Saitama had several objections. They were all, at their core, the same objection.
"None of those are actually problems," Jordan said, reaching into the snack pile.
"The supervisor thing—"
"King joined the Association long before he officially registered as S-Class. You know King." Jordan ate a cracker. "Does he seem like someone who takes orders he doesn't want to take?"
Saitama thought about this. King's relationship with authority was, in practice, one of mutual non-interference.
"S-Class," he said. "That's what you are?"
"And King now, yes." Jordan explained the structure—the rank, the operational independence that came with it, the practical reality that S-Class heroes were treated less like employees and more like affiliated contractors whose continued goodwill the Association had genuine reasons to maintain.
"So if someone told me to do something I didn't want to do—"
"You can say no. Officially. With institutional backing."
Saitama's expression suggested he was processing this as a legitimate improvement over his current situation, which involved no institutional backing and also a potential cold storage liability.
"But the registration itself—there's probably paperwork, and—"
"The Association has a special fund," Jordan said, "specifically to cover facility damage incurred during registered hero activities. The cold storage warehouse falls under that framework. You register, the liability resolves."
Saitama opened his mouth.
"High-ranking heroes receive a substantial base salary," Jordan said. "Plus bonuses for monster defeats. Per incident. S-Class bonuses are—" He let the number land without decoration.
Saitama's brows went from furrowed to level to interested in approximately two seconds.
"Tomorrow morning," he said, with the decisive clarity of a man who has had his actual objection addressed. "I'll register tomorrow morning."
Jordan had not expected it to take less than three minutes. He hid this.
Genos appeared from the balcony with the quiet timing of someone who has been listening and judged the moment appropriate to contribute. "I know the assessment location. I can guide you."
Saitama looked at him. "Assessment?"
"The registration process includes a physical examination and a written component," Genos said, with the earnest precision of someone who has researched this. "It was implemented because the volume of applicants required a screening threshold. But Teacher—" his voice took on the particular confidence of a disciple stating what he believes to be obvious, "—with your abilities, the physical test will present no challenge whatsoever."
Saitama rested his chin in his hand. He was doing the internal arithmetic of physical test versus written exam, and arriving at a conclusion Jordan could read from across the room: physical is probably most of the score, the written part is probably fine if I don't think too hard about it.
Jordan smiled and said nothing.
He'll start at C-Class if he goes through the standard process. That was the honest projection. The standard assessment wasn't built to measure what Saitama actually was—it was built to measure people, and Saitama had stopped being in that category some time ago without the testing infrastructure noticing.
Which meant Jordan needed to do something about it before tomorrow morning.
The plan was already assembled. He'd been holding the pieces for a while, waiting for the right sequence.
An S-Class Joint Recommendation—five names, collective weight, submitted alongside the application rather than waiting for the assessment results. Tatsumaki. Bang. King. Himself. And Atomic Samurai, who had been on the receiving end of the Supermarket Sale Fist's spiritual predecessor, and who genuinely respected people who could hit him in ways he hadn't anticipated.
Somewhere in a desolate wilderness, Jordan thought, Atomic Samurai just sneezed.
Five S-Class recommendations arriving simultaneously for a single applicant would produce a review situation that would be very difficult to navigate around through ordinary bureaucratic inertia. And if ordinary bureaucratic inertia still somehow managed—Jordan had thought through what came next, and had decided it was worth mentioning only to himself.
He clapped his hands and stood. "Good. You two sort out the details. I'm going to shower and sleep."
Neither Saitama nor Genos had any objection to this.
The bathroom was quiet.
Jordan ran the water and did the actual accounting.
F-boy had flagged it this afternoon—the cooldown on Dimensional Travel had completed. The ability to move between worlds was active again. He'd been intending to address this earlier, but the day in City A had expanded to fill the available time, which he found he wasn't particularly bothered by.
The fragment count was the more immediately interesting number.
[Fantasy Card: Limiter Fragment] ×198
The threshold for F-boy's next evolution was 160. He had 198. The surplus was modest by the standards of what future accumulation rates would look like—he was planning to hold inventory until he had a thousand before doing anything else—but the evolution itself had been pending for a while, and F-boy had opinions about this.
He has opinions about everything, Jordan thought, working shampoo through his hair. He's my Stand. Of course he does.
In the void adjacent to the bathroom, F-boy was doing the thing he did when he wanted Jordan to make a decision—the precise, sustained, expressionless stare that communicated displeasure without any of the components that would allow Jordan to pretend he hadn't noticed it.
"Fusing 160 fragments in Saitama's apartment," Jordan said to the shampoo bubbles, "and then whatever the evolution does happens here. In this building. Is that what you want?"
F-boy's expression did not change.
"We're going to another world soon anyway. We do it there, controlled environment, no structural liability." Jordan rinsed one side of his head. "Or we fuse the fragments now and save the evolution for when we arrive somewhere that can handle it."
A pause.
F-boy, in the void, processed the logic of this against his desire for the evolution to happen immediately. The logic was sound. He had enough operational intelligence to recognize sound logic even when it was being deployed to postpone something he wanted.
He activated the ability and stepped into the void.
He's genuinely easier to persuade than Saitama sometimes, Jordan thought, with the warmth of someone observing a familiar pattern. Which makes sense. Same base material.
The fragment cards came out of the void in a cascade—N-rank, white-bordered, hundreds of them appearing and stacking and shuffling against each other in the air above the bathroom tile. They moved with the organizing intelligence of the Stand ability finding its structure.
The bathroom filled with light.
In the living room, Saitama looked up from his watermelon.
The flash had come from somewhere in the back of the apartment—brief, bright, gone before he could determine the direction.
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