The man who stepped into the doorway was shirtless.
He was very large. He was extremely hairy. His chest caught the light of the corridor in a way that suggested he had been lifting weights with considerable enthusiasm before the knocking started, and the dumbbells and barbell plates scattered across the cell floor behind him confirmed this hypothesis.
The thin prisoner in correctional gray exhaled for what felt like the first time in several minutes.
Ah. So that was the sound. Just lifting weights. Just the normal sound of a three-hundred-pound man in a women's prison solitary cell performing an intense solo workout at full energy.
Perfectly ordinary.
Everything should be fine.
"Oh-ho-ho~" The man's eyebrow rose. A slow, appreciative smile crossed his stubble-covered face as he took in the visitor. "Boy, I remember you!"
Puri-Puri Prisoner leaned against the doorframe with an energy that could most charitably be described as welcoming.
"Three months," he said, tilting his chin with the air of someone accepting an invitation he'd been expecting. "And you've finally decided you want to spend a pleasant evening with me? Ugh—" he pressed his fingers to his cheek with mock shyness— "I don't like overly forward boys~~"
The thin prisoner stared at his boss striking a shy pose with both hands over his face, and felt the distinct sensation of his soul trying to quietly exit his body through the top of his skull.
Several seconds passed.
When no response came, Puri-Puri Prisoner spread his arms wide in magnanimous invitation, revealing the full magnificent expanse of his very enthusiastic physique.
"Well. Being pursued every now and then isn't the worst thing. Come now—don't hold back just because I'm a delicate flower~~"
"NO—no, boss, PLEASE—" The prisoner's hands came up in front of him as Puri-Puri Prisoner began his approach. "That's— I'm NOT here for that! I came with a message! A MESSAGE, boss—!"
He had, in this moment, achieved a profound spiritual kinship with every young woman who had ever found herself cornered in a dark alley by three very large men.
"...Is that so."
The advance halted. The warmth evaporated from Puri-Puri Prisoner's expression with the speed of a light switch. He withdrew, crossed his arms, and regarded his visitor with the detached patience of a man who has refiled an expectation.
"Then what's up, boy?"
The explanation poured out in a torrent. Monster Association. Z-City. Dragon-level threats underground. Jordan Evans organizing a team engagement—
Puri-Puri Prisoner listened. His expression shifted from boredom to interest, then to something considerably more resolved.
"Jordan Evans organized this." He nodded, slowly, with great conviction. "Then I am absolutely going."
He reached out and grabbed the messenger by the collar before the man could react, and delivered a combination of gestures that left the latter suffocating, face purple, and collapsing gracefully to the floor.
Puri-Puri Prisoner straightened up, wiped his mouth with satisfaction, and said, "Well done, boy. That's your advance reward. I'll bring you something nice when I get back~"
On the floor, the messenger produced a sound that might have been acknowledgment, or might have been a small, involuntary expression of despair. His body was not entirely certain it was still attached to a conscious mind.
What happened next was not technically a prison break. Technically.
Puri-Puri Prisoner crossed his arms in front of his chest, gathered himself, and hit the outer wall of the correctional facility at speed. Concrete designed to contain some of the worst offenders in the country offered approximately one second of token resistance.
He emerged into the evening air through a neat man-shaped hole, already accelerating, leaving behind a very surprised collection of emaciated fellow inmates who watched through the dust in unanimous silence.
The sunset accepted his silhouette without comment.
Deep in the mountains, far from any city, where there was no internet and the only sounds were wind and distance, a very old man sat on a stone.
The stone itself was worth looking at. It sat at the edge of a cliff, wider at the top and narrower at the base like an inverted pyramid—and beneath that, ten smaller stones of varying shapes had been balanced tip-to-tip in a tower of such improbable geometry that a mild breeze should have toppled the whole arrangement an hour ago.
The old man sat at the apex of this construction and did not move.
A gust came through. The forest shuddered. The old man's white hair and long beard shifted in the wind.
The stones did not.
He might have been carved there, rooted like a pine at the edge of the drop, the bottomless chasm below him visible only as darkness between the treetops.
"Master Bang, I've completed a scan of the ten-kilometer radius." The cyborg Genos landed in the forest halfway up the mountain, his thrusters cutting out, his internal sensors running their sweep. "I'm not detecting any life energy signatures comparable to what you described."
Bang stood nearby, his martial arts uniform neat despite hours of walking through wilderness terrain, his head tilted toward the cliff above with the specific attentiveness of a man listening for something that isn't quite sound.
"Don't worry, Genos." He scratched the back of his head with the expression of a boy who knows he should have brought better directions. "The address my brother gave me should be around here somewhere..."
This was the problem with someone who'd been in seclusion for years. The letter had said these mountains. The mountains were large. They'd been walking since morning.
The sun had nearly finished its descent by the time they found the cliff.
The old man on the stones had heard them long before they saw him.
A smile touched the corner of his mouth—brief, private, the expression of someone who has thought of something pleasant. He didn't move to acknowledge the sound. There was no need.
Then, without standing, without visibly preparing, he was simply not there.
He was in the air above the stone tower, and the stone tower was splitting.
His hands had moved through a series of positions as he fell—slow, deliberate, drawing circles like a man tracing the edges of something only he could see—and the ripples that spread outward from his passing were invisible to the naked eye. Not to the results. The great stone column, taller than a building, sheared into perfect concentric rings, each section separating from the last as cleanly as if cut by an instrument, until only the core remained: a single upright pillar standing straighter than a telephone pole, its surface not even scratched.
The gravel of the outer sections showered down around it in an even, geometrically perfect pattern.
The mountain wind howled.
Whirlwind Iron Fist. The Wind of Death's signature technique, and the reason the martial arts world had once treated this mountain range as an unwalkable address.
In the forest below, Bang's head snapped up.
His gaze locked onto the stone pillar—the precision of what remained behind. The old eyes went soft in a way that had nothing to do with weakness.
It's not only Stand users who are drawn to each other. Martial artists have their own gravity between them. And for brothers who trained together from childhood, who shared the same master and the same name for their respective styles of destroying the world's previous assumptions about what a human body could do—the pull was something older than technique.
Bomb descended from the cliff face without hurrying, using the protruding rocks as natural footholds, landing in front of them with his hands clasped behind his back and the bearing of a man who has not been surprised by anything in forty years.
He looked at Bang, and then at Genos, and then back at Bang.
"Little brother." His voice carried the specific warmth of someone who has been waiting for this visit and has decided not to say so. "How long has it been?"
"More than a year, Brother." Bang scratched his head. He looked, in this moment, approximately twelve years old. "I'm sorry it took so long."
The reunion settled around them with the comfortable weight of old habits.
Bang turned to Genos. "This is Genos—disciple of a good friend of mine. A remarkable young man." He turned to his brother. "And this, Genos, is my older brother. Bomb."
Genos bowed correctly, with both hands at his sides, his posture precise and genuine.
"It's an honor to meet you, Master Bomb."
Bomb looked at him. Something like approval settled briefly in the old man's expression.
Well-mannered. Good.