His arrival produced the particular kind of commotion that follows a person who has spent years being the subject of other people's strong feelings.
There were heroes in the assembled crowd who didn't like Amai Mask. There were heroes who envied him, some who'd been on the receiving end of his public assessments and hadn't forgotten it, and at least a few who had at various points contributed to the online discourse about his character and his methods. None of this was especially unusual. It came with the territory.
What was also true, and what the crowd's reaction confirmed within the first few seconds, was that for every hero who held any of those opinions, there were considerably more who simply admired him. For this, the reasoning was straightforward: he was extraordinarily good-looking, possessed physical capabilities that he kept carefully out of the public record, had a voice that filled stadiums, and conducted himself at the absolute apex of both the hero and entertainment worlds simultaneously. Professional heroes were not immune to this. Even among people whose job description occasionally included fighting things that could destroy cities, there was a fairly universal threshold for an idol who was also genuinely formidable.
In terms of fan base and reach, the only person in the world who occupied the same tier was the man who had established this place — Jordan Evans, equally well-known across both worlds, and one of the very short list of people that Amai Mask extended genuine respect toward rather than the calibrated, elegant performance of it.
He stepped off the helicopter and looked around with real interest. The capsule-shaped building complex; the assembly of heroes ranging from A-Class to C-Class to something rather more difficult to categorize; the general operational energy of people preparing to go somewhere and do something significant. He waved off his assistants — they retreated immediately, practiced at this — and walked forward.
Instinct and the particular directional sense of one powerful person orienting toward another brought him straight to the entrance of the old-fashioned martial arts hall, where a tall figure had already come out to meet him.
Jordan had sensed him arriving. He'd come out before Mask reached the door.
They stood at essentially the same height. Amai Mask was perhaps fractionally shorter, but whatever slight physical advantage Jordan held in that regard was irrelevant in the face of the presence that years at the absolute peak of two competitive worlds had built into Mask's bearing. He looked at Jordan with a genuine smile — not the stage-polished one that appeared in concert footage, but something more direct and more real.
"We finally meet in person, Super Cop."
Jordan read the sincerity in it immediately. The honorific, the direct address, the complete absence of the political calculation that usually lived somewhere in professional hero interactions.
"The admiration is mutual, Mr. Mask," he said, and extended his hand.
Their hands met.
Somewhere in the crowd behind them, the sound of camera shutters began — first one, then three, then a rapid, syncopated chorus as the heroes who'd been slow to process what they were looking at caught up and reached for their phones.
Two faces that had between them generated a truly extraordinary amount of merchandise revenue, standing in front of a martial arts hall in a deserted city, shaking hands in the morning light. The target demographic for the photographs that were about to be taken covered approximately every age range with disposable income. The heroes taking those photographs were fully aware of this and operating with corresponding urgency.
Jordan noticed, felt the familiar weight of being in a public-adjacent situation, and set it aside. Mask seemed to have the same response time for this kind of thing.
"Why the honorifics?" Jordan asked, keeping his tone mild. Mask's friendliness had been genuine enough to prompt genuine curiosity. "We're colleagues."
Amai Mask's expression gave a fraction. The honest answer was almost embarrassingly simple: powerful, handsome, operates with integrity despite everything the world throws at him — yes, this is exactly the kind of hero I respect. He had no intention of saying this, precisely because it was true.
"Call it professional appreciation," Mask said, which covered it adequately.
Jordan accepted this. He held a private view on the question that had circulated in online spaces about Amai Mask's nature — the debate about what, exactly, he was — but he'd long since filed it under moot point, pending Saitama. A man who beat Garou back into himself with a corrective punch had demonstrated that the distance between human and monster was navigable. Whatever the answer was for Mask, it would wait.
"Come inside," Jordan said, stepping aside to make room. "We'll be moving out after the operational briefing."
Amai Mask glanced through the entrance at the assembled S-Class guests visible beyond it. His expression shifted into something cooler — still pleasant on the surface, but with a particular assessment happening underneath.
"Thank you, but no." He gave a polished, genuinely elegant smile. "Not everyone is glad I'm here, and I don't want to disrupt whatever's happening in there." A brief pause. "But if there are individuals in the S-Class contingent whose performance falls short — I'll be watching. And I'll be noting it."
He let that settle, then bowed with precise formality and turned toward the lawn where his helicopter had landed.
His staff had not been idle. The space where the aircraft had touched down had been transformed in the time it took for him to introduce himself to Jordan: a low table, chairs and a sofa arranged around it, plates of food from a hotel kitchen arranged on its surface with clear professional attention, a glass of red wine already decanted and breathing at the correct temperature.
Several heroes nearby stared at this arrangement with the specific expression of people calculating the disparity between their own situations and someone else's.
We're all out here preparing to fight a monster organization.
And he's got table service.
Jordan was already heading back toward the hall when the Mind Network delivered its update.
The information arrived in full detail — not gradually, not in fragments, but with the particular completeness of a communication system that had been running continuously for long enough to compress and transmit significant events instantly. He understood the situation in approximately half a second.
Tatsumaki had arrived early.
There were many things capable of triggering Tatsumaki's power at full expression. Most of them were threats. The absolute top of the list, consistent and unvarying across all circumstances, was anything that touched on her sister.
The mushroom cloud that erupted above the no-man's-land to the east confirmed this assessment with the visual authority of a several-hundred-meter wall of emerald energy expanding outward at ground level.
Amai Mask had taken three steps toward his table. He stopped. Looked at the cloud. Looked at Jordan.
"Need any help?"
Jordan raised one hand, already moving. "I've got it."
He wasn't there a moment later.
Ten minutes earlier.
"Lady Fubuki, are we sure this is the right direction?"
Eyelashes looked at the commercial street around them — closed storefronts, lowered grilles, absolutely no one — and allowed a note of reasonable suspicion to enter his voice. He was slender, medium-length hair pulled back into a small braid, the Fubuki Group's standard black suit making him look roughly as much like a hero as it made him look like something else.
"Don't question Lady Fubuki." Mountain Ape's voice was immediate and flat, the tone of a man who has a policy on this and applies it consistently. The large, dark-skinned hero with the wrestler's build looked at Eyelashes with an expression that communicated several things without requiring additional words. "She received a direct invitation from Hero Association headquarters. That's not something you question."
"I wasn't questioning the invitation," Eyelashes said, carefully. "I was questioning the direction. It's just a very empty street is all."
"That's not okay either!"
"I just—"
"That's not okay!"
Fubuki, walking at the front of the group with her coat settling around her and her expression carrying the particular quality of someone who knows exactly what's behind her and is choosing not to engage with it, did not break stride.
The no-man's-land of Z-City was, in fact, very empty. That was the point of it. But they were going the right way — she had the coordinates, she had the invitation, and she had been to Z-City often enough to know approximately where the training camp Jordan had established was located.
She was not going to say "I told you so" to Eyelashes when they arrived.
She was, however, going to note it privately and allow herself exactly one moment of satisfaction.
The street ahead opened up slightly, and through the gap between two shuttered buildings, visible at a distance, the capsule-shaped architecture of the training camp caught the morning light.
Behind her, Eyelashes and Mountain Ape continued their argument at the precise volume and register of people who have had this argument before and know exactly where it ends.
Fubuki kept walking.
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