Jordan could have pointed out that Garou would probably heal on his own physiques had a way of being stubborn like that. But Bang had already spoken, so Jordan walked over without argument.
"Sure, Bang."
The aftermath of Genos's victory was scattered across the training ground in the form of one very stubborn, very unconscious teenager.
Garou's injuries had compounded over the course of the afternoon—two hours of relentless fighting against a cyborg who had no soft tissue to bruise, no joints to lock, and a fusion reactor where most people kept their lungs. For someone who hadn't yet mastered the breathing technique, Genos had been a brutally efficient opponent.
The math was simple and cruel. Garou had the edge in Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist—the technique was his, shaped from the bones of what Bang had taught him and refashioned into something sharper, more offensive. But Genos's body was high-strength alloy. His firepower operated on a different tier entirely. And spreading across a wide area, the AOE fire damage forced Garou to divide his attention in three directions at once: you can't break through moves built on the same foundation; Garou's current strike power wasn't enough to crack that metal frame; and one mistimed dodge meant getting engulfed.
Three factors. Any single one manageable. All three together—not today.
What had stunned every observer, Atomic Samurai included, was that Garou had lasted two hours anyway.
He'd finally gone down not from a decisive blow but from simple, total depletion—every last reserve emptied, his body refusing one more order. Even then, he'd folded unwillingly, which somehow made the whole display worse for everyone who'd watched it.
Jordan crouched beside him and pressed his palm flat against the wolf's chest.
Green light bloomed—healing chakra flowing in quiet, steady pulses.
Garou had been glaring at Jordan with the particular ferocity of someone who resents being helped but is too exhausted to refuse. Then the chakra reached his cells, and something shifted in his expression. His throat moved. He swallowed involuntarily.
The energy was rich. Not just the volume of it—though the volume was substantial—but the quality. Dense with vitality, saturated with something his body recognized as necessary in the way a starving animal recognizes food.
This body has the will to survive of a pack, not an individual.
Every cell in Garou woke up at once, reaching for the foreign energy with the collective urgency of something that had been running on empty for a very long time.
For Jordan, the output was negligible. A trickle from a reservoir.
For Garou, it was a feast.
The wounds sealed visibly—scabs forming, fading, smoothing over as the chakra did what it was built to do. Less than a minute. Jordan watched the damage un-write itself across the wolf's skin and thought, not for the first time, that if circumstances were slightly different, this kid would be genuinely terrifying.
You already broke the limiter once, didn't you? And you're still on your teen.
You got off easy.
Garou pushed himself off the ground. He didn't look satisfied—he looked like someone who had eaten until full and was mildly annoyed to discover he couldn't eat more. His gaze swept down to his hands, then back up to Jordan, cold and assessing.
"It's really you."
Jordan kept his expression pleasant, mirroring Bang's customary ease with a fidelity that probably annoyed Garou more than anything. "It is. We meet again."
The wolf's lip curled. "Do we know each other that well?"
No. But you're a high-quality patron, and I've already drawn your card, so yes, actually.
Jordan didn't say any of this. He kept smiling.
When he'd been called over, Garou had registered him as familiar but filed it under irrelevant—too focused on four opponents and a tournament to care about the stranger standing near his master. His adrenaline had been running hot enough to drown out anything that wasn't directly in front of him.
Now the tournament was over. The adrenaline was gone. He'd lost to the cold-faced robot kid. And the tall figure he'd been trying to place since regaining consciousness was standing right there, looking entirely too comfortable.
Something tugged at the edge of his memory.
Something recent. Something he should have been able to recall without effort.
When exactly was it…?
He pressed into the gap and found nothing. A stretch of afternoon that ended in stiff joints, a crick in his neck he'd blamed on bad positioning against a tree.
Ugh. Head's pounding. And now my neck's going again—
Jordan registered the exact moment Garou's eyes began to sharpen. He grabbed Genos by the back of the collar without ceremony and started walking.
Too sharp. If I stay here another ten seconds this wolf is going to ask exactly the right questions and I don't have good answers.
"Wait—"
Garou reached out.
Bang stepped into his path.
The old man stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the way he always did—unhurried, measured, taking up no more space than necessary. But the customary gentle smile was gone. In its place was something quieter and more serious.
"Come with me, Garou," Bang said. "I think it's time for a proper conversation between master and disciple."
Garou's arm lowered. He read nothing unusual in his master's tone—Bang was always composed—and turned away with a slight click of his tongue.
"…Fine."
He was not, at this moment, aware that Bang had been waiting to have this conversation with considerable intent. A fist delivered with love is still love. The wolf walked toward whatever lesson was waiting for him with the easy confidence of someone who did not yet know what was coming.
Jordan, watching from a safe distance, felt grateful for the timing.
He steered Genos across the training ground toward Saitama, who had the expression of a man who had genuinely enjoyed the afternoon.
"Genos!" Saitama grinned. "Congratulations. All that training really paid off."
Genos straightened immediately—full attention, perfect posture. A flicker of something warmed behind his usually flat eyes. Of all the affirmations available to him, Saitama's landed differently than the others.
"Thank you, Teacher," he said, with a sincerity that could have been measured by the decibel. "I will continue to work hard."
"Sure, sure. Keep it up."
Across the grounds, the losers' bracket had arranged itself into a small tableau of dejection.
"Okamaitachi." Atomic Samurai looked at his three disciples with the patience of a man who had accepted the afternoon. "It was a practice match. Is there really a need to—"
Okamaitachi was crying. Properly crying, tears tracking down a face that had handled considerably more damage without complaint during the actual fights. She'd been eliminated first, and the fact of it had apparently been sitting in her all afternoon waiting for permission to come out.
The other two weren't much better.
"I failed to bring you victory again, Master," Okamaitachi managed, voice cracking on the last word.
Iaian bowed his head, the medieval plate of his armor catching the afternoon light in a way that made the whole scene more solemn than it had any right to be. "We held the bottom three positions in this tournament without exception. Punishment is warranted."
Bushidrill glanced around, calculated rapidly, and added, "…Me too."
Atomic Samurai shifted his toothpick to the other side of his mouth.
The record was straightforward and unflattering: every external match lost, the internal rankings filled out by the three of them at the bottom. Genos's integrated firepower had been ferocious—combining cannon output with Flowing Water principles into something seamless and relentless. And the white-haired kid who looked like trouble had fought with the kind of escalating pattern-reading that made experience worth less than usual.
The preparations had been thorough. The gap in combat strength had simply been wider.
"Alright," Atomic Samurai said. "That's enough. Tears belong to the weak."
He stood with his arms crossed—the natural posture of a man who had earned his reputation—and let his gaze move across the three of them.
"You lost. That's not a catastrophe. What it tells you is the distance between where you are and the actual S-Class standard. The cyborg and that Garou—they're ahead of you right now. That's the honest assessment."
He paused.
"I'm in the same position."
The three of them went still.
Atomic Samurai—who had not hesitated once during this whole afternoon to acknowledge what the matches had cost him—offered the same accounting for himself without drama. He had lost. It was incomplete training. The gap would be closed.
"So keep going." He showed his teeth in a grin that was less polished and more genuine than his usual displays. "I'll be closing that gap alongside you."
Three voices broke simultaneously.
Not quite crying—or very much crying—the sound fell somewhere in between. Iaian turned his head. Okamaitachi stopped pretending. Bushidrill, with the expression of a man who had not expected to be moved today, gripped his drill-sword and looked at the middle distance with wet eyes.
The scene with all three of them sniffling in the afternoon light—was objectively difficult to look at directly.
Atomic Samurai scratched the back of his head. "Why are you all crying harder now—"
He had been attempting to be inspiring. Apparently it had worked in the wrong direction.
Was I not cool enough? What did I do wrong?
"Alright, I'll go say my goodbyes to Silver Fang. The three of you, stay here." He pointed once. "Here. Don't move."
"Yes, Master." (Wet voices, unified.)
He walked.
Bang had just led Garou aside when he heard footsteps approaching. The precise, unhurried stride of someone who had been calculating the distance since he left his disciples.
The old man's barely-suppressed focus—which had been oriented entirely on Garou in front of him—receded. He smoothed it away the way he always did, the way he had practiced for decades, and composed his expression into something easy and welcoming.
"Leaving already?"
"I've imposed long enough." Atomic Samurai glanced briefly at Garou, who stood slightly apart with his hands in his pockets, attention deliberately elsewhere. "Training doesn't wait."
Bang nodded. "Safe travels. I'm afraid I have some family matters to attend to here—forgive me for not seeing you out."
"Don't trouble yourself." Atomic Samurai looked at Garou for a moment longer. The kid's eyes were exactly what he'd said they were—flat and cutting and carrying the particular edge of someone who has made a decision they intend to keep. "I like that one. The eyes."
Bang's expression shifted slightly. Something complicated moved through it.
"Train him properly, Silver Fang."
"That," Bang said, "is exactly what I intend to do."
Atomic Samurai chuckled. He raised a hand in farewell as he turned away, posture easy, already moving back toward his waiting disciples.
"Next time, then."