After the Battle of New York, the sky had closed, but the world had already cracked open.
The Avengers had stood tall, defending Manhattan from the alien horde. Beside them, for the first time in years, the Fantastic Four emerged: Human Torch lit up the skyline, The Thing battled Leviathans alongside Hulk, Mr. Fantastic saved entire blocks with his reach, and Invisible Woman shielded fleeing civilians.
But while the world cheered, Sahil Hamato — watching from a Brooklyn rooftop — was already three steps ahead.
He wasn't a bystander. He was the eye in the sky. The hand sketching the next move.
Kenji still believed his son was just a brilliant little boy with a thing for parkour and science fairs. He had no idea his son could field-strip a plasma rifle, disarm Karai in a fight, or pick a Yakuza safe house clean of data using a stealth drone the size of a quarter.
Brooklyn, Late 2012
The city was still recovering from the invasion when Sahil Hamato proposed his most audacious idea yet.
Street gangs in New York were showing up with Chitauri-enhanced weaponry: energy grenades, pulse rifles, plasma blades. The Hamato Clan wasn't prepared for that kind of escalation.
Sahil proposed the solution.
"We need to buy up as much of the Chitauri tech that's leaked into the black market as possible," he told Ryota. They were inside the underground war room below the Hamato base, red string and images forming a complex web of the post-invasion arms trade.
Ryota raised a brow. "You want the clan to start scavenging alien tech?"
"Not scavenging," Sahil corrected. "Consolidating. Controlling the market flow. Before Toomes or someone worse builds something we can't contain."
Ryota's silence was thoughtful.
"We buy it all. Seize the tech off the streets before it spreads. We'll need The Hand."
Ryota hesitated, then nodded. "You've been spying on Gao?"
"Long enough. She values results. Let me talk to her."
Sahil continued, "I've been tracing activity in Hell's Kitchen. The Triads, led by Madame Gao, are tied to the distribution routes. I've mapped eight warehouses where Chitauri energy spikes have been detected."
He tapped the screen, flipping to infrared footage, radio logs, and diagrams. "Convince Gao. Tell her this isn't a favor. It's an investment. The clan gets ahead of the curve. She gets profit and power."
Ryota nodded slowly. "Gao answers to the inner circle. But I can reach her."
In a hidden Chinatown parlor, Sahil met Madame Gao, with Ryota and Karai flanking him.
The Triad matriarch, ancient and terrifying, listened as Ryota spoke of Sahil's proposal. She scoffed at first—until Sahil, through live feed, broke down the market trends, tech specs, and future opportunities.
"You are suggesting a child can see farther than seasoned men," Gao said.
"Not suggesting," Sahil said calmly. "I'm proving it."
Madame Gao watched the nine-year-old boy sit calmly between Ryota and Karai. She expected another arrogant child with delusions of grandeur.
What she got was something else.
She sat back, amused. "And what of Wilson Fisk? This territory interests him as well."
"Then we move first. He'll play catch-up."
Gao glanced at Ryota, and then back at the feed. "If this fails, it's your family who answers to The Hand."
Ryota only said, "We're not going to fail."
He handed her an encrypted drive — full surveillance on Toomes' intercepted shipments, his black-market buyers, and power players linked to Gao's own smuggling rings.
"I'm not here to threaten your empire," Sahil said. "I'm here to future-proof it."
Gao smiled thinly. "You're dangerous. Like Fisk when he was young. But smarter."
She agreed. The Hand would fund Sahil's Chitauri recovery program — to corner the alien tech market before it destabilized the entire underworld.
"He's your project now," she told Ryota. "Don't waste him."
With access secured, Sahil set up a secure morgue-lab beneath the Brooklyn base.
Ryota arranged for the discreet delivery of six intact Chitauri corpses. Sahil wore custom gloves, sterilized his workspace, and began his grim study.
His Baxter Stockman template surged in response. He dissected their exoskeletal armor, probing the neural junctions that interfaced directly with weapons. He broke down their immune system, cataloging bioresin tissue and regenerating nodes. He extracted power cores from embedded gauntlets and reverse-engineered the containment fields that stabilized Chitauri energy.
"They're hive-linked," he recorded. "Artificial bio-nodes connect to a master signal. Could be recreated on Earth frequency with neural implants…"
The experiments were morbid. Intense. Dangerous. And utterly priceless.
This pushed his Baxter Stockman template to 60%. His mind processed alien code, energy frequencies, and biotech schematics simultaneously.
The Snake Eyes template had reached 50% assimilation. Sahil moved like a ghost in combat drills — his speed was blistering, his reflexes preternatural, and his stealth training had surpassed everyone in the clan. He could kill without making a sound.
He was now an expert in botany, herbs, poisons and toxins.
Sahil had reached the limits of training halls and simulated combat. One night, alone with Ryota, he said:
"I need real missions. Shadow ops. Targets. If I stay in the lab, I stagnate."
Ryota understood. The boy had become a tool too sharp to sit idle.
To the outside world, Sahil Hamato was a mild-mannered once in a century genius with an unusual academic appetite.
He was being compared to the likes of Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Hank Pym and Bruce Banner.
His parents, proud and unsuspecting, took him to university interviews, guided him through scholarship panels, and watched him crush entrance exams.
By age 10, Sahil had earned or was acquiring degrees in:
Linguistics: Fluency in 12+ languages, including obscure dialects.
Biology: Human-animal hybrid studies and applied genetics.
Physics & Chemistry: Advanced energy systems and material sciences.
Robotics & Computer Science: Quantum encryption, drone warfare, AI autonomy.
Humanities & Ethics: Power structures, war theory, and sociopolitical manipulation.
His professors saw a prodigy. His parents saw a miracle.
Only Ryota and Karai saw the truth.
He was a machine of layered purpose — part soldier, part scientist, part strategist — slowly shaping himself into something neither human nor monster, but an anomaly built for the next era.
"What's next?" Karai asked one day, watching Sahil wire a prototype pulse gauntlet.
"I want to hunt," Sahil said simply. "It's time to test theory in the real world."
The world was still reeling from the Battle of New York.
But Sahil Hamato?
He was just getting started.