Week One
The training post exploded on the fourteenth hit.
Seraph examined his knuckles—redness, no breaks, already fading. He studied the destroyed wood, mentally cataloging force distribution and bone density thresholds.
Peter Parker had lifted cars. Pulled punches to avoid killing normal humans.
Seraph had just destroyed chakra-reinforced hardwood like it was balsa.
Not the same weight class.
He grew another post from the floor, this one thicker, denser. Resumed striking. Twenty hits. Forty. Seventy-five before it finally gave way.
The data was clear: significantly above baseline human maximum. Exact tonnage unknown without calibrated equipment, but the upper threshold was still distant.
"Good. Room to grow."
He looked at his undamaged hands, flexing the fingers.
"Again."
***
The vaulted ceiling was twenty feet overhead.
Seraph placed one foot against the wall and pushed chakra to his sole. The adhesion was immediate—not biological like Peter's setae, but energetic. He walked up the wall vertically, no handholds, just constant chakra flow maintaining the bond.
At the ceiling, he transitioned smoothly, walking inverted.
Blood rushed to his head. His body compensated automatically—Hashirama's enhanced vitality keeping him functional despite the unnatural position.
He ran across the ceiling, full sprint, upside-down.
Still stable.
He dropped, flipped mid-air, landed in a crouch.
"Wall-crawling confirmed. More versatile than the original. Any surface."
He paused, looking up at the ceiling where his footprints had left faint chakra impressions in the wood.
That's going to be useful.
***
Shadow Clone Jutsu should have been simple.
Seraph formed the seal, split his chakra—
The clone appeared. He set it to practice basic forms and kata while he worked on elemental control exercises.
Three hours later, the clone dispelled voluntarily.
The memory upload hit like a hammer to the skull. Three hours of existence—repetitive movement, muscle memory refinement, subtle technique adjustments, mounting fatigue—compressed and slammed into his consciousness in three seconds. His vision doubled. Nausea surged.
He dropped to one knee, breathing through it.
Mental backlash.
Thirty seconds for the pain to become manageable.
He stood, created another clone.
"Spar with me."
They fought for five minutes—brutal, technical, no holding back.
When the clone dispersed, Seraph experienced the fight from both perspectives simultaneously. Every punch he'd landed, he also felt receiving. Every dodge from his viewpoint overlapped with the clone's attempt to connect. Five minutes of combat from two angles, compressed into an instant.
The cognitive dissonance was nauseating.
He sat heavily, pressing his temples.
Worth it.
Wait. Breathe. Let the healing factor suppress the backlash.
Forty-five seconds this time.
Training efficiency just doubled. If I can handle the feedback.
He created two clones.
The strain of maintaining two splits was immediate but manageable—a constant low-grade headache.
"You—fuinjutsu practice. You—elemental control exercises. Three hours, then dispel sequentially, not simultaneously."
The clones exchanged glances.
First clone: "Sequential dispelling reduces feedback intensity."
Second clone: "But extends the duration of discomfort."
"Correct. Do it anyway."
They moved to their stations without further comment.
Threshold established. Two is sustainable. Three would be pushing it.
***
Week Two
Body Flicker was velocity without control.
Seraph focused on a point fifteen feet away, channeled chakra through his legs, and pushed—
He slammed into the wall. Stone cracked under the impact.
Too much power.
He peeled himself off, ribs already healing. Tried again with half the chakra output.
Undershot. Stumbled mid-technique.
Not enough.
Again. Overshot, hit the ceiling.
"This is harder than the memories suggested. Balance is everything."
By the twelfth attempt, he'd found it: focus point, channel, burst, stabilize.
By the twentieth, he didn't need to vocalize the steps anymore.
He created two shadow clones.
"Attack simultaneously. Full speed."
First clone: "This will hurt."
"Proceed."
They engaged. Seraph flickered between them—too fast to track with normal vision, striking from impossible angles, positioning unpredictably.
Both clones went down within eight seconds.
When they dispersed, the double feedback hit like a sledgehammer. Six hours of clone-time—three hours each—compressed into seconds. His brain processed combat from three perspectives simultaneously, every feint and counter and impact overlapping impossibly.
He went to one knee, breathing through the nausea.
Sixty seconds before manageable.
Mental tolerance increasing. Body Flicker operational.
He stood, looked at the scorch marks his rapid movement had left on the wooden floor.
"Worth it."
***
Sensing was a wall Seraph had slammed into for three days straight.
Hashirama's memories spoke of it as instinct—reading chakra signatures like words on a page, feeling malice like a hand on the spine.
But New York was a void. No ambient chakra. No spiritual current. Just concrete, steel, and human noise.
Seraph sat cross-legged in the center of the training floor, eyes closed, brow knotted in the dark.
If there was no medium to read, he would create one.
He began bleeding chakra into the air—thin, invisible, deliberate. Not enough to be seen. Just enough to exist. A mist without weight, saturating the room like humidity.
Humans are batteries, he reasoned. Nervous systems. Heartbeats. Bio-electric fields.
If chakra could carry life-force… then it could carry current.
He reached inward, brushing the dormant Spider-DNA, coaxing that precognitive itch awake—not to react, but to listen.
The breakthrough came at the six-hour mark.
The buzz at the base of his skull didn't tingle.
It snapped.
His eyes flew open as the world unfolded—not visually, but structurally. High-definition wireframes bloomed in his mind. Every living thing became a pulse. Every movement a vibration carried through his chakra-saturated air.
"Two hundred feet," he breathed.
He could feel the frantic skitter of a cockroach on the far wall. The slow, rhythmic thrum of a neighbor's heart three houses away. Electrical signatures burned into his awareness like thermal ghosts—distinct, layered, impossible to confuse.
This wasn't Spider-Sense.
This was a seismic scan.
"Peter reacts," Seraph murmured, a dark grin cutting across his face. "I anticipate."
He called it the Root Network.
By fusing Hashirama's life-force perception with the spider-gene's precognitive twitch, he'd created a 360-degree theater of awareness. Walls became gradients of density. Floors whispered their weak points. Air itself told him where mass displaced, where intent moved.
It wasn't passive. It drank chakra constantly—an active drain, a deliberate sonar that demanded focus.
But in return—
"I can see through walls," he said calmly, rising with predatory grace. "Through floors. Through darkness."
He drew a kunai and hurled it blindly over his shoulder.
He didn't look.
He felt the air shear, the metal's rotation, the resistance curve of the wooden pillar behind him.
Thwack.
The blade buried itself dead center into a knot in the wood.
The Root Network wasn't just a defense anymore.
It was a targeting system.
---
Fuinjutsu was precision work that made clone feedback feel gentle by comparison.
Seraph drew another explosion tag, each stroke deliberate, each kanji requiring perfect form.
The tag detonated prematurely. The blast scorched his hands black to the wrist.
He watched skin regrow over the next ninety seconds.
Forty percent failure rate. Unacceptable.
He created two clones.
"Observe. Identify errors."
First clone, watching his next attempt: "Third stroke, second kanji. Angle deviation of approximately four degrees."
"Noted."
Second clone: "Chakra flow inconsistent during the binding phase. Causes destabilization."
"Correction applied."
Six hours of intensive work. When the clones finally dispersed, Seraph nearly lost consciousness—twelve hours of mental effort (six hours × two clones) compressed into seconds of upload.
He caught himself against the workbench, vision tunneling to gray.
Two minutes before I can stand.
Threshold reached. Rest required.
But the data was valuable: failure rate down to twenty-five percent. Five functional explosion tags sealed and stored.
He looked at his scarred hands—blackened flesh, exposed bone, already halfway healed.
Expensive. But effective.
***
Week Three
"Combination testing."
Seraph created five clones and outlined the parameters: web-slinging integrated with Body Flicker, Root Network combined with Spider-Sense, Wood Release structures incorporating sealed explosion tags.
First clone: "Risk assessment?"
"High."
Second clone: "Mitigation strategy?"
"Healing factor."
They looked at each other.
"Six hours," Seraph said. "Full intensity."
The training was brutal.
Web-line deployed mid-flicker created trajectories that shouldn't exist—instant directional changes that violated momentum, attacks from angles the enemy couldn't predict. The Root Network combined with Spider-Sense produced complete threat awareness in a three-hundred-sixty-degree sphere. Wood constructs tagged with explosion seals became remote mines, traps, area denial.
When the clones dispersed after six hours—sequentially, thirty seconds apart—Seraph stayed conscious through sheer will.
Thirty hours of accumulated experience (six hours × five clones) uploading in stages. His brain processing existence in five places at once, every technique and counter-technique and pain signal from multiple perspectives.
He stayed on one knee for eight minutes.
Twelve clones beyond current capacity. Nine sustainable for limited periods. Seven optimal for extended work.
Eventually he stood, legs shaking.
The chamber bore three weeks of scars: shattered posts, scorch marks, impact craters, burn patterns from failed seals.
"Ready."
He paused.
Almost ready.
***
Seraph emerged after midnight—black clothing, face covered, police scanner in pocket.
The rooftops were his now. He moved between them like wind, silent and invisible, testing mobility techniques in urban terrain.
New York sprawled beneath him in geometric density. Avengers Tower glowed on the horizon. Helicopters circled financial districts. Eight million lives compressed into vertical architecture and horizontal sprawl.
He found a gargoyle on a pre-war building and crouched on its head, studying the ecosystem.
The police scanner crackled: robbery in progress, shots fired, officers responding.
Somewhere in this city, Peter Parker is probably sleeping or swinging.
He'd watched footage two days ago—Spider-Man stopping a convenience store robbery in Midtown, taking photos with kids afterward. The Daily Bugle called him a menace. The crowds cheered anyway.
Same DNA. Different choices.
He stood on the gargoyle's head, looking down at sixty stories of empty air.
Then stepped off.
The fall was data—velocity, wind resistance, trajectory—processed and analyzed before web-deployment. The line caught, held, and he swung through the arc, feeling the freedom of three-dimensional movement.
He disappeared into shadow before the swing's momentum carried him past the streetlight's reach.
Not Spider-Man. Not the hero. Not bound by the same responsibilities.
"Something more."
***
Week Four - The Suit
Day One
"Bone-white hardwood fiber. Needs to stop small-arms fire. Needs flexibility without restriction."
Seraph created two clones and pressed his palms against the workshop table. The wood responded to his will, forming plates that overlapped like scales, each one articulated for maximum mobility.
While he grew the base layer, the clones tested flexibility and thickness, providing real-time feedback.
First clone, bending a test piece: "This segment restricts shoulder rotation by approximately fifteen degrees."
"Correction applied."
Function over form. But appearance matters tactically.
***
Day Two
"Bronze plating. Treated wood, not metal. Aesthetic intimidation."
The plating grew over the chest, shoulders, forearms—root-like patterns that caught light with metallic sheen despite being organic.
He created the emblem: an arachnid with legs curving like consuming roots. Placed it center-chest.
Web-shooters integrated into gauntlets. Triple capacity compared to Peter's original design.
The first test firing jammed. Pressure sensor miscalibrated.
Adjust. Test again.
Variable web density controlled by finger pressure: tap twice for line, three times for net, sustained squeeze for impact webbing.
Hidden blades beneath—eight inches of sharpened hardwood, spring-loaded, deployed by specific wrist angle.
One angle: webs.
Different angle: blades.
He created a clone to spar against while testing the mechanisms. Seventy iterations before he was satisfied with the response speed.
***
Day Four
Voice modulator integrated into the helmet.
He spoke: "This is Arbor."
The output flattened his voice, removing emotional inflection, making it sound almost synthesized.
Good. Inhuman is the intent.
The helmet sealed completely—full face coverage, one-way reflective lenses, integrated air filtration. Not for protection primarily, but for anonymity and psychological impact.
***
Day Five
The suit hung complete on its rack.
Seraph stepped back, studying it in the bio-luminescent glow. Bone-white armor with bronze plating, the arachnid emblem visible even in low light, every weapon system integrated seamlessly.
He ran his hand across the chest plate, feeling the living wood respond to his chakra.
This is who I've become.
The thought wasn't satisfaction exactly. More like acknowledgment. He'd been building toward this moment for four weeks—every training session, every failed technique, every scar that healed.
The suit was the culmination. Not just equipment, but a statement.
" I'm not hiding anymore."
He turned away, leaving the suit on its rack.
"Final adjustments tomorrow."
***
Day Seven
Seraph descended at dawn.
Four hours of methodical work: calibrating the voice modulator, aligning the helmet lenses, checking weapon deployment mechanisms, loading the utility belt with smoke pellets, kunai, wire, zip-ties.
He created a single clone.
"Assessment."
The clone circled the suit slowly. "Functionally superior to baseline expectations. Aesthetically designed for intimidation. All systems operational."
"Agreed."
The clone met his eyes. "You're escalating."
"I'm establishing presence."
There's a difference between survival and this. I know that. But survival alone isn't enough anymore.
The clone said nothing for several seconds, then: "You're certain."
"I am."
The clone dispersed. Mild feedback—confirmation of decisions already made, no new information.
Seraph pulled out the police scanner, cycling through frequencies until he found what he'd been monitoring for two days: Scorpios gang, Hell's Kitchen, scheduled cash exchange tonight.
He marked the location on a stolen city map, calculated approach vectors, identified escape routes.
Target acquired. Timing confirmed.
He climbed to street level as morning light filtered through his house's dirty windows.
The ghost bottle pulsed faintly on the mantle.
"Four weeks ago, drowning in a containment pod. Three weeks ago, scrambling for legal identity. Two weeks ago, building a fortress. One week ago, finishing the suit."
Tonight I stop preparing.
The uncertainty was small but present.
Training has limits. You can practice until techniques become reflex, study until you understand every variable, prepare until preparation becomes hesitation.
But you can't know your capabilities until they're tested. Against actual threats. When failure means more than starting over.
What if four weeks wasn't enough?
He let the question exist without answering it.
The morning sun painted his living room floor in dusty gold. Somewhere in the city, people were waking up, going to jobs, living normal lives that didn't include underground fortresses or supernatural abilities or plans to massacre criminals.
Seraph sat against the wall, looking at nothing in particular.
'
He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall.
The house was silent except for distant traffic and the faint creak of old wood settling. The ghost bottle's pulse was barely visible in the morning light.
By nightfall, the waiting ends.
He opened his eyes, staring at the water-stained ceiling.
The uncertainty remained, quiet but persistent.
"Guess I'll find out ."
Outside, New York continued its endless churn—indifferent, oblivious, unaware that something new was about to emerge from the shadows beneath a haunted house in Queens.
Something that had spent four weeks sharpening itself into a weapon.
Something that tonight would cut.
Whether cleanly or not remained to be seen.
End Chapter 9