The days blurred together.
There was no grand revelation. No surge of unstoppable power. Just a man, fighting against himself every day, in a silent war only he knew existed.
By 2006, Rai had turned his cramped Brooklyn apartment into something that barely resembled a home. Mats on the floors. Sealing tape across cracked windows to muffle the noise. Weighted vests, blunt kunai, chakra exercises drawn in careful ink across the walls.
And blood. His own, mostly. Calloused knuckles. Torn skin. Muscle strains that never quite healed.
The price of survival in a world that didn't even know its monsters yet.
Chakra: The Invisible Battle
He thought he'd gotten the hang of chakra after learning the basic jutsu. He was wrong.
The deeper layers were a battlefield.
Walking on walls was no longer a party trick. Now he practiced sprinting vertically, launching himself from surface to surface without falling. Some nights ended with him crashing painfully into dumpsters or scraping down brick walls, gritting his teeth against the bruises.
The Sharingan helped—barely. It gave him perception, yes, but not skill. Seeing your mistakes didn't mean you could fix them easily. His chakra reserves grew drop by drop, stubbornly, like water filling a cracked jar.
Sometimes, he'd sit still for hours, simply molding chakra, refining it, trying to make the process smoother, faster. It was slow torture.
But little by little, he stopped noticing the burn behind his eyes when he held it for longer periods. The trembling in his hands after heavy usage faded—just a bit.
Progress, measured in inches.
Fire Release: Strength Born in Ashes
The Fireball Jutsu was no longer just a desperate trick for emergencies.
He practiced it under bridges, in abandoned lots, wherever he could find isolation. Early attempts were dangerous—too much chakra, too little control. Flames that sputtered out or exploded violently without warning.
More than once, he nearly set his own clothes on fire.
So he scaled back. Smaller fires. Controlled bursts. Focusing more on shaping than power.
By summer, he could launch a neat, compact fireball the size of a small car, precise enough to strike a mark on a wall without shattering everything around it.
He smiled, just once, when the technique came out clean for the first time.
A small victory. Quickly buried under the knowledge of how far he still had to go.
Genjutsu: Learning the Mind's Shadows
The Sharingan's evolution had been a blessing and a curse.
Unlocking the second tomoe gave him clarity—he could see movement sharper, read microexpressions, predict simple attacks before they came. But it also showed him just how much he was missing.
He experimented with low-level genjutsu: casting illusions to hide himself, to confuse a mugger's aim, to make a pursuer see a wall where there was none.
Success was rare at first.
The mental strain was worse than the physical. Holding the illusion stable required perfect chakra flow, perfect visualization, perfect timing. His nose bled more often than he liked to admit.
But failure taught him more than success ever could.
Step by step, he learned: how much chakra to use. When to pull back. How to plant a seed of doubt in someone's mind instead of forcing a full hallucination.
He was no master. But for a second—sometimes two—that hesitation he created could mean the difference between life and death.
Taijutsu: The Brutality of Basics
Martial arts wasn't about spinning kicks or perfect form anymore.
It was about survival.
Rai trained the basics obsessively. Guard your head. Keep your center low. Hit soft targets—throat, knees, temples.
He recorded himself sparring with training dummies, studying every mistake like a surgeon examining wounds.
Sometimes he'd shadowbox until his arms refused to rise. Other times, he'd practice knife strikes, dirty moves, fast grabs—anything to win fast.
There were no trophies for second place in a real fight.
He wasn't a black belt. He wasn't a samurai.
He was a man who wanted to live.
And that made him dangerous in a way belts and medals never could.
Armor: A Second Skin
The early makeshift armor was serviceable, but barely.
Heavy enough to slow him down. Flexible enough to split under strain.
He scavenged better materials where he could. Carbon fiber scraps. Cut-up ballistic vests. Reinforced leather stitched by his own trembling hands at three in the morning.
No fancy Stark nanotech. No Wakandan vibranium.
Just bruised fingers, needle, and thread.
He layered the armor carefully, binding chakra-sensitive cloth underneath, hoping—praying—it would hold if someone shot him again.
Every upgrade bought him a few more seconds of survival.
And that was enough.
The Unseen Toll
There were nights Rai could barely stand after training.
Nights he fell asleep sitting against the wall, still dressed in sweat-soaked gear, with a half-eaten protein bar on his lap.
There were mornings he woke to aching joints and bloodshot eyes, wondering if it was all a mistake.
If maybe he should just take the money, disappear into some quiet corner of the world, and let the Avengers handle the coming storms.
But every time he thought about it, he remembered the feeling.
That night in the alley. The fear in the woman's eyes. The muggers' knives gleaming under the streetlights.
And his hands, shaking—not from fear, but from purpose.
No cape. No headlines.
Just a choice.
He stood on the rooftop one cold November night, armor stiff against the wind, breathing slow and even.
Somewhere out there, the world was changing. Gods were descending. Monsters were stirring. Men in iron suits were rising.
He wasn't ready.
But he was getting closer.
And that had to be enough—for now.
[To Be Continued…]