A year had passed since the world last saw Sahil Hamato step into the public spotlight at the launch of Hamato LifeTech. In that time, he vanished from the media, universities, and even most of his clan's daily operations. But he hadn't disappeared. He had entered the crucible.
Sahil Hamato went into the wilds of America — alone.
From the icy reaches of Alaska to the dense Appalachians, from the barren deserts of Nevada to the swampy chaos of Florida's Everglades, Sahil survived with nothing more than the bare minimum: a knife, a canteen, and the training burning through his muscles like coiled steel.
Each terrain was a trial, pushing the Snake Eyes template another step toward full assimilation. He hunted and was hunted. He survived ambushes from bears, snakes, dehydration, frostbite, and mental exhaustion. He adapted his senses, honed his willpower, and mastered techniques few even knew existed.
By the time he emerged from the Everglades, leaner, harder, quieter than shadow, the Snake Eyes template had reached 100%. But that wasn't all.
Sahil had finally mastered all Seven Arashikage Techniques — secrets that had made the Arashikage Clan feared for generations:
The Arashikage Mind-Set: Allowed him to block pain, fear, and even external mental influence. He endured cold, poison, and fatigue without breaking stride.
The Cloak of the Chameleon: Gave him the ability to mimic heartbeats and breathing with eerie precision — fooling even biometric security systems.
The Ear That Sees: Let him fight blind, using sound and air shifts to track movement better than most with perfect vision.
The Sleeping Phoenix: Mimicked death so completely he survived a live test in an enemy ambush where even his allies believed he'd fallen.
The Blind Sword: Made him lethal in total darkness, his scabbard an extension of his perception.
The Way of the Inner Anvil: Allowed him to still his breath and pulse into near nonexistence, perfect for infiltration or evasion.
With the final technique mastered, the Snake Eyes template fused completely within him. Sahil wasn't just trained — he was reborn. A living weapon.
In parallel, the Baxter Stockman template surged to 100% completion.
His mind became a supernova of innovation. Biological systems, cybernetics, quantum circuitry — nothing was beyond him.
In his secret Brooklyn facility, Sahil finished what he began:
Finalized his version of the Mutagen — stable, controllable, and potentially world-altering, though not publicly released.
Built his AI supercomputer, named D.E.T.R.O.I.T. — Digital Entity Trained for Realtime Operations, Instructions, and Tasks. Fully self-learning, compartmentalized, and more.
With DETROIT as the base control system, he constructed combat drones and battle robots — agile, lethal, self-repairing.
Captured and experimented on the worst criminals — traffickers, war criminals, rapists. Some were mutated, others converted into early-stage cyborgs. All were terminated post-analysis.
His arsenal now included:
It resembled the movie version of Snake Eyes' armor, with a sleek black design and the iconic visor over the eyes — elegant, faceless, lethal. It wasn't full nanotech like the Black Panther's; rather, it used a layered nanomaterial chassis, bonded with Chitauri bio-resin at a molecular level.
The alien resin's natural response to stress and fracture allowed the armor to regenerate small areas through pressure-induced biomimetic growth. The more damage it took, the more resilient it became — like scar tissue turning to armor.
The suit could partially detach and compress into a pack, much like Tony Stark's early compact armor models. He could wear it on his back, and when needed, it would deploy and form around him like a protective shell.
His gauntlets were marvels of engineering. Not only did they feature powerful electromagnetic wave emitters with a 2-meter range and up to 100kg of lift or push, but they also housed compartments of programmable nanomaterial. With a simple thought, they could fabricate tools, blades, lock picks, or even field diagnostic scanners. These were not magnetic-reliant weapons — his entire arsenal was designed to be non-magnetic, even the energy-conductive materials. He knew how often enemies exploited magnetism.
Sahil's offensive loadout was simple but deadly:
A modified FN Five-seveN pistol, with silenced caseless ammo, enhanced range, and recoil suppression.
A custom Uzi variant, redesigned for close-quarters burst fire with no muzzle flash, and recoil dampeners.
To the world, Sahil was still the CEO of Hamato LifeTech — a rising star in prosthetics and biomechanical enhancements. The public saw a young genius building hope for the crippled. But in the shadows, Sahil had become a ghost — the razor in the dark, a synthetic predator engineered through discipline and relentless training .
He was now at the peak of human capability but he decided to surpass it.