"The truth is..."
"I am Iron Man."
The silence that followed that declaration seemed to weigh upon the entire world. Cameras flashed, reporters exchanged stunned glances, and an entire nation held its breath at Tony Stark's audacity.
Among millions of viewers, a young man with blond hair and crimson eyes watched the press conference on television, seated on the couch of his home in Queens. A faint smile—half amused, half exasperated—curved his lips.
"Who would have imagined he'd actually do that..." he murmured, almost to himself.
His name was Arthur Morgan. He was twenty-one years old, with an athletic build and a gaze laced with irony.
A bizarre accident years earlier had brought him into this world.
Unfortunately, he had always been nothing more than a casual fan of the Marvel universe, whether comics or the MCU. He only truly discovered that he was living in one of Marvel's alternate realities when he learned of the existence of Oscorp and Stark Industries.
And the way he died... well, it could have been considered comedic, if it had not been tragic.
---
On that fateful day, Arthur walked through the streets of his hometown with his head lowered, carrying the weight of yet another defeat on his shoulders. Another failed job interview. Another "we'll call you" that would never come. The frustration was almost tangible, a suffocating knot in his chest that made it hard to breathe.
A light rain fell, soaking his suit and his already exhausted thoughts.
He did not notice the man calling out to him from behind until he felt a hand touch his shoulder.
"Arthur."
Arthur turned around, irritated, ready to snap back with anything... and then he saw something completely bizarre.
A truck was charging straight toward him—but it was no ordinary truck.
It was Truck-kun.
The monstrous mass of metal transformed right before his eyes, mechanical arms unfolding, eyes glowing blue, and a metallic mouth twisting into a grin. It looked like something straight out of a Transformers movie.
"Isekai time, bitch!"
Those were the last words Arthur heard before a robotic fist came crashing down on him, and everything became absolute darkness.
When he opened his eyes again, he was nothing more than a baby, crying in a cradle.
A baby who had been reborn into a completely new world.
---xXx---
His new family was, in short, wealthy.
His father was a successful foreign businessman, while his mother was a Japanese woman from a traditional family—proud and elegant, with beautiful red hair and gentle eyes. He grew up in Tokyo, surrounded by comfort, affection, and a serenity that concealed the chaos awaiting him in the future.
They gave him the name Kenshin Himura.
According to his mother, the name had been inherited from his great-great-grandfather, a wandering swordsman with a pure heart who believed in redemption.
From an early age, he was trained in his family's kenjutsu style, the Kamiya Kasshin style—an art of the sword based on the principle of the Life-Giving Sword, rather than the traditional Killing Sword.
At the same time, he was also trained in a style passed down by his great-grandfather, Kenji.
It was a lethal art born on the blood-soaked battlefields of the Sengoku period.
A style created to allow a single swordsman to face a dozen enemies alone.
The Hiten Mitsurugi style.
He learned both styles with ease.
At that time, he was the "model child," a righteous and moral boy willing to do anything to help others.
But, as always, life would never allow peace to last for long.
---xXx---
When he was only thirteen, fate tore everything away from him.
One night, several assassins dressed in red suddenly appeared.
Perhaps they had been sent by rivals of his father, or perhaps by someone who simply held a grudge against his family.
He tried to fight to protect his parents, but all he managed to do was watch them be murdered before his eyes before fleeing in desperation soon after.
The criminals left him alive—perhaps through carelessness, or simply because they saw no need to kill him.
At that moment, something inside him died. His fury was so overwhelming that, without realizing it, he began punching the ground until his fingers broke, staining the floor with blood—a true Berserker state.
An ability he never knew he possessed awakened, granting him access to some kind of inventory where he could store anything through a small golden ripple.
That day marked the absolute end of his childhood and the beginning of what would become the worst phase of his life.
---xXx---
Driven by hatred and a thirst for revenge, he took the entrance exam for an institution dedicated to training assassins: the JCC.
Its graduation rate was only ten percent.
The other ninety?
They died or went insane before completing the course.
How did he learn about that institution?
That is a story for another time.
It was four years of hell.
Brutal training.
Instructors who seemed ripped from sadistic nightmares.
Tests that bordered on suicide.
He mastered every field that could be remotely useful for his revenge: advanced robotics, physics, medicine—absolutely anything that might help. It took immense hard work and determination to reach the level he considered acceptable.
Because of that, he gained many useful contacts, not only in the underworld, but also in agencies such as S.H.I.E.L.D.
However, during that time, he became an arrogant, absolutist, egocentric, cruel man—the kind of person no one would ever want to approach.
Someone so despicable that if his younger self had seen him, he would have committed suicide on the spot rather than become that.
Perhaps as some twisted joke of fate, he found something he never expected: friendship.
Two companions stood out.
The first was a young man with white hair, an icy gaze, and a serene presence—the kind of person who seemed made of steel and frost. Always calm, always precise. Arthur respected him for that, though he never said it aloud.
The second... was his complete opposite.
A loud, irritating, talkative man impossible to ignore.
The kind of friend who seemed to exist solely to test the limits of human sanity.
But despite everything, it was impossible to hate him completely.
In a place like that, this idiot could still bring laughter.
And perhaps for that reason, Arthur kept him close.
Besides those two, he experienced his first love: a tall, slender, attractive young woman with shoulder-length turquoise hair, yellow eyes with white pupils, thin eyebrows, and long lashes.
She was carefree and always did whatever she wanted, even if it led to consequences.
Perhaps that was why he was so drawn to her.
He was certain that if not for that group of idiots, he might have become nothing more than a vengeful emo.
---xXx---
After a certain incident that got him and his group of idiots expelled from the JCC, he worked for a long time as an assassin alongside his white-haired friend.
At the same time, he made time to meet with the woman he loved.
It was during that era that he was reborn as Hitokiri Battosai—or simply Battosai, for his closest enemies.
Perhaps as another cruel joke of fate, he had ended up continuing the bloody legacy of his great-great-grandfather.
His fame spread like wildfire through the underworld.
Unfortunately, at some point, his beloved suddenly disappeared.
Even after using everything at his disposal to find her, he failed.
Not alive.
She had been murdered by a former companion of theirs.
There is no need to describe what he did to the bastard.
He continued his work as an assassin until he finally achieved the revenge he so desperately sought, destroying the assassin clan that had killed his family in the most brutal and painful way possible.
It was then that he understood his only reward would be emptiness.
The fulfillment and joy he had felt for the first time vanished instantly after completing the revenge he had chased for so long, making him realize he had wasted years of his life for nothing.
At that moment, he burst into deep laughter.
He laughed at his own foolishness until his ribs hurt.
He had spent years of his life on a futile revenge that brought nothing but more memories of his own helplessness.
He had spent countless hours studying everything, learning everything, all for this.
And in the end, it meant nothing.
It was during that time that he finally reached full mental maturity, becoming at last the kind of man his younger self would have been proud to see.
The betrayal and attempted murder by a former mission partner also helped shape who he became, forcing him to see how twisted he had grown and finally change.
When everything was finally over, he realized he had nothing left.
No target.
No purpose.
No motivation to continue.
Shortly after all of that, a small group of mutants from Xavier's Institute appeared at his door asking for help.
That day, he decided to accept his final mission as Battosai.
He even went so far as to accept a mission from S.H.I.E.L.D. for it.
He eliminated the one who would have brought disaster to countless lives in the future, and then left everything behind.
He simply vanished from his former life as an assassin.
Battosai, the legendary killer who had massacred the greatest assassin clan in Japan, simply disappeared from the world after breaking an agreement with S.H.I.E.L.D. and killing the one he was meant to protect.
After arriving in the United States, he decided he should change his name as well.
Arthur Morgan.
Why did he choose that name?
Arthur was the name of his father in this life, as well as his own name in his first life, from what little he still remembered of it.
As for Morgan, it was just a joke he thought of when remembering a certain character from a very famous game in his past life.
After pulling a few strings, he managed to get a stable job as a self-defense instructor for the New York Police Department.
It would be a new beginning.
(End of Chapter)