Ethan learned something very important on his first day of trying to become a secret genius inventor.
Tools were expensive.
Like, really expensive.
He stood in the middle of a hardware store, staring at a modest shopping cart that already represented an amount of money he was not emotionally prepared to part with.
"…Okay," he muttered. "We are officially in the phase of the plan where reality tries to beat me with a stick."
He checked his list again.
Soldering station. Multimeter. Oscilloscope—nope, too expensive, put that back. Precision screwdrivers. Heat gun. Power supply. Storage bins. Basic hand tools.
He sighed and crossed out three more things.
"I can upgrade later."
He paid in cash, flinched at the total, and left before he could talk himself into buying anything else.
The storage unit was perfect in the way only extremely suspicious places could be.
Cheap.
Concrete.
No windows.
Flickering fluorescent lights.
A single outlet.
"…This looks like the opening scene of a crime documentary," Ethan said.
He unlocked the unit and stepped inside.
Ten by fifteen feet.
Bare.
Empty.
He set the tools down and looked around.
"Alright," he said, clapping his hands. "Let's make history in a box."
The first thing he did was clean.
Then organize.
Then clean again.
He laid out the tools. Set up a folding table. Added a cheap lamp. Ran an extension cord.
Then he sat in a folding chair and stared at the space.
"…Okay. Now it's a slightly less murdery crime documentary."
He turned on his Sharingan and looked at the room.
He could see where the floor dipped. Where the power line was noisy. Where vibrations from nearby units traveled through the walls.
"…We're going to need isolation pads," he murmured. "And a better power filter. And probably a fire extinguisher."
He paused.
"…Definitely a fire extinguisher."
He started small.
He took his old laptop apart again and used it as a testbed.
With the Sharingan active, he wasn't just fixing it.
He was re-routing it.
He replaced bad thermal paths. Improved airflow. Reorganized cable routing. Changed the layout of a few components.
It took two days.
When he put it back together, it booted in half the time.
And ran twenty degrees cooler.
"…Okay," he said softly. "That's not incremental. That's cheating."
But that wasn't the goal.
The goal was something new.
Something he could actually sell.
He opened a notebook and wrote:
Prototype 1: Ultra-efficient consumer laptop motherboard
Goals:
Lower power draw
Better heat distribution
Fewer failure points
Cheaper manufacturing
He turned on his Sharingan and stared at a blank page.
And started drawing.
He didn't just design.
He simulated.
He could see, in his head, how electrons would flow.
Where heat would accumulate.
Where signal timing would drift.
He adjusted things before they even existed.
"…This feels illegal," he muttered. "I am absolutely not supposed to be able to do this."
Three weeks passed.
His money got lower.
His coffee intake got higher.
His storage unit slowly started to look like an actual lab instead of a kidnapping annex.
And then—
He had something.
A crude, ugly, hand-assembled motherboard.
No casing.
No branding.
Just function.
He plugged it into a power supply.
Hooked up a screen.
Pressed the power button.
It turned on.
Instantly.
He stared.
"…No."
He rebooted it.
Same result.
He ran stress tests.
It stayed cool.
He pushed it harder.
Still stable.
"…This is not okay," he whispered. "This is too good."
He laughed.
Then he sat down very carefully.
"I just built 2015-level consumer hardware in 2008."
He wasn't done celebrating when he noticed something else.
The lights flickered.
He frowned.
"…That's not me, is it?"
The Sharingan turned on.
He looked at the power line.
And saw the disturbance.
Not from his unit.
From two units down.
Someone had just plugged in something very heavy.
Very noisy.
"…That's interesting."
Two days later, he noticed the van.
White.
No logo.
Parked near the storage units.
Three days after that, it was there again.
"…Okay," he said to himself. "Paranoia check."
He turned on the Sharingan and watched from across the street.
Two men.
Not talking much.
Not using the storage units.
Just… watching.
"…Yeah. That's not nothing."
He didn't panic.
He packed up the prototype.
Moved the most important notes.
And left a few things behind on purpose.
If someone broke in, he wanted them to think this was just a hobbyist setup.
That night, back in his apartment, he sat on the bed and thought.
"…I forgot something important."
He looked at his hands.
"I'm in MCU."
Which meant:
If someone noticed impossible tech…
It wouldn't just be investors.
It would be worse.
"…Okay," he said slowly. "New rule."
He wrote it down.
Never be the best.
Only be better.
The next day, he went back.
The storage unit had been opened.
Not broken.
Opened.
Inside, things were moved.
Not stolen.
Inspected.
He crouched and touched a table.
"…They didn't know what they were looking at."
But someone had looked.
He stood.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Time to upgrade the security plan."
He installed cameras.
Motion sensors.
A very illegal number of traps that were mostly just noise and lights.
And one chakra-based surprise that he hoped he'd never need.
He looked at his prototype again.
"…You're too good," he told it. "We need to dumb you down."
He sighed.
"I can't believe I just said that."
That night, on the roof of his building, he looked at the city.
White hair blowing in the wind.
"…I thought the hard part would be building things."
He smiled faintly.
"Turns out the hard part is staying invisible."