The sky over Manhattan was beginning to darken into that soft twilight haze. Behind the towering Grant Enterprises headquarters, tucked in the alley where few bothered to glance, stood a narrow door. Just wide enough for one person to slip through, it was plain, industrial gray, easy to overlook exactly as intended.
Beyond the door, a narrow hallway stretched ahead, lit by lights. The air was humid. Beside the hallway, hidden behind what appeared to be a utility panel, was a small handprint scanner. It flickered to life as Ezio approached.
A soft chime, a smooth click—and a panel slid aside, revealing a sleek, circular elevator. With a soft hiss, it descended.
Beneath New York's surface, the true heart of Aegis pulsed. The underground facility spanned an entire complex, housing weapons caches, data centers, tech labs, and operations hubs. Each one shielded, segmented, and secured. Everything interconnected through silent tunnels and hidden lifts branching throughout the area Grant Enterprises had covertly acquired.
Above ground, the area around Grant Enterprises spun like clockwork: cafes with glowing signs and perfect lattes, boutique hotels with smiling concierges, pubs echoing with laughter, glitzy bars with neon reflections on polished floors. To the average onlooker, it was a revitalized corner of the city—a success story in urban development, a commercial business area. But behind every espresso machine, behind every front desk, and woven through the Wi-Fi routers and digital registers, was Aegis.
Shell companies funneled profits into unidentified accounts. Surveillance quietly flowed into underground servers. And scattered throughout a few seemingly average apartment buildings were the agents of Aegis, living hidden in plain sight each room a equipped of state-of-the-art security, Azmuth's designs embedded into the walls like secrets stitched into cloth. Weapons concealed behind doors, each establishment either had an assassin or a widow overlooking it.
One such bar, The Hollow Pint, had low lighting, smooth jazz in the background, and bottles stacked like treasure behind dark mahogany. This was the most visited bar by Aegis members. Near the back, in a booth which was naturally hidden, sat Ezio and Haytham.
Two glasses of fine whiskey clinked lightly as Ezio leaned back, smirking.
"It's a strange world, isn't it?" Ezio said, watching the golden liquid swirl in his glass. "Fifteen years ago, I was running across rooftops stabbing people in Florence. Now I'm drinking whiskey under New York, and the bartender's probably ex-KGB."
Haytham chuckled softly, adjusting his cuffs like a nobleman at a masquerade.
"Strange? Perhaps. But strangely familiar. Power games and masks. The players change. The rules don't."
Ezio raised his glass.
"To strange familiarity."
"To shadows in plain sight," Haytham added, and they drank.
Behind them, the quiet chatter of civilians some unknowingly part of the web, others just passing through, filled the room. Ezio rested his arms on the table, his usual edge softened.
"You ever think about disappearing?" he asked, casually.
Haytham glanced at him.
"Every day. But creed has its price."
Ezio nodded.
"Yeah. It does."
For a moment, they simply sat in silence, watching the city move above and below them. It was a rare pause.
Then the comms crackled faintly on Ezio's wristband. He didn't answer yet.
"Five more minutes," he muttered.
Haytham poured another round.
"Make it ten."
On the other hand, high above the city noise, on the top of Red Room, Jiraiya stood leaning against the railing, a cup of sake in one hand.
A door creaked behind him.
"You're early," Jiraiya said without looking.
Aizawa stepped out onto the rooftop, a cup of black coffee in hand, eyes as tired as ever.
"I don't sleep much," he replied, taking a seat on the bench near the edge. "Monitoring shinobi across a foreign world tends to kill the urge."
Jiraiya chuckled, swirling his sake.
"Still we have to do what we need to."
Aizawa didn't respond, though the corner of his mouth twitched.
"I assume your shadow clone is monitoring the shinobi?"
Jiraiya nodded. They stood there for a while, "You think they're adjusting?" Aizawa finally asked, looking toward the distant skyline.
Jiraiya exhaled through his nose, "They're shinobi. They'll adapt. But I think this world will change them more than they realize."
"The tech alone is overwhelming. They're still figuring out touchscreen phones."
Jiraiya raised his cup.
"At least no one's tried to stab the vending machine today."
A brief smirk.
"Yet."
Jiraiya's gaze turned serious, his voice lower.
"You've been quiet lately. Something on your mind?"
Aizawa sipped his coffee, eyes unreadable.
"I've fought monsters, criminals, and warlords. But this world… the lines are thinner. Villains don't always wear masks. Heroes don't always wear capes."
"Or forehead protectors," Jiraiya added quietly.
A pause.
"It's harder to tell who's who."
"That's why we're here," Jiraiya said. "To make sure those who still care don't get lost in the grey."
Aizawa nodded, staring into the sky, the weight of leadership just as heavy in this world as it had been in their own.
"You think Hunter's doing the right thing?"
Jiraiya tilted his head, watching the stars blink.
"I think he's trying. That counts for something. And if we're all here… it means we haven't given up yet."
Another silence. Comfortable this time.
"You brought more of that sake?" Aizawa asked finally.
Jiraiya grinned and pulled a second bottle from his cloak.
"Always."
Deep inside the red room, a soft blue glow pulsed in a secured room.
Azmuth stood in the center, but commanding the room like a general before a legion.
Around him, dozens of floating holo-screens displayed live surveillance feeds, data graphs, energy fluctuations, and schematics in constant motion. One section showed ANBU members eating ramen awkwardly in a food court. Another showed Ezio and Haytham at the bar, whiskey glasses in hand. In one corner, a 3D map of Madripoor pulsed steadily, areas marked with blinking red circles.
A robotic arm extended from the ceiling, handing Azmuth a diagnostic core. He grabbed it without looking, scanning it with a device that projected an ultra-thin beam of green light across its surface.
"Imperfection," he muttered. "Microscopic. Unacceptable."
He tossed the core into a recycling chamber with a grunt.
Behind him, a young intern, a black widow—barely twenty—watched in awe. She tried to speak up but Azmuth cut her off.
"If you don't understand the tolerances, don't try to help. Observing is safer. For both of us."
The girl nodded quickly and backed up.
Azmuth muttered calculations under his breath, adjusting a schematic of a new gravity stabilizer. The model re-rendered, and a power usage estimate dropped by 7.3%.
"Finally, some progress."
He walked toward the far wall, where a reinforced vault door opened automatically. Inside, prototypes hummed—energy blades, reinforced battle armor, drone swarms the size of bees, surveillance bugs. On the far side, a blank space stood illuminated under blue-white lights, awaiting the arrival of something not yet made.
"Soon," Azmuth whispered. "A true base. A forge for ideas."
He touched a console, bringing up a map of a rural area marked in red—potential land for the lab fortress he'd requested from Hunter.
"If I am to keep them alive through what's coming… I need more than scraps and shadows."
The computer pinged.
A small alert: Hunter en route to Grant Enterprises.
Azmuth nodded to himself and shut the alert down.
"Good. He needs to focus on people. I'll handle the impossible."
The morning sunlight filtered in through the tall glass windows of Grant Enterprises, casting sharp reflection on the marble floors of the executive level. The hum of smart devices, soft clicks of keyboards, and quiet murmur of staff created a rhythm that only well-oiled systems produce.
On the 47th floor, Hiroshi stood before with back eyes, a massive interactive glass wall displaying stock movements, project timelines, and global subsidiaries. He scrolled through updates with a flick of his hand, sipping green tea from a sleek ceramic cup.
Behind him, Q sat at his custom-built desk cluttered in a... kind of chaos: wires, a half-disassembled portable hologram projector, blueprints, and a sandwich untouched since sunrise.
"You know," Q said without looking up, "if I don't upgrade the mainframe again this week, it might cry. It's struggling with the synthetic AI you told me to plug in."
"That's your problem," Hiroshi replied with a grin. "I'm dealing with five tax audits, three fake shell corps going public, and a journalist who's sniffing too close to Grant Enterprise."
Q muttered something that sounded like "ask Ezio to handle it," and Hiroshi chuckled.
Just then, the elevator chimed.
Hunter stepped out, wearing a clean-cut black jacket over his usual attire. The moment he entered, the floor paused—not out of fear, but habit. Everyone straightened. Monitors adjusted, reports flicked into presentable form.
"Relax," Hunter said, waving them off. "You're not in school."
He moved through the floor, casually checking in with people—project leads, data analysts, logistics coordinators. A few greeted him with nods, a few with nervous energy. He paused by one of the newer employees a young woman, with formal white shirt which stuck to her curvy figure and a black knee length tight skirt with high heels, nervously adjusting her glasses. Hunter got her profile from the glasses he was wearing.
"Sara, right?" Hunter said.
"Y-Yes, sir."
"You optimized the crypto-trace protocol last week. Good work. Hiroshi showed me the numbers."
Sara blinked, stunned. "Thank you… sir!"
Hunter gave her a small smile and continued walking toward Hiroshi and Q, who looked up simultaneously.
"How's our empire?" he asked.
"Alive," Hiroshi replied. "Barely."
"Thriving," Q added after rolling his eyes. "Also, I ordered two new server racks. Don't ask. You don't want to know."
Hunter gave Q a tired look and turned to Hiroshi.
"After next week's rollout, I'll need three apartment units freed up for new Aegis arrivals. Can you pull strings?"
"Already done. You'll have keys by tomorrow."
Hunter nodded, tapping the side of his glasses to pull up an interface.
"Keep your ears up," he muttered.
He turned to leave but paused halfway.
"And order sushi. Real stuff. That replicator's salmon is insulting."
With that, he stepped into the elevator, vanishing behind reflective steel doors.
Q leaned back in his chair and finally bit into his cold sandwich.
"He says empire like it's a joke. But this… this is a damn machine."
Hiroshi didn't respond, already pulling up blueprints for a new safehouse in New York.
A quaint little café called Moonlight Grounds, nestled between a bookstore and an upscale barber, buzzed with quiet patrons. The barista, a sharp-eyed woman in her 30s, served up espresso with a smile. What customers didn't know was she was a black widow and that her payroll came from one of Grant's shell companies. Her coffee machines? Calibrated by Q himself.
In a corner, a civilian reporter from The Daily Bugle tapped away on his laptop, sipping a latte.
He murmured to himself,
"This block is suspiciously profitable for a dead zone... who's backing it?"
On the other hand, Ezio and Haytham again clinked their whiskey glasses in the pub. Yes, they were drinking all night.
"We could've ended up in Hell's Kitchen after that encounter," Haytham joked.
"Now, won't that be interesting." Ezio smirked.
"No. "
They both laughed, like old soldiers with new uniforms. In that moment, they weren't assassins or agents, they were just two men trying to figure out what to do in a world filled with satellites and superhumans.