"The truth is…" "I am Iron Man."
The silence that followed that declaration seemed to weigh on the entire world. Cameras flashed. Reporters exchanged stunned glances. 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 in his home in Queens. A faint smile—half amused, half exasperated—curved his lips.
"Who would've imagined he'd actually do that…" he murmured, almost to himself.
His name was Arthur Morgan. He was twenty-one years old, athletic, with a gaze that carried a constant trace of irony.
Years ago, a bizarre accident had brought him into this world.
Unfortunately, he had always been nothing more than a casual fan of the Marvel universe—whether the comics or the MCU. He only truly realized he was in one of Marvel's alternate realities when he discovered the existence of Oscorp and Stark Industries.
And the way he died… well, it might have been considered comical, if it hadn't been so tragic.
---
[A/N: Just to be clear, all of this, until around the end of the next chapter, is kind of a flashback; Arthur is currently 21 years old.]
On that fateful day, Arthur walked with his head down through the streets of his hometown, carrying the weight of yet another failure 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 thin drizzle fell, soaking his suit and his already weary thoughts.
He didn't notice the "man" calling his name from behind—not until he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Arthur."
He turned, irritated, ready to snap back at whoever it was… and then he saw something utterly bizarre.
A truck was barreling toward him—but it wasn't an ordinary truck.
It was Truck-kun.
The metallic monstrosity transformed before his eyes, mechanical arms unfolding, eyes glowing an eerie blue, a metal mouth forming into a grin. It looked like it had walked 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 faded into absolute darkness.
When he opened his eyes again, he was nothing more than a baby crying in a crib. A baby reborn into a completely new world.
---
His new family was, in simple terms, wealthy.
His father was a successful foreign businessman, while his mother was a Japanese woman from a proud and traditional family. She had beautiful red hair and gentle eyes. He grew up in Tokyo, surrounded by comfort, affection, and a serenity that masked the chaos awaiting him in the future.
They named him 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, a sword art founded upon the principle of the Life-Giving Sword rather than the traditional killing blade.
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 remarkable ease.
But, as always, life would not allow peace to last for long.
---
When he was only thirteen, fate tore everything away from him.
One night, assassins dressed in red appeared without warning, silent as shadows.
Perhaps they had been sent by rivals of his father—or perhaps by someone nursing a grudge against his family.
He tried to fight to protect his parents, but all he managed to do was watch them die before his eyes before fleeing in desperation.
The criminals left him alive—perhaps out of carelessness, or perhaps they simply saw no need to kill a child.
But in that moment, something inside him died.
And in its place was born a cold, burning, relentless desire for revenge.
---
Driven by hatred, 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 lost their sanity—before completing the course.
How did he learn about this institution? That's a story for another time.
It was four years of hell.
Brutal training. Instructors who seemed ripped straight from sadistic nightmares. Exams that bordered on suicide.
And ironically, it was in that hell that 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 ice and steel. Always calm. Always precise. He respected him for that, though he never said it out loud.
The second… was his absolute opposite. Loud, irritating, talkative, and impossible to ignore. The kind of friend who seemed to exist solely to test the limits of human sanity. And yet, despite everything, it was impossible to truly hate him. In a place like that, that idiot managed to bring laughter. And perhaps because of that, he kept him close.
Besides those two, he experienced his first love: a tall, slender, striking young woman with shoulder-length turquoise hair, yellow eyes with white pupils, thin eyebrows, and long lashes.
She was carefree and did whatever she pleased—even if it led to consequences. Perhaps that was why he had been so drawn to her.
He was certain that, if not for that group of idiots, he might have ended up as some depressed emo cliché.
---
After a certain incident that led to him and his group of idiots being expelled from the JCC, he worked for a long time as an assassin alongside his white-haired friend.
At the same time, he made sure to find time to meet with his beloved.
It was during this period that he was "reborn" as the Hitokiri Battosai—or simply Battosai to his closest enemies. Perhaps as a cruel twist of fate, he ended up continuing the bloody legacy of his great-great-grandfather.
His reputation spread like wildfire through the underworld.
Unfortunately, at some point, his beloved suddenly disappeared. Despite using every resource at his disposal to find her, he failed.
Not alive.
She had been murdered by a former companion of theirs.
There's no need to describe what he did to the bastard.
He continued his work as an assassin until one day, by pure chance, he managed to track down those responsible for his parents' murder.
A certain ninja clan capable of resurrecting the dead.
He finally achieved his revenge—not alone, of course. Not even he could face a horde of ninjas by himself.
But along with the end of his vengeance, he also lost the purpose that had driven him for so many years.
Without a new goal, he said goodbye to his friends and retired from the life of an assassin. He called in a few favors, pulled a few strings, and vanished completely off the radar.
The last time he spoke with his stoic friend, the man had also retired and married the beautiful clerk from a convenience store.
That old male habit of falling for shop clerks had claimed him too.
Our protagonist left Japan and moved to the United States in search of a new beginning.
[A/N: A new beginning is different from redemption. Understand that.]
There, he adopted the name Arthur Morgan.
Why that name? Arthur had been his father's name in this life.
As for Morgan, it was just a joke he came up with after remembering a certain character from a very famous game from his past life.
After pulling a few strings, he secured a stable job as a self-defense instructor for the New York Police Department.
It would be a fresh start.
But something unexpected happened in his very first months on the job.
---
(End of Chapter)
Put simply, this chapter and the next are written largely in summary format to avoid stretching this arc across too many chapters.
I strongly recommend that you only write reviews after reading at least 10 chapters; the beginning of this fic is relatively weak and somewhat misleading if you misinterpret it.