In a particular suburb of Twilight City, children were playing soccer on the street since there were no playgrounds built in the area.
The match was a particularly intense one. The match was about to end and a scrawny young boy in patched up clothes was running towards the opposing goal with the ball.
"Look out!" One of the boy's team-mates suddenly yelled out in fear, however the kid was now 'in the zone'. His eyes focused towards the goal and he struck the ball out in a beautiful arc.
Except, the next instant he saw a large van hurtle towards him at a high speed. The boy was instantly frozen in fear as he felt his death approaching.
Yet, at that very moment, a powerful wind streaked across the kid's paralyzed body and he found that he had been moved away from the path of the van, which rushed away without bothering to stop.
The kid, as well as the other children looked at the mysterious person in a gray costume and a japanese shinobi mask who had burst into an extreme speed and dragged the would be accident victim away from danger.
"Mask uncle, thank you!" The kid in the patched dress yelled out as tears dripped from his eyes.
"My name is Gray Ninja." The masked person said as he ran away from the scene in haste.
---
After returning home from another exhausting day, Adrian looked at his toned body in the mirror, admiring his rapid improvement. The Nucleus Potions were truly effective in improving his physique. Over these days, Adrian had felt his body getting stronger, his endurance and stamina increasing and his tolerance to pain as well.
The past few days had been blissful, with Cody relegated to the hospital, and others busy with battling in the arena, Adrian felt he could relax for once.
After having dinner, Adrian browsed through his news feed, to find that two videos seemed to have gone viral. They both seemed to be amateur footage captured in the Broken Temple district of the city. That area was known as one of the city's poorest districts and rampant with crime.
The first video, Adrian observed was of a mysterious masked man who called himself 'Gray Ninja' who seemed to have a speed type ability and saved a child from an accident. The comments were all praising the Gray Ninja, while criticizing and asking for an investigation into the van driver, who almost seemed like he intentionally wanted to run over the kid.
The second video was also about the same masked individual. This time however, Adrian paused the video with shock on his face. The Gray Ninja person seemed to be in an intense battle with five individuals who were wearing leather jackets with a huge white snake embossed on their backs.
"It's the same gang?" Adrian guessed as he unpaused the ideo to see how it concluded.
In the video, Gray Ninja caught the snake jacket gang members trying to extort an ordinary person of money, and warned them not to engage in such behavior. This caused those men to laugh at Gray Ninja, and the five began fighting with the masked man.
All the five men seemed to be ability users, and all of them had the same kind of strength ability that Adrian had seen in the back alley where the two gang members seemed to have tried attacking the mysterious men.
Facing five ability users with impressive physical strength, Gray Ninja tried his best, but his physical body wasn't as strong. Yet, he showed how his ability was actually very useful when fighting when outnumbered as he used the strength of one of the gang members to attack the other.
Eventually however, the five gang members managed to get their team work together and began thrashing the Gray Ninja. The masked man had both of his hands badly twisted and his body was mangled by the strength of those five strengthening ability users.
"Those abilities are not at all weak. All five of them must be around grade 6 in power, and all of them have similar abilities. Is this snake gang one that only accepts members with strengthening ability?" Adrian wondered as he looked at the remaining part of the video.
In the video, the battered Gray Ninja finally realized that he couldn't face the five gang members and retreated rapidly, disappearing with the help of his speed ability. After the masked man disappeared the five gang members began wrecking havoc in the area, destroying houses and beating ordinary people to vent their rage.
Adrian looked through social media sites and found a polarized discussion. People were cheering the masked individual, calling him a hero. While others were lambasting him for trying to reenact vigilante justice and try to revive a banned practice.
If the gray ninja wanted to help resolve crime, this group argued, they could join the Security Division, whose work it was to deal with criminal ability users.
At the same time others were discussing how a gang of such strong ability users were openly wrecking havoc and the security division wasn't doing anything.
---
In the hospital, Cody looked at the video, his eyes glowing. A woman seemed to be sitting beside his bead, busy checking her nails.
"So, what do you think of our offer?" She asked nonchalantly.
"Is what you said really possible?" Cody asked with excitement in his eyes. He could already see that his future would be boundless if this were true.
The woman rolled her eyes. "You've already seen the proof."
"Alright." Cody nodded. "I agree to your offer!"
---
Meanwhile, in a small apartment, not unlike that of Adrian, a young man with horrifying mangled hands struggled onto a chair. His eyes were tearing beyond his control as a result of the immense pain in his hand. He used his mouth to grab a bottle of Healing Potion and after much struggling managed to inject it onto his thigh using his mouth. Then without any chance to think, he slumped into his bed and fell asleep. The once clean bedsheets now covered in dust, mud and blood, while a japanese shinobi mask was thrown into the corner of the room.