C76 Hand Recap

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Although Charles wasn't allowed to recruit for his school in foreign countries, the American Government happily encouraged him to do so within their borders.

When both groups of meta-humans were getting settled into their Avengers training, Peter and the rest of the council started the second half of recruitment, if you could even call it that.

That being the enrollment campaign for Xavier's School.

Ever since the UN meetings in Japan came to an end, the contents of those meetings became public knowledge, so everyone now knew about meta-humans and the start of the Avengers.

Peter's video with the interview showcasing Charles, Kurt, and Scott's stories and powers certainly helped spread the word as well.

They could have gone a more Shield-like route when it came to forming the Avengers, hiding it away from the world, and acting in the shadows, but that just sounded like a lot of work for no good reason.

The Avengers would be found out anyways, so why hide it?

All of the fans of Spider-Man were a buzz with excitement after finding out that he would be starting a superhero organization.

Every news channels had the best month of their lives. When they run stories about Spider-Man or Iron Man, ratings would go through the roof. Big Spider-Man news and information about new super-powered people entering the world brought them hundreds of millions of views in only days.

While the news was at its peak at this time, Peter released a YouTube video alongside Professor Xavier regarding his school.

-Flashback-

"Hello, everyone," Peter says to the camera with a casual wave.

He and Charles were in the backyard of the school. In the background of the two, the camera recorded happy meta-human children playing on jungle gyms, slides, swings, etc.

"This is Professor Charles Xavier." Peter motions toward Charles and continues speaking. "You all know him from the last video I put out. What you don't know, however, is that Charles here is a high-level member of the Avengers. An organization built by me and few others to protect the world in times of need."

"Hello," Charles says, not knowing what else to say.

"I've brought him in again because this school is open for enrollment to all Meta-human children. I'll let him talk about that." Peter shuts his mouth and lets Charles do the rest of the talking.

Charles went through all of the normal talking points as to why these children need to attend his school, but the main focus was safety.

Safety for the child and those around them. Any child that unlocks their X-gene doesn't know how to control that power yet. They could easily hurt themselves, their parents, friends, pets, teachers, and the list goes on and on.

The fact that it was completely free enroll was probably fairly tempting as well.

Though his main selling point was that he and the teachers of the school know from experience what it's like to wake up one day with crazy powers. They've been through it all before and can guide the students through the transition process.

"...We're not trying to take your children from you. This is just like a normal boarding school. They would return on holidays and summer breaks and can contact you at any time. We just want to help." Charles says with the utmost sincerity.

"Speaking of that." Peter finally speaks. "Tony Stark happens to be another high-level member of the Avengers, so we're very well funded. I've spoken with him and we're currently planning to build an apartment complex close to the school for parents. Once your child has a good grasp of their powers, you can move into an apartment and your child can live with you instead of the school dorms."

Charles nodded in agreement alongside Peter and they both closed out the video. Peter would upload it the next day.

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After that video went out, the large majority of people supported the idea while some had other things to say.

"...Spider-Man is STEALING our children!"

J. Jonah Jameson was certainly the leader of every anti-Spider-Man campaign that has ever existed, so why not jump on this too? What's sad, is the fact that he has even been saying some anti-meta-human speech lately as well.

"...How do we know that these Mutants, because that's what they were called before Spider-Man came along, aren't some alien race sent here to take over our planet?"

Peter got a pretty good laugh out of that one, but it doesn't help that he and all of his followers now exclusively refer to meta-humans as Mutants.

Moving on from the crazy clout chaser, Charles was invited on multiple news broadcasts after the video went out. He didn't want to attend all of them, but the publicity for his school was too tempting.

In the months after these interviews, Xavier's School would welcome almost fifty new students ranging from ages 7-15. Many of these children's parents were waiting for the apartment building to be built, so they could be closer to their kids. Some of the more wealthy families simply bought a house in the area and moved in, waiting for their sons or daughters to control their powers so they can live together.

Everyone, especially Charles, was more than happy with how this portion of the recruitment went. The majority of the public also seemed to favor meta-humans, though that didn't mean they didn't have any opposition.

Religious groups, racist groups, and other organizations such as the Friends of Humanity began to rear their ugly heads. Luckily, Peter's interference has caused these groups to not have as much influence as they would have had originally.

Tony has these groups on a watch list that Jarvis overlooks, so the Avengers will step in if they try anything funny.

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While all of this was going on, Peter was dealing with his newly acquired ancient ninja clan, the Hand.

Scythe, the person Peter put in charge, constantly supplied him with information through texts, calls, and face-to-face meetings when Peter had the time.

Firstly, some people in the Hand didn't like this new leadership coming out of nowhere and the rules that came with it.

They didn't believe in the Black Sky or didn't believe that Peter was the Black Sky, so before these people could cause trouble or leave the Hand, Peter had Scythe arrange a death match between himself and every person that wished to oust him.

1 vs. 1000. Peter would fight however many showed up at the same time. They could use any weapons as well.

Once it was set up, Peter arrived at a very large dojo and found around 600 ninjas, give or take, waiting with weapons ready. Surrounding these ninjas were those that wanted to watch the spectacle, either rooting for the Black Sky or the hundreds of deadly ninjas.

Shocking everyone in attendance, Peter slaughtered all of them mercilessly. He knew that people like this would cause trouble later on if he kept them alive and wanted to make a statement as well.

That statement was extremely clear to those watching the blood, guts, and screams fill the air.

'The Black Sky doesn't like people questioning him.'

Once every ninja that Peter faced was dead on the ground, he turns to the crowd that surround him.

"This is a new Hand!" Peter shouts without an ounce of blood on his blacked-out suit. "The sooner you understand that, the better..."

As Peter finished speaking, each ninja fell to a knee and bowed in his direction.

"Good, because things are going to change a lot from now on."

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That change happened fairly quickly, using Scythe as his conduit, Peter made many changes to the Hand, remaking them into something almost unrecognizable to their former selves.

First, the Hand had a money problem.

Without their illegal businesses keeping them afloat, the Hand was too large to coast by on the money they had stashed away. Seeing this problem early on, Peter instructed Scythe to sell everything except land and priceless items, like Dragon Bones.

Once the Hand sold everything away, Peter instructed them to buy Stark Industries Stock as well as a few others, but that wasn't all. Peter also had them short sell some stock from companies he knew would have a hard time in the future, like Hammer Industries.

Short selling is pretty much betting against a stock, so the worse that company's stock does, the more money the Hand would make. It's complicated but even the Hand has a few ninjas that handle stock market transactions so Peter and Scythe just left it to them.

Seeing as it would take a while for these investments to bare fruit, Peter started another of his plans for the Hand a bit earlier than he expected.

In each major city around the world, Peter placed cells of Hand ninja. These ninjas would gather information on every major criminal organization and launch an attack on them, stealing their money and leaving them for the police to find.

Of course, Peter has already sent notices to all Hand ninjas that killing was prohibited unless the person met certain criteria. He had Scythe place some trusted ninja in charge of every city that way he knows if they follow the new rules or not.

Within months, the Hand got a huge injection of funds from drug dealers, arms dealers, gang members, and all forms of criminals.

A portion of this money was saved for expenses, but most of it was invested for future profit.

Of course, these groups of ninjas in every major city didn't leave after completing this mission. No, they stayed behind to fight crime as vigilantes just as Peter explained to the Chaste.

A/N: 1654 words

[DONT FORGET MY STONES! I sleep 😴]