Hunter of Marvel - Chapter 13

Chapter 13: Bad Man

The countdown in Veer’s mind was deafening.

Five days.

Only five days remained on his flight to Afghan. If he did not board a plane, cross the globe, and locate Tony Stark within that rapidly shrinking window, the foundation of the Avengers would crumble, and New York would inevitably burn in atomic fire during the Chitauri invasion.

Veer walked through the double doors of Midtown Science High School, his posture deliberately slouched to maintain his cover, but his mind was running complex arithmetic. The System’s grinding mechanics were merciless, but he had finally quantified them. Maximum-effort physical training yielded exactly 10 EXP per hour. After brutally exhausting himself in the handball court that morning, he had checked his status. He needed exactly 130 EXP more to breach Level 20. Thirteen more hours of agonizing, lung-burning physical failure, and he would unlock his Hatsu.

He navigated the crowded hallway and stepped into his homeroom.

The class was already buzzing with the usual morning chaotic energy. At the center of it all was Flash Thompson, sitting on top of a desk and projecting his voice so the entire room could hear him detailing the extravagant plans for his upcoming birthday party.

Veer moved toward his seat, expecting the usual dynamic—Flash ignoring him, and Veer slipping by unnoticed. But as Veer passed, Flash’s booming voice faltered. The varsity quarterback stiffened, his eyes darting to Veer’s broad, hunched shoulders. Flash swallowed hard, a flicker of primal terror flashing behind his eyes before he quickly masked it with forced bravado.

“Hey, Singh,” Flash called out, his voice slightly higher than usual. The surrounding students quieted, anticipating a bullying session. “You should, uh… you should come to the party this weekend. It’s open invite.”

The classroom went dead silent. Flash Thompson, the undisputed apex predator of the junior class, was actively inviting the bottom-tier scholarship kid he had supposedly beaten into a bloody pulp just a month ago.

Veer paused..

Veer simply gave a slow, single nod of his head, and continued to his desk. Flash visibly relaxed, letting out a breath he had been holding.

Taking his seat, Veer looked over to where his roommate usually sat, expecting to see Mark hunched over a new MMORPG guide. Instead, Mark was three rows away, sitting uncomfortably close to a pretty, dark-haired girl named Hina.

It had been a bizarre development over the last few weeks. After Mark’s catastrophic, drunken letter to Mary Jane Watson, he had sworn off alcohol and impulsively joined a cheap local gym. There, sweating through miserable sets of bicep curls, he had bumped into Hina, a classmate who was aggressively trying to lose weight. The shared misery of cardio and lifting had sparked a sudden, intense bond.

Now, Mark actually had a girlfriend. And it was deeply irritating.

Mark spent every waking moment of his home life staring at his phone, grinning like an idiot, furiously texting Hina. The quiet camaraderie they had shared in the apartment was entirely gone. Veer, possessing the pragmatic mind of an adult, knew it was a healthy development for Mark. But the reality of it left Veer feeling a strange, hollow sense of isolation. His only anchor to a normal, mundane existence was currently giggling over a shared meme three rows away.

Veer shook his head, dropping his worn canvas bag to the floor. As he turned back to his desk, he froze.

Sitting perfectly centered on the scratched laminate surface was a thick, unmarked manila envelope.

Veer stared at it. His initial, cynical thought was that it was another prank, or perhaps a misguided love letter from the girl in AP Calculus. But the sheer thickness and weight of the paper suggested something else entirely.

He slid a finger under the seal and opened the flap. He pulled out a stack of glossy, high-resolution photographs.

His expression remained completely, terrifyingly blank, but internally, his heart skipped a single, hard beat.

The top photograph was of him in an alleyway, effortlessly lifting the rear end of a two-ton sedan with his bare hands. The second photograph was of him standing in his bedroom, stripped down to a black t-shirt, surrounded by a violent, localized hurricane as he practiced Ren.

Beneath the stack of damning evidence was a single piece of lined paper with a short, handwritten note: Meet me at the old bleachers behind the football field after school.

This was a massive complication.

Veer didn’t panic. His Intelligence stat, currently sitting at a staggering 23, immediately kicked into overdrive, accelerating his cognitive processing speed. He held the photos carefully, studying them not for the content, but for the geometry.

He remembered the exact moment he had moved the car. He calculated the angle of the lens, the shadows cast by the buildings, and the trajectory of the shot. The picture had been taken from a steep, downward angle. From a rooftop. But the adjacent building had no fire escape on that side.

He looked at the second photo. The indoor hurricane. The angle was direct, eye-level, shooting straight through his third-story bedroom window.

There was no balcony outside his window. There was only a sheer, vertical drop of red brick to the alleyway below.

A drone? Veer immediately discarded the variable. With his Perception stat at 21, his hearing was incredibly acute. He would have instantly picked up the high-pitched whine of spinning rotor blades hovering outside his glass.

The conclusion was absolute, forged by pure logic. The photographs were taken from angles impossible for a normal human to reach. Therefore, the photographer was superhuman. Furthermore, the stalker had managed to slip into the classroom, bypass his heightened spatial awareness, and place the envelope directly on his desk.

He had two immediate targets in mind. The first was a SHIELD agent. But the tactical execution was wrong; highly trained government operatives didn’t leave cryptic high school notes to meet behind the bleachers. They bagged you in a van.

That left the only other superhuman anomaly in his immediate radius.

Veer slowly raised his head, his dark eyes sweeping across the classroom.

Three rows ahead, near the windows, sat Gwen Stacy. She was holding a textbook up, pretending to read, but her blonde head was angled slightly. She was watching him from the corner of her eye, waiting for a reaction.

Veer locked onto her. He remembered the suffocating weight of her life-force in the hallway. Level 32. A spider mutation. In the world of Hunter x Hunter, spiders and insects were predatory by nature. The Chimera Ants possessed an innate, biological mastery of Zetsu and In right out of the egg, perfectly masking their presence to hunt. It made perfect sense that Gwen, bitten by a genetically engineered spider, possessed the same natural stealth capabilities. She could cling to sheer brick walls. She could mask her heartbeat.

There was a 70% probability she was the photographer. Actually, seeing the tense, nervous grip she had on her textbook, it was 100%.

The question was… why?

Veer quietly slipped the photos back into the envelope and placed it in his bag. He attended the rest of his classes with his usual, detached demeanor, never once glancing in Gwen’s direction.

When the final bell rang, the school erupted into its usual chaotic exodus. Veer walked out of the main doors into the afternoon sun. But instead of heading toward the football field to play along with the dramatic rendezvous, he altered his route.

He tracked the distinct, rapid rhythm of Gwen’s heartbeat. He found her standing near the front gates, surrounded by a group of her gossiping friends.

Veer walked directly toward her, parting the sea of students with his sheer mass, despite his fake limp. He stopped right in front of her group. The girls immediately fell silent, staring at him in utter confusion.

Gwen’s eyes widened, her breath catching slightly.

“Why don’t we go to the place together, instead of alone,” Veer said, his voice flat, calm, and perfectly even. “We have the same destination.”

The girls standing beside Gwen exchanged bewildered, open-mouthed glances. They had no idea what this supposedly pathetic, beaten-down boy was doing talking to one of Midtown High’s most beautiful girls.

But Gwen understood instantly. She knew he had deduced she was the one who left the envelope.

Not far away, Mary Jane Watson was leaning against a locker. She watched the interaction, her lips curling into a disdainful sneer. “First me, and now he’s targeting Gwen?” MJ muttered to a friend, rolling her eyes. “Pathetic.”

A few feet away, Peter Parker stood frozen, his camera dangling around his neck. He watched Veer talking to his childhood crush, his knuckles turning white as he clenched his fists, a bitter spike of jealousy flooding his chest.

Gwen quickly recovered her composure. She nodded her head sharply, turning to her friends. “I’ll catch up with you guys later,” she said, before stepping away from the group and falling into step beside Veer.

The whispers erupted immediately, sweeping through the courtyard like wildfire, but Veer ignored them. He led the way off the school grounds, walking in heavy, oppressive silence. They walked for two blocks, the noise of the school fading behind them, replaced by the hum of Queens traffic.

Finally, Gwen couldn’t take the tension anymore.

“How?” she asked, her voice tight. “How did you find out it was me? I didn’t leave a name. I was completely out of sight.”

Veer glanced at her. In this universe, Gwen wasn’t the brilliant, top-tier scientific genius that Peter Parker was. She was a normal, averagely intelligent teenager whose passions leaned heavily into music and art, though her stunning looks consistently placed her at the top of the high school social ladder. She wouldn’t understand the intricacies of Nen or System stats.

“I sensed you following me,” Veer lied smoothly, offering a vague, mystical explanation rather than exposing his logic.

Gwen stopped on the sidewalk, looking at him in absolute shock. “You… sensed me? That’s impossible. I was completely silent.”

“You weren’t,” Veer said, keeping his tone carefully neutral. He didn’t mention her massive Level 32 aura, nor did he admit he knew the specific nature of her spider powers. “What do you want, Gwen?”

Gwen stepped closer, her blue eyes searching his face desperately. “I want answers. How did you get your powers? What exactly can you do? And why… why are you acting like a punching bag for Flash Thompson when you could break him in half?”

Veer’s expression hardened. “Are you planning to blackmail me with those photos?”

“What? No!” Gwen recoiled, genuinely offended. “Of course not! I just… I needed to know I wasn’t crazy.”

“Then you are wasting your time,” Veer said coldly. He turned to walk away. “Your proofs are baseless. I don’t have any superpowers. You’re having hallucinations.”

“Excuse me?” Gwen jogged to keep up with him, her temper flaring. “I saw you! I saw you pick up a car with your bare hands!” She reached into her jacket and pulled out her smartphone. “I have a forty-five-minute video of a literal hurricane inside your bedroom!”

“The car was on a hydraulic jack,” Veer lied seamlessly, his voice entirely devoid of panic. “I was just kicking the tire loose. As for my room, I run two high-powered industrial fans to keep the temperature down while I work out. They blew some papers around. It’s an optical illusion.”

Gwen stopped dead, her mouth falling open in sheer disbelief. “Are you gaslighting me right now? Do not treat me like a fool, Veer. I saw it with my own two eyes!”

Veer stopped and turned to face her. He looked at the furious, terrified girl in front of him. She was desperate for a connection, desperate for someone to share her burden. But Veer couldn’t afford a liability.

He decided to flip the board.

He stepped slightly closer, dropping his voice to a low, quiet register. “What if I do have powers, Gwen? What does it matter to you?” He tilted his head. “Don’t you also have them?”

Gwen froze. All the color drained from her face. “How… how do you…” She stammered, taking a step back, her hands trembling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m normal!”

But the panic in her eyes was absolute. She had already slipped up by confirming she could track him silently and climb to his third-story window.

“Everyone has their own secrets,” Veer said softly, his dark eyes pinning her in place. “It is best not to prey on them.”

The fight completely left Gwen’s body. Her shoulders slumped, and she looked down at the concrete, the heavy weight of her isolation crashing down on her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I didn’t mean to pry. I just… I feel like I’m becoming a monster. My body is changing. I’m stronger than a car. I can stick to walls. I’m terrified all the time.” She looked up at him, tears pooling in her eyes. “When I saw what you could do… I just felt so happy. I felt happy because I realized I wasn’t the only freak in the world.”

Veer looked at her. Beneath the cold, calculating mind of the 36-year-old veteran officer, a small sliver of empathy surfaced. She was just a kid who had been handed the terrifying weight of the Marvel universe without a manual.

“Don’t think of yourself as a monster,” Veer said, his voice losing some of its harshness. “Powers don’t dictate what you are. You still have the heart of a human. You have a choice. You can use these powers to help others, to be whatever you want to be. Or, you can just put your head down and pretend to be a normal person, just like I do.”

Gwen wiped her eyes, sniffing quietly. She looked at him, genuinely confused. “But if you have all this strength… why don’t you help people? Why do you let people like Flash walk all over you?”

Veer looked past her, toward the distant skyline of Manhattan, thinking of the impending Chitauri invasion, the nuclear missile, and the blood he was about to spill in the Afghan desert.

“Because I am a Bad Man,” Veer said quietly, his voice heavy with a weary, absolute certainty. “I can’t be a hero.”

He turned and walked away, leaving Gwen standing alone on the sidewalk, the afternoon sun casting long shadows across the pavement.