Hunter of Marvel - Chapter 17

Chapter 17: Hide and Seek

The soft, metallic ‘click’ of the apartment’s front door closing echoed down the narrow hallway.

The moment the sound registered in his ears, Veer Pratap Singh opened his eyes. He didn’t blink against the morning sunlight streaming through the window; his breathing didn’t hitch. He simply lay in the center of the bed, perfectly still, staring up at the cracked plaster of the ceiling.

With his Perception stat currently sitting at a monstrous 46, he had felt the exact moment Gwen’s consciousness had shifted from deep REM sleep to waking awareness. He had felt the microscopic change in her respiration, the sudden, violent spike in her heart rate, and the rigid tension that had seized her musculature when she realized she was wrapped around him.

He had intentionally maintained the slow, deep respiratory rhythm of a sleeping man. It was a calculated, empathetic decision. Gwen was an terrifyingly powerful superhuman—but emotionally, she was still a seventeen-year-old girl navigating an incredibly awkward situation. If he had opened his eyes while her face was buried in his neck, the resulting panic and embarrassment would have been catastrophic. It was far more efficient to let her orchestrate her own stealthy retreat.

He listened as her rapid, muffled footsteps carried her down the sidewalk outside, putting distance between herself and the apartment.

Veer sat up, rolling his broad shoulders until the joints popped in a satisfying cadence. The lingering buzz of the party was completely gone, incinerated by his Vitality.

Suddenly, his bedroom door flew open.

Mark stormed into the room, his face a mask of absolute, indignant outrage. He marched right up to the side of the bed, wound his leg back, and kicked Veer squarely in the thigh.

It was meant to be a punishing, dramatic blow. Instead, a hollow, meaty ‘thwack’ echoed in the room, followed immediately by a sharp yelp.

Veer didn’t even flinch. His body, reinforced by a baseline Strength of 34 and an underlying physical density, didn’t shift a single millimeter. Mark, however, hopped backward on one foot, clutching his leg in agony, his face contorting behind his smudged glasses.

“Ow! What the hell are your bones made of?!” Mark gasped, leaning heavily against the desk to keep from falling over. He pointed an accusatory finger at Veer. “You are completely unfilial! You are a terrible friend! Explain yourself!”

Veer swung his legs over the side of the mattress, resting his elbows on his knees. “Good morning to you, too. I take it you saw her leave.”

“Saw her leave?” Mark hissed, his voice cracking. “She looked like she was fleeing a crime scene! First Felicia Hardy, the most untouchable girl in the entire junior class, and now Gwen Stacy? Gwen ‘freaking’ Stacy? The smartest, prettiest girl at Midtown? What is your dumb luck, Veer? Are you using some kind of pheromone cologne? Because it’s infuriating!”

Veer looked at his roommate’s deeply envious, slightly betrayed expression and offered a flat, practiced sigh. “Calm down, Mark. Your imagination is running wild. Nothing happened.”

“She was in your bed!”

“She was drunk,” Veer lied smoothly, weaving the fabrication without a single micro-expression that would give him away. “At Flash’s party. She had way too much to drink, she couldn’t stand up straight, and she was terrified her father—the Captain of the NYPD—would see her like that. She needed a place to crash and sober up where she wouldn’t be interrogated. So, she slept here.”

Mark stared at him, his eyes narrowing in deep, profound skepticism. “She was perfectly fine when she walked out of here. She wasn’t stumbling.”

“It was just a hangover,” Veer deflected, standing up. He towered over Mark now, his sheer physical mass forcing Mark to take a subconscious step back. “As for your dirty thoughts, absolutely nothing happened. I slept on the extreme edge of the mattress. We didn’t even talk. She woke up, realized she was in my apartment instead of a nice house in Forest Hills, and left.”

Mark crossed his arms, his jaw set in a stubborn line. “I don’t believe you. Not for a second. There is a statistical impossibility happening right under my roof.”

It took another ten minutes of navigating Mark’s hyper-imaginative interrogations before Veer finally managed to shut the conversation down, citing his desperate need for a shower. Mark retreated to the kitchen, grumbling under his breath about the unfairness of the universe.

Veer locked the bathroom door, stripped, and stepped under the cold, stinging spray of the shower.

He cleared his mind, letting the water wash away the lingering scent of beer and the stress of the party. Today was not a day for high school drama. Today was about logistics.

Drying off and dressing in a clean set of dark cargo pants and a black t-shirt, Veer returned to his empty bedroom. He locked the door behind him and stood in the center of the cramped space.

It was time to test his Hatsu.

He closed his eyes, centering his focus on the massive, crackling reservoir of 35,000 Aura Points circulating through his nodes. He summoned the specific, intricate frequency of the ‘Specialisation’ affinity, molding his intent toward spatial displacement.

Veer knelt on the hardwood floor and placed his right palm flat against the worn wooden planks.

He channeled his aura down through his arm, pushing it out through his skin and into the floor. A brilliant, ethereal blue light flared beneath his hand. Intricate, geometric Nen script—circles overlapping with angular runes—rapidly inscribed itself into the wood, glowing with an intense, localized heat.

The moment Veer lifted his hand, the glowing mark instantly vanished.

To the naked eye, the floor was completely normal. There was no burn mark, no lingering residue, nothing. But in Veer’s mind, the location burned like a lighthouse beacon. He could ‘feel’ the exact spatial coordinates of the mark anchored to his soul.

He had successfully established his first portal location.

According to the System’s current parameters for a Level 1 Hatsu, he could maintain a maximum of two active doors simultaneously. By marking the floor of his bedroom, he had permanently fixed his first location. Wherever he was in the world, as long as he had access to a secondary door, he could instantly retreat to this exact spot. It was the ultimate, foolproof panic room.

Veer stood up, stepping back from the invisible mark. He focused his intent on the anchor point, commanding the spatial tear to open.

There was no grand explosion. There was no ripping sound of fabric tearing. The air simply folded inward on itself. A perfectly square, one-by-one meter portal materialized hovering just above the floorboards. The edges of the portal were pitch black, absorbing the light around it, but the center revealed a glimpse into a stark, brightly lit room.

It wasn’t wide—a one-by-one meter square required a tall person to duck and step through carefully—but it was more than enough for two people to enter simultaneously if they squeezed.

Veer stepped into the portal.

The transition was frictionless. One second he was breathing the stale, humid air of his Queens apartment, and the next, he was standing in an entirely different dimension.

He looked around, his Perception stat rapidly cataloging the environment.

The pocket dimension was vast, sterile, and eerily quiet. The System had provided a single floor level. Branching off from a central hallway were exactly eight distinct rooms. Veer walked into the nearest one. It was a perfect cube—ten meters long, ten meters wide, and ten meters high. The walls, floor, and ceiling were constructed of a smooth, featureless white material that felt like polished stone but possessed the tensile strength of titanium.

He could mentally command the System to reduce the number of rooms, merging the walls to create larger, open spaces, but the total area of the floor level remained permanently fixed. He could not exceed the eight-room capacity at Level 1.

He looked up. There were no visible light fixtures, yet the room was bathed in a clear, natural luminescence, perfectly mimicking afternoon sunlight. With a mere thought, the light vanished, plunging the room into absolute, pitch-black darkness. Another thought, and the light returned.

Veer took a deep breath. The air was crisp, clean, and perfectly oxygenated. He analyzed the environmental mechanics through the System interface. The oxygen supply was permanent and self-sustaining. The dimension did not draw air from the outside world. It was a localized, fixed atmosphere. It was a brilliant defensive feature, though his tactical mind immediately noted the limitation—he couldn’t manipulate the environment to suffocate an enemy trapped inside. The pocket dimension was a sanctuary, not an execution chamber.

Suddenly, a translucent blue notification chimed in the corner of his vision.

—

[Hatsu Active: Hide and Seek]

Portal Activation Cost: 100 AP (per entry/exit)
Dimensional Maintenance Cost: 1,000 AP (per hour inside the dimension)
Current AP: 34,900 / 35,000

—

Veer stared at the numbers, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his face.

It was incredibly manageable. Entering or exiting the dimension cost a mere 100 units of Aura. With a maximum pool of 35,000 AP, he could theoretically open and close the door three hundred and fifty times before exhausting his reserves. And the maintenance cost—1,000 AP per hour—meant he could survive inside this pocket dimension for thirty-five uninterrupted hours of real-world time before his aura gave out. With his ‘Aura Font’ passive regenerating 0.2% of his max AP per minute, he could stretch that time even further.

But the most staggering realization was the spatial physics of the ability.

The AP consumption was fixed. It was not dictated by physical distance. He wasn’t physically traveling through the intervening space; he was entering a separate dimension and exiting out of another door. It meant that stepping from Queens to Manhattan cost exactly 100 AP. And stepping from Earth to the surface of the Moon would also cost exactly 100 AP. Distance was completely irrelevant.

There was, however, one severe limitation.

This Nen ability was not perfect, omnipotent teleportation. It wasn’t like the magic of the Kamar-Taj sorcerers. Doctor Strange or the Ancient One could simply visualize a location in their mind’s eye, spin a Sling Ring, and step out onto Mount Everest.

‘Hide and Seek’ required a physical anchor. He could not wish a door open in Afghanistan and step through. He had to physically travel there, place his hand on a surface, and leave a mark first.

It was an infiltration tool that required initial groundwork.

‘I will solve that problem when I level up the Hatsu,’ Veer thought pragmatically. If the ability eventually scaled to mimic instantaneous spatial displacement without anchors, he would truly become untouchable.

But for now, he had to grind.

Veer stepped back through the portal, emerging in his bedroom. He watched the portal snap shut behind him. He opened it again. He stepped in. He stepped out. He closed it.

He repeated the tedious, repetitive process. He monitored the System’s proficiency tracker with mechanical focus. After the fifth sequence of entering and exiting the dimension, a small notification chimed.

[Hide and Seek Proficiency: 1%]

Veer let out a heavy sigh. Five activations for a single percentage point. Reaching Level 2 would require five hundred manual entries and exits. It was going to be an agonizing, mind-numbing grind, but it was absolutely necessary.

For the next hour, he stood in his room, violently cycling his aura, opening and closing the fabric of reality until his proficiency finally ticked over to 5%.

Glancing at the clock, he realized he was going to be late. He grabbed his canvas backpack, slung it over his shoulder, and left the apartment.

The walk to Midtown Science High School was a blur of New York morning traffic. He waited until the first bell rang and the corridors emptied.

He slipped into a deserted janitor’s closet on the second floor.

Kneeling on the scuffed linoleum, Veer placed his palm against the floor. The blue geometric script flared to life, burning its coordinates into his mind, before vanishing completely. He now had two permanent anchors: his bedroom, and the high school.

He stepped back, focused his intent on the bedroom anchor, and triggered the portal.

The 1×1 meter square of absolute blackness opened in the air. Veer ducked and stepped through. The frictionless transition washed over him. He stepped out of the portal, his boots hitting the hardwood floor of his Queens apartment.

He looked around the room, a profound sense of triumph settling in his chest.

It had worked perfectly. He had just bypassed three miles of dense urban gridlock, dozens of traffic lights, and a thirty-minute walk in a fraction of a second. The tactical applications were endless. He didn’t have to physically walk to school anymore. He could vanish and reappear at will.

He had his weapon.

—

For the next three days, Veer’s life devolved into a ruthless, singular routine.

He attended classes as a ghost, barely registering the lectures. He spent every spare moment relentlessly grinding his Hatsu proficiency, opening and closing portals until his AP pool drained to a dangerous minimum, recovering through meditation, and starting the cycle again.

And finally, it was time to go.

The international departure terminal of JFK Airport was a chaotic sea of rolling luggage, stressed families, and blaring PA announcements. Veer stood near the security checkpoint, a single, unassuming canvas duffel bag slung over his shoulder. Inside his pocket dimension, he had already stockpiled dozens of MREs, gallons of purified water, combat trauma kits, and high-tensile paracord.

He wasn’t alone at the terminal.

Mark had insisted on sending him off. It was a genuinely sweet, loyal gesture from a concerned friend. Unfortunately, Mark had brought Hina along.

“Make sure you text me as soon as you land,” Mark said, adjusting his glasses, his other hand firmly intertwined with Hina’s. “I looked up the hospitals in the UAE. They have world-class oncology departments. Your cousin is going to get the best care possible, Veer. Just… stay safe, okay? I know it’s a lot of family stress.”

Hina smiled sympathetically, leaning her head against Mark’s shoulder. “We’re rooting for you, Veer. Mark hasn’t stopped talking about how much he hopes your family pulls through.”

Veer looked at the two teenagers. They were so incredibly normal, completely insulated by their high school romance and mundane lives. It made Veer feel like a specter of death standing in their presence. He was about to board a plane that would take him directly into the heart of a merciless terrorist organization, armed only with superhuman kinetic force and a spatial manipulation ability.

“I appreciate it, Mark. Hina,” Veer said, his voice flat but carrying a tone of solemn gratitude. He offered Mark a firm handshake. “Keep an eye on the apartment. I will be out of contact for a while. The medical facilities require strict quarantine protocols.”

“Yeah, of course,” Mark said, completely buying the lie. “Good luck, man.”

Veer turned his back on them and walked through the security checkpoint, disappearing into the terminal.

—

The flight to Afghanistan was agonizingly long and entirely uneventful.

Veer sat in the cramped economy seat, his eyes closed, passively circulating his aura to maintain his ‘Ten’ shroud. He spend most of his time sleeping.

Sixteen hours later, the commercial airliner touched down heavily on the cracked tarmac of Kabul International Airport.

Veer stepped off the plane and descended the metal airstairs.

He had mentally prepared himself for the brutal, suffocating wall of Middle Eastern heat. The ambient temperature was hovering near 110 degrees Fahrenheit, the air thick with dust and the smell of aviation fuel.

But as his boots hit the tarmac, Veer realized he couldn’t feel it.

He paused, looking down at his hands. The heat was radiating off the concrete in visible waves, yet his skin felt perfectly cool, completely insulated. He focused his perception inward and realized the cause. His ‘Ten’—the shroud of aura constantly enveloping his body—wasn’t just acting as kinetic armor. It was functioning as a perfect, millimeter-thick climate control suit, regulating his internal temperature and deflecting the environmental extremes.

It was a phenomenal, unexpected advantage. He wouldn’t suffer from heat exhaustion in the desert, nor would he freeze in the plunging temperatures of the Afghan night.

Veer cleared customs with ease, his forged documents holding up to scrutiny, and immediately sought out local transport.

He bypassed the official taxis and navigated the chaotic, bustling streets of Kabul until he found a battered, exhaust-belching bus operating on the edge of the city limits. The driver, a weathered man chewing tobacco, took Veer’s crumpled American dollars without asking a single question.

Veer took a seat in the back of the bus. The suspension groaned in protest as the vehicle lurched forward, leaving the dense urban sprawl of Kabul behind.

For the next several hours, Veer stared out the dirt-streaked window. The landscape shifted from broken concrete to sprawling, unforgiving desert, punctuated by jagged, rocky mountain ranges. This was the Kunar Province. This was the territory controlled by the Ten Rings.

He was heading directly into the heart of the narrative.

His destination was a small, isolated settlement nestled in a valley. It was a place that held massive significance in the MCU timeline. It was the home of Ho Yinsen, the brilliant surgeon who was currently keeping Tony Stark alive in a cave. It was the very same village where, in the near future, Stark would deploy his armor to exact a brutal, fiery vengeance against the terrorists who had enslaved him.

The bus hit a massive pothole, violently rattling Veer’s teeth, and began its descent down a winding, treacherous mountain road.

The dust cleared.

In the valley below, framed by the harsh, setting sun, the clustered mud-brick houses and dirt roads of the settlement came into view.

Veer reached Gulmira Village.