Hunter of Marvel - Chapter 9

Chapter 9: Revenge

The cafeteria was so quiet that Veer could hear the faint, rhythmic dripping of a faulty faucet in the kitchen behind the serving line. Hundreds of eyes were locked onto him.

“What the hell are you saying?” Veer asked, his voice steady, though his mind was racing.

Mary Jane didn’t answer verbally. Instead, she leaned across the table and shoved her smartphone directly into his line of sight.

Veer’s looked at the glowing screen. It was the High class group chat, a massive thread that almost everyone in their grade muted but occasionally checked for gossip. Right at the bottom of the feed was a massive, sprawling paragraph of desperate, agonizingly sincere teenage poetry. It detailed a decade-long secret crush, ending with a plea that the recipient deserved better than her current boyfriend.

It was a love letter.

And right above the text, in bold letters, was the sender’s contact ID. It was his own phone number.

The pieces clicked together with the heavy, inescapable finality of a prison door slamming shut. The empty beer bottles. Mark lying face-down on the couch. The phone he had carelessly left on the coffee table. Mark, in his drunken, heartbroken misery, had finally decided to shoot his shot, but he had used the wrong device.

Before Veer could even open his mouth to explain, his Perception stat—currently sitting at an elevated three points—screamed a warning.

A sudden shift in the air currents to his right. The heavy scrape of a sneaker against linoleum.

Veer didn’t even have to look. His body reacted entirely on instinct.

He raised his right hand, palm open, just as a massive, meaty fist swung directly toward his jaw.

‘Smack.’

The sound of the impact was sharp and loud, echoing like a gunshot in the silent cafeteria.

Flash Thompson, a boy who spent three hours a day in the weight room and easily had fifty pounds of muscle on Veer, had thrown a full-power haymaker. But the punch didn’t connect with bone. It stopped dead in the center of Veer’s palm.

Veer’s arm didn’t even buckle. His posture remained perfectly relaxed, sitting in his chair, holding the furious quarterback’s fist as if he had just caught a thrown baseball.

A collective gasp swept through the room.

Veer slowly turned his head, his dark eyes locking onto Flash. “What the hell are you trying to do?” Veer asked, his tone dangerously calm.

Flash’s face was a mottled, violent red. The sheer shock of having his punch caught so effortlessly short-circuited his brain for a second, but the humiliation quickly reignited his rage.

“You fucking bastard!” Flash screamed, spittle flying from his lips. He tried to yank his fist back, but Veer’s grip was like an iron vise. “You send messages to my girlfriend for the whole school to see, and you dare ask what I’m doing?!”

Flash planted his feet, swinging his free left arm in a wild, looping hook aimed at the side of Veer’s head.

To Veer, the punch moved in slow motion. The technique was sloppy, completely fueled by adrenaline and entirely lacking in discipline. Veer simply let go of Flash’s right fist, leaned back slightly to let the left hook sail harmlessly past his nose, and brought his hand up to Flash’s chest.

He didn’t punch. He didn’t strike. He just gave the larger boy a light, dismissive push to create distance.

But with a Strength stat of three, a “light push” from Veer was equivalent to a violent shove from a grown athlete.

Flash’s feet lifted off the floor. He flew backward, stumbling violently over his own momentum, and crashed hard onto the linoleum, taking a nearby chair down with him in a clattering mess of plastic and metal.

The cafeteria erupted. It was pandemonium. The absolute bottom-tier scholarship kid had just casually swatted the apex predator of the school like a mildly annoying fly. It was like watching a stray dog casually beat down a lion.

Veer didn’t stay to bask in the shocked silence that followed. He knew exactly how volatile this situation was.

He stood up smoothly, grabbed his canvas backpack from the table, and slung it over one shoulder. He didn’t look at MJ, and he didn’t look at the students scrambling out of his way. He just walked quickly and purposefully toward the exit.

“Coward!” Flash roared from the floor, his voice cracking with humiliation as he scrambled to his feet. “Run, you freak!”

Veer pushed through the double doors and out into the cool afternoon air, breaking into a light jog. He heard the doors crash open behind him as Flash gave chase, but the quarterback was heavy and running on pure, blind rage. Veer easily navigated the crowded courtyard, slipping through the gates and disappearing into the dense foot traffic of Queens before Flash even made it to the sidewalk.

As he walked rapidly away from the school, Veer let out a long, frustrated sigh.

He couldn’t tell the truth. If he turned around and told the entire cafeteria that Mark was the one who had actually sent the message, Flash would simply shift his target. Veer had the physical stats and the mental fortitude to handle a bully. Mark did not. If Flash caught Mark alone in a hallway, he would put the kid in the hospital.

Furthermore, from a purely objective standpoint, Veer couldn’t even blame Flash. If some guy had publicly messaged his girlfriend declaring his undying love, Veer would have thrown a punch, too. Flash wasn’t in the wrong here. Mark was the idiot who had crossed the line, and Veer was simply paying the tab.

Returning to school for the afternoon periods was out of the question.

“Looks like I’m skipping,” Veer muttered.

He adjusted his backpack and took a detour, heading back toward the sprawling, overgrown section of the local park. If he couldn’t sit in class, he was going to put the time to good use.

He found a secluded spot surrounded by thick, untrimmed oak trees, entirely shielded from the main walking paths. He dropped his bag against a trunk and sat down cross-legged in the grass.

It was time to figure out the mechanics of ‘Ten’.

Veer closed his eyes. He located the flow of his aura that is leaving his body, and carefully wrapped it around his body. The feeble, invisible shroud settled over his skin, humming with a faint, warm energy.

Immediately, he pulled up his system interface to monitor his vital signs.

AP: 7990/8000
AP: 7980/8000

Veer frowned, watching the numbers tick down. Unlike Zetsu, which essentially turned off his internal engine and cost nothing, maintaining ‘Ten’ actively consumed Aura Points.

His analytical mind instantly went to work on the math. At Level 1, the shroud was draining 10 AP per second.

“That’s insane,” Veer whispered.

He had a maximum pool of 8000 AP, thanks to the massive boost from hitting ten in INT. Doing the basic division, that meant he could only sustain his defensive aura for exactly 800 seconds.

Thirteen minutes and twenty seconds.

He checked his recovery rate. His passive ‘Aura Font’ ability recovered 0.1% of his maximum AP per minute. That was 8 AP per minute. Meanwhile, ‘Ten’ was violently burning through 600 AP per minute. The passive recovery was completely negligible while the skill was active.

Even if he deactivated ‘Ten’ and immediately switched to ‘Zetsu’—which the system indicated would multiply his base recovery rate by ten—he would be recovering 80 AP per minute. To refill an entirely empty tank of 8000 AP, he would have to wait for exactly one hundred minutes.

The system was unforgiving. It didn’t operate on dramatic tension or narrative convenience. It operated on cold, hard, inescapable mathematics. It was a stark contrast to the magical, emotion-driven systems he had read about in fantasy novels. If he ran out of aura in a fight, he couldn’t just scream loudly and magically find more. He would be completely defenseless.

He needed to level the skill up to reduce the cost, but actively burning his AP pool dry every thirteen minutes was a terribly inefficient way to train.

Veer recalled the sudden influx of knowledge the system had planted in his brain when he acquired the skills. There was a footnote regarding basic aura manipulation. ‘Meditation.’

If he didn’t forcefully push the aura out into a defensive combat shroud, but instead kept it tight, calm, and internalized through deep meditation, he could train the flow without aggressively bleeding his reserves dry.

Veer adjusted his posture, straightening his spine. He pulled the ‘Ten’ shroud inward, stopping the active combat drain, and focused on the slow, methodical circulation of the energy just beneath his skin.

He watched the interface.

The violent AP drain stopped. His passive recovery kicked in, slowly ticking the numbers back up. And beneath the skill description, the proficiency percentage began to steadily climb.

‘It works.’

Veer locked his mind down and settled in for the long haul. The hours blurred together. The sounds of the park—the distant barking of dogs, the rumble of traffic—faded into a dull, white noise. He sat perfectly still, entirely focused on the invisible current flowing through his spiritual veins.

The sun peaked, began its descent, and eventually dipped below the city skyline, casting the park in deep, violet shadows.

Finally, a sharp chime broke his concentration.

[Skill Level Up: Ten has reached Level 2!]

Veer opened his eyes, exhaling a long, steady breath. The system knowledge updated instantly.

He activated the combat shroud. The aura snapped into place much faster than before, wrapping around him tightly. He checked the drain. It had dropped to 8 AP per second. It was a slight improvement, buying him a little more time in a fight, but the real upgrade was the structural integrity of the shroud itself.

The knowledge in his mind confirmed that his Level 2 ‘Ten’ was now dense enough to act as a genuine physical barrier against mundane weapons. A standard steel combat knife or a swinging machete would slide off the aura without breaking his skin. Unless the weapon was forged from a specialized material like vibranium, adamantium, or was laced with its own magical energy, he was essentially immune to street-level blades.

Firearms, however, still packed too much kinetic energy. A bullet would punch right through his Level 2 defense.

“Still human enough to get shot,” Veer noted, stretching his stiff legs.

He planned to stay in the park for the rest of the night, grinding the meditation technique to push toward Level 3.

But his Perception spiked again.

Footsteps. Four sets of them. Moving deliberately off the paved path and crunching through the dry leaves and underbrush, heading directly toward his secluded spot.

Veer deactivated his aura, keeping his breathing calm. He waited in the dark.

A moment later, the beams of two smartphone flashlights cut through the gloom, sweeping across the tree trunks until they landed directly on Veer’s face.

“Found him.”

Flash Thompson stepped into the clearing, flanked by three of his larger teammates from the football squad. They had traded their school clothes for dark hoodies, and their faces were set in expressions of grim, adrenaline-fueled excitement. They hadn’t just come to talk; they had come to reestablish the high school hierarchy in the only language they understood.

“Coward,” Flash spat, stepping closer, though he wisely kept a few feet of distance between them. “Where are you gonna run now, Singh?”

Veer looked at the four teenagers. They were big kids, built strong by weight rooms and sports, but they were still just kids. They had absolutely no idea what they were standing in front of.

Veer slowly stood up, brushing the dirt off his sweatpants.

“I’m not running, Flash,” Veer said, his voice quiet and perfectly calm in the dark woods. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have messaged MJ. It was a massive mistake on my part, and I take full responsibility for it. I apologize. If you let me walk away right now, we don’t have to fight.”

It was the most mature, de-escalating response possible.

Predictably, it was exactly the wrong thing to say to a group of humiliated, angry teenagers looking to prove themselves. To them, an apology was just an admission of weakness.

The boys laughed. It was a harsh, ugly sound.

“You think you can just say sorry and walk away?” one of the friends sneered, stepping forward. He was a linebacker, thick-necked and aggressive. “You embarrassed Flash in front of the whole school, you little freak.”

Without warning, the linebacker lunged forward, swinging his right arm in a wide, heavy slap aimed directly at Veer’s face, intended to humiliate rather than knock him out.

With three points in Dexterity and three in Perception, Veer didn’t even blink. The boy’s arm looked as though it were moving underwater.

Veer’s hand shot up, his fingers clamping around the boy’s wrist with the stopping power of a steel bear trap. The slap was arrested instantly, inches from Veer’s cheek.

“I really don’t want to resort to violence,” Veer said, his voice dropping an octave, a genuine warning echoing in his tone.

The linebacker’s eyes widened in shock as he tried and failed to pull his arm free.

“Get him!” Flash yelled.

From the right side, another friend rushed in. He had unzipped his hoodie, pulling out a short, aluminum baseball bat. He didn’t hesitate, swinging the metal cylinder in a vicious, horizontal arc aimed right at Veer’s ribs.

Veer let go of the linebacker’s wrist and stepped smoothly backward. The aluminum bat sliced through the empty space where his ribs had been a fraction of a second before, the momentum pulling the attacker off balance.

Instinct, forged by his elevated stats, took over.

Veer didn’t punch. He didn’t want to severely injure the kid. He just wanted to knock him back. He raised his left arm and delivered a quick, casual backhand slap to the center of the boy’s chest.

He vastly misjudged the force of three Strength points.

‘CRACK.’

The sound of the impact was sickeningly loud, like a thick branch snapping under a heavy boot.

The boy with the bat didn’t just stumble backward. His feet left the ground entirely. He flew through the air, traveling nearly ten feet before his back slammed into the trunk of an oak tree. He slid to the dirt, the baseball bat clattering away into the dark.

For a split second, there was total silence.

Then, a horrible, wet, wheezing sound ripped through the clearing. The boy on the ground clutched his chest, his eyes rolling back in his head. He was violently choking, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on a dock, completely unable to draw air into his lungs. The sheer force of the blow had sent his diaphragm into a severe spasm.

Flash and the other two boys froze, absolute terror washing over their faces.

“Oh, shit,” Veer cursed.

He didn’t hesitate. He closed the distance in a blur of motion, dropping to his knees beside the choking teenager. The boy’s face was already turning a terrifying shade of blue.

Drawing on the emergency first-aid training from his past life as a police officer, Veer knew exactly what was happening. The vagus nerve had been shocked, locking the respiratory muscles.

Veer grabbed the boy by the shoulder, rolling him slightly onto his side. He raised his hand, carefully modulating his strength this time, and delivered a sharp, perfectly placed open-handed slap between the boy’s shoulder blades.

The shockwave traveled through the spine, resetting the nerve response.

The boy immediately gagged, his chest heaving as a massive, desperate rush of air tore into his lungs. He began to cough violently, spitting saliva onto the dirt, but the color slowly began to return to his face. He was breathing.

Veer sat back on his heels, letting out a long sigh of relief. He looked up.

Flash and his two remaining friends had backed away, pressing themselves against the trees. Their flashlights were trembling wildly in their hands, casting erratic shadows across the clearing. They looked at Veer not as a scholarship kid, but as a monster. A demon hiding in plain sight.

Veer stood up slowly, keeping his hands visible and open. He looked directly at Flash. His face was entirely devoid of anger, replaced by a cold, weary seriousness.

“I am really sorry,” Veer said, his voice carrying clearly over the sound of the injured boy’s coughing. “I know I made a mistake by sending that message to MJ. I give you my word, I will never send a message to her again. Now, take your friend to the hospital. Let’s finish this right here, without any more violence.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He picked up his backpack from the grass, turned his back on the terrified teenagers, and walked away into the darkness of the park, his footsteps making absolutely no sound on the dry leaves.

Behind him, Flash finally found his voice, barking panicked orders to his friends to help carry the injured boy to their car.

The drive to the local emergency room was a nightmare of tense, suffocating silence.

Sitting in the backseat, holding his friend upright, Flash felt his entire worldview shattering.

“Did you see that?” one of the friends whispered from the driver’s seat, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white. “He didn’t even punch him. He just… swatted him. Like a bug. The guy is a freaking martial arts master or something. We could have died, Flash. You brought us to fight a ninja.”

Flash didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

When they finally rushed into the brightly lit, sterile emergency room of Queens General, the medical staff took over. Flash and his friends sat in the uncomfortable plastic chairs of the waiting room, staring blankly at the linoleum floor.

Two hours later, a tired-looking doctor walked through the swinging double doors holding a clipboard.

Flash stood up immediately, his heart hammering against his ribs.

“He’s stable,” the doctor said, looking at the boys with a stern expression. “He has two fractured ribs, right over the sternum. It was a massive localized impact. Luckily, the bone didn’t splinter inward. There are no punctured lungs, no internal bleeding. He’s going to be in a lot of pain for a few weeks, and he’s not playing football this season, but he will heal completely.”

A massive, collective sigh of relief washed over the three teenagers.

“What hit him?” the doctor asked, raising an eyebrow. “Looks like he took a direct kick from a horse.”

“He… he fell,” Flash lied, his voice barely a whisper. “Tripped over a log in the dark. Landed hard.”

The doctor clearly didn’t believe a word of it, but lacking a police report, he just sighed and walked back through the doors.

Flash sat back down heavily in the plastic chair. He looked at his hands, remembering the absolute, terrifying ease with which Veer had caught his punch in the cafeteria.

He leaned back, closing his eyes.

The social hierarchy of Midtown High didn’t matter anymore. His ego didn’t matter. In the deep, primal part of his brain that governed survival, Flash Thompson made a very simple, very permanent decision.

He was never going to mess with Veer Pratap Singh again.