Ninja of Marvel World - Chapter 7

Chapter 7: Snakes on a Plane

The hum of the Boeing 777’s engines was a constant, droning lullaby that vibrated through the floorboards and into Karan’s bones. He sat in seat 42E, sandwiched between the large man who smelled of onions and sweat, and a woman who was frantically trying to rock a crying baby to sleep.

Karan closed his eyes, trying to cycle his chakra. It was difficult. The air in the cabin was stale, recycled, and thick with the collective anxiety of three hundred people trapped in a metal tube at thirty-five thousand feet.

He checked his mental clock. They were four hours into the flight. Somewhere over the vast, dark emptiness of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Just get me to Dubai, Karan prayed silently. Then Kabul. Then Tony.

He was about to drift into a light meditation when the atmosphere in the cabin shifted.

It wasn’t a sound. It was a drop in pressure. The kind of sudden, suffocating silence that precedes a thunderclap.

“Nobody move!”

The shout came from the front of the Economy section. It was guttural, accented, and terrified.

Karan opened his eyes.

Three rows ahead, a man had stood up. He was holding something black and matte in his hand. A gun.

How? Karan’s mind raced. Ceramic? 3D printed? Or just paid-off security?

“Stay in your seats!” another voice screamed from the rear.

Karan turned his head slightly. Two more men were standing in the back galley. They had knives—long, serrated blades that looked like they had been smuggled in pieces.

A passenger in the aisle seat, an older man with glasses, instinctively raised his hands. “Please, I have a heart cond—”

THWACK.

The terrorist nearest to him didn’t hesitate. He whipped the pistol around and smashed the butt into the old man’s temple. Blood sprayed onto the overhead bin. The man slumped over, unconscious or worse.

Screams erupted. High-pitched, primal shrieks of panic.

“Shut up!” The leader roared, waving the gun. “One more sound, and I open the emergency door and kill us all! Heads down! Hands on your heads!”

Karan lowered his head, interlacing his fingers behind his neck. His heart wasn’t racing with fear; it was racing with a cold, simmering fury.

“My luck,” Karan whispered into his knees. “My absolute, garbage-tier luck.”

He was on a mission to save the world’s most famous billionaire. He had a schedule. He had a budget. And now, he was in the middle of a hijacking scene straight out of a 90s action movie.

He analyzed the situation through the gap between the seats.

Seven hostiles visible. Three in the front. Two in the middle. Two in the rear. Weapons: At least two firearms, multiple knives. Threat Level: High.

If he used Body Flicker, he could take out two, maybe three. But the others would open fire. In a pressurized cabin, a stray bullet could shatter a window or pierce the fuselage. Decompression at this altitude would suck people out before Karan could say “Ninja.”

He needed a silent takedown. Simultaneous. Lethal.

He looked at his hands, hidden beneath the folded tray table.

Summoning Jutsu.

He had signed the contract with Ryuchi Cave. He had 160 chakra points. A small white snake cost 1 chakra point.

“Ten,” Karan decided. “Ten should be enough.”

He bit his thumb. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. He kept his movements microscopic, hidden under the oversized hoodie he was wearing.

Boar → Dog → Bird → Monkey → Ram.

He pressed his palm against the carpeted floor of the aircraft.

“Summoning Jutsu,” he whispered, barely a breath.

Poof.

There was no large explosion of smoke, just a subtle puff that was lost in the dim cabin lighting.

Ten white snakes materialized around his feet. They writhed silently, their red eyes glowing faintly in the gloom.

The Jugo lineage kicked in. Karan’s mind expanded, connecting with the reptiles.

Master… hunger… kill…

“Not hunger,” Karan projected his thought, a cold command. “Hunt.”

He visualized the targets. The man with the gun in row 30. The two with knives in the galley. The ones guarding the cockpit door.

“Bite them,” Karan ordered. “Lethal dose. Now.”

The snakes didn’t hesitate. They were swift, fluid shadows. They slithered under the seats, moving over shoes and bags, invisible to the terrified passengers who had their eyes squeezed shut.

Karan watched through the eyes of the snake nearest to him—a disorienting, heat-based vision.

The leader of the terrorists was pacing the aisle, sweating. “We are in control now! The pilot will—”

He stopped. He looked down.

Something white and wet had just wrapped around his ankle.

“What the—”

The snake struck.

It was faster than a blinking eye. Fangs sank into the exposed flesh above the man’s sock.

“AHH!”

The scream wasn’t a command this time. It was pure pain.

Simultaneously, six other screams echoed through the plane.

The man in the aisle grabbed his leg. He raised his gun, eyes wild, looking for the attacker. But the venom of the Ryuchi Cave snakes wasn’t just painful; it was a potent neurotoxin designed to incapacitate prey instantly.

His leg gave out. He collapsed into the aisle, frothing at the mouth.

“Snake!” someone shrieked. “There’s a snake!”

Chaos. Absolute, unmitigated chaos.

The passengers forgot about the guns. They forgot about the hijackers. Deep in the human brain, there is a primal fear of serpents that overrides almost everything else.

“Get it off me! Get it off me!” one of the knife-wielders in the back screamed, thrashing as two snakes coiled around his neck. He dropped the knife, clawing at his throat, his face turning purple as the venom shut down his respiratory system.

Karan sat perfectly still, his head down, acting the part of the terrified teenager.

Internally, he was counting.

One down. Two. Three…

[System Notification]

[Enemy Defeated]
[EXP Gained: 100]

[Enemy Defeated]
[EXP Gained: 100]

The notifications pinged in his vision like a slot machine.

[Total EXP Gained: 700]

In less than sixty seconds, all seven terrorists were on the floor. Their bodies convulsed, then went still. The venom had done its work.

But the snakes were still there.

One snake, confused by the sudden lack of targets, reared up in the aisle, hissing at a woman in 43C.

“OH MY GOD!” she screamed, climbing over her seatmate. “SNAKES! THERE ARE SNAKES ON THE PLANE!”

The panic was shifting from “we are being hijacked” to “we are in a horror movie.”

“Return,” Karan commanded mentally.

He couldn’t leave evidence. If the authorities found ten exotic, white pit vipers that didn’t exist in any known ecosystem, SHIELD would be dissecting this plane within the hour.

Poof. Poof. Poof.

One by one, the snakes vanished into small puffs of white smoke.

But the damage was done. People had seen them.

“Where did it go?!”

“It crawled into the vent!”

“We’re all going to die!”

The pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom. It sounded shaky.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Captain. We… we have reports of a situation in the cabin. We are declaring an emergency. We are diverting immediately to Rota Naval Station in Spain. Please… please remain calm.”

Remain calm. It was a laughable request.

The plane banked hard to the right. The passengers were hyperventilating. People were standing on their seats, afraid to touch the floor.

“They bit the bad guys,” a child whispered loudly a few rows back. “The snakes ate the bad guys.”

“It’s a biological weapon!” a man in a suit yelled. “The terrorists brought snakes!”

“I’m suing!” another woman sobbed. “I’m suing this airline into the ground! How do you let snakes on a plane?!”

Karan pulled his hood lower. He kept his heart rate steady, though he felt a bead of sweat roll down his neck.

No one saw me, he assured himself. I was under the tray table. It was dark. The snakes appeared from the floor.

He was just a passenger. A victim.

He risked a glance across the aisle.

Seat 42A.

A girl was sitting there. She had blonde hair tied back in a messy braid. She was wearing beautiful black dress. She looked to be about his age, maybe two or three years older.

She wasn’t standing on her seat. She wasn’t screaming.

She was staring directly at him.

Her eyes were green, intense, and terrifyingly intelligent.

She didn’t look at the dead terrorists. She didn’t look at the spot where the snakes had vanished. She was looking at Karan’s hands—the hands that were now innocently resting on his knees.

Karan felt a chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.

She saw, he realized. She saw the hand signs.

He slowly turned his head away, feigning a cough, breaking eye contact.

He didn’t know who she was. But in the Marvel Universe, a teenager who didn’t panic during a hijacking was usually bad news.

—

The landing was rough. The plane slammed onto the runway at the UN Naval Base in Rota, Spain, surrounded immediately by Humvees and fire trucks.

“Heads down! Stay seated!”

A SWAT team boarded the plane. They moved methodically, securing the dead bodies of the terrorists, checking for pulses, and scanning for explosives.

Then came the Hazmat team. Men in yellow suits with Geiger counters and thermal scanners.

“Clear the plane! Row by row! Leave your carry-ons!”

Karan shuffled out with the rest of the herd. He walked down the mobile stairs into the blinding Spanish sun.

They were herded into a massive aircraft hangar. It was set up as a temporary holding area—cots, water bottles, and a lot of armed Marines.

“Listen up!” an officer with a megaphone shouted. “Due to the nature of the incident—specifically the reports of… biological agents—everyone is under mandatory quarantine for forty-eight hours. We will be conducting interviews one by one.”

A groan went through the crowd of passengers.

Karan found a cot in the corner, away from the families and the crying babies. He sat down, pulling his knees to his chest.

Two days, he thought grimly. Tony Stark doesn’t have two days to waste. And my leave from school is only a week.

He opened his System interface to distract himself.

—

Name: Karan Malhotra
Ninja Level: 23 (800/300) [LEVEL UP AVAILABLE]
Status: Genin

—

“Level up,” Karan mentally clicked.

Level 23 -> Level 25.

[Ninja Level: 25]
[Chakra: 200/200]

He felt the surge. His reserves expanded. He was now solidly in the mid-Genin range.

He spent the next twenty-four hours doing nothing. He ate MREs (Meals Ready-to-Eat) provided by the Marines, drank lukewarm water, and pretended to sleep while actually running mental simulations of the raid on the Ten Rings camp.

He sensed her before he saw her.

It was the second night. The hangar lights were dimmed. Most people were asleep.

Karan was lying on his back, staring at the steel rafters.

A shadow fell over him.

“You have very fast hands.”

The voice was low, raspy, and carried a thick, distinct accent.

Karan turned his head.

The blonde girl from Seat 42A was standing there. She held two cups of coffee. She offered one to him.

Karan sat up slowly. He didn’t take the coffee.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Karan said, his voice groggy. “Who are you?”

She smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was the smile of a cat that had cornered a mouse.

“Don’t play stupid,” she said, sitting on the edge of the empty cot next to him. She took a sip of her coffee. “I saw you. You made the signs with your fingers. And then… poof. Snakes.”

She wiggled her fingers mockingly.

Karan’s pulse remained steady. Deny. Deny until the end of time.

“You’re hallucinating,” Karan said flatly. “Trauma does that. I was under the tray table praying to every god I know. If I could summon snakes, I wouldn’t be flying economy.”

“Cute,” she said. “The police searched the plane. No snakes. No venom sacks. The autopsy said the men died of a neurotoxin unknown to modern science. It dissolved in their blood.”

She leaned in closer. “You’re a Mutant? Or something else? An Inhuman?”

“I’m a student from Queens,” Karan said, meeting her gaze. “And you watch too many movies.”

“My name is Yelena,” she said, extending a hand. “Yelena Belova.”

Karan froze.

The name hit him like a physical blow.

Yelena Belova.

Black Widow.

Natasha Romanoff’s sister. The other Red Room graduate.

He looked at her face. Young. Maybe nineteen or twenty. The timeline…

Wait.

If this is 2008/2009 (Iron Man 1 era), and Natasha is already with SHIELD… then Yelena is still with the Red Room.

She is under the chemical subjugation. The pheromone lock.

She isn’t free. She’s a puppet. A sleeper agent.

Karan looked at her hand. He didn’t shake it.

“Karan,” he said simply.

“Well, Karan from Queens,” Yelena said, withdrawing her hand. “You are very interesting. The Red Room would be very interested in a boy who can make snakes out of thin air.”

The mask slipped. Just for a second. Her eyes went cold, lifeless.

“Red Room?” Karan asked, playing dumb. “Is that a club?”

Yelena laughed. “Something like that.”

She stood up. “We will talk more. When we get out of here. Maybe we can share a taxi.”

She walked away, her high heal making no sound on the concrete floor.

Karan watched her go.

Danger, his instincts screamed. This is worse than the terrorists.

Yelena Belova was a weapon. If she reported him to her handlers—to Dreykov—he would be hunted by Widows for the rest of his life. They would dissect him to find the source of his jutsu.

“She’s luring me,” Karan realized.

He couldn’t kill her. Not only was she a “good guy” in the future, but right now, she was a victim of mind control. Killing her would be murdering a slave.

But he couldn’t let her catch him either.

—

The next morning, the quarantine was lifted.

The passengers were cleared. The airline, desperate to avoid a PR nightmare, arranged a charter flight to get everyone to their original destinations.

They were bused back to the tarmac.

Yelena was there, watching him from the back of the bus. She gave him a small wave.

Karan boarded the plane. He sat as far away from her as possible.

The flight to Dubai and then the connection to Kabul was tense. Karan didn’t sleep. He kept his senses extended, feeling for her chakra signature. It was muted, disciplined, like a coiled spring.

They landed in Kabul.

The airport was a chaotic mess of humanity. Soldiers, contractors, locals, and confused travelers.

Karan grabbed his backpack from the carousel. He walked toward the exit.

He felt eyes on him.

He glanced at a reflective glass pane. Yelena was twenty meters behind him, moving through the crowd with effortless grace. She was tracking him.

“Okay,” Karan muttered. “Time to disappear.”

He walked toward the busy taxi stand outside the terminal. It was a crush of people.

He needed a distraction.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of smoke bombs he had purchased from the System Mall during the flight (Cost: 1 points each). They weren’t jutsu, just ninja tools.

He dropped one.

BANG.

A cloud of purple smoke erupted near a group of soldiers.

“IED! IED!” someone screamed.

Panic. The crowd surged.

Karan used the confusion. He ducked behind a pillar.

Clone Jutsu.

But not the regular clone. He used Snake Clone Jutsu.

Its almost like Itachi uses Crow Clone Jutsu to reduce chakra consumption.

He channeled 30 chakra.

It formed a perfect replica of Karan, wearing his hoodie.

“Run that way,” Karan commanded the clone, pointing toward the parking lot. “Look suspicious.”

The clone nodded and bolted, sprinting through the smoke.

Karan, meanwhile, activated Transformation Jutsu.

Poof.

He transformed into an old Afghan man with a beard and a cane.

He stepped out from behind the pillar, shuffling slowly.

He watched through his peripheral vision.

Yelena saw the “Karan clone” running. She didn’t hesitate. She vaulted over a luggage cart and gave chase, moving with terrifying speed.

“Gotcha,” Karan whispered.

He walked calmly to a battered taxi at the end of the line.

“City center,” he told the driver in Pashto (thanks to the System’s translation feature, purchased for 10 points).

The driver nodded.

As the taxi pulled away, Karan looked back.

He saw Yelena tackle the clone in the parking lot. She pinned it down, a knife in her hand.

And then, the clone exploded.

Not into blood and guts, but into a dozen white snakes that slithered away in every direction.

Even from this distance, Karan could see Yelena standing there, surrounded by hissing reptiles, looking absolutely furious.

“Sorry, Yelena,” Karan murmured as the taxi merged into the dusty Kabul traffic. “Maybe next time.”

—

Karan had the driver drop him off at a bustling market in Kabul. He paid the man and walked until he found a secluded alleyway.

He dispelled the Transformation Jutsu.

He was sweating. The chakra drain from the clone and the transformation was significant.

[Chakra: 140/200]

He needed to rest, but he couldn’t.

He found a stall selling maps. He bought a detailed topographical map of the Kunar Province.

He found a stall selling used clothes. He bought a local outfit—a perahan tunban (tunic and trousers) and a pakol (hat). He needed to blend in. A kid in a hoodie in the mountains would stand out like a target.

He went into a public bathroom, changed, and stuffed his western clothes into his backpack.

He looked in the mirror. With his brown skin and the local dress, he looked like any other young man in the region.

“Gulmira,” he whispered.

He walked out of the market and found a bus station.

“Bus to Kunar?” he asked.

The ticket seller looked at him. “Dangerous road. Taliban. Ten Rings.”

“I have family there,” Karan lied again.

He bought a ticket.

As he sat on the rickety bus, surrounded by chickens and crates of vegetables, Karan looked at the mountains rising in the distance.

Somewhere in those mountains, Tony Stark was hammering metal in a cave.

Somewhere behind him, a Black Widow was hunting him.

And somewhere inside him, the Ninja System was humming.

[New Quest: rescue Iron Man]

[Reward: ???]

Karan closed his eyes.

“Let’s start the war.”