Power of Hercules in MCU - Chapter 17
Chapter 17: The Scorpion’s Gift?
The passage of weeks did little to dull the sharp edges of Rudra’s new reality. If anything, time only solidified the strangeness, cementing the panel in his vision, the hum of the Hercules Method in his very cells, as irrevocable facets of his existence. He moved through the motions of his life – school, chores, brief interactions with his unsuspecting parents – like a diver exploring a deep, alien trench, the surface world a distant, sunlit memory. His true life unfolded in the silent, disciplined hours he carved out for meditation.
The EXP requirements for each level beyond twenty had become substantial, demanding a relentless, almost monastic dedication. But Rudra was patient, his focus unwavering. He found secluded spots: the dusty, forgotten attic of his apartment building, a hidden alcove in the vast New York Public Library during off-peak hours, the deep stillness of his own room in the dead of night when the city’s pulse finally quieted. He pushed his mind, his will, his physical energy into that focused point of harmonization, feeling the subtle, internal shifts as his power grew, EXP by precious EXP.
The day his panel chimed with the notification for Level: 30 (0/800), a profound sense of quiet satisfaction settled over him. Eight hundred EXP for the next level was a daunting prospect, but accompanying the level-up was a more significant milestone:
Skill: Hercules Method Lv2 (0%)
Primary Cultivation Technique (Focused Meditation) now yields 2 EXP per continuous minute of effective practice.
Advanced internal energy circulation pathways unlocked. Greater potential for Mind/Will/Physical Energy harmonization.
Two EXP per minute. His rate of progression had just doubled. A small, grim smile touched Rudra’s lips. The climb was still steep, but the ascent would be faster now. He felt the difference immediately. A deeper well of internal energy, a more effortless command over his heightened senses, his strength and speed now residing within him not as a recent acquisition, but as an integrated, fundamental part of his being. The world felt clearer, sharper, his body an even more responsive, more potent instrument.
With this growing power came a hardening of his internal philosophy. He had seen Gwen Stacy, radiant with her newfound spider-abilities, and then had seen her again, shattered and poisoned, bearing the immediate, brutal cost of her heroism. He had heard her whispered, guilt-ridden confession about Felicia and Peter, swallowed by an unknown darkness because of their association with her. He saw the news, the fear gripping the city thanks to the Scorpion.
This was the price of being a hero, he mused, during one long, introspective meditation. This was the crushing weight of responsibility, the endless cycle of conflict, loss, and the torment of knowing you couldn’t save everyone, that your very existence might endanger those you cared about. It was a path paved with sacrifice and inevitable pain.
He wanted power, yes. He craved the strength, the near-immortality, the sheer agency the Hercules Method offered, especially in a world as dangerous and unpredictable as this one was rapidly proving to be. But he wanted it for himself. For his own survival, his own autonomy. To be an observer, perhaps a survivor, but not a savior. The thought wasn’t born of cowardice, he told himself, but of a pragmatic, almost cynical, assessment of the realities he was witnessing.
Let others chase the fleeting glory of heroism; he would walk a different, more solitary path, unburdened by the need to answer the city’s cries, unyoked from the impossible expectation of being its shield. Power without that specific, crushing responsibility – that was his aim.
It was a cool evening, a few weeks after his last encounter with Gwen, when he saw her again. He was walking home from a late session at a public library branch in a different borough, having sought out its quiet anonymity for an extended meditation. The streets were already dark, the city lights casting long, melancholic shadows, the air still carrying a faint, metallic tang of fear from the ongoing Scorpion crisis.
He saw her huddled on a graffiti-scarred bench at a deserted bus stop, a lone, forlorn figure under the flickering neon sign of a closed bodega. She wasn’t Ghost-Spider. She was just Gwen Stacy, looking smaller, more fragile than he’d ever seen her. Her blonde hair was lank, unwashed, her clothes rumpled and stained as if she’d been sleeping in them for days. Her face, illuminated by the harsh streetlight, was gaunt, her eyes wide and haunted, staring blankly at the indifferent flow of late-night traffic.
Rudra’s enhanced senses picked up the tremors running through her, the shallow, irregular rhythm of her breathing. He activated his Enhanced Vision, his gaze sweeping over her. The diagnostic insight was alarming. Her internal energy reserves were critically depleted. He could see the strain on her organs, the markers of prolonged stress, severe sleep deprivation, and poor nutrition. The faint, insidious traces of the Scorpion’s venom still lingered in her system, a subdued, dark webwork around her nerves, a constant, low-level irritant that her spider-physiology was struggling to fully purge while under such duress. She was running on fumes, on the verge of a complete physical and emotional collapse.
He hesitated for only a moment, the memory of her warning – “You could be in danger too, Rudra. I don’t want you hurt because of me” – echoing in his mind. But her current state transcended that caution. She was destroying herself.
He approached her quietly, his footsteps making almost no sound on the cracked pavement. “Gwen?” he said softly.
She started violently, her head snapping up, her eyes wide with a hunted, almost feral fear before recognition slowly dawned. “Rudra?” she whispered, her voice hoarse, cracked. There was no energy left in her for surprise, for questions, only a profound, bone-deep weariness.
“You look,” he said, his voice carefully neutral, devoid of judgment, “like you’re about to fall apart.” He paused. “Come on. My place isn’t far from here. You need to get off the street. Rest. Eat something. Before you collapse for good.”
She stared at him, a flicker of indecision in her eyes, then a weary, almost imperceptible nod. She didn’t have the strength to argue, to warn him away again. She was too tired. Too broken.
He gently helped her to her feet, her arm surprisingly frail in his grasp. The walk to his apartment was slow, Gwen leaning heavily on him, each step seeming to cost her an immense effort. His parents were out for the evening, a rare community event, so the apartment was quiet, dimly lit. He guided her to the worn sofa in the living room, helping her settle into its familiar cushions. She sank into it with a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the world.
He didn’t press her with questions, didn’t offer platitudes or advice. He could see the raw, gaping wound of her grief and guilt in her eyes, in the desolate slump of her shoulders. Words would be useless, intrusive. The pain of losing friends, of feeling responsible for their fate, was a chasm only those who had stared into it could begin to comprehend. He understood, with a chilling clarity that only reinforced his own chosen path, the crushing psychological pressure she was under. This was the hero’s burden. This was the torment he sought to avoid.
Instead of words, he went to the kitchen. He found two bottles of beer tucked away at the back of the fridge, a minor act of teenage rebellion his predecessor had occasionally indulged in, and which Rudra had sometimes continued, a small taste of normalcy in his otherwise extraordinary life. He opened them, returned to the living room, and handed one to Gwen.
She took it, her fingers cold against his. He sat in the armchair opposite her. They drank in silence, the only sounds the faint hiss of carbonation, the distant hum of the city, and Gwen’s quiet, ragged breaths. The shared silence was heavy, laden with unspoken suffering, yet it was also a strange form of comfort, an acknowledgment of a shared, dark reality without the need for empty words. He watched her, saw the despair etched onto her young face, and felt a cold wave of something akin to sympathy, yet it only sharpened the edges of his own resolve. This agony, this crushing weight – it was not for him.
The television in the corner was on, muted, flickering with the late-night news. Rudra had been idly glancing at the closed captions, his mind elsewhere, when a headline banner suddenly scrolled across the bottom of the screen, stark and sensational: “SCORPION’S CURSE… OR GIFT? STING SURVIVORS EXHIBITING STRANGE ABILITIES!”
Rudra’s attention snapped into focus. He reached for the remote, unmuting the volume.
A serious-faced news anchor was detailing the astonishing, terrifying new development. “…reports emerging from multiple city hospitals and police precincts indicate a bizarre and alarming trend. A small number of individuals who were stung by the creature known as the Scorpion, and who, through either extraordinary resilience or immediate, intensive medical intervention, survived the initial period of intense agony without succumbing to… self-destructive acts… are now developing what can only be described as superhuman characteristics.”
The screen cut to shaky cell phone footage of a man in a hospital gown effortlessly bending the steel frame of his bed, his eyes glowing with a faint, sickly yellow light. Then to another clip, a woman whose skin seemed to be hardening, taking on a mottled, chitinous texture.
“Medical experts are baffled,” the anchor continued, her voice grave. “It appears the complex neurotoxin, if not fatal, can trigger profound and unpredictable mutagenic changes within the human body. These changes range from vastly increased strength and aggression to visible physical alterations and, in some cases, the development of… unusual new appetites or behaviors. The media has already dubbed this phenomenon ‘The Scorpion’s Gift,’ but authorities are warning that these newly ‘gifted’ individuals are unstable, highly dangerous, and should not be approached…”
Gwen, who had been staring listlessly into her beer bottle, slowly raised her head, her eyes widening in horror as she absorbed the news report. The venom that had nearly destroyed her, the poison that still left a faint, aching residue in her own enhanced system, was now spawning more chaos, twisting other victims into… what? More monsters?
A choked, despairing sound escaped her lips. “No…” she whispered. “Oh, god, no.” This was a new nightmare, another layer of horror stemming from that one, catastrophic encounter. Was she indirectly responsible for this too? For unleashing a potential plague of unstable, Scorpion-made metahumans upon the city?
Rudra watched her reaction, then turned his gaze back to the screen, his expression unreadable. He had seen the venom’s nature with his Enhanced Vision, its virulent, invasive power. For it to not just cause pain or death, but to actively, radically rewrite human genetics in survivors… this was OsCorp’s dark science at its most uncontrolled, its most terrifyingly unpredictable. More variables. More threats. More instability.
The city outside, already cowering from one monster, now faced the prospect of many, each a twisted echo of the Scorpion’s agony. The so-called “gift” felt like a curse laid upon an already bleeding metropolis. The night, Rudra thought, had just grown considerably darker. And his own need for power, for a strength that could withstand such a world, felt more pressing, more justified, than ever before.