The few days that followed were a period of calm reflection for Su Yi and a necessary period of convalescence for Jessica Campbell. The hospital was now preparing the discharge papers, finalizing the complex transfer of temporary custody to Vanessa Marianna.
Su Yi had set the wheels in motion for his "surprise" on the day of Jessica's discharge: a small, carefully managed celebration, but also a crucial moment of reintroduction. He had a specific group of people in mind.
He contacted Liz Allan, one of the few people at Midtown High with both the social standing and the genuine kindness to organize such an event without fanfare.
"Hey, Liz. I have a favor to ask. Remember Jessica Campbell, the girl from our grade who was in that coma a few months ago?" Su Yi asked, calling her while she was finalizing her college applications.
"Of course, Su Yi. It was terrible. Everyone at school was talking about it," Liz said, her voice immediately sympathetic.
"She's waking up. She lost her family in the accident, and she's being discharged in a few days to start a new life. She has no one. I'm hosting a quiet gathering for her, just a few close friends. It would mean the world to her to see some familiar faces from Midtown—people who remember her before the tragedy."
Su Yi strategically planted the idea. He needed Peter and a few others there, but he couldn't personally organize the Midtown social scene.
"That's such a thoughtful idea, Su Yi! I'd love to help," Liz exclaimed, immediately energized by the opportunity for compassionate action. "I'll reach out to Peter, Ned, MJ, and some of the others who knew her. It's still the end of the holiday, so most of us are around. We can get a small card signed and organize a quiet, supportive welcome."
"Perfect, Liz. Keep it small, low-key, and absolutely positive. She needs stability, not shock."
With the social component managed, Su Yi spent the remainder of the day indulging in a rare moment of domestic tranquility with Vanessa. They walked through a quiet, specialized art district, talking about new exhibitions and upcoming commissions. They shopped for items for Jessica's new room in Vanessa's spacious apartment—not just necessities, but art supplies, high-quality headphones for music, and specialized ergonomic furniture, anticipating the physical and sensory needs of someone recovering from a devastating accident and gaining new, unknown powers. Their interaction was a perfect counterpoint to the impending, explosive chaos brewing elsewhere in New York. Two forces of nature—one of silent, controlled power, the other of chaotic, raw strength—were about to collide.
That peaceful day shattered across the East River.
Dr. Bruce Banner slipped onto the New York University campus like a ghost. His purpose was simple: to evade General Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross's relentless pursuit and retrieve the remaining core research data that had been temporarily stored at his old laboratory on the campus.
He was desperate to continue his research, to find an antitoxin, a counter-agent, or any molecular signature that could finally, permanently solve his transformation problem. Only by severing the bond with the Hulk could he return to the normal life he craved—a life that included Betty Ross.
Banner's initial infiltration, cloaked in borrowed clothes and a pervasive, gnawing paranoia, was a partial success. He managed to access his old terminal and confirmed that the majority of his sensitive notes had been remotely deleted—a preemptive strike by the military command that had once backed his work.
Without this vast library of failed experiments and genetic modeling, the path to solving the Hulk problem had become exponentially steeper. He felt a chilling sense of isolation; the world was actively working against his sanity.
Forced to slink away, defeated and exposed, Banner's luck shifted briefly when he ran into Betty Ross, his former colleague and the one woman who understood the man beneath the monster.
Betty, however, was still clinging to the naive hope that her father, General Ross, could be reasoned with. "He's just trying to contain a threat, Bruce. If you just talk to him—"
"Betty, he's not trying to contain a threat; he's trying to weaponize it," Banner countered, his voice raw with exhaustion. "He doesn't want to cure me; he wants to strap a gamma-fueled engine into a suit of armor and hand it to a battalion. I am not a weapon, and I won't be his tool."
Seeing the desperation in Banner's eyes, Betty finally yielded to her loyalty. She confessed that she had copied a critical subset of the data onto a USB drive before the military takeover, a 'just in case' measure born of professional habit and personal devotion.
With the vital USB drive secured, Banner realized he had one last task: he had to go back to the campus—not to the lab, but to a safe rendezvous point to transfer the data to a secure off-grid server before the military could track the drive's access signal.
What Banner didn't know was that General Ross, using advanced facial recognition software deployed across city surveillance feeds, had learned of his initial infiltration and, more critically, had tracked the distinct thermal signature of Betty's car. The rendezvous point was already compromised.
At that moment, Banner was jogging anxiously across a relatively deserted quad, the USB drive clutched tightly in his pocket. The air felt heavy, electric with unspoken threat. He instinctively picked up his pace, his fight-or-flight response—a mechanism that often triggered the other guy—screaming at him to leave.
As he reached the stone archway connecting the main library to the science building, the world exploded.
A massive, armor-piercing shell, fired from a distant, camouflaged artillery unit, screamed across the campus grounds and slammed into the corner of the science building. The blast was deafening, tearing away a huge section of stone and glass.
Banner was caught completely off guard, lifted off his feet by the massive concussive impact, and slammed violently against an interior pillar. The pain was immediate, bone-shattering, and overwhelming.
That instant was all it took.
The pain, the shock, and the unadulterated fear stripped away Banner's control. His body began a rapid, uncontrolled metamorphosis. Tendons thickened, bones cracked and extended, skin stretched and turned an impossible, vibrant jade green. His physique swelled, becoming burly, cyclopean, and truly enormous—a figure of primal, incandescent rage.
The Hulk had appeared!
The transformation completed in seconds, and the behemoth, fueled by the agonizing betrayal of the ambush, didn't hesitate. Before the dust and the shock of the explosion had even dissipated, the Hulk let out a territorial, world-shaking roar that echoed off every building, a sound that instantly shook the foundations of the entire school.
The chaos spread immediately. Even during the holiday, the university had maintenance staff, researchers, and a handful of students.
"What happened?" "It sounded like a sonic boom, followed by a quake!" "How could something like this happen at school? Is it terrorism?" "Maybe there was an accident in the fusion lab."
Panic rippled through the handful of people nearby. Most assumed it was an industrial or scientific accident. Only those in the immediate vicinity, now completely cordoned off by masked, heavily armed tactical teams, realized the true, terrifying nature of the scene.
General Ross, a man whose face was etched with decades of military command and a lifetime of obsession, stood outside the perimeter, watching the dust clear with grim satisfaction. He was commanding a large column of vehicles mounted with heavy weaponry.
"Target confirmed! Engage with lethal force!" Ross roared into his comms. He was too far gone to care about the campus damage; his only goal was containment or elimination.
The Hulk, still roaring, leaped directly from the gaping hole in the corridor. He landed amidst the rubble, his massive form trembling with fury. He knew this was Ross. This was the culmination of years of harassment and hiding. To attack him on a civilian campus was an act of absolute insanity.
Before the Hulk could even move, Ross ordered the attack. A large group of soldiers opened fire wildly. Bullets rained down, impacting the Hulk's impervious green skin with harmless thuds, forming a dense, futile net of firepower. But it was the artillery that followed that was meant to immobilize him. Shells fired without hesitation, two and three at a time, impacting the ground around the Hulk.
The massive figure could defend against bullets, and even the artillery explosions couldn't penetrate his skin, but the sheer force of the concussions, the kinetic energy that rattled his enormous frame, still registered as pain.
The Hulk roared again, a sound of pure, unadulterated suffering and rage. He began to advance amidst the constant, rattling percussion. He grabbed what was nearby—a severed section of the building's façade, a wrecked maintenance vehicle—and hurled them at the military line with impossible force, turning the battlefield into a deadly, chaotic graveyard of shattered materials.
Finally, with a burst of accelerating rage, the Hulk charged into General Ross's elite forces as if entering an unmanned territory. Men were scattered like leaves in a hurricane; vehicles were overturned like toys. No one, absolutely no one, in the standard military ranks could stop the Hulk's rampage.
It was then that a different figure stepped out.
Emil Blonsky, a man in his late thirties, possessing the taut, hyper-defined musculature of a professional military operative who had recently undergone highly experimental, non-gamma-based super-soldier enhancement.
He was physically stronger, faster, and more resilient than any ordinary human, a super-soldier candidate plucked from obscurity and driven by a burning, almost suicidal desire to prove his worth in combat.
Alone, Blonsky strode toward the advancing Hulk, completely unafraid. He carried a highly specialized piece of equipment: a portable, tripod-mounted sonic cannon, designed to overwhelm the Hulk's sensitive hearing and disrupt his inner equilibrium.
"Bruce!" Blonsky yelled, his voice carrying surprising resonance. "Let's have a duel, just you and me! You wanted a cure; I wanted a challenge! Let's see who is strongest!"
The Hulk paused, viewing the man not as a threat, but as an annoying, brightly-colored insect. Yet, Blonsky was eager for the fight, his eyes wide and feverish.
He deployed the sonic cannon, pressing the activation trigger. A focused, invisible beam of high-frequency sound hammered the Hulk. It was indeed powerful, momentarily stunning the giant and forcing him to clasp his hands over his oversized ears.
But the Hulk's defense was, as always, invincible. Enduring the blinding sonic pain for a crucial few seconds, he charged directly through the wave of sound. The ground cracked beneath his feet. He reached Blonsky in an instant, seizing the sonic cannon with his huge, emerald hands and crushing the complex weapon into a mangled accordion of metal and wire.
Blonsky was livid, his new strength feeling useless against this creature of mythic proportions. He dropped the ruined weapon and charged, throwing a flurry of enhanced, rapid punches at the Hulk's chest.
The Hulk responded with a dismissive, open-handed slap. The sound was like a thunderclap. Blonsky was immediately flung backward, sent flying over fifteen meters, crashing through the glass wall of a portable medical tent and sliding to a mangled stop against a parked humvee.
He lay there, suffering severe, agonizing internal injuries—ribs shattered, organs bruised, his enhanced body protesting against the sheer kinetic brutality of the blow. It was only because Blonsky had been dosed with the experimental serum that he wasn't simply a smear on the pavement. Even the Hulk, in his rage, had intuitively held back the final, killing blow.
Severely injured, Blonsky staggered upright, bloodied and broken, yet instead of retreating, he began to laugh wildly—a high-pitched, terrifying sound of derangement.
"Ha! The strength! It's magnificent!" he cackled, staring at the Hulk with maniacal glee. "Even with the enhancement, I'm just a man! I want that power! I want to be the strongest!"
Blonsky's mind had snapped, his physical enhancement only fueling his pathological drive for ultimate power. He charged the Hulk again, ignoring the internal tearing of his muscles. The outcome was obvious; he was knocked down even more easily this time, sprawled on the ground amidst the rubble.
Just as the Hulk stood over Blonsky, debating whether to crush the annoying figure, Betty Ross rushed onto the scene, having been alerted by the sheer, unmistakable devastation and the sound of the initial explosions.
"Bruce, stop! That's enough!" she screamed, rushing toward the massive green figure, completely ignoring the armed soldiers.
The sound of her voice, her presence, was the only thing that could consistently penetrate the Hulk's rage. He calmed down a little, looking at the immense, senseless devastation around him—the ruined campus, the shattered architecture, the smoking vehicles—and fell silent, the shame of Banner returning in a muted fashion.
Just then, a sleek, black military helicopter swooped low, ignoring the pleas of the ground troops. A sudden flash of light, and a missile struck from its pylon, aimed directly at the now-stationary Hulk.
The situation was instantly critical. The Hulk knew that if the missile exploded on impact, the shrapnel and concussion would surely obliterate Betty. Without thought, without planning, driven by the protective instinct of Banner's inner self, the Hulk scooped Betty up and tucked her safely into the crook of his massive arm.
With a superhuman leap, the Hulk vanished into the remnants of the university's upper floors, using the destruction to conceal his path. He fled with Betty, bursting through walls and across rooftops, moving at an impossible speed away from the campus perimeter.
Watching the Hulk escape, General Ross could only roar his own ineffectual rage, shaking his fist at the retreating helicopter—the incompetent pilot who had missed his shot—and the ruined scene. His elite forces, his heavy weapons, and his supposedly enhanced operative had all failed to capture the 'asset.'
Peter Parker, who lived only a few districts away in Queens, had been working on a complex differential equation when his super hearing picked up the distant, muffled sound of heavy, sustained artillery fire, followed by a roar that rattled the windows of his building. He instinctively knew it was something colossal, something unnatural.
He quickly changed into his Spider-Man suit and, ignoring his Aunt May's call for him to take out the trash, rushed toward the source of the chaos.
He arrived at the NYU campus perimeter minutes after the Hulk's escape, jumping onto a high water tower overlooking the area. He saw the smoke, the overturned tanks, and the immense, almost cartoonishly large damage to the architecture—as if a giant had punched his way through the building.
"What in the world... what kind of monster is it that they're using large-scale, anti-tank weapons against at school?" Peter muttered through his mask, his Spider-Sense still screaming about residual, raw power in the air. He was ultimately a step too late, seeing only the traces left behind, and not the green entity that had caused them.
Far away, in his gleaming, high-tech Malibu estate, Tony Stark was attempting to configure a new set of satellite arrays when his personalized AI, JARVIS, interrupted him.
"Sir, I am registering multiple extreme ordinance discharge anomalies clustered around the NYU Science quad. Simultaneously, there is a seismic spike measuring a 3.4 on the Richter scale, coinciding with the thermal and acoustic signatures of sustained 155-millimeter artillery fire. The Pentagon's internal encrypted channel is spiking with reports of an 'unidentified green humanoid' entity. General Ross is the commander of the containment effort."
Tony leaned back in his chair, a cynical smirk curling his lips. "Ross. Of course. That man can't contain a sneeze without mobilizing a tank division. What is the origin of this monster, JARVIS?"
"Insufficient data, Sir. The entity's speed and durability are off the charts. It shrugged off direct missile impacts. Preliminary analysis classifies it as an Omega-level target, significantly surpassing your Mark III suit's current threat threshold."
Tony's eyes lit up with the thrill of discovery and the immediate, sober realization of a new, massive factor on the global stage. A monster that could defy the full force of the U.S. military and cause that much damage on a college campus was something else entirely. It was a threat—or a technology—that he couldn't ignore.
He immediately called up the Iron Man Mark IV armor schematics. "Reroute power to the long-range stabilizers, JARVIS. Prepare for immediate departure to New York. I need to get boots on the ground, or rather, metal feet on the pavement, before Ross manages to vaporize half of Manhattan trying to catch a glorified lizard."
Tony paused, considering the complexity of this new challenge. This wasn't some rogue businessman or a terrorist with a cheap bomb. This was biology, physics, and military madness all rolled into one. There was only one person he trusted who understood the deeper, stranger corners of cosmic power and clandestine science better than he did.
He tapped the comms button. "And JARVIS, put a priority tag on calling Su Yi. Tell him I need to discuss the potential properties of what appears to be a very, very angry, gamma-irradiated Sasquatch."