The final bell's shrill ring was a release. Aarav gathered his notebook, the movement mechanical. The whispers and glances that had followed him since his impromptu chemistry lecture were like water off the proverbial duck's back. To be more accurate, it was like solar radiation bouncing off the Vajra Kavacha. It simply didn't register.
He moved into the bustling hallway, a sea of teenagers flowing towards lockers and freedom. He was a rock in the stream, his mind a million miles away, processing the reality of his existence.
A shoulder slammed into his, hard and deliberate. It was like hitting a reinforced concrete pillar.
"Watch it, Einstein," Flash Thompson's voice grated in his ear, full of provocation and expectation. He'd put his whole weight into the bump, expecting to send the new, scrawny kid stumbling into the lockers.
Aarav didn't move an inch. He didn't even sway. He simply turned his head, his gaze flat and utterly devoid of reaction. It was the look a human gives a mildly interesting insect. Flash's smug smirk faltered, replaced by a flicker of confusion and unease. This wasn't the script. The new kid was supposed to be scared, or angry, or something. Not… nothing. Muttering a weak "freak," Flash shoved his way down the hall, his bravado visibly punctured.
"Don't mind him. He's an idiot."
Aarav turned. It was Peter Parker, looking genuinely apologetic. "He thinks he's the big man on campus. I'm Peter, by the way."
"Aarav," he replied, offering a small, polite smile that didn't reach his eyes. He was playing a part: the quiet, slightly awkward exchange student. But his mind was analyzing Peter with the intensity of a scanning electron microscope. The faint dark circles under his eyes suggesting late nights, the intelligent, observant gaze that missed nothing, the wiry frame that seemed stronger than it looked. 'So, this is Spider-Man before the world knows it,' he thought. The most important person in this city to observe.
"That was some answer in Harrington's class," Peter continued, falling into step beside him. "The whole isotopic abundance thing. Most people just say 'twelve'."
Aarav shrugged, a practiced, casual motion. "It's basic material where I'm from." It wasn't a lie. A master's degree in engineering did tend to cover high school chemistry.
They parted ways at the school gates, Peter heading off with a wave. Aarav walked the few blocks to his new home. The system-provided apartment was exactly as his new memories promised: a small, clean, box of a place in Queens. It was sterile, impersonal. A safehouse. The silence that greeted him was a physical weight, emphasizing his profound isolation. He was the powerful being on the planet, and yet he was alone in a studio apartment with a view of a brick wall.
The engineer in him, the part that had debugged a thousand lines of code, itched for data. Theory was one thing. He needed empirical evidence. He needed to stress-test his gifts.
He started with the Vajra Kavacha.
A kitchen knife was the first test. He pressed the point against the palm of his hand, applying pressure. Nothing. He pushed harder, his arm straining. The fine point of the blade didn't even dent his skin. Instead, the metal tip itself began to deform, curling and blunting against his palm. A wild, disbelieving laugh escaped his lips.
Next, the stove. He turned a burner on high, a blue flame roaring to life. He held his hand directly over it. He felt a faint, pleasant warmth, like standing in the sun on a mild day. He moved his fingers through the flames. Nothing. No pain, no redness, not even a singed hair.
The finale was the toaster. He looked at the simple appliance, a symbol of domestic mundanity. He took a metal fork, jammed it into the slot, and plugged the toaster in.
There was a violent ZZZZZT! A shower of brilliant blue-white sparks erupted, filling the small kitchen with a strobing light. The acrid smell of ozone filled the air. Down the hall, the circuit breaker for his unit tripped with a loud thunk, plunging the apartment into sudden, silent darkness.
Aarav stood in the dark, the fork still in his hand. He hadn't felt a thing. Not a single jolt. Not a tingle. He was utterly, completely invulnerable. A wide, manic grin spread across his face in the dark. It was true. All of it.
But the bow… the bow needed a bigger test. A more private one.
Under the cover of night, he found it: a derelict industrial yard on the banks of the East River. Graffiti-covered husks of machinery, skeletal remains of warehouses, and the perfect, isolated testing ground.
He stood in the center of a cracked concrete lot, took a deep breath, and focused. The Divya Dhanush materialized in his hand. It wasn't a physical object; it was a construct of solidified, shimmering golden light, cool to the touch yet humming with unimaginable power. It felt like holding a piece of his own soul.
He drew the string. Instantly, an arrow of pure, concentrated solar energy formed, nocked and ready. It pulsed with a quiet, deadly intensity. He aimed at a giant, rusted water tower on the far side of the yard.
He released.
There was no sound from the bow. A beam of incandescent white-gold fire, too bright to look at directly, streaked across the distance. It didn't impact the steel structure.
It simply erased it.
A massive, perfectly circular section of the water tower's base vaporized in a silent, blinding flash. The sound that followed a microsecond later was not an explosion, but the deafening roar of superheated steam and the shriek of melting, twisting metal. The top half of the tower sheared off, collapsing in on itself with a ground-shaking crash that sent a cloud of dust and debris billowing into the night air.
Aarav stood frozen, the bow dematerializing from his slack hand. The sheer, terrifying scale of the destruction left him breathless. The Agneyastra wasn't mere fire. It was stellar plasma—the raw matter of a star's heart. He also realized, with a jolt, that the control was instinctual. He could have willed it to be a pinpoint lance or a wide-area inferno. The power was… absolute.
__
In a dark, silent command center deep beneath New York, a wall of monitors glowed. Agent Phil Coulson sipped his coffee, his eyes fixed on one particular screen displaying a satellite thermal feed.
"Talk to me, Hill," he said, his voice calm.
The voice of Deputy Director Maria Hill crackled over the comm. "Energy signature is off the charts, Coulson. Doesn't match any known profile. Not Stark's repulsor tech, not Asgardian energy weapons, not even the Chitauri cannons. It reads like… a microscopic, localized solar flare. Thermal bloom suggests instantaneous temperatures exceeding the surface of the sun. Occurred in an abandoned industrial sector in Queens. No claims of responsibility, no detected radiation leakage. Just… a water tower that decided to stop existing."
Coulson put his coffee down. "A solar flare in Queens. That's new. Casualties?"
"None reported. The area was deserted. It looks… deliberate. Like a test."
"A test of a weapon that can vaporize steel," Coulson mused, his brow furrowed. "Get a Level 1 cleanup crew to that location. I want every molten droplet of slag from that tower analyzed. I want satellite imagery reviewed frame by frame for the past 48 hours. If someone's testing a new world-ending toy in my city, I want to know who, and I want to know five minutes ago."
__
The next morning, the buzz in Midtown High was different. It wasn't about the smart new kid anymore. Aarav moved through the halls, his enhanced hearing picking up the fragments of conversation.
"…did you see the news?" "…some kind of gas main explosion…" "…in Queens!My dad said it looked like a bomb went off…"
He kept his face a perfect mask of neutral interest. In physics class, Mr. Dell called on him, perhaps hoping for a repeat performance. Aarav gave a simplified, yet still brilliantly concise answer about quantum theory, further cementing his reputation as a genius and drawing another fascinated look from Peter.
It was in the cafeteria that the two worlds collided. A TV mounted in the corner was tuned to a local news channel. The banner at the bottom read: "MYSTERY BLAST ROCKS QUEENS WATERFRONT."
Aarav watched, sipping his water. Peter was also watching, his lunch forgotten, a deep, thoughtful frown on his face. It was more than casual curiosity; it was the look of someone who knew the official explanation was wrong. The look of someone who felt responsible.