The portal's orange sparks flared abruptly in Kamar-Taj's courtyard. Banner stepped through carrying an old canvas bag, visibly freezing when his first foot touched the flagstones. He looked at the snowcapped mountains stretching around him, the rustic stone buildings, and the prayer flags hanging beneath the covered walkways, then turned to glance at the portal closing behind him. His lips moved, but he said nothing.
Tony emerged behind him, noticed his confusion, and casually brushed nonexistent dust off his shoulder. "Don't bother puzzling over it. I spent more than two months learning magic, and I still haven't figured out how it actually works. All you need to know is that it saves you money on airfare."
Banner did not answer. His attention had already been drawn to the other end of the courtyard, where a young man in dark blue mage robes leaned against a stone pillar. He wore a pair of obviously expensive glasses, and his gaze was sharp. Holding a steaming cup of tea, he lifted his chin at Banner.
"Dr. Banner."
Lynn straightened and asked casually, "Thanks for making the trip. Was the bottling room at the soda factory stuffy?"
Banner's grip on his canvas bag tightened. He sized up the young man: early twenties, an East Asian face, a relaxed stance, and a faint smile on his lips. Then he looked at Tony. Tony was playing with his Sling Ring, apparently having no intention of taking part in the conversation to follow.
"You're the friend Stark mentioned?"
Lynn nodded, set his teacup on the stone table, and walked over, stopping three paces from Banner. "My name is Lynn. I know your head is full of questions right now. Who is this person? Why does he know about me? Can he really help me, or is that just another line from someone who wants to use Hulk? Right?"
Banner said nothing.
Lynn took that silence as confirmation.
"There's an idea of yours I need to correct first," Lynn said, his casual tone gradually becoming more focused, though it remained steady. "Hulk isn't a curse afflicting you, nor is he a monster gamma radiation created out of thin air."
Banner's gaze changed. His pupils contracted slightly, and his Adam's apple bobbed.
On those long night shifts on the soda factory's production line, during countless sleepless nights, he had considered that question more than once. What exactly was Hulk? A monster created by radiation, or something that had always existed within him? No one could give him an answer. Neither could he.
"Sit down and take a break." Lynn gestured toward the stone table and stools in the center of the courtyard, sat down first, and pushed his glasses up his nose.
Banner sat with the exhaustion of someone who had spent a long time on the run. He put the canvas bag beside his feet and folded his hands on the stone table, his fingers unconsciously twisting tightly together. Tony leaned against a nearby pillar, seemingly distracted, his fingertips absently rubbing a runic pendant.
"At his core, Hulk isn't a foreign parasite, nor is he a monster gamma radiation created out of nothing. He's part of your own personality. An entity formed from deeply suppressed primal emotions. Anger, fear, defense, the survival instinct. Those emotions were suppressed inside you for so many years that you could no longer even feel their existence. Gamma radiation did one thing: it activated and amplified those emotions buried at the very bottom, giving them a key. It didn't create Hulk. Hulk was already inside you. He'd simply been locked away for decades, and was finally released."
Banner's fingers tightened slightly against the stone table. He did not resist as he would with a psychologist, only listened quietly. He had heard countless explanations for Hulk throughout his life: a curse, a monster, a second personality, a symptom of schizophrenia. But no one had ever defined Hulk as "part of your own personality."
"Banner and Hulk aren't two independent individuals fighting over the same body, much less enemies on opposing sides. You're two extreme forms of the same soul. You represent reason, restraint, gentleness, and reflection; Hulk represents instinct, defense, anger, and survival."
Lynn paused to let Banner digest his explanation before continuing. "You think you're whole? You're not. You locked a part of yourself in the basement and pretended it didn't exist. But it does. It always has. Every time Hulk goes on a rampage, loses control, or destroys things, the root cause isn't that he's evil by nature. It's that you refuse to acknowledge his existence. You suppress him, deny him, fear him, and treat him as an enemy who must be destroyed. What has he done to you? He only takes over your body when you're falling apart emotionally, because he's afraid you'll die, afraid someone will hurt you. He's only protecting you. And you've been trying to kill him all along."
Banner's breathing finally changed, growing heavy, as though something were slowly expanding inside his chest.
"Then every time I lose control..." Banner's voice was very low, as though even he did not quite want to acknowledge that he was speaking.
"Every time you lose control, you're paying the price for that internal conflict," Lynn finished for him, his tone holding no pity, only the calm of someone stating facts. "Your past approach was 'confrontation through suppression.' Forcibly sealing away your emotions and suppressing Hulk's existence is essentially tearing yourself apart. But the more you suppress emotions, the harder they rebound. Suppress him for a day, and he accumulates a day's worth of hurt. Suppress him for a year, and he accumulates a year's worth of anger. When something unexpected happens-your heart rate goes above two hundred, for instance, or your life is in danger-he bursts out in the most violent way possible and takes over everything. You think he hates this world? What he hates is being locked away by you. Every time he wakes amid the ruins, what he sees is you on the verge of collapse. He simply does the only thing he can think of: take over, then protect you so you survive, or escape whatever environment is making you uncomfortable."
Banner's lips moved several times. He lowered his eyes without speaking, but his gaze shifted from the tabletop to his clasped fingers.
Lynn picked up his teacup, took a sip, and continued.
"The logic behind your past involuntary transformations went like this: emotional overload → involuntary trigger → Hulk forcibly takes over → complete disorder, nothing but destruction. Why complete disorder? Because Banner only lets go when he's on the verge of losing control. By the time Hulk bursts out, he's already out of control, with no time to adjust to his surroundings, no direction, only instinct. The two of you have never once made a voluntary handover as equals. You've never trusted him. He's never trusted you either. Banner despises Hulk's violence, and Hulk resents Banner's self-denial. You've resented each other for all these years, when you were one whole to begin with."
Banner raised his eyes. They were bloodshot, but there was no anger in his emotions. He was experiencing his emotions in Banner's way, quietly letting them flow through his chest.
Tony's posture against the pillar had not changed, but he had stopped turning the runic pendant over in his hand a long time ago.
"So what should I do?" Banner's voice was hoarse, as though he were asking someone else, and also himself. "He... has destroyed countless things. There's far too much blood on my hands that shouldn't be there. I've tried everything. Meditation, medication, isolation, suggestion. None of it can control him."
"Because you've been trying to 'control' him all along. Control is fundamentally confrontation. You only resort to control when you need to oppose something." Lynn leaned forward slightly, resting his hands on his knees. "Try a different direction. Don't control him. Accept him. Acknowledge that Hulk is part of you. He may not be the good part you imagine, but he's the truest part of you. Your anger, your fear, your survival instinct-he carries everything you don't dare face for you. He isn't your enemy. He's your instinct, your defense, your protection."
Lynn gave him a moment to digest that before continuing.
"The core logic of reconciliation has three steps. First, abandon suppression in favor of acceptance and coexistence. Acknowledge that Hulk's anger, fear, and desire to protect are all legitimate, that they're the only strength in you that wasn't crushed under extreme repression. Stop tearing yourself apart. Second, transfer the initiative. Transformation is no longer passively triggered by an emotional breakdown, but actively awakened under the direction of reason. You decide when to transform. Your brain controls the motivation and direction, while Hulk's strength carries it out. Third, close the emotional loop. Hulk's rage is restrained by reason and no longer vented chaotically; your suppressed emotions have an outlet and no longer wear you down from within. Balance is achieved in both directions."
With both hands on his knees, Banner looked at Lynn. The exhaustion remained in his eyes, but a faint light shone through it-the light of hope, of Bruce Banner, as a scientist, seeing a complete equation amid chaotic data for the first time.
"What's the final form?" Banner asked, his voice regaining some steadiness.
"In your normal state, you look completely ordinary. Banner's appearance, Banner's mindset, Banner's personality. No physical signs of Hulk, emotionally stable, no different from anyone else. Completely free of the risk of going berserk at any moment. That's your normal state. You'll never have to worry again that a racing heartbeat will destroy anything."
Lynn continued, "The transformation mechanism becomes voluntary and controllable. No need for anger to trigger it, no need for your life to be in danger. You transform whenever you want, switching freely between an ordinary human and Hulk through conscious intent alone. Neither personality consumes the other, and they achieve a balance. After transforming, you can still retain Banner's intelligence, judgment, empathy, and logical thinking, while fully inheriting Hulk's tremendous combat power, unlimited self-healing, physical resistance, and combat instincts."
Lynn stopped, reached for the now-cold tea on the stone table, and took a sip. Then he set the cup down and finished his final point.
"This isn't the divided state where Banner has no strength and Hulk has no brains. It's a perfect fusion in which reason guides strength, and strength protects reason. You'll no longer be half yourself plus half a monster. You'll become one whole person."
The courtyard fell silent for a few seconds.
Somewhere in the distance, an apprentice was practicing elemental transmutation. A flash of orange magical light briefly illuminated half a stone wall, then went out. Banner looked down at his hands. Those hands had filled bottles at the soda factory, held pipettes in the laboratory, and turned into enormous green fists that punched through military vehicles. They trembled slightly, not from anger, not from fear. At last, someone had told him that those hands had only ever belonged to one person.
"How many stages does your method have?" Banner raised his head.
"Simply put, the change in mindset has three stages."
Lynn could tell he was already willing to accept Hulk; all he needed was to set up signposts along the path ahead for him. "Step one, overcome fear. Go from 'Hulk is the monster destroying my life' to 'Hulk is the instinct protecting me.' Step two, let go of confrontation. Go from 'destroy, seal away, escape' to 'communicate, accept, coexist.' Step three, complete your self-integration. Go from 'an incomplete, divided self consumed by internal conflict' to 'a complete, unified, powerful self.'"
Banner nodded slowly. Tony straightened away from the pillar with a faint smile, walked over, and sat on the stone stool beside Banner. He placed his Sling Ring on the table and spoke in an offhand tone.
"So you're planning to keep this walking disaster at Kamar-Taj?" Tony asked.
"You can take him with you, but I'm afraid your mansion will be rubble in a few days. Still, I need to inform the Ancient One first." Lynn stood and pushed his glasses up his nose. "And have Senior Brother Mordo arrange a room for him while I'm at it. Never mind how sturdy it is-at the very least, it shouldn't face the dining hall. If he wakes up hungry in the middle of the night, he might tear down the only dining hall we have."
Banner stood and grasped the handles of his canvas bag. It was hard to say whether the expression on his face was relief or heaviness. Perhaps it was both.