Part One.

As William T. Szustakowski watched the young man sway oddly towards him, he wondered idly what it would feel like to have a hole drilled into the base of skull and whether or not that would relieve any of the pressure that had been building these many months. He had accepted the job guarding the Osborn Pharmaceuticals Division Research Lab largely to cover his debts; it was a good way to make a great deal of money very quickly if one knew what to pocket and how to avoid getting caught, but once your name got to be known in the wrong circles, the loadies and screwheads followed you around like dogs.

And addicts knew absolute nihil about subtlety.

This kid looked like the archetypical user: pale, sweating, couldn't walk a straight line if it was made out of coke. Ninety pound white kid wearing the clothes of a five hundred pound black dude.

"Hey!" William yelled from behind his protective layer of security glass. "Authorized personnel only!"

The loadie just kept swaying towards him.

"Hey, screwhead!" William felt like he was being written by Peter David. "Oscorp employees only past this point!"

The loadie didn't even give pause, just continued his slow approach. Like freak moves like one of those Dawn of the Dead zombies, William thought. The original, not the remake, he amended.

Soon the loadie was right in front of him, separated only by six inches of bulletproof glass. The top of his head were completely concealed by the hood of his camouflage sweatshirt, but William could see the wide, theatrical smile on his unshaven face amid the shadows.

"Hello, sir," the loadie said, bowing gentlemanly, "my name is Venom and I have business in your facility. I would greatly appreciate it you would please direct my to the lab where the new Xenadren performance enhancer is being tested."

"Are you insane?"

The loadie took a deep breath. "Sir, before you continue this course of action, I'd advise you to consider your situation. You are a nameless security guard, I am a killer rogue symbiote. Right now, you are acting as obstacle between me and that which I require to continue my very existence." William wondered briefly how he ended up with such a legalistic loadie. "Now, I am trying to expand as a sentient being, to move beyond the shallow clichés that are most associated with me, but, unless you assist me as I have so politely requested, I will be left with little recourse."

William said nothing, but his face spoke volumes.

The loadie rolled his eyes in frustration. "Fine," then, in the blink of an eye, his skinny arm was covered with a thick black substance the burst through the glass like a thin sheet of ice before reforming into the shape of a hand and coming to rest on the crown of William's head. "Brains, brains," he said dully before snapping William's neck with a twist of his wrist. He seemed very bored with the whole thing.

As William lie dead on the floor, the loadie made his way through the halls of the Oscorp facility, taking his time, seeing no reason whatsoever to hurry.

XXX

"In other news," the radio said with feigned detachment, "a young woman has been found brutally raped by the unregistered vigilante known as the Vindicator. This tradition of masked criminals hiding behind pretexts of fighting crime goes back to the Klan in the days immediately following the First Civil War in the United States..."

"God," Peter sighed, "how could Hell be any worse."

"It;s not that bad," Mary Jane assured him gently.

"MJ, they called me a Klansman!" Peter lamented.

Mary Jane tried to grapple out something she could say to her husband to comfort him, but the fact was he was screwed on a level that was epic even for him. It used to be he could just have one of his superhero buddies (usually Matt) appear in his costume at the same time he was seen in public as Peter Parker, but with the current legislation they were all too busy being screwed into to the wall themselves to help him out.

Fortunately, MJ was saved from admitting any of this by the sudden ringing of the telephone.

For a moment they both just stared at it, as if one of their many enemies would simply pour out of the receiver if either of them picked it up. This was actually a fairly real possibility, but Peter chose not to point this out.

Finally, it was MJ who picked up the phone before Peter could tell her not to. "Hello?"

There was a pause.

She brought the phone to rest on her shoulder and looked at her husband. "It's Howard," she said, disbelieving.

XXX

Valerie Cooper liked dealing with Norman Osborn almost as much as she liked having her body hideously mutated by alien parasites, but since she was considered the expert in field at dealing with uncooperative post-humans and since Tony Stark had ordered it personally and since the last three government attaches to the Thunderbolts had all met with what had been ruled accidents, she had no choice but to perform the unpleasant duty herself.

"Mr. Osborn," she said through clenched teeth, "as leader of the Thunderbolts you are expected to keep every one of your members under survailance."

Norman's smile didn't drop for a second. "And I have."

"The symbiote..."

"If you examine your contracts, you'll find that the words 'Venom' and 'symbiote' never appear," he said, smiling. "The exact wording requires that I monitor MacDonald Gargan and his 'suit.'" He paused for a second to twist the knife. "The Scorpion suit is safely locked away in a storage facilities in New Jersey while Mr. Gargan is slowly dying in hospice." Norman shrugged. "I feel that takes care of my end of the bargain."

"Mr. Osborn," she practically hissed, "that symbiote is incredibly dangerous and..."

He dismissed her with a wave of his hand. "Given that every state in the union is now mandated to form its own team of metahumans... and just how does a nation-wide army loyal to Tony Stark keep us safe from further metahuman violence..." he added wickedly before returning to his point "I doubt a nuisance as minor as a symbiote could cause any real problem."

"And the fact that this symbiote has attacked a research facility for your company?" Cooper asked him with equal vitriol.

"It's not my company anymore," Norman pointed out pointedly. "Your government saw to that."

Now it was Val's turn to smile. "Which only helps make my case for me."

Norman's face plunged deep into Cooper's personal space, so close she was horribly afraid he was going to either kiss or bite her. Either of which would have been more vomitous than she could safely imagine. "I think you might be the only government agent in history to work as closely with metahumans as you have and never develop any powers of your own." He gave her a second to think about this, then plunged even deeper. "There's Fury, of course... but he could challenge most of us bare handed." He looked at her then with such a glassy sensitivity that she could help but think he was about eat her face off. "But you've always been just a big target."

Valerie's training and experience was enough to prevent her from really being afraid of Osborn, but her frustration was more than she could successfully conceal. "I can see you're not going to be in helpful mood right now."

Osborn waved an arm to indict that this was a given.

"I will be back," she assured him.

"If I were you," he replied "I'd concentrate on neutralizing the rogue killer symbiote and leave your own operatives to do their jobs."

When she turned to leave, he muttered back to her "Turning your back on a known sociopath and murderer, never a wise choice."

When she was safely out of frame, the man with the mechanical octopus tentacles approached his current ally and greatest rival. "Do really you have anything to do with the symbiote attack?"

"Symbiotes, " Norman spat in disgust. "You and me, Otto, we were classics."

XXX

"I thought you quit smoking," Peter said, wrinkling his nose in disgust. He found it hard to accept that he had come all the way to Ohio just to have cigar smoke snorted in his face, but that was the direction his life had taken lately.

"I thought you quit being Spider-Man," the duck in front of him snorted. "A lot."

"I'm sorry," Peter said, not really sure what he was apologizing for. "Why did you call me here?"

Howard scratched his bill. "Back when I was single," he began, "Johnny Storm invited me to a wild party at the Baxter Building."

Peter nodded, he had heard quite a bit about the parties Johnny would throw while Sue and Reed were off-planet. Not that he had ever been invited to one, but...

"Anyway," the duck pressed on, "somehow in the scruffle this," he pulled a small device out of his suit pocket, "fell into my clothes." Howard pressed a button on the device and what Peter immediately recognized from previous experience as a hole in time and space opened up before them. "It leads to an alternate Cleveland called 'Clevistan,'" Howard explained. "The anti-Registration heroes have done a lot for me back in the day, so... I figured this was the least I could do."

Peter stared at him for a moment. "What are you saying?"

"Peter," Howard said with uncharacteristic sensitivity, "Clevistan's got it's problems, but... it's better than what you've got going right now. All you guys have to do is walk through the portal."

XXX

"Peter's a special case," Tony Stark explained to the man standing across the desk from him. "If we're going to bring him in, we need someone who can fight him on his own level. The suit should give you that last little edge."

"Why do you need me?" the Iron Spider asked. "You clearly have cloning technology?"

Tony shook his head. "A clone of Spider-Man would never work. I needed someone with experience... someone tested. The powers that you and Peter have are one in million." Tony smiled wickedly. "But, this being China, one in a million isn't nearly as impressive."

"Careful," the Iron Spider cautioned sarcastically, "this being China, an American with a history of beating up the Mandarin might not be the most welcome of guests."

Tony sneered. "You're no more Chinese than I am."

The Iron Spider shrugged. "I think you'll find that the man who saved Asia from alien invaders is more readily embraced than a man who fought set the continent ablaze with his walking wartanks."

Tony smiled, he had the right man all right. "Welcome aboard."

The Iron Spider took Tony's hand and shook it. It was a start.