L.A.
Five mintues later
"WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
"Having fun?" Venom asked. The newly joined Slayer/Symbiote team landed on the side of the building, claws digging into the brickwork as she climbed towards her sister/mother figure. Just because they lacked Venom's spider-like abilities, didn't mean they couldn't improvise, right?
"We can see why you prefer the roof top express," she said her voice a slightly higher pitch than Venoms. "That was a blast!"
"Glad you two approve," Venom said. "We really need a name for you. And something that looks less like you got a wig from the Medusa," Faith ran her claws through the tangled mass of symbiote which had formed a writhing mass of hair.
"We like it. We don't want anyone mistaking us for you, right, 'mother'?" She asked teasingly.
"Alright, smartass, your choice," Venom said. "What about a name?"
"We like... Wrath," Venom gave a scary grin.
"Perfect," she agreed. "Now, we should go and get packed. We need to..." she was cut off as the duo was illuminated by a spotlight.
'This is SHIELD. You are under arrest. Surrender now!'
"Oh..."
Before either Symbiote bonded Slayer could move, whoever shouted at them decided not to wait for them to surrender and shot a blaster bolt at them, providing them with just the motivation they needed. Venom Slayer quickly grabbed up the newly minted Wrath and swung them both away from the source of the spotlight. When they detected sounds of pursuit, Venom Slayer hurriedly moved them beyond the range of the lights and threw Wrath into the shadows of an alley below them, praying that her gambit would protect them while she lead their pursuers a little further away before turning to strike at those that would hunt them!
Faith looked up from where she had landed. B, or rather Venom-B had thrown her so hard that she didn't really have a chance to catch onto the walls of the alley with her talons. So, she'd landed on the ground, but Slayers were made of pretty stern stuff, and when augmented by a Symbiote, Wrath had no problem landing on her feet.
Knowing why Venom had ditched her like that, she ducked down and blended with the shadows, hiding as a couple of hoverbikes shown spotlights down into the alley, but they left soon after.
Buffy was pissed. Venom was furious. Venom Slayer was the both of them mixed together with hormones left over from the 'birth' added to it.
Once she felt she had enough of a lead, she dropped in height before shooting out a couple of weblines that quickly grew taut, and the SHIELD Agents chasing them only realized at the last second, as she slingshot herself back towards them, what she'd been up to. They almost flew over her. Unfortunately, it was almost.
Now facing those that would hunt them, Venom Slayer growled and lengthened her talons for maximum carnage while counting who and what she faced. A five man team of a SHIELD Capture and Detain team. Although sometimes they were also referred to as Capture and Destroy, depending upon the target.
Knowing these weren't amateur thieves, or even vampires and demons, Buffy knew they couldn't afford to hold back. Not that Venom ever wanted to, but likewise, Venom understood that they couldn't revel or waste time. The kills had to be quick, clean, and done on the first strike, or not at all.
With two quick swipes, those that had been on the front were knocked from their hoverbikes and sent tumbling to the streets below, deep gashes along their armor reminding them for the future how close to death they'd come. Before anybody could even realize that much, Venom Slayer had already moved on to the rear left guard and backhanded him through the air to a roof two buildings away and leapt to the rear right guard and just throwing him straight up before moving with the same blazing speed to the team commander.
Idly, Venom wondered what SHIELD was doing letting a woman lead a C'n'D Team, even if she was kinda buff looking with Irish red hair. When the bitch pulled out a sonic gun, they began to get their first clue.
"LEAVE MY MOTHER ALONE!!" a hoarse cry pierced the night as a shapely black blur shot from the nearest rooftop to just behind SHIELD Agent.
Startled, the woman started to turn, only to see another Symbiote, this one clearly female, but with waving medusa-like tentacles in place of hair, and talons sharper than Carnage's. Thankfully, the creature only slashed the sonic gun that remained unfired in the Agent's hands before whipping the tentacles around to throw the Agent off the hoverbike and to the streets below.
Venom Slayer landed on the same hoverbike a heartbeat later.
The two Slayer/Symbiote's stared at each other for a moment, then looked around them, then together down at the team commander before looking back at each other.
"Nice," Venom Slayer grinned.
"Thanks," Wrath seemed to blush.
"Still need to pack up, but I think we'll take the sewers instead of the scenic route," the black and white clad female said to the other.
"Suddenly wishing part of the Slayer package wasn't an increased sense of smell," the latter muttered as they both jumped away to find a sewer entrance.
Sunnydale
Heroes Hideout
"You guys sure do have a lot of stuff for just being her a couple of weeks," Xander complained as he carried yet another case of ammo to the War Wagon.
"What can I say?" Punisher grunted with a sarcastic smirk, "I'm a packrat."
"OK, I've linked up this laptop with all of my Favorites and uploaded all of the programs that I'll be needing, even if we have to hack NASA, the Pentagon, and SHIELD all at the same time while searching local databases, such as the coroner's. I'm ready when you guys are!" Willow chirped from her position with the computers.
"We can leave the rest Xander," Punisher closed up the van they'd be traveling in. "I like to leave nest eggs just in case I ever need to come back to some place to finish a clean up. Besides, if Venom really did take over the new Slayer, then she'll probably be attracted to the Hellmouth same as all the other bad stuff. We might even just wind up having to turn right back around."
"One good thing about being within a few hours driving distance of downtown LA, then," Xander commented. "Saves gas money."
"There's nothing I can do to stop you, is there?" Cordelia suddenly cried out. She, Black Cat, Giles, and Johnny had been standing off to the side, watching the others pack up their gear for the road trip, but Cordy had been growing more and more steadily upset the closer it got for them to leave.
"Cordy, I..." Xander tried to placate her before another of their arguments started.
To his everlasting surprise, however, she instead ran right into his arms and hugged him like she never wanted to let go. He barely even noticed when his own arms went around her just as tightly, but he couldn't help but notice when her shoulders, her whole body even, began to shake with barely restrained sobs.
"I don't want you to go, you could get hurt," she whispered so only he could hear.
"I'll be fine, Cor," he whispered just as softly. "We'll be back by the weekend. I promise, OK? Besides, this is something that needs to be done, and I have to do it. And I'm not exactly doing this alone. I'm going with Wills and two honest-to-God superheroes for crying out loud! I'd be more worried about you, since you're going to be staying atop the Mouth of Hell with who knows how many vamps and demons running around, and I won't be here to protect you."
"Oh you!" she mock-slapped him, but did not leave his embrace.
"On the more comforting side, you've got a superhero of your own that will be here until I get back, so I'm not gonna be panicking here. On the slightly more disturbing side, if Mr. Flaming Skull Eyes even looks at you funny, don't be afraid to kick him in the nuts, and keep his hellfire shotgun for me so I can shoot him with it when I get back, all right?" She laughed at his rather lame joke, but she was no longer crying and that was the important thing.
"C'mon Xander," Punisher said, sounding reluctant about it almost, but still an order. The couple shared one last kiss and then let go of each other, one quickly getting into the back of the War Wagon, the other turning so she didn't see them drive out of the warehouse with screeching tires.
"They'll be back," Johnny told those left behind.
They chose to believe him.
LA
Buffy and Faith's Loft Apartment
"How much stuff we gotta pack?" Faith asked as she looked down at all of her clothes that Buffy had bought for her over the past few weeks. Clothes, she realized, that she no longer really needed. Thanks to little Venom Jr she would never need another change of clothes ever again!
"Only the essentials," Buffy explained, pulling out a case of said 'essentials'.
A box full of chocolate bars. Rich dark chocolate bars. Heaven on Earth.
"Essentials, huh?" Faith grinned, grabbing a bar for herself and tearing into it. She wasn't surprised to hear Jr purr with delight as the chemicals were absorbed.
"Yes," the blonde said with a straight face, "the absolute essentials."
"Sounds good to me!" the brunette cried, helping her with the packing.
Within an hour, everything was packed and locked up and the two girls shifted their clothing to matching black leather outfits, that just so happened to include a couple of strapped backpack handbacks that were filled to the brim with chocolate bars. They also loaded up on a few weapons, a few stakes, silver daggers, blessed knives, bottles of holy water, swords, axes, whips, and a crossbow or two. Since they were leaving behind the majority of Buffy's armory in the loft apartment, yeah, just a few weapons.
"Now what?" Faith asked, suddenly at a loss.
Buffy frowned, and it wasn't her cute pouting frown either. "Now comes the hardest thing anyone ever does. Going home."
Suddenly an explosion rocked the floor under their feet. Both sighed in resignation. "After we take care of whatever caused that," she added, putting down her handback and morphing her clothes into her costume. Faith mimicked her, the mostly black form-fitting costume clearly revealing every seductive curve of her body.
Unlike with Venom, or even the Carnage symbiote, Wrath did not have a mouth, instead sealing over like Spiderman's costume. The eyes were another difference, being a bright glowing red rather than solid white. The red also was present around the fingertips, creating blood red talons when extended, and a touch of it along the back of her hands and up her forearms. The other great difference was the twighlight blue that covered her feet/boots, going all the way up to her calves in a flame-like pattern.
It had only been a few hours, but Faith had alread learned that in addition to giving her talon claws, she could extend a stake out of the back of her wrists. It wasn't wooden, despite having those on her, but part of the symbiote. On a quick test during their run through the sewers, they'd come across a gang of vampires, none of Kakistos' crew thankfully, and she'd tested the stake out on one of them. Worked even better than wooden stakes!
She still hadn't figured out what the blue was supposed to mean, other than the fact that she'd jumped pretty far and pretty fast when Venom Slayer had been in trouble with the SHIELD agents. Something to look into.
The real kick ass feature though, was the reason her eye-patches were red instead of white. She could see into the infra-red and a pitchblack area without any lighting whatsoever that even Venom Slayer couldn't see in was lit up like the brightest day at noon with hundreds of spotlights turned on and pointing at whatever she was looking. She was also pretty sensitive to movement.
As she donned her Wrath form once again, this time in a well-lit apartment rather than a dark alley or sewer, she soon realized the trade-off for the majority of Venom's spider powers. Instead of just inheriting all that, her Slayer powers were magnified to an untold degree. Like the little Wrath symbiote was a Slayer all on herself already, and then joining with Faith, a human Slayer, magnified those powers as much as a symbiote magnifies the traits of those they bond with, and then added its own Slayer powers on top of all that even!
Oh, and the last thing, which she hadn't known until Buffy pointed it out and she had looked in a mirror when they first got back. She had a moniker in white along her back, but it wasn't the spider symbol, and it didn't even touch the side or reach around to the front. It was a simple robed figure, drawn in outline, with a wide pair of angel wings on the back, going up to her shoulder blades.
Faith almost thought this meant she could grow wings and fly, but Wrath silently informed her that while it was still young, even if it were to ever be possible, the symbiote did not know how to do that just yet. She was almost disappointed, until she turned and saw the near-same figure adorning Buffy's chest. Only difference being, the white spider emblem that resided at the center of Venom Slayer's chest, was not copied on Wrath's back. That answered a few questions right there.
Turning off the lights as they both jumped out the window, they hung to the side of the building, staring down and looking around for the disturbance they'd felt.
It wasn't long before they found it.
Who knew the Hulk was in town?
LA
Highway from Sunnydale
"You have got to be kidding me!" Xander exclaimed as they listened to the police reports over the Punisher's radio, and witnessed what was being reported first-hand.
"Who knew Bruce was visiting Hollywood?" Black Cat helplessly shrugged when Punisher gave them all a dirty look.
"Bruce?" Willow repeated.
"The Hulk," Punisher growled in answer.
"Why are we driving right for him?" Xander nervously asked after a minute.
A solid city block from the center of the disturbances, the middle of the LA ghetto actually, the Battle Van was pulled over and parked in a dark alleyway. "Stay here, out of sight, lock the doors. Cat and I will handle this."
"Handle?! Frank, hate to rain on your suicidal delusions here, but that's the Hulk out there!" Black Cat screamed. "He's in a league all his own. The only ones that ever try to take him on are the heavy-hitters like Thor, or the Avengers! You and I do NOT the Avengers make!"
"I like to plan for every contingency," was the short reply, right before he started to unload and equip himself with the 'heavy' guns. RPG launchers were actually the least destructive items that he was carrying after he stepped out of the alley and into the warzone.
"Couldn't have left some of that for me?" the white haired superheroine grumbled.
In the end, both superheroes went out to, at the very least, face the Hulk. Hopefully without making him too angry. Willow did something high-tech and they managed to watch what was happening through a combination of security, observation, highspeed, and News network cameras. Thus it was that they discovered somthering which they immediately had to call Punisher to inform him of.
"FRANK! PUNISHER! WHATEVER! Venom is there! She's already fighting the Hulk! And guess what? She's not alone!" Xander screamed over the radio.
