Felicia didn't know what Venom had in mind, and couldn't even ask him while he was leaping across the streets so quickly, flying over grit roofs and intersections and trusting her to keep up with him. He only looked back when he stopped above the scene swarming with police sirens, the red and blue light shimmering on his symbiote skin like flashes across a puddle of oil. Once she took a second to catch her breath, Felicia looked across the small street at what the police had went so fast to get to- and was disappointed.
"Hardware robbery," she said. "How amateur." The thief must have been someone building their own equipment or getting supplies for someone else. Which meant they either couldn't afford to buy their gear, or they simply didn't know where to buy it from. That was a common issue amongst newbies, those so determined to work alone that they didn't last longer than a month before they gave up the work- or their life.
"Looks like whoever did it managed to get away, too," Venom added, and he was right from how the police officers simply milled about the front of the store and cordoned off the wreckage with yellow tape. As one of them stepped over the sign knocked off its chain during the robbery, Felicia realised just how much mess there really was for what should have been a simple hit. Either the guy behind it was clumsy as hell, or they deliberately made a scene before they fled for the police to puzzle over. Distracting them from anything else they might have otherwise gone after that night. Exactly like the kind of hits she'd been going over just before Venom showed up.
"This store, though… it fits the pattern of the others I think were hit by Killer Shrike," Felicia said. "Which means that 'whoever' is probably working for Osborn."
Venom grinned, his saliva catching the red and blue lightshow below them. "And that means this is worth a closer look."
"How do you propose we do that when there's police all over the front door?" There were only three she could see, but just one spotting them was all it would have taken to waste the evening. Felicia could have probably managed it herself, assuming they were only guarding the outside of the place, but-
"That's where my brilliant idea comes in." The symbiote had pulled back until Eddie was left kneeling next to her, grabbing her attention with his borrowed notepad. "There are some things Eddie Brock can do that Venom can't, like distracting the police while you sneak in and see what you can find."
Felicia raised an eyebrow. "You sound confident."
"I can be very distracting when I want to be."
The eyebrow went higher. With a body like his wrapped in skintight black so often, she couldn't really argue with that. Even though that probably wasn't what he meant by it.
"Alright. You go do your thing and I'll go do mine's." Felicia waited until he descended down to street level, watching him approach the crime scene with what could only be described as a kind of complete and utter arrogance he must have practiced to attain, before she made her move closer to the store. She judged how far she could go across one of the adjacent roofs before being spotted, and stopped just before that point. Below her, one of the officers at the yellow tape line finally noticed Eddie coming near.
"Back off, buddy. Scene's off limits."
At once, his arrogance seemed to dissolve into something much less threatening, almost meek as he flipped open the notepad. "I know. Just here to report on it. What exactly happened?"
It was quite jarring, knowing this was the same man who she knew could decapitate every single officer present in the time it would take her to blink. But when she did blink, all the heads were still intact, and they were all focused on him. Just as he'd planned.
Felicia smiled, and gave him five minutes of being able to keep it up. That should have given her enough time to sift through whatever wreckage was waiting for her inside.
Sadly there were no convenient windows this high up on the building. She had to sneak over the roof while the officers' backs were turned and drop down to the ground, making do with the back door. Eddie did a good enough job of drawing attention that she managed to flit across the open space between cover and the door in seconds, flattening herself against the wall until she was sure no one had seen. When there was no shout or stamp of boots on the pavement after her she pushed on the broken handle and slipped inside, keeping it propped open just a crack behind her.
Once she was inside, the persistent cruiser lights outside giving her flashes of illumination through the broken front windows, she didn't know where the hell to start. It was a small store, but the mess made it seem twice as large. Displays were flipped over, stock strewn across the floor, heavy tools threatening to trip her up as she went further into the staged chaos. Her contact lenses only helped her so much; just because you could see better in the dark didn't make finding anything in it any easier, especially if you didn't know what you were even looking for. She couldn't even tell what had been stolen… though that was the whole point of leaving such a scene behind. Let the cops sift through the wreck and scramble to find out what you'd just gotten away with. She'd done it more than enough times herself to know how effective it was. So maybe this guy wasn't such an amateur after all.
Felicia had already wasted a minute on assessing the damage, trying to find what she could move and investigate without making too much noise. She tried the register first, unsurprised to see it cleared out. Then she tried the backroom, but it was impeccable compared to how it was out front, barely a slip of paper out of place in the filing cabinets she skimmed through. Then she scanned the floor again, twice and a third time, over the hammers and wrenches and a toppled stack of toolboxes-
She blinked, clearing her contacts to make sure what she was seeing wasn't just a smudge of light amongst the metal, and whispered to herself.
"What have we here…?" Something was trapped underneath the lowest box. Flat, lined, crumpled by more than just the weight of what was on top of it. She slipped the paper out, seeing that it was folded over on itself twice to mask how big it really was. It wasn't the same kind used for the store's paperwork, more like it was torn out of a cheap notebook, and it bore scraggly writing in black ink that she could only barely decipher after squinting at it.
'WR, Petsco, Sat; Bmrg; KR build, 2 wks; 2x Grims…' There was more, but it was all equal gibberish to her. Maybe a note about an order or some kind of business shorthand. She checked the back out of reflex, and only saw a single scribble with three thick lines scored underneath it.
16/09/2018, CENTRAL (W), 11PM
It was the 7th now, but she still didn't know how it was supposed to help her. Or if it even could. She was about to crumple it further and toss it aside when the door behind her creaked.
Vaulting behind the counter in a second, Felicia sucked in a breath and kept it coiled in her chest while she strained to hear. Light footsteps, heavy breathing… the rustle of spandex as the newcomer crept onwards behind her. She recognised the sounds, and almost gave up on her breath in a sigh. Of all the nights for Peter to pick up the slack and do his job properly… at least it'd be easy enough to get away from him. If she tried to sneak out, his spider senses would set him off and make him lash out. Better to just show herself now and trust that he was still stupid enough to let her go with whatever excuse she could think of.
She vaulted back over the counter, landing on top of it, and watched him jump as he spun around to face her. He frowned, and she frowned even deeper. This was a spider man, but not the one she'd been prepared for.
"Tarantula? The hell are you doing here?!" She hissed to keep her voice down, and prayed the guy stuffed into stolen red spandex followed her cue. Then again, she didn't remember him being very bright. He blinked rapidly under the ridiculous cap stretched over his head, his jaw slack in its gap, as if he couldn't tell if she was really there. Wasting time looking at her while cops were busy crawling all over the outside. Yep, this one was a dumbass.
"The hell are you doing here, Cat?!" Tarantula thankfully did keep his voice down. "I hit this place first! This is my job!"
He was still as cocky as ever. Some people really didn't change, especially those who just looked up any villain that was dead and stole their name and look before anyone else did. The look itself didn't seem like it had changed either; still the same cheap material, still with the spider on the chest that would have gotten him killed on sight in some alleyways, still with the ties dangling dangling from the back of his head begging for someone in a fight to grab for. If everything was really the same, then Felicia knew just how to deal with him. After all, she'd been his boss less than a month ago and he was calling her 'Cat', even though everyone knew who she really was. A sign of respect, maybe even a subconscious one.
"I didn't see your name anywhere outside," she said, pointing towards the windows to remind him to stay quiet. Tarantula's eyes followed the gesture as he folded into himself, as if he suddenly felt he was the only one really trespassing here.
"I... was gonna do that, but we already got a guy with a graffiti gimmick. Calls himself the Tagmaster. I don't get it either." Then he shook himself, the head ties flying back and forth, as if he just remembered he wasn't on her payroll anymore. "Hey, wait, you didn't answer my question! The hell are you doing-?!"
"Cleaning up after you, it looks like." She plucked a wrench off the floor with her claws, almost threatening to drop it with a crash before simply setting it back down on the nearest surface that wasn't shoved over. Tarantula's relief that she didn't just give their position away was short lived, and quickly gave way to a scowl.
"Don't gimme that look, I got told to wreck the place!" he insisted.
Felicia let herself crook an eyebrow. "By who?" She didn't expect him, not even someone as dumb as him, to just outright tell her, but the effect was as she intended. He shook himself again, likely cursing himself for the slip-up, but at least now he'd be too busy guarding his mind to wonder much more about why she was really there.
"That don't matter," he said. "What matters is they're payin' me for this, and you showing up is gonna make 'em think I had help, and then they'll cut my pay!"
She rolled her eyes with a scoff, and she would have laughed outright if it wasn't for the need to be stealthy. "As if I'd want to take credit for any of this. It'd be embarrassing."
"Fuck you, Cat, it's good enough for the 500 they're s'posed to be giving me."
"If you did such a good job, why'd you have to come back?"
"I… dropped something." His eyes flitted in the ambient flashes of red and blue, and Felicia's widened.
"Something?" she repeated. He must have been truly desperate to get it back, whatever it was, if he was admitting it was gone. As if hoping she would help him.
"Just… something that was meant to remind me of shit. Important shit. I need it back." He was stuttering. He was really desperate, and he was right to be. Felicia had the wonderful, smug and superior feeling that she had found exactly what he'd lost- the torn paper, the scribbled handwriting, all in the frantic shorthand of a man who knew he shouldn't have written any of it down in the first place. If he was working for Osborn, which he almost certainly was, then the paper stuffed into her suit could be holding their next lead on whoever else was in his or Alchemax's pocket.
She just needed to get it out of there, and make sure word of Tarantula's fuck-up didn't reach Osborn. The easiest way to ensure that would be to leave him for the police, safe and sound in a jail cell. But she'd need to knock him out first. The store had too many potential weapons, and using them would bring the cops down on them like the stack of bricks she was worried he'd fling at her if she attacked too soon. She'd need to lure him out of the store, and take care of him quickly.
"Where did you last have it?" Felicia asked, making no secret of how she eyed the corner of chaos where she'd found the list.
Tarantula started, obviously not expecting her to actually offer any help. But, now seized with the hope that she might, he couldn't let go of it.
"I… I'm not sure. Might have been near the toolboxes."
"Toolboxes like this one?" She pulled her boot up on top of one of them, the one that she'd pulled aside to retrieve the paper. Tarantula's face lit up so much, rivalling the cruiser spotlights, that she almost felt bad having to tear it back down again.
"Yeah! That was the one that was open when I came in! It might be-" He was going towards it, but Felicia flipped her arm down to snatch it up before he was even halfway there, and was already at the back door when he processed what had happened.
"Hey! The fuck are you doing, Cat?!" He forgot to keep his voice down, but that hardly mattered now. They'd both be out of there in the next few seconds.
"If you're really so sure it might be in here," Felicia taunted, "come and look for yourself." She took off without looking back, grappling up to the nearest roof with her eyes on another one a few buildings away. It was difficult climbing with the empty box tucked under her arm, but she managed a few ascents before she heard Tarantula catching up with her. She stopped at the edge of the third rooftop, turning to face him while he clambered up after her with the razors on his gloves acting as climbing hooks in the walls. She used the few seconds she had before he got up to assess the store she'd left behind below- the officers were gone, and so was Eddie. Had he seen Tarantula going in after her? Or did he go off somewhere else to change into Venom? Wherever he was, she couldn't call him in for backup. If Tarantula was working for Osborn with the rest of her former employees and he saw her and Venom working together, not even he was dumb enough to not end up connecting the dots.
He was dumb enough to charge right at her though, trying to shank her with the razor on his wrist. She remembered him being pretty good at fighting, but 'pretty good' really didn't mean much against her. She dodged to one side, kicking out towards the other to send him off balance and leaning in towards where the weight of the toolbox pulled her down. She rolled before she hit the ground, tucking the box into herself and springing back onto her feet just as Tarantula recovered. He had another chance to strike her, this time going for a closed fist towards her stomach that was supposed to slam the box into her and drive the air from her lungs, but she leapt back and threw the box between his legs, so it skidded across the roof and made his punch hit empty wind. Just as he was about to spin his body around to go after the box, Felicia spun her leg up faster so that her boot cracked against his skull and sent him stumbling sideways. Another kick on the other side of his head got him on the ground, and he didn't get up.
She wiped her forehead, scratching at the thin sweat on her face with the backs of her claws. She didn't like using her hands too much to fight, mainly because cleaning her claws afterwards was always a pain in the ass. Much easier to just use the power of your legs, especially if you had stiletto heels to be stabbing into anyone who asks for it. Of course, not many guys saw all the benefits of heels, the built-in weaponry for all women able to conquer walking in them.
If they had boots, they were painfully boring, fitted with nothing more adventurous than buckles or nothing at all or...
...Or, in Tarantula's case, with the same kind of razors they had on their gloves. Felicia felt the sting in her ankle, of the razor tearing through her boot to graze the skin underneath. He had kicked out his leg just as she was walking past him, nicking her when she tripped over it. How the hell had she forgotten about those?! How...
Why…
Why was she falling? Why did her head feel so heavy? She tried to push herself back up, but… her arms wouldn't move. Her legs felt like they were missing, like they simply weren't there to listen to the rest of her body. There was a tingling all over her, but even that was fading to a horrifyingly welcoming numbness.
"What… the hell, Tar… rant…" She could feel herself drooling as she tried to speak, slurring as the wave of exhaustion shut down her speech. She saw him through heavy eyes, standing over her, scolding her. His voice bubbled up through the fog, coming either before or after he disappeared from view.
"I don't have time for this shit, Cat! I gotta find it or… or I'm dead! Just be grateful you aren't..." He must have checked the box, found it empty. Went back inside. Leaving her here to… she couldn't think anymore. She could barely even see. The sky was above her, dark; the roof below her, hard; her tongue feeling thick and numb like a slug in her mouth. She could breathe, but she didn't really want to anymore. She didn't… really want to do anything. Just wanted to sleep… eyes closing… sky fading to black…
"Felicia… Felicia! Wake up!"
She felt a slap on her face. Not a hard one, but it was enough to make her seize the wrist assaulting her. She was still holding it when her vision cleared, and she saw the black covering the hand in her grip. Eddie didn't seem to mind how her clawed fingers dug into the symbiote skin. If anything, he just seemed relieved that she wasn't dead.
"...How long was I out for?" she groaned, still swimming in the mush of her own brain.
"Ten minutes," he answered. "We think." He helped her sit up, letting her still hold his hand as he supported her back. Symby seemed to grip her as much as he did, gluing itself to her glove. She breathed in deeply, trying to clear out the fog with a gust of cold wind. Her bones felt like they were filled with concrete.
"Where's…?"
"The guy dressed like discount Daredevil?" he finished for her. "Police caught him when he went back in the store and ran right into them."
Felicia sighed with a silent smile. At least one thing had gone right. She pushed herself off the ground, the throbbing of her ankle piercing through the swamp of her grogginess to give her a shot of awareness, though it also made her stumble with a hiss when she tried to put weight on it.
"Hey. Easy." Eddie caught her before she fell again. "What did he hit you with?"
"Some… kind of anaesthetic. It's a favorite of his." He coated his razors in it so anyone he managed to hit would be on the floor in seconds. Somehow she'd managed to forget about them, or maybe she just hadn't expected him to still be supplied with the stuff.
Eddie cocked an eyebrow skeptically, and seemed to hear something from the symbiote. "You sure it isn't poison?" he asked.
She shook her head; it only felt like poison afterwards. "I'm sure. He didn't use anything lethal in my gang, and I doubt Osborn would give him anything like that. I just… need to sleep it off." Once the pain in her foot faded, she let go of Eddie to stand by herself, still wobbling as she stamped her heel to drive some feeling back into her leg.
"Sorry for getting you not-poisoned, then," Eddie said. He seemed to be fighting the urge to keep holding her up, stanced so he could swoop in and catch her if she stumbled again. She hated how attentive he was. She was the one who slipped up and let herself get stabbed, so was paying the price for it. That was how it worked.
"It was worth it, at least," she said in return. "Tarantula came back because he dropped something, and I was lucky enough to pick it up before he showed."
Eddie's eyes widened, just as her own did when she realised what she had. "What was it?"
She pulled the folded paper out of her suit, both relieved it was still there and that Tarantula clearly hadn't chosen to search her while she was out. "Looks like a list. Can't tell if it's coded or if his handwriting is just really shitty. There's a date and address on the back too, probably another job he was slated to do."
Eddie squinted at the list, as mystified by it as she was. "Why'd you think the list was so important to him?"
"He said it was to remind him of important things. Whatever those things are, they must link him back to Osborn somehow, or at least other people working for him." Felicia shrugged as she tucked it away again. "I'll have a look at it when I get back home. See if I can get anything out of it."
"After you get a good night's sleep, that is," Eddie said, with a tone that both presented no argument and dared her to make one. Which is exactly what she did, even though her mouth felt filled with sawdust and her head felt like it had just been bounced around a mosh pit.
"I'm fine. Really. I just… just need to lie down for a few minutes." But all the talking she'd been doing robbed her of whatever energy she had left. When she sagged against him and the symbiote spread over her fingers to trap her there, she didn't even have motivation to try and struggle.
"You're going straight to bed, Felicia," Eddie told her. "Right now. Non-negotiable."
She could only mumble against him. "Usually men want to get me bed for everything other than sleeping…" But she didn't argue further when Venom hauled her into his arms, holding her against his chest as he took her back to her apartment. The ache in her ankle faded to a dull throb by the time they reached the window, and other than having to fix the tear in her boot she knew it would heal fully by itself.
"If it makes you feel better," Eddie said when he helped her down off the windowsill, "when we saw you'd moved up to the roof we got some pretty nice pictures of the fight."
Felicia had been lulled by the feeling of wind blowing past her closed eyes and tense muscles holding her close, but now she snapped her eyes open as wide as she could manage. "I was getting my ass kicked while drugged up to my eyeballs and you stood by taking pictures of it?" It wasn't exactly what happened, but she was curious at just how much he'd seen of the fight.
"Hey, we didn't know you were drugged!" he swore. "Even then you were the one kicking his ass-!"
"I'm kidding, Eddie." Even in her hazy state, Felicia wondered if he'd always be this easy to rile up. "It's good that you didn't step in, anyway."
"Wanted to show off all by yourself?" he asked.
"Something like that. Now, I have a bed to sleep in and a list to try and decipher, and you have an article to go write. Promise you'll make me look good?"
"You've never needed much help with that. But some beauty sleep won't hurt." He pointed to her bed, and seemed adamant on staying hovering by until he saw her climb into it.
"Fine, fine," Felicia conceded, fighting back a yawn as she turned her back on him. "But unless you want to stay and watch me change-" She started pulling the zipper of her suit down, onto peeling her gloves when she saw his shadow still cast on the wall in front of her. She turned her head over her shoulder with a cocked eyebrow, seeing his head in a similar state.
"That wasn't an offer, Eddie."
He blinked, as if he'd just been broken out of his own kind of intoxicated trance. "We know. I-I know, I… was just… closing the window. Behind us. Good night." Just like that he was gone, fleeing from his own awkwardness. For a grown man who threatened to eat people, he was adorable sometimes.
Though Felicia supposed she was more to blame for it than he was. Like how she'd forgotten about Tarantula's true arsenal, sometimes she just forgot the effect she had on men. Even men like Eddie.
A man like Eddie Brock… seriously considering watching her undress.
Maybe it was the drug still floating in her bloodstream, but she was almost tempted to let him. Or maybe it was precisely because of the drug that she didn't let him.
It was only because of the drug. That's what she told herself even as she felt it ground out by her metabolism.
