Truth, in Eddie Brock's book, was everything. It was his calling, it was his muse, and, at the end of the day, it was his bread and butter. It was more important than personal safety, private property , respect for the dead – what did the dead need with respect? They were worm food, with only dust and decay awaiting them now that they were shucked of their mortal coils –, and 'good taste'. The truth, he would say to anyone who still listened to the words of a disgraced reporter, was a beautiful thing.

Of course, some might say that the pictures that Eddie took in the name of truth were very much the opposite.

Looking down at the street pizza that had formerly been a drug-running mob mook, Eddie considered the thought for a second before taking the picture anyway. A fake badge had gotten him into the crime scene easy enough – it's like cops didn't even have proper workin' eyes nowadays –, and so long as the actual photographer didn't show up…

"Hey!"

Ah, well, so much for that.

Eddie Brock bolted like a bullet finally released from the chamber of a Russian Roulette revolver, camera bouncing wildly around his neck as he twisted into the maze of back alleys that made up Alphabet City. Mutant Town, they were starting to call it now – about thirty years late to the party, but that's what happened when the freak population exploded, people get to noticing –, and the corpses were following the trend.

No skin of his nose. Hell, if the pics were gruesome enough, the Daily Globe would give him a bonus, and mutants tended towards that extreme. These, however, were just supplementary to the real story. The one that would turn the name 'Eddie Brock' into something that got some respect, not a disgusted sneer or a question of 'who'?

Eddie shuffled back into the crowded streets, pointedly ignoring the occasional obvious mutant left spinning in a stray eddy of the stream. He loved New York, sure, but hell if it didn't attract the freaks like flies to ripe roadkill.

Back at his apartment, he slipped out of his long coat and into his water closet-cum-dark room. The red light obliterated the colors of the room, leaving only red, black, and all the shades between. He worked mechanically, making sure everything was just perfect. Digital would be easier, sure, but there was an art to the old-school methods that appealed to something in Eddie, the same something that reveled in the three piece suits and the low-sloped hats.

Greatness allowed eccentricities, so Eddie wasn't worried. Finishing up with today's batch of photos, he turned his attention to yesterday's keepers.

The pictures showed men in suits and masks – some kind of Oriental design, Eddie couldn't keep up with all the points of origin –, milling in the back alleys of Chinatown. The Inner Demons.

Criminals had a flair for the dramatic nowadays, a propensity towards the big and loud that was likely making the mob lords of Christmas Past turn over in their graves like an internship at Oscorp, and the gang bangers were just as guilty as the rest of them. It was the year of the gimmick, and not just in Chinatown.

Though, to be fair, the Inner Demons – Feng Shui leanings aside – were old school for drug dealers, once one got past the creepy masks. They sold their product, never partook, never haggled, and came down like gangbusters on anyone who got in the way. Vigilantes, snooping civilians, meddling kids… Eddie supposed that reporters would fall somewhere on the list of 'Things the Inner Demons Take Exception To'. That hadn't stopped Eddie from taking pictures, though he had made one concession to safety by not using a flash, and here was the proof.

Twenty-one pictures of various Inner Demons, doing business in their native environment and – this had been a real stroke of luck – demolishing an upstart gang. Mutants from Alphabet City probably, if the tree kid getting chopped in the most literal sense of the word was any indication. A couple of kids had gotten away from the initial fight, only to be hunted down and splattered over the cracked cement of Alphabet City. Eddie had pictures, of course.

Maybe two of the kids were left of the gang who were part of the ill-planned attack on the superior gang. Good for him, Eddie knew where to find one.


Alphabet City was never a bright cheery place, but it had steadily gone downhill since the mutants had joined the existing population of minorities already residing there. While 'District x' – the friendliest term for the heavily packed mutant neighborhoods, used mostly by politicians when in front of a camera and those humans living there who still clung to the idea of 'political correctness' – was the worst of it, with the residents of it packed into their decaying tenements like sardines, there were places where people just didn't go, for a lot of different reasons.

The old apartment complex on Ninth, the old Catholic Church – Our Lady of Saints, if Eddie remembered correctly, abandoned and deconsecrated before the muties had even started moving in proper in the 2000's – on Thirteenth, and 'The Place' on the corner of Seventh and B.

Eddie had looked up the history of 'The Place' after he'd moved into the area. The location had changed hands faster than a pair of gloves in a family of ten before just being discarded to collapse on its own time, though not before awkwardly stumbling through enough jobs to make it your average high school graduate schmuck. Speakeasy, antiques shop – at which the same time-period had generated the rumor that there was some kind of secret super soldier lab underneath –, hardware store, family owned factory, storage… and now a hangout for the youngest muties looking to make either a name or a quick buck for themselves or hide out from whatever shit storm their actions had kicked up.

The door hung limply on its hinges, like it had long tired of standing in its frame but for the sake of its duty it clung to a broken semblance of its original function. Surprisingly, only one window was broken – the one in the door itself –, though the rest were coated in thick yellow dust or a dark blue paint that someone had slapped on without care as to the mounting around them. The first room was typical for Eddie's experience with abandoned buildings; largely empty save for a few pieces of furniture that were built into the walls and covered with a mess of messy graffiti tags.

The reporter slunk through the front room and into the back, watching every possible thing. This area was slightly more livable, in that the rubble had been cleared away, the dust was much less thick, and there were a number of sofas and easy chairs scattered around. A few empty cans and discarded pizza boxes floated around the furniture, along with a few other markers of recent visitor.

Eddie unzipped a forgotten backpack that had been tossed in the corner like an afterthought. It was worn and out of style, barely held together by duct tape and liberally applied patches, and stuffed with all the necessities needed by the average teenage runaway. "Change of clothes, couple letters, water bottle, I-pod…" Eddie pocketed that, it's not like the owner – probably one of the mutie kids killed by the Inner Demons – would be coming back for it. Besides that one scrap of technology, there was nothing else of interest. The letters had been basic interfamily platitudes, complete with a 'hugs and kisses' signature from 'Grandma', ergo worthless.

He looked around the room, scanning for anything that looked remotely interesting. "Now, if I was a scared-out-of-my-mind teenage runaway with lame superpowers, where would I hide?" Eddie murmured, blue eyes scanning as he carefully tapped the floor with his shoe tips on the off-chance that, maybe, just maybe, that old rumor about the secret government lab was true.

Nothing, nothing… Something metal creaked and, beneath that, an echo that betrayed something hollow, hard, and deep.

Eddie Brock smirked. "Jackpot."


The ladder seemed to descend past the sewer lines – Eddie knew better, since he'd explored those himself on a story about a group of mutants calling themselves the 'Morlocks' and found a sum total of slime, sludge, and nothing else – until finally giving way to proper footing.

The dust down here was thinner and thick with the signs of air-tight isolation. Eddie wondered for a moment how long this government – those were unmistakably SSR markings on the walls, he realized giddily – facility had lain dormant, hidden beneath the city like buried treasure.

Voices echoed, calm angry mumbles occasionally drowned out by shockingly shrill screams of fear.

"I'M SORRY, IT WASN'T MY IDEA, OH MY GOD, DON'T KILL ME, DON'T KILL ME!"

Grabbing his camera, Eddie slunk towards the racket, into the innards of the secret government lab and into a room ruined by a long gone explosion. He peered through a shattered window… and saw.

The kid was obviously a mutant; though his skin – brown as Mexican dirt – and build – nothing but hard lines and sharp angles, like most teens –, it was his eyes that gave him away. Sparking, pink-red, and glowing, they flashed around the room – missing Eddie by inches – looking for something to save him and finding all of nothing as the Inner Demons cornered him in the middle, slowly backing him towards a strangely shaped operating table.

Human experimentation? Alien dissections? Oh, now there was a story here, a whole new one that was at least ten times as good as a generic gang yarn. Eddie wished he could get away with taking down notes, but the way the room was constructed would broadcast the sound of scribbling to the gangsters if the kid ever stopped screaming.

It didn't look like that would be happening anytime soon, though the mutant teen had the presence of mind to switch gears. "HELP! SOMEBODY HELP! THEY'RE GOING TO MURDER ME! HELP ME!"

The leader of this group of Inner Demons flashed forward, shoving the boy into the machine. "Pathetic." He whispered, the word somehow louder than all the screams that had proceeded it. "Han, activate the machine. I am… curious as to its function."

Eddie Brock was curious too, and the proverbial edge of his seat seemed to draw further and further away from him as the lackey pushed and pulled at a half-shattered control panel. The metal sections of the machine began to close over the mutant's body, allowing the Inner Demon to release his grip on the boy and admire his work more comfortably.

A silent nod from the leader of the group, and the biggest lever on the array was pulled.
This, Eddie would decide later, was the moment everything started going to shit.

The kid screamed, somehow louder than he had before, the noise only just muffled by the machine he'd been locked into, as the lights of the lab flickered and something gold and bright and warm like the sun filled the machine as it twisted to sit upright. Lightbulbs burst, showering the area with shards of broken glass, but the infernal hum just kept going, matching the crescendo of the screams from within the machine as the pitch reached nails-on-chalkboard levels of high-pitch agony. Pinkish-red-white light sparked out of the machine and Eddie's instincts told him that this was somehow very different from the golden rays that had shone out of the clouded-over window of it just before.

Hopefully it wouldn't hurt his camera, he thought as he prepared to take a picture.


The pictures had continued, even as things started to break apart and the still stable sections of decades old electronics exploded into showers of sparks. Every picture promised to be a keeper, another thousand bucks in his wallet, and another piece of truth that would make 'Eddie Brock' a name to be respected once again.

The Inner Demons, in contrast to Eddie's particular combination of pants-pissing terror and cream-himself excitement, stood stoically as the screams quietly died into nothing. They'd come to kill and they, barring any coming evidence to the contrary, had done that. Once they checked the corpse and removed the head – both old-school and pragmatic, a gaping mouth and sightless eyes were really the best way to confirm a death in their business –, they would be on their way.

The light within the machine dimmed and the electricity through the rest of the lab stabilized, leaving the room half-illuminated by bulbs that had no business not being burned out.

Something scuttled in the shadows, and Eddie swore that he caught a flash of red eyes near the ceiling before the whatever-it-was shifted, disappearing again into the shadows.

Oh God, let him not have stumbled upon a government demon-summoning lab, Eddie prayed.

In that moment, the machine exploded, shrapnel obliterating three of the Inner Demons. The rest stumbled back, their partially pulped fellows shuddering on the floor as… it was the mutant, Eddie realized, the same one that had gone into the machine, but… worse.

The brown skin had been burnt a shiny black and his hair was standing on end while the rest of his clothes smoldered on his skinny frame. Worst of all was the eyes. Still glowing pink-red, they now smoked, pink glowing trails pulling back from his face. He snarled, and the pink-red sparks that had burst from the machine during his rebirth exploded around his hands, the pink smoke following it.

An energy based mutant. Great.

The Inner Demons seemed to think the same, pulling their pieces and unloading into the kid as soon as it was clear that he wasn't going to lean over and die nicely.

The mutant seethed, growling at his aggressors as the bullets melted over his pink-red aura. "I'LL FUCKING KILL ALL YOU BASTARDS!" He screamed before jumping forward and grabbing the unfortunate Han. Han squirmed in the mutant's grip before…

Eddie forced down his bile as the man splattered, painting the kid's front and most of the floor around him red. Okay, so the kid could explode heads now. Hell, the guy had gone the way of a microwaved poodle, and it looked like the kid had just realized 'how'. He stared down at the smear that had been a gangster just a few seconds ago, and then looked over at the other Inner Demons.

The leader ignored the fear and pulled fresh piece, aiming carefully between the mutant's eyes.

There was a flash of white and the man's hand twisted around backwards while his thumb and index finger just disappeared along with his gun.

A man in white spandex – there was a name, it was on the tip of Eddie's tongue – stood between the Inner Demons and the mutant.
"You!" The lead Inner Demon exclaimed.

"Yes." The hero said, twisting around a knife thrust before slamming the heel of his hand into the mook's jaw with a crack. He intercepted the next attack – a roundhouse kick, delivered by a weedy man who's suit was just a hair too big for him –, throwing both into the walls before spraying white webbing over both. "Me."

The man attempted to defend himself, but between a normal man and a superhero, there was no contest. White arms blurred, slamming into the gangster's arms, chest, throat, head… followed by a vicious kick that would have killed most people but only slammed the man into the wall, to be glued in place like his minions.

The hero – Eddie could still not place the name, he was a reporter for Christ's sake – turned to look at the mutant. "You oka–" He was cut off by a blast of pink-red radiation to the face.

"I DIDN'T NEED YOUR HELP!" The boy screamed. "MY FRIENDS NEEDED YOUR HELP. DO YOU THINK ANY SUPERHEROES CAME TO RESCUE THEM? HUH? HUH? NO! NO ONE DID!"

Anti-Venom – yes, that was it, Anti-Venom – dodged the next blast, dancing around the follow up like he was half-gymnast half-break dancer, putting as much space between himself and the bursts of radiation as possible. Eddie had sworn that he'd seen the black and white mask partially melt, but no, it was as spotless as it had been five minutes ago. He soon vanished into the shadows, even the glowing red eyes of his mask unseen.

"I DON'T NEED YOU! YOU'LL TAKE DOWN THE DEALERS, SURE, BUT THE REST OF US? HAH." The boy twisted around, eyes too bright and grin too wide. "WE'RE NOTHING BUT GARBAGE TO YOU. TOO BLACK, TOO BROWN, TOO QUEER, TOO FREAKISH." He laughed crazily. "WHAT WE ARE IS TOO POWERFUL. YOU'RE AFRAID. AFRAID OF OUR VOICES, AFRAID OF OUR MINDS, AFRAID OF OUR STRENGTH." With that statement, an Inner Demon started twitching on the wall before his head burst, painting a streak of red ten feet high on the wall behind him. "BUT KNOW I KNOW THAT I'M STRONGER THAN YOU. I'M STRONGER THAN ALL OF YOU. ALL THE COPS, ALL THE GANGSTERS, ALL THE POLITICALS IN WASHINGTON. THIS IS MY POWER!"

"And you abuse it, just like them."

The boy shuddered before blasting another wall. "Shut up." He hissed.

"You could be better than them," Anti-Venom's voice said again, the echo disguising the hero's exact location. "But no. You do the same. You got the power to kill, and you kill. You got the power to destroy, and you destroy. Just like them."

"Shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!" The lab rocked, and Eddie felt the floor beneath his feet shift. "YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING! YOU'RE SOME WHITE PUNK WHO HASN'T BEEN HUNGRY A DAY OF HIS LIFE. WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ANYTHING?!"

"I used to have a family."

The mutant stilled.

Eddie wished again he could be writing this down.
"They were… well, I wouldn't speak much of my dad, he was trash, but I had a little brother. He was…" The voice quieted for a second. "He was precious to me. I pretty much raised him. Now, I'll never see him again. And, yeah, it's only partly because of my powers."

The boy stayed quiet, though he was scanning the ceiling. Eddie had looked himself and, unless the hero had crammed himself into one some crack, it was like Anti-Venom had turned invisible.
"I can't go back. I don't have a home anymore. I'm got weird powers that will get me cut up and experimented on if I get caught by the wrong people. Most nights, I go to bed hungry and there is not a single person I can talk to about any of it." There was a pause and when it ended, Anti-Venom's voice had hardened. "But I'm not going to make some stupid, tragic backstory bullshit like that make me a monster. And you don't have to either."

The boy looked around the room, no longer glowing and no longer confident in his stance, and shivered. A perfect photo-op.

Eddie took the shot.

The mutant jumped, throwing a bolt of red-pink radiation in Eddie's direction – a wide miss, though it kicked up enough dust to make a second photo impossible – and bolted, vanishing into the hall that would unleash him on the outside world.

Eddie hissed, pulling himself upright. Dammit, there better not be dust in his camera…

"You… pathetic… little… fuck."

Eddie slid back, his common sense screaming at him that now would be a great time to run, though some stupid thought kept asking about the camera. The hero was stalking towards him, a low hiss following the razor focus of those too bright, too red eyes.

"You could have helped him, distracted those gangsters for… I don't know. A minute? Thirty seconds. I could have worked with thirty fucking seconds, made it so the kid didn't have to have a near psychotic break. But no. You just wanted your pictures and your story." Anti-Venom spat the words out like each syllable was a swear.

"Okay, I'm sorry, is that what you want to hear?" Eddie said, holding his hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. "Just give me back my camera, I'll give you a cut of the profits, and we'll be square, alright?"

The red eyes sharpened again and Eddie's camera shattered in Anti-Venom's clawed grip. He threw the remains at Eddie, who scrambled for the amazingly intact roll of film. "You want forgiveness? Go to a confessional. I don't do slime." Anti-Venom snarled before darting down the hallway towards the exit after the mutant.

Eddie glared after him and, after straightening the lapels of his coat, stalked towards the outside world. He had photos to develop and then, then, he would spin a story that would put that fucker in his place.


J. Jonah Jameson cut a sharp figure behind his desk, a smoldering cigar carefully balanced between the second and third fingers of his right hand, a gesture mirrored by the fountain pen in his left. The newsman was of an old school of sensibility, wearing three piece suits and a fob watch on his waistcoat, and it reflected in his office.

It was like stepping into a film noir, the air filled with the smoky haze of countless cigars – the man might not have smoked or swore on air, so he could 'set a good example for the kids', but in his private office, all things were fair game – and the light filtered through slatted blinds. If the room seemed to be slightly sepia-toned, that was as much the effect of Jonah's insistence on quality hardwood everything as it was an affect of the atmosphere.

"Betty Brant. The secretary-cum-crime beat reporter." He said slowly, tapping some excess ash off his cigar. "What brings you to my door? Can't be an article, seeing as you turned in your latest piece last night. Better not be a request for a raise." The last bit was muttered quietly.

Betty smirked, her red lipstick standing out like blood spatter in the gloom. "Actually, Mr. Jameson," she said, folding her legs primly as she descended into the chair across from his desk, the hard lines of her black dress never shifting out of place once. Supposedly, every piece of furniture in the office had been pedigreed all the way to original offices, even further back than when Jameson had first started working at the paper. "I was hoping to interview you."

Jonah quirked an eyebrow at that. "Really." He said, rolling the word around his mouth like a piece of hard candy, obviously toying with the idea but as of yet unwilling to bite. "And… what kind of interview were you thinking, Miss Brant? Not an exposé on your favorite boss, I hope."

"Considering that you're my only boss, sir, you can consider yourself safe." Betty said. She pulled out her tape recorder, a black lacquer and chrome dinosaur of the species that still surpassed many of the modern kind in terms of sound quality and durability, and turned it on. "I would like to talk about our… mutual friend… Eddie Brock."

Jonah relaxed at that, oozing back into his chair – a solidly constructed piece decked out in green, well-worn leather that was bolted to its cherry wood frame by thick brass studs that could have been hollow-tip bullets in another life – with a soft 'creak'. "Eddie Brock… didn't expect to hear that name again outside of the tabloids or maybe the obituaries." The newsman sighed. "The kid had potential, I mean, he won the story contest of '02, did decent photos and a noir style story on gang activity, but… serious issues. Should've been seeing a shrink instead of spreading the ink, if you catch my meaning." Jonah added almost conspiratorially.

"How did he win that contest?" Betty asked.
"Detective style noir, if you can believe it. Infiltrated a street gang for three months, wrote down everything that happened, and turned it into a Sam Spade novella. Best writing I'd seen since the contest started in '91." He shook his head. "Also a big indicator of what came later, but I didn't pay attention to that."

Jonah leaned back in his chair again, tilting to the side just far enough to give him a clear view of the collection of framed articles on the wall. Most of them were of his own writing, though Betty knew that at least one of hers were up there; the grand reveal of the serial killer known as 'the Sin Eater' and the story of the serial confessor that had almost derailed the case completely. "Brock had three big flaws. First, he doesn't like to share. Information, beats, credit… the kid learned how to develop his own photos so he didn't have to share a byline. Second, he has a hair-trigger temper. Soon as he thinks it's personal, he makes it personal. And third, he doesn't let go. Grudges, leads…"

"Three strikes, huh?"

"Three strikes and one big fallout for us." Jameson said, grinding the stub of his cigar out in a cut glass ashtray – bottle green, the one color in the office that wasn't some subtle variation on sepia brown, old parchment white, or India ink black – and, after a long moment considering the closed cigar box on the table, relaxed into his chair without one. "First, he finds a guy who claims to be the 'Sin Eater'. Doesn't do anything about it but coax a fucking autobiography out of the guy. He calls the cops after he sends his completed story to print."

"I remember that." Betty said. Of course she remembered, she'd covered the story of the story of the year, researched the actual killer intimately, gone over what little Brock shared of his notes, and gotten several earfuls from the police despite having nothing to do with the original article herself. "The Bugle's first retraction in twenty-five years."

"2007 was a bad year, between the shift to the internet and… that particular shit storm." Jonah closed his eyes, fingers twitching over the keys of some phantom typewriter before he snapped back to reality. "Cut the reminiscing out when you write the article, Brant."

She smiled. "I always do, sir."

"Anyway, last I heard of the creep, he was stalking the cop who nabbed the Sin Eater. Captain Jean DeWolff. You see a dame right out of a Bogart picture driving a remake Doozy around town with police lights, that's her."
"'Doozy', Mr. Jameson?"

"Duesenberg. Car company that went under… in the forties or so. Occasionally the name comes back, but it always fizzles out. But that's beside the point." Jameson pointed right between Betty's eyes. "The point is, Eddie Brock has no issue harassing the person who cleaned up his mess. Eddie Brock saw someone who took down a serial killer and hated her for ruining his golden moment."

Jonah leaned forward, the light from the single bulb – covered by a cheap paper lampshade that did nothing to soften the harsh light it cast over the newsman's desk – throwing his face into near complete shadow.

"Eddie Brock is dangerous. He's sharp, he's got fewer scruples than the rags he works for now, and he's got a grudge against everyone and everything he even thinks has screwed him over. The only good thing about him is that he doesn't have the means to act on that grudge. The minute that changes, someone's probably going to hurt. Badly."

Betty tried to ignore the shiver that ran down her spine at that. "Well, here's hoping he doesn't." She said.


Eddie Brock had thought the day couldn't get any worse, but it had managed to surpass that expectation with flying colors.

Every single shot was totally, completely, and irrevocably ruined, fogged over like the roll of film had been through a gauntlet of X-ray scanners. So the little mutie freak must been throwing around X-rays like candy at a parade besides that red-white whatever, Eddie thought, rubbing his face in frustration. Perfect. Just perfect. Would have made a decent story, if he had some fucking proof. Radioactive mutie versus a spider-freak. Reporter finds a secret lab under Alphabet City, one that had SS fucking R writing all over it. That would have gotten him a decent buck from the Daily Globe, enough to replace his camera after the 'hero' had smashed it.

Now, there nothing. No story, no photos, nothing.

Fuck.

Well, there was always what was left of the SSR bunker…

He looked out the window of his apartment towards The Place and swore out loud.

There wasn't. What there was were S.H.I.E.L.D. agents crawling all over the place like black suited maggots and Nick Fury himself watching over the proceedings.

Within the night, what was left would be gone, scrapped or hauled away to some S.H.I.E.L.D. bunker, and Eddie Brock would have even less than what he started with.

And it was all that fucking Anti-Venom's fault.


Okay, author note time.

So this chapter was attempted – or at least part of it was attempted – in Noir style. The Jameson section probably did it the best, though I don't claim to be an expert on the style. Quite a bit of this has been done for some time – similar to the Shadowland section of the last chapter – and it was easy getting into Eddie Brock's POV, so that's why there's such a quick update on the heels on the previous chapter.

If you're interested in the mutant kid from this chapter, I suggest you look for a character from the 90's called 'Pyre'. While I changed the origin somewhat – Gary 'Pyre' Russel in the comics was an undercover reporter who got his powers from a Hydra machine, not a mutant teen who got his powers kicked through the roof by the same gizmo that helped bring the world the wonder that is Captain America's body – he is a canon character, but since he was originally a) from the 90's with a design to match, and b) from a storyline that was a team-up between 'Lethal Protector' mode Eddie Brock!Venom and the Punisher – three issues dedicated to that concept, THREE, and the whole storyline was called 'Funeral Pyre', how 90's can you get – he wasn't worth much since he's only appeared only one time since then, as a name on a list of other painfully obscure characters during the Civil War event, of which everyone would like to forget happened.

Yeah.

His powers were over microwave radiation (yes, a human microwave oven), which made him Venom kryptonite because otherwise the fight would have ended in the first issue. I kind of played with that in this story, just to make Eddie's day worse. While microwave radiation doesn't do anything to photography film, X-ray will fuck that shit up like described.

How did this happen to my version of Gary? Well, in the words of Abraham Erskine as regarding his super serum… 'good becomes great; bad becomes worse'. The fear and anger of a teenager ill-used by the world becomes hatred towards the world with the means to act on it.

Anyway, I made Eddie a bit of a jerkass. Why? Well, as I've pointed out, I like to blend stuff from the comics, movies, and other stuff when I'm working with characters not referenced in (or treated well) in the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon. So what do I have to work with?

Spider-Man 3, wherein Eddie Brock is a jerkass photographer with shitty Photoshop skills who looks like Eric Forman, Ultimate Spider-Man comics, wherein Eddie Brock is a youthful jerkass who doesn't understand the meaning of 'do not release the fucking bioweapon', and Mainstream Marvel, where Eddie Brock is seriously fucked up and nobody can decide if he's a jerkass with a handful of soft-spots, the symbiote is a jerkass corrupting an okay-ish guy, or if they're both brothers in dickery with a handful of standards gathered from both of their origins, and the unofficial fan film 'Truth In Journalism' – which is the chapter title because it is fucking awesome and if you guys can handle a little gore and some scary shit, I highly suggest it – from which I draw most of my Eddie's personality – self-centered, sociopathic, and unconcerned with anything but his own goals and interests, to the point of being extraordinarily blasé about people getting murdered right in front of him – i.e. taking pictures AFTER POSING THE STILL WARM BODIES.

I'll give that Eddie has some good points, most of which are usually given early on in any adaptation in which he features if at all, but hell if he showed any of them off today.

Anyway on to question corner – aka, Paradox asked things that I will answer here. Don't sweat the smileys.

Ben Reilly's adventures with the Fantastic Four… I might use them as breather episodes or breaks from Ellen's slightly less 'family fun' adventures, IDK.

About his hair… I'm imagining that his bleach job is very obviously DIY. Blend the canon image from the mid-90's and Andrew Garfield's hair from when he played Peter Parker, and you can imagine it's easy to make fun of (but kinda cute in a dorky way).

My Gwen Stacy is 23 and in college (genetics / biology major, balanced with an internship at Oscorp). I'm taking a bit of characterization from the Amazing Spider-Man movies and the Spider-Gwen comic (which I haven't gotten a chance to read, but what I have seen is spectacular), with a fair bit of my own spin because outside of one cartoon and the Ultimate Comics, it's like she doesn't even exist as anything but a cardboard cut-out.

While, technically, Ben is only five (cloning yay), his memories (do not ask me how the fuck cloning the comic books work, because I'm fairly sure that memories are not genetic) and physical appearance put him at about 24-25.

Gwen is (one of) Peter's girlfriend(s) in a few continuities (because Bitches Love Spider-Man), including for a period in the main universe (though she didn't have much of a personality there outside of 'ice queen bitch', 'classic Veronica', 'attractive prop lamp' or 'flawless angel', which happened more after she died), but she almost always gets 'fridged' – a popular colloquialism meaning she got killed because it would be dramatic and the writers had no idea what else to do with her (the Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon, Spider-Gwen (duh), and the original Spider-Man trilogy are the only verses that didn't kill her off, I think, though there might have been other continuities where she didn't that weren't 'What If' issues) and to make way for Mary Jane (who, to be perfectly honest, turned out to be an amazing character outside of the hands of terrible writers).

I imagine that if Harry spends any time around Oscorp, his hormones have made him very aware of Ms. Stacy's existence, but they probably aren't in a relationship higher than 'waves if they see you'.

Anti-Venom's powers involve being able to detect drugs. She could pick up on drugs floating in the air in an enclosed space, a brick of cocaine is going to glow in the dark to her senses.

Mr. Negative is pissed, as I tried to get across in the last chapter, but that's the thing about the Kingpin's empire; anyone with a lick of sense in it is playing the long game. So there's one superhero stealing from their till. Annoying, but eventually that hero will get distracted by some kind of supervillain activity, leaving the 'small fish' – so to speak – to get back to swimming along as usual.

Actually, Marvel mob bad guys either start out powered or stay normal (at least normal for Marvel, where the Kingpin, a 100% normal, but big guy who just gets by with wits and being like 80% solid muscle, can crush a man's skull in his hands), so that's a small saving grace (though Count Nefaria is a bit of an exception, being that he's an asshole with godlike powers that he actively went after, but he's an X-Men baddie so I can ignore him).

Is there a mob war on the horizon? IDK, I've got plans running in mind, but nothing concrete yet. I've got enough subplots to get through a couple chapters, thanks.

Vanessa Fisk is Wilson 'The Kingpin' Fisk's sickly wife and his only link to morality (which, since she's the only person who can make him act like a decent human being, means she's hella important to him). She's never been in good health in any continuity in which she has appeared, so I assume that her disease, while not an immediate threat, is incurable by modern means and chronic, which is why the Kingpin keeps his ear to the ground about anyone with a healing touch (he naturally does background checks, he is the Kingpin for a reason).

Is possible for team-ups (I'm starting to give all of zero fucks about some of the Ultimate Spider-Man episodes because bad writing + no fun = I can fucking do better than this), if or when the gang war story comes to pass.

Shhh, it coming up soon (and who said the good doctor had Synth-Venom?).