Venom recovered fairly quickly from the sucker punch that sent him slamming into a tree. At least, he liked to think he did. Truthfully he had no idea how long it took him to shake off the concussion that was still rippling through his symbiote when managed to pull himself upright, amidst the shards of broken bark embedded into his back.
'Gonna feel that in the morning… if we survive that long.' Venom snarled as symbiote oozed into the wounds in Eddie's skin, forcing out the shrapnel as they healed over, and grabbed a hefty branch to shield himself from the black claws that came ripping through it a second later.
"Not that I'm not happy t'see ya', Dad," Carnage grunted as he tossed the broken halves of wood behind him. "It's just usually the parents don't come along for the honeymoon." An axe-head weighed down his left hand as it came crashing towards Venom's head. He wrenched his neck away, but the red blade managed to shear away some symbiote globs that lagged behind the skull they tried to protect. Symby gritted her teeth through Eddie's, shielding him from her own pain while pulling him to safety. Black tendrils threw up more shredded chunks of tree bark as shields that were shattered in seconds by the ever-changing armament that Carnage was throwing against them. Axes, knives, spears, even what looked like a harpoon attached to a thick red cord all came firing at Venom as he was forced to scramble backwards in defense mode. With a particularly hard throw of an entire stump yanked out of the ground by the roots, he managed to put enough distance between himself and Carnage that he could take a few seconds worth of cover up in the frozen canopy.
He squatted on the widest branch of the thickest tree he could find, with Symby forcing his breathing still while she rippled against all the debris sticking to her. And as Venom sat there, waiting for Carnage's approach, it very quickly occurred to him that he didn't actually have a plan for dealing with him. In the heat of the moment, so desperate to finally get out and do something before he got leashed like a dog again, he'd kinda thought that he could just crush his skull and be done with it. But it had been so long since Venom- not Eddie in another symbiote and not Symby in another host, the original undiluted Venom- had faced Carnage down that he'd completely forgotten what the usual strategy was. Usually with symbiotes only two things were guaranteed to cause enough pain to disable them; fire, and sonics. Carnage, however, had managed to endure fire before. So the only surefire way to weaken him would be sonics, and Venom had no idea where the hell to get his hands on anything like that while stuck in a magic snow globe in Central Park.
"Red has been planning this for a long time," Symby said, the first words spoken since she and Eddie went so eagerly running out to their deaths. "She's made sure there's nothing around here that can harm her."
'Is she vulnerable?' Eddie asked silently, already knowing what the answer would be.
"Right now… no. She's as strong as I've ever seen her."
Of course she was. Just as Eddie had felt invincible after he reunited with Symby, Cletus and Red were now at the peak of their strength, and their brutality. They had a lot of kills to catch up on, and they were hoping to start with Venom. Until he figured out another way or unless one of the others who were dumb enough to come here tonight happened to be carrying high-frequency sound emitters for the explicit purpose of aiming them at an alien psycho's face, all Venom could do was keep him busy, maybe tire him out.
And, above all, keep him away from Felicia.
Though... where was she? Venom tried to scan the clearing for any sign of her, looking towards where he was sure he was punched away from for any wisp of white hair in the wind, but the second he took his eyes off the undergrowth below was the same second that Carnage caught up to him.
"No time for hide 'n seek, Dad!" With a red sinuous rope lashed around Venom's ankle, Carnage yanked him out of the tree, letting every other branch whip at him on the way down. Sharp edges tore holes through Symby faster than she could repair them, and they came too fast for her to push them out of the way. When Venom hit the ground, he couldn't even tell which way was up or down. All he knew was that he was staring up at black, at black night… sky?
He blinked to be sure, but Symby recognised the patterns of the stars instantly. The bottomless mist that had obscured them was gone, and so too was the icy cold that it encased. Whatever magic Hood had put over the place was fleeing, just like all his terrified goons. Venom only caught a glimpse of them all piling on top of each other, desperate to get the hell out of this hell, before Carnage hooked claws into his chest and hauled him up like he weighed less than his conscience.
"Gotta say, pops, ya' ain't really givin' me much of a challenge here." Carnage held him at a distance, digging black thorns into his throat as the red tendrils swarmed around his neck. "What's the matter? You and Mom gettin' a divorce or somethin'?"
Venom was only half listening to his spawn. He could hear Carnage laughing at his own joke, the slimy pink coating of his mouth glistening as his jaw hung open and moved like a stuttering piston. Then the jaw was clamped closed and he frowned through jagged black peaks, though the laughter hadn't stopped.
"What's so funny?"
Venom wheezed through the barbed wire still choking him, and only then realised he'd been laughing too. "We once said we'd feel bad about beating up a guy without legs," he answered. "We were wrong."
Carnage's left eye engorged, the replacement for raising an eyebrow since all of his face was hidden beneath a congealed red crust, and on his right Venom lashed out with a tendril from behind. The tendril didn't get far before being caught in Carnage's grip, the blackness slipping fluidly back between his fingers in contrast to the solid red that had built claws to slice them apart. Venom hadn't expected the attack to hit, though. He was just expecting it to be a good distraction, and it was. Carnage was so occupied with watching Symby retreat that he never saw the fist that came cracking against the side of his head, a bulbous mass of black that sent him rolling back across the ground in a heap of squirming red. The noose around Venom's neck loosened, and he tore the rest of it away with his other hand. The red cords flaked away and crumbled to dust around the crush of Venom's fist, and the symbiote around Carnage seemed to flinch from the abuse. Not Cletus, though. Cletus, like Eddie through Symby, was still grinning through Red's teeth. While his head was bowed, Venom took the chance to camouflage himself against the dark. It wasn't so much like going invisible, more like moulding himself to the shadows around him, but with how dark the sky above was he might as well have been invisible. Carnage, having yanked himself upright, didn't seem to mind that his opponent had seemingly disappeared. He'd know Venom was still nearby anyway. Red would tell him how close she could sense him.
"That's more like it, Dad!" He spat something on the ground that lay between them both, and pulled out a thin blade between each finger on one hand. "C'mon, let's see who loses their eyes first!"
Standing still and wreathed in the shadows, Venom was almost eager to take him up on that offer, knowing that as long as Carnage was preoccupied with brutalising the biggest target he could find he at least wouldn't be looking for anyone else. And, of course, blinding the fucker was appealing in its own way. But he was far from the only one there who had some grudges to take out on Carnage.
"Kasadyyyyyyy!"
The screech came from somewhere above. Venom's head snapped towards it, heedless of how he'd just given away his position by the rushed movement. But Carnage was just as curious to see who the new arrival was.
Well, not a new arrival, just an old one getting upset that no one was paying attention to him.
"Ah fuck me, are you still here?!" Carnage was not impressed by the sight of Norman on his goblin glider, hovering twenty feet off the ground and burning a hole near the sky with its jets. Venom was just grateful for the chance to slip away for real and try to come up with a less suicidal plan.
"Hand over the symbiote, Cletus," Norman bellowed over the distance and the roar of his glider, "and I just might let you leave here with the rest of your limbs still attached to you!" With so much confidence jammed into him he almost made Venom forget that he'd been cowering and crawling for his life just a few minutes ago.
...A few minutes? Was that really all it was? Christ, it felt like he'd been around Carnage for at least an hour. Then again, Cletus was the kind of guy to have that effect on anyone who managed to survive being around him for longer than a minute. Maybe the temporal distortion would fix itself once Venom got himself way the hell away. He slipped behind Carnage, slow enough to not set off Red's senses, creating distance so he could build momentum for an ambush while he was distracted.
"Aw, you want her that bad, Ozzie?" Carnage was yelling back at Osborn. "Well, you'll have to do better than that to impress her. C'mon, Casanova, get down here and fight like a man!" He had two wide scythes on his hands, though neither of them were long enough to reach up to the glider. Maybe, in a rare moment of clarity from Cletus through the veil of his bloodlust, he was so paranoid of Red being stolen again that he didn't want to risk touching anything goblin-related.
"You really think I'm dumb enough to give up my one advantage like that?" Norman laughed at Cletus' lazy gambit. "I don't fucking think so!"
"Then I ain't even gonna bother killin' you, ya' fucking pussy!"
So it was going to be one of those stalemates, where both ends were too proud to back down and too cowardly to charge in. Cletus would be trying to intentionally enrage Osborn enough to force him to attack first, while at the same time Osborn would be driving against Cletus' impatience, knowing he couldn't just fling bombs down at him for fear of destroying the symbiote. Both creatures were so stubborn that Venom had plenty of time to work out a plan of attack, and once he was sure he was far enough into the trees that neither of them would know he was there-
"Both of you still alive, huh?"
He promptly almost jumped right out of his symbiote, flinching away from the sudden whisper beside him even though he recognised it as Felicia's. Her eyes twinkled from more than just the lenses in them, and her hair was not nearly as unkempt as it should have been. Venom resisted the urge to brush his claws through it, just to hold her close. There'd be time for that later- at least, he hoped there'd be.
"What did we miss?"
"Hood started fighting back against Nisanti while you and Cletus were busy tearing through the forest. He got knocked out pretty quickly, so I swiped these off of him." Felicia held out her hand like it was a pedestal, just as Norman's shrieks reached a new crescendo.
"I will give you ten seconds to willingly surrender that symbiote, you piece of shit hillbilly hick, before I fucking carpet bomb you into-!"
"Oooooh, threats from the guy floating up so high so no-one can see him piss himself! 'Scuse me while I look for a fuck to give!"
Venom blocked out the two of them and studied Felicia's palm. It took him a moment to recognise what the sharp, thin rocks were supposed to be, even when a glow ebbed out from them all. At first he thought it was just light reflected from Felicia's eyes but, no, the glow was from within the stones. The same glow that was now within Cletus' chest.
"As well as bringing back the dead, they also seem to give Hood his magic somehow," Felicia revealed, before depositing them back in the safety of her suit. "No stones, no magic, no shield, and nothing to stop Norman from bringing in his toys or everyone from running for the exit."
Felicia was looking past Venom, and when he followed her gaze he saw that that was exactly what everyone was doing, all of them bursting towards the direction they'd both entered from. But there were so many pressed together amidst the trees, with the remnants of Hood's loyal retinue trying to block the way out for everyone else, that hardly any of them could actually get out. Everyone was too afraid of being targeted by Norman or Carnage that they didn't dare separate from the crush of people to try and leave from another direction.
Well, almost everyone. The one familiar guy pushing himself to the back was just more stupid than afraid.
"HEY, OSBITCH!" Boomerang, with no Shocker in sight to try and hold him back, marched out wielding his signature weapon like it was a mast for a battle flag. "Consider this my resignation!"
Though Venom felt bad for the guy painting a bullseye for himself right on his boomerang-face (although he was sure the real Bullseye was a lot less pathetic than him), at least he could rest easy knowing that his own quip wasn't the lamest sounding one uttered that night. Boomerang threw his namesake with all his strength, drawing his throwing arm across his chest and letting loose so the curve went flying straight towards Osborn still hovering above...
And missed him entirely. Osborn watched the boomerang go sailing whole inches past him with complete and utter apathy, and Carnage actually winced on Boomerang's behalf for such an awkward and utter failing.
"Are ya' done yet, Crocodile Dundee?" he asked, while Boomerang's knees started to vibrate together like he was an insect trying to take off. "Cause if that's all ya' got for show 'n tell, I think it's my turn now." Carnage's scythes might have been too short to reach Norman, but they were more than long enough to span the distance between himself and the frozen soon-to-be-dead man praying silently in front of him. He took his time in lowering the blade to Boomerang, letting him believe he could still run away and, at the same time, daring him to do so. Venom bristled, flicking his attention to the other dead body still lying on the grass, ice melting from it to bloat its white skin. One had already died tonight because he hadn't done anything, because he couldn't do anything about it. Even if Boomerang was a criminal, he wasn't anywhere near the league of the two monsters staring him down. That was why he was so terrified that he couldn't move, and that was why he didn't deserve to die.
Felicia delayed his heroics though, with just four simple words pushed out in a sigh.
"Bad aim. How unlucky."
Just as she said it and as the twinkle in her eye faded once again, she was proven both wrong and right at the same time. It was unlucky, but it wasn't bad aim. Carnage, Norman and even Boomerang himself seemed to have forgotten what made a boomerang what it was, and they remembered it just then; the fact that it always came flying back to where it came from. And the return arc of this one send it crashing not through Osborn's skull, but a little lower down. The momentum it had picked up sent the curve of metal crashing right through the base of the glider Osborn was standing on, not quite shearing it in two but spitting the casing so severely that Norman toppled off before the jets died, restarted, kept going long enough to send the craft spiralling, wobbling so close to the traffic-jammed treeline that it knocked an entire line of desperate people out of the way, then sputtered and died again within seconds that saw the glider battering through the air in a cloud of thick smoke. It finally landed with a rending crunch of metal and God-knows what else it was made of on the other side of the clearing, and the smoke sent a signal billowing into the sky.
Despite the multitude of goblin bombs and tanks of volatile fuel onboard the vessel, the crash site miraculously hadn't exploded. In fact, it faired a lot better than Osborn himself.
He had hit the ground legs-first, and if his fall had been just a few inches more to the left or right he might have found it broken by a thick tangle of plant growth. Unfortunately, it wasn't, and the solid grass broke both legs as soon as it greeted them.
The entire spectacle had taken a maximum of six seconds from start to finish, and that was about how long it took for Venom to realise why Felicia looked even more proud of herself than usual.
"You did not make all that happen."
"Oh, I did," she assured him through a grin that dared him to doubt her.
"How?!"
"Simple. Bad luck for Boomerang to make him miss the first time, then I just shifted it over to Norman so it hit him the second time."
Venom doubted it was simple at all, even though Felicia barely looked out of breath. "What about the glider so conveniently clearing an escape route for everyone else? That luck have anything to do with you?"
"Of course," she grinned. "When I give someone bad luck, it takes a lot of effort depending on how unlikely they are to screw up. But if I give it to a random person in a whole group of people," she gestured to the thinning backlog of people finally able to get out with the path cleared of the worst of them by the glider, "it's a lot easier to make crazy shit happen. And if that 'random person' happens to be a guy who thinks a boomerang makes a good weapon, then it takes even less effort to make him fuck up."
Venom was more than impressed. He was absolutely certain that she was bullshitting him- not because he didn't believe that she was fully capable of making crazy shit happen, but because this was Felicia and that was just a habit of hers. "And just how the hell does that work?"
She shrugged. "Cause the larger a group of people, the more likely it is that someone in it is gonna fuck up somehow. It's basic statistics, Eddie."
In a distant part of Eddie's brain that wasn't concerned with surviving the night ahead or being so madly in love with her, he knew that what Felicia was saying made sense. He thought he knew. He maybe thought he knew.
"If you say so…" This was why she had the probability powers, and he had the alien symbiote to do half the thinking for him. Could be worse. In Cletus' case, the symbiote had to do all the thinking.
"Fuckin' typical." Carnage had abandoned tormenting Boomerang, who did the smartest thing he'd done all night and took the chance to disappear, in favour of circling Norman like a vulture around a carcass. "The one guy I threaten to tear legs off'a, and he goes and gets 'em both broken! 'If I can't use 'em, then no one can'. That's just real fuckin' immature, Ozzie!" He took out his frustration on Norman's twisted left kneecap, kicking it so hard where it shouldn't have been bending that his clawed feet hamstringed him, catching on the thick tendons and ripping them right out from his skin. The red muscle that pulsed in time with Norman's agonised screams matched Carnage's skin so well that they just looked like fresh tendrils trailing behind him when he turned his back on his disappointing target.
"Guess I'll just haf'ta pick up someone else…" He seemed to have completely forgotten about Boomerang, instead taking his pick from the terrified people still lingering, nursing wounds from being trampled or expecting far worse waiting for them beyond the trees. As if anything could be worse than what was facing them now.
"Let's see…" Carnage made a show of choosing his next victim, stretching out the moment so he could see which one looked most terrified, which one would be the most fun to pull apart. "Eenie, meanie, miney... hey, wait." He cut himself off just as his claw landed in the direction of a guy curled up in a foetal position, and spun round so fast that his heavy jaw almost wobbled behind the rest of his face as it came flying towards where Venom was hiding. "Where the hell d'ya get to now, Dad?!"
Venom growled in challenge, but he wasn't quite ready to face him again. Mostly because he'd just noticed that Norman wasn't crawling away while he still had tendons left in his skin. Despite the excruciating pain, despite how he literally dragged his useless leg behind him as it replaced ice with blood pumping all over the grass, the ruined musculature glistening like his eyes filled with tears of agony, he was crawling towards Carnage.
With or without a symbiote in his head, he really was completely fucking insane. But before he could prove it to himself by latching onto Carnage's razor-bristling ankle, the click of two guns cocking interrupted his suicidal efforts.
"That's enough, you two." The Hood had woken from his demon nap, his cloak now abandoned to unveil a lanky, gawkish young man lurking beneath it, struggling to breathe through the many holes pervading his stained suit. Whatever was left of the Hood's facade was now completely dissolved. He was Parker (though, not the one Venom was so used to hating), and he was pissed. With how close Carnage and Osborn were together, he probably could have hit them both with just one bullet. He kept two trained on them just in case.
"It's been fun," Parker said after a swallowed gasp. "Real educational, too… but I think I'm about ready to head home. The cleanup in the morning is gonna be a nightmare, especially since neither of you'll be around to help out…"
Venom watched Parker do his best to maintain the composure of a dangerous man pushed to the brink, at the risk of slipping into that of an exhausted man about to completely break down, with as much disbelief as Carnage and Osborn. A more naive creature might have hoped that the three of them would just happily kill each other and save him all the work. But this was a barely thirty year old fairytale cosplayer threatening two of the most dangerous criminals ever to hit New York, with guns. Guns. As if the mere existence of superpowers didn't immediately make the second amendment completely useless to everyone who didn't have them. What was it with almost everyone trying so hard to die tonight?! It wasn't bad luck or magic or alien compulsion or fucked-up chemicals in the brain or anything like that, this was just collective and infectious stupidity- and Venom felt like he was patient zero.
Felicia was looking at him, and at first he thought she was waiting for him to make the first move before any of the other three did. But he recognised that look. She knew he was wondering how the hell he got into this shit, and she was agreeing with him. Even though she was the one who got him into it.
She was so lucky that she was worth it.
A harsh sound grated out from the standoff, tearing one trio away from each other to look towards the other. It wasn't a gunshot, but they were still almost expecting one. None of the three men had moved, though Norman looked like he was convulsing on the ground. Someone was laughing and, most shockingly, it wasn't Carnage.
"Hey, asshole!" Carnage grabbed the back of Norman's neck, clawing right into the skin to dangle him like a ragdoll with his wrecked leg looking like it was barely hanging on to its bones. "You already stole my symbiote, now you tryin'a steal my laugh? I'll get a lawsuit stuck up your ass so far the fine print'll be at the back of your Goddamn throat!" He ignored Parker shifting the aim of his left gun so both of them were now trained on Carnage's head, knowing that he wouldn't fire them even if they'd be of any use. Norman giggled through bubbles of blood in his throat, coughing out thick clots that blended in with the rest of Carnage's skeleton as they splattered over him.
"You… didn't think I only had one glider, did you?" Norman asked, weakly holding something up in a trembling hand. It had a single red light blinking steadily between his fingers, only blinking twice before the second glider heeded the homing beacon and came whistling through the trees like an arrow. It was even bigger than the first, glinting with razor-line edges on every ridge of each wing. It was shrieking by itself, heavy engines and furious jets belching out thrust and coolant whistling desperately through the plating to keep it all together under its own ferocious power.
It was, however, not empty.
"Hood you fucking worthless lying tablecloth-wearing piece of shit! Didn't even fucking wait for me to show up! Think you can skin me outta my half of the score?!"
The sight of the screaming, frenzied woman standing atop the glider, looking like she was literally on fire, answered the unasked question of what Typhoid Mary had done with herself since Felicia and Venom had left her knocked out in the rain. She'd somehow hijacked Norman's ride on her way to come and chew out Parker, and was now setting every tree in her way alight with the globes of fire balanced in her palms. The glider was heading for Norman and Carnage, following the call of the beacon still clutched in Norman's hand, but Mary jumped off before it collided to land feet-first on top of Parker. He broke her fall and shattered the rest of himself against the ground, only managing to avoid the plume of fire that burst towards him from her hands by rolling head-over-heels away from her. The glider had smashed into its target, catching both Carnage and Norman on each wing and carrying them into the trees ahead. A red tendril desperately reached out from the speeding razor to latch onto something solid and pull Carnage free of the trap, but Norman had no such escape. As Carnage slingshotted himself to safety, Venom was still trying to comprehend what had just happened.
"What the hell is she doing here for?" he asked to no one, with only one person around to offer an answer.
"What's good luck for us must be bad luck for someone else here." Felicia tugged on his shoulder, pulling him away from the scene. "Leave her to deal with Hood for us. We can go find Norman and…" She trailed off as she watched Mary start to summon an inferno inches from her own face, so that the flames filled her eyes. "Oh, shit."
"What?" Venom took a step closer to see what she was seeing, but Felicia pulled him back again.
"That's not Typhoid Mary, Eddie," she said slowly, breathing deeply despite the ashes in the air. "That's Bloody Mary. Killing Hood will just be the start for her."
Felicia spoke as someone with experience of what this Mary was capable of. She'd never described any of that to Venom, but… he had a very good idea of what it involved. She looked at Mary like how he looked at Carnage, or Scream, or any of the other animals he'd played a part in unleashing upon the world.
Venom didn't a give a shit if someone like Parker (no matter which one it was) lived or died, but if they just left Mary to wipe him out then she'd quickly move onto anyone else in her way...just like Carnage, she'd set out to massacre the whole city. And, unlike Carnage, she could just burn it all to the ground without even having to move.
"Dammit..." He stepped forward again, and Felicia didn't stop him this time. He just hoped she wasn't following as he marched towards the pyre that was flaring around Parker and Mary. He and anyone else with a symbiote were the last people on the planet able to match someone who could start fires with her mind, he knew that. But he wasn't going to fight her. He was just going to be bait for someone who would.
Out of the frying pan, into the literal fire. Eddie hated cliches, especially when they were a perfect fit. But he only felt a fraction of Symby's discomfort as she recoiled harshly from the heat,
"Hey, Cletus! Get your ass out here! We're not finished with you!" No need to be subtle about it. The sooner he got noticed, the sooner he could drag Carnage back out into the spotlight, the sooner he could put him down… and the sooner he could get himself out of the oven roaring around him.
Mary's head whipped up, singed strands of hair still glowing around her while she burned a handprint into Parker's cheek with her smoldering fist, with her other hand fusing one of his guns into a lump of molten steel around her fingers. She wasn't any happier to see Venom again than she was her former boss.
"YOU AGAIN, YOU FUCKER!" Mary launched Parker away from her with a concussive force, soaking up the heat all around her to propel it towards her new victim-
"I saw him first, toots!" But Carnage was ready before her. He snapped out of his refuge in the shadows and threw her aside with as much ease as she had thrown Parker with, heedless to how his claws burned against her face when they pushed it down and out of the way. A barbed tendril was around her waist, and it flung her far enough away that he wouldn't be interrupted again for a while, literally throwing Venom's entire plan out the window as well. If Carnage could even feel his red skin bubbling between his fingers as Mary's furious pyromancy sparked a last-ditch attack against her manhandler before she was out of range, he was too busy enjoying the thought of Venom's guts being unrolled out like a rug to give it much mind.
"Was startin' to get worried, pops... thinkin' you bailed on the family reunion-!"
Venom was so sick of hearing Carnage's constant sneer that he didn't even let him finish. He used his most obvious advantage, crashing into Carnage so that his own immense size would knock him down. His charge was blind and furious, its only goal to drive as much momentum through Carnage and into Cletus over as short a distance as possible. As soon as solid ground met them both, Venom's punches rained down on Carnage's chest and gaping jaw and pulsing white eyes that seemed to bleed their own black outlines. Every fist that hit his red skin was met with a hundred thin needles trying to pierce Venom's knuckles, but he hardly felt them. His fists only lingered long enough against him to keep Carnage pinned down, to drive as much pain as possible through the symbiote's shell to the animal encased within it. Pain had rarely stopped Cletus before or even managed to hinder him, but it was all that Venom could try to do.
It almost seemed to be working. Carnage was so dazed by the constant hits that all he could do was react to them, unable to lash back or dodge. He tried to sink his teeth into Venom's fist when it came for his jaw, but it just crashed right through them so that the broken fangs now embedded in Symby were like barbs on brass knuckles.
Then, slowly as he continued his assault, Venom noticed there was a delay in his moves. That it was taking more and more force to deliver each punch with the same amount of power. Constriction. Something trying to restrain his arms, something tight around his ribs and chest and neck, like Symby was trying to strangle his whole body.
No, not Symby. Venom took his eyes off Carnage for a second, and found a mesh of red crawling all over him. When he returned his glare, trying to find where the swarm was coming from on Carnage, he only now realised that Carnage's legs were gone. And he quickly realised where they were, even before he looked back over his shoulder.
Carnage had been expecting the tackle, and had taken the precaution of rooting himself to the ground with thick jagged claws embedded in the dirt beneath his feet. A benefit of having a symbiote for legs… that was quickly made void by the fact that enough strength could simply rip the hollow legs away from the torso they were tethered to. And Venom was almost entirely strength.
Almost unstoppable force, meet almost immovable object. He'd torn Carnage completely free from his lower half, carrying his torso to the ground while his legs were left behind. And now he found himself wrapped in a tangle of symbiote strings that stretched out from the abandoned limbs like red and black bubblegum. They easily snapped when Venom flexed against them, but there were so many around him that the broken strands simply joined onto other fragments, until Venom felt like he was trapped in a squirming net.
That would have been bad enough if they weren't also pulling the disembodied legs over, and Venom had turned around just in time to catch the spur of Carnage's heel across his face, almost tearing away Symby's mouth. The snarling mass of teeth and tongue barely clung to the foundation of Eddie's jaw, and when Symby managed to re-secure herself she was being torn apart everywhere else by vicious kicks to the back of Venom's head, shoulders, everywhere that wasn't already being attacked by Carnage's talons that burrowed into Venom so he was lifted off the ground when Venom reared backwards. Carnage's punches weren't as blunt and hard as Venom's, but they didn't need to be. They could gouge and slice and slash, taking away whole chunks of symbiote with every strike, destroying Symby faster than she could repair herself. She was spitting, hissing, shrieking Klyntar curses in Eddie's ears, and he was certain that Red was doing the same as she decimated her mother. Venom might have still been able to overpower him, if he was able to break free of the thick red ropes entrapping him. And with so many holes ripped in his skin, it was only a matter of time before they'd be prying Symby off of Eddie. She was the only thing stopping him from being slaughtered in seconds by the razor-sharp blades coming from all sides, but she was so overwhelmed by the assault that she couldn't fight them off. Red would be taunting her, distracting her, goading her into exhausting herself until her host was completely exposed.
Eddie wasn't going to wait for that to happen. He gave Symby a single command, one that she wouldn't ignore even in the frenzy of agony she was enduring. There was hesitation, but she obeyed and peeled back from his right arm. The Carnage tendrils wrapped tight around it did not stay around the limb, instead they followed Symby's retreat to not give her a moment's peace. Just what Eddie had hoped would happen, and what Carnage hadn't prepared for. There was nothing holding back Eddie's bare fist from slamming into Carnage's jaw with so much force that he was launched backwards through the air, every single cord attaching him to Venom sheared away by the momentum. Then he slammed his whole body back, crushing the tendrils still lodged in the edges of his muscles into red dust. Now that they weren't attached to their host, there was nothing to keep them solid for more than a few seconds. The legs were still feebly kicking at Venom even as they flaked away, and all it took was a grab at the ankles for them to crumble apart.
"I was gettin' bored of those ones anyway…" Venom snapped to his feet, finding Carnage standing before him with a brand new pair of legs solidifying, bolstering, bristling with thousands of spikes. Red had realised what she gotten wrong, and had made many improvements this time around. Carnage was grinning proudly for both her and Cletus. "Go ahead, Dad! Take your best shot! Anythin' you break, I'm just gonna bring back even bet-"
Carnage choked, and it sounded like a bang followed by a squelch. Something fell out of him, a mass of goo that thumped wetly onto the ground. It hadn't come from his mouth, which was no longer grinning. It was from the palm-sized hole that had appeared in his chest, a tunnel carved right through him, and the lump was around whatever had caused it. Through that hole, Venom saw Felicia standing with Parker's surviving gun in her hands.
Whether or not he realised that the red on the ground had just came out of him, Carnage said nothing. Even though Venom had realised in seconds, it took him much longer than that to speak.
"Felicia, what are you-?!"
"The stone, Eddie," she interrupted firmly. "The stone in his chest that brought him back. I got rid of it." She threw the gun aside, confident that she didn't need it anymore just as Carnage fell to his newly-created knees. His arm reached out, limply, grasping for the chunk of himself that had been cut free. White eyes going blind. Saliva hanging down his slack mouth. Venom thought he saw his body start to corrode. Carnage was dying. Carnage, or Red, or Cletus, or maybe both, they were actually dying.
Felicia had just destroyed one of the most dangerous beings in the galaxy, the source of over half of Eddie's nightmares.
That was what he'd been stupid enough to believe for about five seconds. What he'd thought was the symbiote peeling away from its fading host was actually the hook of a harpoon lashing out of Carnage's back, aiming right for Felicia. She dodged so that it grazed rather than impaled her, but the cord it was attached to snapped taut as the hook circled around her ankle, yanking her off her feet and towards Carnage as he whirled round on her. Venom was still in the middle of his five seconds of hope, managing to tear himself free of them only when he saw Felicia's hair stream past her as a white flag of surrender.
"Bad move, bitch." Carnage hissed black oil in her face, not looking away as he sent out a spray of red knives from his hand towards Venom. But the hail of blades didn't even slow Venom down; he locked his arm around Carnage's neck, snapping the harpoon line and dragging him away from Felicia even as Carnage made barbs shoot out from his shoulders and arms. Eventually Venom had to throw him aside with the rest of strength, blood trickling from all over his chest as he bellowed.
"Get away from here, Felicia!" He couldn't fight and worry about her at the same time. He couldn't focus on destroying Carnage if every second he spent still alive was another second that he could lose her in. Felicia was tough, resourceful, and possibly the only human on the planet that he could trust. But having her anywhere near Carnage was a risk he refused to take.
She wasn't stupid, she should have known that she didn't stand a chance against him. He hardly stood a chance as it was. But she wasn't running. She freed her ankle and crawled over to the dead goo she'd blasted out of Carnage's chest, slicing her claws through it until she found the one solid thing within it. Not the stone that she'd been expecting, but the bullet casing.
"The stone's not here," she said numbly. "His body's absorbed it..."
"It doesn't matter, Felicia! We'll take care of him, just get out of here!" Venom's last plea ended in a splutter as Carnage hefted him up over his head, claws lodged deep into either side of his spine. Carnage was physically half the size that Venom was, but that only made everyone forget that he was actually far stronger than him. He probably could have torn Venom in half, broke his back in two with just enough power from his arms. Instead he tossed Venom aside, so there was nothing in the way between him and Felicia.
"Y'know, bitch, you look a lil' familiar… yeah, I'm sure I killed ya' once before." Venom was still rolling across the ground when he heard Carnage muse so dangerously to himself. "Oh, wait… ohhoho, I remember now!"
Venom righted himself with thick black tentacles that flung him back towards Carnage, but his throat was caught in a cage of claws before he reached the madman. Carnage's eyes were huge, bemused as they took in Venom hanging once again so helplessly from his talons. "You got yourself a girlfriend that ain't goo at last, have ya', Dad? Looks like we both got a thing for black and white, amirite?"
Venom was trying to break free, but Felicia was freezing him up. She was looking frantically for the gun she'd thrown away, but gave up the search in seconds and resorted to using a grappling hook to attack Carnage. It sailed over his shoulder, and he caught the cord to yank on it and pull Felicia back over to him.
"Guess that makes you my stepmom, huh?" he announced, neglecting Venom to instead terrorise Felicia with his squirming glare. "Hey, New Mom, y'know what I did to my last one?"
Felicia didn't answer. She only winced when Carnage grabbed her hair, then her wrist; slicing through the gloves and grappling mechanism hidden in the fur with the lightest of pressure.
"GET YOUR FUCKING HAND OFF HER!" At the very real risk of tearing out his own jugular, Venom wrenched Carnage's claws away from his throat and delivered a devastating punch as he dropped to the ground. Carnage stumbled back, thankfully releasing Felicia. She cradled her shattered wrist, white glove stained red with her own blood, chewing her lip to stop herself screaming. Venom only saw her pain for a second, and it was enough to keep him driving against Carnage for… he didn't know how long. His knuckles went numb as they battered him, his throat hoarse more from his endless snarls than the bruises around it, his muscles burning with all the effort he put into channeling all his strength through them, distilling his fury into focus towards the single goal of exterminating Carnage once and for all so he could have one night's sleep without waking up in cold sweat.
Through the ruins of his teeth, Carnage just laughed.
"Does... real Mom know you're cheatin' on her, Dad? Tsk tsk. Bad parenting. Really, you should be ashamed of yourself. What kind of example are you setting for me?"
He wouldn't shut up. Even when he pulled the hole through his chest even wider, even when he clawed the edges of his eyes apart, even when he trapped his tongue in his jaw and sliced it off at the root, he wouldn't shut up. He wouldn't die.
Why wouldn't he just fucking die?!
"Eddie…" Symby was going to tell him to let go. She was going to tell him that he was wasting his time. He didn't want to hear it. Even if she was right, especially if she was right, he didn't want to hear it.
"Hey, Dad… is it just me losin' consciousness... or is it gettin' kinda hot in here?"
And he wanted to hear Carnage even less. He drowned out every voice with the heavy thud and squish of fists against decaying alien flesh, of his own frustration boiling over in his head and the crackle of sparks all around him-
...Sparks? His attack faltered when he noticed them; everywhere in the air, floating, stinging when they touched him. Twisting yellow that made him flinch away.
Over the roar of heat erupting all around him, he finally heard what Symby had been trying to warn him about.
"Eddie! The fire!"
There was no the fire. Everything was fire. The trees, or what was left of them after the battles they'd endured that night, were now alight as smoldering beacons, pouring so much smoke into the sky that Venom almost thought that the Hood had trapped him in another shield somehow. But this was the opposite of the icy morgue that Hood had crafted. This was a furnace, and it was baking Symby alive all around him. She was squealing in pain, holding back shrieks, though only one sound rose higher than the deadly rumble of the fire devouring everything in its path.
"TRY AND FUCKIN' TOUCH ME AGAIN, ASSHOLE! SEE WHAT FUCKIN' HAPPENS!" Bloody Mary had returned to wreak her revenge, utterly unphased by the inferno she'd trapped herself in. When she kicked Venom off of Carnage, her foot sloughed right through Symby and she dribbled off of Eddie like melting ice cream as he toppled over. He didn't watch what Mary was doing, didn't even look to see if Carnage was as debilitated as he was. Symby was trying to pull air into Eddie's lungs, but it was all black and charred and he spluttered it back up. He was drenched, and he couldn't tell what was sweat and what was residue from Symby trying to keep herself together.
He was the one dying this time. The fire, God, he couldn't look anywhere without seeing it. The flames were just inches away from him, licking out to make him flinch away into another roaring wall, a literal circle of fire that kept coming in closer and closer…
'You're not gonna die… we're not gonna die… fucking hell, don't just lie here, do something!' Venom's mind was no more. Now it was only Eddie thinking, pleading with himself. Push down the panic. Ignore the heat, even as it's killing you. Try not to think of where the hell Felicia was in all of this.
...Fuck, too late. He coughed again, gritting his teeth as he wiped a sheen of sweat from his forehead. Symbiote remnants clung to his skin, and the back of his hand looked like black butter. He was losing more and more of himself with every second spent in the oven. He had to get out, he had to think, and he thought…
He thought he recognised this part of the Park, even with the greenery engulfed in flame. There was a pond nearby… to the east. Or was it the south? Fuck, he couldn't even tell which way was which… Symby was screaming. Melting. Trying so hard to stay on him. He was holding onto pieces of her even as she slipped through his fingers. Through the pain, she was somehow able to speak.
"Jump east, Eddie! I'll get you through it!"
'Symby, it's… it's a wall of fire. It'll kill you-!"
"That doesn't matter. Just do it!"
Even though she was patchwork and bubbling and in complete agony, she was pulling him towards the east. If this was her last request, she made it clear that she'd make it an order if she needed to.
It was insane and suicidal and the only option left open to him, so Eddie knew he wouldn't deny her. But if he was going to risk losing her… he'd drag someone else through hell with him.
He found Carnage working his claws through Mary's arm, so intent on his work that he didn't see him coming from behind to grab him. Red was melting just as Symby was, and she splattered against Venom's chest as he pulled Carnage close, red remnants gluing him there as Venom ran across what little ground was left, towards the waiting inferno and then… right through the blaze.
Eddie felt only a fraction of Symby's pain, and he almost blacked out. He felt the fire on his skin, charring right through to his bones, singeing his hair and as Symby peeled away like a cocoon dumping him into acid. The heat alone made him feel like he was going to explode as his blood boiled away, and the back of his throat was cooked as he screamed.
At least he was right about the pond on the other side. The fall into the water, a freezing slap that coursed through his entire body, almost stopped his heart. He was only sure it was still beating when he felt that the only thing left burning was his lungs floating uselessly in the cavern of his chest. His arms were empty, flailing wildly in the wet dark, either dragging him down into his death or pulling him up towards the surface.
It turned out to be the latter, and Eddie didn't know if he was glad about that. His body forced him to gulp down air even as his lungs seized and spasmed from the ash still coating them, as the burned and blistered skin on his chest cracked open with each desperate breath. He was blind from the water streaming down his face, though he didn't really want to be seeing anything. Everything felt so heavy. Everything hurt. Everything was… so empty.
'Symby…?'
He wasn't shocked when she didn't answer. He couldn't feel her. He couldn't hear her scolding him or lecturing him or praising or comforting or her screams of pain. All he could hear was…
Laughter.
Someone laughing above him, dragging him to the shore.
Eddie realised that he hadn't pulled himself free of the pond.
"Looks like it's two against one… my favourite kind'a odds."
When Eddie saw Carnage looming over him, he wasn't burned. He wasn't covered in patches of exposed blackened skin. He wasn't even coughing from the smoke. He was completely unscathed, and his foot drove daggers through Eddie's spine as it came crashing down onto his back, driving him down into the cold mud.
"Really, I don't blame Mom for ditchin' you. Probably gone back to one of her other boyfriends. Y'know why, Brock?"
Eddie wheezed. He wasn't trying to speak, but he couldn't stop it as the spurs from Carnage's foot pressed down and pierced through his lungs. He could feel himself deflating. Light-headed already, black spots swimming in his eyes. For less than a second he thought they were traces of Symby, but they didn't speak to him. They taunted him for still being conscious, and multiplied when Carnage snared a fistful of his hair to yank his head up. Blood was already oozing down his forehead.
"Cause you ain't givin' her what she needs," Carnage hissed in his ear, still grinding his foot down on his spine, forcing him to hear his own bones cracking. "You know it, too. You look at me 'n Red and you think, Venom ain't like them. Venom can be different. I can make this alien fit in on a planet she can't stand being on any more than I can. I can force her to behave, and she'll go ahead and thank me for it. Cause you're so fuckin' scared of what she really is, but you're so much more desperate not to be alone. That's why you're tryn'a turn the perfect carnivore into a vegan, my man. And I dunno about you, but I fuckin' hate vegans."
Carnage released Eddie's bleeding scalp, letting his neck fall limp but keeping his face out of the water with claws secured on his chin, digging deep into his cheeks. "Let's face it... ya' never made much use of her anyway. I mean look at me and Red. I don't lie to her. I don't make her into something she isn't. And cause of that, we're inseparable. Unstoppable. We're… what d'they call 'em on Instagram and shit…?" He paused for a moment and snapped the fingers of his other hand, waiting for Red to give him the answer he was looking for.
"Yeah… power couple. That's me and her. Nothin' but power. More than we really know what to do with most of the time… well. Not so much this time."
Carnage drove the point home with the tip of his claw, twisting it into the worst of Eddie's burns to slice the cooked skin apart. When he screamed he re-awoke the burns along his throat, which only made him scream even more. The worst kind of feedback loop. Across the surface of the pond that had carried him to this torture Eddie saw wild flames reflected, twisting together and morphing into horrible mocking shapes as the water rippled away from him, his labored gasps and the spasms of his muscles as they started giving up on him. Eddie was only glad Symby wasn't here. She'd be trying so hard to fix him, not realising that he was already dead, not knowing when to give up on him.
Heh. That explained why they were so good for each other. Carnage didn't agree.
"You, on the other hand," he was still saying, still taking his time, "were so scared of Mom turnin' into Red that ya' didn't even call her… well, 'her'. But in the end… well, like mother, like daughter. I mean, where did ya' think Red got it all from?"
Eddie couldn't shut himself to the pain because of Carnage's words, and couldn't shut himself to the words because of the pain. Despite his delirium, despite how he just wanted to stop hurting, he understood Carnage perfectly. As if Red herself was forcing their doctrine into him as she carved through his ruined body, one last thing to pride herself on before she had to move onto someone else.
Someone else that wasn't Eddie. He could only pray that it wasn't Felicia either.
'Just… fucking get it over with already…'
Whether Carnage somehow heard him beg or whether he was just getting bored now that Eddie- host of his mother, saint of symbiotes, pain in the ass from day one- was now just another slab of rotting meat, he sighed and stood up. His entire weight was now on Eddie's back, squashing his organs as they went into shut down.
"Do me a favour, Brock. When ya' get to hell, tell my other parents I said hi."
Eddie felt his throat splitting open. It was like being caught in the middle of a tidal wave, his stomach dropping out, eyes blinking and rolling over and over on their own, the blood that he still had in his body gushing through the wound in a flood that pushed the scar open even wider. He gagged on it. He was trying to vomit up his own oesophagus.
The last thing he saw in his own blood as it tainted the pond, the surface still bathed in burning light from the furnace beyond, was the last traces of black slipping out of his eyes. It wasn't Symby, though. They were just tears.