Snuggles The Symbiote
"Did... Did she just reference Aliens?" I didn't want to admit it, but that random HYDRA grunt was saying what we were all thinking.
My first thoughts, once I used my amazing spider-like strength and agility to suplex the undead son of a bitch that tackled me and took a moment to compose myself, was that Ashley's mother did not look like the illusion of the beautiful Asian lady that the Poisons had tried to trick Ashley with what felt like forever ago.
Ashley's mother appeared to be at least ten years younger than that illusion had, a few inches taller, and she was fucking jacked. Though... I could see a resemblance between her and the form Ashley took when she aged herself up to 25.
The fighting had more or less stopped as soon as the woman had grabbed the deranged cosplayer. It's kind of hard to focus on fighting when a muscular Asian woman in a severely tattered dress is holding your leader up by the neck in a way that made it abundantly clear that she could snap his neck without issue, and if the bad guys aren't fighting there isn't much reason for the good guys to fight.
"So," the woman said, "One moment, I'm running into my daughter's bedroom because I heard her scream and I see that some son of a bitch has shot my husband... The next thing I know I'm buried alive, half my flesh is gone, everything hurts, and I have vague memories of watching my long-dead father and more recently dead father-in-law trying and failing to drink each other under the table and the implications of that are probably gonna keep me up at night for a while." I didn't realize it was possible for someone to be as pissed off as she sounded without becoming violent. "And after I dig my way out and my body finishes expelling all of the waxes, wires, stitches, and chemicals that I'm going to assume were to make me presentable, which hurt like Hell mind you, and damn near trip over... That guy over there."
With her free hand, she gestured to the zombie I just suplexed, who gurgled out "Fail Fydra" in response while remaining where I left him.
"And I'm going to assume that his not being a decapitated corpse has something to do with this..." She gestured to herself. "Anyway, I'm wandering around half-dazed while over half of my body grows back, scaring the absolute shit out of everyone for reasons I hope I don't have to explain, when those assholes," she gestured to the six supersoldiers in various states of ass-kicked that had been fighting the Thing a moment ago, "jump me and manhandle my undead ass into the same kind of white windowless van that you'd expect a pedophile to be driving, and the next thing I know I'm in a glass tube while something is scanning me and I periodically hear this jackass," she shook the cosplayer that was in charge of this operation a little bit, "mumbling about how fast the regeneration process is going and something about CRISPR. So glad to be part of your science experiment by the way."
The man was surprisingly calm through all of this.
"And then I hear the sounds of fighting, and my precious little girl screaming all of those curses her grandfather didn't know I knew he taught her, and I start to get angry. And then she calls for my help, so naturally, I do what any good mother would do and... Actually, scratch that, I didn't kill the son of a bitch and dump his dismembered carcass in the Hudson. Yet."
She took a moment to take a deep breath, then choked on it. "Sorry," she coughed. "So I guess what I'm asking is... Who the Hell buried me in a dress? I was very clear on this, I was supposed to be buried unembalmed and naked in a cardboard refrigerator box with a spruce sapling planted over my grave."
I blinked, and suddenly a lot of Ashley's behavior made a lot more sense. She got the crazy from her mom.
Speaking of Ashley, she was crying. Not as bad as she'd been today, but she wasn't trying to hide it like she did before. "I've missed you so much."
Ashley's mother casually tossed the Cosplayer Neo-Nazi aside and started fiddling with the straps holding Ashley down.
To which the cosplayer produced from his sleeve a large taser and jammed it into Ashley's mother's thigh.
She yelped and stumbled and the man with the green skull tattoo had just enough time to say "Resume the kicking of ass" before Ashley, no longer strapped down, kicked him in the face.
Unfortunately, my attention was drawn by my spider-sense going off. I jumped out of the way of a laser shot from one Hydra Grunt, which hit the Fail Zombie as it sat up.
Most of the muscular supersoldiers were still focused on The Thing but that one, Erlking, was still on the catwalk and as my Spider-Sense went off again I reached out and caught the little blue boy, Jo.
"Terran, throw me at the other Terran. The enemy Terran above us." Instead of doing that, I sat him down and he glared at me and started running for the stairs.
I'm assuming that the eagle that was flying around dodging potshots was the other alien kid, Nikki, but I didn't see her change, and honestly, who the hell knows with this crazy place?
The sound of smacking flesh preceded the woman, Ashley's mother, shouting "Ashley O'Leary I taught you better than that! Aim slightly above the groin. Break the cartilage holding the pelvic bones together and he physically won't be able to walk till it heals."
"Yes, Mommy!" following by more smacking flesh and something heavy collapsing with a meaty thump. "Fuck the police," it wheezed.
"...How do you know about that?" Ashley asked all of a sudden.
"Remember when you asked Mommy about what college was like?"
"...You plead the fifth?"
"Exactly, we'll talk about it later."
"...Is this a ninja thing?"
"...I'm going to kill Yuki. No, it's not a ninja thing. We'll talk about all of this later."
"Yeah. Later..."
Note to self, delay Doctor Strange from doing the thing for as long as possible so Ashley could get as much time with her mom as she could.
Deciding that the handful of spiders I'd used to case out the place weren't enough in the chaos of a fight and noting that there were surprisingly few native bugs in the area, I started producing more of my special spiders from every vent on my body.
Immediately two HYDRA grunts screamed like little girls and ran for the broken open section of wall and a third passed out. Judging from the smell I noticed a moment later, he also soiled himself.
With my spiders spreading out, I could get a better idea of what was going on. My Spider-sense interfaced with my awareness of my swarm and it was as if I became aware of everything in the warehouse.
Ashley was holding her nose and saying something in Irish. somehow, a Hydraw grunt got up behind her, shoved a gun in the back of her head, and said "everyone freeze of the mutant kids gets it."
I was too far away to move to his position, but Ashley's mother was not. In one fluid motion, she grabbed the laser gun, twisted it so that the man's grip was broken, then pushed him back with the butt of the rifle. She then, in a flash, deposited the weapon on the ground and began striking several locations on his arms, neck, and torso with the index and middle fingers of both hands.
The man twitched a little, flinched from some of the strikes, and seemed very uncomfortable but otherwise unharmed. "What the hell was that."
I could make out the woman smiling. "Omae wa mou shindeiru," she clearly enunciated.
The was a moment of silence. Then the HYDRA grunt started cursing. "Oh shit! Oh shit!" And turned on his heel and ran... Face first into a wall, causing him to collapse into a heap.
"So that only works about five percent of the time," she announced cheerfully, "but it's always very satisfying when it does."
"...Was that a ninja thing?" Ashley asked, sounding somewhat confused.
"No, that was a gratuitous anime reference," the woman admitted. "Father, being that he strongly valued Japanese culture, encouraged us to partake of media originating from the home of our ancestors. He didn't particularly care what it was, within reason, he just figured that if we consumed the media we'd develop an interest in the culture. Mostly I just learned how to pick out the weebs in a crowd."
The two remaining HYDRA grunts, following the lead of their recently dispatched comrade, both turned their guns on Ashley. "Okay, but you can't get to both of us," one said, "so, to repeat, everybody freeze or the kid gets it."
"I killed Cletus Kassady." Ashley announced loudly but calmly.
"What?" The HYDRA grunt who'd spoken asked flatly.
"What!?" Ashley's mother questioned less flatly.
"I killed Cletus Kassady," Ashley repeated. "And fed all the traces of Carnage and Grendel and the other symbiotes he's worn over the years to my Symbiote. And..." She laughed. "Do you know what a Hellmark is? They're these little things that high-level Demons like Mephisto and Son of Satan's dad..."
"...Satan?"
"He's not the real Satan!" Ashley harshly corrected. "Trust me, A friend and I went to Super Hell a little bit ago, I don't think there is a real Satan, I think there's just a bunch of powerful demons pretending that they matter, and then there's an Anti-God. Anyway, a while back Mephisto gave a couple of these marks out, to Venom and X-23 and Red Hulk, and that meant that they could get power over demons and hellfire and stuff. My Symbiote accidentally stole X-23's, sorry, she's Wolverine now, mark when he took some bits of Symbiote goo from her body so he could heal me better, and you know what I did with it? I used it to eat Kassady's soul so that he'd never come back again, and my powers grew strong on his blood-soaked sins. Then my soul ate the Hell Mark."
"Cause, you see, Carnage wasn't the only symbiote I absorbed bits and pieces of. Doctor Strange says my Symbiote and I took in enough power to become Gods. And not like a valkyrie or sea nymph is a God, Uh uh, we're Elder Gods. Ia Ia Ashley Frickin' Ftagn!" That should have been shocking, but honestly, I was just out of fucks to give at this point.
"And ya know what?" Ashley laughed. "I had so much stress and anxiety and guilt over everything I just told you, but right now, I just... don't care anymore. Because I got my Mommy back, and I'm... I'm too happy to let anything, not guilt, not fear ruin that."
Glowing gold lines and curves form a magic circle and sigils around her, with a large number of glowing dots spaced equidistantly around it. Then one of the dots shattered and vanished, the others moving to become equally spaced again.
"And apparently the spell that Doctor Strange used to help me detox from going power crazy just decided that I can handle some more of the power we've picked up," Ashley observed. "Which would have been really convenient about ten minutes ago, I really wasn't expecting that, but it does illustrate a point for me..."
Ashley's clothes melted and spread over her, but they didn't form her superhero costume. Instead, it was the same form-fitting gold and blue marbled outfit she'd worn when we'd first met, complete with her hair hanging loosely. Except for the face. Her eye lenses were jagged crescents and her jaw was open showing curved daggerlike fangs and a long, forked reptilian tongue.
"I have no reason whatsoever to be afraid of you, puny, worthless excuses for the worst of the worst of humans, and no reason to be afraid of your pathetic little guns. Even if you could hurt us," she held out her hands and with a pair of thwips, she caught the HYDRA Grunts rifles on a web line and tore them from the enemy's grasp, and caught them with her biomechanical tentacles with their clawed pincers. "We are the terror that stalks in the night. We are the darkness that fights for the light. We..."
She took a step forward.
"Are..."
Another step. One of the goons stepped back.
"MENACE!"
Ashley jumped forward. The two grunts lost all composure and took off running...
Right into an invisible wall.
The rest of the Fantastic Four... Who should honestly be the Fantastic Nine at this point, counting the kids and the Bird Lady, faded into view. As did Lisa
"So far, that works about fifty percent of the time," Ashley said cheerfully, shifted back to her civilian clothes. "Last time I tried it I end up breaking character. Kinda my fault, I couldn't think of anything so I just quoted Smaug."
"...Ashley, sweety, how much of that was true?" Ashley's mother asked.
"...All of it," she said somewhat ashamed. "Well, most of it, I mean..."
Ashley's mother got down on her knees and pulled Ashley into a hug. "You don't need to feel bad about any of that. I love you no matter what. Even if you became a megalomaniacal supervillain bent on universal conquest I'd still love you. I'd expect the keys to a shiny new Australia as a mother's day present, but I'd still love you." My heart ached for a moment.
"So, I'm not the only one that remembered the plan, right?" Lisa questioned once Ashley and her mother had their moment. "If sneaking doesn't work, head back to the car and call backup?" I did not admit that I forgot the plan.
"...I'm not the only one that caught the gratuitous Darkwing Duck reference, am I?" The Human Torch added. "She is... Not old enough to have watched that."
Various zombies and supersoldiers still present, many of whom were still focused on The Thing, decided that the intrusion of more heroes was a cause for a change in strategy rather than a surrender.
Erlking lept from the catwalk, landing in front of me, but facing the lion share of the Fantastic Four. As he prepared to charge, Dr. Richards held up a hand.
"Before you do something... Regretable..." The man began, "We ran into some other people on the way here."
Another wall was busted down and as the rubble and dust cleared I could make out the massive, hulking green form of She-Hulk. with Captain America, Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange. around her coming in.
Strange immediately cast some spell, with his magic gestures, that made all of the reanimated corpses briefly glow, then collapse, dead.
Simultaneously six of Erlking's fellows in a single heap landed on top of him.
"Now that I got a second to breathe," The Thing said while dusting himself off, "I'm a bit concerned about the language that's bein' thrown about. C'mon, there's children present."
Figuring the fighting was mostly over, I called back my spiders. In the next few moments, Jo and Nikki started hiding behind their adoptive father while occasionally glancing at Ashley, and Doctor Strange was examining Ashley's mother, who was very much still alive, with the Eye of Aggamotto. "Well, your mind and soul are your own and aren't... Permenantly damaged by the process of resurrection. Welcome back to the land of the Quick, Mrs. O'Leary."
"I prefer Ms."
"My apologies. However, I'd like to run a few tests, because... I'm not one hundred percent sure what's going on with your body... Reed, would you mind if I used your medical scanners?"
"That's what they were built for," the scientist replied.
I wasn't sure how to feel right now. Part of me was happy that Ashley... This is an opportunity that I'd kill for, but... Now what? I'd devoted myself to taking care of Ashley, but if her mother was back then... Ashley didn't need me. And, part of me felt horrible for thinking something so selfish.
I also wasn't sure if Ashley being back to her old self, boasts and all, was a good thing or something she needed to speak with her therapist about.
My train of thought was interrupted by the sound of slurping.
Skull Face, who'd I'd honestly forgotten about when Ashley kicked him, was downing the contents of a transfusion bag. "I just drank enough concentrated mutant growth hormone to empower a normal human being for an entire weak. I have no idea what powers it gives but it plays very well with the Lazarus Formula."
The man began to twitch as his veins and muscles bulged.