Snuggles The Symbiote
I spent most of the late afternoon following my ten-year-old foster sister as she traversed what felt like most of New York City but probably wasn't on foot while she periodically sniffed the air like a dog. Meanwhile, one of my newer teammates, the former supervillain who wasn't a brainwashed serial killer, would hum to herself and occasionally point out which seemingly innocuous building was actually a crack house.
After the seventh crack house, the combination of boredom and my growing concern for Ashley's emotional state led me to speak up. "Ashley, how are you right now."
As she's just leaned forward to take a good whiff of the air, she almost stumbled. Once she righted herself, she answered. "Right now I'm glad that my healing factor isn't sealed because I'm breathing in a lot of pollutants." She paused for a moment. "Mister Snuggles, that can't possibly be right, leaded gasoline has been banned since... where else would it come from!?"
Lisa pulled the front of her shirt up over her nose.
"Other than that?" I continued while trying not to think too hard about what we were breathing. "After earlier at the cemetery? Or in general?"
"I'm not fine, but I'm better than I was this morning" she answered evenly.
I knew that tone. That was the tone I used to tell my dad that I was fine when... Which meant she's not better than this morning, she's just more composed.
"Are you sure? If you need to take a minute... Would you like a hug?"
"I'm good," she said while taking another sniff. "This way," she pointed in a direction and started walking.
Ashley not wanting a hug... was a bad sign.
"So, kid, what can you tell me about The Hand?" Lisa chimed in randomly.
"Why are you asking?" Ashley questioned.
"Because psycho-aunt said you're related to them."
"Not related to them, psycho-aunt made that up. She's just inexplicable good at martial arts like half the people in that one cartoon about the inner-city black family that moved to a rich white suburb with all the swearing and violence that my parents didn't know I watched a couple of episodes of." Sometimes, I worry about Ashley's train of thought.
"Sweety, I hate to break it to you but she believed every word of what she said," Lisa continued, "so either she's telling the truth or she's insane, and while she might be a bigot she doesn't seem that delusional, so..."
"Oh, how do you know!?"
"Well, since you explain things with references... If I said I was Sherlock Holmes with the power to consult Nero Wolfe for second opinions for a few minutes every day, would you understand what I'm saying?"
Ashley paused for a moment. "You're a shapeshifting bisexual genderfluid mutant that doesn't age?"
"...This fucking universe" Lisa replied with the tone of a dark wizard bringing a curse down upon someone's hometown and the bloodlines of the people who lived there for forever and a day... Which was concerning because she could probably do that someday.
"Okay, I'm gonna need that explained to me," I interjected.
"Uh, when we were on Krakoa, did you notice a blue lady with red hair, yellow eyes, dressed in all white with little tiny skulls on her belt?" Ashley asked me.
"Uh, yeah, she was one of the council people who told me you were still allowed on the Island as long as you waited untill Sinister started it to pick fights with him," I answered. "She was the sole vote for 'why are you making us get out of bed for this?'" I elected not to tell Ashley that her ancestor had spent twenty minutes elaborating on how Ashley's outburst and the resulting rampage was a good thing because it made her stronger and encouraged others to become stronger and how proud he was that his blood was so thick in her veins. I imagine that she wouldn't be happy about it.
Ashley looked at me and blinked. "I should have known that. I'm pretty sure I already knew that. But I'm still disappointed. I'm not sure why I'm disappointed when Magneto, Sinister, and Apocalypse were on the council, but I'm disappointed."
"Okay, who is she?"
"Mystique," Ashley replied clinically. "Real name Raven Darkholme. She's a shapeshifter who can turn into any human form and a wide variety of non-human forms. Even turns her flesh and blood into wood and metal. When you saw her she was probably naked and just shapeshifted so it looked like she had clothes on, she does that." Well, that was something disturbing to think about. "And, incidentally, one of the people whose DNA was originally used to modify Mister Snuggles. He's been using it to better imitate clothing."
Ashley stretched her shoulder, rotated it, making a light pop sound. "And according to some of the memories I've absorbed, she's older than Wolverine, has had relationships with both men and women, sometimes lives as a man, was working as a consulting detective in London the early nineteen hundreds, and was in an open marriage with a similarly old mutant woman named Irene Adler, who she met in London while working as a consulting detective.
"There's also strong evidence that Doyle was adapting at least some of his stories from real contemporary events," Ashley finished. "Most likely, Mystique was Sherlock Holmes."
"Anyway," Lisa continued, "metafictional history lessons aside—"
"I don't think you're using metafiction right," I corrected. She glared at me, so I defended "I've been doing college lit since I was her age" I gestured to Ashley. Though, in hindsight, it was kind of weird that my mother had let me read a coming-of-age novel that involved the still-underage main protagonist being raped by an ugly old woman when I was ten. I didn't think that two months ago, but then I became responsible for a ten-year-old.
...I was not going to let Ashley read Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit anytime soon.
"Anyway," Lisa repeated, "you're dodging my question, kid. Denial isn't a healthy coping mechanism and considering what happened with your other evil ancestor getting involved in your life this might be something we need to prepare for."
Ashley sighed. "The Hand are a cult of demon worshiping necromancers. Originally they were a clan of Japanese nationalist ninjas a couple of hundred years ago," Ashley explained, "But then they got subverted by malevolent occult influences and now they're basically just a supernatural cult that does organized crime."
Ashley poped her other shoulder as she walked. "They started in Japan, obviously, but in the modern-day, there are dozens of factions all over the world. Some are more into the demon worship thing than others and some are more into the organized crime thing than others." Ashley started counting on her hands. "...I think there's a branch in Greece because Elektra is Greek and she used to be involved with them." She looked confused for a little bit. "The Chinese Branch got subverted by the Mandarin, who was a Chinese guy who was really into karate and ninjas for some reason. Also had ten magic rings, but otherwise, he was basically a poor man's Fu Manchu until he made a conscious effort to stop being a living yellow peril stereotype. He's dead last I heard but he'll probably be back eventually"
Ashley cracked her knuckles. "And the American branch is mostly a Daredevil problem. I don't pay much attention to Daredevil stuff but last I heard the American Branch of the hand answered to Wilson Fisk, alias Kingpin of Crime, who is that fat bastard defaming Spider-Man's good name with an obviously photoshopped picture."
Ashley was pointing to a billboard with a political ad showing what... did look like Spider-Man edited into a photo of a tall, heavily built man with a huge bald head and gigantic hands... That didn't look normal.
"Ashley, it's not okay to insult people with glandular conditions. Or Gigantism. Or whatever the hell is wrong with him," I chastised.
"I'm not making fun of him because he has a condition," Ashley defended. "It's a statement of fact: He is fat, and he is a bastard. The murderous jerkface was running the MGH racket for the whole state for a while and I'm not gonna be nice to a guy who was peddling drugs that are literally made of people. Especially when I know what it's like to be harvested for MGH. It frickin hurts."
I did not have a response to that.
"No idea how the hell he became Mayor," Ashley continued. "Val says the rumor is that he got his hands on an Infinity Stone and four of those aren't accounted for right now, which might explain it, but warping reality isn't his style."
Ashley continued mumbling angrily to herself for the next while occasionally pointing out which direction her mother's scent was leading her.
Eventually, we found our way to what appeared to be an abandoned bodega. It looked like it had been boarded up completly, but the boards over the door had been torn down and left on the sidewalk.
Ashley paused, got confused for a second, and started sniffing frantically. "No."
She ran into the ruined bodega and I could see her quickly moving about inside, turning over already overturned shelves.
"No... No. No no no." Ashley said in a panic. She fell to her hands and knees, looking as if... As if she'd lost all hope. Then she sat up and let out a high-pitched, ear-splitting shriek, a sound of ultimate suffering, and punched the ground hard enough that I could hear the bones in her hand shatter.
Immediately I was by her side, holding her. I tried to get a look at her hand to survey the damage but by the time I could get a clear look the bones in her hand were already snapping back into place with a sickening sound. "Ashley, it's gonna be okay."
"No, it's not!" She shouted. It took her a few moments to elaborate because she kept stuttering and hiccuping on the 'H' sound. "H-HYDRA. They got here first. I can smell them, smell the people who smelled like rot who were at the cemetery last night. They got her. HYDRA took my Mommy and god knows what they're doing with her."
All I could do was hold Ashley while she cried.
"What am I gonna do now?" She choked out between tears. "The trail ends here, all I can smell is burning gasoline and how the hell am I gonna track that in a big city?"
I didn't know what to tell her, but I was saved from coming up with something when Lisa called out "Guys, you might want to get back out here."
I helped Ashley stand up and supported her as we stepped back out into the street. As the sun began to set for the day, my focus was drawn to the flying car and its three occupants. Two children, a short blue-skinned boy and a tall girl with pointed ears and green scales, both around Ashley's age, and the hulking figure covered in a thick hide of orange rocks who was driving.
The Thing's face was, pardon the pun, grim when we first stepped out but when he saw the state that Ashley was in his expression softened considerably.
"Ya know, when Nikki told me she caught you kids poppin' in and sneaking out right away," The Thing began, "my first thoughts were to track ya down and chastise you for how stupid that is, especially right now... But I can't just sit there and do nothing when there's a kid in so much pain." He parked the car and his two adopted alien kids got out. "So, tell Aunt Petunia's favorite nephew what's wrong and I'll see if I can fix it."
Ashley hesitated for a moment, started crying a little more, but managed to spell out everything that had happened since Spider-Man had interrupted our meeting with Ms. Walters.
The Thing once more, pardon the pun, grim-faced, turned to his adopted children. "Jo, Nikki, today you're gonna learn probably the most important lesson I have to teach ya about life on Earth: The appropriate amount of violence to use when teachin' Neo-Nazis the error of their ways."