Disclaimer—I only own the dentist, and I'm sorry.

Dr. Andy Ricochet was having a particularly good day. All of his patients had shown up reasonably on time, none of them needed anything but a regular cleaning, and despite the fact that he lived in a city filled with dangerous super humans, nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

In fact, it was too good.

"Do you believe in karma?" he asked his patient.

"Whaa?" he replied, unable to close his jaw.

"You know, 'karma.' The ideology that you get what you give," Ricochet went on, raising his voice to be heard over the drill. "I'd like to think that the day has been so nice because I've never done anything wrong or harmful, or even unexpected--"

"OW!" screamed the patient.

"Oops, sorry, I'm a little nervous. Anyway, nothing bad has happened today …. Now rinse, please …. So all I can assume is that something really nasty will happen tomorrow to make up for it."

"Whateffer, ith you thay tho," said the patient, sitting up and gingerly touching his swollen cheek.

"I mean, normally we get at least twelve thugs who've been beaten by some guy in a costume with horrible teeth and even worse tempers, so you can imagine what it's like trying to take care of THEIR cavities …." He motioned to the walls of his office—all of which had at least three repairs on them from fists, crowbars, and some parts of it had even been melted.

The doctor shook his head and sighed. "And yet, nothing like that happened today. At all. In this whole city, not one half-robot-pirate-monster-monkey, or whatever's running around now, decided to visit. So, logically, tomorrow I'll run into a… uh…"

"Dump truck?" the patient quietly hoped.

"Probably …." Ricochet conceded. "Well, you're my last client Mr. Shultz, so maybe I'm in the clear," he said, taking off his gloves and washing his hands, "That is, unless of course, you turn out to be a masked villain and decide to kill me … ?" the doctor finished, half-joking and half-terrified.

"Well …." Shultz paused, contemplating the pros and cons of using his high-tech electric shockers and vibrating this guy to death, when out of the corner of his eye he saw the dentist's keys get grabbed by a web and yanked out the window. Ricochet hadn't noticed, so Shultz just shrugged and said, "Naw, I'm thure if you did anything wrong, 'karma' would take care oth it thor you." He got up and took his jacket, trying not to smirk at the doctor's fate. "Thee ya, doctor," then, to himself, "I hope it hurth."

After the bell above the door announced his final customer's exit, Dr. Ricochet mopped his brow, took a deep breath, and started closing shop. It was pretty dark at this hour, and he and his coworker, Claire, were the last two people in the building. They accompanied each other, as they sometimes did, to the parking lot.

"Andy, seriously, you need to relax," Claire said, patting Ricochet on the back. "The worst we had was a pro-wrestler throw a chair through a window--"

"Ugh, Claire! I had just about repressed that whole thing! Why'd you have to remind me? Now I need therapy again …."

Claire silently counted to ten. "Look, Andy, we're dentists. We clean people's teeth for a living. It's hardly an exciting career--"

"Unless you live here! Haven't you noticed! We have giant lizards and-and-and green men on flying surfboards and-and did you know my neighbor's friend's uncle's arm was broken by a man in a walrus costume! A WALRUS, Claire! What's next!"

Claire opened her car door and slowly turned to face him. "Listen, Andy, you're totally overlooking the other side of all this. We have a lot of whackos, yeah, but we also have that many heroes who save us, too! Don't you think they count for something?"

"Well, yeah, but, Claire," Andy shifted from one foot to the other, "they have superpowers. What can we do? Like you said, we're just dentists."

Claire got in her car and started the engine. For a moment she just sat there, then she rolled down her window and said, "Heroes are just as scared as you, Andy …. but …. they pull themselves together enough to stand up and fight anyway. Maybe you should be more like that," she backed up and started pulling away, "the least you can do is try."

Andy watched her leave, knowing he'd never have a chance with her, being who he was (unless he got attacked by a mutant squirrel and started wearing colorful tights). He reached into his coat pocket for his keys …. then the other pocket … and finally figured he must have left them in the office.

"Toothpaste," he swore to himself, gradually climbing the five-story stairs back up. He could have taken the elevator, but it was currently under repairs. "Wish they'd hurry up and fix the darn thing," he said as scanned his ID card and opened the clinic door, "It's not like it would kill them--" Ricochet turned on the lights and froze.

There, in the middle of the room, were his keys. However, they were dangling from what looked like a strand of some sort of sticky string. It took all of two seconds for Andy to register this as BAD.

He turned and headed for the door as fast as he could. Unfortunately, as someone was blocking it, the dentist found himself freezing for the second time, but with more shaking and sweating added.

This someone was an imposing man, though there didn't seem to be anything especially unique or radioactive about him. This allowed Andy to relax enough to ask, "Hey, how did you get in the doorway without me seeing you?" then wonder why he would ask that in the first place.

"You'll figure that out in a minute, human," replied the man, coming closer and closing the door, "as we require your services."

"Um, the clinic will be open tomorrow …." Ricochet said, noting that this guy's voice sounded a little weird, and therefore becoming nervous again, "so, if you'll let me out, you can make an appointment and--"

"No, this needs to be done NOW."

At that moment Andy knew what was odd about this character's voice; he had two of them. Recalling that he had used the word "we" instead of "I," and "human" instead of "you," were all adding up to "he's probably nuts," and, therefore, "way too dangerous." He reached for his secret weapon.

"I …. I have a gulp a taser?" he barely squeaked. The other man cocked his head, looking a little confused.

"What?"

"A …. a taser …."

" …. One more time."

"I HAVE A TASER SO LET ME GO OR FEEL PAIN!" he screamed.

" …. Oh …." said the man, understanding at last. "That's a bad idea. I wouldn't recommend getting us any angrier. You see, we have a toothache, and it's put us in a foul enough mood to kill more than usual tonight, so we suggest you FIX it."

He took a step closer, which caused Andy to panic, which caused him to press the button that shot out the taser wires. In a blur of motion, the man transformed into something black and hideous, dodged the wires, yanked the weapon out of the doctor's hands, and crushed it in his claws. The human didn't have time to move before the monster had him dangling in the air by his throat, threatening to put that same deadly pressure on his vertebrae.

"Sp-chhhk!" said Ricochet, unable to take his eyes off his captor.

It was easy to recognize him—he had been in the papers several times, thanks to a photographer named Peter Parker (who was being silently cursed at this moment by Andy). His name was Venom, and he was WAY scarier in three dimensions than in two, with his enormous, white eyes, massive muscles, and teeth that nightmares are made of …. literally, in this case.

"Do we understand each other?" Venom hissed, sinking in his claws just slightly and bringing his prey nose to, um, face.

"Gh …. ghyes!" the doctor gasped, futilely attempting to breathe.

"Good," said Venom with a satisfied smirk, which hurt, so he grimaced, which looked even worse. He dropped the dentist, who gratefully inhaled lung after lung full of air while rubbing his now bleeding neck.

Venom squatted down in front of him, willing his symbiotic costume to reveal his face. "So, Mr …." he reached out and lifted Andy's nametag, "Ricochet? Right. It's only in that other form you just saw that our tooth actually hurts, so if you can compose yourself enough to not soil your pants, you can help us, and we will let you live. You know; if we like you enough."

"You're …. you're too kind …." Andy found himself saying, and then, due to the unappreciative growl coming from his aggressor, swiftly regretting it. He decided from here on out it was best to deal with this villain as a professional, lest his head get ripped off or something equally nasty. "N-now, uh, Mr. Venom," he said, carefully standing up, "have a seat and I'll prepare the equipment."

Venom donned his full outfit once more and grinned. "Excellent."