Daisy hadn't been convinced that Bite-size was Gwen, or even that the redhead following her had been Bite-size until she'd lashed out against Iron Heart, who had blasted her with enough sound to reveal Gwen beneath the Symbiote's surface.

Bite-size had remained silent until the elevator settled down in their base.

"Could I just tell you, Daisy? And talk to everyone else later?"

"You still think she isn't obsessed with Daisy?" Patriot asked.

"Yes," Doreen and America said in unison.

"You stalked all of us, right? I think we all deserve to hear an explanation," Daisy said.

"Then can I start with you? Or America or Kamala," Gwe- Bite-size asked.

"Why not Doreen?" Dante asked. "Wasn't she defending you just now?"

"Hey, I'd probably want to talk with Kamala before me too," Doreen said. "Trust me, there's a reason why it should be one of them."

"Fine, start with me," Daisy said as she lightly pushed Bite-size down a hallway. "Just keep in mind that I can do the same thing Iron Heart did earlier."

She led Bite-size to the training room, which she had already sealed in preparation for any conversation with Bite-size.

It was a big gray room with overlooking balconies in the corners, which had its blast shutters down, and two doors to the main training area, one of which had been sealed leaving only the door they came through, and no opportunity for Bite-size to escape.

Daisy stayed by the door but indicated to Bite-size to go a bit further.

She crossed her arms. "So why'd you stalk us?" She'd said something about missing them before but that didn't really explain it.

"Like I said I- No. I should start at the beginning.

"So..." Bite-size stopped for a while, nervousl- Faking a nervous glance around, stalling. "When Gwendolyn fused with Gwenom to become me- Gwenom is what I call my Symbiote half. A-anyway, when I became me I really only wanted to save you from those robots, but after that I realized that I wasn't really Gwendolyn anymore. Or Gwenom for that matter. And then you called me Ghost-Spider and I wasn't comfortable being her, so I left.

"And after that it took me a long time to even figure out what I was, let alone who," Bite-size stepped closer, "but I still missed you guys so whenever I saw you I stuck around for a bit, but-only-in-public." She stepped back again.

"So you missed us, but wanted to figure out your identity crisis before talking to us?"

"Pretty much." Bite-size nodded once, looking off to the side. "Suddenly going from being two separate organisms to being one is by far the strangest, most disorienting, thing I've ever experienced."

That's a suspiciously long-winded way to say what could be summarized in a single sentence.

Daisy didn't want to trust her, the argument was too flimsy. It was easy enough to say and it matched what they knew well enough but it was also a simple lie anybody could say that was nonetheless hard to disprove. "If that's true why'd you attack Iron Heart?"

"Because my Spider-Sense told me she was dangerous, and she's too fast for me to get away without at least stunning her first." The Gwen she knew never even fought back when the whole city was chasing after her, she wouldn't attack her friends just to get away.

"Okay." She didn't trust Bite-size anymore. "So what's this about you 'obsessing over me'? America and Doreen insisted a bit too strongly that it was nothing."

"Yeah, so I'm- I- This is kind of hard to say, even after that whole other thing. Uhhm." She kept stalling. "So I wouldn't call it 'obsessed'. It's just a crush." Gwen talked faster. "And I waaas going to check if you'd ever date a girl before telling you, and if not I'd say nothing and just hope it goes away, but then I became me and I had to deal with that whole mess, and Rayshaun just had to say I was obsessed which is just rude. And, and..."

Bite-size certainly talked like Gwen, and even in handcuffs her hands moved around a bunch while she talked. Not to mention her nervous fidgeting seemed on point for what she'd expect from Gwen after she just confessed a crush... Gwen kept fidgeting. She was crushing on Daisy? Since when?

"You said 'and then I became me', so your crush was since before then?"

Gwen's fidgeting died down, was pushed down, knowing Gwen. "Gwendolyn had a crush on you. Gwenom had never even heard of you before she became me."

"Alright. Next question: Who are you? You keep talking about yourself as separate from both Gwendolyn and Gwenom, explain."

"I'm Gwen." She said, smiling through her mask. "I'm thinking of making it my name legally too. I actually wasn't sure if that's enough though, I don't want my friends to think of me as Gwendolyn just because her nickname is the same as my name, but I also don't want to have to correct everyone else I know on my new name all the time and they really don't need to know about how I'm a completely different person or anything."

That just confused Daisy even more. "What do you mean, 'you're a different person'? How are you different?"

"Well I'm both Gwendolyn and Gwenom, and not just in a 'we are Venom' kind of way, but a proper fusion. Like mitochondria are a part of cells even though they have separate DNA, or how Lichen is actually a mushroom and algae but they've functionally become one organism."

"But Gwendolyn and Gwenom have separate brains, or whatever it is that Klyntars use to think." She knew they had some link, but even so...

"But I only have one train of thought. My halves have a stronger mental connection than what I've heard described before." That...

If Bite-size was lying it'd function as an excuse for whenever she didn't act exactly like Gwendolyn would, but by all accounts everybody's personality changed when they bonded to a Symbiote, so maybe it wasn't an excuse?

"How do I know this isn't just Gwenom controlling Gwendolyn's body? Venom has done it before so we know it's possible." She needed to make sure.

"Maybe Riri can scan my brain? Or a S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor can do it? I don't know. How can you prove that you use your brain to think? Other than by lobotomizing someone."

Daisy kept questioning her for a while after that. No matter what she said, it didn't seem like Daisy believed her, which she supposed made sense since she lacked evidence but it still hurt. It felt like her existence had just been rejected by her crush.

When Daisy left she just wanted to ball up in the fetal position and cry for an hour, instead she'd have to deal with whoever Daisy decided to send in next. She sat down at the wall while she waited.

By the time Kamala came in, which couldn't have been more than a minute later, she was already crying.

"Hey, hey… What's wrong?" Kamala asked when she sat down next to her.

She really wished that she would just be left alone. "Nothing." She wiped at her face, even though she probably could have just absorbed the tears with her outer layer. In fact she wasn't sure if they had even been visible.

"Do you want a hug? For no reason at all of course?" Kamala's eyes were full of sympathy.

She probably thought she was talking to Gwendolyn, which hurt in its own way but it was still better than risking the same treatment she'd gotten from Daisy, so Gwen didn't correct her.

After sitting quietly for a while, Gwen didn't know how long, she glanced at Kamala, who had waited patiently for her to be ready. Kamala smiled a sympathetic smile at her.

"Wanna talk about it?"

"Not really." She looked away.

"They might want to send in the next person soon. Probably America. Would talking to her be better?"

Gwen didn't want to talk to anyone.

"I want to go to bed. Do you think we have a cell for me somewhere? Then we could just wait until tomorrow for the others."

"I could ask after I leave, but we weren't really supposed to fight bad-guys in the first place so I don't think so." Kamala still didn't move, hadn't touched her at all. Gwen wasn't sure if that was because Kamala didn't want to touch Gwenom, or if it was because she respected her personal space.

"Thanks." She considered being silent for the rest of her time with Kamala, but after America they'd send either Doreen or Dante, then the other one followed by Riri, and last would be Rayshaun. At least if they were trying to send people in the order she wanted to talk to them in, which the fact that they sent Kamala and then America probably meant.

That was good, she might even be able to sit out America's time, and if she was lucky Doreen would try to distract her, and Dante wouldn't ask any hard questions... Both Riri and Rayshaun would. Rayshaun worst of all, and if she hadn't gotten her shit together by then she'd probably do something she'd regret, either because he would assume her guilt or because she'd let herself get provoked.

"Do you think Riri could prove that I'm not being mind controlled by an evil Symbiote?" she asked.

"Maybe? I could ask her that too. Is that why you're sa- not happy? Did Daisy think you were just mind controlled?"

"Yeah." Gwen stayed quiet for a few seconds before she decided to keep going. "I'm actually both Gwendolyn and the Symbiote, which I call Gwenom. I don't experience any separation between my halves at all but when I told Daisy, she didn't believe me.

"She basically said that I don't exist."

"That must have hurt." Gwen felt herself tearing up again. She didn't want to be there, didn't want her friends to interrogate her, but it was too late for that.

She turned to Kamala. "I think I want that hug now." She held her arms out, or she tried to. The handcuffs made it so the best she could offer was making a loop for Kamala to put her head through.

Kamala didn't hesitate before hugging her. It felt nice. Felt like Kamala had accepted her just like Glory had. "The worst part is that I still have a crush on her."

Kamala's head shot back to get a look at her face. "What! Did you tell her? Did she do that to you knowing you liked her?" Kamala was angry. "When they kick me out of here I'm gonna have to talk some sense into her for sure!"

"You don't have to. If you could talk to Riri that's really enough."

"What about finding a bed for you?" Kamala asked.

"I... I think I can manage now. Turns out hugs and being accepted really help."

Daisy told Kamala her time was up a bit later; apparently she'd spent twenty minutes with the younger girl.

America wasn't too upset about the stalking; apparently losing both your parents and leaving your home dimension forever makes you understand a thing or two about missing people. She was somewhat skeptical about what Gwen was but at the end it seemed like she accepted her story.

Dante was next. She got along with him well enough, maybe because he reminded her of Kevin, maybe because he asked for help from her all the time. Whenever they sparred he wanted pointers on how to get better, and she often helped on his solo training as well.

He didn't feel too strongly about the stalking and tried his best to understand when she explained about how Gwendolyn and Gwenom had fused to become her but she got the feeling he didn't really get it. He still tried though.

Then it was Doreen's turn.

"Heya Gwen!"

"So, ah... I'm not-" Even after having done it five times already, which was kind of mind blowing honestly, it was still hard to explain who she was. She hadn't even settled on Gwen yet! But she needed to use something.

"Would you prefer Bite-size? I mean you're still wearing it even though it can totally shape-shift right."

She had done it for a reason, that reason, in a way. She had kept her outside as 'Bite-size' so that her friends wouldn't think of her as just Gwendolyn, to remind them of Gwenom. She'd had… mixed success with that.

"Don't call her an 'it'. And Bite-size? Really?"

"Well the hood is obviously a mouth and you have a tongue-scarf, so it had to be something mouth-related." Doreen pointed at her tongue. Which she could use, and had used, in battle. For the record if she wanted to she could bite down with her hood as well.

"Yeah, alright, but couldn't you have come up with a better name? Kind of makes me sound small."

"We could have called you Over-bite."

"That's so much worse." No offense to people with an overbite, or anything, but Gwen didn't think that sounded like a super-anything's name.

"I know right! I'm just happy I came up with Bite-size, 'cause otherwise you'd be GiB, short for 'Girl in Black', though that was my idea too. I guess they'd have called you 'Lady in black', or 'Our Stalker'?

"The idea behind Bite-size was that you'd think someone called that would be small and insignificant until you see the hood, and that's when you realize you've bitten off more than you could chew," Doreen said in her movie-trailer voice.

"And that's what you were thinking when you thought I was an evil stalker?"

"Way I figured everyone deserves a decent super-name, and I didn't think you were evil. I mean, you saved us last Friday, and then helped save tons more, so maybe you were a morally complex stalker.

"Actually going by what Riri said you were probably only trying to preempt an attack against you by stalking us, so as far as I was concerned you were really only an active threat to your host."

Gwen wasn't sure what to make of Doreen's phrasing, if it meant that she still thought of Gwen that way or if it was what she had thought when she gave her the name. "So who do you think you're talking to? Bite-size or Gwendolyn Stacey?"

"Gwen?"

"Both actually."

Doreen seemed to have enjoyed her talk with Bite-size and/or Gwen.

Riri wasn't too sure of what to expect from her, everyone had come out with a different expression. Daisy really wasn't happy, she looked almost worried. Kamala had come out angry, and had gone right to her to ask if she could make a brain scan to see if Gwen was being mind-controlled, which she had thought meant she wanted to prove that that was the case, until she noticed Kamala glaring at Daisy.

Brain-scans weren't really an option though, it'd be too complicated and you'd need data from an actual case of mind control by a Klyntar to compare it with.

America had seemed cautiously optimistic, while Dante had gotten really focused on fiddling with his phone.

Next was Riri's turn so she went inside. The training room had been put in lock-down mode, which was really made in case one of them wanted to test the limits of their destructive capabilities, not to lock someone in.

The blast shutters over the balconies could handle severe explosions as well as lasers or repulsor-rays with only mild damage but you could still see through them from the other side, if only with the lights off, which meant the rest of the team could safely see just how strong their teammates were.

Everything on the lower area was even tougher, capable of withstanding an actual Hulk! Even the doors, when in lock-down mode, wouldn't break from a serious smash or two. The walls were also outfitted with sensors to help measure hulk level destructive capabilities, in case the training dummies completely broke down. The only part that could be destroyed was the floor, as making it indestructible would hinder Daisy's training, but the basin around the liquid-solid (a special material that could be liquefied and re-solidified for near instant repair) was near indestructible.

The dummies where actually pretty neat, being based on a crude version of the Super-Adaptoid and A.I.M. droids. They also had the hulk version of a dodge-ball machine launching balls ranging from just a single kilogram to 1 ton, depending on the setting...

"So..." Riri said, getting back on topic, "apparently I'm next."

"Yeah. Anything in particular you want to ask?"

"Not really. But I want to just say that being stalked, as a powerless fifteen-year-old who can't take her super-suit with her wherever she goes, that's scary. Especially when the stalker is supposedly a serious threat for superheroes."

"Sorry." Bite-sized looked ashamed, but she wasn't going to be forgiven that easily.

"So why'd you do it?"

"I was going through some stuff, wasn't ready to talk to anyone really, but I still missed my friends so if I saw you out and about I stayed close by for a bit." That... didn't sound like stalking.

"That was all you did?" She set fact-checking that as a priority task for A.M.I., she'd go over all incident reports the team had written about Bite-size to determine the likelihood that she was telling the truth.

"Yeah. Okay, I follow Daisy for two blocks every day and I did follow Daisy back here once, after your fight with Exile when I had gotten away from you, and as you know I follow her to her car."

"You mean after you led us into a trap." They'd been lucky America was the only one who had followed Bite-size. Sure, she would probably have survived but if it had been Inferno, he'd be dead or, if they were really lucky, in the hospital.

"I led you into the hideout of some villain called Mr. Negative. I was going to tie them up for the police eventually but I'm guessing you took care of that?"

"Yeah." She frowned behind her mask. "Did you know Inferno was following you?"

"Actually, no, which is really strange since my Spider-Sense should have caught him, but I guess he wasn't very threatening?"

Gwen had felt good about most of her talks at that point; Daisy was really the only one she knew hadn't taken it well. Kamala had been nice, she had won over America, and both Dante and Doreen had been supportive. Riri... She was unsure.

What she was sure of was that Rayshaun wouldn't be on her side.

Patriot entered. Not Rayshaun, Patriot. This was a proper interrogation by someone who wasn't ready to be charitable at all.

She hoped he'd at least let her explain herself. Which... he did, not that he seemed to believe her.

"So what about your obsession with Daisy? Even by your own account you went out of your way to stalk her, which you claim you never really did for anybody else." Patriot crossed his arms.

"Yeah." She swallowed down any hostile remarks that almost left her mouth. "Have you never had a crush in your life or are you just stupid?" Almost all of them. "Actually scratch that, have you never even seen a teen-drama where the main character has a crush on someone?"

"Sorry, what?" His arms visibly relaxed a fraction; it didn't calm Gwen's anger.

"You heard me. I had told literally one person about it before, no one even knew I liked girls! I didn't even know until maybe two weeks ago! Now you forced me to tell everyone, because Daisy didn't trust me enough to tell you to ignore it.

"Thanks for that."

"I'm sorry? I was worried about her, she's my partner, and probably my best friend too, was I not supposed to mention your obvious fixation with our leader?"

"Well the first time you saw me was when I saved her, so it'd be nice if you hadn't assumed I wanted to hurt her."

"You know that assuming things like that is dangerous, life threatening, out in the field. If what you're saying is true, then I'm sorry you had to tell everyone, but you really shouldn't have stalked her in the first place."

"How often do I need to tell you that I barely even followed her? This is like the murder accusation all over again!"

It didn't get any better from there, and more than once she started shouting at him. No matter what, he'd never trust her.