Leaving out the fact he knew where it came from, Peter had judged it was safe to explain to Ned where his change of wear the other day came from. The cafeteria had been evacuated on that day, so no one knew about the cannibalism part just yet, and since he had to explain what happened, he just said he blanked out midway and Shocker was gone.
It wasn't exactly a lie. He was conscious during it and he knew what was going on, he just wasn't able to fully comprehend it until he'd swallowed down the last bone. When asking Mr. Stark for a scan, he was told his body was just growing and that while they did note changes in his body composition, it wasn't anything he didn't already experience. It would've been too awkward to ask if developing a second skin and the odd hunger were part of it, but it made sense to him.
If this was inside his body all along, it couldn't be detected lest they were looking for it specifically. And given he already had the spider bite mutating him, any oddity compared to your average human could be brushed off as just that. Other teens didn't swing webs and climb on walls, but spiders definitely did. Although he doubted any spider was big enough to eat human beings, but in a world of superheroes and discovering what produced him, he supposed anything could happen.
"Okay, so you got this suit inside of you?"
"And it didn't come out since then. I thought it was like my Spider-Sense, but it messes with my head." said the teen, shoving down an entire chocolate pudding down his throat. "I'm not sure if I can do it again or if it was a one-time experience only, but I feel weird ever since it happened, and it doesn't seem like I had a specific trigger for it."
Ned pulled out a tablet, showing his friend a couple notes from their biology class two months ago.
"Larva?"
"Larval stage." corrected his friend. "Normally, it requires shedding skin for arachnids, but you're not a spider yourself. It could be a maturity thing, like growing a cocoon around yourself to help your spider side grow."
"So that makes me more of a caterpillar then, got it." quipped Peter. "Should I rebrand to Butterfly-Man?"
"Maybe once we figure out what's up with you. I don't have the PhD for this, and I don't understand why you haven't talked to the Avengers about it yet."
"I, uh, don't know if that'd really help. I think it's similar to what Professor Banner has, but this doesn't seem to be something I caught and I don't recall anything that gave it to me. If I don't even know what the problem is, they won't know where to look exactly."
"Well, it'd have to be stored somewhere, in a gland or some kind of sac, like snakes do with their venom."
Venom.
"I, uh... I met a superhero from another town the other day, too. Didn't really catch their name but, they were like, big, bulky, a bit scary..."
"You think they could have something to do with it?"
"Not for certain. I mean, it's a bit coincidental, don't you think? Plus, it was after I got my new suit, not before."
"If they knew to come for you that day, maybe they knew how to activate it or they were spying on you. Did they look more like a guy or a girl to you?"
"...a big bulging goo monster."
Ned stared at the response. That was either a newcomer or some really obscure superhero to look like that.
"Blank eyes, huge teeth, very long tongue... with an echo in their voice." said Peter. "Kinda cool actually."
"I know what I'll be wearing next Halloween." chuckled his friend.
"Spider-Man isn't your style?"
"Well, he's cool but, you know, I've never really met the guy before."
Both teens laughed, before he pulled up an image of the hero's... relative.
"He's been calling himself 'the Lethal Protector.' This guy's been around San Francisco for a while, killing criminals like bank robbers and murderers here and there. People don't know if he's a superhero vigilante, a lab experiment or a cryptid. There's nothing on what he does with those he grabs, he just seems to absorb them or make them disappear somehow."
'Or eating them.'
"What's he doing in New York? You don't think he came because of you, right?"
"Well... we can't be sure of anything. He did offer to help around a bit, though."
"I'm not sure that's a good idea with so many heroes already on the job. You think he could be after someone here?"
"If it's not a supervillain, it could be personal business or sightseeing, but then he's not subtle about it if he goes out in costume."
"Maybe you could repay him the favor and go catch some petty thieves in San Francisco?"
"Jameson would accuse me of moving my reign of terror to somewhere else."
'If I get hungry again like that, he'd be right.'
"So I'll take it that Spider-Man's gonna investigate this 'lethal' case?"
"Spider-Man won't because that's a reporter's job. But I think he'll be asking for my help."
Venom's presence here was evidently no secret to him, but he needed to get a hold of him somehow. He wasn't sure blowing his identity away to them right off the bat would be a good idea, but if he wanted to get more answers, it might complicate things for people to know their link to Spider-Man. An ordinary civilian would be a better disguise for now, and he could help cover his parent's tracks.
"Why beat around the bush when we could follow him?"
"I already told you, he may not need us anymore."
Eddie looked down a page of results. Words on Spider-Man being viewed as a threat from the local news, none of which included anything about Sleeper's presence. He wasn't sure whether the kid had a symbiote form naturally around him, if him being a human hybrid somehow attracted another of their brethren, or if they had given birth to twins.
It would not make any difference anyways, two or one were just numbers and not facts for units like them. At least, they knew what he was up to, but it did make a slight dampener in their reunion. No way they approached the Avengers, and it didn't seem like news of their son's hidden abilities had spread yet. No one really knew that Venom was in town aside from the few that tried to track them down.
Eddie couldn't follow him lest it were for an interview, and Spider-Man didn't seem to be the chatty type once his mission was done lately, swinging away at high speed. Venom could track him, but that'd bring too much attention they didn't want.
"I told you his first meal would've scared him, now he's probably still figuring out how to drown the urges."
"There were lots of things happening at the same time, could've been anything freaking him out."
"He's been raised here all his life. He's from this planet too, you know? I was scared when I first did that."
"That's because you're a big pussy."
Sipping down a cup of brandy, the man smirked.
"I wonder when that started to sound like a flirt, sometimes."
"I wonder why you think I'm talking dirty to you saying that."
"I'm not, you just say that a lot for someone who also enjoys it."
"I know when to appreciate people that don't always deserve it."
"That you do."
His other laughed, extending a tendril to grab a piece of dinner behind them. They ravaged a convenience store for food supplies, but Venom always liked to go for dessert while Eddie was working. New York wasn't out of material for him to work with, but his expertise shone through when he had to bring attention to things beyond the public's usual perpsective.
It also meant whatever the news, he had to draw attention away from the red clad superhero if they wanted to meet again. Which wasn't an easy task, Sleeper was damn good at bringing attention to himself.
They didn't really like red all that much after what their other spawn did, and agreed that sticking with darker colors would've been better. Not that they could fault him for it, he was young and probably assumed such a costume was par for the course for superheroes. Plus, the outfit he was wearing nowadays was a gift from Iron Man himself, a man who didn't bother with a double identity when it suited him.
At least, Sleeper was smart enough not to follow his lead that far, albeit they were curious to see if whatever abilities it granted, their child could fly. Probably not as spiders on this world weren't generally able to do that (and Venom didn't feel like talking about rampant creatures on Klyntar), but Eddie quipped that when you're friends with some big bucks tech guy at that age, usually a cape or a jetpack weren't exactly out of the question.
"Maybe we could get inside that-"
"No." bluntly shot down Eddie. "You know as well as I do that that place is a fortress. People like us get 'fixed' in there, they won't be happy with what we do. They dealt with aliens before, but I don't think they can appreciate you as well as I do. I don't want you ending up in a jar, no matter how much I say I do."
"We could eat them if they stand in our way."
"They're still our kid's friends. That's one ticket to family therapy at best." he deadpanned. "I can't really stand their leader either."
"I've noticed."
"We'll get there, we just have to find the right opportunity. For now, let's just focus on giving him an opening instead."
Blank.
For a moment, that's all what he recalled. Things going all white, fading off in a couple seconds.
He went out by the park on his way home, passing by a couple people doing an aerobics class with a faulty radio in the background. He heard all sorts of noises coming out of it with a headache on the rise, then whatever came next sounded like a bang before he lost sight of everything.
He hadn't been shot, had he? His Spider-Sense would've warned him if he had been in danger, but at the same time, perhaps that noise somehow distracted his other senses away.
As he tried to collect his thoughts, he was finally able to see things a bit more clearly again, but his entire body felt off. He was cold and could hardly feel his own skin, probably on the ground. He just knew people were staring at him.
'I didn't transform in public, did I?!'
There were people looking at him from above. In fact, they almost looked like giants...
...did he turn into an actual spider?
He raised a tendril to check on himself, and promptly realized what happened the second he turned around.
His own body laid there, lifeless. He was looking at his own unconscious self, and everything seemed much bigger than him now. On top of that, he didn't even have proper hands. He was... a blob?!
A symbiote...?
How could this even happen? Did he project his consciousness into this form? Could he do that without damaging his mind? It didn't even feel all that alien to him, ironically enough, as this form felt right to him somehow. But he knew he had to get away quickly, civilians were getting concerned.
From the looks of it, they'd probably believe he attacked himself (or rather his body. His symbiote body attacked his human conscious body out of nowhere. This was complicated enough to explain so he didn't bother thinking about it much further). So what was a symbiote anyways to do this? A ghost alien? A mind-storaging parasite of sorts? Was he 'leaving the cocoon'?
He formed a shape with a tendril and, to his amazement, a web sling had successfully formed from him, scaring away the onlookers and latching onto a tree. He'd have to leave for safety first, then get back for his body somehow. He didn't know how long this could last, but he already felt starved from the experience he was going through, and he'd rather not find out if he still had a mouth to eat from.
Just as he took in his surroundings and tried to devise a plan, something sharp had grabbed onto his form, before pecking at him, pulling at the substance that now made his body.
All that he knew next was that he now had wings and was as big as a hawk.
"You have got to get over it one day. Our son does this for a living, remember?"
Eddie growled. Dan had told him that taking a class for fear of heights would make their job much easier, upon being told they were now taking the roofs more often, but he didn't listen. Anne didn't believe him when he said that too much fear would bring Venom out, so he just left it at lame excuses.
"Yeah, I don't think he got that from me. True, I am the more superheroic one out of the two of us, but he's got your attitude somewhere if he didn't need us to become a hero. Give me a break, pup. Wait, do you smell that? Smell what?"
This scent... it was Sleeper's! Much stronger than before, but it also had a hint of... feathers? Not the same as Cher's and Sonny's, that was for sure, but this was more like...
"A wren? You could've told me you were the bird expert here. No, I just had a neighbor that bought all types of animals, that one died because you were so hungry, you just snuck out of me to get a taste. I still remember how the apartment smelled for a while because you left the carcass somewhere, our hens were traumatized. Well, lucky us, I can help us track him down."
Venom made sure he slid down the building on a blind spot, before following the other symbiote's trail. Sleeper must've been out hunting for phenylethylalanine somewhere, they just had to give him the address of their new chocolate supplier. That, or advise him on switching to chicken burgers if he still wanted to avoid adding brains to his diet.
If they didn't risk eating it all themselves, they'd perhaps be able to bring him a snack bag next time they get a hold of him.
"Wh... what?! Sleeper?!"
A literal hold of him.
They had expected to see the symbiote either as Spider-Man or in full view. Instead, they were witnessing what appeared to be a spider-bird hybrid consuming itself on the spot, supporting itself with human-sized spider legs as its main body contorted itself into a mess of black and yellow goo, slowly bubbling more and more into the shape of a giant spider.
Venom approached the creature, confused. What was Sleeper doing and how was he doing it? It was as if he was taking the bird as host, but that didn't make sense. He already had a body, his human body, so what was he...
"Sleeper, is that you, son?"
The creature's form finally stabilized, taking the clear shape of an oversized spider with red eyes, scouting over to Venom before resting a leg on him. The older symbiote grabbed the appendage and caressed it, letting the spider emit a mix of a relaxed and panicked purring.
"Tell us what happened."
Without a word, they felt knowledge pour into their mind. Feelings of distress and amazement, adrenalin and horror, so many confusion sensations... before Sleeper was able to communicate. Something about losing his body in public, how it had to be at 'the tower', that they needed to get back there and he was hungry, oh so hungry.
"Don't fret, our child. We're here now. We'll get your body back in no time, kiddo."
The spider seemed to go down in size as he said that, becoming as big as a briefcase as Venom carried Sleeper into his arms.
The younger symbiote could feel a protective instinct emanating from his parents' form as they began leaping. He explained he didn't know how it happened, or if he could do it again, but this was not the result he was looking for when he wanted to practice being a symbiote. The bigger creature wordlessly responded that it was unprecedented anyways, so he wasn't doing anything wrong.
Sleeper wasn't certain his parent understood, as maybe his human parent would be able to explain better, but he didn't really have a mouth at the time to speak, and while it almost felt like he could share images simply from his head through his father's hold on him, he wasn't certain risking his identity would be a good idea.
...could he reveal himself to his fathers?
"This is where the road stops for us. How do we get there without those wannabe heroes ready to capture us?"
Venom felt a lot of miscontent and outrage coming from his son. He forgot that unlike him, Sleeper was friends with the Avengers.
"Alright, alright. Let's think for a second. Wait, I think the solution is right there! Sleeper, I can sense some new abilities within you."
The symbiote made a confused sound.
"Your form has evolved since the previous time. You leaving your body is surely a mistake, but there's something about your composition that changed. Earlier, we could smell you from miles away because you amplified your own scent, and once you calmed down, we could sense a need to hold you. Are you saying that wasn't just parental instinct? Those aren't mutually exclusive."
The older symbiote began arguing with themselves. Awful timing for a couple squabble, but he couldn't really interrupt them.
"Now listen, I believe if you focus enough, you should be able to command your surroundings into behaving in a way you want them to. Make those people do what you want them to, even without bonding." said Venom as he put the spider down, patting it. "Do not worry, adapting to and learning new capacities is innate in symbiotes, you can master anything so long you know you can do it."
The younger symbiote was uncertain of what his parent meant, but he decided it was worth a try.
Lifting his legs up to a nearby building, he produced a web and flung himself over the streets. Below, an ambulance was nearing the Avengers Tower, only stopped by traffic. He only had one shot at this, but if what he was told was true, he'd be able to fix everything without blowing anyone's cover. He braced himself as he let go of his sling, before falling down in direction of the vehicle.
The spider closed his eyes as he focused. He could feel a certain itch, a release of sorts from all over his skin, as he thought 'Ignore me, go away, stop what you're doing' over and over. He wasn't certain how this worked, but he needed it to regardless.
As soon as he landed, he had his answer right away.
Motorcyclists, car drivers and bystanders nearby all collapsed, some loud snores reassuring him they were just asleep. Venom was right, he created a sleep gas somehow! This could provide to be helpful if he knew how to do it again, but for the time being, he had other priorities.
He tore the backdoor open, his legs becoming sharp blades as he slipped them through the gap between the ambulance doors. There, he saw his own body, inert and completely limp. It was actually kind of horrifying from where he stood, now that he thought about it. He climbed up to the bed where he could see himself, and in a few moments, he felt himself relax.
It was almost like instantly falling asleep, his head was getting lighter and his consciousness fading as he went down, through the cloth and skin and seeing his vision fade off to complete darkness. There was also a familiar warmth in it, one he couldn't quite describe, but it was almost like home.
Then, he felt a very sharp pain to the head, as if he had slept on something rough, and upon opening his eyes...
He looked down at his human body. He lifted his hands, opening and clutching his fists a couple times for good measure.
He was certain Venom had to be gone by now. A melancholic feeling settled inside his chest, as well as a sense of dread targeted towards himself.
Just... what was he?
Doing his best to imitate the superhero, Eddie made a rock 'n roll sign.
Predictably enough, it took Venom gloving his hand for anything to happen. And the makeshift web his other formed was scentless.
"Nothing. It's official, that code doesn't work for us."
"It's a codex. I did my best, but Sleeper's seemingly gone through mutations incompatible with our mass. Perhaps if he bonded with you, we could-"
"I am not letting our child pilot my body."
"Anne said a solid parenthood involved concessions."
"And Dan said that spoiling a child too much could make them into a brat or struggle when they get upset. It's already hell feeding a grown alien living inside of me, don't count on me to drive us for a family dinner."
"How about dealing with our tantrums together first?"
"Can't argue with that one, you got more manageable."
"I was talking about you."
He could feel the Klyntar smirk without even looking.
"Still, Spider-Man is pretty small compared to us. I guess it's better for his work environment than being like Hulk, but I'm concerned about how hungry he could get for now."
"In what sense?"
"You start consuming me when we're out of fuel. His body doesn't seem to go autopilot without him inside. If we had come even a month or two later, he might've starved himself or gotten himself lost today."
"I think he took care of himself pretty well. But you're right. We have to start looking for him more actively, but either we have to show ourselves or he'll have to take a lower profile."
"He'd be in high school or college at our time. I hope for him that he's not one of those popular kids everyone follows."
"Don't tell me you want our son to be a loser like we were."
"Sometimes, misery builds character. But I think I'd rather him be a loser superhero than a super-delinquent, don't you think?"
"As if our son would bother hanging with two-bit hooligans, I bet he'd devoured them on his first day!"
Both host and parasite chuckled.
Sleeper was developing at an irregular rate. He was the first of his kind, so it was no surprise things were unexpected. They could already see him introducing Klyntars as the new trend for defeating supervillains, with mixed thoughts on whether or not eating them would be acceptable.
Regardless, a life as a public hero would be a life alone with their past tracking him down. They'd have to convince him to give up being a hero or hide away from his origins until he'd retire by himself.
Mr. Stark gave him a basic rundown. It was nothing serious, but apparently, Peter had developed slightly more sensitive hearing.
Some minor damage in his ears fixed by his regeneration, caused by certain frequencies. From now on, he'd better go out in public with a couple special earplugs, while they reworked his mask to block out any noise of the kind. This had never happened to him before, but now they knew to be warned.
Mr. Stark joked that Peter was lucky, he was young and this kind of reaction meant he wouldn't go deaf for a couple decades. Peter humored him with a laugh, but he wasn't certain he liked what he learned.
He could now produce chemicals, likely from a way similar to his webs, with varying effects he was immune to. With practice, he could perhaps use them in battle, especially since it wasn't a power they'd expect a spider superhero to have (although, he wondered if he could spit acid as well). He wondered if he could vary the chemical composition depending on his needs and fluid resources.
And while it certainly felt empowering to know his abilities were expanding, he'd rather have found out in a different manner.
If he hadn't gone back on time, who knows if his body would've survived? Furthermore, it was luck that Venom was patrolling around that time, he could've been found by someone much less benevolent, and certainly not as knowledgeable to rescue him or communicate. Then again, he could maybe communicate if he bonded with someone...
...but then where would that leave his body?
If his consciousness was inside the symbiote, then what was he? Did he go his whole life just piloting himself without actually being himself? Not even Venom fully understood what he was, so who was even Peter Parker?
He took a look at his hands. They felt warm, albeit shaking, and he had trouble believing he lost them alongside the rest of his body a few hours ago. He wasn't even sure they were his hands anymore at this point. He could sling webs with them ever since he was bitten by that spider, but how much of those powers were actually his, thinking about it?
One moment, he was this, and the other, he was some alien blob that fed off people's bodies and hijacked small animals to sustain himself. It was already hard enough being Spider-Man, and now he had to deal with the possibility he wasn't even Peter Parker.
Was he just Sleeper? Was Sleeper something created inside of him? Did Peter even exist? Was he pretending to be Peter this entire time?
Was he just a symbiote controlling his own mindless corpse for all his life?
He was...
He was Spider-Man. That was one thing he was certain of. He chose the costume, he chose the name, he chose to save the people around him just because he could, so that he'd spare others the same losses he had to endure up until now.
And just like everyone else in the universe now, he realized he had no idea who or what Spider-Man actually was.
