Snuggles the Symbiote

There was nothing quite like a good vivisection to brighten Bonesaw's mood. It was something she'd needed after the weak she'd been having. Okay, yeah, she'd gotten to tinker on a couple of those people who claimed to be clones of Superhumans she'd never heard off-that guy with the laser eyes was really neat and apparently there was some reality where superpowers were genetic! Isn't that fun!? Why, if she could figure how that worked, there'd be nothing that she couldn't make. She could even do that 'combine a hundred capes into a monster that could kill an endbringer just to see the look on people's faces' thing she'd been wanting to do forever but couldn't because there's no way she could keep powers intact while combining that many brains. She'd just have to get the DNA of a hundred of these guys!

But this one, Bonesaw thought as she poked and prodded a cancerous liver, watching as tumors grew and shrank all over the mass, was extra special. There was so much she could do with Super-Cancer!

"And he still doesn't know that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, even though they were bestest bros for life when the gene sample to make me got taken," the cancer-riddled man on the office desk she was using as an operating table said. "I mean, you'd think he'd read his own issues after the fact or something." He apparently thought he was a character in a comic book or something.

"I'm sorry to say," Bonesaw joked cheerfully, "but you have all of the cancer."

"Oh, I know," her latest art project said. "See, one day old mild-mannered Wade Wilson was walking down the street when he got attacked and bitten by a radioactive honey badger. Then he got injected with an experimental Super Comedian Serum, then the hospital got nuked with a gamma bomb, he fell down into a sewer where he got shot full of Cosmic Rays, and then got sealed in a cocoon after breathing in some alien fart gas. The cocoon hatched into The Ultra Super-Amazingest Immortal Superhero ever: The Incredible Doctor Fantastic Wonder Spider-McIronman, Esquire. Then he realized that that name was stupid and changed it to Deadpool."

"...Okay then," Bonesaw replied. "You don't stop talking, do you?"

"Nope!" Bonesaw's patient, the man who claimed to be cloned from this Deadpool guy, said. "Anyway, how's a cute little girl like you end up in the serial killing mad scientist business?"

"Mister Jack found me," she explained. "He recognized my potential and took me in, teaching me all about the art of murder and torture."

"...Interesting," the victim said.

"You know, this is refreshing," Bonesaw said as she called over one of her spider-boxes. "Normally my art projects scream, or curse, or cry, or call me rude names. You seem to appreciate my artistic vision."

"What can I say," the cancer-riddled clone replied, "I like kids. Anyway, I think I can see where the Ratman is gonna go with this one. You're his favorite character, so you're gonna get obsessed with-ooh, oh god that tickles," he said with a giggle as the spider-box climbed into his chest cavity and started taking samples of fluid and tissues from all of his organs. "You're gonna get obsessed with collecting mutant and mutate DNA and experimenting with it, eventually turning yourself into a Little Miss Sinister when that urge to self-modify that came with your powers gets to you… Then some stuff I'm kind of vague on will happen, you'll be the only survivor and you'll somehow get rehabilitated and end up as the adopted Sister of Skitter, Ratman's donut steel, or both even though, even though it's not really your fault that you're like this, you getting off scot-free for what you've done outside of an apocalyptic scenario is horrifically unlikely"

"Oh goodness, I hope not," Bonesaw said, confused but latching onto the part that she could understand. "Mister Jack and the others are my family, I don't know what I'd do if I lost them."

"So you love them?"

Bonesaw scoffed. "Yeah."

"And they love you?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Yes."

"All of them?"

"Yes!" Bonesaw shouted. "Well, most of them."

"Really now?"

"Okay," Bonesaw admitted, "there's one. He's new. Well, it. It insists on being called it, and says its name is Bloodbath."

"You should tell it to be careful," the cancerous clone said, "it might cut itself on that Edge."

Bonesaw giggled. "Yeah, but… He didn't really pass any of the tests to join the family. He just showed up, ate Cherish, and talked to Mister Jack and then Jack said he was one of us, but..."

"Ahh," the clone began in understanding. "Step-Parent troubles."

"Kinda, I guess. Like, he doesn't really belong here," Bonesaw explained."And he… It. He's mean. To like, everybody but Mister Jack and Crawler. And he's rude, and Mister Jack hasn't had as much time for me ever since he joined up and it's never been like that when we got a new family member before, and..."

"I get it, I get it," her patient said. "You know what Uncle Clonepool would do in your shoes?"

"What?"

"He'd run away," the so-named Clonepool said with a smile. "Come on, let me up and we'll just take off. We can be mercenary buddies! Travel the world, eat exotic food, meet interesting people and then kill them for money. It'll be great!" He looked thoughtful for a moment. "You could use you super-science to give yourself my powers, then we'll get you some vibro-laser scalpels and you can be Lady Kidpool."

"I don't think so," Bonesaw replied. "I mean, it sounds super fun, but I could never leave my family."

"Yeah, but if you leave… Well, if this Jack loves you, he'll be worried about you and try to find you while his heart is all achy that his little girl felt so unloved that she ran away." Clonepool looked up at Bonesaw with pure determination in his eyes. "That'll show him for not paying attention to you."

"...Maybe, but..." Bonesaw was cut off by footsteps and someone with a scary voice poorly singing what sounded like a thrash metal version of Freebird. "Oh great, that's Bloodbath now."

"Oh God," her patient said. "I know that voice." Into the room stomped an ooze red and black skeleton man with spikes and tentacles and lots of sharp teeth. "Ah Hell," Clonepool said, "He's a clone of Cletus."

"'Lo, Wade. It's Bloodbath now," the monster said with a wide, toothy grin. He looked down, hungrily at the helpless mutate.

"Oh no," Clonepool said, "I know that look. You can't kill me in my introductory chapter. I'm Deadpool, everyone's favorite character. There'll be riots in the street!"

"'Cept you ain't Deadpool. Yer just a clone, just like me. Nobody's gonna give two fucks if I have my fun." Bloodbath made a fist that then swole and melted together, forming a hammer.

"No no no no no no no no!" Clonepool explained, suddenly very frightened. "You... You asshole! I've read your notes. If you kill me off here, I swear to God I'll spoil everything!" Bloodbath raised its hammer-fist high into the air. "Jack gets eaten alive by Zerglings!" Clonepool started struggling, but Bloodbath placed a clawed hand through his chest cavity to keep him still. "Prinnirider is Riley!"

"Three..." Bloodbath began to count down, "two..."

"Taylor's Origin is-"

The fist came down, smashing Clonepool's head to a pulp and getting flesh, blood, bone, and brains all over the relatively clean desk.

"Hey!" Bonesaw complained. "I wasn't done with him!"

"Well that's just too fucking bad, now ain't it?" Bloodbath replied. Then, with a sick squelching sound, he pulled a newspaper out of his chest and threw it at her. "I talked to old Jack, pack your bags we're headin' to Chicago."

"Mysterious White and Blue feminine figure with unknown constellation emblem on chest has conversation with Scion?" Bonesaw asked as she read off the title. "Why is she wearing a fedora?"

"No, not that one ya little idiot," the monster corrected. "The one below it. Apparently, my son's here. He got into a fight with a Wizard and I want to kill him."

"...Your son or the Wizard?"

"Yes," and with that answer, Bloodbath left the room. Bonesaw sighed, finished taking her samples from Clonepool's corpse, and then packed up, all the while thinking about how much she hated that thing that was stealing her daddy away from her.