Snuggles the Symbiote

"This is bad," I said. "This is bad. This is very bad. This is very, very, very bad!"

"Cuddlebug," Aegis interrupted. "Please explain why exactly this is so bad."

"I'm pretty sure that's an evil clone of Squirrel Girl," I explained, "and-"

"I wouldn't say evil, exactly," the clone interrupted. "Differently moral. Maybe even sociopathic, but not flat-out evil and-wait a second," she said looking right at me. "You're an Ultra Rare Venomette! And you're Shiny! Sergei, can we keep her?"

Another bad guy walked up next to Evil Squirrel Girl. He was a muscly man with black hair and a well-groomed beard. I almost didn't recognize him in his work pants and jacket, but it clicked in my head when he talked and sounded Russian. "You enthusiasm is always a treat, Belka, but at this time we can barely keep ourselves fed." Evil Squirrel Girl and a copy of Kraven the Hunter were talking about the logistics of adopting me.

"But she's so cute!" Evil Squirrel Girl protested. "I want to catch her and train her and battle her and love her and get her a Hellmark so she'll evolve into Mania instead of She-Venom and-"

"I'm sorry," I interrupted, "But what in the name of Thor's Glorious Golden Locks are you talking about? Are you referencing something?"

Evil Squirrel Girl blinked. "...Pokemon?"

I rolled my eyes. "Pokemon is overrated. Digimon was better."

"...That's okay," Evil Squirrel Girl said with narrowed eyes, "we all make mistakes, sweetie."

"What the hell are you guys talking about?" Vista interrupted.

"Can we maybe not do this bit while my girlfriend's sister is in a bomb vest?" Gallant added.

"There are squirrels in my pants!" Clockblocker shouted while rolling around on the ground. Browbeat picked him up by his legs and started shaking him which made squirrels fall out of his armor.

"Sorry," I said. I was kind of smiling like a sheep but I don't think anybody could see.

Evil Squirrel Girl chittered something to the squirrels that fell out of Clockblocker and they all looked apologetic. Then she shrugged and pulled a packaged pastry out of her pockets. She started eating it and I could smell peanut butter and almonds pretty clearly through the rain.

"Anyway," I said turning back to the other Wards, "the real Squirrel Girl is unbeatable. Literally, she's never lost. Her first ever act as a Superhero at fourteen was to beat up Doctor Doom and send him running back to Latveria! In the past six or so years she's beaten MODOK and Fin-Fang-Foom and Thanos and Galactus and Ego the Living Planet and-"

"Cuddlebug?" Aegis interrupted.

"Oh, Sorry," I apologized. "I never explained who those guys were. Those guys are a giant head that's super smart and also has a rocket chair with all kinds of deadly weapons, a five hundred foot tall shapeshifting alien dragon, a Mutant Cybernetic Immortal Space-Guy with all kinds of cosmic powers, an omnipotent giant that eats planets, and a literal living planet."

"Cuddlebug?" Aegis asked again.

"Anyway, the last time Squirrel Girl got cloned, the evil clone beat up literally everyone," I said. "And I'm not doing that thing where people say literally when they're speaking figuratively because they're stupid." I breathed in before I remembered that I don't have to as long as I'm with Mister Snuggles. "I mean she literally beat up thousands of heroes and villains from all over the world and banished them to a pocket dimension and was only stopped when the Real Squirrel Girl got her hands on Mjolnir and used the power of a God to tear a hole to the pocket reality and bring in all the heroes and villains that had been banished to fight her all at once."

"Cuddlebug!?" Aegis shouted.

"Yes," I said, blinking.

He then picked me up by the shoulders and turned me back around to see that Evil Squirrel Girl was now in the middle of the street, tied up in spider-silk with Weaver sitting on her and lots of spiders crawling around them.

"How the Hell did you-?" What? No, Seriously, what?

"She seemed distracted by her snack," Weaver said with a shrug. "I saw the opening and I took it."

There was only one explanation: Taylor was the greatest hero ever in any conceivable universe forever.

"Okay," Gas Mask Lady said while holding up a remote. "That was-"

And then I heard a gunshot and the remote flew from her hand.

There was another group of people on the street. An older blonde girl in a grey and purple costume and a domino mask, holding a pistol, and a really big girl with a fur-collared jacket and a plastic dog mask, a biker-looking guy with a skull on his mask, a man dressed like a fancy ren-fair guy with a white mask, and a boy about Vista's age with light brown hair in jeans, a hoodie, and a domino mask. Behind them were three dogs with spikes coming out of them and exposed muscles. The dogs were getting bigger.

They were coming our way.

"By the way," the blonde with the gun said, "that's a body double, not the actual Bakuda."

"Why are you helping us?" Aegis asked them.

'We were in the area," the man in the skull helmet said. "Panacea getting exploded is bad for everyone."

"...You were gonna rob the bank," Vista said. "And you're pissed off that the ABB beat you to it."

"That too," the young boy said. "Hey," he said, pointing to me. "Defective Venom Clone?"

"No," I said. "We're not a clone. Uh… I'm sorry, who are you?"

He sighed. "... I was cloned from one of the Runaways."

"The who?" I asked.

"No, that's a band. The kids who killed their supervillain parents by pissing off the fallen angels the parents made a deal with."

"Oh," I said, "Chase Stein's group. Wait… There were no boys your age in that group."

He sighed again. "Molly. Molly Hayes. The girl with super strength. The cloners screwed up and I came out a boy."

And then the Fuzzy Naked Blue Spider-Lady jumped on him and he pushed her off back over the group.

Suddenly there were a lot of guys with guns dressed up in outfits that showed a lot of red and green. Were they all in the bank and-Spider-sense tingling, had to jump because the Kraven Clone leaped at me.

"Okay, if you're going to help," I heard Aegis shout, "it seems like we've just escalated to a full-fledged fight."

Then I saw Browbeat and Aegis go for Kraven, Dogosauruses chasing guys with guns, black smoke, laser beams flying, the street getting all abstract arty, and bugs everywhere and it was basically just chaos in the street.

A few seconds of dodging bullets later, I found myself next to Boy-Molly and the Blonde girl.

"Bruiser-"

"King Kickass," Boy-Molly corrected.

"Bruiser" Blonde Girl insisted, "and uh… Girl from the same bizarre alternate universe as Bruiser."

"Cuddlebug," I supplied,

"Noted. Look," she said, "if one of you can distract Fake Bakuda." I looked up at the entrance of the Bank and saw Fake Gas Mask Lady and the Panacea, the girl that'd fixed up Taylor's arm the night we met. Fake Gas Mask Lady kind of melted and shifted into a pointy-eared lizard-lady thing.

"Hey," I said, "she's a Skrull. Neat."

"Look, if one of you can distract her and away from Panacea," Blondie finished, "then I can get that bomb vest off of her and-"

And then a white blur came out of the sky and punched the Skrull in the head. There was Glory Girl… I wasn't even going to ask how she'd gotten here.

Then the Skrull got up, turned into a man Skrull, and then got all Rocky and The Thing-like.

"Oh," I said. "She's a Super Skrull. Crud."

Blondie turned to me. "...Super Skrull? If my power wasn't telling me that you were telling the truth… Who comes up with those names?"

"If it helps," Bruiser said, "I-or, the girl I was cloned from, was friends with a Super Skrull… In fact, I'm pretty sure the exact one that one was cloned from, and they said that it's a lot less pretentious sounding in their language." Then Bruiser's eyes and feet glowed pink and he jumped hard enough to shatter the pavement below him on take off, heading over to where Glory Girl and the Super Skrull were fighting. "Hey! Xavin! Can we work something out!?"

And then he and the Skrull were talking while punching each other.

I started heading towards Panacea to try and bring her over to Blondey but then I had to dodge and roll because of a giant dog getting thrown at me set off our Spider-Sense.

I turned to where it came from to see the biker guy with the skull helmet get thrown out of a cloud of inky black smoke. Some of it was coming out of him… Wait, did that mean he had demonic darkness powers like uh… What were their names? Something and Something… Cloak and Dagger! I wondered if he had powers like Cloak's while I helped him up just in time to see fuzzy naked blue spider-lady crawl out of the fading darkness.

"Uh, Mister Skull-Face-Biker-Man," I said. "If you were trying to blind the fuzzy naked blue Spider-Lady with your darkness smoke stuff-" Wait, Shadow Stalker had scary darkness powers too. Maybe her powers also came from that… I know there's a name for the kind of powers Cloak had but I can't remember it and-

"This one would like to remind Ashley that she should focus"

"Sorry, uh, she's got spider-powers so she's probably got Spider-Sense-ESP," I finished. "Blinding her won't work."

He grunted "Thanks" at me and backed off to where dog mask girl was.

My attention got taken up when I heard the spider-lady hiss and clack something. "Kill… Eat… Fuck… Daddy… where Daddy? Kill."

I looked really close at the Spider-Lady. She was dirty, with mud or blood or something on her body and in her fur with the rain doing nothing to wash it away. Now that I was trying I could smell a lot of sweat on her, even though the rain. She looked sad… Or scared? It was hard to tell because she had six buggy eyes and a spider-mouth.

She looked right at me and said "Prey? Kill!" and leaped for me. I almost didn't doge in time because she didn't set off our spider-sense for some reason. And then, before I could land, something snagged my arms and legs and made me slam face first into the ground.

I pushed myself up and saw that I'd been hit with weblines and then I got tugged back and thrown through the air.

Spider-lady was apparently a bit smarter than she seemed because she spun me like a record and then cut me loose, sending me flying right into the Skrull, who was back to normal.

Except I didn't hit the Skrull. I hit an invisible wall. And slid down an invisible wall. Then the invisible wall vanished and the Skrull was standing over me with a thing fist. When she… he… The Skrull punched down, I punched back up with my own Thing-Fist.

There was a crunch, and suddenly my arm hurt really, really bad. I totally didn't scream.

"Osteo structure in the right appendage shattered from the impact," Mister Snuggles said not that helpfully. "Can mend, act to avoid further harm."

I pushed myself back up from the ground with just my legs while my arm sort of just hung from the side… There were no tears in my eyes and even if there were it wouldn't matter because Mister Snuggles formed a mask and could drink them up before anyone noticed but there were no tears to drink up.

The Skrull looked down at me. "Is that a klyntar symbiote?"

I didn't sniffle. "Y-yeah."

The Skrull's thing fist melted away and then the Skrull held out both arms. "Flame on." And then both arms were on fire, which was enough of a problem that our Spider-Sense started going off and not stopping.

And then some web got wrapped around my middle and I got pulled back down to the floor.

"Xavin, er, Clone Xavin..." I heard Bruiser say, "I know we're..." He yawned. "I know that we're on different sides right now but Tattletale says that killing underaged heroes is the kind of thing that makes the heroes here shoot to kill on sight, so..."

"The klyntar are a parasitic species that invade worlds, hiding among the native population until they've bred the numbers great enough to enslave and ultimately consume all native life on a planet before moving onward, planet to planet, like a horde of locusts consuming all that they see and evolving, becoming more dangerous with each host and each generation" the Skrull said coldly. "This earth, this Universe will thank me for purging this creature now before it can multiply and consume them all."

And then the Skrull, Xavin, got a face full of bees. And a laser blast in one of… Her… boobies.

It gave me enough time for Mister Snuggles to finish fixing my arm and I was able to shift some scorpion pincers and cut the webs around my middle.

Then I heard the sound of spitting and could smell some funky chemicals and that was my only warning before I got a back full of acid.

"This sensation is best described as pain and irritation."

I needed to move. I couldn't make wings or ocktacles with a back full of acid but I could still embiggen, kinda.

I was able to make my legs a little longer and that meant I could run and jump better if I was remembering how legs worked right.

I was about to jump up onto a building when my ankle got snagged by another one of the Spider-Lady's weblines and I tripped and hit the street face first.

She started dragging me back in time for me to miss a blast of fire from the Skull. Well, they weren't working together, that was a good sign.

"Caustic compound neutralized," Minster Snuggles told me.

I smiled and sent out a pair of ocktacles back to grab spider lady while I used my stickem powers to anchor myself. I could feel spider-lady struggling and I pushed myself up so I could see the Skrull.

Then I threw Spider-Lady at the Skrull.

I didn't stick around to see if it hit. Instead, I pulled back the ocktacles and jumped as high as I could to another part of the street and almost landed on Clone Kraven, who sensed me coming and moved away.

Then I noticed that he had Evil Squirrel Girl over his shoulders and jumped for him again because I figured he was gonna run.

He side-stepped me and used his free arm to flip me over so that I landed on my back.

"You have power, child," Clone Kraven said, "but you lack the skill and determination to use it properly."

"I've got plenty of determination," I said as I flipped back up to my feet… then turned around because he was behind me.

"Da?"

"Yeah," I said, "I got the True Pacifist end in Undertale and everything."

"...You played Undertale but you don't get a Pokemon reference because it's 'overrated,' " Evil Squirrel Girl said. "I hate you. Every, admittedly limited, shred of emotion I have is devoted to an unending hatred for you."

"Whatever," I said with a roll of my eyes. "It's not like you're the real Squirrel Girl."

"Ouch."

A couple bullets from one of the guys with guns bounced off of me but they weren't even enough to make my spider-sense buzz so I ignored them and tried to stare down the Kraven Clone.

Then something green, purple, and stretching landed next to me and collapsed into the Skrull. And that's four for four, she's a Super Skrull all right.

She flamed on again and that meant I had to focus on her, which let clone Kraven run off with a "Do svidaniya, child."

I was going to move to stop him or shout for someone else to but then I had to jump to avoid a blast of fire and… darn it.

Now the Skrull was making walls of fire. That wasn't good, because I was surrounded and it was getting really hot… I dodged blasts of fire as well as I could, thankful that my spider-sense still worked but it was really uncomfortable and Mister Snuggles was freaking out.

"Hold it together, Mister Snuggles."

"This one is not sure what it Ashley is referring to."

"Just-" And then I fell to my hands and knees. At first, I didn't understand why but then I started feeling really weak for the first time in weeks.

The heat was making Mister Snuggles' strength leave him and… This must have been a bad day because I didn't have the strength to stand on my own.

I was barely able to look up. I wished I hadn't because the Skrull was up over me with a big ball of fire.

"Mister Snuggles... it's been an honor."

"This one does not understand."

I closed my eyes. I was scared but what else could I do?

Then I heard a lot of buzzing and the Skrull screaming. I opened my eyes again and she was covered in every kind of bug I could think of. The fires were going out and there was Weaver and…

Today, my new foster sister took out an evil clone of Squirrel Girl and beat a Super Skrull upside the head with a baton. Best sister ever.

The Skrull hit the ground and Weaver came over and picked me up with a grunt.

"You… Are heavier than you look," she said. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I just need a second."

"The fight's winding down," Weaver said. I could see that Kraven and Evil Squirrel Girl had escaped and that most of the guys with guns were either frozen in place or on the ground. A girl in the gang's colors was kneeling about a foot from her gun with her hands behind her head. Also, her pants were wet and she smelled like pee, so either she got beat by Weaver or Skull-Biker-Man because bugs and spooky darkness spewing skeleton-themed guys were the scariest things here.

Behind Weaver, I could see that Blondie was fiddling with Panacea's vest while Glory Girl stood guard. Blondie got the vest off, prompting Glory Girl to hug her sister, and then Weaver turned around and started walking over to them. The Undersiders all looked like they were getting ready to leave. Which made sense, if they were planning to rob the bank then that meant they were villains so sticking around was a bad idea for them. It looked like Bruiser was asleep slung over one of the dogosauruses.

And then the spider-lady landed in the streets, behind Weaver and in front of me. She looked right at me and hissed "Prey." Then she charged.

"Taylor, we need to move!"

But the Spider-Lady was faster than Taylor and got her ankles with a web line. We fell to the ground and then Spider-Lady was over us. She opened her mouth big and wide and lurched down for me. I closed my eyes and heard a wet crunch. But I didn't feel anything.

I opened my eyes to see that Taylor had put herself between me and the spider-lady, whose fangs were deep in Taylor's shoulder.

Spider-Lady let go and Taylor fell to the ground.

The next thing I knew, I was on top of the spider-lady with my claws in her chest.

Spider-Lady screamed like a little girl, pushed me, and then jumped to the next street over as soon as my claws popped out of her.

Taylor was still breathing. I picked her up and carried her over to where Panacea and Glory Girl were. They were still hugging.

"Hey, hey," I said, "we hate to interrupt but Weaver's hurt, bad… You're that healer right?"

The two girls pulled apart. "Okay, set her down," Panacea said. "I'll do what I can."

I put Taylor down, on her front so she wouldn't bleed as much, and Panacea stuck a finger in through the tears in Taylor's costume. The bleeding stopped pretty quick.

"Okay, the cuts don't go too deep," Panacea said, "the monster almost nicked an artery but the cuts aren't too much of a problem. I can fix that pretty quickly and then I'll just need a minute to neutralize the venom.

I tried to calm myself down. Taylor was gonna be fine, I wasn't gonna lose anybody else, and everything would be fine. I looked around a bit, saw the Undersiders were gone, Taylor started to stir and then my spider-sense buzzed.

I heard someone mutter something about earning their time in prison and turned to see that the gangster girl that peed herself had moved and grabbed her gun. Nobody else noticed her and she had the gun aimed right for-

I moved, jumping down the street to get to her and grabbed for her gun.

She struggled against me, yanking the gun back with every tug I mead. Really, I probably could have just pulled it out of her hands but she was a normal so if I used my full strength I might rip her arms off or something. A couple of the others were coming up behind her. Eventually, she shoved me and the gun went off.

A girl grunted in surprise just a second later.

I turned around and saw that Panacea, still kneeling by Taylor, was wide-eyed with a spot of red in the middle of her chest growing wider by the second.

She fell back, Glory Girl screamed. I heard someone tackle the girl with the gun but I didn't see who. Taylor woke up, pushed herself up and then swore when she saw Panacea.

"Vicky," Panacea said in a raspy voice. "Look at me."

Glory Girl kneeled down and took Panacea's hand. "Amy, don't talk. You're gonna be okay. Just, just save your strength and-"

Panacea was looking Glory Girl in the eyes. "...Love… You..."

And then her head rolled back.

"No." Glory Girl said. "No. No no no no no no." Then she screamed, holding her sister's body.

I should have just ripped the ganger girl's arms off. Now a hero was dead and it was all my fault.