Snuggles the Symbiote

Ashley hadn't said a word since Panacea died. Mister Snuggles had spoken through her, sharing a few names, but that was it. (And still creepy as shit.) I was holding her close, but she was just staring at a wall.

We were all in Wards HQ. The team strewed around the room. Everyone looked down. Gallant had taken off his helmet, revealing himself as Dean Stansfield, son of a wealthy family and Glory Girl's on again, off again boyfriend. Director Piggot was there with us, standing in the room with a stern expression on her face.

I… I felt like shit. I was exhausted and the room felt way too hot but I was more concerned about how Ashley was doing.

Shadow Stalker walked into the room. "Heard what happened. Sucks." She looked at Ashley. "Is killer gonna be alright?" Ashley flinched.

"She'll be fine," I answered. I actually wasn't sure but the less interest Sophia had in my foster sister the better.

"Take a seat, Shadow Stalker," the director said, "the others have just finished informing me of the situation."

Shadow Stalker, instead of sitting leaned up against a far wall.

The director gave no outward sign of annoyance. "Just so I have this straight: All the new faces, Bruiser, Chitter, Super Skrull, Kraven and Lung's new spider-pet, Jorogumo, are all clones of people from Cuddlebug's home universe. This is correct?"

We all gave our affirmations.

She gave a disgruntled sigh and continued. "After Weaver captured Chitter, the squirrel controlling master, the Undersiders approached, destroyed the remote detonator for Panacea's bomb vest and revealed that Bakuda was, in fact, a body double, called a Super Skrull." She grimaced saying that name. "The Undersiders had a new member, Bruiser. Meanwhile Kraven and Chitter were there as Mercenaries of the ABB."

More nods.

"Then Kraven and several ABB members who'd been hiding in the bank attacked. All of you, with assistance from the Undersiders, engaged."

She looked to Aegis and Browbeat. "You two initially engaged Kraven specifically, but he proved too fast and agile, but between Vista's spatial distortions and the darkness that Grue generated he was able to use the terrain to his advantage to escape you. Aegis then engaged with armed, unpowered ABB members. Browbeat initially engaged Jorogumo but had to disengage as the fight was dominated by the Undersiders Grue and Hellhound."

She looked directly at Aegis. "Later on, you saw Kraven fleeing with Chitter upon his shoulder but were occupied by preventing Vista from being shot and could not intercept. Is this correct?"

Both boys gave their affirmations.

"Vista and Gallant," Piggot said, addressing those two. "You played support the entire time with battlefield control on Vista's part and well-timed emotion blasts to incapacitate gunmen in Gallant's. Gallant attempted to blast Kraven after Aegis lost track of him but before he fled but he was able to dodge. Vista, you cited that Bruiser, glowing pink, punched Jorogumo out of the street and then immediately fell to the ground and passed out. This is correct?"

Vista sighed, and then confirmed with a "yes." Gallant nodded silently.

"Clockblocker you… Spent the first half of the fight overly concerned with the fact that you'd recently had squirrels in your pants and then spent the rest of the fight freezing gangsters." The director blinked. "You specifically cited an incident where Regent, of the Undersiders, made the girl who would later shoot Panacea spasm to the point of urinating upon herself while simultaneously making you aware of a gangster sneaking up on you."

"Yeah, that's how it went."

"And Weaver, you focused primarily on using your insects to keep a grip on the terrain and distract enemy actors," she finished, "not wanting to risk lethally poisoning non-powered hostiles when there were other options available to yourself. However you twice directly attacked the 'Super-Skrull' in response to attacks on Cuddlebug."

"Yeah," I said… Honestly, I was hoping we'd be finished here soon. I wasn't feeling good and Ashley clearly needed… Something…. Something that wasn't being here. "After beating the Skrull upside the head with my baton I tried to bring Cuddlebug back to safety but Jorogumo returned to the street and attacked us. I wasn't fast enough to avoid her, but I was able to put myself between her and Cuddlebug and take the bite. I passed out after that and woke up after Panacea had been shot."

"Cuddlebug kind of freaked out when Weaver went down," Vista added since Ashley wasn't talking. "Not quite like when she was sparring with Shadow Stalker but her claws ended up in Jorogumo's body. The Undersiders slipped away and the Skrull ran off while we were all distracted by Cuddle's freak out and Jorogumo ran for it."

"Which," the director concluded, "brings us to the part I'm confused about. While mending Weaver's bite, Panacea was killed by an accidental discharge when Cuddlebug attempted to disarm the woman who, after noticing that no one was paying attention to her, went back on her surrender and for whatever reason thought that grabbing her firearm in a threatening manner was an intelligent course of action." The director sighed. "I have two questions. First, Clockblocker… What did you do when Panacea was shot?"

Clockblocker looked down. "At first, I didn't realize she'd been hit. I heard the gunshot and turned in time to see Cuddlebug and the girl fighting over the gun. In hindsight, I should have guessed that something had happened when I saw Cuddlebug let go of the gun but at the time my first instinct was to take out the gunman-I ran for her. Aegis was faster and tackled her, and a few seconds later I got there and froze her to make sure. Then I noticed that Glory Girl was holding a bloody Panacea and saying 'no' over and over again. I rushed over but by the time I got there she wasn't breathing and she didn't have a pulse. I-I tried to freeze her. I kept it up till the EMTs got there… I had to stop when they got to work and they did... everything... I don't even know... but they were yelling that there was too much damage and they couldn't keep working on her if I was still freezing her so they made me stop and... and... they were at it for... I don't even know how long, but they eventually said it was too late for anything they could have done." He was fidgeting with his hands. "I guess I could have tried to keep her frozen until another healer could be called in, but… I didn't know that at the time. Maybe if I'd gone to her first instead of the shooter. Maybe... We... I didn't know they couldn't save her... I'm sorry."

"Okay," Director Piggot said with a raised hand. Then she walked over and looked down at Ashley. "Cuddlebug, I need you to look at me."

Ashley looked up.

"I'm not going to ask why you noticed the woman with the gun and decided that you alone had to deal with it. I'm not going to ask why a cape who can lift five tons overhead was struggling to take a gun from a normal, nonpowered woman." The director was speaking evenly and very deliberately. "What I am going to ask is why a girl who can generate claws able to cleanly slice through a foot of high quality 9 gauge steel with the ease of a hot knife through soft butter didn't just claw the gun apart?"

Ashley, without a word, extracted herself from my arms, walked halfway across the room… And started beating herself over the head and pulling her own hair. "Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! I'm so freaking stupid!"

As soon as she started hitting herself, I jumped up and managed to grab her wrists by the last 'stupid.'

"Stop, stop this Cuddle-"

"Shut up, Mister Snuggles!" Ashley shouted, interrupting me. "She's dead and it's my fault and… Ahh!"

I wanted to say something. Anything, but I couldn't think of anything and… And it felt like my veins were on fire. All of my muscles clenched up, forcing me to let go of her wrists and stumble.

This snapped her out of her self-loathing funk. "T-Weaver?" She said, sounding more frightened than I'd heard anyone ever. "Are you okay?"

"I… I don't feel so good."

I fell and landed on the floor. I couldn't move and it was almost impossible to breathe… Why was the room shaking? It was getting hard to follow what was happening.

"...Taylor?" A Girl's voice-Ashley, even more, frightened than before.

"Taylor!?" Another voice, Shadow Stalker… Fuck!

"Get her mask off," one of the boys shouted. No, not in front of….

Everything went black.

Snuggles the Symbiote

It had been a week since Taylor had… The doctors called it an 'episode.' They'd said that there was some chemical in her system that made flip out and go into a coma. The only explanation they had was that Panacea had been shot before she finished curing the poison from Jorogumo's bite. That made me feel even worse about screwing up so bad.

The doctors said Taylor was stable and that scans said there was no brain damage, so she'd wake up… eventually.

Mister Hebert had been angry… Not at me, or anyone in particular as far as I could tell, but he looked really angry and I'd heard someone say that he'd yelled at the Director and Mister Armsmaster about why there weren't any adult heroes at the bank. I only saw him when they let us visit Taylor in the infirmary at the Rig. Otherwise… He was either working or taking care of things. I hadn't even been home since… My room wasn't' done and sleeping in Taylor's without her felt wrong so I'd been staying in the room they gave us in Wards HQ.

I was there now. It was a simple room, with two simple beds, a desk, and a wall mirror. Taylor and I hadn't expected to be staying here often. I had Mister Snuggles in our Cuddlebug costume but without the mask and I was staring into the mirror.

"So when we did the fiery eyes thing and so how Evil Shadow Stalker was," I said, "it's because of how angry and upset she was making us, right?"

"This one suspects that Ashley's emotional state played a factor." I took that as a yes.

"So," I said while closing my eyes, tight "if I think really hard about the kinds of things Shadow Stalker made me think about." I spent a while, thinking back to when mommy and daddy… When the evil doctor was… and a week ago with Panacea and Taylor. I sniffed and opened my eyes.

The parts that were normally green were glowing a scary looking red and I had… not a ring… kind of a leaf shape maybe? A shape of fire around my eyes. Kind of like a picture I'd seen of a CGI Anime Girl I saw once. The point was that my eyes were glowing red and had fire coming out of them. And steam.

"Okay, scary fire eyes on cue," I said. "...Now we need to check if they're what let us see how evil Sophia was." Then I raised a hand up close t the fire coming out of my right eye. It did not feel warm. Like, at all. "Mister Snuggles? Is that bothering you at all?"

"This one is not harmed or repulsed by flames these ones generate. This one is confused and frightened by the implications."

"Yeah, that is weird." Hmm. I couldn't test my evil vision unless I knew where an evil person was. "Okay uh, let's practice something else until we know where Shadow Stalker is..." I let the fire go out.

I took a deep breath and tried to stretch my arms out as far as I could. "Still only a couple of inches… Most symbiotes can do a lot more with stretching and shapeshifting than we can..."

"Other klyntar in your memory are older, more experienced, of later generations, and far more powerful."

"Oh yeah, that's right?" I said. "You said we were able to stretch as much as we can from DNA from someone else and that it messed with our X-Genes?"

Affirmative.

"Well, the only people I know of with stretchy powers are Mister Fantastic and Ms. Marvel and Mister Fantastic's kid is a mutant so..." Honestly, it made sense. Ms. Marvel was an Inhuman. She was cool, one of the only prominent Inhumans who didn't suck, but stuff that was good for Inhumans was bad for Mutants. It just made sense that mixing them together caused problems.

"This one cannot fault Ashley's logic but wishes to state that it seems irresponsible to speculate based on a sample size of just two beings."

"I guess," I admitted. "It's just if we can figure out how our stretching works then we can maybe see if that'll let us stretch more and then-" There was a knock at my door. "Who is it?"

"It's Vista," came well, Vista's voice.

"Come in."

She did just as I turned to greet her. She looked right at my face.

"What?" I asked. "Are my eyes still on fire?" I could have sworn I'd turned it off. I looked back at the mirror and yeah, they were out.

"Sorry, I just forgot that you weren't Weaver's actual little sister for a bit." I shrugged and turned back as she was approaching me. "Anyway, my school's closed today for an administration thing. We've got HQ to ourselves until Arcadia lets out so I figured I'd, you know, check on you."

"Why do I need to be checked on?" I asked with my head tilted.

"Because I know you've been sleeping on base all week but this is the first time I've seen you since the debriefing," she said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Do you even know about the breakout?"

"Breakout?" I said with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah," Vista said, "they told us after everything calmed down, the reason why the Bad Boyz had their mercenaries down at the bank was a distraction: The Real Bakuda and Oni Lee hit the Rig and sprung Lung, so now he's free again and planning who knows what."

"Lung… He's the guy that turns into a flaming lizard, right?"

"A dragon."

"No," I said, "not a dragon. He's not five hundred feet tall like Fin Fang Foom and he's not cat-sized and cute like Lockheed. He's nothing." Mister Snuggles whispered something in my ear. "No Mister Snuggles, Grendel wasn't a dragon, Grendel was a dark elf."

"Oh… Okay," Vista said. "Anyway, what have you been up to and… Stuff."

"Wait," I said, "is the breakout the reason why some of the walls in the Rig were made of pudding last week?"

"Probably," Vista said. "But seriously, how are you? You took everything that happened really hard, and… Are you okay?"

"I guess I'm doing okay," I said. "I'm mostly just training or practicing with my powers. I tried booking time in the weight room but apparently, they don't want us working out too hard till we get to a certain age because it can mess you up when you're older." I shrugged. "And what's this about them not letting us learn CQC until we're at least fourteen?"

"I know, right?" Vista said. "It's some legal crap about how they're not allowed to make us child soldiers-most Wards don't see as much action as we do here, kids our age are usually like, Girl Scouts with Super Powers." She shrugged. "So we get taught how to throw a basic punch and have to tough it out for a few years because the rules were made to protect those kids instead of to protect the fringe cases like us. It's stupid." Then she looked back up at me really close. "Wait, you've been training and practicing with your powers most of the time you've been here? Like...?"

"All day, every day," I answered. That made Vista look at me funny.

"That," she said, "isn't healthy."

"I made a mistake," I said slowly. "In the heat of the moment, I forgot what my powers could do. I thought about it, there were a couple of ways I could have taken the gun away. Because I forgot, because of that mistake, a hero is dead-and the heroes in this universe stay dead for some reason-and someone I care about an awful lot is sick and isn't gonna get better anytime soon. There's nothing I can do about it now, but I can make sure I don't make that mistake again," I explained, "and that means I need to know exactly what my powers are, what they're capable of, and what I can do with them."

"Okay," Vista said, "but seriously, Cuddlebug-"

"Ashley."

"Huh?"

"You've seen my face and you've seen Taylor's face and know her name. There's no reason why I should keep my name secret from you," I said.

"Oh, okay then Ashley, you can call me Missy then," she replied, "but still. I can understand not wanting to screw up again but there's no way that just… Have you done anything other than…?"

"Not really," I said with a shrug.

"Okay," she said while taking my slightly embiggened hand, "you are gonna come with me, we are gonna sit on the couch out in the common room, and you are gonna stop beating yourself up about what happened and relax for a little bit. Okay?"

"If I have to but… I don't know how to… I don't know anything here, so what am I supposed to do? Look up fanfiction about heroes I've never heard of or watch TV that's apparently radically different from what I'm used to?"

While dragging me out into the common room, Missy hummed. "I think I've got an idea," she said, "you sit here," she pointed to the couch. "I'm gonna get my laptop and introduce you to Peat and Fenn."

So I shrank my arm back up and sat there, wondering who this Peat and Fenn were, while waiting for Missy to get back. I ended up trying to do my claws and Thing Fists are the same time but no matter what I didn't I couldn't have both at the same time. Unless you count having Righty as claws and Lefty as a Thing Fist. I shifted them back as soon as I heard Missy coming back.

"Okay, so Peat and Fenn are this pair of Case 53 kids who don't really trust the PRT and are afraid of cars or something," Missy explained "They're basically traveling across the country on foot having adventures and everybody loves them because they're adorable. Lots of people keep track of what they're up to and people post fanart and photos of them and stuff like that. I don't normally go for this kind of thing but you seem like the kind of girl who likes cutesy feel-good stories like this."

"Okay." I blinked. "What's a Case 53?"

"Um," Missy said… "Uh, where you're from, do you have capes who end up looking uh… Not human? Like, weird skin colors, horns, permanently made of something that's not flesh and blood? That kind of thing."

"Yeah," I said. "There's lots of Mutants like that… so like, these kids go from place to place… And nobody hates them? Nobody throws rocks or tries to drive them away or hurt them?" I… I couldn't understand that. If a pair of Mutant children were going around like that they'd be…

Missy stopped filling with her computer. "You… You said there'd been genocides against people like you… Seriously, how bad is it that..."

"The government once built giant robots whose sole job was to round up and kill Mutants," I said. "The Sentinel Program. Other people have made more since then, but… Seriously? There are no superhumans here who just get irrationally hated and feared for no reason? Nobody that's treated as less than a person because of the kind of powers they have?"

"...Okay, so after you left on the day we met, Armsmaster filled us in on the Case 81 stuff," yeah, that's what Mister Armsmaster had called me the day I met Taylor, cause I was from another world. "I think, maybe, later you should talk to them about forgetting about trying to find you a way home because it sounds like you'd be better off staying here."

"Yeah, Taylor said that too."

"Anyway, for right now you and I are gonna forget about stuff like that and about recent problems and we're just gonna sit here and read sappy stories about kids doing kid things," she finished pulling something up. "Oh hey, they made some new friends."

She showed me the monitor and it showed pictures of busted up motorcycles and lots of vines and stuff forming rings around an old country road with four kids in the middle of a street. Well, three kids and a bundle of twigs shaped like a toddler. In the middle were two kids with long white hair, dark blue skin, yellow eyes, pointy ears, two red horns coming out of the top of their heads, and fangs. They were both dressed in outfits they'd clearly picked out for themselves and couldn't be older than eight. They each had a silver Omega symbol tattooed on their cheeks, one on the left and one on the right. The bundle of sticks was off to the side while standing behind them was an older girl, maybe Missy's age, and-

"-That's a symbiote," I said. The girl was dressed in an outfit, mostly white but with black accents. It actually kind of made me think of a Little Red Riding Hood outfit, except white and black instead of red and whatever else. Under the hooded cape, she had on the same kind of mask I wore when Mister Snuggles covered my face: Spider-Man without the web-lines. There was a black Venom logo on her blouse.

Missy took the computer back and scrolled down a little bit. "It says here than Peat and Fenn were attacked by members of the Fallen, uh… I'll explain who those are later, for reasons unknown but two other parahuman children happened to be in the area and came to their rescue. The fight attracted attention from the nearby town and the Fallen were arrested."

"So… Yay?" I said. I wasn't sure how to feel about another girl with a symbiote out there. Especially… If I didn't know better I'd say she was Anti-Venom but the Anti-Venom symbiote was destroyed to cure the Spider-Flu a little while back.

"They were interviewed after the attack," Missy continued. "Peat and Fenn were too shaken to comment but the girl gave her name as Klara. She said that she wasn't sure where she was, that she'd been approached by a man while she was tending the garden in her foster parents' house and he sprayed her with this sweet-smelling gas. She had trouble breathing for a bit and the next thing she knew she was covered in white goo and a woman with a nice hat was asking her to translate for someone named Groot-Two in exchange for curing her allergy. The bundle of twigs commented 'Je suis Groot.' Repeatedly. It's apparently the only thing he can say. They don't know how they ended up where they did. Peat and Fenn resisted attempts to bring them back to town for medical check-ups after the attack and Klara and Groot Two took their side so they're back on the road. Fenn had apparently been hurt in the attack but a hug from Klara healed him..."

"Can you do that?" Missy asked.

"No," I said, "some Symbiotes can heal their hosts but the only one that can heal other people with a touch is Anti-Venom. Curing sickness and healing injuries is what it does. But it was destroyed so… Sweet smelling gas..." I remembered something from a while ago. Thanos had invaded the Earth and picked a fight with the Inhumans. That was when Black Bolt set off the bomb that made the Terrigen Mists spread around the world. I remembered the smell of the Terrigen from when it spread through Manhattan later that day. The one time my chemical resistance helped me instead of hurting me. "Someone went to my world, deliberately gave a mutant girl M-Pox and then cured her by turning her into a new Anti-Venom… Just to get a translator?"

"Ashley, while this one appreciates an increase in adrenaline secretion it is perhaps not wise to be getting angry right now.

"Hey, this could be good news," Missy. said. "If you told people that she was a high-end healer, then the next time she pops up they might convince her to sign on with us and she could wake up Weaver." I looked right at her and she shrank back. "Sorry."

"I get it, you're trying to make me feel better, but it'd never work out. If healers are as rare as everyone says here, they'd probably put her somewhere where she could heal lots and lots of people. Unless she's near here…?"

"The Article said they were in Alabama."

"So yeah… This sucks," I said. I didn't start crying. "My family got killed because bad people wanted me for their experiments. Then I escape, find myself in a completely different world, but I find someone who cares, someone I start to care about, who invites me into her family, and then she gets poisoned and falls into a coma she can't be woken up from because I accidentally got the White Mage killed."

I definitely wasn't crying.

"C-Ashley," Missy said, "It's gonna be okay. They, they said that Weaver's gonna wake up eventually, right?"

"Yeah… I just… This is on me. I keep asking myself 'what would Spider-Man do' in a situation like this, but it's not helping..."

"Ashley," Missy said, "sometimes when you're in a situation that you think sucks, there's nothing you can do but do your best and hope that it gets better." She blinked. "I mean, normally when I think that it's in the hopes that people will take me more seriously, but I think it applies here. There's nothing you can do. I mean, what could you do? Bring in Jorogumo on your own so they can make an antidote for the venom?"

"Yeah. That'd be stupid. Uh. I've gotta use the bathroom."

I went back down the hall, but instead of using the bathroom I waited a few minutes and then snuck into the elevator. I set it to go up to the lobby and had Mister Snuggles switch into jeans and a hoodie that I pulled up over my head.

I smiled: Vista's given me the answer. 'What would Spider-Man do?' If Spider-Man had gotten someone he loved hurt, if he'd gotten someone killed, he'd make it right. He'd take Responsibility. I wasn't sure how I could make things right with Panacea's family, but I knew that I could make things right with Taylor. I knew what Jorogumo smelled like and this city couldn't be that big. I'd find her, they'd make an antidote to her venom, and once Taylor woke up I could figure out what to do for Glory Girl and her parents.