Snuggles the Symbiote

The city was bigger than I thought. The sun was up in the middle of the sky by the time I'd managed to get to the bank.

It'd only been a week since it'd been attacked but it was already back in business. The street was busy, but that was okay because I didn't need to cross over to the bank itself. I was across from it, on the curb where Panacea had landed when she was shot. The blood was all cleaned up, but I could still smell it.

I stood there and I took in a big whiff. It'd been raining during the fight, and it'd been a week, and there had been a lot of people around her since, but I could still barely catch Jorogumo's scent. There was something really bitter about it. Then I took a second to try and remember which direction I'd punched Jorogumo in.

"Ashley struck one designated Jorogumo over the far side of the street."

"Thanks, Mister Snuggles," I whispered… Okay, what were the rules for crossing a busy street again? Oh, yeah.

I found a crosswalk and but before I could cross over I heard footsteps turning in my direction.

"Hello?" A woman's voice called out to me. I looked and saw a blonde lady in a black dress suit. She looked and smelled kinda familiar.

"Um... Hi" I said with a small wave.

"Little girl?" She asked, "are you here alone?"

"No," I said. It wasn't technically a lie.

"Are your parents around, then?" The woman asked.

"Uh, yeah," I said with a big smile. "I'm going to meet them now."

She kneeled down and looked me in the eyes. There were dark circles around hers. "I raised two girls. I know when a little girl is lying."

Darn it. "Do you work in the bank?" I asked.

"I do not," she said. "Don't try to change the subject, little girls shouldn't be in the streets alone."

"I'm… Looking for someone," I said. That was the truth.

"And who is it, exactly, that you're looking for?"

Crud. No, I can't say I'm a superhero looking for a villain. "I'm really uncomfortable answering a stranger's questions."

"It's okay," she said. "You can trust me, I'm a superhero."

"Yeah," I said. "And I'm Thor, God of Thunder. Pardon that I don't prove it, I left Mjolnir in my other pants."

"Why is Ashley engaging in the sarcasm?"

"...Okay, little girl," the woman said, "Since you don't recognize me, and judging from that New York accent, I take it that you're not from around here?" I shook my head. "Okay, first, there's a powerful gang of Neo-Nazis in this city who are rather fond of Norse iconography. I doubt they'd take kindly to a non-white person making such jokes and they will not hesitate to attack someone in their home or hurt a child." I made a mental note to find a sledgehammer so that I could practice my religion upside the heads of some Nazi-jerkfaces.

The woman summoned a little glowing knife in her hand. I stepped back because it felt really warm. "I'm Carol Dallon, Brandish, of New Wave."

Oh.. That's why she seemed familiar. She was Glory Girl's and Panacea's Mommy… Which meant…

"Then you're here because..." I looked back to the curb where I'd been standing a little bit ago.

"Why I'm here isn't important right now," Mrs. Brandish said. "Right now, I'm more concerned about why a little girl is wandering around, alone, near a busy street in the middle of the day."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"If there's someone to apologize to for this, it shouldn't be me," the woman said.

"No, I mean..." I pulled my hood carefully to make sure nobody could see my face and then had Mister Snuggles form my Cuddlebug mask over half my face. "I was there. It's my fault… I'm sorry."

Mrs. Brandish was quiet for a second. "Alright then," she said a bit loudly while making the knife disappear, "I guess I can make sure you get home safe."

She took my hand and started pulling me away. I had the mask go back inside and basically followed her, not knowing what else I could do other than yank my arm away and well… I was still getting the hang of strength levels between 'if Spider-Man was my size' and 'completely helpless.'

"So..." Mrs. Brandish began once we were away from the main street. "You're the refugee with the parasite."

"Symbiote," I corrected automatically. "Wait… Did they tell you? Director Piggot's gonna be mad."

"Then she should have had them sign nondisclosure agreements," Mrs. Brandish said snarkily. "Now… Why were you really at the bank?"

"Tracking a villain," I said. This was a lot easier now that I didn't have to be 100% secretive.

"Okay," the woman said. "First, I'm going to take you to PRT headquarters. Then I'm going to have talks with the director about sending children out alone on plain clothes operations when they should be in school."

"...Uh, they don't know I'm out here…" Also, I haven't been enrolled in any schools yet, but she didn't need to know that.

The woman blinked. "...what villain are you looking for… And why are you doing it in plain clothes, alone, without permission or supervision?"

"Jorogumo, the Spider-Lady," I said. "She bit Weaver during the fight and now she's really sick. I was hoping that if I captured her, they could make an anti-venom and Weaver would get better faster."

"...And you're looking for her here, why?" Mrs. Brandish was all um… What's the word when grown-ups get tired of talking to kids or stupid people? Oh, yeah, exasperated.

I tapped my nose. "We have a really good sense of smell. I was trying to get a scent trail."

"Okay, okay," Mrs. Brandish said. "Now why does it have to be you, specifically, who finds the spider?"

"...Weaver got bit because she put herself in front of me when Jorogumo tried to get me," I explained. "Panacea was trying to heal her… But then she got shot because I screwed up trying to disarm someone." I blinked. My vision was getting cloudy for some reason. "So she wasn't able to finish curing the poison. Because of my mistake, someone I care about a whole lot is really sick and the only person who can fix them is dead. … I can't, I can't make up for getting you're daughter killed, and I'm so sorry about that, but I can still try to keep T-Weaver from… It's my fault all this happened, so fixing it is my responsibility."

"Child," Mrs. Brandish asked, "How old are you?"

"...Ten."

"And how much training did you get before you were sent out that day?"

"Does power testing count?"

"Then your responsibility for what happened to Amy is negligible," she finished.

"If you say so," I said. She could say it, but that didn't make me not feel like it was.

"Amy is dead," Mrs. Brandish said, "because the Azn Bad Boyz and their mercenaries attacked the bank, because the Parahuman Response Team sent untrained children to do the Protectorate's job, and because I let her go to the bank alone when... If a group of criminals and villains hadn't chosen to break the law, if even one member of the Protectorate had been there, or if I'd been a better parent, my.. My daughter would still be alive."

"...Would you like a hug?" She sounded like she needed a hug, and honestly, it'd been a week since I hugged someone, which is the second longest I'd ever gone without getting or giving a hug.

"I'll be fine… I've just..." I think she swallowed or something. "Last week, I was called to the morgue, saw the girl I'd taken into my home a decade ago lying lifeless on a cold, metal table and I realized that I hadn't been the mother she deserved and now I'd never get the chance to give her the love she really needed. Seven days planning a funeral, a morning burying my child, and I still can't… I came to the bank, where… to try and make sense of everything, and..."

"Why is one designated Brandish confiding in Ashley? Ashley and Brandish have only just met." I mind-shrugged back at Mister Snuggles.

"Are you sure you wouldn't like a hug?"

"I'm sure," she said certainly. "Now, what am I going to do with you?"

I blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I can't in good conscience just let you go after an adult supervillain on your own," Mrs. Brandish said, "at the same time I doubt you're just going to give up on-"

She was interrupted by a loud banging sound from what sounded like decently far away. Without even thinking I shifted into full Cuddlebug costume and took off running towards it, ignoring Mrs. Brandish when she shouted: "Wait, where are you going!?"

People were too busy running away from a 'cape fight' to notice a kid skittering up a building and jumping across rooftops, which let me get there really fast.

Good thing too, because judging from the sounds of banging, crashing, and occasional zapping the fight that was happening was getting worse and more violent and-and there was a gunshot. I called up my wings-I couldn't fly, but flapping just right gave me a bit more distance on jumps.

A minute or two later I had to stop as I was, well, at the fight. Two people in shiny metal armor were fighting. One looked like regular metal armor with no weapon, the other was in some kind of powered armor or Mech Suit, seven feet tall and really bulky… The armor was like a cheap, bulky knock of Iron Man suit combined vaguely Viking-like, with a skull-helmet that kind of made me think of the Punisher's logo, and he was carrying a staff with an old-timey war-hammer floating at the end in some kind of force field. There were some boys in gang colors, but not ABB colors… One of them had an eighty-eight on a red armband and another boy had a swastika tattooed on his arm. They all had guns.

"You zee, Chew…," the man in the bulky powered armor said, "You might control zee bover of electromagnedism, put I, Donar, am its master."

"...Turn off whatever infernal device that prevents me from forming my own electromagnetic fields," the other man said, "and we'll see the truth of that, you Nazi bastard."

That voice… I'd heard recordings of it. I got a better look at the one the obvious Nazi Supervillain called Chew… the armor was the wrong color, and really banged up, and from what I'd heard I'd never have expected him to be kneeling in pain or exhaustion, but otherwise, there was no mistaking it.

That was Magneto. Or at least his clone.

...So a Nazi Super Villain is fighting a Super-Terrorist... "Mister Snuggles, who do we root for here? I mean, I kind of want them both to lose."

"This one would suggest supporting the one that's least likely to exterminate Ashley and ones like Ashley based on arbitrary genetic or phenotypic traits."

"Okay," I admitted, "but if he says anything about Mutants being 'Homo Superior' I'm gonna punch him in the groin."

At this point, the wings would just get in the way, so I had them melt away. I crouched down on all fours and wiggled and shifted a bit so that I could jump just right. When I saw an opening, the Nazi, Donar, standing over Cloneto with his funky hammer-staff raised high, and then I leaped for them.

I gave a soft "snikt" and popped my claws just in time to tear through the staff in mid-air and land, with the pieces, next to the nazi-gangsters. The force field at the end sputtered and fizzled and then the old-looking war-hammer hit the asphalt with a loud and heavy thud.

"'Sup," I said casually. "We're Cuddlebug, and we like hugs. We're the best we are at what we do, and what we do is punch jerkfaces in the groin."

"This one would like to state for the record that it did not agree to that catchphrase."

Everyone was staring at me now.

"Oh, look, ein little child! How cute, sche zinks sche can pe ein hero," Donar said cheerfully. He looked at the gangsters behind me. "Kill her," he said, suddenly cold and all business.

I turned back to look at them. One looked down at me, then up to Donar. "Look, um… Mister Donar, I get that you're new in town and a big-wig Gesellschaft Tinker, but it's been a week to the day that Panacea died." He gulped, and I turned to see Donar was… I couldn't tell if he was glaring, but it seemed like he was glaring. "If-if we kill a little kid cape now, this time tomorrow the city will be swarming with cops, FBI, PRT, Protectorate, the God Damned Army, and everyone else and anybody who even looks like they might just know a villain or someone in the gangs will be hunted down and slaughtered."

"Dummkopf," the Tinker(which was the super-science one, right?) said calmly. "Zee child proke zee Mjölnir sdaff. It vill take me veeks to puild another. Kill zee prat."

Before they could do anything I sprouted a couple ocktacles and sent them out to grab and tear through everyone's guns like I should have a week ago.

The boys looked down at their mangled weapons, then to me, then to Donar, then back to me. Then they all ran.

Most of them ran away but the one with the swastika tattoo went face first into a brick wall and seemed to pass out.

The clang of steel on steel made me realize that Donar had facepalmed. "Zee, zis is vy ve pack in Eurobe don't embloy untrained teenagers."

So then I remembered that he'd called his weapon the Mjolnir staff. What kind of self-respecting Thorite would I be if I didn't punish a Nazi jerkface for the heretical and blasphemous act of associating one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes with History's Greatest Monsters? And hey, there's a convenient hammer I can use to practice my religion upside his head, just like I'd thought about earlier.

I reached for the hammer that had been part of his staff, gripped it tightly around the handle...

And completely failed to lift it.

I reached down with both hands and tried again I mean, it had made a loud thud and it had to have been in a floaty field for a reason so maybe it was just ridiculously heavy.

I gave it the greatest pull I could manage, and... Still nothing

Then I looked down at it… I saw the inscription. No, that's not possible. You can't clone a hammer.

"Whosoever holds this hammer," I read aloud, "if he be worthy..."

"Schall bozess zee bover of Thor!" Donar laughed, almost good-naturedly. "Yeah, zat hammer is vy I call myzelf Donar. I found it in ein crader on ein trip to Iceland in Ninedeen-Eighty-Zix, it took me ein year to create zee anti-graffity field I neeted to moffe it pack to mein laporadory." He laughed again, more like a crazy guy. "I zink it's zee real zing, I'fe managed to draw unkodly amounts of bover from it."

...We'd only gotten here two and a half weeks ago. Even if you could clone a hammer, there's no way that it could have been here in 86…

Thor Odinson, God of strength and Thunder, existed here once, and something had happened to him.

Donar threw his arms up. "Und I zink I'fe only tabed zee zurface. Vy, once I'fe accezed its full bover, I could broffide vole nazions vith clean energy." He gestured wildly. "Cleanze endire cities vorth of unteziraples und zee inferior in ein zingle flasch of Diffine Light. Arh! It'd pe magnificent."

We shook with rage, our chest rumbling as we growled. We could see it. The purest, deepest blackness of his evil heart and all the blood he'd spilled over the decades. Our long tongue traced over our fangs. We could not let him leave here with Mjolnir.

"This one would strongly recommend that Ashley gain better control of her emotions less Ashley do something regrettable."

I took a couple of deep breaths and the evil vision and scary mouth went away. I had Mister Snuggles pull away from my hands so I could try and lift the hammer barehanded, just in case it was Mister Snuggles that was the problem since he was technically an alien invader.

Then my spider-sense went off, but not soon enough for me to dodge the lightning Donar had sent against me.

It hurt. It burned. More than the needles pulling the hormones out of my blood. More than the heat of the fire that meany Lung or that Super-Skrull's.

A second later, it passed. I was face down in the ground, and it was only after I'd pushed myself up that I noticed that Mister Snuggles was all gooey and half my face was exposed. I concentrated and we were able to get him back to normal.

"This one would strongly recommend that we avoid being electrocuted in the future."

I mumbled, "I'll try..."

Donar hadn't reclaimed Mjolnir yet. I wasn't sure if he even could, without his staff... Must have been something with anti-gravity, to get around the Worthiness restriction. I stumbled over to it and, hands still bared, I grabbed the handle two-handed and pulled as hard as I could.

Still nothing. Which was really disappointing, realizing that I wasn't Worthy, but…

Donar laughed again. "Child, if ein genius of bure Aryan plood zuch as myzelf can't lift zee Hammer unaited, vat makes you zink zat ein child of Easdern parbarians could?"

...I was starting to get the appeal of killing people and eating their brains. I had Mister Snuggles cover up my hands again, and then I took a deep breath, clenched my fists, and called up my Thing hands. I was getting ready to just punch the jerkface in the groin when Cloneto interrupted.

"If I may interject?" After basically forgetting he was there, I looked over to where his voice was and saw him standing.

And then I looked up and saw that he had a rusted out old car up above Donar. "Child, I must thank you for keeping this dabbler in the science of magnetism occupied. I dare say he may have actually killed me if I hadn't had the time to figure out the exact dimensions of the area in which no magnetic fields but his devices' can function." He smiled, coldly. "I am in your debt, little one." And then he stepped forward and suddenly the car faltered in the air and fell.

Donar casually raised an arm, sending lightning from his hands that caught the car and held it up.

"Electromagnadism tinker, dummkopf," he said seriously. "I can generate mein ovn vields chust as eazily as I can schut your's down." Then he threw the car at Cloneto, who was barely able to scramble out of the way…

And then a big ball of light touched down in front of him, turned into Mrs. Brandish who forced Donar back by slashing at him with a big glowy ax.

"Zat's it,". He said. "I vas brepared for zee magnet uzer, not zwei Kämbfer. Ve finish dis later, Chew," he said, and then backed as far from Mrs. Brandish as he could, faster than you'd expect in such a bulky armor, and then my Spider-Sense buzzed and I had to jump out of the way of lightning... That seized Mjolnir and pulled it towards Donar. I reached out with an ocktacle and tried to grab for it but got zapped for my trouble, which hurt like Hell. Not as much as earlier, but still. It stung. Bad.

He didn't grab it but rather had it float by him while he generated some kind of electrified forcefield about himself, lightning crackling down an invisible ball. It started floating away.

Mrs. Brandish jumped for him and tried to chop down, but she got pulled back just as the ball lightning force ball vanished with Donar in it.

"I apologize," Cloneto said, "but I fear that if your projected weapon made contact with the force field that you would be electrocuted, perhaps lethally."

"Who was that?" Mrs. Brandish asked.

"It seems that The Kaiser did not take well to my interfering with his operations and he, like the coward he is, called for help from his Masters in Europe," Cloneto explained. "Who sent a scientist specialized in electromagnetism to counter my own mastery of that fundamental force."

"And you'd be Eisenhardt," Mrs. Brandish said. "My children told me about you, before..."

"I'd heard about the healer's death," Cloneto-Eisenhardt-said. "My sincerest condolences."

...Without a clear-cut bad guy to focus on, I started thinking… Without someone Worthy, I couldn't take Mjolnir from Donar… So I should really get back to finding Jorogumo so they could cure Taylor and focus on that jerkface later.

I took a sniff-I hadn't noticed due to the fight, but she'd been here. The trail was about as old as at the bank, but… Bank was that way…

Mrs. Brandish was distracted talking to Eisenhardt… they were checking to see if Donar had teleported away or just turned invisible, and that meant that nobody was looking at me.

I snuck off in the other direction, the way that Jorogumo had been going when she fled the bank. Like in that game with the Octopus, nobody suspects a thing.

Once I was far enough away and in someplace where I didn't think I'd be seen, I had Mister Snuggles change back into street clothes. This time a different colored hoodie and grey sweatpants, so Mrs. Brandish wouldn't recognize me right away if she saw me again, and I went on my way tracking the scent.

AN/ Donar's accent is an experiment. I like phonetic spellings for thick accents, but speak up if it's too difficult to read.

And check out the Snuggles side-stories on my profile.