Snuggles the Symbiote
So Lee was beeping, Bakuda was laughing, my heart was pounding and racing, I was sore everywhere, I couldn't feel my arms or legs, and I was like, really dizzy.
On a scale of one to ten, this was maybe a five on the "how screwed are we" scale.
"What," Miss Militia said off in Bakuda's direction, "Did. You. Do?"
"Hehehe," Bakuda laughed, "Oh, I figured I had nothing to lose, so I triggered the remote detonator on every grenade Oni Lee has on his body. If my count is right, and it is because I'm an absolute genius, then a dozen of my tinker-tech explosives are going to go off soon, and I have no. Fucking. Idea how they'll react to each other." She laughed again. "They could vaporize this entire city and everything in it in a flash of Radioactive Hellfire, turn everything in a six-block radius into sea salt, or tear a hole in the fabric of space-time and expose a plane of reality far beyond mortal comprehension. Literally anything could happen in three..."
Vista jumped up so she was between Lee and Me and Miss Militia, and held her hands out.
"Vista, this isn't the-"
"Two..."
Vista shushed Miss Militia, and the street under Oni Lee started to dip
"...One."
Oni Lee vanished in a flash of green that then came out as a glowing green cloud and knocked Vista off her feet.
A bright, white crack started forming in the air, making creaky sounds as it went up from a pile of crystals that were where Oni Lee had been up at least twenty feet high and then with a huge, glass shattering type sound split open into a huge rift.
Looking through I could feel a whole lot of suction and had to stick-em to the ground below me. Vista and Miss Militia started sliding toward it, Miss Militia grabbing at Vista as Vista pulled herself to her feet and tried to balance.
Looking into the rift… I could see the Earth. And the Moon, and the stars, and… That was a giant glowing blue number four over the surface of the Earth. That could only mean… Despite what was happening, I couldn't help but smile.
As the corners of my vision started to go dark, Vista was able to get upright out of Miss Militia's grip and hold her arms out at the rift again.
She was grunting, loudly, like some wild animal. "Grrrrraaaahahhh!" She shouted, and then…
Then the rift started closing. It was slow, but it was fast enough that Bakuda stopped laughing.
"No… Bullshit, no way you can close a tear in space like that!"
"Shaker… Nine… Bitch!" Vista shouted. "I can do… Whatever… The Hell I..." As the rift shank to just ten feet tall and a foot across, yellow light began spilling through and hit Vista. "Ahhh! The Hell… I... Want!"
Like a canon, the sound of the fabric of reality slamming into itself rang throughout the neighborhood, echoing off into the distance.
Vista took a few steps back and fell to her butt. I still couldn't feel my legs but I was able to have Mister Snuggles sprout our tail and use it to push us over to her so I could give her a hug. By the time I got to her… Well, it was a good thing I'd managed to grab onto her because I couldn't see and I was really dizzy.
"Vista… That was amazing… You're a real hero. Back home you'd… totally be an A-Lister. Shoo-in for the Avengers."
"Thanks," she was able to cough out. "I don't feel so good."
"Me neither," I replied.
"If I don't make it," she said, "bury me in… The varsity boys locker room… At Arcadia."
And then everything went dark.
Step Into My Parlor
...I was crawling on my hands and feet in a dimly lit area that smelled strongly of sweat and some kind of chemical. The ground was rough, cold, and clammy, and I could hear something really, really loud from a brightly lit place in the distance. I looked up-the sky was so bright and the cliffs in the distance looked so smooth. I started walking/crawling around, aimlessly, when suddenly the ground began shaking. I crouched down and held on tight, hoping that the ground wouldn't open up and swallow me, when a massive, dark-skinned foot suddenly landed in front of me.
I gulped, looked up, and saw a giant Sophia Hess, hundreds of feet tall with massive droplets of water covering her body and her hair wet, with her modesty preserved by a massive towel. She looked down at me, and my ears bled from her shout of "FUCKING SPIDER!" Then she lifted up her foot and quickly brought it down upon me and…
...I toppled buildings with careless swings of my massive clawed arms. Hundreds-thousands maybe-of capes had assembled to drive me off, but not even Legend or Eidolon could hurt me.
A thrust of my eight powerful legs against the ground I soared high above all of them and landed, crushing a hospital beneath my weight. I felt something. Some kind of irritating tapping across my abdomen and quickly reached down and snapped up the pesky little bug. I held it up to my face and saw the black and grey-clad form of the Invincible Alexandria struggling to break free from my iron grip.
The eyes I saw through her helmet, tiny as they were, shown with anger and defiance. I smiled, sadistically, and then opened my massive fanged maw and-What the fuck was I doing!? I, this wasn't me, I…
...I was restrained, or something, and... straps or cords of something sticky were running across my back and thousands of white cords were stretching out as far as the eye could see in all directions-up and down and all around. Monsters-spiders the size of Endbringers, some with humanoid faces, others with too many eyes or legs, some in other exotic colors, and one that looked like a spider and a scorpion had a threeway with a wasp were all crawling all around this massive structure and... Oh, my God, I was stuck in a giant spider-web.
"Help me!" I called out as I struggled. "Help Me!"
I could feel vibrations on the cords. Something was coming. Fuck this, I wasn't going to die without a fight, I pulled at my restraints with all of my strength, trying to look up to see my doom, when I saw her.
She was beautiful in an exotic way-a face like a model's marred only by her four eyes with their glowing red irises, but even those were beautiful in a way and the pale blue of her skin. Her face was framed by two long ears that tapered to a sharp point just at the crown of her head, which was itself adorned with a tiara of some shiny black metal. Her hair was long and silver-not white, not grey, not "platinum blonde," but looked like actual hair-thin strands of silver-and went down long enough to cover her breasts, the only covering on her body. Her skin was smooth and her muscles strongly toned-clearly powerful, but also lithe and graceful.
Almost against my will, I found my eyes drown lower and that's where the illusion stopped. Instead of the hips of a woman, her waist merged seamlessly into the body of a massive spider, its body covered in a smooth, shiny carapace that was as black as the night, supported by eight long... well, spidery legs that ended in three-clawed feet.
I heard her laugh, gently, and looked back up. she was smiling at me and spoke in a light, dulcet voice. "What do we have here?" She said with a tone that seemed genuinely curious rather than condescending. "You're quite interesting, sweety."
She climbed up around me and settled her body so that she could lean her head right over mine. "Connected to the Great Web by an Outsider with no previous knowledge of Spiders or mystical Totems... Then, just as it begins to settle in, connected again by the venom of one of The Other's progeny? And such a good heart, taking care of the anomalous Totem and the other cutie it's bonded with." She giggled. "I have no idea how they managed to make a symbiote into a Totem but it's sure to be fun." She smiled widely. "Why, there's no telling just how you three could end up. You're lucky I found you first, some of the others may have simply eaten you to prevent the chaos you could cause, my cute little Totem." She gave a bright, warm smile, from ear to ear, before switching to a sing-song tone "But me? I love chaos. It can be so very fun... or a horrific nightmare for everyone involved. But the surprise is half the fun!"
Then she gently reached down and started stroking my cheek in a sensual manner and suddenly my blood ran cold. "In fact, my little cutie, I think you're just perfect for me." She smiled again, and then slowly leaned down until her face was just level with mine. I could feel her warm breath on my skin and the gentle caress of her hand and feared that something incredibly uncomfortable was about to happen... Until she smiled again, this time with an open mouth, revealing long, vampiric fangs. The beauty was gone from her eyes, replaced by a look of pure madness, and my veins began to burn like no pain I'd ever felt before after she suddenly sank her teeth into the flesh of my neck. Just before I lost awareness, she booped me on the nose and I heard her say "have fun now!" as everything faded to black…
Something was beeping. I blinked my eyes open and… Fuck, my head hurt. What had I been dreaming about? Something to do with spiders?
I took a deep breath while I got my bearings. Judging from the fact that I was wearing a paper gown and had a bunch of tubes and wires in me, it was safe to conclude that I was in a hospital of some kind.
There was a light lit up to my right, but my head still hurt too much to look right at it, so I turned my head to the left.
Ashley was on the hospital bed next to me, in her Cuddlebug costume sans mask, on her side facing me, fast asleep.
"Why is she here?" I asked myself aloud.
"Apparently she ODed on her own adrenaline," said a voice to my right.
I turned my head, squinting to avoid the light, and could make out a blonde girl of maybe twelve."Vista?"
"Out of costume it's Missy," the girl said. "Besides, we all learned your name when you collapsed. It's only fair."
"Okay," I said, "so… How did Cuddlebug OD on her own adrenaline?"
"So you were out for a little over a week. Yesterday, a week to the day of the Bank, Ashley did a dumb and went out into the city alone to try and capture Jorogumo in the hopes that they could make a cure for her venom and wake you up. Eight hours later, after getting a tip-off from Brandish and some independent named Eisenhardt, Miss Militia and I find her beating the shit out of Lung."
"What?"
"So apparently the clusterfuck at the bank was a distraction while the real Bakuda broke Lung out of containment," Vista… Missy explained.
"No, I mean… She's weak to fire. She shouldn't have been able to..."
"The way her costume explains it," Missy went on, "she got a huge adrenaline rush. Hence the overdose. It says she'll be fine after a few days of rest. So she does a dumb and in one night ABB loses all of its capes."
"What?" Seriously, I'm out for a week and… "How?"
"Ashley beat up Lung and Jorogumo, Miss Militia got Bakuda… We'd have arrested Lee too, but Bakuda blew him up as a last screw you and that's why I'm being treated for radiation poisoning."
It was then that I noticed the IV in her arm.
"Are… Are you gonna be okay?"
"Well, I feel like shit and can't keep solid food down," Missy deadpanned, "but they said that a five-day regimen of some Tinker-Tech drug should clean the radiation out of my system and fix the damage. They said I got lucky and that if I'd just gotten a few more rads I'd have been screwed..."
She laughed. Bitterly. "I got radiation sickness from cosmic rays. Bakuda' last screw you opened up a portal to another universe-I could see another Earth through it. Stuff started getting sucked up into other-space before the rays came in. And I was able to use my powers to close the rift. Do I get praised for probably saving the fucking world? No. I get told off for shushing Miss Militia when she tried to tell me to stand down even though I knew I could fix the problem."
She gestured over to Ashley. "And apparently three arrests and saving an independent hero's life don't mitigate sneaking out on her own. I used to think that they didn't respect me, but I don't think that they respect any of us." Another bitter laugh. "About five hours ago the director was in here yelling at her. Said she was getting her pay docked and wouldn't be allowed to go on active duty for at least a year-"
"She can't do that."
"You try telling Ms. Piggy what she can and can't do."
"No, I mean she literally can't do that," I explained. "Cuddlebug and Weaver have custom contracts, and we prioritized freedom over everything else... In addition to the fact that we, not the PRT, own our names, likenesses, and merchandise rights… Well, I don't know the exact legalize off the top of my head, but our lawyer explained it to me that as long as Ashley or I don't break the Law, the PRT can't punish us for anything without breaking the terms of our contract."
"How the fuck did you get that?" Vista asked in the tone of a child speaking to God.
"So there are people from Ashley's world here. You've met some for them," I said. "Apparently, Skidmark got eaten by a vampire. The PRT really wants that information, and Deputy-Director Reineck signed off on it… Also, from what I've been told of the negotiation, the PRT can't actually afford to pay the Monetary Value of information about literally an entire alternate universes Parahuman scene without crippling the Tinker-Budget, and we did choose freedom over money." Apparently, the huge payoff that I'd been so impressed by was actually much less than the combined value of my silk costumes and Ashley's information about her world's capes.
"So, as long as we haven't done anything illegal they can't punish us," I reiterated, "we can quit at any time for any reason and only have to give notice if there's an emergency going on, if we quit we still get our Trusts-I don't know if that means we get what's in it or if the PRT still has to keep paying, they have to keep helping with the red tape to adopt Ashley whether we work for them or not, and there's some rather harsh penalties if the PRT breaks the terms of our contracts." I'd have kissed Alan if he wasn't old enough to be my father and also the father of a traitorous bitch. "I'll just have to point that out to 'Miss Piggy' once I get out of here. Would you say that uh, that kind of behavior is typical of her?"
"Yep."
"Well, then I might be calling in the Youth Guard, too."
"Oh, hell no!" Missy shouted. She sat up and-Oh, hey, she'd been reading a book. That's why the light was on. "I joined the Wards to fight crime and help people. The last thing I need is for some Soccer Mom to come in and start bitching." She started speaking in an exaggerated Minnesota accent. "Ooh, what's wrong with you people. People under the age of eighteen shouldn't be fighting crime, no matter that they can do it and there's not enough adult capes to do it without the Wards, and doncha know that a girl's skirt should go down to her ankles? And that breastplate you've gotten Vista? The one that our guidelines explicitly allows because it's to make sure that her classmates can't guess who she is by comparing cup-sizes? Yeah, I don't like it. Get rid of it, replace it with something else. And I think Shadow Stalker would look so much better in pink!"
I was briefly amused by the mental image of my tormentor in a frilly pink dress.
In the other bed, Ashley mumbled. "No Mister Snuggles… If we eat Paste Pot Pete's brain, we'll catch his stupid." Then she started snoring.
"Vista… Missy… I'm sorry, but I didn't join the Wards to be a hero. I could have easily done that on my own." I sighed. "I joined the Wards because I don't trust most adults to do their god-damned jobs properly, and the way the Director talked about getting us into the Wards and about Ashley set off a lot of red flags. And what you've said has confirmed that I'm right not to trust the director as far as I can throw her. If she's not treating the Wards fairly then there needs to be a check on her control over the Wards."
"I guess," Missy admitted, "but trust me as bad as Piggy gets the Youth Guard is gonna be way worse."
"It's either the Youth Guard or trying to get her fired-was she the one who signed off on that PR stunt that took up literally the Entire Protectorate?"
"I don't know," Missy said with a shrug.
"Well, that's something to look into." As I thought about it… The clusterfuck at the Bank would have gone down differently if there was even one adult Cape there. Whoever was responsible for all of the adult capes being busy with something so stupid as a PR stunt… Whoever decided that was the one responsible for Panacea's death and everything else that happened that day.
Vista turned off her light. "Look, I should probably get some sleep. I don't… Look, I get it, but..."
And then she laid down and made no more sounds.
And that's I realized that I could see perfectly fine without my glasses. In fact, I think I could see better now than I ever could in my life.
One of my hands was free of tubes enough for me to raise it, and I spent the next minute contemplating my hand until I noticed a small seam at my wrist.
As I was looking at it, a new set of senses joined the bugs in the building. I could see in perfect clarity a crevice of some kind. I bid the bug to go forward and saw a white spider with purple eyes crawl out of the seam of my wrist just in time to look down and see myself from the spider's perspective.