Snuggles The Symbiote

"Backpack?" Ashley asked.

"Check!" I answered back as I picked up my bag.

"Cellphone?" She asked.

I patted my pocket, where my PRT issue smartphone rested.

"Taser?"

"Ashley, I'm going to school," I said with a small smile. "I don't want to get kicked out on my last day."

I'd been out of the hospital for a little over a week, and today was my last day at Winslow. And I was in the vocation program, so I was only there for half a day. And nothing was gonna go wrong.

I grabbed my glasses-lenses replaced with non-prescription lenses-and looked back at Ashley. She was just wearing the thin white t-shirt and shorts we'd bought like a dozen sets of when we'd first gotten her clothes. "You need to get ready, too."

She smiled at me and then her symbiote emerged from inside her and formed the other set of clothes she always wore: A light blue t-shirt with what I now knew as a spider-man face logo in the center of the chest and a dark blue poodle skirt over black tights. Her hair stood on end and bound itself up into a ponytail of its own accord.

"You've been practicing?" It had taken her half a minute to change completely the last time I'd seen her do it and she'd had to do the ponytail manually. Now it'd only taken a few seconds.

"Yeah," she said with a nod. "Mister Snuggles and I have been practicing a lot since they won't let us patrol until after today." Director Piggot hadn't exactly been happy when I showed her the line in our contract that said we could only be punished for breach of contract or breaking the law. I'm pretty sure that she yelled at Deputy Director Reinick for agreeing to those terms since she called for him as soon as I left her office. But putting us on monitor duty until our official presentation wasn't a punishment. Joke's on her, I think Ashley likes playing mission control.

Ready for our day, Ashley and I went downstairs. We found my Dad in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. He had a frown on his face.

"Ashley?" He asked. "Is there anyone from your world named Bloodbath?"

"No," she said with a shake of the head. "Not that I can think of. Why?"

"No reason," he said quickly. "Do you still want to spend the morning at my office?"

"Yeah," she said hesitantly. The truth was, they didn't want her at HQ alone until they'd gotten her tutoring program established. Yesterday, before any of the other Wards got there, she'd gotten bored, wandered off, and ended up chatting with an intern. The good news was that everyone now knew that 'mutie' was considered a major slur where Ashley came from. The bad news was that people knew that because Ashley had taken issue with being asked why she didn't use the name 'Cutie Mutie' if she was planning on playing her cape ID for cuteness and going with a mutant 'theme.'

And now Ashley wasn't allowed on base alone unless she had someone or something to keep her occupied, because that intern was afraid of her now and nobody wanted a repeat of the incident.

"Then you might want to bring something to read or do," Dad said. "It can get pretty boring."

"Okay Mister Hebert," Ashley said. "I'll be right back."

Ashley left back upstairs, and I turned to Dad. "Why did you really ask?"

"The Slaughterhouse 9 were in Chicago a few days ago," Dad explained neutrally. "Not too many casualties this time, according to the paper, but they've got a new member calling himself Bloodbath. The way they describe his power… Seems a bit similar to Ashley."

"Crap. And there's the PR thing this afternoon," the wards were doing a thing at the mall. Meet and greet, sign some photos, and answer some questions. It was supposed to be Cuddlebug and Weaver's 'official' introduction so we expected most of the questions to be about us. "Which means it might come up in the Q&A… You gonna be at the Mall this afternoon."

"Sorry, I can't make it," he said while looking away. "I can take lunch off to drive Ashley to PRT HQ or the afternoon off to be at the event. I can't do both. Alan has the afternoon free though. He's gonna film it for me."

Well, it was more than we'd had together in a good long while, so… Baby steps. It was still uncomfortable to think that Alan knew I was a cape… Well, Sophia did too, after I collapsed, so even if Alan had kept his promise, Emma probably knew…. She hadn't said anything, but…

I terminated the train of thought. I was a hero now. I had a new little sister, and after today I'd be transferring to Arcadia and wouldn't have to deal with her attempts to tear me down and make me hurt.

"I uh... Need to catch the bus if I want to be on time," I said. "I'll talk to you later."

Dad nodded and I went to the front door.

Just as I was getting to the door, Ashley called out to me. "Taylor, wait!"

I turned around to see her quickly approaching the front door. "What?"

She held her hands in front of her chest so that they formed a heart and said "I love you," with a big smile.

I smiled back and patted her on the head before I went on my way.

I don't know what I was expecting. My last day-a half-day with the vocation program-had been completely uneventful. I think part of me was expecting some last prank or something, but the worst that had happened was Julia, Madison's minion, telling me to be careful that my ass didn't eat the rest of me as I left world issues.

As I checked myself out in the mirror in mine and Ashley's room in Wards HQ, I couldn't help but wonder what she was talking about. My new costume, almost identical to Ashley's except white with purple lenses and spider-emblem. And it was made of dyed silk instead of alien slime monster.

I had to say, I looked good in it. I'd put on a bit of muscle ever since I woke up from my spider-venom coma. Which is a sentence I don't think most people would ever find themselves saying or thinking. It wasn't a lot of muscle, but it's more than I ever figured I'd have at this point in my life.

I finished the costume much faster than the first one. In general, controlling and using my spiders-Latrodectus hebertus to use the scientific name they'd been assigned-seemed easier than using most bugs.

Once fully costumed and finished admiring myself, I left for the common room. The only others here were Vista on the couch and Cuddlebug (Dad had dropped her off just before I'd gotten in) on the ceiling above her. Vista was looking up and speaking.

"...Weird with my blood cells," she was saying. "They don't think it's cancer but they wanna do some more tests." I think I chose the worst possible time to walk out. "Also, apparently that burn on my chest is more consistent with gamma rays than any other kind of radiation, but I don't think we've got any research on cosmic ray burns specifically, so I don't know how much that means..."

"...Maybe you're turning into a Hulk?" Cuddlebug said hesitantly. Then she let off a nervous laugh.

"What's that one again?" Vista asked.

"Giant green muscle-person who smashes thing and is the strongest there is," Cuddlebug explained. "Sometimes they're red and can absorb energy."

Vista laughed. "I wish. Then maybe they'd take me seriously."

"Would you like a hug?"

"I'm fine, Cuddlebug," Vista said. "They don't think there's anything wrong, they're just making sure."

"...Okay." Even with Mister Snuggles' voice underlaying hers, the concern and uncertainty in her voice were palpable.

So I climbed up a wall and across the ceiling so that I was sitting upside-down next to her.

"Okay," I said after a moment. "You've got a point. This is fun."

Ashley, seemingly distracted from her concern, giggled and then leaned into me for an upside down hug. She put both arms around me, and I put one around her. This close, I could see that her practicing had extended to her costume. Her eyespots looked like actual lenses.

"So, Weaver," Vista said, still looking up. "They finish the second round of power testing on you yet?"

"Not yet," I answered. "We've got my enhanced physiology figured out. Couple tons lift, four times as flexible as a gymnast, more durable. Faster, jumpier. Not by much, but enough for some low brute and mover ratings." I didn't know the numbers yet, though. "But the spiders are another issue. We know that their silk is at least a dozen times stronger than anything in nature but they're still running chemical tests on their venom and I have to go back and finish the 'how many can you summon at once' test because the guy conducting it puked when I opened up every vent and set them all to maximum production."

Somewhere, wherever it is that the PRT archives information about power mechanics, is a video of me in my underwear and a domino mask opening dozens of vents from all over my body and millions of white and purple widow spiders pouring out of my body for three seconds, then the camera falling to the floor and the lens getting covered in fear-vomit.

"Personally, I don't think I'll ever need to summon that many spiders, but they want to be thorough."

"Yeah, they're like that," Vista admitted. "We spent weeks testing my space-warping before they gave up. I'm pretty sure we didn't get anywhere close to my upper limits."

"Mister Snuggles wants to know what your upper limits are," Cuddlebug asked.

"I have no idea," Vista said. "But I'm pretty sure that if I had to I could fit our whole team in my breastplate and still have room to breathe." That was a mental image I didn't need. "So, Cuddlebug, did your plans to cheat your way into high school work?"

Cuddlebug grumbled.

"What was that?"

"...No."

"She's incredibly advanced in math and science," I explained for her, "apparently because her world's a bit ahead of ours in figuring out how Tinker-Tech works and that trickles down, but she completely flunked social studies. They're setting up a tutoring program for her till she gets caught up."

"...It's not my fault that Dracula was just a book in your universe," Cuddlebug said bitterly.

"...you're kidding, right?" Vista asked.

Cuddlebug shook her head. "He's still around, too. Last I heard he was really upset because Deadpool ran off with a demon lady he wanted to marry."

"Ashley," Vista slowly deadpanned, "everything about your world terrifies me."

It was then that the rest of the Wards started coming in and we started going over the plans for the event at the mall one last time. It was just a recap

Shadow Stalker, who hadn't been able to get into the vocational program(to be fair, I was only in it because I was transferring to Arcadia,) came in just a little bit before we had to leave.

I made a point of keeping myself and Ashley away from her as we did so.

"...And introducing our newest Wards….!" the hype-man working the event announced, "Cuddlebug and Weaver!"

And then Ashley and I fell from the ceiling. Halfway to the floor I flipped in the air and planted my locked feet on the stage they'd set up in an open part of the mall. Ashley made a three-point landing next to me just a moment later, and then sprung to her feet and threw her hands in the air.

The curtain on the stage, which the other Wards had already run through to take their places on the side of the stage, opened slightly and a box… cage… thing full of monarch butterflies backstage was opened up allowing me to have a swarm of them fly out above and circle around the crowd, then fly them into a diamond shape, then a five-pointed star, and then a heart.

The people in the crowd, mostly people here with their kids, applauded, and then I returned the butterflies to whatever the thing they were keeping them in was called.

Then I stepped back and let Cuddlebug take center stage:

She started with a few backflips that I doubt someone her age could do without enhanced reflexes before landing in a handstand, supported by one finger on each hand. Her costume then turned solid gold before shifting through metallic shades of burgundy, bronze, gold again, a sort of dark lime, olive, jade, teal, cerulean, indigo, purple, violet, and fuschia before reverting to her normal costume. She then produced two of her mechanical tentacles which anchored to the stage. She then used them to rotate up so that she was upright and facing the crowd. She flashed a peace sign with her right hand and then slowly lowered herself back down and reabsorbed the tentacles. She bowed and the crowd applauded again.

Ashley came back over by me, and then we went into our prepared lines.

"I'm Weaver, I'm a Thinker and a Master that can control bugs, sense them, and borrow their senses-three people here have lice, you know who you are-" actually, no one did. That was just a bit as part of the act. "I can also stick to walls with my hands and feet and create spiders from nothing." I had one of my special spiders crawl out of a vent hidden on my scalp and then make a show of crawling down my mask over the purple lens of my right eye and then climbing back up into my hair and back in its vent. "I made this costume myself out of their silk."

"I'm Cuddlebug," Ashley said cheerfully. "I like hugs. I'm a Combat-Focal Hybrid Tinker and this," she gestured to herself, "is Mister Snuggles. He's a biomechanical nano suit with an onboard AI bonded directly to my physiology. Wave hello Mister Snuggles."

Cuddlebug then produced a tentacle which waved at the crowd in an exaggerated fashion.

After that, a techie wheeled a long table onto the stage while a few more brought out chairs. Each of us took a seat at the table-Cuddlebug was to my left, with us at the far left, as far from shadow Stalker as possible-while the hype-man came back. "Alright, now the Wards are gonna take some questions and after that, we'll be passing out some photos and you'll get a chance to get some autographs."

He pointed out to a pretty, dark-haired girl that I think I vaguely recognized from school. "Question for Cuddlebug and Weaver? Your costumes are very similar. What's your connection?"

Ashley leaned out of her chair and gave me a hug. I wrapped an arm around her, as was now our habit. "Weaver's my big sister."

This triggered a few people in the audience to go 'aww.'

Our hype-man pointed to a little girl that had a hand raised in the first row. She actually looked to be about Ashley's age. "Cuddlebug? What's your favorite subject in school?"

"I'm really good at science," Ashley admitted. "Einstein's theory of general relativity states that what we think of as gravity is actually the curve of the fabric of-"

"I'm going to cut you off there, Cuddlebug," our hype-man said, "otherwise we'll be here all night. You there, in the back," he pointed to a redhead in the back, next to a man holding a camera in-wait, that was…

"Question for Shadow Stalker," even this far away I could make out Emma's voice. "You were the newest Ward before Cuddlebug and Weaver showed up. How are you getting along with them?"

"I haven't had much contact with Weaver just yet," I didn't like the emphasis that Sophia was placing on my cape name, "but I sparred with Cuddlebug when they were doing power testing. She's got the instinct. She needs some work, but I think she's cut out for this."

Our hype-man pointed to a blonde boy near the middle of the third row. "Question for any of the Wards: Do any of you speak any other languages?"

"Cuddlebug can speak a bit of Irish Gaelic," Vista said unprompted. "What was that word you were explaining to me the other day?" she said looking down the table to Ashley.

"...Soith," Ashley said after a moment.

"Use it in a sentence," Vista prompted.

"Shadow Stalker is a soith," Ashley said with a giggle. Shadow Stalker leaned forward and looked down at us but didn't say anything. I'd have to ask Ashley what 'soith' meant later.

It went on like that for a little bit. We, the Wards, answered questions about our favorite colors, movies, books, songs(which led to an anecdote about how Cuddlebug preferred the late career covers that the Earth 'Aleph' version of Johnny Cash did, lamenting that the Earth Bet version got kicked to death by an ostrich before he could do them,) until a grown man with red hair and a press pass forced his way to the front of the crowd and spoke up unprompted. "Nathan Eastman, Brockton Enquirer. What do the Wards have to say about the incident at Brockton Central on April 14th? Particularly regarding the death of Panacea."

Ashley trembled. Luckily we'd never stopped hugging and I was able to give her a comforting squeeze.

Aegis was the one to respond, with a firm "No comment."

Eastman apparently wasn't prepared to take no for an answer, however, and physically climbed up onto the stage. "Come on now, the people have a right to know."

This prompted Aegis to fly out of his chair, slowly hover over to Eastman, pick him up by the shoulders (prompting Eastman, in turn, to grab onto Aegis's arms,) and gently set him down just off stage… Right next to one of the PRT agents who was working security for the event. "We politely request that the public stays off the stage during the Q&A," he said professionally. The agent then escorted Eastman away.

Our hype-man seemed a bit nervous now. "So, I think we have time for one more-"

He was cut off by a puff of smoke in the middle of the stage. The smoke cleared, revealing a woman in a tuxedo with a black hooded cape had appeared in the middle of the stage. I couldn't see her face, as her back was too us.

"Sorry to interrupt," she shouted sternly, "but this PR event has to end early becuase of an emergency. The mall needs to evacuate. Now."

"Oh," came a voice. A familiar voice. my voice, but distorted. Like a rather deep voice was speaking under it and then it'd been recorded and run through an echo chamber. That voice came from a man who'd been standing there with his wife and daughter in the front row.

And then they-and five people near them besides-all flickered at once and they were replaced with what I could only describe as skeletons carved crudely from crystal.

Most of them were short things, maybe two feet tall, with roundish heads with gaping holes where the face should be, but the man, his wife, and kid were most distinct.

The kid was short, maybe the size of a 12-year-old, with an odd orange and blue crystal pattern that vaguely resembled the kind of dress that a little girl might wear in a show like Little House on the Prairie. Her crystal skull-like face was framed by an inky black something that resembled sausage curled hair.

The wife crystal skeleton was feminine shaped, had red crystals in such a way that resembled a blood red robe with a crystal hood… But some of the crystals formed a white cross on her chest.

And the man who'd had a distorted version of my voice was my original costume, in white, but carved from crystal and with the mandibles of my mask framing the skull-face's jaw, and with an ugly black spider-emblem on the chest. The same Inky Blackness from the child's hair formed my long, dark locks.

"But we were going to ask if Cuddlebug was ready to join the New Poison Hive," evil crystal me finished.