Snuggles The Symbiote
Each of us was given a small dart-gun full of something quickly cludged together from a sample of Rose Red's costume that been taken when the PRT first picked her up. Apparently, Tattletale's future self had been here for a bit longer than we thought to arrange for things.
The Poisons had been seen in the middle of town, near where most of the big businesses were, fighting an unknown cape in a suit of Powered Armor... except they'd only been the really small ones, not evil me, evil Panacea, or eviler Bonesaw. Still, it was the best lead to find them and put a stop to them.
We were split up, a few Wards, a few Agents, and a few Protectorate each, in PRT transport vans for quick transport to the fight. In addition to the agents backing us up, I was in a van with Vista and Gallant with Miss Militia standing at the head.
"Now, Ms. Mystic has stated that the 'anti-venom' in the darts should be debilitating to the standard poisons and instantly lethal to the 'bound' poisons, but R&D was only able to make so much on short notice so don't waste a dart on a little one if you don't need to," the more experienced heroine explained. "Ms. Mystic has insisted that they are not in any way, shape, or form human, do not have human values, and despite their insistence that the original person they consumed is dead and gone, claimed that held up to scrutiny by Aemsmaster's lie detector and thinker analysis of a recording of the interview, so don't hesitate to kill."
I couldn't help but think that under any other circumstances, someone in a military uniform telling minors to kill would be the bad guy. Funny what you think about on the way to a fight.
Vista kept glancing at Gallant's leg but not saying anything. It was hard to tell with his armor on but he seemed to know but wasn't acknowledging it. "Gallant, how's the leg?" I asked, just in the hopes of getting the ice broken.
"Fine," he said. "A little stiff, but that's what physical therapy is for and Armsmaster adjusted machinery in the leg of my suit to compensate. Rose Red was a bit grumpy about being rushed to fix me up, but that's understandable. How are you doing?"
We were heading out to exterminate the monsters that literally want to eat my new sister alive. What do you think? "Fine," I answered back. "Vista?"
"First time out since I... Uh, well, Cuddlebug called it 'hulking out,' " she said. "First chance to prove that this doesn't affect my contribution to the team."
The talk about contributing reminded me. "Didn't Ms. Mystic warn us not to send out agents against the Poisons?"
"While the PRT appreciates her warnings about the enemy's capabilities and weaknesses," Miss Militia began, "we feel that our tacticians are more likely to have a better understanding of our agents capabilities and form a proper battle plan."
"I take absolutely no responsibility for any deaths that happen as a result of your inability to listen." Came the voice of the sorceress over our headsets. Well, wasn't that encouraging?
Miss Militia held her hand to her head, seemingly getting a message on her headset that the rest of us couldn't... "If they're dressed like Gandhi, they're probably not... What's a Metal Gear...? Fine."
"Bad news," she said after finishing and turning back to us. "Uber and Leet are at city hall with a giant robot trying to get Mayor Christner to declare videogames an art form. So far they're peaceful, but supposedly, the robot is equipped with nuclear weapons. The rest of the convoy is being diverted to help contain the situation so the poisons are all on us. This means that it is especially important that you follow my instructions."
"Don't listen to her. She places too much value in rules and regulations, she'll get you killed. The only instructions you need right now are 'do what you know yourself to be capable of' and 'kill all sons of bitches.' Actually, that first one is in general. You're not her little soldiers and you're not supposed to be, and all three of you have better judgment than hers in my opinion." Okay, having someone from the future giving advice was less and less of comfort over time.
"Do you have some sort of problem with me?" Miss Militia asked back into her headset.
"Just that you're a spineless hypocrite with a fundamentally flawed and biased sense of judgment. But what do I know? I'm just a bitch. Pro-tip though? Saving lives and doing the right thing are more important than following orders or obeying the law. You're never gonna get that through your thick skull, but I'm obligated to try."
Wow... there was something bitter and hateful behind Ms. Mystic's words. What happened? What was going to happen?
I pushed it out of my mind. The last thing I needed right now was to be distracted. I tried to focus on something else but all I could think of was Ashley telling me once that after doing some research about Earth Bet that we had weirdly high beauty standards.
A short while later, the van stopped with the back opening and everyone piling out. We were just outside the Medhall building. Miss Militia started to give orders but was immediately hit by a flying poison on the end of a blue beam of light, then collapsed to the ground.
"That's the other reason I told you to use your judgment. She'll be fine, but she's gonna be out cold for about an hour."
"Well, shit," Vista said while starring at the unconscious Protectorate. She then casually raised a hand and disintegrated an approaching poison with a blast of heat and radiation. Clearly, she'd been practicing.
"Sorry," came a modulated and partly mechanized masculine voice. The unknown cape in the powered armor had said that between punching out Poisons. The armor was simultaneously bulky and form-fitting, giving the impression of well-defined musculature under a think layer of metal. The main body was blue, with red gauntlets to the lbw, boots to the knee, and a chest plate with pauldrons and white bands on the arms and legs, a white star emblem on the chest, and a white faceplate over a red helmet.
"It's fine," Vista said, quickly stepping into a leadership role. "Accidents happen, who are you and what's the sitch?"
"I'm Iron Patriot!" The man said while blasting a Poison... Why were there so many? Where were they coming from? "I was making my inaugural patrol when I saw these things swarming around. Recognized them from the news."
"Okay, well, since our CO is out cold I'm taking command," Vista said. No one challenged her. "Weaver? Swarm and Recon, find out where they're coming from. Agents? Defensive formation Gamma around Weaver and Miss Militia, shoot or form anything that gets too. Gallant? There are too many life forms for me to warp space around here to a usable degree, emotion control might not work on these things but they're small enough that your knock-back should still let you give me supporting fire. Me? I'm gonna fry some monsters."
PRT Agents formed around me, but I didn't pay much mind. Instead, I started shedding spiders from every vent I had and sent millions of them swarming off in every direction. In addition, I drew on every bug and worm that was naturally in the area. I tried to blank out my surroundings about me as a map of the area formed in my mind's eye. A sewer grate. A sewer grate not too far from here had been torn open from the inside. A few bugs started pouring down, looking for any signs of the Poisons, when I was distracted by something blowing up a piece of the street.
My attention was drawn back to the real world, my spider-reflexes keeping me on my feet, in time to see a woman glowing in blinding white light floating in the air above us. Purity. I'd heard she'd left the Empire and was trying to go straight, so if she was here to help... But then I noticed the armored figure down below her, with the Tinker Tech staff holding an ancient hammer, That creepy German lightning Tinker Ashley'd run into when she went off on her own.
"Yes... hello, we would kindly ask you all to either vacate the vicinity or kindly die," he said... His accent wasn't as thick as Ashley said it'd been.
"Don't mind him," Purity said as she flew lower. "He's cranky because his plans to cyberbully a little girl got foiled and he chose to do this instead of the English phonics lessons he's being made to take."
"If the little babies can't understand a German accent then they never should have become national-socialists in the first place," the Tinker grumbled bitterly.
"But still, we have friends who work in the area and would very much appreciate it if you'd get the hell—"
Purity was interrupted by evil-crystal-me and evil-crystal-Panacea erupting out from under the asphalt. My counterpart stabbed her through the midsection and let her fall to the ground, where she started clutching her wound in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding, all the light from her body fading and leaving a normal woman.
The Panacea doppelganger released a bloody-red goo from the crevices of her body and formed it into several tendrils with jagged blades at the end. She used one to carve right through Donar's giant hammer and the rest were impaled into the ground, which she used to slingshot herself into the formation of PRT Agents. In seconds, with each hand resembling a giant, serrated military knife she was wearing through good men who only wanted to keep the city safe.
I called on every bug I had to swarm her... I didn't think they could hurt her, but they could slow her down, distract her, leave her open to a shot from one of us with a dart-gun, but with a burst of smoke and the smell of sulfur someone was behind me. My counterpart's strong, crystalline arms wrapped around me, binding my arms to my side. Slime from... Fuck, I don't know, her legs? Oozed out over mine and held them in place. One of her hands was clamped tightly over my masked mouth and somehow she was able to overwhelm my control of the natural pests in the area and make them turn on my weaving widows, wasps and flies and bees and bigger spiders all turning on and killing the ones spawned by my powers. Off in the distance, I saw a bright flash of blue light, but I was a little too preoccupied with the stronger psychopath version of me.
"God damn it!" Donar screamed. "Do you have any idea how long it takes to rebuild the Mjolnir staff!? Do you know how many times I've had to rebuild it in the last decade? Twice! Both in this past month!" And then he held out his hands and shot lightning from his gauntlets the Poison Panacea, who paid it no mind. His comrade was bleeding out at his feet and he was concerned about an inanimate object? "You didn't even have a reason to break it! You just did it out of spite!"
I struggled against the grip of my counterpart to no avail. Instead, she forced me to watch as the Panacea knock off finished the last of the agents... So much blood, everywhere... I'm glad that Ashley wasn't here to see this. She didn't... I tried to keep from throwing up.
"Vista to console," I could hear Vista calling in. "We need back up ten minutes ago! All agents are dead, Miss Militia is out cold, Weaver's incapped and—" Vista was bowled over by half a dozen unbonded poisons.
"So, here's what's gonna happen," my counterpart said. "We're all a little upset about the resistance you showed a little bit ago, so..." I tried to stomp on her foot but if she noticed she didn't say anything. "You, and Vista, and fuck it even the Nazi scumbag and the new guy I don't recognize are gonna die here, but first I'm gonna make you watch while my Red Queen kills Gallant like she's always wanted to, just so you can see how fucked you are."
As she said that, the evil Panacea copy's hands shifted into claws and began shredding at Dean's armor.
"Don't feel too bad though," my copy said, "be comforted by the fact that by the time you're dead, Ashley will already have a new big sister and more family than you could ever possibly give her." As the small, imp-like poison crawled from my counterpart's shoulder to mine, giggling in a mischevious way, I realized that there was no sign at all of the Poison Bonesaw.
"Wondering where our little girl is?" My demented duplicate asked. "She's the only one who for sure fit in the vents."
My blood froze in my veins even as my heart rate tripled. I doubled my struggle against my bonds. I had to... I had to end this and get back to the base. I...
"Accept it, Taylor," the other me said as she tightened her grip. "There's nothing you can do... Just sit back and think of the look on that bitch Alexandria's face when we filled her bitch-lungs with Spiders... Wait, you didn't do that, did you? Oh well, no comforting memory to think of when you die."
At that time, a badly bleeding Dean was torn from his shredded armor and thrown headfirst into the still pissed off electrical tinker still futilely trying to electrocute the crystal creature with a violent hatred for my teammate.
The so-called Red Queen leaped through the air and impacted Gallant with both of her feet, knocking him and the German Tinker back a short way. Then she marched forward, picked Dean up by the throat...
And I guess she said something to him, because all of a sudden Dean's face contorted into a look of sheer rage and the crystal monster was blasted back with an emotion beam far greater than I'd seen him use before, in person or in videos of the Wards in action.
He fell to his knees when her grip was broken, but guided by the same anger he dragged himself to her with his hands, stopping only when his hand brushed the broken remains of Donar's staff. A visible spark of lightning shocked his hand, drawing his attention down to the ancient hammer in the device's remains... And then his rage softened into a look of... Recognition? He looked upon it for a moment, then grabbed the leather-bound handle in his hands.
It started at the hammer. Lightning crackled from it, up his arm, and finally arced all around him and in a blinding flash, the wounded Gallant in his torn and bloody undersuit was replaced with a wall of muscle standing a good six-foot-six, at least, with the torn suit tearing further, leaving him bare-armed and bare-chested. Dean's golden hair extended out into a long and glorious mane. If I didn't know better, I'd have said he was a grown man.
"I remember." He said in a voice that, while recognizable as Dean's, was deeper and resonating with power.
"No!" The evil Panacea screamed. "This can't be how it happened! It can't be my fault! You die here!"
"No, it is thou whom meet thy end hither!" Dean shouted and then leveled the hammer's head at the evil Panacea and one of his emotion beams but, like, a hundred times more times as intense and a blue arc of lightning spiraling around it erupted from the stone head with the force of mentos in a bottle of cola before it impacted the crystal creature. Ms. Mystic had said that the poisons were sociopaths who werren't even remotely capable of human emotion, but I could have sworn the evil knock-off was screaming in terror, not pain, as the crystals on her crumbled to dust and the slime inside boiled away. In moments there was nothing left.
My doppelganger gasped and let me go. She made a low, guttural, almost angry sound and ran for Gallant. Thinking quickly, I pulled the dart-gun I'd been provided with, took aim, and pulled the trigger. My dart his my copy, she grunted... And then she just fucking melted into a bubbling pile of goo. Her little demon, having since returned to her shoulder, and all the unbound poisons started twitching before likewise collapsing and melting.
Vista, claw marks on her skin healing, pushed herself up, took one look at Dean... And then stared slack jaw at his abs. Then she shook her head and called back in. "Vista to console. Cancel the back-up, all tangos are dead... We do need uh... a cleanup crew though," she said with her attention being drawn to the alien slime and human blood comingling in the streets. "Uh, maybe two. And someone to keep Cuddlebug from finding out that people died trying to kill the monsters that were after her while she was benched."
"We need to get back to HQ," I said quickly. "My copy all but outright said that the Bonesaw poison was infiltrating HQ through the vents to get—"
"I hate to interrupt," the Gesselschraft Tinker said while sounding like he didn't hate it at all, "but the nice young Aryan gentleman has something that belongs to me and I would very much like it back, yes?"
Dean looked down at the hammer in his hand and then to the Tinker. "Donar of Gesselschraft, I would have words with thee..." A small bolt of lightning jumped from Gallant's hand down to Purity. She jolted, her stomach wound glowing briefly, and she gasped. "But on a later day. I have mended thy comrade to the best of my current abilities, but she may yet succumb to death's embrace should she not be tended to by a healer soon. Take her, and know that Thor will not tolerate thine sullying of his name nor any further attempts to subvert that which thou art not Worthy of."
"...Yes sir, Mister Thor sir!" the man said, suddenly cowed by the realization that he was, apparently, in the presence of a literal god. he stepped over to the downed Purity, picked her up far more gently than I expected based on his earlier behavior, looked back at Gallant, and then took off running.
"Vista," Gallant said as he turned to her, stopping only to pick up the remains of his helmet, "It pains me to ask that you stay here alone, but I feel that would be best if Weaver were returned to Headquarters swiftly." He lifted off the ground, floating in the air on a gust of wind. "And my sudden divinity hath granted me the means to carry her there."
At Gallant's prompting, I climbed upon as back and almost lost my breakfast from the sheer speed as he flew me back to headquarters, with "apparently Gallant's a god now" from Vista being the last thing I heard before we took off. It was only once we were in the air that I realized I'd never seen the Iron Patriot leave.
AN: Anyone who reads Ward probably has a general idea of what a completely sociopathic version of Panacea that's influenced by the Carnage symbiote said to Gallant to make him so absolutely pissed.