Snuggles the Symbiote
"And that's why we're here," the blonde girl, Brainstorm, finished.
In short, they were here to make sure the clones werren't causing too much chaos and to offer to bring home anyone who wanted to go back.
"So, the only thing left," the young woman who'd introduced herself as Laura(Ashley insisted she was Best Wolverine) said, "is whether Ashley wants to come home with us."
"And whether or not the symbiote she's wearing is safe," Spider-Man added.
The teenaged girl, Mania, had her costume peel away revealing... Yeah, Goth girl. dyed purple hair and a pierced lip. I wasn't sure what I was expecting. The tendrils stretched half-way across the table. Then, Mister Snuggles peeled away from Ashley and extended the rest of the way. The tendrils danced around each other without touching for a few moments.
"I'm sorry, what's going on?" No seriously, I had no idea what was going on.
Eventually, the respective symbiotes pulled back and reformed around their hosts. "It's on the up and up. It's a little corrupted, but it's stable. My symbiote could probably purify it in an hour or so."
"Why does your symbiote smell like sulfur?" Ashley asked.
Everyone was silent for a beat. "On second thought," Mania corrected, "maybe it'd be better to take her to the planet of the symbiotes to be purified?"
I put a hand on Ashley's shoulder. "I'm not so sure that Ashley should go back," I said. "From what she's said... Between the Sentinels. And the terrigen. And the Sapien League. And the Purifiers. And the Friends of Humanity. And the Canadian Death Camps. And the wendigos." The wendigos werren't exactly related to the others, but that's still a problem.
"Yeah, uh," Ashley began awkwardly. "Here I don't have to worry about someone finding out I'm a mutant and firebombing my house." Well, not becuase she's a mutant. An hour ago I'd got a warning on my phone that a neighbor had recorded everything from us coming out of the house to Bloodbath tossing Ashley in the air. Her ID and mine were exposed. I wasn't sure how to break that to her yet or what was going to happen, but Dad was back in the safe house and honestly, with the Slaughterhouse Nine in town I wasn't sure if we'd live long enough for it to matter.
...Well, wasn't that a morbid thought?
"The terrigen mists were dealt with a while ago," the girl a little older than me, Ms. Marvel, said. "Queen Medusa decided that terrigenisis wasn't worth even a single mutant death and destroyed the clouds herself after finding out they were about to saturate the atmosphere."
"...And she couldn't have done that as soon as she found out that mutants were dying?" Ashley said with a surprising amount of venom. Enough that it almost scared me. "Or just get a giant vacuum and collect her property instead of leaving it to mutate people? Hell, I heard that the mists were even killing most of the Nuhumans who got exposed."
Ms. Marvel grimaced. "Inhumans, please. Or Inhuman-Hybrid. Nuhuman was coined by some Inhuman supremacist terrorists."
"But you're cool," Ashley said confused. "you're my fourth favorite Hero from back home. If I use Inhuman to refer to you, then I have to associate you with the Inhuman Royals and screw the Inhuman Royals. Why would you want to be associated with people who released a biological weapon across the whole planet and then let thousands of people die becuase they were too lazy to clean it up? I mean, if you think Nuhuman is dumb I won't use it anymore, but..."
"That is an awkward conversation that I'd rather not have right now," the woman said, "becuase it would take a lot of time and be difficult to explain, and... So, I'm your fourth favorite, who are the first three?" She asked, awkwardly changing the subject.
"From three to one, The Thing, Captain America, and Spider-Man."
The eyeholes on Ms. Marvel's mask were wide enough that I could see her eyes narrowing. "Which Spider-Man?" How many Spider-Men were there?
Ashley's eye lenses widened. She gestured to her phone, still out from her earlier selfie with the Spider-Man in this room, then to the man in question, then back to her phone. This prompted laughter from most of the room's inhabitants and a long, drawn-out sigh from Miss Militia.
"Okay," Ms. Marvel said. "That's fair. Those are good ones."
"Don't feel bad, Good MM," the... honestly my first thought was that he was a flamboyant ninja wannabe started. He called himself Deadpool. Did that make Miss Militia Bad MM? "Everyone knows that all the kids love Spider-Man."
"Not just kids," the white-clad soldier, Agent Anti-Venom said. "If it wasn't for Spider-Man?" He shrugged. "I'd probably just be an angry man in some dead-end job."
"Circling back," Deadpool continued, "while the wendigo problem can't be solved until my fellow Canadians stop killing and eating each other, the other stuff... Well."
"Professor X is alive and he and Magneto have a living island with portals all over the world that only mutants and people accompanied by mutants can get to," the unimaginatively named Gwenpool offered. "All mutants in the world are granted citizenship and all nations who recognize Krakoan sovereignty have granted all Krakoan citizens diplomatic immunity. Not only are hate groups no longer openly tolerated, but if she goes back then even if she doesn't live on the island she's basically above the law." She paused for a minute. "Also, the whole island gets free cable service. Really good free cable service."
"We're trying to get the island to grow pizza trees," the scared girl who introduced herself as Scout but told everyone to call Gabby added.
"Wait," Ashley said while gesturing to Gwenpool. "You're a mutant?"
"Yes," she said a little too quickly. "I am totally a mutant with high-level Esper and Reality Warping abilities. I thought I was someone from another universe where everyone was a comic book, but it turns out I just had a psychotic break when my powers came in." She was smiling a bit too wide. It sounded like she was trying too hard to convince people. "That is totally the truth and totally not me using my reality-warping powers to revise my origin story so I can't be killed off in a crossover event or erased from continuity. There was not an entire miniseries where I became self-destructively manic out of fear for my life that ended with me doing that."
I immediately concluded that Gwenpool was mentally ill.
Deadpool looked off into a corner. "And SB? You're not seeing Gwen's text in pink because the author is too lazy to figure out the hex code for the right shade of pink. FFN, you never saw it in pink to begin with."
"Wade? Can we not do this bit right now?" Spider-Man said with a palm over his face.
"Fine."
"Now, actually," Brainstorm said as she pulled up a bag, "we did bring some... Uh, which pocket did I put that in... Some things, if we found Ashley safe and sound... Some pamphlets for Krakoa," she said while pulling out some pamphlets showing an island and a bunch of people, some of whom looked like Case 53s, having fun. "And don't feel obligated to go. My brother's not too interested in it, either, but the mutant contingent of our group wants you to be able to make an informed decision." She pulled out a stack of documents. "These are the modifications that were made to your symbiote, which, well... If it was friendly then you need to know what it can potentially do and if not having a reference document on hand would have been nice."
She slid the documents and pamphlets across the table to Ashley, who honestly seemed more interested in the documents. She started looking through them and making a sound, not unlike a rubber duck, on four occasions.
And then an inquisitive grunt. "Which Captain Marvel? All it says are Kree genes."
"We're pretty sure it's from Carol."
Ashley let out a disappointed sigh at that. She flipped to the last page. "Well, that's wrong. If we had Lockheed's genes we'd be invincible."
"Other than that," Brainstorm finished, "we weren't just trying to figure out how to get here. Rule number one of tracking a missing kid, look into if they have a safe home to go to... I don't know if you know this, but you've got an aunt."
"I do?"
"Yeah... But she's in with the Friends of Humanity."
"...Of course." Ashley sounded disturbingly resigned to that.
"So yeah, that's not an option," Brainstorm admitted, "but we did talk to your old landlord. After your aunt said to throw everything out, he saved a few things in case you turned up." Out of the bag came a plushy shaped like Spider-Man, a stack of crayon drawings, a furled up poster, and a framed photograph.
Three rows. An older white man in the back, with a handsome man who seemed to be half white and half Asian on the left and a beautiful Asian woman on the right, with a little girl with a giant smile and bright green eyes in front.
Ashley was shaking. "Th... Thank you."
Miss Militia had taken notes on the relevant things but hadn't spoken until now. "Are we done? There's a band of spree killers active in the city and I'd much prefer to be working with my fellows doing something productive than... whatever this is."
At that point, there was a knock on the door. Whoever it was came in without waiting, however, and I turned to see...
Alexandria. Alexandria was here. I was in the same room as Alexandria. The dark costume, the visor, the tower emblem on her chest...
Stay calm Taylor. Don't make a fool of yourself in front of Alexandria.
Ashley tapped my shoulder. "I don't know all the heroes from here yet. Who is that?"
"That's Alexandria," I whispered back. "You told me about Captain America? She's basically our him."
Ashley saluted Alexandria, who nodded and then stepped around to whisper something to Miss Militia, who seemed to smile based on her eyes, then got up and went to the door. Once there, she gestured to Ashley and I and beckoned us to come.
Out in the hall, she turned to me and said, "Alexandria is here representing Chief Director Costa-Brown. She's taking command here temporarily due to the combination of the Nine's attack and visitors from another reality. I'm going to escort you two back to PRT HQ in the city, whether you agree to fight the Nine or opt-out is up to you. Afterward, I'll be joining Assault and Battery in the search for Shadow Stalker. Cuddlebug, while I have reluctantly accepted the fact that you can do whatever you want, I don't know what you did to get out of the infirmary. I would strongly suggest continuing to rest unless something comes up that needs you."
Snuggles The Symbiote
Once we got back to our room at Wards HQ, and Ashley had gently, lovingly placed her family portrait next to her rose plant, she admitted to me that she wasn't sure if today had been the best day of her life or the worst. Then she yawned.
Ten minutes later, I managed to convince her to take a nap. "Promise you'll get me up if something happens," she said once I got her to lie down.
"I promise," I said. Once I was sure she was asleep, I started looking through the pamphlets that the heroes from her world had given her.
I'd joined the Wards because I couldn't, in good conscience, leave a little girl who had no other options alone in the system. And so far, Director Piggot had proved my fears right.
But what I hadn't expected was that fighting Lung... It'd only been a few weeks but it felt like almost two years. I hadn't expected that that would be the least dangerous thing she and I would get into.
I became a hero becuase I wanted to do something worthwhile. Something good for the world. Ashley... I think taking care of Ashley could be it. and the truth was, I was starting to think of her as less of a foster sister and more of an actual sister. She's such a little ball of sunshine... I'd even go so far as to say I love her.
Which made it especially heartbreaking for me to realize that I couldn't protect her. With the Poisons. With Bloodbath...
I had said that I didn't want her going back to her world, that it'd be safer here, and that if she went back to visit I'd be coming with, but maybe... An island paradise and diplomatic immunity seemed nice. Especially if what she was saying about that Doom fellow and his diplomatic immunity the other day was true. Maybe that would be best for her?
Bloodbath said he was after Ashley to steal "the brat's" kill. the only "brat" in the Nine was Bonesaw. Ashley... Ashley had been fixated on Bonesaw ever since she got the Poison Bonesaw's memories. If Bonesaw was targetting Ashley... The best-case scenario would be that her heart got broken when she realized that there was nothing she could do to save Riley Davis. I didn't want to think about the worst-case scenario.
The pamphlets were a bit hard to parse. Some bits were written in weird glyphs that apparently you needed to go to Krakoa to learn how to read, but the gist of it was that it was, supposedly, a utopia. I'd talk to Ashley about it when she got up. Maybe if I ask nicely they'll let me come with her to visit and learn about the place. I was a bit concerned about the section on the map labeled Bar Sinister though. I couldn't find anything on it in the pamphlets, but I guess it's not that big a deal.