Snuggles The Symbiote

My next conscious thought was annoyance at someone poking me in the shoulder. Then I remembered everything that'd just happened and immediately I snapped up and jumped to my feet. Bugs. My bug senses were back and while my vision was clearing I used them to get my bearings. No sign of Bonesaw, Hatchetface, or her spider-boxes...

But no sign of Ashley, either, and my heart raced with fear and worry. The little girl who more and more I thought of as a little sister, the child I wanted to protect was in the clutches of one of the most prolific serial killers in recent memory, someone whose survivors envied those who'd died in her clutches...

And my little sister had just pissed her off.

We'd been joined by five others. Alexandria was the one who drew my attention, levitating ten feet or so above the street and surveying the area. From the corner of my eye, I could see Laura, no sign of Gabby, helping Armsmaster tend to Shadow Stalker. Spider-Man was helping up Ms. Marvel, who had a small tear in the sleeve of her costume and blood down the sides of her head. A quick check showed that the sides of my own masked cowl were wet with a viscous red liquid. Bleeding from the ears. It made sense. Vista was standing guard a little bit up the street, and the person who'd been poking me was the red and black wannabe ninja. Deadpool.

"So," he said, "we went out with Grey Tower Woman and the most competent and badass preteen in this part of the multiverse to deal with what looked like a warthog, a triceratops, a squid, an iguana, a spider, and a hippo had an orgy and who regenerated like a mother-lovemaker." Did... Did he mean Crawler? "Then the kid gets a distress beacon... luckily you have a Thor here who was able to take over for us, and we came here but that took half an hour." We were out for half an hour!? Fuck, Ashley was probably... Fuck, fuck. Breathe Taylor.

Off in the distance, I saw a massive bolt of lightning strike from a clear sky. Apparently, Dean was getting the hang of being the Ancient Norse God of Thunder quite well.

"And then you're all out cold when we get here and it takes another ten minutes to wake you up." Fuck! "So what happened?"

"Bonesaw got Ashley," I said. "Ashley tried to talk Bonesaw into surrendering and mending her ways. All she did was piss her off though, and..." I had to stop because I was starting to hyperventilate.

"Fuck!" Vista clearly appreciated the gravity of the situation.

Armasmater, without turning around, shouted for Vista to "Watch your mouth!" He was maybe a little louder than he had to be.

"A ten-year-old girl, my friend, is probably dead or worse," Vista shouted back. " 'Fuck' is the appropriate response!"

"So, should I not be censoring myself for the sake of young ears?" Deadpool asked.

"Don't be so certain," Armsmater, ignoring the Ninja wannabe, said back as he stood. Yeah, he was talking louder than he had to. "We were all out cold. Helpless. Normally we'd have either been dragged back to the Nine's hideout if Bonesaw thought we were interesting or killed with our organs and nervous tissue harvested if she didn't. But she left us alone. Cuddlebug... Remember, she has Bonesaw's memories. From that... Alien cannibalism thing with the poison."

He started adjusting his helmet. "I was skeptical, but... I think Cuddlebug knew exactly what to say to get under Bonesaw's skin. Bonesaw may have some modifications to disguise her automatic emotional reactions, but... Beyond that, Bonesaw said she wanted to know what Cuddlebug knew about mutant biology, and I'm quite certain that she'll talk for hours if you let her."

While Armsmaster was talking, the pile of goo marbled gold and blue that had once been supporting Ashley's frail constitution and serving as most of her wardrobe started bubbling before surging upward and taking shape. Superficially, it resembled a sweater with overstretched sleeves that had been inflated and started moving on its own. But sweaters didn't bubble like wax in a lava lamp and didn't have sleeves that tapered to points like an octopus tentacle that had had it's suction cups peeled off. A large bubble with jagged crescents for eye lenses formed above the "shoulders" of the sweater, which tore open in a sharp zigzag like a monster in a simple cartoon. Inside was solid blue, and a foot-long forked tongue, the same blue rather than the pink it was when the symbiote was bonded to Ashley, stuck out between the "teeth."

Spider-Man eyed it wearily, while the symbiote looked around. Then, like lightning, its "arm" stretched out and grabbed Ms. Marvel by the wrist and pulled her to it.

Deadpool immediately turned from me and drew the katanas on his back. "No, stop that. She's already done her version of the Alien Costume story!"

Spider-Man swore and muttered something about telling someone named Flash that they should have brought a sonic gun.

Ms. Marvel stretched and grew and deformed while Mister Snuggle's limbs wrapped around her and then he stuck his blue tongue in her ear.

"Ahh! Gross! Let go of me, you—Ahh! It's touching my brain! It's touching my brain!"

Alexandria flew down and grabbed Mister Snuggles, trying to pull him loose from Ms. Marvel. And succeeded in doing so, but not before Mister Snuggles plucked something a dark, inky green thing from her head and swallowed it.

Then he melted, falling from Alexandria's hands and landing in a puddle below her before springing back up, in a new shape. The head was the same, but not he had a proper body with arms and legs. Specifically, a twelve-foot tall body that was mostly legs. A torso as thick around as Ashley's but twice as tall, with arms and legs like noodles of a rubber hose ending on humanlike hands and feet too large for the wrists they were attached too, each digit tipped with claws resembling the ones Ashley normally formed.

He leaned forward and reached around, arms twisting around to stab Deadpool and Laura in the small of their respective backs. Seconds later pulling out something black and wriggling from Laura and a fistful of black, green, pinkish-purple, blue, and yellowish-orange from Deadpool, both vanishing within its arms which showed veins of the respective colors traveling up his limbs.

"Ahh... Ahh. That's the spine. That's the spine," Deadpool moaned. "It's gonna be at least an hour before I can walk straight and I didn't even get to do anything fun to be able to say it. Damn genetically engineered mary-sue OC symbiote."

"You'll live," Mister Snuggles said. I vaguely recognized the echo that underlaid Ashley's voice when he had her mask on, but the deep masculine voice was stronger. He'd spoken through Ashley before, but very neutrally. Now I could detect traces of Ashley's faint accent. "Be glad that this one did not completely remove and devour your spinal cord entirely. This one's host has given it the designation 'Mister Snuggles' and it would prefer to be addressed as such."

Spider-Man jumped for Mister Snuggles, who bent out the way like a character from an old cartoon.

"Time is being wasted," the symbiote said with obvious annoyance. "Ths one's host is in danger and must be rescued."

"You should have thought of that—Wait, what?"

"This one's host is in physical danger but it can sense the remnants of its matter within its host's body and can tell that its host is currently alive. This one thus would prefer to immediately travel to Ashley's location and free her from her captivity before that changes."

"Then why did you attack—"

"Not attack," Mister Snuggles interrupted. "This one has a limited ability to function without a host. This one also suspected that Ashley may be injured or infected with some plague upon retrieval and would need to be mended. This one sensed the codices, traces of symbiote biomatter left in a former host that archives the host's genetic information and other factors determining suitability as a host within Ms. Marvel, Deadpool, Best Wolverine, and Spider-Man. Reading codices indicates that consuming Ms. Marvel's codex would grant this one solid form while Best Wolverine's and Deadpool's would significantly improve this one's ability to mend it's host's body. In addition," Mister Snuggles continued, "The abilities and adaptions of the symbiotes in question, the archived combat skills and instincts within the codices, and the not insignificant increase in raw overall power gained from consuming seven codices will assist in rescuing Ashley while the agent of the Cosmos that hand bonded with Ms, Marvel had fully mastered her genetic code and possessed adaptions for rapid advancement of genetic adaptation, which can only provide significant long term benefit to this one and to Ashley."

"You could have asked first," Laura snarked from where she was on the ground.

"You assume that this one has any regard for any being that is not Ashley," Mister Snuggles replied evenly. "It is only the fact that Ashley would never forgive this one if it harmed or discomforted the one designated Spider-Man to even the slightest degree that prevents this one from claiming his powerful codices. Valuable micro-instants are being wasted in the explanation. Ashley must be retrieved swiftly."

"Oh... Okay." Spider-Man honestly sounded confused. "Where is she?"

"I hate to interrupt," Alexandria said professionally, "but official policy is to leave people captured by the Nine. Even if she's clinically alive, there's no guarantee that she hasn't been subverted or that she isn't in some state where death is better and we've lost far, far too many people over the years trying to rescue people who have already been captured. It might sound cold, but we have to prioritize the safety of the city over the life of one person."

No one said anything. Or, if they did, I didn't notice. I was too rattled by the realization that one of the strongest and most experienced heroes in the world didn't think there was any chance of saving Ashley and—

I was roused from my worry by the sound of shattering asphalt. Mister Snuggles had grabbed Alexandria in a vastly enlarged hand and slammed her into the street.

"This one does not work for Alexandria," he said slowly. "It does not work for your Protectorate or your Parahuman Response Team. It does not work for anyone. This one's sole priority is Ashley's wellbeing and happiness. The one designated Alexandria carries herself as one who is invincible, but this one is of a kind created by an incomprehensibly ancient, elder, and eldritch deity of death, madness, and primordial darkness the likes of which your author Lovecraft wrote upon for the sake of murdering the other Gods and corrupting and destroying their creations. This one can only be called alive in the loosest sense, as it is an extradimensional tesseract made of what can only be described as corporeal darkness amalgamated with elements symbolic of the circumstances of this one's genesis." Mister Snuggles growled, a sound like a bear with a fan in front of its mouth. "The only word in your language that accurately describes what this one is from a human's perspective is 'abomination.' This one has an infinite capacity to store the genetic codes and mental imprints of others and adapt to them. With the codes imprinted in this one and Ashley's knowledge of their sources, this one could easily gain the strength to shake planets apart with brute force or obliterate them with photonic blasts."

"Alexandria has three choices: allow this one to rescue this one's host. To purge anything controlling her and mend her wounds, and have that power in the hands of someone who wants nothing more than to help others. An ally in the battle against the beings that wish to destroy this world. Or Alexandria can forbid it, and have this one as an immortal foe willing to destroy everything she stands for from spite. Or Alexandria can try to stop this one, and this one will fill Alexandria's lungs with its mass, ravage her cells for resources, absorb her genetic code and archive her memories and use them to better rescue and protect this one's beloved host while leaving Alexandria dead. You are intelligent, yes? Your brain might make a satisfying meal."

If we got out of this alive, I was going to have words with Ashley about her choice of friend.

Mister Snuggles let Alexandria go, and she levitated from the crater, utterly neutral in expression, as though Mister Snuggles attack hadn't happened. "Very well," she said evenly. "Does anyone else want to throw their lives away?"

I didn't say anything as I stepped forward. The street warped and bent and within seconds Vista was standing next to me.

"How long have you been in this business, Alexandria?" Spider-Man asked. "Becuase I've been doing this for half my life and I've got to say that a hero who'd leave a little girl to die, no matter the circumstances, isn't much of a hero at all."

"Very well. You can go," Alexandria said. "But the consequences are on your heads. Everyone else: If you can walk, help the people who can't. We're falling back so the injured can be tended to by the healers."

She flew over me and picked up Deadpool. "For the record grey-lady-with-rock-hard-abs," he said, "I agree with the shoggoth. If I could feel my legs right now I'd be kicking your ass for even suggesting leaving the kid."

"Duly noted," she said as though he'd been telling her what the weather conditions are.

Just as my group was about to leave, following Mister Snuggles and whatever was letting him sense where Ashley was, Armsmaster, still talking louder than normal, called out to "Wait."

He walked up to me as I turned, and from a hidden compartment in his armor produced a stoppered vial full of some blood-red liquid. "The time traveler said that this was a medicinal serum that would bypass Cuddlebug's chemical resistance. She said that she'd need it soon and that I'd know to give it to you when the time was right."

I took the vial and slid it into the hidden pocket on my back. And then we were off.