Snuggles The Symbiote

I swung and tested and admired the sword that Mister Snuggles and I could summon now. A Viking sword (or a Carolingian, Val had corrected when I showed it off,) solid black, of apparently svartalfar make but actually a composite of Uru and Living Abyss like the rest of Mister Snuggles.

With an effort of will, it changed shape into a massive cruciform greatsword. Again and it became a Katana. Then two Katanas. A pair of sais. A small battle ax paired with a dagger. Back together for a bow staff. And then back to the same Viking sword as before.

"It needs a name," I said out loud as I reabsorbed the sword.

"Why?" Mister Snuggles whispered in my ear.

"Becuase all of the coolest swords have names... Names that mean something, too..." I rolled it over in my head for a bit. It was basically made out of Mister Snuggles, and since he and I were permenantly merged that meant that it was as good as made of my flesh and blood. So a sword made of me should represent the things I stand for and should have a name that fits that...

And then something just popped into my head. "All-Love."

"All-Love?"

"All-Love, the Sword of Compassion and Justice." And not letting anything get in the way of helping people or doing the right thing, but if I added that last part it'd be too long a name.

"...Maybe you'd like to give that some more thought?" Mister Snuggles suggested.

I shook my head. "No, I'm happy with All-Love."

"...If you're sure."

"What's wrong with All-Love?"

"Nothing."

"You're acting weird, Mister Snuggles."

"Wasn't that woman, Sue Storm-Richards, going to take you and the others into the city today?"

"Yeah, but..." and then I realized the time and rushed off to the hanger room.

Instead of superhero stuff, today we were going into the city to see various sights because most of the others hadn't been to any world's New York and I'd almost never been able to leave the apartment to see anything. And we were taking the Fantasticar, how cool was that!?

Everybody was already there by the time I skidded in on my heels. "Please don't run in our house," Mrs. Storm-Richards said without even looking at me.

"Sorry, ma'am," I replied sheepishly.

The Fantasticar was roomy enough for seven people, but just in case I stayed snuggled up close to Taylor. Within a few minutes, we were emerging out of a trap door in the roof of the building that was bigger on the inside than the outside.

Just as we got up over the roof a young girl riding a big red dinosaur walked by and... When did Devil Dinosaur have a symbiote? And it was another one that wasn't Venom or Carnage, how many symbiotes were there?

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Richards," Moon Girl said with a wave.

"Good afternoon, Lunella," Mrs. Storm-Richards answered back.

"And those are the kids you're hosting... The boy who's 'a Thor' and Apocalypse Girl?"

"My name is Ashley!" I shouted over the edge of the Fantasticar. "And I'd like to ride your dinosaur," I added.

"I was just going by what the videos that got uploaded on the internet call you," Moon Girl replied, "You're a meme now."

"...What?"

"Yeah, turns out that a mutant who looks like they're related to an infamous mutant going on an anti-mutant rant—"

"That wasn't an anti-mutant rant!" I shouted. "I was just telling a bunch of people off for being stupid!"

"Well, I know that, but once it's out on the internet..."

I shrank back into the vehicle and immediately switched my outfit to the hoodie I wore when I didn't want to be. "Would it be racist if I disguised myself as a white girl so no one would recognize me as a meme?"

"All you can do is change colors and people know you can do that," Grace said. "I don't think that would help."

Then there was a bit of wiggling and seat changing and then the scaley-gremlin-girl was next to me giving me a hug. But this meant that Taylor got pushed away and she glared at Grace and... I guess that Taylor hadn't forgiven her either.

"Kid, you don't even live in this universe anymore," Lisa deadpanned. "In less than a week you'll be back home and nothing anybody here thinks will matter. So if someone gives you crap, just flip them the bird and tell them to fuck off."

"Please don't swear," Grace interjected.

"Or use the superhuman intelligence you've got but have been severely underutilizing to pick them apart psychologically and destroy them utterly," Lisa finished without missing a beat.

Wow... Nach í An Bhitseach í?

"Yes, yes I am."

"Are you a mind reader?" I asked.

"No, I'm just really good at reading people."

We got going a little after that. The bird's eye of view of New York City was amazing. Especially since, well, I'd been able to see for miles and smell for hundreds of miles ever since I'd come back. Mister Snuggles said it had something to do with the codices he took from Deadpool, same as why I'd been so much faster running and stuff. The life-foundation symbiotes had all kinds of weird stuff in them.

That meant that I could see from the Ocean to... The far side of the city. I could even make out part of Jersey City, and looking over Manhattan as we flew through it...

"Hey, I can see my old apartment from here," I said while pointing to my old building. "I can even make out the exact window I fell out of when I was three or four."

Some of the others looked at me funny.

Mrs. Storm-Richards flew the Fasticar over some landmarks, taking suggestions from the others, but I was happy to just sit back and go with the flow this time.

Also, I learned that 9/11 didn't happen in Earth Bet.

However, our very pleasant day trip was interrupted when we noticed a twenty-foot-tall man in what looked like a knockoff of Spider-Man's Black Suit but with antennae coming from the temples, red eye-lenses, a glowing red sphere instead of a spider emblem, and red boots, gloves, shoulder pads, and a belt. He was fighting a SWAT-team.

"Who's that?" Missy asked.

"That's Black Ant, he's an evil version of the third Ant-Man," I explained.

"That doesn't adequately answer my question," Missy replied.

I didn't answer. This wasn't Black Ant's style. He was normally a stealth agent, but he was also a merc for hire. What was his game?

I couldn't see any sign of heroes on the way. No film crew so that was the real Black Ant... there were some warehouses on this street and it looked like they were all in use. Had he been trying to steal something from one of them and then it went wrong.

"Yeah," I said as I shifted to my costume, "there are no heroes coming so since I'm already costumed up..."

"I don't think that's such a good—" I'd already jumped out of the Fantasticar by the time Mrs. Storm-Richards stopped talking. With my reasonable facsimile of Captain Marvel's flight powers, it was easy enough to maneuver around and adjust my speed so that I could kick the currently giant supervillain in the face with my right foot.

He hit the ground and shrank back to normal size, so I landed, and with a crack of thunder Dean landed next to me in Thor-form.

This was actually the first time I'd seen Dean as Thor since the day he picked up the Hammer. The costuming department had somehow managed to make him a set of Armor kind of like his powered armor but only covering his chest and legs while leaving his arms exposed and with wings added to his helmet, and that got absorbed into the hammer and became his clothes when he transformed. It was kind of neat, actually. Combined with the blue cape it was kinda half-way between his original techno-night look and a proper Thor. A demigod in Shining Armor.

"Oh what the hell Ant?" came a deep and scary voice and... Wait, no...

I turned my head to see a man in a tactical combat suit, a white hooded robe, and a skull mask. And he was holding a glass canister as big as I was full of something red, viscous, and writhing.

That was Carnage. The real Carnage. Or at least a big enough offshoot of it to count as a whole symbiote. I couldn't feel a mind in it, but...

And someone hired Black Ant and Taskmaster to steal it from a warehouse.

"I'm gonna give you five seconds to put that canister back where you got it from," I said slowly and with as much confidence as I could muster.

"Look, kid," Taskmaster said mockingly, "you're cute and I suspect that you and Re-Fair Thor think you're hot stuff, but you should really save the crime-fighting to people old enough to fill out a spandex outfit properly."

"This isn't spandex. It's a symbiote. Like the one that you're trying to steal. For all you know I could be a five-thousand-year-old alien warlord who is merely taking the form of a little girl with my symbiote's shapeshifting powers so you'll underestimate me."

"And the fact that you just said that tells me that you're bluffing," Taskmaster deadpanned. "Now look, someone is paying us a king's ransom for this little monster. I can't say who, but I can give you a hint: They've got diplomatic immunity. So please, move along."

Off the top of my head, the only person I could think of who had diplomatic immunity and who might want an evil symbiote was Doctor Doom. That didn't for sure mean it was him, but he had used a piece of Venom to make a mutagenic bomb once.

"How about you put the Carnage symbiote back where you got it and in exchange, I won't make it so you can't have kids anymore." I stomped really hard to emphasize the threat.

"Seriously kid, this is an Alchemex warehouse. Where they keep the stuff that they don't want people to know they have," Taskmaster lectured, "They used to be Oscorp. Do you honestly trust the people who made the Goblin Formula with a piece of the Carnage symbiote?"

"I don't trust you with it either," I said back honestly.

"Young child," Dean said next to me talking like a good and proper Thor, "who is't this fiend?"

"That's Taskmaster. He can analyze and imitate people's movements. Once he's got enough data on you, he can also predict your movements," I explained quickly. "But since you and I are new and have physical attributes far beyond human norm, he's basically just a normal guy. We can take him easy."

Since he wasn't gonna put down the symbiote or give up, I jumped forward and did a sideways flip to kick at him and...

And then Taskmaster caught my foot by the heel. "And it looks like I'm not the only copycat here," he mocked, "that kick had X-23 written all over it."

He didn't let go of my heel, so I used my stretchiness powers to extend around him and try to wrap him up. Unfortunately, he managed to see that coming and let go of my heel with a push that threw me off balance enough for him to jump and backflip out of my grasp.

While I pulled myself back together... My Spidey-Sense went off and I had to jump. Black Ant had gotten back up, grown back up to giant size and reached down to try and grab me. Just after I dodged, Dean blasted him with a Thor powered emotion laser... It pushed him back but didn't seem to have much other effect.

"Focus upon the skull-faced sellsword, I will have words with the giant," with that the young God of Thunder engaged Black Ant and left me clear to deal with Taskmaster.

I flew down and made to punch him with an embiggened thing fist, but he side-stepped so all I managed to do was put a pothole in the street.

"So that's X-23, Mister Fantastic, and that last one was a variation on one of Ms. Marvel's moves with a bit of a Thing and Captain Marvel spin on it... Are you a Super Skrull? Like some kind of escaped Skrull Child-Soldier experiment and you're going with the symbiote thing to get the Skrull Kill Krew off your back?"

The who now? Instead of answering, I jumped up and tried to give him a flying kick but he was able to karate chop my ankle so that I tumbled over him and hit the ground. "And there's Deadpool. You have anything original?"

I was fuming now, so now I breathed. Lockheed could breathe fire, but he could also breathe smoke and Task Master couldn't predict my moves if he couldn't see me moving. A nice big cloud of smoke that I could maneuver through becuase of my superhuman senses but he wouldn't be able to. I went in after him, planning to jump and grab him and pull on his arm enough to dislocate it and—

And with a crack, he hit me square in the face with the Carnage canister. I rolled backward and hit the ground and... Yeah. Yeah. that was my nose. My nose was broken. It was fine, it'd heal. What was that jar made of?

"Kid, do you think that you're the first person to try the smoke screen trick?" Taskmaster said as he stepped out of the dispersing cloud. "Do you think I just coast by on copied moves? Do you think I'd be able to throw down with the Avengers, Spider-Man, or even Daredevil if it was just that? Kid, I'm a consummate professional who spends dozens of hours a week reviewing tapes, analyzing which moves are most effective, conditioning myself, and exercising so I can make sure that I can use the collection of techniques I've copied with my photographic reflexes properly. You," he said while stepping over me, "are faster and stronger than me, yeah, but you're a rank amateur. There are only two ways you could possibly play with the big boys, little girl. You can either get so overwhelmingly strong that no level of skill can compete... Or you can put some actual effort into getting enough skill to use what you've got. Come on Ant, let's get out of here."

I wasn't letting him get away with that piece of Carnage. I sat up, turned around, called All-Love and swung for his ankles. He jumped over it, but it made him chuckle as he turned back to me while I got back up

"There you go," he said while jumping back from my onehanded slash, "that's better. Something I haven't seen a billion times before. I mean, it's obviously still copied, but it's a mix, not a straight cut-and-paste job. I'm guessing you picked some of this up during the War of the Realms? Your style looks like a composite of a few different variations of dark-elf style swordplay with just a hint of kendo and kenjustu from a few styles." He dodged a two-handed jab. "By the way, that form works better with a curved single-edged hand-and-a-half blade. I'm not saying you absolutely need a katana, but different forms of swordplay are built around the swords that were available to the warriors that created them. If you're gonna mix up some Japanese into your European based techniques then you should at least get a bastard sword. The Carolingian is meant to be used one-handed and paired with a shield."

He blocked a horizontal slash with the canister again, then noticed that I'd shifted All-Love to a katana. "Criticism retracted."

Then he reached into his belt and pulled out a much smaller metal canister with a pull ring. "It's been fun, kid, but I must be..."

And then something pushed him so that he fell backward and it looked like he hit his head on something that wasn't there. He went "oof" and was struggling to get up like something was holding him down.

I looked up and the Fantasticar was parked in the street. Mrs. Storm Richards was standing next to Dean, holding a little ball of distorted light with what looked like an action figure sized Black Ant in it, and looking right at me. "I will be talking to your handlers and legal guardian when this visit is over."

Snuggles The Symbiote

Mrs. Storm-Richards handed off Taskmaster and Black Ant to the police SWAT-team that Black Ant had been fighting when we'd first noticed them but had insisted, and the leader of the team reluctantly agreed, that an evidence locker wasn't a safe place to keep something as valuable and dangerous as a large piece of the Carnage symbiote and that it would be best if the Fantastic Four took it for safekeeping until they could make contact with the owners of the warehouse and ask them what the hell.

Also, ambulances came becuase there had been a lot of security guards int he warehouse and Taskmaster had beaten most of them black and blue.

After that, the trip into the city had been cut short and we went back to Yancy Street to get the piece of Carnage stored away securely and then spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out.

I had not been allowed to ask Moon Girl about riding her dinosaur as punishment for rushing into a superhero fight. I was disappointed, but that was fair.

But right now, late at night laying between Missy and Grace, I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about what Taskmaster had been saying. About power and skill.

I needed both. I needed more of both. Taskmaster wasn't that big of a deal, all things considered. If he could fight well enough with just pure skill to handle me and make my superpowers irrelevant then theoretically anyone could. I mean, in hindsight there was other stuff I could have done but I couldn't be fully sure it would work and if I don't think about it in the fight then it might as well not exist.

Also, I didn't want to maim him, kill him, or cause unnecessary collateral damage.

All it all, it means that I need to get stronger, stronger than I already am, and get the skill to use what I've got and anything I gain in the future to their fullest potential. And I needed to do it fast because while it worked out well this time the next time the bad guy could get away with something dangerous or... hurt someone.

Images of Panacea getting shot, Oni Lee blowing up while Bakuda laughed(which all turned out for nothing, Taylor got better on her own,) me freezing up when the Bonesaw Poison was over me, Emma and Madison's heads in my bed, the man that Bloodbath killed when he threw the brick...

I hadn't saved Riley Davis, Grace now, either. While the scaly girl shifted in her sleep, I thought about how I'd just barely gotten through to her and all it did was make her super angry. I was only able to get her help after she temporarily lost her memory and then rebooted into a version of her that didn't have all of the brainwashing and I had to burn Alexandria's soul just to get her a fair chance.

I'd helped bring in Lung and Bakuda... but only because I'd done something stupid and I'd probably have been killed or captured if Missy and Miss Militia hadn't shown up. And I tackled Jack Slash when he was already loosing and had to bully everyone into arresting him and doing things properly and getting proper justice done for his victims instead of executing him on the spot becuase apprently the laws in the universe were written by the Punisher with no regard for the bill of rights.

That was it. A couple of arrests were all I'd managed to accomplish compared to a bunch of failures.

I needed to be stronger. I needed to be smarter. I need to be better.

"Ashley, with the codices from the dark elves, this one's genetic instability is completely repaired. It has managed to fully adapt to the DNA it was spliced with and is making the most out of the adaptions of the harvested codices. This one could try to adapt to a few DNA samples that Ashley has been exposed to that it has not done so yet, but this one has serious doubts that Ashley could get more than a negligible benefit from Sophia's ordinary human DNA, Jorogumo's DNA consists mostly of the superpowered genes of Deadpool and Spider-Man, no further benefit to it, and Gabby's DNA is similar enough to Best Wolverine's that exploiting it for adaptions would provide only a relatively small increase in our healing factor and a single additional claw in each hand. This one could start adapting to the genetic code we absorbed from the Blood of Apocalypse, which for previously stated reasons this one could adapt to quickly, but otherwise, the only way for Ashley to get meaningfully stronger would be for Ashley to finish maturing and allow the Supersoldier Serum in our system to build up to Therapeutic levels. As for skill, the only way to build that up is to practice."

"Or," I thought back, "we could take more codices?"

"Ashley, I thought you didn't want to do that?"

"My comfort isn't a factor anymore. I need more skill and I need more power. Taking codices will make me stronger and give us more abilities, and memories on how to use them, and that'll give us stuff to fall back on while we're practicing what we already have, I mean if it's not enough. Or mix and match stuff. The mix and matched swordplay was doing better than specific moves..."

"And how will we even go about acquiring the codices? Taking them by force was something you forced this one to apologize to others for."

"If we have all of Ms. Marvel's powers... That should mean we can shrink a little bit, right?"

"Yes."

"And Venom could use his camouflage powers to turn invisible. Can we do that?"

"We could have done that since we took the Poison's codex."

"Seriously, you need to tell me we can do things like that."

Careful not to wake Grace or Missy... Or Taylor in the other bed. Or Lisa on the floor(she lost this time,) I disembiggened down to the size of a small toy. With Mister Snuggle's help, I was able to camo myself enough to be invisible, and then slowly flew from the bed to the door. I kind of had to squish myself with shapeshifting, but after that, I was able to squeeze under the door and, still invisible, silently float to the Human Torch's bedroom.

Then I listened at the door, because not only was he in there but so was his girlfriend, that Sky woman with the pretty wings, and this wouldn't work if either of were awake.

No sound, looking under the crack of the door the lights were off, so I squeezed in and then carefully, slowly floated up over the bed and, still shrunk, extended my arm out into a thin, noodle-like tentacle and sent it up the Human Torch's nose.

I had to go slowly and carefully and let Mister Snuggle's senses guide me, but eventually, I was able to get a grip on the codex of the unknown symbiote. A symbiote whose hosts and powers I didn't know. A symbiote that had spent an unknown amount of time adapting to the cosmic radiation and genetic mutations of a man who could turn into fire and control heat and fire and even keep his fire from burning things if he wanted to.

Worst case scenario, it made the fire breath a stronger and/or more versatile tool. Best case scenario, I got powers that nobody would ever expect from a symbiote. Not to mention that Johnny Storm was one of the longest active superhumans of the modern age and he had astronaut training. With what I'd already taken, that would give me a decent foundation to cultivate into some skills of my own.

Getting the codex out was harder than reaching in for it though. I had to peel it off of The Torch's spine without waking him up, pull it ut without waking him up... My heart almost stopped when he snorted and I had to move fast when he rolled over and snuggled up to Sky, but I managed to get it out.

I snuck down and under his bed and then I carefully sucked up the codex.

Normally I got a stream of memories, but this time it was a little different. I was vaguely aware of what the Torch had been through, and that the symbiote he'd worn had been called Dreadface and was a bad guy one, but I didn't get any specific experiences.

Instead, I got the message "God Is Coming" over and over and over in my head again, in a voice that hurt my brain.

I was still tiny and still crouching down when it was done. "What's this 'God is Coming' stuff?"

"Just a message broadcasted across the Klyntar hivemind," Mister Snuggles whispered back. He sounded worried. "It's nothing that you need to be worried about."

"If you say so."

After a moment, I went back to the room that I'd been sharing with the other girls and very carefully snuggled my way back in between Missy and Grace and did my best to get to sleep