Snuggles The Symbiote
While everyone else was off meeting those... Avengers people who, based on Lisa's experiences, probably didn't live up to the hype, Lisa had elected to spend some time with Doctor Strange, who'd offered to give her some guidance in terms of becoming a proper sorcerer. She'd been able to deduce that the offer had been genuine, but...
"...Carefully applied radiation or chemotherapy may kill or reduce the tumor, but we're still going to have to get in there and cut it out," Strange explained to a middle-aged man sitting across from him. "Now based on your MRI and biopsy results, if we act fast you should make a full recovery, but the longer we wait the higher the risk of complications. Right now, due to the position of the tumor, you've got a moderate risk. Not too bad, not in my hands, but it could be better. Radiation or chemo, if it works, would drastically improve your odds, but if it doesn't work then the time spent on that might be time when the tumor grows."
The sorcerer handed the man a small stack of papers. "Here are some details on forms of chemotherapy and radiotherapy that have been proven to be effective with your specific kind of brain cancer, take some time to read through it because I want you to make an informed decision. You don't need to decide right away, but I'll need an answer within a week or two because, regardless of what you choose, the sooner we start treatment the better your chances."
"Thank you, Dr. Strange," the man said while taking the documents. "You know, when the oncologist gave me the referral, it scared the hell out of me. Sending me to a magic man, I figured it was bad enough that I'd need someone to abracadabra the tumor away... Is that an option?"
The Doctor grimaced. "Technically, but... It'd be costly—Not money," he quickly added, "one of the fundamental rules of magic, at least as it applies to most mortals, is that it always has a cost and almost always has an equivalent reaction. Theoretically, I could cast a spell that would cure your cancer... But the cancer wouldn't just vanish. It would have to go somewhere. It could end up in me, which would drastically impact my ability to help other people in the same situation as you. Or the tumor could appear somewhere else in your body which, to be fair, might make it easier to remove with surgery but then we'd be back to square one. Or it could end up in the brain of some random person.." Strange looked thoughtful for a moment, which Lisa realized meant he was debating whether to say something else. "I could make a deal with some spirit, fairy, demon, or the like and have it take on the cost of the spell which would allow the cancer to be cured without consequence, but depending on the being in question, either I as the caster or you as the beneficiary would be indebted to that spirit and beings that mess around with cancer tend to not be the most... benevolent, of patrons for such things. I'm sure you can see the problem."
The man's eyes went wide. "Yeah... Okay, uh... Wouldn't want some demon demanding my soul or something."
"For something like this, a demon would more likely undo your marriage, Mr. Josephson," Strange said. "It's a thing they do. They say it's like a game, but the truth is that a true demon, a malevolent, parasitic existence pure evil in body, mind, and spirit, can't stand the thought of something so pure that they can never have. The very idea of it causes them pain."
"...Okay, we'll... I'm going to go look over this, talk it over with my wife... Tell her I love her. So, when I've decided do I need to make another appointment or call or..."
"Call in and I'll handle the rest."
"Thank you, Doctor."
And then Mister Josephson got up and walked out of the office.
Meeting over and the meeting, Lisa spoke up, "So is this why you forged paperwork saying I was interested in becoming a brain surgeon and was assigned to you as a job-shadow? That little conversation about not being able to magic away his tumor?"
"No," Strange said as he... started to pack up his desk. "That was a happy coincidence. Tell me, what do you think about Mr. Josephson?"
Lisa shrugged. "He seems like a nice guy. When you mentioned the idea that a demon might take his marriage in exchange for curing his cancer he seemed legitimately terrified for a second. He clearly loves his family a lot."
"If any other doctor handles his surgery he is all but guaranteed to die on the table," Strange said in an almost bored deadpan.
Not even Lisa had seen that coming, not from the way Strange had handled the consultation. "So... you lied to him."
"No," Strange corrected. "Between the perks of my status as the Sorcerer Supreme and occasional time travel, I am well over five thousand years old. In that time, I have taken care to maintain my accreditation as a surgeon, though until recently I've mostly served as a consultant, and expand my medical credentials to improve the depth and range of care I could provide in the fulfillment of my Hippocratic Oath. In addition," he continued, "my mastery of the Mystic Arts, the pursuit of both light and dark magic in both practical and academic studies, and in general experience in commanding the mystical and cosmic forces of reality has endowed me with senses far beyond the human and allows me to perceive disease and injury in a completely different way than mere sight, allowing for a precision that cannot be met by medical science. I can state with not a hint of exaggeration that I am the greatest neurological surgeon that there ever has been or ever will be, at least within my theoretically indefinite lifetime."
"Most people," Strange continued, "whose cases are bad enough to necessitate going under my scalpel, or at least my guiding voice for the surgeon holding the knife, will probably die if it do not handle their case. Which is a problem," he said as he stood up from his desk, "because being the Sorcerer Supreme is a full-time job and if I am not there when some horrific eldritch beast pokes its way into this reality, when the children of a rural town go insane and sacrifice all the adults to the thing hiding in the cornfields or when some narcissistic sociopath stumbles across an easy way to rapidly accumulate magical power and transforms a dozen teenagers in body and mind into a fawning cult of a young woman meant to stroke his ego and a few other things, countless more people could die, or worse, than would if I spent that time treating patients."
"So," the man finished, "Torn between two oaths, I have to balance my time properly to ensure that the most possible good comes from my actions, which, sadly, sometimes involves a bit of cold calculus. When I agreed to take Mr. Josephson's case, it meant turning down another man's case and that other man, a Mr. Jacobs, while not... Quite as severe, will still likely suffer permanent damage because I'm not the one handling his operation."
"Why are you telling me this?" Lisa asked, suspiciously.
"Because if you're going to be your world's Sorcerer Supreme, then you're going to build up commitments. If you're going to be any good at it, you're going to need to make similar tough judgment calls. Are you sure you have the emotional fortitude to do that? Are you sure that you have the moral fortitude to do it and avoid falling into the easy trap of not caring anymore?" The man looked at her inquisitively. "If you had a choice between saving a random stranger from suicide or stopping an evil sorcerer from sacrificing another stranger in a dark ritual, would you be able to make the right choice? Would you even know what the right choice is?"
Lisa didn't have an answer. Instead, she asked a question of the sorcerer. "If being Sorcerer Supreme is such an important job, what makes you so sure that I can do it? I'm a criminal that only joined the 'good' guys to stay out of prison when my gang fell apart. How stupid would you have to be to trust me with something that important?"
"The Young Thor of your world seems to think that you're a good person," Strange countered. And then he held up that big medallion he carried with him and allowed it to float up to his—Lisa jumped back to try and avoid the magical effect she could tell was coming but was blinded by the flash.
"And the Eye of Agamotto agrees. You have trouble connecting to people because you don't want to be hurt. You throw out harsh insults and breaking words to those you perceive as trying to hurt you or others or who you think don't deserve what they have, and you have to be the smartest person in the room. But you've also put yourself at great risk to help people. Only a good person would do that."
"You had no right," Lisa said in a trembling voice.
"Relax, anything I see with the eye is confidential... And, I won't pry, but the eye showed me that you have some... Issues, stemming from a deep loss and some kind of betrayal shortly afterward. If you're interested, I know some good psychiatrists."
"Butt out!"
"If that's what you want," Strange agreed, "your friends should be finishing up with their field trip, I'll take you back to Number 4 Yancy Street and if you're still interested in lessons I'll pick you up in a few days."
Snuggles The Symbiote
"Ymg' ahor ah mgepah'mgehye, orr'enah!"
It was a voice that echoed for miles, one that rang in Lisa's ears like white-hot shards of razor-sharp glass being driven into her brain with the force of a sniper's bullet and filled her mind's eye with nightmare images that she could barely comprehend even as she huddled on the deck of a chartered ship that rocked furiously in antarctic waves stirred up by the furious battle.
A loud explosion rang out and the horrible creature screamed once more "Ymg' ephaiah'mglw'nafh. H' ph' uln nilgh'rishuggogg! ehye mgepogg than Y' ng ya kin mgep nwngluii llll fahf shuggog. H' gof'nn ah already geb. R'luhhor ah nog!"
Eventually, it stopped. It all stopped. The screaming monster, the nightmares in her mind's eye, even the waves began to calm.
Nervously, Lisa stood and slowly opened her eyes, to see a massive humanoid dragon with leathery wings slowly sinking into the sea. She turned around and closed her eyes once more before she could see the creature's alien head with countless squidlike tentacles.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, she heard Strange's leather boots gently touchdown on the deck beside her. "You can open your eyes now, Dread Cthulhu has been forced back into his slumber for another eon or so... As long as some cultists don't perform a certain ritual during the next Solar eclipse, a different ritual during the next three lunar eclipses, or an Elder God doesn't say his name in the next week... You know, a while back Spider-Man joked that I had Cthulhu trapped in a coke bottle somewhere in the Sanctum. Maybe I should try that next time? It might be easier than trying to head off the cultists or beating him back into his coma every couple of months."
Lisa opened her eyes again. Looked at the sorcerer, and, quite calmly, quite politely, asked "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!?"
"A typical Thursday morning for any Sorcerer Supreme who lives up to their station."
"You couldn't tell me that Lovecraft was writing historical fiction or... wait, what?" Lisa had to admit that even she had a hard time reading Strange on occasion.
"To put it simply, Lisa, the world is always doomed. It's not always the work of the beings that Howard Philip wrote on, but I have to deal with existential, supernatural threats like this on a weekly basis: I wasn't kidding the other day about not being able to be a full-time surgeon because of the duties of being the Sorcerer Supreme and I dare say, based on the parasite connected to your brain, that sooner or later you'll find yourself in a similar predicament if you take up the mantle on your own world."
Lisa hated this. She hated not knowing what to say. This was all so far outside her frame of reference that...
"You still have the option to back down," Strange added. "Little Ashley is learning Sorcery from Apocalypse... Who I don't like or approve of but is apparently genuine in his desire to reform, and with young Dean being Thor's reincarnation there is almost certainly a Loki in your home. Either of them could take the mantle. You wouldn't have the powers of the Sorcerer Supreme, but you could still become a powerful sorcerer. You'd be free from the responsibility, if people get eaten by Shub-Niggurath or Dormammu invades your universe, it's not your problem to fix it and you'd bear no guilt for your world's fate, even if you should have known it was coming."
Suddenly, suddenly Lisa got angry. "Fuck. That. That's a mistake I never want to make again..." Wait, why had she added that... "You son of a bitch."
"Guilty as charged. Now, it's getting close to lunchtime, how do you feel about calamari?"
Snuggles The Symbiote
So, Lisa had been staying as a guest in Strange's home since Dean and Vista had gone home and Weaver, Cuddlebug, and her pet murderer had gone to the Mutant Island.
One morning she came down to the entrance hall, where he'd told her to meet him for lessons, and he wasn't there. He hadn't given her a means of contacting him, and a quick rundown of the parts of the Sanctum she wasn't afraid to go into and didn't give her a headache to think about gave no clues to his location. Almost a whole day gone, she had started to get worried when she came back to the entrance hall late in the evening and the door burst open.
In walked Strange, as well as a man in steel armor, wrapped in a green tunic and cloak, with an iron mask obscuring his face. Both men looked exhausted and beaten to hell and were clearly only able to walk because they were supporting each other's weight.
As soon as the door closed behind them, they both collapsed to the floor, breathing heavily.
Then Lisa noticed that Strange was holding a torn and bloody piece of cloth in one hand and something black and slithery in the other.
"What happened?" What else could Lisa have asked?
"It started," Strange said between heavy breaths, "with a failed attempt... to stop Victor here from doing something stupid."
"Count yourself lucky that Doom lacks the strength to punish you for your insolence, Strange," the other man said far more weakly than he probably intended.
"And it ended with a battle between Doom, myself, and what hindsight is telling me was probably Howard's Conan the Barbarian on one side and a predecessor of mine as the Sorcerer Supreme who was derelict in his duties and refuses to stay dead on the other. The good news is that he's been reduced to a badly burned severed head and we got some of his blood, which we can use to divine his weaknesses, and a portion of the Venom symbiote that was in him because he tried to steal the Venom symbiote's powers the last time he was active. The bad news is that he kicked our asses and I doubt being decapitated is going to keep him down for long. Trust me, it's nothing for you to be concerned about."
"Yesterday, you literally beat Cthulhu into a coma." Lisa couldn't believe she was saying that. "I think someone that you had trouble beating is something that everyone should be concerned with."
"It's fine. I just have to... Rest for a minute... Run a blood-based scrying spell to track down the source of his power... Warn Magick that Kulan Gath is back. Assemble a small army... Doom, do you think giving the Punisher a machine gun magazine enchanted to hold an infinite number of hellfire infused silver bullets and pointing him at Gath would cause more problems than it solves?"
"Doom does not know. We may have to deal with Mephisto to gain the power to defeat Gath and, failing that, turn to Doom's greatest foe and hope that she deigns to give aid."
"Doreen's a little busy last I heard," was Strange's only reply.
"Do, do either of you need help?"
"It's fine," Strange insisted. "It's beyond the scope of your stay with me and something I have handled. I just need to rest for a minute."
Suddenly, a circle of great bright white light appeared in the entrance hall, and withing it materialized a young woman with long blond hair, dressed in a black outfit that exposed white a bit of her skin with some stage hairpiece in her hair. In front of her she carried a sword large enough to surf on. As the light cleared, Lisa could see that she'd brought Weaver and Gremlin along with her.
"Stephen," the Stranger said, "we have a problem."
Snuggles The Symbiote
Twelve hours later, Strange had somehow gotten Ashley to calm down, exorcised whatever malevolent force was driving her insane, and explained addiction to her.
And while Lisa sat there and waited, while Strange explained what had happened and apologized, she put a few things together.
So, after everything was back to normal, she asked to speak to Strange in private.
And as soon as they were in a private room, Lisa produced her staff and shoved the business end in Strange's face.
"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't blast your head clean off, you son of a bitch."
"Because you are in no conceivable way a threat to me," Strange said with an almost bored tone.
"You did it on purpose," Lisa said. "You set the kid up."
"I did," Strange admitted.
"Fucking why!?"
"Lisa, let me tell you a little story: Thousands of years ago, in a land called Stygia, a young boy was sold as a slave to a sorcerer. The sorcerer was fat and cruel, abusing the boy horribly, and in his adolescence, the boy realized that he would one day either be killed or be sacrificed in some spell... So one day, when called to take away the Sorcerer's wine cup, he took the cup and beat him to death with it. Wishing to gain the strength to never be hurt again, the boy turned to study of the Sorcerer's library and took the sorcerer's name for his own: Kulan Gath."
Lisa chose to blame the fact that it'd been twelve hours for her taking a second to recognize the name of the sorcerer that had whipped Strange's ass last night.
"Eventually, Gath ran out of things to learn from his former Master's library and traveled to the tower in which resided the Sorcerer Supreme of his time, hoping to learn all there was to know about sorcery." Strange continued, "but you see, therapy would not be invented for several millennia and Gath's pursuit of power did not address his lingering trauma: He became bitter, anti-social, and cruel. Seeing him as a poor candidate for an apprenticeship, Sorcerer Supreme of the time cast Gath out."
"This did not dissuade Gath, however, and in part to spite his predecessor, Gath continued his study by trading what he knew to other sources in exchange for what they knew... Until a brawl with a sorcerer who hadn't been interested in what Gath had to offer ended with some of his rival's blood in his mouth and young Gath realized that his pursuit of magic had imbued him with a unique gift."
Lisa began to feel sick in her stomach as she realized what Strange was getting to.
"Kulan Gath became the Sorcerer Supreme by eating his predecessor alive after a life-time of doing the same to countless magicians, from the humblest of hedgewitches to the mightiest of wizards in order to assimilate their knowledge and power for his own," Strange said, "and when I looked as Ashley using the Eye of Agamotto I saw that she had her own problems and a similar motivation growing from them. Her symbiote gives her a similar ability to Gath's. She could easily have fallen into the same path he did and become as big a monster as he."
"Bullshit!" Lisa replied. "She forgave a serial killer who vivisected, poisoned, and murdered her. They're best friends now. They sleep in the same bed and cuddle, I've seen them do it. She clearly doesn't have it in her to be evil."
"Evil, maybe not," Strange admitted, "but a potential danger to herself and others? She'd already started down the path before she even got here, I imagine that the desire to be good enough, to be strong enough, started forming weeks ago," Lisa's mind turned to the day that'd started with the Undersiders planning to rob a bank and ended in a chaotic mess and a dead Panacea. That'd do it. "And that, along with other issues she has related to trauma, have been festering under the surface ever since. Fester long enough? She would have given in to temptation and started gaining power the fast way eventually."
"So what, you just pushed her over the edge for shits and giggles because it was inevitable?" Strange's explanation wasn't making her any calmer... But maybe that was just her well-justified hatred of manipulative old bastards talking?
"No, the data suggesting that taking Codices would heal her symbiote's genetic damage wasn't falsified, and there were other factors to consider, like the Malevolent Elder God struggling to free himself from his prison in the Andromeda Galaxy, the serial murderer turned Eldritch Abomination serving as his avatar, and the thousands of pieces of that Elder God's shadow laying around, collecting information, and evolving here on Earth." Strange sighed. "So I made a tough call: I arranged for her to absorb several codices all at once at a time and place where the fluctuation in the Symbiote Hivemind would reawaken the remains of All-Black and, via an intermediary, arranged for Taskmaster and Black Ant to steal the remains of the Carnage symbiote while Mrs. Storm-Richards was taking you all on a tour of the city, thus setting the stage for Ashley to go over the edge under controlled circumstances while also luring out a possible threat, All-Black, who could serve as a potential vessel for Knull, the God of the Symbiotes, knowing that Ashley would eventually take both Thor's All-Black Codex and consume the Grendel Symbiote... Thus drastically delaying Knull's return, as his awakening is dependant on the regeneration of his Avatar and the regeneration effect per codex was divided between the Grendel and All-Black. Then, before she fell too far, I snapped her back to her senses giving her a distaste for that path."
"Now, granted, Arcade's Murder World drastically accelerated the time table and if I'd known that Gath was going to make his move so soon... Well, his Venom Codex made for good bait. But let's look at the end results."
Stange started counting off on his fingers. "One: Ashley is now consciously aware of the issues that could lead to her straying from the path she wants to take with her life. Two: Ashley has been convinced of the importance of confronting, managing, and overcoming those issues and is willing to accept help in doing so. Three: Thousands of people who would have otherwise been killed by Knull's Avatar are alive and well. Four: The last traces of All-Black, the Grendel, and the Carnage symbiote have effectively been removed from existence. Five: Many, many things that could grant dangerous levels of power in the wrong hands are beyond the access of those hands." He raised his other hand and continued. "Six, Knull's resurrection has been delayed indefinitely. Seven, while I didn't plan on this part, deranged serial murderer Cletus Kassady is once more among the dead and will most likely remain that way for a good, long time, if not permanently. Eight, Ashley, and I quote the witnesses, 'yeeted' Apocalypse over the Horizon, and anything that deflates his ancient skull is a net good. Nine, I've placed phenomenal cosmic power and knowledge to rival the gods in the hands of someone who can and will use it responsibly for the greater good, once she's got the emotional maturity to handle it."
"But yes," Strange finished, "what I did was cold and cruel and, while intended for her own good, could even be interpreted as a violation of the first Sacred Oath I ever swore. I owe her a great debt. Which is why I'm taking full responsibility for her mental health care and will be arranging for it and anything else she needs to grow up into the person she wants to be, taking all the necessary costs upon myself, and when she's old enough to understand I will explain exactly what I did and why and if she hates me for it that is her right."
"Stop being so reasonable about this! I'm trying to be angry!" God damn it, why couldn't things go back to being simple? Back when the manipulative bastards were old, selfish assholes.
"If it makes you feel any better," Strange continued, "I was warned that this might happen and given some of the information I needed to arrange this a few weeks ago by... Well, you, so you'll eventually have the pleasure of leaving out key details and watching me run around like a chicken with my head cut off when things start collapsing before I was ready."
Lisa's eyes bulged. "God damn it, I'm going to be such a bitch!"