An Absolute Menace

I was finally starting to get better.

Then some raging aiteanns came into the apartment in the evening, killed both of my parents right in front of me, and drugged me with some sedative that probably wouldn't have done crap if my powers hadn't started to stabilize when I turned thirteen. Irony's a bhitseach.

So I woke up naked on a cold metal table being groped, poked, pricked, prodded, manipulated, and measured a dozen ways by half a dozen cúl tónas in labcoats while a seventh jerk was writing down all the data the main group was shouting out as they took it.

One of them shouted "fuck she's awake," they jabbed another needle in my neck, and the last thing I remember as I start to fade out again is one of the bastards dumping a canister of black slime on me.

I next woke up in a ten by ten cell with what I'm pretty sure was a vibranium shackle around my ankle and a matching chain keeping me from getting more than four feet from the back wall wearing what I thought was a shiny black unitard.

I don't know how long after that it was, but eventually, a labcoat wearing jerkwad flanked by three solid black Agent Venom knockoffs came in, told me they needed to run some tests, and if I cooperated there would be a grilled cheese sandwich afterward. Cheddar, Colby Jack, and mozzarella on a garlic-buttered-and-toasted-sourdough bun with dijon mustard and a kosher pickle on the side.

Considering that 1: I'm not made of stone and 2: The three knock-off Agent Venoms had guns bigger than I was, I cooperated.

Five hours of various weightlifting, cardiovascular, stamina, and flexibility exercises. all with wires stuck to my head, back, belly, and chest, and my exhausted butt was chained back up in the cell while the bastard ate the sandwich in front of me.

Why? Why the actual fuck would you do that? Human experimentation is one thing but that's just being a dick for the sake of being a dick.

I don't think I ate or drank anything in my time captive there, except for occasionally some of one of four kinds of green crap they'd made me drink, when they weren't injecting it into my veins, making me bathe in it, or on one occasion having four women rub it all over my body while a guy read something vaguely African sounding off of a script in the most bored monotone I've ever heard.

I have no clue what that was about, I was sedated and wavering in and out of consciousness, but I can't help but feel that it was somehow offensive.

I put it together pretty quick that the unitard was a symbiote and they were using me as in some experiment to see how a symbiote reacts to certain drugs and stuff. Probably something to do with my hormones.

And it was producing results. How fast I could run, how good I was at gymnastics, for much I could lift, how long it took me to get tired... It was all going up, very fast, with the biggest spikes after every time I was fed or bathed anything. Also, I'm the only fourteen-year-old girl I know of with six-pack abs.

Any months of either being in the cell, being manhandled and or sedated and carried to various labs for various fitness tests and crap, and occasionally being strapped to a table and either being submerged in crap or force-fed the same crap, never being given any leeway to figure out where I was or how to escape and always with enough guards that I wasn't sure, and it finishes off with a little of both: Something gets scooped out of a vat, poured down my throat, and then they chuck the table I'm on in and use big strong robot arms to hold me down... Honestly, it was terrifying the first couple of times they did something like this but by the third time I figured out that I didn't need to breathe anymore and I was just out of fucks to give by that point.

The weird thing was, though, that they didn't normally feed me something and then bathe me in it at the same time.

After that, I could feel things changing in the symbiote. It started bumbling and shifting around how it sat on me. Covering more of me...

Then a bunch of alarms went off and I got shot with like five tranquilizer darts.

From there, I woke up in a crate. Specifically, I woke up in an upside-down fetal position in a solid metal crate that was barely big enough to fit me. Straining my hearing, I could barely make out some cúl tóna telling some other cúl tóna about a valuable specimen that was ironically safest right here and that's when I was distracted by noticing that I had a tail.

After about ten minutes of sitting in a small dark box, I noticed the smell of rotten eggs. Another minute later I realize it's coming from my own breath, becuase my body still goes through the motions even though I don't have to anymore, and while I'm pondering that I exhale sharply and belch out some white-hot burning sulfur. From this, I was able to infer that my symbiote wasn't as flammable as Venom was and also that whatever drug I'd been given last was really freaking weird.

A bit of experimenting with that later and I was able to burn a hole through the crate, which, it turns out, was a foot thick and wolverine Claws, and tear my way out... To see a bunch of those Agent Venom knock-offs and a big grey Hulk with a beard and wolverine claws fighting Carnage.

Carnage just grabbed one of the Agent Venom knock-offs and just fucking ate him in one bite and I decided that rather than get involved I should get the hell out of there. Hulkverine can take care of himself.

Running like hell, eventually, I make it to a truck stop, scare the hell out of some seasoned truckers, and get a shotgun shoved in my face before it's cleared up that I don't mean anyone any harm and that I was just running away from some bad people. I get a good look at myself in a mirror and it turns out that I look like someone tried to draw a cross between a xenomorph and a lady and then cut off its head and replaced it with like some kind of obsidian black elf or goblin with a mouth full of alligator teeth.

Eventually one of the truckers asks if I'm a mutant, I ask if that's a problem, he offers to take me along becuase he's maybe two hours away from his stop and there's a Krakoan Gate in a park maybe twenty minutes walking from the depot he's dropping his haul at... And learning that an entire nation of mutants popped up while I was kidnapped was a hell of a mind freak.

So anyway, I get to this living island in the Pacific, and it's like five in the morning when I get there becuase it's the pacific so there's nobody there, so I have to wait until the sun comes up, then I ask people which portal leads to Manhattan becuase I figure the Avengers need to know that there's Hulkverine's Fighting Carnage and an evil paramilitary conspiracy kidnapping people and experimenting with Symbiotes and from there I learn that the Avengers aren't in Avengers Mansion anymore. After a couple of days, I hear through the grapevine that Wolverine got called up for something to do with Carnage and follow him to share what I know...

An Absolute Menace

"And that's how I ended up here," I finished to the two boys. Normie Osborn and Dylan Brock, the grandson and son of two of Spider-Man's deadliest foes...

In a room full of mad science equipment that Dr. Banner was checking over while Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Thing, Hawkeye, Captain America, and Venom made plans on how to stop Carnage from becoming a God by eating every other symbiote and the spines of everyone who'd ever worn a symbiote.

"Apparently top-secret paramilitary stuff involving Symbiotes is a Weapon Plus thing," I added since neither boy seemed interested in continuing, "So when this Carnage stuff is over I'm gonna track down some weapon plus operatives and bust some heads... Really get some mileage out of that diplomatic immunity I apparently have now becuase the mutant paradigm got turned on its head while I was away."

"So... you said a lot of bad words... And a lot of words I don't know the meaning off." Maybe two nine-year-olds weren't the best people to have this conversation with.

"Those were also bad words," Captain America suddenly shouted over to us. "Young lady, we're going to have a serious talk about your potty mouth when this is all over."

Immediately I was overwhelmed with shame. If Captain America had a problem with what you were doing, then it was a problem. "I... I'm sorry. I... Look, I... I've just been so angry and this is the first time in months that I've felt safe enough to let some of it out, so... I'm sorry. I won't do it anymore."

Dylan looked at me funny. "You... Feel safe right now?"

I looked back at him and blinked. "We're in a room with Captain America, Spider-Man, The Thing, Wolverine, and The Hulk. This is the safest room in the entire universe."

Dylan looked like he wanted to respond but didn't actually have a response. "Is this a teenager thing or a girl thing?"

"It's a pattern recognition thing. Captain America and Wolverine always outfight the other guy. Spider-Man and the Thing never give up until the bad guy is dealt with. the Hulk is the Hulk. Put them together and what do you get?" I paused for Dramatic Effect. "The Carnage symbiote tossed in an incinerator and Cletus Kassady in a maximum-security cell at Ravencroft."

After that, the conversation died out. "So I'm workshopping Superhero names... I can't really do anything traditionally heroic since I look like I crawled out from under someone's bed, so I was thinking of 'Menace.'"

"You don't need to worry about that right now," wolverine shouted over from the adult hero's strategy talk. "You can work on that later. You're too young to be getting involved in this stuff."

"...Says the former Headmaster of a school where kids a down to a year younger than me are taught how to fight and often do go out fighting criminals and terrorists," I snarked back. "Besides... Of all the bad stuff that happened to me in the last few months, watching my parents die and being subjected to all kinds of... The upside is that it gave me a great deal of power... But if I've got power, don't I have a responsibility to use it to help people?"

In complete and total unison, every other adult in the room slowly turned to glare at Spider-Man.

AN: Done on a whim after pondering it for a while... Basically, here we have "Ultimate" Ashley. Not so much in the sense of from the Ultimate Universe, but in the sense of a streamlined, somewhat grittier take on her.

This is partially based on things that were revealed after I started the story, or its first take.

Instead of a captured symbiote, Ashley has a Weapon V symbiote. Instead of splicing it with a bunch of genes, they test superpower granting drugs and potions on it and the host they selected.

Ashley never learned this, but the plan was to let the symbiote gestate on her and then take samples from it to clone better symbiotes for the actual soldiers.

This Ashley is three to four years older than main Ashley and her powers are stabilized. She's not constantly sick anymore, but she's still not got anything useful beyond the generic "mutant" package of "very slightly stronger than the average human and immune to certain diseases." Her chemical resistance also doesn't automatically purge anything that goes into her system. She's more comfortable swearing in English and isn't as naive... But she's still a superhero fangirl at heart with absolute faith in her favorites.

If this take of Ashley were used in a Parahumans crossover, it'd probably be with Ward, rather than Worm.

Mods: Most of the things she was fed, bathed in, or whatever were the Calypso serum and other "Jungle Potions" used by Kraven the Hunter. They enhanced both Ashley's attributes and the symbiote's, and the symbiote took very well to them because War of the Realms establishes that Symbiotes take well to the presence of magic, though eventually, subsequent doses stopped working.

However, on three occasions she was given a synthetic drug that Erik Killmonger created based on the Wakandan Herb. This drug has all of the beneficial substances and properties of the juices of the boiled leaves of the herb but that lacks the toxic component that will either kill you or put you in a coma if you aren't part of a specific bloodline. In other words, a drug that can give anyone the powers of the Black Panther. In addition to being fed it and bathed in it, Ashley was given a third dose applied as a poultice in as close an approximation of the traditional rituals as could be recreated on the off chance that it had an effect. As implied in the Venomverse Mini-Series, this has permanently bonded Ashley's symbiote to her, in addition to bringing Ashley to peak physical condition and senses enhanced beyond.

She would feel the need to apologize to the people of Wakanda if she knew exactly what it was, but as it is she felt even more uncomfortable than normal as it was happening.

The final doses, given at the same time, were the Hob Goblin's version of the Goblin formula, which further enhanced Ashley's body and mind(without the insanity of Osborn's version) and did to her symbiote what Soborn's version did to Carnage in Go Down Swinging. Hence the flaming sulfur breath.

...Honestly, considering that Weapon V symbiotes are offshoots of The Grendal, Ashley could probably have Taken Dark Carnage by the time she crawled out of the crate, but she didn't know that and wasn't going to risk getting eaten for a bunch of people who were party to the murder of her parents.