It started back when Carnage attacked New York. Chaos in the streets, lock the doors and windows, pay attention to the news, yada yada, everyone knew the drill by now. stuff like that happened basically once a year at this point.

Except... This time it didn't work. I was in the kitchen, trying to cook something less because I was hungry and more to keep busy when I heard the sound of breaking glass followed by terrible, bone-chilling shrieks coming from the living room. On autopilot, and clutching a kitchen knife for protection, I approached.

It had maybe been twenty seconds since I heard the noise. That was all it took for that... thing. That doppelganger to butcher my parents alive. I still don't know why I walked up to it, my heart forcing ice-cold blood through my system at record speeds, but as it was eating my father's entrails I managed to bury my knife in its neck.

I was briefly shocked out of my funk when I saw what was obviously a homeless man as the bloody red goop melted away... Especially when I pulled the knife back on reflex and saw gratitude in his eyes as he fell over... I heaved as the full implications of what had happened, what I'd just done, hit me like a tank. I didn't have long to panic, however, as the creature that had been wearing that poor man like a suit lurched up and engulfed me.

I woke up the next morning in an alley next to a half-eaten dog. Things got hectic after that, I ended up in foster care but things were pretty stable. My foster family even paid out of pocket for me to see the best therapist in New York It was a bit weird to be getting counseling from a guy who looked just like the monster that haunted my nightmares but that's apparently this guy's gimmick and honestly, it kind of worked.

Things were going well, I started to pick up the pieces... Until four weeks later, when the God of the Symbiotes and his army of symbiote-dragons made earthfall.

That... Thinghad still been in me. The entire time! When its God arrived, it woke up and took over again... But this time, I was awake. I saw everything it did, everything it made me do. Did you know that there's a very slight difference in flavor between rhesus-positive and rhesus-negative blood? I never wanted to know that, but I do now.

There was another difference, too. This time, the creature didn't go dormant when its hive-king was destroyed. Instead it like... Shifted. the doppelganger, it wasn't a real symbiote. It was like, a puppet. An extension of Carnage's will sent out to cause chaos and destruction. Without something to control it, it could do one of two things: Go dormant, or fully bond. This time, it fully bonded... And I got a full brain blast of every demented thing that the monster inherited from the twisted mind of Cletus Kassady.

I've been on my own since then. Found what looked like an abandoned supervillain lair in the sewers to live in, and being fully bonded with that thing meant I didn't really need to eat anymore which was good because I had no income. But being around other people long-term was dangerous...

Yeah, I mean, I probably could have gotten rid of the damn thing, but industrial blast furnaces aren't exactly something I can easily find and without that, there's too much risk of someone else finding it. This thing was my demon, my trauma. I wasn't gonna let someone else suffer it... Besides, if I could master it, control it, use it so that I never... So that people around me, never got hurt like this again... Well, then that would mean that all of this, that it meant something, right? That it wasn't just pointless suffering?

...Unfortunately, while I was doing that, the world started going to shit at a geometric rate. Carnage came back, that one anti-mutant terrorist group managed to get major political power by pushing an anti-alien agenda, then we had another alien invasion, the dead Star God the Avengers were living in came back to life and almost blew up the planet—I'm pretty sure I was dead for a little bit, honestly and having Charles Xavier jam Captain America's perspective into my brain and everyone else's while the damn thing killed him wasn't the worst thing I ever experienced but it's still something I could have done without, Carnage came back again this time as a fucking giant with an iron man suit fused to his symbiote, and finally either the mutants got fed up with everyone's shit and went for some payback which some fascists leveraged for control or else said fascists framed the mutants for genocide to justify genocide. I'm not sure which is true, and honestly, at this point, I don't give a damn. Also, apprently a block of Manhattan disappeared and it was the Fantastic Four's fault and something funky was up with Spider-Man?

Whatever... It was getting clear to me that just mastering this monster wasn't going to cut it if I wanted to avoid getting hurt again. There was always a bigger fish and it seemed like there was a whole school of them doing a conga line lately... I didn't need to just control the doppelganger, I needed it to be stronger, Except...

Underneath my alien costume, I was just a teenage girl with no combat training, unless you counted a violin recital as a weapon. The thing was only a fraction as powerful as Carnage had been at the time and already I was holding it back. Which means that I needed to be stronger, too. Otherwise, I could gobble down every scrap of a symbiote, every 'Codex' according to the archive in mine, in the city but never be able to use it properly.

But... I knew where to start. I'd mostly avoided people, but you can't just stay cooped up in a small, stripped barren lab or you'll go insane... turns out, the homeless talk a lot. So do criminals, and those social circles, unfortunately, do form a Venn diagram. Just from osmosis, I'd heard rumors of a man who could hook an aspiring supervillain up with powers and gadgets, among other things, but I had no idea how to contact him...

And that was why I was in the process of sneaking into the Hellfire Club. Anyone who had paid any attention to true crime in the last few decades knew that there was one man who could be counted on to have his fingers on every pulse in the underworld and rumor had it that he was the new White King.

Honestly, getting past the door was surprisingly easy. I just had to have the symbiote shift into a vaguely Victorian-looking formal dress with a mask and walk in behind a group. Either I could pass myself off as older than I was or this place was used to having underage girls coming in... I was going to assume it was the first, for the sake of what was left of my sanity.

There was no sign of his corpulentness in the... Lobby? Foyer? I did see that guy who bought out Stark Industries making a spectacle of himself and Stark himself who was very clearly trying to restrain the urge to murder the man on the spot... Or maybe that was only clear to me. My symbiote could sense the codices in his body... Unusually strong, and they'd been pickled in some pretty heavy-duty stuff for a bit though I couldn't really tell what, exactly... I made a note of it. I couldn't take it now, not only would I only get a fraction of its power for keeps unless I like, ate him entirely, but even if I could I didn't have the precision control of my symbiote to take it without permanent damage. I'd have to try and track Mr. Stark down later when I could take it without killing one of the few people who consistently tried to make a difference. Maybe try to talk him into giving it up willingly?

It seemed like there were offices on the upper floor. A duck down a hall, looking for a 'powder room' let me change from costume camouflage to actual camouflage, becoming almost invisible as the symbiote's mass covered my entire body, and from there it was simple enough to waltz around drunken cosplayers and other such thing and silently creep up the stairs.

The senses on this thing were, frankly, amazing. It was almost like I could see in every direction and pick up details that I couldn't with the naked eye, and that was only one sense. It didn't even begin to make up for what happened, but I wasn't going to pretend that it wasn't useful. Case in point, it wasn't too difficult to pinpoint the large room occupied solely by a large man using interactions of the senses that I can't even begin to describe. Of course, with the door closed there was no way to get in without blowing my cover.

So, I decided, that I was going to make an entrance. I pushed the door open just forcefully enough that it swung dramatically and stepped into the room quickly but silently as the White King's attention was drawn to the sudden movement.

I then dropped the camouflage and fanned out the six arms that I have when I'm in full symbiote mode. "Wilson Fisk, I would have words with you."

My entrance did not have the effect I wanted, I realized as he took me in with bored eyes. "I see that you've had a significant makeover, Mighty Thor," he deadpanned. "Now, you have ten seconds to tell me why I shouldn't call security to have you thrown out."

I looked at him closely for nine seconds, then started. "There's some slight discoloration on your face. Barely noticeable even to my superhuman senses. From when you were shot in the head, right? And you favor one side of your body ever so slightly... After the time the Punisher stabbed you in the ribs. You almost died from that, didn't you? And there's a certain deliberation in your movement as if you're compensating for aches... Damage from the time Spider-Man broke into the prison and beat you within an inch of your life? What did you do to piss him off that bad? Not to mention that you've been in the game for a long time, you've gotta be feeling your age by now, right? You have a great deal of power as the 'alleged, former' Kingpin of Crime, but all kinds of damage can build up over time and you're still only human." I shifted three of my hands into an axe, the head of a morning star, and a punching dagger. "I, decidedly, am not. If I was looking for a fight, security wouldn't get here fast enough to save you from me."

Like I said, I was into true crime. Particularly things covering super crime or organized crime. And despite what the courts said, everyone knew that our illustrious former mayor was guiltier than sin. I feel like I had a good enough read of him to know what buttons to press now that I was actually talking to him.

He glared at me. "What do you want?" He said coldly.

"There's something I need that I think you can help me get. In exchange, I think I can give you something you'll really like."

He considered me for a moment. "Explain."

"I think, on some level, that you and I understand each other. I lost my family not too long ago, and rumor has it that your wife went missing after the fiasco at the Hellfire Gala." Fisk tensed with clear anger, so I held up a hand to try and head him off. "No, hear me out. We both know that sooner or later, and it will be sooner rather than later, you'll have the people who took her from you right where you want them... My other here? Budded off of Carnage. Every demented fantasy from Kassady's warped brain is bouncing around in here." Honestly, I kind of wish they weren't but if they're here I might as well leverage them. "Five minutes of my tender mercies and they'll be begging to go ten rounds with you in your personal dojo instead." I'd given the stick, here's the carrot. An appeal to his vindictive sadism. "In exchange, I simply request a small hand up in my quest to gain the power I need to ensure that I never suffer the kind of pain I've already lived through again."

Fisk gave an evil grin as he thought over my offer. I think I got him. "A counter-proposal... I will facilitate your attempts to gain the power you seek, but in exchange, your services will be available during my quest to have my revenge, not merely when the perpetrators are at my mercy."

I thought it over. "That seems fair enough." I made sure that my primary hand was actually a hand and approached him, extending to shake on it.

"Then we have an accord," he said as he grabbed my hand in a grip that probably would have broken something if not for the symbiote. "Now, what is it exactly that you want?"

"I'm sure that you've heard of a man calling himself 'The Consultant?'"

Fisk chuckled. "Is that all?" He took out some stationary and began writing down some details. "Return here at seven PM tomorrow, show this to the man at the door," he said while handing me the note he'd just written. "By then, everything will be arranged. And, in the future, a little more politesse would be much appreciated from you."

"Of course, Mister Fisk. My apologies."

"And, before I forget, what is your name?"

My real name was Maria Marshal but there was no way in hell I was giving him that. "You may call me... Massacre."