My silhouette stretched away from me along the diamond grid of shadows.

It had been a while since I had been here, the old abandoned tunnel sealed off by the chain link fencing, the "private property" sign, the warnings, and all the graffiti behind that showed how little they mattered.

'What was the point of going to your place if we were just going to talk for a few minutes and then leave to the middle of nowhere?'

'I have a weird tendency to go to my apartment when things go south, think a few minutes and then go out again.'

'That seems extremely inefficient.'

'Yeah, I guess it's kind of like opening the fridge to think about things.'

'...I'm not even going to ask why you do that.'

'Good idea. Honestly I should stop talking to you like you understand human behavior.'

I grabbed the rightmost corner of the rusty fence and lifted it, passing it with ease as Venom covered my eyes to help us look into the darkness that we were venturing into.

'And what is this place?' He asked.

'Its a tunnel that Oscorp built, supposedly simply for transportation, but it turns out that they had some underground facilities where they were doing experimentation on convicts to create supersoldiers or something. It was a whole scandal but it has slowly been forgotten during the years of legal proceedings.'

'Why would it be a scandal? Were the supersoldiers not powerful?'

'Uhhh, no. People don't like human experimentation.'

'Why?'

'It's dangerous, Venom.'

'Cowards.'

'Whatever...'

'...And why did you choose this place?'

'Well it's the closest place that I could think of that isn't filled to the brim with people. I'm also familiar with it since Leo and I came here when we were in highschool.'

'Did you train with him too?'

'Nah, we were just curious idiots.'

'Are all of your stories this boring?'

'For your standards? Probably.'

I pushed open the steel door on the side of the concrete tunnel. The smell of dust and time stung my nostrils before I felt a layer of flesh grow in the interior of my nose; Venom's awareness of my own body felt like an invasion of privacy, but I tried to ignore it and carried on.

I walked along the obscure corridor until we found yet another broken steel door.

A biohazard warning sign was buried under a multitude of graffitis on the heavy door as I pushed it to open the last room.

It was as creepy as I remembered: a large concrete dome with corroded white paint and graffiti covering the walls, a bunch of corridors that led to loads of empty rooms, not to mention the few heroin needles here and there.

"Alright! Looks good, let's start warming up."

My voice echoed as I started doing neck circles.

'I'm still trying to understand why this is any better than just killing a few lowlives.'

"It's a more controlled environment for the time being. Once we start working well together, we can go against real people."

'Fine, and how are we going to do that, moving our extremities in circles?'

"I'm just warming up, Venom." I stretched my legs, coming close to a full middle split. "In the meantime, why don't you tell me what's your approach to fighting?"

'I see life; I cause death!'

I rolled my eyes.

"Ok, but what techniques do you use to achieve that?"

'Striking, biting, clawing, whatever it takes.'

"You can change size for example, right? Do you ever use that to your advantage?"

'I do what is necessary to destroy.'

"...You don't really think that much about strategy, do you?"

'My strategy is beyond-'

"Venom…"

Venom stayed silent for a couple seconds.

'... I have an excellent Intuition...'

I sighed.

"It's okay, Venom, that's what we're here to do."

'What do humans do to fight?'

"For the most part, humans suck at fighting bare handed, we have a long history of using tools for war, so hand to hand combat is more of a hobby."

'You partake in it?'

"Yeah, you're in luck." I said, as I made a single-leg takedown movement, "But I've only ever fought using my own body, doing it with you is probably gonna require some technical adjustments."

'What adjustments?'

"Not sure yet, but I'm thinking they're gonna depend on the type of combat."

'Go on.'

"Well, the way that modern martial arts are practiced is essentially divided in 4: Striking and grappling, and ground work and stand-up fighting."

'You use 'and' a lot.'

"Well no, it's just that it's more like two categories with two each and then the combinations… Look, the point is: we need to figure out how we'll strike when standing, how we'll strike on the floor, how we'll grapple while standing and how we'll grapple on the floor. All of those are different skills that we need to develop a sort of synergy for."

'Sounds complicated.'

"The path to being the best always is, Venom."

'Fair enough, which one should we start with.'

"Let's start with the classics."

I started to shadowbox, asking Venom to think of ways he could aid my movement.

After a few minutes he started to materialize in my arms, my legs, adding weight and speed to my strikes.

He was confused by head movement and general defense, but after a little explanation of the weaknesses of the body he began to understand those movements too.

In comparison to all other matters, Venom showed a very sincere interest and disposition when it came to fighting, he seemed extremely curious about everything I did, constantly asking and proposing things about the techniques. It was kind of off-putting.

We moved from striking to general movement and footwork, and quickly found that we could swell up different muscle groups to enhance different actions: The calves and quads to burst into a sprint or jump. The shoulder, the muscles of the back leg and the pectoral could strengthen jabs and crosses. By the time we were done with our training session, we had gotten far more comfortable with each other. Venom would constantly morph into forms that were more optimal for what I was doing; He's a fast learner.

Venom's eye covers disappeared as soon as we left the tunnel, despite the fact that it was just as dark outside by now.

"You mind keeping those on?"

'You should learn to see in the dark, Eddie.'

"That's not a skill humans can develop."

'And you think… I care?...'

"... Are you tired, Venom?"

'...'

"... Are you sleeping?"

'...'

He's kinda cute in his own way.

I turned on my phone's light and started walking along the tracks. It was 3 am, Venom was not the only one that was tired.

After walking for a while, falling asleep on the empty metro and having to change cars and go back because of it, we finally made it home. I fell on the bed and immediately went into a deep slumber.

…

I mumbled my way out of my sleep as the lightrays from my window prodded my face.

"Mmmmm…" I swallowed and reached for my phone.

I touched around the bedside table before giving up and lifting my face from the pillow. My phone wasn't there. I turned onto my back and looked down to notice that I was still fully clothed from the night before. I rubbed my eyes and pulled my phone out of my pocket.

…

"CRAPCRAPCRAPCRAP" I repeated as I grabbed a piece of bread from the kitchen.

"You're late?" asked Leo, comfortably sipping his coffee from the table.

"So late!" I went into the bathroom and put on some deodorant.

"When does your class start?" He took another sip and opened his phone.

"It starts in negative ten minutes!"

"Damn. Good luck."

I rushed outside and started speed walking towards the metro.

"Venom, would you help me get to class?"

'No.'

'I'm so late, though.'

'Your class; your problem.'

Can't argue with that.

…

*Clack* The mechanism of the door echoed through the lecture room.

"Mr. Brock, how nice of you to grace us with your presence!" The teacher's sarcasm wasn't particularly aggressive, but it was still there.

"Hehe, yeah sorry." I forced the laugh while I scanned for an unoccupied seat.

I walked to the space near the corner that I had noticed while keeping my face down and sat quickly. Everyone was observing me and the way I sensed things now made me painfully aware of it whether I looked or not.

"You may come in, no worries." The professor said as I sat. The class laughed a little.

"Oh! uh… Sorry."

"..."

"...May I come in?"

Around half the classroom laughed as he turned around to move onto the next slide. He's not a bad teacher, but he's a pretty big douchebag, and this time, I had sorta earned it.

I looked at my hands, resting on my knees, as I waited for the class to move onto the topic. I finally exhaled.

'What was that?'

'What was what?'

'Don't act stupid, Eddie. You were distressed like something was about to eat you; you woke me up. Who needs to die?'

'No one needs to die, Venom.'

'So what? You were panicking like filthy prey for fun? Are you really that-'

'I was late to class, I did something wrong, I felt bad about it; simple.'

'The only thing that's wrong is you being in this stupid place to begin with! We could kill all of these people!'

'If it's so stupid, then why don't you go sleep and store some energy for our next battle?'

'...Fine, but don't you dare let these people humiliate us…'

As Venom quieted down, I brought my palm to my forehead.

I'm going to have to deal with this eventually. I can't have a killer latched onto me for the rest of my life, whispering into my ear. But what can I even do? Have a conversation with the thing about the value of life over a cup of tea? Is this thing even alive in the traditional sense? It certainly mrbrk doesn't seem to care about mstr brok life at all. But, then again maybe that's just the mentality of an "apex predator" or whatever, mister brock I mean what would a great white shark say if it could talk, what would it-

"Mister Brock!"

"Uhh, what?"

A few people laughed again.

"Meditation is a great Hobby; not in my class."

"Sorry professor."

He stared at me for a few seconds, arms crossed.

"So?" He asked.

"E-excuse me?"

He struck the marker against the whiteboard, pointing at a series of lines of code that he had written down next to the screen.

My eyes scanned the text at blazing speed, it was that same fluidity that I had experienced before, that concentration.

"What is the mistake, Brock?"

The code was clearly just a snippet of code, not the full text. My brain rushed to deduce what the code was meant for, what it did, how it worked. I felt the rush again, the growl, the hunger.

"...That's what I thought. Would somebody that's actually interested in programming like to-"

"You can't allocate like that," I interrupted.

He looked at me.

"Go on."

"Lines 2 and 3 are dynamically allocated but in line 7 your array isn't, yet you're trying to pass data from the dynamically allocated arrays to the array in line 7. As soon as that For loop passes more values than the amount you originally set for the array of integers, you'll get a runtime error."

"So what do you do?"

"You allocate dynamically. Change the size of the array with every iteration of the loop"

"I don't think 'You allocate dynamically' will compile, Brock. Try adding a semicolon"

I felt the anger spread as some of the students laughed. Did this guy really think that was an own? He never asked me to give him actual code, he just asked me what to do. Of course I'm not going to "add a semicolon".

I breathed in and made sure the anger didn't control me, I enjoyed it instead.

"Int asterisk, array, equals, malloc, open parenthesis, x times sizeof, open parenthesis, int, close parenthesis, close parenthesis, semicolon."

The class looked at me in silence.

"I added a semicolon." I smiled with as much feigned innocence as I could muster while I heard whispers grow around me.

The class turned their eyes from me to the professor.

He exhaled, placed the marker on the desk and leaned on it.

"I can understand when a student misses one of my classes, even without a reason, I can understand when a student is late and I can understand when a student zones out during class. But you miss my class, without reason, you clearly make no effort to catch up, you barge in late, you don't pay attention, and then you wanna get smart on me?"

"Th-the code was right, it works…"

"It works, Brock, but it's not the topic! Do you even know what we're coding in!?"

"W-what?"

"The programming language! What is it!?"

"Uhh… I mean it-it's C, I don't-"

"C++, Brock! C++! I said yesterday that we would move onto C++ and compare the two languages! You didn't catch up? Great! But since you've been here I've talked about C++ the entire time, and the way vectors work in C++! VECTORS! So if I'm giving you a dynamic allocation problem, and the topic is vectors, what do you think the answer would be!?"

"..."

"Brock!?"

"Uhmm-uhh, open angle brackets. Vector. Closed angle brackets-"

"Yes Brock! we do know the syntax for vectors; we went over it two minutes ago! Maybe you could give us a bit of wit instead, since that's the one thing that you seem to be doing right today!"

He gave me the same fake smile I had given before, in a parodied, more obvious presentation. I felt myself become smaller, my claws retract.

"No? Nothing?"

I tightened my fists beneath the table, looking down.

"Well, hopefully this time you can use that silence to actually pay attention."

No… I can't allow this.

He turned around to look at his computer.

I'm not gonna allow Mr. Thompson to humiliate me in front of the entire class!

The professor clicked around his laptop as he looked at the student list. Suddenly I remembered something about the code. I looked up at the whiteboard, I smiled, felt the claws come back.

"So… let's see… Miss Racquel… how would you fix this-?"

"It's C."

The class turned to look at me again.

"What?"

"The code you wrote down, it's not C++, it's C."

He snorted at my remark while I stayed perfectly serious.

"Well Mr. Brock, I apologize. Evidently you haven't taken up enough of this class' time, so I'll explain it just for you: C and C++ look pretty much the same, so just because it looks like C and could work in C doesn't mean that it's not C++, although to be fair, you didn't pay attention to any of the comparisons I made earlier, so you wouldn't know any better, would you?"

He leaned forward with his arms crossed and the most condescending expression he could muster.

I managed to keep my neutral expression.

"Do they convert data types the same?"

"...What?" He furrowed his brow.

"Does C and C++ convert data types 'pretty much the same', professor? Because as far as I remember, C can turn void pointers directly into other types of pointers whereas C++ needs something else."

He blinked a few times and turned around, looking at his code.

'Personally, I see malloc, which gives a void pointer, going into an integer pointer. It would work just fine in C of course, but for C++…'

I couldn't see his face but figured it was hitting him just about now.

"I don't think your 'C++ code' will compile, professor. Try adding a cast."

My classmates started whispering to each other again.

He looked for a few seconds at the code and then grabbed the eraser, he hovered it over the whiteboard, above the entire text.

I smirked. You're not gonna erase it. You're a prideful douchebag, but you can at least admit when you're undeniably wrong, right Mr. Thompson?

Like I predicted, he moved the eraser down, and erased the two segments of code I had detected before.

He shamefully wrote (int*) in both cases, placed the marker down, and turned to face me while I made a herculean effort to contain my shit-eating grin.

He looked at me and opened his mouth, but before he could say anything:

"Are we going back to C, then?"

"What?" He said.

"The code, have you decided to change it to C after all."

"I just changed it like you said, Brock. Are you trying to make fun of me?"

"Oh! not at all professor! It's just that it surprised me that you used C styled castings."

"C styled?" He asked.

The sense of superiority and vitriol permeated my body.

"Of course! You know: (int*), (float*), so on and so forth."

"I've personally used those in C++, it works."

"It does work, professor, but I don't believe it's standard or safe outside of C, no? Isn't there a C++ styled casting that would be better? Particularly considering the topic of this lecture."

He stared at me with wrath pouring out of his eyes as the whispers of my classmates grew louder. I remained unfazed, looking back.

He walked to his computer and started typing around.

Damn, looking up the answer on Google in front of your students. How the mighty have fallen. Might as well rub it in a little.

"I might get this one wrong since I couldn't make it to your lecture yesterday but I do think it was something along 'static, underscore, cast' and then the data type between angle brackets."

The professor looked at his computer for a few seconds, then raised his gaze to stare daggers into my eyes.

He got up, erased the two lines once again and wrote down my victory speech: static_castint*

He turned around and looked at me. His face twitched as his mind was clearly racing to find something to say, some way to put me down.

The twitching stopped.

"Good catch, Mr. Brock."

He turned around to face the whiteboard and started talking loudly about the next topic as if nothing had happened, but it was too late. Around me contained giggles and the excited whispering of "Ohhh shittt!", "Yoooo!" and similar expressions filled the room, and I felt the bloodied claws retract with satisfaction.

Maybe a little bit of Venom in me wasn't too bad after all.