I couldn't see anyone. I couldn't hear anyone. I couldn't smell anyone, but I knew they were there.

"Okay, show yourselves," I began. "I felt the air shift when you popped in, What is this, a teleporter combined with a cloaking device? A pretty sophisticated one too, I can see in ultraviolet and smell the differences between individual people..." I stepped forward in the direction that I thought they were. "Or is it some kind of spell?" I flexed my blade arms. "Are you going to show yourselves or am I just gonna have to start swinging?"

A shimmer of red light, one that, for lack of a better word, felt like some of the dark magic in Kassady's bones, and I was confronted by four figures.

"Ah. If it isn't Mighty Thor and the B-List Avengers," I quipped as I saw the God of Thunder accompanied by the unmistakable costumed forms of Captain Marvel, The Scarlet Witch, and Iron Man. It was a bit weird that Mister Stark's armor was black, but I could recognize his scent and sense his codices now that the spell was down... Pretty heavy-duty magic if it could block the symbiote hive mind.

Speaking of which... Thor and Colonel Danvers had codices, too. Thor's felt pretty strong but the Colonel's were all mixed up for some reason, I'd need to take them to get an idea of what they were.

"...B-List?" the Colonel asked, bemused.

"The Civil Wars and the Decimation cost you guys a couple of points in my book," I said with a shrug. "'Cept for you," I said with a nod toward Thor. "I've no quarrel with the Prince of Asgard."

"King," the God corrected.

"My congratulations for the coronation and condolences for the death of your father," I said back. "...er, I'm assuming death. If the old myths are anywhere near accurate I do not see him retiring."

"He did retire, but then he passed in battle not long after," Thor confirmed. "He now rests in Valhalla with generations of his subjects and kinfolk, as he should."

"Anyway..." I continued, "I really should have known this was a trap. This many strong codices in one place... And that casket was clearly never in a Damage Control facility."

"It's not a trap," Iron Man began, "we just want to talk."

"Oh, Military Industrial Complex Man just wants to talk," I deadpanned, "so he lured me out to the middle of nowhere and brought Captain Planet Buster, the Mentally Unstabled Reality Warper, and the Warrior God as backup. Yeah. Totally not a trap. What do you want? Me to register with the government?" I said while tossing my hands into the air.

"Maria—"

"Massacre," I corrected. "Call me Massacre."

"Massacre," Iron Man began awkwardly, "you... You're messing with forces that you don't understand and causing a lot of trouble. We get it, we were all teenagers at one point, and you've been through a lot... We can help you, you don't have to do this."

"I know!" I replied back. "But... I really want to. Like... This isn't about my trauma or anything if that's what you think, and it's fair that you think that, I did too at first but, you see... I like fighting. I like getting stronger, I like breaking into places to get the goodies inside... Really liked kicking fascist ass with the mutants the other day, gonna look into doing more of that later, but right now... I want to get stronger. It's as simple as that."

"There are better ways to get stronger," Iron Man countered. "We can help you. We can get you training, we can—"

"Boring," I replied. "My way's more fun and gives faster results."

"You're going to hurt someone sooner or later," Stark continued. "And... That jailbreak, ORCHIS is going to escalate because of that."

"Would you rather I have left a bunch of innocent people to suffer?" I countered.

"We had a plan for that," Stark defended, "but dismantling authoritarian organizations is a delicate process."

I rolled my eyes. "I bet. Now really, is what I've done really so bad? I mean, yeah, I offered to work with Fisk but... You're working with Fisk right now, right? Can't really call me on that. Beyond that, I snuck into a few places to grab things that honestly shouldn't have been left around to begin with, broke into companies that are evil or run by evil people to grab things that they should not have access to in the first place, picked a few fights with supervillains, and any time someone picked a fight with me I did everything in my power to dissuade them before ending the fights as quickly and efficiently as possible with minimal harm," I explained. "The worst thing I did was go after Spidey-Junior for his codex and he punched me through a window and I fell straight down. You ever break every bone in your body?" I asked. "It's not pleasant, so I say we're even."

"So please," I finished after a moment's pause, "what have I done that's so much worse than what superheroes do on a regular basis?"

"It's not about right and wrong," Stark continued, "it's about stopping you before you make the kind of mistake that you can't take back."

"Thanks but no thanks," I replied. "I know what I'm doing. Now if you'll excuse me," I said with a thumb pointing to the cryo-pods and casket behind me, "I'll be taking those as the price for my valuable time."

I noticed the Scarlet Witch's hand gestures just a little too late and found myself trapped by ribbons of red energy that my codex memories identified as the Crimson Bands of Cytorrek.

"We're terribly sorry that it came to this," the witch explained, "but we believe that you're a risk to yourself and others. If you won't listen to reason..."

Okay, now I was ticked. I tested the bands, they kept my arms and legs pinned pretty well but I had just enough wiggle room.

In one fluid moment, I exhaled a blast of fire and sulfurous fumes in the Scarlet Witch's direction while my hair transformed into a set of tendrils and stabbed through the glass of the cryo pods to interface with the living abyss of the symbiotes contained within. Living Abyss didn't freeze even when entirely encased in ice and the bodies were flash-frozen to prevent crystalization.

With a tug, the pods shattered open and dry, frozen bones clattered to the ground as I consumed the dead symbiotes, dead clones, and still very much alive codices.

The truth was, the X-23 clones were only good for raw power. After a certain point. adding more healing and more pointy bits to a symbiote only saw negligible improvement. Even then, it wasn't really that much power. These toxin clones were more like offshoots, notably weaker than the original, and whatever demonic modifications they had were minor.

Svartalfvenom... That was where the real power came in. A given dark elf was pretty strong, and, well... Their bodies were saturated with Dark Magic. Symbiotes, as I so helpfully learned just now, symbiotes both fed on and amplified magic... Especially Dark Magic. The outer shell of living abys had sealed in all the dozen or elves' worth of magic while the devices inside slowly adapted to it, and I'd just absorbed the whole lot at once.

Plus, I realized as I observed my cells adjusting, absorbing the dark elf biology would mean I'd be producing that magical energy myself.

All in all, I'd just gotten a considerably bigger boost than I thought I'd be getting.

I also swole up into a monstrosity with dozens of sets of limbs and mouths, much as Svartalfvenom was, augmented by the additional bulk of the four clones which was in fact my plan in the first place. The sudden increase in size coupled with the Scarlet Witch being distracted by blocking my fire blast let me break through her binding spell.

Immediately I swung my many limbs forward and fired weblines at her, pinning her to a wall and binding her hands and mouth. "No more spells, Ms. Maximoff," I muttered through... Okay, one of the mouths was on my hand and it felt weird. From start to finish, the whole sequence was maybe five seconds.

I leaped next for Iron Man. I no longer had the element of surprise but he seemed unwilling to go for serious damage. At the very least, he wasn't using repulsor blasts. Instead, he went for my main arms and tried to wrestle me into submission. That was a mistake.

A thing that I'd noticed ever since going techno-organic was a cosmetic shift whenever I used integrated tech. Stark's armor was somehow hardered against techno-pathy but the Endo-Sym was designed to be able to interface with the other armors. so when sold black tendrils with glowing, blood-red Tron lines stretched from my torso and jammed into his armor, well, he probably should have seen it coming.

It was easy enough to make the armor return to its dormant state, which is to say, it disassembled itself and folded into a briefcase which hit the floor.

Venom striking a heart patient seemed like a bad idea, so I grabbed the now normal Stark and spun him around so that I could pin him face down and web him to the floor. Six seconds.

I was shrinking, returning to my original form as the codices in Stark's spine tempted me with sweet songs of cosmic power and transhuman viruses. "Eh, why not," I said aloud. When would I ever get this chance again?

It only took me two seconds to get my needle in his back and extract the codices. This was getting easy and... Oh. One of those was from the Endo-Sym, not much new... except for the transhuman mods he'd gotten in the interim, that was, and the time his body was rebuilt one cell at a time. But his second codex... That one came from a dragon. Like, a whole one. That he'd shot full of something called the Extremis Virus, then fused with his latest armor. It had power over other symbiotes. He'd used this... "Extrembiote" to interface with a Celestial that Knull had slain and reanimated with Living Abyss, and both codexes had been in his system when he was bathed in concentrated Power Cosmic and when he'd his nervous system had been hooked up to yet another Celestial.

Much like with Cyclops's codices, I was only getting a fraction of that cosmic power. Enough to bolster my own attributes but... combined with the strength of a full Symbiote-Dragon? It was plenty.

My body shifted, resembling a monstrous blood-red take on the Iron Man suit contorted to my figure, with segmented, bio-mechanical veins crossing over it semi-randomly. I had little time to get used to that form, however, as Captain Marvel got me in a full Nelson and then lifted me straight up through the ceiling, the concrete floor of the warehouse above us, then through that ceiling and kept going higher.

I'd fully assimilated the codices by the time we stopped, and we were high up enough that I could see the curvature of the earth. It was honestly beautiful in a way I don't have the words to describe.

"So is your plan to take my breath away?" I found myself asking. When I didn't get an answer I just smashed the back of my head into her face. That disoriented her enough that I was able to break her grip and the jet boots from the Extremebiote kept me from falling.

I twisted around in Mid-Air and slapped my hand to her back before extruding my needle. I was curious about what was up with her codices and I got the feeling that the answer would be amusing.

I was immediately hit by multiple sets of memories as my body twisted and contorted, processing the essence of multiple individuals as well as all the different types of energy that had been in and out of her half-kree super-soldier system since she first bonded with Venom during the siege of Asgard.

Then the extra faces appeared in different parts of my body. "What... What the hell have you been through?" I asked as I tried to process the perspectives of multiple Avengers all crammed into one.

She responded by charging a photonic blast, so I countered by grabbing her by the ankle and spinning around really fast before letting go. "Hope you like Hong Kong," I quipped as she flew off into the distance.

I started lowering myself back down to the earth. Processing the messed up and scrambled information from her codices was... I think I needed to sit down.

...Thor bursting from the cloud layer, rising above me, striking me over the head with his hammer, and blasting me with lightning suggested that I would not get that chance.

Not that it had done any damage, mind you. After everything I'd taken in, I was a little too tough for that. "Nice try, Jackass! Next time give it your—"

I was cut off by Thor's A-Game. Imagine a hurricane. The worst one on record. Now imagine all the force of its winds, all the lightning it'd generate, all the weight of its rain and waves, all of it from the entire life of the storm from when it forms to when it dissipates. Imagine all of that compressed down to the size of a golf ball. Then that golf ball hits you at Mach five and explodes unleashing all that force in an instant.

I blacked out after a second of spinning. When I came to, I was flat on my back on solid ground, everything hurt, and I was rather dizzy... Which given I was supposed to have perfect equilibrium was really saying something. At least my body was back to normal.

Then a large, heavy hammer crashed into my chest at high speed.

"Struggle not," the God of Thunder said as he stepped down, "for my mystical hammer Mjolnir can only be moved by those who are Worthy." A quick test indicated that no, I could not lift the hammer off of myself.

It was at that point that I just started laughing. "You know," I said between peals, "I didn't expect to be fighting half the Avengers when I got out of bed this morning but... The way my heart's racing, the ringing in my ears, the adrenaline practically gushing into my bloodstream..." More laughter, "I love this... Fighting like this is just... So much fun."

Thor grunted. "Spoken like a daughter of Asgard. In another time, in another place, you might have been a candidate to join the Valkyrior."

"Praise from Caesar," I replied.

"...It is not too late," the blonde god began. "It was not our goal to bring harm to you on this day. If you will just listen to us, come with us back to our headquarters we can help you. You are... correct in that what you have done thus far is not too different from what my fellows and I have done. If this is truly the life you wish, we can help you do it properly. Help, uh, what is the phrase here on Midgard, 'smooth out' the complications that your actions thus far have caused. Mayhaps introduce you to others your age who seek this life."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," I replied back. Then I laughed again. "You know what's funny?"

"What?"

"I know something that you don't."

"What is that?"

"Carnage is coming back," I replied. "Like, the actual symbiote has been off traveling the multiverse gaining power. Kassady's ghost told me himself. Part of the reason I broke in here was to try and get strong enough to kill it when it turns up."

Thor was taken aback. "I thank you for sharing this with me. Rest assured that I will see to it that the Avengers prepare accordingly."

"Cool. Oh, there's one more thing," I started.

"Yes?"

"I don't really have a human body in here anymore. My flesh and bones and the symbiote are one and the same." I demonstrated this by dissolving the contents of my torso and splitting the living abyss that made it up so that I could explode upward like a flash of lightning, sucker-punching the God of Thunder with an open palmed uppercut to the chin as my body reformed properly.

If Asgardian physiology is anything like a human, that should result in a pinched nerve and... Yep, there's the blackout. As the warrior god collapsed, I flipped him onto his back so I could claim his codices. Might as well make it three for three.

No strange changes this time, just black veins cycling through my symbiote form as memories flood in. Knowledge of a time traveler named Meridus, a sword called All-Black, and the history of the God Butchers and Kings in Black filed into my mind and...

"Well fuck," I said to myself as one particular detail from Thor's bond with Meridus hit me. "Kind of regret burning that Rainbow Bridge now." Somewhere in Asgard was a hammer, made of Living Abyss and something called Promethium, and I had the feeling that it would really help me in my quest to become a God if I could get my hands on it. "Oh well, I'll just have to figure out some other way of getting there."

But first, I hadn't landed that far from the damage control facility, and I felt like sucking the blessings of Knull and Cthon out of whatever was left of Kassady's bone marrow.