Dr. Jane Foster has done many things in her life. Right now, she was doing a mandated round of clinic time at the emergency room in order to make up for vanishing in the middle of her shift last week It wasn't her fault. One of Loki's many bastard children had fallen in with a bunch of Mephisto cultists and the god of stories had demanded her help because for some reason he couldn't do it himself and 'Spider-Man's having a rough time and I don't want to drag him into my drama again right now.' She had questions about the 'again' part.
Regardless the kid was okay now and Loki owed her a favor but she couldn't really tell her superiors what happened.
Things were surprisingly slow today, slow enough that she was tempted to go up front and see if whoever was on triage duty was actually doing their job. Most of the time, the hospital was a model of efficiency but every so often you get someone who is burned out but can't or won't retire who gets shuffled around and sometimes they end up in a place where they cause problems. It's the same with basically any high-stress job, really.
With nothing better to do regardless, Jane went up front.
...No. There was no one in the waiting room.
"Something's wrong here," she said aloud.
"Eh," acknowledged the triage nurse at the desk, "just roll with it. It's usually so busy that you barely have time to breathe and—oop, looks like we've got a live one."
In through the automatic doors stumbled a girl who couldn't be more than a teenager, dressed in a hoody. She seemed completely disarrayed and only made it a few steps before collapsing.
Being a medical professional, Jane rushed to the girl's side and began checking her over. No sign of concussion, at least based on how her eyes responded.
"Hello?" She began, "If you can hear me I need some kind of response."
"...A Valkyrie come to carry me to Valhalla?"
At first, Jane froze, but then she brushed it off as a coincidence.
"She seems dazed and delusional," she said more to herself than anything. "Miss, can you tell me your name?"
"Ma... Ma..."
"Ma... Martha?" Jane suggested.
"N-no," the teen corrected.
"Maria?"
That earned a grunt.
"Can you try to stand, Maria?"
The girl, with that prompting, was able to sit up. Then she grabbed Jane's shoulders and Jane moved to help her stand.
"Okay, Maria, I'm going to walk you back and get you checked out now, can you stay with me for just a little longer?"
The girl nodded and Jane... Basically carried her back into the ER.
Once everything was situated Jane began a basic examination. "Can you explain what happened to you?"
"S-syn..."
"Sin?"
"N-no. Sen... Senti—"
"Sentinels?" Jane asked.
"Y-yes."
"Are you a mutant?"
"...no."
"Are you sure?" Jane pressed. "Not everyone knows and... I'm not going to turn you in, if you're worried about that." Honestly, Jane wasn't sure that the girl would be worried about it if she came here, but she didn't seem to be all there.
"...Kinda."
"Okay, so you're 'kind of' a mutant and you got into a fight with Sentinels," Jane said as she pieced it together. "There doesn't seem to be much physically wrong with you, but you're..."
"Syn.. synaptic."
"Synaptic disrupters," Jane finished.
"Yeah."
Well, just great. The poor girl got into a fight with a giant murder machine and it scrambled her brain. No wonder she was so out of it. "Well, the only thing for that is to wait to recover. By all means you shouldn't even be conscious right now." The girl must be made of some pretty tough stuff.
"Yeah... Pretty tough," the girl mumbled.
Jane froze again. "What was that? Did you just read...?"
"Sorry," the girl said.
"...You know who I am, don't you?" Jane questioned.
"Valkyrie... Plan... Needed Valkyrie for plan."
"Doctor Foster, could you come to the front?" Jane had been so caught up in the last few moments that she hadn't even noticed the triage nurse coming up behind her. "There's an... Incident occuring."
Upon being led back to the waiting room, Jane discovered that it was full of red uniformed para-military types.
What she presumed to be the lead ORCHIS goon approached her "are you the doctor on duty?"
"I am one of the doctors on duty, yes," Jane clarified.
"About an hour ago, a dangerous terrorist who we recently identified as a mutant appeared on top of Stark Tower, She was confronted by a set of Sentinels, but somehow shrugged off a synaptic disruptor pulse to destroy them all before fleeing. But, she got sloppy, and we managed to track her to this hospital." He held out what looked like it might be a handheld smart device which projected a hologram roughly the size of a clipboard. Two dimensional, a face that was unmistakable as her patient, if a little younger, next to a somewhat... monstrous take of the same, captioned with "Maria Marshall AKA Massacre. Domestic Terrorist. Mutant Power: Unkown. Other Details: Symbiote-Host"
"What exactly did she do?" Jane asked.
"Broke into Stark Tower, assaulted the CEO, made off with a suit," the Fascist Enforcer explained. "A little while later she shows up with a new look at the Henry Gyrich Re-Education center and brazenly on camera helped a whole bunch of dangerous mutants escape ORCHIS custody. Like she didn't even know the camera was there." Jane resisted the urge to ask them how she got away with it if there was a camera. "Our going theory is that she was there to finish what she started when she stole the armor."
"And you think she's here," Jane concluded.
"We know she's here." the man insisted. He put the device away and then stood in a way that emphasized the weapon he carried. "We know that she's back there right now, and we're going to go and get her before she slinks off."
With that, several of the ORCHIS grunts began moving toward the ER proper.
"Wait!" Jane called out. "This is a hospital. If she's as dangerous as you say then just barging back there might set her off... Stay here, I'll talk to her and bring her out and you," she said to the triage nurse, "look like you're overdue for a smoke break."
"...I don't smoke."
Jane rolled her eyes and it was then that the nurse got the hint and made her way to an elevator.
Once she was sure that ORCHIS would stay put, Jane went back and, once she was sure she was out of earshot, reached into her pocket and drew out a slip of parchment with a phrase written out in Norse runes. She tore it in half, it burst into flames, and within moments the God of Lies was in her presence.
"Huh." Loki, in his typical green coat and horned circlet, observed. "Not even a week. It took Spider-Man years and I basically had to manipulate him into cashing in his favor. Anyway, Janie my girl, what do you need?"
"Have you been keeping up with what's happened here on Earth in the last few weeks?"
"You mean the massacre at the Hellfire Gala and the rise to power of some of the worst liars I've ever seen?" Loki began. "Seriously, what motive would the mutants have had? And people would have had to have noticed that all the mutants marching toward their gates were being herded there by mind control, right? But yet people eat it up, especially here." Loki started tsking. "And to think I was almost president of this Hel hole of a country. Dodged a bullet there."
"...Right, well, there is a squad of their soldiers in the waiting room and I need someone to distract them while I sneak someone they're after out of here."
"That's it?"
"No fatalities and try to keep the collateral damage to a minimum."
"I'll do my best but I can make no promises," Loki relied. "Hmmm, I think I know just the thing."
As if in the transition between two frames of film, Loki was replaced by the iconic image of Wolverine. The disguised god then dashed toward the waiting room, "Hey ya jackbooted bastards," he shouted, "beer hockey and Kraft dinner, come and get me bubs!"
The clamor a moment later told Jane that she had her chance. Rushing back to where her patient was, she found the girl much as she'd left her, dazed and somewhat confused.
"Okay, Maria," Jane began, "something came up, we need to get you out of here now. I can get you somewhere safe and then... Can you stand?"
"...Yeah." The girl stood up on shaky legs and Jane had to support her as she led her to a side exit out back. There was a blind spot in the security cameras in the staff parking lot, if Jane could get Maria there she could transform into Valkyrie and fly her to her apartment. The girl would be safe there for at least a few hours, then she could figure something else out.
Fortunately, they didn't run into anyone in the halls so Jane was saved from having to come up with an explanation, but as they made it to the door a quick peak out showed that ORCHIS grunts were stationed in the staff parking lot as well.
"Looks like we're going to have to fight our way out, kid."
Jane set Maria down so that she was leaning against a wall and prepared to use Undrjarn the All-Weapon, a golden bracelet forged from the shattered remains of the Mjolnir of another universe and empowered by the spirits of the Valkrior, to transform into her godly alter-ego when she heard the girl behind her mumble "M'sorry."
Then Jane felt a sharp pain in her lower back as if someone had jammed a needle in her spine.
And then it passed. Jane turned to see that Maria was holding out her hand which had taken on a scarlet tone and veins of dark green were running not only through it but the sleeve of the girl's hoodie as well. As the veins spread down the girl's arm and across her body she changed her face becoming the slightly monstrous one from the ORCHIS file and her outfit becoming a typical symbiote-style outfit in the same blood red as Carnage. Then the girl stood up. Not in a normal way, no. It was like a puppet being pulled up clumsily.
"Sorry about that," the girl said, a sinister, echoed whisper backing her voice. "Needed the pick me up and... That's new."
The girl was looking at her hand now, which had crystals forming around it. Soon enough, she was encased in crystal armor resembling both a skeleton and Jane's own form during the time she'd stood in for Thor. She couldn't help but think of the Symbiote that had been forced on her, and the crystalline parasite that had consumed them both. It was only the unworthiness of the creature, the Poison, that had saved her.
"So I'm gonna go do the thing now," the girl continued, before fading away. Seconds later, the side door opened and then closed on its own.
Jane followed a moment later to see the ORCHIS soldiers being efficiently dismantled by an invisible apex predator. Some were bowled over by force, one was pulled up and slammed into a wall before being left to fall, but most of them just twitched as if shocked before collapsing to the ground.
When the last of them fell, Jane rushed for the blind spot and transformed. Then the All-Weapon, which took whatever form she needed, became a pair of wings with which to fly. From the air, she surveilled the exterior of the hospital.
It had been surrounded by ORCHIS soldiers who before her eyes were being knocked over like dominos.
None of them were dead, her senses as a Psychopomp told her that, but the girl was fast.
Moments later, Jane found the girl on the roof. No longer resembling a poisoned Thor, just the symbiote monster-girl she'd been just before that, sans the green veins streaking her body.
Maria was sitting perched, not unlike Spider-Man, but whereas the wallcrawler tended to seem relaxed and jovial, Maria... Or, perhaps Massacre, seemed... Menacing, even with the look of contemplation on her face and...
Something clicked in Jane's head. Iron Man had sent her a text, something about a symbiote on the loose, but she hadn't gotten a good chance to look through it. Was that Massacre?
"Penny for your thoughts?" Jane asked. If Massacre actually was dangerous she didn't want to set the girl off.
"Oh, nothing... Just trying to figure out where I go from here," the girl said honestly. "I... Everyone has to sleep sometimes, I have a place down in the sewers bit... If I show up on mutant detectors... If they're willing to send this many people after me... Other people are hiding down there. I wouldn't want someone to see me hop down a drain, call ORCHIS, and have ORCHIS cause trouble for anyone else who lives down there... Shot in the dark, you wouldn't be willing to give me a ride to Asgard, would you?" The girl finished with a smile that would have been cheesy if her teeth didn't resemble those of a crocodile.
"...I don't think Thor would like that very much," Jane said evenly. "But... I could call the Avengers and maybe."
"No... I burned that bridge I think. Besides, I don't really like... I've tried going with what other people suggest, adults, the system... It doesn't really work out for me. Prefer to do my own thing, for better or worse."
Jane wracked her brain. She didn't feel good about letting a teenager who was, so it seemed, in a lot of trouble go off on her own but she also didn't want to risk upsetting someone who was wearing a synthetic apex predator designed to kill gods like a costume. Symbiote hosts weren't exactly known for being the most stable and rational of people.
"...You could try claiming Asylum at the Limbo Embassy?" Jane suggested after a moment. "They've been offering home and shelter to monsters, mutants, and outcastes since they were established."
Massacre blinked. "The what now?"