Episode 64: Painful Memories!
Still in the black void, Peter watched himself and MJ enter the place where the black goo, which he realized was Symbio, was being kept. From there, the battle between Quill's Starlure and Professor Banner's Hulbear commenced resulting in the Symbio getting out. It latched onto Spidi's blue-and-red egg, but Peter tried to get rid of Symbio. As this happened, he heard unnatural screams coming from the Symbio as Peter's hands grasped its sticky body.
"That is the pain you inflicted upon us," Veneo's voice said from the void. "But the worst came soon after."
In the images below, MJ pulled the fire alarm causing Symbio to flinch crying out in agony as it slithered into the floor vent. From there, the images cut away from Peter and MJ and instead focused on the perspective of Symbio. Once it got out of the lab, Symbio went into the sewers where it morphed into a black version of Spidi with the same row of sharp teeth and long tongue as Veneo.
"Once we Matured into Veneo, we preyed upon the Marémon in the sewers for nourishment," Veneo explained as the images showed him attacking lizard and rat-like Marémon, which Peter knew were called Lizrs and Veirman respectively. "But we knew our current form was too weak to go after you and the girl, so we had to attach ourselves to another Marémon."
Again, the image changed to showing Veneo Spidi crawling out of the sewer at night, walking along the sidewalk until it came into an apartment complex courtyard where a black-and-red Spidermin was riffling through garbage. Veneo Spidi immediately jumped on the Spidermin and consumed it in a black liquid form. Then a boy of mixed race came out of the apartment, forcing Veneo to detached itself. While the boy comforted the twitching Spidermin, Veneo slipped away in its liquid form back into the sewer.
"That's Miles Morales," Peter said, recognizing the boy in the images.
"You know that kid?" Veneo asked.
"He was one of my friends at the Marémon Academy, though he was a year behind me," Peter answered. "I'm surprised he didn't say anything about encountering you."
"Maybe he was too afraid to tell you," Veneo suggested. "But despite his interference, we were able to become stronger. Now all we needed was someone to take us to you, and that's how Eddie came into our lives."
Below, the images showed Veneo in his Spidermin form scurrying through the shadows of the main park in Yortown until he noticed Brock sitting on a bench with his head buried in his hands. This allowed Veneo to jump onto Brock's shoulders and pierce his neck with the rear stinger. As a black spider-shaped mark appeared on Brock's neck, his eyes widened as Veneo spoke to him without moving his mouth.
"You're capable of telepathy," Peter realized. "That's how you were able to control Brock even when you were in a PDB."
"Right you are, Parker," Veneo confirmed. "Now let's see what's inside your mind."
Peter tried to move, but quickly discovered he was stuck in place. So he couldn't do anything except to continue watching the images at his feet. He rewatched the day his parents dropped him off with Aunt May and Uncle Ben when he was a toddler, before his parents' plane crashed killing them both. Then further in time, he saw himself getting beaten up by Flash Thompson, an upperclassmen at the Marémon Academy who was dating Mary-Jane Watson, a girl whom Peter knew since elementary school and secretly had a crush on. While Mary-Jane walked away with Flash, MJ stepped over to Peter and helped him up.
"This is boring," Veneo complained. "Let's move on to something more interesting."
Now the images showed Peter's Marémon License exam, and when he held the door open for a man with frosted tips and wore a gray trench coat. Then Peter called MJ to find out if she was done with the exam, when a shot rang out from across the parking lot in front of the building where the exam took place. He saw a car tear out of the parking lot quickly, followed by a crowd of onlookers that went to the space where the car used to be.
Peter immediately realized the space was where his uncle had parked his car, which was the same one that left the parking lot. He ran over to the parking space, and found Uncle Ben lying on the ground with a gunshot wound in his chest. Blood was pouring out from his back, though Peter ignored it as he tried to help his uncle to his feet.
"Who did this to you?" Peter demanded. "Tell me!"
"Don't do anything reckless, Peter," his uncle murmured, before coughing up blood. "I'm sorry…I couldn't protect you…better…."
As Ben became limp in Peter's arms, he froze in place as medical workers came and took Ben away from him. Then he vaguely remembered May taking him to the hospital, where Ben's death was confirmed. May cried so loud that it snapped Peter out of his frozen state and he left the hospital with his fists clenched. He went back to May and Ben's apartment, where he put together an outfit consisting of opaque goggles from a swimming class he took in middle school, a red hoodie with 'Ironfly' printed on the back, a ski mask, sweatpants, and black shoes.
"Please don't show me this," Peter begged, calling out to the blackness above him.
"But it's just starting to get good," Veneo said. "We want to see how things play out."
Back in the memory, Peter used the police frequency on his radio to find out where his uncle's stolen car was going as the police were in hot pursuit of it. He then picked up a pair of Ironfly gloves his uncle got for him as a birthday present, which blew jets of concentrated air to simulate Ironfly's Propulsion attack that gave the Marémon flight capability, and used them to float through the air in the direction of the police pursuit.
To be continued…
