Episode 65: A Battle of Wills!
Peter tried to not watch the memories Veneo was showing any more, but they stayed open. He willed himself to blink and started to move, when Veneo's face suddenly appeared from above. With him came black tendrils that wrapped around Peter's arms and legs while his eyelids were forced open by smaller tendrils.
"Nice try, Parker, but we're in control of your body," Veneo declared. "And if we want to keep watching, then we will!"
So Peter reluctantly watched himself flying over the streets of Yortown on the Ironfly gloves producing jets of air which kept him afloat. He traced the police pursuit to a large warehouse next to the river, where multiple cop cars surrounded the place. Peter turned the jet output to max and flew right into a window on the second floor of the warehouse and right into someone. While the person fell off a landing, Peter ended up flying towards a wall and knocking himself out. By the time he recovered, the police managed to find their way in and were surveying a nearby body. To Peter's horror, it was the guy he held the door open for at the Marémon License facility with several PDBs lying around him.
"Oh, my!" Veneo exclaimed, sounding giddy. "Aren't you a little murderer?"
"It was an accident!" Peter claimed.
"Was it, though?" Veneo argued. "You wanted to kill him. But you couldn't admit that to the police as you lied about getting carried away with the Ironfly gloves, which kept them from pressing murder charges against you."
"You don't know what you're talking about!"
"We're linked together, Parker," Veneo reminded Peter. "So we know your deepest desires."
As Peter felt the darkness closing in, a thought occurred to him. If Veneo could read his mind, then he could read Veneo's mind.
"You know we can hear what you're thinking, don't you?" Veneo said, interrupting Peter.
"Sure I did," Peter lied.
"Liar! What are you trying to pull by acting stupid?"
"Nothing, except to get a sense of what you're hoping to get out of this."
"What do you mean? It should be obvious that we hope to conquer this planet and consume it like we have done with countless others."
"Okay, but why are you doing it? What's your ultimate goal?"
"Because we cannot survive without living organisms to bond with, it is in our nature to take control of the planets we infest and move on to more sophisticated lifeforms to further expand our own lives."
"Do you guys have a hive mind? Because you keep saying things like 'we' and 'us,' like you don't have a mind of your own."
Veneo didn't speak for a long time, as if the concept of individualism was a foreign concept. Just then, Peter felt a sharp pain on his neck and heard a familiar chattering.
"Spidermin?" Peter said. "Is that you?"
"No!" Veneo cried as streaks of blue and red appeared over his face. "This body is ours!"
Then a strong vibration rippled through the darkness, causing Veneo's face to break apart. While this happened, Peter slipped out of the tendrils' grasp and fell into nothing.
"Peter!"
Hearing his name, Peter's eyes opened. A bright light assaulted his vision, followed by the focus of shapes. He was lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by Thor, Peni, MJ, Professor Banner, and Nick Fury.
"Where am I?" Peter muttered. "And what happened to—"
Before he could finish his sentence, MJ suddenly hugged him. Then just as quickly, she slapped him in the face much to everyone's surprise.
"Ow!" Peter groaned. "What did you do that for?"
"That's for not telling me you were the costumed guy who saved me," MJ said, folding her arms.
"Didn't your mother teach you manners?" Nick Fury intervened, pinching MJ's shoulder before turning his eye to Peter. "How are you doing, kid?"
"I feel awful," Peter said, feeling the back of his neck. "Why does it hurt so much here?"
"You had two kinds of poison injected in you," Banner explained. "The first came from the creature Veneo, which he used to take over your body in the same way he did to Eddie Brock, and the second dose came from Spidermin's Stingers."
"Spidermin tried to poison me?" Peter couldn't believe it. "But why?"
"My guess is your Spidermin thought he could counter Veneo's poison with his own," Banner speculated. "It sort of worked, though we really have Patrimidge's Sonic Cannon to thank for getting Veneo off your body."
From a corner of the room appeared a pray mantis-like creature that looked almost identical to Ironfly, except its coloring was black and gray with red eyes instead of blue. Standing behind this creature was a young African-American man wearing a blue military uniform.
"Rhodey," Peter said, recognizing the young man in the military uniform from televised matches with Tony Stark.
The young man in the military uniform looked startled for a moment before settling back into his cool demeanor. "Only my close friends get to call me Rhodey. I would prefer to be called Rhodes if you don't mind."
"Sorry, Rhodes," Peter apologized, glancing between Rhodes, Banner, and Nick Fury. "But what are you all doing here?"
"I saw the incident on the tower from the live television feed," Banner said. "So I called Nick Fury for a favor, and along with Rhodes we made our way over to Xandar City in a supersonic SHIELD jet. Good thing we arrived when we did, because Eddie Brock looked like he was almost about to drop you."
"Where is Brock? Or Veneo for that matter?" Peter asked.
"Brock's recovering in another hospital room, while the Veneo is back in its PDB for now," Nick Fury answered, holding up Brock's PDB. "The doctors managed to extract the poison Veneo injected into both of you, before it could spread through the rest of your body."
"Oh, good," Peter sighed. "Because that's how Veneo was able to control Brock."
Nick Fury's eyebrow raised. "Excuse me?"
To be continued…
