Dozens of people sit within a subway. An old man reads the paper, grumbling about a crying baby nearby. A girl in a hoodie fiddles with her pen as two women talk obnoxiously loud next to her. A man in a suit looks at his watch, frustrated, “Damn train’s running late.” He mumbles. The train finally peels in from the tunnel, but instead of people walking out, several monstrous, almost bulbous creatures shamble onto the platform, their eyes and limbs in the wrong places, like humans with their bodies shifted like clay. People scream in terror as the things run through the platform. Some people run for their lives, others freeze in terror.
One man smiles with glee, his bright red hair sticking out like a sore thumb, Cletus Kasady. The Symbiote morphs around Cletus, turning him into Carnage. Carnage turns his arm into a blade and bisects one of the transfigured humans before using its top half to splatter another transfigured human’s head. Carnage tears through the transfigured humans. Suddenly, he ceases his rampage, as if he senses something
Carnage flips over several transfigured humans before looking towards the area he came from. In that area, there forms a humanoid creature with blue hair and stitches on his face, Mahito. Mahito giggles, “I’d heard humans can see curses under life threatening circumstances, guess that attack I just tried to hit you with fit the bill,” he squints, “Although, you certainly don’t look human.” He says, a smirk plastered upon his face.
Carnage stands up to his full height, looking around at the slowly dying transfigured humans, “My danger sense went off when you tried to touch me,” a devilish grin remains stretched across his face, “I suppose that has something to do with these poor flesh bags?” He queries. Mahito raises his hands, “Want to find out?”
Carnage flies at Mahito and swings his razor sharp claws. Mahito ducks under the slash before shifting his arm into a sword and splitting Carnage in half. The top half of Carnage regrows his legs and shoots a blood web between Mahito’s legs and onto his previous bottom half before pulling on it to knock Mahito off his feet. Mahito lands on his side and sees Carnage pouncing towards him. Mahito splits into two different Mahitos, causing Carnage’s claw to get stuck in the floor. One Mahito kicks Carnage in the side of the head, knocking him through the wall of the train before the two Mahitos morph back into one.
Carnage lands onto a train seat before dodging to the side as Mahito stabs an arm blade at him. Carnage shoots a ball of blood web onto Mahito’s face. Mahito stumbles back as Carnage shoots forward and stabs him through the chest with a blade arm. The blood web seeps back into Carnage as Mahito grips his head. Carnage rips his arm out of Mahito’s chest as the Curse groans, “Sorry, bud, but you’ve just lost,” He licks the purple blood from his arm, “As long as my blood’s in your system, your mind belongs to me.” Carnage begins to laugh as Mahito mumbles, “No. No. My head, it’s” Mahito chuckles, “Not.”
Carnage stops laughing, confused before Mahito punches him in the face, black sparks flying from the punch. Carnage is launched across the train car, landing in the conductor’s cart. He splits off a piece of his symbiote, ordering to start the train. The symbiote piece gets to work as Mahito enters the cart and swings a mace formed from his own arm at Carnage. Carnage dodges the mace swing and slashes at Mahito’s neck. However, before Carnage’s slash can land, Mahito’s head pops off by itself, spinning through the air over Carnage before making a kissy face at him.
Mahito’s lips extend at Carnage at a blistering speed. Carnage dodges the lips a cuts them off, but instead of falling to the floor, the lips morph into a ball before immediately extending back into Carnage’s forehead. The lips stab through his head, causing Carnage to stagger back. Mahito swings another mace-fist at Carnage, only for him to dodge it, causing the mace to slam into the controls. The train goes out of control, shooting across the tracks at an unstoppable speed. Mahito shrugs his eyes and giggles, “Whoops. My bad.”
We cut to a city street in the early morning, one or two people stroll through, a few cars drive by. Suddenly, an explosion erupts from the ground, tearing the street open as fire and metal fly through the air. Mahito rolls across the ground before standing up, “Man, who knew trains explode when they hit a wall? They should fix that.” He says. Carnage pieces himself back together, his regeneration slowed a decent bit due to the fire. Carnage stands up, seeing that his tendrils are shorter than usual.
“Oh my God!” A man screams as he sees Carnage. The symbiote turns to look at the man, “Hello, lunch.” Carnage jumps at man before stabbing claws through his neck. The man shrivels and gargles as Carnage takes the blood from his body, “Ah, just wonderful.” Carnage notes as his body turns a brighter shade of red and his tendrils extend. Suddenly, his Spider-sense goes off. Carnage jumps into the air as a column of skin and flesh shoots at the area he was standing at. Carnage lands on the column and sees it has a face, “K- kill me…” The face begs. “Later.” Carnage says before launching towards Mahito.
Mahito reaches into his cloak, pulling out several miniature transfigured human dolls. He tosses the dolls into the air towards Carnage. One dolls spins sideways and extends towards Carnage, only to completely miss. Another doll morphs into a fleshy net, but Carnage’s bladed tendrils cut it to ribbons. Carnage dodges the third doll and swings his arm to slash Mahito’s head, but the doll morphs into a chain and extends towards Carnage before latching onto his arm, slowing it down.
Due to the flesh chain slowin it, Mahito catches Carnage’s swing in his palm. With Carnage’s wrist in his hand, purple energy radiates from Mahito’s palm as he activates his cursed technique, Idle Transfiguration. However, Mahito sees into Carnage’s essence, and instead of one soul, he finds two. “Two souls, huh? This should be fun.” Mahito think. Instantly, Carnage’s arm explodes in a pop of blood and gore. Carnage reels back in pain before turning the spilled blood into half a dozen spikes that shoot towards Mahito, who splits himself into several pieces to avoid the spikes.
The pieces mold back into Mahito's full form as he shifts his arms into wings and flies into the air. Carnage cackles before forming his own wings and flying after Mahito. The two have a dogfight in the air, Carnage firing tendrils and webs at Mahito while Mahito tosses transfigured dolls at Carnage. Carnage ducks under a bridge of flesh between buildings formed from one of the dolls and swoops down at Mahito, who morphs his wings onto his back before creating two swords from transfigured dolls. Mahito blocks a slash from Carnage, only for his arm to sliced off by a tendril. Carnage goes for another slash, but Mahito turns one of his legs into a horse leg and kicks him away.
Carnage flaps his wings to cease his momentum, but is quickly surprised when a bright light shines on his him, standing out in the dim, cloudy morning. A voice echoes through the streets as a police helicopter flies above Carnage. The officer attempts to speak, but Carnage only notices Mahito flying towards the helicopter, "You slippery little eel!" Carnage growls as he turns to see the pilot and speaker of the helicopter get transfigured into a blob, filling the inside of the vehicle and causing it to spin out of control towards Carnage.
Carnage attempts to dodge, but the helicopter slams into him before crashing into an office building. Mahito runs through the building transfiguring dozens of office workers into monsters and pillars to stall Carnage, who tears through them all with sadistic glee. Mahito watches Carnage rip through the horde of transfigured humans, and then he sees it, "His arm, I changed the shape of his soul, he couldn't have regenerated," Mahito begins to smile as he realises something, "I see, the two souls. Not only does the one remember the shape of the other's soul before I changed it, but they created a better, artificial limb from solid blood!"
Carnage rips the last transfigured human in half before looking up to see Mahito laughing crazily. Mahito grips his head with both hands as his psychotic laughter fills the bloody hallway, "Yes! I see it! The true essence of my soul! Our true meaning! The purpose behind beings like us!" Mahito morphs disgustingly into a huge ball of skin, eyes and mouths, "WE ARE NATURE! NEITHER PREDATOR NOR PREY!" The blob slowly shrinks down until we see Mahito's in his Instant Spirit Body Of Distorted Killing form, "WE ARE THE RUTHLESSNESS OF LIFE ITSELF!" Mahito yells psychotically. Both Mahito and Carnage begin to laugh in a deranged manner.
Mahito launches forward, tackling Carnage out of the building. They both fall through the air, Mahito slams his fist into Carnage's head, over and over, splattering it with each hit. They hit the ground, cracking the street. Mahito goes in for another punch, but is interrupted when Carnage grabs a truck with his tendrils and slams it into him. The truck rolls down the street before Mahito rips it open from the inside. But Mahito has barely any time to react before Carnage tosses another car, and another, and another. Mahito powers through the torrent of thrown vehicles, "This moron is trying to stall out the form. Too bad this doesn't have a time limit!" He thinks. However, as Mahito thinks that the cars stop coming. He looks, and Carnage is gone. "What the?!"
Suddenly, Mahito is ripped from the ground and slammed into a building before being dragged up its surface by Carnage. Mahito's armour begins to chip as he's dragged faster and faster up the skyscraper. Eventually, Carnage jumps off the side of the building, taking Mahito with him before tossing Mahito with all his might towards the grounds. Mahito slams into the ground like a meteor, cratering the area. He gets up, his armour cracked and breaking in some areas. He doesn't have the chance to dodge as Carnage slams into him, cratering the area even more. Mahito attempts to get up, only for Carnage to grab him and toss him into a wall, cracking it.
Mahito look at his hands, his base form, knocked out of his armour. Carnage shoots two blades of solid blood, severing Mahito's arms, "No more slappy magic!" He grabs Mahito by the throat and lifts him up, pinning the curse to the wall. Carnage begins to open his large toothy maw, "Now, what we've been waiting for!" He yells excitedly. However, Mahito opens his own mouth, revealing several tiny arms performing multiple hand signs, "Domain Expansion"
SELF EMBODIMENT OF PERFECTION
The world goes dark around the two. A thousand a hands of a thousand sizes shift around, above and behind them both. Carnage looks around in confusion. Suddenly, the symbiote begins to shift. Mahito yells at Carnage, "If it's you that's the dominant soul, than all I need to do is change your shape to beat you both!" He screams with horrifying joy. The symbiote shrinks, revealing Cletus, who looks around in horror, "And the shape I choose..." The symbiote bubbles around Kasady's chest, "IS THIS!" The symbiote turns into a spear and stabs directly through Cletus' chest. The domain ends as Cletus falls to the floor and attempts to crawl away from Mahito, coughing up blood. Mahito walks over to the crawling, bleeding man. He grabs Cletus by the top of his head. The serial killer screams in pain and terror as his body stretches and goes thinner. His hair falls out at the roots. His eyes shrink into their sockets. Eventually, Cletus is nothing but a fleshy, boney cane, held in Mahito's hand.