Mint and Chocolate

    I felt groggy, looking around after the explosions. The only sound was a harsh ringing that worsened when I moved my head. A bunch of bodies were strewn around. I could tell one of my legs was crushed, my chest uncomfortably pressed into the concrete by my backpack and the person on top of me. 

    Under the rush of adrenaline, I pulled myself out. My right leg looked like pulp below my knee. I had to tear my eyes away, looking at someone convulsing instead. They looked green, and sunken. Something was bubbling from their mouth and plopped onto the ground. 

    It was a black blob, writhing and shrinking a bit. I scooted toward it, some inane urge to help something, anything in this mess if I was left alive. My hands cupped under it, holding it gently to my chest. 

    The scene was only worsening. I saw more explosions in the distance, there was some vague shape flying in the sky dropping glowing orange orbs. When I looked down, the black ooze was seeping into my shirt. 

    “Friend,” A guttural voice boomed in my head and I got chills, shuddering. “I will help friend, but I must harvest first…” With that I passed out again, with a sensation of heating up from the inside ready to vomit.

    On all fours now, I saw my hands digging into carpet from the 90’s I had seen for years now. My fingers were trying to open and close into a fist, some black ooze pulling back from my fingers. The backpack was still on me. My right leg was fully functional again, which I found out upon noticing no pain. 

    “Friend healed,” that voice bellowed. “What now, friend?” I sat back on my haunches, rubbing my face. We were in the entrance to a movie theater. The sunlight was coming from the back wall, which was partially rubble. Somehow though the movie was still playing with no sound. 

    “Who are you,” My voice went out at the end, my lungs hurting. I saw blood further up the hallway where a broken body was draped over a railing. I looked away quickly, feeling something warm in my hand. 

    “Friend,” It sounded concerned. “We can be… Venomette!” 

    “Venomette, huh?” I rubbed my neck. “I guess we can work with that.”

    “You like the name,” They purred. “This pleases us.”

    There was a pier not far from the theater. I felt the black ooze push out of my skin and cover me. It encased me in something tight but breathable. I pulled at where my shirt hem would have been, looking at it. 

    “Am I some sort of fucking Spider-man now?” I hissed, some white design on the front. 

    “Venomette,” They rolled my shoulders, sounding petulant. 

    “Venomito?” I rolled my eyes. “You’re just saying I’m short, but with this suit you’ve got me a few inches higher.” I felt a smile from them, and suddenly we jumped up to the remains of the wall. I felt my heart pounding as my fear of heights crashed into me. They tightened around my chest, making breathing even harder. 

    “Friend is breathing hard, and your blood is pumping too fast, what’s wrong,” They jumped us again, going towards the pier. I felt my eyes squeeze shut, as we teetered on a roof. 

    “Not a fan of heights, my guy,” I wheezed, clutching my chest, squatting. 

    “You don’t have to look,” They said firmly and my senses got overwhelmed for a second before it felt like I was on the ground. Until I opened my eyes and vertigo hit hard as we landed again. 

    “I looked,” I felt bile rising up, before the black swiped over my eyes again.

    “Don’t look love, we have to get to the pier,” They sounded gentle, that tightness around my chest comforting now. “Something is happening down there.”

    “And that means we’re going towards it,” I groaned, trying to focus on the comfort of them enveloping me. This whole situation was beyond my bandwidth right now. I had gone from working all morning in the theater to getting blown up. I made us squat again as I considered whether my coworkers had made it. Most of us were college kids. We’d been talking about Spider-man being Peter Parker, and how a high schooler was more successful than most of us. 

    “We have arrived,” They spoke softly, slowly letting my senses come back. I put a hand to my brow, covering my eyes from this orange sunlight emanating from the center of the broken pier. I used to come here when I was younger, drinking with friends and guessing what all the metal used to be. 

    “Do I want to know what the artificial sun is?” I asked them, out loud. I felt them receding under my clothes. I frowned, squinting at the bright light as a form was starting to take shape. 

    From the middle of this sphere was a man forming, definitely on the taller side. He had the normal four extremities, then four more appendages that, honest to Tony Stark’s ghost, looked like tentacles. The light deposited him in a heap, he was changing before my eyes. 

    Black stretched across his pale chest, fabric forming. His reddish brown hair stained black too, like he was burnt from that artificial sun. Those tentacles were shuddering and moving outward. 

    I sank into the shadows, behind a pillar. I watched as he seemed to turn on, his eyes covered in dark glasses that had materialized. There was a growing unease, from me and my friend, like this man was not from here. 

    “I am an alien,” They murmured. “He seems to be from another planet too.”

    “What?” I said too loudly, and the sunlight born man turned to my voice. Those metal arms started snapping, red lights in the center of their heads. 

    “Who’s there,” His voice was deep, American, just toeing gravelly before he cleared his throat, suddenly swiveling around at his surroundings. 

    I felt that whole body flush, ready to vomit as they pushed over my skin. I tried not to gag, still getting used to the feeling. I willed them to make my form more masculine, hiding my feminine curves. It was a gut reaction, being a woman alone with a violent man made me uncomfortable in a whole worse way. 

    “Where’s my machine?” He sounded broken, rage simmering in his question. Those two bottom tentacles pushed him off the ground, and suddenly his height doubled. 

    We jumped up to a sturdy looking cross beam. I leaned forward, curiously observing him. Parts of him still seemed to be coalescing into this plane. It was wild to watch. He rose higher on those arms, where I could have patted him on the head easily even if I wasn’t currently alien-jacked. 

    “We are friends,” I felt them saying, almost wounded. I patted my chest awkwardly, felt some of the black swell under my head like petting a cat. 

    “We need to find my machine,” This man, octopus guy, or metal spider guy, squid, whatever creature with eight appendages, was talking to the metal arms. He was looking right at the one on his left, holding a hand up to its broad side. 

    “Uh, sir, who are you?” I asked softly, he was under my beam now. He looked around wildly, before one of those arms tried to grab me. I just stood and walked down the beam, relishing the power I felt and how safe it was. Whenever I moved, they kept us ahead. I easily maneuvered out of what we figured was his reach. 

    “Who are you?” He growled, voice suddenly deeper in his chest. I arched an eyebrow at him, he was an interesting guy already. I mean besides appearing from a sun and having metal arms attached to him. I studied sound in school, especially voices. His would be mesmerizing in a recording. 

    I dropped down to the floor, blissfully silent. I was behind him, in a blind spot it seemed. I cocked my head, asking Venomette to pull back into a hoodie. They did as I asked gleefully, they laced between my fingers. I found myself smiling like an idiot. 

“We are Venomette,” I said, voice hesitant but my companion warmed against me. 

He turned sharply, looking down on me from on high, pulling his glasses off with a gloved hand. He looked incredulously at me, dropping to the floor. He was heads taller than me, so he was still looking down at me. Those creepy but incredible metal arms were swaying behind him as he squinted at me. 

“What the hell does that mean?” His two trench coats flapped in the breeze which somehow made him more menacing. I shrugged, keeping my hands in my pockets. 

“I’ll ask again, my eight extremitied friend, who are you?” I tried again, keeping my face mostly hidden. 

“Doctor Ot–” He stopped himself, looking sharply at a tentacle. It snapped at me. 

“Ot?” I repeated, tilting my head back. “That a nickname?”

“NO,” He said forcefully, but it didn’t seem directed at me. When our eyes did meet he almost looked feral, some sort of bubbling crazy there. 

Suddenly the same arm he had been most interested in shot forward and grabbed me. I only panicked half a second before he reeled me towards him, holding me off the ground. My hands left my pockets to hold the tentacle, black ooze licking out from my cuffs. The metal was cold, but warmer in the center. It looked incredibly complex. I poked one of bundles of wires and the arm dropped me as if offended. 

I did not land gracefully as my alien friend was sending my arms up to block the other upper appendage from slamming into me. I moved back a few feet, this tentacle now grabbing me by the forearms and dragging me back in front of him. Only now I was dangling, the hood still stuck up since it was made of alien goo. 

“We are Venomette,” They pouted in my head. 

“Yeah and you’re an alien goo,” I said it out loud, wincing as he reeled me right into his face. Which to me seemed stupid because I could either kick him or wrap my legs around his flesh arms. Though given how big this guy just was I’d struggle. His dark eyes were freakish in this light, an intelligence there I really wanted to know more about. How did such a person get metal arms, for example. 

“Alien goo?” He was trying to look in my hood, the top tentacle not holding me extending these smaller gaspers to touch the hood to try and pull it back. I encouraged Venomette, ET for short I decided, to let it fall. The less this bloke needed to question me was better. 

“You’re a child,” He said in wonder and I furrowed my brows. 

“Who the hell do you think would hang around an abandoned pier?” I snapped, arms going numb. “So again, who in the name of all the Avengers are you supposed to be?”

“What’s an Avenger?” He shot back, venomous. 

“My guy,” I felt ET swell under my clothes, indignant to him not answering me. “You are really starting to annoy us, and well to quote one, you won’t like us when I’m angry.” 

“You are a confusing one,” He sounded soft for a moment, before his eyebrows made a sharp V again. “Tell me, where is my machine?”

“Not liking you not answering us, champ,” I took that moment to let ET push off his shoulders with my feet and get out of the metal claws. We landed a few feet away, drawing our arms over our chest as we frowned right back at him. 

“How did you do that?” He sounded genuinely curious, looking me up and down. 

“Irrelevant,” I waved a hand dismissively. “Tell us who you are, please.”

“Doctor Otto Octavius,” He only paused to clench and unclench his hands. “Is Venomette your real name?” He somehow looked sheepish now, his moods ricocheting making me dizzy. 

“Ah, no,” I said honestly. “It’s a nickname, but everyone important calls us that.” 

He nodded, everything about him seemed calculated. His measured movements were in stark contrast to the rapid ones of these tentacles. I cocked my head, and his eyes shot to mine at the movement. I think deep down he was recognizing he wasn’t from here. Or maybe it was something deeper than I thought. 

“Why are you at this pier?” He sounded distant, one of the upper metal arms turned towards the ravaged back wall. It stretched over to an electrical box there, tearing it open. 

“I could ask you the same thing,” I offered, judging how far away I’d gotten, if we were out of range. “I mean you seem like a normal guy, save the whole tentacle friends. Unless you’re a vigilante or something. New York has a lot of those… you don’t seem like a magic guy. Did you know Tony Stark? Ironman?”

His eyes just narrowed the more I rambled on. That tentacle in the background was messing with something, sparks erupting. Suddenly Octavious straightened, that other top tentacle shooting towards me. I warned ET to let it grab us, lest we start a real fight with him.

“Where is Spider-man?” His voice was dark, menacing, eyes bright with rage. 

“He’s just a kid,” I grabbed the metal arm not gently this time. “He’s already dealing with enough!”

“You know him,” Octavius sounded surprised. “Is he a friend of yours?”

“Everybody knows him! Mysterio made sure of it,” I felt ET stretching over me, climbing up the back of my skull. “Since every news organization tracks him now, especially the Bugle, I’m sure you can answer your own question.”

“We tire of your games!” He roared, and I felt my face contort in confusion. I used we because of ET, but him using it was sending chills down my spine. It concerned me immensely what was going on in his noggin. 

“He means to harm us now,” ET said tightly, enveloping me. Octavius dropped me, staring as we became Venomette. He rose up again, both upper arms poised. 

“What is this, where did your suit come from,” He pushed the glasses back on, blades coming out of the heads of the upper tentacles. I frowned deeply, which I realized he couldn’t see. 

“I’m, well, we, also tire of your games, half metal arm man,” I folded my arms over my chest, feeling ET getting ready to pounce. My use of we caught his attention and his face went slack again. 

“Do you also hear voices?” If I wasn’t currently swathed in ET I don’t think I would have heard his whisper. I dropped my arms, tilting my head again. His human head hung down to his chest, his body seemingly limp. 

Then a blade shot straight into my chest. I looked at it in horror, expecting to collapse and die. After the rest of today I would not be surprised. 

“He can not kill us,” ET sounded furious, my clammy hands on the tentacle holding it in place. Octavius was looking up again. But the intelligence I had seen there was gone, replaced with some wickedness. It took me too long to realize ET was swelling around me. 

“Octavius,” I sounded monstrous, ET thrumming against and inside me. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you have to calm down, I don’t want you to hurt Spider-man either but man, I do hear voices, a voice.” 

“What?” He was back again, only a flash before another blade went into the other side of my chest. I felt the tentacles pulling at me, but I just pulled back, hearing them grind. 

“I said I hear a voice too!” I shouted, a brief thought and ET grudgingly slid back from half of my face. “Think, Otto, can you think for a moment? I don’t want to hurt you, if anything I want to just talk. But if you keep attacking me, ET is gonna eat you–”

“Nuclear physicist brains are delicious,” ET volunteered. “Like lemon candies.” 

“Like a lemon candy!” I finished with more gusto than I’d meant. He looked alarmed, those thick brows contorting on his forehead. The top two tentacles ceased their attempt at pulling me. I didn’t let go. 

“What the hell are you?” He sounded bitter, retracting the blades. “Some moon god sent to thwart me?”

“Uh, no,” I released the tentacles which slithered back, angrily snapping. One bent down to Octavius, and they seemed to be communicating as a wicked grin spread across his features. ET slashed over my exposed face again. 

“Octopus,” ET spoke with my mouth, which wasn’t as weird as I imagined. “Going to the Spider? We will find you again, but be wary of their web.” 

Octavius shuddered at the words, a look of disgust crinkling his features. Then he shot off, in the direction of a traffic laden New York. I heard the concrete which met his metal arms crumbling. 

We sank down to our knees, ET pulling under my clothes. I looked at my hands just meditating. Guy was definitely a supervillian. And I’d just avoided fighting him. Because that was a possibility now for us, I guess. Fighting supervillians.