Venom/Invincible 1 (Patreon)

Edward “Eddie” Wayne

In retrospect, things could have been worse. My “after”life was really just “Life, Take Two” and in a world with superheroes and supervillains. Though I’m certain that whoever arranged this has a sick sense of humor. I was born into a middle class family, the only child of Jean and Jimmy Wayne, and next door neighbors with the Graysons, Debbie and Nolan with their daughter Margaret.

Now, I don’t remember everything about my first life, but I do remember there being a big pop culture character named Wayne who adopts a kid named Grayson. Here, in my second life, a Wayne ends up being adopted by the Graysons. Oh, did I forget to mention that part? Yeah, when I was thirteen, on a family outing there was a villain attack. I lived, but my parents and ability to walk didn’t.

I don’t know how they managed it, but somehow Margaret and Debbie talked Nolan into pulling some strings with some people he knew and within a month of the attack, I was formally adopted. That was five years ago, give or take a few months, five years of being wheelchair bound, living in the same house as a distant hardass who could tell gravity to go fuck off.

But, like I said, it could have been worse. The last four months have been a bit of a mixed blessing. Not long after I graduated high school, I stumbled across something. What exactly it was, or how it got into a bag of pork rinds, I couldn’t begin to tell you. The effects of it, now that I can tell you about.

My best guess is that it’s some sort of bio-tech biosuit that feeds off certain chemicals and hormones in order to enhance the wearer’s physical capabilities. In practical terms, it lets me turn big, super strong, super agile, with a fang-filled mouth, but most importantly for me, it let me walk.

I can’t begin to explain how having sensation in my legs for the first time in five years felt. I spent the first five minutes with the suit just staring at my feet, wiggling my toes while crying. Yes, I admit it I cried, fuck off. The next several hours were spent engaging in parkour that I didn’t know, yet pulled off seamlessly, just reveling in being able to walk, to climb, to jump, to run.

It was in my emotion and adrenaline fueled haze that I discovered the first major drawback to the suit. I was running over a series of buildings when a burglar alarm went off, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass. A glance down at street level showed several goons wearing ski masks with pistols robbing what looked like a pawn shop. Even in my first life, every kid dreams of being a superhero at some point, so I did what any dumbass who got a taste of power and still on the high of realizing that would do: I jumped off the building and landed in front of some of the crooks, my impact fracturing the concrete sidewalk, and a long, thick tongue sliding from between my fangs.

“What the shit?!” one of the crooks shouted, pointing his pistol at me, but in shaking hands it seemed comical.

“What do we have here?” I asked mockingly, the suit giving my voice a much deeper baritone and sinister sounding reverb. “Looking to make a purchase or sale? No, if you were wanting that…”

My fun with monologing was interrupted by the staccato of gunfire. I felt the impacts of bullets connecting with black, suit-covered flesh, but I’d felt harder impacts in the hallway at high school. Snarling, I leapt at the crooks, grabbing the closest one by the head and throwing him at the next. The two went flying, through the glass door and the shelf along the north wall of the pawn shop.

Turning to the remaining goons, I leapt at them, my arms extended and mouth open in a fierce roar. My hands wrapped around their throats and drove them to the ground, some small part of my brain noting a quiet snapping sound under the roar of gunfire as one of the two remaining crooks pointed… was that an uzi?

Yup, the repeated dakka sounds of automatic gunfire confirmed that it was indeed an uzi. The repeated, concentrated fire wasn’t any more painful than the earlier gunfire, and his ability to deal with the recoil was terrible. Coiling my legs under me, I launched myself at Uzi-Goon like a black-clad, fang-toothed missile.

I crashed into him, my shoulder driving into his gut just under his sternum and making him fold in half with a dull ‘oof’. Turning to face the last one, I didn’t think, still on the rush of adrenaline and joy of moving without a wheelchair. The suit came with its own instincts, and those instincts resulted in me leaning down and biting the last crook’s head clean off.

It was only after I swallowed the head that I realized what I’d done. So I did the only thing I could, something that I hadn’t done in years before that day. I ran. I ran, and ran, and ran. I don’t know how long I ran for, only that by the time I stopped, the sun was beginning to rise, and I’d left the city behind and was on the outskirts of another. I didn’t want to kill people, not in the slightest but… I couldn’t go back, I couldn’t go back to being stuck in a wheelchair, go back to the pressure sores that I couldn’t feel, go back to falling over leaving me stuck on the floor for upwards of an hour as I struggled to get back into my wheelchair. All I could really do, in the end, was try to make the best of the situation I was in. Which meant finding people that the world would be better off without, and limiting my brain-eating to them.

Which is how I found myself in my current situation, in a blank white room surrounded by guys with flamethrowers and an older looking man in a suit with a red tie. Maybe targeting a pair of blue-skinned maniacs as big as myself wasn’t the smartest choice, but at the very least I learned that I need to be careful about high frequency sounds.

“You are a tricky man to pin down, Mr. Wayne,” Red-Tie said, “Name’s Cecil Stedman, I’m the head of the Global Defense Force. You’ve made quite a name for yourself these last four months.”

I didn’t respond immediately, simply looking down at the files that he’d dropped in front of me as he’d arrived. I’d gotten my ass handed to me by the Mauler Twins, and shortly after I got away from them, I was grabbed by the local MIB. Locking gazes with Stedman, I asked, “So what now? Lock me in a hole with the other psychos?”

“Your situation isn't that simple. That suit of yours could be a major asset, and you’ve done a damn good job at keeping it focused and the damage minimal. You got arrogant, going after the Mauler Twins, but even then, most of the property damage was caused by their weapons. For someone with super-strength, you’re unusually perceptive about the potential collateral damage.”

Blinking, I gave him a confused look, “Is this an interrogation or a job interview?”

“It’s both, depending on how you play your cards. The vigilante ‘Venom’ can’t be seen working for the GDA. However, if you agree to a training period, part of which will be determining if your suit can do anything more subtle than Schwartzenegger with fangs, we’re willing to provide everything that you need to be a hero and keep that suit fed.”

“If not, you take the suit and I get thrown into a deep hole?”

“Essentially, yes.”

I sighed, running my hand through my hair, “How long would the training period be?”

“Minimum of six months, the exact length of time will depend on your performance after that. After your ability is deemed satisfactory, you’ll be added to a team to work alongside. Which team depends on a multitude of factors, including who needs your capabilities the most. No promises of anyone or any team.”

“Fair enough,” I muttered as I sighed. There really wasn’t any other option, was there? “I’ll do it.”

[hr][/hr]

As to be expected from the organization that funds the Guardians of the Globe and fuck knows how many other hero-teams, the GDA had the best training facilities around. They also had access to the best, nastiest, and most effective drill sergeants around. The less said about Sergeant Howlett the better.

It took about three months before I figured out the trick to making a more compact version of the suit, one that looked more like the spandex-type outfits associated with superheroes instead of toothy monsters from under the bed. I also figured out how to make clothes out of it, and some pretty slick looking ones too.

But, the hardest part was after the six months were up. See, it was not long after the blue bastards, the Mauler Twins, got locked up by the Guardians of the Globe that the biggest superteam in the country, if not the world, were slaughtered. To top it off, my adopted “father” was in critical condition. So for the first time in nearly a year, I was going to be seeing my best friend and the people who took me in. This was going to be an awkward conversation.

I was teleported into the hospital where Nolan Grayson, known to the majority of the world as the hero Omniman, was being treated just in time to catch part of Cecil’s conversation.

“… a hell of a lot worse than your dad there. We’ll be in touch, in the meantime, I believe you have some catching up to do, Nobody.”

Yeah, Nobody was the hero-name that was chosen for me and my slimmed down suit. It had white eyes and was otherwise entirely black without any discerning features, so it was the best anyone could think of. But of course, my boss just had to throw me under the bus before teleporting out, so with a sigh I walked into the room, my Nobody suit on.

“I’m sorry, do we know you?” Debbie asked, her concern for Nolan pushed aside for the moment. I rubbed at the back of my neck, before biting the bullet and pulling back the suit’s mask.

Both Debbie and Margaret’s eyes shot open in shock and I gave a sheepish smile before saying, “Hey, sorry I haven’t called.”

The two women were stock still for a moment, before I had a chest full of crying teen. Returning the hug, I closed my eyes, forcing back the tears that wanted to fall, and just enjoyed seeing her again after ten months of being separated from her. Debbie, of course, joined the hug, and for a moment, it was almost like I hadn’t left (ignoring the lack of a wheelchair).

Eventually the hug broke, and I let the suit morph into street clothes (cargo pants, tee shirt, and boots, all black). Of course, this was when Margaret decided to let me know how appreciated my disappearing without so much as a “how you do” was.

“I admit, I probably deserve that,” I groaned from the floor, her slap having knocked me off my feet.

“I don’t want to hear it! Where the hell have you been, you bastard?!” Margaret shouted, but I was a little distracted by the fact that she was floating six inches off the ground.

“Um… Margaret, you do realize…” I began, only for her to cut me off.

“Yes, I’m flying. I finally got my powers, you figured out my dad’s Omniman when I was three, why are you refusing to loo…” I cut her off.

“Margaret, when you’re floating like that I can see up your skirt,” I said while firmly looking anywhere but her. The view was very nice, but I respect her too much to enjoy it.

Margaret gave a quiet ‘eep’, her anger at my disappearance thoroughly derailed by her embarrassment, and I got up and sat in one of the chairs. I owed them an explanation, a condensed one that left out my having become a killer. The GDA didn’t want anyone knowing they’d recruited a brain-eating vigilante, so the fact that Nobody and Venom were one and the same was hard classified. Meaning that even if I wanted to, I wasn’t allowed to tell them.

All in all, they took it rather well. Both were happy for me being able to walk again, and Margaret was excited at the prospect of us being heroes together, once she had a better handle on her powers as well as a name and costume. None of the names we’d come up with as kids really seemed appropriate, they were things like Omni-Girl or Princess Omni.

“Honestly,” I told her, “your name should reflect what kind of hero you want to be. Do you want to be someone who inspires, who makes civilians feel safe having an invincible protector? Or do you want to be someone who terrifies the bad guys, a ghost story that they tell around their drug deals?

“The way the suit works is better suited, pun not intended, for intimidating people than inspiring. Under it I could be anybody or nobody, any civilian could secretly be a hero in disguise. Or at least, that’s the idea I was going for.”

I could see Margaret about to say something, the frown on her face telling me she didn’t agree with my reasoning, so I held up a hand, “It’s okay. Much as people need a shining beacon of hope, there also needs to be someone keeping an eye in the shadows.”

“It’s just the way you talk makes it sound like we won’t be working together much,” she pouted, and I shared an amused smile with Debbie. Which kind of hero Margaret was going to be was already a foregone conclusion.

“Not necessarily, but let’s face it, I get pissed off too easily to be an inspiring hero. You’re much better suited to it than I am.”

She snorted softly, her eyes dancing as she thought. Her face brightened as she had a realization, and she looked up to meet my gaze with a smile on her face. Grinning, she said, “I know what my hero name’s going to be. You said it earlier: a protector who won’t be conquered, subdued, or defeated. I am Invincible.”