Random art
Dante cut through the mall with his phone out, browsing the news and watching clips with a concerned expression. Most of it was speculation and hoax, but one clip stood out to him.
The footage showed Captain George Stacy being thrown into the wall. The man had the courage to shoot a six foot five symbiote monster. Stupid courage but courage nevertheless.
The comments section was already filled with speculation. 'Spinal injury for sure.' 'That man's never walking again.' 'Prayers for Captain Stacy.' 'Where's Skullfire?'
Apart from a small fanbase asking for him, there were negative comments. He wasn't in the mood to read those. George's injury was serious. An injury that even if George recovered from, would leave him in a wheelchair for life.
'Is this Gwen's Canon Event?'
In the comics and movies, every Spider-Totem lost someone. Uncle Ben. Gwen Stacy. Aunt May. Uncle Aaron. The list went on. The concept of development through grief and loss was baked into the very concept of being Spider-Man or Spider-Woman.
Norman being a unique symbiote as Gwen's defining villain would fit the story style. Still, he didn't know if the law of canon events applied in this universe or not. If it did, saving George might collapse this universe. It could potentially doom billions of lives and brand him as an "Anomaly" in the eyes of whatever Spider-Society might exist in this multiverse.
Was his relationship with Gwen deep enough to take such a risk?
The answer was quite obvious: No, absolutely not.
He had quite literally blackmailed her into helping him. Even now, they were barely acquaintances, connected only by mutual self-interest and the shared goal of stopping the symbiotes.
But did that mean he should just watch her suffer when he could work out a solution or potential loophole to save George Stacy? Gwen had already lost her mother. Watching her lose her father too, knowing he could have intervened won't be a great feeling.
He wasn't that heartless.
Gwen had rolled out of her bed at midnight at his call. The least he could do was bail her out once as she got used to her new career.
'Spider-totems and their tragedies.'
He decided to consult Death after ending the Roosevelt Island crisis. She would know if canon events were real or not.
Outside the mall, he saw Natasha standing arms crossed, with a no-nonsense look on her face. SHIELD must have called her to solve the matters on the Island. Now, she needed his help getting there as soon as possible.
He would get her there, of course, but not for free. Nothing in this world came without a price. Free favors bred imbalanced relationships.
"Natasha."
She turned to face him. One eyebrow rose above her sunglasses. "You look better without the skull mask."
Her compliment came without any warmth, like it was just a clinical assessment.
"Rich coming from my skullmate," he replied with a slight smile. "What's the emergency? Roosevelt Island?"
"Yeah." Natasha's gaze flicked to Laura, who stood close to Dante's side, then back to him. Her lips parted and closed without a word as though she hesitated to say her next words. "Swing your wand, do your magic—whatever. Get me there."
He frowned. "How'd you know I'm a sorcerer?"
She pursed her lips. "I know everything."
A bluff if he had ever seen one. In the movie, she, in fact, admitted she pretended to know everything. Even SHIELD had no idea what sorcerers were at this point. Maybe they did in this timeline.
Still, he appreciated the attempt to fool him. Confidence was also a skill—an important one in her field.
"I can take you," Dante said, already turning toward the side street he'd noticed on his way into the mall, away from the crowd. "But there are some caveats to my ability."
He began walking toward the quiet alley. On the way, he gave her the usual warnings about the disorienting journey and emphasized on following the flow with him, not fighting the pull.
"It's gonna be a bit… disturbing. You might throw up when we arrive," he said, watching Natasha's face for any sign of hesitation. There was none. "Nothing big for you, though. You've experienced worse."
The Red Room had probably put her through psychological conditioning to make her resistant to pain.
Natasha didn't say anything.
They reached the narrow alley between the closed boutique and a parking garage.
"Stick to me no matter what you experience."
Natasha pressed her lips tightly together in a look of disapproval. "I can follow orders. I'm not an idiot."
"One more thing." He kept his voice casual, but his eyes stayed locked on hers. "You helped me with Norman. I got you intel on Clint in exchange. Now, you'll owe me one."
A favor from Natasha Romanoff had many uses, most important of which was having access to SHIELD's information database. Well, until he started a tech expert's Resonance Link and could just hack the database himself. That would take time, and right now, favors were faster.
"People are suffering there," she said in a flat voice. "And you're haggling. Don't you have a—"
"Conscience?" Dante cut her off with a shrug. "Nope."
He did have a conscience. In fact, he was feeling anxious about Gwen, but now was the time to set boundaries. Letting Natasha think he was purely transactional had advantages. Better she saw him as a mercenary than as someone with exploitable emotional weaknesses.
If Natasha refused his terms, he would still take her. She was quite literally free muscle.
Natasha exhaled slowly, her breath misting in the cold air. "I guess you deserve some compensation."
He nodded with a smile. "I'll take that as a promise."
"I'm coming," Laura said and grabbed onto his arm, refusing to be let behind. "My claws can cut down those aliens."
"I wasn't going to leave you," Dante said gently. "You're part of the group."
Laura's grip on his arm loosened slightly, though she didn't let go. He had to applaud her adaptability to stick with him after realizing that she would be in deep trouble without him.
He stretched out his hand toward Natasha. "Hurry up."
She stared at his hand for a moment, then reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a black winter glove. She pulled it on slowly before accepting his hand.
Dante gave her a blank stare. She was acting like he had some viral infection.
So he did what any reasonable person would do when faced with someone being difficult—he yanked her forward hard, pulled her off-balance, and pressed her close against his chest.
The slight twist in Natasha's left feet showed her readiness to engage in combat. She would've started a fight if not for the current circumstances.
"Hey!" Natasha's startled voice was muffled against his jacket. "Testing if a Widow bites?"
"I'm doing it for you," he agreed cheerfully, wrapping his free arm around her waist to keep her pinned in place. Personal space be damned. He wasn't about to have her drift away mid-transition because she stood an inch farther than his arm's reach.
She glared up at him through her sunglasses, annoyed, but she didn't pull away. "Start."
'Null, connect to Elixir's link.'
He would need it to soothe the after-effects anyway. Now, being in physical contact with them, he could feel Laura's elevated heart rate. Natasha's vitals weren't any different. Both of them were experiencing anticipation and anxiety for what would happen during the teleportation.
He tightened his grip on Laura's shoulder to keep her close, closed his eyes, and envisioned his destination.
Then he pushed.
The alley disappeared, and gravity stopped working. They were tossed through darkness, only illuminated by colorful nebulas.
Laura made a strangled sound against his arm. Her fingers dug deep into the jacket. For a moment he feared she might bring her claws and accidentally stab him straight through the bicep.
Thankfully, she held back.
Clinging to him like he was her last straw, she pressed her face against his shoulder.
Natasha, by contrast, had her eyes open as she stared around with fascination. Her mouth was slightly parted, not in fear but in awe, like a child seeing snow for the first time.
Unfortunately for Natasha, her wonderful experience ended as soon as it started.
The world reformed around them. They felt the sharp wind before they saw the grey concrete surrounding them.
Dante felt solid ground underneath and immediately adjusted his balance. They were standing just two steps from a hundred-story drop to the street below.
'Too close.'
A few feet to the left and they would have materialized in empty air. That would've been... awkward.
"Why am I glowing like a Christmas tree?"
Dante turned to Laura's question. "Oops."
He redirected the abundance of mystical energy from Laura and slowly released it back into the environment.
Meanwhile, Natasha pulled back from him immediately to put distance between them again. She didn't show any of the visceral reactions most people would from the violent shift between astral and physical states. There wasn't any sign of mystical energy overflow either.
She glanced behind them and down at the city spread below them then gave him a look of awe. "Empire State Building."
"Yup."
Dante could see their destination from here. Only a few miles to the bridge leading to Roosevelt Island. This was the closest he could've brought them since he had seen this building quite a few times from his apartment.
For safety, he should've taken shorter hops instead of coming here directly. But he wasn't familiar enough with the terrain between Massachusetts and Manhattan. It all worked out well—
Laura made a grunt with a pale face and covered her mouth with one hand.
The nausea finally hit her along with that horrible sensation of being turned inside-out by having her physical and astral forms yanked apart and slammed back together.
Dante firmly held her shoulder. "Stay still."
The golden glow flickered across his skin as he adjusted her condition.
Laura's hand fell away from her mouth, and color returned to her cheeks. She turned away and started coughing.
Natasha walked from behind him and patted Laura's back. "Better?"
"Hmm." Laura nodded and put a cloth over her mouth. "Thought I'd be immune."
"It's not about the body, kid. It's the spirit," Natasha clarified then looked at Dante. "Your skin glowed golden. Another magic?"
Dante shifted his attention to the island. Blue and red lights pulsed at the bridge's entrance where the NYPD had set up their barricade.
"Is it the right time for that question?"
Natasha's expression became serious. "Right. The hero rulebook—fun is canceled in an ongoing crisis."
"Didn't mean it like that."
"Forget it," Natasha said, moving to stand beside him at the edge. The wind up here was vicious, tearing at their clothes, but she stood steady. "Jump or teleport?"
Dante could see the bridge from here, so technically, teleportation could be used to cover the distance.
"No." Laura's growl killed that idea immediately. "Not again."
"The old-fashioned way, it is." Natasha pulled off her sunglasses and let them drop. The winter beanie came next, then the dark red wig of short hair—both tossed aside carelessly to be snatched away by the wind. She tugged the pin from her real hair and shook out the red curls, letting them whip and settle around her face.
Her mouth curved with a provocative smirk. "See you down there, champ."
She casually took a step forward and fell. Her jacket and red hair whipped around in the wind. Just as she reached halfway down, red-orange flames engulfed her. Her heavy jacket and casual wear turned to ash within her flames.
A black leather bodysuit emerged from the flames, the same one she had used to fight Psylocke in. And her chain was coiled around her waist. It unwrapped as she fell, becoming engulfed in Hellfire.
Her face ignited last, leaving only a skull wreathed in red-orange flames where Natasha Romanoff had been.
'She came prepared for a meeting.'
He hadn't noticed the thick chains under her thick clothes.
Ghost Rider fell down on Manhattan street like a burning angel of vengeance, with the force of a meteor strike.
BOOM.
The impact left a deep crater in the middle of the busy road. Cars around nearby rocked on their suspensions. She made one hell of a first impression on the world.
And from the center of that crater, covered in flames, Ghost Rider looked up at him. Even from a hundred stories above, he felt the intention in her flaming gaze.
She was waiting for him.
"Show-off," Laura whispered. "We taking the stairs?"
He nudged Laura. "Get on."
"Don't treat me like a kid," she grumbled, but still jumped onto his back and locked an arm around his neck.
Her weight was negligible for him. Well, her grip slightly restricted his breathing in this form.
"Hold tight."
From the near-top of the Empire State Building, he took a leap of faith.
Wind shrieked past his ears. Laura's arms locked around his throat, her face buried against his shoulder, her small body pressed tight to his back.
His sunglasses flew off his face, torn away by the wind. Laura's winter cap followed a second later and drifted away like a bird.
The street approached at a terrifying speed. A hundred stories. Ninety. Eighty.
"Venom."
The symbiote had been content to rest after being pushed to its limits earlier. Now, it stirred to life again—tendrils erupted from under his skin and hardened across his body in the familiar sturdy suit.
The transformation finished in a near instant.
He hit the ground a few feet from Natasha's crater. The symbiote absorbed the kinetic energy and dispersed it through his muscles, leaving him crouched on one knee with his clawed fist pressed against the cracked ground.
Laura tumbled off his back. A trail of blood trickled down her lips. Some internal injury, which would heal quickly.
"Let me." Venom's consciousness connected to his. "Let me show them what we are."
This time, Dante didn't resist.
'Fine. Why not?'
He rose slowly and tilted his head back.
"HRRAAAGH-HAAAA!"
The sound was guttural and monstrous, multiple voices screaming as one. It echoed off the buildings and rattled windows in their frames.
The roar faded, and he lowered his head. Venom's connection had spiked his adrenaline, making his heart race with aggression. After all, what he had just issued was a declaration and a challenge: We are here. We are the apex predator. We are the Alpha.
Honestly, it was fun. Screaming and letting the primal part of his brain take over for once was deeply satisfying.
Faint shrieks came from the distance—the symbiotes on the island responded with their own challenging roars.
"My fragments," Venom said. "WE MUST RECLAIM."
"We will, don't worry."
He pacified the eager Venom and noticed the street around them had gone silent—uncharacteristic for a traffic-heavy road on a weekday.
People who had been walking their dogs, coming home from late shifts, students returning home, parents, couples, children—they had all frozen in place, staring at the two monsters that had just fallen from the sky.
For a few seconds, there was nothing but shocked silence and raw fear.
Then someone shouted: "It's Skullfire!"
The name passed through the crowd like a wave. They began to recognize him.
"Holy shit, it's actually my GOAT!"
"The guy from Cap Stacy's video! Oh my god, it's him!"
"I remember him. He killed those alien monsters!"
"Who the heck is that woman though?!"
The people who had been frozen in terror started moving again. Instead of running away, they pushed through the vehicles and surrounded them, maintaining a few feet.
Dante stared at the crowd. He had expected screaming and panic before people fled. This reaction was completely unexpected. Even the fearless Laura stepped in closer to use him as a shield.
"Two of them!" A woman shrieked with her hand on her mouth. "Oh my god, are they together?"
"Somebody film this!"
"SKULLFIRE'S BRIDE!" A teenager's voice cut through the crowd, cheerful and excited, like he'd just spotted his favorite celebrity. "Yo, that's Skullfire's bride! That's how demons work, right?!"
It took him everything to not burst into laughter. As a guy, he had zero issues about being shipped with a woman as hot as Natasha.
But Natasha…
Her flaming skull turned slowly to stare at him. Even without features, he could feel the intensity of her glare. The flames around her head burned hotter. Her exciting debut had completely shifted gears with his presence.
"Bride…" She whispered then turned to the crowd. "I am not his anything. We have no relationship."
A woman in the crowd waved her phone at them excitedly. "You guys need to get to Roosevelt Island! There are monsters there! They're hurting people!"
"Yeah!" An elderly man pushed forward. "You beat those things before, right? Please, you have to help them!"
"My aunt lives on that island," another voice called out. "Please!"
The crowd was pressing in now with pleading. Looking at him—them—like they were the answer. The two monsters falling from the sky was somehow the miracle they needed.
***
You can read 20 more chapters on my Patreon!
Patreon.com/Lordheaven