Chapter 4

Dario Sanchez's car came squealing up the driveway and skidded to a stop partway into his garden. He jumped out of the car and ran into the front entrance slamming and locking the door behind himself.

"Honey what's wrong?" his wife, Larissa, asked.

Dario turned to face his wife; she was a tall muscular, but still curvaceous woman. She had been a Lucha Libra wrestler before she had met Dario and become the hit star of one of his action movies that he produced. She long brown hair and brown eyes being of Latin American decent. She also had a notorious temper and could be incredibly cruel and sadistic, and that was what had drawn Dario to her. He had wanted a woman who could be as cruel and sadistic as he was, and Larissa was possibly even more so. But at this point none of that mattered to Dario.

"Remember that slave girl that got busted out by her uncle and then I had him killed?" Dario asked as he ran from window to window making sure that they were locked.

"Yeah," his wife replied. "What about it? I thought you had her killed."

"Well she would be," Dario said. "But it seems like she's found an ally, and it's not just some cop that believes her. It's Venom. He tried to kill me when I was down at the police station."

"The supposed creature that kills criminals for the helpless people in the ghetto?" Larissa asked sarcastically acting like her husband had gone completely mad.

"He's not a myth," Dario said. "He killed four of my men last night and then went and ripped one of the police officers working for me in half. He's real."

"Then locking the doors and windows won't do a damn thing," Larissa shouted as she started to panic a bit herself.

"You're right," Dario said. "I've got to make a phone call."

Dario quickly ran into his office and began flipping through his Rolodex; finding the number he wanted he picked up the phone and dialled the number.

"Hello?" The male voice on the other end answered.

"It's Dario Sanchez," Dario said. "I've got a problem, and I know you're the guy to help me."

"What kind of problem?" the man asked.

"I seem to have earned the ire of Venom," Dario said. "I need something to protect myself and my wife."

"Well as it happens I may have just acquired the very thing you need to protect yourself," the man replied. "But it will cost you."

"Just name your price," Dario said.

"Come to Wilshire Shed Road, just off of Oak Glen Road in 4 hours. Be ready to transfer five hundred million dollars." The man said. "And bring your wife with you."

"Five hundred million?" Dario asked. "That's steep."

"Believe me, it's worth every penny," the man assured him.

"Fine," Dario agreed. "But if this does not work you will have serious repercussions."

"I guarantee you will be pleased," the man reassured him.

Dario hung up the phone and quickly went back down stairs to find his wife.

"Get in the car," he instructed her. "We're about to go on a little trip?"

"We're running away?" she asked.

"No," Dario replied. "We're just going to get something that will protect us from that insane psychopathic murderer."

"I figured you be back," Eddie Brock said.

Eddie was sitting in the dark in his apartment, staring at the television, which was currently off, not showing anything.

"I can't do this," Kerri said. "I'm not cut out for this, and the symbiote wants to return to you."

She was standing just inside his balcony entrance. The symbiote had retracted leaving Kerri standing there in black pants and a black jacket. Eddie couldn't really see much else since she was silhouetted by the lights outside.

"I didn't ask for it either," Eddie said. "And I'm not taking the symbiote back. My time with it is up, it belongs to you now. Don't worry if you don't know what to do, the symbiote has all my experience; it will guide you."

"Why did you do it? How did you do it?" Kerri asked.

"What do you mean?" Eddie inquired for clarification.

"What is that made you Venom?" Kerri asked. "What is that drove you?"

"The system was corrupt, it still is," Eddie replied. "Somebody had to meet out the deserved punishment when the system only offered a slap on the wrist. Somebody had to protect the innocents from the criminals that preyed upon them, when the corrupt so called law sat by and did nothing. A lot of people may have issues with what I did, but that doesn't matter. I was doing something that needed to be done."

"Are you saying I should follow you example?" Kerri asked.

"I'm not telling you to do anything," Eddie said. "Whatever you want to do is your decision, not mine. But I didn't give you the symbiote just so you could avenge your Uncle's death."

"Oh god, somebody help me!" a woman screamed from outside.

"Here's your chance to make choice," Eddie said.

Kerri took a split second to make up her mind; the symbiote then enveloped her body. She took a last look at Eddie, her massive tooth filled maw twisted into a strange mockery of a grin as she turned and leapt off the balcony into the night.

"Good luck kid," Eddie said after her once again. "You'll need it."

"Please don't hurt me," a woman pleaded.

She had run up to the front door of an apartment in the hopes of getting in and escaping but the door was locked. She now sat on the ground hands raised in front of her face as she tried to keep away from her two attackers. They were both large bearded men. They had long tangled and matted hair and were dressed in old torn jeans and leather jackets. One of them held a piece of copper pipe, the other about 3 feet of rusty chain.

"Well that would take all the fun out of it," the one carrying the pipe said.

"Yeah," his partner agreed.

"You may want to reconsider" a voice behind them said.

Both of them turned around to see Kerri standing behind them in symbiote form.

"What is it?" the chain wielding creep asked.

"I don't know," the pipe wielding one replied. "But it's female. We can rape it after we stomp it into submission."

"So you want to feel womanly caresses?" Kerri asked.

She reached out and grabbed them each around the throat and lifted them into the air.

"Do you like feeling our fingers wrapped around your scabby, hairy throats?" she asked menacingly.

Neither man was able to form much of a reply, so Kerri tossed them out to the sidewalk. They hit the ground roughly and she sprang down towards them.

"We're going to rip out your guts and feed them to you!" Kerri threatened.

Kerri then began ripping the two hairy perverts apart with her vicious clawed hands, completely losing herself in the adrenalin rush.

"What are you doing?" the woman behind her asked in a panic.

Kerri suddenly snapped back into reality. She was holding what she could only guess was a liver in her black clawed hand.

"I, we…" Kerri stammered as she dropped the organ. "We saved you."

"You're a monster!" the woman screamed. "Stay away from me."

As Kerri stood there in a daze the woman ran away constantly looking back over her shoulder at Kerri, afraid that she would be next. Kerri was not about to chase after her, she was trying to figure out what just came over her.

"What possessed me to do this?" Kerri asked aloud as she looked at the carnage that she had created.

"It was you," Kerri said answering her own question. "You made me do this. But this, this isn't. I'm going to see Eddie."

"You're back early," Eddie said as he heard the screen door to the balcony open.

He had finally gotten up off the couch. He'd grabbed a package of instant noodles and was now sitting at his kitchen table slurping them down. A single uncovered light bulb hung over his head providing dim illumination to the entire apartment.

"I can't do this," Kerri said sliding the screen shut behind her. "This thing, this symbiote, it… I killed two men."

"So?" Eddie asked nonchalantly not even looking up at her.

"I ripped out their organs with my bare hands!" Kerri cried, as she stood there in symbiote form except for her face holding out her clawed hands. "I disembowelled them!"

"Did they deserve it?" Eddie asked calmly as he forked a large mouthful of noodles into his mouth.

"Well, they were about to rape a woman," Kerri replied.

"And would you have wanted to kill them even if you didn't have the symbiote?"

"Well, I guess, but I don't see what that has to do with anything," Kerri answered angrily.

"It has everything to do with it," Eddie explained. "The symbiote doesn't make you do anything that you don't really want to do."

"No," Kerri said. "Just no. There's no way that I, that I could do. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!"

"The symbiote feeds off of your base emotions; anger being its favourite. It will try and emphasize your anger, push you to act on it. But in the end everything that happens is your choice." Eddie said.

"So that was me?" Kerri asked. "I wanted to do that? I wanted to rip them to pieces?"

"You'll get used to it," Eddie answered with a shrug as he focused on his noodles once again.

"I'll get used to it? I'll get used to it!" Kerri exclaimed. "That's just great, I'll get used to the fact that I have homicidal tendencies to rip people apart!"

Eddie slurped another clump of noodles. "Yep," he replied simply. "I did."

"How can you make it seem so easy?" Kerri asked angrily.

"I never said it was easy," Eddie replied. "In fact it isn't supposed to be easy. Not liking it is what keeps you human. If you give in you become something else. I don't really know much about psychology so I'm not going to try and give you some kind of scientific explanation, nor am I a philosopher who can give you a philosophic explanation. You've got to find those explanations yourself. But I do know that you can't just give up on this opportunity."

There was a long moment of no conversation between Eddie and Kerri. The only sound was the sound of Eddie as he finished eating his noodles. He stood up and put his bowl in the sink.

"You're right," Kerri said. "I've got to go. Hopefully I'll never have to come here again."

"Well if you do I don't really mind," Eddie said as he turned on the taps.

When he turned around to say good-bye she was already gone, the screen door open. Eddie walked over to the screen door and slid it shut.

"Take care of her," Eddie said softly.

Dario Sanchez and his wife arrived in their Ford GT on the dusty road known as Wilshire Shed Road.

"What are we doing out here?" Larissa asked.

"This guy claims that he can defend us against Venom, and I'm here to see what he has to offer." Dario replied.

At the side of the road a rather non-descript blue '95 Ford Taurus was parked with the four way flashers on. Dario pulled over in front of the car and shut his own down and got out. An average sized man with thinning curly black hair and hazel eyes stepped out of the Ford Taurus. He was wearing a brown suit.

"Alistair Douglas," Dario said. "What have you been up to?"

"Just the usual scheme to make money," Alistair Douglas replied.

"This is my wife Larissa," Dario introduced.

"Pleasure," Alistair said nodding at Larissa get only a slight smile in return. "Anyway shall we just get down to business?"

Dario nodded. Alistair led Dario and Larissa around his car to his trunk. He opened the trunk. Inside were five jars, each with a different coloured liquid in it. Alistair reached in and picked one of the jars up.

"You brought me out here and asked me to pay five hundred million dollars for large jar of colourful goop?" Dario asked angrily.

"This isn't goop," Alistair said.

"Then what is it?" Larissa asked angrily.

"This," Alistair said holding up a jar containing a swirling pink and black liquid, "Is a symbiote. Like one of the symbiotes that gives Venom his power. And they can be yours."

"I want proof that these will work or I'm not going to pay the money." Dario said.

"I'm not a fool," Alistair said. "I'm not about to turn over a potentially lethal weapon before receiving payment. But you have my personal guarantee that if the symbiotes do not work as advertised I will refund every penny."

Dario stood there considering the offer. However his wife quickly made up his mind for him.

"Give me that," she said snatching the jar away from Alistair.

She twisted the large lid off the jar. The symbiote inside immediately leapt out and began to latch onto her, spreading itself all over her body as Dario watched nervously and Alistair in awe. The bonding process did not take long. Once it was finished, a pink creature with swirling bits of black that had once been Larissa stood before them. The creature looked similar to Carnage but with pink tendril like hair.

"Larissa, you in there?" Dario asked.

"Of course I'm in here," Larissa snarled back.

"Why don't you test it out?" Alistair suggested.

Larissa walked around back to the Ford GT and grabbed it by the rear bumper.

"What are you doing?" Dario asked.

"What does it look like?" Larissa snapped back. "I'm checking out how strong this thing made me."

She quickly lifted car up over her head. Dario staggered backwards in disbelief.

"Whoa," he managed to say.

"Now I believe there was the matter of payment," Alistair said.

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Symbiotes, Carnage and anything else that may have appeared in Marvel isn't mine. Also, Ford is not paying me to use their cars (although I wish they were) it's pure coincidence.