Dree's arrival

[heartof_thezone]

Characters: Dree Brooks-Donovan (and a figment of her imagination, to keep her company on the ride)
Rating: PG
Time Period: Modern Day
Location: Helicopter and the drop-off area, castle grounds
Relative Date: sometime after the party, one week after El'Ari's arrival
Status: Finished

Comments

[eddie_plus_1]

Lou's elbow came down like a proverbial hammer against Eddie's shoulder. A telling blow that could crush bone and maul concrete. But it didn't strike bare flesh. The blond brawler had the advantage of wearing clothes made of a living symbiote of alien origin, a thinking, feeling, sentient being. The symbiote responded to the incoming assault, thickening and darkening to its sludgy native black, diffusing a great deal of the would-be lethal trauma into nothing more than a winding blow. It gave Lou the time he needed to thrust Eddie back and away. And thrust he did!

The offending newcomer sailed backwards through the air passed Dree to land skidding in the grass, bouncing and turning as he did. Tucking long, powerful legs over his chest after the first impact, Eddie put both hands down, the other springing about his hands in vivid and oily black as the both of them slid another meter, kicking up grass and ground with equal measure until they finally stopped, squared on all fours like an offensive lineman. Eddie's features split into a dangerous grin.

"You're strong, we'll give you that!" he congratulated Lou, "stronger then you have any right to be. But we've seen your true colours, and your menace is not welcome here. A lucky punch is all you get," he went on, his heavy lug boots darkening to an oily black, stretching, creeping, climbing. His clothes all seemed to be undertaking the same transformation and where there were no clothes, the oily substance seemed to pour from his skin. "But where you once faced Eddie Brock, mild mannered former-reporter and star-crossed guardian of the wayward, you now face a lethal protector..." he growled, voice distorted, taking on a sense of vicious stereo as if the man were speaking, but also something else. Across his oily black chest, a white emblem spread, the same one that sat on the back of what was his tee shirt, a white spider with spindly legs. The oily substance crept up his neck, consuming his head, replacing his face with a snarly visage, all pointy gnashing teeth and lolling tongue slavering its viscious green saliva. Where a man's eyes should have been there where vast white planes, vivid and expressionless. "you now face VENOM!!!!" he snarled. All told, he was probably a food larger, his frame enveloped in an oily black costume that threatened to deny the definition of solid and liquid in a single breath.

"We will see you put down like the vicious dog that you are, no longer free to roam these grounds and torment the new arrivals! We knew it was but a matter of time before the predators arrived, but now, you are our prey!!" he snarled, lunging forward. But Venom wasn't just charging into the fray, no. Instead he thrust forward his empty right hand, palm up and fingers out, and from the white square path atop his hand, a line of what appeared to be high-tensile strength spider-webbing sprayed forth, ensnaring the hilt of the makeshift sword. Tearing back that arm and swinging it, Eddie brought the blade cleaving across towards Lou's waist. Ideally it would cut the brigand in half. If it didn't, Eddie would be on him moments after the blade, leading with his left to employ the pivotal momentum of swinging the sword ala web-line.

[major_bummer]

Lou watched with mounting alarm and confusion as the screaming stranger transformed into... Whatever the hell he was and then yanked the makeshift sword out of the woman's grasp. He had seen a lot of insane things in the past few years, but nothing quite measured up to the alien wrongness of what was happening before his very eyes. He was rendered speechless and flatfooted as the pitch-black grinning monster lunged at him, swinging his own weapon at him like something out of a nightmare.

As the blade made contact with his midsection, he couldn't contain a scream of pain as he felt something rupturing inside of him. Something important. The helicopter blade bent and twisted aside with the impact as well, but that was small comfort indeed.

He looked at the woman he'd come here to warn of the dangers of this place before he'd become a part of an object lesson on those dangers. The black monster calling itself 'Venom' was flailing around awfully close to her, and as worried as he was about his own survival all of the sudden, he did spare a thought to the very real possibility that she might get squashed or cut in half if this fight kept too close to her. He was about to try to warn her away when Venom was on him with a brutal left hook to his face, spraying blood on the ground behind him as his head whipped around with the impact. He staggerd backwards, clutching painfully at his abdomen before regaining his balance. There was just about only one thing he could think of to keep the lady out of harm's way. With his free hand out in front of him like a linebacker, he charged at Venom, his back to the woman, hoping to take the fight away from her immediate vicinity. With each step, though, he could feel things moving around in his guts in a way he knew they weren't supposed to. He was in some pretty serious trouble here.

[eddie_plus_1]

"Yesss, good!!" Venom snarled in his rasping two-tone stereo. Normally They would not want to get into such an immediate grapple with someone like Lou. Anyone who wasn't cleft in half by a deadly swing like that was a viable threat worth their salt. "You're still in one piece, we are impressed!!"

Still Venom wanted to take this brawl as far away from the innocent as possible. A hulking brute like this, enraged and unstable could do all sorts of damage to her frail and irreparable body!

They let him stiff arm them backwards, to a point. Where Lou thrust his hand forward and charged, he came into contact with the Symbiote itself, its oily black slickness glistening and cool like touching a melted orca on the forehead. It rippled and yielded under his touch, proving deeper than it appeared. Lou did not find Eddie beneath it, just its slippery enveloping embrace.

When they had made a half dozen meters of ground from where the altercation had begun, it was time to act. Lou's powerful arm temporarily trapped, Eddie caught him by the shirt with one hand and the blade still caught in his side with the other. If a slavering beast with a mouth that was all knife-like teeth and slavering green slime could grin, Venom would have. And he did. It was a sudden indicator that this was about to go badly for Lou as Eddie suddenly dropped his weight back, rolling onto the ground where he promptly adhered to it like an impossibly spider, using the leverage of Lou's momentum and outstretched center of gravity against him Eddie heaved, putting a leg into hopefully tossing him ass over teakettle further away from Dree. "But you are no match for us. We will tear out your spine and dress you with it as a mantle of office for your crimes! This castle is now our home, and we are its sworn defender!"

Priority one was keeping themselves between the giant psychopath and the hulking brute who would just as soon cut her in half and probably eat her brains (which they both agreed they were now 110% firmly against) given half the chance. He smelled of alcohol and that always promised domestic violence. Well, they would gladly return upon him ten-fold his ill-intentions

[heartof_thezone]

Dree watched the two men with a mix of panic and fear. The one who started the attack - if you could call it that - was now acting almost like her own bodyguard. And the one who was yelling about actually protecting her had gone and transformed into... something.

Every single voice inside her head - and, in nearly five hundred years, she had a few - was telling her to run and run fast. But, this was Dree. Ever the mediator, she was determined to not the let them kill each other.

"Why aren't you working?" she asked quietly, staring at her hands. Normally, her powers manifested when she was threatened. 'No,' a voice reminded her, 'it was always when family was threatened. These men are not family.'

Dree glanced around, but there was no one to be seen. She still had no idea where she was and, judging by the bits of the conversation she'd managed to pick up, wherever she was was the last place she wanted to be.

So why the hell was El here?

A grunt and a screech snapped her back and Dree jumped as the new arrival mentioned wearing a spine. Realizing that she was about to do something incredibly stupid, Dree charged the men, with the intention of getting between them.

It was clear that the first man wasn't entirely in control of his faculties, but she didn't want to see him hurt. Enough people had been hurt because of her. And, while she didn't know the situations of either of the men, aside from the fact it looked like both of them could hold out in a fight, Dree knew that she'd come back after death.

'Please, Ozma, help me stop this,' her mind screamed as she popped up in front of her black-clad defender, hand raised. "Stop! Please..."

(Rampage! Feel free to knock her or whatever you need to do)

[major_bummer]

Lou staggered to his feet, painfully, dizzy, disoriented and deeply afraid. He reached down, grasping the broken length of blade stuck in his gut and gasped in agony as he tried to pull it out of his torso. He was rewarded with a gush of blood and a terrible chill as he worked it free, and he coughed up a gout of blood as he nearly doubled over in pain. As he looked up, seeing only through one eye as the other had swollen shut from the bruising the right side of his face had taken, he saw the woman he'd come here to warn was standing between him and this Venom thing.

"Lady..." he gasped, propping himself up on the bit of broken blade like a cane, "gotta get outta here. Get help. Gonna kill us both," he mumbled. His jaw creaked painfully with each word.

He stepped forwards, painfully, clutching his wounded gut with one hand, blood seeping at an alarming rate between his fingers as he hefted the remains of the blade with the other. He shouldered past her, clumsily bumping into her with his elbow as he tried to put himself between her and the black nightmare in front of him.

[heartof_thezone]

As he bumped her, Dree had to plant her feet to keep from falling over. "Please, stop moving. You're hurt and I can help you!" she told him, not entirely sure she could. Stress, in most cases, made her magic unstable and, while she couldn't heal him completely, she could at least get his system on the road to recovery.

Maybe.

Diving between them again, Dree looked up at the two hulky men and took a deep breath. "Please, just stop. I am sorry for whatever it was I said or did that offended you," she said to Lou. Turning to the still-black-clad man, she looked at him and tried to think of every way she could tell him to stop his own attack.

"Please, don't hurt each other any more. Not because of me. I've already screwed up enough lives and I'm begging you both to stop. If this is some long-standing beef you two have, fine, but can you just call a truce for one day?"

Holding a hand out toward Eddie, she slowly stepped toward Lou and leaned to look at his injury. "You probably shouldn't have pulled that out," she offered, with a calm shrug.

[eddie_plus_1]

"Do not fear for us!" Venom soothed, stalking forward upon his prey until the woman's small hand was but the tiniest of imprints upon his powerful black chest. It didn't even come close to filling the body of the white spider-design but Eddie stopped against it, up close and nearly personal with Lou. Really, both of them had long muscular arms, they could probably both swing at one another from such a distance. But They would never chance hitting the innocent. They were there to protect her. "He is not hurting us. You don't have to be afraid ever again. We will protect you from his cruelty."

Although Venom would never ever be said to be the sort who would man-handle a woman, let alone an innocent, like a good guardian he understood when it was simply time to take the children clear of the fire. Very carefully, Eddie reached out and picked Dree up, pivoting to put her down off-side of her attack. They had seen this sort of thing before. Where the captive pitied their captor in the moment of justice. She would be grateful later of course. And that's the point where thin tenebrous tendrils of symbiote darted forth, like squiggling lines of living ink more precise than fingers and more powerful most human limbs, eager to encircle Lou by the arms, the waist, the shoulders, and hefted him up off the ground.

"We cannot spare you though your victim pleads with us, because we see your true colours. One monster to another!" Venom snarled, nodding sagely. His long, slathering impossible tongue lolled about, licking Lou's sweaty, dusty, bloody brow. Then the creature grinned its strange and unsettling grin (unsettling because it always appeared to be grinning viciously, but now it looked smug) and continued "But you have shown your true colours! Any man who would cut down and innocent in a drunken rage does not deserve to live. Do you have last words before we choke you with your own tongue?" Eddie drew him closer, reaching out to envelope his face on either side with his taloned hands. Venom seemed to make a whispered snarling noise when he wasn't talking.

[major_bummer]

Lou could barely follow the monster's rambling, inhuman diatribe. Why did these alien fuckers always have to go on and on like this? Especially right now, when he was really in no state to take in half of it. The last part, though, he was able to follow, as un-fucking-believable as it sounded.

He coughed up some more blood and spat it out onto the snow at his feet, a long strand of bloody phlegm hanging from his lip as he stared furiously at the monster. "Only one cuttin' down innocents here is you, freakshow," he grated. "I was just standin' here, leanin' on my sword thing an' tryin' to warn her about all the monsters 'n' lunatics around here when you blindsided me. Guess you showed her what I was tryin't'talk about pretty good, though, huh?" He hefted the broken blade in one hand as best he could and prepared for he lunatic to make his lunge. He wasn't sure it would do much good at this point, but damned if he wasn't going down fighting.

[eddie_plus_1]

"You can't fool us..." Venom snarled, but his voice was softening, the stereo fading as the visage of horror peeled back (no more pleasant in the parting as it had been in the wearing) to reveal Eddie's gentle blue eyes, bristly cheeks, his tangle of unkempt blond hair. "We saw you waving your weapon around, threatening her! We saw you!" he insisted, although he sounded far less certain now than he had moments earlier.

His grip around Lou's face tightened, but he didn't make any move or effort to actually lay more harm upon him. "We're not the villain, you are! We're the protector. Blood loss is making you crazy." Isn't it? "You mean to say you weren't attacking her?"

Eddie threw him down into the snow, turning to regard the woman instead. "We're very sorry to trouble you, miss. But this man was attacking you, wasn't he? We saw your fear from upon the parapet." He explained. Eddie's expression was kind, genteel, like a police officer regretfully troubling a bystander for their account.

[heartof_thezone]

Dree didn't think her brow could tighten any more as she watched the fight go from smackdown to manhandling. Inside, she could feel the tingle of the magic waking up, though it was like hearing tires squeal, far in the distance. She was looking at Lou's reddening shirt and didn't realize that Eddie was talking to her, let alone that he'd changed back.

"Huh?" she asked, blinking and looking up at Eddie. "I, um.. I-I.. I'm not actually s-sure," she stuttered. She had no real proof that he was charging to attack her, regardless of his speed or the ugly blade. Giving a look to Lou, she searched his face for any sign of an answer.

"I think, um.. maybe- probably... just a misunderstanding." She nodded and took a deep breath. "I do know one thing, though," she said, moving slowly toward the both of them. "He needs to see a doctor. Now." Dree's right hand clenched slightly, trying to hide the slight shake. The magic wanted to heal him, but Dree didn't trust herself to keep from hurting him further.

[eddie_plus_1]

"Oh..." Eddie said at length. "We stick by our decision. You are clearly an innocent in need of our protection. We have seen his sort of behavior before, from womanizers and scum who would just as soon take life as spare it. We think he needs to see the end of this mortal coil, but if you ask us to spare him, we will respect your wishes." Eddie wasn't particularly pleased with the idea of sparring this slouch, but he was willing to entertain the idea that they'd been mistaken. It was a painful concept because if that were true, they'd brutalized a man undeserving of their wrath.

"We may know a doctor..." he hesitated.

[heartof_thezone]

Dree placed a hand on Eddie's arm and nodded to him. "Thank you... for your assistance." Glancing slightly toward Lou, Dree looked at Eddie again and added: "I appreciate it, very much."

Slowly stepping back, Dree held her hands up so that Lou could see she was moving toward him, unarmed. Slowly, she kneeled next to him and reached for his torso. "Please, I just want to see how bad it is." She could feel the surge in her hand, as if the magic knew someone was injured and it had a job to do.

'Don't get out. You could kill him.'

[eddie_plus_1]

Eddie nodded, stepping back. He produced his phone from his pocket and began punching away at the keys with a series of tentacles that sprang from his wrist. The Symbiote typed far better than he did.

[major_bummer]

Lou was really not too keen on the idea of removing the pressure from his wound. He had very little understanding of medicine and no training in first aid, but his instincts were telling him that his hand was sort of holding it all together down there and removing it could be a very bad idea.

And besides, the fact that this woman was being so nice and so kind and understanding to the alien monster-man that had almost murdered him for no reason at all was really, really pissing him off. While if he were thinking rationally, he COULD use help, he was too pissed off, drunk and frustrated to accept help from two people he felt so very, very poorly treated by. He'd healed from beatings like this in a matter of days before and at this point was willing to assume he would do so again without needing to rely upon the charity of such uncharitable people.

"Y'know what?" he muttered, "Fuck both'you. Be jus' fine on my own," He staggered away a few steps, towards the castle, still using the broken blade as a cane to support himself. "Buncha ingrates 'n' lunatics around here."

[heartof_thezone]

Between his tone and his words, Dree felt like she'd just been kicked in the teeth. She was pretty sure that she looked like a stiff wind could knock her over, but all of a sudden there was a little ball of rage building inside her.

Ignoring the warning bells going off inside her head, Dree jumped and dove in front him. "Excuse me?" She glared at him and held up a hand. "I'm just trying to help you." Pointing threateningly at him, her jaw locked. "You came at me. Armed. I don't have a clue where I am, I don't know you and you sure as shit don't know me. You wanna die? Fine."

Dree stepped aside and waved for him to continue on his way.

[eddie_plus_1]

The drunken brigand's upstart refusal of a kindness and courtesy that already did not belong to him only further cemented Eddie's general certainty that he was not on the level. How selfish and self-involved could this wretched man be to say such things to an innocent who wanted to assist him even in light of his readiness to do violence against her.

Eddie stowed his phone, the symbiote reprising its snarling countenance on his face. And then Dree said the magic words. "A wise choice," they agreed with her in slavering stereo as the man moved passed her.

Because that's when they sprang into action, lunging forward with a fierce and brutal right kick aimed directly for the back of the knee. Ideally this would drop the plodding brute down onto said knee and from there, they would grab him from behind in a vicious headlock. If all went to plan, it would be a simple fifteen seconds at best before he was unconscious. Venom was not without mercy in the presence of the innocent: he would tear the man's head off after he was dead, just to be sporting.

After all, she had approved his death with her own spoken word. And that was good enough for them!