Chapter Text
I was Crona from Soul Eater mixed with Wednesday Addams.
...Not literally. That'd be almost as absurd as what was really going on, but on the one hand, I had inky black hair at neck length and liquid paper skin, on the other I was dressed in some kind of old-fashioned black gown, and on the third, what I'd seen of myself suggested an androgynous appearance... Oh, and an eldritch super weapon composed of a black substance completely replacing my blood.
...Let's go over this one more time. No, I'm not the one and only Spider-Man, in case someone's reading this and you think it's a Spider-Verse thing. I come from a completely mundane world where Marvel Comics is just fiction. Thought it was the real world, but apparently I'm a Gwenpool situation. Except she's got mutant powers that manifest as media awareness, but kept her original body while I got tossed in a younger body with 'the tineist chip' of All-Black the Necrosword, fresh from the forge, merged into and replacing its blood.
That fresh from the forge bit being the operative phrasing: Right now, my All-Black was strong enough to serve as my entire circulatory system and generate a non-descript twelve-inch dagger +1 against transcendant beings, and that's about it. But even if I could find a way to regenerate it to match the original, in my hands it'd only be on par with a knock-off Mjolnir, if that, not the blade as it was now after billions of years of growth and having supped on the blood of countless gods. Which probably sounds like Choosey Beggars, but this is a very dangerous world to be in if you lack a certain level of power. If I wanted it stronger than that, I'd need to feed it sources of power or rely on more conventional methods of symbiote empowerment.
And other than the fact that my All-Black was my All-Black, IE, it wasn't going to corrupt me or be turned against me, that was all I knew.
How do I know all this? Frankly, I don't; it was all programmed into my new body, and it feels like the truth, but it could be a sick joke by whatever force or being brought me here. Something to keep in mind.
Anyway, I was currently hustling through a forested park somewhere in LA. Why? Because I'd seen the aftermath of a convenience store robbery not too long ago, which clued me in on exactly when in the timeline I was. Thus, I had a short period of time where I could both get into position to do some good and hopefully get something to feed to my dagger.
I heard a scream in the distance and started running, arriving just in time to hear a teenager declare that he had been born "near the turn of the century."
So naturally, I drove my dagger through his heart.
Topher the vampire screamed bloody murder as my dagger drank deeply of his accursed ichor. He wasn't a god, far from it, but the dark magic reanimating him was drawn directly from the Cthonic Scrolls and had been allowed to steep in his veins and draw power from the life of his victims for roughly a century. The impression All-Black was giving me, if I understood it right, was like eating a bowl of fortified porridge. All the nutrients you need, maybe a little extra, and it keeps you full, but it's not necessarily all that satisfying.
A few moments later, Topher crumbled into dust, and I made a show of retracting my blade into my body before looking at the scared Japanese teenager whom the vampire had pinned to a tree. "Are you alright?"
The young woman took a moment to compose herself and then looked me in the eye: "Who are you?"
"Robin," I said. It wasn't my real name, but given that I wasn't wearing my real body.
"Where, how—"
"I'm a monster hunter," I half-lied. "Lots of old entitled monsters who think their power gives them the right to prey on the innocent, that there are old rules that favor them, rules they themselves made up and are enforced by unicorn farts and pixie dust as far as I can tell, and humans are just prey or livestock or toys. And what I've chosen to do with my life is make the feel a little less safe, one son of a bitch at a time. I've been tracking uh, what was he going by now?"
"Topher?"
"I just got into town and I've been tracking 'Topher,'" I said while making air quotes, "ever since I realized he was in LA. He's roughly a hundred years old, and he's got this gimmick of manipulating people. Inserts himself in groups of troubled teens and flirts with multiple people to cause strife, then turns whatever ones he likes and makes them help him kill the rest." Actually, I don't know if that's true. That's what he'd been planning to do with the Runaways, but he'd only been around for three issues, no time for a fleshed-out backstory, and as far as I knew in my world, he was only written into the comic to screw with Joss Whedon. No clue what his deal is with. "You aren't a mutant, are you? I understand that he's got a taste for mutant blood but hasn't had any for a while." Personally, I suspected that it had something to do with why, in the original, he was fireproof and not only shrugged off a stake but was perfectly fine with a hole clear through his chest until he regenerated it between comic panels. Bastard shrugged off something that would have left Deadpool clinically dead for a few minutes, and I was hoping that in the next couple of months, All-Black might figure out how to replicate that from his DNA. Would be kind of useful.
A look of horrified realization crossed the girl's eyes. In the comic I'd read all those years ago, the only reason Topher hadn't made the rest of the gang watch while he ate Molly Hayes alive in her sleep was because Karolina offered herself up first, and her solar-powered blood hadn't agreed with him.
And then we were joined by a third party,
"Nico are... Where's Topher?" the young black man said, though he was looking at me.
"He was a vampire, I think he was trying to turn me until Robin here killed him," Nico said.
"Robin?" he asked.
I raised a hand, "Yo. And if you would be so kind as to give me your name."
"...It's Alex," he said while extinguishing the lit torch he'd been carrying on the ground. That's the thing, if I recall correctly, Alex, in the comic was... Well, there's a certain irony to his admiration of superheroes, given that he's a manipulative, amoral bastard: His parents, along with the parents of the rest of their group, were a supervillain team in service of a trio of... They're either very weak elder gods, fallen angels, or somehow both. I felt a tightness in my chest as the part of All-Black that was my new body's heart lusted for their blood at the thought of them, but the Gibborim were well outside my current pay grade. The Runaways had run away because they walked in on their parents sacrificing a call girl so that her soul could be fed to the Gibborim.
And Alex had arranged the whole thing. He had a plan to screw over most of his friends and his parents' associates so that he, the girl he liked (Nico) and their parents could take the six slots that the Gibborrim had offered up to their servants, a promise that half of them would inherit paradise after the Gibborim were powerful enough to exterminate humanity because they were another example of those old entitled monsters I'd been talking about. They were probably lying about it, and the Pride's current plan was to each forfeit their chance at a seat to their child so that their legacy would endure into paradise while they lived the high life in the flawed world up until the end.
In the comic I'd read, Alex ends up dying at the end. He sort of redeems himself in the afterlife, but regresses after being revived as a revenant. I wasn't particularly interested in saving him from the consequences of his own mistakes, but we'll see how it plays out.
Anyway, he new damn well that Topher was a vampire... Somehow, and had let him infiltrate the group anyway as a test and possibly to take advantage of Nico being attacked to worm his way into her heart.
"He says he's a monster hunter," Nico said.
"...That's a boy?" Alex asked. If this were an anime, this is where I'd have face vaulted... Then the thought occurred to me that I legitimately didn't know. I hadn't exactly been paying too much attention to my body and hadn't exactly had a chance to examine it. Nothing felt 'off' so to speak, I think whatever process brought me here and put me in this body was compensating for dysphoria and dysmorphia, so...
"Let's just go with singular they/them pronouns for now," I'd figure it out eventually.
This got weird looks from both of them, and I remembered that it was 2003ish.
"...They look young to be a monster hunter," Alex said after a moment. "Just a little older than Molly, maybe fourteen at the oldest."
Pretty sure fourteen was the median age I could be, physically speaking. Mentally's another story... Good thing I'm aro, there's no one I could date where it wouldn't get somebody arrested. "Monsters don't wait for you to grow up," was my response. "I'm all alone, and I've got a weapon that kills monsters real good. What else am I gonna do?"
Okay, the truth was that while I very much planned to go around killing the overwhelming surplus of entitled old monsters in the country, if and when I could figure out a way to pull off the travel times, as there was such a variety of gods and monsters on Earth who I could feed to my blade without guilt who would ensure that my All-Black shard would grow up big and strong, my spontaneous plan, half-assed as it was... this was a team that desperately needed a responsible adult... Admittedly, words that have never been used together to describe me in my life, and even if I didn't look it... I could play the part. If only for the sake of two little girls who don't deserve what they've been through and will go through, one sleeping in the team's lair right now and one who would be rescued even if I had to mug Doctor Doom at knifepoint to get a time machine, and who aren't as good at rolling with it and working through their problems as the older kids in this group... Which, you know, was saying something.
"...If you don't have anywhere else, you can stay with us," Nico said. "There's uh... Kind of a position open on the team." Nico didn't handle stress all that well. Making a lame joke of what had just happen was better than trying to screw somoene I guess.
"...They can stay for the night, but we're gonna have to talk this over with everyone and make sure we have the full story," Alex said while going into reader mode.
I was then led back to the Hostel, the underground ruins of an old fancy hotel that sank into the earth, accessible via a cave... Not sure if that was ana ctual thing that happened or if it was just coic book bullcrap.
"Most of us have codenames," Nico said. "Do you?"
"Vitriol," I replied. All-Black was a symbiote. The first symbiote. Vitriol, in modern times, means words delivered with hate, the most cutting of insults, for example, but originally meant sulfuric acid and similar chemical substances. In certain contexts, it's synonymous with 'venom.'
"You're gonna fit in just fine," Nico replied.
"...Yeah," was Alex's response. I'm no mind reader, but if he wasn't contemplating how my presence could upset his carefully crafted plan, then he was as big an idiot as I thought he was... Which I legitimately don't recall enough fine details of this volume to know if he is or not, so we'll see.
Anyway, pretty sure a hero v hero fight with Cloak and Dagger is up next... God, I hope this isn't a what-if timeline. Would really suck if Knull drops out of the sky, Apocalypse shows up to recruit Molly as a Horseman, or Godzilla decided to rampage across the coast while I'm preparing for something completely unrelated.