Chapter 40: Chapter 40
Peter gains:
Spider sense 2: Your spider sense evolves to the point where it can point from where dangers come from instead of giving a general feeling on the back of your neck. +10 Power.
Active body camouflage: Venom can now change shape and form relatively quickly, allowing Peter to have an active camouflage that changes shape and kind of mimics the exterior around him, making it easy to sneak around. +10 Stealth.
Pack Tactics: Venom becomes really used to coordinating and managing a team of fully infected individuals to find the solution to any problem or create complicated plans. This perk gives you a +5 generic bonus to any roll for each fully corrupted girl currently helping you in that task, up to a maximum of +20.
Chemical assimilation: Venom can now assimilate ONE chemical compound (which includes all types of serum and drugs) and produce it at will inside her body; the more complex the substance, the more time it takes to produce it. This perk gives you one slot that will give you one custom perk depending on the serum consumed.
As the days passed, Venom kept improving Peter's body and her own powers. With the constant recruitment of new members for the hive, there was a need to increase the future prospects of them. Basically, the alien began to learn and study all kinds of different battle tactics she could implement on her hive members. She needed to fully change their minds and bodies to squeeze as much reaction time as possible for them to work, but it was useful to have for now.
Then came more changes to her own body and Peter's internal brain chemistry. She figures out how to quickly change her body shape and texture to mimic the space around her, basically working like an active camouflage. This plus the man's new flying capabilities allowed him to move across the sky at night without getting too much attention. Then she improved the already impressive spider senses of Peter. Venom crafted small extra bundles of neurons that would decode the signal of warning and point to where it was the source. A huge help mid-battle to prevent sudden flanking maneuvers.
Finally, there was the chemical assimilation process. Similar to the way she ate solid materials and put them in her armor. This was like that, but instead of just taking the material, she learned how to reproduce the chemical in question into herself. It was basically a small chemical factory created after studying thousands of different biological processes of hundreds of species. However, the current analytic process of Venom only allowed for one of these biofactories to be active at one time, so she could distill one chemical. Sadly, they didn't have any fancy chemicals or serums to play around with.
Money problems were becoming a lesser problem with each day that passed. First, it was the deal he had with Norman Osborn that gave the initial money flow to start more jobs and projects like patents for high-tech appliances. Small upgrades to stuff like fridges, microwaves, sound systems, etc. were nothing crazy but stuff that people would pay a nice buck for.
With the help of Gwen and MJ working as bodyguard, the duo made a lot of money—something that could give him more money than a normal boy of his age could even dream of. So, now the big man was walking around a convenience store trying to think of how to spend his money.
("My king . . .you should spend your treasure on something big,") Venom muttered as a long tendril came out of Peter's shoulder and grabbed a massive box of chocolates from one stand and put back a jug of orange juice that he had bought.
Peter stopped for a second and went to a special part of the store. ("You are right..." he muttered deep in thought.
("No more chips in bags for this man! Let's get the real stuff!") He said and grabbed triumphantly a big plastic tube filled with his treasure.
("You should buy a lab,") Venom finally added, not to play around anymore. However, another tentacle grabbed some spicy chips for Gwen; that ass would not keep its size alone.
("Oh yeah, that is a really good idea,") Peter answered and nodded a few times, really not used to the amount of money he had now.
With a quick call to Mr. Osborn, Peter had managed to acquire a small lab a few minutes from his house. The place on the third floor of the extremely secure building was a single floor that had everything that he needed to produce his experiments. With some extra help from the millionaire, he even got all the machinery and tools he needed on premium time. It was impressive how helpful that contact was.
Peter gains:
Small chemical lab (+20 on creating chemicals)
Venom knew not to trust the man. However, there was a small detail that didn't stop her from refusing this deal. First, it was beneficial for Peter, and second, the man needed to get burned on the stove. A little bit of precaution born out of this mistake would not be a bad lesson for him. She was sure that they could handle this problem, if it even became one, in the future.
So now Peter was sitting on his new chair as the fresh smell of cleaning chemicals filled his nostrils in the new lab, viewing the streets of New York and night while talking on his phone. "So, Mr. Parker, since you have a small lab, would you be interested in the serum we are working on?" The man asked on the other side of the phone line.
Peter went silent for a second; his curiosity peaked at that suggestion. "What do you have in mind, Mr. Osborn?" He inquired, curious about the kind of drug the man could give him.
"It is a special drug that permanently increases the user's health and body. Currently, it is in the early stages of development, but the secondary effects that it has in animals are too risky to even try in humans. Would you like to use your lab to help us with the research?" Norman said it in a calm and normal tone as if he was an old man giving all his support and faith to a young and promising boy.
Venom was taken aback by that proposal. That was the goblin serum; why did Norman want Peter to get access to it? Well, the bigger question was why he wanted to give it access to someone who could sell the formula or get it stolen by another company. Giving such a precious drug to a teenager, no matter how smart he was, was something that the millionaire would not do. There were two options in the alien mind for that decision: First, the project was so early in development that they didn't realize the true potential of it, or second . . . Peter was a scapegoat; if the drug got leaked into the criminal world, they would frame her king as the responsible.
Peter found out a lot of interesting details about this drug. There was only one application, and they were completed. The chemicals stayed in the user's body constantly making mutations, giving the endocrine system the order to alter the user's flesh instead of being the building block for the change in question. Also, it wasn't removed by urine or sweat like mercury, so the chemical bond created was basically irreversible. However, as the serum made its home in the user's brain, it caused some secondary effects like an increase in aggression and psychosis.
This was a problem for a normal person but not for Peter, who already had an alien in his brain doing technical maid duties on his gray matter. So in the worst case, Venom could just scrub Peter's brain clean and remove all the side effects, grabbing the duty of keeping the changes on the boy rolling. A non-definitive solution for that problem but one that they could implement as they worked on a non-psychotic version of the goblin serum.
So with this thought in mind, the duo accepted the drug and began to do some research on them. They didn't inject Peter yet, but they were trying to figure out how that liquid worked.
Meanwhile, this was happening; something unusual was taking place in the web of fate. Venom and Gwen's misdeeds were finally found, and now a proper agent would be sent to correct the mistakes they had created. They had changed fate too much, and as gravity, this force of the universe was trying to fix itself. A new creation was born in order to put an end to this.
In the guts of the metro system, a small cockroach was grabbed by the hands of destiny. Multiple energies that should not be there began to twist and turn around her even if they were meant to be in this place. Gamma radiation, cosmic rays, etc.—hundreds of small doses of all kinds of energies were poured into the insect in order to craft an agent to hunt down Peter.
With the passing of days, that insect constantly broke her exoskeleton and was reborn, over and over until taking a humanoid form and one clear goal. Hunt down Venom and Gwen.