Deep within the shared psychic link, Venom knew the cold, mathematical certainty of their situation. He was no match for Hybrid. He wasn't a match for any of the four individual Klyntar that made up the red behemoth, let alone their combined, perfectly synchronized form.
Venom was not an elite warrior. He wasn't born into the Klyntar special forces. He didn't possess the acidic bio-resins of Agony, the impenetrable armor of Phage, or the lethal, bladed whips of Lasher. On his home world, he was entirely unremarkable. Just an ordinary, average symbiote, the kind you could scrape off the street. He was a coward who had let himself be abducted and stuffed into a military containment tube without putting up a fight.
But Venom knew exactly where his current, terrifying strength came from. It didn't come from his alien biology. It came from the teenager underneath the sludge.
Peter Parker.
Give me some time, Peter's voice echoed in their shared consciousness, calm and fiercely determined.
WE TRUST YOU, Venom roared back.
Venom lunged. He clasped his massive, clawed hands together, raising them high above his head, and brought them down like a fleshy wrecking ball directly onto Hybrid's face. CRACK. The impact vibrated up Venom's arms. He didn't stop. He unleashed a blinding flurry of heavy right hooks and devastating uppercuts, abandoning all defense. He needed to keep the red monster entirely focused on the physical brawl, buying Peter the precious seconds required to analyze the battlefield.
But Hybrid was built for war.
After weathering a dozen blows, the red monster simply raised a massive hand and caught Venom's descending fist. The impact stopped dead.
Hybrid's enhanced musculature easily eclipsed Venom's raw strength. The red behemoth yanked Venom forward and drove a hardened, spiked knee directly into Venom's abdomen. The air rushed out of Peter's lungs. Hybrid followed up with a brutal front kick, launching Venom across the asphalt.
Before Venom could hit the ground, Hybrid morphed its right arm into a massive, jagged broadsword. It thrust the blade forward.
Venom dug his heels in, catching the descending blade between both of his hands.
Hsssss.
Thick, bubbling purple acid seeped from the edges of Hybrid's blade. It instantly began eating through Venom's black biomass, searing the alien flesh and burning Peter's hands underneath. Venom let out a deafening screech of agony. He planted his boots on Hybrid's chest, kicked the monster away, and scrambled backward. Venom held up his smoking hands, watching the black sludge frantically bubble and regenerate over the acid burns.
Hybrid didn't press the attack immediately. The massive red creature stood tall, four thick tentacles stabilizing its stance. It crossed its arms over its chest.
"You know, in every conceivable metric, you are entirely outclassed," Hybrid mocked, the four overlapping alien voices vibrating the broken glass on the street. "Whether the parasite pilots, or the human takes the wheel. There is only one outcome tonight."
"YOU BROUGHT ME HERE TO HARVEST MY CODEX," Venom hissed, his long tongue thrashing. "YOU NEED ME TO WAKE KNULL."
"Haha, you are a genius!" Hybrid laughed, the sound horrific and wet.
The red monster morphed both arms into massive, sweeping scythes and charged. Venom threw himself into a desperate barrel roll. His claws dug into the shattered remnants of a concrete loading dock. He ripped a thousand-pound precast slab out of the earth and hurled it at Hybrid's chest.
Hybrid didn't even slow down. It swung a scythe, completely shattering the concrete slab into a cloud of harmless dust.
The amalgamation was flawless. It possessed Riot's tactical resilience, Phage's impenetrable skin, Agony's blinding speed and corrosive acid, and Lasher's flexible, mid-range whips. Combined with Grant Ward's elite S.H.I.E.L.D. combat training, Hybrid was an apex predator.
But Peter Parker's brain was working faster than the monster's fists.
Look at him, Peter observed through the psychic link. Every time you hit him, the red biomass swells. He's absorbing the kinetic energy, but he isn't venting it.
Hybrid was bloating. The creature was visibly larger than it had been a minute ago. Its internal structure was a chaotic, unstable soup of competing alien DNA. It was incredibly powerful, but its molecular integrity was fundamentally compromised.
I have an idea, Peter said. It's a massive gamble. WE ALWAYS GAMBLE, Venom replied, a dark grin stretching across his jagged face.
Hybrid's four back-tentacles flattened into razor-sharp cleavers. They shot forward in a synchronized, lethal barrage. Venom ducked the first, deflected the second, and intentionally stepped into the path of the third. He grabbed the thick red tentacle with both hands and sank his massive, razor-sharp teeth directly into the alien flesh.
Hybrid shrieked. The fourth cleaver whipped around, piercing straight through Venom's side. Corrosive acid instantly flooded the wound.
Venom howled, releasing his bite as Hybrid violently flung him through the air. Venom crashed hard into a burning patrol car, clutching his smoking, sizzling ribs.
But the distraction worked.
From the smoke-filled sky above, the headless, remote-controlled Iron Spider armor rocketed downward. The suit's thrusters flared. It bypassed Hybrid's thick chest armor and aimed entirely for the tentacle Venom had just mutilated. The suit's repulsors fired point-blank into the open wound.
Infuriated, Hybrid abandoned Venom. It whipped a massive tentacle around, snatching the Iron Spider armor out of the air. The monster squeezed, the titanium plating groaning under the pressure.
"Now," Peter wheezed from the pavement.
He triggered the remote detonation protocol. The arc reactor housed in the center of the Iron Spider's chest went critical.
BOOM.
A blinding sphere of blue energy obliterated the armor, taking Hybrid's entire left tentacle with it in a shower of burning red sludge.
"You idiot!" Hybrid roared, the stump already bubbling as the biomass rapidly regenerated. "You are just breaking your own toys! Why do you resist?!"
Hybrid expanded again. The sheer stress of the explosion caused its molecular structure to bloat to an unstable six meters in height. The monster was massive, clumsy, and vibrating with rage.
Venom slowly pushed himself off the crushed police cruiser, clutching his bleeding side. He didn't run. He just grinned.
"DO YOU HATE IT HERE?" Venom asked, his voice booming over the crackle of the flames.
Hybrid paused, its milky eyes narrowing.
"THE HUMAN ROCK AND ROLL. THE CAR HORNS. THE BLAZING LIGHTS. THE CONSTANT NOISE," Venom taunted, taking a slow step forward. "DO YOU HATE THIS PLANET? ARE YOU AFRAID OF BEING ALONE?"
Hybrid bared its teeth.
"DID YOUR HOST EVER BOTHER TO ASK YOU IF YOU MISS HOME?" Venom laughed. "DID HE ASK IF YOU WERE LONELY?"
Hybrid let out a deafening, overlapping roar of absolute fury and charged. Four massive tentacles swept forward to crush the black symbiote into the pavement.
Venom didn't brace for impact. The massive, hulking black musculature instantly liquefied. It rapidly retreated, condensing and shrinking against Peter's skin. In a fraction of a second, the towering monster vanished, replaced by the lean, hyper-agile silhouette of Spider-Man in the black suit.
Hybrid's massive strikes missed completely.
Peter moved like a blur. He vaulted over the first sweeping tentacle. He stepped lightly onto the second, using the alien limb as a springboard before the corrosive acid could eat through his boots. He launched himself high into the air, twisting gracefully through the smoke.
Thwip. Thwip.
Two thick web-lines shot from his wrists, plastering directly over Hybrid's milky eyes.
Blind and disoriented, Hybrid thrashed. Peter fell from the sky, landing squarely on the crown of the massive red monster's head.
He slammed his palms flat against Hybrid's temples.
"You know what?" Peter yelled, his voice echoing loudly in the damp night air. "After I noticed your body was swelling like a cheap water balloon, I came up with a theory!"
Hybrid shrieked, raising both of its massive, bladed hands to crush the bug on its head.
Instantly, the black suit peeled off Peter's back. Venom expanded upward, forming a massive, terrifying, disembodied maw of jagged teeth. The black jaws clamped down viciously on both of Hybrid's incoming wrists, locking the red monster's arms in place.
"I've been to a few other universes recently!" Peter shouted, digging his fingers deep into the red alien flesh. "I actually got to hold a magic hammer! A really big one that summoned lightning!"
Hybrid's overlapping voices let out a screech of sudden, primal panic.
"So I'm betting the bio-electricity my body generates still has a little bit of that Mjolnir flavor!" Peter gritted his teeth, his entire body tensing. "And I hear your boss is a really big fan!"
Peter dumped every single drop of raw, unfiltered bio-electric energy left in his mutated nervous system directly into Hybrid's unstable brain.
KRA-KOOM.
A massive, blinding pillar of pure, white-hot lightning erupted from Peter's hands, shooting straight into the heavens and illuminating the entire Manhattan skyline in a brilliant, terrifying flash of divine energy.