Riot was consumed by a singular, burning hatred for Spider-Man.
Theoretically, the web-slinger should have been no match for an elite symbiote commander. If Spider-Man hadn't used that localized bio-electric shock to forcibly sever Riot's connection to Grant Ward, Riot would never have lost. The massive "Hybrid" amalgamation had been a desperate emergency measure, and emergency measures were inherently unstable.
But now, operating as a pure symbiotic mimic without the physical limitations of a human host, the restraints were off. Riot had come for revenge.
Peter had originally planned to swing over, brief Thor on the Grendel paradox, and let the Thunder God handle Knull directly. But Riot had other plans. The gray symbiote's arms violently morphed into two enormous, jagged broadswords. Its serpentine tongue lashed out as it charged directly at Peter.
Peter fired twin webs from his wrists, plastering both of Riot's bladed arms to the concrete. He vaulted into the air, aiming a devastating dropkick at Riot's chest.
Riot watched the vigilante fall into his trap. Anticipating the strike, the symbiote violently wrenched its blades free, swinging them upward in a lethal X-strike meant to cleave Spider-Man in two.
But the blades hit empty air.
Peter had tapped his wrist console, vanishing into active camouflage mid-leap. Invisible, he released his web-lines and used his bio-electromagnetism to aggressively stick himself to the side of an adjacent office building, halting his momentum instantly. He fired two fresh web-lines, snagging Riot's ankles, and hauled back with all his enhanced strength.
Riot lost its balance, stumbling hard to one knee.
The gray monster recovered instantly. It morphed its arms into two colossal sledgehammers, slamming them into the building's foundation. The entire wall fractured.
Peter, still cloaked, abandoned his perch and let himself free-fall. As he dropped, he plastered Riot's torso with heavy webbing. The immense gravitational acceleration of Peter's plummet yanked Riot violently off the building. They fell together. Riot desperately extended its arms, embedding sharp spikes into the buildings on either side to arrest its fall.
Peter simply slashed the extended arms away.
Riot crashed into the street below with the force of a meteorite, cratering the asphalt. As the dust cleared, the gray symbiote lay crumpled in the bottom of the pit, looking suspiciously like Yamcha after a Saibaman attack.
"Stop playing dead, Riot," Peter called out, landing lightly on the crater's edge and deploying the glowing Dragonfang sword from his wrist. "I know terminal velocity won't kill you."
"You knew your fists were useless, so you brought a toy?" Riot mocked.
The symbiote's severed arms rapidly regenerated, morphing into a heavy gray shield and a wicked spear. Riot launched himself out of the pit. "You think a shiny weapon makes you my equal, Spider-Man?!"
"This isn't an ordinary weapon," Peter retorted, his spider-sense guiding his blade flawlessly.
The Dragonfang sword deftly parried the spear thrust and sliced cleanly through the heavy symbiote shield. Peter spun, delivering a horizontal slash that cleaved the shield-arm entirely in two. "It's a divine weapon."
Riot was powerful, but he wasn't immortal. Peter knew that perfectly well; otherwise, the symbiote wouldn't have fled from the Iron Spider's repulsors or used a S.H.I.E.L.D. bomb to save its own skin.
With every strike of the magical blade, chunks of Riot's biomass were permanently severed and neutralized. Slowly but surely, the hulking six-foot monster was whittled down to a stumpy four-and-a-half feet, forcing it to literally crane its neck to glare at Spider-Man.
Seizing the opening, Peter prepared to let Venom take the wheel. Suddenly, his spider-sense shrieked.
The severed chunks of gray biomass littered across the street were still under Riot's telepathic control. They morphed into razor-sharp spikes, shooting upward to impale Peter from behind.
Peter backflipped to dodge the ambush. In that split second of distraction, Riot lunged, its gray hands clamping down hard on the glowing blade of the Dragonfang sword. The symbiote knew this magical blade was the only reason it was losing. If it could disarm the Spider, the fight was over.
"Give it to me!" Riot roared.
"Sorry, return to sender!" Peter grunted.
The scattered gray biomass slithered back up Riot's legs, restoring its mass and raw strength. They locked into a brutal tug-of-war. Neither gave an inch. Finally, the tension snapped. The Dragonfang sword slipped from Peter's wrist mount, flying through the air and embedding itself hilt-deep into a brick wall.
Both combatants collapsed to the pavement, completely exhausted.
"Alright, buddy, Plan B!" Peter gasped. "I'll buy you all the extra chocolate you want later!"
IT MUST TASTE TERRIBLE, Venom rumbled.
The black sludge erupted from Peter's skin. Venom rose to his full, terrifying ten-foot height, unleashing a deafening roar as he charged the gray symbiote. Riot met the charge head-on. The two monsters collided, locking their clawed fingers together in a ground-shaking wrestling match.
Venom looked down at the currently six-foot Riot and grinned a jagged smile. "HA. LOOK AT YOU. ALWAYS THE RUNT OF THE LITTER."
"Poor Venom," Riot hissed, straining against the black symbiote's grip. "So massive, yet only possessing the strength of a parasite half his size."
"WE SHALL SEE," Venom growled.
The stalemate held, but Riot's milky eyes gleamed with dark confidence. They could both hear the chittering shrieks of the approaching symbiote horde. Knull's reinforcements were closing in fast.
"I have won—AAAAAAAH!"
Riot's triumphant boast dissolved into a shriek of absolute agony.
The glowing blade of the Dragonfang sword suddenly exploded through Riot's chest from behind, instantly sapping the gray symbiote's strength.
Venom didn't hesitate. He grabbed Riot by the shoulders, lifted the paralyzed gray monster into the air, unhinged his jaw, and brutally bit Riot's head clean off. Riot's body dissolved into a puddle of gray mud, which Venom immediately scooped up and shoved into his cavernous mouth, swallowing it whole.
The Dragonfang sword clattered to the asphalt.
Standing behind the dissolved puddle of Riot was Cindy Moon—Silk. She looked incredibly bewildered, staring wide-eyed as the towering black monster shrank back down into the lean silhouette of Spider-Man.
"Uh..." Cindy blinked, blurting out the first thought that crossed her panicked mind. "How did it taste?"
"I don't know," Peter replied, gratefully taking the sword Cindy held out to him. "Venom usually keeps his sense of taste to himself, which is why I don't get sick of eating solid blocks of chocolate. Thanks for the save, Cindy. What are you doing here?"
"I was tracking your movements," Cindy explained, her breathing ragged. "You stopped moving across the grid, and I was terrified something had happened to you, so I—"
Peter didn't hear the rest of her sentence.
He suddenly dropped to one knee, clutching his chest. A bizarre, heavy surge of alien energy pulsed violently through his veins, vibrating at the base of his skull. His eyes went wide with a horrifying realization.
"Oh, no," Peter gasped, staring at his trembling hands. "I... no, Venom... did we just steal Riot's Codex by eating him?!"
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