Chain 208: Venom

Chain 208: Venom

Location: San Francisco
Age: 25
Identity: Scientist (Drop-In)
Drawbacks: None

[Free]      Exobiologist
[100/1000]  Silence Those With Questions
[300/1000]  Cost/Benefit Of Human Life
[500/1000]  Giving It
[900/1000]  Devourer
[1000/1000] Import: Demona and the Conspiracy

Oh, hey, another Earth, but this one comes with existential extraterrestrial threats. Isn't that entertaining?

Turns out the Life Foundation is corrupt as hell, even though their research was fairly useful - not just for information on symbiosis but other details. While I didn't get overly involved in what was going on with the main conflict for the most part, I did make it harder for it to keep out of the public eye, even if that was entirely self-serving. Once Venom took care of what he needed to do, the Foundation was rudderless and a victim of poor publicity. It was child's play to snatch it up, and the Sovereign Foundation began prolific hiring.

We were very slightly more ethical.

We were very much more successful.

It turns out if you use human test subjects who actually signed their damned consent forms, you'll find a lot of people willing to do a lot of things for money. I turned a few things in different directions on a lark just to see what could be done, and now we have wooden artificial limbs. By which I mean you attach a wooden plug to the stump and it will literally grow on a person over the course of about four to twelve weeks into a fully functioning copy of the missing limb, complete with full sensation. Or various therapies to cure a number of diseases. Or artificial organs, again made out of wood. Because symbiosis can be immensely useful, but maybe you should stick with Earth-based things that don't have a nervous system instead of alien critters.

Of course, Venom wasn't the only symbiote that survived the chain of events. Carnage showed up after a while, not that I expect that to be a huge surprise, and I elected to mimic the local symbiote power by way of playing with Plastic Man level shapeshifting, save for the fact that I made it look like I was made out of metal. Some red herrings were dropped for the sake of fun, of course, and for a brief time Venom was convinced that I was just as bad as Riot, until I pointed out that we actually got FDA approval for radical therapies and everything was public.

He was still a bit peeved, so we fought for the hell of it anyway. ("Heresy! All fights are necessary!") It was entertaining to do that, actually. And then there was the whole crisis where a bunch of symbiotes spawned from Venom and more heroes were made from them, but... well, who didn't expect a symbiote crisis in the third movie, anyways?