Mud and Rotten People (Part 1)

"I’m a doctor, not God."

Strange stood at the operating room door with his hands on his hips. "And I’m a neurologist. I can’t cure every disease. You can’t send every patient you have to me for treatment!"

"So how is Dr. Connors?"

"I don’t know. You’ll have to ask those testing machines. I can’t fully understand all that data either."

Then Strange saw Schiller, Stark, and Peter looking at him like he was a failing student. He finally exploded. "What do you take doctors for? Wishing machines? You bring patients with every random illness to me and expect me to cure them instantly. And if I can’t, are you going to belittle my professional ability too?"

Schiller said, "Fine, even if you can’t cure him, you should at least recommend someone who can, right?"

Strange rolled his eyes. "Given his current condition, you’d be better off praying to God."

"I want you to save him. I can pay a lot for it," Stark said.

"All you ever talk about is money. I know you’re rich, but not everything in this world can be solved with money. You brought a half-dead corpse here. What am I supposed to do?"

"Listen, you’d better do it now…"

Stark stepped forward and pointed at Strange’s shoulder. His tone was aggressive, and Strange was clearly displeased as well. He shoved Stark away. "Ha, do you expect everyone to be lapdogs for you rich people?"

As he said that, he glanced at Schiller. Schiller had yet to react, but Stark erupted first. He swung his fist and punched Strange, and Peter hurried over to stop him.

"Hey, calm down, Mr. Stark! Calm down!"

Strange doubled over from the blow and touched his nose. A trace of blood stuck to his hand. He cursed under his breath, but Schiller directly grabbed his shoulder and dragged him away.

Strange did not want to leave, but Schiller was too strong. He was practically dragged out of the corridor. The moment they rounded the corner, Strange shouted, "What are you doing? Do you think I can’t beat that damned arms dealer?!"

"Didn’t you notice that he’s acting a little abnormal? Are you planning to trade punches with a madman here?"

Strange sat down on a chair by the hospital corridor, holding back his anger. "I really don’t understand why you people came to trouble an ordinary person like me. You either have money or know those bizarre little tricks. Why do you have to show up in my life?"

Schiller opened his mouth, but ultimately did not say it. He could hardly tell Strange that someone was currently staring intently at his arm, could he?

On the other side, Peter was trying to calm Stark down. He felt that Stark was being a little too irritable. He had not been like this before.

Though Stark could occasionally be melodramatic and sharp-tongued, his temper had always been fairly decent. He was not the sort to explode at the slightest provocation, and most of the time, he could communicate calmly. But for some reason, Stark now looked extremely agitated.

Peter grabbed one of Stark’s arms and tried to turn him around. Stark bared his teeth and violently swung his arm. Peter was actually shoved away.

Peter stared at Stark’s arm in shock. Even if he had not used much strength, he was already far stronger than an ordinary person. Iron Man without his armor should have been just an ordinary man. How could he possibly shove away Spider-Man, who possessed the power of Spider Mutation?

Peter was confused, but he knew something was seriously wrong with Stark.

He stepped back a few paces and saw Schiller wave to him from the corner. Peter looked back at Stark once more, but eventually turned and ran over.

Stark stood where he was, violently shaking his head and occasionally rocking back and forth as though he were speaking to the air.

After Peter ran over, he asked Schiller, "What’s happening? Is Mr. Stark sick?"

"This proves a principle," Schiller said. "Alcohol turns people into a pile of mud."

After leaving the hospital, Stark did not even summon his armor. He gritted his teeth and said in a low voice, "Damn it! You can’t do that! Peter is just a child!"

"Let me eat his head. It would be delicious. You’ll love the feeling…" A deep, raspy voice came from the air.

Stark said, "Listen, you pile of mud. If you dare take control of my body without permission again, I’ll have Jarvis pound you into flour with a 500-decibel sonic cannon!"

And this all began several days earlier.

Ever since Obadiah had remained unconscious, Stark Industries’ weapons manufacturing department had nearly ground to a halt. Even though Stark knew little about business matters, he had realized that Uncle Obadiah had truly been the central pillar holding Stark Industries together.

Without Obadiah, a mountain of trouble came one after another.

Originally, Obadiah had moved with ease among the military, Congress, and other arms dealers. He never let anyone gain even a penny’s advantage, not even the military.

But now that Obadiah was gone, Pepper could still handle some business matters, yet she was far less sensitive to political maneuvering. Stark knew even less about it.

He suddenly realized that he had always lived in something of a vacuum. All he had needed to do was stay in his laboratory and work on inventions every day. The turbulent undercurrents of those treacherous struggles had never affected him at all.

But without Obadiah, Stark had no choice but to face it all himself.

Stark did have a genius brain, but his mind simply did not work in that direction. The military pressured him from every side, and there were few measures he could take.

For the moment, he could not make sense of the tangled and complicated relationships between all the factions. Even if his intelligence meant he would eventually learn it all, he was still floundering badly at the start.

The military seized upon that opportunity. Their move was decisive, and they immediately used a media war to place Stark Industries in a position where it was attacked from both front and rear.

Stark was under tremendous pressure. It felt completely different from failing an experiment or having an invention go wrong. He could not even find an outlet for his frustration, so he could only return to his old habits: smoking and drinking heavily.

All kinds of extreme emotions piled up in his mind, and those intense feelings happened to catch the attention of a homeless outsider.

The Symbiote Venom—a special Symbiote that had separated from the Symbiote mother early on, a gifted child among Symbiotes.

As everyone knew, this species was attracted to all kinds of intense human emotions. Originally, Venom had attached itself to an ordinary reporter who had just gotten divorced. But when that reporter interviewed Stark, Venom discovered that the emotions on this man, along with the enticing scent radiating from his mind, were simply irresistible.

So, taking advantage of the moment that bold reporter shoved a microphone in Stark’s face, the audacious Symbiote instantly detached from its original host and slipped onto Stark.

At first, Stark noticed nothing unusual. Venom was an experienced Symbiote. When he first parasitized a host, he would remain dormant for a while to avoid provoking too strong a resistance from the host.

But Stark soon began to sense that something was wrong. He was no ordinary person. He possessed a brain cursed with knowledge, and he keenly sensed that his intense negative emotions were being drawn out. This drove him to rely even more heavily on alcohol to numb himself, ensuring those emotions would not erupt and hurt others.

Jarvis also used certain data to subtly warn his master that his mental state and personality were beginning to waver. This meant Stark had definitely fallen into some strange, induced state.

That state did not last long.

When Lizardman broke into Stark Tower, Jarvis had no choice but to use emergency wake-up measures to rouse Stark after a night of drunkenness. But in truth, Stark had not been awakened by Jarvis. He had been awakened by Venom, the Symbiote inside him screaming from the massive sonic waves.

Only then did Stark discover that the feeling of being controlled had actually come from a mysterious alien life-form parasitizing his body.

The sonic waves Jarvis played made Venom race wildly through Stark’s body, and Stark discovered the alien creature’s true form—a lump of black mud.

Then he discovered that the alien possessed intelligence no less than a human’s. It could not only communicate with him, but even claimed to possess all of his personality and memories.

Indeed, Venom said that. He said it to every host because it was an excellent way to lower their guard. He would repeatedly emphasize the fact that Symbiotes and their hosts were united in heart and body.

To some extent, what he said was true. Though this species did not look like much and appeared slimy and messy, in the comics, they were not an evil race. They were born as blank slates.

They were more like an "inert species." They could not forcibly devour or erase a host’s personality. Instead, they used a gentler method to parasitize them. Hosts and Symbiotes were more like partners than controllers and controlled.

The Symbiote armies scattered throughout the universe had parasitized many races. They helped those aliens gain stronger physical power, but most of the species they chose possessed high intelligence.

That was because they needed their hosts’ independent personalities to provide emotional energy. It was the foundation of their survival. Unlike certain evil parasitic races, they could not simply turn intelligent life into mindless zombies. Symbiotes could not do that. If their hosts could not think, then they had nothing to eat.

Venom understood this as well. If he could not gain his host’s trust, then he could only wander around hungry every day.

In his eyes, Stark was practically the perfect meal ticket. Stark was at a low point in his life, his emotions fluctuated wildly every day, and Venom could obtain plenty of energy from him daily.

But Venom soon discovered that he had made finding a meal ticket sound far too simple.