The Venom Inside

Interlude One

TheRedeemer1995: Greetings, prospective readers, and welcome back to The Venom Inside! Thankfully, LegionnaireBlaze is feeling much better now, so we can resume working on this thing.

LegionnaireBlaze: Glad to be back everyone. Let's do this!

TheRedeemer1995: Hell yeah! And on that note, let's get started on the Interlude and see how the rest of the My Hero Academia cast react to the newest vigilante and Symbol of Vengeance on the block!

Interlude One

U.A. Campus-Lunchtime

Ochako Uraraka was sitting on one of the benches on the school grounds, quietly eating her lunch as her newfound friends, Shouto Todoroki, Tsuyu Asui, Tenya Iida, Mina Ashido, and Momo Yaoyorozu sat around her, all of them chattering about the big news that had broken last night: All Might having been forced to retreat from a new, and honestly terrifying, vigilante known as Venom, who claimed to be a Symbol of Vengeance standing for the Quirkless and the Villainous Quirked.

From what she'd heard from her classmates, the majority opinion felt like Venom was nothing more than a vicious, mindless monster who was deluding himself into thinking he was a hero, although there were a few folks who felt like he had a point, and that there had been rumors that Venom had actually done some vigilante work prior to his encounter with All Might, and that the sweet little girl, Eri, that had been seen helping out the teachers and staff by being their errand girl, had actually been saved by Venom before being brought to U.A. to get help with her Quirk, which was likewise rumored to be very powerful and very dangerous.

"Well, I think we're asking the wrong questions," Mina's voice said, pulling Ochako out of her thoughts. "The real question we should be asking is who is it that is actually standing for the Quirkless and Villainous Quirked, as the creature says: Venom, or the host inside the suit?"

"Host? What are you talking about?" asked Tenya.

"Well, isn't it obvious?" said Mina matter-of-factly. "Venom is actually two beings combined into one. Just from eyeballing it, and judging from his speech patterns, I'd say that someone has become bonded with some kind of symbiote, an alien creature that needs to bond with a host to survive for extended periods in our world. In exchange, the symbiote provides the host with superhuman abilities that can put them on par with even the likes of All Might, as you can clearly see. However, there can be a few side effects, such as becoming a complete jerkwad and borderline supervillain, or being eaten from the inside out. And on top of that, they're super hard to unbind from their hosts, usually only certain sonic vibrations, like say a bell from a cathedral's bell tower or a Sound Quirk, or a Fire Quirk will do the trick. In some cases, they can also be unbound with Electrical Quirks."

"Uh-huh..." said Shouto, clearly not buying a word that Mina was saying. "And how do you know all this, exactly?"

"I have my sources," said Mina vaguely.

"Riiiight... I think you need to lay off the sci-fi movies and manga, Mina," said Momo, an amused smile on her face.

"Hey, don't shoot the messenger, Momo, I'm just saying, that's what all the facts point to," said Mina.

Ochako frowned in thought. If Mina was right, by some stretch of the imagination, could that possibly mean that this theoretical host was merely an innocent victim who was just along for the ride, like a puppet or suit? Did they truly stand for the Quirkless who were 'trodden upon' or treated as second-class slaves, and those who were cursed with Quirks that were perfectly suited for villainy? Or was that the theoretical symbiote? In all honesty, Ochako had never once thought about if villains had ever wanted to be villains in the first place, or if they turned to villainy because they felt they had no other choice because of their Quirks...