Chapter 57: Chapter 57: Grey over Black
It was raining like hell.
"Don't move!" Laura hissed at Daken as he stopped mid-stride behind her.
"Are you nuts? You want us to just sit here? If he gets controlled by that Symbiote we're done."
"If we trigger him before we know what's happening we're also done. Sit tight, dammit!" Laura held her arm out to still everyone.
"I've got the thunder ready if need be…" Ororo whispered.
Brontë continued to struggle as he stood on the ceiling. His veins and the dragonoid symbol on his chest glimmered blood-red. The outline of fangs once visible beneath the Symbiote suit mask had extended and ripped free, giving him a predatory razor toothed grin.
"Bronte…."
"Who the fuck are you?" Laura snapped.
"Mmmm…. Human evolution. It's incredible. I remember when you were almost indistinguishable from monkeys.. small little tribes of monkey people picking at eachother all day haha!….. now look at you. Look at what's come of you. Genes that once looked like simple helix strands bubbled and mutated…. This boys looks like a gaseous thunder cloud! A nebula of innovation!"
Brontë raised his hand to them. His claws extended from his knuckles and wrist followed by a bone blade bursting from his elbow.
"HAHA he's like a Swiss Army knife!"
"What do you want?" Ororo asked.
Brontë aimed his claws at her. Symbiotic tendrils slithered down the length of his metal claws, converging into a web halfway up to connect them. Lightning danced beneath the galaxy skin of the Symbiote, leaving steaming ash trails and collecting in the web central to his claws.
It looked like an improvised organic blast cannon. And it only grew. Larger and larger…
"Something's wrong with this... this lightning isn't normal earthen phenomena…. No— stop!" The voice spoke from Bronte's mouth as he spiked his power and seared away the Symbiote.
The two fell from the ceiling and smacked the metal floor. He seized like Raze once did.
"AHHHH- this blood is putrid blinding light! YOU ARE WRONG! THERE IS ANOTHER GOD HERE! FACE ME!"
"What..?"
Laura looked over to see Ororo praying. Outside the heavy rainfall had frozen in time.
T'Challa stood in front of his defensively as if he was used to this.
She couldn't say the same for Bronte. Or maybe she could. He'd already faced a total of three gods.
Hopefully…. KNULL, wasn't any larger of a deal than the others. If he was they had the fight of their lives in the making.
***
He wasn't on earth.
He was floating.
In space. He was so deep into space he couldn't see earth. He couldn't see any nearby planets. Only darkness. Partially lit and colored by the sprinkling of stars that could've been planets a million light years ahead. Or space colonies. Or the avengers flying by. Finally returning. It all could've been anything as he floated.
No….
It wasn't even stars.
Stars didn't move. Space didn't slither like snakes in a pit of black muck. Space didn't groan and hum like gagged prisoners.
Space was behind him. Something else entirely was ahead.
"What is this..?"
"My…. P-prison…."
Bronte's stomach caved as the black goup slithered apart and split until a hole appeared— showing down deep into the dark orbs core, a being sat tied to a throne. Dark impossibly old armor clung to his skin like grime given shape. Speaking of his skin, he was whiter than the color— like that very thing was based off of him. Yet his eyes were blacker than the slithering things imprisoning him.
That same dragon symbol beamed from his chest and shed light on an impossibly dark blade at his hip.
"You're KNULL."
He tugged at the things holding him—
"Don't say my name so casually, host!"
"Don't call me host."
KNULL snickered, "Why wouldn't I call you what you are? Should I call earth what it's not as well? Should I not also refer to it as food? Why when I consume it as we speak!"
When he yelled the word speak a wave of black mist spilled from his rotting mouth and hit Bronte. Immediately his vision went black before being replaced with the sight of chaos.
A man in a suit of black stood in the middle of a street. Behind him buildings were lit ablaze. Cars toppled eachother. Men and women screamed in terror as he laughed with his underlings. The devilish horns and sharp teeth really—
"Daredevil..?" Bronte's stomach twisted.
Like Bronte, he too had been taken over by a Symbiote.
Across from him Spiderman, Ghost-Spider, Iron Fist, Punisher and Power-Man were on their last legs.
"What are you doing?!" Bronte snarled.
"What I was born for. The same way you were created to breathe…. Age… mate…. Procreate. I…. Am this."
Brontë growled.
KNULL laughed. "You are familiar. My race's gene seed has a memory…. From a mercenary…. A mouthy wretch. Friends with… a Wo— Wolverine, yes. Your relation is clear."
"Here we go with that bullshit, man.."
"Is there a problem..?"
"You tell me!? I've got a thousand egotistical man children trynna take over the planet and use me like I'm a sword with dreads or something. Y'all got me tight."
"Human vernacular grows more odd every Century."
"You know what else is odd, pasty?" Bronte calmed as the thunder in the distance grew closer.
"Hmm?" He didn't notice his armor beginning to steam.
"You can't tell I'm burning a hole in your only connection to me." Bronte couldn't see back home but he could feel his power flow. It was more than physical. Magic was like that.
"No I can. I can just heal over your light with darkne—"
Poetically… ironically, whatever you want to call it a blast of grayish white light exploded into existence behind Bronte, shedding light on the planet that was actually just a ball. A swirling ball of a million symbiotes.
"AHHHH!" KNULL roared and the Symbiote swarm swallowed him.
"This child's blood is protected by Gaia and Myself. You may have pulled Bronte from earth, but the Grey Goddess is infinite. You are a mere prisoner by your own creations. Stay that way and live in silence. Or I will bring balance…. Justice, to your attempted tyranny." Ma'at spoke from the light behind Bronte.
"Nah forget that, let's smoke him right now." Bronte pulled on his magic, twisting the nebula clouds and solar winds into a chaotic stew of storming spacial material.
"And what of the innocent Klyntar beings that have devoted themselves to keeping him from the universe?" The light spoke.
For a moment it felt like Bronte's rage would ignore the human decency within.
He sighed and the storms stopped. "Right. You can sit tight, but we need to up the score on him. I can't let what he did to New York slide. We can help them."
Ma'at was silent for a moment. "Ok. Stay calm and remember your goal. You will occupy two places at once a while longer. To bring balance."
Brontë wanted to say more to KNULL who had more or less become a metaphor for his frustrations in the form of dark unknown all powerful big bags, but Ma'at sent him flying through space and time and a tumultuous twisting burst of light and color until it shaped and morphed into the flaming visage of Hells Kitchen New York.
He was standing right beside DareDevil. The Dark Devil King with his Symbiote hellions.
"Astral Projection is something many magically gifted individuals can do— with training. You aren't trained or ready. You are a ghost— a means of enforcing justice and balance. A righteous weapon. A thing. You have one chance to commit one act before your connection here is severed."
"Alright let's get busy." Bronte thought before flying above them.
He focused. He listened. The music from the cars abandoned a dozen blacks ahead. The cries of people wounded and traumatized by Knulls terrorist act. The beat of his own internal drum. The state of the storms.
His transparent form solidified with the crackles of lightning and sparkles of fire.
He popped his claws.
The flames covering the streets and buildings below him twisted and funneled into a current of heat that coalesced and circled around him like a halo. He was freestyling at that point as the weaker symbiotes disintegrated at the flames rise.
He spun and spun the ring of fire, taking the oxygen and growing the flames intensity until Hell's Kitchen was hot as an Arizona summers day.
Daredevil shook as he looked up at the halo of fire and crackling radiant thunder clouds. It was… religious.
"Uriel… angel of light and repentance. Smite me…. Save these people. They're innocent… and my sins have overpowered me. Please. Help these people."
"Not Uriel, but I got you." Bronte raised his claws to the sky as a blindingly fast blast of lightning smashed into his them, soaking him in dizzying power.
He aimed his claws at the spinning fire halo like they were magical scepters. Beacons of blinding power.
"NOW!" Daredevil yelled at Bronte while his other half called for the Symbiotes to initiate a final attack on the last stand of heroes.
"AHHH!!!" Bronte sent the blast of flaming thunderous lightning at the Symbiote horde.
It hit the center streets sending a wave of heat and deafening thunderous shockwaves that seared the symbiotes from the pedestrians skin. As the blast knocked them back, webs and hands caught their falls at blinding speeds.
He never saw the end. It seemed like he blinked and then he was back in the space station as the last remnants of the Symbiote boiled off him.
Dead.
The magic in his blood was disintegrating it slowly from the beginning. The use of his powers only bolstered said affects. It seems the two weren't compatible.
Which sucked. The Symbiote didn't ask for any of this.
Everyone stared.
"Bronte—"
"They're not bad. They're… protecting the universe. Don't bother the Klyntar race. We'd be dead wrong for enslaving aliens anyway. As a black man I think that's crazy. And I'll stand on that."
"Was anybody else in space for like no reason!?? HAHAH what a trip I see why people drop tabs on weekdays." Raze sat up and shook his head.
"You guys are so stupid." Laura pulled Bronte into a hug as Gabbie jumped on Raze.
It felt like the whole room exhaled finally.
Brontë found Ororo looking at him. She nodded with a smile.
"You were gone for a while, hermano…." Laura commented as everyone began collecting themselves.
"Yea I stopped at New York on the way back."
"…. What?"
"Nothing."
Brontë surveyed the room. Facing the broken container that ultimately took his mind across time and space , he paused.
"Where's the other guy?"
"Who?"
"N'Thanial?"
Everyone looked around the room and shrugged. "Why you ask?"
"I…. Well everyone else is here but him."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
_Avatar0FFury_
_Avatar0FFury_ Brontë saves New York a second time and beefs with another god. This dude is a actual crash out dummy. He ballin tho (he has literally no money) lmk what ya think and thanks for reading. Also I borrowed this event from Zdarsky’s DareDevil 2022 run. Amazing little symbiote tie in I really liked so I put it in my universe as well. A little thing that will spiral into other things later. ERHM. Spider-Man. ERHM. Symbiotes. ERHM. Anyway thanks for reading and dueces!
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