Tony was standing in his new Venombuster armour, it was around 8 feet tall, with thick banded plates around not just its body but legs and arms as well. The faceplate was snapped open and there was a smaller iron man armoured suit within. He had spent hours designing the perfect countersuit to fight Venom, knowing that Parker was never going to stay good.
As soon as Vision had started to shout about Ultron the Iron Legion had retreated. It was dark and with hidden jammers and countermeasures, nobody would get a clear image of Vision. Tony would make sure everything was scrubbed and once Peter had been taken care of it would be chalked down to another win for team Iron Man, but as he watched remotely as Peter was mercilessly crippled Vision, he wondered if they had crossed a line.
He had a file on Peter. Created when their feud was at its peak, ways to not just cripple Peter's financial situation but destroy him psychologically. It was cruel and unfair, but after his surrogate father Obadiah had turned on him he kept files like that on everyone. Only people he thought he could trust were exempt and the psychological profile on Peter was telling.
His mom was fine. Peter was right and they had nothing on her, his stepdad was a different matter. His use of the Oscorp formula had been discovered and he was currently under arrest, with May there the plan was to delay Peter long enough to drive him to the police station, where, as an easily recognisable Venom, he would be forced to stand down or face unmasking. The presence of the police should have been enough to make him pause, and stand down.
He had never shown anything but respect towards authority figures, even at school when the bullies made his life hell, he stayed low and kept his head down. Peter was a pacifist. He never talked back, and he never fought back.
They were wrong. The profile noted Peter as hesitant, slow to anger and that it was only the Symbiote's influence that fueled his rage. With it being hosted by Flash Thompson, Venom was back to the meek and coercible Peter. He was hardly out patrolling the streets, he was more lenient on everyone he fought, but as Tony watched Vision being twisted and maimed, he knew they were completely wrong.
Peter had been holding back, he had been playing nice and trying to act more like a hero. He hadn’t been Venom to hide, he hadn’t been Venom to try and get his life together. The young overbearing superpowered teen had matured into a pragmatic and restrained adult, but Tony and everyone else had just lit his fuse.
After finishing his phone call with Scott, he had watched and waited but now he sighed and dialled his phone, “Yeah. Vision failed. I need permission to use it though.” Tony nodded and looking over at the sleeker and much larger armour, he grinned. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. We have a more complete picture of his powers. You shouldn't need Ross.”
As he hovered he saw Tony smirking and all he could do was shake his head.
“The arrests at the Parker building failed, my mom isn’t Enhanced so that's another strike, Tony. Want to keep going?”
Venom floated across from Tony,
“Well played. You got them all. So now, now I'm mad, this isn’t a game, and I'm not stopping. You made a mistake Tony.” Venom took a deep breath, allowing his muscles to thicken, the armour plate shifted and covered more of his body, matching the Venombuster in size and bulk. “And now you pay.”
Iron Man snorted, “yeah, I don't think so. We have you on multiple felonies, we have your team on more. This ends here Peter.”
As the Legion carefully lifted Vision, Tony shook his head, “I thought better of you Peter. This, this is barbaric.” but Venom laughed,
“And holding hostages isn’t? Hypocrite. All the charges you have were manufactured by you. Assault? Vision is a synthetic being, so fake. Arresting my mom, she’s not Enhanced, so fake. Defending the warehouse? Fake. All fake. You've got nothing, and after I'm done with you, Tony Stark will be nothing.”
“I’m not here to stop you, Vision did his job, I’m only here to let you know where they are.”
“Oh, and maybe snap a pic while I drop my armour? No proof of who I am, not unless you count all those cameras you have whizzing around us.” Venom's senses could count them all, and there were fifteen in total. Tony hadn’t come here to be a distraction, Fury was right, Tony was here right now to put a stop to him, and he wasn’t playing around.
Venom touched a finger to his ear, “Yeah, Matt. May Parker and Curt Conners are being illegally detained at the 37th Precinct. Can you get them out?” and after he waited for a pause, “Yeah sure. Thank you.”
“See, detaining someone without charge gets you my attention, detaining someone without charge to entrap me, just pisses me off. So, Tony, why don’t we have that test now. That armour looks fancy. Want to see if it's fancy enough?”
The helmet on the Venombuster closed, “Can’t say I didn't warn you. Legion, attack pattern Gamma,” and as the Venombuster jetted upward Venom felt the impact of several missiles against his back. He scanned the area and felt the presence of ten additional suits, five had just fired missiles and the other five were powering up to hit the same spot with repulsors. The armour on his back burned and flaked, and Venom let it repair itself.
“See Pete, I have your cells. I know how to hurt you and I know how to stop you. Stand down. I won't ask again.”
Can she make one that looks like me, everyone’s fishing and I need a decoy.
He could feel Liv's laughter through their link, I’ll see what we can do.
As the Legion rose and repeated their attack Venom thickened the armour on his back but spun and let them hit a more reflective part of the armour, scattering the beams. As he jetted after Tony, he spun and fired off webbing, hitting each drone in the chest, where the webbing hissed and bubbled as it ate through the armoured plating of the drones.
Venombuster was standing on the top of a highrise, watching the battle, and he tutted as he lost connection to more and more of his Legion. Whatever caustic webbing Peter was using was strong enough to eat through the normal Iron Man armoured suit, but he had a surprise for him, sloppy kid, he thought as Venom rose and punched Venombuster caught his fist with a whine of servos.
“Yeah, a lot stronger than before,“ and he swung Venom down and caught him with a foot, kicking him off the roof. “A lot faster too.”
The tendrils at his arms disconnected and Venom caught himself with the extra four arms. “Well, yeah, but not strong enough.” and he launched himself back towards Tony.
Stepping to one side he grabbed Venom by the waist and was rewarded by the harness limbs slamming down, halting Venom's path, Venom hooked an arm around Tony’s and shoulder threw him onto the roof, bringing up a cloud of dust. As Venom knelt on Tony's back he brought the arm around and he could hear the servos in the thicker armour complain as they were bent in a way they didn’t like.
There was a series of clicking noises and then a clunk as the arm locked in place and then a high pitched whine as the arm suddenly sparked into life, sending a charged blast straight into Venom's chest. As he looked down, his armour had flaked away completely and his chest was bare.
“See, your cells lose cohesion once they leave your body, and I just found out at what point that happens. Stand down. I can light you up with enough power, nothing survives. We can do this peacefully or I can take you in pieces.”
Venom stepped back, and the black symbskin covered him from this time, reconstructing the armour. “Surrender? They are rounding up people to send to jail for nothing more than being born. I won’t, and if you think a small zap will stop me” and as Venom raised an arm a thin blade extended from it, glowing red at the tip, “then you don’t know me at all.”
There was a snort from the armour, “Extremis, and you accuse me of stealing stuff” and as Venom brought the blade up and Venombuster caught it on his armour he shrugged, “Vibranium alloy. Strong enough to stop even that” and he lifted a leg and a piston backed kick sent Venom flying.
The thrusters on his back steadied his flight but several Iron Legion intercepted him, batting between them like a ball, As Venom tried to fly up another was waiting, and even as he sent out a ball of caustic webbing it returned fire with a repulsor blast and splatter the ball into nothing,
“Yeah, I know about that as well. I have every file that Sword and Shield have on you. Every fight, every move. All the research Gwen has done, Everything.” Tony said smugly through the speakers on the armour. “You can’t win. I know you better than you know yourself.”
Hovering, Venom took a breath, “you have an adaptive logistics program, tracking and predicting my moves based on past flight data. I gotta say, Tony, that's impressive.” Veon shrunk back down, his armoured form shedding the extra weight and slimming back down into his Venom armour mark two. “But we learned.” and he darted forwards.
“Extremis but our own” and as he sped forwards he grabbed a drone and sent bio-electricity coursing through it, leaving it smoking and disabled, his form shimmered and vanished, and even as Tony’s sensors scanned the sky, he failed to find a target lock, “We know you scan the skies for us, and we can bend them to our will.” Huntress had been busy, and with Peter’s ability to see through the various visual and electromagnetic spectrums, they had practised making a quaint that scattered not just light.
Venom looked around, there were too many to just disable them one at a time, and he knew that Tony would figure out where he was eventually. Even in the air, he couldn't hide the exhaust from the thrusters, or the air movements, he had to even the odds a little.
Venom grabbed a drone, twisted and struck under the joint of its arm, not severing it, but letting symbcells leach into the machine.
The Iron Legion drone shuddered and Venom overrode its program. All he did was change its Friend of Foe protocols, marking every other drone as an enemy and then releasing it.
As it flew away it opened fire on its former brethren, downing several more before Tony sent a kill command and disabled its systems. If that was taken over, then Venom was in that area, and as his HUD scanned for every possible energy he finally found the increased heat from the thruster pack. “Got you.”
As a drone lifted a repulsor and fired a blast of blue energy, it collided with something, and Venom shimmered into view. He had crossed his arms over his chest, and the pale blue energy from the repulsor crackled over a pair of bracers around Venom's wrists. Blue lines streaked up his arm and the arcstar reactor on his back glowed brightly for a second. “When you fight Augments that can neutralise your powers, you learn the same trick, so it doesn't happen again.”
As the gauntlets on his wrist glowed and a blast of energy shot out, destroying one of the Legion drones. “Oh, thanks for the repulsor tech, a bit old fashioned for my taste, but, from a hack, what did I expect?”