Marvel: I'm a Symbiote
Symbiote 0357: Lunch Date

Barely twenty minutes passed by as Apex returned to Susan’s room with two large bags of food in his hands. She had been sitting on the bed with a bored expression while looking out through the window when he entered the room. Seeing the bags in his hands, her eyes widened in shock and slight apprehension.

“I know I said famished…but that’s a bit much, don’t you think?” She said. “Please don’t ask me to finish everything.”

“Snacks,” he said. “If you’re going to be quarantined, at least you should get to enjoy some parts of it. I’ll get you access to some streaming services as well. But first, we should get you hooked back up to the monitors.”

“You said that you had another way to make them work,” she said. “It’s not a big deal, really. I can just attach the electrodes to myself.”

“And I’m telling you that you don’t need to deal with these inconveniences.” He said before putting the bags down on the ground and sitting beside her on the bed. He grabbed one of the wires, and suddenly, it started turning entirely black as the electrode patch started floating. “See? Easy.” With his words, the same thing happened with the rest of the wires as they all turned black.

“Whoa…” She was fascinated by all the floating wires around her.

“Raise your arms slightly. Since the electrodes don’t need any manual intervention anymore, I’ll change the locations for some of them.”

As she nodded, the electrode patches floated closer and attached themselves to her shoulders, forehead, collarbone, back, and then some slipped through the open back of her gown before attaching to her abdomen, thighs, and under her chest.

“Ticklish. But otherwise, I can’t feel them now,” she commented. “What if I want to take them off?”

“That’s the best part, you don’t need to. Even if you need to use the restroom, the wires can extend as far as you go. I have a way to make sure that every electric impulse is perfectly preserved. This way, we won’t have any discrepancies in our readings.”

“Better than being forced to use a bedpan, I guess,” she mumbled. “Can we start eating? My stomach is about to start making embarrassing sounds.”

“You can start first,” he said, handing her a brown paper bag from one of the larger bags. “I need to recalibrate some of these machines.”

“I wish we could eat at a table…” She discreetly glanced at him while pretending to look inside the bag. “Earing in bed can get so messy.”

“So many demands,” Apex sighed. “If it were your nurse, she would’ve called me up to complain about you by now.” He continued calibrating the monitors as per the new positions of the electrodes.

“Well, I recently went through a major breakup. I’m sorry if I’m being moody,” she said with an undertone of sarcasm.

“Yeah, you look all broken up about it,” Apex said. “Was it a serious relationship?”

“It’s complicated…”

“We have time,” he said.

“So, he was about to propose to me…when we were in space…overlooking our planet.”

“Sounds romantic. You said he was about to. Did he choose to break up with you instead?”

“No, that happened a little while before you came here.”

“You’re talking about Doom?” He said before snorting. “Good riddance. The guy is a menace.”

“What do you mean?”

“You will understand more once you start getting familiar with the multiverse. I don’t want to overwhelm you with information just yet,” he said. “Though, considering that he was about to propose, you don’t seem to mind.”

“I was going to refuse anyway. It was less like a relationship and more like a business deal. Something that happened just because. There wasn’t any passion…or even understanding involved.”

“Sounds like a pain,” he nodded.

“How much longer will you take?” she asked.

“Geez, I’m done. No patience.” He shook his head and approached the window before creating a table and two chairs on opposite sides. “Here’s your table.”

“I have to say, Apex. You are amazing. This is so cool. It’s like creating something out of nothing. What else can you do?” She got out of bed and sat down on the chair he had created. She wiggled a little, trying to test its structural integrity.

“A lot of things,” he said while taking a seat opposite her. “I’ll leave my tricks for you to discover later. For now, we should eat.”

“Finally!” She practically ripped open the bag and took out the three boxes and the accompanying sauces. “You got orange chicken? Awesome.” Within seconds, she had all three containers opened and was pouring the packets of chilli and soy sauce into the chow mein while already eating the orange chicken on the side.

“You really were famished, huh?” He hadn’t even opened the first container yet.

She gave him an affirmative grunt with food still in her mouth.

“Try not to choke,” he said, and slowly started eating while looking at her. He’d thought that they would talk a little while eating, but the woman didn’t stop until she had devoured all three dishes that he’d gotten for her.

“Are you going to eat that?” She pointed to the orange chicken that he hadn’t opened yet.

“Be my guest,” he nodded. “Oh, by the way, do you want me to supercharge your metabolism?”

“Whaf?” She asked with her cheeks puffed up like a squirrel and multiple pieces of orange chicken stuffed in her mouth.

‘God, she has such Wanda energy…’ Alex thought.

“Do you want me to supercharge your metabolism? You will be able to break down everything you eat completely, and as a bonus, it will be impossible for you to get fat.”

Her eyes widened, and she quickly swallowed her half-eaten food. “I’ll be able to eat as much as I want without getting fat?”

“Yes, do you want that?”

“I’d love… wait. Is this a trick to make me agree to bond with you? I need to think about it, Apex.”

“Not a formal bond, Susan. Just a rudimentary connection that can be broken at any time. Think of it as a trial. Bonding is a much more complex and semi-permanent process. Once I bond with someone, there will eventually come a point where it will be impossible to break that bond. It will be an eternal connection.”

“Sounds serious.”

“As I said, that’s why I’m offering you a simple perk without any of the obligations. Supercharged metabolism, no strings.”

“That sounds amazing…” she said.

“So?”

“What the hell…” She said with an interested smile. “Call it morbid curiosity, but I want to see what the deal is. Lay it on me.”

“Look at your hand,” he said, making her frown as she raised her hand, which was still covered by his glove.

“I’d completely forgotten that it was even there…”

“It’s by design,” he said as the glove started disappearing in parts and was completely absorbed into her skin. “A part of me is now flowing in your blood and spreading through your body. I will limit my influence to your gut and related parts and give you a supercharged metabolism. You can eat as much as you want, whatever you want, and it will all be digested completely.”

“Even plastic? What about the microplastics in food?”

“Even those. The acid that’s being produced in your gut is strong enough to dissolve any material that you know of. The only limitations include some special materials like Uru.”

“What’s that?”

“The most valuable material in the universe. Also called the rock of creation, and for good reason.”

“Seems important…”

“Back to the matter at hand, any questions about the metabolism?”

“Can this acid be produced en masse? It would solve the world’s plastic problems.”

“Gaia has a better waste processing and management system. Implementing it on scale will take a while, but your planet will also slowly be incorporated into those systems.”

“You’re so normal… I thought you’d be more like Palpatine.”

“Because my Gaia Federation is so much like the Empire, huh?”

“From your words, it sounds a bit closer to the Republic, like just before the Empire was established. You know, with Palpatine in control of everything, but not having ripped away his facade yet. Will you go for Supreme Chancellor or directly skip to become the Galactic Emperor?”

“I’ll show you my Palpatine version when we are a bit more familiar. Don’t want to scare you off too quickly.”

“Ominous,” she smiled. “So, when do we start this training you were talking about?”

“Later. First, I want to make this room comfortable. These empty white walls are depressing. And I’ve barely been in here for an hour.”

“I’d rather get out of here quicker,” she said.

“Don’t try to hurry this. Spending more time training won’t help you. If anything, it will frustrate you. We have to take things slow. And making your environment more comfortable is imperative.”

“Fine, I guess. I don’t have any specific furnishing plans in mind. If you could get me some books, that would be nice. And a microwave…or could I just cook popcorn by repeatedly going between visible and invisible?”

“Can’t do microwave. Any electronics. The TV only works because it’s behind a radioactivity-blocking glass. And the remotes are made with proprietary tech that can send signals through radioactive environments. That’s why you don’t have your phone here either.”

“I figured… Fine. Eating radioactive stuff won’t harm me, right?”

“No,” he shook his head. “You’ll be fine. Since you don’t have any specific furnishing plans, you can get into bed, and I’ll create some general stuff that I have in mind.”

She nodded before standing up from the chair and getting into bed.

Suddenly, she saw black streaks all across her vision and realized that they were black tentacles that had shot out of Apex’s back. Within moments, she saw a bookshelf, a comfortable armchair, and a few more things being created out of nothing.

“And we’re done,” Apex said. “Let me know if you have any specific books in mind. I’ll bring some books that I like tonight in time for dinner.”

“We’re having dinner together?”

“It’s your choice if you want to eat all by yourself, or if you want to eat with me.”

“I wouldn’t mind some company for dinner.”

“Great, then I’ll be off.” He said. “But first, I want you to spend the rest of the day setting your thoughts straight. Meditate if you want to. Watch something, eat some snacks. If you want anything whatsoever, ask me and I’ll get it for you.”

“What if I want something flown from another country?”

“If it’s reasonable, sure. Just don’t send me to get you a fresh baguette from Paris.”

“A baguette doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” Her words made Apex look at her with a flat glare.

“Kidding,” she chuckled. “Thank you.”