"Why are you here?!?!"
Even Venom's voice was about to break. He tried hard to conjure his sludgy body into shape, protruding a head from the center and stared at Batman who stood in front of him. "Why, how, and why on earth are you here?!?!"
Batman appeared to be sizing up this blob of sludge. From the corner of his eye, he soon spotted Stark, clad in Battlesuit, who arrived and stood shoulder to shoulder with him, both studying this floundering mass.
"As much as I hate to admit it, I was once his host. And, I believe, so were you." Stark remarked towards Batman.
"No, that wasn't me." Batman defended, using a tone that seemed a bit like quibbling but did genuinely state a fact. He started, "He might've run into another Batman. A younger Batman."
"Because if that wasn't the case, there would be no chance of running into you again. I wouldn't allow an alien creature that could parasitize people and read their consciousness to walk out of my mind alive."
Chills ran down Venom, but he still griped, "How did you two run into each other? You clearly, clearly come from different worlds... What the hell is Shiller up to?!?!"
"You're right; it was indeed Shiller's doing." Stark hinted with a slight smile, "At least in the beginning, but now..."
Out of fear, Venom reduced himself into a small ball, feeling the looming shadows of the two giants that covered his body, and he swallowed nervously.
Before the sea of knowledge could submerge him, he heard a whisper.
"You got it. The key to this plan is..."
"Of course, I figure. A valid approach indeed. Do you believe this strange alien creature can help?"
"You don't understand. They are a race, so..."
"I see, that means..."
In the patient rooms of Arkham Sanatorium, when Eddie woke up, he saw Shiller's face. A doctor, dressed in a white coat, handed him a cup of warm water. Eddie, whose eyes were unable to focus, rested his head on the pillow and rasped in a tired voice: "Did he leave?"
"Yes, and now, you need to rest here."
Shiller sighed; he picked up a file from the nearby table and said, "I didn't dare tell you when Venom was here. I was afraid he would do something irrational out of excitement."
"The assessment results are quite bad, Eddie. The mental health assessment system for superheroes and superpower users that Nick and I have set up, is not meant to monitor you. It's intended to identify problems early. You must accept this, look right into your psychological state. You are in pain right now, you need treatment."
"But without him, I would suffer more." Eddie's teeth clenched tightly.
"That's exactly the problem." Shiller took the cup from Eddie's hand: "For quite a lengthy period, you were alone, communicating with only the voice in your head. It was safe for you this way, you were alone, you didn't need to worry about what other people think."
"However, in reality, the mental state of many with mental disorders is similar. They communicate with the hallucinations they see and derive a sense of safety from them. But this is like drinking poison to quench thirst for human beings."
"Humans are social creatures, they need to establish a sense of security in society, not develop relationships with the voices in their minds in ways incomprehensible to most. This only leads to more extreme thinking, leading to certain mental disorders."
"This will cause you to find yourself unable to communicate normally with people when you wish to return to society. You can no longer properly respond to the rhythm of social interaction among ordinary humans. But you must interact as it is the source of your pain and for the majority of those suffering from mental illnesses."
"Maybe you're right." Eddie admitted with the remnants of his rational self, "I don't know when I started to become more and more introverted, a bit disagreeable. My colleagues and friends have stopped contacting me or they did, but I never noticed."
"I understand how you feel." Shiller lowered his eyelids, "The union with Venom worked perfectly with Peter and Stark, complementing each other, enhancing their powers and consolidating their wisdom."
"Yet when it came to you, you both felt intense pain. Thus, you began to question whether it was your fault. On this, my latest experience speaks for itself."
"There are two types of thinking a person can have, one excels at calculation, and the other excels at judgement; and not everyone is born with a perfect balance of these two thoughts, not even Peter and Stark."
"Their thinking leans more to calculations like solving a mathematical problem, listing the conditions and then deriving the results using formulas. This type of thinking is neither good nor bad. Although it is highly accurate, it is inevitably rigid and not conducive to social interactions."
"In contrast, I belong to the other extreme. I am proficient at discerning emotions. When something happens, I consider how various people react to it as crucial evidence when drawing my conclusion. It emerges typically out of nowhere, needing to change with circumstances, not constant or inevitable."
"Some people habitually summarize their experiences into formulas and problems; some interpret them as music and paintings. You and I are both of the latter, we are not mathematical personalities but philosophical."