In the vast and dark cosmos, the light of a star shines like a beacon in a harbor. A few small dots fly past an effervescent orange ball, navigating through solar particles, carving their way through the stellar storm, creating ripple-like patterns.
Around the star, there's an energy field visibly rolling like a tide. As ripples spread, those few small dots gradually steer away from the planet. As they get closer, you can see they are several octopus-like spaceships.
The front half of these spaceships is an elliptical cargo hold, with the back part divided into several slender tentacles housing the main control room. Inside, several crew members with monstrous heads are complaining.
"God knows what the Governor is thinking. Using our star extraction team to solve security issues on the surface? He's lifted the agreement on surface bombardment. We might just have to rain down fire on the city next. If the Capital Planet finds out, we might be executed!"
Another monster-headed crew member, slightly larger, pats his shoulder and says, "You know, there's been a shortage of host bodies recently. Look at you, this body of yours is almost decayed. Only the governor has the right to allocate host body quotas. If we work hard for him, maybe we can get a new body next month."
"I've heard that high-ranking agents have lowered the threshold for spare host bodies. Soon there may be an endless supply of bodies for our use. Well, let's hurry back before real problems occur in the city."
Just then, a sharp alarm sounds. The monsters look around. One of them quickly moves to the wall, picks up the communicator and asks, "What's happening? Why is the cargo ship sounding an alarm? Oh, damn! What is that?"
As he peers out from the spaceship's observation window, he catches sight of an incredibly massive alien spaceship silently floating toward them, reminiscent of a predatory shark.
The monster holding the communicator is in a stupor. Then, the voice of a flustered Governor rings out from the ship's broadcast system, "Quickly organize a counterattack! Where is your professionalism?!"
Steadying his trembling hands, the monster quickly drops his communicator. He rushes back to the control room, where the other pilots are already scurrying around frantically at the control panels. Walking in, the monster glances around and commands, "Quick, activate the defense shield! They are charging their cannons, they're likely going to..."
Suddenly, a powerful, silent flash of light engulfs the control room. In an instant, all the tentacles of the octopus-style spaceship, along with the Brood People inside, are completely disintegrated by the astonishing high temperatures and particle collisions.
In the Governor's office, Stark looks at the screen on his arm, as Jarvis's voice sounds in his ear.
"Firing completed, two ships with four secondary artillery pieces have been employed in this attack, fully annihilating the enemy's vessel."
"The firing ship has returned to position, the cannons are cooling down. The next firing opportunity is estimated to be in 3 minutes and 31 seconds..."
Stark glances at the ashen-faced Governor and says, "Did you know? The hardest part just now was to control our secondary artillery to output at a lower power to avoid utterly obliterating you."
The Governor's face-shield trembles, but he defiantly retorts, "You humans really want to start a war with the Brood?!"
"I've contacted our Capital Planet already. They're sending troops here. You're about to face the inexhaustible fleet of the Brood!!"
"But you won't live to see that day." With that, Stark floats up, flies into midair, opens the cannon on his hand and fires a beam at the Governor.
The monster-headed Governor panics and avoids the beam, dashing behind a desk and running to the wall across the room, smashing open a wall cabinet and grabbing the weapon inside.
He arms himself with a large diameter hand-cannon. The Governor hastily mounts it on his forearm, aims at Iron Man's battlesuit, and fires. Energy accumulates at the cannon's muzzle, emitting a soft hum, followed by a massive explosion.
The cannonball from the energy cannon destroys the entire office. Stark, manipulating his battlesuit, swiftly evades the aftermath of the explosion and relentlessly pursues the fleeing Governor.
Missiles, their trajectories calculated, continuously chase the monster, and despite his evasive maneuvers, a missile always manages to catch up to him and explode nearby, flipping him over.
Standing on the edge of a high-rise building, looking down, the streets are flooded, wet air penetrating his lungs. The Governor had never lived in such a humid environment. The fuzzy mist blurs his eyes, making his thoughts hazy.
Amid the flickering neon light, that familiar smiling mask appears again on the screen across the tall building. As if he could see the person facing the screen, he says, "Chased around like a dog with its tail between its legs, huh? When you were chasing those panicked fleeing humans, did you think this day would come?"
He takes a few steps back, revealing the view behind him. It's a control room that the Governor finds familiar, filled with numerous control panels and monitoring equipment. The man wearing the Joker's mask lets out a series of laughs before saying:
"You thought the first place I came to was the TV station? But that's just what I told you. And you believed it."
"While I was introducing myself there, telling you I just got here, in reality, I just came from another place..."
"Where is it?" The man puts his hand behind his ear, making a listening gesture. The Governor whispers, "The Weather Control Tower... You madman! You created this damned weather!"
The man on the screen can't possibly hear the Governor's words. Yet he seems to anticipate the Governor's response, "That's right, where you control the weather!"
"You've developed this planet to such an extent that you can even control the water cycle. After subduing the staff here, I had them do me a little favor..."
"Look up at the sky, see those beautiful crystal clear raindrops, do they not resemble the grains of salt sprinkled from a jar?"
"Can you sense that intoxicating scent of liquor? It comes from the other side, the deepest chaos and madness..."
His tone began to soften, like reciting a romantic poem or singing a requiem, the man in the joker mask straightened up, stepping backward, and another shadowy figure emerged on the screen.
He turned and walked back, standing face to face with the man with bat-like ears, then asked him, "When righteousness and evil, order and chaos begin to invert, when a madman uses his insane brain to do a righteous deed, how would you judge who is the sinner?"
"Look! Among those monsters active in the dark streets are shameless insects that steal away human bodies, parasitizing them, killing them, controlling them...
"Yet those ordinary people you swore to protect, their minds indoctrinated by order, are these insects..."
"Do you see it? They sneak into the human body, manipulating their thoughts and actions, leading them to commit appalling acts of villainy, and I, the pitiful madman in your mouth..."
"I am their savior, I am driving those ugly and despicable bugs out of their bodies, do you see? Just like this…"
A glow from the rain-soaked floor-to-ceiling window shines in, another building is set ablaze, a man with a monstrous head opens his mouth wide, seemingly about to burst into laughter.
Watching this insane scene, the indigenous people here feel no terror, they slowly gather around, looking at the rising flames, the pleasure of disorder is taking root in everyone's heart, that illusion of freedom, it brings them joy.
For a moment, Eddie saw that this was all a delusion. Those so-called monster heads were not really terrifying monsters, they were just ordinary people, but the pleasure born of sin distorted their faces and turned them into monsters.
He shook his head violently, but Venom said in a hoarse voice, "Because evil always happens in order, let everything return to disorder and chaos. Do you think you are upholding justice? No, you are just venting your madness…"
"You intend to save them? To restore order to all this, just as you've done countless times before... Are these people really worth saving?"
Through Eddie Brock's eyes, you could see the surging tides. Unlike the stunning radiance of the stars, the black ocean is tranquil and distant, with no end in sight.
Like a sea breeze sweeping over the surface of the sea and reaching the distant shore, there was another soul standing on the beach.
His gaze seemed to pierce through the distant space, through the barriers of the world, looking at the race with monster heads and bodies like ordinary people, he saw a deeper philosophical meaning from them and heard those mad words.
"Humans are monsters parasitized by thoughts and they can't fully control their bodies. What exactly do you want to save? Their body or their soul? Which one deserves to be saved? Which one deserves to uphold justice?"
Eddie saw the man with the joker mask slowly walking up to a broken window, the rain was blown into the room by the wind, it created a hazy mist around him, when the light shone on him, his voice and the hazy light scatter together.
"The human body can be healed, but their thinking is hard to change. Their circumstances can be altered, but the nature has no chance to be rewritten…"
"During the chaos of the universe, creating a shelter to protect the physical body won't change anything…"
Eddie heard a burst of laughter again, yet gradually it turned from madness to a melancholic tone, he saw the man standing in front of the window with his arms spread out wide, against the backdrop of the night sky ablaze with fire.
Suddenly, he went silent, chuckled and pulled out a button from his pocket, "What did I just say? That the first place I came to on this planet was the weather control tower?…No, no, no, I apologize, I lied to you, but I had to do so…"
With that, he looked back at the camera, raised the button in his hand, then said, "Guess where I buried a big bomb?"
At that moment, on the top of the Governor's office building, Stark who heard this sentence too, took to his heels.
But it was already too late, the intense shockwave from the explosion blew him directly into the air, after stabilizing his body in mid-air, Stark, while pressing his hand on his face guard said, "This damn madman! I told you from the beginning that he's not right!"
Just then, Jarvis' voice came, "Warning! High energy reading detected, locating... 1328 meters underground, rising rapidly, please evade immediately! Immediately!"
"900 meters...500 meters...300 meters..."
Stark immediately flew his mecha miles high into the sky. In his perspective, one massive tentacle erupted from the earth, followed by an endless sea of tentacles, soon, a huge creature crawled up from the ground.
Stark squinted and said: "Hive..."