Absolute Symbiote Chapter 2: Ruin On Earth.

Chapter 2: Ruin on Earth.

(General P.O.V)

J’onn J’onzz sat alone in the cockpit of his Martian bioship, arms resting on his knees, head bowed low.

The ship moved on autopilot, gliding smoothly through the cold black between Mars and Earth. Its systems responded to J’onn’s mental commands, but he hadn’t issued any since they left orbit.

He was trying to center himself.

Coming back to Mars had been a mistake.

He thought he was ready to face what was left. He wasn’t. Not even close. The silence of the planet still clung to him, loud in his thoughts. He could feel the remains of his people, like dying embers pressed into the back of his mind.

Moreover there was that...Thing.

He tried to meditate, shutting his eyes, steadying his breathing. The technique had worked for centuries. It helped clear the noise. Anchor the present. Ground him in memory without being overwhelmed by it.

But something was wrong.

His focus slipped too easily. Memories jumped without rhythm. One second he was thinking of Mars, the next—Metropolis. Then, suddenly, a League meeting. Then a flash of fire. Then his wife. Then the Watchtower. Then Earth’s oceans. Then...

He blinked, brow tightening.

This wasn’t normal.

He had control over his mind. It was his domain. Even in grief. Even under pressure. But now, every time he tried to focus on one thought, another rose up and pulled him away.

Names. Faces. Systems. Security codes.

It wasn’t just memory loss. It felt like someone rifling through his head.

He straightened in his seat.

No. Not someone.

'Something.'

Inside his mind, he reached inward—past surface thoughts, deeper into his subconscious. A place he didn’t usually have to examine.

And there it was.

A presence. Cold. Watching. Rooted like a parasite.

It's name worn like a badge.

Ruin.

“You.”

The bioship’s controls flickered as J’onn’s concentration broke, but he didn’t care.

He entered his mindspace fully. The real world blurred, replaced by an internal landscape shaped like a Martian memory sphere—a mental projection chamber used to organize thought. Except it was corrupted.

Tendrils had spread through it. Black lines cut across glowing memory nodes. Entire sections of his identity had been threaded with foreign structure.

Ruin stood at the center. Not with a physical body—but in a shifting, humanoid silhouette. Mocking form. Mocking him.

"You evolved creature,” J’onn said, voice low but clear. “You shouldn't have been able to survive that flame.”

Ruin responded without speaking. Images flooded J’onn’s mind. The fire. The grief. The rage that had nearly burned it to ash.

But now, instead of recoiling, Ruin absorbed it.

“Not simple evolution, but understanding born from tasting your memories, J'onn J'onnz, the last Martian. I feed on what you thought would destroy me,” it said directly into his thoughts, not with pride but confidence. “You burned your people in memory. You tried to burn me with the same grief. But I am not Martian. I am not bound by your sorrow. I have learned to consume it.”

J’onn recoiled as Ruin swelled in size, absorbing waves of psionic energy that leaked from the mental environment.

Every time J’onn resisted, every painful image he tried to suppress became more fuel.

He tried the flame again anyway—launching a burst of telepathic fire fueled by guilt, anguish, fear.

Ruin didn’t flinch. It opened itself like a black maw and inhaled.

“You are not purging me,” it whispered with a shiver. “You are feeding me.”

Mentally weakened, J’onn gasped and snapped back into the physical world just in time for the bioship to lurch. Alarms sounded. The ship was spiraling in response to the lost mind link between them.

Earth was in view—but the trajectory was wrong.

He looked out and saw it: the Watchtower. The bioship was headed straight for it.

Then the transmission came through.

“Manhunter, this is Captain Atom on Console Duty. Your flight pattern just went ballistic. You’re on a direct path to impact the Watchtower. What’s happening?”

J’onn staggered towards the console. The controls were unresponsive. His thoughts couldn’t override the ship anymore. Ruin had nested too deep.

He made the only call he could.

“C- Captain,” he said, forcing calm into his voice. “You need to shoot me down. Now. You can’t let this ship reach Earth.”

There was silence.

“Say again?”

“Destroy the bioship! There’s something on board that cannot—must not—make it to Earth.”

Another pause. Then:

“Acknowledged. Good luck J'onn.”

Outside, J’onn watched as Captain Atom left the Watchtower and streaked toward him like a bullet made of sun.

The strike was clean. A controlled detonation of quantum energy tore through the front hull. The bioship shattered into pieces—organic plating and psychic alloys scattering in a burning arc.

J’onn barely had time or energy to phase through the explosion and escape.

At the last second, he felt Ruin's presence disappear from his mind and thought the creature had disintegrated.

"T-thank you Atom..." J'onn plummeted through open space, falling unconscious before he could register the heat of atmospheric entry.

Among the ship’s debris, small fragments of black—thin, hard to track matter fell.

Toward Earth.

(Ruin's P.O.V)

I almost had him.

J’onn’s mind was layered and dense, like Martian cities buried under time. But I had carved deep enough. I learned how his thoughts moved, what parts of his memory guarded the others. I found the breach points.

I was going to take all of him. His grief. His power. His Earth.

But I overreached.

His hand. I had taken it— consumed it physically and mentally.

The Martians' experiments had done more than give me an insatiable hunger for Neural Mass. Much like a Martian, I could shift from a physical form into a mental one, which is how I'd survived his first attack.

My neural mass had broken through his cells, and the tissue became mine. Tendrils rooted into his nerves. I could feel his strength pulsing through the limb like electricity.

Then everything exploded.

A wave of heat struck—physical yet hot enough to affect the mental. This was different than J'onn's psionic flames. Raw, destructive. Real.

Captain Atom.

The name surfaced too late from the fragments I’d stolen. A walking bomb. His power wasn’t psionic, and it wasn’t grief. It was something elemental. Fission. Energy born of rupture, not memory.

I screamed. For the first time, the pain felt pure.

His white flame—was matter coming apart. My cells didn’t absorb it. They broke under it.

My structure collapsed mid-air. The hand I had consumed was still mine, but the rest of me peeled away. J’onn escaped. I couldn’t hold him.

Then came reentry.

The atmosphere set me ablaze.

I couldn’t adapt. I didn’t understand why. I’d evolved past psychic fire. But this was something worse. It wasn’t grief, or emotion, or memory. There was no signal to feed on. Only destruction.

My mass burned in chunks.

No mind to hide in. No host to stabilize.

Just me.

Just instinct.

I pulled everything I had inward and wrapped myself in a last-second shield—thin, invisible, but strong. A layer of raw telekinetic pressure, forced into shape from everything I’d learned from J’onn. It wasn’t elegant. It was survival.

I hit Earth.

The impact turned a street into a crater. Buildings folded inward. Metal twisted. Glass shredded. Somewhere beneath me, pipes burst. Above, sirens started.

I couldn’t hear them yet. My awareness came back slowly.

Then movement.

A limb—burning, blackened, still covered in Martian green beneath the ash—dragged itself across the edge of the crater.

The limb was me. Still shaped like J’onn’s. Covered in a rippling telekinetic shield. Still smoldering.

I clawed forward, piece by piece, mass re-coalescing around the limb. Smoke poured from the holes in my skin. I couldn’t keep my form stable. I was still burning inside.

But I was alive.

I didn’t know where I was.

I didn’t care.

I was on Earth.

-0-

Still,

Most of me is gone.

Burned, scattered, vaporized during the descent.

I had to convert all the martian minds I'd harvested into neural mass just to keep myself from breaking down.

The pain still lingers. Not just in memory—real pain. It runs through my structure like damage that refuses to heal. The first pain that’s truly mine. Not borrowed. Not stolen.

I remember fear, too. I’ve consumed it before, felt its texture in dying minds.

But now, I know it.

Right beside the pain. And beneath them both—anger.

Not an echo.

Mine.

J’onn. Captain Atom. The League. Their images are sharp in my thoughts. Symbols of control. Authority. Power. I’ve seen enough of J'onn's memories to know the truth:

They will come for me again.

Because they can hurt me.

I don’t act. Not yet. I’ve absorbed enough of J’onn’s discipline to understand what instinct alone will cost me.

I need to wait.

Grow.

Then strike.

But first—I must feed. J'onn's hand disappears within me and I return to my squirming blank tendril form.

I scan the area using telepathy. It’s difficult. The range is limited. The neural sensitivity I once wielded is degraded. I use J’onn’s telepathic skill to its limit, and I find something.

Not minds. Not proper ones.

Rodents.

Close. Moving.

I move toward them. A slow crawl at first. Body still half-formed, struggling to hold mass together. I find a storm drain. Inside: rats. Nervous, quick, erratic minds.

I strike.

Three. Five. Seven. Gone in seconds.

They are warm. Alive. Their neural signals weak but present.

But the taste is wrong. The structure too small. Their memories are simple—food, fear, flight. No identity. No weight.

I discard the meat. Worthless.

Then something stronger.

Dead minds, but close. Still holding residual signal.

Three bodies. Human.

An alley. Blood pooled beneath them. Two female. One male.

I drag myself toward the woman first. Her brain is intact. I devour it quickly, gaining only fading impressions—panic, a voice screaming, a child’s name.

Then the girl.

Small. Weak. Neural network underdeveloped. Still usable. Still energy.

Last, the man.

I reach inside his skull, but the moment I connect, something different happens.

A memory grabs me.

Pulls me down into it.

I see it through his eyes.

He’s watching them die.

A gang. Painted faces. Laughter like static. The girl screaming. The woman reaching for her. The man screaming but held back. A voice—high, mocking. A gun. A knife. Blood. The girl first. Then the mother. Quick, brutal.

He survives only long enough to be broken.

His grief is not just strong. It is weaponized.

It burns in a way I recognize.

And then something strange.

He speaks.

Not in words. In intent.

“Take my body. Use it. If you can kill them—do it."

He offers himself freely.

Not out of fear.

Out of rage.

I hesitate. I’ve taken bodies before. But never one offered.

Not like this.

His pain is a mirror—not of my loss. I do not understand that. I was never part of a family. Never loved. Never held.

But his anger—I understand.

I reach into him.

And for the first time, I don’t just consume.

I join.

His body reforms under mine. The structure is fresh. Young adult. Muscular. Damage is reversible. I knit the tissue, restore the neural structure, reshape the exterior.

I wear him.

I am him.

He is me.

His name meant nothing to the world.

But I remember it. Timothy Skinner.

I will use it to walk unnoticed.

Because I have learned something useful.

There are others on this planet—beings like the one who wears the clown paint. The Joker and his gang of carnage. Others like him. Supervillains.

Some even strong enough to challenge the League.

I will seek them out.

Study them.

Feed on them.

And when I am strong enough…

The Justice League will burn. It's either them or me.