Your chest rose and fell in ragged, uneven gasps, the burn of exhaustion searing through your muscles like fire. Sweat dripped from your brow, tracing cold rivulets down the curve of your jaw before vanishing into the fabric of your torn clothing. The alleyway was suffocating, thick with the acrid scent of sweat, blood, and rusting metal, but all you could focus on was the whirlwind of gleaming silver flashing before your eyes.

Deadpool moved like a specter of death, his twin katanas slicing through the air with lethal precision, the shing of each stroke a wicked symphony of impending doom. The space between you shrank, his attacks growing bolder, closer, the whisper of steel grazing the fabric of your sleeve. Your breath hitched. One wrong move, and those blades would carve into flesh.

Desperation twisted in your chest, clawing at your throat like a rabid beast. You stumbled back, hands trembling, your heartbeat a war drum against your ribs. "Please," you rasped, voice frayed at the edges, raw with exhaustion and something dangerously close to fear.

Deadpool paused mid-swing, the tip of his katana gleaming under the dim streetlights as he cocked his head, his crimson-and-black mask betraying no emotion. But you searched anyway, desperate for something—anything—beneath that playful, unhinged veneer.

"I don't want to fight you, sugar cube," he drawled, his tone as sweet as poisoned honey. "Not like this."

His words lingered in the stagnant air, fragile as gossamer, but the battle didn't yield. The clang of clashing steel, the distant wail of sirens, the steady drip of water from a rusted pipe—it all pressed in, suffocating.

And then something inside you snapped.

A guttural hiss erupted from deep within your chest, something feral, something wrong. Your lips peeled back, stretching into something beyond human, revealing jagged rows of obsidian-sharp teeth that gleamed with viscous, venomous saliva. Shadows slithered and writhed at your feet, coiling around your limbs like living entities, drinking in the dim light of the alleyway. Your spine arched, your body contorting with unnatural grace, fingers twitching with anticipation—a predator ready to strike.

Deadpool faltered, just for a moment. His head tilted in mock curiosity. "Damn," he mused, twirling his sword effortlessly. "I was hoping for an emotional breakthrough—but nope! We're going straight to nightmare fuel. Love that for us."

You didn't flinch.

"It's far too late to get sentimental with me, Deadpool," you snarled, and your voice—your voice—was no longer your own. It rumbled, layered with a distorted, alien growl, something ancient and merciless.

The air grew thick, heavy with the sickly scent of decay and raw power, the kind that made the stomach churn and instincts scream run.

Your eyes, once familiar, now gleamed like pools of pure void—endless, hungry. Your skin pulsed, dark tendrils of inky blackness slithering and writhing, creeping along your arms, curling around your wrists like living chains.

"I'm already gone," you whispered, a cruel, knowing smile stretching over your monstrous visage.

And then, the darkness moved.

The tendrils lashed out, snapping toward Deadpool with terrifying speed, the very shadows bending to your will.

"There's only Venom now."

The atmosphere thickened, the oppressive weight of your presence pressing against the very air between you. The symphony of the city—the distant blare of horns, the hum of flickering streetlights, the echo of forgotten voices—faded into an eerie silence, swallowed by the abyss coiling at your feet.

Deadpool remained still, an unnatural stillness that defied every chaotic fiber of his being. His body, always poised for a fight, seemed caught in an invisible tug-of-war between instinct and something deeper, something more human.

His masked gaze traced the shifting shadows that clung to you like a living nightmare, the way the inky tendrils pulsed in rhythm with your slow, measured breaths. He swallowed again, the sound dry and audible in the quiet. The usual glib deflection, the rapid-fire quips, the desperate need to turn every moment into a joke—they were gone.

For once, he didn't know what to say.

His gloved fingers twitched at his sides before curling into loose fists, then releasing again. The faintest sigh slipped past his lips, lost beneath the steady rasp of metal sliding home as he sheathed his katanas. The finality in the motion sent a ripple of something strange through your veins—recognition, unease, a sliver of something that almost felt like hesitation.

Deadpool's shoulders sagged, but not in surrender. It was different. A quiet acceptance, a resignation to the inevitable.

"I... see," he murmured, the words raw, unsteady. His voice—so often laced with careless bravado—felt suddenly exposed, stripped of all its usual armor.

He shook his head, an empty chuckle slipping from behind his mask, but there was no humor in it. Just something bitter. Something tired.

"Then... there's no reason for me to fight you."

The sentence landed softer than a whisper, yet it carved into the space between you with the weight of a blade.

A pulse of something primal coiled in your chest, but before you could process it, his head tilted upward slightly, just enough for you to catch the ghost of an exhale. A quiet, bitter laugh, barely more than a breath.

"Guess even I can't stab my way outta this one, huh?"

His words weren't a plea, nor a challenge. Just an acknowledgment of the truth. And maybe—just maybe—a goodbye.

Because the thing standing before him wasn't you anymore.

And Deadpool... he had never been good at funerals.

A grotesque, nightmarish grin split your lips, stretching far past the limits of human anatomy, jagged teeth glistening with thick, viscous saliva. The transformation overtook you in an instant—sinewy, inky tendrils rippling across your form like living shadows, devouring every last remnant of what had once been you. The air churned with the sickly stench of raw power, the acrid tang of venom staining every breath.

Your skin was no longer skin—it was an abyssal, obsidian carapace, smooth yet shifting, glistening beneath the dim light like liquid darkness solidified into something unspeakable. The last vestiges of humanity in your face vanished, replaced by a monstrous visage of primal hunger and unrelenting malice. Where your eyes had once been, now only twin voids remained—pupil-less, luminescent hollows that burned with a sickly, spectral glow, casting jagged, writhing shadows that clawed hungrily at Deadpool's rigid frame.

"Good."

The word slithered from your throat, an eerie blend of distorted voices overlapping, the sound vibrating through the alleyway like fractured glass grinding against itself. It was not one voice, but many—a chorus of abyssal hunger given form, an unnatural reverberation that made the very air tremble.

Your body shifted, muscles coiling with the perfect precision of a predator about to strike. The sheer size of you now dwarfed him, your towering form blotting out what little light remained, a living eclipse of death. A deep, wet growl rattled in your chest, something ancient, something wrong.

"Then this will be... quick."

The final word dripped from your elongated maw, drawn out in a taunting promise, the syllables curling with a dark, sadistic delight.

And then you moved.

The space between you shattered in an instant. The very air screamed as your form blurred, a shadowy specter ripping forward with terrifying speed. Claws—no, talons—elongated mid-strike, razor-edged and wickedly curved, slashing through the darkness like death incarnate.

Deadpool barely reacted, his instincts firing too late. His katanas flicked up in a desperate arc, but the motion was sluggish, futile. A pathetic barrier against the force that was now bearing down upon him.

And in that breath—a fraction of a heartbeat—his fate was already sealed.