Alex Mercer vs. Carnage is a What-If? Death Battle featuring Alex Mercer from the Prototype series and Carnage from the Marvel franchise. This page was created by Death Battle Mike but has since been abandoned and has been adopted by GalacticAttorney. After GalacticAttorney's leave, this page has been re-adopted by BloodStalker500
Description[]
Activision vs. Marvel! Two vicious shape-shifting mass murderers engage in battle! Which biomass-manipulating beast will live to kill another day?
Intro[]
(*Wiz and Boomstick*) Wiz: Weapons are truly versatile objects. Tools made specifically with the universal purpose to harm, dismember and kill other living things. From knives to rifles to swords to bombs, there is no shortage of objects in the vast world that can be utilized to cause death and suffering.
Boomstick: And some people are so murderously creative and eager to kill, they can even make and use weapons by manipulating their own frickin' body!
Wiz: Like Alex Mercer, the creator and host of the Blacklight Virus from Prototype.
Boomstick: And Carnage, the union of Cletus Kasady and the Venom-spawned symbiote from Marvel. He's Wiz and I'm Boomstick!
Wiz: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armor and skills to find out who would win a Death Battle!
Alex Mercer[]
Wiz: Alexander J. Mercer's life was always a hectic one. Born to poverty and living between his mother and in foster care, his only real solace was his affinity for science and his sister, Dana. Wanting to find a better life both for himself and his family, Alex grew up to attend Colombia University in New York and graduated with a doctorate in genetics. With such credentials, Mercer was approached and hired by Gentek, a genetics research company.
Boomstick: Already considered years ahead of his fellow scientist-buddies, Alex became the head of a team working on yet another top secret experiment: The Blacklight Project! Basically, Alex and his buds had to weaponize bits and pieces of weird virus samples given to them by the government. He was so good, he helped create a particularly deadly virus that could mimic and retain parts of its hosts DNA codenamed "Blacklight".
Wiz: Yep, Alex was indeed good... too good. His superiors began suspecting him as a liability due to his paranoid nature, and after Congress proposed investigations into just what they were up to, they decided to essentially just cover it all up like it never happened. Unfortunately, Alex's aforementioned-paranoid personality urged him to delve deeper on his own. With the help of Dana, who by this point had found a career as an investigative reporter, Alex eventually discovered that his fellow employees at Gentek were being assassinated and "silenced" by Blackwatch, a covert military black ops forces unit specializing in viral outbreaks.
Boomstick: Naturally afraid for his life cuz, y'know, Alex himself is an employee of Gentek that might be targeted, he made plans to get the hell outta there! However, just in case he was caught anyway, Alex broke into his own labs and stole a vial of the very virus he made, and managed to give a bunch of super-secret documents to Dana. Before he could get very far, though, Blackwatch still managed to find him in a run-down subway station. Luckily, right as he was turned to Swish Cheese by a hail of bullets, Alex managed to smash the vial containing his own virus and managed to basically re-create The Walking Dead on the entire city of New York.
Wiz: As much as giving the middle finger to Blackwatch might've been satisfying, make no mistake: Alex Mercer died that day. However, as the virus spread and infected the streets, it also merged and consumed the body of the very man who released it. Initially unaware of just what it was, the Blacklight virus assumed the identity of Alex Mercer himself and went on a hunt to take revenge on those who cast him down. Luckily for the virus now named Alex Mercer, he had just the tools to face down Blackwatch.
Boomstick: I'll say! The original Alex Mercer was a damned good scientist, because he gave the virus all kinds of awesome powers!
Wiz: First and foremost, the virus possesses incredible superhuman levels of physical strength and puts them to good use in melee combat, paired up with equally impressive speed and durability. He can also naturally and automatically sense and hear radio comms from military opponents to better sneak around, utilize a radar-like ability to detect specific targets for pursuit, has resistance to mind control and both the bitter cold and scalding heat, near immunity to nuclear radiation, immunity to any other antigens and diseases, can discharge electricity stored within his body, and can use his legs to somehow push himself in mid-air as a sort of "sideways" double-jump for added mobility as well as even glide through the air for prolonged aerial mobility.
Boomstick: That's great and all, but Mercer's best ability by far is that he can control his own fricking body! Somehow, Alex Mercer was so smart, he gave the virus the ability to morph so well that it can not only make weapons from its own body, but do a shit ton of other crazy shit, too! He can form gigantic swords and blades from his arm or turn his fingers into glorified knives to tear through enemies and armored vehicles like butter!
Wiz: With the Whipfist ability, Mercer can transform his arm into a long, flexible whip-like tendril with a large spike on the end for long range slashing and sweeps as well as to grab faraway objects and enemies for long-range attacks. However, he also has the option of using blunt physical hits granted by the Hammerfist ability, which forms large amounts of dense biomass to his arms to increase the power of his punches and send cars and trucks flying. Musclemass, as the name implies, greatly increases Alex's physical power, to the point that he grows twice as strong as normal, as well as boosting endurance and speed and other physical stats far beyond their norm.
Boomstick: If he needs to get defensive, Alex can also morph his arm into a powerful Shield capable of extending sharp spikes to block and negate damage from other attacks. If he wants another way to take hits, Alex can also use the Armor ability, a weird shell structure of dense biomass around Alex's entire body that increases his defense. It doesn't totally stop powerful attacks and impacts like missiles, but it does allow him to retain most of his speed with lesser agility, whereas his Shield ability completely stops damage at the expense of barely any movement. He can even roll up into a ball like that Spyro guy and mow down enemies as a spiked sphere of death and create powerful shockwaves with Hammerfist that can send cars and armored trucks off the ground.
Wiz: However, the deadly by far of his shapeshifting skills are his Devastators; Extremely powerful attacks using large amounts of Alex's biomass to affect the vicinity all around him. The Tendril Barrage is a storm of long, sharp tendrils extending from Mercer's body fast enough to impale and slash a large amount of enemies surrounding him, and Graveyard Spikes has him slamming his hands into the ground to send a surge of biomass into the ground that rises up beneath his foes and skewer them as long, 20-25 foot spikes. He can also perform the Groundshatter and Groundshatter drops, moves that strike the ground hard enough to wipe out large amounts of enemies. Lastly, Critical Pain fires an absurd amount of biomass from his hands as a single tendril strong enough to wipe out many other Infected in a clean hit, firing the tendril so fast that a shockwave appears to emanate from Mercer's hands.
Boomstick: And just where does he get all of this biomass, you ask? Well, unluckily for you - and anyone standing in Alex's way - Alex can gain more biomass to use in battle by literally eating his foes like that puffball kid, Kirby! What the hell is with these guys and their "can't beat 'em, eat 'em" motto!?
Wiz: Well, he doesn't "eat" his foes, per se. Instead, he sort of absorbs them into his body, integrating all of their memories and knowledge into his own mind. For example, by consuming and absorbing soldiers and scientists, Mercer can effortlessly drive military vehicles and has a high understanding of his own genetic makeup and internal machinations. He also gains the physical abilities and statistics of anyone he consumes, and since he's absorbed hundreds of people and Infected into his being over the course of three years, that is quite a lot of biomass and reserves to draw from.
Boomstick: That, and since he's a deadly virus that's supposed to infect and kill people, Alex can also infect people with the Blacklight virus and not only create and summon Infected beings, but he can even control and order them around like some sorta weird puppet master using weird organic mouths in the ground that spit out his own personal zombie-mutant soldiers to help him kill whatever needs killing, from winged Flyers to Brawlers to towering Juggernauts to pack-leading Hunter Leaders and Hydras! Using these backups, he can command his troops to attack from different angles and points to overwhelm his foes while he sits back and watches the madness unfold! Oh, and he also has this weird but awesome "hive mind" power that lets him not only call upon the memories and knowledge of people he's eaten, but even talk telepathically to any of the Infected he himself created, getting rid of the pesky need to bark vocal orders at his troops if they can't hear his voice or are too far away.
Wiz: Most advantageous is his incredible healing factor; As a virus with no bones, Alex can effortlessly heal nearly any wound so quickly and effectively that it seems almost instantaneous. Although he initially needed large amounts of biomass to regenerate, he eventually built up his healing prowess to the point that he can regrow legs and even his own head with little to no external biomass absorption. And finally, even if he meets a foe able to beat him down to his last legs, Alex can activate one his most dangerous abilities: Evolved Form. And before you ask, no. This is not a Pokemon rip-off. In this state, all of Mercer's stats boost threefold; His strength and durability are pushed beyond their limits, both his reaction and movement speeds skyrocket, his healing factor boosts to extreme rates, and his body can adapt much faster and better.
Boomstick: And boy-oh-boy, has Alex done some crazy shit with all of his new powers! He's strong enough to match other Infected individuals like Heller, his Hammerfist can send armored trucks flying just from elbow-dropping the ground, can toss around helicopters using Whipfist like cheap ragdolls, his regular strength without Hammerfist can rip apart tanks like wet paper, and can throw 70 ton tanks like nobody's business. He's tough enough to survive falls from the tops of skyscrapers with no injury, shrugged off a military base blowing up and collapsing with him inside no problem, missiles and bullets do next to nothing, and can take hits from James Heller, another Infected like Mercer, who is strong enough to destroy reinforced Blacklight virus Hives with a bullet dive from above, and his durability is strengthened further by his Shield and Armor abilities!
Wiz: He's fast enough to outpace Mach 3 explosions and sound blasts, dodge bullets and missiles, can move faster than Dana takes to blink, scales to Elizabeth Greene's speed that could kill Blackwatch soldiers faster than they could see, move faster than his followers like Roland who can produce light mirages while evading moving cars, create sonic booms just by boosting in mid-air or divebombing on foes, race out of a morgue before McMullen even noticed and with no sound produced, and is only made faster when he consumed about 9 other Evolved in the second game that were all about comparable to his 1st game self. His healing factor is also nearly unbeatable; He can easily heal from having his arms ripped off, regenerated his face after it had been blown apart from a gun at point-blank range, large stabbing injuries are no problem for him, and most impressively, he managed to regenerate from a single mound of steaming meat after being blown apart by an actual nuclear bomb.
Boomstick: He's also got a shit ton of biomass to use. He can form Infected Pustules pretty much wherever he wants, cover a wall with the Blacklight virus to reinforce it, theoretically form into a gigantic mouth the size of a city block that can roar hard enough to displace car-sized chunks of concrete after absorbing Elizabeth Greene as well as generate some sorta... weird... homing... green-energy orb thingies, and can use his Claw or Blade to stab a bit of infected flesh into an opponent and make them sprout tendrils from the host's body that grabs faraway objects to pull them in to crush whoever got infected! Also, when James Heller eventually defeated and absorbed Mercer himself, the resulting biomass combo between the two of them was enough to create tendrils longer than skyscrapers and impale every Infected in all of Manhattan! Considering he's absorbed 9 Evolved and possibly thousands of soldiers and civilians, he's got a shitload of biomass to manipulate and use to heal himself!
Wiz: However, as powerful as Mercer is, he isn't invincible. He has trouble consuming stronger opponents, usually requiring that he battle and weaken them first before finally being able to consume and absorb them. Mercer also doesn't usually strategize mid-fight, preferring to just mow his enemies down unless he seriously needs to slow down and think, which isn't often. Also, while Mercer might have extreme reserves of biomass stored within his body, should he ever run low biomass, his healing abilities will lower drastically, something proven when James Heller - an Evolved similar to Mercer - managed to weaken him enough to absorb him. Similarly, his Evolved form can only last so long until it runs out and leaves him with his usual stats, so if whatever enemy was able to weaken him to the point of using Evolved is able to outlast it, then he can still be defeated. He was once susceptible to being paralyzed when reminded of his forgotten past, but this was eventually overcame and is now irrelevant by the events of the second game.
Boomstick: Just proves how much of a beast this guy is. Something tells me that every medicine in the world could be used to create the ultimate cure and injected directly into him, and Alex Mercer would just keep spreading and killin'! Do NOT mess with the world's deadliest virus!
"The city's changing...and I'm changing with it. I can be anything. Become anyone. Absorb every memory until I can remember who I am; and who.. deserves my wrath."
Carnage[]
Wiz: Most little boys have pretty similar lives growing up: Taking care of pets, aiming for good grades in school, doing their chores given to them by their parents and all around having a happy, carefree and innocent home life.
Boomstick: Except apparently this kid didn't get the memo. And by "this kid", I mean Cletus Kasady.
Wiz: On the outside, Kasady always seemed like just another, red-headed child with a wild imagination. On the inside, however, lurked a menacing monster. For example, before he was even a teenager, he had already tortured the family dog to death with an auger drill, murdered his own grandmother by pushing her down a flight of stairs and almost killed his mother by dropping a television into her bathtub. After his father killed his mother, Cletus was sent to a boys' home. However, since his antisocial behavior made him a target of bullying, Kasady would commit gory acts of revenge, including pushing a young girl in front of a moving bus merely for laughing at his formal request for a date.
Boomstick: And apparently because fictional homicidal psychopaths just love proving how crazy they are, Kasady decided to just up and burn the entire orphanage to the ground! Like, right on the spot! It was during this time in the orphanage - y'know, before he burned it to ashes - that Kasady became a hardcore nihilist, believing that laws, both moral and actually written, were just plain shit talk and that only senseless violence and chaos were the closest to actual order and freedom! Man, talk about serious!
Wiz: Eventually, Kasady was convicted and given eleven consecutive life sentences. He was sent to Ryker's Island Prison, a maximum security facility for only the most hardened and savage criminals. And, among those many, twisted and insane inmates, was none other than Eddie Brock, whom Cletus just happened to share a cell with.
Boomstick: Yeah, remember Eddie? The guy who uses living Gak to fight Spider-Man? Yeah, that's him, although this time he happened to have accidentally lost his goo monster buddy and was now holed up with a psychotic serial killer who loves to brag endlessly about his favorite ways to kill people. Man, karma’s a bitch, ain’t it?
Wiz: However, the shared space wouldn't last. Eventually, the Venom symbiote managed to break through into the prison and found Eddie, once again re-uniting into Venom. Having regained his powers, Venom broke out of the prison and leaving Cletus behind. However, there was one factor that neither Eddie nor the symbiote took into account: It was pregnant.
Boomstick: … Uh, what? Did you just say this weird, alien goop thing somehow met another goo alien and had a quickie before rescuing Brock?
Wiz: No, no, it's not that at all. See, the Klyntar people reproduce asexually, which means they are essentially genderless and reproduce without the aid of a partner. In the case of the symbiotes, it had left behind an egg sac containing its offspring... which just happened to hatch right next to Cletus Kasady. Immediately bonding with him, the infant symbiote instantly gained all of the insanity and madness raging within Kasady's head, literally becoming one with him and his beliefs. Gleeful at the prospect of now possessing so much raw power to further increase his murderous capability, Kasady escaped the prison and gave himself a new name: Carnage.
Boomstick: And you better believe it's a way better origin for a name than Venom's, because the bond with his new alien slime monster gave him all kinds of deadly abilities to spread his namesake! He gained incredible strength, ridiculous reflexes and speed, an awesome amount of added durability, and a wicked healing factor that lets him keep on fighting even after getting hit with injuries that would kill a normal guy! However, the coolest thing about the symbiote is that each symbiote's offspring is stronger than its original parent. Basically, Carnage can do everything Venom can do, but better, and that includes his awesome shapeshifting abilities!
Wiz: He can produce webbing made from the symbiote stronger and quicker than Eddie, form wings on his back for flight, make a parachute from his arms for better landings from high altitudes, stretch his neck like a serpent, form large cages from his fingers that can trap human beings inside, morph his arms into durable and dense shields to block attacks, sprout long, thin yet powerful tendrils that can grab enemies from afar and toss them around, mimic clothing for stealth, and even decrease the density of the symbiote to act as a living liquid to seep through narrow cracks and vents and smother his foes. Most blasphemous, however, is that Carnage can create duplicates that can be controlled by himself, or even attach to other lifeforms, either to manipulate as puppets or absorb into the symbiote for extra biomass and size. However, most dangerous is Carnage's twisted knack for making weapons out of his own symbiotic body.
Boomstick: This guy can make pretty much every melee weapon known to mankind from his own body when fused with the symbiote! He can extend his fingers into slicing knives and claws, form axes out of his hand, grow small blades at the ends of his long tendrils, make a trident from his fingers and toes Wolverine-style, extend spikes from anywhere on his body, form spiked maces from his fists to bash his foes' heads in, split his arm into two blades to fight multiple opponents, make lances to impale people from a distance, and even shoot bladed projectiles from his own body faster than bullets! Hell, he can even stretch himself so wide that his extended tendrils and tentacles can stretch across all of New York City as easily as I can reach for my beer on Saturdays! How the hell can he fit so much living... stuff... inside his scrawny-ass body!?
Wiz: Well, that's where things get even weirder. While all symbiotes have a potent healing ability that lets them grow more mass at will, the Carnage symbiote is capable of converting negative emotions into actual, physical biomass with which to shapeshift and manipulate in battle. As the spawn of Venom, Carnage's healing prowess more than matches that of his parent. He can regenerate his entire face from being slashed by Agent Venom or even a blast from the Wizard, survive being pummeled by Venom's fists, completely fix his own neck after it had been snapped, reform the symbiote from being blasted by Sam Alexander's Nova blasts, and even regenerate Carnage's entire body from his head down after being decapitated by Venom. In fact, as the Venom symbiote granted complete immunity to all Earthly diseases, the Carnage symbiote also gives Kasady even better immunity to any and all diseases and poisons that can be found on the planet!
Boomstick: Even without the use of his healing, he's tough enough to trade fists with Sam Alexander, tanked Spider-Man's strongest punch, which is saying something considering he can lift a 130 ton piece of metal, and even survive blasts from Doctor Doom that can temporarily down the Hulk! Spider-Woman's electric webs - when the hell was she a thing? - do next to nothing, as well as being pumped with thousands of volts of pure electricity! In fact, Carnage once took two missiles detonating directly on his back, and all it did was piss him off into hunting down the morons who tried it! Another time, Deadpool shot him with an even bigger missile that blew up the building he was in, and it just made Carnage want to tear Deadpool apart, which he once did faster than the asshole could react! Even being body-slammed by Nova, a guy who can travel between galaxies in a matter of minutes, did basically nothing. It's also probably important to mention that his durability scales to Venom's, who can take hits from Juggernaut, as well as tank hits from his own son, Toxin, who's physical power is way better than Carnage's!
Wiz: He's easily capable of dodging sonar blasts from Shriek, dodge an actual energy beam from Firestar, casually deflect an attack from Doppelganger, can fight and keep track of multiple Venom's at once, catch a punch from the original Venom and rip into his arm faster than he can do anything to stop it, blitz multiple soldiers and an attack dog from tiny openings in a vent before they can react, is faster than Venom's 1,500 mph speeds, and is even so fast that he can outpace Spider-Man's reactions, which are stated to be 40 times faster than an average man's! He's so agile, he can skewer Poison Iron Fist before he can counter as well as even catch Nova mid-flight as he was charging at him, who is already mentioned at being faster than light. His physical strength is just a impressive, being strong enough to break through a reinforced wall strong enough that the fragmented pieces went killed the guards nearby from the momentum alone.
Boomstick: He can turn a city street into a crater, pierce Magneto's armor which can survive Exodus' building-destroying blasts, send Superior Spider-Man flying with a punch, casually lift and toss a helicopter, destroy prison bars with no problem, toss multiple cars into the air, gave the Wizard a brutal beatdown, one-shot Nightcrawler with one kick, pull himself out of Cloak's pocket dimension, whip Spider-Man around using just the symbiote part on his face, and once physically overpowered both Spider-Man AND Venom at the same time, proving that his physical strength is stronger than the both of them combined!
Wiz: Carnage is certainly a versatile and powerful fighter, but even with the stat boosts granted from being the improved spawn of an already powerful symbiote, he isn't perfect. Despite knowing how to kill someone nine million different ways, he usually doesn't care for strategy nor his own safety, and usually just charges in slicing. The powers of the symbiote also make him believe himself to be unbeatable, which has been proven multiple times to be far from the truth. And then, of course, there's the symbiote's weakness to large quantities of heat and sound, both of which can harm or even kill the symbiote and force it off to expose the human Kasady underneath. Due to repeated exposure and adaptation, however, Carnage's resistance to fire and sound waves have increased tremendously beyond those of other known symbiotes.
Boomstick: Ya see!? Even his own damned weakness isn't all that much to him now! If Venom is a living nightmare, then Carnage is a goddamned demon delivered from Hell itself!
" I was hollowed out inside... empty... just like my other. We were both sick... because we were incomplete... but not anymore. We healed each other... made each other whole. Neither one of us can survive without the other. Forget host. Forget symbiote. There is only Carnage."
Intermission[]
Wiz: Alright, the combatants are set! Let's settle this debate once and for all!
Boomstick: It's time for a DEATH BATTLLEEEE!!!
DEATH BATTLE![]
(*Ashes And Ghost*)
The streets of New York was in total chaos. Infected beasts were running rampant, attacking and killing any survivors trying to escape or scrape by. Many of the buildings were overrun by mysterious tendrils snaking around the environment, choking out the city itself as an air of terror filled the area. Cars on the street were flipped over, stores and homes were on fire or reduced to rubble, and the screams of innocent people being mutilated and chased down intermingled with the roar of monsters.
In the middle of the chaos, a man stood solemnly on a rooftop watching the scene below him. His eyes were shadowed by his grey hoodie, which was worn alongside a black jacket and button-up white shirt and blue jeans. As he looked on, another man whose arms were extended into large claws suddenly leaped onto the rooftop next to him and bowed respectfully to him.
Evolved: Mr. Mercer, sir, the entire city has been brought to its knees. Blackwatch is no more, and it is only a matter of time until all survivors have been infected.
Turning to his subordinate, Alex Mercer smiled in victory.
Alex Mercer: Good. We'll spread south to Washington, and then east across the Mississippi. Once that happens, all that's left is to--
*BOOM!*
Mercer was cut off when a large Brawler suddenly slammed up through the floor and crashed down several yards away. Alex was about to reprimand the creature when he realized it was dead. Something had slammed it upwards and killed it. Looking to the hole in which it had appeared from, he saw several red and black tendrils squirm out and plant themselves down, and seconds later a pair of similarly-colored hands with sharp claws grabbed the edges and pulled up a strange organism with red skin that had black markings all over, completely white eyes and a mouth filled with sharp teeth.
Carnage: Man, that was rude! Can't a guy find a bunch of innocent civilians to murder in peace!?
The union of symbiote and Cletus Kasady jumped up and onto the rooftop, crouching low until he spotted Alex Mercer staring at him meters away.
Carnage: Oh, hi! You look pretty clean for a guy in the middle of the apocalypse!
Alex and the Evolved stared in curiosity until the Evolved brandished his claws at the newcomer.
(*Meet the Reapers*)
Evolved: Let me handle this, Mr. Mercer.
The Evolved then leapt at Carnage, intending to decapitate him, but to his surprise Carnage morphed his arm into a lance and skewered straight through the Evolved in mid-air, stopping his attack.
Carnage: Whoa, easy there! You clearly ain't the sharpest tool in the shed, are ya? Hah-hah-hah-ha!
The symbiote then tossed the Evolved over his shoulder and off the building. Carnage then turned his attention to Mercer, who looked unperturbed by this change of events.
Alex Mercer: Strange, don't remember an Infected like you. Who are you?
Carnage: He-he-he-he... Infected? The hell are you talking about? I'm not diseased... I am Carnage! Kahahahaa!!
Alex raised an eyebrow under his hoodie. Instead of attacking him, however, Alex opened his arms in a friendly gesture.
Alex Mercer: Carnage, eh? You seem pretty strong. If you're not an Infected, mind telling me how you pulled that trick just now?
Cletus tilted his head in confusion and waved his lance arm around, shifting it into an axe.
Carnage: Oh, this? Please, buddy, this ain't nothin' compared to all the other nifty things I can do! Watch!
Carnage then morphed his arm into a trident, then a mallet, then a drill and finally a scythe before reverting it to his regular symbiote-bonded arm.
Alex Mercer: Interesting... it's as good as what we can do.
Alex then demonstrated by first turning his hands into Claws and then Hammerfist, finally finishing by turning his arm into a large Blade.
Alex Mercer: Y'know... what do you say about working with me, "Carnage"?
Carnage: Huh? "Working" with you? Whaddya mean?
Alex Mercer: I can see it in your eyes... we both know the world's gone to shit. Humanity is just a rotting piece of slime, gurgling and boiling over onto itself. You don't know it, but I am a virus; I can consume anyone and anything into my body, and absorb them into my being. Everyone I consume becomes me, their memories and personality collected under my psyche. I want to fix all those problems: Give mankind one single body, a collective consciousness. There'd be no more war, no more rape, no more deception, no more conflict. In other words... a second chance. But to do that, I need some help.
Alex then pointed at Carnage, who was listening intently.
Alex Mercer: You. You're almost as good as me when it comes to controlling biomass. No... you're just like me. Together, we can bring on a new age of eternal peace and equality for every person on this planet! What do you say?
Carnage:... Nah!
Alex reared his head back, dumbfounded by the answer.
Alex Mercer: What?
Carnage: I appreciate the flattery, but that sounds boring as shit! "Eternal peace"? "No more conflict"? Hell no! I am Carnage! I am suffering and death! That's what this world thrives on! Don't need that "world peace" bullshit!
Shaking his head, Alex took a step forwards.
Alex Mercer: Too bad. We could've used someone like you. If that's how you feel...
He brandished his Blade threateningly at the symbiote-human union.
Alex Mercer: Then I need to eliminate you.
Seeing this, Carnage smiled sinisterly and morphed his hands into dual axes.
Carnage: HAA-HA-HA-HA-HAAA! Let's get started then!
FIGHT![]
Carnage moved first and lunged at Mercer with his axe arms, Alex brought his Blade up and deflected it, forcing Carnage away. Alex leapt upwards and dove straight for Carnage, who ducked forwards and dodged. Carnage then spun around just in time to block against Mercer's large slash, causing the two to struggle against each others blades.
Carnage: Whoa! Easy! I'm supposed to be the psycho murderer here!
Alex Mercer: As long as you stand in my way, I'm not backing down!
Alex then leaned forwards and caught Carnage's axe arms under his Blade, lifting him up and over his shoulder and throwing him over the side of the building. Carnage righted himself in mid-air and landed just fine on the sidewalk below, unscathed by the fall.
Carnage: Damn, now I gotta get back up--Whoa!
While he was talking, Alex jumped over the rooftop edges after him and aimed to crush Carnage from above. Carnage reacted in time and jumped out of the way, causing Alex to make a small shockwave upon impact.
Alex Mercer: Let's see if this can slice you...
Alex shifted both arms into long, sharp Claws, and charged at Carnage. Carnage wasn't fazed, however, and turned his arms into swords and clashed against Alex. Rebounding off each other, Carnage began hacking and slashing at Mercer, who countered and parried each of them. Carnage tried to thrust his right sword arm into his foe, which Alex deflected with his left clawed arm and used the opening to try to slash Carnage across the chest with his own right hand claws. Carnage managed to bring up his other arm to parry the attack and extended his sword into Alex's chest at close-range.
With a grunt, Alex stepped away and looked down to see a hole in his chest, dripping with blood.
Carnage Hah! Gotcha!
However, instead of keeling over and dying, Mercer simply smirked as he healed within seconds, shocking Carnage.
Alex Mercer: Not quite, pal.
Alex then ran up to Carnage with a diagonal slash, followed up by a sideways slice. Carnage blocked the first and ducked under the second, retaliating with a upwards-moving slash that was blocked by one of Alex's clawed hands. Alex then opened his fingers and grabbed Carnage's blade, trying to pull him off the ground. However, Carnage reacted first and lifted Alex straight up, moving so fast that the momentum sent Alex crashing into a nearby storefront window. Alex got up with his smirk gone and rushed Carnage, who charged as well and swung both swords at Alex. Instead of clashing again and being locked in a power struggle again, however, Alex slammed both claws on Carnage's swords and used them to vault directly upwards at least thirty feet into the air. Alex pulled both arms back and prepared to swing down hard on Carnage, and fell down faster than he should have. Carnage stood his ground and turned one arm into a mallet from the elbow down, and right when Mercer was right above him, he leaned to the side and swung his mallet arm right into Alex's side.
Alex: Urghh...!
Alex was sent flying more than half a football field away and crashed headfirst into a turned over car, leaving a dent shaped like his upper body in its side. Pushing himself off, Alex brought up his claws to block Carnage's incoming lunge attack using his newly-formed mallet. Unfortunately, the impact from Carnage's blunt strike was not only strong enough to cause a shockwave, but also brutally shattered Alex's Claws like glass. With the opening, Carnage swung his mallet upwards, slamming into Alex's stomach and hurtling him directly upwards again. This time, however, Alex sent biomass into his arms to form Hammerfists, and swung his now-heavy arms downward to shoot to the ground like a missile.
Alex: Want to get blunt and to the point? Fine by me, buddy!
Not expecting such a move, Carnage was hit dead center by the two Hammerfists crashing down onto his face, causing another shockwave and flattening Carnage on the street.
Carnage: GAGH!
Alex then stood up and used a Hammerfist Smackdown, slamming one Hammerfist right onto Carnage's legs, then using the other fist to crush his abdomen, then rolling while using one Hammerfist to keep his body up and pound Carnage's face again. Alex then leapt away, seeing the small several-inch-deep crater in the road that Carnage lay in. However, rather than staying down, Carnage unsteadily got right back up, holding his battered and flattened face in one hand. Within moments, Carnage's legs, body and head were fully healed and left almost no sign of injury. With a twisted smile, Carnage turned to face Alex and morphed both hands into spiked maces.
Carnage: Heh-heh... That one almost left a mark!
Shaking his head, Alex raised his Hammerfists and hurtled himself at Carnage. To avoid getting hammered again, Carnage reared his mace-shaped hands back and collided them against Alex's Hammerfists, causing another struggle between the two. Eventually, however, Carnage began pushing forwards, grinning sinisterly. Alex realized he was starting to lose and quickly ducked, the momentum causing Carnage to stumble forwards and off his feet. Using this, Alex whipped around and slugged his left fist onto Carnage's back, sending him flying through a fire hydrant and slamming into the concrete wall of a building.
Alex Mercer: Had enough yet?
Carnage pushed himself off and giggled insanely.
Carnage: Nope!
Having said that, Carnage rushed Alex again, who braced with his large arms in front of him and blocked the downward hammer-like strike from Carnage's right mace. However, Carnage merely intended to use that as a bluff, and swung his left down and struck Alex's feet, sweeping them out from underneath him. Carnage laughed as he swung his mace arms hard into Alex's side, chasing him in mid-air and slugging his maces in empowered punches into Alex's ribs twice more before finally letting Mercer fly off down the street, skidding on the blacktop and quickly healing from the hits.
Alex Mercer: Damn, gotta admit that was good...
Alex then heard something moving very rapidly towards him and rolled out of the way, avoiding a downward slam from Carnage. He got up and slammed his left hook onto Carnage's incoming mace, the shockwave causing cracks to appear from the ground beneath them. The two retracted their arms and began a full-out slugging match, their enlarged arms colliding with one another and blocking each other's hits.
Carnage: Whoo! You should be in one of them boxing tourneys, knocking people's heads off if it wasn't illegal!
After ten consecutive seconds of fist fighting, Hammerfist hit Carnage and a mace-arm struck Alex, both in the face and at the same time, causing both shapeshifters to stumble back and away. As before, however, any injuries sustained were quickly healed.
Alex: See, that's your problem. All you ever think of is death and hurting. When I'm done, there will be none of that!
(*Cerberus*)
Suddenly, Alex's arms thinned and stretched into a long tendril with a spikes on the end, forming Whipfist. He outstretched both tendril arms out and grabbed two military-grade trucks about forty feet away from both sides.
Alex: Which is why I have to crush you.
He then pulled in both trucks towards Carnage at blinding speed, intending to crush him. At the last second, though, multiple thin tendrils sprouted from Carnage's back and caught both pieces of debris easily without even using his arms.
Carnage: Hah! Tough luck, buddy!
The tendrils from Carnage's back forced the two trucks away and charged at Alex, who reeled in his Whipfists and swung his right like a baseball bat into Carnage, swatting him away. However, Carnage used one of his tendrils to latch onto Mercer's Whipfist, and as it was retracted back to him, Carnage used the momentum to fly at him from the side and knee kick him, and would've sent him flying had Alex not dug his Whipfists into the surrounding buildings and used them to slingshot forwards at Carnage again. Seeing the attack coming, Carnage used his left arm, which was still shaped like a mace, and thrust it forwards to counter the incoming dropkick attack from Alex. Rebounding off Carnage's counter, Alex landed back on his feet and whipped one of his extended arms in a sweeping motion, which Carnage avoided by jumping clear over it. However, Alex predicted such a move and sent his other Whipfist straight at him, stabbing into him and reeling him back in. Carnage coughed up blood as he was brought face to face with Alex.
Alex Mercer: You've done way better than I thought, buddy. In the end, though... I'm at the top of the food chain.
With that, Alex dug his other arm right into Carnage's chest, ignoring his foe's grunts of pain and began hungrily spreading the Blacklight virus into Carnage's system to absorb him and gain his power. Red tendrils already began forming from Carnage's body. To Alex's shock, however, a searing pain suddenly encapsulated his arm and travelled into his shoulder, and every bit of biomass he'd stabbed into Carnage began to melt.
(*Parasites*)
Carnage: GRAAGH!
Alex: AAUGH!
Alex instantly backed off, dropping Carnage to inspect his arms, one of which was badly damaged and the other missing entirely. Coughing from his foe caught Alex's attention.
Carnage: Raaugh... Th-That won't work, pal... You can't plague carnage...
Despite his pain and clutching at his rapidly healing stomach, he looked up at Mercer and smiled a twisted, bloodthirsty grin.
Carnage: I know more than a million ways to kill someone... and that ain't one that works on me.
Forming his hands into axes, Carnage took advantage of Alex's armless state and sliced his legs clean off in one swing, and used the other harm to chop his torso in half. With nothing more than a grunt, Alex's head and shoulders fell to the ground, spurting blood. Carnage walked smugly up to him and planted his foot on Alex's forehead.
Carnage: Nice knowing you... NOT! HAH-HAH-HA--OW!!
Out of nowhere, a Brawler Hunter body checked Carnage and knocked him away from Mercer. Digging his heels in to stop stumbling, Carnage saw not one, but two Brawler Hunters with a flock of Flyers and an enormous Juggernaut. Alex used his Pack Leader ability to make them target Carnage and Carnage only. Not intimidated in the slightest, Carnage raised his axes at them eagerly.
Carnage: Let's go!
The Brawler Hunters charged first, rearing their arms back for large punches. Carnage laughed as he leapt up and swung his axes down as he fell, nearly slicing off their arms. Carnage went for the Brawler Hunter on his left, embedding one axe into his foe's stomach and the other to lob its head clean off. He then ducked under the other Brawler's punch and sliced diagonally down its chest, spurting blood everywhere.
Carnage: Your turn, baby--AGH!
With no warning, the remaining Brawler abruptly exploded in a fountain of blood, having been "dismissed" by Alex via his hive mind. Blinded by the blood, Carnage didn't notice the flock of Flyers shooting down on him, stabbing into him and preventing him from seeing.
Carnage: OW! Ugh! Why you--Ow!-Would you just--Ow!--Get--Ack--GET OFF!
Carnage abruptly folded his arms, tucked in his head, and let a flurry of sharp spikes stab out from all parts of his body, skewering through each Flyer and killing them all in one fell swoop.
Carnage: Damn, ya'll are annoying! Whoa, shit!
Carnage wiped off the blood fast enough to barely jump to the side to avoid the Juggernaut slamming both of its armored arms crushing him. Carnage extended one of his arms and launched one axe from his arm as a projectile, but the Juggernaut blocked with its large arms and instead caused the axe to embed itself into its arm. The Juggernaut then stomped forwards and tried to punch Carnage, but he used his agility to leap over it and extend a tendril onto his head, using it to swing around and land right on its shoulders.
Carnage: Let's see if a brainless brute has a brain that can be stabbed!
He turned one arm into a long spear and ran it through the Juggernaut's head and neck, manipulating his biomass within the Juggernaut to pierce through more than half of its vital organs. From all the combined internal damage, the Juggernaut keeled over, dead.
Carnage: There! Now, for you!
Carnage then turned to face Alex, and narrowly ducked under a Whipfist. To his partial surprise, he saw Alex standing there just fine, having regrown his legs and body in the time Carnage took to kill his Infected pack.
(*end music*)
Alex Mercer: Well, I guess if you want to get someone killed... You do it yourself.
With that, grey biomass began emerging and covering Alex's body, hardening and adding several inches of height to his overall body. He activated his Armor. Then, grey swirling trails of biomass extending up his shoulders and enlarging his arms, activating Musclemass. At the same time, his eyes glowed a vicious red. Carnage simply laughed and extended multiple tendrils with sharpened spikes and tips from his back and shoulders.
Carnage: Really think you can kill me? HAH-HAH! SHOW ME!
(*No Remorse*)
Both shape shifters surged forwards. Alex threw a haymaker at Carnage which was countered by a tendril grabbing his arm and shifting it away while Carnage used his spear arm to try to skewer Alex only for it to clang off his Armor. Alex uppercut Carnage fifty feet up and leapt up to meet him, but Carnage fused his legs into a large hammer and flipped in mid-air to slam it into Alex as he reached him and sent him crashing down to the pavement in a crater. However, Carnage was assaulted by three more Flyers in mid-air, their attacks sending him spiraling down and open to a backhand hit from Mercer that hurtled him into the side of a tank.
Alex then shifted to Claws and chased after his foe, his armor taking several bullets made from the symbiote. Pushing off the damaged tank, Carnage extended his hands into tridents and met Mercer in-between, catching one of Mercer's Claws and lifting him up to slam him down on the pavement. He then tried to stab Alex, but the Blacklight Virus used his other Claws to swipe at Carnage's legs and forcing him off. Alex jumped to his feet and tried to dodge a spear-shaped projectile from Carnage that ended up grazing his shoulder. Carnage turned a tendril tip on each shoulder into drills and extended them towards Alex quickly, who morphed his arm into a Blade and sliced the drill-shaped tips off the tendrils before using his Armor to take a strike from Carnage's trident arm.
Alex Mercer: Nice try!
Carnage then flipped up and morphed his arms into scythes to bring them both down on Alex, who dodged by jumping backwards and then boosting forth again to slice Carnage in two with his Blade. Carnage reacted in time and used one scythe arm to block it, though the force made him skid backwards.
Carnage: Whoo-hoo!
Alex landed and shifted his arms to Hammerfists and sent two consecutive punches at Carnage, who formed a shield with both hands and blocked them. Right as Alex went for a third heavy hit, Carnage's shield sprouted spikes that impaled into Alex's Hammerfist, making him withdraw in pain. As he did, Carnage bent low and stretched his neck incredibly quickly, biting down on Alex's Armored shoulder with enlarged teeth and swinging him around five times and making him hit multiple armored vehicles and building walls, eventually letting go and launching Alex straight through several rooms in an abandoned apartment nearby. Alex finally landed to a stop on the street on the other side of the building, his Armor badly damaged.
With a grunt, he looked to where Carnage was and raised his arm up high. As predicted, Carnage raced through the destroyed rooms and leapt at Alex, who slammed his Hammerfist down onto Carnage's back and crushed him into the pavement. Alex raised his other Hammerfist, but Carnage extended his arm into a tendril and latched it onto something nearby. When Alex turned to see what it was, he tried too late to jump away as Carnage's arm pulled a downed helicopter towards him so fast that it slammed into him. The helicopter hurtled into two upturned tanks on the street, crushing Alex in between them and finally breaking his Armor. As he shoved the helicopter off him, he heard a thud and looked up to see Carnage standing on top of the chopper in front of him.
Carnage: Geez, you're more stubborn than ol' Pops ever was--OW!
Alex cut him off with a Whipfist strike to the face, knocking Carnage to the floor. Alex jumped onto the chopper while Carnage flipped backwards to avoid a downward strike from Alex's Whipfist. Hopping to his feet, Carnage saw Alex leap up and divebomb straight for him with his Blade, prompting him to form a large sword with his arm and clash against it, causing another shockwave. This time, Alex aimed his other arm which was in Whipfist form and shot it into Carnage's chest to successfully blow him away. Carnage landed on his hands and pushed back up to his feet before he could land painfully on the floor, however, and lunged with both arms shifted into curved cutlasses. Alex used his Blade to block one of Carnage's arms and tried to spear him with Whipfist when he got close, but Carnage twisted to the side and dodged it and slashed his other arm down and cut Alex's arm off. Undeterred, Alex ducked low, pushing his arm down and then sliced his remaining Blade up, slashing a large gash diagonally over Carnage's chest and causing him to fly into a second story building next to them.
Alex Mercer: Gurgh...!
Carnage: Yow!
Alex leaned to the side and let his arm regenerate while Carnage burst to the entrance of the room whose wall he destroyed, both of them already recovering. However, Carnage's wound was more minor, and shifted one arm into a mace, the other into a ball-and-chain flail starting at the elbow, and shot down to Mercer. To try to dodge, Alex jumped backwards, but Carnage swung his makeshift ball-and-chain and slammed it into Alex's chest so hard that he flew backwards more than sixty feet before skidding across to floor and crashing into the wall of a bank. Carnage eagerly chased him down whilst brandishing his weapons, licking the edges of his mouth. Alex slowly got up as pieces of rubble fell around him, and easily spied Carnage making a straight rush at him. He regenerated his arm and shifted them both back to human shape, right as Carnage began bearing down at him with his mace arm poised to strike. Then, as soon as Carnage was nearly right on top of him Alex shot a massive beam of biomass from his arms like a cannon with so much force that a continuous shockwave erupted from his arms the entire time.
The Critical Pain Devastator.
Carnage: GROOAAAURGH!
Carnage was so close to Alex that he was literally hit dead center and sent flying backwards back down the street, slamming straight through the tanks he'd tried to crush Alex with not too long ago as well as several Brawlers and Juggernauts unlucky enough to be in the path of the Devastator move. Alex grunted as the Devastator finished, letting the last few biomass bits fly from his arms. With finality, he stepped out of the ruined building to see his handiwork.
Alex Mercer: Well, damn... that took more than I thought.
Carnage: HEY!
Much to Alex's shock, he saw Carnage lying on the ground eating the biomass he'd shot at him just now which had piled up around him. Pieces of disembodied meat were shoveled into his large mouth and even absorbed by the symbiote, quickly using it to heal any damage taken.
Carnage: Yummy! Hey, bud, not tryin' to sound dirty, but you taste fuckin' delicious!
Alex Mercer:... What?
Carnage soon consumed the last of the biomass Alex used in his Devastator, and rose to his feet slightly larger than before. He gave Alex a menacing grin.
Carnage: My turn!
With that, Carnage burst forwards with his arms forming into morning star weapons. Alex stood his ground and formed shields from both arms as Carnage bore down on him. Carnage pounded away at his defenses, at first battering his right and then left weapons from above and then spinning like a top with his arms outstretched to continuously pound his morning stars onto Alex's shields. The shields weren't anywhere near close enough to breaking yet, but they wouldn't last forever, which Alex knew.
Alex Mercer: I don't think so, "Carnage"...
All at once, Alex pushed forwards and shoved Carnage off long enough to reform his shields into hands and bent low to quickly plant them both in the ground.
Alex Mercer: It's about time I put you in your place!
(*end music*)
As soon as those words were spoken, the Blacklight virus spread through the ground as thin tendrils, quickly coating the ground and spreading all over. Carnage looked ready to attack, but was taken off-guard by the large masses of red and black tentacles and tendrils crawl up the nearby skyscrapers and encroaching over any and all vehicles. At the same time, the screeches and roars from Infected all over the city could be heard as Alex poured more and more of the virus across the landscape, infecting the very city itself. And then, Alex himself began to morph in shape. He began to grow quickly, increasing in body mass and condensing into a giant, meaty mass. His spine became visible and his clothes dissolved with the rest of his body into a giant, worm-like monster nearly four stories tall and with multiple gigantic tendrils surrounding it. At the same time, many Infected creatures from Brawler Hunters to Juggernauts to Goliaths rushed from all directions to Alex's new form, with even several Hydras erupting from the virus-covered ground. Carnage could only stare at the many monsters and Alex's new, gigantic form glaring him down.
Carnage:... Well... shit.
(*Call Shot*)
Alex Mercer [Mother]: SCREEEEAAAGHHH!
Carnage rushed headlong into the fray, turning his hands into axes and jumping up to chop off the heads of the first two Juggernauts who ran into him. As he kept charging, three Brawler Hunters met him, the first of which Carnage raised an arm shield to block a punch from and extended his other arm into a spear to skewer the next. He jumped up and slammed a mace-shaped arm onto the head of the Brawler he just blocked, crushing it and landing in time to stop a hit from the third Brawler by stabbing into its attacking arm. From behind, five Hunters bounded at Carnage, forcing him to toss away the Brawler and turn around to shift his arms into large, spinning propeller blades that he positioned in front of him to shred the first two. The other Hunters leapt over his deadly arm weapons and pounced on him, trying to bite down and tear him apart, but Carnage quickly made thin, deadly spikes erupt from his body that skewered and killed them. Getting up, he turned around in time to raise up his arms to catch a Hydra's prongs to keep its head from slamming down on him.
Carnage: My, my, you're all so fleshy!
Carnage forced the Hydra's head off and lunged forwards, slicing through it with an axe transformation in his left arm.
Carnage: You gotta do better than that to keep me dow--!
Alex Mercer [Mother]: SCREEAAAAAAARGHH!!
Carnage: GAAAH!
Carnage suddenly clutched his ears and leaned dizzily from side to side, the roar from Alex's monstrous Mother form rattling the nearby vicinity and reminding Carnage he was there by its roar afflicting the symbiote. In his distrated state, a Goliath plowed into him and slammed its heavy arm down, crushing Carnage under its incredible bulk. It lifted its arm and slammed it down to crush him again, but by now the roar subsided. As soon as the Goliath dropped its arm, two red black-striped arms shot out from the rubble and stopped it from touching the ground.
Carnage: What... *Cough!*… did I say...?
The Goliath was then shoved off and stumbled from the force used. Carnage rose up from the crater he was in and lunged at the Goliath's head, forming an elongated machete blade and slicing down the left side of its chest, spurting blood and causing it to roar in pain. Carnage landed on the other side, breathing heavily.
Carnage: I said... YOU CAN'T KILL CARNAGE!
He swiftly turned and slashed at the Goliath's legs, and then split his other arm into two tendrils and stabbed straight through a Hunter and a Spiked Brawler who were charging at him. At that point, the Goliath fell to a knee and tried to impale Carnage using the spike on its weaker arm, but he dodged and let it impale the ground instead, swiftly chopping it off and slashing maniacally at its chest and sides. Carnage landed down as the Goliath fell to the floor, and before it could even get up, Carnage rushed it and sliced its head clean off. The Goliath taken care of, Carnage turned and faced Alex's enormous Mother form and raced straight for him.
Before he got very far, Alex spat a wave of metal and concrete debris from his large maw, hitting Carnage full force and slowing him down, but not stopping him. Guffawing like there was no tomorrow, Carnage pounced and dug dual scythe blades into Alex's meaty form below his maw, but was stopped from tearing into him by a nearby giant tendril slamming into him and sending him flying twenty feet away onto an adjacent street. Not giving Carnage time to recover, Alex spat multiple green homing balls of energy at him. Skidding to a stop, Carnage tried to lean to the right to avoid them, but was taken off-guard when the energy balls curved mid-flight and blew up on him anyway, eliciting a screech of pain and making him stumble. However, they only did minor damage, and Carnage powered on and charged at the immobile Alex again.
Alex waited until Carnage was nearly upon him to bat him off with one of his giant tendrils, and the Brawler whose arm Carnage impaled earlier suddenly pounced at him from behind and forced him to envelop the Brawler in his tendrils to lift and toss it straight up. Jumping up to meet it, Carnage gave it a spinning kick with a foot shaped like a sickle and hurtled it into one of Alex's Mother tendrils, damaging it and killing the Brawler before landing and slashing repeatedly at another tendril with sword-shaped arms. Alex sent out a wave of exploding green orbs, one of which hit Carnage and blasted him away several feet, prompting him to get up and use symbiote webbing to latch onto a building and pull away, landing at the top of a small apartment. To avoid the orbs, Carnage leapt from building to building, grabbing Hunters and Spikd Brawlers with extended tendrils and launching them at each orb so that they were blasted instead. Having taken care of them, Carnage immediately rushed back to where Alex's Mother form was, jumping back down to the street to charge straight ahead. He dodged another wave of debris Alex sent at him and extended his arms into long tendrils and reached out to grab two wrecked cars, and with one thrust he tossed both at one of Alex's tendrils he'd already damaged. As soon as the vehicles hit, they exploded and destroyed the tendril they hit. Carnage rushed through the smoke cloud and lunged for another, ripping and tearing through its biomass. Alex quickly put a stop to it with his other, relatively undamaged tendril to swat him away like an insect. Carnage was thrown back nearly fifty feet and instantly charged again when he landed without stopping or pausing, not for the tendrils but now was heading right for the maw-shaped growth itself. When Alex sensed him coming, a yellow energy travelled up the Mother form's spine and into its enormous head.
Alex Mercer [Mother]: SCREEEEEAAAAGH!!
All at once, an enormous wave of blood red biomass surged from the Mother's base like a tidal wave, accompanied by a piercing shriek from the maw itself, crushing all of the vehicles and debris in its path. Carnage briefly flinched and stopped in his tracks, but let out a scream of his own and pushed through, leaping clear over the red biomass wave. In mid-air, he fused his arms together into a large drill and span around rapidly. Unable to stop him, the Mother form's maw was still open as Carnage flew directly into its mouth and drilled straight through it to the other side. When he emerged out of the other side, Alex himself was caught by his drill inside the Mother and was pushed right out of his Mother form, Carnage's arms-turned drill stabbing through him.
Alex Mercer: GAAGH!
Without Alex to control it, the Mother and its remaining tendrils instantly collapsed dead on the ground. Upon landing, Carnage through Alex to the floor and pounced on him with sword-shaped tendrils.
Carnage: THIS! IS! HOW! YOU! KILL! SOME! BODY!
With unrelenting insanity, Carnage stabbed, slashed and hacked away at Mercer, who tried to form a shield with one arm but was stopped when Carnage sliced both arms off and hacked them to bits. Within seconds, Carange reduced Mercer to a bloody pulp with only his blood-soaked upper torso and head remaining.
Alex Mercer: *Cough!*, *Cough*… d-damn...
Carnage then fused his hands together to create a large mass of sharp-tipped tendrils and stabbed them into Alex's disfigured form, snarling like a feral animal as he sent his tendrils surging into what was left of Mercer's body.
Alex Mercer: Well... welcome... to the top of... the food chain.
With that, Carnage completely enveloped Alex and absorbed him into the symbiote itself.
(*end music*)
Carnage: GRAAAAAAAGHH!
He felt the Blacklight virus surge through both his human and symbiote parts, squirming inside of him and trying one last time to infect him. However, like Carnage predicted, the symbiote quickly began crushing into and "curing" the virus, killing off every piece of the virus until, finally, the last cell of the Blacklight virus was cured and killed
Carnage: Haagh... Graagh...
Falling to a knee, Carnage breathed deeply in exhaustion. Slowly, he rose back up to his feet. He looked throughout the wrecked, burning city and the debris and ruins left by the battle.
And then he tilted his head and laughed to the ashen skies above, pure insanity and malice matching the carnage below.
K.O.![]
Carnage went on a rampage throughout the city against the Infected and Evolved alike while the military arrived and tried unsuccessfully to stop the infection.
Results[]
(*Theme Of Carnage*)
Boomstick: Holy cow! That's gotta be one of the goriest fights yet!
Wiz: It just might, Boomstick, and for good reason. This fight was ridiculously close.
Boomstick: I'll say! Nearly all of their stats line up almost equally! Both are faster than the eye can track, and are even faster than the reaction times of bullet-timers like James Heller and Deadpool!
Wiz: Their physical strengths were pretty even, too. Alex once lifted a 70 ton tank with no issue, but since he was putting nearly no effort into it and can double this strength with Musclemass, it's likely he can lift and push more than 300 tons, which is similar to Carnage's feat of overpowering Venom and Spider-Man's combined approximately 300 tons of force as well. As neither Carnage nor Alex put much effort into neither feat, their top physical capacity likely measures up to 400 tons. They were also both equal in their ability to shapeshift and morph their biomass, with both Alex and Carnage being shown to have enough to stretch tendrils across an entire city and form all manner of weapons, flight/gliding gear, form disguises and absorb the biomass of others for boosted health and strength.
Boomstick: They could also both take a huge beating, like Alex tanking an explosion from a military base or Carnage tanking Sentry slamming him straight up through nine floors of The Raft! Hell, even their healing factors let them both completely reform from puddles of boiling goop, like Alex regenerating from a nuke blast that was strong enough to wipe out all of Manhattan and Carnage healing from a gene bomb built by Apocalypse to wipe out mankind! They also had blow-by-blow counters to each other's different abilities, too. Alex can summon other Infected creatures from his own biomass, but Carnage once battled multiple Venom clones at once, so it shouldn't be anything new. On the other hand, it's definitely clear that Heller's victory over Mercer was PIS considering there were multiple times in that fight when Heller's single-minded anger, which isn't much smarter than Carnage's bloodthirst, was being shown up by Alex's calm strategy and cunning! Alex definitely had better brains and more intelligence, whereas Carnage only focuses on one thing: Endless fuckin' murder!
Wiz: However, the key difference that tilted the scale was Carnage's superior speed and healing factor. It's been stated that Spider-Man's reactions are over forty times faster than a regular human's, and since Carnage has outpaced those reactions more than once, Carnage is easily over Mach 469, or 360000 mph. Far faster than any missile, bullet or sound wave Alex has ever dodged or reacted to, which isn't even including Carnage keeping up with and reacting fast enough to catch Nova mid-flight. Now, Nova clearly wasn't going at his full MTFL speed, but the fact Carnage caught him at all in a serious match proves he is far faster than anything Mercer has done or can do. Also, while both regenerated from being blasted to piles of goo, only Carnage was able to completely heal by himself, whereas Alex needed the extra biomass of a random crow to land on his remains in order to regenerate. Hell, the entire symbiote once regenerated almost instantly from a single drop of Cletus Kasady's blood, which it merged with. Meaning, Carnage definitely had the better healing factor of the two.
Boomstick: But wait! I can see the future! "But what about Carnage's weakness to fire and sound? Wouldn't Alex be able to figure them out and use them to his advantage?"
Wiz: Well, it's highly unlikely that would come into play in this fight for two main reasons; 1) There's nothing in the endless memories of the scientists and soldiers Mercer consumed that would lead him to the conclusion that Carnage is weak to fire and sound. As smart as Alex is, there's nothing in the two games or comics to suggest he'd be able to figure out Carnage's weakness unless Carnage literally blurts it out to him, which he's smart enough not to let Alex know. Even if he did, Alex doesn't possess any weapons or abilities that would let him take advantage of that with the potential exception of the Mother form's roar.
Boomstick: Reason #2, Carnage is just way to freakin' tough now for most sounds or heat blasts to hurt him like they used to! I mean, the guy once tanked two missiles exploding point-blank on his back- y'know, one of the most vulnerable and important parts of the body? - and it did absolutely nothing! And way before that, Venom once hit him with a sound gun made specifically by Reed Richards himself to stop symbiotes, and it just annoyed him up until Shriek finally showed up and combined her sound beams with Reeds' sound gun to finally put Carnage down! And then there's the time he survived Klaw self-destructing in his face, a blast literally made of sound!
Wiz: Yes, it's safe to say that any sounds or flames Alex can possibly generate more than likely wouldn't be enough to seriously hurt Carnage, which is under the bold assumption that Alex would somehow figure out his weakness anyway. Another important factor is Carnage's definitive immunity to any and all earthly diseases and illnesses, which definitely includes the Blacklight virus, so infecting him is completely out of the question. It's also likely that Alex wouldn't be able to simply absorb Carnage since it was expressly shown that mid-game Heller - i.e. before Heller was at his full potential - was able to resist and completely stop Alex from absorbing him, and it was made pretty clear in that scene that Alex was fully intending to kill Heller with no holding back. Combining Heller being able to resist being consumed with the fact that other strong Infected creatures like Juggernauts and Brawlers have to be sufficiently weakened before being consumed in both games, and it all points to the conclusion that someone as strong and resilient as Carnage would also be able to resist being consumed unless he was sufficiently weakened in combat first, which is highly unlikely given his aforementioned durability and strength.
Boomstick: Both were awesome shapeshifters with pretty damn even strength and durability, but Carnage's immunity to the Blacklight virus, superior speed and better healing was too much for Mercer to deal with! Carnage shone BlackLIGHT on their badassery, but in the end, Alex got symbi-owned!
Wiz: The winner is Carnage.
Carnage [Winner]:
- + Far faster.
- + Better healing.
- + More experience fighting powerful foes.
- + Immunity and resistance to Blacklight virus and consumption.
- = More or less even durability.
- = More or less even strength.
- - Does not strategize and prefers to rush in swinging.
- - Powers make him arrogant and self-assured of victory.
Alex Mercer [Loser]:
- + Much smarter.
- + More patient.
- + Can summon backup from his own biomass more easily and readily.
- = More or less even durability.
- = More or less even strength.
- - Much slower in comparison.
- - Slightly lesser healing.
- - Powers make him arrogant and self-assured of victory.