Ghede Nibo
Ghede Nibo, (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 4) often just the Symbiote, was an amoral, extraterrestrial symbiote entity which bonded with the Reality Z-25 31-H heroine Kate Five. Ghede temporarily corrupted Kate into a murderous villain, bent only on helping Ghede spawn more symbiote creatures, before they were nearly killed in Angel Falls and resumed their partnership on a more equal footing where Ghede would no longer overwhelm or manipulate Kate's mental faculties and conscience.
Description
Physical appearance
Like others of its symbiotic species, Ghede had no stable physical form, appearing as a blob of goo able to reshape itself as needed. In his case, his substance was black and his eyes were pupil-less and white. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 1)
Personality
The Symbiote was manipulative, tapping into Kate Five's darker subconscious in an attempt to make her go along with its evil plans. A symbiote-melded Nexus Girl described him as “cruel”. He enjoyed inflicting harm on other creatures, but seemed mostly motivated by wanting to spawn more symbiotes. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 1)
Powers & abilities
As a symbiote, Ghede could possess human beings in seconds if he made contact with their skin, though this process could be rejected by a strong enough will, as it involved an element of mind-control as a telepathic link established itself between host and symbiote. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 1) He also seemed to have the ability to extract people's souls from them as they died. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 3) Ghede was capable of surviving away from a host for significant amounts of time, and moving on his own power, although he preferred having a host. (COMIC: Symbiote Surprise)
Biography
Origins
Ghede claimed that he had a native name other than “Ghede Nibo”, which he had later “chosen” for himself, but that it was unpronounceable for humans. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 4)
Meeting Kate
Before possessing Kate Five, the symbiote had been using a blond-haired, muscular man as a host. The two wound up in Cardiff and began causing mayhem. When Section P dispatched Kate Five to stop them, Kate punched the hybrid hulk, with her enhanced strength succeeding in dissociating the alien from the man. However, the alien then jumped to her and possessed her instead, entering her mind and strengthening her darker impulses to induce a blissful, malicious state. The possessed Kate reported that she'd dealt with the situation and everything was fine.
She then returned to Section P's HQ, where she sized up her fellow team-members as potential host for further symbiotes. She honed in on Taki, whom she followed into the showers. There, Kate revealed her monstrous hybrid form and attacker her friend. Although Taki was able to briefly injure her, Kate and the symbiote's powers combined allowed the possessed Kate to overpower Taki and assault her, planting the seed of a new alien within her. Growing within moments, the new, blue-coloured creature attempted to bond with Taki's body, but she managed to throw it off and it hid down the shower drain.
Nexus Girl then arrived on the scene, attempting to figure out what was happening between Kate and Taki, only to be taken by surprise by the new symbiote and bond with it. Kate and the black symbiote were unable to persuade the symbiotic hybrid of Nexus Girl and the blue alien to listen to them, however, with the bonded Nexi instead electing to protect Taki, whom they saw as their mother. Blasted into the next room, the symbiote-bonded Kate killed veteran Section P member Aqua Marine as she made her escape. After her disappearance, Nexus Girl and her new symbiote bond-partner pledged to remain loyal to Nexi's friends and to help them track down Kate Five and separate her from the villainous symbiote. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 1)
Against the Odds
Still possessed, Kate travelled to America, stowing away on a cargo ship. During this time, Kate tested the full extent of the powers she and the Symbiote possessed in combination. In her loneliness, she also began to think back to her past, notably giving more thought to her twin sister than she had in ages. However, the Symbiote tried to discourage her from such lines of thought, which he deemed “weak”. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 2)
They eventually travelled to New York once again, intent on taking out the Odds. At the Fortress of Evening, Armstrong Fatbuckle let her in and she quickly despatched him before heading to the roof, where the rest of the Odds were partying. She suggested a drinking game, using a bottle of wine which she'd secretly drugged. Due to Centennia being the best poker player, she was the last Odd standing, and eventually realised Kate was not in her normal state of mind. The two fought, with Kate nearly choking the life out of the partially-drugged Centennia until Armstrong Fatbuckle's disembodied arm intervened, providing enough of a distraction for Centennia to land a punch on Kate and send her careening into the bell of the Fortress's belltower. The vibrations forced the Symbiote to let go of her body, and it fled while Kate herself lost consciousness.
After she came to, once more herself, the Odds reassured her that they didn't blame her for the things she'd done under the symbiote's influence, and Kate and Centennia finally shared a kiss. Since Kate had previously been using the symbiote as an outfit, the Blue Knight even went clothes-shopping for her, buying her clothes to wear on her way back to the U.K.. However, after saying her goodbyes to the Odds and leaving the Fortress, Kate was immediately ambushed by the symbiote, which forcibly bonded with her once again. (COMIC: Symbiote Surprise)
In Angel Falls
The Symbiote drew Kate to the city of Angel Falls, where she arrived six months after her initial possession. On her first day in the city, she atypically used her powers for “good”, interrupting and killing a man assaulting a woman in an alley. The following night, Kate found herself drawn to the Bleeding Rose, a night club in the Old Harbor District, as a hunting ground for a new victim. Before she could try to kill anyone, however, she was pulled aside by Marcus, the owner, and a vampire. He informed her that he keeps a strict no-killing policy in the club and doesn't want “her parasite” causing trouble. He was surprised and disturbed when Kate's reply was voiced in terms of “we”, not having realised that there existed a mind-meld between her and the Symbiote. He cryptically informed her that the Symbiote was slowly killing her before drawing a glowing, red, magical seal in the air, intended to banish Kate out of the club. Revealing her symbiotic powers in full, Kate was able to block the beam of magical energy. However, Marcus, moving impossibly fast, dodged her retaliatory blow and mads her vanish with a touch and a “Begone”, teleporting her to the boardwalk. Marcus then phoned City Hall, telling them to inform the Guardians of Kate's location.
PhyreFrost transmitted the information to a patrolling Ms. Blitzen, Angel Falls's Atlantean-born protector, who had been informed of Kate's presence in Angel Falls by Sir James Carey. Locating her, Blitzen tackled Kate from the air. A fight began; during the initial, bare-handed wrestling phase, Kate had the upper hand, but she was caught by surprise when Blitzen used her magnetic powers to electrify a metal pipe and hit her with it. This weakened Kate, who began to fight more desperately, drawing on all of her bio-energy and progressively exhausting her super-strength, until finally, Blitzen concentrated and created a huge pulse of electricity that burned the better part of the Symbiote off of her body. Briefly in her own mind again, Kate tried to appeal to Blitzen to explain that her actions weren't her own and she's good again, but Blitzen refused to believe her and shocked Kate again, weakening her already-staggered will and allowing the remnant of the Symbiote to regain control over her.
Dodging another blast of electricity, the possessed Kate managed to fatally stab Blitzen through the stomach, and mockingly kissed her, (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 2) with Blitzen later recalling that it felt as though Kate was about to suck out her soul. However, she was prevented by the arrival of PhyreFrost herself, who forced Kate to leave Blitzen alone and engaged her in another superpowered fight from which Kate ultimately had to flee, unable to effectively resist PhyreFrost's fire- and ice-based attacks at the same time. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 3) The following night, Blitzen's friend Hailey Storm, her bonded elemental Ozarion, her lover Matthias, and his Neo-Atlantean brother-in-law Rhomerho Kel Llurian banded together to track down the “alien parasite” who had hurt Blitzen, starting from the street where the fight had begun. (PROSE: Angel Falls: Vengeance Sought)
Meanwhile, the possessed Kate attempted to replenish her and the symbiote's strength, devouring multiple homeless people she found in the alleyways of a decaying industrial area by the coastline. However, she didn't find enough nutrients to allow the symbiote to regenerate more than the covering of her arm. She was testing out what she could do with that alone when she was cornered by the four avengers, who had been joined by Wyldechild and Novastar. What followed was not so much a battle as a one-sided beatdown as the symbiote-possessed human was hit with a blast of Ozarion's electricity, then a fireball from Hailey, then a point-blank shot from Rhomerho's arcane shotgun which “literally” melted the symbiote's “molecular structure” off her arm, and finally got knocked off the roof by joint “force blasts” from Wyldechild and Novastar.
Before Kate could get away, she was cornered by the avengers. Despite the others' uncertainty with the extent of his wrath, Matthias insisted on getting further revenge on the defeated Kate, inflicting terrible pain on her through the symbiote using the vibratastones embedded in his left gauntlet, as well as another set of supernatural gems through which he channelled the heat of a volcano, and finally stabbing Kate with his energy blade in the same spot where she'd stabbed Emily. Only then, he calmed down, admitting that he went too far and that “his wives” would be disappointed in him. He left Kate with one final threat of even worse vengeance if she should harm his loved ones again, but refrained from killing her, leaving the others to take her into custody while he stomped off. Hailey quickly encased what remains of the symbiote in a crystal sphere, leaving the wounded Kate human and defenceless once again; she was soon delivered to British authorities ready to transport her back to the UK. (PROSE: Angel Falls: Vengeance)
Abducted by Emerald Valkyrie
Due to the injuries sustained in her fight with the Atlanteans, Kate was declared legally dead as she was being flown back to the U.K.. Her twin sister Kimberley, who had been following her adventures through their telepathic link, managed to get a hold of the “body”, who was not actually quite dead, and brought it back to America, as well as the inert physical remains of the Symbiote matter which had been blasted off Kate. She cared for the comatose Kate for weeks, not just out of sisterly loyalty but mostly to study the symbiote to improve her own power-suit. Eventually, Kate awoke to Kimberley taunting her with the claim that her every evil act under the Symbiote's influence had been a reflection of her own darker desires rather than an exogenous evil.
The following night, unbeknownst to Kimberley, Kate managed to contact a fragment of the Symbiote's consciousness which had been left in her mind despite most of its physical being having been rendered inert and separated from her. Breaking out of the vat of healing fluid, Kate reabosrbed the Symbiote's inert mass, bonding with it at a deeper level than before in exchange for a promise of a more equal partnership between their minds. She ambushed Kimberley the following morning, revealing, to Kimberley's shock, that she had learned to spoof their mind-link to send Kimberley erroneous information about her strategies. Despite Kimberley unveiling her emerald-coloured power suit, the Symbiote-possessed Kate gained the upper hand and, overcome by Ghede's evil again despite the promise, began forcing herself on Kimberley. However, too late for the attacker(s) to retreat, Kimberley revealed that she'd actually goaded her into it on purpose in order to draw symbiote genetic material from them. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 4)
Now impregnated with a new symbiote, Kimberley explained to Kate that she was working for an organisation called Ohmega, and that they were located in Ohmega's secret facility on Sark Island. As the new symbiote, which chose the name Balthus, began to be born, Kate went through Ghede to telepathically communicate with it, warning it that Ohmega planned to contain it as soon as it was born and use it as a battery. Born fighting, Balthus immediately killed one of the doctors, and morphing into her symbiote-covered form, Kate broke through the glass observation wall to help. The two symbiote humanoids made short of work of Ohmega's medical staff and their first line of security personnel, but Kimberley was wounded in the process.
When Battle Angel and Nexus Girl, who'd been led to Sark Island by Marcus via helicopter, arrived in the “maternity ward”, they were surprised to see not only the signs of carnage, but also a tearful, not-at-all-evil-looking Kate cradling Kimberley's body and begging for help. However, Balthus was reluctant to jump into the E-Valkyrie suit and make itself the very battery it had been fighting not to become, which Kate thought would be the only way to save her. Battle Angel and Nexus Girl, for their part, did not know what to make of the unexpectedly non-hostile Kate and symbiote. While they parlayed, Balthus made his own choice and bonded with Kimberley directly, stabbing Battle Angel and fleeing.
The wounded Battle Angel ordered Nexus Girl to leave her and pursue Kate, who, running through the base, turned a corner to find herself faced with a firing squad headed by Red Giant. She got hit by a few shots, but was pulled to safety by Nexus Girl and the blue symbiote, who half-separated from his host to have a conversation with his “father”, revealing that he had chosen a name, Eros. Ghede helped Kate begin to recover from the wounds, though she would ideally have needed more time to heal, as she went to face Red Giant, refusing to answer when Nexus Girl asked if she'd come quietly with her and Battle Angel once the immediate crisis was over. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 5) Red Giant, revealing himself to be a “roided-up vampire”, nearly got the better of her, but she was saved at the last moment by Battle Angel, who, before giving her medical attention beyond what Ghede could muster, impulsively kissed her and declared her her girlfriend, revealing that she'd long harboured feeling for Kate.
Meanwhile, Ohmega forces had subdued the symbiote-bonded Kimberley and, deeming Balthus a more valuable resource than the fickle human scientist, prepared to forcibly extract the symbiote from her in a manner which would have killed her. Nexus Girl intervened, calling on the power of the Nexus Stone. Accepting that Ohmega had betrayed her, she agreed to team up with Section P as they made their escape. Nexi insisted on calling upon her powers once again, but their teleportation was redirected to Hell by a demoness called Duchess Valmorri, who revealed that the power of Nexi's Nexus Stone had been a reflection of the true Stone which she controlled from Hell, and also that she held the soul of Aqua Marine. Without deigning to explain herself further, she offered an ambiguous deal to Nexi to make her give herself up to Valmorri, which Nexi accepted despite the others' protests. Valmorri then teleported them to “somewhere safe” — the Fortress of Evening, where they gave quite the surprise to Captain Evening, Professor Madison and Rodney Rabbit. (COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 6)
Behind the scenes
The authorial notes on Page 1 of COMIC: Kate Five vs Symbiote - Chapter 1 included a statement that “the Symbiote is a copyright of Marvel Comics”, and James Bridger did not contradict comments on Page 3 which referred to the unnamed blond predecessor of Kate Five as host to Ghede as “Eddie Brock”. This positioned Kate Five as partially an avowed fan-comic of the Marvel universe, and identified Kate's symbiote as the Marvel character Venom.
This aspect was increasingly blurred over the comic's subsequent history, with Bridger later explicitly stating that Kate's symbiote companion was not Venom, though he may be Venom's “cousin”. Notably, the Cosmic Beholder story COMIC: Blast From The Past implied that Spider-Man himself existed in the Cosmic Beholder/Kate Five universe, making it unsurprising that some version of Eddie Brock and Venom might exist there.
