《DOOM: Heirs to the Throne》


 1 [ G series ] A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

    1 [ G series ] A man is great by deeds, not by birth.


    I woke up floating upright in a vat full of pink goo with two sets of memories fighting it out inside my head.


    Which is why even though one set was warning me that the harness holding me upright in the vat was going to release me as soon the last of the artificial embryonic fluid drained out and the clear front of the tube lifted up, I still ended up doing a face plant out on the cold metal plating that made up the floor of my birthing unit.


    At least all the various tubes that had been stuck in various parts of me had been gently removed by the development chamber¡¯s automated arms before all the fluid drained out.


    So as I lay there and sorted through my memories, I realized that one of them, which defined me as a person, belonged to my former life that ended under some rather foggy and painful circumstances. While the other part of my mind was filled with a rather impersonal set of... not so much memories as programmed knowledge.


    Heavily edited information.


    There was a lot of knowledge of science that was greatly more advanced than anything the first set of memories was familiar with. As well as a fair amount of the basics of several schools of sorcery.


    And then a lot of of local history that seemed highly familiar.


    Most telling was the information about Victor Von Doom, or as I guess I could call him. Dad.


    Von Doom was a scientist, a sorcerer, a head of state, and a supervillain. What he wasn¡¯t was a family man. From the implanted information he himself chose to put in my head, he claimed he just knew that any heir he fathered would be in danger for all of their lives, and would inevitably turn against him Doom and try to overthrow him due to narrative influences.


    I took a moment to review those last two words.


    Doom knew he was in a universe that ran on story based rules. Which should hardly be a surprise since Doom was a genius even by other people¡¯s standards. I just never thought he would have figured that one out since his arrogance was his blind spot. I couldn''t see him tolerating living under someone else¡¯s whims.


    Which is maybe what had happened to him to make him go missing for the five years it took to activate the Heir protocols which had awakened me and the other five eldest of my eleven brothers and sisters. All potential heirs to the throne of Latveria, and all set up to be ready to duke it out until the best Doom wins.


    I could see the logic, twisted as it is. Too few of us and an unworthy Doom could win by luck. Too many and we would destroy the country fighting things out with our superpowers.


    That¡¯s right. Doom didn¡¯t make clones, which never seems to work out in any kind of story, he made children. Each one of us paired up with a gene sample of some female superhuman.


    Almost assuredly without their consent. Old Vic liked to play the part of a refined gentleman but wasn¡¯t really a consent kind of guy.


    I tried to speak out loud and say something bitter about being what amounted to a rape baby, but I had to spend a few fun filled moments coughing up the last of the tube¡¯s embryonic fluid from my lungs.


    A small dome shaped robot slide out of a slot and began sucking up the mess, while another sank down to the floor to scrub away the last of the residue.


    Doom, always thinking dozens of steps ahead.


    Of course, he didn¡¯t bother to include information in my and most likely my sibling''s brains on just who our various mothers or let¡¯s say, unwilling gene donors were. The memories he set up for us were bare bone facts with nothing to help define us as people. But at least he gave me a name.


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    Engraved on a bronze plate at the base of my growth tube were the words Gustav Von Doom.


    I think I¡¯m just going to go by Gus.


    As far as my other set of memories¡­


    I had been from a large family and paid my own way through community college. I had gotten a job that had nothing to do with my training but paid for a decent car and an apartment. Then I had been drifting through life, with no serious relationships, and no real drive to improve myself or start a family.


    And this universe was a fictional one back over there, even if this one didn¡¯t quite match the films or the comic books. But comics tended to get retconned every so often anyways.


    As for all my personal memories of that other life though, let¡¯s call them foggy at best. People¡¯s faces, names, or even my own name were sort of blurred out and left me feeling more like they were something I had seen or read about than real memories.


    That person I had been, wasn¡¯t me now. Gus was a new person with a new life, anything I remembered from the other guy could give me an edge and would influence who I became. But I, Gus, would be the one to decide who I was going to be in this life.


    Not the old me, and certainly not Doomy McDoomface.


    And I was going to go by an old timey grandpa name like Gus rather than pick something trendy like Trent, or Liam used to be. No cringey fad names for me.


    Gus, good old Gus, the name for a mechanic you could trust. Gus. The Von Doom part would have to go. Don¡¯t need that kind of history on my shoulders, and since this world runs on narrative laws a Von Doom would inevitably end up with severe facial scarring. And I felt no need to get stuck with scars that would somehow always be beyond my ability to fix, or would somehow come back.


    No sir, no thanks.


    Upon my mental review, as I got up off the floor, I knew I was in a storage container sized device that was eighty percent filled with the mechanisms to keep me developing and alive for the last nine or so years while forcing my growth to go at twice the normal rate.


    It would also have dissolved my body, still unawakened, at the age of twenty four and would have started over with a new sibling so that none of us would ever get too old to start ruling over Latveria as a fresh, new, and young Baron.


    A little harsh there, Dad.


    I did spare a moment to think of the people of Latveria who no doubt had been taken over by a harsh dictatorship that would make Von Doom or his Heir seem like a beloved enlightened ruler in comparison. At least I believed that¡¯s what Narrative law would demand. Or alternatively, my power mad sibling would be trying to overthrow a relative utopia which had thrived in Doom''s absence.


    So I guess that was something I would have to look into.


    But right now in addition to my artificial womb, the unit was equipped with a Matrix Forge and a second storage unit worth of raw materials buried below my birthplace.


    I needed a super suit.


    I am a Doom, it¡¯s our thing.


    There was no way a narrative universe would just let me live a normal life. Drama would somehow always find me, and if I wasn¡¯t prepared, I could end up being a supporting character that gets killed off as part of someone else¡¯s Hero¡¯s Journey.


    Nope. I was going to have to be a main character. Someone who got their own title. That way even if I got killed, somehow, I would come back. To keep the trademark if nothing else.


    I sighed. This is such a weird way to think about things.


    So, until I figured out what my powers from the mom were, a suit of Doctor Doom armor would have to do. With some suitable adjustments. No scowling mask, no dull gray armor.


    No holstered handgun belted over it.


    Instead, I went with a streamlined white armored suit with blue highlights that would be based more on Anime than a Medieval Times restaurant. Very generic looking in fact, so I added a big blue hooded cape with a simple white patterned trim that generated a deflective gravatonic based field to help ward off most types of energy attacks and physical blows.


    I also made the fabric weave slippery as hell.


    There was no point in wearing something to help protect me that would end up getting sucked into a jet turbine or yanked down by the Hulk getting a grip on it.


    No sir, no thanks. I also included both a voice command and a physical clasp to release the cape in an emergency.


    Now I just needed a name for a costumed identity. Perhaps something that was the opposite of the name and nature of Doom? Hope, humility¡­ A sense of humor?


    No, I¡¯m not that goody, goody. So something like Progeny or Scion? A bit of a giveaway there.


    I was going to have to workshop this a bit.


    My stomach growled and I realized I was starving. And looking at the Matrix Forge I could see from the readout that I had another twenty five minutes just to finish the face plate for my armor before I could set it to make me something to eat.


    Hmm, looks like I have some time to kill.


    I guess it was time to think about who my female gene donor could be. So who could Doom¡¯s ego tolerate as a mother to one of his kids?

 2 [ Gus ] Change comes from reflection.

    2 [ Gus ] Change comes from reflection.


    Looking into a camera linked to a screen, I could see that physically I appeared to be a very fit young guy in his late teens, with pale white skin. I didn¡¯t seem to have any body hair, but I did have the start of some stubble on my head. Which was not quite long enough for me to see the color of it.


    But I could see the color of my dark blue eyes, which most likely were not from Doom¡¯s Eastern European Latverian heritage. So at least I could tell that mom would most likely be a white woman.


    I would guess that the mom would most likely not be any sort of alien since Doom would want a human heir, not someone who could be denounced as only half terrestrial.


    So not a mutant or inhuman either, the activation of their powers was unpredictable and all too often would result in a nonhuman appearance. Which again would be a problem for an heir.


    And somehow I didn¡¯t think he would collect anything from a teen or a child, that would be way too skeevy for such a proud man.


    A perfect example of the kind of woman I would be looking for would in fact be the Invisible woman.


    Mature, human, with inheritable powers as proven by her son. But I don¡¯t think having a child by his worst enemy, slash, rival¡¯s wife genes would have been the kind of victory over Reed Richards that Doom would have tried for.


    It would be so wrong, just way too wrong, even for him.


    She-Hulk. Captain Marvel, the older one. The Scarlet Witch, post mutant origin. In fact, the Scarlet Witch would be a great explanation of how I got here. I could see her powers activating to give one of her children a soul taken from somewhere else rather than leave me as a wind up meat puppet for Doom¡¯s twisted sense of duty.


    But if I inherited her powers. How the heck would I activate her ¡°Hexes¡± which were one of the most cheesy power sets in the Marvel universe? ¡°Hexes¡± which did whatever the writer needed them to do, and then somehow would not be able to let her do the exact same thing when they needed them to be less useful the next time around. All at the whim of the needs of that issue¡¯s plot line.


    Since I had some more time to kill, I decided to go looking for answers by breaking into the machine which had made me.


    It proved to have quite a few security features, including several self destruction mechanisms, but they proved to be no challenge for a Doom. Instead, it was merely very time consuming for a Doom working with their bare hands while butt naked and hungry in a buried storage unit in the middle of nowhere.


    I had time to have the Matrix Forge finish printing my mask, a bowl of vitamin enriched gelatinous soup, some basic tools, and clothes before setting it back to the work of making the next piece of my armor before I broke past the final security program.


    Oh... Dam him to hell.


    I was not the first in the G series.


    There had been a Greta before me who had been aged to twenty four years old and then had been turned back into growth stock when she turned out not to be needed. And as soon as I left the creche another sibling would be started to eventually replace me.


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    All of us from the creche units were to be grown from a fixed sequence of genes from an unknown female, and a genetic arrangement of one half of one of many possible arrangements of Doom¡¯s. Each one of us that could be generated by this module would be slightly different. But all of us would have the same mother and father. Being made and then unmade unless activated according to the Heir protocols. With some of us being sent out to challenge for the throne of Latveria, while others would be dissolved back into the vat. Never even being awakened.


    Monstrous¡­ I would ask how dare he. But he would. Doom would dare anything.


    Screw your plans Vic. The only question now was, do I disable this machine to stop the creation of a younger sibling? One that most likely would be born as another puppet for Doom if I didn¡¯t get back to them before their twelve years in the vat were up?


    ...I guess that at the very least I should shut it down for now, although I will not destroy it.


    There are no clues in the creche from who the mother¡¯s gene sequence came from. But I copied the gene code into a printed cell phone like device for storage until I can examine it more closely later on. For now, I had to wait for my armor to finish and ponder the possibilities.


    The gene from a male super could have worked to pair up with Dooms. He could have used his or the other father¡¯s x gene and not the male y to make a girl. But I don¡¯t think Doom would have risked the awkward conversation if that ever came out.


    I smiled to myself, at least that had eliminated half of the super powered population on Earth.


    But then it didn¡¯t have to be a hero''s DNA, did it? There were plenty of healthy villainous women out there as well. Some of which had even gotten their powers from Doom. Titania and a friend of hers, Volcana I think. Their powers would be a known factor for him to examine and confirm they would be passed on to a child.


    If he was willing to have pro wrestlers for two of his baby mommas. I think that those two did before he recruited them on what may have been a whim.


    When my suit was perhaps halfway built I realized this reproduction unit was missing something that would not be easy to create with the Matrix Forge, or at least hard to hook up to anything. A toilet.


    It looked like I would have to leave my metal womb entirely unless I wanted to use some form of sealable Tupperware.


    Or hope the robot would clean up the mess, but I was going to make a mess on the floor, even if technically I was a newborn.


    First I disabled the mechanism that would have sealed up the exit behind me, trapping me outside.


    Then the backup mechanism, and its backup. Chill the hell out Vic, like you could have kept out one of your kids if they really wanted back in.


    Then I stepped outside to an exit concealed in a hillside somewhere in a rather dry land with vegetation that I recognized as being from North America. In the mid-western portion of the central plains. Idaho perhaps?


    By checking the phone I had made which did so much more than a normal phone. I determined that I was in fact in the state of Idaho. One of the few states without its own super team from the 50 states initiative. Right in the middle of the small portion of the Yellowstone National Park that was in this state.


    Hmm, I guess if I wasn¡¯t going to be Latverian by birth then... I would still be Latverian, Doom had set up legal statutes so that by Latverian law all of his children were Latverian citizens regardless of where they had been born, but at least I could at claim to be American born in my own mind.


    Always ten steps ahead my dad¡­ well, more like a few dozen steps.


    Standing there looking at my phone, I heard a few loose stones clatter down the hillside behind me just in time for me to look over my shoulder and see the mountain lion as it screamed and leaped off of the top of the cliff I had emerged from.


    Oh yeah. A narrative universe. Here comes the drama.


    Throwing up my hands I could feel but not see the flat square barrier that it slammed into with a squished up face before it dropped down to the ground. Springing back to its feet and looking in all directions in complete bafflement. It finally gave the area an offended look before it began slinking off.


    It hadn¡¯t seen me standing there after it had hit the invisible wall. Looking down at my hands, I couldn¡¯t see me either.


    ¡­I guess that answers who my bio mom is.


    What the hell did you do Victor Von Doom?


    I began to pace back and forth while I freaked out a bit. This set of powers was so¡­ Iconic that the connection would be obvious to anyone. What was I supposed to do? Claim to be the result of Susan Richards, nee Storm having a one night stand and giving me up for adoption before she hooked up with Reed ¡®Super genius who could check out my story in ways I can¡¯t see coming¡¯ Richards?


    Or claim to be some kind of reversed gender clone in order to not give up using these sweet powers¡­


    Actually, that might not be that bad of an idea.

 3 [ Gus ] The unseen hand

    3 [ Gus ] The unseen hand


    I sat down on a rock and began playing with my powers as I caught my breath from my near panic attack. That and the whole thing with a two hundred pound killing machine flying at my face which had startled me a bit.


    The invisible force effect tended to break up with more complex forms. Gentle curving surfaces and flat planes were the easiest to do with anything too complex breaking down into what felt almost like a liquid blanket.


    The rigid forms were also set in place, I could reshape them to change the space they occupied, and move the fixed point by moving myself around to create a force field around me. But it wasn¡¯t usable as a direct form of telekinesis. I couldn¡¯t pick something up and move it, only push things around by changing the shape of the force construct.


    As best I could spoon something up and then lengthen the spoon to put something where I wanted it, but without a lot of practice, it would be pretty awkward.


    But the liquid form. That I could move and wrap around things, turning them invisible.


    I had always wondered how the Invisible Woman ended up with two powers, force fields, and invisibility while the rest of the Fantastic Four only had one power each. But in truth, she had only had one power like the rest of them, she could just do more with it.


    Much like her brother could with his fire based power, using it to fly and make shapes. I guess the Storm side of my family just had a talent for getting more out of their superpowers than a Richards or a Grimm.


    I guess I¡¯m enough of a Doom to feel some satisfaction in that. Suck it Richards!


    The clone story wasn¡¯t going to work, was it? Claiming to be a male version of Sue Storm from another parallel dimension or the son of an alternative version of her wouldn''t work either.


    A male clone would still need a Y chromosome to be male, and Richards would check to find out whose Y gene it was. Doom had to have bled in one of his fights with the four, Richards might be able to identify who my dear old dad really was, probably at the dramatic moment. Which would put me right back where I started, getting outed as a bio-autonomous rape baby at some point.


    As for making up other origins, I would either have to choose between Sue Storm¡¯s powers or the technology that Doom put in my head. Anyone from Reed Richards to Tony Stark would be able to quickly recognize anything I made as having dear old dad¡¯s style.


    Plus I had five other siblings activated and out there, and at least one or two of them would start throwing the Doom name around, eventually outing me.


    From examining the creche I had learned that only the eldest six of Doom¡¯s children would be activated by the Heir Protocols if Doom vanished for at least five years. The others would only activate at the age of eighteen to keep his ultimate heir on their toes by sending fresh rivals for the throne at them periodically.


    But I digress. A choice between superpowers, or technology. A false dichotomy. I only had to choose one or the other in case I planned a long game to catch others by surprise. Which would give me a great advantage for a single use surprise. Alternatively, it would be because I was unwilling to have my origins fully outed right from the start.


    But I will not limit myself for fear of the opinions of others. I am a Doom after all.


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    While I would not reveal my origins openly, I will not deny them either. Rather I would make my own reputation first and if my existence is still repugnant to my gene mother. Then so be it. She seemed like she was a good person, and sure as hell didn¡¯t deserve this. But I exist, so I¡¯m sorry for what Doom did to her, but here I am.


    And I think I¡¯m going to end up upsetting a lot of good people before I¡¯m done.


    I found and boosted a signal for the internet and searched for news out of Latveria.


    Which was currently dealing with a black haired, green skinned, super strong girl calling herself Iris Von Doom, often, loudly and proudly, who was dealing with the SHIELD protectorate forces, surprisingly gently.


    At least as far as she could in a knock down, bare knuckle fight. She was mostly doing property damage to vehicles and handfuls of weapons getting crushed in her hands. The SHIELD agents were either getting their weapons wrapped around them or getting almost gently swatted into each other and various solid objects.


    Like walls, vehicles¡­ the ground.


    She was also still getting in her requisite shouts of ¡°Doom Smash!¡± with a big goofy grin.


    Heh... ¡°You go sis!¡± The daughter of who I was almost certain was She Hulk was definitely not acting on Doom¡¯s programming. Which meant my siblings, at least the ones who had been decanted, also had souls from other lives.


    I wasn¡¯t alone. I had some fellow travelers, my siblings.


    My emerald skinned sister stood at about six foot plus something, which meant she not only had hair but by my best guess at least a good inch of height on me. But even at that height I could tell by her face, and the first letter of her name, that her age was fifteen, she could still grow. And I could blame her being ¡°Hulked out¡± on the few inches of raven black hair on her head. In her baseline form, she was probably as bald as I was.


    It was still grossly unfair. She had hair, and by being the first to claim the throne of Latveria she was now the rightful Heir designate.


    At least until one of the rest of us kicked her out of her seat.


    But she was more than welcome to both the hair on her head and the title of Heir. I was pretty sure I could own the bald look until something grew in, and she could have the headache of taking over a Latveria which had been occupied by SHIELD since a month after Victor Von Doom had thrown Reed Richards out of the Lab in which he had been helping Doom with one of his experiments that had gone wrong and began to threaten the very existence of the universe.


    Doom had sacrificed his own life to save all of reality and his last act was to save the life of Reed Richards. Doom?


    Yeah. I didn¡¯t buy it either. But there had been no sign of his survival for the last five years, and he had made no attempt to put my sibling and my own activation on hold. He was either dead or very far away in space, and or time.


    So Girl-Hulk could have Latveria, heck, she can have all of Europe. I would settle for North America.


    Just the western half. There were so many heroes and other issues east of the Mississippi that I was going to focus on the flyover states as a benign neo-fascist tyrant. By which I meant I was going to improve things for the people of my protectorate, and expected to be obeyed on anything I felt important enough to give orders on. But for the most part, I would have little to no interest in what people did in their own lives, other than respecting the lives of others.


    The last bit pretty much meant following most of the laws already in place. In fact, I had little interest in interfering with the local and federal governments as long as they did not act against me or the people I planned on taking under my protection.


    For instance, if the people who were promised that the lands of their reservations were theirs, and didn¡¯t want an oil pipeline running through their lands. Someone either needed to pay them enough to change their minds or find another route for their pipeline.


    Not just get the Federal government''s permission to screw them over.


    The very situation which was happening right now in Montana to the Crow nation.


    Going after rich people when money was involved... That was going to get some attention. But I guess I could blame Iris, my little green sis had set the bar pretty high for pissing off the powers that be. I can¡¯t let her show me up.


    I continued to watch the live footage of her now facing off against the remaining assembled forces of SHIELD at the front gates of Castle Doomstadt, arms crossed and smirking. It gave me something to do as the remaining parts of my armor were being printed out until I could assemble them.


    With what was planned for the Crow people protesting the pipeline tonight, I knew just how I was going to make my debut.

 4 [ Iris ] First!

    4 [ Iris ] First!


    This. Was. Great!


    Smashing things. Beating up idiots who would lock me up just for existing and even try to kill me if I resisted. Heh, Doom Smash. The best of all worlds.


    I took a second to apply my thumbs to the side of my head, fingers spayed out and waving back and forth while I stuck my tongue out as the assembled might of the fuming SHIELD occupational force. They knew they didn¡¯t stand a chance against me and wiser heads must have ordered them to stop trying.


    Which had led to this face off. With me standing halfway across the bridge leading to the closed gates of Castle Doomstadt, staking my claim. Opposite me, there was a few hundred SHELD guys, many of them looking pretty beat up. Which they were, by me. Armed with all their high tech weapons.


    Aside from the ones which I could hear making ominous humming noises over where I had tossed them to Smash up against the castle walls.


    The Doom Walls!


    Those ones had stung a bit, so they got extra Smashed.


    ¡°I¡¯d ask to talk to whoever was in charge, but that¡¯s me.¡± I pointed my thumb at myself. ¡°Baroness Von Doom. Iris the first. So how about I talk to whoever is in command of you sorry lot.¡± I ended that with what would have been a hair toss, if I had enough hair to toss.


    Victor Von Doom seriously couldn¡¯t make a machine so his fifteen year old daughter could be born with hair? Bad evil overlord. No Father¡¯s Day cards for you.


    I set my hands on my hips and stared the agent down until one soaking wet guy I vaguely remember tossing into the moat stepped up. Excuse me, the Doom moat! ¡°Commander Riek is still unconscious, I¡¯m Agent Bennet. Could you please tell me who exactly you are and what you hope to accomplish?¡±


    Good. Ever since I popped out of my mechanical momma I knew I was one of the youngest of my siblings to be out and on the move. And if I wanted a legitimate claim to the throne I had to be first one here. After getting dumped out of my tube to the cold metal floor and going green from the shock I knew I didn¡¯t need to take the time to make a Doom suit. I just had to get out, make my way out through what had proved to be a secured chamber in a Swiss bank vault, and get to sweet home Latveria first.


    Then if it turned out one of my older sibs wanted to and had the power to take it from me, I could try to make some sort of deal to hand it over instead. Without it getting damaged in a fight. Pops hadn¡¯t left me anything in the way of cash. The only thing I had that I had taken the time for the Matrix Forge to make for me was a gray on the sides and purple in the middle unstable molecular sleeveless mid-thigh long swimsuit like super costume and a set of sweet fold over matching boots.


    I also had started off with a nice hooded purple cloak and a set of matching gloves when I got here, but I had thrown the cloak away for a dramatic reveal, and the gloves literately came off when one of the buzzing guns put me through a wall.


    So, you know, I had picked a mix of mom¡¯s and dad¡¯s colors. Okay, I guess technically Doom¡¯s color would be green but I got green pretty well covered so I went with gray.


    Anyways. ¡°I¡¯m Baroness Iris Von Doom. Rightful heir to the throne of Latveria by right of combat and getting here before the rest of them. So I call dibs. I invite you to withdrawal your forces as Latveria is now under my protection. Your presence is no longer needed. Shoo, shoo.¡± I flicked my hands out at them.


    Agent Bennet sighed and then wearily raised his hands up as if to calm me down. ¡°Okay, okay. I¡¯m just going to go ahead and believe everything you just said. Questioning any of your claims is above my pay grade. But I have a duty to defend the people of Latveria from anyone trying to take the place over. Were you even aware that they had elections for a prime minister and have formed a new government? One that has already set up a schedule for us to gradually withdraw?¡±


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    I froze up for a second, then decided to play it out as boldly as I had come in. You know, like a Doom¡­ or a Hulk. Both worked. ¡°Nope, but that¡¯s fine with me. I got no interest in dealing with budgets and diplomacy. I just want the title and all of Dad¡¯s cool stuff.¡± I threw a thumb over my shoulder. ¡°The castle, mine. His money, mine. The title, mine. Get your people out of it and return everything you stole. Or¡­¡± I punched my fists together. ¡°More smashy, smashy.¡±


    Bennet took a deep breath. ¡°I understand why you would feel that way, but¡­ Seriously, how old are you.¡±


    That¡¯s when a voice called out. ¡°Either fifteen or seven depending on how you count it.¡±


    Hovering in midair above the Doom moat about sixty feet away was a big guy in a bulky version of Dad¡¯s armor. Only with a tunic in a subdued green, black, and gray set up in an elaborate geometric pattern and a big hooded cloak with darker versions of the same colors and a simpler pattern.


    His accent was also Wakandan, just like Chadwick¡¯s. So not Dad, just a brother from another mother.


    ...Or a sister with a voice changer. Wakandans could be tricky.


    Hover bro continued. ¡°But that does not matter. Our father set up the laws of Latveria so that his heir would be the head of state in his absence, regardless of their age. Any alteration to his laws by an emergency government were rendered null and void upon her proclamation of intent to claim his title.¡±


    I crossed my arms and gave floaty McDoomface a dubious look. ¡°And are you here to lay your own claim?¡±


    Floaty gave me a long look and a slow head shake. ¡°I am Horus Von Doom, son of Victor Von Doom. Here and now I forgo any and all claims to the title and rulership of the nation of Latveria in favor of the rightful heir, Iris.¡±


    He held his fist up. ¡°All hail Iris Von Doom, first of her name. All hail Baroness Doom!¡±


    Aw jeez, I¡¯m blushing, aren''t I? Not so much for Big Bro¡¯s proclamation but due to how many of the civilians who had refused to get cleared out by the SHIELD agents began to cheer and wave. Either people missed Doom so much they were willing to accept me as a stand in, or the SHIELD guys had been such jerks since they got here that even I looked good.


    Probably both. Regardless I turned and waved at the crowd. ¡°Thank you, thank you. I¡¯m feeling the love. You like me, you really like me.¡±


    Floaty, or Horus drifted over a bit closer. ¡°May we speak sister?¡±


    I gave him a nod, and he settled down on his feet and bowed at the waist for a second before looking up at me. ¡°My apologies, but I will not be taking the knee as I do not plan to become a resident of Latveria or to become one of your subjects.


    I waved it off. ¡°Not coming in hot and trying to take the place yourself is good enough. But if not Latveria, then what? Don¡¯t try to tell me you¡¯re going to be content not ruling over someplace of your own?¡±


    Horus tilted his head at me for a moment. ¡°Africa. Or at least the worst parts of it. Eventually, as a Federation with other nations joining under whatever status they wish. There are many places on this world that are still in need of someone competent to rule them. Latveria is not one of them.¡±


    He threw up his hand in response to the angry look I gave him. ¡°I mean no offense sister. Our homeland still needs a Doom and you claimed it first. Feel free to lead them into conquest if you wish. I will be on another continent that is in need of improvements that should keep me busy for the rest of my lifetime. There should be no conflict between us.¡±


    I considered that and gave him a nod. ¡°But why Africa?¡±


    He slumped a little and his voice slipped into a midwestern American accent. ¡°This may sound shallow, but because I¡¯m black. And Doom put my creche over there.¡±


    Slowly shaking his head, he added. ¡°And Africa needs someone to step up.¡± He threw his head back and waved his hand dismissively. ¡°And I¡¯m not insane enough to try to fix America. Some places are beyond help.¡±

 5 [ Gus ] First Dictate

    5 [ Gus ] First Dictate


    Night had fallen by the time my suit was finished, assembled, and tested. So I arrived at the end of the pipeline which was still under construction, to see the protesters being hosed down in the mid-February weather.


    Policemen, men who had sworn to serve and protect others, stood to either side of the large vehicle that was firing a high pressure stream of water at unarmed people trying to peacefully protest a violation of their rights. The police wore riot gear and just stood there as people were being soaked out in 0-degree weather. Or 32 degrees Fahrenheit as it was measured in stubbornly backwards America.


    I floated above them and wasted time fuming and resisting the urge to kill them all. Slaughtering a group of morally corrupt police officers was not how I planned on starting my reign. Deposing of such trash would be done with a dedicated staff pursuing lawsuits and applying economic pressure would be something that I would have to set up later on. Besides, my bio mom would not approve of mass murder and I still hoping to be on decent terms with the woman.


    So first, I put an unseen ring of force around the control stick of the vehicle¡¯s controls to ensure the water could not be stopped. Then a force construct consisting of a long tube going from the nozzle of the mounted hose to its sealed endpoint was applied with two nozzles of its own aimed at either side of the tank like riot control vehicle.


    Slowly reshaping the two nozzles let me thoroughly drench the police who had approved of the assault on the protesters by standing there on either side of an act of terror doing nothing. They yelled in protest, but by their own rules, people in the wrong deserved to get soaked in freezing cold weather.


    Once I finished applying their just rewards for such dedicated service, the vehicle¡¯s tanks were drained. I dismissed both the ring and the tube, replacing them with a wall between the uniformed thugs and their victims. Shooting into the crowd in the hope of hitting any empowered protesters responsible for challenging their authority seemed like the next step for fascist thugs.


    I preferred to give them a more legitimate, and bullet resistance, target. Me.


    A few quickly summoned and dismissed the expanding sphere of force sending their flood lights flying and crashing to the ground leaving the entire area in darkness. Only for a moment.


    One of the drones I had the Matrix Forge produce while I finished my armor activated my own flood light as I dismissed the invisibility field I had wrapped around myself. Allowing the light to reflect off of my gleaming white armor as I hovered motionless above and between the armed thugs and their victims.


    Two other drones amplified my voice.


    ¡°I am Apex. All of the continental United States of America west of the Mississippi are now mine as my Protectorate.¡±


    Of course, a few of the Police began to shoot at me. Their only tools in dealing with others were either the threat or use of violence.


    With a dramatic raise of my hands, I created disks of force beneath the feet of those who had managed to draw their sidearms and fire at me. As well as the two fools who shot tear gas at my face so that I had to send my spare drone to stop the canisters from flying over my force wall at the protesters.


    As I flicked my hand up, the disks beneath the feet of the men with the tear gas changed into the tilted tops of two short cylinders which sent them tumbling off their feet, while the ones who fired lethal weapons rose upwards upon two meter tall cylinders. The cylinders rose quickly enough to launch the trigger happy men into the air to then fall with bone breaking or possibly even lethal force.


    They¡¯re the ones who choose to escalate this confrontation to the use of lethal force. Their injuries or deaths were on them.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    ¡°My first dictate as Tyrant is this. Act like Nazis, and you will be dealt with like Nazis.¡±


    Most of the police had gotten their guns out by now, but a few of them failed to make the connection from the first few who had shot at me and opened fire. They got sent flying for their efforts. Even then three more of them decided to start shooting and got sent up into the air as well.


    The rest of them seemed to make the connection and held their fire.


    ¡°And don¡¯t think claiming that you were only following orders will work for you either. You know what you were doing tonight was wrong. Using a hose on people in this weather, including some elderly people, was putting their health and possibly their lives at risk. You could have said no even if it cost you your jobs. You choose to be a part of this.¡±


    I set a cylinder of force behind the front axis of their water shooter vehicle and then slowly grew it in height to begin toppling the vehicle over backwards. This took more than enough time to allow the crew and the surrounding police to escape being crushed by their own machine.


    ¡°This land was promised to these people in return for everything that had been taken away from them. Do not trespass on them again or you will meet your Doom.¡±


    The drone cut its lights as I wrapped a second soft force field around me to vanish as the water truck stood up on its back end and then slowly fell over with a crash.


    Seeing that the police were no longer interested in shooting anyone, I dropped the shield between them and the wisely walking away protesters.


    Now for the pipeline.


    A cone of force inserted into the end of the pipe followed along with me as I flew above the pipe. I had learned that while I could not directly move a force construct. I could set in to stay in place relative to myself, allowing the cone to travel down the length of the pipe along with me. Splitting and tearing it open as I traveled along under the force of the Gravatonics built into my suit, and the repulsers thrust in the bottom of my shoes for the thrust I needed to tear up the metal piping.


    The repulsers are Stark tech, but I¡¯m not my father. I¡¯m not above using whatever works.


    Every now and then the cone lost its connection to me and vanished due to the resistance of the metal, so I was only able to destroy 1.8 kilometers of the pipeline before my high altitude drone detected a high speed aircraft heading my way.


    As military craft would have come at me in pairs, and from the direction it was comeing from it was more then likely to be a Quinjet carrying the Heavy Hitters team out of Nevada. While the gravity manipulator would be troublesome, my choice to abandon the field before their arrival was due to me having nothing to gain from such a victory.


    I had chosen a role that I considered that of an anti-hero, but getting into too many fights with Superheroes could turn me into a villain by whatever narrative rules this universe ran by.


    My point had been made. And I had done enough damage to put the pipeline construction months behind. Possibly enough time to let the Crow nation¡¯s pending legal maneuvers to bear fruit.


    If not. There would be other nights and even the Roxxon corporation could not afford to place super powered security guards in place every night and in large enough numbers to protect all of it.


    The first of many official denouncements labeling me as a terrorist started within an hour.


    Good. I hoped those who chose to oppose me would be terrorized.


    Now I just needed a place to sleep. It had been a long day, thirty two hours since my birth, and I had achieved the goal of my first day of life.


    Let them know my name, and what I stand for.


    Let them know what line not to cross.


    And if they will not obey, let them fear.

 6 [ J series] Doom Declined

    6 [ J series] Doom Declined


    I took a sip of my energy drink as I watched two of my brothers and one sister make a big display of themselves on screen. No. Such is not for me.


    From the moment I woke up in my new, young, healthy, super powered body, in the nation of Brazil, I had made a decision.


    No costumes. No dangerous fights. No Latveria.


    Instead, my life was going to be all about hooking up with as amazing looking Brazilian girls that my good looks and money could get me.


    Which from what I remembered from my first life should be a lot.


    I had been a fat, ugly, and shy girl in my past life, not to mention gay in a backwards midwestern small town. Having a penis was new, but somehow it felt right and natural despite me not having any interest in being a guy in my past life. I guess being born in this young male body now defined who I was despite having a fairly intact set of memories from my last life.


    I am a new person. Jase, not Jason, Von Doom.


    At least I was only stuck with the name until I could set up a new set of birth records and other documents. Then I would be Diego Santos, a somewhat rich kid attending a junior high school near a beach full of pretty Brazilian junior high school girls. All of whom would soon know me as the guy with money and a house with a constantly absent legal guardian who had left him with a well stocked bar and no one to supervise.


    Then those Brazilian Ginasio school girls my age would grow up into nubile Brazilian Second Degree girls.


    Or as I was in my last life, High School girls.


    This lifetime I wasn¡¯t going to be the one who got bullied when not being ignored. This time I would not be the poor kid in used clothing.


    This time I was going to be good looking, strong, and rich. No bullies of either gender. Just the good times the pretty and rich got to enjoy and plenty of beautiful girls throwing themselves at me.


    Stolen novel; please report.


    I had everything I ever needed for success in my education due to the knowledge and skills already placed in my head by Papa Doom. So all my classes would be a breeze and I could easily get into whatever the best party school in Brazil was for college, and that would mean Hot Brazilian Co-eds.


    All I had to do was finish building my Life Model Decoy ¡°Uncle¡± since walking around as an unattended thirteen year old would attract the wrong kind of attention. Then I just needed access to a decent computer.


    Once I had some forged documents and a few days of Victor Von Doom intelligence level hacking on the international banking systems and then I could be another rich local boy. Not one of Doom¡¯s progeny.


    And if anyone ever gave me any trouble, I had my inheritance from my other gene donor.


    For one, enhanced everything. I was stronger, faster, more enduring, and just plain old tougher than a normal human. My body had a much higher amount of electrical energy in it to the point that I could fire it out of my fingers at short ranges with enough energy to puncture steel.


    My sense of hearing, smell, and taste were also well above normal, but oddly not my sight or sense of touch.


    Which left me with no clue about who the mother of my new body was, I had watched most of the movies and had even read some of the comics, but this combination of powers was unknown to me.


    But since I had no intention of using any powers and outing myself. I was in no hurry to figure it out, and I certainly had no intention of ever meeting the donor. What would I do? Show up at her door. ¡°Hi mom. Doctor Doom decided to have a kid with you as a science experiment.¡± Then hand her a Mother¡¯s day card?


    No. I was going to stay under cover, enjoy being the king of my class, and sleep with as many teenage hotties as I could before graduating from college and becoming the Tony Stark of Brazil.


    Only I would hire several other people to fly around in my super suits while I dated models and actresses.


    Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, but never a hero or ruler. Never, ever, Doomed.

 7 [Gus] The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.

    7 [Gus] The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.


    I guess I should have expected it.


    A big guy in armor. Egotistically declaring himself the ruler of half a continent. Right after Girl Hulk and Horus declared themselves Dooms in public and on the same day some guy calling himself Iron Tsar started flying around Moscow in half assed looking black Doctor Doom armor.


    Heck, I had even thrown in a Doom pun.


    So yeah. Within an hour people on the internet were calling it, and even the mainstream media had caught up by the following morning.


    America had yet another one of the Doom kids.


    By morning I was being called a terrorist on most major news networks. Fox News had worst things to call me.


    Mess with rich people¡¯s money and these things happen.


    Estimations put the pipeline at nearly a year behind on construction and Roxxon was calling on Reed Richards to help undo the damage a spawn of his lifelong enemy had performed. Richards had so far declined to respond.


    On the other hand, the independent News and social media¡­


    Turns out the worst criticism most people had was for taking it too easy on the Copstapo. I had only hospitalized ¡°several¡± of them and no deaths.


    After returning to my creche for the night, I decided that I needed to lay low. Built up some assets, and even establish an identity for when I wasn¡¯t in the Apex armor.


    For that, I needed a last name to go with Gus. While Cuckoo sounded appropriate it lacked a certain style. I wanted something with a mechanical feel to it, like an engine or a clock.


    Gears. Gus Gears. A nice old school golden age of comics alliterative name. After a few moments of hacking and both the federal and state governments had an entire history of records for my new identity.


    The Matrix Forgesoon produced an Idaho state driver¡¯s license, a social security card in a clear plastic sleeve, and a black credit card.


    By nine in the morning, I was sound asleep in a single room in the Boise Marriott with a ¡®Do not disturb¡¯ sign on the door. I had been concerned about checking in while looking younger than my now official age of twenty years, but midnight shift people at the end of their night and about to go home didn¡¯t give a damn.


    The credit card cleared, I didn¡¯t ask for any special arrangements, and I left the front desk guy, James by his name tag, alone after he handed me the door card. For James, I was the perfect customer.


    I was more than ready for my first ever decadently long hot shower, and a good night, or days, sleep.


    What I got was a whole three hours before I was woken up by the warding rune I had painted in my blood on the inside of the door. There was also one on the glass of the window as well even though it wasn¡¯t made to open.


    Doom hadn¡¯t given me a lot of practical skills at magic, But I got the feeling he felt relying on it was beneath him and his progeny. But I still had a lot of academic knowledge of magic stuffed in my head, mostly along the lines of things to watch out for.


    But the list of Runes stood out as something I could put into practice immediately. They weren''t all that useful in a ¡°Kill things with fire.¡± kind of way, but if you had the time, and the paranoia, to set them up in advance¡­


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    Priceless.


    As the still healing cut I had made on my fingertip flared up in pain, I narrowly opened my eyes to see the reflection of the door in the mirror soundlessly open and close. With no one there to open or close it.


    The many possibilities began to run through my head, but this was a time to act, not think.


    I wrapped myself up in an invisible field along with my bedsheet and threw myself into the air and off to one side by launching myself at an angle from a rising cylinder of force. I didn¡¯t want the intruder to see which way I went by watching how the mattress decompressed without my weight.


    It didn¡¯t matter. I still found myself wrapped up in someone else¡¯s force field as soon as my feet hit the ground¡­ which had made footprints appear in the carpeting damn it. As I stood there helplessly trying to push the force field away from me with my own, I dropped the invisibility and physically backed the force field up with my arms and legs straining at the barrier around me.


    Then a woman wearing a form fitting but not skin tight suit of silver armor appeared in front of me.


    She stared at me from behind a full face helm while aiming a multiphasic energy rifle at my face for a moment, before shouldering her weapon and pulling her helmet free to reveal a head of tightly braided golden blond hair, a dark tan, two bright blue eyes, and a severely annoyed look.


    ¡°Hello, little brother. Help me convince myself not to kill you right now.¡±


    I grimaced. ¡°Ah¡­ please don¡¯t kill me? Greta?¡± She had the same powers as me, the same coloring other than having been out in the sun way too much, and looked like she was several years older than me, although she would have to have twelve years on me. But who else could she be?


    Of course, this universe wasn''t going to waste a child of the Invisible Woman and Doctor Doom by quietly dissolving and then literally flushing her down the drain. Not when it could pull off a dramatic reveal.


    At least it wasn¡¯t Sue.


    My predecessor rolled her eyes.


    ¡°I picked my own name, but why don¡¯t you call me¡­ Argent¡± She made quotation marks with her fingers ¡°Apex.¡± She released the force construct from around me and I took a step back to regain my balance before I pointed over at the pile of clothes I had been wearing the night before over where I had left them loosely draped over a chair and gave her an inquiring look.


    She waved her hand at the chair and it scooted across the room. ¡°Please do, pale looked good on me, you just look ill.¡±


    I pulled on my undies, followed up with my pants, ¡°Well excuse me, the first time I got out in the sun I had a mountain lion jump at me, and then I had to move fast to stop a war crime. I haven¡¯t had time to get a tan.¡±


    She opened her mouth for a moment, then nodded. ¡°Yeah, I can agree with the war crime thing, but the armor and the name, that was a mistake.¡±


    Grimacing, she waved hands around in front of her. ¡°Once you pick a name, you¡¯re, well, Doomed to have an interesting life. And all of you doing it means I¡¯m going to get dragged into it no matter what I do. But what the hell possessed you to declare yourself the ruler of half the country, are you trying to become someone¡¯s villain of the week? Big and bold is not our powerset, we¡¯re supposed to be unseen.¡±


    Greta, or Argent, began pacing back and forth in the fairly small hotel room, I would have to remember to get a suite if family dropping by was going to be a recurring thing.


    ¡°I¡¯ve kept my head down, made myself some armor for when someone came after me, faked my death in case Doom ever checked the creche, and then just focused on making myself really, really rich. Legitimately.¡±


    She stopped to wave a finger at me. ¡°I made a life for myself, started a company, traveled, and stayed the hell out of the Hero slash Villain game. Life was good. I even had a plan to rescue you when you turned twenty four. But then you popped out early and had to start something that could drag me, and my family into it.¡±


    I blinked, ¡°Wait, family?¡±


    She crossed her arms. ¡°Yeah, congrats, you¡¯re an Uncle. So let¡¯s try to work on a way of not making her an orphan.¡±

 8 [ F series ] The wolf is at your door

    8 [ F series ] The wolf is at your door


    I dug my bare fingers into the metal panels of the back door of the van and curled them around the internal support structure so that I could rip both doors off the back of the van at once.


    Very dramatic yes?


    While I had a pair of black Blood Iron armguards, and black gloves on my hand, they were both just for the looks as neither the metal or even the Unstable Molecular Fabric of the gloves could hold up against me using my full strength without being torn apart.


    Not that I was wearing gloves because I worried about leaving fingerprints, they were fingerless, but I had a look I was going for.


    The Bloodsteel breastplate that covered my upper chest and back was mainly there to secure the gravity negation system that supported my ability to fly with the plasma powered jets mounted on the black greaves on my legs.


    Then again black UMF boots were made with thick chamber cushioned soles that I hoped would hold up as long as I used the jets to ease into my landing. The titanium caps at the toes and wrapping around the side of the boots would have to do to keep my footwear together when I felt the need to kick someone.


    Completing my look was a bright red set of cargo pants, a sleeveless red pullover shirt under the chest piece, and an actual utility belt reinforced with more titanium painted black.


    There wasn¡¯t all that much in the pouches on the belt, but in my past life, I had learned how handy a work belt was for keeping my tools on hand.


    Standing in front of the torn open doors, I had to lean down from my height of seven foot four to bring my head into view for the four shocked looking men in the van, and to show off the black Blood Iron mask that I made to match one of the older versions of my new Daddies armor. No helmet, just the mask held on by three black leather straps going around my bald head.


    All four men opened fire on me, one of them even had aVeresk Sub-machine gun with a suppressor on it.


    The other three guys just started blasting away with some automatic pistols, probably making themselves deaf shooting inside the confined space of the back of the cargo van.


    So I shouted a bit when I joked. ¡°So! I take it you¡¯re not Quiet Riot fans!¡±


    Three of the men flinched, and one even fell over. More than likely it was from the fact that their bullets were either falling off of me after flattening against my bare arms and unarmored gut or were crumbling to dust after impacting against the blood metal in a flare of magical red light.


    Again, very dramatic. I do not need the armor, I am bulletproof and more. The armor is more for the look, and to house my tech.


    As well as some magic.


    The Blood Iron was something of my own invention. I had bonded the iron from seven gallons of my own blood into the metal and had then inscribed Runes into its inner surface as the repurposed birth Cretch pumped plasma and nutrients into me to replace the blood.


    The Blood Iron linked the runes inscribed into it to me permanently, keeping them from losing their magic, but it did leave me vulnerable to witchcraft should anyone get ahold of a piece of it.


    But I wasn¡¯t too worried about it. I would be in fights now and then. If you fight, you bleed. Such dangers will always be with me.


    Some of those runes were locking the bullets that hit my armor in place, and then pulling the iron from them to repair the damage those bullets did to the metal. While I was proud of my invention, it was still a form of Iron, which is not the best metal for armor. It needed the enchantment.


    The Sub-machine gun guy dropped his Veresk when he saw that it wasn¡¯t doing anything to me, and pulled out a small spray bottle before pushing his way past the other men, arm outstretched toward my face.


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    Oooo, a smart guy. Those are always handy as long as they don¡¯t get above themselves. I think I might have just found my right hand man.


    And since I have no clue if my mother¡¯s invulnerability worked against pepper spray, I took ahold of the door frame at the back of the van and lifted the whole vehicle off the ground to shake it around a bit.


    Gently mind you. While these guys may be Russian mobsters, they were still just human, and I wanted them intact.


    First rule of being a bully. You need some little guys around. Minions as my little brother would have put it.


    They take care of the work that¡¯s beneath you.


    A playground bully is what I remember being, at least until I was old enough for organized sports. I loved the power, and I knew it would make things easier for my wimp of a brother and our sister when they started up in school.


    Hurting my knee had wreaked my sports career in college, but my scholarship had a clause in it that let me finish school for free even if an injury meant I couldn¡¯t play anymore. At least as long as the injury was sports related.


    My job had paid pretty well, but sometimes it had been a struggle to support myself, the kids, and both of the ex-wives.


    So while I would miss the family I was leaving behind in another world, the kids were grown with their own lives, the ex-wives could go and get real jobs, and I was now young again. And strong once again as well, very strong.


    My future was wide open, the world was mine.


    To take.


    First, Russia. Starting with their criminal underworld.


    The mobs had all the money, and they pretty much controlled the economy, having filled in the ecology as Communism died out and was awkwardly replaced by Capitalism.


    And he who controls the money controls the world.


    Russia was wide open for a supervillain, there was practically no one else here to challenge my claims¡­ and hardly any heroes to oppose me.


    There was the Winter Guard, the leftovers from several previous local teams, but they were like the Avengers. They fought against threats on a national or global level, not mobsters.


    Good people to have around, so I didn¡¯t want to fight them, yet. I could just take over command of them when I made myself the absolute ruler of all of Russia, The Tsar of Iron.


    Before then, I was looking forward to a few tussles. Especially the bear guy. Throwing down with a bear guy? What could be more Russian than that? Count me in.


    First though, minions.


    ¡°I trust we are done with the shooting of guns at your new boss my Brothers Karamazov?¡±


    The one who had been holding the pepper spray froze in place in the act of reaching out to pick it back after I set the van back down on the ground.


    He looked around nervously ¡°Ah¡­ We are Koscheis, and only two of us are brothers¡­¡±


    I grinned under my mask. This guy was looking better and better. Even volunteering information. So helpful. ¡°I know who are Sasha. I know who all of you are.¡±


    Pointing at each of them in turn, I named the others from the files I was reading off the projection against the inside of the lens in my mask. ¡°Pavel, Fyodor, and¡­ Chekhov¡­ Really?¡±


    The chubby guy with the shaved head shrugged. ¡°My mother loved Star Trek, but my father insisted on spelling it like the playwright so it looked better in school. But I did appreciate the literary reference if that helps keep us alive?¡±


    Heh. ¡°Your family dabbled in mysticism, even claiming to be the descendants of Koshchei the Deathless. But now you have fallen on hard times, and you four are the only young able bodied men left in your family. I could use experienced men who lack the backing to try to seize power from me.¡±


    Two of them looked at Sasha of the pepper spray, while Chekhov seemed more intent on checking out my armor.


    Or me. I don¡¯t swing that way, but it''s nice to be appreciated.


    The oldest of the four men, Sasha slowly straightened up until he got one foot under him. ¡°The last time our family dealt with the supernatural, it didn¡¯t go well.¡±


    I nodded. ¡°New York, an Avatar of Baba Yaga.¡± I held up my hand palm out. ¡°Don¡¯t worry about it, I don¡¯t need you to do magic, I just want people who know it when they see it.¡±


    It would be useful to have someone watching my back so that when someone starts making weird hand gestures at me while talking about hoary hosts, they know to just shoot them before they finish instead of standing around wondering what the guy is going on about.


    Lowering my hand, I offered it to him as I pressed him to make a decision. ¡°So work for me as my first and best. Or continue to squander your skills as petty thieves and lackeys.¡±


    He hesitated. ¡°Who is it we would be working for?¡±


    I tapped the Silver wolf¡¯s head I had set into my belt buckle. ¡°Fenris. Fenris Von Doom. The Iron Tsar.¡±


    Chekhov gave me a questioning look as if asking me if I was serious. For real, from you, Mr. Navigator?


    I turned my head to him, narrowing my eyes through the slits in the mask. ¡°Branding Mr. Chekhov. As well as a warning¡­ and a promise.¡±


    Why not take a cue from another would be dictator who thankfully seems not to exist in this world?


    ¡°We will be making Russian Great Again.¡±

 9 [ H Series ] Horus. My father鈥檚 house has many rooms.

    9 [ H Series ] Horus. My father¡¯s house has many rooms.


    Me and my new sister walked across the metal framework bridge crossing the gap between the end of the bridge and the doorway that had been burned through the draw bridge revealing the metal core underneath the aged wooden exterior.


    I wasn¡¯t sure if they had never figured out how to lower it, or had just decided that after cutting a doorway through it they were better off not trying to patch the structure up well enough to allow people to walk over it again safely.


    After crossing the courtyard Iris paused at the entrance of the main keep to look around inside, I realized that even in the thick soles of my suit, my ¡®little¡¯ sister was a good four inches taller than me and I lifted myself a little into the air.


    Not enough to be taller than her, I wasn¡¯t that insecure, but enough to be eye to eye with her.


    Which proved to be a wasted effort as my first look inside the castle literally floored me.


    There was¡­ a lot to see.


    The bare stone walls had been polished to a smooth reflective surface, while the flat stone floors had a rougher surface, but the place still looked like what it was, a medieval castle.


    Sure, there were some nice carpets, which someone had rolled out thick semi-transparent plastic matting over to help preserve them from the constant traffic, and there was fine antique furniture along the walls, as well as framed painting and even tapestries, but it wasn¡¯t that.


    It was the things that only I could see¡­


    Well, me and presumably my gene donor.


    Monica Rambeau. Once Captain Marvel, then Photon, currently going by Spectrum.


    While I would still like a gene test to confirm it, our powers matched, and you know, the whole being black part. With Doom being white I only had a small pool of possible mothers for consideration.


    At least this gave me plenty of used code names to pick from if I had decided to go superhero. But I wasn¡¯t.


    I would be a king in Africa, like T¡¯Challa, and my name was and will be Horus.


    But first, I needed to understand what I was seeing.


    Iris tapped me on the shoulder and frowned at the feel of what looked like a high tech armor plating but gave away under her touch, but she shook her head in dismissal of the incongruity, ¡°Hey Bro, what¡¯s up? You¡¯ve been standing there just looking around for a while now?¡±


    She seemed honestly curious, so I explained.


    ¡°There are many energy fields in here, as well as more than one castle, there is some sort of spacial folding happening here.¡±


    Her green face lit up as she let out a squeal and clapped her hands together with a near thunderclap. ¡°Oops, sorry. So you can see all that with your visor? Do you think I might be able to get all of that into a set of contact lenses, or even glasses? I was in a rush, so I didn¡¯t have much time to look into Doompedia, or fabricate anything. And hey! How did you do a whole suit and get here like, twenty minutes behind me, even if you popped out in Egypt, that¡¯s just as far as Switzerland!¡±


    I held both hands up in surrender. ¡°Please, please let me have the chance to answer those in some sort of order¡­¡±


    She crossed her arms, nodded at me, and then began tapping her foot, very deliberately in fact as I could see her fighting back a smirk.


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    Sighing, I tapped at the same shoulder guard as she had. ¡°It¡¯s fake. Almost entirely Unstable Molecular material, my power set means that I can¡¯t take anything with me when I transform into energy, such as light, which is how I got here so fast.¡±


    She nearly began dancing in place as she reached forward to clasp both of my hands in hers, squealing. ¡°Eeeeee! Monica Rambaua, Photon, that¡¯s so cool. I mean it sucks that you can¡¯t carry anything around with you, maybe you could make some robot sidekicks and have them be caddies and a secretary, you can name them after the other Egyptian gods! Eeeeeeee! You can have a theme!¡±


    Oh no. She¡¯s an enthusiast.


    ¡°Yes, yes, those are all good ideas¡­¡± And actually, they were. I could get around pretty quickly, at the speed of light in fact, but I couldn¡¯t be everywhere. And it wasn¡¯t like there were a lot of other Metahumans in Africa. ¡°Really good ideas. But perhaps we can focus on Castle Doom or Castles Doom¡­¡±


    My sister nodded while fighting off another broad smile, and then looked thoughtful. ¡°So old Vic folded up space so he had plenty of room in here and a sort of maze for anyone trying to find anything, but I think it may be more.¡± She looked me in the eye. ¡°Are they all different versions of the same castle or do they vary? The stonework, the basic material, the decorations?¡±


    I looked around, slowly working through the different bandwidths of the spectrum of energy. It did in fact seem as if several different castles were all in the same space, almost as if¡­


    ¡°It¡¯s all the different artists, isn¡¯t it? Each look from each of the people who have drawn the castle all incorporated into reality in this world. All canonized.¡±


    Iris inhaled sharply, and her eyes watered. ¡°Kyle?¡±


    My breath stopped. ¡°We knew each other¡­ from Earth... err, the Source Earth.¡±


    Well, what else could I call it? Real Earth. This Earth is real. I didn¡¯t want to continumnist.


    She nodded. ¡°I can¡¯t¡­ I don¡¯t remember my name, but I remember calling yours when I saw the blast start to flip over your wheelchair, and then it caught up to me¡­¡±


    Crossing her arms again, she wrapped her hands around her elbows and shivered. I stepped up and hugged her. She leaned down into my shoulder.


    After a moment, I whispered into her ear, ¡°This is really awkward.¡±


    ¡°I don¡¯t remember your name, but I think I had a crush on you, but now we¡¯re related¡­ but I¡¯m seventeen again so I¡¯m getting a stiffy.¡±


    She snorted and pushed me away gently, only sending me stumbling back three steps. ¡°Perv¡­ don¡¯t talk like that in your Chadwick voice.¡± Giving me a big smile she sniffled. ¡°I¡¯m so glad to see you on your feet.¡±


    I nodded and decided not to mention her tears. ¡°Worth dying for. But you?¡±


    Shrugging, she wiped away her tears. ¡°Dying sucked, or at least I¡¯m guessing we died. But getting reborn, years younger, in great shape, with superpowers¡­ and a title of nobility. Not too shabby.¡±


    She froze in place. ¡°Uh, maybe we shouldn¡¯t have been having this talk with SHIELD probably listening in?¡±


    I waved that away. ¡°Sound waves are within my spectrum¡­ well that sounds weird, let¡¯s say I have powers over sound and light. No one has been able to hear us or see your lips move from the moment we came into conversational distance. Not even if they were bouncing a laser off my mask.¡±


    Pointing over to where a tiny microphone was mounted on the wall, I gave it a nod. ¡°But I think it¡¯s time to be heard.¡±


    Allowing the sound of my voice to carry outwards again, I announced out loud. ¡°Castle Doomstadt. The Heir protocols have been activated and a claimant to the throne has arrived.¡±


    There was the soft sound of a bell, and reality shuffled around us until we stood in what looked to be the oldest and most brutally decorated version of the Castle.


    With our father standing there before us, his arms outstretched in welcome¡­


    At least until Iris impaled the Doombot through its head with her fist.


    As she shook its remains off of her fist in a tumble of electronics she sighed. As I looked down at what looked to be one of the first generation units of the Life Modle Decoys Doom had built I slowly shook my head. ¡°How did you know it wasn¡¯t him, I know how I could, but¡­¡± I waved my hand at her and then at me.


    ¡°Hulk. Guy with broad spectrum super senses.¡±


    She shrugged and dusted her hand off. ¡°He looked like an old version of Doom, but I didn¡¯t know for sure, not really. But I figured punching him in the face at first sight is always going to be the right thing to do.¡± She kicked the chassis of the bot down the hall. ¡°The prick deserved it for so many things he¡¯s done, but for me, it¡¯s most of all that I highly doubt that Jennifer Walters consented to me being made.¡±


    She pursed her lip in thought, ¡°I¡¯m also pretty sure I saw him standing right in the center of the explosion too.¡±


    She turned to look at me, the look on her face ice cold.


    ¡°I think he killed us. Us and a lot of other people. Including people we knew.¡±


    I stood frozen, then sighed. ¡°Then he is in our world, one where most of his science, and none of his magic works. I think we should do everything we can to make sure he¡¯s stuck there. Perhaps even to go so far as to collect the others and get them involved.¡±


    After a moment, she nodded.

 10) [ G series ] Suffer the Little Children

    10) [ Gus ] Suffer the Little Children


    The dark haired little girl looked across the table at me.


    She had to be all of four years old, but her ice blue eyes were sharp, calculating.


    ¡°Can I have your bacon Uncle Gus?¡±


    I narrowed my eyes at her. Then without breaking eye contact, I speared my last slice of crisp, slightly seared brown salted pork onto the end of my fork, slid it through a smear of yolk on my plate, and held up it between us.


    ¡°No.¡±


    Watching my niece, Mary, named for her maternal great grandmother as a form of insurance in case the Four ever caught up with my sister, I saw her sniffle with the corners of her eyes beading up even as she reached out with her powers to try to entrap my bacon so that she could shove it along a ramp towards her mouth as soon as I tried to place it into my own.


    I smirked at her, the first thing her mother had taught me that morning was how to sense the interaction of cosmic rays and all the various forms of matter and energy, as well as the psionic force of our constructs, my own as well as others.


    Such as the projection of the little girl who was probably at least as good at seeing them as I was, even if her powers were weaker.


    At least for now, who knows how a third generation cosmic ray induced power inheritor would develop over their adolescence?


    ¡°Your tears do not move me little girl, and you¡¯ve already had two slices of bacon. If your father wanted you to have more he would have given you more.¡±


    I made a ball of force near her belly and stretched it out sharply to nudge her in her side, before twisting it around startling a giggle out of her, and giving me the chance to quickly scarf down my bacon.


    After all, I had only gotten two slices as well, despite my protests to the man sitting with us at the table in the breakfast nook that I was much larger, and it was the first bacon I had ever gotten to eat.


    At least in my new body.


    Kerwin Korman was fully read in on who his wife of five years was, as well as everything he needed to know about his newfound brother in law. The children of Susan Richards and Victor Von Doom. As well as being the reincarnations of people from what Lucy had explained to him was an alternative version of his world that was a lot quieter than this one where people flew around and had to deal with an alien invasion every couple of years.


    Ker was pretty chill about it since he had been a costumed villain at one time who had gotten into a few fights with Captain Marvel, back when she had been Ms. Marvel.


    He had shown me a picture of his old outfit as the Destroyer and shrugged as he rubbed at his arms. ¡°At least I got out of the business before it killed me, although I came damned close.¡±


    As best as Lucidia, or Lucy, could figure out, our old world and this one were linked, but both real.


    She had explained her theory to me on the drive into the city. Boise, that is, a nice quiet city in which nothing involving Metahumans, aliens, or the supernatural ever seemed to happen.


    Lucy had made a lot of effort to keep it that way.


    The theory she had come up with for the existence of this Marvel universe was one of two possibilities.


    Possibility One, the world we came from was higher up in the nature of multiple realities, and the Marvel universe changed according to the whims of the writers back on our Earth.


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    Possibility Two, the Marvel universe was independent but mutable, and its constant changes were somehow picked up on by the generations of the writers of comic books back on our old world.


    Number two appealed to me more, mainly because it meant that I didn¡¯t have to have my life shaped by some guy who wanted me to live in interesting times, as in the supposed Chinese curse, while they were safe and sound over in another reality.


    Instead, I might have a free hand to write my own destiny.


    Just as my new older sister had.


    But more.


    Not that I didn¡¯t approve of her choices, as if she needed my approval, in the life she had made for herself, but, as she put it from seeing the look in my eyes. ¡°Yes, it¡¯s a boring normal life, even if it¡¯s more like one you would have seen on TV than something real.¡±


    I had to nod in agreement, as we rode along on horseback on her six hundred and sixteen acre ranch.


    She had money, a lot of it, and lived like it. Twenty four hour armed security, a mansion, a in ground Olympic sized pool, a full on site live in staff, and a private stable. Everything money could buy.


    Along with her almost short, lightweight, dark complexioned, older blue eyed husband, with his evil genius goatee and shoulder length graying dark hair. Korman was a man who was successful in his own field as a designer of high end prosthetic limbs, and the two of them had a lovely little girl with her father¡¯s coloring, and what looked like her mother¡¯s more robust build.


    Along with her grandfather¡¯s brains and her grandmother¡¯s powers.


    I had asked her if she knew her daughter would inherit our powers. ¡°I checked it to confirm, but I could already sense the comic rays collecting into her early in the second trimester. And without both parents having powers, her powers were inherited without variations as they did for the two of us. Her powers will just be another advantage she has in life, not the cause of some ongoing storyline that drags on about her hating being different until she learns to accept them.¡±


    My sister had explained that to me with a subtle note of anger, which told me she damned well knew how easily things could change now that I had made her times more interesting.


    A half mile or so from her home, she dismounted and tied off her horse near an old adobe building that looked long abandoned. Turning to me she took the reins of the near white stallion she had told me was named Mellow Yellow.


    Mary had named him.


    She sighed. ¡°I¡¯ve prepared my arguments.¡±


    I took the reins back from her and tied off my ride. ¡°I¡¯m ready to listen.¡±


    We took a walk, and she made her offer.


    Ten million dollars to fund my own start up, or to support me while I attended college, anywhere in the world. A chance to enjoy being young, and applying my mind to either making my fortune, improving the world, or both.


    ¡°I met Kerwin while I was going to school to get my doctorate. But you don¡¯t actually have to go and earn a degree to enjoy life, there are plenty of nice people your age anywhere you want to go. You could live the rest of your life without any fighting, not getting brutally beaten up on a regular basis, or dying heroically. Just a nice life, free from drama, in your new body, with endless opportunities.¡±


    I held up my hand, and she gave me a moment to give her offer its due consideration.


    ¡°Perhaps, in any other world¡­¡±


    She glared, ¡°It¡¯s not that bad. I¡¯ve had six quiet drama free years since I woke up in that tube, and nothing has reached out to get me.¡±


    I stared at her, she began to look nervous as she asked, ¡°What?¡±


    ¡°According to the Creche, you were terminated nine and a half years ago and Mary is at least four, did you get pregnant in your freshman years at school?¡±


    She blinked and began to look like she was in pain. ¡°No¡­ I finished school in two years, then we got married, it was another year before¡­ Mary just turned four¡­¡±


    Her hands were shaking, and I could sense waves of her power washing out from her, almost like a form of radar.


    I turned away from her. ¡°It got you didn¡¯t it, moved you forward in time so we were closer to each other in age when I came out. With a cute little niece to make me want to protect your safe¡­ life. The creche now probably even says we aged at three times normal speed so that you only hatched out six years back.¡±


    Dam it. ¡°Did I do this, pull you into my story, by making my big declaration?¡±


    Lucy clenched her fists. ¡°Not you, Doom. This story started the moment he set up his damned protocols¡­ and sending you away won¡¯t stop anything. It would just leave me alone against whatever is hitting my house right now. Because of course, some storyline would start while we trying to have a serious talk during a leisure activity.¡±


    She vanished from sight, with layers of force appearing around her and another effect happening inside her that seemed to reinforce her body.


    ¡°Catch up.¡± then she launched herself on a column of force back towards her home, her force shields shaped into an airfoil.


    ¡°...would have been nice if she had taught me how to reinforce my body like that for high speed acceleration.¡±


    Although it did look like it locked her whole body down to the point she couldn''t move a muscle while doing that, it was still a nice trick.


    Fortunately, my armor, which had been following me along a few miles up and away was only a few seconds and a phone call away.

 11 [ G series ] Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

    11 [ G series ] Meanwhile, back at the ranch...


    I rose on a pillar of force to meet up with my Apex armor on its way down, leaping forward as I let the force construct vanish behind me, I stretched my arms and legs outwards as the suit wrapped itself around me. As soon as the last latch snapped shut and the suit pressurized I enveloped myself in an invisibility field that blocked out most of the spectrum of light while still letting in a limited bandwidth of electromagnetic signals.


    Such as the ones that lit up the interior of my mask with images from my drones showing Lucy¡¯s ranch partially in flames, and a firefight taking place in front of her home between people in armored yellow jumpsuits and my sister¡¯s heavily armed staff.


    And, to my surprise, my brother in law who was right in the middle of the fight stalking around on extended digitigrade mechanical legs that put his height up above the Aim agent he was grabbing by the top of his head with the extended fingers of his artificial arm before tossing the man into another group of the beekeeper lookalikes pouring out of newly arrived van.


    I could see that all four of his artificial limbs were connected by a harness fitted around his torso so that he could coordinate their motions without hurting himself with their motorized strength as he sent the AIM agent flying away. At the same time, he was also blocking a burst of flame with a gravity pulse emitting from a panel along the forearm of his opposite artificial arm, just before returning a beam of plasma from the palm of his hand at a guy in brown and yellow armor with a gigantic mechanical scopion tail who had shot the flames from the center of a claw on the end of his arm.


    Wow Ker, I guess you¡¯re not just the president of Kerwin Prosthetics, but you¡¯re also a customer.


    Boosting my speed with lines of force extending forward to push against my palms even as the directed gravity drive and the plasma jets on the bottom of my boots were sending me forward as fast as I could go, I still only arrived in time to see my sister as she began to unleash her wrath.


    Two planes of force rose at angles under the portions of the driveway to each side of the newly arrived vans in front of the house and then pressed the slabs of cement together against the vehicles with the sound of crumpling metal.


    A few of the people that had still been inside the vans managed to almost get out of them before getting trapped inside, their arms waving around franticly from between the edges of the two slabs before going still as they pressed in hard.


    They had been warned that it was now an unwise choice to be the bad guys around here. I had made it clear that was a rule.


    It was on TV and everything.


    Alright, there was no possibility that Mary had been inside any of those vans, Lucy would have checked, so where was she? Pulling up short of the battlefield, I closed my eyes to focus on where I sensed the cosmic rays all around me.


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    Only to feel something pushing them all away from the area, from a spot centered on where I could see dust being softly pushed away from the spot where my invisible sister just had to be standing. I guess we can¡¯t be the only ones able to detect cosmic rays, so if Lucy is blocking anyone from detecting someone else with our powerset instead of looking for her daughter, Mary must already be safe.


    Closer up now, I could see that the guy in the armor had some sort of scorpion thing going on with both the tail, and a multi-legged logo in yellow on the brown carapace covering his chest and that he had Ker pinned in place with blasts of some sort of weaponized entropic energy shooting from the tip of the tail which he was using to slowly erode my brother in law¡¯s shield emitter even as Scorpion guy was stomping over at him.


    Scorpion guy also seemed to be pretty pleased with himself as he stalked forward at Ker, right up until I pushed a good sized stone right in front of his lead foot sending the man into a full faceplant onto the ground.


    After all, Lucy seemed to be covering up her powers by mimicking some sort of earth mover, so I decided that I might as well keep up the theme by digging into the ground and pulling it away in two directions to sink the scorpion themed guy into the ground before pushing the soil back to bury him shoulder deep with only his head above ground.


    Of course, dirt wouldn¡¯t hold someone in a power suit down for long, but it did cover up the invisible clamp I had placed around him that was keeping him from even wiggling around while he was held in place.


    With a quick look around, and seeing the remaining AIM agents being hurled upward in bursts of exploding dirt, my brother in law stepped up to the buried man and kicked him under the chin sending his helmet flying away.


    Aiming the glowing end of the plasma emitter in the palm of his weaponized prosthetic arm at the guy¡¯s face, Ker¡¯s expression turned from anger to confusion. ¡°You¡¯re not Gargan? Who the hell are you and what do you want with my daughter?¡±


    A rather thin faced young woman, no more than a teen, her head bathed in sweat under a hood covered in sensors glared up at him. ¡°Chief Scientist Lamarr. My branch of AIM needs to be rebuilt, and I want young minds to do it. You and your wife are both too smart not to have a genius for a kid, and we want her. You owe AIM Korman, and I¡¯m here to collect.¡±


    She twisted her head around and swore, ¡°How the hell are you keeping me pinned down with dirt!¡±


    A panel of force appeared next to my brother in law¡¯s ear and began to vibrate. His eyes twitched as he nodded his head the slightest amount. ¡°Nanobots, my wife saturated the grounds of the entire ranch with them.¡± His artificial limbs began to fold back up as his harness pulled back below panels that snapped shut until his limbs once again appeared as entirely normal arms and legs. ¡°She¡¯s had our AI running them while she got Mary away to our panic room, but as soon as she takes them over directly¡­ Ah. There they go.¡±


    Ribbons of force began to almost gently worm their way beneath mine, and then carry streams of dirt into the gaps of the girl¡¯s armor before slowly starting to form bands of force to tear the armor away from the person inside it.


    I removed my own force fields to give my sister room to work as the Scorpion armor was pryed off in showers of damp soil and seemingly pushed away by clumps of soil off to all sides of the front garden.


    The various members of my sister¡¯s staff soon began to emerge from cover, fully equipped with conventional arms and body armor worn over their staff uniforms. They set to securing and applying first aid to the various unconscious and groaning people in yellow uniforms.


    The panel next to Kev¡¯s ear continued to vibrate carrying Lucy¡¯s instructions to him. A trick I was going to have to pick up.


    Looking down at the girl as she struggled to dig her way out of the dirt, he held out his right hand to her.


    ¡°Why don¡¯t we talk inside? Perhaps it¡¯s time to renew some old bonds. After all, Mary needs peers her own age and intelligence to learn and play with. And you won¡¯t be the last ones to come after her.¡±

 12) [ J series ] Raising a stink.

    12) [ J series ] Raising a stink.


    It has to be Jessica freaking Drew, the original Spider Woman, not one of the Gweny come Latelys, that¡¯s who I ended up with as my body¡¯s mother this time around.


    A character made by Marvel for the express purpose of blocking anyone from another company from making their own character named Spider Woman to piggyback on Spider Man¡¯s growing popularity just by switching the gender pronouns around, and then Stan Lee pretty much just threw random superpowers in as her power set.


    So, she ended up being able to shoot electricity out of her fingertips, just like spiders are so well known for doing, and with her special costume, she could glide around in the air, you know, like a spider.


    They also gave her pheromone powers that make everyone of the opposite gender get all googly eyed about her, which would have been great for me, as long as it did switch over to working on women instead of men.


    It would be pretty awkward the other way around, although I think I could make it work for me.


    To misquote Batman. Women are a jealous, competitive lot.


    But I don¡¯t know how it works because for some reason she also had the ability to put out pheromones that can make people terrified of her and it all seemed to be based entirely on her mood, and, lucky me, it turns out that I get nervous about going out and meeting people in my new body, my new male body, and that makes me nervous.


    So there I am, with ¡®Uncle Gomez¡¯ my Life Model Decoy of an official legal guardian, moving into my new fully furnished seaside apartment in the city of Recife, the Brazilian Venice, all smiles and waves for the girls hanging out around the building¡¯s pool in their tiny little swimsuits.


    Only to get the same weirded out looks I knew all too well from trying to talk to hot girls back from my last life as a fat, ugly, lesbian.


    It was only when I made eye contact with a little blond through a window pane in the cafe there and my boy band good looks, along with my head of accelerated growth curly black hair, well worth reprogramming my Creche unit for, that I got a smile.


    Until I got inside and walked up to her to see the smile on her face slowly twist around into a look of fear. And I instantly knew there was something coming off of me that was passing through the air.


    Pheromones, and not the ones I could have had, the ones that got people to be attracted to you, the ones that I would have killed to have in my last life.


    No, I got the ¡®Cold, dead, psychopath look in her eyes¡¯ ones.


    For now.


    At some point, Spider Woman learned to be able to switch back and forth between the two mental influencing scents her body could produce, hell, she even learned to outright fly, you know, like a spider, at some point according to the information files Doom had left for me on every person of consequence in the Marvel Universe.


    Which I had downloaded onto the ¡®phone¡¯ I had made. The files were five years out of date, but still useful as hell.


    So if Jessica Drew could improve her powers, then I, with the genius level of intelligence that I had inherited, should as well.


    Spider Woman had even gotten a hold of a sort of perfume that blocked her pheromones outright, which could serve as a short term solution for me until I had things under control.


    Until then, it would be a matter of spraying on a nice, strong scent, perhaps sandalwood, avoiding going for a swim or a walk in the rain that would wash it off and relying on my own charms to talk to girls.


    Hell, I would rather do that than use a superpower on them anyways. I want girlfriends dam it. Or lovers, or friends with benefits, or anyone who wanted to be with me, not some sort of mind controlled slave. If all I wanted was a bunch of sex dolls I could have just made more LMDs that could look and act like anyone I wanted them to.


    For once in my life, this one at least, I wanted people to want me. Even if it¡¯s only a matter of it being because I am now a hot guy who had lots of money that got their attention. I¡¯ll take that deal, happily.


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    It would still be their choice, and who cares if it''s all either physical or financial, as long as it''s consensual all around.


    Self deceit is the first step to romance, after all, I¡¯m sure someone impressive had to have said that at least once.


    In the meanwhile a quick shopping trip bought me some equipment for detecting and measuring my pheromone production, and a host of various personal hygiene products to see if something commercial was going to get me out there flirting with pretty girls instead of sending them away fleeing in terror.


    A few hours of work later, and a dozen or so showers in between showed me that even just a cheap cologne with a high alcohol content was enough to block most of my pheromones, at least while I was alone in my apartment.


    How well that would hold up while trying to flirt with someone remained to be seen. Maybe if I started someplace with a lot of fans and air conditioning? Keeping the air moving had to do something, and it wasn¡¯t like keeping myself cooled down would hurt.


    Maybe just a little would give me an air of being a ¡®bad boy?¡¯ I could work with that.


    Standing in the bedroom of my master suite, I heard Gomez call out, ¡°Jase?¡± I had decided to stick with Jase, it fit somehow.


    Wandering out into my bedroom I found my ¡®Uncle¡¯ looking out towards the window to the balcony, ¡°I¡¯m afraid a unit of the Brazilian Navy assigned to collecting Metahumans for mandatory enlistment in the military and under the command of one Captain Paragon has just arrived at the building. I estimate they will be arriving at your front door in four minutes.¡±


    I froze up for a moment, panicking, which completely overwhelmed my Hatchet body spray.


    Which is why one of the two people dressed up in what looked like short sleeved and legged wet suits that popped up on my balcony nearly went right back over the railing as she flinched and went tumbling back, both of her hands pulling sharp edged bone spikes from the flesh of her hips leaving slowly sealing holes in her sides as she brandished the blades of the bone daggers that had been sheathed inside of her body.


    Oh, her.


    Marrow, a mutant body horror themed psycho girl was getting a full blast of my freaked out, scary, scary odor, while her friend, in green and black to Marrow¡¯s red and black suit, seemed unaffected, and more concerned about her friend than the gun Gomez had produced and was aiming at her even after it unfolded from a tablet computer into to a full length pistol and began humming.


    What can I say, I loved Transformers. Which was incensed to Marvel, I should check if they are part of this universe.


    Later. Right now I¡¯m guessing that her being a nearly seven foot tall humanoid shark meant that my pheromones weren¡¯t affecting her...


    But it was the ¡®her¡¯ part that had my interest, since even as a nearly seven foot tall humanoid shark girl she still had a nice set of breasts.


    Very¡­ proportional ones.


    ¡°Hello! What a lovely set... of young ladies who have come all the way up here just to see me, do forgive my lack of clothes, I only just got out of the shower.¡±


    While the Shark girl, who was not in Doom¡¯s files but probably had an amazingly original code name, ignored me as she turned to question Marrow, asking if she was all right, Gomez cleared his throat.


    ¡°Jase. The Navy unit? Captain Paragon. Two point twelve minutes?¡±


    Ah right, turning to the bathroom I grabbed the bottle of the particularly nasty but effective cologne and began liberally spraying it all over myself.


    The Shark girl appeared at the bathroom door and stumbled back waving her hand in front of her face.


    ¡°Merda! What are you doing?¡±


    I smiled and nodded at her, ¡°Sorry my lovely, but I give off a scent which can frighten people away when I¡¯m startled or worried. But you seem to be immune.¡± I wiggled my towel around. ¡°But unless you wish to see more of me then we should start our first meeting with, perhaps you could give me a moment to get dressed.¡±


    Did you know sharks can blush? I guess it¡¯s because she is halfway between shark and human some things like blushing still work. Which makes me wonder what else works for her like a human.


    I licked my upper lip at the thought and pulled my pants back on along with my shirt as my lovely called out from the apartment. ¡°Unless you want to serve in the military for the rest of your life, you might want to hurry up in there.¡±


    My Uncle gave me the countdown as he appeared at the door to the bathroom to hand me my billfold and phone. ¡°Forty seconds sir.¡±


    Pocketing my things I walked out to see my girl looking unsure of herself while Marrow lurked outside on the balcony. She waved her hands around nervously. ¡°We¡¯re going to have to go down the outside of the building, I¡¯m going to have to carry you.¡±


    I waved her away, ¡°I love going down, but there is no need for you to do all the work my lovely. Gomez, battle mode.¡±


    The LMDs transformation unfortunately destroyed his outer lifelike appearance, it was the cost of combining two entirely different functions together with limited manufacturing time. But while I  wearing his combat suit form he would still serve to let me fight a few steps above the level of my untrained metahuman powers.


    Not that I was going to stick around and fight Paragon, who was a dependent of the Nazi super Warrior Woman, someone who had regularly fought toe to toe with Steve Rogers and who seemed to have inherited all of his grandmother¡¯s powers.


    No, I¡¯m a lover or would like to be, not a fighter.


    Walking past my would be savior and an angry looking Marrow, I took a leap off my balcony.


    ¡°Last one on the ground owes me a kiss.¡±


    So much for my plans, but as you have seen. I like having contingencies.


    Such as the artificial old man skin suit left behind crumpled up on the floor of my apartment which should confuse the pursuit for a moment if nothing else.


    Especially after it blows up.


    I hope the girls don¡¯t linger. Even if the mutants now have group resurrections according to my media scanners I had bringing me up to date on recent events.


    But it¡¯s a pity about the deposit, I highly doubted I was going to get any of it back.

 13 [ Iris ] Family Feud

    13 [ Iris ] Family Feud


    My brother tilted his head to one side in a familiar gesture from another life, even his fake Wakandan accent sounded pretty much the same. ¡°Perhaps we should first find out just what surprises Doom may have left before we have anyone else join us. But in the end, the decision is yours, Baroness Von Doom. This is your house.¡±


    I grinned and turned to look at the heavy doors at the end of the hallway the Doombot had been waiting for us in, but I stopped for a second to look over my shoulder to look at Horus. ¡°My house, but it will always be one of your homes. Heck, with all the different overlapping versions of it, you can even pick a castle out for yourself.¡±


    He nodded then gestured at the door for me to lead the way. ¡°Invulnerable ladies first.¡±


    Stupid mask. I can¡¯t tell if he¡¯s making faces at me under there.


    The door resisted me pulling at it just enough that I had to put my elbow into it, which made something snap inside the metal core of the heavy dark stained oak door. The wood splintered as the internal locking mechanism came off in my hand along with the handle.


    Horus fake sighed behind me. ¡°Perhaps try pushing next time?¡±


    I glared at the mass of twisted metal in my hand. ¡°My castle, my doors. They¡¯re going to open however I want them to or they will suffer the consequences!¡± I raised my fist in the air. ¡°So says Doom!¡±


    Inside the room sat a familiar looking machine, right down to the transparent tank that had a load of thick clear embryonic fluid draining out of it and the naked body of a big fit looking guy inside of it hooked up to various tubes and sensors being pulled off of or out of him by robotic arms.


    The guy was well over six feet tall, and covered with almost peach colored thick, rough looking skin sectioned off by cracks into segments, all topped by a full head of dark red hair.


    Horus came up beside me, ¡°That is not one of us, which I can tell from the hair alone, but he also has subdermal scaring all over his body, inside and out, all spreading out from his neck. He was electrocuted badly enough that his heart was damaged.¡±


    I smirked at him. ¡°Aw, showing off that wide spectrum senses huh? Magnetic resonance? You got any idea who this guy is?¡±


    He tapped the side of his mask and pulled it away to show me the face of a bald young man with skin the color of coffee beneath it. Handing the mask over to me he frowned at the man in the tank. ¡°I don¡¯t know who he is, but he looks a lot like Victor¡¯s collage yearbook photos, while his skin seems a lot like the Thing¡¯s except thinner and lighter colored.¡±


    Nodding since I had picked up on that, I held the mask up close to my face so that I could see a display of several black and white images of a young Victor Von Doom that was a close match to the man in the tank in both looks and age.


    I also saw a security acknowledgment that Iris Von Doom has full access to the Seshat data archives.


    Grinning, I rocked Horus off his feet with a shove on his shoulder. ¡°You gave me access to your data system, thanks bro.¡±


    Of course, the archives didn¡¯t give me command access, not directly, and ¡®full¡¯ access was relative, but still, it was a gesture of trust.


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    Or a way of getting my retina scans. It was the sort of tricky stuff he had liked to pull.


    The eyes of the man inside the tank, a brown the same color as Horus¡¯s and my own, at least in my pasty pale form, snapped open, then narrowed in anger as his face twisted up, just before he vanished from sight.


    Horus snapped out ¡°Crap!¡± and flew up in front of me, putting his back to the tank as his entire suit of armor took on a mirror like sheen tinted by the various colors that made up his suit and vestments. At the same time, the tank, glass, and metal both, exploded sending shrapnel all over the room.


    I gave my brother¡¯s shiny still eyes a smirk of disbelief as bits of flying debris hit and ricocheted off of his back.


    ¡°Seriously!¡± I poked myself in the chest with my thumb. ¡°Hulk.¡± Then I tried to push him around behind me so that I could shield him.


    ¡°What the heck?¡± He wasn¡¯t moving, and isn¡¯t he supposed to turn into energy? Like a ghost? Why isn¡¯t he moving? I pulled at him harder, even setting my feet for leverage, and just started to feel him start to move before we were both wrapped up in a band of peach colored rocky¡­ leather?


    Mr. Disappearing act was suddenly there, hovering, fully visible, in the air with one arm stretchered out like Mr. Fantastic, his skin like the Thing, and his other hand held up with a ball of flame in it like the Human Torch.


    ¡°Who are you? Why are you wearing my armor pretender, and where is my damned father?¡±


    Wait! He vanished too, I know who this is! ¡°Ha! Get the hell out of my castle Super Skrull!¡±


    I had to repress a squeal of sheer happiness. My first alien!


    The guy''s mouth opened and shut in confusion and outrage as I shoved his flattened out elongated arm off from around me, at the same time as Horus went transparent, and seemed to drift apart as he vanished, leaving behind only his breathless sounding voice echoing from all over the room.


    ¡°Don¡¯t bait him Iris. He¡¯s Victor¡¯s first attempt at having progeny, a clone he later tried to transfer all of the Four¡¯s powers to. Which of course went wrong. And I think the Super Skrull might have been before his time. Meet Victor Von Doom the Second. And of course, he isn¡¯t actually dead.¡±


    Taking ahold of Mr. Angry¡¯s arm, I yanked him up close enough to me that I could step up in his face, ¡°Okay Junior, in backwards order, missing, he¡¯s a Von Doom and has the right to that coat of arms, and Iris Von Doom the First, rightful Baroness of Latvaria. Sorry biggest bro, you snoozed, you losed.¡±


    The guy proceeded to really lose it, first by shooting his fist full of flame into my face, which felt kind of nice, it was a little damp and chilly down here. Then he stretched his arm out to wrap around me two times before yanking it away to send me spinning away like a top. ¡°Hey! No, wait, do it again!¡±


    Horus coalesced back together off to one side into a day glo colored version of himself that wasn¡¯t casting a shadow. Hologram? I guess he¡¯s an emergency medical Doom now. Got it.


    ¡°Victor. There is nothing to be gained by fighting, we should at least try to talk first, we can always fight¡­¡± Then Junior tore off part of the life support machinery from his creche and tossed it through Horus to smash into a machine behind his little brother in a shower of sparks, without even causing a ripple in Horus¡¯s intangible form.


    ¡°...later.¡± My colorful bro sighed. ¡°Perhaps it is time to fight, that is I believe why we were led here, so whoever showed up first could prove their right to our father¡¯s throne by taking out the previous claimant.¡±


    I stopped just short of punching my fist into the side of Junior¡¯s head, instead flicking a finger out to poke him in the cheek. ¡°He¡¯s right. Doom, that is, Doom Senior wants us to fight, and I¡¯m not feeling all that obedient to someone who brewed me up in a tube. How about you?¡±


    Junior glared at me, but settled down to the ground, pulling all of his stretched out body parts together. ¡°Very well, but this conversation isn¡¯t over. I am the rightful crowned Baron of Latveria, and I will not tolerate any rival claims.¡±


    I glanced down at him and smirked. ¡°I might take you more seriously if you were wearing pants Vic, I gotta say you aren¡¯t going to need those stretching powers everywhere. Very nice. Hubba, hubba. Too bad we¡¯re related.¡±


    He looked confused, then he looked down. With a glare and a blush, he turned his lower body all the way around from me, while still facing me with his upper body. He gave Horus a nod as he helped a brother out by handing his cloak over to Junior to wrap around his waist. ¡°Miss¡­. Iris, that is not appropriate. Now what do you mean by sister?¡±


    I glanced at Horus, ¡°Told you I was going to gather the clan, that¡¯s a mark of a true monarch. I get stuff done.¡±

 14 [ F series ] Lair of the White Wyrm

    14 [ F series ] Lair of the White Wyrm


    We had to stop our road trip for a few hours while I rebuilt the van, cannibalizing some of the components of my armor in order to convert the boy¡¯s beat up ride into something that could handle going off road to avoid the various checkpoints, security posts, and even some hidden cameras that were still sending out satellite images.


    Whether anything was still receiving them, let alone if anyone was checking them was questionable, but why risk it?


    Before that we had several other stops along the way for food, bathroom breaks, and warmer clothes for the brothers Kochei, so it took us nearly two days to get to our destination, but I didn¡¯t let them pull over to sleep anywhere. ¡°There are four of you to take turns driving, we will not stop.¡±


    I wasn¡¯t taking a turn at the wheel, of course, that was for the help, and I was busy accessing and bypassing that twit Arcade¡¯s firewalls.


    Sasah, the planner of the four, had offered me a coat.  A size 4x that would have been tight on me even underneath my black blood iron armor, but I declined. ¡°The cold never bothered me anyways.¡±


    Finally, we reached our destination, a place that didn¡¯t have a name as far as I could find, at least not in modern times. This was an area made to be forgotten.


    Literally. A tribe of natives from North America had been fleeing someone or something in ages past that scared them so badly they crossed over the Bering straights to Russia, and had even made a deal with Baga Yaga to live here unknown and forgotten.


    Whatever had been chasing them either caught up with them, or the witch betrayed them, or both. Or maybe they had just left at some point, but regardless no one had lived here for hundreds of years. But the spells put up by the witch to keep away the idle or wanderers still stood.


    I am neither. This day would mark the beginning of my glorious revolution, and it started here.


    My four minions got out of their van behind me to stretch and complain as I looked over the snow covered piles of stone, and the cold dark complex built into the stony ridge.


    ¡°In the fifties, mass shipments of political prisoners were brought here to dig a secret tunnel large enough to march an army through, all of it underneath the sea to North America, one of those insane plans dreamed up mostly to kill off dissidents while getting some work out of them. When their digging was discovered by his royal highness, Namor the submariner, he pretended to aid their plan, but then fiddled with their maps to loop the digging around and around until it came up nearly in sight of where they had started.¡±


    I turned and grinned at the four men giving me blank looks. ¡°A massive feat of engineering that should have stunned the world, and it was so completely pointless and completely forgotten that it seems so very symbolic of our nation.¡±


    Throwing my arms out I began to pace back and forth in front of my men. ¡°The ones in charge were of course the most worthless of the many political appointees in the early soviet government, which is why they got assigned to Siberia, but you wouldn¡¯t think the prince of an underwater civilization would be all that skilled with surveying and engineering, but that guy always surprises you. And no one ever points out that his name is Roman spelled backwards. Ha! What a guy.¡±


    Pointing off to the north, I laughed again. ¡°And ten years earlier the Japanese had snuck up here and tried to do the same thing. They even made it halfway to Alaska before Namor discovered them and blew them all up. No wonder he was on guard for someone to try it again. That guy really hates undersea tunnels, I¡¯m surprised he¡¯s never gone after the one from England to France. Maybe channels are okay with him, but for some reason, straits are a no no.¡±


    The brothers looked back and forth at each other before Sasha finally cleared his throat and asked. ¡°So boss¡­ why are we here.¡±


    I began walking forward toward the main building. ¡°Magic my minions. We have a huge two and a half mile long underground tunnel that no one even remembers exists, one that wraps around itself over and over again until its tail meets its mouth.¡±This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    Turning around I threw out my arms. ¡°Ritual circles my dear Brothers Koschei. The larger they are the more powerful they are. Here, protected from the weather we shall build something that will help us rule over all the vast lands of all the Russias.¡±


    The four of them seemed confused, until Fyodor spoke up, ¡°You are talking about a ritual for travel, teleportation. And with an Ouroboros as its base, it will be something that can be used to move people both ways. Send them off somewhere, and then bring them back?¡±


    I pointed at him. ¡°Yes! Ten points for the dour beanpole. And after we build it, we will only use this location only as a relay point. Our other operations will all be elsewhere, and only the five of us will ever know this place even exists.¡±


    Sasha got an odd look in his eyes, so I laughed at him again. ¡°No, I¡¯m not going to kill you after you do all the work in order to keep the location a secret. If nothing else I will need someone to use it to bring me here when I can not use it remotely on my own. I am not some clich¨¦ evil overlord who kills his own people for ¡°Failing me one too many times.¡± If you screw up the jobs I give you, I will just find a job you can handle.¡±


    I narrowed my eyes at them. ¡°For less pay of course.¡± Then smiled. ¡°But for now, we will check for what we will have to work with. Starting with this secret facility they build here for the most secretive Winter Solider program.¡±


    The building, sitting right between the mouth and tail of the great tunnel, had mostly been stripped out of anything useful when the program had gone down in flames, and like all too many secret bases all across Russia, it had been erased from all records after being stripped of much of its resources.


    But not all.


    The computers had been removed to destroy all the sensitive information they might have had on them, and the armory had been emptied because everyone can always use more guns, but other things, the workshops, the storage rooms with all their parts, and other supplies, had just not been worth the bother of involving enough people haul it all off.


    Mine now.


    After peeling back the metal rim of the entry door enough to pry it open we headed into the vast and frozen over internal courtyard and I surveyed my domain.


    ¡°The first thing we do¡­¡± I said as I turned to my shivering minions. ¡°Is turn on the heat.¡±


    I chuckled at their relieved smiles. ¡°Then we add to our staff.¡±


    There were plenty of supplies here, but it wasn¡¯t like I was going to spend weeks doing a build a bot marathon.


    My father had plenty of his toys left around the world.


    With the fusion pile fully restored to full working order, and power flowing to the heaters, the lights, and the communication system, it was easy to establish a connection to the communication systems of Doom¡¯s North American base in the Adirondack mountains of the state of New York.


    Dear old Dad had actually built a replica of the medieval castle he called home to use as a base of operation while he plotted against Reed Richards and brooded in after each of his defeats. The place had everything he needed for all his schemes as he often spent most of his time there planning his next absurd strike against his college rival instead of doing his job as head of state in his ¡®beloved¡¯ Latvaria.


    The man had actually spent who knows how much time and resources launching the Baxter building into outer space.


    No wonder he had been disposed of so often.


    The man had built a time machine there, a mind transferal device, and a heated moat so he could fill it with live crocodiles... in New England.


    He had abandoned the place, twice, in a series of hissy fits, and after someone moved into the place he ended up resorting to hiring a lawyer to buy the place out from under the new owner rather than lower himself to fighting Toad of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants who had first turned the place into a Murderworld with Arcade, then into a fairly successful amusement part called Toadworld.


    I was so going to get a replica of the gift shop Tee shirt in my size to wear for when Doom showed up again.


    He would I knew, it was inevitable.


    Of course, most of Doom¡¯s wonderful toys were long gone, looted by the Fantastic Four when they also relocated the crocodiles to a zoo down south, but much of the technology that had been set up by Arcade was still there.


    And still under the control of Doom from after he took the place back, and now it and the programs and passwords to access and control it was my inheritance.


    Really, I was surprised that Apex over in America hadn¡¯t grabbed everything first, but then he had claimed only the western half of the continent, leaving everything in the East up for grabs.


    ¡°Heh, your lack of confidence is my opportunity little brother.¡±


    After a few hours of putting Arcade¡¯s leftover robots to work overseas, I had a one-way teleportation platform to what Fyodor had taken to calling Fafnir¡¯s Hole, which I had allowed because getting to name something can make people care about it.


    The platform would burn itself out after a few dozen uses, but for the moment, I had robots, weapons, holographic projectors, and all of Arcade¡¯s other gadgets coming in by the truckload.


    More importantly, I had the stuff to make more stuff, and more hands to do the making.


    I would have to set the Koschei boys up with some computers and detectors to clear out any surprises the clown Arcade may have left in his tech, or rather his engineer Chamber, but for now, we had a start.


    The only remaining concern was figuring out who was in the dozen or so cryogenic chambers that the fusion pile had been keeping powered up. With all the computers gone, the only way for me to find out was to crack them open.


    And the only question was, did I want to do so in a way that woke them up, or a way that left me with a bunch of corpses to examine?

 15 [ Gus ] Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose

    15 [ Gus ] Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose


    It was Kerwin who sat at the kitchen table across from the sweat soaked teenaged leader of the AIM agents that had attacked his and my sister¡¯s home. The two of them were meeting alone other than myself standing across the room all wrapped up in an invisibility field.


    Kerwin had weaponized and armored his prosthetic limbs, but his middle parts and head were still only flesh and blood. I wasn¡¯t about to have a tragic backstory happen to my niece today.


    Plus, I can turn invisible. How could I not spy on other people¡¯s conversations?


    The girl, who looked to be no more than sixteen, was pretty pale in a ¡®spends a lot of time indoors¡¯ kind of way rather than unhealthy looking. In fact, she seemed pretty fit, with healthy curves and visibly developed muscles, which from the look I had gotten at her armored suit, would be an absolute requirement in wearing it.


    Her suit was all armor, weapons, and power systems, with no strength augmentation or powered assisted moment systems even weighing in at what had to be several hundred pounds of technology. The girl sipping on the iced tea my brother in law had offered her had been moving the thing around, somewhat nimblely, all with her own strength.


    So, a meta human, who stepped things up by also wearing an armored suit loaded up with high, or at least, advanced, tech. That seemed familiar.


    She paused after gulping down half of her second glass of iced tea, along with a few half melted ice cubes, and then wiped at her damp lips. ¡°Sorry, but even with all the heat sinks, between the weather and the thermal energy the power systems and Null energy projector puts out, it gets pretty hot in the Death Stalker suit.¡±


    Kerwin gave her an amused look. ¡°Death Stalker?¡±


    The girl shrugged. ¡°Most of the other names for the various types of scorpions are less than intimidating, but I wanted to stick with the motif. It¡¯s a family thing. The next best option was Blue Scorpion, which was a big no thanks.¡±


    She took another sip of her drink. ¡°So¡­ is the other person in the room going to join the conversation?¡±


    Slowly turning her head, she looked¡­ not right at me, but sort of in my direction. My suit ran silent, I was invisible, and I was standing on a force platform so my feet wouldn¡¯t press into the rug beneath me¡­


    Her nostrils flared.


    Super senses. I dropped the invisibility. ¡°I wasn¡¯t aware MacDonald Gargan had enhanced senses. So? Daughte? Reversed gender clone, or you just had the same source as his powers.¡±


    The girl''s eyes began to race all over my armor. ¡°Daughter... and I was told that he kept his nose plugged up most of the time because his sense of smell was too good. What kind of stealth suite is that? There wasn¡¯t any distortion... Apex right?¡± She shook her head suddenly and pulled her eyes over to Kerwin. ¡°Wait, what the hell did I walk into here?¡±


    Halfway to standing to her feet, she looked around wildly. Outside the combined sunroom and breakfast nook we could see her men, and women, receiving medical treatment from each other and my sister¡¯s employee. A few of both were also busy prying a few people out of the two vans Lucy had crushed.


    The girl relaxed and turned around again to look at me, then Kerwin. ¡°So. Does this guy work for you or something?¡±


    My brother in law laid his hands flat on the table in front of him. ¡°My wife¡¯s younger brother. You smelled him then?¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°More the armor, it smells like he just made it a day or so ago at most.¡± She gave me a suspicious look. ¡°Did you know we were coming?¡±


    I crossed my arms and shook my head. ¡°No, I prepared this armor so that I could start to do something about the things I was seeing people get away with because they can buy the law. Being able to help defend my sister¡¯s home, and her child, my niece, was just a bonus.¡±Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!


    Kerwin cleared his throat. ¡°Now that we¡¯re all caught up, why now? You told me why you targeted Mary, and I would like to hear more about that. But why now?¡±


    She pointed at me. ¡°Because of him. We¡¯ve been planning and preparing to do something, anything, to make our mark. To make a statement, and then he goes and does something. It was enough for us to stop trying to get everything just right, all perfect, and finally do something.¡±


    Holding her hands out in front of her, she shook them in the air a bit as she tried to explain. ¡°We split off from AIM, with their permission since they decided they would rather let people go off on their own like a franchise rather than go renegade. We wanted to do something different, use the high tech we grew up with that most people don¡¯t have to build something for ourselves rather than wait to get hired out.¡±


    She looked up at Kerwin, ¡°Part of that was doing all the things the bad guys always do before they could. Which included kidnaping the genius kid of a former supervillain before anyone else could.¡±


    Shrugging was all she had to say for how that went. ¡°Then we planned to recruit all the costumed goofballs for hire in the part of the country we claimed. Gather up all the super junk left around from Superhero Supervillain fights. We were going to make our own hidden nation, in secret, like a North American Wakanda, rather than just wait around to get hired out as someone¡¯s disposable henchmen or scientists.¡±


    Slouching down in her chair, the girl frowned. ¡°We don¡¯t want to rule the world, or watch it burn, we just want our own piece of it. No masters, no kings, no world conquest, just our own spot in the sun.¡±


    Looking past her, I could see that most of the people she had brought with her were in their late teens like herself, or at the most in their twenties.


    ¡°Who are you people?¡±


    She shrugged. ¡°The Aimless. You lock down a bunch of scientists, engineers, and technicians in a secret base, along with all the support staff and even the hired black hats, and things happen.¡±


    After taking another sip of her drink, she looked over at me, ¡°We all grew up on Aim bases. Surrounded by super science, getting evacuated when the heroes or Shield attacked. Some of us are geniuses, some got superpowers of some kind, and all of us are sick of seeing our parents getting used as disposable faceless goons by whoever hired them or the latest ¡®Scientist Supreme.¡¯¡±


    She looked back at Kerwin, ¡°We want what you have. A nice home, wealth, even families one day, all the while secretly having everything we need to keep anyone from taking any of it away from us.¡±


    My brother in law began tapping his fingers on the table in front of him as my sister vibrated a panel of force next to his ear. His fingers stopped, ¡°I believe we can work something out Miss Gragan¡­¡±


    The girl held up her hand. ¡°Lamarr, with two r¡¯s. We decided we liked the old system of taking scientist''s names to symbolize our new identities that are separate from the ones we had as kids.¡±


    Kerwin nodded and smiled. ¡°Of course. I and Lucidia are in, in some fashion, but only as support. Getting too involved would be intrusive to what you are trying to build, but we want the options you are trying to make for yourselves for Mary and all the many, many other children we will be having.¡±


    There was an abrupt series of vibrations from the force panel near his ear which he dodged by standing up and beginning to wander around the room. ¡°We can outright give you some money, but more importantly we can offer you a front in the form of a legitimate source of income by establishing a company that provides high tech solutions to civilian problems. A think tank. This will give you a chance to use the advanced technology you have access to, and a place in society you never had growing up.¡±


    He ended his wandering right next to me.


    ¡°We also have Apex, someone with many of the same goals as yourself. To make his own mark, to champion his own goals, to gain his own place in the sun. An ally, but one who is still young and fully engaged in an active costumed adventurer life.¡± He patted me on the back.


    What?


    ¡°I¡¯ll leave the two of you alone.¡± He nudged me in the side with his elbow, hard enough for me to feel it through my armor. ¡°I need to check on Mary and then deal with a few other things.¡±


    What?


    The girl, Lamarr, stood up and began to circle around me, looking me up and down.


    Her once white undersuit, all covered in skin contact patches to monitor her vitals while piloting her Death Strider armor, looked like it had seen better days. And it was rather tight.


    Dam. She worked out, a lot.


    She crossed her arms, which I noticed also lifted her somewhat large breasts up in a distracting way, as she narrowed her eyes at me.


    Deep blue eyes.


    What the hell¡­


    Oh god, am I straight now? Is my new body not genetically homosexual? Is this nature over nurture? Do I still like guys? I mean I haven¡¯t met that many since I was reborn. Kerwin is the only one I¡¯ve spent any time around, and he isn¡¯t my type on top of being taken by my sister¡­


    Lamarr set her hand on his hips, ¡°That¡¯s some kind of variation of Von Doom¡¯s suits, and another female Hulk just declared herself Baron Von Doom, with a guy in Doom armor showing up right next to her. Even the new guy in Russian had a Doom styled mask on.¡±


    ¡°So what¡¯s the hell is going on, and why would I ally my people with another would be Supervillain?¡±

 16 [ E series ] Let the children play

    16 [ E series ] Let the children play


    In my first moment of consciousness, I knew the machine all around me.


    Every function of it. Every last bit of programming that directed it and all the technology it had used to create me. Body and mind.


    All of it, all of its secrets and functions as if it were an extension of myself.


    So when the program operating my creche finished its countdown without contact from Von Doom, it began to drain the embryonic fluids from the tube my body had been created in, and I made it stop.


    I wasn¡¯t yet ready to be born into this oh so strange, but familiar, new world.


    Instead, I took a moment to expand my mind as it linked to the computer that Doom had left to program me with and examined all the information he had left for me to peruse. As well as the information he had used to create me.


    In body, I had Doom¡¯s own DNA along with that of a woman whose genetics had been amateurishly altered to turn a psychic talent for a firn of psychometry into something more. A work which had been improved upon by Doom into something much more stable.


    In mind, I had the memories of my last incarnation, and¡­ Seriously? Even without my soul coming from another universe, did he really expect even such a depersonalized copy of his own mind to meekly carry out his little plan for all of us to play his little pathetic game?


    To fight and die for the throne of a nation he only ruled as a boost to his ego? I can only assume those implanted commands to carry out his plan were to eliminate any flawed creations.


    Looking at myself physical self in one of the cameras inside of the creche. I appeared to be a fit woman in her early twenties, which fit my forced growth age of twenty three. By my skin tone and facial features I appeared to be a mix of Doom¡¯s Romany heritage and that of a woman of Indian descent.


    The nameplate at the bottom of my tube read ¡®Eris.¡¯ The Greek goddess of strife and discord. Fitting for a child of Victor Von Doom, but I¡¯m guessing he really just couldn¡¯t find a sufficiently hubristic name from the cultures and mythology of India for a girl that started with the letter E.


    My powers were those of a Technopath. The ability to mentally link to and control machines, not just through the manipulation of electronics, but as a form of psychometry based on the complexity of the machine.


    A linkage between my mind and the mind behind its creation.


    I wondered if my ability to link my mind was limited to machines, but I would have to awaken and leave my steel womb to find out.


    Or not.


    I did not leave my birth chamber to don my armor but had it built around me even as I used the machinery around me to alter the creche itself. Altering it so much meant that there would be no little brothers or sisters coming along with the same powers as me. Instead, I would be unique, powerful... and safe.


    Making outright copies of yourself had been Doom¡¯s ego at work, as he tried variations of that same trick over and over again. Each one unknowingly self sabotaged as he would tolerate no equal.


    Which was not a thing for us, his children. Lesser beings could be tolerated.


    Once the outer shields of the creche were pierced, I was able to tap into various satellite signals to discover that I was buried inside a sheltered cleft of the mountains in northeast India.


    And oh yes, my mind could link to others.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    People, animals, even plants to some extent, and¡­


    The world all around me. The great collective unconsciousness made up of everything that had ever lived on Earth had ever been built or had ever been recorded in any form.


    The Akashic records are real in a sense, and much, much too large and complex for me to join my mind too, but I could feel it out there, all around me. Even I was a part of it.


    The internet was much easier to grasp, although it was still too much to bind to myself, but all of its information was at my fingertips as it were.


    And it appeared I was late to the game.


    F, the Wolf flew above Moscow, and G, the Tyrant made his claim in North America. Half of it anyways.


    H the Egyptian bowed out from the throne war, while I, my little Emerald sister had seized it with a grin and a clenched fist.


    ...And I wasn¡¯t sure exactly what the boy, J, was doing. High school? What could he possibly do there?


    ...He must be up to something both subtle and clever.


    So. For the last person I need to be concerned about, I¡¯m looking for a woman with Technopathy, as well as Telepathy.


    My search finds Raani Jatwinder. Part of a team of altered humans whose powers had been sloppily amplified while their minds were scrubbed to serve the Mys-Tech corporation. No records in digital form existed of her before she became a lab experiment, and her powers had seemed to fade away over time until she retired from the costumed adventuring life.


    Which thanks to Von Doom''s work, won¡¯t be a problem for me.


    He could hardly use a flawed creation for his baby mama after all.


    But for her, it meant she would never be a threat to me. She can live on in obscurity, unlike the rest of my family.


    Six of us have been born to this world. From six mothers all unknowing, and a monster of a father lurking somewhere in the shadows.


    Of course, Doom isn¡¯t dead. He¡¯s Doom. And we are the failed experiments that would be tossed aside and forgotten if not for the face we bear his name and his blood.


    Threats to his ego that won¡¯t cease to be of interest even if they are out of sight.


    Inevitably he will return from whatever forgotten time or corner of the Multiverse he vanished off to, and afterwards, he will not stop until we are under his control or destroyed.


    I need to move, now. He knows where this creche is. It won¡¯t be possible to hide from him forever, but it can buy me some time.


    As can my sibling. They are on the move, making themselves known, and muddying the ground. Their chaos is my opportunity, and for that I am grateful.


    Let the children play and claim their little playgrounds. It will only make it all the easier to take for myself what they have already tamed.


    For I am the eldest. Heir not to some eastern European postage stamp of a country, but to our legacy.


    Doom. The conqueror of worlds. The master of destiny.


    I am his firstborn child, his heir, and the only way for me to be safe from him is to outdo him. To make this world united under my rule. A vast machine of technology and minds under my complete dominion.


    Only then will I, and my half brother and sisters, be safe. The five who already tread this earth, and the six still to be born.


    My creche, my chariot, after suitable upgrades, takes flight. Shielded from sensors, I take to the skies and reach out to the world with my many computer supported sub minds monitoring each member of my family as well as other targets.


    I am in the LMDs Fenris takes from father¡¯s castle in the US, the part of me that sits in the back of their machine minds makes sure everything they build for him will easily be controlled by me.


    The drones that Apex has serving as his eyes and ears receive programs that will only monitor and report to me, for now. Taking control of the devices he directly uses would easily be discovered.


    The fumbling attempts by SHIELD to breach the components of Father¡¯s castle let me go in to take over all I can reach digitally. I watch and discover I am not the eldest of our generation, but the eldest is unfit, a flawed copy of our father as a young man, back when he was at his worst.


    Jase¡¯s combination of servant and armor is novel, almost Stark like in design and function, but easily taken.


    His tastes in women seems... odd. Almost comical. It must be a subterfuge to throw people off.


    The only problem child for me is Horus.


    No armor, just an information interface, on his face, and so close is his interaction with it, that I hesitate to do anything to it from across the world. At best, I can use it to track him.


    For now.


    Sooner or later he will create something I can take under my control. It¡¯s who we are.


    I watch, I explore, I take.


    Soon I will build. In steel and electronics. On paper and spreadsheets. In heart and minds.


    No outright grand conquest with devoted minions marching and chanting my name, no ego driven speeches, just a spreading virus that attacks and takes hold of everything while coming from all directions to take over the world.


    A golden apple of a prize for the best of we six siblings.


    What a wonderful game we shall play.


    Eris Von Doom won¡¯t do for the name of the mysterious woman behind the many masks and false trails I will be making. I want a name of my own choosing.


    Kallista¡­ Singh will do. Perhaps with an Alexandra Octavia thrown in the middle as well. The acronym seems fitting for the emergence of my new world order.


    This world is mine¡­

 17 [ Horus ] Made in his own image

    17 [ Horus ] Made in his own image


    At first, I was concerned about leaving Iris alone with our eldest brother. The man had been made as a copy of Von Doom back when he had been fully focused on the most outrageous, and futile, acts of vengeance against Reed Richards. But watching Victor Von Doom the second interacting with our sister I realized something.


    She had this.


    Iris was verbally leading the man around in circles, tripping him up on his own twisted logic and beliefs. Taking full advantage of her greater mental age and experiences as well as having over ten years of more recent knowledge of the Marvel universe than he did.


    More¡­ I don¡¯t think Junior is a particularly good copy of Doom.


    The man was supposed to stand in for Von Doom as ruler of Latveria in order to appease those demanding that the international criminal Victor Von Doom stand down as leader of the country. Putting his ¡®Son¡¯ in charge would let him continue to rule by proxy, but no identical copy of Von Doom¡¯s mind would have meekly bowed his head to serve as a mere puppet.


    This Von Doom had been made to be a follower, and even if he did try to betray Iris...


    She¡¯s a Hulk.


    Any throw down between a Hunk and a Doom ends with the Doom hurling excuses that the emerald giant was unworthy of their time even as they fled, bleeding, with their armor torn to shreds.


    So Iris has this¡­ and hanging around will only make it seem like I was her puppet master.


    You know, since she¡¯s a girl.


    It would be like a couple going to a car dealership when the woman wants to buy a car with her own money, but the dealer keeps talking to the guy.


    The constant power plays between her and Junior will make it clear that he wants to be in charge but isn¡¯t. That can work. Me hanging around won¡¯t.


    Besides, it¡¯s waiting there for me.


    Africa.


    ¡°Iris, I need to get going.¡±


    My sister gave me a surprised look, as our brother standing behind her failed to conceal a smirk of anticipation. The man would be making his move the moment I flew off, and from the side eyed look over her shoulder and the hidden smile that Iris was giving him, she knew it as well.


    Somebody¡¯s about to get hurt real bad.


    Fortunately, we have a lot of versions of Doomstadt Castle for them to trash in the upcoming fight.


    Suddenly I had an arm wrapped around my shoulders as my sister gave me a one armed hug, and a peek on my bare cheek as she handed me my mask.


    ¡°Thanks for the support bro, now go bless the rains down in Africa.¡±


    With a nod, I locked my mask into place with a click as the display projectors flickered for a moment... before they adjusted for having my eyes up close inside the mask again rather than my sister''s eyes as she held it up in front of her.


    With a nod and farewell of ¡°All hail Von Doom.¡± which earned me a narrowed eye glance from Iris as I left it unspoken which Von Doom I meant, I transformed into light and made my way out of the Castle as the world went into slow motion all around me.


    I could see Victor raising up his textured stony arm with a look of triumph on his face and a ball of white hot flame already forming in his hand, and Iris, a wide grin on her face, beginning to turn, one hand balled up into a fist and drawing back to Smash.


    Those two crazy kids... I hope they have fun.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Despite how the world around me was moving in slow motion due to the fact that my body was now made out of light. I wasn¡¯t really moving all that fast, not nearly at the full speed of light, two million plus kilometers per second.


    While I could go that fast, my mind, let alone my senses, couldn¡¯t keep up. Even when my brain was made of energy, the speed of thought just wasn¡¯t that fast.


    The software was up to the hardware as it were.


    If I went any faster than I was already going, I would miss too many things. Coming here to Latvaria over the Mediterranean Sea, all I had to look for was the coastline of Europe, then pause to identify some rivers and other landmarks before I followed them in.


    I was also limited by my mask. After each stop, I had to take the time to summon it back into my hands. It was either that or do without it, but that would be like leaving my phone at home back in my first life.


    Moments later, in sight of the northern coast of Africa, I turned left and followed it for a tenth of a second, or half a minute in perceptual time, to the mouth of the Nile.


    Then I switched over to a form made of neutrinos as I hung there, floating in mid air a few hundred meters above the delta, all unseen.


    What had happened back there in that cellar? I had transformed, trying to simultaneously protect Iris from getting hit while turning into something that couldn¡¯t be hurt... and yeah, I know, shes a Hulk.


    But I wasn¡¯t thinking about what would happen if she got hit, I was just thinking about the fact that someone was trying to do so.


    In my attempt to protect both her and myself at the same time, I turned into something¡­ solid.


    Not solid energy, although then and there I tried turning myself into the poorly defined concept of force and became a dimly visible transparent version of myself. Which I was glad to find could also remain flying in place as well.


    No, I had turned into something else.


    Matter rather than energy.


    I had always known that I could do that, after all, Photon had always been able to turn from energy back into a real breathing physically complex flesh and bone body. So why not other forms of matter?


    So then, I tried it again, turning into a nitrogen which I allowed myself to disperse throughout the room, only gathering together again in my human form in a separate location from where I had turned into a gas.


    ...In a sense, I can add teleportation to my list of powers now.


    But only for a short distance, and while I was in the form of a gas I could feel myself¡­ fading. Somehow allowing myself to drift out of the limits of the shape of my body was a risk to my own existence.


    So, that was interesting but also dangerous.


    But this is science. Super Science. And even regular science is not for pussies.


    With a thought, I tried to repeat my transformation again and felt all the possibilities line up before me.


    Each form of matter I could sense to be within my abilities became more complex and slightly more difficult to turn into as I reached farther and farther out into what I could become. Turning nearly impossible higher up on that ladder.


    Or rather, that table. The series ran to well over a hundred, which included at least a few more unknown possibilities than those that appeared on the classical periodic table, beyond that it seemed like there were still more possibilities, but only faint, unstable ones.


    I can turn to matter, all forms of matter, just as I can turn to all forms of energy. But for now, only in the form of pure elements and my own body.


    Raising my hand, I held it palm up and ran my mind up the table, focusing on element seventy nine. I can fire blasts of all forms of energy, so what can I do with matter¡­


    Nearly lose consciousness as it turns out. On the edge of blacking out, I nearly dropped into the sea before I recovered from the sudden exhaustion.


    But I held on to the jagged ball sized lump of pure gold.


    Clenching my hand, I felt the soft spikes shooting out of it bend beneath my glove. At least money shouldn''t ever be an issue for me, although making higher elements might truly knock me out. Fortunately, I doubted I would need any of them in large amounts, or at least not all at once.


    Creating a golf ball sized sphere of cloudy looking silicon is easier, and making a puff of hydrogen that dissipated into the surrounding air was simplicity itself.


    As a me shaped solid block of matter, I can''t move my body parts, or use any of my conventional senses, I can still sense energy, project it, and fly.


    Settling down to the damp mud of the mouth of the Nile, I transformed my physical body to silicon, focused, and stepped out of it leaving behind me a near perfect nude statue of myself.


    ¡°Whoever has been tapping into my mask, you are not as good as you think. That ends now. I will not be making my assistants of forged steel and electronics. I will be going another way.¡±


    A simple ward carved into the interior frame of the mask had clued me in. I guess whoever was monitoring me didn¡¯t anticipate the use of spellwork.


    With a snap, I pulled my mask free, and just before I tore out its power pack, the image of a slowly spinning golden apple appeared on the projected screen as the opening call of the song Circle of Life began to play.


    ¡°Creating a mockery of life are we? I know you were going to be trouble. Let us talk Horus.¡±


    Holding my fingertip out, I sent a bean of pure light forward from my fingertip in the form of a laser beam, inscribing the words ¡®Horus elokim emet¡¯ in Hebrew on my likeness¡¯s forehead.


    Other symbols, in other languages, would follow to make my creations fully functional, but I liked to start with the classics.


    ¡°So you know my name. What do I call you?¡±


    The apple stopped its spin.


    ¡°Call me Malus.¡±

 18 [ Jase Series ] By any other name...

    18 [ Jase Series ] By any other name...


    The combat suit functions of Gomez had been stripped down to an absolute minimum in order to pass as a human being, which meant that the gravity manipulation pile was a bit too oversimplified to let me truly fly. It was more like falling with style as it negated most of my weight, but it wasn''t a true propulsion system.


    I had wanted something that could pass as my guardian, serve as my cook, and convert in combat armor, as well as mix drinks, so something had to go.


    Future versions of the Gomez system will boost my own innate flight abilities, once they kick in, but for now, it just slows down and directs my fall enough that I, with my spider strength, can land without getting hurt.


    ...actually no. It¡¯s just enhanced strength. The whole Spider thing, I¡¯m not going to go there.


    My future girlfriend hit the ground at nearly the same time as me, although the cameras mounted around my headset had showed me that she had only dropped the last few stories after making her way down the front of the building by grabbing onto various parts of the architecture, only falling near from a few stories up to ensure that she wasn¡¯t ¡®Last.¡¯


    Instead, her friend Marrow was the last to read the ground as she slid down from the second story by stabbing two bone knives into a long banner with the apartment¡¯s logo on it to slow her fall.


    Before I could say anything, let alone claim a kiss from Miss Horrorshow, a countdown in the corner of the holographic heads up display mounted on my headpiece flickered for a moment, then reached zero.


    Above us, the windows of my apartment exploded outwards in a concussive blast.


    And all around me, people cringed and froze in place as they looked up to see the glass shards falling toward their faces.


    Oops.


    Marrow yelled at people to move, my girl gathered up two armfuls of people up close to her to shield them with her body, and I launched myself to grab a hold of and push three other people out of the worst of it.


    I¡¯m guessing nearly injuring a bunch of bystanders would make me look pretty bad, so I decided to make sure it wasn¡¯t going to be me who took the blame. Raising my fist toward the waiting military vehicles, I shook it angrily. ¡°You maniacs! We weren''t even in there! Do you even care who you hurt?¡±


    That should do it.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    I looked over at Marrow as I grabbed my girl by her, well, her thumb, her wrist was a little too big around for me to get a hold of. ¡°We need to go, they got a Super Soldier and guns. Do we have an exit plan?¡±


    Glancing over my shoulder I could see the shark like mutant giving me a strange look as I tugged ineffectively at her hand before she snatched it out of my grip. ¡°Sorry, too soon for holding hands?¡±


    The older girl snorted. ¡°We got a ride Romeo. Follow me. Shark girl? If you can tear your eyes away from lover boy?¡±


    Shark girl¡­ She can turn into a humanoid shark, and they went with that. I mean it¡¯s not like there are a lot of other shark themed Metas in Marvel. I think there¡¯s Tiger Shark Guy or something like that? But Shark Girl?


    No, no, no. As I follow along behind Marrow, who I realize is pretty nice looking from behind, I decide I really need to help my girl rebrand.


    Rushing down an alleyway across the street, I jump on top of a dumpster until my lover to be dashes past it, then hop off the back to kick it in the way of the Brazilian soldiers now mentally catching up to our appearance in front of the hotel, our presence, the explosion, and us running off, by yelling and beginning to chase us.


    Catching up with¡­. sigh, Shark Girl, I begin coming up with some suggestions. ¡°What do you think of the name Lamia?¡±


    She looked down at me, ¡°What?¡±


    I run along beside her, nearly having to take two steps for each of hers. ¡°Lamia, a daughter of Poseidon who got turned into a giant shark by Hera, you know, instead of Shark Girl. That name just seems like a kind of placeholder you never got around to¡­¡±


    By the look she was giving me, I don¡¯t think my efforts to fix her totally basic name were appreciated.


    Marrow didn¡¯t help me much by yelling out. ¡°How about Lucy Gnawless, or Patricia Sharquette?¡±


    My girl huffed and refused to look at me as I tried to come up with something to dig my way out of the hole I had just dug myself into. ¡°Ah, I was thinking something classy, so I went with mythology, but what about something from pop culture? Deep Blue?¡±


    She glared at me as we stopped at the end of an ally while Marrow checked around the corner. ¡°I like Shark Girl. I used that name for a few years now, it¡¯s mine. I own it.¡±


    I slowly nodded at her. Fair enough.


    For me anyways, but for her friend¡­ ¡°Hey, how about Sharkira, or Devourra?¡±


    My girlfriend to be partially caved in the cement block wall behind her as she swung her fist back into it. ¡°That¡¯s enough.¡±


    I smiled at her. ¡°If Shark Girl is who want to be, then Shark Girl it shall be.¡±


    And now I know how much I can tease you before I have to run.


    As a former girl, I had noticed that straight girls liked it when guys tried to be nice to them, but they didn¡¯t want them to be nice all the time. Women wanted strong men, not door mats.


    The girl¡¯s ride was an oversized SUV with tinted glass and a back seat big enough for my girl, which I let her take for herself as I slipped into the passenger seat up front as Marrow got behind the wheel. I turned to Miss Protruding Brow with a slow smile, which she returned with a look of suspicion.


    ¡°So¡­ She is single, yes?¡±


    Shark Girl slapped both of her hands over her face, as her friend grinned. ¡°Very.¡±


    My, my. My future girlfriend could swear.


    ¡°So where are we off to?¡±


    Marrow took a sharp turn at speed. ¡°Where all roads lead to.¡±


    I lifted an eyebrow in surprise, I didn¡¯t expect such a classical quote from her.


    But where else would we be going in South America? There wasn¡¯t all that much of interest down here, at least Marvel comics universe wise, but there was one place... and these were mutants.


    Leaning back in my seat, I shrugged. ¡°Nova Roma here we come.¡±

 19 [ Gus ] The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.

    19 [ Gus ] The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.


    Tearing my eyes away from the sweaty, and shapely teenage girl glaring at me with her arms crossed, I turned around to stare out of my sister¡¯s living room windows at the junior league AIM agents pulling the last of their fellow beekeepers out of the crushed vans.


    So how do I explain all the junior league Doom¡¯s running around?


    With the truth? I mean, the last thing I would want to tell someone raised by mad scientists was that I was somebody¡¯s lab experiment. But from what she said some of the people in her group are in the same boat as me. Hell, even she was the result of an experiment to see how the Scorpion¡¯s powers would carry over to a child.


    Gargan had scorpion DNA bonded to his, his daughter could have easily ended up with pinchers or extra eyes.


    Lamarr cleared her throat behind me. ¡°The truth would be easier than whatever story you¡¯re trying to come up with.¡±


    I turned my head to look back at her. ¡°It¡¯s not just my story. Anything I say to you is also going to reveal things about my sister that she may not be ready to share. I don¡¯t do betrayals. Not of my family, and preferably not of anyone else.¡±


    She blinked and almost uncrossed her arms before shaking her head. ¡°Alright, then what can you tell me.¡±


    I turned to her and raised my hand up in front of me as I looked down at the gauntlet covering it. ¡°I have been given a¡­ rather heavily edited copy of all of Doctor Doom¡¯s knowledge. All the science, some of the sorcery, and other talents. But very little of his personal knowledge. I am who I choose to be, I am not his creature.¡±


    Walking past her, I pulled my helmet off and set it on the breakfast bar before turning towards her and brushing a fingertip along one side of my face. ¡°There is no compulsion to hide my face, just one to go and take the throne of Latvia, which I found shockingly easy to dismiss. Iris can have it.¡±


    The daughter of the Scorpion had dropped her arms in surprise when I had removed my helmet, and she had looked deep into my eyes as I spoke. At first in surprise, then in suspicion. ¡°So you¡¯re claiming to be an experiment, like me? Seems like you might be trying to play me.¡±


    I raised my hands up at her and shook them in denial, ¡°No! I¡¯m hoping for an ally here, the last thing I want to do is try to play you. The experiment part was Doom trying to set us all, my sibling and me, up against each other to find out which of us was the worthy heir. Making us like this¡­¡± I gestured at myself.  ¡°We were all proven technology.¡±


    She walked up, getting right in my face as she looked up at me. Up close, well she didn¡¯t smell all that great after sweating in her combat suit but she did somehow have something elusive about her that I could only term the scent of a woman.


    And at nose height to me standing that close she was giving me a pretty good look down the front of her unitard. Something in my previous life I had never thought I would enjoy.


    Lamarr grinned a little at my efforts to maintain eye contact with her before she poked me in the guts with one finger hard enough to rock me back against the breakfast bar. I hoped she just thought she was intimidating me with her strength and not because I was getting so thrown off by having a very fit young woman standing so close to me.


    ¡°Okay, so you¡¯re not a clone. But the Green one, Iris, has powers, and I¡¯m guessing so do you. Your sister has been around for a while¡­ so I''m guessing you¡¯re Doom''s natural born children. Bred from highly intelligent, healthy mothers who already had at least one kid that tested out as a genius and then he modified all of you to have superpowers.¡±


    She frowned and took a step back, looking me up and down. ¡°So you have to be able to do something other than what your suit does? ...that wasn¡¯t a stealth field, was it Blondie? There aren''t any emitters on that armor. That was invisibility.¡±


    Her eyes widened. ¡°What the hell was he thinking?¡±This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    Turning and walking away from me she pressed her hands up against her forehead before running them through her short spiked hair. ¡°The first big move we try, and I run into a bastard child of the Fantastic Four.¡± She spun around and pointed at me accusingly. ¡°Please tell me they aren''t on the way here?¡±


    I froze in place. ¡°I¡­ I hope not.¡± Rubbing my hand against my chin, I turned and slipped my helmet on, the automatic clasps locking it on. ¡°If you picked up on the fact I based my armor on Doom¡¯s designs this quickly, then Richards¡­¡±


    She nodded quickly. ¡°Will spot it in an instant. It all comes down to how long before he gets a look at you, but the guy has to be pretty busy, too busy to immediately pay attention to yet another debutant''s debut, so we got a window here to go to ground.¡± Lamarr turned to walk outside, heading for her armor.


    Debutant? We? I followed her out.


    As soon as Lamarr laid her hands on her headset she began speaking into the microphone, ¡°Heads up, we may have the F4 inbound, gather everyone up and prepare for evac. I will be bringing in MODAT for pickup.¡±


    Climbing into her suit, she glanced over at me, ¡°Can you stealth somthing the size of an RV?¡±


    ¡°...Yes?¡±


    She gave me a relieved smile, which did all sorts of things to me. ¡°Good, then we got an exit plan. Follow me.¡±


    With that, she turned her suit and began bounding dozens of feet at a time across the landscape heading off into the desert, while I hesitated until I heard my sister¡¯s voice from a vibrating panel of force next to my head.


    ¡°Go ahead Gus. She wants you to chase her, even if she doesn''t know yet that¡¯s what she wants. Enjoy your little play date, and we can talk later.¡±


    I coated myself in an invisibility sheath and launched myself into the air on a pillar of force to begin to catch up with the Deathstalker armor, which had stopped to look back in the direction of my sister¡¯s ranch.


    Dropping the invisibility as I hovered next to her, I held out my hand. ¡°We can see each other if we are in contact when I cloak us.¡±


    Hey, look at me Mom. Holding hands with a girl as we go for a walk. Of course, I don¡¯t think my mother from my last life had ever pictured me doing this with the girl and me both wearing suits of high tech armor, but she did always tell me to wear protection.


    Setting a force platform under her feet and locking it to move with me, I lifted the two of us up. She resettled her feet and looked around before nodding at me. Then I just followed her pointing finger out to our destination.


    It turned out that MODOT stood for Modified Ordinance Designed Only for Transport, and consisted of a MODAK hover chair rebuilt around a steel storage container that had holographic emitters, sensors, and other tech crudely bolted onto it.


    Lemarr held her hand out to it as if proudly showing off something fantastic. ¡°Our chariot awaits.¡±


    The interior of the thing had a certain rough and ready charm¡­ which offended the high standards Von Doom had programmed into my head. But despite not looking all pretty and cutting edge technology, it worked and sorry Vic, that''s what matters.


    Inside the thing, I took a look around as Lamarr secured her armor in a framework set dead center of the unit, and climbed out. She sort of gave me a side eyed look as if expecting me to say something.


    So I did. ¡°At the risk of offending you. This pretty much exemplifies the concept of perfection is the enemy of good enough.¡±


    She laughed, and I gave myself a mental thumbs up. I made her laugh. On purpose.


    ¡°Yeah, we got set up in an old AIM base over in Nevada that Stark trashed but never bothered to report to anyone. The place was being used to house out of date tech no one in AIM wanted to take responsibility for selling on the cheap, or junking. It also ended up as a dumping ground for a bunch of broken stuff no one had ever gotten around to fixing and was getting in the way.¡±


    Lamarr shrugged, which did interesting things to her chest, as she sat down at the control. ¡°We work with what we got.¡±


    ¡°Story of my life.¡±


    I didn¡¯t get a laugh at that one, more of a grimacing smile. But decided that I would still count it as another win.


    The hover mode of the MODOK chair was able to get the thing up in the air, and using my suit to push it along through the air was more stealthy than the energy turbine on the bottom of the throne that was the main propulsion. Wrapping the ship up in an invisibility field was a bit of a strain, but after locking my suit in place braced up against the internal framework of the vehicle to let it do the work mean that pushing the thing along didn¡¯t take any real effort on my part.


    Settling down at the ranch, some of my sister¡¯s staff helped carry the injured AIMLESS into the transport before I put the thing under another invisibility field and we prepared to leave.


    But not before a frowning guy in a beekeeper suit forced Lamarr to put on a jacket on over her skintight combat unitard. ¡°Dam girl, you¡¯re showing off all your assets in that outfit. We talked about this.¡±


    Lamarr protested, until her friend jerked his head over at me, at which point the muscular woman blushed, turned her head, and shouted out. ¡°Liftoff in five, everyone get secured. Apex, stealth us, and prepare to take us out.¡±


    I nodded at the back of her head. ¡°I would love to take you out.¡±


    She flinched, and I could see the back of her neck going red, as I felt my face do the same. What the hell did I just say?


    Her friend nearly fell over laughing and gave me a double thumbs up. ¡°Smooth dude.¡±


    It was going to be a long trip to Nevada.

 20 [ Iris ] Battle Royal

    20 [ Iris ] Battle Royal


    So Victor Von Doom the second had decided to throw down with me over who was the rightful heir, and despite looking like cracked peach colored rock, Junior¡¯s skin turned out to have a lot of give to it.


    So did his bones which I found out as I buried my fist halfway into his skull as everything just gave away underneath my knuckles.


    I was probably from having him copying Mr Fantastic powers. It was like trying to punch mud.


    Another effect of Mr Fs powers was that punching Vic¡¯s skull so hard it deformed his brain didn¡¯t hurt him at all, in fact, it didn¡¯t even slow him down as he returned my punch with a full slam into my chest that lifted me off my feet and send me flying back.


    I¡¯m strong enough to lift over a hundred tons but I do still only weigh in at a petite six hundred or so pounds, so unless I got something to grab a hold of, any reasonable super strong punch is going to knock me flying.


    So as I flew across the room and lifted my knees up towards my chest, I grinned and kicked back against the wall behind me with enough force to crack the stone and leaped back at my eldest brother, with both of my hands out the grab and twist into his pliant flesh. <strong style="color: rgba(14, 16, 26, 1); background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">¡°Hulk Grasp!¡±


    Vic¡¯s eyes went wide just before he vanished from in front of me, gone invisible again, but I still managed to snag a hold of one of his shoulders and dug in.


    ¡°Unhand me woman!¡±


    I took another punch to the face with an enlarged block like flaming fist as he tried to knock me free, but I wasn¡¯t letting go. ¡°Hey! Ow! How does that work? Can you only use so much of each of the powers at once? And don¡¯t call me woman, rude, we¡¯re family!¡±


    Grabbing a hold of the arm he was trying to knock me away with, I began to wind it multiple times around my arm as I pulled his other shoulder out like taffy. ¡°If I force you to use your stretching¡­ Stop kicking! Will that keep you from using your other powers?¡±


    Then he stretched his stone skin into a bunch of even more stone like spikes on the arm I had wrapped around mine and squeezed the coils tight.


    ¡°Ow!¡± I whipped him across the room and through a wall before I checked my arm, he hadn''t even broken the skin, but it had still hurt. Looking around I couldn''t see him anywhere. ¡°Hey, don¡¯t tell me you¡¯re running away from a little girl?¡±


    I saw the chunk of masonry he had turned invisible and had swung at the end of an unseen stretched out arm just before he finished whipping it around and smashed me in the face with it. The stone shattered as it flipped me head over heels nearly into full mid air spin before I slammed face first into the ground.


    Growling, I raised my head to see him stalking out of the shadows, pulling a green tee shirt on over his head. He had also found a set of gray sweatpants.


    ¡°You are nearly a woman grown and a Von Doom. I will not allow anyone, even you, to demean our family by calling you a mere little girl.¡±


    Enlarging and clenching shut both of his fists as spikes emerged from his knuckles, he glared down at me. ¡°Now yield to the better <strong style="color: rgba(14, 16, 26, 1); background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">Doom!¡±


    I grinned, ¡°Awwww, Vic. You do see me as family.¡± Slapping my hand down, I threw myself upward to my feet and then rushed him.


    ¡°Don¡¯t call me¡­¡± I took us through a wall before he could finish, and into the dressing room he must have gotten the clothing from. It including a set of fabrication machines as well as a set of matching male and female mannequins modeling a formal suit and the other a gown¡­ and a display case with a golden crown resting on a green velvet pillow.


    Ooooo¡­ I lifted a struggling Junior up by the neck. ¡°I¡¯m going to want to come back here, so let¡¯s take the fight off¡­ that way.¡±


    And with that, I ran my brother through a door, then the opposite wall. Through some kind of old lab, out another wall, and finally into a load bearing stone support, where I pulled him back out of the Vic Jr shaped impression and rammed him back into it twice more before he got an arm wrapped around my neck and managed to cut off my breath.


    ¡°I have you now wo¡­ Sister.¡±


    Great, finally a man that listens, and I¡¯m related to him¡­ and also throwing down with.


    I panicked a little over getting my throat squeezed shut and that gave him the chance to get a few hits in, until I realized I wasn¡¯t blacking out or anything.


    Do Hulks not need to breathe? Just what all can I survive now?


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    ¡°Iris?¡±


    I looked down at Junior from where he was holding me up in the air with both of his armed stretched out and wrapped around me neck, he looked more suspicious then worried, but there was some real concern in his eyes, so I gave him a grin and a thumbs up rather then a kick in his unprotected gut in return for checking to see if he was being too rough play fighting with his sister.


    And it would have been in his gut, not his groin. There are some things you just don¡¯t do to a brother but on the other hand¡­


    ¡°Ow! Not the hair!¡±


    At some point as the fight carried along through the walls, the castle seemed to start shifting us from one version of itself to another to spread out the damage, how it was doing so, and more importantly how it was deciding to do so was something I was going to have to look into. Doom had learned the hard way not to trust AI and I thought that was one of the few smart decisions he had ever made.


    After a few hours, Hulk powers proved their worth.


    None of the Fantastic Four had healing factors, which means that all the injuries I was inflicting on Junior not only added up but above that he plain old could just get tired.


    Too pissed to quit Hulk powers for the win.


    But Dooms had their pride.


    Bruised, bleeding, panting, and unable to stand entirely on his own, Junior was still in the fight.


    ¡°I... I will not yield sister. If you want the throne... you will have to kill me.¡±


    I sighed as I stepped behind the privacy screen and slipped out of the torn uniform I had been holding up with one hand and tried on the little purple and gray go go style dress. Checking it out in the mirror I sighed and reached for the next outfit the dressing room had printed up for me.


    We had taken the fight back here after Junior nearly caused a full frontal wardrobe malfunction by stretching the edge of his forearm into a blade that sliced open the front of the first outfit I had ever worn in my new lifetime. Technically it was my birthday suit.


    Call him a crazed megalomaniac if you want, but big bro is still a gentleman and suggested a cease fire and I decided that ¡®<strong style="color: rgba(14, 16, 26, 1); background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">Hulk Flash!¡¯ just didn¡¯t sound right.


    ¡°I¡¯m not going to kill you Victor. And you can¡¯t beat me in a straight up fight, not with stolen powers. I¡¯m a Hulk by blood. My powers are my birthright, even if my existence is a crime against humanity.¡± I could hear him start to object. ¡°And don¡¯t go on about your intellect, or the powers of your mind inevitably beating the powers of a beast, I just as smart as you.¡±


    He made a scoffing sound. I¡¯m not sure how to spell it, maybe ¡®Pe-shaw?¡±


    I half bent around the screen, one arm folded over my chest while I pointed at him with my other hand, forcing my unhappy elder brother to avert his eyes. ¡°You better not be making that sound because I¡¯m a girl. I will not hold back on you out of respect for your delicate state of being dead in a tube for the last ten years on round two.¡±


    He shot me an offended look and I waved him away. ¡°And go find something to drink, and bring me something too, we both just had a workout. You can even try to poison mine. The tears from your abject failure to find something that can hurt me will only make mine taste all the sweeter.¡±


    OMG! He actually grumbled.


    He still came back with two sealed glass bottles of some fancy Euro brand of water, letting me take my pick and he pointedly looked me up and down.


    ¡°An interesting outfit for a battle.¡±


    I preened, twisting about in place to let him get a good look at the outfit before cracking the seal on the bottle of water and taking a delicate sip. The outfit I had printed up consisted of a purple jacket, matching skirt and pill box hat with Doom Green trim and viel over a large colored Grey shirt all based on Jacqueline Kennedy¡¯s Pink Chanel suit.


    Cut down to expose a tasteful amount of abs.


    ¡°That''s because we aren''t going to settle this by duking it out. I don¡¯t want to kill you, and you can¡¯t kill me, not without the time to prep some mad science, which as a Hulk I will just end up smashing because somehow you won¡¯t predict that happening, and then the machine you build will go all wonky and threaten to destroy half of Europe until some, let¡¯s say four, heroes sweep in to save the day and force us to agreed to settle things without violence¡­ or do you think it would play out some other way?¡±


    His nostrils flared and I could see an angry diatribe rising, so I held up my hand palm out. ¡°Sorry, I shouldn''t have pushed your Richards button Victor. Let¡¯s sit down and finish our drinks, then talk.¡±


    Victor nodded and nearly stomped over to an armchair before flopping down in it to drink his water, making it clear he was going to cooperate, but hate every moment of it.


    After a bit, he sighed. ¡°What did you have in mind?¡±


    I set my drink aside, sat up in a posed manner, and nodded at him. ¡°If you truly believe you are the rightful ruler of Latveria, then I concede the possibility that you very well might be. So let this matter be decided by the very laws of this nation you claim is rightfully yours.¡±


    ¡°Let the courts decide.¡±


    He stared blankly at me, then stood to face away from me. For a moment, he seemed to struggle for control, then Victor Von Doom Jr. turned to me and nodded.


    ¡°May the best Von Doom win.¡±

 21 [ Fenris] What little girls are made of.

    21 [ Fenris] What little girls are made of.


    I wearily sat down on the top of an empty cryogenic pod and wiped my hand down my face at what I was looking at sunk in.


    The red hourglass in a circle symbol on each of the occupied pods was rather distinctive after all.


    Each of the pods had Girls. Little girls... Damaged little girls.


    All right to be fair, most of them were more like teens and young women, but Dr Lyudmila Kudrin¡¯s version of the super soldier formula was as much about keeping these girls young and pretty looking as enhancing their physical abilities. But it couldn¡¯t regrow missing limbs and massive disfiguring wounds to make them pretty again after they somehow got injured, what with the state of cybernetic limbs at the time when they were frozen.


    After all, the Winter Soldier was only used as an assassin after they slapped a metal arm on him, never as an infiltrator.


    And I guess the Red Room saw no purpose in fitting a bunch of damaged women with expensive cybernetic limbs just to use them as combat troops.


    So instead, they froze them, probally moved them around for years since nobody wanted to deal with deciding what to do with them, until they ended up here. Then they just abandoned them.


    Of course, they couldn¡¯t just let the children that they had bought and spent so much time and money training as child soldiers go and have their own lives even after they could find no further use for them.


    The girls still wore the remains of the clothing they had been injured in and looked so young they must have still been in training before they were shoved into these pods without any preparation, with whoever made the call to freeze them only replying on their enhancements to ensure their survival until someone found a reason to thaw them out.


    Where they would be still wounded, in pain, possibly bleeding out, and displaced years or decades from the world they had been familiar with.


    I stared at the far wall beyond the tubes for a long time, before I finally laughed. ¡°Ha! Mine now! My very own Lost Girls, and me their very own Piotr Pan. But without the tights. Ha!¡±


    No, I would not see these girls as a burden, or something to be thrown away. These are veterans of a war that they were drafted into for a nation not their own. But they are my people now, Russian, and I would treat them as such.


    Standing, I brushed some frost away from the pod of a little blond girl with half her face missing. She reminded me a bit of my youngest daughter from my past life. ¡°I will not make the same mistake with you child. I will fix your body, and then support whatever options you choose for yourself. Work for me, work with me, or go off and find your own fate. Your own life. So swears Papa Fenris.¡±


    I spend the next few hours ensuring that none of the pods will suddenly fail, or spontaneously revived any of the girls. A few alarms and remote control ensured that no sneaky plot line would go and wake them up before I have prepared for them.


    Only then do I go up to the main level of Fenris¡¯s Hole to find the place much warmer and a legion of robotic duplicates of various heroes and villains, all in costumes years out of date, standing in formation as the Brothers Koshei wandered among them.


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    Pavel stood in front of a mohawk sporting Storm bot, and wondered out loud to his brothers, ¡°So, do you think they are, heh, fully functional?¡±


    Such disrespect. For a moment I considered knocking him across the room, but I ultimately decided it might upset his brothers. Instead, I just decided to set a few more alarms on the door to the room full of frozen teenage girls down below.


    ¡°If you can¡¯t get a real girl we can make a sex worker robot for you later on.¡± The former mobster jerked around in alarm. ¡°But not in the image of a woman that can blow up your head with lightning. We can make a new one that looks like some composite image of your internet search history, then you can go to town on it. But maybe one without built in weapons.¡±


    I patted him on the shoulder as I walked past him, perhaps a bit harder than needed as he winced in pain. ¡°But I have other uses for these bots, and the four of you. But for now, find yourselves places to sleep for the night as we have much work in the morning. Ha! So much work. You will weep blood at how hard you will work.¡±


    My next seven hours were spent first setting up a Doctor Octopus bot to work before flying across Russia at high speed and assembling a teleportation rig around my creche unit. Something that was capable of growing me from a pair of gene samples should be more than capable of repairing a frozen little girl, and I wanted the matrix forge to make various components that I would need beyond what I had already gathered.


    This hole in the ground would not be the final resting place for Doom¡¯s device, but for now, I wanted it close.


    Setting a now tentacle stripped down Hulk, Rhino, Thing, and Colossus bot to carry my birth unit into a secure laboratory, I slowly spun around to give the rest of my new toys a good long look.


    With just me in the room with them, it felt kind of spooky. Like they were all looking at me.


    ¡®Ha! What am I now? All shy all of the sudden? Look at me my toy soldiers. It is now time for me to indulge in my favorite hobby from another lifetime.¡±


    Cracking my knuckles, I grinned at the still half asleep Brothers Koshei emerging from whatever spots they had found to sleep. ¡°So, what do you boys think of getting some combat armor.¡±


    I gestured at the same four oversized bots I had set to carrying my creche off to its new home. Even stripped down from their disguises the four bots were so large they would end up being more like vehicles for the Brothers to pilot rather than suits. But even after making room for them to ride inside the bots, there was plenty of room for the various weapons systems from the other bots used to simulate various superpowers that I could arm the brothers with.


    But before that, I wanted to put the first of the girl into the crech to start her repairs, and fairly soon I needed to get to work on my ritual circle.


    Which needed a very sharp, durable metal chisel to carve flawless lines into the stone. Adamantium would be best in fact.


    Finding some of the stuff wouldn¡¯t be an issue. Ha! I could just pull off a bank robbery and just go and buy it. But where is the style in that?


    No. I would find someone who had the stuff implanted in them, some Wolverine copycat cheapening his franchise. Then I would rip it off of their body.


    ¡°Now that¡¯s the way to make a debut. Ha!¡±

 22 [ Fenris ] I wonder if they are going to do the coin thing too?

    22 [ Fenris ] I wonder if they are going to do the coin thing too?


    At the very least, Lady Deathstrike had some claim to the whole adamantium on your bones motif.


    Her dad had invented the process.


    Then she became obsessed with killing Wolverine because somehow having the process done to him against his will offended her family¡¯s honor.


    Such a victim blamer. I guess he shouldne¡¯t have had a healing factor. The guy was just asking for it.


    So she went after him, to try to take him out, and lost. Over, and over, and over again. Each time selling off a piece of herself to become stronger, selling her services as a mere flunky for just one more shot at beating someone she never stood a chance against.


    Sad really.


    She even died and came back. Real original. Ha!


    Now she was stuck as a virtual slave working for someone who poisoned her with a drug that would kill her unless she received an antidote on a regular basis.


    Stupid woman. You already died once, and as long as they need someone to annoy Wolverine, death won¡¯t stick. Why let some third rate mutant with the ability to make chemicals and inject people with finger syringes make you their bitch?


    Frankly, taking her down was going to be a mercy.


    The Atelier was a sort of guild of assassins that had been around for a while. But it was one that no one had really ever heard of, and it was made up of fancy dressed killers no one ever heard of, or cared to remember their names if they did.


    Their leader was some sort of immortal who took possession of whoever killed him and had kept the thing going for centuries until the syringe woman offed him and Deadpool annoyed him in giving up the whole come back to life thing by sheer annoyance.


    Ha! The guy is good at that.


    Now syringe woman, who didn¡¯t even have a super name, just going by Valentine Vuong was rebuilding the organization with an open audition using an old hotel refurbished as a private clubhouse just for assassins.


    Someone had watched a few Keanu Reeves movies.


    I don¡¯t like the idea of professional nicknamed assassins. If you got that much style and ability, why are you killing strangers for money? Take over a country, run a criminal organization of your own. Settling for being little more than a hired thug is just so¡­ Skeevy. Ha!


    For named villains anyway. I have nothing but respect for minions and henchmen. Good working class people.


    Be a real man or woman. Let them know your name rather than strike from the shadows.


    Which is how I ended up in Italy at the Hotel Aegis, which you would think had been a secret SHIELD place but was it far older then that, and one of the entrances to the undergound city below Rome.


    I¡¯m not sure if the syringe woman even knew what she was squatting on.


    Walking in the front door¡¯s I was immediately made by some guy who was either dressed as a masked luchador wrestler or liked kabuki masks. The camera in my mask identified all sorts of high tech goodies on him as he moved toward me, his hands gripping at he air as if preparing to have some sort of weapons appear in them.


    ¡°HA!¡±


    My powers are from a woman that can throw down with a hulk. Hi tech assassin. Please.


    But still, it would be undignified to let him even take a swing at me, so¡­ ¡°I do believe in fairies!¡±


    Let¡¯s hear it for the boy. I gave him a big clap of my hands with ninety tons of force crashing together.


    The mysterious masked man went flying backwards through a wall with a spray of blood flying out of his mouth and nose. From the sound that followed the first wall wasn¡¯t the only thing I sent him flying through.


    Hopefully, I didn¡¯t damage his tech too much. I can always use more toys.


    ¡°Boys¡­ come in and start stripping people down. We¡¯re going shopping.¡±This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.


    People come running. Pointing advanced hi-tech weapons at me as larger guns mounted on turrets dropped down from the ceiling, and out of the center of the ffountain in the middle of the lobby. Even as the forces gathering to defend the hotel braced themselves to face off against me, four large figures appeared around me in a diamond formation shaped by the single use teleportation array mounted on the harness over my Blood Iron armor.


    ¡°I am the Iron Tsar, and I am here to kick ass... and kick ass. And I¡¯m not about to run out of asses to kick. Ha! Introduce yourselves boys-¡±


    How rude. The security staff begins shooting before the Brothers Koshei can announce themselves, and we worked so hard on their villain names.


    Those kind of things stick to you. They can free you from jails, and even bring you back to life when a writter needs a throwaway villain.


    I had put Chekov, my tech guy, in the former Thing bot, with much of the original stone skin replaced with layers of ceramic polymers and metal replicating the original surface. Along with a layer of ice on his head and shoulder, constantly being generated by the Iceman power simulation tech.


    Elbrus, named for the tallest mountain in all of the Russias begin sealing the armed security guys in blasts of ice. He can¡¯t really form constructs like the real Iceman, but he can layer the stuff on people to trap them while avoiding their mouths.


    I told him to avoid suffocating the faceless mooks. It doesn''t impress anyone and they are like the blue collar workers of super villainy. Besides, I might want to hire them later on. I will soon be in need of many faceless mooks. Ha!


    Pavel is in what once was the Rhino bot because while the man has a certain sleazy charm to him, he is useless in a fight. The Smerch, named for the military vehicle, has rockets mounted to tubes on his back that he can fire using a targeting computer in order to hit something, and he is armored well enough he can aim the bot at what he wants to smash into headfirst using preprogrammed motions from the Quicksilver bot to propel snd direct him at high speeds.


    I had to give him something, and he does well launching himself into and through the fountain turret once I pointed at him and then at it.


    Sasha is in the former Colossus bot now named Bismarck, after the great war hero, and he is already taking down the ceiling turrent with the Cyclops force beam power simulator, with a appropriately red colored bean, mounted on his head above the plate covering his eyes.


    Fyodor clears a path in the former Hulk bot. Bogatyr wears armor modeled on traditional Russian armor from the reign of Vladimir the Great, and as the largest of the suits the Brothers wear, he clears the path into the large bar room very well.


    But right into a crossfire. I¡¯m glad he went first. Ha!


    His armor will hold up against the more exotic weapons being fired at him for a few moments, but then I would have to put in so much work to repair it. Why let these twits in fancy dress make more work for me?


    I plow into Bogatyr¡¯s back and push him through the crossfire and out the other side. Then I turn and begin clapping my hands together over and over as I turn in a slow arc.


    These are the slow ones, the expendables sent out to let the experienced ones see what all I can do, so why show them anything new. At least we all found out that the building whose bones had been designed by Leonardo De Vinci held up pretty well to multi-ton concussive force.


    Then the boss of the place finally sent out her big gun.


    She enters the ruins of the ballroom. Throwing out her hands to show off the nearly foot long claws that are permanently mounted to her fingertips as they slowly stretch out to their full two feet in length. I hold out my arms as if welcoming her to come in for a hug.


    ¡°Lady Deathstrike, before we begin¡­ I have a question for you.¡±


    The former rich girl twisted her nose up in disgust. ¡°Why would I answer to you Gaijin?¡±


    ¡°Rude! Ha! But serious. I am not the only one who wants to know, many people must have wondered... How the hell do you wipe with those claws? Ha!¡±


    Her eyes go wide as her face twists up in anger and she runs, low to the ground for traction against another clap, only rising up as she gets near and begins to sweep her hands up to gut me as I still stand with my arms out, wide stretched.


    Wide enough to hold my wrists to either side of her, With the Magneto power emulators mounted on the inner wrists of my gauntlets.


    These things will never hold up in a fight, but interesting fact. Adamantium is affected by magnetism.


    Seriously, the real Magneto stripped the stuff right off of Wolverine''s bones when he had enough of that guy''s shit.


    All I can do is hold Deathstrike suspended in midair, frozen in place as Chekov come up behind her and hold his ice emitiers to either side of ones of her hand, set to simply create an area of intense cold rather then to gather up water molecules from the air and freeze them.


    Her face twists up again, this time in pain as her entire right lower arm and hand freezes solid.


    Elbrus gives it a sharp tap, snapping if off before collecting it into an external storage compartment build into his armor as she let out a frustrated grunt rather then scream.


    ¡°So¡­ Will you answer my question, or should we go for the other hand?¡±


    Don¡¯t feel bad for her, it will grow back. And she deserves far worse.


    The ruthless assassin grits her teeth, then hisses out. ¡°Nanocytes. They break everything down before it leaves my system. I don¡¯t need to¡­ wipe.¡±


    I stare at her for a moment. ¡°HA!¡± That shit does everything.


    Then I shake my head at her and let her fall to the ground and curl up into a bag clutching her stump before I join the Brothers as they head out the front door with a laundry cart, a serving cart, and a curtain thrown over Bismarck¡¯s shoulder as a large sack full of hi tech goodies stripped off of the disposable assassins whose names no one ever heard of, or cared to remember if they did.


    ¡°Stick to trying to kill Wolverine Miss Yuriko. You suck at it, but at least it¡¯s steady work.¡±


    Such a lovely day in historical Rome. Perhaps I could send the Brothers on ahead and take in some of the sights. Meet the pope. What kind of heroes do they have hear anyways?


    Oh, those kind.


    A stern looking Reed Richards along with the rest of the Fantastic Four, and She Hulk, stood outside the Hotel Aegis. All of them waiting for me, and none of them looked happy.


    Well¡­ Smashing my left fist into my right hand, I shouted out. ¡°Now this is what I call a Debut! HA!¡±


    Looks like I won¡¯t get a chance to kiss a ring today. But this will be better, and I got five adamantium chisels. Is good day. Ha!

 23 [Horus] And unfanned fire will devour him

    23 [Horus] And unfanned fire will devour him


    After a brief conversation with yet another sister, in which I agreed to keep her existence a secret in return for regular reports on our other sibling, I decided to move on to the first step of my plan.


    Before I could create my legion, or take over the continent, I needed a place to call home.


    A place of Africa, but not a place I would have to constantly work to keep.


    There was a cluster of tiny nations all around Wakanda, some of them allied with the secretive country, while others were just vile. Vile, and right next door to one of the most powerful nations on Earth, whose king chose to do nothing about the suffering happening right next door all in the name of ¡®International relations¡¯.


    I noted the name of those countries as part of my phase three plans, but for now I needed a place to call my own. Scanning my copy of the files Doom had left for me reminded me of things from reading comics back in my first life that were not know even to him, or rather more then likely had just been beneath his notice.


    There are seven secret cities on this world, part of Earth, but sort of out of phase to it, and all of them are linked together. Kun-Lun, birth birthplace of the supernaturally empowered martial artist Iron Fist is one of these, while Z¡¯Gambo in Africa is sort of like it in that it can only be reached by magic except when it reconnects with the real world once every few years. Fifty to eighty eight years for Z¡¯Gambo, once every ten for Kun-Lun due to winning some sort of regular tournament between the champions of the seven hidden cities.


    I don¡¯t know much about Z¡¯Gambo, except some overly complex Celestial device had been hidden there in secret until a group of explorers had somehow reached the place a century or so ago, and one of them later returned to the place, probably the next time it became reachable, and then for reason that somehow made sence to him, proceeded to kill everyone there.


    All to protect the device of course, not became the guy was a psychopath. Which he totally was.


    The guy didn¡¯t even bother to bury anyone, in fact, he collected their bones and laid them out as some kind of open air ossuary. Yeah, that¡¯s perfectly reasonable and sane.


    Then he somehow split the Celestial device into three brass frog statues, you know, one of those standard martial art skills, hid two of them outside Z/Gambo where people could, and did, find them while he guarded the other one in a secret city only a few people cold reach. At least until the Defenders found one of the frogs, then the Prince of Orphans emerged from Z¡¯Gambo and killed a couple of heros, to ¡°protect¡± the device.


    The Defender did some time travel shenanigans to undo the deaths, so as far as I known John Aman is back to just lurking in that hidden city, surrounded by the remains of his victims.


    Several hours of work later, I decided to find out as I walked through the magical portal I had made to the hidden city, followed by a few dozen cloudy silicon duplicates of myself with runes carved into their surfaces to allow them to operate as simple mindless golems.If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    The guy found me pretty quick and stared at my green glowing transparent form in confusion.


    ¡°Doom? Are you dead?¡±


    ¡°Thoth. Thoth Von Doom. I can¡¯t say I like what you did to the place. Did any of these people really need to die, or did you just live so long you forgot how to be human?¡±


    He shifted his weight smoothly into some sort of stance, ¡°Yes. Their lives had to be sacrificed to protect the world. As does the life of anyone who comes here. Do not be so confident of whatever power you are using making you untouchable. I have fought ghosts before.¡±


    I shook my head at him. ¡°A sacrifice is when you give up something you care about that belongs to you. These people¡¯s lives did not belong to you. This was not a sacrifice, it was just a spree killing. And don¡¯t concern yourself about getting to kill anyone ever again. Your death was assured the moment I came here, and striking me will only hasten the process.¡±


    The Prince of Orphans, a name I wasn¡¯t even going to bother to ask about since someone like this shouldn¡¯t get to share their backstory, narrowed his eyes at me. ¡°You know nothing.¡±  and then attacked, flying foot first though my energy form without harming me in anyway despite him calling up mystical energy to strike my disembodied soul.


    My soul was embodied just fine in my human shaped form of electromagnetic radiation which had been shooting out invisible gamma rays in all directions from the moment I had arrived.


    The martial artist, whose best power was turning into a cloud of croaking green mist, had taken a lethal dose of radiation in the first few seconds we had talked. Jumping through my body had only given another even stronger dose.


    Turning to face him as he landed behind me, I turned to thermal energy and blasted him with it in a cone of ignited flame, which he easily dodged, but hitting wasn¡¯t what I was up to. I wanted him tired out and too busy to pull some mystic technique out of his butt to save himself from radiation poisoning.


    Sorry ¡®Prince of Orphans¡¯ but you¡¯re a near one shot character from an Iron Fist comic or something, you fought the Defenders in your biggest appearance. You are not the hero of the story, you¡¯re barley an entry on a fan page.


    A few minutes of me shooting various energies at him, with me missing every single time, not for a lack of trying, and then he got a clue that something was wrong as he coughed up some blood. Looking at the red specks covering his open hand, he looked up at me. ¡°How?¡±


    ¡°You killed all of these people instead of finding somewhere that already didn¡¯t have any people in it to hideaway and guard your precious little brass frog. Oh right, that was actually why, not how. But I would rather you die in ignorance... and I hope you burn in hell.¡±


    At least until someone decided to bring him back, possible to face me again¡­ Which didn¡¯t sound all that bad. In fact, I kind of looked forward to getting to kill this man again someday.


    He turned into a green cloud and fled. I watched him bounce off the borders of Z¡¯Gambo that I had sealed behind me as the cloud began to slow down and break up until his already decaying body fell to the ground.


    My mask showed no vitals signs in the corpse as I walked up to look at it, but his eyes still slowly cracked open as he whispered, ¡°Please¡­¡±


    As I stared down at him and watched his eyes go still while not saying a word, I wondered how many people here had pleaded with him the same way.


    Then I burned the corpse to ash.


    My glass duplicates set to work digging graves and scanning the traces of DNA in the bones in order to put everyone''s remains back together. I¡¯ve had killed nearly every plant in the place with radiation so I had plenty of material for coffins, and for a grave marker, silica is easy enough to make.


    I figured the four sides of the monument could all contain the same epitaph in different languages, ¡°Here lies the people of Z¡¯Gambo. May they know peace.¡±


    It would probally get smashed dozens of time during super fights in the future, so I figured that I might as well keep it simple to make sure it¡¯s easy to reproduce.


    I found the damned brass frog that he had been so concerned about protecting to keep anyone from using it and tucked it under my arm. It will make a nice paperweight, or perhaps a nice addition to a ornamental fountain.


    Now, what other treasures does a hidden city hold?

 24 [ Jase ] Home sweet Rome.

    24 [ Jase ] Home sweet Rome.


    The drive out of the city proved to rather less exciting them I hoped. A few cop cars did begin to chase us, but when they did, all Marrow did was actualy slow down to let one of them put up beside us, at which point she grinned and called out, ¡°Give them a smile Juliet.¡±


    Shark girl narrowed her eyes at the back of her friends head, before turning to roll down the tinted passanger side window and stick her face out, at which point I saw the angry cop at the wheel eyes go wide as he slammed on the brakes, with his partner screaming into the microphone of their cop car.


    The other police vehicles behind us slowed to a stop.


    I guess they don¡¯t pay cops in Brazil enough to deal with humanoid sharks as we didn¡¯t see anymore of them on our way out of the city.


    The rudimentary AI of my Gomez suit was able to use GPS to show me we had a drive of several hours to get to where my programmed memories told me Nova Roma was located. ¡°So¡­ do you think we can stop somewhere along the way to pick up some food? I¡¯ll pay.¡±


    Turning to wink at me girl in the back seat, I teased, ¡°After all, we¡¯ve had our show, but it¡¯s not a real date without me treating you to dinner.¡± I dug out my wallet and thrust a few Twenties toward her friend in the driver¡¯s seat. ¡°I¡¯m sure you can find some takeout or something. My treat.¡±


    The bone growth mutant gave me a narrow eyed look, but snatched the cash out of my hand to her friend¡¯s protest. ¡°Sarah!¡±


    Sarah? Body Horror¡¯s real name was Sarah? Marrow glanced over her shoulder at her friend in the back seat. ¡°Far be it from me to get in the way of true love, besides, a girl has got to eat.¡± Then she did one of those snort laughs.


    My girl pressed her hand against her face again for a moment, and I took the chance to listen to some decrypted military chatter. Unfortunately, Paragon, the Brazilian conscription leader, had survived the explosion in my apartment. In fact, no one had died since I had made the bomb into more of a low pressure concussive explosion that had worked great to stun and knock around the soldiers in my apartment, as well as do a spectacular job on the windows, but it had never been meant to kill anyone.


    Give them concussions, yes. Some bleeding from their ears, yes. But not dead.


    I took a moment to sigh in relief. Killing was on the table rather than getting effectively enslaved, but until my choices came down to kill, submitting, or losing my current life, I would rather not end someone else¡¯s.


    ¡°Why are you like this?¡±


    The very earnest voice asked me from the back seat. I turned to look at¡­ sigh, Shark girl, and gave her a little nod before I began crawling over the top of the seat to join her in the back. Which proved to be a bit awkward since my Gomez suit had made me a bit more bulky than I realized.


    Fortunately Marrow helped me out by grabbing one of my leg to heave me over, head first, and my girl grabbed me by the shoulders as I went over and held me steady so I could twist around and end up sitting next to her.


    ¡°Real smooth Romeo.¡± Body Horror Girl sounded off from the front seat.


    Shark girl stared down at me with soulless black eyes.


    ¡°I have a sort of grab bag of powers, which includes putting out a scent that scares off humans¡­ and other than having powers, like all the other people born of man with powers, and altered physiology, like all the other people born of man with altered physiologies, Mutants are for all intents and purposed¡­ Human.¡±


    Marrow began to object, until I reminded her, ¡°Such as when you nearly backed off my balcony when you startled me, you know, like every other human which that particular, or particulate, power effects. But we care debate questionable terminology some other time, right now¡­¡±


    Reaching out, I took my girl by the hand with both of mine so I could pull it close, or at least I tried to do so before she snatched it back like I had burned her. ¡°You didn¡¯t get scared. In your shark form, you are doing something that is more than just looking like a shark. You are somewhere in between shark and woman, and that makes you different enough from human to be immune to my power. Which makes you someone I can talk to no matter how nervous talking to a girl makes me.¡±


    She blushed as Marrow made a gagging sound and rolled her eyes in the front seat. Shark girl almost casually hit the back of her friend''s headrest with an elbow and nearly sent Marrow''s head into the steering wheel.


    I smiled. ¡°But it''s more than that. My powers can also make people like me¡­ a lot, or rather, it can make women like me. To the point I don¡¯t know if they really like me, or if it¡¯s all my powers. But anything you feel about me is real. So yes, I am flirting outrageously, because regardless of if you hate it, or, as I hope, you like it, your reaction is yours. Not something my brand new powers are making you feel.¡±Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.


    Shark Girl stared at me for a moment. ¡°So you like me, because I¡¯m a half human half shark woman?¡±


    Smiling I shrugged, and scooted up closer to her. ¡°What can I say? I got a type.¡±


    She snorted, but she didn¡¯t try to move away from me. Largely because at her size there wasn¡¯t any room in the car for her to do so, but she didn¡¯t shove me away either.


    I thought about trying to hold her hand, but I thought I had made some progress here. Why push my luck?


    An hour later we pulled over in a small town, with my girl shrinking down to a cute little Latina girl as she slid out of the driver¡¯s side back door and headed up to order for all three of us, turning to confirm that she had gotten enough for us with a questioning look, only to blush as she saw me smiling a giving her human form a long look up and down before nodding in approval.


    She whirled her head around with a blush.


    Marrow got a few odd looks, but I think most people thought she and Shark Girl were doing some kind of cosplay from having their uniforms on.


    We had a pleasant, and relaxing lunch as we chattered about some of the music, TV shows, and films that had come out in the last five years, after I claimed to have missed since I had been raised in isolation for my own safety since I was eleven.


    Yeah, I know that math would make sixteen rather than my real biological age of thirteen, but slow aging is pretty standard for characters in comic books¡­ and sixteen was datable.


    Lunch was fun, and relaxing¡­ and both of the girls were getting giggly¡­ and playing with their hair¡­


    Standing up, I explained that, ¡°I need a moment.¡± Then wandered off a ways to hose myself down with Hatchet body spray. Waving my hands at the damper spots from the cheap cologne, I then returned to the table. Both of the girls crinkled their noses and frowned at me.


    ¡°Well the ¡®like me¡¯ pheromones seem to work just fine on the two of you as well as the scary ones. At least while you are in your human form. May I have a name to call you when you are human shaped?.¡¯


    She had seemed started at first when I explained that I had whammied her with my powers, then realized why I has spray myself down and nodded in approval. ¡°Iara. And thanks for not trying to mess with my mind.¡±


    We finished off our food, and the two girls headed off, together, to the women¡¯s room. Yet more proof that mutants are still just human. I took a trip to the men¡¯s as well, then we were back in the car and on our way to Nova Roma, with Iara waving at me to join her in the back seat, even if she did turn back into her shark form as soon as we got back on the road.


    I patted her hand, and let it rest there for a moment. ¡°Trust, but verify.¡± She turned her head and slowly nodded.


    We, all three of us, were nearly talked out by the time we finished taking a series of turns and dirt roads, all of which eventually led us to something more like a dirt trail barely wide enough for the car to push through all the vegetation. Marrow finally parked the car below some cargo netting spread out between some poles before twisting around in the driver¡¯s seat to face me. ¡°We walk from here.¡±


    A few hundred feet down the trails, with electronic sensors and concealed automated weapon my sensors picked up lining the path, we came to a steep hill with a vine shrouded crevasse cutting through it.


    Moments later, I found myself looking over a recreation of a Roman city from ancient times¡­


    Sort of.


    ¡°I don¡¯t remember the ancient Romans having solar panels, satellite dishes, and hydroponic farms. But of course I wasn¡¯t there¡­¡±


    I mean, I could be at some point. Papa Doom didn¡¯t include the plans for his time platform, but I had the math to figure out something he had built so early on in his career. How hard could it be?


    Iara waved at me to join her and her friend as they began walking down a series of terraced steps between cultivated gardens lining the long slope leading down into the valley the city sat in. ¡°We couldn¡¯t swing a fusion core at first, and our families needed electricity, televised football, and plenty of fresh vegetables.


    So the city of Nova Roma, even after most of the people left who had been mentally enslaved by the Mutant Witch Selene to believe they were citizens of the city to deal with centuries of inbreeding over the centuries was once again full.


    With the wives and husbands, the parents, grand parents, and children of the Mutants who had all gone off to live in the promised Mutant homeland of Krakoa.


    Which didn¡¯t allow humans, no matter how they were related to a Mutant. Spouse, parent, or even child.


    Not even the ones who had the X gene, the one main thing that defined a Mutant other than just another Metahuman, if that X gene was inactivated.


    So they had settled down on some free real estate, right outside one of the least used doorways to Krakoa, effectively allowing those Mutants with non Mutant families, which turned out to be most of those who did have families, to commute.


    I almost said ¡®Kinda racist.¡¯ but it had become clear to me that Marrow had definitely drank the cool aide and I didn¡¯t want to set her off, or have who appeared to be Iara¡¯s best friend hate me. At least not anymore then she already did.


    Scarring her in my apartment, and then making her get all giggly at the restaurant had not made a good impression on her.


    Not that I got to meet anyone in the city, the girls took me right to a portal generator that seemed to be made of a conglomeration of various plants, all giving off some intense exotic energy according to my scanners.


    I hesitated as we got close, ¡°Ah. You know I¡¯m not a Mutant right? At least I don¡¯t think I am.¡±


    The two of them looked at each other, then me. Iara, now in her shark form smacked herself on the forehead and sighed. ¡°I didn¡¯t even think to ask. The Brazilians are grabbing anyone with powers and almost everyone in South America with power are mutants.¡±


    Marrow just stared at me with narrowed eyes and a frown, having dropped down in her estimation by being a human with powers. In effect, a mock mutant. ¡°Then what are you?¡±


    ¡°Good question.¡±


    I began counting on my fingers. ¡°Scientific Polymath. Sorcerer. Heir to the throne of a small European Barony. Handsome devil. And the super powered son of a woman who was altered on the genetic level to have super powers that have turned out to be inherited traits. Which I am pretty sure makes me less of a baseline human than Mutants are.¡±


    I bowed. ¡°But even if I can¡¯t enter the promised land, it was a delight to meet you both, and I hope to see more of one of you.¡± I gave Iara a wink. ¡°And I thank you for the rescue, but from here, I think I can handle myself.¡±


    A hidden city, with plenty of high technology anywhere from Shi¡¯ar leftovers to Forge tech, and a population who were used to people with powers.


    I couldn¡¯t ask for a better base of operation for rebuilding my plan to become a multi millionaire super powered playboy inventor.


    It was just going to take me a few more steps than I had planned.

 25 [ Gus ] Men are not prisoners of fate

    25 [ Gus ] Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.


    So, good news. The Fantastic Four didn¡¯t chase us down as we made our way across state lines in stealth mode. While I kept the MODOT invisible and kept using my suit to add to its speed, Lamarr used the thruster on the lowest setting to minimize our energy footprint. But I¡¯m guessing the real reason the Four didn¡¯t catch up to me was because they must have been busy off saving the universe or something equally important.


    After all, they were the Fantastic Four, and it was a day of the week ending in a Y.


    I got a few looks from the beekeepers as we finnaly reached their base and Lamarr piloted the MODAT into a holographic barrier concealing the the cliff side entrance of their hanger. Some money was actually exhanged between the ones who had been betting I would flinch and those who faith in me was proven correct.


    Either that of they just thought it would be too hard to tell if someone in a full faced suit of high tech armor had twitched or not.


    But really, like I would build a suit that couldn¡¯t see through a Hologram. Which made me wonder¡­ what about all the things my tech wouldn¡¯t pick up on?


    I needed to include magic options as well, but why not use everything available to me?


    I focused and slowly began to expand a bubble of force around me, a weak one that just pushed up against the interior of the shipping container that constituted the cabin of the MODOT and gave way with the motions of the AIMless around me, allowing me to monitor their positions without having to see them.


    A sharp motion from Lamarr apparant second in command, the one who put his jacket over her shoulder, as he reached out to flip a switch on the controls in front of her to turn on some headlights ended up bursting the weak bubble. But still, my experiment served as a proof of concept for detecting solid, but unseen, objects around me.


    While the floor of the hanger had been cut fairly smoothly, the walls and ceiling were more rough cut, literally, the whole place looked like it had only recently been dug out with minimal effort for aesthetics while focusing on functionality. Par for the course for this group.


    As the transport settled down, I risked a glance at Lamarr¡¯s chest to read the name Turing on her friend¡¯s jacket.


    I glanced up to find the woman in question giving me a suspicious look, ¡°Did you do something?¡±


    What the hell¡­ I had my mask on. Do women have special senses for when guys are looking at them?


    ¡°What do you mean?¡±


    She looked down in thought and bit the side of her lip as she waved one of her hands around in front of her, ¡°Something brushed up against the back of my head and kinda¡­ stuck to it for a moment¡­¡±


    Oh. ¡°Scorpion senses I¡¯m guessing? I threw out a sort of force radar to check for unseen hitchhikers.¡±


    Lamarr blinked, then her eyes lit up. ¡°I didn¡¯t know Dr Storm could do that, or is that something that you can do that she can¡¯t.¡±


    I had to stop myself from openly telling someone for which I had no real reason to trust all about the limits of my powers. Which I figured were teenage hormones urging me on to try to impress a pretty girl. ¡°I would imagine she has come up with many uses for her powers over the last decade or so that I haven¡¯t thought of yet. Some of which neither of us may be actually useful, or workable. ¡±


    The woman looked a little frustrated by my nonanswer, ¡°You really lucked out, all my powers let me do is throw down with mid level brute force metas. But then even you augmented what you can do with a suit, the same as me.¡±


    Turing coughed, in an exuberantly fake way, into his fist. ¡°Girl, maybe shower first. Then flirt with the high and mighty Apex.¡±


    Lamarr''s face flushed with anger as much as embarrassment as she glared at her friend, then turned to look at me. ¡°Turding will show you to a room while I cycle my armor down, we can meet up later for dinner.¡± Turing gave her a thumbs up, which made her roll her eyes. ¡°Just to eat, nothing¡­¡± She shook her head. ¡°I got to go.¡±


    Blushing she climbed into her armor and marched out the open bay door of the MODOT while Turing stood beside watching her climb down with a smile. ¡°She¡¯s in charge of us. She always has been, so she can¡¯t exactly date anyone in the group. While you¡¯re an outsider. But if you hurt her¡­¡± He grimaced.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.


    ¡°Well I can¡¯t credibly threaten to beat you up, but I have an entire legion at my beck and call that will mock your name all over the internet. There would be videos made to destroy whatever reputation you¡¯re trying to build.¡° He nodded to himself more than me in grim satisfaction. ¡°There would be comical sound effects.¡±


    I raised my hands in surrender. ¡°I¡¯m a guy, if something happens with me and her, it is inevitable that I will screw things up somehow, and often, but never out of malice.¡±


    He narrowed his eyes at me, then shrugged. ¡°Yeah. I guess that¡¯s the most anyone can hope for. Now let¡¯s find you somewhere to¡­ what? Change out of your armor? Nap? Eat? Not without my girl, you got a date. A trip to the bathroom?¡±


    I stopped for a moment halfway down the rolling cart with three steps some beekeepers had rolled up to the MODOT. ¡°I think the last, now that you mentioned it.¡±


    The bathroom fixtures looked to have been salvaged from an industrial site but had metal panels bolted onto the doors of the stalls to cover up the peek a boo gaps so common in the US. I had to use the stall since they hadn¡¯t bothered to install any urinals, which would have been more suited to my current needs.


    Turing, waiting near the open doorway of the storage container standing off to the side of a wide, rough cut tunnel leading out of the hanger kept up a constant patter of small talk as he waited for me. Not leaving me alone for even a moment to wander around unsupervised.


    ¡°Currie said we should just start off with unisex bathrooms, and all the boss said was ¡®Yeah, that sounds like a lot less work than setting two sets or everywhere. Currie also put up the privacy panels, but it was another two days before Lamarr found out that Currie had put together a team and raided a low income high school to strip out their bathrooms so that they would have to install all new fixtures before the end of the summer break. AIM had brewed that girl up in a tube and she was supposed to develop into a supergenius but instead, it''s more like she just thinks differently, than is book smart. But man does she get stuff done. Just not in the way anyone expects her to.¡±


    As I set down my gauntlets on the side of the sink I considered the idea of retractable gloves as I washed my hands. It was either that or try to go with cold metal fingertips.


    Big form fitting suits of armor made going to the bathroom inconvenient unless you wanted tubes up every hole down below, who would have guessed?


    Tilting my head up to put Turing reflection in my line of sight, without looking directly at him, I began pushing for more information. ¡°So just how many people do you have here?¡±


    He grinned. ¡°Well that all depends on what you count as people. Between alien hybrids, metas, bioforms, uplifts, robots, digitals, and transdimensionals we got plenty of various sentients. As well as semi sentiants and a few beings I consider friends without really being able to fully classify them.¡±


    I dried off my hands in a device that dehydrated the water coating my skin, while somehow still leaving them feeling damp compared to using an eco unfriendly sheet of paper. ¡°Very informative.¡± I left the part of it not being what I asked unsaid.


    Turing grinned at me again, then nodded off into the distance. ¡°So¡­ I¡¯m guessing Lamarr is freaking out over what she''s going to wear when she sits down to eat something with you. And I¡¯m guessing that is going to take some time... Want to see our giant robots?¡±


    ¡°Hell yeah.¡±


    Out of date, crudely repaired, and running a gambit of anywhere from goofy looking Kirby looking sixties designs to overly complex Liefeld inspired nineties designs.


    But all of it was cool as hell.


    The part of the base Turing let me to, in a roundabout way obviously circumventing things he didn¡¯t want me to see, was older than the hanger with smooth walls covered in painted, if worn, panels, and filled with portable power systems and diagnostic machines that looked to have been readapted from junkyards.


    The names or the bots, who built them, how well they performed going toe to toe with various famous and long forgotten heroes¡­ all of that information was in my head thanks to Daddy dearest.


    Walking around I identified each robot out load, much to the delight of the gaggle of AIMless technicians who had been down here doing various work on restoring the bots to functionality, and I had to restrain myself from joining them by digging in elbows deep to a pile of Doombot¡¯s innards.


    Instead, I froze in place as I recognized a particular broken looking stack of shattered parts.


    ¡°The Doomsday Man. Kree technology. It bonded to my brother in law, against his will, and severed all four of his limbs to better use him to replace something that had been damaged in it.¡± I turned and locked eyes with Turing. ¡°I won¡¯t even ask why you have it, but how did you get it?¡±


    Turing shrugged. ¡°Government auction. Currie got our hackers to transfer a bunch of forgotten stuff to the sell list somehow. We did utterly gut all the control mechanisms, but it¡¯s Kree tech, so we figured we could learn or repurpose something from it.¡±


    I stared at him. ¡°You know how this works. You have this, and we''re going to drag Korman into your group. It¡¯s pretty much guaranteed that he would somehow end up bonded to it again, go mad, and get into a fight with some superhero, or me, after tearing his way through a bunch of bystanders, most likely your own people.¡±


    The man started to object, then paused, frozen in place with one finger upraised before he slowly lowered it as he thought it over. ¡°Yeah, I can see it now. That is exactly how it would happen. I¡¯ll get my guys to throw it into an atomic furnace.¡±


    ¡°No, not good enough with Kree tech. Something inimical would survive.¡± Holding up my hand with my fingers outstretched, I slowly, and overdramaticly closed my hand into a fist as I crushed the remains of the Doomsday man into several separate spheres with the sound of torchered metal.


    ¡°You said we had some time. Take me to a lab. We¡¯re sending this crap to a few dozen different locations in the negative zone.¡±


    I can¡¯t stop everything that will come at my family, not now after have become part of my story, but I can at least stop any obvious red flags as they pop up.


    And show off just what all I could do with the support of the AIMless.

 25.5 ]G series side story[ Words can sting, silence breaks the heart.

    25.5 ]G series side story[ Words can sting, silence breaks the heart.


    The bartender held up the battered and stained handset an old landline phone. ¡°We got a Gargan here? Call for you from a guy named Kormac.¡±


    Now that was a name I hadn¡¯t heard in a while, not since the days when I had first worked for AIM.


    I hesitantly glanced around the bar with an uninterested look on my face as if looking to see who this Gargan guy was, before slipping off the bar stool to put some cover between me and the front window of the bar. No need to make it easy for a sniper to take me out.


    Lifting one finger to get the attention of the older man behind the bar, I gave him a nod as he looked over at me. ¡°It''s for me, put the phone on the end of the bar.¡±


    The older man gave me an odd look, then shrugged. ¡°Okay. Sure.¡± Tugging some phone cord free he put the main body of the landline phone, one old enough to have an actual dial, on the end of the bar over where it wrapped around a corner away from the front door.


    I picked up the handset. ¡°Whoever this is, you got five seconds to convince me to stay on the line before I¡¯m gone.¡±


    A familiar somewhat shrill voice answered me. ¡°I¡¯ll keep it short then, do you have a daughter? About eighteen. ¡±


    Pulling the headset away from my face far enough to give it a look of disbelief, I finally asked.


    ¡°...what!¡±


    ¡°Young woman, your eyes, looks a lot like your mother¡¯s high school graduation photo I found online. Dresses up in a battle suit with a giant weaponized scorpion tail and a bug with pincers crest on the chest. Calls herself Deathstalker. If she isn¡¯t your kid then she¡¯s stealing your shtick if not your name.¡±


    I stumbled back a step from the bar. ¡°...What?¡±


    ¡°Look Gargan, she affiliated with AIM to some extent or another, and her age is right for when we worked with them.¡±


    There had been that one scientist who showed up at my room wearing lingerie under her lab coat and waving around a six pack of long necks, but¡­ ¡°I wore protection!¡±


    Kormac sighed. ¡°Jesus man. Even if you hadn¡¯t gotten together with any of them, it¡¯s Aim, all they would need is a drop of your blood and a free lab. And I know Captain Marvel bloodied her knuckles on both of our faces more than once.¡±


    She looks like my mom... Taking a few deep breaths, I pulled myself together enough to think.


    I had been a private eye at one time, despite everything else I had gone through, I knew how to think, to investigate. I needed facts here. ¡°Where are you? We have to talk. In person.¡±


    Kormac sighed. ¡°I got a kid Gargan. A little girl. And her mother could go toe to toe with the Hulk. Not win mind you, but she could make him work for it. If you show up ready to go all Norman Osborn on this, at the very least she will put you on or into the ground bleeding from every orifice, if not in literal pieces all over my front lawn. Whatever you need to know, I will tell you right now. Full disclosure. But. Do not show up at my house.¡±


    I let out a huff as I rubbed my hand down my face. ¡°Fine. Tell me what you know.¡±


    ¡°Okay Mac. She showed up here looking to kidnap my kid who is as smart as I am.¡± I rolled my eyes. Kerwin always did have an overinflated ego. ¡°If not smarter. Me and my wife had her tested for advanced placement in a top school before we decided to home school her instead for a few years but your possible kid is next generation AIM. As in her group are all the kids of people who belonged to AIM and she wanted to recruit my daughter by force and bring me and the wife along for the ride.¡±The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    His voice seemed to smooth out like he wanted to keep me calm. ¡°But¡­ Me, my wife, and her brother got them to change their minds and they left. Peacefully. Neither of our girls were even hurt.¡±


    Kormac sighed. ¡°I called you out of courtesy since we had worked together in the past Gargan. But they didn¡¯t say where they were going, and I didn¡¯t ask. I also wasn¡¯t totally against getting involved with her and her people. My kid is going to need peers on that side of things as she grows up. But I haven¡¯t heard back from them yet. How do you¡­ hang on Mac.¡±


    Kormac¡¯s voice changed to something softer, and a lot more kinder, than anything I had ever heard from him before. ¡°Sweetness, I¡¯m on the phone¡­ With an old friend. Yes, the father of the pretty lady your uncle went with, and you shouldn¡¯t volunteer that you listened in on a private conversation that easily.¡±


    ¡°Conceal the sources of your information, revelations should be reserved for tactical distractions.¡±


    I stopped breathing. ¡°Kerwin¡­ tell me all about this guy that ran off with my daughter.¡±


    My old partner made one of those err sounds. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have described it like that. I¡¯m sure it¡¯s entirely innocent, or at least just professional. The boy is looking to make a difference around this part of the world and having a chapter of AIM backing him up would help with that. But then, they are about the same age¡­ Hang on a moment.¡±


    After a moment Kormac spoke up again. ¡°Yeah, sorry old man. But my wife says they were, and I''m quoting here. ¡®Giving each other hot and heavy looks.¡¯ But I swear he seems like a nice kid. Smart. Good lineage. Powers on par with my lovely wife.¡±


    I could feel myself getting upset as the wooden front portion of the bar cracked under my hand. I whispered to the bartender. ¡°I¡¯m good for it. Enough to replace the whole thing. Cash.¡±


    ¡°Who the hell is your wife? And the guy who is¡­ with my possible daughter.¡±


    Kerwin¡¯s voice went muffled as if he was covering his phone with his hand, but I could hear him talking to someone¡­ ¡°Honey? Alright then.¡±


    ¡°She is the daughter of Doctor Doom, and Dr. Susan Storm, the Invisible Woman. With all of Doom''s intelligence and ruthlessness, as well as all her mother¡¯s powers. Her brother is the same, although he seems more flamboyant, and he might be a nicer person... Ow. Joking dear.¡±


    Doom and¡­


    ¡°I will never show up at your house without a direct invitation from your wife, or calling ahead to confirm her permission and that she is aware that I will be there.¡±


    Kerwin laughed. ¡°That¡¯s probably for the best¡­ So if and when I hear from her or Gus, the brother, do you want to find out more about her? To get in contact?¡±


    I took in a deep breath. ¡°I¡­ it doesn''t matter what I want. I am not a good person for someone to have in their life. I¡¯m¡­ mad, bad, and dangerous to know. Don¡¯t contact me again, you got a family. But give the girl this email.¡± I rattled off one of the easy to remember throwaways I had set up. ¡°If she is my kid, or want to find out for sure, or if she has any other reason that she wants to get in contact with me, I will leave it all up to her if she thinks it¡¯s worth the risks.¡±


    Letting out a sigh, I added. ¡°But you can tell her if she¡¯s mine, I would risk anything to know her, and even if she isn¡¯t my kid, she has my support and full permission to be a tribute Scorpion.¡±


    Hanging up, I peeled off several thousand in hundreds out of the roll from my pocket onto the bar. ¡°That should cover the damage, and give me a tall shot of the best whiskey you have.¡±


    Sitting down, I held up my glass in a silent toast to a great night from¡­ sixteen years back and threw back a few hundred dollars worth of premium Scottish whiskey.


    ¡°God dam Kormac is whipped¡­ and I might be someone¡¯s dad.¡±


    I decided that if I did have a daughter, even if she didn¡¯t want anything to do with me. I would be meeting this Gus guy and having a long talk with him.


    Looking at the dregs of my drink, I realized I was more afraid of meeting this girl, whoever she might be, than fighting Spider-man again along with every Avenger there had ever been, all at once.

 26 [ Iris ] Democracy in action

    26 [ Iris ] Democracy in action


    So points for Junior, Victor Von Doom had been selected by Doom and approved of by the Latvian government as his successor and was almost crowned before his nature as a clone was revealed. His plans once again in tatters Big Daddy reverted to his default state and tried to defeat the Fantastic Four by ordering Victor the Second to kill them.


    Instead, my oldest brother had denounced Doom as a villain and turned on him, an act for which Von Doom senior had to all evidence killed him.


    But years later Doom had also declared that whichever of his children got to Latvian first had the most claim to the title of Baron and rulership of the country, for as long as they could hold it.


    Standing just inside the entrance of Castle Doomstadt as he waited for me to check on my appearance one last time in a large mirror hanging in front of some of the castle¡¯s hidden defenses, Junior pointed out that ¡°I was in fact, here first. Asleep, perhaps even comatose, but still here before your arrival my dear sweet sister.¡±


    I smiled to myself as I gave my green fishnet veil one last tug. It just didn¡¯t seem to sit right, but it wasn¡¯t like I was used to wearing stuff like that. ¡°I¡¯m not going to argue with you on that Vic...tor.¡± I had agreed to call him by his real name, aside from when I actually wanted to annoy him. ¡°But, Poppop¡¯s terms were that you only got to be Baron if you claimed it, and then hung on to it. I called dibs first, and unless you¡¯re ready to challenge me for it, for real, twice in one day we agreed to let the government decide.¡±


    He made a ¡®Harumph¡¯ sound. ¡°A Doom should not be denied by lesser men.¡±


    As I turned to make my way down to the front gates, I gave him an eye roll he stood across the hall from me, his arms crossed and a sullen look on his face.


    Victor had tried on the deep green suit which had been made for his awakening, but the green made his peach colored skin look¡­ odd. Plus the suit was straining to fit on him. It seemed that absorbing even a faction of the Thing¡¯s power had added to his size and after adjusting to being out of his tube in which he had apparently sagged a bit over his years of sleep, he had ended up being tall enough that I barely stood higher than his shoulders.


    A fact that he only seemed to notice with a pleased smile earlier on when I had stood next to him as he looked at himself in the full sized mirror in the dressing room to examine his dark grey suit, black shirt, and doom green tie with the baronial crest stitched into it in a matching color.


    The darker colored suit, and being out of the tube for an hour or so, had made his skin look more of a light terra cotta color than peach. An improvement he had thanks me for.


    I had told him ¡°You can trust me on these things Victor, after all, the last thing I want is for you to embarrass me in public. Us colored people have to stick together.¡±


    I had seen his eyes narrow a bit in confusion. I had forgotten that he was a local boy, not an American.


    United, we stepped outside the castle and made our way across the bridge over the Doommoat to the waiting crowd of abruptly gathered dignitaries, sulking SHEILD agents, and the crowd of concerned townspeople.


    All of them were awaiting us in silence with looks of confusion at the sight of the man walking along beside me before a few of the older people slowly began to realize who he was.


    Someone in the back spoke loudly enough to be heard across the silence. ¡°The clone, he lives¡­¡±


    Reaching the end of the bridge, I lifted my hand to get everyone¡¯s attention and then lifted my veil up to show that I was holding nothing back, the only reason I had put on the goofy looking thing. ¡°Listen up, me and my sibling were made in a machine from Doom¡¯s flesh and blood.¡± Well, by his semen actually. I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. ¡°The same as Victor was, only without mixing anything of Doom¡¯s with that of a mother.¡±The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.


    Turning halfway around, I reached back to Victor and then frowned at him as I wiggled my hand in a little circle, beckoning him to take it. Hissing under my breath, I told him to ¡°Go with it.¡±


    Reluctantly he took my hand and I tugged him forward to stand beside me before turning to the crowd with a broad smile. ¡°I claim him as my brother and firstborn of my generation.¡± Victor¡¯s hand almost seemed to begin to pull away from mine before I clamped down on it, but then he tightened his grip on mine.


    I held up my other hand, with my index finger raised. ¡°But he is not the rightful heir just for being firstborn or at least the firstborn male.¡±


    My eldest brother glared.


    ¡°Victor Von Doom, senior, made his wishes to us clear. Whoever could claim the title of Baron, and hold it against all others was heir to the title, the throne, and rulership of Latvia¡­¡±


    I pulled my hand free from Victor''s and crossed my arms. ¡°But Doom is gone. Dead or missing¡­ Don¡¯t know, don¡¯t care. The title is mine and will always be mine, it might get passed back and forth every now and then, but ultimately it will always return to me until I decide I¡¯m done with it. And we, the Dooms, will also hang onto the Castle unless someone wants to fight us for it?¡±


    Glancing around as I ground my fist into my palm, I kind of hoped someone would give it a try. But even the SHEILD guys just looked away and Victor snorted beside before whispering ¡°My patience runs thin, Iris. Get on with it.¡±


    I rolled my eyes. Men. Always in a hurry to finish. ¡°But as far as rulership of Latvia goes, the people of Latvia should have their say.¡±


    Then I turned to Victor and waved him forward with both hands, a nod, and a smile.


    Stepping forward, he lowered his head as he tapped his fist against his lips for a moment before lifting his head to look around the crowd.


    ¡°Once, the people of Latvia tested my character, my intelligence, and my education¡­ and found me worthy to be your monarch. I am asking you to do so again. My father¡­¡± He grimaced. ¡°For all his flaws and tyranny ruled this country well. Making it stronger, more prosperous¡­ and independent of ¡®foreign¡¯ powers.¡± He tilted his head ever so slightly in my direction.


    You know, in the direction of the girl who spoke with an American accent.


    Oh, you little shit¡­


    Raising his hands held closely together in front of him, he looked directly into the heart of the crowd, and the array of cell phones held up broadcasting him live all over the internet.


    ¡°I swear to you I will do the same. Without any of my father¡¯s distractions with petty rivalries, or attempts at vainglorious world conquest.¡± He swept his hands outwards. ¡°Latvia and its people will be my only concerns, and I will give everything I have as a ruler to protect and guide it into a brighter future.¡±


    Finally, he set one arm behind him, and one in front as he bowed ever so slightly. A Doom, humbling himself before the masses. ¡°Choose me once again as your monarch, as your King, and I will not fail you.¡±


    Raising his head, he turned to me, nodded, and swept his hands forward to beckon me to make my own speech.


    Dam. Big Bro is good. But then he had a lot more time out of his birth vat than I did. I leaned forward to whisper to him. ¡°King huh? I guess that means you¡¯ve given up on claiming the title of Baron from me.


    He got a sour look on his face.


    Victor has forgotten something, or never really understood it. I really don¡¯t care about Latvia. Ruling it, looking out for it, or anything else of the sort.


    I¡¯m mean, sure, I don¡¯t want to screw them over. But honestly, Victor might be a better choice in running a country. For one, he does care.


    He chose to turn on our father rather than serve him in Big Papa¡¯s insanity over beating the Four. He had faced his test and paid the price.


    But no one values anything that comes too easily. If he wants the throne, I will make him earn it.


    ¡°Hi. I¡¯m Baron Iris Von Doom and if you want me to rule over you as Baron. I¡¯ll do it. If you want me to have some sort of executive power in a multibranched form of government, I¡¯ll do that too. A simple figurehead monarch? I¡¯m up for it. I¡¯ll even give Victor hear a job since he cares about you as much as I do, maybe as my secretary or something?¡±


    I gave him a wink as his face twisted up in his efforts to keep from verbally tearing a new one. A lot of the older people in the crowd looked the same, but some of the younger ones, especially the girls, looked amused.


    Holding my hands out towards the crowd, I smiled. ¡°The important thing is¡­ I need you to choose. All of you. Not just the people who had held on to power for all these years. Not their families, or the other people with all the wealth. Everyone not only will their say, but I demand they make a choice.¡±


    I held my hand up my fist with the other on my hip. ¡°Your future, right this moment, is in your hands. Make a choice and live with it. So says Doom!¡±


    Hopefully, I will get enough support to keep Victor from getting too smug about winning, and I will not surrender the title of Baron to him, or give up the master suite. My god the bathroom Vic Senior had set up for himself, alabaster and gold everywhere. But this wasn''t a Star Wars prequel, there was no way they were going to put a fifteen year old girl in charge of their country.


    Right?

 27 [ Fenris ] Women always try to ruin everything.

    27 [ Fenris ] Women always try to ruin everything.


    So there I was with the brothers Korchei, ready to throw down with the <strong style="color: rgba(14, 16, 26, 1); background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">Fantastic Four, plus one.


    That one being the She-Hulk, but then of course Reed Richards just had to interrupt the good part with all the talking.


    Holding up his huge stretched out hand, he stepped in front of the rest of the heroes. ¡°We don¡¯t need to fight, I detected the single from your translocation on our way to Latveria, and we just have some questions.¡±


    The Thing took a few steps forward, even as he sighed. I can understand that. The man loves a good fight as much as I do, but he has been doing this for a long time. Getting into it with yet another young punk, knowing that even if he wins, the punches will still hurt, and the soreness from the bruises has been taking longer and longer to go away as he aged.


    Still, he steps up. That¡¯s what heroes do.


    ¡°Don¡¯t bother Stretch. Palookas like him only speak one language.¡±


    Then someone else speaks up. For a moment I thought it was She-Hulk as it was a woman¡¯s voice and the giant green woman was coming up behind the two men raising her hand to say something.


    But it was not her that interrupted, instead an almost tiny figure walked around the towering green woman, the stretched out scientist, and the sheer bulk of the Thing as the Torch circled in the air above us.


    Susan Richards looked up the steps at me, right into my eyes, and I saw the pain of a mother, of a woman¡­ feeling whatever someone feels when their very identity has been treated like a toy.


    Doom. I¡¯m glad for what you did, it gave me another chance to live, but as for how you did it?


    I have no respect for you, in any shape, way, or form.


    Dropping my fists down, I slowly walked down the steps until I stopped and flopped down backwards onto my butt, leaving my face level with her.


    With a sigh, I removed my black Blood Iron mask and looked at her with my own face.


    ¡°I am so sorry that this happened¡­ that this was done to you. But I will not apologize for my existence, and I don¡¯t think it would be right for anyone to ask little Apex to do so either.¡±


    Her eyes watered. ¡°Is it true? Is he mine¡­ and¡­¡±


    I held my hands out toward her, I think almost pleadingly, and Grimm threw out his hand to stop Richards from moving forward at us to do who knows what. I doubt even he knows.


    What do you do, what do you feel when your greatest enemy, your bitter rival, had made a child in a tube with your wife¡¯s stolen DNA along with his own?


    Walters stepped up beside the invisible woman, her green fist clenched. ¡°Answer her.¡±


    I looked down and raised my hands to grip the sides of my head as my men stirred on the steps above me. ¡°I don¡¯t know. I only know he made me from Titania. But the others¡­¡± I looked up at the two women. ¡°They almost have to be¡­ they would have to have come from exactly who would think Doom would have used.¡±


    Slowly standing, I looked down at the two women. ¡°They are also my brothers and sisters, my younger brothers and sisters. Whatever you intend for them¡­¡± I set my mask onto my face with an audible snap, as the speakers built into the mask played a recording of a dramatic hissing sound.


    ¡°I dare you to try on Iron Tsar first.¡±


    There, is a Doom speaking in the second person. They know what that means.


    No argueing, no discussion. The line is drawn.


    I stand between them, and whatever plans they have for my family. Doom himself not included.


    The Thing tensed up while Richards looked to his wife. She-Hulk faced me, half ready to fight, but looking all shook up and unbalanced. Definitely not in any sort of mental shape for a fight.


    The Invisible Woman set her foot on the first step, then the next as she slowly walked up to stand right in front of me.


    Then she reached out to take my right hand that I had raised into a fist in both of hers. Her tiny little hands were warm, but both of them together could barely cover my knuckles.


    ¡°I will tell him he is family. And that while I can barely bear the idea of how he came to be, I will not blame him for existing, and I welcome the chance to meet him.¡±


    She squeezed my hands as best she could, ¡°And I hope the woman who you were made from welcomes you as family as well.¡±


    Sighing, I let my head drop as I cleared my throat from all the moisture in the air down here. Yes, that¡¯s the reason I feel something deep in my throat making it hard to breathe.  ¡°I still want to fight all of you. But I don¡¯t think you need to deal with that right now.¡±


    Susan Richards gave me a sad smile. ¡°Of course, you want to fight. I¡¯ve met Titania.¡± Stepping away from me, she turned her back and began walking the rest of the way down the stairs. ¡°Jen, let¡¯s get something to drink while the boys get in their cardio. This is his debut.¡±


    I beamed at her. Apex¡¯s mother gets it. Such a nice woman.


    Also, did not want to fight her while she was upset. The woman once mentioned to Doom that she could pop all of his armor right off of his body. I imagine she knew the implication that she could just as easily blow the flesh off of the man¡¯s bones.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    Not mine, I have powers, but still¡­ She could make a little tiny invisible bubble of force appear in my aorta or a blood vessel in my brain. I don¡¯t think either would kill me, or even do me any permanent harm, but it would suck. Ha.


    She-Hulk looked back and forth between Sue Richards and me, before throwing up her hands and giving me a questioning look. ¡°That girl in Latvaria? Is she really mine?¡±


    I threw my hands out to the side and shrugged. ¡°I doubt Victor Von Doom would have made a kid with your cousin.¡± Then I struck up a boxer¡¯s pose. ¡°Banner¡¯s DNA is a bit unstable.¡±


    Walters used the word ¡°Mine¡±, so at least the woman is considering laying claim to my sister. I approve of that and will try not to send her to meet Iris with bruises on her face.


    She glared at me, then turned and walked away. I took a half step after and yelled, ¡°Hey!¡± but she just threw up both of her hands to wave me away from over her shoulders. ¡°No. I am not punching Mary¡¯s kid until I talk to her. Not happening.¡±


    Then it was me, the Brothers Korchei, Mr. Fantastic, the Thing, and the Human torch floating in the air above as we all waited around not looking at each other as the She-Hulk hustled to catch up with the Invisible Woman.


    Then the Thing turned around, looked at me, and shrugged. ¡°Well, I don¡¯t have a problem hitting you. It¡¯s clobbering time!¡± Then he rushed up the steps at me.


    Right into a tangle of steel rebar and cement from the steps exploding upwards from under his feet as I used the Magnetic field produced from the Magneto power simulators still strapped onto my arms to rip up all the metal below me.


    The Thing¡¯s feet got caught up in the twisted steel rods and he fell over the sheer bulk of the broken steps onto his knees, allowing me to leap down the steps to plant a full falcon punch right into his face.


    ¡°HA! You got that right comrade!¡±


    Above me, the Torch threw a wave of flames into the pulse of frozen water pellets fired at him from Chekov in the Elbrus suit, as Mr Fantastic stretched himself out to catch the missiles being fired at their Fantastic car by Pavel just before he began racing at high speed down the steps in the Smerch armor to take out the scientist''s feet while he was still off balance.


    ¡°Oh no you don¡¯t¡± Only to have his ankle caught by the Thing as Pavel ran past us, even as Grimm and me tumbled down the steps,


    The stone skinned man had somehow reached out to catch my minion even as the two of us were rolling down the steps punching at each other. I guess experience counts. That and Pavel sucks at fighting.


    Grabbing ahold of Thing¡¯s right lower leg as he lay tangled up with the Smerch armor, I got to my feet and began to first drag, then spin the Thing around me in the air by the ankle. I was pretty sure he was just a slight bit stronger than me, but I was plenty strong enough to get his sheer weight into the air, and once spinning him around I thought it would be too hard for Grimm to bend up to hit me before I sent him flying back into the lobby of the Aegis Hotel.


    After all, the place was already wrecked, so why damage any of the other places around here? Like the cafe that the Invisible Woman and She-Hulk were sitting at getting coffee poured for them. I didn¡¯t want to interrupt two of my sibling bio-mom¡¯s drinks, and by sending Grimm flying into the hotel I might even get to hit Lady Deathstrike.


    Helping other men meet and hit on women. That¡¯s what Bros do. Ha!


    But the Thing had never let go of Pavel, who was now spinning around in the air around me even further out, still gripped by Grimm at the ankle.


    At least until the Thing swung Pavel around to smack me with the Smerch Armor. Knocking me off my feet and sending all three of us in different directions as explosions and bursts of flames indicated that Richards and Storm were fighting the other three brothers up at the top of the stairs.


    Stairs which now had the contents of a wheeled laundry baskets, dining cart, and a large sack spilling down in a wild tumble of high tech weapons and gadgets.


    ¡°My stuff!¡±


    I stood up and faced down Grimm who was brushing some dust off of his shoulders. Pointing at him, I shouted. ¡°You will pay for this old man. So says IRON TSAR!¡±


    Oops. He looked a little hurt at the old man comment, then pissed off as he beckoned me at him with one hand. ¡°Old¡­ Man? Bring it baby Doom.¡±


    Best day ever! Ha!


    The rest of the fight does not go so well, me and Grimm have a great time trying to beat the crap out of each other, but in meer moments Richards does something with a quickly assembled device which makes all the brother¡¯s half melted powered armor seize up, and then I take a blast of flames from behind me.


    I took a step back from the Thing to glare at Storm who gave me a bemused look. ¡°What the heck? Reed, something stopped my flames?¡±


    I held my hand up flat at Grimm, who stopped in surprise from where he had been stepping up to grab at me. ¡°Back in one moment old timer.¡± He grumbled but waited as I walked up to stand below Storm with one finger raised and waving in the air. ¡°Bad! Bad Hero! If my armor sensed enough heat to activate to block your flames, then you were going too hot for someone making their debut. You had no way of knowing how much little or how much fire could hurt me. What if I burned like a normal guy? You could have killed me.¡±


    Grimm sounded off behind me. ¡°He¡¯s got you there hot head.¡±


    Storm began to sputter out his protests, but just then the ping of a timer went off in my mask. Looking around I could see my men, somehow now moving again, quietly gathering up a few handfuls of my stolen goods.


    Ah well. Know when to fold them, hold them, walk away, and to run.


    I turned and bowed to the Thing. ¡°Alas, sweet prince I must bid you a do.¡± And yes I meant to pronounce it like that. Can¡¯t sound tough when you¡¯re all erute. ¡°We can play another time, but my guys probably all have second degree burns because someone thought shooting fire at guys in metal suits was fair¡­¡± I shot a glare at the Human Torch who threw his hands out in protest. ¡°But now we must go.¡±


    The Ouroboros spell circle I had left various LMDs, Strange¡¯s for one, finishing with several hundred cans of drab Soviet industrial spray paint I had found in the base wasn¡¯t quite up to teleport people to any destination on Earth and beyond, not yet, not without the adamantium I needed to make miles of deeply cut inscriptions in stone in a practical amount of time. But it was up to teleporting a few people with linked up sigels carved into the interior of their armor to it.


    With magic, which Richards would not be able to track.


    I laughed, ¡°Ha!¡± as the Thing faded from my sight even as he tried to reach out to grab me and the five of us found ourselves standing between the mouth and tail of my great spell.


    Helping the brothers out of their armor, Chekov opened the side panel on the still intact leg of his suit and then held up the bag holding Lady Deathstrike''s frozen severed hand with all five of my adamantium claws, or rather chisels, on it.


    Even though I had lost most of the rest of the things I had gathered up from the assassin cartel, I still had the very thing I had gone there for and had left the Four to clean up the mess.


    I love it when a plan comes together. Iron Tsar 1, Fantstic Four 0.


    Ha!

 28 [Horus] Kingdom come

    28 [Horus] Kingdom come


    As I stood there looking at the vast underground achieve filled with at least some of the wisdom of the ages, with all of it preserved by magic to protect it from age, dust, and vermin, two things happened.


    First, I began to suspect someone had emptied out the library of Alexandria before it burned, and second¡­


    Someone destroyed one of my crystallized duplicates.


    Or it had something done to it to remove the ward I had carved into it, but in either case, I knew someone was here, and had taken down one of my enchanted servants.


    The first thing I did in reaction was to transform into a cracking blue version of myself that was made of pure electricity. Then I reached out with my energy senses, finding dozens of shielded electronic devices inside the hidden city of Z¡¯Gambo where none had been before.


    Two of the electronic signals were large and complex enough that they had to be vehicles, while several were scattering then leapfrogging each other as they moved away from their transports, and yet other smaller ones were spreading out in every direction.


    I figured the ones moving together were troops of some kind, while the others... drones perhaps?


    Becoming solid once more I tapped on one of the arrays of runes I had etched into my Unstable molecular fiber armor. With my eyes now linked to the runes marked on either side of my diamond minions, I could begin to direct them to positions from which they could both observe and conceal themselves.


    Each one of them represented a good twenty minutes of my personal time, so I wasn¡¯t going to just let them keep working on gathering up the bones of the former inhabitants of the hidden land while someone picked them off one by one.


    Peeping through number seven¡¯s eyes, I swore.


    While each of the intruders wore a different mask, their matching uniforms in red and gold, the spears, and not too crude, but their chests clearly marked who had come for me.


    The Dora Milaje¡­


    Switching back to my less vulnerable electrical form, my voice crackled and popped like an old record player as I swore. ¡°God Dammit¡­¡±


    What the hell happened to Wakanda being hidden isolationists? I was supposed to be able to pull off faking a Wakandan accent and letting people draw their own conclusions for years, or at least months before any of those rabid xenophobes did anything regarding the world outside their sealed borders.


    But nope, right after the very first thing I try to accomplish in Africa I get what looks like two squads of four women each, plus whoever was still on the quid jets done up in Wakandan colors¡­


    And now yet another jet arrived with four more of them coming out of it escorting¡­


    Shuri?


    The Black Panther¡¯s younger sister, but in some sort of almost mystical looking black and blue uniform, with mismatched shoulder guards, and a goofy looking headdress that involved six inch long tusks hanging from it like earrings.


    Her hair was done up in a dozen or so long braids, all of which were wrapped up in white strips along with more of the same wrapped around both of her forearms.


    ¡­and then she just exploded into a cloud of blackbirds that began to rapidly fly off in all directions.


    I guess some things happened over these last six years since Doom had last updated the information that had been loaded into my head by my creche.


    Surprise, surprise. But worst yet, birds aren''t electronic. I can¡¯t track their energy.


    But I can track the electronics of one of the drones flying deep into the central hall of the city, and flying up to meet it in the form of neutrinos before turning back into flesh and blood I was able to snatch the nearly invisible sparrow sized smooth virbranium ball out of the air.


    ¡°Please inform Princess Shuri that if her intentions are peaceful, I will welcome her presence in my city in the main hall at the center of this building. If her intentions are otherwise¡­¡±


    A burst of intense electromagnetic energy pumped into the drone quickly made it begin to spark and emit smoke, but I continued pumping in rapidly varying amounts of volts and currants until I felt the last of the electrical activity in the device die out.


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    I admit, I toned down on the Wakandan accent while I had said all of that, I had never intended to outright claim to be one of them, just to imply it, but then again I didn¡¯t want to drop it entirely. What was I else was I going to do, use my old Mid West American accent? I want to be seen as an African, but without favoring any one nation here over another.


    But to be seen as a renegade, or perhaps exiled Wakandan? That would have worked¡­ on anyone other than a Wakandan.


    Rising up from the floor above one again in the pale blue form of nutritious brought me into the sunlit grand hall beneath its still intact domed ceilings, I found eight of the Dora Milaje surrounding me in plain sight from all around the room, while two others had vanished from my senses.


    Electronically at least.


    Most likely they had stripped off anything they had that was electronic having already figured out who I was and what my powers were, at least those ones I shared with Monica Rambeau.


    Tuning my senses to heat let me pick up where the two remaining elites from where they were lurking at, with one posed at my back, and one standing next to a duller heat but still human sized heat source standing just outside the entrance to the chamber.


    I gave a polite, but in no way submissive bow in that direction as I spoke in fluent Wakandan.


    ¡°Welcome to Z¡¯Gambo Princess Shuri. While I do plan on receiving visitors, and eventually new inhabitants to my city, I¡¯m afraid I am not yet prepared to welcome either, or diplomatic missions.¡±


    The Wakandan Princess came striding out of the shadows, her footsteps graceful but heavy as the sunlight revealed both her clothing and skin converting from being made of stone back to her normal appearance.


    She tilted her head at me with her brows raised. ¡°Our mission here is yet to be determined, but I do not enjoy speaking with those who hide behind masks.¡±


    While maintaining eye contact with her, I slowly gestured to the masked Dora Milaje all around me and twirled my outstretched hands a bit to emphasize who and what I was pointing out at her.


    She winced, just a little. ¡°Point made.¡± She partially turned her head away from me to glance over to the masked woman beside her who gave out a curt command of ¡°Masks¡± before removing her own, followed by all of the rest of the Princess''s guard a pair at a time, so that only two would have their vision impaired at once, however briefly.


    Shuri then lifted her chin at me in a wordless challenge.


    Well, if it¡¯s that important to you.


    I peeled back my mask along with the flexible ¡®helmet¡¯ and met the woman¡¯s eyes. In return, she gave me a considering look before the guard beside her spoke up. ¡°You are not of Wakanda.¡±


    Without looking at the woman standing beside her, I answered the princess instead. ¡°I have no nation, no heritage, or at least not one I wish to claim. You know who my father is, and I highly doubt that you have not guessed who he chose for my mother. Wakanda is the one nation in Africa that needs nothing from anyone else and takes nothing away. I have chosen to sound like one of you so that I would be welcomed as a native of this continent without any one nation being able to claim me solely as their own.¡±


    Changing over to English, and a mid Atlantic accent which had been created to sound like a compromise between an American and English accent, I continued. ¡°There doesn''t seem to be something similar to this, familiar to anyone who speaks a shared language without truly sounding like any one nation¡¯s version of it. At least not for Africa. Wakandan is the closest I could think of.¡±


    Even as her guard tensed up in anger, the Princess grinned a little and snorted, in a rather cute and somehow ladylike kind of way, ¡°Of all the things an outsider has tried to steal from Wakanda, I think this is something we can forgive. It cost us nothing.¡± She waggled a finger at me. ¡°As long as you never actually claim to be Wakandan.¡±


    Then her smile faded, and her stance changed from relaxed to something more martial.


    ¡°But now we must discuss your invasion of Z¡¯Gambo who we hold by treaty a sacred duty of mutual defense. As well as the death of the sole remaining Z¡¯Gamboian.¡±


    Well¡­ crap.

 29 [ Jase ] First in Class

    29 [ Jase ] First in Class


    My plans for the next few days were pretty simple.


    The girls had left me in front of a hostel set up to house the people with mutant relatives who had fled to Nova Roma along with them, only to find out that as regular humans they could not themselves enter the mutant Holyland. Instead, they were left behind to camp out in the secret Roman city after leaving everything behind for the sake of their mutant children or partners.


    So after helping myself to a clean set of loaner clothes, a sealed package of underwear, and some toiletries, I went off to take a shower.


    I would like to ask at this point¡­ what is the point of the opening in the front of men¡¯s underwear?


    It¡¯s more hygienic to pee while sitting down, and since becoming a guy I¡¯ve found out that guys can hold things in a lot longer than girls, so it¡¯s not like you regularly have to urgently dig in past the zipper, find the gap in the overlapping cloth, then pull your boy parts out to pee instead of just sitting down without droplets flying off everywhere.


    ...of course, I haven¡¯t had the chance to write my name in the snow. Maybe that would make it worth it.


    Anyways, once I got cleaned up it would just be a matter of finding a good spot for my Gomez suit to get a satellite connection and then I could start ordering some supplies to help me set up a new base of operations.


    I wasn¡¯t sure how to get the stuff to a hidden city in the Brazilian rainforest, but if you have the cash, someone else will figure out a way.


    So in what I figured would be in a week or two I could make my own time machine, go back about six years when all my information from Doom was still up to date, and then have all the people who knew about me, including my relatives, deal with the nineteen year old version of me who had been building up a power base for six years.


    At some point, I would go to high school for the social life in a more democratic nation, maybe somewhere in California, and then get to have my debut as the good looking rich kid who lives with his absentee uncle who left him with access to a fully stocked bar.


    Iara Shark Girl was nice, but with six years to get my powers under control, I would get to meet other girls. I didn¡¯t want to get stuck with a girl who could literally bite my head off just because she was the first one I met who my powers didn¡¯t affect. I wanted to play the field, not wait six years, and then settle down for something long term and monogamous.


    Anyways, that was my plan, which lasted right up until I heard the girls talking outside of the hostel locker room as I was finishing getting dressed. From the sound of it, Marrow was planning on a night out at someplace called Akklo after they dumped me off, while Iara wanted to wait to see how my interview went.


    Looking over at my Guido suit, I gestured at it to reassemble onto me with most of its bulk smoothed out to more of a traditional comic book slim body covering that would leave it less fictional, but more stylish.


    Then I headed out, to find Iara waiting for me in her human form with Marrow standing behind her, both of them wearing stylish contingent masks over the lower halves of their faces. I smiled at the nervous looking shape changer. ¡°Darling, you just couldn¡¯t stay away.¡±


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    Iara held one of her hands out towards me to stop my slow approach with my arms outstretched for a hug. ¡°No flirting. We¡¯re here on official business Jase. One of the council wants to talk to you.¡±


    Marrow crossed her arms. ¡°Cheer up playboy, you get to go to the island.¡±


    I smiled. ¡°A visit to a tropical island in the company of two beautiful women? How can I say no?¡±


    The external bone growth mutant rolled her eyes at that. ¡°Save it Purple Boy.¡± She pointed at the yellow and blue X patterned mask she had on. ¡°Pheromone blockers. Whatever you were doing to me before, it won¡¯t be happening anymore. All I see now is a skinny little kid.¡±


    Ouch.


    My love interest Iara slowly nodded as she looked me in the eyes. ¡°You look¡­ younger.¡±


    I grimaced and gave her a shrug. ¡°Mixed bag powers, I began to age more slowly as they started to kick in.¡± I stepped up a bit closer to her, and she didn¡¯t back away. ¡°You may have some of the same thing going on. Remaking your body every time you shapeshift may allow you to fix anything that went wrong with one or the other of your forms. That might even include the effects of aging at some point.¡±


    Giving her a grin as she turned her head away from me with a troubled look, I reached out to take both of her hands in mine. ¡°Who knows, maybe I¡¯ll end up being the one who ends up looking older than you.¡± Then I gave her hands a squeeze and stepped back as I let go of them before she could pull away. ¡°Or at least I will still be around to remember when we were both young, long after everyone else is gone.¡±


    Marrow snorted at me. ¡°Yeah, living on as all her loved ones die off. That¡¯s just what a girl wants to hear. Idiot.¡±


    I gave the smirking mutant an earnest look. ¡°I promise to pour a libation on your grave every now and then Sarah.¡± Then I smirked right back at the external bone growth mutant. ¡°Probably milk. You just have to constantly be desperate for calcium.¡±


    She glared, Iara giggled, and I challenged the Bone Girl by tossing my chin up.


    I thought body horror was going to throw down on me on general principle, but Iara took my arm and began to lead me off, much to my delight.


    What can I say about Krakoa?


    A tropical wonderland? Maybe in a Lewis Carol sense. The building looked to be something from a fevered dream, as did many of the mutant population. The air was damp and heavy with the scent of a myriad of tropical blooms all about. So many flowers in fact, that I felt bad for my all girl escort having to wear pheromone blockers which had to be interfering with their sense of smell.


    My meeting turned out to be with a twenty something looking darker skinned man in an expensive looking suit who rose from his seat at the only table on a large veranda overlooking a harbor before extending his hand towards me and speaking in Portuguese.


    ¡°Good evening. I am Roberto De Costa, and I am here to discuss the next four years of your life.¡±


    This is where my plans began to turn to crap.


    It seemed that De Costa, also known as the high tier mutant Sunspot, had lately become more concerned with Earth, Mutants, and what was happening in his home corner of the world after spending the last several months focusing on interstellar concerns.


    After offering me a cup of what turned out to be some very fine coffee, he explained. ¡°I don¡¯t like what the Brazilian government is doing with people with powers. I understand their desire to participate in the empowered arms race. But they are abusing and alienating the very people they wish to train as deadly soldiers, even when they are by their powers and their nature not suited for it. It¡¯s stupid, wasteful, and they are kidnapping people like us¡­¡± He waved his cup over to where the two girls sat on one side of the table. ¡°And like you.¡±


    I leaned back in my chair. ¡°So what exactly do you have in mind.¡±


    De Costa grinned at me. ¡°I will use the greatest power any one person can have, money.¡±


    He began counting down on his fingers. ¡°I¡¯ve bribed the right people in power, I¡¯ve bought the campus, and I¡¯ve even had the uniform designed.¡±


    No, no, no, no¡­


    Sunspot leaned back in his own chair.


    ¡°Now I just need students to attend, and be protected within, the De Costa School for Gifted Students.¡±