  Editor-in-Chief DarKnight77
Cover Artists
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Appearing in "Doom"Edit
Featured Characters:
Antagonists:
- Doctor Doom
- Franklin Richards (First Appearance)
- Valeria Richards (First Appearance)
Supporting Characters:
- Avengers
- S.H.I.E.L.D. (Mentioned)
- X-Men Blue
- GeNext
- X-Men Gold
- X-Men
- Mayday Parker
- Jim Hammond
Other Characters:
Locations:
- Earth-3116
Items:
Synopsis for "Doom"Edit
The issue starts with most of the heroes in the Quinjet headed for Latveria. Francis speaks up in the quiet Quinjet telling the others he's going to be honest he's not sure if he likes it.
Michael is surprised and tells Francis that he doesn't have a choice he has to like the plan because he had basically made most of it. Francis laughs and says he wasn't talking about the plan, he had actually been talking about James' new suit, and asks the other's if they think it's too retro as he believe it is.
At the mention of his name James looked up before looking down and examining himself. While the others began to tell Francis he was being overdramatic, James had to admit, he himself had been thinking the same thing.
It had been months ago when he had given Riri, Amadeus, Pym, and whoever else wanted the task of giving him a new suit, and the hero had been expecting some...modernization?
Riri tells the others with a annoyed huff that the new suit was modern. She tells them that the cracked shield, clunky goggles, and war helmet was retro, she laments that no one appreciated the beauty of design these days.
Emma joins in and insists that the suit looks fine and so James looked down at himself once more and analyzed it. The top of his shirt had a sort of blue chainmail armour, scale thing going on. And then there was the normal stuff, white star in the middle. Vertical white and red stripes once the scales ended. Blue pants and a big brown vest. Red boots just like his father’s but his weren’t nearly as spandex like, along with the red gloves, and waiting to go on his head was a blue helmet with an A on the front. His shield had been repainted and almost magically the cracks were gone, really he did look fine in his own eyes.
He guessed the only problem now was that he looked too much like his father. Not just like his father, but like his father before he died. He would have never guessed this would be a problem for him before, but it certainly was one now.
Still it really wasn’t the time to make a fuss as they had entered Latveria and only had a few more minutes to talk things over before they had to drop off. “No worries Riri, I do like it, it’s sleek, and it feels good. It’s nice. If you think the people like it, then it’s even better.”
The girl just nodded seemingly content with that answer, and then it was back to waiting, until Tony’s voice came on to the comms telling them they were 3 minutes until the drop zone and now might have been the time to get ready.
Azari asks if there is any word on the Blackbird and Beast informs them that they are on route and will be ready to drop down just a couple minutes after them. The plan was already in motion.
It was pretty crazy to think about. There were currently 19 people in the Quinjet. 19. A couple of months ago James didn’t think there were any heroes in the world they could even contact, things had been extremely desperate. Now they had 19 in the Quinjet and 10 more heroes on the way. It seemed almost impossible, and it certainly felt like they had an advantage.
However, with everything they had read and heard about Doctor Doom was that he was no stranger to fighting multiple heroes at once. He had gone up against the Fantastic Four multiple times, and in some cases when his schemes were devious enough he’d attract the attention of the Avengers or maybe even the X-Men and fight them too.
Doom was a genius in every way you could imagine, and apparently he was also a Master of the Mystical Arts, something they had never gone up against, and so there were a lot of unknowns. According to Tony and the other older heroes it would be too much to expect Doom to be like the Masters of Evil, old and broken. No Doom would be as healthy as a whistle, knowing him he might even be better than before.
But still...29 well trained heroes was still 29 well trained heroes. It would be interesting to see how everything played out. Hopefully it was another win for Planet Earth and they could finally relax.
Francis begins to address the other heroes telling them they should know the plan. 3 Teams, 3 parts of the castle, and they would hopefully meet up in the same spot. Jimmy tells Francis to stop worrying about it, they all got it. Francis tells him that he hopes so because they had the easiest part of the plan.
The plan was actually pretty simple. The teams were split into three. Cap, Hawkeye, Black Panther, Torunn, Wasp, and this new Spider-Girl would take the lead storming the front of the castle. It would be the obvious attack plain and simple.
Emma, Kitty, Beast, Laura, Ironheart and Vision would go through the back of the building. This was a bit of a harder task but with Beast, Vision, and Ironheart they had some serious firepower and would be able to deal with any tricks Doom might have had up his sleeve.\
The third team was comprised of Wolverine (Jimmy), Psylocke (Jane), Cascade (Jessica.), Solstice (Sofia), Copycat (Michael), and Jim Hammond. This team would be entering the castle shortly after the other two and look to assist any of the team they thought might need.
Of course the Gold and GeNext teams would enter the scene a short couple of minutes later to simply wreak havoc. This really did have this all planned out. It was just time to execute.
“You guys are hitt..krrt..ing the dropzone now. An...krrt...remem...krrt...that I’ll be there....krrt...possible.”
“Tony you're cutting out.” Torunn told the inventor, and they patiently waited for a response but they didn’t get one.
“They cut comms. We’re going in partially blind. We’re dropping now.” James quickly commanded, “Friday open the hat-
Krakoom! The Quinjet rocked as a blast of green energy slammed into the hull and rocked the ship.
“Quinjet stabilizers offline. Autopilot offline.” Friday’s voice immediately rang throughout the entire Quinjet.
James tried to yell more orders but instead the plane was hit again so instead he jumped into the cockpit and yelled at the others “GO GET OUT OF HERE WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?!?!”
And with that warning they began to leave the ship. Azari flew down and Pym shrunk down before following. Torunn grabbed Francis and the archer saluted the rest before they flew off at speeds that made James question if Torunn knew who she was handling. Spider-Girl also gave him a small look that was hard to decipher with the mask over her face before acrobatically jumping down from the jet.
Beast grabbed Laura and Kitty before launching himself out of the ship and Vision offered his hand to Emma who took it and they flew off. Ironheart was last, her helmet flew over her head quickly and she zoomed out of the sinking plane.
The Blue team were the last to go. Jimmy simply jumped down, not a care in the world. Whereas Jane used her telekinesis to levitate herself and Michael, and Jess and Sofia flew down on their own. Jim gave James one little look before flaming on and flying out of the plane as well.
And now James could finally focus. His first instinct was to fly the plane straight into the castle but he immediately had to scold himself as no doubt there were innocents in there. So he looked for the next best thing. The ocean.
There was a fairly large plain of water right before entering Doomstadt that was beginning to look like James' only option at landing the jet. He had to make his mind up quickly so with one swift motion he veered the jet around, turning away from the large castle and sending it near the water. It was annoying as he could already see his team start to fight, and him turning around meant it was going to take longer for him to get there...unless?
“Frost!” James called for the seasoned telepath. He waited a moment and was greeted with a grunt already indicating some signs of struggle.
“Please do me a favour and tell the others on the way to head for the river. They can lock their jet on my tracking device.”
“Will do, now I have a fight to focus on and you have a plane crash to avoid.” And with that she signed off and she was right as well, as the plane continued to get closer James threw on his helmet, grabbed his shield and charged the blast doors jumping out of the plane before he could be in the crash.
He cannonballed into the water, only momentarily stunned before he began to rapidly swim for shore. Unfortunately for him, before he could even make ten swimming strokes, the Quinjet exploded, sending the Super-Soldier under water.
When he finally got up for air, he had to turn around and look at the Quinjet because there was no way it should have exploded that fast. But as he turned around he found the culprit. Three doombots were behind him with their blasters pointed right at him.
“Sh*t.” he dove under water and began swimming as fast as he could. He really hoped his suit was as good as Riri insisted it was because he was not going to dodge all of those blasts.
When Azari had jumped out of the Quinjet neither of them had expected to see doombots already swarming the air peppering them with energy blasts that could blast through planes. It was safe to say they were shocked.
But you didn’t beat Ultron at 11 and 13 years old without some uber good reaction time. Azari dodged the first blast from a Doombot with the grace of a seasoned acrobat and simply waved his hand through the air sending a blast of electricity at a string of doombots, the blast more than strong enough to go straight through three of them.
A doombot overtop of Azari was prepared to blast him but Pym suddenly grew to his normal size and blasted him in the face taking his head clean off after that the boy shrank back down to microscopic size and flew on Azari’s shoulder who waited for him before flying down ready to do the same thing over again.
With Torunn and Francis they had the benefit of seeing Azari and Pym immediately thrown into danger and alter their course immediately. Despite everything they were going through at the moment. The fact that they rarely talked to each other despite being in a ‘relationship’, or the fact that they hadn’t solved anything since that fight, Torunn and Francis had great chemistry on the battlefield.
As quickly as she grabbed onto the Archer she threw him into the air and went to attack the bots in front of her. She wasted no time sending Arnbjorg scissoring through the air imbued with electricity and a precision that could only be achieved through countless practice.
It cut straight through two blasts of energy and destroyed 4 robots with ease. She then kicked through a fifth and called her sword back to her ready to destroy everything in their way. During this same time Hawkeye was in the air and showing why he was an Avenger. In the span of three seconds 5 arrows had been released, with killer aim.
The first two arrows went straight through the head of their targets, the third arrow seemed to melt the robot on impact and the last two arrows exploded taking a couple of robots out with them.
As he was falling he took a half second glance at Torunn who was still throwing her sword into a couple of doombots, so he quickly improvised landing on top of one of the doombots and jamming one of his arrows into the side of it’s head, before putting the arrow back in his quiver. He then jumped off the robot’s back before he lost too much air.
And he didn’t even have to look to know that Torunn would be right there to catch him, and of course she did with relative ease and they moved to the next batch of robots in their faces.
With Spider-Girl as she flew down she shot her webs at one bot shooting towards it like a tether at superhuman speeds, crushing it’s head before bouncing off the first robot to another smashing her fist clean through it’s torso before flipping around a large blast and web zipping towards another bot. Despite being a novice she was still doing fairly well.
When the X-Men, Riri, and Vision jumped out of the Quinjet it was like pure anarchy. Which the X-Men probably should have expected but it had been a long time since they had been in a true fight like this so it was fair if their instincts were a little off, but when they left the Quinjet they all knew it was time to fight.
When Beast jumped X-23’s snikt! Was the only warning he was given to let the clawed woman go lest, he wanted to get cut himself. Out of the four ‘Older X-Men’ Laura was by far the youngest still in her twenties unlike the rest. And maybe that was a reason why she seemed more aware than the rest at the moment.
Or maybe it was her decorated past, either way the doombots never stood a chance. She easily evaded any hits from the doombots and her adamantium covered claws pierced the doombots metal like it was paper mache.
With Beast and Kitty they stuck together, With Kitty once in a while phasing through one of the robots completely disorienting the functions of the robot while Hank ripped them apart as they fell to the ground. They were untouchable as the robots could not figure out a way to harm them as Kitty went intangible.
Vision and Emma Frost looked like the most cool, calm and collected fighters on the battlefield, whether it was a simple hand gesture or two by Emma as she focused on her psionic blasts, or Vision who simply blasted energy from the solar gem on his forehead. Things didn’t get serious for the pair until a Doomboot managed to surprise Emma who quickly had to turn to her diamond form to shrug off the blast. Still though it had caught her off guard. And she had the voice in her head to blame for it.
“Frost! Please do me a favour and tell the others on the way to head for the river. They can lock their jet on my tracking device.”
She didn’t even have the time to be annoyed, as she was wrestling with one of the Doombots before she simply shoved her arm through its heart “Will do, now I have a fight to focus on and you have a plane crash to avoid.”
With that Emma went back to focusing on her fight and was thankful when the Android went to stop her from free falling.
Riri was blasting robots in the air, whether it was repulsor blasts or mini missiles. Lasers or simply punching robots with her iron fist it was fun. Plus she had only gotten electrocuted once by the one a robot she hadn’t been focused on.
And as a result of her amazing armor she was one of the first heroes to make it to ground level at the back at the castle. And as she saw the plethora of robots at the back of the castle she only wished she could still hear Tony’s helpful voice in her head..
There was no time to be afraid for the young X-Men as Jimmy, the main leader of the team, immediately jumped out of the jet despite not being able to fly.
Jane flew out next levitating her and Michael who had a simple energy pistol but with his amazing mutant abilities he easily replicated Jane’s telekinesis like he done so many times before and began to fly himself and shot the pistol with supernatural accuracy that one could acquire my being a mutant the bots didn’t stand a chance. This freed Jane up enough to fight on her own using her telekinesis to augment her strength and fight against the bots. Jessica quickly joined and the two telekinesis users quickly destroyed whatever was in their path.
Jim and Sofia were the two last ones and the two flew out bodies lit on fire, ready to fight. Despite their powers not working the same in the slightest, the two fire users had a very similar fighting style with Jim’s clearly being more seasoned and practiced, while Sofia’s was more robust and free. It was perfect.
Eventually all the teams had made it to ground level, and despite the fact that there was no sign of James Rogers they knew they needed to keep pushing on or else they would lose their advantage.
And so the Avengers crashed in through the front and the Older X-Men went through the backdoor while the younger X-Men took a sky approach.
But as each of the teams entered the Castle from different entry points they immediately noticed things were way harder before, and that fight earlier hadn’t been a cakewalk. Suddenly they were a little worried.
“Alright guys, we're missing James but this is still just like we wrote it up. Spider-Girl you stick with Torunn and if you lose her, fight with the rest of us. Do not under any circumstances fight alone. Got it.”
“Yes sir.” Spider-Girl answered him seriously. And with that the Avengers began to battle. Despite not being as good of a fighter as James, May was strong and her sense of danger was amazing, so she fit in perfectly with what the seasoned heroes were trying to do.
Azari and Pym played off of each other very well, Pym couldn’t grow to an insane 25 or 50ft in the castle but 10ft to 15ft was still larger than everyone else, and it still augmented his strength to the point where he could easily lift a few tons and create problems for the robots in the castle who were presumably guarding the way to the throne room.
Hawkeye was kind of on his own just taking out some of the bots at a leisure pace, and Torunn made sure every once and while she looked back towards Spider-Girl, but the inexperienced hero was doing just fine. And as the Asgardian slammed an electrified fist through another Doombot, she was getting slightly annoyed. They needed to stop them at the source because clearly Doom had as much as he needed.
“We aren’t helping ourselves staying in this corridor, we have to move.” Torunn insisted, and to emphasize her point the powerhouse chucked her sword at one of the exit doors and completely destroyed it.
“Come on people. Let’s move!” Torunn said before flying out. She couldn’t help but smile as she heard Spider-Girl whisper “So cool.” despite everything that was going on.
Getting in the second room Torunn and Spider-Girl were surprised at the lack of immediate robots, instead they were met by two...kids?
Okay one was a teen no smaller than Azari. He was a boy with blonde hair and blue eyes who didn’t exactly look like he was going to be punching anyone’s head off, but he did have an air of confidence around him that you didn’t find around a lot of people who weren’t in this business.
The girl was younger, around Pym’s age, if you told May that she was 10 or 11 she’d believe you in a heartbeat. She was also blond with blue eyes, and in a weird way the girl looked older than her age. Her face was more...mature. And at the moment she held a little remote with 4 different buttons on it, and she generally seemed...bored.
It was kind of unnerving. “You guys wouldn’t happen to know where Mr. Doom is would you?” Spider-Girl couldn’t stop her mouth from running “We just wanna talk. Is he...your Dad or something?”
As May rattled off a bunch of questions Torunn, Azari, and Pym, were preparing for the inevitable attack, and just taking the short distraction as a little break. Hawkeye had planned on doing the same thing, He held his bow in his hand very much ready to release an Arrow if need be, but suddenly he faltered. The boy he...he looked familiar. He had seen him before...yeah, definitely. A long, long time ago...
FLASHBACK
“Alright Francis be nice.” His Mom insisted “This is Franklin. He’s gonna be your new playmate.” Franklin couldn’t help but eye the younger but with some suspicions. Francis was FIVE years old, and he wasn’t really sure Franklin would be able to keep up with all the games he wanted to play
“Hi.” Franklin said shyly, he was basically hiding behind the leg of his mother who urged him further forward with encouraging words.
“Now Francis no roughhousing alright?”
“Yes mommy.”
END FLASHBACK
“F-Franklin?” Francis questioned as he was suddenly brought back to reality “Franklin Richards?”
At the mention of his name his sister seemed a little confused but Franklin only smirked “I didn’t think you’d remember, your memory is pretty good. Though you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
And for Francis it’s because he felt like he really had. There hadn’t been very notable about the couple of playdates they had, but his mother had been insistent about the roughhousing with Francis this specific time. She had harped on it over and over, that Francis had to ask her why, and the only thing she had told him at the time was that it wouldn’t be wise to get Franklin angry.
When he had asked his Father about it, he agreed with his mother, at the time Francis couldn’t believe it because his parents hadn’t been able to agree on anything anymore. And so he took it seriously.
It had only been recently that he learned of the fact that Franklin Richards had been the definition of a cheat code. There was not a single thing the kid could not do. If you thought of it he could do it. A quote on quote “Cosmic Threat.”
And that was when he was a toddler. It was insane to think what he might be able to do now as a teenager. Francis had never been one to concede, especially with what he’d been through but...he couldn’t lie things weren’t looking great. Francis was beginning to realize why invading a foreign country might not be the smartest idea.
“What...what are you doing here. I thought...The Baxter Building was in the middle of New York, how...how did you, how are you here?” It wasn’t his most well put together sentence, but Francis felt like he was the only one who truly understood what they might be up against.
“Doom.” Franklin told him with a shrug “The fight in New York was ginormous, and impossible to miss before Ultron blew up the city. My mother had a bad feeling about things, and their relationship with Doom has always been complicated. He was their first choice and so they shipped us off to Latveria right before the city was blown to bits.”
“And you’ve been here ever since?” Francis questioned
“Yes.”
“And...you like it here?” Francis asked, well aware of how worried he was beginning to sound.
“It’s nice.” Franklin told him with a bored look. The place was at a standstill for a moment, and as Francis gave looks to his team he noticed Azari, and Pym’s facial expression changed just a little as they finally understood who was in front of him. Now he could only hope they were trying to get in contact with the others as he stalled.
“I don’t remember you having a little sister.” He finally spoke once more.
“Yes, she was born only a couple of months before everything went down. Say hi Valeria.” Franklin suggested it to the younger girl.
But she simply gave a once over of all the heroes and then gave a questioning look “You are the heroes who beat Ultron? You all don’t seem that impressive to me.”
“Um rude.” Spider-Girl told her immediately “Those are like the saviours of the free world basically. Show some respect.”
“Respect is earned, not given.” Valeria retorted.
"Ummm, was beating Ultron and saving everyone not enough?” Spider-Girl asked
“Not as impressive as your media would like everyone to believe.” Valeria said with a shrug, but it didn’t even seem like she really believed her own words.
“So you guys wouldn’t happen to be in the business of letting us see Doom, would you?” Francis got the conversation back on track.
“No, that's why we're here actually. To stop you from going any further. Doom’s orders.” Franklin told him with a slight shrug as if he couldn’t care any less for the man’s words, and that made Francis question everything he thought he knew.
Doom had clearly raised them since the destruction of New York but how did they feel about that? Franklin would have some recollection of his parents and his world before Latveria, but Valeria most likely wouldn’t. Still they seemed to be loyal to Doom.
“We don’t have to fight.” Pym spoke commandingly “This doesn’t have to end up in another war. We don’t want that.”
“Well then you probably shouldn’t have flown in here with a stealth jet and 20 powered people. It looks like you are looking for a fight.”
“What else can we do when a foreign country who aren't in the UN, who we haven’t learned anything about for almost 15 years decides to send a probe at our borders. Latveria wouldn’t act in any other way. Most likely they would do exactly what we are doing and make a fuss about it.” Azari told him plainly.
And once again the boy didn’t disagree and simply shrugged his shoulders “Like I said. Doom’s orders.”
“Come on Franklin. We don’t have to fight this is...nonsensical. I know you know this isn’t what we aim for. And I have no desire to see bloodshed between us.”
“Doom’s telling them to hurry up.” Azari immediately told the rest, his enhanced senses doing the work.
“Then we should get ready for a battle.” Torunn told the rest “I don’t believe now is the time for words.”
In a moment Franklin seemed done talking with Doom and looked to Azari, not happy with the Prince “It’s rude to eavesdrop you know. Valeria, you get two shots.”
The girl nodded and pressed a big blue button and suddenly from a hatch in the sky a large robotic dinosaur ridden by a robotic version of the girl dropped from the sky in dramatic fashion.
Franklin snapped his fingers and suddenly he and sister were in the far corner of the room sitting on two chairs with popcorn in their hands seemingly ready to enjoy the “show”
It was annoying and if they wanted a show they were gonna get one. “Guys let’s show these two why we’re Avengers.”
And with that the heroes jumped into action dodging fire from the mouth of the dragon, and energy blasts from the robotic girl on top of it. Spider-Girl was the only one taking longer than usual wondering if this one fight had already made her an Avenger.
It wasn’t often you were told to take the Blackbird from Genosha to a foreign country housing a 60 year old supervillain, but when you got that chance you took it. It was exciting for Megan, Olivier, Pavel, Anne-Marie, and Ray as this was their first mission in over a year when they had been tasked with saving their teammate from some trouble. Now they were storming Doctor Doom’s castle.
Most of them actually didn’t know much about the man in question, but Megan’s mom had insisted the man was dangerous and that they needed to be very careful and so that’s what they were going to do. Wait it out for their parents before they receive their next orders.
But when they did finally receive orders they were surprised at the contents of them. Megan’s mind defences were quickly breached and she heard her mother’s voice in her head.
“I will only say this once darling, James Rogers is currently swimming in the ocean with a horde of Doombots around him. Give him a hand and then he will direct the rest.”
“Umm, okay!” Megan told her mother hesitantly. Because what else was she supposed to say? No?
"Oli, head for the ocean!” Megan told the cajun quickly, and there was no time for objections, and Megan began to address everyone in the Blackbird.
“Alright guys. Cap’s swimming for his life down there and needs a save. Ray, Miguel, Thomas, Oli we will head down there first, Talia and the rest, you all try to protect the Blackbird from turning into a flaming ball of destruction. Will drop in thirty seconds.” Megan directed them quickly.
There were no objections from the others; instead they simply got out of their seats, and some took deep breaths other’s like Thomas and Ray smiled as they relished the thought of fighting. And while that happened Megan took the time to establish a mental connection with the Super-Soldier who had a surprisingly guarded mind.
“Mr. Rogers, this is Megan Frost. The cavalry has arrived. Just hold on a little longer, you think you can manage that?”
“Yup...no problem.” He told her though the sound of struggle was a little obvious. They were only a couple of seconds away from saving the day. Ray opened the hatch and they could all see as Rogers was surrounded by 8 different Doombots and ducked under water as he was peppered with energy blasts.
“Alright team, Cap’s in trouble and it’s up to us to save the day. Let’s do this quickly. No horsing around.” He aimed more at his sister and Thomas. Who nodded dutifully. Alright then what are we waiting for let’s go!”
Ray and Thomas were first to go. The flying girl shot off like a rocket with her bo staff in hand and smacked the head of one of the robots clean off like she was playing T-Ball. Thomas, her feral friend sank his fingers straight in the robot’s armor tearing out it’s metal heart before dodging a couple of shots.
Miguel took a different approach heading straight for the hero in the water, who was using his shield to deflect the hits he was getting peppered with, but even for a man like him, he couldn’t have had that much air left.
Miguel went straight underwater and his psioplasmic shield easily deflected any hits away from him and Captain America brought him to shore.
They both looked to the skies to see Oli and Megan jump into the fray and wreak havoc, but the main thing was the Blackbird which was attempting to avoid getting shot down like the Quinjet had earlier.
However now that James knew where the turret was he acted quickly. Suddenly dashing forward along the coastline, evading Doombots, before hurling his shield at the turret destroying it completely.
Despite everything he endured he still felt fit as a fiddle, and was more than ready to make his way to the castle. And he was happy when he saw the other heroes fly down to his and Miguel’s location and look ready for battle. That was good.
As he stared at the heroes he remembered everything he was told by Emma and the other X-Men. Gambit (Olivier), Megan (Megan), Colossus (Pavel), Rogue (Ray), and No-Name (Anne-Marie) Had been considered the top of the line of the students at the school. The Blue team was good and supposedly this “GeNext” team was better. They also didn’t need much outside leader hence Olivier’s apparent apprehension of him.
The Gold Team however composed of Nocturne (Talia), Apex (Thomas), Firestar (Lily-Rose), Dazzler (Olivia), and Beast (Miguel) were not necessarily novices, but not as advanced as the other teams, with Talia being their leader and the best they had to offer. She also didn’t mind taking the backseat so the choices he had to make were obvious.
“Gambit?” He called for the man’s attention “You're the leader, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright you're the leader so lead. The only thing I’ll ask is for Megan to get in contact with Azari and get a ping on where they’re at so we know how to proceed alright?”
“Sounds good to me.” Oli said and signaled Megan who immediately started to do the job. As they waited on that, James turned to the blue girl who was supposedly the leader of the others and flashed her a smile “You mind if I play some Quarterback?”
“Uh n-no, it’s cool. Do what you must.” Talia stuttered initially before giving him the keys to her team.
“Thank you. You guys are skilled, but haven’t had much real time in the field. I want you guys to stick with Nocturne and I who will lead at the front. Next line is Apex, Dazzler, and Firestar. Beast, you play defense and help out whoever needs it. We are headed for the big battle, try not to lose your head, and if you do. Get behind me.” He ordered, and thankfully they all seemed to be listening “Good, status Megan?”
“Azari says they are in a battle past the main corridor. He says they are going up against Franklin Richards and his sister Valeria. He says you’ll know who that is.”
At the mention of the reality warper's name James momentarily froze before immediately getting back to business “Alright...get your mother to get the older X-Men and Vision, and Jim Hammond to Azari’s location. Everyone else, it’s time to make a push.”
He tried not to let it show, but suddenly Captain America was dreading making it to Doom’s castle. He wasn’t sure how Franklin survived, but for all he knew he saved himself. He was that powerful. And he liked to stay in the mindset that he and his Avengers could beat anyone. But now he felt like the addition of all these...novices weren’t really going to help anyone. As he began to process the Information from Azari, the only ones he wanted anywhere near that room were Olivier, Megan, Talia, and Miguel and Pavel. The rest might get themselves killed.
Really the only problem was getting the others to back off. “Seems like Blue Team is struggling a bit.” Megan informed him. Perfect.
“Alright change of plans. Apex, Dazzler, Firestar, Rogue, No-Name, you go help out Blue Team, the rest of you guys are with me.”
“Oh come on!” Ray immediately objected,
“Come on Ray, just do what the man says.” Olivier insisted as they neared the castle. It wasn’t hard to tell he was trying to save their skins. Reluctantly his sister did what she was told, and began to fly off towards the back of the castle and the other’s followed. Leaving Cap’s new team in the corridor.
“Alright. Franklin Richards is a Cosmic threat.” James told them straight “His power level is supposedly like nothing we’ve ever seen. I haven’t even seen it.”
“How do you know?” Olivier wondered
“The Avengers were doing our homework on everyone in our database. Richards was an interesting case because those results were from when was 3 years old...there’s no telling how strong he is now.”
“Oh how...nice.” Megan said, but they were all feeling the same amount of dread. Talk about an impossible situation. How did one even get that strong?
“I know things might seem impossible. But we do have the right mix of abilities. Talia last I heard the only other person with powers close to anything like that was you...do you think you can counteract his abilities.”
“Depending on how good he is...probably not. I-I haven’t gotten that much time to fully understand and use my powers. If you're asking if I can do things similar to what my Mom could do then no. Sorry.”
“No, it's fine.” That just meant it was time for plan B, and plan B was brown hair with a white streak in it. “You can absorb anyone’s powers with a touch right?”
“Yeah.” Olivier responded, a little surprised at all of his knowledge.
“How long does it need to be?”
“The longer the better, but with enough focus I can probably get the power needed to fight him temporarily.”
“Do you think Wilson could use his Copycat powers?”
“I don’t think so.” Olivier admitted “This would be one of those situations where it might be too much to handle for him.”
“Well then that’s how we're going to do this.” The Super Soldier quickly delved into a plan that he had Megan broadcast to the rest of the Avengers and X-Men currently battling Valeria’s machinations. It was a hard plan with a simple goal Olivier touching Franklin’s arm.
The new team Cap was leading got to where the Avengers, Spider-Girl, and the other X-Men and saw them fighting a 10ft metal gargoyle that was blasting everything in its path and then there were the Doombots crowding the room as well. And as they got there it seemed they were struggling a little bit.
Torunn was flying around doing her best to avoid hits, but she had to quickly pull Pym out of the way of a blast. Hawkeye had seemed like he was already out of arrows and could only dodge hits from time to time.
Azari and Torunn were fine, but Azari seemed a little tired which was surprising considering they could all fight for an extremely long time.
“Nocturne, you think you can deal with this?” James asked the hero, and after a quick nod she started, closing her eyes briefly before her body was swarmed in a red sort of energy. And then she sent three quick blasts of the red energy at the huge gargoyle, One at its face, another at its chest, and one at its leg. Each hit it’s target and destroyed the gargoyle with relative ease.
As this happened the frown on Valeria's face was large, and even Franklin began to look annoyed “It looks like you're going to have work on your robot sis.”
“Shut it Franklin.” Valeria told him with a pout.
“We don’t have to do this.” James told the reality warper “There isn’t any need for us to fight.”
“You might as well save it. Hawkeye and-and your Human Torch over there already tried.” As he spoke about the Human Torch it was clear he was very shaken, no doubt by the fact that he thought it was his uncle....They could use that.
"Your parents wouldn’t want this.” James tried once more.
“My parents aren’t here.” And with that the cosmic level threat took off, and boy could he move. He didn’t have to do much, not really. He teleported straight behind Kitty and Laura, knocking them out with the softest taps in the history of mankind. Beast attempted to lunge at him before he got frozen in mid air and…taken out with the rest.
Spider-Girl should have been next, but her insane reflexes allowed her to dodge the boy’s first hit, and Talia took that as the best moment to start the plan attacking Franklin. Her powers were probably some of the only ones that would actually work as the reality warper, but for the time being they were just the distraction, as Torunn, Azari, and James went to attack Valeria.
And just as they thought, the young girl’s eyes widened with real fear. She was defenseless. But when they were probably an inch away from Valeria the heroes found that they were suddenly over 20ft away.
“That was chea-” Franklin tried to tell them, but he was quickly smacked in the face with Nocturne’s hex energy.
In this time Gambit flew over to the young reality warper hoping to just get a touch of his skin, but just as it seemed like Franklin was on the ground he was suddenly in the air.
“You know, honestly your plan was pretty good. Doom was right to say you were a great tactician. If I hadn’t already known what you guys were going to try and do. You probably would have succeeded. But, you must have not read the scouting report. I’m a telepath, or did you all forget?”
“But...I-I would have felt you. We would have felt you.” Emma insisted. And it was true. Emma, Megan, Jane, and Jessica were four high level telepaths, though admittedly only Emma and Megan truly could pull off feats one might reserve for an Alpha or Omega Level mutant. But heck even Oli and Talia had low level telepathic abilities someone should have known he was there.
“Almost! If the other’s had a little more practice because for people like me, It’s going to take more than level 8 psi shields to stop me from getting in your heads.” Then in an instant he teleported behind Talia and simply karate chopped her neck, causing her to go limp.
“Doom is getting impatient, I am sorry about this.” He told them honestly. And with a snap of his fingers everything went dark for every hero in the Castle.
When the Avengers awoke they were in jail cells and bound in shackles that they quickly learned were unbreakable. It didn’t take a genius to learn that they were all at the mercy of Doctor Doom. All 29 of them.
From Vision, to Jim, to Torunn, to Talia, all their heavy hitters had been subdued, and it had been a long time since the Avengers had ever felt like they were in an unwinnable situation. Even then at this moment they were still hoping for some tricks up their sleeves.
It was...weird when Doom came in. His metal bodysuit clanked with each and every step he took. His mannerisms were so cold and calculating, like he had done this a million times before.
It was a hard pill to swallow that they might have been facing their greatest challenge yet...and they had willingingly walked straight into it. And then of course. The man began talking.
“You invaded my country. My castle. What gave you the right?”
“You sent a probe to our home.” James pointed out
“And yet I did not attack it, did I?” Doom retorted “I did not send doombots to invade your territory. I did not take planes and fly them over your seas. I never did any of that. 29 super powered individuals have entered my Kingdom. Never before has Doom been so blatantly disrespected.”
“You must realize it’s a different time in our world. We’ve just got out of the rule of one tyrant, we could risk another.” James explained to him “We had no plans of entering your country, but our hands were tied.”
“Hmph, well now you will pay for your idiocy Captain. For all your predecessors faults, they never would have been this dumb.”
“What are you going to do with us?” Spider-Girl couldn’t stop herself from asking, and Doom didn’t even turn around
"Whatever I please.”
The dramatic monarch left the room not sparing any words and the Avengers just had to think about how weird the entire thing was. They invaded Doom’s country and what? Got captured? And even if they had won, they were gonna what? Threaten Doom and then let him continue whatever he was doing in Latveria and hope he didn’t retaliate?
They had been dumb enough to take the bait knowing it was bait, and James could accept that. He could, that was something you just had to accept was a possibility when doing things like these. No, what had James, Olivier, Francis, Talia, Emma, Vision, Jim, and Azari thinking was another simple question.
Why did he set the bait? Doom didn’t do things out of emotion, not normally. Nearly everything was calculated. He wouldn’t risk fighting off 29 heroes at one time unless he had a very good reason? So what could be that reason?
It was stumping all of their critical thinkers and no doubt it would have continued on if not for the interruption by Franklin and Valeria.
The two young heroes came bolstering in around 15 minutes after the departure of Doom and didn’t seem particularly happy. The way the room was set up, a lot of the cells were split up and if you weren’t in that cell you couldn’t hear the other “Inmates.”
Jim, Spider-Girl, Captain America, Kitty, and Francis were in one of the cells and it was the one that seemed to attract Franklin and Valeria the most. It seemed they were pulled towards Jim and also Kitty. He could only hope they might be able to use their words to get them out of this mess.
“Franklin, are you okay with this?” Kitty immediately asked him “Are you okay with Doom holding us hostage, with keeping us prisoner.”
“You broke Doom’s law.” Franklin told his old babysitter with a sad sigh “His word is sacred here and we can not disobey it.”
“Not even if it goes against everything that is right?”
“What is right? What is wrong?” Franklin questioned them with a shrug “Who am I to decide, If Doom believes that you trespassing means you are now his prisoner then who am I to tell him that otherwise?”
“Because when you power, you are also given a responsibility whether you like it or not.” Spider-Girl explained to him “We are obligated to do the best we can with the gifts we’ve been given, and following Doom is not that.”
“It's not my rules.”
“But what if it was?” Jim asked Franklin “What if Doom didn’t matter. What if there was just a choice for you to make. What would your parents tell you. Your family. Your first family. If your Mother and Father were in your ear right at this moment. What do you think they’d want you to do?”
At this question Franklin glared at the Android before tugging on Valeria’s arm “Come on Val were leaving.”
And that’s exactly what they did. They two heroes left just as quickly as they entered in the scenario and Francis sighed angrily “I thought you had him for sure Jim.”
No one said anything as they all agreed with Francis. It had felt like they had him cornered and instead he simply ran off. It was obvious the boy could be very key in changing their fortune but at the moment that seemed far-fetched…
Unless?
Klik! Klik Klik! The shackles of each Hero began to fall to the ground and they all looked to the small blonde girl with the remote control in her hand. Franklin walked in behind her and had a pensive look on his face, putting a hand up signaling the heroes to let him talk.
“Sometimes it can be hard to remember what my parents would have wanted because it's been so long...But you guys are right. So come on let's get out of here before he notices. Because when he does notice, he won't be happy.”
Franklin began to lead the other heroes out of the Castle and they could only be happy at the moment. A chance to kick Doom’s butt and go back home. They’d do both and get back peacefully, because that’s what heroes did.
NotesEdit
This is the second last issue of the A New Legacy Vol 1.
It's been said that this first volume will be integral to the very last volume of the series, and that writer Capt10America is very interested to see if anyone will figure out what's so important in these first 16 issues.
TriviaEdit
- No trivia.
See AlsoEdit
Recommended ReadingEdit
- None.
Links and ReferencesEdit
- None.