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The French and British troops had taken the pressure off the ODMs, although judging from what Mystique was hearing from Diamond, the troopers were definitely not having it all their own way. Casualties were beginning to mount, horrendously as few of the weapons they had could damage the Rippers. With them as near inviolate air support, the French couldn't use any large-scale units within the city. Worse, the Rippers were simply smashing buildings down even more than they were firing at the humans, and a destroyed urban environment was even more deadly than an urban one.
But while interested in how the overall battle was going, trying to help the locals directly wasn't Mystique's mission. Finding the beacon was, and eventually, as a fireteam of ODMs fought it out all around her against a much larger group of Chitauri accompanied by a Ripper, Mystique found the building that must house the Beacon.
She made certain about this by circling around, even joining in the fight against the ODMs for a few moments, firing at them from one position so as to not appear suspicious to the other Chitauri. Mystique then faded away back into the office building that she had been in, heading out the back of emergency entrance, and out into a small alleyway there, seeing where the scanner was still pointing.
With that, Mystique hunkered down, waiting for the coast to clear for a few moments before racing across, as above her, the aliens clung to different buildings firing at a specific area, where the Thing had just appeared, smashing a Ripper down into another building a half block away.
With the Thing unknowingly pulling all attention away from where Mystique had previously been, and the ODMs now moving off, she reached the building where the beacon was housed, a warehouse turned into some kind of nightclub on the River Seine.
Inside were a few bodies by the doorway, but little else as she raced through the building. It having been midday when the invasion began here in Paris, the nightclub must have been practically empty, thankfully. Still following the scanner, Mystique headed up into the VIP rooms on the second floor.
But as she did, Mystique heard the movements of feet and slowed, hugging the shadows of the stairs for a moment, changing her skin color from the strange mottled metal gray and white of a regular Chitauri into black so she could blend in better.
Slowly finishing her trip up the stairs, Mystique paused, staring down the hallway. There, she saw three Chitauri, and one blue skinned alien woman with a metal faceplate seemingly stapled to one side of her head. She was directing the other three as they carried what looked like a large metallic box with several strange-looking antennae and a radar dish on top of it. The radar dish was pulsing, and there was a distinct energy visible within the sphere of the radar dish. "Be careful. We have to move it carefully, the slightest bump can interrupt the signal! But that rock skinned bastard got too damn close for my liking. I…"
Suddenly, the blue skinned alien turned, staring straight at Mystique, bringing her gunn up, firing at her.
Mystique dodged to one side, her form fading out even as she returned fire. Her strike hit the blue skinned woman, but she didn't seem to feel it, charging forward with a roar. "Get the beacon out of here, hide it someplace else. I will deal with this one!"
"Deal with me is it?" Mystique charged forward, her rifle still firing. "There's only room for one blue-skinned femme fatale in Paris girl, and it isn't a half-cyborg like you."
The two of them exchanged green energy bolts as they closed, charging towards one another down the corridor, then at the last minute, Mystique leaped upwards, aiming to jump over the woman. But the blue-skinned alien leaped upwards as well, smashing Mystique up into the ceiling. Pinning her there for a moment, she wrapped her one hand around the shapeshifter's throat, the other grabbing her belt. "I have no idea what a femme fatale is, you up-jumped monkey, but I rather think you don't qualify."
With that, she hurled her back down the way Mystique had come.
Mystique crashed into the safety railing of the stairs leading up to the VIP section, flipping over it to smash into the dance floor below. She pushed herself to her feet quickly, her body far more durable than a normal human's, then rolled to one side as Nebula landed so hard she cracked the ground, cracks in the wood of the flooring appearing in every direction. The alien woman lashed out with a kick, but Mystique caught it, twirling and tossing the woman to the ground, where she lashed out with another kick, forcing Mystique to break her grip on Nebula's other leg.
Rolling, Nebula came to her feet, and charged forward again, knocking Mystique's rifle out of her hand with a single blow as the other hand came up in a fist. Mystique dodged, and returned a two punch combo to the woman's chest and shoulder as she danced around her, her fingers morphing into claws.
While her transformation powers were limited in what kind of abilities they could give her regardless of what form she took – if she formed into say, Scarlet Witch she couldn't use the younger woman's magic – Mystique could still form claws that were almost as good as Sabertooth's had been. Back before he had been dumped into a lava flow, anyway.
Nebula found this out to her cost, as Mystique's transformed claws caught the woman across his stomach before she could get fully out of range. The blue-skinned woman snarled, but when Mystique went for another swipe, she redirected the blow. Stepping into Mystique's range, Nebula smashed the human woman's face with a punch that had her flying backwards, her nose and jaw broken for a few moments before her healing power could fix the damage.
Mystique waited until the woman closed to finish her off, her legs lashing out and catching the woman in the diaphragm with enough force to drive the wind out of her. A double-handed blow to the side of the head as she leaned forward, Mystique's body shifting to have the same rubber qualities as Reed Richards, sent Nebula sprawling to one side, and Mystique tried to roll on top of her, bringing her claws back into play.
But Nebula caught her clawed hands by the wrists and turned them both onto their sides, slamming Mystique into the ground and then releasing her rolling away to put some distance between them as several Chitauri appeared in the doorway. "Kill her!" Nebula ordered, pointing back to Mystique only to stare in confusion at herself.
Damn, but this never gets old! Mystique had seen the Chitauri first when they had been rolling around, and had been transforming her body as they did, finishing the transformation of her face the instant the alien girl threw her off. Now the Chitauri stared at the two copies of Nebula in confusion, their guns flicking from one to the other.
Her eyes wide with rage Nebula roared and charged towards Mystique. But then the front of the dance club exploded inward.
In the rubble of the wall he had just shattered, Hulk roared out, "Hulk smash! I do believe I'm getting the hang of this." As he used a portion of a Ripper he had torn off the creature to, yes, smash the Chitauri so hard one of them came apart. The other two were flung through the air. Two others had already been buried by the rubble of the Hulk's arrival.
The woman hastily held up a hand to her face to protect it from debris, and that was all the opening Mystique needed. She closed, her claws extending this time to a foot in length as she cut into the woman's throat from the side, nearly decapitating the cyborg woman.
Nebula of the Black Order, often ignored adopted daughter of Thanos, fell, grasping at her neck with both hands as she tried to staunch the bleeding, staring at the other woman in shock and growing horror. Mystique however had no sympathy at all, nor mercy. Her claws shrank back, becoming thicker, and she stabbed them into the back of the woman's head, severing her spinal column with a crunch of bone upon bone and the squelch of chopped flesh.
Looking up from where he had just smashed an alien into a meaty kind of paste on the floor, the Hulk shook his head while above him, Ripper fire began to fall like hail onto his position, the light of it causing Mystique to look away even as more of the club started to come apart. "That was quite nasty," Hulk stated, ignoring the impact of the energy blasts on him and around his position.
"You're one to talk. What are you doing here anyway? I thought the plan was for you to help with the battle in Washington, or out in Nepal," Mystique shouted.
"It was, yes. But the X-Men seem to have the fight in Washington DC slowly turning, especially since Storm started her efforts to remove civilian population and teleport in troops there first. I decided to come here to Paris and arrived several hours ago, although I worked my way inward from the suburbs rather than jumping into the deep end first," The Hulk answered, still ignoring the bolts of plasma hitting him, none of which were hot enough to hurt him much.
When one of the Rippers however hit them with the main cannon, he stumbled slightly to one side, turned, and muttered "good luck", before leaping away into the air, his fist upraised to smash.
Grumbling, Mystique stared down at the woman, then smirked, and took her form again before shifting back into that of a regular alien. Then she was off, following the scanner once more through the streets, as above her, the portal once more regurgitated a large clump of troops. There could be no victory here until that beacon was shut down.
But Mystique was fast on the heels of the group transporting the beacon away. Forty minutes later, as the group of them tried to zigzag away to throw her off their scent, Mystique cut across their route. Getting ahead of them, she positioned herself in a building directly above them. When the clump of aliens carting the strange bit of technology around came within sight, She opened fire. One alien fell quickly, while the others dropped the device and ducked into cover, their automatic instincts failing them.
For a moment Mystique wished the Chitauri had faces so she could see the shock and horror there as they realized this left the beacon out, defenseless under her fire. The beacon almost seemed to shut off as it hit the ground but kept on working right up until five plasma bolts from her gun seared into the thing. A moment later it fizzled and popped and then the lights around the small control console shut down.
And above the city, the portal popped out of existence.
The tide was turning, and elsewhere, that tide was building further….
OOOOOOO
Despite his agreements with various countries around Latveria, it had taken Doctor Doom several hours to browbeat the local military forces into agreeing with their political leaders to allow him and his Doom bots to enter Hungary and to march, or rather, fly, on the city of Debrecen. But finally, as the battles in Washington and Paris began to slowly turn against the invaders and as afternoon pushed into evening, his own forces began to smash into the enemy air forces around Debrecen.
Interesting, doom amused, his arms crossed as he stared down at the battle going on below, his true presence concealed by various electronic and magical means from eyes and sensors alike. This attacker seems to have a good sense of tactical defense at the very least. The various strong points that had been raised throughout the countryside, here literal countryside, along with a few scattered towns and hamlets outside the city outskirts, had begun to hold up the local response to this invasion prior to his Doom Bots arriving, and now were actually holding up his Doom Bots somewhat well for the moment. He had yet to lose any of his units, but the small shield generators, the antiair guns, and the infantry heavy points this particular assault force were using were doing a decent enough job holding his droids in place. Heavy infantry weapons, large anti-air guns, and small shield generators, none of which have been reported at the other fronts as far as I know. China is… a mess, I will admit and the mountains down in Nepal are worse, but even so, it is clear now that each invasion point is led by a particular intelligence. Although I use the word loosely. Regardless…
As his cloak whipped around him, Doom, nodded his head slowly to a series of beats from his suit's onboard computers. "I have finished analyzing the enemy's weapon systems. And found them wanting."
With a single command, his Doom Bots began to exhibit energy shields of their own. Further, their weapons ratcheted up to a higher level of power, expending their onboard energy. They would not be worth much in a few hours, but that was fine. This battle would be over by then.
Instantly the battle changed.
One hard point had been hard-pressed already. The first of another layer of defensive points, the aliens had been caught before any further force could be built to protect its front and flanks, letting his Doom Bots and the locals surrounded on three sides, with two of them taking no fire from any other fortified position.
Several dozen Doom Bots flew through the air towards it, ignoring the enemy fire to slam gauntleted hands against the outer shell of the energy shield the invading aliens used. Energy weapons specifically designed to breach shielding, a miniaturized and highly refined version of the gravity beams that the Avalon Empire's Ravens used against enemy ships, blasted into the shielding. The small shield, barely large enough to cover a city block, shattered easily. Two more Doom Bots flashed down past original three, and were in among the Chitauri quickly, wiping them out with precise strikes of fist or energy weapon.
That same thing quickly began to happen at other hard points, the alien's defensive stance no longer even slowing his Doom Bots down.
Not that Doom cared overmuch. He had already moved towards Debrecen, trusting in his own technology and magic to keep himself hidden from the enemy.
Although it galls me to admit, Potter was better than I was with magic when we first met, Doom admitted ruefully to himself, the only person he would ever admit weakness to of any kind, and even then, only in the past tense. I have since made up a large amount of that gap, although he will probably always be stronger than me in terms of overall magical potential, and better at dealing with Demons and Devils. Potter has a spell based advantage there, and his mutant power is uniquely suited for him. But in every other way I will become his equal…
Doom snorted then, the sound echoing around him in the clear evening sky, so far removed from the conflict below and now behind him that it was but distant thunder. His voice echoed all around him as he spoke aloud to himself, a habit he had nearly done away with by this point. "Or as near as I can get without actually stealing from Potter the various resources he has access to. Doom is no petty thief, nor will he build a foundation of his own strength on the work of another. Especially one I call ally."
It amused Doom to reflect on that point at times. More than a year ago, he had been called a supervillain, or perhaps an antihero in the news of the world given his various technological breakthroughs, which he shared routinely with his folk. Such labels had amused him at the time, for Doom had never seen himself in that kind of light, seeing the morality of the individual as beneath him in his position as king, his intellect far too powerful to be so chained.
But since his first interaction with Storm and Harry when dealing with his wayward experiment, the Darkoth droid, Doom had seen an opportunity to achieve a specific goal and gain power thereafter. After that goal had been achieved, his road to further power led him to now becoming if not well-liked among the leaders of the world, at least deeply respected by them. No longer was he seen as a super villain. Doom was not seen as an upstanding leader, obviously. He was still a tyrant. But he was accepted in a way that he had not been before, and that amused him.
It also amused Doom somewhat that his ambitions had been… mollified to a certain extent. Who could have imagined that a mother's love and a woman's touch would take away so much of my desires for power and greater authority? Now, I simply seek to do what I can for my people, and for the future. No longer do I see conquering the world or the universe beyond as the only way to truly prove my superiority over others. I have proven my superiority several times over Richards, my old foe. And I have proven to the world my might time and time again.
Indeed, the future looked bright for both Doom and his people above and beyond this newest alien invasion. Latveria was quickly becoming one of the most well industrialized, technologically advanced nations in the world, and had grown in leaps and bounds thanks to the Eurasian War and Doom's taking advantage of it. They even had a presence in space, which no other nation could say bar Potter's Avalon Empire. Soon, Latveria, for all its size, would be a superpower on the scale of America and China, and soon, they would grow beyond that small start.
Immortality is the next goal, both for myself and for my wife. She and I, we will rule our own empire alongside that of the Avalon Empire. And in surpassing Harry in that realm, in living longer and living better, I will prove my superiority over him in turn. Save, perhaps, in the area of attracting womenfolk.
Doom laughed then, a true chuckle of genuine humor as he reflected on that score while descending towards Debrecen. Doom's tastes in women had changed after meeting his mother, and a homebody queen, one who could handle public relations as easily as breathing, and who ran her own international conglomerate, one who wanted to spend more time at home to raise their eventual children? That was more than enough for Doom. He had no need of more than one, nor pining after women already taken. Although, the pure male response within me wishes to add a caveat to that thought in the form of the Enchantress. If she had come along as a, what is the term, a two-for-one deal with Paris, I would not have complained.
His moment of humor took Doom down into the city, whereupon he paused, landing lightly on a rooftop near the center of the Debrecen. He was interested to note that these aliens hadn't gone into the wholesale slaughter that was being reported in the city of lights and the American capital. And they certainly were not causing as much chaos and destruction as was occurring in China or in the China Sea. Yet another sign of the fact that the minds controlling the various invasion forces are not only different in methodology by temperament. This one seems almost human in his or her regard of the local civilian population. Although I doubt that regard would remain once the mad Titan Potter assumes is behind this invasion makes his presence known.
Shaking his head at that idle thought, Doom held up one of his wrist guards, flipping open the protective covering and beginning to input a command into the controls of his suit's sensors. Now, the hyper spatial dissonance is a most noticeable signal and this close, the interference the alien ECM has caused will not be able to stop my… There it is.
Within seconds, his onboard scanners had discovered the signal he was searching for, and Doom made his way over in that direction. He found the Beacon had been moved into an opening area, allowing a multifaceted shield to be placed above it. Several shields in point of fact, creating a layered defense. "Smart of them. When one has a single most important asset, it behooves you to defend it to the utmost. But if they think that this is enough to stop Doom, they are sorely mistaken."
He alighted on a nearby roof, whereupon he began to put a new series of commands into his suit, reaching forward with his communications equipment into the systems of the shields in front of him. After all, since there was no one alive underneath those shields, it was obvious that they needed to be under some kind of remote control, or else the beacon would never be able to be moved again without taking the shields down by force. And whatever defense those shields provide, moving it and starting the beacon elsewhere would still be a more viable strategic defense.
Within seconds, the first shield flickered out.
By the time the second did, the aliens within the city had responded. Thousands of them boiled out from various defensive points or from where they had been patrolling the city, coming towards them from every direction. And it mattered not at all to Doom.
A single blast of power caught a dozen aliens. Another, a gravity weapon, lifted still more off of the various buildings all around Doom, hurling them upwards into the air, where they would either die or reach orbit and simply die of lack of oxygen. The gravity weapon certainly had enough power to cause either outcome. A spell flattened a dozen others, while the kinetic weapons in his eyes smashed skimmers out of the sky while Doom's own energy guns opened fire from his other hand, a single beam from each finger smacking into the various Chitauri charging his position.
However, he was surprised when a green-skinned woman of quite fetching appearance leaped off one of the skimmers so struck, doing a barrel roll in midair before landing lightly on her feet in a combat crouch. He idly watched her, cocking his head thoughtfully to one side as he took in her primitive weapons, a pair of swords that looked somewhat like a cross between a machete and an arming sword. "A part of me actually is quite pleased that even aliens know that sword-fighting is one of the true arts of combat. But another part is somewhat displeased. Do you truly think that your weapons will…"
The woman quite rudely interrupted Doom by charging forward, her blade flashing out, trying to bisect Doom. Doom blocked it with a negligent backhand from one of his gauntleted hands, watching in some amusement as the blade failed to penetrate his armor, although the readings from the blade that his armor had just made from that contact was quite interesting. She is a good deal stronger than her form might suggest. And that blade has been made of some interesting material. Nothing quite like the magical materials coming out of the Empire or my own alchemical projects, but still, interesting. It's molecular makeup is actually quite a bit closer to that of a diamond or other type of gem than metal, and it's edge is amazingly thin. Fascinating.
"Very well. Although you are quite impolite, Doom will play with you for a bit." Doom drawled, battering aside another blow from her blade, even as his other hand rose and fired off another blast of energy at a ripper that had just come through the portal. The beam bisected it, sending both sides of it to crash down below.
For several seconds he batted the woman's blows aside, coming to respect her skill, somewhat, if not her fight or flight instincts. The woman's blows were precise, controlled, and within her form Doom could see several moves that juxtaposed favorably with martial arts styles that Doom himself had seen previously and learned. Indeed, perhaps without his suit, the woman would have proved his superior, as much as that annoyed him to think. With his armor though, she was no threat, and didn't seem to realize it.
Nor were the hundreds of Chitauri all around them, Skimmer, infantry or Ripper, none were a threat, their beams intercepted, redirected or used to further empower his suit's own energy weapons. She should already be able to tell that I am beyond her. But here we are.
Just as Doom tired of the game, his helmet beeped at him. The final shield around the beacon had fallen.
The woman saw that too, and hastily shouted out orders in some alien tongue. Doom's onboard systems began to translate it quickly but it would take them quite some time to build up a vocabulary. Though really, whatever the woman said was a moot point. Before any of the milling Chitauri about below could do anything, Doom teleported away from the woman, landing near the Beacon. A single gauntleted fist smashed it, and the giant portal above Debrecen flared out with a loud pop of displaced air.
"No!" The woman shrieked, a word that needed no translation, as she launched herself down towards Doom, who began casually dealing with the alien invaders all around him. And beyond the city, his Doom Bots reported that the second line of defense had fallen. Many were pushing into the outskirts of the city now.
Doom took a moment to order them to not damage the city structure or its inhabitants unnecessarily. His onboard suit told him the civilian population, those that still lived which seemed a vast majority, remained inside the buildings within. It would behoove Doom's forces to not do more damage to Hungary's population than the Chitauri themselves.
With that done, Doom slew the final alien around them, felling it with a bolt of power from his eye beams, leaving the green-skinned woman alone. This did nothing to halt her attack if anything she became even more frantic. Doom blocked her blows with his hands and forearms, allowing his system to make more readings on her weapons, while taking in her somewhat exotic alien beauty. Unbidden, his earlier thoughts on his wife, Paris and the Enchantress came to mind as he took in her perfect, athletic form. And if Doom is to expand his Empire into the stars as Potter has, perhaps…
A kick nearly took Doom in the side, but he dodged around it more for the fun of it really than anything else. He grabbed her foot, and watched in amusement as she then did a perfect roundhouse kick, trying to force him to relinquish his grip. He didn't, and her foot clanged against the side of his head, doing no damage. The woman then gasped as Doom raised her up into the air and slammed her down back first into the ground by the same hold on her ankle.
Still, she was obviously made of stern stuff, and as Doom relinquished his grip on her leg, she put her hands behind her head, and rolled away, bringing her swords up and hurling them at Doom from barely a few feet away. They smacked off of his armor, but Doom noted that they had been launched quite well, and were Doom a lesser man, they could have cut into his armor underneath his armpit and where his leggings met his faulds. It was very clear that the woman was a consummate warrior.
But Doom was tiring of this farce. When she grabbed up a blaster weapon from one of the aliens attempted to use it, he walked through her fire as he had theirs previously. Using his own blast of plasma to shatter the road behind her he watched as she stumbled forward. Before she could try to retreat further, Doom was on her. One hand crushed the alien energy weapon in his grip, while the other slammed into her temple with carefully calculated force.
The woman's eyes rolled up in the back of her head and she fell senseless, only to be caught by Doom tossed over one of his shoulders. He wrapped a metal band around her wrist, and a second later, she was gone, sent to a prison back in Latveria within a advanced faraday cage, which would block any from finding her.
"I wonder what manner of prize you will turn out to be, alien woman?" Doom mused, raising a metal clad hand to a metal clad chin. We shall see when my fiancé and I question you. Perhaps a source of information about the various empires out there that is not completely connected to Potter and his enterprises? That could be useful in the future, even after this invasion."
Reminded of the greater invasion for a moment, Doctor Doom sent out a final series of orders to his Doom Bots. "Slaughter the aliens. Defend the civilians, but slaughter them all, return kind for kind, before returning to Latveria." Given his recent expansion during the Eurasian war, Doom had no desire to attempt to conquer Hungary. He was merely here as part of his deal with Potter and his local neighbors. Let them clean up after his victory.
As he rose into the air Doom reflected that similarly, this battle had concluded his part of this play. The rest of the invasion, which was also now facing fierce resistance, was the purview of Potter. He, Storm and the rest foolishly declared themselves the defenders of earth, and I am more than happy to leave them to it. And if it appears as if their hubris has gotten them into something they cannot get out of, which I doubt admittedly, then Doom will still be here, ready to step in.
A moment later, his various satellites in orbit reported the closing of the portal in Paris had occurred not a few moments before the one he had closed here, and Doom chortled, shaking his head as he repeated some of his earlier thoughts aloud. "Which I doubt admittedly. After all, Potter is an ally of Doom. If he could not see off this kind of assault, would not be worthy of that appellation. I think, Mad Titan or not, these aliens will find that out to their cost."
OOOOOOO
"Hah… well, I now have a target for one of my little satellites, anyway…" Thanos began, before another portal shut down. It took him a mere second to realize which portal that was, and then Thanos' blood ran cold. Gamora. My daughter!
If Thanos could be said to have a heart at all, let alone a soft spot, it was shown in his relationship with Gamora. While she was merely his adopted daughter, Thanos having never fathered a physical blood relation, Gamora had long been a cross between a Black Order member and a… apprentice almost. Gamora was smart, intelligent, dangerous, driven, unafraid to get her hands dirty while at the same time not taking any joy in it. And, dare Thanos say it, he had grown to truly feel some measure of affection towards her as he would a real daughter.
Quickly shifting his attention to one of the screens on his throne's armrests, Thanos inputted a series of commands, bringing up several beeping lines on a screen. Like the rest of his Black Order, Gamora had a small chip installed in her spine, which could allow Thanos to know if she was in distress or not. Not that before this Gamora ever had called for such aid, but Thanos didn't just use that kind of monitoring passively. It was an excellent way to keep track of people, as not just the Black Order had them. Nearly every officer captain and above within the Skrull and the Chitauri had the same kind of medical chip.
Quickly he pulled up the data from Gamora, and breathed a faint sigh of relief. His daughter was alive at the very least. She read as unconscious at present, which meant that whatever had happened on the other side, someone had not only shut down the portal, but overcome Gamora, which Thanos knew would not have been an easy achievement even at long range. The signal was intermittent, but his technology was better than whatever was trying to hide her.
Seconds later, he knew where she was, and ordered Ebony Maw to send large scale force towards the tiny country called Latveria. Was there not something of a local savant ruling that nation? He must be the one who was responsible for Gamora's loss.
Turning his attention to the last data coming in from Gamora's portal, he decided he had a new target. And not just one of the fusion bomb pumped fusion beams, either. No. All of them.
It took several moments, but the various satellites he had sent through were soon above the city. Using one to peer down was but the work of a few seconds rewiring and he watched as humanlike droids carried his daughter away. He waited then, his eyes widening as another humanlike droid in the city turned it's head upwards as if it was somehow able to detect the waiting satellites. "Impossible. A human able to come up with sensors that can see my cloaking device?"
A second later, he was certain, as the being raced upward. Thanos snorted.
"Fine. Let us see if your armor is as impressive as your sensors…" With another touch of a button, the satellites oriented themselves downward. A large aperture on each satellite oriented themselves. Form within light appeared, ruining their cloaking. And from within fusion bombs of a power that would dwarf anything from the Kree or Skrull arsenal ignited, and beams fit to cut through a planet's crust and several layers of magma beyond lashed out.
Thanos could have made them stronger, to cut through the whole planet, but he had hoped to make this war more artistic than simply violent. But all together, they might well still do that. Or at least do so much damage that all of the European continent would crack over time like an egg as a super volcano erupted from where they hit. Either way, he would have sent a message and covered the assault force from Ebony Maw's base in Nepal.
OOOOOOO
Having sensed someone acting the part of a voyeur, Doom had decided to poke his eyes out. Now, however, he stared at the sheer power of the beams coming his way, and that of the city that he had gone to the trouble of saving mere moments ago. "You would dare to wipe away that which Doom has saved? NAY!"
With a single mental command, Doom ordered every remaining Doom Bot into the air. The ravening beams of energy flashed downward, but were nowhere near the speed of light. By the time they were close, the doom bots had created a lattice of interweaving diamond patterns, with Doom behind the first group in the center. Shields rose all around, connecting and powered one over another, just in time for the beams to hit.
The first rank died in an instant. The second, barely a second later. The third held for an eyeblink, but the fifth stayed in place for a second, before the bolt of fusion energy struck the next. Then it hit the final line, where Doom was.
Heat like nothing Doom had known since the first time he put on his mask before the metal had cooled washed over Doom. A lesser man might have had flashbacks to that moment, or perhaps being in the literal hell that was Mephisto's realm when Doom and Potter went there to retrieve his mother, Cynthia.
Doom was not a lesser man. Better, his army of doom bots had held for just long enough. Long enough to give Doom the knowledge of the energy that now threatened to turn him and what he had wrought this day into less than ash. And with that knowledge and his own mastery of magic, not science, he crafted a spell. A spell to reflect the blast back along its route.
It was hard, intensely hard, and parts of Doom's suit melted even as the last of his Doom Bots came apart around him like so much chaff in a furnace. Yet Doom prevailed. Even as the impact of the wave of fusion energy carried him down, around him a pure black shield of scintillating magical energy appeared. A spell his mother had taught him to reflect any attack he could comprehend. The drain was impossible, and Doom felt his body and suit starting to shut down, but the shield was in place.
And the combined fusion beam flashed backward up into the atmosphere, destroying nothing more than the air it passed through before hitting the satellites that had released such energies.
Seconds before that destruction occurred, Doom fell out of the sky, bits of his armor peeling off as he fell. The fall might well have killed him in his weakened state and as battered as his armor was. Yet something stopped his fall.
"My son, the overachiever," a dry, but still well-loved voice intoned from one side of him. The next instant, through bleary eyes, Doom saw his mother's face. "I warned you what the cost of that spell would be, Victor. You have given more than a few decades of your life to what you have done this day."
"Th, the one who sent those beams, they would have taken what I had accomplished this day from me. I will not allow others to take a victory from Doom," Dr. Doom ground out through chapped, bleeding lips.
Well, to others he was Dr. Doom. To Cynthia, sorceress with few equals below the level of the Sorcerer Supreme, he was simply Victor, and she shook her head at his attitude. "Well, my son. Pride has cost you dearly."
"Not so." Dr. Doom smirked despite the chapped lips and the knowledge his spell had literally stolen decades out of his life. "I had already decided to achieve immortality. And Doom is not one to, as you say, underachieve."
Cynthia laughed at that, and Doom closed his eyes, knowing he was safe, protected by one of very few people in all creation he trusted entirely. I am glad that my personal part I nthis affair is done now, though. I am in no condition to continue… yet whoever decided to try and wipe out my victory had best hope that Potter deals with him, or else Doom will.