[A/N]: New week, new goal! Let's kick things off with 150 power stones for a bonus chapter!
"Am I?" Jay's smile widened. "Wave to the camera, Victor. Your people are waiting."
The duel that erupted transcended mere swordplay.
Doom's mystically enhanced blade, specifically prepared to counter Jay's abilities, remained invisible to his danger sense. Every parry became a calculated gamble based on reading muscle tension, breathing patterns, the minute shifts in Doom's stance that telegraphed his intentions.
But this was exactly what Jay had trained for.
His enhanced reflexes turned anticipation into art, each movement flowing into the next.
Doom fought with supreme confidence, clearly savoring what he believed would be his final duel as a mortal being. His blade work was elegant, precise, and enhanced by mystical energy, but still fundamentally bound by human limitations.
But something was different now. Doom's strikes came faster, more desperate. The revelation that his nation was watching had shattered his theatrical composure.
"You can't do this!" Doom snarled between exchanges. "I am their savior! Their protector!"
"You're their executioner," Jay replied, his voice carrying to every microphone in the laboratory. "Every illness, every crop failure, every child crying in terror. That was you, Victor. You fed your people's suffering to demons while they prayed to you for salvation."
Jay wasn't trying to win quickly. He was buying time, one eye on his watch while the negative demons watched with malicious anticipation, and poor Valeria struggled in her paralyzed state.
But more than that, he was ensuring every citizen of Latveria saw exactly what their leader had become.
Sparks flew as their blades met.
Doom's strikes came in calculated sequences. Overhead cleaves that split the air with emerald fire. Horizontal slashes that left glowing trails. Thrusts that sought gaps in Jay's defense.
Jay answered each attack with practiced precision. He flowed around Doom's blade like smoke, countering with strikes that carved through the mystical energy without touching the man wielding it.
When Doom pressed forward with a combination of slashes, Jay backflipped over the emerald energy, landing in a crouch before springing forward with an upward cut that forced Doom to parry desperately.
"You should feel honored," Doom said between exchanges, not even breathing hard. "When I become a sorcerer on par with gods, you will be remembered as the last enemy I defeated while still bound by the weakness of flesh."
Jay spun away from a particularly vicious strike, his blade tracing a perfect arc that severed one of the ritual's connecting lines. The chamber pulsed as energy was momentarily disrupted before rerouting itself.
Time crawled.
Each second felt like an hour as Jay maintained the delicate balance of engaging Doom fully while performing precise strikes on the ritual itself. The accumulated nether energy built toward the threshold he needed, contained within the geometric patterns but not yet bonded to Doom's physiology.
At exactly 11:50 PM, Jay saw his moment.
In one explosive movement, he performed a strike at the ritual's precise center, not to destroy it, but to sever the demons' connection to this dimensional plane while trapping their energy within the ritualistic patterns.
"No!" Doom screamed, abandoning the duel to frantically attempt repairs to the ritual diagrams. "My sacrifices! Months of planning!"
Jay was already moving to the next phase.
Light daggers immobilized Doom against the laboratory wall while Jay teleported with the paralyzed Valeria to the hospital in a flash of blue energy. He materialized in the emergency ward, gently placing her on a stretcher.
"Help her," he told the startled medical staff in fluent Latverian before vanishing again.
When he returned seconds later, Doom had freed himself and was desperately trying to reestablish the dimensional connection, his fingers bleeding as he redrew symbols with his own blood.
The time for subtlety had ended. Now came the reckoning.
Jay's voice cut through the chamber like a blade forged from pure malice.
"People of Latveria," Jay's voice carried the weight of months of accumulated rage as millions of viewers found their screens hijacked. "Behold Victor Von Doom, your beloved ruler."
The camera focused on Doom kneeling beside the ruined ritual, his elegant clothes torn and stained, his mask askew to reveal burned flesh beneath. He looked exactly like what he was. A broken man desperately clawing at mystical symbols drawn in his own blood.
The hatred he'd been choking down finally broke free, raw and burning.
"Look closely at your would-be god. The mighty Doctor Doom, ruler of a nation, reduced to crawling on his hands and knees like a child drawing with chalk."
Jay's laughter was surgical in its cruelty, designed to cut through Doom's pride.
"Victor Von Doom, who broadcast to the world that I was a villain manipulating innocents. Victor Von Doom, who exposed the 'Power Broker' as a fraud preying on the desperate."
Jay's words became venom itself.
"Here is your noble leader, attempting to sacrifice his childhood sweetheart to demons for the chance at godlike power."
The revelation tore through Latveria like wildfire. Even through the castle walls, Jay could hear the collective gasp of an entire nation.
"Tell them, Victor. Tell them about the months-long ritual that's been feeding on your people's suffering. Tell them how their mysterious illnesses, their impossible accidents, their crops failing and their weather turning hostile, all of it has been fuel for your summoning."
Doom's composure cracked. "You don't understand! I was going to save them! Rule them properly! Guide them to greatness!"
"By murdering the woman who loved you?"
Jay's hatred turned to verbal assault, each word precisely targeted.
"Let me guess, Victor. When you were a child, did Valeria tell you that you could be anything you wanted to be? That you were special? That you deserved better than the hand life dealt you?"
The accuracy of the guess was visible in Doom's flinch.
"And look what we have here instead," Jay's voice dripped with venom as he addressed the cameras. "The ruler of Latveria, reduced to kneeling and drawing scribbles while betraying the only girl who'd ever accept his hideous face. First Valeria, then Sue Storm. You really have bad luck with the ladies, huh? Or do you only pine after married women because you have a kink?"
Jay paused, letting the silence stretch. When he spoke again, his voice carried mock concern.
"Wait, I need to know. When you think about Sue Storm, do you picture her with Reed? Is that what does it for you, Victor? Because there's therapy for that kind of thing."
Jay's laughter turned hysterical.
"Oh no, don't tell me Doctor Doom, ruler of Latveria, is a 'cuck'?"
Doom's entire body went rigid.
For a moment, the laboratory fell into absolute silence except for the hum of dying wards. Then, slowly, Victor Von Doom rose to his feet with the terrible dignity of a monarch whose kingdom was burning around him.
"You..."
His voice was barely a whisper, but it carried the weight of mountains.
"You DARE speak that word to DOOM?"
The mask that had been askew slowly straightened as Doom's hands moved. When he spoke again, his voice had shed all pretense of humanity, becoming something cold and terrible.
"DOOM is eternal. DOOM is inevitable. And you, miserable wretch, have just committed the gravest sin possible. You have made DOOM's humiliation PUBLIC."
His voice rose to a roar that shook the castle foundations.
"For this transgression, there will be no mercy. No quick death. No peace in any realm!"
The air around Doom began to shimmer with barely contained power.
This final mystical blast Doom summoned was pure desperation made manifest. A howling torrent of power drawn from every dimensional fracture around them, every scrap of demonic energy he could tear from the ritual itself. The concentrated fury could have leveled city blocks.
Jay cut it in half with contemptuous ease, his cursed blade parting the energy.
He wanted the citizens to see their "god" fail.
"And this is where your story ends," Jay said, his form now radiating anti-mystical energy so intense that the laboratory's wards began to malfunction. "Not with your ascension to power. Not even with a dramatic last stand worthy of your ego. Just pathetic, whimpering failure."
Using his polarity powers, Jay began the most ambitious feat he'd ever attempted.
The overwhelming dark energy trapped within the ritual circle flowed into him like a river of liquid night, but instead of corrupting him, he channeled it through his unique abilities and converted the darkness into pure light.
The transformation was visible as streams of shadow entering his body and emerging as radiance that made the camera feeds flicker and distort.
The realization hit Doom like a physical blow. His months of work, his sacrifices, his deals with demons. All of it was about to be used to help the very people he'd harmed.
"No..." Doom whispered. "You can't... that's MY power... MY..."
"Your power?" Jay's laugh was genuinely amused now. "Victor, you were never going to get this power. The demons were using you. But I guess that's fitting. Everyone uses you, don't they? Even you use yourself."
"Citizens of Latveria," Jay addressed the audience, now glowing with converted energy that made him appear angelic despite the violence of the moment, his hair shifting to brilliant white. "Your leader spent months feeding your suffering to demons. He turned your trust into fuel for his personal ambitions. He branded me a master schemer while planning to become something infinitely worse."
The great clock in Doomstadt's central square began to chime midnight.
Christmas Day was beginning.
"But I want to show you something Victor Von Doom never understood. I've learned that Power isn't about what you can take. It's about what you can give."
Jay raised his hands, and the converted energy responded to his will.
"This Christmas morning, I gift you healing. I gift you hope. I gift you the future your leader tried to steal."
The feat defied every natural law.
Light erupted from Castle Doom like a second sun, but this wasn't the harsh glare of fusion or electricity. This was healing given physical form, restoration made manifest, hope transformed into something that could touch the world.
The energy flowed through the seventy markers Jay had placed throughout Doomstadt, each anchor point becoming a beacon. The miracle didn't stop at the city's borders.
Streams of healing light raced across Latveria.
In hospitals throughout the nation, patients who'd been dying found their bodies suddenly whole, restored to perfect health as if their illnesses had been nothing more than bad dreams.
Dr. Volkov stared at her instruments in shock as terminal diagnoses simply vanished from her screens. Patients who'd been catatonic for weeks sat up in their beds, lucid and whole. Children born with genetic defects watched their DNA rewrite itself in real-time.
But the miracle extended beyond human healing.
In the agricultural districts, destroyed crops ripened instantly. Spoiled grain stores became pure and nutritious again. Livestock found their strength returning.
Even the weather responded. The vicious storms that had been battering Latveria for weeks simply dissolved, replaced by the gentle snowfall of a Christmas night.
The effect was visible from orbit. Satellite feeds showing Latveria glowing like a star, tendrils of pure light spreading across the nation's territory.
But it was the human reactions that made the miracle real.
In hospitals, families wept as loved ones were restored to them. Doctors fell to their knees, overwhelmed. Nurses who'd worked themselves to exhaustion suddenly found their patients laughing, crying, embracing life with the desperate intensity of those granted reprieve from death itself.
Farmers rushed into fields that had been barren wasteland hours before, falling among crops that continued growing even as they watched. The elderly danced in nursing homes, their bodies restored to vitality they'd forgotten they'd ever possessed.
Throughout Doomstadt, people poured into the streets despite the late hour.
Strangers embraced. Children played in snow that no longer felt hauntingly cold. Church bells rang spontaneously.
News anchors countrywide abandoned prepared scripts, reduced to stammering attempts to describe the indescribable. Religious leaders fell to their knees in spontaneous prayer. Scientists ran calculations that their instruments insisted were impossible.
Social media exploded with footage that spread faster than any network had ever carried information. The hashtag #ChristmasGift trended within minutes.
Some people fainted from overwhelming emotion. Others laughed until they cried. Most simply stood transfixed, watching something that redefined their understanding of what was possible.
When the light finally faded, Jay swayed on his feet, drained by the transformation and expenditure of energy that nearly emptied his reserves. Only his enhanced physiology kept him conscious.
The cameras still broadcasting countrywide showed him standing over Doom's broken form. Victor Von Doom now lay bleeding and defeated in the ruins of his own ambition.
But Jay wasn't finished.
Jay approached slowly, deliberately. Each step echoed through the laboratory and into millions of homes.
With tremendous effort, he placed Muramasa's tip against Doom's chest. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of everything that had passed between them.
"Why?"
The question held months of accumulated pain.
"You had everything, Victor. A nation that loved you. People who trusted you with their lives before you threw it away for petty revenge."
Jay's voice cracked with exhaustion and emotion.
"Why betray all of that? Why come after me? Why ruin my life? Why blame me for an accident when we both know was your fault? Why sacrifice innocent people who saw you as their savior? Why lie and rip away my friends and loved ones? Why try to murder the one person who loved you before the world taught you to hate?"
Doom's laughter was broken, bloody, echoing through the laboratory and into millions of homes.
"Because I am DOOM!" he screamed through ruined vocal cords. "I alone deserve to stand supreme! Anyone who threatens that supremacy must be crushed, whether they are insects beneath my notice, false heroes playing at righteousness, or a woman who dared represent the innocence I chose to abandon!"
His eyes blazed with unrepentant hatred.
"I regret nothing! Every choice was correct! Every sacrifice was justified! If ruling requires me to stand atop a mountain of corpses, then I will build that mountain myself and smile while I do it!"
Jay looked into those hate-filled eyes and saw the most terrifying revelation of all.
Victor Von Doom genuinely believed he was the hero of his own story.
There would be no redemption. No moment of recognition. No understanding of the evil he'd committed.
Doom was exactly what he appeared to be. A narcissist so consumed by his own ego that he would sacrifice literally anyone and anything for the chance at more power.
Including the woman who'd loved him unconditionally.
Jay raised Muramasa with hands that shook from exhaustion. When he spoke, his voice carried the finality of judgment.
"Then may God have mercy on your soul, Victor Von Doom. Because I won't."
"No," he whispered, blood bubbling at his lips. "Not... like this. Not... defeated by..."
"By the villain you created?" Jay finished quietly. "Yes, Victor. Exactly like this."
The bells outside rang in joy, but in the throne room, the only music was the hiss of blood spreading across marble.
Jay didn't linger to savor victory. He teleported away in the same instant, leaving behind a dying tyrant, a nation struggling to process their salvation, and a world forever changed by witnessing the impossible.
In the silence that followed, Doomstadt's church bells continued to ring Christmas morning across a land finally free of the supernatural poison that had been slowly killing it.
Victor Von Doom's final gift to his people was his own defeat.
And across the globe, humanity went to sleep on Christmas Eve having witnessed proof that miracles, while rare, were still possible in this world.
[A/N]: How was this chapter? Did the revenge land? Was it satisfying, and did the payoff feel worth it? Been building to this moment for a while, so I'm curious if it hit the way you expected.