Chapter 4

Three Months Later

Sofia's muscles strained and protested as she lifted herself up before flopping back down. Once again she heaved with her arms and pulled her slim body up towards the beam in the ceiling. Keeping fit when most of your hours were spent confined in a small space was one of few options to spend time with.

After what was her fiftieth pull-up she dropped her hands from the beam, and sat down on her bed where she had been standing. Though she had grown somewhat since she left her mother, it was still the only place from which she could reach the metal beams.

Still breathing heavily, Sofia leaned back, one leg pulled up on the bed with her while the other hung off the edge. Her attention was switched from her aching hands to the muffled sound of marching. She regarded the corridor beyond the iron bars that fronted her cell with mild interest. Her vigilance was rewarded by a small group of men in green jumpsuits, a woman in purple armour, and a man in a business suit.

"This is the first cell sir," the woman said, checking on a tablet of some sort.

"You here for my complaints about the iron bars?" Sofia asked loudly, attracting their attention. She was glad at that moment that light was scarce and her face was likely shrouded in shadow, people rarely took a fifteen year old girl seriously.

"Iron bars?" the man questioned, stepping forward. Sofia cocked her head as she identified him.

"Norman Osborn," she muttered to herself, sitting forward. "The iron gives me a headache, especially under constant exposure."

"And why would that be Miss von Doom," he asked.

"That would be telling," she replied, standing and walking over to the bars. "No, the question is what are you doing down here? People come to you for the Thunderbolts program, not the other way around."

"Things have changed," he stated, turning to the woman, "open the cell."

Sofia smiled as the bars slipped down into the floor mechanically, and raised an eyebrow when one of the soldiers handed her a bundle of green cloth and silver armour. She fixed her gaze on the group as she unfolded her clothes.

"Are you going to watch a girl get changed?" she asked coquettishly.

"You're not a girl," Osborn replied, to which Sofia simply laughed and turned around. She unzipped and stepped out of the orange uniform, baring her tattooed back to the onlookers with only her bra-strap obscuring the skeletal wing art and trio of swirls at the base of her neck. She pulled the green cloth over her head and with practiced ease, clasped it by her shoulder before fitting the various armour pieces to herself.

After slipping on her greaves, she turned around again to find Osborn openly staring her up and down. Sofia flicked up her cowl so only her slight grin was visible.

"What are you staring at?"

"You. You're quite the enigma," he replied. "Hand, where's Doom's cell?"

"This way sir," the woman replied, accessing her tablet once more. Sofia fell into step with the strange crowd, reserving her questions for a later date.

"Wait a second," the woman, Hand, said and soft fingers connected with the band wrapped around Sofia's neck. With a click the metal was removed from her skin, immediately making Sofia's hands fly to her now bare neck, massaging the skin she hadn't felt for many weeks. She rolled her shoulders a little as the feeling of being apart from her magic faded, and she felt free.

Experimentally Sofia whispered a spell, and a grin spread across her face as her trusty dagger appeared in her hand. She caressed the silver blade lovingly, feeling the sharp edge lightly before slipping it back into its sheath on her hip. When she looked up from the blade, they were just entering the corridor she knew to be maximum security, where the most dangerous of criminals had their solitary cells.

When the small party stopped moving, she leant back against the wall opposite the cell of an armoured man who was currently regarding her rescuer.

"Osborn," was Doom's only acknowledgement.

"Doom," he replied, gesturing to the woman seemingly only known as Hand, who pressed some buttons that opened the cell. She stepped up to the large man hesitantly, before reaching up to quickly remove the collar, and then the devices covering each of his hands that prevented him from moving his fingers lest he use an incantation. Once Sofia had seen the metal devices removed, she decided to voice her opinion.

"I know there is some saying about gift horses, but why are you doing this?" she addressed Osborn.

"You are both being released-having never been formally charged, and indeed being foreign nationals the US government had no right to hold you in the first place," he said.

"That does not answer my question." He smiled, and turned towards her father instead.

"I'm releasing you as a gesture of good faith, and in hope of fathering some trust. And perhaps persuading you to join a group I am creating."

"A group?" Doom said, speaking for the first time.

"A small group of people within power meeting together to mutual benefit. Namor wished you to be a part of this and I agreed, as representative of the mystic."

"You wish for your own version of the Illuminati," Sofia said, considering the group that had been publically ousted after the return of the Hulk.

"Essentially, yes. I've replaced Tony Stark in all other senses, it seems only appropriate," Osborn replied. "Emma Frost stands to represent the mutant populous, Namor the Atlanteans, but I cannot exactly bring Doctor Strange in."

"And you think Doom will be your pet sorcerer?" the man said, hands clenched in fists.

"No, like I said, this will be a group of equals meeting for mutual benefit. Anyway, regardless of what you decide, there's a chopper up top waiting to take you back to Latveria, these two HAMMER agents will escort you," Osborn gestured to two of the guards. "If you'll excuse me, I have someone else I need to see here as well."

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Sofia shifted in her seat on the chopper, all too aware of the fact that she was sitting on steel. She instead tried to concentrate on the man beside her who had remained silent throughout their journey.

Finally caving to the need to talk, she muttered a quick incantation that would muffle their voices to the aircraft's other occupants.

"Thoughts on Osborn?" she inquired of her unmoving parent, who had his face cradled in one armoured gauntlet as he stared at the moving countryside of Europe.

"If you're thinking I am considering trusting him you are wrong," he states after a moment.

"I thought as much. It astounds me the American government has put a man with a history of mental illness and criminal work in charge of their defence. Then again their idea of a 'democracy' remains strange to me as well; society should be governed by those with the strength in hand to lead it."

"Indeed."

"Thinking of that, what will have happened to Latveria in our absence?"

"There are Doombots on hand that will automatically assume my mantle if the need arises, keeping up the illusion I am always there."

"Speaking of the place…" Sofia murmured, looking out of the helicopter. Doomstadt loomed in the distance, castle Doom standing resolutely tall above the city.

The pilot slowed the rotors, and the chopper began to land still a ways from the city. Sofia ended the muffling spell and quirked an eyebrow at the HAMMER agent sitting opposite.

"Why are we landing here?" she asked.

"Director Osborn does not want to be directly linked with you publically, so we're landing away from the public eye," the man replied. He then glanced over at her father and pulled a digital camera from within a pouch on his belt, "hey, can I get a photo?"

Doom turned his head slightly to glare at the man, who looked suitably cowed, stowing the device.

As the chopper landed, rotors winding down, the man opened the sliding doors and hopped out. Sofia gracefully followed, breathing in the fresh air of the vibrant landscape.

She turned to look back at her father but froze mid-spin, eyes locked on a female figure not far off. The red hair playing in the wind, green skin-tight outfit and rage-filled expression were all too familiar.

"Shit," she said simply, regarding her mother with something only describable as dread.

"Daughter mine," she said, voice dripping with malice, "lover mine."

"Morgana," Doom acknowledged, stepping up beside Sofia.

"I considered enacting my revenge while you languished in cells, but I felt it would have been lacking. No, crushing your hope as you finally return to your seat of power, that is a far sweeter victory."

Morgana began casting the first spell, raising her hands to conjure creatures from the earth. Sofia stepped back to do the same while Doom began to cast shields, but found herself cut off from the mother earth. Her mother's Fae blood was stronger than her own; less diluted, she had a stronger connection to the earth.

Sofia cursed in her head as the ground began cracking, clawed hands reaching up. Thinking desperately she summoned her grimoire to float in front of her, flipping open to a specific page even as she slit open the palm of her hand with her silver bladed dagger.

She chanted heavily in a grating tongue, reading the glyphs off the page rather than memory for this spell as the blood streaming from her hand formed occult symbols in the air.

"Still having to read from a book?" her mother mocked as she finished summoning her hell-beasts. Sofia ignored her, chanting only quicker. She took a deep breath in when she finished, whispering a spell to close the slit in her palm.

Within the circle of swirling crimson symbols, the empty space began to glow white. The white patch grew, and grew until its diameter was as great as a man was tall. From within the light, like a man reaching through a window, came a stubby grey hand, missing a finger from a normal human hand.

An arm followed the hand, and a body followed the arm, until the stocky grey humanoid stood before the portal, its single wide red eye glaring around. And it was followed by another, and another, the creatures dropping from the portal she had made to the other-where.

Sofia stood tall and channelled her powers, not in small part due to the blood glyphs that surrounded the portal, through the beasts, subjugating them, making her will their only desire. The beings known as the Mindless Ones turned as one towards her mother and army of roving beasts, and charged forward with only single-minded destruction.

Sofia placed her hands on her knees for a moment, just a moment she needed to catch her breath after the summoning. When she straightened, she saw that while the group of monsters and Mindless Ones engaged in brutal battle, Morgana and Doom traded breathless words, spells flying off but never hitting. She tracked one of those blasts of purple magic swerving away from her father to impact instead on the chopper and the two men who had been panicking beside it, incinerating them.

She glanced back to her fighting parents in time to hear her mother utter a final word.

"Bavaloomni."

Doom gave a cry of agony as the powerful spell ripped through his shields, purple magic suffusing his form.

"You have no idea how long I have waited to hear you say that," Morgana said gleefully. Doom tried to raise a hand surprisingly weakly, but was smashed back down into the ground by a great beast that had made its way past the Mindless.

Sofia heaved her tired form up and sent a spell to blast the animal away from her father, taking her dagger and re-opening the wound again she chanted once more, taking up position over Doom's prone form. Her mother sent another spell her way, but Sofia ignored it, ignored her light-headedness, and focused on her words and the glyphs forming in a circle around her. She finished just as the purple magic sputtered off of her barrier, the crimson glyphs creating a ward around her.

She swayed on the spot a second, trying to get her thoughts together. She absent-mindedly considered the bleeding slit on her hand, murmuring the healing spell once more.

"You focus too much on blood magic child. It leaves you vulnerable, and in this fight you are sorely outmatched," Morgana taunted from her place, stepping forwards through the remains of her group of Mindless. When one tried to get near her, she simply took its stumpy head off with a blast of purple without even breaking her stride.

Sofia backed up instinctively, and nearly tripped over something. With looking down she had the stark reminder that her father was lying on the ground. She quickly dropped to his side. A diagnostic certified he was alive, and his eyes burned with fiery purpose still, but he did not move a muscle and he said nothing as she tried a few revival spells. Sofia flinched as she felt magic sputter off her warding, quickly followed by another blast, and another.

Sofia looked up through the barrier at the enraged face of her mother. She snarled at the older woman; this was not how it was going to end, she was not going to die today. She was preparing her words to attack when she noticed a slight blur behind her mother. And then her head was ripped from her shoulders. Sofia blinked, and gaped slightly like a goldfish as none-other than the Sentry held the swiftly disintegrating head and body of the late Morgana le Fay.

"Well that was over quickly," a voice came from behind her, distorted through a modulator. Sofia turned around to see a man in Iron Man armour which had been painted red, white and blue touching down. He was swiftly followed by Ares, some young man with white hair she didn't recognise, and what appeared to be Ms. Marvel, Spiderman and Hawkeye. She knew however that they were not; the costumes were different for one thing, and their features were slightly off, wrong bone structure. "Hand, this is Iron Patriot. We're on the ground at Doomstadt."

"Is he really going to call himself that in public," 'Hawkeye' remarked.

"We need a clean-up team and evac, ASAP," the man continued, ignoring his teammate's quip. Sofia just about recognized his tone of voice through the electronics as being Norman Osborn, which explained a few things. "What's wrong with Doom?" the man asked, addressing her.

"You think you've won don't you?" Sofia asked him.

"Um, guys," the Sentry said quietly from behind her.

"She's dead, game over," Hawkeye replied, looking down at her.

"She's still alive in Avalon," she said.

"Hey, uh, something's wro-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh," the Sentry's protests turned into a scream, and Sofia twisted to see the man. His eyes glowed orange, and she had to shield her own as he exploded in a blast of heat. The energy rent what remained of her shields, and the whole group was thrown backwards.

"Sentry is down, I repeat Sentry is down," Osborn said as he picked himself up from where the explosion had thrown him. Sofia trained her eyes on where the Sentry had stood, and grimaced as she saw who had replaced him as the dust settled.

"Understand this, you simple mortals of flesh," Morgana began, as she stood there with yet another legion of monsters at her back. "I am not from your time. Even if you kill me here, I can come back from my time in the far past and destroy you. Do it again and I will come back in your childhood and remove you from existence."

"Morgana! I am Ares, God of war, son of Zeus," the muscular man stated, "and I demand you go back whence you came!"

"It is you mighty Ares, my humblest apologies for not recognizing you before," Morgana drawled out. "Though, you say Zeus' name as if your father cares whether you live or die. In this time I know he does not. Pavati Mulandooso."

As soon as the words left her lips, the black-suited Spiderman cringed, and clutched his head in his hands. With a groan, the man exploded outwards in a mass of ebony, with a large gaping maw that snapped up the War God, and spat him out over the way.

Sofia simply swore and threw a blast of purple energy at her mother, and another, and another. Arcs of violet energy spattered away from the green clad witch who simply grinned.

"It seems you at least grew a spine under your father. Face me then, daughter mine," her mother proclaimed, giving a gesture to her forces that quickly moved to engage the costumed group of 'Avengers.'

The pair set to duelling as the world around them turned to a chaotic mess. Mother faced off daughter and each chanted their words as amethyst like energy broiled in the air between them, each countering the others moves even as they were made. Sofia fired off significantly fewer attacks, but she held her defence.

"Get close to le Fay!" Osborn ordered as he was beset by what was his pet Spiderman.

"What are we gonna fucking do?" Hawkeye yelled, "last time we killed her, she came back and took one of ours. Five more times and she's golden."

Ares acknowledged the argument with a roar of inarticulate anger, smashing his way through beasts until he faced Morgana herself. She turned slightly towards him, backing away from the deadly iron axe Sofia was all too familiar with while trying to defend against her daughters attacks.

None of the three of them saw the purple suited man coming, ending a leap while holding out an arrow which he swiftly plunged into Morgana's heart. The woman clutched at the instrument that protruded forwards through her chest helplessly, light fading from her eyes as her body and that of her legion began to dissipate once more.

Once she saw the life leaving the body, Sofia turned and jumped to where Doom's form still lay crumpled.

"Father?" she asked, placing a hand on his forehead. The man groaned, but did not move.

"Le Fay," he rasped out, barely audible. The aforementioned woman had hit him with something advanced that would take him a while to work past, so Sofia gathered her options in her mind.

"Is she dead now, or is she just going to come back again?" Ms Marvel queried to the group at large.

"The latter," Sofia answered tersely, then started to make her way over to the God of War. "Lord Ares, I need to borrow your blood."

"What?" the man said confusedly as Sofia approached him, dagger drawn. Sofia gazed warily at the gathering of purple energy on the hill opposite.

"You have the most powerful blood here," she replied, slicing her blade across his muscly forearm, "just shut up and let me work and we might just survive this. The rest of you, give me time to charge the spell."

She sheathed the blade, and stuck her hands out to begin reciting, crimson flowing from the open wound to form Gaelic Glyphs in the air.

"Take a position," Wolverine shouted, running forward to engage the oncoming horde.

"I think taking a position was what got me in this crap in the first place," the white haired youth quipped, firing off a pair of pistols as he leapt into the fray.

Ares swung his axe again and again, defending the small position Sofia had taken behind him, blood still pouring from his cut into the air.

"Victor? Victor can you hear me, we need your help," Osborn cried from where he had some kind of blue shield up around her father's prone form.

Sofia let it all fade into background noise as she concentrated on the spell, harnessing the power of an Olympian into an attack. With a cry of effort she uttered the last syllable, the runes in the air glowing a deep purple before disgorging the colourful energy in a solid beam of violet light, straight at Morgana. The woman's body gave way immediately under the raw power of the blast, dissipating into atoms.

Sofia doubled up slightly, breathing heavily as she rested hands on her knees. Her body couldn't take much more of this; she simply didn't have the energy yet. Damn her physical age.

"Did you just kill your own mother?" the youth inquired as he walked over, the beasts disappearing once more.

"Well she wouldn't be the only one here," Hawkeye commented.

"Doom?" Osborn repeated again, looking down at the fallen man, "we could really use some damn help here."

"Run away," he rasped out, "this fight is not yours."

"Father you need to use the time cube," Sofia said, walking over to them, "it's the only way to end this."

"Sofia-," he tried to start, but she cut him off.

"No, you know it's the only option," she turned to Osborn, "get him away from here, we'll hold off my mother as long as possible."

"I don't take orders from-," the man started.

"Don't talk, just do it!" she demanded. Reluctantly, the man took Doom in his arms and flew into the sky on repulsors.

"We'll hold off le Fay?" Ms. Marvel said scathingly, "and how do you plan to do that? You look dead on your feet and every time we kill her she just comes back."

"Details," Sofia said simply, falling back to sit on a rock, trying to catch her breath still.

"Err, guys," interjected Hawkeye, who was staring into the sky, "is that a fucking dragon?"

Sofia followed the man's gaze into the sky, where indeed, a redheaded figure could be seen waving a sword from atop said scaly beast.

"Yes," Sofia replied tiredly, "yes that's a fucking dragon."

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Sofia had become so used to the constant fighting that when her next blast of magic landed on empty space she was somewhat surprised, and it took her brain a moment to process that all the monsters were gone. As well as her mother.

"Who killed her this time?" Ms. Marvel inquired.

"No-one, she just vanished," Wolverine replied, staring at a space not far off as he tried to keep his tattered costume together.

"Finally some good news," Sofia stated, wiping sweat from her forehead.

"What do you mean?" Hawkeye asked.

"I mean my father must have dealt with her in her own time. She's not coming back."

"How do you know that O' mystic Meg? How old even are you anyway?" Hawkeye stated, looking around the land and sky trying to find a trace of the witch.

"Why do people always come back to my age?" Sofia remarked idly. "I'm still just as capable of beating their asses into the ground."

"Language," said a familiar voice behind her. Sofia spun on the spot to regard the two armoured men who had earlier flown off, Doom holding a cauldron by its metal hoop for some reason. "It is unbefitting of a lady."

"My apologies father," she stated, giving a mock curtsey.

"Hey, what happened to Ares?" the now more human sized Spiderman said, poking the stone statue that was the God of War.

"Simple petrification spell," Sofia responded, even as her father made the correct gestures to undo it. "My mother is not quite unhinged enough to incur the Lord of Olympus' wrath." She had to withhold a laugh as the black suited man back stepped quickly from Ares as the unfrozen God unleashed the swing of his axe he had been in the middle of.

"What about Sentry?" Ms Marvel said. The question hung heavy in the air for a long few moments. Sofia merely shaded her eyes against the Sun as a Quinjet soared out of the sky to land by where they stood.

"I'm sorry Bob," Osborn said, causing her to turn and see him having taken his helmet off. "I thought you….damn." Sofia kept her thoughts on the matter to herself; she personally believed having a mentally unstable person with power the likes of which few in the universe held 'off the table' as it were would be a good thing. Instead, she stood up on a hillock and stared towards Doomstadt, which had remained blissfully untouched by the battle that had taken place.

"Time to return home," she murmured, gazing up at the castle.

"Doom, no-one's ever going to know this happened," Osborn stated.

"I do not need or require your pity," the man stated in return.

"No. Frankly, I can't be seen to be running halfway around the world to help you," he replied, and after a pause in which her father said nothing: "And you're welcome! Let's go."

Sofia did not turn around at the sound of the Quinjet departing, nor when she felt her father's presence by her side.

"I can't wait to have a bath again," she remarked, looking over at her tower, longing for the luxury of her large tub once again after months of prison showers.

"I have something for you," Doom replied, causing her to turn around. The man held out the dark metal cauldron filled with colourless liquid

"A cauldron of water?" she asked, confused. Her eyes widened however as she read the inscriptions and runes along the side. "Taken from Avalon? This….I can use this, thank you father."

Doom did not reply, simply staring over at Doomstadt while his battered cape whipped about in the wind.