Part 3: Dance Me to the Wedding Now
As I looked out over the castle courtyard from the future nursery, I was looking forward to a few quiet days, at least. I didn't get them. Instead…
The Great Hall of Castle Doom erupted into violence as Magneto and his Enforcers retaliated against Doom's failed attempt to lure them into another dimension and slaughter them there, where the laws of physics were different and Magneto's powers would not work. The castle's security forces streamed in from all directions to join the affray, but they were ineffectual against the powers of the mutants, being all too human.
The only forces on Doom's side who were at all effective were the Invincible Woman and the Inhuman Torch, and they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Magneto and Doom were locked in combat in the middle of the battle, and it was not going well for the ruler of Latveria—not well at all.
I had to do something. I seized an inkwell off my desk, and visually tracked the blur and the falling bodies that showed where Quicksilver, Magneto's super-fast son, had just been. If I aimed for him and let fly a hundred thousand times, I could never hope to hit him, not at the speeds of which he was capable.
So instead I deliberately threw the inkwell in a direction where he wasn't. I hit him square on the chin—or rather, he ran right into my missile.
The Heroic Law of Odds: Million to one chances always succeed.
I admit I first encountered that law in the works of Terry Pratchett, but careful observation had proved it to be true.
The 'thwack' that was barely audible above the din when the inkpot hit was as nothing to the sound of Quicksilver's skull hitting the stone floor with a dull 'thunk'. At the speed he was going before I intervened, his head shattered like a watermelon falling off a speeding truck.
"Pietro!" howled Magneto, breaking off his fight with Doom to rush to his son's side. He was not the mutant leader now; he was a father. I didn't waste a moment. I took up my pen, stopped him by the ludicrously easy tactic of stepping on his cape.
As he turned toward me to remonstrate, I grabbed a handful of his silver hair in one hand, and brought my other hand around in an arc that ended when my pen pierced his eye. His electromagnetic powers washed over me, to no avail. I wore nothing metal, and my pen was made in Venice. It was completely impervious to his powers. It was a slender shaft of tinted and shaped glass—that came to a wicked point.
He shrieked in pain, and vitreous humor spurted out over my hand, but I drove the pen in deeper still, until it dug into the brain, and then I dragged it from one end of the eye socket to the other, until I felt the fragile glass snap and splinter.
Magneto gurgled, twitched, and died, sagging suddenly to the flagstones.
All around me, the battle had ground to a sudden, shocked halt. "You—you killed him," someone said, in disbelief.
"I killed them both." I said, wearily. The blue-black ink stains on my hand and on Pietro's face bore witness to my other deed.
Doom pushed his way through the crowd, looked at the corpses, at the stump of pen which I still held in my hand, fragments of brain tissue adhering to it. "You," he breathed, in awe and triumph. The breathtakingly handsome face, the perfect, unscarred face of Victor Von Doom turned toward me. "This is your doing. For your services and loyalty, I here create you the Duchess of Brantzia and Keeper of the Citadel."
"Brantzia is mine!" protested his wife, Valeria, the Invincible Woman, who had fought her way through the press to his side. "And the Citadel is mine!" insisted their adopted son, Kristoff, the Inhuman Torch.
"Bah! They were yours." growled their leader. "I bestowed them and can reclaim them as I choose. Take care that is not all that you lose." he said, glaring at them. "And as for that traitor!" he spat, looking at the rock-like, orange skinned It that crouched in the corner, "I shall have it crushed into a million fragments and used to make ornamental garden paths."
"Now!" he raised his voice, speaking to everyone, Latverians and mutants both. "The House of Magneto is overthrown. Your leader and his heir lie broken and bleeding on my floor. The House of Doom rules over all!"
He turned back to me. "Whatever it is you want, you have but to name it, and it is yours." He took my hand, and looked searchingly into my eyes.
"I thank you for the offer, but there is nothing you can grant or give me that I want." I said, fighting the impulse to free my hand.
"Are you so sure?" he asked, in a velvety undertone.
"There is something that I want," came another voice, from the head of the stairs. "And that is that you should let go of my wife's hand." All heads turned to look at the imposing masked figure that stood there, his cloak falling about him like two great wings.
Victor came down the Great Stair, as only he could. "You!" fulminated the Doom who stood before me. "Who are you to appear in my armor, in my castle? Why do you not show your face, you craven?"
"Who are you, who calls himself Victor Von Doom?" retorted my Victor. He had the air of authority that the other Doom lacked, the aura of command. He swept across the room toward us. "For I tell you now that I and I alone am Doom, and you, who bowed your neck under the yoke of this offal," the toe of his boot prodded Magneto, "are nothing but the palest shade of what I am. How many years did you seek to free yourself, you and yours? And in the little time which my wife has spent here among you she vanquished them with less effort than it would take her to swat a fly."
My Victor turned to me. "Come. Swiftly. Put your arms around my neck." I did so. He slid an arm around me, boosted me up so I was half sitting on it, then raised his other hand and vaporized a large hole in the roof. The suit's propulsion field engaged, and we shot up into the sky, leaving a very startled Great Hall full of people below us.
"My dear, I have the answer." Victor said, shielding me from the wind with his cloak. "The one behind this is Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch."
"Magneto's daughter and Quicksilver's twin," I said, identifying her immediately. "She made her father the ruler of the world, using her powers."
"Yes." He confirmed it, nodding. "She may again. It is not beyond her powers to resurrect them even now. She is attempting to create her own private world where she and everyone she loves have what they always wanted. Unfortunately, she has imposed it upon our own."
"There is a problem with that." I said, as I carefully wiped my hands on my smock. "A lot of the people she didn't love are dead. Given that she was for many years an Avenger and Janet's friend, she must be—quite literally—insane."
"She is." was his reply. "Nor does she want to be helped, because if she returns to sanity, her two sons will cease to exist."
We were on a really tough deadline to get things back to normal, too. Our wedding was supposed to be tomorrow.
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A/N: Confused? Don't worry. All will be explained...eventually. If you are a reader of the comic books, this is loosely based around the recent big crossover, 'House of M', which has a Victor Von Doom so out of character that I just had to do something.