I'm afraid I gaped at him for a moment in simple mute astonishment, while he went on: "There is no time in which to re-tool it to fit you, but I believe that I can improvise some padding to keep the torso in place. Make haste. The bathroom is there." He pointed.
"But—." I began.
"Go!" He commanded, and called after me. "Tie your hair back securely while you are at it!"
I went. The voice he was using said he was not going to put up with any arguing, so I ran a quick cost-benefits analysis in my head, and decided to go along with it.
The garments he had given me were not unlike long-johns, but instead of silk, they were the ever-popular unstable molecules, which happily stretched or shrank to fit the individual wearer. They were nearly indestructible, and clung nicely to abdominal muscles, which meant that the costumed adventurer community as a whole tended to use it almost exclusively. I would have liked to see Victor wearing those long-johns much more that I liked seeing myself in them…But this was not the time to think about that.
On my return, I found Victor making adjustments to the mask of the armor he was proposing I should wear. He looked up. "Good. Have you got your clothes? Bring them here, and yourself as well. The boots are there—." He gestured at a pair of metal footgear. "You look stricken, my dear. Is something the matter?"
"Um. Yes. Victor, I just don't know about this…"
"I, however, do. It should come as no surprise to you—is there enough padding in the toes?—that I took care to monitor what was going on even while I was spell-casting. You have made yourself some rancorous enemies today. Stand up." He began fitting the greaves of the armor around my calves as he spoke.
"You are intelligent, resourceful, and ingenious—none of which will deflect one well-placed fireball. They are on their way here even now. If you are armored and armed, the fight is three against two—and those two, you and I, are smarter than the three of them put together. Bend your knee." I complied.
"If you are not—the fight is three against one, and I would be hindered by the need to protect you." he said. I was armored up to the waist by that time. "Take a few steps."
I did. Rather than weighing a ton, as I had expected, wearing the armor was—like the first time I drove a car with power steering, after years of wrestling the wheel by brute force. It was unexpectedly easy and light—but when I made too sudden of a move, I overcompensated and lost my balance.
"Careful. Now the padding—your clothes." He started wrapping them around my midsection. A pair of sport shoulder pads completed it. He took the front and back plates and had me hold the front in place while he fastened them together.
"There. Not quite the 'steel bustier' you once mentioned with dismay, but it will serve. You played the lot of them as Mozart must have played the harpsichord—like a virtuoso. Your left arm, please. They will be after your head. Now, the suit's systems will do a lot of the work for you—but not all of it. Avoid moving too fast. The readouts for the computer in it are the lenses in the mask. The letters are transparent. The weaponry controls are in the gauntlets--." He gave me the gloves.
I put them on, as he fit the cowl and back of the helmet in place. They were made of a lot of interlocking plates, to give the head and neck mobility.
Unfortunately, since I was about three inches shorter than he was, the shoulders of the armor were somewhere up around my ears. I was glad I could not see myself. And my hair, which was bunched up around the back of my neck, made me itch. Actually, knowing there was no way I could scratch myself made me itch all over. I wondered how Victor could bear it.
"Keep in mind that the system is live. Oh, and there is a bomb in the breastplate." He threw one of his green over tunics over the armor, and fastened the cape around my shoulders.
"A bomb in the breastplate!" I exclaimed.
"Yes. In case anyone should be so foolish as to try to peel the armor off me—in this case, you. Don't worry—it's shaped to detonate outward, at the one who is doing the peeling. Even should it go off, it won't hurt you—the anti-shock devices are excellent. You'll hardly feel a thing. It won't leave so much as a mark on your skin."
"How many times have you had the bomb go off while you were wearing the suit?" I asked
"In combat? Four…I have disabled the lock on this faceplate—normally the only way to remove it is with the key I have in this ring—." He showed me the ring, worn under his glove. "You might need to remove it on your own, however."
"Thank you…" I said, as he slid the mask that was a twin of his own over my face—and as it clicked into place, the suit came alive around me.
Right on cue, there was a tremendous booming sound. The impostors had arrived.
They had made an impressive hole in the outer wall of the Citadel. I could only hope it wasn't a retaining wall, but I was afraid it was.
"Which one of them is which?" asked Kristoff.
"Does it matter?" Valeria responded.
"Surrender now, and I promise you a quick and merciful death. Resist—and a merciful death is the last thing you will have." vowed the impostor. I had not seen him when he was using his Mr. Fantastic-like powers before. His right arm ended in a sledgehammer shape, and instead of Reed Richards' ordinary Caucasian skin-tone, his skin had the cold, liquid sheen of mercury. Metal skin—that struck a chord somewhere in my head, but where?
"You weary and disgust me." replied Victor. "Although you are but a mere puppet, I shall enjoy obliterating you."
"Let it begin, then. Valeria—Kristoff—Deal with that one. Leave this one to me." The pretender said, and so it began.
It was clear from the start that Victor was by far the better fighter. He had often fought Reed Richards hand to hand, and studied how to fight someone with stretching powers. The impostor was not as familiar with fighting someone in such a sophisticated and versatile suit of armor. He might shape his limbs into swords, spikes or hammers, but his blows rained down ineffectually. His magic could find no purchase.
I, on the other hand, was not doing so well. The suit was giving me trouble. Left to my own devices, I would have turned and fled—to lure the Invincible Woman and the Inhuman Torch into the bowels of the Citadel, where I would have come up with something. In the suit, however, I was clumsy, awkward, disoriented by the computer readouts that flashed in my eyes. I could aim and fire the energy weapons, but I rarely hit either of them.
If I had an hour to familiarize myself with the suit—but I didn't. But if I could use my obvious bumbling to my advantage—. I staggered exaggeratedly into the wall, fired in Kristoff's direction—and missed, vaporizing an area of the wall behind him.
"Look at how clumsy she is, Mother! This will be easy."
"Save some for me, Darling!"
I aimed and fired again—once again missing Kristoff. "You sure aren't as good with weapons as you are with lies!" he taunted me.
He just didn't know what I was aiming at. I fired again—and an enormous chunk of the Citadel above him collapsed on his head.
"Kriatoff!" Valeria flew to his side, and used her powers to lift the stone off him. Once she was sure he was all right, she turned to me. "Let's see how well you breathe with one of my invisible force fields cutting off your air!"
I put my hands up to my head, feeling a solid bubble around it. The air quickly grew stuffy. The readouts in the lenses flashed at me, "Ambient oxygen levels dropping. CO² levels rising above acceptable. Switching to life-support." The external air vents snapped shut, and fresh air flooded my helmet. Damn, but Victor did good work! He thought of everything.
I straightened up, and advanced on Valeria. "Not had enough yet? I know I haven't. Here!" She stopped me in my tracks with another force field. "You were playing up to him, I know it."
She hissed in my face. "Nasty piece that you are. Feel this? I'm putting one of my force fields inside your armor, and I'm going to expand it until it bursts like a grape. Then I'll let my son cook you on the half-shell—!"
"No—!" I cried. "It's dangerous—."
"Screw that!" she spat. Well, I had tried.
The bomb in my chest plate went off. The explosion knocked me flat on my back, but as Victor had said, it didn't hurt, and the shock absorbers were excellent. I got to my feet and took a few tentative steps forward, to where Valeria lay, flat on hers.
She was dying. I could tell. There was a hole in her midsection that went all the way back to her spinal column. As I watched, she twitched, gurgled, and died. The glamour died with her. She made a pathetically ugly corpse. I felt ill.
"Mother!" cried Kristoff, horrified. He struggled to his feet, pointed at me, and said, "I'll roast you alive for this!" Tears boiled away on his face as fast as he shed them, as he went nova at me.
I staggered back, pinned against the wall by the force of the flames he sent at me in a steady stream. It took a long time for the armor to heat up, the readouts keeping me informed of the rising external temperature. I did not start to sweat until the suit began to glow a dull red—and then I heard Victor say three terrible words in an arcane language.
Then Kristoff started to scream, because Victor had not taken away his power—only his invulnerability to it. The smell of cooking meat was strong.
"Suffer as you have made others suffer." Victor said to him, as he died.
There was a brief silence, punctuated only by the pings of cooling metal, as my suit recovered from the heat Kristoff had thrown at it.
"It is done." Victor said. "I promised you would get your blows in before he died. This way—."
The impostor had been stretched to his limit, or perhaps beyond. Looking at what Victor had done to him was like looking at a lot of silver 'Silly String'—the foamy plastic that came in aerosol can which firmed up when it came into contact with the air. He was all over the place—knotted and tangled around pillars, trailing on the floor.
"His head is over here." Victor led me to him.
The eyelids of the impostor flickered at our approach. "Kill me." he pleaded.
"In a moment." Victor promised him, and to me, "My dear—?", gesturing at the impostor's head.
I took a deep breath. Cruelty did not come naturally to me. Mischief did, but not cruelty. I didn't want to become the sort of person to whom cruelty came naturally. Whatever I did here, today, to this Doom, impostor though he was—would be the first step in that direction.
Then an insight clicked into place. "Ave Doom, Rex Mundi." I said.
"Receiving orders." The impostor said, automatically, as he had been programmed to do. "What?" he asked, startled at his own pronouncement.
"Hah!" Victor slapped the pillar next to him. "Priceless!"
"Remember your activation." I told the Doombot.
"Unit 23, inception date…." It reeled off its vital statistics.
"You said your wife and your son were not who you thought they were. Well, you weren't who you thought you were either." I said. "Complete data purge and memwipe."
It fought the command for a fraction of a second. "As you so order…" The glow in its eyes faded and went out.
"How could you tell?" asked Victor. "It performed magics—which it should not have been able to do. That fact alone blinded me."
"I don't know how or why it could do magic, but there was the fact that not only did he and Valeria have no biological children, but he had never had his sperm analyzed. Then, you mentioned that the Vision, Wanda's husband, was an android. And the way his skin changed when he stretched reminded me of the second Terminator movie, and the CGI assassin. In the end, though—I think it came down to this: Valeria aside, how could any human being who grew up within Boris' sphere of influence not be deeply affected by his genuine goodness—or his sense of honor?"
"I see. We are done here—you already have reclaimed your ring, and these creatures are disposed of. Now for Genosha—and the Scarlet Witch." Victor said.
"Hold!" a strange voice came from above us. "You are summoned!"
With that, the Silver Surfer glided down from the sky on his board.
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A/N: Next chapter, things get cosmic!