Disclaimer: I don't own the Fantastic Four—Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, 20th Century Fox, and probably a bunch of other people do. However, if the aforementioned parties feel like loaning out the guys, put me at the top of the borrower's list. Also, I'm not making a penny off of this. I am banned from reading other F4 fan fictions until this is finished, so any similarities to other stories are entirely coincidental. Typos are mine. Here's the finale, folks. I really hope you enjoyed the ride.
14
There was no point in trying to get out of the generator room, Johnny knew. Even if he and Ben got free, it would breach what meager containment of the impending blast that the dome could provide. There wouldn't be any place on Earth to hide from the destruction of the atmosphere anyway. What the hell was Doom thinking? Was he so wrapped up with killing Johnny and Ben for spite that he'd burn up the planet for spite or was he just that stupid that he didn't have a clue about the chain reaction he was setting off?
There was no way Johnny could absorb all the power out of one self-regenerating thermal cell, let alone three. They'd almost sucked the life right out of him when he'd infused them with his bio-thermal power. He'd burn himself up trying…and the minute he touched the stones, they'd try to drain him again. That would only hurry along the explosion and increase its magnitude. He had Ben separate the stones and covering them with pieces of titanium that Ben ripped from the generator, hoping to stop the rocks from further infusing each other.
The heat being thrown off by the trio of space rocks was getting to be a little much even for a man made of stone. Ben tried his communicator. "Reed? Sue? Can ya hear me?" It was no good. Doom's funhouse was still interfering with the incoming and outgoing signals.
The Human Torch tried absorbing as much heat as he could from the room; he couldn't forestall the explosion, but he could try keep both of them alive long enough to think of a plan. The effort of taking that much bio-thermal power into his body was becoming painful. Johnny looked at Ben. "If you've got any suggestions, let's hear 'em now."
Only one thing sprang to the Thing's mind, only one way he could think of to stop the stones from regenerating and amplifying their energy. He retrieved the stones, which was cold to the touch despite the heat they were putting out, holding one in each of his massive palm and placing one beneath his foot. Reed had said that breaking the space rocks might release their bio-thermal heat in one giant burst. It might kill Ben and Johnny. Still, it was better that the two of them got vaporized (at least it would be a quick and painless death) instead of the whole planet getting burned up. It had to be done soon if he was going to do it.
Ben gave the Human Torch a questioning glance. Johnny saw what the Thing intended and quickly nodded in unspoken agreement.
This is either gonna stop the rocks from going ka-boom, or we're gonna be doin' some explain' to the man upstairs soon, Ben thought. He closed his eyes and put all his muscle into crushing the three stones, waiting for the thermal cells to release all their heat and energy in one massive burst.
Nothing happened.
Ben opened one eye, and one fist. The meteorite in his open palm had been ground into fine powder by his hand. The glow in the remaining grains slowly faded and died. The same was true of the thermal cell in his other hand and the one ground to dust under his foot. "Thank you!" he breathed, brushing rock dust off his palms. "See? Sometimes smashin' stuff is the right answer."
The Human Torch sagged to his knees, leaning on the railing of the catwalk for support, unable to do much besides nod in response. His muscles spasmed in protest of the excess heat coursing through his body. Ben moved to the younger man's side and hoisted Johnny to his feet. He could feel the heat pouring from the kid. "All right there, Matchstick?"
Johnny needed to vent some of the extra heat he'd absorbed…and he already had a target picked out. He looked at the two-way mirror, not really surprised to find that Doom had vanished while the two of them were busy with the space rocks. He'd taken the metal cases of infused and un-infused meteorites with him.
Ben ripped the door's control panel right out of the wall. Johnny incinerated the wires underneath the panel. The door popped open a few inches and Thing wrestled it the rest of the way until they could stumble from the generator room into the corridor.
The guards were waiting with their guns and taser weapons drawn. They weren't the targets Johnny wanted, but they'd do. He focused some of that excess heat in his body onto the weapons trained on him and Ben. The guns swiftly heated up, so quickly that the guards never had the chance to squeeze off shots before they were forced to pitch away the red-hot weapons.
Ben had no trouble chasing off any of the hired goons who weren't cowed by the Human Torch's demonstration. The guards were probably only there to give Doom time to escape with that case full of space rocks, Ben figured. There was no sign of the metal man by the time the short fight was over.
No way. No way was Doom getting away. Not after all this. Not after all he'd done, Johnny resolved again. He knew where his former 'mentor' was heading. He summoned his flames and flew towards the access tunnel that led back to Doom's palace in pursuit.
"Johnny!" Ben shouted uselessly after him. "Wait!"
Doom had changed the security system, however, just in case his former protégé made another visit to the dome. As soon as Johnny reached the mouth of the tunnel, his heat signature triggered taser cannons mounted on the walls. Their bolts formed an electrical barrier so quickly that Johnny couldn't avoid hitting it.
The bolts caught Johnny off guard. The electricity disrupted his powers and sent white-hot pain, almost as bad as Doom's own unrestrained energy, through his body. He hit the floor hard, working hard not to pass out under the twin agonies of the electric shock and the excess heat that still wracked him.
Ben dodged the shots from the cannons---then he tore them from the wall.
"What word didn't ya understand, kid? 'Johnny' or 'wait'?" the Thing scolded. He caught Johnny beneath the arms and once again lifted him to his feet. "Ya better start usin' yer head or you're gonna get hurt."
Johnny's impulse was still to get to Doom fast. The psycho would head for the roof and the hanger where he kept his prototype aircrafts. Some of the crafts Doom had up there could give the Warbird a race for its money. Even the Human Torch might have trouble catching them, fast though he was. He sure didn't want to find out…especially not while his muscles were still seizing up from the heat and the electrical blasts. Got to vent this heat somehow…
"He's heading for the roof," Johnny warned Ben.
"Perfect. Let's see if he can fly in an electromagnetic storm," Ben smirked. He pulled the small tube from his belt. Reed's homemade electro-magnet gizmo, if it worked as Mr. Fantastic expected, would not only ruin every control box and computer with Sater's program that Doom had squirreled away in this building, but would wreck havoc on whatever shiny planes Doom had up on the rooftop.
The tube did all that and more. A press of the trigger and the pulse wiped out the fortress' computer and security systems. The lights on the taser cannons blinked out. For that matter, the entire palace went dark as the computer-controlled power generators groaned and shut down. The computers would not come back on line, thanks to the little extras that Reed had incorporated into the tube: A nice little computer virus transmitted into the palace's systems via its satellites that would be downloaded into its mainframe when the gas-powered backup generators tried to restart the computers.
Johnny's arm burst into flames, providing light for them to find their way in the darkness. They would have to search the hideaway and make sure that Sater's program had been erased, but that problem would have to wait until Reed and Sue caught up with them, until they had Doom under lock and key. The important thing now was to get to the maniac and get those thermal cells away from him.
The aircraft was a prototype. On the ground, it resembled a helicopter with wings, but it had been equipped with retractable rotors, engines almost as fast as a rocket and a hull built to withstand the heat and pressure of the speed so that it flew like a military fighter jet once it was in the sky. His engineers had told Doom that such a machine was impossible to build, let alone fly. Doom hated the word 'impossible'. Selva-Uitti had appropriated the craft in their hostile takeover of Von Doom Industries, but Doom had reclaimed (stolen) it. The craft would get Doom far enough from the hideaway by the time Johnny and Ben escaped that generator room that not even the Human Torch would be able to catch up with him (assuming they escaped the generator room, and the superheroes were quite pesky with their ability to survive what should have been certain death, so Doom couldn't discount that possibility). As long as he had his infused cells, sacrificing a few of the space rocks in order to escape didn't concern Doom.
Doom settled into the pilot's chair, passing the case with the precious thermal cells to Leonard, who sat on the co-pilot's seat. Doom's assistant had already powered up the aircraft for takeoff.
The ship was only a few feet into the air when some sort of pulse struck the aircraft. The controls went dead and the engines ground to a halt. The lights of the roof (and the rest of the palace) flickered out. The aircraft fell like a stone back down to the landing pad, not falling so far that the vehicle was damaged. It would not power up again.
"What the---?" Doom mumbled. This could not have been caused by the explosion in the generator room. A pulse strong enough to penetrate this craft's hull and scramble its systems could only be caused by a device of Reed Richards' design. He cursed the scientist and his interfering pest family.
Infuriated, Doom ripped off the cockpit door when he climbed out of the craft. He whirled to face the familiar noise of flame and rushing air as the Human Torch sailed up through the hole Ben had made in the roof two days earlier.
"I was prepared to let you go as a reward for being such a useful protégé," Doom snarled at the boy. "But, if you're determined to die, I'll be happy to accommodate you."
Doom shot a volley of energy towards the human fireball, and Johnny banked hard to veer out of the path of the blast. Doom could see that the younger man was struggling a bit---too much heat from the thermal cells or too much electricity from the taser cannons, no doubt. He smiled to himself. He could finish off the bothersome Human Torch if he did so quickly, before Grimm joined the fight.
Meanwhile, Johnny finally found a target upon which to unleash the pent up heat in his body: Doom's toy copter. He flew around to the passenger side, putting the craft between himself and Victor, and hovered there. He saw Doom's trusted aide seated in the co-pilot's seat. "You might want to move, Lenny," Johnny suggested, "and don't even think about taking those thermal cells with you."
Leonard took his advice, abandoning the metal case in his haste to abandon the aircraft. He ran for the stairs leading back into the palace, leaving the irate superheroes to his employer's discretion…and collided with the Thing.
Leonard only squeaked out a startled, "Oh", before Ben raised his thumb and forefinger and knocked the brown-nose assistant cold by flicking the man right in his nose.
Johnny mustered the heat that was tearing through him, gathered it and focused it in one tremendous burst that he directed at Doom's aircraft. The fencing that lined the roof melted and its wires snapped. The titanium beneath the stonework glowed red hot. The helicopter-like skids of the prototype craft buckled. It had been built to withstand heat, but not heat nearing the Human Torch's supernova levels. Within seconds, the skids buckled and the craft sagged and tipped onto its side.
"Not a bad trick, Johnny. You did learn something from my tutelage." Impervious to the heat that the Human Torch discharged, Doom circled around his melting escape vehicle. "Just not enough."
Doom pitched the door he'd ripped from the craft at his foe just as Ben Grimm climbed onto the roof. "Johnny, watch out!" the Thing shouted a warning.
Johnny didn't see the projectile in time, and the door slammed, broadside up, into the Human Torch, knocking him out of the sky. He plunged towards the frozen lake at the bottom of the cliff. Ben was too far away from the side of the building to see where Johnny had fallen.
The computers that had interfered with transmissions had been knocked out by the electromagnetic pulse. Ben thumbed the communicator. "Reed, Susie, any time ya wanna lend us a hand here, that'd be great," he sent out a message.
"We're already on our way, Ben," Reed answered. Ben checked the sky, but saw only stars. There was no sign of an approaching airplane. They could be a few miles away or hundreds of miles. He hoped the Warbird was as fast as he'd boasted that it was.
Doom turned, with a self-satisfied smile, to face his former protégé's now-furious surrogate big brother. Thing balled his hands into fist. He saw the listing aircraft and smirked back at the metal villain. "Aww, now that's gonna make it a bitch for you ta take off, Tin Man." Ben's tone dripped sarcastic sympathy. "Ya wanna fly? Here, let me give ya a hand."
Doom fired another torrent of electricity at the Thing. Ben dodged easily by vaulting over the metal man's head and landed beside the damaged airship. He grabbed the 'jetcopter' by its tail section and swung it like a baseball bat. It slammed into Doom and knocked him the length of the roof. He sailed into the open hangar door and through its back wall. The broken wires of the security fencing save him from going over the edge of the roof. The damaged wires ensnared him.
The Thing hurled the damaged aircraft at Doom. The copter smashed into a jet plane inside the hangar. The crash sliced both vehicles in half, but the prototype jet copter took the brunt of the impact. It's tail section and main rotor became projectiles, sailing off the roof and careening down to the frozen lake. The rotor was lodged, half-buried, in the thick ice. The tail section came to a halt when it crashed into the thick trees.
Ben ran to the spot where Johnny had gone over the side of the building, trying to catch sight of the Human Torch. He was nearly plowed down by a whirlwind of fire as Johnny rocketed up the side of the palace and sailed right past the Thing.
Still ensnared by the security fencing, Doom saw the streak of fire and fury shoot across the roof---on a collision course with the metal man. Johnny hit Doom with every fiber of heat and strength he possessed. The flames severed the wires, and the Human Torch lifted Doctor Doom off his feet, off the roof, and lifted him into the sky.
If Johnny let go, there was no danger that the fall would injure Doom, so Victor did not hesitate to grab his captor's shoulder and unleash more electricity, trying to disrupt the Human Torch's powers and gain his own freedom. Johnny wavered under the onslaught, but put his concentration into maintaining his flames and kept going. He turned his flames as hot as they could go without going supernova, flooding the titanium man with heat until Doom's metal skin glowed like a hotplate.
Dragging Doom, Johnny made a large circle around the frozen lake. He glimpsed a light moving in the night sky in the distance. The Warbird? The Latverian cavalry? More of Doom's brainwashed guerrillas or lackeys? He wondered. It didn't matter. Johnny lined up for a run at the icy water.
"You murdered the doc," Johnny growled at Doom over the roar of air and fire. No way are you getting away with all this, no way.
"Know when to let it go, Johnny. I've told you repeatedly emotions will get you killed," Doom answered. He fired a stronger shot, and this time Johnny couldn't maintain his powers as the pain lanced him. His flames flickered and he felt himself begin to lose altitude. It didn't matter…Johnny only had to stay airborne for a few more seconds. He had to end this fight, had to immobilize Doom, and he knew just how he was going to do it.
"Thanks for the advice," he grunted as they closed on the lake…and the copter pieces that protruded from the thick ice.
Johnny gave up trying to maintain his flames, letting momentum carry them down to the lake. He poured whatever heat he could still summon into Doom's metal skin and released the man, trying to pitch him towards the flat side of the copter's rotor blades. The Human Torch flamed out and covered his face as he landed on the icy sheet. He managed to twist himself to avoid the jagged shards of the aircraft sticking out of the ice. Johnny slid to a stop face down a few dozen feet from the wreckage. The ice began to steam beneath his overheated body.
Meanwhile, Doom's glowing-hot skin impacted with the weakened metal rotor blades. Instantly, the heat from Doom was conducted to the blades, which began to curl and fuse themselves to his arm and back. Under the superheated metal man and the rapidly heating blades, the ice around them steamed and cracked.
Ben saw all this. He cursed and raced to retrieve the metal case with the thermal cells. Then, meteorites in hand, he leaped from the rooftop, falling hundreds of feet and landing in the snow gently as if he'd just stepped off a porch. It was too difficult to run in the waist deep snow, so he closed the distance between himself and the lake by tremendous leaps instead of strides. He was surprised to find people from the nearby village making their way along the road. The villagers had been drawn by the sight of the Human Torch sweeping across the night sky. Great, just what we need: Lookie Lous.
Johnny heard the ice hiss and then a loud crack. Ice. Cracking. Not good. If he was a normal person, he knew it would be safer to lie flat than risk breaking the ice. But he was not normal. His body temperature was going to melt the ice like butter, quickly, and lying flat would just melt a larger section. He pushed himself up, and his hands began to sink into the ice—as did his knees where he now kneeled---as it rapidly melted under his overheated body. Fissures snaked across the ice from where he stood to the spot where Doom was fused to the rotor blades.
Doom was watching Johnny with a gaze of approval. "Fitting, Johnny, very fitting: A man made of titanium and a man made of fire on a sheet of ice. The ice breaks and both die…and the only rescuer for miles is a human boulder." If he were worried about his predicament, he did not show it…even though the rotor was sinking into the melting ice, threatening to drag Doom down to the icy depths of the lake. "So, you're finally prepared to murder me, Johnny. The student surpasses the teacher. Tell me, are you going to wait around to die with me?"
There was a deafening crack and the ice under Johnny's feet finally broke. He flamed in time to save himself from plunging into the watery abyss.
As he watched, the gap widened and merged with the cracks that had formed around Doom and the pieces of aircraft. In the blink of an eye, the rotor blades---which still anchored Doom---vanished into the dark water, dragging the man down with them into the icy depths. Johnny hovered over the swirling water into which Doom had sunk.
"You murdered the doc."
"All you wanted was for me to make you a new weapon to play with."
Doom deserved his fate. Johnny knew it. Deserved it many times over. Deserved it for every life he'd snuffed, for the way he'd used Johnny, for the atrocious weapons he'd forced Johnny and Nora to create, for the horrors he'd planned to let loose on the world, for the pain he'd caused Johnny's family. As long as the man who had been Victor Von Doom lived, his madness would threaten every person on the planet. Johnny's family would never be safe from his pathological hatred and thirst for revenge…
…The family that had saved Johnny from a life controlled by that same hatred, which Doom had tried to instill into the unwilling Human Torch.
"My job is to try to save any lives that I can…"
"I'm not a murderer."
"…not just the people I think deserve my help."
"I can't be like Doom."
Johnny heard the whine of an approaching plane and looked up to see its lights. He thought it sounded like the Warbird, but in the dark of night, he couldn't see it clearly enough to know. Ben dashed from the forest, trudging along the snow-covered lakeshore. People from the nearby town weren't far behind him. Johnny recognized Rafi and Old Man Gustaev among them. Ben was too far away to help even if he could have walked onto the fragile ice with his heavy stone body.
The Human Torch glanced from the churning water, to Ben, and his stare lingered a bit on the approaching plane.
Reed, Susie, I really hope that's you, he said a silent prayer.
Then he let his flames burn out.
Johnny heard Ben shout as he fell, then the swirling, ice-cold waters closed over his head.
Aboard the Warbird, Sue saw her brother fall---quite deliberately---into the half-frozen lake. "No!"
Reed set the autopilot, which brought the Warbird to a halt, hovering above the hole in the ice where Johnny had plunged into the lake. Sue was already moving into the cargo bay. She hurriedly opened the cargo bay doors and swung a winch into place there. She stared down at the black waters, wanting to reach out with her powers and put a shield around her submerged brother, but she couldn't even see where he was. All she knew was he'd only have minutes---if that long—to live in the freezing lake.
Footsteps pounded into the cabin and suddenly Reed was kneeling beside her. He got a good foothold, grabbed the chain on the winch, and leaned out the open doors. He stretched his body down to the frozen lake and took a deep breath before his head and torso went under the water. The cold crushed the breath from his lungs. It was so dark that he knew he'd only find Johnny by letting the water carry him where it had carried the boy and by groping blindly.
His outstretched arms found something---a flailing hand. At the contact, the hand (which was definitely flesh, not metal) grabbed tightly to Reed's arm. Still working blindly, Reed wrapped the chain around Johnny, who never let go of his arm. He kept one hand on Johnny's shoulder; with the other hand, Reed tugged on the chain to signal Sue. When the chain began to move, Reed coiled his arm around Johnny and began to contract his own body from its stretched position, helping lift both of them from the water, helping the winch do its job.
Johnny let go of him, and Reed feared the boy had lost consciousness---until they broke the surface of the lake. Johnny was pale from the frigid water, probably hypothermic, but he was conscious and breathing…and both his hands were holding fast to the rotor blade to which Doctor Doom was fused.
As Reed and the winch lifted Johnny and Doom, Reed felt the Warbird move. It glided forward until the trio hovered above Ben and the farmers on the shore. "It's all right, son, you can let go of Doom now," Reed called to Johnny, not sure if the younger man would understand him. "We're going to get you onto the Warbird."
At that, the younger man shook his head emphatically. He pointed to the ground. Reed wasn't going to waste time arguing with Johnny. They had to start getting him warm and fast. The villagers were already gathering wood, brushing a clear spot in the snow drifts, and building a fire. Reed looked up at Sue, and gestured for her to lower the chain.
When he felt himself descending, Johnny—with some effort---got his frozen fingers to let go of the blade. Ben caught the blades and Doom. None too gently, he set Doom on the bank and left him for the villagers to deal with. It didn't look like the man was going anywhere, welded to the blade like he was.
Next, Reed handed Johnny to Ben. After he'd let go of his charge, Reed dropped to the ground. Rafi and the villagers were already stripping off their own overcoats and began draping them over the Human Torch as Ben sat the boy beside the blazing fire. Others brought more wood for the fire.
There was a rush of air and Sue glided on a disc of psychic energy to land on the shore. Still on auto-pilot, the Warbird flew off in search of a place to land. Sue had brought more blankets, a pot, and a cup. Sue almost mummified her brother bundling him into the heavy blankets before finally hugging Johnny to satisfy herself that he was still alive and in one piece. Johnny couldn't protest the kids' glove treatment with his teeth chattering so badly. Cold had become an alien sensation to him.
Rafi took the pan and cup from the Invisible Woman and began to melt snow over the fire. Gustaev went to gather some winter shrubs that were good for helping with frostbite and hypothermia. A few of the villagers wandered to Doom, draping coats onto him. They were befuddled about how to separate him from the pieces of rotor.
Reed watched them, grateful that they had come, unbidden, to help, grateful that they were asking no questions about the mistreatment of Doom, who was still their friend and protector as far as any of the villagers knew. He nodded his gratitude to one of the men when the farmer met Mr. Fantastic's eye. Rafi returned the nod. Reed could see why Nora, and Johnny, cared so much for these people. He didn't know how he'd do it, but Mr. Fantastic was going to keep his promise to help these folks.
With Doom out of commission (for now), with Gorshen back in the embassy (for now) to reluctantly clear Johnny and Sue's names with the Latverian and American government, and the need to ensure that all the meteorites and all copies of Sater's program were removed from Doom's lair the Fantastic Four would be spending a little time in Latveria. After Johnny was back on his feet, he could help Reed explain their actions to the villagers and figure out the best way to help them.
Sue used her energy to create a bubble around the impromptu campsite, which shielded them from the cold wind and kept in some of the heat from the campfire. Reed kneeled in front of Johnny, giving him a quick exam. He didn't try to move Johnny yet. He didn't know what was so important that Johnny had adamantly wanted to be on the shore instead of the warmth of the plane, but, since they were already on the ground, Reed wanted the young man to sit and let the fire and the blankets and the hot water warm him up first. "That was a dumb stunt---are you all right, son?"
Johnny's mouth quirked into his familiar cocky grin. "Fine---was really hoping---that was you guys," he stammered around his chattering teeth.
"We need to get you back to the Warbird," Sue insisted.
The Human Torch's gaze shifted to Doom and his smile curled into a frown. The burning anger he'd felt for the villain had subsided, but there was still one last bit of business that needed to be taken care of. "Just got to do---one thing—first," he said.
Johnny stumbled to his feet. They didn't approve of him trying to walk, but Reed and Sue moved to stand on either side of the Human Torch and Ben was right behind him. His family walked along with him, ready to catch or support him if he needed them…and he did need them. He didn't give a damn if it was an Achilles Heel or not.
He trudged over to Doctor Doom and stared at the metal man thoughtfully for a minute. Finally, Johnny bent down until he was at Doom's eye level.
Johnny's cocky grin returned.
"In case I didn't say it before, boss: I quit."
THE END