A sigh escaped the lips of Victor Von Doom as another patch of skin came off with a little help from his claw-like hands. The flaking had started during the shipment to Latveria and, as near as team of specialists was able to tell, he was growing metal like most people grew skin or hair. By all accounts he should have been paralyzed at this very moment, unable to move, ready to die as soon as his body ran out of nutrients. But Reed Richards, the man who got everything right had made two mistakes. The first had been his errors in calculating the resistance of the shields on the space station. That mistake had led to the alteration of his DNA and the change into a man of metal. The second had been not realizing just how much Victor's physiology had been altered. And that mistake would be Richard's final.
Turning to Leonard, the assistant Victor kept by his side night and day, he ordered him to make a phone call. "To an old friend," he chuckled. "It's time to call in a favor." A favor that would allow him to destroy the 'Fantastic Four' as the American press had baptized them, and, perhaps in time, take over this backwater country. He'd been forced to abdicate his throne in the world of business in which he felt so at home. Now it was time to make a new one.
