So, broken promises time: I know I said we'd get some insight into Hecate and Hercules in this chapter - heck, I expected to write out the remainder of their battle - but having finally gotten to this point in the fic, I couldn't resist the opportunity to tackle it in earnest. This stuff has been swimming in my brain for years (I promise it's not some kind of recent development because of all the Multiverse stuff in the MCU of late), so this chapter is entirely devoted to a single conversation between Kara, Doom, and...well, you'll see.
Actual promise: next episode WILL deal with the rest of the Hecate+Hercules fight, and will close out the Labyrinth arc of this story, hopefully without too many dangling plot threads.
Fair warning: if the last one got a bit trippy with the Black Mercy stuff, this one's kind of a doozy - very dense, very technical, and extremely meta. I've tried my best to keep it as simple as possible in the text, and a further explanation awaits you down at the bottom notes, but if you end up with any questions regardless, feel free to ask specifics in the comments/reviews or my ask box over on Tumblr (darthkvznblogs), open to all. I hope you enjoy this chapter!
It feels like the worst kind of eternity – standing there, staring at the glaring number sixteen as Doom stands across from her and the hologram, his cold, bloodshot eyes unblinkingly evaluating her reaction.
Her thoughts still scattered, she brings herself to ask the only question she feels she can. "Why?"
Doom hums. "A litany of factors." –he says, waving his hand so a number of images surround this representation of her home dimension. She spots many eerily familiar costumed heroes, whose names she can't recognize but feels like she ought to. "Chief among them the impact that your mere presence would have on our dimension, and thus upon Doom's ongoing designs."
Kara groans, completely fed up with his vague answers. "Stop wasting my time with your stupid cryptic bullshit, and tell it to me straight for once!" –she demands, taking a step forward, her fist clenched in anger and exasperation.
His eyes narrow. "You will take the explanation as it is given, Kara Zor-El, or learn nothing at all."
"Well, then. I guess we're done talking." –she says, her eyes taking on a threatening glow.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Let's not be so hasty, both of you." –a third voice says, and the man it presumably belongs to steps in between them, holding his arms up and just over each of their chests, trying to stop them from charging at each other. He seems vaguely familiar; a clean-shaven, brown-haired man in a blue and black jumpsuit, about as tall as Victor himself, which is fairly notable in and of itself, a clean six-foot-two. Aside from that, there's only one remarkable feature about this random, middle-aged Caucasian man; the sides of his hair are pure white – not bleached or dyed, yet so premature and specifically located that it can't be a natural consequence of aging. "Please, Kara, hear us out." –he asks, then turns to the armored man. "And Victor, I think hers is a pretty reasonable request; you know you can get kind of long-winded."
Doom huffs and turns away, his emerald cape billowing behind him. "Coddle her as you will, Richards. The work will continue regardless." –he says, walking out of the projection's range, which drops the dramatic black void to show him stepping back to the monitor bank.
Kara frowns, keeping a glancing eye on the supervillain. "Wait a minute...Richards?" –she asks.
"Please, call me Reed." –he says, extending his hand. "I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have sans Victor's self-important tone."
That's it; that's how she knows the man. This is Sue's husband, the brilliant-yet-fringe scientist who led their spacewalk and accidentally got them doused in cosmic radiation, presumably according to Victor's designs, who went missing after the other three members of the expedition were liberated from Centipede. It's him, except... "You look...older than I expected." –she notes, staring down at his hand and ignoring the gesture.
"Oh, you're expecting the wrong Reed." –he clarifies, awkwardly taking the hand back. "The one you're thinking of is, uh...very much not affiliated with us. Still missing, I believe; I expect Miss Storm and the others are still trying to track him down." –he says, wistfully.
"So you're...from some other dimension, then? Like me?" –she asks, bitterly.
"Yes and no." –Reed winces. "Victor certainly makes it worse with the way he chooses to speak, but he's not bluffing when he says there are a lot of factors at play, here. Feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to explain."
Kara crosses her arms, glancing back at the armored figure, working away at the computer banks. "Well…start with you, I guess."
"Honestly, I'd rather start with you; you and your situation are much more interesting to me." –he admits. "But, as you wish. Like I said, I'm not the Reed Richards of this particular iteration of the universe. I suppose you could call me the 'original', the one who initially existed in this dimension before Victor embarked on his quest to fix everything that went wrong in our version of the world." –he says, a hint of bitterness to his voice, then shrugs. "Of course, it's something of a crapshoot whether or not I'm actually the original Reed Richards of this dimension, or whether the powers that be reinvented 199999 before Victor ever started his own cycle, but I digress."
Kara takes a moment, struggling to parse through his lofty explanation. "Wait...I thought Victor was from another dimension?"
Doom actually laughs, half in actual amusement and half in what Kara would call regular ol' megalomania. "Is that what Strange told you? Is that what the Sorcerer Supreme actually believes? How charmingly self-important."
"Pot calling the kettle black." –Reed says, deadpan, turning back to Kara. "He's not wrong, though; the Stephen Strange you know and indeed, every Avenger, and everyone you know – except for a very small pool of people in your immediate vicinity – is an iteration of an original set of people, who either shared our world before its ruin, or came from a world where they're the originals themselves."
"All of you are interlopers on our world, whether or not Doom specifically placed you here." –Victor surmises. "Guests at best, pawns at worst; you all exist at Doom's leisure, to the benefit of the plan – and only for as long as you're useful."
Kara scowls. "And when we don't march to your tune?"
He gazes straight into her eyes, and Kara finds no soul staring back at her. "Doom...iterates."
"If it helps at all," –Reed supplies. "It's not a painful affair. When we restart the cycle, everything starts over, dragged all the way back to the Big Bang for new changes to be…implemented."
Kara pales; the scale of this cyclical loss of life baffles her, utterly incomprehensible. "We don't actually kill them, Kara." –he hurriedly says, seeing the blood drain from her face. "They're...rewritten, recreated by the beings in charge of this universe to allow for a new and hopefully improved version of events to take place, accounting for the necessary changes."
He manipulates the hologram, and Earth-199999 once again replaces her native universe. "We call this process 'retroactive continuity'." –he begins. "Whenever a new universe is created, either from scratch or as a derivative of existing dimensions – as 199999 is of Earth-616 – there is a loose framework that everything within it has to stick to. For example, the Earth will always form around the Sun, and humans will always evolve on it – and in our particular case, we will always eventually develop superhuman abilities and costumed identities, creating superheroes. The more a dimension deviates, however, the bigger the chance that its Creators will intervene – to remake or, in extreme cases, to eliminate the aberrant dimension."
Around the image of Earth, scenes of what Kara assumes to be the original events start playing out; Tony building his first, makeshift armor in the cave, Steve's shield frozen in the Arctic atop his comatose body, Thor rendered mortal, banished by Odin to Earth, and then all of the Avengers assembling to fight Loki and the Chitauri. Soberingly, she realizes that she isn't present for any of it; the events continue on in a blur, notably showing her a swarm of skeletal, silver robots crashing like a tidal wave upon her fellow heroes, a clash between two groups of individuals mostly unknown to her led by Iron Man and Captain America themselves in what appears to be an airport, and a golden gauntlet, studded with multi-colored gems, suddenly being made to snap its fingers, unleashing an incomprehensible powerful wave of light and energy. She witnesses, in abject horror, as Peter dies, seemingly disintegrating in Tony's arms on some ruined alien world.
All of it happens entirely without her input. She doesn't exist – didn't exist, at least, in that so-called original version. As far as she can tell, people like Ben, Nico, and Ellie are also explicitly absent.
"We force such deviations." –Victor says, as if sensing her thought process. He approaches the hologram again, and extends his hand; on it, a small orb appears depicting a very young version of Ben Tennyson, perhaps ten or so, finding and wielding the Omnitrix. "Doom has scoured the Multiverse for its strongest champions, its bravest heroes, and its most powerful defenders. Those deemed worthy have been taken, or otherwise made to appear, in order to bolster the existing champions of this world – those who failed us when it mattered most, who allowed our world to fall to ruin over bruised egos and petty disagreements."
Kara notes that Victor says this with much more vitriol than she's ever heard from him; he's usually boisterous, of course, larger than life, but his tone is usually dismissive when he talks about anyone other than himself; whatever the original Avengers did, whatever their failing may have been, it's clearly driven Doom into wrathful madness. He tosses the orb at the Earth, and the dimension number gains a subtitle: 'Iteration 1'.
"There's only so much flexibility a dimension gets to have with respect to its established framework." –Reed adds. "If we merely, say, dropped the Omnitrix into our dimension, which originally lacked it, the change would ultimately have no effect; the device's presence would be deemed an aberration, and it would find its way out of our universe somehow – a natural portal back home, perhaps, or maybe the device would simply break down into its molecular components as its atoms behave in a nearly imperceptible but fundamentally different way from ours. To make sure the change 'sticks', triggering the retroactive continuity phenomenon, we need power."
"A very specific kind of power." –Victor says, gesturing at the occupied sarcophagus with one hand, making a triumphant fist with the other. "The spark of Creation, trickled down from the Celestials who've forged the Multiverse to the divine creatures spawned from the union of sapient belief and our planet's natural magic. The power of a god, forcing the universe to submit to Doom's will!"
The hologram of Earth seems to momentarily glitch, and suddenly, some of the events depicted are modified to include Ben and his alien forms; the one he calls Diamondhead cleaves through hordes of those silver robots, and he later fights Vilgax alongside Thor and Hulk in his red-skinned, four-armed transformation. The process repeats, over and over, adding all sorts of people; she only really recognizes a few, like Ellie and Nico – apparently as foreign to this universe as she is – but she makes a mental note of trying to figure out who the others are when this is over. When all's said and done, it appears that they're currently on iteration #117 – the first one she appears in, crash-landing on Earth after escaping Krypton's destruction.
"Maybe a tad overstated." –Reed says, sarcastically. "But yes, we use the essence of a sufficiently powerful divine creature as a sort of catalyst. The Greek God of War Ares was the first – and nearly our last; we were young, and stupid, and we underestimated him. If not for Victor's skill and quick thinking, he would've killed us both." –he admits, taking a gloved hand to his neck, seemingly subconsciously. "But we managed to capture him, and drained most of his power to kick-start this cycle."
"So the woman in there, she's a goddess?" –Kara asks, nodding at the sarcophagus' occupant.
Reed nods. "A fairly obscure one, yes. Our next modification, despite occurring on a galactic scale, doesn't require quite as much power."
Kara crosses her arms. "What are you going to change now?"
"Nothing you should concern yourself with." –Doom says.
"Nothing on Earth, and nothing affecting the planet in the short term." –Reed clarifies. "We, uh…probably shouldn't risk any more major retcons, so we're simply bolstering galactic society's ability to combat the Black Order's hordes, in turn reducing the numbers Earth and its heroes would have to contend with when the time comes."
Kara narrows her eyes. "So you're throwing innocent aliens at Thanos and his forces as cannon fodder." –she scoffs. "I don't know why I'm surprised, considering I'm one of those aliens, apparently."
"I'm sorry, Kara." –Reed says. "I know it seems callous, but the truth of the matter is that safeguarding Earth and the human race is objectively more important than protecting any other planet in the universe."
"Is it, now?" –she says, unimpressed.
"You think this is Richards' ego talking. Or Doom's. It is not. We have proven that this Multiverse largely operates on the basis of human existence." –Victor explains. "All sapient life and consciousness influences reality in physical and metaphysical ways, but humans are given precedence in the vast majority of the universes we've encountered."
"We're like an anchor; a nexus point, around which the rest of a given universe forms." –Reed supplies. "We may be far from the actual center of the universe, but we've discovered that when we make changes, they always spread from our planet outward." –he says, a shadow passing over his face. "And when humanity falls, and our planet is no more, the rest of the universe typically collapses, too."
Kara purses her lips. "Is that what happened to yours?"
Reed sighs. "It's what was happening. Thanos won. The Avengers were defeated, many of them even killed. And even though they managed to claw back some form of victory, years later…it wasn't enough."
"Half of all life in the universe, randomly eradicated in an instant. 'Merciful', the Mad Titan called it." –Victor says, bitterly. "The trillions left behind would disagree. Their loved ones – gone! Every institution, from churches to governments, crumbling under the weight of a bureaucracy meant for double our numbers! Fields left to rot, cattle starving to death, cities falling apart from lack of maintenance!"
"Victor was king of Latveria then, too." –Reed says. "Thanos' genocide was truly randomized; as far as we can tell, every lifeform in the universe had a 50% chance of dying, decided instantaneously to fulfill Thanos' arbitrary quota. But this cosmic death wave didn't consider anything beyond raw numbers; in practice, some countries lost a relatively small amount of people while others were…well, 'harder hit' would be an understatement."
"Seventy-eight percent of my people, Kara Zor-El." –Victor says, looming over her even though he's not much taller. "Great Latveria, reduced to an emptied husk overnight."
"And seventy-five percent of mine." –Reed laments. "Sue, Ben, Johnny…all gone. Nothing any of us could do but watch."
"All because those self-righteous heroes foolishly believed their scattered numbers were enough." –Victor leers. "The Avengers had but to ask. Scores of champions, Earthly and otherwise, who could've helped, who could've prevented this travesty of a defeat from taking the lives of so many."
"And not just from the Snap, either." –Reed says, somberly. "Bus drivers, citizens speeding along the highways, airplane pilots, vanished as their vehicles went – what do you think happened to many of their passengers, Kara? People operating construction equipment, doctors in the middle of surgery, children and babies left without their parents for days, as the world reeled with the loss…and those are merely the ones we lost accidentally! Can you imagine, half of humanity falling to ashes around you? The tremendous survivor's guilt that would entail?"
She can, of course, imagine.
Victor gives a bitter scoff. "Many took their lives as it became clear the tragedy was no accident, and not remotely temporary. And this picture, of course, repeated itself untold millions of times, as every surviving sapient took in the carnage. Thanos vanished, and left behind a half-dead universe that would only further decline as a bitter new normality took hold – like a mutilated limb, its wounds untreated, seemingly functional but merely awaiting inevitable death as the rot settles in and starts to spread."
Kara winces. "I get it."
"It took the surviving Avengers five years to collect the Infinity Stones and undo the Snap. Five years of pure, unfettered chaos, during which it became public knowledge that they were to blame for failing to stop Thanos."
"You keep saying that, but I'm struggling to understand how you stop an evil so incomprehensibly powerful that it just kills half the universe at a moment's notice." –Kara challenges.
"Such failure of imagination is what falsely led the Avengers to believe they alone could challenge Thanos. In their rush to retaliate against his initial invasion, they spread themselves too thin and allowed the Deviant Eternal to systematically defeat them, collecting all of the Infinite Six as he went."
It doesn't escape Kara that this is pretty much how Victor defeated them, back in the OsCorp lab. It's not hard to believe that Doom has done this song and dance over a hundred times – he's obviously a practiced hand at defeating the Avengers, as much as he appears to be at propping them up.
"So why not team up?" –Kara asks. "You have all this knowledge, this whole damn mechanism that can rewrite the history of this universe, and still you act like a supervillain. Why not try to work with us?"
Reed sighs. "We've tried, is the thing. On the first iteration, we attempted to convince the Avengers to take the fight to Thanos before he could attack. Even with the evidence of our memories, they never bought it. So we laid a trap, and forcibly brought them to him…and got them all killed."
"Iteration 2: we had the Mad Titan brought to Earth, alone. The Avengers were victorious, but the Black Order razed the Earth in retaliation."
"Third iteration: Victor went and killed Thanos on his own. The Black Order realized he was human, traced him back to Earth, and destroyed the planet."
"Iteration 4: through clever manipulation of the galaxy's superpowers and strategically placed nuclear warheads, the Black Order was destroyed. Thanos miraculously escaped the carnage, stole the Power Stone from Xandar, and wiped everyone out."
"And so it went. On and on, dozens of times." –Reed says. "It didn't matter what we tried; one way or another, Thanos won, and the best we could get afterwards was a pyrrhic victory. That's when we started to wander the Multiverse – when we realized other dimensions suffered villains of similar scope and cosmic destruction, some of them with far better results."
Doom waves his hand, and Earth-199999 is replaced with several others, whose events unfold before her eyes; the Omnitrix attaching itself to ten year-old Ben's wrist, and subsequently him defeating several villains such as Vilgax as he ages; Nico as a much younger kid travelling and then battling alongside what she assumes are other demigods; a young, male version of Ellie getting zapped inside some kind of portal that turns his hair that familiar snow white, and then battling a number of ghostly foes – and eventually, surprisingly, Ellie herself, much younger and angrier than the one Kara knows.
But she sees others, too; a young, stocky boy with a pink gemstone in place of his bellybutton, a golden haired warrior goddess holding a gleaming sword aloft, a young, lanky man holding a sort of mechanical amulet that bathes his innocent face in a haunting blue light, a raven-haired teen girl suddenly bathed in pink light and transformed into a ladybug-themed masked heroine, and many, many others.
Kara's pretty sure she even spots a couple of Spider-Man-type figures who aren't the Peter she knows under the mask. A nerdy, timid kid. A cool skater dude with great hair. A laidback young Black boy. A blonde teen girl that eerily resembles Gwen, merely a hairstyle apart. A haggard man enveloped in some kind of monstrous black goo, like a twisted dark caricature of Spidey's signature look.
Even if only half of these iterations have yielded major 'retcons', as they call them, that's still dozens of universes forcibly stitched together into one. "How is this universe even in one piece?" –she wonders, baffled. "You've corrupted it so much, it just seems…completely unrecognizable."
"Like I said, as long as we stick to the 'script', so to speak, we're allowed to make these changes." –Reed says. "I'm not entirely sure why the Celestials allow it in the first place…"
Doom scoffs, like they've had this argument before. "Because we are mere playthings to them. Our iterations have merely made the game slightly more interesting to Arishem and his kin."
Reed rolls his eyes. "Even if I agreed with such a cynical worldview, why keep up the charade in that case? Why not take our idea and run with it? They certainly have the power to make these changes entirely without our input."
"You know quite well that to do as we have would break their own self-enforced rules, Richards." –he grouses, then turns to Kara. "And thus we turn to you, Kara Zor-El."
Supergirl's not entirely sure she wants to know anymore, given all that she's learned – like taking a peek under the hood of reality and discovering it's not quite as solid and stable as she'd like to believe – but she valiantly nods. "Go on."
"We've made enormous strides since turning to the Multiverse for answers." –Reed says, clearly elated. "We've already managed to defeat Thanos and the Black Order several times, even before the Snap takes place. By carefully grooming heroes and villains alike along the paths we desire, we've gotten to a point where the Avengers and their allies are powerful and coordinated enough to reliably win this scenario."
"The collateral damage to Earth remains, however, entirely unacceptable. If our quest is to be considered successful, the Mad Titan and his forces must be defeated at little to no cost to our planet. Otherwise, we'll run the risk of permanently losing the people we lost at the beginning of our venture – not to mention risking the stability of Earth dimension 199999."
"We needed a trump card; a powerful champion who could serve as a symbol and rally the disparate champions of this universe, native or otherwise, even after the revelation of our machinations." –Reed supplies. Kara gets the distinct impression that that bit doesn't usually go over well. "Someone who came from a world that naturally evolved to the level of variety we've artificially provoked."
Whose playthings are we talking about, now? Kara bitterly thinks to herself. "Are you talking about Earth-16 now?"
"Yes! What a wonderful world." –Reed praises. "Threatened by such incredibly powerful forces, yet so united even its younger heroes have a major role in continually saving the world."
Richards shows her glimpses of that world – it's silly, but it almost feels taboo to look at them. Profiles for several heroes display alongside some of their battles – they scroll by too quickly for Kara to really absorb them, but she notes such names as The Flash, Wonder Woman, and Batman. Like the name 'Earth-16', Kara feels a sort of strange familiarity when she reads their monikers – a familiarity only exacerbated as she sees a Tamaranean princess called Starfire, several humans in Green Lantern uniforms, and finally, a man described as Superman.
Kara tears up on the spot; it's like she's staring at a younger version of uncle Jor-El, clad in such a similar uniform to hers that there can be no mistaking who the man could possibly be. "That's…is that Kal-El?" –she asks, hoping against hope, her voice breaking even as she tries to rein in her emotions in the presence of her nemesis.
"Indeed. Clark Kent, the way you are Kara Danvers. The Man of Steel. The Last Son of Krypton. The Superman of Metropolis." –Victor says, a surprising tinge of respect to his voice. "A paragon of truth and justice, the likes of which this universe almost entirely lacks. A perfect figurehead for the movement we have created."
Kara narrows her eyes. "So, then…why isn't he here?" –she asks, crossing her arms. "If Kal is the one you wanted, your so-called 'perfect candidate'…why pick me?"
"Aside from the fact that he was a baby when you both escaped Krypton?" –Reed says, cheekily. "It's because Superman is something of a load-bearing pillar of Earth-16, as he is for other such derivatives of Earth-1. If he permanently died, or was otherwise taken out of the universe, the reality would quickly spiral into chaos without him."
"That's insane. How is one person so important? And how does the universe exist before he's born and after he dies? It's not like Kryptonians live forever; Kal couldn't be Superman for more than a few decades, could he? Can I?" –Kara balks.
"Such is the game the Celestials play. They wish for such icons to be players within it, and when they don't, the game is ended – and with it, the lives of all who existed on such universes."
Reed purses his lips. "We couldn't take Kal-El out of Earth-16 without dooming that universe. And even if we could…we simply can't gather the immense amount of power that'd be required to make his existence here possible. All the gods in the world wouldn't cut it."
"But you could do it for me?" –she asks, confused.
"For the most part, yes." –Reed nods. "We weren't able to bring you in seamlessly – you may have noticed Krypton's absence, for example – but we could do it to begin with because you're not one of those 'cornerstone'-type people, Kara. You're like the rest of us – as powerful as you can be, as influential on this reality as you already have been, your continued existence is entirely optional. Simply put, if you died today, the Earth would continue to spin. And as far as Earth-16 is concerned, that's exactly what happened."
Doom hums. "Regardless, it was a foolhardy bet. Even with the retcon phenomenon, Earth-199999 could've still rejected you – returned you from whence you came, or killed you outright. We fully expected the Celestials to decide that your inclusion was one too many, come from a universe that follows a fundamentally different, if similar pattern to our own."
"Yeah. But the fact of the matter is, we couldn't leave you behind." –Reed admits. "I hate to say it, but…you were destined to die as you attempted to escape Krypton, Kara. Your pod was to be damaged by a fragment of the crust, losing speed and being consumed in the explosion as Kal-El sailed to safety. If not for Victor's intervention, you would've died."
"Once again, you needlessly coddle her, Richards." –Doom says, then turns to Kara. "You did die with Krypton, Kara Zor-El. Only by Doom's merciful hand was the moment reversed, and you were allowed to survive by escaping through a portal into the Phantom Zone, manipulated to bring you to this world."
Doctor Doom takes an armored gauntlet to her chin, bringing it up for them to lock gazes – his, soulless as ever, hers, brimming with enraged tears. "I saved your life. And now, you will save the lives of everyone on this universe. Such is the purpose you were brought here for – that, and nothing else. Fail at this task, and we will simply excise you from this reality – return you to your own, to die as you were fated to."
And thus, the other shoe finally drops; all the effort, what must've been years on end of going through these cycles for the greater good, sullied by the same ego, magnified into abject megalomania, that Doom so hated in the Avengers that failed him and his world. Even if his motives were entirely altruistic – and judging by his comment on 'saving the originals', likely at the expense of the ones in this particular iteration, she doesn't buy it – Victor and Reed's desire to achieve victory only on their own terms has ruined any chance of her joining their crusade in earnest.
So she expresses that, by blasting the supervillain with her heat vision.
Doom goes sailing, thrown through his computer banks. Reed gasps in shock. "What? But…Kara, I thought you would understand…"
"Oh, I think I understand just fine." –she says, her eyes incensed. "And don't you worry, Doctor Richards; when I put on this suit, I made a vow to myself to save everyone I could – to keep people from experiencing the loss I carry on my shoulders every day. And regardless of personal motives, I think I can say that the same driving force pulls on every hero I've met so far."
She shrugs. "So thanks for your input, but I think we can take it from here."
Supergirl charges forward, like she's gonna punch the man; he dives out of the way, but she continues on, striking at her true target – the sarcophagus holding the unnamed goddess. The container offers surprising resistance, but not nearly enough to stop her inhuman strength, and the crystalline material shatters, killing the feed of power to the hourglass-shaped device – some kind of magical battery, if Kara had to guess, to hold and transfer the divine energy. She then slices across the power lines connecting everything with her heat vision.
The hourglass pulses, concentrating its collected energy into the singularity in the center; then it sends the whole thing upwards, all at once, and the container explodes.
Kara barely has enough time to grab the unconscious woman and fly out of the immediate blast range; it's still powerful enough to knock her down and send the limp goddess sprawling, rainbow-colored light beyond the human spectrum swamping her vision for a moment. She shakes her head and reaches for her charge, but gets punched across the jaw by a gloved hand before she can reach her.
Supergirl turns, finding Reed staring at her in continued disbelief, his arm stretched all across the room. She knew about his power to stretch his body like it's made of rubber, thanks to Sue, but this…isn't that; instead, his arm appears to be a mixture of synthetic muscle tissue on a collapsible metal framework, a 'skeleton' of sorts. "He saved me too, y'know?" –he says, hollow, the arm retracting about halfway. "When we tried to grab Ares, I got careless; I don't really feel pain since the accident that gave us our powers, but I sure felt it as his axe slid through my neck." –he admits.
Richards' body expands, to match his outstretched limb – his torso, his legs, his other arm, they all stretch to reveal similar synthetic muscle and metal. "He couldn't save my wife or my friends, but he managed to pull me back from the brink. Dragged my soul back from the ether and gave it a body to inhabit." –he explains, gesturing at himself. He smirks sadly. "One of his 'Doombots', you see. I think I've done a good job customizing it – I almost feel like myself again."
"You don't owe him anything." –Kara tries. "You don't need to go along with his madness just because he saved your life."
"The thing is, Kara, I do. We all do." –he says. "Everyone else celebrated when the Avengers brought back the victims of the Snap. Even I thought I should just count my blessings when my family came back, safe and sound. But Victor wouldn't settle for the Avengers' imperfect solution. And he knew that everyone we'd lost never should've died to begin with. Victor is the only person willing to fix everything."
Reed shakes his head. "Don't you see, Kara? That's all we want. At the end of the day, all that lofty cosmic stuff about variants, iterations, and the Multiverse…it's all just a means to an end: to set things right for a universe that was ruined by the machinations of a few. To give us the chance to save the world that the Avengers wasted, and stop Thanos from even coming close to winning, whatever the cost."
"That's just it, Doctor Richards." –Kara says, forlorn. "You start ignoring the cost, and any solution starts looking affordable. This whole thing has spiraled so far out of control that you're right back where you started: putting this whole universe's existence at risk."
"How can you say that? We gave you a chance, too; you were fated not to make a difference in your original home, but you've already made a huge impact here – both as a hero, and just as someone living in this world! If we hadn't brought you here, so many of your loved ones wouldn't be here at all." –he says, clearly disappointed. "Jeremiah, Eliza, Winn, Alex…Lena; they never existed before you arrived, Kara. They don't exist, back in Earth-16; can you imagine your life without them? Can you even picture a world where they were never born?"
Kara scowls. "That a threat?"
"It is a certainty." –Doom says, having finally dug himself out of the rubble. "And a potential reality, should you continue to defy the plan laid before you."
"For someone who should know everything there is to know about us, you sure don't understand us as well as you think." –Kara scoffs. "I know for a fact that none of them would be onboard with this stupidly convoluted plan of yours, and I know they'd all cheer me on for putting a stop to it."
Reed sighs. "Oh, Kara. You didn't stop anything." –he says. "Messed with it a little, maybe, but…"
"The retroactive continuity event has already taken effect, Kara Zor-El." –Victor says, gleefully. "And so the universe continues to bend to our will."
Okay! That's a whirlwind of information, huh? Regardless of this chapter's reception - and I do expect to lose some people here, no hard feelings - I have to say it's such a relief to finally write down something that's been kicking around in my mind for literal years. Obviously, some of the specifics - such as Doombot!Reed, which I have to credit ZR Stein for helping me come up with it when I realized I needed a third voice in this conversation - are much more recent, but the concept of Kara having been dragged over to a version of the MCU by Doom from a DC universe has been a part of this fic since its inception, all the way back in 2017.
The concept has since expanded, of course, to become the in-universe explanation and justification for all the dang crossovers I've stuffed into the Kryptonverse - IRL, yours truly just really enjoys some newly discovered fandoms and figures out how to fit them into the fused setting, but in the context of the story, it's Doom (and Reed, but mostly Doom) cherry-picking the Multiverse for people he can use to achieve the ultimate, perfect victory over Thanos, the Black Order, and in a way, the original Avengers of the MCU.
So, now that we're here, some clarifications:
-The Kryptonverse as I've written it is Earth-199999 (the official canon designation for the MCU) plus all the modifications (aka all the extra fandoms I've stuffed in there) Victor von Doom has made through the retroactive continuity phenomenon.
-The original version of events on Earth-199999 did take place all the way to the events of Avengers Endgame
-Victor is from the original MCU, and so is Reed (though he did kinda die along the way to the Marvel version of Ares). Strange wrongly assumed Victor was from another universe because the MCU and the Kryptonverse are so different. (Sorry TV Tropes friends, I've wanted to correct you for so long, but y'know, spoilers)
-Every non-DC character is a doppelganger/variant of the originals in the MCU or wherever they come from; for example, Kryptonverse!Ben Tennyson is a variant of Prime!Ben (from Earth-10000), the same way Ben 23 and Gwen 10 are.
-Every DC character except Kara is a "Kryptonverse original" variant, since none of them exist on Earth-16 (I know Lena has a cameo in YJ S3 but I'm only considering S1 and 2). Kara herself is the original individual from Earth-16, saved from death and transported over as described by Doom.
-The retcons make it so any new elements "have always been" a part of the Kryptonverse. How seamless that modification is and how much power it demands entirely depends on how much a new element forces the universe to deviate from the original MCU - and like Victor and Reed said, the more it changes Earth and humanity in particular, the harder it is for the modification to stick.
-Kara's is a special case; Victor says it kinda fancifully, but the idea is that while similar, DC worlds are fundamentally different from Marvel worlds - each derived from Earth-1 and Earth-616 respectively. It took a lot of power to bring Kara over and having her stay, and the result was, as described, rather imperfect. It's the boldest inclusion they've made yet, a very risky bet that they're hoping will pay off in spades - and so far, it has.
I hope that explainer helps! Now on to some fun trivia stuff:
-Obviously a lot of references to the other fandoms in the Kryptonverse, but I'm sure you caught the kinda Spiderverse one! It's only partly intended as a nod to No Way Home or the Spiderverse film; it's also a reference to my own earlier attempts at creating this kind of shared continuity in First Contact and Beating the System. In my mind, those aborted realities were part of the iterations Doom has created along the way here. Self-indulgent, but I don't care hahaha.
-If you've caught on to the fact that there's a Starfire on Earth-16 when there obviously isn't one in YJ (yet), that's intentional! Earth-16 has its own crossovery flavor (just a couple extra fandoms though, nothing as crazy as the Kryptonverse)
-Victor and Reed experimented on other realities before they ever modified 199999! I may have written a couple stories set in such universes...
-I only plan to use the retcon mechanic twice; once was here (you'll see the results soon-ish) and one is...a secret hahaha. What new fandom do you think I'll be including through this one?
There's probably more to talk about, but this is already extremely long hahaha. If this chapter was a bit much for you (and yet you're still here somehow, thank you!), don't worry; this is about as lofty and existential as the story gets. We'll get back to our regularly scheduled superhero antics next chapter! Until next time!