The Last Chronicle

by Miss Starfire

After years of struggling to build their lives together, Tony Stark and Pepper Potts have lost everything. But as all-out war looms, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance, Tony and Pepper are ready to take it all back. It has all come down to this. Story 8 of 8. The epic finale to The Last Chronicles Saga.

13. Chapter 12

Guest Review Responses

Iron kid: The chapter is too shot but a part form that very good chapter can not wait for battle sense – I honestly can't wait for the battle scenes either. I don't like writing battle scenes, but they're going to be a lot easier because I already have most of them written in my head. It's all fighting now (with a few Doom and Whitney flashbacks, here and there), but punch-punch-punch-kick-kick-slap-slap-oh-crap is all that's left! Thanks for being here! :D

A/N: Fair warning, my Faithful Readers. The genre of this fic IS Tragedy for a reason. Five characters are not gonna make it – and there will be no coming back for them. Anyone want to take a guess at which five?

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Chapter 12

He was ready.

After all this time, he was finally ready to make his move. All he was waiting for now was the right opportunity. The beast had just finished another round of torment on him, and so it could happen at any moment now. As it had happened each time, he returned to his unfortunate circumstances with full memory of where he actually was and how he came to be here – memories which had been absent just seconds ago, as he had watched his dear Valeria perish yet again.

Recalling again all he had learned in the last few repeated cycles that his existence had become, Doom prepared to strike out with all he had the instant he felt the alien centipede's mind turn away from him… any moment now… any moment…

Now!

With a growl containing all of his hate and rage for the vile thing that held him captive, Victor von Doom thrust his armored hands out, his gauntlets unleashing with full force a wave of energy that was the exact same frequency to the monster's own life-force, but would have the exact opposite effect from benefitting it. The result was immediate and unmistakable.

Yogthulu let loose a shriek of surprise and pain that went beyond any sound a mere human had ever heard. The otherworldly intestines that simultaneously could smother with their closeness or engulf with their expansiveness began to tremble like a cosmic earthquake, shaking Doom's position, but not causing his resolve to waiver an inch. He could sense that the creature was trying to muster a defense, strike back at him with its power, even within its own body. Doom was having none of it, and lashed out with his power again, his reserves being used in tandem with the knowledge he had gained of the demon's vulnerability, adding his own voice as further distraction and humiliation to his captor.

"You are not so mighty after all, are you, creature? You are no longer taking joy in suffering, now that is your own that you are experiencing. Allow me to provide you a proper lesson in the ways of pain!"

"STOP!" Yogthulu's wails echoed in his ears and his mind simultaneously. "Stop now, human! I will not allo- UAAAAAGH!"

Behind his metal mask, the doctor smiled with as much wickedness as his black heart was capable of mustering. It felt good to turn the tides on this foul thing that dared to believe itself his better. Yogthulu had never felt pain before; it did not know how to handle it. Its tolerance for the feeling of physical damage was nonexistent, and this weakness would be exploited to the fullest.

"You will learn not to meddle with my affairs, nor to renege on a deal once struck. But you will not have the opportunity to put that knowledge to use, for it shall be the last thing you learn in your damnable life."

Doctor Doom continued to increase the power pouring from his armor in green electrical arcs, pushing with all he had left to drive the life out of his enemy.

"But most of all, you shall realize in your final moments how grave an error you made in thinking that you could claim me. You have brought this fate upon yourself, Yogthulu. You should have realized from the beginning, that I would ultimately be your undoing. For I… am… DOOM!"

The struggle went on for an unknown length of time, but Doom never wavered. In spite of all the thrashing and flaying about, he ripped into the demon's life-force without pause. Eventually, he felt the sensation of falling, and then a massive tremor ran the full length of the beast as he felt it crash onto a solid surface. Still, Doom did not let this distract him from plunging the arcs of power into the alien flesh continuously, like a knife of raw energy that he would use to terminate the creature through slow and painful exsanguination.

Yogthulu's wild thrashing began to slow; its wails – both mental and audial – began to subside. After a few more moments, it stopped altogether and Doom felt its body settle. The doctor did not let up; he would take no chance that the abhorrent thing would come back from the edge of death. He was going to push it over that edge and fling its filthy carcass into the Depths, if he could.

After continuing for a few more moments, Doom was convinced that the creature was not faking. It might not have really been dead, but he doubted it was a ploy. Just in case there was still any life within it, however, Doom was not going to simply cut a hole through the side and walk out. Gathering all of his remaining power – trying to maintain a steady foot-hold in the process, which was difficult, and not because of the uneven interior either – Doom flung his arms outward and unleashed a concussive blast of energy that became a massive explosion within Yogthulu's enclosed body. In an instant, the cavity was torn open, smoke and debris filling the sky.

Engaging the anti-gravity features of his armor, Doom flew above the smoke cloud and expended the last of the potential kinetic force he had gathered within his armor, letting it arc out of him like electrical discharge. He took in a breath of sweet, yet extremely frigid air. The action felt wonderful, yet at the same time it hurt his lungs. He knew he would feel different after being held in a state that lacked physical sensation for so long. Yet, at the same time, he could tell that something was not quite right. Something was still wrong with him. Well, he would deal with that later. First, he needed to determine where he was. He would be fortunate if he had not wound up on some other planet or in another dimension.

Doom looked around himself, taking in the environment. His armor's scanners made a sweep of his surroundings at the maximum extent of their range, but he did not need them to know where he was. He recognized the mountain range that the demonic centipede's corpse had landed upon. He was in the mountains of his own Latveria. He was home. Presumably, the beast had tried to exit its own realm and bring him back to a plane of existence in which he would be subject to the traditional laws of physics, and therefore be more vulnerable to attacks beyond simply using the powers of its own realm, which he had already been using against it.

Whatever the reason for his arrival back on Earth, it did not matter. So long as he had not wound up in a parallel universe to his own world, or ended up in the past or future of the era from which he was taken, all that mattered was that he had succeeded in returning to where he belonged.

Getting his bearings, Doctor Doom began to fly off in the direction of the capital city, Doomstadt, and his glorious castle which overlooked it. Once there, he would rest, and then prepare. Prepare to make those who had set Yogthulu upon him pay. Oh, he would inflict a misery upon them, so massive in scope and so profound in design, that they would look back upon the moment when Yogthulu was prepared to consume them… and consider it as an opportunity that had been lost.

Yes: Doctor Doom did not take revenge lightly… and Iron Man would be one to find that out.

xxxXXXxxx

He turned his head to his right, opened his eyes, and saw her lying next to him. She was on her back, fast asleep, her face relaxed, her breathing leveled; just as he always found her when he was the first of the two to wake up. He shifted his body so that he now lay completely on his right side, reached out to touch her face with his left hand, and then grinned in contentment when she began stirring awake. Her hazel eyes fluttered. Her mouth contorted into a small smile. She licked her lips and swallowed down the dryness typical of the early morning, just before she opened her mouth to speak.

"Morning, Tony," she whispered.

"Morning, Pep," he immediately replied.

He slid closer to her body; the pull her form had on his always made it impossible for him to resist being around her without being pressed against her. She closed her eyes as soon as his lips landed on hers, and once he pulled away and opened his own electric blue orbs to stare at her face once more, a small cry coming from him almost choked him to death.

"PEPPER!"

Her eyes were once again open, but they lacked life within them. Her mouth was ajar, a thin trail of vibrant red blood trickling from the side of it. Her skin, which just seconds ago had radiated life and warmth, was now blue, cold and bruised. As his field of vision expanded to take in the rest of her, he swiftly realized he was lying in a pool of her own blood, rivers of it coming from a large hole in her head. He tried to get up from under the covers that were on them, but he just slipped in the slickness of the red liquid, sending him crashing onto her deceased-looking body.

He tried to pull himself away from her once more, but he found himself unable to move; and the reason for it made him gasp in shock. Her fingers were now digging into the sides of his head, her wide eyes staring at him with desperation. Her lips moved but no words came out from them, only croaking sounds that made him shiver. He attempted to pry her fingers from his head, but even while looking dead, she was stronger than she had ever been in life. The more he tried to release himself from her grip, the more he failed. And the more he failed, the closer his face got to hers. Maggots began coming out of her mouth and ears. Her eyes began leaking more of her blood as if they were tears. The scene was too much for him to witness, but he could not make his eyes close, or his nose stop breathing the scent of decay and death that emanated from her. He simply could not free himself from her.

"Whhhyyy, Tony? Whyyyyy?"

Her voice was raspy and forced, but he still managed to understand her words. He stared at her mouth and became horrified by the fact that her formerly plump lips were being feasted on by the maggots that were now crawling up his own arms. Yet, this scene was only half as frightening as watching something pop up from the middle of her forehead – an object he did not have the time to identify before it blew up in his face and bathed him with blood, brain matter and pus.

This was when it hit him. This was the moment he knew something was not at all right, aside from the obvious. This was too abnormal. Too detailed. Too bizarre to be considered real. He had to be dreaming. He just had to be dreaming. No human could be alive in these conditions. No real human being could still be conscious and speaking after this.

This is not real, the inventor closed his eyes. I have to wake up. I have to wake up!

His hands landed on her cold ones and he began pulling them away from his face. He succeeded in partially removing her frozen fingers from him, but only because the digits broke off from her hands due to what appeared to be frostbite. He opened his eyes to see one of her broken fingers lying on the palm of his hand, partly rolling from side to side. At the sight of the unattached finger that appeared to still have some life within it, he could not help the scream that came out of his mouth as he tossed it away from him.

"Why, Tony?" Pepper cried beneath him. "WHY did you kill me?"

"W-what?" the genius managed to ask, his eyes glued to her melting ones. "I… I didn't kill you, Pepper! I didn't! I didn't!"

"You promised…" the redhead began gurgling in maggots and blood. "You… promised…"

Before Tony could defend himself in this nightmare from hell, before he could make any statement whatsoever to refute her accusations, the ginger's body exploded below him, showering him with the remnants of who had once been his beloved wife. And even after it was obvious that her body had expired, he could still hear her voice echoing in his tent, demanding an explanation as to why he had sent her to her death by his hand.

He gasped loudly as he sat up straight, beads of sweat running down his temples despite the cool weather surrounding him. His eyes were wide, wet and stinging. His breathing was ragged. His entire body shook violently. He was in a total state of shock. It took him a few minutes to control himself; to find his center and realize that he had just been dreaming – again. That this had been nothing but the same dream that kept haunting him, worsening in its gruesome scale every time he went to sleep. He closed his eyes, inhaled and exhaled deeply through his nose, and then barely heard the zipper of his tent being pulled down.

"Tony? Tony! TONY! Arthur is back!"

The inventor nodded once to let his childhood friend know that he had been heard, but he made no effort to move. He pulled the front of his shirt and used the inside of it to dry his sweating face. He then rubbed his forehead with his fingers, feeling some relief come to him with the small release of endorphins the action caused. However, when the scene of Pepper's forehead exploding briefly crossed his mind yet again, the genius pulled his hand away, opened his eyes, and all but scrambled out of his sleeping bag.

"T, are you alright?" Rhodey asked with a frown, suddenly forgetting that his job was to immediately bring Tony Stark out into the field to talk to Arthur Parks as soon as he returned from his mission. "You look pale, man."

"I'm fine," Tony replied before he grabbed a plastic bottle of water and chugged its entire contents in one go. "I'm fine. Just… give me a minute. I'll be right there."

Tony wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand and crushed the bottle of water with his right hand. He licked the last of the fresh water from his lips, blinked several times, and then turned around in place to see that not only had James Rhodes not moved an inch, but that his frown had deepened so much that it almost resembled Gene Khan's.

"Dude, what the hell? You look like you just saw a ghost?"

Tony pursed his lips, looked away from Rhodey's judging gaze, and then rounded the man to reach the exit of his tent. He ignored Rhodey's groan of desperation as he trailed behind his billionaire friend, his focus only on reaching the current location of the Living Laser. He quickly found Arthur, sitting in a camping chair and eating cereal from a tiny plastic bowl; one which he almost dropped when he saw Tony approach him.

"Tony!"

"S'okay," Tony raised his left palm to keep Parks from further exerting himself, and then threw the now empty bottle of water into the fire that was kept lit at all times. "Finish eating. It can wait."

Arthur's look of concern was reflected on Rhodey's form standing behind Tony; and also on the faces of anyone else close to the genius billionaire, regardless of how much Tony Stark tried to ignore them. The two men near him exchanged worried glances, but they knew better than to try to pull anything out of their leader right now. He had been looking worse and worse since being teleported from Munich, and the news that Arthur had brought with him from the Venice checkpoint was not going to help improve the genius's mood.

As Tony waited for Arthur to recover from his latest travel, he began looking around to yet again briefly reassess the status of their mission, even if he was well aware of where it stood. It had been four days since Team D had been in Munich; the same four days since Arthur Parks had taken a chance and had returned to Vienna to try to find Teams B and C, but had only been able to teleport back with Beast and Maria Hill just before the city had been wiped out. It was also nearly two days since almost every other member of the resistance had been teleported to Kübekháza via Living Laser Express from Budapest, shortly after the incomplete Team B and the injured Team C had reached the latter team's final checkpoint together as one.

They were just a few miles away from Latveria's borders – able to reach Castle Doom in less than twenty-four hours, if they willed themselves to do so. Everyone present was more than ready and able to fight: T'Challa, Whitney, Rhodey, Cyclops, Gambit, Nick, Jarvis, Hawkeye, Happy, Maria, Beast, Gene, Bruce, Jean and Rogue. Jean Grey had telepathically kept up-to-date with Professor X back on Muir Island, who was now standing by (so to speak) to play mission control once the battle started. Everyone had already recovered from the side effects of traveling through the power lines. Everyone was ready to start the battle that would end this war. Everyone was just waiting for Tony to give the order; for him to point his finger towards Latveria and say Go! Everyone was ready, except Tony Stark himself.

And no one, not ONE soul in this camp, could blame him for hesitating at this juncture. Team A was MIA again, and Team A was composed of some key members of this counterattack.

Maya Hansen was supposed to lead Pepper and Tony inside the castle while Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton served as a distraction. Nightcrawler was supposed to teleport James Howard Stark to safety, once found, and after helping his mother break into the power core room. Bobby Drake was supposed to keep Pepper Potts alive until reaching Latveria… and Pepper Potts was supposed to go into the power core room and stop Doom's source of energy at its root.

Tony held back a sarcastic chuckle at the irony of it. Their plan was based on the ability to cut the energy source to Doom's arsenal. And energy would have gotten them all here in once piece, at the speed of fucking light.

His original plan had them leaving tomorrow morning, especially now that T'Challa was here with the Earth Movers, their suits, and supplies. But the more he thought about it, the more he and everyone else realized that leaving without Team A made all their planning and efforts a bust. The chips on their necks would last only for so long; and the only adult person that could avoid the Mainframe's influence was Pepper Potts herself. And she, along with her team, was yet to arrive to the final checkpoint everyone else awaited in.

"Are you even listening, Tony?" Rhodey's angry voice made Tony's mind return to reality.

"What?"

Rhodey groaned in response and threw his arms in the air.

"The checkpoint is gone, Tony," Arthur repeated the statement he had made three times already – one that had clearly gone over Tony's head until now.

"Gone, how? Venice disappeared too?"

"No. The building was taken over by Doombots. The teleportation device was mostly destroyed. I could barely get out of it when I got there. I had to use power outlets to come back. That's why I'm late."

"Are you alright?"

"Yeah."

"Any sign of Team A?"

Arthur shook his head from side to side and his head hung; partly in shame that he had failed to locate Team A, but also in sympathy with Tony's feelings of despair and frustration, as the Living Laser awaited words of anger from the blue-eyed man. Both he and Rhodey expected Tony to blow up at the news, to start throwing things around and perhaps even demand that Arthur return to Venice and wait for Team A to show up. However, and much to their surprise, Tony simply sighed, patted Arthur on the shoulder, thanked him for his help, and then walked away and towards his tent without much else to add.

The sun was starting to come up, which meant that the camp would soon be buzzing with life and the execution of the past few days' routines, and Tony wanted to have no part in these activities right now. People would start having breakfast, talking, and then training again. They would go over the details of their plans, the blueprints of Castle Doom, and then review the maps of the Alps and Team A's path in an effort to figure out where said team could possibly be held back. Tony knew that there was talk of sending a search party to the Alps to look for Team A, but he would not encourage said action by publicly admitting his knowledge of its existence.

As much as it pained him, and as much as he wanted to be at the forefront of it all, there would be no search and rescue for Team A. The timing was not right. The situation was of no help. There was only getting to Latveria and stopping Doom, with or without the help of his wife.

This is what his redhead would have wanted him to do, anyway. Keep pushing and moving forward with the plans, no matter what. She would not want him to sit here and pout. She would not want him to hold the world hostage for her sake – not in a crucial moment like this. Their son awaited them in Latveria. He needed to be rescued from the hands of the madman that was now responsible for killing hundreds of millions of innocent civilians around the world for no good cause. Putting a stop to Doom's cruel acts was of higher importance than looking for a redhead in the middle of the Alps. And if he dared to go back to look for her and found her, she would surely yell at him for daring to commit such a stupid deed. He just knew her too damn well to not know this to be the case. Just as he knew that everyone else would not know or even try to understand why he would be willing to halt any and all efforts to go back for his wife.

And frankly, after everything that had happened thus far and knowing what awaited them in Latveria, he could not at all give a damn about that.

Tony covered his face with his hands as soon as he entered his tent and groaned into them, trying his best to get his rage out of his system before anyone else watched him breakdown at the news brought by Arthur Parks. He knew that they would try to use any of his pent up frustration to get him to yield to the We Need to Find Team A front. He knew either Gene or Rhodey, or both, would be in here at any moment to argue with him about his blatant inaction regarding determining Team A's whereabouts – just as they had done so every day thus far. But he also knew that he could not give in to their wishes. He knew that it was pointless to do a 180º on their plans now.

He knew it was stupid to turn back.

Tony sat on top of his sleeping bag on the ground, eyed his backpack in the corner, and then heard his redhead speak to him in his mind.

"I love you, jerk. Don't give up."

Her words were his only guide.

Memories of her were his only source of fortitude.

The pinwheel necklace on him his single fountain of hope.

Hope that Team A would suddenly show up. Hope that, just as before, their MIA status was simply just another temporary setback.

Hope that his fiery redhead was not gone.

Hope that he would hold her in his arms, once again.

Hope that was instantly shattered in a fleeting moment when turmoil taking place outside his tent made him rush out of the confines of his quarters and towards the edge of their camp to join everyone else already there, gasping at the scene in shock.

On the ground before them, barely conscious and still smoking from teleportation, lay a beat up and bleeding Maya Hansen, Nightcrawler, and Natasha Romanoff.

xxxXXXxxx

Everyone's blood turned cold after the remaining three members of Team A finished telling their story; after they concluded their explanation of the reason why they were short two members of their group and of how they had risked being seen on their way here by taking public routes to get to Kübekháza, as fast as they possibly could. The trio was still partly dehydrated, noticeably injured, terribly exhausted, and their minds somewhat hazy due to Kurt's constant teleportation to cut the distance walked, but they were aware enough to inform everyone, in no uncertain terms, of the possible tragic fate of Bobby Drake and Pepper Potts.

"We…" Maya swallowed hard, almost expecting her head to be chopped clean off where she sat once she delivered the news. "We didn't find any… bodies, but… but…"

"But we didn't see any footprints either," Natasha admitted, her head hung while Barton carefully patched her up. "They could've been covered by the snow, since the storm was still going on by the time we reached the bottom of the mountain, but…"

"But we couldn't find anything else," Nightcrawler added, shame written all over his blue face.

Tony eyed on the map the approximate spot where the avalanche had taken place and noted with silent grief that it was the same place where the first hikers to climb to the top of the Matterhorn had perished in a similar fashion: falling to the glacier below after their ropes had accidentally snapped. Of the three people that had plummeted to the bottom of the mountain that one time, only two of the bodies had ever been recovered. It was highly possible that Pepper and Bobby's bodies would never be found… but it was also possible that they were still alive.

Pepper had Extremis 0 ingrained in her, which made her body as obstinate in its efforts to keep breathing as she was herself. The woman had once before survived a treacherous fall; being left for dead in a cold submarine; getting injected with snake venom; drinking contaminated water and eating rotten food; and she had even fought Doctor Doom while alone, half naked and unable to see him clearly move, on top of all; all of these events taking place way before the virus had been completely active within her. Before she had fully accepted and embraced what she could do. Each life-threatening event had brought the virus further and further out of its dormancy, making the ginger harder and harder to kill after every occurrence. And now, after two decades of hibernation, it was wide awake and raring to go at making sure nothing brought the redhead down.

Then, there was Bobby Drake, who was none other than the fucking Iceman, for crying out loud! Tony very much doubted that the mutant would simply accept a death as ironic as this for him: killed by a mobile pile of cuddly snow or due to a precipitous fall over thick ice. He knew that Iceman would have much rather be killed by being sent over to melt in the sun, or due to a shotgun to the face after flirting with someone's wife, or even by Gene's disappearing mouth trick… but not by ice. Not by what Tony knew the X-Man was proud to become. Not to mention, Iceman did not back away from a challenge, either – from an important assignment given to him. This was why Tony had trusted him to watch over Pepper, despite everyone else's doubts – and this was why the genius hoped their combined abilities had found them a way to either stop their fall or minimize the impact it could have on them.

Perhaps, as the rest of the team filled themselves with pain, mourning and grief, Pepper and Bobby were already making their way here, arguing about whose fault it was that they had made a wrong turn after hitting the intersection of I-Just-Fell-Off-a-Fucking-Mountain Street and I-Need-to-Find-My-Way-Back Avenue. Maybe, just maybe, the fate of Pepper and Bobby was not as tragic as everything pointed it to be.

Or perhaps, it was also likely that his dream had been more than just a dream: that it had been a soul-wrenching premonition. A heads-up sent by the universe, telling him that he was the only reason why Pepper would die of hypothermia, frostbite, or a shattered skull after falling to the bottom of the damned mountain he had sent her to climb. Maybe his nightmare was a message from the afterlife, sent by Pepper Potts herself, nagging at him from the beyond… but he knew that she was aware that he did not have faith in what he could not prove: and the afterlife was one of these things that he did not believe in.

"Well, that settles it," Happy stood up from his chair, pulling Tony from his multiple and contradicting thoughts. "We need to go back and search for them."

"I agree. And we should take one of the Earth Movers, too," Rhodey added, earning him a nod from Harold Hogan and Gene Khan.

"I should go, too," Jean Grey said. "I can maybe try to communicate with them telepathically, find their location that way. Or, at the very least, tell the Professor to try using Cerebro to find them without cluing in Doom."

"I can use my rings to get us there," Gene also stood up. "I can get us pretty close to where it happened, and we can start from there."

"We have an extra first-aid kit, still unopened," Maria Hill began searching for said item. "We should also bring a tent."

"And maybe get in contact with Doctor Ross. We don't know what condition they might be in," Clint suggested.

"What populated place is nearby the location?" Gene's eyes searched the map. "We could perhaps try to–"

"One day."

Tony's deadpanned response made everyone stop their planning and look towards the hunched-sitting inventor. He was staring at the ground, his hands laced under his chin, his face not giving anything away of how he truly felt. He had not moved or said anything throughout Team A's recollection of the events, yet his current tone of voice and pose made it clear that he would accept no arguments from anyone who believed that they should already be on their way to the Alps.

"One day?" Rhodey frowned. "One day for what?"

"We'll give them one extra day to get here. If they're not here by sunrise, a whole day after the morning they know we're supposed to leave for Latveria, we're still packing up and heading out."

"What?!" Gene shook his head and had to be held back by Jean Grey. "That's just unacceptable! One day is not enough for them to catch up with us, especially if they're hurt worse than they are!" Gene pointed towards Natasha, Kurt and Maya. "What we need to do is go looking for them ourselves right now!"

"No," Tony's calm response made Gene Khan's left eye twitch.

"No?" Gene walked around the telepath and closed the distance between him and the inventor. "Are you fucking kidding me, Stark? Were you even paying attention to what they just said?"

"Yes, I was paying attention, Gene," Tony's head snapped up to glare back at the half-Makluan, but his voice remained evened out. "But we are not going to look for them. We are staying put, waiting for them for one extra day, and then leaving as soon as the sun comes up. With or without them."

"What the FUCK, Tony?" this time, it was an equally fuming Rhodey who reached Tony's current position. For most of the time that Gene had attended the Tomorrow Academy, Rhodey and the Mandarin had not really seen eye-to-eye. It was just Tony's screwed up luck, however, that the duo suddenly decided to join forces against him at a time like this.

"Are you listening to yourself?" Rhodey continued. "Have you completely lost it? This is Pepper we're talking about! Pepper! She is my friend! She is your wife!"

"I know damn well who we're talking about, Rhodey," Tony stood up from the chair and narrowed his eyes at his best friend. "Don't you dare insinuate that I don't understand what the hell is going on. I know it better than anyone 'round here!"

"Do you now?" Gene spat. "Because I don't think you do. You should be the first one on board with this! You should already be helping us pack! We should be the ones trying to stop you from leaving!"

"This is not the best choice, Gene, and you know it. We have a job to do. We… this… this is not what… this is not what Pepper would want us to do. You trust her, don't you, Gene? You told her that you trusted her, believed in her… more than I do. Remember?"

Gene opened his mouth to deny Tony's claims – assertions that the Mandarin himself had made when Tony had been the one losing his shit over the rough training sessions that had been prepared for the ginger in the VTR. But he could not do it. He could not suddenly take back the words he had said before. He still believed in Pepper. He still trusted her to protect herself and for her to properly and effectively use the trainings she had received from him. Part of Gene, a rather small part at the moment, still believed that the woman he loved was in the process of finding her way out of the Alps while cursing loudly at herself for being stupid enough to hold everyone back. And even though the part that told him to go looking for her took up most of his soul, he knew that his most hated enemy was in the right.

Seeing that the genius had successfully taken down one of his supporters, Rhodey grabbed Tony by the collar of his shirt and pulled him towards his face, their noses nearly touching.

"Not what she would want us to do? You don't think she wants to be rescued? You don't think she would want for us to help them out? Do you even understand how this is your fault? Do you even know what you did to her?"

"I KNOW WHAT I DID, RHODEY!" Tony held onto his friends' forearms, somewhat angry at himself for finally losing his cool in front of his team. "I know what I did to her! I know that… that she and Iceman are… most likely… that they probably didn't…"

Tony briefly closed his eyes, exhaled through his mouth, released Rhodey's arms, and then hung his head.

"I sent Pepper there… I sentenced her to death when I sent her to the Alps. Especially now that I know there was another way. I know that. I..." he closed his eyes again, images of her blue-looking, maggot-infested face of his dreams passing through his mind. "But if we stop now, if we delay it more than we should… it'll all be for naught."

Tony's right palm awkwardly rested on his chest, right on top of his redhead's necklace, and then stared at Rhodey in the eye.

"I can't allow that. I can't let it all be for nothing. Please, understand that. All of you: you just have to understand that. It's not that I don't want to go looking for her. It's not that I don't know that her blood… their blood, is on my hands. But we need to do what we came here to do. We can't just go back after how hard it was for us to get here in the first place. She…" Tony smiled sadly. "If she knew that I let us turn around now, she'd kick my ass."

Maya, Kurt and Natasha exchanged defeated looks across the camp, all remembering similar warning words of ginger-led punishment befalling the inventor being uttered by the redhead herself during their climb. She had said that she would hurt Tony for sending them through the Alps. She had intended to give him a piece of her mind once reunited again. She had planned to see this through to the end, push for this Doctor Doom overthrowing issue to be done with, and then shake her husband senseless for his silly ideas. She had stated, in no ambiguous terms, what she had in store for the mad scientist and for her biological father as well, once she was face-to-face with them. She had listed what she had wanted to do after she was done, and how strongly she believed sacrifices needed to be made to win this fight. During their two weeks of travel with her, she had been an open book to them, showing what she was made of and what she stood for, and after seeing her in action during their time together, they all begrudgingly had to agree with Tony Stark's current reasoning and words.

In fact, for anyone that knew her, they would have to reluctantly agree that Tony was right. Yes: she would have liked to be rescued. But she would also choose saving her son and the world he would live in, above saving her own ass.

Slowly, almost hesitantly, Rhodey released Tony's shirt, clearly showing on his face that he knew, deep inside, Tony's words to be true. He did not have to like it, or even have to agree with it; yet, the lack of either action on his or anyone else's part would not make any of it less of a fact. Rhodey then looked over his shoulder, towards Gene's and Happy's current location, and saw on them the same expression of angry acceptance of what needed to be done that he knew was also reflected on his own face.

Pepper Potts had survived worse things on her own – and this time, she was not alone. They would just have to trust and hope that she and Bobby were strong enough to find their way back. And that Tony Stark's blind belief in his wife's abilities was not too over the top.

"One day, Tony," Rhodey said between gritted teeth. "One FULL day, alright?"

Tony Stark agreed with a nod.

xxxXXXxxx

Unseen to the world, Doctor Doom stood looking over his targets as they continued to dash back and forth over the whole chaotic scene, determined to recover the remains of all the casualties from the bottom of the river. Meaningless. Pathetic. The delusion that they both shared, the sense of duty that guided them; it disgusted him.

Doom had learned many things in the six months since his return from Yogthulu's realm, and had set many events in motion. He had learned that Tony Stark, the son of his former captive Howard Stark, was Iron Man. This had been revealed to the world during his absence, and once he had discovered this, Doom had immediately begun researching his young opponent.

At the time he had started looking into the boy's life, he had discovered that a member of his team, a bratty girl named Patricia "Pepper" Potts, had been abducted, and that the culprit was believed to be the daughter of Obadiah Stane. With spy tech that no one else on Earth had access to, Doom had been able to watch and listen as Iron Man, his allies, and S.H.I.E.L.D. all scrambled to find the girl and apprehend her abductor.

Once the Stane girl had been placed in custody, he had listened with great interest while it was revealed how much the Potts girl meant to Stark. The boy was full-fledged in love with her, and her situation had been making him miserable to a degree that Doom knew all too well. Doom's microscopic spy tech did not work near Stark's Iron Man armor when it was active – something the boy had built into the suit was able to scramble even the doctor's inventions – and so he had not been able to follow the inventor when he flew to wherever his base of operations was. However, this was not really a concern, as the revenge Doom intended to dish out did not require making a surprise attack on Iron Man's headquarters to accomplish.

Rather, he had kept apprised of the situation by continuing to look in on the Helicarrier. Eventually, Stark had returned with the girl and the Mandarin. The two had apparently allied themselves again to retrieve her from wherever she had been held. It had ultimately been determined that Potts would likely recover, and that had been when Doom had decided he had seen enough for now, opting to withdraw from observing his enemy in order to start plotting.

It was clear to Doom just how much the girl's plight had affected Stark. This would serve him, as he was forced to admit to himself that, with the allies the inventor had amassed and how much his power had grown, a direct strike against the boy would be fool-hardy in his current condition. As such, Doom had decided to go about his revenge in a different manner.

He had sent an invitation out to all of the enemies that Iron Man had made who were still alive and not in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, and had offered a sizable reward for the deaths of both Iron Man and Rescue. He put emphasis on the girl's death, particularly that her head was to be removed and that the reward for her was higher than for Stark himself. His goal with these actions was to cause Stark as much sorrow as he could once Pepper Potts had been murdered and Stark had failed to protect her. Simple, yes – clichéd even – yet absolutely effective.

He had also gathered together many of those he had sent the bounty invitation to and met with them all at a neutral location. He had made it clear to all of them that any mention of his return to anyone would result in a death most unpleasant, a threat which none of them dared to test, even in his weakened state. This would ensure that all parties involved claimed ignorance if questioned about who had set this endeavor in motion, but would also drive home the legitimacy of this endeavor better than if he had remained anonymous to them through indirect communication. The cabal of criminals had shared plans, strategies, and weapons technology, so that each would know what the other would do to try to collect on the bounty Doom had set. Most had been in no condition to attack the heroes at the time, just like Doom himself, but had begun making preparations for when that time came.

Sasha Hammer announced that she would reform the Maggia, which her cousin, Justin, had put out of commission, and would begin amassing wealth and members in order to make a direct strike on Iron Man. She had also shared the Titanium Man designs with Doom, which the doctor had in turn shared with the rest of the group to see what could be made of it.

AIM had begun reconstruction of the cyborg assassin, Whiplash, as well as the construction of a new Crimson Dynamo armor provided by Anton Harchov, former head of the defunct Project Pegasus.

Rhona Erwin began formulating a plan of constructing an unstoppable android doppelganger of herself, and began studying the technology Iron Man had used against Obadiah Stane's Guardsmen, in order to turn Stark's own inventions against him.

S.H.I.E.L.D. head Nick Fury had surprisingly joined the gathering as well, claiming that Stark and Potts' refusal to supply S.H.I.E.L.D. with weapons was intolerable, and that Iron Man had embarrassed him and his organization too many times. Fury had made it clear, however, that his alliance with the group was temporary, and that his organization would continue to pursue justice against each member of the cabal once Iron Man had been dealt with. Doctor Doom did not care about the man's motivations, but would continue to watch the general closely in case all was not as it seemed.

Most notably, a plot from within the heart of the two Stark companies themselves had also begun as a result of this meeting. From his previous visit to Stark International at the invitation of Obadiah Stane, Doom had downloaded all information about his tech rival that he could, including employees and secret projects… projects that were kept hidden even from Stane's watchful eye and Howard Stark's before him. Among these had been a man by the name of Aldrich Killian; a scientist employed nearly twenty years earlier by Howard Stark, and who had been secretly commissioned by S.H.I.E.L.D. to create a new version of the Super Soldier Serum. Killian had already been long at work on a compound that served that very purpose, and accepted the resources S.H.I.E.L.D. had offered to help the work along. Doom had been particularly intrigued by this, and had invited Dr. Killian into the conspiracy against Stark and Potts.

Upon his return to Earth, Doom had discovered that parts of his body had been phased away with the damage Yogthulu had done to his soul. Although his soul was restored fully upon his return, his body was not, with patches of his skin, muscle, organs and even skeletal structure missing in various places upon and within his body. Yet, his body continued to support him – it simply was not nearly efficient enough for recovery. The scars that covered his face from the explosion years ago were one thing; he hid those behind his metal faceplate. The damage from Yogthulu was different; it left him in a profound state of weakness from which he could not recover naturally, yet did not allow him to die.

Killian's creation of the compound he called "Extremis" appeared to be exactly what Doom needed to restore his body to what it had been. After inviting Killian into the fold and explaining their common desire to cure themselves with the virus, the two evil doctors began engineering a sub-conspiracy, independent of the bounty against Stark and Potts, yet ultimately serving the purpose of sealing the pair's fate. First, Killian began to encourage a romantic relationship between his stepdaughter, Maya Hansen, and Tony Stark, in the hopes that the girl would eventually end up pregnant by Stark, allowing Killian to take his theory of "natural birth Extremis" in another direction using Stark's unique strain of the virus.

Second, Killian also met in secret with Stark International board member, Mitch Richards, who coincidentally was the older cousin of the new head of AIM, Kevin Kowalowski – who, through further coincidence, had been a schoolmate of Stark and Potts, and was also a nephew to AIM's former Scientist Supreme, which explained how the unremarkable young man had come to be in charge of the organization as an act of nepotism. Although not privy to knowledge of the bounty's existence, Mitch Richards had ambitions to one day have a large controlling interest in both Stark International and Stark Solutions, and so was game to be in on the ruination of Tony Stark and Pepper Potts, both of whom the young businessman despised. Killian, through his stepdaughter, and Richards, through his board membership, had shared a great deal of information with AIM about Tony Stark's inventions that were on file with both Stark companies, and Kowalowski had, in turn, shared that information with Doctor Doom.

It was through this conspiratorial passing along of inside info on Stark, that Rhona Erwin had obtained the specs of Iron Man's negator packs for use in her own plan against him. But, more importantly, it had also allowed Doom to view AIM's entire inventory of weapons technology. This had included a cloaking device that had been designed and traded several years earlier to the mercenary known as the Ghost, which Doom knew he could use in the future, with some modifications and improvements. Of greater significance to the doctor, however, was a device that had been built only months earlier by the head of the previous regime within AIM, Basil Sandhurst. The machine, called The Mainframe, had been based on technology Sandhurst had designed for AIM, and which focused on mind control. Sandhurst had intended to use his latest creation to achieve this on a global scale, but had needed the Extremis that resided within Tony Stark to bring this vision to fruition. Upon studying the schematics of this device and learning the details from the few remaining AIM scientists, Doom had begun thinking beyond his planned revenge against Iron Man.

But all of that was still in the early planning stage, and had no bearing on the here and now. And here and now, Doctor Doom was putting his own version of the Ghost's cloaking tech to use. He was standing upon the wreckage of a train car, one which was part of a larger scene of carnage that he had initiated himself. The train had been derailed hours ago, with part of it having been submerged in the river, alongside which the tracks had run.

Harsh, freezing winds whipped snow all around in vicious swirls – also courtesy of the doctor's own handiwork. Doom had utilized minor weather manipulation technology to instigate a massive blizzard on the North American east coast, causing the coldest winter in decades for the city of New York. His plan had been to create a disaster and observe Iron Man and Rescue in action, to see where things currently stood with the pair. He was also curious as to whether he might be able to get them in a position of vulnerability that he could take advantage of while in his cloaked state, eliminating the need for the slow progress of the bounty invitees to even become involved. But mainly, this was reconnaissance.

Once the storm had raged for a few hours without anything happening that warranted intervention by Iron Man, Doctor Doom had taken matters into his own hands, yet again. He had derailed the train he currently stood upon, in such a manner that it would be chocked up to a consequence of the storm, of course. Iron Man and Rescue had been called to the scene when the search and rescue efforts had proven too volatile for the authorities to handle alone. The two had managed to retrieve some survivors from the freezing river, but it was now mainly a search for the corpses of passengers who were unaccounted for. It was morbid work, and the two were freezing and exhausted.

"Rescue, need a break? Don't lie to me."

"I'm fine. Just needed to catch my breath."

"You know I can scan your vitals from here, right?"

"You know I can do the same, too?"

Their banter ended as they presumably switched to internal communication between their armors. He could have listened in if he wanted to, but there was a chance that they might have detected an eavesdropper on the communication line. Besides, what did it matter? They were probably arguing about each other taking risks or other such trivialities. Their actions would tell him all he needed to know.

It had seemed that Stark had abandoned his romantic interest in the girl, as he had moved on to courting Killian's stepdaughter rather quickly. Potts had also moved on to another young man who she attended school with. Still, the fact that they lived, ran a company, and fought crime together regularly, had Doom wondering how much of what the public saw was true. It was the main reason why he was here, now, taking matters into his own hands. He wanted to know if Stark's feelings for the girl had truly lessened, in which case he would need to make adjustments to the bounty and find another way to make the boy suffer. So far, the current crisis was not providing enough information for that, beyond the fact that they still cared for one another's health. That was too common to be useful to him. He needed more concrete answers.

His sensors alerted him to an approaching airplane that would fly almost directly over this area. Realizing an opportunity, Doom took to the air, still silent and invisible to the world, leaving the armored pair to continue their muted bickering below.

The mad doctor flew straight at the incoming aircraft, determining it to be a passenger airliner, filled to roughly four-fifths of its capacity with people who were most likely on their way to visit relatives for the Thanksgiving Day holiday that this wretched country would be celebrating in a week's time. Well, they would never reach their destinations or see their loved ones, but their flight would serve a greater purpose now – his purpose.

He matched the plane's speed and moved in close to the engine located along the left wing. Reaching out, he touched the fingertips of his gauntlet upon its surface, immediately releasing a small army of nanobots that were stored within the metal encasing his hands. After releasing enough to do the job, he then flew over the craft and repeated the action with the engine on the other wing. Some of the nanobots were spreading across the full length of the aircraft, while the greater concentration of the machines embedded themselves into the engines as much as they could.

Doom slowed his own momentum, allowing the plane to pull ahead, and quickly calculated the precise details that would make his plan work. Once he did so, and as soon as the right moment came, Doom detonated all of the nanobots he had released.

The explosion was arranged in such a way that the plane did not come apart in the air, but there was no chance of survival for any who were inside the craft, and it would likely be chalked up to the horrid weather conditions that led to the tragedy, especially since no sign of his nanobots would ever be recovered. The aircraft immediately began to plunge toward the spot where he had already derailed the train – just as he had wanted it to be.

He swooped down a little lower to have a better view of what would happen. And what he witnessed was Iron Man taking to the air, obviously scanning the ruined craft to find the best way of stopping its descent. What managed to surprise even Doom was when the armored hero, apparently not willing to even bothering trying to make a futile attempt at turning the plane away from its projected point of impact, fired every weapon in his arsenal at the burning plane, reducing it from a flaming, plummeting vehicle to a flaming, plummeting debris field.

Iron Man disappeared from his view in the explosion, but Doctor Doom continued to track his signal as he plunged into the river amid most of the remains of the plane. It was not long before Rescue surfaced from the waters and began looking for her companion, even stopping to ask a member of the police on the scene where Iron Man had gone.

The doctor watched as the girl dove back into the water, resurfacing now and then, searching frantically for the young inventor and having no success. After a few minutes, the armored heroine finally surfaced with a battered Iron Man in her grasp. As rescue workers began to enter the water in boats and rafts, making their way toward the far shore where the two had surfaced, the Potts girl set Iron Man upon the ground.

"Tony, talk to me! Say something to me, Tony!"

As Doom watched the girl use one of her repulsors to attempt a jump start of the battery in the boy's armor, he began to wonder if he had actually succeeded in terminating Iron Man this day.

"Tony! TONY!" her cries grew more desperate as she began to rip the damaged armor from his body. "Tony, open your eyes. Tony? NO!"

Potts disengaged her armor, retracting it into a backpack, which she then flung away from herself. She checked his breathing and his pulse, obviously finding neither as she began to administer mouth-to-mouth breathing and chest compressions in an effort to resuscitate the boy.

"Come on, Tony! Don't you fucking do this to me! Don't you dare do this to me, Stark!"

She began to sob, and so did the people who were beginning to gather around as they watched the girl try and continue to fail at bringing back the hero. She continued to try reaching him with her voice between CPR attempts.

"Tony, please breathe! Please, baby, please breathe! Breathe! I promise I'll tell everyone you're great in bed! I promise I'll let you sleep until nine! Just, please, Tony, please come back. You can't leave me! You can't just leave me like this!"

That settled it for Doom. He did not know where things stood between them, but it was clear that the two had feelings for one another that would make the loss of either unbearable to the survivor. Tony Stark was as close to death as one could be before reaching the point of no return, and he knew that he could let the boy perish, knowing that it was by his hand, weakened though it was, and not have to pay the bounty to any of the fools who had accepted the invitation.

But, that would not be enough for the young Stark. It would be his death, yes, but only his death. He had not suffered as Doom had decreed that he must, and he knew that the loss of the girl would be what would break the inventor to his core. Tony Stark could not die without knowing that kind of pain, that unique brand of sorrow. Doom would not allow it.

Knowing that it would lead to greater torment down the road, Doctor Doom extended to his young opponent the only mercy he would ever grant him. Moving in close to the pair on the ground, unseen and unnoticed to all, Doom knelt down and placed the tip of a single finger against Tony Stark's nostril and released his few remaining nanobots. While they would probably conflict with the boy's Extremis for the next few hours, causing unforeseen complications to his overall condition, they would be able to revive him in short order, enough to keep him alive and allow the doctors to do their work. They would pass from his system within a day, leaving no trace behind that they had ever been within him.

"I-I owe you… five bucks, Tony. You can't… you can't let me off the hook. Please, Tony. Please, don't die on me, Tony! Please, I can't-I can't do this alone. I need you! Please, I need you! I need you so much…"

The girl's pleas were annoying him greatly, but she should have no more need to do so. Any moment now…

Sure enough, as Pepper Potts leaned down to make one more attempt to breathe for Stark, the boy began to spit and cough water forth from his lungs.

"Tony!"

The girl readjusted their positions so that his head lay in her lap.

"It's alright, Tony. It's going to be alright."

Yes, this had definitely been a most illuminating evening. Doom had seen all he needed, and excused himself from the scene, knowing that none who were present would ever know that he was involved or to what extent.

But his plans for Tony Stark and Pepper Potts had only just begun.

xxxXXXxxx

It was extremely quiet around them – too quiet for his taste, to say the truth; way too quiet for it to be considered nothing more than the natural state of the area they were currently in. For the last half a mile or so, the only noises that Tony had picked up near him belonged to those made by his companions: the sounds of deliberate yet careful footsteps, of stretching or rubbing fabrics, the roll of the stealth-activated Earth Movers behind them; all man-made sounds. However, the expected tunes of nature were nowhere to be found. The wintery winds were eerily calm. The dark clouds above them refused to let go of their precious cargo. Not even the fauna that he knew lived in Latveria had dared to make an appearance thus far. Everything appeared to be still, dormant; practically dead, in fact.

According to his calculations, they were already in Latverian terrains, approximately five miles away from the edge of the capital, where Castle Doom was located. From his classes back at the Tomorrow Academy, Tony knew that Latveria was not known for its warm, open culture, or for the welcoming behavior of its citizens, but he knew that the country was heavily populated and very active – something they were yet to see for themselves. So far, and despite the fact that they were consciously walking thru the small towns and villages that rested at the bottom of the hills were Doomstadt was situated, not one soul had made its appearance. It was as if the entire country had been deserted… or as if its entire population had long ago been exterminated.

"It was never this lonely, when I was here," Maya Hansen said aloud, as if reading Tony's grim and suspicious thoughts. While it was true that the brunette had not gotten plenty of opportunities to abandon her post inside Castle Doom to stroll the city, she knew enough about the ways of the country to realize that the current loneliness of the suburb they were in was an appallingly uncommon trait for it.

"Maybe Doom sent his people underground to keep them safe," Scott reasoned, his visor picking up no signs of anyone or anything else beyond his teammates and of the digging tech they were dragging behind.

"That sounds too humanitarian for the likes of Doom," Rhodey commented, his hands resting on the straps of his modified, War Machine backpack.

"A monarch is only a ruler if he has people to command," Gene said, also highly disturbed by the fact that their party appeared to be the only sample of people in the entire land.

"Well, he rules the world now," Whitney Stane interjected, her mask detecting no signs of life either. "Who needs a small country when you have an entire planet at your mercy?"

"That is probably the worst part of it all," Kurt suddenly appeared next to Tony. "What he did with what he saw being no longer of need."

Gene and Tony exchanged worried looks, both recalling their first-hand experience at finding out how little the Doctor valued human life that was not his own or of his kin; how he had once thrown the two of them and Howard Stark at the jaws of a multidimensional creature, all without even batting an eye. Neither Tony nor Gene doubted that the maniac they had come to fight could have yet again made similar arrangements; even if just to say that he had done so just because he could.

Tony's head turned to his right to stare at an equally wary Nick Fury, and then to his left to eye a rather watchful Maria Hill. The genius had no doubt that similar thoughts to his were crossing the minds of everyone present, as none of the members of the resistance were here because they were naïve, slow to react or stupid. They were a group composed of experienced heroes, skilled mutants, high-tech vigilantes, peace-keeping agents, and trained assassins. Even if their strength was not in their numbers – or at least compared to the previous armies that had beforehand made an effort to take down Doctor Doom, it was not – their individual abilities made them a force to be reckoned with. Working together as a group, well… it made it even more alarming, to say the least, that they had been allowed to walk this close to the capital without encountering any attempts at stopping their advances. He would have thought that the ruler would have wanted to quickly dispose of the greatest threat that could walk up to his doorstep; however, it was as if he was welcoming them with open arms.

Perhaps, this had been Doctor Doom's plan all along. Perhaps, he had set everything in motion so that he was able to just sit back, relax, and enjoy the fireworks; let the heroes do all the work for him, and then reap the benefits once they were on his turf.

Tony frowned at the grave thought, which set off all kinds of warning bells in his mind. He suddenly extended his arms to his sides to signal for everyone to stop where they stood, and then looked over his left shoulder to stare at Hawkeye, one word practically forcing its way out of his mouth.

"Shoot."

No sooner than Tony finished saying the word, Clint Barton's arrow was already flying past their ranks. The projectile followed the expected path, stopping only when it encrusted itself onto a building's wall. Everyone remained still for another minute, all waiting for some type of counterattack, or maybe even a sign that their presence was known to the Latverian ruler or citizens, but nothing appeared to change at all. They all knew about the calm before the storm, but this seemed to be the calm before the calm before the shit storm.

"I really don't like this," Tony said to no one in particular.

"Try again?" Clint asked.

"No. Let me try," Kurt said, his right palm on his chest. "I'll retrieve your arrow."

Tony silently stared at the man for a moment, frowned at the idea, but still reluctantly nodded his approval. Other than Gene and the Living Laser, Kurt was the only other person that could appear and disappear on command. If there was any chance of danger awaiting them when jumping a few feet in front of themselves, it was best if the task was undertaken by someone who could potentially pull away from a threat as quickly as a passing thought.

If they saw it coming, that was.

Sensing the palpable gravity of the situation, everyone else took on an offensive stance. Rogue and Living Laser levitated a few feet above the ground. Hawkeye readied and aimed another arrow. Bruce prepared to call on the Hulk. Maya, Widow, Fury, Maria and Jarvis all cocked their guns. Happy, Rhodey and Tony placed their palms on the center of their backpacks. Scott prepared to lower the blast shield on his visor. Gambit loaded up a few cards with kinetic energy. Beast, Black Panther and Chameleon raised their fists in the air. Jean Grey placed her hands on her temples, and Gene Khan clenched his hands in preparation for using his rings.

They all held their breath. They all narrowed their eyes. They all felt their hearts threatening to stop and their bodies ready to engage at the slightest provocation. Nevertheless, they all patiently waited to react when Nightcrawler disappeared in a cloud of smoke. And then they all lowered their defense when they saw the mutant successfully standing by the place the arrow had stopped.

After looking left and right, back and front, and then up and down, Kurt easily pulled the arrow out of the wall and then proceeded to twirling it in his fingers once. Following a rather pronounced shrug and left tilt of the head, he began walking towards his team. The projectile had traveled about sixty feet away from where it had been released by Clint Barton, but Kurt was only able to take twenty short steps before he was suddenly and violently tossed backwards and towards the same wall he had just been standing by, seconds ago.

Watching Nightcrawler being flung back caused everyone to instantly return to their offensive stance. While concern for their teammate shone in their face, and despite their instinctive need to go check up on the fallen member, they all remained unnervingly still and silent, their eyes traveling all around them to try to pinpoint where the attack had come from. However, when nothing out of the ordinary stood out to them and the city remained as silent as it had been thus far, Tony's head snapped to his right.

"Whitney! Do you see anything?"

"No," the blonde shook her head vehemently. "The mask is not picking up anything."

"Rhodey?"

The agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. slammed his hand on the center of his chest and immediately became enveloped by a smaller version of his suit of armor. Tony waited a few more seconds for the AI to pick up on anything before them with its multi-spectrum view, but when all he heard was War Machine's loud cursing, the inventor knew that nothing had been found by Rhodey either.

"Anyone?" Tony's tone showed his mounting frustration. "Gene? Jean?"

The telepath shook her head, and Mandarin snarled.

"Gambit!"

A handful of cards were immediately released by Remy, but the payload did not make it past twenty feet – mirroring roughly the same distance that Nightcrawler had been able to travel before being pushed back. Some of the cards evaporated on contact, and the rest simply bounced back, just as Kurt had.

"Is it a force field? Can we blow it up?" Fury asked.

In response, Tony suited up. He then aimed his hand repulsors towards the front and released two large bursts of energy, one from each hand, only for them to bounce right back and hit him square in the chest.

"UGH!"

"Tony!"

A flash of red and gold flew past the other members of the resistance as the hero was flung back, their mouths nearly gaping at the unexpected act. Before Iron Man was able to slow down his flight or even attempt to turn around in midair, he hit another invisible barrier from behind. The ricocheting effect of the second hit made the hero slam his front against the ground, skidding on the hard surface until he nearly reached his previous standing position. At first sight, the attack on their leader appeared to be as random, and its cause as inconclusive, as it had been on Kurt. However, as they concentrated their gazes on the aftereffects of Rhodey using his repulsors at a lower-impact range on the same spot from which Tony had just been bounced off, the source of the attack was finally revealed.

Wavy ripples of floating energy began rolling all over the place, mixing the view of the area around them with something dark-colored that they could not immediately identify. As they traveled from side to side, the waves became longer and taller, the origin of them slowly taking shape before their eyes until there was no doubt in their minds what they had merrily walked themselves into. It was not a force field that surrounded them from all sides: it was an army of unusually large and heavily armed Doombots – an army that, unbeknownst to them, had been following them since entering the country; an army that had remained undetected by using the same cloaking technology the Doctor himself had used to infiltrate inside the Stark penthouse. One that, the inventor knew in his heart, only James Howard Stark or Pepper Potts would have been able to see with the naked eye.

One that, Tony feared, could be the single reason why his redhead had presumably not made it out of the Alps alive, and why she had never reached their camp at the final checkpoint in Kübekháza.

What if the avalanche had not been an accident? What if Doom had been there with Team A, all along, only to take the ginger away at the perfect time? Victor von Doom knew about the workings of Extremis. He knew that Pepper could see his aura and James could see through his cloaking device. He perhaps had even discerned that James Stark's immunity to the Mainframe's waves had been inherited from his mother's version of the virus. What if removing Pepper Potts from the picture had been done so that she was not here to warn them of the army slowly creeping up on them and their path? What if Tony's hopes that his wife was still alive and breathing were false?

No, Tony clenched his eyes shut. The hero, while still on the ground, now lay on all fours, his fists trembling in crippling denial. No. She made it. I know she made it. I know she's still alive!

"Aw, shit," Happy followed his groan by strongly hitting the front of his backpack with his right fist. The item unfolded instantly and enveloped him in the base structure of the Hulk Buster armor, which was then fully completed by the rest of the armor flying off the top of an Earth Mover and attaching itself onto the jock. The entire feat took no more than three seconds, but it was enough time for everyone else to begin and complete their own version of suiting up.

"Are you OK?" Tony heard Rhodey ask.

"Yeah," Tony finally stood up from the ground, his right, armored hand vigorously rubbing his lower back as his mind told his heart to forget about his grim doubts for the moment. "But I fucking miss Extremis right about now. That's gonna leave a mark."

"Better than a hole," Natasha replied, almost without thinking, after remembering a similar conversation between her and the inventor from a while back. It was rather out-of-place for her to joke at a time like this, especially when she was unsure of where to aim her gun when the now visible army of Doombots took a uniform step towards the group, but her response triggered the expected response from the blue-eyed inventor.

"Silver lining, really?" Tony smirked despite himself; a little distraction was greatly appreciated right now.

"That's all I've got," she smiled. "Although, you still owe me an island, Stark."

"Sorry, Natasha," Tony shrugged, also recalling their conversation after capturing Madame Masque in their search for finding the redhead she had taken. "I gave it to my wife."

"Is this really the best time for this?" Gene, now in full Mandarin getup, said inside his helmet, his fists quickly lifting in the air when the robots took yet another step towards them.

"I guess Doom does know we're here, huh?" Bruce asked with a sad sigh when the army shortened the distance between them once more, and he then turned into the Hulk. The green version of his angry alter ego had again replaced the smarter, grey version that had once existed. After battling the Makluan Overlord, the alien lizard had not only reverted Dr. Banner to his human form in order to defeat him, but the process of doing so had somehow restored the stronger, but more simple-minded form of the beast for all subsequent transformations Bruce had undergone. "Hulk HATE robots!"

"To be fair, I don't think they like us very much, either," Maya gulped at seeing the mechanical Doom look-alikes take yet another step towards them, forcing her to stand closely behind Iron Man. The machines were nearly identical to their creator, save for the fact that they looked just slightly less advanced than Doom's personal armor, and they lacked the green cloak that completed the mad doctor's fashion statement. These Doombots were not meant to be decoys; they were soldiers.

"Keep'em away from the Earth Movers," Tony ordered as the bots took another step.

"Think they can see them behind the stealth mode?" Maria Hill asked.

"Something tells me we're about to find out."

Following his verbal observation, Scott Summers placed his right index and middle finger on the right side of his visor, making it the last move the Doombots allowed of the heroes before the robots lifted their arms and aimed them towards the group to begin their attack.

xxxXXXxxx

It was like being back in New York when the Makluan invasion had taken place. However, and in hindsight, Tony Stark would have preferred taking on the alien lizards again than having to face Doctor Victor von Doom in his own land.

The passing of time had led him here; to be within miles of knocking at the door of the greatest villain he had ever encountered in his entire life… if he could get past his Doombots. Every action taken since accidentally sending the ruler to another dimension had been in preparation for this moment – for the inevitable instant when he had to risk his life for the sake of the entire planet – again. That particular time in New York City, when the genius had been inside the alien spaceship and he had held back the Makluan Overlord so that Gene could teleport Pepper, Rhodey and Bruce to safety, Tony Stark had honestly thought that he was going to die.

He had never told anyone, not even his beloved redhead, that he had not expected to make it out of the ship with his life. The reality of it had not hit him, however, until he had felt his body falling to the ground. His head had been spinning, his body had been in pain and highly unresponsive, and the only thing he had discerned in those moments while reaching the streets of New York in freefall had been the voice of his fiery friend via the intercom. He had never told her, and she had never asked about it either, but Tony had heard, loud and clear, the panic in her voice when she had called his name.

"Tony? Oh, no! NO!"

He had never before heard that tone of utter fear coming from her, and it had frightened him in ways that he had never felt until then. He knew that she was alright – Gene would not allow anything to befall the redhead, even way back then. But he feared what his possible death would do to her. He had known what she had been trying to convey to him all throughout the battle – what he had been clever enough to delay. He had known that she felt something special for him, even if she had never openly or too extremely acted upon it. He had feared not so much the idea of dying a hero – but of hurting the ginger with his untimely passing. More than anything, in fact, he had feared not having the opportunity to tell her how special she too was for him.

But he had made it. And so had she. And then the real struggle had begun.

And now, here he was, many years later, punching his armored right fist through a Doombot, and then pulling out his arm to see it covered in blood.

What?!

He blinked rapidly to focus on his upturned palm and forearm, hoping that his eyes were just misleading him – that perhaps the color of his suit of armor and the sunlight above them were working together to play tricks on him. However, when the red liquid began pouring down to the ground not only from his arm, but also from the stomach area of the Doombot itself that he still held onto with his left hand, Tony Stark had just enough sense to gasp.

"How?"

While still holding the robot by its right shoulder, the inventor rushed to remove the helmet portion of the bot. The thick piece of metal dented when it fell to the ground, leaving in its wake the face of the redheaded woman he had just killed.

"No," Tony opened his faceplate. "No. NO!"

More out of instinct than common sense, Iron Man's left hand moved to rest on her lower back to support her weight, her body instantly becoming limp as the blood left her innards. With his right hand, he tried checking for a pulse, brushed the matted hair from her face, and he then choked back a sob when he saw a trail of red trickling out from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her mouth hung even more, prompting memories of his nightmare to return to him.

"Pepper? No. No, Pepper! Please, NO!"

The commotion around him became unimportant to his ears as he fell to his knees. He stared at the hole in her stomach; at the guts and other vital organs that now lay on the ground behind them, and he had to fight back the urge to retch. It was not the first time he had ever killed someone, and it was not the first time he saw first-hand the gory results of taking someone's life. But this was the first time he saw it happening to someone he loved.

"Pepper… baby… how… I didn't mean to… Pepper… no… Pep!"

His entire body trembled. His eyes filled with tears. And as he was about to scream the guilt and agony that was drowning him from the inside out, he noticed something important that he should have seen before.

The woman in his arms – the dead woman he held, had long, red hair.

Images of Pepper's recent haircut flashed before his eyes.

He immediately tossed back and forth the hair from her neck, examined it meticulously, narrowed his eyes, and then growled.

The scar Ghost had left on her neck was nowhere to be found.

Then, just as suddenly as this realization had come to him, the woman in his arms was no longer a young redhead, but a much older blonde.

Despite his arms wanting to just release the corpse he held in them, if for nothing else but just due to complete anger and surprise, the blue-eyed billionaire forced himself to slowly lay down the body on the ground. The poor woman was not at fault here, whoever she was. Yet, he had still killed her. He had still taken her innocent life.

He blinked again; harder this time, and then closed his faceplate.

His HUB's screen began displaying all kinds of contradicting notifications, adding to his already exceedingly confused state of mind. When the scanner skimmed over the robotic parts, the software detected nothing but the metal suit and claimed that no pilot was inside. However, when the same scan ran through the exposed head of the woman, it noted that the individual was a female human and that she had passed.

There was nothing on or in the Doombot armor itself that explained why he had seen Pepper's face on the woman instead of what appeared to be her real features. His AI was not picking up any anomaly in his body, the presence of a bioweapon, or even the manifestation of the Mainframe's waves. It just did not make sense to him – none of it did. His mind simply could not come up with a logical explanation for what he had just witnessed. He was not sure if he had been dreaming, imagining, hallucinating or what. All he knew was that he had thought, even if for just a short minute, that he had killed Pepper Potts.

Nonetheless, what was even more disconcerting for him at the moment was the fact that, without knowing what had just taken place or how to keep it from happening again, it could come back to haunt him when he least expected it. When he least needed for it to act out.

He slowly got to his feet, his eyes never leaving the woman, guilt temporarily taking a backseat due to a lack of understanding. He licked his dried lips, held his head between his hands, and then looked up and to his right when he heard a statement that he should have uttered himself the moment he had seen blood dripping out of the supposed bot.

"They're not robots!" Jarvis's scream made everyone else hesitate for an instant. "There are people inside!"

Iron Man focused his gaze towards the standing location of the butler to see the same expression of complete shock on his face that he knew he had probably had on himself, moments ago. While battling it, Jarvis had managed to remove the helmet of his robotic opponent, and he was now fighting hard to keep at bay the attacks of the man held inside. Tony flew directly towards the compartmentalized chaos, stunned the man inside the suit with a light electric shock from his repulsor, and then fixated his attention on the visibly shaken older man before him.

"J, are you OK?"

"Yes," Jarvis nodded, opened his mouth again to continue his retort, but it was interrupted by the rest of the team coming to terms with what they were up against.

"What did you just say?" T'Challa held back the killing blow he was about to deliver to the robot in his hand, and opted to simply removing the helmet from its head. The King of Wakanda then frowned in confusion behind his mask before he aimed his attention towards Edwin Jarvis and Tony Stark.

"This one is empty," Black Panther continued, "There's no one inside!"

"This one is not!" Whitney Stane said, her back to Maya Hansen, making sure to protect the helpless brunette. "There's a kid inside!"

"A, what?" Rhodey immediately switched away from using lethal force when he realized the robot he was fighting against also held a small child inside. "Dammit!"

"I don't understand," Jarvis shook his head left and right, watching as his peers' attacks lowered in intensity and thus in efficacy as well.

"I don't either," Tony opened his faceplate once more, knelt to check for a pulse on the unconscious man he had just stunned, and then stood up again.

"Who are these people?" Jarvis sidestepped when two more Doombots approached them after uttering his question. The man then easily teamed up with Tony to temporarily incapacitate the incoming robots without actually fatally harming them before staring towards Iron Man once again.

"Citizens?" Tony's eyes alternated between watching their backs and staring at the hesitant battling taking place around them. "They may be the people of Latveria."

"That sick son of a bitch," Gambit added as he began using his cards to keep the robots from getting near him rather than killing them. "How are we supposed to fight them, then?"

"Jean," Iron Man closed his faceplate. "Can you read their minds? Can you tell which bot has someone inside?"

"No," the redhead replied, her hands motioning from side to side to move Doombots out of her way in order to make a path for herself towards the center of the fight. "I think the helmets are preventing my powers from getting through."

"Just like Magneto's," Tony groaned. "Gene?"

"Can't tell, either. Something's blocking my rings!"

Fuck! Tony inwardly groaned. It's Doom. It has to be Doom!

"Uhm, Stark?" Hawkeye began walking towards the middle of the fight as well, noting how everyone else was starting to gather around the still invisible Earth Movers as the number of robots began to go up. "Little help here?"

"I know! I'm thinking!"

"Can you think faster?" Rhodey asked as he picked up Maria Hill and Nick Fury and flew them away from the new wave of bots.

"Just a second, alright?" Tony snapped, smoke figuratively coming out of his head with how hard it was at work.

"Tony, we have to do something right now," Happy began, "There's too many of them already, but we can't fight them back!"

"I know! I know! Just… give me a second… let me think… let me…"

"That's not fast enough!" Maya bit her lip at the sheer number of newly approaching Doombots.

"Shut it, all of you!" Tony yelled. "I just need a minute to–"

His words died on his lips. His head snapped up to eye the enemy. And when the memory of a similar situation came to him, he smiled. He did not have Extremis activated in him to fry the circuits of the entire army – just as he had done so with AIM's robots, once before. But he did have another way to take down every single one of Doom's look-alikes at his disposal; he just needed to do it alone.

"Gene," Iron Man stared up at the floating Mandarin. "Get them out. Get to the Castle. Start it all!"

It took a nanosecond for the Great Khan to understand Tony's words. But when his rings began glowing brightly, Tony knew that the man was now following his same train of thought.

"The Earth Movers, too!" the genius added before he took to the skies.

"What?" Rhodey's question was immediately answered when he felt heat covering every part of his body. He had experienced this before – once in his entire life – and as he watched his armored hands beginning to glow white and his eyes losing focus, War Machine realized what Tony had just done.

"Tony, no!" Whitney stretched her arm towards the hero, but it was too late to stop his plan.

The genius briefly closed his eyes when the bright light of teleportation blinded him, leaving him alone with an army of robots waiting to take his life.

Yes. It was definitely just like being back at home during the Makluan invasion. But this time, he was not going to allow himself to die.

Or at least not today.

Not now.

"Sorry, folks," the young billionaire said under his breath as he powered up his sonic blasters and extended his arms down. "But a headache is better than death."

He counted down the seconds for the blasters to be at full charge, took in a deep breath, and then screamed as he released half of his armor's battery power as a combination of knockout and EMP waves. He knew what he was risking by setting off such an unprecedented attack, but he could only hope that it paid off. If the numbers were correct, then the blast would not reach the capital. If his calculations were right on the spot, his team would not suffer the effects of said attack.

Once the wave dissipated and the resulting light came to an end, Iron Man smirked smugly at seeing the positive results of his reckless act on his descent to the middle of the battleground. The army of Doombots, every single one of the robots, was down for the count. The ones that had contained and controlled the people of Latveria had simply shut down as their pilots had been knocked out by his sonic blasters. The fully automated ones had ceased to function from his EMP wave. Leftover sparks of electricity randomly made the metal parts twitch, but other than some minimal movements here and there, his suit did not detect any fighting spirit within them.

His rashness, for once, had paid off.

Or at least it appeared as it had, until he heard a familiar sound coming from behind.

He slowly turned around in place, focused on the city, and then held back a groan.

Another army of robots was approaching him; one twice as large as the previous one had been. And before he could fly away to try to make a run for it, he was hit once again. This time, however, the attacks came from all around. He flipped over so that he lay on his back, stared above him, and then cursed aloud when he saw multiple flying robots all aiming their charged up palms at him.

Shit, he swallowed hard.

Maybe he was going to die tonight.