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.

14. Chapter 13

Guest Review Responses

There was no Guest love for me for the last chapter (I kinda didn't deserve it, I know!), but I do want to thank Anna Katari for following and favoring all The Last Chronicles stories. I started sending thank-you via PMs, but I'm starting to feel guilty for spamming people's inboxes :)

Anyway, here's the latest chapter. Aftermath and Oh, Yeah: Her will also be updated shortly.

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Chapter 13

"What in the actual fuck did you just do, Gene?" Whitney was the first one to practically shove her uncovered face onto Mandarin's masked one after dropping her camouflage. "Why did you leave Tony behind?"

"Are you deaf, Stane?" Mandarin replied, after removing his helmet as well, and clenched his hands to keep himself from punching the aggravating blonde right in the face. "Didn't you hear what he said to me?"

"And you didn't realize he wasn't thinking straight?" War Machine pointed at the man.

"We're not supposed to leave anyone behind!" Scott Summers angrily added, barely being held back by his wife. "We've already lost Pepper and Iceman, and now we–"

Cyclops halted the rest of his livid reply when the sound of a loud boom and a nearly-blinding bright light shining in the distance caught the attention of everyone.

"Holy shit," Arthur Parks exclaimed with a shiver when he felt his pores tingle with the intense energy disturbance in the air. "What the hell was that?"

"EMP bomb," Rhodey read aloud the information from his display. "And a sonic blast, too. A big one. Iron Man's doing."

Even though the sizable attack did not necessarily reach their current location, the true magnitude of the round was obvious to them not only from the massive, noticeable aftershock, but also from the readings on their tech's screens. There was no doubt in their minds that the effort needed to release such a powerful attack had been rather substantial; as it was also clear to them that Tony had probably depleted his options for being able to defend himself by performing said counterattack.

Once the blast ended and the city became quiet again, Rogue, Rhodey, Whitney, and Maria Hill all began fast-walking towards the origin of the attack.

"Cherie, stop," Gambit grabbed Rogue by the arm, earning him the deepest glare he had ever seen on the woman.

"What do you mean: stop?" Rogue pulled her arm away from Gambit's hold. "We need to go back for him!"

"No. He did this so we could keep going. We aren't going back," Gene replaced his helmet on his head once more.

"And he's done doing whatever it was," War Machine interjected. "We should go get him out of it, now, while we still can."

"And undo what he just did?" Mandarin spat. "If whatever he did worked, he'll catch up with us. You know how stubborn Stark is. And, if it didn't… then we'd waste his efforts if we go back for him. We can't go back."

"Gene's right: we can't do that," Living Laser said with a sad shake of the head. He wanted to return for Tony as well, but he knew that there was something of greater importance to be done while time still appeared to somewhat be on their side. Going back for Tony was the right thing to do; but it was not the best thing to do at the moment.

"Yes, we can!" Whitney began, her spirits not yet crushed by the negativity in the group. "Are you all fucking crazy? We can't leave him behind! We need to–"

"Shut UP!" Happy Hogan's sudden outburst made everyone turn to face the jock, their jaws slightly ajar at the premise. He removed his faceplate to reveal his full-of-frustration face while he wildly gestured with his arms as he spoke.

"Just, stop it! It's done! He did it! We're here! Don't have time to go back. Now, let's suck it up and go do what we came for! Let's go do what Tony wanted us to do!"

"But, Happy," War Machine shook his head, his brain not being able to believe that he was hearing these words from the usually lighthearted man who had always jumped at the opportunity to help the young billionaire. "We can't just leave Tony alone to–"

"Doom won't kill him," Maya wiped tears from her eyes, surprised at how unprepared she felt she was to be in the middle of a war that she had been an unwilling participant in orchestrating. "He won't kill him. He needs him, remember? He… he'll be alright."

"Are you sure about that?" a now conscious Kurt asked, his eyes staring towards the area they had just been taken from against their wishes.

"Can any of us be sure about anything, at this point?" the brunette replied with a shrug, pointing out the agonizing reality that very little had gone as planned – other than, of course, the fact that they were now at Doom's doorstep, at last. It was painful to say and recognize, but the truth was that no amount of careful planning would have ever made this mission as simple as distinguishing black from white.

Finding no immediate, genuine answer to the botanist's question, Kurt's shoulders deflated and he looked down. The mutant already felt as if he was failing to keep up his end of the bargain – his part of the mission. Pepper had been lost to the Alps; and now Tony was possibly gone, as well. They did not have much of a chance of winning without them; but turning back was not an option either. And neither was asking Doom if he could give them a few extra hours to get their shit together.

As much as everyone hated to admit it, Gene included, they were already living on borrowed time.

"Hogan's right," Nick Fury said after no one else argued about going back for Tony; the man taking the lead now that the genius was nowhere in sight. "We need to end this. Now."

The members of the resistance sighed sharply and then alternated between staring in the direction where they had been ambushed by the Doombots, and towards the front entrance of the imposing-looking castle a few feet away from their current location. They then exchanged defeated looks amongst each other before reality hit them in the face once more. If Tony Stark had been able to keep going with the mission, even after knowing that his wife might have died because of a decision made by him, then they had no right to halt their mission at this stage just because their leader was elsewhere; they too could continue pushing through until the end.

Not only was this outright necessary; Tony Stark expected them to.

Silence and grim faces spoke volumes of their current feelings and thoughts; of how much they evidently understood what needed to be done – but these two aspects did not appear to be loud enough for some of them. For some of them, words still needed to be said; thoughts still needed to be brought to life.

"For Pepper," Happy said, his head aiming towards the sky; guilt eating him up for not being close to his fiery friend when the accident had happened. He had been her official bodyguard for years and, even if the title was no longer his, the jock knew he would forever consider it his duty to watch over the redhead, come what may.

"For Bobby," Rogue closed her eyes, her thoughts being about her lost best friend, and she then looked down. Her feelings for Gambit and her feelings for Iceman were completely different in nature, but both were rather strong – the former being of romantic love; and the latter being akin to one would develop for the brother she never had and that she had not even know she had wanted.

"For Tony," Rhodey said after a gulp, remorse also making a home of his heart. Even after he had promised himself that he would never again allow his two best friends to perish before it was their time, here he was once more, wondering if his brother and sister were still alive. He had failed them twice in the same year already – the least he could do at this point was making sure their son was rescued alive.

Everyone had had different reasons for joining with S.H.I.E.L.D. in their quest to stop Doom; and some of these motives had evolved throughout their time on Muir Island. However, the sense of calling to fulfilling the cause had never faltered; it had actually increased. No matter how tough the task had gotten thus far, and no matter how much the current odds of winning were skewing towards the negative side, there was no stopping now.

The world needed them. A baby boy needed them.

No more innocent blood deserved to be spilled because of a cruel, despot son of a bitch. No more innocent lives would be taken by him – and their own lives, they knew, did not count.

They were not in it for the glory or for the fame – they were in it because it needed to be done.

The entire team took yet another moment of silent reflection and eyed one another with a look of renewed appreciation – a look of possible goodbyes. Nonetheless, when they all stood up straight, squared their shoulders, took in a deep breath, and then looked towards Nick, the man knew the time had finally come.

"You know what to do, people," Fury unceremoniously began. "Let's get it done."

xxxXXXxxx

Maya Hansen's startled look was understandable and expected.

The young woman had just finished having a meeting with Aldrich Killian, not half an hour ago, and she was rather flustered and upset, for several reasons. She had been forced to listen to her stepfather prattle on and on about how selective Extremis could be, and how that had been one of the causes of her two years of failure with Tony Stark. Killian had not held back in thoroughly listing all the reasons why she had not been the correct person for the job, how she had been entirely doomed from the start, and of how little of a chance she had actually had of ever catching the attention of the young Stark.

It was one thing to know and acknowledge, on a personal and internal level, that the heart of the one you loved would never be yours, no matter how hard you tried. It was another entirely to hear a man you despised state aloud all the ways you were not worthy of being treasured by who you loved.

Like trash, that was how Maya Hansen currently felt; like trash that was not even good enough to be recycled for any cause.

Killian had been using a donated sample of one of her own ova, and one of the sperm samples from Tony that had been stored away in her lab. She had managed to obtain the samples after finally convincing Tony to begin a sexual relationship with her after Pepper had left him, and it had been difficult to do so discreetly and without contaminating them. Aldrich had showed her the two newly-thawed specimens under a microscope, having been placed near each other in the right setting to instigate artificial insemination under laboratory conditions. What had resulted from it, had finally finished breaking her heart.

To her surprise and confusion, Tony's sperm cells had started out heading straight for her ovum specimen, as they were naturally supposed to, but had then deviated from all expectations. As soon as they had neared the egg, they had seemed to recoil, as if they had smelled something rotten and had wanted to get away from the fumes. The sperm had begun to circle the ovum for a few seconds, acting almost as if they were taking a survey of it, and had then darted off in all directions. Despite the long time the male and female reproductive cells had been together in the dish, not one sperm had made any effort to fertilize her egg. Puzzled and feeling a little hurt deep down, she had eventually and slowly pulled away from the microscope, her pride beaten to a pulp.

Killian had then gone on to hypothesize that Maya had never had a chance at becoming pregnant from Stark, even if he had taken every opportunity to have unprotected sex with her multiple times a day – something that would have never happened, anyway. Aldrich had attributed this fact to his belief that Tony Stark's strain of Extremis had somehow managed to sense the strain that had lurked in the DNA code of Pepper Potts, even before it had been awakened. Tony's romantic interest in Pepper, which had already existed and had been growing stronger before he had injected himself with the virus, had become irreversible once the genius had subconsciously realized there was someone else like him. And once the new virus in his body had detected the presence of another compatible strain in its proximity, that was all she wrote for any other woman that ever tried reigning in him.

If Killian's theory was true, it meant that Tony's mind and body had both been conditioned by Extremis to have an unending emotional bond with – and unmatched physical desire for – Pepper Potts, above any other woman. It shed light on Tony's refusal to remove Pepper from his life while simultaneously telling himself he needed to in order to keep her safe. It explained why he could never truly let her go. If he could have done so, it would have hurt, of course, like any other man in any other relationship would feel after taking such action. But with Tony, his mind and body had already adjusted themselves to make it impossible for him to move on from Pepper or to have a fulfilling life with any other woman. He had not been able to fall in love with Maya, despite all the effort he had made to do so, and regardless of all she had done to win his heart, literally because no other woman would ever be good enough for him other than Pepper Potts.

Maya had spent two years with Tony, and although she had genuinely wanted to be with him, her mission and her feelings had both been destined to fail all along. Tony's sperm had refused to fertilize any ova that did not belong to Pepper Potts, and that had really been frustrating, to say the least, for a myriad of reasons; the top one being that Maya had wanted to fulfill her mission and have the inventor's baby, so that no other woman who became pregnant by Tony Stark ever had to give up her child for Killian's and Doom's cause. Even now, at this stage of the mission, she could somewhat accept that Tony's heart did not want any woman that was not Pepper; his love for the redhead really was genuine. But to know that even his sperm, the one part of a man's reproductive system that he could not control once it left his body, willingly refused her as well…

That, to be completely honest, had stung her like a son of a bitch.

Killian had suspected that Tony's Extremis had acknowledged his lack of interest in her and had reacted accordingly, preventing her from becoming impregnated by the inventor during all of their sexual encounters. Now, having proven it to be true in a lab, her stepfather had promptly and openly mocked her efforts and her feelings, and her hatred for him now swelled to the point where she had needed to find some solitude to cool down for a while.

She had already sworn to make the man pay for turning her mother over to Doom after coming to Latveria and, at this point, she was truthfully wondering how she could have ever idolized him and seen him as a role model, as shady and heartless as he had turned out to be. For ten years, since he had married her mother, she had been grateful that this amazing, if somewhat odd man, had come into her life, filling the role of a father she had never known. She had looked up to him and his genius, and he had even inspired her to pursue a career in science. He had been the type of adoptive father that Pepper Potts had had in Virgil Potts, with the slight caveat that Killian had not honestly wanted to be anyone's father, role model, or the sort.

Looking back on it now, knowing it had all just been an act, a cover for his false life as he toiled away on Extremis at Stark International, Maya wished she had never known him. She wished that her mother had never laid eyes on the deceitful man. She wished that her birth father had never abandoned her and her mother before she had been born. She wished that her life had turned out to be a lot different than it actually was – she wished that she could have had the ginger's life. The roles were slightly reversed, but enough for one to be much better than the other, and the irony behind the fact that she and Pepper – who she was now aware was essentially her stepsister – had both been raised by an adoptive father, and that they also shared a familial relation on top of it all, even before it had been known, was just a tad too upsetting to acknowledge just yet.

So many wasted opportunities and remorseful what-if's to ponder, yet her time of peace by herself, secluded away in her room/lab in Doom's castle, suddenly ended without much further ado. The door to her room opened without her consent, and without any preceding verbal warning or even a simple knock, to allow an annoyingly, overconfident-looking Kevin Kowalowski to stroll right in, as if the stupid man owned the place, bringing out in her a simultaneously angry and startled look.

"What the hell are you doing here, Kowalowski?! Get the fuck out," she screamed at him, partly surprised by her unforeseen use of expletives. She was certainly not one to curse or insult people for the heck of it, but she had nothing but contempt for the arrogant and inept head of AIM. In fact, she would much rather prefer to return to Killian to hear another round of insults from the scientist than to even think about talking to Kevin at all.

"Now, now, Hansen: there's no need to get your old-lady panties in a wad. Calm down. I'm here to talk to you about something very important."

Kevin stood next to her sitting form and placed a hand on her desk, leaning his weight against it. Maya frowned at him, but then decided against lashing out at him, if just so that he would move on sooner rather than later.

"What is it, then?" Maya crossed her arms and rapped her fingers against her bent elbow. "Make it quick."

Kevin reached into the right pocket of his pants and pulled out one of AIM's custom touch-pad communicators, or AIM-pod, lacking any official term for it. He typed into it for a moment, slightly repositioned his body, then turned the pod around, keeping the back of the device held closely against his chest, allowing her to read the text message on the screen. She wondered for a brief moment why he had not simply just sent its contents to her own pod, or flapped his trap to relay the message, but once it clicked, she began to understand.

I'm not who you think I am or who I appear to be. NJF sent me.

Maya frowned and looked up at Kevin again, realizing then that the way he had repositioned his body was done deliberately so that the hidden security camera in the room, if it was located where she suspected it to be, would not be able to see the screen. She thought hard about the initials NJF, trying to remember if she knew anyone with those letters in their name. Thankfully for her and for Kevin, it did not take her long to come up with an answer for it: Nicholas Joseph Fury.

"He sent you here," Maya whispered, all her efforts directed at keeping a straight face. Kevin nodded in response, flipped the pod around once more, typed in a new message, and then showed it to her.

I'm here to help you with our mutual problem. Both of them.

The brunette was further confused by this and became very tempted to simply scream at the man to stop speaking in code. Was Kevin informing her of his plans to betray Doom? Or had he always been a mole? The first text had said that he was not who she thought he was, but for the life of her, she could not immediately discern what this had meant.

When Kevin did not instantly offer an explanation, the botanist rolled her eyes at her shitty draw of the cards.

"So, who are you, then?"

Kevin typed a new message and flipped the pod.

The only other person to have ever broken up with your ex-boyfriend. He doesn't like me anymore because I threw away his spice.

Maya was now beyond confused. The woman had had several boyfriends in the last six years, did Kevin really expect her to just sit here and recount her failed relationships to him? The nerve of the man! Nevertheless, despite herself and against her better judgement, Maya Hansen did just that.

The most recent and most significant one had been Tony Stark, of course. Was Kowalowski talking about the genius billionaire? What did he mean by having broken up with him? Was he referring to his attending the Tomorrow Academy with Tony? Or was he admitting to being gay? But Tony was definitely not gay. It just did not make sense. And what did throwing away spice have to do with anything?

She tilted her head and held her hands out in a gesture that indicated she had no idea what the hell he was talking about, but Kevin continued to firmly stare at her and shook the pod a little. Maya reread the message and thought harder about it. Undoubtedly, Kevin was trying to be discreet about their conversation and wanted to continue speaking in code.

"Are you referring to Tony," Maya asked in a whisper, needing more information to understand the concealed message. Kevin still did not respond, but he shook the pod a second time. The scientist took the gesture to mean: Yes, I am talking about Tony Stark. Whoever Kevin was, he had once broken up with Tony and had thrown away his spice, whatever the fuck that meant. As such, Kevin was no longer in Tony's favor. But other than herself and Pepper, the only person who had ever broken up with Tony Stark was…

Her eyes went wide as a possible answer came to her, and it was then cemented at the realization of the significance of the word: spice. The most well-known spice was pepper.

Maya gasped and looked Kevin in the eye as a smirk appeared on his face.

"You're – you're her?"

Kevin nodded once to the question that was barely kept as a whisper. Maya looked down at her feet, her eyes moving from side to side as she thought about this development. She then looked back up to the man who was not a man, unsure of what to say.
"How long have you been here?"

To this, the false man began typing again, and then showed her the message.

Since the meeting where Harchov died.

Maya's eyes went wide again. It had been almost a month since Doom had called together everyone involved with the bounty – everyone who was left, that was. Just before that meeting, Anton Harchov had been told by Doom that he had contributed nothing to the cause other than providing the Crimson Dynamo armor that had just recently been used by the Black Knight in an attack on Rescue. Harchov had mouthed off to Doom about his own lack of having provided anything useful, and had met a swift, yet very brutal and messy end. Maya and Killian had been summoned by Kevin Kowalowski to attend the meeting after that had happened, and had seen Harchov's still-smoldering remains on the floor of the room. Now, weeks later, Maya finally knew that it had not been Kevin who had summoned them, after all.

"OK," she said after gulping. "What do you need from me?"

Whitney Stane smiled back at the girl, already fancying her initiative.

xxxXXXxxx

He barely had enough time to raise his arms, while still lying flat on his back and on the ground, to activate his shield. Sweat dripped down his contorted face in the pain and effort it was taking him to keep up the only protection separating him from the Doombots' vicious attacks. His EMP/Sonic Blast combo wave had had the expected results on the first round of robots. But now that many more had shown up out of thin air, he doubted that using the rest of his armor's energy to fight rather than defend made much sense.

Then again, staying behind and believing that he could take on a world of Doombots all by himself was something else that should have not made much sense to him, either.

"Power at 35%."

"Dammit!"

Tony slowly stood up from the ground, his shield starting to flicker away. Under normal circumstances, and by design, the shield of his armor should have been able to stay on without a constant need to fuel its power. However, the energy blasts being released by the army of Doombots flying above him were testing the limits of his force field. If he let go now – if he pulled back, even if just an inch – the mounting attack that the shield was currently barely being able to keep at bay would rain upon him, putting him through unbearable pain he did not wish to experience at all.

"Power at 27%."

"Shut up!"

The suit's battery being drained was something that not only had he accounted for, but something for which he had also planned, as well. However, his spare battery was currently being held inside one of the Earth Movers – at least five miles away from him. The distance itself would have not been a problem in and of itself, seeing as he had expected to be flying towards Castle Doom by now. What he had not expected to take place, though, was being surrounded by robots once more after his massive counterattack.

"Power at 12%."

"I said: shut up!"

"Mute command cannot be executed."

"What? Why?"

"Armor protocols have been altered to suspend the mute function in case of life and death circumstances. The current situation applies."

"WHAT?! Why have the protocols been altered?"

"The new protocol was established to force User: Iron Man to remain aware of perilous conditions and act to prevent or avoid them."

"It, what?" Tony narrowed his eyes. "Who the fuck wrote that protocol?"

"User: Rescue."

"Ugh! Come on, Pep!"

Leave it to his wife to watch over him, even when not around. Leave it to her to try to protect him from beyond.

Then again, she was not wide of the mark for doing so. His son was still waiting for him. His mission was nowhere near done.

"I have to get out of here."

Iron Man's boot flight stabilizers began heating up, slowly charging up to try to stage a quick getaway. He knew that the robots would simply follow him towards the castle, but given the fact that the rest of the team was there – along with his spare power source for the suit – he had to run the risk of dragging behind the army of Doom's look-alikes that he had been originally trying to stop from hurting his friends. In either case, the real battle was waiting for him in Castle Doom. This was nothing but a minor interference.

"Power at 5%. User intervention required."

"You think?" the inventor's snarky retort was followed by his feet leaving the ground, if only just briefly.

"Power at 3%. User intervention required. Unstable power diversion," the AI informed him of what he already knew. He had to choose between using the shield and taking flight – the battery would no longer be able to support the use of both.

"Power at 2%. User inter–"

"I KNOW!"

Iron Man's feet were roughly returned to the ground; the weight of the energy blasts above him was simply too much. His entire body was being pushed down; his armored boots were now a foot into the soil. He could not help but looking away from the increasing bright light the collision of the laser grenades and the weakening force field created, even if that reduced his chances of seeing his enemy's next move. He just had to look away from it all – from what threatened to burn him alive.

"Power at 1%. User–"

"No! I can't… AAAHHHH!"

xxxXXXxxx

Tonight was the night.

Maya Hansen continued to check and recheck everything; everything she had in her pack, everything set up on her computer, everything written out on the schedule that she had left for Killian to follow while she was away. Said schedule related mostly to the care of James Howard Stark while in her absence, but it was set only for a few days. That was how long she was expected to be gone while she checked in with Nick Fury, making one final analysis of where S.H.I.E.L.D. stood before reporting back to Doctor Doom that everything was clear for his campaign to begin.

However, unknown to Doom and Killian, Maya was going to be gone for much longer than a few days. If all went well, the next time she entered this castle, it would be in the name of stopping its owner and her stepfather, once and for all.

Maya could not stop herself from looking into her pack again, making sure that the syringes were there. Most of them were for Fury, and would be administered by her to make sure the general was able to last long enough to complete the mission that was to come. Two other syringes, however, contained a very different substance, and they were not going to be used until the very end. Tony's end.

Maya did not want to think about that right now, so she also checked the small, portable drive she was taking with her that contained the most recent pictures of James, which she had just taken a few days ago. They were going to be used as incentive for Tony and Pepper to believe what they were going to be told and to ensure their cooperation. But more than that, Maya believed that the two had an absolute right to see proof that their son was alive and well, and that she had seen to it that he had been well cared for.

It was only partially true, of course. Doom and Killian had treated the baby boy like shit numerous times, but for the most part, she had been able to keep him comfortable, well fed, and had done her best to be his friend while he was held captive here. For having been the one to take him from his parents by making it appear that he had died, she had absolutely owed it to the pair, just as she owed it to them to bring something that allowed them to see him now; alive and happy.

She checked her watch again, knowing that she was going to have company at any moment now. The time to leave was coming, and she had a big job ahead of her. Fury and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. were waiting for her on Muir Island, where Tony Stark and Pepper Potts were currently being held in secret. Maya had known that the airplane explosion that had swept the world's news last month had been a fake, engineered by Fury to get the duo off of Doom's radar while plans were made to stop him.

What worried her, however, was that Doom did not appear to be as happy as she thought he would be, or confused as to who had finally fulfilled his bounty on the two. It made her wonder if he had bought it at all, or if he was simply relaxed that they were now out of his way. It was unnerving, that was for certain.

There was a soft knock at her door, and she turned to see the form of Kevin Kowalowski enter the room, closing the door behind him and smiling at her. Knowing the part she needed to play, Maya smiled back, stood up from her chair, and went to him. She threw her arms around his neck before the two leaned in and kissed.

Of course, Kevin was actually Whitney Stane in disguise, and neither woman really enjoyed this, both having completely heterosexual orientations. However, for the sake of throwing off anyone observing them from the security cameras in either of their quarters, it had been decided after their meeting last year that, as Kevin's visits to Maya's room became common and vice versa, it needed to appear as if some sort of relationship had been developing between the two as an explanation, should either of them ever be questioned of why they were meeting so often.

Whitney had been trained personally by Natasha Romanoff in the art of spying, and she knew that it sometimes involved getting physical with someone, in order to sell a lie. That training allowed her to do this with ease, as she knew that it was fake on both her part and Maya's. Women were typically able to be more comfortable with such a situation than men, anyway, so they were able to get through it graciously enough. In any event, Maya knew that she was actually just kissing the hard light hologram that surrounded Whitney, rather than her actual lips, and that made it easier for her.

Once they separated and had leaned in to rest their chins on each other's shoulders, Maya whispered to the blonde-in-disguise.

"Is everything ready?"

"Yes," Whitney responded with a nod.

She had been charged with taking Maya to Muir Island, and making sure she, her equipment, and her information, all made it in one piece. Tony and Pepper were currently in the Muir Island medical center in states of coma; Tony from the manipulation of his partially reactivated Extremis, courtesy of Maya's information to S.H.I.E.L.D. the year before; Pepper from having been administered a slowly accelerating compound delivered to her by Dr. Ross when she had gone to the hospital after the attack she had sustained in the Stark Solutions penthouse.

The doctor had been forced to cooperate with the operation under the pretense that his wife was in danger, and he had played along well enough at the time. Pepper had started to approach a death-like state at a slow pace that had taken weeks. According to Maya, Pepper had a strain of Extremis in her that had been there all her life and had been slowly waking up over the last few years. In fact, it had been the blonde's own actions, when she had held Pepper captive and had tortured her in the submarine, that had started the process of activating it.

At this point, Pepper had finally reached a state of near-death just before Whitney, Arthur Parks, and Gene Khan had hijacked and destroyed their plane. The ginger had subsequently had the compound removed from her system, and she, like Tony, was now simply waiting to be woken back up, with her Extremis fully turned on. Maya was the only one who could properly awaken the two with this desired effect, and Whitney had to make sure she got her there to do it.

"Get your things, and then let's get out of here," she said to Maya, who nodded, pulled away from her, and then walked back over to her desk to grab her pack and shut down her computer.

She, as Kevin, had volunteered to take Maya to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, where Doom believed their destination was. She had been in the madman's presence a few times, and he genuinely frightened her. She now better understood why her father had been so afraid of the dictator when he had visited Stark International to acquire the Iron Man armor designs. He was even more frightening now, as just last week, Aldrich Killian had administered a strain of Extremis that had been developed to heal Doom from the damage Yogthulu had inflicted, and it had worked. Now back to his full strength, Doom was gearing up for a massive offensive against the whole world. Time was of the essence, and while Doom currently rested, she and Maya would take their leave to go join the rest of the gathering resistance.

"I take it everyone is ready for our visit," Maya's question brought her out of her thoughts, and she nodded.

"They're waiting for our report," she said, playing along with the act that they were talking about their report to S.H.I.E.L.D. about the completion of the bounty. Her friend nodded to her response and then completed her task of turning off her system and gathering her last items.

Her friend: because, as hard as it was to believe, Whitney Stane and Maya Hansen had become friends, of a sort, during their time here. Sure, it could have been explained as simply as the two of them being the only ones here who were secretly working to stop the plans for world domination taking place behind the castle's doors. It could also have been chalked up to the two of them having loved and been rejected by Tony Stark, in favor of Pepper Potts.

But in the end, for Whitney, it had mainly been that she had never truly had any friends. Tony had been her friend, sure, but for most of that time it had mainly been because their fathers had been friends, and so the two were often left in each other's company while their fathers had discussed business matters. Tony had partially begun to see her as a real friend during the time that they had attended the Tomorrow Academy, but that had mostly been because he had felt sorry for her. Rhodey, Pepper, Happy, and Gene Khan to a degree, had all tried to be friendly with her at one point or another, but they had simply been peons to her, people who hung around Tony like orbiting moons, and so came with the territory of being around him. Finally, although she definitely had formed a bond with Natasha and Clint, they were more like older siblings to her, parents even; the mother and father she had dreamed of having but never did.

For Maya, the fact that she had lost her friendships with Tony and Pepper, lost her mother, lost the father figure she had idolize for half her life, and had been complicit in a conspiracy to destroy the two people who had treated her kindly and respected her for who she was, even when she had kept them apart, had left her feeling more guilty and alone than she had ever been in her life. Once she had learned who Whitney was and what she was doing here, she knew that the other girl would completely understand those feelings. From there, the two had developed an unspoken respect for one another and for the burden they both carried, as they went about their respective missions to help Tony and Pepper, and stop Killian and Doom.

Even so, Maya had not been certain that she could trust the double agent for many months after their first meeting. What had finally convinced her had been James's reaction to the secret blonde. It had been a couple of weeks after James had been brought here; Maya had him in her lab and was nursing his injuries from the latest batch of tests that Killian had performed on him. More like surgeries, when one really thought about it. Whitney had walked in, disguised as Kevin as usual, wanting to get an update on the status of things that she could take back to Nick Fury for her own report. Kevin, unlike Maya, could come and go as he pleased since AIM's base was located elsewhere, and he brought regular updates on the development of the new Mainframe to Doom periodically.

Whitney had stood in the presence of James Howard Stark for the first time and had looked him over carefully. She kept a hold on her reflex reaction that many young women experience when near a baby; she had wanted to smile and gush at how cute he was, and she took note of his similarity to both of his parents, particularly his brownish-red hair, which looked just the slightest bit blond in the right light. Not to mention his startling, electric blue eyes; his father's eyes, full stop.

Maya had watched the two closely, noting how James was staring intently at the stranger in front of him. Knowing that the baby could see things others could not, she wondered if he was seeing through the illusion and looking at Whitney as she truly was. Whitney noticed how the boy was looking at her and she became a bit unnerved as well, her expression remaining blank. After a few moments, which seemed to crawl into hours, James's face slowly changed into a warm smile, his eyes sparkling just the slightest bit as he looked up at the woman disguised as a man.

Both women were slightly taken aback at the expression of kindness, trust, and understanding that the baby boy was giving the secret agent. Maya knew that James could somehow see the connection the blonde had with his parents, as well as her intentions and motivations. Whitney felt comforted by James's face; she did not know if he could tell what she had done to his parents in the past, especially his mother, but his gaze made her feel as if he did not judge her for it if he did know. He seemed to be telling her with his soulful blue eyes that everything was alright.

That had been the deciding factor for Maya. She knew that no ill-intent could be hidden from James, even if he could not understand what he was seeing. And if he trusted Whitney Stane, then she knew that she could as well.

Finished with their own personal reminiscences of how it had all come to this, both women gave each other a look that said they were ready to get the hell out of here, right now. Continuing to put up the act, Whitney held her hand out to Maya, who took it tenderly, also playing along for any spying eyes, and the two walked hand-in-hand out of Maya's laboratory.

Both were prepared to make right, either separately or together, what they had done to the man they both loved, and to the woman they had both betrayed, who owned that same man's heart.

xxxXXXxxx

The sounds of explosions much louder than before made Maya Hansen suddenly stop her trek towards her assigned location, her eyes wide at the frightening view she knew everyone could witness taking place from afar. The commotion was once again coming from where they knew Tony had been left behind, which made her heart beat faster than it already was. Her plan was falling apart at the seams. Time was running out. She now finally fathomed how grossly she had underestimated the timeframe required to do what she had come to ensure was done. This was not how it was all supposed to go. This was not how far back she was supposed to be at this point in time. She was not even supposed to be here all by her lonesome self, to start.

"Oh, shit," the brunette looked left and right, just now realizing that she had left herself wide open for an attack. She was not near the main battle currently developing at the front of the castle between the improved army of Doombots guarding the doors and everyone else, but she was still circling the castle of the maniac. She knew that he had eyes and ears everywhere, and that practically nothing got past his scrutinizing watch, but she still had to at least try to conceal her presence near the back of the building, by hook or by crook.

She took a few steps back, her eyes cautiously staring everywhere until her body hit the large object that had surreptitiously been following her around. With her back still pressed against it, her right palm aimlessly patted said object until she found the scanner she knew had to be somewhere nearby. She slammed her hand onto it with what she knew to be too much force, but she felt no regret for doing that. Who could blame her, really, for being so on edge and fidgety, when she was the only person in the entire army of heroes whose only superpower was being good with a scalpel? She doubted the mechanical replicas of Victor von Doom would flee at the sight of a surgical device, let alone from a helpless woman who could barely keep her hands from shaking in fright.

Maya Hansen was here simply because she had worked with Doctor Doom, had a personal vendetta of her own to fulfill, and because of her vast knowledge of the workings of the Extremis virus. She was definitely not here because she was the strongest there was.

That was what the Hulk was for.

The Earth Mover's stealth feature at last became disabled to allow the botanist to turn around in place and begin her hasty climb toward the top of the technological device while inwardly snorting at the fact that, after all that treacherous climbing in the Alps, this ladder felt as if it were nothing more than a kids' playground one, despite how long it was. The fact that these were the miniature versions of the digging machines, reduced to a fourth the size of their original design, also happened to help tremendously.

Even if she was hopping inside of it way before she was supposed to do so, there was no other way to stay protected until her turn to act came around. Despite the fact that the Doombots could probably, eventually, find the location of the hidden digging device, she would undoubtedly be much safer inside. Not to mention, Tony had added some weapons to the excavation invention when he had redesigned it for this war, just in case, he had stated to her while training her how to use the Earth Mover, trouble got in their path.

Always ahead of the curve, Maya sadly smiled at the thought. That was one of the many reasons why she had been attracted to the young billionaire, in the first place. And it was one of the few reasons why she was still very much in love with the blue-eyed man despite knowing it was never meant to be between them.

She sighed in relief when she reached the hatch atop the Earth Mover without being spotted, thus she had to do now was twist it open, pull it up, jump inside, take a seat, and then set the device into lockdown mode. She had practiced this task over and over again, back at Muir Island inside the VTR, just to make sure that she had at least one sure way to stay out of sight when the appropriate time came around. She could have probably done this with her eyes closed – or with the Earth Mover still in stealth mode; this was how much she had overkilled the practice of the task. Yet, in none of the practice runs she had performed before, no matter how tricky the system had made them out to be, had she experienced anything like what she was about to face right now.

As soon as she pulled open the hatch, she was thrown away from the device and back onto the ground by something swiftly exiting the Earth Mover, practically at the speed of sound. The air was expelled from her lungs the moment she – and the back of her head – hit the hard ground, preventing her from instantly being able to make sense of what was unfolding around her. Her eyes were blurry yet seeing dark spots. Her lungs burned from the lack of oxygen within them, and her throat refused to stop the coughing fit that was rattling her frail form.

She laid on her right side, rubbed her neck and the base of her head with her left hand, and almost did not recognize the distinct sounds blaring from the Earth Mover nearby.

But in the end, she did.

She absolutely did.

And she would have smiled at the revelation that suddenly befell her. She would have even laughed. She would have probably cheered loudly as well. But all her body allowed her to do right now was groan, moan, and curse aloud in pain.

The light at the end of the tunnel was starting to come into view, but she still had to somehow manage to get her ass inside the digging device.

xxxXXXxxx

It had been just over two years since the last time he had personally kept close tabs on the irritating couple. For a time, it had appeared that the falling out that had taken place between them would allow his vengeance to come sooner than he had hoped. It had been clear, based on the Hansen girl's reports, that the two had not gotten over each other, but that their pride had kept them apart, inflicting emotional pain on one another over and over, while still yearning to be together.

If he had had the strength to attack the girl in a way that would have achieved his goal of making Stark suffer, he most certainly would have. The boy would have had even more to regret, as he would have died believing that Pepper Potts hated him; that she had died believing that he hated her; and also lamenting his ruined chances with her before feeling a cold hand crush the life from his heart, the girl's head held up in front of him as the last thing he ever saw in his pitiful life.

Alas, Doom had not been in a position to take such action, and no one had made any real attempts to collect his bounty on them during that time. As such, the two had now reconciled. They were together once again and seemed to be happy, in spite of Potts being pregnant with another man's child. Their soap opera-like lives were exhausting to Doom, but not as exhausting as knowing he was not yet strong enough to exact his revenge on Stark.

He was actually watching them intently now, concealed behind his trusty cloaking tech, as the two enjoyed a day together at the beach. Or, more accurately, while the girl enjoyed the day at the beach, since the hot flashes that accompanied her current stage of pregnancy prevented her from feeling the cold of December's winter. Stark, on the other hand, was buried under layers of clothing. And he was clearly keeping up the pretense of enjoying the time out with his girlfriend, at the expense of his own life by hypothermia, or at the very least, the loss of a few extremities to frostbite.

After a while, and after some mindless chatter that Doom did not really bother to focus on while he spied on the actions of the two, Potts finally seemed to pick up on Stark's palpable discomfort.

"Let's go home," she finally said and smiled. "I think I've had enough for the day."

"Sure? We-we've only been h-he-here two hours," Stark stuttered out, but the girl merely smiled, removed her beach hat, and then kissed him.

"I'm sure," she said with finality. "Let's go back to where it's warm and cuddle on the couch. Does that sound good?"

"Sounds like a plan to me."

"Good," she replied.

Without moving an inch, Doom watched as Stark led the woman away from the beach and to their car. The redhead then suddenly looked back over her shoulder as they walked away and, for a brief moment, Doom wondered if he had finally been spotted, seeing as she had looked directly towards where he was standing. However, based on the serene expression on her face, she was simply looking through him and at the ocean beyond, before returning her attention to the genius in front of her.

"Thank you for bringing me here, Tony. I really appreciate it."

"Anytime, Pep," he said without missing a beat and squeezed her hand. "You're my girl, right?"

"Yup," she nodded. "And you're my boy."

Doom felt like puking in his helmet, the sweet behavior between the two disgusted him so. They were so caught up in each other as they headed back to their car, that he wondered if they would even notice him standing here if he was visible, a large neon sign above his head, pointing down at him. On an irritated whim, Doom threw all the caution which he had lived under for the last two and a half years to the wind and turned off his cloaking device. He stood on the beach, his back to the ocean, and openly faced the departing couple. If they turned around and looked back now, they would clearly see him standing there, in all his glory, and his secrecy would instantly be blown.

Nevertheless, the two were too busy holding onto one another to even pay attention to their most basic instincts, which should have alerted them to a predator lurking nearby. He was now hidden from them only by their own feelings, rather than by his advanced cloaking device.

Soon, the mad doctor thought with mounting disdain as he reactivated the stealth mode of his suit. Soon, your time will come.

xxxXXXxxx

"… Fine…"

The sounds of battle near him were unmistakable, even somewhat inviting, but he could not force his eyes to open up to witness what was going on. His body felt like it weighed a ton; and not because his armor was somewhat heavy when not powered up – the anti-gravity tech that he had been using on his suit for quite some time prevented that from being the absolute case. The inability to move at his will was taking place, however, mostly due to the fact that he could feel every muscle in his body burn in ache, as if he had been showered with thousands of anvils, all at once.

"Sure…"

"… Out…"

He felt his eyelids twitch, but his electric blue orbs still remained closed. His fingers also tried to move, but he could hardly find it in himself the will to breathe. He swallowed hard, weakly cleared his throat, and then felt the unexpected yet unique sensation that came from the armor coming back to life.

"Power at 30%. Scanning user vitals."

The humming of the suit was like an encouraging lullaby for him – one meant for energizing his spirit rather than one to invite feelings of lethargy. The fans inside the armor turned on and they instantly cooled his skin. The HUB display slowly flickered to full use and allowed for his viewing range to expand. And once he was finally able to partly open up his eyes, the first thing he saw was the face of a Doombot nearby.

Oh, crap!

He prepared for said robot to take advantage of his proximity to him, to bank on his weakened state, but the bot never made a single move. Instead, it remained there, static, on the ground near him; not one sign that it was preparing for delivering a final blow. Tony furrowed his brow in confusion, thought back on the last thing he remembered happening, and then realized that he had long ago stopped that particular look-alike in its tracks.

Oh, yeah, the genius began moving his head to face the sky. That one is done.

The question now was: why was he not done, too?

He blinked his eyes back to limited clarity, sluggishly moved his head left and right, and then slowly came to the conclusion that not only had he not perished just now, as he had thought he surely would, but that he was again being protected by another Iron Man tech-made force field; one that evidently was not being projected by him, seeing as he could barely conjure a simple thought.

Rhodey, this was the inventor's first thought when he saw a trail of gray fly above him. Or Happy, he added after a pause when a flash of white followed the trail of gray. Or both, the genius thought with a sigh of both relief and fear when the distinct sound of repulsors being used made its way to his eager ears. They're here. They… they came back. They… Wait. Son of a bitch! They came back!

"User's vitals' scans show no permanent damage was sustained, but immediate hydration is highly recommended."

"Yeah, sure. Let me get right on that," Tony replied with sarcasm as he forced himself to sit up, intending to immediately tell his friends to leave the premises now. He held the weight of his upper body by resting his hands behind him and on the ground, looked up almost immediately to search for the current locations of the Hulk Buster armor and War Machine, and then heard the sound of repulsors once more. He blinked hard when the sunrays cruelly reminded him that his corneas needed a second to adjust to the drastic change in light, but what his eyes revealed to him once they became focused enough was something that nearly made him drop back onto the ground.

The gray had not been really gray but silver.

And the white was more akin to an almost transparent off-white.

With strength that he had been sorely lacking just seconds ago, Iron Man sprung to his feet, pressed his shaking armored palms against the shield, and then gasped in surprise at what he saw.

At whom he saw.

And his heart both almost stopped beating and almost forced itself out of his chest.

She was not fully covered in her suit yet, but the pieces of it were coming together quite nicely despite the chaos she was facing. She was alternating between using whatever parts of her suit she had on, with her own Extremis-given strength, and was being complemented in whatever shortcomings she faced by a quickly adapting bridge of ice. Whenever she needed to change positions to continue fighting the flying bots – and the handful of parts of the Rescue armor that she had on her person were not enough to do the trick – Iceman was quick to send aid her way while simultaneously taking down Doombots himself.

Their moves were so in sync that it was almost choreographic – more so than they had been when they had practiced together in the VTR. And, more importantly: they were not at all ones expected of people who had plummeted to their supposed deaths from the Alps.

Then again, Tony briefly considered a somber idea with a frown before taking a step back and away from the force field: maybe he was hallucinating again. Maybe Iceman and Rescue were not truly fighting before him. Maybe they were just Doombots in disguise. And maybe he was not being protected by the shield in question; maybe he was being kept there against his will.

"All of those are empty!" Tony heard the redhead scream at Bobby Drake, prompting the man to immediately produce and drop a large block of ice on top of said group of Doombots. She then jumped off the floating piece of ice she had been standing on, was joined by the rest of her suit on her way down, and then landed on her feet with all the grace he knew her to have while in her armored hero form.

"I'm ready again! Guide me, Red!"

No sooner than the words left Iceman's mouth, Rescue began using the Sonic Blaster feature of her suit to knock out Doombots with citizens inside – just as Tony had done himself, moments ago. Every robot she left standing instantly became a target for the X-Man, who quickly yet momentarily reduced the numbers of the army of bots.

Then, in a short window of opportunity that all of them knew would not present itself again, Rescue took to the skies, twirled in the air, and then headed straight to Iron Man's location. The shield went down a second before she reached him, and her armored hand then sturdily grabbed him by the left arm. She lifted him into the air and took him away with her, Iceman wasting no time in following closely behind, more or less surfing along a constantly generating ice-slide, much as Blizzard had once been witnessed doing.

Halfway to their obvious destination, Bobby Drake pulled ahead of them, faced them while still traveling on his bridge of ice towards Castle Doom, and then looked directly at an Iron Man who was still silently deciding whether or not to believe if what he was seeing was at all real.

"Did my job, boss," Bobby smirked even though his voice was rather solemn. "I expect a huge raise after all this."

Before Tony could even consider any type of a response, Iceman playfully winked at the redhead, turned around in place, and then rushed towards where the main battle was already unfolding. Behind her faceplate, Pepper's eyes temporarily filled with tears of happiness and gratitude towards the man that had helped her make it out of the Alps in one piece to come here, sometimes even nearly at the cost of his own life. It had been difficult for the both of them to reach the camp without much in terms of supplies, and then to locate their team once they had arrived in Latveria, but they had made it just in time to keep Tony from losing his life.

They had made it in time to perhaps make sure that her self-sacrificing husband lived to see another day.

Knowing that they had no time to waste, Pepper made both suits activate their stealth mode. As soon as the suits became invisible, she sped up to reach an area just behind the castle, where she knew Maya Hansen would be waiting for them, if everything was still going according to plan. She then dropped them both on the ground, immediately retracted her armor into her backpack, did the same for Tony's, and then grabbed his hand in hers to begin pulling him in the direction of the castle. She pulled gently once, harder twice, and then roughly for a third time, but all of her efforts were in vain; the inventor refused to move an inch, no matter how hard she yanked on him.

"Tony, what's wrong?" the redhead desperately tugged on his arm again, wishing that she suddenly had one of those bursts of Extremis adrenaline to pull him along. "I'm sorry we're late, but we have to–"

His hot, desperate-moving lips crashing onto hers nearly made her topple over.

Two weeks. Two motherfucking, long-ass weeks he had been without her. That was two damn weeks too damn long.

His arms circled her waist, pulling her body flush against his to the point he was almost hugging her twice over. Her neck bent backwards with the force of his kiss. His fingernails urgently dug into her skin, eliciting a light whimper of pain from her. In spite of it all, he refused to let go, hallucination or not, until she forcefully pushed him away from her face by resting her hands on his shoulders. Her fingertips then slid up his neck and brushed against his face, trembling as much as she could feel he was shaking too.

"Are you real?" he whispered, his hot breath caressing her lips. "Are you really here?"

"Yes," she whispered back before placing a quick kiss to his lips, at the same time taking away some of his spiking aura from him to help him calm down. "It's me, Tony. I'm here. I'm alive. I… I've missed you… so much…"

"Pepper," he exhaled her name in a way that reminded her of their many nights together, and she then felt his mouth trailing familiar paths on her shoulder and neck while his arms around her practically broke her bones with how tight he was holding onto her. Nevertheless, she threw her arms around his neck, briefly buried her face into his chest, and then repeatedly kissed his jawline.

"I'm sorry… for worrying you. I… we-we had an accident, and–"

"I know," his lips traveled from her neck to her face. "I know. I know. I'm sorry for putting you in danger. I'm sorry for not thinking of a better way. I'm sorry, Pepper. Please, please, please forgive me."

"Forget about it," she kissed his lips again. "Just, don't think about it, Tony. It's over. It's done. You're here. We're here. We made it. We're alive."

"I love you," he grabbed her face by her sides, his eyes digging into hers. "Dammit, Pep, I love you. So much. I love you, Pepper Potts."

The redhead smiled, ran her hands down his face, and then kissed him again, deeper this time, stopping only when the sounds of battle pulled them away from their trance.

"I love you, too, Tony," she pressed her forehead against his. "I love you, so much. But–"

"But we have a job to do," he interrupted her, slowly coming down from his Pepper-induced high.

"Yes," she exhaled with regret, immediately missing his warmth when he pulled away from her. "I'm sorry. But we do."

"Then let's get it over with," he gave her a soft smile, his hands now in hers, before he took them to his lips to kiss her knuckles. Even now, years after this tradition of them had started, the simple act still managed to practically floor her in awe. "Let's go get our son back."

After a curt nod from her, and an even broader smile, Tony Stark once more felt ready to take on the entire world, with his redhead by his side.

Nothing could stop him.

Nothing would stop him now.

He was certain of that.

xxxXXXxxx

Doctor Doom was not known as the greatest scientific mind in the world for nothing. It was only a matter of time until he had become successful in modifying AIM's early designs of the cloaking technology to something much more useful than simply being invisible. Those fools really were like droning bees in a hive; too mindless in their work to even consider expanding their way of thinking.

He had perfected a means to use the phase-shifting process that the cloak already used to fade in and out of the visible world, and had redirected the energy used in that same process to achieve a limited form of teleportation. He could not go from one end of the world to the other – as in, he could not travel from his castle in Latveria to Stark Solutions in New York and back again on a whim, but he could be within visual distance of said skyscraper and teleport in and out of it, avoiding the need to bypass the security measures Tony Stark had set in place around the penthouse located within.

He had already used this ability a few times before, having entered the Stark residence a short time after the two young heroes had brought home their infant son from the hospital. He had intended to use the ability to study the pair closely, as well as their son, who Killian believed could hold potential for aiding in their Extremis research and develop cures for themselves. On the day that Doom had first entered the Stark penthouse, he had learned almost immediately that there was indeed something very different about Stark's son.

Doom had not dropped his cloak once throughout his entire first visit to the penthouse; and yet, as soon as he had walked up to the baby's crib and had looked in on him for the first time, the infant had immediately locked eyes onto him and had begun wailing as if all the denizens of Hell were after him. The doctor had actually been startled by this, and had even turned toward the nursery door in expectation of a fight when said door had opened and Pepper Potts had entered the room to tend to her son's cries. Nevertheless, the girl had not seen the intruder in the room at all, confirming his suspicions that the baby possessed the inexplicable ability to see him despite his advanced tech.

He had remained in the home all that day, watching the small family go about their business, and the baby had not stopped crying all the time, screaming loudly whenever Doom walked into his view. This had led to great fatigue and irritability in the young couple, even into a heated argument, and Doom had allowed himself to indulge in a minor victory over the fact that his actions had led to such frustration between them.

Now, after deciding it to be the best course of action, he had just teleported into the penthouse to scrutinize Pepper Potts more closely. Tony Stark was currently in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody for the death of Rhona Erwin, being experimented on at the behest of Maya Hansen in accordance with Killian's plan to probe the last secrets of Stark's Extremis strain. The baby had been sent away a little while ago; he was going to be looked after by his grandfathers at Stark International headquarters, which meant that the redhead was open to be messed around with.

Knowing that a new mother coping with the added stress of an imprisoned fiance was likely to reduce the Potts girl to sleep once she was alone, Doom had waited a while to give her time to fall into deep sleep before entering the premises. It had been his intention to gather his own data on the girl in detail; Killian had been studying her blood samples very closely for a while now, but always gave generic answers when asked why. The man was clearly hiding something, and Doom did not appreciate that. He had the feeling that it was nothing that threatened nor conflicted with his plans, but he would not tolerate secrecy in an endeavor that Killian would not even have been a part of without Doom's invitation in the first place. In addition, from what he had observed so far, the doctor was beginning to suspect that, as with her son, there was indeed something… different about the girl.

He had just teleported inside the living area of the Stark penthouse and had walked to the open door of the master bedroom, expecting to find the girl there alone and asleep, or sobbing perhaps if she were still awake, but he was surprised to find that she was neither crying nor unaccompanied. In actuality, he had just walked into seeing the Mandarin, also known as Gene Khan, placing a kiss to the sleeping girl's forehead before standing straight and brushing some of her hair away from her face. The young man must have used his own teleportation abilities to enter the building after the girl had been left alone, as Doom had not witnessed anyone else entering the penthouse after the lockdown mode had been set in place by her.

Suddenly and without warning, Gene Khan visibly tensed up and turned where he stood. He then began looking all around the room, his eyes shining with a golden light that also emanated from the Makluan rings on his fingers as he carefully scanned his surroundings.

The movement was repeated a few more times by the Mandarin alter ego, and after realizing that the enhanced senses gifted to him by the alien rings must have allowed him to detect an unusual presence nearby, Doom began backing away from the door and headed back into the living room.

To Doom's surprise, the Mandarin was quick to follow after him, still perusing his surroundings while doing so, obviously aware of something lurking nearby, but he evidently lacked any details as to what. Gene Khan was clearly shaken by the sensation he could feel creeping up on him; yet, and soon enough, the ruler of Latveria realized that there was not much the Mandarin could do about this fact. If Gene Khan could have seen his presence nearby, he would have already made the conscious effort to attack him, or at the very least, to try to pinpoint his current whereabouts.

Nonetheless, and much to Doom's satisfying pleasure, he had not.

The doctor was happy to come to the realization that the cloaking technology enhancements he had recently applied to the suit were strong enough to shield him from the Mandarin's vision, at least at most levels of the light spectrum, especially since he knew how advanced Makluan technology could be; compared to the typical run-of-the-mill Earth-bound device, that was. Without knowing where to look or how to look, it was highly unlikely that he would be spotted by the all-seeing Gene Khan.

Then again, extremely improbable did not necessarily mean absolutely impossible. And he was not ready to take that chance.

He would just have to come back to investigate Pepper Potts at a later time; a time when Gene Khan was nowhere around.

Being cognizant that there was not much else to do at this point in time, Doom finally teleported out of the building, leaving the Mandarin to his thoughts, knowing for a fact now that he too would suffer guilt over the girl's death when the time came. Doom had not forgotten the Mandarin's part in his ensnarement by Yogthulu, and the part-Makluan would surely feel his wrath when the time was right.

What was it about this redheaded young woman that made two grown men bend to her every whim? What was it about her that set those two men on edge when she was in danger?

She was not even that intelligent, attractive, or special enough to merit such devoted attention from the two powerful men she had at hand. How she had managed to earn the attention of Tony Stark and Gene Khan was beyond him. The two men were surely weak and out of their minds for allowing a woman to have so much influence on their actions and thoughts.

Then again, silently and much to his chagrin, Victor von Doom admitted that he was not one to talk.

xxxXXXxxx

The inside of Castle Doom was no better than the unwelcoming outside, at least aesthetically speaking. It actually felt as if the front door that Hulk had just torn apart for them had been a time machine, and their destination had been none other than England during the Middle Ages. There was very little light inside. Strange and unnerving art covered the walls, and as Nightcrawler had almost realized when first stepping inside, deadly traps were hidden all over the place. It was as if they had stepped inside an odd-looking fun house at an old, abandoned carnival in a deserted town – only to find that there was nothing fun about it at all.

As soon as they had set foot inside the entrance hall of the castle, all hell had broken loose, forcing the heroes to jump into action at the drop of a hat.

"Does Doom use a magic hat to make his bots?! How are there so many of them?!" Happy Hogan groaned inside the Hulk Buster armor as he threw yet another couple of robots out the large windows in the main hall, the weight of the soldiers shattering the thick glass with no problem at all.

"I take it that he had some downtime, you know, between his all-day sulking on his plans to kill us and all," Rhodey replied, both of the machine guns on his shoulders aiming towards the army of robots that were trying to approach him.

"Man needs a hobby," Gambit twirled his retractable staff in his hands before he used it in conjunction with a large set of explosive cards to take down the five bots surrounding him.

"Taking over the world can be considered a hobby," Jarvis retorted as he removed a robot's helmet to make sure that there was no innocent civilian inside before he strapped a bomb onto it and then kicked the robot away from his standing location.

"So is getting laid," Iron Man replied, earning him a loud groan and a face-palm from Rescue.

"Really? That's what you're thinking about right now?" Rescue's annoyed voice was followed by her punching a robot in the face without even bothering to look at it.

"You two talk too much," Fury interjected before he reloaded his enhanced handgun and used it to take down another Doombot.

"We need to play the part," Iron Man lightly shrugged, his metal feet and fists stopping incoming robots in their tracks as if they were nothing but toys. This suit of armor sure beat using his typical weapon of choice.

"Then you need to talk a lot more than that, Rescue," War Machine added.

The member of the Air Force followed his keen observation by taking flight to direct his hand repulsors and machine guns towards the dozen or so robots that he had just confirmed were not being piloted from within. His suit's systems procured aim towards his target. He confirmed that the impact would hit the mark. But he was then stopped in his tracks when a block of ice hit the bunch as if they were mere bowling pins being hit by a giant, fast-rolling, square-shaped ball, which halted only when the bots became metal smears against a nearby wall.

"Nice spare!"

The loud self-praise and the bulldozing-like move caught the attention of everyone within the castle's walls; robots included, and practically brought the fight to a standstill to watch Bobby Drake make the type of entrance he was known to favor in situations like these. The block of ice then exploded into a thousand pieces, and some of the pieces were purposefully aimed towards the second set of doors that the members of the resistance were trying to reach. The entrance hall was only the start of their efforts to take over the castle. Their true goal was reaching Doom's throne chambers.

"What?" Iceman shrugged when he felt the eyes of everyone on him, his right hand nonchalantly spearing a neighboring robot before haphazardly throwing it in the opposite direction it had come from, almost in a comical way. "Never seen an ice cube smash robots before? Where do you all live? Under a rock?"

"Sometimes, it's a rock. Sometimes, just under a big pile of snow," Nightcrawler replied, his face showing how glad he was to see his friend and comrade return to the group, seemingly intact.

"You alright?" Scott asked, likewise happy to see his teammate appearing to be alive and well, but also keenly aware that verbal confirmation of welfare was all there was time to do at the time.

"Didn't the incessant talking at poor times already answer that?" Mandarin hissed, a handful of Doombots instantly hitting the ground at his command.

"I missed you too, Khan," Iceman rolled his eyes. "But I don't think that Red missed you that much. She's too busy catching up with her man."

"They're here?" Fury narrowed his eyes after sparing Chameleon a knowing look.

"And in position, as far as I know," Bobby replied before nonchalantly decapitating an empty robot.

"Then what are we waiting for? Call on the second wave of help!" Hill ordered the psychic of the group.

"On it."

Jean placed her hands on her temples while Cyclops, Chameleon and Gambit protected her as she concentrated on the difficult task at hand. She was aware that the Professor had Cerebro to help him find her location and hear her message, but she still had to stretch her telepathic muscles to connect with the man, leaving her highly vulnerable while she completed the job.

"It's about time, too," Rogue smiled, her eyes briefly locking with Iceman's to make sure that he was as fine as he claimed himself to be.

"Should I get the door, then?" Jarvis cocked his gun, his chin pointing towards the heavily guarded gate that, thanks to Maya's detailed blueprint of the structure, they knew led to the next level of the castle.

"Allow me," Mandarin replied, lifted his arms towards the doorway, and smiled inside his helmet. "Been wanting to do this for a very long time."

"Oh, it's on now!" Happy pumped his fists in the air, for the first time looking forward to fronting their real enemy, at last.

"Ready to face this asshole, Hulk?" War Machine enquired, his eyes turned into slits behind his faceplate.

"Hulk HATE waiting!"

"I'll take that as a: yes," Living Laser's glowing form said from his position in the air.

"I empathize with the sentiment," Black Panther's claws grew even longer than they had already been moments ago.

"You speak for us all," the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. added after a short pause, pointed his gun at the door, and then gave the order for everyone to go.

xxxXXXxxx

Tony Stark at last arrived to the room that functioned as his personal laboratory in the Stark Solutions penthouse, completely unaware that he was being keenly observed by Doctor Doom from the hallway outside of the room; the place where he had been waiting for him to finally come collect his son. The doctor had moved baby James Stark out of his bedroom a few minutes prior, and he had deposited him in his father's lab, giving Stark a good scare and giving himself time to observe and think.

Victor von Doom was now furious and barely keeping it together, which was a stark contrast to how delighted he had been at first, when he had come to learn that the child had begun saying his name, or at least attempting to and succeeding with a close equivalent. Doom had introduced himself by name to the baby three months ago, when he had become aware that the boy was at an age where he would begin to associate people and objects by name. Until a few days ago, all he had been able to speak were crude approximations of his parents' names. Then, James had begun to say boom when he was within the child's vicinity, letting the madman know that he identified him as well.

However, a short while ago, the small boy's actions had worsened the doctor's already foul mood. He had become positive that Killian was keeping something very important from him about the boy and his mother, and while it made no difference to his plans, he was going to see for himself just what potential the two held. This night, just moments ago, James Howard Stark had broken open his crib latch with his bare hands, eliminating any doubt Doom had had that the boy not only carried Extremis as had been suspected all along, but that it was of a far greater quality than Killian had assured him it could be.

Having noticed the baby's desire to impress his father, Doom had relocated the child to his current spot in order to heighten Tony Stark's level of panic to a point where it would be plain on his face and in his voice, all with the simple goal of giving the baby enough incentive to perform some abnormal feat in the hopes of appeasing his father. If the boy could do something else other than seeing through his cloaking device and jailbreaking out of his crib, this would be the perfect time for the youngster to prove himself before the invisible crowd.

"Howie, you scared the crap out of me!"

The baby had been smiling with pride at his father once he had been found. Although Tony's volume and tone of voice made it clear that he was not in a happy mood, the tyke still continued to look happy as he began the process of crawling towards his father. This caused Tony Stark's rapid breathing to shallow and his own smile to spread across his face, not at all being what Doom had expected to take place.

"That's it, Howie. You can do it. Come on! Come on!"

Damn it all to hell! Instead of forcefully throwing away the remains of the broken latch, breaking it further with his hands, or performing any other major feats that would have been impossible for any other baby, the tiny Stark had opted to simply perform an ordinary move that babies could do that he had simply never done on his own before. This was definitely not what needed to be taking place right now. This was most definitely not what Doom had come to see.

His mood quickly worsening due to the unexpected turn of events, the doctor opted to teleport inside the room, directly in front of the crawling baby, in order to halt his progress while remaining unseen to Tony. If this did not yield the expected results – if this act did not prove to him that the child was worth the trouble of being taken away from his irresponsible parents, then his time here would be wasted tonight.

And someone, namely Tony Stark, would pay for wasting Victor von Doom's precious time.

"Come on, Howie! You're almost here. Keep going."

Rather than obeying his father's wish, James Howard Stark slowly looked up until he was staring directly at the red eyes glaring at him from behind Doom's faceplate; an action that almost tamed his foul mood. The doctor then heard Stark swallow hard behind him and take a single, cautionary step forward, alerting the metal man that his desperate deed was perhaps starting to shape into what he had wanted it to be in the first place.

As Doom continued to stare down at the baby, James lifted his little arms up towards him and wiggled his fingers, indicating that he wanted to be held by him again, giggling loudly as he did so. Doom merely continued to silently stare back at the child, trying his best to express as much anger as he could with his eyes, wondering if the baby would interpret his current mood and react accordingly. He was tired of playing the game of being this child's imaginary friend – it was time for the boy to be pushed into submission and learn the real power of Doom.

"All spectrum views. Rotate. Five-second intervals."

Doom nearly growled in frustration as he remembered that Stark had his little toy with him, one that allowed him to view different modes of the light spectrum that were typically not visible to the naked eye. In response, and to avoid the chance that one of the spectrum Stark would check might give away his presence, Doom teleported out of the lab and back into the living room in the blink of an eye.

He tolerantly waited where he now was; knowing by his habits that Stark would bring his son in here after calming down and realizing that he could not place him back into a crib that had been broken open. Doom took the time to look around the room, which was now a complete mess, what with Tony having flipped over most of the furniture in his panicked search for his son throughout the home. The young man's poor reactions and mind-numbing responses to emergencies were sickening to the doctor – how this kid had managed to keep him on his toes was beyond him. It had to have been pure luck, not skill, that had allowed the Stark Family to remain as intact as they had been all this time.

They were both approaching now; he could hear Stark talking to the boy, and he could even hear the child responding back a few times with the rough versions of all the names he could currently speak. It was just a matter of time now – their luck would eventually run out.

And tonight seemed like a good time for that to come to pass.

As they entered the room, Tony turned off the lockdown protocol, causing the security shutters around the doors and windows to retract, revealing that the clouds that had been building outside had finally released the storm they had been holding within. The rain and lightning fitted with how Doom felt in his soul right now – and they also foresaw how he planned to leave the two unsuspecting victims he had in his eye.

A bright flash and a rumble from outside preceded all of the lights in the place blinking out. The storm, which had started in the relatively short time that Stark had had the penthouse in lockdown, was getting down to business quickly and had already killed the power, much to Doom's elated surprise.

"Crud," Tony whispered when the backup generator did not immediately kick in.

The inventor then reactivated the device he called the ROI, most likely intending to use its night vision feature to see his way around, but he never got that far. As a second bolt of lightning struck near the building, illuminating the whole room through the window for an instant, Tony Stark gasped and spun around in place to stare at the exact spot where Doom was now standing. The doctor was not quite sure what had just happened, but it was likely that whatever spectrum the device had been cycling through had allowed Stark to see his reflection in the balcony window he had been facing at the moment of the lighting strike.

Doom stayed where he was as Tony continued to stare in his direction, cycling through vision settings, trying to see more clearly what he had just seen reflected behind him. He needed to know if the inventor's gadget could detect him through his cloak, or if it had been a random combination of that specific level of light and his reflection in the glass. If so, he could avoid being seen again, but if he could be seen…

In an instant, Stark's face changed to one of shocked surprise, and Doom immediately knew he had been spotted once more. Before Tony could confirm what he was seeing or what spectrum he was seeing it in, Doom quickly swiped his hand through the air, using his armor's ability to manipulate the effect of gravity on an object to fling the ROI from Tony's face without approaching him, shattering the device upon the floor.

Stark immediately held his son as close to his body as he could, and held out his right hand in the direction of his lab. Summoning a gauntlet from his own armor onto his hand, Stark then aimed it back in the direction Doom had been standing, but which he had now moved away from.

"Who are you? Show yourself! How did you get in here?"

The panic in the inventor's voice was high, even more so than it had been minutes ago while searching for his son's whereabouts. Figuring now was as good a time as any to take his leave, Doom activated the teleporter, hearing Tony shout aloud one more time in the second before he vanished, rage now mingled with terror in his voice.

"SHOW YOURSELF!"

But there was no longer anyone there to threaten with his fiery words.

xxxXXXxxx

Professor Xavier opened his eyes, lifted his head, and then looked over his shoulder to an awaiting Doctor Betty Ross and Dr. Ross to share a smile with them. The young woman clasped her hands against her chest, gasped inwardly, and then asked the one question she had been dying to ask ever since the last team had left the compound.

"Was it Jean? Is it time?"

"It appears to be."

"Are you gonna call your friends now?" Dr. Ross asked; his tone of voice as impatient yet as hopeful as his counterpart's appeared to be.

"Yes," the Professor nodded once to the unrelated Rosses, returned his attention to the device on the table before him that allowed his mind to remotely access Cerebro while abroad, and then heard Betty verbalize the question he had already heard forming in her mind.

"Which ones, Professor?"

"Which ones?" Xavier smirked with confidence as he closed his eyes. "All of them."

xxxXXXxxx

"Fifty more feet," Tony read the Earth Mover's ground-penetrating radar numbers aloud before he turned around in place, adjusted the straps of his backpack, and then faced the redhead and the brunette before him, all sporting looks that spoke volumes of how ready they were to end this battle.

"Are you sure there won't be anyone waiting for us up there?" Pepper asked.

"Not with the distraction happening at the top of the building, they're not," Maya replied as she too got ready to exit the Earth Mover as soon as it dug itself out onto the floor of the deepest basement within the castle.

"Let's just hope that Clint and Natasha can use our armors well enough to keep Doom and his bots busy thinking we're up there, even if all we manage to do in that time is finding Howie and barely reach the power core room."

"With the second wave of help on its way, we should have enough time for all that," Pepper added with a smile and then adjusted her backpack for the nth time. She was trying to sound confident for Tony's sake, who she could tell was highly on edge, but the truth was that she was as nervous as he was. Somewhere in this castle, hopefully where Maya expected him to be, their son was patiently waiting for them. If the little boy was still on the premises, and the botanist believed that he was, she and Tony would soon find him in Maya's lab. Finally, after all this time, they could see their son again. And, with any bit of luck, they would find only him, and not his corpse.

The redhead tightly closed her eyes at the rather morbid thought before leaning closer to the genius. Not a second later, she felt Tony's arm briefly surround her shoulders from the side, shortly before she then felt his lips against her forehead. She returned the gesture by surrounding his waist with her arms and pressing her right ear to his chest, almost relaxing with the sound of the steady beating of his heart.

"Twenty-five feet," Maya said, if just to break the silence that was making her feel uncomfortable while watching the couple tenderly comforting each other without words. In the tiny, cramped space within the Earth Mover, there was not much room to use for roaming around – or much to observe other than the computer screens and one another, leaving her with the sad choice of watching the man she loved tending to the woman she could not bring herself to hate.

The brunette's hands fell inside her pockets to feel for the syringe she still carried with her, and she then looked up to read the radar one more time. The digging technology was starting to slow down its trek as they had finally reached the stone and concrete foundation of the basement, which signaled how close they were to their destination. In a matter of seconds, she would be back to the place she had hoped to leave every day she had been in it. In less than a minute or so, she would return to the location where her mother had died; the place where her mother's rotting body still lay, in some unknown cell, being denied the option to be buried according to her family's faith.

All because Aldrich Killian had deceived her and her trusting mother. All because said man had wanted to keep up with appearances while furthering his demented cause. Even now, after all the destruction the ruler of Latveria had caused to countless people around the world, Maya Hansen could not tell who the worst of them was: Aldrich Killian or Victor von Doom. And knowing what was about to take place in just a few moments, she knew that she would never have the opportunity to find out.

"We're here," Tony's statement made the botanist look towards him to see the couple suiting up. In the blink of an eye, Iron Man and Rescue were before her, their armors bringing back memories of simpler times – of times when her biggest worry was how close the inventor and the redhead appeared to be. Worries of whether or not something more than just pure friendship existed between the two friends and roommates. Those times felt as if they had taken place forever ago. So much had changed since then. So much had been lost in that time.

And lost time, Maya Hansen had learned, was something that no one, anywhere, ever got back.

The sudden halt of the Earth Mover and the top latch automatically unlocking itself were their cues to begin climbing out of the machine. The Earth Mover had stopped so that it's top hatch was level with the floor, keeping it from being seen from afar. The second Earth Mover was following suit, its programming sending it several feet away from their location, to do the exact same thing this particular Mover was doing right now: embedding itself at a strategic location beneath the castle to explode with near-nuclear force when the time was right. As much as Tony hated to admit it, he was very good at building weapons. And both of these Earth Movers had been specifically designed to blow the entire place to Kingdom Come when the best chance to do so presented itself: if their plan to shut down the power core failed – regardless of who was still inside.

It did not take long for them to hike out of the Earth Mover, crawl on the floor for a few feet to move away from the opening the machine had left behind, and then to stand up straight in the dark hall. Iron Man had been the first one to come out of it, and his suit had instantly searched the area for unwanted guests. When he had detected none, Maya Hansen had come out. And then, after making sure the device was on stand-by to explode by inputting the appropriate sequence, Rescue exited the Earth Mover as well.

The three members of the resistance remained silent where they stood, their heads slowly moving left and right to eye both ends of the hall. There was very little light near them – and most of it came from fire lit torches attached to the walls. Whatever was visible did not appear to be very welcoming; and neither was the scent of decay that permeated the air.

After years of being unknowingly haunted by the owner of this palace, and after months of preparing for executing their retribution towards the man that had plotted against them for such a long time, the opportunity to make things even had finally arrived – nonetheless, and much to their dismay, the trio could not make themselves move an inch just yet.

As if sensing that her current hesitation was also present in the two heroes standing before her, the brunette sighed loudly, extended her right arm in the direction of her private lab, bowed slightly, and then spoke words she never thought she would ever say to anyone, anywhere, ever.

"Ladies and gentlemen: Welcome to Castle Doom."