[Third Person Pov]
"Return the hammer, you must," Peter intoned in his best Yoda voice, complete with the wrinkled brow and exaggerated hand gestures. He even managed to make his eyes look slightly crossed for authenticity.
"Belong to you, it doesn't," Harry chimed in immediately, matching the accent with theatrical flair. A wide, mischievous grin stretched across both their faces.
They lasted exactly two seconds before the act collapsed. Both of them dissolved into snickering, then full-blown laughter, pointing at Victor like some school bullies.
"Nerd—!!"
Doom's reaction was instantaneous and devoid of amusement.
Both palms turned upward. With a single, contemptuous motion of his hands he telekinetically ripped Peter and Harry off Hulk's shoulders and hurled them in opposite directions. Their bodies slammed into the far walls hard enough to crack the stone, embedding them several inches into the masonry. Dust and fragments rained down around them.
Doom's features remained perfectly stoic behind the iron mask while the two heroes grunted in pain.
"Worth it," Peter groaned, still pressed into the wall like a living decoration.
From the opposite side of the hall Harry managed a shaky thumbs-up. "Totally."
Gwen pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaled a long-suffering sigh.
Reed Richards stepped forward from the group, expression grave. "Victor," he said, voice measured but firm. "We've already determined what you're planning. Know this—we will not allow it."
Doom regarded him for a moment, then slowly turned his gaze toward the rocky figure standing nearby. His eyes lingered, and the corners of his mouth twisted into a cold sneer.
"Benjamin," he said, each syllable dripping with disdain. "I must say… your outward appearance has finally matched the level of your intellect. Congratulations."
Ben's eyes went wide with pure offense. "Alright, that's it!!"
He charged before anyone could stop him, massive fists cocked back, a living avalanche of orange rock and fury.
Felicia's hand rose almost casually. Probability magic shimmered around her fingers like heat haze.
A powerful bolt of emerald energy slammed into Ben's chest mid-stride and sent him flying backward. He careened toward the others like a runaway boulder.
Hulk reacted on instinct. One enormous green fist met Ben's trajectory and smashed him sideways. Ben crashed into the wall with enough force to send a spiderweb of cracks racing upward. The fractures climbed the stone, reached the vaulted ceiling, and a massive section of masonry tore free.
The chunk of ceiling plummeted straight down onto Doom, pinning him beneath tons of debris in a thunderous impact that shook the entire hall.
Ben blinked, still rubbing the back of his rocky head. "…I meant to do that."
The rubble began to rise.
Piece by piece the stone lifted into the air as if gravity itself had been reversed. From beneath the floating debris Doom's eyes burned with pure, incandescent fury.
"You will all learn," he snarled, voice echoing with layered magical resonance, "that no one makes a tomfoolery out of Doom—least of all in his own home."
Thor had clearly reached the end of his patience. He began spinning Mjolnir's replacement hammer in rapid circles, shield raised, already charging forward with a battle-cry.
"Return to me my hammer!!"
Peter peeled himself free of the wall with a grimace and web-lined across the hall. "Shit. Looks like we're really doing this."
Harry somersaulted free of his own impact crater and joined the others in a single fluid motion.
The hall exploded into chaos.
An energy beam struck Thor's shield with the force of a siege engine, sending the Asgardian sliding backward across the polished floor. He rolled clear, raised his hammer, and unleashed a concentrated blast of kinetic force that streaked toward Doom like a comet.
Lizzy's power flared. The rubble Doom had begun to hurl simply disintegrated mid-air, reduced to harmless clouds of fine dust that drifted harmlessly away.
Doom answered by vanishing and reappearing in erratic, stuttering bursts of teleportation—warping inward on himself and emerging elsewhere in the hall in rapid succession. One moment he was near the shattered balcony; the next he was behind the group, then above them.
Peter's spider-sense screamed. He predicted the next emergence point, fired dual web-lines to create tension anchors, and opened a small portal behind the space where Doom would appear. The moment the armored tyrant materialized, Peter launched himself through the portal in a spinning drop-kick that caught Doom square in the back. The impact drove the Latverian king into the floor hard enough to leave a long, smoking trail of shattered stone.
Doom landed at Hulk's feet.
The green giant's eyes narrowed with pure protective rage. "Hulk will defeat evil man for his friends!!"
Fists the size of wrecking balls began raining down in a relentless, savage barrage.
Doom barely managed to raise a protective barrier in time. The shield blossomed around him in a dome of emerald light—but Hulk didn't care. Each impact cracked the barrier further. The floor beneath them fractured, then completely gave way.
Both combatants plunged into the room below.
From the newly opened chasm Doombots erupted in coordinated waves—sleek, armored constructs that seized Hulk by both arms and hauled the struggling giant away into the depths.
Johnny streaked in from above, trailing fire. "Someone better call the fire department because it's all going to go up in flames!" He unleashed a concentrated stream of white-hot plasma that slammed into Doom the moment the tyrant tried to recover, driving him back down to the lower level in a trail of scorched stone.
A second Doombot answered with a precise energy blast that tackled Johnny out of the air mid-flight.
More Doombots poured into the hall from every direction—rising through the broken floor, emerging from hidden panels in the walls, dropping from the damaged ceiling. The grand chamber transformed into a battlefield of overlapping energy blasts, exploding stone, and the continuous roar of combat as the heroes found themselves suddenly outnumbered in the heart of Doom's domain.
Reed elongated and flattened his body in a single fluid motion, transforming himself into a living paraglider that latched onto the nearest Doombot mid-flight. He wrapped every available limb around the construct's chassis, using its own momentum against it while redirecting its energy cannons toward a second Doombot that had been lining up a shot on Johnny. At the same time his fingers worked with surgical precision, prying open access panels and yanking out power conduits even as the machine struggled and sparked beneath him.
Across the hall Aria phased straight through another Doombot, her gem blazing with brilliant light. The construct came apart around her like a puzzle box opening in reverse—every plate, circuit, and actuator spinning outward in a precise orbit. A holographic blueprint flickered into existence in front of her eyes. With a manic grin she guided the floating components back together, reshaping them on the fly into a massive, levitating railgun that hummed with unstable power.
"Coming through!!" Harry shouted as he vaulted over a pile of rubble.
Aria's cackle echoed from somewhere in the smoke, high and unhinged.
Harry's chi and kinetic energy converged around his hands, forming a spear of pure force that crackled with contained power. He hurled it downward in a perfect arc aimed straight at Doom.
"Nightwing!!" MJ's voice cut through the chaos. She extended a hand, a webline snapping into Harry's grasp mid-air.
Their hands locked. Harry began to spin at an extraordinary rate, building centrifugal force until the air around them howled. At the peak of the rotation he released, transferring every ounce of kinetic energy into MJ as he swung her downward like a living meteor.
MJ's psychic energy flared. A massive hammer of pure telekinetic force materialized in her grip. She brought it down in a crushing arc that met Harry's spear against Doom's barrier. The combined impact shattered the emerald shield in a blinding detonation of light and force, sending both of them rocketing backward through the air on the resulting shockwave.
"You really shouldn't take what doesn't belong to you, Victor," Susan said coldly.
A translucent force field blossomed around Mjolnir at Doom's waist and yanked the hammer free with a sharp metallic *snap*. The weapon shot across the hall toward her outstretched hand.
Peter streaked downward in a blazing neon trail, using the swarming Doombots as living stepping stones. Each impact launched him faster, residual static crackling in his wake like a comet's tail, as the Doombots were left destroyed.
Once he landed he aimed his fingers in the classical gestures as energy gathered between them. The shot of power erupted in a concentrated, blinding blast that struck Doom square in the chest. Electricity crawled across the armored surface in jagged, spider-leg patterns of pure white light.
One instant Doom was forcing himself upright. The next he was airborne—hurled backward through a heavy oak desk that exploded into splinters before he slammed into the far wall hard enough to crater the stone.
Peter streaked in front of him, right fist already sheathed in crackling electricity. The static radiating from his knuckles flickered and danced, forming faint, ghostly silhouettes that looked almost like the legs of a spider.
"Hello there," he said, channeling his inner Obi-Wan Kenobi.
The first punch seemed almost leisurely. Then the speed increased. Each impact landed with the sharp, percussive report of a gunshot. Within heartbeats the strikes blurred into a continuous storm of force and lightning. Doom's hybrid armor—forged from the highest science and the deepest mysticism—held longer than any conventional plating should have. But even that masterpiece had limits when subjected to several tons of repeated, electrically charged punishment.
Spiderweb cracks raced across the wall behind the Latverian king. Static electricity leapt through every fracture, lighting the stone from within.
Peter finally stepped back, chest heaving, residual current still twitching through every muscle fiber. Sparks occasionally leapt from his fingertips as he stood there panting.
Pain and raw agony burned in Doom's eyes as he peeled himself off the wall and collapsed to one knee. Blood seeped freely from multiple points beneath the dented, sparking armor.
"E-Enough…" Doom's voice came out hoarse and strained.
"Calling it quits so soon?" Johnny sneered from across the hall, one burning Doombot collapsing at his feet wrapped in a cloak of fire. "For all the hype, this was pretty easy."
Doom's head snapped up.
"No. I mean—" He thrust a finger toward Peter. A field of zero-point energy erupted around the web-slinger, freezing him in place and lifting him helplessly into the air. "**ENOUGH!!**"
"Doom will take no more of this abuse!" he roared, voice once again layered with magical force.
He extended his free hand toward the force field still containing Mjolnir. Lightning exploded from the hammer in violent arcs until the entire bubble glowed like an overcharged light bulb. Susan's arms trembled violently as she fought to maintain the containment. Sweat poured down her face. Hairline fractures spiderwebbed across the barrier's surface.
"AHHHH!!" she cried, every muscle straining.
Then, like a light bulb shattering under too much current, the force field ruptured.
Mjolnir tore free and flew straight into Doom's waiting gauntlet.
The moment the hammer touched his palm, lightning surged through his entire body. Dents in the armor smoothed themselves. Fractures sealed. The bloodied, battered tyrant rose once more as emerald light and storm energy restored him to full strength.
Susan swayed, light-headed from the effort. Ben appeared behind her just in time, catching her before she could collapse.
Gwen stood nearby, an axe of pure ice forming in her hands. She shot a pointed look at the Human Torch.
"Johnny," she said flatly, "you honestly have to learn how to shut the fuck up. For Christ's sake."
Johnny threw his hands up in protest, flames flickering indignantly around his shoulders. "I'm sorry! How was I supposed to know he would get a second health bar because of what I said?!"
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