A/N: 500 chapters is insane ngl, I've been writing for close to 3 years by now I believe, I'm 22, 3 threes ago I was 19, mind blown. I wouldn't have made it this far if it wasn't for everyone's support which i am eternally grateful for, it's been an amazing journey with Everyone, you guys are awesome, thank you š š
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[Third Person Pov]Ā
Gwen was kicking her feet idly against the edge of the platform as she watched Peter comfort Thor, the soft murmur of their conversation drifting across the rain-slicked space. One moment she was relaxed, almost bored. The next, her body moved on pure instinct.
She hadn't even realized she had leapt until her boots slammed down several meters back, knees bent, weight balanced in a low, ready crouch. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Breathing turned sharp and shallow. Every muscle locked tight, coiled for violence she could not yet see.
The sudden motion startled both Nick Fury and Harry. They tensed in unison, eyes snapping toward her.
"Ghost?" Harry asked carefully, already half-rising, the sticks in his hands stopping their playful twirl.Ā
Fury's hand was already on his sidearm. "What's with her all of a sudden?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out," Harry muttered, studying the rigid lines of her posture, the way her fingers flexed her bone claws slowly exiting out of her. "I think she's sensing something. But for her to react this hardā¦"
Gwen barely heard them. A sharp, high-pitched ringing erupted at the base of her skull, drowning out every other sound. It swelled in an instant into a white-hot spike of pain that drove straight through her head like a heated nail. Tears sprang to her eyes. She staggered, both hands flying to her temples as a cold sweat broke across her skin.
"Ahhhhā!"
The cry tore out of her before she could stop it. Her legs trembled. The world tilted.
Harry was already moving. He vaulted the short distance and landed beside her, one arm sliding under her shoulders to keep her upright. "What? What's happening?!"
"S-Something is coming!" Gwen forced the words through clenched teeth, voice raw. Every breath burned. "I don't know whatābut it's vile. Evil. I've never felt anything like this before!"
Outside, under the relentless rain, the same invisible hammer fell on the others.
Thor had been mid-sentence "Thank you, Spiderā" when he saw Peter suddenly stagger backward, boots kicking up wet mud. The younger man's hands flew to his head.
"Ahhhāfuck!" Energy crackled erratically across Peter's suit, lenses twitching as if the eyes behind them were trying to focus on something that wasn't there.
"Spider?" Thor asked, concern cutting through his earlier distress as he rose to his full height.
Jane, Darcy, and Erik stared as one spider-person after another folded under the same invisible assault. Hands pressed to temples. Breath hissed between teeth. Faces contorted.
Darcy took an instinctive step back. "Okay, what's going on here? You guys are honestly starting to scare me."
Aria's voice came tight, strained. The Mind Stone at her forehead pulsed in time with the pain, a sickly rhythmic throb. "Our bodies have an in-built warning system. It gives us a heads-up when sudden danger is close."
"And right now it's lighting up like a freaking Christmas tree," Felicia gritted out, swaying slightly, the world swimming around her.
Mary Jane looked pale enough to faint. She hugged herself, shoulders trembled faintly, rain plastering her hair to her cheeks. "H-How can something so malicious even exist in this worldā¦?"
Bruce and Lizzy reached Peter just as his knee hit the wet ground. They caught him under the arms and hauled him back up, both of them could feel the tension in his body.
"Something is coming," Peter said, voice low and stripped of all humor. Water streamed from the edge of his hood. His lenses narrowed to thin, hard slits. "Something dangerous."
Lizzy's hands began to glow with rising energy. "What do we do?"
Peter exhaled slowly, the sound almost lost beneath the rain. He straightened, every line of his body radiating a cold, resigned certainty.
"Nothing. We do nothing."
His gaze lifted past them, toward the darkened skies beyond the downpour.
"He's already here."
"Whoā" Bruce didn't get to finish the question.
A searing emerald radiance detonated across the night sky, so abrupt and brilliant it turned the storm-lashed clearing into brief, unnatural daylight. Shadows fled. Raindrops glittered like shattered glass for a single heartbeat. Hawkeye threw an arm across his purple shades and still had to look away, a low grunt of discomfort escaping him.
Harry and Gwen dropped into the crater beside Peter almost simultaneously, both staring upward as the blinding sphere of green energy slowly contracted and dimmed. Thunder rolled in the distance as the light finally resolved into a figure.
He stood suspended above everyone in the air, long green cloak whipping around him in the wind. Silver armor gleamed beneath the fabric, etched with intricate lines that pulsed faintly with residual power. A smooth metal mask hid every trace of expression, leaving only the cold authority of the man within.
Victor von Doom.
"So many have gathered," Doom's voice carried easily over the rain and thunder, rich and measured. "One might almost mistake this for a reception prepared in Doom's honor."
Lightning split the clouds directly above him, illuminating the mask in stark white for an instant and underscoring the final syllable.
Peter vanished.
He reappeared in the air behind Doom in the same flash of lightning, bone blades already extended and humming with concentrated chi. The strike was silent, precise, lethalāaimed straight at the exposed gap between cloak and armor.
It never landed.
A telekinetic force seized him mid-thrust. His blades froze inches from Doom's back as a metal gauntlet flared with feverish emerald light. Peter's invisible form shimmered into visibility under the strain, muscles straining uselessly against the invisible grip.
"Damn itā" he clicked his tongue. Even the cloak of invisibility hadn't been enough.
Doom turned his body with casual precision, guiding Peter past him with a single dismissive gesture. The younger man fought the hold, blades thrashing, but Doom simply raised his other hand and released a concentrated beam of green energy into Peter's back. The blast struck like a hammer of pure force. Peter was hurled downward, crashing into the earth hard enough to carve a second, smaller crater beside the abandoned Mjolnir.
Aria stepped forward without hesitation. The Mind Stone flared, and a focused purple ray lanced through the rain toward Doom's chest. A barrier of green energy snapped into existence around him an instant before impact, absorbing the blast with a low, resonant hum. Doom dismissed the shield with a flick of his fingers and pointed casually in her direction.
The storm answered.
A thick, branching bolt of lightning crashed toward the group with a sound like the sky itself being torn open. Mary Jane reacted as soon as Aria's attack ended. Hard-light constructs erupted from her hands, weaving a multi-layered bunker around everyone, raising multiple shields in a fraction of a second. The lightning struck. Barriers shattered in rapid succession with blinding flashes and sharp reports, but the final layers held. Jane and Darcy screamed and dropped into a crouch, hands clamped over their heads as residual energy crackled across the outer shields.
Doom's voice rolled across the clearing once more, now edged with cold indignation.
"Is this how you choose to greet me?" Doom sneered, "It displeases me. Allow me to educate you in the customs of my kingdom."
Both of his hands ignited with emerald power. He descended slowly until his armored boots touched the mud, then pressed his palms downward in a deliberate, almost ceremonial motion.
Pressure slammed into everyone at once.
It was not mere weight. The very air thickened and warped. Raindrops froze mid-fall, suspended like a thousand glass beads. Those without enhanced strength or power were driven to their knees and then fully to the ground, bodies sinking into the soft earth. Even the powered individuals found their spines forced into a hunch, muscles trembling under the invisible force that demanded submission.
"When one arrives in the presence of Doom," he declared, each word weighted with absolute certainty, "one must lower the head in humility before their superiorā¦ and bend the knee in acknowledgment of the power of their sovereign."
"Make no mistake. As it is done in Latveria, you will do the same, for none stand equal to Doom!!"
Knees buckled. Bodies were forced downward until no one remained standing at his eye level. Doom walked forward through the frozen rain with unhurried grace, droplets parting around him as though reluctant to touch the cloak. When he reached Mjolnir he did not stoop, after all such actions were beneath him. He simply extended one open hand.
The hammer shuddered against the mud, then rose with his thoughts. Clumps of wet earth slid from the head as it floated into his waiting grip. Doom lifted Mjolnir high, examining the ancient weapon with the detached interest.
Above them, the storm answered with a fresh roll of thunder and a lattice of white lightning that briefly turned the entire sky the color of bone.
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