"I'm returning the favor."
The last of the robots collapsed into rust piles, their quantum cores sputtering out like dying stars.
The massive hands dissolved, crumbling into quantum foam and scattering in the wind.
Domino's eyes faded back to normal, and she felt exhausted. Using the Death Stone's power like that took something out of her, a cost she was still learning to measure.
Meanwhile, Hank hadn't stopped his assault.
While Domino handled the mechanical army, he'd continued his methodical destruction of the Conqueror.
Each size change calculated for maximum damage. Each strike placed with the precision of someone who'd spent decades studying physics and knew exactly how to make a body hurt.
Finally, he pulled out a vial of inverted Pym particles, the liquid inside glowing blue instead of red.
"Since your head can't contain your enormous ego," Hank's hand was steady despite the rage coursing through him, "let me help."
He stabbed the vial directly into Kang's temple.
The glass shattered. Blue liquid flooded into the Conqueror's brain through the entry wound.
At the same time, his other hand pressed a red capsule against Kang's chest, injecting standard Pym particles directly into his torso.
The effect was immediate and grotesque.
Kang's head swelled rapidly, expanding like a balloon filled with too much air. The skin stretched thin, showing veins and neural pathways as the brain inside grew exponentially. Each pulse visible. Each thought theoretically trackable if you could parse the patterns.
At the same time, his body shrank.
Compressing down to the size of a toddler. Then an infant. Then smaller still. The torso collapsing while the head expanded, creating proportions that violated every principle of anatomy and somehow remained functional through sheer stubborn refusal to die.
But the adaptive technology in Kang's helmet and Hover Throne, designed to protect him from temporal anomalies, kicked in. It tried to compensate for the size differential, the future-tech nano-machines working overtime to maintain their user's survival. The helmet reshaped itself, bending and warping to accommodate the new proportions. The throne, still connected via quantum entanglement, reconfigured into a hover platform.
What emerged was a floating head.
[Image Here]
Massive and swollen, attached to a tiny shrivelled body that dangled uselessly beneath it. The body barely the size of a doll, limbs thin as pencils, chest rising and falling with rapid, panicked breaths.
Hank stepped back, breathing hard, his knee finally giving out from the exertion. He collapsed to one knee, age and exhaustion catching up to the adrenaline.
Janet and Hope rushed to his side, supporting him before he could fall completely.
"Easy, Hank," Janet's voice carried practiced concern, the tone of someone who'd spent years caring for the wounded. "You're not twenty anymore. You can't just go full berserker without consequences."
"Worth it," Hank managed between gasping breaths. "Absolutely worth it."
Scott had been standing frozen throughout the violence, his mind trying to process what he'd just witnessed. The arrogant old man, but still a fatherly figure who'd recruited him from prison, had just turned someone into a living nightmare through science-fueled rage.
Now he looked at the floating Kang head and couldn't help himself. "Dude. That's ugliest mugshot I've ever seen. How are you even alive?"
Kang tried to respond, but his vocal cords had been compressed along with his body. What came out was a high-pitched squeak that might have been threats or pleading. It was impossible to tell.
To Domino, the new form looked familiar.
"Oh my god," she said, and laughter bubbled up before she could stop it. "Jay told me about this guy. MODOK. Some big-headed villain who could barely function without his hover chair." She turned to address the crowd of quantum residents who'd been watching in terrified awe. "You look exactly like him. It's actually uncanny."
She faced the gathered crowd properly.
"Citizens of Axia," her voice carried authority she hadn't known she possessed, "your tyrant has been reduced to a floating joke. The robots that enforced his will are now piles of rust. The fear he used to control you?" She gestured at the transformed Kang. "Look at him. Really look. Does that inspire fear? Or pity?"
The words hung in the air for three heartbeats.
Then someone started crying. A quantum resident whose form had been locked in a painful configuration by Kang's technology felt the restraints degrade and finally return to their natural shifting state. They sobbed with relief.
Another took up the cry. "Free! We're free!"
The celebration started small, just a few voices raised in joy. But it spread like wildfire through the city, residents pouring into the streets as the news traveled faster than physics should allow. Cheers and tears mixed together as beings who'd known nothing but oppression for years finally understood what liberation felt like.
The rebellion group Janet had been part of emerged from hiding, their makeshift armor and weapons looking almost quaint compared to what Domino had just demonstrated. Their leader, a shifting form that settled into something vaguely masculine when addressing Janet, approached with reverence.
"So he's the Famous Hank from the upper world?"
Janet nodded, her arm still supporting Hank. "I told you someone would come. I just... I didn't expect it to be quite like this."
The days that followed were a blur of activity.
The rebellion took control of what remained of Kang's infrastructure. The Crystal Spires, once his seat of power, became a people's hall. The throne room where he'd dispensed temporal judgments was converted into a council chamber where representatives from Axia's different districts gathered to debate governance.
Their democratic process surprisingly efficient for beings made of probability and quantum foam. Leaders were chosen through consensus rather than force. Laws were debated that actually made sense given the fluid nature of quantum reality.
Janet was instrumental in the transition.
Her experience as both scientist and survivor giving her unique insight into what the city needed. She helped draft laws that made sense given quantum reality's fluid nature. Mediated disputes between districts that had been forced into cooperation under Kang's rule but had old grievances predating his arrival and taught the council representatives how to think in terms of collective good rather than individual survival.
But even as she helped build something new, her eyes kept drifting to Hank, to Hope, to the family she'd lost and found again.
On the third day, she made her decision.
"I'm going back with you." Janet spoke the words to Hank in private, in a quiet corner of what used to be Kang's palace and was now a people's hall. "This place will be fine without me. Better, probably. They need to learn to govern themselves without relying on someone from above."
Hank's relief was visible, the tension he'd been carrying since the reunion finally easing. "You're sure? I don't want you to feel like I'm forcing this. If you've built a life here..."
"The life I built was survival, not living. These people deserve their freedom, but I deserve mine too. I want to go home, Hank. I want to see Earth again. Sleep under real stars. Feel actual wind that isn't quantum probability deciding which direction it should blow."
She took his hand, thirty years older but still fitting perfectly against his palm. "I want to have dinner with our daughter and meet Scott's daughter. Actually, spend time with my husband doing absolutely nothing productive because we can just exist together."
Hank pulled her close, and for a moment they were just two people who'd found each other again despite impossible odds.
"When?" he asked.
"Soon. Let me say my goodbyes properly. These people fought alongside me. They deserve more than me disappearing in the night."
The departure was bittersweet.
The citizens of what they'd renamed Chronopolis gathered to see Janet off. They'd formed connections with these strange visitors from above, grateful for the liberation but understanding that their saviors didn't belong in this quantum space.
Gifts were exchanged, small tokens made of stabilized quantum foam that would hold their shape in the normal world. Promises to remember were given and received. Tears were shed by beings whose emotional expressions shifted across their faces like water.
"They're going to miss you," Hope said quietly.
"I know," Janet replied. "But I've been missing you and your father for thirty years. It's time to go home."
Domino had been watching from the shuttle's entrance. But she'd been quiet, letting the family have their moment.
Now Janet approached her.
"Thank you," the older woman said simply. "For coming down here. For bringing my family. For..." She gestured at the transformed Kang, still floating in his platform-prison under quantum guard. "For dealing with him. I've been trying to build resistance for years. You did it in minutes."
"Don't stress, I had good motivation," Domino replied. "Robots bring back bad memories."
"Still. Thank you." Janet paused. "And thank you for letting me see this through. For staying these extra days so I could help with the transition. I know you have family waiting topside."
Domino's chest tightened at the reminder.
Luv and Jay. Her boys.
She'd been down here for nearly a week, though who knew how much time had passed topside. The quantum realm's temporal fluidity made it impossible to tell.
"Yeah," she managed. "I do. So let's get moving before I start getting homesick."
Finally, they piled into the quantum shuttle.
And Domino had been right to worry about space. With Janet added to their number, the cramped interior became actively uncomfortable in ways that made the previous journey seem spacious.
The shuttle had been designed for four people maximum, and they were pushing five into a space meant for fewer.
After some awkward shuffling and quiet negotiation, Janet ended up sitting in Hank's lap. Both their faces went red, decades of marriage doing nothing to prevent the slight embarrassment of public intimacy.
Hope and Scott exchanged knowing glances but wisely said nothing, though Hope's lips twitched with suppressed amusement.
Domino took her seat, but every fiber of her being hummed with eagerness to leave. It had been nearly a month since she'd seen Jay. Nearly a month since she'd held Luv. Her family.
The need to get home had been building with each day.
"Can we please go now?" Her voice came out more desperate than intended. "I love a good reunion as much as anyone, but I really need to get back to my boys."
Hope's hands moved across the controls. "Engaging Pym particles for ascension. Everyone hold on. The trip up is always rougher than going down."
The shuttle's engines hummed, quantum fields realigning to reverse the shrinking process. The city outside began to recede, or they began to grow, perspective becoming meaningless again.
Faster this time. The quantum realm blurred past them as reality reasserted itself, pulling them back toward the macro scale where humans belonged.
Domino's compass of crimson light ensuring they didn't get lost in the probabilistic chaos of expansion. Her luck carved a path through fluctuations that would have scattered them across dimensional boundaries.
They grew. And grew. The shuttle expanding along with them, Pym particles working in perfect synchronization to maintain structural integrity.
The lab materialized around them, first as a speck, then as a confined space, then as the familiar room where they'd started. The shuttle settled onto its platform with a gentle thud, systems powering down with satisfied hums.
The hatch opened, releasing them from their quantum prison.
They stumbled out, legs shaky from the transition, inner ears still convinced they should be the size of atoms. Hank supported Janet, who took her first steps on Earth in thirty years with tears streaming down her face. Hope stood beside them, one hand on her mother's shoulder as if to confirm she was real. Scott collapsed onto the nearest chair and didn't move.
"Come on," she said gently, addressing all of them. "Let's get you home properly. You've all earned it."
They filed out of the lab, leaving behind the quantum shuttle and the technology that had made the impossible possible. Outside, the sun was setting, painting California in shades of gold and amber.
Janet stopped at the doorway, tilted her face up to the sky, and breathed in air that didn't taste like quantum probability. Real air. Earth air.
"I'm home," she whispered, and the words carried thirty years of longing finally fulfilled.
Hank's arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her close as they watched the sunset together.
Hope joined them, completing the family unit that had been broken and was now, finally, whole again.
And Domino stood apart, taking in the serene scene but a knock on the door broke it.
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