they've got modified features and software brains [ psl ]

[nerdfight]

WHO Victor von Doom (nerdfight) and Misha Hunt (interspace)
WHAT In which science is done, a country is conquered, and Misha has to deal with a narcissistic asshole hellbent on revenge.
WHEN About a year after the sequel
WHERE Various places
WHY because fuck you Richards, that's why

It was something that had been bothering him for a while, a question that had been left unanswered and one that he was finally deciding to spend his time on now that he had to build up his resources and wait instead of attacking. Who was the girl who had appeared out of nowhere and integrated herself with his greatest enemies? She was an unknown variable, a puzzle to be solved, a threat to be destroyed. He needed to figure her out so he could properly dispose of her and move onto his real targets.

That would take time and research and since his last defeat, he'd take things slower so that he could do things properly. First, he watched from afar through cameras and finding videos of her exploits. Her flight was unnatural, something that couldn't be explained like how he and the others could be. Then, he had to take readings where he couldn't be caught. It was easy enough, send a small drone out to take the readings during a fight, with everyone distracted enough to not notice yet another spectator to the match. That was when he noticed it. He needed to study her in person, he had to know if the readings were correct.

So he set up a plan. A test run of his newly created Doombots would do nicely. Five points of attack to separate everyone so that he could grab the little insect like a flytrap, snatch her up in such a way that nobody could save her from his grasp. It was a beautiful day for an attack too, bright and sunny with no chance of rain. Donning his mask and outfit, Doom went out with his army of Doombots and waited on a skyscraper for his target to pass on the way to one company of his Doombots. When she arrived, he would be ready.

Comments

[nerdfight]

He didn't even plan on forming a response since he could tell she was on her last legs to begin with. When she didn't say anything else, he left the cell and closed the door, locking it behind him. While it might not keep her in at the moment, once he made a few adjustments, she wouldn't be able to phase through the cell and escape. But first, he had to build the emitters to keep her trapped inside, which wouldn't take too long since he already knew how to make them.

Once the emitters were built and installed, he made sure that she had food and water in her cell for when she woke up and finally went back to working on ALFRED. He had to get other parts to replace the inferior pieces Richards used in the initial building of the device and had hooked it up to a laptop to upgrade the coding used once he finally broke the encryption Richards had put in it. Doom might not be somebody to give praise, but credit where credit's due, Richards did a damn good job with encrypting and Doom really couldn't insult him for that.

[interspace]

This time, the sleep was more natural. This time, Misha was out for quite a long while as her body recovered and took the opportunity it had been given to rest. By the time she woke up, none of her pains had really gone away but it was easier to move around and for that she was thankful. Those same aches were reminding her why she had to keep quiet, give away as little as possible to make up for all of that bullshit earlier where her mouth had definitely run off without her brain's permission.

She rose above the bed, tucked and rolled and made to leave the cell once more. Whatever Doom was doing now, she could see that he had made a whole lot of progression with ALFRED since her last look-see and that only made her angry. Victor needed to stop messing with ALFRED now, because seriously. It wasn't even his! As she came to the glass enclosure, Misha fell back with the sound of a clonk and a loud, muffled cursing. "What the hell!"

Who had put that wall in the way of her phasing?!

[nerdfight]

It wasn't until he heard the clonk that Doom looked back over at the cell to see that Misha had run into the wall in an attempt to phase through it. He started to laugh, a genuine one instead of the more villainous ones she was used to hearing from him. To him, it was quite amusing that she had run into a wall. Part of him believed it served her right. She couldn't have believed that he wouldn't figure a way around that. He was a genius and he already had an emitter on his wrist that proved that he could do it.

"Good morning. I see you've noticed that I've installed emitters on your cell," he said once he was done laughing. Turning around, he went back to working on ALFRED, typing a few new lines of code on the laptop and checking to make sure he wasn't going to break anything. "I'm nearly done working on this, so save your outrage for something more important. There's food for you in there if you're hungry. It wouldn't do me any good if you ended up starving."

[interspace]

Shaking her head and probing at her nose, Misha glared through the glass at the laughing man across from her. Truth be told, it wasn't a bad laugh but coming from Victor von Doom certainly soured it. She gave the cell a better once-over and spotted the devices he mentioned, scowling in personal affront while she crossed her arms and moved back to the cot. The food and water wasn't hard to find and she placed it next to her on the bed and inspected it to hide the reddening of her face that had nothing to do with the small impact.

"Is it morning?" she grumbled. Time didn't really have meaning without any outside light or ALFRED to help keep track. If this escape was going to be under her own power, she needed as much information as possible before she would make her second attempt. "Suppose I use my outrage on being kidnapped, huh? Or maybe poisoned. Well, drugged. You wouldn't want to kill your premier test subject, you're not stupid. Forgive me for not automatically assuming you'd play fair with my necessities for survival for some asinine reason involving honor or chivalry because I'm pretty sure those are optional to you."

[nerdfight]

"It might be," Doom responded, not giving her a proper answer to what the time of day was. He wanted her out of sorts in case she did try to escape. It would make it that much easier for him to recapture her. Plus, it was genuinely fun to play mind games with someone, even if they happened to be a child.

"You're smarter than you appear," he said calmly as he focused on ALFRED. He wasn't going to be distracted from his work by the girl yet again if he could help it. He did spare a moment to roll his eyes at her comments though. She really was dramatic and that was saying something coming from him. "Why would I drug you when I have you right where I want you and you're still recovering from the injuries I gave you? It's a waste of drugs to give you any right after you've just woken up from quite a long slumber."

[interspace]

Doom's vague answer only earned him an annoyed scoff. Misha could tell what he was doing but that didn't make it much less effective. Not knowing something wasn't any better just because you realized that you didn't know. This was going to get under her skin but there was nothing to do about it. She crossed up her legs and rolled her shoulders with a grimace while trying to feel out the extent of the aforementioned injuries.

"Gee, thanks," she said drolly. Checking over the spread, she picked up the cup and put it between both her hands, brows furrowed as she sighed into the lip and took a large drink. There was nothing doing even if he was playing her and water was still water no matter how many other substances were in there. Now she was rolling her neck and trying not to let on too badly. Being pumped with various voltages at Doom's whim was definitely leaving her muscles in fits, not to mention the bruising she would probably have from both the tackle and the knee to the gut. "What about aspirin? Think you might have laced this with any of that? Ibuprofen? Aleve?"

[nerdfight]

"And cause you to accidentally overdose? I don't think so." Doom wanted a live subject with actual brain functions so as to see her powers in action, not a braindead or straight up dead subject. That was completely useless to him. It surprised him just how little this girl realized the important the state of the test subject was to his studies. One would think Richards would have at least taught her some basics of science while she lived in his building.

"Until I'm done and can get you medication for the pain, I would recommend stretching." He keyed in a few more lines of code and seeming satisfied, he saved and uploaded it back into ALFRED. While he waited for that to finish, he checked over everything else to check that he had covered all of Reed's mistakes. Satisfied with what he found, he unplugged it from the computer was the update was downloaded and activated it so that it could properly install itself. The component upgrades made the update install quickly and when he was sure that was done, he picked up ALFRED and went to grab her some ibuprofen before going to her cell and opening up a panel in the door, holding the pills and ALFRED for her to take. "Hopefully now you can see that I am not trying to kill or harm you, but instead merely wish to answer some questions about you."

[interspace]

It was less about scientific integrity and about Misha's understandings of Victor's ethics. That was to say, she felt it safer to assume he didn't have any rather than hold him to unspoken rules about how to go about things when something was in his way. Although it was entirely unfair to Doom, Misha really did not care about being fair when she had just been kidnapped. Let him prove his own morals in more esoteric subjects if he wished. She just wasn't going to make the leap for him.

While he finished up with ALFRED, Misha surreptitiously tried holding her arms out over her head in a sleepy sort of stretch. Her breath hitched when one of them locked up at the elbow; her mind took hold moments later and wrapped the arm in her cosmic thread, forced it to finish pulling out anyway and she ducked her head to hide the pain. This sucked. She was much less capable of being up and about than she dared admit with Doom in the room and was reduced to cheating with her power to fake it. When he came to the door, she eyed him long and hard, noticing the pulse emitter he still wore on his wrist and flicking her gaze to the larger emitters affixed to the corners of her cell. The door was open, although that didn't necessarily mean the field was, but it was a chance. Who knew when she would get another one?

She gently launched herself over the tray of food until she was standing by the foot of the cot and walked to the door, taking ALFRED first. She set him back up, visor and earpieces and core on her arm, made sure his boot sequence was going before she reached for the pills. At the last moment, her hand shifted and her arm was under his wrist, pushing up and away in a hope to unbalance him before he caught on to hold his ground. In the same motion, she was leaning and shoving off the air to try and make it through the gap of the door, her thread expanding into fabric and covering her from every angle — if she could just get out of his reach fast enough, make it far enough to get through the floor or the ceiling or somewhere he couldn't just grab her, she would be home free. She could totally do this.

[nerdfight]

To not expect that Misha would make an escape would have been foolish of Doom and he was not a foolish man, despite what others might believe of him. He was an incredibly intelligent man and he knew that she was much like a bird in a cage, yearning to reach the open sky once more and trying any chance to fly away at any opening. So it was no surprise to him when she tried.

Thankfully, he had the emitter on this time, so there was no need to try to press it and give her an opening. No, he was prepared for her escape and while his metallic body wasn't the fastest thing in the world, it didn't really slow him down all that much. Especially not enough for him to miss grabbing her. His hands reached out and grabbed her as he surged forward almost as if to tackle her. If she truly wanted a fight, then he was going to give her one.

[interspace]

Making a noise of frustration, Misha tried to pull tighter, do something, anything to get away from Doom before he tossed her back in there and the whole thing started again. Her power fluctuated then, a feeling she had never felt so strongly before, seeming to latch onto the second subject when Doom made contact and she couldn't stop herself in time. Her flight instinct was already in motion and she was pulling away in every way possible despite him having such a good grip on her. It was like some kind of blanket left out in the cold brushing across her skin and then—

And then.

There was nothing around them. Nothing familiar, but perhaps everything. It was like sitting out in the open and watching twilight that never ended no matter which way you looked. Stars were only beginning to shine in the sky but the stars were right there, so close you could reach out and touch their luminescence and be pulled into the vastness hidden inside. It was a calming and mysterious scene, something foreign where there was no air but no trouble to breathe, no gravity or up or down or vertigo. No matter where you went, you were falling in some direction or another and momentum was king, no way to stop your path without outside interference.

It was a nightmare. Thoughts of Doom, escape, ALFRED, anything that could have possibly been tied up in her head simple disappeared in the soft glow of this interspace where everything connected and nothing truly existed. This was the place that had haunted her dreams and tortured her waking hours for three years, the place where she had drifted for an impossible instant and her entire life was taken away. Her whole body had frozen up, her throat had closed on her, and she was already beginning to cry from the wash of emotions completely holding her paralyzed more than any of Doom's shocks ever could. Not this again, not this, anything but this again. She couldn't do this again, she was going to disappear and never be found and there would be nothing left, she wasn't going to survive.

Someone, anyone, everyone. Please. Help.

[nerdfight]

There wasn't a word for how Doom felt being pulled into this nothing, this space. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time, falling forever and everywhere and not knowing which way was up or down. This was the answer he was looking for, not in the way he expected, but it was still one that solved a few things. For once in his life, he felt truly lost and insignificant and he honestly didn't know what to do with this feeling. He tried to feel anger towards the girl, but nothing came.

Speaking of the girl, his aborted tackle had turned into something more like a hug, Doom holding her carefully like a precious lifeline to the way back. She was panicking again and he wanted to be furious, but he could understand why she would panic in a place like this, where it seemed like it could swallow you whole and leave nothing behind. The problem was that they needed to get out and with her like this, she was virtually useless.

They need to get out. They need to get back. They don't need her losing it and drifting in this void forever.

[interspace]

There was nothing she could do to reclaim herself. Coming back here was surely a sign that she would be gone forever, no way to return home. No way to find a home to make. She wasn't going to keep it up if something didn't give. ALFRED was silent, still processing the upgrades that Doom had installed and she was utterly alone in this nothing-space. There was no one else — except that there was. She felt solidity, presence all around her as she was held against someone and kept close. It felt too good to be true, to surreal to actually be there, and yet she was holding on tightly and unable to stop herself from falling apart.

Motion had no effect on trajectory. No matter Victor holding her close or her shaking frame, no matter any movement they would make, they continued to fall into the neverending space. She was too far gone to see, too far gone to care which direction they were going because everywhere led to gone, but perhaps Doom would find hope in the light they were approaching. Close enough to reach out and touch, a near-miss otherwise, some kind of anchor they would never get the chance to reclaim. Useless though Misha may have been, she wasn't actively impeding any of Victor's range to do whatever he felt necessary in such a hopeless situation.

[nerdfight]

Doom was only somewhat better off than Misha, but he was aware of the light they were approaching and if she wasn't going to do something, then he was. Making sure Misha was held securely against him with one arm, he reached out to the light with the other hand and he felt a pull when his hand touched the light and the force got stronger and stronger until they were--

Falling. Out of the sky, but only by a couple meters, Doom below Misha and wrapping his other arm back around her as they hit the ground. He grunted from the impact and didn't move immediately, not because he was injured, but because his mind was still reeling from being in that nothing. It was like being a statue again, stuck without anything but his own mind. He couldn't stand the feelings of loneliness and hopelessness and dread it brought up and instead focused on the girl in his arms. "Insect. Dragonfly."

[interspace]

Despite the fact that the world had righted, there was sun on her back and directions once again made sense, Misha was still stuck in that place. Her heart wouldn't stop racing and her body wouldn't stop trembling, breaths coming in gasps and quivering long inhales when she could manage. Their impact hardly shook her but it did start to knock her attention outward rather than the terrifying focus of nothing that was anywhere.

She took in a large breath, shifting her head against Doom's chest where she had buried it and started whimpering where words refused to form. Her hands clenched and flexed, trying hard to will herself into some kind of action. It wasn't that she was unaware of who she was with or what must have happened, but her mind simply refused to let go of what had just happened. Like a broken record, it just kept skipping back and back and back and back—even as she fought to right herself.

[nerdfight]

To be perfectly honest, he wasn't expecting much in the way of a response from Misha quite yet. Both of them needed to calm down from their experience, her more than him. Doom had learned to force himself through rough situations without much of a look back, but he couldn't help but tremble a little bit at the feelings the interspace brought back up. It was bad and he would be happy to never step foot in there again, but some part of him knew that he was going to have to eventually.

He didn't even attempt to move, just laying in the dirt and sand and rocks that made up the ground he was on. Misha needed time and he was going to give her it and until she started to speak coherently, he was going to close his eyes and concentrate on other projects. Anything but focus on the void that would haunt his nightmares like being stuck frozen in that box currently did.

[interspace]

Somewhere in the middle of their bubble where nothing would touch them, nothing could reach until they were calmed and brought back to their own respective safe places, there was a quiet beep in Misha's ears, followed by a questioning voice. It was ALFRED, finally awake from the upgrades and updates and firewall checks, all of those stupid safeguards Reed had installed before finally handing the glorified flight calculator over to Misha for her birthday. She heard his voice and her sobs mixed with laughter because she still couldn't speak, couldn't explain anything or give any kind of signal. ALFRED only knew of that nightmare space from Misha's descriptions and she suddenly realized how lacking they had been from blessed time apart.

After a long enough pause of simply listening to Misha's unstable sounds and breaths, ALFRED did what ALFRED did best: he picked a course of action based off the information at hand. Music began to play in her ear, the usual playlist she pulled up after nightmares where she couldn't get to sleep. Calm and rhythmic things interspersed with angry, screaming wordless pits of metal and drums. It was incredibly helpful in calming her down and finding someplace in her brain where it made sense to feel like she was without being overpowered and soon she managed to gain her breath enough to attempt words once again.

Quietly, tentatively and very uncertain, Misha said, "D—Doom?"

[nerdfight]

Even with his eyes closed and mind drifting elsewhere, Doom noticed something was happening with Misha. He didn't know what, but it seemed to be an improvement over her previous state. That was good and he drifted away into his mind again, finding safety in numbers and shapes and designs so complicated that only a handful of people could understand them. It was soothing to him in the same way the music was to Misha. Both had their own ways of coping and hopefully that would be enough for now.

"Insect, you look better," he said calmly, opening his eyes to look at her. This was good. Both of them were in states where they could function, process what had happened, and figure out where they were now. That was a step in the right direction and he realized that he was still holding onto her almost protectively and moved his arms so that he was no longer holding her. That was embarrassing and not something he needed to deal with at the moment. "Do you think you'd be up for moving or do you want me to carry you?"

[interspace]

Better was so hilariously relative that Misha had to laugh. Well, she tried, anyway. It morphed into a sob in the way that sounds tended to do after a long cry but the intent was there and she shuddered, waiting until it passed, and decidedly did not raise her head while laying over Victor von Doom. It was like staying still when there was a predator trying to find you. No sudden movements or anything like that.

The question was supposed to be a sarcastic jab, but Misha wasn't going to throw it away just because of that. Taking stock of herself, there was a lot wrong. Her mind may have been coming back to her, but the pure shock of reliving that nightmare had only exasperated the tension in her extremities while also turning them into goo. There was no way she could stand and her mind was too exhausted to cheat her way into it for as long as they would need. "I dunno if I can get my legs moving," she said after a moment. If Victor was going to make the offer, facetious or not, she had no pride left to injure that day by taking him up on it.

[nerdfight]

There was a long sigh, but Doom didn't really seem all too bothered by the response. "Then I'll carry you," he conceded and started to carefully move her off him and onto the ground. It wasn't that he was being nice so much that he had realized that he had overestimated her physical capacity and she was far more fragile that he initially believed. He got to his feet and then moved so that he was crouched back down in front of her, his back facing her.

"Grab on and I'll carry you," Doom said without any sort of stinging tone, instead a hint of resignation was lurking. He was the one who made a sarcastic comment that she happened to actually use against him, so it was his fault that this was happening. Not that he would ever own up to it. "Breathe a word of this to Reed and his ilk and I will make sure you pay for it."

[interspace]

When she was set aside, Misha took the moment to try wiping away any lingering traces of her freakout. Physically speaking, it was going to leave her with puffy eyes and a tiredness she couldn't hide, but cleaning up would make her feel better and that would definitely show. Doom was in front of her and she shifted, reaching out to wrap her arms around his neck and get herself situated. She didn't even bother worrying about putting too much weight against his airways considering the guy was made of metal and even Ben Grimm hadn't been able to choke Doom out.

"My lips are sealed," she promised with an obvious tone of amusement. As entertaining as their situation was in the abstract, it would be hard to separate from the why it was happening even later on. This was not an experience she planned to revisit often and Doom's own subdued reaction was telling her that he was probably in a similar boat. Although the question was one she assumed had no answer, she asked, "Where we heading? See anywhere nearby?"

[nerdfight]

Doom didn't even react to the arms around his neck. There was a weird dichotomy between his skin and the metal body underneath it. He could feel the pressure of his arms that his mind processed as something that should damage him, but yet the metal underneath didn't budge at all. Once he was sure she had a good hold on him, he stood up and held onto her legs just in case her arms gave way. She felt like she weighed nothing to him and he wouldn't have a problem carrying her for any sort of distance.

"Good, I'd hate to have to kill you." There wasn't any sort of malice in his voice, like he was just going through the motions instead of actively caring what Reed thought about him. He turned around slowly to see if he could find anything and stopped when he saw something in the distance. "There's something over there. Hopefully, it's civilization of some sort."

[interspace]

It was a given that Misha would need the support to keep herself held up, although she cheated just enough to get them standing and in a good position. Weirdly enough, it was hard to outright tell the man carrying her didn't have regular flesh underneath his clothes and skin. Whatever it was that his metal-insides was truly made out of, his squishy outer coating did a great job of hiding what was underneath.

Throwing some of her caution to the wind, Misha set her chin on Doom's shoulder. She looked in the distance that he was indicating and nodded halfway. "Yeah, I think I see it. Maybe. If not, we'll be closer to something else than we were before. Just... this could be anywhere, you know?" she added quietly.

[nerdfight]

If it was any other time, Doom would have noticed these weaknesses and used them against her, but she looked the way he felt and he couldn't really blame her for it. Not everyone was as good as Doom when it came to hiding their weaknesses, especially the mental ones, so he wasn't going to hold it against her at this point in time.

"We'll see when we get there," he stated as he started to walk, making sure not to jostle Misha too much as he walked. Doom knew better than to start running when the girl could barely move and could potentially fall off. And given how far off it seemed, it gave him the perfect opportunity to ask something that had been bothering him. "What was that place?"

[interspace]

"My own personal hell," Misha muttered darkly. It was a hard, difficult thing to explain where exactly they had gone in those few terrifying moments. She had only been there once, after all, but that was still one more time than Doom had under his belt. Despite that fact, it was pretty easy to understand what the place had been and the implications of entering somewhere other than where they exited. Start in one place, end up somewhere that possibly didn't even exist in relation to the point of origin. Point A to point 1, if you would. After a notable pause for thought, Misha continued.

"It's, like... multi-universe theory. If you can imagine a permutation of events, it exists somewhere out there. That place is the hub, I guess," she said, uncertainty obvious in her tone. This time, she couldn't possibly be so lucky as to recognize where she had ended up, and that thought scared her. More than anything else, she seemed to be running purely off fear to keep going recently. First with Doom and his kidnapping plot, now with being dragged into that outer-universe that sent chills down her spine. At least she now knew it wasn't her own personal bias that made the place terrifying, yet on the other hand she was certain it had been her own power that pulled her back in. What kind of cruel trick was that? "That was the second time I've ever seen it. Look... when I said anywhere, I really mean it."

[nerdfight]

"The multiverse theory. I'm familiar with the concept," he murmured thoughtfully as he processed the information. If every single one of those lights he saw was its own universe, then there were countless numbers of universes out there. Then things seemed to click together. She had been in there once before and had knowledge of events in his own universe that nobody else would have. Knowing the theory as he did, he let out a sigh. There was only one answer that fit. "Then in your original universe, mine is a fictional construct."

Surprisingly, he's not angry about the concept of being fictional because he knows he's real at least in his own universe and honestly, any universe where he wasn't real must be inferior to his own. A universe without Doom was one not worth thinking about and fate had clearly decided that to be the truth when the girl was removed from it. But there were other things to worry about like where they were at the moment. "Then we will figure out where exactly we are and work from there. You have more experience with this, so for the moment, I will defer to your judgment."