The fingers came up under his mask, piercing his gorget with a cold metallic sound. He froze as he suddenly felt the cold, vibrating edges resting on the skin of his face, and alarms began to blaze on his internal HUD as his armor’s systems were compromised.

No alarms, no alerts. No idea an assassin was here.

The grip was like a vice, and then his backplate, holding the primary power source and main computer drives of his armor, shrieked and fell off him in a wash of heat and sparks, held back only by his insulated underarmor.

The hand on his face, holding him very sure and stably, didn’t move as his armor was sliced off of him, the hardened steel with quiet magical reinforcement sheared through like paper by flashes of gold, right down to the fingers on his gauntlets. They all whined in protest and fell away heavily, clattering to the floor around him, and he did not move.

With a flick of the back of that hand, his mask was sliced apart, and his naked face was revealed to the world. He could only contain his outrage.

Something bumped him in the back of his knees, and he was forced down with overpowering strength that would have simply broken his bones if he resisted.

He didn’t resist, sitting erect on the stool there and saying nothing.

An unnatural arm, clearly some form of psychic construct, flowing gold in hue, deposited a flat, square device on the lab table in front of him. He recognized the device and more importantly, the red star upon it, and tensed up despite himself when he saw it.

“Activate it,” her soft voice whispered in his ear.

He was absolutely sure that if he refused to obey that the hand on his face would close, and he would never refuse anyone anything again.

He reached out and put his hand on the holo projector. It read his palmprint, and hummed to life.

The detail on it was fantastically clear, the equal of anything he could produce himself, but far smaller, he noted sourly. His mood didn’t get any better when the image of the owner of the device flickered into existence in front of him.

“Victor,” The Great Bear stated, and his pale violet eyes were flatter and colder than von Doom had ever seen directed at him.

“Master,” he acknowledged. “Forgive me if I do not bow...”

There was a crunch as something very heavy was deposited on his table behind the holoscreen, crushing forty thousand rubles of equipment and a modulater for a white hole power source worth probably half a million rubles, even partially made as it was, totally flat.

He also recognized that cube as his own work, and where it was from.

“Victor, the first reason you are not dead right now is because the little toy on your desk there failed to kill anyone. The second reason is because I had to ask The Golden Hag to give you exactly one more chance.” Those pale violet eyes, always so penetrating in that crude face, narrowed to slits, and despite himself, Victor felt his heart skip a beat.

His Master had never looked at him like that, even when disappointed by his attitude or the callous nature of his experiments.

He finally realized what it meant to truly anger The Great Bear...

“I do not understand your obsession with Dr. Richards, nor do I care. I will not stop you from going after him again, but I will say this: when you do, succeed or fail, you will die, and I will not step in to save you again.”

The fingers/claws on his face tensed ever so slightly, and cool breath blew on his ear.

“Both of you are far too intelligent and capable, and you could save this planet many times over. Unfortunately, that also means that a struggle between you could doom it together, and I will not permit that.”

Everything shook at the Great Bear’s words. The table, the walls, the floor, his bones and blood, and his teeth actually clattered at those words.

You couldn’t project that kind of power through a holoprojection. At least, he had no idea how to do so...

“There is a price for my intervention.” Master Briggs’ frown only seemed to deepen. “I will never see you wear that ridiculous mask in public again.” Doom’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “The next time I see your face concealed in public and it is not war, I, too, will cover my face, and I will come to pay you a visit in that little country I allowed you to claim, and I will bring you away, not to be seen again.”

Victor von Doom wanted to protest this statement, and only by supreme force of will did he keep his silence. Again, he was sure if protested those words, it would be the last thing he ever uttered. The Words of that promise RANG around him, like a great vice of steel and fate mixed together, and although his magical knowledge wasn’t great, he could feel how deadly ominous that Oath was.

The whole world lived in fear of inciting The Great Bear’s wrath. Mercy and generosity were the rights of the strong, and he was being shown what came on the other side of that hand today, a thing he had only ever dispensed from the other side.

“Understood, Master Briggs,” he acknowledged stiffly. He even managed to stifle most of his resentment.

“Valeria’s training in the Red Room is done. I will be returning her to you. I expect a marriage within six months, and a child within eighteen. If you wish to reign, start acting like a proper ruler and begin your dynasty.

“As always, I am here for counsel if needed. Good day, Victor.”

“Good day, Master.”

The holoscreen vanished, the projector collapsed into dust, and Victor was alone.

Alone!

He slowly reached up to his face, and found no hand there. He hadn’t even noticed when it had been withdrawn. His fingers came away with tiny traces of crimson from where her fingers had broken his skin.

He dared to turn his head then, and saw that there was no one behind him. Indeed, only the scattered armor about his feet gave any sign that she had been here.

An idle display, showing that she could reach him through all of his defenses. It was a grim lesson to learn...

“Doombots, attend me!” he called out, resisting the urge to lash out.

Nothing happened, and the hackles rose on his skin. He looked at the three attending robots in his lab, discretely withdrawn into the corners and sides, and how they were unmoving.

“Castle, status report!” he called out, and a cold shiver went down his back when there was no reply.

He turned and made his way out of the lab, looking left and right down the corridors under his castle, seeing they had gone oddly dark... as had the elevator leading directly down from off his audience chamber.

---

He took the stairs and made his way up them coolly. When he reached the top, he stared at the sunlight leaking in around the non-descript wooden door there.

This particular door was set well inside his castle, near the ancient armory, and nowhere near a window.

He pulled it open and stepped forth.

The sun shone down. The wind blew in his face. His view extended in all directions, and he slowly looked right and left.

His castle had been leveled. The great slicing marks of stone sheared through by something impossibly sharp and strong were clearly visible, smooth and slick. He reached out to a wall stone to his right, framing the descending corridor, and it felt as smooth as if water-carved.

He’d heard nothing, felt nothing.

Not from the collapsed towers and keeps. Not from the self-defense cannons and missile launchers going off and now laying about shredded. Not from the Doombots shattered and fused all over the place, nor the legions of combat bots that had been dispatched from underground barracks and were now completely ripped apart, scattered across the killing grounds around the castle.

There were fallen jets and combat vehicles burning here and there, chopped apart without restraint. He stared at it all, and his expression grew more and more unsightly.

It was one thing to be able to do all of this. It was quite another to be able to do it and him not notice or be alerted of anything at all going on.

It meant she had entered his home, his center of power, compromised all of his security systems, and then proceeded to thoroughly wreck everything before heading down to him.

The moat was draining into the lower depths of his dungeons. Great gashes in the earth plunged down for who knew how much distance, and he was sure the structural damage to the land here was complete. He would literally have to excavate all the stone and rebuild with steel and masonry if he wished to keep using this location.

But his people were safe and unharmed, a full crowd assembled outside the fallen walls and collapsed drawbridge, staring at him as he stepped forth from the only intact structure left of his castle.

At his naked face, and the scars upon it.

His fists clenched, and he had to breathe deeply to stop himself from trying to shield his face and turn away.

He knew Master Briggs was watching, and Master Briggs would do exactly what he had said. He would bring Victor von Doom away, and his student would not be heard from again.

It was a different world, and von Doom considered the visage of his Master, and that promise.

One chance only, to take his rightful place upon the throne of the world, the place his Master was not leaving to him. If he chose to do so by force... now he knew The Golden Hag was truly watching him, and not merely addressing annoying problems to him now and then to take care of by that damn crystal phone.

There had been no warnings from The Golden Hag. Her words reached those who needed them by various means, and it was she who decided when the line was crossed and it was time to act.

There were several vengeance contingencies he had devised in the event of his death or fall. He felt certain that if he went to investigate them now, he would find them all off-line.

He would no more be allowed to threaten their world than any other invading alien, cosmic horror, mystical threat, or deranged lunatic, and their eyes were now cold and upon him.

He had known the Baxter Building would survive the trip into outer space. His probes of its structure and design had revealed the extent of the internal restructuring and bracing Richards had done on the building, and the costs of some of the materials. Indeed, he would have been quite disappointed if any of the members of Richards’ team were injured in the slightest.

He had not taken into consideration how other powers might view his deed, and the mastery of the world it portended.

The old man and his unfathomable knowledge and power, and the woman who acted without restraint from any other being in this world. He could tell the simple fact that his Master now owed her a favor for not slaughtering him was not a small thing...

They were watching him. Watching him, because he was a being who could destroy the world, and they would kill him before he could do so.

A brooding look on his face, Victor von Doom considered what the future held for him now as he stepped forward to address his people.

Explaining this would not be difficult at all. They would either believe what he told them, or they would not, and his reign would continue.

He would merely have to steer a far more cautious course now than he had been ready to embark on...