My eyes were locked onto the display of nuclear bombs slowly descending onto Wakanda's shields, looking back to meet Doom's gaze as he spoke.
"You are the fastest variable in this reality, Pietro Maximoff and yet, even a man as fast as you cannot be in two places at once," Doom spoke with an amused tone. "Make your choice: Abandon your friends and lover to save your sister or fight Doom and risk the chance that Wakanda's barriers can withstand the explosion."
"Strange, portal?"
"If he does, I merely detonate them early."
"I could teleport them to another destination."
"Yet, the radiation would remain, and tens of thousands of lives would be lost. Can you live with that, Pietro Maximoff?" Chaos energy around my body sparked as time slowed, the flashes of silver-blue helping me think better.
'Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck! Okay, come on! Come on, there has to be something! Think of something!' I could run over and get everyone out, but I'd have to carry them all out of the range of the blast radius as well.
Doing so would tire me out, especially since I barely got a good meal afterwards. That would mean everyone here would have to deal with Doom on their own.
'Can they handle him? Agh! What am I thinking? Of course not!'
"Pietro."
'However, if I stay here and the barriers break, that's Wanda, Vision and the entirety of Wakanda gone. Can I let them die just because I didn't want to risk Nat and the others' lives?'
"Pietro."
'On the off-hand, even if the barriers hold, I risk the very slim chance of the vibranium absorbing the kinetic energy and being overloaded by it, thus resulting in an even bigger explosion coming from inside their barreirs. Would Wakanda design their barriers to do that? Shit! Don't got enough info!'
"Kid!" I blinked as I heard Tony's sharp command, turning to see him and the other Avengers staring at me with frowns. "Go."
"What? No, you guys can't handle this."
"Not to toot our own horns, but we fought off an alien invasion, too care of a killer robot uprising and patched things up after having a civil war with each other," Nat replied, adjusting her Widow bites. "I think we can handle another megalomaniac that thinks he wants to become king of the world."
"No, this...I'm not risking it."
"Pietro, go and save your sister. Then, come back and help us," Steve cut in, a smile on his face. "You said that you're the fastest living thing on the planet, right?"
"In the galaxy."
"Good. Prove it now. Show it to everyone here that you are," I met the captain's gaze before looking at everyone. Thor just gave a grinning thumbs-up as Hulk thumped his fists together.
Strange on the other hand had a mixture of exasperation and amusement on his face as he nodded with Tony, my eyes travelling from them to Natalia as she smiled.
"Go," she repeated, "and when you get back, we'll have a real talk on that retirement you spoke of."
"You're retiring? I never thought I'd see the day," I ignored Tony's words as I stepped closer, grabbing her hands and kissing her knuckles softly.
"Please, make sure you stay safe, okay?"
"Don't worry. I'll make sure she does," Steve spoke and I gave a thankful smile, turning to Doom as the man stood waiting his hands behind his back.
"Are you done lamenting on your choices, Pietro Maximoff?"
"Don't worry. This will be all over in a flash."
"It will be," He spoke before my eyes widened at his next words. "After all, this footage is delayed by two minutes."
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3rd Person POV:
'Now, let us watch your descent into despair,' Doom thought, watching as Pietro's eyes slowly widened along with everyone else's.
Yet, before he could speak, his own widened slightly as Pietro's Super Mode activated and the young man took off.
Pietro himself was uncaring for the world around him as he ran, each step pumped with adrenaline, desperation and want as he carved a bloody trail straight towards Wakanda.
The aura around his body crackled and shot out arcs of electricity, charring the very ground he ran upon while throwing out devastating shockwaves.
Towering waves of water erupted upwards with every step and evaporated before they could even fall down, his body vibrating to slip between the bonds of mountains and trees.
Where he once took a few seconds to reach Wakanda, barely three had passed before he caught sight of its barriers.
Walls of condensed light that were once invisible were now lighting up the horizon, straining to block off a sea of radiation that tried to shatter it.
His eyes locked onto the first people in the villages outside Wakanda's border, grabbing onto them before turning and running them to the base of a mountain range nearly twenty miles away.
Turning back around, he grabbed the next couple, doing so over and over again while waves of fire and concussive force shattered the barrier of Wakanda.
Putting the last villager down, he felt his lungs burning and his heart thundering against his ribs. He raced towards the centre of the city, picking up a few pieces of cloth along the way.
Wrapping them around over two dozen people, Pietro strained his muscles to move as he dragged the people behind him, placing them right beside the villagers.
Turning right back around, black dots began to swam in his vision, but he fought through it, determination burning in his veins as he carried two entire rhinos that had people sitting on it.
'Come on! You're the fastest in the galaxy! No, you're the fastest in the fucking universe, so move!' With a snarl, Pietro found himself running through a shower of the translucent shards that had made up the barrier.
His hand enveloped that of the young and the elderly, his shoulders carried the weight of a thousand people and his arms lifted the bodies of thousands.
Yet, despite the blood pouring from his orifices and the pain of his torn muscles, he never stopped moving. Only one thought flashed through his mind as he ran.
'Just one more step,' the speedster thought to himself, carrying the last of the Dora Milaje to stand next to T'Challa before he raced back.
Now with just one destination left, Pietro ignored the heat of the flames as he wrapped an arm around Wanda and Vision, struggling with every step as he felt his back beginning to burn.
'Just...one...more step!' With a second wind, he finally shot out of the city and towards the Wakandans, barely able to put the couple down before falling to his knees.
The moment he stopped, all of Wakanda were stunned as they found themselves taken twenty miles from their homes within the mere blink of an eye.
They didn't get to dwell on it much as a loud and thunderous explosion tore through the air, making them look to the horizon to see a blinding mushroom cloud slowly rise into the sky.
"Pietro!" Wanda screamed as she rushed to her brother's side, who was struggling to breathe through the blood dripping from his nose and throat
"B-Breathe," he gasped out and slithering threads of scarlet chaos magic erupted from her hands. They coiled into his chest and out through his nose and mouth, the speedster gagging and vomiting up dark red blood.
Wanda pulled her magic back and allowed the speedster to finally breathe, who didn't dare to move as his body felt as though every single cell was being burned at the same time.
"T-Tony."
"What of Mr. Stark?" Vision asked, kneeling beside him as T'Challa, Bucky and the Dora Milaje approached.
"F-Fighting...Doom...Nuke...Wakanda...was used...to distract me..." he struggled to get out, Vision immediately helping him sit down when the speedster tried to stand.
"No, you are not going anywhere like this. Sit," Wanda ordered, keeping her brother down as he tried to rise again.
"I-I need to. They're...they're going to die."
"Wakanda...it's gone?" Most of the Wakandans looked dismayed as they heard that, T'Challa and the Dora Milaje bowing their heads with the citizens as Bucky frowned.
"Great, so there's another super-villain trying to take over the world?"
"N-No, he-ugh!" Pietro's body stiffened as he fell back, gripping at his chest as he struggled to get the breath in.
"Pietro! Just keep breathing!" Wanda spoke with a concerned look, using her chaos magic to manually close his wounds.
'No! Come on! Just...just one more step!' Yet, despite his internal screaming, he couldn't stop the darkness from consuming his consciousness as exhaustion took him away.
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At the same time:
Outskirts of Latveria:
"And there he goes. Doom thought he would have attacked, but it appears I was proven wrong," Doom murmured, a frown adorning his face under the mask as he turned back to the gathered foes.
"You don't know the kid that well then," Steve replied, adjusting his shield as Doom nodded.
"It appears not, but he will arrive to nothing but a devastating failure," he replied, stepping back as the Doom bots rushed forward. "Now, Doom remembers you telling him that he would be captured and yet, he does not see it happening."
"Then, let's the show on the road, people," the armour on Tony's arms snapped open as he fired off a salvo of missiles, the opening strike setting off the Doom bots as the Avengers and Strange rushed to meet their charge.
Dozens of arcs of electricity erupted from Thor's body as he leapt, drawing in their attention as he raised Stormbreaker.
"For Midgard!" The Asgardian roared, descending from the sky and impacting the first droid with a brutal cleave. Lightning erupted from the blast, carving through five Doom-bots behind the first and sending the rest hurtling to the ground as smoking heaps of debris.
Right beside him, Hulk roared as he clapped his hands together, flattening a Doom-bot that got caught between his hands. Natalia leapt over his shoulder and kicked another bot down, ducking behind Steve as he rushed in and threw his shield.
It richochet off several bots before flying back to Steve, who caught it with a spin before flinging it again. Giving a thumbs-up to Tony as the shield bounced back, Nat ducked into a split as Tony aimed and fired his uni-beam.
The Captain grunted as it impacted him, bracing and spinning to deflect the concentrated beam at the other bots trying to surround him.
Hulk roared as he charged in, leaping over Steve to grab a bot and slam it into another. Several fired beams of emerald-green light at him only for large Tao Mandalas to block off the blasts.
With a series of intricate mudra handsigns, Strange shaped the Mirror Dimension into a barrier in front of him, blocking off the barrage of beams fired at his form before pushing it forward.
The Doom-bots rushing at them were swallowed by the spell as he cancelled it out, eldritch magic erupting from his hands in the form of whips.
With a flourish and a leap, Strange spun through the air while lashing out with a large sweep, slicing through the Doom-bots while flicking out platforms to Natalia.
She leapt from them as she fired her Widow Bites, stunning the bots long enough for Strange to fire beams of Eldritch light that burned through their forms.
Tony himself shot up into the air, his palms lighting up with a vibrant blue hue as he fired repulsor beam after repulsor beam at the bots flying up to him.
Yet, his focus was not on them, but their creator, his variant that still had his hands behind his back as though the Avengers destroying his army was not such a big issue.
'We need to take him out.'
"F.RI.D.A.Y?"
"Yes, boss?"
"Send in the HB2.0.
"Already en route, boss," Tony looked up as the clouds above were split apart, smiling at the sight of his latest creation hurtling towards their location.
However, his eyes widened as a large emerald-green runic circle appeared in its path, firing out a colossal beam of light and reducing his new Hulkbuster to ashes.
"You truly believed I would let you disrupt my plans with your little toys, did you?" Doom scoffed, lowering his right gauntlet as the residual magical energy faded away. "I have studied and read up on countless suits you've created across countless timelines, Stark."
"You can't insult me, because that'll be like insulting yourself," Tony spoke with a snort, to which Doom just raised his left gauntlet at him.
Strange formed a triple-layered Tao Mandala in the path of the beam that Doom fired at Stark, but his eyes widened as he watched the man's beam slipped through two of the barriers before exploding upon impact with the third.
"Using a separate protection layer on the last barrier? Quite clever of you, Strange."
'He can rewrite his spell mid-casting? This might be much more dangerous than we anticipated,' he thought, watching as the villain turned away from him to look where Natasha helped Steve cut off the heads of three Doom-bots.
"Natalia Alianova Romanoff, you are worse than Doom anticipated," Nat frowned at his words, feeling a bit insulted.
"Well, I've been mostly running for the past two years."
"Doom supposes that is true, but still, he expected better."
"Well, why don't you stop hiding behind your bots and take us on yourself?"
"...Very well," they all blinked as the bots all crumbled like marionettes without strings, Doom himself walking forward towards her. "Doom is not one to shy away from a challenge. Now, come."
"Hulk like tin-man!" With a happy snarl, the green behemoth shot forward with a surprising speed, Doom's head snapping to him as Hulk swung a fist.
Instead of moving out of the path of the blow, Doom stood still, raising his left gauntlet as several geometric sigils flared to life in the air beside him.
The blow landed with a thunderous boom, sending dust and stone flying everywhere. The Avengers and Strange grunted as they stood fast, enduring the force right before their eyes widened as Doom became visible.
Hulk himself looked surprised as Doom held his palm to his fist, a snort of derision escaping the villain's lips.
"Raw strength driven by anger. A primitive way of battle," With a simple twist of his wrist, their eyes widened as Hulk's elbow and shoulder popped out of socket before the behemoth was sent soaring back with a loud pop.
"Point Break! Light him up!" Tony opened the back of his suit again as he slouched slightly and Thor didn't hesitate as Stormbreaker brought down a blinding column of white-hot lightning on the villain's head.
At the same time, Tony swung his arms out with a roar, unleashing a monstrous beam of plasma that intermixed with Thor's lightning.
The Latverian monarch was engulfed in a dome of blinding light as Tony's attack ceased, Thor himself stopping his lightning as they stared at the aftermath.
Steve could barely make out the shadowy form standing on the slag that was once the ground, eyes squinting to see how damaged their target was.
Yet, as the smoke cleared, they were all treated to the sight of Doom standing completely calm within a revolving sphere of emerald ruins. Strange could barely make out some before they shattered, Doom raising his hand with a hum as sparks of electricity lit up the runes on his gauntlet.
"Impressive, but predictable, Stark. It brings me heartbreak to say that none of you are capable of bringing harm to m-" Doom stopped talking as his head snapped to the clouds, the others doing the same.
"What...in the fuck?" Natalia cussed as she looked up, staring at the three gargantuan, sword-shaped spaceships that appeared with deafening gold-blue flashes.
"It appears your time has come to an end, Avengers," Tony looked to Doom as he watched the king of Latveria fly up, spinning just as all of Latveria's citizens stopped in their tracks.
Then, his eyes widened as they all flew up, using some form of repulsion device like his own that fired from their hands and feet to help them fly after their leader.
"...I don't suppose we accounted for this, did we?" Tony asked, Steve slowly shaking his head as Doom stopped to float at head-level with a man dressed in purple neurokinetic armour.
"Doom."
"Kang, you've come earlier than expected."
"You are not prepared?"
"Always. Doom simply did not believe you would like to meet your demise at such a young age."
"Oh, I've had years to sit around," Kang replied with a scoff, to which Doom had a subtle smirk of anticipation under his mask as both leaders looked at each other.
"What are the parameters of our battle?"
"Any and all are included. Now then, let us battle," Strange's eyes widened and he immediately created the Shield of the Seraphim around the ground, helping them fall through a portal just as a colossal beam of light came down upon the entirety of Latveria.
A/N: And we end it here!! I was going to delay this, but then I thought, 'You know what? Fuck it, we're going big and then we're going home'.
Next chapter: Secret Wars I
As always, read, enjoy, review and until the next one...
Ba-Bye~!!