1 [ G series ] A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

I woke up floating upright in a vat full of pink goo with two sets of memories fighting it out inside my head.

Which is why even though one set was warning me that the harness holding me upright in the vat was going to release me as soon the last of the artificial embryonic fluid drained out and the clear front of the tube lifted up, I still ended up doing a face plant out on the cold metal plating that made up the floor of my birthing unit.

At least all the various tubes that had been stuck in various parts of me had been gently removed by the development chamber’s automated arms before all the fluid drained out.

So as I lay there and sorted through my memories, I realized that one of them, which defined me as a person, belonged to my former life that ended under some rather foggy and painful circumstances. While the other part of my mind was filled with a rather impersonal set of... not so much memories as programmed knowledge.

Heavily edited information.

There was a lot of knowledge of science that was greatly more advanced than anything the first set of memories was familiar with. As well as a fair amount of the basics of several schools of sorcery.

And then a lot of of local history that seemed highly familiar.

Most telling was the information about Victor Von Doom, or as I guess I could call him. Dad.

Von Doom was a scientist, a sorcerer, a head of state, and a supervillain. What he wasn’t was a family man. From the implanted information he himself chose to put in my head, he claimed he just knew that any heir he fathered would be in danger for all of their lives, and would inevitably turn against him Doom and try to overthrow him due to narrative influences.

I took a moment to review those last two words.

Doom knew he was in a universe that ran on story based rules. Which should hardly be a surprise since Doom was a genius even by other people’s standards. I just never thought he would have figured that one out since his arrogance was his blind spot. I couldn't see him tolerating living under someone else’s whims.

Which is maybe what had happened to him to make him go missing for the five years it took to activate the Heir protocols which had awakened me and the other five eldest of my eleven brothers and sisters. All potential heirs to the throne of Latveria, and all set up to be ready to duke it out until the best Doom wins.

I could see the logic, twisted as it is. Too few of us and an unworthy Doom could win by luck. Too many and we would destroy the country fighting things out with our superpowers.

That’s right. Doom didn’t make clones, which never seems to work out in any kind of story, he made children. Each one of us paired up with a gene sample of some female superhuman.

Almost assuredly without their consent. Old Vic liked to play the part of a refined gentleman but wasn’t really a consent kind of guy.

I tried to speak out loud and say something bitter about being what amounted to a rape baby, but I had to spend a few fun filled moments coughing up the last of the tube’s embryonic fluid from my lungs.

A small dome shaped robot slide out of a slot and began sucking up the mess, while another sank down to the floor to scrub away the last of the residue.

Doom, always thinking dozens of steps ahead.

Of course, he didn’t bother to include information in my and most likely my sibling's brains on just who our various mothers or let’s say, unwilling gene donors were. The memories he set up for us were bare bone facts with nothing to help define us as people. But at least he gave me a name.

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Engraved on a bronze plate at the base of my growth tube were the words Gustav Von Doom.

I think I’m just going to go by Gus.

As far as my other set of memories…

I had been from a large family and paid my own way through community college. I had gotten a job that had nothing to do with my training but paid for a decent car and an apartment. Then I had been drifting through life, with no serious relationships, and no real drive to improve myself or start a family.

And this universe was a fictional one back over there, even if this one didn’t quite match the films or the comic books. But comics tended to get retconned every so often anyways.

As for all my personal memories of that other life though, let’s call them foggy at best. People’s faces, names, or even my own name were sort of blurred out and left me feeling more like they were something I had seen or read about than real memories.

That person I had been, wasn’t me now. Gus was a new person with a new life, anything I remembered from the other guy could give me an edge and would influence who I became. But I, Gus, would be the one to decide who I was going to be in this life.

Not the old me, and certainly not Doomy McDoomface.

And I was going to go by an old timey grandpa name like Gus rather than pick something trendy like Trent, or Liam used to be. No cringey fad names for me.

Gus, good old Gus, the name for a mechanic you could trust. Gus. The Von Doom part would have to go. Don’t need that kind of history on my shoulders, and since this world runs on narrative laws a Von Doom would inevitably end up with severe facial scarring. And I felt no need to get stuck with scars that would somehow always be beyond my ability to fix, or would somehow come back.

No sir, no thanks.

Upon my mental review, as I got up off the floor, I knew I was in a storage container sized device that was eighty percent filled with the mechanisms to keep me developing and alive for the last nine or so years while forcing my growth to go at twice the normal rate.

It would also have dissolved my body, still unawakened, at the age of twenty four and would have started over with a new sibling so that none of us would ever get too old to start ruling over Latveria as a fresh, new, and young Baron.

A little harsh there, Dad.

I did spare a moment to think of the people of Latveria who no doubt had been taken over by a harsh dictatorship that would make Von Doom or his Heir seem like a beloved enlightened ruler in comparison. At least I believed that’s what Narrative law would demand. Or alternatively, my power mad sibling would be trying to overthrow a relative utopia which had thrived in Doom's absence.

So I guess that was something I would have to look into.

But right now in addition to my artificial womb, the unit was equipped with a Matrix Forge and a second storage unit worth of raw materials buried below my birthplace.

I needed a super suit.

I am a Doom, it’s our thing.

There was no way a narrative universe would just let me live a normal life. Drama would somehow always find me, and if I wasn’t prepared, I could end up being a supporting character that gets killed off as part of someone else’s Hero’s Journey.

Nope. I was going to have to be a main character. Someone who got their own title. That way even if I got killed, somehow, I would come back. To keep the trademark if nothing else.

I sighed. This is such a weird way to think about things.

So, until I figured out what my powers from the mom were, a suit of Doctor Doom armor would have to do. With some suitable adjustments. No scowling mask, no dull gray armor.

No holstered handgun belted over it.

Instead, I went with a streamlined white armored suit with blue highlights that would be based more on Anime than a Medieval Times restaurant. Very generic looking in fact, so I added a big blue hooded cape with a simple white patterned trim that generated a deflective gravatonic based field to help ward off most types of energy attacks and physical blows.

I also made the fabric weave slippery as hell.

There was no point in wearing something to help protect me that would end up getting sucked into a jet turbine or yanked down by the Hulk getting a grip on it.

No sir, no thanks. I also included both a voice command and a physical clasp to release the cape in an emergency.

Now I just needed a name for a costumed identity. Perhaps something that was the opposite of the name and nature of Doom? Hope, humility… A sense of humor?

No, I’m not that goody, goody. So something like Progeny or Scion? A bit of a giveaway there.

I was going to have to workshop this a bit.

My stomach growled and I realized I was starving. And looking at the Matrix Forge I could see from the readout that I had another twenty five minutes just to finish the face plate for my armor before I could set it to make me something to eat.

Hmm, looks like I have some time to kill.

I guess it was time to think about who my female gene donor could be. So who could Doom’s ego tolerate as a mother to one of his kids?