13 [ Iris ] Family Feud

My brother tilted his head to one side in a familiar gesture from another life, even his fake Wakandan accent sounded pretty much the same. “Perhaps we should first find out just what surprises Doom may have left before we have anyone else join us. But in the end, the decision is yours, Baroness Von Doom. This is your house.”

I grinned and turned to look at the heavy doors at the end of the hallway the Doombot had been waiting for us in, but I stopped for a second to look over my shoulder to look at Horus. “My house, but it will always be one of your homes. Heck, with all the different overlapping versions of it, you can even pick a castle out for yourself.”

He nodded then gestured at the door for me to lead the way. “Invulnerable ladies first.”

Stupid mask. I can’t tell if he’s making faces at me under there.

The door resisted me pulling at it just enough that I had to put my elbow into it, which made something snap inside the metal core of the heavy dark stained oak door. The wood splintered as the internal locking mechanism came off in my hand along with the handle.

Horus fake sighed behind me. “Perhaps try pushing next time?”

I glared at the mass of twisted metal in my hand. “My castle, my doors. They’re going to open however I want them to or they will suffer the consequences!” I raised my fist in the air. “So says Doom!”

Inside the room sat a familiar looking machine, right down to the transparent tank that had a load of thick clear embryonic fluid draining out of it and the naked body of a big fit looking guy inside of it hooked up to various tubes and sensors being pulled off of or out of him by robotic arms.

The guy was well over six feet tall, and covered with almost peach colored thick, rough looking skin sectioned off by cracks into segments, all topped by a full head of dark red hair.

Horus came up beside me, “That is not one of us, which I can tell from the hair alone, but he also has subdermal scaring all over his body, inside and out, all spreading out from his neck. He was electrocuted badly enough that his heart was damaged.”

I smirked at him. “Aw, showing off that wide spectrum senses huh? Magnetic resonance? You got any idea who this guy is?”

He tapped the side of his mask and pulled it away to show me the face of a bald young man with skin the color of coffee beneath it. Handing the mask over to me he frowned at the man in the tank. “I don’t know who he is, but he looks a lot like Victor’s collage yearbook photos, while his skin seems a lot like the Thing’s except thinner and lighter colored.”

Nodding since I had picked up on that, I held the mask up close to my face so that I could see a display of several black and white images of a young Victor Von Doom that was a close match to the man in the tank in both looks and age.

I also saw a security acknowledgment that Iris Von Doom has full access to the Seshat data archives.

Grinning, I rocked Horus off his feet with a shove on his shoulder. “You gave me access to your data system, thanks bro.”

Of course, the archives didn’t give me command access, not directly, and ‘full’ access was relative, but still, it was a gesture of trust.

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Or a way of getting my retina scans. It was the sort of tricky stuff he had liked to pull.

The eyes of the man inside the tank, a brown the same color as Horus’s and my own, at least in my pasty pale form, snapped open, then narrowed in anger as his face twisted up, just before he vanished from sight.

Horus snapped out “Crap!” and flew up in front of me, putting his back to the tank as his entire suit of armor took on a mirror like sheen tinted by the various colors that made up his suit and vestments. At the same time, the tank, glass, and metal both, exploded sending shrapnel all over the room.

I gave my brother’s shiny still eyes a smirk of disbelief as bits of flying debris hit and ricocheted off of his back.

“Seriously!” I poked myself in the chest with my thumb. “Hulk.” Then I tried to push him around behind me so that I could shield him.

“What the heck?” He wasn’t moving, and isn’t he supposed to turn into energy? Like a ghost? Why isn’t he moving? I pulled at him harder, even setting my feet for leverage, and just started to feel him start to move before we were both wrapped up in a band of peach colored rocky… leather?

Mr. Disappearing act was suddenly there, hovering, fully visible, in the air with one arm stretchered out like Mr. Fantastic, his skin like the Thing, and his other hand held up with a ball of flame in it like the Human Torch.

“Who are you? Why are you wearing my armor pretender, and where is my damned father?”

Wait! He vanished too, I know who this is! “Ha! Get the hell out of my castle Super Skrull!”

I had to repress a squeal of sheer happiness. My first alien!

The guy's mouth opened and shut in confusion and outrage as I shoved his flattened out elongated arm off from around me, at the same time as Horus went transparent, and seemed to drift apart as he vanished, leaving behind only his breathless sounding voice echoing from all over the room.

“Don’t bait him Iris. He’s Victor’s first attempt at having progeny, a clone he later tried to transfer all of the Four’s powers to. Which of course went wrong. And I think the Super Skrull might have been before his time. Meet Victor Von Doom the Second. And of course, he isn’t actually dead.”

Taking ahold of Mr. Angry’s arm, I yanked him up close enough to me that I could step up in his face, “Okay Junior, in backwards order, missing, he’s a Von Doom and has the right to that coat of arms, and Iris Von Doom the First, rightful Baroness of Latvaria. Sorry biggest bro, you snoozed, you losed.”

The guy proceeded to really lose it, first by shooting his fist full of flame into my face, which felt kind of nice, it was a little damp and chilly down here. Then he stretched his arm out to wrap around me two times before yanking it away to send me spinning away like a top. “Hey! No, wait, do it again!”

Horus coalesced back together off to one side into a day glo colored version of himself that wasn’t casting a shadow. Hologram? I guess he’s an emergency medical Doom now. Got it.

“Victor. There is nothing to be gained by fighting, we should at least try to talk first, we can always fight…” Then Junior tore off part of the life support machinery from his creche and tossed it through Horus to smash into a machine behind his little brother in a shower of sparks, without even causing a ripple in Horus’s intangible form.

“...later.” My colorful bro sighed. “Perhaps it is time to fight, that is I believe why we were led here, so whoever showed up first could prove their right to our father’s throne by taking out the previous claimant.”

I stopped just short of punching my fist into the side of Junior’s head, instead flicking a finger out to poke him in the cheek. “He’s right. Doom, that is, Doom Senior wants us to fight, and I’m not feeling all that obedient to someone who brewed me up in a tube. How about you?”

Junior glared at me, but settled down to the ground, pulling all of his stretched out body parts together. “Very well, but this conversation isn’t over. I am the rightful crowned Baron of Latveria, and I will not tolerate any rival claims.”

I glanced down at him and smirked. “I might take you more seriously if you were wearing pants Vic, I gotta say you aren’t going to need those stretching powers everywhere. Very nice. Hubba, hubba. Too bad we’re related.”

He looked confused, then he looked down. With a glare and a blush, he turned his lower body all the way around from me, while still facing me with his upper body. He gave Horus a nod as he helped a brother out by handing his cloak over to Junior to wrap around his waist. “Miss…. Iris, that is not appropriate. Now what do you mean by sister?”

I glanced at Horus, “Told you I was going to gather the clan, that’s a mark of a true monarch. I get stuff done.”