17 [ Horus ] Made in his own image

At first, I was concerned about leaving Iris alone with our eldest brother. The man had been made as a copy of Von Doom back when he had been fully focused on the most outrageous, and futile, acts of vengeance against Reed Richards. But watching Victor Von Doom the second interacting with our sister I realized something.

She had this.

Iris was verbally leading the man around in circles, tripping him up on his own twisted logic and beliefs. Taking full advantage of her greater mental age and experiences as well as having over ten years of more recent knowledge of the Marvel universe than he did.

More… I don’t think Junior is a particularly good copy of Doom.

The man was supposed to stand in for Von Doom as ruler of Latveria in order to appease those demanding that the international criminal Victor Von Doom stand down as leader of the country. Putting his ‘Son’ in charge would let him continue to rule by proxy, but no identical copy of Von Doom’s mind would have meekly bowed his head to serve as a mere puppet.

This Von Doom had been made to be a follower, and even if he did try to betray Iris...

She’s a Hulk.

Any throw down between a Hunk and a Doom ends with the Doom hurling excuses that the emerald giant was unworthy of their time even as they fled, bleeding, with their armor torn to shreds.

So Iris has this… and hanging around will only make it seem like I was her puppet master.

You know, since she’s a girl.

It would be like a couple going to a car dealership when the woman wants to buy a car with her own money, but the dealer keeps talking to the guy.

The constant power plays between her and Junior will make it clear that he wants to be in charge but isn’t. That can work. Me hanging around won’t.

Besides, it’s waiting there for me.

Africa.

“Iris, I need to get going.”

My sister gave me a surprised look, as our brother standing behind her failed to conceal a smirk of anticipation. The man would be making his move the moment I flew off, and from the side eyed look over her shoulder and the hidden smile that Iris was giving him, she knew it as well.

Somebody’s about to get hurt real bad.

Fortunately, we have a lot of versions of Doomstadt Castle for them to trash in the upcoming fight.

Suddenly I had an arm wrapped around my shoulders as my sister gave me a one armed hug, and a peek on my bare cheek as she handed me my mask.

“Thanks for the support bro, now go bless the rains down in Africa.”

With a nod, I locked my mask into place with a click as the display projectors flickered for a moment... before they adjusted for having my eyes up close inside the mask again rather than my sister's eyes as she held it up in front of her.

With a nod and farewell of “All hail Von Doom.” which earned me a narrowed eye glance from Iris as I left it unspoken which Von Doom I meant, I transformed into light and made my way out of the Castle as the world went into slow motion all around me.

I could see Victor raising up his textured stony arm with a look of triumph on his face and a ball of white hot flame already forming in his hand, and Iris, a wide grin on her face, beginning to turn, one hand balled up into a fist and drawing back to Smash.

Those two crazy kids... I hope they have fun.

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Despite how the world around me was moving in slow motion due to the fact that my body was now made out of light. I wasn’t really moving all that fast, not nearly at the full speed of light, two million plus kilometers per second.

While I could go that fast, my mind, let alone my senses, couldn’t keep up. Even when my brain was made of energy, the speed of thought just wasn’t that fast.

The software was up to the hardware as it were.

If I went any faster than I was already going, I would miss too many things. Coming here to Latvaria over the Mediterranean Sea, all I had to look for was the coastline of Europe, then pause to identify some rivers and other landmarks before I followed them in.

I was also limited by my mask. After each stop, I had to take the time to summon it back into my hands. It was either that or do without it, but that would be like leaving my phone at home back in my first life.

Moments later, in sight of the northern coast of Africa, I turned left and followed it for a tenth of a second, or half a minute in perceptual time, to the mouth of the Nile.

Then I switched over to a form made of neutrinos as I hung there, floating in mid air a few hundred meters above the delta, all unseen.

What had happened back there in that cellar? I had transformed, trying to simultaneously protect Iris from getting hit while turning into something that couldn’t be hurt... and yeah, I know, shes a Hulk.

But I wasn’t thinking about what would happen if she got hit, I was just thinking about the fact that someone was trying to do so.

In my attempt to protect both her and myself at the same time, I turned into something… solid.

Not solid energy, although then and there I tried turning myself into the poorly defined concept of force and became a dimly visible transparent version of myself. Which I was glad to find could also remain flying in place as well.

No, I had turned into something else.

Matter rather than energy.

I had always known that I could do that, after all, Photon had always been able to turn from energy back into a real breathing physically complex flesh and bone body. So why not other forms of matter?

So then, I tried it again, turning into a nitrogen which I allowed myself to disperse throughout the room, only gathering together again in my human form in a separate location from where I had turned into a gas.

...In a sense, I can add teleportation to my list of powers now.

But only for a short distance, and while I was in the form of a gas I could feel myself… fading. Somehow allowing myself to drift out of the limits of the shape of my body was a risk to my own existence.

So, that was interesting but also dangerous.

But this is science. Super Science. And even regular science is not for pussies.

With a thought, I tried to repeat my transformation again and felt all the possibilities line up before me.

Each form of matter I could sense to be within my abilities became more complex and slightly more difficult to turn into as I reached farther and farther out into what I could become. Turning nearly impossible higher up on that ladder.

Or rather, that table. The series ran to well over a hundred, which included at least a few more unknown possibilities than those that appeared on the classical periodic table, beyond that it seemed like there were still more possibilities, but only faint, unstable ones.

I can turn to matter, all forms of matter, just as I can turn to all forms of energy. But for now, only in the form of pure elements and my own body.

Raising my hand, I held it palm up and ran my mind up the table, focusing on element seventy nine. I can fire blasts of all forms of energy, so what can I do with matter…

Nearly lose consciousness as it turns out. On the edge of blacking out, I nearly dropped into the sea before I recovered from the sudden exhaustion.

But I held on to the jagged ball sized lump of pure gold.

Clenching my hand, I felt the soft spikes shooting out of it bend beneath my glove. At least money shouldn't ever be an issue for me, although making higher elements might truly knock me out. Fortunately, I doubted I would need any of them in large amounts, or at least not all at once.

Creating a golf ball sized sphere of cloudy looking silicon is easier, and making a puff of hydrogen that dissipated into the surrounding air was simplicity itself.

As a me shaped solid block of matter, I can't move my body parts, or use any of my conventional senses, I can still sense energy, project it, and fly.

Settling down to the damp mud of the mouth of the Nile, I transformed my physical body to silicon, focused, and stepped out of it leaving behind me a near perfect nude statue of myself.

“Whoever has been tapping into my mask, you are not as good as you think. That ends now. I will not be making my assistants of forged steel and electronics. I will be going another way.”

A simple ward carved into the interior frame of the mask had clued me in. I guess whoever was monitoring me didn’t anticipate the use of spellwork.

With a snap, I pulled my mask free, and just before I tore out its power pack, the image of a slowly spinning golden apple appeared on the projected screen as the opening call of the song Circle of Life began to play.

“Creating a mockery of life are we? I know you were going to be trouble. Let us talk Horus.”

Holding my fingertip out, I sent a bean of pure light forward from my fingertip in the form of a laser beam, inscribing the words ‘Horus elokim emet’ in Hebrew on my likeness’s forehead.

Other symbols, in other languages, would follow to make my creations fully functional, but I liked to start with the classics.

“So you know my name. What do I call you?”

The apple stopped its spin.

“Call me Malus.”