3 [ Gus ] The unseen hand

I sat down on a rock and began playing with my powers as I caught my breath from my near panic attack. That and the whole thing with a two hundred pound killing machine flying at my face which had startled me a bit.

The invisible force effect tended to break up with more complex forms. Gentle curving surfaces and flat planes were the easiest to do with anything too complex breaking down into what felt almost like a liquid blanket.

The rigid forms were also set in place, I could reshape them to change the space they occupied, and move the fixed point by moving myself around to create a force field around me. But it wasn’t usable as a direct form of telekinesis. I couldn’t pick something up and move it, only push things around by changing the shape of the force construct.

As best I could spoon something up and then lengthen the spoon to put something where I wanted it, but without a lot of practice, it would be pretty awkward.

But the liquid form. That I could move and wrap around things, turning them invisible.

I had always wondered how the Invisible Woman ended up with two powers, force fields, and invisibility while the rest of the Fantastic Four only had one power each. But in truth, she had only had one power like the rest of them, she could just do more with it.

Much like her brother could with his fire based power, using it to fly and make shapes. I guess the Storm side of my family just had a talent for getting more out of their superpowers than a Richards or a Grimm.

I guess I’m enough of a Doom to feel some satisfaction in that. Suck it Richards!

The clone story wasn’t going to work, was it? Claiming to be a male version of Sue Storm from another parallel dimension or the son of an alternative version of her wouldn't work either.

A male clone would still need a Y chromosome to be male, and Richards would check to find out whose Y gene it was. Doom had to have bled in one of his fights with the four, Richards might be able to identify who my dear old dad really was, probably at the dramatic moment. Which would put me right back where I started, getting outed as a bio-autonomous rape baby at some point.

As for making up other origins, I would either have to choose between Sue Storm’s powers or the technology that Doom put in my head. Anyone from Reed Richards to Tony Stark would be able to quickly recognize anything I made as having dear old dad’s style.

Plus I had five other siblings activated and out there, and at least one or two of them would start throwing the Doom name around, eventually outing me.

From examining the creche I had learned that only the eldest six of Doom’s children would be activated by the Heir Protocols if Doom vanished for at least five years. The others would only activate at the age of eighteen to keep his ultimate heir on their toes by sending fresh rivals for the throne at them periodically.

But I digress. A choice between superpowers, or technology. A false dichotomy. I only had to choose one or the other in case I planned a long game to catch others by surprise. Which would give me a great advantage for a single use surprise. Alternatively, it would be because I was unwilling to have my origins fully outed right from the start.

But I will not limit myself for fear of the opinions of others. I am a Doom after all.

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While I would not reveal my origins openly, I will not deny them either. Rather I would make my own reputation first and if my existence is still repugnant to my gene mother. Then so be it. She seemed like she was a good person, and sure as hell didn’t deserve this. But I exist, so I’m sorry for what Doom did to her, but here I am.

And I think I’m going to end up upsetting a lot of good people before I’m done.

I found and boosted a signal for the internet and searched for news out of Latveria.

Which was currently dealing with a black haired, green skinned, super strong girl calling herself Iris Von Doom, often, loudly and proudly, who was dealing with the SHIELD protectorate forces, surprisingly gently.

At least as far as she could in a knock down, bare knuckle fight. She was mostly doing property damage to vehicles and handfuls of weapons getting crushed in her hands. The SHIELD agents were either getting their weapons wrapped around them or getting almost gently swatted into each other and various solid objects.

Like walls, vehicles… the ground.

She was also still getting in her requisite shouts of “Doom Smash!” with a big goofy grin.

Heh... “You go sis!” The daughter of who I was almost certain was She Hulk was definitely not acting on Doom’s programming. Which meant my siblings, at least the ones who had been decanted, also had souls from other lives.

I wasn’t alone. I had some fellow travelers, my siblings.

My emerald skinned sister stood at about six foot plus something, which meant she not only had hair but by my best guess at least a good inch of height on me. But even at that height I could tell by her face, and the first letter of her name, that her age was fifteen, she could still grow. And I could blame her being “Hulked out” on the few inches of raven black hair on her head. In her baseline form, she was probably as bald as I was.

It was still grossly unfair. She had hair, and by being the first to claim the throne of Latveria she was now the rightful Heir designate.

At least until one of the rest of us kicked her out of her seat.

But she was more than welcome to both the hair on her head and the title of Heir. I was pretty sure I could own the bald look until something grew in, and she could have the headache of taking over a Latveria which had been occupied by SHIELD since a month after Victor Von Doom had thrown Reed Richards out of the Lab in which he had been helping Doom with one of his experiments that had gone wrong and began to threaten the very existence of the universe.

Doom had sacrificed his own life to save all of reality and his last act was to save the life of Reed Richards. Doom?

Yeah. I didn’t buy it either. But there had been no sign of his survival for the last five years, and he had made no attempt to put my sibling and my own activation on hold. He was either dead or very far away in space, and or time.

So Girl-Hulk could have Latveria, heck, she can have all of Europe. I would settle for North America.

Just the western half. There were so many heroes and other issues east of the Mississippi that I was going to focus on the flyover states as a benign neo-fascist tyrant. By which I meant I was going to improve things for the people of my protectorate, and expected to be obeyed on anything I felt important enough to give orders on. But for the most part, I would have little to no interest in what people did in their own lives, other than respecting the lives of others.

The last bit pretty much meant following most of the laws already in place. In fact, I had little interest in interfering with the local and federal governments as long as they did not act against me or the people I planned on taking under my protection.

For instance, if the people who were promised that the lands of their reservations were theirs, and didn’t want an oil pipeline running through their lands. Someone either needed to pay them enough to change their minds or find another route for their pipeline.

Not just get the Federal government's permission to screw them over.

The very situation which was happening right now in Montana to the Crow nation.

Going after rich people when money was involved... That was going to get some attention. But I guess I could blame Iris, my little green sis had set the bar pretty high for pissing off the powers that be. I can’t let her show me up.

I continued to watch the live footage of her now facing off against the remaining assembled forces of SHIELD at the front gates of Castle Doomstadt, arms crossed and smirking. It gave me something to do as the remaining parts of my armor were being printed out until I could assemble them.

With what was planned for the Crow people protesting the pipeline tonight, I knew just how I was going to make my debut.