“That... is damn big,” I said very unnecessarily to Ben Parker.

We were floating out there in extragalactic space, looking at the ship hovering there. Very tellingly, the light suppression that was making the night black on the Battleworld, isolating it from the rest of the galaxy, wasn’t active here, and the heavens were indeed full of stars in all directions.

Well, calling it a ship was a bit of a stretch, as it was a tubeworld, a massive arcology that encompassed a ring an AU in radius, an honest to goodness system-ship that massed more than a Dyson’s Sphere.

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https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Worldship_(Taa_II)

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It was Taa II, the ‘home’ of Galactus, where his worldship returned with what he had preserved of the biomes of the worlds he was forced to destroy to consume the Celestial Seeds within them.

It was one of the great Wonders of the Universe. Galactus had called it here from halfway across the universe, and now it waited just outside the dimension-sealing of the Beyonder.

“That it is.” The Molecule Man’s eyes roved the immensity of the thing, trying to picture it all at once, and simply unable to at this time.

“Easy, Ben. Your job is just to replicate it. Pull the mass out of the star, and make a mirror image of it.” The old red star was a hundred times the mass of Sol, easily able to provide enough material to make the tubeworld.

He didn’t have to understand the technologies at work here. I probably could handle a lot of it, Sama and Briggs had the Ranks to understand more, but really, replicating it wouldn’t be a problem.

The nearby sun sank precipitously in size, and above Taa II a duplicate formed with magical speed, a million miles a second brought into being as mass was taken, reshaped, and set into an identical pattern to the system ship below it.

It still took several minutes to fully form the second tubeworld. When it was done, the old red star was basically reduced to a much more excitable yellow core left behind, smaller than Sol.

There was a shuddering, and Taa II simply melted away, transported back to whence it came from, and the new tubeworld shifted once as control changed hands.

Bringing its own reality with it and greatly exceeding the speed of light, the Taa III breached the dimensional barrier and headed for the Battleworld.

I was standing on it as it did so.

So were Sama and Briggs.

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Doom leaving and returning with two human women did not go unnoticed by the mercs inside their fortress. There was of course great interest in finding out where they came from, but it was plain the women were both civilians, with one being a scrawny girl under five feet tall, her face hard and abused, and the other being a softer, vaguely innocent-looking woman with the extra weight of someone who enjoyed her time watching morning talk shows.

“Woman, you watch them, and you make sure he’s not killing them,” Hill ordered softly. Thundra rose with surprising grace and glided after Doom in complete silence. A lot of startled eyes turned to watch her go, not expecting her to be able to move like that.

Thundra was also the only female there he called ‘woman’. Maybe there was a reason for that...

Hill was also grimly uninterested in bringing in more human civilians to do anything. He stoically noted that if they went searching for civilians and found them, did everyone want to bring them along when they ran away? Maybe they just wanted to wave and abandon them to their fates with mocking grins?

Enthusiasm waned rapidly, and nobody bothered to inquire too deeply into where any humans from Terra were.

---

So this is where the Titania and Volcana Templates were born, Felicia ‘Thundra’ Ouilette thought, watching Doom at work.

His Doomliness would probably have been disconcerted to learn that Felecia had a Chaos Core, and was a very dangerous practicing Witch, even if she didn’t use her magic or other Ultra Core powers very often. She could discern everything he was doing, figure out the reason why, and work out how and why he was using the alien equipment here to do things that would not be possible with just Terran technology.

Felicia was totally familiar with all the Powered Templates used by the women’s forces of Thundra’s time, and most of the men’s, too. She now knew why these two Templates were not more widely applicable, and furthermore, how to fix that.

Mary MacPherran and Marsha Rosenberg were in holding tubes right now, being genetically altered by Doom. He was borrowing power from a massive storm currently howling about outside, fed by the alien energies and tortured existence of this patchwork world. They would emerge with super-powers as two of the strongest female Powered around, Titania and Volcana. Titania in particular would have a revered reputation in the future Thundra had come from.

Doom needed a couple supporters of his own, and this was certainly one way to get them. Felicia’s eyes twinkled as she noted that Doom wasn’t going to be in his lab all the time, and someone else could certainly use these devices...

---

“You! You look like the strongest man here! I want to fight you!” A leather-clad fist crunched into the metal wall, thoroughly denting it, swung by the red-headed amazon who had emerged from Doom’s lab, standing there next to another woman now glowing with white-hot molten heat.

Crusher Creel, having some brews with the guys of the Demolition Team, just sat back on his couch and laughed. “I ain’t got nothing to prove... to a dame!” he shot right back at her.

Her face turned unsightly at the refusal to fight her, and she was just about to say more when a very deep voice broke in, raspy and rough as grinding stones, “No fighting in the fortress.”

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She whirled around, excited at the chance to start a fight, and then looked up in astonishment as The Mountain looked down at her coldly. Before she could blurt out anything, he stated grimly, “I don’t know you. Who are you?”

There was a weight behind his words that she’d never felt before. The excitement of being tall and powerful and finally able to fight shriveled up and became something else she was very familiar with from being tiny all her life as she looked up at his unfriendly eyes.

“These are the two Doom was working on, Mr. Hill,” Thundra reported, stepping up behind him and looking eye-to-eye with the other redhead, shoulder-high to The Mountain, but there was no comparison in how they held themselves.

“Names!” Mr. Hill stated bluntly, clearly irked at this development.

“Titania!” spluttered the new lady Brick.

“Volcana!” piped up the other, sounding a little awed, especially with how casually both of the established mercs were treating her burning self.

“Boss, I got a situation here. Did you give clearance to Doom ta bring in some of his own forces? He seems ta have found a couple volunteers and Powered them up,” Mr. Hill reported into coms.

The Mandarin’s voice came back calmly, “Doom mentioned that he might be bringing in some allies of his to use, but that they would not be a threat to us, Mr. Hill. Who did he manage to find?”

“Name’s’r Titania and Volcana. Powered-up like Deltas, but holding themselves like total newbies,” he judged, and both women colored despite themselves. “How do ya want me ta handle this?”

The Mandarin considered the matter calmly. “Assign them quarters, bill their expenses to Doom, and see if you can file off the rough edges, since I doubt Doom will see fit to train them, Mr. Hill.”

“Understood, Boss.” He put down his collar and glared at the two women, who flushed again under his cold eyes. “Let’s get one thing straight here. You two work for Doom, not for me or our boss. Ya ASK Doom to second yerselves to me. If he says no, ya stick by Doom and do what he tells ya. If he summons ya, ya drop everything and ya go ta him, and ya do what he says. That’s how things work in this business, ya got me?”

“Y-yes, sir!” they both stammered back, staring up at him.

His grey eyes looked over the two of them once more, unmoved, assessing. “Woman, this one’s your project. Take her and show her the ropes. Marko!” he barked into coms, moving his eyes from Titania to Volcana. “Got a special project for you. Drop what yer doing and c’mere.”

“On my way, Hill,” came the terse reply from the Juggernaut.

“I don’t, I don’t have to do what you say!” the redhead somehow snarled out.

There was a blur of motion, and then Titania’s head was planted ear-deep in the floor under Thundra’s hand with a resounding crunch. Despite being used to superhuman violence, everyone there still blinked at the speed of the takedown.

“This man’s standing orders are the only reason you aren’t dead, Little Girl. I don’t care how big you think you are, right now there are at least a half a dozen men in this building who can straight up kill you, and you don’t get any say in the matter. That muscle-headed clod you challenged on the sofa is one of them.

“So, if you want to live long enough to enjoy being tall and strong, you will obey The Mountain’s orders. You got me, Little Girl?” Thundra lifted up Titania’s head calmly off the floor to glare into her eyes.

Titania’s eyes were shocked that another woman could still do that to her. There was no mercy in Thundra’s gaze, either. “Yes, yes, I got it!” she spluttered.

Thundra rose, effortlessly bringing Titania with her and setting her hard on her thigh-high booted feet. “Come with me and let’s see what you can do, Little Girl.” Ignoring Titania’s spluttering and spitting blood from her split lip, Thundra propelled the younger woman ahead of her roughly. “Keep walking. I’m not letting a wild card like you behind me.”

That naturally left Volcana standing there all alone, and suddenly she felt extremely vulnerable as the only woman in the room.

“Yer burnin’ the floor, girl,” Mr. Hill growled calmly. “I kin sense you’ve an Earth connection. Dump the flaming attention-getting and move ta obsidian or whatever you’ve got.”

Volcana blinked at him, a little shocked. “I, this is the way I came out of the tube...”

“Don’t make me repeat myself, girl,” Mr. Hill growled again, his eyes heavy on her.

Volcana took in a deep breath, and willed something harder than she ever had anything in her whole life.

Her white-hot flames snuffed out, replaced by a wave of hard blackness that spread up her body, transmuting lava or plasma or whatever she was made of into harsh, jagged black rocks, sizzling slightly with vestigial heat.

Mr. Hill ignored the shock on her face as she gawked at her stony limbs. “When Marko is done with his session, you find Thundra, and ya arrange for some clothes that stick around when ya change forms, girl. If any guy lays a hand on ya here, he’s taking his life in his hands, but this life ain’t a soap opera. There’s a lot o’ boys in this business who got the social skills of dogshit and figure any woman showing skin is broadcasting that they’re available for sex.

“Ya might have noticed ya got no clothes on.” Volcana looked down at herself, and if stone could blush, she would have. “Ain’t no problem, ‘cause ya look like a bad statue of a woman right now, but it gives the idiots ideas, and they are idiots, make no mistake about that.

“Yer a newbie, it’s so obvious it’s like yer shoutin’ it at me. When yer a pro and one look at ya is enough ta warn off a man, ya do what ya want. Before then, you talk ta that woman and ya get a decent outfit, and don’t cater to the dreams of the dogshits, ya hear me?”

“Y-yes, sir, Mr. Mountain... sir?” she squeaked as an even bigger and broader man stepped up next to him with oddly strange silence. “Oh gawd...”

“Marko, this here girl is a transformer, and a total noob,” Mr. Hill said without sympathy. “Take her under yer wing, don’t touch her, and make goddamn certain no one else touches her, including that prick of a partner of yers, because we both know he’ll try. Show her the ropes as fast and hard as ya can. If it hurts, it hurts, this ain’t no business for the weak.

“They belong ta Doom until he says otherwise.”

“If they belong to Doom, nobody in their right mind is gonna touch them, even Tom,” Marko huffed confidently, and the guys looking on from the table in the middle of the room nodded reluctantly. It wasn’t that Doom was overly protective of his people, but they were his, and messing with Doom’s property was messing with Doom. Messing with Doom could end up all kinds of bad, and doing it to test how much Mr. Hill would defend your assholeness was also a really bad idea.

“Truth. But Doom ain’t gonna give a damn about them once we are out of here. They’re just short-term muscle he can boss around to make himself feel more in control.”

Cain Marko’s eyes flashed. “Fuck. What’s your handle, girl?” he growled down at Marsha Rosenberg.

“Vol-Volcana,” she almost whispered.

Despite her soft reply, he smiled. “Now, that there’s a handle with lot of potential. First rule, you own your name. You claim it, and you make damn sure the other person knows your name. Since nobody knows you, you put it in their face until they stop asking you.

“Now, you scream your name at me until everybody here has a reason to remember it.”

Volcana looked at his eyes, staring down and challenging her, and took a deep breath.

“I AM VOLCANA!” she screamed at him.

She ignited like a furnace going up, instantly turning to white-hot flame, the floor around her turning to a molten mess, and the ceiling above starting to go cherry-red.

Yeah, she pretty much commanded all the attention in the room.

“Nice. Tamp it down, don’t need to set our crib on fire,” Marko smiled, and watched as she gasped and brought her flames down quickly. It took her a minute to change back to the black rock form, and he just waited patiently as she did.

“Good. Now, you come with me, and we’re gonna work on a few things. We’re gonna find out what you can do, so we know what to expect from you, and so you know what you are capable of. I ain’t expecting a lot out of you today, that’s on you.

“Don’t you worry none about hurting me. Ain’t nothin’ I saw from you that’s a threat to me. You can let out all your frustrations and I’ll be just fine.”

Volcana clenched her jaw as she noticed that The Mountain hadn’t been in the least worried about her flames, either, even as she followed Cain Marko, the Juggernaut, out of the room.