Location: Latveria - Castle Doom
Day Four, Hour Twenty-Three
Doom does not fail.
This is a fundamental truth, as immutable as the laws of physics, as certain as the rising sun. Victor Von Doom, master of science and sorcery, ruler of Latveria, does not fail at tasks he sets his considerable intellect toward.
And yet.
Doom stood in his observation chamber, watching through the optical feed of Doombot Unit 47 as it was torn apart by creatures that should not exist. The metal shrieked. Circuits sparked. The bot's camera went dark.
The ninety-fourth loss in four days.
Doom's gauntleted hand tightened on the control console, leaving small dents in the reinforced steel.
"DOOM!" he roared, his voice echoing through the empty chamber. Not a curse. Simply the acknowledgment of his own name, his own reputation, his own irritation at this impossible situation.
Four days ago, his sensors had detected an unusual energy signature in the mountains of Latveria. Doom had investigated personally—as he did all matters concerning his domain—and found something that defied initial categorization.
Two creatures. Large. Armored. Magnificent.
They resembled corvids—crows or ravens—but stood nearly six feet tall with wingspans that exceeded twelve feet. Their bodies were covered in dark blue-black plumage that had a metallic sheen, and their heads, wings, and chest were encased in what appeared to be natural armor plating that gleamed like polished steel.
Knights. They looked like knights in avian form, their armor decorated with red accents that caught the light as they moved.
And they were clearly bonded. Mates. The way they moved together, coordinated their actions, protected each other—it spoke of deep partnership. Perhaps even love, if such creatures were capable of that emotion.
Doom's first instinct had been scientific curiosity. His second: acquisition.
Creatures with natural armor plating, flight capability, and obvious intelligence? They would be valuable assets. Guards. Warriors. Subjects for study. And if they could be replicated, if their armor could be analyzed and reproduced...
Doom had sent the first squadron of Doombots with capture protocols: non-lethal force, containment fields, neural inhibitors.
The creatures had destroyed them in under three minutes.
Day One, Hour SixDoom had reviewed the footage with growing fascination.
The creatures—he had taken to calling them the Knights in his notes—fought with surprising intelligence and perfect coordination. When separated, they were formidable. When together, they were devastating.
But there was something else. Something his sensors struggled to quantify.
When one of the Knights defeated a Doombot, something changed. For approximately thirty seconds afterward, all attacks simply... stopped working. Energy beams deflected. Physical strikes bounced off. Even sonic weapons designed to disorient organic neural systems had no effect.
It was as if, for that brief window, the creature became invulnerable.
Doom had watched the footage seventeen times, analyzing every frame. The effect activated only after a confirmed defeat of an enemy—when a Doombot fell, ceased functioning, was rendered inoperable. Then, like clockwork, a shimmer of energy around the victorious Knight intensified, forming what his instruments could only describe as a perfect defensive field.
Temporary invincibility triggered by victory.
Fascinating. Impossible. Infuriating.
Doom adjusted his strategy. He sent bots in waves, attempting to overwhelm them before the defensive field could activate. This worked marginally better—the Knights could only defend against so many simultaneous attacks.
But then they did something that forced Doom to recalibrate entirely.
They synchronized.
Both Knights took to the air, their wings beating in perfect unison. The sky above them darkened, clouds gathering from nowhere with impossible speed. Wind began to howl through the mountain pass, and Doom's sensors screamed warnings about rapidly dropping pressure and forming weather patterns that violated meteorological models.
Then the female—Doom had determined their sexes through behavioral observation—released a cry that resonated across every frequency his instruments could detect.
The hurricane formed in seconds.
Not a natural storm. This was focused, controlled, weaponized weather. The wind speeds exceeded Category 5 within moments, and every Doombot in the vicinity was either torn apart by the sheer force or sent tumbling through the air like children's toys.
Doom had watched his entire squadron scatter across three mountain valleys.
The Knights had settled back to the ground, clearly exhausted by the effort, but victorious.
Doom had been forced to reassess. These were not mere animals. These were weapons. Biological weapons of considerable sophistication, possibly engineered by an unknown enemy.
Or perhaps gifts from an unknown ally, waiting to be claimed by someone with the vision to use them properly.
Either way, Doom would have them.
Day Two, Hour EighteenDoom had adjusted his tactics again. Stun fields. Adhesive nets. Cryogenic weapons designed to slow their metabolism without causing permanent harm. He wanted them functional, after all. Damaged specimens were of limited use.
The Knights adapted.
Every strategy Doom employed, they countered. If he sent ground units, they took to the air. If he sent aerial units, they used that devastating hurricane technique to clear the skies. If he tried to separate them, they fought with even more desperation, as if the thought of being apart drove them to greater ferocity.
And always, always, that defensive shimmer after each victory.
Doom had begun to recognize the pattern. The effect lasted exactly thirty seconds from the moment a bot was confirmed destroyed. During that window, the Knight in question was effectively untouchable. After thirty seconds, they became vulnerable again—but by then, they had usually repositioned, found cover, or prepared their next attack.
It was a perfect defensive mechanism. Reward victory with temporary invulnerability, allowing the victor time to recover, reassess, adapt.
Evolutionary genius.
Doom needed to know more. He needed tissue samples, behavioral data, neural mapping. He needed to understand how this worked, so he could either replicate it or counter it.
But first, he needed to capture them.
Day Three, Hour NineDoom had watched them through long-range surveillance as they rested in a cave system. They huddled together, the male's wing draped protectively over the female. They groomed each other's feathers with surprising gentleness, their beaks working with precision to straighten plumage and clean armor.
It was... tender.
Doom did not allow himself to be moved by such displays. Sentiment was weakness. These creatures were resources, nothing more.
But he noted the behavior. Bonded pairs often fought harder when protecting each other. This could be exploited. Threaten one, force the other to make mistakes. Separate them, break their coordination.
He had sent infiltration units—smaller, quieter bots designed for stealth. The plan was to tag them with trackers, perhaps inject a mild sedative that would accumulate over time, making them progressively easier to capture.
The Knights had detected the infiltrators before they'd gotten within fifty yards.
The ensuing battle had destroyed fourteen bots and part of a mountain face.
Doom had begun to suspect that these creatures possessed senses beyond the normal spectrum. Enhanced hearing, perhaps. Or the ability to detect electromagnetic fields from the bots' power cores.
He added stealth countermeasures to the next wave. Shielded cores. Acoustic dampening. Thermal masking.
The Knights destroyed them anyway.
Day Four, Hour TwelveDoom could see them tiring.
Four days of constant harassment, constant battle, minimal rest. Even creatures as formidable as the Knights needed sleep, needed food, needed recovery time. And Doom had ensured they had none of these things.
Wave after wave of Doombots. Never enough to overwhelm them completely, but always enough to keep them fighting, always enough to wear them down.
The male's wings drooped slightly between attacks now. The female's movements had lost some of their precision. They were still dangerous—Doom had learned that lesson well—but they were approaching their limits.
Doom prepared the final assault. He would deploy everything remaining in his Latverian arsenal. Thirty-seven Doombots, coordinated assault pattern, multiple capture methods running simultaneously. The Knights would have nowhere to run, no time to recover, no opportunity to mount that devastating hurricane attack.
Victory was imminent.
Doom does not fail.
Day Four, Hour Twenty-ThreeThey were failing.
Doom watched through multiple camera feeds as the Knights fought with the desperation of cornered animals. The male's armor was scorched in places. The female favored her left wing. They were breathing hard, their movements mechanical rather than fluid.
Doom's bots closed in from all sides. Nets deployed. Stun fields activated. Containment protocols initiated.
The male went down first, caught in a net designed to conduct neural inhibitors directly through his armor. He struggled, crying out—a sound that was part bird, part something else entirely, something that registered as distress across Doom's audio sensors.
The female screamed.
Not a battle cry. Not a challenge. Pure anguish.
She dove toward her mate with suicidal intensity, tearing through three Doombots in seconds. The defensive shimmer activated, and for those thirty seconds, she was untouchable as she tried desperately to reach him.
But there were too many bots. Too many attacks. And she was exhausted.
Doom allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. He had them. Finally, after four days, he had them.
Then the male did something unexpected.
He stopped struggling. Went completely still. And released a sound that Doom's sensors had never recorded before—low, resonant, vibrating across multiple frequencies simultaneously. It wasn't loud, but it carried.
The female responded instantly, her head snapping toward him. They locked eyes across the battlefield.
And Doom, who had studied their behavior for four days, who had analyzed their every movement and tactic, recognized what he was seeing.
A plan. Desperation. Sacrifice.
The male suddenly erupted with strength that shouldn't have been possible, tearing through the net with brute force that damaged his armor and drew blood. The defensive shimmer flared around him as the net qualified as a defeated enemy. For thirty seconds, he was invulnerable.
He didn't use those thirty seconds to fight.
He used them to reach his mate.
The female was already moving, fighting her way through the remaining bots with renewed ferocity. They met in the center of the battlefield, and the male grabbed her with his talons—gently despite the urgency—and threw her skyward with all his remaining strength.
She tumbled through the air, caught herself, and for a moment, Doom thought she would return. Thought her bond with her mate would override survival instinct.
But the male screamed at her. Not a cry of pain or fear, but a command. An order.
Flee. Live. GO.
The female hesitated for one agonizing second. Then she turned and flew.
West. Away from Latveria. Away from Doom. Toward the border, toward freedom, toward anywhere that wasn't here.
The male turned to face the remaining Doombots, spreading his wings wide despite his injuries. A challenge. A declaration.
You want us? You go through me first.
Doom's tactical analysis was immediate: the male was buying time. Creating distance between Doom's forces and the female. He was trading his freedom—possibly his life—for hers.
Doom respected the tactic. It was logical. Effective. Cold.
But Doom had not spent four days on this hunt to accept half a victory.
"Pursue the female," Doom commanded. "All available aerial units. The male is secondary."
His bots split. Half remained to subdue the male. Half launched after the female, who was already disappearing into the distance.
And then the male did something that Doom should have anticipated but didn't.
He triggered the hurricane.
Alone. Without his mate to synchronize with. Without the full power the technique required.
It nearly killed him.
Doom watched through his sensors as the male's body shook with the effort. Blood trickled from his beak. His armor cracked further under the strain. But the clouds gathered. The wind rose. And the hurricane formed—smaller than before, less controlled, but still devastating.
Every Doombot pursuing the female was caught in the maelstrom. Torn apart. Scattered. Destroyed.
The male collapsed immediately afterward, crashing to the ground in a heap of feathers and damaged armor. Unconscious or dead, Doom couldn't tell from this distance.
But the female was gone.
Doom stared at his displays. At the fallen male. At the empty sky where the female had disappeared. At the wreckage of ninety-four Doombots scattered across Latveria.
Four days. Four days of tactical superiority, overwhelming force, perfect strategy.
And Doom had been outmaneuvered by birds.
No. Not birds. Warriors. Intelligent, devoted, formidable warriors who understood sacrifice and tactics and love.
Doom pulled up his tracking data. The female was headed west. Across Europe. Toward the Atlantic. Probably toward America, where she might find—what? Safety? Allies? Others like her?
Doom's intelligence networks had reported strange creatures appearing across the globe. This was clearly related. A coordinated phenomenon. Which meant...
Which meant this was bigger than two armored birds.
Doom activated his comm system. "Retrieve the male. Non-lethal force only. Medical containment. I want him alive and functional."
"Yes, Lord Doom," came the response.
Doom watched as recovery units moved toward the fallen Knight. The creature stirred weakly but didn't resist as they carefully loaded him into a medical transport pod.
Doom would study him. Learn from him. Perhaps even heal him, if only to understand the source of that remarkable defensive ability.
And when the female inevitably returned—because Doom was certain she would, bonded pairs always did—he would be ready.
Doom does not fail.
He merely... adjusts his timeline.
But as Doom turned away from his displays, as his castle settled back into its usual ominous silence, he allowed himself a moment of grudging respect.
The male had won. Not the battle, but the objective. His mate lived. She was free. She had escaped Doom's domain.
It was, Doom admitted privately, exactly what he would have done in the same situation.
And that, perhaps, was the most infuriating part of all.