The biting wind howled across the barren, jagged ice shelves of Jan Mayen Island. Located deep within the Arctic Circle off the coast of northern Norway, the island was essentially a frozen rock. Its only permanent residents were a solitary weather station, a rusted navigation beacon, and a thriving population of polar bears.
Today, however, the local wildlife was giving the eastern ridge a very wide berth.
The permafrost literally shuddered. A massive shockwave kicked up a localized blizzard of powdery snow as two of the heaviest hitters on the planet collided.
"Take this, Ben!" The Hulk roared. He dug his massive green fingers into the frozen earth, tearing up a slab of solid ice the size of a minivan and hurling it through the air.
"You throw like my grandmother, big guy!" The Thing—eight hundred pounds of solid, orange rock—caught the flying glacier against his shoulder. He laughed, a deep, gravelly sound, as the ice shattered into a million harmless crystals against his rocky hide. In this completely uninhabited wasteland, the two powerhouses didn't have to hold back. They could wrestle and brawl to their hearts' content, treating the sub-zero environment like a massive, indestructible playground.
A hundred yards away, Janet Van Dyne pulled the fur-lined collar of her heavily insulated, immaculately tailored designer parka tighter around her neck. Her breath plumed in the freezing air.
"Peter must be absolutely miserable missing this," Janet muttered, her teeth chattering slightly despite the bright, cloudless sky. "A tropical, all-expenses-paid vacation to the Arctic."
She glared out across the snowdrift. Hank Pym was crouched fifty yards away, completely ignoring the scenic glaciers. Instead, he was enthusiastically using a pair of sterile tweezers to collect samples of frozen polar bear scat, placing them carefully into little glass vials.
"I just... I don't understand how his brain works," Janet groaned, burying her face in her gloved hands. "We are standing on top of a pristine glacier, miles away from civilization, and my boyfriend is analyzing fecal matter."
Susan Storm laughed warmly, pulling her own heavy coat tighter over the blue fabric of her Fantastic Four uniform. "You have to be patient with them, Janet. These brilliant, brooding boys are all exactly the same. If they aren't buried in a lab for more than twenty minutes, they start to twitch. They need a project to distract themselves."
Janet pivoted, her high-end snow boots crunching against the ice. "Speaking of projects, you dragged the entire Fantastic Four out to the middle of nowhere. Who is watching the kids? Franklin is barely two, and little Valeria is basically a newborn. Did you hire a S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical nanny?"
"Oh, no," Susan said casually. "Victor is watching them."
Janet froze. She stared at the Invisible Woman, utterly bewildered. "Victor? As in... Victor von Doom? Doctor Doom? The psychotic, magic-wielding dictator with the metal mask?"
Susan sighed, waving a gloved hand dismissively. "It's... complicated. He's mellowed out recently. Mostly. I mean, he used to believe he was the only mortal qualified to rule the world, so he did a lot of unsavory things to try and conquer it."
"Has he figured out he's insane?"
"No," Susan replied entirely seriously. "He realized that the rest of the world simply isn't intelligent enough to deserve his leadership yet. So he went back to his homeland of Latveria to turn it into a global superpower, entirely to make the UN jealous. He's just waiting for everyone to inevitably beg him to take over."
"Susan, that is the literal definition of a megalomaniacal villain."
"Maybe," Susan admitted with a small, fond smile. "But he helped deliver Valeria. He's her godfather. He would burn the world to ash before letting a single scratch fall on her head. The kids are perfectly safe."
Janet looked at Susan, entirely speechless. The incredibly bizarre, deeply tangled family dynamics of the Fantastic Four were too much for her to process on a frozen glacier. She shook her head and dropped the subject.
Down by the edge of a jagged ice cliff, Tony Stark stood unbothered by the cold. The internal climate control of the Iron Man armor kept him perfectly toasted at seventy-two degrees. He retracted his gold-and-red faceplate, letting the frigid air bite his cheeks for just a second before turning to the man standing beside him.
"Bringing back memories, Cap?" Tony quipped, tapping his gauntlet against his armored thigh. "Your old sleeper berth shouldn't be too far from here. Want to take a detour and check out the ice block you took a seventy-year nap in?"
Steve Rogers stared out at the endless expanse of frozen ocean, his expression stoic and unreadable. He didn't turn his head. "It's hard to say, Tony. I don't exactly have fond memories of the scenery." Steve pointed a leather-gloved finger toward the overcast horizon. "Incoming."
The low, thrumming hum of massive repulsor turbines cut through the howling wind. A S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier breached the cloud cover, slowly descending toward the icy waters off the coast. It was an older, retrofitted model—the agency was holding back Stark's newly designed Project Insight carriers until they were fully operational.
Inside the Helicarrier's command center, Nick Fury stood perfectly still, his lone eye fixed on the tactical monitors.
"Coulson," Fury spoke into his encrypted comms channel. "Is the biological disposal protocol complete? Good. I want Spider-Man's blood sample fully incinerated immediately. Ensure every member of the senior science team visually verifies the destruction. Leave nothing to chance."
Fury tapped his earpiece, severing the connection. He turned toward Clint Barton, who was casually leaning against a navigation console, spinning a specialized arrow between his fingers.
"How is our resident human matchstick holding up?" Fury asked.
"Johnny is practically vibrating out of his suit," Hawkeye replied, not looking up from the arrowhead. "But, Director... is bringing a walking supernova to a frozen hostage situation really our best tactical play?" Clint finally met Fury's eye, his expression dead serious. "If this alien sludge is afraid of fire, sure, the Torch is a great deterrent. But we are looking for a monster locked in ice. A guy who burns at six thousand degrees might accidentally thaw the damn thing out."
"Which is exactly why Storm is on strict standby," Fury replied smoothly. "This whole setup stinks of a trap. Spider-Man made that explicitly clear. The symbiotes want us to wake their god."
The Helicarrier engaged its water-landing thrusters, settling into the freezing ocean waves with a massive hiss of steam. Within minutes, the assembled brain trust of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four were gathered around the holotable in the carrier's primary briefing room.
"I assume you didn't fly us to Norway just for the scenic views, Fury," Reed said, his elongated fingers resting lightly on the edge of the console. "Tell me you have a precise location."
"Right here, Doctor Richards," Fury hit a key.
A three-dimensional topographical scan of Jan Mayen Island materialized in blue light. A massive, pulsing red anomaly was buried deep within the digital ice.
"According to the scan, the symbiote dragon exists exactly two hundred meters below the permafrost layer," Fury explained, bracing his hands on the table. "I need the combined muscle and intellect in this room to excavate the ice without fracturing the biological stasis of the creature inside."
Tony leaned over the table, a familiar, arrogant smirk crossing his face. "Let me get this straight. We freeze our asses off digging a two-hundred-meter hole to carefully extract a sleeping alien dragon... and then S.H.I.E.L.D. just swoops in, slaps an eagle logo on the cage, and takes all the credit? You really have the easiest job on the planet, Fury."
Fury fixed Stark with a singular, unblinking glare. "I have the most exhausting job on the planet, Stark. None of you are qualified to handle my end of the logistics. You guys get to play in the snow."
"Oh yeah?" Tony challenged, raising an eyebrow. "What's the most exhausting part? Go on, tell me."
Nick Fury let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Dealing with the Norwegian environmental agencies protesting our carbon footprint."
PS:
Believe it or not, Doctor Doom being Valeria Richards's godfather is 100% comic canon! During a complicated pregnancy, Susan Storm had to turn to Victor von Doom for help using a mix of science and sorcery. He saved her and the baby, and in exchange, he got to name the child (Valeria, after his childhood love). Despite being the Fantastic Four's greatest enemy, Doom has a massive soft spot for Valeria and protects her fiercely!
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