Four Freedoms Plaza

"What's that, Big Brain?" the Thing asked, as he entered Reed Richard's laboratory at FF Plaza. Mr. Fantastic was situated at a device on his cranium and electric sparks were pulsing from his temples where the device was placed. The Thing was puzzled as to the purpose of the device and how this contraption would help them in their current mission.

"It is a device that will be able to track down Doctor Doom's specific body signature," Reed explained carefully, in layman English. "I suspect that Doom is at his home in Latveria but he could be hiding from us anywhere in the world by now."

"Reed, do you really think that good ol' Doc Doom would be in a hiding place when you and I know that he'd rather be facing us head-on?" the Thing asked.

Before Reed had a chance to answer, the rest of the FF entered the lab, which included Johnny, Sue, and Lila Storm. They were all curious as to what the Thing's and Reed's conversation was all about.

"What's the hullabulloo all about?" the Human Torch asked. "You know, you can't keep anything a secret from us."

"Johnny, please," Sue said, "If Reed wanted to tell us, he would have already."

Lila just folded her arms and frowned. She was curious, too, but didn't want to voice her opinions just yet because she was still new.

"No, no, it's all right, Sue," Reed comforted his wife. "It's no secret. I think I've found Dr. Doom and Ben was right all along."

"I could have told you that," the Thing said, snidely.

"Don't get a swelled head, Benjy," the Torch said.

"Enough bickering, people," Sue said.

Lila just smiled at their constant fighting.

"My sentiments exactly, Fantastic Four," a new voice said, as a hologram of Doctor Doom appeared before their forms. He was pointing at them, as regal as ever.

"Doctor Doom!" Reed shouted, accusingly at their old foe. "What do you want from us?"

"Only to battle you with my allies for the last time."

With that, the Fantastic Four, including Lila, disappeared in a teleporting ray that was extracted from the Doom hologram.

Latveria

As the Fantastic Four materialized within his throne room in his castle at Latveria, Doctor Doom knew that this would be the final battle between himself and the fabled Fantastic Four. He didn't think it or suspect it but somehow, he knew it. As if he possessed psychic powers or powers of precognition.

He waited until the ray dissipated, the FF came into view, and their bodies were cohesive. Doctor Doom sat on his throne, with his wife Queen Invisible right beside him, dressed in her Malice leather ensemble. In front of him was the Super-Skrull, the Hatemonger, the Psycho-man, and select members of the Thunder Gods gang. They were all primed for battle.

Doom faced the FF and began his ranting, "It has come to your attention that I have the means, the ends, and the power to defeat you. It is only a matter of time, and the time has come now. I believe you know my assosciates…"

"Yes, we do," Reed explained, speaking for the rest of the team. He waved his hands in the air for the others to quiet down so that he and he alone could speak with his old adversary. "I deduced that since Queen Invisible was Malice, you had to be the mastermind behind this whole 'Hatemonger Affair', as we like to call it. What is your plan, Doom?"

"Simple, my dear Reed Richards. You and your team will fight my team and if your team survives, you will perish at my hands."

"Great," the Thing said, clenching his fists and banging them together. "Just what we need. Another world-conquering creep to battle the world's greatest super hero team."

"That should be easy," Lila Storm said, her body crackling with energy. "I know I've never fought you before but don't think that we'd take your threats laying down. We're the FF, after all."

"You may be one of the Fantastic Four," Doom proclaimed. "But it is clear you are still a novice in this state of affairs. You would do well not to second-guess Doom again. I should strike you down with such impudence." He paused and then, spoke, "But enough of these trivialities. Let the battle begin."

At that moment, Doctor Doom waved his arm in the air and the villains charged toward the heroes.

It was only typical that the Thing was facing off against his current nemesis, the Thunder Gods gang. He didn't know them by their names, first or last, but by the weapons that they incorporated. Each hero had his or her arch-enemy. Spider-Man had the Green Goblin, Daredevil had Bullseye, Alpha Flight had Omega Flight, the Fantastic Four had Doctor Doom, and he supposed that he, the muscled Thing, had the Thunder Gods gang. Even though they were new enemies to him and that they usually only fought the NYPD and Code Blue, while under the Psycho-man's thrall, they decided to take on the Thing.

But enough talking to himself. He should turn his attention back to the fight. There were five Thunder Gods facing off against him, each brandishing a different rifle. He faced first-hand against the one with the electrical current and electromagnetic guns.

"It's clobberin' time!!" the Thing shouted at the top of his lungs, ready to fight his combatants.

The leader of the gang said to Rocky, the one member who had a gun that could truly harm the Thing, " Hit 'im wit' that gun again."

The gun he meant was the one that could transform the Thing back into Ben Grimm. But the Thing had an ace up his sleeve.

When the ray hit the Thing head-on, he stayed in his Thing form. "Ya kin hit me wit' that gun a million, zillion times and it still won't have any effect on me 'cos Reed sprayed wit' a solution that would prevent that gun from ever workin' 'gin. And that means… it's really clobberin' time!"

But the Thunder Gods gang was not unprepared to deal with this cosmic-ray-induced threat. They may have been ordinary human beings underneath their uniforms but they had the toughest weapons drawn from the black market at their disposal. So, the gang decided to hit him with every gun at once, harnessing energies hotter than the sun itself in the enclosed space of their battle arena.

It took them long minutes and moments of discharging their vast weaponry at the Thing's helpless form until the desired effect finally took place. Slowly, the Thing was brought onto his knees and then, he collapsed. He was unconscious in seconds. The amount of weaponry was just too much for him to take. The concentration was just too vast.

The gang walked over to where the Thing lay and kicked him over to make sure that he wasn't playing possum. He indeed was out cold. The Thunder Gods have won.

Mr. Fantastic approached the Psycho-man, knowing full well that the villian would use the emotions housed within his Hate Box to make him go on a rampage. No problem. That was fine with him. He knew how to turn his emotions against his foe.

"You are feeling angry at your fellow team-mates," the Psycho-man said, pushing very sensitive buttons on his powerful Hate Box. He pressed the one marked 'Anger/Hate'. "You hate them for pushing you to the background, from discussing scientific theory instead of fighting battles yourself. You know that your wife Susan Storm is better adept at being a leader of the Fantastic Four than you are capable of."

"Yes, yes, I-I-" Mr. Fantastic said, as he stretched his arm in front of him, sizing it into the shape of a powerful fist, and punched the Psycho-man upside the head. "I think not!"

"What?! Why aren't you entrapped in total emotions of hate instead of freeing yourself from it? My Hate Box is fool proof!"

"But I am not a fool. I am Mr. Fantastic, leader of the world's greatest super hero team, the Fantastic Four. While there is a justice and freedom around, we shall always defeat the tyrants of old, tyrants like you, Psycho-man."

"What jibberish is that?" Psycho-man asked. "I would expect such lines from Captain America, not you." He raised the intensity on his Hate Box. "Perhaps you just need more power. Perhaps that is how I shall defeat you."

Mr. Fantastic was not prepared for what happened next. He became twisted, a force for evil for dealing with his enemies, which were the Fantastic Four. The only flaw in the Psycho-man's plan was that the rest of the Fantastic Four were fighting the other members of the Hate Monger's Hate Guard. So he just had to devote his energies to the Psycho-man.

"You caused my pain. You caused my hate!" Mr. Fantastic chanted in a dull mantra as he used his stretching powers to punch the Psycho-man upside the head again. He then took his Hate Box away from him and smashed it into a million pieces.

"Without your little weapon, your Hate Box, you will be powerless," Mr. Fantastic said. "It fuels your power."

Mr. Fantastic gathered up the Psycho-man for Dr. Doom.

The Invisible Woman faced off against Malice, Mistress of Hate, who was also known as Doom's recently married wife, Queen Invisible. She had the exact same powers as Sue Storm. In fact, she was an exact copy of her. Sue knew that for the longest time several of the villians that the FF faced had a thing for her. Doom, Sub-Mariner, and Rama Tut. Doom obviously couldn't have the real thing so that he needed the next best thing.

"If you think that you are going to win this fight, you've got another think coming," Sue said to Malice. Malice was clad in her leather ensemble, a fetching attire that Doom in his darkest dreams desired for the real Sue to wear for him.

"We'll see about that. You almost beat me in Central Park but I beat you in the city," Malice said, stretching her mind powers over invisibility. She hurled an invisible force shield around the villainess's body so that whatever powers that Sue would hurl at her it would be thwarted. "And almost doesn't count in my book."

Sue then utilized a trick that she used when she was Malice herself. She surmised that the force shield covered her body but not totally. It didn't cover underneath her feet so that the ground of Doom's Latverian castle was not impervious to her next attack. She created a force shield all her own underneath her feet, propelling her shielded body in the air, almost to the roof of the ancient building and dropped her to the waiting floor below. Malice was resourceful enough to keep the force shield around herself activated so that she wouldn't be harmed when she hit bottom.

"That oughta do the trick," Sue said, as she approached her nemesis. "And now for the coup de grace…"

"Oho, not so fast, Mrs. Richards." Then, even though she was prepared for another attack, Sue Storm was not prepared for what would happened next. Malice hurled invisible knives at her that tore up Sue's costume a little bit. She was pinned to the opposite wall. "I told you you shouldn't overestimate your opponent."

"You're right. You shouldn't," Sue said, smiling a bit. Then, Sue hurled a bolt of pure invisible force at the unshielded Malice which struck her head. She fell silent moments later and fell equally to the ground unconscious.

Using all of her strength inherent in her long years of practice, Sue Storm carried Malice over to Doom's chamber.

"You're the new one, eh?" the Hate Monger said, as he tried to use his emotion-controlling powers on the one called called Lila Storm. He knew zilch about her, her powers, and how she would fare in a fight against himself and the rest of Doom's forces for evil.

Lila smiled. This was going to be fun. She was new at this whole super heroine thing prevalent in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries but what the hell? She was willing to give it a try. For her brother and sister. That's far off descendant brother and sister.

"You're going nowhere fast, H.M.," Lila said, as she prepared for her attack. She decided to use all of her powers in this new pronged attack on good ol' H.M. He caused enough troubles for the Fantastic Four and herself the past couple of days that she wanted nothing more than an end to it.

"I know your powers all too well," Hate Monger said, using his robotic psychic abilities to cause her to hate him more than life itself. "You have a great variety of powers at your disposal but they are very limited in their usage. Let's see how you fare against me."

"Apparently quite well," she said, as she saw and if the rest of the FF were watching they could see as well, that the Hate Monger was what he appeared to be, nothing more than a high profile robot. And her powers were sufficient to fight him and his entourage of emotion-controlling powers.

He caused her to hate everyone around but that included the Hate Monger as well. Too bad for him. She used all her powers at once to attack him and push him into submission.

First her telekinetic powers. Not as powerful as Jean Grey or other not so well known mutants of the genre but good enough to destroy the robot in front of her. She figured that nothing inside of him was human, just another brainchild of the Doom mind. Doom created a lot of robots in his time (or more appropriately, his team of chief scientists did) and this was just another in a long assembly line of robots.

Then, his appendages started to come apart as she undid the nuts and bolts of his whole configuration. Finally, he was just a stump. Head and body and that was all. She also used her TK powers to take off his clothes so that he could be further humiliated by his nakedness. And to top it off, she used her elemental powers to make him explode. She heard that another mutant like her used similar techniques to another robot of destruction in Alpha Flight some time ago. She hoped she lived up to his standards.

She walked over to Doom.

"Flame on!!" the Human Torch shouted as his battlecry at the Super-Skrull who was now his opponent. As Johnny Storm burst into flames, the Super-Skrull did likewise. While Storm possessed just one powers that was encompassed by the fabulous Fantastic Four, Kl'rt possessed all four, minus Lila's powers.

Oh, well. Kl'rt's loss is Johnny Storm's gain. But then he would have to depower all the rest of his powers, rather than fight him flame power for flame power.

"Jon Storm," Kl'rt commanded at his younger foe. "You are ever the tempestous one and a hot-headed one. You are no amtch for my superior might. I have the power of all of your comrades, including you, and the fighting force of an entire Skrull empire backing me as well. And my hypno-powers. How shall you fare against me now, Johnny Storm?"

Kl'rt stretched his flame arms around Johnny's body, gripping him firmly in the chest and hurling him to the other side of the room, bypassing Doom by an inch or two. The shock was so much to Johnny's hapless form that he flamed off for a moment or two. When he looked up at the Super-Skrull approaching form, he was still smoking.

"If you think that this is going to sit me out of this fight, you're got another thing coming," the Human Torch said, flaming on immediately after the attack.

This time the Super-Skrull transformed himself invisible and his hands into the Thing's craggy hide to punch him every which way. He also hurled invisible balls at the Human Torch.

"I may have been the one who is known as the group's resident clown," the Human Torch said, evading the blows, invisible and otherwise, and launching into an attack all his own. "But there is more to me than meets the eye. I have the power to harness the fiery powers of the living sun within my own body. And I can still fight with the best of them. As you shall soon see. Take that, Skrully!" With that, the Human Torch hurled flame ball after flame ball at the Super-Skrull, who absorbed it into his own body once he was fiery.

But then, the Super-Skrull saw something within the Human Torch's eyes that he had never seen before. Yes, Johnny Storm was known as this year's class clown, but he was something else entirely. He was a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude. He was the Human Torch, the youngest member of the FF. And sooner or later, when this altercation was over with, the rest of the FF would encounter Kl'rt and all would be undone.

The Super-Skrull flamed on and flew away from the Latverian castle.

"Hey, where are you going, scaredy-cat? Chicken!!"

Suddenly, Mr. Fantastic joined the Human Torch, with the rest of the FF and a revived Thing. Reed said, "C'mon, Torch, we have to confront Doom now."

"That's great, Reed. I'm in a mood to flame ball that tin-plated goon."

"Doom," Reed said to his enemy, who was once his college room-mate for a brief time, "You are a pitiless fool if you think we are going to fall for your crackpot schemes to do away with me and my team again for the final time. This would be the end of our confrontations."

Even though on Doom's featureless face he held a straight face, Reed could have sworn that Doom wanted to smile in front of his face. To show Reed, the dreaded Mr. Fantastic, that he was for a brief moment better than his adversary. But alas, it was never meant to be.

Doom said, "No, I will not sully my hands on you."

"You've said that before, Doomsy," the Thing said. "What are you going to do? Sit there all pretty like while we pound your face in."

"No, this!!" With the press of a master control switch on his throne, magnetic beams, attuned to the metal within the Fantastic Four's costumes, hurled them to the plane that they landed in and put them on a one way path back to New York City.

The Fantastic Four won this time, Doom thought, but not in the war.