404: Doom Not Found

- 11 years before canon -

"Anger sharpens the blade. Purpose gives it aim."

The metal mask clicked into place with a hiss of compression.

Victor Von Doom stood beneath the flicker of reactivated neon. The long-dead arcade buzzed faintly, as if waking from a coma. Its lights, long dormant, twitched back to life like ghosts remembering how to glow.

He didn't flinch. The mask was heavier than expected—not in weight, but in consequence. Each seam had been forged not just by fire, but by warth. 

A hunger deeper than mere substance, it called out for vengeance.

With Victor's eyes glued to his image, he glared with unprecedented fury. 

The scar still felt fresh, and it further primed the fuse that was within Victor's mantle. 

Doctor Doom had returned.

The arcade was a relic from another age—once filled with noise, light, cheap sugar highs, and tokens now scattered like dead currency.

It stank of scorched insulation and rat droppings, its floors sticky with time and ash. But Doctor Doom had made it his own. Rewired. Repurposed. Reborn.

The old netrunner that once called it home no longer needed it. 

Power lines were jacked from nearby street lamps and illegally tapped transformers with supporting arc reactors pushing the surrounding equipment to its limit.

Old Braindance machines had been gutted for processors. An abandoned claw crane had become the shell of a thermite bomb. Junk, once dismissed, now serves a purpose. His purpose.

This was no longer a hideout.

This was a forge.

Doom moved with deliberate precision. His new armour was a hybrid of necessity and engineering—scavenged cybernetics, reinforced with industrial composites, padded with gel lining he'd stolen from an old Trauma Team crate.

One shoulder bore the scars of a recent hit; he'd rigged a servomotor to support the joint. It still ached, but pain was just feedback. Background noise.

Across the arcade, V sat cross-legged on top of a cracked Skee-Ball machine, flicking a knife from hand to hand like it was part of her bloodstream. She watched him from the shadows, always part curious, part cautious.

It had been twelve hours since his awakening, and the man never stopped. During this time, numerous things occurred, one of which was the creation of his tools, armour and study of his enemies. 

V had taken the time to reveal their profile, special tools created for the sole purpose of defeating them. 

"You ever think you're taking this whole mask thing a little too seriously?" she asked, tilting her head.

Doom didn't answer. He adjusted the capacitor lining in his gauntlet, then reached for a small satchel filled with thermite paste and micro-detonators. The bench before him was laid out like a war altar—tools not of survival, but of excellence. 

"You know," she went on, more gently now, "most people get shot and take a damn break. You? You go full chrome and start building bombs."

Doom's voice was quiet. "Rest is for those without purpose. I am not like most people."

"You're brooding. With explosives."

"I'm focused."

She dropped down from her perch, boots echoing off cracked tile. "You don't sleep. You don't eat. You barely breathe unless it's for revenge. This ain't healthy." 

"Don't lecture me on health, I've seen what you feast on... and don't be mistaken, it's not revenge. It's merely causation." His tone stayed flat. "Furthermore, I do not waste time. Every moment is calculated. Your worry is unnecessary."

The two seemed locked within a dilemma. V, for the first time in a long time, felt anxious on someone else's behalf.

She couldn't fathom why, but certain words escaped her lips. 

"I'm worried." 

"Fools are often lost in worry. I am certain of my Victory."

Yet V felt her worry increase. 

My Victory? He still doesn't trust me, the bastard! Still thinks it's a one-man op...Can't he see I'm worried for him? Does he not care? Dammit, stupid! Stupid, Stupid! Get it together V, you've only known each other for a day or two... Just cause he saved your life doesn't mean you gotta give it your all...

Yet, regardless of her thoughts, she still felt disappointed within her heart. 

"You don't trust me, still," V murmured, her words once again escaping her mind.

It seemed to linger longer than it did, but when Doom registered it made him pause.

He could not deny her accusation because it was true.

How many allies had he truly had in his life?

They could only be counted on one hand, and with a city like this?

Doom knew better than to work merely on instinct. Logic was required, and reasoning and deductions needed to be used. 

Doom would not be played. 

He finally looked up. "Trust is expensive, V... Time showcases it. I don't have either."

She didn't argue. Just watched him with something that hovered between amusement and concern. He never stopped thinking, moving, it felt as if she saw a coked-out corpo in the flesh - A clock that never stopped ticking. 

"You know," she said, after a beat, "I didn't have to come back. Could've ghosted. Sold your location. Got a better gig."

"Then why didn't you?"

A pause. She thought of many conclusions, yet could only reach one. 

"Dunno," she admitted. "You remind me of someone. Maybe me. Maybe someone else... Doesn't matter."

He didn't press her. Attachment was dangerous. But so was loyalty. And she hadn't left.

That counted.

Doom walked toward a side room—once a party zone, now a makeshift garage. A car sat in the centre of the room under dim lamp light.

More accurately, a skeleton of a car—a Makigai MaiMai Type 3, pre-2060 model, stripped of corporate software and corporate sanity.

Compact.

Boxy.

Disposable.

He'd found it a mere three hours ago, in a forgotten depot buried under an overpass in the East Slums. A fleet of repossessed vehicles, gathering rust and dust, guarded only by a faulty motion sensor and a sleep-deprived scavenger with a shotgun.

The scavver never saw him. The shotgun still hung on the wall beside the breaker box, right where Doom had left it.

The MaiMai had no engine, no windows, and no seats. But it had a reinforced frame. Enough room to pack a payload.

Doom had installed a crude ethanol-fuelled combustion core and replaced its guidance system with a basic targeting relay. He'd ripped the eyes out of an old smart-fridge AI to serve as the ignition brain. It couldn't hold a conversation, but it knew how to obey.

Its purpose was singular: drive forward, explode. 

It would be art. 

A display of his authority. 

While the vehicle could be hacked, a netrunner would merely be restricted to stopping the vehicle, not its ignition. 

That sole function was reserved for Doom and Doom alone. 

Doom crouched and checked the seal on the first thermite core, mounted just behind the driver's seat. There were no wires—just magnesium triggers and chemical switches. Crude, simple, lethal.

V, wishing to bud in, did so, "So this is your masterstroke, huh? Homemade car bomb in a clown car shell?"

"It's efficient. Draws attention. Breaks lines. No alarms, no surveillance. No mercy."

"I don't know. Once this thing pops, I wouldn't be surprised if Maxtac made their way over... This'll be on the headlines for a while."

"Good, the city should remember its place." 

"Heh, cocky... You really think Gina J's place needs a car explosion to get into?"

"It's not about Gina J. It's about what follows after. Chaos draws the spiders out of the web."

He slammed the hood shut.

"And more than that, it's a message." 

"What kind of message do you need to send? Feels like you're the next Silverhand here. What's next, a manifesto?" 

"Manifesto? No. This will be but a simple message. One acknowledged by every culture and language." 

"And what would that be?" V mused, her hand by her hip as she looked the car up and down. 

"Fear." 

The vehicle hissed.

Sometime later, rain began to fall - soft, thin, biting. 

Victor stood in the glow of the dying neon, armour humming, the aluminium mask expressionless.

He began going over the plan. 

"I'm going to retrieve the case," he said. "When I give you the order, awaken the vehicle. Afterwards, attempt to watch, delay or distract the mercenaries' netrunner. She's watching. A woman of her calibre would no doubt either be drawn to the fire."

"You sure she'll take the bait?"

"Should she choose to remain passive, we gain the initiative."

She nodded, reluctantly impressed. "And after that?"

He turned toward the arcade's back exit, shadows stretching across the floor.

"Then I become something this city fears."

"How ominous." She exasperated her hands out in mock, "So, how exactly are you going to move this thing? With no doors or windows, I don't exactly think it's road worthy."

"I have a plan," Victor explained, his eyes glued to the plastic sheets behind her.

"Don't tell me..." 

"Yes."

---

"I got their ping... Seems she's not hiding anymore... More like waiting," V voiced, "She's waiting for pick-up... Hired muscles, five to six outside, unknown count inside."

"Capabilities?" 

"Gangers, Gonks from 6th street. Cheap personal, you've handled worse. What I'm surprised about is their audacity. Tyger claw territory? Most of em won't live by tomorrow, regardless." 

"It's fate then." 

Rain was hissing across the alley as Victor put the vehicle into position. He'd leave it inconspicuously in front. No one would bother to observe the joke of a car; it didn't have the flair for such. 

The building squatted like a concrete sarcophagus, its facade scarred by time and fire. A 6th Street gang banner hung limp from a balcony, soaked and faded.

Shouts and low music drifted from behind broken windows—cheap synthwave, bad arguments, the lull of gangers lulled into routine. Gina J's "safehouse" sat at its centre, fortified in illusion only. He'd mapped the structure an hour ago—four exits, all sealed or bottlenecked.

No escape. Not for her.

The MaiMai idled in the alley below, engine rumbling like a sick animal. Victor had driven it here under cover of darkness, steering manually through Pacifica's neglected backroads. Now, the ignition was controlled through the feed in his visor—a line of code, a thought away from detonation.

His comms crackled. V's voice came through, low and tense.

"I've still got MM on trace. She's bouncing signals between sectors, but staying close. Like she knows something's up."

"She always knows," Victor muttered.

"You need me to pull her attention away?"

"No. Let her look."

He leaned forward into the rain, the mask catching droplets like steel tears. The HUD tracked motion below—two guards at the front entrance, lazy. A few more marked along balconies and stairwells. All soft targets.

"Begin..." 

V hearing his orders, activated the car's ignition.

The car roared like it had been woken from the grave, sputtering down the alley and into the courtyard. Shouts erupted—confused, angry.

Victor tracked the signal until it reached the designated waypoint.

Then he detonated it.

The explosion split the night in two.

A sunburst of white-hot fire ignited, thermite bursting through the car's chassis. The shockwave cracked windows across three blocks. Smoke gouted into the air. Screams followed. The courtyard buckled, the building's first floor collapsing inward under the blast. Debris rained from above.

Victor was already moving.

He dropped from the rooftop, cloak snapping, boots hitting molten tile with a crunch. His modified armour absorbed the shock of landing; the servomotor in his shoulder groaned, but held. The HUD flickered once, recalibrated, then lit up with body heat signatures—most scrambling, disoriented. Some not moving at all.

This was the moment. The breach.

One ganger stumbled from the smoke, coughing blood, trying to speak. Victor silenced him with a single shot to the throat. 

Another appeared at the top of the stairwell—gun raised, shaking. Two shots: one to the knee, one to the throat. He collapsed before he could scream.

Victor moved like a machine—silent, cold, inevitable. Not a shadow.

A force.

His pistol—a compact .45 with a kinetic enhancer—spat fire with every shot. The recoil dampeners in his gauntlet redirected the force back into the trigger, allowing precision in motion. 

The gloves themselves held a hidden capacitor system: microshock arrays charged from earlier. He hadn't needed to punch anyone yet, but when he did, it would be diabolical. 

The hallway was warping from the heat—doors sagging, walls crackling. Smoke licked the ceiling like tongues searching for air. Gina's personal guards were already down, limbs twisted in defensive postures, some still smouldering from the blast.

He did not stop to check if they breathed.

He did not need them alive.

This was no longer vengeance.

This was a message.

At the end of the corridor stood the final door—steel-reinforced, internally sealed. Gina J's panic room. She had paid well for it. Vault-grade materials. Digitally layered locks. Even a biometric override. A coffin with a keypad.

Victor reached into his coat and removed the second thermite charge. This one was more refined—smaller, purer mix, custom-fused from drone battery cells and magnesium powder. He pressed it to the hinges.

It sparked, then glowed.

He stepped back.

The door liquefied.

Inside, Gina J stood alone, framed in the red flicker of firelight. Her face was half-blackened by soot, her hair matted, one eye swollen. In one hand, a cheap pistol. In the other case—Victor's target.

The one that this entire war spiralled around.

Her hand trembled.

The mask stood before the prey.

A steel Gaze.