Thundra pushed the stumbling Titania over to a couch, and she hit it with a groan, flopping over to display a face completely black and blue, swollen everywhere and her sharp nose flattened and bent at an acute angle.

Even the men there winced at the sight of the black and blue marks all over her, and they didn’t miss her broken nails and split knuckles, either.

Crusher Creel took one look at her and got up from where he was sitting, heading for the kitchen. When he came back, he had four extra brews in his hands... and he was made out of ice.

“Take this,” he told the redhead, pressing a bottle into her hands, and setting down the others. Then he put his big and icy hands right on her face, and she gasped in shock. “Just drink. I can see yer healin’. You’ll be fine in an hour or two, but I know what that feels like, getting slammed up the head like that. Just sit there and drink and don’t mind my hands.”

“Nowhere else, Creel,” Thundra said firmly from her own seat, watching him closely.

“Sure, sure,” the big man grinned despite himself, as Titania poured the first beer down her throat, and coughed and gagged despite herself. “Did a number on her, red.”

“She’s got a lot of mean to let out. Doesn’t know how to do it. Seen a lot of it. Granted, they can’t usually toss a tank around.”

“Yeah? What’s her Rating?” he asked, interested. Relative Strength wasn’t the only determiner in a fight between Bricks, but it was a big one.

“80, 85 tons? Pretty impressive. I don’t know any other women who default that high, except Serenity.”

“Whoa,” Creel murmured, startled. “That include Dynamo, the She-Hulk?”

“Dynamo buffs that high, and whole lot higher. She-Hulk is 70,75 tons at default, although if she goes berserk, hold your shirt.”

“Huh,” he acknowledged, filing that away. “Who’s Serenity? Never heard of her.”

Thundra smiled thinly. “My daughter!” she declared proudly.

Every man there looked at her, wondering how a woman who looked like her could have a grown daughter.

“Do I even wanna know who her dad is?” Creel asked fatalistically.

Thundra’s green eyes gleamed sharply. “Oh, I think that will be obvious when you see her!”

“See her?” he asked.

“She’s on her way here with the Mick!” she declared even more proudly.

----------------

A few days and one villain-launched ‘surprise attack’ later...

Doom was such an idiot, thinking his surprise attack had caught the heroes off-guard, removing them as a threat to his schemes.

Granted, they’d sold their surprise and confusion pretty well, and managed to retreat in good order from their base after putting up a defense the muscle on his side had torn through pretty quickly.

They were now visible fleeing into the distance on a disk of black and gold. Without a fast aircraft, there was no way to catch them.

“-this guy didn’t do anything during the attack!” Piledriver mumbled, glancing at the aloof Graviton, who was watching the heroes retreat with everyone else.

“He was shut down. Shit happens,” Mr. Hill said, not defending Hall, just stating the obvious. “My Weight was nixed, too.” Stillflight Fields were like that.

“You think me helpless?” Graviton turned on Piledriver, the kind of haughty arrogance in his eyes that could easily make the Demolition Crewman back off. “Hmm, perhaps I can be of some assistance right now. I see something that might be of use. How about I drop a mountain on them, mmm?”

He reached out with his hand towards the mountains that abruptly jutted up along a terrain junction in the distance, tensed it, and lifted.

To say there were a few dropped jaws as an entire mountain was torn free of the planet’s surface was no exaggeration, especially as it moved very rapidly over top of the fleeing heroes.

Graviton flattened his hand, and the mountain fell.

Mr. Hill watched casually as uncounted tons of stone descended squarely upon the heroes a few miles away. The wind from the impact was a colossal wall of dirt and scree of tornado-force, but the belatedly activated storm shields of the heroes’ fortress came on and dealt with them easily enough, while the ground quaked and rocked from the impact.

Graviton hadn’t let it hit with full force, or this section of the makeshift planet’s mantle would likely have fractured like glass. Still, the earthquake shook the place like a toy boat on the ocean as the shockwave went out and sent loose objects and super-villains flying in all directions.

Eh, they were going to blow this place up anyway, so no big losses.

“Eh, probably take them a day or two ta dig out,” Hill muttered over the storm, regarding the new mountain rising up only a short distance away now, and quite stealing Graviton’s moment of glory.

“What?!” Graviton spluttered, turning on him. “There’s no way they could have survived that much weight coming down on them!”

Hill just gave him a ‘Stupid Shmot Guy’ look, which he did very well. “Like using the Patriot’s Shield?” he asked, turning away and leaving the words hanging.

And now the heroes were buried under a mountain, and they couldn’t reach them, even if they wanted to.

The other villains there gave Graviton knowing glances as they left the balcony, too, carefully neutral, but conveying exactly what they thought.

He had a massive amount of power, sure, but he was an arrogant idiot who couldn’t use it properly.

Graviton grit his teeth, considering raising the gravity massively on the mountain, and then realized it was useless. Richards could neutralize his gravity, even if he started a singularity or something, and all it would do is free the heroes from the mountain faster.

It was a good move to delay them and imprison them for a bit, but hardly capable of killing them if they had any brains at all... and brains were not something the heroes were in short supply on.

------

-Any problems on yer end?- Hill /asked neutrally. -Other than the obvious, o’ course.-

The Patriot looked up at his Shield Liberty, locked in place above them and holding despite the entire weight of the mountain coming down upon her. Radiating from her were crystalline arcs of shadow and light, forming a force field around the symmetrical space that the heroes were clustered in. Sunstone and Darkstar were seated back-to-back in meditative poses, keeping the force field wedging the stone around them at bay intact, while Liberty held up the weight from above.

-We’re fine, Hill,- General Rogers /replied, amused despite himself at the casual /voice of the mercenary, as if he knew that they’d be fine. -Graviton, I assume?-

-Yeah. Oh, don’t worry none about Thor. No hide nor hair of him hereabouts, he got away.- They’d been whaling on him good, but a flash of lightning had come down, blinding everyone for a second, and he’d been gone.

-What’s going on?- Rogers /asked reasonably.

-Doom’s running around like a Schmot Guy with his head cut off, looking through all your tech. Since that big ship appeared out there he’s been kind of manic.-

-He wants to get on Galactus’ system ship? Interesting. Well, let him do what he wants. We should be out of here inside an hour.- The Patriot looked over to where Mr. Fantastic was working on the War Machine armor of James Rhodes, making energy conduits to it that could be supercharged so they could blow their way out of there. With Cyclops, Sunstone, and the Torch capable of pumping juice into his armor, it wouldn’t take much to do the job.

-Will do. Nice acting, by the way. Woulda sold me iff’n I didn’t know about it. Though I don’t think you meant the killbot ta break the Hulk’s leg.-

-A couple of Potions took care of him. Dynamo makes good stuff,- the Patriot /replied calmly.

-Yeah, those girls know their stuff,- Hill /agreed. -Let’s see how this plays out.-

---------

The heroes took up residence in a village of fairly primitive aliens, who Sunstone was nevertheless conversing with smoothly inside an hour. There was a facility with advanced technology nearby, which the aliens were avoiding.

I watched Doom teleport up to Taa III and run around for a while inside it, before Galactus became aware of him and kicked him out non-too-politely. Since Big Planet-Luncher normally eradicated pests, He was taking care that Doom lived (which Doom would no doubt attribute to his amazing armor in his arrogance) and furthermore, Doom brought someone with him when he was hurled back to the Battleworld.

Lightmaster!

-How in the Heavens Above did Lightmaster get on Galactus’ home?- I had to /ask in Markspace incredulously. My Cosmic Awareness was very bolloxed up by the combination of events going on, and I couldn’t even trace how he got there. In the original comics, it had been Klaw, but Klaw was long Silenced and vivisized by the Black Panther here.

-Umm, I think that was me.- All eyes turned to Carol Danvers. -Remember that escapade I had at Project Pegasus two years ago?-

I wasn’t up here then, but assents came from multiple directions, and I’d read the after-battle report. She /went on, -Lightmaster was trying to get that liquid light prototype and initiated a dimensional breach, which I stopped by sucking in all the energy... including him in his light form.

-I ended up on Taa II, and there was that whole dance with Terrax the Tamer trying to find some cosmic weaponry on the ship while Galactus was on the other side of existence or something. I ended up using up all the absorbed energy on the ship while we were fighting, probably including that twat.-

-Galactus transferred him over to the doubled ship. The big guy is a player...- I /muttered for everyone.

There were murmurs of agreement as they realized it. -Why is he important?- Carol had to /ask. -Photon or Lantern could hand him his ass!-

-He’s solidified energy who’s been bouncing around as part of Taa II for a couple years. Would you say he’s pretty attuned to the place?- I /asked her.

-Uhhhh, yeah, probably. Is that important?- Carol /answered cautiously.

-Not unless you were planning on doing something radical, like, oh, absorbing the entirety of the energy of Taa III...-

-Oh, shit...-

-----------

The four vehicles came roaring up to the doors of the Ringbase, audible from a long distance away.

Mr. Hill stepped out to greet them as they pulled up, as did most of the people in the Ringbase, including the Mandarin himself. Doom was sitting in a private cell, completely out of it after being thrown out of Galactus’ ship, and Lightmaster was capering around like an idiot made of solid light inside his uniform, clearly unhinged after his experience, yet he had still managed to haul Doom back here.

“Holy shit, these guys got the fuck shot out of them,” Crusher Creel murmured, looking at the swathe of bullet holes, scarring, blasted windshields and gouged armor and metal everywhere. Holes in some really, really hard armor, as he was an expert on materials.

But they were here. The men and women looked at one another in relief and excitement.

The Mick slowly shut off his Mustang, and the coughing roar seemed to sigh as it finally came to a rest.

The other Drivers did the same, and the mercs all got out of their vehicles, calls of recognition from past associates going out as they did.

The chain-wearing, flame-haired, emerald amazon swinging out of the back of the Swiss cheese made out of the armor-shredded monster truck definitely got attention, especially after she came up to hug her mother Thundra. Creel had an interesting expression on his face when he realized who her father was, as his glance at Blonsky earned a quick shake of the head from the Abomination.

Mr. Hill handed the Mick and Jennifer Kale half a stogie each, and lit it with the usual match he struck off his face. Both of them puffed on the cigars gratefully.

“You look like shit, Mick,” The Mountain told him helpfully.