Chapter 1: Once More, With Curiosity

When it was first revealed that Victor von Doom had returned, no one had actually believed the newsreader. At first, the Fantastic Four had stared at the evening news in complete disbelief, a mild horror that overcame them with the fact that Victor was on the loose, presumably looking for revenge, and they hadn't even noticed. His solitary confinement in the prison made from his own metallic body had been escaped months ago, but no one had told them. There had been no hint of disaster, no sneak preview of what was to come. Nothing.

Not until that morning.

When they had first heard about his return, Reed had set to work on finding out where he had been all these months, where he had left Latveria and returned to the US without any legal permission. It hadn't taken Reed long to realise that Victor had come into possession of a unique technology, masterful in design, that used a similar energy to that of the cosmic storm which had given them their powers. If Victor used it on them, it would take their powers away, returning their bodies to a neutral state and storing the energy inside of Victor himself. Then, if he attempted to use his own abilities, it could potentially over-surge, resulting in the deaths of many humans from the radiation poisoning they'd experience from coming into contact with the cosmic energy.

So, it was no surprise that when they had finally tracked him down, the battle swiftly entered a large downtown showdown.

Crouched behind a large chunk of wall, which now served as one of the many pieces of debris in the vacant street, the Fantastic Four were hidden away, trying to desperately come up with a plan that would help them get the technology, in the form of a weapon, away from Victor without getting any of them hit by it; something that was proving much harder than they'd anticipated when they first went after him.

"I could always just whale on the guy and keep him busy," Ben suggested, taking his usual approach towards Victor.

"It's too risky," Reed said, putting a stop to what could be called a stupid idea. "As soon as he sees you, you're as good as dead."

"I could try and make him invisible to Victor," Sue suggested, knowing that Ben would be able to sneak up on their enemy easier if he wasn't seen.

Reed turned to her, giving her that protective husband look that she was more than used to now. "You've tried projecting invisibility before, and the last time you were unconscious for three days," he reminded her, shaking his head. "I'm not letting you do that again."

She frowned at him unfairly. "I'm getting stronger," she reminded him, "and if it works, surely it's worth it?"

But to no surprise, Reed wasn't alone in his opinion. Ben looked at her softly. "Reed's right, Susie. It's too much for you."

Johnny groaned loudly as he tried to look over the piece of rubble they were hiding from. "This is ridiculous!" He complained. "We should just do exactly what we did first time."

"Wing it and hope for the best?" Sue criticised, remembering their last showdown with Victor that had ended with them becoming official superheroes.

"No, I'll go supernova on his ass, Sue can contain it, and if we can get water from a hydrant again, we can freeze him."

It was a good plan, to be sure, but there was just one flaw. "He came back from that before," Sue reminded him.

"Only because of the Surfer's radiation," Reed added.

Johnny smirked. "And I don't think he'll be coming back anytime soon.

Ben rolled his eyes, wondering how they got themselves into situations like this. "So, we're going for that plan?"

All eyes fell onto their leader. "Reed?" Sue asked, a dread feeling in her stomach that told her something wasn't going to go right.

But Reed nodded. "Right, OK."

Johnny grinned. "Cool!" He cried out, always eager to charge his flame to the highest temperature.

"Just make sure that we all stay out of range," Reed instructed as they all prepared to move again. "Johnny, you're going to have to move quickly, otherwise he'll have a clear shot at you."

Johnny flamed on one hand, showing it to Reed. "This is the coolest thing that's ever happened to me," he said, not for the first time in their three years as a team. "I'm not letting him take that away just because he's pissed off with us."

"Johnny-" Sue started, causing her brother to turn to her.

"What?"

She looked at him, a warning dying on her lips before she could form it into words. "Just be careful, OK?" She reminded him.

Far from feeling her worry, he grinned confidently. "Aren't I always?"

"No, not really," she smiled along with him.

He put his hand on her shoulder. "Relax, sis. What's the worst that could happen?"

Johnny flamed on and darted into the air, immediately adding the previous pace to their attack. However, because he was moving so quickly, Victor had trouble focusing enough to make a clear shot at Johnny. When the heat became unbearable, Sue expanded a force field to enclose the wall of flame that held Victor in place. Near to the top of the force field, however, there was an open space, so that Johnny could escape the vortex of fire before he had to stop.

But just as he flew out of the gap at the top, a flash of green light accompanied him. The light, focused into a steady ray, hit Johnny square in the chest, and it didn't take long for the rest of the team to realise what had happened.

Victor had gotten his clear shot.

Instantly flaming off despite his need to remain airborne, Johnny cried out, falling to the ground along with an array of rubble that had been disturbed during his circular flight path. Sue screamed, watching her brother fall to the ground without trying to fly again. Her concentration disappeared, and the force field shattered, leaving a familiar scene in the middle of the street.

But all Sue could think about was how she had seen her brother fall, and appear to be crushed. What if something had fallen on him? He'd have been killed, for sure. Her brother. Her baby brother. While she headed off for the direction in which he'd fallen, Ben and Reed continued to finish Victor off in the same way they had done last time.

"Johnny?" Sue called as she ran through the rubble, inhaling the dusty air around her. "Johnny!"

But there was no answer.

She began to move the rubble, using her force fields to lift the large chunks of wall away from the ground, each time terrified that her brother's mangled body might lay beneath them. The larger rubble gave way to smaller chunks, about the same size as the average human adult. Sue's energy began to fail her and emotions got the better of her, leaving her incapable of creating a force field strong enough to lift the rocks. Still desperate to find her missing brother, she resorted to using her hands. Of course, she wasn't nearly strong enough to move the rubble from it's place.

Then, she felt a pair of hands holding her wrists, gently prying her away from the rock she was trying to shift. "Careful, you're going to hurt yourself," Reed warned her, moving her a few steps away from the rock so that she wouldn't try to break free.

Sue looked up at her husband, frightened tears gathering in her eyes. "Johnny's underneath all of this!" She reminded him. "We have to get him out."

Ben stepped up, trying to reassure her, even though he, too, was concerned for his missing team mate. "Relax, Susie, I got this."

Whilst Ben manages to break some of the rocks apart, making them easier and manageable for him to move around, Reed continued to hold Sue back. Even though she was fighting to be let loose from his hold, he wasn't going to let her hurt herself by trying to find Johnny. He understood that she needed to find him, and he wanted to find him too, but he had to look out for Sue at moments like this where her own safety wasn't her concern.

Eventually, she settled for letting Reed hold her, his arm around her shoulder as she looked at the massive mess around them, waiting for a sign that her brother was alive. "Johnny?" She called out constantly. "Johnny, where are you?"

"Hey, kid, can you hear us?" Ben called out in his gruff voice, as he and Reed added their own calls to the damage around them.

But ten minutes passed, and there was still no answering call from him.

"He's not here, Sue," Reed said after a long silence fell over them.

"He has to be!" She said, knowing that her brother wouldn't have left the scene of fight without them.

"We've searched under every rock," Reed said, gesturing to the large street covered in broken up rubble. "He's not here. It's like he's vanished."

Sue frowned at him, her eyes narrowing. "People don't just vanish, Reed. I saw him fall!"

"We all did." Reed said softly.

"I'm not going home without my…" but she trailed off and didn't finish her sentence. Her eyes wandered for a moment, concentrating on a spot over her shoulder. "Did you hear that?" She asked after a moment had passed.

"Hear what?" Reed asked her.

"Shh!" Sue said, putting her hand on his chest.

In the silence, Reed heard a sound he definitely wouldn't have expected to hear in the middle of a scene like this. A child's cry. A sobbing. A frightened, heart-wrenching cry that could only come from a scared child.

"That." Sue said quietly, looking up at Reed. "Did you hear that?"

Reed was staring over her shoulder in the direction of the cry. "There wasn't a child anywhere near this place." He said, almost to himself, as he remembered that the area had quickly been cleared thanks to emergency services.

"Oh, God," Sue said, drawing her breath in quickly and biting her lip. "What if a child's been hurt?" She asked, contemplating worst case scenarios. "Because of us?"

"Let's just find them first," Reed suggested, before his wife could come up with a guilty speech about children. He knew that they longed for a child of their own, and that so far their attempts had been in vain, and the last thing he wanted was for this to set her back.

So, they searched. They went back over the rubble until they found a small gathering of rocks that had made a caved area over the ground. And there, protected from everything around him, they found a small boy curled up, with his face hidden as he cried the same cries they had heard from thirty feet away.

"Over here," Ben called to the others as he caught sight of their culprit crier. "I found the kid."

Immediately, Ben moved to check that the boy was OK, but Sue put his arm out to stop him. "Wait," she said, stopping him in his tracks as she looked down at the small boy. "He's scared, we can't just leap on him."

She approached him in a completely different manner, crouching down near the entrance of makeshift cave and waiting for the boy to look up at her. When he did, he squirmed backwards as far as he could go.

"It's okay," she assured him, in a gentle voice. "You're safe now. You can come out of there."

The boy turned his head, his face showing into the afternoon light for the first time, and Sue's eyes widened.

"Oh, my God," she whispered breathlessly.

"What?" Reed asked, stepping forward in case she had seen some injury of his.

"Those eyes," she said, never taking her eyes away from the boy. "Look at them."

They did look, but they didn't see what Sue did. "What about them?" Ben asked.

"They're Johnny's eyes," Sue said, almost in disbelief.

Ben laughed lightly. "You think Johnny's got a kid running around that he doesn't know about?"

The fact that Johnny might just have been the most promiscuous man in New York didn't make them doubt the fact that Johnny probably had thousands of children running around, but that wasn't want Sue was fearing right then. "No…I think…but that's insane…" she whispered to herself.

"He's still watching you," Reed said gently from where he stood near her side, "try and get him to come to you."

Sue held out her hand to the boy. "It's okay, we're not going to hurt you," she said, still speaking in soft tones. The boy began to crawl out of the space, and Sue smiled at the sandy-haired child. "That's it, come here," she encouraged him.

Crawling to where he had enough space to stand up, the boy didn't take his eyes off of her. Something seemed to register in his mind, and he went from small, wary steps, to more confident strides, until he had all but thrown himself into Sue's presence. He stopped a step before where she was crouched, putting his hand into hers and squeezing it tightly.

Sue smiled at him. "My name is Susan," she told him, "what's your name?"

The boy looked up at her, giving her a look as if he thought she were insane. "I know you," he told her simply. "I know my Susie."

Sue frowned slightly. "What's your name?" She asked him again, this time with more curiosity in her voice.

The boy titled his head to one side. "It's me, Susie," he told her. "It's Johnny."