Somewhere in the outskirts of California...
It all started with a dream and an idea for Reed Richards.
He had this dream for a long time, catching glimpses of it while allowing himself some briefs moments of sleep, his head resting on the table in his makeshift lab in his dad's garage.
He dreamed of making the world a better place.
To make a world without boundaries and give mankind a place among the stars.
When everyone else looked up in the sky, ordinary people only saw something distant and unreachable. One absurdly important goal that would just get infinitesimally closer generation after generation.
When Reed looked at the sky, he saw entire worlds full of possibility and wonder and unspeakable and magnificent things. Things that one day he would see with his own eyes and touch with his own hands.
"Reed? Can you come here for a second?" The blonde girl asked as she leaned over to look at the telescope.
"Yes, I just need one moment to organize my better not—" Right as he said that, a cascade of white papers fell right from his arms on the grass. Reed sighed as he tried to pick up the sheets full of coordinates and calculations. As he tried to gather the papers as fast as he could, he saw in the corner of his eye the blonde girl bending over to help him with his task.
As they reached for the same paper he felt Sue's warm hands briefly touching his, and he gulped, freezing on the spot as he looked up to meet her blue eyes.
"Ehr...Yes...What were we talking about?" He quickly collected himself, reasoning that the opening of his blood vessels and the significant flooding of his face with a red hue was merely a neurological response.
"Oh, that." Sue picked up the last paper and went back to the telescope. "I think I found something new."
Reed quickly checked his calculations once more, and Sue gently stepped on the side to let him see her discovery. Reed hesitated as he took a moment to look at her adjusting one wild lock of her hair back under her headband. Was it a new one? If so, it really made her blue eyes stand out and...Reed cleared his voice and adjusted his glasses, mentally reciting the calculations as his eye focused on the silver object soaring through the night's sky.
"Oh…"
"Is that the good kind 'Oh' or the bad kind of 'Oh'?"
"It's a...Uh...Good one. I think we...I mean, you found a new celestial body!"
"Really? Oh my gosh, you're not joking?"
"I'm never joking about science, Sue. According to my calculations, you just discovered a new comet."
"Did I? Oh my gosh, it's amazing!" Sue quickly sprung up and hugged the boy tightly, shaking him back and forth as the girl squealed with glee. She then realized how close they were getting and Reed noticed that the blood vessels in her face were also getting pretty open. Reed tried to mutter something as Sue discreetly pushed herself off of him. "So, I guess we should find a name for it."
"Well, you were the one to find it, so it's up to you."
"I'll think about it for a moment. Guess it will make a good college recommendation. Sue Storm: Comet Finder!" Sue struck a heroic pose, her finger pointing at the sky while flexing the other arm.
"Once we finish college, we could do so much more than this. One day, I want to go up there, Sue." A wide smile lit up his face, something that Sue didn't find adorable at all, no siree. "There are just so many mysteries up there. Did you know that mankind has only a 4% total comprehension of every scientific field?"
"Four is not a bad number. Isn't that the number of years you're skipping?"
"Two, actually."
Sue chuckled. "Yeah, you're going to miss out. The last year where everyone is counting the days to graduation, career counselors grasping at straws to make you pick a job you'll hate, the homecoming party where you can't find a date…" Sue couldn't be less subtle if she tried but the boy next to her was stuffier than his starched shirt.
"To be honest, I'm relieved. I always thought that high school was...Limiting. I always felt everything was going too slow for my tastes. I-I mean, not that you're slow, you're quite brilliant!" Reed stammered and panicked when he noticed his friend's off-putting (but quite charming pout) and cleared his voice again while adjusting his tie " It's just that I can't wait to work on real things."
"Has this something to do with that teleporter prototype? You know, the one that burned Ben's eyebrows?"
"It was just one eyebrow. And something like that, yes. Once I have enough funds we could really make something out of it."
Sue sighed. "I envy you, Reed, you know that?."
The boy raised an eyebrow. "Why is that?"
"You have so many wonderful dreams, and you got everything planned out for the future. I don't know what do do. I feel like I have a lot of responsibilities trust me. My brother can't take care of himself and my father, well, he's not going to be around for a while…" Sue tried to laugh it off but deep down Reed knew how she really felt. Losing someone dear was never easy...He couldn't help but admire her for her strength.
A strength that deserved a better life. A strength that one day could've brought them to the stars and beyond.
He gulped and said the words he knew would change their life. "I'll take you there."
"What?"
"I want you to feel free. I'll show you the Universe, Sue..." He held both her hands and a smile lit up her face. "I want to show you there's much more than this hill, much more than your house. Once you see the wonders that wait for us out there, you'll be free to choose whatever future you want. We'll just have to wait and finish college."
"Well, as long as I'm there. Because God knows, Reed, you wouldn't know how to tie your shoes."
Reed let a hearty, sincere laugh. "That's why they invented straps, Sue."
"I think I have found a name for that comet."
"Really? What is it?"
"The Silver Surfer."
Sue wondered if one day they would see it again among those wonders Reed promised to her.
New York, Ten Years Later…
Ben Grimm was a simple man.
He saw something that had to be punched; he punched it.
He saw a craft without a pilot; he would pilot the crap out of that.
He saw a friend in need; he would help them.
That's the kind of man Ben Grimm was.
But when he heard his friend making that offer, something crawled up his spine. He didn't feel something like that ever since last time he hopped on a plane. When you go up there enough times, you gain something of a sixth sense. Something that rears its ugly head well before a radar is beeping and telling you that someone wants to sneak up —on you and smoke you. As he threw that last punch, it was with such force that the chain holding the bag was creaking and protesting. Some would've sworn it was going to fly all the way out of the gym. That was the kind of punch a guy would throw if he felt someone or something sneaking up on him.
"Whoah, that was one heck of a punch, Benjy!" Sue chuckled as she patted on his bicep.
"So, what do you think?" Reed took his hat and placed it on his chest, wearing a sheepish smile. Ben's friend was always sharply dressed, making a huge contrast with the rest of that small, almost spartan gym of Yancy Street, and always looked like the smartest guy in the room.
Granted, he was, but that was another matter entirely.
"I 'unno, Reed. Since we wuz roommates where haven't I followed ya? But ya see this?" Ben placed a hand on his belly.
Reed tilted his head. "Your abdominal muscles?"
"It's my gut. And my gut sez...Something is off. Mebbe we're not ready."
Reed looked dejected, almost mortified. "Ben, I–"
"It's like this, Ben…" Sue took a step forward, a strong determination burning in her gentle eyes. "Do you or do you not want to make history? Because what we have right here can. And we need the best of the best to pull it off. Are you with us?"
He'll be damned. Susie really believed in this. She hadn't said a word all the time Reed has been explaining the details of the supposed expedition. Reed was like a brother to him, and so was Sue. Well, not a brother, but as close as family. He owed something to them. Also, if he weren't there to watch his back, the bullies at school would've shoved that giant brain of his in the toilet every day.
Ben paused for a second before bursting into hearty laughter to break the tension of the moment. "Okay, wow! How can I say no after that? Yer lucky your girlfriend can be so persuasive, egghead." Ben extended his hand for Reed to grasp it and he shook it with a grip that could make a man wince in pain. Reed steeled himself because, really, he couldn't ruin the moment. He waited for Ben to turn and grab a towel to nurse his knuckles. "How many are on board with this?"
"Uh...The three of us."
"Really? I thought we needed a fourth." Ben started wiping the sweat from his brown hair. "Didncha say that the government was backing us up? Yer still in touch with that, wuzzat, creepy European guy?"
"Victor, you mean? Sure, he's a brilliant mind, but he's had an accident."
"Ya mean an accident or an accident? Ya see, there's a big difference and when ye grow up in Yancy Street ya kin see both kinds."
"I wasn't there to help him nor did he want my help. An accident has left him disfigured, and was expelled for tampering with college property." Reed looked on the floor, his hands trembling as he held the hat. "That man deserved better." If he didn't know Reed any better, he looked like he was going to cry.
"Jeez, now I feel sorry for him. Still, I got your back, Reed. I think we should follow my gut, but my gut was always right when following ya, so it evens out." He patted his friend's back. This simple, friendly act nearly threw him off his balance and knocked his glasses out of his nose, but that at least brought him back to high spirits.
"Thanks, Ben. I promise that it's going to be fantastic."
"That's the cheesiest thing I ever heard. I see that those four PhDs of yours amounted to somethin'."
"Five, actually."
"And ya still can't take a joke."
Sue gave a small nod in response to that.
Nevada
Johnny Storm really didn't want to be there.
His sister had promised fun, but his sister wouldn't know fun if it bit her on the neck. She said that they were going to space and yet all he could see was a big, black, somewhat creepy door frame standing in the middle of the desert. He saw literal phalanges (He tried to think about something cool: The Spartans were cool) of computers showing up endless nerd trivia monitored by even more nerds that could be interested in trivia.
And then the guys in suits. Dear God, he didn't need the guys in suits. They kinda creeped him out. They always turned out to be the villains in the movies. He was looking at Sue talking with a guy he figured was a general or something. That chest full of medals left little to the imagination.
From that poofy mustache, though, he looked like a guy that could take an afternoon to build an ungrateful puppet.
There was another suit with them, wearing a pair of sunglasses. He was a balding guy with the most prominent forehead he ever saw and a kind of sleepy appearance. If he was trying to get somebody's guard down and shove him into a black SUV, then Johnny guessed he had the right attitude at least. The most harmless suit he ever saw.
"Hey, did someone lost a little kid or something?" Johnny was almost startled as he turned to see the tallest astronaut he ever saw. Well, he was the first, but still, the man was a mountain. He was wearing a bulking and almost tacky blue spacesuit and had a pair of reassuring eyes, also blue. "Where's yer parents, kiddo?" He patted on Johnny's head, ruining minutes of hard work he did on his locks that morning.
"My sister is talking to Geppetto over there."
The man chuckled. "Ya gotta be...Yer Susie's little brother! I remember when you were just a yea high. Yer filling out, kid."
"Well, looks like you're filling out enough, big guy." He patted on the man's belly, earning a gruff grunt from the astronaut.
"Yer goin' places, kid. Granted, maybe not good ones."
"Looks like you got a fan, Grimm!" The man with the white mustache showed up, giving another, hair ruining pat to Johnny's hair while he went to meet Ben. Ben couldn't help but crack a smile at seeing the kid's grin turn into a frown. "Be proud, son. Your sister and your friend are going to become heroes." The two men exchanged a salute. "Major Grimm."
"General Ross, sir."
"How does it feel to be about to make history, Major?"
"Funny, everyone is asking me that."
"You really should be proud. You're doing a great service to your country."
Johnny couldn't decide if those stock phrases that all military guys seemed to say were just that or actually sincere. Both possibilities were unsettling.
The other man with the general offered a handshake, still flashing that sleepy smile of his. He had a firm grip, and Johnny noticed he had some circuit like glowing lines on the back of his hand.
"I don't know if we met: Agent Coulson of Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."
"That's a mouthful."
"We are trying to shorten it these days to a possibly less threatening acronym."
"Coulson is here to spy on us." Ross tried to pass it off as a joke. A bad one but still, points for the effort.
"Technically, we are monitoring this experiment for security reasons. But yes, we're also spying on you. It's just that many of the talents involved in this project were kinda flying under the radar." He blinked. "Pun intended."
"Hope that Reed Richards knows what he's doing. To be fair, he's the only member of this Think Tank apart from Doctor Moy that bothered to show up. Tony Stark has decided to mysteriously disappear in Afghanistan. That's just poor form."
"And we've got no whereabouts of Doctor Banner as well. Who knows, maybe they ran off together..." Coulson said.
"I told you not to say that name again!" The General all tensed up, almost like he was going to take a chair and break it over something. Or someone. Preferably Coulson's huge forehead. It was the first time Coulson's unflappable smile cracked. "But enough of that." The General snapped immediately to his semi-pleasant self. "Hope Doctor Richards has put some thought about this."
"I assure you, General, I just spent a lifetime working on this. Nothing too serious." Reed showed up out of nowhere with Sue at his side. The two of them were wearing the same spacesuit as Ben. Reed was absentmindedly checking on some calculations on the holographic keyboard on his wrist.
"The contributors are going to feel safe now, Doctor Richards."
"It's just a shame that we couldn't pour more talents for this experiment. I wouldn't have minded a second opinion about this. Still, it's their loss." Reed let out a nervous laugh that left the General unimpressed.
"Once we open the door to a literal another dimension those nerds are going to flock to us like sheep."
"It's one way to put this, General."
"By the way, Doctor Richards…" Coulson reached into his pocket and took out a business card. "If things don't work out with the government, think about us. We do have an initiative or two that could benefit some extraordinary individuals."
"I'll think about it, Agent Coulson." The man shook hands with Reed and went out his merry way, eliciting another angry look from the General. He was getting used to those as well because this time he merely put his hands in his pocket and whistled on his way. Johnny was always one to follow a good example and decided to go and annoy another authority figure.
"So, is this your idea of a date?" Johnny said with his arms crossed behind his head, flashing a cheeky grin. He nonchalantly walked to Reed's side as he was checking his suit one last time.
"Pardon?"
"Come on...You've known my sister for a decade, at least. Don't' tell me that you never thought about…"
"About what?"
"That thing?"
"What thing?"
"You know…"
Reed raised an eyebrow. "Do you?"
Johnny opened his mouth for one long, awkward moment and raised his finger as if to ask a question, before accepting defeat with grace."I'll see myself out…"
"You do that." He could've sworn Reed was smirking as he turned around but he was an egghead and Johnny was cool, they were like from two different planets.
Johnny started following the rest of the bigwigs in the security shelters and took the time to give one last look at his sister. He didn't know know why but he felt that something was profoundly wrong. He stopped on his tracks again as he felt a slight, worrying vibration beneath his feet.
Reed turned on his communication link, built on the inside of his helmet. "Alyssa? Readings?"
"All clear, Reed." A female voice answered to Reed from the other side. "I just need some time to gather the power and we'll be ready to start off the experiment."
The Three of them stood in front of the portal as a gust of wind flew by. The sun shone against its black frame, giving it an ominous feel. It started humming as it began draining half of the electricity of Nevada to power it up. What was more important, a few hours of neon lights or a chance to change the history of humanity as we knew it?
Reed swelled his chest with pride as he was ready to make his dream a reality. To show mankind a way to the stars. To a better future. He was proud of the people that stood beside him to make that a reality.
Ben cracked his knuckles, ready for some action. Part of him hoped there really would be a scary alien with multiple jaws so he could punch all of them.
Sue checked her vitals and the others one final time. She could never be sure enough. Fortunately, the scientist had designed the most advanced life support system three astronauts could ask for. She grabbed the two men hands and took the first step towards the portal.
The strength of their bond was going to be put to the test and turn that dream one brave scientist had a long time a reality. Once they had unloaded their spacecraft, they would've been the first people to set foot in an anotheruniverse.
That was until the Earth started shaking.
The phalanges of machines monitoring the activity of the portal went crazy and filled the air with electrical screeching. The ground quaked with such magnitude that the desert itself was close to cracking in half, swallowing everyone and everything there. The bowels of the earth roared and shook, threatening everyone there with white-hot rage.
"What is it? An earthquake?!" Sue yelled as she tried to keep herself on her feet.
"That's impossible!" Reed said as he tried keeping his glasses on. He activated the sensors in his spacesuit to check in less than three seconds pages upon pages of complex calculations. "Seismic activity has been dormant in this area for years!"
"Looks like it wanted to make a visit, bring the kids…" Ben grumbled. "Could've texted us at least!"
The very ground started to crack, and a vast chasm was opening right under the portal. The already fragile instrument nearly collapsed unto itself and begun buzzing while a series of coils lit up around its entire frame. A myriad of red lights shaped like angry little eyes lit up that frame. Reed fiddled with his communicator to call Doctor Moy for some answers. "Alyssa, what's happening?!"
"I don't know, Reed! The readings are off the scale! The portal can't handle whatever's happening on the other side! Get away from—"
Radio silence.
A blinding red light burst out of it, and suddenly, a door to a new universe was opened. That small corner of the Earth was bathed in the light of another sun. As the red light shone upon their bodies, Sue realized with abject horror that their vitals were skyrocketing.
That sight immediately hypnotized Reed. He saw an entire cosmos in front of him, framed only by a red rectangle, at just a few meters from him. Planets made of glass were orbiting around blood-red suns. Clouds of living metal twisting and reforming themselves in labyrinthine and mesmerizing forms. Asteroid rings circling a celestial body at such speed that its diameter was diminishing by the second.
With a look of horror and unquenchable curiosity, he noticed that those weren't asteroids: That was a swarm.
He tried to reach that display of beauty and pure horror with his hand, those alien worlds, and unquantifiable galaxies, but it was still too hard. For a moment, he was sure that those strange creatures were looking right at him, and his world but the sheer magnitude of what was happening didn't make him deter. If only his arm were longer if only he could stretch it just a little further and touch...
"Reed...Ben...I can't see!" Sue's eyes turned pale white as she stumbled blindly. Ben weakly tried to stop her from tripping over herself, but he felt his entire body heavier than ever before. It felt like his spacesuit was being slowly filled with rocks and his knees gave up.
An enormous, roaring, bloated mass of energy erupted from the portal and was going to engulf the brave explorers with it.
"Sue, look out!" The General tried to grab Johnny. But Ross was one second too late, and Johnny leaped to his sister's aid, running faster than he ever ran. He didn't care about the enormous projectiles of energy bombarding the area so focused he was on helping his sister. Just as Johnny Storm managed to tackle Sue out of the way, one sphere of pure, glowing energy hit them both and knocked the siblings to the ground. Reed screamed in horror as he watched them fall.
The red light consumed the four, and the portal fell silent as if anything ever happened there, leaving just a crater in front of the portal.
Sue started to slowly come to her sense, her vision coming and going as she tried to make sense of her surrounding. She felt like her skin was burning and removed her helmet to catch some fresh air. She felt some relief with her eyesight restored and realized she was in a huge crater still in the desert. "Reed? Ben? Johnny?!"
Half buried in the charred ground she saw Reed.
His limbs and chest and neck were horrifically and unnaturally stretched as he was laying on the ground. It looked like all of his bones were pulverized, his skin a mere container.
"Oh...Oh, God…" Sue took a few tentative steps towards, not daring to move him. "Reed, oh God, please don't be—"
"Sue!" The misshapen creature with Reed's face raised from the ground like the coils of a snake. His chest and arms were absurdly long while his neck was twisted in such a way that a human being couldn't survive that. Obviously, someone didn't bother to tell Reed as he held up one stretched out hand in front of him and wiggled out some tentacle-like fingers. "That's...That's fascinating."
"Well glad you like it because I'm freaking out!"
"Sue…" Reed blinked a few times and looked down at the rest of him. "Please, don't freak out…"
"What happened to you?! You look like you're somehow made of rubber."
"I think we are in the same predicament. I can't...I can't see you!" At first, Reed thought he was having some kind of concussion due to the incident and the subsequent fall, but that was unquestionably what looked like an empty space suit walking around that talked with Sue's voice. "It's like you're neither absorbing or reflecting any form of light!"
"What? I'm invisible?!" Sue hastily unclasped one glove of her spacesuit and threw it on the ground only to find no hand inside it. "Reed, I know you won't approve, but I think I'll keep freaking out!"
"Please try to stay calm even if what's happening defies the laws of physics as we know it!"
"Wait a minute...Where's Johnny?" Sue said as she turned and Reed did the same as he further stretched his neck upwards to take a better view. The two froze in shock when they saw what looked like a man-shaped bonfire coming screaming at them.
"REED! SUE! IM ON FIRE!" Johnny screamed at the top of his lungs as he flailed his arms around while wreathed in flames so hot that the ground beneath him was slightly melting at every step. His voice was somewhat booming and distorted by the strange flaming aura.
"Johnny! Stop, drop and roll!" Sue tried to reach for him to calm him down but noticed how easy people that could see their limbs had it
"Wait a minute, Johnny!" The boy stopped in his tracks as he saw a giant mass of long, contorted limbs crawling towards him that somehow had his friend's face on it. "I've figured it out! You're not really on fire!"
"I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE SMART ONE, REED! HOW CAN I NOT BE ON FIRE?!" He shrugged and gestured towards his new fiery look.
"Think about it, Johnny! You should be in agony or smell charring meat. It does not seem so since you have the time to complain about it."
Johnny looked at his flaming hands with a puzzled look. "I guess...Not?" He sniffed the air a few times only to smell some ozone. The boy looked a little...Disappointed by that. After that outburst, he felt pretty embarrassed at being wrong. And being shown up by Reed Richards but mostly being wrong.
Sue realized that, and if someone could've seen her, they would've seen her slapping her invisible forehead with her invisible hand.
"I think that the radiations coming from this portals have somehow transformed us into something...Different. It gave me a far greater degree of flexibility than a normal human body would allow, Sue can turn herself invisible and Johnny is not on fire. He is made of fire." Reed further stretched his torso and coiled three times around himself. He tried to return to a somewhat human shape afterward, but he felt a little discomfort around his still uneven shoulders and one still flaccid ankle dragging his foot on the ground. "Uh oh…"
"I DON'T LIKE THE SOUND OF THAT! WHY DID HE SAY THAT?!"
Reed went pale in shock as he noticed they missed one member of their unfortunate expedition into the unknown. "Where's Ben?"
As if on cue, a giant rock flew over the three newly superhumans' heads and crashed on the ground, pulverizing itself into thousands of little pebbles.
"REEEEEEEEEED!" A voice bellowed from the distance and when the dust settled, Reed Richards blood froze in his veins as he realized the horrible truth: That giant pile of orange rocks with broad shoulders, a huge, prominent brow and a pair of angry but still noticeably human blue eyes, wearing the tattered remains of a blue spacesuit around its waist, was his friend Ben Grimm. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!" Ben took a pair of menacing steps, and the ground trembled as he moved slowly but patiently towards the scientist. Reed tried to act rational, but the sheer menace that his friend radiated in his new form was downright otherworldly. The...thing his friend had turned into was twice as tall as a human being and covered, no, downright made of solid rock stone.
"Ben, whatever happened I need you to stay calm, I think—"
"OH, YOU THINK?! I THINK IM GONNA SMASH YA TO A PULP!" Ben raised one huge fist and Reed jumped out of the way to avoid finding himself at the bottom of the smaller crater Ben made inside their own. "YOU TURNED ME INTO A MONSTER, REED! HOW COULD YOU?!"
"Ben, stay calm! I don't want to hurt you!" Reed said as he instinctively sprung forward and wrapped his elastic body around his friend's solid rock frame to try and restrain him. Ben just roared and grabbed one strand of his malleable form.
"TOO BAD! I REALLY WANT TO!" He grabbed Reed by one stretched arm and started rotating on himself. The momentum would've turned a man of Reed's size into a projectile destined to be turned into red mist as soon as he hit the ground, but the scientist flattened his body, allowing him to float safely and land as a soft, bluish mass. Reed pulled himself to his feet and tried to keep resonating with the behemoth.
"Ben! Reed! Stop that immediately!" The air around Sue started cracking with electricity as her face was visible again. She looked with horror as she saw Ben try to land deadly punch after deadly punch and Reed barely dodging each one, contorting his body in the craziest shapes.
Finally, Reed had enough of being on the defensive and wrapped himself up around Ben, trying to restrain his movements. Ben tried to shake Reed off of him and from the look of the scientist, he was doing so.
"Hey, sis! Your mom's voice! It worked! I've never been happier to see your face." Johnny looked at his hands still wreathed in flames. "Could you yell at me too? I'd like to return to normal."
"I will later! Thanks for trying to save me, by the way!"
That was the angriest thank you, Johnny, ever heard.
"Ben, look at Sue! She's able to turn it on and off, to make herself visible on command." Reed struggled to keep Ben's arms restrained, but the giant managed to free one arm and tried to grab Reed's face. "I can transform my body to make it look human. Maybe it works for all of us! Maybe I could help you yo—"
"WELL, DO IT RIGHT NOW, STRETCH! OR I SWEAR TO GOD I—" Ben lifted a giant fist and in the time that took Reed to blink, he found out that it was just one inch from his face.
"I SAID STOP!" As Sue roared her command, both Reed and Ben were knocked off their feet and landed at several feet from each other by what looked like a pair of invisible punches slamming them right in the chest. To Johnny it looked more like an angry mom placing herself between two warring siblings and holding them by the forehead as they flailed their arms helplessly, trying to hit each other like in the movies.
"Whoah...Did Susie do that?" Ben looked as puzzled as any giant rock monster would look if it were knocked on the ground by a five-foot tall girl. As he learned many times in the course of his life, sometimes a man needed a good knocking before regaining some sense. To his horror, he noticed that it was like being hit by a speeding car...And it didn't even hurt. He barely felt it as his rocky butt was already sent flying.
Reed looked down and noticed that not only he didn't feel any pain whatsoever, the impact just left a small circle shaped bump in his ribcage. Or at least in the point where it should've been his rib cage since ribcages don't simply inflate themselves back to shape.
"It looked like a force field of some kind. We need some time to test our new abilities. Ben…" He offered one hand to his friend to help him get up. "Please...I promise that I will find a way to turn you back."
Ben looked at him for what seemed like an eternity and Reed had that look again. Reed's stoic and logical facade was cracking by the second as Ben could see in his eyes something he rarely saw from his friend: Regret, fear, and an unspeakable sorrow.
The same sorrow in Ben's blue eyes as he held up one rocky hand in front of him and realized things would've never been the same. He never noticed how much his hands weighed before but how he did and he hated it.
Ben grumbled and grabbed Reed's hand.
The four looked up to see some army helicopters come to pick them up. Johnny closed his eyes and tensed every muscle in his body, and he stopped being wreathed in flames. He then realized his clothes had turned to ash. Johnny, then, placed a hand on his head. He still had hair. Still messy but not burned. "I guess it's not the right time to ask for a pair of underwear."
"Wotta revoltin' development."
"This is quite fascinating, Reed. And terrifying, too." The black haired woman in the lab coat was checking four holographic renditions of the four newly transformed anatomies. Reed, Sue, and Johnny were in the aseptic laboratory, almost bare if not the built-in holographic interfaces coming out at the speed of thought and almost invisible but effective scanners that immediately checked their new bodies the moment they entered it. Two armed guards were just outside. Sue didn't expect them to not put some hidden cameras in there. At least Sue had finally some time to see the home base of this so-called "think tank" of scientists.
"Tells us something we don't know, Alyssa." Sue was pacing back and forth, turning on and off her powers on a reflex. Unbeknownst to everyone, she was figuring out how her power was working. The invisibility was a little tricky but, ironically, she was able to create shapes of different size entirely invisible to the human eye.
"You've just been turned to lifeforms this world has never seen. As far as I'm concerned you are something you don't know."
"Yeah, what would the Oracle of Delphi say about that?" Johnny said from the other side of the room, still nursing his thankfully extinguished hands. He drew some curious looks from all the presents. "Know thyself?" He blinked. "I'm not just a pretty face, you know."
"We still don't know the limits of your new abilities, so we'll have to do some tests." As Doctor Moy went on and on about some newly built testing ground for them, Sue walked off, wanting to take a breath of fresh hair until she saw New York City from the window.
The Baxter Building was a colossus of metal and concrete. A sleek, pure white fortress of science standing out like a sore thumb amidst the concrete jungle of Manhattan. Sue looked at the city from up high and realized that those bulletproof glasses were basically a prison. She could see that in Ross' eyes that the army feared them.
It was sensible, coldly logical even, but it still irked her. Her thoughts went to Ben and the fact they had just caged him like an animal because they couldn't comprehend him. While she didn't condone that outburst, at the time, Sue realized she would've done exactly the same. Besides, Ben went in there of his own volition.
She didn't feel much different than before. She was still that girl living with her aunt and taking care of her baby brother. Sure, he was sixteen now, but she was still a baby...She was still that girl that graduated at the top of her class despite her father being a criminal. She was still that girl that by a fantastic series of coincidences had Reed Richards in her life again.
Why turning invisible and creating force fields would change all that? Why would turn into an elastic man, and a human torch would change what they were? Why would that change of appearance change Ben Grimm?
Those men in uniform just didn't get that.
The persons that emerged from that incident were the same. End of the story.
"We're gonna get out of here." And with that, she turned invisible.
"Be honest with me, Reed." Ben Grimm was a simple man. A man that had lived everything a man could live. When he saw a friend in need, he would help him. That's what a man was supposed to do. When he looked at his giant, rocky hands asked himself 'Was this my reward?'. All those years of defending Reed, having his back, lead to this?
"I'm here, Ben." Reed was sitting just outside the cell. It had no bars but only a field of energy that was supposed to fry any prisoner with funny ideas like a moth. One thing he liked about the military was they didn't mess around. Ben had found out that so-called security measure only stung him a little when he tried to pass through it, like an angry little mosquito. Better than nothing, he guessed.
"If ya knew what was goin' ta happen...Ya still would've asked me, ain'tcha?"
"No, Ben...Not this way...I had no idea that—"
"Now that's funny. Reed Richards got no ideas." Ben started cracking his knuckles as he used only to find out he had no knuckles to crack anymore. Just rocks.
"Ben, I promised that I would help you. I will find a cure for this...This…"
"Ugly mug syndrome?" He let out a gravely phoned in laughter. It sounded more like the sound of rocks being rustled together.
"I will turn us into humans again, Ben. Even if it takes me a lifetime to do it."
There it was. That look again in his eyes. Whenever he did that, Ben felt that he couldn't be angry at the guy. That was before, though: He settled for being phenomenally enraged for the moment and call it a day.
"At least give me some technobabble of ya so I can get some sleep. Did Alyssa ever tell ya what happened to us?"
"Well, the good news is that we found other dimensions. Several others."
"The bad news I guess is everything else?"
"Our anatomy is so different from everything that evolved in our ecosystem that the only logical explanation is that somehow we swapped our bodies with our counterparts from other universes where these phenomenal abilities are the norm."
"Wow. So that means one alternate me is running around bein' pretty yet squishy in a world of rock monsters. He's a Ben Grimm, all right. Some luck o' the Irish we got."
"This could also be the mean for a cure. Perhaps your body is still out there in the multiverse. Maybe I can find it and put you back in there."
"Well, awright then." Ben sat on the floor of his cell. "Is it done yet?"
"Ehr...No."
"Then come back here when ya've done it."
One thing people never warned Johnny about was that everything after getting superpowers was so boooooring. After a couple of hours of just turning his power on and off and throwing a couple of fireballs (which was cool) in front of boring guys in military uniforms with poofy mustaches they just stuck him into another lab for other tests.
Was that going to be his life?
"Johnny!" A voice came calling from him from over his shoulder, and he reacted to it with all the calm and rationality a guy in his situation could use.
"OH GOD, I REGRET EVERYTHING!"
"Johnny, it's me." Sue turned visible starting from her eyes so that he could see them rolling them so hard they feared they would pop out of her skull. She stopped unraveling her invisible force field at her neck's height.
"Uh. I guess no one is giving us some clothes to turn invisible to us. Or become fire."
"Our suits kind of absorbed some of the radiations and they can adapt to our powers. Reed believes he can create some new ones, though."
"I hope it's something that makes my butt stand out."
"Johnny…" She shot him a glare.
"What? Girls love that."
Sue raised a hand to stop Johnny's tangent before she figured it out she kinda had to make it visible again."Listen, we're getting out of here."
"That's a great idea and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter but how do we do that?"
Sue held up the other hand holding up some kind of security key card.
"Wait, where did you get that?"
"Let's just say they do not train secret agents to deal with an invisible girl."
Agent Coulson started revving up the engine of his car, musing about that strange day and the kind of report he was going to give to the giver ups. He checked on his pocket for his smartphone and noticed that something that weighed and felt like a key card was missing.
"Oh, come on, not again! Fitz is going to kill me! Well, not kill me but he'll pout at me and it's really awkward when he does that!"
"I've seen him use that to open some doors in this supposedly high tech, government-sponsored building. Guess he was here to spy on us, like Ross said."
"Wait, you don't have any clothes. Where did you hide tha—"
"Please focus, Johnny." Sue quickly hid the card again and started going off on her own, turning her back on Johnny. "Still, I think we have to get out of here as fast as we can. We have to get Ben out of that cell and lay low for a while. Just as soon the military lowers their guard. Maybe we could find some help, at least someone willing to let us use a lab. Are you with m—" Sue turned around and saw that Johnny was gone. Then noticed that the key card was gone. "Oh, for f—"
If someone told Jonathan Storm that he would be spending the better half of the day running away from the government on a kickass motorcycle, he wouldn't have believed them. He felt terrible about leaving Sue like that, but there's a time in the life of a man where he has to take matters into his own hands. And by matters, he meant a magic key card to escape the military, steal a motorcycle and…
Actually, he didn't plan that far ahead in the future. He figured that he would make it up as it went on.
For the moment, he wanted to feel free. Feel the wind on his face and the sounds of wheels screeching on the streets of New York. As he gathered more and more speed, he saw his hands catching fire and something wild awakened inside of him. He slowly enveloped himself in flames as went faster and then, his skin flaking off slowly as pure energy replaced it and then...He let go of the handle.
"FLAME ON!" He bellowed, and just like that, his incandescent form became lighter than air. He thrust his arms in front of him and let go of the motorcycle. As if on a reflex the boy expanded the aura of pure energy around his body, creating a sonic boom that propelled him forwards and then all the way up.
A human torch started soaring through the sky. "HOLY SHIT IM NOT DEAD!"
Still, it was always a good outcome.
In a matter of minutes, Johnny became a sensation on Instagram as he saw dozens of passerby taking his picture with their phone. Part of him knew that Reed and Sue and the General or whoever would've killed him for that but that wasn't important to him. At that moment he felt utterly indestructible.
"Holy shit...Is that a mutant?!"
"No, it can't be...Maybe that vigilante? The guy from Hell's Kitchen?!"
"This is not Hell's Kitchen, and he doesn't fly!"
"Yeah, but you've seen him? You can't know that!"
"Guys! It's The Human Torch! He's back!"
He didn't care much about what they were saying: At that moment he was the center of attention and he loved that. He was moving so fast and everyone down there looked so small, like a collection of tiny dots going on about their own boring lives and he was up there, leaving a trail of pure flames above them. The people loved him for that, even if it was going to be only for an instant.
He felt the cold wind biting his face, but his energy body made it feel more like a warm breeze.
All of his worries evaporated, and with that, he started to laugh louder than he ever did.
He felt powerful.
He felt free.
He was free.
That was when another earthquake came.
"OH COME ON, NOT AGAIN!"
He heard an explosion right in the center of the street and amidst the smoke and rubble an enormous, scaly thing emerged from the ground, his horrid claws grasping at the asphalt to better pull itself out of the earth's crust. A ninety feet tall green monster, his head and arms covered in extremely sharp looking spikes, was right in the center of Manhattan, casting its menacing shadow. The creature towered on everything but the tallest skyscrapers. His eyes had no light and looked like a pair of milky white pits that hid an ancient, alien and brutal intelligence. The citizens of New York didn't even have the time to pull themselves out of the rubble and panic for its big entrance that the monster opened his cavernous maw and roared with such force to lift in the air several cars, sending hundreds of people running for cover. One of the vehicles was about to hit a young Pakistani woman pushing a stroller and without even thinking Johnny put his arms in front of himself. He squeezed out of himself every last drop of energy to conjure a fireball that shoved the car out of the way right as the mother panicked and picked up her baby to try and shield it with her own.
To her immense surprise, the woman wasn't dead. She raised her head she saw the figure of a defender wreathed in flames, standing between her and the monster.
"I'm here now…" Johnny turned towards with a reassuring smile.
The woman nodded with tears of gratitude to her savior and ran away as fast as she could. She hugged her baby and thanked God as she got out of the way.
Ok, that was step one.
Now he had to do the rest.
Worst case scenario he would've died. No big deal.
Somewhere in the depths of space…
Their fleet was a graveyard.
The woman had no illusion about it. Just a long trail of failures and metal and hate. If there was one thing her people still had was the sheer hatred they felt. It was a good thing: Hate was a weapon. Everything started with a weapon. One man wielding a weapon could carve an empire by itself. An empire that would've made the infinite, uncaring stars weep with blood.
It was the only thought that kept her warm at night.
As she stood in the darkest bowels of the mothership after being escorted by the cold sentries, the woman was waiting alone in the throne room. She reminisced about that place: She had seen it at its prime, shining with the literal and metaphorical light of her people. The loneliness of that place was something leaders had to grow accustomed to it. She never questioned her orders and respected the burden of command. Never shed a tear for what she had lost.
Four green lights shone in the infinite darkness and she kneeled at that sight. The eyes of the Supremor were upon her.
"Rise, daughter…" The voice whispered, their tone soothing and yet as strong as steel, sounding like a thousand people speaking at once, both male and female.
"Command me, Supremor."
"The signal, daughter...It is time…For you to act."
"No...No, it can't be!" The woman raised her head to stare right at her leader's otherworldly form. "But from where?"
"A blue planet, forgotten, lost until now in the fog of ages...They too have opened the way to the stars."
"Could that be…?"
"Yes...Our old, testing ground. A new species evolved on it. They too have completed the great work." Green liquid spilled on the floor, forming a series of concentric circles and from the innermost one, it emerged a hammer with a black diamond at the center of its head. "Take this, daughter. Our last Universal Weapon." Another weapon emerged at the opposite side of the hammer. It looked like a couple of triangles joined at their respective tip. "Our last Eternity Forge. May their power guide you and their might aid you."
At that ancestral sight, the woman finally dared to feel hope again. She raised and grabbed the two weapons, crossing them over her chest. "Thank you, Supremor."
"Go, daughter...Our, dear, Hala. Our Accuser."
Author's Notes: Well, here we are. I had this idea for a long time, but better late than never sa they say. I've been a Marvel fan ever since I learned o read and I never stopped since then. My dad passed to me his old X-men and Fantastic Four and I was hooked. When the marvel Cinematic Universe started we were both thrilled and we loved almost every movie. This is just my tkae on how things could've been if Marvel had the rights of all their properties. Of course, I do understand the situation and, to be fair, I had this idea before I learned of the whole Marvel-Fox deal. Still, I hope you'll have fun reading this as much as I had fun writing it.
For those of you reading the comics, you can see I took some elements of Ultimate Fantastic Four (underrated) and Marvel Season One (Even more underrated) but as you can from Hala the Accuser's presence things can and will get crazier. As a wise man once said: "Excelsior!"
