Chapter 1
"Clash of the Cosmic"
Reed "Mr. Fantastic" Richards had returned to intensive scientific studies and experimentation in the supreme midst of an entire story of the multi-story top of the Baxter Building belonging to none-other-than: the Fantastic Four.
Head-and-neck stretched toward the main display screen of his space scanning system. Right arm stretched several feet to one side of said system's complicated controls. Left arm stretched several feet to the other. One man in Fantastic Four uniform of dark blue basically performing functions normally requiring quite a few topnotch technicians.
After all that had happened since first the Silver Surfer and, almost immediately after, Galactus, then, years after that first cosmic melee between the Devourer of Worlds and his glittering herald, once again. This time pitting not only the Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer against great Galactus, but four other previous power cosmic-wielding heralds against their former master and Maker…
The man humanity knew as Mr. Fantastic, rather than Reed or Dr. Richards, had vowed to never again allow such cosmic threats to Earth to take place without first establishing significant forewarning.
Something that, after many months of comparative cosmic inactivity in anything at all unearthly, was about to be abruptly obliterated once spatial sweeps suddenly detected something significant streaking in from slightly beyond the Earth-Moon orbital locality…
"My God…"
"You picked what we were going to watch on the wall-screen TV yesterday, Ben, it's my turn today!" loudly lamented Johnny "Human Torch" Storm. Even as he struggled with the rocky hulk sharing the reinforced sofa in the main common area of the multi-floor Fantastic Four part of the previously beautiful Baxter Building.
Holding the TV remote in a rock-like right hand, while using his left to fend off the much smaller young man in similar Fantastic Four uniform, whom was uselessly struggling against someone of supreme mass and impossible-to-measure super-strength.
"No way, small fry," the gravelly voiced Thing thunderously responded while watching what he wanted on the enormous paper-thin plasma screen created by Mr. Fantastic for their mutual amusement. "You'll put it on somethin' sickenin' like 'Tyra' or 'The View'. And I'd rather trade punches with that Fallen One guy we last stood against all by my lonesome that put up with that crapola!"
"Dammit, Ben," angrily growled the Human Torch as his core temperature started its sharp rise, "there's an extreme motorbike special on ESPN 2 and I wanna watch it! So give it up gravel-for-brains!"
"Hey," retorted the rocky superhero wearing only his hallmark dark-blue britches baring the same 4 symbol as his three fellow freaks of a cosmic storm in space, "Reed said my organs…includin' my brain…were rock-like, Junior! He didn't say nothin' 'bout my brain bein' 'pebble-like'!"
"Damn it, Ben!"
With that, the hot-tempered Human Torch burst into blazing plasma-flame that, as always, the flame-retardant furnishings were designed to withstand. Which didn't stop the suddenly blazing superhero from floating a few feet over said scene prior to forming flaming fireballs before flinging them straight at…
"Hey! Cut it out, matchstick! Ow!"
Once again grappling together in what had suddenly seemed a daily dance between two bored-to-tears beings of singular superpowers unique to each of the Four. Not counting, of course, the cosmic visitor still streaking via silvery surfboard about the planet apparently selected as his second celestial home. When not streaking through deep space.
"If you wanna play rough, Torchie…let's play rough! Grrr-aarrrr!"
Yet again, responding to the thunderous sounds of destructive violence in the common area involving a blazing brother and rock-hewed friend, Susan "Invisible Woman" Richards stormed into the scene.
One which threatened definite destruction of yet another set of reinforced furniture in the form of a sofa held easily in one stony hand of the Thing while a flame-enshrouded Human Torch hovered not very far away with some more blazing balls in his burning hands.
"Ben! Johnny! Stop this now!" shouted the beauteous blonde about to reintroduce these two to her form-fitting force fields guaranteed to tame both in scant seconds.
The Thing slowly lowered, via that one huge hand, the heavy-as-hell couch to the carpeted floor. While the Human Torch fully flamed off to stand once again on that self-same floor. Both attempting to tell their side of the story at the exact same time, only to end up a mangled mess rather than understandable statements…
"Enough!" the Invisible Woman loudly ordered while hands, presently ungloved even though she, too, wore her Fantastic Four uniform of dark blue brandishing the self-same symbol, daintily tightened into fists. "I'm getting sick and tired of this, boys! Just because there's been very little to do lately doesn't mean you two have to behave like a couple of…!"
The sudden shrill sound of a Red Alert klaxon, accompanied by rapidly flashing red alert lights, both clandestinely included in the design of extreme comfort and clear-cut luxury of the common area…
"Reed's found somethin' on his gizmos!" said Thing with a vicious snarl of ardent anticipation.
"Let's go!" followed a fully flamed on Human Torch.
"Oh, no," said Invisible Woman somewhat under her breath, even though, deep down, the super-sexy spouse of Mr. Fantastic secretly desired something exciting to shake them all out of their shared doldrums.
In the short time it took for three of the Fantastic Four to pile into an emergency elevator, completely reconfigured to handle the hugeness of the Thing…
"What is it, Reed?" the Human Torch, flying first from the rapidly arrived elevator with the Thing and the Invisible Woman making a mad dash in the self-same general direction of Mr. Fantastic, still super-stretched in order to readily work his space scanner's complicated controls.
"Yeah," the gravelly voice of the Thing said swiftly after, "what's happenin', Stretcho!"
Allowing his head and hands to return to a normalized form, the smock-wearing, over Fantastic Four uniform, Mr. Fantastic said, "My cosmic sensors have detected something almost as powerful as Galactus on fast approach from further out into our solar system. Something more solidified living energy than anything at all relatively random."
"Meaning?" managed the Invisible Woman as her innermost desire for something to test their superpowers once more merged with her fearful concerns regarding such a situation.
"Meaning," lovingly explicated Mr. Fantastic to the one woman to whom he entrusted his whole heart and soul, "that this entire planet might very well be facing extinction. Again."
"So?" said the Thing while slamming one rock-hand into the other with a thunderous report. "We'll bash 'em the same way we did Galactus and the Fallen One. What's ev'ryone so blasted worried for!"
Though thoroughly proud of his heroic friend and fellow FF-er, Mr. Fantastic fretfully replied, "Though we have no choice but to head out in the Fantasti-Car, without further analysis, I can't guarantee that we can…"
"Guarantee-shmaurantee, Reed," the Human Torch cheerily replied, while his hot-as-hell plasma flames allowed him to rise ever higher into Mr. Fantastic's singular super-lab. "Let's just go bust this bozo from space!"
"Hell, yeah!" was the Thing's roaring response.
With a smile playing upon his lips, Mr. Fantastic said seriously, "Let's go."
Meanwhile, rapidly approaching Earth, in general, and New York, in particular…
A cohesive cosmic ball, fully cognizant and equally deadly, if it so desired, streaked far too fast to be seen by the unaided eye. As well as far faster than the time taken by the Fantastic Four to climb into their Fantasti-Car in order to rise through their hangar's hinged roof…
Having violently entered the cast-aside-by-society form of a homeless man with longish silver-white hair and handlebar mustache of same…
"I have succeeded in placing myself into a temporary 'home' while here on this puny planet!" proclaimed the reverberant voice belonging to the being from far, far away while cosmic dynamism literally crackled about both hands. "A planet my space-spanning senses detected attracting the likes of Galactus on two separate occasions! As well as two of his former heralds: the Silver Surfer and the Fallen One! If any single cosmic entity is to understand the reason for such significant attention directed toward a seemingly insignificant planet and its peoples...the Stranger is the one to seek it out! And if any stand in my supremely powerful path...!"
In answer to that self-posed promise, the Stranger unleashed the slightest hint of his power cosmic onto a parked car and near-instantaneously twisted it inside out…
"And now…the Stranger shall see for himself…what this world holds for the Absolutes of this vast universe!"
END OF CHAPTER 1
