AN: This was originally part of a challenge I was attempting on Livejournal several years back for fanfiction where one picked a character or set of characters - in this case the Fantastic Four - took each letter of the alphabet, picked one of two prompts with that letter and tried to write an AU around it, sadly this ended up being the only entry I managed with W for Western and S for Steampunk covering this particular fic, but I figured since I located it again recently I would submit it to the public, especially for Fantastic Four. Hope you enjoy anyway, should hopefully have some more Marvel fics up soon across the site together with more with Spidey in Ravencroft.

"Oh, howdy stranger – didn't see you come in. The Name's Willie, Willie Lumpkin. Guess you'd call me the Town's Postman and communicator in these parts. New to Baxter, are ya? Out from the east? Well I guess you might not know what puts us Baxter folk on the map – got ourselves some real living supermen under our sunny streets: The Fantastic Four."

"No clue, son? Well you sit there while I dust off the driver for your ere telegram and I'll tell you their story. Now where I'd put that darn thing... Ah... so, no doubt you've heard of some of the super folk we've got round here – that ghostly Phantom Rider, the tough Two-Gun Kid, Kid Colt... but these fellow's, they're quite a different story.

"Starts with the town's very own gee-whizz, young Reed Richards. Set up shop here in Baxter two year ago and started building the most gosh-darn stuff you can think of! Mine Carts that power themselves, machines to clean and scrub your clothes without any hand, even started going on about making some kind of metal horse come boxcart to roam about in, even maybe make it float off the ground. Course a lot of folks here called him a crack and a fraud but they soon changed their tune when he gave them the goods. Good man, that young Richards, even before he became like he is now."

"Here's what you were after... so, one day young Richards is out saying he's got some big trip planned to map out the wastes to the north, spews off some talk about some rays from the stars and that it's gonna change everything... anyhoo, he goes off with a trio of friends of his. There's Benjamin Grimm, some tough-looking fella from the Bronx of New York, far away. Said to me once he came here on account of trouble from some gang or other back home. Can be a little bit gruff but he has a good heart where most have none at all. Then there was the lovely school-mam, Susannah Storm, together with her younger brother Jonathan. That gal's really something, teaching all the kids at our local school even now when she has the time. Her brother's rather different – care-free, always trying to seduce some pretty girl or two for some wild party. Can't say he's gotten any better myself. But anyway, Ms Storm had taken a real shine to Mr Richards since he showed up and as more than willing to tag along for some scientific study. With the other two as protection of course. The four of them rode off, and for six weeks we didn't hear a peep."

"Then they were back, but by god were they different! Something about those cosmic rays Richards said they found changed them into... into something more than human. Reed looked like he'd gone through the meat grinder, able to stretch that body of his to gosh-darn any length. Mr Grimm was like a real living Frankenstein when we first saw him... hard rock for skin, like the desert had swallowed him up and carved him into some half-finished Adam. Several ladies went and fainted when first they saw him."

"And then Mr Storm... the local pastor went and called him Satan's child at first on account he could burst his whole body into infernal flame, and people had heard the stories down south of the Ghostly Phantom Rider who could do the same. And he could fly too – no wings, just a trail of flame behind him. Still gets me every time I see it. And poor Ms Storm... she'd got the power to be like a Ghost in the air; there one minute, gone the next. Soon after the folks started saying she could also make these energy things ya can't see to shield something... Richards called it a 'Force Field' when I asked him about it once."

"Now at first we were all scared out of our wits, but young Richards said nothing said changed bar themselves – said he was still a member of God's Earth and he'd had a kind of revelation out there in those wastelands... whoever gave 'em those powers did it for a reason, and he saw it to be protecting people. Not just us but the whole state, maybe the entire world. Course folks wanted to know what they were needing protecting from, and young Reed told us alright."

"Out there in the darkness are some creepy folks, both man-made and infernal. Not long after they'd gotten those gifts Reed said they'd fought some manner of demons, led by some cave bound crazy living like a Mole in them mountains. He learnt that there were bad people here in the west – some want that power they have, others just want to take away the values we hold dear. That Mole Man was just the first of many."

"And ever since, stranger, we've been getting those crazies, right on our doorframes. Pointy eared green demons from beyond the heavens who can look like you or me. A man from Siberia who wanted to be as ghostly as poor Susannah and make his travelling circus of monkeys into monsters out in those wastes. Even a gosh-darn dragon controlled by some heathen Alchemist! We get all sorts round here. But so long as we have those four fantastic men and woman to help us, operating out that tower with all the steam coming out of it... see there?... we not got too much to worry about. Mostly."

"Yes."

"You finished with that letter? Good good... you know Reed managed it in the end. Created that strange boxcart of his to get them round the state, when they need to meet up with another of those supermen we get these days. Calls it something like... oh yeah! The Fantasiwagon! Powered by steam and it hovers right off the ground. No wheels, no rails... incredible."

"Indeed. Powered by aerial steam-powered anomicals, I would say-"

"What's that stranger?"

"Oh, nothing. My English is still a little choppy. Here is the message you require, Mr Lumpkin."

"Great! Well, that's my story. And all you're gonna need to understand stranger is when that freaky ball of fire burns in the sky, the Fantastic Four are riding the trail... and ain't no man white, brown, red or green gonna stop 'em."

"We shall see."

"Hm? Heh, don't quite recognise the language here-"

"It is a long-distance message to my homeland regarding the business I have to undertake here. For an old... friend. I ask that you sent it to New York where one of my contacts can transmit it more... effectively... than I might here. Thank you for your assistance and the story you have told me. It is most informative."

"Come quite the distance, have you? Must say I admire that mask of yours, keeps the dust out real nice I bet. Where exactly you hailing from stranger?"

"I come from a land in Eastern Europe. Latveria. And please Mr Lumpkin...

...call me Victor."

THE BEGINNING?