Chapter Two - Animal Man

Two Years Ago

It's the last year of Sue Richards' life … but she doesn't know it yet.

She's finally getting her life back on track, although it hasn't been the best year for the people who've been helping her.

First there was her best friend Alicia Masters-Murdock, who was murdered by The Kingpin in his attempt to destroy Matt's life. His son Jack would have been next but, before that could happen, The Kingpin vanished, and hasn't been seen since.

Then there's her psychiatrist Leonard Samson, who she'd been seeing, but not vice-versa, in order to help her come to terms with her condition. From all accounts, Dr. Bruce Banner had found Samson in his office one morning being attacked by a ten-foot tall roach (presumably it was a result of some bizarre radiation accident – such things usually were). Dr. Banner had, with the aid of his green fists, flattened the roach, but it appeared to be too late for Samson. He just lay on the ground convulsing, his eyes staring uncomprehendingly and his mouth emitting an inhuman scream. Banner took him to The Pantheon's secret mountain headquarters where he's been like that ever since, despite the combined efforts of Doctors Banner and Doom.

And finally, there's her husband Reed, who, like Ben and Sue before him, has finally started to lose control of his powers.


It's the last day of Sue Richards' life … but she doesn't know it yet.

These days she's permanently invisible, along with anything she touches.

Today is the day of Reed's and their now-ally Doom's annual chess match.

She watches the game, invisible to Doom, but viewable by her husband through the thermal goggles he now wears. As the game progresses Doom goes on the attack, sacrificing his queen, while Reed's play becomes more and more defensive. Seemingly erratic knight moves of Doom's suddenly make sense when, in an exchange of pieces, Reed loses his queen. Of course the knight is removed from play in the next move, but suddenly Doom seems to have the upper hand. Reed looks at the board through his goggles as a pawn is promoted to a queen. Beneath his mask, Doom smiles – victory appears to be in his grasp.

"Stalemate in seven moves," declares Reed. "We better get going."

Doom looks at the board and then looks at it some more and then realizes Reed is right. On any other day Doom would vaporize the board at this stage, but today's not the day. It's a draw this year, but eventually, one year, victory will his.

The trio depart. They're on their way to halt an alien invasion.


It's the last hour of Sue Richards' life … but she doesn't know it yet.

Doctor Doom was the first to discover the Skrull Invasion that had been taking place under their very noses, and he'd sent Mystique, posing as a Skrull, to act as a spy.
Thanks to Mystique they've found out the whereabouts of the Skrulls' nerve center and an epic battle is taking place. It's the climax of what will later be referred to as the Human-Skrull War and all the world's heroes are there.

Sue positions herself between Reed and Doom, her force field keeping her safe – at least that's the theory.

As she uses her invisible barriers for both defense and offence a war rages round her. As numerous Skrulls mutate into nightmarish configurations, and power beams, mystic incantations and weapon blasts are unleashed all around, Sue is glad for once to be invisible.

Up above, she sees Nightcrawler bamf-ing around, seemingly at random. From his vantage point, with it's rapidly changing camera angles and red smoke dissolves, Kurt Wagner sees everything that's going on - well, everything visible, that is.


It's the last minute of Sue Richards' life … but she doesn't know it yet.

She also doesn't know that she's not the only invisible warrior in this battle. A Skrull with the combined powers of the Fantastic Four is also there this day. As he soars invisibly above the heroes, he prepares to pick them off one by one.

Holding his thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart, he lines up a hero's head between them (admittedly he can't see his thumb and forefinger but invisible people quickly learn to imagine such things). Using Mister Fantastic's power his arm swiftly shoots out towards the hero and he places his thumb and forefinger on the sides of the hero's head. Then, using The Thing's strength, he pushes his thumb and forefinger together.

Below, Scarlet Witch's attention is diverted from the fight by the sound of The Vision's head exploding.

As the Super-Skrull lines up another victim, he suddenly sees red smoke appear in front of him. And then, looking down, he sees the robotic part of his body become visible around Nightcrawler's foot. The circuitry that enables him to fly, and also keeps his robotic part invisible, has been destroyed by Nightcrawler (or, more accurately, displaced to another dimension). His mission looks like it will have to be abandoned … but, then again, maybe not.

Looking down though the swirls of red smoke surrounding him, Nightcrawler sees the Super-Skrull's robot part becoming visible around his foot, shortly followed by the rest of the Super-Skrull. To Nightcrawler's surprise his foot is completely unharmed – he'd often speculated what would happen if he teleported into something solid, but it appears he speculated wrongly. Before he can bamf away, he's looking into the Super-Skrull's hypnotic eyes. As they plunge towards the ground, the Super-Skrull gives Nightcrawler a command to teleport into the other heroes.

And then Nightcrawler starts the first of a fatal series of teleports – he's unable to resist the Super-Skrull's command but he can decide in what order to do his teleporting.

His first port of call is the mutant known as Shadowcat. As he materializes over her intangible body, he leans forward and looks back at her, his face etched with sadness. He has so much to say, yet no time to say it in. Whatever he says will probably be his last words.

"I ..." he begins, but then the hypnotic command takes control again and he's teleporting away one last time. This time he chooses Sue Richards - the person he's most likely to miss. Hopefully he'll land on one of her force fields instead. Sometimes you've got to make sacrifices.


It's the last second of Sue Richards' life … and the last seconds of Kurt Wagner's.

Nightcrawler materializes and notices something unusual. His teleport isn't accompanied by the usual cloud of red smoke. Then he realizes that he can't breathe. His hand reaches for his face and feels something on top of it. His survival instinct kicks in and he rips the thing off, sending it hurtling towards Doctor Doom.

As Sue Richards' invisible face splatters against Doctor Dooms's armor, Nightcrawler looks down at the blue costume his body's wearing with the 4 emblem on the chest. Except it's not his body that's wearing it - it's Sue Richards' invisible body on top of his.

As he slowly realizes what's happened his face turns pale blue. Maybe the horror of what's he done, which would no doubt have haunted him forever, would have been sufficient to break The Super-Skrull's control over him. Unfortunately, we'll never know because in the next second a blast from Doctor Doom's gauntlet has put an end to Nightcrawler and any future teleporting.

And the battle continues on...


Hours later, the heroes are victorious and, aside from the numerous corpses, only the solitary figure of Reed Richards remains. He'd been watching Sue (well, to be strictly accurate, her familiar thermal signature) through his goggles when she died. He'd seen her body slump and she'd appeared to rip her face off. He'd continued to watch the various parts of her scatter as Doom's blast struck Nightcrawler, and he'd continued to watch what was left of her as her remaining heat slowly dissipated.

Now her glow had gone completely and he was left in the dark.


It's a week later.

Nick Fury insists on handling all of the funeral arrangements. It was SHIELD's fault that the Earth-Skrull War got as far as it did – SHIELD should have spotted it sooner. How could the Skrulls have infiltrated the highest echelons of government unnoticed all these years?

If they hadn't spotted the Skrulls themselves, they should have at least spotted the numerous telepaths (Xavier, Grey, Frost) meeting deaths in mysterious circumstances. The Skrulls didn't want anyone finding out about them before they were ready.

Arranging the funerals will be Fury's last act as head of SHIELD – after that he's resigning. It's not just the Earth-Skrull War – that's just the final straw. There was the Leonard Samson affair – the investigation was dropped to prevent departmental overspending, despite the numerous questions left unanswered. How did that roach get into his office anyway? It was too big to fit through the doors or windows. And what happened to Samson? Surely being bitten by a radioactive insect couldn't affect a person that much? And, even worse than the handling of the Samson case, there was SHIELD's decision to give the highest intelligence clearance to Doctor Doom. Had these people forgotten that five years ago Doom was trying to take over the world? Sure, the guy had saved the world on numerous occasions, but Fury's convinced that he was only saving it for himself.


For Reed Richards the day starts as usual. He wakes up in The Negative Zone and looks over at the other side of the bed where he doesn't see Sue. Then, not fully awake, he reaches over for his goggles and puts them on. And he still doesn't see Sue.

Today's the day of the funeral, and the first time in recent memory that he'll be making a public appearance. As he finishes getting himself ready he looks at his flat face in the mirror. His bendy teeth cross over each other in places from where's he attempted to brush them and his attempt at combing his hair's left his haircut slightly askew. He slowly takes the time to straighten his teeth and stretch his hairs to the same length - he'll have to get used to doing this for himself now that Sue's not around anymore.

Of course he can't do anything about the fact that he can't contract fully anymore, which means that his stretched-out Mister Fantastic persona is now the same as his normal Reed Richards persona, but that doesn't matter - well it shouldn't. Today's about Sue.


Peter Parker had refused to take pictures of the funeral for J. Jonah. The minute he sees the twelve foot tall Reed Richards arrive he knows that he's made the right decision. Of course, Jameson will get someone else to take the pictures - after all, for the last two years, the Richards' had taken Spider-Man's place as Jonah's Public Enemy Number One. Parker hopes that Jameson doesn't use "GUMBY!" as a headline. Then again that would appear tasteful next to the headline he'd used four years ago for Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm's deaths.


As they stand at Sue Richards' graveside, Matt Murdock feels Jack's hand slip out of his. Any other parent would look around frantically to see where their child had gone, but Matt's radar sense is keeping track of Jack. He 'sees' Jack picking up what looks like marbles off the ground.

Matt's mind goes back to the last time he and Jack were standing at a graveside – Alicia's funeral.

Jack returns to Matt's side and kneels down, playing with the marbles. As the funeral comes to an end, Matt kneels down beside Jack. Jack passes him a marble - it 's damp. Then Matt's heightened sense of smell realizes what the marble is. Matt and Jack continue playing marbles until the marbles are worn down and only their tracks remain - the tracks of Reed's tears.


Doom's noticed a change in Mystique. She's acting differently, remote. No doubt she's blaming him for Nightcrawler's death. Of course, the real person behind Kurt's death was The Super-Skrull, but he'd been slain in the battle, with only his robotic remains being found afterwards.

Still, time was a great healer. He'd just have to be patient - unfortunately patience was not one of Victor's virtues. However, it was one of Mystique's. Maybe not the old Mystique, admittedly, but then again that Mystique was now dead. That would teach her to impersonate a Skrull – as if Skrulls would be fooled by appearances. The new Mystique was of course a Skrull - a Skrull who'd led the heroes into a trap. Unfortunately the trap hadn't worked and the battle was lost, but, with Doom by Mystique's side, the war wasn't over yet.