"The Flame and the Quest"
By Scott Casper (thanks to Archie Goodwin, for Fantastic Four #117)
November 20, 1971
14 days before the gate opens
New York City
For John, it was the worst news he could imagine hearing. "No, babe, say it ain't so…"
"Oh, don't be such a baby about this," Crystal said as she continued packing. "I didn't say I was leaving for good. I just want to get away for awhile. See Attilan again and my family."
"But…I'm your family now," John said as he followed Crystal around their hotel suite. "And Ben and Alicia and…okay, not Namor so much…"
"John, I'm just going to be gone for a few days," she said as she emerged from the bathroom with her favorite shampoo and conditioner.
"I get it, though. You need a vacation. I do too! Why don't we go on a vacation together? You and me, getting away from it all?"
Crystal sat her hair products down next to her suitcase and mulled it over. "Hmm…okay, but where?"
John looked out the window, at the ceiling, at the floor, and then back at Crystal. "Give me a day. One day. I'll think of the perfect place."
Novemer 21, 1971
13 days before the gate opens
Crystal was enjoying a quiet breakfast of tsampa and yogurt when John came into the kitchen/dining room of their hotel suite.
"I've got it, hon!" John said excitedly as he sat down. "It came to me in a dream! You remember when we were going through the letters from foreign heads of state? You know, all those requests for help from the Fantastic Four."
"Oh," Crystal said, audibly disappointed. "You mean a working vacation?"
"Well, yeah, sorta. I mean, we'll just go check the situation out. Maybe get involved in just an advisory capacity. We could even see if Lockjaw can come. That way, if they really needed help, he could go get Ben and Namor and let them come do all the hard stuff."
"Well…it would be nice to see a new country…and see Lockjaw again…" Crystal had to admit. "But what country did you have in mind?"
November 22, 1971
11 days before the gate opens
Toncontín International Airport, Honduras
The reception was fit for a visiting head of state. Soldiers stood at attention. A brass band waited to perform. President Ramon Ernesto Cruz of Honduras stood with his aides waiting and watching the sky for the world-famous Fantasticar or some other …well, fantastic conveyance. No one was expecting John and Crystal to show up next to a giant bulldog with an antenna on its head and a bunch of suitcases hanging from its jowly mouth. Which was why everyone was startled when that was exactly what happened.
"Sorry to alarm you, Mr. President," John said, extending his hand to President Cruz.
"We neglected to tell you we changed our transportation plans," Crystal added.
"Quite so…" Cruz said, recovering. He motioned for the band to start playing and the soldiers remembered to go back to standing at attention.
John and Crystal smiled and waved as the welcoming ceremony commenced. It was a nice gesture, but a little too long and they were eager when Cruz asked them to come speak with him in private. At a word from Crystal, Lockjaw sat and guarded the luggage.
"Mr. and Mrs. Storm," Cruz began, "I want to thank you, personally, for coming to see what the situation is in my country firsthand."
"It seems nice enough to me," John said with a shrug. He glanced at Crystal, anxious to get this over with and on with their vacation.
"You will see, Mr. Storm," Cruz said. "My country is beautiful, yes, but there is also danger here…"
November 23, 1971
10 days before the gate opens
West New York, New Jersey. Antony's Dogs
Even wearing an ordinary business suit, Namor stood out in a crowd. All eyes turned to stare at the unusual shape of his head, his unnaturally tall eyebrows, and those large, pointy ears. And he was getting real sick of hearing people saying "Spock" behind his back. "I don't understand it," Namor said at last to Alicia Grimm. "I was destroying New York City when the actor who played Spock was still in diapers. How can anyone confuse me with a character from a TV show?"
Alicia gave a little smile at hearing Namor's bruised ego. "People have short visual memories," she suggested. "Maybe we just need to get you on TV more often."
"Hmm…" was all Namor said as it became his turn in line. "Two hot dogs, land dweller," he commanded. "Everything on mine."
"Ketchup on mine and extra pickles, please," Alicia chimed in. "And I'll have an iced tea, if you sell that here, and King Namor of Atlantis here needs an extra large glass of water."
"Yes, sir!" said the impressed young man behind the counter, staring at Namor.
"Thank you for that," Namor said to Alicia as he guided her to an empty table afterward.
"No problem." Alicia was glad to be off her feet. It seemed they had been pounding the pavement all day, interviewing potential landlords, but it was really only 12:30. She felt her stomach and the baby bump that still barely showed. She was grateful that the second trimester had started and she felt better now. She had hid a lot of discomfort and nausea from Ben and the others those first three months. "Did you like any of the properties we saw?"
"They were all tolerable, but nothing really leapt out at me. Did you have any impressions?"
"They seemed spacious enough, but what was that smell in the last building?"
"You noticed it too? It smelled of bleach to me."
"No, no, under the bleach smell. It was there to mask something else. I'm guessing there was mold or mildew problems they had tried to scrub away before we arrived."
"Ah, Alicia…your sensitivity is such an asset," Namor said. And he put his hand over hers on the table.
Alicia tensed. His touch was electric, as Sue had long ago told her from their long period of flirtation. Alicia had often, since being accepted as a member of the Fantastic Four and spending more time with everyone, worried in the back of her mind about her superficial resemblance to Sue and how Namor might react to that. She also knew, from his three wives – all of whom overlapped – that Namor was insatiable. "How is Namora?" she asked.
Namor pulled his hand away, recognizing the tactic from many near-intimate moments with Sue Storm both before and after her last name became Richards. "She's well," he said, with no hint of disappointment in his voice. "We found a new sea monster to fight together last week. We named it Krago. Actually, we're pretty sure it was sicked on us, probably by Llyra up to her old tricks…"*
Alicia smiled, content to let Namor go on with his story.
((*Namor is referring to events from Sub-Mariner #44, cover dated November 1971))
November 24, 1971
9 days before the gate opens
Tegucigalpa, Honduras
Laughter echoed through the hallway of the Honduras Maya Hotel as John and Crystal made their way back to their suite. John, clad in a polo shirt and shorts, could barely see around the bag of souvenirs he carried in both arms. Crystal, resplendent in a yellow floral jersey wrap dress, tried to stop laughing.
"No, say it again!" Crystal managed to say.
"I am never trying to speak Spanish again," John pouted.
"Excuse me, I wanted to buy your dog, I am hungry," Crystal said, trying to imitate John's voice.
"Not everyone is a language whiz like you, hon. Get the door, will ya?"
Crystal unlocked the door, but gasped when she saw the room inside. John reacted the same way, with a lump rising in his throat when he saw the disarray of the front room.
"Lockjaw? Lockjaw!" Crystal yelled as she ran inside.
"Looks like there was a struggle…" John observed, sitting down the bag of souvenirs.
Crystal had raced from room to room, calling for Lockjaw, coming back to John with tears welling up in her eyes as her search came up empty. "John…do you think…?"
"I think we should have listened to President Cruz when he asked us to investigate General Arellano sooner," John said as he held her.
"Lockjaw is still alive, though," Crystal said, pulling herself together. "I know it. We've got to find him."
December 1, 1971
2 days before the gate opens
Avengers Mansion
Few guests were allowed into Avengers Mansion to use their phone, but Benjamin Grimm was no ordinary guest and the communications room of the Avengers was no ordinary phone.
"Sorry, Ben," the Black Knight said. Dane Whitman, the Black Knight, was helmetless, but otherwise clad in his distinctive chainmail armor and tabard, the enchanted Ebony Blade still sheathed at his side. "I had heard you looked human again now, but needed the retina scan to be sure it was you."
"Sure, sure," Ben said, clad in a much less distinctive sweater and sweat pants. "I understand them Skrulls might be around again* and I'd have to be a pretty tricky Skrull to fake these baby blues. I wouldn't be askin' ya for this favor if most of the FF's equipment 'wuzn't in deep storage right now."
"I still can't believe it. The Fantastic Four not in the Baxter Building is like…King Arthur moving the Round Table to Denmark."
"Yeah, yeah…but remember, we didn't even start out here in New York when we first got our powers. We were still California transplants back then. Anyway, the people I need 'ta call are gonna be expectin' me to look all orange and rocky, so you might wanna step back…" Ben said as he pulled off his sweater and stood bare-chested.
"Amazing. Does the transformation hurt?" Dane asked.
"Nah…" Ben said, concentrating, his brow furrowed and his eyes closed. "Nothin' like it did the very first time I became the Thing. That felt like all my skin wuz' bein' ripped off. Now that I'm used ta' it…it just feels…kinda…weird…" Ben's words came more slowly, forced between
gritted teeth, despite his claim of painlessness.
((*See recent issues of Amazing Adventures of the 1970s: Featuring the Inhumans and Amazing…Featuring the Black Widow!))
Dane could only watch, a little awestruck, as Ben's very form expanded, grew hunched over, and hardened until he looked like a crusted over statue. As his skin took on an orange hue, rock-shaped welts seemed to rise to the surface of the skin.
When it was over, Ben opened his eyes and looked back at Dane, still staring at him. He knew that look of disgust all too well. For maybe the thousandth time in his life, Ben thought of Alicia and how glad he was that he would never see that look in his blind wife's eyes. "Okay, now that I'm the Thing again, let's get on the horn and call the Inhumans." Ben had a piece of paper in the pocket of his stretch pants, now stretched taut over his more massive body, and struggled to fish it out with his thick, bulky fingers. He tore the pocket loose, but caught the paper in mid-air. It was not a phone number in any traditional sense, but coordinates on which to pinpoint the communications satellite the Avengers and Fantastic Four shared.
Dials were adjusted and Ben, recognizing equipment similar to machines the Fantastic Four owned, sent a message to Attilan requesting an audio-video connection. Long moments of blank screen later, an image popped up of a total stranger.
"Who are you?" Ben asked, taken aback. "You ain't from the Royal Family."
The man – or looked like a man, despite a bristle-like Mohawk haircut and saggy cheeks that looked like jowls that started too high – seemed equally taken aback on the other end. "No one speaks to the Royal Family without clearing channels. Not even you, The Thing."
"Yeah, yeah, well get them channels cleared fer' me, 'cause I need to talk to somebody like Medusa about her sister. We need ta' know if she's heard from Crystal…"
December 3, 1971
The day the gate opens
Copán, Honduras
"Well, this is a mess!" John Storm shouted.
The trail of the abductors had led west from the capital city. Along the way, John and Crystal had learned that Lockjaw's abductors belonged to a cult that claimed to worship a Mayan goddess called Ixtel. What they wanted Lockjaw for, John and Crystal could only guess, but the trail led on all the way to the Mayan ruins of Copán, near the Guatemalan border. They had rushed to follow the trail quickly – rushed so quickly that they had not brought changes of clothes and their Fantastic Four uniforms reeked from exertion in the Central American heat and humidity. And they had spent days on the trail already too, failing so far to find a spare moment to try and contact the rest of the Fantastic Four back home and let them know they were alright.
"Yeah, pretty bad!" Crystal shouted back. The reason they were shouting, despite being right next to each other, was because of all the gunfire pinning them down in their current location behind a stone wall.
"Ready?" John shouted back. With a nod from Crystal, John gestured with his finger and huge gouts of flame erupted all around the stone wall and spread out towards their attackers. He had a good sense of the distance and caused the fire bursts to end abruptly before reaching anyone, but it had the desired effect of sending them all ducking for cover. The shooting stopped.
Crystal jumped out from behind her cover. The snipers were positioned stone ruins hundreds of years old. It would have been simpler to cause them to topple with her earth powers, but she held back from destroying national treasures and concentrated on her air power instead. A whirlwind appeared around the ruins, sweeping up anything loose into its vortex and sending four shooters – all dressed in camouflage - tumbling out from behind their cover.
John targeted their guns as he raced out from behind cover, causing their barrels to overheat and melt just enough to be inoperable. He closed the distance to the ruins with Crystal right behind him.
"Incoming!" Crystal yelled.
One of the four men had dropped his rifle sooner than the others and pulled a grenade loose from his baldric. John spotted it only after it had been thrown, but caught the grenade in a ball of fire and melted it to slag before it could detonate. Crystal followed through by having a loose rock on the ground fly up and strike the man in the face. That bought them enough time to reach a large archway and stand under it for cover.
"I like there," John said, nodding towards a building. It was the only intact building to be seen amongst the ruins; a wide, stone building with a second floor half the width of the first one.
"Got a good feeling about it?" Crystal asked.
"I got my good feeling from looking at you, but I still think we should go in there."
"I can't believe you still think you have to flirt with me," she said as she came over to him, "but when we're in danger, I like it." To show him, she grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him to her for a kiss. "Now," she said when she came up for air, "we're going to need some cover between here and that doorway…" She concentrated and wall-sized projections of earth began to rise out of the ground to either side.
Running together side-by-side, John and Crystal made their way to the open doorway to the ancient building, walls of soil and grass rising before them and sinking behind them the whole way. Clods of dirt flew everywhere as the walls were riddled with bullets, but the earthen shields held and they both reached the doorway safely.
Inside, only impressions remained behind of some interior walls and a partial staircase surrounded by rubble stood alone off to one side. If there had once been a floor between levels, it was probably wooden and long since rotted away. At the center of the large, gutted interior the floor recessed about a half-floor lower. Stairs led down into this area, which had a perfectly-preserved flagstone floor. Five hooded men stood at the points of a pentagram drawn on the stones with chalk and marked with candles and, laying in the middle of the pentagram, was Lockjaw.
"What do you think you're doing?" Crystal shouted. With an angry wave of her hand, gale force winds flung all five men into the air, over the stairs, and crashed them hard against the outside walls. Then she ran down the stairs and knelt at Lockjaw's side.
"Lockjaw had better be okay…" John threatened as he picked up the nearest wind-tossed victim by the front of his robe and hauled him halfway to his feet with a strong jerk.
"Of-of course!" the man said. His Latin American accent was thick, but he spoke English fluently. "We needed the dog to be safe. We were told he had a special power that we would need."
"Who told you? And use him for what?" John pressed.
"Johnny, we need to get Lockjaw out of here!" Crystal cried. "They have him drugged…or hypnotized, or something! If we get him out, they can't use him for whatever they were planning."
"Or perhaps, it is simply too late because they've already done it," came a voice from the staircase. It was a Spanish accent, thick and archaic. John had heard it before, once, a long time ago.
"Diablo!" John said. Without his trademark "Flame on!" battle cry, John enveloped his form in a fiery sheath of plasma and, with a gesture, sprayed gouts of burning plasma across the room towards Diablo. Controlled by John, though, the plasma stopped falling and shaped itself into a flaming cube that burnt in the air all around Diablo.
Diablo simply walked through the flaming plasma without being hurt by it. "Ah, the Human Torch! Little Johnny Storm all grown up," Diablo said, smiling, his arms extended as if for a welcoming embrace. "It is good to see one of my old enemies already, though I cannot say it comes as a surprise. I have been watching you for some days now from my other-dimensional prison…"
"I'm not interested in hearing it!" Crystal yelled. Frustrated at not being able to rouse Lockjaw, she whipped up a whirlwind and aimed it at Diablo.
As the whirlwind approached him, the winds kicked up dust and debris that swept over Diablo and bothered him, but he produced some power from his belt and threw it into the wind. Suddenly, the whirlwind changed direction and headed straight back towards Crystal. She was able to dissipate her own whirlwind, but not before it had knocked her off her feet.
"Walk through this!" John shouted as flaming plasma poured from his hands onto the floor around Diablo's feet, melting it. Diablo poured the contents of a tiny vial into the slag at his feet and all the plasma turned to snow. Worse, the transmutation followed the stream of plasma all the way back to John. Before he could even snuff his own flame, his plasma sheath was trasmuted into a thick coating of snow. He shook furiously, trying to shake the snow off of him before Diablo could follow up with another attack, but felt a hand grip his chin just as the snow fell from his face. Diablo's eyes stared back into his.
"That's right, Torch. Look into my eyes…" Diablo said hypnotically.
NEXT ISH: Diablo is back, Honduras teeters on the brink of civil war, and the FF are separated continents apart! And it gets worse before it gets better! Be back next time for "Thunder Among the Ruins."
