Swelling with love Chapter 10, a fantastic four fanfic

Time to play a game of good news bad news.

The good news is that this chapter is extra long.

The bad news is that you can expect further updates to come on a bi/tri weekly basis.

The news that you'll have to decide the nature of is that chapters 10 and 11 contain some of the raunchiest material in this fic.

Swelling with love chapter 10 Trust: in which Susan and Reed Richards have guest of both the invited and uninvited variety.

Susan Richards considered her current situation very carefully before voicing her thoughts. "There's a wonderful view of the ocean out our window, but who cares? It's 9:00 AM and I've got the windows drawn, the phone is disconnected, our room is booked for a solid week, yanked, I yanked the phone's power chord out of is sockets, a Fantastic Four communicator is on the nightstand but Johnny understand that if he call us for anything less then a genuine supervillian he'll be paying for it until he rusts.

When the mood feels right I can stretch out a finger and flick the lights off. I think that means I've covered all the bases to a degree that even you would approve of Reed, so why don't we get to work consummating this marriage? I figure with any luck we can do it half a dozen times before we need to plug the phone back in and call room service so they'll bring us lunch. Sound like a plan?"

At Reed's nod she began to coil her body around his. "Wonderful. So what position do you want us to be in when we do it a for the first time as husband and wife?" Reed gave one of those damnably honest answers that couldn't directly disagree with. Well that'd be easier to do if we'd actually taken the time to name some of our more exotic positions."

Susan pouted slightly. "I'm not vain enough to name positions that only I can achieve. If you want to do it though, go ahead." Reed just smiled as he laid on his side looking at Susan who was currently doing the same. "Well to tell the truth I'd actually like to do something different if you don't mind, although it is a little perverse."

Susan's face instantly became an expression of mock horror. "Perverse!? Reed I thought you knew me a better then that!" She chuckled at her own unconvincing words and smiled. "Come on Reed considering everything else we've done, it is going to take a lot to make me feel that something is too perverse to be enjoyable. Go ahead, what's your idea?" Reed sighed. "It'd be easier to show you then explain it." Then he pressed a finger to Susan's forehead and everything went grey.

Susan shivered. "Okay, I'm standing around in the middle of nowhere, wearing nothing, with no idea how I got here. I think it is time to be honest with myself and say that I just might have gotten my a little too horny for my own good." Susan looked around again and sighed, all things considered 'middle of nowhere' was being too generous to this place.

Wherever she was they hadn't even heard of technicolour, everything except her was grey, grey, grey, grey, lots of grey mist and other grey stuff. Looking down she couldn't even see what she was standing on because of the grey mist that was rolling over her feet.

Susan just staired for a few moments, and then very slowly something that should have been entirely too obvious suddenly dawned on her. What the hell was going on that was letting her look straight down and even contemplate the possibility of seeing her feet? She pressed her hand to her midsection and felt reasonably well toned muscles that she had been 'out of reach' even to her for the last few months of her life.

Something very wrong was going on. "Let me guess, you'd like an explanation right about now?" Reed walked out of he grey mist and Susan nodded extremely fervently. "Yes, yes, and double or triple yes. You can start with why you've got brown hair again, I'm not pregnant, where we are, how we got there, what happened to my clothes, and anything else you think I'd like to know."

Reed was also naked, Susan wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing, she wasn't going to make any snap judgments until she got some more information. "Where we are is hard to explain even for me. The simple version of it is that 'here' is a temporarily established location in the psychic plane. It is where your imagination meets mine." Which is why we both appear not as we are, but as we truly imagine ourselves to be, not from the perspective of a single moment but looking back and forward on our entire lives."

Susan breathed a small sigh of relief, after all it was unlikely she'd be able to come up with a better explanation than that. "Okay then. A warning beforehand would have been appreciated, but that's in the past. What I'm wondering about is why you consider this as incredibly perverse. We've seen each other naked so many times that it barely even registers any more."

"That's no the perverse part, this is the perverse part." Susan was vaguely aware of the fact that Reed's penis had been erect, but not really finding it something worthy of fixating over. On the other hand when it suddenly more then doubled in size, shooting out towards her wrapping around her right leg and then proceeding to lift her up into the air, that was new.

All of which left Susan hanging upside down her body's weight being supported entirely by her husband's manhood. Clearly this was going to be all kinds of interesting. "So too perverse?" Susan shook her head. "A year ago, too perverse by half. Today, wonderfully endearing. I can't wait to find out what kind of fun we can have..." Susan tried to easily slip of "Reed's" grip but nothing happened.

A very pronounced frown filled her face. "Okay a bit more explanation would be appreciated it.. Why is it that in here you're elastic and I'm not, and if you could put me on the ground while you explain it'd be appreciated, I'm pretty sure I can already feel a headache starting to develop from the way the blood rushing to my head, which considering what we're hear to do is exactly the wrong direction for it to be heading."

With surprising dexterity Reed twisted his genitalia around and left Susan actively sitting on top of her husband's member, which didn't seem to be having any trouble supporting her. "Well like everything else here it is complicated. The long and short of it is that it takes a lot of practice to properly control oneself in here.

I had more or less six months worth of nothing but practice while I didn't have a body. If you want to get something like that done, then you have to imagine it." Susan adjusted her position slightly. "Okay, color me confused, because I'm trying to and its not happening." Reed's brow furrowed slightly.

"I can't say that I know perfectly what you're thinking but I have a theory. When I say imagine, it might be more appropriate to say dream. But it's hard for you to do that, because you're so intimately familiar with stretching your body in real life and thus I it's probably hard for you to properly dream about something like that convincingly.

You're thinking about what you know works in real life, rather then properly imagining, but I'm fairly certain I could help you with that given time. Though time we spend working on that is time we couldn't spend doing other things..." Susan sighed. "Reed, at this very moment I'm currently straddling your penis, no your body, just your penis. I know I'm not a genius like you but I think I can guess what you're working towards.

Just one small, well not exactly small thing. There are horses out there for which this thing would be way too big and even though I'm currently knocked up like a mare in April, if I can't stretch on command, well you do the math." Reed of course was always good at math, in a few moments it was a much more conventional sized member (well at least if you measured in width lengthwise was another story all together) that was curling itself around her nude form.

"This better?" "Yeah, that looks like a perfect fit." "By the way Susan, if you're currently feeling a little uneasy because of you're sense of balance being off, well I think I know a way that I could make you feel pregnant again." "Oh really?" Splosh. Testicles the size of beanbags, who would guess that such an expression could be without embellishment. "This is gonna take a while isn't it?" "Why, do you have some place to go?" "No, I was just savoring the taste of sweet anticipation."

Susan sat up in her hotel bed. She quickly elongated and retracted her fingers just to make sure that herr powers still worked, and smiled privately to herself at the result. Then she preformed a somewhat more esoteric examination of her body and much to her surprise found that the lower half of unstable molecule uniform was dry as a bone.

Apparently you could have what amounted to more sex then you knew what to do with on the psychic plane without having it actually qualify as a wet dream, well that was a nice little side perk. Sort of like that beautiful view their room had, not having it wouldn't have kept them from enjoying themselves, but it was still a nice little side dish alongside the main course.

"That was interesting, and fun beyond belief, so what do you feel like doing next?" What came out of Reed's voice could best be described as a undulating gurgle, the kind of thing movies always had Frankenstein (make that Frankenstein's monster, Reed would he for her to make obvious mistakes about great literature even in her mind) was known for doing. "Sorry?"

She heard his response in her mind rather then in her ears. /What I want is rather immaterial considering that more or less all I'll be capable of doing for quite a while is laying here.\ Susan extended her neck, circling it around so that she could look at Reed while he was laying behind her. "I know I've always bounced back first from sex, but I did I really take that much out of you?"

Reed's head shook very, very weakly, and he was still sticking with psychic communication. /No it's just that there's a divide between mind and body Susan, it's not an easy divide to cross, and the more thoroughly you cross it, the harder it is to work your way back.

You see that's the reason I suggested we didn't do something like that on beforehand., bzecause doing it makes me focus so heavily on my mind that it's going to take me a while before I can switch gears and start using my body properly.\ Susan rolled over and was able to look directly at Reed. "Really? Ouch I'm sorry, exactly how bad is it?"

Reed's fingers twitched. /It gets better the more practice I have at it. I think I can manage rudimentary motor functions. Chew food, bowel and bladder control, probably can manage a fairly good hobble with your help. Not much more then that however.\ Susan sighed and lay back.

"Well I still feel a little bit bad because I'm at least partialy responsible for your current condition. So I guess I'll just lay here and wait for it to pass." /Well Susan even though my body is more or less shot, the very fact that I'm able to communicate mentally fairly easily with you says that my mind is ready for some fairly unstrenuous mental activity. Put your head to one of my hands if you would...\

"So I take it by unsternious mental activates you mean helping me figure out how things work in here, rather then doing each other like minks in heat?" Reed nodded and Susan looked down, even though she could actually see he grey mist rolling over certain portions of her body she couldn't feel it. "So can we have clothes here?" "Of course."

Reed was still standing and he held out an open palm toward the ground. Grey mist suddenly rose up and began to coil around first his hand and then the rest of his body. In the process it transformed from grey to blue, and eventually solidified into a blue Fantastic Four uniform.

"You can have anything here if you can imagine it the right way." Susan tried and though a couple strands of the mist rose upwards, they sank back into the general swirl before making it halfway towards to her. Reed approached her slowly. "Try closing your eyes." Susan did and then she thought and, and thought, and thought about having her unstable molecule uniform on.

"Well that's something." Reed's words snapped her out of her trance, and she opened her eyes. True enough, she was now wearing her familiar blue bra and panties. She slowly stood up, running a hand along the garments and nodded, to their credit they felt spot on. "You said that you had six months of practice, so while you didn't have a body you more or less just spent all your time here. That must of been nice..."

"It was undeniably convenient at times. The moment I had an idea I could take it from the design stages to 'reality' in seconds. Then I'd be able to play around with it, and in short I'd be able to fully create and test things before I so much as lifted a telikentic finger. I also could create 'mirrors' that let me know what was going on around myself or any of you. But for all of that, I'm pretty sure it was also driving me insane one day a time."

Susan took a single step backwards in shock. "Really?" Reed nodded as if he had never been more sure of anything in his life. "Yes. As you might have noticed, reality is a fairly nebulous concept in here, and in theory this place lets me have whatever I want, from there it's nothing more then a bit of applied logic. If power corrupts then absolute power corrupts absolutely.

But luckily because of you I was able to stay sane." Susan took two steps forward now, twisted her neck to the side slightly, and realizing that she couldn't do it any more then slightly compared to how far she could normally twist it. "How?" Reed held out his right hand, his eyebrows slanting downwards in anger.

"Simple, because even in here I don't have it all. Observe." More mist began to coil upwards beside him taking the form of countless interlocking gears, and other bits of and pieces of machinery. "The make up of the average human body can be defined as a complicated system of interlocking joints which allow for a certain range of movements." The motions of his right hand was performing was changed slightly. "Oil could be seen used as a replacement for blood, synthetic human skin could be carefully applied over it, sensors which gather and process visual information could be designed just like eyes, hair would obviously no particular challenge."

More mist washed over the thing turning into skin, leaving behind an extremely familiar looking naked woman. "Put it all together and what do you have?" Reed clenched his right hand into a fist and the faux Susan Richards he'd created instantly fell apart, its components quickly turning back into mist.

"An oversized children's toy, no more, no less. Because eve in here the Turing Test is the only test I've never been able to pass." Susan was still struggling slightly to deal with the construction and destruction of another of her. "The what?" Reed sighed. "The Turing Test its very a simple. It typically works along the following lines, a person is lead into a room with a computer that they type questions into and get responses back.

The goal is to see if the person asking the questions can tell if the response are being typed by a person in an adjoining room, or generated by a piece of computer software. Personally I'm sorely tempted to view it in a manner similar to absolute zero, where its not an attainable goal in and of itself, only something we can measure how close we come to it, but in a universe full of shapeshifting aliens I'm not ready to disregard the possibility that someone somewhere has been able to perfectly pass it.

Doing so would mean designing something mechanical in nature that's able to perfectly appear human mentally as well as physically. Victor said he had done it, but personally I believe that his claims in that area were based on his own twisted views of humanity. A man who thinks as little of human emotion and the suffering of those around him as Victor Von Doom would probably be able to design a robot that perfectly imitated him.

But regardless of whatever else I could make in here, I couldn't 'make' you. So that determination not to let what happened to me keep us apart, that was line which kept me tether to the world which existed outside my own head. It was also something that Victor managed to exploit as well, it was when he pointed out to me that if I had a body again then I'd have a chance with you that got me to agree with him.

Well I'd say that I hope the way things have turned out would leave Victor rolling in his grave, but as we both know his body actually is, rolling in the hay with you. Because now thanks to him, I not only have you out there, but as of today finally manage to have you in here as well!"

That Susan knew exactly how she was going to respond to, taking a moment to seductively lick her lips and shake her hair. "So do you feel ready to have me in here again?" For an answer Reed just smiled as he instantly dispersed his clothing back into grey mist and soon enough Susan once again found her entire hundred and somesuch pound body being supported by one boneless mix of flesh, blood and muscle.

Reed adjusted his posture and Susan found herself sliding down Reed's pole until she landed on top of him, knocking both of them to the ground. "Okay let's do it one more time this way, then I want you to spend some time teaching me how to stretch in here, so that we can play the Amazing Anaconda versus the Perverse Python."

"I thought you said you weren't vain enough to start naming positions that only we could achieve?" "There's a fine line between naming sexual positions that only you can achieve and naming sexual games that only you can play. And I promise I'll let you know what it is as I find out exactly what it is."

Saying it was a week in paradise would have been an understatement, but sadly not even Reed could find a more appropreate word or phrase, so paradise was what they went with.

"So how are the happy couple doing?" Susan smiled broadly at Ben's question glad to see the two of them were completely over whatever awkwardness that might have existed between them, but then meeting Alica probably had helped him quite a lot with that.

"Reed carried me in through the threshold. And a week later the poor dear was so tired I had to carry him out of it." "Thanks that great sis, glad to know you had fun, let's just leave it there before you say something that I'll regret hearing."

Things settled back to normal in the Baxter Building from then. Nothing had gone noticeably wrong during the week afterwards. Reed even went so far as to arrange another bit of goodwill on behalf of the Fantastic Four towards the other superhero groups that operated mainly in the city.

Five days after they got back from their week long honey moon, The Baxter Building had visitors. While the Fantasticar had a suitably somewhat surreal appearance to go with its name the X-Men's vehicle of choice the Blackbird looked as simple as its name suggested.

Susan didn't have the air force experience that Ben did, but she could tell pretty sure it had either been built based on a military aircraft, or had actually been a piece of military equipment that had been acquired through circumstances that Susan wasn't about to poke her elastic nose into.

A hatch lowered, and the first thing that came down it was a bald man in a mechanical wheel chair who was wearing an ordinary business suit. Suffice to say, it came off as something of a anticlimax, and then the guy with white feathery wings more or less the same size as Ben's flew out and once again all was right with the world. The bald man in the wheelchair took his right hand off the controls as Reed approached his mode of conveyance. "Professor X? A pleasure to meat you at last." "Likewise Reed Richards."

The man who had decided to that henceforth he should only be known as the Wingless Wizard examined his two current motley compatriots. Peter Petraskey also known as the Trapster was brilliant (though no where near as brilliant as the wizard himself) chemist who had once made quite a name for himself in adhesives.

The Sandman on the other hand was nothing more then a run of the mill theif who had gained incredible powers by accident. It galled Wizard to work with such a man, but his incredible abilities to transform himself into sand and be as ever present as a dust storm or as hard as concrete made him too valuable a resources to simply turn up his nose at.

He was also unsurpringly the first to voice his dissatisfaction with his leader's plan. "Seems like way more trouble then it's trouble then it's worth, trying to take on the Fantastic Four in their on their own home turf."

Wizard scowled the Sandman as the base fool filled the room with the scent of his smouldering cigar. "Sooner or later we will have to deal withe Fantastic Four, better we do so with on our terms then upon their's. More to the point, once we have dealt with them once they will never bother us again, and the Baxter Building and all it's treasures will be ours. The equipment within alone would fetch several fortunes on the blackmarket, besides, Richards and his companions are short sighted enough to believe that he could create a defence system for his building that I could not outwit, hah!

It was be child's play to compose such a plan once I'd obtained the blueprints for his building. To start with its sensors will prove utterly incapable of detecting a ship that is powered by my antigravity technoligy. Of course any kind of forced entry, even so much as breaking a single window, or putting so much as an unexpected fifty pounds upon the rooftop would trigger countless alarms. But that is no reason to be disheartened since Sandman will be able to slip in through even the very smallest of cracks and then simply open up a window for us to enter through. At which point we need only divide and conquer the members of the Fantastic Four."

Sadly one of the key elements of this plan still seemed remarkably unwilling to preform his task. "There's no way I'll be able to pull it off Wiz. You know what the winds are like up that high? If I split myself up different parts of me will get blown across different state lines!"

Wizard simply smirked at the very idea that there might be a part of his plan he hadn't already thought through. "Well you will not have to attempt this particular feat alone Sandman. After all, we will be known as the Frightful Four, and not the Fright Three, and so it is with great pleasure that I introduce the final member of our quartet. You may rest assured that she is even more powerful and deadly then Ultra Woman herself!"

"Is she also more pre..." Trapster got no father before the Wizard shoved a gloved hand across his mouth silencing him. "I would suggest you refrain from pointless mockeries Trapster, she is not the kind of woman who suffers such with a smile." Now then, allow me to introduce Madame Medusa..." A well built woman walked into the room. Her green eyes had a catlike quality about them, and her mane of red hair gloriously cascaded down the back of her body, stopping just shy of her ankles.

She wore a full body purple outfit that involved a belt that was a slightly redder shade then the rest of her outfit and had a stylized "M" embroidered in the middle of it. She wore a simple black mask that hid the upper portions of her face, and she needed to only sniff the room once before she acted. Several strands hair suddenly rose up, shifting about before her, and began to rotate themselves in a rapid circle like a living propeller.

By the time she was done with that particular trick Sandman's cigar had been quite forcefully extinguished. "I owe you a great debt Wizard, but I see now reason to endure hardships for the sole sake of other's enjoyment while I repay it." There was a detectable French accent to Medusa's words, but it was hardly present to such a degree as to hamper communication. Sandman staired down his nose at his unlit cigar for a moment before looking Medusa over from the top to bottom of her hair, since this range also contained at least 90 of her body.

"Not bad at all, you know I happen to like dames who play rough." Another strand of Medusa's hair flicked the unlit cigar from his mouth. "And I would like to see the Wizard's plan over and done with so that we need not waste another moment contemplating it."

From there it turned into something of an impromptu party more or less. Reed and his opposite number more or less exchanged notes on their experiences both as psychics (though Reed was obviously on the weaker end of that particular spectrum) leaders of a team of superheroes.

For her part Susan usurpingly found herself reclining languidly on one of the Baxter Building's many couches conversing with the one superheroine among their guests. Marvel Girl was an attractive woman (well Susan couldn't see her face beneath the black mask she was wearing, but what she could see wasn't anything to be ashamed of) who seemed to be more or less about Susan's age with green eyes, and shoulder length red hair.

She also had telepathy and telekinesis that was slightly more powerful then Reed's, though she lacked his incredible intelligence. "So Marvel Girl I couldn't help but overhear some of my husband's conversation with your professor, what exactly is the difference between a mutant and a mutate?"

The section of Marvel Girl's face that could be seen around the her mask reddened. "You can call me Jean if you want, I was at your wedding." Susan blushed herself slightly. "Okay Jean sorry I didn't reocgnize you but it seemed like my husband invited just about every superhero in the city if not the state, if not the nation if not the, well you get the idea."

Jean waved her comment off, while Susan was lounging on her side along a couch she was simply sitting in a chair, but then Jean wasn't currently a mother to be. "It was your wedding, who reckonizes the faces of each and every single one of their guests, especially when so many of them were wearing masks? Anyway, the difference between the two terms is pretty simple, at least when used to describe the origin of someone's superpowers.

A mutate is a phrase that could be used to describe you or any other member of the Fantastic Four. It means that someone experienced some particular key event that was responsible for them gaining powers. In your case it was obliviously the exposure to cosmic rays during your flight into space. On the other hand, mutants like every member of the X-Men, while our powers may manifest at some moment of extreme stress, they've actually been encoded in our genetic structure from birth."

Susan winced. "So it just happens?" Jean nodded and Susan winced to an even greater degree. "That can't be fun at all. I mean yeah it was a lot to go through in one day: first thinking I was going to be the first woman to set foot on the moon, then worrying if I'd ever make it back to the earth alive, followed by discovering I had superpowers, but at least it was a chain of logical events that I could understand.

If I just woke up one morning, stretched, and found my arms growing longer and longer till they fell off on either side of the bed and not having a clue why... I'm pretty sure that would have promptly lead to me freaking out so badly that my head would have slammed against the ceiling."

Jean held out her right hand and a book flew to it, then she flipped it up into the air. For a few moments it just spun randomly but then it stopped, and proceeded to slide gracefully back into the bookcase it had come from. "Yeah. I thought was going crazy for a while, because I was hearing voices in my head, seeing things move for no reason, but luckily before I wound up committed I met the Professor who explained to me that I was a telapath and those voices were other people's thoughts.

That's a lot of what we do when we're not stopping mutants who want to use their powers to gain and advantage over those who don't have them, the Professor helps us track down mutants and we offer our services to help teach them how to use their powers."

Susan rolled her eyes and managed a weak smile. "I guess that makes it officially a triple ouch. I usually spend most of my days just lazing around the Baxter Building, do a couple light domestic chores, reading a few books, mainly on how to deal with pregnency and child rearing, pine over my husband, and otherwise being a big blue lump on whatever piece of furniture I care to relax in." "Well you are pregnant."

Jean said it with a slight giggle in her voice as if there was something inappropriate about it, but then arguably considering how I had happened... Either way, Susan took a moment to elongate her neck and carefully inspected her belly before responding. "Yep, all the smart money is on I'm pregnant." She left her neck elongated, and twisted it around, so that she once again was looking at Jean.

"Well I guess once I actually give birth to these six I'll have my elastic hands pretty full,but I'm still glad I'll only have to worry about my own super powered children." Jean shrugged carefully pushing one of her red bangs out of her face. "Well most of the 'kids' are at least in their teens, that seems to be the most frequent age for mutants to develop their powers.

That said, you do have very nice home." Susan shrugged her shoulders, elongating them a little for effect. "Well like you probably know, all four of us got our powers at the same time and we were more or less standing right next to each other at the time, so the entire forming a superhero team was a pretty obvious course of action.

Being able to pull one together from people who'd never known each other before, that must have taken some doing." Jean stood up and nodded as she to preform some minor stretches, evidently not feeling like she could sit still any longer. "Yeah even though the Professor is clearly in charge, since he rather obviously can't follow us into the field there was a certain amount of jockeying for position between us for who would be second in command.

But we've mostly worked that stuff out by now, even if it took a while. So what's it like, being pregnant I mean?" Susan rose from laying on her side to sitting up with her belly resting on her legs. "Well just like with just about everything, superpowers help. I might spend a lot of my time just laying around, but that's more because I don't have anything to do then lacking the energy to do it. Why do you ask?"

Jean blushed again and gave a sly smile. "Well I'd be lying if I said that I don't have my eyes on a certain someone, and I think he likes me to, but we're both still working out how serious it is. Not to mention even if we did get into a relationship, considering what kind of world it would mean bringing kids into.."

Susan stretched out an arm putting it on Jean's shoulder. "As I see it, if we ever let the villains we deal with frighten us enough that we doubt we'll be able to keep our children safe, or wonder if its worth bringing children into the world, then we're letting them win by default."

Jean just sat there for a moment, and then her smile became much more genuine. "Good point." Susan nodded as she retracted her arm back to its normal length. "It's a story that's basically old as history itself. I'm no match for my husband mentally, but I'm not exactly a dim bulb and I know a little history myself.

The soldiers who fought in World War Two saw humanity unveiling countless new weapons, including for the first time the possibility of wiping out all life on earth go from being bad science fiction to horrifying science fact. But it didn't make them loose their faith in humanity and wonder if it was worth having children. Quite the opposite in fact, it was called the Baby Boom for a reason after all.

Truth be told, that's sort of what happened with me and Reed. After putting up with half a year of having the man I love be nothing but a living brain, when he finally got a new body, well bing, bang, boom, and then this happened." It was then that Jean asked the question that Susan had been expecting for quite a while. "Do you mind if I feel?" Susan licked her lips and smiled. "Okay. But bare in that they're my unborn children, not a bunch of circus animals, they don't give schedualed preformances."

Eventually things wrapped themselves up without a fight breaking out between the two groups, despite what Johnny's comicbook collection had to say on the issue, the entire meeting managed to take place without a fight breaking out between the two groups. The closest they came was Ben managing to goad Angel (the winged member of the X-Men) into a quick race to see who was faster in the air. Ben won that particular constant by considerable margin and was noticeably proud of it to. "Was barely a contest, my turns were way tighter, but then something tells me that guy pulled an eight G turn in his life."

Wizard smiled as he watched the Baxter Building's roof through a pair of high tech binoculars. "Excellent. Look our foes already divide themselves for us. Mandroid has departed as have their superpowered guests. Let us board my ship and make haste!"

Ben Grimm sighed as he closed the door to his room behind him. It'd been a long day, and he was ready to hit the sack. Except that something was slightly off. He always left his window at least slightly open because Reed had to have a fancy mechnical locking system of the old fasion twist, untwist, so it was just easier leave it slightly open so that it could be slid fully open any time he wanted to take flight out of it.

But Ben was pretty sure he only left it wide open when he was out and intended to return to the Baxter Building through his window. So what was it doing wide open as he walked into the room? Deciding that trying to figure out how it happened was more trouble then it was worth, he walked over, intending to lower it before calling it a night.

Except that as he pressed his hands to the window he suddenly found himself starring down the barrel of a very oddly shaped gun, then everything went orange.

Dragonfly suitably dealt with, Medusa swung Trapster in through the window that was easily large enough for a person to fit through. Sandman reformed himself from the pile of sand that he'd turned into underneath the bed, and Wizard casually floated in through the window. He then proceeded to give Dragonfly a quick blast from a small green bottle he was carrying which ended Dragonfly's fruitless struggles against Trapster's paste.

"Excellent, excellent. Trapster apply enough of you solvent to Dragonfly's bonds that we can move him about easily. With him dealt with all that remains is Ultra Woman, and Mr. Fantastic. Sandman, you and Trapster will accompany me as we move towards Richards' lab to search for him, Medusa you check to see if they've retired to their rooms. If you find them you know what do don't you?"

As Trapster applied the solvent to his paste Dragonfly fell to the ground, even though his body his arms, legs, and wings were still pasted together. Medusa for her part began to wrap several strands of hair around his unconscious body, while another strand lifted up a green can that was the twin to the one the Wizard had just used. "Of course."

"It's fascinating isn't it Susan, just like I surmised it would appear that evolution is in fact being pushed into overdrive. Humans developing extordinary abilities for no apparently reason at all. I wonder, if I compare our, well mine are rather worthless for obvious reasons, but if I compared any of your three's genetic structures before and after the accident, would I be able to pinpoint the exact genes which are responsible for our average humans developing such powers?"

They'd seen the last of the X-men but Reed was still fully dressed in his armor, and in response to his question Susan began to twist her upper body around his. "Yeah, that's interesting, but I can think of some more interesting things that we could do in your lab tonight." Reed teasingly pressed a finger to her nose. "I suppose you do raise a valid point.

"There they are, get them!" Susan and Reed suddenly found themselves face to face with three men who she had never seen before and that cry was the only warning she got before some strange contraption one of the man held let loose with a torrent of orangeish gunk.

If she'd been more on the ball then Susan probably would have been able to curl herself into one in time to avoid the blast, but she was taken totally by surprise, and barely maanged to return to normal before she got hit. The stuff felt like it weighed a couple hundred pounds and pushed her to the floor even as she was still trying to come to grips with what had happened to her. From her less then perfect vantage point she was able to see that apperently Reed had gotten nailed by plenty of the stuff as well.

"Struggle all you like doll, your not getting out, the my paste could anchor a battleship!" Attacking without balre any warning, derogatroy female pronoun, it seemed like a fairly safe bet that she was dealing with supervillians. "Well then its a good thing I'm not a lot more flexible then a battleship!"

The paste was covered her body between her breasts and neck, and there was some on her arms, but not nearly enough to imobilize them. She easily elongated her fists sending them on a collision course with the man's face. His eyes went wide and he tired to stop her arms with another blast of paste, but Susan just smirked as she saw the orange muck start to emerge from his weapon.

Now that she was aware of what was going on, Susan was easily able to manuever her arms out of the paste's way and then have them finish their journey to the man's face from a slightly different angle. The villain in a red and orange outfit was knocked backwards and off his feet.

Another one of the villains dressed in some kind of purple suit of armor suddenly lifted off the ground and as he flew past Susan's arms he slapped a pair of small objects to them before she could use them to get a grip on him. All of a sudden, Susan's arms went haywire, stretching themselves in each and every direction regardless of what she tried to do with them. "Sandman finish her!"

All of a sudden Reed took a single step forward, the mass of orange that had apparently been stuck to him sliding right off. He raised his hands and fired a pair of concussion beam blasts. Meanwhile the other villain (Sandman apparently) began to transform his body into some kind of mass of sand in the vague shape of a human body.

Before he could do anything to Reed, Susan decided to make use of the limbs she still had control of, extending her legs and delivering a pair of kicks to Sandman that reduced him to a pile of only slightly shifting dust. "Your shields might have been able prevent Trapster's paste from setting on your armor, but your aim is truly pitiful Richards!"

Even from her position of being stuck to the floor Susan smiled. Mainly because with that kind of perfect timing that you only see when irony is involved, a section of the roof caved in on top of the the villian in purple. "I'm not sure of how much protection that armor provides you so I decided to take a more esoteric approach to subduing you. Now then Susan, why don't you and I see our last guest out?"

Sandman was started to reform, but Susan had plenty of blows left in her body. But then all of a sudden something grabbed Susan's neck and yanked her backwards. She found herself face to face with a woman with lots of red hair green eyes and she was holding a grey spray can in her right hand.

She emptied it's contense into Susan's face, and instantly the world went fuzzy. "Fair well Ultra Woman." Whatever was holding Susan's neck let go of it and it fell limply to the ground. "Dam it... feel like James Bond's girlfriend... if I'm an amoeba... need to stop breathing... through my mouth... won't be vulnerable to... damn knockout gas..." Then she closed her eyes and there was darkness.

Johnny really wasn't sure where exactly he was going. All he knew was that he didn't want to spend another night as the only guy in the Baxter Building who didn't have a steady girl.

On paper it certainly sounded like a much easier task then saving the world several times over, after all he'd had to deal with an inordinate number of guys how found themselves sexually... an inordinate number of guys who in various ways said through either words or actions that his sister was an incredibly beautiful woman. He'd climbed out of the exact same gene pool as her, so clearly it wasn't just imaging himself as hansom when he saw his reflection.

More to the point, as a founding member of the Fantastic Four he was 25 of ROLLING IN IT when it came to finances. Yes to all appearances Susan loved Reed for his brain more then his money, but that didn't mean Johnny had to.

He ran through the checklist again, he was hansom, rich, famous, and he had discovered that being a superhero gave you access to a veritable flood of pickup lines. So why the hell was he did he find himself listening to Ben make jokes about how he was "jacking in" to the building's power grid to recharge his batteries alone in his room ever night?

Well there was the problem in and of itself. All the chicks he ran into who were only interested in a guy's body wanted him to introduce them to Ben, and all the chicks he ran into who were only interested in a guy's brain wanted him to introduce them to Reed. How the heck was he suppose to have a chance to score with competition like that?

Well, now that Reed and Susan were finally married with any luck he'd stop having moon eyed girls come up to him and ask him if he really did know Mr. Fantastic. /Johnny get back to the Baxter Building, on the double! We're under attack on the third floor from the top, I'd say more but Susan need's my help!\ Johnny jammed his foot down hard on the break the moment he felt the psychic conversation stating, luckily there hadn't been anyone following him close behind him, so he avoided creating an accident that way.

Once he fully felt in control of his body again, he sighed, if it wasn't his own team mates it was supervillians, apparently it was gonna take a miracle for him to be able to land a girl. He carefully looked both ways, and then eased his car into a thoroughly illegal U turn.

He really needed to talk to Reed about letting him get some kind of "superhero" bumpersticker on his car that would let him basically do all the kind of stuff cops did when they were in were involved in what could quickly turn into life or death situations.

But for the moment, the illegality of what he had just done, and what he was about to do came secondary compared to the fact that he could actually do it. He transformed from Jonathan Storm to the Mandroid, flipped up a small hidden compartment in the dashboard and pressed the little red button beneath it. That button was one of the few victories he'd been able to win, but he had convinced Reed to give some of his cars pretty heavy modification in case of situations more or less just like this one.

His car went from zero to two hundred MPH and rising n the space of a couple of seconds, that kind of thing could be a big enough burden on machinery, and would have been even less fun if he'd had human flesh at the time. He carefully inched a finger forward and openned another hidden compartment revealing a blue button that would release his cars drag chutes. He'd need to be pressing that one fairly soon since he doubted Reed would look kindly on him ramming one of his cars into the Baxter Building even if it was in the line of duty.

Ideas raced through Reed's mind like cars through an intersection, and not a single one of the could help him now. It would have been so very easy to build a way to remotely activate the Baxter Building's security measures into his armor. So very easy to do, and he hadn't done it.

After Susan had suddenly been knocked out the Sandman had turned into a swirling vortex and come at him. His shielding systems were set for a certain defined size, after all if it was a perfectly air tight barrier then he'd need to build an internal air supply. which was another wonderful idea that he might never get a chance to implement.

Countless tiny particles of sand had been able to flow through his shield and right now they were currently irritating his lungs and throat, choking him. How utterly ironic, Doom had claimed that his shielding would be able to withstand an atomic blast, and while wearing it Reed was going to be taken down by a numbers that even he couldn't counter an avalanche of dustmites jamming themselves down his throat.

It hurt to breath and darkness was creeping into the corners of his eyes. Try as he might he could not cough his throat clear enough to draw in oxygen or speak words. But then there was a strange serenity as he realized he didn't have to. Leading up to, on the day of the wedding and the week after he'd already let Susan know everything he'd wanted to tell her.

No, not everything, he could have praised Susan St... Susan Richard's beauty a different way for decades on end, for centuries if he'd had the time. But apparently he didn't... he might never get to see her give birth, might never get to see or know his children... funny he finally understood... just what she meant when she'd told him... she didn't want to give up the possibility of... things that might yet be... Reed didn't either... But sadly as he already knew to well, even among all of the machina that augmented his armor there was no suitable method for delivering dues to this situation. Consciousness slipped from his grasp.

"Excellent, the Fantastic Four are defeated!" Sandman reformed himself into his normal human appearance and held up every finger on his right hand except his pinkie. "You know for a guy who's supposedly so smart Wizzy, you don't seem to be very good at counting. I only see three of them, which mean the Mandroid is still out there somewhere."

Medusa felt her hair starting to probe around the room's corners, checking every nook and carnny outside of her vision, as if expecting to feel strands of it brush up against cold metallic flesh at any moment. The Wizard meanwhile simply landed on the ground and laughed. "Sandman, do I look like some pompous over bearing fictional villain to you? Yes the Mandroid is still out there, but there is not one single reason that he should ever be given so much as a chance to see his comrades again, unless it is as the last thing he does before he expires."

Three small antigrav discs slid into the Wizard's right palm and he tossed one to each of them, Medusa catching hers with a strand of her hair. "Attach these to our defeated foes and Trapster you will secure them in place. Sandman, you will smash a hole in this room large enough for us to shove them out, and Medusa you will use your hair to see that they are pushed through it. By the time these three awaken, if they ever do, they will discover themselves leaving earth's atmosphere for a second time, curtesy of my discs! Then, it will simply be a matter of weather they die from asphyxiation, hypothermia, or any of the countless other was that the human body is bound to perish if it departs this world unprotected!"

Sandman slapped the disc to Mr. Fantastic armor, and it was accompanied by a slight magnetic "clink" indicating that even without the paste it was unlikely to come lose on its own. For the first time it seemed like a genuine smile was one his lips. "You know that's the first part of this plan I've heard that I can fully get behind. Once we've sent these three on their final voyage Mandroid will have no chance at all against the full might of the Frightful Four! Ain't I right?" Trapster pasted his disc into place on Dragonfly's body in silence though he nodded firmly at Sandman's words.

Medusa brought the antigravity disk she held in her hair closer to her looking down at Ultra Woman's body. Even after being forced into an unnatural sleep her body still remained strewn about the room, yet was a certain part of her body that seemed quite naturally dispended even if to a somewhat greater degree then normal. Looking at it closely it might have just been her eyes playing tricks wit her, but she was sure she spied some movements within it.

Wizard touched the master antigrav disc he wore on his belt, and the two fallen male members of the Fantastic Four rose up into the air. Medusa could feel the disc in her hair starting to tug against it in a desire to rise upwards as well.

"What are you waiting for Medusa?" She turned back to look at her three companions, thought for only a single moment, and then smiled. "Nothing." Her hair winded up and tossed the antigrav disc. Several more strands of her hair easily snatched Trapster's paste gun from his surprised hands. She twisted it in and fired. The stream of paste arrived only a few moments after the antigrav disc landed right in the middle of Sandman's chest, and the glob of orangish adhesive should do a magnificent job of keeping it there, and keeping him off balance, that made one.

She twisted the gun around and didn't just press the trigger, she yanked it down. The Trapster was neatly hoisted upon his own petard as what had to be close to a gallon of his own sticky mixture secured him to the floor. He had a solvent on him for it somewhere, but she doubted he'd be able to reach it in his current condition. Just to be sure however she gave the gun a quick yank, snapping the chord connecting it to the Trapster's backpack, creating a leak which would only further burry him within his own chemical concoction. That made two.

Her red hair lashed out like dozen of angry fists, each one craving a chance to wrap itself firmly around some portion of Wizard's body. But three was not going to be an easy number to achieve, while Medusa had been subduing her other two former confederates the Wizard had rengaged his suits own antigravity systems, and somehow he managed to carefully manuver between all of the strands of Medusa's hair.

"Traitorous wench!" He threw handfuls of antigravity discs at her, but she stood her ground against the assult, her hair had no trouble at all hitting targets which didn't change their course every other second, and each and every single one of the discs was struck by a strand of her hair and sent spinning off on another course away from Medusa.

He fired blasts of energy from his gloves, but Medusa managed to duck, weave, jump, and otherwise avoid them. Then she hit upon an idea, instantly implemented it. With the paste still securing it disc to his chest Sandman was careening helplessly about the room between the two combatants, at least until a strand of Medusa's hair seized him and hurled him at his master.

Just as she had hoped Wizard was too busy avoiding her torrent of crimson tendrils to see this particular attack coming and their bodies careened into one another. "Dam it, deactivate this thing so I can show this girl who's boss Wizard!" Medusa's hair tendrils quickly encircled their two bodies in a cacoon, however as it turned out she was going to need to start counting backwards. Through numerous tiny cracks between the strands of her hair grains of sand began to spill with an alarming speed.

Sure enough it didn't take long before Sandman had managed to reform himself. "All right Medusa, let's see how you like a guy who plays rough!" He formed a giant fist made of sand and swung it at her with reckless abandon. Medusa had spent just about every second of her life that she could remember using her hair to get the better of those who had either greater strength of numbers on their side, and brute strength itself wasn't much harder to counter. She wrapped her hair around the fist before it could connect, seeking not to alter it's course, but use it to alter her own.

With that firm fist to pull down on, Medusa's hair pulled her into the air, allowing Sandman's blow to pass through empty air. Then she launched her own counter attack, send her red locks lashing into Sandman's midsection like living whips. Sure enough his midsection more or less exploded in a shower of sand under the force that assailed it. Then Medusa hooked another handful of her hairs through the hole in her foes body and used that leverage to hurl him across the room. He transformed himself into a swirling vortex before he connected but Medusa knew just how to deal with that.

Before she could however, she suddenly gritted her teeth in pain as Wizard's gauntlets blew a man sized hole i the cacoon of hair that had been restraining him, and he promptly flew out through it. One of her (even if she had hundreds of tendrils of hair at her command) against two of them, those were not odds she liked to think about, but it was too late to do anything but press on. Besides, at worse all they could do was kill her, and death seemed like a rather pale deterrent to someone who was living her life.

Elevator music. There where times when Johnny Storm seriously fantasized about putting his brother in law in a headlock and asking him what the hell he had been thinking, and at the moment he had way more time then he needed to do just that.

Ben would have flown up, his sister would have stretched, Reed had his own private jet pack. But Jonathan Spencer Storm the Mandroid, when he heard that the rest of the Fantastic Four was engaged in fight for their lives near the top floor of the Baxter Building, what did he do? He took the elevator.

The elevator that was currently playing run of the mill, everyday, slow, how much more this can I take before I need to smash either my skull or the speaker in, elevator music. Johnny would even be willing to compromise with Reed when they talked on the subject (he hopped like hell they would have a chance to talk on the subject) it didn't have to be something loud modern and flashy, it could be Ride of the Valkeries.

But making him listen to the stuff that the Baxter Building's elevators was currently pumping out wasn't so much working his last nerve, as snipping it like a pair of pliers. He would have shut it off, but he was busy using his innate empathy with electronic devices to try and make the elevator he was ridding in move as fast as mechanically possible. Which was another thing he'd need to talk to Reed about (please, please, give him a chance to get board out of his mind by Reed's voice and freaked out by his sister's pregnant figure) that. If a guy could do all the other stuff he did, making an elevator that didn't make him wonder if climbing the building might have been a better idea shouldn't be too much to ask.

Luckily it was at that moment that with an annoyingly chipper "ding" the doors finally opened giving him first class view of the fight that was still taking place within the Baxter Building. Unfortunately he didn't have a single clue what side he was suppose to be on at first, since the other three members of the Fantastic Four were currently out cold.

Luckily the problem resolved itself fairly quickly, on one side, one attractive woman with really long red, on the other two guys both of whom he recognized pretty quickly form the description's he'd gotten of them while comparing foes with other guests at Reed and Sue's wedding, the Sandman and the Wizard.

Unfortunately the woman who had up to this point been managing to keep her two opponents off guard using said long red tresses in ways he doubted even his sisters elastic hair was capable of, suddenly froze in shock at the sight of Johnny. One of the Wizard's antigravity discs hit her right between the breasts, and she impacted against the ceiling with an extremely painful sounding "WHAM!"

She continuned to struggle but the Wizard made a few quick twists on his outfit which was probably loaded with at least as many tricks as Reed's and both the woman her hair were pinned to the ceiling with what looked like almost bone crushing force.

Luckily the two had their back's to Johnny and no clue about why their luck was about to take another unexpected turn. After pinning the woman to the ceiling the Wizard had stopped zipping around the room like a humming bird, that was a choice he was going to regret.

He spun around as he heard the sound of Johnny's metal feet on the floor, but he was just a couple moments too late as Johnny wrapped his hands firmly around the floating criminal's leg. The Wizard tired to amp up the power to his antigravity suit to shake Johnny lose, but he was one step behind the Mandroid.

Johnny might not have a single clue exactly how the particular energy Wizard used to power his antigravity devices worked, but it just so happened that he didn't need to know in order to syphon every single ounce of it out of that whacky looking purple suit one drop at a time so long as he could maintain physical contact.

As gravity joined Johnny in having a good grip on his opponent, he decided proceeded to deal with Wizard in the simplest way he could think of, he yanked him down on to the ground and punched him in the face. He'd spent a fair amount of time in Reed's lab (at its owners behest, though in retrospect Johnny was very thankful for it) working with machines that measured how much force was being applied to them.

That pratice helped him know just how hard to hit if he wanted to break someone's nose, knock its owner out cold, and probably give him a concussion to boot, but not actually shatter his skull, however attractive that idea was. Unfortauntly just as he had taken one of the two superivllians out of the fight, Johnny recieved a hammer blow of his own. It sent him sprawling, and left him lying on the ground looking up at Sandman about to hit him again with what had certainty felt like a giant block of concrete.

"Nice try kid, but now it is just you and me, and it doesn't matter how hard you hit, it doesn't hurt me at all." Johnny knew he was right, luckily he had more to work with then just his fists (great he hadn't even been Reed Richards' brother in law for a month and yet he was already starting to think like him) in fact quite a lot more. Johnny rolled out of the way as the giant fist came slamming down, and took off running away from the Sandman, which just like he expected ended in him taking another blow to his back that sent him sprawling up against another wall.

Johnny patted that wall and smiled as Sandman approached him before rising to his feet. "You really wana go a third round? Fine. This job's gone crazy enough already I could use a good punching bag." "Well so could I." Johnny adjusted his stance slightly and even as Sandman came at him, Mandroid smashed through the wall he had been leaning against. Sandman couldn't stop himself fast enough and so he ended up running out through the Baxter Building's newest emergency exit leaving the two of them a long way up with nothing but air between them and the ground. "Big deal, when we hit the pavement you're gonna break like a cheap watch and I'll pull myself back together in no time." "Neither of us are gonna hit the ground..."

Johnny harnessed the antigravity energy he'd drained from his previous opponent and used it to fire himself upwards back towards the Baxter Building like a silver bullet. He smashed through Sandman reducing him to an oversized dust cloud, before rentering the room he'd just left through another hole in the wall that he was sure he'd hear a complaints about from his teamates in the not to distant future.

But what was more important was that as he slowly turned around he saw that just like he'd hopped, even though he was trying to pull himself together Sandman was fighting a losing battle with mother nature. Spiderman claimed that he'd been able to defeat him with nothing more then a high suction vacuum cleaner, well when he finally managed to pull himself together (hopefully not any time soon) Sandman would be able to claim he'd been sucked and blown.

Johnny drew in a very deep breath clearly it was time to take his thinking helmet off before he ended up overclocking his system to a dangerous degree. After all, there was only one thing left to do. He walked directly underneath the red haired woman and released the last of the antigravity energy he'd managed to syphon to rise a few feet into the air, and carefully plucked the disc stuck to her body from its resting place without copping a feel, however easily he could have.

The two dropped to the floor at more or less the same moment, but luckily the floor managed to support Johnny's weight (since two more holes in the Baxter Building which he was responsible for was exactly what he needed at the moment) at which point Johnny allowed a genuine smile to slid across his face. "So what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?"

The woman's hair pressed against his hands and she more or less vaulted right out of his hands to land on her own to feet. "What I must do, leaving." Several strands of her hair began to work their way towards the holes that Johnny had made in the wall, as if she meant to just climb down the Baxter Building.

For all he knew she might be able to pull it off, but he had absolutely no intention of letting a beautiful redhead walk, swing, fly, or climb right on out of his life after having that romantic a first meeting. "Listen, if you've got some place important to be, fine. But you could at least tell me your name and explain why you have to leave? We are superheroes after all, when people have problems we help them.

"So you're saying we got attacked by the guys how might be our greatest foes yet, and I slept through the entire thing? What a revoltin' development." Reed shook his head, the Fantastic Four were gathered in his lab to compare notes over what had happened. "I think it is safe to say that the Frightful Four won't be much of a menace to us or anyone else for quite a while. Sandman will need a considerable amount of time to pull himself back together, Wizard and Trapster both derive their 'powers' completely from the devices they've designed, so I keeping htem contained should be no great challange.

Which just leaves Medusa." Ben turned his glare towards the subject of the conversation. "Yeah, so what exactly are we going to do with this carrot topped crook?" Johnny was in his human form for the moment but planted his hands firmly on his hips all the same. "Hey, she was also responsible for taking out Trapster, and keeping Wizard and Sandman busy till I arrived. If it wasn't for her, that probably would have been the last nap of your life."

Medusa was being very careful to keep all her hair close to her body, though considering how quickly it could move that was worth about as much as seeing htat a cat currently had its claws sheathed. "No Jonathan, Dragonfly is right, I did come here with he intention of doing you four harm." Susan was sitting by Reed, though she started to extend her neck so that she could get a closer look at Medusa's eyes. "Well why don't you just tell us why you changed your mind? After we've heard that then we start debating what we're going to do with you?"

A single strand of Medusa's hair began to work its way towards Susan, but it pulled back just as quickly. "You did Ultra Woman. My epxliantion starts at the beggining of everything I can remember. You see I found myself in Paris, and absolutely no idea how I'd gotten there.

Because I couldn't hide my hair, I couldn't fit in. I'd tried cutting it a few times, but it always grew back too fast, and pretty soon I'd wind up ankle deep in strands of my hair without achieving anything. Anyway, I soon realized that even if my hair made me a pariah, it also made me a very effective thief. But eventually I drew more attention from the authorities than I could handle, at which point the Wizard stepped in and rescued me.

So when he asked me to join the Frightful Four, I readily agreed, even if it meant going from a simple thief to a supervillian But when we'd managed to defeat three of you and I was catching my breath, I realized that even if I thought I was ready to kill people in cold blood, there was no way that I was ready to kill a pregnant woman.

I have no idea who I used to be, what I used to do, and where I got in my powers, but I swore for a moment I could remember just enough to know who I used to be wouldn't have ever even considered doing something like that. So I decided it was better to turn my back on my current allies then whoever I used to be." Ben gently nudged Reed with one of his wings. "Just to make sure we aren't getting taken advantage of by some gal with a sob story who the Johinynator fell for, can you poke around what's underneath all that hair?"

Reed coughed slightly and stood up. "Medusa I don't want to read your mind if your not comfortable with the idea, so can I ..?" Several strands of Medusa's hair twitched slightly, but she nodded firmly. "Of corse. If it could possibly help me get my memory back, so much the better." Reed focused, and the others just waited around preforming various slight tics of irritation and bordem as the time passed, until finally Reed was finished and sank back into his seat.

"She's telling the truth. There's a portion of her memory that's disconnected from the rest of her mind, but what she can remember is perfectly in line with what she told us. The good news is that this disconnect doesn't seem to be cause by any sort of physical damage, the memories should naturally come back on their own, though weather it will be a particular event or just the passage of time that does the trick even I can't say.

The bad news is that I am in no way have enough confidence in my mental powers to try and use them to fix your mind with them Medusa, I'd doubtlessly end up doing more harm then good." Johnny particularly jumped for joy at this announcement. "So can we keep her?"

Susan for a moment considered slapping her brother with an extra large hand. "Johnny, she's a human being, not a pet! She's not our or anyone else's to 'keep' on a whim. That said, I'd feel like a royal heel if we didn't at least try to repay her helping us when it really counted."

Reed nodded as well. "Considering that she seems to be more a victim of circumstance then anything else, it would probably be for the best of everyone involved if we provided her with a place to stay for now. However I'd like to make two requests: a lock of your hair and a blood sample." Susan pretended to fume slightly. "Those had better both be for research husband of mine." "Of course dear."

Ben looked around the room and then shrugged. "Hell far be it for me to be the guy who rains on everybody's parade when I don't know this girl from Eve." Reed nodded firmly took off one of his gauntlets, reached into one the many drawers of the desk he was sitting at and pulled out a seringe. "Excellent. Medusa would you mind rolling up one of your sleaves? This shouldn't take very long..."

Sure enough she used her hair to roll up her right sleave, and even wrapped a few strands of it around her arm to make her veins stand out more clearly. Susan couldn't help but notice her brother pointedly looked away and he didn't looking back until Reed was finished affixing an adhesive strip the minuscule puncture mark he'd made in her skin.

Then after carefully placing the seringe in a holder so that he wouldn't lose track of it, he reached out and yanked one of Medusa's hairs free. Sure enough, it seemed hydra like no sooner had it been removed then a new one sprung into being to take its place. Though more interesting was the look on the owner of that hair's face.

It'd been a long time since Susan had been able to pull off a strand of her hair, but she doubted doing it had ever made her eyes water. "Fascinating. I'm sorry, I should have been more gentle, obviously in addition to the normal protein chians that make up human hair your's must obviously contain some kind of nervious system. It'd be the only logicaly way for you to manipulate them, but it would also make having them handled harshly every bit as painful as our other appendages, though I suppose that's water under the bridge.

You three can show Medusa around the Baxter Building. Don't count on me showing up for dinner, something tells me I'm not going to be leaving my lab for a while." Susan coiled her body around Reed's chair. "Well then something tells me I just might be spending the night in here as well."

Ben looked a Reed and Susan, looked at Johnny and Medusa and sighed. "Love, can't fight it so you might as well live with it. I'm off to Alica's, if any more supervillians show up, try telling em we've already had our quota for the day, if that doesn't work you know how to reach me."

Ben flapped his wings a couple times and then took off through the labs door with Johnny and Medusa following at a much more sedate pace. As the door slammed shut Reed turned to face the room's one remaining occupant. "You realize that..." Susan cut him off before he could finish. "Yeah I know. You've got that look about you like a kid in a candy store.

You get work analyzing you two new toys, I'll just hang around and be ready to provide moral support or sweet elastic loving, until the need for one of those two arises, I do believe I hear a certain hotrock calling my name."

Even her bulging belly did precious little to slow down the speed with which Susan stretched across the room and began to entwine herself around the gift that kept on giving. Reed watched her, though his hands were all but pleading with him to get down to work. "Comfortable?"

Susan finished arranging herself and nodded. "It's not as good as you, it's not even a close second, but it makes for one dam enjoyable third." Reed nodded, spun his chair around, his mind already racing own lists of all the various tests he'd need to subject his new samples to.

"So you can basically stay wherever you like, hell if I know why Reed decided our headquarters should have enough rooms to house the Fantastic Forty, but I suppose between you and the kids my sister has on the way we'll be letting less of it go to waste."

Medusa nodded as she looked at the sparse room, her hair continuing to flicker up and down almost like an ocean tide. "Thank you Jonathan, you don't know who much having a place to call my own means to me." Johnny just shrugged, being a superhero gave you plenty of experience dealing with people who were near constantly singing your praises.

"Don't thank me, it's my brother in law's building and you did all the hard work that got you hear. That said, only my sister calls me 'Jonathan', and she only does that when she's pissed at me for some reason or another. You can call me Johnny like everyone else." Medusa's lip quivered for a moment as if she was afraid of this show of familiarity but then she nodded.

"All right Johnny. By the way, I didn't want to be rude, but how far along is your sister?" "About five months give or take." Just like Johnny expected her green eyes went wide with shock. "It's sextuplets, or six kids, which is why she looks like she should have already popped. Also don't ask her about the entire five months pregnant, just got married thing, I can't say for sure but I'm willing to bet its a touchy subject."

Medusa nodded slowly once again. "I think if I remember correctly this floor's kitchen is this way correct?" Several strands of her hair did a pretty decent job of pointing since she evidently didn't feel like using her hands. "Yeah, why are you getting hungry? Reed keeps the fridges and what not pretty well stocked. but its more or less self service until he designs some kind of robot that'll automatically cook meals for you, which I'm sure he already has plans for in his head if not actual blueprints."

"Just the food alone will be more then enough." Johnny knew that wasn't exactly putting on the worlds most impressive display of small talk at the moment, but iof he'd learned anything from the few romance movies he'd seen, clearly sheer persistence could at times make up for a lack of skill. "Yeah, I guess living on the lam wouldn't exactly give a girl time to develop a taste for the finer things in life. But at least living here you won't have to worry about the where your next meal is coming from or working with creeps like your former partners."

Sure enough, all of a sudden Johnny had a flash of inspiration. "You should probably take your mask off though. Unless you've got a bunch of scars under that thing, and if you do I'm sure Reed could put you in contact with some people who could fix your face. I mean before these guys got to work on Reed he had been left with a face that was so leathery I wanted to make a baseball mit out of it, and not only thoroughly fixed it, but made it look like... well its a long story but suffice to say, he knows some very good plastic surgeons."

Medusa shook her head, reached up and took off her mask, sure enough underneath it was nothing but a very pretty face, and looking at it didn't turn him to stone. Granted he was starting to get the general feeling that looking at it for long enough might harden certain parts of his body. "Wizard wanted to me wear it to look more threatening. Considering that I don't have a single clue about who I am, I don't even have a identity to protect. In fact it'd be rather nice if I ran into someone who had some clue about who I am." Johnny couldn't do much in respond to that other then shrug.

"Well I suppose that's enough analysis for one night, even on such a remarkable subject." Susan unwrapped herself from around her hotrock and laid herself out on the floor looking up at Reed. "Of course she isn't a more remarkable subject then your wife, right? Also you do realize that if you've only got a couple of minutes left before tonight turns into tomorrow morning?" Reed began putting away his equipment.

"Susan, what color hairs do you think I want to find on my pillow in the morning?" "If you were any other man I'd say strawberry blond." A smirk was a very odd thing to see upside down, because from her current perspective it looked sort of like a frown, but not quite. "I was never a big fan of strawberries, so I think I'll take the blond straight up."

Susan grabbed one of her hairs and pulled at it so Reed could see how it stretched rather then snapped. "The only hairs on your pillow are going to be black. Not that you won't have company, I just don't 'shed', it's one of my many advantages that come with upgrading to an ultra class woman. So what did you find out?"

"You're really interested?" Susan gave an honest answer. "Not particularly, but I know you well enough that if you don't get this out of your system then it's going to end up seeping into your afterplay conversation, if not your foreplay, and I'd rather hear it come from your lips while we're not doing anything sexual.

So you talk, I'll lie here and nod along, and once you're done we can get down to some sweet matrimonial bliss. Remember, a good marriage is built on give and take." "I don't think Medusa is human." Susan extended her neck, then lifted it up into the air so that she didn't have to see Reed's expressions inverted. "Say that again? I mean if she's not human what is she, some kind of skrull or other alien?"

Reed shook his head, and twisted his neck slightly as if remembering exactly what data he had stored on his machines. "No. It is just hmm... okay you know how different 'races' of humanity are really nothing more then a fancy way of saying that someone is in possession of a certain set of recognized genetic alles, frequently dealing with skin pigmentation?

Well Medusa has the requisite 46 chromosome, and being female they can be broken down into 23 symetrical pairs. But there are 'hiccup's in her DNA, particular chromosomal arrangements that don't match up with standard human DNA patterns." "Which all adds up to?" Reed shrugged. "I only wish I knew.

The best I can do is draw analogies. If I saw this kind of deviation in any other type of animal I'd assume that it was an evolutionary offshoot that had officially become a different species. But of course as is common knowledge, the final sage of speciation requires the development of distinct matting rituals, to the point that the two sets of rituals are irreconcilable with one another. ..."

"Well my brother certainly seems determined to prove that she isn't that far removed from mainstream humanity. I'm probably going to have to keep a close eye on him even if Medusa looks like the type who can look after herself, better safe then sorry." Reed nodded slowly blinking about half a dozen times then coughing to clear his throat and continuing.

"Yes. Moving on, Medusa's body sample also shows she's been exposed to some kind of unknown mutagenic agent that I think its safe to say is responsible for her powers. Of course what that agent is, well that's thoroughly up to debate, for all I know it could have been some shampoo that accidentally got mixed with radioactive waste."

Susan blinked a couple of times herself. "You're making that up." Reed gave a very magnificent shrug. "I'm not saying its the most likely explanation, since in theory hair loss would be the most likely result from that particular event instead of rampant hair growth. Though I suppose it might be some kind of undocumented benign cancer that's limited to her hair, whcich could explain why its growths so quickly..

But like I said this is all nothing more then complete conjecture. It'd be like saying that if we hadn't known better someone might suggest Ben got his powers from being bitten or stung by some kind of irradiated or otherwise unique dragonfly. What does matter is the I've managed to identify a couple of traits of her hair.

The long and short version of it is that its not only stronger then ordinary human hair, but also most military grade building materials. Though what's even more dramatic is the simple fact that she's able to effectively orchestrate so many strands of it in perfect synchronization. You understand what I'm trying to say?"

Susan shook her head. "You're the smart one, what do you think the odds of that are?" The closest Susan was going to come to those particular calculations was "low" and leave it there. "Okay then, consider this. When you reduce your body to an amorphous blob like form from which you produce and control what amount to tenticals, how many can you comfortably handle?" Susan shot back her answer at once. "Four or five why?"

Reed nodded in time with her words. "Because it's showing that your mind is still to a certain degree unable to break loose of the concept of how your body worked when you didn't have your powers, which is a problably the price you pay for having your at rest apperence be bipedal instead of only ahcieving it through concentration.

But no matter what you do with your powers, you have trouble controlling more appendages at any given time then your used to dealing with. Which is why when you grew extra ones like wings and a tail you felt so unsure of your ability to walk properly. But Medusa, her mind is somehow able to handle a number of appendages which would doubtlessly create as sensory overload for even for someone of my intelligence."

Susan slid across the floor and resumed her normal appearance standing in front of Reed. "That sounds great, is this speech coming to an end any time soon or should I start finding myself a pillow?" Reed telikentically jerked the necessary lever to make a bed fold out of the walls of his lab.

"This speech is coming to an end, but unfortunately there's a genuine conversation that I do want to have with you before we do anything else. Would you mind joining me on the bed?" "You even have to ask?"

Soon enough the two lay on top of the bed's sheets facing one another. "Susan, about today..." "This is about how we almost bought it, isn't it?" Reed's faced paled, and for a moment Susan felt inappropriately thrilled at the fact that she could once again see the fluctuations of color in Reed's face. "I was going to put it more gracefully then that, but yes. I've already thought of half a dozen things I can do to make sure that if the Wizard or anyone else tries to pull off a similar stunt in the futre they'll get stopped cold before we even catch sight of them, but that doesn't change the fact that I can't design solutions to problems I'm not aware of."

Susan smiled leaned forward and kissed Reed on the lips. "You know it's funny that I should have to say this twice today but seeing as its something profound I came up with on my own, here goes. If we ever let the villains we deal with frighten us enough that we doubt we'll be able to keep our children safe, or wonder if its worth bringing children into the world, then we're letting them win by default."

Reed just laid there for a moment then he looked up at the ceiling, then looked back at Susan and slowly ran a hand through her hair. "That's it. I have officially given up trying to come up with a logical explanation for how a man as marginal as me ended up with a woman as wonderful as you. Given that personal is not the same thing as important I figure the world will be a better place if I don't waste my time pursuing what is doubtlessly one of life's most challanging question."

Susan stretched out her arms and wrapped them around Reed's body. "Hey, there's no way that you're mediocre Reed, your Fantastic in all kinds of ways. Yeah, you could spend every spare hour of every day turning this entire building into a fortress that fires on every single pigeon that passes by. Needless to say it'd be firing stun rays of a carefully tested strength so that the pigeons would be able to recover before they hit the ground, but you'd still be blasting away at birds.

Or you could work an amount of time that you feel is reasonable working on the building and an amount of time that you feel is reasonable in here with me, doing this, that, the other thing, possibly several other things in fact. Besides, look on the bright side, the two of us got taken completely by surprise and we were still winning up until Medusa got into the fight."

Reed looked over at the pile of discarded pieces of his armor on the floor. "Well I also had my armor on at the time, which was more luck then anything else." Susan twisted her neck around Reed's so that she could lean over his shoulder and look at the armor as well. "Speaking of your armor, I can think of a really good way that you could get even with Wizard, or at least make him and every other member of the sueprvillian community with half a brain, all five of them, realize why its a very bad idea to mess with us."

Reed twisted around so that he could look at her face. "Which is?" Susan looped her neck around Reed's again getting a perverse pleasure out of the way she could make him twist his head this way and that if he wanted to keep eye contact with her. "Well I'm don't consider myself a lawyer, especially in the field of how the law overlaps with people who have superpowers, but here's my view how things could go down tomorrow.

SHEILD shows up to pick up our two evil geniuses, and you talk with them about the possibility of getting your hands on some of the evidence after what should be a pretty darn clear cut case of attempted murder and, generic supervilliany for lack of a better term once you hand over the Baxter Building's security tapes. Then since your having trouble figuring out a suitable means of controllable propulsion for your armor why don't you try and build some of that antigravity technoligy into it?

I mean I could be wrong, but something tells me that men who are out to conquer the world don't bother to file the necessary paperwork to take out patents on their tools/weapons of death. So yes it would be dirty and underhanded, it would also seem like karmic justice for you to reverse engineer whatever they use against us, especially for superheroing purposes. I mean its what you did with Doom's armor after all..."

Reed was silent for about twenty seconds, which was the longest Susan had ever remembered him taking to think something out. "I could do that..." Susan elongated neck smiled down at Reed's. "Yeah. I mean you thought about that when you decided to become superheroes, right? That for just about every superpowered villain we ran into there'd probably be some mad scientist who had gone farther then you in one particular field because he specializes while you generalize?"

Reed's blue eyes suddenly got, very, very wide. "No I hadn't. Do you have any idea why I didn't have us tow Super Skrull's spaceship back to the Baxter Building? Because I'm sure if I could figure out even half of the technoligy that makes it up I'd be able to create spaceships that make my last one look as obsolete as an ass drawn chariot next to a bullet train."

Susan covered her face with a hand. "Well I do believe my chances of having sex tonight just went straight out the window. You're clearly going to be busy for the next hour at least or so imaging all the evil technoligy you want to take apart and put back together again. So I'll just leave you to that, and enjoy my side of the bed."

She untangled herself from around Reed, fluffed her pillow and laid down on it with her back to Reed who at once began to slowly run her hands through her hair. "Susan it's not like that." Susan's neck preformed a quick one hundred and eighty degree twist. "Tell you what then. Why don't I just compact myself down a bit and then I'll go dancing. Because, that way I'll be able to have my fun regardless of what exactly you're thinking about. You should just be grateful I've come to accept, and at this point in our relationship, even be amused by the undeniable fact that science turns you." Reed just smiled at her. "Science might turn me on, but only you get me off."

AN: Hopefully Medusa's change of allegiance, makes sense considering that she's pretty clearly portrayed as even while being a villain having moments when she's wondering how happy she is with the idea of offing anyone, and so when faced with committing either a really evil or a really good act she goes with the side of the angels.

Also the Wizard disserved a certain amount of credit in his first appearance, because this its the only time when having some but not all member of the Fantastic Four he decides to actively off them instead of using them as bate for the others or tapping them with some elaborate restraint systems, this time around he came up with an ingenious and simple plan for how to get rid of the FF that even Reed couldn't think of a solution to. Which I guess shows how threatening a villain is frequently is inversely proportional to how frightening/effective they are.