Invisible Woman – Baxter Building

Susan Storm would always remember the day she had become the Invisible Woman. How could she forget? Reed still blamed himself, although the solar storm could not have been predicted until it was upon them, not even by Mr. Fantastic.

Mr. Fantastic, according to Ben the nickname came from when they had been in school together, when Reed had won every contest and aced every test with his intellect.

Sue didn't know if it was really true, she'd only met them in college.

College was how it had started, Reed had won a contest for a small trip to space funded by some billionaire. Ben was already a pilot and a space shuttle was enough like a plane for him to fly it, there'd been no better choice.

Bringing guests had not been out of the question. As soon as Johnny had heard about it he had clamoured to go with all the excitement of any sixteen year old boy.

Sue had gone with them, ostensibly to protect her brother, but who would pass up an opportunity to go into space?

The flight had been the fun it was supposed to be before Reed saw something on the sensors. Solar radiation, unpredictable, deadly, the atmosphere would protect the Earth but their small shuttle was not equipped to handle it.

By all rights the radiation should have killed them.

Afterwards even Ben hadn't known how he had landed the shuttle without killing them all, how they had staggered out and lay on the ground in some farmer's field. They should never have survived, the radiation was lethal. Sue could remember thinking.

Then her brother had spontaneously caught on fire.

Sue had screamed as much as anyone, then more when she began to turn invisible.

A domino effect, Reed's body stretching uncontrollably and him struggling to recoil it, his limbs like that of a child's rubber toy. Ben moaning in horror as his skin became hard like a rock, it'd never changed back.

That was three years ago. Now they had become the Fantastic Four.

Which had been a long and complicated ride in itself.

Once they had recovered from the crash and dragged themselves to civilisation they had almost immediately been apprehended by SHIELD.

Ben had nearly broken a few limbs, not knowing his newfound strength and hating to be ordered around.

At SHIELD they met with a man named Agent Coulson, quite high up in the organisation. He had explained to them the basics of what they were. Mutates. Humans who were not quite mutants, they had the same latent genetic potential but at a weaker level. It could not be triggered without some external influence.

Such as solar radiation.

The radiation, a lethal dose, had altered them at a molecular level, creating their incredible powers.

SHIELD had contracted them as field agents, allowing them to work somewhat autonomously from the organisation as long as they carried out 'errands' for them.

They had their own small SHIELD facility in New York City, the tower of the Baxter Building. Reed had paid for most of it with money from his father and the technologies he helped invent. They effectively worked as freelance superheroes, calling themselves the Fantastic Four. For the others it was almost perfect.

Reed could continue scientific research to his heart's content.

Ben was a pilot, of course he was, allowed to fly the most high-tech planes and jets out there. He might try to hide it but he was never happier than when he was in the air.

Johnny had had the rest of his education governmentally funded, although he hadn't been a fan of SHIELD high school or of online college courses rather than the real thing. But he was famous, girls were all over him. Even if he was angry he would be the last of the boys to get a steady girlfriend.

Sue herself did not have much of a role other than as the Invisible Woman, she had no special talent and her power had few non-mission applications. She wasn't a scientist, she'd majored in English, aiming to be a teacher or publisher. That was well off the cards now even if she had earnt her degree. She couldn't be a pilot, she could hardly drive on a freeway.

It was easy to feel useless, just Reed's girlfriend and Johnny's sister. Then again, Sue knew she was invaluable to the Fantastic Four and SHIELD as the Invisible Woman. And she was the only one who could stop negotiations (and who gets the last cookie) turning into gladiatorial fights.

Overall, their lives were good. The only problem had manifested with Victor von Doom, now calling himself Doctor Doom. He didn't have a doctorate.

The man was insane, but he was the ruler of Latveria and hadn't committed any international crimes anyone could prove.

Apparently regularly attacking the Fantastic Four did not count. Always wearing the stupid metal armour to cover up what he had done to himself when trying to summon demons. No one knew if it had worked.

Sue would rather remain ignorant about that. If Doom had demonic helpers she'd find out eventually anyway. Maybe when he next turned up, he was due within the next three weeks.

Perhaps this time they would get enough evidence to have his diplomatic 'I am the King of Latveria' immunity revoked. How the man had ended up running a country Sue would never know, you never heard of it other than when Doom was shouting 'I am the King of Latveria'.

Reed had no answers there. Nor did SHIELD, the organisation considered him a minor irritant.

To Sue the psychopathic genius with unlimited funds you couldn't get arrested who tried to kill you at least five times a year was not a minor irritant.

There had been other villains, of the common 'garden-variety' according to SHIELD. Mostly men with slightly above average intelligence who had gotten a hold of or created some, usually radioactive, powerful object and decided to use it to become a criminal mastermind or take-over the world.

It did help that none of them had any planning skills.

The public called them 'superheroes'. Like Captain America had been, or the vigilantes like 'Daredevil' and the mutant 'X-Men'.

Honestly, they were only trying to do their best. Sue often wondered if the world's other superheroes had been cajoled into working for SHIELD or some similar organisation.

SHIELD meant well, only the organisation regularly seemed to be lacking. Some of its members and committees on all levels doing very questionable things.

Sue did not trust the organisation, she only trusted Johnny, Reed and Ben.

Notes:

I don't think this makes as much sense as it could. But anything's better than the original comics reasoning, seriously. I'm going to try be less sexist and weird than the comics, I'm reading from the beginning so I'm still on 1963 and hoping it improves.

I'm also sorry this chapter is essentially a summary of how the Fantastic Four happened and what they are doing in my AU, and that I'm posting later than I said I would. I haven't seen either FF movies so I don't know how this compares to these.

The ending is unclear because I just stopped so I could post this.

I'm also introducing the idea of mutants/mutates. It's going to come up a lot.

This is the same time as Thor and X-Men in this AU – 2011. I'm introducing the FF now so I can write them whenever. In my timeline they gained their powers in 2008 before Iron Man.

Next it's time to introduce Ant-Man and the Wasp. Let's hope that's better than this was.

Don't expect many more chapters written from the perspective of one of the FF. This was way too hard to write.