Reed and Susan were engaged but not yet married, nor had they, as far as anyone knew, set a date. No surprise there. Reed was still busily studying what the cosmic rays had done, how to control it, and how his research might be applied to cure the world of all its ills. Johnny Storm was thoroughly enjoying his celebrity status, while Ben Grimm remained more reclusive, though he was the hero of children everywhere.
How he would enjoy knocking them off their thrones.
His own reputation was in ruins, of course, but not entirely unsalvageable. As always, Leonard had done a superior job in protecting Victor and the Von Doom name. According to Leonard's report, despite his broken neck, Dr. Weber had still been alive -- barely -- when Leonard had begun to clean up the mess after Victor's disagreement with the doctor over the proper way to deal with his condition. Leonard had carefully removed any glass from Weber's hair and clothes so that forensics could not link it to a place of death, then dragged him to a car. He relieved the doctor of his wallet and watch, then found a alleyway in which to discard his body, overturning a garbage bin on him to further contaminate any physical evidence. Weber still clung tenaciously to life, but a few well-placed kicks ended his suffering. The next morning the newspapers dutifully reported it as a mugging gone bad.
Ned Cecil had been a little more troublesome, as a man with a gaping hole in his chest could not be disguised as a simple mugging. Leonard had ripped down an overhead light in the garage, yanking down the wires so that the banker's death looked like an accidental electrocution -- a very nasty electrocution. Both victims had ties to Victor Von Doom, but nothing beyond circumstantial evidence could link their deaths to him.
Leonard had also disposed of the equipment Victor had stolen from his own company -- the rocket launcher, the cooling unit -- so that the thefts could not be specifically connected to him. The very public fight on the streets of New York was another matter entirely. Then again, no one had seen his face except for during his exit from the Baxter Building with Reed's body, and even then it was partially transformed to metal, and the witnesses couldn't be exactly sure what they had seen.
Nothing he couldn't deal with. He was, after all, just as brilliant as Reed Richards, and years in the business world had made him quite skilled at manipulation and putting a positive spin on even the worst disasters. Victor just lacked Reed's patience, but the past few months had taught him some of that. He'd always taken shortcuts, preferring to take the risks rather than wait to consider every single variable. But he did learn from his mistakes. Attacking the Fantastic Four with brute force had been his downfall. Even though he was stronger, they outnumbered him. Dealing with them would require more finesse, more subtlety. Divide and conquer had been the right idea, but he should've taken more care to make sure each was permanently dealt with rather than give them the opportunity to recover and regroup.
This time he would not fail. This time the result would be the end of the Fantastic Four. And they'd never see it coming.
"Reed, why are you watching that garbage?" Sue said with a sigh, trying to steal the remote from his hand.
He stretched his arm away, keeping it from her grasp. "I need to know what they're saying so I can better present a response," he said, his eyes on the TV screen.
"Fine," she sniffed. "But I'm not going to watch any more of it." She got up from the couch and stomped from the room, flinging herself angrily on the bed when she reached the bedroom. She wasn't mad at Reed, but rather with this whole damn "exposé." "Fantastic Frauds," it was called. An hour of television devoted to slander. Okay, so technically Ben had caused the accident on the Brooklyn Bridge. And while no one had been killed, some people had been seriously hurt in the resulting pile-up. And millions of dollars of damage had been caused to the bridge itself. But it was an accident. And they'd saved those people!
The timing, of course, was purposely coinciding with the parade this week. She wasn't thrilled about the parade; none of them really were, except Johnny, of course. But New York wanted to celebrate their heroes.
"Susan!" she heard Reed call, but she ignored him. She'd already seen more than enough of that trash. The idiot who had been trying to kill himself, starting the whole chain of events that led to the accident, was suing them for the "psychological trauma" caused by being "menaced" by Ben. Some of the other people injured in the crashes sought damages of their own. They'd been joined by a woman who claimed to have been burned by Johnny's supernova during the fight with Victor. And the government was investigating whether Reed was violating the law with unlicensed dangerous equipment in the middle of the city. They'd had to hire lawyers to deal with it all -- none of them knew how to. Even Johnny was complaining about it "cramping his hero style."
"Susan!" Reed said again, and this time his voice came from close by. She jumped as she realized he'd stretched his neck down the hall and his head was in the doorway. She hated it when he did that; it was so disconcerting. His hand stretched into the room and he grabbed her arm. "You're not going to believe this."
"What?" she snapped, exasperated, but she let him pull her from the room. When the TV came into her view, she froze in shock. The documentary had ended, and an evening news program had come on. And there, sitting across from the anchorman -- literally in the flesh -- was Victor Von Doom.