AN: Well it's finally done, after much delay part of it my fault (being lazy working on side projects) part of it my editor's fault (do you want it done fast, right or cheep, pick two) part of it just bad luck in general.
Anyway the next chapter of Second Stretches is finally ready. Once again I am deeply, deeply in need of comments in order to validate the time I spent working on this particular project so please please PLEASE review!
Also I'll come right out and say right now that part of this chapter was written before I had the idea for Original Twist and thus in retrospect isn't nearly as creative or interesting as it should have been... Well hopefully you guys will still enjoy it PLEASE ENJOY IT...
Second Stretches Chapter two: Lessons, in which Susan Richards tells her children a bed time story.
Time passed (as it has a habit of doing) and a month later or so the big day came, the very first time that Reed would be trying his hand at homeschooling their children. While he was busy doing that his wife was busy with, nothing...
Susan Richards sat and thought, and sat, and thought, and sat and thought, and that was about it. The last thing her kids needed right now was her hesitantly looking over their shoulders. She'd helped Reed make sure the lesson plan was suitable for children their age, and while he evidently trusted himself to be impartial towards them, Susan doubted she'd be capable of the same.
So much like she had during some of her first days in school she predominantly passed the time by watching the clock. Once or twice she took off one of her gloves and looked at her nails. They were all but perfectly clean, though she managed to kill a few seconds extracting every speck of dirt she could find from them, using her powers to push the stuff out into the open rather than the more traditional approach.
That task completed Susan rubbed her belly. She was already starting to show slightly. But then she'd started to show at this point with only (if that word was appropriate given the context of sextuplets) six, so it was no surprise she was showing after the same amount of time now that it was eight.
She leaned back and sighed. Her children were with Reed; Reed was with her children. There wasn't anything going wrong with the world at the moment, so what the hell was she suppose to do with her time?
Eventually she managed to find a certain amount of peace by reclining her chair and slowly running through every memory she had of her children, from conception, to giving birth, to today. Once she'd done that she opened her eyes again and sighed. She was still alone.
Just as she was considering trying to curl herself into a small enough ball to comprehend her unborn children's heart beats, she suddenly heard the wonderfully familiar sound of elastic bodies bouncing up and down the hallways, and warmth flowed through her. Sure enough in a scant few moments later with Samantha leading the pack entered the room who one and all had smiles upon their faces. Granted Jane's seemed to be edging its way into smirk territory. "That was school? Not exactly the most exciting four hours of my life but I don't see what the big deal is."
Susan looked once more at the clock and saw how early it was. Somehow Susan doubted that they her children had simply finished their lessons ahead of schedule and slowly the feeling of warm contentment drained from her body. This prophecy was promptly fulfilled by the very first words out of her husband's mouth when he entered the room. "Sue, would you mind coming with me? I need to talk to you about something..."
At once their children were paying much closer attention to what was going on than they probably had back in the classroom staying very still and remaining silent, except for Jane at least. "You guys know what that tone of voice means..."
Benjamin nodded, rolling his eyes in the process. "Yeah, it means that mom and dad have to go save the day again."
Rachel threw in her own quick nod as she simultaneously stroked her chin. "So what should we do until the explosions and aftershocks stop this time?"
Unlike most parents Reed Richards did not seem particular upset that his children had seen right through his attempts at deceiving them. "The same as always. Head to Aunt Alicia's salon, and she'll make sure nothing bad happens to you."
A chorus of dejected moans arose, but the children obeyed orders, though it wasn't till Susan was sure they were out of ear shot did she asked the question that had been waiting within her since his arrival. "So what exactly do we have to worry about today?"
Reed looked at her, and Susan knew that this wasn't going to be an easy mission. "Well I just got a call. Apparently some green skinned alien that could change its size at will was just spotted robbing a bank downtown. When the police opened up on it the thing apparently transformed it skin into a dense metal causing the bullets to bounce right of it."
Sure enough Susan's eyes went wide. "You don't think that the Super Skrull could be back? Jeez, first pregnancy and now this. I guess it just goes to show that the more things change the more they stay the same, not that I need a lot of additional proof where that axiom is concerned after living for a decade or two with Johnny..."
-----
"So who exactly is the Super Skrull?" The entire team was now on board the Fantasticar (and Reed was now dressed in his high tech armor which thanks to improvements on its previous owner's (the same person who happened to be the previous owner of his body) designs now held enough firepower to more or less take on a division of tanks, even if it looked incredibly anachronistic) and zooming in the direction of the recently robbed bank, hoping to find some clue as to the location of the alien responsible.
"Well, Crystal, as I'm sure you remember, the skrulls are shapeshifting aliens that we've encountered a few times before. But back when the team was still less than a year old the skrulls created what they thought was the ultimate warrior. He was genetically engineered so as to be able to make use of all of our powers. Needless to say we weren't able to beat him a straight up fight, but luckily we were able to cut him off from source of energy fueling his powers. I thought we had gotten rid of him permanently after that, but then he wouldn't be the first of our foes to have proven remarkably resilient."
It was at this point that Ben joined in, bringing the voice of experience to bear as always. "Which brings the question why are we in such a hurry to go pick another fight with him when instead you could have gotten to work whipping up another one of those fancy gadgets we used to depower him the last time around?"
Reed's face slid into a confident smile as he examined the Fantasticar's controls. "Because this time he evidently isn't willing to just sit around waiting for us to come up with the right technological trinket to defeat him with. Also, while we might lack a specially prepared device we do have another sort of ace up our sleeve. Even though the Super Skrull still has all the powers of the Fantastic Four, the Fantastic Five have Crystal on their side."
As usual Johnny seemed to consider it his god given duty to interrupt as many of Reed's speeches as possible. "Hey, flattering Crys is supposed to be my job! By the way on a completely unrelated topic, you're looking even better today than usual Crystal, though that may just be because my sister is starting to puff up like a balloon filled with babies that won't burst for another few months."
The Inhuman herself wasn't letting praise go to her head. "That's nice both of you, but what makes me so special this time around?"
Reed looked over out of the clear dome over his seat as if double checking his equipment's finding by eye. "Because Crystal, neither Super Skrull's elasticity or metallic skin will be able to protect him against freezing. If you can lower the temperature around him enough while we distract him, then we should be able to 'put him on ice' in no time."
The sound of Johnny's hand (he hadn't transformed into his metal Mandroid form yet) slamming into his seat's roof could be heard echoing through the Fantasticar. "Quick show of hands, everyone else who saw that particular lame pun coming a mile away? Anyone at all?"
Before he could take an accurate tally Reed brought the Fantasticar to a stop. "I think we've reached our destination given the crowd of frightened looking civilians. Though I must saw given the Super Skrull's previous actions if he is back, he seems to have changed his operating procedure rather drastically. He's gone from demanding all of humanity's surrender to robbing banks and scaring people at a fancy restaurant."
Johnny shrugged as the ship touched down and he pushed back the dome above his seat and got out. "So maybe his stay as a cow at the funny farm we gave him left him a little loopy? All I know is that we've got ourselves some alien butt to kick!"
-----
After entering into the restaurant that was now apparently deserted by all but the staff and one being who probably wasn't from earth, the Fantastic Five were left with several questions, one of which Susan brought to the front as she carefully eyed the situation before them. "Reed, unless my pregnancy forgetfulness is kicking in really early, I somehow doubt that's the Super Skrull."
Yes the alien did in fact have green skin, but that was about where the similarity ended. Instead of armor he had on only some kind of bizarre purple one piece outfit that seemed designed to combine a jacket with a pair of shorts. Also his head was just a bit too large for his body, and it was rather noticeably a strange sort of ovaloid shape that came to point at the top more or less. Then there was the fact that he was sitting at a table which was covered with food and two large bags of money.
"I think you're right Susan..."
Looks were exchanged amount the teammates and then Johnny gently nudged Reed's back. "You're the super smart guy who knows what people are going to do before they do it or say before they say it, you go talk to him." Susan was actually a little stunned that her brother needed to offer any kind of incentive or explanation to her husband. She would have expected him to be glad for a chance to make contact with any new kind of alien.
But you could only run into so many aliens who seemed to inevitably turn out to be bent on conquering (if not flat out consuming) the earth until even the most strident scientist's idealism gave way to practical paranoia. But there was more to it than that, Susan couldn't help but think that the green alien seemed to radiate a veritable aura of strangeness about it, not only that it hadn't come from Earth, but that it couldn't possibly belong on Earth.
But still, very slowly Reed approached the alien and coughed slightly. "Do you mind explaining what's going on here?" As he asked the question his eyes focused on the two large bags full of money (complete with the "$" sign that Susan had thought only existed in comic books) rather than the food.
The alien offered a big friendly smile and spoke up, his voice rather high and childlike. "Sure, I've just arrived from planet Poppup in the tenth galaxy! I was hungry but these guys I met said that if I was going to get some food I'd need to get some money. Luckily they were kind enough to point me in the direction of the... bank they called it, where I could get some! Of course some mean people tried to get in my way, I must say that you earthlings have some very strange customs!" Without further ado he proceeded to take a very large bite out of the watermelon on his table.
It took Reed a few moments to contemplate this answer then looked back at his teammates as if for a moment even he was stumped. "And why exactly did you come here?" Was the question that he eventually went with, one that had preciously little bearing on the stolen loot that could only have been more obvious if there was a flashing neon sign (complete with light up arrow) announcing its presence.
The green alien just smiled. "Well the planet Poppupian is a very exciting place, a little too exciting at times honestly. You see it's so exciting that the only way we can be at all safe there is to be constantly changing. So I decided to just change myself into a rocket ship and blast off towards some place new for a little vacation. Your world was the only planet in this galaxy that looked like there was anything worth doing on it."
It was at this point in the conversation that Johnny decided joined to join in. "Okay, you know what? I think I've heard just about enough of this. If we had to listen to the sob story of every single alien who came to earth and broke the law then we'd never have any free time. Why don't you give the money back to us so we can give it back to the bank, now."
The green alien proved that some gestures truly are universal by blowing a long raspberry at Susan's brother. "You want this 'money' then you take it, because I'm gonna need the rest of this stuff to buy myself some more food when I get hungry again!"
Johnny pulled back his fist, a smirk twitching at his lips. "Well since you asked for it." However as he brought his fist forward, all of a sudden the green alien had sprouted countless spines that Johnny's fist collided with leaving him shaking his arm in pain.
The spikes retracted as quickly as they had come, leaving the one who had previously possessed them smiling profusely. "What's the matter, did you find yourself in something of a thorny dilemma?"
Just like Susan had expected Johnny's usual barge right in and start knocking heads together approach hadn't worked out very well, in fact he beat a quick retreat to his own wife's side. "Damn it I can't get these stupid things to come out!" He tugged and tugged at the thorns, but much like a porcupine's quills they seemed to have some kind of latch which prevented them from being torn free. Luckily Crystal needed only one look at the problem to come up with a solution.
She carefully pressed her gloved hands along the thorns (careful to avoid their protruding points) and very slowly they turned from brown to a snowy whitish color as they froze. Johnny caught on and waited patiently until all of the offending prickers had been iced over before she slammed the backs of his hands together.
The frozen thorns immediately shattered into a small collection of ice chips which fell to the floor at his feet. Even more luckily the alien who had put those thorns in her brother had simply gone back to eating peacefully. The pierced sections of Johnny's hands almost automatically began to "scab" over as new metal began to grow, though it was clear that he wasn't about to try his luck again.
"Sis?" In another setting Susan would have laughed, given that the plaintive tone and wide puppy dog eyes which accompanied the question would have been more appropriate if her brother had been bout two decades younger and asking her to fetch him something on a high shelf, rather than asking her to attack one very strange extra terrestrial.
Not that Susan needed to begged in order to do her job, Ultra Woman stretched out her body and very calmly wove herself around the unconcerned alien like a giant blue blanket, dragging him out of his chair and onto the floor. She felt her captive struggle against her grasp for a few seconds and then go still.
Unfortunately his going still was promptly followed by the body she was wrapped around seeming to shift around inside of her into something much more angular than it had been previously, a shape that she couldn't help but think felt familiar. Then suddenly a loud roar echoed inside the living cage Susan had turned herself into and a few moments after that she found herself getting literally rocketed around the room by the alien contained within her.
Sure enough the fact that he could turn his own body into a ship capable of crossing the distance between planets had become painfully obvious. Also surprisingly the type of vessel he had turned into belched forth flames to provide thrust just like any human craft. Flames that ate away at Susan's cohesion until she had melted into a cerulean colored pile of goop that the alien was easily able to free himself from.
He then bent down and picked up a handful of Susan's body giggling as she flowed through his fingers. "What a strange creatures you earthlings are! Not only are you all different from each other, but you're really, really different! Hmm..." Then before Susan's eye's he transformed into some kind of creature that she could only describe as being a three trunked elephant.
One of those trunks promptly proceeded to suck up Susan's melted form into it like a superpowered vacuum cleaner. Inside the creature that the alien had turned into everything went dark. She felt the world shifting around her pulling, tugging, and playing with her body which was still somehow melted enough to be stretched out and kept her from properly resisting the strange process.
She thought she could vaguely make out the sounds of the other's voices, but it wasn't easy to hear when she couldn't form anything that properly resembled ears. So the process continued.
Her dark world with no shapes and no clear sounds was timeless until a few words range through her head loud and clear. "You want her back? All right, have her. AHHH, AHHH, AAAHHH, CHOOO!" The creature "sneezed" Susan back out, and yet she'd been pulled tugged and twisted to such a degree that inside the large monster she'd grown from being the size of a puddle to a veritable tidal wave.
Susan didn't so much bowl over as absorb her teammates like olives trapped within a brick of jello. For her part she was left looking upside down at the cackling green alien who had returned to what he evidently considered normal. He pointed at the giant mish mash of super hero and heroine flesh that he had created. "Oh wow, I'm gonna have a lot of fun on this planet!" Then he proceeded to promptly amble out of her range of vision.
For a few moments Susan had nothing to occupy her mind but the feelings of numerous bodies awkwardly struggling against her to win their way free from her. This was a sensation guaranteed to cause a case of déjà vu for a woman who had carried sextuplets within her for the better of a year. Then she got her head screwed on right and realized what needed to be done. "Crystal, wherever you are turn up the heat."
She felt the flames summoned by the elemental controlling Inhuman spread within her quickly (which was good because for a few moments she had worried that her teammates might end up drowning inside her) and Susan promptly went from corn starch to quicksand to a puddle on the ground exactly where she'd been to start with, though at least her teammates were free. "A cool breeze would be appreciated..." She told her sister in law as Susan struggled to pull herself back together.
For the third time since they'd entered the restaurant Crystal obliged. Thanks to plenty of practice she knew just how cool to make it to help get Susan recover from being melted without freezing her.
Once everyone had fully recovered from that particular scuffle Ben took stock of their situation. "Well that experience isn't exactly going to have a cherished place in my members."
Johnny shrugged as he shook a few flecks of his sister's body from his hands that hadn't fallen off on their own. "I don't know. I'm sure the kids will get a laugh out of hearing about how their mother was turned into weapons grade snot." Susan shrugged off that particular comment in favor of trying to track down the alien who had so humiliated her. It wasn't hard given that he was about as easy to find as an elephant in a wheat field. He left the restaurant not so much through its back entrance as through its back wall, apparently having transformed his body into some kind of living buzz saw in the process. Thankfully this hadn't undermined the building's structural integrity in the process.
Once Susan was able to squeeze herself through that particular pile of debris (the others behind held up while Johnny and Reed worked to make a proper human sized hole in the rubble) she found the alien was looking straight ahead at the considerable number of people who had stopped and gasped at him when he'd come slicing his way through the wall.
Then he suddenly 'rotated' to face Susan, it wasn't so much that he twisted his body about the way she could her own. This was a much less fluid transformation, like someone bending the limbs on a child's toy into a new position, leaving Susan quite grateful that the transformation wasn't accompanied by any particular sound effects.
"Oh good you're here!" He said to Susan as if completely forgetting everything the two had done to each other only a few minutes ago. "What's up with all of them? Why didn't they do whatever it is they do that makes them special instead of just standing around?" Susan looked at the strange little green alien and despite what he'd already done to her.
She couldn't help but feel a perverse sort of pity. "Not everyone on this planet has special powers in fact very few of us have them."
It was at this point the Popupian eyes popped right out of his skull, before snapping back in. "Oh really? Then how do you explain all of these people?" He was pointing at the traffic.
If he hadn't already shown his ability to more or less effortlessly get the better of the entire Fantastic Five Susan would have actively buried her face in her hands. "Those are cars, vehicles. Regular people, people without powers drive them around to get from place to place more quickly."
The alien examined the fast moving traffic for a moment and then there was a glimmer in his eyes, the kind of glimmer that if Susan had seen in her brother eyes she would have curled herself into a very small ball until things were done exploding and all the fires had been put out. "So you mean that anyone can control one of those things? They look I like fun, I want to try!" Sure enough Susan knew that this particular situation wasn't going to end well. The alien promptly transformed into some kind of weird combination of wolverine and rhinoceros which then ambled out into traffic headed towards the first car in sight.
Said car just so happened to be a taxicab that was cruising for passengers. Now while New York cabbies were rather notoriously stiff necked, the fact that this one chose to abandon his vehicle rather than stick it out was hardly surprising. Of course once he was out of the way the monster reverted to being a harmless if mischievous looking green alien who took the wheel firmly in both hands. He wasn't quite sure what to do after that however.
"Wow, so many buttons and levers!" He began to search for how to control the vehicle through trial and error, pressing buttons and yanking levers. For the moment all he achieved was managing to amp up the air conditioning, start the window shield wipers and change the radio station.
Susan increased her eyesight to a point where she could confirm her own worst fears about the situation, that the taxicab's driver had unfortunately left the keys in there, and it was only a matter of time until by sheer random chance its new 'owner' figured out how to get it to work.
While Susan was trying to think of what to do next, the wall that her friends were being kept behind more or less completely and utterly shattered. This was probably due to the fact that Crystal had apparently frozen it while Susan hadn't been looking.
"Well chalk this up to one more thing I've seen yet refuse to believe during my career as a superhero. I mean what kind of alien who can turn his body into a spaceship comes to earth then decides to jack a car, and a beat up cab at that! I mean seriously he could have at least chosen something with a little class, Roles Royce, Ferarri, Lamborugehni...." Before her brother could go on with the list, a key was turned and an engine revved.
"YE--HAAA I FOUND IT!" The alien put his foot down hard on the pedal, causing the taxicab to start going fast, in reverse. He spun the wheel around displaying an almost uncanny amount of luck or skill and managed to shift it into drive, just in time to zoom through a red light and make an illegal turn, in the process instantly causing two fender benders as other people swerved to get out of his way.
Now it was Ben's turn to make what he considered a wry comment considering their very unfortunate situation. "You know if he turned on his blinkers, sounded the horn, and gave somebody the finger I wouldn't be able to tell him apart from any other cabbie in this city."
Susan twisted her neck around to shoot a glare at him. "So are we all just going to stand around watching an alien going for a joyride? Don't answer that. I'm going to go try doing some actual superheroing." Then she promptly stretched out her arms and grabbed hold of the bumper of the hijacked taxicab. A moment later sure enough Susan was yanked right off of her feet, and she began to shorten the length of her limbs pulling herself closer to her goal.
/Susan, be careful this alien's power is....\ While she appreciated the mental warning Reed was giving her, she particularly feel it was anywhere close to necessary.
/Like nothing we've ever encountered before? Well not exactly 'nothing' but clearly for the most part way out of our league? Yeah, I've noticed that already on my own.... still, let's see if I can't slow him down a bit...\ Now that she didn't need to bother with having a conversation in her head, she began to stretch out her legs, and proceeded bounce them off of the ground, throwing herself upwards, letting go of the car's back bumper.
Before the vehicle was able to speed away from her Susan's arms shot out and grabbed hold of its front fender. She let gravity and a little creative control of her body do the rest, and it wasn't long till her she was spread across the offending car's window shield like a great blob of blue gunk that was completely and utterly impenetrable.
Of course the green alien promptly figured out the rather obvious solution of leaning out the driver's side window, though rather than looking at the road he chose instead to focus on Susan, something he could have done just fine from the inside of the car. "Oh, hey, it's you again! By the way, what's your name?"
Susan promptly reformed arms and legs and stretched them out grabbing hold of a nearby pair of lampposts. In seconds Susan had become a giant vertical rubber mat, which curled itself around the car. That curling was important, since otherwise Ultra Woman would end up catapulting a considerable chunk of medal halfway across the city. Once the car had finally stopped bouncing around inside her body she finally spoke up. "Susan Richards, and you are?"
The green alien looked at her for a moment like she was one hundred percent crazy. "Please, back on planet Poppup we all know each other's names. Now then, why do you have to keep spoiling my fun?" As he spoke the nameless alien proceeded to more or less shoot right out of the cab like a cannon ball. For her part, Susan gently placed the car on into an unoccupied parking space so that traffic could resume like there wasn't a crazy alien on the loose.
Once she had finished taking care of the car she looked around and discovered that the alien was now floating overhead, and once again her teammates were catching up with her.
"If you won't let me have fun down there, I'll just go see what fun I can have up here!" By this point the rest of the team once more had managed to catch up with Susan.
"Well at least now he isn't causing massive amounts of property damage, though we're still not any closer to stopping him. I don't suppose you managed to get the name of the alien so that you could exchange insurance information down the road."
Susan shook her head, for some reason at the moment she was more upset about her failure to ascertain the alien's name than her success at stopping his joyride. "Not really, in fact I don't think he's even really got a name."
Johnny looked up at the alien who was of course by this point engaged in an aerial game of tag with Ben. "Okay then, you know what? Let's call him Impossible Man until one you can come up with anything better."
Apparently Susan wasn't the only one feeling a bit bent out of shape, since at this point Reed actually stamped his armor covered foot on the ground hard enough to crack the concrete slightly. "Let's spend more time trying to come up with a plan of how to defeat him and less what to call him."
Susan shrugged slightly as she looked at her husband. "Well I'm fresh out of ideas, and its typically your job to think the team out of problems. At the moment all we've got going for us is that clearly he isn't trying to kill us, otherwise we probably wouldn't even be standing here...."
/INCOMING! NEED A LANDING PAD NOW!\ Susan and Crystal looked and saw that the Impossible Man had somehow managed to outfox Ben and send him plummeting towards the ground. Crystal at once used her air manipulating powers to create an updraft beneath him. Meanwhile Susan extended her hands and curling them into a protective sphere about his body.
Of course the residual energy he brought with him meant that her limbs still were forced to slam against the ground, though when she opened up her palms he was intact in body if not in ego.
"You know one of these days I'm gonna have to go the extra mile to get some air bags installed so I don't need you two lovely ladies to soften up my crash landings."
The Impossible Man flapped a little bit closer to the ground, a wide smile on his face as he commented upon Susan's reflection. "Of course I wouldn't want to hurt any of you, if I did then who I would have to play with?"
For just a brief moment Susan understood how her husband must feel more or less around the clock since an absolutely brilliant idea had occurred to her. "Okay you know what, time out..." Just to drive her point home Susan proceeded to make the necessary gesture by pressing fingers of her vertically held right hand into the underside of her flat horizontal left hand to create a "T" symbol. "I'm going to take my superheroine suit for a moment and put my mother apron on."
Almost at once Johnny placed his hands over his head firmly enough that the sound of metal clanging on metal filled the air around them for a moment. "Please, please, please tell me that you're speaking metaphorically. Because first of all I didn't know that you even had an official 'mom' apron and second of all I don't want to live in a world, or at least live in the city that was saved by my sister dancing around skyclad."
Susan momentarily glanced at Crystal who nodded making it clear where her brother had picked up his most recent euphuism. "Yes I was speaking metaphorically. Now then, everybody lean close because I'd like to only explain this once." Sure enough just like she expected the Impossible Man proceeded to lean in close as well, and when Susan shoved him away with an elongated arm he allowed her to.
The key to winning any game was that you had to know what rules your opponent was playing by. And so Susan explained her plan to deal with the city's newest pest and then they got to work enacting it. Step one was to get back in the Fantasticar and fly home.
----
"What are you doing?" With a sound like a balloon popping the Impossible Man suddenly came into being.
"Ben, who is it?" Alicia suddenly went very still and her husband didn't move in the slightest having already assumed the necessary statue still pose of one who was having a statue made of them.
"Just a bit of business that followed me home. Don't worry. He isn't dangerous, just go back to work." Alicia slowly nodded her hands alternating between the statue she was sculpting, and Ben's body. Seeing that he wasn't about to get any attention this way the Impossible Man suddenly transformed his hands into green sledgehammers and raised them over one of the countless tiny statues that littered Alicia's salon. Ben smirked at the small alien's antics.
"Go right ahead. Those are nothing but cheap duplicates of her more impressive works." Ben then broke his pose to pick a folder up off of his wife's desk and hurled it at their visitor who reverted his hands back to normal so he could catch it.
"If you want to find the genuine article then here's a manifest of everything that she's sold in the last fiscal year, feel free to make a treasure hunt out of it." The alien looked at the folder, weighed it in his hands, and then didn't even bother to answer, vanishing as quickly as he had come. Ben nodded calmly at this particular turn of events.
"And problem solved, for us at least."
---
"Hey, what are you doing?"
Reed looked up from the computer that he had been entering data into. "Working."
In an instant the Impossible Man was seated splay legged across Reed's keyboard. "On what?" Rather than trying to type with the uninvited guest in the way, Reed sat back and pressed a small button on his armor causing a small computer screen to pop out of said armor. The keyboard attached to said screen was too fine for your average human fingers to manipulate, but when you were telekenetic there was no such thing as too small an area for you to influence.
"Trying to create a new theory about how the universe works based on everything the Fantastic Five has learned. Not to mention I'm cataloguing information on all the various races we've discovered either in outer space, the negative zone, or other unexplored sections of our own world. I don't suppose you'd be willing to be interviewed for the section on Popupians? Do you have any sort of organized religion?"
In an instant the Impossible Man was gone, and beneath his armor's mask Reed smiled.
----
"What are you doing?"
Johnny looked up at the Impossible Man and grinned before raising an eyebrow. "Well given that me and Crystal are done saving the day we were thinking about spending some time relaxing together. Trust me, you won't want to watch. You can if you want to, though you'll only end up learning what I did years ago. It takes more than superpowers to protect you against neurosis's." A moment later he was gone and Johnny turned his gaze to Crystal.
"See, that guy may be more powerful and more immature than me, but that doesn't mean that he can beat me at chicken!"
----
"What are you doing?"
Susan looked up at the Impossible Man and then down at her offspring. "Well, I was just about to tell my kids a bed time story. By the way, I don't care what you're here for. Ultra Woman has checked out for the day. I'm officially Susan Richards and only Susan Richards. If you're going to go and out and try to destroy New York or wreck general havoc then there are plenty other superheroes and superheroines in the city who will probably step up to the plate to try and stop you. Now then, kids what form do you want me to take while I tell you your story?"
Proving that they'd obviously been comparing notes while Susan had been out and about six voices made the same request. "Snake!" Susan nodded calmly and began to lengthen out her lower body curling it around and around creating a copious set of coils that her children promptly began to climb all over burning off much of their excess energy before finally settling down.
Susan took this as a signal to begin telling her tale, even though she couldn't help but look upwards at the Impossible Man who was floating around the ceiling listening intently just like her children.
"Okay then, once upon a time there was a magical realm. It was ruled by a wise king and his devoted queen, who made sure that the land was prosperous, and the law was just and in turn justly enforced. All was well under their rule and for the kindness with which they treated their subjects they were blessed with two children. First a beautiful daughter who was wise and mature beyond her years, and a handsome son who was, less wise and mature but in possession of a good heart.
But then one day disaster struck. While the King and Queen were out going for a ride about their estates a flock of birds startled their horses, and the Queen who was not as good a rider as her husband was thrown by her mount. The King did everything within his power to try and save her, but it was not enough, and she perished.
Worse, with the Queen's death a pall fell over the mind of the King. In the year that followed he was taken by all manner of charlatans who claimed to be able to bring his departed Queen back to him, but in the end only stole much of the land's treasury before vanishing never to be heard from again.
One night the King himself awoke, beheld the fool he'd become in a mirror. He in turn departed from his own lands never to be heard from again, perhaps to try and seek for himself some way of being reuniting with his lost love. But with his departure the young Princess was appointed ruler of land, a task far beyond even her skills. Luckily, the Princess' aunt was willing to serve as her regent..."
"Regent?"
Valeria glowered at Benjamin for interrupting the story. "It means someone who acts as a ruler, because the person who should be in charge can't for some reason. Right, Mom?"
Susan nodded (mildly surprised that it been Valeria rather than Rachel who had been first to instruct her brother on the obscure word's meaning) before continuing the story.
"So time passed, and without the king's excesses a small measure of prosperity returned to the land. But even on her 20th birthday when she became rightful ruler of the nation, though of course she would not become a queen until she had a king, the Princess's heart was still heavy.
She no longer mourned for the fact that she had lost both of her parents, but for the future of her land. While the exorbitant taxes her father had levied to raise funds for his desperate schemes were no longer in place, her nation's treasury was still greatly depilated. Worse still, a series of harsh winters made her hesitate to try and recoup the money from her people less their lives become utterly unbearable.
But on one cold and blustery winter day, the bravest knight in all the land who had made a name for himself fighting desert bandits on the eastern border of the Princess' Kingdom arrived. He had brought with him in turn his friend, the wisest mage in not just all of the Princess' land, but many would have contested the wisest mage in any land.
The brave Knight said that if the Princess would but listen to her friend, the land's treasury would be soon once more filled to overflowing. The Mage for his part laid out a surprisingly simple plan. He told the Princess to behold the way that the moon glistened in the night sky, and by such glistening see that clearly it must be made of silver.
With the funds the Princess could provide him with, he would be able to devise a spell such as to be able to transport people to the moon, and back again, each of them taking handfuls of silver with them, and before long the nation would indeed have more wealth then it knew what to do with."
Another interruption came forth from the occupants of Susan's coils. "Hold on, hold on. The moon isn't really made of silver, and even if it was, assuming you found a way to breath up there, if you started taking chunk after chunk of it back to earth wouldn't that play royal havoc with the tides going out of control possibly leading to the collapse of civilization as we know it? Also wouldn't introducing so much more of a previously limited quantity into the system destabilize the nation's economy through cause massive inflation?"
Susan elongated her neck so that she could look Rachel right between the eyes. "You know, I'm proud of how mature you all are, but when the mother finds herself telling one of her children that they need to be more whimsical, there's something slightly off about the relationship. Now then where was I? Ahh yes....
The Princess was wary of the Mage at first even with the Knight and all the people of the land who knew him vouching for him, because she remembered the horde of fakes who had one after another taken advantage of her father.
So, determined not to make the same mistake, the Princess decided that she would give the Mage a chance but that she would in turn personally observe him in his work, so as to be sure the little of her treasury that remained was not misspent.
She attempted to do so in secret but the Mage was quite canny and he reordered the placement of pictures in the laboratory the Princess had provided him with claiming that it allowed him to study more easily and better work his arts. Though if this was true or not the Princess could not tell, but was undeniable was that it also blocked each and every one of the peepholes that the Princess had arranged for the creation of.
So deciding that the well being of her land was a thing of importance above all else, the Princess sheepishly asked the Mage for admittance into his laboratory so that she might observe the master at work. In turn the Mage readily gave it to her, since it would have been foolish to bar the Princess from any room in her castle.
While she sat among the many bubbling potions and long drawn out theories scratched upon roll after roll of parchment, she listened to how earnestly and energetically the Mage talked about his work, she saw, for the Princess was a very good judge of character, just how deeply he cared about his native soil.
As days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months and winter turned into spring, the Mage continued to tirelessly work away from dawn till dusk, his hair and beard frequently growing long and tangled. The Princess for her part discovered to her amazement that she'd become somewhat besotted with the Mage who was a full decade her senior. She was enthralled by the idea that any man could dedicate himself so fully and do so much for her nation, for if he succeeded even the bravest knight's services would seem like a pebble balanced against a boulder.
Which was why the Princess took it upon herself to personally bring forth the food that her cooks prepared to the Mage's laboratory which he left so very infrequently that the immature Prince once joked that by this date he must have surely forgotten what the moon he was trying to reach even looked like.
Thus, the Princess was present on that fateful spring day when with a mighty cry the Mage jumped to his feet and declared that he had done it. He began to dance around his laboratory filled with excitement over finally having slain a problem that he had been locked in protracted combat with for so long. In his haste he even took the Princess's hands more or less forcing her to join in his wild uncoordinated exuberant celebration.
He soon released those royal palms however as he realized the nature of his mistake and begged the Princess' pardon which she gave, though now she would not let go of the Mage's hands. She invited him to take true love's first kiss with her then and there, since she desired greatly to have him be the man who made her a true and proper queen of a prosperous nation.
The Mage refused however saying that they should leave not leave such a thing to chance. He would not bestow that first kiss upon her and invite their love to flourish until the Princess's lands and people had already done the same." That was of course what you might call an embellishment. The night before they'd try to get to the moon Susan and Reed had engaged in what they'd decided to charmingly call a "a fuck for good luck" which had either worked wonderfully well or not at all depending upon how you measured such things.
"So the next day the Princess, the Prince, the Knight and the Mage all gathered together away from the Princess' castle so that they would have plenty of room to place the shinning silver which would soon insure none of the nations which surrounded the Princesses' lands ever thought them weak again.
The Mage drew many symbols in the ground, chanted mystic phrases in languages that made sense only to his ears, and then it happened. Four beams of light so bright as to be painful to the eyes shot down like lightning, yet no clap of thunder followed them, instead all was still and quiet.
When she regained her senses, for the spell had left her horribly disoriented in its wake, the Princess despaired, for it was only ordinary earth beneath her feet rather than shinning silver, and there were no heaps of the precious metal laying around. Angered that her hopes could have been raised so highly onto be dashed, she crossed her eyes, determined fall asleep and not reawaken until the Mage's plan had succeeded, but sleep would not come.
So she just laid there, until she felt a pair of hands try to lift her from the ground, and suddenly felt herself sliding between the fingers of that hand like sand through an hourglass. This strange feeling drove her to once more open her eyes and lay eyes upon the unfair world she dwelled in.
She saw the Knight sanding over him, a pair glistening silver wings jutting from his armor, and a worried look upon his face. 'Princess, behold yourself!' So she did just that and was amazed to see that her arms and legs had grown to many times their previous length, and laid in countless coiled loops upon the ground.
Suddenly she saw her brother the Prince, except he looked as if he had been cast in silver, and with absurd ease he ripped a large tree from the ground, roots and all. 'Look what your friend the Mage did to my sister. Since I cannot find him, you will pay for his transgressions!'
The Princess' limbs instantly found themselves in possession of an unnatural strength as they shot forward binding her brother in thick bonds that he could no more escape from then a guinea pig from a serpent's squeeze.
It was while the Prince, Princess, and Knight all marveled at this development that they suddenly heard the voice of the Mage in their heads. He told them that he had made one crucial mistake. Instead of bringing them to the silver of the moon, he had brought the silver of the moon to them.
That clearly the Knight now possessed wings of silver allowing him to fly with all the celerity of a dragon, that the Prince now possessed a body with all the strength and resilience of silver. That the Princess now possessed a soul of silver, which allowed her entire body to flow and shift like the melted form of the metal waiting for the blacksmiths hammer.
As they considered these changes the Princess asked what had happened to the Mage. In response they slowly felt themselves drawn over to a small bush and as the Princess pushed its branches aside she beheld a strange pink lump, and once again heard the Mage's voice in her ears.
He had gained the purity of silver, for while he no longer had a body, his mind which had always been his most prized possession had become even mightier than before. He begged them to return him to his laboratory so that he might prove his point and they did just that. The Knight and Prince ended up needing to carry the Princess as well for every time she tried to stand she fell over on legs that folded like parchment.
After being tossed onto her bed like a sheet the Princess fell asleep and when she awoke she promptly rolled right out of bed, which reminded her abruptly of the changes that she, her friend, brother, and true love had undergone.
She could not manage to walk, but she slowly shifted about across the floor and eventually made it to the mage's laboratory. She stared in amazement at what she found waiting for her, countless little artificial men any one of which could have fit in the palm of a grown man's hand marched this way and that, and in the center of all this hustle and bustle was a crystal ball that contained the Mage's mind.
She slowly crawled her way over and told the mage to behold how she had been unfairly blighted, for she a Princess was forced to crawl along upon the dirty ground like a worm, not to mention her dress threatened to at any moment suddenly no longer properly protect her royal dignity. In response several of the little men approached her. The Princess recoiled away in fear until they cornered her against one of the walls of the laboratory.
'Why do you run?' asked the Mage through his strange way of speaking straight to the Princess's mind. 'These clockwork creations serve as my eyes, ears, and hands, you have no more reason to fear that they would harm you than that I would.'
The Princess blushed and her chin sank even lower to the ground as she asked the Mage to tell her what he planned to do for her. The Mage told her that he would have his legion of artificial assistants craft for her a dress made from threads of finest silver woven together so that it would provide a mold for her to pour herself into, allowing to both move about as normal and take maximum advantage of her silver soul should it be called for.
The Princess was overjoyed at this news, and so she lay there meek as a mouse while the Mage's miniature army went about the task of properly measuring her. She fell asleep once more during the process and by the time she awoke her silver dress was ready. Just as the Mage had said. She allowed her body to flow backwards into it, and to her surprise found that she was able to stand up upon her own to legs once again."
This entire section of the story was of course polite embellishment, Susan had never had anywhere near that much trouble moving around like a normal human being after she got her powers, (not accidentally using them to augment her natural movements yes, but standing upright had never been especially difficult) but it made a nice touch.
"Several more of the Mage's creations held up a large mirror allowing the Princess to examine herself, though in truth she could have just as easily twisted her head upon her neck to achieve the same effect. The silver dress covered every inch of her body from neck to toe and it glistened wonderfully, but all the same the Princess was ashamed by her gift.
It was far tighter than any dress she'd ever worn, not uncomfortably so of course, but it displayed all the curves of her body with a shocking frankness. She asked the Mage if he could not make her something slightly more in keeping with current styles, but sadly the silver dress only worked its magic because it clung to her body like a second skin.
So the Princess accepted the dress since it was after all a vast improvement and without it she would once again find herself flat upon her belly or back."
"If she couldn't take it off without going all limp, how did she, you know, go to the bathroom?"
Six glares were turned in Rachel's direction, though Susan tried to make her own as soft as possible. "Let's have a quick vote, should I continue with the story or waste some time describing a complicated system of levers and pulleys used to support the Princess' body while she preformed scatological functions?"
"STORY!" Rachel was outvoted five to one so she just crossed her arms and pouted, even lengthening her neck slightly so that she could hear more clearly.
"The silver dress was only the first of the Mage's many wonderful creations. He was able to bring into being objects of a magical nature which many had thought were long lost to the world, bottles that were always filled with fresh water and would never run dry, spoons that would fill any bowl they were placed in with a hearty nourishing broth, countless tiny crystal balls that allowed people all over the Princess's land to communicate with each other far more quickly than even the most well trained pigeon could fly...
These great inventions were one and all delivered to the people of the land by the Knight who used his silver wings to go from village to village faster than any horseman could ride. And so, even if it had not happened exactly how he planned it, the mage's spell did indeed lead to the Princess's land flourishing, as she was guiltlessly able to increase taxes to refill the royal treasury since her people were kept well sustained by the Mage's magical artifacts.
Unsurprisingly, as the Princess' land became quite prosperous and full of magical artifacts, many princes from foreign lands travelled to try and win her hand in marriage so that they too might possess such items.
Nor of course did it escape their notice that with future of her land had been ensured, much of her dourness left the Princess who spent many a festival whirling about the dance floor in her silver dress, sparkling like a star come to earth. One and all of these princes however she thanked for their time and gave tiny recompense to them for their journey, hoping that there would continue be peace between their lands for centuries to come, but refusing to marry herself to them.
These princes in turn left gracefully, allowing the Princess to return to the Mage's laboratory where she spent many a night gazing longingly at the crystal ball which held all that remained of the man she had thought was destined to be her one true love.
But no sooner was one problem dealt with than another rose its ugly head, for there were a great many sentiments among the people of her kingdom who felt the Princess should marry the bravest Knight in the Kingdom, after all countless had been those who had seen the Knight arrive at their villages, towns, or cities delivering the Mage's creations.
The Princess herself was conflicted, for Knight was in fact strong of arm, kind of heart, and compared to her brother certainly quite wise. Yet, night after night, she'd shift in her bed and think of the glowing opaque orb that held what remained of the brilliant Mage who sacrificed so very much for the good of so many.
One day the Princess and the Knight left her castle in order to attend some formal function celebrating how very nice things were in the kingdom these days, with the Knight acting as the Princess's escort since she required one and could think of none more suited for the task.
While they were away a drake with obsidian colored scales, flapped its way to the top of the Princess's castle, and a single figure jumped down. He was dressed from head to toe in dark armor, but he was far more dangerous than any base knave. He was an evil Wizard who had studied at the same school of spell crafting as the Mage, in the fact that the two had known each quite well.
During their time they had made many of the other students, and even some of the teachers look like fools who claimed sleight of hand tricks with cards and rabbits were true magic instead of the ability to summon forth flame with but a word and gesture. But one day the Mage had come upon the Wizard working upon a most unusual spell that involved consorting with deamons and devils.
The Mage warned the Wizard of the danger inherent in such actions, that should there be the slightest miscalculation of the spell either in how it was written or how it was cast the Wizard would pay for it, and in fact noticed one such error. The Wizard however would not hear of it, and ignored the Mage's words, and went ahead with casting the spell that night beneath the full moon.
No one knew exactly what happened as a result of the spell, but the Wizard refused to show his face afterwards, claiming himself horribly disfigured and shortly afterwards he was cast out from the school. But he had not let that stand in his way and had studied all manner of magics and used his power most greedily to force those around him into obedience.
His armor was the Wizard's greatest creation, it served as a place to store vast amounts of magical power, allowing him to perform all manner of remarkable feats. He had heard of his rival's transformation and wanted to posses such power as well, not to mention prove himself finally the greater of the two.
He entered into the Mage's laboratory and since the mage did not recognize him, he tricked the Mage with talk of how working together they could create a mechanical creation the size of a normal human being, and by making use of it the Mage would be able to win the Princess's hand.
Though the Mage literally had no heart, he still possessed feelings and desires, and thus allowed himself to be moved into a special container for transport by the Wizard. A container that the Wizard had designed just so as to prevent the Mage from being able to make use his vast magical powers. Before the Wizard was able to escape however he ran into the Prince, who challenged him to battle.
Sadly even the silver skinned Prince was no match for Wizard and his black armor, though before he fled the Prince in a moment of great heroism attached a minuscule magical amulet to the foot of the Wizard's drake. Thus, when the Princess and the Knight returned shortly they were able to track the Wizard back to his tower, travelling in an artificial dragon that Mage had crafted.
As they approached the sable tower however a flock of deamons descended upon them. The Dragon luckily had a multitude of defences: blasts ice from hidden nozzles froze the deamons to statues and beams of energy returned the winged monsters to whatever dark realm they had been spawned in.
But in the end the deamons managed to shred the dragon's wings causing it to crash into the Wizard's tower about halfway up. The Princess, Prince and Knight quickly abandoned the dragon, and though many deamons tried to follow them, in the confined space they were quickly defeated.
The Knight grabbed two of the flaming pitchforks that the defeat deamons had used, and said that he would finish off those that remained. The Prince for his part planned to scale the outside of the Wizard's tower, his silver limbs crushing onyx stones into hand and foot holds.
The Princess of course began to quickly cascade up the towering staircase to the Wizard's private domain. Each of the three faced a challenge of course. The Knight did battle with a full score of the remaining deamons, and only after all of them had been sent plummeting groundward was he free to proceed.
The Prince discovered to his horror that the Wizard had designed his tower so that certain parts of it might be detached and with but the pull of a lever, a section of the castle fell away while the Prince still gripped it. But the Prince managed to adjust his grip and leap from the falling piece of rubble and once again grab hold of the tower, continuing his climb.
And as for the Princess, she found herself face to face with a gigantic 'man' made of the mud. He hurled huge spheres of the stuff at her that would have doubtlessly quickly left an entire squad of ordinary soldiers helplessly mired, but the Princess danced as she never had before in her life, first left, then right, back and up, avoiding the golem's attacks while drawing ever closer.
Then she took a great breath and dived into the midst of the monster. At once the battle surged back and forth between the mud monster, and the Princess with the silver soul, between a creature that was only following its orders, and a woman who was fighting for the man she loved.
Its conclusion was inevitable, the mud monster's body broke apart and pieces of it were hurled in every conceivable direction leaving the Princess free to continue climbing the Wizard's tower.
The Prince reached the top of the tower, and tore a large enough hole in a wall that he could climb through it with the Knight following behind him, while the Princess slipped in through a simple wooden door. The Wizard faced them all smiled, as he gestured at another lever, and told them that he only needed to pull it to send the orb which held the Mage's mind plummeting to the bottom of his tower, where it would of course shatter.
The Prince and Princess were momentarily held motionless by this threat but then the Knight told them how from his experiences, if they allowed themselves to surrender at his threat, then they would be equally helpless before the Wizard, and so they had to struggle while they still could. And so they attacked.
But the Wizard, summoned forth a mighty gust of wind that hurled the Prince and Princess backwards against the walls of his tower. The Knight who had avoided the storm tried to remove the container holding the Mage's mind from the trap door it was positioned above, but without success as the Wizard quickly struck him down with a blast of mystical energy.
The Prince once again went forth to battle with the Wizard, but this time he knew about the all but impenetrable shield which protected the Wizard, and so he waited for his armored foe to try and strike him before he met force with force. The resulting shockwave was so great that the Prince was knocked out, but one gauntlet of the Wizard's armor was destroyed, that the sight that the Princess beheld as she regained her wits.
Not all of her wits of course, because had the Princess been thinking clearly she would have wrapped herself around the Wizard's mouth to gag him and prevent him from casting any more spells or even drawing breath until he collapsed..."
"Mom you're starting to drift into Rachel territory here, you can spare us the tactics lecture." Susan didn't so much as miss a beat.
"As I was saying Samantha, in a blind rage the Princess attacked the Wizard who responded by casting another spell which electrified his armor and shocking the Princess until she lay helpless before him upon the floor. The Wizard cackled, for even if he had lost an arm of his armor, he now finally would be able to have the mage's power all for his own.
Or so he thought at least. At the sight of what his captor had done to the Princess, the Mage was driven beyond simple things like hatred or fury, into a state that does not have a proper word for, becoming something like the purest distillation of wrath imaginable. The wards that the Wizard had erected to contain his power shattered in the blink of an eye.
The Wizard realizing that he could not contain the Mage's power went for the lever that would seal the Mage's fate and pulled it. As the trapdoor opened the Mage cast a spell that he'd been saving for a truly desperate situation, the one spell that he believed might reverse his fate, a spell designed to swap the spirits that resided within two bodies.
And so the spirit of the Evil Wizard was sealed inside the Mage's mind leaving him to scream and curse all the way down to the bottom of his tower, where upon he suffered the same fate he had planned for his rival.
And as for the Mage and his companions? Well the Princess was mightily confused when she awoke to find the same body which had left them in such a deplorable state now tending to their wounds. With the voice of the evil Wizard, the kind Mage explained to his friends what happened, to them, and he offered to reveal the story of his entire life to prove his true identity. However the Princess needed only look into his eyes, to realize the truth of his words." That was another polite fabrication but the truth was definitely not suitable for her children's ears.
"They departed from the Wizard's black tower, making use of its previous owner's own tamed drake as the tower itself now lacking the magical power its master had infused into it sank into the depths of the earth itself. Needless to say there was much rejoicing among the nobles of the land at the four's return, but there was also much trepidation.
Both of them afraid, the Princess feared that should she remove her silver dress, she'd once again find her body unable to support itself, while the Mage worried that the face which dwelled beneath his armor might drive his love from his side. Both of them saw the fright that dwelled within the other's eyes, and so very slowly the Princess began to remove, the black helmet as the Mage began to remove the silver dress he might as well have crafted with his own hands.
The Princess felt the helmet come loose, but kept her eyes firmly closed, waiting for the feeling of powerlessness that would surly come when he dress was removed. She did not care in the slightest what her new husband's face looked like, just so long as she was actually able to gaze upon it, rather than finding looking helplessly at his feet while she lay upon the floor.
But while she felt the cold air lap at her body that was all, and when she finally faced what she feared, the Princess discovered that even without her silver dress she was still standing perfectly upright. Then she gazed with equal wonder at her husband's face. For the disfigurement that the Wizard could not bear to have any gaze upon was in truth naught but a tiny pink scar no larger than her pinkie finger
'You could stand on your own.'
'And you always were handsome.' And with those sweet words ringing in their ears the two finally shared true loves first kiss.
The Princess full well planned to marry the Mage, whatever his body he occupied. And thus the Princess and the Mage were married in a grand ceremony before all the nobles of the land."
More embellishment, compared to the up and downs that had come from her getting pregnant before getting married, the fact that half of her children's genetic structure came from a man who would have doubtlessly been one of the world's worst supervillains given half a chance had gone thoroughly uncommented upon to her surprise in retrospect.
"Now then off to bed my sweet Princes and Princesses, we've got another big day tomorrow." Susan abruptly released her grip and to her satisfaction all six of her children bounced rather than splattered as they hit, the ground heading for their beds.
Susan took a moment to return her body to its normal human appearance and stood up brushing a strand of blond hair out of her eyes.
"And of course just like all good stories that one doesn't end but still continues to this day..."
"Tell me another one."
Susan rotated her neck around round to face her uninvited green guest and shot him her best smirk. "Make me."
The Impossible Man glowered down at her as he floated above her. "If you don't I'll turn into a really scary monster and gobble you up!"
Susan's smirk only grew wider. "If you do that then you'll never hear another story. You see, while you might be able to do whatever you want, you could probably even find some way of capturing me and taking me so far away from here that even Reed would never find me, that still doesn't ensure that I'll do what you want, quite the opposite in fact.
You see your own power works against you, there's a human expression that sums it up pretty well I think, 'It's lonely at the top of Olympus', meaning that no one wants to play with someone who always wins.
It's why Vegas pays my husband a thousand dollars a year not to set foot in it unless it's for superheroic purposes. It's why you could bounce all around this town and find not one other person who will pay attention to you regardless of what you do. So unless you agree to my terms I'm not going to open my mouth in your presence again."
The Impossible Man floated a little closer. "What terms?"
Susan held up a finger. "First off I'll tell you one more story, one." She held up another finger. "After that you head straight back to wherever you came from."
She raised a third finger. "If you obey the second rule then once per year, and that's years by our measure of recollection, one trip of the earth around the Sun, and I'll tell you another story as soon as I can find time since I'm not going to be spinning yarns while evil villains are holding the world or this city hostage."
She raised her fourth finger. "Fail to abide by rules, one through three, at any point and I won't even know you're there no matter what you do. Understand?"
The Impossible Man nodded along with her every word. "Okay, okay, but like you said, you have to tell me another one right now!"
Her smirk now filled Susan's lips to the very brim. "All right then, here's the story of the silver souled Queen, and the dreadful djinn...."
----
"And thus concludes our modern day retelling of Shahrazad..." Susan said proudly to her husband as they lay "in bed" together, her body whose lower legs were still melded together quivered back and forth before him, like a dancing snake. "The moral now the same as it always was, never underestimate the power of a woman who knows how to tell a good story."
Reed smiled up at Susan as he hands stroked her bare skin. "So tell me, once you have your audience enthralled, what do you do next?"
Susan began to very slowly wrap her body around Reed's. "Then I move in for the main event...."