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Issue #14 March 2010	"Homecoming" Written By David Golightly

PREVIOUSLY IN FANTASTIC FOUR:

After rescuing the youngest members of the Richards family, the substitute FF (Ant-Man, Nova, She-Hulk, and Machine Man) are determined to put the pieces of the puzzle together and learn the whereabouts of the missing Fantastic Four! Their only clue? An energy signature that originated in Latveria, home to the fascist Dr. Doom!

“Is everyone okay?” Ant-Man called out.

Through the hiss of smashed hydraulics, the smoke from a wrecked nuclear engine, and the sight of the edge of a crater, Scott Lang tried as best as he could to see the other passengers of the crashed Fantasticar.

Only moments ago they had been soaring through the air, unharmed and unchallenged. Once they had passed through Latverian airspace, however, that had quickly changed.

Blinding lights of specialized anti-aircraft fire, coming from a nearby castle, had overpowered their defenses and brought them screaming down into the earth. Luckily, Reed Richards never skimped out on a Fantasticar design. The special crash shielding he had incorporated into the hull had saved their lives.

A fiery blaze of red and orange shot up out of the wreckage. Frankie Rayes, the cosmically powered Nova, shook the cobwebs out of her brain and focused on Ant-Man. “I’m okay,” she said after a moment to collect her breath. “Where’s Jennifer?”

The entire left half of the Fantasticar suddenly burst out of the crater, discharged by the green muscles of the sensational She-Hulk. Jennifer Walters had never been one to gain excessive strength from her rage directly like her cousin, Bruce…but the look of extreme anger on her face spoke volumes to the contrary.

“I’m going to rip the faceplate off of that jerk,” She-Hulk muttered as she hopped out of the crater.

A metal arm, coated in purple armor, extended down to Ant-Man. Scott took Machine Man’s outstretched hand and allowed himself to be pulled up on the level terrain with the rest of his team. “I think we’d all like to rip a piece of him off,” he said.

“I can’t believe he shot us down!” She-Hulk exclaimed as she flexed her fingers. “I swear to God—”

“My systems tell me that he used a combination gravity projector and rail gun,” X-51 stated. “It is quite an amazing thing that we were not killed upon impact.”

“It’s going to be even more amazing what I do to his precious castle,” She-Hulk shot back. “Nova? You see anything in our way from up there?”

Nova soared a dozen feet over their heads, scoping out the terrain. They had crashed nearly half a mile from the first wall of Doom’s castle. The green grass fluttered as a wind passed over it, but otherwise there was no motion that she could detect. The castle stood tall and silent, alone against the hillside.

“He hasn’t sent out a welcoming committee yet,” Nova replied as she dropped back down to their level.

“That doesn’t mean he’s assuming we died in the crash,” Ant-Man commented. “Stay on the alert. We tracked the energy discharge from whatever transported the Fantastic Four to this very location.* Doom knows something and we’re not leaving until we find out what.”

* [The FF vanished in #9, and X-51 tracked the energy signature in #11 – D]

“Well,” She-Hulk said as she cracked her knuckles. “If he already knows we’re here, then I don’t see a need for subtlety. Do you?”

---- 4 ----

“They are approaching, master.”

Doom waved a dismissing hand at the accompanying android. “Of course they are, dolt,” Dr. Doom replied. “I can see that for myself. They managed to survive the first assault. Impressive. Allow them access to the castle grounds and then send the next wave of the Omega defense pattern.”

The android bowed, its torso remaining bent as it removed itself from the observation chamber. Doom stared at the monitors in wonderment. These heroes had dared to enter his lands unannounced, bearing the symbol of his hated foes. He had taken great pleasure in blowing the Fantasticar out of the sky, although a minutia of shock had grazed his perceptions upon realizing that Richards hadn’t been onboard.

It would seem that his gathering of intelligence from the other foes of the Fantastic Four was not premature.* There was surely more to this rallying force invading his territory then met the eye.

* [Doom alluded to gathering the FF’s greatest foes in #11 – D]

Not since his experiment during the previous week had he known what had become of Richards. The Fantastic Four were destined to die at his hands, and if these usurpers to that prestigious title would challenge him, then they would have to die as well.

---- 4 ----

She-Hulk, using the wing of the Fantasticar like a battering ram, slammed open the front gates to Doom’s castle. Inside an entire platoon of green and silver androids awaited them, no doubt at Doom’s command.

Shoving the wing fragment into the ground, She-Hulk created a makeshift shield to protect them from the barrage of energy discharges that the robots peppered them with.

Ant-Man, shrunk down to a mere two inches, bounded off of She-Hulk’s shoulder and ran beneath the assault, too small to be targeted by the androids. He darted between their feet, discharging his own bio-blast from his gauntlets and shutting their systems down for good. Their internal circuitry sizzled as he slipped through a half dozen of them, melting their components together into useless slag.

Taking to the air once more, Nova roared overheard in a blaze of fire. Weaving in and out evasively, the stray blasts from the androids’ assault barely missed her. With a surge of power cosmic and a grunt of exertion, Nova seared the heads of three more androids off without batting an eyelash.

“They’re going to swarm us soon!” She-Hulk called out. “They have the numbers! They’ll just overrun us and that will be it!”

“Not unless I disrupt their operating signals,” Machine Man replied calmly. A small antenna erected from his shoulder, broadcasting a specific series of commands. “Even Doom would need a constant stream of information to guide his subjects. I doubt that he would ever allow autonomy within his own grounds.”

She-Hulk leaned against the wing wreckage protecting her and X-51. “Whatever it is you’re doing, you better do it fast, shellhead!” she declared.

“This is a complex anti-algorithm I am attempting to…ah, there it is.”

Ant-Man ran up the shin of an android and leapt onto its back. Climbing until he reached the robot’s neck, Scott Lang hung on for dear life. The android thrashed wildly, bucking like a demon bronco.

Scott’s left hand slipped out of its hold, nearly sending him flying away helplessly. Just as the centripetal force almost dislodged him, the android slumped over lifeless.

She-Hulk peered out from behind the makeshift shield. “Not bad,” she said to Machine Man. “Not bad at all. Wish you would have done that sooner, of course. But not bad at all.”

“It was only because of the numerous receptacles the androids possessed themselves that I was able to—”

She-Hulk waved a hand at him and turned away. “Whatever. I honestly just want to bust some heads. Scott? What’s our next move?”

Ant-Man shimmered in a cascade of Pym particles as he grew back to his normal human size. Rubbing his left arm to ease the pain of nearly having his shoulder ripped out of its socket, he said, “Doom won’t let this slow him down. We need to move inside the castle. Now.”

“Done and done,” Nova called down as she blazed by overhead.

The top two turrets of the castle slid back to reveal a pair of barrels that undoubtedly belonged to some malicious equipment that Doom used to welcome invaders to his home. Nova, without hesitation, blasted the barrels with an awesome display of power cosmic. The charred metal crumpled before the barrels were even fully extended.

Nova arced up and over the turrets and let loose a solid beam of energy that cut through the roof of the front spire. Bits of brick, mortar, and even chunks of reinforcement material that Doom had woven into the infrastructure were flying. The heroine punched her way by force into the spire, disappearing into the long cylinder of stone.

Machine Man, She-Hulk, and Ant-Man raced to the base of the spire just as a white hot burst of power blew an opening there from the inside out. Nova hovered for a moment, making sure that the other three heroes were chasing after her before she flew off deeper into the castle.

The trio rounded a corridor corner just in time to see Nova being blasted back by another contingent of android guards. Machine Man extended his arms, telescoping them out in time to catch her smoking body. He set her down gently as She-Hulk trotted passed and dove head first into the pile of androids.

Green fists smashed through the armored exteriors of the robot guards, pulverizing them to bits of gears and shrapnel. As the last android fell she stood still in the center of their metal corpses, huffing.

“I’m getting a little tired of this,” she said.

“To be honest,” Ant-Man responded, “I think he might be letting us in.”

“Are you serious? Did you blank out during the reenactment of Blade Runner outside?”

“Let me put it this way,” Scott said. “Have you ever known Doom to only post a few stray defenses? He’s the type that plans things to the very last detail. He’ll plot something out years in advance, just to make a point. No, this isn’t like him. I think he wants us to get inside.”

A thick sealed door at the end of the corridor lurched open. The noise of the metal grinding against the stone floor reverberated down to them, bouncing off the walls like a beach ball.

Ant-Man and She-Hulk traded looks. “Okay,” she finally said. “Maybe he is letting us in. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to rip him a new cape.”

Nova stood back up with Machine Man’s help, leaning on the automaton for support. Satisfied that she would recover, Machine Man helped her strut down the corridor to the awaiting entrance.

The quartet centered themselves in the doorway, prepared for the worst. Dr. Doom was one of the world’s most vicious villains, having terrorized entire nations for decades from the safety of his own castle. Reed Richards had battled the armored villain to a standstill countless times, which was the primary reason for the four heroes to be extra cautious in their approach.

They stood before an enormous chamber, at the center of which was a huge construct of some mysterious design. To one side, a red carpet lined the way to a golden throne, at which sat the man they had come to see for answers.

“Welcome,” Dr. Doom said from his perch on the throne.

“Doom!” She-Hulk hollered. “It’s time to pay up, amigo!”

“Pleasant as always, my dear,” Doom replied. “I usher you into my home and this is how you act as a guest. I never took you for one so…rude, Ms. Walters.”

“We want answers, Doom,” Ant-Man demanded. The quartet collectively took a few steps forward, allowing a bit of distance to spread between them. “We traced your energy signature here from New York. We know you were involved in the disappearing of the Fantastic Four.”

“Do you now,” Doom responded curtly. “I would never second guess a discovery of yours, Mr. Lang. What makes you think I intended for them to vanish in the first place.”

“I don’t know your reasons, Doom, but I know you took them. Where are they?”

“I regret to inform you that I do not know where they are.”

“He’s lying,” Nova muttered as she winced in pain.

“Actually,” X-51 countered, “he is not. My sensors indicate a steady heart rate and no pupil dilation. I believe he is telling the truth.”

“His armor could be altering your readings,” Ant-Man said. “We can’t trust him.”

“As astute as you appear to be, Mr. Lang,” Doom replied, “I am pleased to inform you that you know nothing. Your entire investigation, as laughable as it is, has been misinformed since the beginning.”

Scott ground his teeth in frustration. “Maybe you’d like to set your pompous ego aside for a moment and enlighten us.”

Doom motioned to the lumbering construct beside them. “That is a device that only a genius on my caliber could have constructed.* Given my studies into the phenomenon known as ‘cosmic rays’ I am the world’s foremost authority on the subject, with perhaps a small exception to Richards.

* [We first saw this machine in #8, although we didn’t know what it did – D]

“I’m sure that even your elementary educations make it known to you that energy can never be destroyed. It can be broken apart, converted, and even inflated. But that machine, my dear heroes, does something else more impressive. It moves energy.

“Regardless of my own antagonism toward Richards and his self-serving family, I must hold them in slight regard. They have thwarted me over the years, time and again. I hold their success in direct respect to their amazing abilities. Abilities based on cosmological radiation. Radiation that could be withdrawn from their cellular structure.”

“You were sapping their powers away?” Scott inquired.

“In laymen’s terms, yes. In the final days before they vanished they were undoubtedly aware of their powers beginning to randomly fade. I imagine the terror on Richards’ face was rather…pleasant. He must have realized that he was losing control. Given enough time, I would have succeeded in removing their powers permanently.”

“But something interfered,” Machine Man said. “Another power source perhaps.”

“Indeed.” Doom stood up from his throne, making the four heroes tense up. He took a few steps toward his energy draining creation, admiring it, but still seeming disappointed in his body language. “Just as I was administering the final treatment that would wipe away their powers for good, something interfered. In a bizarre mix of science, I believe that they were removed from this dimension. I doubt that was the intent of whoever else assaulted them, but the result was still the same. The Fantastic Four are gone forever. I have been unable to locate them, and if Doom cannot do it, then it cannot be done at all.”

Doom turned his gaze away from the machine toward the quartet of heroes. “Therefore, you will be taking their place in the coming trial.”

“What are you talking about?” She-Hulk demanded.

“If you are to replace Richards and his family as a new Fantastic Four, you must first prove yourself worthy of the mantle. Originally, I intended to gather my fellows to finish them off once I discovered their location. My own private army of supervillains, complete with built-in motivation to see my wishes carried out. However, since you seek to take their place, they’ll prove an adequate test.”

“You’re insane,” Nova said. “Johnny…he’s not really gone. He couldn’t be. I would know.”

“He is as good as dead, my dear. No one will feel their loss more than I. I’ve been robbed of my final victory over Richards, and you four will serve as a merger substitute. Salvage what sense you have. If you somehow manage to survive and escape Latveria, you will soon see just what I had in store for your precious Johnny.”

A dozen doors surrounding the room slid open and a hundred more android guards poured into the chamber. Various weapons of different designs were aimed at them. They were trapped, unable to move without bumping into one of their captors. Doom faced them, smirking behind his gray faceplate.

The arrogance of the dictator was evident, despite their inability to look at his own true face. “Pitiful,” he muttered. “I doubt you four will be able to make out it of here alive. Kill them.”

The four heroes prepared themselves, standing in resolve for a final confrontation. She-Hulk clenched her fists, ready to die fighting if it came to that. Her only regret was that she had never found a cure for her cousin.

Ant-Man checked the amount of Pym particles he had stored in his helmet, wondering if he would be able to all four of them and escape into the microverse. He thought about his daughter, Cassie, and what she would do without him.

Nova let go of Machine Man, determined to face the end on her own two feet without support. X-51 released her as he analyzed the possibility of their survival.

KRA-KOOOOM!

The entire top portion of the chamber was sliced off, blasted away completely as easily as an electric knife would carve a turkey. Even the reinforcements that Doom had buried within the infrastructure were cleanly severed.

An uproarious wind whipped through the chamber, knocking over several of the surrounding androids. They were all captivated by whatever was transpiring above them, their gazes held as if mesmerized.

Something shimmered into view. A large starship, no longer shrouded by a cloaking shield, covered nearly the entire opening that had been blasted apart. A door in the center of the underbelly slid back, and four figures dropped out.

A massive orange monster slammed into a grouping of androids, smashing them to bits. His hide was course and as thick as stone, and the other heroes in the center of the chamber couldn’t help but smile when he shouted, “IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME!”

Ben Grimm, a lost member of the Fantastic Four, crushed three of the androids in one gigantic rocky hand. With a sweep of his other arm he shattered the armored casings of another dozen androids. He trudged through the robots, cracking them open like they were tin cans.

“Holy…” She-Hulk muttered. “Look…look at the size of him.”

The Thing had always been large, but somehow, in some way, he had nearly doubled in stature. Points protruded from his typically smooth orange hide, as if he had become an exaggeration of himself. No longer was he the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed mascot of the team. Instead he had become much more of a Thing than ever before.

Several androids nearby suddenly burst open from the inside out. First their armor casings would glow red hot, and then begin to bubble. Pressure quickly built inside their robotic bodies and then the sweltering furnaces growing inside them would force them to explode outward.

A lick of flame wisped out of the androids bodies’ and took a more solid form. The fire, somehow alive, condensed into a blonde man. Johnny Storm, the hotheaded Human Torch casually chuckled to himself as he hovered for a moment, taking in the chaotic scene under him. Like his teammate, Johnny Storm had also apparently been changed. With a smirk after choosing his next target, the Human Torch’s solid body flickered into a living flame and dove down at the next set of android soldiers.

“It’s almost as if he is fire,” Nova observed as she rose above shrapnel from another exploding android.

“Impossible!” Dr. Doom cried out. “Kill them! Kill them all!”

“You’ll never give up, will you, Victor,” a hard, but feminine voice said from behind Doom. “That’s always been your downfall. Overzealousness.”

Doom whirled around but saw no one beside his throne. His armor’s sensors, among the most advanced in the world, could detect even a trace element of DNA in a pond of water. He scanned upon seeing nothing, filtering his sensors through exo-thermal scanning, atmospheric pressure recognition, and several others. Nothing.

A wall of invisible force struck him, knocking him down from the platform that his throne rested on. Dumbstruck, Doom scanned the area again, but again he detected nothing.

“Show yourself!” he commanded.

Light bent at odd angles, shimmering different aspects of view into one shared space. Susan Storm, the lithe Invisible Woman, stepped out from inside the golden throne. Her fists were clenched tight as she mentally controlled the invisible wall that pinned Doom to the ground.

“Surprised?” she asked. “I thought you might be. Break your expectations, Doom, and you’re no better than any other villain we’ve faced over the years.”

Doom charged a lance of energized plasma in his gauntlet and shot it at the Invisible Woman. The green ball of death rocketed through the air, aimed directly for her. She didn’t even flinch as she phased her body into translucency and allowed the plasma to pass harmlessly through her body.

Not only could she bend light around her to seem invisible, or harden that same light into constructs of will, but Susan Storm had apparently also developed new abilities alongside her teammates.

“Amazing,” Machine Man said as he watched the scene unfold. “While visible, I am able to scan her. The energy radiating from her form is unlike anything I have ever seen before.”

Doom tried to stand but the invisible wall of force held him down. The servos in his armor threatened to buckle completely unless he relented and gave up, but Doom was determined. Once more he attempted to stand up fully as he managed to kneel underneath the Invisible Woman’s wall.

Fighting with everything he had, Doom had all of his concentration on switching over his power reserves in his armor so he could maintain what little control he had. As far as he was concerned there wasn’t any question in his mind that he could overcome her power. Doom would succeed. Doom would win.

He blinked when he saw a pair of feet move before him. He tracked the blue boots up and saw them attached to legs, and then a torso. Finally, he tilted his head back enough to see the face of Reed Richards looking down at him. There was stubble on his face, peppered with equal parts black and white, just like the hair atop his head.

“For years you’ve sought nothing more than to have me groveling at your feet, Victor,” Reed said coldly. “And look at where you are now.”

Dr. Doom screamed as Reed’s words washed over him. Never before could he have thought this moment possible. Never had he conceived, under any circumstances, that it would be him kneeling before Reed Richards. Whether it was by choice or as a result of force, it didn’t matter. Doom, even if it was figurative, had bowed to a man he despised.

“Richards!” Doom hollered. Desperate and losing control, Dr. Doom systematically released the safety locks on his armor. The plasma core that powered his systems ruptured, exploding out the back of his chestplate. “Richards!”

His cape and hood in tatters, Doom finally managed to stand up. The ruptured core of his armor had been the sheer amount of power needed to slip out from under the Invisible Woman’s will. But the cost…Doom hobbled toward Richards, his armor now a burden instead of a boon. The servos were dead and useless. The onboard computer was lifeless. His weapons were dormant and heavy.

He clutched at Reed, grasping the folds of his blue and white uniform. He leaned into the man, and Mr. Fantastic simply stood still. “You’re finished, Victor,” Reed said. “That armor is more of a prison than ever before. You’re better off without it at this point.”

Reed’s face elongated, as did his arms and legs. His body flattened as he poured his arms into the sides of Doom’s exposed armor. Mr. Fantastic flooded the armor with his own body, shoving the component pieces around from the inside.

“It’s…you who is…now in a prison,” Doom muttered. He slid back a seal on his iron mask and began to laugh. “A prison of death, Richards!”

The now pores body of Richards, between the cracks of Doom’s armor, flexed. Doom caught his breath as the leggings of his armor popped off of his body, shattered open from the inside. His arm bracings and chestplate exploded off next, leaving him weak and partially naked.

Finally, his mask wrenched off his face, revealing the hideous scarring that his own incompetence had marked him with over a decade ago.

Reed stretched out from the underside of the chestplate and regained his full human form again. He looked down at the beaten, cold, and confused Victor Von Doom. “Would you be referring to the contact poison you coated your armor with?” Reed inquired. “Clever. It undoubtedly would have ensured my death if I ever physically assaulted you. However, as you can see, I’m alive.”

“H…how…” Doom muttered.

“My powers have always allowed me to exercise control over my molecular structure. But now, thanks to you, Victor, I have complete control at the atomic level. Poisons won’t work on me, not when I can simply filter out the atoms. And sealing me inside your armor wouldn’t work either, since I no longer need to breath.”

“My god,” Ant-Man whispered. “If that’s true…then he’s barely human anymore.”

“No,” Doom replied, astonished. “Impossible. I had nothing to do with this. I would never be a party to granting you more power over me.”

“But you were, Victor. And now you’ll be haunted by that simple fact for the rest of your life, alone, here amongst the rubble of your castle.”

She-Hulk, Nova, Machine Man, and Ant-Man all felt themselves being force into a group. The four heroes found themselves lifted off the ground inside an invisible bubble, which was suddenly catapulted up and out of the chamber through what used to be the ceiling.

As they were forced away from the castle, pillars of fire exploded out from the sides. An entire tower was brought down by one fierce swipe of an orange arm. Another section was crushed down into nothing by solidified light waves.

Great sections of Earth lurched open from the onslaught. Dust and dirt sprung up from the shockwaves, partially covering the landscape. In less than a minute the ancestral home of Victor Von Doom had been demolished, with no trace of the special reinforcements he had integrated left standing.

The invisible ball set the four heroes down a quarter mile away. It vanished, leaving them free to move about the grassy hillside. There were no words to describe what they had witnessed. As the last pieces of Doom’s stronghold crumbled away, the heroes simply stood and watched, baffled as to the events that had transpired before them.

Undoubtedly, the Fantastic Four had returned. They were changed, even alarmingly so, but it was them. Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Human Torch, and the Thing had saved their lives and stopped their worst enemy without even working up a sweat.

Even though none of them could find the words to convey what they were thinking, they were still all on the same page. While their powers had apparently been altered somehow, it appeared that the restrictions they had placed on themselves since the beginning of their heroic careers had been removed.

The question was hanging in the air almost as heavy as a morning dew: what had happened to the Fantastic Four?

---- 4 ----

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