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| Issue #18 August 2010 |
"The Challenge" Part 4 of 4 Written By David Golightly |
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PREVIOUSLY IN FANTASTIC FOUR:
With a little help from their friends, the Fantastic Four are back to their old selves (with a considerable power boost added). After breaking free of the Kree scientist Bartos’ control, the FF find themselves on Monster Island within the new Kree capital city of Nor-Xi, flanked by the first wave of an invasion force! Standing at their side are Ant-Man, Nova, She-Hulk, and Machine Man, plus a reformed Mole Man and his legion of monsters!
“Hey, Matchstick,” the bulky Thing said. “You gonna keep score this time, or should I?”
“You suck at math so I’ll have to,” the enflamed Human Torch replied. “One point for the grunts. Two points for each ship. Three if you get it before it lands.”
“Looks like I’ll be getting’ all the clobberin’ I can handle!”
Both the Thing and the Human Torch charged into action, bolting from the operations center and through the open doorway into the hanger bay. The main building of the new Kree capital city of Nor-Xi was primarily finished, although the quick battle with Bartos and his engineers had taken its toll on the infrastructure.* With the new threat of the Kree commander arriving with the first wave of an invasion force, the Fantastic Four was determined to clean up this mess as quickly as possible.
* [Check last issue – D]
Reed and Sue stood over the defeated Bartos, their minds now freed from his mental control thanks in no small part to their son, Franklin. Reed glared down at the Kree scientist, a touch of anger in his eye mixed with curiosity.
“You’re finished,” the leader of the Fantastic Four stated. “It’s over. You might as well call your commander and tell him to go home. The Kree won’t be setting up shop on Earth so long as my family is here.”
“You don’t understand,” Bartos shot back. He tried to rise but Sue held him down with an invisible shield. “Earth is the starting point for a new campaign against the hated Skrulls! The high command decided it months ago! They won’t turn back now. They’ve come passed the point of no return. As you Terrans say, it’s do or die for them at this point.”
“Then we’ll just have to put a stop to it,” Sue replied.
“Our thoughts exactly,” Scott Lang said.
Behind him stood She-Hulk, Machine Man, and Nova. The quartet had, for a time, served as an interim Fantastic Four while the original family was being held in space by the Kree. They had come to work firmly as a team of their own and if it weren’t for their efforts then the original Fantastic Four never would have been freed of Bartos’ control.
“We’re with you,” She-Hulk added. “And it looks like our newfound friends are one step ahead of us.”
She pointed a green finger behind Reed and Sue. They turned to see the ferocious monsters that had been under the command of a reformed Mole Man aiding the efforts of the Thing and the Human Torch. Straga the Scaled One and M’linth led the charge as their contingent of beastly creatures ripped apart the nearest Kree warship.
To the side of the operations center stood the quiet Mole Man, now looking more humble than menacing. Without his will over the monsters the battle would undoubtedly be a different one.
“I never thought I would see the day that the Mole Man would lend us a hand of his own free will,” Reed commented.
“I trust him to be sincere,” X-51, the incredible Machine Man, responded. “He repaired me and helped us escape imprisonment.* He stated that he only wishes to live a life here with his creatures, undisturbed, becoming something of a hermit.”
* [As seen in the last issue – D]
Reed nodded. “Then let’s push these Kree back into space where they came from.”
“Go get ‘em, mom and dad!” Franklin squealed from the overhead display. His sister, Valeria, gave a confident thumbs-up to her parents.
Ben Grimm’s rocky spikes pulverized the outer hull of another Kree warship, denting and smashing his way easily through the armor plating. Sparks flashed with each strike of his stone fist, bouncing light off of his orange hide. Once the hole was made he jabbed his fingers through and enlarged it so he could get at the Kree soldiers inside.
Out of three dozen warships that had arrived on Monster Island, the Thing had destroyed seven by himself. He looked skyward and saw the wisp of flame he knew was his friend, Johnny Storm, melt the landing gears of two more warships before they even touched down. Ben smirked, thinking that he was going to have to move faster if he was going to get a higher score than the Human Torch.
The Invisible Woman simply made herself intangible and almost casually walked through the hanger bay, strutting through the warships that had landed and disabling them from the inside.
Mr. Fantastic lashed his stretched arms around an entire platoon of Kree soldiers, scooping them up with one arm and containing them with his other. No amount of force would break his grip or untangle his arms.
Blaster cannons from the mothership of the invasion force, resting safely in the air at the rear of the fleet, shredded the side of the massive hanger bay. The shots struck down several of their own soldiers before Nova melted off the muzzles with a dazzling display of cosmic power.
“If we take the commander,” Ant-Man shouted over the roar of the others, “we can end this now!”
“Sue, if you wouldn’t mind,” Reed said to his wife.
The Invisible Woman nodded and with a flick of her wrist, a sphere of invisible force encapsulated the dozens of soldiers that Reed had been disarming. Now free to move about, Reed slithered like a snake along the floor toward the end of the bay. Pounding hoofs, claws, talons, and feet stamped all around him as the monsters took a more one-on-one approach to the flooding Kree invaders.
She-Hulk broke into a run, throwing herself into the air once she reached the end of the dock. The lush jungle, mixed with the avenues of the newly constructed Nor-Xi, whirled under her as she sailed through the air, latching onto the tip of the mothership’s forward hull at the apex of her leap.
She dug her fingers in, climbing up the face of the spaceship until she reached the bridge. “It’s times like this I wish I had a catchphrase like Ben,” she said, and then slammed her fist directly into the windshield of the bridge.
The ship commander and several other Kree warriors were waiting for her, however. She-Hulk was launched off of the ship by nearly a dozen blaster strikes. She didn’t fall for long, though, as Machine Man had reached the edge of the hanger bay and extended his telescoping arms out to catch her.
Mr. Fantastic caught Ant-Man’s eye and slithered right for him, gaining speed. The tiny hero, shrunk down to a mere two inches, hopped onto the back of the now snake-like Mr. Fantastic. Reed stretched his arms out, gripping the edge of the dock, and pulled.
The pair whipped out like a slingshot, aimed directly for the hole that She-Hulk had punched into the mothership. Reed formed himself into a sphere, making sure to cover Ant-Man to save him from the coming impact.
Like a bouncing rubber ball, Mr. Fantastic shot around the room, knocking out man of the Kree soldiers before they could even draw a bead on him. On his last rebound he opened up and Ant-Man jumped free, tackling a pair of Kree as he enlarged to their size.
Within seconds the room was cleared, save for Mr. Fantastic, Ant-Man, and the Kree commander.
The commander’s eyes bulged with fury. He readied an order to his men, but after glancing out through the hole in the windshield saw that nearly all of his forces were depleted.
His hand raked across his thigh, gripping a sidearm. Ant-Man let loose his bio-kinetic blast, incapacitating the commander just as Reed wrapped an arm around his wrist. The gun fell to the floor, as did the Kree commander, unconscious and defeated.
“Thanks for the assist,” Reed commented as he unwrapped himself from the commander.
“Thanks for letting me,” Scott replied. “We make a good team.”
Reed smirked and let his eyes wander around the bridge. His eyes locked onto the commander’s chair, or more specifically, what was sitting on top of the armrest. He glided to it, picking up the strange yet familiar device from where it sat.
“What’s that?” Scott inquired.
“I’ve seen this before, although this looks more like…” Reed flipped one of the controls on the side of the device and the lights on the top of it suddenly deadened. He extended his neck and glanced back through the hole in the windshield. “Ah hah. I thought so. Unbelievable.”
“What?”
“When my family and I were transported aboard the Kree vessel, Bartos wiped our minds with a device that looked just like this, only in a more weaponized design. This central relay on the top is just that, a relay. Bartos was broadcasting directly into their minds this entire time.”
“You mean the commander wasn’t leading this invasion? Bartos was?”
Reed nodded. “That’s how it appears. He was controlling their minds, hiding amongst their ranks. See for yourself.”
Scott stepped to the front of the bridge, peering down into the hanger bay from above. Reed had been right: all of the Kree soldiers had simultaneously stopped fighting and were all looking around as if they had just woken up from a bad dream.
“Do you think they even know where they are?” Scott inquired.
“Doubtful. It’s probably that Bartos brought them here against their will, and possibly without the Kree high command’s knowledge. He could be a lone wolf, operating as a rebel. An impressive rebel, I should say.”
In the hanger, Ben pulled back his fist, stopping it from smashing into a trio of Kree soldiers. Their sudden befuddled expressions caused him to hesitate, as the entire brawl had magically ceased. Glancing upward, he saw Reed and Scott looking down at him. Ben shrugged and tossed them a thumbs-up.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a moss-covered slab of concrete lift up. Turning his head he saw the marshy statue called M’linth mimicking his gesture by lifting a clump of thick moss in approximation of where his thumb could be.
“Looks like you got a new best friend, Stay-Puft,” Johnny said as he reverted to human form and dropped down beside Ben. “He looks like just you, too.”
“Bite me, Matchstick. You lost, by the way. I kept track.”
“You can’t even figure out the tip when we hit Pappa John’s.”
“It’s not over!” someone behind them screamed.
They turned to see Bartos, still held in place by Sue’s invisible shield, foaming at the mouth with rage. His appendages flailed about, desperately trying to free himself. “I’ll see the Fantastic Four dead at my feet before long!” he screamed. “I’ll rip your power from you and kill you slowly. You’ll beg for mercy from Bartos the Conqueror!”
“Bartos the Insane is more like it,” Frankie Rayes, the cosmic Nova, muttered. She swung over their heads and landed near Johnny, smiling.
The Kree soldiers began to murmur amongst themselves, all of them scared over where they had suddenly discovered themselves. Soon enough they would discover that they had been brought to Earth to a new Kree capital city named Nor-Xi, built in the heart of Monster Island.
The Fantastic Four had finally returned as the heroes the world knew them as, but their work was far from over.
---- 4 ----
ONE MONTH LATER
“How is the transcription coming along?” Reed wondered.
“Pretty smooth, for the most part,” the image of Scott Lang replied. On the holographic display in Reed’s lab in the Baxter Building, Scott’s head spun to face Reed no matter where he stood. “Since you sent us the translation files we’re overcoming the Kree to English language barrier fairly quickly. Did you know that every Kree child is now taught English as a second language in their school system?”
Reed continued his work in his lab, manipulating the gravimetric impulses that were pummeling his stretched arm from within a glass tube that he had strapped to himself.
“That makes sense, seeing as how the Kree have been interested in Earth just as much as the Skrull homeworld since they discovered us,” Reed responded. “Knowing your enemy’s language can be a powerful weapon. Any more trouble from the residents of Nor-Xi?”
“None. After the minor insurrection things have remained calm. I think they’re thankful, actually. It seems that Bartos, who is quite enjoying the prison level, filled his ships convicts and slaves. They’re happy to be on their own in a city of their culture.”
A lot of debate had occurred over what to do with Nor-Xi. The world powers wanted it dismantled, for the most part, or its technology assimilated and studied. It had been the combined efforts of Reed, the Black Panther, and several delegates of the United Nations that had saved Nor-Xi from final destruction. They had argued that the Kree engineers and soldiers who were forced to come to Earth, and who had no way of returning to their world, or even a desire to, were the rightful constituents of the city. They had built it, after all, whether they had wanted to at the time or not.
Nor-Xi was classified as a sovereign state of Monster Island. In the end it was the Black Panther, T’Challa, who had finally gotten the aggressors to subside. As a world leader himself he knew how to handle political tactics with ease.
The recent adventures of the Fantastic Four had shown Reed just how much the world would need a family like theirs at the forefront, even when the original members weren’t available. That was why he had asked one final favor from Scott.
“And how about the new Fantasticar I sent you?” Reed asked. “I modified one of ours for your team. I figured it would help you get around Monster Island easier.”
“It got here this morning. X-51 was looking over the turbine engines, displaying as close to wonderment as a robot can get. She-Hulk said it still has that new Fantasticar smell.”
Scott had rallied heroes under him when the Fantastic Four were needed, but not present. He had effectively taken up the reigns, blazed the trail, and formed a family of sorts. The group had even saved his children, for which he was forever grateful.
While they were together, the media and the team themselves had been referred to as a pseudo-Fantastic Four.
Scott and Reed both agreed that Fantastic Force suited them much better.
The new Kree residents of Nor-Xi, now recognized as an official part of the world at large, would need someone to protect them. The rumblings had already been felt in the underworld that the city was ripe for the plundering. Soon enough someone would come and try to cause trouble on Monster Island. When they did Ant-Man, Nova, She-Hulk, and Machine Man would stand at the ready.
In a way it put Reed at ease to know that a back-up team was on-call. Fantastic Force, in the last month alone, had already shown great signs of promise as far as a peace-keeping group could be considered.
“I need to head down to the hanger,” Scott said. “Jennifer and Frankie will be returning soon from their meeting with the Mole Man. He’s been a non-issue but I want to keep in contact with him, if for nothing else then to make sure that we can still trust him.”
“Keep me posted,” Reed said just before he closed the connection, making Scott’s holographic head disappear.
He turned his attention back to his stretched arm beneath the glass. He checked the readings on his display. Satisfied with what he saw, he switched off the gravimetric generator and slid his arm back out of the glass tube.
All of his testing over the last month had confirmed one thing: the transformation that he and his family had undergone was permanent. The bizarre mutation triggered by the combination of Dr. Doom’s experiment and Bartos’ transport had effectively tripled their power levels.
For years he had sought a cure for his friend and confidant, Ben Grimm. Now it seemed that he had only gotten worse. For every stride he had made in finding a way to reverse the effect of the cosmic radiation from Ben’s body, the transformation had put him back at square one.
Sue had told him that even though they might be different now, they were still the same Fantastic Four. They would still be heroes, and more importantly, they would still be a family.
Reed Richards smiled, content that his wife was just about always right.
---- 4 ----
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’d like to thank Doug Bookey and Tom Moses for getting me interested in Altered Visions (with a shout to Derrick Ferguson, my most vocal supporter). It’s been a fantastic place to write at (watch your step in that last sentence, you wouldn’t want to trip over that pun). When I jumped on board the FF title had been dormant for some time. The previous writer had lost interest and I had to admit, before I started working with the characters, I could see why. The Fantastic Four have become bland over the years. This is Marvel’s First Family! Extreme explorers! The pinnacle of heroics! They should be ground-breaking and cutting-edge, not weighed down by rehashed plots and boring characters with little to no drive. I decided I had to make them exciting again. I thought of three ways to do that.
1) Amp up their powers. If the FF’s foes are progressively getting more and more powerful, then how come they don’t increase their own power accordingly? Of course, absolute power corrupts absolutely, so if I was going to give them a power bump then I needed that to taint their characters (at least in the beginning). After seeing what they are brutally capable of we get a Fantastic Four to be reckoned with. How better to show what they can do now then pit them against ALL of their archenemies at once?
2) Wrap a mystery around them. With the action of the book being driven easily by their powers, I wanted to create an air of WTF that was always present in the background. Reed was always getting into weird stuff as a scientist and his family usually suffered for it. This is a team that regularly has tea with new alien species, discusses politics with subterranean usurpers, and discovers entire kingdoms between molecules. Thus, it wasn’t hard to put them in a bizarre situation. Since Marvel has been Skrull crazy over the last few years I wanted to put the spotlight on the Kree, the opposing force to the Skrulls. This set up a MIA Fantastic Four for a number of issues, leaving the reader to wonder how and when they would return.
3) Expand on their available members. I don’t think that the Avengers should be the only Marvel team with reserve members. The FF have proven themselves just as important to the world as the Avengers, so how come they don’t have people on call to pick up the slack when they aren’t around? You could argue that Reed, Ben, Sue, and Johnny ARE the FF and could never be replaced, but I’m hoping that my replacement heroes (Ant-Man, Machine Man, Nova, and She-Hulk) changed your mind. Why shouldn’t the FF have a back-up team ready to roll? Well, now they do.
This has been a terrific book to work on and I appreciate the time people took to read the work I did. It was grueling, it was fun, and it was definitely worthwhile. There are a few things that I hope the next writer will pick up and roll with, most notably Dr. Doom’s apparent death, the ideology of the team’s new abilities, the Mole Man’s proposed restitution, the mystery of who hacked the Baxter Building’s computer network, and the chemistry with a new support team in Fantastic Force.
I truly believe that Fantastic Four at Altered Visions has been my finest work to date. Thanks for reading and I hope you give the next writer as much appreciation as you gave me!
-D. Golightly
