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| Issue #6 October 2008 |
"Family Matters" Written By David Golightly |
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PREVIOUSLY IN FANTASTIC FOUR:
Is salvation for Reed Richards at hand? When the world’s brightest minds united to create the ultimate intergalactic spacecraft, Reed had poured his heart and mind into the project. Creating a warp engine that could propel the craft and its crew light years farther than any ship before, the Infinity vessel had befallen an accident and been lost without a trace. Scott Lang, James Rhodes, and a skeleton crew had all been thought lost without a trace. Even the Silver Surfer couldn’t locate the Infinity. But now, Reed’s son Franklin has claimed that he knows exactly where they are!
“Tell me again how you did it.”
Franklin Richards smiled at his father, happy to be the center of his attention for once. Too often his mother Sue would scold Reed for ignoring their children to play in his lab. But now Franklin had his father’s undivided attention, and he couldn’t have been happier.
“It was simple,” the young Franklin replied. He traded a glance with his sister Valeria, then with their friend Cassie Lang. “Cassie sort of helped. I used her DNA to find her daddy.”
“I don’t get it,” Johnny Storm said.
“You wouldn’t,” the scruff and bulky Thing chimed in.
“Oh, like you do?” Johnny shot back.
The Thing playfully punched the Human Torch in the shoulder, nearly knocking him off his feet. Normally they would have carried on longer, but a silent glare from Johnny’s sister, Sue, quieted them.
“Take it outside, boys,” Sue ordered. “Isn’t Alicia waiting for you, Ben?”
“Oh, yeah! I almost forgot. Thanks, Suzie.”
The pair left, exiting through the main doorway. Johnny lit one scorching finger aflame and sneered. The door had barely slid shut behind them before Ben was yelling at Johnny, doing his best to keep any foul words locked away.
Reed, Sue, their children, and Cassie Lang stood in the center of Reed’s lab at the heart of the Baxter Building. To one side was their portal generator into the Negative Zone, a much larger and more stable version of the handheld device that had nearly been the key to a Skrull invasion.* Spaced throughout the room were plenty of half-finished projects that Reed had started for various organizations and parties, the least of which being Charles Xavier. It seemed to him that project would never be completed now, but at the moment he had other things on his mind.
* (Courni manipulated everyone into stealing that device in the last issue – Dave)
“How did you use Cassie’s DNA?” Reed inquired.
“It was my idea,” Franklin’s sister, Valeria, said with her chin stuck out. “I suggested that Franklin use his powers to sort of home in on Cassie’s DNA.”
“But it wasn’t easy like that,” Franklin quickly added with a smile. “I had to map it out first.”
“You mean I had to map it out first.” Valeria stomped over to her brother and fixed him with a glare. “You just created a display of her DNA. I’m the one who mapped it out and picked out the important sequences.”
“Valeria,” Reed said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Are you telling me that you mapped Cassie’s entire deoxyribonucleic acid strand?”
“No,” she replied. “Just the good parts. It only took me a few hours.”
“Reed?” Sue asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” But the truth was that he was better than fine. His children, despite their bickering, had taught themselves how to do something so complex that it had taken scientists years to figure out. And they had done it in a single afternoon.
Franklin Richards had been gifted with special abilities thanks to the cosmic radiation that Reed and Sue had absorbed. When he was first born, his parents had worried about how their unusual situation in life would affect him. When Valeria had come along, they had grown accustomed to seeing the impossible and were more accepting of it.
Whether it was the ability to warp reality, distort psionic fields, or brainstorm through the human genome, the Richards’ kids were truly the heirs of the Fantastic Four.
“Dr. Richards,” Cassie said, speaking for the first time since they had entered the lab, “we’re not in trouble, are we? I just want my daddy back.”
“No, no. Of course not. Sue, could you hand me that analyzer? And Franklin…I’d like you to recreate the DNA sequences you found earlier.”
As Sue handed her husband the handheld analyzer of his own design, Franklin rubbed his hands together and concentrated. With but a few thoughts, he crafted an image in midair using his powers to distort reality. A DNA double helix, familiar to most in basic structure, materialized out of nowhere.
“There, dad,” Franklin said. “That’s Cassie’s DNA. All of it.”
“And here is where I thought would be the key sequences to match against Cassie’s father,” Valeria added as she pointed at a few clusters in the strand.
“And you…homed in on them, Franklin?” Reed asked.
“Yeah! Since I knew what I was looking for, it wasn’t that hard to sort of ‘see’ where Cassie’s dad was. I’m not sure where exactly, but with my powers I can sense his place in reality.”
Reed leveled the analyzer at the image and recorded the information displayed. Nodding along as he typed commands into the analyzer, Reed began to form a smile on his face. He turned to face Cassie and then held the analyzer in front of her, comparing a few thoughts he had with the information scrolling across the small screen.
“What do you think?” Cassie asked. She was a few years older than Franklin and Valeria, but since her father disappeared she had become fast friends with the siblings. “Is it going to work, Dr. Richards? Am I going to get my daddy back?”
“Cassie,” Reed answered as he shut off the analyzer. “I think this just might work.”
---- 4 ----
“Ben, what’s wrong?”
Alicia Masters placed her hand onto the Thing’s rough face, feeling the bumps and cracks that she knew so well. Even though she was blind, Alicia probably knew Ben’s features better than anybody.
That also accounted for the half dozen people in the middle of the toy store staring them down. Despite his fame and general acceptance amongst the populace, Ben Grimm still had difficulty going out into public.
“Nothing,” he said somberly. He sounded distracted and distant. He picked up a toy robot off the shelf, turning it over in his hand absentmindedly.
“I know you, Benjamin. When you say ‘nothing’ you mean ‘everything.’ C’mon. Tell me.”
“It’s the kids.”
“What do you mean? Something about the birthday present?” Alicia wrapped her arm around Ben for guidance as he walked them down the aisle toward a section of toys under a big yellow sign that read ‘SPECIAL SALE!’
“Franklin and Valeria cooked up a scheme to get Cassie’s dad found. I just poked my head in for a second before the Matchstick started messing with me. But the point is the way they were lookin’ at Reed, ya know?”
“I’m not sure I do.”
Ben glanced through the bin of toys that were marked as half off, trying to see if something would work as a birthday present for Franklin. “They looked at him like he was their dad, like he was their whole world. And Cassie…poor Cassie, she just wants her dad back so bad that she’s trying to figure out a way to do it herself.”
“Ben…are you telling me that you want to start a family?”
If the orange rocks that made up the Thing’s face were able to turn red, they would have. “Sheesh, Alicia. I dunno. I’m just sayin’ what’s on my mind is all.”
Alicia placed her hand on Ben’s chest and matched her face to his, knowing that he was looking right back at her. “Benjamin Grimm, don’t think that because you have that thick hide means you can be a block-head. This isn’t something we’ve ever really talked about before. I want kids someday, too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“With me?”
Alicia poked him in the chest playfully and smiled. “Yes, with you, you big oaf. Of course, a girl has to make things honest before kids get involved.”
“Oh. Uh, right. Yeah…so, um, what do you think about the Robo-Commando for Franklin’s birthday present?”
“I think it’s a great way to avoid a serious conversation, but it will probably be okay for a gift, too.”
Ben feigned a smile and led Alicia back down the aisle toward the front of the store, where the waiting cashier was staring them down. The ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing was happy to get out of the conversation for now, since he wasn’t sure if his ability to have kids was something that could ever become a reality.
---- 4 ----
“I’d like to thank the Invisible Woman for being present here today. Her support in the opening of this shelter has inspired many of our volunteers to stay on fulltime, which will only benefit the community in the long run.”
An applause spread throughout the gathered crowd in front of the small stage, which had been erected just outside the front entrance to the newly constructed Helping Hands Woman’s Abuse Shelter. Cameras clicked their shutters open and closed nearly as fast as the audience clapped their hands. Sue shook hands with the speaker, a tall African woman, before stepping in front of the microphone.
“Thank you, Abigail. As you know, many of the programs that our philanthropy at the Baxter Building funds help to provide jobs and income for residents of the city. But what Helping Hands does is more important than providing the start-up capital for a new building, or scouting for reality for construction. They help woman who need to be helped. You can see the symbol of the Helping Hands Foundation behind me, and at the center of it is a heart. I believe that this shelter has heart. I believe that there are women in this world that—”
When Sue had left the Baxter Building, her husband, and her children behind to keep her appointment for the ribbon cutting ceremony for the shelter, she hadn’t mentioned to anyone that she had felt a little odd. It was nothing that caused her pain, or even minor discomfort. Just different.
She paused in her speech because when she had glanced down at her arm, she was surprised to see that it had turned invisible. From her right elbow down to her fingers there was nothing. The rest of her arm was there, she could feel it lying on the top of the podium, but she couldn’t see it.
The way that Sue’s powers worked, as Reed explained it, was she actually manipulated light to bend around her cellular structure. This also provided an explanation for how she was able to create invisible but solid objects such as force fields and bubbles.
But whenever she used her powers it was a conscious act. She had erected a barrier on instinct before, but she had never turned herself, or part of herself, invisible without concentrating.
So when she saw part of her arm had turned invisible and realized that she hadn’t tried to, she became alarmed. She focused, concentrated, and saw her arm reappear, and cleared her throat.
“Excuse me,” she said. “There are women in this world that need a hand to guide them. By setting their pride aside and accepting the heart that this program has to offer…”
Sue droned on through her speech as she had practiced, her mind wandering through the predetermined words with ease. Due to the angle of the podium she doubted that anyone had seen what had happened, and would chalk her momentary pause in the speech up to nerves. The truth, however, was that she didn’t understand what had just happened.
And it scared her.
---- 4 ----
“Oh, my God! It’s Johnny Storm!”
The blonde and easily recognizable Johnny Storm looked over his shoulder and sighed. He was hoping to do a little window shopping in the city by himself today. Even amongst the hundreds of people walking down the sidewalk, and despite his clever disguise of sunglasses and a ball cap, he had been pinpointed just as soon as he had stopped to look at the new iPhone on display.
Three young women, all within their mid-twenties, looked to be on the verge of screaming from the excitement of seeing him. One of them was fumbling inside her clutch bag for a digital camera, while the other two were pushing through the foot traffic to get to him.
After the ordeal with Courni, Johnny had just wanted to get away and think. What he didn’t need was to be mauled by adoring fans.
He turned and began walking away at a brisk pace, trying not to call more attention to himself. Another glance over his shoulder let him know that the first woman had succeeded in finding her camera and was quickly catching up with the other two who were calling out his name.
He ducked down an alley and sprinted to the other end. Shedding his sunglasses and hat, he lazily said, “Flame on,” and ignited his entire body into a flaming figure of fire. The lift his powers provided shot him up into the air where the girls wouldn’t be able to follow.
He never left home without wearing his Fantastic Four uniform underneath his street cloths, but unfortunately that hadn’t prevented the instant flambéing of his jacket, t-shirt, and jeans. It was annoying, but not nearly as annoying as it would have been to let those women catch up to him.
Leaving a flame trail behind him, along with cries of desperation and love from three overeager twenty-somethings, the Human Torch spiraled up into the clouds and left the city behind.
He hadn’t confided this to Reed, Sue, or Ben, but being betrayed by Courni had really hurt him. What he thought was true love had actually been manipulation by an alien bent on world domination. He supposed he should be used to situations like that, but something about Courni had really struck a cord with him.
Or maybe it just seemed that way from having his emotions all twisted around. That was part of what bothered him; he had no way of knowing what he should feel. Should he be angry? Should he lonely? Should he be happy for having her gone?
He spotted the apartment building of Alicia Masters. Dropping in on Ben while he was on a date didn’t sound like the brightest idea to him, but for as much grief as they caused each other, they had also been supportive, too. Alicia and Ben had something special. Johnny couldn’t help but think that the both of them together, given their experience with a successful relationship, might be able to help him sift through his thoughts.
Sticking his arms out in front of him, the Human Torch began to descend through the puffy clouds and head for Alicia’s building. Hopefully they wouldn’t mind too much, but he really needed someone to talk to.
BA-DOOM!
One side of the sixth floor of Alicia’s building suddenly exploded out, spraying the street below with dust and debris. Johnny paused, confused by what was happening, and then hastened his descent. It looked like something had punched through building and fell to the street.
A huge crater formed in the center of the busy New York avenue where the orange object had landed. Once the dust settled, the Torch dropped down to see the Thing picking himself up out of the crater.
“Matchstick!” Ben said. “Good timing, kid. We got trouble.”
“What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Ben brushed a chunk of drywall off of his arm. “Fine. But Alicia’s in there. One second I’m grabbing the popcorn out of the microwave, and the next thing I know this giant robot thing jumps out of the hallway and lands a cheap shot! Never would have happened if I had seen it comin’.”
“What’s a robot thing doing in Alicia’s apartment?”
“Do I look like Pat Sajak? Just get up there!”
Johnny spun in midair and flew up to get a better view of the hole made by Ben’s forced exit. “I think you mean Alex Trebek,” he said, although not loud enough for Ben to actually hear him. “They don’t do questions on Wheel of—WHOA!”
A large, metallic hand shot out of the hole in the side of the building and gripped the outer wall. A second followed suit and a lumbering robot appeared in front of Johnny. Wires were sticking randomly out of the sides and its head was painted with three different colors. Its torso was comprised of a hodgepodge of electronics; Johnny was sure he could see a television set, a microwave, and even as electric oven. All of the components were sown together with thick cables that were frayed on the ends.
“Hey, there!” the Torch called up, waving a fiery hand in greeting. “Tall, dark, and ugly! Unless you want to be melted down into scrap, how about telling us where you came from?”
The robotic monster answered by raising a metal fist and punching it into the side of the building. The giant robot swung out onto the outside of the building like a rock climber, creating hand and foot holds all its own by kicking and punching the building. Windows shattered and chunks of the concrete face broke away, endangering the frightened people below.
“Hey! Robo-Kong!” the Thing screamed from the street. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Ben followed the same suit as the rampaging robotic monstrosity and began climbing up the face of the building. “Johnny, check on Alicia! I’ll take care of Optimus here.”
The Human Torch nodded and back-flipped in the air to position himself for a straight shot into the hole that the robot had made. With a fiery burst of speed, Johnny rocketed inside the apartment building to look for Alicia. Once he made sure she was okay, he would call for help.
With a little luck, they could wrap this up before the cavalry arrived. But something inside him said that it wouldn’t be that easy.
---- 4 ----
“Are you almost done, daddy?”
Franklin, like any child, had a short attention span when it came to things that adults typically handled. For the last hour he had been maintaining a small portal that connected together two separate areas of space and time. On their end of the portal inside the lab, Reed calculated several readings and made adjustments on one of his machines. On the other end…they weren’t sure exactly what was happening.
“Don’t be such a baby,” Valeria scolded as she pointed to a panel on the machine that Reed was tampering with. “Don’t forget to adjust the flux capacitor, dad.”
“Thanks, sweetheart,” Reed answered with a smile. He had to admit that working so closely with his two children had been an uplifting experience. Or perhaps he was excited at the prospect of locating the lost Infinity shuttle.
Reed extended his right arm further than a human being should have been able, reaching halfway across the lab to pick up a small utensil to make an adjustment on the capacitor with. His rail thin rail snapped back the thirty feet with but a thought, returning to its normal size and shape. Working in his lab had never been easier thanks to his stretching powers.
Since he had designed the warp engine onboard the Infinity, and that was seemingly what had malfunctioned, Reed felt extremely guilty over the failure of the launch. He had spent countless hours in his lab going over the data, but nothing had seemed to account for why the shuttle had been lost. But now that the kids had found a potential way of locating the vessel, his salvation seemed to be at hand.
Franklin said that he would be able to get a general idea of where in the universe the matching DNA would be. Reed wasn’t able to fully understand how Franklin’s powers worked yet, but he was able to aid his son in sharpening his awareness.
Since time and space are inherently related, at the other end of the small portal that Franklin had opened should be roughly where Scott Lang was located. Whether or not he was onboard the Infinity, or alive, was another matter entirely. For that reason he had asked Cassie to wait outside while he worked. He couldn’t bear to see her face if for whatever reason he ended up transporting a corpse back into the lab.
The machine he was putting the final adjustments on would act as a transporter, a device inspired by something he had once seen the Watcher Uatu use to move people back and forth from the Blue Area of the Earth’s Moon. Using Cassie’s DNA as a guide, the beam would lock onto Scott’s DNA and teleport him to their side of the portal.
The targeting laser being beamed through the small portal that Franklin had opened, for now, was keeping track of where he assumed Scott Lang was.
A small robot no larger than a watermelon hovered next to Reed, it’s red iris opening and closing to focus on what he was doing. “Herbie,” Reed said to the floating robot, “place the lab on lockdown, will you?”
The robot scurried away, put-putting through the lab. It reached a wall receptacle and plugged itself into the computer database housed in the basement of the Baxter Building. Electromagnetic shielding designed by Tony Stark and improved upon by Reed himself hummed to life between the walls of the laboratory.
“Okay, I think we’re ready.” Reed said. “I need you to keep the portal open just a little longer, okay, son? I’m going to place you behind the shielding now and then we’ll see if this works.”
Reed stretched his arms out and scooped up both his children in each one. He extended his legs and stepped over, instead of around, the bulky equipment strewn about his lab to then stand behind the thick barrier comprised of titanium. He doubted that anything would go wrong, but with his children present he couldn’t take any chances.
“Everybody put your goggles on,” Reed said as he handed the kids a pair of plastic glasses. “Safety first! Ready? Here we go.”
Reed’s stretched hand slipped out from behind the barrier and flipped the trigger on the transporter. A solid green beam fired out of the end, tracing the red targeting laser through the portal. Slowly, using his handheld remote, Reed increased the power, making sure to keep one eye on the feedback levels.
“Power is nominal. Okay, Franklin, it’s time to enlarge the portal.”
Franklin stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth in concentration as he manipulated the energy pocket that linked one side of the universe to the other. After he squinted one eye, the portal slowly began to grow bigger. Blue tendrils of cosmic energy squirmed around the green and red beams that had punctured the portal.
“I think…yes! It’s a lock! I’ve got him! Commencing retrieval!”
A pulse shot through the green beam streaming from the device, which was promptly swallowed up by Franklin’s portal. After a few moments of calmness, the portal began to shake violently.
“Franklin, is everything okay?” Reed asked.
“I…I’m not sure. It feels…kind of weird.”
The portal, which was now as large as an average human, was flickering back and forth a few feet in every direction. Strangely, the targeting laser was bending around the room with the bouncing portal. It was as if reality was warping the light.
Now matter how guilty he felt over the loss of the shuttle, it was nothing compared to the safety of his son. “Close the portal, Franklin. We’re done. I don’t have enough—”
“Dad!” Franklin screamed.
Valeria gripped her brother to keep him from shaking. Reed wrapped on arm around both of them and looked through the Plexiglas opening in the barrier to see the portal now jumping dozens of feet around the room. “Close the portal!”
The machine firing the twin lasers into the rampant portal began humming loudly enough to drown out Reed’s pleas. He stretched an arm toward it to flip the kill switch, but just as soon as his hand came within a foot of the device, it exploded.
FWOOM!
The blue energy of Franklin’s portal consumed the room, bathing everything in a blinding light. The blaze only lasted for a split second, and once it died down Franklin finally stopped convulsing. He was lying on the floor behind the barrier, tired and breathing deeply. Reed was relieved to see that his on was breathing at all as he mentally chided himself for endangering his children like this.
“Son, are you okay? Can you sit up?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Valeria, though smaller than her brother, helped him to bend at the waste. “That was funky.”
“How come you didn’t turn your power off?” Valeria asked.
“I couldn’t. It’s like there was something on the other side that was holding on to me.”
“Well, it’s over now. I am so sorry, son. I want to take you down to the medical bay, okay? After I call your mother—”
“Umm…excuse me?”
The three Richards paused behind the barrier, unsure of who had just spoken. Reed stretched his neck around the side, looking around the room. He saw no one and wondered if the space/time continuum had been ruptured somehow during the experiment.
“Down here!” the voice said.
Reed looked to the floor to see a small black dot moving back and forth in an agitated state. “Oh, my God…” Reed muttered as he realized who had spoken.
“I don’t know what just happened,” the miniaturized Scott Lang said, “but am I ever glad to see you!”
---- 4 ----
NEXT ISSUE: Scott Lang is finally back on Earth! But the Fantastic Four don’t have time for a Q & A session to find out more about the lost Infinity, as downtown there’s a robotic Frankenstein on the loose. But is there more to this menace than meets the eye? And what’s the connection to a certain fan-favorite android?
