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Issue #7 January 2009	"Robots in Disguise" Written By David Golightly

PREVIOUSLY IN FANTASTIC FOUR:

A charter member of the lost starship Infinity, a vessel Reed Richards helped design, has finally been recovered! Guided by the powers of Reed’s son Franklin, Scott Lang, the amazing Ant-Man, has been teleported back to Earth. But the reunion will have to be short, as Ben and Johnny are busy downtown battling a hodgepodge robot that seems intent to destroy everything in its path.

Many fascinating sights can be seen in downtown New York City. The citizens living there have become accustomed to not only the ‘tourist traps,’ but the common costumed heroes that rampage through the sky on a daily basis. At any given point it is not unusual to see a man tethered to a bit of webbing swinging between buildings, or a powerhouse soaring behind a stone hammer of archaic design.

Some laud these amazing spectacles. Others cower. However, the majority of the populace seems unified in appreciating one set of heroes native to New York: the Fantastic Four!

Soaring over bystanders’ heads the Invisible Woman maneuvered between buildings with pristine control. Held aloft by light bent to her total command, a thin disc underneath her feet, Susan Storm charged through the air toward the distress beacon her brother had sent. The numerical ‘4’ on her uniform flashed, reminding her that it was an emergency.

While it appeared to the naked eye that Sue was riding on nothing, in actuality she had gained such authority over her powers that she could create invisible objects by bending light particles. The science of it was lost on her, often explained by Reed, and then mocked by Johnny. It had come easily to her. She had never had a problem controlling her powers before.

Until this afternoon.

During a speech she was giving to support a new charity organization, Sue had lost control of her powers without realizing it. One minute she was fine, and then the next she looked down to see her arm had vanished.* With a small amount of effort she had made her arm visible again, but the fact that she had to make a conscious effort was what bothered her.

* (Last issue – D)

A familiar ‘whoosh’ approached her from the left, which brought a smile to her face. “Hello, Reed,” she said with a casual glance over her shoulder.

The Fantasticar, a unique vehicle that Reed Richards constantly upgraded and toyed with, swooped down from the heavens to flew beside the Invisible Woman. Typically every incarnation could split into four separate, smaller ships. Its sleek and silver design made it appear beyond normal engineering. At the helm was Mr. Fantastic himself, the genius inventor and leader of the Fantastic Four.

“Sue,” he replied without taking his eyes off his destination further into the city. “I heard the alarm but I can’t get a hold of Johnny or Ben. Do you know what’s wrong?”

Sue shook her head. “All I know is that Ben was with Alicia when the call went out. Where are the kids?”

“I left them back in the lab with Cassie and her father.”

“Scott? Scott Lang? You found him? You found the Infinity?”

It was Reed’s turn to smile. “It was our wonderful children that found him.* The ship, for the moment, is still out in deep space. Scott is at the Baxter Building reuniting with his daughter. I sent the coordinates of where I retrieved Scott from to the Avengers since this emergency came up.”

* (Last issue again – D)

Sue knew how much pressure Reed had put himself under to devise a way to find the lost spaceship. Having built the warp drive that had caused the Infinity to become lost had proven a heavy burden for Reed. She saw the spark in his eye, no doubt put there from having taken a giant step toward rectifying one of his biggest blunders.

Given that, and the looming emergency that they rushed toward, she decided against telling him about her powers for now. There would be plenty of time to discuss it later.

---- 4 ----

“Are you okay?”

The flames covering Johnny Storm’s body extinguished as he touched down inside Alicia Masters’ apartment. Or rather, what was left of her apartment. The lumbering robot that had burst through the outer wall had left little standing upright upon its departure.

“Johnny!” Alicia replied. “I’m fine. Thank goodness you’re here. Where’s Ben?”

He cupped a hand around her wrist to help guide her through the mess and out into the hallway. “Heading for the roof last I saw him. He’s going head-to-rocky-head with that thing. Whatever it is.”

“I think it’s that toy we bought for Franklin’s birthday! It burst out of the closet and before I knew what had happened, it started bashing through my house. It knocked poor Ben through the wall!”

“Poor Ben has been knocked through Galactus’ force field. He can take it. Alicia, can you think of anything that might help explain this a little better?”

“I remember it was making these weird grinding noises. Everything else was just too confusing. Sorry, Johnny. Being blind makes me a bad witness.”

Johnny led her into the stairwell and placed her hand on the railing. “I’d rather have ten of your eyes than just the one Cyclops has any day. Head downstairs and get away as fast as you can, okay?”

“Where are you going?”

“You kidding? I’m not going to let poor Ben have all the fun!”

---- 4 ----

“Stand still, you little bugger!”

Ben Grimm, the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing, ducked underneath the lumbering metal arm of his opponent. A chunk of debris sticking out of the monster’s ‘elbow’ struck him in the head and proved durable enough to knock him over. His orange and rocky hide smashed into a stairwell entrance, buckling in the door.

“Okay,” the Thing said. “Maybe you ain’t so little.”

The roof of Alicia Masters building was like any other New York City rooftop, complete with antenna and satellite arrays for the tenants television-watching pleasure. A handful of them went flying with a wave of the metal monstrosity’s bulky arm.

A radio relay tower, approximately fifty feet in height, was near the center of the roof. After brushing by Ben with surprising speed, the robotic goliath lunged onto the tower, grasping it with the jerky fingers that were as thick as girders. Cables lashed out, wrapping around one of the copper transmitters and yanking it off the structure.

It plunged the transmitter into its chest, eliciting a strange grinding noise as metal scraped over metal and the transmitter disappeared inside the modern Frankenstein’s body. From where he stood Ben could see Alicia’s television set, her microwave, and even her toaster mixed amongst the cables and wires that held his foe together.

“Something tells me you don’t plan on stopping anytime soon,” the Thing said as he ripped a section of pipe from the edge of the roof. Steam whistled out of the bare pipe, which would have burned someone with normal skin. “So before you get too big for your britches it looks like I’ll have to be the one who cuts you down to size! It’s clobberin’ time!”

The Thing covered the distance between the rooftop edge and the tower with a single leap. Using the pipe like a baseball bat, the Thing slammed the long implement into the metal monster’s legs, dislodging them from the tower. The creature struggled to stay up, tightening its grip on the structure and bending the beams where it held.

Ben raised the pipe over his head and smashed it down directly onto the robot’s back. Several smaller bits of absorbed appliances broke away, but the mismatched robot persisted. Releasing one arm from the radio tower, it struck Ben on the side and sent him flying off of the roof entirely.

The Thing dropped the pipe as he flew, know concentrating on whether or not any pedestrians that had stopped to watch the brawl would be underfoot. He crashed into the neighboring building and bounced down into the alley between them, smacking his left arm off of a fire escape.

Bits of garbage that lined the alley floor clung to his face as he picked himself up. “Good thing Spidey ain’t here to see this,” he grumbled. “The webhead would have a field day with this imagery.”

“Need a hand, Ben?”

The Thing saw a pile of trash in front of him magically lift off the ground and move to the far side of the alley. While anyone else would think that a fairy godmother had chosen that moment to help make life a little easier, Ben knew that it could be none other than the Invisible Woman manipulating her invisible force fields.

Ben picked himself up and brushed off some of the stray garbage, saying, “Thanks, Suzie Q. Howsabout whipping up a force field to sling me back at that walking Radio Shack? Round two is all mine.”

The Invisible Woman hovered a dozen feet over Ben, smiling. “Reed’s up there taking readings on it. Try to let him finish up before you pulverize everything in sight, okay?”

“I make no promises, but if Stretch needs someone to hold it in place while he sticks it with a needle, I’m your guy.”

Sue nodded and extended her arm out toward Ben. The Thing felt pressure under his feet and made sure to steady himself. A disc comprised of bent light, identical to Sue’s, formed under Ben and began to lift him up into the air. They had done this enough for Ben to know what to expect. Over the years the group’s teamwork had grown from something forced into something comfortable. They moved jointly not as a unit, but as a family.

Speeding through the air on a thin but durable disc of light, the Thing appeared back on the roof to see Mr. Fantastic stretching his body between the legs of the creature. Huge metal arms smashed down around the roof, trying to pin Reed to one spot, but the leader of the Fantastic Four proved too fast. Intertwining his own body with that of the metal monster’s, Reed ensnared their opponent while simultaneously analyzing the creature with a handheld device.

While the steel giant was held in place by Reed’s elastic trap, its upper body was free to swing wildly. “Don’t hog all the fight, Stretch!” Ben called as he hopped off the invisible platform and charged the monster.

The Thing bounded up to eye level with the monster and landed a punch squarely where its head should be, which consisted mainly of twisted electronics from Alicia’s apartment. The monster lurched to the side, but because it was held in place by Reed’s resilient body, it toppled over and hung off the side of the roof.

“Amazing,” Reed said as he poked at the device in his hand. “I’m registering a specific power source that I have not come across before, yet there is something familiar about the way the infrastructure is designed.”

“Huh?” Ben replied.

“The skeleton, the basic apparatus that this robotic masterpiece was formed from, seems incredibly familiar to me. I’ll have to search through my files to match it…”

Looking to the Invisible Woman, Reed nodded and unfurled himself from the robot’s legs as he poked away at the buttons on his scanner, running through information faster than most could follow. Sue concentrated and mashed a slender field over top of the robot, holding it flat to the roof. It squirmed and grinded against the pressure, but it held.

“If it’s the skeleton you want a closer look at, Stretch, I’ll be happy to rip it out of the thing for you.”

“Like you’re even smart enough to know what to look for!” the Human Torch said as he descended to the roof beside his sister. “Isn’t it cute how he pretends to have a brain inside that head full of gravel?”

“Just because I’m concentrating on holding that big robot down with an invisible force field doesn’t mean I won’t smack you, Johnny. I can multitask.”

“Alicia okay?” Ben inquired.

“She’s a little rattled, but I think she’ll be alright,” Johnny said. “That’s one brave woman that you’ve—”

A flash of light exploded from inside the robotic creature and Sue squealed from both surprise and sudden pain. Breaking away from the force field holding it down, the mechanical Frankenstein lurched off the side of the building, falling out of view. Reed stretched out an arm to steady his wife while Ben and Johnny rushed to the edge.

“Are you okay?” Reed asked, forgetting about his analysis of the robot.

“Power,” she said. “Just…a flash of power. It disrupted my field and the backlash…”

“Uh, Reed?” Johnny said as he hopped into the air and ignited his flame. “What would happen if the robo-freak were to assimilate the Fantasticar?”

Before the chaos ensued, all Reed could say was, “Uh-oh.”

The Fantasticar, a brilliant engineering feat created by Mr. Fantastic, was nearly the first concept design made for the Fantastic Four’s adventures. It housed an array of weapons, tools, and information that made it one of the most formable vehicles on Earth. Reed had custom built over twenty Fantasticars since the group’s creation, specifically designing them for the unique needs of heroes that at any moment could be called off-planet.

Upon arriving on the scene, Reed had placed the Fantasticar on auto-pilot and let it hover a few feet away from the building…in approximately the same spot where the mutated robotic monster had slipped off the roof.

The twin ion engines of the Fantasticar roared to life and the metal giant launched into the air. The vehicle had been ripped in half and bound to the legs of the sentient robot, its engines now propelling it into the upper atmosphere.

“Johnny!” Reed yelled.

“On it!”

In a blaze of fire, the Human Torch rocketed after the runaway robot, leaving a trail of burnt ozone behind. From their places on the roof, they could see that Johnny was catching up quickly with the robot, but that he wouldn’t be able to handle the situation alone.

“Stretch, figure out a way for us to get up there! Now!”

“Right, Ben. Sue, I need you to form two stable posts. Can you do that?”

Sue blinked a few times before nodding her head. She extended her hand and twisted light particles to form two solid, invisible objects. She brought her hand up and then slammed it down, driving the posts firmly into the roof. Cracks rippled out from the round holes that suddenly appeared in the rooftop, marking where the invisible posts where set.

Reed stretched out both of his arms and wrapped them several times around the posts. “Remember that time Johnny gave Franklin a slingshot, Ben?”

“Yeah, the little ankle-biter wouldn’t stop…oh! Gotchya, Stretch!”

Mr. Fantastic contorted and twisted his body, rolling his legs up over his shoulders and around again to form a pouch. The Thing plopped down on top of Reed’s makeshift sling and curled up as much as his bulky body would allow. “Suzie,” Ben said. “If you don’t mind?”

The Invisible Woman, still unsure of the stability of her powers, nodded yet again and imagined a thick wall of force pressing against Ben. Slowly Reed’s conformed body pushed back with Ben in tow, stretching Reed’s arm thinner and thinner. The pressure mounting from the pseudo-life-sized slingshot was nearly enough to make Sue falter again.

“Make sure you get me lined up right, Reed,” Ben said. “If I miss you’ll be draggin’ me out of the Hudson.”

Sue exhaled as she dropped the invisible force pushing against them and the orange hide of the Thing shot off the roof. Reed’s elastic body endured the stress easily, as he snapped back into his regular form soon after.

“Look alive, Matchstick!”

The Human Torch tossed a handful of fireballs at the robot in a feeble attempt to melt away its legs. Looking over his shoulder at the coming orange meteor that was Ben Grimm, his eyes went wide and he ducked down out of the line of fire. The Thing reared back his fist and connected with a punch just before impact that dislodged most of the robot’s lower body.

The white light that had flashed earlier poured out of the bottom of the exposed robot. Ben began to fall, as did the robot. “Vaporize it, kid!” Ben called up as he fell.

Johnny aimed and fired a blast of concentrated heat directly into the robot’s exposure, searing away the central skeleton. Bits of liquid metal dropped away as Johnny’s flame melted the core of the robot, which cooled as they fell to the city like tiny, metal raindrops.

“Don’t worry, Ben, I’ve got you!”

The Thing, as well as most of the falling robot, abruptly stopped in midair as one of the Invisible Woman’s force fields formed under them. Sue and Reed hovered nearby inside a bubble of force, again thanks to Sue. Ben shot them a thumbs-up as the Human Torch swung around to face them.

“Scratch one evil robot,” Johnny said. “Sorry about the car, Reed. At least it wasn’t me that wrecked it this time.”

“Sue, set us down so I can get a closer look at the infrastructure of that robot. I’m almost sure I remember where I saw that design from now, and if I’m right, we need to move very quickly.”

---- 4 ----

“The Warden said nothing to me about clearing you.”

The Thing stood behind Reed with his arms crossed, irritated at the green-armored Guardsman giving them the runaround. He didn’t expect special treatment on a daily basis, but when the Fantastic Four stopped by The Vault it was never a social call. The Human Torch, his flame put out, rolled his eyes while his sister stepped up beside Reed.

“We’re here on advance priority on behalf of the Commission for Superhuman Activities,” she explained. “The Warden gave us proper clearance to speak with one of your personnel.”

“Call your boss, will ya?” Johnny said. “He’ll tell you it’s cool.”

The Vault was the prime detention center for housing unusual criminals. Those with powers that could easily escape a normal prison, and required special attention, were placed inside the Vault. The Guardsmen, armored sentries that were authorized to use deadly force, were charged with keeping the prisoners inside the thick walls. Their green armor was partially designed on specs provided by Tony Stark, otherwise known as the invincible Iron Man.

After Reed had inspected the remains of what had begun as the simple toy that Ben had purchased earlier that day, a popular item called a Robo-Commando, the Fantastic Four had taken off directly for the Vault. The toy had only been the basis for the metal monster it had become, and Reed knew of only one man he could speak with to learn the truth.

The Guardsman radioed in the request directly to his superior, who finally verified the visit. With a smirk, the Thing pushed by the Guardsman and into the facility. The large door, which looked to be nearly three feet thick and made of solid titanium, slid open to grant them access to the main entry hall.

The Vault was a sophisticated compound that housed the deadliest of enemies the world had ever known. The Fantastic Four stalked down the central corridor, ushered in by two more Guardsmen. The group had only ever visited when necessary, as the Vault was not a place that tourists were welcome.

“I’ll have to take you through the level three security wing,” one of the Guardsmen said over his shoulder. “You’ll get to see some of your friends along the way.”

They turned to the right at an intersection and followed the Guardsmen, who every so often had to pause to open another thick doorway. The Vault was expansive, and it went down into the soil for at least a dozen levels. Soon they found themselves at the final door, marked as leading into the security wing where the man they sought was located.

“Please,” the Guardsman said before opening the door, “don’t touch anything.”

The Human Torch scoffed but kept his comments to himself. The door opened and the Fantastic Four began to walk by a dozen criminals they knew all too well.

A roaring riptide, contained inside a single eight-by-ten cell that was sealed off from the world, splashed wildly against the energy fields that acted as a barrier. As the Invisible Woman walked by she noticed a plague over the cell that read ‘MORRIS BENCH, a.k.a. HYDRO-MAN.’

Across the long hallway another cell vibrated from the pounding noise that pulsated inside. The fields, different than the others, had been created specifically for that inmate to be soundproof. The plague overhead read ‘ULYSSES KLAW.’

A few cells down the Thing paused in front another chamber. He stared in at a bald and muscular man sitting on a soft bean bag. “What’s the matter, Creel?” he said. “Can’t absorb something as soft as your brain?”

The plague read ‘CARL CREEL, a.k.a. THE ABSORBING MAN.’ The inmate, a foe that Ben Grimm had tangled with on numerous occasions, flashed his middle finger and ignored the comment.

“Here we are,” the first Guardsman said as the second stepped into place behind the group. “Inmate 551432; Aaron Stack, also known as X-51, also known as the Machine Man.”

The man inside the containment cell sat peacefully on a cot, even though he never slept. Trays of food were never delivered to his cell since he didn’t require food. He was a sentient machine, able to survive on nothing but energy. He was known to the Fantastic Four as a hero, which had been the reason why they were so surprised upon learning that the Machine Man had been incarcerated.

The purple-armored man called Aaron Stack by his friends stood up and approached the front of the cell. “Dr. Richards!” he said. “I was not aware that you and your family would be visiting today. Can I help you?”

“Mind telling me how your circuits got into a rampaging kids’ toy that loves to beat up blue-eyed heroes?” the Thing said with an edge to his voice.

Mr. Fantastic placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Aaron, we’ve arranged this visit because circuitry matching custom components that only you possess inside your unique body were discovered as the basis for a robot that attacked us today. I recognized the frame design. There is no doubt that you have a connection to this.”

“What can I do?” Machine Man said. His voice held an innocent, if not formulaic, tone.

“I’ve arranged for an examination.”

---- 4 ----

In the bottommost floor of the Vault, inside a closed room that had only one exit, Aaron Stack lay motionless on a slender table. Guardsmen were stationed around the room, mindfully watching as Mr. Fantastic worked.

“The Warden only agreed to this if I take you offline, Aaron,” Mr. Fantastic said. “I’m sorry.”

“It is okay, Dr. Richards. I trust you. I will do whatever is necessary to help you.”

Reed typed in a few command to a computer station set a few feet away from the exam table that Machine Man was displayed on. The purple armor covering most of his body had been opened at the chest and various wires had been attached to his inner workings. Once Reed typed in the command, the glow in Machine Man’s eyes died off and the incarcerated hero went into the computer equivalent of a coma.

“Are you sure about this, Reed?” Sue asked from behind the table. “Machine Man has worked with us, not to mention the Avengers, a dozen times. But he was captured six months ago for a reason. I don’t know if you should be poking around inside his parts like this.”

“Why was he arrested in the first place?” Johnny asked.

“Yeah, this guy was a hero right?” Ben added. “What gives?”

“X-51 went rogue nearly a year ago,” Reed explained as he typed away. “He began infiltrating software companies and stealing data. He was discovered by Namor of all people when X-51 broke into one of his buildings. Machine Man declared his innocence, stating he had no recollection of the altercation. Since there was no evidence to support his innocence, he was sentenced here.”

“He must have been controlled by somebody,” Johnny said. “I can think of a dozen guys off the top of my head that could do that! Puppet Master, the Wizard, umm, how about the Controller?”

“Right now our concern isn’t…oh, my god,” Reed said.

“What is it?” Sue asked as she leaned over her husband’s shoulder.

“I’m rooting through X-51’s subsystems. Ben, hand me that wire on the tray beside you.”

The Thing, with his massive orange fingers, picked up the wire and handed it over. Reed plunged the end of the wire into Machine Man’s exposed chest and fed it through his inner workings.

“The subsystem that controls X-51’s power modulation should be offline, but it’s not. There’s a foreign body inside him that seems to be keeping that particular subsystem operational. The camera at the end of this wire should give us an idea of what that foreign body is.”

An image flashed onto the screen beside the terminal that Reed had been typing at. Mounds of coils and wires brushed by the fisheye lens as Reed continued to feed the wire through Machine Man’s body. Finally, he stopped, shocked at what the image was displaying.

“That’s impossible,” Reed said.

Near the center of Machine Man’s body, where his main power source was located, was a small silver creature that was latched onto his circuits. It was barely visible until Reed magnified the lens’ zoom and refocused it. Two bug eyes looked back at them, large, round, and familiar.

“Hey, I’ve seen that before,” Johnny said as his muscles grew tense.

“Reed,” Sue said. “We destroyed all of those things. That shouldn’t exist.”

Reed cleared his throat and stared at the screen. “Somehow, despite the efforts of the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, the X-Men, and all the other heroes on the planet…Terminus found a way to survive.”

---- 4 ----

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