The Mighty Muscled Thing! The pliable fleshed, aptly name Mr. Fantastic!, His Wife the force field wielding Invisible Woman! Her brother the hot headed and tempestuous Human Torch! Together they form the greatest fighting team the world has ever known! They are, now and forever,

The Fantastic Four!

Fantastic Four #11

"Conversations from the edge of hell."

Reed Richards awoke slowly, painfully. And immediately felt his pliable limbs bound. As darkness gave way to light, Reed took in his surroundings. His limbs were encased in thin plastic tubes, which were connected to a similar plastic cylinder which encased his thinly compressed body.

Reed gazed around him and immediately remembered what had happened to him, and to his friends, the rest of the Fantastic Four.

The word echoed through his brilliant mind, as he began to struggle futilely, trying to force his body through any crack that might exist in his see through prison

"You might as well stop wasting your time, Richards, there is no escaping this time."

"Ah Victor, I suppose now you’re going to regale me with tales of how you intend to kill us all and how we have no hope of escape. I’ve heard it all from you and others like you many times before, old friend. Save your breath."

"Ever the optimistic one, eh Reed?"

Doom was seated in the room, in a vast throne, sipping wine through his mask. "I’d offer you some Reed, but I’m afraid it would have no where to go, hahahaha."

Reeds body was so badly compressed into the thin cylinder that Mr. Fantastic actually considered Doom to be right for a change.

"So which Victor Von Doom do I have the pleasure of dealing with today? Not the one who once did indeed share drink with the Fantastic Four as well as the X men, when we all worked together to save a certain mutant. No, certainly not that one. Is it the one who once teamed with a revamped FF and traveled to the negative zone? I don’t think so either. I suppose then it’s the pompous megalomaniac who likes to hear the sound of his own voice more then anything else in the world."

Doom throws the goblet in his steel encased hand across the room, towards Reed.

"You go to far, Richards. Your life is in my hands, with the merest clenching of my fist I could end it, like unto an ant being stepped on. There are no multiple personalities to Doom. There is only one Doom. Your superior. The man who has once again captured the Fantastic Four."

"Please Victor. How many times do we have to do this dance? Why are you even bothering? Go back to Latveria, and stay there. No one cares what you do in your country. Your populace may be poor, but you provide what you can for them and they live a decent life. Why are you looking to endanger that again?"

"What do you know of Latveria, Richards? It is my homeland, my birthright. It is I, and I am it. All who live there must bow before me, for I am Doom."

"I’ve heard all this before Victor. You are boring me. Why did you build this faux Baxter Building here in the middle of the Adirondack wilderness? Why did you bother? Just to get my attention? You needn’t have bothered. Stop this madness Von Doom. The enmity between us has grown to ridiculous levels if you have to create an entire building just to get my attention. I’m sure you can put all this effort to better use. I’m sure your people would appreciate it more if you did something for them."

Doom leaps across the room, gripping Reed by the plastic encased throat. "You fool, I told you to shut up!"

He releases Reed, and storms away, out of the ornately decorated room. A room that never existed in the real Baxter building, but is an exact replica of Dooms throne room in Latveria.

‘Good.’ Thinks Reed, ‘He’s gone. I must devise a way out of this, before he returns. He seems more unhinged then ever. Something must have happened to him that’s unknown to me.’

Across the great structure, in another room, stands the Vivacious Vixen, her arms chained to the wall behind her, her body hanging slackly against the chains, which don’t allow her to sit or lay down, only sag there holding up her own weight, painfully.

Sharon Ventura struggles momentarily pulling against the chains as strongly as she can.

"Poor little poppet." A female voice taunts, seemingly from nowhere, "All that strength and you can’t break free. Those chains are titanium, cow. Not just regular steel. You’ll never break them."

Sharon Ventura grimaces and grunts as she strains all the more . "Show yourself, Malice, I know you’re there. Stop playing games with me."

"As you wish, wench." As she speaks, Malice shimmers into view, Malice, who is really Susan Richards, the invisible woman!

The leather-clad woman approaches Sharon, and taunts her openly. "Stupid, cow. You can’t replace Susan Richards, no one can. You’re just another in a long line of failures who had tried to take her place."

Sharon grins menacingly at Malice before speaking, her hair damp and limp from exertion she gazes up at her enemy, then speaks in an angered and booming voice, "Don’t you mean YOUR place? Not hers? You ARE one and the same person, you know."

Suddenly Sharon is gripped by invisible hands, as Malice gestures from ten feet away, and lifted into the air, her chains pulled taut.

"I’ll rip your body in more pieces then can be counted if you ever speak that way to me again, cow."

She drops her hands, and Vixen drops to the ground panting in pain.

"Guess I hit a nerve, huh Susan?" Sharon fearlessly taunts again.

"You try my patience, Vixen." She heaves Sharon up into the air again, ripping her arms almost from her body with the accelerated jolt, and then drops her to the ground once more, where she lies, barely conscious, breathing heavily.

Malice saunters over to Sharon, and lifts her chin up in her black gloved hand. "Still with me, my dear? Good. We have a long night ahead of us, where we’ll discuss things like your treachery against Susan."

Sharon stare up at Malice and grins, "Don’t you mean against you?"

Her immediate screams fill the hallway in every direction...

Nearby, Benjamin J. Grimm, the ever lovin’ blue eyed Thing shakes himself again, trying to pull free of the molasses-like quagmire that holds him still, to no avail.

Then, suddenly, Doom enters the room where Ben is trapped, as a door slides open, allowing the villain egress.

"You should stop struggling, buffoon. All you’ll do is trap yourself further. In fact maybe you should continue to struggle all the more. You’ll be pulled under eventually. Like quicksand, and even though you can hold your breath far longer then a human being, you will eventually suffocate there. Such is the genius of Doom, that your own prodigious strength will be used against you."

"Ah blow it out yer pie hole, ya wacko!" Ben retorts angrily.

"As intelligent an answer as can be expected of you, Grimm. You always were a Neanderthal, even when you did not look the part."

"Mebbe so Doomsie, but I ain’t the one the average guy on the street refers to as ‘monster’. Keep that in mind, Frankenstein face."

Doom storms over to the tank holding Ben and he glares balefully at the entrapped hero. ‘You go to far this time, Grimm. I should dispose of you with my own two hands, were I not concerned with soiling my royal hands on your gruesome exterior."

"Yeah rust bucket, you’re the one whose got issues about touchin’ me? Somthin’s wrong with that picture, you psycho. How’s it feel ta live yer entire life in a tin boiler? I’m just curious if that’s what makes you as crazy as you are, ya freakin’ lunatic!"

Doom turns in a flourish of his cape and throws his head back as he exits the sliding door. "Die slowly, Grimm, I will have the pleasure of seeing you die before my eyes, in a trap of my own making, before my ultimate revenge takes place."

As soon as Doom is gone, The Thing struggles all the harder against the inexorable grip of the quick sand like material, and continues to fall ever deeper into the sucking morass...

Another room enters Dr. Doom, with a flourish of his cape, as his stoic metallic mask almost seems to smile at the predicament of the Human Torch before him.

Like a goldfish in a bowl, Johnny Storm struggles to keep his head above the water-like substance that clings to his costume and flesh, his nose and face struggles to gasp air in the small space allotted for his head. The see through tank is a good 20 feet deep, so Johnny must keep paddling constantly to stay afloat.

"So Jonathan, how do you like your new accommodations? Do they suffice? Oh, and do not bother to try to heat your body up enough to boil any of the liquid away. It is not water, but a self-replicating nano-mass of my own design that feeds on heat. Your body heat alone is what is keeping your prison active and holding you trapped. You have no escape, and no hope of one." Doom laughs as he watches Johnny’s futile swimming to stay afloat. "Yours was the easiest prison to design. You are the least dangerous to me. Your mind the weakest, perhaps you are even stupider, to put it in vernacular you would understand, then the grotesque Thing. You are no threat to Doom, none of you are."

Then he dramatically leaves the room, the door opening and closing automatically at his approach. Then and only then, does the Human Torch smile.

‘You made a mistake, Doom.’ The Human Torch thinks to himself. ‘And I caught it. Me, the "Stupid" one, and this time it’s going to cost you.’

But then Johnny Storms mind returns to the one who brought them all here, and he shivers involuntarily. "Sue" he speaks slowly aloud...

A room in the ‘Baxter building’. There, the woman now known as Malice stares at her naked body in a full-length mirror. "Not bad, you still got it girl. Even after all the lack of use Susie girl has given you lately. We’re, uh, I mean I’m, still a babe." She seems to almost shudder with the last sentence, stumbling slightly as she grips her head, and begins to lean on the wall.

Then a holographic image of Dr Doom appears before her.

"Malice, I need you now, we are about to begin. As much as I am enjoying this, you should put some clothes on."

She angrily stares at Dooms image, then smashes the holo-projector beneath the floor with a spike of force field energy.

"I will be there when I please, Doom." She retorts angrily, "And not an instant before." And then she smiles evilly before continuing "I hope you got a thrill out of this, Doom. But where you’re concerned, it will always be look, but never touch."

Minutes later, Doom and Malice stand together, as four sections of wall suddenly rise upwards, revealing one huge room, with each of the Fantastic Four trapped in one section.

"You are all together again, one final time." Doom Begins. "You will all die together very shortly, in this building, as you should have years ago."

As Dr. Doom speaks a rumble begins beneath their feet, and immediately Reed knows what is happening. "Oh no." He whispers aloud. "Doom, you’re madder then ever. Stop this, it’s not to late to redeem your life."

Doom laughs, "You are ever the fool, Richards. Ever the redeemer. Doom has nothing to redeem; he has no reason to try, for Doom has done no wrong but to vanquish his enemies. Dooms people love his gentle hand, his loving approach to rule. As any king would do, any monarch, any hero."

"Hero?" The Thing roars. "Hero? You ain’t no hero, you tin plated maniac. You’re a bloody psychopath who rules his people with a fist o’ iron. Nobodies ever gonna miss yer ‘gentle hand’"

"That’s right." Sharon Ventura adds, "You’re loved by your people, because if they don’t love you as you tell them to, they die. They know this. They act as if they love you, because they have to. It’s the same with any bloody dictator."

Doom stares at her balefully. "You go to far, Vixen. But it matters not. For shortly you will be dead, when this building explodes high above the Earth.

"What are you talking about?" Johnny asks in gasps of air.

"You haven’t guessed yet fool? Richards knows, he feels the acceleration, the roar of the powerful motors in this buildings base as it tears towards space, where it will explode, killing you all, as it should have years ago."

He gestures towards a portal on the wall, which shimmers, and then a view of the outside of the Building appears. A view of it hurtling towards space, and certain death!

To Be Concluded!

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