Doom Forges A Mental Link Between Sue Storm and Porkum

Sue Storm left the beauty shop, her new haircut perfect, trimmed down to her collar.

A few golden curls were carefully bagged and disappeared into a purse. The hairdresser who had cut the Invisible Woman's hair for years did not go home, but as instructed, went to a former pork packing warehouse. The door was open, and she walked past the outer office. All the furniture had been removed from the inner office, the carpet torn up, and on the bare floor a design had been marked of frightening complexity, lit only by black candles.

She knelt before the armored figure who read silently from a book on a wooden stand before the complex mystic circle. Held the bag of golden hair out to her liege. Doom took the offering. With a word, not of thanks, but of acknowledgement of her loyalty, she was dismissed.

Porkum lay in the center of the cirle. The naked pig man resisted the urge to scratch himself as Doctor Doom began a slow circumambulation of the circle. Between his metal fingers, he twined the golden hairs with short, dark bristles he'd plucked from the mutant's own pink hide. An infinitely fragile rope slowly took shape as Doom began to chant.

The connection Doom wove was subtle. Quantum entanglement, a binding of souls...Doom knew they were different words for the same relationship. Life wedded to life, mind to mind. With infinite delicacy, the mystic monarch tied the two ends of the braided chain together. He halted, and looked down at Porkum.

"It is done," Doom said.

The pig-man sat up. "Don't feel any different."

"You will," Doom said somberly. "You both will."

Night settled on the Baxter Building. The children went to bed. Ben Grimm enjoyed a cigar and a Stephen King novel in his own quarters. Johnny Storm roared through the air like a fiery comet; Spider-Man needed help with something. Reed Richards was in his lab, in deep conference with Henry Pym and Tony Stark on some sort of atomic assembler.

Sue Storm, freshly showered and dressed only in an oversized Fantastic Four t-shirt and panties, sighed and slid in between the cool sheets. Today had been a good day. She always felt better after a fresh haircut. No super-emergencies. Her head hit the pillow and she closed her eyes. For a few moments, her mind raced through the day's events—ancient memories came back to haunt her—she wondered if she'd set up the coffee for the morning—her breathing slowed, deepened.

She wasn't even sure when she drifted off.

Then the Invisible Woman's eyes opened wide. Her face broke into a very uncharacteristic smile. She lifted up the covers, raised her head, and leered at the soft hills of her own breasts beneath the t-shirt. A very strange chuckle, utterly unlike any sound that Sue Storm had ever made in her life, came from her throat.

"Jackpot." The word came from Sue Storm's throat and lips, but it wasn't Sue Storm in command as her body levered itself out of bed.