Mae Is The One Who Spread The Photos

Breakfast came and went. Sue got the kids started on their schoolwork, Ben went to the gym for a workout, Johnny burned across the sky on the way to a hot date. Which left the Invisible Woman alone for a couple hours to look up her old college friend, Mae Milton.

The university alumni site wasn't particularly useful. A regular web search turned up far too many hits to wade through. Sue sighed and used her S.H.I.E.L.D. identification number to log into their secure database. The Invisible Woman racked her brain to recall Mae's birthday, where she was born, any scrap of personal data she could feed into the search.

And got a hit.

Mae Mifton was now a businesswoman. Sue whistled as she scrolled through assorted business records. A small publishing empire, interests in various clubs, a video distribution company, a lot of web stuff. Her criminal record was largely clean, as far as S.H.I.E.L.D. was concerned. A couple of IRS audits, some suspects Maggia pay-offs, a couple off-shore bank accounts with question marks, but no known association with terrorists, foreign governments. The Invisible Woman frowned, not sure why Mae was on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar at all.

Until she took a closer look at the businesses. SuperSluts, Inc. CapeSluts, LLC. Herotic Properties, LLC. These were specialist porn publishers and distributors. The ones that owned those websites that published photos of superheroines having wardrobe malfunctions, who had published Tigra's sex tape before the lawsuit, who had offered Ms. Marvel a million dollars to make her adult film debut when she hit 18. Sue Storm's jaw dropped as she saw the civil cases by various heroines against Mae, which had mostly been settled out of court. Jennifer Walter's name showed up frequently; She-Hulk seemed to have almost made a speciality of civil litigation.

With a knot of tension in her stomach, Sue Storm clicked through to SuperSluts' main website.

Only to see her own face, front and center. As a preview of a new product.

COMING SOON: THE INVISIBLE WOMAN BARES ALL!

Someone had added stars over the nipples, but it was the same photo that Janet had sent to Sue this morning. Her old friend, Mae Mifton, was the one who had released the photos. Who was going to publish them so that the whole world would see them.

"Dagnabbit," Sue whispered aloud. Her ingrained effort to not swear in front of the children rendered her incapable of using the expression she really wanted.

Sue Storm rubbed her temples. This was bad. But maybe not the worst. She knew Mae; her old friend might listen to her if she asked her not to publish the photos, or at worst to sell the rights back. Jen had dealt with her successfully too, so that was another possible approach, to threaten litigation. There would be no way to keep this secret from Reed and the others, but Sue could at least keep her overall reputation largely intact if she acted fast.