One year later...

“Honey? Do you have those invitations ready?” Called out the Invisible Woman on her way to her husband’s lab, the door opening to her proximity as she stepped inside, looking into the large research space to find her husband Reed. There, she found him at his desk filling out letters, a small stack already enveloped to his left when he stopped and turned around to smile back at his wife waving back at him.

“Oh, hello Susan. Yes, I’m almost done here.” The man chirped back as he turned around in his seat and went back to writing letters, his wife coming up behind him to press against his back and drape her arms around his shoulders in a soft embrace. Kissing the back of his head as she watched him print out invitations for a party they had been planning. Bringing up one letter he had finished but hadn’t put in an envelope, Reed looking up to the smiling face of his wife as she perched herself over his right shoulder to read what he had written for their friends. “Care to give it a read over?”

Plucking the letter from Reed’s hand, Susan stood up straight to read over the invitation. A warm smile on her face as she mused over why she and Reed were making these. To think it had been a whole year since the accident that had them all meet different versions of Susan across the multi-verse. Some good, some wonderful, some plain… Some horrifying. But still, it was an interesting experience. So much so, even though they had to part ways, she didn’t want to cut herself from knowing how her other selves were doing. So. She and Reed came up with a plan to invite them all back for a special occasion. And right now, they were writing the invitations.

“Hello Reed and Susan Richards from the MULTI-VERSE, you have been cordially invited by Reed and Susan Richards of universe 616 to a family barbeque at our address at 4 Yancy street Ney York, New York. Food and drink will be provided but please BYO…BYOPDS?”

“Bring your own portable dimensional scanner.” Reed explained, counting each word with his fingers. “If the other Reeds are anything like me, they’ll want to document as much as they can from our reality to take home to research like I would if I visited theirs.”

Snorting and rolling her eyes, she couldn’t help but kiss him on the forehead, ignoring him explaining what he had been researching ever since that fateful week as she made her way to the portal device siting against the wall of the lab. Turning on the portal, the device hummed to life, swirling like molten silver before its surface smoothed into a polished surface and images began to form. Gaining in clarity, the picture showed Susan as a ship captain sailing across the ocean. Smiling back at the image, she knew that was the wrong one and went to the nearby dial to change the reality she was looking at. It took months for Reed to fix the polarity problem when this all first happened and found a way to reverse it so it wouldn’t cause surges in the portal device again. All thanks to a watch she had around her wrist that stabilized her frequency while in proximity to the portal.

Which meant she could finally peer into other realities without harm… It still only showed everything from her version in that reality, but at least it wasn’t pulling them all into hers. This worked in her favour, especially for what she was doing right now.

“Okay… First on the invitation list…” Plucking an envelope from the pile in her hand, she looked out into the portal to find a version of her on the other side. Blue skinned, with antlers and angelic wings, the succubus was at a desk writing up financing for her resort when Susan flicked the envelop through the portal, smiling when she noticed her other noticed it land on her desk in surprise. “…And next.”

Going over each universe where her friends resided, Susan flicked an invitation in front of their proverbial lap. After sending half a dozen invites through the portal, Reed came up from behind her with the last one, seeing his wife smile back over her shoulder when they looked up universe 149, finding that Susan with her Reed in the living room. “Here’s the last one Suzie.”

“Good, that includes everyone who can come.”

Stepping away from the portal, the two watched as the Susan from that reality picked up the letter from the coffee table and excitedly called over her Reed, the Invisible Woman then turned the dial to look away from the universe to give them privacy.

“And that’s all of them. This should be exciting to meet them again.”

“Indeed, this would give me an opportunity to meet other Reeds as well as Susans.”

“I just hope we have enough room for everybody.”

Looking around the lab and stepping out to the hallway to the rest of the building, Reed found Ben and Johnny sitting with Franklin and Valaria in the living room where they sat with Jo-Venn and N’Kalla on the floor watching the game. “Well… I can always update the space with a little help with Valaria. I’m more worried about food then space.”

“Oh, HERBIE can help with that. Besides, you KNOW the other mes would bring something to eat.”

Looking back at the portal sifting through realities, Susan crossed her arms and tilted her head in fascination, looking at every permutation of choices that led to so many realities. Many were so subtle; it was hard to see what was different. While others so radically different it made her head spin.

“This weekend is going to be fun, thank you for this Reed.” Susan swooned, kissing her husband on the cheek.

“You’re welcome swee…”

A flicker from the portal caught Reed’s eye, making him pause as the portal generator began to change on its own. Stepping back, just in case, out of worry that her proximity was to blame, Susan watched as Mr. Fantastic went to work checking the controls as he lost control of the portal.

“What’s going on Reed?”

“It’s… It’s strange, the portal generator is acting like its being controlled remotely.” Reed mentioned over his shoulder, trying to change the settings on the controls. “Every time I try to reset the controls, it sets them back by themselves. I can’t even…”

A ripple occurred on the surface of the portal, one that made Reed take a step back. Just then a metallic claw reached out from the portal and grabbed Reed by his torso, propelling him off his feet and pinning him against the tiled floor with enough **** to crack the tiles.

“REED!”

Another chrome-coloured mechanical tentacle extended out from the portal and reached for whatever it could grip, then another and another, then in unison they bent and arched, pulling what they were connected to through the portal until someone made their way through into their universe. A woman, one wearing a green body suit stood a foot above the floor, her stance poised with her gloved hands behind her back, looking around the lab with welder’s goggles over her eyes, and her long blonde hair braided into a ponytail behind her. Taking a few steps with her mechanical limbs, her gaze quickly turned to the **** Reed on the floor and the surprised Invisible Woman taking on a defensive stance to this stranger, this woman who looked exactly like her.

“Hmm, impressive, I see you’ve already mastered relative dimensional folding in this reality…” Looking to the man she had in her grasp and the confused woman by the door, this strange woman raised her chin, her eyes unreadable through the goggles. “Though something tells me YOU aren’t the architect of all this.”

“Who ARE You?!”

“Ah, what we see now is like a dim image in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. Susan Storm, I presume?” Smiling back at her and still being propped up by her mechanical limbs, the stranger bowed with a curtsy. Her tentacles coiling and swirling around her until they took the form of a seat for the woman to sit and cross her leg over the other. Yet the one she had over Reed kept its place. “You may also call me Dr. Susan Storm, though I’ve been quite fond of the title of Doctor Octopus.”

“Let go of my husband you BITCH!”

Reaching out with her hand, the villainess gasped when she felt an invisible **** grip at her throat. Surprising her, but she retained her cold, smarmy demeanor as she eyed the Invisible Woman threatening her.

“You are going to let my husband go, and you are going RIGHT BACK where you came from!”

Smiling and tilting her head, despite the vice grip around her throat, Dr. Octopus raise her gloved hand and snapped her fingers. “Oh?”

The portal behind her rippled again, with more women stepping through, making Susan shift her gaze to the half dozen versions of her glaring back at her. One wore a black body suit with a lightning bolt cleavage window, her cropped platinum blonde hair standing on end as arcs of static electricity licked between her fingers and out her eyes. Her face a mask of barely contained anger. Another wore purple robes, holding a coiled staff that had a crystal ball at its pommel that looked like it contained a storm within, her face obscured before the hood of her robes. Another was practically Amazonian in figure and height, towering over the others by at least a foot, her physique was powerful and her appearance tribal, wearing leather pants and jacket with lion’s fur mink stitched around the collar. Her skin was a mocha colour and her hair thick and wild, matted like a lion’s mane. The fifth was the oldest looking amongst them, hunched, yet propped up by folded up wings wearing a flight jacket with a fur collar, her face covered with an aviator’s leather helmet made to look like a buzzard’s beak. The last flew out of the portal, laughing maniacally until she came to a hover above them all, standing up on a self-propelled drone in the esthetic of a bat or gargoyle with a gaping fanged maw and wings that buzzed with the collection of propellers keeping her aloft. This final visitor wore a full body fish-scale armor with blue linen boots, gloves and a tunic with hood and cloak. Her blue skinned face twisted in a fanged and toothy grin that reached her pointed ears.

Stepping back, the Invisible Woman was shocked to find a squad of women, all sharing her face staring back at her, while their leader retained her regal aire, her hands folded in her lap as she smiled back at her.

“So, you want us to go back or else? You and what army?”