Porkum Sends Sue Storm Some Handmade Milk Chocolates

For the first three days, it was a joy to sleep in. To have the whole top floors of the Baxter Building to herself. The little H.E.R.B.I.E. robot would bring her coffee and snacks. Every afternoon, one of the Avengers would show up to chat with Sue. Jessica Jones to help her to the astronaut shower she had been using to keep clean, Captain Marvel or She-Hulk to do some light aerobics so that the Invisible Woman didn't lose her all-important six pack, Janet Van Dyne or Tigra just to keep her company. To talk with her and keep her sane until the nurse arrived to take her vitals, make sure Sue was taking her meds, and change the dressing on her wounded leg.

The nights were the worst. Long, dark nights without her kids, her husband, her family. She could only take care of so much email every day before she fell asleep. Only to wake up all alone.

So on day four, she projected an invisible scooter-chair and went down to the mail room.

Nothing about Sue Storm's previous life had prepared her for being a superheroine, and nothing about being a superheroine had prepared her for being a celebrity. Sometimes there was a mountain of fanmail and packages. H.E.R.B.I.E. was trained to sort through most of it. Folks offering to license the Fantastic Four brand or sell them something went into the junk pile. Fan-letters were sorted by recipient, with each of the Four trying to read and answer as much of it as they could when they had spare time. Packages were sorted out that way too.

Everything was scanned, of course. Chemical, biological, radiological, temporal shenanigans...people had sent them bombs, biological weapons, warnings from the future, chemical explosives, all manner of traps. Also cookies, cakes, candies, hand-knit sweaters and blankets, strange and terrible objects of devotion. Sue frowned as she thought of all the panties that the male members of the Fantastic Four had gotten in the mail. Or the disgusting pervert who had used semen as glue for the stamps on his envelope. Reed Richards kept the Baxter Building secure, but more of the sensors were focused on the mail and deliveries than anywhere else in the building. It seemed to be the preferred mode of attack for so many dimwitted villains, perverts, and hopefuls.

This meant that whatever made it through Reed's rigorous screening was usually fairly safe to handle.

"All right, H.E.R.B.I.E.," Sue said aloud to the small robot as it hovered in place. "What have I got?"

There were letters. The Make-A-Wish Foundation had their number, and everything was scheduled through their representatives, but some people just wrote in asking if Sue could drop by. It hurt the heroine to deny these requests; there just wasn't much time in the day. They had a form packet, with a signed photo of Sue that she would slip in—and she liked to personalize it, not just have it be a standard brush-off. Then there were the love-letters. Sue usually didn't bother to read most of these; and plenty of men and women sent their photos to Sue as well. They could be quite graphic; Sue wrinkled her nose at one piece of perfumed pink stationery from someone named Porkum, who had included a ridiculous photo of something the Invisible Woman took to be some new species of giant earthworm, as prehensile as an elephant's trunk. With a shake of her head, Sue fed them all into the shute for the atomic disassembler in the basement.

It was a long, lazy day, going through the mail. Interrupted only by Jennifer Walters, the She-Hulk, coming for Sue's fitness break; and the nurse to take her blood pressure and advise her not to work too hard. Sue worked through lunch and was getting hungry by the late afternoon, but she had made a good dent in her pile of correspondence.

Which left the packages.

One of them was in bright pink wrapping. The exact shade as the card from Porkum that Sue had discarded earlier. She tore open the wrapping and the smell of fresh milk chocolate filled the room. Immediately, Sue's mouth watered. The Invisible Woman bit her lower lip as she opened the box.

There were a dozen small hand-dipped chocolate bonbons there. Sue's palms went sweaty. To maintain her figure, she normally avoided sweets. A moment on the lips, an eternity on the hips. To be truthful, though, chocolate was her weakness. One she very rarely indulged in. Of course...just one bite might not hurt...

"H.E.R.B.I.E.? These were scanned, right?" Sue asked.

"Correct, Mrs. Richards," the robot said formally. "No biological, chemical, or radiological danger detected, with a certainty of 99.998%"

"Good enough," Sue thought as she popped a chocolate treat out of its container and into her mouth. She crunched through the rich milk chocolate into the surprisingly salty-sweet cream filling beneath.

"And once she is in the Baxter Building, alone, how will you get to her?" Doom said. "You must know that every package is scanned thoroughly before any of the Fantastic Four even see them."

Porkum grinned savagely. "Sure. And I bet you know every way that stretchy cuck husband of hers scans things. So you can make something that looks good to the scanners, but passes them."

Doom snorted. "It is not that simple. Although...I could alter the package at a molecular level so that the act of scanning it triggers a change from one chemical state to another. Something that would pass the scanners, but in the very act of scanning became a substance that would not."

It was an intriguing line of thought.

"Ummmmgh," Sue Storm moaned aloud. Her body shook at the rush of sugar and chocolate. The flavor felt strangely off, especially that creamy center, unlike any chocolate she ever had. As Sue licked her fingers, she eyed the rest of the box nervously. Those were dangerously good. There was even a note on the packaging. A pink card that said PORKUM'S HAND-MADE MILK CHOCOLATES.

Sue's tongue ran over her lips and teeth, to try and catch every last morsel of chocolate. She wondered who this Porkum even was. Some new chocolatier setting up business in New York City? A mutant, perhaps.

She stared at the row of chocolate bonbons. Her stomach rumbled. Sue knew she really shouldn't...