Porkum Uses Defraudium To Disempower Every Heroine In New York City

The emergency calls began to blow up the Invisible Woman's phone at 3AM. She fell out of bed, uncharacteristically weak and shaky. Her wounded leg, still unhealed, ached terribly. Sue threw an invisible **** field cast around it...only to find, to her dull surprise, that she could not.

"Porkum!" Sue realized immediately.

On her phone, heroines around New York City were reporting of sudden power-loss. She-Hulk, Silk, Ms. Marvel, a handful of mutants—the Invisible Woman's head pounded with a by-now-familiar ache as she crawled over to her closet, where she kept her costumes.

"H.E.R.B.I.E.!" Sue shouted, as she hauled herself into a sitting position onto a chair. "That radioisotope that went through my leg—can you calibrate Reed's sensors to look for other sources of the same radiation?"

"Affirmative," the little robot said.

"Do it," she ordered.

Sue grabbed at a particular costume. The legs and arms were a kind of metal mesh that held a nanomolecular exoskeleton. Reed had based it on the technology of a heroine called Wildstreak, a former Olympic athlete who had become paralyzed due to an accident, but fought crime with the aid of an exoskeleton. Reed had adapted the technology for Sue, just in case of emergencies like this one. The only downside was the limited battery life; it wasn't designed for continuous use like one of Iron Man's armors. Still, as she shed her nightwear and slipped into the outfit, Sue felt reassured that she wouldn't be quite as weak as she felt when she confronted Porkum.

And she did need to confront him. The Invisible Woman was certain of that. With the other superheroines in New York depowered, it was up to Sue Storm to deal with this threat.

"Mrs. Richards, sensors are calibrated," H.E.R.B.I.E. said. "A large field of the exotic radiation is bathing the city."

"What's the source?" Sue said as she engaged the exoskeleton and stood up with a deceptive ease that belied the way her muscles felt like jelly. To the rest of the world, it looked little different from her old costume with metal sheaths over the arms and legs. Yet to Sue, it felt as if every movement was being amplified.

"Triangulation suggests the Statue of Liberty's torch," H.E.R.B.I.E. chimed in.

"Bastard!" Was Sue's automatic response. To think that the disgusting pig-man would defile a sacred national monument to literally disempower women—"I'll bet he votes Republican, too."

As Sue Storm headed toward the Fantasticar, she paused.

Is this really the right thing to do? To rush off without a plan? she thought to herself. Because that worked so well last time. No, I need to take a minute, think this through. If Porkum is doing this, he'll know somebody will come after him, probably me. He'll have some trap in place. I've got to outsmart him.

A few moments later, an idea came to her. She smiled grimly. Whatever Porkum was expecting, he would be in for a surprise.