Ruby Takes Sue's Head

Sue Storm had just stepped out from her hairdresser's shop on 45th St. and was contemplating a trip to the Gotham West Market when there was a flicker of pain in her neck. She tried to raise her hand to the spot of pain, but her arm did not move. Instead, the Invisible Woman's vision saw her fall forward, vision greying out at the edges.

There was a sense of falling in darkness. Yet the strangest thing was she couldn't feel her body. Couldn't feel anything.

Then her nose began to itch.

Instinctively, she tried to raise a hand to scratch it. Nothing happened.

As awareness grew, she tried to use her powers. Imagined an invisible finger scratching her nose. Again, nothing happened. Except now Sue felt the stir of real alarm. Something was dampening her powers.

Sound came to her ears. She kept her eyes closed, just listening for a moment. Sue couldn't feel anything beow her neck, but she could feel a tight collar on her neck, pinching into the skin. Carefully, she tried to control her breathing.

Then she realized she wasn't.

Sue couldn't feel her lungs. Couldn't draw and expel air. Her nostrils moved, but there was no suction.

"You're awake," a woman's voice said, oddly clipped, like text-to-speech. "Do open your eyes, Susan."

Since there seemed to be no point in pretending otherwise, Sue opened her eyes.

Her perspective was from atop a table. She looked up at a woman in a skimpy costume, a single violet leotard with red gloves and boots, with a scandalously plunging neckline that exposed the sides of her modest breasts and quite nearly showed the color of her pubic hair. Yet what caught Sue's attention was the small crimson sphere that sat atop those shoulders, resting on what looked like a studded metal collar.

It was like staring into the depths of a perfect ruby. Sue could see reflections play across the surface, and through the semi-transparent material the rest of the room beyond. A name surfaced in Sue Storm's memory, and a cold sensation gripped her.

"Ruby Thursday," Sue said.

Her mouth and tongue moved, but no air stirred. The sound came out of the metal collar that gripped Sue Storm's neck.

"Indeed," the villain said. She reached forward with her gloved hands and stroked the Invisible Woman's golden blonde hair. "And you, Susan Storm, are now mine."

With care, the villain lifted Sue up, her hands situated just under the heroine's ears. She turned her around, towards a mirror attached to the wall of what Sue could see was some sort of small laboratory. Equipment she had no name for, but which reminded her of Tony Stark's work on cybernetics. What might have been an MRI machine. Various computers and screens. Doors that suggested this was one room in a larger complex.

Yet the mirror caught Sue's attention. It was a full-length mirror, that showed Ruby Thursday's entire body.

For the first time, Sue Storm saw her own disembodied head, held in the villain's hands. The blonde hair actually falling below the level of the metal collar fixed to the stump of a neck, its hidden electronic mechanisms recirculating the blood in Sue Storm's brain, refreshing the oxygen and nutrients needed to keep her decapitated form alive.

Sue Storm opened her mouth and no sound came out, but her electronic collar screamed.