Second time's the charm

The front door of the apartment swung open with Johnny Storm stepping inside and sweeping his hand through his hair, exhaling out a whistle just as he closed the door behind him and looked up to see several versions of his sister sitting in the living room, chatting amongst themselves until the click of the door made them silent and they turned their attention to the Human Torch. Nervously, the man greeted the group of women.

“Hi Johnny.” Chirped out the hologram sitting at the couch, an unreadable smile on her lips as she and the others watched the man go to the nearby table and dropped his coat and a few items he bought while out.

“Hey… Sis, is Sue still mad?”

A shared chuckled was heard between the ladies in the living room, with the succubus taking a smiling sip of her drink and the alien looking away wistfully with a grin.

“You don’t have to worry about a thing Johnny, Sue and Reed kissed and made up.”

Sighing and leaning back against the table, Johnny shook his head and smiled, turning a chair behind him to sit and go over his things now that the weight of worry was lifted off his shoulders. “Thank God! The last time I saw her that angry was when…”

“When Doom kidnapped our daughter Valaria?” Asked the wendigo with a smirk, her eyebrow raised, wondering if that occurred in this dimension too.

“Oh, what about that time Xavier’s bad side tried to kill our son?”

“What?... He tried that?” Gasped the hologram, her hand at her open mouth in shock.

“That didn’t happen with you?”

“NO!... Huh.”

Crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair, Johnny could only stare as the four women compared realities. Slowly shaking his head when he heard from the version of his sister with wings and horns that a demon threatened to **** her daughter… So, she crushed him like a grape. Or the time Taranaq the beast god commanded the wendigo Sue to eat her Reed. Or how the transforming car version of his sister told how some big mechanical warlord named Megatron wanted to wipe out all life on Earth, starting with her loved ones. To say he was pleasantly confused was an understatement. But then he noticed a few of the other Susans were missing.

“Hey, where are the other two?”

“Hmm?” Asked the alien woman, sipping her drink.

“You know; the super model and the… Sex ****.” Johnny shivered a bit as he was **** to picture that image with his sister. “Didn’t they go with you? Where are they now?”

“Like I said Johnny, they’ve kissed and made up.”

*

Reed laid in bed, staring up at the ceiling in utter surprise while two versions of his wife too up either of his arms in bed with him, nuzzling his chest while his real wife slept on top of him, using his chest as a pillow.

“Wow…”

Hearing his wife… Or one of them at least sigh and hug his arm more tightly, Reed looked down to see her smile as she pressed her face against him affectionately. Slowly the woman stirred and sat up, folding her arms underneath her and unintentionally giving her cleavage a window as she propped her chin up on her open hand to rest on.

“Did we have fun Reed?” She asked, smiling, and tracing circles around his chest with her finger. “I hope we didn’t take too much out of you.”

“Wow…” The man could only mutter, still looking down at the trio of women who held him close.

Giggling at his reaction, Susan leaned up to kiss his nose and pulled away to sit up at the foot of the bed to gather her clothes and get dressed. Slowly stirring, the others got up and did the same, offering their own gestures of affection to the man as they all separated and gathered their things. The former sex **** continued to show affection even as he zipped up his pants and tried to pull his shirt on, the woman helping him the entire time and peppering the back of his neck and shoulders the entire time. Looking up at his wife as she finished getting dressed, she didn’t have a look of anger about her, quite the opposite. If anything, she looked back at the other version of herself with an endearing smile then back to him with renewed interest.

“So Reed, any luck with the dimensional portal?”

“Well, I’ve been trying to fine tune it again, I was working on it for…” Pausing, he scratched his head in confusion. He suddenly realised he had no idea what time it was, or what he had been doing in the lab the entire time. “H-How long we’re you gone again?”

“Five hours Reed.”

“REALLY? Well… I guess I got a lot done. Would you all like to see?”

Seeing the trio of women nod, Reed got up and opened the door to their bedroom. The moment he took a step out, the man was surprised to hear the other Susans cheer and whistle from their spot in the living room, making the man blush when his wife and the other two Susans came up behind him and embraced him from behind.

“Wow, you guys must have REALLY made up when you got back.” Called out Johnny from the living room table, oblivious as to all the excitement.

Coughing into his hand and gasping slightly when he felt one of the Susans behind him pinch his rear, the model version of his wife sashayed past him to join the others with an alluring grin on her lips looking over her shoulder.

“Uhm… Let’s take a look at what I’ve managed to complete, shall we?”

Gathering up and following the man down the hall to the laboratory, the group huddled together and closed the door behind them, keeping a wary eye on the floating cosmic woman still hovering at the center of the room with some trepidation. Reed returned to the controls of the portal and checked over calibrations. Activating the device, the portal came to life with a hum of energy and a halo of static that caused the back of everyone’s necks to form goosebumps. The images flittering in the portal slowed, allowing the group of Susans to view into one world after the other. Just like before, the list of worlds that skimmed by through the portal were either subtle or incredible, there did not appear to be a middle ground that could be narrowed.

One world appeared almost medieval, with what looked like Susan wearing an enchantress’s garb and a staff in hand facing some terrible demon monster, another showed her at a school sports event cheering on her son and daughter as they raced in a potato sack together. Another showed Susan making a sandwich for herself, only to switch to the image of a massively obese giantess of the woman wearing the crown of Galactus haphazardly on her head while floating in space reaching for a moon to devour. Then turning to a world where Susan had dyed her hair black and became a goth rocker in front of a cheering audience, another where she became a nun, another where she became a stripper. Each world was different, each world made the Human Torch bring his hands to his eyes in the hopes of burning out the images of his sister in so many screwed up realities.

“I swear Reed… Therapy!”

“Sorry Johnny, I still don’t have control over which dimension to peer into yet, but at least it looks more stable now.”

“Yeah… Your right on that.” Murmured the alien Susan, slowly approaching the portal and watching as the realities passed by one by one, there was no static, or blurriness, it was almost like watching television. Except for one strange oddity. “But why is it only showing me, err… Us?”

“Hmm?” Leaning over to stretch his neck to see what the woman was seeing, Reed watched as one reality after the other passed by. One of Susan sunbathing on a tropical beach, another of her baking cookies with her version of Valaria and Franklin, another of her as Queen of Atlantis with Namor. All these dimensions were focussing on his wife and almost no one else. “I must admit, this is very strange, I wonder why.”

“Are we looking at this place in another dimension?” Asked the hologram, looking through the portal and seeing other versions of Susan Storm come into view. “I mean, in those realities is that where this building would be?”

Stepping forward to look at the portal more closely, the Invisible woman squinted to look at the different worlds as they shifted by.

“No… Those look like the Bahamas… That’s a mountain… And that doesn’t look like New York at all… Where the hell is…”

Just then the portal began to intensify with light, surprising everyone just as a body was ejected from the portal and landed right on top of Susan.