The Fantastic Four Are Called For An Emergency

Despite the warm day, Sue Storm shivered. The sun shone through the Invisible Woman, and refused to heat her limbs, but the breeze caught at her naked body as she traveled an invisible highway, back across the rooftops. Her nipples grew hard and rigid, and goosebumps broke out all over. The sweat ran freely down her body, but couldn't evaporate without sunlight, so it ran cold and icy.

None of these were new sensations. Most people never thought about what it was like to be invisible, and Sue could have surprised them with a few of her experiences. Yet it was the first time in her life she had ever been undressed in public. As her feet padded on invisible forcefields she took some solace that at least she did so unseen.

At least, as long as I don't run into Daredevil, she thought with a smile.

Half an hour would see her back to the Baxter Building, and then she could have a shower, get dressed. Except it wasn't five minutes after she left Mae's house that her communicator began to buzz.

"Attention, Fantastic Four," Reed Richard's voice chimed in. "Some kind of large aquatic monster is attacking the Fulton Street Fish Market! Everyone, converge on the site as quick as you can..."

Sue cursed. Her communicator screen shifted to show a map, picked out a route. Already, the Fantasticar would be on its way with Reed and Ben, Johnny would be flying under his own power. The Invisible Woman couldn't afford to let her family fight alone.

Invisible rollerblades bedecked her feet as she zipped along an invisible highway. The incriminating photos and contracts in their manilla envelope were strapped in an invisible pouch on her back. As she moved, she kept an eye out for any rooftop clothesline for something she could borrow to cover herself—but this wasn't a part of New York that often featured such old-fashioned solutions to drying clothes. Not in an age of electric dryers and rising rents.

She smelled the fish market before she saw the creature. There was an explosion and screams, and Sue guided herself towards it. When she finally did see the beast, she wondered how she had missed it. The creature had to be three stories tall, like a giant octopus with ten stilt-like arms and a ring of ten eyes around the great green crest of its head. It moved with astonishing speed, and the streets were crowded with people who fled the beast. Wherever its tentacles touched, there was an explosion.

Sue looked around, tried to triangulate the flashing lights and sirens of oncoming police cars, ambulances. In the distance, she could see the tell-tale silhouette of the Fantasticar, on its way and moving fast, Johnny a streak of flame beside it.

"I'm on the scene!" Sue told her communicator. "I have eyes on the monster."

She chewed her lip as she debated whether to tell them about her current undressed state, then decided against it. That wasn't a conversation she wanted or needed to have. With any luck, she could keep all or most of herself invisible until she got home.

"I'm going invisible," she said. "Hopefully the monster won't see me."

Reed's voice squawked caution. With courage befitting her role as a heroine, Sue skated in closer. The beast was oddly luminous, and Sue saw with some surprise that the concrete beneath its supporting tentacles wasn't cracked at all despite what must be an immense weight. The Invisible Woman got as close as she dared, and then stopped in mid-air and aimed an invisible battering-ram of pure **** straight at the heart of the thing.

The tentacled beast didn't even flinch. Susan Storm blinked, confused. It hadn't even flinched! She frowned and tried to figure out where she had gone wrong...when the thing turned.

The Fantastic Four was here. At least, the three that it could see. The beast let out a roar that seemed to come from a dozen throats at once, its tentacles lashed at nearby buildings.

One of them passed straight through the Invisible Woman.

Sue gasped in shock as the tentacle passed through her. There was a blinding flash as it caught her eyes, but otherwise she didn't feel a thing. Immediately Sue realized what had happened.

"Reed! It's a hologr—"

The holographic tentacle touched the building beneath Susan Storm. The small charge of plastic explosive was triggered, just as it would have made contact. The brunt of the blast was absorbed by the invisible **** field Sue stood on, but the puff of air and heat knocked her off her footing. For a moment, she fell...and then something crashed against her head, and the world went dark.