The Pornstar's Studio

Sue Storm could see the headlines of the Daily Bugle now: "The Invisible Woman goes to pornstar's home!" She smiled grimly as she left the internet cafe, the address and directions already memorized. Three blocks to the nearest subway, head down amid the crowd. Just another New Yorker. It was the easiest way of being invisible in New York, short of standing on the sidewalk with a cup begging for change.

The Invisible Woman liked to be able to disappear like this. Among people. To see them, up close and personal, not just as milling ants from the top of the Baxter Building. It was so easy, in her life of going out into space, into other dimensions, fighting aliens and gods, to lose track of everyday people. Here, on the street, jostled and elbow to elbow with people from every part of life, Sue could see what she fought for.

It wasn't all pretty. Yet it was real. Sometimes, Sue needed that.

She emerged from the subway back into bright sunlight. With her bearings, she walked on. The studio was in one of a warren of small businesses in the ancient brownstones in this district. Bigger stores that had been cut up and remade so many times only the shells of the buildings were the same from a century ago. Once it might have been a restaurant, a book store, a hat shop. Now, Sue saw someone had painted the logo of Tempest Productions. Unless Sue had known what she was looking at, she would have taken it for any other hole-in-the-wall business.

The Invisible Woman marched boldly into the porn studio, as if she had every right to be there. She surveyed a very beige reception room, with one chair and a desk before a door. A small camera occupied a corner of the room near the ceiling. With a thought, Sue turned the camera invisible. She didn't want it to record any more of her than necessary if she could help it.

A kindly grey-haired woman whose enormous bosom sagged onto the desk before her greeted the blonde with a smile.

"Hi. I'm an old friend of Mae's. Is she in?" Sue asked.

The smile stayed on the old woman's lips.

"Do you have an appointment?"

Sue continued to smile too. She saw how the old woman was going to play it. The Invisible Woman reached into her wallet and drew forth a badge she only used for special contingencies. One of the perks of doing the occasional mission for Nick Fury was that she was, at least part-time, an official agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

The old woman's eyes went wide. She ceased smiling.

"I just want a chat. Mae really is an old friend," Sue said as she put the badge away. "Nothing official. Unless we have to make it official."

A moment on the intercom. A guarded smile returned to the old woman's face.

"Miss Tempest will see you now," she said. "Straight through the door. She's...on set. Today is a shooting day."

The Invisible Woman's guts churned as she realized what the old woman met.

"Thank you," Sue said.

An invisible hand turned the knob and opened the door as Sue approached it. A neat trick for putting people on edge—and to not leave any fingerprints.

Sue swallowed hard as the door opened, though. She had plunged into combat with dozens of alien races. Faced demons and demigods, traveled through time, to the depths of the ocean, shrunk down to the microverse. Yet she had never, before today, stepped foot into a porn studio on the day of shooting.

It was time to experience something new.