When She Starts Using More

An invasion from the Negative Zone. An attempt by the Mad Thinker to construct a new Super-Skrull from the bodies of dead Super-Skrulls, using the same techniques as the Frankenstein's Monster. Galacta, daughter of Galactus, was pregnant again. One thing after another came up, and the Fantastic Four rose to meet each challenge. Valeria and Franklin accidentally played a game with the Cosmic Tesseract that had far-reaching consequences on the space-time integrity of the universe. Sue had to ground the two for a month for endangering the fabric of all existence.

As the days passed into weeks, Sue acquitted herself as well as ever, grateful that her injury had healed so completely, that her powers were strong and effective as they had ever been.

There was only one thorn in Sue Storm's side, one flaw in her existence to remind her of her period of convalescence. The pills she still took. The little bottles of big pink pills that continued to come regularly. Which was a good thing, because Sue Storm had noticed her usage had increased. At first, it had been one pill a day. Then one in the morning and one at night. Soon, however, Sue had noticed her energy would flag during the middle of the day, and she would have a third pill with coffee instead of lunch.

It was perhaps a month after Reed returned when Sue arose in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. She felt enervated, shaky, but not the natural tiredness that came from normal activity or the stress of adventuring. Something itched beneath Sue's nerves, her brain refused to be quiet, her heart seemed to beat erratically in her chest—she stumbled into the bathroom and automatically opened the medicine cabinet. By dint of habit, she reached for a pill—

—and it was only after she dry-swallowed two fat lozenges with their imprint of a smiling pig that she looked at her medicine cabinet and realized it was full of pill-bottles.

All of them the same. The prescription had long since run out, but the little brown bottles had continued to arrive. Sue stared at the cabinet full of pill-bottles and thought back to how often she had taken the pills. How it had become second nature to her. She swallowed hard as she felt the pill hit her stomach, and almost immediately a sense of well-being seemed to wash over her, followed by a sensual heat.

The Invisible Woman closed the cabinet and stared in the mirror at the blush that rose on her cheeks. Instinctively, she turned her nightie invisible, and saw the dark brown nipples stiffen as the blush spread from her cheeks down her neck. She frowned. The reaction was too quick, too automatic, to be the result of the pills themselves. They hadn't had time to take effect yet.

Then she exerted her power a little further. Layers of skin disappeared, to show the yellow fat and white milk glands, the striated red muscles and veins that pulsed as her heart hammered more normally in her chest. Then the muscles disappeared and Sue saw her own pink lungs. The long, snake-like tube of her esophagus. The vivid bag of a stomach. A part of her that no-one saw, no one knew about.

The wall of the stomach dissolved away...and Sue gasped as she saw the two pills break apart and release a creamy middle she had not guessed they possessed. A very familiar whiteness...like the insides of Porkum's bonbons.

With a shiver, Sue ended her power. In the blink of an eye, she was no more than a beautiful blonde who stood dressed in a thin blue nightie before the bathroom mirror.

Yet there was worry in her eyes, for all that her weakness swiftly passed. Because she knew now what she should have guessed all along, when Porkum's chocolates had ceased arriving—that he had found some other way to get to her. The pills that Sue now realized she could not go a single day without.

"I'm addicted," Sue said to herself—and knew she would get no sleep tonight.