#9 Volume Two

Franklin Richards awoke that morning with a groan.  It didn’t start out as a groan, but became one mid-yawn, when his brain finally caught up with the rest of his body and the alarms went off.   Test day!  School started in less than an hour and it was a test day.  He’d forgotten to study.  Franklin moaned into his pillow, realizing he’d have to cram on the bus.  Again.

 

Yet, with the exception of that crummy first hour Biology test, it didn’t prove too bad a day.  He had his favorite sandwich -- ham and provolone, no crust --  for lunch, swapped notes with that cute foreign exchange student in History class, and made hazy plans with his friends for the weekend before the final bell.  It was all very mundane, of course.  Very common and unremarkable. 

 

Wonderfully so.

 

No miracle luck would rescue Franklin on that Biology test though.  Last second cramming hadn’t helped.  His brain had refused to absorb anything.  He scored a low ‘C’ and had to bring it home for his parents to sign.  His mother gave him a disapproving cluck, took away his video game privileges, and said he’d have to show his father, before kissing him gently on the head.  She was used to him not getting the best of grades.  She wished he would but she had to come to accept that her Franklin was just an average young boy.  He was no great brain and that was maybe okay. 

 

There was no pressure to be anything but what he was.

 

The evening too proved dull like most evenings spent at home.  They had dinner, made from processed foods re-warmed in the microwave or on the stovetop.  Afterwards, Franklin did an hour’s worth of algebra homework and then went outside to help with the yard chores.   His father put on work gloves and cleared great big handfuls of smelly old leaves out of the rain gutters.  Franklin raked them into an organic recyclables bag for disposal.  Later, he would watch television with his parents, while his mother rocked his sister gently in her lap.  On the screen played a brain-dead reality show about wannabe pop stars followed by a soapy melodrama involving implausibly attractive lawyers. 

 

Franklin went to bed that night tired, spent, and relatively happy.  Not a single important or significant thing had happened the entire day.  It was one of many like.

 

None of which was even remotely true.

 

Franklin’s parents here were not his real parents.  They were programmable hard light constructs produced by a series of hidden micro-projectors.  The house wasn’t a home because nobody really lived there.  The whole suburban neighborhood in fact, despite the very convincing two car garages, barking dogs, and backyard swing sets, was a fake, a carefully constructed set that only mimicked life. 

 

It had all been built by Reed Richards and tucked away on one of the many floors of the remodeled Baxter Building.  It was called the VB-5000, the letters standing for ‘Vacation Bunker’.  He’d built it for his wife and children, as a safe retreat where they could, on occasion, forget the cares of the world and their hectic lives and pretend to be a normal family, all without the danger of leaving home.  

 

It had never been used.  

 

Franklin being the sole exception.  He may have been the only one who even remembered it existed.  Every now and then, he would sneak away from his holographic tutors and his faithful nanny Yoshi to play pretend for awhile.  His pretend didn’t involve fighting dragons or traveling through outer space or facing down the forces of evil.  He had already done all of that. 

 

So instead Franklin’s pretend involved living the life of a normal boy his age, or at least how he imagined they lived, having very little hard data to go by.   A life with normal parents and normal expectations.  Where the name Richards didn’t hang around his neck like an enormous, inescapable weight, a dread prophecy that demanded fulfilling. 

 

That, to him, was the fantasy world. 

 

The one he could never have or even so much as glimpse except in play.

 

---

 

“You’re doing it wrong.”

 

The speaker crossed his pudgy arms across his chest.   He was roughly the same height and age as Franklin, yet in every other instance his physical opposite.  Dark-haired, red-faced, tubby, with a thick upper lip that curled arrogantly upwards at the slightest provocation.  

 

The two children -- three altogether, if one includes girls, and one probably should -- were gathered in one of the Baxter Building’s numerous labs.  There were so many labs in fact that the labs had wings and the wings had separate halls and the halls themselves had rows upon rows of carefully numbered rooms that only Dr. Richards himself could ever possibly keep straight. 

 

They were in the robotics wing right now and on the work table in front of them were the scattered parts and circuit boards of a robot mid-construction.  It was globular in form, although currently that globe lay split in two halves, with long spindly arms awaiting attachment beside it. 

 

A skinny young girl with red highlights in her shoulder length hair was even now busy soldering robot limbs to robot joints.  

 

“I said you’re doing it wrong,” Hubert Nightshade repeated, re-crossing his arms for emphasis.  “Didn’t you hear me?”

 

Eva Nyugen stopped working just long enough to glare at him.  “Shush, won‘t you?”

 

“No, I won’t shush!  I am a robotics genius.  I know what I’m talking about.  You both have to listen to me!”

 

Eva answered his plaintive whine with a dramatic groan of her own.  “This is why no one likes you.”

 

Hubert’s lip seemed to curl upwards just a little further than usual.  “Feh.  I don’t care.”  He paused, sniffed imperiously, then shifted his feet.  “Franklin likes me.  Don’t you?”

 

“Sure.” 

 

“And he’s famous, you know.  Not like you.  You’ll never be famous.  I will though.  Someday.”

 

That was mostly true, Franklin thought.  Not the part about Hubert becoming famous -- he could care less about that -- but the part about liking him.  Hubert could certainly be pushy, temperamental, and even rude at times.  Franklin hadn’t found any of these less than endearing traits to be a deal breaker though.  Maybe that was simply because he had never had many friends his own age.  That made him more willing to be tolerant of the quirks in his newest ones.

 

He also felt a little sorry for Hubert.

 

That’s because Hubert’s mother was a mad scientist, one who specialized in building combat robots for non-techie villains.  Nightshade Robotechs didn’t have a great track record though.  Their robots were known for failing at critical moments, like while storming a rival’s secret lair or when Captain America punched them really hard.  They were definitely third rate. 

 

So Hubert’s mom was more like an irritable scientist than a truly top shelf mad one.  Franklin imagined it was a difficult to grow up in such a situation.  Do you root for your parents to succeed and cause misery for the rest of the world?  That seemed kind of weird to him.  It was no wonder Hubert didn’t know how to behave in public.

 

At least Franklin’s parents were always the good guys.  Unless you believed what some of those people on the news channels were saying lately.*  But Uncle Ben said he shouldn’t.  They were all just jealous and cynical, because in America you’re not cool unless you’re tearing somebody down. 

 

* (Reed Richards has come under fire for the unforeseen negative applications of his technology as of M2K Fantastic Four v2 #1 - Self-referential Al)

 

Franklin didn’t know if that last part was really true or not.  He also didn’t know the first thing about building a robot.   His friends supposedly did.  Or at least they certainly thought they did... 

 

“Hubert!  No!  That is just stupid!  It’s only supposed to help with chores and stuff…”

 

Hubert placed a tube of thermal epoxy down the bench with a weary sigh, the long put-upon adult about to explain the obvious facts of life to a small, slow-thinking child. 

 

“All robots are improved with a death ray, Eva.  Everyone knows this.” 

 

“You’re crazy!  What are you talking about?”

 

“Franklin wants a death ray.” 

 

“He does not!”

 

“Um, I really don’t care…”

 

Nobody listened to Franklin, not that this mattered.   There would be no winner in their debate, for they were all three about to be interrupted by an uninvited guest. 

 

---

 

“If you’re just tuning in, you’re listening to The Hype, the radio supplement to our nationally syndicated cable news program of the same name.  I’m your host, Jackson Orizio.  We’re discussing deceased starlet Virginia Pokes, again, and the recent bombshell that she may have suffered from necrophilia, among other things.  Is that correct, Dr. Tiller?”

 

“Um, yes, actually it i-”

 

“Uh huh, exactly.  So, now, here’s what I don’t get.  Why the big reaction?  I mean, who cares, right?  There are times I wish I suffered from that.  I lay awake all night, tossing and turning, and…boy, you know, it seems like more of a blessing than an illness to me.”

 

“Um…”

 

“Now here’s my take.  It probably had something to do with all the sleeping pills she was reportedly taking.  Am I right?” 

 

“Ah, well…actually…I don’t know about that.  Are you sure you’re not confusing necrophilia with narcolepsy, Jackson?” 

 

Jackson’s eyes narrowed from across the console even as he chuckled warmly in reply. 

 

“Ha, ha, oh, I think I ought to know the difference!  Uh oh, that’s my producer running in!  Looks like the advertisers are downstairs with the torches again.  We’d better take a quick commercial break but thanks so much for stopping by Dr. Tiller.  When we return, we’ll welcome back Webster Strawslinger, author of Unnatural Acts and a friend of the show, to discuss the recent death of Dr. Henry Pym, who some considered a modern day Dr. Frankenstein.”* 

 

* (Henry Pym died by his own evil creation during the Kang/Ultron War.  See related mini on site - Al)

 

As the show mercifully went to break, Jackson smothered his microphone with his right hand and motioned one of his aides over.  He whispered something into her ear and she quickly whispered back.  His face turned a purplish red.  “And did it go out over the air?  Oh, for Christ sake, you incompetent jerk-offs!  You’re supposed to censor me for stuff like that.  The liberal PC police will be after my nuts again!” 

 

He scowled across the studio, where Dr. Tiller had just ducked out the door, sparing himself from the host’s notorious wrath.  “Pointy-headed screwball.  Thinks he’s funny too I bet.  Lets see him get booked anywhere again after this!  And, hey, if I wanted to boink a corpse, I’d just boink wife!  Ha!  Did you see her in the lobby?  Night of the Living D -- and where’s that pimply intern with my flavored mineral water?!?”   

 

Everyone scrambled, except for Jackson, who sat fuming at his mic, and a second man, a complete stranger.  This man lingered silently in the doorway, dapper in dress tails, white gloves, red silk cravat, and top hat.  When Jackson finally noticed him, he jumped in his seat.  He hadn’t seen or heard him enter.  Nobody had in fact.  

 

“And who are you supposed to be?  Houdini?  Guests are to wait in the lobby until called in.”

 

“Pardon my intrusion, but I‘m not a guest,” the man said, voice silky smooth as he reached into his coat. “I have a request.”

 

“What?  Do I look like a stupid FM disc jockey do you?  We don’t take requests here.  This is talk radio, Snidely Whiplash.  Somebody call security, I w-”

 

Jackson’s sentence froze in his throat as his lips began to quiver.  He had seen something darting up the sleeve of his sports jacket out of the corner of his eye.  Now he saw it again.  A cockroach, and not just one, but dozens of them, streaming across the console and over his arms and down into the loosened collar of his shirt.   A panicked scream formed on his mouth, allowing the swarming insects to dart between his parted lips.  

 

As Jackson’s eyes bulged, a thin smile spread over the stranger’s face. 

 

“I’d like you to play this tape for me.”

 

---

 

“You sure you don’t recognize him?  Take a closer look, son.”

 

Franklin did as he was told, peering up at the man’s hangdog face.  He even changed the angle a few times, just in case, but that didn’t help jar his memory either.  He really couldn’t say whether or not he’d ever seen Mr. Griffin Gogol before in his life.  He’d seen so many people after all.   

 

“We found him wandering around Seventh Avenue, sorta dazed, and couldn’t get him to say anything but…”

 

“…rabbit!…”

 

The cop scowled.  “That.  We thought about driving him to the hospital, but that ID card clipped to shirt listed Dr. Richards, your father, as his employer.  And you know how the city prefers to keep it’s nose out of your family’s business…”

 

That much was certainly true, Franklin knew.  With the exception of a handful of understaffed and under-funded units like Code: Blue, the NYPD’s current policy as regarded the Fantastic Four was strictly hands-off.  No amount of hazard pay in the world could make an investigation that might lead to serving an arrest warrant on Dr. Doom or Molecule Man worth it.  Besides, just in terms of the amount of squad cars and equipment destroyed responding to such calls, the city simply couldn’t afford heavy involvement. 

 

“You sure there’s nobody else in that building I can talk to, kid?  Somebody a little older…”

 

Franklin shook his head.  His mom and Uncle Ben and Uncle Johnny were currently off battling the Hulk with a bunch of their superhero friends.*    He doubted they’d be back right away.   

 

* (See M2K’s Avengers #59 for all the action - Al)

 

“He is wearing one of our employee uniforms though, I’m pretty sure.  So I guess I could let him inside to wait.  Maybe Yoshi will know what to do when she gets back from the dentist with my sister.”

 

“Oh, sure, Yoshi will probably know,” the officer said, nodding, as if he was intimately familiar with that name.  Franklin guessed he thought she was a member of the team and not just their nanny.  Whatever the policeman really thought, he was already scurrying back to his patrol car in rapid bounds.  While he didn’t exactly slam on the gas when pulling out, he did run over the curb in his rush.  

 

Franklin was used to that kind of behavior by now.  Even commuters had a tendency to speed up whenever they passed the Baxter Building.  After all, one never knew when a Kree war cruiser or a trans-dimensional portal to the Dark Realm might set down in their backyard, spewing aliens or Mindless Ones up and down the block.  That sort of thing was not at all uncommon.

 

Hubert and Eva were still putting the finishing touches on their robot when Frankin got back inside.  The little silver globe was now floating several feet off the floor, bobbing in place, as Hubert attempted to pry the manual controls out of Eva’s hands. 

 

“We’re going to call him HERBIE,” Eva announced, wrenching the remote back with one final tug that almost sent Hubert prostrate.  “Even if Hubert doesn’t like it.”

 

HERBIE was a name with a less than sterling reputation in Franklin’s family history, having belonged to a string of robots that mostly tried to kill them, but he merely shrugged at the news.  “Okay.  This is Mr. Gogol by the way.”

 

Hubert squinted up at the big stranger, studying his blank, moony expression.   “Mister who?”

 

“…rabbit!…” Gogol yipped, his eyes rolling around in their sockets like big white marbles.  “…rabbit!…”

 

“Mr. Rabbit?”

 

“Mr. Gogol,” Franklin corrected.  “I don’t know him personally but I think he might work for my dad or something.  See the big 4 stitched on his hat and shirt pocket?   That’s the same uniform the security men wear at our warehouse.”

 

Gogol started.  “…thief!…”

 

“Did he say thief?”  Eva asked. 

 

“Um, maybe…?”

 

Hubert scowled, reaching out to poke his index finger at the empty flashlight loop on Gogol’s belt.   “What’s wrong with him?”

 

“I’m not sure.”

 

“Maybe somebody stole his rabbit,” Eva suggested.  “Did somebody steal your rabbit, Mr. Gogol?”

 

“Rabbit!  Fire!”

 

All three frowned.  Gogol wasn’t making much sense and, as a game, the novelty was already wearing thin.  Plus they had a robot to fine-tune.  Franklin suggested that they put him in the infirmary and let one of the medi-bots give him a sedative until his mom returned.

 

“Wait, just hold on a sec,” Eva said, getting that intense look she did when thinking especially hard. 

 

Like Hubert, Franklin had met her at the Young Inventors Convention earlier this summer*, where both had skipped out early after failing to complete their projects.  He quickly learned that this was not normal behavior for Eva though.  If anything she was a workaholic and enough of a perfectionist that his own dad would have been impressed.  Eva’s parents were both Class-A technicians in the Experimental Research and Design Department (ERADD) at SHIELD, which was almost like a normal job in Franklin’s mind, if one ignored the occasional LMD revolts, HYDRA takeovers, and excessive use of acronyms.  

 

* (That would be M2K Fantastic Four #4, Vol. 2 - My Own Biggest Fan)

 

“Warehouse!” Eva announced suddenly.

 

“Thief!” Gogol ejected in return. 

 

Hubert smirked.  “Look, finally someone who speaks at her level.  Maybe we should leave them alone to get better acquainted?”

 

She ignored his smart-aleck comment, this time, and tested out the word again, getting the same reaction.   “It’s like he’s in some kind of…spell, you know?  But he still hears us.  Do you think maybe there was a robbery at the warehouse, Franklin?”

 

“Um, I don’t know…” 

 

“Well, then we should definitely investigate!”

 

“Yes,” Hubert agreed, suddenly changing tact and siding with Eva for once.  “I would like to see the Fantastic Four’s warehouse myself.  So we must investigate.”

 

“That’s probably not a good idea, actually.  I mean, we really should wait for an adult before we…”

 

But even as he was making it, Franklin knew this argument was going to prove a unanimous loser.

 

---

 

Not even an hour later, Hubert was already asking Franklin why he’d insisted on dragging him along on this pointless trip.  So far he had just one word to describe the Fantastic Four’s warehouse and wasn’t at all shy of sharing it with his friends.

 

“Booooring!” 

 

“Well, yeah, but what did you expect?”

 

“I expected something cooler.  Something befitting the Fantastic Four.  Why else do you think I came along?  Where are all the flying saucers?  The taxidermied Skrulls?  Where are the giant glass tubes filled with alternate dimension versions of famous people, like cyborg Stalin or flesh-eating, zombified Milton Friedman?” 

 

Franklin shrugged.  “Um, I don’t know.  They probably don’t exist...”

 

“I mean, this is boring.  It’s just boxes.”

 

And so it was.  Row upon row of cardboard boxes, shipping crates, and old metal filing cabinets from ancient times when facts were organized on paper not computer spreadsheets.  If there was anything more flashy stored in here, then it had been safely tucked away from curious eyes behind panels of wood and packing straw.  Almost as bad, at least from their perspective, is that the warehouse itself was quite orderly.  There was no sign that any kind of break-in or fight had occurred inside.  Franklin began to suspect that Eva had been wrong altogether, that Gogol was merely nuts, when they finally stumbled across a small crate with its lid pried off.  The number ‘62-3’ was stamped on it in red ink and a crowbar was resting on the floor beside it.  Gogol’s missing flashlight was discovered nearby, its lens cracked. 

 

“That’s it?  Just one box?  Hardly much of a robbery.”

 

“That’s assuming anything was stolen in the first place…”

 

Hubert strained his arm down into the crate until he recovered the invoice.  “It says…  ‘Miracle Man, Miscellany’.  Sound familiar?”

 

Miracle Man.  It was the kind of goofy name one ought to remember but Franklin had heard a lot goofy names in his short life.  This one didn’t ring any particularly resonant bells.  “Maybe.  I dunno.” 

 

“Oh!  Did you say Miracle Man?” The boys glanced over to Eva in time to see her face light up.  “Of course you know who he is, Franklin!   He was only one of the Fantastic Four’s very first villains, a stage hypnotist who later used technology and magic to enhance his abilities.  In fact, I think th-”

 

Hubert rolled his eyes as she continued.  “Such a total fan girl,” he groaned, mainly irked that he hadn’t remembered all this himself, despite his own complete hardbound set of Encyclopedia Fantasticas*.

 

* (Encyclopedia Fantasticas available at all fine Fantastic Four-approved retailers.  Also available in DVD-ROM or digital download.  See official website and/or catalog.)

 

“So I guess there was a robbery then?  Probably?  At least now that we have a suspect, we can report it.”  Report it to who was the question.  The NYPD were out and the Avengers were busy dealing with the Hulk.

 

“Except there’s still kind of a problem, Franklin…”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like Miracle Man’s supposed to be dead, for one.”

 

That was a bit of a problem as far as pinning a robbery on him went but by no means insurmountable in Franklin’s experience.  Dr. Doom had died so many times now that the Latverians probably didn’t even bother dragging his headstone out of storage when the latest obituary was posted.  He wasn’t the only one like that either.  Death just didn’t seem take on some people the way it ought to.  It was more like a vacation, but with scars instead tchotchkes for the souvenirs. 

 

Plus, even if this guy really was dead, with a name like Miracle Man, well…

 

“Hey,“ Eva noted, interrupting his thoughts mid-stream, “maybe that’s what’s wrong with Mr. Gogol?  He’s in some kind of hypnotic trance.  Maybe if we clicked our fingers or clapped three times or something, he‘d snap out of it.”

 

“Maybe…

 

“Mr. Gogol?  Hey, where is he, anyways?”

 

Hubert pointed to a nearby office station, where Gogol was now standing with his nose pressed to the window.  As the three walked over, they could hear him say whispering the word “…fire!…” over and over again under his breath.  Hubert sighed. 

 

“You really need some new material.  Think we should try looking for his rabbit next?”

 

“There probably isn’t any rabbit, stupid.  I bet it’s something he hallucinated while hypnotized.  Maybe that’s what frightened him.” 

 

“A rabbit?  And this is who the Fantastic Four hires for security?”

 

“Um, guys,” Franklin interrupted, having joined Gogol at the window.  “I don’t think it’s rabbits scaring him right now.”

 

“Why’s that?”

 

“Because, um, the neighborhood really does appear to be burning…”

 

---

 

NEXT ISSUE: Miracle Man back from the dead…or not.  A city on fire…or not.  Franklin and friends to the rescue…or not.   Whatever the case, you’ll definitely want to be here next month for the concluding chapter of…or, etc. 

 

---

 

FANTASTIC FORUM

 

Some bookkeeping for the continuity-minded. 

 

Griffin Gogol, the former Captain Ultra, last appeared at Marvel 2000 in Champions #10 where he lost his powers to Loki as well as a good many of his teeth courtesy of Hercules.  Sort of a hard luck fellow, you might say.  He also dressed like a box of Crayolas, so arguably brought some of that on himself.  He is deathly afraid of fire, probably because he read too many Martian Manhunter comics as a child. 

 

Miracle Man, a master hypnotist who followed Mole Man as one of the Fantastic Four’s very first foes, last appeared in The Thing #24, wherein he was murdered by the Scourge.  Justice was served, I suppose.

 

Media personalities Webster Strawslinger and Jackson Orizio, as well as youthful geniuses Eva Nyugen and Hubert Nightshade, first appeared at Marvel 2000 in the site’s very own Fantastic Four v2 (Issues #1 and #4 respectively).  In other words, I made them up.

 

And for those of you who may be yearning for some fic that actually features the Fantastic Four (a novel idea!) click on over to Avengers #59, where the team is currently helping to deal with a rampaging Hulk.  Clearly, M2K has all your FF needs covered.  (Unless you need to see Mr. Fantastic.  In that case, you’ll have to wait another issue for us to finally catch up with him.)

 

Also, by the by, a belated thank you to all those who voted for Fantastic Four #8 in the Reader Poll several months back.  It’s very cool to know that there are still people reading, despite my less than impressive release rate last year.   Thanks.

 

- Alan Strauss