What has gone before: The FF have finished with their most recent battle with Doctor Doom and his Hate Squad, consisting of Queen Invisible, the Hate Monger, the Psycho-man, the Super Skrull, and the Thunder Gods Gang. The FF learned that good old' Doc Doom was the man responsible for their recent bad press and the wave of hate that spread over New York City. They returned home to New York from Latveria to find Alicia Masters, in her recent form as the Undying Force. She wanted help from Reed Richards to deal with her powers before she turned bad. She altered reality to make Johnny Storm believe that he was still in love with Alicia, since the Alicia that he thought he was in love with was really a Skrull. While the FF were dealing with a menace in the heart of New York, Lila Storm, who had stayed at the Plaza to baby-sit her infant son Brake, was attacked by the Wizard.

Lila Storm laid on the floor of Reed's lab in FF Plaza, drifting in and out of consciousness. Her whole body hurt like hell. She couldn't believe that with her wide variety of powers at her disposal she could be defeated by a man who could control gravity. But most of all, she had a splitting headache. She attributed that to her fall.

Meanwhile, as she struggled with her pain and humiliating defeat at the hands of the leader of the new Frightful Four, the Wizard had extradited the Electromag Gun. This was one of Dr. Richard's recent inventions and now it was in the possession of the Wizard. It was a device that Reed had come up with during their fight against hate. It could take away any super-villain's powers and/or strengthen the powers of a super hero like when the Thing was transformed back into Ben Grimm by the Thunder Gods Gang. *

* (In M2K's FF #18-Gregg.)

I have a feeling I know what the Wizard wants with it now, Lila thought, as she tried to stay awake. Somehow her legs felt leaden and her body achy and weak. She crawled on the floor to reach where the Wizard was standing triumphantly in his gain over the gun. No way in hell was she going to let that jerk defeat the Fantastic Four, while she had anything to say about it. So she reached out with one hand, while with the other she pushed her body closer to where the Wizard was.

Even though she was a novice to this game of super-heroing, she had read the files in the FF's master computer about the Wizard and the many incarnations of the FF's evil twin, the Frightful Four. In those bygone days of the 1960s, when the FF was just in its infancy, the Wizard had lured the evil talents of Medusa, the Sandman, and the Trapster to his team. Since then, Medusa had quit the Frightful Four and turned over a new leaf, becoming a member of the Fantastic Four and the royal family of the Inhumans. Lila guessed that the Wizard had gained the membership of past incarnations of the Frightful Four but decided not to make the same mistake of asking Medusa to join, since she was now a hero and he would risk incurring the wrath of the entire family of the Inhumans.

Lila looked up at the Wizard, glancing on in awestruck admiration at the Electromag Gun, as if it was his own invention, not a product of Reed Richards. Then, upon closer inspection, the villainous Wizard examined the gun like he wanted to know how the damn thing worked. She smiled, with satisfaction. For someone purporting to be as brilliant as Dr. Richards , the Wizard didn't seem to know how his genius twin operated his inventions. But she didn't let the Wizard know that she was secretly laughing at him because she wanted this to be a true ambush, a surprise attack on her part.

If she couldn't stand right away, then she could damn well gesture her powers into action. Here goes nothing, she thought and said silently.

But the Wizard was not as enraptured in his pondering as Lila once thought, for he turned around and slugged her in the jaw before she was able to utilize her powers into existence. She groaned and spit out blood and fell into unconsciousness.

"Uhhnnnnn," Lila said, as her head rested on the floor of FF Plaza.

"Now, to join the rest of the Frightful Four in battle," the Wizard said. "My new Frightful Four."

Lila had one eye open, as the Wizard flew out of FF Plaza with the Electromag Gun in tow.

"Johnny, I think I have to tell you something.." said Alicia Masters, the Undying Force, imploringly. She wanted to tell the Human Torch that she was sorry for altering reality and lying to them that the events of the past few hours had been nothing more than a bad dream.

True, she was still the Undying Force and she had come to the FF to ask Reed's help from her turning into a force for evil and succumbing to the dark side. But she may have outstayed her welcome. Upon seeing the FF flying in their Pogo Plane after their most recent battle with Dr. Doom, she was so ecstatic upon seeing them that she wanted her dreams to come true. She knew that a Skrull masquerading as the blind sculptress Alicia Masters had fallen in love and married Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. That was years ago. Nearly a generation ago. Johnny couldn't fall in love with the real Alicia again for it would bring back horrid memories of that Skrull ruining his life. The real Alicia wanted to just use her newfound powers to make the FF happy upon seeing her again, so she altered reality in a dream sequence to make Johnny happy with Alicia again, even if for a short time. Now, she was sorry she did.

"Yes, what is it, Alicia?" Johnny asked, as he turned around from looking at her directly in the eyes. Alicia now realized that even if she hadn't altered reality he couldn't face her. The pain of losing Alicia so many years ago was too painful for him.

"Nothing, Johnny. Carry on." A new idea popped into her head. The FF remembered nothing, only that they had a weird experience of Johnny and Alicia happily married again. All she had to do was erase it from their memory. A simple twisting of their memory was all it would take.

"Hey, Alicia, look at that destruction down below," the Thing said, as the entire team surveyed the damage that the new villains that they had been cordoned to attack had been doing to their fair city. The fact that the Thing, her darling Ben in a far, long ago day, had said 'look' with her own eyes had been strange to her, somewhat. She had not gotten used to the fact that she was among the sighted and not the blind, as she had previously been ever since she had gained the power of the Undying Force. It bothered her that she had to rely solely on her eyes rather than her heightened other senses. It didn't bother her, though, that Ben told her to look.

"Oh, I'm sorry, 'Licia," the Thing continued to say haplessly. "I didn't mean nothing by it." By the way that the Thing had been looking at her and she at him, he must have gotten the impression that she was bothered by his slip of the tongue.

"Don't worry your pretty head over it, Thi-Ben. I won't take offence, if you won't." This was a playful interaction of words between the two that seemed to hark back to a time when the two were indeed an item and there was nothing standing in their way. Now, Johnny was more of a hindrance than anything else. The Thing would want nothing more than to get romantic with Alicia and he suspected that she would reciprocate his feelings for her but Johnny would be saddened by it. The Thing knew that Johnny had taken Alicia away from Ben but that Alicia was really a Skrull and now the real Alicia's Undying powers surpassed all of the FF's own abilities.

"Well, I'll be a blue eyed monkey," the Thing said," it looks like it's the remnants of a 1960's version of the Frightful Four down there, wreaking havoc on our city!!" Still the same Ben, thought Undying, as she watched the thing cut conversation with her and bark orders at Reed Richards, who was the steadfast leader of this quartet. Undying didn't mind, though. It was really a sight to behold, seeing Ben Grimm in action, while all this time she had to rely on hearing him in action and imagining the rest.

This time Mr. Fantastic was piloting the Pogo Plane, because he thought that the Thing would want to 'hang out' with his former love. He was right, but when the Thing saw action thrusted in his general direction, not even Alicia Masters could stay his hand. "Reed, open the hatch to this baby, so's I can show them that it's clobberin' time!!!"

"Dropping in unannounced like that is not the way," Mr. Fantastic explained to his best friend from his college days. He kept one eye on the Thing and the other on the airspace ahead of him, so that he wouldn't crash and ruin a perfectly good paint job by the Human Torch. "We should analyze this whole situation. What would random members of the past incarnations of the Frightful Four want with destruction of a United States city on the eastern front? And where is the Wizard? He seems to be the leader of every Frightful Four that we've encountered. He can't be far behind. I think we should approach this situation with caution."

"That's where we have a little disagreement, Reed," the Thing said, as he also stood up in his seat in the Pogo Plane. "I say we bust these guys up! What they are up to is no good and I aim to fix it-and them!!"

"Ben, no!!" Mr. Fantastic warned.

"Ben, please, sit down," Undying said, turning to her former lover. "Reed's right. We have to approach this like civilized adults." Alicia knew that she could force the Thing to sit back in his seat, to make him stop his mindless charge; she could alter reality a final time. But she was through with altering reality on her friends and yes, team-mates. She wanted to make her friends trust her with her newfound powers not the other way around. So it was up to her using words and gestures to halt her former lover's clobbering time technique of dealing with enemies.

"Excuse me, Alicia, but those guys down below have gotta learn that no one messes with New York," the Thing said harshly, as he leaned his back onto the window hatch and exerting all of his superhuman strength, popped it open. Then, he jumped in the air, imitating the Hulk's way of bounding from land mass to land mass. He arrived in the middle of midday traffic.

"At least, you haven't changed a bit, Ben," Undying said, remarking how Mr. Grimm was always the headstrong one of the Fantastic Four.

"Hey, mac, get out of the freakin' way!" one motorist yelled at the top of his lungs, as he saw the orange-rocky Thing crash-land in his direct path of vision. The sound that the Thing's descent made was like that of a small nuclear bomb going off. All this driver wanted was to move the traffic forward or perhaps, run over the Thing, if such a thing was possible.

The Thing wasn't sure how but he had stopped New York traffic to a virtual standstill. Motorists were getting out of their vehicles and yelling at the Thing to move out of the way, while others just lazily honked their horns furiously. The Thing thought that these fine motorists should be more concerned for their own safety and well-being while they were at the mercy of the new/old Frightful Four rather than a member of the Fantastic Four risking getting a jaywalking ticket. That should have been the least of his worries. Now all that occupied his time would be to fight the Frightful Four and cart them away to the Vault.

"Don't get yer underwear in an uproar," the Thing chided his annoying motorists, while he carefully crossed the street. "I'm movin', I'm movin'!" As he walked to the other side of the street, to where the two evil beings were, the motorists got back in their cars and proceeded to let traffic run its course.

Hearing muttered curses under the breath of the motorists, the Thing approached the Sandman and the Trapster. He was somewhat surprised to see the Trapster among the villainous. Recently, he teamed up with the Human Torch. * And there was a time when the Sandman was among the heroes. ** But in recent years he seemed to have gone bad again. Maybe there was hope for him yet.

* (In M2K's Marvel Fanfare #17-Smiling Gregg.)
** (In Marvel's Marvel Team Up #138-Gregg Again.)

"What is this? Old Home's Week?!" the Thing asked of the two villains. The Sandman and the Trapster had watched the whole procession of the Thing arguing with motorists and crossing the streets to where they were. Up to that point, they had been nothing but endangering the citizenry of New York City and destroying buildings and causing property damage. This must have been the red alert we had earlier today, the Thing thought to himself as he launched himself into battle.

"That's about all I care to hear from you, clown," the Sandman said, as he dissolved the solidity of his arm into sandy grain and shot it at the Thing's face, perhaps expelling the sand into the Thing's open mouth. The Sandman cackled and enjoyed watching the Thing collapse on the sidewalk pavement and spit out the remains of his arm onto the ground. The Thing looked a little peeked, as if he was nauseous from the surprise attack.

Next up was the Trapster. He fired glue from his paste gun and bound the Thing's hands together. They were caught in a vice. The Thing tried with all of his might to break the glue hold that the paste gun had on his appendages but he couldn't break it for the life of him. He was too weak from inhaling the sand and the ferociousness of the ambush.

"What a revolting development," the Thing said to himself but he was aware that the two members of the Frightful Four heard him all too well.

"Ben, are you getting in trouble," Undying Force said, as she flew around the three combatants. She was glowing with the energy of the power that was hers to command. She gestured wildly and freed him from the glue that the Trapster placed on his hands. The glue shattered into nothingness as she converted it into excess energy. It simply evaporated.

"Where would I be without you?" the Thing asked, as he stood up, free of the trap that the Trapster set. Undying Force also evaporated the sand that was forced into the Thing's waiting mouth. "Now, let's clobber these bums!!"

"Don't you want to wait until the rest of the Fantastic Four arrive," Undying said. She looked behind her for that was where the Thing was pointing to and glancing at where Reed, Sue, and Johnny landed the Pogo plane and arrived on the scene. Sue was wearing an alteration of her standard FF uniform, she wore a skirt instead. *

* (For full drawings of Sue's new FF uniform, check out Marvel's FF Vol. 3 No. 51-Still Gregg.)

Before the FF was able to attack the new Frightful Four, the Trapster confided in the Sandman, "My wristwatch that is attuned to the Wizard's going-ons and he has contacted me that he has the weapon. We must be off."

Silently, the Trapster and the Sandman activated the gravity discs on their belt buckles and escaped through the afternoon air. "Let's go after them, Reed," the Thing said. "If only we had Lila here. Omygod, I just realized that Lila is all alone at the Plaza. You don't think that they could be attackin' her. They said somethin' about the Wizard and a weapon. We have to save her."

"That is imperative to my plans," Reed said. "We will encounter the Frightful Four again."