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PREVIOUSLY ON #F4nthNgtvZn — After an unexpected cosmic storm scrambles the DNA of four amateur astronauts, a military scientist, his love interest, his love interest's gearhead brother, and his test pilot find themselves quarantined to The Baxter Building. Cut off from the outside world until their mutagenic conditions can be evaluated, on the day they step foot outside of the New York skyscraper, they return to find that the most technologically advanced place on the planet has fallen into the clutches of the Negative Zone's own cosmic warlord, ANNIHILUS.
CHAPTER 13: Going Baxter Square One — As the setting sun cascades Manhattan's monuments, daylight abandons all but one noticably absent landmark as distant aerial shots give us an outsider's perspective of what the world-famous BAXTER BUILDING must look like to every national news media outlet's helicopter that now encircles the decimated tower like ratings-hungry vultures. Baxter's top five floors, some of which once housed the most advanced tech known to mankind, just moments ago vanished down a dimensional rift that seemed to have emerged from inside the building itself, and it doesn't appear to be closing on its own. A circular sheet of otherworldly energy presents a wide open window to the collage of celestial objects visible to anyone looking down on it, but underneath the portal, Johnny Storm hunkers down under the low ceiling of the building's new zenith in an attempt to shut down the source of the portal. The FF's sabotaged space droid H.E.R.B.I.E. beeps, sparks and whirs expressively as his primary mechanic/caretaker cinches off the gateway projector, 200 square feet of portal retracts down into the probe, giving them the headspace needed to stand upright. Three others ascend the stairwell and enter whatever's left of the Mechanical floor, in disbelief at the roofless maze of walls they now traverse through. Much like a decapitated organism, the Building's mechanical functions continue to function as normal, Kirby-stylized pistons still pumping inside like a still-beating heart. Helicopter spotlights illuminate an orange rock-man navigating this maze accompanied by two others, suddenly an IRIDESCENT DOME expands around one of them and displaces loose debris in all directions. Sue Storm, for the first time since her mother passed away, is left without a parent and without a home, the soundproof dome surrounding her muffles a pained scream, which triggers her brother's emotional reflex of engulfing himself in flames. "Somehow or another, they got ahold of Herbie and hijacked his portal module, then used those same components to teleport him here and stand him upright...” Reed completes the thought, “And reprogrammed Herbie to project a NEGATIVE ZONE PORTAL wide enough to envelop the whole building. This was... this took planning, that insect has more brainpower on its side than anyone could’ve predicted, and now billions of dollars worth of equipment just fell into the wrong hands, a perfect heist."
Johnny grits his teeth and screams lividly into the howling skyscraper wind, then kicks a piece of debris across the room, stubbing his toe, "Dad, Alyssa, plus every other genius unfortunate enough to come here today, they're all at the mercy of that literal hellspawn, Reed. How can you call this a heist? This was an extraterrestrial act of war!" "From his perspective we're the invaders, and now he's taken hostages and gained the upper hand." "We're talking about an alien, Reed, the rules of engagement need not apply here." "I don't suppose he's lookin' ta get a ransom check, huh?" "Our Building's worth more to him than any human life." "But if that's the case then why leave H.E.R.B.I.E. behind? Half of our government checks went towards building him." Johnny notices a dent on Herbie's maintenance hatch where that damned insect must've pried it open, "Probably went for the internal recharge couplers, buggers like those for some reason." He heats the droid's torso and pries open the softened metal door, and from inside the battered space probe looking out we see our heroes looking in, "No freakin' way, can... Annihilus can't be this stupid can he?" Lodged between the wiring sits a GLOWING CYLINDRICAL BAR, Johnny hastily reaches for it only to be stopped by Reed, urging him not to touch the object lest he be robbed of his eyesight. So Johnny's left hand burns brighter than molten metal, clasping the 'Cosmic Control Rod' in a white hot grip, but strangely enough, nothing even remotely strange happens to him, and his vision remains unaltered, and stranger yet… the Control Rod is still relatively cold to the touch. "No that can't be right," he tosses it up and down haphazardly, "Maybe it's a dud, like a drained battery or something."
Sue rises with an exhale and a confession, "Damnit, Dad. You just had to have it didn't you..." "Wait, what?" "Remember our little swap meet on Monster Island? Well there was something else our dad kept hidden from the Foundation, even from Viktor, an ace in the hole to solve all our troubles. That must be the decoy Control Rod, created in secret, to trick the alien into leaving the cave without the real thing." "You're kidding," Reed inspects the faux CCR with microscopic vision, while Johnny's face begins to change shade. "You mean Dad knew, this whole time, that an insect armada would eventually come back looking for their stolen Crown Jewel? And he invites all the big wigs of science here, for what, so he could auction it off, make it someone else's problem? What was he thinking?!" Human Torch's skin glows an even brighter shade of orange before angrily combusting again, "Flame off John. Cool your jets, I promise you we're gonna get Baxter back here in one piece," but Reed knows he can't keep this promise. A gust of wind from above brings their attention to Lt. Willie Lumpkin's tandem rotor helicopter as it descends from the skies and lands gracefully in the clearing. In one last act of deference, Ben places a heavy hand on Johnny's shoulder, "We'll get him back, kid. Your dad, your building, the whole enchilada. Reed's a man of his word." He caustically rebuffs the stone mitt, "But first we gotta make like Snake and get outta New York before people start askin' questions and demandin' answers." Lumpkin steps out, removes his beret, scratches his forehead, "You kids look like you need a lift."
Somewhere in the colorful expanse of our parallel realm, the barren surface of a shattered giant, PLANET ARTHROS spans the upper part of the frame while the stolen half of Baxter passes through the bottom half of the frame, mimicking the opening shot of Star Wars. Once fully in-view we see the amputated end of the building with thousands of Arthrosians piled behind it, pushing it along using their anti-grav assisted flight technology. We then cut to Baxter's interior, transfixed camera angles are stationed at every familiar indoor location, only this time we're witnessing the effects of ZERO-G on a disembodied tower. Backup generators keep the lights on in nearly every room, Olympic weights hang in the air inside Ben's Gymnasium, chairs, tables and a plate of donuts levitate past each other in the Conference Room, cabinets swing ajar in the Chem Labs, spilling their contents towards the camera, and all that, plus an adrift bag of chips, hovers in-and-out of focus in the newly-installed Rec Room. No visual on the captive scientists, but 3-D audiences just got their money's worth to the tune of Classical music and literal levity.
Chapter 14 - WESTWARD BOUND: Future Foundation's Chinook escort wooshes past the frame towards a radiant CALIFORNIA sunrise, accompanied by the transitional sound of four knuckles rhythmically striking a slab of wood, followed by a dog barking and a teenaged girl answering the door. Enid's face lights up before flinging two awkward arms around her big brother, past his shoulder she sees an illegally parked Boeing Chinook CH-47 blocking a suburban intersection, the Storms beckon at her unconfidently. Next we cut to everyone seated roundtable in Richards' living room with midday sunshine pouring in through the front window. Sue, Reed's father — Gary Richards, the highest-ranking NASA official on the west coast — and Lieutenant Lumpkin look over some space shuttle schematics to discuss the modulations needed to recover the captured scientists, while Reed uses an omni-tool to recalibrate a small, circular space hologram projector recovered from his bedroom. Johnny paces around the house aimlessly, scoping out family photos while Sue pencils in some alterations to the shuttle blueprints, Enid's pouring some snack food into a bowl when she abruptly yells out, "Holy pits, is that Ben!?" Sure enough, the man known to the world as THE THING is hunched down in front of their window looking in, he just looks bored. "Making him wait outside, shame on you!" "He didn't wanna burden us with his massive presence, Mom." "Oh nonsense, he knows our open door policy is mandatory." The room goes silent as an exceptionally polite 8ft-tall stone giant is welcomed in by Mrs. Richards, Enid takes a few steps back from the imposing behemoth, someone she used to consider an uncle. Gary nods at the rock-covered figure, "Lookin' good, Grimm. How've you been?" "Nah, don't let my good looks fool you, sir. Things are lookin' pretty grim these days. But I'm doing okay."
Reed drops the omni-tool, "Alright it's all set, now can someone shut those blinds? It's a holograph so it needs relative darkness in order to work." No one gets up, "Please, don't everyone get up all at once." Reed raises an arm to close the blinds from where he's seated, but his dad and sister's eyes are now fixed on the limb. "Johnny, do you mind?" "You're afraid to show your powers off in front of the fam? Understandable. You folks ever been to an arcade? You know the tatted-up Buddhist guy in Street Fighter 2? It's pretty much like that." When the room goes dark the miniature holo gets activated, a flurry of star constellations burst out into the headspace of their living room. "Woah, is that... the other star system?" "SOLES AETERNUM, like ours it has eight planets: Tyanna, Kestor, Arthros, Krysok, Argor, Mantracora, Ootah, and Tarsuu." His hand cues the holograph to zoom in on the most massive celestial body: "ARTHROS, the barren protoplanet that once habitated the aphid lifeforms known collectively as the Annihilation Wave, until its core shattered across the cosmos and its denizens adapted to survive in the asteroid belt that formed in its wake."
He zooms in further into the belt to view: "THE GIDEON TRUST, the Zone's first human settlement, a mining station built into the side of an asteroid. We all know what happened there." Enid interjects, "And that's where they're being kept?" "Well yeah, the facility uses a self-sustaining power source that's managed to keep the lights on for all these years, plus an atmospheric artifice and gravity tethers. The conditions inside are stable, it's no wonder the Wave chose it as their central hive." Lumpkin leans forward and gets down to brass tax, "Alright, so the alien baddie wants 'em alive— making this a hostage crisis. Now I've dealt in diplomatic negotiations before, but what happens to our 37 abductees when y'all show up, guns blazing." Gary agrees, "And how about when they see the shuttle approaching? We haven't gotten a probe anywhere near the place, they keep getting picked apart." Sue takes over the demonstration, "That's where these shuttle mods come into play. The world thinks there's only two inhabitable dimensions, but there's actually a third: THE QUANTUM ZONE, it exists a few rows below the N-Zone on the Dimensional Stack. Now if we can access it physically, we'll be able to position our shuttle parallel to the interior of an unaccessed cargo bay on The Trust's aft side. Phase ourselves into the station, extract the scientists, phase back out, then re-emerge using the Matter Transmitter Tower back on the Air Force tarmac."
The Lieutenant blinks twice, "Huhn... so who came up with this plan?" Sue and Reed respond in chorus "I did." "We both... did." "Well there are a lot of variables to consider. We can fit all 37 of them in the payload bay, but what about..." Everyone turns to The Thing, "With Ben being the size that he his, there's no concievable nook or cranny available on our shuttles that can house him." "S'okay. You don't need me, I get it." For a second he looks totally disenfranchised, until the thought of seeing ALICIA MASTERS again creeps into his mind. "But I didn't come all this way for nothing, there's someone out there who does need me, and soon as we're done here I'm gonna take off." Reed disagrees, "No we're gonna need you there in Mission Control." Then Sue throws him a not-so-subtle elbow nudge, "But... I suppose you deserve a vacation, and isn't she hosting an art exhibit at the rec center tomorrow? Enid's an avid painter herself, you should let her tag along." "Really? I'm no Picasso but I have a few, uhh..." "Tell you what, kid. We'll set you up with your own panel, get you some local recognition. How's that sound." "Sounds like a plan." The onus is now on Gary to give the final word to NASA, "Well... in the spirit of giving, I'm gonna ring up the Flight Research Center to let 'em know you're coming. You sure you three can handle this alone? We can lend you the talents of a more experienced group of—" "Not an option, we're going somewhere few astronauts dared to tread, and none of them made it out alive." The shot pushes in on the still image of the holographic asteroid before it crossfades into the actual location.
THE GIDEON TRUST — an abandoned Mining Facility installed into the Arthros asteroid belt to siphon shipping-grade engine fuel that would have powered return expeditions, a project financed by billionaire Gregory Gideon whose namesake still emblazons the station, and deemed a suicidal business venture only after it was ransacked by THE ANNIHILATION WAVE, resulting in the deaths of over one hundred and fifty personnel, Gideon himself included. "The Gideon Trust. What a joke. What amusing titles you bestow upon your puny vessels, how foolishly you seek to flaunt your imagined might." Our solemn band of captured labcoats traverses the ground floor of the spacious Central Mining Chamber, the center of operations for the facility, "Welcome to the court of insects." The strangely human tonality of the villain's voice emanates from unknown scaffolds overhead, "You've been brought here in an act of unmerited mercy, both as a witness and as a workforce, to aid in my ascendancy to ultimate power." Various paradrones blockade the human cargo in-place, several more decorate the arena of industrial rafters that surrounds them, for a lot of them this is their first encounter with the invasive species. "You see this place that I call home, this macrocosm of infinite oddities you sought to contaminate with your foul stench, to extend your empire and plant a flag on the nearest rock with the most abundant resources, this is where you'll live out the remainder of your pathetic lives." The batwinged Lovecraftian cosmic horror dismounts in staggering proximity with the diminutive mortals, and among them, FRANKLIN STORM and ALYSSA MOY become the focus of his undesired attention. "Ah, familiar faces. All too uncommon in this line of work." She struggles to stay as stonefaced as her mentor in the face of the supernatural. "My underlings have informed me of your vow of silence, of which I intend to break— just as you have broken mine. The CONTROL ROD, the thing that allows me to speak, stolen by the cowardly lord of your most desperate planet, then reclaimed by its rightful owner. Thieves! Is it not paradoxical how the very brutes and beasts you sought to eradicate in your quest for knowledge now hold the reigns to your very existance? Hmm, what say you, girl who plays games?" "We're not going to die here, you are." Alyssa immediately regrets speaking up, "IS THAT WHAT YOU THINK? Do you not know? Can you not guess the horrible oppressive truth? The game is over, girl, and Annihilus has won."
CHAPTER 15 - This Station Is Non-Operational: So by way of time-conserving montage we fast forward through the building process of— "THE EXCELSIOR— a recommissioned 9th generation NASA shuttle, bought and paid for by my father, kept locked away in storage until he felt I was ready. Plus we're having it retiled with antimatter-resistant plates so when whatever obstacles we face collide with our vessel, be it biological or inorganic, poof! Instant particle obliteration." Johnny converts his index finger into an actual blowtorch to seal the new tiles into place with a team of flight engineers, while Reed and Sue attach a portal projector to the nosecone, (Ben is noticably absent from this scene.) The latter two are seated driver and passenger up in the crew compartment, sporting sleak new blue spacesuits, "Superpositioning coad loaded, phase space anchor initialized. Power flow is go. Gating is go. Organic components are nominal. Recording arrays are a go. We're all set, we have a go for transport." "No anomalies, no quantum disturbances, my board is all green Dr. Richards." From behind the overhead windows, our astronauts copy that, "I show a green board as well, transport step one is affirmative." For step two, NASA's entire personell attends that momentous occasion when Excelsior gets transmitted from a raised platform in Century City's Flight Research Center into THE NEGATIVE ZONE. To them, the shuttle disappears within a brief yet lingering flash of light on the other side of tinted, shatterproof windows, but to the three astronauts being instantly robbed of a gravitational tug, the occasion is made all the more momentous and bizarre.
From behind overhead space windows looking out at the unknowable vastness that lay ahead of them, Reed and Sue find themselves laughing at the borderline-euphoric sensation of suddenly losing a fundamental force of nature, gravity. "Hey back there, did you feel that?" Johnny's back in the spacious PAYLOAD BAY, strapped into one of 40 chairs, "You lightweights have never gone skydiving before. I live for that feeling." Clumps of manmade waste collide with the shuttle's outer hull, but being the same polarity as the matter in our dimension, it doesn't disintegrate. The distorted chatter of MISSION CONTROL bursts in on the intercomm, "Negative, Major. There's some particle adherence, mostly loose hydrogen. Some other stuff we can't identify straight away, but for want of a better word I'm gonna call it 'giant clumps of trash.'"
From a wide shot we see The Excelsior methodically maneuver through the dense asteroid belt, more carefully avoiding the celestial bodies composed of trash than the ones made of rock, but as Reed weighs his options, eventually a collision with one of these TRASHTEROIDS becomes inevitable— Excelsior's vertical stabilizer slices an opening into the garbage clump, and out pours the INSECTOID HORDE. The ones who clung to the ship's dorsal fin as it penetrated their hive were obliterated at a cellular level almost instantly, but more are still coming, as their hive mind alerts the area's remaining swarm to the presence of an invading alien shuttle in need of immediate deconstruction. This goes about as smoothly as you'd expect from a swarm of antimatter beings coming into contact with positively-charged ion tiles. Johnny floats up to the passenger cabin, "One of you wanna take a quick break? Give me a whack at the co-pilot's chair?" "Not on your life are we giving you any 'whacks.'" "Speak for yourself, if I can't hit him when he acts up, I don't know why we keep him around." The many astral phenomena visible only through the overhead windows mesmerize Johnny into a rare moment of silence, "Take it all in buddy. This is what you've been missing. That is Arthros, the Mercury-sized protoplanet from which all life in the Negative Zone originates. There's Tyanna, a rogue planet that's broken free from its orbit and travels aimlessly through space." "I can relate."
"Trust me, you can't relate. Diamond mountain ranges, ice volcanoes, magnetic tornadoes, oil oceans, molten iron rain, and vaporized rock in the atmosphere would say otherwise. See that light emanating from behind it? That's a highly radioactive, rotating quasar with an immensely powerful magnetic draw, called The Distortion Area." "Why do they call it the Distortion Area?" "Because—" "Because when you listen closely, man, you can almost hear Jimi Hendrix play the Star Spangled Banner." Sue places a hand over her brother's face and sends him hovering back. We again montage our way through several hours of tedium, cutting between exterior shots of the shuttle with various cosmic anomalies hanging in the backdrop, Reed & Sue sitting in silence while the control panels light their faces, and Johnny belted down in the back, headphones on, his smart-phone drifting slowly towards the camera until its cord tightens and draws it back, in sort of an homage to Chronicle. "The Trust is coming down the pike, John!" He floats up to the Flight Deck, "I don't see anything." "That's the idea, means they can't see us yet." "We're about to enter Transient Oscillation, we figured we'd warn you first." "Warn me about what, what is—OOMF!" They had already activated the superpositioner, phasing them out of the N-Zone and into the Q-Zone before he could utter another word. "So this is it, huh..." Instead of black space occupied by luminous stars, this zone has a blinding white backdrop, resembling a photonegative of space, but with all manner of shape & color occupying the foreground. "Kinda preposterous, ain't it?"
Transient astronomical events surround them, impossible to describe, mercurial like a lava lamp, meant to resemble Jack Kirby's psychedelic splash pages. "Float back to the Payload Bay, you should see three small plasma screens, two on each wall and one on the floor." "Kay?" "Turn them all on and tell us what you see." "Uhhhh just a whole lotta nothing. It's blank, white." "You should be able to change the setting, and get a view from another dimension." "Hey I'm seeing it now, bunch of rocks, we must be adjacent to the asteroid belt." "Tell us when you see something metal, manmade." The screens begin to display the interior of The Gideon Trust's Cargo Hold, "There. We're there. I can see it." "Phase space anchor initialized. Now monitor all three of them, make sure we're parallel to the floor. This has to be perfect." "Alright, bring us approximately 3 feet starboard, that's right on the x-axis." In the Q-Zone, we see Excelsior's Orbital Maneuvering System Engines push the spacecraft ever so slightly in the corresponding directions. "Now we need to be raised about 2 feet higher on the y-axis, alright. Now on the z-axis, bring us forward about 5 feet, carefully. And don't stop until I tell you. Give it another pump. One more... yeah, gonna need one more pump starboard for good measure, aaaaand TRANSPORT." A red wall of energy phases from the Passenger Cabin all the way back to the Engine Deck, dropping the shuttle inside the derelict Mining Vessel, albeit a few inches higher than they intended.
Chapter 16 — STATION INFILTRATION: The loud thud of Excelsior getting pulled down by artificial gravity echoes throughout the station, we see shots of various corridors wherein we hear it reverberate. One of the shots happens to be occupied by two Arthrosian junkers eating trash, then hearing a faint echo, with a very District 9-influenced hyperfocal effect focusing in on its curious face. "You think they heard that?" Johnny's tactical space helmet retracts neatly into a backpack beside his oxygen tank, "You think they're expecting people like us? Get ready to unleash hell on the hive." A viridian-armored Arthrosian hovers loudly through an organically polluted corridor to investigate the noise, stopping when it spots something odd laying between the cargo crates that litter the floor. The camera angles up to view an MB-SG1 laying flat, connected to a long, blue, wavy hose, and for the last two seconds of its life the Arthrosian cocks its head in confusion, Reed bends his wrist and the gun angles up, filling the onlooker with deadly spores. Elsewhere we see meddling space bugs flattened instantaneously by invisible planes, the flies are literally dropping like flies and, if not for lack of brain capacity, the aliens don't understand what's happening to them.
Up until this point this whole infiltration sequence has largely been viewed from the enemies' perspective rather than through the lense of a video game-ic 3rd person shooter, instead panning artfully across Reed's elongated arm as it fires around corners. But when the alien watchmen grow wise to their arrival, Johnny emerges from his sister's invisibility aura with acrobatic displays of marksmanship. Now fully alerted to their presence, Sue spreads her hand to cast a barrier large enough to seal them off from their end of the corridor, pushing the shield along as an ever increasing number of droning Arthrosians angrily slams against it. "How's your aim, little bro?" She pries open a small breach in the force field, their enemies anxiously pile onto the crack in the armor only to be exterminated. "Yeah... I practice." "Let me guess, empty motor oil cans and a nailgun?" "Bingo."
Alyssa fidgets with her I.D badge while seated alone inside her holding cell, as it's the only item she had on her when Baxter went under, but when the strange thumping sound of instantly compacted insect bodies hitting the floor brings Dr. Moy to her feet, she's quick to investigate. Alyssa doesn't see anyone else outside of her cell, but the reoccuring mid-air bug compression sound of her aphid prison guards being systematically neutralized gives her confirmation of the Foundation's imminent deliverance — the FANTASTIC 4 are here to rescue them. Reed disables the shield generators, he and Sue reappear as each captive scientist timidly exits their adjoined cells, Doctor Storm steps out from his vault and shushes the astrophysicist next to him, because it's critical that they depart silently, but he communicates sheer gratitude and pride in his children with just one look. Well so much for stealth, the very moment their rescue is staged and underway is the same moment that the otherworldly manifestation of all that is ghastly & nightmarish in the negative cosmos descends into the frame.
"What manner of creature disturbs my kingdom?" ANNIHILUS threshes two veiny, violet wings before retracting them and standing vertical, "Ah, the caged ones have been set loose upon the void, and in their place, a trio of subhuman filths weilding my own infernal contraptions against me. This should prove most enthralling." His Control Rod briefly flashes and a whole regiment of Arthrosian paradrones swoops down in a buzzing blur, violently striking a blueish dome that appeared suddenly around the scientists, that's when Johnny drops down on them from above, descending the hexagonal stepping stones while discharging his bio-weapon like a madman. "I'll hold them off! Get everyone loaded up on the shuttle!" But his sister isn't having it, "Jonathan Lowell Spencer Storm, you are NOT impressing anyone with your chivalrous bullcrap! Get DOWN!" Running backwards, Reed remains the only one focused entirely on The Bug King as the other two focus their efforts on priority #1, the P.O.W.'s. Annihilus continues to taunt the lone astronaut, "And in lieu of the utmost erudite human specimins your kind has to offer, I'm left with an igneous ignoramus, a girl in a bubble, and an abberant little invertabrate!" Instead of participating in ruddy banter with the diabolical deity, Richards unloads his weapon while distancing himself from the beastly thing, "What an amusing appliance. Care to witness the full force of my own personal aegis?" The COSMIC CONTROL ROD hanging about his neck ignites aglow, disturbing the air between them, corruscating throughout a set of bent antennae adorning his sinisterly insectoid face. Annihilus transfers this raw power into two clawed hands and unleashes a blast upon the unexpected visitor, launching Reed back, and liquefying his cellular makeup. The shear concussive force of this EMP blast has knocked his superhuman malleability into a state of flux, torso and limb begin rapidly writhing like sea serpents shrouded in electromagnetic energy, Reed retreats into a nearby crevice of metalworks. "That's right, withdraw from this futile crusade against me, you agitated little worm!"
DOCTOR STORM, his offspring, and his Foundation reps bank down a flickering corridor and turn a corner to meet their savior firsthand, THE EXCELSIOR. From inside the shuttle's payload bay, his son does a head count and makes sure everyone's buckled in, while he and his daughter man the deck and start the engines. "Mission Control, we have them." "Can you make a clean extraction?" "Negative, we're stacked on top of cargo crates and can't risk a teleporter malfunction." Gary Richards weighs their options, "Then get those aft bay doors open and commence your departure through that. To hell with the station, blow it to smithereans." "Johnny? Doors." "Already on it." "Wait..." Sue extends her arm, flexes her fingers, and the sliding cargo bay doors are pried open remotely via force field. "That works too, I guess." An open window to outer space lies just ahead of them, now all they need to do move the shuttle forward. ANNIHILUS glides through the cavernous mining station, occasionally firing a cosmic blast down at the writhing, blue anaconda he's pursuing as it slithers through the undergrowth of this industrial jungle. "Spineless human!"
We see the blasted portion of Reed's body recoil and twist up like a startled rattlesnake, "The complexity of earthly lifeforms has proved a continuing source of amusement to me! Stay awhile in the court of insects, and we'll find use for you yet."
"Propulsion engines 1 and 2 ignited, but the 3rd one is offline!" The Excelsior has barely budged an inch as a result, the assorted cargo crates beneath it spin with the full range of motion that square wheels offer, effectively wedging the shuttle in place. "We're sitting ducks! The station could go off at any minute!" We then catch a glimpse of Johnny's face, realizing what only he has the power to do. Three events are unfolding simultaneously: Reed and Annihilus face off in an epic battle, Sue and her father flip switches on the control panel hoping arbitrary button-pussing will ignite the 3rd engine, and Johnny Storm has gotten out of the shuttle and jumped into the faulty fuselage, wedging himself inside the circular funnel in the pose of a famous Leonardo Da Vinci sketch, "FLAME... ON!" The Excelsior surges forward, through the hangar door and out into free space, frightening its occupants with such a sudden departure and leaving The Gideon Trust behind in a blaze of glory.
"You thought you could storm my fortress and release my prisoners without leaving something of much greater value behind? I'm going to make slaves of you all!" The winged warlord's spindly, clawed fingers clutch Reed's head in a vice grip, but two free, elasticized hands swoop in from behind to fire spore bullets into the villain's back. "You... you slippery, undulating, grovelling—" Annihilus's face goes from menacing to downright confused when the sound of a white hot, human ember, searing through several walls of the compound, comes crashing into the mining chamber, stopped only by a wall of unmined space rock. Excelsior's rockets exploded Johnny's oxygen tank, converting him to a heat conduit and propelling him through the station like a superheated bullet. Annihilus wastes no time standing around while The Trust's atmosphere begins to spiral down the drain, instead taking to the air with one final exhortation: "SUFFOCATE, YOU FOOLS!" He flaps, ascends and exits.
The Gideon Trust is finished — its orbital tethers are falling out of allignment with the asteroid belt, atmospheric and gravitational vectors are quickly falling out of equilibrium, and everything with wings has already abandoned ship. Reed and Johnny stagger dizzily in a hobbled sway with the swinging camera movements, towards the nearest door to a room labeled Command Deck, which Reed intuitively knows will contain — "Escape pods. Go!" Two magmatic hands melt the sealed door open, inside the room they find an available rescue capsule to the right and a space-window forward and center where the shattered remnants of planetesimals loudly pelt cracks into the glass, not to mention an enormous swirling, Jack Kirby splash page brought to live-action lies just ahead of the doomed station. "Reed? You never told me why they call it THE DISTORTION AREA." "Because, John. It's an area we can never hope to understand, one of the greatest mysteries in modern astrophysics, it distorts everything we know about thermodynamics." As they near it, the laws of reality break down all around them, fractal abstractions dance around Johnny's fingers, "Don't look at it, Johnny! It's not real." "Reed... something's wrong... I don't hear Jimi Hendrix!" We pull out to an extreme wide shot of The Trust seconds before it submerges completely into The Distortion Area and vanishes from sight. A stylized camera zoom-in brings our attention to a relatively microscopic ESCAPE POD as it jettisons out sideways, but doesn't generate the necessary escape velocity to shake off the intense pull of this cosmic anomaly, and so it too disappears into the fray.
Deafening silence accompanies a smashcut back to the real world, in the distance we see CENTURY CITY's Matter Transmitter Tower sitting dormant outside of the Air Force Base's TARMAC, inside an adjoining security booth, a single occupant sleeps on the job. A daisy chain of multi-spatial sensor-arrays encircle the triangular tower, one by one we see them activate axiomatically, like a series of industrial spotlights shooting up to the sky. This wakes the uninformed, Spielbergian security guard and prompts him to exit the booth and approximate the structure, walkie talkie in hand. "Sergeant, what's your 20? I'm stationed at the TARMAC, and that wonky Tower just booted up on its own!" The space between the two prongs fills with visible energy and launches something into the sky, forming an enormous reddish bubble, larger than the platform itself. His radio crackles, "Say again?" "Shut her down when you see the shuttle come through!" EXCELSIOR bursts into the night sky. "Oh," seconds later THE ANNIHILATION WAVE emerges hot on their trail, the officer hightails it back to the booth, arriving just in time to shut the quantum gate and avoid The Wave's clutches. The Excelsior skids out across the airstrip, rattling its 38 occupants before coming to a standstill, the pursuing Arthrosians are quickly obliterated by its antimatter hull. "Everyone okay?" Alyssa responds, "We're all a little shaken, but not ungrateful to be back. A job well done, Storms!" The pilots unbuckle, "Dad? Promise you won't steal from aliens, ever again." He laughs, goes in for a hug, then calls back to his son, Alyssa gives the Payload Bay a once-over, "What? I thought he and Reed were up there by you." "JONATHAN! REED!" Storm and his daughter exchange a strong look of regret, "We left them behind. We have to go back, we... we left them behind! How could we leave them behind!?" "I was protecting everyone else! How could I've known they would stay on the station?!" "No don't blame yourself, Sue. This wasn't your role in this, you played your part and played it well. You saved my life and countless others." "And didn't we just detonate the station on our way out?" She looks mortified, "No no no, Sue, they survived. I know they survived. Look at me, if we made it this far? So have they."
CHAPTER 17 - The Cryosphere Awakening: We horizontal pan through a dense snowstorm blowing viciously through an uncharted terrain, with chunks of broken metal braces formerly adjoining THE GIDEON TRUST jutting out in the foreground like the ribcages of an elephant graveyard, while low visibility whiteout conditions obscure distant fires in the background. Barely discernible from the rest of the wreckage but miraculously still intact, Johnny Storm is the first to emerge from the escape pod, clutching fast-melting snow in his hands and prying himself out, Reed's foot is stuck inside so he's heaved by his arms like a taffy puller until they're both free of the lifesaving capsule. Standing shoulder to shoulder, Mr. Fantastic and the Human Torch look desolately out into the snowy wastelands, "I think we've officially gone off the reservation, my friend. The distortion area was.. nothing short of indescribable." Johnny heaves up his lunch, "If not somewhat nauseating." Spitting fire into snow, he leaps back down into the lifepod to retrieve his MB-SG1, "You're the expert on everything extra-dimensional around here, where the hell are we now?" Reed takes in his surroundings, "Judging by the tectonic glacial land formations and inhospitable weather conditions, the likeliest candidate would be TYANNA, the rogue planet, otherwise we could be standing on an icecap of the waterworld TARSUU, the outermost planet in the system. Both remote, both largely unexplored. Gravity?" He jumps up and down, "Feels like a 1.03 standard G's. Comfortable. The atmosphere? Oxygen, nitrogen, water, ammonia, methane, Co2. Breathable, but too thin to support to life. Theoretically we should've experienced symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning minutes ago." "Great." "Although our metahumanity could be allowing us to adapt to these environmental extremes." "Well, on top of not knowing our own whereabouts and the thought of my lungs assimilating to an ice planet, something else just crossed my mind." "Yeah?" "If we don't know where we are, how long until our folks back home realize where we are?" "...Something tells me that just crossed their minds, too."
"Where are you guys," Sue's ungloved hand runs across the cartographic digital map in front of her face, she's back at NASA's MISSION CONTROL combing through all known parameters of the Zone for any signs of them, refusing to rest while her duties as matriarch to the Four have not yet been fulfilled, her father displays a similar sense of stubborness as they try to locate Johnny and Reed. "I thought we had everyone aboard, believe me had I known that they would—" "Save it Sue, you aren't accountable for their actions. What do the latest scans say?" "They're saying The Gideon Trust is ...gone. It just disappeared somewhere over the DISTORTION AREA." Alyssa chimes in from the far side of the room, "That's a massive dead zone, every probe we send there loses signal, we may never know what lies on the other side." Franklin's weathered looks grow wearier by the second, meanwhile back down on NASA's ground floor Gary Richards and Meribeth Richards aren't displaying an ounce of patience in the unexplained absence of their son. "What are you telling us here? What—what garbage are you feeding us? Tell me what happened to my son." Lumpkin tries to keep the situation calm, takes his coat off and physically prevents Gary from entering the same room as Franklin, but fails to hold him back. "Mr. Richards, there's little else I can add to what I've already told you." "Drop the formalities, Storm. You're a doctor right? Isn't it your job to be the bearer of bad news, tell us what happened to our Reed." "Alright, you gave us access to this facility, total transparency is the least you deserve. Your son and mine are still aboard The Trust, but the outpost itself has fallen beyond the realm of retrievability, and them along with it." "Fetch me my spacesuit, dear. I'm going in after them." "Gary, oh stop. How long, Dr. Storm? The longer we wait—" "The sooner we go back the more likely it is we'll encounter more of those things, en masse." "Every hour we wait, we waste." "I was held captive for days, not hours. And if we made any sorta men out of them, they'll do what men have done for centuries: perservere." "You just aren't listening to me." "No you aren't listening, Mrs. Richards! We just kicked the hornet's nest, if we launch a search party now we'll endanger everybody, the Annihilation Wave is just waiting to get that foot in the door!" "You think you can talk to my wife that way..." Gary hurls a metal stool, which ricochets against the iridescent barrier that instantly appears between them, the retired astronaut then turns around and starts giving the orders. "You're wrong! Someone get Grimm on the horn!" Susan lowers her defences.
Johnny blazes a trail of instantly thawing snowfall through a seemingly unending junkyard, while the other wayward son surveys its contents more carefully. "So this is the final resting place of our collective million dollar enterprise, unmanned space rovers must be magnetically drawn to the Distortion Area, fed through a wormhole and sent here, to the land of lost satellites, purgatory for probes." Johnny remains silent, "You know we're gonna be stuck on this planet for a fortnight or two, might as well pass the time. And we should probably seek shelter, for your benefit, you can't keep expending energy like there's no tomorrow, what with the adverse reaction you had to the cryotherapy—" He stops melting snow and turns around, "Oh Christ do you ever shut up? You don't think I already know that I'm gonna frickin' freeze on this god forsaken iceball? I really did get the short end of the stick, you know? I'm not made of rocks," "Johnny." "I don't have psionic defense mechanisms, I got nothing to even brave the elements!" "Man turn around, just look." Reed gestures up at something in the distance, the camera pulls back slowly until a familiar manmade structure envelops the frame— THE BAXTER BUILDING! —Or the missing portion of it anyway. "Baxter, you beautiful bastard! Have I ever been so glad to see you!" Reed smiles in disbelief, "Alright here's what we're gonna do, champ. You see that silo? It has an OBSERVATORY, that's our way of signalling back home." "No kidding, with a telescope?" "If you ever bothered to look through it before, you'd know it's got a radio transmitter that's capable of sending nanowave messages across universal boundaries." "That's a pretty long-range connection we gotta establish, but I guess we have exhausted all our other lifelines. So it's about time we..." "Phone a friend?" "Exactly."
Fire-flying and stretch-climbing up to the nearest floor not buried under ten feet of snow, they remark how it "Looks like someone shattered your unshatterable windows." "Someone?" Johnny raises his MB-SG1 at arms length, "More likely it was the subzero temperatures, the cryosphere on this planet seems inhospitable to insect life." "Better safe than sorry," he flips on the gun's mounted flashlight as they venture down the newly unfamiliar corridors that used to belong to an iconic American skyscraper. Nowadays the whole place sits on a slant, the floors are coated in ice so it takes them a while to find their footing, and the further they travel away from the windowed areas the darker it gets. Plus you can tell there's definitely someone or something lurking in the shadows, because every time the flashlight shines into a new room, a small silhouette creeps past the shot, while sharp violin notes send a shiver up your spine. "Check it out, the water main froze and ruptured here." An enormous icicle formation emanating from a burst pipe is blocking their way, so Johnny lights up his hands and gets to thawing, but the water flowing downhill causes Reed to plummet down to his elbows. He starts to slide back down the icy incline, with his outstretched arm providing a rope to this quicksand predicament, Johnny's reeling him back up by gripping the corner wall. "Easy does it Stretch, I gotchu. You good?" But while climbing to his feet, Reed's face telegraphs IMMINENT DANGER lurking behind his fellow castaway, so his grappled arm is suddenly released when a flurry of spore bullets is fired at something the gunman didn't get a good look at, not before it whipped around a corner and into the darker recesses of the broken building. Torch ignites himself for an added boyouncy and begins speed-hiking towards the red, floating assaillant that almost succeeded at getting away. Almost. But then not quite.
The hovering contraption dashes out a pre-broken window to no avail of discouraging its fiery pursuer, who lands on top of it and begins flame-punching its outer hull before he has to be flung off by a strategic barrell roll. Richards now braves the snowstorm alone, on-foot at ground level, trudging towards the impact point of the human meteorite then fishing him out of the snowbank. Now with the blizzard clearing up, a higher visibility range has opened up new facets of their environment, which now appears to be much more than just a cosmic junkyard... "An ice planet with flying robots and stone ruins. Explain that one, genius." "The remnants of a lost alien culture? Hold on a minute, these engravings look like..." His hand brushes clumps of snow from the impressions on a stone block. "Cyrillic?" "But that means... Reed, if you tell me we've been on Earth this whole time, I swear I'm gonna..." If the look on his face doesn't confirm this to be the case, the nervous laughter does. "Ahaha, woops? I must've miscalculated our—" Johnny Storm takes to the air, flying up through the ruins as we pan back to a wide shot, revealing an entire STONEHENGE of human achievement amidst the winter scrapyard. To punctuate the scene, the back of Torch's head, shaking in disbelief, occupies the foreground of the frame with the gothic spires of a MEDEIVAL FORTRESS looming in the background. "Oh you've gotta be shitting me."
— ACT 3 HAS BEEN SPLIT INTO TWO PARTS — SO STAY TUNED FOR MORE! — #F4nthNgtvZn —