Supermaxx
Mao Mao
Simple Unicycle
Fetzen
Central City, Missouri
Four days had passed since the Fantastic Four had arrived in the Baxter Building. It had taken a day for the craft that had brought Reed Richards and his colleagues to be transported to them. The next two he had spent running thousands of projections on the effect potential alterations to the craft’s composition might have. None of them had come back positive. Yesterday Reed had run through the list of those that might be able to help him.
This world’s Doom had been unable to help him. Lex Luthor was the next choice – or so Reed had thought. It seemed that this world’s Lex didn’t quite possess the same zeal of the Luthor that Reed was familiar with. That left a host of names that were either unreachable, not age appropriate, or unfriendly to the cause – including some that had made attempts to Reed’s life back on his Earth.
Only one fit all of the criteria that Richards was searching for – S.T.A.R. Labs founder Harrison Wells.
Reed had met Wells on half a dozen occasions on his own world. He had found him to possess a peculiarly naked kind of ambition. It was a trait that Reed had noticed in Victor von Doom once. Where Reed saw science as exploration, Victor saw it as conquest. There were shades of that to Wells – but he had proved a hardy ally to Barry Allen over the years and Barry’s word was more than enough for Reed.
The reading that Reed had done on this world’s Wells and its Flash had given the super scientist some pause for thought. Whoever was behind the cowl, it certainly wasn’t Barry Allen but Wells still seemed to be providing them with support. Perhaps he could provide the Fantastic Four with some assistance.
Reed was sat in the back seat of a black sedan parked across from the S.T.A.R. Labs building. In the driver’s seat was Guy Gardner – whose crooning along to eighties soft rock Reed had been forced to endure for the entirety of their car journey.
“What’s our plan here, Doc?” Guy called over his shoulder to Reed. “You want I should come with you, give you a little backup, or are you g-”
Gardner let out a startled scream as he made eye contact with Richards in the back. His face was swollen out of recognition. One of his eyes was so bulbous that it was almost the size of a grapefruit and his usually dark brown hair was almost mullet-length on one side and short on the other.
Thick drooping lips let out slurred words. “What’s wrong, Guy?”
“What’s wrong?” Gardner said with bemusement. “What’s wrong with your face?!”
Reed glanced towards one of the sedan’s mirror and let out a wholesome laugh upon noticing his nightmarish appearance.
“Oh, my apologies, I must have got distracted. It’s a trick I learned from an old friend back on my Earth.”
With a click of his fingers, Reed’s features returned to their normal state.
“You see, when I first acquired my powers I subconsciously blocked myself from doing more than stretching and bending my appendages. I think I was worried that if altered my appearance too dramatically I might lose my sense of self and not be the same man afterwards.”
Guy bristled in the front seat. “Yeah, well maybe give me a little warning next time. I almost had a heart attack.”
“My friend Eel was very fond of practical jokes,” Reed said with a wistful smile. “He showed me that with a little imagination my powers were next to limitless. With enough training, I could make myself look like anything or anyone that I wanted to.”
Richards snapped his fingers again and his form shifted into that of a teapot. After a few seconds there was a snap and he was transformed into a mirror image of Guy. Reed lifted up one of his arms playfully and flexed his bicep as Eel might have done. It bounced up and down like something out of an old Popeye cartoon.
Gardner shook his head disapprovingly at the display. “Alright, you proved your point.”
Reed smiled. Suddenly his smile faltered as it dawned upon him that he couldn’t recall the last time that he had spoken to Eel O’Brien. He wasn’t even sure whether Eel was still alive when they’d left their world. It punctured his mood and he slid back in his seat.
He clicked his fingers one last time and the visage of Guy Gardner was replaced with that of Doc Savage – the protagonist from a series of pulp science fiction books Richards had read growing up. Maria Hill had made it very clear that he couldn’t risk being recognised if he ventured out. As long as he didn’t run into any pulp enthusiasts he figured he ought to be alright.
With a few parting words, Reed climbed out of the sedan onto the busy Central City street. Even at night there were still throngs of people dawdling up and down. Reed felt someone’s gaze on him and turned to face it. A Japanese tourist had their viewfinder pointing towards him. He smiled politely, realising he was obstructing their view, and skipped out of their way. The other passersby bore him no mind.
For the first time in a long time Reed Richards knew what it felt like to be “normal” again.
The impulse didn’t last long as one glance back towards the S.T.A.R. Labs building reminded the super scientist why he was there. He had studied the building’s schematics on the journey over and was determined to put them to the test now that he had arrived. He told himself it was some elaborate test of Harrison Wells’ ingenuity but if Reed were being truthful he had been looking for an excuse to break a sweat ever since their run-in with Namor.
The lone night watchman on the front desk was easy enough to bypass. Reed waited for a quiet moment and then melted his form down and slid beneath the building’s locked front entrance. He slid along the ground of the lobby unnoticed towards the elevators. They were outfitted with thermal sensors. A nice touch but not enough to stop Reed. He had no intention of riding the elevator to begin with.
He slid through the crack in the elevator door and snaked his way around the cables. It was tough going. Richards made sure not to set off the tripwires placed on the twelfth and eighteenth floors. It was on the twenty-first floor that things got interesting. Wells’ official office was situated on the twenty-sixth floor but there was a floor – the twenty-third – completely unaccounted for on the schematics. It was no accident.
Reed slid free of the elevator shaft on the twenty-first floor and dabbed the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand. In the distance he spotted movement. Two armed guards were conversing among themselves – in their hands state-of-the-art weaponry that could have fried Reed on the spot. One of the guards looked up in Reed’s direction for a moment. There was a glimmer of suspicion that passed upon hearing the punch line of his colleague’s laboured joke.
The two walked on and Reed let out a nervous sigh and expanded. He had rendered himself wafer-thin. From dead on he was next to invisible. Had the guard looked at an angle the super scientist’s game would have been up without a doubt. Buoyed by his success, Reed slithered after the men, making sure to observe each of the technological marvels they had been stationed to guard along the way, before breaking towards a nearby restroom.
He wormed his way through the cardhole and made sure not to set off the pressure pads placed discretely beneath the tiles.
“Here goes nothing,” Reed muttered under his breath as he perched on the edge of a sink.
In an instant his body became almost liquid and filled the sink to the brim. Richards grunted as he squeezed his way through the faucet and inched through the limescale-covered pipes. It was slow going and Reed had to hold his breath most of the way – but he arrived on S.T.A.R. Labs secretive twenty-third floor not too worse for wear and without setting off any alarms.
He dusted himself down upon exiting the restroom and made his way toward the faint tapping sound he deduced was Harrison Wells working away into the night.
His deduction proved correct. Haunched over a worktop with a pair of goggles resting atop his head was the man that Reed had travelled across the country to see. He seemed none the wiser as to Richards’ presence there.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, Harrison, but I think your defences could do with upgrading," Reed called to him with a collegiate smile.
