Half Pint

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

How’s everyone getting on with their posts? I’m excited to see where everyone’s stories are going!

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

Got my next post up! I've put a little thing at the end which should easily open up the Future Foundation for collabs with pretty much anyone, even those outside of New York. Please shoot me a PM if you'd like to work on something!

I'm travelling for work on Sunday, so chances are I may not be able to get another post up next Tuesday. I'm going to see if I can get some writing done during the layovers, and I've read online there might be wifi on the plane so chances are I might hopefully be able to get some done in the air!

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

---

Sue approached the warehouse with caution. She didn't exactly look like the type to hang about the docks at night, even with her collar popped up and hands stuffed into her jacket pockets. Herbie glided along the ground next to her, having spent the majority of the journey hidden in a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. Sue kept her eyes fixed on the warehouse almost in tunnel vision. Her heart was in her throat thinking about what awaited her behind that door, so much so that she did not notice the flickering street light in front, or the distant sound of water slapping against concrete, or the eyes that seemed to trace her every step from up above.

She knew better than to walk straight into an ambush. She felt a bit scraped and bruised from their previous adventure today, but there was no time to waste. She'd learned today that mole people existed, which meant whatever had Reed had a good chance of being worse than what she could imagine, all the more reason to go in prepared.

Sue ducked into the space between the warehouse and its adjacent twin. She unslung the duffel bag from her shoulder and lay it in front of her, obscured from the dock behind a dumpster. Soon she had stripped from her disguise and left it inside the bag, the cool blue of her supersuit striking out against the murky darkness of the dock. For a moment she allowed herself to glance down at the logo on her chest, the faint '4' still emblazoned across her front.

"And then there were two..." She murmured to the night air. If they were really stepping back into this business they'd need to either add two more members or get a change of uniform. Maybe even a different name, 'The Terrific Two' didn't really roll off the tongue very well. Regardless, now wasn't the time to brainstorm, if she left it any longer she'd be saving people as "The Only One".

She gave the building a quick once over, tracing around the perimeter looking for anything unusual or any way in other than straight through the front door. A fire escape led up to the second floor from the back of the building, she made sure to turn invisible before making her way up to the old rusted door at the top. She tried the handle, no luck, and almost thought to try and throw it off its hinges with enough force had it not been such a loud way of entering. She glanced around, there was no keyhole to pick in the door, it was becoming more and more apparent that she might need to spring this trap if she wanted to get in.

She turned to make her way back down the stairs, but was stopped by Herbie frantically tapping at her knee with one metallic hand and pointing upwards with the other. She glanced down at her mechanical friend and then up and around the area he was signaling to until she saw the open window he was directing her to. She looked at him and smiled.

"Herbie, you are one crazy little bastard, you know that?" The little robot happily chirped back in reply. "Honestly think Reed must have been watching old episodes of The A-Team when he made you." She scooped up Herbie and after a brief word of reassurance, tossed him underhand through the window. He had enough energy to hover along the ground, but flight wasn't something he was capable of. Next, she deftly climbed up onto the railing of the fire escape, using one hand to steady herself against the side of the warehouse as she stood straight up. She glanced down, far enough to break a bone or two if she didn't catch herself. She took a breath, lining up her jump before leaping towards the open window.

She caught the frame with her fingers, her body swinging past the window slightly as the inertia carried her. She dug her boots into the side of the wall, slowing and steadying herself. She glanced down and then back up again before pulling herself up and through the window and into the upstairs office.

It was the kind of room you'd expect a dockyard foreman or mob fixer to keep. It was overlooking the main warehouse floor, windows coated in grime, blinds half-snapped and yellowed with age. There was a desk, but no papers. A chair, but no indentation. A coat hook on the wall that hadn't seen a coat in years.

Sue moved in low, scanning the corners first, then the ceiling. Herbie whirred beside her in near silence. The dust hadn't been disturbed. No footprints. No heat residue. No signs of a struggle. She turned to Herbie and whispered "No boss, no thugs, no welcome mat. That's either really good news...or incredibly bad." Herbie flicked his optics once in what could only be interpreted as a shrug.

Sue crept to the interior window that overlooked the warehouse floor and peered through the slats. She could see the top of Reed's head below her, laying back on a chair. She allowed herself a smile for a moment, before glancing around the room once more. She knew better than to take all of this at face value.

Her eyes landed on the grime-caked window to her right. Beyond it, barely visible in the dark, were the metal support beams that crisscrossed the ceiling. Not built to stand on, but she was half-sure they would hold her weight, even in their unmaintained state, and more importantly give her a better view of Reed and the inside of the warehouse.

Sue cracked the window open slowly, easing it upward with gloved fingers until there was just enough room to slip through. Herbie gave a soft chirp of concern behind her, but she didn't look back.

'And next up for the flying Graysons, Sue Storm!' She thought, imagining herself as a tightrope walker in the circus. She stepped out and crouched low, balancing on a narrow I-beam slick with condensation and rust. The whole thing trembled under her weight, just enough to remind her that these beams weren't built for footsteps. She lowered herself to a crawl, using her hands to steady her as she inched her way towards the centre of the warehouse.

She kept her eyes on Reed, discovering the computer monitor flashing green light at his unconscious face. Herbie was making his way down from the office as quietly as he could. That's when she saw it. She turned and was met face to face with what looked like a blank cinderblock on the body of a huge man.

The Awesome Android stood motionless atop the steel like it had grown there, crouched and silent, a sentinel of the rafters. It had no eyes, but it was still looking down at Reed.

Sue froze mid-step. Her breath caught in her throat and she tried to stop herself from screaming out in fear. Then her foot slipped. The rust flaked under her sole and her center of gravity vanished. She dropped in a sudden, sharp blur of motion between the beams, but her instincts kicked in.

She threw out a hand and formed a hard-light construct just beneath her, invisible to everyone but her. It hit her like a trampoline, catching her with a jolt that rattled her teeth. She gritted her jaw and forced her limbs still, pressed flat against the surface of her own invisible shield like a spider clinging to glass.

Above her, the Android's featureless face moved to track her, before rising to his feet. Sue rolled backwards to her a standing position as it leapt down after her, crushing the spot where she had fallen and sending concrete splintering out around him. She glanced back for a second at Reed, she had to keep this thing away from him. He was a sitting duck in his current state.

Sue took off in a sprint across the top of her still-active construct, building another platform mid-step just ahead of her. The instant her foot left one shield, it dissolved behind her, only to reappear in front a stuttering staircase of invisible force leading away from Reed, and around and above the android back up to the rafters.

The Android didn't roar. Didn't growl. Didn't make any sound at all. It simply moved. It launched after her, its metal frame hitting her last platform with a sound like a car crash inside a drum. The beam under her shuddered from the impact. Sue ducked low and rolled, hurling herself through a narrow break in the crossbeams and catching herself with another field just before her ribs would have slammed into a steel pipe.

"Okay, okay!" she gasped, scrambling upright. "Tall, dark, and featureless. Not exactly my type!"

She dropped back down to the warehouse floor, flipping midair, and caught herself with a cushion of force, sliding across the surface like it was made of glass. She wasn't trying to beat the thing yet. She just needed space, to keep it away from Reed and formulate a plan. She called out to Herbie. "Herb! Wake up Reed!"

The little robot nodded, hurriedly making his way over to Reed. The Android adjusted course in the air, its body morphing and sliding until it was facing down towards her. His hands turned into hammers as he dove down towards her

She veered left, skimming the side wall, leapt again and made a mistake. The next shield cracked under her feet before she could reinforce it. She tumbled sideways, slammed into the wall with her shoulder, and dropped to the floor, twisting mid-fall to land in a crouch.

Pain bloomed across her ribs and shot down her arm, but she bit it back, gritting her teeth. No time for that now. The Android hit the ground with a concussive boom, its hammer-fists cratering the floor where she had just been. Dust and broken concrete sprayed in every direction. Sue staggered to her feet, coughing, just as the thing straightened its back and started toward her again.

"Herbie!" she shouted, bracing herself. "Status on Re-" She caught herself mid-sentence. Worried she'd be giving away his identity if she spoke any further. "Status on Mr. Fantastic?!" The name was the first one that came to mind. She was sure Reed would hate it.

Herbie, now hovering beside Reed's chair, let out a flurry of distressed beeps and nudged Reed's face gently. For a few seconds nothing happened. Then a flicker, Reed's head stirred, a low groan escaped his lips.

"Come on, genius!" Sue shouted. "Any time now!"

The Android was nearly on her. Sue threw up a wide forcefield wall just in time to intercept a massive, piston-driven punch. The impact rippled across the shield like a drum skin under a mallet, sending out a low whump that cracked nearby windows.

The Android didn't react, it just continued it's assault. Like it was testing the field's tensile strength. Her field shimmered violently under the pressure.

"I leave Reed alone for 5 seconds and he goes and pisses off the T-1000. Just my luck." She muttered to herself.

Her shield was close to breaking and she knew it. It had never happened before, but she wasn't looking to find out what happened when it did. She pressed the shield out a bit, expanding it's size towards the automaton as he hammered down upon it. Quickly she faked it getting bigger and instead dropped it entirely and ducked under to her left. The android was mid swing and fell forward, clattering against the wall with a mighty thud and breaking through in a shower of bricks. The sound echoed through the night air against the sound of lapping waves.

Sue scrambled behind a row of rusted cylinders and thick industrial piping - ancient refrigerant lines, marked with frostbite warnings and faded chemical hazard symbols. She glanced at one of the pressure valves. She prayed it was still active.

"Okay." she whispered, "let's see if you like the cold."

The Android's thundering footfalls closed in fast. She reached up, formed a small shield around the valve like a wrench, and wrenched it sideways. The pipe groaned and then ruptured.

A jet of white freezing gas exploded outward, howling like a wolf as it started enveloping the Android mid-step. It began to freeze in place. Crystals starting to form across its torso and limbs, joints locking as cold mist hissed around its body. Sue didn't wait, she summoned a forcefield like a battering ram and slammed it into the Android's side with everything she had.

The blow connected with a crack like shattering ice. The Android stumbled, its left arm breaking free in a spray of brittle, frozen shrapnel. It staggered, systems glitching, one leg dragging behind it as it turned toward her, movements stiff and uncoordinated.

"Didn't like that, huh?" she muttered, breathing hard. The Android's remaining arm morphed violently, blades folding out albeit slower this time.

Sue backed away slowly, keeping herself between it and Reed, who still hadn't stirred. "Herbie!" she called. "Wake him up now!"

The little robot beeped frantically, doing everything it could to wake his Maker nudging his shoulder and chirping a sharp alert tone. Nothing was working. The little robot began to panic, and with one mighty thwack smacked him across the face. The scientist woke with a startle, glancing down in confusion at a very worried looking Herbie who was pointing frantically at Sue.

He craned his head around the chair just in time to catch her throwing up another shield as the Android lunged again, slower this time. Anger surged within him, he rose from the chair, breaking the clasps that held his arms and legs as his limbs increased in size.

Soon he stood at the same height and width as the Android, approaching behind it like a shadow taking shape. The machine hadn't even registered him yet. It was still focused on Sue, trying to muscle through another one of her shimmering constructs. Reed didn't utter a noise before he struck.

He wrapped two massive, elongated arms around the Android's torso and ripped it backward in a single, brutal motion. The Android staggered, caught completely off guard - the first miscalculation it had made all night.

Sue's eyes widened. "Reed?"

The scientist-turned-golem didn't answer. He slammed the Android into the floor once, then again, the warehouse trembling with each impact. The second hit cratered the concrete beneath them, the third broke it further, the android reaching out to grab onto something, anything that would make the beating stop.

The Android tried to shift its limbs, morphing one into a blade mid-swing, but Reed caught the arm before it could fully form and twisted. A wet-metal sound rang out as the mechanism bent in a direction it was never meant to go.

"You laid a hand on her." Reed snarled, his voice deeper, more strained. "That's the last thing you'll ever do."

The Android's body morphed, its remaining arm switching sides and swiping toward Reed's neck, but his shoulder stretched and absorbed the impact like dense rubber. His other hand morphed into a hammer-like mass and came crashing down onto the Android's chest, cracking more ice away and caving in one of the outer plates.

"Sue!" he barked, "Get ready!"

"For what?!"

He lifted the Android overhead with both arms, every tendon in his reshaped body straining against the weight. "To finish it!"

Sue nodded, her breath still heavy from the androids previous assault. She threw out her hands and built a tunnel of forcefields, a gauntlet of shimmering violet walls, aimed directly at the broken wall the Android had fallen through.

Reed let out a final grunt and hurled the machine through the air like a shotput. The Android smashed through each barrier, exploding through the final one with a thunderclap of kinetic force, and was launched out the side of the warehouse into the night.

Silence returned, to the room. The only noise was the collective panting of a super couple who had just defeated their first villain. Reed stood breathing with his hands on his knees, the stretching mass of his shoulders slowly retracting, his form shrinking back to his natural appearance. Sue let her shield fade and took a long, shaking breath.

Reed turned to her, face flushed with adrenaline and fear. "Are you okay?" He asked, rushing over to embrace her.

Sue nodded against his chest, still catching her breath. "Yeah. You?"

He pulled back slightly, searching her face for injuries. "Better now."

There was a pause. Then she smirked faintly. "You could've warned me before going full Kaiju."

He huffed something between a laugh and a groan, his hands dragging down his face. "Look...I'm sorry. About earlier. About Elder. I shouldn't have dismissed what you were saying."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry too. I didn't have to come down on you so hard. I just..." she hesitated, then admitted, "I've seen people like him get away with too much for too long."

Reed nodded slowly. "I get it. I do. But I can't just walk away from what he's discovered. There's potential there, Sue, not just scientific, but...maybe even for redemption. If we can steer it. If he'll let us."

"Then we don’t walk away." She said, a little more guarded. "But we don’t stop asking questions, either."

Reed gave a small nod. "Fair."

Herbie let out a proud chirp and hovered over to the cracked console still glowing faintly with green light. Reed followed it, flexing his sore hand. "I'd bet a million dollars whoever built that thing is the same person who brought me here."

They both looked at the screen in front. Flashing green letters read:

[TEST PASSED. I WILL BE IN CONTACT.]

---

Back at the Baxter Annex, the silence felt heavier than usual. The hum of distant city traffic barely touched the windows. The lights in the lab were dimmed, save for one pale projection glowing in the middle of the room.

Reed sat alone. His eyes were locked on the screen before him, paused on a single frame from a video almost a decade old. Their first day in the Baxter Annex. Before the mission. Before the powers. Before the split.

Sue had her legs draped over the back of the couch, tossing popcorn at Johnny, who was pretending to deflect it with a kitchen glove. Ben was eating pizza straight from the box, crust-first, and shouting color commentary from behind the camera. Reed himself stood off to the side, distracted with a makeshift antenna for the Herbie's first prototype, multitasking as always.

The only thing Reed thought while looking at it was how young they were, and how happy they were.

Reed unpaused the feed. The grainy footage played back through the tinny recording. Ben moving the camera over to reed and slapping a large hand against his back, laughing.

"The world's not gonna fix itself, Stretch."

It was the first time Reed had heard Ben's voice in years. He blinked slowly. That line had played on repeat in his head ever since they'd made it out of the warehouse. Ever since the fight. Ever since he'd stood in front of the console, and the parting message had flickered across the screen like a challenge.

Reed sat back, eyes glassy. There had been a moment, before the fight, just after the console gave its message where he'd had to make a choice. He could've reactivated Four_Scramble, kept their digital trail hidden, their past scrubbed and safe.

But he didn't. He chose to keep the memories instead. Chose to let the world know they were still out there. Even with all of the danger it brought. Heroes again.

Their security was gone now. Replaced with open files; Old images, articles, interviews, family photos. Even that terrible daytime talk show appearance Johnny had appeared on - having blagged his way onto the set by pretending to be a famous racecar driver. It was all still there.

Reed's hand floated above the interface and gestured again. A second projection lit the room, their suits -unstable molecule blends keyed to their unique bio-signatures, floated midair in ghostly outline, shifting slowly as he adjusted the structure. The traditional blue was bleeding away, replaced with clean white, edged in black and silver. The logo on the chest was clean and minimalist: not a '4', but three hexagons. He'd spent hours thinking about that shape. Three hexes - each six-sided, perfectly tessellated, endlessly repeatable. A pattern found in nature, in chemistry, in structure. They stood for cohesion under pressure. For balance. For adaptation. One for the past. One for the present. And one for the future. A new formula, built from what remained.

The Annex door slid open. Sue stepped into the room, her damp hair tucked behind her ears, dressed in a simple black tee and sweatpants, toweling off her arms. Her eyes adjusted to the light.

"Reed?" she asked. She followed his gaze to the paused frame still frozen on the screen. Her eyes softened. "Is that?"

He nodded. "First day."

Sue moved beside him, folding her arms. She smiled faintly at the sight of Johnny and Ben clowning around on-screen.

"I remember this." she said. "God, Johnny was always so cocky."

"Yeah. But he always believed in the mission. Even when I forgot what it was."

He tapped a few keys on the keyboard, and a hardlight projection of the new suits and the white-on-black hexagonal emblem began drifting in midair. "When I sat in that chair, in front of that terminal, they gave me a choice. Either save the security protocols...or save our memories." Sue glanced at him, a sudden seriousness in her expression. "I chose the memories." he said.

She didn't say anything at first. She was shocked to tell the truth. She'd never known Reed to ever look at those files. Let alone be so affected by the prospect of losing them.

Reed stood, walking slowly toward the projection. "We built Four_Scramble to keep us invisible. That was the deal, hide long enough to survive. Hope someone else topples Lord so things can go back to the way they were. But that's not what Johnny wanted. That's not what Ben believed in. And when it came down to it, I couldn't erase what little we still had left of them. I wouldn't."

He reached up and rotated the floating schematic slowly with his hand, the white suits glinting faintly in the lab light. "Things will never go back to the way they were. It's time we start looking forward rather than back." Sue moved over to inspect the new suits next to him. "The hexagons weren’t just an aesthetic decision." He continued. "I've been thinking about the structure. What it means."

He pointed to the logo, three black hexagons intersecting in a triangular pattern. "Hexagons are found everywhere in nature. In carbon lattices. In honeycombs. In snowflakes and crystal formations. They're efficient. Resilient. They bind together under stress and distribute pressure perfectly. And they replicate. Not just as a pattern...but as a principle."

Sue took a step closer, listening. "One hex for the past." Reed said pointing to the left hexagon. "For Johnny. For Ben. For everything we lost." He pointed to the second. "One for the present. For you and me. For everything we still have." And then the third. "And one for the future. For what we will build next. For the people we help along the way."

He turned to face her, the faint light of the projection casting a glow across his tired features. "I didn't just choose the archive because I was sentimental, Sue. I chose it because it reminded me that we're not here to disappear. We're here to endure. To make a difference."

Sue looked at the symbol for a long time. "Not a four anymore." she said.

"No." Reed replied. "But something that can hold more than four. Something that can grow. Fit together again. Whatever this team becomes next...we're not going backward."

Sue smiled at him. "I knew you'd come around eventually, genius." Before embracing him in a kiss.

---

---

Sue turned on the TV, hoping for static, for weather, for anything that would quiet her brain for a while. Instead, the channel flickered into a late-night news segment. The Daily Bugle's, judging by the dramatized footage and pointed narration. A female reporter was speaking over grainy footage of flashing lights and blurred security camera stills.

"A classified breach occurred last night at the former Baxter Building, now operated under federal jurisdiction. Eyewitnesses report a short, intense firefight between security forces and two unidentified Meta individuals. No fatalities have been officially reported. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen two agents taken away in ambulances, though federal sources maintain the injuries were minor and non-lethal.

Surveillance footage, which has not been released to the public, allegedly shows one suspect manipulating some form of energy barrier, while another appeared to stretch his limbs beyond normal human limits. Department officials have refused to comment on the authenticity of these claims.

The building, once home to the infamous Baxter Foundation think tank and later the former short lived superhero group known as the Fantastic Four, has remained under lockdown since the program's abrupt dissolution years ago after President Lord's election. This marks the first recorded incident of unauthorized access since its closure.

While federal sources deny any connection to the disbanded team, speculation is mounting online. Digital analysts have noted similarities between the intruders' tactics and archived footage of the Fantastic Four's operations during the The Reach Event.

No suspects have been identified, and no group has claimed responsibility."

The reporters voice trailed off. Seems there was no escaping it now, they were in it for the long haul. Sue rose from her seat shaking her head. Her gaze drifted to the projection still hovering in the air, their new suits, pale and crisp, edged in silver and marked with the triad of hexagons.

She stepped forward, brushing her fingers across the edge of the hardlight interface. The panels shimmered at her touch. Her eyes glanced towards the computer screen Reed had been using to work on them.

Below the schematic, Reed had left the command line open. The same one he'd used to rewrite their suits. Sue sat down in the chair he'd vacated and pulled the keyboard toward her. She browsed a few news sites, the details of their incursion were few and far between, but some leaks had got through as they were always bound to. Next she went a bit more off grid, various online forums where people were arguing over whether or not they had been the real thing or copycats. She tried to stay off sites like those, the users who hated metas were bad enough, but the ones obssessed with superheroes were just weird.

Her fingers hovered over the keys for just a second before she began to type. The interface was crude and outdated. A relic from the early darknet boards used by off-grid metahumans, buried behind dead protocols and false DNS returns.

A single open thread pulsed faintly: [ THREAD 267.14 | SUBJECT : FUTURE FOUNDATION | ] She began to type.

Tired of running?
So are we.
The Future Foundation is active.
Reach out, or don't.
We'll be there.

She hit send. The screen stuttered, then blinked back to black. No trace of the message remained. But the right people would see it. It was time to help the world again.

Teen Titans: Secret Origins - A Re-Imagined DC Canon RP

I think we just need the folk in the T-Bird to reply following @King Kindred‘s post and then we can regroup?

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

Totally considering that! Drax has always been one of the Marvel characters I’d like to write, but rarely get a chance to. I might be applying for a Marvel character someday, but I dunno, is there a limit on how many characters we can apply for?

@Terry Bogard

I believe it's just one for this roleplay!

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

After my next post I should have Reed and Sue freed enough to work on a collab if anyone is available and would like to! I'm just writing up my next post now, so I should be available for the rest of the week to work on something in time to post after my next with anyone!

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

---

Sue had barely spoke on the way home. Reed's mouth was moving a million miles an hour speaking about Elder and his Moloids. Theorising and conceptualising how he'd managed to create life and where these ancient creatures had came from. Sue's mind was elsewhere. The thought of all of this being beneath their feet for so long frightened her, why would any new sentient race be content living underneath the earth? The question of if they'd ever breach the surface felt more like 'when' would they breach the surface to her. Or worse yet, when Lord and his troops would find them. She stared out the window of the bus as it rumbled through New York toward their safehouse, the skyline was blurred and grey under the cloud-choked sky. Her reflection in the glass looked pale and drawn. She barely recognized herself.

Reed continued rambling as they opened the door to the Baxter Annex and peeled off their field gear. "-the bioluminescent mycelium isn't just for light, it's a neural mesh. He's networked it. That's why the walls felt like they were humming, Sue. It's living architecture - it's got to be. Symbiotic, probably semi-sentient. Elder might not have just bioengineered those creatures - he might've shaped them! Do you realise what this means?"

Sue slumped down onto the couch, barely looking at him. Herbie Jr. floated out of his charging dock and glided over to her like a curious pet. She rested her hand on the white robot's smooth dome, absent-mindedly stroking it as if he were a cat. Reed hovered nearby.

"Sue, are you listening to me?"

She glanced up at him. "Yeah, Reed, I'm listening."

Reed had seen this face a few times. The last major time was when Johnny had left them. Sue was the smartest woman Reed had ever met, but she had a terrible poker face. She wore her heart on her sleeve, you could almost always tell what emotion she was feeling by the slightest glance at her face.

Reed stopped his train of thought. Thinking for a moment before perching himself on the arm of the sofa. "Okay, what is it? You're clearly upset. Just say it."

Sue didn't answer at first. She looked back out the window with her chin resting on her hand, the clouds were hanging like smoke over the city. "I don't trust him."

Reed blinked. "Who? Elder?"

"Yes. Elder." She spoke with a sigh. "That man isn't a victim. He didn't just fall into the Earth and become some tragic figure surrounded by misunderstood mole-children. He's playing you, Reed."

"Playing me?" Reed echoed, baffled. "Sue, he's deformed. He's half-blind. He's living underground surrounded by the last remnants of some extinct civilization he alone brought back to life!"

"Yeah. That he engineered into servitude."

Reed opened his mouth to argue but Sue cut him off.

"Did you even look at them? Those Moloids aren't a new species, Reed. He admitted it! They could have been people once. Maybe not human, but maybe close. And now they're just...feral husks. Do you really think they just chose to follow him? How do you explain Belo? Why is he the only one we saw that could speak?"

Reed frowned. "There's no evidence he enslaved them. They're imprinted - possibly epigenetically. We don't know their baseline. They could be-"

Sue raised her voice, emphatically standing up from the couch and moving to the other side of the room from Reed. "Don't do that! Don't sterilize it with scientific jargon. We both saw the way they flinched when he raised his voice - the way they huddled. That wasn't imprinting, Reed. That was fear."

Reed's brow furrowed, but he didn't reply. Herbie Jr. rotated in midair, sensors dimming, as if trying to avoid the tension.

Sue stepped forward, lowering her voice but keeping a firm tone. "You want to know the real reason I don't trust him? It's not just the Moloids. It's because I remember who he was at the Think Tank."

Reed's eyes narrowed slightly. "Sue-"

"No, let me finish!" She snapped. "He used to sit in judgment of every girl who walked through those doors. All the boys? You, Victor, even that creep Wittman! He nurtured you, encouraged you, gave you freedom. But the girls? Me, Gloria, Sharon, Aiko - we had to beg for scraps of approval. He second-guessed every proposal we made. He rolled his eyes when I corrected him. You ever wonder why the best I ever got from him was b B+? I remember he once said to Gloria that women 'lacked the true competitive drive' to change the world!"

Reed took a breath, barely opening his mouth to speak. "I never heard him say that."

"Of course you didn't!" she said, incredulous. "Because you were the golden boy. You were everything he wanted to mold. You're still defending him, Reed. Even now. You're making excuses for a man who built an empire underground and turned sentient life into furniture!"

Reed ran a hand through his hair, pacing. "Maybe he was biased. Maybe he is a bastard. But he also cracked a code that could change biology itself! Do you understand what that means? Sentient architecture. Regenerative infrastructure. We could cure disease, feed the planet-"

"Oh my god, listen to yourself!" Sue snapped. "You sound just like him. And what if he uses this technology for evil? What if he buddies up with Osborn and Lord and the rest? Helps them bio-engineer the X-Gene out of mutants?"

Reed stopped cold. He had no reply.

"You're so obsessed with what it means that you won't look at how he did it. What he sacrificed. Who he hurt. Do you ever think about the cost of these ideas, Reed? Or do you just catalogue the upside and call it progress?"

His voice sharpened. "That's not fair."

"No? How do I know every time we find someone like Elder you won't want to understand them first before we stop them? How are we going to fight back against Lord if you're so focused on figuring out what makes monsters tick instead of stopping them from hurting people?"

"Because understanding is the first step to-"

"To repeating their mistakes. You're a step away from becoming like them with that mindset!"

"What makes you think I want to fight Lord in the first place? What's wrong with what we've been doing? Newsflash Sue the Fantastic Four are done - were done years ago! Even before Ben and Johnny left it was done! We are not heroes and we never were!"

Sue gasped at the mention of her brothers name. She felt tears welling up in the corner of her eyes. "Yeah well Newsflash brainiac-" She parroted back with venom in her voice. She grabbed her phone and unlocked it, tapping away before turning the screen displaying emerging reports of their infiltration to the Baxter Building towards him. "-We might not have a choice! You think they don't have footage of our face? What are we gonna do hide somewhere else? Let everyone around us die while we sit underground with the Moloids?"

Reed stood silent. His hands were clenched. For once, his mind didn't have an instant answer. He could see the pain across his partners face. It hurt him to see her so upset, but he couldn't let this go, whether it be pride or stubborness he felt like this was one argument he couldn't resolve so quickly.

"I thought you'd changed." Sue said quietly. "But maybe some part of you is still that kid trying to impress monsters like Elder."

That was the one that landed. Reed's face dropped, he had pure anger displayed across his features and yet he remained silent. He moved toward the door, grabbing the data tablet off the charging dock, ignoring Herbie's soft chirp of protest.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm going to find whoever's been tracking Elder. If there's another player in this, we need to know who." He said in monotone.

"Reed-"

He didn't turn around to answer her. "I'll be back when I have something useful."

The door hissed open. And then Reed was gone, leaving Sue standing alone in the low hum of the Baxter Annex, Herbie Jr. whirring softly beside her as she began to cry.

---

Reed felt the cold night air bite his face. He was following the data tablet like a blood hound, it kept his mind off of the argument with Sue. Somewhere in his heart he felt, or perhaps knew he could be wrong about Elder. That Sue was right. But something bigger was stopping him from admitting it.

Every few blocks, Reed stopped to recalibrate the device. He rerouted through a low-level satellite relay, bypassed two security nodes without thinking. The deeper he followed the signal, the more anomalous it became. At first, he'd assumed it was a leak, something primitive in Elder's jerry-rigged architecture made up of salvaged tech. But now he was sure this was something deeper, the source of all of this was being protected.

He stepped into a shadowed alley off Canal Street and knelt down tapping into his device. For every security measure he'd bypass another would pop up. It was getting quicker and quicker, loading up more than he could handle alone. God damn did he choose the worst time to argue with Sue.

Suddenly the screen went blank. For a moment he thought his tablet had been overloaded. He hit the side of it with his palm hoping to jig it back into life. Suddenly the console opened on the screen. A line of code scrolled across the interface - one he hadn't written.

[Welcome, Dr. Richards. I estimated a 94.6% probability you'd follow.]

Reed's breath caught in his throat. He rushed to sever the connection but it was too late too late. The tablet screen went black once more. And then flickered as a new window opened. It was a map of him. Or more accurately, his movements since leaving the Baxter Annex.

Footprints traced every movement he'd made over the last hour. Time-stamped, even with the altitude tracked. It was like a running app he'd never asked for.

At the center of the map, a blinking point labeled only:

[YOU ARE HERE.]

Then it changed:

[YOU ARE LATE.]

Suddenly, the tablet chirped and rebooted. An address appeared on the map leading to the docks. Reed zoomed in with two fingers and rushed to the old Warehouse at the end of the pier.

He pushed open the rusted door to the warehouse a short while later to find it surprisingly empty, save for a glowing terminal at the end of the room. The whole place felt off, like he was about to spring an ambush. This was a necessary sacrifice. If the person on the other end of his tablet had been tracking him they'd know where the Baxter Annex was. This was no longer just about helping Elder, it was about protecting Sue.

He took a deep breath as he stepped further into the empty space, his eyes darting around the room as he slowly made his way through the darkness and to computer. As he approached he placed a hand on the old dentists chair sat in front of the monitor. He inspected it briefly, it had a tangle of wires hanging out the back and some sort of harness system around the arms.

"Don't sit." he muttered to himself. "Definitely don't sit." He glanced at the screen, a blinking cursor in the top right of the console. The person on the other end began to type.

[Hello, Dr Richards.]

Reed stood still. His own reflection stared back at him in the glass.

[You are not being watched. Not in the way you think.

You are being measured. Modeled. Replicated.

And, if possible, improved.]

Reed leaned forward over the desk. He instinctively moved to type on a keyboard, but found none available. He scanned the room again, looking for anything that could have been monitoring him. He ventured a try at speaking.

"Who are you?"

[Unimportant.

You are more machine than man, Reed. A soft machine. Even your grief follows geometry.

Let's test that.]

The monitor flickered again and two folders appeared side by side. One labeled: "/Personal/Archive/Shared_Memories/" and the other: "/Security/Protocols/Four_Scramble/"

Reed felt a surge of anxiety as his shoulders tensed. He recognized both of these filepaths instantly. 'Shared_Memories' was exactly what it sounded like. A private vault Sue had asked him to build. Hidden files from their years together. Photos, voice notes. Moments that had slipped through the cracks of grief and survival. And most importantly, the last recorded memories they had of Ben and Johnny.

'Four_Scramble', on the other hand, was the system they had built to keep them invisible. A location scrubber Sue had coded to hide their movements, decoy identities built into Lord's metahuman census, and a voice-cloaking keyed to distort their speech patterns across tapped comms. Everything they needed to operate under the radar and without too much hastle from Lord.

The cursor pulsed and then began to type.

[You may keep one.]

[The other is overwritten.]

[Not copied. Not moved. Not archived. Gone.]

Reed's mouth felt dry. "You can't-"

Another line:

[Can't I?]

The Shared_Memories folder opened itself and began opening and cosing various documents at random:

• sue_laugh.wav
• annex_first_night.mp4
• johnny_last_sighting.mp4
• graduation_photos.zip
• Ben_Argument.mp3
• storm_family_photos.zip

The cursor typed again.

[Keep the life that built you — or the life you hold onto now.]

Reed took a slow step back from the screen, his head racked with thoughts. "They're not separate." he muttered.

[They are now.]

[You can save your past.]

[Or you can protect her future.]

He froze in place.The wording was deliberate. Not his future, her future.

[You love her. Predictable. She makes you human.]

[But she is not invisible without this.]

Reed stood in silence. Shellshocked. His mind was scattered. For a few moments he stood staring at the text in front of him desperately wishing he could wake up from this nightmare.

The cursor blinked again.

[When you are ready to make your decision, please take a seat.]

Reed looked behind him at the dentists chair and took a deep breath, before sliding back into the chair and being locked in place as the metal clamps tightened around his wrists and ankles.

---

Sue sat on the floor beside the workbench with her knees pulled to her chest. Herbie Jr. hovered at her side, chirping quietly in a rhythm that almost felt comforting. She hadn't cried like that in a long time. Not since Ben walked out. Not since the moment Johnny told her she wasn't his sister anymore.

Now Reed was out there chasing ghosts again. Her fingers trembled as she reached for the console. She had half a mind to shut it all down, the scanners, the monitors, the data. Just turn it all off. Maybe Reed was right, they were scientists for gods sake not superheroes. Even with their powers they barely made it out against the security force back at the Baxter Building. And now Reed was out there, probably about to get himself killed without her there to protect him.

She rubbed her nose with her forearm. The time for feeling sorry for herself was over. Her partner might've been bullheaded, but he was still hers. It was time to track him down and help him, even if his plan was crazy. She rose to her feet and turned to the computer on the workstation, furiously tapping away at the keyboard as she began trying to track the tablet Reed had taken.

She was having an unusual amount of trouble, like something was blocking her. She was faster though, especially with Herbie by her side helping with the hack. Finally she managed to break through, tracking Reed to a warehouse at the docks. Her brow furrowed, what was he doing there?

She stared at the blinking dot on the screen. "Herbie." she spoke. "Ready for your first field mission?"

Herbie let out a happy chirp, spinning in place as Sue rose from her chair, wiping the remaining tears from her cheeks.

"No more crying. We're doing this my way now."

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

@Half Pint Around the idea of Wakanda being a safe harbour for Mutants and a rogue prince and his future queen fighting the good fight despite the insistance of everyone else?

Not really... Maybe Wondie and Steve... But the problem with that is "Why would either of them really put themselves out there for Mutants?" With T'Challa and Ororo, it makes perfect sense, they are her people and he can't very well stand by while his beloved's people are being hurt, especially if it's the Morlocks who she shares a special connection to. But with Wondie and Steve, it'd be a bit out of left field. And also a hell of a time being that Themyscera would only accept the Females because the males would just be... Well, depending on the continuity, mated and kicked out at best, or straight up murdered without the mating at worst.

@Sep It's a good option... Unfortunately, and it pains me to say this, i never really got into Inhumans (Recently watched Inhumanoids, but that's a VERY different thing... Although Marvel did do a few issue run of their comics...) I appreciate that Lockjaw is the single most important character in Marvel Universe and anyone that hurts him is the one thing that unites, literally, the entire universe into action... But the rest of them i'm rather unfamiliar with, at least not familiar enough to really build a story on.

Fuck it, i might just give this whole RP a miss and wait for the next one, since every idea gets rejected regardless.

@mattmanganon

To be fair, I don't think your ideas have been getting rejected outright previous to this one, and that's only because the characters play a central part in @Lord Wraith's story. I'm sure we're all happy to workshop an idea with you that will work!

Another character I can think of would be Black Adam? You could pair him with someone else if you still want the queen aspect and don't want to use Isis, keep in mind you can reimagine them to fit! Maybe Wonder Woman or someone?

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

@Lord Wraith understandable. Back to the drawing board again.

@mattmanganon

Are there any other characters that would work with the central theme of your idea that aren't T'Challa and Storm?

Ultimate One Universe: Resistance

<Snipped quote by Half Pint>

Thanks. I enjoyed the Moloids, and I'll be shallow and admit I enjoyed how you put the Emphasis on Doom.

Me and @Lord Wraith were talking about it the other day, the F4 villains scale really quickly. One day they're dealing with Mole Man then the next day they're stopping Galactus from destroying the planet and Doom from rewriting reality.

@Sep

Oh 100%. I'm enjoying writing them in this setting because it means Reed can't just invent some new device to defeat the world threatening foes or have a huge amount of money to sort through his problems with.