Due to lower gravity than found on Earth, the methane and ammonia rains of extrasolar planet HD 189733d – located 63 light years from Earth in the constellation of Vulpecula – fell in slow motion. However, because of a curious barometric anomaly affecting precipitation, the methane crystals boiled and evaporate at roughly the same temperature as they formed, creating a dramatic misting effect of glittering silver-gold droplets tumbling like snow but then vaporizing into bronze swirls of freezing mist at several staggered layers above ground level.

It was a truly breathtaking spectacle, and standing in the natural cathedral of this alien environment was an experience unlike any other Susan Storm-Richards could recall. For a woman who had spent half her adult life being inspired and dismayed in equal measure by the fantastic, that was rare praise indeed. It was almost enough to make her forget that she was furious.

Almost.

“Reed? We have to talk…”

Reed Richards was drifting in a counter-balanced semi-sphere of molecular discordance, generating an effect similar to the weightlessness of an anti-gravity pod but without the disadvantages of velocity lag. It allowed his body freedom of clinical movement with nigh-absolute buoyancy, a perfect state in which to focus utterly upon his work. Nonetheless, even as he wheeled slowly in mid-air at the sound of his wife’s voice, an air of discomfort was apparent. Susan noted her husband’s physical tenderness with concern, aware that Reed’s cellular elasticity – his unique superhuman power – had recently been, for want of a better term, in flux.

“You like it?” Reed asked, indicating their surroundings. “Three-dimensional, holographic virtual rendering, programmed in accordance to the base data accumulated from theactual HD 189733d, and then overlaid upon an expanded spatial location.”

“Reed—”

“The location in this instance being a sub-pocket of Kosmos, the dimension first accessed by Henry Pym and utilized for the variable-structure quality of its particles – Pym Particles – which allow the transition of physical mass between the dimensional membrane. Pym gets to grow and Janet van Dyne gets to shrink, shunting their mass from one frequency of existence to another without compromising density or their body’s intrinsic template. We, on the other hand, get to enjoy expanded dimensional space.”

“Reed…”

“You see, by layering the confined reality of a single location within sub-Kosmos, physical boundaries no longer apply. This room, where we’re standing? Bigger on the inside than the outside, to quote the recognized vernacular; and, with the virtual module, this expanded space can be automated to render an immaculate visual representation of anywhere or anywhen we choose. With a flick of a switch we could be standing in Paris at the height of the Revolution, navigating the summit of Mount Fiji, exploring the volcanic moons of Ro-Sirius 9—”

“Reed!”

“Yes. Hello. Yes.”

Reed paused, looking guilty. Sue glowered.

“I’d say you look beautiful when you’re angry, but that would imply that there are times when you’re not beautiful, which obviously isn’t true,” Reed said. Then, musing, he added, “or which, by extrapolation, could suggest that you’re always angry…”

“When didn’t you tell me?”

Reed considered this carefully. “Because… because? No, sorry, you’re going to have to narrow it down.”

There were a lot of things Reed didn’t tell Sue. It wasn’t because he was willfully secretive, or because he was so arrogant that he believed his wife wouldn’t understand half the things he did. She was formidably intelligent, truth be told. It was just that there wasn’t enough time in the day for general chitchat.

In this instance, however, he was being deliberately obtuse and they both knew it.

Sue held up a data readout on synthetic crystal – another one of Reed’s inventions that, regardless of patent, had recently been blatantly imitated by Apple in the creation of their supposedly future-defining ‘virtual paper’ – but it was the data itself that was the smoking gun.

“Ah,” said Reed. “That.”

Sue stared up at her husband sadly, her initial anger ceding to an all-too-familiar weariness. They were an odd couple these two; her with her effortlessly disheveled blonde hair, languid blonde eyes and poster girl curves, all 1960s Brigitte Bardot chic; him with his silver-peppered temples, vague air and perpetual stiffness to his carriage, but with the disarming charisma of a 1950s Cary Grant. The inherent irony in the pair of them was sometimes overlooked; she was the Invisible Woman, capable of disappearing in the blink of an eye yet also the genuinely stunning beauty who turned heads and broke hearts, and he was Mister Fantastic, a man not given to self-promotion despite his many talents, and a man who could never truly relax in his malleable body.

Their names and their abilities did not define them. But, even so, Susan’s recent discovery was a potentially harmful one indeed.

“What I’m asking, Reed,” she said, softly, “is why you didn’t tell me that in the six months since the Red Skull used the Cosmic Cube to subvert reality, our powers have been steadily and irrevocably diminishing – and at the current rate of decline, that situation could soon be critical…?”

AS SOON GO KINDLE FIRE WITH SNOW

Part I: A Life Less Fantastic

By Meriades Rai

“Well, hello there. Didn’t you used to be a big-time superhero…?”

Johnny Storm looked up from his root beer and peanuts with mild annoyance, preparing to deliver a humorless rebuke, but instead he merely frowned when he saw a slight, mousy brunette approaching the bar where he was sitting. The woman didn’t elicit any attention other than his, and not because he was the only superhero – big-time or not – in the joint; she was plain and unassuming, with a shy and awkward demeanor, and not at all Johnny’s type so she surely couldn’t have been one of his many casual girlfriends. Nevertheless, she seemed oddly familiar. She waited patiently for the light to spark behind Johnny’s eyes.

“Jen…?”

Jennifer Walters smiled, with a hint of a sigh. “Wondering if I was an old flame, right?” she murmured. “No pun intended, hotshot. Buy a girl a soda?”

Johnny obliged, hailing the bartender and then easing back on his stool. “Sorry, it’s just—”

“I know, I know. I’m a whole new me when I’m not big, green and glamorous. These days I try and ration out the sensational She-Hulk; remind myself what it’s like to be normal. That’s why my opening gambit was somewhat ironic.”

Johnny nodded vaguely, feeling dumb. Jennifer had been a member of the Fantastic Four awhile, a few years back during a time when Ben Grimm – The Thing – had been off exploring the universe on his lonesome, or some such. She’d been a real hit, a boon to the team and a media darling, but it was all as She-Hulk; Jen Walters just wasn’t the same kind of draw, and seemingly not as memorable, even for her team-mates.

“I’m sorry,” Jennifer said, sipping daintily at her soda. “About Ben. I… can’t imagine how difficult it’s been. Has he…?”

“We don’t tend to talk about it,” Johnny said, glancing away. “You know, Reed and Sue… or the kids. I mean, it’s there, like an elephant in the room – a big, rocky, orange elephant – and it’s like everyone’s still pretending it’s just temporary, one of those hero-gets-screwy then returns-in-a-blaze-of-glory deals. We’re no strangers to those. But… it’s been a long time now. Ben’s gone, he’s changed… and I don’t think he’ll ever be back. The stuff he’s done, I’m not sure he could even if he wanted to.”

Jennifer merely nodded, allowing Johnny to talk. It seemed like it was what he needed, and with her being a professional attorney listening came naturally. And she could genuinely empathize. Her time with the Fantastic Four may have been as Ben’s replacement but she’d always liked the man, felt a kinship with him. The fact that the world had lost the Thing they knew and loved, and that he’d now become the hostile monster he’d always hated to be perceived as… it was a tragedy.

“The FF have been keeping a low profile these past few months,” Johnny continued. “Enemies with a personal vendetta, global threats. Reed’s stretching powers have been causing him pain lately, and my flame’s been… erratic, although I haven’t wanted to bother him or Sue with that. We’ve had it rough. And you…?”

Jennifer smirked, her brown eyes darkening. “Yeah, I can relate to rough,” she muttered. “You’ve seen the news, from my time out in Los Angeles with the West Coast Avengers? I got my sweet green ass handed to me by Titania in the middle of a court case – with her subsequent escape from custody being all my fault in the first place, and with my humiliation captured live on television – and then it got ten times worse. Simon – Wonder Man – went ape during his own court appearance and his legal representative – which, for the record, would be me again – was unable to stop him. A child, a young boy… he died. We don’t know the full details, or even if there’s a sniff of the set-up about it all, but the damage was done. *

* see recent issues of Marvel Omega’s West Coast Avengers!

“The WCA hasn’t disbanded – not so far as I know – but there’s one hell of a lot of friction, which is probably only to be expected when Quicksilver’s got his speedy little fingers on the team leader’s gavel. Even Wanda wasn’t able to keep him in line at the end.”

“The end?”

Jen grimaced. “He fired me. About five seconds before I quit. So here I am, back in New York, single white female – sometimes green – looking to piece her life back together, not for the first time…”

Johnny snorted and rolled his eyes. “Pietro Maximoff, world’s fastest moron, and the second most irritating man alive. He should do us all a favor and go kickstart his own Brotherhood of Really Annoying Mutants. No wonder his sister calls herself the Scarlet Witch, all that red’s from the constant embarrassment…”

Jennifer stared at the blond man beside her, then giggled. Johnny pouted.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’re funny, that’s all.”

“Funny?”

“Yes. You have wit, Jonathan Storm. You just don’t show it that often, because you prefer being the archetypal angry young man. And maybe you’ve spent a long time in Ben’s shadow, and now it’s time to burn a little brighter.”

“It was a big shadow.”

“See? Witty.”

Johnny grinned, then gestured towards his bowl. “Want to hear my joke about the two peanuts? These two peanuts walk into a bar, and there’s this gorilla… oh no, wait, actually it was a giraffe… and… no, it’s three peanuts, and—”

“Objection!” Jennifer declared, hands over her ears. “I’ve changed my plea, your honor. I’d like my prior comment stricken from the record…”

Johnny looked mock-aggrieved, then chuckled. And that was when the long window at the front of the bar exploded in a shower of glass and wood as a man’s body suddenly impacted with an almighty crash, sending the tavern’s smattering of patrons diving for cover…

“Reed?”

Reed Richards held up a hand in admittance of defeat, then disengaged his anti-gravity semi-sphere and descended to ground level. Now dressed in an immaculate tweed jacket, waistcoat and slacks, with a pair of half-moon spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, he appeared every inch the dignified – and wholly eccentric – Victorian scientist, inventor and imaginist. He leaned back against a flawless nineteenth century writing desk with a sigh, nervously fingering a pocket watch on a chain. In the background, the faint strains of a rustic waltz played by string quartet rose and fell.

Across from her husband, Susan noted the change in the virtual environment around her and in all its accoutrements, not least her clothes. She examined herself in her new, lacy black and red corsetiere and jacket and black ruffled skirt with its hooped petticoats, then hitched up her hem to reveal heavy black boots with a dagger heel and a pair of cherry red stitched silk stockings. She flexed one ankle demurely and huffed. She then glanced about at her new surroundings – opulent period décor, all oak paneling and velvet drapes in dark, brooding colors – and reacted warily to the sudden appearance of a gentleman butler offering her a snifter of cognac from a silver tray. She accepted, raising a quizzical eyebrow at her husband.

“It’s on a random loop, with a pre-programmed environment shift every fifteen minutes,” Reed explained. “Think of it like a virtual reality iPod, with five thousand different potential landscapes on shuffle. This is Johann Strauss’ Hirschenhaus in Vienna, circa 1840 – at least, according to all available data sources. I’m thinking there’s some slippage from the Nikola Tesla steampunk scenario I was tinkering with…”

“But the cognac’s not a hard light construct? I can drink it?”

“I keep a bottle in an antechamber accessed via a sub-portal from the main room. For special occasions.”

“That’s a lie.”

Reed paused, then looked sheepish. “Actually, yes. Alright. It’s the product of an experimental process involving molecular restructuring and elemental recycling. In a sense I’m brewing moonshine out of raw particles.”

“And I’m your guinea pig?”

“You love being my guinea pig.”

Sue sniffed. “This is true.” She sampled her drink, then pursed her lips. And coughed. “Ech. Tastes like chicken.”

“It does…?” Reed looked alarmed at his wife’s apparent distress, lurching forward with arms held wide. Sue sustained the charade for a good ten seconds, then laughed and skipped away, her ruffled skirt whisking teasingly about her ankles. Reed scowled. He pursued her, catching her swiftly and curling an arm about her waist as he turned her. She discarded her glass and took his hand in hers, guiding him into the first few steps of a gentle, intimate waltz. Strauss had always been her favorite.

“You’re an incorrigible mad scientist and you deserve all the teasing you get,” Sue purred, staring into her husband’s dark eyes over the rim of his spectacles. “Now. Be serious. And honest, because as I’ve just demonstrated I’ve got a sixth sense for when you’re lying. Our powers…?”

Reed sighed.

“I still have tests to run, but even I know when to admit when a key dynamic is presently indefinable,” he said, feeling the warmth of his wife’s body against his as they danced. “I can’t categorically state if the deterioration was instigated by the Red Skull’s machinations or if it originated earlier, as a result of our encounters with The Wizard, or The Puppet Master, or Doom… or perhaps it’s merely a question of our original mutation finally having run its course. The cosmic radiation we were exposed to all those years ago, all its specific but random frequencies, it changed us on a biochemical level but didn’t permanently alter our primary DNA template. There was always a chance that template might one day reassert itself, most likely with some metaphysical kick as a catalyst – and altering reality and the localized universe’s fundamental state of being would certainly qualify.”

“And so…?”

“According to preliminary scans I’m estimating a capability reduction of between sixty and seventy-five per cent in the past six months, at a calculable and steady decline that suggests our powers will eventually reach a negligible state inside the next six to eight weeks. That rate of decline also establishes a marked difference between this and the many other times we’ve lost our powers due to outside influence.”

“You can’t reverse the degeneration, or even slow it?”

“Not as yet. There are potential solutions, but they’ll take time to formulate, and—”

“What if we don’t?” Sue asked, holding Reed’s hand tighter and resting her cheek against his chest, breathing in the uncanny scent of tweed and oak overlaid upon the man’s more familiar smell. “What if… we just let this run its course? If we’re fated to be normal again, to be given a second chance at a life less fantastic… together, and with our children… would that be such a terrible thing?”

Reed said nothing. If Susan had glanced up then she would have seen a shadow in his eyes, a forbidding sadness, and she might have glimpsed something of the truth. Something else her husband wasn’t telling her. But she was content for him to hold her, and to dance. Reed closed his eyes and breathed in the soft fragrance of her hair.

“No,” he said, quietly. “A life with you would not be less fantastic, and could never be. And for… however long that life might be, it would be my delight and my privilege.”

Sue raised her lips for a kiss, but the moment was interrupted by the shrill bleep of her communicator. She unclipped it from her belt, and immediately her decadent period garb destabilized and was replaced, in a shimmer of molecular reconfiguration, by a more familiar, figure-hugging bodysuit of indigo-blue and white, adorned with a stylized 4on her chest.

“Duty calls,” said the Invisible Woman, not without irritation as she eyed her husband with a rather salacious glint. “Shame. I was enjoying that dance. Save me another later? And keep the spectacles. They’re… raunchy.”

“Spectacles are raunchy?”

“When you wear them the way you do, yes.”

Reed smiled shyly and opened a teleportal in mid-air. Sue blew him a kiss as she stepped through, then glanced at her communicator display and grimaced as she began to dematerialize. “Always with the timing, Jonathan,” she said, with a sigh. “Always with the timing…”

Jennifer Walters had instinctually timed her transformation into her alter ego to perfection; otherwise she – and a number of other bar patrons – would have been crushed by falling debris. As it was, the main room of the tavern was a wreck and its previously elaborate fascia was utterly destroyed. The air was thick with dust and smoke, and there was an elderly gentleman pinned beneath a wooden beam, moaning softly as three other men struggled in vain to release him.

She-Hulk – a shade less than seven feet tall with skin of a radiant emerald-jade, and altogether more vibrant and arresting then her human counterpart – shrugged aside a load-bearing wall that had conspicuously not lived up to its billing and moved across to where the old man was trapped, releasing him with one seemingly effortless heft. The weight of the beam was nothing to someone possessing her incredible strength, but when such prowess was contained in such a striking package it was no wonder those around her were momentarily struck dumb. It was the exact opposite reaction to that which typically greeted her other, ordinary self, a fact that She-Hulk never failed to note.

“What the hell was that?” Johnny Storm barked, scrambling forward over a hunk of masonry that had demolished a goodly portion of the bar counter where he’d been sitting. “Somebody came through the glass like a freight train. There’s no way anyone human could have survived—”

“No. Not human.”

Johnny faltered as a figure rose before him, shrugging aside debris with much the same disdain as She-Hulk. This was a man, displaying a brazen, naked upper torso that rippled with finely corded muscle, and similarly powerful legs sheathed in britches of tessellated black scale. His face was tapered, with an aquiline jaw and black, almond-shaped eyes, framed with a slick of oil-black hair. The man’s skin, typically burnished pearl, was now exhibiting a deep reddish hue as if he’d been recently scorched; otherwise his imperial features and haughty demeanor couldn’t possibly be mistaken as belonging to another.

Johnny groaned and rolled his eyes. “Terrific,” he muttered. “As I was saying earlier: Quicksilver, the second most irritating man alive. And here, ladies and gentlemen, I present the title-holder…”

Namor, the Sub-Mariner and the Avenging Son of Atlantis, cocked a snook at Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. Which was par for the course whenever these two old enemies encountered one another and was usually the precursor to shameless brawling. Noting this and demonstrating the wisest of heads, She-Hulk stepped forward between the two men as Namor arched an eyebrow in inflammatory fashion – as only Namor could do – and the Torch literally ignited in a sudden whorl of superheated crimson plasma and flickering golden flame.

“Hey, gorgeous,” She-Hulk murmured, towering over Namor by a good head-and-a-half. “You look like a parboiled lobster. And I’m assuming you don’t dive-bomb downtown drinking establishments out of habit, even though that’s something I wouldn’t put past you if you were bored on a Saturday night. So, instead of trading insults with Johnny and then spanking each other silly with your bespoke handbags – which is so last decade – maybe you want to fill us in on your present situation…?”

Namor stared up at the jade giantess, eyes sharpened to black glints and his sea-slug brows furrowed. Then, slowly, he smiled.

“Jennifer,” he crooned. “Always a genuine pleasure.”

“Likewise.”

“Can I hit him yet…?”

“Simmer down, Johnny.”

Namor smirked at the Torch, then stared out through the ruined fascia of the bar into the street beyond, his expression growing serious. “Actually, Storm,” he declared, “simmering may not be the order of the day. You could be just the ally I require; and, yes, that’s every bit as painful for me to say as you’d imagine. My foes advance even as we speak…”

The Torch and She-Hulk followed Namor’s gaze – and witnessed the inexorable approach of a legion of astonishing creatures, smoldering golems of red hot rock progressing at a swift, relentless pace along the street, emanating an incredible heat that was gradually reducing every obstacle in their path to molten slag. These beasts were formed of pure, burning magma, and their advance could only be likened to the devastating surge of lava flow.

“Lava Men!” She-Hulk exclaimed. “The Wasp encountered a horde of these jokers in Milan just the other day * – and now they’re in New York too? What is this, a worldwide shopping tour?”

* In Marvel Omega’s Heralds Origins # 1!

“I fear your humor is misplaced, Jennifer,” said Namor. “These are specimens of that mysterious subterranean race we Avengers have vanquished on previous occasions, but before they were autonomous; now they appear to have rallied to the cause of a new general…”

Up ahead, on cue, another presence emerged from within the Lava Horde and directed her fiery gaze towards the ruined bar where Namor had come to rest after she’d thrashed him with a torrent of flame and scalding ash. She was tall and broad this woman, as Amazonian in her own way as She-Hulk, and her physical form was composed entirely of jet black igneous rock – basalt, rhyolite and euhedral phenocrysts – and a corona of superheated plasma and nigh-incandescent flame. She was imposing, she was terrifying… and she was familiar, to both She-Hulk and the Human Torch.

“Oh, God,” She-Hulk breathed. “That’s Marsha Rosenberg, isn’t it? That’s Volcana…!”

NEXT ISSUE: Why is Volcana leading an army of Lava Men in pursuit of Namor… and why may it be up to Jennifer Walters, and not the sensational She-Hulk, to stop her? Is this just a prelude to something more sinister? Hint: yes, of course it is! What, are you new at this…? Be here next time when As Soon Go Kindle Fire With Snow continues!

AUTHOR’S NOTES

It wouldn’t be true to say I’m no particular fan of the Fantastic Four, but – aside from John Byrne’s stellar run some thirty years ago – I’ve never considered it one of my favorite titles. Perhaps it’s because it’s difficult not to tread the same ground over and over, and because unlike the Avengers there’s something sacrosanct about the balance of the core team; any time you subtract one of Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben from the equation, the whole seems to suffer. The one exception to that rule was, again, Byrne’s masterstroke of replacing The Thing with She-Hulk in the aftermath of Secret Wars. It may not have worked for everyone, but it worked for me.

Now, here at Marvel Omega, the malevolent machinations of one man – namely Curt Fernlund – have fiendishly deprived the FF of Ben Grimm once more. And whilst that’s terrific in one sense (we, the readers, get Curt’s Thing series and a uniquely grim Grimm to rejoice in) it also leaves a massive, rocky gap to fill. Judging by this issue I’ve taken the obvious get-out, treading the same jade giantess path as Byrne all those years ago… right?

Well, maybe. But, come now. You don’t expect it all to be that easy, do you…?

I hope you enjoyed this inaugural issue. I hope you stick around for some more. I hope you’ve got a penchant for the reinvention and revitalization of old, obscure villains and titanic threats, for mysterious resurrections, for pulp science fiction fantasy adventure, for poignant and unexpected character development, and for giant worms. Because, yes, there will be giant worms, darn it. T’ain’t the Fantastic Four without giant worms…

Cheers!

~ Meriades Rai