This is the final rewrite of this book , the start of the long term project to make this story better, more complete and with less issues both minor and major. For the first some chapters, this won't include any major changes, after that at the very least the timing will be spread out, and I will try to include changes/suggestions from the reviews.
START CHAPTER:-
Susan Richards, AKA the Invisible Woman, normally one of the most level-headed and calm individuals one could ever hope to meet, was at this moment not calm at all. Instead, she was irritated, angry, beside herself with worry, and oscillating wildly between wanting to fall down into a sobbing wreck or grabbing her husband to see if she could somehow choke a rubber man. "Reed, why is this taking so long? You had this all set up before those bastards took Franklin! Why is it so difficult to set up again! It's been three hours since we got home, and he's been gone for even longer!"
Those three hours had been the worst in Susan Richards' life, beating out anything that had happened since the two of them, her brother, and Ben Grimm had become the world's first hero team, the Fantastic Four. That was because her son, Franklin Richards, a healthy, happy, little baby boy, had been taken from his cradle by some monster out of the Negative Zone.
Reed and Susan had gone out on an evening date while Johnny and Ben had both gone out on their own respective dates, leaving Agatha Harkness and Wyatt Wingfoot to mind the store, as it were. This should have been overkill; Agatha was a witch of considerable power and Wyatt was a master marksman plus a hand-to-hand combat expert. Imagine their shock when they came home to find both of their friends unconscious and heavily injured with their baby Franklin missing from his crib.
Agatha seemed to have succumbed to some kind of gas, collapsing, and smacking her head against a shelf, while Wyatt had simply been pummeled into submission. He had woken up briefly when Johnny found him, informing them that beasts, which he described as winged green things, had come from, and escaped back through, Reed's workshop where the dimensional portal was housed.
Researching the Negative Zone was one of Reed's ongoing scientific projects and to say it had been a mixed bag was putting it mildly. Apparently, the Negative Zone was a universe that lay parallel to their own, not connected to, but overlaying their own in strange ways, with some similarities and quite a lot of incredibly odd differences. Some of which were, Reed conjectured, that the Big Bang was being reversed in that universe already and that despite the entire Negative Zone being filled with breathable air, the number of actual life forms within was incredibly low. That life was there was not in doubt, just the amount.
Indeed, the Fantastic family had run afoul of one such being named Annihilus when they were searching for a cosmic control rod needed to negate the effect of the cosmic impulses of living energy that were interfering with Susan's pregnancy with their now kidnapped son. Who knew what else the Negative Zone held that Reed had simply not found yet?
The fact that Reed hadn't installed any warning devices on the portal to let him know if it activated irritated Susan, but she knew that her husband was sometimes pretty much the poster child of the absent-minded professor. The time he was taking to make certain that the machine was still working was pushing it though, quite a lot.
In stark contrast to his wife's current mood, Reed Richards was the epitome of phlegmatic calm. "Susan, it won't help us or Franklin if we enter the Negative Zone too far away from him to find him quickly. I need to at least roughly calculate the area where the being who took him went. Somehow the machine was used from the other side without any kind of controls in place for said use, and the coordinates changed dramatically from where I had placed them. Quite fascinating, really, how such a remote control could be achieved."
"Yeah, well it's a pity that that fascinating discovery of yours has come with my nephew being abducted!" Johnny Storm, Susan's much younger kid brother said, unconsciously turning on and off his flame power around his fists as he paced around the Baxter building's lab fifteen. "I really don't care what they want him for, I'm gonna flambé them for taking Franklin."
"You said it Flame-head," said the family friend Ben Grimm. Ben had been their pilot during the accident that had given the Fantastic Four their powers but had been their friend for far longer. He was the most physically changed of them all, being unable to turn his powers on or off, having been transformed into a monstrous orange rock covered Thing, thus his codename.
"Just another couple more minutes guys, I've calculated the position, now I'm creating a tracker so we can follow whoever took our baby."
"'Whoever took … Oh, come on Reed!" Johnny exclaimed, "It's Annihilus! He's probably still got it in for us because of how we stole his cosmic control rod, even if we did return it. Hell, even Wyatt's description matches those of his troops."
"Extrapolating an answer from limited data does no one any good Johnny." Reed answered. "We've only been able to map a limited area of the Negative Zone. Who knows what we will find as we continue to research it?"
Susan growled. "We're not going to continue researching it, Reed! Or are two injured friends and our missing baby", she emphasized, "not enough to warn you it's dangerous!"
For a moment Reed looked flustered, but after a few seconds thought he answered readily. "And that is precisely why we should continue to research it, because we don't know if it can be a source of help or danger. May I remind you all if we hadn't found and explored the Negative Zone to find the cosmic control rod, Franklin might have died stillborn."
"I'll admit, however," he said after a moment, "that I need to take more precautions. I'll install a heavy security system on both the portal and the lab itself as soon as we get back."
He turned back to his devices and after a moment he said, "and done."