"Flame on! Flame on!" Johnny Storm's voice was a raw, desperate plea, cracking with a despair that was almost pitiable. Yet, no matter how fiercely he cried, how desperately he shouted and strained, his body remained stubbornly, chillingly, human. The familiar, comforting inferno refused to answer his call. He was breaking down, not from physical pain, but from the sudden, terrifying loss of the very thing that had made him unique, powerful, himself, in this vast, often uncaring world.
Susan moved towards him, her own heart aching with a complex mix of frustration, pity, and a reluctant understanding of Ranger's harsh methods. Her hand stretched out, intending to offer a comforting touch to Johnny's shoulder, but he violently swatted it away. "You…! All of you did this to me!" His tone was a venomous accusation, his eyes blazing with a different kind of fire now – one of betrayal and impotent rage. "You let him! You agreed to it!"
Words died on Susan's lips. What could she say? He was right, in his own twisted, self-centered way. Even Reed, usually lost in his own world of equations, seemed to sense the shift in the room's atmosphere, his scientific mumbling quieting to a barely audible whisper. As for Ben, he was currently strapped onto a diagnostic bed in an adjacent alcove, his newly human form being meticulously scanned and monitored by a swarm of gentle Ultralink medical drones and Reed machines. He remained silent, perhaps lost in the dawning, overwhelming reality of his own reclaimed humanity.
Ranger, however, his face an unreadable mask, though his eyes held a glint of something akin to satisfied amusement, pushed himself off the workbench he'd been leaning against. He approached Johnny with a slow, deliberate stride. "Johnny, my boy." he began, his voice deceptively soft, almost paternal, "it's not as if you've lost your powers completely. Think of it more as… they're on a temporary, extended vacation. Under new management, so to speak. Benjamin's management, to be precise." He knelt beside the distraught young man.
"And, of course, you two are still part of the same team. A family, even. I'm quite certain if you ask nicely, if you demonstrate a modicum of newfound maturity, he might even let you borrow your powers occasionally. To, say, impress a pretty girl at a beach party? Or perhaps to light a particularly stubborn barbecue?" Ranger's lips curved into a smile that showed just a hint of teeth, a predatory gleam in his eyes.
"I mean." Ranger continued, his voice a low, conspiratorial purr, "you must have been a good, supportive friend to your teammates in the past, haven't you, Johnny? Built up a reservoir of goodwill? Ben wouldn't dream of deliberately tormenting you, of withholding your abilities purely out of spite for all those charming little 'rock-head' or 'pebble-puss' endearments you've so generously bestowed upon him over the years… would he?"
"You fucking, manipulative shit!" Johnny screamed, thrashing against REMORSE's unyielding grip. "I'll kill you! I'll flay you alive and wear your goddamn skin like a cheap jacket! I'll get it back," he snarled through gritted teeth. "Somehow. I'll make you pay." Ranger just smiled, a serene, almost beatific expression that only seemed to fuel Johnny's impotent fury.
Reed Richards, suddenly re-emerging from his scientific trance, his eyes glued to a particularly fascinating data stream on a floating holographic display, interjected, "He is, in essence, correct, Johnny. And if my preliminary calculations regarding the energy transference matrix are accurate, if Benjamin chooses to utilize his 'Thing' persona, your pyrokinetic abilities will indeed reactivate. However." Reed's brow furrowed, "the current energetic linkage indicates a reciprocal state. Unless you willingly choose to relinquish your Human Torch form and revert to baseline human, Benjamin will be unable to return to his own human state. It's remarkably elegant, in a crude, brute-force sort of way. A binary power switch, with each of you holding one half of the activation key for the other's transformation."
"How… how fascinating." Reed continued, more to himself now, his voice dropping back into that familiar, excited mumble. "It's almost like a forced, artificial symbiotic relationship, a biological feedback loop where one state necessitates the inverse in the other, a forced, artificial symbiosis. One change triggers the other. Crude, but elegant." He began to sketch complex diagrams in the air with an glowing, elongated finger, lost once more in the labyrinth of his own thoughts.
Susan knelt beside Johnny, her expression a mixture of pity and exasperation. "Johnny, you heard Reed. You haven't truly lost your powers. They're still there. It's just that… you need Ben's permission, his active transformation, for you to access them."
"Like that big, orange, lumpy pebble-brain will ever allow me to use my powers again!" Johnny shouted, his voice cracking with despair. "If he wasn't currently strapped to that bed, getting poked and prodded like a science fair project, he'd be over here right now, laughing his rocky ass off at me!" He pounded a fist against the floor. "No! No, I can't be like this! I can't be… normal! Girls love me when I have powers! They love the Human Torch! Now I'll have to bring that… that asshole Ben with me every single time I want to chase girls? Never! Not in a million years!"
He scrambled to his feet, lunging towards Reed, grabbing at his stretched lab coat. "Reed! You have to change it back! Change me back to how I was before! You're a genius, you can fix this! Undo whatever this… this monster has done!"
Susan stepped forward, voice firm despite the chaos: "Johnny. Enough."
Reed, startled by the sudden physical contact, pushed Johnny away with a surprising, rubbery strength, his eyes still fixed on the data readouts. "Preliminary data suggests that the energetic bond established by the Reality Stone's intervention is currently in its strongest, most cohesive state. It will likely attenuate over time, perhaps degrading to a more… 'solid,' less mutable state. But to reverse it now?" Reed mumbled, tapping furiously at his console. "Can an astral projection, sufficiently amplified, disrupt the quantum entanglement without causing catastrophic feedback to both subjects? Or perhaps a chroniton-based de-phasing field…"
"Speak English, damn it, Reed! Can this be changed or not?!" Johnny begged, his voice raw with desperation.
"No, Johnny." Reed stated, finally looking directly at him, his expression one of scientific finality. "At least, not with any technology or understanding currently at my disposal. To even attempt to undo such a fundamental alteration, imposed by a force equivalent to an Infinity Stone… I would require a comparable power source, or a theoretical breakthrough that is currently....."
Johnny just crumpled to the floor, the fight, the fire, completely extinguished from him. He sat there, amidst the wreckage of his pride and his powers, mumbling to himself, "I've become normal. Ordinary. I've… I've fallen from grace."
Susan tried to go to her brother, to offer some comfort, but Ranger's hand on her arm, gentle yet firm, stopped her. She turned, surprised, to see him shaking his head almost imperceptibly. "Your brother doesn't require your consolation right now, Susan." he said quietly. "He needs time. Time to process the… new reality of his existence."
Her eyes shifted between Ranger's unreadable face and her brother's slumped, defeated form. She let out a long, weary sigh and sank onto a nearby bench. Ranger dropped beside her, a comfortable, if somewhat charged, silence settling between them as they watched Reed, once again lost in his scientific endeavors, meticulously operating the advanced machinery around Ben's now-human form, while Johnny continued to wallow in his profound, power-stripped sorrow.
"Seeing my brother so… broken… it must make you quite happy, doesn't it, Ranger?" Susan asked finally, her voice low, devoid of its earlier anger, just filled with a deep weariness. "Why wouldn't it? After all, he attacked you. Twice."
"Susan, Susan." Ranger chided gently, "I won't insult your intelligence by lying and claiming I derive no measure of… satisfaction… from witnessing Johnny Storm confronting the rather harsh consequences of his own arrogance and recklessness. But you should also know, with absolute certainty, that this outcome, however personally gratifying it may be for me, is by far the least painful, the least destructive, of all the available options. I would have been entirely within my rights, by almost any conceivable moral or legal code, to kill him. Simply on the grounds that he made repeated, unprovoked attempts on my life. But I didn't." He stretched his arms languidly and stifled a yawn. "And that restraint, my dear Susan, was exercised primarily because I do not wish to make an irreconcilable enemy of Reed Richards, nor, indeed, of you."
"And please, do not mistake that for fear on my part." he added, his voice firming. "I simply find engaging in conflicts born of such… juvenile provocations to be profoundly tedious. And frankly, Johnny's power being on a leash, held by someone as demonstrably mature and responsible as Benjamin, is far more beneficial for the long-term stability and safety of your team, and indeed this city, than it is for me personally. Besides." his eyes seemed to look far beyond the walls of the lab, towards some distant, cosmic horizon, "you are not the Avengers, nor SHIELD, nor any of those other cumbersome, ideologically hidebound organizations. You, the Fantastic Four, are, at your core, explorers. Adventurers of the infinite. And that." a faint, almost wistful smile touched his lips, "is something I can, on some level, appreciate."
"And what of the trust that's been lost between us all because of this?" Susan retorted, her voice still tinged with sorrow. "Johnny… he will never let this go. He'll never forgive Ben, or me, or you."
"And is that truly my fault, Susan?" Ranger countered, his voice gentle but unyielding. "I presented you all with a choice, a consequence of actions he initiated. I gave you time to discuss, to deliberate. Do not lay the burden of that decision, a decision you and Benjamin and Reed collectively made, at my feet. And it's not as if trust, once fractured, is impossible to regain. It's Johnny Storm we're discussing, for crying out loud. He's mercurial, emotional, and possesses the attention span of a hyperactive gnat. Just ask Reed to whip him up some new, shiny, high-tech toy, perhaps a flame-proof hoverboard or a suit that shoots glitter, and he'll likely be a happy, if still somewhat petulant, boy again in a week." Ranger shrugged dismissively. "And let us not assign all blame to me for this family drama, shall we, Suzie? He is not my brother. It is not, nor should it ever be, my responsibility to teach him basic manners or the concept of consequences."
"Susan." he continued, his tone becoming more serious, "let us dispense with the pretense that my presence here, or indeed your team's interactions with me, have been based on a foundation of complete and utter trust. I am not naive. I can practically smell the contingency plans. I am well aware of the Ultimate Nullifier, currently primed and ready to fire from some discreet, heavily shielded location within this very building, should I prove… unmanageable." He gave Susan a deep, knowing look, his eyes seeming to pierce through her carefully constructed composure. "The only reason the Fantastic Four haven't already attempted to neutralize or forcibly contain me is because your brother was so clearly, unequivocally, in the wrong from the outset, and because I, in turn, have thus far exhibited what you might consider a… surprisingly reasonable and accommodating attitude, given the circumstances."
He paused, then offered her a small, almost conciliatory smile. "So, let us agree to set aside these undercurrents of suspicion and potential hostility, shall we? Let us, for the sake of pragmatism, and perhaps even a more… harmonious future, simply be friends. Because I assure you, Susan, neither of us truly wishes to be enemies with the other. The collateral damage would be… considerable." Ranger extended his hand.
Susan looked at his outstretched hand, then into his eyes, searching. "And what of Victor Von Doom?" she asked, her voice quiet but firm. "I believe you are still the delegate he himself crowned, personally escorted. Who will you stand with when Reed and Doom inevitably clash again? As they always do."
"Susan, my relationship with Victor Von Doom is, and always will be, strictly professional, mutually beneficial, and predicated on a clear understanding of shared, temporary interests." Ranger explained. "The 'delegate' status was merely a convenient fiction, a useful tool to observe who, amongst the world's more trigger-happy nations, would be foolish enough to fire their nuclear ordnance at a Latverian-backed envoy. A test, if you will. And as for choosing sides between your team and Doom?" He smiled, a genuine, almost charming expression. "I will not. There is no conceivable benefit for me to become entangled in that particular, long-running, and frankly, rather tedious feud." His hand remained outstretched. "Is this assurance sufficient for the Fantastic Four, and for you, Susan Storm, to consider me… a friend?"
Susan hesitated for a moment longer, then, with a small, decisive nod, she took his hand. Her grip was surprisingly firm. "Yes, Ranger. It is."
They both withdrew their hands. Ranger flexed his fingers, a thoughtful expression on his face. "I must say, Susan, your hand is remarkably soft. It was almost… a distinct pleasure… just to hold it for that brief moment. Suzie… Can I call you Suzie?"
"Well, I'll be!" Ben Grimm's voice, now unmistakably human, full of gruff amusement, boomed from the adjacent alcove. He walked into the main lab area, no longer a mountain of orange rock, but a man of average height, if still powerfully built, wearing a slightly too-large hospital gown. He was rubbing his newly fleshy knuckles. "I was gone for just a little bit, gettin' turned back into a normal fella, and you two are already holdin' hands and gettin' all chummy with nicknames! I didn't know you had it in ya, Suzie! Or you either, pretty boy!" He grinned, a wide, human grin that was still somehow pure Ben Grimm.
Susan's face flushed a brilliant shade of crimson. "Ben! It's not… we weren't…" she stammered, flustered. Ben just winked at Ranger, clearly enjoying her discomfort.
"Just go on a date already, you two!" Ben declared, clapping Ranger on the shoulder with a surprisingly strong, human hand. "Lord knows Suzie here deserves a fella who actually notices she's a woman, instead of just another variable in some damn cosmic equation." He shot a pointed look towards Reed, who was still oblivious.
Ranger smirked, a flash of his earlier, shameless confidence returning. He turned to Susan, his eyes twinkling. "An excellent suggestion, Benjamin! A man of great wisdom, clearly." He then addressed Susan directly, his voice smooth and impossibly charming. "What do you prefer most for a fine dining experience, my dear Susan? The delicate flavors of fish, the robust satisfaction of chicken, the rich complexity of lamb, the hearty indulgence of pork or mutton, or perhaps the classic, undeniable appeal of a perfectly aged steak?"
Susan, still reeling from Ben's teasing and Ranger's sudden shift, blinked in confusion. "Um… lamb, I suppose?" she managed, her brain short-circuiting.
"Lamb it is! Very well!" Ranger declared, his smile beaming. "You still retain a small, yet not insignificant, portion of your allocated compensation, Susan. And, as per the astute and timely recommendation of our mutual friend Benjamin, I shall hereby officially invite you to join me for a dinner date. Next Monday, three days from now. Shall we say, seven o'clock in the evening?"
"Hey, wait there a minute, kid!" Ben grumbled, though his eyes were still laughing. "I was just kiddin' around! It's goin' a bit too fast, even for a fella like you." Susan looked like she was about to faint from a combination of shock, embarrassment, and a tiny, undeniable flicker of intrigued anticipation.
"A truly magnificent upselling tactic, Benjamin! Consider me inspired!" Ranger declared, ignoring Ben's protestations, his gaze fixed on Susan. "Very well! In light of your invaluable assistance in this delicate social negotiation, I shall reduce my previous demand of the remaining two conditions to a mere one! And furthermore, Susan's remaining portion of the compensation shall not be diminished in any way, provided, of course." his smile was dazzling, utterly shameless, "she graciously agrees to honor me with her company for this aforementioned dinner date. Any further concessions, I am afraid, and I would be operating at a net loss, a fiscally irresponsible position for any aspiring… associate… of the Fantastic Four."
He took Susan's hand again, his touch surprisingly gentle, and raised it to his lips, bestowing a light, almost courtly kiss upon her knuckles. "I shall arrive to collect you at precisely six-fifty PM, three days from now, my dear Susan. Do ensure you wear your most enchanting dress. The occasion, I assure you, will warrant it."
Ranger didn't give either of them another moment to think, to protest, to even breathe. With a final, dazzling smile, he shouted, "Go Turbo: Flight!" and with a shimmer of energy, he was gone, launching through the hole in the ceiling he, or rather Johnny and Ben, had so conveniently created earlier.
Ben stared at the spot where Ranger had vanished, then at Susan, who looked utterly shell-shocked. "Did he just…?" Ben asked, his voice a mixture of disbelief and grudging admiration.
"I… I guess he did." Susan replied, her voice faint, her fingers unconsciously touching the back of the hand Ranger had kissed.
"That kid." Ben chuckled, shaking his head, the sound deep and, for the first time in a long, long time, entirely human. "He sure is as arrogant as he is shameless. But damn if he ain't got style." He grinned at Susan. "Well, Suzie. Looks like you need to start preparin' for that date on Monday. And maybe." he winked, "buy yourself somethin' real pretty. You deserve it." His laugh was lighter now, freer than she'd heard it in years.
"Who knows, Next thing we know, he's gonna propose. Hope you're ready for space weddings."