But during one of Doom's return visits to his beloved Latveria, Reed had escaped his prison, defeated Doom, and used the alien device to reclaim his body. Now he was home to reclaim his life.
The elevator could hardly move fast enough as it sped towards the top floors. He dashed through the corridors, bursting into Susan Richard's room with his arms stretched wide (and I mean wide).
"Honey!" he beamed.
"YOU!"
"Um-" Not the welcome he had been expecting, but he moved in for a reconcilleratory hug nonetheless, rebounding of an invisble wall of force almost instantly. He staggered back, shocked at the look of seething hatred on her face. He'd never seen her this way in his life.
"Honey, please," he implored. "It's me, Reed Richards."
She raised her hand and an invisible fist clamped around his throat, squeezing it to pencil thickness. "Oh, don't start that again! "IT IS I, REED RICHARDS, AND I DEMAND TRIBUTE. IT IS I, REED RICHARDS, AND I DEMAND A SANDWICH!". Was I not explicit enough about what I'd do to you if you ever dared show your face around here again?"
He needed desperately to speak, to explain that the terrible things she thought he'd done over the last few months had been Doom in his body, but the hand around his throat made it impossible. She raised her other hand, forming a bubble of force around him so thick that it was partly opaque, and then balled it into a fist. The bubble imploded in on him.
Reed Richards had fought the Hulk before. he'd been crushed, stomped, squeezed, and stretched. This was much worse. This was from every direction at once, stronger, and remorseless. His legs buckled like accordians into his lower torso, his neck collapsed into his body like a falling buidling. His arms were pressed tight against his body with such power that they almost felt like they were merging with his torso. As his head sank into his chest, everything went black.
The air in his lungs, compressed into a fraction of the space, finally burst free. "BUTHONEYTHATWASNTMETHATWASDOCTORDOOMINMYBODYANDIMSORRYFOREVERYTHIIIIIIIINNNNG!"
He couldn't feel his limbs or even his head; his entire body was pressed so tight it felt like a single, slender lump. Even if he'd had the strength to move a finger, he was no longer even sure which part was his finger.
"I told you if you ever showed your face around here that I'd make you pay for what you did to me. For what you did to Ben," Susan Storm said, as she knelt to pick up her ex-husband. He stood on his end, his body waggling slowly backwards and forwards like a dazed earthworm. "I thought the world's Greatest mind would have remembered that," she taunted. The world's greatest mind entirely within the palm of her hand, she thought, as she picked him up. He was warm and squirmy. She could feel him beginning to fight the forcefield that held him in shape.
A pot of white powder that had once belonged to the Trapster stood ready. Taking a pinch, she sprinkled it lightly over Reed's new form. It worked fast; the Unstable molecules that made up Reed's Fantastic Four costume suddenly became very, very stable molecules, sealing him inside his own suit and his new form forever.
[I'm afraid this strays somewhat from the request remit in that Susan is technically his wife, not his girlfriend. In my defence, I only had half an hour to do it in and I only learned half-way through that they're married. What I know about FF wouldn't fill a postage stamp.
Which begs the question why I decided to write a FF story in the first place. I don't really know.]
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