Susan Storm's force field shimmered, a desperate, translucent bubble against the incandescent fury of Johnny's uncontrolled Supernova. The air within was stifling, the heat pressing in, but outside, reinforced plasteel was beginning to flow like wax, concrete sublimating into superheated gas. The Baxter Building groaned, a colossal beast in its death throes.
"Suzie, ya gotta let me out!" Ben Grimm roared, his rocky hide glowing a dull, angry red from the ambient heat, even within the shield. "You can't hold this damn bubble much longer with me in here drawin' half the heat! Besides." his voice was a low, dangerous rumble, "I gotta teach this little hot-headed brat a lesson he won't soon forget, before he incinerates the whole goddamn city just 'cause his ego got a boo-boo!"
Susan, her face pale with strain, her brow slick with sweat, nodded grimly. The force field contracted with a visible effort, shrinking to encase only her, a tighter, more resilient shell. "Try not to bring down the rest of the city while you're calming Johnny!"
Ben just grunted, a sound like grinding tectonic plates, as he stepped out of the shrinking shield and into the inferno. The heat was a physical blow, but he weathered it, his dense, inorganic form more resistant than any organic being could be. He ran, not away, but directly towards the epicenter of the Supernova, Johnny Storm, a miniature, raging sun, still shrieking defiance as he vaporized the last of the advanced Ultralink constructs that had dared to oppose him. "Burn! Burn, you damn tin cans! BURN!"
Every thunderous step Ben took sent shockwaves through the already molten, shifting foundation of the Baxter Building. He leaped, a surprising agility for his bulk, his massive stone hands clapping together with a sound like a mountainside collapsing. The concussive force of the clap was immense, a focused shockwave of air pressure so powerful it momentarily disrupted Johnny's plasma field, the flames flickering, the unbearable heat receding by a few crucial degrees. The superheated, molten floor around them flash-cooled, hissing and cracking into a jagged, obsidian-like surface. Seizing the momentary disruption, Ben headbutted Johnny with the force of a runaway freight train, driving the Human Torch downwards, through multiple compromised floors of the Baxter Building.
"What the hell are you doin', Rockhead?!" Johnny shrieked, his voice distorted by rage and the impact, as they plummeted through story after story. "Attack the damn robots, you orange dickhead! Not me!"
"Johnny, oh, Johnny, you little flame-brained twerp." Ben snarled, his voice a guttural roar as he rained blows down on Johnny, even as they fell. "I am gonna enjoy every single, solitary second of this!" His massive leg stomped down on Johnny mid-air, a brutal, driving kick. "Because, you little punk, it's CLOBBERIN' TIME!"
The Thing's rocky arms became living battering rams, each impact against Johnny's flaming form sending bone-jarring shockwaves through the collapsing structure. They smashed through another floor, then another, the immense heat from Johnny's uncontrolled state melting steel girders and vaporizing concrete even before they made physical contact. Just as they were about to crash through to the ground floor lobby, Ben, with a final, contemptuous grunt, kicked off from Johnny's chest, propelling himself sideways, crashing through an external wall and landing in a shower of debris on the already chaotic street below. Johnny, now an uncontrolled meteor of fire, slammed into the reinforced foundation of the Baxter Building with an impact that shook the entire block.
The ground sizzled, then melted, as Johnny burned his way deeper, creating a smoking, magma-filled crater. Ben Grimm, shaking his singed, steaming hands, lumbered towards the edge of the chasm. "Oi, Johnny!" he bellowed down into the fiery pit. "You back in control down there, ya little pyromaniac? Or do I gotta come down and clobber ya a few more times to knock some sense into that thick skull of yours?"
His answer was a geyser of concentrated flame that erupted from the hole, engulfing him. Ben roared, swatting at the fire, his rocky hide blackening and cracking under the intense heat. "Now you've done it, Johnny! Now you've really gone and done it!" He backhanded a chunk of molten debris the size of a car that came flying out of the crater. Johnny, wreathed in an even more intense, almost white-hot aura, shot out from the ground, hovering above the devastation, his eyes blazing with undiluted fury.
"What the fuck are you doing, Ben?!" Johnny hollered, his voice cracking with betrayal. "As if sheltering that goddamn Doom-lackey wasn't bad enough! You heal him, you let his damn robots wreck our home, and then you attack me?! Ben, You are a traitor! You picked _that_ freak over me?!"
"You flame-for-brains, pea-brained, arrogant little idiot!" Ben roared back, his own temper now reaching critical mass. "If we don't get that Ranger fella healed up and calmed down, we're gonna have the entire goddamn world, probably led by Doctor Doom himself, comin' after our asses! And you, you had to go and barge right in while he was unconscious and fightin' for his life! Do you really think you can take on the whole damn planet just 'cause you can fly and set your farts on fire, you shit-faced moron?!" Ben was truly enraged now.
"Fucking imbecile, that's what you are! As if your usual brand of tomfoolery and nearly gettin' us all killed on a weekly basis wasn't enough, you had to go full Supernova inside the goddamn Baxter Building, with your own sister and me standin' right next to ya! You could've killed us all! You could've leveled half of New York City! All because you found out, for the hundredth damn time, that the world doesn't revolve around your flaming, overinflated ego!"
"Hah! Like my flames would ever kill you!" Johnny retorted, his arrogance somehow still intact. "I have my powers under perfect control! I can turn it on, turn it off, whenever I want! Just like this!" He flared his flames to an unbearable intensity, then extinguished them in a blink, only to reignite them a second later. "I'm not like you, you big, ugly, rocky piece of shit! You probably don't even remember what your own damn face looks like under all that orange crud!" He sneered. "At least the girls I'm with can see my handsome face when we're gettin' down to business!"
Johnny clamped his mouth shut as soon as the words left his lips, a flicker of actual fear – of Ben – flashing in his eyes. He saw The Thing's massive form tense, a low, guttural growl emanating from deep within his stone chest. Johnny tried to flame on to full power, to fly away, but he wasn't fast enough. Ben leaped, a truly terrifying sight, his hand closing around Johnny's ankle like a vise. Then, using Johnny's flaming body like a demonic, human-sized flail, Ben began to slam him sideways into the remnants of nearby buildings. Each impact was a small earthquake, accompanied by the shriek of tortured metal and crumbling concrete. With a final, furious roar, Ben hurled Johnny through the already weakened external wall of a neighboring skyscraper.
Johnny, dazed and disoriented, his flames sputtering, crashed through multiple interior walls before coming to a stop in a molten, smoking heap. He barely had time to register a breath of relief as he lay against a half-melted steel girder before Ben Grimm, covered in dust and radiating fury, was upon him again, a massive stone knee slamming into his face with the force of a battering ram. The Human Torch, now little more than a comet of uncontrolled fire and agony, was launched out of the skyscraper, arcing across the sky, and crashed into the Great Lawn of Central Park, incinerating trees and boiling the surface of the Pond. The Thing, with another incredible leap, landed beside the newly formed, smoking crater, his shadow falling over Johnny's prone, flickering form.
"You disrespect her, one more goddamn time, Johnny." Ben growled, his voice a low, deadly tremor, "and even if that Ranger kid doesn't turn you into a permanent charcoal briquette, I will." He punctuated his words with a single, devastating punch that drove Johnny deeper into the earth, the impact sending tremors rippling across the park, rattling windows for blocks. "You should be on your goddamn knees, thankin' whatever lucky stars you were born under that you're even still alive after pullin' that Supernova stunt."
Ben spat contemptuously into the crater, then turned and began the long, lumbering walk back towards the Baxter Building. Susan Storm, her force field shimmering around her, descended gracefully, landing in front of him, her face a mixture of relief, anger, and profound weariness. "Ben, are you okay? Did he hurt you? Is… is Johnny alright?"
"Your brother's fine, Suzie." Ben grumbled, spitting again to the side. He didn't break stride, heading back into the ravaged skyscraper.
Susan looked from Ben's retreating form to the devastation that now scarred a significant portion of Midtown, all to bring her idiot brother under control. She wanted to sigh but she couldn't. There wasn't time. Encasing her feet in protective force fields to negate the still-molten ground, she walked towards the edge of the crater her brother now occupied.
Johnny lay there, half-conscious, his flames reduced to a weak, flickering aura. Susan carefully skidded down the loose earth of the crater's edge, her body still wrapped in a force field to ward off the residual heat. She knelt beside him, gently shaking his shoulder. "Johnny. My idiot brother. Wake up. You have made an even bigger, more catastrophic mess than usual."
Johnny groaned, his hand coming up to touch his forehead, his eyes fluttering open as if trying to recall what had just transpired. Then, memory, and with it, a fresh wave of indignant anger, flooded back. "That fucking pebble!" he shouted, trying to sit up, wincing in pain. "He fought against me! For that goddamn Doom-lackey!"
"Johnny, listen to me. You need to be calm. Please, just for once, hear me out." Susan pleaded, trying to keep her voice steady. "First of all, Ranger needs to be healed. It is far, far better for all of us, for the entire planet, if he recovers quickly and without further… complications." Her brother, predictably, wasn't listening.
"You let him do this to me? After everything? No. No. I'm ending this—right fucking now." Johnny snarled, struggling to his feet, his flames beginning to intensify again. "And then I'm going to find the rocks-for-brains and melt him into slag!"
"Susan Storm." The cold, metallic voice of N'Baro Aksteel X377 suddenly sounded through her comm implant, which had apparently reactivated. "Am I to interpret your… and your associate Benjamin Grimm's… one and only opportunity to pacify and contain the hostile entity 'Johnny Storm' as a categorical failure?"
Susan Storm closed her eyes and let out a long, weary sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the world. "Yes, Steel. Yes, you are. Do what you will. Just… please… don't kill him. Incapacitate him. But don't kill him."
"Who are you talking to, Sister?!" Johnny demanded, his voice thick with suspicion and rage. "Don't tell me it's that tin-can lackey, or Ben! I'll kill—"
Before he could finish his sentence, the very sky above them seemed to tear open. A colossal shadow fell over the crater, and with a sound like a thousand freight trains derailing simultaneously, a gigantic, multifaceted construct, easily the size of a skyscraper, its surface a shifting amalgam of repurposed Baxter Building technology and raw, glowing Turbo energy, slammed down from above. It landed with earth-shattering force, the impact generating a cloud of fire, smoke, superheated steam, and pulverized earth that blotted out the sky.
When the dust finally began to settle, Susan, her force field flickering, could just make out a monstrous, vaguely humanoid shape of pure, contained fire, impossibly vast, its "eyes" burning with an cold, blue, intelligent light. And beneath its "foot," barely visible amidst the swirling energies, was her brother, Johnny Storm, his own flames utterly dwarfed, extinguished, pinned like an insignificant insect.
"Titan-Class Elemental Construct: REMORSE deployed."