Ben Grimm and Alicia Masters are leaving the Metropolitan Opera House after Puccini's Madame Butterfly performance. Still, they walk only a short way before autograph hunters besiege Ben. Ben signs a few autographs, but Ben and Alicia quickly depart when a small boy becomes frightened by his appearance. Alicia asks him not to hurry because she cannot see, and Ben apologizes, adding a few self-deprecatory remarks. When Alicia accuses him of fishing for compliments, Ben replies that he cannot understand why she is in love with him. At about the same time, Johnny Storm, dressed in a new suit, enters a tavern called "Your Mother's Moustache," When he sees a girl apparently unescorted, he approaches her, but her boyfriend appears and roughly tells Johnny to move along. Johnny becomes angry and bursts into flame, much to the astonishment of the boyfriend, and soon he melts his way out of the place, annoyed at having lost control. Elsewhere, Reed and Sue are taking a walk and discussing the possibility of Sue's returning to the Fantastic Four full time. Sue has thought of becoming a private detective, and Reed asserts that the Invisible Girl would be very good at the job. Sue says that it is difficult to find oneself, and sometimes she wishes she had never learned that she was lost. As Medusa leaves the public library, the Torch flies back to the Baxter Building, and at 12:32 a.m. he descends toward the roof and enters. A minute before, a wind whipped through the streets surrounding the headquarters, strong enough to knock over ex-Marine Barney Slocum, now a derelict living in the building's shadow. The wind arose from the passage of the mutant Quicksilver as he sped toward the Baxter Building. As Quicksilver comes to a halt, he uses a communi-disc to contact the Great Refuge, and the face in the disc asks whether he has put Plan "M" into operation yet. Quicksilver replies that he has not, because the teleportation device set him down too far from the city, and he requests more reconnaissance time. But his request is denied, so he begins the assault phase of his mission by speeding into an uncompleted subway tunnel to the secret entrance to the Baxter Building. A massive door opens when Quicksilver touches certain bricks in a pre-set order, and he enters.

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