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ununniliad · 4 years

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WikiLull EXHALE: “After the After”

November 15th, 2016. The lawn outside LNHQ, which is currently in the process of being rebuilt.

There was a great battle here.

...well, since this is the headquarters of the LNH, there have been many great battles here, and many more yet to come. But today feels like the day after a great, terrible battle, tho in fact it's been a week; coming down from the edge is like that, sometimes. And in a way it's been much longer, almost four years; recovering from trauma is like that, sometimes.

Nevertheless, the battle is over. There's a wind through the trees, blowing off the brightly-colored leaves; the world is stepping back, sitting down, and letting out its breath.

A single oak leaf, red and mottled with brown spots, tumbles down through the air, whirling in the cool autumn breeze. It flips, floats down... and disappears into a bubble of swirling darkness, inky colors shimmering and shifting like an oil slick on its surface. The bubble grows to the side of a person, then pops - and Cheesecake-Eater Lad and Token Girl tumble to the ground. A moment later, a tall, muscular blond woman with red eyes and subtle Star Trek-ian ridges on her face lands solidly on her feet - Captain LNH.

Token Girl coughs, pushing herself up, hands on her knees. "Whew. Felt like I was gonna turn inside-out."

Captain LNH chuckles, helping her to her feet. "That's what it's like, traveling from Looniverse-Astaroth, gateway to the Deep Omnilooniverse."

"Yeah, I think I liked it better back when we called it alt.comics.lnh." Token Girl stretches her arms, hands palm-out in front of her, and lets out a tension-releasing yawn. "How're you doing, Cheesy?"

Cheesecake-Eater Lad pounds himself on the chest and coughs. "Good thing I have such a strong stomach, that's all I'm saying." He shakes his head and turns to Captain LNH. "And you really want to... I mean, of course it's your decision."

Captain LNH nods firmly. "It is, and I do. I'm not..." She looks up at the LNHQ. "Not ready to come back."

"I get it... I think." Cheesecake-Eater Lad puts on a brave smile, but its edges start drooping. "I'm just... you spent so long in your own head. Uh, you didn't have a body at the time, but you know what I mean."

"Right, yeah. But not..." Captain LNH grabs her own shoulder, squeezes it. "Not all of us heal by talking about it. At least not right away."

oh god please let me step away from this awkward conversation, thinks Token Girl.

"Right. Well." Cheesecake-Eater Lad takes Captain LNH's hand, puts his over it. "I support you. And the Deep Omnilooniverse couldn't have a better defender."

Captain LNH smiles, a soft wave of starlight rolling thru her hair. "And the regular Looniverse couldn't have a better Anchor of Indulgence."

Cheesecake-Eater Lad chuckles. "Yeah, uh, you'll have to ask Unixepoch what that actually means, the next time you talk to him." He let go of her hands, and she took a step back.

"Will do. See you later, Tara!" Captain LNH begins to float up in the air, cosmic energy coalescing around her body.

Token Girl lets out a breath. "Right. Looking forward to it! Bring me some of the anime merch Looniverse-Murmur has, it looked amazing!"

Captain LNH laughs. "Gotcha. Oh, and keep an eye on the Loonited States for me. That new president..." She shakes her head, smiling. The energies swirl around her body, forming into a swirling bubble of bright colors, shafts of light shining out from the globular mass. It shimmers bright - then seems to zoom away, from every angle, until it is out of sight.

Cheesecake-Eater Lad takes off his toque, runs his hands thru his hair. "Whew." He turns to Token Girl. "We should probably--"

WHUMPF! He's lifted off his feet and up into the arms of a tall, pudgy, freckled woman who showers his face with kisses. "Oh my goodness dear I missed you!"

He squirms in her arms and laughs, wriggling out and onto the ground. "Jeez, hon." His cheeks are a-blush, and Token Girl smirks. "It was only a couple hours."

"Yes, and a couple decades before that, so forgive me my clinginess." She pulls him in close and presses him to her side.

He wiggles pleasantly, and a lithe, athletic woman in an abbreviated ninja outfit walks around his other side. She leans in to give him a kiss on the cheek. "Hearty Homecoming, Husband! Our Wonderful Wife Was Worried, but your Safety Surely Seemed Secure, by Superhuman Skill and Cosmic Competence!" She slides in, snuggling both of them and smiling at Token Girl.

Cheesecake-Eater Lad blushes. "Ah, I believe you know my wives, aLLiterative Lass and Petunia Boonspackle."

Token Girl nods! "Right. aLLi's a co-worker, of course, and I met Petunia back during the whole Neme.sys thing."

"Ah yes, Tara the Multinaut!" Petunia releases Cheesecake-Eater Lad in order to clasp Token Girl's hand in both of her large, warm hands. "Thank you so much, for helping weave our timelines together."

"Aw, don't worry about it," says Token Girl, blushing herself. Gosh, this lady's presence feels comforting, like a crackling fireplace. "I've always been a shipper, anyway. And if the history where Cheesy's alive can coexist with the one where he's dead, it's a minor problem to make the one where he's married to Petunia coexist with the one where he's married to aLLi."

"'Specially Since Sapphic Sisters Surely Sign-off," says aLLiterative Lass. "Truly, Triads Treat Tenderly. Will you Witness our Wonderful Wedding?"

"Er..." Token Girl's eyes swivel back and forth. "Aren't you already...?"

"Separately," notes Petunia, "but since polygamous marriage is legal in this timeline [The Liminals #1 - Footnote Flower Girl], we wanted to let everybody know that this isn't two marriages, or even three, it's one big one." She puts her arm around aLLi, who rests her head on the taller woman.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," smiles Token Girl. "...unless I have to save the world that day, of course."

"Then that can be your present," says Petunia, smiling wide and giving Token Girl a thumbs-up.

"Precipitant Perfidy is a Powerful Possibility with that Present President," says aLLi, rolling her eyes.

"Now, now, let's save the politics for later. For now, we must be off~" Petunia hefts a squeaking Cheesecake-Eater Lad up under one arm, and aLLi under the other. "Picking up the daughters~"

"Right! See you later!" Token Girl chuckles under her breath as she watches them head off. Maybe this is what being the Looniversal Anchor of Indulgence means - making the people around you happy by making yourself happy. Well, good - they all deserve to be happy for a very long time.

She looks up at the clear blue sky, streaked with whispery clouds, and feels herself inch back from that sense of panic and emergency. There will be more emergencies, more world-shaking battles; but for now, she strolls casually back into LNHQ, looking for cheesecake.

The usual crowd is milling about in the lobby, chatting, getting the mail, rushing out to desperately stop a net.villain, learning the true meaning of Armistice Day, and so on. Subtle breezes flow thru the room, the tarp over the partially-destroyed wall flapping in the wind.

Token Girl makes her way thru the crowd with practiced skill, heading towards the hallway door until she spies a cluster of people and people-like entities that she can't let herself miss.

Escape Lass hefts a bowl of apples under her arm. "...can't sustain over-the-air signals, they just bleed out between the dimensional apertures, so we'll have to lay cable the whole way."

"Which is a problem," speaks the bowl of apples, in fact the MicroMAC Quadcore, "since it is an indeterminate distance which, likely, shall change in indeterminable ways over time."

"Right," says Escape Lass, voice filling with problem-solving enthusiasm, "which-- oh, Tara!" She bounces in her blue short-sleeve straitjacket towards Token Girl, wrapping her free arm around her and squeezing her tight to her side.

Token Girl squirms in surprise, but laughs. "Hey, Evie. Y'all about to head out?"

"I think we are," says Escape Lass, letting go of Token Girl and putting Quadcore in her arms. Token Girl blinks at the robot in disguise, who doesn't blink back, as his form currently lacks eyes. "Foreshadowing Lad, how's it looking?"

"Hmmmm..." Foreshadowing Lad stretches out an arm clad in green spandex, and smiles up at Escape Lass. "Feels like we're almost at a happy ending."

Escape Lass grins, takes Foreshadowing Lad's hand, spins him around, dips him back and kisses him, then lets him go~ The young man stumbles back into the arms of his other partner, Non-Judgmental Agnostic, who squeezes him in a tight hug.

"Man, everybody's in a triad nowadays," says Token Girl, chuckling and handing Quadcore back.

"We'd invite you in and make it a quad," says Non-Judgmental Agnostic in her soft, tinkling, quasi-divine voice, "but I'm afraid it would turn into a Great LNH Polycule and swallow Net.ropolis."

Token Girl flushes. "Uh, so uh, y'all are going to make your way back to your world, Escape Lass?"

Escape Lass nods firmly. "Right. We're going to head down into the depths of the LNHQ, down to the point where the LNHQs of different universes start mingling to save on storage space, and find our way home to the Legacy of Newfangled Hierophants."

"Newly designated Looniverse-Bael," speaks Quadcore.

"That's right, in the Deep Omnilooniverse... ah, dammit." Token Girl tsks at herself. "We could've had Captain LNH take you back."

Escape Lass shakes her head! "No, don't forget, we have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs back."

"Preferably in the form of interuniversal messaging system," speaks Quadcore. "If we can overcome these significant technical issues."

"That's right," nods Token Girl, dislodging some of the details she learned during that whole confusing shebang. "You got a lot of people who'd like to emigrate."

"Right, tho your Looniverse isn't our main destination." Escape Lass smiles down at Quadcore. "Somebody made us a better offer."

"Ohhhh..." Token Girl looks between the lady and the robot and it clicks. "Ohhhhh-- with *them*!"

Escape Girl laughs, fingers half-covering her mouth as her eyes sparkle, and nods. "Right."

"That's-- wow," says Token Girl, processing the idea. "A world with tiny robots and giant humans feels very Deep Omnilooniverse, but it's not what I would have expected them to--"

"Cower, fools!" A figure leaps into their midst, with the swish of a cape! He rolls back his head and opens his mouth to let out a megalomaniacal cackle!

"Ah-ha-ha-ha! Mueh-heh-heh-heh! ...how was that?"

"... it sounds like you're making progress!" says Non-Judgmental Agnostic supportively!

The figure smiles in delight. He looks like a very normal person, with hair a few tones darker than his skin and eyes that are a color. The only odd things about him are the crimson circuitry running down from his eyes, over his chin and down his neck, and the symbol on his forehead - a stylized sword tucked into a breast pocket, with fancy monogrammed initials on it - PE, for the Pocket Empire!

"...cool, hi," says Token Girl, eyeing the man. She'll have to catch up with WikiBoy on all his weird clones later, but for now, she's pretty sure this is... "wIkimus Maximus, right?"

"Correct!" says wIkimus proudly, idly battling his cape out of the way.

"Or should we call you..." Escape Lass tosses Quadcore to wIkimus and points a dramatic finger. "Our most thrilling enemy!"

wIkimus juggles Quadcore for a moment before getting his arms solidly under the bowl, then looks back at Escape Lass. "Mwa-ha-heh-heh-ho! That's right! Now that I have deposed the foolish Antiochus XXVIII, I am the one true leader of the Pocket Empire!"

"God, and thank you for doing that," says Escape Lass, shaking her head. "Um, and argh you fiend and such."

Token Girl has her arms crossed and her eyebrow raised. "That's a heck of a thing."

"It probably seems strange," says Non-Judgmental Agnostic, smiling. "But on many worlds, the rivalry of support is one of the strongest social bonds there is."

Token Girl nods, and leans away from the dramatically-proclaiming nerds so that her worlds can go straight to the ears of Non-Judgmental Agnostic and Foreshadowing Lad. "So... what happened to CassAIndra?"

Foreshadowing Lad sighs, a heavy weight on his brow. "Multi-Tasking Man thinks he can fix her."

"He'd be the one if anyone was," murmurs Non-Judgmental Agnostic. "They know each other from the inside out, now."

"Fair. I just wanted to thank her... well, hopefully I'll get the chance." Token Girl shakes her head. "And WikiMan?"

"His WikiPowers are lost," says Foreshadowing Lad, "and I don't see a future where he gets them back. He's now a fixed narrative being, based on his last edit."

"I don't think he minds much, tho," says Non-Judgmental Agnostic. "He gets to experience the childhood he never did the first time, with the MicroMACs as his friends."

Token Girl nods thoughtfully, eyes on Escape Lass and wIkimus. "And... mmm." She shakes her head. "I don't know. It feels strange that all the different factions, the Pocket Empire and the Guardiettes and the AniMACs and the MicroMicroMACs and everybody else, are still going to keep fighting each other, even tho..." Her forehead wrinkles, and she looks up at Non-Judgmental Agnostic. "Like, do they really have a reason?"

Non-Judgmental Agnostic turns her eyes up to the skylight over the foyer, watching the clouds swoosh by. She takes a deep breath, and in an 'I am reciting this from memory' voice, says, "Ever since the Trademarkers used their Alterscope to spy on the RoboMAC worlds, the MicroMACs have been fighting battles for the entertainment of others." She smiles at Token Girl. "They can be more than that, now. They already are. But doing huge, dramatic, splashy stuff for an audience - that's part of them."

"Like it's part of the LNH," says Foreshadowing Lad, nodding.

"Heh. I guess so..." Token Girl turns to Escape Lass and wIkimus Maximus and snaps her fingers, giving them the fingerguns. "Okay, I'm gonna head off. Catch you all on the flipside."

"Oh, before you go!" Escape Lass bounds forward and catches her in a hug. Token Girl squirms in obvious embarassment and quiet delight, and hugs her back.

After she's let go, Token Girl waves and heads out of the foyer and down the winding corridors of LNHQ, towards the cafeteria. As she turns a corner, a figure staring off into space collides with her, both of them falling on their butts.

"--oh, sorry!" The other one scrambles to his feet, and Token Girl can see that it's Can-Handle-Any-Type-of-Change-Except-For-the-Ultimate-Ninja-Wearing-a-Cape Lad, three-time winner of the Longest Name in the Legion contest.

"That's okay," she says, helping him up. "But are you all right? You seem, uh, distracted."

He shakes his head, blushing just a bit. "It's just..." He looks over his shoulder, then leans in to murmur. "I'm afraid my powers are malfunctioning."

"Ohhhh?" Token Girl felt a slight tinge of worry. CHAToCEFtUNWaCLad was a relatively new Legionnaire, but had already become one of their dependable stalwarts.

He nods firmly. "I saw Ultimate Ninja walk by the cape closet, and..." He breathes just a bit deeper. "I didn't feel anything."

"...ah." Token Girl's worry becomes a different kind of... melancholy, really. She had been right there when it happened, but...

"Me too!" Puts-Paperclips-on-The-Ultimate-Ninja's-Desk Lad, three-time loser of the Least Useful Power in the Legion contest, popped into the conversation out of nowhere. "I just got a new jar of clips and they've just been sitting in a drawer all week!"

"Oh, man!" says Can-Handle-Any-Type-of-Change-Except-For-the-Ultimate-Ninja-Wearing-a-Cape Lad. "It's weird, isn't it?"

"It's super weird!"

"Mmmm..." Token Girl draws in a breath. "Well, maybe you should go to Doctor Stomper and have him check up on your powers."

"Ooh, yeah, good idea. Thanks, TG!" The two of them head off in the general direction of sickbay, chattering about the weirdness of the day.

Token Girl rubs her upper arm, getting some of that stiff tension out. She was there when it happened, but... she's not supposed to say anything. She's still not really sure that was the right choice, but it's...

Well, it's what Ultimate Ninja wanted, so.

She makes it down to the cafeteria, grabs a slice of one of Betamax's weird culinary experiments (in this case, pizza with black bean sauce and cotija cheese), reflills her canteen from the water filter, and takes ten to relax, sip, eat and process.

Just about ten minutes later: "Hey, mind if I sit here?"

Token Girl is tired enough that her first impulse is to pull out one of her trademark snappy comebacks so she doesn't have to People any more. But she recognizes the voice, and its owner doesn't count as a People, he counts as a Friend; so she looks up and gives a tired but sincere smile. "Yeah, sure!"

And Wikiboy sits down, putting his Szechuan tacos and soda on the table and smiling back, with just a touch of hard-earned confidence. "How've you been?"

"I've been..." Token Girl rolls her mind over a chaotic landscape of emotion... "I've been a lot. How about you?"

"Uh... also a lot, I think." Wikiboy adjusts his hair and straightens up. "Adjusting to how my powers work now, and the new... part of me, I guess you'd call it."

Token Girl nods, the questions that have been on her mind for a while rolling to the front. "Yeah, uh, did you absorb, like... the whole Apathy Beast, or...?"

"It felt like it at the time, but now it just feels like..." WikiBoy puts his hand over his chest, and takes a deep breath, stilling. "...like an extra bit of... weight? Calmness? Metaphysical machinery?" He shrugs! "Something like."

"Right. But you can still be edited?"

"Yeah, that still works about the same way. It's just that I can ignore edits if I really want to." He looks out the window. "It's kind of... the power to Not Care."

A little wave of regret sloshes on the shores of Token Girl's brain. "Gotcha. ..can you edit yourself?"

WikiBoy stares out the window, quiet for a long while. "...I don't know. When... when we were all together, all in one body, I could, but... I haven't tried since." He takes another deep breath, straightens up, and turns to her with a smile. "Someday, I guess. But right now, it feels like..." His smile droops just a bit at the edges. "WiKaine messed himself up real bad by editing out everything he couldn't stand."

Token Girl summons up her ultra-secret net.ahuman power, Being Distractingly Light and Humorous. "You mean Axen Kiwi, the No One of WikiBoy, right?"

WikiBoy blinks, then laughs. "Oh, god, yeah. I forgot about all the convoluted video game nonsense for a bit."

She grins. "Kingdom Hearts references are the natural destination of ridiculously convoluted crossover plotting."

"They really are." He shakes himself and runs his hands thru his hair, blushing a bit as he realizes how vulnerable he'd been. "I think he ran off into the Deep Omnilooniverse in the end. I hope he finds something to..."

"...put in that literal heart-shaped hole in his chest?" Seeeecret power!

"Oh, god, that's right. WikiBoy laughs. "Jeez our lives are hilarious sometimes." He shakes his head ruefully. "I didn't really get that, when I was the butt of all the jokes."

Oh no, the secret power backfired and now a huge wave of guilt is swamping Token Girl's brain! "I'm--" She stumbles. "I'm sorry if I ever--"

WikiBoy holds up a hand and looks her in the eyes. "Don't worry about it, please."

"...you sure?"

He picks up his taco and gives a big, performative bite, chewing and swallowing. "I was--" Slurp crunch smack. "I was created to be the butt of all the jokes, the one who just takes abuse because it's not as funny if I get revenge. That's who my Writer needed me to be... a harmless fantasy, something you write to find the happy buttons in the folds of your own brain and push them, and maybe find other people with the same buttons that'll enjoy it. That's who I was, then, and... I'm kinda proud of it?" He takes another bite, and licks his fingers. "Yeah, definitely this weird existential pride."

"I don't really get it," says Token Girl, "buuuuut that's good?"

WikiBoy giggles and lets out a little snort. "Yeah, it is. But then other writers got ahold of me, ones with different buttons, and they decided to take the elements of the fantasy and use them for a different kind of story. Like Jay Edidin embracing Chris Claremont's version of Lee and Kirby's Cyclops - finding the part that appeals to you. That's what collaborative fiction universes are about. And now I'm who I am right now." He pulls out a wet-wipe and cleans off his fingers. "There's plenty of room in there for different interpretations, too. I still get into wacky unfortunate comedic peril." He tosses the wipe on his tray and leans back in his chair. "I dunno. It's weird to think about who I used to be, but... yeah, I'm not sorry I was him."

Token Girl looks at WikiBoy, relaxing, thoughtful, and warmth swells in her chest. "I'm proud of you, man."

"Awh. Well." WikiBoy blushes, straightens up, and grabs the rest of his taco, shoving it in his mouth and mumbling "Thanks." around the food.

Token Girl chuckles. "So, uh... what haven't we... oh, yeah, WikiCide. He decided to become your evil opposite, huh?"

"Yeah~" WikiBoy swallows. "I'm proud of him, too. He's had a longer path than I have, even, but I think he's gonna do a great job."

"Four outta five ain't bad, I think," says Token Girl.

WikiBoy nods, and streeeetches and yaaaaaaaawns. "Mmmmm... I think I'm gonna go take a post-lunch nap."

"Hey, nap buddies~" Token Girl holds up her fist, and WikiBoy bumps it. She stands up and stretches. "See ya when I see ya."

"See ya too, assuming I have eyes at that point." WikiBoy stands up and picks up his tray.

Token Girl turns to go... ponders for a moment. "Hey, WikiBoy?" She snaps her fingers. "You're an SD Deathscythe."

"...yeah, sure~" WikiBoy poofs into an adorably chibi battle robot holding a glowing laser scythe, and toddles off on his chunky robotic feet.

Token Girl makes her way out of the cafeteria and down to her room without any more run-ins. She shuts the door and leans back on it, closing her eyes. Jeez, what a day. And it isn't over yet, but she can kick off her big stompy boots, hang up her button-covered denim jacket, flop into bed, cuddle a body pillow with a badass anime girl on it, and take a nap.

...she dreams of patterns in the sky, lines that aren't lines and gods that are great rotating symbols, and she watches the lines separate until the symbol is gone, and she watches Discord wave as she passes...

Token Girl wakes up 23 minutes after her alarm was supposed to go off. Oh, crap, she's supposed to get the Metatronium Sifter back in-- oh crap oh crap oh crap!!

She pushes her feet into her boots and wiggles her heels into place, grabs her jacket, and charges down the hallway to the transporter room. Parking Karma Kid is there, sitting behind the console and watching a compliation of ridiculous Grand Theft Auto vehicle tricks on his phone.

"Pete!" Token Girl says, leaping onto a transporter.thingy pad.thingee. "Gotta be at a place right exactly now! Address!" She throws a paper airplane at him.

Parking Karma Kid catches it out of the air and unfolds it. "So you're asking me to drop you off, not in some open space at sea level, but inside a mid-city building on the fifth floor?"

Token Girl nods desperately!!

Parking Karma Kid cracks his knuckles. "Thanks! But next time, give me a hard one!" His fingers dance over the console and she's gone~

Token Girl materializes in the hallway outside apartment 507-- whew, only a minute and a half late. She knocks on the door, and a kinda butch lady with short curly hair and devastating cheekbones opens it - "Terrible" Maddie Turnip. Token Girl holds out her hand, Maddie grabs it with a little grin, and they go up, down, left, right, wiggle your pinkies - the old Radikool Kidz Klub secret handshake. Then Maddie pulls her forward unexpectedly into a brief but strong hug that makes Token Girl gasp - not unpleasantly - as the air is squeezed out of her.

Behind Maddie, on the couch, are two people. One is a tall, dark-haired woman with a sort of 40's pinup girl look and an infectuous smile - Forgotten Gal. The other is a scrawny young man of Polish descent, with long blue hair and wearing a lemon-yellow T-shirt and blue jeans - Skrajny the Multinaut.

"C'mon, c'mon, I got a cherry crumble in the oven." Maddie leads Token Girl in and sits her down in a big plush recliner, a plate of dessert pressed into her hands.

"Okay, okay," laughs Token Girl. "But just one slice for me, please, I've got a dinner date." She takes the proffered fork and nibbles - delicious. "Lessee, uh..." She reaches into her satchel and pulls out a weird, septagonal device. "Here ya go, Skrajny."

"Please, call me Kacper." He says 'Casper' but Token Girl's gone thru enough baby naming sites to know how it's spelled. Kacper takes the Metatronium Sifter. "Tho I don't know what I'm gonna do with it."

"We'll figure it out," says Forgotten Gal, squeezing Skrajny's hand and giving him a reassuring smile. Token Girl notices that she's still wearing the Nostalgic Brace she'd gotten... somewhere along the line, Token Girl wasn't really sure. But it counterbalanced her forgettability, for people who had an emotional investment in her - which everyone in the room definitely did.

Token Girl decides to jump directly to the elephant in the room. "You're definitely not going home, then?"

Kacper sucks in a breath, lets it blow out loose lips. "...I want to go back. I want to help my people, the ones who are still trapped in that messed-up imperialist view of the multiverse." He puts his hands out in front of him and shakes his head. "But the Ordered Realities bureaucracy would hunt me down as a deserter even if I wasn't keeping the Idoloid technology. It's much safer, for now, for me to stay in an unregistered world where their influence is strictly indirect."

Maddie nods. "'Sides, this way, we can keep each other safe."

"Hell yeah!" Forgotten Girl pumps her fist. "Heroes together!"

"Woo!" says Kacper, giving a thumbs-up.

Token Girl grins and finishes off her bit of cherry crumble. "I'm glad to have someone like you on the force, Maddie."

"Heh, well." Maddie puts down her beer and gives Token Girl a tired but sincere smile. "Thanks, but I ain't on the force anymore."

"...oh. Uh." Social snafu? Had something happened?? "Sorry???"

"Nah, it's okay." Maddie sits back, arms crossed. "You're right, I was a good cop. But I was mostly good at not being like a cop's supposed to be. And after we found out..." She shakes her head. "Some of Shadez Radikal's people were... acquaintances, maybe even kind of friends. People I thought I could count on - people who'd given me orders. And I thought about those orders..." She shrugs. "I'm done with necessary evils. Or as done as you can be, in this world."

Token Girl let out a breath. "Yeah, that's fair. And like, who even knows what the laws are gonna be like with that new President."

"Oh lord, that guy," says Maddie, shaking her head and tilting her beer back, pouring the rest of it down her throat, then letting out a satisfying belch.

"Coulda been worse, tho," says Forgotten Gal, punching Maddie lightly in the shoulder.

"Yeah," says Token Girl, shaking her head too. "Anyway, what are you gonna do now?"

"You wanna take this one?" Maddie says to Forgotten Gal, who smiles and leans forward.

"We're gonna try and make something new. A place for Weird People."

"While everything was going down, we ended up getting to know some of your Shadow People," says Kacper.

"And we had ideas, and they had ideas..." says Maggie. "And a lotta those ideas were compatible."

"It's gonna be a place where weirdos like us can just, like, live, and support each other," says Forgotten Gal, eyes sparkling with possibility. "Without having to worry about cops, or CEOs, or weird people in frog masks, or any of that."

"Sounds great," says Token Girl. "But..." She rubs her chin thoughtfully. "Isn't that basically the LNH?"

Maggie lets out a little bark of a laugh. "Kid, you got a flippin' ninja death machine for a leader. It ain't an egalitarian society yet, that's for sure."

"...yeah, you know, fair, reasonable."

"Besides," interjects Forgotten Gal enthusiastically, "we can have more than one!"

"We gotta have more than one," says Maddie. "As many as we can get, I think."

Token Girl mmmmmms. "Good point..."

"It's like the Powernauts taught me," says Kacper. "You gotta spread the power around."

Token Girl giggles. "Right, and--" She's interrupted by her phone, which belts out a rousing chorus of 'Yappapa'. "Aw shoot!" She bounces to her feet! "Gotta get going to dinner!"

"Hugs first!" Forgotten Gal leaps up and hugs her, and Token Girl puts up only minimal protest. Maggie pushes herself to her feet and wraps her arms around the both of them with even less protest, and after a hesitant moment, Kacper joins in. Token Girl feels embarassingly warm and snuggly and appreciated, and only lets it go on for so long before she squirms out and away.

"See ya!" Everybody waves as she heads out the door.

This time, she walks to her destination; it's only a few blocks down the street, and exercise is always a useful prelude to the kind of food you get at the Pizza Pit.

At the door, she checks her phone; 7:57 PM. Awesome, just a couple minutes early. She slides inside and finds a place to lean up against the wall, looking up at the stage. She wouldn't want to miss this - the very last performance of the Cool Name Band.

Merissa is absolutely shredding on the bass, and Kid Occultism Kid is leading on guitar. Keeping up the beat is, of course, Deathspork: The Terminator on drums, with accompaniment by Amnesiac Brad Pitt on saxophone. And belting out the vocals at the top of her lungs is the one and only top of the pops, Rock'n'Roll Lass!

The crowd looks up from their pizzas, at the stage usually reserved for animatronic animals and karaoke performances of Baby Shark, enraptured by the sudden sense of something special happening; a magical alchemy that will disappear after tonight, and somehow, that feels okay; somehow, that feels right.

Token Girl leans back and lets the sound wash over her; the secret chord that pleased Discord. She hadn't been able to appreciate it properly before, either during the Secret War of the Bands or during the moment they had played to the universe itself. Now... her eyes lid, and her breath slows, and something opens up in her chest, and she lets it flow thru her...

When the music ends, she opens her eyes, stands up, and streeeetches. It feels like she's taken another nap, but she's absolutely brimming with energy...

"Thank you, Net.ropolis!" shouts Rock'n'Roll Lass. "Never forget where the rock came from! Good night!" The curtains swish closed, and Token Girl slips around the side and heads backstage.

The five of them are in the dressing room, taking off their stage makeup and chatting, letting themselves wind down too. Token Girl knock-knocked and leaned in. "Hey! Got a minute for your biggest fan?"

All five look up and all five smile, tho Deathspork's expression is annoyed at his own happiness. Rock'n'Roll Lass crosses the room, grabs Token Girl's hand, and pulls her up close in a sororal fist-clasp. "Glad you could make it, babe."

Token Girl feels that warmth rise to her cheeks again. "Wouldn't miss seeing y'all off!"

"Indeed, you are just in time!" Deathspork rises, having strapped his drums to a wheely cart, and gestures grandly. "For our alliance has been fruitful-- but now it must end! You have earned my respect, but the next time we meet, it will be-- as enemies!!"

Merissa rolls her eyes exaggeratedly. "Dude. PLEASE get over yourself and you might stop sucking."

"Verily," speaks Kid Occultism Kid, "you have far greater potential than you allow yourself to know. Especially on the drums."

"Bah!" Deathspork opens the stage door and sweeps dramatically out of the Pizza Pit. Tries to sweep dramatically out of the Pizza Pit. Trips on the steps and falls out of the Pizza Pit.

Screaming.

"...right," says Token Girl. "How about you, babe?"

Rock'n'Roll Lass laughs. "Yeah, I'm headed off too. Got to get back to the '60s and make sure all the 'classic rock' isn't being produced by white boys." She shakes her head. "'Classic'. Man, what a trip."

"Hang it loose!" says Amnesiac Brad Pitt, throwing up the horns.

Rock'n'Roll Lass raises her eyebrows and chuckles. "Yeah, you do you! G'night, folks!" She steps carefully over Deathspork, and disappears into the night.

"I have taken the liberty of ordering our repast for the evening!" Kid Occultism Kid thrusts out a hand, and the wood warps within the dressing room wall, turning into a mystic swirly portal! "Shall we?"

Merissa rolls her eyes. "You really didn't need to be that extra." She walks up to the door... and blasts it into tiny pieces with her Ultra-Mega-BIGGUN! "Not when you could be that extra!" >:D

"oh my god you nerds." Token Girl stepped thru the pieces of broken door, pulling Amnesiac Brad Pitt along with her. Kid Occultism Kid waves their hands, and a giant arrow appears, guiding them to their table. A waitress drops off their pizza and gets Merissa's signature, and they dive in.

"So," says Token Girl, dipping one of their gloriously greasy breadsticks into marinara, "how are you holding up, Brad?"

"Ah..." Amnesiac Brad Pitt shakes his head. "I don't think I'm going to call myself that anymore." He gets up and stands behind his chair, putting one hand on the faded First Trenchcoat draped over it. "After the other Brad Pitts formed the Idolon of Millions and sacrificed themselves, the idea of holding up that name, that legacy... that's not what I am."

Kid Occultism Kid swallows and says, "And what, then, would you be?"

"I'm just a memory of what came before." The former Amnesiac Brad Pitt puts on the First Trenchcoat and turns towards the door, but stops for a moment, looks back. "I'm just... a Memento."

"...uh," says Merissa, "you weren't in that movie."

He freezes. "Wait, really?"

"Are you thinking of Guy Pearce, maybe?" says Kid Occultism Kid.

"Well shit." The still-nameless Idolon turns around and sit back down at the table. "So... how about that election?"

The tension breaks and the table turns into a caophony of nods, sighs, mumbles and eyerolls.

"Like jeez that new President," says Merissa, shaking her head. "I mean, I was too busy to run, but..."

"Yeah," says Token Girl, "but... it could definitely have been worse."

Merissa pauses, remembering, and nods firmly. "Yeah, it really could..."

"And for now," says Kid Occultism Kid, "we shall look forward, to the future. To what we can do to keep this from happening again - to make things truly better."

"Hear, hear," says Mr. What's-His-Name.

Between them, the foursome quickly finish off the pizza, the breadsticks, and the side order of wings. Token Girl lets out a satisfied belch, and Merissa gives her a high-five. "Okay," she says, "I'm gonna head back to LNHQ, how 'bout y'all?"

"I'll totes come with," says Merissa, picking up her bass.

"I shall stay here and help our friend consult on a new moniker," says Kid Occultism Kid.

"yeah thanks," says you-know-who.

The two of them head out the door, into the cool autumn night, gibbous moon waning overhead. As they walk, Token Girl feels Merissa's demeanor change, from the chill relaxed lady she likes to project to the insecure teenager-esque being she actually is (in Token Girl's estimation). Something wants to come out, but it can't be forced, so she waits...

They're almost there when Merissa turns to her and bursts out with a "So hey..."

"Yeah?" says Token Girl, like she hadn't been waiting.

"It's just..." Merissa fidgets, and her face wrinkles up in the frustration of being kuudere, trying to hold back her feelings to maintain her persona of Cool. Thankfully, she isn't very good at it, and the words come spilling out. "Do you really think we can make stuff better? Like, the world almost went totally to shit! It's fucked up in so many different ways! I don't think..." Her voice softens, and she turns her gaze away. "I don't think anybody, no matter how cool and powerful they are, can deal with it by themselves."

Shit. Token Girl does not consider herself anything like 'good at this stuff'. Fearless Leader or Catalyst Lass would be much better at the encouraging speeches, and Special Bonding Boy or Fairy Princess Lad would be much much better at the talking about feelings. But, well, she was there and now she's here, so she takes a deep breath and...

"...yeah, I think you're right. Like... during all the shit that happened, all of the crazy and cosmic and depressing and amazing stuff-- I couldn't have done any of it by myself. Which..." Okay, here goes. "Which is why we all had to do that together. So many of us had to take it on from so many different angles, your band, the Powernauts, Captain LNH and Cheesecake-Eater Lad, the MicroMACs, Maddie and Forgotten Gal, Escape Lass and WikiMan, all the WikiBoys, all of us... We had to come from different places, different backgrounds, different powersets and different stations in life, because we were all needed, we all helped in different ways."

Merissa's eyes are wide and-- oh, dear, yes, they're sparkling. Well, at least it's working - better wrap up while she's ahead.

"So like... yeah, I do think we can stuff better, but only if we keep doing that. If we all value each other's efforts, and don't stop supporting each other - the front line fighters, the healers and comforters, the big public speakers, the logistics nerds, the hyperspecialists..." Token Girl chuckles. "And the token weirdos like me, who just happened to be in the right time and place to kinda, give a little push in a helpful direction."

"...hey!" says Merissa, snorting. "Don't be so down on yourself, grandma. You did a lot of the work too." She shrugs~ "Not as much as me, of course~"

Token Girl laughs. Oh thank fuck it worked. "Grandma, eh? Well, sonny, er, little lady... no, that sounds dumb, I don't know how grandmas talk."

Merissa lets out a gigglesnort. "Okay, okay, so stop talking. See you in the morning, I'm gonna do something cooler than hanging out with you~" She runs down the sidewalk to the back door of the LNHQ, swings it open, and yells, "Also you're rad and thanks!" before disappearing.

Token Girl chuckles, running her hands thru her hair as she saunters thru the back door. Whew. It's been a day of far too many emotions... time to vegetate.

She finds her way to the TV room, the hallways gently guiding her as always. Forsaken Lass and Net.Access are on one of the overstuffed couches, making out and oblivious to the world around them, so she flops down on the other one, next to Fuzzy. "What's on the boob tube?"

"Well, I don't watch the news a lot," says Fuzzy, flipping from channel to channel like it's 1992 or something. "But I figured this was important." She stops on an image of a podium with American flags around it. Vaguely stirring, vaguely patriotic music was playing.

"...welp," says Token Girl, running her hands thru her hair. "Let's do this."

The vague music quiets, and a warm and enthusiastic announcer comes on, completely unfazed by what he's about to say. "Ladies and gentlemen, in his first address to the nation, please welcome the new President-Elect of the Loonited Sates of Ame.rec.a..."

A person walks up to the podium. A person both of them recognize. A person both of them have fought with. And before last week, the last person either of them would have expected to see up there...

"...Bad Judgment Boy!"

The Icon of Ill-Considered Ideas strolls saucily up to the podium. He's wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Che Guevara on it and tight shorts that say "JUICY" on the bottom. He grabs the microphone (causing a screech of feedback) and addresses the nation.

"Hey guys! Wait, there's a teleprompter. My... fellow... Africans..."

An aide runs up to Bad Judgment Boy and whispers urgently in his ear, but he waves them off.

"Look, look, I know you wanted me to talk about the economy or whatever, but let's focus on what's really important: Me! See, I'll be great for the Ame.rec.an people. Most politicians are big in debt to shady figures in industry. But all the shady figures *I*'m in debt to disappeared last week, so it's fine!"

Token Girl watches, open-mouthed, for as long as she can stand. Then she grabs the remote, clicks off the TV, and falls back on the couch. She looks up at Fuzzy. "...well, it coulda been worse, right?"

Fuzzy chuckles. "It really could have. But..." She scratches her head. "I still don't understand how the heck he won!"

Token Girl sits up and shakes her head. "I should head to bed." She stands up, streeeetching out. "But I'll tell you what I can tomorrow." She walks to the door, but turns when she gets there. "And we can start at the end." She gives Fuzzy a wink, then ambles away.

Fuzzy shakes her head. "Good night." She turns to the camera. "And sleep well, when you do."

----

Author's Notes: So, the thing is...

I had SO MANY PLANS for WikiLull. And they grew, and they grew, and they just kept growing. And I realized - what I really wanted WikiLull to be was a catharsis to all the pain and awfulness of the 2016 election, all of its causes and all of its effects. And that's just too big for one story to be.

So instead, I decided to tie off the loose ends, and take a lot of the places Jeanne and I had wanted characters to go and just move them there, and leave the Looniverse with a good status quo. And get it done before the 2020 election, eheheh... just under the wire.

The Deep Omnilooniverse is, of course, a parody of DC's Dark Multiverse. Jeanne and I were originally going to call it the "Dark Omnilooniverse", but using "dark" like that is overdone and carries Weird Racial Overtones, and the play on the idea of the "deep web" was really compelling. All of the Deep Omnilooniverse worlds mentioned in this issue are named after demons from the Ars Goetia, because we're fancy like that. It's not very well-defined here, so feel free to go wild!

#Fiction #Original Fiction #Superheroes #Silliness #Drama #Adventure #Legion of Net.Heroes #Classic LNH #WikiLull

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ununniliad · 5 years

Text

Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 3 #2: "The TERROR of June 26th, 2019!"

<cover: A fancy hardcover lying on a messy desk, on whose cover is written in gold leaf, "On June Twenty-Sixth, Twenty-Nineteen, the Legion of Net.Heroes will DIE!">

----

It was June 23rd when the evidence was discovered.

The young, academic orc (also known as an orcademic) who worked in the library of LNH Headquarters, whose real name was Fred Gnarshteeth but who had for various reasons which we will not go into here decided to call himself Anal-Retentive Archive Kid II...

...slapped a manila folder on the desk, and put a VHS tape down next to it. Behind said desk stood Fearless Leader, Co-Deputy Leader of the Legion of Net.Heroes. The other Co-Deputy Leaders, Catalyst Lass and Cheesecake-Eater Lad, stood next to him, peering down at the folder. The post-WikiLull Ultimate Ninja leaned against the wall, silently watching the goings-on.

"According to this evidence," said ARAK II, "in three days, the LNH will face a villain more powerful than any we've ever seen before."

"Sounds like every other Tuesday," said Cheesecake-Eater Lad, mindfully keeping things light.

"Where does said evidence come from?" said Fearless Leader, keeping on-point.

"Library Lad was working on going through old LNH records when he disappeared," said ARAK. "Taking things from the archives that are in danger of being forgotten, and putting them in an accessible database in our modern systems. I've been trying to keep it going in his absence."

"Good job!" bubbled Catalyst Lass. "That kind of community-minded spirit is what keeps the LNH the LNH."

ARAK nodded in acknowledgment, letting himself savor a little bubble of warmth in his belly, then continued briskly. "This is a twenty-five-year-old statement taken from an incident type 214."

"Time traveler who has come back on a last desperate mission to change the future," said Fearless Leader.

"Just so," said ARAK. "In this case, the time traveler was Poignant Death Lass."

"Who wouldn't even join the LNH until years later," said Catalyst Lass.

"Right," said ARAK. "The statement was taken by Sig.File Man. PDL, badly wounded but still mostly lucid, described a foe who came out of nowhere; a man filled with enormous cosmic power, burning out his body, and blaming the LNH for everything that had gone wrong with his life. He ripped through all of our strongest hitters, and was in the midst of blowing apart the LNHQ when she was sent back. After handing over the tape, she passed out, and was taken to sickbay, where..." He sighed. "Well, where you can guess what happened."

Cheesecake-Eater Lad and Catalyst Lass looked up at Fearless Leader, who had been the sole survivor of a very similar attempt at averting worldwide disaster - an attempt that had failed. But he had grown since then, kept moving forward and recovering, and seen this Legion through many more moments of near-destruction. His face was calm, focused. "Right. And the tape?"

ARAK nodded, and signaled. wReamhack wheeled in a metal cart with a VCR and a CRT TV on it. ARAK slid the tape in and pressed play.

The lawn of the LNHQ, everything quiet and normal. Suddenly, a streak of light flies through the air - and collides with a hastily-activated defense shield.

Before the shield, a man floats in the sky, his features washed out by a crackling field of energy that surrounds him, bolts of blue, red, purple, white, lashing at the ground, curving off into space,. Where the energies intersect with the shield, it starts fading. "The LNH... you've been hurting me since I was a child... you killed my mother... NO MORE!" He rams his crackling hands against the shield, and it cracks apart! "REVENGE!"

Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story, one of the LNH's heavy hitters, finally reaches the threat. They grapple, and the energy blasts into the Kid's form. "Nice try, net.asshole," grunts the man, "but you're going down like the Browns." The Kid cries out in agony, and holds on - but his form seems to wither and dwindle, and finally, he falls, a drained shell.

The shield deactivates, and LNHers spill out of the HQ - whichever random members were in today. They engage, but the man plows thru them. "She was a sweet woman! She never did anything! Do you hate immigrants? Do you hate single mothers!? WHAT DID SHE EVER DO TO YOU!?" His own form withers as he moves inexorably forward, but he seems no less strong.

Suddenly, Kid Kirby, the greatest cosmic hero of the Legion, appears, seated behind a huge, complicated-looking cannon. With a great flash of light, it pours a blast of coruscating energy into the man's form... but when the light dies down, the aura of energy is even stronger, occluding the man entirely. A searing blast from the man destroys the cannon, blows Kid Kirby to pieces, and blows a great hole in the side of LNHQ.

"And now..." The man's voice is thin, halting. "Now..." He walks through the hole, into the heart of the LNHQ. "DIE!"

From afar, the LNHQ can be seen glowing from within - and then a fireball consumes it - and spreads - and spreads, destroying, consuming the city--

Nothing is left of Net.ropolis but a crater. The screen goes black.

Catalyst Lass let out a breath she hadn't been aware she'd been holding. Fearless Leader looked less calm, more grim. "That was... thorough."

ARAK tried not too look shaken - come on, he thought, you've watched this already, no surprises here. "Apparently, there was an automatic failsafe that recorded and sent the tape after everything came apart. Complete with the dramatic camera angles."

"I know Multi-Tasking Man has been working on something like that..." said Cheesecake-Eater Lad, his expression pale but determined.

"He's thorough too," said Fearless Leader, leaning back in his seat. "Anal-Retentive Archive Kid, your analysis?"

ARAK tapped his neatly-manicured claws on the desk. "As far as I can tell, this was our Legion, a Legion that had taken on the Bryttle Brothers, the Crossover Queen, the Mechanical Author... and we were defeated by someone we didn't even know about."

"But we should've known about him in this timeline," said Cheesecake-Eater Lad. "Why wasn't this flagged? We've had the next time the Time Crapper shows up scheduled for the last six months."

"It turns out there's a fairly simple answer to that, having to do, again, with time," said ARAK. "The statement was taken on June 26th, 1994. Twenty-five years before the incident, to the day..."

Cheesecake-Eater Lad's eyes went wide. "...and two days before..."

"Retcon Hour," said Catalyst Lass quietly. Her knuckles went white on the edge of the desk.

Retcon Hour, one of the messiest events in the Legion's history, involving multiple time-travelers creating a multitude of alternate timelines, then letting them overlap, overwrite, a million conflicting narratives at war. The LNH had defeated the mastermind behind it all, somehow, and Captain Continuity and the RACCelestial Madonna had put things back as they should have been - but everyone who had been through the final battle held onto strange, fragmented memories of things that had never been.

"After Retcon Hour, no one wanted to even think about changing the future," said Cheesecake-Eater Lad. "They were just happy that the LNH seemed to have a future."

ARAK nodded. "That makes sense. As far as I can tell, this file was put in the archives and left to gather dust. Nobody's thought about it in the last twenty-five years - until today."

"All right," said Fearless Leader, standing up. "We have three days of warning, and we're going to use them. First, we bring in all the forces we can. Every Legionnaire, ready to defend, on the day of the attack. Second, we search for any sign of this guy. He has to be out there somewhere. Maybe we can find a weakness. Maybe we can get to him before whatever triggered this attack happens."

"I'll rally the members!" said Catalyst Lass.

"I'll get our resources on the case," said Cheesecake-Eater Lad.

"Anal-Retentive Archive Kid," said Fearless Leader, "see if you can match the data on this to anything else in the archives. A villain we've fought before, a hero gone rogue, a cosmic confluence that fills random people with powers. Even if it seems like this guy came out of nowhere, he's got to have a past."

"Got it," said ARAK, standing straight and nodding firmly.

Catalyst Lass mm-hemed. Fearless Leader looked at her quizzically... "Oh, yes."

All three of the Co-Deputy Leaders looked to Ultimate Ninja. He stood up, cracked his knuckles, and gave a firm nod.

"Right," said Fearless Leader. "It's time to gather our strength. Legion... let's go!"

----

The call went out. Subgroups were pulled back from missions. Reservists were called to active duty. Characters whose writers had been inactive for years but were still technically on the roster gathered together offscreen.

Contraption Man and Multi-Tasking Man firmed up the LNH's defense grid. Occultism Kid, Shining Tungsten Magister and Kid Occultism Kid wove mystic wards. Johnny Stomper and Very Big Boy trained for combat with giants, while Doctor Stomper and Mashup Laq monitored for incursions from the Picoverse. Foreshadowing Lad reached out for clues and hints, while Kid Recap recalled the past. The leaders drafted plan after plan.

And ARAK dove deep into the archives, looking for the single clue that might save them all...

----

The day came. At the break of dawn, the massed forces of the Legion of Net.Heroes gathered on the lawn of the LNHQ. Scouts spread out through the city. Satellites recorded every spark of net.ahuman power being used, looking for the spark that would turn into a wildfire.

At full readiness, they waited.

...and they waited...

...and they waited.

By mid-morning, Cheesecake-Eater Lad, Frat Boy and Shake-n-Bake Lass were distributing breakfast in shifts, each LNHer on edge, ready to rise from their meal and fight.

By noon, a bunch of blankets had been brought out to spread on the lawn, and the LNHers were sitting to conserve their energy, having little conversations to keep their minds sharp, but still ready for the fight. Lunch was served in picnic baskets, and LNHers snacked on fortifying sandwiches and cheesecakes. Soda, juice, and bottles of water were pulled from a series of coolers and passed around.

By mid-afternoon, there were five games of Magic: The Gathering going on and three D&D campaigns, there was a screen set up showing all seven Vorkosigan Saga movies, and a Lego model of the LNHQ was in progress. Anal-Retentive Archive Kid II leaned against the door to the LNHQ, Catalyst Lass standing next to him and soaking in some sun.

ARAK sighed. "I've been searching for the last three days, and there's nothing. Not just no other appearances of this guy, but no evidence someone like him has ever existed. Like, take a look at this..." He held up a clipboard with the statement on it, and a transcript of the tape. "The guy was talking about how the LNH killed his mom. So I look up bystander fatalities. Not a common thing with us, but it can happen. Then I look up the children, follow up their histories... I found three that had ever shown powers, one of whom lives in Nepal now, one of whom is an investment banker in Cleveland, and one of whom is actually a member of the LNH. And here - it says that he spoke with a midwestern accent, and he was talking about 'the Browns'. So I started checking in the Cleveland area, but there's like a dozen active net.heroes over there and none of them had tangled with any cosmic villains in the last year." He shook his head. "It's all like that. Nothing comes together, there's no person for whom all of this fits." He looked up at Catalyst Lass. "I'm sorry. I lead us on a wild goose chase."

Cat smiled and put her hand on his shoulder. "Hey, it's okay. It's better to be proactive and have it turn out to be nothing than to ignore things and have them turn out to be something." She gestured out towards the crowd on the lawn. "Besides, you got everybody together for a picnic!"

"Mmmm... yeah, that's fair." ARAK looked over the gathered crowd, and tried to relax, to take an actual break. If only he could be sure, though...

"Oh, hey, Cat." ARAK looked up. Two men were coming towards them; one was older, and dressed in blues and grays, in that distinctive coordination that told ARAK he was a net.hero in a casual version of his costume; the other, younger, wearing a T-shirt and khaki shorts on the hot June day.

Catalyst Lass squeaked in surprise and delight. "Sig.File Man!" She pushed herself off the wall and wrapped him up in a tight hug, then let go, stepping back, holding him by the shoulders and looking him over. "It's been so long! How've you been? Who's this?"

Sig.File Man laughed good-naturedly. "Pretty good, thanks. And you're right, it's been forever." He gestured to the younger man. "This is my son, Adam. He lives in Net.ropolis. I flew over for a visit, and we heard the LNH was having some kind of shindig, so I decided to stop by."

"Your son?" Catalyst Lass clapped her hands. "I didn't know you had kids!"

Sig.File Man smiled. "Just the one. Remember after I left the LNH, and sent those Christmas cards with that cute girl and the little boy? That was him and his mom."

"Ohhh!" Cat grinned. "He's grown up so big and strong, good job! Does he have powers?"

"Well, yeah..." Sig.File Man leaned in and spoke quietly. "He's not interested in being a net.hero, but I figured you-all might be able to help train him anyway. He's got a kind of phobia of this place, or I would've brought him by years ago." He tilted his head towards Adam. "He's been going to a new therapist lately, and even coming here is a big step up."

"Ohhhh, of course!" trilled Cat. She stepped over to Adam. "Hullo there! I'm Catalyst Lass, Co-Deputy Leader of the Legion of Net.Heroes! Would you like a bit of a tour?"

"Oh, well..." Adam looked down, but then looked back up at Catalyst Lass, and was, like so many, swept up by her honest enthusiasm. "I guess we could."

He followed her into the LNHQ, leaving ARAK and Sig.File Man alone. ARAK looked down at the clipboard in his hand... oh, what an opportunity! "Say, Sig.File-- ah, I guess I should ask your real name."

"Sigmund Ampulle," said the former Sig.File Man, and stuck out his hand.

ARAK smiled. "Fred Gnarshteeth." They shook, and ARAK pointed to the clipboard. "Do you remember taking this statement? For obvious reasons, it's been on my mind today."

"Hmmm..." Sigmund took the clipboard and glanced over the top page. "Oh, yes, this..." He blinked, and leaned in, squinting at the date on top. "...ah. Of course..." He looked up at the gathering of LNHers. "Of course it would be today that we came by..."

ARAK tilted his head. "Er... pardon me?"

Sigmund chuckled. "Sorry, but... let me tell you a story..."

"Back in 1994, I was starting to drift away from the LNH. My old team, the Tantalizing Teens, had broken up a couple years before. Cliche Dude and SideKick Man had joined the Legion alongside me, but Cliche Dude had left for a space mission with Halls Jordan, and SideKick Man had turned out to be an evil robot all along. That stung, of course, and I was left with few close friends in the community. Then an old enemy ran me over with a bulldozer..."

"Eesh," said ARAK.

"Yeah, right? So I wasn't exactly having fun as an LNHer. But I didn't really know where I should go next."

"Then this fell in my lap. I figured, why not stop this before it starts? So I started making plans to go to Cleveland and investigate. Then..." Sigmund sucked in a breath. "Retcon Hour happened. I barely remember the bulk of it; I think at one point I was the leader of an all-singing all-dancing theater troupe version of the Legion?" He chuckled. "But it was big and it was stressful and it was just another indication that maybe this wasn't the kind of life for me. So those plans turned a bit longer-term than they used to be."

"I rented an apartment and tried to track down the 'mom' mentioned - doing some of the fancy detective work I hadn't really done since my Tantalizing Teens days. I found a few different women who fit the clues; but there was only one of them, Sarah Hernandez, who was raising a young son alone, ever since his male genetic donor had walked out on them. I kept an eye on the others, but made friends with Sarah, hoping that I could keep them out of any net.hero-related trouble."

"A young son..." ARAK looked over his shoulder at the LNHQ, then back at Sigmund, eyebrow raised.

"Yep." Sigmund nodded. "Sarah and I ended up falling in love by Christmas. By then, I'd heard about their backstory - how they'd been visiting Net.ropolis during Retcon Hour and been temporarily pulled into an alternate universe where the LNH were all these terrifying evil robots, and Adam had ended up rather traumatized."

"I see..." The pieces fit, indeed, thought ARAK.

"We got married a couple of years later," said Sigmund. "By then, I'd formally retired from the LNH and set up a detective agency. I figured, well, maybe just by coming here I'd prevented a tragedy."

"Only there was a tragedy still on its way. It turned out Sarah had a degenerative neural disease..." He sighed. "With no cure."

"Oh..." said ARAK, unsure how to respond. He settled on, "I'm so sorry."

Sigmund shook his head. "Don't worry about it. That was a long time ago, now. And, this time, I was there to support both of them thru it." He looked off into the distance. "It was during the stress of that whole mess that Adam's powers activated. Powers to channel cosmic energy. He was pretty freaked out by them, to be honest - freaked out by anything related to net.heroes - and for a while he thought he'd messed up his mom. The doctors told him he couldn't have, that that wasn't how disorders like this work. But he ended up repressing them pretty hard."

"He's doing better now, though?" said ARAK, encouragingly.

"Yeah. Not city-destroyingly better, thankfully. I guess, in the other timeline, without therapy, without anybody, he just ended up obsessing, and..." Sigmund raised his hands, motioned pushing something away. "Anyway. Yeah. Much better, and has been quite stable for a long time."

"Good," said ARAK, and meant it. "I guess, then, you've saved the city - and I can close this file, which is nearly as relieving."

Sigmund laughed. "Guess so." He handed the clipboard back. "Turns out there's a lot of ways to do this job."

"Yeah. And the people who take care of it before it becomes a problem don't get nearly enough credit for it." ARAK tucked the clipboard under his arm. "Would you like to come down to the archives and help me close this file out? I'd like to give you credit, after all this time."

"Aw. Well, far be it for me to maintain false modesty." Sigmund opened the door of the LNHQ, and ARAK stepped thru.

And the picnic ended up going on past dusk, until the moon rose over the city of Net.ropolis.

#Original Fiction #Superheroes #Adventure #Drama #Legion of Net.Heroes #Classic LNH #Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 3

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