Okay, this is on my hard disk since June. I don't know why I
didn't post, I honestly thought I did. Sorry.
Oh yes now I remember! It's all coming back! I was waiting for
Jenn to assure me that I wasn't spoiling any of her plots. So
if you're a Misfits fan, you can safely read this issue, it's
*guaranteed* not to predict the future ;-)
(Of course, the reason why I didn't post even after she replied
is lost in the mists of time...)
What follows is the original prologue; the only stuff I edited
are up to the dashed line below and my sig.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Minority Miss is coming back! I swear! :-)
This is a story in the LNH2 imprint. This means it's a POSSIBLE
future - perhaps not the most likely, probably not the one the
authors plan for the characters. You're warned.
Also, Acra Flight is (in principle) a tightly knit mini-series,
so don't expect to understand the stuff too well if you haven't
read the previous issues, and even then, you won't understand
it fully until you read the whole arc. Sorry. :-)
****************************************************************
We kids looked at each other. I seemed to be still the leader -
Blackbird, the last living descendant of the Wicked family and
son of the living occult library, Luke Jones. Analysis, the
Sherlock Holmes of the 21st century, looked absolutely
helpless. The oldest of us was Kathy Jones, daughter of
Leviathan Lass and Demon boy - half of the Legion of Occult
Heroes, who were by the way now missing, banished back to the
Earth where they were born by my aunt Emily, previously known
as Demon Grrl (but don't say that where she can listen) and The
Banister, who now lied unconscious on the floor, completely
drained after using her power on so many people after not using
them at all in years. And of course there was her daughter, my
cousin Mary, who was two-year-old by that time, but capable of
intelligent conversation thanks to the Leviathan, who she then
uncreated. That was in 2012; now in 2015 she is best known as
SoWhat. Without aunt Emily, we were all that was left to the
world; we had to find out where were Green Trenchcoat and his
other half, Vicky Delaware, and why they were draining almost
all of the force of the Earth Spirit to there, which caused all
plants in the world to wind up dead that morning.
I learned this with Kid Recap before he retired. Cool, isn't?
----------------------------------------------------------------
Who Cares Studio presents:
ACRA FLIGHT
#4
Weird People, Magic People
Part of the LNH2 imprint. Any similarities the characters and
events described in this story have with real life characters
and events - or with characters and events in your stories for
that matter - unless otherwise stated are purely coincidental.
Most characters (see end of message) and this story are
copyright (C) 2000 by Fernando "Lalo" Martins. Other
characters are (C) by their creators as credited below.
The text of the story may be copied in any form or medium, for
any purposes, provided that the text is copied verbatim. To use
parts of it, or to create derivative works, please contact the
author at mailto:lalo@hackandroll.org
----------------------------------------------------------------
"Okay", I said, trying to show some leadership, "first the
Green, then the Garrolds, right?"
"Yeah, fine", moaned Kathy. "They would lecture me all month if
I went after them first anyway. They can take care of
themselves, even if the whole world is dead and Mum is
powerless."
"Thanks, but I already recapped."
"You forgot these two bits."
"Right. So, without them and being that Occultism Kid can't
help without a living plant for a ritual, how the hell are we
going to find Green Trenchcoat and Vicky?"
"Er, I think I know just the person", said Analysis. "Let's go
find Lady Carmine."
"Uh? Isn't she some TV-show witch?", I asked.
"Yes, and also counsel to a lot of celebrities. But she is also
a real sorcerer. She was a supervillain even, back then, in the
same group as my father."
"Uh... is this a good idea?"
"Don't worry. Her group was more close to friends with my
family than really enemies. Except for the thing between Lady
Carmine and aunt Paytan, but she's over it already."
"Don't we have any other choices?", I asked, uncomfortable.
"Unless you want to ask aunt Paytan, no."
I swallowed. I didn't mind to die someday, but I wouldn't just
walk into Perdition of my own will.
"Ok... let's find Lady Carmine then. Where?"
"She can pick us up, I only need to make a phone call."
A few minutes later, Analysis hung up the phone and the air
started to glow red in the room. Aunt Emily was upstairs, being
taken care of by Leviathan Lass' mother; Lady Kirsty Jones, the
non-super-powered counterpart of Leviathan Lass native to our
Earth, stood at the door and gave Kathy a nasty look.
"You take care of yourself. You know they didn't want this to
happen yet."
"I know, but what can I do?"
"What you're already doing. The right thing." Lady Kirsty
tossed a package to Kathy, just as the room disappeared in the
red glow.
----------------------------------------------------------------
"Wasn't Perdition a hero too?", Asked Kathy to no one in
particular, as we materialized in a comfortable-looking room
with a lot of magazines and sofas. It felt like the waiting
room of some doctor, but with most of the decoration in red
instead of white or some soothing color.
Usually, when someone gets Analysis started up, I smack both of
them in the head straight away. But that time I was curious
too, and a quick glance at the mags showed me there wasn't
anything more interesting to do than listen. I knew a few
things about Perdition, but not the whole story... knowing
everything is my dad's domain, not mine.
"Well yes, she was. She could summon demons, just like your
father, and she was quite good with magic thanks to a magic
sword who teached her the basics. But she could be summoned to
hell too, and that was the problem. Usually when she was in
hell she would be controlled by whoever summoned her, and it
was in one of these occasions that she met my mother and aunt
Brittany, who freed her somehow. When they got back to Earth,
they formed the Misfits."
"So, what happened?"
"She eventually had to go too far... you know, the pressures of
being a hero, with a writer who tends towards moderate angst...
so she was called to hell - for payback, she thought.
"But it wasn't like that, it turned out. I'm not too deep in
the metaphysics, but it looks like there is a kind of demon who
is born human, like the Leviathan. Wizards who get too powerful
and prefer the dark side, or something like that. Or just like
to be served by lesser demons. Perdition was actually being
called to hell to fulfill her destiny.
"Well, I don't know what happened exactly. Mom doesn't like to
talk about that trip; it was when the Misfits really fell
apart, no matter what is officially in the archives. But they
eventually managed to take her back, and she retired with her
boyfriend, then known as Faq Boy, and `lived happy thereafter'
for a few years.
"Till someone killed Faq Boy, who was then her husband.
"She went all-angst (TM), and without Mom (we were traveling
around the world then) and aunt Brit to support her, she
decided to bring him back.
"But the only beings capable of reliably bringing back the dead
that she knew, weren't reliable anymore; partially thanks to
her, they had just finished Falling and were in war with hell
for control of something. And hell wasn't much more capable of
helping either, thanks to the war. She went rampage and started
to kill both sides' armies until someone would listen.
"Eventually, the former angels did, and proposed to bring him
back _if_ both she and him would support them in the war and
afterwards.
"To make it short, she agreed. She knew they would do something
nasty to him, but she explicitly mentioned in the pact that his
soul and personality would have to be intact, so she agreed.
"He was taken back, his old power of changing reality trough
documentation kept, and his other power - to reappear whenever
he died - restored, with the twist that he would now reappear
in a specific place in hell, instead of the LNH's peril room.
"They sided with the former angels and took hell over. After
that, she - as one of the high captains in the winning army -
was put in charge of a big chunk of hell, as a member of one of
the highest ranks of the new power structure, and he - now
known as Tech Support Man - was put in charge of hell's tech
support service..."
"Wait a minute!", I interrupted, "Hell has a tech support
service? For what, sins?"
"Actually", Kathy replied, "for software, hardware, net
connection, telephony, and hi-tech stuff in general."
"But... who would use it???"
She smiled. "Some of the biggest companies in the world on
those areas have been using it for decades. Where do you think
hell gets money to buy people's souls? By selling tech support
and legal services, of course!"
I waited for one of them to tell me it was a joke. None of them
did. I then realized the door was open, and a tall, very
elegant black woman dressed in red silk was standing there,
with an amused smile.
"Hi. I'm Lady Carmine. And yes, what she just said is true."
She turned to Analysis. "You're getting thin, dear. How are
Bryan and Savannah doing?"
----------------------------------------------------------------
Now we stood in a small and warm room, with all walls littered
with shelves full of magical stuff and a big round table with 9
chairs. The four of us sat around one side of the table, while
Lady Carmine and a stunningly beautiful woman in her
mid-twenties sat on the other end, hand in hand like long-time
lovers. Her manager, one Mr. Fossavelus, wasn't anywhere to be
seen; that was good, I don't like him.
"So, you say the problems with the plants are caused by someone
connected to the Earth Spirit drawing all of its force to
somewhere else."
"Probably", I said. "If we're correct, can you find out where?"
She exchanged a glance with the younger woman, who stood up,
walked to one of the shelves behind us, and returned with a
tiny wooden vase, while the older woman said, "Shouldn't be too
difficult. Let's try."
Lady Carmine closed her hands around the vase and tilted her
head as if looking into it; but her eyes were closed. The vase
and the sorcerer glowed a bright red, with sparks flying to all
directions, but mostly down. Then everything stopped as fast as
it began - no, faster - and she turned back to us, with a
worried look.
"I found the place. A distant reality, as you guessed. But I
can't take you there. And worse, you must go quick, or things
will get bad."
"Aren't they bad enough already? The whole world will starve
in a few days", I said.
"No we won't. Animals are as dependent on the Earth spirit as
plants. By now, all life forms simpler than insects are already
starting to fall."
I looked around. "Well. So, back to Uncle Occie it is, I think.
Can you give me some kind of `address' to the correct earth?"
The younger woman was standing next to Lady Carmine with a
bucket full of clay. They exchanged a glance and the sorcerer
took a handful of it with her left hand, and started to shape
it into an approximated sphere. "Of course I can. But you don't
have time for Occultism Kid. He would need hours to prepare the
ritual. You need someone who can travel dimensions naturally."
"Well", Analysis said, "the problem with this kind of people is
that they usually are nowhere to be found... because most of
the time they _are_ traveling dimensions!"
The woman smiled. "Yes. But between these trips, most of them
usually stop to visit the Jelly Queen."
We looked at each other, for different reasons. Analysis was
ashamed of not thinking about that; Kathy had no idea what a
Jelly Queen was. SoWhat seemed to like the idea. Me, I wasn't
prepared for the level of silliness I knew I'd soon be facing.
Lady Carmine walked to me and placed the ball in my hands. It
was blue with white strips now, and a brown or green mark here
and there. Then it hit me; d'oh, it was a miniature Earth.
I looked to Analysis and Lady Carmine, and breathed deep.
"Okay. So, how do we reach the Jelly Queen Realm?"
----------------------------------------------------------------
We were standing in the middle of the road, our hands joining
us in a circle. Analysis finally decided to give the
instructions. I sighed.
"All right. Now we're gonna sing and dance. Blackbird, when you
think the time is right - meaning, mostly, when we're already
slightly off this reality - you have to do the first thing that
comes to your mind. If you take too long, or if it isn't weird
or spontaneous enough, the stuff fails and we can't try again
for seventeen days, and the world doesn't have that much time."
"Why me?"
"It has to be you, because you're the most serious and angsty
of us and that's how it works, you know it."
"We're doomed."
But of course we had to try anyway. We raised our hands and
started to dance around the imaginary circle. And we sang
together the same improvised song, with no previous arrangement:
Now where did she go?
Where did she went to play?
We looked high and low
Laughing all the way...
Find her and her king
Visit them tonight,
What fun it is to ride and sing
With the Acra Flight
Binky's well, Binky's well,
Brit is gone away,
O what fun it is to ride
In a world of only play...
Our eyes were closed, and the floor still felt solid enough
below my feet, but I knew that was my cue. I let my hands go
from the circle and jumped to the middle, while the others
stopped the "carol" but went on dancing. My mind was absolutely
blank, and I sweated cold rivers.
Finally, trying not to think about whether the normal people in
the street could still see us, I clicked my heels and shouted.
"There is no game like Doom! There is no game like Doom!"
A somewhat nasal voice muttered in the distance that he liked
it too, and then we opened our eyes to find ourselves in a
world where everything looked like drawings by a child. Except
for us, but we weren't that much better off; SoWhat looked like
a cartoon, and I was a coal sketch. Kathy was black-and-white
and flickered, like an old movie, while Analysis looked like a
digitally-enhanced photo with enough detail to stun anyone who
looked straight at him.
A very pleasant female voice called from behind a crayon hill.
"Hi kids! Anyone care for jelly beans?"
----------------------------------------------------------------
We were sitting in a circle on a green crayon hill, tasting
Brittany's famous killer punch and going trough the obligatory
chitchat of "how is your dad" and "what has your mom being
doing lately". Then she finally gave us our cue.
"Well, if this was a social visit you would be with your
parents, and it isn't even my birthday, so... what's up?"
I looked around, not really willing to explain the whole thing
one more time. Thankfully, Kathy saved me the trouble.
"Well, you surely remember Green Trenchcoat from the LOH. How
he managed to split from Vicky Delaware and they went their
separate ways. Now, they recently married and now they're
missing, and this morning all plants on Earth were dead; we
believe they're stuck somewhere, drawing so much energy from
the Earth Spirit that there isn't enough for the planet to go
on living normally."
"Fascinating. And how did you kids end up with the problem in
your hands? The Junior Acraphobe Corps?"
"Ugh", I said. "Well, originally it was aunt Emily who took it
upon herself to investigate, but she passed out after banishing
all of us out from the Leviathan's homeworld."
"Generation Zed, Acraphobe?", Brit asked.
"NO!", Kathy protested. "And, while she did that, she also
banished my parents to _their_ homeworld, so I had to join the
others to find Green Trenchcoat so that afterwards we rescue my
family together."
"I see. Acraphobe: TnG?"
"Please don't go there", pleaded Analysis. "And by the way... I
just came along because Blackbird's dad wanted to stop losing
from me in chess."
"Not true, dear. Of course Luke was planning to push you kids
into a team. So, Teen Acrophobeans?"
"I won't be a teen for another eleven years", said SoWhat.
"Anyway, I don't see what is so cool about teens."
"And what about that lovely name your collective unconscious
minds came up with while you chanted to get here? What was it
again? Oh yes. Acra Flight."
"Look", I said, "we're not a team, ok? Call it, at best, an
emergencial task force."
"All right dear, if you say so", the Jelly Queen smiled. "So,
what can I do to help the Acra Flight Emergencial Task Force?"
I buried my face in my hands. Kathy helped again.
"Well, Lady Carmine found the world where they are for us, and
we need some means of transport to the place. She figured you
would be able to help."
"Perhaps. All kinds of people and, uh, non-people come here,
some of which you could find rather strange... ah, silly of me,
you already find _me_ strange enough don't you?" She smiled
again. "Blur dear can you please come here for a second?"
"I already am, your majesty. You know I can't resist punch."
The voice came from nowhere; sounded near, but not very clear,
as if muffled or something.
"Of course. So, kids, this is Blur. He is an incorporeal
conscious abstraction."
"Uh sure."
"She means", said the blurred voice from nowhere, "I'm
basically a living concept. Some of us bother building bodies,
so you can say 'he is the _embodiment_ of such and such
concept', but as I represent uncertain and distorted things, I
think I would look really ugly in human form, so uncorporeal is
best. Which of course means I can't say I'm the _embodiment_
of uncertain and distorted things, as I'd need a body for that."
"Uh sure."
"So", said Kathy, "are we going or what?"
Brittany - no, the Jelly Queen - felt uneasy. "What, you don't
like him? He was created in 2000, which even puts him in your
age range for the team..."
"WE'RE NOT A TEAM!"
"...and of course my husband could take you to the correct
world trough the Net, but he can't really appear in your
stories", she went on, pointing to a distant area of her realm
who looked like computer-generated - but not something like
what we have today, more like stuff from the 80s, with
phosphorus green and all - "because one day your stories will
be posted to a time when he wasn't known by the readers yet,
and his author objected to him being introduced in an LNH2
title..."
Yes, now I know what she was talking about - isn't she amazing?
- but of course by then it made absolutely no sense. Pretty
usual when you're dealing with the Jelly Queen.
"Uh... all right, we'll take Blur... so, Blur... uh... where
are you after all?"
"Right around you guys. How am I supposed to know what reality
to jump to?"
Analysis sounded uneasy. "Isn't it a little inconsistent with
your concept to jump realities? Or, at least, jumping to the
_right_ reality?"
Somehow we could feel Blur smiling. "Perhaps. Who knows?"
"Oh no. Clear answers, please. I don't want to get stranded on
a strange land - or worse, Real World (TM) - for who knows how
many issues."
"Well, the dull answer is, most conscious abstractions can
travel between dimensions because the concept itself exists on
all of them. Satisfied? Can we go now?"
I took the earth-ball out of my pocket. "Fine. This ball
represents the Earth we're looking for; Lady Carmine somehow
encoded the world signature in it or something."
I watched the ball become rather blurry in my hand, and the
voice came again, "Right. I can feel it; I know where it is.
Ready to go?"
The girls kissed the Queen goodbye; I and Analysis shook hands
with her and the King who had just walked in (late enough to
avoid being described in detail by the Author). He said to me,
"don't forget to show up later for a game of Doom V". Then we
walked to the top of a higher and narrower hill and tried to be
very close to each other, to make the transport easy for Blur.
"All right, here we go!"
----------------------------------------------------------------
As we faded - or rather, blurred - away, I thought I could hear
the Jelly Queen saying something like, "Darling, can you please
lend me a phone?"
****************************************************************
Next issue: Five is a good number... next issue we finish the
origin-of-Acra-Flight-recap-arc. What's up with Green
Trenchcoat after all?
Of course, if you still believe 100% in my "Next issue:" hooks
and you're wondering where are Innovation and Research in this
issue as I promised in #3, I have a very beautiful bridge to
sell you. :-)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Emily and Luke Jones (the ex-Teens in Trenchcoats) are (C)
1999, 2000 Ben Rawluk.
LOH, or the Legion of Occult Heroes, is (C) 1994, 1995 Paul
Hardy (whatever happened to him?).
The Misfits, Lady Carmine and her helper, and Bryan (Analysis'
father) are (C) 1995-2000 Jennifer Whitson; part of their story
told in this edition is a quick summary of the series, a
tribute to its fifth anniversary. I changed some names, in good
LNH2 tradition, to reflect the passing of time; if you need
help, follow the table below:
Lady Carmine Rebecca Drayer (JBoNV)
Janey (her helper) Hooded Ho'od Win Jr. (JBoNV)
Jelly Queen Weirdness Girl
Tech Support Man (previously Faq Boy) is (C) 1995-2000 Jamas
Enright. I should have created a successor for him and
Perdition for Acra Flight; damn. (Bangs head on wall)
All other characters are my creations, based on those
characters and their stories, except for Blur and Brit's
husband who are all mine!
[]s,
|alo
+----
--
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