[Cover: Mynabird stands at the center of a star-dappled sky,
reaching toward a glowing light. Captain Continuity, Captain
Rat Creature, Minority Miss and Kid Kirby are rushing toward
him from the corners of the page].
[Variant cover: Girlwatcher stares through the porthole of a
spaceship, watching Minority Miss smash a meteorite into
several pieces with one mighty blow].
[B E I G E]
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===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
Five years ago...
Chris Ankle slammed his closet door shut as his parents
entered the room. His mind fumbled for another excuse even as
the look on his mother's face told him it was already too late.
"Can we talk to you for a minute?" his mother asked, while
his father filled the doorway behind her.
"Of course," Chris said, taking a seat on the edge of his
bed and willing himself to look as normal as possible.
"We had a call from the school nurse today," his mother
began, sitting down beside him and smoothing out the pleats of
her skirt -- a rich burgundy, though in Chris' opinion it
failed to compliment the forest-green blouse she wore.
"She was worried about the cuts and scratches on your
arms," his mother continued. "She thought perhaps our cat
might be too aggressive, as this is the third time you'd told
her you'd been hurt while playing with her. I wasn't quite
sure what to say, since of course we've never had a cat."
"You're not hiding a cat somewhere, are you son?" his
father asked, staring at the poster of Vivienne Westwood
over Chris' bed.
"Jason, please," his mother said. "Now Chris. We've seen
the cuts and the bruises and we've heard you tell us a hundred
times about walking into a door or tripping on the stairs, even
though we both know you've never walked into a door in your
life."
Chris took a deep breath.
"If it's bullies, son, you can tell us," his father said.
"I'm not in favor of violence -- your mother could tell you I'm
more a lover than a fighter -- but I'd be happy to show you a
thing or..."
"It's not bullies," Chris said, and stood up.
"Whatever it is," his mother said, holding his gaze, "you
can tell us. You know that. Your father and I are always
here for you."
Chris slid back the closet door.
His mother gasped.
"You're... you're a fashion designer?" his father said,
staring at the gold lame jumpsuit with the turquoise "G" in the
center of its chest.
"No, Dad," Chris said, standing as straight as he could
manage. "I'm... I'm a net.hero."
No one said anything for a few moments. His father looked
behind the jumpsuit into the back of his closet.
"You're sure there's not a cat in here?" he asked.
"I've been fighting crime," Chris said. His mother seemed
to be concentrating on a spot at the back of the room. "Facing
villains. Well, henchmen. Well, wanna-be henchmen. I'm, uh
thinking of joining the LNH."
"You play hockey?" his father asked.
"He means the Legion of Net.Heroes," his mother said.
"What kind of... super-powers... do you have, Chris?"
"Can you fly?" his father asked.
"I look at girls," Chris said.
His mother and father glanced at each other.
"We know that, Chris," his father said.
"We've always known that, dear," his mother said.
"As a matter of fact, when the school called, we thought this
might be another... incident..."
Chris sighed. "Let me show you," he said, walking around
his bed and drawing the curtains away from his bedroom window.
His parents followed. "See that girl down there?"
"The one with the long black hair and the... the
miniskirt?" his father asked.
"She's five-foot, four inches tall and weighs 114 pounds,"
Chris said. "Her measurements" -- Chris blushed a little as he
continued -- "are 34-26-38. She's wearing a size 4 dress from
Banana Republic, though it would be a size 2 at the Gap. Her
right leg is about half an inch longer than her left. She
took dance and gymnastics as a child but hasn't practiced either
in years. She gets her hair done on the Upper East Side,
probably Zola's, and her lipstick is smudged a little on the
left side of her face, looks like it might have been a martini
glass..."
His father was the first to speak.
"Hell of an eye, there, son," he said.
"You... you have a gift," his mother said. "But are you
sure that being a super-hero is what you want to do with it?
Especially if you're going to come home with your hands torn
up and your beautiful face..."
"Sure he's sure," his father said, giving Chris a little
punch on the shoulder. "Your mother and I have always told
you to go after every opportunity that was out there for you."
"With the exception of that Weissman girl," his mother said.
"Or just... don't stare at her so closely."
"We're not going to hold you back," his father said,
looking at Chris as though seeing him for the first time.
"Nobody is. If you have a chance to reach for the stars, go
for it."
===+++===
"Who Stole The Stars And Put Them In Your Eyes?"
===+++===
Five minutes ago...
"I reached for the stars all right," Girlwatcher said,
watching the constellations spill away through the rear window
as the Legion of Net.Heroes Starship _Jefferson_ tore a hole in
the heavens. "I just wish I knew what the hell I was doing
here."
Girlwatcher leaned against the lightly curved steel railing
surrounding the observation platform. He'd been surprised,
then flattered when Ultimate Ninja had asked him to join the
group of heroes heading into space to stop the Legion of Net.
Villains from breaking the worst criminals in the universe out
of a place called the Ultimate Black Hole. It wasn't until
they'd left the solar system behind, traveling faster than any
object made by humans ever had, that Girlwatcher realized how
out of place he really was.
"They've got Kid Kirby," Girlwatcher said, mostly to
himself, "who walks around in a suit of armor nobody can
understand with the power of a god in his pocket. Captain
Continuity -- the guy can tunnel through planets, shrugs off
entire armies like they're not even there. Deja Dude... I'm
still not sure exactly what Deja Dude does, other than argue
with everybody. But he's supposed to be more powerful than all
the rest of them put together."
Girlwatcher looked upward to the galley deck, where Deja
Dude was backing away from an angry Minority Miss.
"That's disgusting," the dark-haired heroine said, jabbing
Deja Dude in the chest with her finger. "I don't know why you
would even think that was appropriate."
"And I don't know why you're offended," replied Deja Dude.
Like Minority Miss, he wore a form-fitting black spacesuit with
the letters "LNH" embossed in silver beneath his right
shoulder. "I merely remarked to Obnoxious Ame.rec.a Boy that
when it comes to produce..."
"Shut up! I don't want to hear it!" Minority Miss said,
placing her hands over her ears.
"...that I love big, juicy melons as much as the next man,
but there's nothing as delicious as a sweet, firm, Asian pear,"
Deja Dude finished.
"I guess the tension is getting to everybody," Girlwatcher
said, as the sounds of Minority Miss pummeling Deja Dude rang
down from the galley. "Cynical Lass keeps going on and on
about how she's not allowed to have a cigarette. Skunk Girl
said she was going to kill Captain Rat Creature if he spent
another night running around on that giant exercise wheel.
And Ultimate Ninja... I think this is the longest he's ever
gone without slicing someone to ribbons.
"But you seem to be doing all right," he added, turning
to his companion on the observation platform.
"I'm, well that is, I'm really, that is I'm mostly, pretty
much generally, I think I'm fine, really fine, because that is
I always have something to do, and you know what they say, as
long as you have something to do, then you're never, not really
anyway, you're never at a loss for what you should be doing,"
Obsessive Compulsive Boy said, rocking back and forth as he
spoke.
Girlwatcher took a deep breath. Rescuing Footnote Girl
from the killing machine called the Alt.Imate Ninja a few weeks
earlier had been the bravest thing he'd ever done. Carrying on
a conversation with Obsessive Compulsive Boy ran a close second.
"What is it that you're doing?" he asked.
"Well," said Obsessive Compulsive Boy, clearly pleased to
the point of mania that someone had asked, "before we, I mean
all of us, before we left the Earth, I had a phone call, and it
was Contempo Weapons Lad, and you know the two of us, we were
part of a team, the Duo Contempo, and actually we were part of a
couple of other teams but that probably isn't important right
now, or maybe it is, but anyway he called and it was so
wonderful to hear from him because it's been a really long
time, you know ever since he put me in that box and shipped me
all the way to Ame.rec.a, which seems an awfully strange way to
get somewhere but it gave me plenty of time to think, which I
always say I never have enough time to think but he called and
I asked did he want me to go back to Alt.stralia with him even
though technically he was deported because the LNH was going to
send me into space and he said that was the best news he'd ever
heard in his entire life and that I should say hello to the
stars for him. And so I am."
"You're what?" Girlwatcher asked.
"Saying hello to the stars," Obsessive Compulsive Boy
said. "All of them. I'm saying hello to all of them. Every
star that we've passed. I've logged forty-seven thousand and
sixteen so far. Ooh, there's another one. Hello!"
"You do realize," Girlwatcher said, raising his voice to
cover the sounds of Deja Dude and Minority Miss shouting at
each other from the galley, "that there's more than four
hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, at least
a hundred million galaxies in the universe -- and that none
of them cares particularly if you say hello to them. I mean,
Kid Kirby could lay waste to an entire planet, and..."
"That one does," Obsessive Compulsive Boy said, pointing
at a tiny glittering dot against the sea of black. "It is, at
least I think it is, I mean it certainly seems to be, that is
I'm reasonably sure that what it's doing, it's heard me say
hello and now what it's doing is coming here to see me."
"What are you..." Girlwatcher asked, raising his binoculars
and staring in the direction indicated by Obsessive Compulsive
Boy, who had begun hopping up and down, his body bobbing in the
space.thingee's limited gravity. "If we're staring out the
back window... and that star is moving toward us..."
"Minority Miss!" Girlwatcher shouted.
"Can it wait?" Minority Miss asked. "I'm beating Deja
Dude within an inch of his life."
"Please say no," said a bedraggled-sounding Deja Dude.
"Something's coming," Girlwatcher said, never taking his
eyes from the window. "A spaceship, by the looks of it. And
it's your turn to deliver news to the Ultimate Ninja."
"I must be getting old," Deja Dude said, as Minority Miss
flew off in the direction of the bridge and a tall, armored man
strode through the galley doors. "I used to enjoy it whenever a
woman in a black jumpsuit slapped me around. These days, that
kind of foreplay just makes me..."
"Deja Dude!" thundered the armored man.
"Let me guess, Kirby," Deja Dude said, regarding the seven-
foot tall warrior next to the refrigerator with a bemused smirk.
"You need my help in engineering again. You know, it wouldn't
have killed you to take a few real life physics classes in
addition to all the comic book ones."
Kid Kirby appeared flustered. This was no easy task, as
his face was completely covered by a black-visored helmet, but
he had recently installed a synthetic pheremone-release system
in order to make conveying emotions easier.
"The wielder of the Power Kirby knows the ways of
molecules even as he knows the transit of galaxies, for he has
observed them both with the detached gaze of a visionary and the
tender intimacies of..."
"Please, Kirby," Deja Dude said, holding up one hand.
"The last thing I want is for you to tell me about your 'tender
intimacies' while wearing your scratch-and-sniff armor."
"DO NOT MOCK THE GAUNTLETS WHICH CHANNEL THE POWER OF HE
WHO BREATHED LIFE INTO THE COMICS COSMOS!"
"Okay," Deja Dude said. "But if this Power Kirby of
yours is all-powerful and everything, why do you need my
help?"
Kid Kirby hesitated.
"He who claims mastery over the Power Kirby," he said,
"has...never been married."
"What does that have to do with..." Deja Dude began, then
his eyes widened. "You didn't. You couldn't. You wouldn't.
What am I saying? Of course you did. You installed a Mother-
in-Law Box as the ship's main computer, didn't you?"
Kid Kirby hung his heavy helmeted head.
"Oh, very well," said Deja Dude, rolling his eyes and
teleporting himself into the starship's engine room.
"Dude!" said a heavyset man splattered in grease and
wearing a mutli-pocketed tool belt over his spacesuit.
"Thought you'd never get here."
"Gaffer," Deja Dude replied, fanning the last wisps of
purple smoke left from his teleportation away from his face.
"What the hell have you and Kirby done with this place? It
looks like a cross between Stephen Hawking's garage sale and
the home of one of those sad, cat-hoarding people you always
see on the evening news."
"Thanks," Gaffer said, beaming with pride. "Kirby had
most of this stuff in his lab, but I'm the one who put it all
together."
"I can see that," Deja Dude said, making his way around
what he hoped was not an enormous gray-green wad of chewing gum.
"Is that...are those... jumper cables connecting the flux
capacitor to the cold fusion drive?"
"Barnardian jumper cables," Gaffer corrected. "Only thing
in the universe that allows any one thing to be powered by any
other thing. We use them to..."
"I know what Barnardian jumper cables are," said Deja Dude
"But I have no idea what that thing is," he added, pointing to
what looked like a single gray pyramid rotating in space.
"That's the Povich Antigravity Drive," Gaffer said. "It
operates on the Torchwood principle."
"The Torchwood principle?"
"No one can work out how it manages to stay on the air,"
Gaffer said. "And yet it does."
"KIRBY!" screeched a metallic female voice. "WHERE ARE
YOU, KIRBY? OUT WITH YOUR GOOD-FOR-NOTHING FRIENDS AGAIN?"
"That's the Master Ethernet Relay Intelligent System
computer," Gaffer said. "Calls herself MERIS. She's a bit
tempermental..."
"Leave her to me," Deja Dude said, snapping his fingers.
The room lights dimmed, and Deja Dude's spacesuit rewove itself
into a red velvet smoking jacket. The sounds of Barry White's
"Love Serenade" purred from an unseen sound system.
"If there's one thing I know," Deja Dude said, his voice
lowering to match the singer's, "it's how to handle the ladies."
"Good luck with that," Gaffer muttered, shaking his head
as he left Deja Dude alone with the computer. "I think I liked
that guy better when he was a sheep."
It wasn't until Gaffer entered the spaceship's atrium and
saw his fellow heroes flying, leaping and (in the case of
Captain Rat Creature) scuttling to their battle stations that
he realized they were under attack.
===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
"Two hundred miles and closing," Obscure Trivia Lad said,
his metallic face reflecting the amber letters that scrolled
across the monitor before him.
"It's just as we *@#$%^&* suspected," Innovative-Offense
Boy added, scowling at a rounded, fish tank-like monitor on
the other side of the bridge and wishing for the thousandth
time that the Legion had incorporated state-of-the-art
technology into the design of the _Jefferson_'s bridge, rather
than raiding a local antiques store.
He squinted at the tiny blinking square on his screen.
"A Cinereus-class carrier of the Christicantthinkofagoodname
Empire," he concluded. "The same *@#$%^! kind the Imperial
fleet reported stolen shortly before we left the Earth."
"Never trust an anthropomorphic alien koala to do a man's
job," said the Ultimate Ninja, sitting with his fingertips
pressed together in the captain's chair at the center of the
bridge. "Any response to our hail?"
"None yet, sir," Linguist Lass replied, placing one hand
over the tip of her headset mike. "They'll be within taunting
range in approximately 45 seconds."
"Reduce speed, and tell Kid Kirby to ready our first-strike
capability," the ninja said, as the unidentified spaceship
appeared in the central viewscreen, a pale dot beside the gray
ringed planet and its moons. "What kind of firepower can we
expect?"
"Limited at this range," said Innovative-Offense Boy,
staring into what looked like an old-fashioned kintescope.
"But it can put two hundred starfighters in the field in
under ten minutes. Unless Mynabird's made a deal with
*@#$%^& Manga Man, though, there's no way he'll get enough
qualified pilots to..."
"We've entered taunting range. Incoming transmission,"
Linguist Lass broke in, as the giant viewscreen blurred with
static, only to be replaced by a spinning, three-dimensional
"LNV" logo superimposed over the image of an exploding
volcano. The monitor's speakers began to throb with the sound
of Guns n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle."
"I'll give this to the Legion of Net.Villains," said
Parking Karma Kid, as the volcano symbol faded and the sleek
black helmet and scrolling yellow visor of Mynabird filled the
viewscreen. "They don't skimp on the production values."
"Legion of Net.Heroes!" growled Mynabird, his deep,
throaty bass reverberating throughout the bridge. "You claim
to protect the people of Earth! And yet what have you done to
defend its people against hunger? Against war? What have you
done to protect them from the collateral damage caused by your
constant battles against others like yourselves?"
"The Legion actually has a fairly comprehensive insurance
policy," Obscure Trivia Lad began, before Ultimate Ninja held
up his hand for silence.
"Perhaps you wish to know our master plan?" Mynabird said.
A scrolling ticker at the bottom of the viewscreen read, "LNV
LEADER PREPARES TO REVEAL SECRET PLAN TO WOULD-BE HEROES."
"Very well. First, we will exterminate your advance army.
Then, we will release those who are unjustlly imprisoned within
the Ultimate Black Hole. Our combined forces will bring order
and justice to all the civilized planets within the 28 known
galaxies."
"He's launching fighters," Innovative-Offense Boy reported.
"But they're not *@#$%^& moving into attack position. They
must be waiting for something..."
"And then... and only then... I WILL STRANGLE EASILY-
DISCOVERED MAN LITE WITH HIS OWN SPINAL CORD AND USE HIS
SKULL FOR A CATBOX!" Mynabird shouted, cackling like a drunken
raccoon as he shook his gauntleted fist at the camera. "I will
gouge out his eyes with a rusty soup can lid and dip each of
his fingers in liquid nitrogen before snapping them like
carrot sticks and pour rancid goat milk down his... what?"
The villain paused, as a tall, redheaded woman -- the
living virus known as Vector Prime -- whispered something into
the side of his helmet.
"Oh, very well," Mynabird said. "And we'll extend our
rule over the universe. I thought that sort of went without
saying."
"Ready to transmit response, sir," Linguist Lass said.
"Would you prefer the usual 'You'll never get away with this,'
or would something along the lines of 'We'll see you in Hell'
be more suitable?"
The Ultimate Ninja rose from his chair.
"Tell them," he began, and muttered something in Japanese.
Linguist Lass gasped.
"What did the Ultimate Ninja say?" Obscure Trivia Lad
asked.
"Something that would make Innovative-Offense Boy blush,"
Linguist Lass said, as she relayed the ninja's words.
"Defiant words from a defeated foe!" Mynabird said. "I
look forward to filtering your ashen remains from my ship's
engines. In the mean time, I leave you with this."
Mynabird's face disappeared from the viewscreen, only to
be replaced by the image of preternaturally pale pop singer
Rick Astley singing and dancing on the streets of an unnamed
European city.
"Oh Obscure Trivia Lad's God!" Obscure Trivia Lad cried.
"That Mynabird is never going to give us up! Nor will he ever
let us down! He will never run around and desert us. He will
never make us cry... though that would seem to work to our
advantage," the android added, stroking his metallic chin.
"That video isn't the only thing he's throwing at us. Hang
on, everybody," said Parking Karma Kid, jerking the wooden
ship's wheel to the left. "I'm taking evasive action!"
The ship's deck pitched, causing Innovative-Offense Boy to
tumble head over heels and Linguist Lass to be thrown from her
seat -- only to be caught by the outstreched liquid metal arm
of Obscure Trivia Lad.
As the face of Rick Astley shrunk into the corner of the
viewscreen, the heroes gasped at the sight of a massive chunk
of frozen rock sweeping past the bow.
"Where the @#$%^&*(* did that come from?" Innovative-
Offense Boy said. "Did we wander into an asteroid belt?
Or did Mynabird decide to throw a really big @#$% rock at us?"
"Not just one rock," Obscure Trivia Lad said, returning
Linguist Lass to her seat. "Somehow... some way... the LNV
is ripping apart the ring that surrounds that planet, and
is sending all of it right at us. Obscure Trivia Lad is
guessing it is the work of that telekinetic cat, Barrage."
"Bad kitty!" Linguist Lass shouted at the viewscreen,
which had clouded over with hundreds of chunks of rock and ice.
"No kidding," Parking Karma said. "Violating state,
federal and interplanetary law is one thing, but violating the
laws of physics... well, sir, that's just not cricket."
"I agree," the Ultimate Ninja said, taking his seat and
pressing a small red button on the armrest of his chair.
"Kid Kirby?" the ninja said. "Execute Plan 717."
"You guys actually came up with a plan in case a cat with
mental powers heaved part of a planet at our spaceship?"
Linguist Lass asked.
"Several plans, actually," Innovative-Offense Boy said.
"But Plan 717 is one of those all-purpose #@$%^& plans for when
somebody does something that really, really pisses the Ultimate
Ninja off."
Linguist Lass took a look at the stormclouds gathering
over her leader's brow and swallowed.
"I am so not forgetting his birthday again this year,"
she said.
===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
Minority Miss checked the seals on her helmet for the
third time and waited for the panel behind her to slide open.
When it did -- the air of the room rushing out like someone's
last breath -- she found herself floating in space. Not
floating, she reminded herself. She was a super-hero. Heroes
flew.
"Remind me again what Plan 717 is," the cheerful voice of
Captain Rat Creature buzzed through her earbuds. "Is that the
one where we murder all the Jedi? Or the one where we have to
keep Mr. Furley busy until Janet can get Chrissy and Jack out
of the bathtub?"
"It is the plan wherein Minority Miss must contend herself
with yon swirling mass of devastation... you and Captain
Continuity must take this fight to its source... and he who
carries the burden of the Power Kirby must do what he must do,"
said Kid Kirby, activating a button on his armor that shifted
his arms and legs into an heroic pose. "Look not upon my work,
lest ye despair."
Handle the asteroid storm by herself? Minority Miss
opened her mouth to complain, then looked at Kid Kirby, who
had flown off to confront the stream of starfighters pouring
from the city-sized enemy carrier, and at Captains Continuity
and Rat Creature, who were preparing to attack the carrier
itself.
"Good luck," she said, then added the phrase every
member of the Legion of Net.Heroes used only in the most dire
and critical circumstances. "May your death serve to benefit
all life in the universe, rather than the sales of this issue."
"Amen," said the other three heroes, leaving Minority Miss
alone to face a tidal wave of planetary debris.
"Now let's see," Minority Miss said, as a marbled chunk of
iron and ice trailing carbon dioxide vapor like a bride's train
tumbled end over end toward the heroes' spaceship. "Which of my
powers would work best at getting rid of a whole bunch of flying
rocks? I could use the invisible force field, but I always end
up forgetting where it is. I could transmute the rock into
water vapor, but there's always the chance the water could react
explosively with one of the other elements that's floating
around..."
"Any time you're ready, Minority Miss," Captain Continuity
said.
"There's the psychic Tholian Web... but that one gives me
a migraine every time I use it," Minority Miss continued, as
the jagged edge of one asteroid edged closer. "I could use my
command of the electromagnetic spectrum to take control of the
magnetic field surrounding the rocks, but there's a good chance
that could mess up communications with the ship..."
"No need to worry about communications," said the voice of
Parking Karma Kid. "Seeing as our spaceship is about to be
smashed into a million little pieces a minute or two from now."
"*@#$%^& it," Minority Miss said. "I'll just hit the
@#$%^&* thing."
She wound up and slammed her fist into the center of the
asteroid, which cleaved into five smaller fragments... all of
which continued to plunge toward the spaceship.
"Now I remember what my mother used to say about hitting
asteroids," Minority Miss said, shaking her fist. "She told me
it's better to shove, not punch, or you end up getting little
bits of cosmic crumble all over the place. And that none of
this would have happened if I'd settled down with that boy from
next door and gone to dental hygeine school."
Minority Miss flew from asteroid piece to asteroid piece,
placing the palms of her hand on each and pushing it back
toward the gray planet. Her efforts seemed to work, though
not for long; each planetary fragment stopped after a few
thousand yards and snapped back, as though tethered to a
bungee cord.
"*@#$%^ing Barrage," Minority Miss grumbled. "If we ever
make it back to Earth, I'm not wasting any more of my Saturdays
volunteering my time at the mutant animal shelter. I need to
find a way to..."
Her words, and most of the air in her lungs, disappeared
in a moment as something heavy and hard and human-shaped hit
her in the pit of her stomach with a force that made the
asteroids around her feel like slow-pitched softballs by
comparison. It wasn't until her helmet unfogged that Minority
Miss could see what it was that had struck her.
"Plummet," she gasped.
NEXT: Captain Continuity vs. the LNH! Minority Miss vs.
Plummet! And the star-shattering arrival of... Don Ho? ===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
"Why hasn't Kid Kirby wiped the sky clean of these things
yet?" Captain Rat Creature asked, his hamster's paws tearing
the sickle-shaped (and, he felt, wholly unnecessary, since they
offered no advantage in space) wings from an enemy fighter.
"The Power Kirby is not to be used lightly," Captain
Continuity said, dropping like a diver onto the fuselage of
another craft and severing the nose cone with his feet. "I'm
sure it troubles the Kirbian to use it to take even one life,
let alone the hundreds he's currently fac...ugggh!"
The Knight of Continuity fell back as the cockpit of the
spaceship opened and the pilot squirted a sticky grey goo in
his face. As the substance hardened in the chill of space,
Captain Continuity stared in disbelief at the face of the pilot.
"Cheesecake-Eater Lad?" he gasped.
"It's not Cheesecake-Eater Lad," Captain Rat Creature
said, his beady black eyes glowing red for a moment as he
blasted the chunks of cheesecake from Captain Continuity's
body. "Not the real one, anyway. Those cold, unfeeling eyes...
and the fact that he has only half a face...sort of gives it
away."
"Of course!" Captain Continuity said, shaking himself free
of the frozen dessert and smashing his fist into the faux
Legionnaire's face. "Mynabird must have salvaged the robot
duplicates of the Legion when he captured our headquarters.
Did you get that, Kirby? The pilots are all robots!"
"Thank you, Captain," said the crackling voice of Kid
Kirby. "I am now free to act...as only I CAN!"
"Cover your eyes," Captain Continuity said, turning away
as a light brighter than any of the stars around them filled
the sky for a moment, as though the eye of God had opened and
closed. When Captain Continuity looked again, a third of the
fighters that had been attacking Kid Kirby had vanished.
"That's our cue," Captain Continuity said, smashing his
way through the river of light-spitting starships that issued
from the enemy carrier like bees protecting a hive. As he
descended, the blinking crescent of the starship began to look
less and less like a city at night and more like the mass of
turrets, radar blisters, particle cannons and writhing, snapping
mechanical tentacles that it was.
"Do you ever get used to this?" Captain Rat Creature
asked, as he dodged the pulsed fire of multiple lasers and
swooped down through the yawning yellow mouth of the starship
hangar.
"Which part?" Captain Continuity asked, grabbing two
starfighters by their tailfins and smashing them together like
a pair of cymbals. "The soaring through the stars, gazing at
the infinite mystery of all creation surrounding us? Or the
part where we bash it?"
"The knowledge that everyone on your world -- maybe
everyone on every world -- is counting on you to succeed,"
Captain Rat Creature said, as the two heroes stood, back
to back, in the middle of the hangar. Everywhere they looked,
gun barrels rotated, hammers slid back and laser swords ignited
as the army of robot duplicates formed a circle around them.
"One of the first things they teach you in the Knights of
Continuity is not to let your powers make you think you know
what your part in the fate of the universe is going to be,"
Captain Continuity said, clapping his hands together. A wave
of androids tumbled backward, and dozens of starship cockpits
shattered with the blow.
"None of us will ever really know where we belong in the
greater scheme of things, any more than a plague germ or an
atom understands its power to destroy a city," he added.
"I wouldn't have taken you for a fatalist," Captain
Rat Creature said, ears lowering and whiskers twitching as he
prepared to confront the horde. "Are you saying that we're no
better than these robots?"
"Hey!" said the robot duplicate of Special Bonding Boy,
using one hand to hold his shattered jaw in place. "Some of
us have feelings, you know. And at least we know how to
recycle our resources."
"I used to volunteer at a nursing home on weekends,"
said the one-legged robot Pants Rabbit Lad. "Before the whole
rebelling against humanity and slaughtering everyone thing."
Captain Rat Creature blasted them both with his laser
vision.
"The robots do what they're programmed to do," Captain
Continuity said. "We get to choose. That's what makes us
heroes.
"Now go," he added. "Find Barrage. Keep him from
destroying our ship. I'll take care of this group."
"That's what you think!" screamed the robot Tour Guide
Girl. "I'll be leading your ass on an all-expense paid trip
through the seventh circle of Hell."
"I've been there," Captain Continuity said, cracking his
knuckles as Captain Rat Creature sped away and the phalanx of
robots closed in around him.
===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
"Anybody else hear that *@#$%^&ing ticking sound?"
Innovative-Offense Boy asked. "It's driving me @#$%^&
crazy."
"Obscure Trivia Lad's apologies," Obscure Trivia Lad said,
placing a six-inch model of a clock on the bridge console.
"Obscure Trivia Lad purchased this souvenir replica of the Beige
Clock Tower just before we left the Earth. Easily-Discovered
Man Lite assured Obscure Trivia Lad that it would become a
collector's item."
"I'm beginning to understand why Mynabird hates that guy
so much," Parking Karma Kid said. "Personally I... hang on,
somebody seems to have placed an order of rings."
The Legion's paragon of parallel parking turned the
starship's wheel this way and that as several more frozen bits
of planetary ring zoomed past the bow of the spaceship.
"That was too @#$%^&* close," Innovative-Offense Boy said.
"Where the @#$%^&* is Minority Miss? She's supposed to be
blocking for us."
"We've lost contact with her," Linguist Lass said, studying
the instruments in front of her. "It could be the rings
themselves... some of them have a pretty high iron content, and
they might be messing up our radio signals."
The Ultimate Ninja swiveled his chair to face Innovative-
Offense Boy.
"We need a miracle," he said.
"I'm @#$%^&*ing working on..."
"Now," the ninja said.
"...Okay," Innovative-Offense Boy said. "Tell Gaffer and
Substitute Lad to get up here right away. And tell them to
bring @#$%^&*& Obsessive Compulsive Boy's Wii."
The two heroes arrived on the bridge moments later, with
the small white game system in Gaffer's arms and Obsessive
Compulsive Boy clamped around Gaffer's leg.
"Damn, that boy is strong," Gaffer said. "I haven't felt
a grip like that since the time I had to wrestle Cate Blanchett
for the last danish on a craft services table."
"Please oh please don't take my Wii I'm not entirely sure
what I've done to deserve this although probably if I thought
about it I would say that it maybe, just maybe possibly has
something to do with the fact that I used Cynical Lass'
brassiere for other than its intended purpose unless one could
generalize its intended purpose was to launch water balloons
from the observation platform which now in hindsight that is
looking back I realize was probably not a good idea in the
limited gravity of this spaceship but I really don't see why
..."
Ultimate Ninja walked over, bent down, and tapped
Obsessive Compulsive Boy above the bridge of his nose with
one finger. The sidekick whimpered once and was silent.
Innovative-Offense Boy pointed from the Wii to the
steering column of the starship.
"Can you modify that @#$%^&* device so that it acts..."
"...as a controller for the ship? Sure," Gaffer said,
digging his Leatherman five-in-one tool from the belt around
his waist.
"You act like you've done this before," Linguist Lass said.
Gaffer smirked, his hands moving at unheard-of speeds (for
a union employee) as he dismantled the ship's wheel.
"Lady, any techie out of trade school can turn his XBox
into his personal DVR, or a couple of PS3's into a parallel-
processing AI capable of rendering holographic porn," he said,
spinning the Leatherman around in his hand like a gunslinger.
"But it takes a real artist to mod a Wii."
"Obscure Trivia Lad," Innovative-Offense Boy said, placing
one hand on the shoulder of the android navigator. "I'm going
to need you to be a *&@#$%^& surfboard."
"It is not what Obscure Trivia Lad's mother would have
wished for him," Obscure Trivia Lad said, his liquid metal body
elongating into the desired shape. "Then again, Obscure Trivia
Lad's mother was not exactly pleased about the whole transition
to transhumanism, either."
"Better make this quick," Linguist Lass said. "Scanners
say a whole mess of those ring particles are headed this way."
"Right," Innovative-Offense Boy said, as Gaffer placed the
shining metal surfboard above the Wii array and began wiring
its base. "Substitute Lad, I need you to duplicate the powers
of the @#$%^&*( California Kid."
Substitute Lad concentrated for a moment, then relaxed,
the eyes behind his mask taking on a vacant expression. The
cry of seagulls and the pounding of waves seemed to echo in the
distance, and Linguist Lass was convinced she caught the fading
aroma of marijuana on the bridge.
"Dude," Substitute Lad said.
"@#$%^&*(ing A," Innovative-Offense Boy said, slamming a
compact disc into one of the slots on the control console.
"Now fly this mother@#$%^&er right through that asteroid
storm and bring us within firing range of the @#$%^& enemy."
Substitute Lad nodded sleepily and hopped onto the
surfboard with feline grace, his every gesture adjusting the
pitch and yaw of the starship. The other members of the bridge
crew strapped themselves into their seats -- with Linguist Lass
hauling the still-twitching Obsessive Compulsive Boy into
Obscure Trivia Lad's chair -- as the loudspeakers resonated
with the sounds of a ukulele and the voice of Don Ho.
"Everybody knows I lead a happy life," the Hawaiian
crooner sang, as Substitute Lad surfed the ship on a high arc
that carried it dangerously close to two iceberg-sized
asteroids.
"Got no troubles and I've got no wife
"Freer than a bird in a banyan tree
"I'm the original happy me..."
Obscure Trivia Lad's miniature clock tower, Obsessive-
Compulsive Boy's toothbrush and a dozen other odds and ends
careened around the bridge as the starship barrel-rolled
through a canyon on one of the ring fragments and looped
around an ice formation on another. Linguist Lass and Gaffer
became ill, and even the Ultimate Ninja gripped the armrests
of his captain's chair a little tighter than usual.
Substitute Lad paid no attention. Like any California driver,
he was drinking a latte with one hand and sending a text
message with another while tapping his foot in time with the
music.
"My back is strong, my shoulders broad," Don Ho sang.
"Ride the ocean on my big surfboard
"Catching a wave bigger than a mountain high
"Jump on the shore, I'm still dry..."
An onslaught of rock and ice particles -- some as small as
marbles, others the size of Rhode Island -- hurtled toward the
ship one after the other. One came so close that Substitute Lad
dropped his latte, splayed out his hands and allowed the ship
to coast down the carbon-dioxide vapor trail flowing from one
of the asteroids like Tony Hawk riding a half-pipe.
"I do a lot of swimming when the sun is high
"Do a lot of lovin' in the bare moonlight
"Don't know if it's better in the night or day
"But I'm very happy either way..."
The ship broke free of the asteroid cloud, arriving on
the far side of the Legion of Net.Villains carrier. As the
Jefferson's internal gravity stabilized, those on the bridge
who were still capable of looking could see a formation of
fighters in the far distance being decimated by Kid Kirby.
"Bitchin' " said Substitute Lad, stepping off the
surfboard, which resumed the shape of Obscure Trivia Lad.
Ultimate Ninja was the first to regain his footing.
"Innovative-Offense Boy, you have the con," he said,
striding down the ramp that led away from the bridge. "Tell
Ordinary Lady, Steak-and-Potatoes-Man, You're-Not-Hitting-Me
Hard-Enough Lad, Skunk Girl, Cynical Lass and Deja Dude to meet
me in the transmatter chamber."
The ninja unsheathed his katana and ran his fingers along
the edge of the blade. "We're forming a boarding party."
===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
Captain Continuity brushed a still-flexing robot hand
from his shoulder and surveyed the damage. The hangar lay
ankle-deep in shattered android duplicates and smashed
fighters, its walls scorched by laser blasts, riddled with
bullet holes and dripping with something unpleasant that
had come out of the phony Pants Rabbit Lad when it expired.
He picked his way through the twitching, sparking wreckage
until he found the head of the duplicate No Sense of Direction
Man.
"Which way is Mynabird?" Captain Continuity asked, picking
up the head.
The head stuck out its tongue and blew an oily raspberry
at the Captain, who sighed and removed a flash drive from a
compartment on his belt.
"I have all seven seasons of 'Full House' on this chip,"
Captain Continuity said. "You can tell me where your leader
is, or I'll plug this into your brain and you can spend the
remaining moments of your life pondering what Alanis Morrissette
ever saw in Dave Coulier."
"That way," the head said, nodding at a vertical passage
to the left.
"Much obliged," Captain Continuity said, flinging the head
to the side and striking out towards the right. He found the
layout of the carrier disorienting, designed as it was by alien
koalas who seemed to prefer large vertical spaces to horizontal
ones and whose corridors were laid out like the branches of a
tree, with no obvious path toward a bridge or command center.
Ignoring the handholds on either side of the tunnel, Captain
Continuity flew upward until he reached a small, spherical
chamber. The moment he stepped inside, the floor and ceiling
panels irised shut.
"Greetings, Legionnaire," cackled a high voice Captain
Continuity neither recognized nor welcomed. "As you can see,
we've been expecting you."
"Well, yeah," Captain Continuity said, testing the
strength of the chamber walls with his hands. "I mean, you
threw a bunch of rocks at our spaceship. That kind of thing
gets under a person's skin."
A hole opened in the ceiling and Captain Continuity held
his breath, expecting gas. Instead, a plum dropped to the
floor, bounced once, ricocheted off the far wall and bounced
again.
"I appreciate the gesture," Captain Continuity said, as
two more plums...then three...then seven...fell down, while
the first plum continued bouncing. "But at this point a fruit
basket just isn't going to cut it."
"That's where you're wrong, Captain," said the voice, who
sounded more relieved to finally be able to explain what was
going on than anything else. "For as you have doubtlessig...
doubt-lessree...doubt...as you have realized by now, each of my
specially-treated plums gains an exponential increase in
velocity each time it comes in contact with a solid object!
In time, my Plums of Power will be moving fast enough to
penetrate even your indestructible hide!"
Captain Continuity stared for a moment at the fast-
bouncing fruit surrounding him like the electrons of an atom.
"Killer plums," he said. "Right."
"I'M THE GODDAMMED PLUM MASTER!" the voice cried. "What
am I supposed to do, drop an anvil on your head?"
"Look," Captain Continuity said, his right hand darting
out to snatch one of the plums out of the air. "Here's how I
roll. First of all, I don't like it when people start throwing
the word 'penetrate' around, especially in reference to
produce."
He crammed the plum into his mouth and continued talking,
juice dribbling down the side of his lips.
"Second," he began, grabbing the rest of the plums in
quick succession and devouring them, "wait. Hold that
thought."
The Knight of Continuity puffed out his cheeks and spat
a stream of seeds in rapid succession at the wall on the other
side of the room, adjusting his aim to create a pattern of seed-
holes in the shape of a door. He placed his palm in the center
of the wall and pushed. The metal crashed to the ground.
Captain Continuity walked through his makeshift door, saw a
thin man in a purple jumpsuit fleeing from a control panel,
grabbed him by the top of the head and held him at arm's length.
"For killer plums, those were pretty tasty," he said.
"Th...thank you," Plum Master said, his legs dangling in
the air.
"Where's Mynabird?" Captain Continuity asked.
Plum Master raised a shaking finger toward a passageway
emerging from the southwest ceiling.
"Thanks," Captain Continuity said, releasing the villain.
Before he could reach the ground, however, the hero had
grabbed the top of his head again.
"Oh yeah," Captain Continuity said. "And which way is
the men's room? I always hate going off to fight someone when
my hands are all sticky."
Plum Master pointed again. Captain Continuity smiled,
slammed the villain's head against a bulkhead, then left him
to slump to the floor while he flew towards the lavatory.
"Damn good plums," he said, wiping the juice from his
chin.
===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
How does he do it?, Minority Miss wondered, as she
kicked and clawed at the short man in the magenta spacesuit
pushing her farther and farther into space.
She knew Plummet had the power to fall faster than any
other living thing. But what did it mean to fall in outer
space? What or where was he falling toward? Did he have the
power to latch on to any source of gravity -- a planet, or
even a distant star -- and pull himself toward it? And was
it really important for her to figure this out while her life
and the lives of her teammates were on the line?
Minority Miss reached forward, placing one hand on each
of Plummet's shoulders, and somersaulted herself over his head.
Before the villain could recover she had surged forward,
appalled that in the few moments she had been in his grasp the
two spaceships had disappeared completely from view, and
even the gray ringed planet had become a distant dot. She
willed herself to go faster -- it was hard to tell, without the
feeling of the wind rushing past her, but she felt she was
making headway as the planet ahead became larger and larger and
she saw the little explosions of light that told her Kid Kirby,
at least, was still in the fight.
By the time she reached the cloud of ring debris she knew
without looking that Plummet was following her.
She teleported away just as he whizzed through the space
where she would have been, reappearing on the other side of a
hunk of rock that reminded her of the Pao de Acucar.
As Plummet stared from side to side in confusion, searching for
his prey, Minority Miss noticed the path he'd made as he'd
plowed through the asteroid field, with some of the smaller
rocks and even a few of the larger ones lingering behind him
as though caught on a cobweb.
This could work, Minority Miss thought, as Plummet caught
sight of her and began his rush toward her once again. But I
need to be very, very fast.
The young Brazilian woman stretched out one arm and began
to fly in a zigzag pattern through the asteroids, moving faster
and faster as Plummet followed her like a guided missile. As
their speed increased, so did Plummet's rocky entourage: more
and more of the ring debris followed in his wake until almost
the entire asteroid cloud rattled behind the villain like the
tail of a comet.
Minority Miss had no idea how fast she was moving. Her
powers allowed her to do anything that any three beings in her
universe could do, and in her brief career with the LNH, Apoena
Goulao had met some very, very fast people. She closed her
eyes, stretched out her other arm and imagined herself moving
beyond the speed of light, beyond the speed of thought, beyond
the speed of spells or science-fiction starships or a successful
Disney franchise producing a direct-to-video sequel.
When she opened her eyes, Plummet was still right behind
her, which was exactly where she wanted him to be.
"Now!" Apoena said, and teleported several miles away.
The surprised Plummet stopped short, looked around, and then
looked behind him, just in time to see an entire planetary
ring's worth of rock and ice slam into his body like a cosmic
avalanche.
"You know, I usually tell the guys who follow me around
not to expect me to give me a ring," Minority Miss said, as
Plummet's motionless body spiraled away into space. "But in
your case, I made an exception."
Her smile faded as she looked back at the cloud of rock
and ice -- now dispersing itself across the emptiness of space
-- and realized she had no idea where her spaceship was, or in
what direction she had come. She scanned the skies, listened
to the busy crackle of radio waves, reached out with every power
she'd had or had ever heard of, but saw and heard and felt
nothing but the nothing that surrounded her. She was as alone
in the universe as anyone had ever been.
NEXT: Kid Kirby vs. Mynabird! Captain Rat Creature vs.
Barrage! And Deja Dude faces a woman from the Legion's past... ===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
"Londonbroil, I'm bored," Barrage said, idly smashing a
pair of asteroids together with the flick of a paw.
"You don't say?" said the thin man with the flamethrower,
watching through the vast stained-glass window as the little
silver dot of the heroes' spaceship weaved its way through yet
another shower of planetary debris. "And here I thought the
whole picking things up and knocking them to bits against each
other was what you enjoyed most."
"Oh, I enjoy it; of course I enjoy it," Barrage said,
rolling onto his back and twirling his two front paws around
in circles as the starlight made kaliedescope patterns in his
belly fur. "I haven't had this much fun since I was a
kitten. But I don't usually chase anything this long. My
instincts tell me I should let them go for a bit, lie in
waiting until they've got their confidence back, and then
pounce. What do you think, Londonbroil?"
"Londonbroil?"
"I'm afraid we're all out of Londonbroil for the moment,"
said a high, cheerful voice. "Would you settle for a pound
or two of getting your ass kicked?"
Barrage spun around, leapt to his feet and stared, wide-
eyed, at the most perfect thing he had ever seen.
It was the size of a bear. It was dressed, uncomfortably,
in a black spacesuit. It was hovering above an unconscious
Londonbroil, its two front paws folded one over the other,
looking pleased with itself.
And it was a hamster.
Barrage paused for just a moment -- he knew that the
heroes were getting closer, and he had learned how dangerous it
was to leave any of his foes unattended. But then the giant
floating hamster wiggled his pink nose and Barrage forgot
everything in the world but the joy of trying to kill it.
He started with the chairs, lifting them one by one from
the various tables and consoles around the room with his mind
and flinging them at the hamster, which swooped and dodged and
flew around the room in wide, delicious loops. Barrage's tail
swished back and forth as he tore monitors from their couplings,
lifted computer banks and a rotating globe (Mynabird had said
it was important, but Barrage felt he could always put it back
after he had finished crushing the rodent) and launched them
through the air. Yet the hamster ducked and wove with super-
cricetidean dexterity, finally blasting the globe in half with
a flash of light from its eyes.
Barrage reached out with his mind to tug at one of the
shelves from an adjoining room, but the hamster was already on
top of him, pinning him to the ground with one clawlike hand.
"Time to put this cat in the bag," Captain Rat Creature
chirped.
"Oh please," Barrage said, staring up at the hamster with
wide, unblinking eyes. "I'm just a little cat. A little gray
cat who never meant to hurt anyone."
"Tough luck, Toonces," Captain Rat Creature said. "That
Hello Kitty routine only works on humans."
"I see," said Barrage, narrowing his eyes and staring at
one of the remaining computer consoles. A green light
flickered on its instrument panel, and doors on either side of
the chamber slid open to reveal dozens of almond eyes.
"More cats?" Captain Rat Creature said, staring from door
to door as felines slunk, crept and capered into the room.
"Couldn't you have at least hired some henchpeople? You could
have dressed them in cat suits. Or would that have been too
Andrew Lloyd Webber for you?"
"Allow me to introduce the Meow Meow Gang," Barrage said,
as the cats formed a circle around Captain Rat Creature.
"Like me, they were the subject of a cruel human experiment,
genetically modified and enhanced with nanotechnology by the
master criminal Darkheart. Of course, that was the first
generation. Since then, they've been growing...multiplying...
upgrading..."
"Upgrading?" Captain Rat Creature said, noting the
metallic gleam in the eye of a Siamese. "These kitties run
Vista?"
The roomful of cats raised their fur and hissed.
"No one in their right mind would upgrade to Vista,"
Barrage said. "These cats created their own operating system
years ago, then sold it to Apple as Tiger, Leopard... I believe
they're currently working on Cougar..."
Captain Rat Creature's ears pricked up as a roomful of
paws unsheathed long, jagged claws, circular saws, tiny plasma
jets, particle-beam cannons and chainsaw blades.
"Easy, kitties," the hamster said, as the little green
light on the computer turned red and the doors of the room
clamped shut. The cats crept closer. "Nice kitties..."
An orange-and-white tabby cocked its head and blinked at
Captain Rat Creature.
"Mj30w?" it said, and pounced.
===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
This was the part Captain Continuity always hated. Not
bursting into the enemy stronghold; Captain Continuity had
always been very good at bursting into things. What bothered
him -- what always bothered him -- was coming up with something
to say as he crashed through the bulkheads that the person on
the other side would find both witty and authoritative. It was
one of the many reasons he turned down requests from the camera
crews at "COPS" to report on his work.
"It's over, Mynabird," he began, then shook his head.
Saying that would only prompt the leader of the Legion of Net.
Villains to assert that it wasn't, in fact, over, and might even
make him feel obligated to fight it out in order to prove the
point. Captain Continuity wasn't opposed to fighting -- most of
the time, he preferred punching someone in the face to arguing
with them -- but he had embarassed Mynabird in their last
encounter, and in his experience super-villains rarely allowed
themselves to be embarassed more than once.
Captain Continuity sighed and drummed his fingers against
the armored wall in front of him. A pair of security robots
rounded the corner and began firing lasers into his back, but he
paid them no attention. He couldn't very well say, "Your reign
of terror is over, fiend," because Mynabird hadn't had the
opportunity to reign over anything, and he couldn't say "This
time, you've gone too far," because that would only help to
reinforce the villain's sense of megalomania, which was exactly
what Doctor Phil was saying heroes weren't supposed to do
whenever he had them on his show...
To hell with it, Captain Continuity thought, and barreled
his way through the doors.
"Mynabird!" he shouted. "It's time to bring this ship
into the shore...and throw away the oars...forever!"
He regretted the words as soon as he had said them, but
there was nothing to be done. His predecessor in the Knights
of Continuity, the mighty Continuity Champ, had warned him more
than once of the dangers of rushing into battle with an REO
Speedwagon song stuck in his head.
But Mynabird seemed not to notice. The villain sat in
the middle of his throne room, a vast chamber designed by
the koalas who had created it to look like a forest grove,
with the twisted trunks of artificial trees curving away
from the cup-shaped throne at the center and the octagonal
observation panel beyond. His back was turned toward the
hero, which struck Captain Continuity as rude, given the amount
of trouble he had gone to in order to reach him.
"Turn and face me, monster," Captain Continuity said, then
hesitated. "Unless you're doing something private over there.
In which case... finish up, and then turn and face me!"
The throne rotated around. Instead of the armored
Mynabird, however, Captain Continuity found himself face-to-
face with a man in an impeccably-tailored Italian suit
saluting him with a glass of wine.
"Captain Continuity," the man said. "How wonderful it is
in this day and age to meet someone like yourself, whose vast
abilities are yet exceeded by his good manners."
"Arthur E.L. Presence?" Captain Continuity gasped. "So
you're the one inside the Mynabird costume?"
"Good heavens, no," Presence said, placing the glass of
wine on the arm of the throne as he rose from his seat. "Not
that I hold anything against those who choose to go the armored
route; it's quite flattering on some people, and you can tell
Mynabird I said so. Those of us who can alter what you think
of as reality on a whim, however, find that kind of
accoutrement a trifle extraneous."
As he spoke, Arthur E.L. Presence made a slight gesture
with his hand, and Captain Continuity found himself inside a
long copper cylinder, staring at Presence's smiling face
through a single riveted window. He raised his fist to smash
the glass, but found movement to be painfully slow -- it
seemed to take a whole minute for his mental command to reach
his arm, and when his arm finally did move it felt as though
he was pushing it through Jell-O, or slow-setting concrete.
"You...
...can't
....believe
...this
...cell
...will..."
"Well yes of course I can believe it will hold you, since
it's my belief that put you there in the first place," Presence
said, resting an elbow on one of the artificial tree trunks
surrounding the throne. "To be perfectly honest, Captain --
and I truly don't wish you to take this in the wrong way --
when Mynabird called to offer me a contract, I was convinced
he'd ask me to eliminate someone like Deja Dude or Opinionated
Lad... someone who would be a real challenge, even for a person
of my particular abilities. Killing you didn't strike me as
all that interesting."
"hold...
me..." Captain Continuity gasped. What was happening?
It felt a little like fighting Lagneto, except that he found it
difficult to stay focused on what he was doing. The more he
willed his arms and legs to move, the more his mind flooded
with things he hadn't thought about in years... memories of
growing up, of his years with Generation Y, of the planets he'd
saved, the people he'd known...
"You've always been a straightforward, stand-up kind of
guy, Captain, which I'm sure makes you delightful to work with,
but gives me very few options as a writer," Presence said.
"In some ways, you're a bit of a throwback. A good-hearted,
clean-souled fellow just trying to do his best for the universe.
That sort of thing mostly went out with the Silver Age."
The Captain... no, not the Captain... his name was Chet
Wiggins... and he had a puppy as a child, Mr. Flopsy, and he
and Mr. Flopsy used to wrestle on the living room rug while
listening to R.E.O. Speedwagon records...
Captain Continuity shook his head. Mr. Flopsy? Where
were these thoughts coming from? He had to concentrate, to
focus on getting those few steps closer to the window...
"And that's when it occured to me," Presence said,
making another gesture and causing the glass of wine to vanish
from the throne and appear in his hand. "What would happen if
one were to take a stalwart old soul such as yourself and
rapidly expose you to all the storytelling conventions of the
modern world? That's what prompted me to build my masterpiece
-- the Bronze-age Emotional Necessitator and Decompression
Implementation System. Think of it as a kind of reverse
hyberbaric chamber -- it forces you to become decompressed."
Chet Wiggins remembered the junior high dance where he'd
finally worked up the courage to ask Tiffany Sloan for a slow
dance -- but before he could say a word, his friend Matt Danlan
(who wasn't even a close friend but just someone he sort of
knew) had asked for his help because something he'd done had
pissed Doug Waters off and the older boy had stuck gum in his
hair... and he had wanted, so badly, to stay on the dance floor
long enough to hear what Tiffany had to say, even if it was no,
but Matt insisted he come to the men's room to help him out...
"Not only does the BENDIS slow your perception of time --
forcing you to take several issues to accomplish something you
would normally have completed in the space of a few panels --
but it requires you to experience rapid characterization,
flashing back to events of your past whether or not they have
anything to do with the situation at hand," Arthur E.L.
Presence said. "You'll find it all but impossible to resolve
your current plotline -- but you'll also live your life more
fully than someone as two-dimensional as yourself could ever
have imagined."
Wiggins knew he was in a trap. But he also knew he had
never fully explored the relationship he'd had with Continuity
Champ. Did the Champion see him as merely an enthusiastic
young companion -- the way Chet had once seen Mr. Flopsy?
Or had he recognized that Chet had the potential to live a full
and meaningful life on his own, but forced him to accept the
service the Knights of Continuity required -- just as that
damned Matt Danlan had dragged him away from Tiffany?
Presence raised his glass to toast the captured hero.
"You can leave any time you like, of course," he said.
"You simply have to want to get out more than you want to learn
the deeper truth about yourself. Personally, I think you'll go
barking mad, but I'm trying to stay objective about the whole
thing. I expect it will be a fascinating demonstration. I'd
suggested to Mynabird that he might want to join me for this,
but he said he had something more important to do. I can't
imagine what that could be. Cheers."
===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
Although he would never have admitted it to anyone but
himself, years of serving as the conduit of the Power Kirby had
taken their toll on Kid Kirby's personal life. The people who
had once been his closest companions had become friends, then
colleagues and were now merely acquaintences. Even the most
powerful members of the Legion of Net.Heroes found it difficult
to avoid looking at their wristwatches whenever Kid Kirby
described what it was like to try to prevent a collision between
galaxies, or to forge a peace between the Elder Gods of ARPANET
and the Cute Continuum.
As a result, Kid Kirby spent a great deal of time talking
to himself.
"Must it ever be so?" he mused, the residual energies of
the Power Kirby swirling around his armored fists in the form
of several spinning dots and a stream of crackling energy.
"But why? Why must the evils of an earlier age ever be
exhumed by the rising generation? Is it true, then, that only
that which is good be allowed to rest in peace?"
He stared at the swirling patterns of starfighters above
and sighed. After his first devastating assault, the robot
pilots had formed themselves into smaller and smaller groups,
making it more difficult for him to eliminate large numbers of
them at once. Those few fighters that had survived both his
power surges and Captain Continuity's assault on the carrier
were either the cleverest or luckiest of all, and picking them
off was proving difficult.
"Even as I destroy you, I pity you, robots," Kid Kirby
said, lashing out with another blinding flash at a group of
dive-bombers. "To have aped humanity and not to have
savored it... to have chosen instead, the path of senseless
destruction is nothing but..."
"Familiar?" said Mynabird, as something heavy and hard
clamped down on Kid Kirby's back, causing his arms and legs
to convulse with pain.
"Can you hear me? Good," Mynabird said, as a storm of
blue-white energy surged from Kid Kirby's twitching body through
a pair of wires Mynabird had attached to his own armor. "I'm
broadcasting on every imaginable frequency. It's my belief
that when your world is being torn apart it's only fair that
the one doing the tearing should let you know what's happening,
and why. God never seems to get around to doing that, but I
plan to improve upon His model."
"So you th-think yourself a god?" Kid Kirby said, as
power flickered and flowed from his armor like liquid
lightning. "You d-d-dare..."
"Most people would be flattered," Mynabird said, the
blackness of his helmet silhouetted against the pulsating
waves of energy emanating from Kid Kirby. "I stole a
spaceship. Drove it halfway across the universe -- and that's
with gas at $4 a gallon. Hunted down your friends and threw a
planet at them. Let you sit here and play Galaxian against my
army of robot duplicates.
"All so I could get close to you, Kid Kirby," Mynabird
said. "It was all for you."
With a supreme effort, Kid Kirby wrenched one wavering
hand toward his back, but Mynabird slapped it away before it
could make contact with the cable he had clamped there.
"You know what the hard part was?" Mynabird said.
"Finding a pair of these things... what are they called?
Oh, yes... Barnardian jumper cables, capable of taking energy
from any source, such as you, and transfering it to any other
source. Like me."
"You... you can't... you're not worthy..."
"Here's what I've learned about life," Mynabird said,
shuddering as his armor absorbed the last of the Power Kirby.
"Those who are given the power over life and death hardly ever
deserve it. You know how that goes, don't you, Kid Kirby?
It's like... if you have a milkshake... and I have a straw...
and my straw is longer than yours... not that I'm compensating
for anything, it's just that I happen to have a really long
straw..."
"The power... I must... not... allow..." Kid Kirby said.
Ripping the cables loose from Kid Kirby's back, Mynabird
spun the motionless hero around with one hand.
"And my straw reaches your glass... you know what happens
then, Kirby? Can you guess?" Mynabird shouted, his hands
beginning to pulse with a dull red glow. "I... DRINK... YOUR
MILKSHAKE!"
Clasping his fists together, Mynabird bashed Kid Kirby
with a two-handed wallop, sending the armored Legionnaire
spinning end over end through empty space. He opened one
palm and blasted Kid Kirby with pure cosmic energy,
launching the hero backward in the direction of the gray
planet.
"YEEEEEHAAAH!" Mynabird said, pumping his fist. "The
feeling -- it's incredible! Like being drunk and on a
waterslide and running into your seventh-grade crush and having
them say you look like a rock god while at the same time you're
listening to a jam session of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, the
guy from AC/DC and Alex Lifeson -- but more so. Much more so.
Kirby, how did you ever restrain yourself from doing things
like... this?"
Holding his red, glowing fists in front of him, Mynabird
twisted each hand in the opposite direction.
===+++===
Hundreds of billions of light-years away, in a high school
classroom somewhere near the center of Net.ropolis, Easily-
Discovered Man Lite gripped his arm and screamed in pain.
"Hector Lopez!" said a tall woman with a clipboard.
"Please pick up your number two pencil and return to the test."
"I can't explain it," Lite said, "but somehow... someone
just gave me an Indian burn."
"I've heard enough of your excuses, Mr. Lopez," the
teacher said, ignoring the laughter of the other students. "No
force on earth is going to keep you from completing this state-
required standardized placement test... not your headache, or
your arm falling asleep, or phantom ailments, or...
"Holy mother Christmas!" she exclaimed, as an unseen hand
lifted Easily-Discovered Man Lite into the air by his underwear.
"That's... quite a wedgie."
===+++===
"YES!" Mynabird cried from the other side of the universe.
"And now... the dreaded 'purple nurple'..."
"...come in, Mynabird," whispered the voice of Vector
Prime. "Are you finished with the Kirbian yet? Your troops
are ready for the final assault on the Ultimate Black Hole."
"Fine," Mynabird said, firing an offhand blast at the
still-drifting Kid Kirby that sent him spiraling down toward
the planet below. "Farewell, Kid Kirby. May you make a more
interesting crater than you did an enemy."
===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
"Something's wrong," Linguist Lass said.
"Really?" Parking Karma Kid asked. "Because I thought
with all the rocks and spaceships and energy beams coming at
us that we were all doing spectacularly well."
"It's Kid Kirby," Linguist Lass said. "He's... he's
stopped narrating."
"And we haven't heard from Captain Continuity, Captain
Rat Creature, or Minority *@#$%^& Miss," Innovative-Offense Boy
said, shaking his head as he and Ultimate Ninja walked past the
rows of Legionnaires standing at attention in the ship's
transmatter room.
"Kid Kirby knew what kind of a mission this was," the
Ultimate Ninja said, his face unreadable beneath its hood.
"As did each of you when you signed on for this trip."
"Excuse me, please, but I'm not sure that I did,"
Obsessive Compulsive Boy said. "Although I think, that is I'm
pretty sure that I remember that Obnoxious Ame.rec.a Boy told me
it would be a lot like Battlestar Gallactica without all the
religious subtext."
Ultimate Ninja scowled at Obnoxious Ame.rec.a Boy, who
shrugged. "Contempo Weapons Lad gave me $20 to take him
along," the Chauvinistic Crusader said. "Can't turn down
scratch like that, even if it is in Alt.stralian dollars."
"We may have lost our heaviest hitters... but we still
have You're Not Hitting Me *@#$%^&ing Hard Enough Lad,"
Innovative-Offense Boy said, nodding to the excited-looking
hero on the transmat pad. "We still have Jean," he added,
stealing a glance at his wife, the warrior known as Ordinary
Lady. "Drabble Girl is as tough as they come, and so is Steak-
And-Mother@#$%^&ing-Potatoes Man, and Substitute Lad, and..."
His voice trailed away as he stared at Girlwatcher.
"Well, we have Deja *&^%$#@ing Dude, anyway," he finished,
turning to Linguist Lass. "Tell that @#$%^& to get up here if
he's finished sweet-talking the @#$%^& computer."
===+++===
"Duty calls, my dear," Deja Dude said, transforming his
smoking jacket back into an LNH spacesuit. "I only wish I
could stay here forever listening to your dulcet tones."
"Do you really mean that?" the starship's Mother-In-Law
Box asked, as Deja Dude picked his way through the cluttered
engineering compartment.
"Absolutely," Deja Dude said. "There's nothing I'd like
more than to go someplace quiet, just the two of us. Perhaps,
when all of this is over..."
He closed the hatch to engineering, smirked, and snapped
his fingers. Nothing happened. He snapped them again. To
his surprise and frustration, nothing continued to happen.
"Fine," he muttered, breaking into a brisk jog and
climbing the two ladders and three sets of stairs required to
reach the transmat chamber. "Ultimate Ninja, everybody, sorry
I'm late..."
He looked around at an empty room.
"Can't believe they started the attack without me," he
said, squinting at the chamber walls. "That's funny," he
added, shaking his head. "My X-ray vision doesn't seem to be
working. Maybe Minority Miss really did beat it out of me.
"I'll try the old magic mirror trick," he said, looking
down at one of the reflective tiles on the transmatter pad.
"Mirror, mirror on the mat -- show me where my friends are at!"
The tile remained silent, even after Deja Dude had kicked
it twice. In desperation, he sought out the computer monitor
mounted above the door.
"MERIS?" he asked. "Sweetheart? Uh, where did all the
other LNHers go?"
"I sent them away," the computer said. "Just as you
requested. I'd do anything for you."
"Then bring them back," Deja Dude said, folding his arms.
"But Deja," the computer said, sounding hurt. "You said
you wanted to be alone with me. I even went to the trouble of
transporting the ship to another universe... someplace without
any comic books or super-heroes, so those powers of yours
wouldn't get in our way."
"You've taken away my powers?" Deja Dude said. "Listen,
MERIS, without my powers, somebody could get hurt. Me, for
instance. You need to bring those back right away."
One of the tiles on the transmat pad -- the one Deja Dude
had kicked, in fact -- began to hum. A pair of Mary Jane shoes
appeared on the pad, followed by a pair of legs in white knee
socks and the body of a young woman, dressed in a Japanese
schoolgirl's uniform.
"But we haven't even had time to get to know each other,"
the computer said, as the young woman's head appeared, her
bright-pink hair cut into bangs. The girl stepped down from
the transmat pad and ran her hand along Deja Dude's cheek.
"And I'm really looking forward to that."
Deja Dude swallowed. "Listen, MERIS, I may have given you
the wrong impression earlier," he said, pointing to the wedding
band on his hand. "You see, I'm a married man."
The girl put one hand over her mouth and giggled.
"I haven't been entirely truthful about myself either,"
said the girl, her voice coming simultaneously from the
computer monitor and her own well-glossed lips. "You see, I'm
really less of a computer and more of...well, I guess you could
call me a virus."
"Okay," Deja Dude said. "Not the worst thing a woman has
ever kept from me, but close."
"And my name's not really MERIS," the girl said, sliding
both of her arms around Deja Dude's neck. "It's Merissa. And
I'm your biggest fan."
NEXT: The Legion finds itself in an all-too-familiar place... ===+++===
"This doesn't look like a spaceship," Parking Karma Kid
said, kicking up a cloud of dust from the spongy gray soil
beneath his feet. "It definitely has more of a planet-y feel
to it."
"Who gave the order to activate the transmatter?" Ultimate
Ninja asked.
"None of us did," Ordinary Lady replied. "There must have
been some kind of a glitch with the computer. Deja Dude should
have us back within minutes."
"I sure hope so," Girlwatcher said, staring through his
binoculars. "Although it doesn't look like there's anything
dangerous out here... just those high, curving mountains in the
distance..."
"It might help," Cynical Lass said, "if you pointed those
things away from my chest."
"Oh. Right," said Girlwatcher, blushing through his
helmet as he faced the opposite direction. "Now it's just gray,
gray, gray as far as the eye can see."
"Obscure Trivia Lad knows this place," said Obscure Trivia
Lad, letting a handful of the planet's dusty soil fall through
his metal fingers. "Obscure Trivia Lad has been here once
before. During the Flame Wars."
"I recognize it too," Ultimate Ninja said, just as
Girlwatcher saw the first flickering orange eyes appearing on
the horizon. "And that means we're all in trouble."
===+++===
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
===+++===
LEGION ROLL CALL:
California Kid.... Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
Captain Continuity.... Jeff "Drizzt" Barnes and Robert
"Mystic Mongoose" Armstrong
Captain Rat Creature.... Saxon Brenton
Cheesecake-Eater Lad.... Matthew Jotham Millheiser
Cynical Lass, Easily-Discovered Man Lite and Substitute Lad
.... Rob Rogers
Deja Dude, Linguist Lass and Ordinary Lady.... Martin Phipps
Drabble Girl... Jessica Ihimaera-Smiler
Gaffer.... J.O.S.Hartung
Girlwatcher.... Chris Gumprich
Innovative-Offense Boy and Steak-and-Potatoes Man
.... John "upLink" Scheibeler
Kid Kirby.... H. Jameel al Khafiz
Minority Miss.... Lalo Martins
No Sense Of Direction Man.... Steven Howard
Obnoxious Ame.rec.a Boy.... Jamas Enright
Obscure Trivia Lad.... Brian Perler
Obsessive Compulsive Boy.... Mitchell "Tarq" Crouch
Pants Rabbit Lad.... Tom Russell
Parking Karma Kid.... Steve Simmons
Skunk Girl.... Ted "Arsenal" Brock
Special Bonding Boy and Ultimate Ninja
.... Ray "wReam" Bingham
Tour Guide Girl.... Mike Escutia
You're Not Hitting Me Hard Enough Lad.... Arthur Spitzer
SPECIAL GUEST VILLAINS:
Arthur E.L. Presence.... Steven Howard
Barrage, Londonbroil, Plummet and Vector Prime
.... Rob Rogers
The Christicantthinkofagoodname Empire, Mynabird, The Legion
of Net.Villains, Plum Master and the Robot Duplicates
.... Arthur Spitzer
The Meow Meow Gang.... Dave Van Domelen
Merissa.... Saxon Brenton
More information on these and other characters at:
www.lnhq.info/wiki
MUSIC:
"Love Serenade" written and performed by Barry White
"Welcome to the Jungle" written by Axl Rose and Slash
and performed by Guns n' Roses
"Never Gonna Give You Up" written by Mike Stock, Matt Aiken
and Pete Waterman and performed by Rick Astley
"Happy Me" written by H.B. Barnum and performed by Don Ho
"Can't Fight This Feeling" written by Kevin Cronin and
performed by REO Speedwagon
Original soundtrack unavailable on LNH Records.
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
LNH Authors Group for editing assistance
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
"Beige Countdown" created by Arthur Spitzer
No genetically-altered cats, giant hamsters, planets or
plums were harmed in the making of this net.comic.
"In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a
demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this
planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and
our opportunities are unlimited."
--Neil Armstrong
