Blue Light Productions presents:
Birth Of A Villain #24
A chaotic add-on cascade-type Legion of Net.Heroes title
"More Stuff Happens"
Written by Saxon Brenton
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Fourth Wall Lass left the hospital where Retcon Lad and the young
man called Zacharias Durandal had been taken to after the fight with the
mutant angst-eating net.villain called Dinnerplate [in _Limp-Asparagus
Lad_ #42 - Footnote Girl]. It had been a long day. She wanted to get home
and unwind.
Her dorm at Dave Thomas Deluxe University was closer than the flat
where Limp-Asparagus Lad and Retcon Lad lived, so she headed that way.
Along the way she trudged past the site where the Legion of Net.Heroes
Headquarters would be, if it hadn't been stolen by the notorious
international thief Carmen SanFrancisco [in _Writers Block Woman (and
Mouse)_ #33-35 - Footnote Girl].
It was therefore to Fourth Wall Lass's considerable surprise that
the LNHQ was, in fact, back where it should be.
She looked at it. It refused to waver and evaporate away like some
errant mirage. She walked up and ran her fingers across the stonework of
the wall next to the front doors. It was hard and cold to the touch. She
craned her head back to stare at the front facade of the building which
only this morning hadn't been here and now only just slightly more than
ten hours later was back, and said, "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised."
These sort of things happened in the Legion of Net.Heroes.
Fourth Wall Lass pushed her way in through the front doors, intending
to report to Ultimate Ninja or whoever the current shift manager was, and
then perhaps crash in one of the spare rooms. This plan was put to pause
when she noticed the inordinate number of net.heroes who were lying
around on the floor of the foyer. There was even a kiwi lying on top of
a surfboard which was floating in the foyer's fountain.
An adrenalin rush perked the young woman up as she had a sudden
horrible flashback to _Legion of Occult Heroes_ #5, and she jumped forward
to check for pulses. They were alive, which caused her to heave a sigh of
relief, and only then did she realise that her hands had gone clammy with
cold sweat.
Wiping her hands on her uniform, she headed for the computer rooms
to check the logs for what had happened. And if that didn't tell her
anything, then she just take a peek across the Threshold and see what had
happened so far with the plot.
=============================
Meanwhile, at the besieged headquarters of the maniacal cult know as
the Church of the Fourth Wall, Father Brown was horrified to learn that
another militant cult was planning on using the hard wrought scheming of
his Church to further their own ends:
"He's... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Father Brown lunged forward.
"You're altering the doorway into the dimensions - you're breaking the
fourth wall!"
"Of course!" said the woman in red, jumping forward and stopping him
in his tracks. "We will achieve our goal - to breach the fourth wall and
drag David R. Henry into the LNH universe - where he will at last WRITE
FOR US! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" howled Father Brown.
Heretics! Blasphemers!"
The woman sneered at him in disgust. "Get rid of him," she ordered.
Nodakommandos moved forward, guns at the ready.
Father Brown was beginning to get angry. "Get rid of them!" he
shouted in return. Whereupon a group of pot-bellied aliens dressed in
purple with huge staring eyes and spade beards popped up and began
shapeshifting into the forms of the nodakommados. As each alien changed
its shape to match a nodakommando, the nodakommando that had been thus
duplicated vanished, cast into Comic Book Limbo.
The Acolyte stared about him as the scene in the dishevelled but for
the moment under control central sanctum of the Church. "Was it wise to
unleash the Space Dvandoms?" he asked.
"I had no choice," Father Brown replied. He exhaled. "If only their
abilities could be used against Taft..."
"The zombie corpse of ex-president Taft doesn't count as a person
anymore," Acolyte reminded him. "They'd have no more effect on him than
Vector's Legionnaire's Disease does."
"Yes, yes," agreed Brown. "I'm not complaining about the resources
that you've been able to share with us. In the meantime, see what you can
do about fixing the settings on the dimensional aperture."
The Acolyte nodded and turned to the console, suppressing a smile.
The arrival of the nodakommandos had almost been a catastrophic setback,
but it had been handled - for the moment - and had even turned out to be
mildly beneficial in its own way. Each time Father Brown was forced to
use dimension breaching methods that the Acolyte and his group had
provided, it was a small victory for the Acolyte's plans to subvert the
Church.
Father Brown had turned to the Space Dvandoms. "While you're using
those shapes, secure this area, then expand your operations to retake the
rest of the building. Restrain the remaining nodakommandos you find, and
engage the zombie of W.H. Taft."
The Space Dvandoms saluted and moved off. Father Brown turned back
Acolyte, who was working at the controls by which the Church of the
Fourth Wall had planned to call forth the Cabbage-Wielding Angel of Death.
Alarms were still blaring. "Has Taft fully breached the building yet?" he
asked.
"Yes. He's inside the north gate, in section C3. Our forces are
moving to intercept. Then Acolyte's eyes widened. "Oh my... It's her!
She's back!"
"What are you talking about?"
"It's the GREAT SATAN! She's back! Our sensors weren't able to detect
her before. We were presuming that she was off-dimension, or something.
But she's back! Fourth Wall Lass is at the LNHQ."
On top of everything else that had happened today, this was getting
a bit too much for Father Brown. His face twisted in a paroxysm of both
loathing and exultation. His eyes bugged out. A fleck of foam appeared at
the corner of his mouth. Both hands came up in to his chest in clenched
fists as overwhelming emotions conflicted within him. With immense self-
control he managed to avoid dropping to the floor and chewing on the
carpet, and instead stage-whispered, "She must be destroyed."
"I'll re-assign some of the Vector's away from the defence of the
building and into an attack squad immediately."
=============================
Back at the LNHQ, Fourth Wall Lass was reading up on past events.
Contrary to her initial assumption it seemed that the LNHQ had not been
returned within ten hours. Although she had only experienced the first day
of it, the LNHQ had been in the possession of Carmen SanFrancisco for the
better part of a week. And that had been a while ago. And now that FWLAss
had returned she found that not only had she skipped over a large chunk
of continuity, but that she had also been dumped in the middle of a
completely different storyline altogether.
As ever, time in comic book universes was proving to be completely
screwy. The worst part was that in the Looniverse they knew about the
phenomenon and had to take it into account when they were trying to fill
out their tax forms.
(Have you any idea how hard it is to explain to the Tax Department
that you're claiming exemption from tax for a whole year because you were
in Limbo for the whole time and technically didn't exist to get paid?)
Worse still, she had been dumped in the middle of a chaotic add-on
cascade-type story. The last time she'd been in one of those had been
_Saviours of the Net_ #7, and the experience had... not been pleasant.
It wasn't something that she ever wanted to have to go through again if
she could at all help it.
"Rat bastard Writer." It was the only comment that came to mind that
adequately described it all.
She turned her thoughts back to the current storyline. The security
cameras had caught some of Vector's attack on the LNHQ, and the subsequent
plans of Mouse et al when they had first met up with Insomnia Lad, and
later of Gorilla Grad and Tsar Chasm (of all people!) as they had gone
through the computers looking for potential weaknesses of Vector. All of
this, however, had been only given a piecemeal overview of what was going
on - and typically for the LNH, nobody had bothered to give even the
briefest of updates to the logs.
So Fourth Wall Lass had simply broke the fourth wall and started
reading the story from scratch. Good thing she could speed read.
She got as far as the end of issue number 9 and the first mention of
involvement of the Church of the Fourth Wall. At their name, she started
in alarm, and hissed, "Those idiots!?"
"Watch who you're calling names, honey," said a voice from behind
her, accompanied by the hum of blasters warming up. This gave FWLass the
half instant she needed to leap out of the way as the weapons of some
more Vector clones did serious property damage to the computer labs.
.oO( Oh boy, wReamhack and Renegade Programmer are going to be sooo
ticked off, ) observed a part of Fourth Wall Lass's mind that wasn't
currently preoccupied with dodging blaster fire. .oO( Time to leave, I
guess. )
She tried to open a small hole in the Threshold of the fourth wall,
and found she couldn't. "Aw, crap! Not AGAIN!"
One of the Vectors smirked. "Sounds like our little fishie's just
found out we're not going to let her get away."
"Ohhhh, my heart just bleeds for her," oozed the other Vector.
"Just what I need," grumped FWLass, "Being patronised while murdered
by a pair of leather clad bimbos who're physically incapable of falling
flat on their faces." She looked around for an escape route. One of the
ventilation ducts used by the kiwis for their paramilitary training would
do fine. Then:
"Would you happen to be Vector?" asked a new voice.
One Vector turned, and found a small figure standing behind them. It
was small and green, but nevertheless it was not a kiwi bird. At just over
a meter high it would have come up to about Fourth Wall Lass' stomach;
the Vectors towered over it. It was humanoid, covered in lime green fur,
and was wearing one of those 'Cat in the Hat' type floppy red-and-white
striped top hats. It grinned at them with unblinking eyes and a completely
insane smile on it face.
"Yes. What of it?" retorted the Vector, and blasted the figure.
The figure blinked. It was now a black-and-crinkly silhouette of
itself, but still standing upright. The figure calmly wet its fingers,
took off its hat, and snuffed out the small fire which was burning on the
crown of its head.
Then it reached into its hat, pulled out one of those rubber banding
devices used to castrate cattle, and with one fluid movement docked the
Vector's head off.
The other Vector began shooting the figure, but this didn't seem to
make much difference to its already charred state.
"That's not nice," observed the figure. "Do you know what happens to
ladies who aren't nice?"
"DIE you little green freak!" screamed the Vector, backing towards
the door.
"They get eaten by... TARANTULAS!" exclaimed the figure, pulling from
its hat a tarantula. It was a BIG tarantula. About a meter high, and that
was just the body. Add in the legs and it stood as tall as the ceiling. Oh
yeah, and it was hungry, which is why it leapt upon the Vector and ate
her alive.
Cut to a shot of Fourth Wall Lass, who's going, "Eeeew." SFX: Screams,
the clattering of mandibles, and satisfied munching-type noises.
And then there was silence. Unconcerned, figure reached into its hat
again, took out a hair drier, and used it to blow off all of the char
that it was covered with. In seconds it was as though the Vectors had
never even shot at it at all. It looked around, and spied Fourth Wall
Lass. "Hullo," it said.
"Um, high there."
The figure raised a finger to its lips. "Be vewy vewy quiet. I'm
hunting Vectors." Then it handed her a business card. It read:
Green Eggs Hates Spham
Member of good standing of the Order of St. Doomas
Sphammers exterminated while you wait
Fourth Wall Lass looked at the card, then at the figure. .oO( It
figures, ) she had to admit to herself. ( If there's villainy about that
involves clogging up the internet, how could the Order *not* turn up in
response? )
Then an errant thought scampered across her mind. This story already
contained members of the Legion of Net.Heroes, a Net.Trenchcoat Brigader
in the form of DeadHeadMan, and now one of the Order of St. Doomas (not
to mention coming *this close* to a Superguy appearance). She wondered:
could this possibly be a herald of 'Cry Apathy' crossover that was
supposed to have died an apathetic death several years back? She shook
her head. No, that level of organisation was implausible in a chaotic
add-on cascade-type story.
She turned her attention back to the religious psychotic... or was it
psychopathic? Darn, she could never remember which word described the
people who enjoyed hurting others and which word was for the people who
just didn't care. Anyway...
"Well Green Eggs, thank you very much for the save. I'm Fourth Wall
Lass of the Legion of Net.Heroes. If you're hunting Vector, I suppose we
should run a security scan of the building to see if there are anymore
lurking about."
"And if there aren't any here?"
She shrugged. "There are supposed to be Vectors running around all
over the place, but the best choice would probably be the Church of the
Fourth Wall, who she's apparently working for," FWLAss said, leading Green
Eggs to an undamaged computer terminal and initiating a security sweep.
"Nothing in here. Give me a moment to skim through the story... Ah, right.
Twaelia did an external scan in issue 12 and came up with Rec.mon.d in
Washing.net as Vector's point of origin. That's probably one place you'd
want to go... Green Eggs?" She glanced around, but Green Eggs had gone.
=============================
Remember how the Church of the Fourth Wall hadn't quite got the hang
of the technology that they had stolen from the LNHQ? Guess what, it
doesn't just apply to the tech from the LNHQ. Would it really surprise you
if some of their other work also turned out to have some flaws in it?
In the skies above Net.ropolis, a squad of three Vectors with jet
packs was making their patrol. Suddenly, one of them went, "Aaierghh!"
and wobbled in her flight.
One of her compatriots began scanning for enemies who could have
attacked, while the other one radioed, "Raptor Green-2, what is your
condition? Over."
"I... feel..."
The head of the squad indicted that they make their way to a secure
position on the ground. Upon landing Raptors Green-1 and -3 turned to
their team mate.
She already had her helmet off to get more air, and her eyes were all
funny. "Yes... I understand now... The power... The power is MINE! She
threw
a maniacal grin at the other two, and wiped their minds. They collapsed
to the ground, braindead.
"I am no longer Melissa, self-replicating virus and space waster. I
am Explorer Z, non-self-replicating worm and DATA ERASER!"
=============================
"So then," asked Chinese Guy, "Now all we have to do is find Khe
Sheraq?"
"I can be of help there," said Fourth Wall Lass, opening a portal in
the Threshold and stepping through from the other side. She had a small
pile of computer printouts with her. "Hello everybody."
"Well, that's impressive timing," observed Insomnia Lad.
Fourth Wall Lass grinned mischievously and winked at him. "Yeah.
Anyway, I've just got back in continuity..."
"And boy are your arms tired," quipped Chinese Guy.
She rolled her eyes. "That too. Now, look..."
"DIE squishies!" boomed the Vectorbot, which in the meantime had
gotten up and was advancing on the four of them.
"Shut the F*CK UP!!!" screamed Fourth Wall Lass, and opened another
hole in the Threshold, this one flat on the ground beneath the Vectorbot's
feet. The Vectorbot fell in, and then was promptly sheared in half as
FWLass closed the portal.
"AAAARGH!" screamed the giant mecha.
"HA! Not so tough when you can't block a girl from using her powers,
are ya!? Huh!? LOSER!" FWLass continued to yell. And then to add insult to
injury, she opened up another hole in the fourth wall above the Vectorbot
and let the severed bottom half fall down onto the top half. There was a
very satisfying 'CLOOONG' sound effect as the two pieces collided. The
Vectorbot lay still.
Writers Block Woman watched with concern as Fourth Wall Lass
hyperventilated over the by now rather badly damaged remains of the
Vectorbot. "Dear, I think you may be a little stressed. Just take deep
breaths... Oh, you already are.
Fourth Wall Lass forced herself to calm down, and said, "Sorry, it's
been a long day. Okay then, I have news. First up, the most important
thing that you'll want to know is that Mouse, Twaelia, Lenny and the
others aren't dead. The Vectors are using technology that they stole from
Dr. Stomper and that they foolishly haven't bothered to totally master
yet. The others were just sent back in time to 1984. As soon as they
rescue the Dr. Stomper of that time period, they're going to try and get
his help in returning home."
"Oh, that's *wonderful* news," gushed WBW.
Fourth Wall Lass nodded, then continued. "The Vectors are acting as
troops of the Church of the Fourth Wall, who plan to re-establish the
fourth wall and seal off the Looniverse from the Writers. That's
supposedly what the Legionnaires Disease is all about: keeping the
net.heroes unconscious so that they can't interfere. I have no idea why
some of us are unaffected by it."
"It might be a plot device or some sort, or there might be a
plausible reason for it," Insomnia Lad speculated. "But cutting the
Looniverse off from the Writers - that'd be like 'Looniverse Adrift' all
over again," he said, aghast.
Again Fourth Wall Lass nodded. "Tsar Chasm has already figured out
some of the dangers of what the Church is doing, and has gathered up the
other active net.heroes he could find and taken the to Sig.ago to try and
stop the Church there. I suggest that we go after Khe Sheraq, then catch
up with the others once the Lotion of Emotion is recovered. I brought
some Net.erpol reports on Sheraq's last known location."
Chinese Guy looked confused. "If Tsar Chasm has such a firm handle
on what's going on, why do we need to go after the Lotion anyway? It was
a pretty desperate attempt to find a clue, as I recall."
"Because this is a chaotic add-on cascade story, and we have no idea
what will become significant, and what won't," pointed Insomnia Lad.
"That's right," agreed FWLass "Most of what I've just told you has
been stated as fact somewhere in the story. But any or all of it could be
amended or retconned away as the Writers add to the story. We have to be
careful; those Writers can be devious and downright demented.
"Anyway, that's the most salient of the 'firm' facts that I've got.
There's one other thing that I'm worried about. The head of the Church of
the Fourth Wall is a guy called Father Brown. He's being assisted by a guy
calling himself Acolyte, but he's not a member of the Church of the Fourth
Wall. In fact, they've been talking about the alliance between the two of
them. They've also been talking about closing off the fourth wall to
everybody except the 'One True Author', which pretty much goes against
everything I know about the Church of the Fourth Wall."
"You know a lot about them, then?" asked Writers Block Woman.
"I try to. Ultimately my origin and theirs stem from the same place.
You see, thousands of years ago alien comic book writers came to the
Looniearth and taught some of the ancient human cultures how to sneak
across the fourth wall. Those aliens set up organisations in each culture
they had contact with to teach loonihumanity about fourth wall techniques,
and after the aliens left many of those groups eventually died out or
degenerated into religious cults of the 'mystery religion' type. Later
still, there was a schism in one group, and one faction tried to wrest
control of the power base. They failed, and during the time that it took
them to regather their strength, their dogma underwent a radical shift to
hate and fear breaking the fourth wall. *That's* basically where the
Church of the Fourth Wall started.
"When they felt strong enough, they started trying to destroy the
other groups. Sometimes they succeeded, and sometimes it didn't, but the
shadow warfare pruned back the number of groups as they were either
destroyed or banded together against their common enemy. Then, a couple of
years ago I was visiting Machu Picchu at the time that the Church made an
assault on one of the other priesthoods. The fight spilt over to catch up
the tourists in the area, and in the confusion I received my powers more
or less by accident. That's the quick and short explanation, anyway."
"How von Daniken-eqsue," commented Writers Block Woman.
Fourth Wall Lass grinned. "I remember thinking much the same thing
at the time. Anyway, unless there's been another schism or shift in dogma,
the Church's current behaviour is suspicious. I think that may be because
they're compromising their beliefs to work with their allies. And there
are certain clues that point to who those allies are."
"Well, don't just keep us in suspense," demanded Chinese Guy.
"I think its the Church of Dvandom," she said. "Their plan centres
around sealing off all other Writers except their 'One True Author'; and
they've been making efforts to keep us away from Sig.ago and keeping
Dvandom Force from becoming involved. When the nodakommandos tried to
take over their base and summon David R. Henry into the Looniverse to
Write for them, there was a squad of Space Dvandoms on hand to use against
the nodakommandos. Finally, their leader Acolyte says he's fought the
Legion before and also boasted that chaos and entropy are his element."
"Hold up," said Insomnia Lad, who had been assembling all those
clues into one piece. "Wouldn't that mean..."
"Yeah. I think that the Church of the Fourth Wall is working with
the Acolyte of Dvandom... wReamicus Maximus."
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HAS FATHER BROWN MADE AN ALLIANCE WTH wREAMICUS MAXIMUS?
WILL THE NET.HEROES FINALLY BE ABLE TO FIND KHE SHERAQ?
WILL THE CHURCH OF THE FOURTH WALL BE ABLE GO FORWARD WITH
THEIR PLANS WHILE THERE ARE STILL NODAKOMMANDOS IN THEIR
BASE, NOT TO MENTION EX-PRESIDENT W.H. TAFT?
WHAT HIDEOUS PERMUTATONS WILL THE MUTATING MELISSAS TURN INTO?
WHERE DID GREEN EGGS GET OFF TO?
The answer to these and other questions may or may not be
forthcoming in future episodes of: BIRTH OF A VILLAIN!
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Saxon Brenton Uni of Technology city library, Sydney, Australia
saxon.brenton@uts.edu.au
This classic .sig from Lance Smith may be pertinent:
Did alien comic book writers really visit ancient cultures and teach them
how to sneak over the fourth wall? (see Captain Mayan #fish-eagle-dot-dot)
