LNH20 Comics Presents #14
The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 14: "What Happens Next"
Chapter 14 of a chaotic add-on cascade
By Andrew Perron
-
Within the well-furnished but suddenly-shifting rooms of the
Netropolitan Museum of History, Nerf Girl picked up the Sword that she
had drawn from the styrofoam Stone and attempted to hold it in a simple
guard position. It slipped from her fingers as if the handle were
covered in the finest extra-virgin motor oil and clattered on the
ground. Dangit! How was this happening!?
Suddenly, she heard the newly-felted Doc Nostalgia shout, "-MISTER
MORRISON!"
Of course! Mister Morrison, the indescribable imp of imagination!
She'd seen that name many times in the research she'd done after
finding out who her real parents were...
He'd first shown up as a problem for Nowhere Man in the mid-'60s, and
had quickly gone on to bedevil the Network as a team. (His third
showing against them had famously inspired both a novel by Heinlein and
an album by The Who.) But in these early appearances... well, it was
*always* hard to tell what he was on about, but there had been
insinuations that he "wasn't supposed to be there yet" and that he was
"on a pleasure trip". Indeed, after his most famous appearance, he
didn't show up again until 1987. In later appearances, his methods
seemed to drift from "insane puzzles that would get him to go away" to
"insane puzzles that would unlock deep philosophical truths about the
nature of reality".
And there he was! Walking down the hall towards them, head
continuously exploding into a million multicolored butterflies which
turned into comics as they flew by. His jacket constantly shifted,
from leather to flannel to waterproof to military. His body seemed to
be made of tiny, shifting pixels that one could only just make out, no
matter how close he was. The paintings on the walls around him
rippled, turning from abstract representations of thoughts into
thoughts themselves and back.
Doc Nostalgia held his head. "Sensory overload... getting too much... I
can't *think*..." He flew up, crashing through the roof and into the
sky.
Ultimate Mercenary rummaged through his pockets as Mister Morrison drew
closer. He pulled a sextant out. "Yarrr, that's not it..."
A Jolly Roger. "Nay..."
A bag of parrot chow. "Nay..."
A bottle with a miniature ship in it. "Nay!"
A smoke grenade! "Ah, there's the thrice-poxed dog!"
Then it exploded in his hand.
Kid Enthusiastic pointed his handheld scanning device at Mr. M, only to
find that it had turned into a magical princess wand, and that he was
wearing a stylized version of Japanese boy's school uniform, in blue
and red. "Um... Enthusiastic Statistical Acquisition!"
Mister Morrison bowed. "ThE bRoWn Ox QuAcKeD, oVeR sYzYgY's LuMpEn
JoWlS."
Nerf Girl scratched her head. Speaking of insane puzzles...
Nudist Man peeked out from behind a column. "That certainly *sounded*
like English..."
"Looks like he's using a Standing Trope Reversal Wave on us!" said Kid
E. "I think-"
"Wait!" said You're-Not-Hitting-Me-Hard-Enough Lad, who had been
floating intangibly in the background. "I can feel the imprint of the
logic puzzle on my mind!"
"Of course!" said Kid E. "He's changed your powers from absorbing
*physical* impacts to absorbing *mental* impacts!"
"Yes, and it's obvious! His sentence used every letter of the alphabet
at least once, except for 'I' and 'F'! The puzzle solution is an
English sentence, and the first word is 'if'!"
"Blimey!" said Ultimate Mercenary. "We'll have no trouble with the rum
dog's bilge-sucking brain-twisters at this rate!"
There was a giant sucking POP! and they were back to normal.
"...or not."
Kid Ethusiastic cocked his head to the side. "Hey, do you guys hear
that? A sort of descending scream?"
.p=B0w=B0q.
January Frost narrowed her eyes. "The fact that I cannot remember what
happened to our charges - and the fact that this did not seem at all
odd until just now - yes, I have a problem with this."
Fearless Leader spoke quietly. "Doc, you have to remember. What
*happened*?"
"It's no use," said Cranium 5. "Until the two time periods catch up
with one another, the memories will remain inaccessible!"
"Will you all SHUT UP!?" shouted Doc Nostalgia, clutching his head.
"You're too loud, I can't *think*..."
"At the very least," said January, "we need to find out what's
happened
to the rest of the team in this time period."
"I'd advise against it," said Cranium 5. "You can see the effects that
collapsing the waveform are having on the good Doctor."
"Say," said Fearless Leader, "do you hear that? Sort of a...
descending scream..."
"We have to do *something*," said January, getting right up in the
mouse's face. "Send a signal, or-"
"I tell you, there is no way the two time periods could cross over!"
shouted Cranium 5.
THR-KRASHH! The skylight shattered and Doc Nostalgia tumbled through.
"...but then, temporal physics was never my specialty."
The one Doc Nostalgia fell on the other, and when they touched, there
was a wave of blazing light...
.p=B0w=B0q.
Nerf Girl grabbed her foam blade and raised it confidently, but Kid
Enthusiastic held out a hand. "I wouldn't attack him directly. It
gets... messy."
"So what do we *do*?" grunted You're-Not-Hitting-Me-Hard-Enough Lad,
cracking his knuckles idly.
"Noitseggus a ekam ot em wolla, esaelp." Mister Morrison spread his
hands, and shimmering blue portals appeared around them. Cats with the
bodies of toaster pastries shot out, trailing rainbows behind them.
"It's the Memetic Minions of Morrison!" shouted Nudist Man, just barely
dodging the shimmering trails.
"This must be another puzzle!" said Sister State-the- no, wait, I mean
Ultimate Mercenary. "But how are we supposed to solve it?"
Kid E said, "I think-"
Suddenly, light streamed through the windows, and a wave of surging
energy washed through the room. Nerf Girl could feel her bones
twisting, a startling and disturbing sensation compared to Mister
Morrison's quick transformations. As the light faded, she could see
the newly changed forms. Kid Enthusiastic was wearing a leather apron
over a pair of overalls, a helmet, leather gloves and heavy-duty
goggles. Ultimate Mercenary was dressed in an all-concealing black
outfit with a red, white and blue belt. Nudist Man looked like he was
made of marble. You're-Not-Hitting-Me-Hard-Enough Lad was wearing an
all-blue outfit, a padded helmet and boxing gloves.
Nerf Girl looked down at herself. Her skin looked faintly metallic,
and... were those *claws* at the ends of her hands? "My god..." Her
mind whirred. "I've been turned into MechaKat!"
"Your mother... mine..." Kid Enthusiastic looked around. "We've all
been turned back on the legacies that inspired us!"
"Like some sort of... Nostalgia Wave!"
Ultimate Mercenary stared at himself in shock. Shaking out of it for a
moment, he said, "At least the nyancats are gone!"
"Etilop gnibe tsuj saw I, yllautca." The portals reopened, and the cat
barrage began anew...
.p=B0w=B0q.
Brain the Objectivist Pizza Delivery Boy opened his car door and
stepped out.
The grass was soft and dewy under his feet. He was on the edge of a
forest near the shore of some island he couldn't name. It was
twilight, but there was some bright light coming from within the trees.
He walked towards it, parting branches in his way, until he came to a
clearing.
Human figures, in suits of colorful spandex and poses of perfect rest,
lay on a hill. At the top, there was a man floating in midair, whose
blade burned with a pure incandescence. He recognized them, from
newscasts, from books and magazines, from memorials held long ago...
"The Saviors of the Net..."
-
Author's Note: Okay, let's get this train kickstarted! Adrian called
dibs on the next chapter, and I've sent him my notes, so look out for
another issue soon!
Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, plot moves forward!
[I split this into two parts to keep readers from being crushed beneath a wall of text. The second part goes up tomorrow.] About 20 years ago, on the now-defunct newsgroup called rec.arts.comics, a bunch of people started making up goofy superhero names for themselves. This spawned an in-joke based roleplay that
[Continued from yesterday...] Three people sat alone in a conference room. One was Fearless Leader. Another was a muscular, square-jawed man with hair of an odd blue- black hue, dressed in jeans and a faded, distressed T-shirt with "DN" in a circle on it. The third was a distractingly beautiful brunette
LNH20 Comics Presents #1 - A View From The Twisted Library copyright 2011 by Dave Van Domelen [Part of the LNH20 Comics Presents #1 Chaotic Add-On - Ed, who missed this place.] Acton Lord, fifth to carry the title (although the public knew of only three, and some suspected all three were the same man kept alive by techno-
The man before him, hovering slightly off the ground, fumed. He was
scrawny and pale, with dishwater-blond hair. He looked to be around
college-aged, and was dressed in an immaculately tailored suit one size too
large for him. "That's *Death*, not that you didn't know. I was hoping to
actually do my job today, but now I see that that won't be possible."
A small group of LNH members was walking through a psychedelic landscape, on paths of tentacles and goo and thread and ice and sometimes nothing but light, crossing portals that looked like giant open mouths, cuts ripped into air, whirlpools, floating crystals, balls of light, or even rectangles scrawled in charcoal; walking past
LNH20 Comics Presents #2: The Spoon of Destiny Saga: "Re-animations and Revelations" Chapter 2 of a chaotic add-on cascade by Adrian J. McClure, Andrew Perron, Martin Phipps and Dave Van Domelan *** Dr. Mood had been at the Netropolitan Museum of Art looking for the Spoon of Destiny when five Legionaires (Doc Nostalgia, Nudist Man,
You know what we need more of? You know what the early LNH had a lot of? You know what really brings fanboys and fangirls in? SHIPPING! - LNH20 Comics Presents #4 The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 4: "Free Shipping With Twenty-Five Dollars' Worth of DOOM!" Chapter 4 of a chaotic add-on cascade
LNH20 Comics Presents #5: The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 5: "Time and Again" Chapter 5 of a chaotic add-on cascade By Adrian J. McClure *** So now Nerf Girl had faced her first actual net.hero battle. She'd had to fight for her life once before she was technically a net.hero, but now she actually had a name and a costume and was a bona fide card-
"Coming To Grief" A High Concept Challenge 24-Minute Story in the LNH20 (Legion of Net.Heroes 20th Anniversary) universe copyright 2011 by Dave Van Domelen
In the street next to the Netropolitan Museum of History, Lindsey Gensym was watching the LNH battle the Otakaiser, unnoticed as always. That battle had started right in front of her eyes, right after Dr. Mood had surrendered. Of course, she was also in the room when Dr. Mood initially attacked, and she had, as always, wondered
LNH20 Comics Presents #7 'Exactly Where We Can Grab It' which is chapter 7 of a chaotic add-on cascade written by and copyright 2012 Saxon Brenton Once again a man entered the air conditioned office that housed Ultravac, the villainous supercomputer that controlled the terrorist
- LNH20 Comics Presents #8 The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 8: "Not a 24 Parody" Chapter 8 of a chaotic add-on cascade Part of High Concept Challenge 26! By Andrew Perron - Lindsey Gensym rushed into the Netropolitan Museum of History and stopped short. The sunlight through the windows outside seemed... odd, flat...
LNH20 Comics Presents #9: "Draco Dormiens" Chapter 9 of a chaotic add-on cascade by Adrian J. McClure Note: this issue takes place immediately before Clueless Lad Team-Up *** It was almost midnight at the waterfront district; the rain was pouring down and the sky was dismal and starless. Brian was not having
"The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 10: "Switch Play""
by Andrew Perron
LNH20 Comics Presents #10 The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 10: "Switch Play" Chapter 10 of a chaotic add-on cascade By Andrew Perron - Far from the LNHQ's sub-basements, in a very different set of labyrinthine catacombs, deep beneath the Vatican... And "labyrinthine" was no exaggeration, thought Killswitch. The Espionage
LNH20 Comics Presents #11: "The Assassination Squad" Chapter 11 of a chaotic add-on cascade by Martin Phipps The Recovery Man returned to the office that housed Ultravac, the villainous supercomputer that controlled the terrorist group WHATEVER - the World Headquarters for Anarchy, Terrorism, Evil, Vengeance,
LNH20 Comics Presents #12: "Chaos Reigns" Chapter 12 of a chaotic add-on cascade (though probably something more like 20 if you count all the crossovers in other series) by Adrian J. McClure Lawrence Herrera, age 45, single, recently laid off from his job as department store manager, was the first to notice it. He was leaving
Agent M was piloting her flight.thingy on approach to LNH HQ in Netropolis. She was bringing her espionage Squad back home after they had retrieved the Spoon of Destiny from a museum in Italy. (See LNH20 Comics Presents #10.) "Okay, everybody," she said. "Seat belts on. We're on approach to
PREFACE: Since Adrian's almost done with LNH Comics Presents #15, I thought I'd repost the story to date. How's about three issues per day 'til we catch up? .p°w°q. About 20 years ago, on the now-defunct newsgroup called rec.arts.comics, a bunch of people started making up goofy superhero
LNH20 Comics Presents #2: The Spoon of Destiny Saga: "Re-animations and Revelations" Chapter 2 of a chaotic add-on cascade by Adrian J. McClure, Andrew Perron, Martin Phipps and Dave Van Domelan *** Dr. Mood had been at the Netropolitan Museum of Art looking for the Spoon of Destiny when five Legionaires (Doc Nostalgia, Nudist Man,
A small group of LNH members was walking through a psychedelic landscape, on paths of tentacles and goo and thread and ice and sometimes nothing but light, crossing portals that looked like giant open mouths, cuts ripped into air, whirlpools, floating crystals, balls of light, or even rectangles scrawled in charcoal; walking past
You know what we need more of? You know what the early LNH had a lot of? You know what really brings fanboys and fangirls in? SHIPPING! - LNH20 Comics Presents #4 The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 4: "Free Shipping With Twenty-Five Dollars' Worth of DOOM!" Chapter 4 of a chaotic add-on cascade
LNH20 Comics Presents #5: The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 5: "Time and Again" Chapter 5 of a chaotic add-on cascade By Adrian J. McClure *** So now Nerf Girl had faced her first actual net.hero battle. She'd had to fight for her life once before she was technically a net.hero, but now she actually had a name and a costume and was a bona fide card-
In the street next to the Netropolitan Museum of History, Lindsey Gensym was watching the LNH battle the Otakaiser, unnoticed as always. That battle had started right in front of her eyes, right after Dr. Mood had surrendered. Of course, she was also in the room when Dr. Mood initially attacked, and she had, as always, wondered
LNH20 Comics Presents #7 'Exactly Where We Can Grab It' which is chapter 7 of a chaotic add-on cascade written by and copyright 2012 Saxon Brenton Once again a man entered the air conditioned office that housed Ultravac, the villainous supercomputer that controlled the terrorist group WHATEVER - the World Headquarters for Anarchy, Terrorism, Evil,
- LNH20 Comics Presents #8 The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 8: "Not a 24 Parody" Chapter 8 of a chaotic add-on cascade Part of High Concept Challenge 26! By Andrew Perron - Lindsey Gensym rushed into the Netropolitan Museum of History and stopped short. The sunlight through the windows outside seemed... odd, flat...
LNH20 Comics Presents #9: "Draco Dormiens" Chapter 9 of a chaotic add-on cascade by Adrian J. McClure Note: this issue takes place immediately before Clueless Lad Team-Up *** It was almost midnight at the waterfront district; the rain was pouring down and the sky was dismal and starless. Brian was not having
LNH20 Comics Presents #10 The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 10: "Switch Play" Chapter 10 of a chaotic add-on cascade By Andrew Perron - Far from the LNHQ's sub-basements, in a very different set of labyrinthine catacombs, deep beneath the Vatican... And "labyrinthine" was no exaggeration, thought Killswitch. The Espionage
LNH20 Comics Presents #11: "The Assassination Squad" Chapter 11 of a chaotic add-on cascade by Martin Phipps The Recovery Man returned to the office that housed Ultravac, the villainous supercomputer that controlled the terrorist group WHATEVER - the World Headquarters for Anarchy, Terrorism, Evil, Vengeance,
LNH20 Comics Presents #12: "Chaos Reigns" Chapter 12 of a chaotic add-on cascade (though probably something more like 20 if you count all the crossovers in other series) by Adrian J. McClure Lawrence Herrera, age 45, single, recently laid off from his job as department store manager, was the first to notice it. He was leaving
Agent M was piloting her flight.thingy on approach to LNH HQ in Netropolis. She was bringing her espionage Squad back home after they had retrieved the Spoon of Destiny from a museum in Italy. (See LNH20 Comics Presents #10.) "Okay, everybody," she said. "Seat belts on. We're on approach to
An empty stage, lit from above. From the wings steps a man. The main is of an ambiguous age, impossible to tell if he's twenty or thirty, and would probably look even younger if he shaved the goatee and moustache. Though his glasses are transparent, his eyes are forever in shadow. He wears a faux-leather longcoat that has
LNH Comics Presents #15 "Better Late than Never" by Adrian McClure co-plotted with Andrew Perron **** THE LNHQ, THE PRESENT, TO THE EXTENT THAT TIME AND SPACE HAVE ANY MEANING ANYMORE Professor Penumbra walked into the conference room. "Sorry to be so late, something came up at the last minute. I can't leave this city
"The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 16: "You Too Are Mortal""
by Andrew Perron
LNH20 Comics Presents #16 The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 16: "You Too Are Mortal" Chapter 16 in a chaotic add-on cascade By Andrew Perron - Netropolis! Specifically, the neighborhood of New Bundelkhand, founded by Captain Nemo after he was brought forward in time by the Network in 1967,
What Has Gone Before: ... Doc Nostalgia pressed some buttons on his chair; a series of indicators appeared on screen. "Of course! The city is giving off twice as much retcotheric energy as @Lantis's power core! And it's also disrupting time and space! Wait just a minute... where are the LNHers who found Cranium?"
LNH20 Comics Presents #18 The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 18: "Rising Action" Chapter 18 in a chaotic add-on cascade Part of LNH RETURN! By Andrew Perron - Deep within W.H.A.T.E.V.E.R.'s secret headquarters, Andrea watched a room full of lights flash on and off, reels of magnetic tape spinning fu
"You have to turn yourself in now!" said Doc Nostalgia. Fearless Leader said something in response but he didn't hear it. "What was that?" Doc Nostalgia motioned for him to pull down the window, and he did so. "You have to turn yourself in now!" he repeated. He whispered. "I don't want to hurt
Over five years ago, on the somehow still-existing newsgroup called rec.arts.comics.creative, a bunch of people decided to make a new LNH world to celebrate its 20th anniversary, because why not. This spawned a surprisingly elaborate superhero and complex shared universe that never quite died