LNH: LNH Comics Presents #61: Infinite Leadership Crisis Episode 26
Jessica Ihimaera-Smiler
jaelle at ihug.co.nz
Thu Apr 26 14:16:02 PDT 2007
LNH Comics Presents #61: Infinite Leadership Crisis Episode 26
"Mouse"
by Jaelle
As the sun rose over the city of Net.ropolis on the 26th of April, the
LNH... was mostly asleep, as they tended not to be a bunch of early
risers. Would-be world conquerors take note: take over the place at 5am
in the morning. No one will notice. Or care. At least not until after
the first cup of coffee, by which point you should have had enough time
to consolidate your position.
Anyway, it was therefore not until roughly 8.30am in the morning that
the somewhat diminished LNH assembled once more to wait for Pulls Paper
Out of Hats Lad to announce the name of the latest victim. Er, leader.
"Mouse."
All eyes turned to the sidekick.
Mouse stared right back.
"You have got to be freaking kidding me. I have a bad enough time
managing ONE costumed lunatic, and she's my MOTHER. There is absolutely
no way I am running the whole crazy lot of you!"
Pulls Paper Out of Hats Lad waved the paper at her meaningfully.
"Argh. Yes, yes, I know. The paper has spoken," Mouse put her hand over
her face. "Fine, but I want it made completely clear that I am NOT doing
the accounts. Or anything else involving mathematics. Okay?"
There was general agreement from all assembled.
"Good. So, besides the accounts, the missing leaders, and the usual
day-to-day disasters that we face, are there any other crises going on
that I need to know about?"
"Um... Mouse?" Fred the receptionist stuck his head in the door. "You
have a call from a supervillain about his plan to take over the world."
"... I had to ask."
**
Mouse picked up the phone, a feeling of dread pooling in her stomach.
"Hello?"
"Is it true?" An excited voice replied. "You, Mouse, are now Leader of
the LNH?"
"Yeah. How did you know and who are you?"
"Oh wow, this is so great. Um... right... hang on a second. I'll hang up
and call back and then we'll start over again, okay?"
"What?" Mouse stared at the receiver as the other person hung up, and
punched the off button warily. There had been something horribly
familiar about that voice...
The phone rang again.
Mouse scowled at it and answered. "Hello, Boot City Mortuary. You stab
'em, we slab 'em!"
"Beware my nemesis for I have... what? Damn! Wrong number, sorry!"
"It's you isn't it," Mouse said flatly. "King Konqueror."
"Gah, you tricked me! Curse you!" King Konqueror sputtered (for it was
indeed he). "Can I try again?"
"Sorry, no." This time, Mouse was the one to hang up. "Twit."
The phone rang again.
"Somebody get that!" Mouse yelled, only to discover that most of the
rest of the LNH had wandered off for breakfast, including the
receptionist (having apparently taken her continuing presence at the
desk as an offer to stand in for them). Grumbling, she answered again.
"Yeah, what?"
"Beware my nemesis for I have put together a masterful plan which will
bring your precious LNH to its knees! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"
Mouse rolled her eyes. "If it's such a masterful plan, why are you only
trying it NOW? It's been, what... four, five years since you've done
anything? I thought you'd given up or gone into retirement or something."
"It's not MY fault," King Konqueror's tone was sulky. "Your author
hardly ever puts out issues anymore. I haven't had the chance to show
off my true evil genius! But then I heard you'd gotten promoted to
leader of the LNH, and I knew this was my big chance to make it into the
villainous big leagues! If I take out Mouse, the sidekick, who would
care? But if I bring down the leader of the LNH, that's huge! I could
finally get my picture on the cover of Villains Monthly! It's so unfair!
They've never picked me, but Tsar Chasm is on it every other month and
he's barely even villainous anymore! Who the hell keeps voting for him?"
Mouse blushed somewhat guiltily.
"So the minute I heard, I raced to put together a dastardly plan, the
details of which I shall now reveal to you!" King Konqueror's voice
deepened and took on a speechifying tone. "As I was saying earlier,
beware! For I have unleashed a plague the likes of which no one has ever
seen before. An army of mutated cabbages will soon gallop down the
streets of Net.ropolis and lay waste to all in their path."
"Mutated... cabbages?" Mouse repeated slowly. "THIS is your big evil
plan that you think is going to successfully defeat me? I don't know
whether to be insulted or... no, no, I'm definitely going with insulted."
"What do you expect? I'm on a clock here," KK retorted. "Next time you
make it to the A grade, TELL me first!"
"Okay, look, hang on a moment." Mouse picked up a nearby phonebook and
flipped through it loudly for a few seconds. "Right. Well I have some
bad news. I've just checked in the LNH Leader's Ultimate Guidebook, and
I'm afraid that with a threat rating of only 1.3 on the Claremont scale,
your evil plan is too stupid for me to bother thwarting it. Sorry."
There was a long pause.
"The LNH has... standards?"
"Believe me, I'm as shocked as you are." Mouse replied. "But hey, it's
right here in the Guidebook. My hands are tied."
"Wait! Wait... I can do better! Just give me a couple of hours and some
magical potions and... look, I'll call you back."
"Feel free." Mouse replied, and headed off to the Ultimate Ninja's office.
**
Sometime after lunch, just after Mouse had finished holding a short
meeting with Anal-Retentive Archive Kid, Bibliography Boy, and Browsing
Boy about the search for the former Leaders (these three being the first
names on the excellent list she had found on the desk summarising who
was doing what for the investigation), Fred put through another phone call.
"Yello."
"I'm ready! Do you have that Guidebook with you?"
Mouse made a face and reached around behind her. "Hang on a minute." She
grabbed the first book-like object off the shelf behind her and glanced
at it. "'Marketing Your Name, Honour and Soul for Fun and Profit'. Okay,
so this is either something PR Kid was referring to, or something
Occultism Kid left behind. Either way, I'm not touching it." She put it
back and wedged it shut into a corner with a stray feather duster.
"Thank you, Captain Cleanup." Instead she picked up a slim volume titled
'Latin for the Illiterati' and began to flick through it idly. "Okay,
ready."
"An army of robot duplicates of myself!"
"Hmmm... okay, TECHNICALLY that would qualify..."
"YES!"
"Buuuutttt... I'm afraid we would only be able to send out an army of
robot duplicates of LNH members to fight them," Mouse finished smugly.
"We do actually have one of those on hand at the moment, where would you
like your duplicates to be meeting them?"
"Wait, only duplicates? You wouldn't be coming yourself?"
"Yeah, sorry, but there's this whole union thing," Mouse waved a hand
vaguely. "And trust me, you do not want to have the United Delegation of
Robotic Duplicates mad at you."
"Oh no, no of course not," King Konqueror sounded appropriately humbled.
"Um... I'll call again later."
"Ave et vale!"*
[*"Goodbye and farewell." -- Footnote Girl.]
**
The phone rang again around 9pm, as Mouse had composed the reply to the
last of a wide variety of polite (and some not-so-polite) inquiries for
bill payments from a large number of companies who supplied the LNH with
power, water, internet connections and cheesecake ingredients.
"I'm gonna get you good with this one!" King Konqueror sounded
positively gleeful. "It's my greatest plan yet!"
"Uh huh," Mouse said. "Well, let's hear it then."
"Try THIS on for size! A giant, radioactive tuatara! Beat THAT!"
"Ooooh... sorry, we've already hit our giant reptile quota for the
month," Mouse contemplated her fingernails. "What with breaking up the
fight between Fin Fanfic Foom and Carassion, and then Apocalyptic
Turtles, Tortoises and Terrapins, we're way over the limit."
"Weren't the last three all the same thing?"
"Not according to our leader at the time, and Leader's word goes."
"You can't turn this one down!" King Konqueror's tone became desperate.
"I've already spent the last of my budget on it!"
"Not my problem."
"But, it breathes fire!"
"Big whoop."
"Lives would be in danger!"
"Don't care."
"It's an endangered, indigenous Net.Zealand species!"
"I..." Mouse ground to a halt. "DAMN!"
"WOOHOO! Villain's Monthly cover, here I come!"
**
Two hours later:
"I thought you said that this thing breathed fire," Mouse said, standing
over the comatose giant tuatara.
"Well... it WOULD have breathed fire, if you'd just given it enough time
to soak up solar energy through the panels I installed on its back,"
King Konqueror replied sulkily, as New Look Lass finished tying him up.
"It's not even that gigantic. It's only 2, maybe 2 and a half metres
tall tops!"
"The growth formula was designed for snakes! I wasn't sure how it would
work on tuataras, and I didn't want to kill the poor thing, so I had to
dilute it." KK shifted guiltily. "How IS Mr Spiky doing?"
Mouse closed her eyes. "You NAMED it?"
"It was a team-building exercise!"
Mouse sighed. "Well it looks fine to me, but I'll have it checked out
and sent back to Net.Zealand. There IS a way to reverse everything
you've done to it, right?"
"Oh yes, of course," King Konqueror nodded towards a nearby table. "My
notes are over there, along with the antidotes." He sighed mournfully.
"So here I am, defeated again. Darn it, I really thought this was it! My
big chance to take out the leader of the LNH and become a somebody!"
Mouse rolled her eyes and sat down next to him. "Just out of interest,
how did you know about the whole leadership thing anyway?"
"Oh, I keep you and your mother under surveillance all the time," KK
shrugged. "You ARE my arch-nemeses after all. I meant to do something
when your mother got chosen, but she never picked up her phone when I
called. I even tried text-messaging, but no joy."
Mouse stared at him. "Are you telling me that you've known about the
state of leadership flux at the LNH ALL MONTH???"
"Yeah."
"And..." Mouse continued. "It never occurred to you even ONCE to spread
the word amongst your fellow villains so that you could all team up and
take advantage of this?!"
KK stared at her, a horrified expression spreading over his face.
"You," Mouse began, "are undoubtedly the biggest, DUMBEST, most moronic
excuse for an arch-villain that I have ever..."
And then she was gone.
King Konqueror looked at the empty space where Mouse had been sitting.
"Um, does this mean I win?"
End.
Pull-Paper-Out-Of-Hats Lad created by Arthur Spitzer.
Anal-Retentive Archive Kid and Footnote Girl created by Saxon Brenton.
Bibliography Boy created by Jerry Boyajian.
Browsing Boy created by Ben Rawluk.
PR Kid created by Jamas Enright.
Occultism Kid created by Josh Geurink.
Captain Cleanup created by Maurice Beyke.
New Look Lass created by Charles Fitzgerald.
Tsar Chasm and Fred the receptionist created by Ken Schmidt.
Mouse, King Konqueror created by Jaelle.
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