LNH20: LNH20 Comics Presents #3: The Spoon of Destiny Saga Part 3

[Lalo Martins]

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
floating eyeballs, forests of cobwebs, planet-sized creatures with
millions of tentacles, and last month's leftovers forgotten in the
back of the fridge.

"This is beyond creepy", said one of the net.heroes.

"We'd get there faster if we could just fly", said, not for the first
time, Minority Miss, who was walking first, for the simple reason
that she was the one most likely to survive whatever they happened to
encounter.

"I told you", muttered the mysterious master of mystic matters,
Professor Penumbra. "You have to stick to the path. That's how this
kind of thing works. Otherwise you'll never make it back safely."

"I know. I understood it the first time. Still don't like it."

"No matter", retorted the reluctant ruler of ritualistic rubbish.
"We're there."

And indeed, when the miffed maid of many minorities crossed the next
giant open mouth, she found herself standing in a large, grey plain,
dotted with sinister dead trees of too many angles, a crooked house
looming in the distance.

As the group entered that dimension, Tori, the cybernetic legionnaire
asked,

"But what *is* here exactly?"

Professor Penumbra started to answer, "One of the--"

But the master of the house seemed resolute on answering that one, as
a booming voice came from above, yelling,

"Who dares enter the dread realm of the mighty Rwtn-T'bol?"

The net.heroes all looked up, in time to see a horrible, unspeakable
thing with tentacles (more tentacles than they could count, in fact,
tentacles seemed to appear and merge and split all the time) swoop in
and land in their midst.

"We come from--" Penumbra started, but apparently he was fated not to
end a sentence today.

"Professor Penumbra! I know you! Too often have you foiled my plans,
insignificant bacteria! You shall be squashed like the insect you
are!"

That didn't sit well with one of the net.heroes, who was possibly a
bit obsessive-compulsive: "Insect or bacteria? Which one is it?"

But Rwtn-T'bol wasn't paying attention; he (it?) had decided to
tackle the Professor physically, and was now making a disturbingly
faithful impersonation of a hentai monster, however apparently with
the ultimate goal of inserting Penumbra into its mouth, rather than,
well, the other way around, let's leave it at that.

Apoena (that's Minority Miss if you haven't been reading) leaped into
action; but the Ancient One (that's Rwtn-T'bol if you... you know
what whatever) wouldn't be foiled by ridiculous human concepts like
teamwork.

"No", it said, "I won't be foiled by ridiculous human concepts like
teamwork!" (Didn't I just say that?) "My powers allow me to be in any
sufficiently important place, any local hub of existence--" and as it
spoke, it dragged the dazed defier of deadly dimensions through,
well, a dozen or so deadly dimensions.

.o(I'm not having a great day), Adam (that's the Professor) thought.
.o(Should have had the coffee, heartburn be damned.)

                             .p⁰w⁰q.

What he was referring to, of course, was his breakfast. That's how
this whole thing had started, of course. Having woken up with an
upset stomach (too much Bolognese sauce recently, don't ask), he
arrived at the LNHQ cafeteria, looked around, and decided to go for
the black tea. But he was a purist; no tea bags for Adam Polcien, no
sir! He poured roasted flakes into a blue mug he picked up at random,
then water warmed just right, and just a little bit of cream. Then he
swallowed in one gulp, because he was thirsty, and damn he needed
some caffeine in his system.

He laid the mug down, and made the mistake of glancing inside.

When you're plagued by the supernatural like Adam Polcien is, it
might be better to avoid tea leaves entirely. It will almost
certainly almost be unpleasant.

On the other hand, maybe it's better to be forewarned than, well,
have your arms unexpectedly ripped out and eaten by some horrible
unspeakable creature.

Anyway, reading tea leaves is a complex and subtle art, requiring
years of study, and a knack for symbolism and metaphor.

There was nothing subtle or metaphoric about the image the tea leaves
and cream drew on the bottom of the blue mug. It was quite obviously
the planet Earth being torn apart by the Great Old Ones.

                             .p⁰w⁰q.

As he was dragged by Rwtn-T'bol through a number of places that would
shred the sanity of any normal mortal (but not Professor Penumbra!
His sanity, of course, was already long gone, by most people's
reckoning), he struggled to stay out of the horrible thing's gaping
maw.

Also, its breath was foul.

"For Dikto's sake, Rwtn-T'bol, what have you been eating?"

"Never mind that", said the elder god. "I think it was a planet I had
last week that didn't quite agree with me."

Adam looked around and thought he recognised Fearless Leader, Doc
Nostalgia, and Charisma Lass. .o(Is this the LNHQ master conference
room?) Then it was the LNHQ lobby. .o(Wait, I could use this.) He
focused his thoughts, trying to steer the journey *just that little
bit*.

And then they were in the infirmary. That, oh boy, didn't sit well
with Kindle.

"Hey! No ancient otherwordly evil gods here!", she exclaimed, fuming.
"Some people are allergic, you know? I'm trying to keep this sterile!
Or as close as I can with costumed people coming and going all the
*&%#(@ time!"

"Whu--?", the creature was confused for a moment, as, to be fair,
anyone would be, if you had a large black woman with flaming hair
(literally flaming, that's not just a poetic way of saying she's a
redhead) fuming anger in your direction (also, you know, being
Kindle, literally fuming, as well).

A moment was enough; Professor Penumbra landed a punch right in
Rwtn-T'bol's third-from-the-left thabalafropenemovugonamejistophegus.
(That's an organ that, in most Elder Gods, is located between its
vengeance and its summer house.)

"Ouch", it said. And with the shock, both Rwtn-T'bol and Professor
Penumbra fell down on the ground of the Old One's home dimension.
While it was distracted, the other net.heroes immobilised it by the
tentacles. Well, most of them. Well, some. Well, for some value of
immobilising. A relatively small value.

"Hang on", said Professor Penumbra. "We didn't come to fight. Well,
not necessarily."

"We didn't?", asked Minority Miss, with some surprise.

"What do you want, then?", the many-angled one wished to know.

"Just to ask a few questions. Almost nothing ever happens on the
eldrich planes without you knowing..."

"Of course. Rwtn-T'bol is at every hoop you jump and every
intersection you cross..."

"Whatever. Heard anything about destroying the Earth recently?"

"Destroying? Not so much. As you know, we intend to reclaim it from
you insignificant worms--"

"Now come on", protested the same net.hero who had objected before.
"Worms, bugs, or bacteria?"

"Although I suppose--", the Greater Horror pondered.

"What?", asked the master of mysticism.

"As a matter of fact, at this very moment, the only thing I've heard
about your miserable planet is that some of the Terrible Ones are,
well, I suppose you'd see it as, I guess, helping out."

"Say WHAT?"

"Here's the thing. The Great Betatoth, for whom the future holds no
secrets, although of course he doesn't see it quite as vastly as I
see the present--"

"*Ahem.*"

"well, he has foreseen that one of your, what's the term,
net.villains, was about to come into possession of an artifact of
unspeakable power, which would give such amoeba--"

"Oh COME ON", said that one other net.hero, "now you're doing it on
purpose!"

"-- the possibility of challenging even ourselves. We can't have
that. We'll tolerate almost anything, even each other, to teach their
proper places to revolting rodents such as--"

"WILL YOU FRAKKING STOP IT!"

"Anyway, yes, there's this thing going on. I'm not involved though,
rather busy at the moment. Betatoth spread the news, and we all
yelled your terrible immortal anger, but you know how it is, who can
be bothered to get off their quelitziflozzers and actually do
something, especially when it requires getting our metaphophrobbers
dirty with such a troublesome plane, or interacting with such a
revolting class of--"

"Don't even."

"you get the point. But yes, if the prophecy does end up coming true,
I imagine we'd opt to destroy your world. Well, that might not stop
the one who has the Spoon of Destiny. So I guess we'd have to do it
shortly before that. Or while the flea--"

"That's too votes for insect, at least"

"--is learning to use the artifact. Whatever. Anyway, you'll want to
talk to Gosub-Nogudwhat. She's the one that's doing something about
it. I suppose she's intending to sic her Dork Young on this Ultravac
creature. Nice to have minions, I always say. Handy. Or tentacly, as
the case might be."

"Pawy, in her case", offered Adam.

"'Xactly. Anyways--"

"Gosub-Nogudwhat, eh? That's a bit disturbing."

"Well, she is, to be fair, and coming from me that's something, but
don't tell her--"

"No, I mean, it's disturbing that she's taking an interest. That
means we should expect unusual amounts of monster activity."

"Yeah, but see, the monsters will be on *your* side this time."

"Oh."

"Well, kind of. Up until such time as someone actually gets their
hands on the Spoon. Then all bets are off."

                             .p⁰w⁰q.

Writer's notes:

There you go. It would appear I just managed to write a traditional
heroes-go-interrogate-a-lesser-mook-and-find-out-the-startling-truth
story... with just a bit of a twist. Hope you enjoyed it.

Yes, I did leave the identity of most of the task force unspecified.
Yes, just so you can retroactively insert your preferred characters.
You're welcome.

All characters appearing or referenced in this story are believed to
be general use unless noted otherwise.

Professor Penumbra, Minority Miss, and Tori created by Lalo Martins.

Kindle created by Andrew Perron.

Fearless Leader created by Adrian J. McClure and Dave Van Domelen (or
vice versa).

January Frost/Charisma Lass created by Tom Russel and recreated by a
bunch of us.

Doc Nostalgia created by Adrian J. McClure.

Rwtn-T'bol, Betatoth, Gosub-Nogudwhat and her Dork Young technically
created by Lalo Martins, although well, there was a very limited
amount of creating there.

-- Lalo “having way too much fun with this” Martins