LNHY: Looniverse Y #13: 1st Fit

[Adrian J. McClure]

"Hold it!" said Pister Y. Maprika III, the world's richest man, clad in his newly built armor in the shape of a can of No-Duh Soda. ("No-Duh! I'ts a soda!") "You're not getting away with this, Dr. Frankencorn!"

"Bah!" said the three-foot ear of corn mounted on a cornstalk, with electrodes bolted into its "neck," shaking its leaf-fists. "You will never defeat the my mighty inventions!" The hulking cornstalks marched off toward the billionaire net.hero. "My 'stalkers' will rip you in half! And then the world will be mine, thanks to the power of my delicious mind-controlling popcorn!"

"I don't think so!" said Exclamation!Master!, pointing at the sky as he and his sidekick struggled with the "stalker." "Once we've exposed your treacherous schemes no one will--Kid Kicked-Out?"

"I'm sorry!" said Kid Kicked Out, as he gobbled down the popcorn. "It's just too delicious! I--Hate! Kill! Destroy! Rrrarrrrgh!" His eyes had turned into spinning wheels. He then tried to grab Exclamation!Master! by the throat, and the two net.heroes found themselves locked in a life-or-death struggle.

"I won’t stand for this!" said Pister Y. Maprika III. "I'm going to stop you!" He thrust out his arms and opened his palms. The gauntlets for his rec.pulsor rays began to glow. He stood in his impressive dramatic pose for about a minute.

"Well?" said Dr. Frankencorn, tapping his feet.

"Ah," said Pister Y. Maprika III. "Ah, that's the red button, right? They said it was the red button..."

"Give me a minute, dear, I'll take care of this," said Trophy Wife.

"Trophy Wife!" said Pister Y. Maprika III, "you take care of this!"

Putting on her best seductive manner, she wriggled her gold-plated posterior. The brain-slaves--who, thankfully, were all straight men--turned their heads and their eyes started spinning in the other direction. Trophy Wife snapped her fingers. "Get rid of them."

"Yes, mistress!" said all the brain-slaves, charging on Dr. Frankencorn at once.

"See!" said Exclamation!Master! "The power of your popcorn is nothing compared to the metallic maiden of might!"

"Maiden," said Trophy Wife. "Heh."

"Ah. Well," said Exclamation!Master!, blushing. "Sometimes one must sacrifice accuracy for alliteration!"

"Bah!" he said. "I will face you gaudily-colored fools in battle again, and this time I shall be prepared!" With that he vanished in a shower of popcorn, as his "stalkers" fell to the ground dead.

"Excellent!" said Pister Y. Maprika III, "Another victory for the LNH!"

"Which you had nothing to do with!" said Kid Kicked-Out, brushing dirt off his shirt. "You just sat around giving us orders to do stuff we were already doing!"

"Well..." said PIster Y. Maprika III, "I provide the vision!"

"Forget it!" said Kid Kicked-Out. "I'm out of here. I quit."

"I thought you weren't even part of the team anymore," said Trophy Wife. "I don't know what you're even doing here."

"Well... I double quit!"

"Oh," said Exclamation!Master!, "for the record, Trophy Wife's rump is not hypnotic in and of itself! It merely had a powerful influence on the unfortunate victims of the zombifying popcorn who had already been rendered susceptible!"

"Uh, who are you talking to," said Kid Kicked-Out.

"Anyone who might be listening!"

"Whatever, I'm out of here," said Kid Kicked-Out.

The rest of the LNHY headed off into the Legioncarrier, a rocket whose midsection was shaped like a can of No-Duh. ("No-Duh! It's a soda!") "Dear," said Trophy Wife, "don't you think you're going a little bit overboard on the branding."

"Nonsense!" said Pister Y. Maprika III. "Branding is very important. No-Duh is a trusted and powerful brand brand, a touchstone of American culture! We're going to use that to build this "Legion of Net.Heroes" up into something that really matters!"

"That's funny," said Kid Kicked-Out, "because from where I'm standing, it looks like it's mostly about you."

"Didn't you just double quit?" snarled Pister Y. Maprika III.

"I triple quit!" Kid Kicked-Out grumbled off into the distance.

"Yay!" said Exclamation!Missy!, cheerful as ever. "Another victory for the LNH!!! Let's go celebrate!!!"

"You're not a member of the team, Exclamation!Missy! You can't ride in the Legioncruiser. It's against our constitution. Section 7 paragraph 6..."

"Are you certain?!" said Exclamation!Master! "I don't see the harm in that!"

"Dear," said Trophy Wife, patting him on the head, "she's just a kid. There isn't any harm done."

"I... No, I won't have it." He stamped his feet. "You see, the amount of fuel the Legioncruiser uses has to be carefully calculated, and we can’t allow even the slightest deviation or else we'll go crashing into the sun!"

"We're not in space," said Trophy Wife. But Exclamation!Missy! had already left in tears, pedaling away on her Exclamation!Cycle! Pister Y. Maprika III stepped into the Legioncruiser and Exclamation!Master! woefully followed him.

****

It was getting close to midnight. Kid Kicked-Out was slumped at the bar, empty glasses surrounding him. He hadn't felt this bad, since... well, since he was kicked out of the army that one time. Back when he was fighting the Nazis, or maybe it was the Goths? Everything in his life between the time he left home and the time he became a cape was kind of a blur. (It was funny how prevalent that term was even though practically no one actually wore a cape.)

"I can't believe it," he said. "Kicked out again."

"Well," said the bartender, wiping the vomit off the bar, "your name is Kid Kicked-Out."

"I know, but... I thought it was going to be different this time!" He shook his fist at no one in particular, then collapsed back down into despair. "I mean... It's always been this way. Ever since my grandpa kicked me out all those years ago. See... I was born in a really messed up family. My granddad kicked my parents out of his home because they wouldn’t follow his rules but he kept on micromanaging every aspect of their lives. And then there was my brother. Everyone loved him, the disgusting little jerk. Including my granddad, and he hated everyone. He was the only one who could live up to his standards. Every time we got together to give him a gift, he looked down on my gifts and he loved my brothers. And then one day we got into a fight, and... and..." He gripped his hands around something in midair, then brought them down, as if bashing someone’s head in.

"And my granddad wasn't very happy about that, and he kicked me out. And ever since then I've been kicked out of everything. I've been kicked out of just about every army in the history of the world. I've been exiled from every nation. I've been kicked out of Heaven and Hell, and then I couldn't die again. People have tried to kill me again and again--I've been shot, hanged, stabbed--I was crucified twice! Everyone thinks that other guy was so great but he was only crucified once! And it didn't do any good. I can't do anything right. I can't even die!" He yanked a chainsaw that was lying around from when some bikers had gotten into a fight, revved it up, and tried to cut off his own head. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” He started screaming in pain, but that didn’t deter him from continuing to attempt to decapitate himself.

Everyone else in the bar stood dumbfounded at this, except for the bartender, who had had net.heroes and villains in before and was used to this kind of behavior now. He waited until Kid Kicked-Out had fully demonstrated the futility of his course of action and dropped the chainsaw on the floor, collapsing into a sobbing heap. "Ah, I think you've had enough to drink," he said. "Do you want a soda?"

"It doesn't come from the Vending Machine of All Evil, does it?"

"Nope."

"OK, so what have you got?"

"Here. It's on the house," said the bartender, handing him a can of No-Duh.

Kid Kicked-Out's face contorted into a mask of rage. He screamed a horrible scream and threw the soda can at the mirror, shattering it to pieces, then started throwing around chairs, bottles, and tables all over the place as everyone else stared dumbfoudned. It wasn't long before the bartender picked him up and summarily ejected him into the street.

"Well, so much for that," sighed Kid Kicked-Out, brushing the broken glass off his uniform.

"Kid Kicked-Out?! Are you OK?!!!" said Exclamation Missy. She grimaced, as he had not washed his uniform or taken a shower in several weeks, not having access to the resources of the LNHQ.

"Wh-what the heck are you doing here?" He blinked to make sure he wasn't hallucinating, having drunk a fair amount of beer. Thankfully, his immunity to harm didn’t keep him from getting drunk.

"I wanted to make sure you were OK!!!" She smiled at him. He couldn’t help but feel a little better--no one ever smiled at him--even if that smile was a bit unnervingly cheerful.

"Uh... thanks. But I don't see why. You never liked me, and I'm not even your teammate."

"Sure you are!!! I don't care what that guy says!!!"

"I... hey. Wait a minute. That gives me an idea."

She looked alarmed. "It isn't anything dirty, is it?!!?"

"Uh... no, no it isn't. I mean, what if we formed our own net.hero team. The Legion of Substitute Net.Heroes! Or something. We don't have to give a crap about that Maprkia guy or the Member Detector or any of their stupid rules. And.. I'll get kicked out, except... Yeah. We'll write it into our constitution that I can't get kicked out. But that's our only rule. Like, we can have as many characters from the same author as we want. We can contact everyone who ever got rejected from the LNH for whatever reason."

"Ooooh! That sounds great!!!" Exclamation!Missy! hugged him enthusiastically. It felt nice. It was the first time he'd ever been hugged since... well since he could remember. Suddenly he was wondering whether he should go ahead with this. She was such a sweet kid, even if she had a really annoying voice. Would it be right for him to drag her into this mess? Was this a good idea?

Well, Kid Kicked-Out had never had a good idea in his entire life, and he'd never let that stop him before.