LNH/LNH2/LNH20: Just Another Multi-Writer Cascade That Will Probably Never Have an Ending #11

[Andrew Perron]

The moment you've all been waiting for...

                     JUST ANOTHER MULTI-WRITER CASCADE
                  THAT WILL PROBABLY NEVER HAVE AN ENDING
                            ISSUE NUMBA ELEVEN
                           "Do The Rifty Thing"
                             by Andrew Perron
========================================================================
The top of the cover is covered by a huge, garish "LNH RETURN!" banner.
Masterplan Lad, Foreshadowing Lad, Mashup Laq and the Saviors of the Net
are standing in a room, looking at a brightly-lit doorway in which
stands a fearful silhouette, holding something that is almost, but not
quite, a spoon...
========================================================================

The corridor outside room 58008 in the dormitories of the LNHQ was
getting crowded.

Masterplan Lad was kneeling in front of the door, trying to open it with
his Plot Device, to no avail. Irony Monger watched, calculating
possibilities on what could be done next to complete the Saviors of the
Net's mission. After MPL had shown up, Penultimate Savior, Kid Remender,
Occultism Lord, and Continuity's Champion had run up behind, followed
shortly by Non-Judgmental Agnostic, Mashup Laq and Pliable Lad, with
Foreshadowing Lad, pushing the bed that Killswitch was laying on,
bringing up the rear.

"Drat," said Masterplan Lad as the doorknob popped and fizzed but failed
to turn. He stood up and turned to the Saviors of the Net. "This is your
fault, you realize. If you hadn't been so quick to go for Plan Ends
Justify The Means, a dangerous child wouldn't be locked up in there with
the most powerful destructive force in the galaxy."

"Actually," said Non-Judgmental Agnostic, "now that the Insanity Gems
have been neutralized, the most powerful destructive force in the galaxy
is Kubrik's Kube."

"Yes, yes, whatever!"

"Nonsense," said the Penultimate Savior, stepping forward. "This
situation couldn't have been foreseen, and there was-- there *is* no
other way--"

"Oh, yes," said Masterplan Lad, rolling his eyes. "This problem is
entirely predictable and has only one possible solution, but *also*
includes variables that could not have been foreseen beforehand."

"Cut the bullshit, man!" Kid Remender sneered, getting up in MPL's face.
"You're not willing to do what it *takes*!"

"Oh, I most certainly am!" said MPL, raising his Plot Device.

"HEY!" There was a flash of light, and everyone turned to look. There,
radiant in the hallway, stood a golden, shining armored figure-- wearing
Mashup Laq's labcoat. At the ends of its arms were big, blocky Mega Man-
style energy blasters. "These are Canon Cannons, created through the
combination of Continuity's Champion and Irony Monger's powers - sorry,
guys. They have the ability to freeze all of you by fixing you totally
in continuity, and I *will* use them unless we sit down and talk this
out like reasonable adults!"

Irony Monger had felt the touch on his hyper-sensing robotic arm, but
had dismissed it as the kind of random motion organics were constantly
making. Fascinating. "Our mission is urgent; I don't think we have
time--"

"We'll waste *more* time fighting each other and working at cross-
purposes!" Mashup Laq was breathing hard behind the golden faceplate. "I
joined the LNH because it was an organization of heroes - of people who
rejected binary choices, who could always find another, better way! If
that's not true anymore, I might as well go see if Teenfactor is
hiring!"

The Saviors looked away in shame, and Masterplan Lad rubbed the back of
his head. "Yes, well. That's, um, that's what I was trying to say."

"Didn't the LNH used to be less intense than this?" whispered
Foreshadowing Lad to Pliable Lad.

"I dunno, my series was always pretty dramatic," whispered PL. "Less
people from the future, though."

Penultimate Savior shook his head. "But... you don't *get* it. In our
timeline, the LNH tried everything, *everything*, and it didn't save
them. And I'd rather lose Earth - lose my home, my parents, and
everything I've ever known - than let this destroy the universe."

"But..." Non-Judgmental Agnostic stepped gingerly into the conversation.
"This isn't your timeline, though. Or it isn't *just* your timeline.
Don't you see? You're one possible outcome of this, and I'm another."

"One possible future..." said Foreshadowing Lad, way in the back. "You
guys..."

"That's right, possible outcomes..." said Masterplan Lad, stroking his
chin. "This is Looniverse-A, the 'main' timeline - of the Classic LNH,
anyway. It's being torn apart by its greatest strengths, the fact that
you can do anything..."

"Guys," said FL, hopping up and down.

"But that's the thing," said Continuity's Champion. "How can we fix such
a problem without cutting off the ability to do anything?"

"GUYS LISTEN!" shouted FL. Everyone turned to look, and he shrank back a
bit. "Uhhh... Oh! I think I remember what I was supposed to tell
everybody!"

For a second, he just stood there. Then Mashup Laq waved their cannons
encouragingly and said, "Go on..."

"Oh! Right. It's about the future! My foreshadowing powers - which
apparently are a thing I have - let me..." He frowned and scratched his
head. "They let me sense that the future is... always... inspired by the
past? Wait, that's dumb, maybe I was thinking of something else..."

"...of *course*!" said Masterplan Lad, smacking himself in the forehead.
"I'm an idiot! *Inspiration*! Chaos Theory all but gave me an
instruction manual!" He started running down the corridor. The others
looked at each other and ran after him, Foreshadowing Lad pushing
Killswitch's bed again.

"You see," he said, "I have it from a reliable source that the only way
to close these rifts is to generate enough inspiration particles to get
the Writers to finish their stories. And what inspires you to finish
*your* story? How about a big, ambitious, fun story that managed to
overcome all obstacles and finish - Beige Midnight!"

"A reasonable hypothesis," said Occultism Lord. "But Beige Midnight has
already been published - shouldn't it be inspiring people already?"

Masterplan Lad waved his hand in a kind of 'ehh' gesture. "Artistic
types get discouraged easily. We need to give them a kick." He stopped
in front of the door to the Plot Device Room. "In here is a chunk of
pure Beige Midnight Story, created as a side-effect of Kid Not Appearing
In Any Retcon Hour Story becoming Kid Not Appearing In Any Beige
Midnight Story back in 58.5. If I'm right, when we drop it into a rift,
it'll disrupt it and release enough inspiration to get *something*
posted."

"Sounds easy - a little *too* easy," grumped Kid Remender.

"Honestly, I think we've accumulated enough plot coupons by this point
to get a break." MPL threw open the door - and revealed the glowing,
crackling energy of a rift!

"...mind you, I might be wrong."

                 --^v^v^v----^v^v^v^v^v^----v^v^v^--

Confusion reigned at the used book arcade. After Merissa had
disappeared, her goth minions had reverted to normal girls, confused,
panicking. The Legion of Young.Heroes were trying to calm them down,
Manga Girl was calling out for Victoria, the Addams Family pinball game
had scored a multiball, everything was chaos.

"Okay, quiet, QUIET!" Agent Susan Susannah of the LNH-Readers-Who-Are-
Sick-To-Death-With-These-Damn-Neverending-Events-Liberation Front fired
her Mostly-Nonlethal-BIGGUN in the air. Everyone turned to look.

"Now," she said, at the center of attention. "We are just going to get
this damn cascade *over with* so we can all just go home!"

Murmur murmur murmur. "Well," murmured Lacuna of the LYH, "it *would* be
nice to make sure the Looniverse was safe."

"Okay, so how y'gonna do it?" asked Manga Girl.

Agent Susannah stepped forward. She took a deep breath and faced the
fourth wall. "Well!" she said. "That was certainly an exciting way to
end a cascade! It sure was amazing when fairies came by and closed all
the rifts with magic and everybody went home!"

Lacuna put her head in her hands. "Never mind."

"And the part where the Living Moderator came by and personally
apologized and told everyone that the endings to all those stories were
going to be posted soon was the best!"

Manga Girl put a hand on her shoulder, gently. "I don't think--"

Agent Susannah waved her off. "But it's too bad that all of the people
from the alternate futures had to go home forever and stop bothering us
already--"

"Okay, that's it!" The Green Knight picked up Agent Susannah, kicked
open the already kicked-open door, and bodily tossed her out with a
Wilhelm scream. They dusted their hands off, closed the door, and turned
around. "All of you who want to get out of the subplots and actually
have an effect on the main story, raise your hand!"

The hands of Manga Girl, the Legion of Young.Heroes, several former
minions and a few random arcade patrons rose.

"Then follow me!" GK raised one green metal fist in the air. "Lacuna,
get whatever information you wanted from that rift. Then we're heading
to the LNHQ!"

                 --^v^v^v----^v^v^v^v^v^----v^v^v^--

For decades, astrophysicists have theorized that a solar system could
have two planets in the same orbit if they fell into each other's
Lagrangian points - those points where the gravity of the star and the
other planet cancel out. A pair of planets on opposite sides of a sun
would fulfill that equation, and in the home system of the Dorfs, such a
pair exists - Dorfia, the homeworld, and its equal and opposite, Planet
Inferior!

And it was there that the fedora-shaped saucers relentlessly towed the
Argo, and the net.heroes within...

Down into its gravity well. Down, down, through the atmosphere, heedless
of the heat of reentry. Alice Ashdown, AKA the limitless Net.Access,
grimaced. As the Argo was, in a way, her body itself, she felt every
burning degree - even if it the legendary power she tapped kept it from
truly hurting her. She considered trying once again to break away, but
no. Better at this point to follow the plot, and bring the LNH to the
bad guy.

The saucers slowed, slowed, until they came to a great dusty mesa miles
wide. They landed before a bone-white citadel, an enormous statue rising
out of it of an annoyed-looking black-haired woman in a T-shirt and
comfortable pants. A force field snapped into place, enveloping the Argo
in hard light.

The entire active membership of the Classic LNH, plus the members of the
LNH3k and the Legion of Net.Hippies who were visiting this time period,
trooped out of the Argo, in a double-page spread drawn by George Perez
in fabulous detail, down to the individual tongues of flame on Burning
Bra Lass's chest. Net.Access collapsed back down into humanity.

The field only allowed one direction of travel - forward, into the
citadel, through the vaulted door and the shining corridors. Several
LNHers tested their powers on the field, but to no avail; they continued
down the marked-out path.

At the end of their journey was a throne room, but the throne was gone.
In its place was a rift, seething with blue-green energies. A shaft of
light, like the sun through a dusty basement window, shone out of the
rift. The light projected an image into the throne room, the bridge of a
virtual starship. Sitting in the command chair of that bridge was a
hulking purple figure wearing a fedora.

"Ahhhhhh, the Legion!" He stood up and gestured widely. One hand wore a
glove that had several empty gem-shaped holes sewn in it. "I am LAN.os.
Welcome to my humble abode."

Mumbles rose from the crowd. The Ultimate Ninja stepped out, his body
language a bold proclamation of fearlessness. "LAN.os!" He pointed his
Ginsu Katana at the obvious parody. "Why have you brought us here?"

"How kind of you to ask!" He clapped his hands. In the citadel, rows of
plastic chairs appeared. "Sit, sit! It has been a while since I had an
audience."

Net.Access lowered herself uncomfortably into the hard chair.
"Phenomenal cosmic power and can't even spring for something
ergonomic..." she muttered.

"Long ago, I was cast down, unfairly - for no reason at all! By an
insane individual!"

"Yeah, I bet," murmured Burning Bra Lass, who was sitting next to her.
Net.Access snickered.

"Since that awful day, I have been trapped in a faraway plane - THE
FRIEND ZONE! But even to these distant shores, the rifts have spread!
Behold! The Net.dusa Cascade!" The shaft of light projecting out of the
rift widened, showing the great viewing deck of the starship. Outside
the window was a great cosmic formation streaming blue-green light,
backed by the standard nebula that you see in every space shot.

"The rifts?" muttered Ultimate Ninja.

"The rifts!" gasped Captain Pulls-Rabbits-Out-of-Hats.

The image of LAN.os rose from his chair. "And through these rifts, I
have found my salvation - through them leaks the power of the Kubrik's
Kube!"

There it was. Now, they could get on to the part with the actual hero-
ing part, and maybe she could shut off the flow of doubts and angst and
just get on with being awesome.

"But this power is incomplete!" LAN.os, the beams of light that
projected his image twinkling in airborne dust, walked down the rows of
chairs. "To escape this prison, I will need to solve the puzzle of the
Kube and rip my way through the rifts back into reality! But first, I
must enter the Cascade itself!"

Net.Access looked down, thinking hard. Right, standard thing where the
cosmic villain makes some phenomenon threatening reality even worse.
That explained why they were out here, dealing with the villain - the
home team was probably dealing with the phenomenon itself, and they'd
meet up at the end.

Someone put their hand on her shoulder. She waved it off. So all they
had to do was--

Wait a moment. She looked up into LAN.os's face, felt his solid presence
as reality slowly slipped away from her.

"To cross over into the world of the Kube, I will suborn the Keymaster
of the Omnilooniverse - Net.Access!"

                 --^v^v^v----^v^v^v^v^v^----v^v^v^--

Out of the rift stepped a figure - a tall, lean, dangerous figure. He
drew himself up and said, "Ahhhhh, finally! I've returned - and can
claim this cascade for my own!"

The net.heroes took up fighting positions. "What's your evil plan?" said
Pliable Lad.

He chuckled, low and dangerous. "Simple!" He pointed at Killswitch's
unconscious body. "I'll take the Spoon of Destiny! In my hands, it will
become the Spork of Ultimate Darkness! I-- the spork-wielding assassin
from Jesse Willey's Grocery List #11!"

They looked at each other. Then they looked at the assassin. As one,
they cracked their knuckles and advanced.

"Hey, wait, what are you-- hey-- no! NOOOOOoooo..."

A few minutes later, a sealed carboard box addressed to Abu Dhabi
dropped into the LNHQ's mailbox. From inside could be heard a muttering.
"you'll never stop me for good! mumble grumble... i still need to pick
up some milk and eggs..."

Back at the plot device room, the net.heroes were carefully squeezing
around the rift. Mashup Laq had let go of their mashed-up powers in
order to make it through, and Foreshadowing Lad was standing outside,
watching over Killswitch just in case.

"Okay, we need figure out how to send Killswitch back," said the
Penultimate Savior.

"Indeed," said Masterplan Lad, patting PS on the shoulder. "And," he
muttered, leaning in for just a moment, "don't think I haven't noticed
your protectiveness. Good choice, but you'll have to explain sometime
how LNH2 crossed over with LNH20."

PS blushed. "That-- that's not relevant right now."

"As you say."

The net.heroes spread out through the Plot Device Room, looking through
the various knick-knacks and macguffins. Continuity's Champion leafed
through a stack of The Might of Cap'n Quaalude. Non-Judgmental Agnostic
was startled when she picked up a package and a jack-in-the-box (painted
like obscure Decibel Dude & Vigilante Guy villain Bobcat the Clown)
popped out. Irony Monger scanned across various electrofictiomagnetic
frequencies, but wasn't sure what he was looking for.

Pliable Lad frowned at a rack labeled "Glowy Rocks". "Hey, you said it
was Beige Something, right?"

"Beige Midnight, yes," said MPL. "Be sure that it's not Beige Countdown;
the skipped issues make that one less powerful."

"Um... how's about whatever this one is!" PL held up an irregular
crystal that was somehow glowing beige.

"Ah! Perfect." MPL took it, hefting the weighty narration in his hands.

"What now?" said Penultimate Savior, looking skeptically between the
crystal and the rift. "We just kinda chuck it in?"

"Well, we'll want to be careful - the rift may react unpredictably in
the process of closing up. Hmmm..." He peered around the rift.
"Foreshadowing Lad, you'd better lift Killswitch off that bed and bring
him in here."

"Um, I'm not sure that's a good idea. I'm not one of those super-strong
net.heroes. Or those normal-strong net.heroes..."

"Oh, all right, let me help..." MPL squeezed past the rift. The Beige
Midnight Story in his hand glimmered, but didn't react.

"Here, I'll..." Penultimate Savior inched past and took Killswitch's
feet. MPL picked him up by the shoulders, and they heaved.

Non-Judgmental Agnostic heard a small noise, next to her ear. She turned
to see the clown-in-the-box's arm ratcheting back. There was something
in its hand...

With a ker-ching!, the doll tossed a genuine imitation banana peel
across the room, landing right smack under Masterplan Lad's feet. As
N-JA opened her mouth to shout "Look out!", MPL's foot came down on it.
He slipped, eyes wide, falling backwards, dragging Killswitch,
Penultimate Savior, and the chunk of Beige Midnight Story with him
backwards in a slow-motion explosion of blue-green light...

                 --^v^v^v----^v^v^v^v^v^----v^v^v^--

Author's Notes: Masterplan Lad will return in LNH v2 #50! Killswitch
will return in LNH20 Comics Presents #18! But where is Penultimate
Savior? What's happening to Net.Access? And who's going to come out of
Room 58008? Find out in the next issue of Just Another Multi-Writer
Cascade That Will Probably Never Get an Ending!

Planet Inferior is called that because, as seen from Dorfia, it's in an
inferior conjunction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_conjunction#Superior_and_inferior
(And also because, y'know, Dorfs.)

As of now, the floodgates are open; feel free to take this inspirational
opportunity to move forward with never-finished storylines! Let's make
2015 the year that the LNH moves to the next level!

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, LNH RETURN! continues... tomorrow!