[LNH2] Generation Zed, The New Class #5

[Martin Phipps]

                                  Generation Zed, The New Class #5

                                    The Mirror Cracked -- Part 1 of 4

2019.  The future.  LNH HQ.  The Peril Room.

  "Now, thrust your hand forward," Ultimate Ninja said as he demonstrated to 
his protegee.  "Do so swiftly enough and forcefully enough and you will 
enter the chest cavity.  Now, twist your hand thusly.  You will be able to 
get a grip around the man's heart.  Thus if you pull your hand out in one 
sudden motion you should be able to rip out the man's heart in the process!  
The heart will continue to beat for a while outside of the man's chest.  It 
is a kind of reflex action.  Of course, there is a certain satisfaction of 
having your victim watch his own heart slowly stop beating."
  "Ew!" Penultimate Ninja complained.  "That is @#$%ing gross!  I don't want 
to get all that @#$%ing blood all over me!"
  "There are cleaner ways to kill an opponent, to be sure," Ultimate Ninja 
confessed, "but as your instructor, it is my duty to teach you all possible 
ways to subdue a foe, including the messy ones!"
  "'Ninj?"
  Ultinmate Ninja heard the voice of a man he hadn't seen for quite some 
time.  It was an old student of his.  "Cheesecake Eater Lad!"
  "Yeah.  I brought my son with me.  I thought maybe you could train him to 
be a ninja."
  "Um... how old is he?"
  "He's only six but--"
  "No.  Absolutely not."
  "He's got natural talent--"
  "That's not the point."
  "You remember his mother, aLLiterative Lass, right?  He inherited all of 
her abilities, including her reflexes and natural fighting skills."
  Ultimate Ninja sighed deeply.  "Ninjas are trained to kill.  I'm not 
willing to teach a six year old how to kill."
  "You trained me."
  "You were an adult!  Besides, you never became a killer."
  "Nor will he!"  Cheesecake Eater Lad grimaced.  "Look.  How about a 
challenge.  aLLiterative Lad versus Penultimate Ninja!  The son of 
aLLiterative Lad versus the son of Ordinary Lady!  My protegee versus 
yours!"
  "_You_ have been training him?"
  "I've tried.  Now I think he deserves training from the best."
  Ultimate Ninja nodded.  "Alright.  Let's see what he can do."
  Penultimate Ninja laughed  "You're joking right?  He's a little kid!"
  "He is very fast," Cheesecake Eater Lad assured him.
  "Isn't this going to be like child abuse though?" Penultimate Ninja asked. 
  "What if he starts crying?  What then?"
  "Just try to subdue him," Ultimate Ninja advised.  "You don't have to hurt 
him."
  "Okay," Penultimate Ninja said, reluctantly.  He approached the little 
boy.  "Don't worry, I know what I am doing!"
  "So do I!" the little boy said as he jumped up in the air, twisted in mid 
air and landed a kick across Penultimate Ninja's face.  Penultimate Ninja 
was thrown back and left wide open to aLLiterative Lad's follow up punches 
to the chest and stomach.  Penultimate Ninja doubled over in pain.  This 
left him wide open to a nerve pinch to the neck which rendered him 
unconscious.
aLLiterative Lass turned to the other two adults in the room and smiled.  
"Did i Do good Daddy?" he asked in a manner that followed his mother's own 
speech patterns.
  "You did indeed!" Cheesecake Eater Lad said.  He turned to Ultimate Ninja. 
  "What do you say?"
  Ultimate Ninja put his arm around his old friend.  "Well, it's like 
this..."
  "Yes?"
  Ultimate Ninja gave Cheesecake Eater Lad a quick karate chop to the back 
of the neck of such force that Cheesecake Eater Lad was knocked unconscious.

Two hours later, in the med lab...

  "Ow!" Cheesecake Eater Lad said as he regained consciousness and saw 
Ultimate Ninja standing over him.  "What was that for?"
  "That was for you allowing YOUR protegee to defeat MINE in combat.  I lost 
face."
  "Are you okay, dad?" Cheesecake Eater Lass asked her father.
  "Lilith?  Why aren't you studying?"
  "Doctor Stomper is taking us on a tour of LNH HQ.  (She means Doctor 
_Johnny_ Stomper --Footnote Woman)  My classmates are all here with me!"
  "May I meet them?" Cheesecake Eater Lad asked, sitting up in his bed.
  "Sure.  This is Blackbird.  He's the son of Luke Jones.  Do you remember 
Luke Jones?"
  "Barely."
  "SoWhat is his cousin.  She's the daughter of Emily Jones."
  "She's just a little girl!"
  "I'm not a little girl!" SoWhat said.  "I am nine years old already."
  "Sorry!"
  "Analysis here is the son of Out-Of-It Lass."
  "Out-Of-It Lass?"
  "One of the Misfits," Analysis told him.
  "Ah yes.  I remember now."
  "And the others are Blur, Whining Girl and Token Boy."
  "It's nice to meet all of you," Cheesecake Eater Lad said.  "So, about 
aLLiterative Lad...?"
  Ultimate Ninja nodded.  "Alright.  I'll train him."
  "Really?" Cheesecake Eater Lass asked.  "My little brother is going to be 
trained by the Ultimate  Ninja?!"
  "Lilith!"
  "I have to go!  Doctor Stomper wants us to keep moving!"

  "Alright everybody!" Doctor Johnny Stomper said, "Here's the time 
portation room.  Ah!  Lilith!  Nice of you to join us!"
  "Sorry!"
  "The time portation device can be used to travel to other time periods.  
We can also use it to observe the past without actually travelling to the 
past."
  "What about observing the future?" Analysis asked.
  "We can't observe the future because the future hasn't happened yet."
  "But if we travel into the past then we are from the future as far as 
people in the past are concerned.  How can this be if the future hasn't 
happened."
  "The future hasn't happened to them but it has happened for us."  Johnny 
Stomper smiled.  "Trust me.  Quantum chronodynamics is a new field of study 
but the basic laws governing time are well understood even if we haven't 
quite figured out why things work the way they do."
  "What about alternative time lines?" Cheesecake Eater Lass asked.
  "Ah yes," Johnny Stomper said with a smile.  "They would appear to be a 
product of the fictional nature of the Looniverse.  Otherwise it seems 
unlikely that there would be Looniverses like our own but with slight 
differences.  I mean, if you go back to the big bang then what would be the 
chances of a Looniverse one day arising with people anything like us, let 
alone duplicates of everyone of us?"
  "What I mean is can we observe alternative time lines using the time 
portation device?  And can we use it to travel to other time lines?"
  "Yes and no," Johnny Stomper said in all seriousness.  "Yes we can observe 
other time lines but we wouldn't want to do so for fear of disrupting the 
barriers between Looniverses!  God forbid that anything that we observe in 
some apocalyptic alternate reality should find its way into our Looniverse 
and pose a threat to our citizens!"
  "But why would alternative time lines necessarily be apocalyptic?"
  "Because that is the way that they usually are!  It is a standard rule of 
superhero fiction that the reality that we all know and love is the best 
possible outcome and that all Elsewhirls are realities in which the people 
whom we hold most dear are all dead.  Even in realities where the people we 
love survive it is at the expense of something else!  They are all 
considered interesting places to visit but not places you would want to 
live; otherwise the Looniverse might be subject to a reboot in favour of 
another reality!"
  "So have you actually observed other time lines?  Have you tried visiting 
them?"
  "No."
  "Then--?"
  "As I said, it's too dangerous!  Now, please, I don't want to hear any 
more about travelling to alternative time lines!  Please!"  Johnny Stomper 
waited until he was sure there would be no further questions on the topic.  
"Good.  Now watch as I activate the machine and use it to observe the early 
Net.tropolis!"

  Net.ropolis Academy, founded in 1823, was built in what was then the 
outskirts of old Net.ropolis to serve as a boarding school for the city 
elite. In 2019, the school served as an adjunct to LNH HQ: it was where the 
Legion trained its young protegees.
  Currently only eight students were being housed at Net.ropolis Academy, 
Blackbird, Analysis, SoWhat, Blur, Cheesecake Eater Lass, Whining Girl, 
Token Boy and, now, aLLiterative Lad, the school's youngest student ever.  
In the old days, male and female students occupied separate dorms on campus 
and this tradition holds true to this day.  Thus, while Blackbird, Analysis, 
Token Boy and aLLiterative Lad were staying in one dorm, SoWhat, Blur, 
Cheesecake Eater Lass and Whining Girl stayed in the other dorm.  This was 
convenient for the girls because, on a night when most of them couldn't 
sleep, they would have someone to talk to.
  This was one of those nights.
  "I don't know why we don't just use the time portation device to look into 
the future and then use what we know of the future to make a killing a stock 
market, for example," Cheesecake Eater Lass said.
  "You heard Doctor Stomper," SoWhat said.  "Time travel doesn't work that 
way."
  "Besides," Whining Girl said, "we don't need a time portation device.  I 
can see all your futures."
  "Really?" SoWhat asked.  "What do you see?"
  "You are all going to die horrible deaths!"
  Cheesecake Eater Lass shook her head.  "Don't listen to her!  She's always 
saying that!"
  "You say that now!" Whining Girl scoffed.  "But when you're all dead, who 
is going to be around to tell me I was right?"
  "Anyway," Cheesecake Eater Lass said, "I wish we could just go to LNH HQ 
and log into the time portation device and use it to observe the past, the 
future, alternative time lines, whatever we want!"
  "Why don't we then?" SoWhat asked.
  "Because even if they let us into LNH HQ, we can't log onto the machine."
  "Well, hey, isn't your father the great Cheesecake Eater Lad?  I am sure 
they would let you in and out of LNH HQ.  It's not like you would be 
considered a security threat.  And as for logging on to the machine, well, 
it's only a matter of knowing the password."
  "But that's just it: we don't know the password."
  "You don't."
  "You mean you _do_?  How?"
  "It's only a matter of watching him while he types it in," SoWhat said.  
"People think because I'm only nine years old that I can't see them."  She 
shrugged her shoulders.
  "Fine.  Give me the password."
  "No.  If you're really going to do this then I am coming with you!"
  "Alright.  Whining Girl, what about you?"
  "Sure," Whining Girl said.  "That way when you're on the floor dying 
because something went horribly wrong I can be there to say 'I told you 
so!'"

NEXT: The girls access the machine!

Blackbird, Analysis, SoWhat and Blur created by Lalo Martins.  Permission 
was granted for me to use them for another project.  Copy of this being sent 
to Lalo Martins just in case.

Ultimate Ninja created by Ray "wReam" Bingham.

Johnny Stomper created by Josh Geurink.

Cheesecake Eater Lass, Whining Girl, Token Boy, aLLiterative Lass and 
Penultimate Ninja created by me.

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