LNH: 58.5 #43 Coming Up With Bad Guys Is Not That Hard

[Lalo Martins]

Twenty days ago, Cannon Fodder and the New Misfits stopped a
Xinerama Brother from imploding the Looniverse.  In the weeks
before that, they dismantled the Crime Empire, the largest
criminal organization their world has ever seen, and *that* was
after repelling an invasion from the Evilverse.

But the work of a net.hero never ends.  The Xinerama Brotherhood
is still out there somewhere, and they will inevitably attack
again (Cannon Fodder went looking for them).  The Ultimate Gnab,
the terrible Evilverse weapon which the Xinerama intended to
use, was stolen by a cloaked figure which we're assuming to be
the Time Crapper, self-proclaimed mortal enemy of the New
Misfits (who went looking for him.)  And, worst of all, Pantra
decided it would be fun to stick around.  OUCH, watch those
claws!

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Who Cares Studios irredeemably presents...
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                             #43

              I Wanna Be Evil,  I Wanna Be Mad
             But More Than That, I Wanna Be Bad

                       by Lalo Martins

http://www.lnhq.info/archives/58.5/

Disclaimer: I didn't revise this issue as many times as I
usually do, due to time constraints (have to leave for a company
trip in a few minutes).  So I apologise if I let any stupid
mistakes slip.

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"Purrrr", made Pantra, rolling on her back on the floor.
Analytic was oblivious to her attempts at being cute, poring
over maps and old pictures.  Comic trope of the day: people with
uncanny perceptive powers are usually unable to notice when
they're the target of someone's, em, "special" attention.  Fan
Boy, however, noticed, and blushed a deep red.

"I'm telling you, there's nothing here", Sammy said.  "We went
over everything multiple times, I'm sure it's a dead end."

"Quite honestly", asked Maggie, "what would the Time Crapper
want with a cabin in the woods in Color.alt.o?  In the middle of
nowhere, with a private lake?"

"A lake with no fish", added Pantra, the sadness on her voice
almost tangible.  "None whatsoever."

"Remember", Green said, "he has a girlfriend now."

"Nah, this is looney", offered Howie.  "How *did* we end up
here, anyway?"

"We had solid evidence...", Blackbird started.

"Solid?", asked Sammy.  "BB, this is about as solid as Duke
Nukem Forever.  And since when did you become the expert in
collecting and analyzing evidence here?"

Bonnie stepped visibly closer to the leader.  "Are you
questioning Blackbird's leadership?"  The boy in black, not
being subject to the trope about amazing perceptive powers,
smiled slightly.  .o(Bonnie and Blackbird, eh?  Interesting.)

"Hell yeah.  I'm sorry, but yeah."  She stepped even closer,
defensively.  But Sammy kept going.  "I've known you for years
and you're my friend, man, but in the last two weeks or so,
you've been acting completely off your game, and driving this
investigation into the ground."  Pantra had stood up, and now
was standing next to Sammy in exactly the same way Bonnie was
with Blackbird.  The sheer ridicule of it dissuaded any other
New Misfits from drawing closer to either one.  "WTF, man?  What
happened to you?"

"A little over two weeks ago?", asked the boy on the other side
of the table, with a thoughtful expression.  "About shortly
after the Xinerama showdown?  Say, April 369th?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Hmm, let's see.  What could have happened then."

The doors and windows to the room all fell open, and the New
Misfits were soon surrounded by a team of teenagers that looked
remarkably like themselves.

"Oh", said Blackbird, "I know.  That's when my team captured the
real Blackbird and I, Deathbird, vice-leader of Acla Fright,
took his place among you.  But off my game?  No way, Meredith.
I was just, you see, leading you guys into a trap."

"Acla Fright?", repeated Maggie.

"What the ~^*#?", hissed Pantra.

They were surrounded by:
 Meredith Samuels      Calculating
 Daniel Hunt           Contraption Boy
 (unpronounceable)     Forbidden Lore
 (artificial Lovecraftian
  horror)              Old Ugly
 Maisie Colbert        Rottweiler Lass
 Blackbird Jones       Deathbird
 Green Delaware        Person for the Evil Treatment of Anything
 Mary Smith            Disdain
 Saytan Black          Runaway Boy
 Billy Martins         Weirdo

"What the ~^*#?", Pantra repeated.

"Oh", said yet another figure, joining the scene; a beautiful,
chestnut-brown-haired girl in a demonic suit.  "Allow me to make
the introductions."

"WTF", said Sammy.  "Kathy?"

Demon Girl smiled at him, not in a nice way.  "Nice to see you,
Meredith.  You look less obnoxious than ours."

"Oh, I get it.  You're us, from the Evilverse, right?"

"Precisely.  See, you were the first to ever defeat our LNH.
The Evilearth went into a downwards spiral after that.  Rather
than moving on with the conquests necessary to fuel our economy,
too many resources were pooled into finding the route back to
your universe.  This led to ruin and collapse..."

"Serves you well", muttered Maggie.  It was no secret she had
lost her parents during the Evilverse rule of Net.ropolis.

"You see, twenty years from now our scientists finally cracked
it, and launched an invasion.  And from what I could tell, they
were probably going to succeed.  But the Acla Fright, one of the
best terror units of our time, decided it wasn't good enough.
We acquired a portal generator, and jumped back in time to
shortly after the LNH's defeat... when we succeed and take over
your world, we can re-open the portal, and hand it to the
Evilverse lords on a silver platter, avoiding two decades of
decadence and suffering!"

"Yeah right", said Pantra, "like $@!= that is happening."

"I imagine you know part of our team well enough.  Deathbird's
story is pretty much identical to Blackbird's; same for me,
Mary, Maisie, Daniel, and Meredith.  Except I'm uncertain how
your Maisie became Pantra, I doubt it was similar to the sordid
story behind our Rottweiler Lass.  And while torturing
Blackbird, he told us your Kathy left you to pursue a more
promising career...  of course, in our world, there *was* no
career more promising than leading a terror unit.

"We're joined by Forbidden Lore, a time tourist from the distant
future, who stole a time machine to visit a time where her
bioengineering skills were less common; Green, who like yours is
the Earth Spirit of another world, in this case one world our
LNH razed clean; he was bound and enslaved by Devil-Worshipping
Black Magic Kid.  Weirdo is the son of our Weirdness Magnet and
Weirdness Girl.  And Runaway Boy, having been raised in hell
after being offered as a payment by his parents (who we suspect
to be Devil-Worshipping Black Magic Kid and Perdition), is very
resistant to pain, and a bit of an escape artist."

"Where is Blackbird?", snarled Bonnie.

"What do you take us for, some Looniverse villains?  We tortured
him for information, then we killed him, obviously."

"Noooooooooo", Bonnie screamed, and threw herself at Demon
Girl's throat.  The vilainess smiled and changed into a demon;
and the fight started.

It's hard to say which was more savage; the fight between the
two Old Uglies, the one between Pantra and Rottweiler Lass, or
the swearing that punctuated the latter.

On the more sane but no less violent side, Howie K. was giving
Runaway Boy a rather scary beating, which the thin, scarred boy
from the Evilverse didn't seem to feel at all.

Weirdo was inside Blur, trying to... well, his powers are
probably too strange to even explain, so let's just say he was
trying to do *something* there.

Smoke Ring Girl had lit a cigarette, and decided to help Bonnie
survive Demon Girl; but Deathbird wouldn't have that, and was
pitting his own darkness constructs against her smoke rings.
Fan Boy was behind her, summoning winds to help the smoke get
where Maggie wanted it, and keep the darkness away.

The two Contraption Boys were going furiously through their
equipment, trying to hack into each other's gear.

Green and Green were face to face, seemingly in deep
concentration, in a fight of wills.  In reality, they had made
telepathic contact and the Acla Fright version had agreed to
just look busy for a while then throw the fight.

Forbidden Lore and Disdain were eating pineapple-flavoured
popcorn with curry prawn ice cream and enjoying the show.

And, of course, Analytic and Calculating were staying back,
studying all opponents, waiting for a weakness.

In all fairness, an unarmed Bandwagon Chick had no chance at all
against the large, armored, spiky demon form chosen by Demon
Girl from her large repertory.  And not for the first time, she
asked herself what the hell she was doing in that group after
all, what could she possibly offer apart from her Mystic
Bandwagon.  But Bonnie was fueled by a rage the likes of which
she had never before known, and the reason for it was drifting
in the edge of her consciousness, obvious enough if she wasn't
adamantly refusing to acknowledge it.  In fact, to say that she
was even thinking at that moment is only partially correct.
Thoughts did pass through her mind, but it was as if she was two
separate entities; one detached, watching the fight from a
distance, in disbelief, and having those thoughts.  The other,
completely out of control, furiously tearing and hacking, and
punching, and kicking, and biting, her only thought one of
revenging the boy she l... she had come to respect so much.

"You can't", she cried, punching Demon Girl with two hands which
were already bloody from all the spikes.  "You can't have killed
him!  You just can't!"

Demon Girl just laughed.  "Of course I can.  It's what we do."

"No", Bonnie insisted, landing a punch on Kathy's eye.

"She's right, you know", came an eerie voice out of nowhere.

"Say what?", asked Deathbird, his back bolting upright, his
constructs losing some resolution.

The whole room, the whole cabin, went darker by a few shades.  A
cold wind blew, dragging white mist that seemed completely out
of place.  Only it didn't now; not anymore.  Now the dark, the
mist, the chill, seemed perfectly in place, perfectly natural,
as if that's how the entire world is all the time, but we refuse
to see it.  New Misfits and Acla Frighters alike were filled
with dread, relived their biggest regrets, and stopped to
question their place in the world.

All except for Bonnie, that is.  For some reason, she felt warm
and calm, and her wounds just didn't have the will to hurt
anymore.  Analytic and Calculating noticed the mist seemed, in
fact, to be billowing out from her body.

"She's right", repeated the voice, as the mist and darkness
coagulated in the middle of the room.  "You can't kill
Blackbird."  The shape of the New Misfits leader gradually
formed there, and he looked Demon Girl in the eye.  It was his
voice, but not quite; it didn't sound human at all.  "At least
not with the crude physical means you attempted.  I am, after
all, not entirely human.  I'm a Wicked, and we don't die
easily.  And I'm tired of being underestimated."

"Brilliant", Demon Girl said, dropping Bonnie, who fell like a
sack of potatoes.  "Let's have a proper fight, then!"

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Starring:
 Maisie Colbert        Pantra                 May B.'s
 Meredith Samuels      Analytic               mine
   ("Sammy")
 Wally Windsor         Fan Boy                mine
 Margo "Maggie" Sumner Smoke Ring Girl        mine
 Green Delaware        Tree-Hugging Kid       mine
 Kiwi Kiwii Kiwi       Howie K.               mine
 Bonnie Chique         Bandwagon Chick        Sue Clark's
 (artificial giant telepathic terrestrial
  trilobite)           Old Ugly               mine
 Blur                  Blur                   mine
 Daniel Hunt           Contraption Boy        mine
 Blackbird Jones       Blackbird              mine

The Wicked Family was created by Ben Rawluk.

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