LNH/HCC12: Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #39
Saxon Brenton
saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
Mon Aug 30 09:57:25 PDT 2010
[LNH/HCC12] Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #39
___ ___________________________
| |-| \
| |-| [] / #39
| | | [] egion of \ 'Hack and Cough'
| | | []__ [] [] [] [] / (Part of High Concept Challenge #12)
| | | [___][ \[]et.[]__[]eroes \
| | | []\ ] [ __ ] / written by and copyright 2010
| |-| [] [] [] [] \ Saxon Brenton
| |-|___________________________/
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|_|
[A Silver Age-style roster of characters in the form of a series of mug
shots in little circles runs down the side of the title page. There is
only one for this issue:]
Roll call for this issue:
o Fuzzy!
This is just one of the super-powered do-gooders who belong to an
organisation that thinks that running around with your underwear on
the outside is acceptable as a fashion statement. They are: the
Legion of Net.Heroes!
@%%%%%%%%%%@
"Ahh, ahh, ahh-CHOO!"
Fuzzy hated being sick.
The problem wasn't that snot got everywhere. I mean, snot *did*
get everywhere - but that was a perfectly ordinary situation that anyone
would have to put up with.
The problem as Fuzzy saw it was that while it may well be that Time
waits for no man, it was definitely the case the Crime waits for no
superhero. There was always a crisis of some sort going, and they *had*
to be dealt with otherwise Bad Things would happen. In this case it
would be that the Injokerz street gang would release a sample on Injoker
venom into the city's water supply.
The net.heroine wiped her nose (fortunately she had the advantage
of usually not needing to wear a mask of any sort) and gazed down at
old water treatment works with a pair of mini binoculars. The building
had been abandoned decades ago when new infrastructure had been created.
But significantly it hadn't been torn down. It was a lot like the
abandoned warehouse district in that regard.
She scanned along each side of the building, looking for signs of
an Injokerz presence. They weren't in their usual haunts, but this was
only one of several thematically appropriate... Wait. There. Guards
with Injokerz gang colours. Which meant suits in wildly different
colours, faces done out in pale makeup, and hair dyed in equally insane
rainbow hues. Right, it was time to deal with them... unambiguously.
Fuzzy moved across the roof to a side that faced away from the
derelict water treatment plant and leapt from the edge of the parapet,
making her way to the ground with a series of acrobatic leaps that would
have made the average parkour enthusiast green with envy. Splash page
montage of her descent: the side of the building is shown in full, and
along the way are inset panels of her grabbing railings and swinging
downwards, using her momentum to somersault between fire stairs and
downpipes, until she lands, crouching on the balls of her feet with one
outstretched to steady herself and the other arm in a defensive
position ready to do battle with any lurking gang members. It looks so
cool that for a moment the reader forgets to ask: now hold up a second,
with her powers of ambiguity how come I can even see her at all?
To which the obvious answer is: her powers are playing up. This is
why she hates being sick.
And so Fuzzy made use of shadows as she quickly headed for the old
treatment works. That stunt had been risky - gymnasting down the side
of a building like that while sick and when any fumble could have meant
serious injury or death. But not to do so was almost as bad. This
world was one of action and drama, and it required constant narrative
impulse. Movement, movement movement! Keep moving, don't stop, don't
let the momentum run down. It was part of the cost of living in a
fictional world that ran on narrative principles.
She arrived at the entrance. Two Injokerz were standing guard.
With a ruthless efficiency she took them down. First a chop to the
solar plexus of one of them, knocking him unconscious. The other
ganger wasn't quite so easy, having quick reactions and taking aim with
a gun. Fuzzy disabled him with a leg sweep, then as he was still
falling grabbed him by the head and rammed his face hard against the
brick of the wall. He fell to the floor, his nose broken and bleeding.
Then she was off again.
Now, in a sensible world - a world running purely on the laws of
physics, and governed by mundane cause and effect - there wouldn't be
a demand for constant heroic endeavours to keep the world on an even
keel. But in a world like that there was also no guarantee of
dramatic last minute saves from disaster.
So, yeah. With the prospect of millions of people being infected
with Injoker venom, and then the resulting deaths either directly from
the venom or indirectly from the chaos caused by mass psychosis? She
needed to take the risk, keep her moves fast and funky, and hope like
blue blazes that the Rule of Cool would make up any shortfalls if she
fumbled because of ill health.
Inside were more guards. She disposed of them as well. There
were also signs of hasty engineering work being done. There were
flickering lights from an arc welder being used downstairs. Down where
the pipes connecting this disused treatment plant to the rest of the
city water supply system were. Pipes, which like this entire building,
should have been fully disconnected and torn down. It didn't make any
sort of economic sense in an urban area where land near the city centre
was at a premium.
But it did make narrative sense: cities with superheroes needed
abandoned buildings for the supervillains to lair in. Or the super-
villain groupies, in the case of the Injokerz.
She snuck further in and down. From the shadows she saw this:
there were four Injokerz standing around, watching someone not dressed
like a gang member, with a welding mask and welder, working on the
pipes. This man paused and raised the mask. One of the Injokerz - Ramon
Yont, Fuzzy recognised, one of the gang leaders but not the overall
Injokerz head - said, "No slacking off, now."
"It's done," replied the engineer, wearily.
"Well now, that's different," Yont drawled, walking over with an
anticipatory glee. "All set and ready to go, then?"
"Yeah. This pipe, straight through to the 42 Avenue junction.
But, look, if you do that you'll kill thousands of people."
"Aw, come on," said Yont in a sing-song voice. "It's just a joke."
he patted the engineer patronisingly on the face. "Can't you take a joke?"
And the engineer began to gasp and choke. Fuzzy's eyes narrowed
and went flinty. Even before the man finished collapsing onto the
floor, dead with his face stretched into a hideous rictus grin, she
knew what was happening. Ring poisoned with concentrated Injoker
venom, with a small poisoned spike that broken the victim's skin when
Yont had patted his face.
Fuzzy picked up a half brick and lobbed it back upstairs, where it
landed with a clatter. The noise attracted the Injokerz' attentions,
but not their immediate suspicion.
Yont called upstairs, "Soup, Parker, we're ready to go down here."
When no reply came Yont yelled again, "You'd better not be goofing off
up there!" Still no reply. Yont nodded to one of the other Injokerz
with him down by the pipes and said, "Go and find those two idiots."
The Injokerz ganger mumbled, "Sure thing, boss," and moved off.
Fuzzy followed him, and with perhaps a little too much relish
thought .oO( 'Vagueness and ambiguity that confound my enemies.' ) before
ambushing and knocking the ganger unconscious as quickly as she could.
So, now she only outnumbered them one to three.
She returned downstairs. She doubted she had much time left to
play around with picking off the gang one at a time. Then, just as she
was about to make her move she was struck with a wracking cough. Damn!
The equivalent of a character in a _Scooby Doo_ cartoon sneezing at just
the moment when it would give away their hiding place to the not-really-
a-monster-but-a-guy-in-a-rubber-mask who was chasing them.
"A net.hero! Get them!" came the predictable cry as she was
suddenly revealed. Two of the remaining Injokerz started shooting at
her. Fuzzy dodged, since she wasn't completely sure that her weakened
powers of ambiguity would be enough to keep them from getting a bead on
her if she stood still. Nevertheless she didn't go to the lengths of
fully ducking behind cover. Past experience and testing when she'd
been sick before suggested that as long as she kept moving then the
people attacking wouldn't be able to target her properly. They'd lag
behind, aiming at where she had been, rather than where should actually
was.
Meanwhile she'd already pulled out her own gun and gotten off some
clear shots that downed one of the two Injokerz, and if anything caused
the other one to panic and fire wild. She closed in on him, weaving
about slightly to keep him from being able to proper aim, then grabbed
a chair and smashed it over his head.
And that left one.
Crap. Now was going to be the tricky bit. Final foe. Big climax.
And again she was hit by a wracking cough, which was exactly the
opening that Yont had been looking for. Fuzzy heard the brokes-no-
nonsense click as Yont primed his gun and took careful aim at Fuzzy - and
she knew, just *knew*, that now that the two of them had reached the big
climax that Yont's aim would not be thrown off no matter how well her
powers of ambiguity were working. If Yont fired that gun, then he would
hit her, and Fuzzy would die.
Time for one last superhero trick.
Fuzzy coughed again. She didn't bother to try to cover her mouth,
not while she was keeping her hands out in the open where he could see
them.
"Feeling a bit under the weather, hey hero?" taunted Yont.
Fuzzy grinned. "I've had the flu all week, I feel like hell, but
I've still more than tough enough to take you down, Yont." She coughed
again.
"Big talk for someone hacking their guts up," smirked Yont. "Now
I think it's time for you to take a dirt nap so I can get on with the
big picture of making the whole of Net.ropolis smile."
Cough. "By dumping Injoker venom into the water supply."
"You got it sister."
"Thousands of people will die if you do that."
"But they'll die with smiles on their faces."
"I don't think you're going to do that."
"And who's going to stop me? You?"
Cough. "Oh yeah. Me and my flu germs." Cough. "I've been busy
breathing all over you."
Yont sneered with a you-do-you-think-you're-trying-to-kid? look
and fired. But it was too late. His vision was starting to go blurry
and his aim was off, and Fuzzy didn't even need to dodge. (Although
she did, after she heard the retort of the gun, because even though she
knew intellectually that her plan was sound most people's reaction to
gunfire was to flinch and duck.)
She punched him in the face and sent him sprawling. The gun fell
from his hand and he scrabbled to reach it, but she simply stamped
down on his wrist.
"You see Yont," she said in a conversational tone of voice,
"Superhumans tend to have superhuman constitutions. We're usually
resistant to disease except as plot point. But when we do catch
something, anything strong enough to make us sick is going to work
even faster and harder on a non-super."
Yont's eyes were wide with adrenaline rush and frustration at
having been beaten. "You bitch! You went and deliberately got me sick.
I oughta sue!"
"Tell it to the marines," said Fuzzy as she reached for her LNH
comm.thingy. "You've done more than enough damage for one evening."
==========
Character credits:
Fuzzy created by Connie Hirsch.
Authorâs notes:
Written for the 12th high Concept Challenge: under the weather.
I dithered while deciding on exactly what story to write for this.
This story starring Fuzzy is basically one of my fourth wall breaking
examinations of how genre mechanics work. Partly because it's in an
established superhero setting and mainly because it's in a style I find
fun it was quick and easy to write once I actually started.
The other story examined the idea of people developing powers after
getting sick, along the lines of the Wild Card virus from the _Wild Card_
series of mosaic novels. It would have been set in Moscow and featured
the choking smoke from the summer fires killing people (just like current
real life events) being used as a plague vector by a necromancer to raise
an army of undead but also causing some Russians to develop superpowers
as an antibody reaction to the necrotic plague. Unfortunately that story
would have required more time and effort to write in order to do it justice.
-----
Saxon Brenton University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex
world of jet-powered apes and time-travel." - Superman, JLA Classified #3
More information about the racc
mailing list