[LNH/ACRA/WRIMO] Anal-Retentive Archive Kid: A Judicious Use Of Overkill #3
Saxon Brenton
saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
Sun Nov 7 17:18:38 PST 2010
Anal-Retentive Archive Kid: A Judicious Use Of Overkill - part 3
A Legion of Net.Heroes miniseries for the RaccoWriMo writing month
Written by and copyright 2010 Saxon Brenton
Last issue: Wendle Johnson used an emergency recall teleport to jump
back to the LNH-HQ. It was either that get shot it the head, which would
have seriously messed up the day of anyone who didn't have high-end
regeneration abilities or out-and-out invulnerability.
Now read on:
There was nobody about for him to call on for help.
Which was ridiculous. The Legion had literally hundreds of members.
What, was there another teamup crossover fate-of-the-freaking-universe-
hanging-in-the-balance Event going on somewhere?
There was no one in the Peril Room. Nor was there anyone at the
reception desk: Fred had left a sign 'back in ten minutes'. The
cafeteria and rec.room were empty as well. He had a hard time imagining
that Super-Apathy Lad was anywhere other than sitting around in the
building doing nothing, but he had no idea where and was also under no
illusion that Super-Apathy Lad would bother to answer his comm.thingy if
Wendle called him. In the end he called the computer labs to talk with
Multi-Tasking Man, or Renegade Programmer, or someone, and managed to get
in contact with W.I.L.B.U.R. - the Wildly improbable LISP Based Urbane
Robot who acted as the Legion's major-domo.
"W.I.L.B.U.R.! Great!" Wendle said with relief from finally getting
ahold of someone. The empty LNH-HQ building had been starting to feel
like the set of some creepy after-the-end movie. "Listen, where's
everybody gotten off to?"
"All Legionnaires are currently listed as occupied, sir," said
W.I.L.B.U.R. "Cheesecake-Eater Lad is fighting a fire in Burbank.
Decibel Dude is..."
"Okay, okay, that's cool," said Wendle. His adrenaline rush was
fading. Nevertheless, he still wasn't thrilled by the idea of
W.I.L.B.U.R. taking the time to itemise the whereabouts and activities
of every single LNH member. "Uh, I've got a bit of a situation. A
home invasion - maybe a robbery, maybe a kidnapping. Armed gangsters,
tentatively ID'd as Yakuza," he said, and then rattled off the details
of where and when and who.
"I can reprioritise the workload of one or more of the net.heroes,"
suggested W.I.L.B.U.R. "Even so, it will take at least fifteen minutes
for anyone to respond, sir. Possibly more."
And they would probably be diverted from another task that was just
as urgent, thought Wendle.
Blast. So, he was the only person available - and it would be
insane for him to try and deal with it himself. There were lots of
costumed heroes that could take on an army of mooks and triumph against
the odds. But guess what? Bitter experience had shown that Wendle
wasn't one of them. Better to just let the cops deal with it.
A pity. This was just one more thing on top of an already crappy
day, and now that the adrenaline surge was pretty much over Wendle was
back to feeling surly and hard done by. Laying the smack-down on some
bad guys held a certain appeal just at the moment - but there was no way
he could pull it off.
Or was there?
A pattern suddenly occurred to him. "W.I.L.B.U.R., I'll need some
equipment from the Plot Device Room," he said thoughtfully. "Let's see.
A flight.thingy, a temporal inhibitor harness, a telepathic sifter..."
Oh yes. This would be good. Anger wasn't a terribly productive
emotion in the long run, but right now Wendle didn't particularly care
and would enjoy working off his frustrations. And better still: gangs
were a criminal demographic that often got passed over by the Legion in
favour of the large scale exotic threats. The Yakuza in particular
were a bunch of murdering thugs with delusions of Robin Hood dignity,
and it would be satisfying to shove a metaphorical spoke through the
wheels of their little red wagon. Death really was too good for them...
Wendle's frown deepened at that thought, and he turned it over in
his mind testing it for fit. It was worrying - distasteful even - but
he made a snap decision and said to W.I.L.B.U.R., "And I think a moral
intuiter, a karmic tracer, and a holistic decreator." Then he began to
realise the implications of what he was planning, and added, "Plus a
bag of holding and a dozen six packs of Mr Paprika."
This looked like a job for Anal-Retentive Archive Kid.
=====
Character credits:
Anal-Retentive Archive Kid created by Saxon Brenton.
W.I.L.B.U.R. created by Jeff Coleburn.
Author's notes:
Pardon? You say the story should be called 'An injudicious use of
technobabble'. I'm sure I don't know what you mean.
-----
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
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