[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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