LNHY/LNH: Looniverse Y #14 (AKA Just Another Cascade #11.5)

[Andrew Perron]

On 3/18/2015 9:57 PM, Adrian McClure wrote:
> Looniverse Y #14
>
> "Why Ask Y?"
>
> AKA Just Another Cascade # 11.5
>
> Note: This takes place before Death of Trophy Wife.

I started making a joke about creating a handy flowchart to explain the 
continuity, and now I'm actually elbows-deep in a chart that shows how a 
double-digit number of timelines intersect in Just Another Cascade @.@ HALP

> Previously on LNHY: Pister Y. Maprika III, soda magnate, has taken over the
> LNH, while young would-be-hero Kid Enthusiastic has gained leadership of the
> net.villain team, the System Corrupters, determined to forge it into a force
> for revolutionary change.

HELL YEAH.

> Previously on Just Another Cascade: classic-verse LNHer Victoria Arden, AKA
> Forsaken Lass has been dumped on the world called T-Bone by one of the
> narrative rifts formed by the LNH's lack of closure...

DUN DUN DUN.

> Victoria Arden walked into the LNH lobby. Something was wrong. She'd known
> that from the first moment she arrived here. Everything was dingier and darker
> and more unpleasant. The traffic outside was louder and everyone honked their
> horns more. Inside the lobby, the paint, an ugly shade of blue-green, was
> peeling off the walls, which were plastered with posters for some drink called
> "No-Duh." ("No-Duh! It's a Soda!")

Reminds me of when the Justice League visited Earth-616 in JLA/Avengers.

> "OK, are you the receptionist?" said Victoria.
>
> "Receptionist? Who needs one?

That explains a lot.

> "I guess. I already have. I'm Victoria Arden—Forsaken Lass. I'm already a part
> of the LNH. Well, my LNH. All the LNHes I've ever heard of take in
> extradimensional refugees all the time." She crossed her arms.

It's true! I started with... A BUNCH.

> She sighed. As frustrating as this person was, he was probably just the
> drama-creating obstacle character, the equivalent of Ultimate Ninja. The
> reasonable one should be coming along any second now.
>
> Another man walked into the room—

Mwahaha. <3

> tall, pleasant, and open-faced, looking a bit
> like Chris Evans with a slight beer gut.

Oooooh, nice! Man, so much of this is going to be valuable for the wiki.

> "Well, why don't we ask it?" said Pister Y. Maprika III. He pulled out some
> sort of wand thing from his pocket—it looked like the offspring of a tricorder
> and a marital aid—and scanned her.

This is Looniverse-Y, not Looniverse-XXX, right?

> "The rest of the team. You're called the *Legion* of Net.Heroes, right?"
>
> "Well, we've never had more than five people" said Pister Y. Maprika III.

Haha ^^;

> "Only those chosen by the LNH New Member Detector are worthy of being inducted
> into the LNH!!" said Exclamation!Master!
>
> "Why are you listening to it?"
>
> <:Because I"m the LNH New Member Detector:>, said the LNH New Member Detector.
> <:Duh!:>
>
> "I—"

*cackles*

> "Oh, business as usual. I finalized the purchase of the planet Mars so I could
> use its ice caps for bottled water. That's two planets I own now!"
>
> "Er, what are you actually going to do with Neptune?!!" said Exclamation!Master!
>
> "It's… ah… an investment."

Heeheehee. (And now THE DEVIL owns it!)

> "Don't worry, dear, I'm sure something else will come up." She patted him on
> the head. (She was twice as tall as him, and an inch or so taller than
> Exclamation!Master!)

^.^

> Just then, a big, clunky, 50s-looking robot wearing a pink tutu and a sparkly
> silver crown walked into the LNHQ lobby. "Hi!" she said. "Beep boop. I'm
> Princess Robot and I'm here to join the Legion of Net.Heroes!"

AUGH. ^.^

> <:Look, it's her. Just let her in already and go back to bathing with your
> caviar bath bomb.:>
>
> "Who told you about that? I mean…

*cackles*

> Look, Miss Robot, I'd be happy to have you
> on board, but… well, you have to consider the realities of business. Superhero
> teams like ours are primarily marketed toward boys. You don't appeal to, ah,
> male sensibilities in the same ways as Trophy Wife does. If we allowed another
> woman on the team, it might be hard to sell the merchandise…"

SATIRE <3 <3 <3

> Alice could come here and save her, of course… but would she? Did she even
> care? Sometimes Victoria felt like all she knew how to do was be miserable.
> Who would want to share that misery? Alice seemed happy, secure, sure of
> herself—all the things Victoria wasn't. Victoria would just bring her down.
> And maybe Victoria didn't want to be saved by someone else—why couldn't she
> save herself? Maybe it'd be best if she never saw Alice again.

ANGST <3 <3 <3

> Victoria was so busy brooding over her thoughts that she almost didn't notice
> the ten-year-old boy on the flying tricycle.

Yes good. Angst interrupted. <3

> "Holy moly! It's a dame with a sword!" said another woman following after her.
> With her black fedora and peacoat, she looked a bit like a female Captain
> Jack, or a goth Agent Carter. "She must be one of those Teenage Giant
> Halfbreed Angels!"

Everything about this paragraph is perfect and beautiful and I love it.

> Another woman stepped out of the shadows, sniffing the air. She was… there
> weren't really words to describe her. Saying she was beautiful seemed as
> inadequate as saying heavy metal music was loud.

Oooooooh. o.ov

> "Kid Enthusiastic? Is that you?"
>
> "Yeah! I don't know who you are but that sure is me!"

You're really good with his voice. <3

> "The…what?" Victoria blinked. "Are you the evil version? Shouldn't you have a
> beard? No you're too young to—" She broke off into nervous laughter.

He tried wearing a fake one for about a week, but it was really itchy, you guys

> "Evil, are we? Well, I don't know about that," said the woman in the peacoat.
> "I'm kinda messed up. But everyone in this lousy two-bit world is kinda messed
> up. I'm just doing the best I can."
>
> "I am most definitely evil," said the dark lady, "but considering what passes
> for good in this universe, I may be your best hope."

Holy SHIT THESE ARE BOTH REALLY WELL-EXPRESSED AND DEFINED PHILOSOPHIES AND 
CHARACTERS

> What's your world like?"
>
> "Oh! Um… Not like this one. It's a bit brighter and better put together and
> the LNH is an actual functional net.hero team. Well, sort of."
>
> "That's what I was worried about," said Kid Enthusiastic. "If you come from a
> world that has real heroes, that means the villains could be REALLY bad. Given
> the Law of Narrative Symmetry, since you're a hero, the other being that came
> through was probably a villain. They could have been here for months, planning
> stuff, without anyone knowing…

Ohshi--

> "Oooh!" said Princess Robot. "What does it do?"
>
> "Well, we're still not entirely sure how it works or what it's monitoring,"
> said Pister Y. Maprika III. "But I have the world's top scientists studying it…"

Um.

> "I'll get around to it one of these days. I hired some cleaning crews, but
> they never came back from the basement…"
>
> "Oooh? What's down there?" said Princess Robot, pointing, with excellent
> timing, to a rusted door that said "LNHQ Basements." Under that was written,
> in a blood-red graffiti scrawl, "DO NOT ENTER. EVER." (The last word being
> underlined three times.)

Oh god. XD;;;; THIS MAKES SO MUCH SENSE.

> "Well," said Trophy Wife, "that's the doors to the basements. You, ah, you
> probably shouldn't go there." This remark was punctuated by a blood curdling
> scream from beneath. "There are all kinds of noises that come from down
> there," she said. "Screams, ominous chanting in no known human language,
> accordion music… You get used to it after a while."

Oh by the twelve Olympians. XD XD XD

> "It's not just you," said Trophy Wife. "Someone put way too much starch when
> they washed this dress."
>
> "Gasp!!!!!!" said Exclamation!Master! "I can't move!!!!!!!!!!!!"

<snip>

> The dry cleaner. somehow took off his suit in a single dramatic motion,
> revealing a purple uniform with a green cape and "Y" insignia.
>
> "I stand corrected," said Trophy Wife.
>
> "Indeed, buffoons! You've fallen prey to my deadly Super-Starch!"

...YOU BROUGHT BACK THE STARCH THING :D :D :D

> "And now," gloated the false drycleaner, "nothing will be able to stop my
> conquest of the entire Omnilooniverse! For I am one of the oldest and
> deadliest enemies of the TRUE Legion of Net.Heroes, Y-Plex Burp! Soon, I will
> rule all of creation! Soon, humanity will bow down before me! Soon, NO ONE
> WILL EVER ASK WHAT MY NAME MEANS AGAIN!"

THE AMAZINGEST

> Victoria didn't even bother to ask why the System Corrupters' headquarters was
> a giant upside-down vending machine.

<3 <3 <3

> It was a dimly lit
> building not unlike the LNHQ, but Kid Enthustiastic had apparently added a few
> of his own touches. He'd painted the walls bright colors and plastered
> pictures of dinosaurs everywhere.

Augh. <3

> "That's what you were doing last night, huh?" said Kid Enthusiastic. "Maybe
> you could be a little quieter today." Private Eye blushed a little. The dark
> lady chuckled.

Oh man. Speaking of shipping. o.o

> Victoria concentrated on one of the dinosaur posters on the
> corridor wall. It was a tyrannosaurus rex in glasses and a snazzy vest suit
> eating a book while a crowd of people ran away in terror. "Libraries are
> Delicious!" it read

That's entirely adorable and entirely appropriate.

> "I guess you really like dinosaurs," said Victoria.
>
> "Oh yeah!" said Kid Enthusiastic. "Of course, most people think they don't
> really exist and were just put in to confuse believers, but I believe they
> were real, somehow.."
>
> Victoria blinked. "What the hell is wrong with this world?"

:D (I'm totally following up on this in DoTW.)

> "I've been asking that my whole life," said Private Eye.
>
> "Nothing we can't fix!" said Kid Enthusiastic.

Eternal optimism!

> Y-Plex Burp's Y-Bots had hauled up the LNH and strapped them to evil-looking
> racks that he'd set up in the lobby in short notice.

How efficient!

> "Ah, but you have no idea of the true scope of my plan! You see, the LNHQ is a
> building with strange dimensional properties. By taking over this LNHQ, I will
> send forth my Y-Bots into LNHQs across the multiverse and conquer all the
> Legions! Muahahahah!"

Ooooooh, nice. <3

> That's when Trophy Wife realized—Exclamation!Master! had been deliberately
> escalating the drama to get Y-Plex Burp to reveal what his plan was! Good boy.

Good, good

> "Flirting? I've heard of such things but no one has ever done something like
> that to me.." He stared at her in complete bafflement.

XD

> Flexing her not inconsiderable muscles, she broke free from the rack
> and scattered the pieces across the room, bursting free from her dress. "Oh
> dear," she said. "Good thing I just went shopping." She put on another dress,
> this one a bright audacious crimson, before any fanboys reading could linger
> on her too long.

Augh, badass lady characters. <3

> Victoria lay strapped to a table in the System Corrupters lab, while Kid
> Enthusiastic waved some kind of science-wand over her. It looked like a
> retcotheric katzenjammer,

That's really good.

> Kid Enthusiastic giggled.
>
> "What is it?"
>
> "Do you like her?"

:D

> She never felt any
> attraction to Ultimate Mercenary or Masterplan Lad even though she actually
> sort of liked them, or any of the other men she'd met in the brief period she
> was part of the LNH. Whereas she found Exciting Lass unnerving, but being
> around her gave Victoria all kinds of thoughts and feelings.

This seems like a pretty good way of putting it together.

> "That's cool! I don't know why God has a problem with that. I figured maybe
> someday I'd ask him myself."
>
> "Wait, what?"
>
> "So God doesn't talk to people in your world?"

I'm imagining Kid E-Y's relationship with God being much like T-Rex's.

> "Yeah, that's interesting... See, if you look at the things that God has said
> and done over the centuries, they're contradictory and confusing and
> inconsistent, and theologians have couple theories why. Some say that God is
> beyond human understanding. Some say that he's an imperfect being that is
> gradually learning perfection. And some say God is a fictional character
> written by different people with different ideas about how he works and that's
> why everything's such a mess. Of course, that'd be true of the rest of us too..."

Hmmmmm, yes.

> "It is. Although some of us are mostly written by one writer, like me."
>
> "So wait, what does that mean for free will?"
>
> "Well... I don't really know.

Free will and honest characterization are two sides of the same coin.

> "So... wait a minute, could God strike us down too? I mean, we are hanging
> around with the Mother of Demons."
>
> "Well... he could, yeah. But at some point, he stopped doing that. Over the
> last year or so, God hasn't really been speaking to people.

DUN DUN DUNNNN

> He hasn't even
> smited people who ask Him silly questions."

I thought the Internet Oracle was over with the Crossover Queen

> "Yeah! But don't worry, she only ate someone that one time. When we fought
> that demigod guy who was trying to rebuild his kingdom and take over the
> world. She unhinged her jaw like a snake and swallowed him whole.

o.ov

> She's a monster,
> yeah, but she can be good. She's not purely evil, she's just… like a person,
> only more so. And by having her on our team, we're making sure she helps
> people rather than hurts them!"

ALL OF THE PHILOSOPHY AND CHARACTERIZATION.

> Princess Robot
> made some kind of weird giggle-like beep and vibrated delightedly.

She walks this nice line betwixt cute and creepy.

> She tried to sort through her thoughts, but after everything she'd been
> through she was just having too many thoughts and feelings.

THE FEELS

> The other woman gripped it gently but firmly. "I am Exciting Leather Strap On
> Lass."
>
> "I, uh, see." Victoria looked at her waist, then quickly looked up.

Heeheehee <3 I really like how you describe the intensity of her presence.

> At
> the moment, my power is not what it once was. I was sealed away for too long,
> pressed under the ocean… Have you ever felt yourself sleeping and felt some
> presence pressing down on you, trapping you between waking and sleep? On this
> world it would have been me or one of my children, but that's beside the
> point.

Resonant *and* funny.

> "Of course. What do you take me for, girl? Still… they do interest me, in a
> way. I have no desire to be good myself. I have no understanding of goodness.
> But as I've grown older, it's come to interest me. I am drawn to those who
> call themselves heroes—those who would improve themselves, who would give
> their lives for an ideal—precisely because it is so far from what I am."

Uh-huh. Sure. Does Nietzche's line about looking into the void also apply to 
staring into the sun?

> "I thought my old enemy was such a one, but he disappointed me, and I repaid
> him in kind. The boy though… he's different. He's aware of himself and the
> world in the way few are. Child though he may be, that makes him powerful—even
> dangerous, in his way. In all my countless years, I've never met a mortal
> quite like him. I'm curious what he'll turn out to be. That curiosity has
> outweighed my hunger."

Yessssss. :D

> "Me?" Victoria laughed bitterly. "Are you implying I'm some kind of hero?
> Because I'm really, really not.

Oh, Vicky. <3 (I promise never to call her that again)

> If I had longer to study you, I could help free your soul. Or
> claim it as my own."
>
> "I, um, I. Ah. Well that's probably for the best then." She pulled her hand
> out and took a step back.

REALLY intense.

> "No! It can't be!" he shouted. "I
> thought I'd defeated you. Well no matter—Y-Bots!"
>
> "Why bots? Don't ask me," said Trophy Wife, knocking another one over.

I love all versions of this joke.

> "Beep boop. Hello!" said Princess Robot.
>
> "What are you doing?" said Trophy Wife.
>
> "I'm flirting with them, just as you did. Hello! You are pretty!"

THAT IS ADORABLE AND SLIGHTLY DISTURBING.

> "This is impossible!" said Y-Plex Burp. "Well, no matter. I will activate the
> secret bomb I left in the other rift and DESTROY THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!" He
> pressed a giant red button on his console. A timer appeared on the screen, set
> to five minutes.
>
> "Wait," said Trophy Wife, "won't that kill you too?"
>
> "…oops," said Y-Plex Burp.

Just astounding. <3

> "It looks pretty swell," said Public Eye. "But… isn't that kinda… I don't
> know… conspicuous?"
>
> "What are you talking about, of course it's stealthy! It's painted black!"

:D I love action figure logic.

> I don't trust that lady one
> bit. She's no lady, she's a dame!

Heck, she might even be a broad

> She could usually ignore the fact that it was always watching her, that sword
> was picking up on all her thoughts and feelings, just like most people could
> ignore the fact that a bunch of bored and confused NSA agents were monitoring
> all their texts.

Painfully apropos.

> "There's like six of these things that have popped up in the last few years,"
> said Kid Enthusiastic. "No one knows where they come from."

Washing up from the shores of abandoned universes?

> "Psst, first there's these bad guy robots we gotta smash!" A couple of
> angry-looking Y-shaped robots were rolling towards them.
>
> "I thought we were supposed to be the bad guys!" said Public Eye.

The System Corrupters in a nutshell.

> A bolt from the one behind her singed her shoulder, but then she turned around
> and finished the last one off with a burst of blue flame from her strap-on.
> Victoria was a little relieved now that their interactions hadn't gone anywhere.

LNHY in a nutshell.

> "Holy mother of moly!" ejaculated Public Eye. "I'm gonna have to be careful if
> we ever, uh, train again!"

*cackles at that dialogue tag*

> "OK, I sort of understood that," said Victoria. She couldn't get over how
> goofy the "Reversatron" was but she couldn't make fun of it either. It'd be
> like kicking a puppy. Maybe, she reflected, thinking back to what Exciting
> Leather Strap-On Lass had said, that was part of what made him dangerous.

YES :D

> Then the blade buzzed and one by one, the mirrors around her turned into
> static and went dark. The mirror in front of Victoria flickered back to life.
> Inside, she saw something that almost looked like herself, but its eyes were
> blank and cold—as hers had been, she'd been told, when she was possessed.

I AM A SHADOW, THE TRUE SELF!

> She didn't know if she was a hero or not, she didn't know if
> she was a good person or not, but she knew she had to save her friend.

HELL YEAH.

> And Y-PLex Burp found himself in the curiously empty lobby of the LNHQ—the
> real LNHQ, from his own world. "Ha!" he shouted. "I live! I knew nothing could
> destroy me! I feel brilliant! I feel inspired! What if… what if I took over
> the world by imprinting mind controlling chemicals on postage stamps! Of
> course! Legion beware—"
>
> Unfortunately, he didn't notice the teenage girl with an enormous gun engaged
> in a battle with a small group of desperate Legionnaires until she blasted him…
>
> TO BE CONTINUED IN JUST ANOTHER CASCADE #12!

:D

> "Well since she's a robot princess, she might have some kind of robot
> leadership ability, and they stuck around because they're connected to her
> now, I don't know," says Trophy Wife.

Works for me!

> "Of course! We can have our own army of robots!" said Exclamation!Master! "Now
> we can use them to impersonate my civilian self to maintain my secret identity!!"
>
> "You don't have a secret identity, dear," said Trophy Wife.
>
> "Oh, right!

*cackles*

> And far away, a shadowy figure (probably one we've seen before, but who knows)
> looked at a computer screen and cackled.
>
> "Excellent!" he said. "Our goals are accomplished. We took one of the
> deadliest villains of the Dead Universe [see Looniverse Y #13 part 0] and
> placed her in the Legion. When the stars are right and God has fallen at last,
> we will deactivate this persona we gave her and her true self will be known…"

IT'S ERIK THE RED

> AUTHOR'S NOTES:
>
> Hoooooo boy. This wound up being way longer than I planned for. I realized
> partway through writing it that this was enough material for two issues, or
> mabye three—but by then, Andrew Perron had already written #15, and I wanted
> to keep it as one issue since I'd divided my last LNHY issue into three parts
> and never finished it.

Mwahahaha :D I cause CHAOS

> I thought for a while about whether or not to go ahead with my original idea
> for Princess Robot considering it's similar to an idea that Arthur introduced
> in Death of Trophy Wife, but then I realized that LNHY is SUPPOSED to be a
> mess... that kind of chaos could be productive.

<3

> Thanks  to Andrew Perron for suggesting Y-Plex Burp as the villain of this
> issue. Maybe someday we'll learn what his name means! (Probably not.)

Man, I'd love a good No-Prize explanation at least

> Anyway, there's one long monster issue left—Just Another Cascade #12—and after
> that I'll concentrate on writing shorter issues more frequently. See you there!

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, woooooo!