LNH: WikiLull (was LNH/META: Okay. Guess no Daily LNH Wiki Entry today...)

[Adrian McClure]

On Thu, Apr 7, 2016 at 10:32 PM, Scott Eiler <seiler at eilertech.com> wrote:


> But then the LNHQ was destroyed.  And then rebuilt.  And then destroyed.
> When Prankster Brad Pitt rescued him once during that period, Amnesiac Brad
> Pitt did not enjoy it at all.  But Amnesiac Brad Pitt could tell, the LNHQ
> was standing now.
>
> So he asked the LNHQ, "*Where* do I live?"
>
> The LNHQ responded, "Brad Pitt is a Oscar-nominated actor created by Jane
> Etta (née Hillhouse), William Alvin Pitt, and RACCCon 2012."
>
> "I still remember that.  But where do I *live*????"
>
> "Information unknown."
>
> "... DAMMIT!"
>
> ...

Then he saw two women who didn't seem to quite fit in with the world
around them. As a trenchcoater--at least he could remember that--he
had an instinctive sense of the strange and anomalous, and they
definitely were. One was a kind of gothy Asian girl with a silent
movie-esque bob haircut who gave off powerful lesbian vibes. The other
was a white girl with curly auburn hair--maybe her girlfriend? But he
didn't want to assume. Then they started making out, so yeah, probably
girlfriends--but they stopped once the redhead caught sight of him.

Amnesiac Brad Pitt overheard them talking, via his Plot-Relevant
Dialogue Sense: "You were saying we needed to find a trenchcoater,
right? There's one right there?" He waved.

"Hi!" says the redhead, yanking the goth chick toward him by the hand.
She was wearing old worn-out jeans and one of those ubiquitous nerd
mashup t-shirts. "I'm Alice Ashdown, Net.Access of the Legion of
Net.Heroes. This is Victoria. Also Forsaken Lass. She's my
girlfriend." Score one for Amnesiac Brad Pitt's keen observational
skills. "She's got amnesia and she needs your help."

"Wow," said Amnesiac Brad Pitt. "I guess that's going around. I'm
Amnesiac Brad Pitt."

"Brad Pitt?" said Victoria. "You mean like, the actor?"

"I guess so?" Amnesiac Brad Pitt made an exaggerated shrug.

"Oh!" said Alice, "you should tell your wife thank you for making Gia.
That movie was, uh. Formative."

"My wife? You mean... I'm married to Angelina Jolie? Wow. Cool."

"I heard you were getting divorced," said Victoria.

"Wow. Not cool."

"Boy, I hope you haven't done anything really awful that will make
this story awkward in the future," said Victoria.

"Me too," said Brad. "Although I don't know if I'm the actual Brad
Pitt. I'm maybe more of the idea of Brad Pitt. Or an idea of Brad
Pitt. I don't actually know how any of this works. Shrug emoji."

"OK, so," said Victoria. "Better get down to business. I want to know
if you know what this was."

She drew what seemed at first to be a black sword out of the air. But
it wasn't actually there at all. It was like a piece of starless night
sky. Looking at it made a pain stab in his eyes, like a hangover.
"Oww. That's bad."

"I knew that," said Victoria, re-sheathing the sword-thing. "What is it?"

"Oh, that? That's the Wraal Abjurer."

"OK, that's something. What the hell is the Wraal Abjurer?"

"...I don't remember, but I read about it somewhere. Uh, I don't think
I'm actually allowed to resolve this plot here. Your Author's done
throwing important plot points into cascades."

"Well that's great," said Victoria. "Bye." She was being pretty rude,
but then again, if looking at that thing was so awful for Brad, he
could only imagine what it'd be like to live with it.

"Hold on. We have a name," said Alice. "That's something, right? We
can look it up."

"Yeah," said Victoria, but where?" Then their faces lit up at the same
time. "The Infinite Library!"

"That's so cool," said Alice. "I always wanted to go there. Thanks!"
She waved goodbye.

"Yeah, thanks," said Victoria, making an effort to smile a bit. The
two of them walked off hand in hand.

[TO BE CONTINUED IN... THE LIMINALS #1! Coming as soon as this author
finishes all that other stuff!] said a caption floating in midair. A
stiff breeze knocked it into Amnesiac Brad Pitt's face. "Owww!" he
said.

If he hadn't been smacked by the caption, he might have noticed the
sinister masked assassin lurking sinisterly in a nearby alley. Said
assassin had spotted just what he needed: a trenchcoat.

The Net.Trenchcoat Brigade was dead, to begin with. By now, all of its
members had died, retired, been dragged to Hell, buggered off to
another dimension, or been reserved. There were still a lot of mages
who were influenced by them at second or third hand. There were even
rumors that a new incarnation of the Pet.Trenchcoat Brigade had come
into being: the Young Animals. But they didn't have the unity they did
in the old days--like so many other things, there were so many
different kinds of magic out there now no one could keep track of them
all.

The exception was this guy. Brad Pitt, the Last Trenchcoater. And
WikiCide, the assassin's employer, needed a trenchcoater's trenchcoat
to complete his dimensional portal and bring the full force of his
allies through. He didn't say anything about whether the man attached
to the trenchcoat should be alive or dead, but the assassin knew what
he was good at.

He wasn't very good at it long ago. No one had cared about him--in
fact, he'd never even had a name, referred to only as the
"Spork-Wielding Assassin from Jesse Willey's Grocery List #13." But
after his humiliating defeat in Just Another Cascade, he'd resolved to
get his life together. He sought out the Rung of Revamp, and became
something greater than he could have ever imagined...

DEATHSPORK: THE TERMINATOR!

"You!" said Deathspork: The Terminator, stepping out of the shadows.
His jumpsuit was covered with pouches stuffed with sporks. "Give me
the trenchcoat now, and I just might not kill you that painfully! Aww,
who am I kidding. This is gonna hurt."

"OK, who are you?" said Brad Pitt. "Is this some kind of allegory for
the struggle between the creative interiority of Vertigo and the
flashy commercialism of contemporary 90s comics?"

"I am Deathspork: The Terminator!"

"Look, Deathspork the Terminator, I've had a long day, so can this
wait until I get my memories back?"

"It's Deathspork COLON The Terminator!"

"Deathspork the Colon Terminator? OK, that sounds bad."

"Rrrrargh!" said Deathspork: The Terminator, flinging an exploding
sporkarang straight at Brad Pitt's face.

"Yikes!" said Brad Pitt.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Notes: Young Animal is the new DC imprint managed by Gerard Way, which
is a successor to the parts of Vertigo set in the DCU, which has
series such as the Doom Patrol revival and Cave Carson Has a
Cybernetic Eye.

The NTB exposition, inspired by recent discussion, is there to mark
the transition between the NTB of old and the Lunaverse, which is
Drew's idea for urban-fantasy-ish LNH-universe stories that draw on
other influences such as YA lit. They had that in mind for LNH20, but
the Liminals fits into that perfectly and will be part of that
imprint.

-- 
Adrian "The Dark Spaceknight" McClure, now with sig

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.--William Blake