LNH/LUNA: WikiLull: The Story So Far (Issues #1-12)

[Drew Perron]

A quick-and-dirty collection of all the WikiLull chapters so far, because it's
been a few months! Plus, the story now has a wiki page of its own:
http://www.lnhq.info/wiki/WikiLull

----
Issue #1, by Arthur Spitzer:

 >HQ Currently Destroyed, Check Back Later

 >We're sorry, our site seems to be having problems at the moment. We'll bring
 >it back ASAP.

 >Legion of Net.Heroes

And Fuzzy looked at the smoldering crater that had one time been
the Legion of Net.Heroes Headquarters.  "Okay.  Who did this?"
she said with a very stern expression on her face.

"Hey!  It wasn't me.  No, Really!  It wasn't me!" said
Bad Judgment Boy slowly backing away from the gaze of his
fellow LNH'rs.  "Honest!  It was someone else this time!  Really!"

Arthur "Didn't do it either.  Honest!" Spitzer

----
Issue #2, by Drew Perron:

Around the corner, next to the Pizza Pit, a dark figure cackled. "Little do
they know that the destruction of their headquarters is only the first step!
Even now, the writer had to use the only Looniverse restaurant they could
think of, because they couldn't look up any others! All part of the plot of -
WIKICIDE!"

(Seriously, Lalo had mentioned he was moving the wiki to a different virtual
machine, so I assume this is part of that~)

Drew "big explosions and trees" Perron

----
Issue #3, by Adrian McClure:

[I meant to write this earlier, but Real Life got in the way. ]

Meanwhile, Masterplan Lad, Victoria Arden, and Net.Access were waiting for
their lunch at the Pizza Pit. It was taking some time, since the authors
couldn't look up other restaurants and half the LNH was eating there. (Not
that the pineapple cheesecake which was the special today was necessarily
bad, but sometimes one wanted variety.) Since the Pizza Pit was right next
to the LNHQ, it sometimes took on its special dimensional properties, so
there was enough seating for everyone. The service staff, though, was
stretched desperately thin. At least Doctor Stomper had given everyone
temporary superspeed serum injections so they could carry out all the
orders.

"So is there anything we can do?" said Net.Access. "Any worlds to save or
crossovers to be in?"

Masterplan Lad shook his head. "We're still waiting on the first issue of
our series, The Liminals, which I'm sure our Author is working on right
this moment and not distracting themself again with irrelevant projects."
He glared across the fourth wall. What? I'm working on my dissertation.

"You know perfectly well you're not. If you were you wouldn't be typing
these words right now."

OK, point. Suddenly, Manga Girl (who's been around long enough she doesn't
have to use the number anymore) dashed through the door and plopped on the
table. "Hi guys!" she said. "What's going on?"

"Well, the wiki was destroyed," said Victoria.

"Yes!" said a figure in a red costume who had been lurking around the Pizza
Pit with his cape drawn over his face, cackling to himself. "All due to the
devious plot of... WIKICIDE!"

"Actually, no," said Net.Access. "It was, um... It was me."

"What?!" said WikiCide.

"Huh?" said Manga Girl.

"Well, Vic and I went to one of Token Girl's old anime nights, and then we
were training in the Peril Room and I thought it'd be cool if I channeled
the Dirty Pair... Yeah."

"Sorry," whispered Victoria. "You looked good in that bikini, though."

"Thanks! Well maybe I'll wear it for you when we're, you know, alone."
Victoria suddenly blushed. "I mean, whenever you're ready for, ah, that
kind of thing."

"Bah!" said WikiCide. "Never mind! This will still be the beginning of my
devious plan--"

"They've fixed it now," said Masterplan Lad. "Everything should be back to
normal in a few moments."

"Bah again!" said WikiCide, storming out of the Pizza Pit. "Next time,
heroes... Next time!"

"Who was that guy?" said Manga Girl.

"No idea," said Net.Access. "Look, I'm sorry, OK? I didn' know--"

"It's OK," said Victoria, squeezing her on the shoulder. "We've basically
all blown up the LNHQ at some point."

"In our Infinite Leadership Crisis issues," said Masterplan Lad, "which I'm
sure our Author is working on this very moment--"

"So yeah," said Manga Girl. "You're totally one of the Liminals now!"

"That's not actually the name of our team," said Masterplan Lad. "It's more
of a sort of descriptive title, like 'Doctor Who.' Our team is more of an
unofficial agglomeration of friends like the Limp-Asparagus Lad cast or the
Net.Heroes of Parade than an organized subgroup like Dvandom Force or the
Alt.Riders, and our series has a somewhat tangential relationship with the
superhero genre, so..."

"Nah, that's too confusing," said Manga Girl. "That should be our name."

"She's right," said Victoria. "Sorry, buddy, you're overruled."

"Oh all right," Masterplan Lad grumped.

"Now that we've offiically named our team," said Net.Access, "we should
totally do the Fantastic Four oath thing where we stretch out our hands and
lay them on top of each other." And they did. "One for all and all for
one!" she said.

"And pizza for everybody!" said Manga Girl.

Meanwhile, WikiCide stalked off into an alley somewhere. He may have
suffered a setback, but he was far from done. Oh no. For he was the
Ultimate WikiClone, the embodiment of all the anger and resentment WikiBoy
would never let himself feel, edited out of existence but then brought back
into continuity by the Rifts. [From Just Another Multi-Writer Cascade that
Had an Ending] One way or another, for every single humiliation that was
visited on him over the course of his life, the Legion would pay...

TO BE CONTINUED IN SOMETHING... MAYBE?

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

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I
see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."-- Joan Didion

----
Issue #4, by Arthur Spitzer:

Bad Judgment Boy clicked his cellphone off.  "Okay," he
said with a grin on his face, "I just made the most
brilliant deal ever.

"What's that?" said Namer Boy.

"Well, this whole LNHQ destruction thing (which I swear I
had absolutely nothing to do with) got me to thinking.  How
can I turn this crisis into an opportunity?  And this
genius idea just hit me from out of nowhere.  All my fellow
LNH'rs don't have shelter because of this.  They're going
to need shelter.  Tents!  Camping equipment!  So I've been
on the phone making arrangements with this camping supply
whole dealer.  Course I also had to get some loans from
some very shady dangerous people so I could pay for all
this stuff.  But, man!  All I have to do is sell all these
tents and camping equipment to my fellow LNH'rs for a
discount they won't be able to get at any store -- and I'll
be rolling in it.  Enough cash to pay back all these
dangerous people I borrowed from -- and enough left over to
be like the richest LNH'r ever!"

"Umm, BJB," said Namer Boy pointing to something behind Bad
Judgment Boy.  "It's back up."

"What?  What's back up?"

"The LNHQ.  It was destroyed.  But I guess it's not
anymore.  See?"

Bad Judgment Boy turned around.  "No.."

Bad Judgment Boy fell down to his knees.  "No.

"Well," said Namer Boy looking at his watch, "Good luck
selling all those tents and camping equipment.

Bad Judgment Boy still looking at the back in working
operation LNHQ just kept saying "No" over and over again.

Arthur "Pizza Pitt!" Spitzer

----
Issue #5, by Drew Perron

The Monitor Room of the LNHQ. Multi-Tasking Man, Renegade Programmer and
wReamhack were busy going over the computer system; even though the swarm of
post-singularity nanites that had rebuilt the LNHQ were very friendly, they
weren't technically adept, and had accidentally clicked on the "Install
Windows 10 now" popup, leading to all sorts of shenanigans. Still, it was just
about sorted out.

Multi-Tasking Man was reinstalling the tweaks to the TCP/IP stack, refreshing
the encryption keys on the government hotlines, building up his rating on
League of Legends, and looking up if he'd had any appearances that weren't on
the wiki yet. His brows furrowed. "We've got a situation. Google Groups search
has gone strange."

"So you're saying it's Tuesday," snarked wReamhack.

"Ha. I say again, ha." M-TM punched a button to put the search screen on the
big board.  "Subject lines seem to have vanished from searches, and some of
the previews are missing. All of the relevant data *seems* to be in there, but
it's very difficult to tell."

"Wait a minute," said Renegade Programmer, turning away from the cyber-
coffeemaker. "First data disappears from the wiki. Now the biggest Usenet
search engine... Doesn't it seem like someone's trying to make it harder to
look up stories on RACC?"

wReamhack banged his fist into the desk. "Of course! This is right as the
nomination ballots for the RACCies are coming in! Someone's trying to sabotage
the RACCies!"

Multi-Tasking Man folded his hands in front of his face and leaned back. "No,
it couldn't be that. There's still an unfinished RACCies storyline out there,
and after all the fuss they made in JAC about writers not finishing their
stories, they *probably* wouldn't start another one."

"Oh." wReamhack slumped back in his chair. "Then... it's probably just a
coincidence."

----
Issue #6, by Adrian McClure

"Hold on a minute," said Multi-Tasking Man, taking a break from debating
the new Homestuck update on tumblr, designing more effective blocking tools
for social media, and building a giant pickle in Minecraft. "What's that
ticking noise?"

"Oh, probably a bomb," said wReamhack. He blinked. "Oh crap, it's a bomb."

And the LNHQ exploded again.

"Well," said Victoria, watching the explosion through the window of the
Pizza Pit, "at least it wasn't us this time."

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

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I
see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."-- Joan Didion

----
Issue #7, by Drew Perron

Then the LNHQ unexploded, flames sucking back in and building putting itself
back together.

Victoria and the people I can finally start calling the Liminals blinked.

Then the LNHQ re-exploded. Then it unexploded again. Then it froze
mid-explosion, pieces of masonry hanging in the air, Domestic Lad floating
upside-down with comedically bugged-out eyes.

"Masterplan Lad--" said Victoria.

"On it," he said, holding up his umbrella-shaped Plot Device.

"Some kind of time loop?" said Net.Access, tilting her head. "It might be a
loopweaver that wandered into our continuum."

"Maybe someone's changing history, like in Retcon Hour, and we're seeing
histories with explody LNHQs overlap with explosionless LNHQs!" said Manga
Girl.

"It's not a temporal effect," said Masterplan Lad, frowning. "It's
information-based. Someone's trying to do a denial-of-service attack on the
LNHQ itself!"

Drew "DUN DUN DUNNNNN" Perron

----
Issue #8, by Adrian McClure

Meanwhile, Token Girl was sitting in the pizza pit, watching the LNHQ
explode and then unexplode.

"So," said Catalyst Lass, "have you watched Steven Universe yet?

"What's that again?" Token Girl turned away from the window and
slumped on the table. "Oh yeah, the gay rock show. I'm thinking about
it. I mean it looks pretty, but..."

"It has a really complex and mature view of relationships and their
development. Way more than a lot of shows for adults. And it's got a
strong diverse cast--"

"--Which we could really use more of."

"As soon as I can get the writers to create more stuff."

"Yeah, well good luck with that. Wasn't there supposed to be a new
volume of LNH by now?" Uh, maybe?

"OK, so." She leaned forward. "Steven Universe. How about it."

"Well, I dunno, it looks like it's a bit... Sappy? Too cute?"

"Tara. Tara, listen to me. You have a life size Totoro plushie."

"Well, OK, I kind of do. But... Miyazaki is Miyazaki, you know?"

"Well, I'd say that Rebecca Sugar is one of the few creators in
animation who has that kind of distinctive imagination and depth of
vision that he does. Team SU's working in a different context and
medium from Ghibli but they're just as good at what they do."

"Huh. OK, I'll give it a try. Or I will when our HQ stops blowing up."

"Mhm. Good point," says Catalyst Lass, tapping on the window. "I hope
someone gets it sorted out soon..."

"Hey guys!" says Merissa. "I hear that you have a problem!"

"Well, yeah," said Token GIrl, indicating the exploding/unexploding
LNHQ outside.

"What's going on?"

"It's a denial of service attack," said MPL. Having been summoned by
his plot-device to exposit as needed, he then immediately shifted back
to his own table, grumbling at the storyline.

"Oh!" said Merissa. Her face lit up. "Well it's a good thing I'm here!
It sounds like what you need is..." She dashed off to the bathroom.
Token Girl fidgeted and moved to get up. "Shhhh," said Cat, raising
her finger to her lips. "She's not done yet."

Merissa burst back into the Pizza Pit with an outfit not unlike Major
Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, along with some
fancy mirrorshades. "...Merissa, the Ultimate CyberHacker! Bugs
blasted while you wait! Yeah!" She raised her Mega-Ultra-BIGGUN 2.0
into the air with a flourish.

"Tara, did you show her that?" Cat whispered. Token Girl nodded.
"Well, OK... Just don't let her watch Dirty Pair." She turned to
Merissa. "What's your plan?"

"I'm going to go in and help the hackers save the HQ! I'm half virus
myself, yanno?"

"OK, sounds good." She patted Merissa on the shoulder. "Just... be
careful, and don't call yourself the 'Ultimate' anything when the
Ninja's around, OK? He's still kind of touchy." [after LNH v2
#58.5--ed.]

Merissa marched off, the gun strapped to a holster on her back that
she really shouldn't be able to support. "Oh jeez," said Token Girl.
"Someone's got to look after her and keep her from doing anything too
blow-things-up-y." And she dashed off after Merissa. Then she stopped
in her tracks. "Wait, I'm trying to get people to do the sensible
thing? Am I getting old?"

"Maybe!" said Cat. "I worry about that too. But you're only as old as
the sliding time scale affects any given story."

"OK." Token Girl dashed after her again.

****

In the street across from the LNHQ, Merissa ran across a giant stick
of dynamite. "WikiBoy, is that you?" she said.

The stick of dynamite grunted affirmatively.

She grabbed Bad Judgment Boy, who was standing nearby, by the nape of
his neck, pointing the Ultra-Mega-BIGGUN 2.0 in his face. "Hey, you.
Did you turn WikiBoy into a giant stick of dynamite again?"

"Um... no?"

Merissa's smile glinted. "GOOD." She dropped him on the ground, then
snapped her fingers. "WIkiBoy, you're not a giant stick of dynamite
anymore. Bam!"

WikiBoy collapsed to the grounds. "So what's going on?"

"Denial of service attack. I'm gonna take care of it. Wanna help?"

"Sure. It's not like I have anything better to do." WIkiBoy shrugged.

"Ok. Hey you know what would be cool? If you were an AI mini-tank.
Cause I feel like I should have one."

"OK," said WikiBoy.

"OK! You're a Tachikoma. Bam!" She snapped her fingers, and so he was.

"Whee!" said the WikiKoma.

And together, they burst into the LNHQ lobby, with Token Girl hurrying
after them...

IS THIS A PROPER STORYLINE AT THIS POINT? WHO KNOWS. ANYWAY, I GUESS
SOMEONE WILL CONTINUE IT

----
Issue #9, by Scott Eiler

...

Meanwhile, Amnesiac Brad Pitt wandered around...  somewhere.  With his
Net.Trenchcoater Brigade powers, he could get very far from home.  And
with his amnesia, he couldn't get back until the other Brad Pitts
rescued him.

After enough rescues, the Brad Pitts mystically recorded his home town
inside LNHQ.  Surely as long as LNHQ stood, Amnesiac Brad Pitt could
mystically connect to it and find his way to the city where he lived.
He could find his own way from there.

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!"

...

Author's Note:  Well, that's where *I* stand on leaving out information
from the Wiki just because it was funny once.  But I'm not bitter...
'cause we can *make* it funny again!  8{D>

----
Issue #10, by Adrian McClure

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.

----
Issue #11, by Drew Perron

TINNNG! The sporkarang was knocked off course, spinning around in the air and
crashing to the ground. The explosion lit a silhouette from behind, the
silhouette of the one who had knocked it out of the air. She stood, in skinny
jeans and a leather jacket, holding a repeating crossbow with casual ease, a
cigarette dangling from her lips.

"It can't be!" said Deathspork; the Terminator. "My old enemy-- KRISTEN
STEWART!"

"Saving you *again*, Brad. That's, what, twenty-three pizzas you owe me?"
Kristen Stewart rolled to a crouch, pointing the crossbow at Deathspork.

"Sorry, have we met?" said Amnesiac Brad Pitt, putting out his coat where
sporkarang shrapnel had set it on fire. "Are you another member of the NTB?
Because if you are, I'll have to call my agent and have him change my
business cards so they read 'The Second-to-Last Trenchcoater'."

"Why couldn't it have been Always Has A Pizza Ready When You Want Pizza Brad
Pitt?" Kristen sighed. "Look, I've had to explain myself to half a dozen of
your quantum variants today, so I'll keep it short and sweet. I'm not NTB, I'm
MTB - Magical Troublemaking Bastard. I stir shit up when it needs stirred, and
I got the job when a terrible thing happened to me in a graveyard on the set
of Twilight." She inclined her head toward Deathspork. "Specifically, a 'meet
one lucky fan' event with *him*."

Deathspork snarled. "I won that contest fair and square! You'd think a
*serious* actress would welcome strong criticism!"

"You used the words 'resting bitch face' three times and talked about how much
better the version in the porn parody was!"

"I'm still not sure about this," said Amnesiac Brad Pitt. "Isn't using actual
celebrities more of a Superguy thing?"

Kristen shrugged. "I'd be more worried about that if there had been any
Superguy stories since Breaking Dawn Part 2 came out."

Hidden behind a bush, a figured rubbed his hands in gleeful anticipation.
Deathspork had acted as the distraction he was always meant to be. Now,
WikiCide would strike!

Decked out in an elegant butler's tuxedo, WikiCide stepped up to Amnesiac Brad
Pitt. "Hold your coat, sir?"

"Oh, yes, thank you." Brad shrugged off the trenchcoat and handed it to him.

"AHA!" Everyone turned as WikiCide held the coat high in the air. From within
its rumples and well-worn creases, darkness swelled, and the eerie high
screech of ripping reality shivered through the air. "Now, with the eldritch
power of the Last Trenchcoat, I can combine the Worlds' Addresses harvested
from Google Groups with the robots.txt of the LNH Wiki - AND BEGIN A NEW ROBOT
INVASION!"

Drew "this was inspired by a suggestion from Lalo" Perron

----
Issue #12, by Adrian McClure

====*MEANWHILE IN THE LNHQ...*====

"Wow," said WikiBoy, "this looks pretty bad." The lobby was in a
constant state of explosion and unexplosion.

"It's really loud in here," said Token Girl, squeezing her palms over
her ears. "And I thought watching the Michael Bay Smurfs movie was
bad..."

"WikiBoy, can you generate a quantum stabilizer field?" said Merissa.

"...if you say so?" he said.

"OK." She snapped her fingers. "Bam!"

A green field of energy shot out of the WikiKoma's back, so now the
explosions had stopped and lobby was only sort of on fire.

"OK," said Merissa, "we just gotta go to the control room and I'll
save us with our l33t cyberhacker skills!" (She pronounced it
"el-three-three-tea.") Probably there's gonna be spacetime distortions
and stuff but--"

"HALT!" A young Tibetan sorcerer of ambiguous gender presentation,
wearing orange robes that were kind of trenchoat-y, appeared in a
dramatic poof of dark smoke.

"Oh yay, the first fight!" said Merissa. "You seem pretty cool, but
not that cool, so I guess you're just the first boss. Hope this'll be
over quickly!"

"Merissa, hold on," said Token Girl. "I love a good fight as much as
anybody but we should save the fighting for when it matters. We don't
know they're our enemy--"

"But I am!" the mysterious sorcerer (sorcerex?) said. "Scarlett
Johannson, you will stop this at once! This indignity will not stand!"

"Wha?" said Merissa. "I'm not Scarlett Johannson! If I were there'd be
a Black Widow movie already! And Ike Perlmutter would be shot into
space! And we'd have the rights to the Fantastic Four and we could all
be in Secret Kingdom Heart Wars III: Infinity Inferno of Vengeance and
we could team up with all the Disney heroes and the Star Wars heroes
to fight the Nobody of Darth Beyonder and I could save the day by
fusing my Gun-Keyblade with the Infinity Gauntlet!" Everyone in the
room fell silent imagining what that would be like and almost keeled
over.

"What, isn't that cool?" said Merissa.

"It's an abomination!" said the mysterious sorcerex. "But not as much
as your playing Major Kusanagi! I've come to put a stop to that before
it's too late!"

"Huh?" said Merissa. "I'm not playing her in a movie, I'm just
dressing up as her because she's cool!"

"You can't lie to me, Johannsen!" She raised her hands into a fighting
stance, crackling with arcane energy.

"OK, you are kind of cool I guess, but I'll still stop you!" said Merissa.

"Wait a minute," said WikiBoy. "Um... could you maybe... um... explain
why you want to blow us up? And maybe tell us who you are?"

"Very well then. I am the apprentice of Occultism Kid. Some call me
Kid Occultism Kid, but you shall know me as the Not Yet Ancient One!
Once I was one of the world's most famous Youtube lets players,
concerned only with fame, money, and getting more subscribers. But
then I fell prey to carpal tunnel syndrome and all my videos were lost
to a copyright takedown! And so I sought to learn the ways of magic to
heal myself and win copyright lawsuits and destroy the dreaded
Takedown Bots. In the process, I went on a quest of enlightenment and
became one of the NTA..."

"The NTA?" said Token Girl. "Don't you mean the NTB?"

"No, the NTA! Newly Trained Arcanists! And now there's a terrible
whitewashed Inception ripoff movie being made of my life! I have gone
forth to set my occult might against the forces of Hollywood before
they whitewash everything and cast Shia LaBeouf as Martin Luther
King!"

"Oh Jesus," said Token Girl. "The writer just put in a reference to
Ghost in the Shell because they'd been watching Stand Alone Complex on
Hulu... did something awful happen after this story started?" She
looked it up on her phone.thingy. "'Ghost in the Shell Considered
Using CGI to Make White Actors Look Asian...' Christ. Yeah, that's
terrible--"

But before Token Girl could say anything more, the pitched battle had
begun! Merissa used the BIGGUN to fire frag grenades (nonlethal frag
grenades... it's that kind of story) but the NYA-One transformed them
into flowers! "How do I win this boss fight?" she said. She put the
BIGGUN on "Manual" mode and used it to fire a Strategy Guide...
Unfortunately, while the BIGGUN could do literally anything, it had to
involve blowing things up somehow, so the manual exploded in her hands
before she could read it. But the book dust blinded the NYA-one, and
Merissa put her BIGGUN into Gun-Keyblade mode and fired out gun-keys
before she could do anything...

Meanwhile, two robots watched from a distance. One was in the form of
a pastel purple-pink car and one was a train with cool racing marks.
The car, which was generating pale illusionary mist from its exhaust,
shifted into the form of a humanoid bot with Miami Vice sunglasses,
while the other became a radical samurai. "Vaporwave, I was
wondering..."

"Yes, Multitrack?" said Vaporwave coolly.

"That dude who you're using the illusion-y stuff on to make it look
like her enemy is Scarlett Johannson... aren't they... you know... a
sorcerer?"

"Sorcerex."

"Well whatever kinda sorcer they are, won't they see thorugh your illusions?"

"Ah, you see, this headquarters is still in quantum flux. She won't
percieve the truth until it's too late."

"Yeah! All we have to do is--aaah!" Multitrack fell off the top of the
couch, where he'd been standing, and into the cushions.

The battling net.heroes hadn't noticed the robots for two reasons. The
first was Vaporwave's illusion powers. The second was that they were
the size of actual toy cars.

Vaporwave sighed. "Well, despite the... flawed nature of my partner,
it will only be a matter of time before this world belongs to... the
MicroMACS!"

[Note: Drew came up with the name MicroMACS. Vaporwave is named after
the retro-80s music/aesthetic genre, while Multitrack is based on the
drift racing transformer imaginatively named Drift+the "multi track
drifting" meme]

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

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

----

Drew "TO BE CONTINUED..." Perron