LNH: Classic LNH Adventures #74: Birth Of A Villain Part Fourteen

Arthur Spitzer arspitzer2 at gmail.com
Sun Aug 19 13:44:48 PDT 2018


 In this weeks reposting of stuff you can find in the eyrie archive
https://archives.eyrie.org/racc/lnh/
we have the forteenth section of a Birth Of A Villain.

And with #35 Saxon Brenton returns.  Will Gorilla Grad finish the
cure?  And while that happens Fourth Wall Lass and Invisible-Intangible-
Inaudible Lass have a heart to heart about whether the Writers are satanic
or just sadistic.

And with #36 Martin Phipps attempts to chop the head off this cascade.
Will he succeed?  And who will win the 2000 Nobel Prize for Peace?


And now..


              _						
             | |      Classic			
             | |                      =
             | |      ____    ____    _    ____    ___
             | |__   | [] |  | [] |  | |  | [] |  | _ \  

             |____|   \__]    \__ |  |_|   \__/   |_|\_\
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                                |_|  OF NET.HEROES

                                     ADVENTURES #74


                         =====================
                    Birth Of A Villain Part Fourteen
                         =====================




From: Saxon Brenton <saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au>
Subject: [LNH] Birth Of A Villain #35
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.creative,alt.comics.lnh
Date: 14 Aug 2001 21:39:22 -0000

Taking time out for a bit of character development,
Blue Light Productions presents:

Birth Of A Villain #35
A chaotic add-on cascade type Legion of Net.Heroes title

Spotlight On: Fourth Wall Lass and Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass

Written by Saxon Brenton
In consultation with Jamie Rosen

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Cover shows a lab in the LNHHQ. In the extreme foreground on either 
side, both Gorilla Grad and Tsar Chasm can be seen, absorbed in 
their work. They are so far forward on the picture plane that the 
perspective makes them look huge and out of focus, with their forms 
running partly off either side of the cover, and their faces being 
obscured by the title logo towards the top. Between them in the 
background Fourth Wall Lass and Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass 
are sitting at the rear of the lab, talking.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

     Fourth Wall Lass mused on the predicament that the Legion had 
found itself in.
     It would take a while for Gorilla Grad to synthesise the cure to 
the Legionnaire's Disease that had been spread by Melissa. Of course, 
Melissa was calling herself by the net.villain code name Vector now, 
but ultimately she was still just Melissa - another follower of the 
maniacal Church of the Fourth Wall and its leader, Father Brown.
     It was strange in some ways. During her initial appearance at the 
Planet Kirby theme restaurant Melissa had claimed to be the 'ultimate 
villain'. Shortly thereafter this seemingly extravagant claim had 
apparently boiled away with the revelation that she was just another 
one of Father Brown's minions, albeit an impressively powerful one.
     But had it?
     As Melissa, the woman had transformed - or rather, been trans-
formed - into a powerful virus that caused havoc in Real Life. Then, 
as Vector she had initiated a confrontation with the Legion of 
Net.Heroes and its impromptu group of allies that had seen most of the 
Legion rendered comatose and the Church of the Fourth Wall come 
perilously close to wresting control of the Looniverse from the 
Writers (mad group of anarchic nincompoops though they often were) 
and into the hands of a Writer under their own control. Moreover, in 
the process of trying to seal off the Looniverse's fourth wall to all 
others, they had unwittingly also come close to collapsing the first, 
second and third walls and thereby damaging the Looniverse more than 
they could imagine. She shuddered to think of what would happen in 
that case.
     Fourth Wall Lass sipped her Mr Paprika, and noticed from reading 
one of captions that Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass had sat down 
beside her. "Hello," she said.
     *Hello,* replied the Maid Of Lurking. *What's up?*
     "Oh, nothing much. I was actually thinking about what would 
happen if the first through third walls collapsed."
     *Tsar Chasm said the Looniverse would be sucked into Real Life.* 
[In _Birth Of A Villain_ #23 - Footnote Girl]
     Fourth Wall Lass nodded absently. "That's one possibility, though 
I don't think Vammo Woman, the RACCelestial Madonna, would allow 
that to happen without a fight."
     *Vammo Woman. She was the winner of the pageant during Retcon 
Hour, wasn't she? The one who became the new Looniversal Anchor.*
     "That's right. I think it's safe to say she'd put quite a bit of 
effort into keeping the Looniverse from falling into Real Life. Or 
rather Real Life -1. I don't know whether she'd succeed though. I 
mean, I *hope* she'd succeed, but it would probably depend on how big 
the 'hole' caused by the collapse of the walls was. And it might be 
that only a part would get ripped way, anyway."
     *Either way, it's not a pretty thought.*
     "No, it's not." She sighed. "Anyway, how is it going with you?"
     *Okay, I suppose. This is the first time in ages that I've been 
able to interact with real living people who are awake rather than 
sleeping ones or dead ones or strange cosmic entities. And being able 
to help against an actual villain is nice. Most of the time I just 
wander around, talking with the occasional ghost, helping with dreams, 
and generally trying to keep from going insane.*
     "That sounds pretty rough."
     Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass smiled wanly. *I think it's 
supposed to be. From what the Perfect Stranger told me, the whole 
point of my powers is so that the universe has someone to suffer 
hardship for no sensible reason.*
     Fourth Wall Lass nodded with weary resignation. "It might be 
Drama related. Limp-Asparagus Lad once speculated that the Drama is 
necessary to keep our stories interesting, and that the net.ahumans 
have to shoulder the burden of most of the outrageous misfortunes that 
the Looniverse seems to thrive on." Then she rolled her eyes, and 
added, "Of course, that means that the normals have to bear the weight 
of being a crowd of non-entities whose only purpose is to be saved 
from the Threat Of The Week."
     Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass snorted, partly in amusement 
at the other's cynically accurate assessment, but mostly in irritation 
at the notion of a universe that had as a basic principle the need to 
be unfair to people. *Well, that's true, I guess. It's not like I'm 
the only one with problems.*
     "Good old fashioned personal problems; the building blocks of 
character development for the superheroes of the Modern Age of comics."
     *Of course, some of us get more than we could ever need. Some-
times I can't help thinking about things like what happened to the 
Legion of Occult Heroes. I've sat through a few of the showings of 
the remembrance movie that was made in the final days before their 
universe... died. And when other people bring up files I've been able 
to read some of the reports of things that have happened to other 
members of the Legion, like when Sig.Lad was dying because his powers 
were destabilising; or when Decibel Dude was framed by Dr Oblivion.*
     [In _Legion Of Occult Heroes_ #5, _Dvandom Force_ #s 43-48, and 
_Decibel Dude And Vigilante Guy_ #s 31-40 - Footnote Girl]
     *It's as though the Writers go out of their way to make their 
characters miserable,* she concluded.
     "Some of them do. I'd like to think that most of them are simply 
writing to the best of their ability to create interesting stories, 
but I'll admit that there have been times when I've found it hard to 
tell whether they've been trying to use adversity as a means of 
character development or as tool of sadism. I know that Swordmaster 
thinks it's the latter."
     *That would probably be the worst of it. Thinking that your 
Writer was out to get you, I mean. There were times when I've thought 
things like that - the whole world was out to get me - but this was 
before I got my powers. Back then it was actually just a string of 
stupid little things going wrong, really, and looking back they seem 
pretty trivial compared to some of the things I've had to put up with 
since I became Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass. But then after I 
became a net.hero and broke the fourth wall, I realised that a whole 
lot of what's wrong with the world is planned... And some of the first 
things I started to wonder about was whether God hates us or some-
thing, or like, maybe the gnostics were right and the Devil really is 
running the world.*
     "I don't think the Writers are satanic," FWLass disagreed mildly. 
"Sadistic sometimes, but not actually evil. The point is, deep down 
inside, they don't really believe in us. No matter how much they 
go on about how 'real' their characters are to them, in the end 
they're talking in a pure literary sense, about how familiar with us 
they are in the abstract. Like reading a book and getting to know the 
characters so well that you can predict how they'll react to a given 
situation - but in this case the Writers create the book rather than 
read it."
     *They often talk about how real we are to them.*
     "Yes, but like I said, that's in the sense of knowing how a 
character will react. Then they put on the pose about people getting 
intuition from other dimensions and writing that history down as 
fiction, like in the Heinlein stories and from DC comics and stuff. 
But if the Writers really started hearing voices or getting strange 
new ideas from literally nowhere, I can tell you now, they'd freak and 
book themselves a session with a psychiatrist."
     This set the two of them off with the giggles. After a few 
seconds this tapered off, and FWLass added, "So, no, the Writers might 
be malicious at times, but the situation isn't quite as knowingly evil 
as it sometimes looks like. When you get right down to it, in their 
heart of hearts none of them truly believe we're real, and I suspect 
that they think that if they're inflicting pain on something that 
doesn't really exist, it doesn't count as pain."
     *You make them sound more like demiurges. You know, in the sense 
that they're like some idiot gods thrashing about and doing stuff, 
but not realising that they aren't actually the real and ultimate 
creators - and that ultimately they're secondary creators and that all 
of their antics are subject to God.*
     Fourth Wall Lass thought about this. "That's a pretty good 
description, actually. I usually think of them as 'demas', which is 
a technical description that Anal-Retentive Archive Kid dug up from 
somewhere. He's into comparative religion and mythology. It's supposed 
to be a word that describes a god who shapes a pre-existing world, as 
opposed to a god who created the world from nothing. But, yeah, 
demiurges would be a better description."
     *Actually, it took me ages to figure that out that much.*
     "Figure what out?"
     *That the Writers aren't literally God. Where I grew up it 
wasn't... really considered proper to get involved with the activities 
of net.ahumans.*
     "Wrong side of the tracks, sort of thing?"
     *A bit like that,* IIILass admitted. *Anyway, when you find out 
about the Writers, it comes as a bit of a shock. Now, I got to sort 
out the fourth wall thing fairly quickly because I could drift around 
with the other net.heroes and pick up what was going on. Even if I had 
to piece it all together myself because I couldn't ask questions!* she 
added. *But, you can imagine what it's like for most normals who 
aren't part of this world of high weirdness. They don't get all that 
much information. If the villains talk at all they're usually making 
misleading statements for their own purposes or issuing terrorist 
threats, and the heroes tend to censor the seriously strange stuff 
in their press releases. And stuff like the fourth wall, well, even 
though that's public knowledge it's the type of thing that the Writers 
don't allow to loom too large in the pubic consciousness, because it's 
the type of thing that would cause society to shift too far away from 
being recognisable as an only slightly different version of their 
world in Real Life.*
     "Oh yes," agreed FWL. "Just like Marvel and DC maintaining 
shared universe settings that're easy for new readers to access. Even 
allowing for the compressed time scales they've adopted to explain 
why their heroes stay young, there's so much stuff that's happened in 
their respective universes that they should look nothing like they do."
     *You can see what I'm getting at, then.*
     Fourth Wall Lass nodded. She could, and in fact it was something 
that she considered often. She was the one member of the Legion 
who broke the fourth wall because it was her superpower rather than 
because it was an amusing plot point to entertain the readers, and she 
was privy to information about how the world really worked that was 
pretty esoteric even by net.hero standards. Moreover, her grasp of 
comic book cliches and her literature study classes at Dave Thomas 
Deluxe university gave her an insight into the forces shaping world 
history that had nothing to do with the ones usually posited by 
mainstream theories.
     And sometimes FWLass worried that she might become so focused 
on the interplay of plot, characterisation and drama that she might 
loose track of how it looked to people who didn't know that they were 
fiction. She made a habit of trying to see things from the normals' 
point of view, simply to try and maintain her humanity.
     *Anyway,* said IIILass. *I guess all those sorts of things are 
why the Church of the Fourth Wall has such an attraction to some 
people. The notion that the fourth wall is a danger, and that the 
Church has ways to seal it off so that the nasty things on the other 
side can't get us... That must be extremely appealing to anyone who 
feels helpless against the bullying of the Writers.*
     "If you're of the mindset that looks on the whole concept from a 
Lovecraftian point of view."
     *What, that the Looniearth is a small patch of light and sanity 
in a huge dark world and there are terrible cosmic things out there 
that we really don't want to know about?*
     "That's the one."
     *You don't buy it,* IIILass observed. It wasn't a question.
     "No. I can see where they're coming from, but... No, I mean, 
partly it's because I don't hold with the idea that the world is a 
fundamentally bad place. Amoral on the physical level, maybe, and 
subject to all the creative nastiness that the Writers can cook up, 
definitely. But on a spiritual level it's like you said: it's all been 
overseen by a good and loving God." Fourth Wall Lass gave her a 
sober look...
     (Or at least, she would have given IIILass a sober look if she 
had known where she was sitting. As it was, FWLass was only vaguely 
aware that her invisible companion was sitting somewhere to her 
immediate left. It's really hard to make eye contact with someone that 
you can't see.)
     "...As far as I'm concerned, the First Fallacy of the Church of 
the Fourth Wall is that they've given up hope. They've taken to 
thinking that they have to protect people from something that they 
think is wrong and do it *at any cost*, and if they keep people from 
knowing about the fourth wall then it'll just go away. Basically 
they're hiding their heads under the blanket and are trying to pretend 
that the 'bad things' just aren't there.
     *Fair enough. And the other part of it?"
     She shrugged. "The other is that I've seen the Church in action 
and to be blunt I don't trust them any further than I can horizontally 
defecate. It's like... Well, as I was telling Writers Block Woman and 
the others when I caught up with them in issue 24, the Church is a 
splinter group of a number of secret societies that preserve the 
knowledge of crossing the fourth wall that was brought to Earth by 
alien comic book writers. I first found out about the fourth wall when 
the Church made an attack on one of the other groups that it had been 
estranged from after it took the paranoid path. Having seen some of 
what the Church gets up to, I think that closing off the fourth wall 
is only its first priority and then after that it has taking over the 
world and generally being tyrannical psychopathic nutburgers running 
a close second." They might talk a lot about protecting people, 
but I've noticed that they tend to shrug off collateral damage as 
acceptable losses.
     *Sounds like a good example of something that Neddy Thunderbox 
used to say."
     Fourth Wall Lass paused as she tried to keep up with the sudden 
change of direction in the conversation. Neddy Thunderbox. He'd been 
with the Society of Wireless Heroes, who were one of the hero groups 
that were about prior to the Legion. Dvandom Force was supposed to 
have visited a parallel Looniearth were the Society were still active. 
She searched her memory for anything about Neddy and his catchphrases 
that were relevant. She hazarded: " 'I suffer fools gladly because I'm 
one of them'?"
     *Actually, I was thinking of: 'Always judge a man by the way he 
treats someone who is of no use to him.'*
     Fourth Wall Lass hadn't realised that that was a saying that he'd 
favoured, but she savoured the philosophy behind it. "Yes. That's a 
good one."
     Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass continued, *So, the Church 
has been corrupted by their own fears to become an organisation of 
hate. Not just hate against the fourth wall, but hate in general.*
     "That's about the size of it," FWLass sighed. Then she poked out 
her tongue and went, "Ppphhht. How about we change the subject. Just 
thinking about those ninny's makes me angry. What was it you said 
about meeting sleeping people?"
     *Oh. Uhm. I can communicate with people when they're dreaming. 
The Perfect Stranger told me I could do that if I tried.*
     "Really? You mean, actually talk with people, and have them talk 
back? But wouldn't you be able to meet people and stuff and not be so 
lonely?"
     *Well, yes. Kind of. But people who are dreaming usually aren't 
always all that coherent. And they never seem to remember me after 
they've woken up.*
     "That sounds like more of that arbitrary hard luck that's been 
dumped on you."
     *The same thing had occurred to me as well,* IIILass agreed. 
*Still, it's kind of nice being able to help people. Sometimes when 
they're having bad dreams I can kind of talk them into... well, it's 
not quite straight lucid dreaming, but sort of having a bit more 
control over what's going on. And I get to hang out with Cheesecake-
Eater Lad, too."
     "Cheesecake-Eater Lad?" said FWLass, somewhat bemused.
     *He's so sweet. And I don't just mean because of all the sugar in 
his cheesecakes, either. He cares about people, and he's always 
working so hard. But he never remembers me when he's awake. Or at 
least, he's never mentioned me. But I often visit him in his dreams, 
and we go dancing and walking along the beach and stuff.*
     Fourth Wall Lass had never considered C-ELad along romantic 
lines. Probably this was because she was already involved with 
someone, but the fact was that Cheesecake-Eater Lad was a bit on the 
tubby side (and this despite all the ninjitsu training he did under 
Ultimate Ninja!). Still, girls were more likely to choose a boyfriend 
based on what type of person he was rather than whether he looked like 
a sex god, and FWL had to admit that C-ELad was not only a Legion 
mainstay - competent and dependable - but he was also perennially good 
natured.
     "And he never remembers you?"
     *No.*
     "Would you like me to tell him?"
     Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass baulked. *I... don't think so. 
I mean, how would you react if you were told someone you could never 
see, or hear, or touch had a crush on you?*
     "I see what you mean. But, look at it this way: if he never knows 
about you, what would happen to you if he went and became romantically 
involved with someone else?"
     Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass cringed at the thought.
     Fourth Wall Lass bit her lip and said, "Sorry. Look, just think 
about it, okay? In the meantime, how about I have a talk with Dr. 
Stomper about your condition. That, at least, should be something 
clear cut and easy to handle."
     *It should be,* IIILass said wryly, *but I wouldn't be too sure.*
     Just then Gorilla Grad interrupted: "Okay people, it's done! The 
cure for Legionnaire's Disease is ready!"

IS THE CURE REALLY READY?

DOES THIS MEAN THAT THE END OF THIS CASCADE IS 
FINALLY IN SIGHT?

OR WILL THE WRITERS PROCRASTINATE BY DWELLING 
ON THE SUBPLOTS WE'VE ALREADY GOT AND THEN 
COMPOUND THE PROBLEM BY CREATING MORE?

We'll just have to see: in the next issue of... Birth Of A Villain!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Add Notes:
     I'll mention this mainly for Fourth Wall Lass' benefit since I 
know she'll be reading this, but it's also general advice for other 
Writer's too: attempts to cure Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass of 
her condition are almost guaranteed to go Horribly Wrong - probably 
fatally so depending on how much effort is put into them. Curing her 
of being Invisible-Intangible-Inaudible Lass won't revert her to 
normal, or anything like that. It'll just cause her to cease to be. 
(Why, yes, this is another of the aforementioned instances of a Writer 
being creatively nasty. Why do you ask? :-)
     On other issues: the discussion of the social and religious role 
of the Church of the Fourth Wall is something that Rob Rogers brought 
up ages ago - in both the public forum and in private email - after 
introducing the Church into the BoaV cascade. The nature of Fourth 
Wall Lass' powers makes it obvious that she'd be keenly interested 
in the issue. However, as I've tried to illustrate, there are other 
possible sides to the debate - many of them depending on a particular 
character's relationship with their Writer. (Remember how many 
character's have taken the opportunity of visiting the RACCCafe to 
mouth off about their Writers? Or even to do them in, like Swordmaster 
tried?)
     Finally, the Neddy Thunderbox quotes were put in during the week 
in April when I first started writing this episode, which was also 
when the news of the death of Harry Secombe came out. Secombe, of 
course, used the nom de guerre of Neddy Seagoon for The Goon Show 
radio comedies and is therefore the person (once removed) that Dvandom 
based Neddy Thunderbox on. I'd known about the 'He suffered fools 
gladly because he was one' quip he made about himself, but I didn't 
realise until I'd read the obituaries that he'd favoured the other 
aphorism, which he had inherited from his father. Since Thunderbox 
is supposed to be a super*hero*, I thought it would be appropriate if 
in addition to Seagoon's jovial but blathering idiocy, he also had a 
touch of Secombe's empathy for others.
----------
Saxon Brenton   Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney, Australia
saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au

From: "Martin Phipps" <phippsmartin at hotmail.com>
Subject: [LNH] Birth of a Villain #36
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.creative
Date: 15 Aug 2001 06:46:51 -0000

Birth Of A Villain #36
a chaotic add-on cascade type Legion of Net.Heroes title

"The Conclusion (?)"

Written by Martin Phipps with no one there to stop him!

----------------------------------------------------------
Cover has wReamicus Maximus and Father Brown shaking hands
with Bill Clinton in the background.
----------------------------------------------------------

  As usually happens in the Looniverse, events are ultimately decided by 
committee, namely a committee of writers from the real world.  In this 
particular case, however, the vast majority of writers appeared to have lost 
interest in the various Melissa clones.  This then ultimately resulted in 
one ultimate fate for all the Melissa clones, one which struck the fancy of 
the only writer who was apparently interested in seeing the story to its 
ultimate conclusion: the Melissa clones all became amorous Filipinas who 
went around Manila saying "I love you" to all the men they met and causing 
them to momentarily erase from their minds all memory of their wives and 
families.  The Melissas were finally brought to justice, however, when the 
mayor of Manila ordered another crackdown against that sort of thing!

Meanwhile...

  Doctor Stomper found himself in a small canoe on a lake.  He sat there 
silently and motionlessly.  Then he heard a voice.
  "Wake up, my boy!"
  Doctor Stomper noticed oars on either side of the boat.  He placed his 
hands on the oars.
  "That's it, boy!  You can do it!"
  Doctor Stomper brought the canoe to shore.  He looked up at the man who 
had called to him.  He wasn't very tall so the reeds along the shore 
obscured all but the part of him that was above the waist.  He was an old 
man, but still healthy, which was all the more surprising because he was 
dead.  "Grandpa?"
  "Yes, boy, it's me!"
  "Am I dead?"
  "No, you're dreaming."
  "Oh."
  "But you might as well be dead already, son, if you're not going to wake 
up."
  "Grandpa, I'm tired.  I feel as though there's something in me making 
copies of itself and sending out e-mail to all my friends."
  "Yeah, that's the Legionaire's Disease," the vision told him.  "But 
Gorilla Grad thinks he's got a cure for you and the others, but you have to 
fight it, my boy!  They can't bring you back if you don't fight."
  "I don't know," Doctor Stomper said.  "I'm not a major player in the LNH.  
I never was.  I never even appeared in Cry.sig.  Hell, the person I was 
based on, he hasn't even been on the net since May of 1992!"
  "And if he were here now he'd say that it was completely out of character 
for you to be whining like this!"
  "Thing is, do they really need me anymore!"
  The vision shook his head.  "My God, son, did you even read the last issue 
of this series?  Don't you realise how dry the pseudoscience for this 
reality is becoming without your entertaining explanations?  Do they need 
you?  My God, son, they need you more than they've ever needed you before!  
Now you get out of that boat and come step onto shore!"
  Doctor Stomper nodded.  "I'm coming, Pops!"  He struggled to get out of 
the boat.
  "That's it, my boy, you're doing great!"
  "I can barely feel my legs."
  "Come on, you can do it!"
  "Grandpa?"
  "Come on, Doctor, come back to us!"

  Doctor Stomper opened his eyes.  Around him stood Gorilla Grad, Tsar 
Chasm, Weirdness Magnet, Pedestrian Girl, Fourth Wall Demolisher Lad, 
Expendable Man, Fourth Wall Lass, Twaeila Brock, Mouse, Insomnia Boy, Easily 
Siscovered Man Lite, Coward Lad, Google-13, DeadHead Man and Chinese Guy; in 
other words, the entire cast of the past thirty-five issues, with the 
exception of Writers Block Woman who was sitting elsewhere in the room with 
Mr. Tiddles on her lap.
  "You did it!" several cast members told Gorilla Grad.
  Gorilla Grad nodded.  "We need to give this to all of them," he said, 
refering to the special mixture of Dr. Paprika and Jolt Cola.  "But be 
careful!  Make sure the solution is only 25% Jolt Cola!  Anything more than 
that could be dangerous!"
  "Congratulations!" Tsar Chasm said.  "Of course, you realise that I will 
have to leave now.  The Legion considers me a villain and if any of them 
were to wake up and find me by their bedside there might be an unfortunate 
understanding."
  "Of course," Gorilla Grad said.  He offered his hand.  "If we see you 
again, I hope it can be as friends."
  "I wouldn't count on that," Tsar Chasm said, refusing the handshake.
  Gorilla Grad went back to tending to Doctor Stomper.

  Over the next few days, the Legionaires were slowly came out of their 
comas.  As it turned out that Legionaires disease was not life threatening 
and, given time, the Legionaires would have all have woken up on their own 
accord.  In fact, none of them had been out for more than a week when all 
was said and done.  Yes, that's right, the past thirty-five issues all took 
place in a matter of a few days, which meant that it was still 1999 (much to 
the confusion of Weirdness Magnet who seemed to think it was 2001 already).  
Meanwhile, with the LNH back in action, the Legion of Costumed Individuals 
(Pedestrian Girl, Fourth Wall Demolisher Lad and Expendable Man) made their 
way back to their home dimension and Twaeila Brock similarly returned to 
alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die.

  With things having settled down, Tiddles, who still had control over 
Writers Block Woman, considered the situation he found himself in.  He 
realised that is would look a bit strange to have Writers Block Woman flying 
into action with a cat in her arms... and God forbid she should drop him!  
Nor had he quite figured out how to manipulate Writers Block Woman such that 
nobody would suspect that he was actually in control; after all, it was one 
thing to fool Insomnia Lad, DeadHead Man and Chinese Guy but what about the 
rest of the Legion?  Or mouse, for that matter?
  After checking Writers Block Woman's entry in the LNH roster, however, and 
following the link to her daughter, Mouse, Tiddles was able to determine 
that Writers Block Woman was, in fact, the ex-wife of Jonathan Connery, the 
Director of the Conspiracy Corporation, the second largest corporation in 
the world.  Tiddles soon realised that, short of getting Writers Block Woman 
and her husband back together again, there was no way he could use Writers 
Block Woman to gain control of the Conspiracy Corporation.  Mouse, however, 
was another story.
>From what Tiddles had been able to determine, it seemed Writers Block Woman 
and Jonathon Connery shared custody of Mouse.  Thus, all Tiddles had to do 
was take control of Mouse, leaving Writers Block Woman with a big gaping 
hole in her memory but otherwise no more the wiser, and then just bide his 
time until Mouse's next trip to Net.Zealand.  Tiddles purred with delight.  
Being in control of the world's second biggest corporation was certainly a 
lot better than being in control of some small time crime syndicate!
  Tiddles had Writers Block Woman bring him into Mouse's room.  He then 
instructed her to leave him there, go back to her room and go to sleep.  
Mouse found her mother's behaviour a bit strange.
  "Mom?  Why did you bring a cat in here?  Mom?"
  =( She can't hear you. )=
  "Who said that?"
  Tiddles jumped up on Mouse's bed.  =( I did. )=
  "Whoa!" Mouse said.  "I guess I shouldn't have watched Doctor Doolittle 
before going to bed!"
  =( You're not dreaming. )=
  "Oh and I suppose you are a talking cat."
  =( You hear my voice as a result of my powerful mind projecting its 
thoughts into your brain.  I am Tiddles.  I am your master. )=
  "You must be joking."
  =( I am not!  I am a superior intellect!  You will do as I say! )=
  "You must have me confused with somebody else.  I think for myself!  I 
don't take orders from anyone, let alone a cat!"
  =( I am no ordinary cat.  I am Tiddles. )=
  "And I'm Mouse."  She shook his paw.  He felt humiliated.  "Nice to meet 
you, except that mice don't like cats... and now I can understand why."
  =( Enough of this!  You will take me to Net.Zealand where I can use your 
father to take over the Conspiracy Corporation. )=
  "I don't think so.  I'm quite happy here with Mom and all my friends in 
the LNH.  Now, why couldn't you just be an ordinary housecat?"
  =( Ha!  Someday cats will rule the world!  You'll see! )=
  "Fine.  Until then why don't you just go to the kitchen and get a nice 
bowl of milk.  Hmm?"
  With a hiss, Tiddles ran out of the room, out of LNH HQ and out into the 
night, perhaps never to be seen again.

  Of course, you might be wondering what happened with wRreamicus Maximus 
and his church of Dvandom in his on again, off again battle with Father 
Brown and the Church of the Fourth Wall who were at one point allying 
themselves with the Nodacommandos.  Well, unfortunity, due to the separation 
of church and state and the freedom of religion, both guaranteed by the 
constitution of the Loonited States of Ame.rec.a, there was nothing the LS 
government could do about either group.  Instead, the government offered to 
negotiate a settlement.
After months of intense negotiations, the two church leaders were brought to 
Camp David where a beaming President Clinton, always thinking about his 
legacy, got the two of them to sign an agreement to cease hostilities and to 
not try to bring any writer, neither Dave Van Domelan nor David Henry, 
through the fourth wall to the Looniverse.  The two church leaders then 
agreed to shake hands.  They met again in early 2000 when they shared that 
year's Nobel Peace Prize.
It remains to be seem, however, if the two churches, with their 
diametrically opposed beliefs and points of view, would continue to coexist 
peacefully.  That's life: you can't expect that everything will have a neat 
and tidy conclusion.

                                   THE END (?)

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==========
Next Week: Nope still not over!!  Part Fifteen!!
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Arthur "Same Classic Channel.  But Same Time?  Probably not." Spitzer


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