LNH: Return of Just Another Multi-Writer Cascade That Will Probably Never Have an Ending.GEKIJOBAN: "Friendgame"

[Drew Perron]

                                    Return of
                         Just Another Multi-Writer Cascade
                  That Will Probably Never Have an Ending.GEKIJOBAN
                                  "Friendgame"
                                 by Drew Perron
================================================================================
The cover is a lovingly hand-painted portrait of Net.Access punching LAN.os 
right in the face.
================================================================================

A universe, not of hard and unyielding matter and energy, but of connection, 
affinity, the fundamental forces that bind people together - the Friend Zone!

And within that universe - the planet known as Rostir, home of the ghosts of 
millions of never-realized characters! And home to something else! Home of one 
of Looniverse-20's most powerful artifacts - an Absurdity Stone! In specific, 
guarded here is the soul of the Absurdity Stones, the mytheopeic center of 
everything that is the superhero genre - the Characterization Stone!

And upon that planet's misty magenta fields, beneath its violet sky with its 
soft robin's-egg clouds, lands the ship of - LAN.os!

The insipid purple man, fedora on his head, wearing a tailored business suit 
with the Crossover Queen's insignia on the lapel, walked down the ramp, followed 
by an average-looking, slightly slouchy black guy in a Moon Girl T-shirt, 
looking around and taking pictures with his phone.

"Haha!" shouted LAN.os, raising his chin, looking over the mist-covered 
landscape, soft like the dreams of a Lisa Frank unicorn. "Guardian! I summon you 
from your slumber. Awaken for LAN.os, son of the greatest warrior in the cosmos!"

The mists drew together before LAN.os, and out of them arose the shuffling, 
shadowy ghost of a character who never was - Ultra-Nazi-Squared, a concept for a 
net.villain who was dropped when the cultural view of Nazis as an easy default 
bad guy suddenly stopped being a Thing.

"lan.os of inferior," murmured the phantom. "you seek the stone... as have so 
many others... fools, all... once, i held the stone..."

"Skip the backstory, pathetic wretch, and take me to the site of my greatest 
victory!" LAN.os raised his fist in the air and shook it mightily.

The average-looking guy took a picture of the phantom. "This is going straight 
up on the Discord."

The villain-who-never-was lead them to the shore of a great lavender ocean, 
lapping at a beach of multicolored sugar sand. LAN.os grinned, cracking his 
knuckles. "Finally, my day of triumph and power approaches! Finally, the day the 
scales will be balanced - in favor of *me*!"

"Fat chance!" There was a THOOM! and water and sand sprayed up in the air as a 
figure landed on the beach.

The wave crashed back down on LAN.os, who sputtered and flailed, suit and hat 
completely soaked. "Pff! Pfahfh! What!? Who! Who dares challenge LAN.os, second 
to the Crossover Queen!?"

"Who do you think, buster!?" There in the breaking tide stood a figure. She was 
dressed in a black catsuit with a red, blue and gold starburst on the chest and 
a stylish brown leather jacket with cybernetic wings on the back. On her head 
was a red fedora that worked a thousand times better on her, and on her hands 
were high-tech blue-and-silver gauntlets. She was the Keymaster of the 
Omnilooniverse. She was Net.Access.

"YOU!" LAN.os shook his fist at her. "Of course... I should have known you would 
come to oppose me!"

Net.Access shook her head dismissively. "Sorry, but I have bigger things going 
on. How'd you get back in the Friend Zone, tho? I figured I'd never see your 
weird chin here ever again."

LAN.os laughed. "Fool, I am stronger than you knew me! I have made... EXACTLY 
ONE FRIEND!" He grabbed the average-looking guy and squeezed him against his 
side. "DOUG, from the comic book store!!"

"Uh, hey." Doug wriggled in LAN.os's grip and waved to Net.Access. "Sorry about 
this."

She acknowledged him with a nod. "Pardon me if I don't applaud."

"Your praise is meaningless to me, so there! But I have entered the Friend Zone, 
and located the Characterization Stone, as part of the Crossover Queen's plan! 
Soon, we shall enter a great crossover, where I take my time obtaining all the 
Absurdity Stones, one by one, each one that I obtain bringing in at least half a 
billion dollars in the US, and even more worldwide! And when they are brought 
together, I-- I mean, she-- shall rule triumphant!" LAN.os looked around 
shiftily. "I'm definitely not planning to betray her. Just ask Doug!"

Doug nodded. "Yeah, totally. He comes to game nights and talks about how he's 
not planning to betray the Crossover Queen all the time."

"And now..." LAN.os turned toward the ocean. A great whirlpool formed on its 
surface, a swirling nexus ready to pull anything down into the briny depths. 
"The Characterization Stone requires a sacrifice! And I--" He lifted Doug up 
over his head, in both hands. "I shall sacrifice my exactly one friend!"

"Hey, wait wait *what*!" Doug squirmed around, dropping his phone in the sand. 
"LAN.os. Dude. We *talked* about this."

"Yes, Doug! I remember our great debates on the trolley problem, and my promise 
that I would not sacrifice any of the gamers with which we play! But you see, 
Doug!" LAN.os roared in triumph. "I HAD MY FINGERS CROSSED!"

Net.Access rolled her eyes, sliding her hand down her face. "Okay. Enough. Let 
him go."

LAN.os cackled in maniacal glee. "Now, we shall have the ultimate climactic bat--!"

Net.Access snapped her fingers and the beach underneath LAN.os turned into a 
quicksand trap from a 1950s adventure movie. He yelped as he was pulled down to 
chest level immediately. Net.Access tossed a vine to Doug and he climbed out 
gratefully.

"Like I said. I didn't come here to fight you." From the pocket of her jacket, 
Net.Access pulled a cube - or, rather, a Kube; one of the Kubrik's Kubes, 
once-mighty cosmic artifacts, now powerless pieces of multicolored plastic. "I 
came here to fix a mistake."

"Insolent woman!" LAN.os charged up his prodigious cosmic strength-- but by the 
laws of '50s adventure movies, flailing around only caused him to sink faster, 
and by the time he stopped, the quicksand was up to his shoulders. "As soon as 
my army--"

"You can't take an army into the Friend Zone, LAN.os, I know it's just you and 
Doug on an automated ship." Net.Access tossed the Kube up in the air, caught it, 
looking off in the distance, memories playing across the back of her eyes. "Do 
you remember, when we fought before?" She shook her head, laughed. "No, you 
wouldn't. It's not the kind of thing you pay attention to. But..."

She sighed, smiled wistfully at a happy moment. "After Victoria and I saved each 
other... we were talking to everybody, and I was like... well, I hope this 
teaches the Writers to finish what they start. And everybody agreed. But..." She 
shook her head. "But we were wrong. I was wrong."

"It wasn't..." Net.Access turned to look at the place the technicolor sky met 
the pastel sea. "It wasn't the unfinished stories that caused the rifts and put 
the Looniverses in danger. I thought that that's what it was, when I saw the 
great pattern at the heart of the cosmos, and the missing pieces that were 
breaking it apart. But..." She looked around, turned to Doug, just so she could 
have an audience who might listen. "But it wasn't the stories that hadn't been 
written. It was the stories that *wouldn't* be written. It wasn't just that the 
Writers weren't writing endings, they weren't writing anything. Because of 
guilt. Guilt over having left things half-done."

Doug nodded, eyes wide, not understanding a word, as a tide of mist rolled in 
from the fields and covered the beach in a whispering haze. LAN.os, nose-deep in 
the mist, sneezed.

"The impossible standards, the need to catch up, to..." Net.Access waved her 
hands in the air. "To climb a mountain when you've already fallen and hit every 
rock on the way down! Before you can do *anything* new." She sighed, taking off 
her hat and running her hand thru her hair. "That's how I failed Intro to 
Hamburgerology. Got caught on an unfinished assignment, never turned it in, 
stopped going to class... to be honest, I'm still not sure *why* they put sesame 
seeds on the buns."

"Uh, are you getting distracted?" asked Doug.

"*My* victory speech would have been a lot better," grumbled LAN.os. "It would 
have had lots of references to famous European philosophers. Sounded really smart."

"Right. Anyway, what I'm saying is, me and the whole narrative around the rift 
crisis might've made things worse." The wings on Net.Access's back started 
fluttering, and she rose up in the air. "So I decided to do what I could to fix 
things. To be honest, I was already in the Friend Zone before I sensed you 
coming. You're not what I came here for at all."

LAN.os snorted, turning his head away. "Humph! Women and their easy excuses..."

Doug sighed. "Did you even *read* the 'feminism 101' articles I kept linking you?"

"I... I *skimmed* them, I swear!"

Net.Access rose up over the whirlpool. "To summon the Characterization Stone..." 
She held out the Kube in front of her. "I summon our future." She closed her 
eyes. "The future where all those long-forgotten stories would be finally 
finished. Where everything that we hoped to see flashed before our eyes in a 
perfect moment. Where we could resolve everything, once and for all, and seal it 
with a perfect 'The End'."

The Kube began to glow, softly at first, then coruscating with silvery color, 
filling with the energies of dream and desire. "Once, I sacrificed a perfect, 
finished past for an unbounded future, bright with possibility. Now, I sacrifice 
a perfect, finished future, so that that unbounded possibility may be accessible 
to all, each day free of the guilt of ages, each day open and new!"

Net.Access lifted the Kube over her head, and the mist rose up from the beach, 
up from the magenta fields, up towards her. As the mist rose, it spiraled around 
itself, became a solid shape, like a tornado in reverse.

The tip of the tornado slammed into the Kube. It shook, and Net.Access held on 
with both hands, brows knitting as a torrent of unrealized possibility streamed 
recklessly in, the silver light brighter and brighter with each moment until it 
was eye-searing.

Net.Access lowered the Kube, holding it out before her, directly over the maw of 
the whirlpool. "I release the Writers! I release the plots! I release the guilt! 
I..." Her hand opened. "Release!"

The Kube fell, tumbling end-over-end until it disappeared into the churning sea.

The whirlpool collapsed in on itself, and a column of light burst from the 
water. In the middle of that column was a fist-sized hunk of ruby, unfinished 
but scintillating with crimson light.

Net.Access reached out. Lighting crackled from the surface of the ruby into her 
outstretched hand, and she flinched, and turned her head away, eyes closed. But 
when she looked back, her eyes were glowing red, and her hand closed around the 
Characterization Stone.

"NO!" yelled LAN.os. "That was a meaningless sacrifice! Something you valued for 
the wrong reasons - something you had to let go of for your own good!"

Net.Access smirked, fedora perfectly perched on her head, eyes bright with the 
light of the Stone. "That's the most meaningful sacrifice you can make." She 
held the Stone in the air, pointing into the sky. "Let the wheels of 
characterization, stopped so long ago, grind into action once more! 
CHARACTEEEEEER... GRAND GROWTH!!"

Crimson lightning crackled around the Stone, around her body, and shot into the 
sky-- slamming against it like it was an invisible dome, and causing the dome to 
crack wide open, a gash that caused the alien light of a yellow sun to stream thru.

And thru that gap zoomed an enormous fishing hook, glinting golden, arcing thru 
the air and slamming into the sand. The hook was attached to a line, and the 
line pulled taut, pointing off thru the crack; and pulled thru by the line came 
a young man and an armored being.

The man wore a white trenchcoat with shimmery silver trim over a white spandex 
bodysuit with silver boots, a silver belt with a gold buckle, and a gold, 
shield-shaped chest emblem with a silver fishing hook on it. The being's armor 
was composed of smooth plates, gunmetal gray for most of it, blue on the gloves 
and boots, with a shining white breastplate, a blue circle on the left panel, a 
blue square on the right, and a blank blue faceplate. Doug watched them fly 
down, mouth in an O of amazement, and snapped several pictures.

They landed with a thump! on the beach. "Net.Access, are you okay?" said the 
man. "I sensed an enormous plot hook right before that-- I mean, that *rift* 
opened." He looked concerned, youthful brow furrowed.

"I'm sensing intense cosmic energies from the object she's holding," said a 
deep, smoky voice from the armor. "It may be some form of cosmic plot device, 
tho from the spectral analysis, I can tell it is not *the* Cosmic Plot Device."

The Characterization Stone pulsed in Net.Access's hand, and a burst of crimson 
energy pulsed from her eyes. "Nnnn... okay, that's enough of that... Plot Hook 
Lad... Betamax... can you give me some kind of containment unit?"

"One moment." Betamax pulled seemingly random panels off her armor; beneath each 
was an identical panel, which rose into place. She brought them together, 
assembling a sleek gray-and-blue sphere with an iris on it, which she threw up 
to Net.Access; Net.Access dropped the Stone into it and sighed. "Whew."

"So do we-- WHOA is that LAN.os!" Plot Hook Lad took a step back.

"Hah, yes!" crowed the cosmic villain, raising his fist. "And now that you have 
secured the Characterization Stone for me, I will-- whoop, sinking, sinking..."

"Yeah," said Net.Access. landing on the beach. "Long story."

"He desired that object, and you stopped him," said Betamax.

"Okay, short story." Net.Access adjusted the iris on the containment sphere, and 
a trickle of crimson energy streamed out like mist. "But that's not important, 
the important thing is, talking about what's been going on in your lives lately."

"...you know, I know you've been spending a lot of time with your girlfriend 
lately, but you could have, like, sent a text or something," said Plot Hook Lad. 
"No need to unearth interdimensional artifacts."

"I believe it is for the artifact," said Betamax, whose voice was near-monotone 
yet excellent at conveying a subtle amusement.

"Right," smiled Net.Access, the drama of the previous scene slowly dissolving, 
the guilt that had been released easing away.

"Oh, well." Plot Hook Lad laughed, a bit of his old awkwardness showing up. "Why 
don't you go first, Betamax, and I hook in?"

"All right," she said. "As you both know, I was originally known to the LNH as 
Irony Man II, showing up after the original Irony Man retired, on a secret quest 
to find the Messiah of Sincerity so that we could recruit the cosmic being known 
as the Laziness to stop the cosmic beings known as the Serious Business."

"Right," said Net.Access. "I wasn't around for that whole thing; how did it go?"

"Well."

"...well?"

"Yes." Betamax's featureless head gave a simple nod. "We accomplished our goals."

"Ah." Net.Access scratched her head. "...okay, well, what's been happening with 
you lately?"

"Well, I decided to stay in the present, for now, as a member of the Legion. I 
took on the new moniker of Betamax, to signify an embrace not of technology as a 
simple arc of ever-increasing progression, but as a branching infinity of 
possible futures, and a reminder that simply because one is more 'advanced', one 
is not necessarily better."

"Wow," said Net.Access. "That is simultaneously really deep and excessively 
convoluted."

Betamax gave a small bow. "Thank you."

"Yeah, once that whole thing was resolved, I came back to the LNH too," said 
Plot Hook Lad. "They helped me get my life back in place, it was... *really* 
hard dealing with all the emotional stuff, but, like, better than the 
alternative, right?" He gave a chuckle and pushed his hair back. "My family's 
great... everything's okay now."

Net.Access took a step towards Plot Hook Lad and pulled him into a tight hug. He 
made a little noise of surprise, then returned it; after a moment, they 
separated. "So," said Net.Access, "how'd you come back to life, anyway?"

He grinned. "Oh, Masterplan Lad brought me back to life."

"Masterplan Lad!?" Net.Access blinked in surprise. "He never said anything about 
that!"

"Well, he hasn't done it yet, of course." Plot Hook Lad's grin widened, and he 
crossed his arms.

"...uuuuuh-*huh*." Net.Access found herself smiling despite herself. "And you're 
not gonna follow up on that, are you."

"Nope!" Plot Hook Lad bounced in place impishly.

"Okay, okay," said Net.Access, shaking her head cheerfully. "Well, get some 
cosmic-y types over here to contain LAN.os. Maybe stick him in the Ultimate 
Black Hole if that's still around? And if it's not, y'know, evil. ...it's 
probably evil tho"

"I shall contact my sources," said Betamax, walking over to the quicksand.

"Ha-HA!" cackled LAN.os, exulting. "LAN.os never loses! Now, Doug!"

"...now what?" said Doug.

"Activate the device I gave you, of course!"

Doug rummaged in his pocket. "You mean this weird silver thing with the red 
button that you said not to push?"

"Yes! Push it, Doug!!"

Doug sighed and handed the device to Betamax. "Dude, you *literally* tried to 
kill me."

"...for friendship, Doug! Or, well, causally linked to friendship, at least!" 
LAN.os attempted the puppy dog eyes, and Net.Access had to look away.

She looked toward Doug. "Are you okay? Physically, but also, uh, emotionally."

"Physically, yeah." Doug rubbed his thighs. "Emotionally... this has been a 
weird day."

"Yeah, it really--" The containment unit pulsed in her hand. "Hhh. Uhh, lemme 
just take care of this..."

Her outfit dissolved, reforming into a sepiatone version of Babe Ruth's uniform. 
She took a step back, winding up...

"Wait! No!" LAN.os shouted. "Fool! I'll have to find another-- I mean, make 
more-- I mean..."

Net.Access launched the containment unit over the ocean. It flew, arcing high 
into the air... and at the very top of the arc, burst apart, the 
Characterization Stone trailing crimson fire until it splashed into the sea and 
was gone.

She dusted off her hands. "Leave that for Earth-20 to deal with." She turned 
back to Doug, ignoring LAN.os's shouts. "I think it's gonna take a while for 
them to deal with this guy. Want a ride back?"

"Sure," said Doug, "but can't you only leave with a friend?"

Net.Access took his hand.  "When you go thru big weird cosmic stuff together, 
you're friends. That's a net.hero rule."

"Oh, well..." He rubbed the back of his head with his other hand, a bit shyly. 
"That sounds good. Thank you."

Net.Access lead him off the beach, down across the magenta fields. "I'm sorry if 
this is blunt, but... how'd you become friends with that guy, anyway?"

"Heh. No, I guess there's no good way to ask." Doug shrugged. "Honestly, he 
showed up at game night one week and just... really seemed like he needed 
something normal in his life. So we let him play. And like... honestly, for a 
while, it seemed like he was just... having fun just enjoying himself. But 
then... I don't know what changed."

Net.Access nodded in commiseration. "I think... some people can't let go of what 
they've convinced themselves they have to do. Even if it's not nearly as healthy 
for them as letting go and just having a good time."

"Yeah. You think I should, like..." Doug looked over his shoulder. "Cut him off?"

"That's up to you. But I would establish some boundaries, at the very least."

"Yeah..."

They came to a tall, spreading tree with bark of rose gold and leaves of, 
surprisingly, emerald green. Beneath sat a well-composed, human-looking being, 
deep in a book, his umbrella leaning against a tree.

"Masterplan Lad!" Net.Access waved, and Masterplan Lad looked up.

He waved and stood, putting away his book and taking up his umbrella as they 
walked over. "I see you met a new friend," he said.

Doug scratched the back of his neck, smiling. Net.Access chuckled. "Yeah, this 
place does that to you."

"Did you get done what you needed to?" said Masterplan Lad, adjusting his bowtie.

"For now." Net.Access looked off into the sky. "They'll probably need reminding."

Masterplan Lad nodded, a small, rueful, hopeful smile on his face. "They always do."

Masterplan Lad took Doug's hand, and together, the three of them walked forward; 
and as they walked, they shimmered into soft, multicolored light, and they faded 
from the Friend Zone. But they could return anytime they felt like it, without 
grief or pain. And, reader, so can you.

================================================================================

Author's Notes: I wrote this story trying to let go and do only what made my 
brain happy. I think I did a pretty good job, especially considering I wrote 
this in less than a week, and I recommend the method to all of you.

The concept of Looniverse-20 having its own set of Absurdity Stones (as an 
equivalent of the Classic Looniverse's Insanity Gems) is based on conversations 
I had recently with Saxon. (Who I think could *definitely* use the advice in 
this story. <3)

Drew "along with, you know, most of us" Nilium