NTB/LNH: Classic LNH Adventures #210: Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #42-43
Arthur Spitzer
arspitzer2 at gmail.com
Sun Aug 1 14:25:42 PDT 2021
You can sift through the racc list archive
https://lists.eyrie.org/pipermail/racc/
or you can try google groups racc for these issues of LNH v2.
First off is LNH v2 #42 another Saxon Brenton yarn. This one's another
of his MISANTHROPIC TALES of the NTB. And starring in this issue is
Mr. Elmo, Master Blaster, and FIN FANFIC FOOM! FIN FANFIC FOOM?! Well,
I guess there's nothing more to say about this issue. It has FIN FANFIC
FOOM in it so obviously you have to read it! It is the LAW! The Law of
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
And then we have LNH v2 #43 by Drew Perron. It's Columbus Day! And what
better way to celebrate than to have the Good Columbus battle the Evil
Columbus to the DEATH! Who will win? And who will be the Evilest Columbus?
And will History ever be that same again?
Anyways...
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|_| OF NET.HEROES
ADVENTURES #210
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Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #42-43
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[NTB/LNH/HCC] Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #42
This issue of
[]
[] egion of
[]__ [] [] [] []
[___][ \[]et.[]__[]eroes Volume 2 #42
[]\ ] [ __ ]
[] [] [] []
has *once again* been highjacked to present another of the
MISANTHROPIC TALES
OF THE
NET.TRENCHCOAT BRIGADE
'The Dreams Of A Hundred Apes'
featuring Mister Elmo
written by and copyright 2011 Saxon Brenton
for the 19th High Concept Challenge
[Acraphobe content warning: This story is has a Net.Trenchcoat Brigade
label and is therefore implied Acraphobe.]
Officer McGracken had his gun drawn and at the ready as he edged
up to the door. He was not happy. Anger was part of that, but most of
it was straight out, adrenalin driven fight-or-flight terror.
He had lost both Dinsman and Wolchowski somewhere in this musty
old abandoned warehouse. A stress driven part of his mind could have
suggested that 'been herded from them' was probably a better description.
And perhaps that wasn't just paranoia talking. This place was...
disorientating. His radio wasn't working, and the few simple experiments
that McGracken had performed to check his perceptions suggested that his
eyes were playing tricks on him. He was beginning to suspect that this
place may have been pumped full of hallucinogenic gas, or moving walls,
or something. Whatever it was, it had the stink of some type of
supervillain lair set up for mind games.
He listened carefully at the door and heard nothing. He eased it
open slowly, looked inside, and with weary resignation took note of the
fact that the room within was far bigger than could be reasonably
expected to fit inside the warehouse that the cops had entered half an
hour earlier.
"Come in," said a voice. It was deep, and calm, and scary as all
hell. In response McGracken responded, "Freeze! Police! Get out in
the open with your hands in..." and then his voice trailed off as he
realised that he was yelling at a dragon.
It was huge. It was green and scaly. It was casually lounging on
the floor on the side of the room to the left of the door in the way
that dragons habitually curl up for a nap atop a pile of treasure. It
was wearing purple underpants.
"Hello Officer. I am
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
and I welcome you to my lair. Please, come in. I have been
expecting you."
McGracken stared at the dragon, only vaguely aware that he had
lowered his gun and stepped further in to the room. Its eyes were
large and luminous and it was all that McGracken could do to keep
from being lost in the depths of its gaze. He swallowed nervously.
He had to keep his wits about him.
"You're probably wondering where all the treasure is," said
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
conversationally. "For some reason people are always obsessing about
hoarded treasure."
McGracken hadn't, actually, but he mutely nodded just the same.
"Over here is my current project," continued the dragon. "And
as these things go I'd like to think of it as quite valuable."
McGracken found himself being gently by firmly guided by a large scaly
hand-like limb in the direction of some sort of built thingummy.
The cop looked at it, but couldn't make out what it was. It was
big, and made primarily of metal, with a number of protruding bars and
rods that made it look something like a kinetic sculpture. But there
were angles that just didn't make sense, plus parts that made it look
like a giant slab of cheese or a pile of skulls or a moving nest of
snakes. There was also what looked like a chair. McGracken focused on
the chair. The chair was sensible, and didn't hurt his eyes to look at.
"It's a story telling engine," said
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
"Here, why don't you try it out? I'm really quite proud of it."
McGracken was seated in the chair, which was a high backed affair
something like a throne, although he was also peripherally aware that
there were other, stranger parts attached behind and above him. And
this is what the storytelling engine had to say:
Once Upon A Time there was a happy and prosperous kingdom. But the
kingdom was under threat from incursions by dragons, who would swoop in
for no apparent reason and lay waste to large parts of the countryside.
But *actually* there was a reason, because Once Upon A Time there
had been a happy and prosperous kingdom of dragons. Which had come under
threat from incursions of nasty, brutush and short humans, who would
swarm in for no apparent reason, taking up occupation of large parts of
the countryside.
And during that ancient Once Upon A Time a wizard versed in the
dark arts of cryptohistoromancy came to the greatest of the human
warlords and said, 'Lord, the land responds to the stories we tell it.
If we spread the idea that this land is ours and has always been ours,
then we will bind it under the Weight of our Words.' And so it was
agreed and so it came to pass, and the kingdom had always been a human
kingdom, and the dragons were cast out to the edges of the lands.'
But then one day a Brave Little Tailor set out to overthrow the
tyranny of the humans, and win the talon of the beuatiful princess of
a restored dragon kingdom...
The dragon carefully reached out and placed an adhesive patch
decorated with a silvery coloured rune onto McGracken's forehead. The
man's eyes glowed briefly with a flash of white light, which then
pulsed out across his face and over the rest of his body, following
the pattern of veins just beneath the skin and leaving a residue of
silvery metal across McGracken's face and skull.
With the glyph of accursed immortality thus activated
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
then used one razor sharp claw to decapitate the cop. The unsupported
body fell to the floor, where it produced a few final spurts of blood
from the neck artery before the heart muscles gave in to death.
Meanwhile the dragon carefully held onto the still-living-and-deep-in-
dream head and puttered around the baroque construct of the story
telling engine. It was trying to decide which of the remaining places
would be the best place to insert McGracken's cranium. The choice
didn't take long, and then as the dragon installed the silvered skull
it smiled and uttered aloud the cryptic comment, "And the Legion of
Net.Heroes always wins".
--==###==--
Mister Elmo wandered the streets of a city that wasn't Net.ropolis,
occasionally muttering to himself. People tended to avoid him, which
was fine by the Trenchcoater. He had realised long ago that he didn't
have much in common that he could talk about with most people. To
paraphrase the notions that Lovecraft had used in his horror stories,
most people only retained a grip on the thing that was usually confused
for 'reality' and 'sanity' by remaining blissfully ignorant of the Big
Picture.
He stopped at a vendor's cart in a crowded lunchtime plaza and
bought himself a cup of coffee. As he raised his drink to his lips he
stretched out his mind, feeling the more-or-less coherent fabric of
History distil out of Time at a rate of one second per second. For the
moment all seemed quiet, and Mister Elmo sipped his coffee in peace.
The world was warm, and green, and lush. Mister Elmo basked in
the sunlight of an open grassy field as giant reptiles soared overhead.
Then the shock of surprise brought him back to the here-and-now,
and Trenchcoater crushed the still half full styrofoam cup. Hot coffee
spilt over his hand and added even more stains to his tan coloured
trenchcoat. A bystander not only saw this but was concerned enough to
ask, "Hey! Are you okay, mister?"
"What?" asked Mister Elmo as he focused his attention back on the
mundane, and glanced down at his scalded hand. "Ah, thanks. I, uh,
hadn't noticed. Excuse me," he said, and rushed off in the direction of
the subway with his mind ringing from the threat of a world where
dragons ruled. As he ran across the road cars braked and swerved and
honked their horns. Mister Elmo paused for long enough to round on them
and yell, "Do you mind!? I'm walking here!" before continuing his dash
down the stairs into the subway.
From there his trip to Net.ropolis proceeded quickly. At the
entrance to the subway station Mister Elmo passed through the turnstiles
without having to insert either tokens or a ticket. As he reached the
platform a train was drawing to a halt, and the trenchcoater stepped
aboard without needing to pause. The train was just the right one to
take him to the airport by the quickest possible route, and there he got
off and walked upstairs to the airport proper and then through the gates
without once needing to bother with a boarding pass or security check.
The airplane he wanted was taking on passengers just as he was arriving,
and once again he walked aboard without having had to slow down - let
alone stop - at any point since he had disembarked from the train.
A stewardess directed him to his seat. As he sat down and waited
for the takeoff he mused on his destination.
Bloody Net.ropolis.
Superhero capital of the world, of course, and full of more weird
goings on than most people would believe. Which made it convenient if
you wanted all your weird sh!t in one place for easy access, but
annoying as hell when you finally realised that none of it made sense.
Even though the place was some sort of weirdness magnet (yes, various
members of the Net.Trenchcoat Brigade had checked at one time or
another, just to satisfy their own paranoid curiosities) you would
think that any supervillain with enough brain cells to rub together
would have moved their operations to another city, or even some little
town out in the middle of nowhere. Ignore the exhibitionists who wanted
to build a rep for themselves by trying to fight and defeat a big name
superhero. Mister Elmo was specifically thinking of the villains who
had a plan - taking over the world, or summoning up an elder god, or
whatever - that would proceed just fine without any sort of climactic
fight scene.
Damned costumed superhumans.
The flight was uneventful, and once he reached Net.ropolis Mister
Elmo caught a taxi to the abandoned warehouse district, where he paid
the driver - in real money! - with a hefty tip and the advice that he'd
better get out of here quick. The driver knew enough to guess at what
was going to happen next, and drove away with a curt but polite, "Good
luck, senor."
The Trenchcoater eyed the warehouse suspiciously. He could sense a
glamour of misdirection and bemusement that had be laid over the place.
He didn't expect it to cause him too much trouble - after all, he was
professional at navigating inconsistencies of history, both perceived
and actual - but that was no excuse for being blase and careless. He
rummaged around in his coat pocket and retrieved a ball of twine, and
then immitated Theseus as he advanced into the building.
As he advanced he could hear someone or someones stumbling about
in the corridors further in. Mister Elmo sighed. He had been hoping
that all the theoretically innocent bystanders had been warned away.
But, on the up side, having other people about to act as distractions
would be useful - as long as they didn't actually get in the
Trenchcoater's way.
He made his way towards what felt like the centre of discontinuity.
This, at least, was more difficult. It was small, quiescent, with
only the barest hint of being there at all - but also with the sense of
vast potential, of just waiting to explode outwards in some type of
malignant glory. In any case getting to it involved navigating a short
tangle of corridors. This brought him to a door. There was talking on
the other side.
He eased the door open a crack and found that he was positioned at
the back of a large area. There was a dragon (In purple pants! Never
a good sign!) up front and facing away from him, weaving a web of
beguiling blarney over two police officers. Meanwhile at this end of
the room was a throne. An ornate seat. And a particularly macarbly
ornate one at that, decorated as it was with human heads.
And another part of that ornamentation, the Trenchcoater sensed,
was it's thrumming power. Mister Elmo stared intently at the throne,
for long enough for a trickle of drool to form at the corner of his
mouth. He absently wiped it away with his sleeve as his mind raced.
It was... No, it *looked like* a power accumulator of some sort.
Sit on the throne and tap into the power? For how long? Was it an
apotheosis engine? A throne to raise you up to the power level of a
throne? And while dealing with puns, it occurred to Mister Elmo that
'throne' was also slang for 'lavatory'. Perhaps it was a construct to
imbue the recipient with the abilities of the Time Crapper, the super-
villain who could be you, the evil future self that nobody wanted to
grow up to be.
Hurm. Well, mucking around with time could explain how an
alternate history dominated by reptiles could be brought into existence,
he supposed. But... no.
The throne was too small. Even taking into account that dragons
could typically take on human guise, it just didn't make any sense to
have an apotheosis engine built so small. No self-respecting dragon
would crown itself with godhood while in human shape.
The Trenchcoater slipped through the door and made his way closer
in order to get a better look. What was it really? he wondered. While
the dragon continued with his beguiling speech out in the middle of the
room, Mister Elmo examined the setup, tracing the power conduits that
snaked around the structure and the silvery runes that encompassed
the living but apparently totally out-of-it heads.
Meanwhile
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
had gotten up to the "It's a story telling engine," part of his patter,
prompting Mister Elmo to look up brightly. "Oh, is it?"
The dragon and both police looked at him.
"Well, I had been wondering," said Mister Elmo, a touch defensively.
Actually, that name gave more than enough hint as to how that
alt.reality-sans-humans-but-with-added-dragons was being generated.
Of more concern was the dragon standing in front of him. It
narrowed its eyes. "You aren't a mundane human," it said.
Mister Elmo gave the dragon a sharp look. "No."
"I had been wondering when you would get here... Occultism Kid."
And at that moment MasterBlaster burst through the ceiling, guns a
blazing. He dropped to the floor and yelled, "Alright! Keep those
hands where I can see them! The Legion of Net.Heroes is... What the f&ck
is that!?" he demanded, catching a proper look of the throne.
The police looked at the construct. One of them frowned in
puzzlement. "It's a giant piece of cheese."
"No, it's a Lego statue of Daffy Duck," disagreed the other.
"So, now the Legion has arrived in force," growled
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
at MasterBlaster. "But I don't care how many of you there are. You
will not dare try to damage my engine."
But Mister Elmo noticed that the dragon made no move to protect
the thing that it had built.
"Well, if you don't want it destroyed, then that's exactly what I
think I'll do," said MasterBlaster.
"No! Don't!" exclaimed Mister Elmo.
MasterBlaster's guns swung menacingly in Mister Elmo's direction.
"Whose side do you think you're on?" he demanded with Hollywood tough
guy bravado.
"It's..." There was no time to explain, and even if there had
been, this was one of the Legion of Net.Heroes. He wouldn't have enough
intelligence to understand! "It's a trap! It's rigged to explode if
you use blunt force against it. It has to be deactivated by being
disassembled!"
The dragon roared, lunging towards Mister Elmo. "Be silent! Or
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
will put you in his pants!"
"Ahhh!" screamed Mister Elmo, genuinely horrified at the prospect.
He dodged around the throne, with the dragon close on his heels.
MasterBlaster started firing at the huge reptile. Mister Elmo caught
sight of the two cops just standing there, still befuddled by
FIN FANFIC FOOM!'s
draconic awe. It occurred to the Trenchcoater that it would be nice to
have some of those useful distractions that he had been thinking about
earlier, and so as he ran he used his frothing abilities on them. "What
the hell are you just standing there for!?" he ranted. "There's a bad
guy wanting to change history so that dragons rule the world! Don't
just stand there like New York rubberneckers! Shoot!"
This seemed to break them out of the dragon's mind control. In any
case, they started shooting their revolvers at the dragon. Mister Elmo
wasn't sure what all the gunfire was actually doing - it didn't seem to
be actually wounding the dragon, or even slowing him down - but it did
distract him enough to turn on them. With one tail sweep the dragon
smashed one of the police against the wall with a sickening crunch,
killing him instantly.
Mister Elmo hurriedly put the distraction to good use. He ducked
back to throne and pulled out a simple pen knife. Okay, so it was a
storytelling engine, huh? So all the power was being cycled through
the dreaming, decapitated heads. Was there a critical number? No, wait,
a critical number wouldn't be relevant, because
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
had tried to goad MasterBlaster into destroying it. It must already
have enough victims slotted in. It was ready and primed to release the
energy patterned by the story to reshape the world as fact rather than
fiction.
How amazing. Almost by accident Mister Elmo had been spot on when
he'd told MasterBlaster that the thing had been booby trapped if you
did anything to it other than painstakingly disassemble it. Thank
goodness for Magician's intuition, supplying him with the correct answer
on a subconscious level!
So, yes, that meant that
FIN FANFIC FOOM!
had already primed it with enough heads. But not for long, thought
Mister Elmo grimly as he used the penknife to prize off the silvery
material from around each skull, thereby separating them from the
mystical infrastructure of its un-life support and allowing them to
die one by one.
Meanwhile MasterBlaster was having loads of fun using his
cybernetic hand to form weaponry of sufficient calibre to knock about
his draconic adversary. FIN FANFIC FOOM! picked himself out of a wall
and took frustrated stock of the situation. The story telling engine
was being picked apart piece by piece, and so it now looked unlikely
that it could goad any of the Legionnaires into destroying the engine
with one stereotypically heroic explosive hit and thereby releasing the
accumulated power of its dreaming minds.
The dragon was a carnivore, meaning it had entirely the wrong type
of teeth to gnash in frustration. So instead it threatened, "Next time
we meet Occultism Kid, I will put you in my pants!" Then it jumped
up into the air and through the hole that MasterBlaster had already
made in the warehouse roof (and perhaps widening it a bit more in the
process) and flew away.
Mister Elmo watched it go. He felt a giddy sense of relief.
After all, that threat it had made was a particularly terrible one - but
thanks to the dragon's mistake of identity, Mister Elmo wouldn't be the
one who'd have to deal with it. Quite a good result, even if the
Trenchcoater did have to say so himself.
=====
Character credits:
Mister Elmo created by Greg Morrow.
MasterBlaster created by Rob Ramirez, via Martin Phipps.
Fin Fanfic Foom created by Saxon Brenton. IIRC only named checked
previously, first appearance here. Given over to Public Domain.
Author's notes:
Written for the 19th High Concept Challenge: 'What Is The Secret Of
The Silver Skull Machine?'
I'm not entirely happy with this, since I wanted a Net.Trenchcoat
Brigade story, but I think instead got a Legion of Net.Heroes story that
just happened to have an NTBer in the lead role.
To the best of my knowledge the trenchcoating character of Mister
Elmo (as opposed to Greg Morrow's net.handle) only ever appeared in the
NTB roster reprinted in the _Wrath Of The Administrator_ trade etherback,
and reproduced again here:
Net.name/persona: Mister Elmo
Real name/address: Greg Morrow
Powers/mystical abilities/colour of trenchcoat: Strange frothing
abilities/mystical sense of continuity violations/tan
Origin: Driven insane by years of datelessness, Mister Elmo
prowls the back streets of USENET, incessantly whining, with spittle,
about trivial inconsistencies.
-----
Saxon Brenton University of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
"These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex
world of jet-powered apes and time-travel." - Superman, JLA Classified #3
PREHISTORIC PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS
<---------------------->
___ ___________________________
| |-| \
| |-| [] / #43:
| | | [] egion of \ "Columbus Day!"
| | | []__ [] [] [] [] /
| | | [___][ \[]et.[]__[]eroes \
| | | []\ ] [ __ ] / Written and copyright 2011
| |-| [] [] [] [] \ Andrew Perron
| |-|__________________________/
| |
| | The oil-painting cover shows an epic battle on the decks and the
| | rigging of a 16th-century ship. Dozens of sailors are fighting,
| | one crew looking noble in gold and white, the other dirty pirates
| | in black and grey. In the center, dueling atop the mast, are a
| | pair of captains, crossing blades, their clothing and expressions
| | iconic and representative of their crews.
|_|
<---------------------->
<---------------------->
[ Buenos Ai.rec, Argenti.net ]
Joaquin Aguirre, ten years old, sighed. "Well, here we are at the
history museum. Goody."
"All right, class!" His teacher, Sra. Alvarez, clapped her hands.
"Today, we're going to see an exhibit about Christopher Columbus!"
Quino (as he was nicknamed by his peers) rolled his eyes. "Oh.
Wonderful. Because we don't do that every year."
Martina Torres, the girl who hung around him all the time and he did
stuff with but he wouldn't really call a "friend" because, c'mon,
*girl*, elbowed him and said, "Shut up. I want to hear this even if
you don't."
He rolled his eyes again, an exaggerated neck-roll going with it, and
stepped back, leaning against the wall.
Sra. Alvarez hadn't noticed. She pointed at the diorama of three ships
on a stormy sea. "Christopher Columbus sailed from from Spain with
three ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. He went all the
way over the ocean and discovered the New World!"
Quino snorted. "Specifically, he discovered some random island in the
Carribean. By accident." His older brother talked about this stuff all
the time, and Quino hung out with him as much as possible. So far, the
aura of cool had failed to rub off.
"He was the first European to meet the Native Americans!"
"He talked about using them as servants, kidnapped a bunch of them and
dragged them back to Europe, and called them 'Indians' because he
wouldn't admit he was half a planet away from where he'd been going."
"He lead his crew on four separate voyages!"
"His crew that he cheated, stole from, and hung for disobeying him."
"He's the one man most responsible for the world we know today, and
that's why we celebrate Columbus Day!"
"Yeah, responsible for centuries of oppression, widespread social and
economic equality, disease, racism..." Quino couldn't take any more.
He looked around - no adults were watching. He slipped out of the room.
"Columbus. Tch. Man, that guy can go to hell!"
<---------------------->
[ Meanwhile, in the underworld... ]
A dark faerie made of silver and moonlight cackled fiendishly. "We of
the Infortuhada are almost done with our machine to create monsters out
of archetypes from the minds of humans!"
"Yes," replied another dark fae, like some kind of devilish moth. "But
we must be careful, because negative, hateful energy will create
monsters, but positive energy of joy and love will create heroic
power!"
"Indeed!" said the first fae. "Now go, take this to the city of the
wind!"
<---------------------->
"Muahaha!" said the mothlike fae, fluttering invisibly through the
afternoon sky. "Little does my fellow bad guy know that when I,
Diablilla, create the monster, I'll use it to destroy him first!"
"Actually," said a voice from nowhere, "I, Tiniebluna, do know, and I
sent one of my minions to take you out mid-flight and use the machine
itself."
"Well crap."
A dust devil sprang out of the air currents and wrapped Diablilla in a
frenzied gust. He spun out of control, frantically beating his wings
just to have a chance of staying in the air. His strange and magical
faerie equivalent of lungs burned, and despite a white-knuckle grip,
the machine started slipping from his fingers.
"Bah!" he spat in the dust devil's face. "If Diablilla cannot have it,
Tiniebluna certainly cannot!" And he tossed the machine away, letting
it arc towards the ground below...
<---------------------->
Quino slipped out of the building, grumbling all the way. He stuck his
hands in his pockets and walked around the side of the building, over
where the shady picnic tables were. He flopped down and took off his
backpack. "Maybe I'll just eat lunch now. Take *that*, Columbus!
...I'm so lame."
Suddenly, there was a crash! as something rammed through the branches
of a tree. Quino jumped back as it crashed into the ground, kicking up
a line of sod. "What the--" He spoke a string of words that even his
older brother didn't know he knew.
After a few moments of silence and birds singing, Quino relaxed. He
scooted forward on the bench, keeping a careful eye on the machine, and
hopped off onto the grass. He picked up a fallen branch and knelt down
in front of the machine, poking it lightly. "What *is* this? Some sort
of space junk?"
When it failed to respond to pokery, Quino reached out for it. "I
wonder if--"
As his hand came in contact with the metal, the city shuddered. The
energy of hate, of fear, of resentment, of grief, swirled like a great
funnel cloud, with the locus of the storm centered on Quino. The
machine filtered the negative energy through his mind at high velocity,
getting an impression of his thoughts, giving it shape and form and
purpose...
With a booming silence, a figure appeared. Stretching up five stories
tall, wearing a great black coat stained with dirt, drink and blood,
fierce and cruel in visage with several missing teeth, dark, unsmiling
eyes, and a tangled beard under a wide hat. In one hand, he held a
bloody sword; in the other, a severed head. With a roar, he crushed
one of the cars parked on the street into a flattened mass.
Quino blinked, his mind feeling more than a bit mushy. He looked up at
the towering apparition. "...holy crap."
The immense man let out a shout of wordless rage. People on the
sidewalk screamed and ran. He ripped a fire hydrant out of the ground
and tossed it into a tree.
"What's going on!?"
Quito felt a pulse of coolness beneath his hand, and a whisper traveled
up from the machine into his head. ~ you have created an Archetype
Monster of the hidden hates of the people ~
"*I* did this?"
~ your frustration and anger shaped it ~~~ creating a construct you
would label as ~~~ Evil Columbus ~
Quino swallowed. His mouth was suddenly dry. "Well... well, how do I
undo it?"
~ the best way to dispel negative-energy constructs is with positive
energy ~
"You mean..." He felt a sudden, horrible certainty. "You have to cancel
it out, with... something people like?"
~ something that brings them joy and pride ~
"...crap." Quino put his face in his hand and shook his head. Oh, he
knew what people had pride in, all right.
He closed his eyes, putting both hands on the machine, trying to ignore
the great, thudding steps of the monstrous Columbus. This was going to
be hard.
He took a deep breath, and tried to let go. He didn't have anything to
be angry about. What's past is past. He was just a kid, like everyone
kept trying to tell him. No worries, no cares, he lived in the now...
Now he had to remember. Remember a time long ago, when he had been
innocent, when the parades and the celebrations had just been fun.
When he'd first heard of the name and saw the globe and the ships and
imagined what it must be like to travel and explore and see new lands
and meet new people, to find a whole new world...
The machine vibrated under his hands. Little puffs of lingering hate
were driven out, as a faint, coruscating iridescence spread over the
metal surface. The great Evil Columbus turned toward this sparkle as
it grew into a gleaming light. He stalked toward it, intent on
destroying the annoying glare, but it expanded out until it was
blinding...
When the light faded, there stood a figure. Standing straight five
stories tall, he gleamed in a golden longcoat, buckled securely over a
white shirt and trousers with just a hint of ruffles. He looked over
the city with a sparkling smile and a wise gaze. The left side of his
belt held a golden telescope, and the right, a golden sextant.
The Evil Columbus snarled and swung his blade. The Good Columbus
sidestepped it gracefully, catching the arm and delivering a sock to
the chin. Evil Columbus frothed in rage and bit down on Good
Columbus's arm. They swung about, locked in combat, kicking and
punching and stabbing and shouting. Their furious motion redoubled,
directed into a smaller and smaller area; both began to deform, to
collapse, imploding with a rumble and a flash!
Nothing was left of the two but a dissipating cloud. Quino let out a
breath of relief.
He looked around at the damage. Maybe this machine could fix it
somehow...
He felt a pulse up his arm. ~ archetype creation system overloaded ~~~
entering physical form to heal ~
In a cloud of sparkles, the metal disintegrated into rust, leaving only
a semi-solid cloud that leaped towards Quino's chest and vanished.
He blinked. "...oh, boy."
<---------------------->
Tiniebluna pounded an insubstantial wall. "Thanks to that addlepated
paddlepuss, the machine has merged with a mortal!"
A pair of bright red eyes gleamed in the dark of the underworld. "Well,
then, we will have to test that mortality... *personally*."
<---------------------->
Author's Notes: A random tale, inspired by my file of jotted-down
ideas. Didn't mean for it to be quite so to-be-continued, but that's
how it shook out! If someone wants to use Joaquin, I'd be cool with
that! He goes on the Not Reserved list.
Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, fun times with metaphors!
==========
Next Week: Perhaps a story that has NOT-ALIVE PRESIDENTS!!! Perhaps..
==========
Arthur "Same Classic Channel. But Same Time? Probably not." Spitzer
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