LNH: Classic LNH Adventures #207: Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #36-37
Arthur Spitzer
arspitzer2 at gmail.com
Sun Jul 11 14:15:33 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 #36 by Saxon Brenton. Is a Titanium Swordsman
a match for some Neo-Meteors? Possibly.
And then we have LNH v2 #37 by Martin Phipps. Can Sister-State-the-Obvious, Coward
Lad, Sarcastic Lad, Cannon Fodder, Catalyst Lass and Sing-Along Lass
ESCAPE THE HYPE.ER.CUBE? Possibly.
Anyhow, find out if my possibly prediction works out in...
_
| | Classic
| | =
| | ____ ____ _ ____ ___
| |__ | [] | | [] | | | | [] | | _ \
|____| \__] \__ | |_| \__/ |_|\_\
||
|_| OF NET.HEROES
ADVENTURES #207
=====================
Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #36-37
=====================
Saxon Brenton saxonbrenton at hotmail.com
Thu Jun 24 21:23:32 PDT 2010
[LNH][Contest] Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #36: HCC10
___ ___________________________
| |-| \
| |-| [] / #36
| | | [] egion of \ 'Being There'
| | | []__ [] [] [] [] / (Part of High Concept Challenge #10)
| | | [___][ \[]et.[]__[]eroes \
| | | []\ ] [ __ ] / written by and copyright 2010
| |-| [] [] [] [] \ Saxon Brenton
| |-|___________________________/
| |
| |
| | Cover shows a worm's eye perspective of a giant robot looking
| | resolutely upwards at a shining tower that itself climbs away
| | until it fades into the blue of the sky.
| |
| |
| |
|_|
"Super happy fun powers ACTIVATE! Form of a GIANT ASS-KICKING ROBOT!"
With that Shen Cheong transformed into the three metre tall mecha
known as the Titanium Swordsman and took to the early morning skies.
Not for the first time Shen experienced a moment of 'what the Hell
am I doing?' double take. He was an engineer by profession. That was
what had brought him halfway around the world to work in Kenya on the
Chinese built Heavenly Fulcrum space elevator. However unforseen
circumstances had brought him to putting most of his work into the
net.ahuman security that protected the megastructure. It was all very
strange if you stopped to think about it. What was the phrase that the
Americans used? 'Being bitten by an origin'? Still, he was a
net.ahuman now, looked up to as a hero by many, and had obligations to
protect and serve.
In the darkness and at this range the incoming neo-meteors would
be invisible to the naked eye, so he consulted the radar telemetry that
the people monitoring the security perimeter were forwarding to him.
At first glance the four incoming bogeys looked like they were
moving slowly, even lazily. This was particularly so if you only took
into account the ETA - they weren't due to arrive at Mount Kenya for
another seventeen minutes. However that impression was catastrophically
short sighted. Like almost all the rocks fired at the Heavenly Fulcrum
over the past week or so they had been launched from across the border
of the neighbouring state of Ethiopia and where approaching from the
north at something in excess of Mach 3.
As he listened to the radio chatter from his colleagues as they
angled into position the Titanium Swordsman briefly flickered part of
his attention away to check the recordings of previous incursions. As
expected they were on a different flight path (significantly different
in the one case when the attack had been from Somalia in the north-east).
That was a disappointment, since it confirmed that whoever had it in for
the Heavenly Fulcrum - whether rival mining groups, enemy nations, or
plain old lunatic religious insurgents - they were using a mobile base
of operations.
Shen enjoyed machine speeds in his empowered state, but he did not
bother taking time to analyse this data. Instead the Swordsman turned
his attention to the upcoming interception. Of course, this was not one
of his rostered patrol shifts, and he and the contingent of jet fighters
had been scrambled to act as backup should one or more of the rocks get
past Sublime Weave.
It was possible. Not because of any weakness on Sublime Weave's
part, of course. Normally the Weave's spirographic force fields would
be neither big enough or robust enough to stop a rock travelled at more
than a thousand kilometres per hour. However the man had been using
plotdevicum to boost the range of his powers and so far had a perfect
catch rate. Between the efforts of Weave and the others members of the
Fulcrum's net.ahuman security contingent no rocks had made it through
the elevator's exclusion zone yet.
No, instead what everybody was acutely aware of was the possibility
of the neo-meteors might suddenly decide to dodge. It was obvious that
the was some net.ahuman involvement in launching these attacks. No
matter what speed they were propelled at, mundane rocks with no apparent
source of thrust were not capable of flying many hundreds of kilometres
on a non-ballistic trajectory. And if something still had enough
control of them even after launch to make them fly that way, when would
the autumn mist lift and reveal some other unusual flight behaviour?
Out on point the Sublime Weave raised a large force wall across
the path of the intruders. It showed on the Swordsman's distance
sensors as the sudden appearance of a solid barrier. At this scale the
image looked paper thin, but he knew that up close the wall would be
several metres thick and made of a pulsing network of constantly
renewing patterns, like an old raster graphics computer screen.
And speak of the devil. The rocks dodged! The barrier was several
hundred metres wide and high, but two of the neo-meteors dodged around
it - one skipping upwards and another to the left.
"I'm on the leftwards one," radioed the closest of the fighters,
and then peeled off to intercept. Titanium Swordsman recalled that
this was Lt. Li, a young go-getter originally from the Southern
Provinces. The Swordsman himself indicated he was in position for the
other and gained altitude to intercept.
The jet's rocket propelled missiles arrived first, and mercifully
the rock did not try to dodge a second time. The Swordsman took longer
to destroy his target because his signature weapon, the most powerful
item in his arsenal, required close range - but when he was on top of
the final neo-meteor he used his plasma sword to smite the rock,
obliterating it with a satisfying explosion of light and debris.
After that bit of excitement The Swordsman returned to base and
powered down. As ever there was about half a minute's worth of
disorientation followed by a slightly longer period of mental fatigue
as Shen's thought processed dropped down to merely human levels. But
he was fine by the time that the preliminary debriefing was organised.
In fact several hours after the stand down from red alert Shen found
that he could not get back to sleep and spent some time composing an
email to his wife instead.
She was still back in China, working part time as a maths tutor
in Anyang and raising their daughter Xiang. He missed them, of course.
But the opportunity to work on a project like this had been too great
to turn down. It still was - despite the strange turns that Shen's
path had taken.
He absently wandered over to a window and looked up. It was still
more than an hour until dawn, and down here the land was still in the
darkness of the Earth's shadow. But higher up the sunlight had started
to reflect from length of the Heavenly Fulcrum. Shen's living quarters
were some way from the base of the elevator, but compared to the length
of a many thousands of kilometres tall tower the perspective meant he
was looking straight up at what seemed like a glowing point as bright
as a full moon.
The space elevators were roads into the sky. Where would they
lead? There was already mining of the asteroids and talk of lunar
colonies. What else? Terraforming of Mars? The prospects thrilled
Shen, and scared him more than a little. And what then for the next
generation, and then one after that. Only last week he'd been informed
that little Xiang was had announced at her twelfth birthday that she
wanted to be an astro engineer, just like her father. That had made
Shen smile, and not in any wistful way at childish impulsiveness. His
little girl had always been stubborn, and good at maths, and more
interested in boys toys for some reason. He did not doubt that she
would carry through with her intention, and if he didn't get to start
work on Martian terraforming then it was a good bet that Xiang would.
All of which meant protecting this asset from whatever villains
wanted to tear it down. He hoped the implementation of the force field
defences would be ready soon. In a way Shen envied the setup that the
Americans had for their space elevator in Brazil. Whatever else you
could say about the turmoil of South American politics at least it was
more stable than the situation in sub-Saharan Africa!
His reverie was broken by a warning klaxon. Now what? Shen rushed
outside and powered up, taking advantage of the Titanium swordsman's
ability to process data at speed.
There was some form of monster rampaging through the off-site
complex on the other side of Thika. Knowing he was the fastest combat
effective who could get there he took to the skies while radioing
his intentions. Then he patched into security feeds and examined the
incoming visuals. A humanoid monster. Made of rock! He zoomed in on
the imagery. Ha! They looked like the same types of rocks as the
neo-meteors.
Further details were coming through... The creature had emerged
from the laboratory where the neo-meteors were being examined. Yesss,
that made a nasty sort of sense. The Titanium Swordsman began to see
a pattern forming. From the looks of it the neo-meteors were some type
of Trojan Horse gambit: attack with the rocks in a more-or-less passive
form, let them be captured and taken back to base to be examined, and
then once inside the security perimeter reactivate them for a final
attack against the space elevator.
It was a pity for whoever was behind this that the rocks had been
taken for examination to a lab almost 100 km down the mountain from the
Fulcrum. What, did they think the Fulcrum's defenders were stupid?
Unless it was a feint. The Thika complex was on the southern side
of Mount Kenya, away from the direction of the rock launches. Sigh.
The sooner they could get that force field built, the better.
Frustratingly none of the ordinance that Captain Xu's men were
using against the creature seemed to be doing any good. While he
wasn't particularly thrilled by the prospect of having the efforts of
himself or his men overshadowed, this was looking more and more like a
case where he would need the intercession of one of the net.ahumans
stationed up the mountain.
"Sir, look!" came a cry, and Xu had just enough time to see
Titanium Swordsman's final half second of approach before the mecha
crashed into and carried off the hostile.
The Titanium Swordsman slammed the rock creature into the tarmac
and began ripping into it. The creature retaliated with a powerful
punch that sent the Swordsman staggering backwards.
The Swordsman circled warily. How had the creature managed that?
It seemed to be a lot more powerful than he had been expecting from the
forces involved during the capture of the neo-meteors by Sublime Weave,
Auspicious Dawn, and the others. Had it been underpresenting its
strength in order to be captured and smuggled in? Or was it that its
parts were stronger when combined into a gestalt? Could be either, or
something else entirely.
He decided to work on the latter notion, since the obvious solution
involved dismembering the rock creature. Even if were wrong in his
basic supposition, he'd still have the advantage of having hindered the
monster's ability to move and attack. He radioed his intentions back
to Captain Xu's security squad and put them on standby for this plan
both succeeding and failing. Then the Swordsman drew his plasma sword,
feinted to one side, and sliced through his enemy's arm.
The arm fell to the ground. And began to crawl back to rejoin its
body. Titanium Swordsman wasn't particularly surprised, but in a way
was relieved that the pieces didn't levitate with independent flight.
As the creature ducked backwards to get away from the plasma sword and
pick up its arm, the Swordsman made a sudden jump forward to cut loose
its other limb. The creature seemed prepared for this and used its
remaining fist to smack a punch into the Swordsman's right shoulder,
critically damaging the joint and almost tearing his arm off.
Aarrgh! Fsk! Titanium Swordsman dialled down his pain receptors,
but even so that would need major repairs before he could transform
back to human.
They circled each other, each looking for an opening. The rock
creature also continued to move backwards a bit, seemingly hoping for
another instant of respite during which it could pick up and reattach
its severed limb. The Swordsman let him start, then feinted forward
again. The rock creature lunged in defence, but had fallen for the
Swordsman's feint, leaving it undefended on its left flank and unable
to prevent the Swordsman from severing the remaining arm.
Titanium Swordsman did not wait to see what the creature's
reaction would be. Instead he pressed his advantage with a flurry of
blows to continue to whittle away the animated pile of rocks, although
he did keep a careful watch out for kicks. He kept chopping even after
the pieces stopped moving, since he had seen enough zombie movies to
realise that a limb with even one joint still intact - even just a
finger - would be capable of independent movement. Of course, if this
thing had been able to assemble itself out of rocks it would almost
certainly be able to move about without jointed limbs in any case, but
hopefully this would significantly slow it down. Soon security forces
began to pull up in trucks and jeeps, and began sealing each piece of
debris they could find into separate containers reinforced with steel.
With the fight over Titanium Swordsman started running a more
comprehensive diagnostic on the damage his arm had taken. As he did
so he stared up the mountain towards the Heavenly Fulcrum. .oO( I've
travelled a long way and put up with an awful lot of crap for your
sake, ) thought Shen wryly.
However he knew that like all big engineering projects the
Fulcrum was merely a symbol of something far bigger than it's physical
presence - which was saying a lot for a tether up to a launch platform
in geosynchronous orbit. And for that reason he knew he'd willingly
put up with even more if it was thrown his way.
=========
Author's notes:
Written for the 10th high Concept Challenge: the immigrant experience.
I waffled even more than usual in choosing a story to tell for this
one. In the end I decided to simply hang a character piece/fight scene
combo on the existence of one of the space elevators that I have used
occasionally as part of the background of the Legion of Net.Heroes setting.
-----
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
From: Martin Phipps martinphipps2 at yahoo.com
Date: Fri Jul 9 10:54:53 PDT 2010
[LNH][Contest] Legion of Net.Heroes Volume 2 #37: HCC11
___ ___________________________
| |-| \
| |-| [] / #37
| | | [] egion of \ 'Death Trap'
| | | []__ [] [] [] [] / (Part of High Concept Challenge #11)
| | | [___][ \[]et.[]__[]eroes \
| | | []\ ] [ __ ] / written by and copyright 2010
| |-| [] [] [] [] \ Martin Phipps
| |-|___________________________/
| |
| |
| | Cover shows Sister-State-the-Obvious, Coward Lad, Sarcastic Lad,
| | Cannon Fodder, Catalyst Lass and Sing-Along Lass sitting in a cubic
| | room with what appears to be windows in the middle of each wall.
| | The blurb on the cover says "WHO CAN ESCAPE THE HYPE.ER.CUBE?"
| |
| |
|_|
"Hey! Everybody! Wake up!"
Sarcastic Lad was the only one awake: Sister-State-the-Obvious, Coward Lad, Cannon Fodder, Catalyst Lass and Sing-Along Lass were all sleeping.
"Fine!"
Sarcastic Lad walked over to where Cannon Fodder lie unconscious and slapped him across the face.
"Wake up!"
Cannon Fodder woke up. "That hurt!" he complained.
Sarcastic Lad smirked. "Oh like you can't take it!"
"I still feel pain, you know," Cannon Fodder said, standing up. "So where are we?"
"I was hoping you could tell me."
"Well, then, how did we get here?"
"If I knew that I would also know how we got here."
"Well then we should try waking up the others and asking them what they know."
Sarcastic Lad rolled his eyes. "Why didn't I think of that?"
"I'm just trying to help."
"Yeah, well, I would have expected better advice from Sister-State-the-Obvious."
"Then maybe we should wake her up next."
"I was being Sarcastic! Can't you tell?"
"So was I."
"Oh. Okay. Good one."
Sarcastic Lad and Cannon Fodder went around trying to wake up the others. Whatever force had brought them here had put them all into a deep sleep.
Finally, all six of them were awake.
"We need to try to escape," Sister-State-the-Obvious said.
"But we don't even know where here is," Catalyst Lass pointed out.
"We're all going to die!" Coward Lad.
"Now, now, let's not panic," Sing-Along Lass said. "The rest of the LNH is probably looking for us. Maybe we should just stay here and wait."
"Screw that!" Sarcastic Lad said. "I'm going to try going through one of these windows."
Sarcastic Lad opened the window. There could not, however, see what was on the other side.
"I wouldn't go through that window if I were you!" Coward Lad said.
"There's a surprise!" Sarcastic Lad said. "Here goes nothing."
Sarcastic Lad poked his head through the window. Everybody stood behind him and waited to see what happened next.
"Well, that's weird."
Everybody turned around to see Sarcastic Lad's head poking through the window behind them.
"The lower half of Sarcastic Lad's body is here while the upper half is over there!" Sister State-the-Obvious said.
"We're trapped here!" Coward Lad said. "There's no escape!"
Sarcastic Lad crawled through the window just to be sure it wasn't some kind of illusion. "So is this really the same room?" he asked.
"We didn't go anywhere," Catalyst Lass said, "so, yeah."
"This room must have been built using Kirbian technology," Sing Along Lass surmised. "It's using a fourth dimension to make space curve in on itself!"
"We could really use Kid Kirby's help right now!" Sister State-the-Obvious said. "Or Doctor Stomper's"
"Yeah, well, they aren't here though, are they?" Sarcastic Lad said.
"Well what do you say we do?" Catalyst Lass asked.
Sarcastic Lad shrugged his shoulders. "There's three men and three women here. Maybe we're all that's left of the human race and it's our duty to save the species by repopulating the Earth. I say we pair up right now and get busy."
Catalyst Lass chuckled. "Nice try."
"We only tried one window," Cannon Fodder said. "Why don't we try one of the other ones?"
"I think of I went back though the window behind me then I'd come back through the one in front of me," Sarcastic Lad said.
Cannon Fodder nodded. "So we'll try one of the other two." Cannon Fodder walked up to one of said windows.
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Coward Lad asked.
Cannon Fodder shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, the worst that can happen is I get killed."
Cannon Fodder started crawling through the window. His companions looked behind them to check to see if he was coming through the window on the other side of the room. He wasn't.
"What do you see?" Catalyst Lass asked.
"Another room," Cannon Fodder said. "It looks the same as this one. But it's obviously a different room because if it were the same room then I'd be looking at you. Right?"
"That makes sense," Catalyst Lass said. "Okay, we're all going though to the next room!"
"Why?" Coward Lad asked.
"Because I said so."
And so they did.
"Now what?" Sarcastic Lad said. "We're in a different room but it's the same as the room we left."
"We keep going," Cannon Fodder said.
"Wait!" Coward Lad said. "How do we know the next room won't be the same room we just left? I mean, if all the rooms look the same we could end up just going through the same rooms again and again and..."
"That's enough!" Catalyst Lass said.
"The guy has a point," Sarcastic Lad said.
Cannon Fodder nodded. "Okay, does anybody have a pen?"
"I have a marker," Sing-Along Lass said, producing it from her pocket.
"Perfect!" Cannon Fodder said. He then wrote the number "1" on the wall.
"I get it," Catalyst Lass said. "You're going to write a number on each wall and then we'll know if we ever come back to a room we've already been in."
"Exactly!" Cannon Fodder said.
Catalyst Lass looked at Coward Lad. "Does that answer your question?"
"I guess so," Coward Lad said.
"Fine," Catalyst Lass said. "We keep moving!"
They proceeded to the next room. Cannon Fodder took out the marker and was about to write on the wall when he noticed something odd.
"Oh dear..."
"What is it?" Catalyst Lass asked.
"There's already a number here."
Coward Lad gasped.
"What number?"
"1,261,314."
"No way," Sarcastic Lad said.
Catalyst Lass sighed. "Are we seriously supposed to believe that we've already been in this room? At that this is... what...?"
"The one millionth two hundred and sixty one thousand, three hundred and fourteenth room we've been in. Not counting the first one."
"But we've only been in three rooms!" Sister State-the-Obvious said.
"Unless where we are is folded in time as well as space," Sing-Along Lass suggested, "and we've arrived in a room we visited before."
"You should write the number out yourself," Sister State-the-Obvious said, "and then we'll see if it's your handwriting and not somebody else's."
"That's actually a good idea!" Cannon Fodder said. He wrote out the number underneath. "It certainly looks like my writing."
Sarcastic Lad shook his head. "It can't be your writing. I mean, think about it: are we really going to go through... what?"
"One millionth two hundred and sixty one thousand, three hundred and thirteen more rooms."
"Exactly. I mean, how long would that take? Days? Weeks? Years? We'd be dead."
"We're doomed!" Coward Lad said.
"Don't you get it?" Sarcastic Lad said. "Somebody is playing with our minds!"
Just then, a laser beam activated. It started firing randomly around the room.
"Look out!" Catalyst Lass yelled.
Everybody ducked. Then, just as suddenly, the laser beam stopped firing.
"Is everybody okay?" Catalyst Lass asked.
"Ow," Cannon Fodder said.
"What's wrong?" Catalyst Lass asked him.
"I appear to have a whole in my chest," he asked.
"Cannon Fodder is dying!" Sister State-the-Obvious said.
"Actually, no," Cannon Fodder said. "I haven't actually died once ever since I learned that I was actually a refugee from alt.fan.bugtown: now I just heal my wounds until I get better. It only takes a few minutes."
"We can't stay here," Catalyst Lass said. "The rest of us aren't so lucky."
Sister State-the-Obvious nodded. "If that laser beam had hit me in the chest I would be dead now."
"Wait!" Coward Lad said. "This room has lasers! What if the next room has something even worse!"
"Hold on!" Sing Along Lass said. "Let's calm down. Catalyst Lass, what was the last thing you remember before you came here?"
Catalyst Lass thought hard. "I remember Biege Midnight was still going on. Dekay and Diskolar were making the whole world beige and everything was supposed to end when they woke up."
Sister State-the-Obvious frowned. "No, wait. Wasn't that two years ago? In 2008?" She thought hard. "I'm confused."
Sing Along Lass sighed. "Okay, look, we're not getting anywhere this way so we're just going to have to break the fourth wall and try to figure out what the author is going with this."
"He's going to kill us all one by one!" Coward Lad said.
"I don't think so," Sing Along Lass said. "I mean, I was created by Drizzt, you two were created by wReam, Sarc was created by..."
"Gary St. Lawrence," Cannon Fodder said.
"Thank you. And as for me, I'm one of the original Legionaires, going back to the Cosmic Plot Device Caper."
"So?" Coward Lad asked.
"So nobody is going to kill us off! Our authors haven't been around for years! That means that can't give anybody permission to kill us off! Aha!"
"What about me?" Coward Lad asked. "Who came up with me?"
"Hmm..." Catalyst Lass pondered.
"Tom Russell," Sarcastic Lad said.
"And does that mean I'm not going to get killed off either?" Coward Lad asked, hopefully.
Sarcastic Lad shrugged his shoulders. "Who knows? He could have given somebody permission to kill you off."
"Crap."
Sarcastic Lad sighed. "Why don't we just look up at the top of this post. Maybe it will say who's writing this derivative crap." Sarcastic Lad looked up. "Ah. Martin Phipps. Why am I not surprised?"
"Martin Phipps?" Catalyst Lass said. "Deja Dude?"
"Well, sort of, yeah."
Catalyst Lass chuckled. "Oh, well then, Deja Dude will appear and rescue us. He always appears in his own stories and he always saves the day."
Just then Deja Dude appeared.
"I resent that!" he said.
"And yet... you're here."
"But I don't _always_ appear in my own stories. You take that back!"
Catalyst Lass laughed. "Well, maybe not every single one."
"Alright then," Deja Dude said. "That's better."
Catalyst Lass smirked. "Well, now that you're here, get us out of here."
"No."
"No?"
"No, you see this is supposed to be a challenge: I design a death trap and you, the characters, have to figure out how to get out."
"Okay, fine," Catalyst Lass said. "So how do we get out?"
"Um..."
"You don't know, do you?" she asked. "You're just making this up as you go along!"
"Hey!" Deja Dude said defensively. "That's how I write, okay? I start a story and then I see how it goes. I never plan things out in advance."
"And what about in real life? Do you plan things out in real life or just see how it goes?"
"Wait!" Deja Dude said. "Let's not go there. How many people can say that their lives have turned out exactly how they planned it would?"
"Okay, fine. So you're just going to leave us here?"
Suddenly the walls started to shrink. And as this was a cube shaped room that meant that the floor and ceiling were also getting smaller.
"The room is shrinking!" Sister State-the-Obvious said.
"The room is getting smaller," Deja Dude said. "Soon you won't be able to fit through the windows. What will you do?"
Catalyst Lass looked up. "There's a window on the ceiling."
"Okay..."
"But there's no window on the floor."
"Okay..."
"So if we go though the window on the ceiling then it has to go somewhere: it can't lead us back into the same room because there's no window in the middle of the floor below us."
"Very good!"
"But the ceiling's too high to reach and none of us have flight thingees..."
"The ceiling is getting closer as the room shrinks," Cannon Fodder said. "If one of you can get on my back then I'll try pushing you up. Then you can lift me up and so on."
"So you're okay now?" Catalyst Lass asked.
"I'm fine. I'm completely healed. Hurry: get on my back!"
Catalyst Lass got on Cannon Fodder's back and reached up and grabbed hold of the window on the ceiling. She opened it and pulled herself through.
"Me next!" Coward Lad said.
"Alright: get on my back and Catalyst Lass will pull you up."
Coward Lad got on Cannon Fodder's back and reached up and grabbed Catalyst Lass' hand. Catalyst Lass pulled him up. Next were Sister State-the-Obvious and Sing Along Lass followed by Sarcastic Lad.
"Just where are we going?" Sarcastic Lad asked.
Catalyst Lass looked around. "We're back in LNHHQ. The Peril Room."
"So this was all some Peril Room exercise?"
"I guess so."
Sarcastic Lad looked at Deja Dude. "This wasn't really a death trap. We were never really in danger."
"Well... duh," Deja Dude said. "The death traps in death trap stories never are death traps: the point is that the hero is supposed to escape. And you have. Congratulations. Now hurry up or I'll e-mail Gary St. Lawrence and get permission to kill you off."
So Sarcastic Lad jumped up and his friends pulled him up. He just managed to fit through the window before it disappeared below him as if it were never there.
"Wait," Sarcastic Lad said. "'As if it were never there'? Shouldn't that be 'As if it _was_ never there'."
"I don't think so," Catalyst Lass said. I think it's the subjunctive. You see the window _was_ on the floor so saying it was never there would be wrong so you say 'as if it _were_ never there'."
Sarcastic Lad shook his head. "Somebody go find me Grammar Lad!" he said.
THE END
==========
Next Week: Possibly More LNH v2 issues!
==========
Arthur "Same Classic Channel. But Same Time? Probably not." Spitzer
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