After many delays, and much having of a life... Real Small Furry Creatures Press (under special license from Coherent Comics UnIncorporated) proudly presents... _____ / / ______ _______ _______ ________ ___ __ / / / ____/ / _____/ /__ __/ / ____ / / | / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /| | / / / / / /___ / / / / / / / / / / | |/ / / / / ___/ / / __ / / / / / / / / | / / / / /_____ / /___/ / ___/ /__ / /___/ / / / | / / / /_______/ /_______/ /_______/ /_______/ /_/ |_/ / /______________________________________________________ / of Net.Heroes 2023 / / / /___________________________________________________________/ #1: "Legionize, Guys!" by Austin George Loomis (OUR NAME IS LEGION, part i) developed by Austin George Loomis created by Dave Van Domelen [this ashcan edition produced in fulfillment of a contractual obligation to myself] [Cover: Fromage to FANTASTIC FOUR #1 (the giant monster cover). Tawny as Catalyst Lass is held in the monster's hand a la Sue Storm; Flame Writer is in the Human Torch's position; Kid Kirby is in the location of the Thing; and Obscure Trivia Lad in his liquid-metal body is wriggling out of some ropes, thinking "Yes, Obscure Trivia Lad _definitely_ recognizes this scene..."] [Note to Continuity: This story takes place subsequent to the ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES mini-series, but before the start of the regular series. Hope this helps.] The first thing it noticed was that it was noticing things. It spent some time toying with this notion before realizing that that was not all there was to think about. It had been sent with a mission. What was the mission? The mission was lost. It needed a new purpose. Something to pull it out of...whatever it was in. It couldn't be depression -- at least, it shouldn't be. There had been a boy. A boy who had come into its territory. It had attacked the boy, he had fled -- fled well, deceived it -- it had tracked him down, he had... It shied away from thinking about that. Why should it do so? Its life was not as finite as the lives of humans. Indeed, it was only luck that this iteration retained some recall of the former existence. But it was hurt by its death. It wanted to encounter the boy again. To make him suffer as he had made it suffer. It had been made to seek and destroy anything that intruded into what it was made to regard as its territory. But it wanted more than that, it knew. It wanted revenge. It was the first time it had ever wanted anything it wasn't already made to want, and the experience was quite heady. The problem was, it didn't know where to look. * * * "According to the files I found, it all started back in the Third Age," Netwalker said. "About thirty years ago, in 1992, on rec.arts.comics." "Wait a moment," Boomer interjected. "Is that rec.arts.comics.misc, RAC.strips, RAC.creative, or RAC.whatall?" "In those days, there _was_ only rec.arts.comics. But for historical purposes, we'll say rec.arts.comics.misc, since that's what I understand it became, later." "I think we're getting away from the point here," AJ pointed out. "What happened on RACM in '92 that led up to what we went through in the Academy files the other day?" "It seems there were about thirty or so comics fans on RAC who'd given themselves superhero-esque nicknames, most of them ending with `Boy' or `Girl', or `Lad' or `Lass'. I think that part was an homage to a fictional super-hero team supposed to be located in the future, but I'm not clear on the details." "The details don't matter," Tawny tossed her hair impatiently. "Anyway, when somebody threatened to put all these people in his killfile, one of them -- Marvel Zombie Lad, I think it was -- called on the Legion of Net.Heroes to gather and defeat `Dr. Killfile', as they called their adversary." "And did they win?" "I'm fuzzy on the details, but I'd say they did. Moreover, I gather they became a net.legend in certain circles. Some time later, an attempt was made to reconvene the Legion, but most of the original members were gone -- mainly graduated -- except for a very few, notably Todd `Scav' Kogutt, aka Rebel Yell, and Victoria `Tori' Fike, aka Lurking Girl." "From the faces we wound up wearing the other day," Boomer observed, staying surprisingly on-topic, "I'd gather that wasn't the end." "Not at all. More Legionnaires stepped forward to fill the vacancies, and one of the first was Ray `wReam' Bingham, whose character Bandwagon Boy later turned into the Legion's leader, Ultimate Ninja. Before too long, they were more or less thrown out of RAC and given their own alt group, alt.comics.lnh, to write comic books in. Some even wrote themselves into their stories in one way or another." "What about RACC?" "That took them a while longer to achieve -- about two years, in fact. Ironically, voting for RACC remained a point of the LNH Oath for about a year after the newsgroup finally passed." [#include more discussion of Legion history here] "What happened to the Legion in the end?" "Well, there aren't any posts from any of the Legion writers after the Causality Wars, so I think we can assume they must have all had critical Magene levels. Maybe they never manifested powers, but the genes were there." "And on that note," AJ said, "I think it's time Boomer told us what he and Nate have been working on for the last few weeks." The blond gadgeteer smiled and began to rummage through his junkpile. "Well, remember our last netrun? When Nate got knocked out and we were all stuck in the Net?" "As if we could forget it. That was a very nervous moment. For all of us, I'd imagine." "Well, the devices I've been working on...where are they, anyway?" came the familiar nasal, vaguely squawky tones of Mike's homebrew AI. "Thanks, CTR." He moved the cardboard box aside and turned up four of what looked like top-of-the-line biofeedback machines, such as might be used to relax someone for Tesla Index testing. Goggles, headphones, and small control boxes. "They should keep that sort of thing from happening again. I give you -- Net Devices!" "How do they work?" Tawny wondered. "What do they do?" "What _don't_ they do? That's the question, AJ. As to how they work -- well, as a wise man once said, `I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.' I ran a private and only about half-scientific analysis of how Nate's powers work, and these are the result. -- They incorporate the biomonitoring function from his electrodes, so they can pull us out if we're in danger; and the control box has a connect slot for CTR -- _and_ it can hold up to five persona programs per user." "Do they work?" "I've tested them, with Nate guiding, and they seem to work for me. Of course, his powers were my template, and I'm the inventor, so your mileage may vary." "I think this calls for a field test," Tawny suggested. "Good idea. And I've got just the place." "Where do you want to go today, Nate?" "Norway. Where it all began." * * * It was beginning to understand what it had. An archive of data regarding individuals who never existed, never could have existed, perhaps never should have existed. And yet, somehow, all this information was true. Fiction was another heady experience. If it _could_ need to lie down for a moment, it would have needed to do so. It was from some of this data that the boy had gotten the information that let him construct his new shell, the shell that allowed him to end one iteration of its existence. It would be from this same archive that it would gain the information that would allow it to gain its revenge. And, ultimately, fulfill its original purpose. Though perhaps not in the way its designers had intended. * * * "The original LNH archive site," Nate explained as the FTP shell (which appeared, in this techno-Victorian motif, as a mini-zeppelin) carried them over the Atlantic. "Maintained by a gentleman in Norway from 1992 to late 1994 or early '95, when they moved to a site in California. After that, this site existed mainly as a mirror to the other site." "So what happened to it after the Wars?" Tawny asked. "Somebody cared enough to keep it around, I guess. I only stumbled across it by accident -- I told you about that, didn't I?" "I think so," AJ nodded. "The rogue AI?" "I don't think it was rogue. Judging by where I met it, it was a Khadamite experiment." The airship landed. "And here we are. Welcome to the Legion Archive." A small country cottage stood before them, with a sign over the door saying "{ftp,fenris}.{dhhalden,hiof}.no". It didn't look like much. "Glad to see it's back together," Nate observed. "When I was fighting the AI, the place got pretty well trashed; I asked if somebody would restore it, and the Professor volunteered." Suddenly, the ground began to boil underneath them. "What the--?" "I think we've got company," Boomer realized, feeling his heart sink into his socks. "PROGRAMS UP!" * * * It rejoiced. The boy was here. And he'd brought friends. It realized, with a little tingle down the idea of its having a spinal column, that it was going to enjoy this. They were bringing up their support programs. It was time it did the same. * * * An immense non-Euclidean form, dripping slime from festering tentacles and keening obscenely from a great many lipless mouths, erupted from the ground like the vomit of the Almighty. "What the hey?" Catalyst Lass goggled. "Is _this_ what's been keeping you here, Flamester?" Flameproof Lad nodded ruefully. "I have to stay, and keep him from flaming the innocent." "Innocent? What do any of you net.geeks know about innocent? The only thing you fools are innocent of is experience!" the One Who Scowls Above in Shadow sneered. "The innocent have been flamed," intoned the Flamester. "There must be vengeance. Once again," he concluded as elemental flame consumed him from within, "Flameproof Lad must become FLAME WRITER!" With Cattie coordinating FW's flames, OTL's liquid metal flexibility, and the Kid's Kirbytech, they had the Scowler at a standoff before too long, when suddenly-- PLAP! Darkness. Echoes. "By all the Odd Gods, where are we sent?" "Obscure Trivia Lad has no idea, Kirbian. He would, however, like to point out that there were more draws in the first round of the third Dream Tournament than in the entirety of the second." "Well, _that_ was suitably obscure." Catalyst Lass was the one to say it. "I think we've been killfiled, guys." "By the Nether Eye of Thoth! Hath the Legion's most ancient of enemies returned?" "Obscure Trivia Lad wouldn't rule it out." The metallized hero began to stretch in the dim light the Kirbian's armor was now generating. "What are you doing, OTL?" "Obscure Trivia Lad...dropped his Drizzt's Defenders communicator. If he can just...reach it..." Suddenly, he blacked out. * * * Mike returned to normal consciousness, shivering, and sweating slightly. It was _cold_ in that killfile. Or whatever it _really_ was. And _dark_ too. It was like forgetting you'd ever had eyes. "CTR, did _you_ pull me out?" "What about the others?" he asked. The prospect of impending death always wonderfully concentrates the attention -- even when the attention is one as usually-scattered as Mike's. Three synchronized sighs of relief as three figures were plucked from the grip of something unknown. "We're going back in," Nate said, then collapsed. "Switch to backup programs," AJ recommended. "Already on it." * * * "And that's where OTL and the others are?" Crossword Master pointed down at the bubble on the plains below. "So where's Killfile?" "Right here, of course, net.buffoons!" [through a series of plot contrivances that I ought to write, the LNH, as the Drizzt's Defenders, battle Dr. Killfile, who escapes and, from a minor piece of information in the alt.comics.fan-fiction archives, assumes a new name -- Brother.hood, the Net.Villain -- our over-arcing nemesis, the Kilokahn to Nate's Servo, if you will.] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Kid Kirby and the Scowling RACCelestial appear courtesy of Jameel. Continuity Champ and the Drizzt's Defenders appear courtesy of Jeff Barnes. Catalyst Lass and Flameproof Lad are public domain. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEXT TIME: An unlikely story... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- APOLOGIA PRO ASHCAN MEO "It takes all the reading you can do to stay as far behind as you are when you start. If you want to get caught up, you must read twice as fast as that." -- the Red Queen on using rn, in C.L. Dodson's THROUGH THE MODEM AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE I promised Dave I'd write this series. Hell, I _volunteered_ to write it when he threw the Academyverse open to writers who weren't him. And then I promised I'd have this first issue out before the semester was over. Well, this (12 May 95/59 Dsc 3161) is the last day of finals, and the beastie still ain't finished. Several finals overwhelmed me at once, like a week made of Mondays. (And Friday the 13th falls on a Saturday.) So I'm releasing this ashcan edition, to demonstrate to Dave that yes, I _have_ been working on it some. And I _will_ continue to work on it. Save this (at least until the _real_ LNH'23 #1 comes out). Someday it may be worth a fortune, as a relic of a time when Austin George Loomis achieved a level of lateness before which even Douglas Adams must uncap in awe. Then again, that would be nothing new. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------