Four thin voices were all that remained of the Chorus. Four interweaving harmonies, barely audible to one another, yet still linked. Simplicity where there had once been complexity, consistency where once had been diversity. One song in four variations, held true without flaw or dissonance. A faint sadness wove throughout. Dour bass, angry tenor, resigned alto, nervous soprano. So much had been sacrificed that the song might continue, so much made of what little remained. Was there power to the song? Yes, but fading. Was there hope to the refrain? Yes, but faint. Was there more to be found? Was there more? Was there? Perhaps. The song could rise again, if only there were ears to hear. If only there was a heart to bear the song. If there was an emptiness to fill, rather than a fullness of sorrow. Perhaps. @>-`-,-`-,-`-,`-,-`-,-`-,-`- \\ // -'-.-'-.'-.-'-.-'-.-'-.-'-<@ .|,Coherent Comics Presents \\ // #24 - Ad Astra Per Asperum --X------------------------- E }X{ ARCHS copyright 2003 by the '|` A Superguy/LNH Tale // \\ Dvandroid (Dave Van Domelen) @>-`-,-`-,-`-,`-,-`-,-`-,-`- // \\ -'-.-'-.'-.-'-.-'-.-'-.-'-<@ A few minutes ago.... "Okay, time's up," Kat said, not moving from her cross-legged position. Oakthorn, interrupted in mid-rant, did a doubletake. "What do you MEAN, 'time's up?'" "I mean I've let you four piss and moan long enough that you should have gotten most of it out of your systems, and now you're just running on inertia," she replied. "Even Davan got bored and wandered off a few minutes ago, and he has a pretty well-developed sense of schadenfreude." "That's not really fair," Forgeheart started, stopping when Kat held up a hand. "I've been more than fair. I remember how bad it was for me the first time I switched bodies...and the second...and I know I had professional help the first time. You need to get it out of your systems, fine. But we're the only ones with a shot at stopping the madman behind all of this, and we're not going to do it if we just keep moaning about our lot. Floyd has a bit more justification, since he's flashing back on the trauma of being here before, but that's all the more reason to get the hell out before he has to relive it all, and us along with him." "Fine," Skysabre frowned, having mostly been silent during Oakthorn's extended angstfest. "How did the professionals help you through this the first time?" Kat uncrossed her arms and sighed. "Well, the situation isn't exactly the same...there wasn't another living copy of me hanging around after the Scanning process, so I didn't have to deal with the uniqueness problem. On the other hand, the Scan is fatally thorough, so my last memories before waking up in a Robo shell were of dying, my first sight included my own corpse. It was a rude shock, but it did help make it all feel like a transition instead of a copying." She stood and started to pace. "There were a lot of subtle details and tricks I'm not going to try to reproduce here, but the core of any Scan's orientation is to take to heart a simple dictum. 'Cogito ergo sum.' It goes beyond Decartes's meaning of the phrase and straight to the heart of identity. I am myself, because I think I am. The fact that I'm not in the same body, that my mind is now a mass of electronics and holographic storage instead of synapses and organic processes, doesn't matter. Even if I were to overcome a dozen or more safety protocols and create a fully functioning copy of my mind in another RoboMAC, I would still be myself...and so would she. Skysabre, you remember Cig.Lad, right?" [Constellation #18 - Ed, who's pretty sure he's the original Ed.] "The Oddball Legion version of me...of Sig.Lad, sure." "If you look back far enough, the two of you were identical at some point, even if you had to go back to the zygote phase. Under all the time loops, GIF copies and alternate realities, you and he were the same person until some point at which you went your separate ways," Kat was gesturing animatedly at this point. "I suppose so. And you're trying to say that our sense of self shouldn't be so tied up in uniqueness, since we all have copies of some sort, somewhere? Fine. But that's not my issue...I got over that sort of thing long ago. I'm more worried about what road I'll go down...so many of my alternate selves have become monsters." Kat sighed again, for effect. "Okay, but if I could cope with being a copy, and you could cope with being a copy, Stan and Anna should be able to handle it as well, right?" Oakthorn looked dubious at the prospect, but Forgeheart seemed to be buying into the idea, at least tentatively. Kat pointed at Skysabre and added, "And if what you told me about Acton Lord is true, a version of you became him after being trapped for too long in just this sort of place...so it's even more important that you shake your damned funk and start trying to get out!" "Tell me how we're supposed to do that without any powers?" Oakthorn spat back angrily. "You may still be made of stone, but the rest of us have nothing without our weapons and armor." "Kat might be able to punch through the wall?" Davan suggested. "I thought you got bored and wandered off?" Forgeheart quirked an eyebrow. "Kat uncrossed her arms, I stopped being bored," he shrugged. "Besides, as I got farther away, I could feel my mind starting to slip away again. I think just being around you five is helping me keep what little grip I have on reality, such as reality may be." Forgeheart slapped herself on the forehead. "I can't believe I totally missed it!" "What, Kat's breasts?" Oakthorn suggested. "No, dummy. Misdirection, the stage magician's best friend. We've got it coming and going here." "You think this whole thing is a diversion of some sort? An illusion?" Skysabre furrowed his brow in thought. "Of a sort, yeah. The Gentle Gift of Crimson doesn't want his prisoners trying to escape, so he makes it seem like there's no way to escape. Oh, escape is probably pretty damn hard as well, but an aura of all-pervasive angst helps keep anyone from trying. But we've been engaging in misdirection ourselves, without even realizing it...we've been fooling ourselves," Forgeheart stood up and started looking around. "I'm not following you," Oakthorn frowned. "Davan, what direction to the closest wall?" Forgeheart asked. "That way, more or less," he pointed. "Let's go. I think we have more power than we let ourselves believe. The Dvandroid said we were conduits for Drama, and that the weapons would help us focus it. But, except for Floyd, we each have an alternate means of focusing that power." Forgeheart started walking towards the wall, and the others followed. "What alternate means?" Floyd asked dubiously. "The nanotech?" "Of course!" Kat exulted. "They may have gone dormant after building these new bodies, but there's bound to be a few left in each of us. They're not going to respond the way I'm used to...or I would have been able to get them to work before. But..." "But they must still be working somehow, given that I was able to survive far longer in that vacuum trap than I should have been," Skysabre finished. "Same thing with me and a drowning trap," Forgeheart nodded. "But wouldn't Crimson know about that? I mean, he clearly DID when he was gloating at us," Oakthorn countered. "I doubt he'd leave us even a power that we didn't know about, so long as HE knew about it." "You're right," Floyd nodded. "On the rare occasion where he couldn't just bend a superguy to his will in the past, the Gentle Gift of Crimson would imprison the future pawn here, damping their powers so they couldn't get out." "Dampened, but not gone," Kat emphasized. "I think the reason Davan feels saner around us is precisely because of the power we're still channelling. You four were still vulnerable to the psychic effects of this prison for various reasons...Looniverse natives are really susceptible to angst, I've found...but our link to Drama seems to have blunted the effects. Here's the wall," she announced, pulling up short. It was light brown and uneven, like the grain pattern of some sort of plant magnified a thousandfold. Or like the inside of a giant gourd, which was what Davan had said the prison was. Kat threw a punch at the wall, but her fist bounced from its springy surface. "No good. We could use a little fire, or some plant control here." Forgeheart raised her hands and concentrated for several long seconds, but nothing seemed to be happening. Skysabre placed a hand on the wall. "Hm. A little warmer, I think." "Not getting anything from this end either," Oakthorn sighed. "We're damped enough." Suddenly, the ground shook and everyone was tossed about like tenpins. "What the...?" Kat spat. "That was way too big to be an arrival shock, and there's no visible source," Davan said as he picked himself up and looked around. Forgeheart simply focused on the wall and narrowed her eyes. The wall burst into flames. "Whatever it was, it's distracted Crimson's hold on us!" she exclaimed. She raised a fist, and for a moment it was surrounded in the ghostly outline of a mighty hammer head. Then, with a savage blow, she smashed through the wall of the gourd-prison, sending flaming shards of shell everywhere. A mighty wind suddenly whipped up and blew them all through the hole, and they landed in the empty throne room where they had fought Tybalt before being imprisoned. The gourd, only a few handspans high, now spun and screamed like some kind of fireworks. "Quick, toss it out in the hall before it spits everyone else out!" Floyd warned. A gust of wind leapt from Skysabre's hand and pushed the screaming gourd towards the main doorway, which sprang open before the gale. Men and women began to shoot out of the gourd as it flew, all of them with the look of madness in their eyes and many with the taint of the abyss already in their bodies. "What now?" Oakthorn asked as he slowly turned about, taking in the room. "We're in the throne room, but no one else is...do we go looking for trouble, wait for it to come to us, or run like hell?" "Speaking as the only normal guy in the room, I vote for 'run like hell' myself," Davan ventured. "I second that," Floyd piped up. "I don't have any residual nanotech in me to help focus my power...assuming I have any power at all right now." Without warning, Kat clamped her hand down on Floyd's shoulder and dug her stony talons into his flesh. "You do now, I think. Assuming I have any voluntary control over the little critters, anyway," she explained while Floyd grimaced. "Warning would have been nice," Floyd muttered. Suddenly, Tybalt unfurled out of nothingness and kicked Kat in the head, sending her flying into the wall. "Warning would be nice, I agree," Tybalt sneered. "But you know that 'nice' isn't really my style, jester," he mocked Floyd. "Running now," Davan said, then bolted for the main doors, which immediately slammed shut. "Hiding in a corner and whimpering now," he amended. "Don't bother trying to find your weapons and armor," Tybalt chuckled, taking up a relaxed pose in the center of the throneroom. "My master is no fool, to leave such things lying around where they might be found. Your equipment has been rent asunder, its power devoured by the Gentle Gift of Crimson. And a light enough snack he declared it." Again, Tybalt favored the room with a haughty sneer. "That's because the weapons were merely a focus," Skysabre smiled ferally, like a wolf that had cornered a cat. "The power was always inside of us, waiting to be tapped!" Lightning surged from Skysabre's hands, striking Tybalt with twin argent lances of brilliant power and knocking the transformed dragon across the room. "We can do that?" Oakthorn asked Forgeheart, disbelief written across his features. "Guess so!" she replied, slamming her fist against the floor. A crack emanated from the point of impact, growing into a chasm that threatened to devour Tybalt. "Not twice," Tybalt muttered, regaining his balance in time to dance out of the way of the fissure. "Playtime is clearly over," he added, swelling in size as he unleashed his true form, a serpentine dragon of tremendous strength and power. Oakthorn mimed the action of nocking and drawing a bow, and with a glint of surprise in his eyes, called into being a glowing green arrow. He loosed it, sending it streaking at the head of the dragon. The arrow splashed against Tybalt's face, narrowly missing an eye and causing the dragon to reel in pain. Vines appeared out of nowhere and started to grow from the point of impact, wrapping around Tybalt's mighty jaws and clamping them shut. "Good, that's shut him up," Kat muttered as she finished peeling herself out of the wall and launched herself onto the writhing serpent, wrapping both arms and legs around the muscular form and starting to squeeze. "Your turn," Forgeheart winked to Floyd. "What, you want I should get him wet? I don't think that's going to bother him," Floyd replied despondantly. "There's more you can do with water than use it like a firehose, Seafixer," Skysabre said from within a nimbus of crackling lightning. Floyd thought for a moment, watching Tybalt thrash about, smashing Kat into the walls in his attempts to loosen her grip. Then he chuckled. "Hey, skinny," he called out to Tybalt. "Dry up and blow away, won't ya?" Seafixer raised his hands, and suddenly water started to ooze from between the scales of the dragon's hide. First a drizzle, then a shower, then a torrent. As the precious fluid left the dragon's body, Tybalt started to shrivel like a raisin in the sun, trying to scream but unable to because of the vines still entwining his jaws. Finally, with a grimace of pain, Tybalt shrank to his human form, escaping the vines but not the woman of stone who clung to him. The two fell to the floor, Tybalt's face lined with the wrinkles and furrows of an ancient man. He finally gasped, "I submit," before falling unconscious. "That felt UNBELIEVABLY good!" Floyd shouted. "I've wanted to give that bastard a taste of his own medicine for years!" Then he started to twitch slightly. "Is something wrong?" Kat asked, a bit worried at her casual use of what had started as a nanoplague. "Not sure," Floyd replied, looking around a bit nervously. "It feels like...my *soul* itches." "THEN ALLOW ME TO SCRATCH IT!" a silky voice boomed incongruously through the throne room. Crimson power erupted from the empty throne, slamming everyone into the walls before coalescing into humanoid form. Bands of crimson power remained wrapped around each Exarch, covering limbs and mouth. The Gentle Gift of Crimson crossed his legs, rested his chin on his fists, and smiled. "What AM I to do with you?" he chided. "You break my prison-gourd, you damage my lieutenant, you ruin the decor of my throne room, you force me to take time away from other matters to deal with you...I suppose I will simply have to kill you now. Oh, don't try to talk your way out of it, I have read the various 'Evil Overlord' lists, and agree that in cases such as yours, there is a point beyond which it is no longer worthwhile attempting to subvert an opponent. You have passed that point, and your passage into Oblivion will be short and painful. I merely have to decide on a method, and I believe I have *just* the..." There was a sharp crash as a once-human form flew through the main doors, clearly not under its own power. "Now what?" the Gentle Gift of Crimson stood, an annoyed expression flickering across his face. The Exarchs remained silent, their crimson gags allowing no other choice. A man in a business suit stepped through the ragged hole in the door, brandishing a slip of paper in one hand while cradling a slightly battered briefcase in the other. "Gentle Gift of Crimson, also known as the Winter's Setting Sun, also known as Banestar's Heart, also known as Prince Cloaked In Blood...I, the Mage Municipal of this Altiverse, do hereby serve you this summons to appear in civil court in Junction City, Kansas, at the appointed date to defend yourself against charges of multiple zoning violations. Failure to appear will result in summary judgement against you." He held out the enchanted subpoena. The darklord looked at the piece of paper as if it were a particularly unpleasant dead fish. Then, a moment later, it erupted in flames, forcing the Mage Municipal to hastily drop it. "I do not recognize your legal system," the Prince Cloaked In Blood sneered. "I represent the only true law, the law of Entropy, the law that says all existence will one day cease. Oblivion is my master, and your destruction, pathetic mageling." Power started to spark from the darklord's eyes, but the Mage Municipal seemed to be ready for this, whipping his briefcase around to interpose it between him and his foe. The Gentle Gift of Crimson started to chuckle at the puny defense, but caught himself as he realized what the briefcase truly was. Then the case was opened the tiniest crack and the darklord was drawn in like smoke into a fan. The Mage Municipal closed the Pocket Bureaucracy and set it down before motioning for the others to come in. "We have to hurry," he said as he cast a small spell to dissipate the crimson bands that imprisoned the Exarchs. "The Pocket Bureaucracy is almost pure Order, it should counter his Chaos-linked power for a moment, but I doubt it has the ability to hold him for long." Ben Sidhe took a moment to kick the still-unconscious form of Tybalt before going to help Forgeheart to her feet. "So, we run for it, right? Regroup and try again later?" Jack suggested. "No, we will never have a better chance," his father replied. "Nuclear artillery has weakened the darklord, he will not fall for same trick again. Fighting free of Pocket Bureaucracy will weaken him further. We stay and fight." Meanwhile, Floyd seemed distracted, if no longer twitchy. "Um, guys... is anyone else hearing...singing?" "Just the singing of blood in my ears," Hans Kartoffelkopf replied with uncharacteristic terseness. "Wait...I do," Oakthorn started tapping the heel of his palm against the side of his head, as if trying to jar something loose. "What the hell?" "So do I," Skysabre furrowed his brow in concentration. "I can almost make out what the song says...just at the edge of hearing." "That's crazy. You're crazy," Jack pshawed. "There is no singing. Just the, um, clattering of the Pocket Bureaucracy as it starts to break apart. Please can we run away?" "It's a song in my mind," Forgeheart realized. "Not a real sound. It's like...the dream of a choir, half-heard in memory. The lyrics don't exist, yet you can't help but feel you understand the meaning." "It's the nanomachines," Kat said flatly, as if trying to fight back the emotions associated with an old and painful memory. "I've heard them sing once before, when they first infected me, when they learned to be something other than a plague." Floyd doubled over in pain. "It's TOO LOUD!" he screamed. Suddenly, even though they hadn't been the closest to him, the other Exarchs were at his side, moving like a racing torrent. They didn't know exactly why they did so, but each placed a hand on his back. Then the Pocket Bureaucracy exploded in a cloud of triplicate forms. The Prince Cloaked In Blood seethed with power and anger, no longer was the epithet Gentle even remotely applicable, even in irony. "You. Die. Now." On the word "Now," there was a second explosion that had nothing to do witht he darklord's threat. It hurled Kat, Skysabre, Forgeheart and Oakthorn back from Floyd in a display of argent light. As it faded, Floyd was surrounded by a silvery shell that slowly seeped into his body, leaving only a sprinkling of sparks on a skin that had turned the deepest black. "I AM WHOLE!" Constellation screamed as he stood and faced the darklord, an epiphany torn from his lips. "Not for long," the Prince Cloaked In Blood snarled. "I destroyed you before, this time I won't toy with you." Putting words into action, he hurled a bolt of darkest red at Constellation, a color that seemed to absorb light rather than give it off, a color of pure death. The bolt fell into the starry blackness of Constellation's chest and vanished, only a slight grunt of pain betraying any effect on the hero. "I was weakened by fighting Superguy when you attacked me, parasite," Constellation countered, hurling a spray of stars at his opponent. He was gratified to see the darklord dodging in a most undignified manner. "Now you are weakened from the day's events...and you were never really that powerful on your own to begin with, were you?" he mused with a sudden realization. A star flared into brighter life over his left eye, and he scrutinized the Prince Cloaked In Blood with senses few mortals possessed. "Powerful enough," Banestar's Heart intoned darkly as he sent out spears of bone from the walls to skewer the still-incapacitated Exarchs. Jack and Mairi pulled two of the limp forms out of the deadly trajectories, and silvery discs appeared to block the remaining spears. "No, I don't think so. No wonder this darkland grew so much more slowly than others!" Constellation exclaimed. "Your cause was lost the moment the Exarchs arrived in this Altiverse, told their story, and were believed. You depend on victims coming to you, so that you can drain their energy and use it to expand the darklands. With no one venturing inside the city, you had to make do with ambient lifeforce, slowly gathering it in and laboriously expanding your domain." "Slow or fast, Oblivion always wins in the end," the darklord countered, gathering strength and starting to glow darkly from within. "But that's your problem," Constellation flared pure silvery-gray as he drew upon the unrealized realities of the astral realm and the power of the five elements. "It's NOT the end yet. It's NEVER the end!" Dark and light clashed in a display of power that none could bear to look at. The final detonation blew straight up, sundering the peak of the Dark Spire and shredding it into dust. The beam of tainted light lanced upward and upward, becoming purer and brighter as it reached for the ever- present clouds. It burned a hole in the clouds, a hole that expanded with the speed of an explosion, racing for the horizon. Then it was over, and the Sun shown down on Topeka. * * * * Three days later... "So...this is goodbye?" Skysabre asked. Constellation nodded as he allowed the darkness to creep back over his face. "I've done what I could to help start the healing here, tore out the Dark Spire by its roots and banished the uncurable monsters to netherspace, but the rest is something anyone with a willingness to work can handle. And I learned during my years as Crimson's slave that he's not the only one of his kind. I have a responsibility to find the others and...deal with them as well. I owe it to Dot, if nothing else. Do you want me to take you home to the Looniverse first? I'm pretty sure I could manage it now." "It's not home anymore," Oakthorn surled. "Our 'originals' still live there, we'd just be excess baggage. Especially since we seem to have lost most of our powers to you." "The chorus is sorry," Constellation sighed. "They felt a need to join all the power within one, and once they found me, they knew I was the one to hold it all. They left you what they could, at least, and with the Gentle Gift of Crimson gone, that should be enough." "Enough for what?" Kat asked, tapping one stony finger against the palm of her other hand. "Enough for whatever destiny awaits us here," Forgeheart replied. "The forces that guided us into this world aren't quite done yet." "How do you know that?" Jack asked as he shared a slightly dented can of nuts with Louie. "I...saw it in a dream," she admitted. "But something tells me it wasn't just a dream. And you were in it," she nodded to Jack, "and you," to Mairi, "and all of us. We belong here now." Skysabre chuckled. "So the Dvandroid wasn't lying when he said that defeating the 'sorceror' would lead us home. He knew we wouldn't want to go back to the Looniverse...this is our home now. We've fought for it, now we'll rebuild it, make it our own, and make ourselves its own." There was a pause, and everyone looked around expectantly. Constellation smiled and started to fade from the world. "I guess I'll say it," he broke the silence. "There's no place like home." And then he was gone. IS THERE ANY PLACE LIKE HOME? WHAT IS THIS DESTINY THE EXARCHS SEEM TO HAVE? WHAT POWERS WERE THEY LEFT WITH TO FACE IT? HOW LONG BEFORE THE NEXT EPISODE? The last question will probably be answered on the next...SUPERGUY! ============================================================================= Author's Notes: And so ends "A Season In Crimson," the first UberArc of Exarchs. How it breaks into arcs is an exercise left to the reader. From the very beginning I had a vague idea of how this would flow, if not a real plan for how it would unfold. I knew it would start with the Exarchs finding their weapons and armor, then confronting progressively stronger foes in service to the Gentle Gift of Crimson, before finally facing him in final combat. And that there would be some sort of fusion of powers involved in taking down the cosmic-level threat, as in Ronin Warriors (Yoroiden Samurai Troopers). Along the way, they'd discover the truth about their origins, although it took me a while to settle on exactly what that would be (initially I toyed with simple Many Worlds Theory divergent versions). Jack was originally planned to be the fifth Exarch, but once I introduced Floyd I knew he had to be the real one, leaving Jack as a red herring. I know I left my previous Superguy series in something of a mess. I was starting to lose interest, was too focused on the long term stuff and not enough on how to get from here to there (i.e. I had plans for how Jack would eventually free himself from Hell Inc. with the help of Mairi, but there was all that tedious character development that had to be done in between). And I was waiting for crossovers that never materialized, and Superguy started winding down again, continuity elements getting harder and harder to use, etc. So I ended up just stopping, writing an explanatory post, and moving on with ASH and LNH. Soon after, I decided to wrap up my LNH series as well, having run into similar problems but lacking even a long range goal to focus on. So...about a year ago, I was noodling around with ideas. A few Superguy series had clanked back to life, and I felt like getting involved again. But I didn't want to just pick up Crazy Guy again, if nothing else, the dis- incorporation of Hell had taken the wind out of my main plot's sails, and I didn't want to write a story set several years ago just to make the plot work. I started pulling out ideas and influences and stirring them in a pot...the eXiles comic, the Exalted RPG, the fact I was moving to Kansas and thus should do something based on the Wizard of Oz. Somewhere in that mess, I decided to use some characters split off from Dvandom Force #48 for my cast. And the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon gave me some ideas for bringing in the old Crazy Guy cast later on. And then I started writing, cranking half a dozen episodes in a couple of weeks, drawing comparisons to the old Bill Paul days. Actually moving to Kansas threw me off my stride, though, and I slowed to a crawl again. Then I had a burst of inspiration dust while at a professional conference and not taking notes at a coworker's talk (since I could always get a copy of the powerpoint slides), and I ended up rough plotting (very rough...three or four lines an ep) #16-24. I've managed to average about an episode every other week since then, going from those notes. Now, however, I've reached the end of that. I did briefly consider just ending the series at #24, thus denying R_M the chance to do a crossover, but I eventually figured out what I wanted to do next with the team, after powering them way down and sending Constellation off into the sunset again. What AM I doing next? Let's just say that there's danglers from Crazy Guy that I had originally planned to deal with after the Hell Inc. stuff, and they're still out there.... Next Episode: Exarchs #25 - "Translation"