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An occasionally Acrophobe LNH title

  In Memory of Mark Gruenwald
    Who gave us wonderment and morality along with the cosmic 
    in _Quasar_ when nearly everybody else had succumbed to the 
    darkness of Grim'n'Gritty.

Issue #1
Timeline And Timeline Again
Part 3 of Leftovers

Written by and copyright 1997 Saxon Brenton

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Cover shows Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story floating 
in outer space. He is half turned away from the audience, looking 
towards distant galaxies which are all deep red in colour.
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          "This place is the end of time. There, entropy awaits like 
          a ravenous beast, where it drains all energy and life. It 
          is the only time...the only place known where life cannot 
          possibly exist." 
              - Waverider, in _Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey_ Book 3

          "One mad prophet martyr journeyed too far and saw the Timewyrm. 
          He saw it in a timeline that he could not be sure of, devouring 
          Rassilon or his shade, during the Blue Shift, that time of 
          final conflict when Fenric shall slip his chains and the evil 
          of the worlds shall rebound back on them in war."
              - _Timewyrm: Revelation_

  Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story was hurtling forward 
through the swirling rainbow coloured non-landscape of the Timestream, 
also known as the Meantime (because when in the Meantime, you were in 
between time).
  He was hurtling very fast. So fast in fact that he couldn't read the 
numbers that occasionally whizzed past, making nasty zipping noises as 
they went. These numbers represented what year one would materialise 
in if one were to drop out of the Meantime back into the flow of history.
  The problem, however, was that KidNAIARHS wasn't able to stop.
  The net.hero wasn't able to read the dates, but he could make them out 
well enough to see that they were getting very large very fast.
  Uhm...
  No, that's not quite right. Physically the numbers remained quite 
small, so KidNAIARHS wasn't in any danger of being pounded flat by 
hitting a huge digit the size of a truck or anything like that (although 
considering the amount of damage that micro-meteorites can do to space 
craft if they're moving at high relative velocities this wasn't 
necessarily a comfort). Rather, there was a growing number of digits 
in the dates, indicating a rapidly increasing numerical value.
  Anyway...
  Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story knew that the numbers 
seen in the Meantime were subjective, and were perceived by each 
individual as dates using whatever chronological system that he or she 
habitually used. Kid might not be able to read the dates, but he knew 
that he was very far from the 20th century, and moving farther away all 
the time.
  Which way he was moving was also relatively easy to determine. His 
own powers of sensing entropic decay told him that he was moving 
downtime, into the future. For a moment he once again mused on why 
people habitually talked of moving 'downtime' when they meant travelling 
into the past. Time flowed 'downhill' like water, taking the path of 
least resistance.
  He thrust the thought aside. This was no time for pedanticisms. He 
had to stop his forward plunge.
  He had found that merely using his powers of flight to slow himself 
was useless. He had tried that already, and found to his dismay that he 
had somehow gained an immense amount of forward inertia. How, he didn't 
know. One moment he had been flying over Net.ropolis On Patrol, the next 
he had been hurtling willy-nilly through time.
  [It was due to the Fandom Zone criminals using a piece of Jewel Retcon 
Hour Story that they acquired in _Limp-Asparagus Lad_ #20 - Footnote Girl]
  KidNAIARHS looked at the footnote.  .oO(Did they indeed?) he thought 
grimly. He'd have to do something about that when he returned to the 
20th century. But for now, he had to dampen his movement rate and drop 
back into sequential time. Then he could jump back to his personal 
present via the Rock.
  There was one possibility that occurred to him. He could use his 
powers over energy, and simply 'dump' his excess inertia. He didn't 
particularly like the thought of it, because the amount of energy it 
would waste would be pushing the limits of his oath to Maxwell to help 
conserve energy to help stave off the heat death of the universe. Still, 
if he didn't get rid of it, then it would be lost anyway. Sometimes, one 
had to make sacrifices.
  So, using his energy manipulating powers in a way that he had never 
anticipated, he began desperately to try to expell his accumulated 
inertia. In this he was only partly successful.
  To anyone watching in realspace/realtime, KidNAIARHS would have 
appeared as a spark of light - nova bright - as the dumped energy 
radiated out of the Meantime and excited free floating hydrogen ions 
into plasma. A spark lasting billions of years, and moving in a crazily 
spiralling path about and out of the galaxy. This latter effect was 
because although Kid himself wasn't physically moving in the Meantime, 
the orbits of the stars, the galaxies, an even the expanding universe 
itself caused his relative position to realspace to 'rotate' under him.
  Unfortunately, his efforts were not doing him particularly much good 
at halting his headlong plunge. For a moment he thought he would be 
doomed to careen forward in time forever.
  And then he stopped.
  He found himself floating in space. Far out in space. There were no 
nearby stars. The closest points of light were some comparatively nearby 
galactic clusters, and even they were so dim and extremely red-shifted 
as to be nearly invisible.
  "How did I get here?" he wondered aloud to himself, taking advantage 
of the fact that as a cosmic character he was automatically able to 
breath and communicate in the vacuum of space.
  =(I brought you here, traveller,)= answered a voice.
  Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story turned to behold a 
glowing, slightly nebulous humanoid form. It was sexless, and faintly 
transparent.
  "And who are you?" Kid asked.
  =(I am Humanity,)= replied the luminescent being.
  Kid blinked. "So. You are humane?" Was this another cosmic class 
anthropomorphic personification? That would certainly explain why it 
chose to intervene if it were the embodiment of caring.
  Humanity smiled and shook its head. =(Wrong context. 'Humanity' as 
a noun, not as an adjective. I am a collective being. At this far point 
in the Looniverse's history the only races that have survived are those 
that have achieved some degree of cosmic awareness through the 
manifestation of their racial consciousness.)=
  "I see. So you are the consciousness of the Looniearth?"
  =(Not quite. You should not define 'human' so narrowly. All races call 
themselves 'human' in their own tongue. I am the universal consciousness 
of all sapient races.)=
  "Well and enough. Thank you for rescuing me. It is greatly appreciated. 
Now, can you tell me when I am?" He cast a look at distant space, 
suspicious of the immense red shift of those dim clusters.
  =(You are some 10^42 of your years beyond your own time,)= Humanity 
informed him.
  Kid considered. That was a _long_ time into the future. Something in 
the order of a million billion billion billion billion years. There was 
little sense in trying to find the Looniearth in this age. Not only would 
the Sun have gone nova long ago, but the entire Milky Way would have 
collided with and been consumed by the far larger Andromeda galaxy. 
There was a good chance that not even the charred remains of the Sol 
system remained, but instead would have been torn apart by gravitational 
tides and any debris probably swept up by black holes.
  Then something occurred to the net.hero. "If the Looniverse still 
exists so far into the future, then I take it that it turned out to be 
an 'open' universe. One that will continue to expand forever rather 
than collapse back into a 'Big Crunch'."
  =(It is now,)= replied Humanity soberly. =(And in many ways that is 
all your fault.)=
  "Mine!?"
  =(You and your fellow heroes, and the entire zeitgeist of the Heroic 
Age in which you lived. The continual need to entertain the audience 
with ever more spectacular stories has brought the Looniverse to the 
sad situation it is in today.)=
  KidNAIARHS was horrified. "Did the continual clash and fray of heroes 
and villains unleash universal destruction on such a scale? What doomsday 
weapon could possibly wreak such havoc? The Ultimate RMGrouper? The 
Cosmic Rubik's Cube? The Insanity Gems? The Ring of Retcon? The Cosmic 
Plot Device? Surely it could not have been the plan of the Napping 
RACCelestial to turn the hunger of Alt.lactus into an unquenchable engine 
of destruction; that would have produced the exact opposite effect!"
  =(None of these. The reason is both profound, yet far more subtle.)= 
Humanity considered for a second on how best to explain, then said, 
=(Let me tell you a story...)=

\begin{flashback}

LOONIVERSE VERSUS LOONIVERSE

  And so it came to pass that due to Cosmic Events too contrived and 
silly to describe here, that the Looniverse was sundered into two. [The 
panel shows a still frame of the Looniearth and its moon Loona splitting 
in a mitosis-like effect.]
  These two halves both possessed anthropomorphic personifications that 
embodied the entirety of the two new continuums. [The panel shows a still 
frame of two Transformer-like entit... 
  "Hold it!"
  A round-bodied figure steps onto panel. Literally round-bodied. Her 
figure consists of disc with the LNH logo on it for her torso, to which 
stick figure arms and legs are attached, the whole being topped with a 
normal-looking head. This is Louise 'Wheezie' Alt.Comics.LNH, the 
Continuity Cop for the Looniverse. "Are you out of your mind? You want 
to get our collective butts sued off? Change that name used in that 
simile, mister."
  Uhmm... Will 'RoboMAC-like entities' do?
  "Much better," she concedes, then turns and leaves.
  [The panel shows a still frame of two RoboMAC-like entities - one 
green, one orange - standing side by side.]
  But now these two beings, called the Brothers, have discovered each 
othe...
  "Hey!" protested Politically Correct Person, walking on in front of 
the panel.
  WHAT IS IT NOW!?
  "You shouldn't be calling two such powerful and obviously non-humans 
'brothers'. It not only confines them to irrelevant paradigms that such 
beings are far beyond, but it also reinforces male-dominated social 
power structures."
  Fine. I'll call them the Siblings. Happy? Now go away! I've got a story 
to tell.
  "Hmmf," sniffs PC Person, somewhat miffed. "This wouldn't have 
happened if you had applied a little common sense beforehand."
  Grrr.
  (One of these days I'm going to have to hire myself a narrator, rather 
than doing this John Byrne act and trying to handle everything myself.)
  Anyway...
  But now these two beings, called the _Siblings_, have discovered 
each other, and their respective universes. And because they are the 
embodiments of comic book universes, they immediately become embroiled 
in a senseless conflict to determine which one will dominate, rather 
than try to coexist peacefully [The panel shows a still frame of the 
Siblings - each holding a flaming sword - standing on either side of 
a giant scales, with the two Looniearths being weighed.]

                        - o o O O O o o -

  It was a fairy typical day in the city of Net.ropolis. Which meant 
that fiendish schemes were in the process of being thwarted by the 
forces of justice.
  "Curse you, Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story!" cried Ny!Lon! 
the World's Wickedest Sock, as he scrambled from the ruined pile of scrap 
that had been but seconds before his horribly be-weaponed battle frisbee.
  "Surrender, Ny!Lon!" said KidNAIARHS, standing in a heroic pose (arms 
akimbo and cape billowing in the breeze). "Your plans for the conquest 
of Net.ropolis have been thwarted."
  "Not yet, Big Blue Cheese," snarled the sock, whipping out from behind 
his back a bizarre Ditko-esque weapon that was far too large to have 
been hidden there. "Not while I still have my Retcon Hour Story Rifle. 
One shot from its lethal magazine, and you're history!"
  KidNAIARHS looked amused. "And how will you hit me with it? I can 
dodge its beam easily."
  "Perhaps. But can you dodge when you are also wrestling with... the 
Atomic Shagpile!?"
  A great slab of synthetic floor-covering rose up from the rubble of 
the battle frisbee. KidNAIARHS took a half step backwards as he assumed 
a new but equally dramatic pose. "The Atomic Shagpile!" he breathed as 
the Mat of Menace towered before him. It seemed that this fight would 
be more difficult than KidNAIARHS had at first imagined; the Atomic 
Shagpile was another of Ny!Lon!'s fiendish creations, a rug of non-
natural and unnatural fibres, powered by the seething nuclear energies 
that lay at the heart of Cold War diehards and paranoiacs everywhere!
  "This Time You Will Not Escape," grated the Atomic Shagpile in its 
mechanical voice as it leapt towards the net.hero. 
  Ny!Lon! cackled fiendishly before raising his RHSRifle. Locked in 
mortal combat with the inhumanly strong and nigh-indestructible Shagpile, 
KidNAIARHS would be helpless to avoid the mad sock scientist's attempts 
to kill him. In the charging chamber of the RHSRifle was a piece of Green 
Retcon Hour Story - deadly to all net.a-powered Vathlosians. In the past 
the evil sock had toyed with the net.hero, using non-lethal types of 
Retcon Hour Story in efforts to humiliate him; such as the time he 
stripped KidNAIARHS of his sense of humour with Silver Retcon Hour 
Story, or used Red RHS to turn him into a pygmy marmoset. Well, the 
time for games was past. Now, Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour 
Story would die.
  "Not so fast, Ny!Lon!" exclaimed a voice. Ny!Lon! suddenly found 
himself bound and his RHSRifle squeezed from his grasp by the malleable 
form of:
  "Elastic Sock! My traitorous ex-minion from the Monster Sock Drawer 
of Evil!" snarled Ny!Lon! in surprise.
  "Name calling will get you nowhere," said the Woollen Wonder.
  Ny!Lon! just snarled and poked out his tongue in frustration. He had 
a particular hatred for Elastic Sock, since it had been during the fight 
scene started by Elastic Sock's defection to the forces of Good that 
Ny!Lon! had suffered his hideous deformity. Ny!Lon! had been preparing 
a new and even potent batch of the acid that Elastic Sock had been 
immersed in to gain his powers. This more powerful version would grant 
even stronger powers, but at the cost of the lives of the recipients in 
only a few tens of days. Elastic Sock had objected to the notion of the 
Sockforce Mortai suicide troops just at the moment that the Justice 
Loonies of Ame.rec.a had burst in, and in the ensuing melee Ny!Lon! had 
fallen in the vat of acid. Without the proper preparations it had not 
given him powers, but merely disfigured him; when he had emerged he had 
been bleached white except for his green scalp and red mouth. Ever after 
that he had concealed his features with the Dr. Doom mask that he now 
constantly wore.
  "A most timely arrival," said KidNAIARHS. Unhampered by the threat 
of other concerns, he had managed to overpower the Shagpile after only 
a few minutes of pitched combat.
  "Yeah. Well, let's get these two off to the..."
  And then it happened.
  Across two worlds the message was broadcast. The cosmic Siblings who 
embodied the entirety of both continuums had decreed that there would 
be battle. The net.heroes of Looniearth-DC and Looniearth-Marvel would 
fight against one another, and whichever net.hero in a match managed to 
'pin' the other would win that contest.
  And whichever group won the most battles would also win the continued 
existence of their world. The other would be destroyed utterly and cast 
in Alt.blivion, the realm of Killfile the master of non-existence.
  While the two heroes boggled at the implications of this message, and 
especially the knowledge that they were among the net.heroes chosen to 
battle for their world, Ny!Lon! absconded, riding away on the back of 
the Atomic Shagpile. "These two universes must have been brought into 
extremely close proximity for this battle, perhaps even into an 
overlapping conjunction. Worlds in flux! What a perfect opportunity to 
take control. I must make plans so that whichever world survives, I can 
claim it as mine!"

                        - o o O O O o o -

The Battles Begin

Lobotomy versus Wolfenblitz:
  Lobotomy rushed in at the hairy Wolfenblitz, screaming, "Gonna gut 
you ya little bandersnatch!!" He threw a haymaker, his bike chain 
wrapped around his fist as a knuckle-duster. Wolfenblitz ducked and 
then, snarling, came up from below to rip Lobotomy's throat out.
  Seriously gored, Lobotomy gave a vicious backhand that sent Wolfen-
blitz flying. The psychotic dog-cum-man recovered quickly, but before 
he could mount another attack Lobotomy tore a pylon out of a wall and 
threw it at the other, impaling Wolfenblitz through the chest. Now 
majorly pissed, Wolfenblitz ripped out the pylon and growled, "You're 
gonna pay for that, mothersucker, eh?"

                        - o o O O O o o -

Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story versus Maui:
  Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story found himself at what 
appeared to be an outdoor car park. Across from him a little ways was his 
opponent, a muscular young man of short stature dressed in what looked 
like a costume designed by Walt Simpson from stylised Pacifanfic Island 
elements. His face was covered in a whorly pattern of tattoos, but these 
were of secondary importance to his eyes, which seemed to dominate his 
face and attracted the attention of anyone who saw them. One eye was 
grey, the other a vivid green. He nodded to KidNAIARHS in a manner of 
professional acknowledgment. "And who are you, that we should fight 
for the sake of the universe?"
  "I am Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story, born of another world 
and given powers to combat the decay of the universe into entropy."
  The other considered this. "That is a good mission," he conceded. 
"It's auspicious for a preserver to be defending his world in this match."
  "And you are?"
  "I am Maui, god and hero of the peoples of Poly.net.sia." He grinned 
lopsidedly. "Not as good an omen for a fight scene, since I'm a creator 
rather than a preserver, but I'll just have to make do with the best I 
can."
  "So must we all," agreed KidNAIARHS. "If you are ready, we should 
begin."
  "By all means."
  Quicker than the mortal eye could follow, KidNAIARHS scooped up a 
large rock and hurled it at Maui. But Maui, of course, was not mortal. 
He deftly stepped to one side. But then, just as the rock was about to 
impact he thrust out one hand and calmly grabbed the projectile.
  Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story really hadn't intended for 
the first attack to take his opponent out; it had been a distraction. As 
soon as the rock had left his hands he was racing forward preparing to 
make use of a double feint. He was mildly gratified when it seemed that 
Maui's attention was fully focused on the rock.
  The god was holding the offending piece of rubble in one hand, looking 
at it musingly. Then (taking advantage of the fact that comic book 
characters can exposit huge amounts of dialogue even in the middle of 
frenetically fast and furious fight scenes) said, "You know, I'm always 
a bit disappointed that most of the time people don't use their heads 
rather than their muscles to work out their problems." Then, just as 
KidNAIARHS was about to reach him and wrestle the god to the ground Maui 
looked up, grinned, and leapt to the side in a series of incredible 
cartwheels and backflips.
  Five such leaps brought Maui to rest some twenty five meters away. 
He shrugged to himself. "Well, if we have to resort to brute force, I 
guess I'd better get to it." And from seemingly nowhere he brought out 
what looked like a white club. This was a weapon he'd crafted from the 
jawbone of his ancestress, Muri-ranga-whenua. Never letting go of the 
club, he swiped it through the air in the direction of the building that 
KidNAIARHS was now standing at the base of, which then obligingly 
collapsed on the net.hero.

To Be Continued

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Character Credits: 
  Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story created by Badger (Matt 
Rossi). Reserved by Saxon Brenton. 
  Atomic Shagpile, Elastic Sock, Humanity, Ny!Lon!, the Siblings, and 
Wheezie Alt.Comics.LNH created by Saxon Brenton.
  Lobotomy created by Scav (Todd Kogutt).
  Maui is mythological, and therefor automatically Public Domain.
  Politically Correct Person is Public Domain.
  Wolfenblitz created by Abhay Khosla.

All characters copyright 1997 their owners or creators.

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Add Notes Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story:
  Why, yes readers, I have been rereading my old _Ambush Bug_ comics. 
Why do you ask? :-)
  But seriously...
  By the Wombat! _Limp-Asparagus Lad_ has spawned a spin-off title! 
Who would've thunk? And who would've thunk it'd be starring Kid Not 
Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story? I bet that even in his wildest 
imaginings that Matt Rossi couldn't have anticipated were things would 
end up when he suggested KidNAIARHS as a one line joke for Retcon Hour 
(And those imaginings can get pretty wild. Remember, we're talking about 
Rossi here :-).
  Anyway, something about this series. Much like _Limp-Asparagus Lad_ 
I'll probably write about 'whatever I feel like at the time' (hey, it 
worked for Gaiman), but the main focus (albeit a very fuzzy focus) is 
supposed to be cosmic stories. Time will tell if I stick to that premise.
  Next issue will be the second part this three-part mini arc sojourn 
into the future.
  Also, my apologies to any Commonwealth mathematicians for not using 
proper notation of a billion (10^12), but since Humanity communicates 
telepathically and KidNAIARHS is Ame.rec.an, I couldn't see any way 
around him perceiving it as 10^9  :-P

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Continuity:
  The Leftovers arc takes place (for the most part) in October 1995. 
The chronology to date is:
     * part 0, 1, & 2 - _Limp-Asparagus Lad_ #s 18-20 
                        (part 0 is also part 2 of The Flame Wars III)
     * part 3, 4, & 5 - _Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour Story_ #s 1-3

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Character Description:

LOUISE 'WHEEZIE' ALT.COMICS.LNH
TYPE: NWC     CREATED BY: Saxon Brenton
POWERS: Near cosmic class abilities to deal with continuity 
    infringements.
COSTUME: Body is disc with LNH logo, with stick-figure arms and legs.
FIRST CONTINUITICAL APPEARANCE: _Kid Not Appearing In Any Retcon Hour 
    Story_ #1  (First actual appearance in _Limp-Asparagus Lad_ #34)
ADD NOTES: Behind the scenes worker to maintain continuity, so may be 
    more of a META character than, say, one of the Knights of 
    Continuity. Works with Writers and Characters to preserve the 
    illusion of reality for those people who think that the events in 
    comic books actually happened.
    Think Johnni DC in the _Ambush Bug_ comics for approximate 
    appearance, powers, and temperament.
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