The numbers didn't add up. No matter how many times he rearranged the columns, no matter what spells he cast to herd his client's finances into some semblance of order, the numbers simply did not add up. Mind you, when your client is a venture capitalist who specializes in businesses that rebuild cities shattered by Superguy activity, you expect a certain number of...irregularities. Assets that have literally become liquid as a result of extremely high temperatures or nanodisassemblers, for instance. But this was beyond the normal levels of bad accounting karma this client normally generated. So he went into the books once more, in an attempt to isolate the source of the problem. An hour later, he had his answer. Municipal bonds for a particular city were mystically fluctutating in value, between the high expectations for a city about to be rejuvenated...and one in a world where none would be left to rebuild. The Mage Municipal closed his eyes wearily. Events were coming to a head in Topeka, Kansas. * * * * Things didn't add up. It was like trying to find all the pieces of a murder victim who had been run through a woodchipper and then misfiled under his first name rather than his last, requiring a lengthy search through blood-soaked filing cabinets while demonic secretaries snapped gum loudly and filed their nails down to flesh-rending points. Forces were aligning like the gears of a meatgrinder, pointing straight at Jack as if intending to look into his own filing issues, then give up and just scatter the bits and pieces across three and a half continents just to be sure he couldn't grow back from the experience. But they had nowhere to point. Something was holding them back. Something nastier than they were, which was a trick in itself. Wherever Jack was, he was looking at a fate worse than being slowly lowered into a vat of molten bronze while a chorus of lemurs sang the Celine Dion catalog at him off key to bazouki accompaniment. Hans Kartoffelkopf, the Shaman Shamus, threw on his cigarette-burned trenchcoat and set out for the airport. Jack needed help. * * * * No matter how hard he shook the Ebon Sphere, it remained black. No wisdom was forthcoming. There was no future to be seen. The human heroes had clearly failed, and the world was doomed. The Park Stranger began a spell of Sending. He was a Stranger, to be certain, but there were still some on this world he would prefer not die at the hands of the Darklord. They must be warned, given time to escape to other planes. * * * * "Ayy-YAH!" "Father, what's wrong?" Jack asked after hastily swallowing a bite of lunch. "My chopsticks snapped. VERY bad omen." "Don't be silly. Cheap takeout chopsticks break all the time, and it's not a bad omen. Except maybe to warn you that your takeout might come back around later and cause indigestion," Jack chuckled. Just then, a black cat chased Louie under a ladder, across the table (spilling the salt) and knocked over a mirror on the wall. "BAD omens," Jack's father intoned gravely. "We must prepare. Events are approaching a nexus, and once it has passed, neither man nor god will be able to undo what will be done." @>-`-,-`-,-`-,`-,-`-,-`-,-`- \\ // -'-.-'-.'-.-'-.-'-.-'-.-'-<@ .|,Coherent Comics Presents \\ // #22 - Anno Draconum --X------------------------- E }X{ ARCHS copyright 2003 by the '|` A Superguy/LNH Tale // \\ Dvandroid (Dave Van Domelen) @>-`-,-`-,-`-,`-,-`-,-`-,-`- // \\ -'-.-'-.'-.-'-.-'-.-'-.-'-<@ "You are not real. You are copies, homonculi with false memories implanted by some unknown subsystem. You are not the good guys, you are the leftover debris of a mercenary machine, twisted by hyperspatial energies and wistful longings. You may now spend an eternity contemplating this." It made a sick sort of sense, Kat realized. She'd tried "budding" off copies of herself before without success, but that had been in a reality where science wasn't suspended any time it was inconvenient. Imbued with enough plotdevicium radiation, she supposed a chunk of herself could survive and regrow into one or more parts. Of course, she was the chunk, not the self.... All of this flashed through her mind in a fraction of a second. Then she pushed it aside and launched herself at Tybalt, hoping to take the dragon down before it could transform again, reducing the opposition to just the Darklord. Ha. JUST the Darklord. To her shock and dismay, she realized the others weren't moving yet. Maybe Seafixer was just too overawed by the man who had so thoroughly trashed him before, she'd seen that sort of gunshy behavior many times. But the others? It could only be some sort of existential horror stopping them in their tracks. They were starting to recover as Kat pummeled Tybalt with rock-hard fists, but it was clearly too late. The dragon was reeling under her assault, but smirking at the same time. And the Gentle Gift of Crimson was lazily raising a hand, stretched out towards them all. The world went red with blood and pain. The blood was the power of the Darklord reaching out for her, as Kat had none of her own. The pain, however, she was able to supply in abundance. Her vision dimmed, and she could no longer see much beyond Tybalt's still-smirking face. Then she saw no more. * * * * Davan felt the ground start to tremble, and quickly sat down on the hard gray surface. This had happened only three times since he'd been imprisoned, and the first time had knocked him off his feet. Davan was pretty sure that the coming quake signified the addition of another prisoner to the merry bunch of lunatics, but he had yet to confirm that. Maybe this time he would. Then the main temblor hit, and Davan was hurled into the air by the whipcrack of the ground! He tumbled end over end before landing hard on his side, his breath knocked from him by the impact. At least nothing seemed to be broken. "That...was worse than usual," Davan muttered as he picked himself up and started scanning the horizon for any sign of the newcomers. Any arrival THAT forceful was going to leave a mark of some kind. * * * * "That's gonna leave a mark," Anna muttered as she climbed out of the shallow pit she'd landed in. "At least I'm not TOTALLY naked this time, they left me my underwear." "My turn for that running gag," Kat replied, clawing her way out of a rather deep hole. "But I suppose since I'm made of marble, it's an artistic nude. Everyone else okay?" "No, I'm not *%&#-ing okay!" Oakthorn snarled from a sitting position. "I'm not even ME, I just some sort of carbon copy spat out by you...your other self, whatever. Gah! I'm not even a first generation copy!" "I'm not all that happy about it myself, Stan," Anna agreed as she walked over to check on the unmoving Seafixer. "It's like finding out that my stage persona is real, but I'm not...that the clothes have no emperor, as it were. Do I even have a soul? I have all my memories, at least I think I do, but the magic 'I' inherited from 'my' father didn't make the transition. But I'm still too pissed off to get all angst-ridden at the moment. Hey, Floyd...you alive?" "Pissed and angsty aren't mutually contradictory, damn it," Stan muttered. "You lost your inheritance, sure. So did I, I guess. But I...the real Stan King...worked so damn hard to become my...his own person over the past few years. Now I find that everything I think I am is just a copy, stealing the efforts of someone else. Do I even call myself Stanley King anymore? Do I have a right to everything Stan did, everything he earned? Maybe I should just go by Oakthorn and drop the 'Stan' entirely. I'm just a tool of the drama force anyway. Hey...Skysabre! You've been awfully quiet, what's your take?" Skysabre stared at the dust, a brooding expression on his face. No one wanted to break his silence just yet, and the moment stretched...until he finally broke it. "Acton Lord," was all he said. "Huh? What about him?" Oakthorn cocked an eyebrow. "I have a...history of bad experiences with copies," Skysabre replied after another pause. "I got time-looped once, and that created Acton Lord, one of the most insidious threats the Looniverse has known. Then he created thousands of copies of the two of us, and my attempt to stop him just corrupted the copies, spinning off dozens of alternate Acton Lords and confused, weakened Sig.Lads. Not to mention hundreds of copies that were so damaged that they died instantly. It's not a good feeling to know you've killed yourself a thousand times over...and now *I'm* a copy. In my head, I know I'm not going to turn into another Acton Lord, that I'm a stable copy and not a doomed bizarro version. But every time I've been cloned, looped or cp *.*'ed before, it's ended badly. My heart tells me that even if we get out of this, even if we beat the Gentle Gift of Crimson, something worse will come out of it, because of me. Because I'm not the real deal, because I have some tragic flaw that will come out in the end." Kat sighed and sat down cross-legged, folding her arms in front of her. "So, let's sum up. Skysabre's tragically flawed, Forgeheart is a false front, Oakthorn is a fraud...Seafixer, how do you feel about this news? I know you're not one of the copies, but as long as we're having a big old angstfest by the campfire...?" Floyd had regained consciousness during Skysabre's monologue and he looked around in dismay. "We're screwed. This is where the Gentle Gift of Crimson puts people when he wants them to go mad. I should know, I spent...some time here. I don't really know how long, that's part of the point. But it took me a while to come back from that, if I ever really did. There's no exit, we won't get out until he wants us out." "That's cheerful news," a new voice called out from some distance away. A thin man, with brownish-gray hair and a few tattered rags of clothing still clinging to his body. He wasn't starvation-thin, but it was clear he'd missed a few meals recently. "At least there's someone else here who can talk. Unless I'm hallucinating this all. Which could be...I hallucinated a cat made of pink putty a few days ago." "We're not hallucinations," Oakthorn called back. "We're not real *either*, but..." he muttered under his breath. "Welcome to the gray hell," the man added as he got closer. "My name's Davan, and I'll be your waiter for the evening. We'll all wait together, that is, for the inevitable drooling insanity. Won't that be fun? Our prison is about 4,278 paces across, although I suppose that should be only about forty-three hundred, no call for false precision," he started to giggle nervously and whisper to himself. "Sorry, sorry...you're the first people I've met here who can string two words together in a meaningful way, and I'm starting to think I'm about to lose my membership in that club. Whatchoo in for?" he added in a falsely cheerful tone. "The Man pegged me for stealing bread." Davan started to hum a few bars from Les Miserables. "Hey, haven't I seen you before?" he peered at Floyd. "Gray trenchcoat, gloomy outlook?" Floyd smiled ruefully. "Back when I was a slave of the Gentle Gift of Crimson, maybe. I wandered the city a lot before I was freed. Oh yeah, I'm so damn FREE now," he started to laugh bitterly. Then he was wracked by a fit of coughing for a moment, before continuing. "By the way, this place is an ellipse, semimajor axis four point one three kilometers, semiminor axis three point nine eight kilometers. All housed inside a gourd about as big as your head. While in here, you don't need to eat or drink, but you still get hungry and thirsty." "Tell me about it," Davan moaned. "I think some of the worst headcases in here have turned to cannibalism to try to stop being hungry, so keep an eye out. Well," he eyed Kat, "maybe not you. But they might still try. And I think some of the others try to get eaten, since at least they won't be alive to suffer anymore." "Gives new meaning to saying 'bite me', eh?" Kat smirked. Silence. "Don't tell me I'm the only one here who still has a sense of humor?" Kat rolled her eyes in exasperation. IS KAT THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO STILL HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR, OR WAS IT JUST NOT VERY FUNNY? WILL THEY BE TRAPPED UNTIL THEY GO MAD? WILL THAT MAKE THEM MORE LIKE THE AUTHOR? (Hey, now....) Answers to some of these, and a whole lot of supporting characters, on the next...SUPERGUY! ============================================================================= Author's Notes: The Mage Municipal and Hans Kartoffelkopf are both supporting characters from the old Crazy Guy series. Crazy Guy #18 is a spotlight episode for Hans, who was originally created by Jason Skiles for a local BBS add-on story back when I was in college. Yes, his last name means potatohead. Most of what Skysabre angsted about happened in the Crisis of Infinite Clones, part of the Electrocutioner's Song crossover in the very early days of the Legion of Net.Heroes. It's amazing how screwed up LNH continuity got in such a short time, and Crisis of Infinite Clones was in part an attempt to clean up all the inconsistencies in Acton Lord's portrayal in various titles. Oh...and if I recall correctly, the original Sig.Lad didn't survive that whole mess anyway. The one who died in Dvandom Force #48 was at least a first generation copy, if not second generation. Yes, the pink putty-cat is another reference to Nee's webcomic SomethingPositive.net, which is still going strong after over a year.