Retcon Midnight
Chapter One: "Suddenly Unfamiliar"

by Mike Escutia
© 1994

Pliable Lad opened his eyes, expecting nothingness.

The tractor-trailer bearing down on him, its horn honking wildly, was anything but nothingness.

Thinking extremely quickly, Pli jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being run over, and landed rather ungracefully on the side of the road. He could hear the driver shout something along the lines of "Crazy drunk #@&!"...only not that elegant.

As the dust raised by the truck's passing settled, Pli picked himself up off the ground and looked around. He was on the same street he and the others had been on when they had encountered wReamicus Maximus just moments before.

Or was it moments? Pli looked around himself, and found that there was considerably more damage to the area than he remembered...

"Hey! You! Turn around, you!"

Pli turned around to see two armed military officers with vaguely familiar uniforms on, pointing their guns at him. The guards seemed surprised to see a person in a costume, but then they figured it out.

"Well, well, well," one of them said. "Looks like we caught ourselves a super-hero."

"Look, I'm sure this is some sort of misunderstanding," Pli said. "I'm with the LNH. I—"

"The LNH was destroyed and outlawed over a year ago," the other guard said. "It's pretty obvious you're with the resistance. You're coming with us to be interrogated."

"Gentlemen, I sincerely don't think he'll be joining you this afternoon," boomed a heroic voice. The two guards turned around, just in time to have the barrels of their guns to be sliced off by twin rapiers belonging to a trenchcoat-clad figure that both the two men and Pli recognized, albeit for different reasons.

"Kid Chivalry!" Pli shouted.

"Plymax?" KC wondered.

"It's the swashbuckler!" one of the guards shouted. "Call for backup!" He then pulled out a spare gun and began shooting again. The swashbuckler teleported to behind him and hit him on the head with the hilt of his sword before turning and slicing the other's communicator in two.

But it was too late. They could hear several more guards running down the street that intersected the one Pli and KC were on. "Quick! This way!" KC hissed as he led Pli to a abandoned building nearby. "Conceal yourself." Pli did so, turning into a small rat, and slipped through a crack in a wood board covering a doorway, while KC teleported himself inside. Both remained quiet as the guards passed by the building.

"They're gone," one of the guards said.

"Thank you for volunteering to bear the bad news," another said.

"You're welcome, sir," the first said as the guards left.

Pli resumed his true form, and KC stepped out of the shadows and motioned for Pli to follow him. They walked through the building before exiting into an alleyway next to the structure. Waiting there was someone who also looked familiar to Pli.

"Cannon Fodder?" Pli exclaimed. "What's going on here, guys?"

"He looks like Plymax," CF said.

"He can't be him," KC said. "Plymax died during the Great Massacre. Killed by that gun."

"Who are you?" CF asked Pli.

"CF, don't you recognize me?" Pli asked. "It's me, Pliable Lad!"

CF made a hand signal to KC, who nodded and turned to Pli. "I think you should get some sleep," he said.

Suddenly, Pli felt lightheaded and compelled to fall asleep...and did so.

CF intercepted his body before it hit the ground. "Let's get back to the hideout," he said.

"Uhhhhhh"

Pli awoke, feeling very much like Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Or was it one of the sequels? Oh, wait. He was knocked unconscious in all three movies...

"Don't try to move," came a female voice to his right. "You're still a bit groggy."

Pli turned to see the speaker. "Organic Lass???"

"Do I know you?" she asked innocently.

"Ah, he is awake," came a voice at the door. Kid Chivalry entered the room, followed by another person, whose face was hidden in the shadows.

"Yes, and he thinks he knows me," Organic Lass said.

The figure behind KC chuckled. "He thinks he knows KC and Cannon Fodder, too." He stepped aside — and even more into the shadows — as Cannon Fodder entered the room.

Pli was then surprised to another familiar face enter the room: Curly. Except it wasn't Curly, but rather a tall, muscular figure that looked like Curly — and tough enough to give even the most powerful villain a case of the willies.

"Curly, is that you?"

"Yeah. What's it to you?" Curly asked.

"Easy, Curly," CF said.

A young woman whom Pli could instinctively tell was new at this (whatever it was) entered the room, followed by another familiar person: Gestalt Lad.

Naturally, none of them recognized him.

"Help him to the chair," the stranger said. Organic Lass helped Pli get up off the cot he was laying on and to a chair in the middle of the room.

"Why don't any of you recognize me?" Pli asked. "What's going on here?"

"That's what we'd like to know," the stranger in the back said. "Tell us your story."

So Pli did. He told them about the RoboMACs invasion, his abduction by the Master of the Net, Retcon Hour, and his being retconned out of existance by wReamicus Maximus.

"There's just one problem with your story," Curly said.

"What's that?" Pli asked meekly.

"wReamicus Maximus is dead."

"Oh."

"Well, I don't believe him," Gestalt Lad said.

"What's wrong with this world?" Pli asked. "Why aren't we in LNHHQ? Where's the rest of the LNH?"

Curly said "The LNH is dead."

Light years away on another planet, a mysterious figure looked around himself. He couldn't tell for certain, but he had this faint feeling that something was not right.

Reality itself had changed.

The building used to be known as LNHHQ, back when it was inhabited by the LNH. Now that they were gone, however, the building served a much different purpose...as the fortress headquarters of Dr. Armaggeddon.

The soldier entered the throne room and kneeled before the throne. He had thought his commanding officer had been joking earlier when he said that he would be the one to bear the bad news. Obviously, he didn't know his commanding officer well enough.

"Report!"

"Milord, there was a skirmish in the southern part of the city," the soldier said. "One member of the resistance and someone who looked like Plymax."

"WHAAAAAT????" Dr. Armaggeddon screamed. He promptly vaporized the soldier with his wrist-blaster. "I killed Plymax myself! He should be dead!" he fumed.

"You! Put all units on alert!" he shouted to an assistant. "If either Plymax or the resistance show their heads again, attack...but bring Plymax to me alive!" With that, he got up and stormed out of the throne room, going through a door into a back room that only he had access to.

Once inside the room, he walked to the oposite wall and opened a safe put there by his slaves. He then took out a small box out of the safe and opened that.

Inside were the nine Rings of Retcon.

In the secret building that served as the resistance's base, but down the hallway from the room Pliable Lad and the resistance group were in, a green portal opened, and a man in a trenchcoat stepped out.

"What do you mean dead?" Pli asked.

"He's definitely not from around here," Gestalt Lad said.

Kid Chivalry sighed. "Most of the LNH died over a year ago in the Great Massacre. We're all that's left."

"What?" Pli sputtered. "But...how? Better yet, who?" He tried to think of what had happened the year before that could correspond with what Kid Chivalry was saying.

"He calls himself...Dr. Armaggeddon."

Bingo.

"He and his Knightforce Elite invaded Net.ropolis first, taking several hundred people hostage and demanding the LNH's surrender," Cannon Fodder said through gritted teeth. ["Hey! Watch the angst level!"] "We had no choice but to surrender. And then...he brutally murdered the others. Those of us who were able to get away did."

"But..." Pli began. "But we stopped him and saved the LNH! You, KC, me, and Plymax!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Cannon Fodder said. "Dr. Armaggeddon had Plymax executed as a traitor. And none of us have seen you before today!"

Pli's head was starting to hurt. This was getting confusing. "You're that Dr. Armaggeddon destroyed the LNH, and that you guys are all that's left?"

"'Fraid so," Gestalt Lad said.

Pli took a moment to take all this in. "So who's your leader?" he asked.

"That would be me," said the stranger behind Kid Chivalry. KC stepped to one side, and the stranger stepped forward. It took a minute, but Pli was able to recognize the costume.

"Rebel Yell!"

"You got it," Rebel Yell said. "When I learned of the Great Massacre, I brought together the survivors to fight back. There were less survivors than I expected, though. Even the Ultimate Ninja is dead."

"....Wow."

"That still doesn't explain why Pliable Lad is here," Curly said.

"He must be from an alternate timeline," Organic Lass said. "A single retcon couldn't change the world this much, could it?"

"On the contrary, it can. And it has." Everyone turned to see a man in a black trenchcoat standing in the doorway in a heroic pose.

What's more, there was a bald eagle perched on his shoulder.

"Drifter? Windrider?" Pli exclaimed. "Tell me you remember me."

==We do.== Windrider broadcast telepathically. ==And we know that something is very wrong. That's why we're here.==