🚀 go-pugleaf

   "Of course he'll sing," Sing Along Lass said, pointing at the Giant
Robo currently piloted by a rather angry Manga Man.  "Everyone loves a
sing along!"  This cheerful statement, was, however, contradicted in the
past by the entire Legion of Net.Heroes.  "Come on!  'I'm a lumberjack,
and I'm okay...'," she began.
    "I can't believe she does this all the time," Kid Kirby said to
himself, amazed.  Even more amazingly, Manga Man seemed stunned by the
singing.
    "Stop!" Manga Man commanded.  "Stop that!"
    "You don't like that song?" Sing Along Lass asked.  "I know one that
everyone loves:  'Row, row, row your boat...'"
    "No!" Manga Man moaned.
    "I guess most people really _don't_ like sing alongs," Kid Kirby
noted.  "I don't think that I want to take any chances."  He checked his
antimatter extrapolator.  Empty.  He discarded it, allowing it to return
to the Kirby Zone from which all his tech came.  "The intensified
molecule projector, then."  Instantly, boulder-sized ball and stick
molecules streamed forth from Kid Kirby's gauntlets and impacted with
the Giant Robo, knocking it prone.  Unfortunately, the molecules also
drowned out the sing along in progress.
    "Now, annoying American, die!"  Manga Man fired missiles at Sing
Along Lass, who was having far too much fun to notice.
    "Damn!" Kid Kirby spat, reacting with an electro-pulse to detonate
the missiles early.  His estimation of the missiles' power was slightly
off, however, and Sing Along Lass was sent flying by the blast.  "Oh,
man!"
    "That should silence her!  Heh, heh, heh!"
    Kid Kirby flew to Sing Along Lass and gently lifted her from the
featureless ground.  "Damn it!"
    The Giant Robo got back to its feet.  "I suppose you're going to
have an emotional attack and go berserk, as you Americans are wont to
do, right?"
    "Wrong," Kid Kirby replied.  "You'd never catch the Silver Surfer
losing his head in a battle.  I'm out of here!"  With a deafening
"BOOM", a circular opening in space appeared.  Kid Kirby stepped through
it, and it quickly vanished.
    
    Sequestered in a typical villain's headquarters, the rest of the
displaced net.heroes, save Cliche Dude and Continuity Champ, languished
in glass tubes that negated their powers, or non-powers, depending on
the hero.  Lost Cause Boy still looked confused.
    "What's wrong?" Browsing Boy asked.
    "I thought that I was in Integrity Quest," Lost Cause Boy answered. 
"Now, I'm here.  How does Spider-Man deal with it all the time?"  He
quickly forgot about his problems when he glance over at Panta's prison,
in which the lithe cat-woman lay unconscious from loss of blood.  They
had become close in their brief time in the LNH, and it pained him to
see her in such a condition.  Harras would pay for this.  Damn editors
and their-  Lost Cause Boy suddenly collapsed, dazed, off balance, and
outside of his confinement.
    "I knew it!" Doctor Stomper exclaimed.  "I knew that continuity
would mess up somehow!  Lost Cause Boy's involved in too many
storylines!  Thus, he became momentarily discontinuous from the strain
that he was putting on reality!"
    "Whatever caused it," Lost Cause Boy responded weakly, "I'm not
about to complain, but it did a job on me.  My legs feel like tree
trunks, all-"  He cut himself off, lest he say that which should not be
spoken.  "Well, anyway, I feel pretty bad."
    "Can you shut off the containment field?" Obscure Trivia Lad asked. 
"Obscure Trivia Lad wishes to wreak havok upon Obscure Trivia Lad's
enemies!"
    "I don't understand all of these controls," Lost Cause Boy answered.
 True to form, the net.villians' hideout was jam-packed with consoles,
controls, levers, lights, and buttons.
    "I'll tell you how to open the cells," Browsing Boy said.  "I
browsed through this building's owner's manual on the way in."
    "But you didn't even touch the manual!" Mainstream Man protested. 
"You weren't even in close proximity to it!"
    "When they brought us in, I had a chance to glance at it on
someone's desk.  They don't call me Browsing Boy for nothing."
    "What's this?!" Old Comics Man asked as he awakened.  "In my day, we
didn't have fancy-schmancy glass tubes for prisons!  We had bars and
locks!  And they didn't use some field to negate a hero's powers, they
just knocked him out with a pipe!"
    "Hurry it up, all right?!" Rebel Yell prompted.  He had a traitor to
deal with.
    "All right, then," Browsing Boy began.  "Here's the first sequence..."

    "Where...where are we?" Sing Along Lass asked weakly, coughing.
    "The Kirby Zone," Kid Kirby answered.  He and Sing Along Lass were
on a small asteroid floating in a multi-colored void filled with weird
shapes, floating eyeballs, and other assorted strangeness.  "I used a
Boom Tube to get us out of there, but I'll be weakened for a while
because of it.  That's why I don't use it very often."
    "Why don't I feel right inside?"
    "You most likely have internal injuries.  You were pretty close to
the center of a large explosion, and-"
    "Tell me a story, please?"
    "But-" Kid Kirby began to protest.  She was probably entering shock
and wouldn't remember what he told her.  Seemed like a perfectly good
time for an origin story.
    "All right.  Once, there was young man who liked comic books.  One
day, he read a comic book drawn by Jack Kirby and was very impressed. 
After this, the young man learned about Seigel and Schuster, Eisner,
Stan Lee, Gaines, and other greats in the field of comics.  He noticed
that many people in modern comics didn't give proper credit and respect
to the originators of the field.  Many readers didn't give proper
respect to those first men with imagination.  'Even if they don't like
the old comics, they should respect them,' he said.  Then, one day, he
was visited by a great 'Cosmic Being (tm)' who granted him power in
exchange for keeping the old comic creators in the minds of comic book
readers everywhere, and defeating 'bad comics'.  The young man used this
'Power Kirby' to create technology in the style of Kirby, and chose to
wear Kirby armor to remind people of-"
    "I don't think that I'm going to make it."  Sing Along Lass coughed.
 "Show me your face," she asked.  "Please.  You're a nice man, and I
want to see you without your armor."
    "All right," Kid Kirby answered as he faced away from the readers at
home (darn! :-).  His armor disappeared, and he stood in a Kirby pose,
with Quasar style wristbands of Kirby technology.  His cape fluttered in
the breeze.
    "You have a nice face.  Let's sing!  Row, row, row your boat..."
    "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream," Kid Kirby came in
right on time.  Sing Along Lass was unconscious by the second verse. 
"There aren't enough people in the world like you.  You're going to
live," Kid Kirby vowed as he began to build.

    "So, what's your well thought out, realistic plan?" Comics-Snob-Boy
asked his allies.
    "Most of the beings with comics-related powers have been brought to
this empty universe," the androgyne answered.  "Most of those powers are
based on comics that are entirely unrealistic.  The most blatant of
these blasphemers are Mainstream Man, Marvel_Zombie Boy, Kid Kirby,
Cliche Dude, and Fanboy King."
    "Fanboy King?" Comics-Snob-Boy asked, confused.  "But he's a net.villian!"
    "We do not discriminate on the basis of one's morals.  We have
chosen on the basis of power alone.  We shall invert the powers of the
blasphemers, and boost those inverted powers with those of the others. 
This raw energy will be of a type suitable for converting all comic book
readers to good comics.  Realistic comics.  Artistically satisfying
comics."
    "Will this harm my friends?"
    "The process will be most...unpleasant, but your friends will be
better people for it.  They'll enjoy the same good comics that you do."
    "Then let's get started," Comics-Snob-Boy exclaimed, eager to finish
his life's goal.
    "Our master wishes to meet you, to personally welcome you to our
group," the wild-haired girl said.
    Comics-Snob-Boy turned and, upon seeing the 'master', gasped in shock...

Next:  The Epic Conclusion, and some "Whatever happened to..."

Jameel
Physicist-At-Large
Kid Kirby, net.hero
Physicist-At-Large