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                           Presents:

   Atlantis University Discontinuitous Tie-In: "A Cold Spell"


     Greetings, Superguys and -gals. This is undoubtedly going to cause a
slight bit of confusion, since there isn't a whole lot to do with Superguy
in this post, but nor does anyone outside of a few friends of mine have any
idea what Atlantis University is about. The short explanation is that it's
a series I'm working on, which I expect to have going by mid January at the
latest, and which draws most of its characters from other altiverses.
     The northeast (or at least my part of it) was hit with about two feet
of snow over the weekend, and this (with the "help" of a certain E-freind)
spawned the premise of this little story, a tale of one of the characters
before things started getting really weird.

     Continuity wise, this happens now, but that doesn't really matter
since it's in another altiverse.

614FANTASYSTORY

     Rasthia puffed slightly as she finished cleaning the snow off the
balcony of her tower. She could easily have magicked it away, but had
decided to do it by hand to get the exercise. She had however cast a spell
of Environmental Comfort on herself before she started, as she had no
desire to freeze her tail off. Let's take a moment to describe her fully,
shall we? Her face and general proportions looked astoundingly like Cindy
Crawford, though with some SLIGHT differences... such as having a ten foot
long snake tail instead of legs, and fine copper orange scales, shading to
a lighter goldish color on her front. A pair of wings, batlike except for
being covered in long, soft feathers, rose from her hips to fold like shawl
around her shoulders. Her wild looking  "hair" was composed of the same
fire-red feathers, her eyebrows and lashes of similar but shorter ones. Her
face was somewhat narrower, as well, but not too much. She wore a white
vest with a tiger stripe pattern and pink trim, but had no need for any
other apparel. Like any other member of her species, there was nothing else
visible to be exposed. As she came in from the balcony, Rasthia replaced
the shovel in its alcove with the other cleaning implements, the reared up
in surprise as a tremendous, wet THWOD!! sounded from outside.
     "What the hell(tm) was that?!?" Spinning around, she saw that the
window to the balcony was entirely blocked by whatever had made the
"thwod". She couldn't sense anything out of the ordinary...  Readying her
combat magicks, and wondering why an attack hadn't triggered her tower's
wards, Rasthia glided back towards the door, then blasted it open with a
spell of the Annoyed Superior. Cautiously, she proceeded through it, but
still couldn't detect any intruder. The balcony was deep in snow again,
however. Looking through the pile of snow, she found a message tube, which
she quickly opened. The image of Brichenshein, a friend who lived in
Deutschland, appeared over the end of the activated tube, and appeared to
speak as the message played.
     "Hah! I gotcha, Ras! Bet you never thought you'd have a snowball fight
with ME!" Its brief duty done, the image faded away, as Rasthia's face
darkened. The flimsy aluminum tube crushed in her hand and her still-active
shields flared with power in reaction to her fury, melting away some of the
snow.
     "Right. You want a snowball fight, you've GOT ONE!", she exclaimed.
                        <>   *
                          *  <>
                         *<> *
     A few hours later, she stood again at the balcony, which was now
equipped with a complex control console, contemplating her handiwork. A
large structure now rose from the courtyard, pointing through a gap that
had been made in the wall and eastward. The best way to visualize it would
be to take three 1000ft. radio towers and mount them on 15ft. metal rings,
spaced from twenty to thirty feet apart, and drape liberally with power
cables. Mount it on a large turret at about 40 degrees elevation, and build
a huge hopper at the "breech" end. Now have a dozen water and air
elementals hover over the hopper, the water group spraying streams of it
into the air where the air group spin it into mist and then snow. As the
hopper fills, the snow is packed and moved forward by more supernatural
minions, so that it starts to form a long cylinder of hard-packed snow.
Rasthia grinned an evil grin, then turned back to the inside of her tower.
Things wouldn't be ready for another hour or so, and she had to prepare a
suitable note for the message tube "warhead".
                        <>   *
                          *  <>
                         *<> *
     The preparations finished, Rasthia stood once again in front of the
control console, dismissing her assistants back to the realms they had been
summoned from. When she had completed that task, she began manipulating the
levers and knobs of the controls. The mystical generators in the lowest
levels of the tower thrummed as a vast magical charge was built up, and
small flashes and optical distortions appeared and disappeared around the
framework of the launcher, as it prepared to fire its massive missile.
     With an air of finality, Rasthia pulled the final lever, and the vast
energies that had been building were released. The column of snow, 10ft. in
diameter and 100ft. long, suddenly became airborne; a hard outer shell of
ice would protect it from atmospheric friction until just over the target
zone when the ice itself would finally ablate away. Rasthia gave a final
snicker, then hurried inside to watch the impact on her scrying globe.
                        <>   *
                          *  <>
                         *<> *
     Brighchenshein was feeling slightly nervous. He had, of course, been
mystically observing as Rasthia got his message and gave her angry reply,
but had been blocked before she began her own preparations.
     "Surely she should have retaliated by now... I just don't understand
it." He was unsure whether to be relieved or more nervous when his Incoming
Harmless Projectile spell tingled a moment later. When he heard the
whistling sound of its approach, he decided that "more nervous" was the
right option. When it got louder still, Shiny thought that perhaps he ought
to see just what it was that was coming his way, and headed out into the
courtyard of his compound. He looked up.
     "Oh, poopie."
     The massive snow-missle impacted just outside his walls, spattering
snow over the entire compound and much of the surrounding area. The message
tube, prematurely activated by the impact, played to the empty air.
     "Well Shiny, I guess I should congratulate you. You are the recipient
of the world's first Intercontinental Ballistic Snowball, after all!"
     There was a faint tickle in the air, as if someone very far away were
laughing very hard, but it faded away eventually.

     Fin.

                        <>   *
                          *  <>
                         *<> *

     So, what do yas think? Once I get the actual series going, the action
will very quickly move into 000SUPERGUY, but I didn't want to set this
there with the native characters because I'm not quite up to the present
day in the archives. Just a bit more to go, though.
     All this stuff is mine, so don't mess with it. I'll be posting a
formal copyright notice once all characters are introduced.

                                                 -Drogn, He of the Typo
                                                     merryhwd@sover.net

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