🚀 go-pugleaf

        The group of LNHers walked as fast as they could back to LNHQ.  Multi-
Tasking Man had informed them that transmatting was too dangerous due to the
retcon waves.  [See any of the previous Retcon Hour issues, including PL #21-23
--mre]  Rescue Lad and Cannon Fodder carried the unconscious form of Amorphous
Lad.
        Suddenly, a man stepped from around a corner and blocked their path.
The newer members of the group didn't recognize him, but the others did.
        "wReamicus Maximus!" Cannon Fodder spat.
        "That's right!  But my business is not with you, but rather with
Flexible Guy!" wRM said, pointing at Pli.
        "That's *Pliable Lad*," Pli said.  "What are you doing here?"
        "You're the one who ran into me earlier!" the villain said.  [See
last issue --mre]  "Now I shall have my revenge!"  He raised his hand.
        His ringed hand.
        "Hey, is that the Ring of..." Pli began.  "Uh-oh, it is...Hey!  Don't-"
        There was a flash of green light, and then Pli was never there.
        "I AM IMPLO!  THIS TITLE IS CANCELLED!"
        wRM looked up to see a seven-foot tall cyborg hovering a few feet above
the ground.
        "You're too late," wRM said.  "I just retconned the title character out
of existance."
        "WHAT?" IMPLO looked disappointed.  He sighed.  "VERY WELL," he said.
And then he left.

                                 _-<+*+>-_

                              Retcon Midnight:
                      World Without a Pliable Lad #1
              (incorporating Pliable Lad #24 as the prologue)
                           "Suddenly Unfamiliar"
                                    by
                               Mike Escutia

           [Continuity note: This takes place immediately after
           PL #23.  Don't worry about its effect on continuity.
                           Just read the story.]

                                 _-<+*+>-_

        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 sur-
prised 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 after-
noon," 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 tel-
eported 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 ex-
iting 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 Massa-
cre.  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 abduc-
tion 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 differ-
ent 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 com-
manding 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 Ply-
max."
        "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 ei-
ther 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 openned, 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.==

                                 _-<+*+>-_

[What happens next?  Find out in Retcon Midnight: World Without a Pliable
Lad #2-5, available ONLY via ftp to eyrie.stanford.edu (look in the directory
/pub/lnh/Miniseries/Retcon.Midnight)!  And stay tuned for Pliable Lad #25,
coming to Superguy in early December! --Mike]

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