🚀 go-pugleaf

All characters are property of their respective authors, and this story is
copyrighted 1994 by Dave Van Domelen.  Permission is granted for the
distribution of this story via SUPERGUY and for archival, but all other
rights, including repost, are reserved to the author(s).

This story was written by Dave Van Domelen,
dvandom@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu.  It is to him that all praise,
death-threats, invitations to join Superguy, etc. should be directed.


      Constellation #24 - "Cup and Crow" - Robot Invastion part 3 of 3
    copyright 1994 by Dave Van Domelen for Coherent Comics UnIncorporated
===============================================================================
   Thanks to Chet Raymo's _365 Starry Nights_ for the stellar information
===============================================================================

[The cover is enhanced.  Red foil on a black cover, with transparent inks on
the red foil part outlining the figures of Spartacus, Sig.Lad and
Constellation.  The red glow is coming from a red plastic triangle imbedded in
Spartacus's chest a la Eclipso: The Darkness Within #1 from DC.  The corner
pennant proclaims RI3 and the header says "Special GIANT-SIZED 24th Issue!"]

     Kopikat floated, adrift in the new reality she had fled to.  Given the
choice between being chopped up by a rather angry Thresher and risking using
the "Q" key of her gadget watch, she'd chosen the danger she didn't know over
the one she knew.
     Unfortunately, this new reality didn't seem to be a fanfic universe.
Threads floated by almost at random, but didn't form a landscape.  No one was
trying to weave the threads into a tapestry, as it was.  She shifted into human
form and grabbed ahold of one of the threads.
     "Oh, hello.  I don't recall seeing you around here," commented the
inhabitant of the thread, a fairly thin man.  "You thinking about it, or just
do it?"
     Kopikat had no idea what the man was talking about, but her spying
experience told her not to just say "Huh?" to him.  "Well, I was getting a feel
for the new news.group, and...."
     She stopped abruptly when the man started peering at her breasts, and his
interest didn't seem to be sexual.  "Awful rigid, they look like.  Cups or a
bad implant job going hard?"
     Now she did say "Huh?" and continued with, "They're mine.  Why do you
ask?"
     The man snickered.  "Sure, they're yours," he reached out, and before she
could lurch back, flicked a finger against her chest.  There was a metallic
ping.  "Build them in shop class, son?  Innovative, long-lasting, but hardly
realistic.  I guess you'll need the FAQ, it has a section on falsies for those
who haven't made the plunge yet."  He handed her a glowing object, which she
presumed was a file representation.  She took it.
     "Welcome to alt.transgendered..." were the first words.

     [writer's note: on the all-inclusive newsreader on my other account,
alt.transgendered follows alt.toys.transformers.  However, I only scanned
subject headers, and apologize if my portrayal of the group was totally off
base.  Not that I expect the intersection of my readership and that of
alt.transgendered to be terribly large]

               *              *              *              *

     "Damn."
     "Huh?"
     "Oh, joy."
     Sig.Lad, Thresher and Particle Man (respectively) spoke almost
simultaneously.  A look of vague disgust flickered across Sig.Lad's face as he
spoke.
     "She learn teleportin'?" asked Thresher to no one in particular as he
pulled his sword out of the ground, from where it failed to hit Kopikat.  Then
his voice took on a skeptical tone and he turned to the net.heroes to ask, "You
friends of hers?"
     Sig.Lad took a quick, speculative look at his gadget watch, then turned to
the Guardian.  "Well, we thought so.  Apparently, she's not a Guardian like she
told us.  Why'd you make like Conan the Agrarian?  What'd she do, aside from
that 'turncoat spy' bit you mentioned?"
     Thresher stowed his sword into its plow mode and snorted, "What *ain't*
she done, y'can ask better.  She's a damn mercenary, works for whoever pays
best.  You ain't from around here, are ya?"
     Constellation paused to ponder if the 'hick' accent was being faked, then
answered for the group.  "No.  We're from another reality.  MACE has invaded
our world, and we came here seeking help from the Guardians...we have power
ourselves, but not enough to hold back a full scale invasion like this."
     Thresher's accent did slip for a moment as he muttered, "So *that's* why
they've been so quiet," but recovered and said, "Well, y'all'll wanna talk to
Spartacus 'bout that.  He's in th' area, I'll give him a ring."  Thresher went
into a sort of internal monologue look that Sig.Lad recognized from months of
working with Constellation and Particle Man.
     Particle Man whispered, "I wonder what she got paid in?  From what little
we know about these RoboMACs, they don't seem to have an economy as such."
     Without even seeming to recognize that the question wasn't directed at
him, Thresher replied, "Upgrades, new systems, new programs, repairs...there's
lots o' things y'can trade for here.  Just cuz we ain't got cash don't mean we
ain't got an economy.  And some of us like to trade for the sake of trading.
It makes us feel more human, and reminds them of us what was once human what it
used to be like.  Spartacus'll be here in a jiffy.  Y'all go wait by that road
a klick to the west, that's where he'll be meetin' ya.  Now scuze me, I gotta
get back ta the harvest."  With that, the crusty old farmMAC picked his way
back to where he had left off and transformed into his combine mode.  The trio
took to the air and soon were at the roadside.

               *              *              *              *

     The Secret Dvanders sat in the spacious cab of Spartacus's 18-wheeler
form, one of three non-robot forms he had.  As they rolled northeast to ChiPlex
the heroes filled Sparticus in on the details of the invasion.
     "So, can you help us?" asked Constellation once he was finished narrating
the last two issues plus crossovers to the Guardian leader.
     "Of course.  Our oath to protect humanity from MACE isn't limited to one
world.  I've already put your story out over our secure ComNet, and we're
having to fight back the volunteers...after all, we can't leave this Earth
undefended.  So, how many can you transport?  A few hundred?" asked the voice
from the dashboard.
     Sig.Lad shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  "One by ourselves.  We thought
that since MACE invaded *us*, the technology was feasible here.  We'd lead the
way, you'd follow with your own devices."
     "Sorry, it's not feasible.  We've made incredible advances in the sciences
in the last century, but dimensional travel is strictly against the laws of
nature here.  The gate had to originate in your reality."
     "Damn.  They must all have been brought to the Looniverse by Acton Lord,"
hissed Sig.Lad.  "At best, we could bring you along with us to our reality,
since we don't have to carry Kopikat anymore.  Perhaps once there we could open
a gate back here."
     "Hmm.  If you can carry me, you can probably carry a number of smaller
MACs inside me, correct?"
     "I think so.  We'd be pushing it, though.  It's as much the number of
'souls' carried as the mass," commented Constellation, who would be doing the
actual carrying.
     "Well, I could absorb the minds into myself, making your load easier.
Then on arrival I could re-implant them.  And I can think of a few Guardians
who would be very useful to you.  If your communication systems are as
controlled as you say, Waveform is probably there.  So we'll need our Comm
expert to counter him.  And a gestalt would be helpful...the MiniMACs can all
fit into my trailer, and they combine into a fairly powerful FortressMAC,
MunchkinMaster.  And we're going to need a 'mad scientist' as I suppose you'd
call it, to work on the gateway problem.  Tireiron's got a small enough form to
squeeze in.  I'll have them waiting at ChiPlex when we arrive."
     "If nothing else, we might be able to rally our forces with your presence,
boost morale," noted Sig.Lad.
     "Sometimes morale can be the most important part of a battle..." was
Spartacus's response.

               *              *              *              *

[insert various RI3 crossover issues here, as the Guardians arrive and some go
into battle, such as the MiniMACs and Boomer & his CDs.  LNHers get bailed out
of bad situations, but the tide has yet to turn]

               *              *              *              *

     In his repair bay/battlestation mode, Spartacus worked on reattaching the
legs of a MiniMAC torn off in battle.  He occupied most of the grounds outside
the LNHQ, and a tent was set up next to him for the various scientific LNHers
to work in alongside Tireiron.  The framework for a dimensional portal has been
erected, but the technical guts of it haven't even been started.
     Renegade Programmer looked up from a printout.  "These simulations show
that we can't just extrapolate the technology from Netlurker's gadget watches
up to this size, not for anything but intranewsgroup travel."
     Doctor Stomper frowned.  "And Kid Kirby's Boom Tubes cannot pierce the
trademark shield that surrounds most of alt.toys.transformers...his DC-based
device is largely antithetical to that Marvel-licensed property.  Perhaps
Contraption Man might have a solution, if he were still in this century.  The
problem is largely one of scale.  We can transport roughly human-sized beings
across newsgroups with a fair amount of accuracy once we know the dimensional
frequency, which we do in this case thanks to Particle Man, but such large
beings as most RoboMACs exceed some threshhold of unknown basis.  The fact that
most of our technologies do not function properly under their physical laws is
probably the cause of this threshhold.  A powerful reality-warper like Acton
Lord is obviously capable of exceeding the threshhold, of course."
     "We have our own reality warpers," noted Organic Lass, who was helping
Spartacus by fabricating certain compounds he needed for repair work.  "What
about Deja Dude?  Or Theory Man?"
     "Theory Man is fetching pizza...the universe disagreed with him on this
one, I'm afraid.  And Deja Dude, aside from being on a leave of absence, is far
too written-ahead to participate in this crossover.  I'm afraid the only option
left to us is to raid Acton Lord's Andale Atoll base and attempt to secure his
dimension gate long enough to bring through Guardian forces.  Fortunately, we
*have* established a transdimensional communications channel that will let us
signal the Guardians when we have the gate open."
     A voice from the tentflap spoke out, "I want to be in on that raid, Doc."
     Everyone turned (except the injured MiniMAC, who couldn't yet).  "Squid
Boy?" they asked in unison.
     Tireiron's eyes flashed as he spoke, "Squid Boy, I understand from the
roster we downloaded that your only power is to provide Suicide Squid with a
body when he comes to this Looniverse.  You lack the combat skills needed for
such a dangerous mission."
     "So what?  I caught wind that someone's planning on killing me off in a
future storyline, so I figure I'm invulnerable until then.  The worst that
could happen is I die a little early, right?"  Squid Boy's voice had an edge of
bitterness to it that made Organic Lass wince.
     "Squid Boy, you don't *know* that for sure.  The story's several issues
away, there's plenty of time to appeal, try to get a rewrite.  There's no
reason to go on such a...."
     Squid Boy cut her off.  "Suicide mission?  Hey, Suicide's the name of the
game for ol' forgotten Squid Boy!  Besides, what appeal?  This may be the last
story I appear in before I get killed off there...if I don't do something to
make readers give a damn, I'm dead anyway."  Squid Boy slumped against a large
piece of vaguely Kirbyish equipment.  He looked like he was holding back tears.
"Damnit, I'm one of the originals.  I wanna live to see RACC!  It's not my
fault that Paul has edged out SS in popularity!  If you don't let me go on this
mission, you might as well pull the trigger now and let me die quickly!"
     The tent was quiet save for the distant sound of evacuations and the
slight clicking of Spartacus's repair arms.
     A gentle, yet booming voice came from the repair rig.  "Squid Boy, I know
what it's like having to hold back someone from a battle they truly think is
theirs.  In my world, humans sometimes chafe at the fact that we do all their
fighting for them.  But you must realize, if all you can do for your cause in a
particular battle is die, you're doing nothing for it."
     Sig.Lad had entered the tent during Spartacus's speech.  "I'm sorry to
contradict you, Spartacus, but things work differently here.  For you, when a
human dies, he's dead.  And you feel it your fault that he died.  But here, a
hero is never dead for certain, even a minor one like Squid Boy.  Death is
impermanent at best...far worse is obscurity and apathy (well, unless you're
Super Apathy Lad or one of the Intangible Legion).  Yes, Squid Boy, you can
come on the raid.  But hang back and don't try to be Cannon Fodder.  I don't
want to be responsible for your death either, even if you *do* come back from
it."
     Squid Boy straightened up.  "Thanks, Sig.Lad.  That means a lot to me.
Are we going to start planning now, or should I go brush up on combat in the
Peril Room right now?"
     Sig.Lad placed a hand on Squid Boy's shoulder.  "You go practice.  I
suspect any plan we come up with can be explained on the way to Andale Atoll.
Just make sure Ultimate Ninja didn't leave one of his programs in the machine."
     Squid Boy grinned slightly and left the tent, perhaps a bit too quickly.
     Tireiron looked at Sig.Lad and coldly said, "What kind of 'glorious death'
crap are you trying to lay down here?  I know this is a few hundred years
before our time, but I thought that kind of barbarism had faded long before
this!"
     "Tireiron, you don't understand.  This world works differently than what
you know.  For the everyday citizen, death is a fairly final thing, to be
avoided as much as possible.  But we're heroes, we don't die like normal people
do, any more than we live like they do.  A useless, unused character will
eventually just fade away into Limbo, perhaps never to return except in walk-on
cameos.  Death is only rarely permanent...we do have our dead.  Lost Cause Boy
for one.  But most come back.  And back.  And BACK.  So long as the explanation
for how death was cheated is entertaining and interesting, the character can
die numerous times before death finally claims him."
     "You're right on one thing, Sig.Lad.  I *don't* understand.  But I suppose
I don't have to understand you people to help save you.  Because when Antiochus
kills someone, they stay dead.  Trust me on this one."

(Continued in part two, immediately following...)