LNH: Hungry, Hungry Sabertooths! #6pi (October 2020B): ""18.84955592154... Plus an Excess of Enthusiasm Means Big Trouble For Simplicity!"

Watching the tangle of the narrative from outside, Simplicity chortled in glee. 
His agent was at the center of the tangle, un-knotting threads with glorious 
dedication. Soon, he would have a nice, simple narrative that could proceed from 
beginning to end with no surprises!

...hey, wait a minute.

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HUNGRY, HUNGRY SABERTOOTHS!
#6pi (October 2020B): ""18.84955592154... Plus an Excess of Enthusiasm Means Big 
Trouble For Simplicity!"
A tale of cosmic contraposition, contradiction and contrapposto, by Drew Nilium

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The series had just had a #6pi, and that was already an excessively convoluted 
way of numbering issues!

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Oh yeah, a tale of convolution too, by Drew Nilium

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Oh, Simplicity was going to get to the *bottom* of this. He traced the threads 
of narrative, back to where this nonsense was coming from...

Enthusiasm of the Finishless leaned against one of the Doric columns that were 
out in front of LNHQ at the moment, spine all bendy, holding one hand in the air 
and grinning wide. "Gosh I love cascades!!" they said. "Ooooooh, what would 
happen if..."

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Mashup Laq sat in their room and squinted at the video-intercom image of a pair 
of fighting figures in the lobby of the LNHQ. "Imperilus the Avenging Son, 
right? What are you doing here, dude?"

Imperilus grinned. "When my world got gnarly messed up, the demon duck brought 
me here to fight superheroes! And damn, you guys fight hard! I love it!"

Mashup Laq pinched the bridge of their nose. "Right. Well, look..."

"Aha!" stage-monologued the Black Halo to themself. "Whilst yon badnik is 
distracted by the comely enby on the monitor, I shall draw deeper of the strange 
dead of this world - and strike!!"

They put all their weight on one foot, leaning forward, stretching out their 
hands, summoning one deeply linked to death - so deeply - some kind of - feedback--

The Black Halo shouted in alarm as an ethereal shape of white leapt out of their 
chest. With a flip, the diminutive figure landed on the floor and declared, 
"SCARY GHOST LASS LIVES AGAIN!"

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Ohhhhh, that was good. Enthusiasm loved bringing back Tom Russell characters! 
Oooooh, and there were some of those Vector-troll-sheep. Maybe one of them could 
turn into some kind of anthropomorphic--

"Excuse me," said an irritated voice from a higher layer of reality.

Enthusiasm looked sidewaysout and smiled at the stick figure glaring facelessly 
at them. "Ohai!!"

"Just *what* do you think you're doing to this story?" said Simplicity. "And 
this issue??? October 2020B?! You're referencing one of the most inanely 
convoluted numbering reboots Marvel ever did, and doing them one worse!?"

"Okay okay okay *but*," said Enthusiasm, doing a Saturday Night Fever pose and 
pointing at Simplicity. "What if *every* issue from here was #6pi, and they were 
just timestamped!! That'd actually be simpler than normal numbering, right!?"

"I-- in a technical sense, I suppose--" sputtered Simplicity. "But it'd be far 
too complicated to start that system twenty-five issues in! And besides, the 
issues are *already* timestamped!!"

"Hey, nice double exclamation point!!!"

"AAAAARGH" Simplicity leapt at Enthusiasm and knocked them into the space 
outside the narrative, where the two started slapfighting.

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In a classic "Silver Surfer leaning forward against the cosmic current" pose, 
Chaos Theory zoomed along the tangled ways of Hypertext Time. Turn left at The 
Namer Boy Documentary Project: Season One, and they should be just about... there?

Huh. You didn't see that every day - two cosmic beings, rolling around on the 
nonexistent ground, one of them laughing and snorting, the other shouting 
imprecations.

Chaos Theory slid up close to the narrative and re-read Hungry, Hungry 
Sabertooths! from the beginning. Aha. Well, this wasn't something they 
particularly needed to worry about - neither one of them seemed to be causing 
the strange Drama flow between Looniverse-A and Earth-Combover, and the 
difference between the power levels of a Gruenwaldian cosmic being and a 
Gaimanesque cosmic being was extremely poorly defined, so they'd probably remain 
at stalemate, focused on each other until some unbalancing factor came in - just 
the kind of thing Simplicity would have approved of, if he wasn't part of it.

But that didn't help sort out the actual cause of the flow. Unfortunately, 
between all the energy beings and death gods and satanic incarnations, there was 
nothing in particular within the narrative that seemed to be causing it... so 
how about something from outside the narrative, exerting pressure on it?

Chaos Theory carefully sorted thru the different writers' viewpoints. Drew's, 
Jeanne's, Arthur's, Scott's... there was a lot of passion for the LNH here, and 
a lot of gleeful silliness, but there was something deeper, more negative, that 
was a constant...

Aha. Of course. Fear - a fear tied to the genesis of Earth-Combover. The 
bone-deep dread of the possibility that the upcoming election would go the wrong 
way, trapping the Real World in the same kind of awfulness that threatened the 
Looniverse.

Well. Could they do anything about that?

Chaos Theory sat just outside the story, and thought...

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Drew "legit didn't expect it to go in that direction, Chaos Theory does what 
they want" Nilium