LNH: Hungry, Hungry Sabertooths! #46: "Shine Your Kube"

HUNGRY, HUNGRY SABERTOOTHS!
Issue #46: "Shine Your Kube"
A tale of living your truth

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Carolyn Forge, the diabolical Doctor Killfile, was having an excellent day.

Oh, certainly, she'd been annoyed when she learned that her masterpiece, the
sabertooth virus, was being used by some Johnny-come-lately giant monster bird.
But she had been making so many fascinating scientific discoveries today,
confirming some long-held hypotheses, and having some very exciting battles
against net.heroes. And fate had just put her in the exact right position to
drop a dramatic revelation that she'd been holding onto for a few years now.

Her audience for the revelation, a trio of LNHers, could do nothing but watch
as she manipulated the liquid metal body of their comrade, Obscure Trivia Lad.
She'd brought him back from deactivation a few years back and rebuilt him into
an unwitting spy for the East Coast Brotherhood of Net.Villains.

"I came to Mister Homage, when he was building his Brotherhood, and gave him
the plan to steal Obscure Trivia Lad's body and resurrect him. He was only
interested in a spy." Her hands moved beneath the silvery skin. His design was
truly beautiful - never let it be said her father didn't bring beauty into this
world, even if he was incapable of appreciating it. ""I mostly wanted to see if
I could do it."

Bulging out from that skin was a Kubrik's Kube, a cosmic containment device she
had put there. The necessary twists and turns to activate a Kube were said to
be a challenge put forth to entire species, to see if they were worthy of
enlightenment; naturally, Doctor Killfile had solved it in a day and a half.

"But..." A click, and the Kube lit up, each side a single grid of color. "I knew
that having a great store of cosmic energy at hand..." She gave her audience a
perfectly-timed grin. "Well, it would have its uses." She drank in their
helpless, angry faces. Back in her school days, she'd kept herself busy with
STEM work and net.heroing, but really, she should have spent at least a little
time in the theater. Ah well.

In the nearby park, the aforementioned giant monster bird, UltraKiwi Wondersock,
had become a giant *robot* monster bird, MechaKiwi Wondersock, because that was
simply the kind of world Doctor Killfile lived in, and it did no good to
complain. He was battling against his sister, UltraKiwi, and his father,
UltraSixpi. Joining the battle were two giant robots piloted by members of the
LNH; however, to even the odds, Wondersock had just summoned four giant monsters
from recently-discovered universes, calling them the Monster Legion of the Deep
Omnilooniverse, as you do.

Normally, this sort of thing wouldn't interest Doctor Killfile except as a
scientific curiosity - plenty of data to be had from inter-universal travel and
alien visitations, after all. But, even though her day was indeed wonderful,
she couldn't let this theft go - and especially not when she would have an
audience for the comeuppance.

She directed Obscure Trivia Lad's body to rotate until the Kube was pointed at
the battle. She decided to give him one more little treat before letting him
go, and leaned in, whispering in his ear. "If it's any comfort, channeling this
much energy is certainly going to break the control devices I installed in you.
And you'll probably survive." He couldn't move, but she fancied she could feel
his shudder nonetheless. It was always nice to be the bearer of good news.

Doctor Killfile focused her powerful will into the Kube, telling it precisely
what she needed it to do. It wasn't a good idea to rely on cosmic plot devices
for too long, so she'd just use it to steal some power for herself.

Twin beams of electric power lanced out from the Kube - she watched them hit
the towering, silver-and-red figures of UltraKiwi and UltraSixpi, and their
energy raced back along the connection, into the Kube and into her body!

It was bursting and bubbling with plasma intensity, the light of faraway suns
distilled, but her will was like steel, like diamond, like one of the
superstrong alloys she'd recently invented. Obscure Trivia Lad passed out, his
body losing its humanoid form, floating into the air and becoming a silvery ring
connected to the Kube by strands of substance.

The light coursing thru her was almost - *almost* more than she could control,
but she focused it into ritual, forcing her vocal cords to call out a name.
"UltraKiwi."

"KIWI!" a voice from within the Kube shouted to her, and a translucent
apparition, UltraKiwi's form of light, appeared to her left, in the same pose
she'd taken, arms outstretched.

Good. Now - *focus* - the other. "UltraSixpi."

"SIX PI!" called the voice, and UltraSixpi's form appeared to her right, arms
outstretched.

And now the energy was not trapped in her body, but was coursing thru the light-
forms, an elegant circuit that passed thru her but lightly. Perfect; and now,
the cherry atop the ritual.

She raised the Kube over her head, and the light-forms mimicked her. "I'm
borrowing the power of light!" she shouted out, a defiant smirk radiating into
the sky. "I'm sure you don't mind."

The phantom images swung into her body, and the light became one with her. She
could feel her mind and body expanding, hands dropping from the Kube as it
became too small to hold, and she took a moment simply to exult in the sensation
of overwhelming power.

"ULTRA KILLFILE!" shouted the voice. "AERIAL ASTERISM!"

And when her senses came back into focus, she was one of the giants, clad in a
copy of the great kiwis' armor, resuited to her form, with some excellent
glowing-blue detailing fitting her personal color scheme and suggesting her
villainous nature.

UltraKiwi and UltraSixpi were kneeling, drained, their KiwiTimers flashing red.
In their absence, the Monster Legion had focused on the giant robots; Great
Queen Merissakaiser Z was wrestling the Looniversal Answering Machine while
dodging Charbar's flaming basketballs, and Ninjaguar was using one hand to toss
giant shuriken at CollectionTitan while katana-dueling Smashup Laq.

And MechaKiwi Wondersock, interrupted in his maniacal cackling, was blinking at
her in confusion. "What! An ally to my terrorous plottings!?"

"Hardly." Ultra Killfile cracked her knuckles. "I'm here for my virus."

"*Your* virus?! Hah! Hah hah ha--"

WRUNCH as she punched him in the giant metal face. MechaKiwi Wondersock yelped
in surprise and alarm, as she made an impossible, square-cube-law-defying
vertical leap and kicked off his chest.

The Monster Legion turned away from the robots to try and stop her, but she
cartwheeled in midair, feet landing on CollectionTitan and Charbar's heads, and
pushed off, throwing herself high into the air, towards the apex of the Super
Quarantine Field surrounding the city.

She could see the glimmer of the tiny metal object, rising up toward the Field.
She reached out, at the very peak of her jump, closed her hand around it, and--

Crunch.

Ultra Killfile landed on the ground, serum dripping from her fingers.

MechaKiwi Wondersock, half-sprawled on the ground, stared up at her-- his eyes
widened, and he cackled! "Hah! Now the nega-ultra-energy will infect your body!
Arise, my servant!"

She kicked him in the face. "Idiot."

"Blurf!" He went down.

The monsters rushed her, but a moment's concentration made the light rush up
within her body, and with a clap of her hands, it exploded out, knocking them
all back. With the combination of this power and her unbreakable will, she could
accomplish miracles with ease. Why didn't she simply invent a way to be this
powerful all the time?

Because it would make things too easy, of course. Because it wouldn't prove
what her heart needed to know - that with nothing but her intelligence and her
will and her refusal to compromise, her *self* whole and indivisible, she could
change the course of the world.

She took a step forward, and planted one foot on MechaKiwi Wondersock's chest.
He gasped in shock and breathlessness, despite not having lungs in this form.

"This is *my* virus," Doctor Killfile declared, "from *my* blood and *my*
sweat." She leaned forward, shifting the prodigious weight of her giant form
onto his body, and staring him in the eyes, face to face, close enough to hear
rivets popping off. "And neither you nor anyone else will profit off my hard
work and genius ever again."

She pushed herself off of him, back up onto her feet, and summoned up her stolen
ultra-energy. Her hands shimmered with the light of stars humans had not yet
named, and she swept her arms outward in a dramatic slicing motion. A wave of
energy rippled out, slicing through the bonds of nega-ultra-energy that
connected Wondersock to his Legion.

The connection was cut, and the enormous, monstrous forms began to shimmer and
fade, pulled irresistibly back to their home worlds. "Not only is it home to
the LNH, it's also home to several other online universes!" But her threat was
hollow; and in a moment, all that was left of the Monster Legion of the Deep
Omnilooniverse was a fading echo.

Ultra Killfile glanced over her shoulder. MechaKiwi Wondersock seethed in
impotent rage, but would not, could not, stand and challenge her once more.
Good. "I am my own villain. No one else's. Remember that."

The giant robots, whose pilots had watched all of this in startled amazement,
looked at each other, not sure what to do now. She gave them a charming little
smirk and flipped her hair. "Cure my plague, net.heroes. I am done with it."
She turned away, walking casually out of the park, throwing them a parting wave.
"See you next plan."

Her giant form dissolved into glitter, and she let the battles wind on, thinking
of them no more, mind moving on to the next possibility...

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Drew "I like her" Nilium