LNH: Leadership Cry.sig: Net.ropolis 2023 #29ish: "Questions to Our Answers! Refresh the Issue #!"

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         Issue #29ish: "Questions to Our Answers! Refresh the Issue #!"
_______________________________________________________________________________

Half an hour since the end of the strange battle against the Unknown Ninja.

In the conference room, Fearless Leader, Cheesecake-Eater Lad and Catalyst Lass
sat on one side of the long table, and Manga Girl and Fuzzy sat on the other.
Doctor Stomper sat at the end, with a manila folder full of printouts.

"The fake Ultimate Ninja is in the holding cells," said Fearless Leader. "We
haven't found the fake LNH writer, alive or dead. And it seems like we've
confirmed that the Unknown Ninja is also a fake."

"You think?" said Manga Girl. "Seemed to me like he recognized Nina!"

"From what you said, he-- or they, or it-- didn't have a face."

"Sure, but like... have any of you ever *seen* what the Ultimate Ninja looks
like under the mask?"

The room was silent.

"...back in the day, he had that other identity, Bandwagon Boy," said
Cheesecake-Eater Lad. "He didn't wear a mask... unless... that whole face was a
mask?" His mouth screwed up. "If anyone would do that, it'd be the Ultimate
Ninja..."

"...if this really was UN..." said Catalyst Lass, folding her arms, "...and
he's back from a cosmic journey into the imagination of the Real World... Who
*knows* what could've happened to him!"

Fearless Leader leaned forward, brows furrowed. "...even so," he said. "Even
*if* this is the original Ultimate Ninja somehow returned, he's clearly not the
same as he was. For now, we need to continue treating him as a potential threat."

"And considering UN used to kill Peril Room duplicates of literally the whole
LNH on a daily basis..." Fuzzy trailed off. Everyone else nodded, grimly.

Almost everyone else. "Can't fix that right now," said Manga Girl, jumping to
her feet. "So let's work on fixing Nina!"

"If I may," said Doctor Stomper, stepping forward and opening his folder. "With
many of the full-body holistic changes that happen to net.heroes, there's a
single effect that can be undone as wholly and thoroughly as it was done.
Therefore, the Legion Science Squad and I have done some preliminary scans,
attempting to quantify the change to Nina in order to remove it. However..." He
passed out stapled-together batches of printouts. "Nina doesn't seem to have
been affected by some youth-inducing agent. Rather, it's as if everything that
she experienced since she was a child has been removed. In essence, we can't
revert her, because she's already been reverted to a 'natural' baseline state."

"Like the fountain of youth..." said Catalyst Lass, thoughtfully, staring off
into the distance. "Wouldn't most people like to erase all the mistakes they've
made, and go back to who they were before they had to do all these troublesome
adult things...?"

"I wouldn't!" shouted Manga Girl, startling Catalyst Lass. "And I don't want
Nina to, either!" She paced around the table. "She's already become someone
trustworthy, someone capable, someone *strong*!" She got back to her seat and
slammed her fists into the table! "She's become who I'd want to be, and we
can't throw that away!!!"

The table was silent, as Manga Girl breathed hard.

"...well," said Cheesecake-Eater Lad gently, "we weren't planning to."

"...right." Manga Girl slumped into her chair. "Sorry."

Doctor Stomper ahem'd. "Indeed. We plan to look into other ways of dealing with
the problem."

"Speaking of problems," said Fuzzy, "the thing I'm most worried about is the
ability the Unknown Ninja seemed to have to alter reality."

Fearless Leader nodded. "The fake Ultimate Ninja seemed to have a similar
ability."

"What could it be?"

====

"An Existence Snowglobe?"

"Yes," said the Dragon of the Pen. She was sitting, petticoats gathered primly,
on Shirley's bed. "It is the ultimate ability of a Server of the Red Stapler
War, the power to create a bubble of reality that shifts the form of the
surrounding narrative to one's own."

Shirley sat backwards on her desk chair, facing the bed. "That's amazing... and
there were, like, two or three going off at once?"

"Indeed."

"Wow..." After the Dragon of the Pen had shown up, there was no way Shirley was
going back to sleep. So she'd texted off work, stayed up all night and into the
next day talking to her, and just now some kind of amazing thing had happened.
Honestly, she was pretty tired, but it was worth it. "So, Dragon of the Pen...
you know what, can I just... can I just call you Penny?"

"Of course, my Client. You can do as you like with me."

"..." She'd said something like that several times now, and every time Shirley's
head filled up with steam and she had to take a minute. Seriously, did she know
what she was saying!? "Right, uh, right, so Penny. Let me just... put all this
together. There's a magic war going on."

"The Red Stapler War, yes."

"Right. And that guy, or that thing, you stabbed, was coming to kill me because
whoever his boss is knew that I was one of the contestants, or whatever, even
though I don't know any magic."

"That's correct. Even though you have no magical training, you have considerable
natural aptitude... though, my understanding is that you should not have been
able to become a Client except through magical workings of your own. This 'phone
app' seems to be a new factor in the War."

"Gotcha... and the whole way this war works is that all the Servers fight and
kill each other, and the Client with the last Server alive wins. So, for you to
not die, we have to win."

"More importantly," said Penny," as someone without the protection of the Great
Families, your own life is in severe danger."

Shirley shook her head. "That doesn't matter as much, to me."

Penny looked confused, but stayed quiet.

"So we gotta..." Shirley stood up. "I guess we gotta... plan..." She wobbled
and wavered in place.

"My Client, you are in desperate need of sleep." Penny rose from the bed. "You
can rest without worry, for I shall keep guard over you."

Shirley flopped into the bed. "aw that's sweet... um... hey..." Well, she *did*
say 'as you like', right? "maybe you better keep a close guard... like, *real*
close..."

Penny nodded firmly. "Of course, my Client." She laid down in the bed too,
getting between Shirley and the door (or, rather, the big plywood board they'd
put in front of the doorway).

Shirley put her arms around Penny's waist, and in moments was in the deepest
sleep of her life...

====

Continuity Porn Star sat in an airport bathroom, hands over his face, breathing
shallowly.

They were back. His tattoos were back. Which was good, not just because it
meant the timeline wasn't dissolving into entropically inert ylem, but also
because their sudden reappearance had forced the police officers who were
arresting him for public nudity to let go as their minds were scrambled by
seeing every point of continuity in every RACC story at once.

But he needed to raise the alarm. Even though he was a net.villain, he knew his
duty. The LNH needed to know what happened in issues #17-24. They had to know
about the threat to the Multiversal Office.

====

Drew "time to push forward" Nilium