LNH20: Bite-Size Tales of the LNH v20 #28: "A Vent Story"

Kid Enthusiastic looked out the window of the Super Dimensional Fortress LNHQ, 
and watched two planets collide.

It was really quite fascinating. Enormous plumes of magma were venting off into 
space, forming groups of new asteroids. The shapes of the continents were 
cracked and bent but still visible, pushed out of place in a kind of 
super-accelerated version of plate tectonics. The atmospheres had become a kind 
of hazy fog, full of dirt and ash, that swirled and twisted around the misshapen 
globes.

It was hard to see, because his eyes were red, puffy, and still covered in a 
thin film of tears, but he kept watching. At this point, it felt like all he 
could do.

There was a hand on his shoulder, and he looked up. "Hey, Cheap Costume Man," he 
said. Well, he said something that kind of sounded like that; his throat was so 
dry and strained from crying that he couldn't quite get the words out.

"Hey, Kid." Cheap Costume Man knelt down and looked out the window. "We're ready 
to go to zip drive again, so you'd better get secured." He passed over a squeeze 
bottle of water.

Kid Enthusiastic took the water, drank the whole thing, gave it back. "Thanks..."

"Are..." CCM hesitated. "'Are you okay' sounds stupid, but... are you?"

Kid E stared at the conflagration. "Aren't... aren't we supposed to stay here 
and... fix this?"

CCM put his hand on Kid E's shoulder. "We can't. This is because of... millions 
of people doing what terrible, awful, powerful people taught them to do over 
their whole lives. Even though we're amazing and powerful and kind, there's less 
than a hundred of us. We can't fix all of those people."

"But shouldn't we at least be punching the awful, powerful people in the face!?" 
Kid E croaked, looking up at CCM with his red, tear-streaked face. "That's what 
net.heroes *do*! We hit the bad guys where everybody can see! So they know that 
*their* bad guys can be hit!"

"Not this time." CCM leaned forward and gave him a hug. "This time, all we were 
able to do is help some people. And that's all we're going to be able to do 
tomorrow, and the next day. Back at home we can hit bad guys all day, but here, 
we've just got to leave it up to other people."

Kid E held his body tight and sobbed. "That sucks!! That *sucks*!!! I want to 
strike back, I want to fix things, I want to go back in time and make it so this 
never happened! It *shouldn't* have happened!!!"

"It shouldn't. It did. I'm sorry."

Kid Enthusiastic held onto him for a while, wailing, letting out all his grief 
and helpless rage. Eventually, he stopped.

"why... why are we even here, if we can't do anything?"

"We *can* do something. We *are* doing something. It'd be a lot harder for these 
refugees to get somewhere safe if we weren't here for them. And a big part of 
that is you, your inventions and your spirit." He smiled at him. "Don't forget, 
we've only made it this far because of all the alien tech you've been adapting 
for us. When the LNHQ first got sucked into that wormhole, a lot of us felt just 
as helpless as you do now."

"...i mean, yeah, course... i couldn't not help..."

"Yeah. And now we're going to help the people we can reach, because we've come 
this far."

Kid E smiled. "okay..." He grabbed CCM's shoulder and stood up. "i guess it's 
okay if we just keep going..."

"Yeah. For today, that's okay."

====

Drew "going to help the people I can reach, today, tomorrow, and the day after" 
Nilium