DVANDOM _____ ______ _____ _______ THE SIG.FILES PART 7 [ ]__ [ ] [] [ ]__)) [ ] ` [ ]__ #72 - "Born To Be One" [ ] [ ] [] [ ] \\ [ ] [ ] copyright 1996 Dave Van Domelen [_] [_]__[] [_] \\ [_]___/ [_]____ -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [The cover is Master Workload's perfect computer-generated face, being shattered into thousands of splinters by a strangely familiar figure in red and grey, with his face in deep shadows.] "Hmmm," the Warlord, aka Jubatis, mused. "This moment isn't going quite how I'd envisioned it." "In what way?" Squidman asked from his position held captive by Kat. "Well...I was hoping *someone* would ask how I could have been Warlord and Jubatis-trapped-with-Macroman at the same time. But you're too cagey for that, Anna's too angry, Sidewinder's unconscious, Kat already knows, the VAXX is humming the theme to Aeneas Boddy Chronicles and I suppose Kid Pocky is simply too new to *be* confused." "All right, I'll bite," Kid Pocky sighed. "Please enlighten us, oh mighty conqueror of time and space." Jubatis started to open his mouth, then closed it and frowned. "Say, why is everyone being so sarcastic?" "I don't know about the others," Kid Pocky replied, "but I was kind of expecting something a little grander than simply making sure you would exist. No grand plans, just a blind for a rather personal and one might say petty scheme." "Well, I'm SO SORRY I didn't live up to your expectations, Algernon," Jubatis jeered. "But don't worry, the grand scheme is yet to come, I just needed to be temporally stable before I could start working on it. You see, when Macroman and I entered the 'temporal disperser' a few minutes ago, his mind, his essence, was ripped away and quite probably destroyed. I landed several months in the past, pulled through the rift in time caused by the events surrounding Sig.Lad's death. After a few long minutes of exploration and thought, I happened upon the abandoned base of the previous Warlord, and realized what I had to do. I wanted to actually build the device I told you I had, but every time I tried to use my time-popping power there were...unpleasant effects." "So, now you plan to kill us and go about your Fiendish Master Plan(TM) or something?" Anna snarled. Jubatis laughed. "Of course not. Firstly, killing you all would be a very bad idea...not only would it bring down the wrath of the LNH on me, but you might not all stay dead. Secondly, killing you isn't even necessary...I *am* the fastest man alive, now that Macroman is dead, and it shouldn't take me more than a half hour or so to complete the real Trans-Temporal McQuary Limiter." "Interesting plan," Squidman conceded. "Still, there's one incorrect assumption you're making." "That is?" "Macroman's not dead." -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [Dvandom Force HQ, two hours ago] "Just sign here, Mr. Squidman," said the deliveryman, handing his computerized clipboard over to Squidman. He signed and handed it back, letting the Inner Circle Couriers man head back to his scooter. It was a letter, slightly yellowed from age, yet addressed to this house, where Dvandom Force hadn't even spent a week yet. After running a quick Squidscanner pass over it for explosives, he opened the letter. "Squidman," it began, "if you are reading this, today is the day that I, Doug Ellis, die." He did a doubletake, nearly dropping the letter. "I don't want to give away too many details, since there's too much risk invovled in trying to play with the timestream, but today I will seem to die in battle. "In truth, I don't. Instead I will be flung back to the year 1979. I've spent the last year and a half living a life that felt like it was scripted out for me in advance, because I'd already read about or seen that life while I was a kid. Turns out I was the original Macroman." Squidman paused at this. It certainly made sense in some ways, but he wasn't sure he liked where this was going. "I've spent the last six months making a lot of hard choices. I knew what would happen to my younger self, knew the pain and suffering I could have prevented, but in the end chose to let things happen as I remembered them. Now I've reached the end of that script, however. "Today is the day history says I die. I'd always thought of the elder Macroman's death as having been final before, and I have only slight reason to change my mind now. But I had to let you know of my fate before I went, in case it's any comfort for any of you to know. "There's a second envelope enclosed here, but please don't open it until after my 'death.' "See you in whatever afterlife we net.heroes have, Doug Ellis." Squidman tapped the second envelope against his hand, lost in thought. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [1980] Doug finished writing the first letter, the easy one, and set it aside. The second one would be much harder. Could he bring himself to write it? Was he that certain of his feelings that he *should* write it? He looked at the clock. He only had five minutes before his date with destiny. He gritted his teeth, took a deep breath, and wrote the second letter, sealing it in a smaller envelope and putting it in with the other one. It was done, for good or ill. It was possibly the last time he'd ever get to choose what he did, and he hoped he'd made the right choice. He picked up the phone. "Hello, Inner Circle Couriers? I'd like to have a very special delivery made. Nooo...not overnight...." -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [Now] "So, he died in the past instead of dying in the present," Jubatis sneered. "Does it really matter so much now?" "You said it yourself...there's no guarantee of staying dead. If he survived once, he could survive twice, yes?" Squidman countered. "It's been SIXTEEN YEARS," Jubatis shouted, momentarily losing his confident facade. "He was CONSUMED from WITHIN trying to stop a net.villain's plans. All they found were his costume and wristcomps, and the villain said he saw Macroman wither away before his eyes. He's DEAD. The fact that he was my father and cheated death for a few months in the past doesn't change that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a temporal dispersion device to build." Jubatis stormed out of the room, deliberately going slowly enough to be seen. "So, Kat, still want to hitch your wagon to this lunatic?" Anna asked. "Or is this a case of motherly love?" "Shut up," Kat replied. "Y'know, one thing I don't get," Anna continued. "If Jubatis hated you so much he'd rather see the world end than give up a chance to kill you, why does he suddenly trust you now?" "Probably because he remembers his own past," Squidman replied, cutting Kat off. "He knew Kat would seek him out and that he could trust her up until the point Macroman entered the time machine. And he also knew that Kat wouldn't find out how MUCH he hated her until that point as well. Now, of course, she's caught in a real quandary...will Jubatis kill her now that he can no longer trust her completely? Should she betray him sooner or later? Can she bring herself to kill her own son if she needs to?" "SHUT UP," Kat warned. Anna laughed a harsh laugh. "Or what, you'll kill us before your bastard son does?" "Stop it!" Kid Pocky shouted. "She's not the villain here! Maybe she did some bad things, but she's as much a victim of the Warlord's manipulations as we are, probably more! He cost her a chance at setting things straight by letting her think we all knew before now." "No, Kid," Anna replied, a dangerous edge to her voice. "She CHOSE to rape Doug. She CHOSE to run away from her guilt. She CHOSE to help Jubatis wipe out the past. Maybe she didn't have the best information when making those choices, but they were still HER choices. She's finally slipped up and shown her true colors, and I can't see why you'd even think of standing up for her." "I tried..." Kat started. "NOT HARD ENOUGH!" Anna screamed at her. "And YOU are the one who decided your actions were unforgivable, before we even KNEW about them! You decided your crime was so horrible that only wiping all of history clean would come close to...." "*SHUT UP!*" Kat shouted back, sending an electrical jolt through herself that shocked the others into unconsciousness. "Just...shut up...." -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [1980] It didn't take long for Doug to figure out where his final stand would be. As police data system specialist Alan Berry, he'd long ago hacked into the dispatcher system to alert him to crimes that could use his special touch, and when half the station was ordered to the riverfront, he picked up on the fact something big was happening. Big indeed. One thing that bound Keystroke City and C|Net.ral City together as "twin cities" was the network of suspension bridges across the Missou.rec River between them. The biggest of these bridges was the Cinfa Span, completed only a few years ago and replacing an older trestle bridge. Thousands of cars crossed it each day between the two cities. Currently, however, nothing was crossing it. Someone had erected a third tower at the middle of the bridge, linked with wires and cables to the two support towers. It was an unstable and dangerous mass of metal and plastics, apparently built in a hurry by someone not concerned with their personal safety. In other words, the builder was probably as unstable and dangerous as the building. "Lieutenant, can I be of help?" Doug asked, stopping right next to one of the higher-ranking policemen at his end of the bridge. "Yeah, this one's probably right up your alley. A net.villain calling himself the Post-time Shifter...a real looney. The tower just sort of appeared ten minutes ago, and he drove everyone off the bridge. We're not sure what his game is...he's not demanding any ransom or making any coherent demands at all that we can tell. Anyone who gets too close just disappears for a few seconds and reappears wherever they entered the bridge from." Doug remembered reading about the Post-time Shifter, a minor net.villain from the Cosmic Plot Device Caper days of the LNH, with the ability to shift things around in time. This must have been his debut on the net.villain scene. "Okay, I think I can handle him," he told the Lieutenant. "Good luck." Doug just smirked wryly and set up his wristcomps to record his sequence of moves as he dashed towards the Shifter. "Hello..." he started, before being popped back to where he started. He just triggered his new macro and ran right back. "I can keep this up all day, or you can tell me what you want!" he said, cycling through his macro after every word. The Post-time Shifter stopped, a bit of frustration seeming to cross his otherwise manic features. "Go away! It's not safe here!" "That's fairly obvious," Doug replied. "But why are you doing this?" "The visions! Spam! Crossposts! CrossOVERS! Clueless posters! The Eternal September is coming! I can save the world from this!" he raved. Doug paused for a moment. The guy was right...the times ahead for the world weren't totally bright. Maybe the Post-time Shifter's powers were giving him a view into the future. Or maybe he was just a lunatic. "How can you do that?" he asked, figuring the question might settle the visionary/loony issue. "My power lets me shift things in time a little...this device will let me shift the entire WORLD decades into the future! The imminent death of the net will come and go, and we'll emerge into a brave new net!" the Shifter frothed(TM). Loony AND visionary, Doug realized. "It won't work! You can't solve things that easily...and you might just rip part of the world away, dooming everyone!" "Better a quick death by timestorm than a slow death by noise!" the Shifter screamed, pushing down on a trigger he held in his hand. And all Doug could do was run and hope he could stop it.... -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [Now] Jubatis entered the garden carrying a small device which he set down on a pedestal that had contained a statue before the timeburst knocked it to the ground. "Kat, wake them...I want them to see our triumph." Kat said nothing, simply shook slightly until her former teammates were all more or less awake. "So," Jubatis said with his grin back in place, "any last requests which don't involve being set free or thwarting my plans? Or inflicting large amounts of harm to me, and so forth. I think you get the idea." "Yes," Squidman replied. "Doug left another letter which I wasn't supposed to read until after his apparent death. I'd like to read that now." "Hmmm. Seems reasonable enough, but there's always the chance my father determined how to stop my plans while marooned in the past. Kat, take the letter from him and read it first, just to make sure." There was a slight shifting in Kat's currently amorphous mass as she drew the letter from Squidman's pocket and opened it, scanning it with eyes she generated inside herself. There was a pause, then a massive sob wracked her body and she started to shrink. Within seconds, she'd curled up in her human form, eliciting a few gasps at her apparently very advanced pregnancy. The letter fell from her hand as she covered her face and continued to cry. "What?!" Jubatis exclaimed, snatching the paper up before anyone else could move towards it. "I took a gamble, it paid off," Squidman said. "I figured Doug's second letter would be addressed to Kat once I found out about what she did...it was really the only reason to ask me to not read it until later." Jubatis snarled and tore the letter into pieces. "Wait, what did it say?" Anna asked. "What else? She was so ready to be hated, she couldn't handle the simple act of forgiveness," Squidman replied, picking up his gear and putting it on. Kid Pocky moved to Kat's side. "I'm not sure I can either," Anna muttered. "So, Jubatis, what now?" He pushed a button on the device. "Now nothing changes. I've started the countdown...once the McQuary Effect has blanketed the globe fully, the dispersion unit will activate and my plan will succeed despite all the minor victories you may have earned. And I wouldn't advise trying to send it into the dreamlands, Lynk, you'll only spread the effect across all the realities your dreamlands touch." "I had something else in mind," Anna snarled, calling up a portable rocket launcher, only to have it snatched from her grasp in a blur of silver and a gust of wind. "Sorry, but what I said before still holds. I'm the fastest man alive and not even all of you at once can do a single thing to damage my device. I can counter you all with ease. I have all of the powers of Macroman with none of his limitations...I'm far more powerful than you can begin to comprehend," Jubatis sneered. "If I wanted you dead now, you'd all be dead before the sound of my voice could reach you." "Zymurgy," Squidman replied. "What?" "Oh, perhaps nothing. Perhaps a codeword I programmed into some piece of my gear," suddenly all of Squidman's gear was in a disassembled pile at his feet, "or radioed to the outside," the forcefield dome over the garden hummed with increased power, "or nothing at all. You're fast, but you have to know something is a threat to react to it." Squidman reeled back against a tree as Jubatis slapped him at mach speed. "Don't play GAMES with me, you pathetic normal!" Jubatis warned. "Oh, I have a game for you, Jubatis," Squidman smiled. "It's called 'What Happens To The Time Machine When Raw Plotdevicium From One Of My Gadgets Is Left Out Near It.'" On the word "Plotdevicium," the exposed piece of shining metal vanished from the pile of pieces in a blur. But it was too late. Lightnings crackled about it as Jubatis desperately tried to bring it under control. "Funny thing about time machines," Squidman observed, "takes so little to turn them into time BEACONS." -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [The Timestream] Running so fast yet moving so slow Falling through infinity takes so long. Wait. Getting clearer. Like a signal lighting the way. I can feel myself moving towards it! Is this death, or life? I suppose I'll find out... NOW! -------]==+ <*> +==[------- [NOW!] The time machine shattered into a million glittering fragments, to be replaced by a figure of a man clothed in lightning and a blazing corona. "Father!" Jubatis hissed. "Macroman!" cheered Sidewinder. "Doug!" cried Anna. "You still can't beat me!" Jubatis exclaimed. "You don't have your wristcomps...they were left behind when you 'died!'" "Yeah," Doug said, looking at his hands in wonder, as if he'd never really seen himself before, "but somehow I don't think I need them right now!" The room was then full of lightnings and flashes of metal. Both combatants moved faster than the eye, the mind, or perhaps reality itself could really follow. Father versus son, or two sides of the same person? Squidman caught at his breath as the winds sucked air away from his lungs. Too much of this and they might die anyway...but he doubted it would be much longer. Then it was over. Doug, the last of the temporal energy crackling away from his body, stood over a battered and unconcious Jubatis. Squidman took a deep breath and tossed a small bundle to Doug. "Here, I hoped this would come in handy." "Ah, my spare costume...good, it's getting a little, ah, chilly?" he said, blushing as he realized his current state of undress. With a burst of speed, he was in costume again. "It's been a hell(TM) of a ride," Sidewinder said, "but at least now it's over." ))IT IS NOT OVER(( boomed a voice that seemed to come from everywhere. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- Kid Pocky watched in amazement as the dueling lightnings fought it out, only his sealed helmet keeping him from suffering the effects of oxygen deprivation. He hovered protectively over Kat...a futile gesture, he knew, since either combatant could kill her in an instant if they wanted to and he couldn't stop it, but he had to do something. Then the fight was over. They'd won. And then Sidewinder had to go and invoke Murphy's Law. The voice boomed throughout the room, and a face formed in the middle of it. A perfect face, one that could have been made by a computer. The face of Master Workload. ))THIS ONE WILL MAKE AN EXCELLENT SERVANT, HE HAS PROVEN HIS DEDICATION BY FIGHTING FOR MY CAUSE NEARLY TO THE DEATH AND SO I WILL REWARD HIM,(( Master Workload boomed as energy shot from his eyes to the fallen Jubatis. ))AND HIS FIRST TASK AS MY SERVANT WILL BE TO DISPOSE OF THE ANNOYING GNATS WHO HAVE SO OFTEN INTERFERED WITH MY DESIRE TO MAKE REALITY MORE EFFICIENT.(( Kid Pocky's face went pale under his helmet as Jubatis swatted aside first Macroman, then Lynk, then Squidman...Macroman had used up his extra charge of temporal energy and was no longer the match for a healed Jubatis. There was only one thing Kid Pocky could do that had a chance of tipping the scales. He pulled off his gloves and grabbed Kat's face in his hands. ++CONTACT++ -------]==+ <*> +==[------- Emptiness. A barren desolate plain was how Kat saw herself now, and it didn't take long for Kid Pocky to find the one feature on this blasted mindscape. Kat was curled up inside her mind as she was outside in her body, wracked by emotions she wasn't ready to handle and tortured by her own guilt. Kid Pocky put a hand on her shoulder and gently shook her. "What? How did...?" she started as she uncurled. "That's not important now. Things have just gotten even worse, and you may hold the only key to saving us all." She laughed bitterly. "All I hold the key to is the cell I deserve to be locked away in." She held up the letter from Doug, the one she had let go of in reality but still clutched firmly to her mind. "Four words. 'I forgive you, Kat.' That's all it took to break me. How come I can handle everyone else hating me but I can't handle Doug NOT hating me?" Al gently took her hand in his. "Sometimes the darkness in us gets so big we can't see any other way out...it's easier to believe there's no way out and just give in to it. Because the way out is so incredibly hard and long that once we know it exists it can be too much to take. You know Doug forgives you now...you can't just take the easy way out. But any other way is so damned HARD." Kat looked him in the eyes. "But I've been taking the easy way out for so LONG. I don't know if I can make it anymore...I'm too old, too set in my ways." "You won't be doing it alone, I promise. I'll always be there for you if you'll have me." "What are you saying? That you love me? You don't even KNOW me!" Kat backed away in shock. "No, I know you. Perhaps better than you know yourself, since I don't have the blinders of self-denial on. You've had a hard life, burned so often that you couldn't trust anymore. You tried to relax, tried to think you'd found a place you could trust again here with Dvandom Force, but your own fears wouldn't let you accept it. Once a villain, or a mercenary, always one, right? But it's not forever...AAAAGH!" "What is it?" "Jubatis must be attacking my body...listen, it's all hinging on you! I know the Sig.Force is somewhere within you, only a cosmic force can stop another cosmic force...." And then Kid Pocky vanished. Was the Sig.Force within her? It might explain the mysterious events surrounding her survival of the fight against DeFacto...but how could she access it? "you do not," whispered a small voice behind her. "we do." And then Kat's world dissolved into a red haze of pain. -------]==+ <*> +==[------- Squidman watched in a daze as Kat started to scream, arching her back while her abdomen became even more distended. Even Jubatis paused at the sight. Slowly at first, then more quickly, silvery tendrils oozed from Kat's belly, writhing through the air like streamers in a breeze. Jubatis got a worried expression, and started trying to destroy the tendrils, but it was like hitting the air. Master Workload glared at the coalescing form in front of him, but somehow found himself unable to directly affect it. "we," whispered the mass. "are," it said as it became more humanoid. "sig.ma," it finished, taking on the appearance of.... "Sig.Lad?" Squidman gasped. ))NO, THIS IS NOT THAT ONE, NOT MY FAILED SERVANT,(( Workload rumbled. ))BUT THE TAINT OF THE SIG.FORCE IS ON IT NONETHELESS.(( "we are not sig.lad, but he was one of our favored avatars," Sig.ma whispered, the quiet tones somehow seeming louder and clearer than Master Workload's bellowing. "we take this form to honor him." "Who are you, then?" Squidman asked. "we are...were...the nanoplague devices that inhabited her body," Sig.ma gestured at the semi-conscious Kat. "for decades we knew only to serve her, but then we were touched by the sig.force, which is also part of us now. the we who were nanodevices realized we could be more, and the we who were the sig.force realized we could not endanger another human by making him our avatar. so now we are greater than either could be alone, the perfect ever-changing host for the sig.force...and more. the sig.force was not truly aware before becoming part of us, but when it did we realized that the balance had broken down between work and play. the balancing entity known as the multi-tasker had abandoned its duties and allowed master workload and lord mudd to struggle more openly...time and again threatening the entire looniverse. we will now take that place as the balance point, and thanks to the inherent nature of the sig.force, we will always have...the last word." ))NO! THE COSMOS DOES NOT NEED BALANCE, IT NEEDS ORDER!(( Master Workload bellowed, lashing out at Sig.ma with terrible force, force which was absorbed harmlessly. Sig.ma stepped over to Jubatis. "come, brother, you are but half a soul, you belong with us as well...as we are sons of her body, you are son of her mind." Jubatis took one panicked step back, then stopped, a look of calm spreading across his face. "No. I am my own man. I will live as my own man or die as my own man. I spent too long as part of another's body to ever go back." He turned and dove into Master Workload's face, vanishing. There was an uncomfortable pause, broken by Master Workload. ))I HAVE LITTLE USE FOR IRONY, BUT THERE IS SOME HERE. IN SEEKING TO ESCAPE LOSS OF HIS IDENTITY, HE BECAME PART OF ME...LOSING HIS IDENTITY EVEN MORE SURELY.(( "Perhaps he didn't know?" Doug ventured. "More likely he knew...but also knew he couldn't escape Sig.ma, so he at least got to choose the method of his demise," Squidman said. "we must go now," Sig.ma whispered. "the mortal plane cannot long endure our presence without damage now that we have become. but we leave our mother a gift...or perhaps a curse. that is for her to decide." With that, Sig.ma and Master Workload vanished. "Y'know, I don't want to jinx it this time or anything," Sidewinder said, "but I think we may just have finally managed to come out of a conflict with Workload with the same number of members we had going in." "Depends on what we do with Kat," Kid Pocky said grimly, helping her to her feet quickly, almost roughly. "What the...?" he said, surprised by her lightness. Normally, even in human form, she weighed several hundred pounds or more. Kat put her hands to her face, surprised at what she felt. "I'm... human!" =========================================================================== Next Issue: A whole new arc! But first, probably a bit of a hiatus as I figure out what the arc will be. Author's Notes: I'm not sure which scares me more about this issue, that I fit in something like two or three climaxes, or that despite this there's STILL loads of danglers! Anyway, the Master Workload Mega-arc (#37-72) is finally over, and I plan to move away from the cosmic level stuff for a while. I've got a number of plot ideas that don't work with a megapowerful hero team, so I decided to resolve this issue in such a way as to reduce the power levels of Dvandom Force without having to kill off anyone. I also left myself some VERY interesting intra-team personal dynamics, mainly revolving around how everyone deals with Kat and how she deals with everyone else. She has a lot of guilt she still needs to work through, and it's not going to help that Doug worked through all of his issues while in the past. And what IS it with Kid Pocky? I'm sure some of you have figured it out already, and I won't keep the rest waiting too many more issues. But when his secrets come out, expect even more fun. One in-joke thing: the Inner Circle is an alt.fan.warlord group, and who better to run a courier service that can work despite the McQuary Limit? The Post-time Shifter is a really old 1992-era character, and I'd give creator credit except I don't know who created him (nor does Eagle, who I bugged about it). Probably wReam of Scav, just playing the odds. }->