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//|| //^^\\ || || .|. COHERENT COMICS UNINCORPORATED PRESENTS
// || \\ || || --X---------------------------------------------
//======================= '|` ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES #43
// || \\ || || Unfinished Business 2: Bull Market
// || \\__// || || Copyright 2003 by Dave Van Domelen
___________________________________________________________________________
[cover shows the original Solar Max, battered and cut in several
places, crouching on gravel at the edge of a woods. The image
is somewhat wavy, as if viewed through a rippling surface.]
ACADEMY OF SUPER-HEROES ROLL CALL
CODENAME REAL NAME POWERS STATUS
-------- --------- ------ ------
Solar Max Jonathan Zachary Spacetime Control ACTIVE
"JakZak" Taylor
Comet Sarah Grant-Taylor Superspeed, Ice Body ACTIVE
Green Knight Salvatore Napier Strength, Regeneration ACTIVE
Contact Aaron Zander Psi, Mind-over-Body ACTIVE
Scorch Scott Handleman Pyrokinetic ACTIVE
George Sylvester Living Light MEDICAL LEAVE
Essay Sara Ana Rodriguez Gadgeteer ACTIVE
Peregryn Howard Henderson Jr. Elemental Mage ACTIVE
Lightfoot Tom Dodson Velocity Control ACTIVE
Breaker Christina Li Telekinesis ACTIVE
Fury Arin Kelsey Concussion Blasts ACTIVE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[June 10, 2025 - Washington D.C., Federal Sector]
"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice," JakZak
smoothed down the front of his "formal" uniform as he took a seat across the
desk from Howard Henderson Sr.
"Frankly, I'm surprised you didn't just come bursting through the door,
demanding to know the truth," Peregryn's father smirked. "It's practically
de rigeur in relations between supernormals and government agents."
JakZak shrugged. "I considered it, for dramatic effect if nothing
else. But it's been a long time since you were first a mere 'agent' and I
doubt you would have been impressed. In any case, a wise man once told me to
save the outbursts for when it was really important, or you'd never be able
to convince anyone you were really serious."
"The first Solar Max said that once when I was a 'mere agent' if I
recall correctly," Henderson nodded. "And I presume you're here about the
circumstances surrounding that final warp bubble?"
"Exactly. There's a clear pattern of escalating threat in the warp
bubbles, yet the notes on this last one say nothing. It's in the middle of
nowhere, and there's nothing in the news archives...open OR sealed...that
sheds any light on it. So I figured you might know. Or at least, you would
have looked into it while checking the will for security purposes."
Henderson tapped a few virtual keys on his desktop, calling up a file.
"You're right, I did look into it. And, officially, it's as blank as you've
been able to find out."
"Unofficially?"
"No one knows. No one still alive, anyway. Back in early 1997, a
prison transport carrying the morpher Mosasaur to the Northwoods Correctional
Facility got into a one-vehicle accident. Solar Max...the original...was in
the area, kept Mosasaur from escaping and helped the injured driver and
guards. Curiously, the impact marks on the front of the transport were
inconsistent with hitting a tree, although there was a felled tree nearby.
And one guard was missing without explanation, but Solar Max claimed to have
come upon it after the accident, and not witnessed it. The agent who filed
the report said he thought Solar Max was holding back, but...." He shrugged.
"But Solar Max left on his interstellar jaunt pretty soon after that,
before anyone could bring official pressure to bear?" JakZak suggested.
"Exactly. And by the time he got back, things were a little, ah,
hectic. And it seemed that just about anyone who could have been involved if
it was a jailbreak attempt was dead anyway, so we never pushed the issue."
JakZak scratched at the back of his head for a moment, the military-cut
hair hardly disturbed by the action. "The Godmarket was getting started
around then. Maybe a Pureblood was involved in things and messed with Solar
Max's memory?"
"But why would he remember the warp bubble, then?" Henderson countered.
"Why indeed?"
* * * *
[June 10, 2025 - Kirksville, Missouri Sector]
Well, it hadn't been total hell, but it *had* been pretty damned
uncomfortable. Tom's mom was old enough to be grandma, and grandma was long
dead. Cousin Jerry was working on his baldspot, his beer gut and his third
marriage. Adrian, one of his high school gaming buddies, now had kids in
college. Oh, everyone was proud of him, glad to see him, there were no
awkward cases of drunken relatives staggering in and berating him for
thinking he was "better 'n us".
But none of that made them feel any more familiar. They'd had nearly a
generation's worth of extra years to forget him, and to change to the point
that they were nothing like what he remembered.
What was this supposed to have taught him? That he was a man out of
time, isolated from everyone he'd known before? He already knew that. He'd
grown apart from most of these people *before* his little tussle with special
relativity. The Professor wanted him to take something away from this
experience, but what?
Well, in a literal sense, there was that package he'd been given by the
university president after the ceremony, with instructions to give it to
JakZak once he was done taking care of his cleanup job. But anyone could
have been sent to fetch that. It could even have been mailed or couriered.
He sighed and went over to the window of his hotel room, pulling aside
the curtain a little and peeking out. The crowd had gotten smaller, but it
was still there. People he'd barely known when he was a kid here in
Kirksville, and their kids, who he'd never known.
There was a knock at the door. Probably room service...he'd ordered
down a few minutes ago, not feeling up to going out to eat in public but too
emotionally tired to want to hit the road.
He opened the door. It was not room service. Rather, a tall, thin man
with somewhat bushy white hair stood there, wearing a suit that screamed
"Professor of Humanities".
"Dr. C?"
"In the flesh, what's left of it," the old professor nodded. "Sorry I
wasn't at the ceremonies today, but I've been retired for a while, and the
letter from you-know-who didn't reach me in time to get here until now. May
I come in?"
Tom blinked. "Oh, sure." It was weird...Dr. C had been a young man
when his son had been part of Tom's gaming group. Well, young for a
professor, anyway. Chris...hadn't made it past 1998, though. Tom had
checked.
"Quite a crowd out there, eh?" Dr. C nodded towards the window as he
came in and sat on the edge of the bed.
"Yeah," Tom frowned.
"Oh, you don't like the adulation? I thought that was one of the fringe
benefits of being a superhero. Or any kind of hero, for that matter."
"Maybe for the hero of a comedy," Tom made oblique reference to the
professor's specialty, "but I'm not sure if I'm not in a tragedy."
This brought a small frown. "Tom, life is neither comedy or tragedy.
Things can go well or go poorly, but there's no artificial structure to
events, no denounment to wait for. Are you worried that you have some sort
of 'tragic flaw' that this crowd will exploit? Vanity or hubris?"
"Maybe. I don't know. I never really got this sort of response
before. In the 90s I was a junior member of a team that wasn't always
terribly popular...heck, they stuck us out on an artificial island because a
shadow dragon knocked over a few buildings in the previous HQ's neighborhood!
And since getting here," he waved his hands around in a vague gesture, "I've
been pretty much in the background as well. Catching up on the times, going
to school at the Academy. I've got a few groupies there, but it's more along
the lines of...oh..."
"Someone who had gotten a few bit parts in the movies spending time at a
Shakespeare festival?" Dr. C suggested.
"Exactly. They're impressed, they want to know if I have any pointers,
but they plan to be just like me. It's not like the people outside, who
adore me because they *can't* be just like me. I don't really know how to
take it."
"Well, here's where you can figure that out," Dr. C gestured at the
curtains. "You have your adoring fans, hometown friends and acquaintances
who've been waiting for months for you to come home...yes, I know you don't
really think of this as home, but THEY do."
The old man stood and placed his hands on Tom's shoulders. "Someday,
assuming you don't go and get yourself killed, you'll draw crowds like this
everywhere you go. Crowds as big as I hear the Green Knight draws in
Mexico. Like it or not, you're on stage, you have a Public. And right now,
they're pretty well-disposed towards you, they're not likely to turn on you
if you make a mistake...like you're making now, sulking in your hotel room."
"The show must go on?"
"Damn straight."
* * * *
[June 10, 2025 - Italy]
Simon Smith had always, at least as long as he could remember, put great
stock in the aphorism that true wisdom is knowing how much you don't know.
As a man who couldn't remember anything of his life before twenty-seven years
ago, who had been "born" aged about fifty or so as far as he could tell,
Simon knew that there was a great deal he did not know.
But in the past few months, his wisdom had increased greatly by the
measure of that aphorism.
A little persistence had unearthed a small underground chamber among the
ruins of the old manor house on the estate he was "house-sitting" for
Giovanni. The Italian was certainly enjoying his life in the city, closer to
his offspring...Simon's presence alleviated the man's lingering guilt over
abandoning his family estate.
In any case, the old manor house had been in ruins for centuries, but
the hidden chamber was almost miraculously intact, as if it had been sealed
up by magic until the right person arrived. In fact, Simon's studies to date
suggested that might be exactly the case.
Of course, he was no Mage. From all he'd heard, anyone with even a
scrap of mystic talent vanished in 1998, and the hazy fragments of memory he
had of that year suggested truth to that claim. But there was power in the
right kind of knowledge, and there were ways one could fan the tiny spark
held by all non-Anchors into at least a candleflame. Small divinations were
now within his power, as well as spells that helped him understand the
encoded and ensorcelled tomes that represented the true knowledge this vault
contained.
None of it, however, had helped him unlock the memories of his first
forty or fifty years of life. Every so often there would be a tantalizing
clue, or something that felt familiar, but it would slip through his fingers
like sand.
But he had time...attending to Giovanni's grapevines was hardly onerous,
and his own investments meant he could retire from his life as a wandering
repairman, extending this hiatus indefinitely.
Yes...a new career did seem likely for his twilight years.
* * * *
[June 12, 2025 - Chicago, Illinois Sector]
Scott reflected on the advantages of a flashy costume. Sure, he didn't
have a "secret identity" like a lot of the godtimers, and his face was
available on the nets, but he really wasn't recognized for it. Most people
knew him now by the Black-Opal-like helmet he wore on duty. So all it took
was sunglasses and a decent fake mustache and no one paid him any mind as he
sat in the mall food court during the mid-morning lull.
Well, not exactly no one. There were at least three STRAFE agents with
*much* better disguises scattered around the area, just in case the meeting
went sour. And probably a dozen more Scott didn't know about.
Scott's bookreader pinged, popping up a small and seemingly routine
system message. It was the signal Coulter had arranged to send to let Scott
know he was there. Scott looked around, and immediately noticed something
iffy about a heavyset black woman slowly meandering her way towards the
frozen yogurt stand behind him.
Scott met the woman's eyes and nodded slightly. With a faint expression
of surprise, she changed direction and came to sit down across from him.
"How'd you know it was me?" a husky contralto asked. "Gimble told me
this holodisguise was perfect."
"You walk like a guy. But good job not intersecting anything with the
hologram," Scott added. At the unspoken question, he replied, "When your
fiancee is a fashion designer, you pick up a few things about how men and
women tend to move. Anyway, the fact you're here means you're at least
willing to consider the offer. I'm here to answer any concerns you have, and
ink the deal if you're willing."
"I'm tempted," the disguised Robert Coulter nodded. "Anya and I have
been wandering for a few months, and the fun is starting to wear thin. But
if we settle down anywhere, people are going to zero in on us and maybe take
out some bystanders in the process. The Academy is already one of the more
secure places on the continent, and preferable to most of the other options."
"Plus you get pardon for anything you may or may not have done at your
last job," Scott added.
"You don't sound too enthusiastic," Coulter narrowed his eyes. Well,
the holographic woman did, anyway.
"I'm not. But that's not really relevant at the moment, since I'm no
longer involved with the Academy."
"Hm. Well, trying to figure out Van Domelen's motives was giving me a
headache, I'm not going to start again now. I'm leaning towards accepting,
but I have two conditions."
Scott had expected something like this, so he was able to avoid an
indignant outburst. "Those being?"
"One, odds are that with me on the faculty, I'm going to be in a
position where I have to share secrets with you people. I need to know you
can *keep* a secret, even a potentially explosive one. You don't trust me,
Handleman, fine. But I don't necessarily trust you, either."
"How do you plan to test our trustworthiness?"
"By telling you a secret and seeing if it leaks. If it gets back to me
by any press channels, Anya and I keep wandering."
Scott nodded. "Shoot. There's an Essay Special under the table that
will keep our voices from being intelligible more than a meter or so away."
"A great deal that would be of interest happened at the wedding
reception, some of which may come out in due time. One thing that happened
was that the Conclave became aware of the existence of Innocenza Graves,
daughter of Gimble the fixer and...Lorenzo Archangeli." He continued over a
silence that had nothing to do with Essay's jammer, "Find Innocenza, and you
find old Montreal."
"Um...and the second condition?"
"A job and pardon for Anya...for Spiral."
* * * *
[June 14, 2025 - Somewhere on Highway G-113, Wisconsin Sector]
Various evergreens crowded up against the shoulders of the General Usage
highway that had once been named U.S. 51. The road was only one lane each
direction, like most G highways, but it was better maintained than most,
since it was part of the main route up to the Academy from the south. The
traffic was never heavy enough to justify upgrading it to a four-lane
H-series "Heavy Usage" highway, but it was important nonetheless.
The driver pulled over at a spot where a recent storm had felled a few
trees. He called back, "Geepiss says the spot y'want is about a hunnerd
emm up the road."
Solar Max and Peregryn got out of the van. "You guys stay back here,"
Solar Max told the quartet of troopers who had shared the ride with the two
heroes. "If it drops in the pot, you probably won't be able to help...your
job is to make sure the alert goes out if something nasty pops out of the
warp bubble and we can't stop it," he waggled his gauntleted finger to take
in himself and Peregryn.
"Yes sir," the sergeant of the partial squad saluted. The rest of his
men had been left off several miles back to man a temporary barricade. A
similar one had been set up to the south.
The two supernaturals cautiously walked down the road, casting about
with their specialized senses. After a minute, they stopped.
"Feels like the right place," Solar Max waved an arm at a spot slightly
above the roadbed.
"Yes. The trees here are younger than those around them," Peregryn laid
a hand on the trunk of a tree about fifteen meters from Solar Max. "This is
one of the older growth trees, and I feel a strong mystic signature deep in
its heartwood. Something more than an accident happened here."
Solar Max whistled as his onboard computers confirmed Peregryn's
analysis of the tree growth. "Mr. Henderson is a master of understatement.
Physical evidence inconsistent with a one-vehicle crash indeed...looks like
someone cleared enough trees here to land a helijet or two."
"Give me a moment to consult with the spirits of this place, then I will
be ready to support your time-viewing effort."
Solar Max cocked his head, at least as much as was possible in armor.
"Do you think the spirits might be able to tell me what I need to know? So I
won't have to risk the time-viewing at all?"
Peregryn shook his head. "Spirits of the land and the plants tend to be
fairly slow. They will remember something having happened here, but unless
it took hours, they will be uncertain what it was. They remember storms and
harsh summers, not crashing trucks or battles of even an hour in duration.
But I shall ask." He sat down on the scraggly grass at the forest's edge and
closed his eyes.
A long, uncomfortable moment passed for Solar Max. Third time's the
charm, he kept telling himself. No backlash this time. And maybe no "this
time" this time, either, if the spirits were chatty enough.
Peregryn finally opened his eyes. "The spirit of the bedrock recalls
the presence of great power, greater than you or I possess. However, the
time we are interested in *was* the beginning of the Godmarket, so it could
have been any one of a dozen or so sylvan gods who took an interest in this
area. But no, I don't think it's a pure coincidence either."
"Guess it's time to time it," Solar Max stepped up to the warp bubble.
He could "see" it as a sort of wavering shadow when he focused on the local
gravity. Just a faint effect, not enough to even disturb the insects that
flew through it...but there, if you knew how to look.
"Remember, think of it as a magic mirror," Peregryn said. "It will show
you not just images, but the entirety of the events surrounding the beginning
of its existence, so long as you do not doubt yourself and your abilities."
"Right, no doubt," Solar Max nodded, staring into the flickering shades.
An image began to form, with sounds bubbling out of nowhere....
* * * *
[January 10, 1997 - Somewhere on U.S. 51, Wisconsin]
A heavy armored truck drove north towards "The Pit". Without warning,
walls of shimmering gold force sprang into existence around the truck. The
driver swerved hard in an attempt to follow the new maze he had found himself
in, but his efforts were insufficient and the truck slammed into one of the
walls. The maze shimmered for a moment, then shattered into golden shards
that evaporated in the cold morning air.
A man wearing a heavy parka over some sort of stylized ancient clothing
grinned even as he shivered. "Your turn, my lord."
"Do not call me that where any may hear, 'Mr. Maze.' It is important
that none suspect I am anything but a simple criminal." The speaker stepped
out from behind the snow-covered trees.
It was a huge man, easily 240cm tall, his head that of a bull. He
carried a gleaming golden double-bladed axe that was taller than Mr. Maze.
He wore no heavy clothing against the cold, although his thick fur seemed to
do the job well enough. He wore a sort of skirt and a wide array of
medallions and pendants that covered most of his chest. His feet ended in
thick cloven hooves and his fingers in short but savage talons. In short, he
was a minotaur.
The minotaur stepped over to the armored van and gripped the doors
firmly, digging his talons into the seam between them. With a shrug, he tore
the doors off.
"B-back off!" came a voice from inside the van, followed by a cyan lance
of light as a laser weapon of some sort was trained on the minotaur. Most of
it reflected crazily from the assortment of gold and silver adorning his
chest, but there was a faint sizzling sound as the weapon found flesh.
The minotaur reached into the van and pulled out a crumpled weapon as
the guard screamed. "We are here for Mosasaur, little man. I do not care if
you live or die, but if you care, you may wish to run now." He followed this
with a snorting sort of laugh, a sound that was as cruel as it was strange.
The guard darted past the minotaur, who nodded to Mr. Maze with a
smile. A shimmering arch suddenly appeared in front of the guard, who fell
headlong into it while looking back at the minotaur. The arch closed.
"He'll never find his way out of that one, Minotaur," Mr. Maze
chuckled. "Anyone else in there?"
"Three more guards, unconscious or dead from the crash. And our Doctor
Victor Pressman, aka the Monstrous Mosasaur. Drugged into oblivion,
naturally, or he would have simply freed himself by unleashing his atavistic
form," the Minotaur assessed before reaching in to withdraw a gurney. The
man strapped to it was slender and balding, the sort of man you'd expect to
find at a Faculty Club, not in an armored truck headed for The Pit.
Suddenly, everything acquired a second shadow.
"Hold it right there!" an amplified voice boomed. The light faded and a
figure in red dropped to hover nearby. It was the original Solar Max.
Suddenly the view blurred into shifting planes of gold and flashes of
red. Muffled voices could be heard, but everything was as if from a long
distance down a twisty maze of corridors, all alike.
Seconds ticked by with nothing concrete to see or hear, then there was a
blinding flash that seemed to fill all the world.
Things dissolved back into focus to reveal Solar Max, glowing like a
piece of the Sun itself, standing over an unconscious Mr. Maze. The glow
faded to tolerable levels, coalescing in Solar Max's hands and connecting
into a fiery quarterstaff.
"One down, one to go," Solar Max said, panting slightly. "You're big
and strong, Minotaur, but DSHA reports say that's pretty much it as powers
go. Do you want to join Mosasaur in the Pit with, or without, serious
burns?"
"I think Mosasaur will be joining me in my new team, and you will be
going to a very different pit," the Minotaur literally snorted.
"Fine. Hard way," Solar Max said as the staff suddenly reformed into a
small lens, from which spouted a torrent of light and heat...
...which fell into a disk of inky blackness that formed in front of the
Minotaur.
"The DSHA is wrong," chuckled the Minotaur. He released one of the
amulets dangling from his neck and touched another, gliding into the air.
His slow glide rapidly became a flying rush, and Solar Max barely avoided the
swing of that deadly axe the man-monster carried.
Reforming the lens into a staff, Solar Max jabbed at the Minotaur's
chest in passing, hooking onto a few medallions and snapping their chains.
He cursed under his breath, having missed the one that seemed to be capable
of blocking his solar blasts.
"Do not confuse the favors I bear for the source of my power, little
man," the Minotaur said in a low growl as he spread a massive hand to clutch
the remaining pendants to his chest. "You could strip me of all of them and
I would still destroy you."
For a long minute they fought, axe against staff, with Solar Max
occasionally switching his powers in an attempt to gain temporary advantage.
Teleportation, blinding light, even an explosive electromagnetic pulse failed
to tip the balance of the fight. And while Solar Max was tiring, the
Minotaur seemed to be growing more invigorated by the challenge.
Finally, the Minotaur settled to the ground and Solar Max circled
warily.
"I get it. Those 'favors' are from various gods, aren't they? You're
some sort of avatar, like Set or Stormcloud," Solar Max said between deep
breaths. "Or at least someone who has bargained with the gods for power."
The Minotaur laughed, a deep, hearty sound with only a hint of mocking
tone to it. "Avatar? No, for my failings, I am no mere avatar of some
other, greater god. I am, as you mortals say, the real McCoy. God-King of
what you call Minoa in days that no longer are. This is all politics, you
see, the games of divinity that a mortal like you could never grasp. Nor
will you live to try."
The axe glowed with an inner fire that reflected the glow from one of
the pendants.
Forgotten by both, Mr. Maze had regained consciousness. "I will banish
him for you, my lord!"
Realization showed on the faces of both Minotaur and Solar Max in the
same fraction of a second.
"Yes!" Solar Max crowed, bending his will to the arch even now
manifesting before him.
"NO!" the Minotaur bellowed. "He will...!"
The arch flipped over and engulfed the Minotaur, only the broad shaft of
his axe remaining outside and keeping him from falling into an endlessly
recursive maze.
"How DARE you!" Mr. Maze staggered towards Solar Max, fighting him for
control of the golden arch. It was clear now that he was not a young man,
and the earlier fight had taken a lot out of him.
"The Wanderer's told me about fallen Purebloods like your master, Maze.
I'll dare a LOT to keep them out of my world!" Solar Max shouted back.
Things seemed balanced for a moment, but then Mr. Maze collapsed like a
puppet with cut strings. The arch started to seal, despite the Minotaur's
efforts at bracing it open.
"Robert, no!" He levered himself up and faced Solar Max. "You killed
him! I will eat your entrails for that!"
"You can't eat what you can't touch," Solar Max snarled, as if trying
not to think about the fact that he'd just killed someone. "And you're...
going...IN!"
The gate shrank again, a sound of shattering bones accompanying it. The
Minotaur howled in incohate rage for a moment, then focused a gaze of
unadulterated hatred on Solar Max.
"I curse you threefold, Solar Max. So long as I remain in this trap,
you will know no peace. You will see this world descend into chaos and know
the loss of those you love. And you will surely die if you tell any the
truth of what happened this day. I invoke the Furies, Hecate and Nyx to seal
this curse! I call upon Oranos and Zeus to lend their might to this curse!
I beseech Kronos to remember my words until the end of time!"
The gate closed further, and now only the Minotaur's bloody and frothing
head was still visible.
He turned to face JakZak.
"So, you've finally come to free me...."
============================================================================
Next Issue:
The arc concludes in "Unfinished Business 3: Inauspicious Return", as
the second Solar Max fights the battle that his predecessor couldn't win!
PLUS: for you "process geeks," the original outline for #44 will be included
in the Author's Notes section, so you can see how a typical issue of ASH
begins its life!
============================================================================
Author's Notes:
More on the roads, first. The old Interstates got to keep their
numbers, but I now stands for Intensive Usage, thereby depriving would-be
wits of lines like "How can Hawaii have Interstate highways?" The old state
highways became Sector highways, but also usually kept their old
designations. Even the Combine government isn't hardcore-bureaucratic enough
to want to rename all the couple thousand Texas highways! But all the
U.S. highways and their counterparts in Canada and Mexico got relabeled as
General Usage or Heavy Usage roads.
I know a few threads from last issue seem to have been dropped, but
don't worry, they'll be back. I wanted to concentrate more on the bits that
dealt with "generations" issues this time out...fathers and sons, mentors and
students, the godtimers and those yet to come. Okay, I admit it, I just
trimmed a few scenes that felt like they were too much for this issue, but
looking back I realized that my feeling was based on the theme of
generations. :)
Finally, the Minotaur and Mr. Maze started life as one-line-wonders in a
big list of villain seeds I wrote up for my game Modern Knights. As I turned
the basic idea of this arc around in my head ("The original Solar Max dies,
leaving behind a mystery" was the original idea), I decided that making the
Minotaur a fallen god would give me someone with the power to tie together
all the bits I was thinking of, without being SO powerful that it'd require a
plot device of epic proportions to keep him from just taking over the world
in the 2020s should he be released (I hadn't yet decided whether he'd get
out, but I wanted to leave the option open).
More background in the notes for #44! Oh, and I was going to include
the original outline for this episode, but it has too many long term plot
spoilers in it. #44's is safe for release. }->
============================================================================
For all the back issues, plus additional background information, art,
and more, go to http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/ASH !
To discuss this issue or any others, either just hit "followup" to this
post, or check out our Yahoo discussion group, which can be found at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ash_stories/ !
============================================================================
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