[LNH] Young Lagneto #4: Versus the Legion of Net.Hippies!
__From__: Martin Phipps
__Subject__: [LNH] Young Lagneto #4: Versus the Legion of Net.Hippies!
__Date__: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 07:10:35 -0600
In the village of Muubaanlek in northern Thai.lan.
Eric and his wife, Noi, were watching the news on NNN when they had a
report on the LNH's
recent adventure with Sentries attacking their HQ in Net.ropolis. Noi
looked at her husband.
"When did you first meet the LNH?" she asked.
"Which LNH do you mean?" Eric asked.
"I first met the Legion of Net.Heroes in the nineties but I met the Legion
of Net.Hippies back in the seventies."
"The Legion of Net.Hippies?"
"Yes, it was the summer after I graduated from high school," Eric
explained. "Hex Luthor had gone on to become an industrialist like his
father and was setting up a Hexcorp factory in my home town. Thing is, my
best friend, Frank, didn't like the idea of Hex Luthor building a factory in
our town: he said that the factory would pollute the air and water and would
destroy the last remaining pristine area between Net.ropolis and Net.York.
So he contacted the Legion of Net.Hippies and brought them down to the site
of the proposed factory.
"The Legion of Net.Hippies consisted mainly of people who had been both
dodging the draft and protesting the Vi.net.nam war. It was rumored that
they were also satanic cult worshipers but Frank dismissed this as
government propaganda. Anyway, in the mid-seventies with the Vi.net.nam war
over and Nixon having been impeached, there didn't seem to be much for the
Legion of Net.Hippies to do... not that they ever did that much anyway but
it would have been nice for them to justify their eristance. So going on
the road and protesting in favor of what they considered to be worthy causes
seemed as good a reason to exist as any."
"Did the two LNHs have anything in common besides their names?"
"Well, from what I understand Procrastination Boy and Super Apathy Lad
were in both groups, which of course means that they weren't actually "boys"
or "lads" when the Legion of Net.Hippies were formed. Perhaps the
Procrastination Boy and Super Apathy Lad of the Legion of Net.Heroes were
just two guys with the same names as the ones in the Legion of Net.Hippies.
Or perhaps as they got older they were eaither too lazy or too apathetic to
change their names to Super Apathy Man and Mr. Procrastination. Who knows?
They did operate out of the same HQ as the LNH, or at least it was at the
same location as the site for LNH HQ was almost completely rebuilt shortly
after the Legion of Net.Heroes was formed in the eighties. And, of course,
Frank himself is a link between the two groups because he later joined the
Legion of Net.Heroes as Bicycle Repair Boy."
"Really? You never mentioned that before! Your childhood friend went on
to join the LNH?!"
"Well, yes, although we did sort of drift apart after high school. I mean
I went on to study physics and biochemistry and he went to, well, repair
bicylces. It's not like we were exchanging Christmas cards or anything like
that. I was more surprised to find my daughter, Aili, hanging out with the
boys of Generation Y."
"She was a member of the LNH too?"
"As I understand it she was a member of Generation Y and Generation Y was
a subgroup of the LNH so, according to set theory, she would have been a
member of the LNH, yes."
"Eh?"
"Never mind," Eric said with a smile. "Anyway, it's a small world when
both your high school buddy and your daughter join the very group that you
swore to destroy!"
"Why did you want to destroy the LNH anyway?"
Eric thought for a moment. "It's a bit of a blur now. My mind had become
clouded by the Cosmic Plot Device. While it increased my cosmic awareness
considerably it apparently weakened my higher reasoning."
"Really?"
"Well, yeah," Eric said. "I mean, in retrospect, I can see it was pretty
stupid of me to use the Cosmic Plot Device to bring Asteroid L to Earth in
the first place. And then when the Cosmic Plot Device disappeared from
where I had kept it in my citadel in the Savage Place, I was just looking to
someone to lash out against. I then went to Net.ropolis looking for the
LNH, thinking they might have had something to do with it. I hesitated to
actually confront them in person, however, because I was still wary about
someone recognizing me as Eric Morova. Instead I got recruited by Acton
Lord who promised to give me a chance to attack the LNH with impunity after
they had been lured to his base in the Gray Area of the moon."
"So that was when you went to prison?" Noi asked.
"No," Eric told her. "I went to prison years later after encountering the
LNH two more times." His face became grim. "Anyway, I thought you wanted
me to tell you about the Legion of Net.Hippies."
"Okay. Besides Procrastination Boy and Super Apathy Lad, who else was in
the group?"
"Let me see," Eric said. He then thought for a moment and started
counting on his fingers. "There was Pot Lad, Woman's Lib Lass, Make Love
Not War Lad, McGovern Supporter Lad, Burning Bra Lass, Kid Grass,
Draft-Dodging Lad, Peace Lass, Demonstration Boy,
Calls-Respectable-People-Fascists Lad, Flower Child, Listens-to-Rock-n-Roll
Lass and... Needs-a Shave-and-a-Haircut-and-Bath Man. There might have been
others. I'm not sure because there were others who joined the demonstation,
mostly people from our hometown, including Frank himself, who weren't
actually members of the Legion but were just there because they thought it
was a good cause."
"What about you?"
"Me? No! I spoke to Hex personally and he assured me that he was just
interested in what was best for the town! Like most small towns, it had a
higher unemployment rate than the big cities! Hex figured that this was
because the big companies didn't want to invest in small towns, that they'd
rather bring people from the small towns to the big cities rather than bring
the jobs to the small towns. Hex said he was actually saving the town by
providing people with a means of support so that they wouldn't end up have
to choose between going to live in Net.York or Net.ropolis in order to
support their families."
"There must have been a lot of people who agreed with him," Noi reasoned
because he went on to become president!"
"Yeah but that was in the year 2000. This was the seventies and back then
most people our age were a bit idealistic. They figured they could solve
all the world's problems by sitting around, smoking pot and listening to
rock music."
"And having a lot of sex," Noi pointed out mischievously.
Eric mused. "Yeah, well, that was the one good thing about the seventies.
Well, that and the Bee Gees. And Star Wars."
"So what were you doing while they were protesting?"
"On the day the plant was supposed to open, I was, I'm afraid, part of a
counter protest that wanted the plant to open on schedule. I thought the
Legion was just causing trouble and I told Frank as much, much to his
dismay.
"'Eric, I've told you before and I'm telling you again, I think you've
been spending far too much time with Hex Luthor. The man is a right
bleeder,'" Eric said, imitating his old friends faux British accent. "I
guess we had already started to drift apart by that time: he was as
idealistic as I was realistic. We both wanted what was best for our town,
we just couldn't agree on what that was."
"So what happened?"
"Hex did about the only thing he could do, really: he called in the riot
police. He had to, really, because the protesters were blocking the
entrance to the factory, which meant that people wouldn't have been able to
show up for work. Still, I couldn't help but feel a bit torn when I saw the
police with their helmets, shields, body armor and clubs. It all looked a
bit much for a group of unarmed hippies. And Frank was still my best friend
back then. I didn't want to see him get hurt."
"What did you do?"
"As Lagneto? I couldn't do much because I didn't want anyone to realise I
had mutant powers. That being said. When I saw the police approach the
Legion of Net.Hippies I instinctively used my powers on them to stop them
from hurting these guys."
"So you helped them after all?"
Eric sighed. "For a moment, yes, but then I saw some of the demonstrators
making fun of the police saying 'Hey, look guys, the pigs can barely move!
What's wrong guys? Your helmet's too heavy?' When I heard these jeers I
felt pissed off! The police were there to do a job, and that was to clear
an illegal protest on private property so that other people could exercise
their right to go to work and make a living. So instead of holding the
police back I let them go at those hippy scumbags and give them what they
deserved!"
"Eric!"
"Sorry. But it was an emotional issue for me. For me the carefree
lifestyle of the seventies finished when I graduated high school. I was
determined to go on to university in the fall and make something of myself
and I guess I looked down on those in the hippie movement, including the LNH
of the time. That might explain why I was so quick to think later on that
the Legion of Net.Heroes were a group that had to be destroyed, because I
had come to feel so much hostility towards this LNH of the seventies. I
didn't realise back then that the Legion of Net.Heroes really were a group
devoted to defending all of Looniearth."
"So what happened to them? "I mean the Legion of Net.Hippies."
"A few of them got arrested that day and then when they were released they
protested somewhere else and got arrested again. It was an endless cycle of
protests and arrests until, finally, some of them obviously got a clue and
realised that all their protests weren't accomplishing anything, that the
general public weren't supporting them anymore, and that would have been
when they went on to finish college and go out and get actual jobs. The
Legion of Net.Heroes eventually disbanded altogether and their HQ was
boarded up until the late eighties when construction began on a new LNH HQ
at the same site."
"By which time you had already become the net.villain Lagneto, right?"
"Yeah, that was after I got my Ph.D., had gotten married and had had
Aili." His face turned grim again. "Look, I'd rather not talk about that
part of my life. You told me once that it didn't matter."
Noi pouted. "I'm sorry!" She put her arms around him and kissed him.
"How's about we turn off the TV and go to bed?"
"Now you're talking!" Eric said decisively... and so they did.
THE END
Lagneto created by Jef Kolodziej
Legion of Net.Hippies created by Arthur Spitzer
Acton Lord created by Dave Van Domelan
Hex Luthor and Bicycle Repair Lad created by Christopher Hare
Noi created by me way back in the eighties as the focus of an adolescent
fantasy
