RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Writer's Block Strikeforce 69 #1

Somewhere outside continuity...

Graviton was fucking bored. As a (size-altering) superhero, he didn't like saying nasty words like that. But, as Dr. Augustus von Braun, a scientist, he felt he had describe his situation as accurately as possible. And, in this case, that was: "I'm fucking bored."

His eyes stared at the monotone stream of data in his computer screen. In the old days, when the numbers bored him he could look out the window of the Strikeforce's satellite and marvel at the beauty of earth or the glory of the sky. If he was lucky, he could use the ultra-prismatics of his invention and zoom in on a naked colony. Though he was still in the same satellite, if he looked out the window now all he would see would be the grey nothingness that had surrounded the place for so long now. If he zoomed in on it, the luckiest he could get would be some grey-on-grey action.

It had been almost a year since the SF satellite, and all the Strikeforcers inside it, were transported to this place. Nobody was sure how or when it happened: they just faded away from existance and appeared in this limbo. At first, Graviton found the grey void outside fascinating to look at during his moments of idleness, but after months of nothing but that, he really started missing "Friends" reruns.

Sitting in the satellite's Monitor Room (where, appropriately, they kept all the monitors), he was absent-mindedly staring at his favorite screen (the one on the lower left corner) as he ate a cheeseburger, when he noticed a sudden shift in the data had occured few moments ago. Not believing what he saw, he rubbed his eyes and looked at the screen again. All he could see was yellow. He wiped the burger's mustard from his eyes, and took another look.

"Dear Gob..." he said to himself.


Brandon Mullarney, also known as Hero, the caped strong man with more powers than fingers (19 powers), was having some private time in his chambers: he was sitting in his sofa eating chips and dressed in shorts while watching "Seinfeld". He kept his "Seinfeld" tapes a secret from the rest of the Strikeforce, especially from that sitcom nut Graviton, because if they learned about their existance they would start borrowing them, and there was a high chance he would never see most of them again.

"Hehehe... that Kramer..." he whispered, so the people in the next room couldn't hear his enjoyment.

An annoyingly common ring-tone you've probably heard at least 500 times in your life let Hero know someone was trying to reach him through his SF communicator. (He didn't know exactly who, though, since he hadn't discovered the amazing world of personalized ring tones yet.) There was a time when the sound of his comm would have sent him into a state of alert, but these days, it usually means someone's run out of barbacue sauce.

Sighing, he pressed "mute" on his remote and answered the call. "Yep?"

"Hero, you've got to come to the Monitor Room!" Graviton's voice exclaimed.

"What is it now? Did your favorite monitor break again?"

"Now, it's much more important than that! We're... We're in continuity!"

Hero's eyes widened. "What do you mean..."

The comm hanged in the air for a couple of seconds, like all sorts of communicating devices do in these cases, as Hero moved to the bathroom in super-speed. He put on his pants, slicked back his hair and brushed his teeth, all in less than a second. He slowed down to floss, though, because the last time he flossed in super-speed he lost two teeth and both of his pinky toes.

"...in continuity?!" he finished, now standing behind Graviton's seat in the Monitor Room.

"Well, not exactly in continuity..."

"Damn you, you made me get dressed for nothing!"

"...but finally outside it, which is a step up from being in limbo, as we have for the past year."

"What in Gob's name does that mean, Augie?!" Hero was starting to get anxious, as he does when he doesn't take his pills. Not crazy pills, mind you. Just pills to prevent him from yelling at people.

Aug... Graviton was used to the role of the scientist guy who explains shit, so he sat back and got comfortable. "Well, allow me to start by saying that I've finally figured out what happened to us:

"About a year ago, for reasons I can't begin to understand, our universe's continuity split into two timelines. From the little I've observed, it appears one of these continuities... let's call it 'Earth A'... is the one where our old 'Vanguard' friends reside, albeit in a very different form than when we met them. The other continuity, let's call it..."

"Elsinor."

"What?"

"Let's call it Elsinor."

"Why such a silly name?"

"My mother's name was Elsinor. She was a saint. I've always dreamt of naming a daughter after her, but since we appear to be stuck here and I'm not too popular among the team's females... they make me nervous, so I yell at them... it appears that I won't have any daughters, or even sons, to name Elsinor. This is why I've recently decided to bestow that honor upon something else, to make peace with my late mother and, ultimately, myself. I thought about suggesting the name for your pet screen, but this is even more fitting..."

"How come?"

"She was a big woman."

Graviton cleared his throat and moved in his seat. "Well, eh... Ge-Getting back to what I was saying... Earth, uh, 'Elsinor', appears to be protected by a group of metahumans calling themselves the MBL. See, what I think happened is that the... 'gods' or whatever that rule these two realities each took the elements of their predilection from the 'old' Earth and buildt new universes around them. The problem was... nobody wanted to take us, so we're stuck in the middle."

"Oh. That's kinda insulting, isn't it?"

"Indeed it is. HOWEVER, the unexpected result is that we're not merely outside those two continuities... we're now outside every continuity that exists, and capable of observing the endless realities that reside there!"

" So, you can look into any of these other realities?"

"Yes, that's how I saw the current state of the two timelines that used to be our universe... I can tune the monitors we used to watch newsfeeds to show us instead any reality we can imagine! But here's the better part... with some adjustments to our teleportation technology, I think I can allow us to not only observe these realities, but to enter them!"

"Great! This means we can come back home, doesn't it? Or... whichever of the two timelines resembles home the most..."

"Weeeeell... In theory, yes... But, do we want to come back?"

"What do you mean, Augie?"

"Think about it: nobody wanted us there. Not Vanguard, not the people... Not even the 'gods' of that place. I say screw them. Not to mention that we would be redundant in any of those places, since they already have superhero teams protecting them... What about the countless other realities without superheroes, or with lame ones, where we could really make a difference?"

Hero looked at Graviton for a second. "What about them?"

"We could go there!"

"Oh! Ohhhhhhhh! Yeah, you're right! That'd be cool. Shall we tell the rest of our teammates the good news?"

"Well, as the one who made this discovery, I'd like to..."

"Fine, fine, I'll tell them. Where's the mic?"

before either man could make the announcement they were interrupted by a loud: "DUUUUUUUUDEEESS!!!!!!! Strikeforce. . .69! Duuuude."

The Strikeforcer and former Vanguardian known as Brute Force (that's two words, not one). walked into the room.

BF: "Have you guys seen it yet?"

Graviton: "Well, as a matter of fact, we were just about to make the announcement about being out of continuity to the whole team."

BF: Out of. . .what???

Hero (whispering to Graviton): "Has he gotten dumber since he's been here?"

Graviton (whispering back): "Definitely a case of Homer's Syndrome. We should take him to med bay for an exam after we make the announcement."

BF: "No, dudes, my new sleeveless outfit designed to show off my bitchin' biceps!"

BF posed as Hero and Graviton attempted to regain their composure.

BF: "There's no way the hot chicks on the team can resist this! High five!"

“Shhhsss. THUD!” An arrow passed just an inch from BF’s right hear, and planted itself in the wall. A blue costume was hanging from the arrow.

“My outfit!” cried BF.

“You left it acain in dhe Waschingmachine!” growled a voice with a heavy German accent, coming from behind.

The three Strikeforcers turned to see, standing across the door, William Tell, with a red face that stood nicely with his yellow costume.

“Look!” he said, raising another costume in his left hand, and fluttering it under the nose of BF. “I did my wasching, but dhere was your fukking Kostume left in dhe Machine, and it dyed my spare one! Now it’s GREEN!”

“Frankly, Bill, now it’s better. Yellow makes you so gay” stated BF.

“Grhrrr!” growled again William Tell. “Now eferyone will kall me Robin Hood! Arghhh!”

And William Tell left the room, crying.

The Striking Cafeteria

"...and, in conclusion, having sex with a zombie is in no way dangerous to one's health, especially if you have mystical powers to protect you, and in fact can result more pleasurable than doing it with a live person." After finishing his speech, Brian Dead took the coffee mug he had been holding up since he began talking, and took a sip from it. "Shit, this stuff is cold..."

"Hmmmm..." Moonstone said, rubbing her chin. "Well, I must admit your arguments were pretty convincing... This isn't something I would normally do, that is, you are not something I would normally do, but since we're stuck in limbo and I..."

"ATTENTION, STRIKEFORCE!" Hero's voice exploded from the Highschool-like amps on the cafeteria ceiling, causing everyone to look up, even though that doesn't help you hear better. "PUT ON YOUR PANTS AND SUCK UP YOUR BELLIES! WE ARE BACK IN CONTINUITY, PEOPLE! Meeting in the gym in 20 minutes!"

Moonstone moved her gaze from the amp down to Brian Dead, calmly stirring his coffee with a rotten finger. "I suppose you know this means I won't sleep with you."

"Oh, yeah. I knew that," Brian casually said. "I was actually expecting something like this to happen... it always does when I manage to convince a female to sleep with the dead guy. I'm used to it by now."

"Oh," Moonstone said, a little disappointed to see that Brian wasn't heartbroken. "Then why do you keep trying? Is there any female in this place you haven't given this speech to?"

"Only a few, like Gertrude, the cafeteria cook..." Brian looked at the woman in question, violently dropping the green substance they'd been eating for the past year on a cautious Strikeforcer's tray, and shuddered. "I only do it to pass the time. It's like a mental excercise. I gave up on getting laid again the day I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a worm entering my forehead."

"Well, in any case, I wish you good luck for next time..." Moonstone stood up "...but don't me try again. Ever. If you'll excuse me, I'll go change before the meeting."

As Moonstone left, Brian continued stirring his coffee and then took a small sip. He put the mug down, not in front of him but on his right, carefully cleared table space directly below him by moving his plate to the left, and let his forehead drop in painful impotence. "Every. Fucking. Time."

The Meeting Gym

Hero stepped into the podium he had someone else move to the gym the day it was decided that a meeting room for 15 people wasn't the best place to have meetings with almost 70 Strikeforcers. Since then, this place was known as "the Meeting Gym", and every physical activity was to be taken to the new "Gym Room", where the big table and the chairs around it made the weekly basketball games a bitch.

"What's this about being in continuity?" Freak asked. "We're still in the middle of a grey void."

"Well, we're not in continuity..." Hero began, causing a general 'awwww' in the audience, "...but outside it, but not exactly outside, it's more like we're in but not in it, I mean... uhhhhhhh..." Hero wanted to see how long he could go before having to call Graviton "...Graviton!"

Graviton, up until that point standing on the podium in the size of a pencil, grew like a pedophile in a boy scout camp and grabbed the microphone from Hero's hand. "You know how there's a shift in mollecules if they are being observed? Matter changing when you look at it?"

"Of course!" was the general response from the audience, as they began chatting about this and other theories, and quantum physics in general.

"My instruments detected something like that about half an hour ago. As I looked into it, I realized we've suddenly become surrounded by several wavelengths; each one containing the information of a different reality. It was relatively easy to decode this information and translate into visual information our monitors can show." Someone raised a hand. "Yes, you in the second row."

"Isn't that a bit too convenient?" the random Strikeforcer asked.

"Uhhhh..." Graviton nervously looked at Hero. Hero made a short look at Brute Force, standing in the crowd, who understood instantly and quietly grabbed the nosy Strikeforcer.

"C'mon, let's go..." BF said.

"Where are we going?!"

"To the back... C'mon, move, move..."

"Ehem, ANYWAY," Graviton continued, "I've also been able to translate that information into coordinates our transporters can understand."

"All in the past half hour?" Moonstone asked.

"Yes. Well, the ten minutes preceeding the twenty since Hero made the announcement, to be exact..."

"[german accent]Can you teleport us into one of those realities, then?[/german accent]" William Tell asked. "[german accent]It would be nice if someone could go buy some toilet paper. Merlin's file cabinets are almost empty. Plus, with the mushy green stuff we're eating, his secret world domination documents don't quite get all the places that need to be reached, you know?[/german accent]"

"I think we all know about that, Wilhelm. We're all eating the same mushy green stuff and using the same hard paper..." Hero said, trying to keep a straight face not to give away the fact that he had a secret stash of toilet paper inside his mattress, and a secret box of hamburgers under his bed.

Off to Graviton. "To answer your question: we can't use the teleporter yet... I have to make some tests, or I could end up teleporting you in the middle of the void. Give me two minutes and..."

"No time for tests!" Hero interrupted. "This is a return to greatness for the Strikeforce, it cannot be delayed!"

"But I could just teleport a coin and..."

"NO! No coin will replace a Strikeforcer in a suicide mission for as long as I live!" Hero yelled. "What we need now is someone willing to risk their life for the team... Someone brave enough to face certain death... even sacrifice his or her life so that the rest of us know glory once again! What we need is..."

Everyone in the crowd, plus the people on the podium, stared at a man in a bright yellow costume (like something Marvel would publish in the 80's) with the letters "CF" in his chest.

"...CANNON FODDER!" Hero said.

"My name is Contra Fighter!" the man in yellow exclaimed. "Not Cannon Fodder, CONTRA FIGHTER! Cannon Fodder is a nickname those video-game-illiterate fools gave me!"

"Excellent. Step into the nearest teleportation tube so that we can begin, Cannon," Hero said, floating off podium and placing his arm around CF. "I admire your courage, my friend..."

"Why does it always have to be me?!" CF protested as he and Hero walked to teleporting tube conveniently placed on the Gym's corner (since teleporters were installed in every room inside the Satellite, including the bathrooms, the hallways had become an abanoned wasteland. If you ventured into the hallways, it was rumoured, you could hear the ghosts of the cosmonauts who first inhabited this place whisper passages of "The Capital" in your ear, unaware that the U.S.S.R. was long gone).

"Oh, face it, Cannon..." Hero said, as he opened the teleporter's glass door and showed CF the way in with a flawless grin "...you were born for this."

"Yeah, yeah..." CF replied, standing outside the teleporter. "Just let me get a saving point..." CF raised cap of the odd looking watch on his left wrist, and with his other hand pressed the red 'SAVE' button. "Done. You can throw me to the damn lions now."

Hero gently pushed CF into the tube and closed the door. He looked over to Graviton "Coordinates ready?"

"In theory, but given the situation I would like to double--" Graviton heard the teleporter's characteristic humming. "*sigh*"

"Monitor ready?"

"Yes, Graviton said, hooking up the small monitor he carefully carried under his arm. When no one was looking, Graviton whispered "...you're the only one who understands me..." into the monitor's speaker.

As CF faded away, the monitor's screen faded in. It showed CF standing in the middle of a street, in a city that looked like New York.

"DONE!" CF yelled at no direction in particular. "Can you bring me back n--" A passing truck interrupted CF's words, tearing his body to pieces.

Before the general 'Ouch!' had died out, CF re-appeared just outside the teleporter, in the same place where he pressed the red button in his wrist. "Ok, I died anyway. Are you happy now?"

"Very happy," Hero said. "And so, let it be known that a new era for the Strikeforce has began!"

"[german accent]A era in which we can clean ourselves with toilet papers coming from diverse realities![/german accent]"

The people cheered, and the post ended.

Brute Force skipped out on the rest of the meeting because he had to take a large crap. Stopping by his room to pick up a large stack of comics, he set about his business.

"But. . .but, King Semen can't be dating Barbarian Princess! She's not an amphibian! Plus, I think she's been sneaking back home to the Isle of Lesbos with Freedom Maid! Oh, ew, that isn't Barbarian Princess at all! It's Saturn Spaceman disguised as Barbarian Princess! Who writes these things? Hey, Hostess Cupcakes! Delicious and refreshing!"

There was a loud knock on the door.

"Hurry up in there! Some of us don't have super strong colons, you know!" Material Girl, token eighties character, screamed from out in the hallway.

"Dammit, woman! I'm in the middle of a dramatic moment in classic graphical literature here!" BF responded.

"You mean you're reading those stupid comics again! Why don't you grow up you asshole?!" Material Girl began to walk off down the hall to look for ACK as she needed to finish her laundry and ACK's rotors were much more suited to the job than the old Russian systems on the satellite. "And don't forget to flush this time, you twit!" She yelled back towards the bathroom where BF settled back into his reading.

BF staggered out of the bathroom with much difficulty. "I hate it when my legs go to sleep!" He lamented, attempting to lift one leg and move it forwards. "Damn these pins and needles!" BF slowly made his way back to his room.

Down the hall, ACK took care of Material Girl's laundry. And Material Girl. "Oh yes! Spin Cycle! Spin Cycle, you gorgeous hunk of machinery, you! Oh, God, YES!!!!!!!!!"

Freak was talking to a guy in the cafeteria. No, it was a computer room. Wait, I was right the first time, it was the cafeteria.

"So, you died?"

"Yeah, it really sucked."

"what was it like?"

"Oh, you know. It was...like dying. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find good Chinese food when you're dead?"

"Probably not. Have you used that joke before?"

"Yeah, I use it all the time. I'm not really sure how I came back. But, you know, here I am."

"Well, that's good isn't it?"

"Not really, I don't belong here. I'm froma different message board, er, I mean reality than everyone else."

"What?"

"You know, an alternate reality."

"You mean you're not Drake Marshall?"

"Who the hell is Drake Marshall?"

"The guy everyone was hoping you were."

"Oh, sorry. My name is Herald Skye."

"Wow, your name is sure spelled funny."

"How can you tell?"

"I'm a very smart lizard man."

"Yes, I see."

"So, what are your powers?"

"I can turn pure chaotic energy into solid constructs."

"Wow, that's needlessly complicated."

"Yeah, well, I'm the son of a Chaos Fighter and the former Herald of Chaos from an alternate future."

"Alternate from the alternate message board, er, reality you're from."

"Exactly."

"Do you have a code name?"

"Yeah, Skywedge."

"Skywedge, huh. Want to get a chalupa?"

"Sure."

And off they went to get chalupas.

A nekkid girl appears in the salad bar.

"...WTF?" She looks down at her feet, one is in the ranch dressing the other is in the bacon bits. "EWWWWWW...not again!" she grabs a couple napkins off a stunned strikeforcer's tray and cleans off her feet then jumps onto the floor.

"Thanks. Uh, can you tell me where I am?" The man continues to drool and stare at her breasts, she lifts his chin up so he's looking at her face. "Hello? Can you please look up here when I'm talking to you? That is better. Now, Where am I?"

The man keeps glancing at her nakedness but manages to stutter out an answer.

"Strikeforce 69? Never heard of it, but I guess it'll do for now." She walks away from him towards the two men getting chalupas. The random strikeforcer (and most of the others nearby) watch her as she walks away.

Damn you for reminding me of this aborted failure, you miserable bastard.

Hey, it wasn't me. Really.

I hope you're telling the truth, son... for your own sake.

I am, sir. Why would I spam back with Shotgun-Wound-Guy?