THE LIMINALS
#11: "Every Time A Bell Rings..."
A tale of angels and demons by Jeanne Morningstar
A Leadership Cry.Sig Net.ropolis 2023 prelude (maybe?)
This issue is dedicated to Rachel Pollack (1945-2023)
"To learn to play seriously is one of the great secrets of spiritual exploration."
–The Forest of Souls: A Walk Through the Tarot
Dee? Xauriel McKenna--Masterplan Lad, guardian of the narrative; Victoria Arden--Forsaken Lass, survivor of Limbo; Alice Ashdown--Net.Access, champion of
crossovers; Sakura Mangas--Manga Girl, synthetic senshi of creativity; and Maria
Hart, troubled trenchcoater, along with her ostrich familiar Sunny! They are
four young net.heroes, one trenchcoater and one ostrich who fight to understand
themselves and the worlds they inhabit, moving between the heroism of the LNH and the uncanny strangeness of the Lunaverse--the Liminals!
"So," said Masterplan Lad, finishing the the last touches on their lipstick. "How do I look?"
"Amazing," said Sharon. "If I didn't have a girlfriend, I'd be grabbing ahold of
you and pinning you to the wall and kissing you right now."
Just then, to MPL's frustration and relief, the moment was interrupted
when Doug
walked into the room, bearing the the night's movies–Sharon Friedman and Alys
Delano (as they knew their names were now) were DVD watchers; they'd even been
known to still watch videotapes.
Doug's abiding obsessions in life were mech anime and black and white movies. If
you got him in a room with Alice to talk about Macross, or with Sharon about Old
Hollywood, they'd never talk about anything else for a week.
Doug was bisexual, and he had a boyfriend and a very likely potential girlfriend
in Sig.ago, where he'd grown up. His pride in his home city was still pretty considerable (he'd told MPL shortly after they met that he in all honesty preferred Dvandom Force to the LNH; he even admitted a fondness for Teenfactor).
He'd moved here for a film history research fellowship; but had told MPL he preferred not to date people in Net.ropolis as there was too much drama. He'd meant this in the colloquial sense, not the narrative-metaphysical sense, but it
was still true: the constant flow of Drama around the city meant that it could
be difficult to hold down stable relationships.
Masterplan Lad knew a lot of queer people in long-distance relationships. As in-person queer spaces grew harder to access due to gentrification, and the internet became one of the most important vectors for queerness, it had grown more and more common. Some people he knew–such as Frat Boy and Fearless Leader–were even dating people in other dimensions.
That meant that
Net.ropolis could be near any other city, and that made it that much easier for
people in long-distance relationships, though they could never predict when Net.ropolis would be there. It was a little harder for Sig.agoans, though–Sig.ago was Net.ropolis's conceptual opposite; one of the things that
defined Net.ropolis was that it was Not Sig.ago and vice versa.
"Hey," whispered Alys, gently tapping them on the shoulder, "are you expositing
to yourself again?"
"Er, yes," they said.
"Well it's time to listen to Doug exposit instead."
Then they looked up at Doug instead, who was going on animatedly about the movie
they were watching today--one of those old Dolores De Wynter romantic comedies,
"Miss Net.ropolis"–and went on for a bit about her various trysts with famous
lesbians and experiments with gender.
And naturally, they thought of Maria. They felt something they'd been
feeling for a while now–a deep frustration and an absolute, desperate need, the
absence of her hand on their skin.
Masterplan Lad felt someone tap them on the shoulder. They turned around and saw
a familiar figure in a familiar trenchcoat. "Hi," said Maria.
"What? How did you--"
"We're both magicians, babe. And I sealed a narrative connection between us–remember?"
"So ah, what have you been up to?"
"Oh, roaming about the Earth and walking up and down on it.
"Well, I've been recovering after what we went through. At some point I'll have
to help sort out the post-cascade canon, but right now I'm supposed to rest as
much as possible. Ninja's orders.
"I've been calling myself Dee. For the moment, anyway."
"Dee, huh? So, like, John Dee?"
"Not particularly, no. I hadn't thought of that. That whole ceremonial magick tradition–that's not really who I am. It's too rigid, appropriative, and convoluted. And when something's too convoluted for me..."
"So you're more of a chaos magician, then?"
"Well, I think the understanding of our storytelling universe naturally tends to
something like chaos magick–thinking of magic as a narrative function. But even
chaos magic strikes me as too programmatic much of the time."
"Right! So you're a trenchcoater, then." Maria hooked her arm around theirs. "Systems and received traditions are bullshit. They always disappoint us. We understand this. That's the trenchcoater way."
"Hmm. I do see much that appeals to me in that, but... It's not a system of rules, but it is a set outlook, and I'm not sure it's mine. I'm not sure any of
the ones I'm familiar with are."
"I'm sure. I will say, it's very stressful to not fully understand all that. And
not know what my name is."
"Yeah, but it's also kind of cool? A lot of magic revolves around names. The Name Eater of the Seventh Abyss of Kelorak can't get you if you don't have a name in the first place."
"Ah, there's another thing I didn't know I had to feel anxiety about," said Masterplan Lad.
I gotta initiate you further. This isn't a sex
thing. Not *yet*." She winked conspicuously.
"Well tarot is great. It's like, not useful for offensive magic but it's good for figuring the world and yourself out.
Being good at tarot is the reason I'm
not an even bigger disaster than I am. C'mere."
Grabbing ahold of their hand, she pulled them through the door of a nearby shop–the Promethea Spiritual Supply Shop.
The scent of the air was heavy with cheap incense. At the deck was a middle-aged
white woman with a lot of rings wrapped in a sparkly green shawl. There were all
kinds of vaguely spiritual knicknacks, gewgaws and trinkets on the walls and shelves, from rune stones to rings to crystals. MPL grimaced to see a rack of dreamcatchers.
They took
out and examined the JONG! Tarot, based on Arthur Spitzer's acclaimed series, with images of iconic characters such as Plum Master and Dumpster-TRON.
It was the old familiar Rider-Waite-Smith Deck, the main one
their Writer used, as that was the one Rachel Pollack had used as a baseline in
her books. While tempted by the Dvandom Force tarot, they took the RWS out of the carousel.
"OK," said Maria. "Now the next step is..." She leaned in to whisper them, putting her hand on their shoulder. "We steal it."
"What?"
"Yeah, there's a custom that you can't buy your first tarot deck. It has to be
given or stolen. I mean, it doesn't *have* to be that way, but it's cooler and
therefore more dramatic and therefore gives your magic that little bit of edge."
"You're an LNHer, right? And you have mega scrupulosity even for a net.hero. So
that's why *I'm* gonna steal it."
There was an ear-splitting scream like a banshee's.
In the real world, someone who ran a kitschy spiritual supply shop would not actually have the magic powers to attack anyone who stole from them. But this was the Looniverse, and therefore...
"Thief!" said the woman at the desk. She raised up her rings, which emitted a red light that looked like tinted filmstrip. "By the Neon Noodles of Net.torak!"
"And here I was thinking we'd get through the whole issue without a fight scene," said Masterplan Lad.
Masterplan Lad looked about desperately for some kind of talisman or artifact they could use but amid this heap of commodified signifiers stripped of meaning–which is what magic is–there was nothing.
Before the Neon Noodles of Net.torak had hit,
Masterplan Lad felt lines of force wrap around their body, pressing into them.
They had to admit it felt good.
"Ah, so you've counteracted her binding spell by using your own on me first. I
imagine–ngh!–you've put a lot of thought into constructing this spell."
"Oh, I have." Maria cackled.
"Do you think you can escape me?" said the shopkeeper. "Now I will summon a demon! Behold!" She raised her rings, which began to grow in a green light.
All the talismans in the Spiritual Supply Shop shook. The foundations began to
quiver.
The shopkeeper looked around nervously. She knew that she'd made a terrible mistake but it was too late to back away.
At the center of the crater that was once a spiritual supply shop was something
that might have once been a man. Crosshatched with bulging muscles, he exuded Liefedity. This was none other than the LNH's old foe, the Robgoblin, now demonically re-powered by the Power Liefeld!
"Oh no," said Masterplan Lad. "I didn't think we were going to address this plot
that quickly..." [See System Corruptors #37]
"No! Fight NOW" shouted Robgoblin. "ROBBLE ROBBLE ROBBLE!" He sent a wicked burst of energy from his axe, causing more destruction.
"No," said Masterplan Lad. "This moment feels... significant somehow. I think I
have to face him..."
A faint glow of light had begun to surround Masterplan Lad. They felt the panic
give way to to a giddy sense of potential. "Hold on. I think I can feel another... major dramatic shift about to happen, in who and what I am. I... I think you can draw it out."
"I can feel it too," said Maria. "There's power building inside you. I gotta warn you... it's going to hurt."
"Then let it," said Masterplan Lad.
Masterplan Lad felt a sharp pain in their shoulder blades.
Their bones cracked and shifted, their flesh split. Their clothes and reality as
a whole shifted around them. From behind them they could see a great light.
Their body was filled up by pain, but in Maria's hands it didn't feel so bad.
They stood up and stretched out their two bright silver wings.
"I... ah. Hmm," said Masterplan Lad.
"What????" said Robgoblin. "An angel? Who's not a hot girl like Avengelyne? Blasphemy!" He shouted.
"I mean, some people might disagree with the not a hot girl part," said Maria.
They
could sense the flow of Drama around them in a much more immediate, visceral way. They knew their initial intuition was right–it wasn't time for this storyline to be resolved. This was one of those times when putting things off just might be the right answer.
"I'll bet," said Maria. "But this actually is a lot better. Now you don't have
to worry about your umbrella being stolen by the Terrible Ones or some shit."
"Aww. That's it for our date, huh?"
"...we were on a date?"
"Wait! I had a thought about teh name thing. Hear me out–Denys, with a y. Which
is a form of Dionysus, as in Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, the author of On the Angelic Hierarchy. That seems on theme now. It fits the cadence of your name, it makes the 'Deus Ex Machina' pun work, and it's kinda halfway between 'Dennis' and 'Denise' so it's a good genderqueer-y name."
"Hmm... interesting. It also connects my name to Bacchus, I note, who some call
the founder of trenchcoatry. But what if it doesn't work out?"
"Then you can just change it again.."
And somewhere in an abandoned apartment building, a figure paced. A figure who
happened to be made of conglomerated snail mail.
The Letterhack had been planning its revenge for a very, very long time now. It'd been five years since the first issue was posted, for god's sake!
The Letterhack heard footsteps and turned around. A couple of very greasy-looking men in suits had walked into the building, who seemed charged with an arcane power. There were wands in their pockets, and they definitely didn't look happy to see it.
They were hit wizards from the Wizard Mafia.
That was good. Mafia plots were
serious, realistic, important. The fact they had their wands pointed at it was
less good.
"Ah, but I am no ordinary mobster, my friend," said the ruff guy. "I am Edward
De Vere, Earl of Oxford, author under various pseudonyms of such renowned literary works as Hamlet, Moby Dick, and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl.
And
thusly shall I, like the son of Atreus, avenge the most foul and unnatural wrongs done unto me!"
"Who was that?" said the Letterhack. "Is that from Dune?"
"Ah, my friend, I shall give you a literary education yet... As well as an education in what I in one of my most exquisite essays once called the simple art of murder..."
NEXT: The Manga Girl Revenge Squad!
And now we know what MPL's deal is right now, to the extent that they themself
do. This was a plot development I thought up... jesus christ almost ten years ago, back when I was watching that terrible but weirdly fun CW Constantine series.
While I couldn't fit it into this issue, they do have the ability to "fold" their wings into extradimensional space which makes it easier to get through doors and such. (Which is why they're not visible in Leadership Cry.sig #8).
I really have no idea when Robgoblin will show up again. Is he going to come back in Leadership Cry.sig? That cascade already has a ton of plot elements, but
you know how cascades are...
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