What the flying ####: AKA: New Beginning a Retrospective by Gentlman Vaultboy.

[Marvelous Miscreant]

We are a frivolous bunch

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 In the deed. As it ought to be.

[Marvelous Miscreant]

I kinda want to re-read the Miscreant Arc now...

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Enter at your own peril.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Where was I?

Myself, deciding that Mik might very well attack his mincraft planet for some reason, decides to put it in his pocket AKA a personal realm. It's now an infinite amount of planitoids covered with monsters. He hides another redundant immortality in there, surrounding it with mincraft nerd friends and their friends i order to guard it. In the place he filed with monsters.

Also you know that Celedon plague that could have been interesting? He cures it. he gathers up a bunch of weeds and casts a worldwide spell that cures it. He just does and everything is fine again. Except for the teeny tiny little detail that those not effected by the plague were able to breed out of control and reproduce to "enormous numbers." Apparently the threat of death by horrible disease caused everybody to screw like rabbits because what else are you going to do? It has apparently been long enough (or Celedon pregnancies are so short) that everything is now out of whack. But it's all okay, because the cure has a side effect: from now on, everyone born on Celedon is a natural shapeshifter. They can change into anything until the age of 21, at which point they're locked in to the form they're in. This applies to everyone born after the cure was distributed.

Wulf see's this and decides to celebrate with non-alcoholic fizzy drinks. Everyone around him is less than enthused, likely caught up thinking of the social ramifications of such a sweeping change. So he threatens them with violence, and they all drink and cheer. Myself teleports to the party and proceeds to...make himself even more invincible. Dude piles on defensive spells then starts doping right there in the middle of the room. Then he sets up a Research Zone and starts constructing death robots to be his bodyguards, presumably in the middle of the dance floor.

Unfortunately for everyone the threat isn't over yet. It appears that those monsters Wulf mentioned earlier, the Cosms a Gullets are for some reason no longer satisfied with space radiation. A rogue one is headed toward earth, looking to suck up its tasty Earth energy. Two more are headed toward Aeon, and four Gullets are converging towards....I guess where Myselfs Minecraft cluster used to be since he put that one in his pocket. So no danger there. Meanwhile, one last Cosm draws toward Celedon. Wulf cries out to someone, anyone for aid. Help, someone help!

So Mik flies up to the one that's after Earth and uses Ultimate Authority to tell it to piss off. It does not work.

If the site is down and you can't read the description of Ultimate Authority, I'll go ahead and post it.

Ultimate Authority wrote

With this ability anything you can order anything to do what you want. This includes inanimate objects. However, the longer the command the less the power your command has, so it's best to stick to a few words. This ability takes intense concentration to work. The level of concentration varies, depending on if the object could normally do this. Meaning that living objects are easier to control than inanimate objects, or space. Orders can also include effects such as, Burn, Freeze, or Age.

Seems pretty cut and dry, doesn't it? Can anyone give me a reason this should not work?

Wulf say it doesn't work because it's not divine but psychic, and they eat it, and besides they can't take orders because it's not even really sentient. And even though psychic powers aren't mentioned in the powers description and Mik, the power's creator, tells him that it's not psychic Wulf continues to insist that it is psychic. It goes the same way with every other solution that Zale, Neo, or Mik come up with. It either flat out doesn't work, is ignored, or threatens to make the situation worse.

Because Myself's solution is the only one that matters to Wulf. I don't mean Wulf the character like I usually do. Wulf the poster states, flat out, several times, that he's only interested in Myself's input. The other player may as well have gone and done something else. The only editorializing I'll do about that is mention that this is the only New Beginning, so far, that genuinely pissed me off while reading it. Back to the plot.

Myself's solution is sixfold. First he builds a bunch of planetary arks, capable of carrying the entire population of Earth and Celedon into the safety of hyperspace. I can't even fathom the logistics of an evacuation that big, but I'll bet anything mind control greased the wheels considerably. He has previously placed his own planet into a personal realm, which makes me wonder why he can't do that with every planet these things are threatening. Noe catches on to this, and places NEw Atlantic in a pocket dimension as everyone on Earth is being marched on to the arks. He telepathically sends the one headed to Earth information on the Van Allen radiation belts, but because that's psychic powers that will just get eaten by the big stupid ball of cosmic nothing. He puts a black magic shied around Celedon, so that when a black mage uses black magic half of it is sent to the black magic shied and the ting will be able to eat to its hearts content. Because black mages are evil, and only care about power, they'll definitely keep casting spells to further their own plots even if the whole planet is in danger of being eaten. Wait, wasn't he evacuating Celedon? Bah, details! He puts portals in front of the beast to a plane of infinite energy so they can eat like pig in a trough forever. Unfortunately, the eat dimensional energy (that was the reason given why doing things like folding them into their own little pocket dimensions didn't work) so the portals will destabilize and fall apart in an instant. Finally, he makes research zone in his martian colonies so that if they ever roll around again we'll be prepared.

Myself, satisfied with these stop-gap measures, starts to colonize hyperspace. Or has already been colonizing hyperspace, because they've already learned to harness the energy of hyperspace and protect themselves from it. And also mine? And the colonies drift around? No one explains what exactly hyperspace is.

But that's besides the point, because Myself uses the energy and incredible technological advances of these recent colonies to make himself more powerful.

Wulf pops in at this point and says "hey, good job with Celedon, but you still have Earth and Aeon to save. Not to mention your own planet." I guess Myself didn't send him the "my planet is in a personal realm" memo.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Took me a minute, but I can take the criticism in stride. I seem to have bothered a lot of folks through the course of my tenure here. Sometimes, the same folks more than once.

Proceed.

[Zaleramancer]

I'm now remembering an embarrassing argument I had with Jester on who was faster.

Oh, that's gonnna burn.

dork ages dork ages dork ages

[Mik_Hael]

I'm just waiting for the period when I said "screw it, I'm killing everything." for about a good year.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Pretty sure that comes up soon.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

While everyone is busy trying to figure out what to do about Wulfs big balls of doom, Zale takes this opportunity to fly to Mars in a rocket ship and claim it for his own not realizing that Myself beat him to the punch ages ago.

Mik gets tired of all this and stabs a Cosm with a sword. Wulf gets all pissy at this and says that they absolutely can not be killed. Not in a "they're invicible" way, in a "you aren't allowed to hurt the because they're mine" kind of way. In response Mik makes them dance like Michigan J. Frog and bows out.

At this point everyone meets up on I'm going to say Mars and discusses how to finish up with these monsters, Wulf still insisting that no one kill them and vetoing every plan involving that. Myself says that, to get them to stay in one place, all they have to do is create an infinite energy source. Bug says he could whip something like that up in three months, but there's no time for that. At this point, only Aeon is still in any danger because all the other planets are hidden away, and even then Phi manages to distract the smaller one.

Phi at this time introduces three lieutenants of his: The Mirror master, Soul. The Alchemis, Golet. And the Psychic, Psy. That's all the information we get on them and I'm not sure why they're even brought up.

Myself, meanwhile, is flying around like Nyan Cat holding a star in his hand distracting the rest of them. Wulf thinks he van get their friends the Asterisks to help, which are beautiful, luminescent, xenophobic star beings. Zale thinks he can create a star the size of the moon given sufficient time, and Phi says he can build a ring to hold them until they're done eating. Phi suggest that, if they do this, they may even be able to farm them.

Seeing as how there's no more real danger, Myself ends the evacuation and lets everyone return home. Then he goes about building even more of a cult of personality around himself, changing the metabolism of any who wants it, giving out even more superpowers, age reduction and locking treatments (literally just handing out immortality), building schools, hospitals, infrastructure....

Now this might be the part where you expect me to make some pithy comment casting all this in the most fascist light possible, and I could. But I won't, because I have no problem with any of this. Also, the average number of powers an ordinary Earth human possesses is now 4. 2 at minimum. Just thought I'd point that out.

With the Cosms all floating happily away and everything safe and dandy again  Phi takes the opportunity to be an idiot and wonder aloud who would win in a fight between him, Mik, and Wulf. While they discuss power level and get more and more pumped up at the thought of an all out brawl between three who can bench whole civilizations, Wulf elaborates on the meaning of his title, The Penultimate. See, it's all based on a prophesy that states that he's the last good and just ruler of the planet. If this prophesy already seems a little fishy, just wait. So he's the last good king, and the guy after him is so bad, so terrible, that Gaugamon the big monster goes mad with grief and kills the entire planet. But Wulf can't stop it, because he's dead from natural causes at this point, and the true heir has been tricked off the throne.

So what this means is that this prophesy is invalid, because no vision of the future can ever stand up to Myself. See, Myself shares all his powers with Wulf. This includes immortality. So the only possible way Wulf would ever die of natural causes would be if Myself went first. Wulf dying, and the prophesy being fulfilled, is reliant on Myself's death. The man who's so immortal Sun Wukong would look at him and go "hey man, don't you think you've had enough?" Wulf, seriously consider changing your name to The Ultimate because you are sovereign god king forever ruling over a continuous golden age.

What was I talking about? Oh right, Mik, Phi, and Wulf were going to blow apart half the night sky duking it out. They all go off to train for this fun little exhibition. It's, like usual, Mik who suggest that it take place somewhere that won't result in a billion pointless deaths.

Meanwhile, Myself wanders into a town that persecutes people for having powers. Remember, 2 at minimum. He mind controls them on this incredibly flimsy excuse. Or kills them. He says "convince", but he puts it in quotes and nothing is clear about where this town is or what myself is doing there or what happens. So, the usual.

The first annual compass fox hunt begins on Aeon. No one of note attends. Three years later someone finally does that side quest.

[Zaleramancer]

Mars is a contested territory.

The contest in question is checkers, of course, but still.

[Mik_Hael]

I think I might have an explanation for the entire people with no powers thing.

Remember that Irony power I made a while ago.

Real World.

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Wulf, Mik, and Phi head off to fight somewhere, leaving everyone else to deal with all powerful versions of Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, and Bruce Lee who came to this dimension wanting to harvest the spines of the cosmic clouds and are now running amok because they all left. If this comes out of nowhere, that's because my eyes glazed over during the arguments over why the things couldn't be killed and it got lost in the shuffle. Point is, these guys showed up.

Neo, Geenday, and Myself jump into action, doing all sorts of preparations like donning armor, calling in armies, and powering up. Myself summons up a army of Justin Biebers and Greeday prepares to throw <big number> of Kystians at the problem like he always does. Each of them takes multiple posts on this build up but none of them actually take the time to, you know, attack.

It's at this point that Marv shows up. Neo ascribes to him a level of power he's not comfortable with, but in doing so inspires the creation of Marvs supercomputer buddy K.A.R.M.A. More on that later because, at Marvs request, Mtself pulls the wondrous city of Kethencia into this dimension for him and plops it down in the middle of the Sahara desert. Kethencia, city of Amber and Sand inhabited by sentient constructs of his own design, is soon under the control of the Kethencian Augmentation Regulating Master Automaton. K.A.R.M.A., the magic supercomputer the powers everything from the lights to the ambient energy in the air and managed by the clockwork Marv, Sullivan. We also get the first mention of a Tech Elf, Techne, who Wulf provides to do IT support in case Marv needs it.

Neo makes a funny comment at this point about how it's a good idea to have all the power tied to K.A.R.M.A because that would make it harder for anyone compromise the city, which is the exact opposite of true. Moving on.

Techne is the best at everything machines ever. She knows Marv's super computer better than he does, because she finds glitches in the machine biological components. Marv heads down to eject these and the biological bits take on part of his DNA, becoming a computer clone named Cyto that tries to delete Marv as a redundant component. They fight, he gets beaten, and Marv throws him into Wulf's hell dimension Prison Realm.

Good news. Turns out that those three martial arts demi-gods god board waiting for one of our heroes to actually put a stop to them, so they went back in time, slaughtered the dinosaurs, and presumably died of old age clutching the spines of their conquest.

With everything settled and celebrations in order, Marv decides that it's time for New Beginnings first party. We are on page 28.

The party encompasses the remainder of the thread.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

(Hey, look, a post where I'm not absolutely awful!  )

Oh, hey, wait, is that NB 3 or 4? Or 5? The first party is somewhere in there...

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Four.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

Hm...I think I remember now...

[Mik_Hael]

No comment on real world idea?

[Gentleman Vaultboy]

Mik_Hael wrote

No comment on real world idea?

I looked it up, but that power specifies a world wide effect with know one knowing that superpowers exist. Even if the user realised they had it and restricted their power to a single town if would still snuff out the powers of every person that came through it. Even if the traveler had defense against the effect there would be no persecution because everyone affected by the field would forget that superpowers exist every time they saw them used.

But you have pointed out a flaw in my thinking. Instead of asking myself "how could towns like that exist when everyone has superpowers?" I should be trying to make sense of it. "How would towns like this exist if everyone has superpowers?"

Now, onto the party. AKA "and thought everything before this was self indulgent."

Marv, in a move unprecedented in this story, throws open the doors of his territory and invites everybody into Kethencia to get down. He then makes the mistake of telling Wulf he can invites as many people as he likes. Later on this invitation gets taken to its logical, ridiculous conclusion, but Wulf starts off small. "Gladiators, amazons, ogres, werecreatures, fairies, goblinoids!" The lights and music are cranked up by D.J. K.A.R.M.A, and Sullivan sets the cooks to their task. I'd think a few would die from sheer exhaustion before the end of the night, but they're magic metal people so who knows?

Perhaps seeing this very dilemma, Phi and Wulf insist on bringing their own food. Myself, as a housewarming present, offers to imbue one thing with an ability while Mik puts up a Anomaly Core as a prize for any sort of contest they might hold. He also references the giant one on Earth, still sitting at the top of that pyramid.

Now things start moving very fast, and it's unclear what actually happens and what people just discuss doing, but I'll try to condense it. At one point Wulf request a lot a Kystians from Neo, who shows up to the party with them in toe. At some point I'm pretty sure Wulf and Marve set up a vomitorium, changing the eaten food back into good food with Mythpowers to be eaten again. At some point a whole lot more people showed up.

Two people who did not show up are Mik and Bug, who are on Celedon. Mik, I assume, misread his invitation. Bug, I'm sure, is just lost. Mik, looking around and seeing no party, decides he wants to contribute to it anyway with a sterling lightshow depicting both a dragon and all the worlds wars played out over Celedon's atmosphere. I personally would find this terrifying if I didn't know what was happening, but thats just me. From the roof of Wulf's castle, Mik and Bug kick back, eat some popcorn, shoot targets between reactors with a giant plasma cannon, and listen to the dragon as it belts out the music of the late great Jimi Hendrix. When busted the targets release butterscotch and chocolate to cascade down onto the planet and evaporate at sunrise.

I like this image, because at its core its just two guys listening the the radio, watching the stars, and shooting guns into the air. It's surprisingly normal.

Back on Earth Marv cranks up the base and adds in some lasers, while Wulf orders fairies to fyt about in the fog to create atmosphere for the dance floor. Marv has also noticed what Mik is up to, and turned the sky above the city into a giant viewscreen so the people at the party can watch. They've run out of real wars and have moved to fictional ones, with Mik adjusting the cannon so that you can add effects to the battle. Bug shoots one up and makes it hail on Aslan and the army of Narnia. Another shot and ninja cats have joined the fray.

Wulf now takes the time to set up some fun party games and also amazon mud wrestling and a bounce house. I call it the bounce house, but in reality its a bed with a bunch of stereotypically hot female mythical creatures jumping on it. Marv approves so hard his head blows up, which comments on. Wait, how is Bug here? Wulf explains that he has temporarily conjoined the city and Celedon, something that boggles the mind because of the sheer difference in size. But yes, Wulf has now invited a whole planet to the party and he isn't done yet.

But before he invites anyone else he raises a giant concrete skydiving platform and invites Marv to leap off of it with him. It is so high it's outside the atmosphere. Mik condenses a cloud layer under them so that they don't die horribly when they hit the ground.

Myself gets in on the embarrassing harem act and brings his own contingent of sexy girls who he created for "a friend." Right. Pull the other one, it's got bells on.

They just keep adding things, don't they. While I was looking away they've installed a football-field-sized Moon Bounce, a Mermaid Pool, a Dragon Ride, and a Zero-G Laser Tag area. And now they've started a pie eating contest. Bug sits the contest out in favor of some chicken, and women immediately start hitting on him. Geenday also shows up, hijacks a dragons, a starts doing loop-de-loops.

Marv calls everyone around, because he's handing out tattoos that give you access to Kethencia's ambient energy. Wulf gets his on the bottom of the foot, while Greenday opts for the nape of the neck. Then this is interrupted by the centaurs, who are organizing a horse race.

(Bug's shameless flirting also gets interrupted by a call from his girlfriend, who's just calling because she's worried about him. He tells her he's fine, closes it, and immediately goes back to flirting. )

The racers line up.
Wulf on Hurricane.
Greenday on Nikola Tesla.
Marv, on the Orcish Diabolus.
Bug, Featuring Epona from the Legend of Zelda series.
And a bunch of no name mook who don't matter in the slightest.

Buy in particular says that Epona comes with 10 speed boosts in the shape of carrots. Not carrots. In the shape of carrots. He's dopeing his horse.

And they're off, Bug using 4 boosts right off the bat. Greenday's Nikola Tesla is literally made of lightning. Diabolus is a monster and overtakes Wulf almost immediately. Bug and Greenday are out in front with Marv steadily gaining when Greeday throws lightning at Bug and Epona. Not even one page into the race and they're already cheating, the two of them fighting for first place throwing tornadoes and lightning at one another, Marv almost getting caught in the crossfire and Wulf desperately uses a wind booth to try and regain some ground. Mischet by Phi, though, as he tosses a blue shell into the race. But Geendays horse is now literally a tornado, who spits the shell back out and throws up a giant lightning wall. Bug goes over.... and falls into the spiked pit Greeday had time to dig like Dick Dastardly! This could be the en... Song of Time. He GOT OFF THE SONG OF TIME IN MID-AIR!

With this flagrant use of time travel Bug clear the pit. The Line up is now Greenday, Bug, Blue Shell, Marv, Wulf. I told you those mooks at the beginning didn't matter. Marv drops out around the time Greeday's horse turns into a hurricane because he finds this just as ridiculous as I do. Bug and Greeday reach the finish line neck and neck, tying, before Bug crashes into a wall of velcro Wulf had set up before. Wulf heads off to the pool a punch as they scrape themselves off the wall.

Hey, Spyder is at this party. Guess he got tired of coffee.

Everyone spends the next few pages watching Orc wrestling, which I would totally watch, while women still throw themselves at Bug. Mik raises a point that they've all been at this for two whole days. Then Wulf lowers the gravity and everyone forgets about that. In response, he shrugs and spike the punch pool with a transmutation elixir While Neo opens up a hole a mile wide straight down to the core of the Earth so they can go base jumping down it. I'm no geologist, but I can't help but think that would cause....something to happen. Something bad.

Neo and Green Link New Atlantis to the party like Wulf did with Celedon, and Wulf taps Rad World because suddenly fictional character start showing up at the part. Myself connect a fountain of eternal youth to the party. Neo lifts the area that Bug ands his lady pile are on and throws it into the sky. Wulf starts poofing in real, celebrity women, and some of them are immediately murdered in gruesome ways.

But we've finally reached the end of the thread, and get to see how they get everyone home. Hold on let's see, last post in the thread....

Wulf wrote

Time to continue the party.

.....it's not done yet.

We're not done yet.

I need scotch.

[Celadon's Penultimate]

 Oh, most indubitably. Good times. Goooood tiiiimes....

Things are about to get very fun.

[Mik_Hael]

Interesting proposal, my response to that is how would this power intersect with others...an easy answer to the how would these towns come into existence could probably be answered that it's the few people who either were cleansed by the spinning trigger toys or were some unlucky smucks who got the useless crack tart esque powers and hate the flying super gods.

I'm currently toying with the notion of how an extremely powerful field generated by the real world power would interact with people who had their mind protected/enslaved by Myself but whose powers themselves were not immutable, or vice versa, immutable powers but not an immutable mind, which might explain the several appearances of villains that are never explained some unknowing kid with power of imagination and whose second or third ability makes it so that his powers are immutable who simply has an active imagination. In other words reads about batman, creates batman, instantaneously forgets he created batman.

As for those with whose powers somehow grant them mind immutability or have been protected through some other means, may never realize they had powers due to real world keeping them at bay albeit thanks to their immutable mind power they are still aware of other powers....however the second any of the events generated by a superhuman would automatically be erased if it was in a zone protected by real world....meaning that every time a planet destroying event happened as long as it was created by super powers it would be erased and the general reality in that area would return to normal....then again this is all posturing.

Maybe monster king is doing it for all I know, he's currently in control of the northern hemisphere and has all of my powers which should include real world, and given that he should be aware of the power he should be able to control it's field of effect so in theory he should be able to create controlled bubbles of anti power areas....maybe just maybe him or someone else with this power are sacrificing themselves to form small cones of reality protection around the power hating towns by sitting themselves in it's dead center and then limiting the real world field to several miles around themselves.

Thinking of contradictions to explain this mess is starting to get confusing, brb.