page 983 – The true threat
Ahhhh, convention weekend. One of the few times in the year when a Far Out There page actually posts automatically at midnight! …and also one of the times when there isn’t a new Voting Incentive, cos I’m crazy busy with stuff. I THIIIIIIIIINK there’ll be a fresh one next Tuesday, but I wasn’t able to finish that one extra comic page that I usually like to have taken care of when I do an extra long con trip like this. So, yeah, we’ll see what kind of shape I’m in on Monday and whatever happens happens.
Now, back here in the past where it’s still Tuesday, I really need to get started packing…
1/9/18 EDIT: Okay, this MIGHT be unnecessary, but I’ll write it just in case. I THOUGHT I’d more or less recovered from MAGFest when I started working on today’s comic, but it’s getting late and I’m rapidly beginning to doubt that. I mean, I’m pretty sure I didn’t get sick this time, it was just a VERY physically taxing four-and-a-half days and I’m still really tired. I’m already starting to get that “Hey, I might need to drop everything and immediately fall asleep” feeling even now, so just in case, rest assure that I did NOT die on the road over the weekend, and there IS both a new page and a fresh Voting Incentive in the works as I write this… for as long as I can stay awake.
(Historical Notes: You know, as I re-post this, we’re right around the time that the online-only MAGFest 2021 is supposed to happen. Part of me wants to be nostalgic, but reading stuff like the paragraph above just reminds me of why I stopped going even when it was there to go to.)
Congratulations, kids! You finally meet someone who’s more than willing to tell you to your face’s that he considers you the evildoers, and can directly point to the evil thing you just did to him.
And, in addition, they finally met what is probably their first ever actual Real Villain, a former next-in-line to inherit the position of Boss of a major Criminal Syndicate, with a list of (unconvicted) crimes to her name that would fill several entire filing cabinets, who regards them as zero threat and instead finds them hilarious, and who they immediately begin to puppy-dog-fawn over in typical teenage boy fashion. It would be really difficult for anyone to fail at Justice-Hero-ing any harder. So they are as Extraordinary as they think, just not in the way they think they are.
Layla’s not in any way, shape, or form the first Real Villain that the kids have met. After all, they’ve met their own parents, who’s we have enough circumstantial evidence to state have a list of crimes big and expansive enough that the entirety of Layla’s crime history looks like she was stealing food to feed orphans in comparison.
OK, the first real villain not a blood relative*. Or maybe the first real villain that they might actually have a chance to thwart. Or perhaps the first real villain that they met on their “crimefighting adventures”.
*Heck, this is a weird universe, I can’t even say for sure they’ve met their parents, maybe some of the super-mega-ultra-rich let nannybots do 100% of everything since birth because they can’t be bothered to mess with gross nasty kids– it still wouldn’t be the least responsible parenting decision they’ve made. Just conceive and incubate ’em in a vat, hand ’em off to nannybots for all the icky details, and rent a Nitpicker and associated Army to pamper and coddle their delusions -who says parenting is hard?
The third one may be the most likely… if I didn’t believe that they had likely passed near several real villains during their crime fighting careers and simply missed the crime due to their adventures. And they don’t have a chance to thwart Layla, she doesn’t have any criminal plans running at the moment, beyond a generalised and hopeful “return to being rich”, and that plan, in and of itself, isn’t criminal. Plenty of people have plans to become wealthy, most of which don’t involve crime.
My goodness, SO many things I have to bite my tongue and not reply to for fear of spoilers! 😛
These kids will be in the plot long enough to have relevant spoilers?! In relation to what we were saying? Even with how this arc is turning out, that’s still incredible to me.
*TONGUE-BITING INTENSIFIES*
…if I actually am able to set custom emoticons for this site, I need to see if I can set some secret combination of symbols to be a Tongue-Biting Face only I can use.