Dark_Knight1954
New Member
PART ONE
Having decided that Metropolis, as well as the rest of the Free World, had no immediate need for the Man of Steel at this time, not to mention the implied probability that Lois Lane would stay asleep and, therefore, encounter no degree of danger that such as she seemed so constantly capable of bringing upon herself, Superman had streaked out into the airlessness of space at speeds rapidly reaching near-light velocities.
Something supposedly not possible, according to Albert Einstein as well as the plethora of physicists and cosmologists who had come along after, through both the remainder of the 20th Century and, now, into the first few seven or eight of the 21st.
But such a possibility existed according to Kryptonian scientists, such as Jor-El, Kal-El’s biological father…the man who desperately tried to essentially save most of the humanoid race of a crystalline Krypton, only to be forbidden from something considered to be sedition by the illustrious Elders ruling their super-scientific, star-spanning, in past centuries prior to political pressures to stop, species.
Causing the true father of Kal-El send the Superman-to-be baby, with the partnered techno-assistance by the baby’s natural mother named Lara Lor-Van, prior to marrying Jor-El, to send a hyper-space traveling vessel, large enough for only a single infant, out in the general direction of Earth at relativistic speeds seemingly exceeding the speed-of-light constant, so quaintly attributed to Einstein, by a factor of thousands. While Kal-El’s beloved biological parents, unfortunately, were forced to remain behind and die along with countless billions as the aging red giant that had been Krypton’s sun for more than ten billion years, with an intelligent civilization in existence, from a proverbial Stone Age to the Age of Space Travel and more, for some two-and-a-half million of those years…
With a sudden inner sigh, while still concentrating on not breathing while swiftly reaching light-speed in space, normal not hyper at this particular point, Superman thought, To think. A planetary race who had, untold millennia earlier, sent spaceships out to explore and, possibly, colonize. Ships that, eventually, achieved hyper-space travel potentials, making vaster interstellar distances at seeming faster-than-light instead of close-to-light velocities. But because of strife-fraught faction-against-faction combative troubles across the crystalline surface of that near-frozen world orbiting a dying single sun, had forced my father, for one, to spend the next scientific half-century to halt all interstellar activities, until the fateful afternoon my Kryptonian parents secretively sent me away via a hyper-spatially traveling vessel…a true star-ship!…well, let’s just say that such was most definitely an ironic turn of events. But one thing my father, as well as all true scientific types on Krypton at the time, had indeed long-since learned was that near-light was extremely possible along with the eventual achieving of seeming faster-than-light levels of interstellar travel via said hyper-space. Too bad billions became subsequently extinct because of certain ruling Elders expressly against super-science due to remembrances of science-assisted planet-wide battles that had, for a time, threatened what the Elders held was a possible destiny that did not necessarily include interstellar exploration and definitely not planetary colonization.
Pouring on the graviton-creating/controlling super-flight capabilities, like he had learned to do many years earlier, not long after becoming the blue-red costumed superhero he had always seemed destined to be, Superman managed to not only hit an impossible speed of 78-percent the speed-of-light, some 145, 000-plus miles-per-second…which had the Einstein predicted action of significantly increasing the mass of the Man of Steel in a geometric manner, something that was most definitely not a feeling of comfort even for someone so seemingly godlike to mere Humans…until it was time to surpass space-time’s simplistic normality.
"Uhnnnnnnn!"
Exerting so much mental control over graviton-production/distribution about a brawny, as well as truly invulnerable, body caused a significant sensation of agonized discomfort to sweep through his super-consciousness, but, as Superman had done in the not-too-distant past, he pressed harder and harder, until…
SSSSSSSHHHHHHHssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh-Mmmppt!
…having, first, entered hyper-space and, then, halting his FTL-like velocities as soon as superhumanly possible in a short-sustained time period…
"Arrrgggggghhhhhhnnnnnn!"
Superman, managing not to crash headlong into the heart of a futuristic city, surprisingly familiar to the agonized eyes of the Last Son of Krypton, still landed hard enough to send himself skidding for several less-painful feet.
Before gradually rolling onto hands and knees prior to planting one red-booted foot so as to slowly stand, while shaking off the after-effects of a super-short hyper-space speed that had promptly allowed for the preplanned entrance into a drastically different reality-point.
One that, according to Humans who firmly believed in linear time, would be considered as Earth’s Thirty-First Century.
But which was, in point of actual scientific fact, merely a part of multiple coexisting dimensions/universes/realities. This one being the dimensional existence of several superheroes that Superman had met many times and who had now, thanks to a green-skinned super-genius’ trans-time transmission seen and heard solely by Clark Kent’s super-eyes/ears in the relative emptiness of his Metropolis-located apartment.
"Thank science you came, Superman," said a familiar leader-like voice, even as a recovered, fully finally!, Man of Steel stepped toward his trans-time teammates.
"What seems to be the trouble, Brainiac 5?"
Brainiac 5, the blonde-haired, green-skinned supercomputer-minded Coluan standing as understood leader of the future-reality group of super-powered individuals called collectively: Legion of Super-Heroes.
The primary multi-costumed membership being embodied by the perennial likes of: Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, Triplicate Girl, Lightning Lad, Phantom Girl, Element Lad, Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy, Star Boy, Invisible Kid, Ferro Lad, Karate Kid, Shadow Lass, Mon-El…
"He’s back, Superman," said Braniac 5 with a suddenness that swiftly shook the Kryptonian’s attention away from the assemblage of super-persons and back to whatever had forced the 12th-Level intelligence of B-5, as he was often so colloquially called, to initiate a seldom-used trans-time transmission, which was his invention as was most everything else used by the Legion.
"Who?" hoarsely asked Superman, already afraid of the answer even as his super-muscular physicality tensed significantly with hands tightening into twin super-fists.
Swiftly stepping forward to promptly reply in B-5’s stead, in a tone as tense and, simultaneously, tough as any Legionnaire, including the still-standing Man of Steel, the Daxamite calling himself, Mon-El…
"Composite Superman is back! And all of 31st Century reality is threatened!"
END OF PART ONE
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PART TWO
"What? How? I thought…," stammered Superman, something, normally, which would never ever had happened, short of prolonged exposure to Green Kryptonite.
Clearly such expressed the self-same feelings of likely defeat hovering, like a proverbial black cloud, over the Legion of Super-Heroes, even as Cosmic Boy sighed, "We don’t know, Superman."
"Everything had returned to normal after Xan had been sent back into this, his normal dimensional existence," Saturn Girl said both in orally delivered as well as telepathically delivered words directly into the mind of the Man of Steel.
"Then, as of 24 hours ago," added Lightning Lad with a snarl and a scowl, "the bastard escaped special super-power dampening detention set up by the Science Police…"
"…and proceeded straight into the Science Museum, like the first time," said Phantom Girl as she eerily walked straight through their mutually acclaimed leader, Brainiac-5, with no hint such disturbed his super-intelligent computer-like mind in the least.
"Then he used a still unknown combination of a full millennium of machines and devilishly cleaver devices, some from the likes of Lex Luthor in your time-reality, Superman," finished Element Lad, while playfully altering the elemental nature of a baseball-sized object he had been holding, too smooth to be any sort of fist-sized stone, from whatever its state started as into all manner of unnatural elemental states such as gold, silver, platinum, diamond, plus a wide variety of extraterrestrial elements, save for any sort of Kryptonite, naturally, from the seemingly countless worlds within the United Planets.
Still Superman couldn’t help but, subconsciously at least, keep his true-blue eyes on the ball-sized/shaped swiftly-altering-elemental states object currently in Element Lad’s left hand, while fully half his attention turned to the only Legionnaire who’s significantly scarred countenance remained forever hidden from even his closest super-friends in the 31st Century, yet whose ability to turn himself into living iron of similar mass, only dozens of times heavier due to the fact he had, indeed, become almost solid iron over just flesh-and-muscle: Ferro Lad.
"Though we’ve made certain he can’t get back into your time-reality, Superman, he still poses such a fantastically substantial threat to ours that…"
"That it became necessary," said B-5 in his usual supercomputer-minded tone and green-skinned affectation, "for me to initiate the trans-time transmitter in order to request your rapid arrival, Superman."
"I see…"
Even as Superman and the flight-ring wearing, yet another super-genius creation of Brainiac-5’s, Legionnaires flew off through the remarkably clear and pollutant-free air over such an impossibly large super-city of Superman’s seeming "future", a super-city that, though being considerably bigger than Metropolis and Gotham City combined, was, in point of potential historical fact, originally the Man of Steel’s Metropolis…
"This is the Science Police!" said the amplified-by-helmet microphone lead officer, Jahk Ethaan, dressed in his slightly colorful, similar to all officers of the Science Police, and laser-proof vested, since there were no longer bullets or normal, to such as Superman, handguns or rifles to fire them. "You are hereby ordered to surrender or we will fire sustained laser-blasts at you, until…!"
"Never!" super-shouted the curiously costumed, as a literal half-Superman/half-Batman, with green B-5 type skin-coloring, continued using Mon-El-derived super-strength, heat vision, and even super-breath to wreak total havoc in the heart of the super-city. "I once again have all the powers, to use separately or in any self-controlled combination, in order to, first, bring Earth to its knees and, then…the entirety of the United Planets! Ha, ha, ha, hahahahaha!"
"Then you leave us no choice, Composite Superman!" S.P. Officer Ethaan finished fatalistically via auto-amplified helmet headset, then, with another mentally-altered set of in-helmet nano-computer mechanisms, only to the laser-armed Science Police officers basically surrounding Composite Superman and the mostly trashed, via his unique collection of super-powers, city center. "Set laser rifles and pistols to maximum intensity and fire. Maintain until I give the order to stop. Now!"
Suddenly, lashing out in impossibly cohesive streams of gleaming bright red beams of obliteration-level energy, they strike the half-and-half super-villain, literally, from all possible sides about his barrel-chest torso brandishing a half-Superman "S" shield and half-Batman "bat-in-yellow" shield.
Only to end up seeming to be a simplistic display of light with no lasing capabilities.
"Ha, ha, ha, hahahaha!" Composite Superman laughed loudly, before half-shouting, "When will you idiots understand the truth of this situation? Nothing can harm Composite Superman! Not even…!"
"Superman!" exclaimed a lesser S.P. officer, even as everyone, including Composite Superman, looked skyward. "And the Legion!"
"Yeah," lamented a glowering S.P. Officer Jahk Ethaan at the site of the Superman-led Legionnaires, "but they were nearly incapable of capturing him the first time…without some sort of other-reality help!…so how can we be at all sure they can stop Composite Superman this time?"
"Ahhhhh," a gregariously grinning, satanically snarling super-villain, literally one-half Superman and one-half Batman in bi-caped/half-cowled costume over exposed skin of Brainiac 5 green. "Come to play some more, Legionnaires? Nice to see you’ve brought one of my all-time…or, more truthfully, all-times, favorite punching bags from another reality…Superman! Hahahahaha!"
Without waiting, Composite Superman streaked skyward with a super-speed possible only by such as Superman and Mon-El, who did the exact same in a downward direction in a veritable dual dive, even as the non-invulnerable…including, curiously, Ferro Lad, who could not utilize his B-5 created flight ring at all after solidifying into living iron!…Legionnaires promptly split up in order to deliver multiple vectored attacks against such an all-powerful opponent.
Of the flying-via-flight rings Legionnaires, only Braniac-5 would have to hang back, since his super-power, so to speak, existed solely in his 12th-Level supercomputer intelligence, even greater than the 8th-Level intelligence, by and large, held by those of his homeworld of Colu.
Then again, the peerless super-intelligence of B-5 was always as welcome as the various super-powers of the other Legionnaires.
Superman and Mon-El were, after crashing headlong into Composite Superman, now double-teamed the equally strong/equally invulnerable half-Superman/half-Batman super-villain with triumph teasingly close, until the still-smirking half-and-half super-villain called upon the powers of Triplicate Girl.
"Looks like the tide has tripled against you two," growled a grinning-like-a-madman Composite Superman, all three of them, as the super-strong trio took the attack, three against two, straight to Mon-El and the Man of Steel.
Clearly the Legionnaires, separately and together, needed to put their superhuman powers into play.
While three super-strong/invulnerable/multi-powered Composite Supermen proceeded to pummel, for now, Mon-El and Superman with bombastic blows from one ungloved, green-skinned hand and one that was Bat-gloved, causing Superman and the Daxamite superhero to struggle to not be beaten to a proverbial pulp…
…Cosmic Boy concentrated magnetically-manipulated energy from outstretched arms in an attempt to hurl metallic objects straight at any single one of the split-into-three Composite Supermen, unfortunately with little to no measurable success…
…while Lightning Lad sent coruscating bolts of concentrated electricity, more than enough to utterly obliterate any of his fellow Legionnaires, save for Mon-El and, of course, Superman, but had absolutely no such destructive effect against such as their half-Superman/half-Batman nemesis…
…even Saturn Girl’s super-telepathic bolt was unable to blast through such supreme mental powers, stolen, in essence but not in the literal sense, from her, which would’ve rendered even the likes of Mon-El and the Last Son of Krypton into a quick comatose state…
…Colossal Boy, Earth’s own Gim Allon, accidentally mutated by artificially-created radiation inadvertently realized from the hasty study of a multi-billion year old asteroid whose extreme elliptical orbit brought it in from the very edge of the visible universe, meaning it had existed since just after the cosmically explosive "birth" of said universe, in this particular reality, landed long enough to super-size himself. His instantly-reshaping super-costume did so as well while he attempted to use gargantuan hands, whose arms held out proportionally greater strength, only to be hurled hard into a kilometer tall building, one of the lesser ones at the super-city’s center…
…Sun Boy, still using his flight ring to hover over Superman, Mon-El, and three Composite Supermen, unleashed the solar flare-like superheat in carefully concentrated twin blasts meant only for this quintet of invulnerable beings, in hopes of at least distracting the half-and-half super-villain, to no avail…
…Chameleon Boy, he of the shapeshifting society on Durla, was swiftly reshaping himself into all sizes and strengths of potential creatures, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, as well as heavy things, none of which helped slow the one-into-three Composite Supermen…
…so desperate was the situation that the only Legionnaire, with a seemingly useless super-power, which was precisely why Brainiac-5 had left him holding down the proverbial fort at their supreme headquarters not too far removed from this mostly-destroyed downtown area, literally bounced into the frenzied fray…
"Bouncing Boy! No!" exclaimed Saturn Girl as the self-inflated superhero with the loveable brother-like personality presented consistently to one and all within the Legion, with her shouted words augmented telepathically, then gently insinuated into the thoughts of Chuck Taine, whose curious and seemingly worthless super-inflating/bouncing abilities came through the accidental drinking of a new super-plastic/elastic chemical concoction his illustrious scientific father had created after thinking it was simply some delicious something that the overtly friendly fellow with an overeating problem that essentially no longer existed in the 31st Century. "Stop! He’ll kill you, if…!"
It was just then that, after all the devastation that had been wrought under the multifarious super-powers of Composite Superman, the half-and-half super-villain, one of the three he had earlier tri-duplicated himself into ala Triplicate Girl’s abilities lifted the Bat-gloved hand and…
"Gyiiiiiiiii!"
"Bouncing Boy!" shouted several shocked Legionnaires almost simultaneously even as Superman reacted as well.
All at the sickening sight of an instantly deflated and quickly declining, physically speaking, due to a multitude of suddenly sped up biochemical reactions and interactions by the stolen, so to speak, powers of a Legionnaire currently on assignment elsewhere within the United Planet’s spatial limits: Chemical King.
In the tense seconds that had elapsed as the whole of the Legion, as well as the time-space visiting Superman, gathered about the slowly slipping-toward-Death individual that lay at the collective booted feet of his fellow Legionnaires and the Man of Steel.
"Chuck!" sobbed Saturn Girl, even as her super-telepathy touched the silently shrieking, in sheer internalized physical agony, Bouncing Boy, as others instantly knew…
"He’s dying," Triplicate Girl said, splitting into three who promptly dropped to their own trio of knees next to both Bouncing Boy, flat on his back, and Saturn Girl, on her knees as well. "B-but…he can’t die! He’s Chuck Taine! The only person to consume a super-plastic/elastic chemical and live to become…!"
"I can fly straight into my lab in our HQ high-rise, Bouncing Boy," offered the green-skinned, blonde-haired 12th-Level super-intelligent Legionnaire leader while standing close enough to be seen by the fast-fading eyesight of a long-held fast friend.
Barely shaking his fleshy head, as well as forcing a shaky smile to his too-full face, Bouncing Boy weakly replied, "N-no n-need, B-5. It’s…t-too l-late…anyway. At least…at least I w-went o-out…like a Legionnaire. Th-thank y-you all f-for…for…"
"He’s dead," said Superman matter-of-factly as his X-ray vision, verified an instant after by such super-vision belonging to the likes of Mon-El, the Daxamite-born super-man in his own way as was Superman in his time-reality. "I’m…sorry."
Nothing else needed to be said as the suddenly silent super-group of the 31st Century gathered tightly round the now lifeless, flesh-heavy, corpse of someone whose seemingly non-super presence appeared to be more hindrance than help in regards to normal super-villains, let alone the likes of Composite Superman, whom had turned from three back to one several short seconds before super-streaking up-and-away through the city’s sky.
In many ways, which would not be consciously considered until the initial shock of such a friend’s demise softened, Bouncing Boy did die as a heroically active participant within the Legion of Super-Heroes he’d loved so well.
His self-destructive intervention, at the absolute least, forced Composite Superman to leave and proffer no further, for a time, destruction within the heart of the super-city acting as capitol to not only all of Earth in the 31st Century, but also the administrative seat to the multi-world whole known simply as the United Planets.
"Rest in peace, Bouncing Boy," said S.P. Officer Jahk Ethaan, mostly to himself while mentally activating helmet-to-helmet headset systems with the gathering laser-armed officers of the Science Police. "Rest in peace."
END OF PART TWO
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PART THREE
Batman had endured this middle-of-the-night bat-and-mouse chase, across rooftops via acrobatic Bat-booted feet and Bat-belt obtained Batarang-and-line, for longer than he’d normally allow.
Truth was, he had been getting a bit bored or late.
It had been weeks since the last super-trouble of any given level had arisen, in the unlikely dual embodiment of both Dr. Hugo Strange, former psychiatreextraordinaire of Gotham’s own Arkham Asylum, and the suddenly insane, so it would seem, ex-psychiatric intern, Dr. Jonathan Crane, now known as Scarecrow, who’d Dr. Strange, using singular mind control techniques on what, apparently, happened to be a meek mind that was just the opposite of what had been believed by Dr. Jeremiah Arkham. Two threats that the Batman, with Superman’s assistance, were swiftly stopped and, as expected in such situations, sent back to Arkham Asylum as equally-insane inmates.
Weeks of minor criminal activity that had no ready need of a Caped Crusader, yet had been Batman’s sole source of nocturnal activity as a cowl-and-caped crimefighter.
Such was why, when the Dark Knight had arrived at a cat burglary-in-progress, involving the more ritzy condominium dwellings in and around upper downtown Gotham City, he left his self-protected Batmobile parked and avoided reaching for anything offensive inside a single one of the multitude of compartments making up the yellow Bat-belt worn snuggly about the well-muscled waist of this non-super-powered hero in blue-gray.
Curiously, he hadn’t yet been able to fully identify the thief in shiny black leather currently crossing from gothic rooftop to gothic rooftop in some impossibly similar manner as the Batman’s Batarang-and-line.
Still, judging from the indisputable fact that this fleeing black-garbed, in glistening leather, criminal had not so much as shot a handgun in his direction nor used any other super-criminal type weapon, Batman merely believed it to be a slightly better-than-average burglar.
Little could the Caped Crimefighter know that, even as he caught up to the criminal whose moves mirrored much of his own, save for the stealing of jewelry and stolen-from-safe cash being totted in some sort of equally black, but not leather, backpack, that he was about to encounter, but not necessarily for the first time…
"You!" exclaimed the Cowled One with quick recognition, after using some curiously small semi-circular objects whose sole design was to break the running tread contact between booted feet and rooftop surfaces and, as such, cause said criminal to fall flat and hard on their rear. "But I thought you quit after…!"
"I did!" grunted what turned out to be an exceptionally beautiful, assuredly unforgettable, lady beneath the formfitting outfit of glistening black leather, black booted, black masked design, which she swiftly pulled off a black-haired head with one curiously claw-gloved hand. "But, really, Batman, how long did you expect someone like me to play the role of a ‘good little girl’? You should’ve known me better than that, Dark Knight."
"Yes, perhaps I should," softly said the Batman even as his half-exposed, beneath the impermeable indigo cowl, square-jawed countenance formed a decidedly pleased half-smile, "Selina Kyle."
Gradually drawn together by an excitement essentially sexual in basic nature, although never completely acted upon, the Batman and the Catwoman were very close to a kiss.
When…
"Sorry to bother you, Batman," said an all-to-familiar somniferous voice, even as it gradually landed directly to the Dark Knight’s Bat-caped backside, "but I need your help."
No sooner had the sexual tension of this little Hallmark moment been obliterated, than Catwoman tugged her black mask back over her dark-haired, dark-eyed head while simultaneously snatching up a temporarily lowered-to-the rooftop backpack of misbegotten booty…
"Maybe another night, Bats. See ya!"
…than Catwoman utilized her signature black whip to, in essence, swing-jump onto yet another Gotham City high-rise rooftop before, faster than expected, disappearing into the moonless midnight.
"Thanks, Kal-El," grumbled the blue-gray costumed crimefighter sarcastically with narrowed-within-cowl eyes locked onto those true blues of the Last Son of Krypton. "What’s wrong…Lois in trouble again?"
Slowly shaking his square-jawed, spit-curled head, Superman stepped considerably closer while seriously saying, "It would appear an enemy is causing super-trouble for some, uh, friends of mine."
His always analytical billionaire mind beneath the cowl was quick to do its deductive dance, as the suddenly sneering Dark Knight knowingly said, "Composite Superman."
Nodding deeply, Superman gently placed a hand on the cape-covered, protectively padded, beneath gray surface, Bat-suit, then partially explained, "I’m afraid, after taking you back to your Batmobile, you’ll have to trust me to take it and you…someplace strange."
"Someplace strange?" said Batman in a smugly rhetorical tone and half-affectation. "Normally, I’d say we were standing there already, but…"
Meanwhile, within the daytime super-city of the 31st Century time-reality, a very colorfully costumed, as varied as their individualized super-powers, Legion of Super-Heroes were streaking through the self-same skies, via Brainiac-5’s flight rings, save for Mon-El, whose Daxamite capability to produce and direct gravitons for self-flight made him more like Superman, strike as a super-team.
"If not for my desire to be amused by such as you," said the literally half-Superman/half-Batman, with exposed skin as green as that of Brainiac-5’s Coluan coloring, "I would call upon a number of ‘stolen’ super-powers, running the entire range of you greatly beloved Legionnaires, to have utterly destroyed you all! Instead…I shall toy with you. Especially since it seems Superman has, apparently, abandoned you following the laughable, to me, demise of that self-inflating fool called…Bouncing Boy!"
"Shut the hell up!" screamed an enraged Lightning Lad as he, as per normal for his electrically volatile nature, unleashed huge lightning bolts with the concentrated force of billions of bombs being dropped with super-precision targeting onto a single, specific point not one single centimeter bigger than the bi-symbol christened muscular chest.
As with a seemingly endless number of previous power-bolts from the hovering via flight ring super-hero hailing from an agrarian planet called Winath, where he was one of many electrically-endowed humanoids named Garth Ranzz, such had very little effect, if that on the half-and-half super-villain.
Lightning Lad, like Brainiac 5, Cosmic Boy, and Saturn Girl, not to mention the late-and-lamented Bouncing Boy killed earlier, was one of the original core members of the Legion of Super-Heroes that was now home to so many super-powered members, some by birth on Earth-like planets, others through accidental actions, that it was now part and parcel to periodically patrol throughout United Planet’s space-boundaries via Legionnaire starships similar in hyper-space traveling capabilities as any other currently in common usage by an untold number of member-worlds across a spiral galaxy exactly like what those in Superman’s time-reality continue to call: the Milky Way.
Even as Mon-El took the brunt of the super-battle to Composite Superman, being the only such super-strong/invulnerable superhero in this time-reality, save for whenever Superman pays a visit…
"Uhnnnnn!"
…while Star Boy, swooping in swift flight ring spirals about their under siege half-Superman/half-Batman nemesis, exerts his power specific super-ability to significantly increase the mass of anything, inanimate object or person, to, at the very least, manage to mass-confuse Composite Superman for the span of, perhaps, eight-to-ten seconds before the half-and-half super-villain countered with the self-same mass-controlling abilities combined with Lightning Lad’s and Saturn Girl’s, which managed to mangle the mind as well as the unprotected physicality of Star Boy…
"Eeeeeiiiiiii!"
Meanwhile, just then passing through the unseen something separating one reality from another…
SSSSSSSHHHHHHHssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh-Mmmppt! Mmmppt!
Superman, struggling to desperately hang onto the nearly three-ton Batmobile wherein the Batman, sealed into the self-protected super-car, while wearing a special Bat-breather covering the nose area and exposed face, strained to maintain graviton-producing/directing capabilities a little longer.
"Come on, Kal-El," Superman said to himself, super-teeth clenched tightly enough to shatter same in normal non-invulnerable mortals, as his handsome square-jawed features had become a grimaced mask of super-will. "Just…sit it…down…nice and…easy!"
Just when it seemed as though the Man of Steel was about to allow the bat-like vehicle to crash hard enough to potentially damage the seemingly indestructible creation of billionaire Bruce Wayne/Batman…
"Uhnn!"
No sooner was it clear to the Cowled One that the Batmobile has, basically, landed, than he unsealed same from within while removing his Bat-breather before leaping headlong into the light of day on a 31st Century Earth.
"Amazing," muttered the man within the cowl-and-cape as he took in, at a single glance, the marvelous magnificence of a super-city unlike anything even the founding fathers of Gotham City could conceive. Then, upon hearing the groans of his crimefighting colleague…
"Superman! Are you all right?"
"Yes," the man in blue-red said, even as he slowly stood, as if doing so might somehow manage to downplay the palpable pain in the broad of his back and the dense musculature of his legs, "it’s just…that’s the first time I actually brought something like the Batmobile with me. It was…a lot more of a strain than I thought it’d be."
"Good," Batman said in a seemingly passionless fashion, "because if someone like you and this Legion of Super-Heroes need my help…well, let’s just say you’ve got to suck it up, my super-friend. Or else there’s absolutely no chance in stopping Composite Superman!"
"Understood," said Superman after finally exerting his super-will to the point where pain was no longer a lingering issue. "All right…I’ll fly above the Batmobile and lead you to where the Legionnaires and Composite Superman are currently embattled. The in-ear communications device will establish and hold the link so I can basically talk you in."
"Ready when you are, Kal-El," said the Batman, making certain his in-cowl communications contrivance was also fully functional before leaping inside the cockpit of his Batmobile once more.
"Lead the way!"
Lightly lifting off, Superman, seconds later, super-flew a few hundred feet higher than the turbo-engine, flame-spewing Batmobile made its way, in a more roundabout manner, through seldom-used streets, save for citizens to walk along whenever their super-city was not under such sustained attacks, in the self-same general direction.
"Am I coming in, okay, Batman?" asked the streaking along, at ground-speed equivalents, Man of Steel, testing the essential electronic link between the two.
"Five-by-five, Superman," said the Dark Knight in prompt reply, his Bat-gloved hands expertly handling the Batmobile’s wheel while Bat-booted feet expertly alternated between brake and accelerator in order to keep pace with the Last Son of Krypton flying overhead. "Now…you do realize that we’re not going to be able to take advantage of Composite Superman’s lead-allergy right away. He’ll be expecting it this time. Besides, we have to make certain not to unnecessarily expose Mon-El to the lead. No need in endangering the Daxamite super-man’s life."
"Understood," said Superman by way of an electronically transmitted reply, while swiftly zipping in and around the buildings of unbelievably tall architecture, even as Batman expertly sent his turbo-engine, 0-to-100 in three seconds, Batmobile in much the same manner along the streets themselves. "For the time being, let’s just hope having you here will help with the Element-of-Surprise factor and give us just enough of a pause to set him up for an eventual fall."
"Not before I get tossed about like the non-super hero that I am I’ll wager," grumbled the Batman barely loud enough to be transmitted into the Man of Steel’s in-ear device, which, of course, such as he didn’t need since his super-hearing would’ve done just as well.
All that the World’s Finest, in their time-reality, could conceivably believe would swiftly greet their eyes in the microseconds to come was, hopefully, some semblance of survival by all superheroes set against a villain as powerful as the Legionnaires, Superman, and even the Dark Knight combined.
"Here goes nothing…!"
END OF PART THREE
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PART FOUR/CONCLUSION
First and foremost, Superman swooped in at sub-Mach speeds upon the super-powered ruckus occurring in yet another downtown territory comprising the centermost section of an indescribably large cosmopolitan super-city of the 31st Century, which, in the thousand years prior in this particular time-reality, would’ve invariably been, although a lot less in sheer size, a much more modest Metropolis.
Even though, in this reality, there had been no Superman nor Lex Luthor, even though there had, in fact, been a completely Human Clark Kent partnered, at the Daily Planet newspaper, with a still lovely Lois Lane. Neither ever becoming romantically enamored with one another in any way, shape, or proverbial form.
Strange how such simplistic alterations would’ve inevitably led to other superhuman crimefighters that invariably included, from a far-flung planet called Daxamite, which, although home to an exceptionally xenophobic super-scientific species, nonetheless allowed for a few brave individuals to eventually leave their beloved world and its sole sun that, like Krypton in Superman’s reality, was a bloated, aged, red giant called Valor.
Therefore, once Lar Gand arrived, via hyper-space travelling sub-sized starship, on Earth whereupon, under a middle-aged yellowish star called Sol, he took up the task of being a super-man who’d named himself Mon-El, from some race-memory retrieved narrative involving a heroic protagonist of a similar-sounding personage basically believed to be nothing more than a morality tale for small Daxamite children.
Still, two super-men were always a lot better than a single such super-powered person…most especially against such as Composite Superman who could always triple his multi-powered prerogative, thanks solely to Triplicate Girl’s perfectly counterfeited tri-duplication abilities.
Triplicate Girl, real-name Luornu Durgo, from the planet Cargg that orbits, oddly enough, a trinary star system, sprang forth from a race whom, at some point during the latter part of evolutionary development, had inevitably emerged with the distinct species-specific power to quite literally, physically as well as mentally, triplicate themselves. She also had the honor of being the very first non-founding member to join the just-starting-to-grow Legion of Super-Heroes.
"All right, now," shouted the flight ring hovering Brainiac-5 even as the Man of Steel streaked straight into the frantic fray, "Superman’s back! It’s time to tie Composite Superman up so our surprise hero can proceed with the plan!"
Though the half-and-half super-villain, all three of them, allowed his super-hearing to zero in on B-5’s shouted instructions, his super-eyes spied Superman in a super-dive directly at his currently landing half-Superman/half-Batman green-skinned Self, done in order to trick the mostly soaring around via flight rings, save for Mon-El, Legionnaires into landing as well.
Then he could conquer the entirety of such superheroes headquartered on Earth in his time-reality of the 31st Century…along with the sudden super-strong stopping power brought against the Last Son of Krypton.
"Did you get your second wind, Superman?" super-shouted Composite Superman so loudly that even essentially unbreakable building windows threatened to shatter.
Something that, in this futuristic super-city’s scientifically perfect reality, would have required the close-quartered explosion of a suitcase-sized device with a destructive potential set to nuclear-level.
As expected, the half-and-half super-villain split himself into three, two of which worried with Superman and Mon-El, while the third took to the sky once again in order to draw in the flight-ring wearing Legionnaires that were not Kryptonian or Daxamite.
"Let’s take this freak out!" shouted an enraged, as well as outraged, Lightning Lad sending brilliant bolts, each electrically charged with at least a million volts, into the bi-symbol chest of Composite Superman, while his lunatic laughter rolled forth like thunder as his invulnerability easily absorbed it all. "Saturn Girl! Now!"
Before the half-Superman/half-Batman villain could hover-spin around, Saturn Girl unleashed perhaps the greatest concentrated transmission of telepathic power ever endeavored by the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty born on Titan. It would either work perfectly and, at the very least, scramble the surface consciousness of the Composite Superman or…
"Gyyyaaahhh!"
"It’s working, Saturn Girl!" yelled their leader, Brainiac-5, from hovering above the airborne assault against such an incredibly powerful super-villain. "Keep it up!"
"I’m," started a strained Saturn Girl as her fair-skinned face screwed itself into a mask of super-intense concentration reaching far beyond her wildest expectations, "…trying…but…can’t…hold out…long…!"
"Now!"
Heeding their green-skinned leader’s uncharacteristic shout, a lot louder than normal for the 12th-Level blonde-haired Coluan ultra-genius…
The totality of flight-ring flying Legionnaires swiftly took the fight straight to the still psychically assaulted Composite Superman, their person-specific super-powers utilized in unison as a single entity, just as they had been tentatively trained from the very instant each swore their
allegiance to the Legion of Super-Heroes and, indirectly, to the United Planets.
Colossal Boy swiftly increased his size to some two hundred meters, with previously ordinary strength significantly enhanced accordingly, and proceeded in slamming one huge hand hard onto Composite Superman, who easily shrugged it off Mon-El like invulnerability combined with limitless super-strength, while the hovering Saturn Girl’s super-psionic power remained tightly
concentrated onto the still struggling super-mind within the half-and-half super-villain…
…even as his other two tripled personages continued countering the super-strong strikes made by both the Man of Steel and the Daxamite in Red…
…while Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, Star Boy, and Sun Boy jointly jockeyed closer to their hovering half-Superman/half-Batman, sending extremely destructive bolts of lightning along with magnetically-controlled blast-waves and mass manipulative power amidst nova-level super-heat streamers sent against the lone, one out of three, Composite Superman…
…even as Sensor Girl, one of the newer recruits, exerted her singular capability to create realistic illusions, carefully confining such to only the mind of Composite Superman…
…even as Saturn Girl, no longer able to maintain a telepathic attack, psionically pulled out, so that Sensor Girl’s illusory power could take total control…
…and, after Ferro Lad willed himself into living iron, the permanently masked superhero sent himself, via flight ring, headlong into the momentarily mentally overwhelmed Composite Superman not battling Mon-El and the Man of Steel at street level…
…causing said Superman-fighting and Mon-El battling Composite Supermen to suddenly streak skyward in order to direct renewed rage toward those Legionnaires currently conducting their massed aerial super-assault…
"You will all die!" screamed a half-cowled madman commanding all they had in singular super-powers as well as Mon-El’s yellow sun-supplied strength and much, much more.
"Now, Batman!" Superman said somewhat loudly via the link established by the in-ear Comm-device previously supplied by the Cowled One.
No sooner did the Batman knowingly reply via Superman’s smallish in-ear communications device, saying simply, "On my way", than the Man of Steel gave a get-ready nod to Element Lad, who had been the only Legionnaire not attacking Composite Superman during those last tense minutes.
Exactly as it seemed the half-Superman/half-Batman was on the verge of vanquishing all the other Legionnaires via the unleashing of virtually all his Legionnaire-like abilities, Composite Superman’s super-hearing heard a strangely familiar roar on rapid approach.
A singular sound that was sorely out-of-place for this particular time-reality.
With a super-fast/super-strong spiraling out exertion of Mon-El-mimicked super-powers after the unified utilization of all other Legionnaire-acquired abilities, Composite Superman almost instantly relieved himself of the potential threat presented by such super-powered, flight ring-flying assailants to land and look toward the thunderously arriving turbo-engine street vehicle at this site of recent super-battle…
"Batman," grinned the half-cowled, green-skinned countenance of the half-and-half super-villain even as the obsidian, even in daylight!, Batmobile rumbled to an swift tire-screeching stop. "Just when I thought the triumph in my here-and-now was doomed to boredom…the Caped Crusader has come to play. Heh, heh, heheheh."
Superman stepped to the side, along with Mon-El, both secretly sighing in subconscious assuagement inevitably revolving around the playing of this wild card from a neighboring time-reality. All while allowing anguished super-muscles to finally relax so the sensations of palpable pain and definite fatigue could swiftly dissipate inside two equally invulnerable bodies. One in blue-red and the other in mostly all-red, save for a true-blue hero-type cape.
Having already brought the bombastic Batmobile to a screeching, skidding-sideways stop some six hundred meters from where stood Composite Superman…
"You’ve proven what a tough guy you are with these Legionnaires, Composite Superman…but are you capable of defeating the only person responsible for defeating you the first time?" snarled the Dark Knight after swiftly leaping out of his unique, in two time-realities, car’s cockpit-type super high-tech section to stand so heroically before a multi-super personage.
Having long since landed, not to mention continuing as a single, as opposed to triple, individual, the half-and-half super-villain said with a sadistic sneer, "You just don’t know how badly I’ve looked forward to this, Batman. But, before we do fight…remove your Bat-belt! My X-ray vision has already warned me that you’re carrying that lead compartment secretly carried behind your caped back. Weaken me once, Batman, shame on me, weaken me twice…"
Without hesitation, Batman thumbed in the secretive code that caused the Bat-belt’s buckle to release, then held the yellow belt dangling down next to his right side for several seconds, before dropping it to clatter onto the street’s surface roughly a meter from both Bat-booted feet.
"Ready when you are," taunted the Caped Crimefighter after promptly taking up a typical hand-to-hand battle stance seen numerous times in Karate-type tournaments throughout his own, and Superman’s, time-reality. "If you’re brave enough to fight me on my level, C.S."
With a chuckle, Composite Superman thought to himself, C.S.? How quaint.
"Very well, Batman," began the half-and-half super-villain even as he, too, took up a typical, in both time-realities, hand-to-hand battle stance. "Drawing upon the multi-planetary martial arts skills of Karate Kid to beat you down."
Hearing his name, Karate Kid, hovering steadily alongside the rest of his fellow Legionnaires, couldn’t help but tense at the notion of this half-Superman/half-Batman and all Legionnaire-powered person using his non-super capabilities against the legendary, in that other time-reality, non-super hero.
Still, as fully knowledgeable about Superman and Brainiac-5’s earlier expressed plan as the rest of the flight-ring floating super-team, he relied upon the emotional control teachings of his multi-world martial arts training in order to hover…and hope.
"I don’t need super-powers to beat the Batman," Composite Superman added sarcastically, even as the two drew ever nearer. "No super-strength. No lightning bolts. Nothing but good old-fashioned martial arts action derived from more worlds than your own universal existence."
"Is talking me to death part of those otherworldly martial arts techniques, C.S.?" snidely scoffed the cowl-and-caped crimefighting colleague, in his reality, of Superman, still standing aside with Mon-El as both, along with Brainiac-5, who’d just then landed via flight ring to stand with them, desperately hoped their plan, which prompted Superman’s trans-time trip back to Gotham City, would, indeed, end in success over Xan.
"The only ‘talking’ I’ll do when I’m finished defeating you on your own non-super playing field," snarled a singularly overconfident Composite Superman as both stood cowled head to half-cowled head striking distance from one another, "shall be to deliver a eulogy over your broken body."
"Bring it," Batman defiantly as well as deviously half-grinned in practiced reply.
And so the two caped opponents commenced Karate-type strikes and counters that made the Man of Steel truly proud of the Dark Knight’s never-say-die determination when facing someone he knew to be utterly invulnerable to any and all physical harm while having to stand his ground after receiving non-super, on purpose, punches and kicks from the half-and-half super-villain relying only on Karate Kid’s multi-combative capabilities.
Some small part of the Last Son of Krypton wanted so much to super-run toward these two and stop the non-super fight, but he knew that, if the plan were to work at all, none could interfere.
No matter what.
His super-fists tightening at his sides, Superman silently encouraged, Come on, Bruce. Just hang in there a few minutes more. Just long enough to be absolutely certain Composite Superman’s attention is totally directed at you and this hand-to-hand fight. Then…
"You can’t hope to top Karate Kid’s super-cultural knowledge of untold millennia of martial arts with what little you came to comprehend on only a single planet, Batman," sniggered Composite Superman in a somniferous whisper close to the tightly held, fully cowled face down to the street’s spotless surface, Dark Knight Detective. "Surrender now…and I promise to only break one arm. Heh, heh, heh, heheheh."
Nodding in the direction of the still, via flight ring, hovering gray-and-white costumed, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Periodic Table-controlling Element Lad…
…who, in turn, nodded in the direction of the also still flight ring hovering masked Legionnaire, Ferro Lad…
…even as the Batman, still held cowl-covered face firmly against the street, felt the muscles of his right arm, being expertly twisted without using super-strength by Composite Superman, essentially start to become agonizingly mangled, while still resisting those last syrupy-passing seconds necessary until…
"And now, Batman," began a grinning green-skinned half-Superman/half-Batman, still straddling the indigo-colored caped back of the cowl-down Dark Knight, "it’s time to teach you a very valuable lesson. Hope you can write left-handed. Heh, heh, hehheheh."
"Heads up, Composite Superman!" teasingly shouted Brainiac-5, even as the half-and-half super-villain looked up to see the simplistic-yet-ingenious counter-action for which the Batman had, to put it in mostly colloquial terminology, acted as flesh-and-blood decoy.
"No," said Composite Superman to himself in the microsecond immediately proceeding the double-fisted downward strike of a living iron superhero having been elementally altered, via a fellow Legionnaire, into living lead.
Once again having reverted to Xan due to lead-induced unconsciousness, the colorless-skinned, orange-haired alien with singular understanding of precisely how one could become a Composite Superman, was securely held behind ultra-strong sets of force fields via the Science Police, even as the Batman stood with Superman in the elaborate living room located within the much-more-complex-than-the Batcave HQ for the Legion of Super-Heroes.
"We can’t adequately relate how much we appreciate your help in this, Batman," Brainiac-5 said with a seldom seen green-skinned smile to the cowl-and-caped crimefighter currently nursing a sore, but not broken, right arm. "Are you sure you wouldn’t like to visit our hospital facilities in order to significantly speed up the healing of your…?"
"No, thank you, Brainiac-5," swiftly stated an always self-sufficient superhero without super-powers, even as pulsating pain continued to tug at his forethought. "I’d just like to get back to my own time and, uh, pursue some personal interests."
"If you should ever desire to relocate to our reality, Batman," said a gregariously grinning Lightning Lad, co-founder of the United Planets’ Legion of Super-Heroes, "I’m sure Superman would be more than willing to..."
"Again, thanks, Lightning Lad," reiterated a recalcitrant Caped Crusader, his half-exposed square-jawed countenance slightly half-smiling. "But I much prefer my Batcave…even if my supercomputers can’t compare with a 31st Century PDA. But, should you ever need my help again, don’t hesitate to trans-time call my blue-red friend."
With that, having bid heartfelt farewells, Superman swiftly streaked off with Batman in order to, after the Dark Knight reentered the Batmobile’s self-protected cockpit section, return it and them to their slightly less-perfect time-reality…
"I wonder what Batman would’ve said had he known about this reality’s Bruce Wayne?" rhetorically asked Saturn Girl with a growing grin.
After flashing back to cerebral-located historical files, within the supercomputer-like mind of the blonde-haired, green-skinned Brainiac-5, regarding a 20th Century, their Twentieth, Bruce Wayne growing up with parents who were never victims of an armed robbery gone bad. Recalling a Bruce Wayne without the obsessive-compulsive desire to dress up in a bat-like costume in order to offer opposition to super-criminals and criminals alike in their 20th Century Gotham City. A Bruce Wayne who happily took control of Wayne Enterprises after his father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, retired and to whom Bruce married a certain dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty who’d never felt compelled to don a skintight black leather costume and identity-concealing mask.
Ms. Selina Kyle became Mrs. Selina Wayne in this separate reality where fairy-tale endings did come true.
But then, what kind of reality could it truly be without the likes of Batman and Catwoman?
END
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Want to see Composite Superman in return mode? Go to Wikipedia-sponcered sight at: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Worldsfinest283.JPG
Having decided that Metropolis, as well as the rest of the Free World, had no immediate need for the Man of Steel at this time, not to mention the implied probability that Lois Lane would stay asleep and, therefore, encounter no degree of danger that such as she seemed so constantly capable of bringing upon herself, Superman had streaked out into the airlessness of space at speeds rapidly reaching near-light velocities.
Something supposedly not possible, according to Albert Einstein as well as the plethora of physicists and cosmologists who had come along after, through both the remainder of the 20th Century and, now, into the first few seven or eight of the 21st.
But such a possibility existed according to Kryptonian scientists, such as Jor-El, Kal-El’s biological father…the man who desperately tried to essentially save most of the humanoid race of a crystalline Krypton, only to be forbidden from something considered to be sedition by the illustrious Elders ruling their super-scientific, star-spanning, in past centuries prior to political pressures to stop, species.
Causing the true father of Kal-El send the Superman-to-be baby, with the partnered techno-assistance by the baby’s natural mother named Lara Lor-Van, prior to marrying Jor-El, to send a hyper-space traveling vessel, large enough for only a single infant, out in the general direction of Earth at relativistic speeds seemingly exceeding the speed-of-light constant, so quaintly attributed to Einstein, by a factor of thousands. While Kal-El’s beloved biological parents, unfortunately, were forced to remain behind and die along with countless billions as the aging red giant that had been Krypton’s sun for more than ten billion years, with an intelligent civilization in existence, from a proverbial Stone Age to the Age of Space Travel and more, for some two-and-a-half million of those years…
With a sudden inner sigh, while still concentrating on not breathing while swiftly reaching light-speed in space, normal not hyper at this particular point, Superman thought, To think. A planetary race who had, untold millennia earlier, sent spaceships out to explore and, possibly, colonize. Ships that, eventually, achieved hyper-space travel potentials, making vaster interstellar distances at seeming faster-than-light instead of close-to-light velocities. But because of strife-fraught faction-against-faction combative troubles across the crystalline surface of that near-frozen world orbiting a dying single sun, had forced my father, for one, to spend the next scientific half-century to halt all interstellar activities, until the fateful afternoon my Kryptonian parents secretively sent me away via a hyper-spatially traveling vessel…a true star-ship!…well, let’s just say that such was most definitely an ironic turn of events. But one thing my father, as well as all true scientific types on Krypton at the time, had indeed long-since learned was that near-light was extremely possible along with the eventual achieving of seeming faster-than-light levels of interstellar travel via said hyper-space. Too bad billions became subsequently extinct because of certain ruling Elders expressly against super-science due to remembrances of science-assisted planet-wide battles that had, for a time, threatened what the Elders held was a possible destiny that did not necessarily include interstellar exploration and definitely not planetary colonization.
Pouring on the graviton-creating/controlling super-flight capabilities, like he had learned to do many years earlier, not long after becoming the blue-red costumed superhero he had always seemed destined to be, Superman managed to not only hit an impossible speed of 78-percent the speed-of-light, some 145, 000-plus miles-per-second…which had the Einstein predicted action of significantly increasing the mass of the Man of Steel in a geometric manner, something that was most definitely not a feeling of comfort even for someone so seemingly godlike to mere Humans…until it was time to surpass space-time’s simplistic normality.
"Uhnnnnnnn!"
Exerting so much mental control over graviton-production/distribution about a brawny, as well as truly invulnerable, body caused a significant sensation of agonized discomfort to sweep through his super-consciousness, but, as Superman had done in the not-too-distant past, he pressed harder and harder, until…
SSSSSSSHHHHHHHssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh-Mmmppt!
…having, first, entered hyper-space and, then, halting his FTL-like velocities as soon as superhumanly possible in a short-sustained time period…
"Arrrgggggghhhhhhnnnnnn!"
Superman, managing not to crash headlong into the heart of a futuristic city, surprisingly familiar to the agonized eyes of the Last Son of Krypton, still landed hard enough to send himself skidding for several less-painful feet.
Before gradually rolling onto hands and knees prior to planting one red-booted foot so as to slowly stand, while shaking off the after-effects of a super-short hyper-space speed that had promptly allowed for the preplanned entrance into a drastically different reality-point.
One that, according to Humans who firmly believed in linear time, would be considered as Earth’s Thirty-First Century.
But which was, in point of actual scientific fact, merely a part of multiple coexisting dimensions/universes/realities. This one being the dimensional existence of several superheroes that Superman had met many times and who had now, thanks to a green-skinned super-genius’ trans-time transmission seen and heard solely by Clark Kent’s super-eyes/ears in the relative emptiness of his Metropolis-located apartment.
"Thank science you came, Superman," said a familiar leader-like voice, even as a recovered, fully finally!, Man of Steel stepped toward his trans-time teammates.
"What seems to be the trouble, Brainiac 5?"
Brainiac 5, the blonde-haired, green-skinned supercomputer-minded Coluan standing as understood leader of the future-reality group of super-powered individuals called collectively: Legion of Super-Heroes.
The primary multi-costumed membership being embodied by the perennial likes of: Cosmic Boy, Saturn Girl, Triplicate Girl, Lightning Lad, Phantom Girl, Element Lad, Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy, Star Boy, Invisible Kid, Ferro Lad, Karate Kid, Shadow Lass, Mon-El…
"He’s back, Superman," said Braniac 5 with a suddenness that swiftly shook the Kryptonian’s attention away from the assemblage of super-persons and back to whatever had forced the 12th-Level intelligence of B-5, as he was often so colloquially called, to initiate a seldom-used trans-time transmission, which was his invention as was most everything else used by the Legion.
"Who?" hoarsely asked Superman, already afraid of the answer even as his super-muscular physicality tensed significantly with hands tightening into twin super-fists.
Swiftly stepping forward to promptly reply in B-5’s stead, in a tone as tense and, simultaneously, tough as any Legionnaire, including the still-standing Man of Steel, the Daxamite calling himself, Mon-El…
"Composite Superman is back! And all of 31st Century reality is threatened!"
END OF PART ONE
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PART TWO
"What? How? I thought…," stammered Superman, something, normally, which would never ever had happened, short of prolonged exposure to Green Kryptonite.
Clearly such expressed the self-same feelings of likely defeat hovering, like a proverbial black cloud, over the Legion of Super-Heroes, even as Cosmic Boy sighed, "We don’t know, Superman."
"Everything had returned to normal after Xan had been sent back into this, his normal dimensional existence," Saturn Girl said both in orally delivered as well as telepathically delivered words directly into the mind of the Man of Steel.
"Then, as of 24 hours ago," added Lightning Lad with a snarl and a scowl, "the bastard escaped special super-power dampening detention set up by the Science Police…"
"…and proceeded straight into the Science Museum, like the first time," said Phantom Girl as she eerily walked straight through their mutually acclaimed leader, Brainiac-5, with no hint such disturbed his super-intelligent computer-like mind in the least.
"Then he used a still unknown combination of a full millennium of machines and devilishly cleaver devices, some from the likes of Lex Luthor in your time-reality, Superman," finished Element Lad, while playfully altering the elemental nature of a baseball-sized object he had been holding, too smooth to be any sort of fist-sized stone, from whatever its state started as into all manner of unnatural elemental states such as gold, silver, platinum, diamond, plus a wide variety of extraterrestrial elements, save for any sort of Kryptonite, naturally, from the seemingly countless worlds within the United Planets.
Still Superman couldn’t help but, subconsciously at least, keep his true-blue eyes on the ball-sized/shaped swiftly-altering-elemental states object currently in Element Lad’s left hand, while fully half his attention turned to the only Legionnaire who’s significantly scarred countenance remained forever hidden from even his closest super-friends in the 31st Century, yet whose ability to turn himself into living iron of similar mass, only dozens of times heavier due to the fact he had, indeed, become almost solid iron over just flesh-and-muscle: Ferro Lad.
"Though we’ve made certain he can’t get back into your time-reality, Superman, he still poses such a fantastically substantial threat to ours that…"
"That it became necessary," said B-5 in his usual supercomputer-minded tone and green-skinned affectation, "for me to initiate the trans-time transmitter in order to request your rapid arrival, Superman."
"I see…"
Even as Superman and the flight-ring wearing, yet another super-genius creation of Brainiac-5’s, Legionnaires flew off through the remarkably clear and pollutant-free air over such an impossibly large super-city of Superman’s seeming "future", a super-city that, though being considerably bigger than Metropolis and Gotham City combined, was, in point of potential historical fact, originally the Man of Steel’s Metropolis…
"This is the Science Police!" said the amplified-by-helmet microphone lead officer, Jahk Ethaan, dressed in his slightly colorful, similar to all officers of the Science Police, and laser-proof vested, since there were no longer bullets or normal, to such as Superman, handguns or rifles to fire them. "You are hereby ordered to surrender or we will fire sustained laser-blasts at you, until…!"
"Never!" super-shouted the curiously costumed, as a literal half-Superman/half-Batman, with green B-5 type skin-coloring, continued using Mon-El-derived super-strength, heat vision, and even super-breath to wreak total havoc in the heart of the super-city. "I once again have all the powers, to use separately or in any self-controlled combination, in order to, first, bring Earth to its knees and, then…the entirety of the United Planets! Ha, ha, ha, hahahahaha!"
"Then you leave us no choice, Composite Superman!" S.P. Officer Ethaan finished fatalistically via auto-amplified helmet headset, then, with another mentally-altered set of in-helmet nano-computer mechanisms, only to the laser-armed Science Police officers basically surrounding Composite Superman and the mostly trashed, via his unique collection of super-powers, city center. "Set laser rifles and pistols to maximum intensity and fire. Maintain until I give the order to stop. Now!"
Suddenly, lashing out in impossibly cohesive streams of gleaming bright red beams of obliteration-level energy, they strike the half-and-half super-villain, literally, from all possible sides about his barrel-chest torso brandishing a half-Superman "S" shield and half-Batman "bat-in-yellow" shield.
Only to end up seeming to be a simplistic display of light with no lasing capabilities.
"Ha, ha, ha, hahahaha!" Composite Superman laughed loudly, before half-shouting, "When will you idiots understand the truth of this situation? Nothing can harm Composite Superman! Not even…!"
"Superman!" exclaimed a lesser S.P. officer, even as everyone, including Composite Superman, looked skyward. "And the Legion!"
"Yeah," lamented a glowering S.P. Officer Jahk Ethaan at the site of the Superman-led Legionnaires, "but they were nearly incapable of capturing him the first time…without some sort of other-reality help!…so how can we be at all sure they can stop Composite Superman this time?"
"Ahhhhh," a gregariously grinning, satanically snarling super-villain, literally one-half Superman and one-half Batman in bi-caped/half-cowled costume over exposed skin of Brainiac 5 green. "Come to play some more, Legionnaires? Nice to see you’ve brought one of my all-time…or, more truthfully, all-times, favorite punching bags from another reality…Superman! Hahahahaha!"
Without waiting, Composite Superman streaked skyward with a super-speed possible only by such as Superman and Mon-El, who did the exact same in a downward direction in a veritable dual dive, even as the non-invulnerable…including, curiously, Ferro Lad, who could not utilize his B-5 created flight ring at all after solidifying into living iron!…Legionnaires promptly split up in order to deliver multiple vectored attacks against such an all-powerful opponent.
Of the flying-via-flight rings Legionnaires, only Braniac-5 would have to hang back, since his super-power, so to speak, existed solely in his 12th-Level supercomputer intelligence, even greater than the 8th-Level intelligence, by and large, held by those of his homeworld of Colu.
Then again, the peerless super-intelligence of B-5 was always as welcome as the various super-powers of the other Legionnaires.
Superman and Mon-El were, after crashing headlong into Composite Superman, now double-teamed the equally strong/equally invulnerable half-Superman/half-Batman super-villain with triumph teasingly close, until the still-smirking half-and-half super-villain called upon the powers of Triplicate Girl.
"Looks like the tide has tripled against you two," growled a grinning-like-a-madman Composite Superman, all three of them, as the super-strong trio took the attack, three against two, straight to Mon-El and the Man of Steel.
Clearly the Legionnaires, separately and together, needed to put their superhuman powers into play.
While three super-strong/invulnerable/multi-powered Composite Supermen proceeded to pummel, for now, Mon-El and Superman with bombastic blows from one ungloved, green-skinned hand and one that was Bat-gloved, causing Superman and the Daxamite superhero to struggle to not be beaten to a proverbial pulp…
…Cosmic Boy concentrated magnetically-manipulated energy from outstretched arms in an attempt to hurl metallic objects straight at any single one of the split-into-three Composite Supermen, unfortunately with little to no measurable success…
…while Lightning Lad sent coruscating bolts of concentrated electricity, more than enough to utterly obliterate any of his fellow Legionnaires, save for Mon-El and, of course, Superman, but had absolutely no such destructive effect against such as their half-Superman/half-Batman nemesis…
…even Saturn Girl’s super-telepathic bolt was unable to blast through such supreme mental powers, stolen, in essence but not in the literal sense, from her, which would’ve rendered even the likes of Mon-El and the Last Son of Krypton into a quick comatose state…
…Colossal Boy, Earth’s own Gim Allon, accidentally mutated by artificially-created radiation inadvertently realized from the hasty study of a multi-billion year old asteroid whose extreme elliptical orbit brought it in from the very edge of the visible universe, meaning it had existed since just after the cosmically explosive "birth" of said universe, in this particular reality, landed long enough to super-size himself. His instantly-reshaping super-costume did so as well while he attempted to use gargantuan hands, whose arms held out proportionally greater strength, only to be hurled hard into a kilometer tall building, one of the lesser ones at the super-city’s center…
…Sun Boy, still using his flight ring to hover over Superman, Mon-El, and three Composite Supermen, unleashed the solar flare-like superheat in carefully concentrated twin blasts meant only for this quintet of invulnerable beings, in hopes of at least distracting the half-and-half super-villain, to no avail…
…Chameleon Boy, he of the shapeshifting society on Durla, was swiftly reshaping himself into all sizes and strengths of potential creatures, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, as well as heavy things, none of which helped slow the one-into-three Composite Supermen…
…so desperate was the situation that the only Legionnaire, with a seemingly useless super-power, which was precisely why Brainiac-5 had left him holding down the proverbial fort at their supreme headquarters not too far removed from this mostly-destroyed downtown area, literally bounced into the frenzied fray…
"Bouncing Boy! No!" exclaimed Saturn Girl as the self-inflated superhero with the loveable brother-like personality presented consistently to one and all within the Legion, with her shouted words augmented telepathically, then gently insinuated into the thoughts of Chuck Taine, whose curious and seemingly worthless super-inflating/bouncing abilities came through the accidental drinking of a new super-plastic/elastic chemical concoction his illustrious scientific father had created after thinking it was simply some delicious something that the overtly friendly fellow with an overeating problem that essentially no longer existed in the 31st Century. "Stop! He’ll kill you, if…!"
It was just then that, after all the devastation that had been wrought under the multifarious super-powers of Composite Superman, the half-and-half super-villain, one of the three he had earlier tri-duplicated himself into ala Triplicate Girl’s abilities lifted the Bat-gloved hand and…
"Gyiiiiiiiii!"
"Bouncing Boy!" shouted several shocked Legionnaires almost simultaneously even as Superman reacted as well.
All at the sickening sight of an instantly deflated and quickly declining, physically speaking, due to a multitude of suddenly sped up biochemical reactions and interactions by the stolen, so to speak, powers of a Legionnaire currently on assignment elsewhere within the United Planet’s spatial limits: Chemical King.
In the tense seconds that had elapsed as the whole of the Legion, as well as the time-space visiting Superman, gathered about the slowly slipping-toward-Death individual that lay at the collective booted feet of his fellow Legionnaires and the Man of Steel.
"Chuck!" sobbed Saturn Girl, even as her super-telepathy touched the silently shrieking, in sheer internalized physical agony, Bouncing Boy, as others instantly knew…
"He’s dying," Triplicate Girl said, splitting into three who promptly dropped to their own trio of knees next to both Bouncing Boy, flat on his back, and Saturn Girl, on her knees as well. "B-but…he can’t die! He’s Chuck Taine! The only person to consume a super-plastic/elastic chemical and live to become…!"
"I can fly straight into my lab in our HQ high-rise, Bouncing Boy," offered the green-skinned, blonde-haired 12th-Level super-intelligent Legionnaire leader while standing close enough to be seen by the fast-fading eyesight of a long-held fast friend.
Barely shaking his fleshy head, as well as forcing a shaky smile to his too-full face, Bouncing Boy weakly replied, "N-no n-need, B-5. It’s…t-too l-late…anyway. At least…at least I w-went o-out…like a Legionnaire. Th-thank y-you all f-for…for…"
"He’s dead," said Superman matter-of-factly as his X-ray vision, verified an instant after by such super-vision belonging to the likes of Mon-El, the Daxamite-born super-man in his own way as was Superman in his time-reality. "I’m…sorry."
Nothing else needed to be said as the suddenly silent super-group of the 31st Century gathered tightly round the now lifeless, flesh-heavy, corpse of someone whose seemingly non-super presence appeared to be more hindrance than help in regards to normal super-villains, let alone the likes of Composite Superman, whom had turned from three back to one several short seconds before super-streaking up-and-away through the city’s sky.
In many ways, which would not be consciously considered until the initial shock of such a friend’s demise softened, Bouncing Boy did die as a heroically active participant within the Legion of Super-Heroes he’d loved so well.
His self-destructive intervention, at the absolute least, forced Composite Superman to leave and proffer no further, for a time, destruction within the heart of the super-city acting as capitol to not only all of Earth in the 31st Century, but also the administrative seat to the multi-world whole known simply as the United Planets.
"Rest in peace, Bouncing Boy," said S.P. Officer Jahk Ethaan, mostly to himself while mentally activating helmet-to-helmet headset systems with the gathering laser-armed officers of the Science Police. "Rest in peace."
END OF PART TWO
________________________________
PART THREE
Batman had endured this middle-of-the-night bat-and-mouse chase, across rooftops via acrobatic Bat-booted feet and Bat-belt obtained Batarang-and-line, for longer than he’d normally allow.
Truth was, he had been getting a bit bored or late.
It had been weeks since the last super-trouble of any given level had arisen, in the unlikely dual embodiment of both Dr. Hugo Strange, former psychiatreextraordinaire of Gotham’s own Arkham Asylum, and the suddenly insane, so it would seem, ex-psychiatric intern, Dr. Jonathan Crane, now known as Scarecrow, who’d Dr. Strange, using singular mind control techniques on what, apparently, happened to be a meek mind that was just the opposite of what had been believed by Dr. Jeremiah Arkham. Two threats that the Batman, with Superman’s assistance, were swiftly stopped and, as expected in such situations, sent back to Arkham Asylum as equally-insane inmates.
Weeks of minor criminal activity that had no ready need of a Caped Crusader, yet had been Batman’s sole source of nocturnal activity as a cowl-and-caped crimefighter.
Such was why, when the Dark Knight had arrived at a cat burglary-in-progress, involving the more ritzy condominium dwellings in and around upper downtown Gotham City, he left his self-protected Batmobile parked and avoided reaching for anything offensive inside a single one of the multitude of compartments making up the yellow Bat-belt worn snuggly about the well-muscled waist of this non-super-powered hero in blue-gray.
Curiously, he hadn’t yet been able to fully identify the thief in shiny black leather currently crossing from gothic rooftop to gothic rooftop in some impossibly similar manner as the Batman’s Batarang-and-line.
Still, judging from the indisputable fact that this fleeing black-garbed, in glistening leather, criminal had not so much as shot a handgun in his direction nor used any other super-criminal type weapon, Batman merely believed it to be a slightly better-than-average burglar.
Little could the Caped Crimefighter know that, even as he caught up to the criminal whose moves mirrored much of his own, save for the stealing of jewelry and stolen-from-safe cash being totted in some sort of equally black, but not leather, backpack, that he was about to encounter, but not necessarily for the first time…
"You!" exclaimed the Cowled One with quick recognition, after using some curiously small semi-circular objects whose sole design was to break the running tread contact between booted feet and rooftop surfaces and, as such, cause said criminal to fall flat and hard on their rear. "But I thought you quit after…!"
"I did!" grunted what turned out to be an exceptionally beautiful, assuredly unforgettable, lady beneath the formfitting outfit of glistening black leather, black booted, black masked design, which she swiftly pulled off a black-haired head with one curiously claw-gloved hand. "But, really, Batman, how long did you expect someone like me to play the role of a ‘good little girl’? You should’ve known me better than that, Dark Knight."
"Yes, perhaps I should," softly said the Batman even as his half-exposed, beneath the impermeable indigo cowl, square-jawed countenance formed a decidedly pleased half-smile, "Selina Kyle."
Gradually drawn together by an excitement essentially sexual in basic nature, although never completely acted upon, the Batman and the Catwoman were very close to a kiss.
When…
"Sorry to bother you, Batman," said an all-to-familiar somniferous voice, even as it gradually landed directly to the Dark Knight’s Bat-caped backside, "but I need your help."
No sooner had the sexual tension of this little Hallmark moment been obliterated, than Catwoman tugged her black mask back over her dark-haired, dark-eyed head while simultaneously snatching up a temporarily lowered-to-the rooftop backpack of misbegotten booty…
"Maybe another night, Bats. See ya!"
…than Catwoman utilized her signature black whip to, in essence, swing-jump onto yet another Gotham City high-rise rooftop before, faster than expected, disappearing into the moonless midnight.
"Thanks, Kal-El," grumbled the blue-gray costumed crimefighter sarcastically with narrowed-within-cowl eyes locked onto those true blues of the Last Son of Krypton. "What’s wrong…Lois in trouble again?"
Slowly shaking his square-jawed, spit-curled head, Superman stepped considerably closer while seriously saying, "It would appear an enemy is causing super-trouble for some, uh, friends of mine."
His always analytical billionaire mind beneath the cowl was quick to do its deductive dance, as the suddenly sneering Dark Knight knowingly said, "Composite Superman."
Nodding deeply, Superman gently placed a hand on the cape-covered, protectively padded, beneath gray surface, Bat-suit, then partially explained, "I’m afraid, after taking you back to your Batmobile, you’ll have to trust me to take it and you…someplace strange."
"Someplace strange?" said Batman in a smugly rhetorical tone and half-affectation. "Normally, I’d say we were standing there already, but…"
Meanwhile, within the daytime super-city of the 31st Century time-reality, a very colorfully costumed, as varied as their individualized super-powers, Legion of Super-Heroes were streaking through the self-same skies, via Brainiac-5’s flight rings, save for Mon-El, whose Daxamite capability to produce and direct gravitons for self-flight made him more like Superman, strike as a super-team.
"If not for my desire to be amused by such as you," said the literally half-Superman/half-Batman, with exposed skin as green as that of Brainiac-5’s Coluan coloring, "I would call upon a number of ‘stolen’ super-powers, running the entire range of you greatly beloved Legionnaires, to have utterly destroyed you all! Instead…I shall toy with you. Especially since it seems Superman has, apparently, abandoned you following the laughable, to me, demise of that self-inflating fool called…Bouncing Boy!"
"Shut the hell up!" screamed an enraged Lightning Lad as he, as per normal for his electrically volatile nature, unleashed huge lightning bolts with the concentrated force of billions of bombs being dropped with super-precision targeting onto a single, specific point not one single centimeter bigger than the bi-symbol christened muscular chest.
As with a seemingly endless number of previous power-bolts from the hovering via flight ring super-hero hailing from an agrarian planet called Winath, where he was one of many electrically-endowed humanoids named Garth Ranzz, such had very little effect, if that on the half-and-half super-villain.
Lightning Lad, like Brainiac 5, Cosmic Boy, and Saturn Girl, not to mention the late-and-lamented Bouncing Boy killed earlier, was one of the original core members of the Legion of Super-Heroes that was now home to so many super-powered members, some by birth on Earth-like planets, others through accidental actions, that it was now part and parcel to periodically patrol throughout United Planet’s space-boundaries via Legionnaire starships similar in hyper-space traveling capabilities as any other currently in common usage by an untold number of member-worlds across a spiral galaxy exactly like what those in Superman’s time-reality continue to call: the Milky Way.
Even as Mon-El took the brunt of the super-battle to Composite Superman, being the only such super-strong/invulnerable superhero in this time-reality, save for whenever Superman pays a visit…
"Uhnnnnn!"
…while Star Boy, swooping in swift flight ring spirals about their under siege half-Superman/half-Batman nemesis, exerts his power specific super-ability to significantly increase the mass of anything, inanimate object or person, to, at the very least, manage to mass-confuse Composite Superman for the span of, perhaps, eight-to-ten seconds before the half-and-half super-villain countered with the self-same mass-controlling abilities combined with Lightning Lad’s and Saturn Girl’s, which managed to mangle the mind as well as the unprotected physicality of Star Boy…
"Eeeeeiiiiiii!"
Meanwhile, just then passing through the unseen something separating one reality from another…
SSSSSSSHHHHHHHssssssssssshhhhhhhhhh-Mmmppt! Mmmppt!
Superman, struggling to desperately hang onto the nearly three-ton Batmobile wherein the Batman, sealed into the self-protected super-car, while wearing a special Bat-breather covering the nose area and exposed face, strained to maintain graviton-producing/directing capabilities a little longer.
"Come on, Kal-El," Superman said to himself, super-teeth clenched tightly enough to shatter same in normal non-invulnerable mortals, as his handsome square-jawed features had become a grimaced mask of super-will. "Just…sit it…down…nice and…easy!"
Just when it seemed as though the Man of Steel was about to allow the bat-like vehicle to crash hard enough to potentially damage the seemingly indestructible creation of billionaire Bruce Wayne/Batman…
"Uhnn!"
No sooner was it clear to the Cowled One that the Batmobile has, basically, landed, than he unsealed same from within while removing his Bat-breather before leaping headlong into the light of day on a 31st Century Earth.
"Amazing," muttered the man within the cowl-and-cape as he took in, at a single glance, the marvelous magnificence of a super-city unlike anything even the founding fathers of Gotham City could conceive. Then, upon hearing the groans of his crimefighting colleague…
"Superman! Are you all right?"
"Yes," the man in blue-red said, even as he slowly stood, as if doing so might somehow manage to downplay the palpable pain in the broad of his back and the dense musculature of his legs, "it’s just…that’s the first time I actually brought something like the Batmobile with me. It was…a lot more of a strain than I thought it’d be."
"Good," Batman said in a seemingly passionless fashion, "because if someone like you and this Legion of Super-Heroes need my help…well, let’s just say you’ve got to suck it up, my super-friend. Or else there’s absolutely no chance in stopping Composite Superman!"
"Understood," said Superman after finally exerting his super-will to the point where pain was no longer a lingering issue. "All right…I’ll fly above the Batmobile and lead you to where the Legionnaires and Composite Superman are currently embattled. The in-ear communications device will establish and hold the link so I can basically talk you in."
"Ready when you are, Kal-El," said the Batman, making certain his in-cowl communications contrivance was also fully functional before leaping inside the cockpit of his Batmobile once more.
"Lead the way!"
Lightly lifting off, Superman, seconds later, super-flew a few hundred feet higher than the turbo-engine, flame-spewing Batmobile made its way, in a more roundabout manner, through seldom-used streets, save for citizens to walk along whenever their super-city was not under such sustained attacks, in the self-same general direction.
"Am I coming in, okay, Batman?" asked the streaking along, at ground-speed equivalents, Man of Steel, testing the essential electronic link between the two.
"Five-by-five, Superman," said the Dark Knight in prompt reply, his Bat-gloved hands expertly handling the Batmobile’s wheel while Bat-booted feet expertly alternated between brake and accelerator in order to keep pace with the Last Son of Krypton flying overhead. "Now…you do realize that we’re not going to be able to take advantage of Composite Superman’s lead-allergy right away. He’ll be expecting it this time. Besides, we have to make certain not to unnecessarily expose Mon-El to the lead. No need in endangering the Daxamite super-man’s life."
"Understood," said Superman by way of an electronically transmitted reply, while swiftly zipping in and around the buildings of unbelievably tall architecture, even as Batman expertly sent his turbo-engine, 0-to-100 in three seconds, Batmobile in much the same manner along the streets themselves. "For the time being, let’s just hope having you here will help with the Element-of-Surprise factor and give us just enough of a pause to set him up for an eventual fall."
"Not before I get tossed about like the non-super hero that I am I’ll wager," grumbled the Batman barely loud enough to be transmitted into the Man of Steel’s in-ear device, which, of course, such as he didn’t need since his super-hearing would’ve done just as well.
All that the World’s Finest, in their time-reality, could conceivably believe would swiftly greet their eyes in the microseconds to come was, hopefully, some semblance of survival by all superheroes set against a villain as powerful as the Legionnaires, Superman, and even the Dark Knight combined.
"Here goes nothing…!"
END OF PART THREE
____________________________
PART FOUR/CONCLUSION
First and foremost, Superman swooped in at sub-Mach speeds upon the super-powered ruckus occurring in yet another downtown territory comprising the centermost section of an indescribably large cosmopolitan super-city of the 31st Century, which, in the thousand years prior in this particular time-reality, would’ve invariably been, although a lot less in sheer size, a much more modest Metropolis.
Even though, in this reality, there had been no Superman nor Lex Luthor, even though there had, in fact, been a completely Human Clark Kent partnered, at the Daily Planet newspaper, with a still lovely Lois Lane. Neither ever becoming romantically enamored with one another in any way, shape, or proverbial form.
Strange how such simplistic alterations would’ve inevitably led to other superhuman crimefighters that invariably included, from a far-flung planet called Daxamite, which, although home to an exceptionally xenophobic super-scientific species, nonetheless allowed for a few brave individuals to eventually leave their beloved world and its sole sun that, like Krypton in Superman’s reality, was a bloated, aged, red giant called Valor.
Therefore, once Lar Gand arrived, via hyper-space travelling sub-sized starship, on Earth whereupon, under a middle-aged yellowish star called Sol, he took up the task of being a super-man who’d named himself Mon-El, from some race-memory retrieved narrative involving a heroic protagonist of a similar-sounding personage basically believed to be nothing more than a morality tale for small Daxamite children.
Still, two super-men were always a lot better than a single such super-powered person…most especially against such as Composite Superman who could always triple his multi-powered prerogative, thanks solely to Triplicate Girl’s perfectly counterfeited tri-duplication abilities.
Triplicate Girl, real-name Luornu Durgo, from the planet Cargg that orbits, oddly enough, a trinary star system, sprang forth from a race whom, at some point during the latter part of evolutionary development, had inevitably emerged with the distinct species-specific power to quite literally, physically as well as mentally, triplicate themselves. She also had the honor of being the very first non-founding member to join the just-starting-to-grow Legion of Super-Heroes.
"All right, now," shouted the flight ring hovering Brainiac-5 even as the Man of Steel streaked straight into the frantic fray, "Superman’s back! It’s time to tie Composite Superman up so our surprise hero can proceed with the plan!"
Though the half-and-half super-villain, all three of them, allowed his super-hearing to zero in on B-5’s shouted instructions, his super-eyes spied Superman in a super-dive directly at his currently landing half-Superman/half-Batman green-skinned Self, done in order to trick the mostly soaring around via flight rings, save for Mon-El, Legionnaires into landing as well.
Then he could conquer the entirety of such superheroes headquartered on Earth in his time-reality of the 31st Century…along with the sudden super-strong stopping power brought against the Last Son of Krypton.
"Did you get your second wind, Superman?" super-shouted Composite Superman so loudly that even essentially unbreakable building windows threatened to shatter.
Something that, in this futuristic super-city’s scientifically perfect reality, would have required the close-quartered explosion of a suitcase-sized device with a destructive potential set to nuclear-level.
As expected, the half-and-half super-villain split himself into three, two of which worried with Superman and Mon-El, while the third took to the sky once again in order to draw in the flight-ring wearing Legionnaires that were not Kryptonian or Daxamite.
"Let’s take this freak out!" shouted an enraged, as well as outraged, Lightning Lad sending brilliant bolts, each electrically charged with at least a million volts, into the bi-symbol chest of Composite Superman, while his lunatic laughter rolled forth like thunder as his invulnerability easily absorbed it all. "Saturn Girl! Now!"
Before the half-Superman/half-Batman villain could hover-spin around, Saturn Girl unleashed perhaps the greatest concentrated transmission of telepathic power ever endeavored by the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty born on Titan. It would either work perfectly and, at the very least, scramble the surface consciousness of the Composite Superman or…
"Gyyyaaahhh!"
"It’s working, Saturn Girl!" yelled their leader, Brainiac-5, from hovering above the airborne assault against such an incredibly powerful super-villain. "Keep it up!"
"I’m," started a strained Saturn Girl as her fair-skinned face screwed itself into a mask of super-intense concentration reaching far beyond her wildest expectations, "…trying…but…can’t…hold out…long…!"
"Now!"
Heeding their green-skinned leader’s uncharacteristic shout, a lot louder than normal for the 12th-Level blonde-haired Coluan ultra-genius…
The totality of flight-ring flying Legionnaires swiftly took the fight straight to the still psychically assaulted Composite Superman, their person-specific super-powers utilized in unison as a single entity, just as they had been tentatively trained from the very instant each swore their
allegiance to the Legion of Super-Heroes and, indirectly, to the United Planets.
Colossal Boy swiftly increased his size to some two hundred meters, with previously ordinary strength significantly enhanced accordingly, and proceeded in slamming one huge hand hard onto Composite Superman, who easily shrugged it off Mon-El like invulnerability combined with limitless super-strength, while the hovering Saturn Girl’s super-psionic power remained tightly
concentrated onto the still struggling super-mind within the half-and-half super-villain…
…even as his other two tripled personages continued countering the super-strong strikes made by both the Man of Steel and the Daxamite in Red…
…while Lightning Lad, Cosmic Boy, Star Boy, and Sun Boy jointly jockeyed closer to their hovering half-Superman/half-Batman, sending extremely destructive bolts of lightning along with magnetically-controlled blast-waves and mass manipulative power amidst nova-level super-heat streamers sent against the lone, one out of three, Composite Superman…
…even as Sensor Girl, one of the newer recruits, exerted her singular capability to create realistic illusions, carefully confining such to only the mind of Composite Superman…
…even as Saturn Girl, no longer able to maintain a telepathic attack, psionically pulled out, so that Sensor Girl’s illusory power could take total control…
…and, after Ferro Lad willed himself into living iron, the permanently masked superhero sent himself, via flight ring, headlong into the momentarily mentally overwhelmed Composite Superman not battling Mon-El and the Man of Steel at street level…
…causing said Superman-fighting and Mon-El battling Composite Supermen to suddenly streak skyward in order to direct renewed rage toward those Legionnaires currently conducting their massed aerial super-assault…
"You will all die!" screamed a half-cowled madman commanding all they had in singular super-powers as well as Mon-El’s yellow sun-supplied strength and much, much more.
"Now, Batman!" Superman said somewhat loudly via the link established by the in-ear Comm-device previously supplied by the Cowled One.
No sooner did the Batman knowingly reply via Superman’s smallish in-ear communications device, saying simply, "On my way", than the Man of Steel gave a get-ready nod to Element Lad, who had been the only Legionnaire not attacking Composite Superman during those last tense minutes.
Exactly as it seemed the half-Superman/half-Batman was on the verge of vanquishing all the other Legionnaires via the unleashing of virtually all his Legionnaire-like abilities, Composite Superman’s super-hearing heard a strangely familiar roar on rapid approach.
A singular sound that was sorely out-of-place for this particular time-reality.
With a super-fast/super-strong spiraling out exertion of Mon-El-mimicked super-powers after the unified utilization of all other Legionnaire-acquired abilities, Composite Superman almost instantly relieved himself of the potential threat presented by such super-powered, flight ring-flying assailants to land and look toward the thunderously arriving turbo-engine street vehicle at this site of recent super-battle…
"Batman," grinned the half-cowled, green-skinned countenance of the half-and-half super-villain even as the obsidian, even in daylight!, Batmobile rumbled to an swift tire-screeching stop. "Just when I thought the triumph in my here-and-now was doomed to boredom…the Caped Crusader has come to play. Heh, heh, heheheh."
Superman stepped to the side, along with Mon-El, both secretly sighing in subconscious assuagement inevitably revolving around the playing of this wild card from a neighboring time-reality. All while allowing anguished super-muscles to finally relax so the sensations of palpable pain and definite fatigue could swiftly dissipate inside two equally invulnerable bodies. One in blue-red and the other in mostly all-red, save for a true-blue hero-type cape.
Having already brought the bombastic Batmobile to a screeching, skidding-sideways stop some six hundred meters from where stood Composite Superman…
"You’ve proven what a tough guy you are with these Legionnaires, Composite Superman…but are you capable of defeating the only person responsible for defeating you the first time?" snarled the Dark Knight after swiftly leaping out of his unique, in two time-realities, car’s cockpit-type super high-tech section to stand so heroically before a multi-super personage.
Having long since landed, not to mention continuing as a single, as opposed to triple, individual, the half-and-half super-villain said with a sadistic sneer, "You just don’t know how badly I’ve looked forward to this, Batman. But, before we do fight…remove your Bat-belt! My X-ray vision has already warned me that you’re carrying that lead compartment secretly carried behind your caped back. Weaken me once, Batman, shame on me, weaken me twice…"
Without hesitation, Batman thumbed in the secretive code that caused the Bat-belt’s buckle to release, then held the yellow belt dangling down next to his right side for several seconds, before dropping it to clatter onto the street’s surface roughly a meter from both Bat-booted feet.
"Ready when you are," taunted the Caped Crimefighter after promptly taking up a typical hand-to-hand battle stance seen numerous times in Karate-type tournaments throughout his own, and Superman’s, time-reality. "If you’re brave enough to fight me on my level, C.S."
With a chuckle, Composite Superman thought to himself, C.S.? How quaint.
"Very well, Batman," began the half-and-half super-villain even as he, too, took up a typical, in both time-realities, hand-to-hand battle stance. "Drawing upon the multi-planetary martial arts skills of Karate Kid to beat you down."
Hearing his name, Karate Kid, hovering steadily alongside the rest of his fellow Legionnaires, couldn’t help but tense at the notion of this half-Superman/half-Batman and all Legionnaire-powered person using his non-super capabilities against the legendary, in that other time-reality, non-super hero.
Still, as fully knowledgeable about Superman and Brainiac-5’s earlier expressed plan as the rest of the flight-ring floating super-team, he relied upon the emotional control teachings of his multi-world martial arts training in order to hover…and hope.
"I don’t need super-powers to beat the Batman," Composite Superman added sarcastically, even as the two drew ever nearer. "No super-strength. No lightning bolts. Nothing but good old-fashioned martial arts action derived from more worlds than your own universal existence."
"Is talking me to death part of those otherworldly martial arts techniques, C.S.?" snidely scoffed the cowl-and-caped crimefighting colleague, in his reality, of Superman, still standing aside with Mon-El as both, along with Brainiac-5, who’d just then landed via flight ring to stand with them, desperately hoped their plan, which prompted Superman’s trans-time trip back to Gotham City, would, indeed, end in success over Xan.
"The only ‘talking’ I’ll do when I’m finished defeating you on your own non-super playing field," snarled a singularly overconfident Composite Superman as both stood cowled head to half-cowled head striking distance from one another, "shall be to deliver a eulogy over your broken body."
"Bring it," Batman defiantly as well as deviously half-grinned in practiced reply.
And so the two caped opponents commenced Karate-type strikes and counters that made the Man of Steel truly proud of the Dark Knight’s never-say-die determination when facing someone he knew to be utterly invulnerable to any and all physical harm while having to stand his ground after receiving non-super, on purpose, punches and kicks from the half-and-half super-villain relying only on Karate Kid’s multi-combative capabilities.
Some small part of the Last Son of Krypton wanted so much to super-run toward these two and stop the non-super fight, but he knew that, if the plan were to work at all, none could interfere.
No matter what.
His super-fists tightening at his sides, Superman silently encouraged, Come on, Bruce. Just hang in there a few minutes more. Just long enough to be absolutely certain Composite Superman’s attention is totally directed at you and this hand-to-hand fight. Then…
"You can’t hope to top Karate Kid’s super-cultural knowledge of untold millennia of martial arts with what little you came to comprehend on only a single planet, Batman," sniggered Composite Superman in a somniferous whisper close to the tightly held, fully cowled face down to the street’s spotless surface, Dark Knight Detective. "Surrender now…and I promise to only break one arm. Heh, heh, heh, heheheh."
Nodding in the direction of the still, via flight ring, hovering gray-and-white costumed, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, Periodic Table-controlling Element Lad…
…who, in turn, nodded in the direction of the also still flight ring hovering masked Legionnaire, Ferro Lad…
…even as the Batman, still held cowl-covered face firmly against the street, felt the muscles of his right arm, being expertly twisted without using super-strength by Composite Superman, essentially start to become agonizingly mangled, while still resisting those last syrupy-passing seconds necessary until…
"And now, Batman," began a grinning green-skinned half-Superman/half-Batman, still straddling the indigo-colored caped back of the cowl-down Dark Knight, "it’s time to teach you a very valuable lesson. Hope you can write left-handed. Heh, heh, hehheheh."
"Heads up, Composite Superman!" teasingly shouted Brainiac-5, even as the half-and-half super-villain looked up to see the simplistic-yet-ingenious counter-action for which the Batman had, to put it in mostly colloquial terminology, acted as flesh-and-blood decoy.
"No," said Composite Superman to himself in the microsecond immediately proceeding the double-fisted downward strike of a living iron superhero having been elementally altered, via a fellow Legionnaire, into living lead.
Once again having reverted to Xan due to lead-induced unconsciousness, the colorless-skinned, orange-haired alien with singular understanding of precisely how one could become a Composite Superman, was securely held behind ultra-strong sets of force fields via the Science Police, even as the Batman stood with Superman in the elaborate living room located within the much-more-complex-than-the Batcave HQ for the Legion of Super-Heroes.
"We can’t adequately relate how much we appreciate your help in this, Batman," Brainiac-5 said with a seldom seen green-skinned smile to the cowl-and-caped crimefighter currently nursing a sore, but not broken, right arm. "Are you sure you wouldn’t like to visit our hospital facilities in order to significantly speed up the healing of your…?"
"No, thank you, Brainiac-5," swiftly stated an always self-sufficient superhero without super-powers, even as pulsating pain continued to tug at his forethought. "I’d just like to get back to my own time and, uh, pursue some personal interests."
"If you should ever desire to relocate to our reality, Batman," said a gregariously grinning Lightning Lad, co-founder of the United Planets’ Legion of Super-Heroes, "I’m sure Superman would be more than willing to..."
"Again, thanks, Lightning Lad," reiterated a recalcitrant Caped Crusader, his half-exposed square-jawed countenance slightly half-smiling. "But I much prefer my Batcave…even if my supercomputers can’t compare with a 31st Century PDA. But, should you ever need my help again, don’t hesitate to trans-time call my blue-red friend."
With that, having bid heartfelt farewells, Superman swiftly streaked off with Batman in order to, after the Dark Knight reentered the Batmobile’s self-protected cockpit section, return it and them to their slightly less-perfect time-reality…
"I wonder what Batman would’ve said had he known about this reality’s Bruce Wayne?" rhetorically asked Saturn Girl with a growing grin.
After flashing back to cerebral-located historical files, within the supercomputer-like mind of the blonde-haired, green-skinned Brainiac-5, regarding a 20th Century, their Twentieth, Bruce Wayne growing up with parents who were never victims of an armed robbery gone bad. Recalling a Bruce Wayne without the obsessive-compulsive desire to dress up in a bat-like costume in order to offer opposition to super-criminals and criminals alike in their 20th Century Gotham City. A Bruce Wayne who happily took control of Wayne Enterprises after his father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, retired and to whom Bruce married a certain dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty who’d never felt compelled to don a skintight black leather costume and identity-concealing mask.
Ms. Selina Kyle became Mrs. Selina Wayne in this separate reality where fairy-tale endings did come true.
But then, what kind of reality could it truly be without the likes of Batman and Catwoman?
END
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Want to see Composite Superman in return mode? Go to Wikipedia-sponcered sight at: www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Worldsfinest283.JPG
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