Post by redsycorax on Dec 20, 2021 21:55:22 GMT
LIMBO: A legendary world that consists of former heroes and villains who are relics of previous timelines that no longer exist or alternate universes obliterated in sundry crises. Limbo serves as a repository for characters such as the Space Canine Patrol Agents, numerous Superboy analogues, and beings erased from existence by sudden temporal shifts... it lies outside the current parameters of the known Multiverse...
+++
Brainiac 5 looked up at the wheeling, constantly reconfiguring sky as he thought back to the days where he was a member of the Legion of Super Heroes, before the timestorm when Brainiac 2 (Vril Dox) had been erased from existence, along with all of his descendants. He hadn't seen Vril since, although he was probably somewhere on the dimensionally transcendental world on which he had found himself. He looked around him, as the wind whistled around his desolate surroundings, full of entities and civilisations that had never existed and now never would. He thought of Kara Zor-El, his beloved Supergirl, and wondered what the multiverse would bring next to the world on the edge of space and time.
METROPOLIS, EARTHPORT, CE 3021:
As Supergirl decelerated from the time vortex, she was joined by a small white projectile. As it slowed down from lightspeed, she was startled to see it was a small white kitten, with a telltale lightning streak on its side: "Whizzy?"
"Wow, you're Supergirl, cool. My late dad Streaky was one of your companions. I'm Kuiper, the son of Streaky and Ester, the lightning-bearer member of the Space Cat Patrol Agents."
"So what brings you to the thirty first century, Kuip?"
"I was patrolling my time era's Earth looking for villains to deal with and I caught sight of you going transtemporal, so I decided to follow you. I have a telepathic link on my collar so I can communicate with you."
"What happened to Streaky? I haven't seen him for years."
"Oh, he and my mother and the other SCPA agents sacrificed themselves during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. I got sent to Earth and got brought up by Krypto the Superdog."
"Rao. That's... Matter Eater Lad?! But I thought he was..."
As they descended and landed, Tenzil Kem walked over to them:
"Kara. Your memory of this era is occluded by a cognitive barrier. I will give you... enlightenment."
Supergirl blinked and then remembered who wasn't there: "Brainy?! Where's Querl?"
"I am now designated Black Hole Lad. Querl Dox was erased from existence in a timestorm, and I was the only one who could perceive it. I believe he may be in the transdimensional realm known as... Limbo."
"Tenz, what are you doing here? How are you alive again?"
"Quantum flux. It has caused many reverberations as initially minor modifications to histories transform into tidal waves as the causality and consequences are magnified over time. For example, Laurel Gand was initially erased from existence, but reappeared during the Five Year Interregnum and the Legion's temporary dissolution. She died during that period and Lar and Tasmia are bringing up her daughter Lauren from her relationship with Rond Vidar."
"You haven't answered my question, Tenz. How do I get to this Limbo place?"
"That's where we come in, S-Girl." impulse and XS joined them, as did Computa 2.0:
"Mam'selle Kara, I 'ave located the multiversal coordinates for Limbo. They are in this data dot. Scan it and memorise its coordinates."
As she did so, Supergirl noticed Kuiper had done the same: "Kuiper? This is too dangerous for a kitten."
"What if there's forgotten categories of kryptonite there, Supergirl? I'm not from your homeworld, so I can provide you with help."
Supergirl considered that for a moment, then nodded: "All right, then. But Jenni, Bart? Once you help us there, return here immediately. There may be speed force anomalies or entities present that could present a risk, even to the grandchildren of the first Flash."
"Who said you were going alone, Kara?" Mon-El descended from the air as Supergirl nodded:
"All right, Lar. But no-one else gets to join me on this, apart from you and Kuiper here."
"Hey, Kara. Why do I smell Winathian pleasure blossom on your kitten there?"
Kuiper's collar glowed: "And so do I. Lightning Lass, right? I think Mom was an element in the history of Winath. She was one of the enhancile cats who were sent out by Winath's space exploration agency in the Traverser probe series, namely Traverser V in the twenty-fifth century."
"Yes, of course. My ancestor Toria Ranzz was one of the project design staff. And Traverser V discovered Korbal, the planet on which Mekt, Garth and I got attacked by lightning beasts and given our electrical capabilities. And the cat onboard was a long-haired white enhancile named..."
"Ester, yes. My mother. I know contact was lost, but the reason why was that lightning beasts attacked her and supercharged her body with electricity too. She had abilities comparable to yours. She became a Space Cats Patrol Agent, which is where she met Dad, Streaky the first supercat."
"Nass! She was one of our animal pioneers and the reason Korbal was charted as unsafe, although circumstances forced Mekt, Garth and I to land there and..."
"Because Mom's abilities were acquired, I didn't inherit them. Although in Dad's case, the X-kryptonite supercharged his genes after repeated exposure, making his abilities permanent."
"Kara, Kuiper, Lar? Time to go..."
BLEEDSPACE:
"So what do we know about Limbo, anyway?"
"Not very much. Its existence has been known about for a millenium, though. After the last time Laurel was in it before her death, she told me that the world in question is atemporal and locked in a steady state pocket universe of its own. Whenever individuals are erased from existence, they arrive on that world. And if quantum flux variations occur, they return to existence and unless they have specific superpowers like total recall memory, they don't recollect their period of imprisonment there." Mon-El replied
"But we live in an infinite multiverse again, and what about the "Convergence" event? What about Hypertime?" Kuiper asked.
"Exactly. The Flash and you, Kara, undid the sequence of events that led to the original crisis ever concluding with the end of the first multiverse, although not before the sacrifices that had to be made during the Crisis occurred- apart from Barry and your deaths. For a while, you must have been on Limbo as well."
"Uh, this is where we drop you off, folks..."
LIMBO:
Supergirl, Mon-El and Kuiper looked around:
"That's odd. I remember the Inferior Five's Merryman being a fixture around here."
Kuiper replied: "Uh, no, apparently not now. With the erasure of the multiverse-ending aspect of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, their particular alternate Earth survived, albeit with their timeline altered. Their parents, the Freedom Brigade of the United States, dominate that alternate Earth's history, which is downright weird. Their world used to be "Earth-12", now it's... Earth-55, from what I recall of my adventure with Liberty Cat and Krypty."
"So who is lurking around here, now?"
"That would be us."
"Luthor?! No, wait, my cousin Superman told me about you- you're the heroic Earth-Three version of Lex Luthor."
"Which Superman? I've met two of them, one from Earth-One and other from Earth-Two."
"Earth-One. Oh, this is my colleague, Lar Gand of Daxam and the metafeline is called Kuiper."
"And this is my wife, Lois Lane-Luthor."
"Of course. You're Alexander's parents."
"Then he did escape to a safe alternate Earth? Oh, thank Lucifiel!"
"What happened was that..."
"Earth-Three vanished from existence but apparently you were sent here? What about the Crime Syndicate?"
"Something recreated Earth-Three in the antimatter universe. Then, with the recoalescence of the multiverse, another iteration of it appeared. But details of it were different, and apparently, I didn't exist there- and Lois' new iteration was Superwoman."
"So, Alex, who else is here apart from you?"
"There have been a lot of abrupt arrivals and departures. Ace the Bathound, Kathy Kane/Batwoman I, a benign Superwoman Lois Lane, a Batman from a world where Bruce Wayne's parents were never killed, a married Green Lantern and Carol Ferris, Captain Thunder, and youthful incarnations of Wonder Woman named Wonder Tot and Wonder Girl. And Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, from a vanished alternate Earth of talking cartoon animals."
"So, where do you live, exactly?"
LIMBOPOLIS:
"We've been told that there's a threat to this world's existence."
"It's not too bad here. Like the World of Ys in its steady-state universe, everything we end or whose existence we end regenerates back into existence at once. And we can't die. Effectively, if there were any timestream here, we'd be immortal."
"Which is small consolation, I suppose." As Kara turned, she gasped. Standing in the doorway was a familar figure. Then she closed the distance and embraced him at once:
"Querl! Oh, Querl, how could I have forgotten you? Especially you."
"Kara. My beautiful Kara. What I went through after I thought I'd lost you during the Crisis..."
"Good to see you again, Brainy."
"Lar. Although that's not Streaky...?"
"I'm his son, Kuiper. Kara here wanted to rescue you from this place."
Alexander looked away: "I'm afraid that's not possible. The only thing that would do that would be a quantum flux which would erase the circumstances that brought him here."
"Wasn't erasing the outcome of the first Crisis enough? Limbo shouldn't even exist."
"In a restored infinite multiverse where anything and everything is theoretically possible? I agree. But even if we did undo the sequence of events that led to Brainiac 5 coming here, countless others would still remain here."
"No, that's wrong. I won't let this stand."
"Kara, exactly what did you and Barry do to erase the end of the first multiverse?"
"We attacked the Anti-Monitor at Event One, the prelude to the multiversal Big Bang. Effectively, we weakened him so much that he wasn't able to erase any further Earths from existence and obviously, undid our initial deaths too. Enough to generate additional iterations of me on Earth-Zero, as the core alternate Earth is now apparently called. So, what do we do? Is it even safe to erase Limbo from existence now that it's no longer relevant? More to the point, who might stop us?"
"I was afraid you'd say that. While the Crime Syndicate disappeared from this world some time ago, there's an evil iteration of Superman called Overman who might be a nuisance in that regard."
"I crossed paths with an alternate-universe version of me called Interceptor, she told me that he was from Earth-14. But isn't he psychotically insane?"
"Yes, and clutching a Doomsday Bomb." Brainiac 5 nodded.
"But... surely that wouldn't detonate here? Any nuclear reaction would be instantly nullified, given the steady-state physics of Limbo..." Mon-El commented
"Which means that we need to do something about that. Erase the circumstances that led to the existence of Limbo in the first place." Supergirl added.
"We don't know if Limbo was originally created or whether the atemporal nature of this dimension means that it has always existed, unrelated to the presence or otherwise of surviving universes." Alex contributed.
"Oh, of course. I should've realised that. Brainy, remember when the Fatal Five attacked Superboy and us with a time-sorter device?"
"Yes, I see what you mean, Lar. If it can realign temporal sequences, it might do the trick and erase Limbo from existence altogether."
And so, an entourage of metahumans and others, led by Supergirl and Mon-El, attacked the irate, snarling Overman at the centre of the wasteland that had once been Earth-14, but where he now existed alone. Grinning to himself insanely, he activated his doomsday bomb at the same time Brainiac 5 turned on the time sorter and...
Limbo.
Ceased.
To.
Exi s t
In its place, there were untold numbers of reunions and expressions of relief.
Kara, Kuiper, Mon-El and Brainiac 5 appeared back on Legionsphere in 3021....
Overman growled and snarled at the Justice Project of America on Earth-14...
On Earth Three Point One, Alex and Lois Lane-Luthor embraced their long lost son Alexander, now grown to manhood...
On other Earths, Bruce Wayne became Batman without the death of his parents, Lois Lane became Superwoman as the result of a scientific experiment by Professor Phineas Potter, Bruce Wayne and Kathy Kane married and their son Bruce II became Robin II to Dick Grayson's Batman II, Hal Jordan clutched Carol Jordan's hand as she gave birth to their son Martin, Captain Thunder found himself amidst the hell of his post-apocalyptic Earth-964, where a nuclear war had wiped out humanity (for not all resolutions were pleasant ones), Hoppy the Marvel Bunny soared above the skies of Earth-C-Plus, and Wonder Tot and Wonder Girl were earlier aged incarnations of Wonder Woman on Earth-124.
And in an infinite multiverse once more, in all its complexity and diversity , there was no need for Limbo, so it had never come into existence.
EPILOGUE:
"Kara, will you marry me?"
"Yes, Querl, yes!"
THE END: NEXT LSH STORY: WEDDING OF THE MILLENNIUM
+++
Brainiac 5 looked up at the wheeling, constantly reconfiguring sky as he thought back to the days where he was a member of the Legion of Super Heroes, before the timestorm when Brainiac 2 (Vril Dox) had been erased from existence, along with all of his descendants. He hadn't seen Vril since, although he was probably somewhere on the dimensionally transcendental world on which he had found himself. He looked around him, as the wind whistled around his desolate surroundings, full of entities and civilisations that had never existed and now never would. He thought of Kara Zor-El, his beloved Supergirl, and wondered what the multiverse would bring next to the world on the edge of space and time.
METROPOLIS, EARTHPORT, CE 3021:
As Supergirl decelerated from the time vortex, she was joined by a small white projectile. As it slowed down from lightspeed, she was startled to see it was a small white kitten, with a telltale lightning streak on its side: "Whizzy?"
"Wow, you're Supergirl, cool. My late dad Streaky was one of your companions. I'm Kuiper, the son of Streaky and Ester, the lightning-bearer member of the Space Cat Patrol Agents."
"So what brings you to the thirty first century, Kuip?"
"I was patrolling my time era's Earth looking for villains to deal with and I caught sight of you going transtemporal, so I decided to follow you. I have a telepathic link on my collar so I can communicate with you."
"What happened to Streaky? I haven't seen him for years."
"Oh, he and my mother and the other SCPA agents sacrificed themselves during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. I got sent to Earth and got brought up by Krypto the Superdog."
"Rao. That's... Matter Eater Lad?! But I thought he was..."
As they descended and landed, Tenzil Kem walked over to them:
"Kara. Your memory of this era is occluded by a cognitive barrier. I will give you... enlightenment."
Supergirl blinked and then remembered who wasn't there: "Brainy?! Where's Querl?"
"I am now designated Black Hole Lad. Querl Dox was erased from existence in a timestorm, and I was the only one who could perceive it. I believe he may be in the transdimensional realm known as... Limbo."
"Tenz, what are you doing here? How are you alive again?"
"Quantum flux. It has caused many reverberations as initially minor modifications to histories transform into tidal waves as the causality and consequences are magnified over time. For example, Laurel Gand was initially erased from existence, but reappeared during the Five Year Interregnum and the Legion's temporary dissolution. She died during that period and Lar and Tasmia are bringing up her daughter Lauren from her relationship with Rond Vidar."
"You haven't answered my question, Tenz. How do I get to this Limbo place?"
"That's where we come in, S-Girl." impulse and XS joined them, as did Computa 2.0:
"Mam'selle Kara, I 'ave located the multiversal coordinates for Limbo. They are in this data dot. Scan it and memorise its coordinates."
As she did so, Supergirl noticed Kuiper had done the same: "Kuiper? This is too dangerous for a kitten."
"What if there's forgotten categories of kryptonite there, Supergirl? I'm not from your homeworld, so I can provide you with help."
Supergirl considered that for a moment, then nodded: "All right, then. But Jenni, Bart? Once you help us there, return here immediately. There may be speed force anomalies or entities present that could present a risk, even to the grandchildren of the first Flash."
"Who said you were going alone, Kara?" Mon-El descended from the air as Supergirl nodded:
"All right, Lar. But no-one else gets to join me on this, apart from you and Kuiper here."
"Hey, Kara. Why do I smell Winathian pleasure blossom on your kitten there?"
Kuiper's collar glowed: "And so do I. Lightning Lass, right? I think Mom was an element in the history of Winath. She was one of the enhancile cats who were sent out by Winath's space exploration agency in the Traverser probe series, namely Traverser V in the twenty-fifth century."
"Yes, of course. My ancestor Toria Ranzz was one of the project design staff. And Traverser V discovered Korbal, the planet on which Mekt, Garth and I got attacked by lightning beasts and given our electrical capabilities. And the cat onboard was a long-haired white enhancile named..."
"Ester, yes. My mother. I know contact was lost, but the reason why was that lightning beasts attacked her and supercharged her body with electricity too. She had abilities comparable to yours. She became a Space Cats Patrol Agent, which is where she met Dad, Streaky the first supercat."
"Nass! She was one of our animal pioneers and the reason Korbal was charted as unsafe, although circumstances forced Mekt, Garth and I to land there and..."
"Because Mom's abilities were acquired, I didn't inherit them. Although in Dad's case, the X-kryptonite supercharged his genes after repeated exposure, making his abilities permanent."
"Kara, Kuiper, Lar? Time to go..."
BLEEDSPACE:
"So what do we know about Limbo, anyway?"
"Not very much. Its existence has been known about for a millenium, though. After the last time Laurel was in it before her death, she told me that the world in question is atemporal and locked in a steady state pocket universe of its own. Whenever individuals are erased from existence, they arrive on that world. And if quantum flux variations occur, they return to existence and unless they have specific superpowers like total recall memory, they don't recollect their period of imprisonment there." Mon-El replied
"But we live in an infinite multiverse again, and what about the "Convergence" event? What about Hypertime?" Kuiper asked.
"Exactly. The Flash and you, Kara, undid the sequence of events that led to the original crisis ever concluding with the end of the first multiverse, although not before the sacrifices that had to be made during the Crisis occurred- apart from Barry and your deaths. For a while, you must have been on Limbo as well."
"Uh, this is where we drop you off, folks..."
LIMBO:
Supergirl, Mon-El and Kuiper looked around:
"That's odd. I remember the Inferior Five's Merryman being a fixture around here."
Kuiper replied: "Uh, no, apparently not now. With the erasure of the multiverse-ending aspect of the Crisis on Infinite Earths, their particular alternate Earth survived, albeit with their timeline altered. Their parents, the Freedom Brigade of the United States, dominate that alternate Earth's history, which is downright weird. Their world used to be "Earth-12", now it's... Earth-55, from what I recall of my adventure with Liberty Cat and Krypty."
"So who is lurking around here, now?"
"That would be us."
"Luthor?! No, wait, my cousin Superman told me about you- you're the heroic Earth-Three version of Lex Luthor."
"Which Superman? I've met two of them, one from Earth-One and other from Earth-Two."
"Earth-One. Oh, this is my colleague, Lar Gand of Daxam and the metafeline is called Kuiper."
"And this is my wife, Lois Lane-Luthor."
"Of course. You're Alexander's parents."
"Then he did escape to a safe alternate Earth? Oh, thank Lucifiel!"
"What happened was that..."
"Earth-Three vanished from existence but apparently you were sent here? What about the Crime Syndicate?"
"Something recreated Earth-Three in the antimatter universe. Then, with the recoalescence of the multiverse, another iteration of it appeared. But details of it were different, and apparently, I didn't exist there- and Lois' new iteration was Superwoman."
"So, Alex, who else is here apart from you?"
"There have been a lot of abrupt arrivals and departures. Ace the Bathound, Kathy Kane/Batwoman I, a benign Superwoman Lois Lane, a Batman from a world where Bruce Wayne's parents were never killed, a married Green Lantern and Carol Ferris, Captain Thunder, and youthful incarnations of Wonder Woman named Wonder Tot and Wonder Girl. And Hoppy the Marvel Bunny, from a vanished alternate Earth of talking cartoon animals."
"So, where do you live, exactly?"
LIMBOPOLIS:
"We've been told that there's a threat to this world's existence."
"It's not too bad here. Like the World of Ys in its steady-state universe, everything we end or whose existence we end regenerates back into existence at once. And we can't die. Effectively, if there were any timestream here, we'd be immortal."
"Which is small consolation, I suppose." As Kara turned, she gasped. Standing in the doorway was a familar figure. Then she closed the distance and embraced him at once:
"Querl! Oh, Querl, how could I have forgotten you? Especially you."
"Kara. My beautiful Kara. What I went through after I thought I'd lost you during the Crisis..."
"Good to see you again, Brainy."
"Lar. Although that's not Streaky...?"
"I'm his son, Kuiper. Kara here wanted to rescue you from this place."
Alexander looked away: "I'm afraid that's not possible. The only thing that would do that would be a quantum flux which would erase the circumstances that brought him here."
"Wasn't erasing the outcome of the first Crisis enough? Limbo shouldn't even exist."
"In a restored infinite multiverse where anything and everything is theoretically possible? I agree. But even if we did undo the sequence of events that led to Brainiac 5 coming here, countless others would still remain here."
"No, that's wrong. I won't let this stand."
"Kara, exactly what did you and Barry do to erase the end of the first multiverse?"
"We attacked the Anti-Monitor at Event One, the prelude to the multiversal Big Bang. Effectively, we weakened him so much that he wasn't able to erase any further Earths from existence and obviously, undid our initial deaths too. Enough to generate additional iterations of me on Earth-Zero, as the core alternate Earth is now apparently called. So, what do we do? Is it even safe to erase Limbo from existence now that it's no longer relevant? More to the point, who might stop us?"
"I was afraid you'd say that. While the Crime Syndicate disappeared from this world some time ago, there's an evil iteration of Superman called Overman who might be a nuisance in that regard."
"I crossed paths with an alternate-universe version of me called Interceptor, she told me that he was from Earth-14. But isn't he psychotically insane?"
"Yes, and clutching a Doomsday Bomb." Brainiac 5 nodded.
"But... surely that wouldn't detonate here? Any nuclear reaction would be instantly nullified, given the steady-state physics of Limbo..." Mon-El commented
"Which means that we need to do something about that. Erase the circumstances that led to the existence of Limbo in the first place." Supergirl added.
"We don't know if Limbo was originally created or whether the atemporal nature of this dimension means that it has always existed, unrelated to the presence or otherwise of surviving universes." Alex contributed.
"Oh, of course. I should've realised that. Brainy, remember when the Fatal Five attacked Superboy and us with a time-sorter device?"
"Yes, I see what you mean, Lar. If it can realign temporal sequences, it might do the trick and erase Limbo from existence altogether."
And so, an entourage of metahumans and others, led by Supergirl and Mon-El, attacked the irate, snarling Overman at the centre of the wasteland that had once been Earth-14, but where he now existed alone. Grinning to himself insanely, he activated his doomsday bomb at the same time Brainiac 5 turned on the time sorter and...
Limbo.
Ceased.
To.
Exi s t
In its place, there were untold numbers of reunions and expressions of relief.
Kara, Kuiper, Mon-El and Brainiac 5 appeared back on Legionsphere in 3021....
Overman growled and snarled at the Justice Project of America on Earth-14...
On Earth Three Point One, Alex and Lois Lane-Luthor embraced their long lost son Alexander, now grown to manhood...
On other Earths, Bruce Wayne became Batman without the death of his parents, Lois Lane became Superwoman as the result of a scientific experiment by Professor Phineas Potter, Bruce Wayne and Kathy Kane married and their son Bruce II became Robin II to Dick Grayson's Batman II, Hal Jordan clutched Carol Jordan's hand as she gave birth to their son Martin, Captain Thunder found himself amidst the hell of his post-apocalyptic Earth-964, where a nuclear war had wiped out humanity (for not all resolutions were pleasant ones), Hoppy the Marvel Bunny soared above the skies of Earth-C-Plus, and Wonder Tot and Wonder Girl were earlier aged incarnations of Wonder Woman on Earth-124.
And in an infinite multiverse once more, in all its complexity and diversity , there was no need for Limbo, so it had never come into existence.
EPILOGUE:
"Kara, will you marry me?"
"Yes, Querl, yes!"
THE END: NEXT LSH STORY: WEDDING OF THE MILLENNIUM
