Have I mentioned before that I hate time travel?

I was on my way back from visiting the west coast when I got dragged into some kind of energy vortex. It was like a sideways tornado and it was way more powerful than I could break away from. I was almost home, when it hit and then I was somewhere else. The mountains and river looked the same, but there was no Lake Aven and Pinnacle City wasn't anywhere to be seen!

I stayed high in the sky and flew south along the mountain chain knowing that I should come across a city, before too long, like Cheyenne or Laramie. My direction sense is pretty good, and using my power to enhance my vision a bit, I could see some subtle differences once I came upon some roads. There was a two lane blacktop running north-northwest where Highway 693 should be, only it had signs saying it's Highway 87. And none of the markers were for Saratoga, they were for Wyoming. Then I remembered the GPS in my comm unit, but I couldn't find the satellites!

By this point, I'm getting pretty freaked out. I see a couple of cars, but they're antiques. I started scanning the radio band and got signals on the AM band, playing old music, and some kind of radio shows. I didn't pick up anything in the FM range or microwaves. BLEEPING time travel!

I flew into a little gas station near a town called Chugwater and scoped out the newspapers in the racks. There was a Denver Post and a Cheyenne Tribune, the Denver paper was a day older than the Cheyenne paper, so I placed my "present" as on or about September, 13, 1948. It was late at night and no one was around, but I didn't want to take any chances and drifted back up into the night sky to read my papers. I hope the out of date nickels I put on the racks don't freak anybody out, too much. Nothing I could do about the lack of ancient currency, at the moment.

I found a spot back in the hills, where nobody seemed to go, much and tuned my vision so I could read by moonlight. The front pages of both papers had stories that tripped alarms for me. They talked about the second World War as if it hadn't ended, yet. The Germans were said to be staging out of England for an invasion of the US and Canada. I couldn't find a single mention of the atomic bomb, so it looked like that never happened where/when-ever I was, or was delayed somehow.

There were stories about people called "Gladiators" that seemed to be supers, like me, fighting in the Atlantic and Pacific fronts. The Japanese had landed in Mexico and were pushing deep inland to stage an invasion from the south and west. It was like stepping into a Harry Turtledove novel. I
needed more info, I needed some sleep and a good meal, too.

It was about that time that I noticed a thrumming noise above me, like an old helicopter or something. I looked around and was shocked to see a flat, lozenge-shaped airship, like nothing I'd ever seen outside of Popular Mechanics. And, like nothing I knew from the WWII era. It was dark, almost black, except for the gondola and other appendages. A spotlight hit me, a voice called out on a loudspeaker, "Stay where you are, I mean you no harm!"

I stayed where I was, and presently the craft descended to about 50 feet overhead and cut motors. As they spun down, the silence closed in. A door opened in the bottom of the gondola and the voice called out, "I'll drop you a ladder."

I laughed. "No thanks. Don't need one!" and I rose into the opening. There was a little man, inside, with white hair and the strangest clothes I've seen since I was a kid, watching old movie serials on video with my Uncle Jay. He seemed startled that I could fly, but not so much by the look of me.

"My name is Edmond Binder," he said, "I'm called 'the Futurist'."

I asked how he knew where to find me. Well, it turns out he's the one who brought me here. Reaching into the future and pulling things out is what he does. Since I needed to get a better feel for where and when I was, I decided to go along with him for awhile.

We went back to his base, not too far from the site of Pinnacle City, in my world/time. There, I was able to get some food, and get some info. I was right in that the presence of supers had changed the pattern of the war. America had an atomic bomb project, but it didn't receive the backing it had in my world. Germany had abandoned their bomb project due to repeated failures and the success of their super-soldiers. They had even had some success in empowering normals, to create an army of super-strong, extremely fast solider they called Blitzkriegers.

The Allies had been less ambitious, drawing natural supers together to form the team they called the Arsenal of Democracy. The supers helped protect the Atlantic convoys from the German submarine wolf packs, but in the end, it was a change in strategy that helped turn the tide for the Axis powers. In this world, Hitler or one of his advisers, decided to continue hammering the English and held off on turning the war toward the Eastern front until much later. They attempted the first invasion of England in 1942, which failed, but they established a successful beachhead in June of 1944 and with the Blitzkriegers and massive air support, England fell. Hundreds of thousands were evacuated across the Atlantic and the British monarchy moved it's seat to Montreal.

With western Europe more or less pacified, Germany turned with a vengeance on the Soviets.

In the Pacific, the war progressed much like it had back home, as near as I can recall, until about 1943 when one of Japan's supers magnified a hurricane sinking half of a USN task force and scattering the rest, so that they missed a major sea battle that I can't remember. This gave Japan enough leeway to make a stab across the Pacific to land on Mexico's west coast, at Puerto Vallarta. Things hadn't gone well, after that. The Japanese were fighting their way inland and north. The US, Mexico, and other Central and South American nations had joined together, in a way we'd never dreamed in my world. Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela were learning from American ship builders and their naval forces were growing at a rapid pace. Planes from the US patrolled the skies from Canada to Tierra del Fuego and the Japanese advance was slowed to a crawl.

With Great Britain out of the picture, the Germans were flexing their muscles in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, cementing their hold on North Africa and expanding their territories along the eastern Mediterranean.

The details of the war are just too complicated to keep in my head. It's 1948, now, and the Americas, along with Australia, are the last bastion of freedom on Earth.

While Binder, "the Futurist" was filling me in, he let a few things slip that I'm pretty sure he didn't want me to know. He mentioned that most of the Allied supers, including former villains, were member of the Arsenal and were working to defend the hemisphere. That being said, his base seemed to be pretty lightly manned. On top of that, the locations of the command centers didn't match up with this location. Let's just say I was a little suspicious.

He showed me around the base, including an arsenal of bizarre looking weapons he'd plucked from some future or other. A lot of them were really fanciful, with that 1930s Flash Gordon styling. He then showed me a newer section, where he'd been pulling things out that looked more familiar to me. There was a laptop computer, a rack of M-16 rifles. A Hummer with a flat tire. I asked about these things and he admitted they were some of his newest acquisitions, and that it was only since his work with the Arsenal that such things had been coming through. His power to grab objects from the future was natural, but working with the Arsenal, he had been able to develop an amplifier that allowed larger objects to be recovered, and expanded the "range" of his ability. It looked to me like he'd been limited to futures that mimicked the science fiction of his time. That he'd been limited by that pulp magazine cover vision of the future.

He still couldn't bring really massive things through. The machine's aperture was limited, so they weren't snatching jet fighters or tanks from the future. They were getting books, however, and the computers he had running in one room were being mined for the data they could provide, depending on the interests of the former owners, I suppose.

The trick had always been that the technology he brought back was always based on science he couldn't duplicate. He hadn't been much help to the war effort until they'd developed ways to expand his reach to futures with reproducible technology. Allied soldiers had assault weapons based on the earlier AR-180 in .30 caliber. They had reliable, compact, transistorized radios, receivers and two-way. In place of satellites, there was a network of sub-stratospheric balloons linking the Americas in a communication network that was nearly undetectable, thanks to its use of narrow beam radio beacons. All the death ray rifles and electro-beam pistols he'd brought back in the early days were museum pieces, now. Their exotic power sources depleted, he'd never been able to replenish them. Oh, a few of the gadgets operated on principles he could understand. He carried an ultra-sonic sleep gun at his hip that could be recharged simply enough.

It was all very interesting, but my bull&#$! detector was insistently buzzing and I finally told him I'd heard enough and would he please either send me home, or direct me to the exit. To his credit, he never really lied to me, he just omitted some details concerning his work and his position in this society, but I'd guessed, by then, that he was something of a ne'er-do-well, even if he did spend part of his time working with the good guys. He admitted that the machines at this base were incomplete and he lacked the ability to reopen a portal to a specific future, once it had closed. He promised to help me get home, if I would help him. Help him 'what'?

Help him win the war.

West Coast Adventure

Well, a few weeks ago I headed out to the west coast to hang out with the Guardians. I helped them deal with a couple of minor bad guys and helped stop a high speed chase before the Fox News helicopters could even arrive on scene.

Then a couple of weeks ago, there were a series of break-ins at high tech facilities around southern California. As luck would have it, one of these happened at Century Electronics Research, which is home to the Guardians' own benefactor, Centurion. They have a building off on the east side of the facility, among some hills, but they get a feed from Century's security stations, so the alert came in pretty quickly.

What do you know, but there's my old sparring partner, Serpentine along with a few others I didn't recognize. One was a big, blond guy who told us to call him Kodiak. He and Mega paired off, early on, he seemed to be as strong as Mega and nearly as tough. Met my second ax-wielding supervillain, who goes by the unimaginative name "Battle Axe", the others took off as soon as we showed, so we didn't exchange names.

Serpentine was all slithery hands, again, but she's still vulnerable to electrical shock. I gave her a taste and she let me go. Mega managed to get a gadget away from Kodiak, presumably the prize he'd come to steal. Just looked like a metal tube, to me. Centurion was in Washington for some kind of meeting with the Defense Department, so we couldn't ask him.

Deprived of his toy, Kodiak did something and he and Serpentine winked out of sight. I guess they teleported, because I couldn't detect anything across the EM spectrum that I can sense. Teleportation is tricky and expensive, so that means these people are hooked in with somebody pretty serious.

West Coast

Headed out to the west coast to see what the Guardians are up to. Haven't seen them since they moved out there to start the team with Centurion.

I heard that Adler is having a baby, soon. She's been seen all over Europe with another winged hero, Gyrfalcon. Little winged babies sound cute, but my mind drifts to the horror of poopy diapers from above.

The interstellar intrigue is getting a little weird. With the Overguards rendered inactive, there's no interstellar organization to keep one star empire from devouring the neighboring star republic, etc. We got a report from the lunar base that said the M'wann were making moves on the Kuldar. Neither have been very friendly to Earth in the past, so it's hoped we won't have to take sides in the conflict. We're lucky in that the solar system is kind of a galactic backwater, and we don't really impinge on interstellar politics in a big way.

Well, I'm headed west. I got clearance to go super-sonic once I'm clear of the city. Looking forward to some sun after this winter. Cold doesn't bother me so much, but the gray days get to me, after awhile. I'm thinking I should move my base of ops, but I like being in Pinnacle City, so close to Legacy HQ. Something to think about.

Back in business!

Okay, I know, it has been a long time, but I'm finally back in action.

I've worked out with Omega Unit's training bots so long, now, I can tell them apart by the dents and scratches. Once we figured out why my powers were acting up, it was just a matter of retraining my energy absorbing ability, by exposure to a variety of energy sources. It was tedious, but I'm back to my old self.

Went out on patrol last night, it was cold and snow had fallen earlier in the evening. About 2 a.m. I found this guy in clunky armor trying to break into an office on the 31st floor of the Morrow Building... from the outside. He was trying to be sneaky, obviously, or he woulda just punched through the glass and gone in. The office belongs to Aldrich Innovations, a consulting and design firm. Norm Aldrich made a name for himself, a few years back, by bringing two floundering software companies together to form Awestruck Inc., the 3rd largest PC game maker.

No idea what they'd be doing that would interest a super-villain, but hey, when you catch them in the act of B&E, the why is less important than the stopping them. Or something like that.

Anyway, I plucked him off the side of the building and he kicked me with his boot jets. It was obvious he hadn't heard of me, because he kept tossing plasma bolts at me and flashing me with those jets. I was eating it up, charging up for my attack and all. I realize I'm laughing, like a kid, with the excitement of the chase and all.



So, there we are, twisting and turning our way over downtown, between buildings and such.

I'm laughing, and I can hear him shouting angrily, but his helmet is muffling his words and I just don't care about his plans being folied or whatever. I'm the good guy, he's the bad guy, there's the jail cell.

We were nearing the edge of downtown and he kicked his jets on high and boosted out ahead of me. I let him go for a bit, pull away, until he's just a speck on the horizon, but when I look at him in the infrared he's a flare, a bright beacon. So, I roll and shoot up into the sky, gaining a few thousand feet and then pour my stored energy into speed. Like a rocket I'm streaking across the sky, just like I've practiced and the flare of his jets is getting so big I switch back to normal eyesight. I'm doing nearly mach 2, in my dive and I flash past him almost bfore he knows I'm there. As I close, I focus a beam of microwave energy on his back-mounted jets. One of them blows almost instantly, sending him into a tumbling spiral down to the snowy passes of Overlook Mountain. He's got just enough control to make a hard-but-safe landing and I expend some more energy in braking.

I had him pretty much stripped of armor by the time the Special Services transport arrived.

Oh, he was ranting about Aldrich taking over the world with some kind of new cel phone. I don't know what he was talking about, but hey, I'll look into it. Villains aren't completely mad, like they are in the movies, there may be something going on that needs a look and I know some people who look for a living.

On the mend...

Well, well...
It looks like I was right. The Overguard device I carried was one of the set usually carried by an Overguard to channel the power of the Crimson Flame, the sentient quasar that powered and directed the Overguards. It's power is manifest as a psionic plasma that is shaped and controlled by the wielder's thoughts. Sort of artificial telekinesis.

Even without the full set, I was channelling energy from it all the time. I didn't even know it, but I was becoming dependent on it, even when there was other energy I could use. I'm on Citadel Island, now, working out in a special environment gym. At random intervals, the background energy spectrum in the room changes and I adapt to it, to fuel my workout. Part of the workout has me converting energy from one form to another, with instruments to help me refine my control. I should be stronger than ever, when we're done and capable of finer control that ever before. That's the hope, anyway.

Esprit has been especially attentive, I think she likes me a little too much. I mean, yeah, she just turned 17, and all that, but geez, she's like a sister to me. At least she's been getting out some, I heard she's been teaming up with the Young Guns, lately.

Dr. Omega says his interdimensional sensors are picking up some kind of disturbance in the ether. It could be trouble in a parallel reality that's causing tremors in those around it. Or, it could be something coming our way. It's impossible to tell, even for Tesseract, whose powers let her sense a lot more than any instrument humans have been able to build. Wait and see. He's called a tele-conference between the various super-teams to warn them.

I don't feel so good...

I've been under the weather, recently. A few weeks ago, my powers started acting up. I'd absorb heat and try to expel it as electricity and it would come out microwaves, or I'd try to amp my strength and stuff would catch fire around me. It's very frustrating.

I'm on the inactive reserves with Legacy, at the moment and I'm spending my time on Citadel Island, while Dr.Omega runs tests.

I think it may have something to do with the Overguards. I wore that suit for so long and had that Overguard power gem thing, I think my body got conditioned to drawing energy from it. It may also be a further mutation of the syphon virus, a kind of delayed symptom. It may be a combination of factors. We should know more when my results get back. Man, I wish we had magical labs like on TV, where all the test results come back before the bottom of the hour commercial break.

Oh crap, they want more blood. Damn, this sucks.
Later

Another new suit...

Well, my nifty alien Overguard suit finally bit the dust. It stopped self-repairing and spots where it had previously healed began tearing under minor strain. I contacted Dr. Omega and had them run off a few of our SmartSkins (TM) in my colors. They're not as adaptable as the Overguard suits, but they're better than fighting crime in my sweat pants.

The other day I was involved in a fight with Magister and his Demi-human Liberation Army. I sympathize with the demi-humans, but this guy is always trying to liberate his people so they, and everyone else, can be his subjects. Not my idea of liberty.

He attempted to breach Legacy HQ to steal something from Dr. Oblivion's stash of magical artifacts. He got into the HQ, but as far as we can tell, he didn't get what he came for.

I just realized I haven't shown my updated costume since the big cross-time battle. This is my new SmartSkin (TM) version. I made a little alteration, since I no longer have the Overguard power gem. They tell me we already have over a hundred regular customers for SmartSkins and with their versatility, we'll have more in the future. Its comfortable, too.

Good news is, I'm getting back into the hero thing...

...bad news is, there's a new Abraxas in Dynasty. He's younger, and claims to be the son of the recently deceased Dynasty leader. Valkyrie is leading Dynasty, now, and Ironsmith and I got the call about a warehouse robbery on Connor Road.

We arrived and found these two tearing through the place.



I managed to get in some good shots on this Abraxas, Jr. and he definitely doesn't seem as strong as the original. Could be a hybrid, I suppose. Still packs a punch, but I can charge up quite well from his punches. He also tosses around some impressive energy beams from the eyes that started the fire.

Ironsmith got a workout in his latest rust bucket. Why he paints them up that color, I will never know.

The warehouse was a mess, but it looks like they left without whatever it was they came for, so that's a plus.
Back in business. It feels good.

I'm still NOT DEAD...

And that's more amazing than it sounds.

Okay, I've been dragged across half the freakin' galaxy, since the start of summer and all I wanted was a nice, relaxing vacation!!!

I went with the Elysians to their orbital habitat and they tested out the ancient hyperdrive, and it worked! We jumped a few light-minutes at a time, making a circle around the solar system. It was fun and the stars were brilliant and untwinkling and all that. After awhile, it was time to go home so they programmed a jump to take us back to solar orbit, just inside Earth's orbit.

This time, the drive did something decidedly nasty. Instead of dropping us into a parallel orbit with Earth, it jumped us across the damn galaxy. Something about a fold in space-time or something, wrong place/wrong time, whatever.

We reappeared in normal space in the middle of the battle of the millenium. There was what looked like an enormous red star near us and there were thousands of space ships of different types in the space around us. The habitat reacted by erecting some pretty powerful force shields, and the battle raged around us as if we'd never appeared.

Then something strange (yeah, I know) happened. My Overguard power gem started reacting and I got this flood of information. The red star was, in fact, the massive quasar--sentient quasar-- the Overguards call "the Crimson Flame". It's the source of all their power and fuels their technology as well. The Flame was calling for help.

Overguards were responding, but distances are enormous on the galactic scale and there was simply no way for them all to get here. The attackers were using a power of their own, a kind of indigo/violet energy they tossed around the way the Overguards do their red energy. They are known as the Brotherhood of the Black Sun and their power source is a strange, dark quasar that radiates mostly in the ultraviolet. I'm told that violates a bunch of laws of physics, as we know them, but I saw the thing and it's real. It's also very powerful, probably as powerful as the Flame, and had all its forces concetrated to the task of capturing or destroying the Flame.

Now, there are a lot of very powerful Elysians, so it wasn't long before we had a squad or space-worthy types ready to join the fight. It took some time to get the habitat to open a window in the shield, for us, but we got out and made contact with the Overguards and their allies.

The fight was brutal. Space combat is the weirdest thing I've had to learn. No gravity to work with, so flying is always tricky. Easy to move, difficult to maneuver. At least there was plenty of energy to eat.

So, we fought. And we fought.

We lost. We were simply outgunned and there was no help for it, but to grab all the survivors we could and bug out.

The Flame, realizing it was about to fall into enemy hands did the only thing it could. It used its own power to warp itself out of normal space. Better than it falling into the hands of the Black Sun crowd, but deadly for the Overguards in the field. At least the Flame managed to send out one last warning signal. The Overguard tech holds a residual charge for a few hours, so most Overguards would be able to find a safe haven, before their power went dead.

So, the Overguards are no more. My gem went dark about 6 hours after the Flame disappeared. No one knows if the Flame is still alive, or if it committed suicide. The habitat is now a crowded place, 580,000 people of 16 different species living there. There's room enough, but feeding them all is going to take some work. They hyperdrive still works, but the jumps back to Earth took a lot longer than the one out had. We couldn't locate that ripple in space-time that vaulted us across space on the way out.

On the way back, we met several Overguard ships, running on backup power supplies. Limping home, like we were. We managed to get some of our evacuees to ships headed for their homeworlds, and by the time we popped back into orbit around Sol, we were down to 389,000, or so.

Here's the thing. The Overguards have acted as the de facto peacekeepers in the galaxy for thousands of years. Now, there is no peacekeeping force in the galaxy, and there's a new, very dangerous threat running loose. Earth's status as neutral territory may be threatened. It's suddenly a very different galaxy out there.

I'm not dead!

Wow. Summer's almost over. I never thought I'd be away from home this long, much less away from Earth.

It's amazing how something like an exotic vacation can get you swept up into large, strange events. I decided I needed a break after the last big adventure and took the opportunity to head back down to the Elysian city in Antarctica. I get there and they're having a big celebration. They've just learned how to activate and operate the propulsion systems on their space habitat, that've been dormant for millennia.

Of course, with having met some of their long lost predecessors, the true pre-historic super-beings who built the thing and are the source of most of Earth's legends and myths of gods and heroes with supra-normal powers, I was pretty busy sharing my story. No shortage of dinner invitations, you might say.

So, as these things happen, I got swept up in the celebration and accepted an invitation to visit the habitat and ride along on the first test drive.

They drive system folds space somehow, it's not entirely understood even by the Elysians, they're learning how to decipher the ancient science as their brains continue to evolve, thanks to the "upgrades" they got when they were accepted by the derelict habitat.

Here's what it looked like, on our approach.



Man, I am tired. I'll write more later.
This gets complicated and there's some pretty bad things happening out in space, right now. Earth's lucky to be in neutral territory, at present, but with what's happening, it may not last much longer.