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Spoiler Warnings: This story contains plot recaps of Legion of Super-Heroes stories appearing in Adventure Comics, Superboy, Legion of Super-Heroes
2988 …
Brainiac Five had played the powers of the Infinite Man and the Time Trapper (who represented the different cyclic and linear theories of time respectively) against each other, so that they ended up destroying each other.
The End of Time…
Chronelle, the wife of the Time Trapper was the only one who knew the truth. For eons she had observed his misuse of his incredible powers, of the false Time Trappers whom he had used to perform his minor tasks and mislead the Legion of Super-Heroes as to his identity. On one occasion, during a time travel journey to 1978, he had been mistaken for one of the Controllers. In the mid 2990s, he had been mistaken for a future version of Rokk Krinn aka Cosmic Boy.
In fact, the advanced beings who had the power to manipulate time, but were not supposed to use it, were a race of giants, with faces and bodies resembling those of earth humans, who could shrink themselves to normal size in order to interact more effectively with humans. As she had slowly discovered the evil nature of the being she had married, she had made perfect mental notes of everything that her husband had done, and had seen a pattern emerging from the 2960s to the 2980s.
The Time Trapper had interfered in history several times, in order to demoralize the Legion of Super-Heroes, making them more susceptible to his final attacks and the murder of the pocket universe Superboy he had adapted to replace the earth-1 version of Superboy whose existence was in danger of negation by the Crisis on Infinite Earths. In fact, what nobody knew was that the Time Trapper had caused the Crisis on Infinite Earths by manipulating the Anti-Monitor, Krona and others to believe a false trail of scientific deductions, which left a handful of super heroes convinced that the multiverse had been intended to be a single universe.
Chronelle did not have sufficient power to challenge her husband, and had been only able to observe his depredations with horror. Now he was gone, and she had a chance to put everything right. Time would then rewrite itself in a multiverse, with a significantly different and more positive set of outcomes on earth-1. However, she would first have to go back and amend things.
Chronelle's changes would not be noticed by the people affected. Their memories would simply reset themselves to align with the new timeline. First she averted the Crisis on Infinite Earths. There would now continue to be a multitude of earths, in particular earth-2 where the Justice Society of America had aged and seen a generation of children form Infinity Inc; and earth-1, where the changes would form the basis for the opening chapters of this story.
The Time Trapper had arranged for the Legion to consider Supergirl for membership in order to set up the tragedy in Brainiac Five's life, when he would later cause her to die in the Crisis. He had originally done this, sensing that Brainiac Five was the only Legionnaire with enough scientific knowledge and intelligence to threaten his plans. Chronelle prevented Supergirl's Legion encounter, and the girl did the natural step of joining Robin, Aqualad, Kid Flash and Speedy to form the Teen Titans in the 1960s. In time Speedy and Supergirl began dating.
Repeating his strategy, the Time Trapper had allowed Gym Allon to gain the power of enlarging to giant size, so that his one-way crush on Salu Digby (Shrinking Violet) would lead to his marriage under deception to Salu's Durlan impersonator Yera. Chronelle now prevented Colossal Boy from acquiring the giant size. He remained with the Science Police and continued on to have a lasting relationship with fellow officer Gigi Cusimano.
Chronelle went back to the time when Superboy first met an amnesiac Mon-El of the planet Daxam, and they had both mistaken him for a fellow Kryptonian. The Time Trapper had sewed confusion and caused Mon-El to be stricken with fatal lead poisoning. He had been sent to the Phantom Zone for more than 1000 years, existing intangibly alongside Krypton's worst criminals, who had ironically survived the planet's explosion. He had had to watch history unfold for over 1000 years, until he had finally been released after a daily cure had been invented in the 30th Century. The memories of that experience had scarred him forever, even though he was the only Daxamite with a cure for lead poisoning.
Chronelle prevented the poisoning of Mon-El, whose real name Lar Gand came back to him as his memory recovered. He kept his regular Daxam costume and became known as Marvel Lad, living with the Kents as Bob Cobb. He remained in the 20th Century, but would fly into the future with Superboy for Legion of Super-Heroes meetings.
Mon-El grew to adulthood in the 20th Century and eventually became involved with Sally Selwyn, who loved Bob Cobb rather than Marvel Man, as Mon-El ended up calling himself. Marvel Man became one of the 20th Century's greatest heroes.
Chronelle undid the next act of the Time Trapper's interference, namely the restoration of Bouncing Boy's powers, so that he would not remain in the Legion of Super-Heroes and end up as Duo Damsel's second choice. Chronelle prevented Computo from destroying a third of Triplicate Girl's forms, and Luornu Durgo never changed her name to Duo Damsel. More significantly, she told Superboy how much she loved him, after Superboy had decided that staying in the 30th Century was more appealing, since the older Mon-El was already able to protect 20th Century earth. He responded to Triplicate Girl, who was naturally far sweeter than Lois Lane would otherwise have been as a partner.
Chronelle knew that her husband had given Darkseid a temporary power over time in the 2980s, so that he was able to send Lightning Lad's and Saturn Girl's twin son Val back in time and cause him to grow up as Validus and become part of the Fatal Five. Chronelle put Val back in his right time and place before anyone else even noticed his absence. As a result, there was no Validus in the Fatal Four in the 2970s, and Invisible Kid was never killed.
Phantom Girl realised that she loved the sensitive Lyle Norg more than Ultra Boy, and broke off their relationship and began talking to Lyle more and more, until he read the signals and asked her out. She took him on a trip to her interdimensional home world of Bgztl using the Legion cruiser's intra-warp adapter and introduced him to her brother. Ultra Boy came to realise that he loved fellow Rimbor citizen An-Ryd more and returned to her, but remained in the Legion as an active member.
Chronelle prevented Mordru and Mysa Nal from gaining occult derived magic power and thus Mysa never became White Witch and never joined the Legion. Mordru would now never threaten anyone, as a powerless human.
Star Boy never lost his other powers (those which made him compatible to Superboy) and the absence of Supergirl was never felt in the Legion. Though Star Boy also retrained his unique power of inducing mass.
Duplicate Boy and Shrinking Violet dated for some time, and then Duplicate Boy found himself in direct combat with Nemesis Kid, who had betrayed the Legion to the Khunds. Duplicate Boy could copy any power, while Nemesis Kid had the ability to adapt to defeat any single opponent. When their powers met in what everyone expected to be an epic battle, their powers simply cancelled each other permanently. Duplicate Boy returned to Lallor and lived a civilian life. Nemesis Kid was no more trouble, as both of them were powerless. Shrinking Violet developed and showed her interest in Sun Boy much sooner and they dated steadily.
Brainiac Five and Shadow Lass fell into long-term love.
The Heroes of Lallor disbanded after Duplicate Boy's loss of powers, feeling that without him to watch their backs, the super hero business was too risky. Gas Girl's unique power qualified her for membership in the Legion of Super-Heroes, and she joined and fell in love with Chemical King, who would thus never suffer the low self esteem that the Time Trapper had intended to lead to his death.
Other couples continued as they had done in the previous timeline: Timber Wolf and Light Lass; Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl, Star Boy and Dream Girl, Karate Kid and Princess Projectra, Cosmic Boy and Substitute Legionnaire Night Girl. Karate Kid never died in the restored timeline. Ferro Lad still died, as Time Trapper had not been involved in the Sun Eater's threat to the earth.
Neither Elastic Lad (Jimmy Olsen) nor Insect Queen (Lana Lang) nor Pete Ross ever had any involvement in the Legion of Super-Heroes. Instead, they met for the first time when Lana came to work in Metropolis sooner, and the two redheads met and fell in love, despite the age difference, after Elastic Lad saved Lana from a fall. Lana had stopped pining for Superboy when it became clear that he had disappeared, and Jimmy had never felt anything deep for the spoiled and selfish Lucy Lane.
Laurel Kent was never a member of the Legion Academy.
The story picks up in May 2977, when Wildfire introduced Dawnstar of Starhaven to the Legion of Super-Heroes, so that she could use her extraordinairy tracking powers to defeat the first wave of Resource Raiders. Drake (Wildfire) Burroughs was in love with Dawnstar but unable to restore his anti-matter energy to human form. Chemical King, contented with his relationship with Gas Girl, felt deeply concerned for Wildfire, and managed to work with Brainiac Five on a process that gave Drake Burroughs the ability to switch between human form and anti-matter form whenever he wished. This was another of the positive outcomes that the Time Trapper's interference had prevented before. Drake Burroughs could fill out the Wildfire Containment suits in either human or anti-matter form.
Chronelle joined the Legion of Super-Heroes shortly after the changes, as she believed that she should enter the Legion's timeline in 2977, not that long before the Earthwar that Mordru had inaugurated in the previous timeline. She revealed only her ability to be giant sized, and without Colossal Boy, she was a natural member to join as Colossal Girl. She began visiting Rond Vidar at work and sharing a fraction of her knowledge of time travel with the honorary Legionnaire. With the Time Trapper now removed from the timeline altogether resulting from a time paradox of his encounter with the Infinite Man, there was no need for Jaxon Rugarth to go through the ordeal of becoming the Infinite Man. Chronelle advised Rond and Jaxon to limit their experiments, so that little was discovered, but the Infinite Man didn't arise. She and Rond soon fell in love too, and Rond Vidar, the only powerless Legionnaire, enjoyed having a giant girlfriend.
2978 was there to unfold in an entirely different way.