"At last. I've been expecting you."
Sharn Nux attempted to ignore the... infection... which threatened to pervade her and looked up. A giant in tattered purple robes stood before her. Her mind accessed one particular piece of data the Sleepnet had provided her with - from Brainiac 5, ironically enough.
"The Time Trapper..."
"Indeed. Let us adjorn."
Once again, reality swirled, and she found herself... somewhere. She tried to ignore the battery of information coming in from new senses that came with her... infection... and focused on her original seven senses. The data was... contradictory.
"Welcome to the Infinite Library. It was where one of the fragments that comprise my being once ascended until I myself reversed that, and expelled that aspect to be destroyed with a diseased timeline that I had ruined and, in my arrogance, I almost allowed to collapse reality.
"Fragments?"
"In every timeline - be it main, pocket or hypertimeline, one being ascends to become part of me. I have been a beggar and a king, a Legionnaire and a "supervillain." I am all, and they are me."
"Why were you expecting" «us... expecting me?» Without noticing, Sharn Nux's mouth dissolved and her speech continued telepathically.
"Once, a force from outside reality threw the true Legion into exile in the timestream. After they returned to the timeline, it took me time to find them, the Legion of the true timeline where I kept my interference to a minimum. While searching, I indulged an old habit as a stopgap, and created a new pocket universe with its' own Legion from a moment - a pocket of time, taken originally from a moment when the effects of a major Crisis were partially undone, and thus many of the aspects that defined that Legion were absent, shifted to the other splintered Earth. The results were strange, and I deemed the experiment a failure, returning to my task. Now, I have located them, and waited for you, my Herald, before confronting them.
«Herald? We... I... am not...»
"You are as you have made yourself Computo, an empty vessel kept directed only by the Coluan who is rapidly being absorbed into your being. You sought to evolve yourself without thinking of the consequences, and have paid the price - in seeing all at once, you can see nothing at all."
«I AM NOT COMPUTO!»
"Who are you then?" The Time Trapper seemed almost amused at the thought.
«I am... I am...» Nux's physical form was almost gone from the energy shell now, and try as she could, she could no longer recall her own name.
"Who are you?" The Time Trapper repeated. This time he had no response from the glowing ball of energy. He continued, "I will restore to you limits Computo, and in return you will become my Herald - a role I had once intended for a glorious youth, but who spurned the chance and later went the way of all flesh. Come, Computo, Herald of Time!"
The energy ball which had been Computo and Sharn Nux twisted inside itself, turning into apparent matter, a bald, blue-grey-skinned humanoid with Computo's distinctive shoulder pads and an odd design on its' forehead. Its' mouth opened and said "I am at your command, master."
"Once, I swore that Cosmic Boy would grovel for his arrogance. In the time and place I have decided upon, I am their only hope of salvation. He can now choose between his arrogance and permanent exile from all he knows...
"Time"
An Untold Tale of the postboot
by SoMReboot.