Chapter 2.
1819: Jakob Olsen, alias Capt. Greenbeard, and his Cajun wife, nee Justine Valeur (a.k.a. "Lila Evans"), become the parents of Barthelemy Alain Olsen at St. Dumas Parish, Louisiana. The boy's mother was named for her paternal great-great grandfather, Justin Valor, son of Sir Jon Valor alias the Black Pirate (scourge of the 17th-century Spanish Main). Her own father privateered for the fledgling U.S. Navy, during the Revolutionary War, as "the Pirate Prince." And she, herself, became infamous to the British navy, during the War of 1812, as "the Corsair Queen"!
1820: The Missouri Compromise splits the Mississippi River crossing of New Philadelphia into Central City, Illinois, and Keystone City, Missouri.
1839: Jake Olsen brings his wife and son along on the maiden voyage of his shipping company's newest Mississippi steamboat. Unfortunately, the boat comes under attack from river pirates just before reaching their final stop, Keystone City. The latter were secretly hired by Cedric Cartago; a notorious slave-catcher who thinks Olsen has been helping to smuggle escaped slaves to freedom as a costumed ally of the Underground Railroad called "the Black Marvel." Olsen and his crew manage to repel the attack. But, in the process, Justine is tragically killed while protecting her husband from being shot in the back. It is at her funeral, shortly afterward, that their son confesses that _he_ is actually the Black Marvel!
1840: Bart Olsen founds the first steam-powered ferryboat service between Keystone City and Central City. It is while off-loading cargo at the latter river port that he and a debarking female passenger named Josephine Heller (daughter of Josiah Heller, leader and founder of the Hellerites) catch each other's eye. Instantly becoming mutually smitten! Their subsequent night together naturally results in a marriage of necessity, nine months later. Yet, strangely enough, Bart is not averse to that. In fact, as the Black Marvel, he becomes an ardent defender of the Hutterites' freedom to practice their religion as they see fit (including multiple wives). While, under the alias "Bart Hawk," he continues "conducting" escaped slaves for the Underground Railroad.
1845: Local residents' opposition to the Hutterites becomes overwhelming in Central City. Forcing them to relocate across the river in Keystone City. There, Bart adopts a third identity! One partly inspired by his second wife Owl Woman of the Anitsiskwa (or "Bird Clan") Cherokee. He becomes the vigilante archer known as Bird Man. Complete with membranous glider-wing cape!
1850: The Hellerites are supposedly wiped out by the Blackfoot Sioux while en route to California via the Dakota Territory portion of the Oregon Trail.* But, that is merely a convenient excuse for these particular Homo magi to vanish from the public eye! Even so, Josephine Olsen has to come to love her husband too much to lose him to a semi-manipulated Amerindian attack. So, she uses her magic to turn him into an actual hawk (with black plumage)! Thereby allowing him to escape.
1899: The "Martians" who invade Earth, just before the turn of the new century, are driven off by the Hellerites' magicks before the former can finish setting up one of their Infinity Gates near New Salem, Colorado. While the "Martians" who landed on Oolong Island, in the South Pacific, are outright slain by the magicks of a Eurasian wizard named...Tzin-Tzin Hark.
1940: The super-swift mystery man known as the Silver Streak gains a fine-feathered friend. A melanistic hawk that he names Whiz after it seemingly gains superhuman speed and human-level sentience (including the power of articulate speech) from a blood transfusion from the Silver Streak!
1976: The planet Galador materializes near the Dark Horse Nebula; teleported there from a parallel universe, by Prince Ben Aldain, to escape mass destruction by the invading Spider Guild from the Vega star system.
1986: A genocidal war with the Dire Wraiths of Galaxy M32 results in yet another teleportation. This time, to the universe of Earth-TRN-9423. . .in the year 2399. **
JOVIAN MOON OF EUROPA (2460 A.D.)
Max Mercury continued with his story.
"The Manhunters proved more than a match for the (mostly ceremonial) palace guards of Galador's capital city. Ultimately, that left only line of defense between them and the Infinity Gate. Prince Aldain, himself. And he used his powers of matter/energy conversion to change himself into a being called. . .the Composite Superman. Supposedly, the collective embodiment of something called the Legion of Superheroes from the 30th century of yet another parallel universe!"
"The next thing I know, I'm looking at trio of one hundred foot-tall giants with green skin; and each one wearing half a mask that resembles nothing less than the bisected face of a giant anthropomorphic bat. The middle one then flew up toward the Borg cubes orbiting Galador. While the other two wiped out the Manhunters by turning them into immobile stone. . . before floating them upward towards each other's mouths. Each one muttering something that sounded like 'Mmmm! Rock candy. ' "
"As for the flying counterpart? I was told by a Green Lantern from Omicron Eridani 2-A that he disrupted all the circuity of the Borg (cubes and all) with a massive electromagnetic pulse. That's when it happened. The Infinity Gate suddenly activated all by itself. And, when it did, a giant talking snake- -calling itself the Seventh Son of Set- -emerged from it! With some kind of humanoid outline emerging from the giant snake, in turn, before heading upwards in the same direction as that flying Composite Superman. And when it reached him?
"They merged."
"The next thing I know, I'm being bombarded with telepathic images, from that Eridanian Green Lantern, of a white hole opening up where the Borg cubes had been. A white hole from which a cascade of anti-matter began to emerge! After that, I was basically told to scram through the Infinity Gate and look for some kind of help. "
"In that case," replied a new voice (from seemingly out of thin air), ". . .I'm afraid you're too late."
Whereupon, Speed Demon of Earth-9250 emerged from the Infinity Gate behind them. Infecting each of them with the Technarchy transmode virus through his vampiric bite.
*See chapter 6 of UHHEA (vol. 2).
**See "Web Of Deceit."
Special note: the Composite Superman was a Silver Age super-villain who debuted in World's Finest Comics three years before Computo the Conqueror disintegrated one of Triplicate Girl's component counterparts. Hence, my fanfic version of Composite Superman can likewise triplicate himself. As well as transmute matter like Element Lad; devour solid rock like Matter-Eater Lad; grow to giant-size a la Colossal Boy; generate EMP's a la Cosmic Boy; and negate gravitational attraction (= make things super-lightweight) similar to Light Lass.