Except for the giant butterfly.
"You can't escape me!" Mister Mind buzzed loudly. "I've waited too long for this moment to let you interfere with my destiny any longer!"
Something sprayed from the giant butterfly's proboscis: an ominous black light that Booster didn't recognize at first... until he spotted the distorted faces of dozens of bodiless wraiths trapped within the expanding energy field. "Holy crap!" he exclaimed. "That bug just puked the Phantom Zone at us!"
The darksome Zone rushed toward them like a tidal wave, enveloping everything in its path. Fleecy white clouds were sucked into the Zone, along with generous portions of sky and sunlight. The spreading space-time distortion threatened to swallow the retreating Time-Sphere in a single gulp. "Count your blessings, gentlemen!" Mister Mind gloated. "You'll be safe in the Zone while I consume your reality!"
"No thanks!" a new voice shouted from above. Booster's jaw dropped as Supernova swooped to the rescue. A brilliant radiance surrounded him. His long blue cape flapped in the breeze. "They've got better things to do—like stopping you for good!"
Supernova zipped between the Sphere and the Zone. Utilizing the cannibalized Kryptonian circuitry in his costume, he fearlessly met the oncoming void. Like a prism, he altered the Phantom Zone's wavelength, refracting it back to where it belonged. The sinister black energy vanished from sight. A blinding burst of light drove Mister Mind backward.
What the heck? Booster thought, completely baffled. I was Supernova, so how come I don't remember any of this? Is this a future self, or maybe a past self from a parallel universe? The paradoxes made his head spin. And how can the Supernova suit still exist anyway? Rip tore it to shreds back in Kandor!
He gave Hunter a confused look. "Rip?"
The Time Master tapped a button on the Sphere's control panel. The transparent ceiling dilated to form an opening and Supernova flew into the Sphere though the aperture, which noiselessly closed behind him. The masked hero pulled off his hood to reveal a sweaty face that looked vaguely familiar to Booster. The man's mussed blond hair was the same color as his own.
Who?
"Booster Gold," Hunter said. "Meet your twenty-first-century ancestor, Daniel Jon Carter." He quickly explained how "Skeets" had tricked Daniel over eight months ago. "I rescued him from that time-loop while you were playing Supernova in Metropolis—and stowed him in the future for his own safety. And as a backup plan, in case something happened to you."
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Booster thought grumpily. "And the costume?"
"Borrowed from a moment you weren't using it," Hunter explained. "Naturally."
Daniel held out his hand. "Pleased to meet you, descendant."
Now that he was looking for it, Booster could see the family resemblance. He's got my Uncle Rajiv's chin. Booster made a mental note to make sure Daniel came out of this adventure alive, just to ensure that Michael Jon Carter would still be born three centuries from now. Assuming the universe—make that the multiverse—was still in one piece by then. "Thanks for the save," he said, shaking Daniel's hand. "You really pulled our butts out of the fire."
"What can I say?" Supernova replied. "It was the least I could do for my own flesh and blood."
"I'm afraid we don't have time for a family reunion," Hunter interrupted. He expertly worked the navigational controls as the Sphere plunged back into the timestream. Seasons rushed by in a blur outside. "We seem to have lost Mister Mind for the moment, but it's only a matter of time before he catches up with us again." He turned toward them, his face somber. "A chronal butterfly is one of the most dangerous life-forms in creation. According to ancient Venusian mythology, they feed on the very substance of space-time itself, and lay their eggs in the quantum foam underlying reality. This new multiverse is like a banquet for Mister Mind. Given a chance, he'll consume every version of Earth, right down to the core Earth, the one we all came from."
Booster only understood half of that, but neither part sounded good. "So how do we stop him?"
Hunter looked over the gummy fragments of Skeets. "Did you manage to recover most of the pieces?"
"I think so," Booster said. Hunter had insisted that he salvage the remnants of Skeets' golden shell before they'd transported back to the Time-Sphere from Centennial Park. The newly hatched butterfly had needed a few moments to dry his wings, giving Booster time to scoop up the broken pieces before they had to escape. He felt a pang in his heart as he contemplated the gooey shards. Skeets had been a good sidekick, before that slimy caterpillar had infested him. "Why did you want these pieces anyway?"
"Just an idea." Hunter started fitting the fragments together again. "If we can only buy ourselves enough time."
"Which we may have run out of," Daniel said, pointing behind them. He tugged Supernova's blue hood back over his head. "Here comes Mothra again!"
The giant butterfly flew toward them. His enormous wings flapped and a tremendous wind buffeted the Time-Sphere, throwing the men off balance. Booster grabbed onto a handrail to keep from falling. The bubble rocked back and forth, like a toy boat atop a stormy sea. "Hold on!" Hunter shouted, his gaze glued to a display panel before him. Wonder Girl's golden lasso vibrated audibly. Sparks erupted where the enchanted rope connected with the Sphere's engines. "We're being tossed into a parallel universe!"
Despite the turbulence, Booster managed to glance down at the city below. Metropolis looked the same to him. He remembered what Rip had said about each of the parallel Earths being identical to each other. Guess he knew what he was talking about.
Then Mister Mind bit off the top of the Daily Planet building—and the entire city changed. Before Booster's startled eyes, the City of Tomorrow morphed into a barren postatomic wasteland, the once-proud skyscrapers melted together into hills of metal slag. At first, the ruins looked totally abandoned, but then Booster spotted a small group of figures moving through the wreckage. As the shaking Time-Sphere swooped lower over the city, he got a better look at the bizarre scene below.
Armored knights, wearing suits of medieval plate armor, rode atop oversized mutant Dalmatians as they charged toward a field of bright red flowers, whose scarlet blooms seemed to be emitting plumes of billowing black smoke. "Onward, Atomic Knights!" the lead knight called to his fellows. "These strange plants are emitting an eerie blackness that's spreading over the entire Earth." He hurled a flaming torch into the midst of the flowers. "We've got to destroy them before it's too late!"
A mutant creature, which looked like a humanoid mole, rose up from behind a nearby heap of rubble. His whiskers twitched as he fired at the Knights with a laser pistol. A crimson beam bounced off the polished breastplate of one of the Knights. "Turnback!" the mole-man commanded. "We cannot allow you to destroy the secret weapon we are using to conquer the planet!"
Huh?
Booster blinked and rubbed his eyes, but the surreal vista remained unchanged. The Atomic Knights, their canine steeds, and the nefarious mole-man all looked up in surprise as the Time-Sphere whooshed by over their heads, followed closely by a butterfly the size of a zeppelin. The mole-man's dumbfounded expression matched Booster's.
"Where the hell are we?" Booster demanded. "And when?"
"Metropolis, 1987," Rip Hunter informed him. His eyes scanned the readout on one of the Sphere's historical monitors. "Only a year after a nuclear holocaust destroyed most of civilization!"
"But that never happened!" Booster protested. He was no PhD, but he was pretty sure he had never seen anything about Atomic Knights and mutant Dalmatians in the history books of the twenty-fifth century.
"Not on our Earth," Hunter admitted. "But every time Mister Mind flaps his wings, and takes a bite out of another reality, it sends a ripple through the timestream that changes that Earth's history in unaccountable ways. He's eating crucial years and events from the timeline. This parallel Earth now has its own unique past, present, and tomorrow." Despite the danger, the scientist in him sounded intrigued by the phenomenon. "It's the Butterfly
Effect, writ large."
"Are you kidding me?" Booster said, not believing his ears. "That's just a metaphor!"
Hunter shook his head grimly. "I wish."
"Watch out!" Supernova shouted in warning. Mister Mind's wings flapped once more, sending the Time-Sphere rolling end over end across the smoky sky. Wonder Girl's lasso sparked violently. An unsettling whine came from the engines. Booster's stomach did cartwheels as the Sphere careened off the side of a skeletal skyscraper into yet another universe. Nausea threatened, and he squeezed his eyes shut to block out the spinning scenery outside.
He waited until the Sphere stabilized its orientation, then opened his eyes, half afraid to find out where they had materialized now. Gazing down through the transparent floor of the flying globe, he saw at once that the desolate domain of the Atomic Knights was gone, replaced by the familiar sights and sounds of twenty-first-century Metropolis. It's home, he thought gratefully, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.
"Booster! What are you doing here?"
His heart leaped up as Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman rose from the city to meet the Sphere. The Man of Steel and the Amazing Amazon flew toward them under their own power, of course, while the Dark Knight employed a bat-winged parasail to lift him up into the sky. Talk about a sight for sore eyes, Booster thought. The Big Three couldn't have chosen a better time to stage a comeback.
"Boy, am I glad to see you folks!" he told them, using the built-in mike in his costume. "You wouldn't believe what we've been through!"
"Tell us later," Batman said, cutting straight to the chase. His intense gaze zeroed in on the mammoth butterfly gliding toward them. Superman and Wonder Woman took up defensive postures above the endangered city. "What in blazes is that creature?"
"Remember Mister Mind?" Booster began, but before he could explain further, the hungry imago started nibbling on a cloud, chewing holes in the very fabric of this universe, like a moth dining on an old woolen sweater. Warning lights flashed upon the Time-Sphere's dashboard as reality shifted around them.
Abruptly, the heroic trinity changed. Their faces grew crueler, their world-famous uniforms restyled themselves. A bloodred U replaced the S-shield on Superman's chest. Wonder Woman's star-spangled colors gave way to a tight black leather getup that seemed better suited to a dominatrix than a super heroine. Large round lenses sprouted from Batman's cowl. A large gun appeared on the hip of his heavy gray body armor.
Wait a sec, Booster thought. Batman never carries a gun.. . .
"Do you know these intruders, Owlman?" the altered Wonder Woman asked her armored companion. She glared suspiciously at Booster and the others.
"Not a clue, Superwoman." He drew his gun and took aim at the Time-Sphere. "But I can tell they don't belong here." He nodded at the caped figure flying beside him. "You destroy that monstrous insect, Ultraman. Superwoman and I will deal with these invaders."
"Don't tell me what to do!" Ultraman snapped. "I'm the leader of the Crime Syndicate and don't you forget it!" An angry red glow filled his pupils. "I say we kill them all."
Superwoman laughed coldly. "That's what you always say!" She undressed him with her eyes. "No wonder I married you...."
Owlman looked on jealously.
Okay, this is ivay too sick and twisted for me, Booster thought. Alarmed by Ultraman's red-hot eyes, he shouted urgently at Hunter. "Get us out of here—fast!"
Ultraman's heat-vision flared, but the twin beams zapped past the Sphere to strike Mister Mind instead. The indignant butterfly let out an insectile screech and flapped his wings furiously, whipping up a temporal gale that hit the Sphere with the force of hurricane. The globe and its passengers found themselves rebounding from universe to universe like a pinball. "Tinmad!" Hunter cursed, briefly losing control of his syntax again, as the reassembled remains of Skeets' shell went tumbling across the floor. He feverishly chased after the bouncing golden orb.
Tossed about the interior of the Sphere, Booster caught only glimpses of the myriad parallel Earths they passed through during their bumpy flight from the depraved world of the Crime Syndicate. Only slightly singed by Ultraman's heat-vision, Mister Mind pursued them relentlessly, wreaking havoc with history with every flap of his glittering chartreuse wings. Booster could only gape in amazement at the baroque versions of Metropolis rising and falling before his eyes.
Aztec pyramids replaced modern skyscrapers, only to be supplanted seconds later by Middle Eastern minarets and onion-domed mosques. Nazi storm troopers paraded down the main street of a fascist metropolis where the swastika was proudly displayed from every flagpole and awning. Pirate ships docked in the harbor, while the Bat-Signal, shining over Metropolis instead of Gotham, bore a skull-and-crossbones design. The gleaming spires of lost Atlantis occupied the surface of the Earth, while Metropolis sank beneath the waves. An anthropomorphic pink bunny rabbit, wearing Captain Marvel's costume, flew above a city teeming with talking animals. The Blue Beetle, who had died right before the Crisis, was restored to life on a whole new Earth. His bug-shaped airship soared above a parallel version of Hub City.
"Earth-12," Rip Hunter counted out as each new reality took shape. His computer catalogued them for future reference. "Earth-15, Earth-23 ..."
It was all too much to take. Booster forced himself to look away. "How many of these insane alternate Earths are there?"
“fifty-two,” a faint robotic voice piped up. “it’s a multiversal constant, LIKE PI OR THE SPEED OF LIGHT.”
"Skeets!" Booster snatched the rolling shell up off the floor. "Is that you, buddy?"
“Michael?” the robot sputtered, his electronic voice filled with static.
“SIR?”
A rush of emotion came over Booster, surprising him in its intensity. He hadn't realized until now just how much he had missed the little robot. "I thought you were gone for good, pal. That sneaky butterfly said he'd killed you."
“not entirely,” Skeets revealed. “His larval form telepqrted
INTO MY CIRCUITRY DURING THAT FIRST MEMORIAL SERVICE, AND
started eating away at my hardware.” Booster remembered Skeets shorting out during the ceremony, “he immediately took control
OF MY CENTRAL PROCESSOR AND STARTED CONVERTING MY CASING INTO A COCOON, BUT PART OF MY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE REMAINED FIREWALLED OFF FROM HIS INCURSION. I WAS AWARE OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING, AND SHARING MISTER MIND’S PLANS TO SPAWN A NEW GENERATION OF CHRONAL BUTTERFLIES THROUGHOUT THE MULTIVERSE, BUT I WAS UNABLE TO SAY OR DO ANYTHING TO ALERT YOU.”
"But you're back now, buddy." Booster polished Skeets' cracked and tarnished exterior with his sleeve. "That's what matters."
"Not if we can't stop Mister Mind's feeding frenzy," Rip Hunter insisted. "Time was already in a fragile state after the Infinite Crisis. The new reality was still fresh and malleable, like wet cement, when the imago's emergence caused it to schism. The altered timelines are just starting to reset themselves, but Mister Mind's rampage threatens to destabilize the entire multiverse. And if he manages to reproduce..He shuddered at the thought. "Well, all of history will be reduced to eternal chaos, without form or linearity. Causality will have no meaning." .
"That's bad, right?" Supernova asked. "So how are we supposed to sack that monster, anyway?" The giant butterfly, now the size of a small moon, was still on their tail. The gusts from his flapping wings continued to jostle the racing Sphere. Mister Mind's uncoiled feeding tube sucked greedily at the atmosphere of each new Earth. His eager palps ripped mountain ranges into bite-sized chunks. He would have caught up with the Sphere for sure if he hadn't been so busy gorging himself. "I don't suppose you've got a 'chronal flyswatter' tucked away somewhere?"
"No," Hunter confessed. "But I may have the next best thing." He reached out and took Skeets from Booster, who grudgingly relinquished his friend. "But first we need to cut him down to size a bit, which means it's time to pull out all the stops." Holding onto Skeets with one arm, he withdrew a stopwatch from the pocket of his bomber ja
cket. He held the watch up before Booster and Supernova. "I confiscated fifty-two seconds from Doctor Tyme, who stole them right after the Crisis. I've been saving them for just the right moment."
Booster tried to follow Hunter's explanation. How does someone steal time, anyway? he wondered. Never mind. I don't want to know.
Wonder Girl's lasso hummed and sparked as Hunter programmed new coordinates into the Sphere's navigational controls. "We're heading back to Earth-One," he said. "Booster, I need you to go on one last scavenger hunt for me. There's a weapon that might come in useful right now...
Moments later, the Time-Sphere lurched into the sky above mainland China. Mister Mind materialized above them a heartbeat later. The monstrous butterfly dove toward them, his antennae quivering in anticipation of another delicious morsel. Booster saw the vulnerable Sphere reflected over and over again in the insect's multifaceted compound eyes.
"Snack time!" Mister Mind exulted. "I'm feeling much fuller now, but don't worry. I've saved plenty of room for dessert!" His front legs reached out for the Sphere. "Say your prayer—"
Rip Hunter clicked the trigger on the stopwatch, and time stood still. Mister Mind was frozen in place above the Time-Sphere, only a hundred yards away. Hunter opened another doorway in the Sphere's outer shell. "Hurry," he urged Booster. "You only have fifty-two seconds to steal the weapon and get back here. Go!"
Racing the clock, Booster flew out of the Sphere and down toward the Great Wall of China, right into the middle of what appeared to be an all-out battle between Black Adam and more super heroes than Booster could count. Booster had no idea what Adam had done to piss off so many good guys at once, and he didn't have time to find out. Doing his best to ignore the tumult going on all around him, he stayed tightly focused on his mission, scanning the Great Wall for his target.
There it is! He spotted Steel and his niece crouched atop a crumbling stone watchtower, just like Rip had predicted. The two inventors, each clad in their own high-tech armor, were putting the finishing touches on a large homemade missile. "C.O.M.P.U.T.O. is online, Uncle John," Natasha Irons announced. She programmed the missile via her laptop.