In Lieu of an Origin Story

An interview with Greybird of Starhaven, 26 July 2999 ...

It’s a pleasure to finally be able to talk to you. Working with the Academy trainees keeps me busy! Especially since I’m going to take some time off from the adjunct faculty, next month, to help plan the wedding.

We really do have a remarkable family. Still, y’know, it’s nice to feel wanted by the media for myself for once, not just from having that famous sister ... Just kidding! I love Sis madly, you know that. So, anyway, here are the high points.

I have all of the powers of my sister Dawnstar, most in similar scope. Not her skill with using them, though! That first came with her meeting a payroll in commercial space-freight guidance, years ago. And then, of course, with her Legion career over the years.

You want specifics? Okay, let’s see ... I can track anything that moves, especially outside a gravity well, across deep space, and through hyperspace, by following quantum trails. I can make psionic fixes on all kinds of lifeforms. I have a moderate degree of invulnerability to space hazards, with no need for a special suit or for breathing in space. (Well, one oxygen fix can last for several days, anyway.)

And I can fly faster than anything or anyone else in the known universe ... well, okay, with one exception! Now that Dawny has regrown her wings, she can easily do 8 light years per hour, if not more. And female shapes are notably more warpodynamic. I can only make 4 to 5 LYPH, and that’s on days when I have a good breakfast.

I also seem to have more skill with fixing on silicon life than on carbon life. Never figured out why. When Blok visits us, along with his mate (I found her for him on Manna-5), I always get a strange headache!

I do have somewhat more physical strength than Dawny’s already sizable amount, as men do in general. She’s about one-fourth of the way from humanoid “normal” up to Mon-el’s level; I’d be about one-third of the way up there.

My brother Greatfire and I have, of course, the very same stylin’, well-feathered, three-layer-deep, five-meter-span wings as Sis does. He and I, though, each have a swirl of accents of red, dark grey, and black amid the white. As if you haven’t noticed!

’Fire, by the way, is my fraternal twin. We’re 12 years younger than Dawny. His powers measure at a little less than my speed and Sis’s strength. What he can do with his mind to manipulate external energy flows, though, is really amazing. And flashy. Always made him a lot more extroverted, even cocky, than I’ve been! But he’s the best brother I could have ever had.

I’m proud to say that our family has more than a little influence on Starhaven. We were recently successful in browbeating the authorities, so that they’d finally make the genetic engineers put all their effort into growing my sister’s wings back. Dawny’d helped build the planet’s defenses, after all, with those fees she made from navigation and with her Legion salary, and they owed her big time.

That work then took nearly a year. What pain she went through! She’d lost her wings when some kind of savage energy-being “possessed” her for nearly four years. We couldn’t find out how it disguised her, or where she was, and I was too young to track her yet with much accuracy.

Why didn’t her fellow Legionnaires recognize her in all that time? Her face looked the same, and behind it, she was trapped inside her own mind. One spark of recognition might have scared that wolf-spirit into leaving her. Nobody realized she’d been mutilated ... I’ll never figure that out. Most of them never got to know her that well, I suspect. Some didn’t even try too hard. Their loss!

Anyway, those scientific shamans made all three of us the way we are. Along with the two-thirds of our people who have just the wings and added gravity-well flight power. We knew the technology had been found to fix her up, and they’d better be less reluctant to pay to use it next time someone else is this badly hurt. Our folks have inside info on the Starhaven Council members, and we’ll be watching ...

I’d mention here some powers that we have that were rarely reported in Dawny’s most famous Legion adventures:

She and I have telekinesis over objects up to about 10 times our own body mass. That comes in handy for disarming and hauling around opponents! Greatfire can only sling around his own weight in other matter, but can also control energy flows up to phaser strengths.

All three of us have some natural telepathy, as does everyone on Starhaven, but only on a single channel. If we want to “talk” to more than one person, or in other than Interlac, we need the usual telepathic plugs.

We each have invisibility on command when we’re moving outside a gravity well. It helps a lot in finding and opening space warps. Fewer of those electromag distractions, y’know!

And we all have the slower aging that the Spirit has bestowed on us under our unusual yellow-red star. Most of us from Starhaven age at about half the Earth humanoid rate, but we three age at only about a third of that rate. We’re gonna look good in those fringed buckskins for a long time!

That’d almost be enough so far to fill my Science Police dossier, I’d say ... you’re really going into depth for this show, aren’t you?

I ought to save you some research time on one item: The only place that my bro and I were mentioned in the public Legion chronicles, until recently, was in Dawny’s bio in Who’s Who in the Legion. Our folks wanted more privacy for us when we were growing up. The Legion didn’t follow Sis’s advice (at first) when she recommended us for the Academy, so we didn’t make it into any Legion missions with her before she left after Black Dawn.

Well, in particular, we were kept out by ... Don’t get me wrong, Wildfire was and is a great guy, but he was still, ahem, fried back then about not being able to, um, do anything interesting with her. And I guess he didn’t want Greatfire and me around to remind him of it all.

Drake has had a rough go of it, with the Controllers only pulling him out of the Sun last month. I’m glad he’s forgiven the past. He’s even planning the energy holos and SFX for the wedding next month. What a class act!

I bragged a bit too much to Cham the Fearless Leader last year, when I agreed to fill in as backup with the Legion reserves while Dawny was fully recovering. All kid brothers are brash. I said, “Sometimes the best just takes a little longer ...” Yeah, silverale makes me say stupid things.

Sorry about cutting this short, but I have to find ’Fire over at the Brande complex — I hope Marla Latham will let him off early. The energy-flow spec for the Europolis space elevator ... what a brain-breaker. It sure helps R.J. to have someone around who can “think” those simulation models into being instantly.

We’re meeting Timber Wolf for dinner at Legion HQ. Mother sent us some more holos of Starhaven wedding rituals to show and explain to him, so he can plan more of those stylized acrobatics to fit the standard ceremony.

Y’know, that’s the kind of exuberance that made Sis fall in love with him. And about time! He brought her out of her shellshock, held on to her as she was made whole. He made her care for life and find the peace of the Great Spirit again. And he knows just how to make her laugh and smile. Brin’s going to be one great brother-in-law!

Dawny is still touched that you wanted to be maid of honor, Mirella. That kind of gracious spirit is hard to find. Especially with girlfriends, let alone exes. ... By the way, do you know any spa around here that does a quick feather waterproofing, fast enough for this weekend? I have a theater date in Atlantis with Lamprey. She’s special, isn’t she? Wish me luck!

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{Click for an illustration of Greybird, Greatfire, and Dawnstar}

{Click for a Slide.com slideshow of illustrations of Greybird by various fan artists}

Original writing: Copyright © 1999, 2010 by J.S. Reed
All character and setting names are trademarks of DC Comics
Greybird and Greatfire were first mentioned in Who’s Who in the
Legion of Super-Heroes, issue 1, 1988