A/N: Just to warn you, this IS nothing more than a prologue, giving a little background before the actual story begins. Also, most of this prologue is the background of the Multiverse as seen in the comics for those readers that aren't familiar with the comics. Oh, and I own almost nothing in this story. I do own Marvel Earth-617, David Rosen/Shade (featured in my Smallville story The Veritas Saga,) and Tony Richards/Torch.

Bleeding Multiverse

Prologue: Origins of the Multiverse

The universe holds many secrets. One of the greatest of these is the fact that we are not alone. No matter what scientists tell you, we are not alone. We are not alone, because this is not the only universe. There is in fact an infinite number of universes. In one universe, humanity is alone in sentience, in another it is just one of countless sentient species. In one universe, humanity must trudge along with no real heroes, and must look to fiction to inspire us. However, what is fiction in one universe, is reality in another. Our Prime universe is a universe where humanity is alone and has no heroes except in fiction, and the most famous fictional heroes are those of the American comic book. And the greatest comic book heroes were usually found on the pages of comics belonging to two companies: Marvel and Detective Comics/DC.

The Prime DC universe's age of heroes began in the 1930's, with the rise of the Last Son of Krypton in the city of Metropolis. Within 20 years, many of DC's greatest heroes joined together to create the Justice Society of America. In the DC Multiverse, heroes were loved and treated as heroes. Then, in 1985 DC's multiverse had collapsed due to an extremely powerful villain known as the Anti-Monitor in an event known to us as the Crisis on Infinite Earths, only to be partially recreated 20 years later in 2005 during the Infinite Crisis. The new DC Multiverse consisted of only 52 different universes, each one unique, yet similar to the Prime Earth of DC's multiverse. It is DC's Earth-16 that this story shall focus on, but not yet.

First, we must look at DC's competitor, Marvel. The Prime Marvel Earth's age of heroes began in 1942 when a young man named Steve Rogers took an experimental formula that put him at the peak of human potential, creating the hero known as Captain America. Unlike their counterparts in the DC multiverse, the Marvel heroes were for the most part feared and despised, despite their many heroic deeds, and their multiverse never suffered a collapse. However, they experienced their own tragedy only a few months after DC's Infinite Crisis.

On July 13, 2006 Marvel Earth Prime (officially Earth-616) was rocked when a team of young heroes called New Warriors took on a group of super villains, a confrontation that ended with the death of nearly 1,000 men, women and children. The event would forever be known as the Stamford Disaster. In response to the Stamford Disaster, public opinion against superhumans rose dramatically, and on July 25, Congress created the Superhuman Registration Act. The same day, Maria Hill, director of the government division SHIELD, approached Captain America and asked him about the heroes he expected to fight registration, and to join SHIELD in the battle against them. He turned them down, and immediately chose to side with the anti-Registration heroes. On September 15, exactly at midnight, the Registration Act was signed into law.

For nearly a month, a silent war was fought between Captain America and his Secret Avengers, vs. Tony Stark/Iron Man and SHIELD. But on October 6, it became a true war, a Civil War between the heroes, and the Civil War claimed it's first casualty in Goliath, a hero that could become forty stories tall with proportional strength. The Civil War raged on for months, with the numbers and people constantly changing. Many Secret Avengers were captured by the government forces, and many pro-Registration heroes joined the Secret Avengers, the most prominent being Peter Parker/Spider-Man. Then, on January 17, 2007, the two sides met for the final time. The final battle was fought just outside the Baxter Building in New York City and ended when Steve Rogers saw how much damage they'd caused, and surrendered.

From the beginning, the DC and Marvel universes had almost never interacted, and those few times they had it was on accident, but things were changing. By 2003 on Earth-16 of the DC Multiverse, the first heroes showed up: Kal-El/Superman, David Rosen/Shade, Bruce Wayne/Batman, Diana/Wonder Woman, Hal Jordan/Green Lantern, Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, and Barry Allen/Flash, and the next year they form the Justice League. On Earth-617, an Earth nearly identical to Earth-616, the events of the Marvel Civil War played out nearly the same, but exactly three years after the Civil War ended, on January 17, 2010, Anthony Peter Richards was born to genius Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic and Susan Storm/Invisible Woman. Tony Richards may not have been a genius like his father or namesakes, but he was going to do something no one else had done . . .

A/N: If you want to read about how the Earth-617 Civil War went, read Not a Typical Civil War by Clownwithachainsaw. He took the Civil War, and gave it a purpose, and an ending that satisfies both sides of the war. I recommend it to everyone, it's a great read, and as he says, it's how the Civil War should have been done.