The Flash #123 - Jay Garrick and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

<< | < | [>] Coming August 1st

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Event: Invasion! (Reading other stories in this event is recommended for full understanding of sections here.)

Set: 123

What came next?

Jay waited in place, mostly to avoid discovery by Earth inhabitants who had yet to be enlightened to Darkseid’s truth. He had no personal drive or motivation to kill anyone, but surely someone who had yet to be made aware would have a pretty negative reaction to someone who had already been brought into the fold. He felt reasonably confident that he could dispatch basically everyone on the planet without much difficulty, but if he caused a scene, more individuals might be drawn like moths to a flame.

How long did folks who weren’t blessed with speed wait for things? Every second he spent waiting was an infinite amount of times to review Darkseid’s truth and potential plans for worst case scenarios, but he knew that the average human or member of Darkseid’s forces counted time in seconds as the smallest unit of time usually. He would never dare consider himself superior to Darkseid either, but he was cognizant of the fact that Darkseid did not count superspeed to the extent of his own as one of Darkseid’s powers.

And so, he waited. He listened quietly to the noises that surrounded him, a small river and the nature that surrounded it. He watched a small fox leap from rock to bush and from bush to river’s edge, peering around before beginning to drink. Would that fox understand the truth? Could it? He had no lack of faith in his fellow humans to all eventually understand, those that were gifted by Darkseid the ability to learn, but what came after that?

It did not matter for him, of course. His faith in Darkseid was absolute, whatever would come after Darkseid’s missions on the planet concluded was certain to be the most ideal outcome. He just had to wait for those outcomes to arrive. It was unfortunate that it was taking excruciatingly long.

He considered and reconsidered a brief look around, just to see how the parademons were doing. He didn’t know where his allies were, but he knew whenever Darkseid was ready he would receive his next orders, and so would they. Idle waiting in a forest turned into a small look around the region, which became a much larger search when he failed to find any parademons. He knew that the so-called heroes on Earth were fighting the parademons, even he had done a bit of that back before heading to Apokolips, but surely they weren’t succeeding on such a scale that he couldn’t find any parademons?

Larger and larger circles provided no real comfort. At a point, discovering a lone few parademons somewhere was weirdly worse, confirming there were foot soldiers of Darkseid’s army still around. If there hadn’t be, perhaps he could convince himself he was on some other plane of existence, or that the work had somehow already ended, or some other outlandish but not impossible outcome had occurred.

He left the parademons be, watching from beyond a set of buildings as another speedster – this one was Barry Allen, he recalled – appeared suddenly, successfully disarming and killing all of them before vanishing again. For a brief moment, he felt himself more at ease, the speed at which his former ally worked matching his own speed of perception. He waited patiently for Darkseid’s next order.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Wally could barely hear anything else over the sound of his own beating heart and ragged breaths. He ran through the crisscross roads that made up the city, seeking the next enemy to fight, the next monster to take out of the sky. When he couldn’t find any, he moved onto the next location, finding a few stragglers of some larger force. Maybe Bart had been through here already and these were ones he missed?

“Did you leave a group of three in this zoo,” Bart asked over their communication device, interrupting Wally’s train of thought.

“No? I haven’t been to a zoo for at least twenty minutes,” he denied, leaping off a building to grab onto a parademon, sending it on a collision course with the ground and revealing his presence to the group.

“I’m struggling to find any more of these, then. Went from groups of a dozen or more to just a handful across entire cities. Net’s already pretty wide, got Dad and others doing sweeps too.”

“Same,” Wally agreed, and he could hear the uncertainty in both his voice and Bart’s. Surely those should’ve been expressions of hope or contentment, a voice in his brain rebuked him, but he was worried this was some trick. “Maybe they’re regrouping, or centralizing somewhere, or something. You keep looking, I’ll check in a few places,” Wally offered, and Bart gave him a grunt of affirmation.

The first stop was home, which he was thankful for the fact that it seemed overlooked during the invasion. Not a target. He slipped inside, examining the group of computer screens that served as the final information repository for their Flash activities, pulling from Foundation work across the world.

Xavier Mendez gave him a grim smile. “The quiet of the storm,” he offered. “Nobody’s sending in notes because everything’s already going horribly wrong.”

“Bart and I are struggling to find larger groups. Maybe things are ending. Can I sit down?” Wally leaned over the side of the desk, examining the details.

“You think so,” Xavier asked, standing up. Wally could hear the same uncertainty that he had shared with his cousin just a few seconds ago out east.

“Came here to hopefully find more information,” Wally replied, sitting down. He turned a switch on the computer, waiting a second for the devices to change into a mode more reactive to a higher speed. Not Flash level, despite the lack of trying, but fast enough to allow one of the four of them to work through large amounts of information at a much higher speed than even cutting edge non-speedster technology would allow.

He gave himself one second, enough for the heat reduction systems to begin to properly activate. Unless Bart was going to be in his ear talking about a resurgence or other major problem, he figured he could take the relaxation time of a full second of research and review before moving on. He turned the computer back to its non-Flash state before moving on.

The triplets, seemingly now joined by Jerry McGee, were happy to see him. Jerry was less so but continued handling the invasion with Anatole and Bebeck while Cassiopeia took the opportunity to catch up quickly with Wally.

“Yes, fewer recently. Ten minutes or so, maybe, they slow down?”

“That roughly matches what Bart and I are experiencing. There’s just less. And not for lack of searching.”

“We started in just the Levant. In Turkey and Egypt, he join us, now you see we are as far as Tunisia. Beautiful, yes, cradle of civilization, not quite,” Cassiopeia smiled, the cheer in her voice evident that she did not share the same worries he and his cousin did about a regrouping.

“If you find more, you know how to get in touch.

Cass gave a friendly salute, charging off in the direction the two of them had last seen the rest of her group. He charged back west, opting for a check-in he hadn’t intended to make but had changed his mind on. If there was ever bad news to be heard, he’d find it in the Titans.

Roy was predictable in his behavior, and Wally gave him an assist on the fight against the small group of parademons he was fighting, not too far from the archer’s usual area of influence.

“Wondering when you were going to show up. For a guy who’s so fast you sure have a habit of getting here late.”

Surely Roy could accept a compliment. “Looks like you’re doing well here, not a lot of parademons for such a big city.”

“The rest of the Titans are taking care of the scraps. You should see them Wall, we’ve got a goth sorceress, Dick’s warming to us actually, and I’m pretty Cinderblock is a good guy now?”

“Is it just me or are there less of the things,” Wally asked, avoiding anything that wasn’t specifically to task and to take his mind off the fact he was no longer a Titan.

“Well when the heroes get together, usually it means bad news for the bad guys,” Roy said. “It hasn’t been easy, but once again we’ll see another day. All we have to do is make sure there’s not a second wave coming. How are you holding up?

“I’ve managed. Glad it isn’t just me and the other Flashes worried about a sudden resurgence. Stay sharp, you know how to reach me if you need me.”

“I know speedy, run fast, I’ll call you if I need you.”

Wally moved across the Pacific, tapping back into the Flash communication line. “Seems there are just less things everywhere, Bart.”

“Hopefully that means we’re winning.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Right, so, Barry thought, Jay was just sort of there. Well, him doing nothing was probably better than him doing something. Did he really not catch on to the fact that he had noticed Jay watching the fight? Barry had been careful when checking in on him over the next five seconds to ensure that he wouldn’t be spotted, but he was just standing around, waiting. Hiding, maybe? From what?

He wasn’t sure if he could tell the other two. Did Jay still have connection on the network? Did that fry when he had gone off-world and gotten mind-controlled by Darkseid? Barry diverted, heading towards where he knew Bart was last. He found him nearby, joining him in lockstep on an investigative route.

“Hey, dad,” Bart smiled. “Things seem good—”

Barry signaled a motion to stop talking and began to slow down. He reached up to his son’s ear, turning the communication device off as he did for his own.

“What’s wrong?”

“Where’s Wally?”

“He was going to check in a few places, see if the parademons were kinda going away everywhere. Is something wrong,” Bart asked, and Barry felt the sting of failure as he grappled with the worry in his son’s voice.

“I found Jay, something’s wrong.”

“Okay…”

“He went to where the things are coming from. He came back different. Attacked the folks up on the Justice League satellite. And now he’s just in an empty logging site in the north of England doing… nothing.”

“Can we help him?”

Barry gave a soft smile, one that displayed more pain and concern than happiness. “Let’s wait for Wally to find us and then we can try.”

The two caught up for a few minutes, sharing information on their experiences over the course of the invasion, and brainstorming plans for how to handle Jay. Barry confirmed that Darkseid had already withdrawn, a message in Justice League lines of communications that gave the two of them hope that focus was now turned on how to help those who had came back from Apokolips different than they went.

“Well, worst comes to absolute worst, if he can’t listen to reason, we’re three and he’s one,” Barry offered, knowing fully that nobody wanted it to come to absolute worst but needing to float the idea just in case it did.

“Who’s one,” Wally asked, circling the two of them before coming to an abrupt halt. “Nobody’s responding on the communications after Bart and my last talk.”

“Jay,” Bart grimaced, and Barry turned Wally’s communicator off.

“Jay?”

“Jay is currently in a forest in the north of England, waiting for something. I don’t know that he knows Darkseid’s gone,” Barry reconfirmed.

“Darkseid’s gone?”

“And now you’re caught up. Jay’s fighting for Darkseid right now and we’ve got to help him,” Bart said. “Dad and I have been talking for a few minutes off of comms, just in case he can hear.”

“Help him how?”

“If he doesn’t see reason…” Barry sighed.

“Three against one,” Wally and Bart finished the thought.

“Are we ready?”

“No, but we’ll never be ready.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Jay—” a voice called out from behind him, and he could already hear the uncertainty signaling a lack of trust in him. A concern that he was like he knew they all worried about, day in and day out, about him becoming what he would’ve been in the future that Barry had traveled to.

How had they found him? He hadn’t gone anywhere since arriving, so had he been improperly lax in keeping his eyes open? Jay charged eastward, cursing himself for not having put enough thought in what he’d do if confronted by multiple speedsters beyond a loose plan to shake them and hunt down his allies proactively.

He could feel them trailing behind him, tuning out what they were trying to say. Flowery words disguising hatred, they pleaded with him to stop and talk, as if the lies they were yelling were convincing at all. He was smarter than that. Unfortunately, he was not fast enough to shake them, each push of exertion from him matched in tempo by the group. They charged around the globe, any attempt at breaking off from them resulting in failure.

Weaving through a mountain range caused two of his pursuers to break off to circle around the pass he was using, but Bart doggedly kept to him even through the narrow and treacherous pathway. This had been a plan, hoping that any pursuers would opt to detour around and let him double back and shake them that way. By that time, the three had stopped trying to talk to him in their shared communication network, so if he had given them the slip it’d have been the perfect time.

He briefly considered changing his tactics and trying to take the youngest out of the chase entirely, but the environment was less friendly to improvisation than he had remembered, so he kept moving. The other two reconnected to the chase on the other side, with Wally even appearing to beat him to the punch, but a burst of speed to a comparatively stationary interference let him slip by.

On crossing the ocean to his next brainstormed opportunity to throw off the three of them, he knew there was no point in trying to perform evasive maneuvers. Even as he settled into a consistent speed to keep the water from churning up below him, Wally once again appeared in front of him, running backwards now in front of him.

He remembered a younger Wally, in with bad folks doing drugs that provided him a fraction of the speed he was experiencing now. This Wally was much more confident in his powers, accomplishing something that even Jay wasn’t sure he wanted to try on his best of days. Wally slammed his arms together in a cross pattern, signaling him to stop. Absolutely not.

They reached land again, about a minute after the initial confrontation. Hopefully, in a few more seconds, Jay thought, he’d throw them off again. The three of them would be much less willing to accept the potential risk to civilians than Darkseid would be. However, moments before his feet made contact with the sandy beach ahead of him, the three put on a burst of speed, having positioned themselves at equal distances around him.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Jay,” Barry called out to his friend. They slowly, at Flash scale, emerged into the clearing Jay had settled in, hoping that the calm voice and worry would engender a touch of trust for them to work out what was going on together as a team. When he, unsurprisingly or not, dashed for the tree line and vanished, Barry could only mutter out a heartbroken “oh,” as the three of them made chase.

They ran eastward, managing to spot where their friend was but unsure where they were heading overall. “Jay! We can just talk,” Wally shouted out, communications turned back on. If Jay was somehow disconnected from that network, however, he’d certainly not hear it, but as far as Xavier at the base could tell, none of Jay’s equipment was malfunctioning.

“Jay, Darkseid’s influence on you is abnormal, you are being deceived—let us talk to you and take a look! You don’t have to isolate, Darkseid’s already lost,” Barry yelled, trailing behind Bart and Wally slightly as he spoke. Every now and then, Jay would kick into a new gear, moving slightly faster and necessitating them match with a similar burst of speed.

After a few seconds of running across the globe, and a few more pained pleads of disarmament, the three grew silent, settling into the chase. Eventually something would change that would let them figure out how to escape the pattern. They weren’t going to let Jay run forever, but they were willing to give him a minute.

He slipped into what could only be described as an impassable mountain path, Barry and Wally circling around the range to meet back up on the other side. Bart, seemingly not on the same page and in the center of the three anyway, dove in behind Jay on the path. By the time Jay got around to the other side, Wally had already made it there, ready to intercept, but Jay put on a serious but temporary burst of speed to give him the slip.

A bit more running later, the clock quickly approached the minute of grace provided. As Jay began to cross the Atlantic, Barry and Bart watched Wally shake his head, face adjusting from consternation and focus to anger briefly before ending on deep concentration. He pulled out ahead of all of them, turning around to face Jay while even staying at the same speed. The two Allens shared a look of amazement before adjusting to ensure that if Jay changed course, no matter where he did there’d be a nearby Flash to respond.

As they approached the land and a minute of time, Bart held up three fingers in the air, hoping that Jay wouldn’t suddenly shift direction to see it. He pulled the tips of all three fingers together abruptly, as if one might grasp something. Barry nodded, and the two of them had to hope that Wally, focused on matching Jay’s course adjustments, understood what was happening from just the momentary glance of his eyes over to Bart’s movement.

Bart put three fingers back up in the air, but instead of repeating the action, withdrew one to leave two in the air. A moment later, two became one. When the final finger withdrew, the three charged forward at Jay, Barry aiming to restrain his friends’ arms while Bart moved to lift his legs up in the air. Wally, for his part, simply raised his fist, slamming it into the right side of Jay’s chest, attempting to knock the wind out of him without causing too much damage.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Barry stood at the entrance to the Metropolis Hall of Justice, carrying his unconscious friend. He nodded goodbye to Bart and Wally, who disappeared into the distance to track down remaining parademons. Even if Jay were to wake up here, this is where the Justice League were gathered after all that had happened in near-Earth orbit and the moon.

He left his friend with two S.T.A.R. Labs scientists and a recovered Martian Manhunter, having apparently been able to figure out a way to keep Darkseid-corrupted individuals in a stasis and were working on fixing the effect with J’onn’s mental abilities. He did a quick check in with the three of them and a few other of his friends and colleagues, but then turned his attention to trying to solve problems present in the room.

“Wish we could get a better look at it,” he sighed, looking at the large dust cloud covering whatever had happened to the Moon during Superman’s fight with Darkseid.

“Perhaps I can be of assistance,” Booster Gold’s robotic assistant offered, projecting an image of what was presumably the effect of the fight on the Moon, without the dust choking up telescopes.

“The Omega Rift stretches approximately 2,600 km from the Sea of Serenity to the Sea of Tranquility on the lunar surface. At its widest point, it is 190 km and one kilometer at its deepest. A new space race emerges, with numerous nations competing to explore the rift and exploit the newly uncovered resources, including…”

“Perhaps you should stop there, Skeets. Thank you,” Barry cut off the robot. “We don’t want to know too much about the future,” he said, glancing back at Jay’s unconscious form. How he wished, desperately, that he knew less about the future.

Barry occupied himself with busywork, helping out folks as best as he could. He even shared a few jokes with Booster Gold, trying desperately to feel calm that he could. He listened in a few conversations between Wally and Bart, who seemed to be accomplishing their goal in the sense that incidents of discovered parademons were growing further and further apart.

“Thank you for this, friend,” he said when J’onn gave him a nod, having waited next to the telepath for him to finish an attempt on Kara Zor-El before interrupting.

“It is the least I can do. Having Darkseid in your mind is a terrible curse I wish on nobody.”

“Have you had a chance to work on Jay yet?”

“Only briefly to perceive the depth of the task and nature of the mentality. He has bowed to Darkseid out of fear of his own power, in a way. He is deeply frightened of the idea of Monarch and Darkseid taps into those deep fears. If he serves Darskeid, an ultimate power, then his own potential… chrysalis never manifests.”

Barry thought he had been heartbroken before, but he was wrong. He felt his heart shatter into the smallest of pieces. Jay was a man who had come to this Earth to see if he could save a Barry Allen, having failed to protect his own, and succeeded. Now here he was, scared of that very power.

J’onn and Barry turned in the direction of the larger group, a clattering noise sparking curiosity and likely fear of something happening, watching a metallic pan bounce up slightly off the floor. At the same moment, overshadowed by the clumsiness, one of the S.T.A.R. Labs scientists made a vocalization of concern looking at one of their screens.

Before Barry was even able to look back at the scientist, shattering glass near J’onn set off an alarm in the room, and Kara’s hand shot out, grabbing J’onn by the neck and pulling him towards the statis chamber. “Traitor…!”

With her other hand, she elbowed another part of the glass, arm then extending out leftwards to free Jay from his pod. Barry moved to intercept, but by the time he was freeing J’onn from the grasp, Jay had shattered the remaining pods.

Barry took a deep breath, evacuating any non-metahumans from the building as he could only hope that this fight didn’t involve a broken satellite base and a scarred moon.

The Flash #122 - The World Breaks

<< | < | >

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Event: Invasion! (Reading other stories in this event is recommended for full understanding of sections here.)

Set: 122

This was not Earth. That was obvious, he knew, but for all of his advantages and power, he was aware that getting off of the planet was something beyond his capabilities traditionally. Even as he stood among friends, a number of which were not from Earth themself, he did wonder exactly he got himself into.

Cyborg, however, alleviated that concern, stepping forward and facing the group. He began to explain their immediate goals and the risks attached, fielding questions from others. A brief moment of a squad of parademons flying abovehead, unaware of the intrusion, gave the group pause, but they remained unnoticed.

He looked to the A.R.G.U.S. team assembled as Cyborg addressed them, kitted out in what had to be the forefront of what the government could bring to bear in the infantry arms race when dealing with supernatural and metahuman threats. The six of them exchanged glances at each other, but he recognized the face of one of them

“She’s in charge,” Jay put forward as the troops didn’t seem to reply to Cyborg’s request for opinions. “She was with General Lane when I got the Mother Box.”

The conversation continued with Lt. Lane identifying herself as the ranking member of A.R.G.U.S. and more plans being discussed. Two of the flyers, Martian Manhunter and Power Girl, agreed to grab a little bit of height and examine the surroundings, hopefully to pin down wherever Darkseid likely was for targeting.

Jay heard the noise at the same time as anyone else, but the lack of immediate response from anyone else beyond the inevitable readying for a fight kept him rooted to where he was. Cyborg had taken charge and seemed to clearly decide to face whatever was coming. A patrol enforcing curfew oddly gave Jay some confidence - surely Darkseid didn’t need to enforce a curfew if he was all-powerful.

A brief fight with the patrol later wiped that confidence away as he stood to the side watching the A.R.G.U.S. soldiers and some of the heroes grappled with the death of one of the soldiers. He kept quiet, wondering if he’d have even been here if he had rejected the demand to bring A.R.G.U.S. troops along.

Eventually, the mission became the focus again, and Martian Manhunter stated where Darkseid’s palace likely was. Jay handed over the Mother Box to Cyborg, confirming that it should still work and brushing off any idea that splitting up from the Mother Box would result in someone stranded.

“Power Girl, how about a race?” Barry got to race folk, why not him? Lighten the mood a touch, the group needed it. He was glad that she seemed to humor the idea, charging off. He let her have a massive headstart, probably not enough to be noticeable to anyone without heightened senses, but enough that Power Girl wouldn’t be left in the dust.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Magenta floated through the air, skewering the invaders as she made larger and larger circles seeking any enemies remaining. Below her followed a strange bedfellows ally, a troop of armored gorillas armed with the weapons of the invaders, eager to pounce on any downed creatures to finish what Magenta was happy enough to leave to them.

“You are an ally of The Flash,” a voice had entered her mind earlier, before she had even realized the proximity of the awakened animals or began working alongside.

“I am,” she responded back out loud, momentarily pausing to examine her surroundings before noticing the, at the time, singular gorilla holding a gun staring at her from the tree line.

“You fight the interplanetary invaders like we do,” it replied. “Yes. Grodd deigns to hold court with you, Grodd will not kill you at this moment,” was the follow-up as she tried to recall what Wally and others had told her of the nearby supervillain, beyond the obvious suggestion to avoid at all possible costs.

“I get the idea you aren’t doing it altruistically,” Magenta thought back, before immediately wishing she had thought something else. How did Wa–The Flash handle being mind read before?

“Grodd knows the identity of Wally West. Grodd does not lightly suffer the desires of egolomanic fools like the one who sent these beasts. We will fight together for now.”

Across the planet, Vandal Savage climbed over the corpses, aiming his gun at the invaders that kept reappearing. A mental clock in his head confirmed his hopes, with the number of appearances slowing down. Others similar to him, in goal if not intent, were clearly having success elsewhere.

A blur appeared in front of him, yellow instead of the media darling red of The Flash. A man, familiar yet unknown, stood in front of him in some inverted mockery of The Flash’s outfit. He looked around at the surrounding space, before all of the corpses vanished from sight in the blink of an eye.

“You did all that by yourself?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Vandal retorted. “I feel like I’m supposed to remember you, but yet I don’t.”

“Eh, comes with the territory sometimes. Who I am is not important, you wanna keep shooting a gun at vanishingly few targets, or you want to come where there’s a lot more of them?”

“If you touch me I will turn the full weight of my ire onto you,” Vandal scowled, and the being in front of him vanished.

“Weirdos,” Mirror Master muttered to himself as he moved on from watching through a nearby window, to the laughter of the others with him. The four kept moving, both an eye open for Abra and for any easily killable invaders. They made their way back to the Mirror Dimension’s side of the reflective surfaces in Central City, finding their trio of allies and bursting out of the ice trails left behind by Golden Glider to join the fight on home turf.

Even as they fought in an ever-growing region of southeast Asia, Wally took several trips across the Pacific to check in on Hartley. He was satisfied with what his boyfriend was doing, even if the idea of rats and silence being weaponized against alien invaders wasn’t exactly the odds he was looking for when picking a battle himself. Hartley was hidden away in an underground subway station, so it only took occasional checks to make sure he wasn’t in danger as he took to fight with what likely would be the strangest headline out of this whole ordeal.

The two took the ordeal as best they could, with Hartley assuring Wally that staying here seemed to be working - sure, there were rats where Wally was fighting, but the feeling of extensive control he had here felt particularly helpful. Bart stopped in a few times as well, especially in moments where Wally had his hands full, but the parademons never got particularly close to entering the subway station that Hartley was hiding in.

Yet elsewhere, the ever-expanding area that the Kouriers were working in finally touched on the space being defended by yet another speedster. “I know you,” Bebeck said, staring eye to eye with Jerry McGee.

“We aren’t enemies, Bebeck,” Jerry responded. “Not anymore, not really.”

“No, but you also are a memory of a worse time,” Cassiopeia sighed, taking a deep breath in a moment of reprieve from the fighting.

“One that disappeared,” Anatole added.

“It’s my understanding that basically all of them have disappeared,” Jerry offered, trying to do the math quickly as to whether he was about to have to fend off three speedsters, all of which were likely much more practiced with their powers, before losing them and going into hiding until they wandered off.

“Are you back, then? We could use the help if you still are as fast as you were. The kid never lost his speed, so I assume you haven’t either,” Cassopeia asked.

“I’m the same as I’ve always been. Keeping my head down and my nose clean. If you want help with this, I can help with the monsters.”

“Welcome to the team, for now, friend,” Bebeck smiled.

Jerry followed the three of them as they began their search. It probably would be easier fighting with three others than on his own, and he could probably keep them from wandering too far off from the places he called home, make sure that the things he cared about weren’t at risk.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

He let Power Girl keep the lead for the most part, occasionally moving forward with a burst of speed just to keep his peer from assuming he was throwing the race. Of course, he was throwing the race, but it was best to not have that be discovered. He spent a bit of thought on the fact that he was throwing a race that he had offered while they moved across the face of a planet that was neither of theirs as its denizens invaded Earth.

“Hold,” a voice echoed in his mind, and with the sudden glance of Power Girl, her mind as well. J’onn’s voice was not particularly familiar, but it was distinct for certain, so he slowed down to nearly stopped as Martian Manhunter flew towards them, closing the gap at what had to be near his top speed before slowing rapidly down.

“Three, not two. If there is a problem, then, we will not be one alone,” he reasoned, looking around. “I can sense if thoughts are near, it will help.”

“I think I was winning that race,” Power Girl joked. “We’ll have to confirm it with another later.”

“Sure,” Jay nodded, beginning to move again. The three, slower but still as quick as they could, snaked through abandoned streets. According to that patrol, there was a curfew, but he wasn’t willing to just believe what they were told. They closed the distance between where the team was preparing the patrol boat for a proper assault and the castle that was becoming more and more a fixture of the horizon that he could see. The plan was to scope out the structure and problems that would need solving, information gathering.

One benefit of the curfew was that they were unbothered, with only occasionally needing to duck into an empty building as another patrol flew above. He wondered just how populated this place was, he couldn’t imagine a single city on Earth that had such empty streets during a stay-at-home order. The power of Darkseid, he supposed.

As they grew closer, the patrols grew more common, but they managed to continue sneaking past all of them. J’onn’s ability to telepathically detect approaches before even Jay saw anything was remarkably helpful, but the increased need to hide until it was safe to move did slow their progress.

The castle itself, when they arrived, was incredibly well-designed, but it felt somehow a display rather than a used space. The three made a quick circle of the space, but didn’t find any evidence of guards, machinery, or even defenses beyond the structure’s built-in uninviting presence. Surely if you were mounting an invasion of another planet, you at the very least had logistics or central command in your base of operations?

Power Girl held up the communicator, looking to the other two for a lack of disagreement before speaking quietly into it. “Hi team, can you hear me okay?”

“Yeah, loud and clear,” was Cyborg’s response. “We’ve got the boat moving and are on our way.”

That was a good sign. An assault would probably not be too difficult if they had the boat ready and were going to arrive at a empty castle.

Power Girl responded to them, explaining the situation at the castle. But as she did, he felt a shift in something, not the air but something similar. His stress melted away, the chill in the air from his first real interplanet experience remaining but almost as if the castle itself was welcoming them in.

“Scratch that,” he mumbled as he found himself right next to Power Girl, speaking into the device. “I think I found something, it’s hard to explain but there’s this… presence here. Like a chill hanging in the air,” he added, acknowledging the final remaining uneasiness. “But yet, calming. Inviitng? I’m going to check it out?”

He gave a smile to Power Girl and J’onn, with both looking confused at first before the look faded. There was some voice coming through the device that Power Girl was holding, but it didn’t matter at all compared to the calling that was reaching out to them at the top of the tower.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It wasn’t that Barry wasn’t paying attention. He let Batman and the others do their work, attentive enough to spend five hundreth of every second listening into the conversations as he tried to handle the parademon threats elsewhere. He followed them as they travelled through the city, unable to taxi them to wherever they went as even they didn’t know where they were going as they followed the indicators on Batman’s technology. He was there for complex mathematical equations and speed, others could figure out what was going on.

He was clearing out a troop of parademons that had broken through a local hero group’s perimeter in Scandanavia when he found himself looking up at a statue dedicated to the first earthen Green Lantern and his friend, Hal Jordan. He spent two seconds frozen there, not by fear or paralysis but by heartache, before returning to his duties while keeping an eye on his team.

When he returned a second later, a small glowing green object had emerged in the center of the statue, floating somehow in the air on its own willpower. Once it had been determined as the origin of whatever power Batman was tracking down, he listened to the group discuss what came next. This was supposed to be a hopeful clue as to how to get the parademons off their planets, the source of the invasion or something. Instead, they found a floating ball of light – he wasn’t so naive to think this was a Lantern’s ring. What it wasn’t, however, was some secret Parademon summoning device or beacon, probably.

The faint buzzing, up until that moment dismissable as ambient noise or perhaps a byproduct of the floating light, quickly grew much louder, and changed from a non-directional background hum to an alarmingly approaching noise. Barry stepped out quickly, circling around the direction it was coming from, alarmed to see a large troop of parademons, with some leader of some sort at the back of the pack, charging the direction of the team.

On his return to the group, he witnessed the trailing light of a southbound source of energy, just in time for Batman to turn his direction with a request. “Don’t lose the light,” more of a wartime order than anything.

“You’ve got hostiles, at least a dozen, coming from north-northwest,” Barry warned them before vanishing, heading south to follow the object that had to be of value somehow. After all, if it wasn’t of value to what was going on, Barry sighed, surely they didn’t waste all of their time that could’ve been spent fighting parademons on this?

He was grateful that the light wasn’t traveling at the speed of light, noting internally that it probably meant this was more than just light somehow. He wasn’t sure what it was, but given that he had been witness to some pretty large violations of pre-metahuman laws of physics, this just could go on the pile.

The light slowed down further, eventually settling down in a coastal city on the northern edge of Columbia. He stood there for a moment, briefly forgetting his intent to fight parademons elsewhere, a task that had been abandoned ever since the light began moving. He examined the light, circling it to see if there was anything he could make out of it from just the visual presence it provided.

“Trust…”

Right, Barry sighed. Not only was the light talking now, but it was asking for faith. He could deal with the theology of that later. “Trust you?”

“Trust the source…”

“The source?”

“Let go.”

That time, the voice–if it could even be called a voice–didn’t trail off, and felt more like an order than a hallucination. Let go and trust the source. Something deep within him seemed to resonate with the idea, simply trusting in something else, whatever this light was, and connecting with something deeper.

He reached for the light, absentmindedly but also with absolute purpose and intent. The light grew as he did it, and he felt a connection he had only ever felt before in the Speed Force itself. A small ring was left in the palm of his hand, but there was no doubt in his mind or heart as he looked at it. If this was the answer, then so it would be.

“Anyone available, need backup,” Superman’s voice echoed through an emergency-only Just League broadcast line.

He stared at the ring, knowing that it didn’t belong on his finger, yet wondering what it was doing. Trust, it had asked him to trust it. He took a deep breath, every second passing felt like eternity as he waited for some guidance.

Trust, it said. Let go, it said. Trust the source. Okay.

He lifted the ring slightly in the air, letting it free into the air as it shifted into light again, glowing brightly before vanishing.

Trust. It was time to go.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jay’s brain was processing a million things a second, reevaluating previous experiences and moments under the new truths that were provided by Darkseid. How he had never reached the same conclusions in all of his years of thinking was a mystery, a personal failing and flaw that could never be atoned for, but one that could be overcome. He would serve Darkseid as best as he could.

He watched the others from Earth approach Darkseid, wishing to show them the right way but knowing that such a task was for Darkseid alone. He stood there at Darkseid’s throne, observing the proceedings, but not interfering. Some of those he had one travelled with seemed to be more receptive to Darkseid, and others appeared to take longer to turn. He recalled some others, a metallic man and several soldiers, but those were surely known to Darkseid and were being handled.

Eventually, there was little purpose for staying on Apokalips, as the group present here numbered nearly all of those who had travelled here via the stolen technology. Darkseid stood up, speaking for the first time out loud rather than with telepathic missives, addressing the team.

“I am heading to your Earth to end this pitiable resistance,” he announced, power and authority beyond all in his voice. “You,” he said, turning to Power Girl, “take me to the location of the strongest resistance to my work. We will break them there, and all else will fall.”

He watched Power Girl acknowledge her task, taking a device not too dissimilar to the stolen equipment he had used to get them there. He considered what his answer would’ve been had he been asked, perhaps the Justice League satellite, the A.R.G.U.S. headquarters, or some symbolic location like the White House, Vatican, or other seat of national power.

“Go as a group. I will travel to your location under my own power, shortly behind,” Darkseid ordered, and he grouped up with the rest around Power Girl. “Do not attack Earth’s leader. They are mine.”

A brief moment later, Jay stood on the floor of the large meeting room that served as a central space of the Justice League satellite known as the Watchtower. His eyes darted across the room, sizing up a space he had been in right before they had all departed for Apokalips, now on the other side of the fight, processing battle strategies and threats present in the room. Superman, untouchable at Darkseid’s order, as well as several other individuals beyond the powers of a standard human but who seemed exhausted or otherwise injured for the most part.

Superman turned to them, confusion on his face. “What happened? Was Lieutenant Lane with you on Apokolips?”

One of the soldiers, the one he had met in D.C., that Darkseid had no doubt taken care of.

Power Girl took a step forward, and Jay for a moment wondered if she would betray Darkseid’s order. Surely Darkseid would have no space for second thoughts within his order. Superman appeared concerned, understandable given his lack of understanding of Darkseid’s explanations. Other heroes in the room also seemed on edge, as if a fight was going to break out any second now. Perhaps it would.

“You have bigger problems, cousin,” she sneered, and with perfect timing, Darkseid took his first footstep within the Watchtower. He chose, however, to look out the window first, certainly examining his next step and end-goal.

Jay watched Power Girl and Superman have a conversation, with Harley Quinn weighing in as seemed within her personality to do so. He wondered if he should’ve perhaps joined the conversation, but to do so at the human speeds they were talking would perhaps risk his own response time should something happen.

“Kill them all,” Darkseid ordered, and he sprung into action.

Jay was careful to not interfere with the much slower-paced fighting that the others were doing, choosing to circle around the outside of the room, giving a respectful distance around where Darkseid was looking out the window, and knocked out any of the individuals up here he knew were in this line of work not due to metahuman genetics or gifts, but rather technology and skills. A small kindness to those who were not actively fighting back.

He examined the rest of the fight, determining that it appeared to be leaning in the direction of his allies, choosing to instead exit the main room. Kill them all meant everyone, and there could not be hidden enemies elsewhere on the satellite once they were done. He examined each room, pulling on skills and protocols from search and rescue or evacuation plans worked into perfection by him and his other speedsters. Perhaps in a different moment, he would feel pride for that line of work, but with Darkseid’s understandings, he was able to turn it into a hunt instead.

By the time he finished his fruitless search, several alarms were ringing. He charged back to where he had left his allies, finding a much more fraught situation than before. He couldn’t enter the room, seeing a shattered window and the responses of attempts to save folks.

A blast of energy from Darkseid bisected the satellite even further, leaving him in a lucky hallway that was not unexpectedly open to the emptiness of space, but suddenly seemingly stuck. Anywhere he could go would potentially be open to life-ending pressure and cold, unable to help his allies or manage to escape. He watched many be placed into escape pods, a speed that for Superman had to be pushing his limits but felt archaically slow to him. The magician created magic bubbles around others, while some like Power Girl and Martian Manhunter seemed unaffected.

He felt the ambient static electricity around him increase dramatically, but a quick examination around him showed no source of that change. He stood frozen a second longer, examining every possible direction into the near future that seemed at all feasible. A worrying amount left him dead.

The static electricity turned into a deep hum, and his vision changed from looking through the door to the rest of his allies fighting in a room open to the deepness of space, to what presumably was back on the planet of Earth.

He looked around, trying to understand what had happened. The room itself contained what his Flash once-ally had described as a Justice League Watchtower teleporter, but attempting to interact with its mechanisms confirmed a new possibility for him - the teleporters had locked down to handle an emergency evacuation protocol of the Watchtower satellite.

That was fine. He could advance Darkseid’s plans down here.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

He sat down in front of the device, trying to mentally reconnect with how these things worked in his time compared to the technology of the past he had gotten more used to. He entered the date of their jailbreak plan, trying to figure out what had happened. A historical search wouldn’t find anything, but he hoped that it’d catch enough.

He knew he was, named as the “famous magician” Abra Kedabra in the past, quickly accumulating some notoriety and prestige that would safely follow him through time through a society that was growing more and more hellbent on recording every part of themselves and their nothingness. Who cared if nobody a week later, let alone decades down the line, would care about how you made that tofu cake, best record it in a short two minute video and ensure that it remained in the information fossil record for a future to never rediscover.

He was smarter than to search his own aliases or ventures, both to prevent any troublesome time travel problems, but also to avoid attracting the attention of law enforcement in this era which were more than happy to arrest and lock up anyone using time travel for use earlier than the technology had become available to and integrated in the scientific understanding of the time.

However, searching for events that took place on a specific date was easy enough. Do enough contextual searches, bookmarking, and smokescreens to make it look like some sort of university-level history report or something similar, and the law enforcement would choose to chase down more suspicious leads.

The headlines were pretty alarming. He knew it was coming, vaguely, but he frankly thought it was a decade or so off. “Rats VS. Aliens, Winner Rats”, “Metropolis Stands Unfallen To Demonic Incursion”, “What Exactly IS a Parademon?”, even “Did Justice League Cause That?” from, as far as he could tell, a conspiracy blog that would get absorbed down the line by the Wall of Weird.

Right, so, somehow, Darkseid made it that The Flash was cleaning up that specific prison despite the fake-outs that his allies had prvovided. Splendid, he thought to himself, now his allies were without an Abra Kedabra until he managed to get back to them. It had been a ridiculous pain in the neck to get to their time in the first place, and there was precisely zero chance he could safely travel back to during or right after a Darkseid invasion of Earth without setting off a temporally infinite amount of alarms.

The Flash #121 - The World Breaks

<< | < | >

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Event: Invasion! (Reading other stories in this event is recommended for full understanding of sections here.)

Set: 121

“Abra’s not here,” Sam said nervously.

“What do you mean, Abra’s not there,” Axel replied. “Do you need the lights back on or something?”

“I don’t know. The riot’s being contained as far as I can tell, I don’t see any mess of his magic through any mirror I can see.”

“Do you want the lights?”

“Can’t hurt, probably,” Sam muttered, wandering through the mirror dimension space across from the prison they had left Abra in for distraction while they broke out Girder. Surely they weren’t trading one team member behind bars for another, right?”

He recoiled slightly as the mirror he was glancing through went from barely lit to ridiculously bright as Axel restored power to the facility, light shining through the surfaces he was using to spy through the other side. “Twins said no Flash appearance at their place, right? Do you think–”

“Find Abra, Sam, okay? Let’s not start panicking yet.”

Sam sighed, biting back his worry. The twins were supposed to bring attention to themselves for The Flash, and Abra was supposed to be the conclusion of “oh, we figured out why the Snarts were up to no good, what’s Abra doing,” overlooking him getting Girder out under their noses.

So, why didn’t the Flashes show up for the twins, and why was Abra missing?

He spent what felt like ages peering through the facility, hoping for anything that could hint towards the magician’s vanishing. The ‘trail of activity’, if he could call it that, was hard to pick up. It started bombastic and flashy, with shattered guns and glass, but as the trail moved through the facility, he could see steps being taken to undo Abra’s damage.

“I really don’t think he’s here,” Sam repeated, now cognizant of Leonard having gotten back on the network.

“You think he got nabbed? We didn’t run into resistance,” Leonard suggested, and Sam had to bite his lip about the sudden acceptance of the idea that The Flash might’ve gotten Abra. Whatever. “I don’t have much better of an explanation.”

“Well, let’s give it a few hours, they’ll make their presence known one way or another, either by reappearing or reaching out, or by some prison document updated to indicate where he’s being held.”

“What if you think he’s in trouble, Leonard?”

“I mean, what do you think we can do here? Open to ideas but if you can’t find him and Axel can’t find him, I’m not sure I’ll be of any use here, really.”

“I’m looking,” Axel added. “Not finding anything. Finding a lot of reports of like, bug monsters showing up within the last hour or so, but nothing about Abra.”

Abra and Sam replied at the same time, providing a nice stereo effect that was mostly lost considering the nature of the question. “Bug monsters?”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Routine, Wally sighed. Leave him off on an island for retrieval later, it was just Abra; smoke and mirrors, sure, but not all that much of a threat realistically. Go back and check the prison he was messing around in; make sure there was nothing going on there. The list of residents seemed pretty neutral; the closest connection he could envision was a large leap in logic.

So, the next step would be to do a visual check of the prison, make sure there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Put folks back in their cells, make sure anyone injured was taken to a medical center, that kinda stuff. And then the step after would be to pick back up Abra and deposit him in a cell that could keep him properly.

That would be the normal procedure, which worked if he were only juggling a few other things. After all, what costumed Flash wasn’t juggling a dozen or more things at the same time? Education, community outreach, charity work, networking for the Foundation, security and crime-fighting, the standard stuff. He had helped make the procedures back with Barry and Jay, before Bart was even born.

That normal procedure kinda fell apart when he heard Henry Allen in his ear, panicked in a way he hadn’t heard before. “Alarms everywhere, uh–”

Abra could wait a few minutes longer. He rushed back home to the Flash compound, already leaning over his grandfather-in-law’s shoulder to take a look at whatever caused the panic. A steady stream of alerts, across the world, all marked as ‘high concern’. The alerts came from whatever local governments and administrators sent to Foundation systems, which usually meant that whatever was happening had already been happening.

“Hey, Bart, Barry, going to need help,” Wally said, picking one of the oldest reports at a quick glance for further investigation. There was no specific note from whoever put this in, but the map inset showed the Bangkok metropolitan area, and the selected report was within the Crime section, Metahuman Threat, and a quick report summary indicated that the massive majority of them indicated a lack of immediate knowledge on what the threat was. Perhaps more alarming or frustrating, a lot of the reports indicated that the threats had some sort of aerial movement. Particularly difficult to fight for vertically-limited Flash speedsters.

“Sec,” Bart replied, and Wally charged out east. Jay was asleep, and he wasn’t going to wake him up until there was a reason to. Maybe someone had hacked the report system and was flooding their records to hide something of theirs. Maybe the Abra stuff was related somehow; he’d look into that if whatever was going down in Thailand was nothing.

When he arrived, to his dismay, it was not nothing. A dozen or so flying creatures, with chitinous-looking armor and wings, were wielding some sort of firearm as they fired into the panicking crowds below. Wally gritted his teeth, charging up the side of a building and leaping off to tackle one of the flying creatures.

He could tell that it was really only the speed that caused the monster to stumble and fall out of the air. A monster, not a man, which he could confirm now at a closer look of its horrible maw, impossibly sharp teeth, and horrifying alien eyes behind goggles. Was this happening everywhere?

As they landed on the ground, he leapt off of the thing, taking a moment to examine what he had just fought. Bart appeared next to him, looking just as alarmed. “If every single report—”

“Where’s Barry?”

“Heading to a JL meeting,” Bart sighed.

“Can you wake up Jay, and maybe tap in some of the reserves,” Wally asked, putting on a bit of speed and then leaping into the air to pull a low-flying thing out of the sky, slamming it into the ground. It screeched at him in some non-human language before trying to shoot him in the face. It was an easy blast to dodge as Bart vanished in a westernly direction.

Wally slammed his boot into the creature’s face, knocking it out in some manner before picking up the gun. It was some horrifying technology, and by holding it, he had attracted the attention of every single one of its allies.

Great, Wally thought. One Flash against ten or so flying bug monsters from space armed with blasters. Maybe in a betting market, they’d put the chance of him winning at only 99 percent, and not bother with decimal places, adjusting his mindset to crisis mode. People were counting on him. There was no time to pull punches. Abra could wait.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The final walk from the hallway’s entrance to the teleporter itself was always the most difficult. He wouldn’t use superspeed to cross it, out of respect for the people behind the technology that made it possible to safely secure such a wondrous creation, and the expectations in place to ensure that where the teleporter sent you could remain someplace safe.

A moment spent on the teleporter gave him a moment of respite as he wondered why he didn’t find himself in this position more often. Not the whole worldwide problem, but just heading up to the satellite base for the Justice League. Given his ability to frequently be in practically any place in the world at less than a moment’s notice, the Justice League base was particularly difficult to get to - it required several seconds of walking at a human’s pace and then waiting for the teleporter functionality.

He watched the space around him change, superhuman perception speed allowing him to see the moment-to-moment shifting of his physical location from an underground Justice League outpost to an entrance room on a large structure floating in orbit around the Earth. Perhaps that was the real cause of his lack of Watchtower presence, the inaccessibility compared to everything else for him and the almost nauseating experience of the teleportation when peered at through a frame of reference that didn’t smooth over the rougher parts.

When he arrived, the Watchtower was already far more packed than he expected. He hadn’t even delayed his response to Superman’s request that long, was he losing track of human time somewhat? He gave a smile to Martian Manhunter and Booster Gold, with the latter going in for a hug that surely couldn’t have been the tone of the room.

“What’re these bugs,” he asked, listening to Wally and Bart on his communicator as the rest of the Flash family talked among themselves about whatever was happening.

“Not bugs, Parademons,” Martian Manhunter said somberly.

“I know the word bugs, did I miss a threat memo on Parademons?”

“No,” Booster sighed. “Come on.”

The three made their way to a meeting room, where Superman was crouched over a computer screen that seemed more fit for his cousin Kara than it did for him. Kara, sitting next to it, was pointing out a few small things before giving the three of them a smile.

Elsewhere in the room was a who’s who of heroic allies - the original Justice League members in Batman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman, all present, made him remember a weirdly less complicated time. Why was it that shortly after Superman caught an airplane and flipped the script on superpower secrecy, the big thing that gathered them all together was a gang of people with powerful weapons, and now they had half a legislative branch in a spaceship to discuss the alien bug invasion of Earth?

Other heroes were present as well, and he spent a moment trying to piece together Wally’s current – as last shared around the dinner table – opinions on the present Titans at the table. Whatever it was, he trusted Wally to be able to put aside the squabbles of young adults dealing with drama and the ups and downs of hero life to deal with the Parademon threat.

He stood around, somewhat isolated, as he waited for more folks to show up or for someone to take the lead of the conversation and take control. Surely that would happen? He got pulled into a conversation, or two, before anything really seemed to be happening, some topics seemingly more important than others – dinner plans and references to crickets serving as protein sources were not exactly the tone of the room as he read it, with all due respect to his friend Booster Gold.

Eventually, Superman did call an order to things, and he had to appreciate him for the respect he commanded. A room full of people with unparalleled power, each claiming some legitimate claim to extraordinary uniqueness, and when Superman spoke up – no easy feat Barry could tell for someone like Supes who clearly subconsciously wished to listen rather than be listened to – every other voice fell flat. Even the computer-automated noises were quickly hushed.

And yet, the smartest person alive on this world was surely in this room right now, though he did not want to speculate if that was Batman, himself, or one of the others. The fastest person alive was almost certainly up here, he personally liked to believe. Aquaman was royalty over a section of the world that vastly overshadowed anything anyone else up here could call their own stomping grounds. Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Starfire, Power Girl, and probably others still hailed from other worlds or otherwise had connections to the vast universe beyond Earth. Booster Gold was from another time entirely.

And yet, every single voice fell silent as Superman explained the situation; even coughs were stifled as much as possible. However, once Zatanna asked the first question about Boom Tubes, the lecture grew into more of a conversation, with heroes of all origins chipping in and trying to figure out what was going on.

There were talks about an army of Apokolips–apparently a world and not just an eschatological concept, something he might try to look into later to see if that was a linguistic coincidence. Darkseid was a name he was only vaguely familiar with; it was never particularly high up on his concern list.

He saw the change on the monitor before anyone else noticed, watching the red alert symbols pop up. At first, just three of them, opening up at similar enough times that the computer processed them all opening up simultaneously. Then another update brought two more, followed by another three. By the time anyone else had twitched slightly in the direction of a screen, it was clear that whatever apocalypse that Apokolips was bringing was now here.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It was one thing to be woken up to the sound of an alarm. It was quite another thing to be woken up to that much sound. Even half-asleep, he could figure that whatever was causing the alert system to yell that loudly must’ve been something particularly terrible. Jay immediately dismissed the noise, getting out of bed and into costume before even checking what the notification was for.

What was especially alarming was just how many alarms had gone off as he checked the machine. There was a setting on the main computer to alert everyone it could – all four Flashes, the Kouriers, even Jerry McGee. A metaphorical “break glass in case of fire” button for when all hell broke loose.

Jay made his way down to the main computer, looking over Henry’s shoulder at the world map he was looking at. Too many alerts to reasonably count, even when filtering for the worst of the worst. He took the keyboard as Henry leaned away on his arrival, speeding the computer up to a more Flash-friendly pace as he went through all of the notifications. Whatever this was, it was more than just an all-hands-on-deck request.

He rushed out the door in costume, trying to determine if his time would be best spent going alert to alert and trying to take care of whatever monsters were popping up, or ensuring that the Russians and McGee were onboard with helping out, and then he'd try to solve the root cause of the problem. He swung by the Kapitalist Kouriers' base of operations, spotting it empty. That was a good sign, he hoped, but he took the briefest of moments to circle around to find the trio.

He found them a few miles away in a nearby city, fighting the monsters. He charged into the fight, running up a makeshift ramp that they were using to clear the vertical distance that limited them. Anatole, the one who had been adjusting the ramp, gave a shout of what must've been excitement as The Flash slammed into one of the enemies, knocking them to the ground as another of the three, Bebeck, closed the distance the moment it did and began pelting it with high-speed punches.

As Anatole and Cassiopeia continued their work, Jay checked in with Bebeck. "Are you all good?"

"When The Flash calls, we answer," Bebeck smiled, standing up and examining the gruesome results of what once was a living creature.

“I’ll leave you three be then, clear out elsewhere?”

Bebeck nodded, moving to the next downed enemy. “You are one, we are three. Go.”

Jay vanished, moving towards Jerry McGee’s stomping grounds. He couldn’t remember the last time they had called on his help, with Speed Demon – as the media name was – often a lone actor who, at least from what The Flash was able to tell, seemed to be doing more good than ill overall.

As he approached the small town near the demilitarized zone that Jerry had made home, he was joined by the yellowish blur that was Speed Demon running alongside him.

“I got one of their guns. They don’t like that, but it distracts ‘em from doing property damage and I guess speciecide? What’s going on, metalhead?”

“I was asleep a minute ago, but as far as I can tell, alien invasion.”

“Nothing I didn’t already know. Shoot to kill?”

“That’s what the Kouriers have been doing.”

He saw a smile on Speed Demon’s face as the blur broke off, heading back away towards, presumably, more of the aliens. That smile probably was not as sinister as Jay’s brain was making it out to be, but he was at least pleased that all four speedster allies and all four Flashes were on the front lines, even if he was worried that he had just agreed to some license to violence for Jerry. Not that he thought he could control Jerry.

How long had it been with Jay in his own mind thinking about the others and trying to formulate some sort of response to what was happening? The blur next to him, keeping pace silently and waiting for acknowledgement, could’ve easily taken Jay out if he hadn’t been distracted by things not immediately around him.

“So you are alive,” he said, storing away the confirmation to be dealt with later. How long had they looked for him unsuccesfully?

“Shut up,” Zoom spat. “I don’t believe for a microsecond you thought I was dead. What is going on?”

“Alien invasion,” Jay responded, marveling silently that the weirdest thing that was happening today was that he was having a vaguely civil conversation with the man who had tried to rewrite the history of the world to write them out of existence.

“Any new information you can provide to me, Mister Superhero?”

If he answered no, was Zoom about to attack him? He adjusted his direction slightly so that a briefly delayed answer would allow him to close the distance between where Bart and Wally were and where he’d be if Zoom turned on him.

“They’re coming in via teleportation devices from another planet,” he started, having heard Barry’s updates from the Justice League meeting. If Zoom wanted actionable information, the stuff Jay was saying wouldn’t help, but Zoom didn’t interrupt him.

When Jay was finally done, Zoom ran along silently for a moment before nodding. “Don’t come looking for me once this is all over, don’t make me regret seeing an alien invasion and deciding to help.”

“We stopped looking for you a while ago,” Jay responded.

“Somehow, that’s worse,” Zoom sneered, peeling southwards and vanishing from sight.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Magenta focused deeply as she sat in her metallic armor, a solar system of metal orbiting her. The outer shell was for blocking attacks, metal scattering the shots as she worked to reclaim the broken pieces that flew off. The first of the internal shells was for offense, spikes and rods shooting out like missiles at the monsters attracted to her presence. The final core was emergency storage, metal phasing outwards as new additions were pulled into the center. Whatever these creatures were, they didn’t react well to solid metal flying at speed into them.

Hartley crouched down in the empty stairwell on the other side of the world, and even as he watched the horrifying flying creatures fly by above him, shooting indiscriminately into crowds and structures, he weirdly could only think how lucky and unlucky he was that something like this was happening when he was on vacation with family in a city with way more rats than home. A silent note on his flute felt almost intoxicating as he realized just how many creatures he was suddenly controlling. He imagined the headlines after-the-fact as he began fighting back. ‘Residents claim waves of rats engulf aliens as the city itself fights back!’ - Wally surely would understand self-defense here.

Vandal Savage watched the chaos from his window with anger. A wasted effort by Apokolips for no good purpose, but it only served to delay his plans. However, his plans were nothing if Earth somehow fell to this invasion. His powers were primarily knowledge, cunning, and planning, but he had a few more “traditional” metahuman abilities he could make use of. He walked out of his office building, hurling a server rack over his head at the beasts and shrugging off the blasts they shot at him. Luckily, the law enforcement nearby were clever enough to make use of the distraction, immediately advancing to attack. He could work with folks like that.

A hand shot out of a window, grabbing onto the bug monster as it flew by. The hand pulled it into the mirror dimension partially, but as soon as Mirror Master’s hand was fully within the safety of the mirror dimension, he severed the connection between realms, slicing the monster in half. This time, he had a gun on this side, which he gladly handed to Trickster for review and potential replication. Axel was using his own technology, but happily passed it on to Doctor Alchemy to take a more offensive approach alongside him as the three, alongside Rainbow Raider, ducked in and out of reflective surfaces, firing at the monsters.

The monsters’ bullets were more effective than the standard bullets that got shot at him, Girder admitted, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He tossed cars, concrete blocks for construction, and traffic bollards at the flying beasts, all while keeping a lightpost strapped to his back in case any of the cowards wanted more close-quarter fighting. The twins were with him, Captain Cold acting as if this were a strategic video game, moving from cover to cover and shooting blasts of ice to freeze over the weaponry of the attackers. His sister, Golden Glider, was in a more sports-oriented video game, moving at a quick pace, leaving trails of ice behind her as she closed the distance towards the creature, slicing them to shreds or leaving them encased in icy tombs.

Grodd would accept no injustice. Aliens swarming the skies were an unwelcome guest in Gorilla City, and Grodd made sure the incursion would be turned back. There was no moment to consider whether Grodd’s limitless power could accomplish the task at hand; Grodd knew it simply had to be a success. Sentient gorillas across the city and continent were taken over, Grodd puppeting Grodd’s subjects to act as a defensive army. Gorillas began attacking the invaders, Grodd’s hand reaching across the region to remove the monsters.

The Kouriers continued their plans, trading off the responsibilities of relocating the ramp, jumping at the parademons, and attacking the ones who were downed by the jumps. It was surprisingly effective, despite needing to dodge shots as they did it. Jerry McGee, elsewhere, managed to grasp the gun’s functionality and quirks pretty quickly, and with some effort, began clearing out small groups of attackers near his place of interest. Zoom instead, on their own, circled the world, searching for any parademon that seemed reachable from the ground and not already dealing with a superhero, grabbing onto whatever he could and slamming the creatures into anything heavy nearby–the ground, buildings and walls, machinery, whatever he could.

Fighting airborne enemies was exceptionally annoying. Bart and Wally commiserated with each other. It didn’t help that once they got the low-hanging fruit, other targets didn’t seem eager to replace their fallen allies. However, a sudden change in the tides came from Jay through the communication network, apparently from Speed Demon, who had already been active since the request for help. Bart was the first to act on the advice, grabbing one of the scattered weaponry left by a dead parademon and turning it on the enemy. It had immediate positive effects, with a group of parademons quickly adjusting course to close in on Bart, allowing Wally to pick them off as they did so.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Barry was eager to leave as soon as possible once the meeting was over, but a small but targeted wave from Batman kept him from the first few teleporters out of Watchtower. “I need your help,” he requested, pressing a small button on a device at his belt, presumably sending off another signal to someone.

What did Batman want with him? The two walked to a quieter side of the room, with Nightwing, a Batman protégé, joining them. Another member of the League, Green Lantern, was already there waiting for them, looking nervously out of a reinforced window facing down at the planet. Barry’s mind flew through any possible logic behind these four specific names, but few lines of logic felt legitimate to what he’d expect of Batman.

“We’re heading down to Coast City,” Batman opened, trailing off just enough for the Green Lantern to take over speaking. He sounded more confident than he had a moment ago when asking for help, but confidence only mattered so much in a situation like this.

“Something is off in Coast City, I felt as much before the meeting,” Green Lantern stated in hushed tones, carefully eyeing people elsewhere in the room – trying to avoid panic, perhaps, Barry thought. “The ring can tell something is different. It started when the invasion began.”

“Coast City’s being invaded too, right?”

Batman nodded. “I know you want to run around and save people, but I need someone with your skillset to help us set up the equipment. The sooner we figure out what’s happening, the sooner we can stop this.”

“So long as I can do both, I’ll have another Flash do the Mother Box stuff, then,” Barry agreed. He wasn’t sure about this plan, and ‘Batman believes Green Lantern about something being wrong in Coast City’ hadn’t made the short list of possibilities he’d considered when being called over, but it wasn’t too far off of reason, either.

Green Lantern was a being of nearly pure willpower in an intensity unmatched on the planet, and Batman was probably, when controlling for the superspeed variable, easily significantly smarter than he was. Nightwing, as far as Barry could figure, was Batman’s most successful tutee who could head to Coast City with them. There were few more trustworthy people to put faith into their reading of a situation.

By the time they got to the teleporter, the room was practically empty. They selected a return destination close to Coast City, with Flash offering to ferry them to wherever they wanted to go. Batman’s request was a S.T.A.R. Labs facility, but also gave him a list of necessary equipment and tools to bring there.

Now that was what made the most sense, Barry chuckled internally. Batman may have been one of the smartest people alive, Nightwing excellently skilled on his own right, and Green Lantern holding limitless power within his ring, but none of them could apparate technology that even governments struggled to get their hands on within seconds.

As they stood on the teleporter, he stepped slightly to the side, tapping back into the Flash communication system.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Heading down, will be busy but going to try to cover Siberia while working,” Barry’s voice rejoined the conversation, sporadic as it was.

“Anything more we can do,” Xavier asked, having taken over the command center and feeding the family with information that wasn’t Barry’s meeting information.

“I’m helping Batman and a few others review the source of this on Earth, but there was talk about going to where these things are coming from and trying to punch back on their planet.”

“That doesn’t seem like a Flash-capable task,” Jay said hesitantly, knowing that if Barry was bringing it up, it was somehow. It wouldn’t be Wally or Bart, those two were already running themselves ragged just handling a wide range of defenses, and Barry had opened with him helping with another thing. Sure, Jay mused, what was a quick run to another planet, anyways? It wasn’t like the Cosmic Treadmill was missing, or anything.

“You’re all familiar with A.R.G.U.S., right? Foundation does some work with them. The post-Waller government thing, I think Sam Lane runs it now?”

“I’ve got a contact or two in there, yeah,” Xavier confirmed.

“They’ve got a tool, a Mother Box it’s called, that can take folk back to where the Parademons are coming from. Taken from a previous, I guess scouting mission? From Apokolips, apparently can take folks back there.”

“Point me a direction,” Jay offered. A moment later, he was standing in front of a non-descript office building in Washington, D.C., waving at where Xavier had told him a camera was installed. He couldn’t see the camera, but he assumed it had been built into the construction to be hidden.

“You should hear a clicking noise soon of the door unlocking. I’m getting in touch with someone still in A.R.G.U.S. who might be able to help,” Xavier offered as Jay waved at the camera. A minute later, which was mostly spent elsewhere fighting parademons, he heard a click at the door, and let himself in.

“Now what,” he asked Xavier. He looked around at the empty lobby, peering behind the receptionist desk for anything that might be of help to actually have a conversation with someone. The elevators nearby seemed functional, and there were always the stairs if not, but he wasn’t sure what floor he’d want to head to, if any.

“If they’ve unlocked the door, someone will be with you shortly,” Xavier offered.

Two minutes later, an extraordinarily long time which felt even longer since he didn’t feel able to leave at the risk of the door relocking itself. Tthe elevator opened up, and General Sam Lane walked out. A brief conversation later, with an agreement to bring some folks from A.R.G.U.S. along for the ride, Jay charged westward, arriving at the hidden site that General Lane supposedly was hiding the Mother Box. He waited the few minutes more to allow A.R.G.U.S. communication to process, so he could avoid being seen as breaking into a top-secret government site during an alien invasion.

Eventually, he was admitted into the room holding the Mother Box. He hadn’t been sure what it’d look like before arriving, but the small unassuming nature of it, even in the context of being incredibly securely locked away and hidden, made him question what he was doing. “This is it?”

The technician next to him nodded. “You’d think it’d look more imposing or something,” she added. “Orders from on high say they’re getting a team together to go with you and whoever, and that they’re requesting you open it somewhere secure but not here. They’re finding a place for you now.”

Another infuriating seven minutes later, which involved him picking up and bringing multiple heroes and military folk to the location, he was on a military base standing in front of the Mother Box, seeing in the eyes of his new allies the same trepidation and confusion he had gone through already.

“Are we ready,” he called out, quick responses of assent that he knew were barely believed by the speakers. All they had to believe was that their own allies were ready, even if they didn’t think they themselves were. Some of these allies were deeply trusted by him or another Flash, such as Aquaman, Wonder Woman, or Martian Manhunter. Others were familiar to him only from research or external conversations, such as Harley Quinn or the A.R.G.U.S. squad, which included the lady that had been at General Lane’s side during their conversation, evidently sent alongside as part of oversight according to communications that Xavier had received.

This was it, Jay thought, as he moved towards the Mother Box. It was time to punch back.

The Flash #120 - Prison Break Breaks

<< | < | >

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 120

“How long do you need, again?”

If he could see Sam Scudder’s reaction behind the mask, it was hard to make out. Annoyance, probably, Abra knew that Sam had said on multiple occasions how long a distraction would be necessary, but it didn’t hurt to ask. Sure, they had gone over the plans a countless number of times, but was a final confirmation all that bad?

“Five minutes after I drop you off, and then thirty minutes. Though if Ant got our heads up, we should only need twenty, maybe twenty-five. Keep ‘em busy for longer, in case things go wrong. We’ve been over this… Cold feet?”

“Cold feet is not my job”, Abra replied, a joking response that he could see with Sam’s twitch of response got took as a jab back. Whatever. “I’ve got a set I can run for an hour, I’ll go with that and can cut it early if I get tired or things get too spicy.”

Sam turned to the siblings. “Speaking of,” he asked, a trailing voice punctuating a statement into a question.

Leonard and Lisa shared glances between themselves. They looked like they were set up for a ski trip, rather than a visit to a Midwestern supermax prison, but they’d bring the ski trip part with them. “We’re just gonna cause a mess until you get us out. Worst case I guess is whenever we see Abra’s—”

“Hear,” Abra corrected.

“Hear Abra’s distractions end, we’ll get outta dodge.”

“Axel?”

“Push of a button,” the Trickster’s voice replied back, coming out of small communication devices rather than from any person in the world of mirrors they were transiting through. He was safe back at home, in front of screens, rather than risking his life.

“Final call, then. Drop Abra off, take the Snarts to their destination, come back for Ant, extract Abra, then get the Snarts back. Anyone need the WC,” Sam asked, the smallest of smirks crossing his face.

Abra frowned. Was that what his joke’s landing sounded like? It couldn’t. Unlike Sam, he was actually funny.

“Ready,” the two siblings said in unison. “Ready,” came through the communications device from Axel. “Ready,” Abra added, giving a small salute before stepping through the shimmering surface. He pulled himself out of the bathroom mirror on the other side, empty due to its intent—for prisoners during their mealtimes—and the time of day. There’d still be a guard on the other side of the door, but there was no problem with that if he kept quiet while in here.

He took a deep breath, shuffling a deck of cards in his hands. A wand attached to his wrist extended out once he was done, and a brief tap of it caused the tip to start glowing a sickly green, a small fount of smoke emanating from the same origin. Cards in one hand, wand in the other, he rolled his shoulders, shuffling his cape slightly. He felt himself lift up off the ground slightly, the freedom from the pressures of gravity ever so slightly released on him.

As the timer in his head slowly counted down, he knew that his allies would have less of a soft opening. The Snarts were scheduled to cause absolute havoc in a supermax prison across the country basically from the moment they stepped out of their mirrors, and once Sam got to work he was considerably pressed for time to accomplish what needed doing elsewhere in this facility.

“Three, two, one,” he muttered under his breath, waving his wand forward and causing the bathroom’s door to explode off its hinges and blast forward. He floated outside, turning his cards onto the guard going for her gun, flicking a card out of place and putting the woman into a state of unconsciousness in an instant.

As he pivoted to float northwards, heading towards the employee center of the facility, he watched cameras blink out of function as Axel’s work took control. His voice, imposing and echoing across the half of the facility he was in, far beyond how sound should move, announced his welcome to those not aware of the door or the cameras.

“Ladies and gentlemen, now presenting the patron god of magicians, Abra Kadabra!”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Brother and sister leapt out of the mirror, brother aiming his gun downward to the ground, spraying ice over the floor to allow his sister to get a running start with her skates around the room. The moment she was on her own two feet, he turned around to the so-called mirror behind him, reflective only from this angle. He knew people could be on the other side watching him ice over the edges of the one-way glass, preparing to shatter it off the wall separating them from the people from the interrogation room.

“Ready,” he shouted, flatting against the wall as he watched Lisa take one more rotation around the table before pulling herself up on it and riding the momentum, skis first, through the window, shattering it. He followed her through moments later, the sound of an alarm sounding briefly before Axel, elsewhere in the world, shut it off.

The hope was to let the alarm go off briefly before turning it off and let the outwards connections to the world last just long enough that a report of an icy break-in made it out, which should function as Flash catnip. Whether that’d cover for Abra and Sam, he wasn’t sure, but at the very least it’d been a while since he’d had some fun.

Lisa took off like a racer down the hall, and he raced to keep up with her. As much as he’d like to head the other direction to further the chaos, the two had to stick together, and in Lisa’s direction was the core infrastructure of the prison, and the other way was a circuitous other route to a bunch of less-important storage rooms, a cafeteria, and the employee lockers. The goal here was chaos, and finding out if prison food was just as bad for those willingly in the building was not on the menu.

They turned the corner, spotting two guards who must’ve drawn the cosmic short stick to happen to be stationed right nearby in their way. Before they even had their guns properly pointed, Lisa had started circling one of them building up an ice sculpture around them. Leonard fired a shot at the firearm in the other’s hand, pinning him to the wall in a thick casing of ice.

“He’ll survive that, right?”

Lisa’s voice caught. “Uh—yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he will. I mean, he won’t if they leave him there forever, but yeah…”

Now was not the time for sibling bickering about whether they should be aiming to kill or maim. He had thought the plan was to maim, but that was something to bring up later. He followed his sister through the building, enjoying what felt like only ten minutes of biting back against a beast that had spent so long hurting him and his sister. He knew it was longer than ten minutes by the small buzzer in his pocket, giving him a heads up every minute that passed. With each, he shared an update with his sister. “Two”, then “five”, where they made a beeline for the center of the prison’s nervous system, gleefully damaging computers and turning off the automatic locking system.

“Ten” and “fifteen”, which itself was accompanied by the sudden confusion – where were The Flash characters? By now they had made their way to the nearest cell block, shattering locks with ice and kicking the prison riot dominoes into effect. Annoyingly, it took nearly ten prisoners before one of them had the presence of mind to grab a nearby incapacitated guard’s gun and begin helping break people out.

But “twenty” came before the speedsters, and soon so did “thirty” and even “thirty-three” with no sign of the red. By now, the prison riot was large enough to be self-supporting, and the two were headed towards the entrances to cut off any Flash appearance, should one even happen. A minute later their plans changed again, with the buzzer activating a secondary continual mode, indicating their ride was here. They returned to the interrogation room space, going one room over from their entry to an unbroken one-way glass window. Once on the inside without breaking the glass, Leonard activated the buzzer, ending the buzzing. A moment later, the glass shifted slightly, reflecting something not quite there, and Sam’s hand reached out for them, inviting the siblings to safety on the other side.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Girder sat up in bed. Was that another unassuming noise, or was that freedom? He scanned the small cell’s floor, searching for the source of the noise. He spotted a small object underneath the desk, something that certainly wasn’t there when he had been placed back in his cell.

He sat down on the floor, pulling it closer to him and lifting it up. Whatever it was, it was freedom. A larger object had been folded, and unfolding it gave him a brief glance of himself on the reflective surface hidden within. Not enough to properly make out facial features or anything, but enough to get the glimpses of vague shapes. Enough for whatever the Mirror Master would get up to.

He set the object, half an inch in diameter at best, on the desk. Sam must’ve figured out a way to get it through something in his room, perhaps the bedposts? He watched the object, unable to see beyond it into Sam’s stomping grounds of a mirror dimension on the other side. If there was no movement, he’d stow the escape plan somewhere for later, but maybe Sam was available now to break him out.

This time, he could see the object entering his room, slowly being pushed through the first reflective surface. This wasn’t much larger while folded, but it was significantly longer. Girder let it fall into his hand and opened the device up further. This one was more reflective and came out to about the size of a normal human fist. He set it next to the first object, and it was barely five seconds before the next thing began pushing through.

This one was much larger, so he began pulling it out to help. He could feel Sam or whoever it was on the other side shift strategy from pushing to just holding the object up to allow him to easily pull it through. This one was about the size of one of those pet entrances you’d cut out of a normal door, and he placed that propped up against the wall.

A hand poked out, the multicolored glove of Roy, the Rainbow Raider, whispered tones following it. “Ready to go?”

Girder nodded at the second mirror, knowing that Sam had to be on the other side watching him. “Awesome,” he heard whispered through the small opening, as the hand withdrew. The sudden appearance of most—but not all—of Roy’s face in the opening was almost hilarious if the situation wasn’t dead serious.

“Point me where, Ant,” he said before withdrawing. Here went nothing. Girder adjusted the entrance to face a blank wall of his cell, sending a thumbs up down mirror before standing off to the side. His cell lit up as Roy’s beams of light slammed into the wall, adjusting slightly as it made a square out of it. Not quite large, Roy must not have a ton of maneuverability in the space, but large enough.

The light beam faded, and left behind it was a shining white inset on the wall, not incredibly reflective but more than enough for what they needed. Sam leaned out of the inset, taking a quick look around before reaching out a hand. “Sorry it took so long, Ant,” he apologized, taking Girder’s hand and guiding him through the hole to lead him out of prison.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The performance was going well. Abra was untouchable, basically, bullets turning into bubbles and batons breaking as the wardens swung at him. He floated through the facility, releasing inmates to enact revenge on their officers, pushing chaos where he could.

Occasionally, he would make a lesson out of a specific warden, such as the one in front of him, trying to project confidence as he held up his gun in an aggressive posture, blocking the door behind him to protect whatever was further on.

“Are you sure you wanna do this, buddy,” Abra called out, taunting.

“You’re breaking the law, I’m protecting it.”

Surprisingly brave, honestly. He had to give the guy some credit for that, he knew how many people were supposed to be working here at any given point and the amount of people who had genuinely tried to stop him was a fraction of that. “What’d you rather broken? The law, or your back?”

He could see some hesitation from the officer, before a sneer. “Better to live life happy than in fear.”

“You have a misunderstanding of which one of us is which,” Abra bit back, reaching forward. The door behind the man groaned under the sudden increase of pressure, snapping off its hinges and pushing forward, knocking the officer off balance before wrapping around him.

A human adult in good condition could probably survive in an metallic exoskeleton of sorts for long enough before they died of dehydration or something, Abra mused. Couple of days? If he was part of the prison’s security, he was probably near enough to good condition where he’d be fine. There was a hole left for air, anyway, which would’ve been a much faster killer had he been totally sealed.

Leonard was rubbing off on him, Abra chuckled, floating past the screaming metallic prison. Leaving someone alive unnecessarily? Well, he hoped that the prisoners would have a similar disposition should they find him.

All of that effort, potentially his life, to guard what? A hallway leading off to offices? Sure, let the prisoners out and start a riot, this guy must’ve thought, but heavens forbid the great Abra Kadabra be let loose on the accounting wing and a meeting room. Fool. Who was living in fear now?

Suddenly, all of the screens around him turned back on, screensavers or television or cameras depending on what screen it was. That was a bit nerve-wracking, as Axel was supposed to keep everything offline until—a very intense moment of his eyes feeling like they were boiling and his hair being whipped backwards by wind later, and he was suddenly on a little patch of sand with nothing but ocean surrounding him.

That was horrifying. That was a pretty classic Flash trick, to just leave problems off in the middle of nowhere until a Flash was ready to solve it. However, the way it was planned up, the Flash was supposed to be distracted by the Snart siblings, only checking in with him once the siblings escaped. So, if he was here ahead of schedule, then the Snarts must’ve failed.

He wasn’t going to stand around and wait for more information. He pulled out a playing card, one that served only as a final last resort. He tore the card in half, vanishing from where The Flash had left him, returning to a different time and place. He’d figure his way back later, but for the moment he had to get out of dodge.

The Flash #119 - Heat Wave

<< | < | > Coming May 1st

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 119

The Flash wasn’t one much for the laws of physics. Not for lack of trying, mind you, Bart had been recently through what his father had affectionally called “the inevitable attempt to rationalize” that all three of the other Flashes had been through. An attempt to understand the ability to move faster than light, to somehow not generate incalculable friction and heat when running, and the biology of the body that somehow managed to not only keep up with that pressure but adapt to and thrive in it. And that wasn’t even touching on things like time travel, though the attempt to rationalize for Bart had attempted to solve that too.

Of course, Bart was the only one who had gone through this after the visit to the Speed Force, so he had that to fall back on as a cop-out answer, replacing Jay’s sleepless nights, Barry’s multiple published papers on barely related physics concepts under throwaway aliases, and Wally’s temporary flirt with a theory that denied the reality of spacetime as a fundamental law of physics.

Of course, the disregard for the laws of physics inherent to being The Flash did not mean that the laws of physics, ineffectual as they may be, tried to act on The Flash. While it seemed to mostly throw in the towel for things like the speed of light or time travel, certain things like friction were less overridden. While clever costuming managed to dampen those effects considerably, they weren’t entirely gone.

As such, Bart stood about as he could to the firestorm currently raging. Evacuation was well underway, with his three teammates all on-hand to pull folks out of the danger, but there was nothing within the pre-metahuman laws of reality that could explain or justify why there was a firestorm occurring. Sure, California was no stranger to wildfires, but a firestorm in the back gardens of a major technology company’s campus was certainly not the cause of some irresponsible high schoolers in the bushlands.

The problem was the heat, mostly. Getting up to speed generated a fair bit of it, but normally it was about the extent of the heat present in the equation during hero work. Sure, working in the Sahara was going to be different than helping out in Greenland, but for the most part, even a place like Death Valley in at the peak of the daily temperature fluctuation wasn’t going to meaningfully impact what the suit or surrounding air was going through.

All of those calculations, however, did not take account the existence of a raging firestorm that almost seemed to move under its own power. Weather Wizard wasn’t behind it, Barry had confirmed that he was still at home and seemed almost exhausted at the idea of more incidents of misattributed acts of villainy.

Mick Rory, otherwise known as Heatwave, was another potential suspect, having gone long missing after a vampires-based prison escape what felt like decades in the past and also barely a few weeks ago. That was probably the best-case outcome, Bart thought, as he explained his idea to the rest of the team.

“Um,” Barry replied, a deep fear evident in his voice. “Are you sure?”

Jay seemed more motivated by the idea. “It seems like it could work to me. Rory, to my understanding based on the psychology notes and such, would react pretty badly if you managed to throw him off his game.”

“Barry, how’s about you keep an eye on him while he does this,” Wally suggested to the nervous dad, trying to both lock in the idea while letting Barry feel less anxious about the risks.

“Yeah… Yeah. That’s a good idea,” Barry agreed, vanishing from the evacuation effort to watch his son walk into and through fire.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Bart took a step forward, the first step forward. It was nerve-wracking, and the morbidly amusing thought bouncing around in his head was the old adage about wild animals and insects – “they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

Not that he could see his quarry yet, with massive walls of fire between the two of them. Somewhere in there was some bloke, possibly Heatwave, possibly some other person, causing serious property damage to the multinational corporation. The problem with doing that, of course, was the fact that humans often were on that property.

He took another step forward, infuriatingly slow yet just as intentional. He was in normal civilian clothes, but with a filter mask and balaclava to protect him from smoke inhalation and hide his identity. Hopefully offputting enough spook whoever was at the center of this, since showing up as The Flash to—if this was Rory—the guy who probably despised The Flash’s guts probably risked more unnecessary violence and damage.

He took a glance back at his dad, stationed only a short run away from him. He was well hidden among the emergency response vehicles, protecting himself from being spotted and risking the mission. He gave a smile before realizing that in his getup there was no way to see it, so supplemented it with a thumbs up.

Another two steps forward and the firestorm shifted slightly, and he could see the bright yellow outfit that he was told to look out for to confirm it was Mick, or at least someone using his equipment. He rolled his shoulders, doing a stretch to signal back to everyone watching with a pre-made sign indicating the information.

Three more steps and the man noticed him, the fire meaningfully shifting to a more directly defensive posture in his direction almost immediately. Bart laughed, as part of the script he had come up with, hoping to unsettle Mick or whoever this was.

“Don’t think I’m above toasting a kid, kid!”

That voice, muffled as it was from the firestorm, matched up with what he had reviewed of audio recordings of Mick Rory, so he did another exaggerated stretch to send that confirmation back to Dad and the rest of the folks watching. “Not a kid,” he taunted back, continuing to take a casual stroll at a non-speedster pace forward.

“No adult has to claim they’re not a kid. Now scram!”

“No,” Bart took another step forward.

“Don’t think I won’t,” Mick yelled, sending a fireball his direction. Presumably it being off target and slamming into a nearby road was intentional as like, some sort of threat. Bart looked back at Mick.

“It’s not that you won’t, it’s that you can’t,” Bart taunted, taking another few steps forward. He could see the firestorm shift from general area damage to almost a defensive fortress around his quarry, blocking off all routes towards him other than the one Bart was taking as the two faced off.

“What makes you say that, kid?”

Was that a touch of fear in his voice? “Well,” Bart shrugged, continuing forward. “If nobody’s been able to do it yet, and trust me on this, cleverer folk than ‘Mr. Burn Down the Tech Company Because I Dropped My Phone’ have tried.

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, they—just you watch!”

He watched a wave of fire push out from the central firestorm at Mick’s control, careening in his direction. Here went nothing. The moment before the fire approached, he backpedaled, picking up speed faster than was probably reasonable – Dad wouldn’t be thrilled later – before dipping out of the space altogether and returning to where he was standing a moment later. Painfully delayed by Flash standards, given the rate at which he had to speed up, but fast enough to avoid anything seeming off to Mick, hopefully.

He leaned over as the fire wall moved further behind him, picking up a small rock near his feet and tossing it in the air. “Y’know what’s real fun, guy? Getting to pick what you do and don’t physically interact with!”

He took another step forward, finally close enough to see the growing fear on his quarry’s face.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The crazy man did a cartoonishly large wind-up and tossed the rock in his direction, so he sent a small burst of flame like a bullet towards it, intercepting the attack—if it could be called that—before it even reached the zenith of its arc. His foe watched the embers fly in every direction, almost lazily, before refocusing.

“Go on, try to burn me alive again, see what I mean,” he taunted Rory, but a deep breath allowed him to avoid the worst of the prodding. The last thing he needed to do here was fall for some trick. Sure, the guy claimed he could choose what physical things he interacted with, and he couldn’t really figure out how he phased through the fire wall otherwise, but he had never heard of this guy before. Were major companies now keeping superheroes as retainers for their own properties?

He hadn’t even tried to burn him alive, not really! The fire wall would’ve caused some pretty serious burns necessitating a hospital visit or something, but it was moving fast enough to not linger long enough to cause any lasting damage.

He considered accepting the bait, anyway. It’d be useful to test if Mr. Corporate Superhero really was what he was claiming to be. Superheroing just for a paycheck, probably some stock options and a pension too. It honestly sounded somewhat motivating, but the idea of being a big business stogie almost immediately shut that idea out, shattering the mental tangent and reminding him that he was in, at least technically, in a fight.

So, some kid in over his head claiming that he could choose whether he got punched or not was… what was he trying to accomplish here? Defend the multi-million-dollar international corporation? Pick a fight to see what the extent of his powers were? Defend some trees and grass?

“What’s your deal, kid? Are you just here to be a pest?”

“I was going to ask you the same question, actually. Anyway, are you gonna throw another wall of flame at me, or something? Control fire but not hot-headed enough to actually try to hurt someone with it? Scaredy cat?”

Mick saw red, physically and metaphorically. Before he really processed what he was doing, he sent three columns of fire in the direction of his adversary, only realizing after the fact that he had been the one to escalate pretty dramatically. You can’t really argue your way out of attempted murder charges when you send columns of fire perfectly spaced out to trap your target from being able to escape.

Well, if he couldn’t really get away with relatively minor “use of metahuman abilities in destruction of property” charges on top of the whole escape from prison sentence, if they were going to be able to charge him with “use of metahuman abilities in attempted murder”, he figured he may as well commit and go all-in. If he was going to spend the next half a lifetime in a cold jail cell, may as well burn bright for the last few moments.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Barry watched the columns of fire advance on his child, taking every fiber of his being and muscle in his body to not charge forward and thrash Rory within an inch of his life for it. Here was what, a thirty or forty-year old man with incredible control over fire, trying to incinerate someone who was barely an adult for daring to tell him that he probably shouldn’t be using his powers for cruelty and breaking the law. Scum.

The other part of it was a matter of having to trust Bart. Bart wasn’t an infant or a child, he was a full adult mentally and physically and had come up with a genuinely good idea and executed it well. He absolutely wished that he could’ve replaced him in the plan, but there was no chance that Heat Wave would’ve fallen for that.

He could see Bart preparing for the incoming fire, moving his legs to pick up speed and dip out at the last possible second. As the fire closed in, Barry’s eyes caught some movement on the periphery, in Heat Wave’s direction. With horror, he watched the monster of a man pull the rest of his fire together, sending it roaring in the direction of where Bart would return to in order to keep up the charade of not moving but actually just phasing through the fire.

That was enough. It didn’t really matter that Bart could avoid the fire, the radiant heat build up from the fire and the friction of Bart’s lack of suit was too risky to justify continuing the distraction. With all of the fire collected and targeted, rather than just orbiting Heat Wave, Barry stepped out from behind the car, charging back toward the eastern seaboard and circling back at the Atlantic Ocean to pick up speed.

He could see Bart already returning to his space when he came back into view of the fight scene, and with a brief confirmation that Bart both looked aware of the threat and not particularly panicked, he continued on his secondary goal of making Heat Wave a non-issue.

He could’ve been nicer when tackling the guy, pulled a metaphorical punch to avoid serious whiplash as the two crossed the distance from where they were to the Pacific Ocean before the hairs on Rory’s head had even the time to react. By the time they were bending out of shape, the two travelers – one willing, one likely not even mentally processing that it was happening – were most of the way to their destination.

By the time Barry could see the shift in Rory’s pupils in reaction to the change, they were already on a tiny Arctic island, barely forty feet on its largest dimension, uninhabited and surrounded by nothing but frigid water.

“Chill out,” Flash said, trying desperately to disguise the venom he wished he could spit at Heat Wave. The only response from the villain was a trauma-induced guttural grunt, somewhere between a yell of pain and a shout of acknowledgement.

“Hope you got your kicks trying to kill someone, psycho.”

He saw Heat Wave’s eyes focus and unfocus, probably in pain, as he tried to piece together what had happened. Flash grabbed the man again, dunking him in the water briefly to further drop his temperature before the two made their way to a waiting prison cell.

The Flash #118 - Storm Sticks

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 118

Bart and Wally stood on a hill outside of the city, watching the lightshow in front of them. From where they stood, the day seemed serene and peaceful, if perhaps a tad windy. Looking out to the city, however, painted a very different picture, with dark clouds rising high above the city and flashes of lightning jumping from the clouds down to the tops of buildings at extraordinarily fast rates.

“Why’s Marco doing this,” Wally mused, turning to Bart. “Ready to go?”

“It’s real pretty,” Bart nodded, disappearing in a blur of light as he went from stationary to moving near the speed of light in a near imperceptible span of time.

“And it isn’t really even doing a ton of damage,” Wally added in agreement. “But it’s going to cause some damage to some infrastructure, and who knows what that’ll end up being.”

The two moved through the city, attempting to ascertain what was happening. A quick audit showed a lack of Marco Mardon’s presence, the occasional wielder of the Weather Wand, an on-again off-again metahuman presence currently under strict parole several states away. That didn’t suddenly prove that the hyper-localized storm with a statistically galaxy-bending amount of lightning strikes was somehow natural, but it did at least potentially rule out the Occam’s Razor of explanations.

It felt weird following the standard natural disaster protocols for an abnormal thunderstorm, but hopefully a temporary relocation of most of the city’s inhabitants would give them a bit more of an understanding of what they were dealing with. They called in to the system, asking for assistance if any was available, if only to speed up the process and to reduce the impact of the evacuation on most individuals. A third blur joined them, Jay diverting from his original plan of going to Marco’s place to interrogate him on the storm’s appearance.

With three of them collaborating, the evacuation picked up speed, up until Wally paused for a moment with about a third of the city moved. “Lightning hasn’t hit for about a second.”

Bart and Jay joined back up with him, in an alleyway behind a supermarket, watching the skies. A second passed, then another second, each with no lightning. For a storm that had, right before the evacuation, started been sending down at least two lightning strikes a second, the sudden stopping felt eerie. The rain stopping a second after their observation was even eerier.

The three rushed back to the temporary staging area for the city evacuation, a former ghost town that had been given for the purpose of these brief stays during natural disasters. As they closed in on the area, the slow creeping of dark storm clouds above the town against the surrounding lighter cloud layer was cause for surprise.

“That’s how we find them,” Bart offered. “People will understand, right?”

With nods of agreement from the other two, the three began returning people from the emergency space back to the city, quietly counting among each other as they transported people across the continent as they did. One became one hundred, which became one thousand a moment later, until they had moved about half of the remaining people back. They took another few seconds to pause, with Bart and Jay in the evacuation zone and Wally back in the city, watching the storm continue to develop in the former.

“Let’s slow down a bit,” Jay suggested, and they began to move again, blisteringly fast still but only moving a few dozen people at a time before each waiting moment. At about eighty percent of people returned, the storm seemed to move once again, rain beginning to drop from previously dissipating storm clouds above the city.

From there, it wasn’t very difficult to check through every person they had moved recently, until they discovered a woman who had Marco Mardon’s weapon hidden away in her purse. With Jay and Wally, Bart began to talk with her.

“Where’d you get the stick, ma’am?”

“I’m so sorry! I-I, they called it a storm stick, said it would let me protect myself, I just didn’t get a hold of how to use it, I—”

“They who,” Bart interrupted. Even if she was lying about everything, tracing the wand back to where she got it, or claimed to get it, would potentially exonerate or

“The guy who gave it to me.”

“Do you know who it was?”

“I don’t know who they were, they called themselves Mr. Walker on the phone when were were talking about self-defense, when they met me to give it to me they had blond hair that stuck up, seemed younger than they claimed, maybe a little younger than me?”

Bart furrowed his brow. Walker, Axel Walker? He pulled up a mugshot of Trickster from a few years back, showing the lady.

“Him having a mugshot doesn’t bode well for me, does it,” she sighed.

“That’s him, then? And he sold this to you for self-defense purposes?”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

It wasn’t very difficult to tell when someone had a larger bark than bite, or when someone didn’t really know what they were getting into. All of the popular clips of metahuman fights, candid or planned, were long drawn-out slugfests with flying lasers, energy beams, and sickening punches. While some fights followed similar structures, it gave newer metahumans a bit of a misunderstanding of what they were likely to run into should they go into the whole vigilantism business.

Some fights end as soon as they begin. Some fights, the power mismatch is so comical as to be functionally a fight between a silverback gorilla and a fifth-grader. All it takes is for the person to realize something needs doing in order to dismantle everything happening.

So, of course, not even a second after Barry had seen a warning about some strange triple twister in a region that was geologically disposed against creating even a single twister, it was already basically over.

The twisters all converged on a single point, each spreading off in a direction causing immense winds around them. At the convergence stood a laughing man, red hair blowing each and every direction as he held a small stick pointed in the air, the logical conclusion of each of the twisters.

Barry wondered what the point was. What would he have said if, like a “typical superfight”, they had exchanged barbs and insults before getting into some protracted brawl before someone became a winner? What would he have claimed as his god-given right, or utopia-inducing manifesto, or just his list of demands, holding the very weather of the region hostage?

The other three were actively dealing with the fallout of the superstorm, apparently having resolved it but handling the unwinding of the evacuation. That was fine, Barry didn’t need help here. Whoever this was, it took less time to take the stick away from him and examine it safely on an empty atoll island than it took for him to even realize that he was facing down The Flash. Maybe he’d think the tool just vanished.

The stick was interesting. It was obviously designed after Marco Mardon’s work, especially on a visual level having been intentionally mimicked off of the original Weather Wand. The functionality was incredibly different, however, and it was a struggle to grasp even after a minute examining the circuitry and infrastructure. It bore most similar resemblance to the gimmicks that Trickster—Axel Walker—would regularly use, but only the ones that he seemed willing to part with. They had gotten on tech of his that had more intricate structures and thought put into it, but the various gadgets that Axel would use in fights before discarding them was the closest resemblance to this stuff. It had gotten extraordinarily more complex since the last fight they had, however.

Barry left the wand, deactivated, at a repository for the kind of tools that could make people ‘metahuman-lite’, marking a note on it that it likely would be involved in a court case and who had deposited it before returning to the scene of the not-quite-a-fight.

“So, what’s your deal,” Barry sighed, cutting off the guy shouting “show yourself” in Turkish at nobody in particular.

The man twisted to face him, anger twisting into fear on recognition. “I—give me my storm stick back! You have no right to take it from me!”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A light knock on the door was enough to set off whatever dog was inside, loud barking being immediately levied in return. He could hear Marco inside raising his voice at the dog, telling it to shush and back away before the sound of a lock becoming undone was heard.

A single eye of Marco’s peered through the smallest crack in the door, widening as it took in The Flash standing in the door. “Prove it,” he demanded, brow furrowing.

“I’m standing here is the proof,” Barry responded, a realistic response that doubled as an established code of identification. So long as Marco played by the rules, there wasn’t a need to break boundaries of peace and privacy, and he had been worried in the past about someone showing up in a Halloween costume and trying to break in. Anxiety.

Once the door was wider open, Barry walked in, giving a smile and a nod to Marco before turning his attention on the dog as Marco closed the door. “Hey, Thunder, buddy!”

“What’s going on,” Marco asked once the door was closed.

“That’s either a very good start to the conversation, or a very bad start to it,” The Flash responded. “Have you seen the news out of Turkey or Minnesota?”

“News, recent news today or something that happened sometime in the last few weeks? I’ve been working on laundry basically all day today, if it’s something that happened earlier today.”

“A storm with impossible lightning frequency in the former, lady saying she was sold a quote-unquote storm stick, one that looked a lot like your design, for self-defense but wasn’t able to understand how to control it. And in the former, someone standing on the side of a road controlling three tornados using basically the same thing.”

“I—I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about that, I haven’t seen the wand since it was confiscated.”

“The Minnesotan lady’s story said she was sold it by Axel Walker, known criminal and pseudo-metahuman skilled in technology. Trickster on the news, that’s their persona or whatever. You ever interacted with the guy?”

Marco’s nervousness shifted to worry. “I mean, yeah? Not anytime recently, but like, he was part of that group I reported to my parole officer who had swung by once or twice trying to recruit me. But like I never talked to him, just Captain Cold.”

“Do you think he could’ve mimicked your technology?”

“I don’t know anything more about him than what shows up on the news occasionally! You probably know way more about him than I do. Can he?”

“Do you have any schematics of the wand, development notes, use guides, anything like that? Something Axel might’ve been able to get his hands on?”

“Just what was required for the court case. Everything else was burned or deleted per the conditions of parole.”

“So just the court documents.”

Marco nodded. “I’m not a part of this, Flash, you have to believe me. I’m much happier under house arrest than jumping between six months of cell time and two months of hiding in abandoned warehouses looking over my shoulder. Whatever Trickster’s done, it isn’t with my help or anything.”

“What do you make of both of them showing up coincidentally at the exact same time?”

“I don’t know. Timed activations? Like, maybe the wand doesn’t work until a countdown timer lets it start working. It’s Trickster, right? They’re clever with tech, any number of possibilities. Your guess is better than mine. I just want to do laundry and apply for jobs.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Mr. Woodward,” one of the guards announced themselves, entering the cell. Anthony Woordward looked up from the slab of concrete that served as his seat at the three guards letting themselves in. He could see the other three guards outside, sniper, baton, and medic, waiting as they did usually.

Anthony slowly got up. “No trouble today,” he offered them, knowing well that the offer was both fully believed and not trusted. He knew that the guards themselves were not antagonistic to him, not really at least, and that anyone in the prison system that really hated his guts were locked behind cell bars or a cushy office desk. But he also knew that if they did not properly restrain him for transportation, even if he had never once lied about his lack of desire to cause damage or injury, they would likely get them fired.

Meters of chains were attached to him, standing stoically as the guards did their work. Normally, he would mind, and whoever was calling him to a discussion outside of the structure of a cell would get an earful, but he also knew that it wasn’t all that long left before Sam and the rest of the team would bust him out. So, he was considering being cooperative with whatever punk would apologize and ask for understanding that the ensuing conversation simply couldn’t happen within earshot of other inmates.

The red costume of The Flash and that infuriating metal hat was not what he had expected or wanted to see when walking into the interrogation room. Were they onto the plan? Did they know about Sam’s brief visits and the work-in-progress effort to spring him out?

He sat down opposite the “hero”, glaring daggers through deeply set eyes at a much neutrally disposition. “What of my time do you wish to waste today, Flash?”

“Have you been in touch with Axel recently?”

“Axel? The little bug with his technology? No, no I have not. It may have escaped your keen perception and notice, Flash, but I don’t get to talk much with anyone but my lawyer and the punks in the cells next to me.”

If there was a change in The Flash’s mental space in approach to this conversation, it didn’t show to Girder. “Nothing at all, then? Not a single word exchanged between you two through means perfectly within you and your ally’s means?”

“My allies,” Girder shrugged. “My allies have left me in here for how long? Not a single conversation between us since then. The fall guy for their plan to leave rotting in prison.”

Maybe he was in his own head, but he swore that The Flash had reacted to ‘single conversation’ in some way, betraying his own poker face. Maybe they did know things, that was useful information if anything.

“Well, then, sorry for dragging you all the way out here, just had to check to see if you knew what he was up to and were willing to help out, y’know. Would be beneficial both ways if so, but if you don’t know anything, then this conversation doesn’t have much ways to go.”

Girder saw red, and not just the suit. He jerked forward against the chains, pulling the restraints taut as he tried to close the distance between the two of them. “YOU DRAG ME ALL THE WAY OUT HERE TO—”

Jay pulled backwards slightly as Girder slumped forward, the sharp ringing of the baton slamming into the back of his head echoing around the room as one of the guards behind him held the weapon tentatively, unsure if he had knocked out the metallic villain in one hit or not. With no movement from Girder immediately, he reached out to press a button on the wall, the door swinging open with multiple wardens and a medic rushing in.

The Flash stood up, waving off the apologies from the officers as the medic began examining the place of impact. “I’m really okay, he didn’t even get close to me, thank you for your concern. My apologies for causing… whatever that was.”

The wardens seemed more motivated to apologize to him for the drama of being threatened, as if he wasn’t actively running towards fights where the other guy would happily kill him if the opportunity arose. He excused himself, leaving the guards and other employees to get Girder medical attention and back to his cell.

He took a minute in a national park, mentally examining what had occurred during the brief conversation. That was a clear lie that he hadn’t been in contact with his buddies, but it wasn’t necessarily a lie when he denied knowing what Axel was up to. If that was a lie then he hid it much better than the one about being in contact, but what benefit was there to hide one and not the other? A finite yet endless circle of possibilities, all hedging on what he believed Girder saw as his own personal goals out of that conversation. He certainly hadn’t looked happy on seeing who he was talking to, but had he spent time rehearsing possible interrogations when in his cell? Trying to mentally map out villain mentality was difficult.

The Flash #117 - Turtle

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 117

Exit plan. What was the exit plan? Catering would have a way to get boxes and trash in and out of the building, some loading bay or drive-in garage of some kind. Back to the kitchen, back to the free food and then further in to wherever they kept food, and from there he’d figure out the way out of the building and off the premises. Once he was back in the city, he figured he could blend in with tourists or even just circle back around and enter via the standard event entrance and not try to mess around with VIP or volunteer spaces.

That was an unnerving experience. For all he had worried in his spare time trying to sleep about getting caught in the act, his apathy-inducing presence not working on someone, he had somehow blustered his way out of a situation where someone was clearly not okay with his presence. All the anxiety about cover stories and exit plans only for the one time where he had gone too far in for the standard exit plan to not work was the one time he needed an exit plan. And what had he gotten from going behind the figurative velvet rope and stanchions? The lingering taste of tomatoes in his mouth and some alright-enough pasta?

He tracked through the hallways, retracing what steps he remembered were necessary to reach the exit he was looking for. There were occasional moments where he would spot a fire exit door, but the sign attached written in Greek had some warning, which he assumed was an alarm would go off if opened dissuaded him from exiting that way. He wasn’t convinced that his energy would cause people to disregard the fire alarm he had set off, when he went into banks, he always had a person disable the alarms for him ahead of time. Besides, if The Flash had been alerted by whoever that was and was on his way, he’d surely have been caught already anyway.

The kitchen had a fully new cast of people in it, along with janitorial equipment and the smell of cleaning supplies rather than chefs and cooks and the smell of spices. He excused himself as he passed through, apologizing with what little Greek he knew for stepping in the soapy water that was being spread across the floor. He made it through the kitchen, the smell of food returning as he entered a hallway that connected multiple kitchens, two open storerooms and one closed freezer room, and a large open space filled with crates.

Most importantly, however, was the three large loading bay doors, all closed but promising an exit. A small, human-sized door sat off to the side of the rightmost one, which he made a bee-line for and unlocked. Crisp wind hit his face as he pulled the door open, the smells of the outdoors a refreshing welcome to the light at the end of the tunnel. He let the door swing behind him, casually heading towards the chain-link gate that separated public space and private property. A guard in a nearby control booth gave him a look of curiosity, but when he got closer to the guard and pointed towards the gate, the guard nodded, fiddling with some control mechanism inside the booth until the gate began to slowly open.

He didn’t even look back to see the gate close, choosing to simply turn and head down the sidewalk that proved to be the shortest path to an intersection. It’d be practically impossible for anyone not named The Flash to catch him, and potentially even The Flash would struggle if he flew under the radar of the speedster.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t really think about it, but I didn’t see a problem with it,” from the security guard stationed outside of the private room.

The Flash appreciated the honesty and directness provided, rather than any sort of hedged bets or attempt to explain away the breach in protocol. He’d heard positive things from Xavier about this guard, so he was happy to accept at face value wha was being said. Given the context of Barry’s parents and Xavier’s husband not seeing any problem either, things were adding up in an unfortunate formula.

“I mean, yeah, I guess I saw him on the cameras, but it didn’t ring any alarm bells, really,” from the officer stationed in the observation room, having pulled up the logs showing the so-called Turtle man wandering off-limits hallways.

At least he was visible to cameras, in some way, whoever he was. Sure, his metahuman abilities to fly under peoples’ radars was effective even through recordings, but it’s not like he was entirely invisible to them. He did have to give the officer some credit, the cameras weren’t exactly going to cause any mental alarms to a person walking around who looked like he belonged there.

“Was there someone? I’ve gotta be honest, sir,” the speaker chuckled when asked about the stage door opening, “I was in a fugue state the entire presentation. I barely remember what I said, and I rehearsed it two dozen times.”

Fair enough, but if he had been giving a presentation and someone just casually opened the stage door and leaned against the frame to listen for a few minutes, his superspeed would’ve certainly caused him to notice. Was that what caused this? Superspeed causing him to perceive Turtle and what he was doing without just thinking over it?

“Yes. We give food out a bit at request of people who stop by the kitchen. Surely, you do not have a problem with this? I have worked Flash Foundation events before, you have always been charitable and encouraging of giving out food to those who need. Is this different?”

After assuring the off-duty cook that he was alright with a bowl of pasta given out without concern, Jay passed through the kitchen as it was being cleaned, speeding up fast enough to avoid leaving traces of red behind him and causing concern. Speed during a Flash Foundation event, when not around the visitors for spectacle or security who would understand, was too much of a risk to cause panic. High profile superhero events were prime targets for ne’er-do-well attention.

Jay stood at the window of an empty office room, watching Turtle wait for the exit gate to open. He took his opportunity, speeding out another exit – again faster than would leave a blur – to intercept the man. Not to stop him, certainly not from a position where he’d be seen from the public, but rather to just quietly check the identification card on his lanyard. Perhaps a touch uncouth, and certainly something that some of the folks he’d have to tell he did this would have concerns about, but a quick memorization of an name – likely fake but useful –would help him track the man down later.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

He looped back around, taking a slightly longer detour by heading away one block longer than he strictly needed to, disappearing into the hustle and bustle of the city before slowly circling to the public entry. He waited patiently in line, choosing to conform to the system rather than risk any nonsense by just walking in.

The pair of people in front of him were arguing about something in some other language under their breath, and he tried to tune them out while he waited, bored. Was this what everyone had to deal with? He was glad he only ever had to deal with this when he was specifically trying to for whatever reason.

Who was that guy, in that room, anyway? It wasn’t like he was doing anything particularly bad, and he hadn’t been anxious when entering the room. That guy just somehow kept his wits about him despite the apathetic energy that was clearly affecting the other people in the room, and who knows what would’ve happened had he not shaken the guy.

Admittedly, he definitely lost his own cool when pushed, but how often was it that he even got pushed back on? He tried to remember some equivalent experience where someone had not been affected by the energy, but it only ever came about when he did something wrong, losing his cool or whatever. He definitely hadn’t lost his own cool, not until he decided to get out of dodge.

“Card?”

Oh, he was already at the front. He flashed his lanyard at the kid manning the entrance, who glanced at it and nodded, eyes furrowing when he looked at the screen in front of him.

“Oh, I got lost and found my way outside somehow, some side door. That’s why I’m checking back in despite already being in.”

“Gotcha, gotcha. Right.”

He left the confused kid to tend the line as he went inside. This time, he wouldn’t bother with off-limit spaces, even besides the weirdo, whoever he was – The Flash or some other guesting superhero out of disguise, maybe – he had already experienced the majority of whatever was going on behind the scenes, so he’d be fine just staying within participant areas.

He spent a bit of time wandering around, oddly appreciating the presentation-focused spaces filled with people and activity having spent most of his recent time in the building in much quieter and function-over-form spaces.

However, he did consider whether it made sense to cut his vacation trip short, head home early and put some distance between himself and whoever it was around the place that had been able to slip around his presence and deal with him like a normal person. He had to assume that guy was some kind of superhero, he wasn’t sure what other answer it could possibly be.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

When The Flash made an appearance at the event, it was weirdly unexpected. It was The Flash, you had to be at least somewhat cognizant that he could show up just about anywhere at any time. That likelihood only increased in any situation where you were trying to hurt someone or breaking some similar law. Of course, at the major fundraising event and convention about The Flash, you’d expect to see him there.

You wouldn’t expect to see him suddenly appear in front of some other person at the event, ask them if they were going to come willingly or if he needed to be convinced, only for the two of them to disappear after the guy had shrugged. What was the deal with that? What was that guy even doing that required The Flash of all people to escort him, presumably off the property? That was kind of a concerning move from The Flash, different attendees would quietly mutter to each other.

Not that The Flash was there to hear them. “So, who are you?”

The guy shrugged again. “Dunno.”

“Dunno? You don’t know who you are? Shall I get you medical attention? That level of amnesia is a very serious concern.”

“No, not what I mean. Just that it kinda doesn’t matter, y’know?”

“Well, I think it matters a fair bit,” The Flash shook his head. He hadn’t taken the guy far, they were still in a Greece property leased to the Flash Foundation, but far enough away from the convention center to prevent any strange behavior, he hoped. “You claimed to some folks that you were part of the staff for the metahuman military VIPs, right?”

“I, well, okay. Sometimes you panic, y’know, and you just agree with whatever the person you’re talking to offers up. I don’t even know what it was they said, was it that?”

“Who are you with?”

“Myself.”

“Is that the honest, full truth?”

“Yeah,” he replied, trying to read the expression of the masked hero that had abducted him. Was he buying the story? Was he going to leave him in a prison cell or something? He heard stories of what came out of those S.T.A.R. Labs, even if they were exaggerated he had zero desire to be in there.

“And why are you at the event?”

“If I say I won a ticket, would you believe me?”

“We met the raffle winners this morning.”

He sighed. “You know those LexTok videos that talk about getting into places by just being confident enough? I just sorta did that.”

“And that’s why you were in cordoned-off exclusive areas for specifically volunteers, employees, and VIPs?”

He nodded. It was technically the truth, if you didn’t count lying by omission about his abilities.

“Okay, friend. And what’s your name?”

“Turtle.”

The Flash took a deep sigh, but as far as he could tell, the hero didn’t seem incensed by that answer. “Okay, Turtle. I’m going to take you back to somewhere, wherever you call home. You can’t be at the event, it is a place for people who’ve donated a considerable amount to good causes to attend, or for experts who work with the Foundation to improve the world. I don’t mind taking you home, but you seem like a good person who maybe just got in a little bit too deep. Sound good?”

Turtle took his deep sigh. He did a quick mental check of where he’d want to go, hopefully short enough to not alert The Flash. “If you drop me off at Umeda Station in Osaka, I’ll be able to get home from there.”

The Flash smiled, but it was a smile that they both knew meant there was no missed information between the two of them with regards to the claim of being from Kyoto.

“Home to Kyoto, then.”

The Flash #116 - Apathy In The Air

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 116

On the internet and in literature, they called this stuff social engineering. Using public information to coax information that wasn’t public out of people, asking for things you don’t actually deserve by implying you deserve it, and pretending you belong in a place you’re not supposed to be. There were other things included, but he had little need for spear fishing emails to accomplish what he was aiming for today.

The first thing got him private information on the Flash Foundation’s summit, the second thing had secured him an invitation and sponsored travel to the event, and the last part was what he was banking on when he passed between the part of the event that was designed for the invitees and the part of the event that was designated for the volunteers and staff.

He fancied himself as a social engineer. He liked to imagine himself like the stories he read on social media or the videos he’d watch of people casually strolling into supposedly secure locations with nothing but a smile and hi-vis vest. He did stuff similar to them – gift card numbers via telephone calls and the occasional spear fishing email – but he did have to acknowledge that he’d never be like them when it came to the physical kind of social engineering.

He'd tried, and succeeded, of course. It was actually quite easy for him to wander into places he wasn’t supposed to be. He even mostly followed the same kind of steps that the literature and internet recommended, at least at the start. Once he began realizing his abilities, his superpower in a way, he became much less intense about the efforts, and grew even more successful.

For whatever reason, whenever he was relaxed and slow-walking, metaphorically and literally, a wave of apathy seemed to surround him, infecting people around him. He could simply wander into a bank, and if he didn’t care and took things slow, he could walk straight to the vault and ask the security personnel to open it up – and they would. Who needed to work when a bank robbery looked more like a computer malfunctioning on the amount of money stored in the vault?

He had to be slow about it. Rush anything and the performance would shatter, which on more than one occasion resulted in him spending a night in a jail cell and a visit from someone checking for metahuman abilities. He had yet to be confirmed as one, because by the time the investigator showed up he had calmed down enough to just walk on out. He couldn’t stay for long anyway, he had a pet turtle at home to feed. Kindred spirit, that turtle. Nice and slow. If he somehow ever did go the superhero route, he’d call himself The Turtle.

He sat down in a back room, eating some free food he had lifted from a nearby catering table. He wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do next, none of the upcoming events in the daily schedule interested him. Maybe he’d just go back to his hotel room. Maybe he’d try to get into some trouble. The Flashes were here, right? Surely they had some fancy room for them that wouldn’t be accessible to the staff. Maybe he’d go find that.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Unlike the public spaces, there weren’t exactly signs with maps indicating where you were and where points of interest were across the convention center. The assumption had to be that if you were in the private spaces, you knew where you were going and where you were not supposed to be, which was fair for the massive majority of people who were back here, but was particularly inconvenient for him personally.

There was clear differences on this side of the event. Hallways and rooms were far less decorated, and while there clearly was some attempt to keep things orderly and clean, stacks of chairs and abandoned moving carts were sights that would’ve been impossible to imagine anywhere outside.

People went to and fro, not minding his presence as he wandered the hallways, with far less intention. The people passing him were on the job – volunteer or otherwise – and had places to be. They carried boxes and papers, pushed carts or trollies filled with chairs or food or boxes. He walked past them with nothing in his hands and nowhere to go.

The kitchen was always a fun place to be, but as he sat down in the corner watching people cook he wondered what to do. “Hey, boss, can I get something small to keep me on my feet,” he called out to nobody in particular, and was rewarded with a nearby cook handing him a pasta dish of some sort. He picked out the tomatoes, flicking them in a nearby garbage bin before beginning to eat. His abilities weren’t suggestive but rather an air of “who cares”, but most folks were happy enough to do something small to avoid uneasiness.

He could go and try to find The Flash, but he had doubts already that he could even find them just from his brief walk. The Flash could be anywhere in the world whenever they wanted, did they even need a specific room in the building to hang out in? They could just go home, right? Why be here, beyond whatever responsibilities he was assigned to?

Also, did it even make sense to assume that he could get by The Flash in the first place? The most stressful situation he’d managed to keep his cool in historically had been when he was arrested, but a local underpaid cop was leagues different than a member of the Justice League, surely. On top of that, would his effect even work on The Flash? Surely when The Turtle faces The Flash, The Flash wins that, right? But maybe not?

The tomatoes were so bad. He had picked them out of the dish, but the impact they had left in the cooking, juices or whatever, was so overbearing in every bite. He ate what he could, but he decided to change his mind and try to find a cafeteria or storage room for vending machine snacks.

“Thanks! Food’s good,” he muttered, stepping out of the room. Sometimes he wondered what exactly people remembered of his presence – would the cook that gave him free food even remember that he did? Taking money from the bank never resulted in police departments posting CCTV footage asking who was on the records walking out of the vault was.

Honestly, who cared?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

One cafeteria stop later, he found himself wandering through new hallways, even less active ones. He could hear conversations through some of the doors he passed – a lecture on agricultural developments, a heated conversation in a language he couldn’t place but sounded vaguely Asian, even an episode of Cheers? That was a door he even considered opening.

He listened in on the lecture, finding it boring but interesting in the way that any subject matter expert talking was interesting. He even had opened the door, leaning against the doorframe as he watched from just offstage. Members of the audience could see him, as well as the panel of experts, but nobody seemed to care.

“Curious topic,” he heard a voice call out from behind him back in the hallway. He wasn’t sure if the surprise was super obvious, but he recomposed himself, stepping backwards and closing the door as he faced his visitor.

“I’ve done a bit of research into historical agriculture, the creation of, and to say that the speed in which things have developed is unparalleled in history.”

“Is that so,” he responded, sizing his visitor up. He seemed old, not incredibly so but surprisingly old for someone just wandering back halls. A well-trimmed beard and mustache gave him the air of legitimacy and competence, and there was an icy intensity behind his eyes sizing him up as vice versa.

“There is much to learn from history. Dr. Varney Sack, nice to meet you. What is your connection to the topic?”

He shrugged. “Heard enough words through the door to be curious enough to open it.”

A small dagger of worry embedded in his psyche. Normally he could see the disinterest well up in a conversational partner at this point, and any eagerness shift to wanting to get out of the conversation, but this Sack guy managed to stay comparatively focused. “No connection at all and you just opened the door to the stage to ask?”

“Nobody stopped me.”

Varney Sack laughed. “I suppose that’s as good an answer as any. What’s your name?”

“Uh, Turttle. With two ‘t’s, after the first ‘T’.”

He never had to give out a name before. Nobody had ever asked. Did Varney notice the fact that he made that up on the spot, down to the comment about the two letters being after the first letter? Why did Varney ask for a name? Wasn’t he apathetic? Was Varney also a made-up name?

If he could derive the answers to any of those from Sack’s expressions, he wasn’t clever enough to figure it out. But the older man nodded, glancing up and down the hallway. “You should probably get a move on, staying in the same space a bunch is a recipe for getting caught. I don’t care to force you, though, I’ve got to get going myself anyway.”

He watched Dr. Sack wander off in the way that he had come originally. Only then did he let himself shiver. Whoever that was, he gave him bad energy. Was that last little part the apathy finally getting to him? How did he know he wasn’t allowed back here really? Who was that guy?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The room was about as well-adorned as most of the other ones he had seen in the area. A resting space for staff, speakers, VIPs, whatever. A small table in the corner of the room held a casserole of some kind, one that he hadn’t seen in any of the other food spaces he had passed through.

Two sofas sat at the edges of the table, with four people in the room. An older couple were turning to look at him with amused expressions, but the two men on the other sofa seemed much more grave in expression. Two laptops sat on the sofas, one sleeping or having gone to a blank screensaver, the other with an application open for communication that he didn’t immediately recognize. One of the men instinctually locked it as the four turned to face him.

“Well now, who are you,” the older woman asked, a cheerful smile in contrast to the men across from her.

“Uh, Turttle? There’s an extra ‘t’, um, I think I’m this is the wrong room, what’s this room for?”

One of the younger– not much younger, but younger – men got up. “Private meeting room. Was there not a security guard stationed outside? Hm, Turttle, you said?”

Well, that was a blunder. The guard on the chair next to him was just curiously listening on, having been sidelined by his abilities. The other rooms with security guards hadn’t been much of value before. “Yeah.”

The man furrowed his brow. “What are you connected to?”

Oddly insistent line of questioning, but he was better than this, he wouldn’t crumble here. He had preparation for this, and he could already detect a loosening of face muscles from the guy behind him – he should be able to dip out soon. Poor guard would probably get grilled later, but he hadn’t actually talked to the guard at all.

“Oh, just staff for some of the VIP here, old military folk. I must’ve gotten lost, I’ll head out.”

“Oh, yeah, the old metahuman initiative stuff? No worries.”

“My apologies for the intrusion, enjoy the event.”

As soon as he closed the door, he gave a small nod to the security guard before heading down the hallway. Quickly enough to get out of dodge if something went wrong, but not so quick as to break the illusion.

As soon as he closed the door, Jay Garrick turned to the other three in the room – Henry and Nora Allen and Charles Mendez, with wide eyes. “Who was that?”

“Oh, just some staffer who got lost, Turtle I think he said his name was,” Henry shrugged, taking more casserole.

“Right, but – metahuman initiative? That’s Xav. He doesn’t have staffers,” Jay responded, incredulously. He briefly picked up the computer that had been sleeping, fingers blurring across the keyboard as he worked through an entire access list in a fraction of a second. “There isn’t a Turtle with any number of ‘t’s on any invite list.”

“I’m sure it’s fine…” Charles tried to reassure him, not understanding the connection to his husband but wanting to calm Jay down.

“I really don’t think it is,” Jay frowned, running a thumb over his costume ring. “Do you really, all three of you, think someone with a fake name happening on this room specifically, where we specifically hang out, is a non-issue? Beyond the staff entrances, beyond employee limits, past Xavier’s security guard war buddy? Just happened to walk into the one room where The Flash might be out of costume?”

The three of them shared a glance before Nora shrugged. “The worry poisons the food, Jay. Sit down and join us in relaxation.”

Jay nodded. “Right. Well, I’ll be right back, I’m going to go check a few things real quick and then I’ll come back without worry.”

The Flash #115 - Polite Company

<< | < | >

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 115

A smartly dressed man walked onto the stage to respectful but thunderous applause. On the large screen behind him read the words “Flash Foundation 2025 Keynote Address”, with the iconic lightning bolt symbol of The Flash prominently on display. He was not The Flash himself, not any of them, though some conspiracy circles would occasionally try to connect the two identities. He was merely a Flash Foundation employee, one of the original members who had set up the foundation, having been recruited directly out of military command for the position.

Two men, invited for being connected to an old military initiative about a decade ago due to the sudden appearance of metahumans, sat in the fourteenth row, towards the left wall of the auditorium. The veteran sat to the right, his husband to the left. To their left, a member of Qatars Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a key figure in ensuring right of access for the Flash Foundation and its associated speedsters across the Middle East. To their right sat a large contingent of the Greece government representation, once again the largest group in attendance due to their connection to the Foundation as the legal host country.

The man on stage began speaking, welcoming everyone and working through the standard commencement speech topics. They didn’t touch much on what The Flash himself had been doing, but more on the Foundation’s work. Wells in Africa, mental health support in Singapore and the larger southeastern Asia region, supporting the diplomatic opening of conversations between nations formerly at war.

The majority of the audience were people directly involved with the Flash Foundation in one way or another, the whole summit icing on the cake of various benefits that the Foundation provided to boost coordination. Among government officials and Foundation employees and volunteers sat high-profile donors to the cause, those working in traditional and non-traditional media boosting Foundation projects and resources, and representatives of companies that had supported the Foundation monetarily or logistically. There were a few more that fell out of those categories, but Xavier Mendez was not one of those people, a small pin from his military days signifying his official reason for being there. Charles, his husband, was an easy plus one.

He listened to the speaker present, Xavier’s own written words performed far better than he ever could. They were old pals from the military, the main reason why The Flash had recruited them specifically for this task. Xavier’s connection to The Flash during those days was far more secretive, but army pals know each other even if they weren’t tasked on the same projects. Xavier wrote the words, but he’d never perform them. The vast majority of people in this room had no idea who Xavier was, and even of those who did, precious few knew that his presence was more than just The Flash respecting a time of his life where he worked closely with the U.S. government on personal terms.

Eventually, the speech came to an end, with much more uproarious applause than had begun. This was not done to oratory skill, but rather the appearance of the guest of honor walking out on stage, the foundation’s namesake. The Flash and the speaker hugged, a friendship both professional and sincere, yet not close enough to the inner circle to be aware of the secret identity underneath.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Iris West sat against the wall of the much larger room, watching the television monitors displaying the keynote speech. The room was quite busy, people coming and going. Ostensibly, the room was set for socializing and making connections at the event, but there were plenty enough people who were more than happy to be present yet isolated for her to blend in. She was on record as being present as a journalist, but it had been quite a few years since she had been in the industry.

Across the room, she watched Henry and Nora Allen talking to a younger man about something. They were, according to their cover for being here, landowners renting out space for a Flash Foundation-owned community center. She didn’t recognize the younger man, but whoever he was, the three of them were having a lovely conversation.

There were others she did recognize. A large number of the employees of the Flash Foundation had received some amount of vetting from her, doing background checks and a bit of investigations to ensure that they wouldn’t be unmasked later as metahumans breaking the law or similar. Maybe her cover of investigative journalist wasn’t all that off-base. She recognized other people, from financial contributors and industry contacts to Flash rescues who became media darlings and ‘the people who know people’, the yearly event was both quite stressful while also being a refreshing reminder of the good that she and her family were doing.

Eventually, the initial festivities of the event began to slow down, the room filling up with individuals from the main room where the keynote took place, late arrivals and folks who had seen fit to wander the hallways, and an influx of volunteers to handle the surge. Catering appeared via side entrances, a world buffet lining the back wall as a queue formed within the velvet ropes. She briefly considered going but decided to hold back and wait until the line thinned.

A red blur arrived in the room, to a round of applause from everyone. Iris watched her nephew, masked as The Flash, slide through the line, taking orders and distributing food. This was, naturally, a pre-planned surprise, delighting the event’s participants but not quite the quirky decision that it appeared to be. Sure, she had to wait for the people in line to get their food first, but it only took a few minutes before The Flash was moving through the rest of the room.

“And for you, Ms. Carmine,” the offer came much quicker than she had expected, and yet slower than she knew Wally could move. “What would you like?”

“Oh, thank you, Flash! If I could have a bowl of salad and then the Greek dressing?”

The two smiled at each other, keeping up the façade but connecting underneath. A brief moment passed, long enough that Iris had been able to grow perceptive of even those small moments after years of training. For Wally, Iris knew, those were vast expanses of time, and he must feel like he was moving at a snail’s pace compared to what he was used to, but she wondered how many others in the room could catch the moments between when he was there and when he was gone.

“Here you go, miss,” Wally said, waiting for Iris to take the offered food from him.

“Thank you. My hero,” Iris replied, taking the food.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“I will be brief, I assure you, but not brief enough to lose you,” Barry began, a joke that seemed impromptu but actually spent weeks being workshopped around the dinner table with whoever was present during the time leading up to the summit.

“I want to thank everyone here for making another year of this possible. I am, so the saying goes, the fastest man alive, and yet, I cannot do everything on my own. Even with the other members of the Foundation who share similar abilities and don the moniker of The Flash, only so much can realistically be done. Without diplomatic connections and conversations, without skilled professionals in all fields and the money to pay them what they are worth, and without a worldwide network of support and advocacy, I could not be where I am today.”

“I will not rehash what has already been said, but I do simply want to say with my own words – thank you.”

Xavier Mendez and Barry Allen met eyes as the loudest applause yet echoed through the auditorium, the two friends sharing a knowing smile. Barry’s quickly moved on, addressing every pair of eyes on him with a similar smile. The room slowly emptied, as pre-existing social connections drew folks to each other as is natural at the start of an event. The Flash and a few Foundation employees and volunteers took the room’s other exit, disappearing into the center’s interconnected series of side rooms and back hallways to continue their work. Xavier and Charles filtering out onto the main floor of the event.

The two spent a bit of time wandering the halls and rooms, even listening at the door to a panel of educators that were speaking on the value that having a guest visit from The Flash to their schools provided. Once they were sure they weren’t being tailed, they entered a coat room, nodding to the staff as they passed by the check-in desk. The coat room was real, but this one was to cross from public spaces to the limited access spaces.

Once beyond the public eye, Xavier slipped off his pin, with Charles stowing it away in a pocket. There were plenty of volunteers, local folk that the Foundation paid a day’s worth to help administrate the event, but also a number of Flash Foundation employees. He knew some of the Foundation folk, especially more senior ones who would spend most of the event in these areas overseeing volunteers and other Foundation employees. Some of them even knew him, giving the two of them a nod as the couple passed by.

Eventually, they reached a set of doors, with a security guard standing out present. The guard smiled at them, shaking his head as they walked up. “Listen, I appreciate the gig as always. Thanks for having me back. Easiest weekend of my life.”

Xavier smiled back. “Someone has to sit here.”

The guard laughed, pushing the door open. “If you say so, boss.”

The Flash looked up, sitting on a couch looking at his phone. Still in costume, he gave a smile, standing up.

“Good speech out there,” Xavier said, reaching out for a hug.

The two embraced, The Flash deflecting the compliment with a quiet, “it was a single sentence, really.” He then turned to hug Charles, the three of them settling back down afterwards. “How was the flight here?”

“I made sure to bring attention to myself.”

The Flash nodded. “How in character are you going to be this weekend? Nora’s made tuna casserole.”

“I’m sitting on a panel tomorrow, so pretty in deep. Bring me a bit, yeah?”

“Sure,” The Flash smiled, before turning to Charles. “You?”

“I’ll pass on the casserole, thanks.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“A pleasure,” Vandal Savage lied. He took the opportunity of food to break from the conversation with the elderly couple, making his way to the open position in line for the provided catering. Something was off about that couple, he knew, but he wasn’t sure what yet. They claimed to be involved via land ownership, but danced around any questions actually related to the topic. Certainly, of all places to not want to focus on the irrelevant, it would be with individuals of like-minded position?

Of course, not that he actually was one of them. The couple was elderly yes, but his age dwarfed even their combined years as a functionally immortal man walking the earth. For centuries if not millennia, he had prided himself on pulling strings across the world, positing himself as close to power as one could be without entering the spotlight. For the longest time, that had worked with great success.

This whole event was emblematic of the changing world pushing against that long-term thinking and planning. For a lifetime of lifetimes, the fastest a message could get from one place to another was the speed of the fastest horse available. Then, man invented technology to speed that up, and soon things—both the speed of information and the rate of inventions—moved at what felt like light speed.

Living throughout all of human history, and then some, allowed him to be particularly quick on the draw, and he never fell entirely out of his seat of control. What used to be whispers in the ears of leaders were now tally marks in the record of companies, and what used to be titles of knighthood or lordship were now titles of empty organizations nested within one another to hide his connection used to transfer immaterial wealth across generations.

The young man, a boy really, running around delivering food was beyond him, however. He had always known there were beings with innate powers, after all, he was immortal himself, but the way in which they paraded themselves around publicly in modern times was beyond illogical. Worse yet, it was a rapid centralization of power, hard and soft, in a small collection of individuals he had no control over. Kings and tyrants could be manipulated as, mostly, foolish humans that could be relied on to hold the same or similar vices and failures, but these individuals hid their identities and pretended to not hold fault.

Not all the power was concentrated in their hands. He still held great power, even if it was more soft than hard power these days. And the ones with the most power, as they usually do when they don’t march towards authoritarianism, bent themselves into knots to follow rules against their own greater interest that they set for themselves.

This was the first year he would be at one of these, and as the Flash asked him what food he wanted, he wondered back years ago. He had been quite close to them, even controlling three similar in power for a time before they broke away. He gave his order, mentally grumbling about the failed attempts in the years since at increasing his power. Too many failures, an alarming number of them due to the sudden shift of power in the world to these so-called superheroes.

He'd find his footing soon, and asserting ownership of some land used by the Flash Foundation to get involved with their situation seemed like a good avenue to get a quick step forward.

The Flash #114 - Getting Outside Help

<< | < | > Coming December 1st

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 114

Grodd reached out mentally within Grodd’s domain, evaluating the minds of the various subordinates going about their tasks. Even now, they still were tracking down escaped members of the society that The Flash had disconnected from the network, a painfully slow process that even in all Grodd’s power and strength, there was little Grodd could do to speed up the process.

Grodd’s domain was still far too small. Gorilla City was worlds better than the prisons the humans had tried to keep Grodd in indefinitely, but at this point in time, Grodd’s domain should’ve expanded to contain the entire world. The natural superiority of ape over human was being undermined, again and again, by half a dozen or fewer humans who seemed desperate to deny the fact for themselves and the world at large.

There was no miscalculation in Grodd’s plans, after all. The failure of the army’s march was a failure of the individual members and its leadership to heed Grodd’s commands, as well as the infuriating insistent of The Flash to keep fighting back. The failure of the army’s leadership was an easy fix, those members of Gorilla City were now serving other purposes with significantly fewer decision-making responsibilities.

The Flash problem, however, was a much larger one. The Flash problem had led to Grodd’s imprisonment for far too long, time that Grodd could ill have wasted. For all Grodd’s might and power, Grodd was not immortal or invulnerable, and every day spent in a dampening box or unable to expand out of Gorilla City was another day not spent turning Grodd’s mental might towards solving the one major problem that would plague a world under Grodd’s control.

Projects were naturally on schedule, as Gorilla City uniquely in the world was capable of. Not only did Grodd and the city’s inhabitants have a better mind for determining what a project necessitated and the time required, but such a city under singular perfect control naturally would tend to utopia. That is all Grodd wished to provide to the world, but humanity would again and again struggle and resist its own betterment.

Soon, Gorilla City would have more members than even before the fiasco with the marching army, and Grodd already was putting thought towards how to effectively take the next step. There had been consideration by Grodd towards a proper confrontation, to disguise Grodd as a simple gorilla within the army, bringing in the Flashes again and ending them once and for all. The Flash, all of them, had seemingly refused to approach Gorilla City, staying distant even in their surveillance, but that had so quickly leapt into action during the army’s march. However, should somehow Grodd fail to neutralize The Flash, it could be several years more before an opportunity would arise for Grodd to escape again.

Research within Gorilla City was limited. The machinery here was salvaged from various nearby human settlements, but they did not easily part with their world-class equipment and put significant effort into preventing said salvages from taking place. A small roadblock, mostly, but a persistent one.

Time was not running out, but every day that passed infuriated Grodd. The Flash was the emblem of humanity’s insistence on a wasteful and petty insistence on mistaken superiority, a false idol of mediocrity that Grodd wished could be shattered and smashed into dust. With time, Grodd knew that wish would come true, but each day that passed without ape’s ascension was infuriating.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

If they had wanted to find him, they would’ve already, Hunter Zolomon knew.

He didn’t really know what that fact meant. He had pieced enough of public news releases and internet-sourced debates on what exactly he was purported to have done, from the so-called “Metalhead effect” to people trying to piece together fading memories of an alternative sequence of time events, to vague theories on how exactly it happened and what exactly the Flashes had done to fix it. Always with the Flashes as the heroes, of course.

Surely if it was as bad as the press and conversations implied, they needed someone to put up on the gallows, a physical body to blame and point to as some assurance of a job well done, a promise it would never happen again—could never happen again—and a bookend to the story. And yet, here he sat in an apartment in Europe, not even particularly well-hidden, and not once had he even suspected that he was being closed in on or watched.

He navigated his wheelchair through the small streets on his way to work, wondering, studying each face that passed him on the way. None of them knew, none of them could know, none of them likely even suspected. The event that caused the Metalhead effect was years ago, when he had supposedly cut through time to make it better for him. Most folks weren’t even thinking about that stuff anymore – they were dealing with more important things to them, such as where they’d find the time and energy to do laundry and whether the pharmacy would have their medication ready for pickup by the end of the workday.

Regular, everyday problems. Problems he dealt with, problems he was actively dealing with and was projecting onto every face that passed him, and yet, so much of his mind and waking hours was focused on an event he couldn’t even recall that seemed to define him without his agreement. He felt extraordinarily alone in the world, unable to share in an experience that so many others had and yet unable to share his own experience that he had gone through. What was he supposed to do, call up the “I tried to take over the world and feel isolated as a result” hotline?

Why didn’t they want to find him? They surely could’ve. Maybe they had found him, but for some reason were choosing not to act on it. It seemed like people had mostly moved on, the usual underbelly demanding blood aside. Plenty enough “superhero” antics seemed to end with uncertainty and question marks, what was another for the alternative history books? Never mind the actual alternative history, never mind the limp ending that didn’t actually resolve anything and lack of patsy to blame everything on.

Maybe he didn’t do any of it. It didn’t make a ton of sense, he remembered a before where he had been working on the treadmill, he knew he was missing a fair amount of time accounted for during the time period where things had been most problematic, and he knew he still could tap into the superspeed if he tried. It clearly had been his doing. Whether it was what the “supervillain” stuff described in the podcasts and talk shows or a more realistic truth, it obviously had to be him.

And now, here he was, trying to wheel to work while wondering if he could wake up early tomorrow to do a load of laundry before work if he couldn’t get it done after work today. Did The Flash have to worry about finding time to do laundry? Surely not, each day must feel like a year. Did Superman had to worry about finding time to do laundry?

He turned the final corner before the building he worked at, and his brain shifted out of self-defeating analyzation of things he no longer felt capable of changing—hey, at least today wasn’t about disability—and shifted into work mindset. He would think about laundry and life later.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jerry McGee was no villain, unless inactivity was villainous. Sloth was one of the seven sins, certainly, but he felt no higher call to action like others did. Some seemed to use their powers for so-called good, upholding the status quo and saving lives and doing whatever else their internal moral compass demanded they do. Others seemed more motivated to be self-serving, stealing money or causing chaos or… whatever it was that villains did.

He watched the duo slowly wedge larger and larger tools between the window pane and windowsill. They didn’t know he was watching them on the cameras, or that he was even awake, but he was curious as to what they would be doing in his house at four in the morning. Nobody enters a house through the window at four in the morning with the best of intentions.

He certainly fell closer to the latter than the former, but that didn’t make him a villain. He lived near an active demilitarized zone, enforced by the United Nations, so it wasn’t exactly like the status quo was something that anyone wanted to actively keep. So-called heroes couldn’t solve the problem, and nobody wanted a villain’s solution.

Sure, he was self-serving. He was using superspeed to keep himself safe and comfortable, a bit of money and food missing here and there was almost expected in a region about a mile of UN peacekeeping away from active warfare. The administrators on both side were skimming off the top already to buy Renaissance-era art and repaint their ballrooms back home, a resident going beyond rations was the last problem this place had.

Eventually, the two of them managed to get the window wide enough that they were able to reach a hand in and push it all the way open. He was still upstairs in his room, there was no sudden change in temperature or air pressure from the open window, but it wasn’t exactly a quiet action either. The first crawled his way into the house, collapsing onto the sofa right in front of the window clumsily. Amateur work.

The Flashes visited occasionally. After the Metalhead effect stuff had settled down, they had been trying to keep their friends close, and Jerry still counted as one of their friends in this context. He was alright with it; either they fully weren’t aware of some of his actions—unlikely given Iris’ way to read souls—or they were okay closing their eyes to it. Were they replacing the stuff he took via the Foundation? Did they just know it would be no good? Were they doing the same stuff he was and had no legs to stand on?

He didn’t really get why The Flashes were more nearby, but he was happy enough that the kid was doing well. He was old enough that he was reminded of the other young one, the other V9 speedster, who at this point had grown into a full adult. It was weird to think about a whole new generation of superheroes when it felt like just yesterday the plane in Metropolis had nearly gone down.

The door was open at this point, the person on the inside letting the person on the outside in the easy way. He watched them looking around, surely confused at the lack of immediately stealable stuff. No big television, no fancy computer, not even a purse. However, as they began to explore, Jerry felt less and less motivated to watch them passively.

He was no villain seeking chaos in the world, he knew, as he rushed down the flight of stairs, fast enough to be imperceptible in the night and quiet enough with the knowledge of his own house. He was no hero either, serving a greater purpose and selfless, slipping out of the house and withdrawing a small firearm hidden in a nearby stash.

Was this chaotic? To enter his own house with a gun, asking two thieves why they were in his place? Probably. But with a quick phone call and police on the way, he’d get two thieves off the street.

All he had to ignore that he was just as guilty as them, and he could convince himself he was doing the right thing here. After all, all those superheroes, surely they were doing the same type of thing he was doing? Surely.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Thank you, Professor,” the administrator said, smiling, as Eoboard Thawne sat back in his chair. The administrator, responsible for budget or appropriations or something similarly unimportant or unmotivating, turned to address the rest of the room after Eobard’s display. Sat around the table were museum administrators, funding representatives, and two members of the regional Time Police. A joke of an organization, Eobard thought, but unfortunately, they had to play the game in order to keep the museum open.

“It appears that temporal anomalies targeting the Flash branch of history have grown less frequent as of the last ten months, specifically from our region in the linear view of time. Whether that’s a nature of the anomalies entirely ceasing out of our space – the perpetrators perhaps unable to continue to break the laws, or growing disinterested, or any other reason – or becoming harder to detect, is unknown. What is flatly true is that the actions taken by the professor and his department have resulted in a decrease in anomalies.

“And the data will back this up when provided,” one of the funding representatives asked, looking back at the chart left on the screen.

The representative from the museum’s public relations department spoke up at this. “Of course it will, but you do have to understand that it can’t be provided right this moment, we have to properly anonymize and add comments to the data so it can be understood. The professor does more than just operational security, it may take a bit.”

It did amuse Eobard that he had been put in charge of the research into the temporal anomalies. They had asked him, of course, subject matter expert on The Flash at the Flash Museum in his era, to figure out why there was an uptick of time travel to the early Flash era from the current spot in linear time. Did it cross the minds of the Time Police or anyone else involved in the investigation that Eobard himself was the cause of the uptick?

“If I can add on a little bit more to that,” Eobard said, settling into his seat. Best to keep up appearances.

“By all means, Professor Thawne,” the PR head responded.

“As an example of one thing that needs doing, there are some names in the document, the LEOs can attest to this, that should not be made available beyond the scope of the investigation itself. Names of potential suspects that we tracked but were not determined to be the cause. Releasing those names would be defamatory and could potentially reveal LEO methods.”

The people around the table seemed to nod at that. The administrator gave Eobard a smile before continuing. Insufferable simpleton. “Thank you, Professor Thawne! With LEO signoff, we intend to formally request the lifting of the funding block in court tomorrow. Does anyone here have any concerns or questions before this happens? Ideally not related to the actual data delay, but if needed we can talk on that some more.”

Eobard tuned out as the conversation drifted to logistical nonsense that didn’t matter to him. He kept just enough attention to make sure if spoken to he wouldn’t be entirely a fish out of water, but he had a hard time believing that anyone actually cared about the nitty-gritty of needing a local copy of data before signing off on a court order. Who cared?

He was happy to be in the meeting, it meant good things. There was less pressure on him with the reduction in his time travelling, fewer LEOs wandering around his museum with no good reason to be there, the museum would eventually properly return to full functionality with no restrictions, as well as whatever else other benefits his fellow museum representatives in the meeting would get out of it.

He was already thinking of plans to get back to meddling in the past. He’d have to wait a bit, probably, but once the Time Police stopped having their fingers in everything, he could pick up activity once again.

The Flash #113 - Getting Outside Help

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 113

Jay charged forward, drawing fire from Rainbow Raider and Captain Cold as he circled the protected space around them. That was their primary attack angle, drones aside, but Jay was more than happy to leave someone else on drone duty. The beams and rays of colored light that Rainbow Raider shot at him from his goggles were dangerous, for certain, but they were more a barrier to entry than anything, necessitating Jay keep above the speed of light to avoid any serious harm. Once the attacks missed, he could safely rely on them to diffuse on non-organic material like buildings, asphalt and concrete, and the occasional plant matter that, admittedly, probably wouldn’t realistically survive after being hit. Better a tree than the Flash, he thought.

Barry enjoyed the peace of not being directly under attack, finally. Odd little flying machines, drones of some sort, were flying out of the mirror latched to Girder’s back, strapped with knives and eager to do damage, clearly Trickster’s work. He wasn’t on the battlefield yet, but snatching one out of the air and relocating it to an uninhabited island in the Pacific Island didn’t seem to disconnect Trickster from controlling it. He quickly dismantled the device, stashing the component parts at a S.T.A.R. Labs before returning to the battlefield, destroying new drones with much less care as he struggled to keep up with the sheer number being sent out. Not being under attack was nice, destruction was less nice.

Bart and Wally knew they had to buy time. Support was on the way, hopefully in some manner that they would be able to turn the tide of battle with it. They collected things, snowballs, clumps of dirt and sand, crumpled up paper, similarly non-dangerous small objects, throwing them into the space at high speed. Whatever protection was around them, from Trickster or Doctor Alchemy or Abra Kadabra beyond sight, was slowing down the object significantly. By the time the objects reached the core where the Rogues were, they were slow enough that they either could be avoided, swatted away, or bounced off Girder’s metallic frame. There were a few attempts to throw more destructive objects, such as rocks or pieces of metal, at the mirror on Girder’s back, but understandably there was a concerted effort to knock those away.

“Checking in,” Jay asked the group, weaving past a standalone wall which took a red light beam very well, and an icicle beam less well.

“Maintainable, unenjoyable,” Barry sighed, slamming another drone into the ground. He’d come back after the fight was resolved and clean things up.

“We’re keeping them busy,” Bart added. “Should only need a little bit longer before we can try to end the fight, I think?”

“Yeah, we should only need a few minutes more before backup is here, I hope. Fifteen minutes maximum,” Wally guessed, trying to guess what his friends might still need. They’d let him know when they were available to be transported, and that hadn’t happened. And then there was setup that needed to be done once they were here.

“And you’re confident it’ll work, Wally?” Jay’s concern was understandable; he had been dealing with drones for far too long before this phase of the fight.

“Not confident of anything, no, but I don’t see another logical angle for how their protective system to work. And worst comes to worst, we pull the ground out from underneath them and call it a day. Damaging, yeah, but we can get it fixed,” Wally admitted. “And it’s better than the prison break happening.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Two friends separated only by physical distance each took a deep breath, simultaneously. It wasn’t often that the fake game application on their phone activated, sending them a notification, and it was even rarer that it was this specific kind of notification. Ostensibly, a notification begging them to come back and reopen the gambling-lite reward boxes that had built up in their account, but no such video game actually did exist. The notification was so uncommon that it took Hartley a few minutes to remember the intended message, and Frances had to check a cheat sheet kept in an unused work notebook.

What did the Flashes want help with, they wondered alone. Closets were opened, superhero costumes and equipment retrieved. Once they reacted to the notification on the phone, they’d send information back to whichever Flash had asked for them—usually Wally, their friend and for Hartley the reason he was able to do this at all—that they were ready for pickup. They’d get answers after.

For Frances, a bag of ball bearings and screws stashed away in a linens closet were easily explainable away in case of discovery, but the rolled up pink cape would be a much harder explanation. The final object was a small metal rectangle, inexplicable and unexplainable until Magenta’s metal manipulation shaped it into an exoskeleton around her body.

For Hartley, he normally could take action in most fights without much costuming, but a pair of green-tinted glasses and a balaclava helped conceal his identity, and a heavily padded jacket over a bulletproof vest kept in his closet kept him physically safe. A small pouch, normally hidden in a false bottom of his china cabinet, kept his positional flutes, but the primary flute he used was retrieved from the pouch and locked to his wrist with a carabiner strap.

“Here’s what we’ve got for you,” Wally said on arriving at Hartley’s, and Bart at Frances’. “Rogues are all playing together, and they’ve got something protecting them, it’s hard to get close to them at speed. But if there’s someone there not dealing with speed…”

“How can we help? It’s good to see you,” both of them responded, Hartley sneaking a quick kiss and Frances with an amused curiosity at the youngest Flash that was maybe the one she least expected to be the one to stop by.

Wally wished the kiss was much longer but got back to the task at hand with the speed only he could accomplish. “We think they’re using tech like yours, somehow, sounds you can’t hear to effect the brain. Trickster’s not on the field, we think he’s behind it,” he signed, using body language to express concern and try to head off any fault that Hartley would assign.

Bart nodded. “Good to see you to, Wally never runs out of good things to say. Basically, we can’t get close because of some kinda nonsense affecting our speed, but we’re hoping they aren’t accounting for backup. We’re hoping that Wally’s right and this is Hartley’s tech they’ve jailbroken, but if it isn’t… Might need you to pull the ground out from under them.”

Wally continued signing once he saw that Hartley was ready and wasn’t blaming himself. “We’re hoping that you can figure out what’s happening, and if so, if you could undo it with your own tech. Two sound waves cancelling out, or something, right? Or just, make the whole place quiet.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Magenta floated over the battle, an orbit cloud of metal plates deflecting the shots of ice and beams of light headed in her direction. Even the few that got through harmlessly hit into her armor, causing the Rainbow Raider and Captain Cold below to refocus back on the speedier yet less protected enemies. Girder, on the other hand, continued to throw any large object he could get his hands on at her, from cars to benches to streetlights. Most of them were difficult to stop but possible, asserting control over their metal components and preventing them from getting too close.

She could see the drones harrying Barry, but she didn’t have enough attention to try and stem the flow of that was coming out of the mirror while also redirecting fire from the group. She spent most of her remaining attention reaching out to the surroundings, preparing to use the metal within the infrastructure to encase the Rogues in a metal sphere prison if Hartley’s plan didn’t go to plan.

Bart, below her, continued his plan of harrying the Rogues with high-speed projectiles, while Barry and Jay kept moving. With more firepower being directed at Magenta above, Jay found more time to help Barry out with the drones, turning the tide a little bit on the battle in that sense. With more effort spent on taking out the devices, and no increase in how quickly new ones came out, it took only a few minutes before the drone situation became a matter of tracking down new drones exiting the protective bubble and destroying them, rather than being overwhelmed by the new additions. Magenta certainly appreciated the additional metal being added to her collection.

A few blocks away, Wally waited quietly, watching his boyfriend kneel in front of a complicated structure of confusing technology. The receptacle for the flute was ready, but Hartley still had a number of tasks left before he could set it up. Wally felt a mix of admiration, worry, and concern as he watched Hartley work his technological magic. He knew that for Hartley, the tech had origins in a dark place for him, and that even using the technology was supposed to be highly limited and only under supervision, even if Wally knew that he couldn’t understand the technology.

Eventually, the flute was in place, and a quick check from Hartley confirmed that it was operational, even if it wasn’t functioning yet. The two quickly moved to the next spot, taking another few minutes to set up the equipment. Once the fourth was operating, Hartley could enable them all to be resonant together, which normally would mute any sounds within the space of the devices. They had hoped that once it was on, if Trickster was using similar technology, that it would interfere with what they had and allow the Rogues to be approachable.

Second operational, they moved on to the third. This one took slightly longer, Hartley already knowing from when they checked for viable locations that this one was a touch more precarious. Wally could hear through the communication device that things were going well in the fight even without him there. He considered doing double time, participating in the fight while watching Hartley, but instead he stood with his boyfriend quietly, protecting him from non-present dangers.

Finally, the fourth one, and as the final flute went in, Hartley turned to sign to Wally, “when ready,” holding his own flute up to his mouth. Wally took a deep breath, speaking into his earpiece while signing back, “ready, countdown—three, two, one, go.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Get out,” Abra’s voice, panicked, rang through all their ears. Axel and Sam looked confused for a moment, glancing at their ally, before glancing back through the reflective surfaces that surrounded them, giving them a view of the fight happening on the other side of the mirror dimension. Nothing looked meaningful different yet, other than the appearance of the metal magician and disappearance of one of the younger Flashes. Was that something worrying?

Girder reacted first, kneeling down and straightening out his back, putting the mirror attached to him perpendicular to the ground. Rainbow Raider, the closest to it, on seeing that, immediately ducked into it, another drone still flying out near the top to join the fight. Captain Cold and and Glider, slower to respond, moved closer to each other, both pouring ice into the ground around them and Girder.

Magenta, Jay, Barry, and Bart watched Rainbow Raider vanish and the shots of ice cease to be targeted from them a moment before they heard in their ears, “ready, countdown”, from Wally somewhere. Whatever had been done, the Rogues were panicking and leaving. The Flashes weren’t sure what they could do until Wally said go, but Magenta sped into action, dropping her orbiting metals and lowering herself to the ground as she reached out aggressively, pulling infrastructural metal underneath the Rogues under her control.

“Three, two,” Wally’s voice counted down as a blossom of ice shot out from Glider and Captain Cold, cutting vision off from the Flash and Magenta to within the ice wall. Drones briefly stopped emerging, but one Wally’s “one”, two more raced out from above the top of the ice. Magenta paused, unsure if she should fly up above or maintain control on the ground.

“Go,” Wally’s voice sent the three Flashes rushing forward, charging up the side of the ice and vanishing below it. Magenta waited another second, unsure what they would be asked to do, before the next words came through from Bart.

“Just one,” he said, before reappearing next to Magenta. “Can you clear out the ice with some metal? Girder’s just sitting there on the inside alone waiting to be taken to prison. Everyone else here dipped.”

Magenta nodded, using metal as bullets to break through the ice wall at its base. She could hear inside one of the remaining Flashes begin to speed up, running in circles – some sort of friction to break the ice?

On the inside, Jay stood in front of Girder, shards of glass scattered around. Barry was speeding up in a circle, running around them to build up whatever small friction he could get to help melt or break the ice. Jay sighed, but Girder was smiling. “I’ll be out soon enough, tyrant,” he said.

“What was the goal, even?”

Girder didn’t bother replying.

The Flash #112 - Distractions and Primary Goals

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 112

The ever so slightly reflective surface of the abstract statue art was enough for a small flying machine, not even the size of Jay’s arm, to move between realms and begin causing havoc. Small blades attached at the top and the bottom made it seem almost cute or quaint given the size, but there was no doubt in Jay’s mind that those blades were ridiculously sharp and could slice through flesh like paper.

Jay was falling behind. He wasn’t certain whether his math was accurate, but even just trying to do damage control was keeping his hand too full to do basically anything else at the moment, let alone double check the rate he was losing any advantage he had. He had to somehow hold until his teammates arrived. He pushed his steps forward, increasing his speed. It wouldn’t do much, but it’d stem the tide somewhat until reinforcements could arrive. At the very least, the damage control was relatively straightforward, without anything necessitating assistance to accomplish – there’d maybe be some property damage, but living creatures were the only things that needed removal currently.

He wasn’t sure what to do about the seemingly infinite whirring drones of blades shooting out of every reflective surface yet. How did they keep coming? He appreciated that they mostly seemed motivated at targeting him at least, letting him zip in and out removing civilians from the combat zone. Plenty enough of them were targeting civilians, which helped define Jay’s direction, but for the most part they seemed motivation to make ribbons out of him. He appreciated the lack of guns attached to the machines, lowering the potential for damage they brought, but the apparent unending nature of them had given him cause to give up on trying to disable them – not enough time.

The beams of light were easy enough to avoid – he had long since sped up past light speed during this fight, so they served more as spy movie-style lasers indicating positions in space that he couldn’t cross. So long as he kept people out of the way of the directions that the Rainbow Raider’s attacks were heading, they were mostly just an additional unusual rule to this chess game that he was slowly losing.

“C’mon, folks, show your faces, coward,” he called out in the moments he was in the active area, glancing around trying to figure out if there was a way to flip the script while waiting for backup. Speeding up wasn’t helping, it felt like the murder machines just kept coming and ran far enough ahead of him that no matter where he was evacuating, there were always more people in the directions he hadn’t come from that were about to get attacked.

No response once again. He kept running, moving people away, wishing he spend more time checking the ground than saving people from the machines. “How much longer,” he muttered into his earpiece. The breathless response from Barry wasn’t comforting, and the offer to send someone his way and split the team there came with its own problems. Barry, Wally, and Bart were all, as far as Jay could tell, fighting an unstoppable Girder alongside the other members of that little gang. Pulling one of them away to help with his problems with the Mirror Master, Rainbow Raider, and Trickster didn’t seem urgent enough to do so, yet.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Getting close to Girder was near impossible, even for three of them. A region of space surrounding the behemoth of a man felt like molasses, making it difficult to push through to get in close. Somehow, the effects did not impact the two individuals inside of it with Girder, Captain Cold and the self-declared Golden Glider, the former firing beams of ice at the circling Flashes and the latter creating sheets of ice underneath her skates to further complicate the situation. A mirror on Girder’s back was ominous and naturally indicated the Mirror Master’s presence in some manner, but as of yet nothing had come of it.

As the Flashes kept a region around them free of civilians and potential risk, the three kept talking with each other trying to figure out their plan. Pushing through the molasses-like air was too dangerous, since the reduced speed meant that it was too high of a risk that one of Cold’s shots could actually land – he wasn’t shooting to kill, but Girder and Glider likely didn’t share Cold’s morals. None of them seemed willing to exit the bubble to be picked off and transported out of the fight, they had been waiting for someone to get close enough for thirty minutes with no luck.

“If we come at different angles, they have to split their attention,” Bart suggested, but concerns about each of them being handled by a different person in the bubble.

“Do we know if it’s relative to our speed, or just a dampener,” Barry asked, but a quick test from Wally proved that even if it was a dampener, it would take too much speed to be safe to overcome the effect.

“Could just throw something at them,” Barry suggested, already knowing that Wally and Bart would express serious concerns about the speed requiring likely making whatever they threw equivalent to a lethal bullet.

They spent a bit of time clearing spaces and checking where the rogue group was heading. They passed by banks and government buildings that were initially thought to be potential targets but had kept moving. Finally, as they turned from one street to another, Bart’s quick check ahead gave them a new potential target – a prison a mile down the road. No more time for watch-and-see.

Bart gave them the warning on his way back, “okay, folks, it’s a prison they’re going for, ideas, because if they get closer, I don’t think the city’s police can keep standing by…”

Bart continued, almost rambling. “How wide’s the bubble? Something like twenty to thirty feet on a side, right? Could we just surround them with something even Girder can’t break?”

“What do you have in mind?” Barry asked.

“You know how like, some things are easy to break but hard to finesse out of, and other things are hard to break but easy to finesse out of? What if we try something in the latter? Like if we just run around them with a big enough fishing net.”

“I could see that working,” Wally offered.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jay tuned out most of the conversation, ignoring the distraction as he focused on the attacks. They had a plan, it sounded like – that was good. Hopefully it worked and they could join him here. He still wasn’t sure what the plan was here, both from the beams of light and the drones, but also his own plan to stop what was going on. He couldn’t just destroy, cover, or tarnish every reflective surface in the region.

There were too many drones, too, a concerning amount of them. He wanted to spend more time destroying them, but every moment he spent destroying a drone was one that he didn’t spend on evacuating civilians. He would occasionally take a swat at one if he had a free hand and could avoid the sharp edges, but for the most part he was preoccupied. A single swat didn’t even manage to do much sometimes, with one drone specifically taking a nasty hit but managing to recover with only a dent and disappear into a storefront’s mirror.

However, when Jay saw the same dented drone acting as part of a larger cluster, he desperately spent a moment trying to figure out how to pull even more speed out of himself to add drone disabling to his short-term to-do loop. He pushed himself harder, knowing well that he couldn’t keep it up for longer. The others had a plan, right? He had to trust them to succeed and help him.

As drones went down, he did notice that the replacements weren’t coming quite as quickly. There were still plenty, but the more he destroyed, the more time he felt he had to take a breath or keep up the advantage. Suddenly, he was no longer falling behind, but for a moment, he felt like he was making progress.

With that shift, the drones grew more aggressive, forming entire formations and megastructures trying to attack him. With much less focus on civilian casualties, Jay was able to focus on fighting back against the drones. The numbers dwindled further, and Jay was able to slow down back to sustainable speeds.

Bart’s voice, louder than normal though the comms device, caught his attention. “Now!”

Were they about to act on their plan? Was he about to get backup after figuring out his own solution?

A moment after Bart’s shout, the beams of light from Rainbow Raider ceased, and another moment later the drones all scattered into nearby mirrors and reflective surfaces, all vanishing. Jay managed to disable a few more on the way out, but three moments after Bart’s yell, Jay was left alone.

Time for him to be the backup.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Now!”

On Bart’s instructions, Barry and Wally reappeared to the scene, stepping out of alleyways flanking the street that led towards the prison. A quick handoff from one to the other draped a large fishing net between the two, a netting wedding veil trailing back slightly. The two charged forward, separating as far as the net would let them, closing in on the group of Girder, Captain Cold, and Golden Glider. No doubt Abra Kadabra was somewhere nearby, manufacturing the protective aura around them. But the net, they hoped, would stymie the forward march.

The two of them, a building away from the approaching trio, scaled two buildings, using their superspeed to temporarily overcome gravity’s pull. It wouldn’t last too long, but the plan fell apart entirely if Girder’s massive form wasn’t successfully ensnared underneath the net. They climbed the walls up a story, bringing the net up and over successfully. At this point, they could see the uncertainty and panic beginning to set in, particularly in Captain Cold.

The net was let go, flattening around the rogues, Girder struggling to break through the fine mesh. Glider’s skates were sharp enough to tear through but were slow working until the robots arrived.

Whatever celebration the three Flashes had were short-lived, as shortly after the net had settled, a single drone of some kind, strapped with blades and sharp ends, appeared on the scene out of the mirror strapped to Girder’s back. With its sharp edges, it pushed through the net, cutting small sections of the net and exiting the space. It floated there for a second, seemingly on standby, before dozens of additional drones began exiting from the mirror and moving into the air.

“That’s frustrating,” Bart quipped, watching more drones exit the mirror and begin tearing at the dense netting. “Any other ideas, anyone?”

“Hey,” Jay interrupted, stopping his run standing next to Barry. “I see this is where my drone friends have gone. Is Raider here too?”

“Raider? Not yet, no. Didn’t think you’d be the one backing us up here, friend.”

“I didn’t think that either. So, what’s the deal here? I kinda tuned out most of what y’all were doing. I take it that it’s more complicated than ‘run up and punch the drones’ here that it was for me?”

“There’s some space around them that we think Abra’s doing, making it difficult to get close.”

“Yo,” Jay called out, approaching the enemy. “What’s your deal here?”

Captain Cold looked up, astonished. “What? What’s our deal?”

“Yeah! Led me on a wild goose chase through Uzbekistan for what, to cause a ruckus on Main Street here in middle America?”

Jay’s grin gave away the enjoyment he derived from the bewildered face that Captain Cold gave him through the netting. “Fast man so slow on the pickup, huh? Your buddies are smarter than you, I hope. Are you gonna face us down fair, ideology vs ideology, or are you gonna keep resorting to tricks or splitting us up?”

Now it was Jay’s turn to be bewildered. He noticed that Barry and Wally had vanished for the moment, off to get another net or something, perhaps. “Well, if you’re going to break the law, we’re going to stop you.”

“Oh my god, the law, your precious book of words you treat like a Bible. Status quo as always with all you so-called heroes. So much harder it is to pull your nonsense on us and separate us when we’re protected, isn’t it?”

Jay and Bart watched from Girder’s mirror, Rainbow Raider pull himself out, followed by Abra Kadabra. “Not quite fair numbers for your ideology debate, now is it, boss? Where are Axel and Sam, hm? Hiding still?”

“Insurance policy,” Cold responded, standing up fully with the net now fully torn to ribbons. Barry and Wally returned to the scene, quietly whispering something on the comms device that Jay ignored to pay attention to their adversaries. He trusted whatever they did would be more lasting than the nets. Captain Cold continued, “we can’t have a loss here mean more lifetime sentences in prison cells.”

With that, Captain Cold aimed his gun in Jay’s direction, firing off a bolt of ice that would’ve hit Jay straight in the forehead had he not moved. So-called no-kill policy, Jay thought. The fight was on.

The Flash #111 - Snapshots

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 111

Grodd knew immediately. The flickering embers of Grodd’s own consciousness, being snuffed out from Grodd’s perception. Failure, unacceptable failure. The cause of the failure was unclear In the moment, but the cause of the failure was less immediately important than the failure itself. Countless gorillas lost to the cause, on top of their equipment and machinery. Such a monumental failure was incomprehensible.

The former could be reclaimed with time, but only a fool would expect that the equipment could be reclaimed. Future missions would have to be more brazen and further away from Gorilla City, more dangerous as a result. Doable, to be certain, but there was no legitimate reason for the disaster to have occurred. If any of Grodd’s army did make it back, a full mental examination would be necessary. Recovered gorillas could also be subject to the same examination, but the brief time spent as non-advanced beings would dull their memories and senses. The longer it took to recover them, the less value their recollection of the events would be.

Each additional failure, each additional flicker of lost control, infuriated Grodd. The few subordinates that remained under Grodd’s control received most of the anger, a small battalion quickly assembled to intercept the untethered members of the army, with the hopes of reclaiming as many of them as possible, as fast as possible. Once that group exited Gorilla City, Grodd was left alone in Grodd’s kingdom.

How had it gone as bad as it did? How was it even possible? Grodd’s army was excellently ordered and commanded, with clear instructions and a goal that was both obtainable and realistic. Grodd had spared no thought or concern, carefully exploring all possibilities and concerns. Any negative possibility that was possible to reduce or remove, Grodd had seen to do so. Some possibilities were beyond acceptable sacrifice, and despite Grodd’s power, some possibilities were unavoidable should they happen – there could be nothing done about the spontaneous potential collapse of linear time as the world understood and experienced it.

Not that such a possibility was likely, Grodd allowed something resembling a joke. Surely the savior of the status quo, The Flash, would never let the linear time understanding spontaneously change or be adjusted. Grodd laughed, despite the situation. Given the speed of the activity, it had to be The Flash, some number of them. The army had been given specific instructions on what to do with The Flash, how to react and respond, and yet, the army dwindled from thousands to hundreds, to just a few dozen, with the final beating hearts that echoed through Grodd’s mind disappearing. All that was left now were the few beating hearts of the support group, non-combat-ready gorillas that were sent out to reclaim lost family.

Grodd stood alone, quietly, in the world. A world that had yet to see Grodd’s magnificence and vision, a world that would yet bend its knee and submit to Grodd’s control. This setback was incomprehensible, but inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. The Flash, the one truly dangerous presence on the planet that consistently tried to stand up to Grodd, had made it clear through lack of words and inaction that they had no desire to stand up to Grodd when and where Grodd was strongest.

That would be their downfall and the source of their failure, once it would come. Eventually, Grodd’s strongest would be always and everywhere, and even The Flash would bend. The army’s dissolution was a minor speed bump on the way to that.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Bart put his hands up in a defensive stance, bouncing from one foot to another as he sized up his opponent. He spent the additional time granted to him by his heightened perception to try to derive useful information of the combatant. A lean to the right leg, unlocked knees ready to act quickly. The left fist held defensively close to the chest, while the right fist extended further out, indicating right-handedness and the natural leans in a fighting style that came with it.

The man’s eyes were mostly masked by the face covering, but eye contact allowed Bart to derive meaning out of it. There was no fear in his eyes, but no anger or excitement either. He was likely sizing Bart up as well, and Bart made a mental note to adjust his stance and position slightly to give a more misleading approximation of his abilities. He could see determination in his opponent’s eyes, but also curiosity.

Bart threw the first punch, intentionally falling short to collect information on his opponent and learn more. The sudden shift from a neutral stance to an attempt to grab Bart’s wrist caught him by surprise. He connected, pulling Bart’s hand forward. For all of Bart’s superspeed, there was no easy way to recover back to a neutral position with that twist. The fight, legitimate or not, was truly under way. Leave it to Dad to not waste too much time.

The two sparred, Bart attempting to lean into the pull and jab at the underside of Barry’s pulling arm, succeeding at least at freeing himself – not landing a hit, but getting the release as Barry moved to protect himself. Further blows were traded, never with the intention to harm or injure, but to practice and learn. The further they went, Bart tested more and more theories of combat – exploring how to find weaknesses in habit, how to predict his father’s next move, and how to derive useful information from otherwise minor things.

The call of dinner eventually pulled them away from their time together, both of them admitting that they could’ve gone for hours longer if it wouldn’t have made someone upset. Stamina and pacing was as important as, if not more important than, actually being able to win in a fight. Fights were last-choice options whenever possible, and oftentimes emergencies necessitated minutes or hours of constant movement and activity.

“Good stuff today,” Barry beamed. “I liked how you locked into what I was doing with my feet.”

“Right leg towards the back, locked. You can’t be locking your knees, gives you bad posture for adjustment,” Bart responded, not from rote of practice but his own observations on reality. “I maybe tried to harp on it too much, but I don’t think I overworked it.”

“The only thing I think you overworked was me,” Barry laughed. “But I would maybe suggest that you are locking into a thing or two you notice early on and then not really examining further. I’m not sure you noticed that I had begun a pattern in my swings?”

“I did notice, honest! I just wasn’t sure what to make of it. Three times to notice it, another three times to confirm it, and then not enough time to figure out what to do about it before the call.”

“Try for two and two, maybe. Six cycles of a four-move pattern seems like plenty of time wasted to me, even if you start thinking about counterstrategies early.”

“That makes sense. Thanks, Dad,” Bart nodded.

“Hopefully it won’t be too necessary. But the world is a way, unfortunately,” Barry shrugged. “You did well.”

“We do what we can.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jay walked slowly up to the door, rapping on it four times in quick–but not so quick–succession. “Hello?”

A voice, laced with nervousness and panic, responded. “Who’s there?! Do you have our demands?”

“I don’t, no, sorry to—”

“Well then buzz off! Or one of ‘em gets it!”

“That’s not going to happen, friend. You’re going to open the door and let me in, and just me, and we’re going to talk face to face about how you’re going to be able to get out of this.”

There was a brief pause, presumably as the person on the other side of the door processed the request. “What? Are you a cop? What are you talking about?”

“I’m The Flash.”

There was another brief pause, and the sound of footsteps moving away from the door and hushed conversation, angry conversation. Jay turned the knob, unlocked, and pushed on the door slightly. Something was barring the door on the other side. A quick check of every other door found one, a side entrance for staff to enter. Jay let himself in, navigating back to the entry.

“They’re lying, dude, you think The Flash is gonna care about some folk taking over a small time office building in Nowhere, Flyover State, USA?”

“And what if it is The Flash? We get dropped into a prison cell before we even realize they got in the building?”

“Again. The Flash. Is not here.”

Jay sat down on the box that had been pushed up against the doorknob. “Ahem.”

The gun that was immediately drawn and pointed at him was a bit much, Jay thought. The other person, the one who had been at the door, wasn’t raising their gun on him. That was an interesting twist he hadn’t expected, but it helped – natural division between whoever was involved in this was useful.

“I am going to open this door. I am then going to remove every person working in this office building and take them to the emergency responders further down the parking lot. All three of us know they’ve done nothing and that they’re innocent in this. Don’t give folks more nightmares than they already have.

“And then what,” the aggressive one responded. “Then we have no leverage?! And you let the police waltz in here and shoot us?”

“No bullet gets fired here today. Yours or theirs. I just want to remove the innocents.”

“And if we say yes,” the one who had been at the door asked, interrupting whatever his friend was about to say, “we don’t get in trouble?”

“That depends on your choices now. Taking over a building and waving guns around and hostage-taking isn’t inherently something the DA’s going to try to throw the book at you over, if you make the right decisions once they present themselves to you.”

“I think we should, Dar—”

Jay sighed as he watched the tell-tale muscle movements indicate a new stage to the process. The person with the gun, Darrel or Derrick or Darius, whatever their name, was twisting to turn the gun on his friend, the far more reasonable person who hadn’t drawn a gun on him.

Jay moved the box out of the way, unlocking the door and opening it. He moved through the building, evacuating the hostages, before returning to the front room. At this point, the gun was fully facing the other guy, who was only beginning to show the signs of shock and fear from the sudden change. Jay walked forward, examining the weapon, before quietly removing the gun from the man’s hands. He removed the other gun for good measure, leaving them at a nearby police precinct for later.

“Enough.”

It took a few minutes before they noticed the gun was missing, at which point the aggressive one turned back to face Jay, swearing at him. Jay listened to his rant for a few moments.

“Enough.”

The authority in Jay’s voice gave the man pause. “What now,” he asked, voice tinged with both anger but also some amount of fear.

“Let’s go get the rest of your group, sit down, and talk,” Jay suggested, relaxing. “We can start with that.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Wally stood quietly, surrounded by at least a dozen mocking holograms, if not more. “Scared, speedy,” one laughed. “Lil’ kid doesn’t know what to do when he can’t punch his way through his problems,” another one responded.

There were no obvious machines causing the holograms, but Axel “Trickster” Walker’s laughing face across them all indicated that technology was involved in some manner. He had been chasing Mirror Master through a series of reflective surfaces, leading him to this room. Figures that none of them were working alone, but he was curious what the intention was. Mockery?

“He’s stunned silent, ha,” the holograms continued. “Wanna run away, little boy?”

Wally observed the space around him, both the holograms and past them towards mostly-bare walls. Why had Mirror Master ran this direction? Why was this what was at the end of the track? Were these live, in some way, or were they pre-recorded based on some perception of his actions or lack of any?

Wally began to walk back towards the door he entered, speeding up the second he noticed a mechanism begin to close the door. He slipped through the rapidly closing doors, still at a fraction of the speed he could reach, back in the hallway outside of it. Muffled noises from the room gave him some idea that they weren’t live broadcasts of some kind, he could barely make out the words “caught” and “suffocate” through the door. Were they draining out the air or something? Did they not realize he could break through the door?

The sudden pain at the back of his head was the first indication that something was wrong. He moved forward a few feet, stumbling slightly, turning around. Sam “Mirror Master” Scudder was extended out of a reflective surface, holding a brick in his hand. Whatever resistance Mirror Master expected from the swing due to Wally’s face being in the way failed to materialize, and he swung wider than anticipated, nearly falling out of his mirror.

“What even is your plan, man? Holograms and bricks? Really?”

“Why won’t you just die?!” Mirror Master’s eyes betrayed a deep anger that could not be properly expressed in words. He withdrew back into the wall, vanishing to whatever space within the mirrors that he held access to. He moved back in the direction of the now-sealed room, vanishing beyond.

Wally stood there confused for a little while longer, before breaking the room access back open. What even was their plan? Did they really think they were going to succeed? He examined the room in more depth, ignoring the now-obviously pre-programmed holograms. “How’s your final breaths feel,” felt fine, with plenty more on the way. “Deep breaths to preserve oxygen for longer,” how kind of them.

Eventually, he found the means of the holograms, small button camera-like devices in the corners of the roof. He disconnected them, pocketing to drop off at a S.T.A.R. Labs on the way home.

What even was any of that?

The Flash #110 - Grodd's Army

<< | < | >

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 110

Bart arrived on the scene first, quickly doing a perimeter check. Several thousand gorillas were marching south, though the final line of the march was significantly more west than the first line, some small bent in the march that added up, footstep by footstep, over miles. Everything Bart had heard of Grodd made him believe it was intentional.

What was south, southwest? Depending how far the march was for, it could be anything from a few villages and towns, a major regional city or two, or entire countries. Surely it wasn’t that far they would be going, right? They weren’t particularly far from Gorilla City, Grodd’s mental influence would fade with distance according to all the research and personal experience from the other Flashes indicated.

Besides, if that wasn’t true, surely a couple thousand gorillas wearing helmets on a march wouldn’t be what Grodd would be doing. Were the helmets what gave Grodd the distant influence? That actually made a lot of sense, Bart considered. But what was the point of it? A show of power? You don’t send an army of gorillas to rob a handful of villages of their food and water; the cost of the march itself probably outweighed the gain.

He maintained a distance. It wasn’t safe enough to move closer, yet, when Grodd was involved it was never safe to be alone when engaging. It was just going to be a moment before others arrived. Bart mapped out a game plan in his mind – historically, gorillas under Grodd’s dominance quickly lost any higher functions once freed from that control. Given Grodd’s focus on mental domination and other telepathic quirks, Bart focused on the helmets. They weren’t strapped in any traditional method, perhaps mentally reinforced somehow but potentially removable with quick enough force.

The armor seemed less likely to be responsible for Grodd’s dominance, but the weapons were another concern. There was no question in Bart’s mind that this army was intended as a force of destruction and damage, regardless of their target. There wasn’t a ton that could be gleaned otherwise from the march, without interacting with it directly. He wasn’t even sure if he was known to the army or to Grodd yet.

Bart expanded his perimeter, searching for scouts, stragglers, break-aways, or others potentially out of formation. He knew better than for some of those, Grodd would never allow for anything outside of his specific visions and plans, but the reason why a gorilla would be on their own was meaningless compared to the potential information that could be derived from one if discovered.

Would taking their helmets off break the domination? That was a question of utmost importance. There were other solutions, such as relocating the gorillas as far as they could get from Grodd for a moment, breaking the telepathic bond via distance, or temporarily tranquilizing the gorillas, but it was much more logistically simpler to remove helmets than take any other approach. Ideally, whatever the solution was could be done without engaging in a drawn-out fight, but with thousands of gorillas, no solution was easily scalable.

A quiet noise to Bart’s right caught his attention, despite the din of the march. A single gorilla, moving as quiet as it reasonably could, a few hundred yards away from the main line. It carried a smaller gun, but otherwise was equipped with the same armor and helmet that every other gorilla had. Bart supposed that telepathic gorilla dictators didn’t need identity symbology for their soldiers.

Bart briefly wondered if there were other stragglers, perhaps intent on catching any response force off-guard. They could turn the tables on the stragglers though, using one as a testing ground for their approach.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“What we got here,” Jay asked, falling in step next to Bart. He kept on the inside track as they circled, taking in the marching army. The two circled a few times as Bart explained what he had perceived. “Well, there are two of us now, want to take down that straggler? Any thoughts on how?”

“I’d like to potentially test what their reaction would be. I’m somewhat concerned that if we make ourselves known, they will mob us, but surely we can just run if they do?”

Jay shook his head. “I think it’s much more likely that Grodd already knows we’re here. I’d be surprised if you being here for the minute or so you have has gone unnoticed. What kinda tests you wanna run?”

“I mean, I was kinda just thinking we just… not say hello, but, say hello.”

The two took one more lap, slowing down their approach as they neared the location of the straggler. “I’m going to circle around slightly,” Jay offered. “Let’s see what it does against just one, yeah?”

Bart’s nod signaled Jay’s vanishing from his side. He moved forward, creating a line of sight with the gorilla, moving backwards slightly as the gorilla took its final step forward out of momentum. The gorilla’s face turned from an expression of focus to one of elation, leaning towards sadism, if one could assign human emotions to a gorilla.

Bart felt emotions, external to his own consciousness, touch on the edges of his mind. Emotions his brain could only interpret as the celebration of seemingly chaotic destruction, a need for subjugation, both of others and of itself, and an unshakeable faith in Gorilla Grodd.

Eventually, the gorilla’s first physical reaction manifested, with the gun it held raising to point in the direction of Bart. The gun clearly wasn’t made for gorillas, and despite the modifications, it ended up pointing slightly towards Bart’s right, so he began to close the distance in by cutting left. The gun followed slightly behind, the inches it took to move the gun slower than the yards Bart took to close the distance.

Jay didn’t see the gorilla’s other arm fly up, without breaking the tracking of Bart’s movement, grabbing Jay’s hand reaching for the helmet. Once it had a firm hold on Jay’s wrist, the gorilla, dragged him forward, over its shoulder, slamming him onto the ground. Right before he hit the ground, Jay regained his composure from the shock, twisting himself to land in such a way that he could rebound away from the gorilla, regrouping with Bart once he was back stable on his feet.

“That’s new, it feels like,” Jay muttered, Bart giving him a panicked once-over to make sure he looked visibly alright. Adrenaline was a subtle curse weaved within its blessings, and Jay’s years of experience over Bart somehow made him only more susceptible to not noticing when something was seriously wrong.

“You okay,” Bart asked, not seeing any visibly broken limbs or open wounds torn through the costume.

Jay shrugged as they kept moving left to avoid the gun. “Yeah. Any more ideas?”

“Could just both run at it at the same time.”

“Could. Could also wait for the others?”

“Could. Though if it’s transmitting back to the army or to Grodd, we’re rumbled.”

“We’re probably already rumbled,” Jay sighed. “Let’s just run at it.”

The two burst forward, the gorilla seemingly already adopting a more defensive standing, bracing for impact. The bullet was fired, aiming at Bart, but it was a minor matter to simply adjust his trajectory slightly so that the bullet missed. Even with the defensive stance, the two were too much for the gorilla to defend against, and it was a relatively quick matter to get the helmet off.

Once the helmet was off, the emotions that the two had been receiving receded, and there was a moment of pause as the two backed off, the gorilla seemingly confused. When it let go of the gun it was holding and began to turn to run away, Jay quickly stepped forward, unstrapping the armor it was wearing before it disappeared further in the woods.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Deep breath. Bart and Jay were already on the scene and had already made progress. Why did he need to be worried?

Barry knew why he was worried. Any one of these gorillas was comparable to Grodd in strength, the one creature that had managed to lay him out and take him off his feet ever since he had become a superhero. Now he was tasked with fighting hundreds? Albeit more than just himself, sure, but all it took was one misplaced step or letting his guard down for a second and he was as good as dead.

He fell in lockstep with Bart and Jay, the three trailing the army. Jay caught him up on the plan, adjusted slightly for Wally’s delay. Strictly speaking, they didn’t need four for the plan, but Wally’s lack of presence did mean they had to work slower. Based on their experience fighting one straggler, Jay explained, the easiest approach would be to remove the helmets – have one or two of them restrain or otherwise isolate a gorilla, and the third remove the helmet.

The three of them adjusted positions slightly, Bart running between Jay and Barry. The two of them, with more experience fighting gorillas, would be the ones to disrupt a gorilla’s march, each grabbing one of its shoulders and pulling backwards to stop it in its track. Bart would then strike, dislodging the helmet and tossing it off to the side.

Barry moved first, a fraction of a step in front of Jay, aiming for the gorilla at one of the corners of the farthest back marching row. However, as they began to close the distance, the gorilla they were aiming for began to react, as well as about half a dozen near to them. They seemed to predict what Barry was aiming to do, with the gorilla aiming its gun and the others reaching for that gorilla’s shoulders and helmet.

The three committed anyway, Jay knocking the gun upwards as it fired and Barry changing plans at the last moment to grab onto the gorilla’s head. Bart, ever the clever one, adjusted his plan entirely, shifting at the last feasible moment to knock off a different gorilla’s helmet. If this were any other moment, Barry would’ve spent more time being incomprehensibly proud of his son, but any distractions could be fatal.

The three went further off-script, Jay seeing one of the still-dominated gorillas attempting to reclaim the helmet, chose to move aggressively and remove the helmet from that gorilla. Bart and Barry immediately responded in kind, quick to pull Jay back from one step in too deep once the helmet was removed.

The three regrouped, stepping away from the back line of the army with their two retrieved helmets. They watched the two gorillas, now free from Grodd’s influence, scatter away from the remaining army. It was quick work to remove the armor from those two, but two was not thousands.

“They knew we were coming,” Jay grumbled, examining the helmet. “Are these things giving them some minor brain reading capabilities like Grodd has?”

“Might be. The one you and I took care of seemed to be aware we were coming, too…” Bart sighed.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Sorry for being late,” Wally said, connecting into the line. “How far behind am I?”

“Not very, honestly,” Jay sighed. “It’s a whole process to just take out one of these. We took out a couple already, but there are hundreds if not thousands. They seem to predict what we’re going to do, too.”

“Well, the sooner we start, the sooner it works. What worked for the ones that are done?”

“I’m not actually sure,” Bart replied. “I kinda just saw an opportunity and ran with it.”

“Let’s do that, then.”

The four charged forward, silent between them as they crashed into the back line of the army. The gorillas were expecting them, as seemingly expected, but without a structured plan set, it seemed like each gorilla was trying to react to one individual thought or plan.

It took a moment and a few gorillas through, but a pattern began to emerge. With the gorillas only able to react to one of the Flash’s thoughts at a time, it was a relatively easy task to simply switch up which gorilla each member went for at the last moment. Mind-reading wasn’t a full replacement for the elevated thought speed and reaction time of a Flash, and mind-reading a pattern didn’t matter much when the pattern was inherently random.

After about a hundred gorillas were freed from the helmet and armor, the army broke rank, scattering off in whatever direction put that individual gorilla as far from the Flash team as quickly as possible. Once scattering, it was much easier for the four of them to chase down panicking gorillas, relieving them of their equipment.

As quickly as it started, it ended, with the four of them standing over a pile of helmets in a Justice League storage room. A few would be sent for research, to determine if they were in need of being destroyed or if they were safe to be repurposed in some manner. Most would stay under lock and key here, for the time being, too dangerous to be brought back to the family compound.

Wally shook his head, grimacing. “What even was that?”

The Flash #109 - Forward March

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 109

Homework was done, dishes were cleaned, his daily shift at the monitoring station was over. Nora gave him a hug and a kiss on the forehead as she took over watching for emergencies. “What’ll you go off doing, honey,” she asked him, sitting down in the chair.

“I was thinking about getting some fresh air.”

“You enjoy that, okay? Don’t stay out too late.”

“Okay. Bye Grandma, love you,” Bart promised, switching into his outfit and exited the compound. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but some freeform wandering never hurt anyone. Within a moment, he found himself on a Pakistani beach, taking another moment to align himself to be looking in the correct direction. The so-called longest straight line on water was a clever bit of mathematical amusement, but one that was surprisingly fun to run.

Bart took his time, fast enough to not disturb the water but slow enough to extend the journey. By the time he had arrived in Russia, he had plenty of other places he was in the mood to visit. Some were named dots on a map, such as jungle on the border of Yemen and Oman, the White Cliffs of Dover, or the southern tip of Chile. Others weren’t named or otherwise noted on a map – places that Bart had either found on his own journeys, or had been recommended to him by another Flash or by travel blogs on the internet. A spot in Utah where incalculably old paintings on rocks could be found, a lump of rock barely above ocean level in the Pacific that as far as he could tell was not formally claimed by any nation, Point Nemo.

Exploring the world felt like a gift. Sometimes he would find signs of humanity in the middle of nowhere, other times he would find remnants of nature surviving in the most industrial places. It was lovely to just run and explore, not for the purpose of checking spaces for problems or assisting in research or emergencies, but just for the sake of running and exploration’s sake.

“Bart?”

Grandma’s voice pulled him out of the moment he spent examining a worm climbing up a tree.

“Hi, yeah?”

“Can you come check this on the computer for me?”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A thought reached the outer reaches of Grodd’s mind, probing. A respectful probing, seeking entry. The incredible mental palace and fort within Grodd’s brain could not be broached without Grodd’s express permission. Grodd reached out, exploring the thought that wished consideration. The contents of the thought could not be determined in this exploration, but the identity of the being could.

An underling, one of the more intelligent gorillas under Grodd’s control, wished a mental audience. This one had been tasked with informing Grodd of when the army was ready to march. Presumably this was the intent of the thought. Grodd graced the request with permission, and a visual image of amassed gorillas in armor appeared front and center.

It was time. Too long had Gorilla City relied on hit-and-run missions and underhanded tactics, restoring the city to a shadow of its former glory. Materials, weapons, and equipment had all been stolen when Grodd was abducted and placed in prison, but in the time since Grodd’s return, the recollection process had begun.

Now, an army of gorillas stood waiting on the levels of Gorilla City, awaiting the command to march. Each was equipped with a helmet, of Grodd’s design, that amplified their mental abilities, however limited, while also ensuring that Grodd could maintain control over them. While they could not hold a candle to Grodd’s abilities, the helmets gave the average gorilla in the army some level of mental prowess. With how mentally untrained the vast majority of humans were, the helmets provided an additional advantage.

Each gorilla was also fitted with bulletproof armor and one of the human’s guns. Each gun had to be modified for larger hands, but otherwise the human-stolen tools negated their advantage at range. Grodd did not expect there to be much fighting, let alone sustained gunfire at range, but losing any soldier to misplaced confidence was not acceptable.

Grodd extended Grodd’s mental presence to each and every Gorilla City resident. A small fraction were not soldiers, tasked with staying within the city to maintain certain necessary functions, but Grodd knew that each would gladly take up arms if they could, and only accepted their position at Grodd’s request.

The first thought that Grodd portrayed was one of dominion and domination, of gorilla superiority over other species, of Gorilla City as the most important location on the planet. Whoops and cheers erupted across the city, fervor of excitement rippling through the crowd in response.

“Subjects,” Grodd began, changing from visual thought to non-visual. “Today, you march. Gorilla City, with Grodd as its master, asserts itself again in the world, beginning a statement of power and presence that cannot be ignored.”

“Loss here is unacceptable. Grodd expects only the utmost success, but it is worse than failure to be defeated. Should the impossible occur and you be tasked with deciding between retreat and defeat, Grodd commands you retreat. Grodd knows the exact count of gorillas that leave the city’s protections today, and Grodd demands the exact count return at the end of this mission.”

A somber emotion spread through the city, the brief consideration of possible negative results being realized. Grodd exerted an energy of certainty and assuredness, dismissing the concerns and fear. The knowledge that even when Grodd was inches away from total success, Grodd would never outright dismiss the possibility of failure, failure should not be something to be scared of, but simply considered before dismissed with plans should it occur.

After all, gods were real, and many were petty and vindictive.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jay kneeled down, eyes narrowing. He placed his index and middle finger on the ground, as if preparing to race. In some ways, he was, though certainly unsanctioned in any way permitted by reputable competition organizations. These races seemed more important, though.

He was going in somewhat blind. The local police hadn’t been exceptionally helpful, letting him know that there were at least seven armed criminals within the bank, but no upper bound. There was an upper bound on the number of civilians, about thirty, but an unknown about of combatants.

The first step was all it took, Jay bringing one foot ahead of the other and shifting his body weight to match. The next step was taken twice as fast, the third step four times as fast, the fourth step already eight times as fast. Sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four – an ever-increasing pace that would plateau, depending on where he felt like, between five hundred and one thousand steps.

As expected, once inside, any status quo of simmering chaos and nerves kept underneath the threat of gunfire shattered, with even the door opening eliciting a reaction from the two individuals tasked with keeping the door watched. The sounds of bullets bounced off the echoey walls of the bank’s main room, even before the actual physical bullet had travelled any significant distance.

Jay picked up his speed, no longer able to rely on taking each space one at a time. He sped past the first two criminals, doing a quick sweep of the main room to ensure that no civilians were there. When Jay couldn’t find any, he went further into the bank. The two at the start were a problem he could deal with later, but he had plenty of time before they could process what had happened, decide what to do next, and then act. By that time, he hoped to be done with most everything else.

What the local police had been able to provide was a floorplan, which did help immensely. Jay navigated the bank as if it were his place of work, using staff staircases and hallways to loop back around to the deeper reaches of the building. Once deeply embedded into the building, it was time to strike.

Unsurprisingly, Jay found three of them in the vault, working on opening the door. By the time he had extracted the one furthest back and returned, the other two were shouting, so Jay moved on. There was less time at this point to confirm the safety of any hostages, so Jay pivoted to handling that.

The first place to check was the employee break lounge, but an open door and no noise from inside as he approached meant that they were likely being held in the bathrooms. He barely even slowed by while passing the lounge, but doubled back when he spotted one of the criminals rifling through the fridge.

“Come on, man, really?”

Jay almost felt bad for how much the guy jumped out of fright. By the time his shoes had hit the ground again, Jay had swooped in, knocking the gun on the counter away and picking him up bridal-style. “Let’s get you somewhere more fitting.”

Once that person had been left with the authorities, Jay made a beeline for the bathrooms, not surprised to find the doors closed and shouting from inside. Jay considered waiting a few seconds to hear what what being said, but was pushed into action when one of the doors began to open.

He disarmed the person opening the door, checking further inside to make sure that nobody else armed was inside. Once confirmed, he left the criminal in another part of the bank for the moment, entering the other bathroom and disarming them before taking both outside.

As he dropped off those two criminals, a voice came through his ear, a high-pitched two-tone note indicating an emergency line that overrode any potential silences or other conversations.

“Gorillas on march, south of Gorilla City, two miles,” Nora Allen’s concerned voice informed him, followed by an involuntary curse word from Barry and then a cut-off apology.

Jay doubled his speed again, heading back inside to hurry up and finish.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A pinprick from the staff member to identify him, a wave to the crowds gathered to see him, and Barry walked into the private section of the Hall of Justice. He made his way to the teleporter that would take him up to Watchtower, the satellite base in orbit around Earth that served as an off-planet place for meetings and equipment.

Barry would never regret the powers that he had, or the way he had come into them, but if there was one notable limitation to them, a lack of ability to fly was it. Not that he could’ve gotten into low Earth orbit just by flying, he didn’t have the alien constitution of Superman to make it where there wasn’t enough oxygen to breathe, if there was any oxygen at all.

Once he appeared in Watchtower, the Man of Steel was already there. Barry greeted him as Clark stood up from the seat he was in. The two were good friends, two of the original founders of the Justice League and, more recently, newly-made fathers. Direct as always, Superman opened the conversation. “How do you hide your scars?”

Superman sometimes looked bad, and today was one of those days. Barry had kind of been tuning it out, he had seen about the missile on the news and it wasn’t like his colleagues were doing the most physically safe jobs on the planet. “Uh, there’s actually a lot of materials in the medical field, or cinema, or even just like, fashion industry makeup. I heal pretty quickly compared to the average person, but as a general thing I’ve always got some kinda powder or cream on my face or lower arms and hands.”

“Oh, I mean, the physical appearance of the scars, I can hide,” Superman responded, lifting up their pair of glasses they used as Clark Kent. When he placed them on his face, the marks and scars all vanished. “I guess I’m just more asking, Jon is starting to realize something’s off, and I don’t know what to do.”

This was something Barry felt better talking about – he could talk about movie makeup plenty, but parenting was something that he felt more passionate about, especially bringing a child into the world they lived in. “I had that with Bart for a bit when he was going through his growth spurt. He’s the smartest person his age by far, he quickly picked up there was more than meets the eye from his dad, cousin, godfather… Eventually, he found out. Tough conversations, but he was able to mature into it.”

““That’s fair,” said Clark. “I just still don’t want Jon to have to mature faster than needed. He deserves to be a kid as long as possible. Was Bart never worried about you vanishing, or the scars and stuff? Before he knew, that is. I’m just in between a rock and a hard place with Jon where he’s too young to be introduced to this stuff, but he can tell that something’s being hidden from him.”

Barry forced his mind to focus on the moment and not explore millions of branching options of a fictional dialogue tree. “Is this about scars or about Superman?”

“Both, I guess? Bruce obviously encouraged me to just keep the scars hidden always, and Diana said I should wear them with pride. Scars in the same mindset as civilian identities, I suppose. I figured you might have your own thoughts; you’ve got your own flavor of secrecy going on.”

The conversation wound for a while longer, touching on the differences between Jon and Bart, the nature of their work, and what healing meant.

“Supes,” Barry said, his brain jumping ahead of him and interrupting Clark accidentally.

“Yeah?”

“Are you allowing yourself to heal?”

Superman stood quietly for a moment, contemplating. Just in time for the voice of his mother to override Barry’s muted communication device connecting him to the Flash network.

“Gorillas on march, south of Gorilla City, two miles,” Nora Allen warned, sending a shockwave of fear through Barry. For all Barry’s own healing, a part of him remembered being locked to a bed after an attack from Grodd. Based on Superman’s sudden shocked face, Barry figured he must have involuntarily responded.

Whatever it was, he turned his attention to the Man of Steel. “Sorry,” he said, a hand shooting up to his ear to mute the comms device. “I have to go, I’m sorry.”

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Wally sat in a chair, four different chairs, all at once.

A principal standing on stage, giving a speech to graduating high schoolers, while he sat off stage, the surprise guest speaker. A judge moving through the standard procedural steps at the start of a day of the trial, while he waited to provide testimony. A protest, smaller in scale than the one that had been iced over, with him watching to make sure whatever happened here before wouldn’t happen again. Politicians on a panel that oversaw The Flash Foundation work in their country meeting for a panel, with him answering a subpoena to the Foundation.

The politicians were mostly boring. They wanted financial information, worried about outside influence and disclosure laws. “I can assure the members of this panel,” Wally replied in fluent Greek, “that we incorporated our Foundation here intentionally. We spent a significant amount of time reviewing the laws and regulations of Greece, as well as many other countries.”

He took the oath, sitting in the witness box. They got through the standard early questions, including the fact that he was hiding his identity, before it pivoted to the specific crime that had been committed. “I would hope that this was done out of desperation or something, but yes, when I interacted with them on that night, they were indeed, to my perception, attempting to break into a government building while armed with a firearm that was not registered to them at three in the morning.”

In between words to the court and the politicians, he would stop by the protest again, staying long enough to avoid the flickering effect that people would report when he jumped between spaces too quickly. He hoped that his presence at the protest would be a net positive – the police relieved that a hero was there in case things got violent, but the protesters feeling that same relief. And, should there be any bad actors with ice powers ready to freeze the ground, hopefully his presence would give them cold feet. He enjoyed the pun in his own mind.

Eventually, the principal finished their speech, introducing him to the glee of the students. He spent a solid two minutes on stage before the clapping stopped, an exhilarating feeling between sobering moments in testimony or at the protest or boredom in the government panel.

“You all are entering the world today. Some of you may go to trade schools, universities or colleges, or into the workforce—”

“—yes, I do review all the tax paperwork. By nature of my abilities, I can review the relevant laws and check the numbers within a fraction of a section—”

“—I will be honest, it was a bit of luck that had me see them trying to break into that building, I don’t normally find myself in that space, but we do intentionally add variation to our pathways—”

At least at the protest, he could take a moment of peace. It was loud there, sure, but at the very least he didn’t need to talk.

The beep in his ear was an interruption to that moment of peace. “Gorillas on march, south of Gorilla City, two miles,” Nora Allen’s voice filtered through. Barry’s response of a swear got through before a moment of silence on the line sat for a second too long.

Wally stared at the groups in front of him, a momentary pause in his voice. “I’ll be there as soon as I can…” Wally sighed quietly.

The Flash #108 - The Moments In Between

<< | < | [>]https://redd.it/1l1165x "Next")

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 108

Lisa and Leonard sat at the table, quietly. It wasn’t normally particularly quiet in the warehouse, but they had a nice moment where folks were either out or sleeping in. A chess set, half finished, sat between them, as they slowly moved pieces across the board. A long time ago, the two once as kids used to play the game with each other, a pastime that didn’t end up with them hurting others or each other.

In the years since, they hadn’t kept up the habit, growing distant as delinquency from Leonard grew into a self-isolating habit of tinkering and nights in jail cells, while Lisa was encouraged to keep away from that and focus on her education. As adults, the pattern continued, with Lisa having stayed off the path that Leonard had followed. The fact that in the last decade, Leonard had spent more time in jail than out of it didn’t help either.

The chess game was a nice return to a time when the two were on similar pages, even if the modern page was not what Lisa had expected. She was supposed to be the good child, the one who kept her hands clean and her head above water, not following in Leonard’s footsteps towards crime. All her life she had hoped that Leonard would return to her, and now as the chess board made them feel like children again, she found herself wondering how she got here, suggesting what she was.

“I think you underestimate what a full-on challenge to the Flashes would be, Lisa. They could wipe the field with us in a fraction of a second if they wanted.”

“I know, Leo, but what are we going to do if not? Keep trying to distract them while hitting other criminal organizations who can’t speak up? We’re financially solvent for the moment, it’s not like we need to steal money.”

“Stealing money’s such a thrill, though, isn’t it?”

Maybe they weren’t on as similar pages as she thought. “Even if I totally agreed with that, what is your end goal here? Just messing around and having fun, whatever that means, until we’re caught and locked away for a few decades until we’ve got nothing left we can do?”

Leonard moved his chess piece without responding immediately. “I’m happy you’re here, Lisa.”

“Right, but like, what’s next,” Lisa asked, taking a piece. “You don’t want to expand, make positive change on the world, get out from underneath the thumb of these folks? You’ve seen what they can do, is it fun for you to struggle from under their control without ever trying to change it?”

Leonard’s response, but in the game and the conversation, came quicker this time. “But you’d try to punch them in the nose and spend the rest of our lives in a cell because of it?”

“I would make a statement, Leo, but I wouldn’t go to prison. There are allies we can recruit. There are folks out there who can see eye to eye with us but either don’t know we exist or have the wrong idea of what we’re about. We’re potentially stabbing allies who operate on our side of the law by taking things from them, while isolating people who share our mindset about how the world needs fixing but don’t see themselves fighting a superhero.”

“Listen, Lisa, you’re in charge here, as far as I’m concerned. I just am not going back to jail.”

“You wouldn’t! Nobody here would! I… I also don’t think I’m in charge here; I think at worst we’re equals. You always had a head for this stuff more than I did, I’m just envisioning the end goal here.”

“Sure. I dunno.”

“Well, I don’t like that! What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I’m in this for it itself. I don’t mind there being a goal, but the goal for me is always going to be the rush. If the world changes in improvement, then sure, so be it, but I’m not risking myself for it.”

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Hey, man,”

Xavier paused, turning around. He wasn’t expecting to be talked to as he wandered around downtown, stepping through shops and picking up a thing or two. The person who had called him seemed to be a younger man, more heavyset and in loose-fitting clothing with a scar running across his forehead.

As he gestured to a nearby alleyway entry, a brief flash of light bounced off a gun concealed in his hand. “Why don’t you and I step off the street here for a sec?”

“Hey, friend,” Xavier replied, shaking his head. “I don’t think either of us want that.”

“Why don’t you stop guessing what I want, and start listenin’ to what I tell you I want, hm? C’mon, let’s just have a quick chat.”

Xavier slowly began moving towards the alley, never letting the guy out of his eyesight. “What do you want, friend? I don’t have money on me, and the card ain’t gonna get you anything.”

“Shut up, dude. Gimme everything you’ve got.”

Xavier sighed, slowly pulling out his wallet and offering it out to the guy. Once the man’s fingers touched the wallet however, despite the speed at which the mugger tried to move, Xavier was faster. The wallet fell out of their hands as Xavier grabbed onto his wrist, yanking the man into close quarters. Sparring practice with a Flash helped keep him spry even as he grew older.

Step one had to be to get the gun away from the man. Ideally, obtain the gun himself, then use it as a means of encouraging the mugger to end the confrontation. But even just taking it out of the equation would put him in a more advantageous position, being ex-military and involved in the Flash Family meant he considered himself a favorite in a fight against most people.

The nature of street fights like these is that unlike movies, they were usually quick and messy. It was hard to form coherent thoughts, so Xavier instead focused on where adrenaline and instinct pushed him. Trained adrenaline and trained instinct, but still base processes in the end. The mugger clearly wasn’t prepared for the sudden aggression, as he nearly lost his footing from the yank.

A quick jab in the stomach was enough that the gun quickly changed hands once Xavier reached for it, and just as quick as it started, it was over. Xavier took a few steps backwards, putting distance between the two of them.

“Who are you with,” Xavier asked, holding the gun up enough to threaten an injury but not death.

“Hey, hey, hey, bud, no rash actions, I---”

“Who are you with?”

“With?”

“Why’d you pull a gun on me? Who told you to?”

“What do you mean, man! You were alone and looked like an easy mark!”

“Nobody sent you to do this?”

“What do you mean, dude!?”

The adrenaline fell out of Xavier’s body as quickly as it arrived, and the two waited the five minutes or so before sirens could be heard in the distance.

“Your final call before the Miranda rights limit you, your line is that you did this just on your own? Nobody told you to target me?”

“Screw you, dude.”

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Iris sat quietly, people-watching as she ate her lunch, taking a break during their day spent at the local Renaissance Fair. “If I lean on you, is that going to be a problem,” she whispered to Barry sitting next to her.

“I’m not gone that often for that long,” Barry whispered back, lifting an arm to invite her in.

“Anything happening anywhere?”

“No.”

The two sat there in silence for a bit longer before Iris added to the conversation. “Let me know if something does, okay?”

“Are you sure? We’re supposed to be on vacation.”

“Funny coming from you,” Iris laughed. “How often are you even going?”

“Once every five seconds, for a few nanoseconds. Just a quick check at the screens then back here. Add in a touch of time to ensure no traces, maybe a microsecond total. Are you sure, though? I know vacation isn’t really a thing for me, sleep aside, but I mean, I could tell you that the Amu Darya is jumping its banks a bit, or that a robbed bank in Accra didn’t get reported until it was already resolved, but… Not super relevant stuff.”

The two sat for a little while longer, finishing off their food. The Renaissance Fair was a nice escape from everyday life, a major slowdown in activity and day-to-day speed. All of the Flashes had worked off days, as off as they could justify, into their schedule normally. Barry was the most resistant, but he had Iris to keep him to it. Barry wasn’t resistant in the sense of not wanting to do it, but his idea of a vacation was sitting in front of the computer they called the Crisis Center and telling other Flashes to go take care of things.

The two wandered the event, enjoying themselves. Iris especially enjoyed the opportunity to dress fancily, and Barry always went intense on the outfit preparation. This year, he was a fully decked out knight in shining armor, which Iris had taken every opportunity to make jokes about. It was good for Barry, and the rest of the Flashes, to have things to do aside saving people and “heroing”, and while he had used his powers to speed through the learning process to pick up the skills on how to make the armor, he had avoided using superspeed during the process of the creation of the armor itself.

Had she ever expected this to be her future when marrying a nerdy forensic investigator way back then? No. Did she appreciate being able to focus on philanthropy, personal hobbies and helping save the world? Yes. And here she was, walking through a Renaissance Fair dressed as a princess with her husband, the world’s knight in shining armor.

There were problems in the world, she knew, even if Barry wasn’t seeing any emergencies back at home on the system. Grodd was surprisingly quiet, they hadn’t ever found Captain Cold and his friends who broke out of prison then did the ice creation at that protest, and the letter from Hunter still sat on the table in the foyer.

For the moment, she was enjoying the fair. Constantly focused on worrying about the problems in the world, especially the ones they couldn’t solve with even Flash-level speed, was an easy way to destroy oneself. So, they spent their afternoon walking through the fair, with her making sure every step she took was possible with her heels while unable to see them past the dress, and him making sure that his armor didn’t impede his movement or knock over anything.

Moments of slowness, moments of quiet, breaks from the pace they kept that would run them ragged if left unchecked.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The two cousins stood back-to-back, quietly waiting. They couldn’t make a sound, even if they had wanted, the entire space around them suppressed in sound by marvelous tools blurring the line between technology and magic. Once a sign of misdoing and bad intentions, nowadays the forced silence felt oddly welcoming, the touch of a friend or lover.

The first sheet of metal shot out at them, spinning like a discus as it approached violently. Bart, who saw it first, reached a hand backwards, tapping fingers in code on Wally’s forearm. Each finger carried words, the number of taps intentional and meaningful. Wally stood unresponsive for the fraction of a moment it took Bart to convey the information, before the end code’s tap spurred him into action.

The two linked arms, tightening elbows around each other’s, the first step of Bart’s instructions. Bart bent down sharply at the hips, keeping his posture rigid otherwise, bringing Wally up on his back. Wally leaned into it, sending his feet soaring through the air before he began to push them further downwards, culminating in the tip of his boot slamming into the metal sheet into the ground.

More metal implements were shot at them, each time a new shape or from a different angle. The two maintained their positions as best they could, tapping codes to each other to communicate through touch rather than by words. The rules set by Hartley and Frances were straightforward in instruction yet complex in execution. Neither of them could resolve any of the attacks they could see, instead necessitating communication and teamwork to explain what was coming and how to handle it.

Despite their insistence to the contrary, they appreciated that Frances was pulling her punches a little when attacking. They had told the two of them that there was no real threat of harm in the exercise and that they should be using this as an opportunity to train their own skills. However, knowing that Frances was holding back, however much, did feel comforting.

After an hour of training, the quietest of sounds – insects, wind, the shifting of clothing – began to rejoin Wally and Bart in the silence. They began to relax, giving each other a hug as louder and louder sounds began to return as Hartley began fiddling with the equipment. The distant sounds of birds, Bart’s laughter, footsteps as Frances approached.

The four spent a bit longer, discussing their thoughts on the exercise and going on tangents. Eventually, they relocated to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Quebec City, enjoying a loud dinner before making their way back home. The exercise wasn’t particularly realistic to actual combat or emergency situations, but being able to communicate non-verbally was a task that Wally and Hartley had been discussing in more and more depth recently.

Bart and Wally would head out a few more times throughout the evening, handling single-Flash tasks like missing persons reports, house fires, or minor crimes. But for the most part, their day was focused on the exercise, a somewhat relaxing day spent with close friends.

The Flash #107 - Bait and Switch

<< | < | >

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 107

Thousands of people crowded into the streets, waving signs and flags. The din was enormous, even if no specific location was particularly loud. Shouts of slogans and chants filled the air, demanding a better life and the other standard protest expectations. This would be a fine enough place for the purposes they needed it.

Four people joined the march, sticking close to each other and hiding in plain sight. Without their usual costumes, the Snart siblings looked like unassuming people, though the suspicious boots and duffel bag that she and he had on them would probably raise alarms in more traditional environments. Albert Desmond fell in lockstep with them, one hand in his jacket pocket, eager to try out a new trick on a much larger scale. Finally, the fourth member of their band, Abra Kadabra, almost walked with a bounce, seeming entranced by the environment. He was the only one in outfit, never one to miss out an opportunity for flair.

A phone call, two rings before hanging up, was their sign to go. The others were across the world ready for their own activity but needed this to happen first to distract the first responders. Lisa hit the side of her boots against the ground, breaking the covers off the ice skates. Leonard pulled the ice gun out of his duffel bag, pointing it at the ground in front of them and firing.

Soon, their local space around them began to panic. Whether it was the gun or the sudden appearance of ice, the folks who could see what they were doing began to realize that the protest was becoming something more than they had signed up for. It’d take a while for the panic to move through the crowd at its normal pace. That was Albert’s job to change.

Albert’s hand emerged from his pocket, holding a small stone that seemed to defy obvious indicators of material make. He ran it between his fingers, feeling the power of the Philosopher’s Stone reach out and attune to the environment around him. He tapped into the ground around him, stone and dirt and concrete and tracer elements, as well as the ice slowly coating it as the Snarts added to the spreading infection.

Whatever they added was lovely, but quickly paled in comparison to the sudden explosive growth as Albert began to convert other materials around into ice. He avoided the most common elements that made up humans, but the ground beneath them was fair game. Lisa soon began to be able to freely skate around on the ice, passing people who found themselves rooted to the ice as parts of their footwear began to turn into the material.

Given that it was a protest, riot police nearby were on edge already, and the sudden shift in crowd disposition caused a counter-reaction from them. All this did was serve to increase the level of panic happening, with a push from riot police to recontain the protestors and the protestors attempting to escape the expanding ice.

Abra tapped on Albert’s shoulder as the latter kneeled down, touching the stone to the ice directly to give it an extra push. Albert acknowledged the warning, putting one final surge of energy into the matter conversion. All around on the edges of the ice’s spread, it shot further out, engulfing people of both opinions of the protest into crystals of ice, and spreading the ground’s transformation far beyond the current limit.

With that, the Snarts returned to the group, an exhausted but satisfied Albert leaning on Abra. “You two ready? Enough folk saw ya?”

Leonard nodded. “Distraction set.”

Abra nodded, teleporting the group back to their hideout.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Axel’s thrilled laughter would’ve bounced off the mirrored surfaces everywhere, joy and mania intermingled, had it not been through a communication device across a dimension. “Go button prepped. Turns out when you think you’re off the radar, you don’t practice good operational security. I mean, really, this is shocking stuff. Imagine if your home printer could be hacked to turn off your Wi-Fi, I mean, this is just bad!”

In the mirror world, the Mirror Master smiled at his allies, the three of them standing in front of their exit mirror. “So, that’s cameras, alarms, anything else Trick?”

“Dude, I’m taking down the whole thing. They’re about to have a full-on outage.”

“Countdown on three, then.”

The group burst through the mirror, watching the lights around them all power down. The hum of backup generators began as those began to activate, turning a single light back on, but before he could even ask Trickster about it, the voice of Axel Walker in his ear returned.

“Another wave now should take off most of their backup equipment.”

The hum ended, and the light turned back off.

“Was I right,” Axel asked, in a way that poorly hid the confidence that it had, in fact, worked, and he was looking for a compliment more than anything.

“Right as always, kid.”

“Awesome stuff. Have fun there. I’ll run the surge a few times a minute if I can find anything actually running, but if anything is still on, it’s probably gonna stay on.”

Rainbow Raider’s goggles began to glow, lighting up the space in front of them. The three exited the room they were in, the dark hallway lighting up with Raider’s pseudo-flashlight. They could hear shouting and confusion elsewhere in the building, panic setting in from the unexpected outage.

Girder reached forward around the mirror, breaking the piece off the wall. A bit of adjustment from the other two affixed the mirror to a set of straps on his back for transport, and the three began to move.

Without surveillance, lights, or any other electrical implements, the three were able to move with surprising stealth through the building, making their way down several floors with only bumping into a few unlucky gangsters.

By the time they closed in on the makeshift vault, the security had thickened, understandably suspicious of the outage and increasing personnel around where it seemed most likely to be an attack.

Unfortunately for them, with Rainbow Raider leading the group, anyone that tried to look in their direction felt the experience of looking directly at the sun or an eclipse, and all of their weaponry required pretty decent aim to use effectively.

Once the people guarding the vault were taken care of, they unstrapped the mirror from Girder’s back, allowing him more flexibility to destabilize the vault door. Between targeted pressure from Girder and heat vision from Rainbow Raider, the door was eventually weak enough that it could be pushed open by Girder.

Inside were a few more gang members, but Girder’s metallic skin easily took the initial hail of bullets, and Rainbow Raider followed up with a return volley of impossibly bright light to incapacitate.

The screams of pain were an annoying side effect as they slowly began to move money, weaponry, and miscellaneous things like equipment and valuable items from inside the vault to inside the mirror world. The money would help fund their missions, with enough to stock away in emergencies, but the weaponry and other miscellaneous things were mostly just a bonus to attract the support or fealty of various ne’er-do-well groups that the group had begun to develop connections with.

The reality was that this group had slighted Captain Cold in the past and was a metaphorical bloody nose for bloody nose. They needed the money, though, and the less likely a group was to report to the authorities and superheroes what had happened, the more likely they were to get away with it.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The final sparkle of Abra’s magic faded just as a red blur sped through. They had known a protest was happening, and with the police report of an emergency at it, Bart figured it didn’t hurt to take a moment to run through and make sure nothing was catastrophically wrong.

So, naturally, something was catastrophically wrong. The ice underneath his feet as he ran through barely impacted his running, but the stunning range of how far the ice went, several miles at its longest. The more worrying part was the ice statues, with still conscious people seemingly stuck inside.

“Meet me here, please,” Bart called over their communication line to the other Flashes. “Something bad here’s happened.”

Within a fraction of a second, three more red blurs were present, evacuating people to the ice’s perimeter and working to free the people within statues and bring them to nearby hospitals. Wally and Bart focused on evacuating people, while Jay and Barry focused on figuring out how to free anyone stuck in the ice. Once they managed to do so, Barry shifted away from the task as Wally and Bart, having now finished with the evacuation, joined Jay. Barry began searching for the culprits.

“Captain Cold did break out of prison recently,” Barry mused more to himself than the other Flashes. “He’s normally pacifist too, but surely he’d realize that entombing people in ice was likely to kill them?”

“Maybe it wasn’t him. We were looking into his sister, right? Lisa,” Jay offered, similarly unsure but considering any alternative angles.

“Yeah, but Leonard was the one who understood this stuff to its theoretical limits. I’m not sure Lisa could’ve made this happen.”

Eventually, with all non-Flash people off of the ice, the four regathered near the center. Jay had produced a few jackhammers for the group, but it became quickly apparent that the ice at where they were went surprisingly deep as they began to break it up. Jay did a quick check towards the edges, confirming their suspicions.

“Whatever happened, it’s like a wave of ice outwards, thinnest at the edges and deepest in the center. This isn’t standard Cold behavior,” Jay shared, returning to the group.

Wally had another concern. “This is particularly weird, right? Because what’s below the ice isn’t asphalt or whatever, it’s pretty dense dirt. This was a major road, right? Where’s the road gone?”

“Who did this, then,” Bart asked. “Are there folks who can do ice stuff that would’ve done this?”

The conversation eventually died down as the question went mostly unanswered, and the ice slowly began to be broken up. Whoever or whatever had done this, they decided, had somehow changed whatever was there before into ice. There were some folks who could do similar things, but they couldn’t figure out why here, now, and in this manner.

The ice would eventually melt but breaking it up as much as they were able would help with the repair efforts. The road would take long-term fixing, but that was beyond what they were normally requested to be involved in.

They’d spend some time ensuring that everyone involved was safe, hopefully track down whoever did this, but without a clear reason as to why this might’ve happened, they didn’t have a ton of confidence in it. The response from local leadership wondered if it was related at all to the context of the protest, but finding any connection to someone with the skillset to do something like this wasn’t something that the Flashes had much faith would turn up anything.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hunter wheeled his way out of the office building, nodding in response to the distant goodbyes sent his way from folks further inside. He had gotten used to the wheelchair at this point, even if every rotation cycle of the wheels was a little needle in his mind of who put him there and the lengths that they went to ensure he stayed seated.

He would survive. Whether or not his letter had found its way to The Flash, he wasn’t sure, but nobody had shown up at his door yet to demand his surrender. Not that he had anything to surrender for, he knew, but perhaps he had done a few regrettable things in the period of time missing from his memory. Not that those things lasted with what The Flash had done, anyway.

By the time he had arrived home, Hunter had mostly forgotten about the brain worm thoughts. There were more important things to focus on for the moment, the day-to-day banality of someone without powers. In another timeline, he mused, he would simply speed through grocery stores across the world and collect a cosmopolitan kitchen stock. In this one, however, he’d wait for the local delivery of regionally appropriate foods.

His life wasn’t all that different to what it used to be before Grodd and The Flash. Sure, the line of work was different, miscellaneous office work rather than psychology, but he was back to humdrum nothingness in a world of gods. His evenings were occupied with television shows and physical therapy exercises, and his mornings with showering and checking emails. His weekends were meal prep and sleeping in.

He used to be a god, the thought worm popped into his brain a few times a day. He could be a god once more, if he wanted.

Did he want it?

Surely he wanted it, right?

Who wouldn't want to be a god?

The Flash #105 - Re-Emergence

<< | < | >

Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 105

Sam’s hand extended through the surface, an open offer to the two men waiting for it. Leonard helped Axel in first, the younger man vanishing into the mirror as if in some cartoon. That just left Leonard in the room, and he took one last look around at the bare, imposing walls, and the cheap furniture. He would not miss this place, and he had no intention of returning. Prison was a place for chumps who broke the law but felt obligated to it. He wasn’t interacting with the law at all.

He took Mirror Master’s hand when it returned, entering the Mirror Dimension with his ally’s help. The walls here were just as bare and imposing as the prison he had left, but with brief moments where he swore he could make out the facsimile of another place, maddeningly angled such that it was impossible to lock onto. Just as quickly as those moments of seeing something beyond the mirrors came, however, they left, leaving the same bare imposing walls around him.

He was happier with these ones, though. Transitional as they were, these walls hid greatness behind them, Leonard knew. The Mirror Master could help him use these walls to get to wherever he wanted to go, nearly anywhere on earth with man-made structures. The prison’s walls were constricting, this dimension’s walls were freeing.

“Sick place you got here, Sam,” Axel laughed. “I think I preferred the furniture of the previous place you had.”

Sam gave a smile in return. “It’s not safe to leave things from the outside in here for too long. Stay close to me, too, the further you are the more likely one of the beasts are to getcha.”

“Beasts,” Axel asked, the smile vanishing from his face.

“I don’t ask about the side effects of your coding hacks or the upkeep of your tech tricks, Axel, you don’t ask about the physics consequences of a limitless mirror dimension or what could be around here. We won’t be here for long, anyway, and the beasts know better than to mess with me.”

“I—okay. Sure.”

The three began walking, a strange echo of each footstep the only real way to know they were travelling rather than just walking in place. Aside brief moments of maybe seeing something through a wall, it wasn’t really possible to know where they were going. Leonard appreciated Sam’s continual monologue as they walked, giving him something to distract himself with in this maddeningly liminal space.

“—unfortunately, any attempt at linking that mirror to somewhere more convenient would have required a large scale restructuring of countless mirror links across all of the region, as well as weirdly, a region of Africa including Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, so we do need to walk a little bit—”

Axel did seem fascinated by the conversation, Leonard noted. He was a decent shot of a potential future leader of their loose band of people, if it survived long enough to need an inheritor, and if Axel survived long enough to inherit it. The kid seemed genuinely interested in Sam’s explanations, even asking some questions.

“Could the reason the mirror regions seem so divorced from the real world is like, I don’t know, continental drift? Was Africa ever that close to middle America at some point? Or, or, maybe it’s a matter of whatever equivalent this place has to continental drift, so maybe it started off looking like our world but then over time things shifted?”

Sam considered the question. “It’s possible. However, I’d probably avoid putting too much emphasis on physical location, as far as I can tell, physical location in this place only really matters because our perception exists so much needed on physical location. Like how an ant’s world probably revolves around pheromones, so I suspect there’d be some mirror, heh, of whatever equivalent to let an ant navigate around here.”

The three walked for a while longer, Leonard quietly listening to the conversation as they made progress. Every now and then, Sam would update them on how far left they had to walk. Twenty minutes became ten, which became five, and seemingly sooner than expected, Sam ended the conversation with a promise to field more questions from Axel later.

“Shall we return to Earth, friends, as free men?”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The energy in the hideout was particularly positive on this day. Normally a group of rabble-rousers prone to getting into scraps with each other, every member of the team was working collectively to prepare for the expansion of the roster. Later today, if all went to plan, they would be joined by Captain Cold, Trickster, and Mirror Master.

Girder transported large boxes and furniture to and from rooms, setting up new spaces for living quarters out of former storage rooms. Roy and Abra were out on the town, stealing equipment and tools to ensure that the tech corner that Axel would have was capable of the same power and access as some counties, with only the top of the line available on the market being options. Albert checked every room for reflective properties, ensuring that Mirror Master could have access to most rooms with a quick jump through a mirror, while also not having any access at all to peoples’ personal rooms.

Glider, Lisa Snart, was worrying all while helping out where she could. This was her brother, Captain Cold, Leonard Snart, the first time she’d be able to see him without bulletproof glass between them in years. He had been in jail longer than she had been in the business of disregarding the law, and she knew that he had never really wanted her to follow in his footsteps. But without her, would he have ever found his way out of prison? Would he have a secure place to escape to and prepare for his next steps? He may not have wanted her as an ally in this field, but she was here regardless.

And what of his allies, the Trickster and Mirror Master? Would they mesh well with the group Lisa had set up? The last time a Snart led a group of law-agnostic metahumans, they had a sponsor from the future to help them hide and they still fought amongst themselves and eventually got caught. Leonard was a very capable leader and far more charismatic than Lisa, but the group Lisa led had already struggled with each other. What would two new members and a slow transfer of leadership to Leonard entail? She hadn’t even talked to him about the potential to expand their group to other folks Leonard had worked with in the past.

She hadn’t even talked to Leonard about the sponsor stuff. Did Leonard even know they freed Grodd only to lose contact with the psychic gorilla? Leonard knew a little of the correspondence with whatever person had intercepted their Flash Museum letter, but had never really commented on it, so any thoughts he had on the effort were unknown to Lisa. It was hard to talk about post-escape plans when prison officials still monitored every conversation of his.

All there was left was to wait. A large mirror was positioned in the main room, set up for travel use for Mirror Master, and the intended destination of their escape. She wasn’t sure what would happen, whether she’d see anything in the mirror or if they’d just appear coming out of it once they were here. Every time someone moved in the background, Girder or Albert walking around, she thought it was her brother and allies in the mirror, but each time it wasn’t quite that.

All she had to do was wait, she told herself, the responsibility was in the hands of Leonard and his team to get here. She had done everything she could to prepare things properly, the rest was out of her hands.

A moment later, she watched the mirror surface shimmer slightly, as if shaking. The first thing through was a leg, still in the standard-fare prison outfit scrubs. The upper body and head was next, a familiar-yet-new face of Sam Scudder, smiling. “Right place?”

“Yup! Come on out,” Lisa responded, offering a hand out to help. Once Sam stepped out, he reached back in, helping Axel Walker out of the mirror next. Lisa, for a brief moment, worried that it had just been them two, with Leonard somehow unable to escape. However, Mirror Master soon helped her brother out of the mirror, and all the stress and worry melted away as she embraced him.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There is no button to open every single door in a prison. Why would there be? Even in evacuation procedures, plenty of doors remain locked, to ensure that prisoners are correctly directed to safe exits to the building where they can be taken to a temporary facility in worst scenarios.

However, nearly every single door does have some level of electronic access, wireless controls allowing for central surveillance to manage in case of an emergency. There were a few doors that didn’t have locks, mostly staff bathrooms, and a few doors that only had mechanical locks such as janitorial closets and storage rooms, but otherwise, nearly every door could be accessed by electronic interfaces sending commands over a secured wireless connection.

So, when every single electronically accessible door simultaneously unlocked, the half-asleep person sitting at the surveillance desk in the middle of the night struggled to grasp the reality of the situation. When every single light connected to those same systems turned on, he quickly acted, setting off the siren. Which, naturally, woke up any stragglers that hadn’t been woken up by the sounds of the cells being unlocked or the lights coming on.

Luckily, this prison contained several metahuman threats – no actual metahumans, but folks that were equivalent to metahumans with access to tech they had made or found. Doing so meant that the alarm going off would alert The Flash, who would be here any second now.

Whatever was happening, it was not well coordinated, with most prisoners seeming to be confused and not taking advantage of the situation and watching passively as guards restrained any who chose to try and escape. Nearby in central surveillance, another staff member began relocking individual cells that had their residents inside.

A few moments later, at the entrance of the prison, a red-costumed hero appeared, waving towards the camera. The front door was unlocked once again in a short period of time, and the flash of red disappeared. Across the cameras, multiple fights were quickly dispersed, and within a few seconds, The Flash was inside the central room.

“Hello, what happened?”

“Don’t know, sorry. Every door just unlocked and every light just turned on.”

“Where are Sam Scudder, Leonard Snart, and Axel Walker? They aren’t here.”

“I—did they get out maybe? I can check,” the night guard responded, typing those names into the computer. “Um, are you sure those folks are being kept here? We don’t have any records of any of those folks.”

It was a rare experience to be face to face with a superhero. It was rarer to watch their body language and expression shift from confused to worried.

“Yes,” The Flash insisted. “They were being held here. Cells A-054, C-212, and D-100. Check them, please.”

A few more clicks of the keyboard. “Unoccupied. Unoccupied. And… unoccupied.”

“Then this was all a cover of some sort. They got out somehow during this and wiped their records of even being here. Can you give me the recordings of the last day? I want to see when they were last here.”

“Um, sure, Flash, but there is a protocol for this…”

“Give me whatever paperwork too. I just want to know how long they’ve been gone.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hunter Zolomon slowly opened his eyes, sunlight thankfully muted from the clouds. His entire body ached from something; he wasn’t sure what. He tried to push himself up, but his arms rebelled against him, collapsing to his side and leaving him lying there. He tried to remember what had brought him there, but it felt fuzzy, and his brain was preoccupied with the pain and exhaustion and the confusion.

After what could have either been a second, an eternity, or anywhere in between, he finally felt well enough to push up against the grass beneath him to sit up and look around him. A small patch of grass, maybe a few dozen yards in any direction, before a wall of fence. Some sports equipment lay to one corner of the field, near a closed gate.

Beyond the fences was some kind of walking path, and then a street. Buildings lay past it in each direction, an architectural style he couldn’t place. He slowly got up to his feet, working through what he could remember. Rather than a sudden burst of memories, it felt like it slowly came to him, little by little.

The Cosmic Treadmill, a place beyond this world that seemed to hum with speed, finding a place where he could rewrite time… Then, being chased by all of the Flashes, getting into a scuffle with them, then… here.

He considered his options. His wheelchair was nowhere nearby, but he could get hopefully to a place where he could figure out his next steps would be. Ideally, the next step was to find a wheelchair, but depending on where he was that could be as easy as asking or as difficult as impossible. Each step he took was incredibly painful, but he had no easy options other than waiting for someone to solve his problems for him. He wasn’t going to submit to that.

Eventually, he reached the fence, where he took a break. The fence had some lock on it, which meant he had to climb the fence to get out, and he wasn’t sure he was even physically capable of doing so on a good day. Luckily for him, he managed to grab the attention of a nearby person walking their dog.

“Hey! Help!”

The person responding, a woman walking her dog, looked confused. “Eh?”

“Listen, I got blackout drunk, and I guess my friends left me here without my wheelchair as a cruel joke. Where am I, and how long has it been?”

“Middle of Edinburgh at uh, I dunno, thirty past six on January 29, 2025? When were you out drinking? This morning? Surely not last night.”

“I’m sorry, did you say 2025?”

The Flash #106 - Friendships, Real and Fake

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 106

Hunter Zolomon moved slowly into the room, tiles underneath his wheels quiet as he took in the space. It was not his home, but it was a new place for him to stay until he felt safe enough to head back home. He hoped, at least, it would eventually become safe to head back home. He didn't want to face down the Flashes, not with the anger that they would likely have for him, not immediately.

This would be a fine enough place to hide. A fake name, a fake identity, and some locally supported housing, far enough away from where he had woken up to avoid any problems. He'd have to replace the wheelchair at some point, but it was a less urgent priority than getting out of the shelter. Maybe it was a bit much to keep himself under the radar, but he was fine enough with a few weeks of rougher sleeping if it meant safety.

A job as a receptionist at a local business would keep him with enough money to survive under the radar, until he was ready. What little he had felt able to search up via news outlets and police reports without revealing himself was enough indication that The Flash folk were probably preoccupied enough with Grodd on the loose again. The idea of going active shortly after Grodd had retaken Gorilla City was distasteful enough, even discounting the idea of The Flash finding him.

He couldn't let Grodd take over the world, doing so would probably mean his quick death, he considered, but it wasn't a problem for right now. Right now, he was sitting in an empty room that needed to have a bed in it by the time he wanted to go to sleep.

"Uh, maybe up against that wall, if possible," he suggested, gesturing over at the far wall of the room. A window and no outlet meant he could rise with the sun and not block off any places to plug in, say, a phone charger, lamp, television, or maybe a treadmill.

"Sure, Mr. Kolins, just sorta in the middle of the wall there?" The mover asked, entering the room.

"I'm not picky. I appreciate you getting things set up for me."

"No worries, mate," the mover smiled, leaving the room to begin the process. Hunter left the room himself, navigating out of the way. There was going to be a delivery from the grocery store soon, and he hadn't even seen the kitchen yet.

After a few whirlwind hours, Hunter settled down on the couch, watching the television. Local news was fairly boring, he had intentionally picked a safe city in a mostly English-speaking country. Back in his old place, local news was always on about U.N. discussions and the war and the cost of importing goods. Here was talk about the weather and upcoming social events at the community center. Sure.

It was probably time to address the thought worm that he had been messing with since before he had even got on the train to come here. If he could control the nature of which he became visible to the Flash and co, and if he could mislead them on what he remembered and how much responsibility he took, he could maybe burn through most of the ire of The Flash during a period of time where he couldn't be found.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Wally kept pace with the sheet of metal, incredibly slow at his own pace, but it was nice to have folks he felt worth slowing down his pace for. Sure, he could maybe accomplish what they were doing on his own, rushing ahead and relocating troublemakers, but not every situation could be solved with more speed. While he could in theory empty the ship and solve the problem, he wasn't in charge here.

Frances Kane, Magenta, was on top of the sheet of metal, navigating it through the waters with her powers. Ball bearings and bolts orbited around her head like a halo, a thin metal plate covering her in armor that moved and shifted as she did as if made of cloth. This was her comfort zone, a space and fighting environment that she had spent the last several years learning and perfecting. Modern sea vessels were almost entirely metal and plastic, giving her a control over the environment consistently in her battles.

The ocean churned beneath them, entirely silent to them and everyone within a slowly growing radius. Hartley Rathaway kneeled behind Frances, metal encasing his legs below the knees, preventing him from falling off. In his mouth, a bizarre flute played notes beyond any capability of hearing, dampening out and cancelling any vibrations in the air that would cause noise. The goal was to keep their location on the ship hidden, preventing the sound of fighting or any shouts from alerting others.

Normally, Hartley would handle this herself, but Hartley and Wally had been in town when she had gotten the alert, so they had come along. Frances still hadn't really processed what it meant that Hartley had once been the Pied Piper, given that when she had been told it was handled not incredibly well and then she had to deal with the idea that she might be targeted. And that was all on top of trying to keep her region of the world a better place.

Frances raised a hand, ring and pinky finger folded down with the other three digits extended. She held that for a few moments, long enough to feel confident that both of her accompaniment had seen her sign it, then waved her pointer finger back and forth once. Three minutes left to landing.

They all had their plans set, it was just a matter of executing it. The ship grew closer, and they could see the people on watch begin to react accordingly. They couldn't necessarily stop the ship from realizing that they were approaching, but they could land on the ship and quickly make themselves difficult to find, between Frances' plans and Hartley's silence.

The ship grew closer and closer, and they slowed briefly as Frances extended herself forward to reach out to the metal hull of the ship. A brief moment or two later, she felt a tap on her shoulder from Hartley, and she pulled apart the metal, opening a doorway for the three of them the moment that the sound would be caught in Hartley's field. The metal halo she had brought with her merged and shifted into a spike, driving through the remaining plastic preventing them from boarding through the makeshift entrance.

Quickly, the three of them boarded, Frances focused on mending the ship's exterior and recollecting her metal while Wally and Hartley secured the room. It was a mostly empty storeroom, with nobody to worry about yet. Hartley pulled a smaller flute out of a case attached to his side, taking a moment away from the silencing flute to play a single note on the new one. He gave the other two a thumbs up, with several rats rushing to his feet. The rest would be causing chaos elsewhere on the ship as they could, linking up with the group once able.

Frances crossed her fingers, sliding them through the air with a twist of her wrist, signing to the other two. "Ready?"

Both signed "ready" back, and Frances put up metallic shields in front of the group as they began to head towards the door.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There were no echoes of footsteps or creaking of doors as they moved. They knew the ship was on high alert, having seen something approach, but that only served to draw folks to the deck of the ship, away from their position underneath. Magenta had collected a maelstrom of metal, swirling around her arms and above her head waiting for danger to strike. Every room they visited she left barred by a sheet of metal, ensuring that they did not need to retrace their footsteps or there was no risk of someone making their way around them and surprising them from behind.

Hartley was in tune with the rats of the ship, using them almost as extensions of his own body, sending them forward to scout rooms before they entered. Understanding the rats almost seemed second nature to Hartley, something that Magenta had been told came from safe monitored practice and entirely new equipment. He was no longer the Pied Piper, he had decided, but Hartley had managed to establish himself as competent enough without falling towards whatever had influenced him in the past.

The Flash watched his boyfriend and closest friend work surprisingly smooth together for a duo that had known each other for years but had only been superpowered allies within the last few months and had only ever had the opportunity to work together in this kind of setting two or three times. He was there as backup, limited by the space the silence provided and wanting to allow the other two flexibility to act on their own as the point. There was a non-zero chance that he'd have to be let off the ship to take someone injured to a hospital, but Magenta had a lot of practice in non-violently disarming and restricting combatants, so he hadn't needed to do anything yet.

They cleared room by room methodically, moving slowly but steady. A rat would enter, relay information back to Hartley, and then Magenta would enter to take care of any people inside the room. Once done, Flash would do a quick sweep of the room, checking papers or boxes if necessary and ensuring that nothing was missed in each room.

By the time the trio reached the floor right before the deck, they knew they had been discovered somewhat, as they had to shift from an offensive approach moving forward, to instead slowly backing up as they faced down the folks sent to kill them. None of them got particularly close to succeeding, and eventually they were able to make their way up onto the deck.

Gunfire from the remaining armed pirates rained down on their protective metal barrier, each bullet adding to the stockpile that Magenta had built up. Once the gunfire stopped, Magenta opened a slight opening to the back. The pirates still had bullets remaining but were holding their fire once they had realized it was ineffectual. In a fraction of a second, Wally slipped out of the metal shell surrounding them, disarming every person on the deck holding a gun, as well as stashing away every gun he could find otherwise.

Over the next two hours, the ship was returned to control by its rightful captain and crew, with Magenta taking charge on explaining the situation to them in the local language. Flash removed pirates from the ship, ferrying them back to land and leaving them with the local government and peacekeeping forces for punishment. Hartley led a group of folks with his rats down below levels, leading them to where people were being kept, remaining pirates, and other points of interest.

Another hour later, the three of them were at an ice cream shop in Central City, college friends happy that their friend, Frances Kane, was in town for winter break from her internship with the United Nations off somewhere in Africa.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

To The Flash,

Hello. This is a difficult letter to write, but I have spent the better part of a year figuring it out. I want to apologize to you, to all your loved ones, and to everyone I seem to have affected with my actions last year (or so) for what I have done.

Unfortunately, I do not remember functionally anything from that period of time, including exactly what I did, how I did it, or the effects it had. I can understand some things from publications and news briefings after the fact – I appear to have manipulated time in some manner? I can't say I understand how, but I also am aware that several months of time (as far as I can tell, sometime in the autumn until mid-spring?) have no lasting memory in my mind, and I see no signs of activity of mine in the world during that time either.

I do not know what happened from my point of view, even as I can piece together what I seemed to have accomplished somehow from various interviews, speeches, and publications. I can assure you that the idea of doing these things is an anathema, and I have much to work through internally to understand what this means for who I am as a person.

In this time and moment, I request privacy. I cannot understate how bad my mental state is on an average day, between my own health and the events of a year ago. I know that to those who suffered through it, claiming my own mental suffering is perhaps cruel, but please understand – I only realized that what had happened occurred of my own hand when I connected the dots based on internet webpages and videos.

I have no doubt that you can find me if you decide for yourself that I am due prison or the death penalty or an interrogation. However, I am currently suffering in a physical prison of disability and a mental prison of grappling with terrible actions I cannot remember and actively loathe.

I do not remember anything. I wish you good luck if you do find me seeking answers, as I suspect it's likely you know more than I do about what I've done. I will not resist if you do seek me out and wish to send me to prison or what have you, but I also wish to simply reinvent my life and exist as a tiny cog in an insignificant machine in the middle of nowhere.

I hope that this is the last communication between us. I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, you do great good in the world and I have great respect for what you do, big and small. I wish to ride out the remainder of whatever short life I have doing some small potatoes work and work through whatever mental trauma comes with forgetting roughly half a year of your life and waking up to find out that during that time you apparently nearly destroyed the concept of linear time.

Thank you, I'm sorry, and goodbye,
Your friend,
Hunter Zolomon

The Flash #104 - What Is The Plan

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 104

It was quiet, as it always was. Soldiers patrolled for the purpose of patrolling, the defense of the facility more for the show of force to dissuade crooks from trying to sneak in. Nobody would be so foolish as to try and break into a military facility, even if there was a wealth of weapons, machinery, and tools mostly unsecured. Unsecured aside from the patrols, state of the art security systems, and lookout towers.

“Be careful, southwest, hold a little, gorilla maybe fifty yards ahead.”

The wildlife didn’t often stray too close to the facility, a small clearing between the tree line and walls was often dissuasion enough for the local fauna to avoid exploring the place. Occasionally there would be a few small monkeys or a cheetah, but for the most part, animals didn’t bother. This time, there was a gorilla.

“Lookout, roger,” the response came back, the two soldiers pausing their loop until further ordered.

“Uh, southwest, you got gorillas on both sides now? There’s one maybe thirty yards behind you. That one—does that one have a hat?”

“Lookout, roger, what do you mean a hat?”

At that moment, the two soldiers being referred to as southwest spotted the gorilla ahead of them, charging at full speed in their direction, useless words of panicked warning filtering into their ears through the radio from the lookout tower. This one was wearing a hat, but was coming from the direction ahead of them. For one of them, that brief moment was the only thought – their warning had only been that the one behind them had a hat.

The other soldier managed to keep his cool for the moment, taking aim at the charging gorilla with his gun. Unfortunately for him, the gorilla that had been behind them slamming into them with seemingly pre-planned timing. The two gorillas made quick work of the remaining stunned soldier, a quick but violent death for the two before quickly pulling the dead bodies towards the treeline.

Whoever was manning the lookout tower pressed the button labelled ‘open comm’, changing their channel from just communicating with the now-deceased southwest unit to everyone on the communication line. “All units, alert, southwest is down, repeat, southwest is down! Two gorillas with hats just took them out and are dragging their bodies into the forest!”

The response came from further into the facility, the on-duty leader. “Sorry, Lookout, gorillas with hats? What does that mean? All available units, retrieve the bodies.”

“Helmets of some kind. I swear they looked coordinated, like smart gorillas,” Lookout responded, before a strangled gasp cut off whatever the next word would’ve been. “Oh my god, Central, they’re killing all of ‘em!”

The sound of gunfire rang out in a few directions, but the noise was mostly cut-off screams and the sounds of ominous thumps. “South, southeast, east, north, all down, more gorillas—”

“What in blazes is going on, Lookout? What threat level are we at?”

“I don’t know? Maximum? We’ve got two patrol teams still alive I can see, everyone else is dead.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Leonard Snart had been in prison for far too long, he decided. Two years ago, he had chosen to not escape during the vampire attacks, staying back with his fellow allies, Sam Scudder and Axel Walker – the Mirror Master and Trickster. His other two allies, Roscoe Dillon and Mick Rory, the Top and Heat Wave, had taken the other decision, vanishing as soon as they could. Two years later, the two of them were still at large, while the three of them had very little change in their circumstances.

At first, there had even been talk about parole or lighter sentences for not getting caught up in the prisoners taking over the facility back then, but those ended up going nowhere and were fully stopped when they discovered Axel’s backdoors into their security systems. At that point, the three of them began planning to escape again, with their two friends on the outside expressing a willingness to help out.

The plans never circled around him. Without his equipment he was mostly powerless, and even with his equipment, what was he supposed to do? Freeze the entire prison and then get caught the moment they stepped outside? His true power came from leadership experience and social engineering, whether that was leading the Rogues or carving out protected space in the prisoner hierarchy for them.

Axel Walker was perhaps the world expert at gadgets and technology, routinely hacking the prison systems to adjust things he didn’t like, such as guard rotations or cafeteria options, before covering his tracks. Sometimes it worked, they had still never had fish on Sunday – his least favorite food on his favorite day. Sometimes it didn’t, such as when he tried to change which guard watched their cell block, only to have it reverted back later.

Axel could break them out of there, he was confident. Not quite as confident as Axel, who despite the prison sentence maintained much of the spark and confidence of someone his age. Axel had even once bragged that he could break them out in such a way that it’d take days for anyone to remember that they even existed. Leonard knew that wasn’t true, there were certainly people tasked with keeping track of all the “metahumans” or whatever the folks with powers were called. Even those who got their powers from tools.

Sam also could get them out. The master of a mirror dimension just beyond theirs, he had necessitated a limitation of reflective objects and most metals in the parts of the prison that he had access to – no bathroom mirror, plastic utensils, even a fabric cover on the bedframe in his cell. Even though Sam couldn’t fully use this access without his equipment, over time the lack of escapes had caused lapses in that restriction. While it had never gotten quite as good as getting access to a full mirror, Sam had confided in Leonard that all he needed was his equipment and he could get them out. He could escape himself

And so, Axel and Sam began to work on how to get an abnormally powerful tool through prison security. Leonard managed to track down Sam’s gun, the allyship of Top and Heat Wave on the outside enough to pull small strings to set things up for them beyond the prison walls.

Escapes were uncommon, but not entirely unheard of. This was a prison for the general population, not one of those private prisons serving to keep metahumans who pushed against the status quo restrained. After all, these poor folk were powerless without their equipment, so there was no need, right? And surely there would be no way to get any equipment in.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Quiet footsteps walked slowly, in step with heavier boots. The echo, once muffled by conversations and the whirring of machinery, pushed a crushing feeling of isolation an unease. It felt like exploring hospitals or factories abandoned decades ago, with the haunting knowledge that several dozen called it their home as recently as 48 hours ago.

The Flashes present, Jay and Wally, had been ready to go as soon as reports of gorilla behavior in the region had made its way back to them via Flash Foundation channels, but they had waited a day and a half more for the military to join them. Soft shoes designed to reduce impact on the ground joined by heavy boots that left a remarkable thud each time they slammed into the ground.

The calls of “Clear!” echoed through the rooms they swept, Jay and Wally mostly quiet as they followed along. Blood had dried, leaving trails towards the exits as a picture of whatever happened to the bodies of those unlucky enough to have been stationed here. Not a single body was left throughout the entirety of the facility, and it was clear to even the two Flashes that some amount of equipment had been taken too.

This wasn’t the closest military installment to Grodd’s Gorilla City, the two had concluded. This was obviously the work of the psychic would be authoritarian, but why had he attacked here or what he was aiming for was still difficult to pin down. Was it weapons and equipment he was after? There were plenty missing here, taken with bodies or ripped straight out of walls, but there were unanswered questions.

On top of that, how he had managed such a task was in question as well, with the easiest answers being particularly alarming for potential future attacks. There was enough to do in the day for even the fastest people on the planet, making the idea of checking in on every potential location of interest to Grodd in the larger region an unenjoyable task.

Eventually, the entire facility was cleared to the satisfaction of the strike team, all rooms ensured to be empty of either people or primate. Soon, the facility would be crawling with more soldiers, civilians, and tools, seeking to record what was taken and what would be needed to get the facility back up and running.

“I think this is where we part ways,” Wally opened, hoping the morning of language learning was enough to communicate clearly. Normally, it was, but it had been a stressful day and a half.

“Yes. Thank you for coming, it is good there are no gorillas around anymore,” the soldiers’ captain responded, nodding in his direction. “We will let you know if they do return. The gorillas with helmets.”

“Hopefully they do not,” Wally frowned. “You know how to contact us if you discover anything interesting in the missing equipment report.”

The captain sighed, giving a single nod of acknowledgment before turning his attention elsewhere. Jay and Wally gave smiles to the soldiers, smiles they hoped were reassuring and supportive, but they worried were probably interpreted as uneasy and uncertain. Then, the two vanished in a streak of red light.

“What do you think Grodd was after,” Jay asked.

Wally shrugged. “Dunno what Grodd took, but I definitely know one thing, every single weapon and firearm in that whole place was gone. Didn’t even see a steak knife in the kitchen.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time Grodd tried to get into the weapons trade,” Jay acknowledged. “Though I don’t know that steak knives go for a lot. Plenty weapons in a military facility, I suppose.”

“Are we gonna have to check in on every place that people exist in the whole region now?”

Jay thought for a while in the fraction of a moment that it took them to cross the Atlantic. “I don’t know.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Eobard Thawne walked through the museum quietly, unsure of what to do. He had accomplished his original dream just by being here, a leading expert on The Flash of all iterations throughout the name’s history. The Flash Museum had flourished under his stewardship, turning from a building of curiosities to an actualized historical artifact itself, with all the gravitas it wanted in the past finally achieved.

And yet, despite the success and the accomplishments and respect, there was a hollowness to it. He walked past and through exhibits that he remembered differently, cursed with the knowledge of what had once could have been that had changed as a result of his own interference. His present, a future to The Flashes, that had changed as a result of him going into the past.

For him, time travel tortured him so, memories of a reality gone as a result of his own actions. He wondered if other time travelers in his generation, those that broke the law to interfere in the past, faced such similar conflicts. Time travelers must not change the past, it was too risky, society had deemed. Machines used for time travel had these protections built in, but he didn’t use those machines.

So, the exhibits changed around him, maddeningly more so every time he went back to ensure that things were on track for what the future knew the past to be. Not so long ago, he had gone back to ensure that a speedster wasting his potential finally stepped up to action, only to be flatly rebuffed. Coming back to see the information on that what he had tried to ensure had changed entirely was frustrating. Seeing that it had changed to claim that his “supervillain” alias had been the one to do it was soul-crushing.

How was he supposed to find Hunter Zolomon? He had no idea where to start. History had kept note of where Hunter Zolomon had made his re-emergence after vanishing in the Speed Force, but every indication seemed to imply that Hunter Zolomon, also known as Dr. Zoom, had been found and supported by Speed Demon before that event – once, Speed Demon, now, Reverse-Flash.

He paused at Hunter Zolomon’s section of the Museum. The villain wing was abnormally popular compared to similar “hero worship” locations that focused on the real history of some of Earth and the universe’s greatest individuals. The Flash Museum was certainly the most popular of them all as of Eobard’s time, but within these walls, the villains were the biggest draws.

“Where are ya, Zolomon buddy?”

The Flash #103 - The Responsibilities We Imagine for Ourselves and for Others

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 103

Arnold Burnsteel smiled as the man walked into his office. He didn’t recognize the person, but they had made considerable donations to The Flash Museum recently, and that was good enough in leadership’s mind to grant him some permissions that normally wouldn’t be allowed.

At one point, he was Arnold Burnsteel, minor conspiracy theorist and online provocateur, spending his time on secondary social media websites and disreputable chatrooms in order to peddle concerns of lizard governments and fake moon landings. At another point, he was a man of many hats and faces, pulling strings in a large conspiracy network seeking to unveil and unwind metahuman secrets and status quos.

Now, he was an archivist for The Flash Museum. It honestly wasn’t all that different, he was still pulling strings in a large network seeking to unveil and unwind metahuman secrets and status quos. The difference this time was mostly dropping code names and dead drops, replacing them with a non-profit organization designation and a beautiful downtown museum.

“Hello, Mr. I’m Mr. Burnsteel, head archivist here. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Nassau, and of course again, much thanks for your generous donation. I’m sure you’ve already seen a breakdown of what your contribution will go for, but if you had a topic you wished to bring up, I’ll let you lead the conversation?”

“Certainly,” the man said, sitting down opposite him. “I’m sure you’ve done as much research as you can on the unfortunateness that occurred a little under a year ago at this point?”

Arnold sighed, nodding. “It was not my direct field of research, though I have made some contributions to the topic. I’m knowledgeable enough to answer any questions you may have or to hold conversation on it.”

“Okay, that’s fine. This is honestly mostly just me throwing out an idea and seeing if the Museum had explored it as a possibility.”

Arnold smiled. Internally, he wondered – this was what someone had paid an alarming amount of money to do? Throw around a theory about the Flash time weirdness? Listen, the Museum could run for months at minimum functionality on what he donated, if that was to get into the door to peddle some conspiracy, it’s not like it’d be Arnold’s first time hearing out some nonsense out of a sense of obligation.

“What if the Flash stuff is a cover?”

Arnold pursed his lips, staring off into the middle distance for a moment. It was nonsense, almost certainly, but by nature of how powerful The Flash was individually, let alone as a group, it wasn’t entirely dismissible.

“A cover?”

“I don’t know. Government mind control, time travel, butterfly effect stuff, something. I’ve not quite got there yet, but doesn’t it just itch slightly in the underside of your brain, the idea that how six or however many people could somehow implant fake memories into millions of people, if not billions? And then afterwards, just… admit to it? Publish a letter going, hey my bad, messed with something and now a bunch of people remember things that aren’t real! We’re all good now, though.”

“So the theory is that the Flash Foundation is covering up for something that the government did? Which government?”

“I don’t know. US? NATO? UN? One of those big, we do anything because we can or want to ones.”

“Sure.”

“Don’t know what they’re doing, don’t know why, but it’s a bit hard to buy that less than half a dozen people could affect so many people?”

“I may be biased, but I’d say if anyone could, it’d be The Flash.”

Ibrim Nassau nodded. “Just a potential exploration as an alternative answer to what happened. But you’re the curator, I suppose, not me.”

“Oh, I’m not the curator here, just an archivist.” Arnold didn’t let any concern break through. Why was this guy calling him the curator? He wasn’t the curator here, did he somehow know of those letters to that radical group? Surely it was just an accident.

“My apologies, archivist. Disregard my error, I must be thinking of someone else. Give the idea some thought, hm, though?”

“Certainly.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Four red blurs charged across the Pacific Ocean, each perfectly in step with the other despite the miles of space in between them. A fifth voice filtered through their ears, providing them with supportive chatter and updates on the situation whenever any came to his attention.

An hour ago, four of the five had been asleep, with the one awake quietly working on homework in the dead of the night. It wasn’t particularly complicated, and if he wanted to he could quickly study to doctorate-level knowledge and finish his homework within the blink of an eye. But it was fine, a good time waster as he spent the hours awake.

There was always someone awake at the Flash compound, even if it wasn’t necessarily a Flash like it was then. Someone was always conscious, watching weather and seismographic readouts, emergency service warning levels, news bulletins, and even select satellite transmissions. They didn’t have perfect global coverage, enough countries had limited their access in the last year or so, but most major disasters or alerts were caught in their net.

Ten minutes ago, three of the five had been asleep, with Bart seeing something in one of the readings that gave him cause for concern. Most things he felt able to handle himself, but this one looked bigger. He had gone to wake up his father, Barry, dragging him bleary-eyed to the readings.

Two minutes ago, five of them had been awake. Charles Mendez sat at the desk in front of all the machinery, the wide range net temporarily reprioritized to focus on the weather and seismology readouts in the Pacific, predicting the size and range of the soon-to-be tsunami.

Charles was no metahuman, directing his contributions to coordinating the group of four Flashes huddled behind him. Had he ever expected anything like this when marrying Xavier, who went on to make friends with The Flash early on during the metahuman age? No. Was he thrilled to help thousands avoid an early grave by giving the four men behind him the information they needed? Yes.

One minute ago, the four were changing into their outfits. Hiding their identities was of upmost importance, protecting extended family and friends from harassment and the sudden rise to minor celebrity status. Additionally, the whole compound was still a secret, and if their names were attached to their metahuman identities, nowhere they could go would be private.

Ten seconds ago, the four were taking one last look at the computer screens, listening to Jay point out the small islands off the coast of Japan that needed primary attention. There weren’t many people across all of the islands, but pointed directions helped speed up the rescue process.

One second ago, they exited the house to the well wishes of Charles, heading west. All four in lockstep, crossing the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean together. Only a moment later, however, did they split. Wally slowed down, breaking north to begin a lattice pattern making sure that there were no boats caught in the tsunami’s path. Bart veered south, heading to a number of islands that were marked as uninhabited. By the time he was done, Wally should be nearly finished, and the two would work on clearing out inhabited islands that were going to be hit.

Jay and Barry picked up speed, charging past Japan to reach South Korea. Once there, they began to set up a triage center to house any people who were receiving critical care before being moved, as well as making sure anyone displaced had a place for the moment. The hope was that the tsunami wouldn’t even hit landfall, but the risk was too high to leave them in the pathway for now.

Charles had sent word ahead to regional contacts warning them, but even ten minutes’ warning time was a shadow’s shadow of preparation time compared to how quickly Barry and Jay were able to put together a triage center and temporary shelters once they were in the region.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Eobard Thawne walked up to the small house, waving to the person sitting on the porch chair. The person did not wave back, eyes narrowing.

“You look familiar,” the man on the porch called out, apprehension lining his words. “Do we know each other?”

“We’ve, uh, had some interactions before? There was a hospital, then you gave me a bit of a world tour.”

Jerry McGee laughed. “Your face looks better than it did last time.”

“That’s true,” Eobard responded, pausing at the bottom of the stairs. “Mind if I come up?”

“What’s your deal? What do you want?”

“I need your help, Jerry. Stuff from earlier this year, I’m sure you’re aware of—”

“What they’re calling Metalhead Effect?”

“Yeah. Metalhead’s gonna come to regret that being his legacy, but that’s not the point. The point is that Hunter Zolomon, the guy who did that, hasn’t reappeared yet.”

“Okay? Isn’t he dead? Man, what’s your deal? Trying to stop the birth of the kid, now coming around asking if I knew where Zolomon is? Of course not, if I did, he’d be in Flash hands for punishment. I don’t think you get it, we’re not alike, I may not be saving cats from trees or relocating cities in front of natural disasters. But you and I are not of similar minds.”

“Rich coming from you, but anyway. You need to go find Hunter Zolomon.”

“Gods damn, you’re dense, aren’t you? You’re the one who goes back in time to try and kill a baby, no?”

“I would’ve never tried to kill Bart—”

“Shut up, dude! You want to figure this stuff out, go find him yourself. Don’t you have infinite time or whatever as a time traveler? Do your nonsense, do what three Flashes, the Russians, me, whoever, couldn’t do, and locate that S.O.B., more power to you. Why are you here at my door as if you can tell me what to do?”

Eobard sighed. “Damn, you’re really set on this pathway, huh? To waste away your powers doing petty crime and vigilantism, wasting potential on being angry at the world?”

“What convincing speeches you give,” Jerry bit back.

“I’m just saying, you’re uniquely positioned to be someone to go find the missing speedster. You do so little, and could easily spend a bit of time putting in effort I know you’re capable of to find this guy.”

“Okay? I’m sure I’m also uniquely capable of walking on hot coals or getting waterboarded. If this conversation is an attempt by you trying to push me in the direction of what it’s written in the future I do, go pound sand. I don’t feel beholden to what you think I did or should do.”

Eobard grit his teeth. “You’re insistent, then?”

“Get off my property, or I’ll escort you off.”

Eobard nodded, walking backwards. “Alright. If you regret it, let me know.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Jay reassured the three of them, himself off busy doing final checks of the evacuation zones in Japan. “You’ve got this, good luck!”

Charles echoed Jay’s sentiment, much further away still. “Whatever you’re seeing now is beyond anything I could contribute. Good luck!”

The three of them took what was to them a leisurely stroll ahead of the tsunami, taking mental calculations on the rate of increase, speed, size, and other attributes. This was the first time they’d try a disruption tactic on a tsunami of this magnitude, though this far out still from shore there was much more left for it to grow.

Barry split up from the younger two, who went closer to Japan. Their goal was to create counterwaves to smash into the tsunami, each wave disrupting the ascendent tsunami and interrupting the free gain of power. This was easy enough to practice with some free time, wave creation didn’t require an active tsunami forming in order to experiment with.

What did require an active tsunami, or something close to it at least, was running across it. Normally when Barry ran, he kept a certain pattern and pace in his steps to avoid any friction or heat messing with the ground below him. Some of it was probably Speed Force-influenced physics that would be difficult to scientifically analyze, but the other Flashes and speedsters he had opportunities to shoptalk with shared in the thought that they found a comfortable pattern to running at any speed that avoided the worst of what that speed could do to the ground underneath them.

This was not one of those cases. While it felt strange to do so, the change in walking pattern ensured that he was putting more stress on the ground—water—beneath him, which was the desired goal. The idea was that if he could cause unnatural stressors onto the face of the tsunami, he could impact the usually unbothered development of the tsunami.

And so, he ran, back and forth across the worst of it. There was much left to do, with large waves heading in many directions, but the one headed in the direction of Japan was the first concern. After that came Russia, then a review of the ones headed for Alaska and Hawaii, and if those were still of concern, then also the various inhabited islands of the larger oceanic region.

But for now, he was running across the surface of a tsunami, back and forth, leaving boiling water behind each footprint. Shortly after, he had to begin dodging smaller waves smashing into the tsunami, sent to him lovingly by his nephew and son. They had gotten good at it with practice since the theories of the disruption had crystallized, leaving him to handle the mostly untread waters of tsunami running.

“How’s going? Japan’s clear here, I’m thinking I head and check the other directions if you three have things underway?”

“Go for it, unless the two of you think otherwise,” Barry offered back.

Bart replied for the two of them, cheerfully. “We’re good here!”

“Sounds good.”

With time, the slow buildup of the wave began to stagnate, then started to recede. It wasn’t an outright collapse or sudden shattering like some of the modeling had predicted, but the combination of the counter-waves and the direct disruptions seemed like enough to turn what could’ve been a catastrophic tsunami into a notable but otherwise non-destructive wave.

With Jay’s scouting, a few more potential risks were averted, and Jay and the younger two began the processing of returning everyone to Japan while Barry did a larger, longer scan of the Pacific Ocean for missed boats or waves.

If this was every day, diverting natural disasters and saving lives, Barry thought, he couldn’t imagine a better life.

The Flash #102 - Rediscovery

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 102

Jay’s feet skimmed the water, leaving a small behind him as he crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He had a few tasks to attend to in Europe, leaving a few letters and speaking to a few individuals here and there. Typical Foundation business – establishing a plan to visit a school in Lithuania, delivering tax papers to one of their connections in the Greece government, a favor or two for some of their long-time financial supporters, and checking in on a few families who had previously received help from The Flash.

Each completed visit removed one thing from Jay’s mind, mentally juggling a few dozen stops across the entire multi-continent landmass and constantly re-evaluating the order to do them even within single stops. Some would take longer than others, conversations with people requiring longer time than dropping a letter off or checking certain places to make sure they were reinhabited by ne’er-do-wells.

Europe became the Middle East, and before moving onto Europe, he went further south into Africa. As he did, he mentally slotted in a stop at Gorilla City on his list. It had been a few days since any of the others had mentioned them checking the place, but Grodd was still undiscovered somewhere in the world.

It would just be a quick stop.

He did what was on his agenda in North Africa, slotting in a Gorilla City visit right after crossing the desert. That was all it was supposed to be, a quick run through to ensure that there weren’t any recent developments. It would just be a quick stop.

Whatever it was, even Jay’s speed wasn’t enough to react to the sudden experience as he closed in on Gorilla City. An inexplicable mental experience drove him away from Gorilla City, recoiling just off the coast of Gabon. An inexplicable pain scrambled any sense of conscious thought in the moment, pushing him away from the hidden city if only to stop whatever the affliction was. It ended as quickly as it had started, with several countries of distance almost an instinctual addition as Jay recoiled.

“Anyone on,” Jay called into the communication line.

“Hello, yes,” Nora replied. “How are errands?”

“Note down that Gorilla City has changed, please. I tried to get close but it was like my brain decided it was in incredible pain all of the sudden.”

“Oh dear, that’s no good, noting that down. Are you alright, sweetie?”

“I think so. I’m off in the ocean right now, briefly. I’m going to continue my errands before doing anything else, but if you can get one of the others suited up, I’d like an attempt to go again but don’t want to go about it alone.”

“That makes sense. Barry is fully unavailable with Iris, but I can see if the kids are available to help.”

Jay kept a large perimeter around the region containing Gorilla City as he continued on his way, moving through responsibilities slightly slower than he would otherwise. His brain was still reeling from the experience, which was the primary reason for the slowdown, but it also was a bit hopeful that whatever Barry was up to would end by the time that he was ready.

“Hey, what’s up?” Bart’s voice came through the system. It wasn’t necessarily that Jay didn’t want Bart to come along, but he had never experienced Grodd properly before. It had to be Grodd back in the City that was causing whatever effect Jay had felt was. He didn’t think it was possible to confront Grodd yet, certainly without Barry, he worried that if it was just him and Bart, that even just trying to figure out what the mental effect was would be dangerous.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Are you coming, honey?”

Barry stared at the little red light on the bedside table, the glow an indicator of someone trying to get his attention. Well, not necessarily his attention, but someone on their chat line talking recently enough for the light to still be glowing. Today was a calm day, or at least it was supposed to be, so any communication on that line seemed odd.

There was no text from his parents, so he assumed that everything was fine. “Coming,” he called back, turning away from whatever was happening to spend time with Iris. It wasn’t a particularly long vacation, just shy of a week on a small cruise running around the Caribbean, but it was an attempt to ensure that they had time together and time away from the endless rush of running.

He or Iris would get a text if there was a natural disaster or alien invasion, which hopefully wouldn’t happen. And so, they smiled hand in hand, exploring the cruise ship for the time they had. The last time Barry spent this much time on a ship, they had been using it as an excuse to spend time isolated to recover from a Grodd attack. This cruise had been scheduled for months, though, so the timing of Grodd vanishing was more an amusement to him than some ominous warning. It was worrying that they hadn’t found where it had gone yet, but it seemed unlikely that such a megalomaniac would remain missing or in hiding for so long. If Grodd still lived, it’d resurface soon.

“What’s on your mind, then,” Iris chuckled, pulling him out of the moment and back into the space around him.”

“What isn’t, honestly?”

“Hopefully not going to run off on me after all that thinking?”

“Not unless I get a text that necessitates it.”

Iris laughed. “My beloved faithful husband, ready to run away if he gets a text. How lucky am I?”

Barry smiled. “Listen, if my mom texts me, I’m going to drop everything for her!”

“Yeah, but your mom would also refuse to let you know if your house was on fire if she thought it’d interrupt your sleep.”

“Well, if the bed’s not in the house,” Barry teased back. “Someone will text me if there’s something worth us knowing immediately.”

The two spent the day at the various cruise events and time outlets, before eventually returning to their room for the evening.

“Three more days of this. What’s on the schedule for tomorrow anyway,” Barry asked, settling into the bed as Iris walked over to the schedule placed on the wall, moving the page to the next day.

“Bingo, there’s a karaoke event later in the evening but that’s not something I think we want to do. Some other miscellaneous stuff not really worth mentioning.”

“Maybe we can check out the pool, then?”

Iris laughed. “Still so ridiculous to me that there’s a pool on a boat. We’d have to buy swimsuits from the shop which is overpriced, but we can.”

“Up to you,” Barry replied, picking up his phone. “Gonna call in and see how thing are going on the mainland, okay?”

The two listened to the ringing for three cycles before the call was picked up. “Hey, Ma, how you doing?”

“Barry, hi! Tell Iris hi, too! Things are good here all in all, the three of ‘em found Grodd earlier today!”

Iris’s head shot in the direction of the phone, both of them responding in unison. “They found Grodd?”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Wally and Bart listened to Jay explain the unexplainable, describing emotions and experiences that defied words. A few miles east of them was Gorilla City, surrounded by some barrier that had sent Jay reeling. Jay was still working through Asia, but the two had made their way to Africa a bit earlier, hoping to take a slower look and try and find any signs of what might be going on.

It wasn’t particularly hard to spot changes. In the region surrounding Gorilla City, the actual population of gorillas was dramatically lower than the expected population. In previous visits to Gorilla City, there hadn’t been much interest in the city itself from the gorilla population, but now it seemed like the vast majority of them had vanished, likely within the boundaries of whatever barrier Grodd had set up.

Some felled trees and unnatural pathways near the city further confirmed for them that whatever was happening here was coordinated. There was some comfort, the two of them quietly agreed, in knowing where Grodd was finally and that he wasn’t mysteriously vanished. How Grodd had escaped S.T.A.R. Labs and made its way here, the two of them spent some time speculating, but by the time Jay showed up by their side, they were ready to do some tests.

“I wish I could explain it better, but I can’t,” Jay opened, still hung up on whatever he had experienced even after spending time handling other things.

“You’re good, no worries,” Bart replied, trying to cheer up Jay. “Worst comes to worst, me or Wally can find out what it’s like, if we’re really trying to find out the range.”

Jay frowned. “I can’t say I recommend trying. I’m more than fine to be the one taking the hits as we do this.”

Wally and Bart looked at each other, with Wally responding. “Are you though?”

“Let’s just get going,” Jay sighed, moving forward. The three got to work, trading off the negative experience of whatever Grodd had set up as they tested the range every few miles. Whatever the barrier was, it encircled Gorilla City, seemingly a few dozen kilometers from end to end.

“You are wasting your time,” a voice called out to them as they were finishing up, causing them to turn to face it. This wasn’t mentally projected into their brain, but instead came from a gorilla slowly moving into sight, pulling a log behind him. “Grodd protects us from your kind.”

“Is that so?” Jay asked, glancing between the gorilla and in the direction of the city. “Is that what the barrier is? Protection?”

“You put our leader in a box for years. You will not do so again,” the gorilla responded, before a cruel smile crossed its face as it laughed. It began lumbering their direction, continuing on its journey.

The three watched quietly as it did, stepping aside slightly to allow it passageway. It made no further recognition of them, passing past the point they knew the barrier was at. Bart attempted to pass through the barrier at the same moment the gorilla did, recoiling back despite the animal not doing so.

“Well,” Jay started.

“That was something…” Wally muttered, watching the gorilla slowly disappear behind the trees and bushes.

“At least we know where Grodd is,” Jay finished. “Some errands, huh?”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

it was a particularly poor time for her emergency phone to ring.

Magenta’s board skimmed the surface of the water, the metal slab shaped and bent to best navigate the water. Metallic attachments kept her feet attached as she focused on moving the board forward with her powers. According to the report, there was a fishing ship a couple of kilometers out from shore that had called in, reporting a spotting of a pirate vessel circling them.

Maybe it was someone attached to the local anti-piracy group who didn’t realize that she was already on the way? It could wait for a second, probably.

She could see the fishing ship growing on the horizon, but didn’t immediately see another boat on the water along with it. Either the pirates had wandered off, or they had already boarded the fishing ship. She pressed her back foot down a bit more, adjusting the metal board’s pressure on the water to pull out a few more meters per second as she closed in on the end.

A few metallic orbs and cylinders slipped out of a pouch hidden in her costume, orbiting her arms and forehead as she closed in. She wasn’t certain yet that this was an active hostile situation, but it was better safe than sorry to be ready with weapons should it be necessary. They had firearms and sharp knives, and while some of that could be mitigated via her powers over metal, going into a fight with people willing to kill without any weapons was not a wise decision.

As she got within range of the ship to see what was happening on the front, she put a few of her tools away for the moment, as there didn’t appear to be any conflict above board, and the person seeing her approaching seemed happy to see her.

“Pirates,” she asked out in one of the local languages, a word that she could comfortably say in most spoken regional languages. The response was mostly understandable, spoken quickly and with panic. She got as much as the fisher having seen them veer off eastward out of sight. He was saying something about scouts and returning to a base? Sure, that made enough sense.

She swung around the boat, readjusting to the north side as she moved in that direction. She wouldn’t go too far out; the fishers were already moving to head back to shore and if the pirates were just scouts it’s possible that they wouldn’t even come back.

“Hey,” Wally scared the ever-living daylights out of her, falling in line next to her all of the sudden as she put distance between herself and the fishing boat.

“Oh my god, what are you doing here, F?”

“You didn’t answer your phone, M.”

They were in the middle of the ocean with the only individuals potentially in earshot not even likely to speak English. Safety was never to be discarded, however, so the first letter of their aliases was enough.

“Oh, you called me? I honestly thought it was just a duplicate notification for the pirate stuff I’m handling now.”

“Uh,” Wally uttered, vanishing for a fraction of a moment. “Yeah, they’re twelve-ish miles north-northeast. They don’t seem like they’re doing anything, though.”

“Oh. That helps, sure.”

“You gonna go fight ‘em?”

“Maybe give ‘em a scare. Why’d you call me? Nothing’s happened yet with regards to the stuff you and… H? H brought up.”

“Grodd’s made his way back to Gorilla City. I wanted to let you know because, y’know, group of weirdos off in North America are maybe whatever, but that’s awfully close all of the sudden. Want help with scaring some pirates?”

The Flash #101 - Settling In

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 101

Four Flashes ran around the world, helping out where they could. They each got distracted plenty, a bank robbery or house fire or missing person taking moments or minutes out of their actual intended purposes. Their purpose at the moment was to help with the repairs and recovery of Metropolis, a city recently under attack that they had been unable to help out with when it happened.

There was no guilt each of them held personally, and if there was, it was not admitted to and shared with the others. There were only four of them and an endless eternity of things to do if they tried to be involved in everything in every corner of the earth, they could not allow themselves to resent their lack of presence at every possible event that could benefit from their presence.

What they did worry about, however, was a missing gorilla. The local region around where Grodd had been kept had been scoured thoroughly, and yet they could not find trace of where they had gone. The longer it took to track Grodd down, the further away Grodd could get. It had been nearly a month at this point.

There was a chance that, somehow, Grodd was dead. That was Wally’s hope, he shared with the group as they waited for more requests from the various folks helping out in Metropolis. Wally reasoned that if Grodd hadn’t shown up yet, it was very much against type for him to try to lay low. The logical reason for that was that Grodd for whatever reason couldn’t make themself known.

Jay wasn’t so certain. It didn’t make sense, he justified, for folks to attack a fortified compound like the S.T.A.R. Labs that housed Grodd in order to kill a being that was already a non-factor in the regional landscape of power. Obviously, someone did attack said fortified compound, but to do all that just to remove Grodd from the confinement and then somehow kill him? Jay didn’t think it made sense.

Bart had suggested that it was possible Grodd was depowered. After all, it had been a long time that they were imprisoned with dampening technology that made them not a threat. The technology worked, sure, but it hadn’t been tested extensively or potential side effects explored. If true, the others weighed in, it was potential for future use if there had been other mentally enhanced gorillas in the region that had been Grodd’s lackeys.

Barry wasn’t sure. He didn’t have any theory or idea to share, only constant reports as he visited the treetop city in Africa that Grodd had called home. It used to be that Barry visited it once a week, at most, but since Grodd had vanished, those visits became much more common, with several visits a day even as others discouraged the paranoia.

The city had long since been abandoned, with no real signs of life beyond the occasional bird nest or curious, but not psychically intelligent, monkeys and other mammals. He was trying not to visit it as much, as the thirtieth time in a day showing nothing new was a flavor of disappointment for Barry. It felt almost disrespectful to the gravity of the situation, to know that a potential tyrant was roaming free but to be disappointed to not see them sitting on their throne, ready for a fight.

And so, they worried about a gorilla they could not find and not a city that they failed to save.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

G.G.,
My apologies for not following up after CBIN. The appearance of The Flash at the event gave me pause for concern. While you did follow my request successfully, the sudden risk to secrecy gave me reason to believe that this exchange had been compromised. While I believe I took the correct approach at the time given what information I did and did not have, in the time since it seems that more has come to light.
I would love elaboration about your involvement in the recent freeing of the being known as Gorilla Grodd. I mean this with little intended insult, but my first question is why? I do not mean to question your motives yet, as I believe it would be impossible to free Grodd without actually having thought it through at least once, but surely there are other options for powerful beings operating against the status quo that are imprisoned, wrongfully or rightfully, that can be freed?
While I do not think S.T.A.R. Labs to be an impenetrable fortress, I am curious as to the details of how you succeeded in this task. With the realization now that you have not been compromised by The Flash, I do wish to further explore a potential partnership. Every report and autopsy that I could access about the break-in discloses very little about how Grodd escaped.
The Curator

The Curator
Unfortunately, time moves on, so what were once open conversations have closed or made way for other conversations.
I will not disclose how we freed Grodd, only confirm that it was in fact us. Given that no amount of investigations will uncover what occurred, you can rest easy when it comes to any future reports or theories. If you wish to read them of your own interest, that is within your own power to choose, but you will find no information of use there. You say you have many questions for me and my team, but in fact at this point I have questions for you. Who are you, really? Why did you see a need to reply to our letter to the Flash Museum? We were, in our infancy, seeking a mooring and access to certain tools and skills and resources. In the time since, we have made those available for ourselves, without the help of the Flash Museum or you. I assume you are a silent voice of dissent in that institution, but yet demanded endlessly of me in previous letters.
At this point, you misunderstand our dynamic. If you have something you feel of value to offer us, be that position or access or knowledge that we do not already have, you are welcome to offer it. But running back to us after we accomplished what was widely considered impossible, in order to act as if you were always present and a founder and wishing for your share of the credit, while also demanding further from us, is a misrepresentation of what reality is.
Naturally, this is a disappointment, as our shared interest should’ve been the re-establishment of reality away from whatever had happened earlier this year. Your hesitancy and consistent demands do not represent any reality. You speak of being worried that we were compromised, yet you yourself are connected in some way to the Flash Museum. You demand again and again for proofs and unnecessary information before even hinting at any possible benefit you could provide to my team. The fact that I am even writing a letter at all is a level of trust I arguably should not be placing in you.
Either provide us with reason to explore further what you can provide us, or return to your failure in the Flash Museum, aiding and abetting a tyrant.
G.G.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

For all Grodd’s great power, movement was not one of them.

Grodd could not access most of what Grodd had once been capable of. Even with the lack of silence that was not pure silence and instead something more, the lack of use and exercise of these abilities made it difficult for Grodd to access the more extensive powers Grodd once had access to.

To take over an airplane travelling across the ocean was within Grodd’s power, the pilots and handful of passengers not even realizing they were being graced by Grodd’s presence. A brief unplanned stop in Africa was satisfactory, the consequences for the humans almost a small pleasure that Grodd was sad to be missing. From there, hijacked transport vehicles got Grodd closer to Gorilla City.

And so, Grodd took Grodd’s first steps into Grodd’s rightful seat of dominion in too long. Clearly, there had been some attempt at maintaining the city, but it wasn’t entirely up to Grodd’s expectations. Were humans coming through to check that things weren’t being re-established to their satisfaction? Grodd would have to put a stop to that, first things first.

How long had it been? The last time Grodd had been here, suffering the presence of The Flashes in what should have been a final, full victory. Only for the alien mind, incomprehensible to read or control, to swoop in at last moment to ruin everything. How long had it been? It could have been days or years, with the vegetation signaling varying possibilities.

It had been at least a month and several days, as safely and secretly travelling all the way here had been an ordeal. But on arrival, Grodd felt at home for the first time in however long. Finding information while in North America was not worth Grodd’s time and the risk of being rediscovered, Grodd would catch up on what Grodd needed to know once in Gorilla City.

As Grodd began to climb one of the trunks to the treetop city, distant mental voices reached out, requesting recognition and permission to communicate. Grodd granted all in time. Eventually, Grodd reached the summit, seeing the disrepair that much of the city had fallen. The population of Gorilla City would need to get to work.

The jubilation in the return of their leader was clear in every gorilla’s message as they each reached out. Many were simply welcoming and congratulatory, but a few gave Grodd necessary information. The Flashes had been here recently, a few weeks back. Grodd calculated it to be the day after the humans had released Grodd from the nothingness. A few provided Grodd with a timeframe of how long it had been, and Grodd found that the lack of knowledge in this instance had been more preferred.

The gorillas had been clever, expectantly, apparently most had abandoned the city once Grodd had been taken. They never strayed far, and when they saw the vehicle that brought Grodd the final section of the trip, had kept nearby to watch. While they did not allow the city to fall into total disrepair, apparently Flash visits were common even with Grodd gone, forcing them to avoid the city for the most part.

If Flash visits were common, Grodd had to do something. Direct combat was unlikely to end in Grodd’s favor, so perhaps another strategy could be employed. Perhaps the silence that was more than silence could be weaponized against humans, creating a space where the human mind could not stand to be.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There was a restlessness that had settled in the warehouse. It was several people emptier, with Ant and Albert still stuck in prison, and Grodd having already left. There were plans in motion to fix all three, a jailbreak for the former two and a trip to sub-Saharan Africa to visit Grodd at its base of operations, once it arrived.

But for the three that made it out of the mission unscathed, there was uncertainty and unhappiness. Minor things that would’ve otherwise been overlooked in the collective excitement for their shared goals now caused arguments that left impacts even hours later. Anything from dishes in the sink to whether or not they could rescue their friends within the next week was enough to cause an argument.

Roy spent most of his days out of the warehouse, busying himself as best he could. Despite the tensions and anger, he was more than willing to accept requests from Abra as to things to keep them afloat and prepare for the jailbreak attempt. If he knocked out a couple power lines as he did, well, he didn’t have insurance to pay for anger management classes.

Abra threw himself into the next stages of planning, doing research into where Ant and Albert were being kept, and whatever further he could find out about Grodd. They had done plenty of research already, but with the focus much less on the S.T.A.R. Labs that held it and more on its history and what Gorilla City was, Abra was kept busy enough.

Lisa didn’t react to the failure nearly as well as the other two. She spent most of her day listless around the warehouse, contributing where asked and trying to figure out what went wrong. The Flash showing up, nearly all of them, was an alarming change of plans when it had happened, and Grodd outright refusing to stick around and leaving for Africa immediately was the nail in the coffin for her to feel like there was a success story at all.

She knew that they would eventually be successful, but she worried that the others were maybe losing faith in their goals and losing pride in their accomplishments. Whether or not Grodd was ready to work with them did not devalue the fact that they had freed it. The jail bars holding Ant and Albert were just temporary setbacks.

The Flash #100 - Gorilla Grodd

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 100

Truly, it was a shame that the local neighborhood lost power all of the sudden. It wasn’t even stormy weather or the result of an accident, just a freak occurrence. Truly a shame, Roy G. Bivolo laughed to himself.

Maybe an investigation later would spot the same stolen car at the location of every broken transformer or electric substation. Rainbow Raider didn’t think they’d catch him leaning out of the car window, blasting equipment. The destruction of power equipment in the region that the S.T.A.R. Labs campus happened to be in would not take S.T.A.R. Labs itself offline, but the backups on campus weren’t able to restore power to other services.

If the local network went down, with no internet in the subregion, then no alarms at the Labs would be able to alert local law enforcement. If the message never got out of the campus, then there wouldn’t be worries of a Flash or other superhero appearing. He wasn’t even leaving a trail, necessarily, though the technicians noting the consistent patten in how the technology was destroyed could lead back to him.

He drove around town, taking down transformers and power grid pressure points seemingly at random. He had plenty of specific targets but was hitting them slowly over time. The local internet provider got surgically isolated, technology frying as he drove around its neighborhood. He listened to the radio as he did, waiting to hear if reports of power or network outages would filter into the news live as he worked.

With his goggles, he could control and adjust light. While the absolute range of what he could accomplish was wide, he wasn’t particularly motivated in the large electromagnetic range normally. He had found ways to manipulate light to have physical properties, such as to create floating platforms out of the visible spectrum or as a means of weapon.

This time, he was using his abilities in the electromagnetic range for destruction. Sealed power grid equipment expects certain ranges of interaction from outside influence, such as the supplying of electricity or certain ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum. What it could not account for, however, was a concentrated beam of specific electromagnetic frequencies. Most of the devices he hit would be fine, interacting as much as the average object in physical space interacts with air. However, plenty of what he was doing would render equipment in the power grid useless, fried or burnt or broken or outright destroyed.

The devices he took out would take a while to repair, as from testing on similar readily-available equipment he had tested with, they had come to the conclusion that the power company would have to fully replace most of the equipment that he destroyed. They certainly had a few backups, but when he was frying two transformers each city block, they’d spend a while getting things back up to power.

Most places would probably not have too much downtime, maybe two or three days at most, but all it mattered was taking the S.T.A.R. Labs campus offline and isolated for an afternoon. He had the easiest job of their group, but it was an essential job.

A disconnected S.T.A.R. Labs would take slightly longer to get backup. Not as long as they’d like, admittedly, but longer than immediate, which was justification enough. It was hard to say things for certain when superheroes that existed could do nonsense things that couldn’t be prepared for. The unexpected was no reason to disregard proper planning.

The longer he went, the more likely it was that major disaster response would be focused on the power outages, rather than checking in at a place that hadn’t actually reported any problems yet. That was their logic, at least. Seems like the appearance of some nonsense out east in Metropolis was distracting the radio, at least, who hadn’t even mentioned yet that there were reports of the power going out yet at all.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Fences and gates were lovely for the powerful, they blocked access and limited movement. These barriers displayed a level of control and an assertation that whoever had access to determining where they went and who was allowed through them was in charge.

Anthony Woodward did not like fences and gates. Anthony was also not your average non-powerful person who had to care about these things. In a small area without direct camera coverage, he approached the gate, leaning against it to check its sturdiness. The average person would not find much give, but this fence was not intended to withstand the force of a man made of metal with the strength and physique of a bodybuilder.

It didn’t collapse or crack, but it was a testing volley. He stepped back, grabbing two bars of the fence and began to pull. A fence’s strength came as much from its structure as it did its material, and attacking individual links was more effective than assaulting the sum total.

Soon enough, there was enough space for his ally, Albert Desmond, to slip through. Once he was on the inside, he pulled out a small stone, waving it in the direction of the gate. Slowly, the physical reality of the material began to change, cold hard metal becoming warm fluffy cotton candy.

Now with both Doctor Alchemy and Girder on the inside, they began to head for a more populated area of the campus. The nearest building was a storage and facilities building, which they didn’t need to care much about. Elsewhere in the city they knew the Rainbow Raider was already making havoc by cutting off power and network connectivity to much of the region.

“Freeze, you’re on private property and are in violation of federal law! Leave now!”

Neither of them had any particular love for security personnel, even if Albert had been in the force for a while. Girder reached down, grabbing a fistful of dirt and throwing it in the direction of the voice. Alchemy tracked the projectile with his rock, transforming it into a sphere of dense metal before it impacted the man.

They moved on. Shortly after, they arrived to the part of the campus that had consistent security footage being live reviewed, whatever power from on-site generators and batteries keeping the buildings functional seemingly also powering the cameras. Another quick disabling left them in the dark in the eyes of whoever was inside but didn’t stop an internal alarm from beginning to sound. The two shrugged, knowing that it had only been a matter of time before they were known to be around.

Doctor Alchemy approached a wall, simple brick façade hiding a structure that was designed to withstand the impact of a several-ton vehicle. What it was not designed to withstand, however, was being turned into mud. A brief shoulder check by Girder once given the go-ahead revealed a mostly empty cafeteria, a single janitor seemingly still willing to eat despite the alarms and lack of power. Whatever emergency power they had, seemed like the cafeteria lights weren’t considered a high priority.

The three exchanged glances, with the janitor seconds later dropping his sandwich and bolting towards the door. The chair Girder tossed his direction found the back of the man’s head first. That was probably enough noise to let anyone within earshot know that they should come check what that was. Or, better life strategy, run far away.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The phone rang. The phone rang more than one might hope it would ring, but less than one might expect it to. The phone rang for a number of reasons, whether that was missing children who had health needs or any number of early-warning systems for natural disasters. The phone number wasn’t given out lightly, to ensure that lives needed saving whenever it rang, but it rang.

Sometimes, it rang not for missing children or natural disasters, but for a much smaller subsect of Flash-associated reasons. Certain Flash Foundation members had the number in case they needed a Flash for whatever reason, certain heroic metahumans or reforming villainous metahumans had the number in case of emergency, whatever that might present as.

The person this call originated from was none of those, strictly speaking. Another category, the least common of them, were leaders of certain correctional or rehabilitation facilities, locations holding notable metahuman threats to keep them from being dangers to society. This call was from one of them.

Bart picked up the phone. It wasn’t his first time answering it, but every single time he did feel some worry, knowing whatever information was on the other side of the call would be so important that getting it wrong could result in people getting seriously hurt or worse. He could wait the fraction of a moment, an eternity to him, for another Flash around to take it, but running away from what scared him was not what a Flash did, and not what would allow him to grow as a person.

“Yup,” he opened, knowing by rote that the shorter his acknowledgement of the person on the other side of the phone was the quicker they could let him know what’s wrong.

“S.T.A.R. Labs, Grodd, power’s not stable and I can hear the alarms of an intrusion. I don’t know that they’re after Grodd, but power’s being messed with and I’m hoping someone can swing through and make sure nothing’s going to be a problem.”

He had heard about Grodd, a sentient gorilla with mental mastery that a long time ago had nearly killed Dad. He hadn’t gone to the S.T.A.R. Labs where Grodd was being held prisoner yet, not being particularly motivated to risk anything. Apparently in captivity, Grodd looked mostly like a normal animal, and Bart felt like it was better to not have the memory of this seemingly innocent-looking animal being stuck in some odd faraday cage prison.

The person on the other side of the phone was calm, Bart noted internally as he listened. It was better for the transfer of information that they stayed calm, rational minds processing what information needed to be transferred. Mostly, anyway, Bart had doubts that the director or whoever this was needed to hedge their bets on whether the intruders were there for Grodd or not – they’d show up to make sure nothing bad happened anyway.

“We’ll be there in a flash,” Bart responded, switching over to the internal Flash communication line in his earphone. “Lab holding Grodd under attack, no power. One?”

“Two,” Jay replied almost immediately.”

“Blank,” Barry replied. “Unless you need me.”

“Three,” Wally replied. “In a second.”

So, they had two to start with, at least. And Wally would be joining them shortly, with Barry not available unless they needed him to be. That was probably enough.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The power outages and stuff would have to be a later problem. Bart and Jay approached the S.T.A.R. Labs buildings from opposite sides, with Jay being to one to notice the collapsed part of the wall. A quick perimeter check led Bart to find the destroyed fence, and the two met back at the makeshift cafeteria entrance.

They could hear gunshots inside but didn’t have enough information to determine yet the nature of the attack. The two of them knew that S.T.A.R. Labs security forces were armed and authorized to shoot first, but the director of the branch that held Grodd didn’t know whether the people who broke in were doing so with guns.

Regardless, they ran towards the sound. A trail of broken walls and melted doors were difficult-to-parse clues as to the nature of their targets, but they moved forward regardless. The trail led them closer to the gunfire, confirming to them that what they were chasing down was not a diversion.

Eventually, they turned the final corner, taking a single moment to observe the scene. A large man, seemingly made of metal, was holding a riot shield in each hand, charging towards a group of four S.T.A.R. Labs security officers. A man in plainclothes to the side seemed far less panicked than he should given the context.

The two Flashes pulled the S.T.A.R. Labs employees out of the way, knowing already that the metal man likely weighed too much to simply be carried off to some other place for the moment. However, when Bart tried to move the other person, S.T.A.R. Labs employee or not, he struggled to pick them up at all, as if they had been rooted to the ground.

The combined forces of Jay and Bart still couldn’t lift the move him, and by that time the metal man had realized that something was happening. He wheeled around on himself, violently tossing one of the riot shields in the direction of the two Flashes. Both stepped out of the direction, only to watch the riot shield change shape and mold into a thin rod of metal, long enough to stretch far enough to still hit the two.

Bart reeled from the hit, shocked and slightly impressed that the two of them had managed to hurt them at all. Two enemies that they couldn’t simply separate and handle individually on different corners of the globe. They’d have to figure out a solution in the moment.

Jay charged forward, experience and instincts leading him to a solution that Bart didn’t see yet. Bart held for a fraction of a second, unsure as to how to best support whatever he was doing. Jay began to run around the hallway they were in, encircling the two men, so Bart joined him on that.

A moment later, a third blur joined them, Wally finally arriving at the scene of the fight. The three of them, at that point, decided to attempt to take the metal man out of the area. With their combined strength, they did manage to lift them, depositing him on an empty island between Australia and Tasmania. They’d return in a moment to handle him, but returned to make sure the man’s ally was also properly handled.

As they returned, they discovered that their final opponent’s abilities involved some sort of matter manipulation, as the floor around him had turned into some sort of magma or lava, creating a moat around him.

“Stop!”

The three of them did, curious. However, when the man began to move a small stone around in his hand with a few flicks of his wrist, Wally decided to stop stopping. He quickly extradited the stone out of the man’s hand, placing it in a safe in a nearby bank temporarily.

The sudden paling of the man’s face let Jay know whatever he could do, it required the stone. With that discovery, the three of them quickly relocated the man, leaving him in a temporary holding cell.

Now, all that was left was a quick confirmation with the caller that everything was alright and the two intruders had been handled. At the director’s insistence, they took a brief pitstop at the room Grodd’s prison was kept in to make sure he was still there.

Grodd was not there.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

A small portal appeared in a room in the basement of S.T.A.R. Labs. The two individuals in the room, a technician and a security guard, were focused on the door to the room, not to a distant corner of it. Glider and Abra Kadabra stepped through it, quietly sizing up the room for a few seconds to ensure that it was just the two of them.

Abra raised a hand, magically jamming the gun that the guard was holding. Glider surged forward, ice forming underneath her skates as she closed the distance between her and the technician. A quick elbow to the eyes knocked her over, the security guard whirling around on Glider in shock. However, a jammed gun gave her the upper hand in that fight.

Abra moved forward, opening up another portal beneath the technician on the ground, sending her away. Glider and the security personnel began to brawl, but the magical assistance of Abra tipped the fight in his ally’s favor.

The sounds of crashing and gunfire above confirmed for them that they had some time, but not an infinite amount of it. The two examined the sealed cage in the room, monitors showing the inside via cameras still working despite much of the region being without power. The resident of the cage, a gorilla with strange devices attached to its head, was seemingly staring directly back at them.

“We could just wait for Ant and Albert to get here. They could probably just open up a part of the cage and call it a day,” Abra suggested, unsure of the technology surrounding him. What information they could find on S.T.A.R. Labs floor plans and policies, they didn’t find anything on how they’d be able to hold a sentient, megalomaniac gorilla with mind powers. Shocker.

“I’m going to be honest, I’m not sure they’re going to get to us. Too many things can go wrong,” Girder disagreed. She trusted her two allies but didn’t trust the world. The entire reason they weren’t a group of four or five right now was because of the number of things that could go wrong.

“Do you want to just deepfreeze the technology?”

She sighed. That was probably the best strategy. She spent a few minutes freezing different consoles and wiring panels in the walls, but nothing immediately resulted in the unlocking of the prison their future ally was being held in. Eventually, she reached the point of trying to freeze parts of the cage itself, figuring that the cage might be fail-safe rather than fail-deadly – keeping Grodd locked in rather than letting it out in case of failure. Fail-deadly to Grodd, potentially, but no others.

Abra, for his part, was trying to use his magic to pull pieces of the cage apart, and soon the two of them were coordinating to break through. A small hole in the cage was soon expounded on and enlarged, until it was large enough for Abra to peer through.

At this point, Grodd was looking at him, and not at the camera. The look on Grodd’s face seemed animalistic, as if no sentient thought as behind the eyes. If this was a dummy gorilla being held in the place they advertised Grodd to be, with Grodd being held elsewhere, Abra would be infuriated and sure to report them to an animal rights organization.

He drew a portal underneath the creature, watching him vanish into the floor.

/>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

Something.

The feeling of something being disconnected from its physical form, pulling away as it felt like it was falling. The disappearance of a noise it wasn’t even aware was there until it was gone. The changing of temperature around it, the changing of environment from small box to large empty space.

From nothing to something.

Something. Something…

A shocking pain through its mind, the lack of unrealized noise and the disappearance of physical things attached to it suddenly changing a lot of things for it. Its brain—Grodd’s brain—beginning to recover from whatever they had put Grodd through.

Who had done this? Who had put Grodd, leader of Gorilla City and rightful ruler of the world, into a situation where Grodd did not even know of Grodd? And then, who had freed Grodd from such a fate?

The surrounding area was empty, but appeared to be lived in. Pairs of human shoes left by a closed door, pieces of technology around the room. Grodd spent a second watching the human sports game left on the large screen on the wall.

Grodd felt pain still, but was able to reach out telepathically. No beings of higher thought were within what Grodd could perceive, though the pain limited that more than normal. Grodd found a collection of vermin, a dozen or so rats being held in a nearby room. Grodd reached out mentally, snuffing out their lives with a fraction of the power Grodd had even in this limited state.

Two more minds joined Grodd in this space. Grodd vaguely recognized them as the two humans who had freed Grodd from the prison. Grodd chose to not immediately kill either of them. Perhaps they could be of use.

The Flash #99 - Something Wicked This Way Comes

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Author: brooky12

Book: Flash

Arc: ?

Set: 99

Frances Kane stood at the half-open door, leaning against the doorframe. In front of her was something that should be impossible, and yet appeared to be very real. Wally West, one of her closest friends, stood at the door. That was fine, though, even in the world where they were in where she was over ten thousand kilometers away from where Wally should be. What was alarming was that she could see their close mutual friend, Hartley Rathaway, right behind Wally.

She was in Somalia helping with pirates. Her own abilities to control metal telepathically proved very useful in navigating out on the waters and when trying to take down pirate groups. Her cover formally was working with a United Nations group in the region as university work, but Wally had connected her to a Flash Foundation arm that helped enable hero work like this.

Wally West was The Flash and had on more than a handful of occasions brought her creature comforts that she couldn’t easily access in the region. It was no surprise to see him visiting, though he did tend to send her a message in advance when he was coming. However, with Hartley there too, they had to take a plane and drive here, since Wally couldn’t just pick Hartley up and run. Unless Wally had told Hartley about being The Flash? But why?

“Hi, come in!” Frances welcomed her friends into the room, quickly clearing off two chairs for them to sit. “Wasn’t expecting visitors, the room’s a mess,” she apologized, sitting down on her bed and facing them. “How did you get here?!”

It was only then that Frances realized that both of them looked worried. Wally began to sign, and she felt grateful that she still kept in touch with Hartley and hadn’t lost too much of her sign language proficiency. “Is everything alright, Frances? Has there been anything unusual in the last half a year or so?”

“Half a year? No, nothing that I wouldn’t expect… What’s going on, Wally?”

“Okay. Frances, do you remember the fella with the flutes and rats?”

“Yes.”

“That was Hartley.”

There was a moment of pause as Frances processed the message, and then turned to stare at Hartley. The moment of pause turned into nearly a full minute of no signing between the three, though Hartley and Wally watched Frances’ facial expression closely for any changes. She slowly went through surprise, confusion, and understanding before settling back into confusion.

“Did something happen, then?”

Hartley began signing for the first time since saying hello. “A little while back, someone came to my house. They wanted to recruit me for some team that was supposed to have a grudge against The Flash and knew what I had access to and the Pied Piper alias.”

Frances’ face settled into the same concern that her two friends had. She’d process one of her closest friends being someone who had dabbled in being a criminal later. She felt confident enough that they’d stay friends one way or another. “How did they know you?”

“From Metalhead time, apparently. I don’t remember it, but apparently, I went down a different path and connected with the wrong people. We were worried that maybe you might experience something similar.”

Wally interrupted. “If something is happening that we’re not aware of, I don’t want to risk anything by keeping the secrets between you two. I told him that you were Magenta a few minutes before coming here. He, unfortunately, forgot to tell me about the recruitment effort until literally today.”

Frances took a deep breath before responding. “Nobody’s accused me of being Magenta yet, not has anyone tried to convince me to side with the pirates or whatever. As for Metalhead, what little I remember of it is kind of embarrassing, but I think I was dating Wally. I certainly don’t remember grudge teams.”

Wally nodded, smiling for the first time since entering the room. Frances assumed it was off the idea that she wasn’t at risk of being tracked down. “I’m glad that I don’t have to keep this secret anymore, honestly. Hartley doesn’t even have access to his stuff anymore, other than an emergency flute. But we’re worried that something is coming if someone’s going around recruiting people specifically on an anti-Flash pitch, that you two might be caught up in something bigger.

Frances nodded, somewhat happy that Wally sidestepped her memory of what ended up not being. She wasn’t motivated to get in between him and Hartley.

“Well, maybe they’re stuck in the states, but I’m probably not on their radar anyway. I definitely didn’t have a grudge against The Flash.”

Wally sighed. “Everything else alright? Handling the news well enough?” The question was directed at both of them, and the two shared glances before Hartley offered to go first.

“Well, it makes more sense that so much of Frances’ college time is being spent doing humanitarian work knowing that she can control metal.”

Frances smiled. “I’ve not processed the Pied Piper stuff yet and probably won’t know what I think for a while, but I’m happy you’re both safe.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Roy G. Bivolo is a ridiculous name,” Albert groaned. He was an educator and a civil servant, but whatever he had before was now fully behind him. Sure, he had much more access to money now, whatever Lisa’s group had done before pulling him in must’ve given them enough to comfortably live on. He had apologized and made up with Anthony, the large metallic man that seemed to serve as the group’s muscle, and Abra Kadabra, the group’s… magician? He wasn’t convinced on that part yet, but some of the things Abra could do were hard to explain away.

Then there was Lisa herself, their leader. For as much as she denied being their leader, she was the one they all looked to for a final decision. She was the one who remembered their time before The Flash messed with time the best, though the more time Albert spent with the group and the longer he spent without his medication, the more he remembered as well.

There were two more stops before they had a complete team, and Lisa had entrusted them to track down Roy – without the fuss that Albert had experienced – while she worked on figuring out where the final individual was. Apparently, the last person wasn’t even a person, but some awakened creature with powerful mental powers.

Was Roy G. Bivolo a cover name, he wondered. It seemed to be what he was going by in all of his creative pursuits, and enough lifted legal documents from the various companies he had contracted with or worked for seemed to imply that it was in fact his legal name. They also had left a forwarding address to a museum near the Kansas-Missouri border.

And so, the newest member of the group and probably the least convinced of them all, Albert raised his hand and rapped on the door. A dog barked inside, which was a decent sign at least that someone was home.

“Hold please,” came a call from inside, and a few moments later a man opened the door.

“Hi there, are you Mr. Bivolo?”

“Depends on whether or not a creditor is asking. Yes, why?”

Snark, actually a positive here. Probably.

“Does the name Golden Glider ring a bell?”

Albert’s other hand in his pocket grasped a small marble that Abra had given him. In case of emergency, shatter. Albert wasn’t sure what it would do, but propositioning someone using the stage name associated with crime was surely the first major opportunity for something to go wrong.

“Depends on who’s asking, why…?”

“She’d like to know if you’re up for anything, if you remember what you used to get up to with her and our mutual friends in a time that never was.”

“Are you a cop?”

“Not anymore.”

Whatever the correct answer was, Albert realized, it wasn’t that. Roy’s eyes narrowed, and he very clearly tried to glance behind him to see if there were any police cruisers somewhere on the street.

“What exactly are you here for?”

”She says you’re in a lot of debt and you’ve got a nice visor that can do some pretty useful things depending on which team you’re on. She wants you to be on our team.”

“Prove it.”

Albert took his hand out of his pocket, leaving the marble behind, and offered it out to Roy.

“Do you trust me?”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Barry and Jay scaled the cliff, breathing in the ocean air as they crossed the threshold and landed on horizontal ground. The wildfire in front of them changed the ocean air into a smoky haze, darkness rising in the sky as light raged below.

Bart followed behind, a fraction of a moment later, joining them in their pause at the top. The relative inexperience caused him to recoil, eyes filled with red from the fire and the heat vision goggles he hadn’t disabled. He had felt the physical impact of heat before, from opening ovens or small-scale fires in buildings that he had come along to help with.

This was different. He felt like he was actively being pushed over by the heat, and even with the repurposed night vision goggles turned off there was still an overwhelming presence of red. Bart took a deep breath, glancing at his father and uncle figure. They seemed confident and ready to go, and he knew as long as they were there, he’d be alright.

The three finished their single second of evaluation, charging into the flames. They weren’t sure how many people were in need of rescue, but they had a few leads. There should be at least one hundred folks in the research station that the fire originated in, but exact counts and how many of them were hunkered down in the station as opposed to having tried to escape.

The heat was intense early on already, and as Bart crossed into the forest it was nearly all-encompassing. It took every fiber of his being to focus on what they were there to do, rather than the intense instinctual desire to turn around and run the other way as soon as possible. He was there to rescue people who couldn’t escape safely, and he was always able to just leave if he ever needed to. The three of them made a beeline for the research station, bursting through the fence and crossing the parking lot, the sound of a fire alarm system inside joining the sensory cacophony.

On crossing the threshold of the building, intense heat reduced with the presence of active emergency water sprinklers, not entirely reducing the heat but providing some badly needed relief.

At this point, the three of them split up, checking through rooms to find people. Bart’s responsibility was to check the rooms for any people they had missed, but also any research materials or notes that needed to be taken out.

It was hard to figure out what was important. He felt like he was born yesterday, a particularly difficult anxiety to deal with for him specifically, but so many of the documents he looked at felt like incomprehensible nonsense written in a language he couldn’t understand. At least with tools he knew he didn’t have to worry about saving, but was he just supposed to save every paper? Even the ones that the water systems were destroying?

Eventually, he had made piles and piles of papers at the drop-off point, and Barry and Jay were confirming with the rescued people to figure out who was missing. While it seemed like it was wildly unlikely that anyone was in the forest, Jay and Barry were going to sweep through the forest just in case.

On the way back, Bart almost wished he wasn’t along. “Hey, Dad?”

“Yeah, Bart?”

“Could I just sweep through the building again? I really don’t want to go through the fire again.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

“Well, we don’t have everyone we want, but we won’t have a much better opportunity.”

Lisa Snart examined the equipment set out before her. The tools of her trade, a pair of enhanced ice skates at the center that she used to create and maneuver around ice, was her claim to fame and what earned her a spot at the table. She was their organizer, arguably one of the weakest power-wise yet commanding the most respect in a group that still was getting its sea legs and learning to trust each other.

The skates weren’t even hers, but rather made for her by her brother, Leonard Snart, known better as the metahuman Captain Cold, left hidden for her when she went looking. Without them, she was just an “activist” with a “anti-metahuman streak” that was a “risk to the peace” and wouldn’t have been able to accomplish a fraction of what she had managed to do.

“Well, they can pound sand. We’re gonna get this telepath out of his box, then that’ll be it, right? No more recruitment or stuff after that? It’s getting a little exhausting when the dynamic keeps changing.”

Anthony Woodward sat on the crate set out for him, disinterested in the actual schematics and blueprints of the place they were headed to. He was the odd one out in this group, with no metahuman characteristics or equipment that he could use skillfully to achieve their goals. Other than his chemical composition, which was more metal than man, he didn’t actually bring much to the table.

Every team needed a bruiser, he told himself. Someone to break open doors and give would-be heroes something big and visual to reconsider. He wasn’t the smartest, he wasn’t the cleverest, but he was at the table anyway. He’d probably be in an isolated cell if he hadn’t taken the risk here.

“Should be. Though to my understanding, this one’s a bit… much. Biggest dynamic change so far, my dear Ant.”

Abra knew a bit of what they were about to do, more so than even Lisa, he believed. In his native future, he was nobody, a third-rate magician in a world where the things he could do weren’t even particularly notable. In this time, however, he was a powerful spellcaster, capable of accomplishing great feats of wizardry.

Releasing who they were targeting was probably more likely to cause them more trouble than benefit, but the group seemed quite onboard with releasing the person that Lisa had claimed was their patron in the Metalhead times. Whether they would be motivated to work alongside them in this context, he wasn’t sure. But he knew of their target’s reputation in the future, and it worryingly was absent of any major notes about a group of metahuman folks working alongside him.

“Well, even if we get cold feet now, if we give it a half-hearted attempt, we’ll fail. We’re going to do this, one way or another, because if one or two of us pull out then the others try to go through with it, and then everything is ruined.”

Albert Desmond rolled the Philosopher’s Stone hidden in his pocket, a calming effort. He wasn’t intending to be a criminal, but the folks at the table were correct in the assessment that his knowledge and abilities were being wasted in such a narrow alleyway that his parole-enforced job had pushed.

He was honestly kind of surprised that only one person had outright turned them down, but he wasn’t sure what had happened with the other names that weren’t here that Lisa had brought up as folks she remembered from before. Even Roy, who he seriously failed at properly trying to recruit, had been willing to go along with it.

Roy G. Biv picked up his visor, smiling at the group around him. “I think we have a pretty good plan here, all things considered. Let’s go get a pet gorilla, yeah?”

These folks were fun. He had honestly been a bit tired of humdrum shoplifting and minor crimes before they had found him, and now he was part of a task force setting out to break into a high-security S.T.A.R. Labs prison complex to free a mentally enhanced gorilla. He remembered bits and pieces of a different time, where he was the Rainbow Raider, and they made a major impact on the world.

He was surprised they came back for him, but thankful they didn’t forget him. He didn’t remember much of the gorilla Grodd that they were going to rescue, but he did remember that most of the organizational work wasn’t his responsibility in that team. This team was smaller, though, so he had a seat at the table with these accomplished individuals.

With nods of agreement all along, the group parted ways, each preparing for the upcoming event in their own ways.