Keystone City. Now.

Criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot. They're also stupid. Incredibly, amazingly stupid.

There aren't any superheroes in New York City to speak of except Kyle -- Green Lantern Junior.

New Orleans is spandex-free. Detroit? A few small-timers. Seattle? Not a one since Ollie left. Boston -- nada. Portland (either Maine OR Oregon, incidentally) -- zilch. St Louis -- zip. Chicago -- not a cape in sight.

If this were some weird alternate universe where I was a bad guy and had a goatee -- you know, like on that Star Trek episode? Evil doubles from alternate universes always have goatees -- you know where I'd be? Boston, or Portland, or St Louis, or New Orleans. New Orleans is nice this time of year -- cool, but not cold. Heck, forget the cities-- if I were a supervillain, I'd be in Hollis, New Hampshire. Some little suburb where NO ONE would expect to find me. It's not like you need mass transit and a Starbuck's to take over the world. 

And that's if I were a supervillain. If I were just your run-of-the-mill mugger, say? Or bank robber? Man, I wouldn't even vacation in Metropolis. I wouldn't so much as SPEAK the name of Gotham. And Keystone City?

No, man. No way would I try my trade in Keystone City. 

But I'm not stupid. These guys over here -- those four I just passed seventeen times in my patrol, before the lead guy's foot had a chance to finish stepping down in front of him? These guys are stupid. They're trying a bank job in Keystone, and Keystone is my town. 

My name is Wally West. I'm -- 

	The Fastest Man Alive: "Safe at Any Speed"
Flash #1 - January, Year One	by Bill Kte'pi

Fiona Webb hadn't had an easy life. You probably think you haven't either. You've got your woes, your trials and tribulations you've pushed through to get where you are today. Yeah. You don't know squat. Fiona Webb was the fiancé of the Flash -- the first one (well, the second one, but the first one other than the guy back in World War II) -- except his first wife wasn't actually dead. The guy everyone thought had killed her zipped back in time and tried to kill Fiona, too -- and she didn't even know why. She didn't know Barry Allen was the Flash. She didn't know squat, either.

The Flash saved her. And he killed Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash, the guy who tried to kill her. He wound up on trial for it -- a superhero, one of the truly SUPER heroes, on trial. In part because of her.

You think that's bad? We're just getting started. Fiona Webb isn't even her real name. Her real name is Beverly Lewis, and she entered the Witness Protection Program and was given a new name after she testified against a mob boss, Ross Malverk. A guy who happened to look just like Barry Allen -- that's how she met Barry, when she turned him in to the cops after he moved in to the apartment next to hers.

What are the odds of that? A superhero, whose later love for you marks you for death at the hands of his arch-nemesis, happens to be the spitting image of the mob boss who uprooted your life -- and he moves in to the apartment next door. Those odds are long the way the sun is hot.

For a long time, Fiona felt she knew why it had all happened: it happened because she was cursed. Her life was cursed. Bad karma, from a past life in which she was a slaveholder, or Genghis Khan, or Benedict Arnold or something. She went to shrinks and mediums and psychics and dentists (well, she needed a root canal -- because her teeth were cursed), and they all told her the same thing: Karma catches up to you. Your past deeds influence your current fate. Brush at a thirty degree angle.

She was in a bad place for a long time, but she came to her senses.

Fiona Webb wasn't cursed. She was chosen. Like the Virgin Mary was chosen. Like Mary Magdalene was chosen. Like Joan of Arc was chosen.

Fiona Webb was chosen by the Flash, a god among men, to carry his word and spread the word of Triumphant Velocity.

She'd returned to Keystone, sure of herself, her faith, and her mission. Because the Flash still lived here -- not Barry, Barry was dead, he saved the universe in ways no one can quite remember, for his glory was too magnificent to behold -- but his chosen successor, Wally West. Groomed from childhood to take Barry's place.

And maybe -- maybe Wally was the True Flash. Maybe, as the Golden Age Flash was Moses, the hero of the old covenant, maybe Barry was John the Baptist to Wally's Christ.

She sat at the train station, collecting her thoughts, waiting for the right moment to get up, go to his home, and approach him. A drunken bum in Leesville told her Wally was the True Name of God. Maybe he was right -- drunk or not, maybe he was exactly right.

Fiona Webb hadn't had an easy life. But she was okay now. Everything was just fine.

Godspeed.

Wally was moving fast -- extremely fast, even by his standards. Close to the Speed Force barrier. He found himself doing that more and more lately -- pushing what would have been his limits at one point, just for the thrill of it, the feel, the heat it brought to his muscles, the sting it put in his lower back.

It was like a runner's high -- well, literally, but of an entirely different caliber. 

There was a time when the speed of sound was a challenge for him. Now he was near limitless. He WAS speed. He lived, breathed, and ate it. He was the avatar of the Speed Force -- faster than Barry had ever dared, faster than Jay or Johnny, faster than Superman, much less a speeding bullet.

He hadn't even stopped the bank robbery yet. He had become fast enough that he didn't need to deal with things the instant he discovered them: it was better not to, in fact, better to continue his patrol so he could organize his plan according to priorities, as he weaved through the streets and alleys of Keystone like blood through arteries: Deal with the most dangerous or threatening situations first, and so on down the list so that, if worse came to worst, he might not get that cat out of the tree, but he'd stop the car accident. 

Straighten the ladder so the housepainter doesn't fall.

Move that guy out of the street so the bicyclist doesn't collide with him.

Pick up the can of oil so it doesn't leak into the sewer drain.

Suck the velocity out of the car with the failing brakes.

Things he did without really thinking about them. Reflex actions. Sometimes -- especially here, so near the Speed Force -- he felt like Keystone was just an extension of himself. Other times, he was afraid that if he didn't slow down he'd never stop -- the circuit he ran through the city would become him, and he would become it, losing himself in the rhythm and rhyme.

He was addicted to the rush of speed, and the fact that he was thinking about it -- catch the falling kitten, push the car forward so it narrowly misses that fender bender -- meant it was time to slow down.

Twenty-sixth pass by the bank robbers, and his pattern recognition caught up with his motion: that was Linda. He'd just passed Linda, in that group of pedestrians which the truck would hit in three seconds. Plenty of time to get the bank robbers and save Linda and the others -- at this speed, there was plenty of time for anything. He could alphabetize his clothes while he was at it.

But this was Linda.

He sped up, and weighed his options for something far, far too short to be called a moment -- a micromoment. Who came first? Stop the bank robbers who were about to fire into the bank, or save Linda?

He veered off, lent some velocity to Linda and the others -- enough that they found themselves moving just a little faster, just fast enough to reach the other side before the truck passed by, a trick he found startled people much less than picking them up and moving them -- and then solidified the inertia of the bullets in the robbers' guns. Just a precaution -- he had them disarmed and strapped up with duct tape before any of them could see him, much less think of firing, had the job taken care of in a fraction of the time it would take a synapse to travel from brain to finger -- but precautions were good. Precautions were part of the job.

Safe at any speed.

He had time to slip a note in Linda's pocket, one she'd find later. The typical little Post-It-sized love letter. Just something to brighten her day. "See you at dinner. Love Wally."

The rest of the day's patrol went as normal. Crimes stopped. Accidents prevented. If anything struck Wally as unusual, it was that there seemed to be less to do than there normally was -- maybe criminals were getting smarter and finally moving elsewhere, but it wasn't just the crime. He'd pass by a ladder that he'd need to straighten soon and return to find it had righted itself -- or that a kitten had made it out of a tree much faster than it should have on its own.

Like he had a guardian angel somewhere, helping him out.

Karen Starr had had an odd life.

Hard to avoid when you're the granddaughter of an Atlantean lord who died 50,000 years ago and sent you into the future so you could avoid being possessed by an evil sorcerer -- even harder when your powers are essentially copied from Superman's because you used to think you were his cousin, and you've been depowered and repowered and given birth in the middle of a temporal rupture, with the aid of a Cthonic goddess. When things like that happened to you, you really didn't have any choice but to pull on the spandex and fight supervillains.

She sighed, looking up from the accounts book she'd been pretending to concentrate on, and gazed out the window of her thirty-fourth floor office, looking out across her new home city.

There hadn't been any supervillains in Brooklyn. Well, not many, at least. That had always struck Karen as odd -- I mean, geez, she had been the only real superhero there, so it was the best place to BE a supervillain, right? You'd think so, but guys like Abra Kadabra and Killer Croc apparently felt otherwise.

Criminals were a foolish lot.

Okay, so there'd be supervillains here in Keystone City. She could handle that. It wasn't why she moved here. Her software company, StarrWare, was relocating its center of operations to Keystone -- and as CEO, that meant she was moving with it. Sure, it had been her decision to relocate, but that was based on tax benefits, a good deal on the property and lease, availability of local talent, and ...

It WASN'T because of the supervillains. She was Karen Starr as much as she was Power Girl -- more, even. There was no Justice League Europe anymore, so she didn't have a steady job as a superhero -- although she'd let Superman know that if he needed her for the Justice League's latest incarnation, she was available. Even if Batman did creep her out a bit.

So she'd fight a little more crime. No big deal. Crime needed to be fought. It wasn't her reason for moving, or even a side benefit, it was just ... a result, that's all. Just a result she felt neutral about.

It sure as HECK wasn't because Wally West was here.

That womanizing, no good ... they'd been in the JLE together, Power Girl and the Flash, and gods, did he annoy her. He was so smarmy, so arrogant, so handsome -- 

She meant irritating! 

Irritating!

Blasted Wally West. HE was the one who should be relocating. Let him move to Brooklyn. Karen Starr had work to do in Keystone.

Blasted little ... he'd annoyed her so much that she embarrassed herself on a number of occasions. Made up a story by way of apology and explanation later, an allergy to diet soda -- shyeah. Gods knew why anyone bought that.

Anyway, returning to an active life as a crimefighter made sense now that she'd recovered her full powers. She was nearly the equal of Superman. She couldn't wait to see the look on Wally's face when he found THAT out.

Not that she cared what Wally West thought. Not at all.

Evening patrol. Late for dinner with Linda -- the fastest man alive, late. Hadn't that been Barry's schtick? So it went. Things happened. Wally had a city to protect.

Put that cigarette out before it rolls into the puddle of gasoline.

Pick the gum up before that woman can step on it and ruin her shoe.

Clean up behind that horse.

By rights, Keystone should be the cleanest city in the world. Clean of grime, clean of crime, safe for everyone. It was his city, and he was its champion. He couldn't believe he'd ever moved elsewhere -- he WAS Keystone. The city was a part of him, it coursed through his veins.

He loved this city.

Keystone City had the lowest automobile insurance rates in the country, because so many accidents stopped before people realized they were starting. Property insurance, that was another matter -- the battles with supervillains did tend to take their toll.

Stop the would-be purse-snatcher in his place, lend velocity to his intended victim, and then smack the perp silly.

Take the slim-jim away from the car thief -- he'd be spooked enough that he wouldn't try again.

There was time for a break now. Things had gone quickly today, gone more smoothly than he was used to. He was ahead of schedule -- had easily bought himself time for a nice, leisurely meal with Linda. He probably wouldn't even leave the table for a quick too-fast-for-her-to-see patrol more than seven or eight times.

In a millisecond, he was through the doors of the home he shared with Linda, shedding his Flash costume and dressing himself in something clean but informal -- looked like she'd started dinner without him, blast it, but he sat down anyway, and --

"Um."

Linda was looking at him with sheer astonishment, but the "Um" didn't come from her. It came from the guy whose lap he was sitting in.

Wally stood up, turned, and found himself facing a mirror image -- well, not a mirror image, that would have been the Mirror Master's work -- found himself facing his double, then. A surprised and suspicious looking Wally West.

"Look out, Linda," both Wallys said in unison, as they circled each other at superspeed. "It's some kind of trick!"

Express Mail