The Fastest Man Alive: SWAP MONTH SPECIAL To Stump a Speedster
Flash #12- January, Year Two	by Steve Crosby

    Twenty minutes go by like an eternity. I must go all over the city a thousand times, but I don’t find anybody responsible for the explosion.

    The police, overseen by two detectives had cordoned off the remains of the collapsed building. As those detectives and a squad of forsenic officers searched the wreckage for clues, the Flash suddenly appeared.

    Thankfully, the building was empty. Government-run offices may as well be graveyards on a Saturday.

    “Detectives, is there anything I could help with?” Flash asked, slowly enough for them to hear. “Just ask, and I can search every crevice of this place before you could blink.”

    “Yeah, but would you find anything?” pointed out Detective Chyre. “Some of the evidence we look for is too small for the eye to see. Evidence that you would more than likely destroy. Fingerprints and hair are fragile things, Flash.”

    Detective Morillo was also shaking his head. “Best just to leave things to us. Obviously this freak had you in mind when he planned this. His mind was so focused on beating you that he likely missed a few things. We’ll find those mistakes, make an I.D, then get it all wrapped up before you can blink.”

    The officers are right. It would be better if I just left now. Later I can stop by the lab and read their findings as they’re being written down. When they have the information I can use-

     “I found something!”

    One of the uniformed officers stands up in the wreckage. In his hand appears to be a portable cassette player. The casing is painted green with a black question mark.

    Detective Chyre took one look at the odd-looking electronic and groaned. “Oh brother, we should have seen this coming. It’s one of his Rogues.”

    He’s referring to the Batman. Recently a group of my old sparring partners had tried to wreck havoc on his city, Gotham. I suppose it stands to reason that one of his enemies would take it personal. Personally, I’m relieved that it isn’t Joker.

    “Turn it on,” Detective Morillo informed the uniformed officer. “It shouldn’t be booby-trapped. The Riddler likes to mock his opponents, not kill them.”

    The tape player disappeared from the uniformed officer’s hand. In a blur, the Flash was standing behind the two detectives, holding the tape player.

    “I had better hold this, in case it is booby-trapped,” he told the detectives. “By the time I feel an explosion, I can drop this and get you all out of the area before it hits the ground.”

    “It would be better if you just ran that out of town,” Detective Chyre said. “We wouldn’t want any potential evidence destroyed.”

    After nodding compliance, Flash hit the PLAY button. The tape whirred, and a very slow voice could be heard from the speaker.

    “What is that saying?” asked Detective Morillo.

    Good question. If this is the Riddler, he must have recorded this at a high speed. Yeesh, normal speech alone is too slow for me. Everything is so drawn out. I’m liable to forget the previous word by the time I hear the next one. There seems to be some kind of pitch in the background too.

    Off in the distance, an explosion interrupted the focused listening. Immediately Flash let go of the tape player and ran off in the direction of a plume of smoke. Just in time, Detective Morillo pitched forward and grabbed the tape player before it could break against the ground.

    Across town, Flash found a charred section of rooftop and little else.

    A decoy! Somehow that high pitch must have set it off.

    Half a minute after he had left, Flash was back among the detectives, listening to the tape. The interruption had been enough for the Scarlet Speedster to lose his place, however and he didn’t have the slightest clue what he was listening too.

    Apparently the detectives were having the same trouble. Detective Chyre frowned and hit STOP. As he was about to hit REWIND, however, the tape inside started to hiss and bubble. Right away Flash was on the move, snatching the tape player away. But there wasn’t any explosion, so Flash remained where he was as the tape was eaten away.

    “Dammit!” Detective Morillo cursed. “What is this guy playing? Mission Impossible?”

    Detective Chyre shook his head. “No, he was just telling us how stupid we are. Instead of rushing to play the tape, we should have sent it straight to the lab. There, we could have recorded the entire thing as it played, and that explosion probably wouldn’t have been set off. Now we just  have only what we heard.”

    “Uh, and what did we hear again?” Flash asked.

    “No idea. Dammit, that was annoying.”

    Flash grinned at Detective Morillo. “Heh, welcome to my world.”

    Detective Chyre’s cell phone rang. He held it up to his ear and listened. “Uh huh. Yeah, he’s here. Okay, I’ll tell him.” After putting the phone away, Chyre looked at Flash. “While you were wasting time here with us, the Keystone National Bank was robbed.”

    Without so much as even a blur, the Flash was gone, on his way to the bank, too late.
 
    Here’s a riddle for you. How do you outrun somebody faster than you? Get him to run in a different race.

    “I managed to catch them all, but the money hasn’t been recovered.”

    Wally was standing on a terrace, drinking tea. Just outside the doorway into her home stood Iris Allen, Wally’s aunt.

    “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. How could I-”

    “They robbed the main terminal,” Iris interrupted. “Stuck a device on it that allowed them to transfer out hundreds of millions, right?” At seeing Wally’s expression, Iris grinned. “Blogs, Wally. I was reading about it on the Internet minutes after it happened.”

    “Right. Well, uh, do you know they managed to trace the transaction? Yeah, and they still can’t recover the money.”

    Iris leaned forward against the railing, next to her nephew. “That’s because thousands of transactions were made, to accounts all over the world. All of those accounts, opened that day, were then closed, the balances withdrawn in cash.” Again, Iris grinned. “There’s a website dedicated to you. On it are photos of you in several banks around the world. I am a journalist, Wally.”

    “A good one, too,” Wally said with a smile. “You talk to Grandpa yet?”

    “Yes, I did. Thank you for easing him into it.”

    “Well, he knows you’re from the future, so the idea wasn’t a complete shock to him.”

    “Still, just seeing me all of a sudden likely would have killed him.” Gazing out at the Italian landscape, Iris Allen thought about her meeting with her father. Tears of happiness were forming in her eyes. “I don’t think he noticed that I’m nearly his age now.”

    “Grandpa doesn’t notice much. What he does notice, he tends to forget.”

    “And that’s not his age talking,” Iris said with a laugh. “He’s always been like that, so absent-minded. God, he wants to know everything about the future. Or maybe he just wanted me to keep talking so I’d never leave. Bart has to go see him, by the way.”

    “You told him about Bart?”

    “Not everybody lives long enough to see their great-grandchildren, Wally.” Iris lowered her head, suddenly saddened. “A few of us don’t even get to see our children.”

    Wally nodded his head, solemn. “I was thinking about him today, as all that craziness was happening. I mean, I think about him every day. Most of the time I’m wondering what he’d think about this, about me.”

    “You know he’d be proud of you, Wally,” Iris assured him. “He thought of you as a son.”

    “And I thought of him as a father. Lord knows he was around more than the real thing.” Wally turned to his aunt, suddenly apologetic. “I’m sorry, Aunt Iris, I didn’t mean-”

    “Yes you did, and I happen to agree with you. Rudy is who he is, and I’ve thought so for years. Go on,” she said reassuringly. “Why were you thinking of Barry?”

    Wally turned back to the view, shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it had to do with those detectives going on about preserving evidence, but I had the feeling that Barry would have figured everything out. He would have stopped to think, you know? I don’t know if he could have stopped that explosion, but the tape and all that…he just wouldn’t have been fooled the way I’d been.”

“This Riddler – you’re sure you’re dealing with him? He likes to prove he’s smarter than people right?”

    “That’s what I’ve heard. At first I thought it might be the Trickster, but apparently he’s in Gotham. It’s definitely Riddler. Every terminal in the bank had a question mark on the monitor. The police figure that he’s in Keystone because my Rogues went to Gotham. They failed against Batman-”

    “The Batman.”

    “Huh?”

    “Sorry, Wally. It’s just the journalist in me again. That’s how the papers always refer to him. Not so much a name as a title, as though he’s not really a person but somehow bigger.” Iris smiled at Wally. “Like you. The Flash.”

    “Oh.” Wally blushed. “Well, that at least makes sense. Jay, Barry, me… the title’s bigger than all of us. I’ve met Batman though and, well, yeah. The Batman is actually more appropriate. Anyway, Riddler is trying to show the Rogues up by beating me. Sort of a ‘which villains are better’ kind of thing.”

    “The Rogues are more civilized,” said Iris. “Most of them, anyway. From what I’ve heard, so is Riddler. Did he kill anybody?”

    “No, just stole money and destroyed property. The thing is, with the equipment cost and all the people that must have been working with him, I can’t see him breaking even on this.”

    “Like I said, Wally, with Riddler it’s about ego. He beat you, publicly. As for the money, though,” Iris shook her head. “It could be he was building relationships, financing something bigger, I don’t know. I only report facts.”

    “I’ve thought about going to the Batman, asking for help. Barry probably would. Or maybe he wouldn’t have had to. No matter how fast I get, Aunt Iris, there are always going to be situations like this, where I feel as though I’m one step behind.”

    “That’s maybe the third time you’ve mentioned Barry.”

    “Well, he was a smart guy, Aunt Iris. Jay is too. Max knows all this stuff about the Speed Force. Jesse runs a software company. Any one of them could probably figure out the riddle here and find the Riddler. Me, I can’t even see the riddle. All I see are these clues that mock me because I know that if I were smarter I could figure out what they mean.”

    “If you were smart like Barry?” Iris finished for him.

    Wally nodded. “Exactly. If I were…smart…like…Barry…” Wally completed the thought slowly, as at the same time an idea was forming in his head. “Hunh.”

    Iris tilted her head. “What is it?”

    “Nothing, I…” A realization had come over Wally, and it showed on his face. “I think I just figured out the riddle. Gotta go, Aunt Iris.”

    Suddenly, Wally West disappeared from the terrace. Alone, Iris saw a faint red blur move across the countryside.

    “Good luck, Flash.”

   Saltwater crested in the wake of the Scarlet Speedster as he raced across the Atlantic. Soon he was ashore and zig-zagging between beachgoers. Sand was left behind for solid rock. The Flash was speeding for his home’s sister city that was Central City.

    Yeah, I’m an idiot. When I was combing the city a dozen times for Riddler, not once did I stop by the Flash Museum. That’s what the riddle was. If I wanted the answer, I had to go see Barry.

    The red streak that was Flash moving at nearly the speed of light wavered slightly as it passed the cemetery.

    Then again, I never looked there either.

    A brief detour was made. Mausoleums were checked and every gravesite inspected. Seconds later, Flash was back on course.

    Better safe that sor- “Yeargh!”

    Just as Flash was exiting the cemetery, a high-pitched whistle assaulted his ears. The rapid oscillations were particularly effective against his balance. His hands pressed fruitlessly up against his ears, the Flash stumbled into traffic. He stumbled directly into the path of a semi.

    The front bumper caught Flash on the hip. A pair of tires pressed over his leg. In the midst of the sensory assault, Flash didn’t have a chance to vibrate; didn’t have a chance to do anything except keep going forward. Into the second lane he went, just in time for a speeding taxi to crash into Flash head-on.

    The Flash went flying, cracking the windshield with his impact. He rolled over the car as it’s momentum kept it going forward. As soon as he struck the pavement, Flash rapidly crawled off the road and to safety. His leg was a mass of blood and bones, pieces of the hip bone seemed to be moving independently, the ribs were making a pincushion of Flash’s lungs and somehow both his arms were dislocated.

    Lying there on the side of the road, Flash gritted his teeth in agony as he healed. Worse, he had to keep moving, vibrating and manipulating his bones back into place so as to heal properly.

    Okay, so he knew I was going to check Barry’s grave first. Ow, must’ve tripped an electronic eye on my way out. More and more, this Riddler is getting on my nerves. Well, as soon as I heal up, I’ll show him what it’s like to get run over by a very fast object.

    But then Flash realized he didn’t have time to stop and finish healing. In the midst of that whistle had been a voice relaying a message. Tripping the electronic eye had triggered more than one trap.

    Thirty seconds, he said, until the museum blows sky-high. It’s mid-day; the place will be packed.

    With sixteen seconds already lost, the Flash staggered to his feet and raced for the museum. His arms were back in place, but the legs were still raw and he was coughing blood. Specks of it appeared on the ground at long distances from one another. Even hurt as he was, Flash made it to the museum in four seconds.
 
    Where’s the bomb gotta find the bomb come on out bomb aha!

    Flash uncovered the bomb in the area detailing the Flash’s more outlandish adventures, hooked up to the Cosmic Treadmill. There was a timer, a blank screen, and a ten-digit keypad.

    Oh great if the bomb goes off I can’t just carry the explosion away, this might rip a hole in time. Five seconds to go… not a lot of options. I don’t even know how many digits I need to punch in.

    Racing up to the bomb, Flash’s mind raced about how he could disarm it. There were five seconds remaining, and he had to act fast. Remembering the theme of forensics, Flash reached down to his boot, brushed some dust of the sole, and threw it against the keypad. Dust only stuck to the oil on one number. Immediately Flash pressed that button as many times as possible. The timer stopped at one second. The bomb was disarmed.

    Ha! I just realized that Riddler wears gloves, so that shouldn’t have worked! Oh man, thank heaven for the self-destructive cra-

    So elated was Flash in his victory that he didn’t notice the timer screen slide open until a blade stabbed out into his chest!

    There’s a sword in my chest. The only reason it hasn’t pierced by heart is that I managed to vibrate in the nick of time. Okay, and that would be an electric charge to distract me. Figures. Focus Wally. Just focus, and back the hell up!

    The Flash did so, stumbling backwards until he was free of the long blade. Only then, when Flash was able to breathe easy, did he hear the rapid voice from the dead bomb.

    “-about done at the National Bank of Central City. The proceeds are only an investment for a project now sufficiently funded. My congratulations on a game well played. Next time I may remove the handicap. Entertaining nevertheless, though I still prefer chess with the Dark Knight. You can thank Trickster for suggesting I try you for size. If the poor fool survives Gotham City, that is.”

    Later, I found a written note on the base of Barry’s statue outside the museum. It was a riddle. After a few hours, I figured out that Riddler was operating out of Barry and Iris’ first house. There weren’t any riddles there.

    He got away clean.

Next Issue:

    Tim Burns returns with Part Three of BLUR!