The Flash Family had gathered together for the first time since they
split up. They all looked haggard and tired, especially Max. It seemed
as though he had been hit the worst by this fall out. They sat around a
table, except for Wally, who paced back and forth in place.
“This is taking too long,” Wally said, removing his cowl
and pacing faster.
“It always takes too long for you, Wally,” Jessie said with
a slight under bite of sarcasm.
“The joys of having speed,” he shot back to her. Perhaps a
bit harsh, but given the current climate of frustrations, Wally was
having a hard time holding his tongue and his temper.
“Whathavewegot?” he asked, to blank looking faces.
Johnny got to his feet and waved in front of Wally. “Calm,”
he offered before he sat down again and slowly sipped his coffee.
Everything was so very, very slow to Wally at the moment. It seemed as
though the Flash family had been robbed of it's vibrance and was forced
to wallow in shame as the only part of the city to remain in normal
speed without any powers.
“What have we got,” Wally asked, letting his shoulders hang
and taking a deep, drawn breath.
“Wally.” Max got up, his elbows shaking as he straightened
his arms against the table. He was weak, his costume destroyed and his
chest wrapped in bandages from the burns he received.
“What happened to you?” Wally asked, zipping over to Max
and putting a hand on his shoulder.
A small spark exploded between them and Wally retracted his hand.
“Struck by lightning,” Max said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Right.” Wally wasn't so sure.
“It looks like the Speed Force has
empited itself into Keystone completely. The storm was part of that; it
was the Speed
Force warping nature to accept it into our world.”
“Right, so why has it spilled everywhere like an over-ripe
water-melon?” Jessie asked
“I don't know.” Max answered, running a hand over his face
to wipe some of the sweat away. “It's difficult to say. It
could be that we had the greatest build up of Flashes in our section of
the universe, or it could be that our Flashes caused too much strain on
the Speed Force
and it became distended and snapped off. It could be anything.”
“But we know that it happened and it happened in Keystone and we NEED TO SORT IT OUT!” Wally
added, becoming increasingly more aggravated with the speed at which
they discussed things. He was used to speedy fluidity, someone asking
something and minds working at superspeed to get things done. Now he
had a brain that was running five times as fast as the person sat
opposite him.
“We will sort it,” Johnny walked slowly over to the
telephone on the opposite table.
“Johnny is going to liase with the Police, give them as much
information as they need, given the situation, and Jessie is going to
do as much research as she can through what I've provided her.”
Max gestured towards the three bookcases of leather bound journals
behind him.
“Lucky me,” Jessie offered, rubbing her temples quietly.
“Any word on Jay or Bart?”
Max shook his head and got to his feet slowly.
“Where are you going?” Wally asked.
“With you,” Max offered and walked out the door.
“This isn't what I wanted to happen, GODAMNIT” He held his head in
his hands, his Weather Wand and domino mask on the steel table before
the pair of them. The Weather Wizard shook his head from side to side
and looked up at his partner in this venture...this crime against
nature.
“Alchemy...What the hell are we going to do?” he asked,
pleading for an answer. In front of him, the man known as Doctor
Alchemy poured over his books, twenty or thirty open in front of him,
as he traced his fingers over every known piece of knowledge he could
gather. To his side lay the glowing and shattered Philosopher’s
Stone.
“Why did we do this?” Weather Wizard asked, getting to his
feet and unbuttoning the top part of his costume; it was hot in the
room. They were underground, deep underground in a cave carved out by
Alchemy's power. If the other Rogues got wind of the fact they had
given the entire city Flash powers, they wouldn't just get beaten.
They'd get murdered.
“You know why we did it,” Alchemy said, his tone as placid
and monotonous as his movements across the pages of his books.
“We wanted superspeed to fight the Flashes on their level,
Alchemy, NOT AN ENTIRE CITY OF
FLASHES TO FIGHT US!” He threw his hands in the air as it
started to rain under the low, hot roof.
“Stop that! You're making my books wet,” Alchemy stated,
closing a few of them to protect their already faded and jaundiced
pages.
“What are we going to do, Alchemy?” the Wizard asked again.
“Well, if you were quiet long enough to let me search, I would
tell you that I am looking through all of my books to try and find a
way to make it right. What we have here is an unprescidented situation.
The Speed Force
is an abstract quantity, it's not been measured or expressed in any
kind of chemical or biological way. It's going to take time and it's
going to be difficult.” Alchemy answered, looking at the remains
of his Phlisopher's Stone.
“And expensive,” he added with a raised finger in the air.
The rain slowly died back and the Wizard sat down again, clearly
aggitated.
“I need something to eat, Alchemy.”
“Well, if you want to think about making something, go ahead. I
don't think it's any state up there to go for a take-out.”
“Crap.” Wally pulled away from the household at
super-speed, his feet plowing through the ground as fast as he could
muster, which was greatly depleted from his original speed. He could
feel the drag as he reached his upper limits. This was going to suck, was all his
mind could race through.
A more worryingly though occurred as he sped through the streets of
Keystone, his mind flickering between two women, one of whom being
Linda, who he cared for a lot, and the other, flicking between someone
he cared for almost as much as Linda who might be able to give him more
support in this situation. His thoughts of Power Girl plagued his mind
much more than the situation around him.
As he skidded to a halt, he started to try and notice and take down
everything that was going on. People sliding around unable to stick to
the surface, as a result of having no friction on their body. People
running into each other unable to counter for the fact their minds were
still moving at normal speed, but their bodies were propelled so much
faster than that.
As he charged on he saw people unable to touch each other, stuck in a
vibrational wraith like form, moving through solid objects and floating
through the air with every gust of wind, which was just as violent and
powerful as the beginning of the storm.
The rain had made the surfaces of the roads slick and hard for most to
grip onto, except for the people who were stuck at super-slow. Wally
weaved in and out of their bodies, helping fallen people to their feet.
While they were stuck at super slow, the world around them was still
moving as normal and, as a result of it, them falling over was seconds
of movements, but their reaction to it would take almost an hour.
Wally stopped for a moment to wipe the rain from his face. Speeding up
an alleyway, he wiped the mositure from his face and pulled his cowl
down. Without the Speed
Force to help him, he was just another meta-human and as a
result of this...he was starving with hunger. His metabolism had
removed the fat from his body and was starting to burn his muscles away.
Speeding towards the nearest and moderatly functioning fast food
outlet, he found at least sixty people with the same idea, devouring
whatever they could find with their bodies desperatly trying to process
the proteins and fats before it turned on itself again, starting the
vicious cycle.
“This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better,”
he said to himself, trying to ignore the pangs of hunger that stabbed
at his stomach.
“Okay, come on Wally, pull it together here.” He leaned
against the side of the building and rubbed his gloved thumb and
fore-finger against the bridge of his nose.
“These people, this city needs you, you've got to get it
together. Come on..” He balled his hands into fists and gritted
his teeth. He turned around, arms down by his sides, and looked over
the devistation of Keystone.
“Right then...first things first.” He closed his eyes and
took a deep breath. His stomach growled loudly and he felt it churn at
the thought of more running.“Find a couple of burgers, I
think...” He rubbed the back of his head and sped back into the
fast food outlet. It was going to be a long couple of nights.
Lightning flashes that exploded cars beneath the windows. Thunderclaps
that had removed the possibility of artificial lighting from the prison
itself. Iron Heights was now completely in the dark, and the guards
were becoming slightly antsy. The prisoners themselves, mostly
Meta-Humans, were becoming increasingly more angry and closer to riot.
Cells were beginning to fragment as their occupiers had greater access
to their powers with every second that passed.
Slamming their weight against the walls, using whatever they had at
their disposal, fists, shoulders, super-strength. The walls began to
give and, for every prisoner that escaped, they freed two more.
As the walls fell down, the villain known as Double Down pulled himself
from the rubble and shot two cards into the throats of the guards
around him.
“RRRRIIIIOOOOOTT!”
He yelled at the top of his lungs, before leaping off the gangway onto
a guard below him. Iron Heights was about to be at war with itself.
Johnny had been on the phone for nearly an hour and even his patience
was wearing thin. An emergency was an emergency and, if what Wally had
told him was true, then he was going to need to keep his patience and
wits about him.
The Keystone Police Station had been at the very epicenter of the
spillage, with wreckage sticking out from the building. Half the
station was given superspeed and were trying to adapt to their new
surrondings, and the half were so slow that the woman on the phone was
close to finishing her fourth sentence making Johnny wonder if there
was any point at all in talking to her.
“This is getting me nowhere, Jessie. What about you?”
Though Jessie Quick wasn't so quick anymore, her reading speed was
still miles above most others. As she scanned through the journals Max
had given her, looking for anything she might glean about the Speed Force, her
mind turned to what might have been.
What would life have been like for her if she had pursued a career as a
superhuman historian and not a superhero itself? Life might have been a
lot different. She could have any number of thesis out there now,
including books, a syndicated TV show on superhumans, and so forth.
Instead, she sat in a poorly lit room reading over books written about
something that occurred (vaguely) a hundred years ago. This was her
life now and she found it extremely hard not to be disappointed.
“Slow, Dad. Slow.”
Wally stood before a small group of people, Flashes, he presumed. They
all seemed to know Max and crowded around him. Wally cleared his throat
and pulled his cowl down, balling his fists together and looking at the
floor.
“The Speed
Force is gone and what had united us together is broken and we
can't find it.” He looked up across the people before him,
including a young woman who appeared to be from his time period, a man
who wore clothes that leant him to the Victorian era in a smart dress
with a lightning bolt instead of a pocket watch, a woman with red skin
and alien features, an African man who was naked aside from the leopard
skin around his chest, and a woman who appeared to be Asian, who looked
at Wally with something a little more than interest.
“This storm has cut us off from everywhere else. We can't get to
Central City and we can't get out of Keystone. We're isolated and
everyone that's here with us is isolated too.”
He turned to Max and then to the group again.
“We're all Flashes in some form or another and we're going to
make damn well sure that my city...Our City...is going to stay
protected. I need you and, more importantly, this city needs you. The
people of this city, we're their only hope and the only people we can
rely on are each other.
“So...can I count on you?”
“Kree Nve Uoir,” the red skinned woman spoke.
Max turned to Wally and smiled. “She said she would.”
“How do you speak that language?”
“Uhh,” Max hesitated, enough for Wally to tell he was
holding something back. “Must be my exposure to the Speed Force over
time?” he said looking away from Wally.
As the other Flashes spoke amongst themselves, Wally sat down next to
Max and opened a wrapped burger he'd saved for himself. He offered Max
a piece.
“Not like it used to be, is it?” he offered to Wally, as he
bit into the cold burger.
“Not really. Never seen a Khund Flash before. I didn't even
realise that aliens could tap into the Speed Force.
Makes sense really.”
“It does, doesn't it? Kind of makes you feel small though, when
you see the scope of it, and a bit selfish,” Max said, his eyes
slightly glazed over.
“What do you mean?” Wally asked, finishing the burger and
looking at the woman Flash ahead of him. She offered him a wink and he
looked awkwardly away.
“I mean, we thought we were the only ones able to tap into the Speed Force. We
thought we were so special, but these people... Wally, there's a Speed Force
space-ship out there. We didn't do anything that special. In terms of
the Speed Force,
we didn't ride the lightning, we used it to spark our lightbulbs.”
“Well, I don't see it that way, Max. We've really made a
difference as Flashes, haven't we?” Wally asked, more as a
rhetorical question than anything.
“Have we, Wally? If we understood our powers better, maybe if we
respected them more, we wouldn't be in the situation where Keystone is
cut off from the rest of the world by this Storm...and people might not
be dying because of it.” Max looked at Wally, his expression
grave.
Wally had nothing to say to that. After a few minutes and a loud gulp,
he got to his feet and sped off.
As the lightning crashed down around them, and thunder shook through
the rooms of the building, without the glass to protect them from the
outside, the bearded and bald man stood in silence, holding a curved
blade in his hand. He looked through his sunglasses against the
lightning bolt shaped blade, pulling it from the table where he had
bashed it into shape with a hammer.
It was a crude design and he held it up to the light, stroking a hand
through his beard. A deep croaking came from his throat, which was his
version of laughter, but after years of cigarettes and drink his voice
had turned from deep, to gravel to almost non-existant. Formerly a
lecturer at Keystone University, he had been expelled after some
unorthadox experiments involving animals and live disection, after his
wife had sadly passed away.
He'd bring them back and he'd bring her back. His voice was shot now,
completely runined from weeks of screaming, slowly getting quieter and
quieter until there was nothing left but the horrible gutteral
clicking, sometimes so loud it made his entire chest vibrate. Some of
the children had given him a nickname because of this sound, something
he hated, but had learned to adopt, especially in this world.
