His yellow boots dug into the front lawn. He was puzzled, something
screamed to him that everything was broken, everything was different
and he felt a hole where his heart should be. He felt distant and
heavy, like his arms were made from metal and heavy, dense wood. He
pulled down his red mask and ran a hand through his blonde crew cut.
“Phewoo,” was all that came from his lips as he
blew a sigh into the rain, the water covering and drenching him despite
his ‘frictionless aura’. He walked to the front
door and knocked on it a few times, looking around the front garden. It
had changed, the only thing that was similar was the little plaque that
read ‘Garrick’. He smiled, at least that was the
same.
The door was opened by a frail looking woman, who gazed up at the
blonde man, smiling down at her. “Hi Joan. Been a while
hasn't it?”
She crossed herself and hung to the side of the door.
“Barry?!”
Wally and Max stood before the TV camera, with his Flash Gallery
visible behind him. The Victorian man in particular was intrigued by
the camera, moving himself forwards to examine it, only to be pulled
back by the young blonde woman in jeans.
“Stop, now isn't the time,” she hissed at him.
“But it is so interesting...” he trailed off,
fixing his vision on the reflective glass of the lense.
Wally cleared his throat. Two motivational speeches in a day? Will
wonders never cease.
“People of Keystone, you all know me. I know I've not been
the stallwalt defender that you got if you lived in Gotham or
Metropolis, and I know I've made mistakes. Particularly when I thought
I was a Speed
Force god...but I am here to protect you and do whatever
I can to help you in this difficult time. This is probably the most
difficult time of all.”
He swallowed and stepped towards the cameras again.
“You're probably wondering what's going on. Near as we can
tell, the source of my power, this thing called the Speed Force,
it's
fallen through space and into our city. Most of my
friends...” He cut himself off. Should he tell the public
that they're not able to be Flashes anymore? That the assembly of
heroes, or presumed heroes, behind him couldn't run any faster than
they could?
“Most of my friends will be out in the wreckage doing what
they can to help you. And I promise, they will help you. I know many of
you have lost your houses or you're moving too fast to even register
this, but for those of you who can hear this and are all right, I've
got one single message for you.”
“The Flash Family will stop this.”
With that Wally shot off into the distance, breaking into the slowest
run he'd ever managed before, as though the energy that made him the
Flash had faltered even more. He was barely above Mach 3 now.
How could he stop citywide devastation if he couldn't even out run a
plane?
As Barry walked into the house, he looked around. Everything was so
different and it felt so different, but he was sure it should feel like
home. It just felt of nothing, like his emotions were disconnected. He
looked at Joan and went through the motions, putting his hand on her
shoulder, but his voice was completely devoid of any kind of compassion
or care.
“Careful now, Joan.” He walked through the front
door and caught sight of his wife. He was sure that he should be
overcome with joy, that he should cry and give himself over to elation.
Instead he had nothing inside of him, as she wrapped her arms around
him in a tight hug.
“BARRY! Oh God, it's you! It's you!” She smiled and
hugged him again and again, kissing his cheek and his lips as he stood
there as unmoving as a statue. He looked down at his wife.
“What's going on, Iris?” She looked puzzled by his
response. Surely he remembered they were maried. Was he taken from
before that point in the Time Stream?
“What time do you come from, Barry?” she asked,
matter of factly.
“I come from... I don't know.” He shook his head,
rubbing the back of his neck in confusion.
“I can't go on like this, Dad,” Jessie said,
pushing the books away from her and walking towards the door.
Her father looked up from the telephone, a notepad before him with
hundreds of numbers written down. He was trying to work out a new
mantra, something that took into account what was going on. Something
that made sense...to him at least. Everyone needed a little victory.
“Jessie, come on, we can make it through this. We're the
Flash Family.” He offered her a weak smile that only
compounded her anger.
“No, Dad, we're the Flash peripherals. They love him and not
us. I'm going out, all right?” She grabbed her coat from the
rack and left through the door, out into the pouring rain and
electrical discharges in the sky. Lightning wouldn't strike her now
that she wasn't special. Nothing was striking about her at all.
She ran a hand through her already soaking wet blonde hair and sighed.
This was hopeless. She was supposed to become the next Flash, not
Wally. He was Kid Flash, he didn't want the legacy or deserve it. It
was Jessie’s and she wanted it. Badly.
And now, she had no speed, no powers. Just some knowledge and a stupid
mathematical formula that made no sense anymore. She balled her fists
and looked up as something fluttered through the cloud cover, something
she could barely make out. She knew it wasn't something local to
Keystone though.
She ran, at human pace, towards the red cloth and grabbed it as it came
to a rest on top of a car with shattered windows. She pulled it taught
and looked at it. Casting her gaze to the sky she felt something in the
clouds, something pulling at her.
Was it Superman?
She leapt ontop of the car, completely overcome by the feeling she had,
and looked down below her. Alien technology and the alien it was
attached too was badly injured. It spoke to her in garbled noises that
sounded like electrical discharges. She ignored it and helped the alien
out of it's harness. The alien would get help, she'd make sure of that,
but it might be Superman up there. If anyone could help it was the JLA.
She needed to get there.
Slinging the pack onto her back, she looked at the handleheld guage and
quirked an eyebrow. How could she tell what any of this meant. She
shook her head. It didn't matter, just point and go. Pressing a number
of buttons and ignoring the single glowing bar, she looked upwards, as
the pack burst a jet of electrical power from underneath her and her
feet felt slippered.
Anti-Friction pack? Electron Slingshot? She had no idea as she was
propelled into the sky, tearing through the crackling clouds faster
than she'd known in her short time as a normal speed human. She closed
her eyes through the worst of the storm, reaching upwards with her
freezing cold wet hand grabbing at what she thought was Superman as she
exploded from the cloud cover.
She was surprised at what she found.
She'd seen it on the TV. Wally had been on TV and it wasn't to
apologize for what happened before, when he was boosted by the power of
the people in the city and became almost a God. She'd hoped that she
could have gotten over him a little by then, but seeing him in this
state, looking to haggered and worn, she paniced and took off
immediately.
Keystone had been her home until the events that had Wally removed from
it, for however short a time, and now she was flying above the cloud
cover of the city. How could he have been so careless again? Karen
wasn't exactly a master of subtly or making amends, but she always
followed her actions with her heart. She shook her head and ran a hand
through her blonde hair.
Despite the massive clouds and rain and lightning underneath, there was
no wind up where she was. That in itself was unusual. She ran a hand
along the inside of her forearms and balled her fists. She was breaking
through and she was going to help Wally.
As she tore downwards, she felt the effects of her momentum being
sucked from her, loosing speed the closer she got to the edge of the
storm. Lightning crackled and struck her, knocking her from her
position, and felling her, as she dropped from the sky towards the
thick black clouds below.
She pulled her hands over her face, in the hopes of not getting hit by
lightning again, only to find as she hit the cloud, the effects were
not as she had suspected. Instead of passing through into an electronic
maelstrom, she felt herself being forced upwards, her cape torn from
her body, and her limbs thrown behind her, as the momentum and force
she had delivered earlier was restored to her.
“Damnit,” she growled as the G-Forces made her
stomach lurch forwards into her flesh. She tried to steady herself, a
completely impossible task in this instance. She noticed a familiar
crackle of red electrical energy, tearing through the cloud cover and
shooting through the blackness towards her. Karen smiled, and took a
long blink. Wally had come for her. She didn't know how or why, but he
had. Bless that man. As she opened her eyes she realised it wasn't
Wally it was in fact a door-way of electrical energy opened before her,
and a thin hand reached through, grabbing her around the ankle, yanking
her from the portal itself.
It was Jessie Chambers and she looked shocked.
“I thought you were Superman?” Jessie shouted in
surprise.
“I thought you were the Flash?” Karen responeded
equally as shocked and somewhat annoyed.
“Lord!” The Victorian Era Flash was thrown
backwards through a shop front. The window was already broken, but he
skidded on his back, tearing his suit and cracking his head against
some fallen televisions. He was out of the fight.
“Try and keep him off balance and unfocused!” Wally
yelled, after throwing up a gullet full of vomit. The Top was loose,
spinning like a dervish of uncontrollable energy. He was disorientated,
unable to control his movements. His spinning was manic, like he had no
idea what he was doing.
All the while he was babbling under his breath. Wally could make out
words here and there.
Lightning Strikes and Thunder Claps.
Beware the noise of the Insect king
Remember to balance the girders
It didn't make any sense to him, as he shot forwards, intending to
strike the oscilating man in the face, but instead getting clocked in
the back of the head with a spinning fist.
Wally hit the dirt in front of the blonde woman, who used him as a
spring board, attempting to kick the Top in the head. She just about
managed it, but got clocked by the same fist on her way down.
As she hit the floor, it was clear she was unconscious and the Top
drove a huge trench into the concrete below him with his spinning
fists. He stopped for a moment, looking up at Wally and the running man
in the background, wearing the same costume.
“Barry?” Wally asked as the man shot past him and
hit the Top in the face with a dustbin lid. The Top dropped onto the
floor and moaned in pain.
“Hiya, Wally. Sorry there's no time to chat.” He
smiled that knowing smile, and raised the lid again, hitting the Top on
the back of the head as he tried to get to his feet.
“How are you...but you died, didn't you?”
“I did, but now isn't the time, Wally.” Barry
dropped the lid and tore the sleeves off his uniform, tieing them
around the Top's wrists and ankles.
“We don't want him spinning anymore, Wally.” He
looked down at this work. The Top was unconscious and tied up to the
point where if he managed to get on his feet again, by some miracle, he
would topple over anyway.
“Can you run, Wally?”
“Of course I can,” Wally said quickly, a little
more defensivly than he would have liked.
“Then run, Wally. The city needs you.”
“But...”
“I can look after myself, better than you can at this point.
Game Face, Wally.” Barry smiled and gave him the thumbs up.
Wally didn't want to look acceptance in the mouth and shot off into the
distance, leaving a trail of dirt and rubbish in his wake.
With the disorientation of the people of Keystone, a group of workmen
were out in the middle of the storm doing what they could. Tony
Woodward was one of those men. A mountain of a man, with long shaggy
hair and an over-grown beard, all he wanted to do was to protect his
daughter.
His wife had died some months before hand and his daughter was the only
tether keeping him attached to this world. He'd let himself go,
previously he'd been just as big, but more muscles, less hair and no
beard. Grooming became a non-issue when he woke up in his bed alone
everyday.
His friends worked around him and he smiled. They weren't getting paid
for this, but they worked harder than they ever did on the construction
site. The devistation was massive, on a scale he'd never seen before.
For every piece of debris and metal and technology they moved, another
house collapsed on itself, sending a shower of wet dust and wood flakes
into the air.
Tony covered his face as he tried to help an elderly woman from her
home. As he dug his crow bar into the final door frame and pulled it
open, he found her sprawled out underneath it. It was clear she hadn't
survived the final collapse of her house. Tony wiped a tear from his
eye, and let the door fall back ontop of her. He couldn't lift her out.
He just couldn't.
As he turn around, another cascade of debris pushed him onto his back
and a large metallic object hurtled from the skies.
“Oh Jeezu...” The object crashed through Tony,
cutting him in half and spattering half of his body through the
doorframe and into the old lady below. He didn't have time to scream as
his jaw was blown off and his vocal chords severed. He saw a red bolt
of lightning shoot past him and stop momentarily, shaking its head. It
shot off again and Tony managed to stretch a single finger to signal
that he was still alive.
It didn't matter. Tony wasn't going to die.
His feet felt as though they'd been hitting the dirt for days. As he
looked down at this broken and tattered costume, Bart was beginning to
wonder what exactly had happened. Days before, though it seemed longer
to Bart, the storm had hit his city, and he'd been struck by lightning.
He'd been struck by lightning before of course, only this time if
didn't just involve pain. He felt the heat of friction of his body, and
as though he had been sucked through a tiny filter. It reminded him of
what Coffee must feel like.
He sped over a hill, just in time to see hundreds of long legged
Dinosaurs tear through the grass and sand towards him, shooting past
him and avoiding him, like a real life, high budget Jurassic Park. Bart
smiled to himself, shooting off after one of the Dinosaurs and eyeing
it up, as its pace became faster and faster, until they were both many
miles ahead of the others.
“Man, this is totally cool. Dinosaurs!”
“What the glacier are you?” the Dinosaur exclaimed.
Bart lost his footing in suprise and skipped off the surface of the
ground, eventually sliding across the surface of a nearby lake. It
wasn't particularly deep, and the water was crystal clear.
“You can talk?! Ofcourseyoucantalk. Everyonecantalkthesedays.
Shazamhasatalkingtigerthatwearsacoatwhycan'twehaveasuperfastdinosaur,
chum.”
“You need to slow down, mammal.” The Dinosaur
skidded to a halt, looking down at Bart, who pulled himself out the
water.
“Slowdown? WhywouldIdothat,
you'reobviouslyasfastasme.” Bart added, spinning on the spot
to remove the moisture from his body.
“Because I am afraid you might hurt yourself.” The
Dinosaur cocked its head to one-side as Bart shot around it, observing
it from every angle.
“You're real and I'm not imagining it, am I?” He
grinned before poking the lizard in the eye. It hissed and retracted
its head, threatening to kick him.
“I am real, yes,” it answered, a question suddenly
forming in its heat assisted mind.
“How can we understand each other?” it asked,
pacing around Bart as a giant dragonfly danced around his head, its
massive wings longer than Bart’s arm.
“I think it's how we get our powers?” Bart
answered, looking around for something, noticing something shiny around
the dragonfly's midsection.
“Whatsthat?” He asked, snatching the insect form
the air and pulling it free of the object. The Dinosaur's head poked
over Bart's shoulder and blinked a few times.
“Oh, that makes sense,” Bart said, holding the ring
up to the light. It had a large “L” mark in the
center of it, signifiying that it belonged to the Legion of Superheroes.
“What makes sense?” the Dinosaur asked, its smaller
front arms reaching for the object, which Bart snatched away.
“Legion flight ring, allows translation of different
langauges or something. It's pretty cool. Explains why we can
understand each other, must be backwards compatible.” Bart
smiled at his own sarcasm, something which was an entirely new concept
to the Dinosaur.
“That must mean a Legionnaire is around here somewhere. Come
on.” Bart sped off, leaving a trail of parted water as he
shot across it's surface. There must be someone here who fulfilled the
Legion quota. Even one of those substitutes, there had to be some way
to get out of this place.
Bart continued to shoot forwards. He wouldn't give up, wouldn't stop
moving until he found someone. Whoever he was looking for. In a world
of Dinosaurs, spotting a Legionnaire shouldn't be that difficult.
