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thebubblesareevil · 2 years ago

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Slowing down and Speeding up...

Part 1

The next night, as he prepared for sleep, Barry planned. He had a list of questions and was determined to get them answered. So he kissed his wife and laid down to sleep, determined. He would get answers out of Danny even if it killed him!... Though ideally it wouldn't... hopefully.

Barry laid there for what felt like hours trying to sleep, trying his best not to fidget too much and disturb Iris. Slowly, ever so slowly, Barry began to doze off when...

BEEP...BEEP...BEEP!

Barry jumped out of bed at the sound of his communicator. Grabbing the device he read the message. He sighed as he gave Iris a quick peck on the cheek, telling her to go back to sleep, knowing neither of them would be getting any rest as her own phone began blaring.

Questions would have to wait, for now he had work to do.

--------

Three days and an Alien invasion later, Barry collapsed into his bed. Iris chuckled at her husbands antics.

"Is the big, strong, superhero tired?" She asked, sitting next to him as she gently rubbed his back.

"Hngh" came the muffled reply. Iris chuckled.

"I know, I know, it's been a long few days. That doesn't change the fact that even speedsters need to brush their teeth." Barry groaned. "And no superspeed! As tired as you are you're more than likely to crash into the wall." Slowly Barry dragged himself from the sweet comfort of his pillow to brush his teeth.

Once done, he blearily trudged back to the bed, collapsing once more. Iris chuckled before draping the covers over his prone form. She turned off the lights before joining him in bed.

Barry barely processed anything as she ran her fingers through his hair before wrapping an arm around him.

"You did such a good job sweetie, you saved so many lives, and I'm proud of you." Barry barely managed a smile as she kissed him. "Now get some sleep, you've earned it."

"Yr suu prrft, I lrve u Rs." Barry mumbled as he drifted off to sleep, as his wife giggled.

"I love you too."

---------

When Barry's eyes flew open, he was almost as tired as when he shut them. He was surrounded by a tunnel of rushing light, his first instinct was to run of course, before his last dream came to mind. He took deep calming breaths as he let go of his tight grip on the speed force. Exhaustion flowed through him, but (at the risk of sounding like a certain bat) he had questions that needed to be answered, so he walked.

And Walked...

And Walked......

And-

"What are you doing?"

Barry's eyes flew open, though when they closed he couldn't say, only for him to jump back from Danny's face that was a mere 2 inches from his own. The teen burst out laughing.

"Where the heck did you come from!?!" This only seemed to make the teen laugh more.

"Dude, you've been walking around with your eyes closed for about an hour!" Barry turned red from embarrassment. Doing his best to salvage the situation Barry cleared his throat.

"Yes, well, it's been a long week. That's not important! I have some questions for you!" Danny tilted his head to the side while pointing a single clawed finger at his chest. "Yes you!" He shouted. Danny grinned.

"Okay, shoot! What do you want to know?" Barry was nearly taken by surprise but quickly recovered.

"Okay, first things first, why are we here?" Danny looked at him like he was crazy.

"You went right for the difficult questions, huh. I mean I'd like to say we all have a purpose, although I learned that sometimes that purpose is to help someone else's purpose. I mean... there's no real set answer I don't think, however-" Barry just stared at him blankly before shaking his head.

"I meant in the Speed Force! I mean if you happen to know the meaning of life we can talk about that later, but for now I just want to know why we are in the Speed Force." he interrupted, too tired to run in circles. "I've talked to other speedsters about this dream before and none of them have ever been here, so why are we here?"

"Oh! Well that's a much easier question!" Danny gave him a fanged grin. "I'm here because I was wandering around the Infinite Realms and stumbled upon this little piece of heaven. As I've said before, prime napping real estate, or anything really. You and Speedy Gonzales are the only other people I've ever run into here, and he never really bothers me anyway." he shrugged at Barry's look of shock and annoyance.

"As for you, that's a whole other can of worms. After the last time we ran into each other, I asked around some of the older circles of ghosts. It was actually one of the Observants that had the answer, or at least a vague explanation." Danny put his hands behind his head as he got himself comfortable, floating mid-air. Barry was not jealous, thank-you-very-much.

"And?" He pushed.

"And for some reason you've got a stronger connection with the speed force than the others. Something about how you generate energy when you run. They wouldn't explain more than that, they're pretty annoying like that." he shrugged. "Sorry if it's not the answer you were looking for." Barry sighed.

"It was less than I'd like, and more than I expected. Okay, next question. Who is that other guy? Why was he after me?" The half-ghost cringed with a hiss.

"I was afraid you would ask that... he's kinda complicated." Danny sat cross-legged as well as crossing his arms. "So from what I can tell is he's kinda your grim reaper." Barry jolted in shock.

"He's what?!?!"

"Hey, calm down, no need to freak out!" Danny replied trying his best to calm the panicking speedster.

"You just told me the grim reaper is after me and you want me to calm down?!?!?" he shouted.

"He's not after you, for Ancient's sake! Sit Down!" he commanded and to his own surprise, Barry sat down.

"He is the grim reaper of speedsters, but the only reason he was chasing you is because you were running around in the Speed Force. That's how you mess with things that shouldn't be messed with, and it's his unending job to stop/punish people who mess with those things."

"And exactly would I be messing with?" He asked, doing his best to calm down.

"Space-Time. Now next question, I came here to get my homework done. I may have more time here but it's not infinite." Barry took a deep breath, nodding.

"Okay, well I guess the biggest question I have is about you." Danny raised his eyebrow, curious. "You said you died, can I ask how?" Danny froze, possibly literally as Barry started to feel a chill in the air.

"That's...That's not really something you should ask ghosts. It's considered extremely insensitive and rude, honestly most ghosts would attack you for asking something like that." Barry nodded.

"Hey, it's okay, you don't have to answer if you don't want to." Danny took a deep breath and nodded.

"My sister thinks I need to talk about it, she's probably right as usual."

"If you want to talk about it, you can do so at your own pace. No pressure." Danny smiled softly.

"Thanks, I might take you up on it sometime. Now it's my turn to ask a question." Barry grinned.

"Fair is fair, hit me."

"Why are you so tired? You haven't been here in about a week so I gotta admit I'm curious about what you've been up to." Danny shrugged. Barry laughed.

"My Earth got hit by an alien invasion, the whole league was fighting them back for the last three days. We managed to stop the invasion and Superman (Danny snorted) managed to broker a peace treaty to prevent future conflict." Danny was grinning through the whole explanation. "What's with that face?" Danny chuckled (no it wasn't creepy, calm down Barry)

"So let me get this straight. You have ALIENS, ALIENS in your world, and they invaded." His grin got bigger, showing off his jagged teeth, as Barry nodded. "We are going to unpack the fact that you have a guy on your team that calls himself Superman later. Right now I need you to tell me EVERYTHING! What did they look like? Were they green? Did they fly? Were they able to breath oxygen or did they use gas masks? Why did they invade? What planet were they from?!?!" Barry was honestly impressed by how much the ghost was vibrating as he shot off question after question. Barry cleared his throat.

"Well, I'm gonna be honest I don't have all the answers about those particular aliens. I was more concerned with stopping the invasion more that anything." Danny visibly deflated as he started to droop from where he was floating. "But! I have a teammate that's from Mars." The ghost immediately perked up, his form glowing brighter than before.

"SERIOUSLY?!?!?!" He shrieked. Barry chuckled, happy to see him excited about something normal.

"Oh yeah, Superman is actually from the planet Krypton and Hawk man and Hawk woman are both from Thanagar. Hell if you wanna reach a bit, Green Lantern may be from Earth but he's a space cop." Danny could light up a room with how much he was glowing at this point.

"Tell me all about the Martian! You can tell me about the others later, but you gotta tell me about the Martian."

"Okay, okay, but not for long. You already said you needed to do homework." Danny groaned but conceded, giving Barry his full attention. "Okay so in the League he goes by the name Martian Manhunter, but his real name is J'onn J'onzz. He was pulled from his planet in the middle of a war...on accident. The poor scientist had a heart attack when he saw J'onn show up outta nowhere. He kept himself hidden for years to keep the government off his back, but when the world needed him he joined the league." He grinned.

"He's a pretty chill dude, honestly, once you get passed the telepathy. I won't tell you everything about him, cus superhero bro code and all that, but he is in fact green, he can shapeshift, as well as density shift through most solid objects, oh and he can fly too." He finished with a yawn. Danny practically squealed in excitement.

"That's so awesome! I'm so jealous, I wi-" Danny froze looking around, much to Barry's confusion. "I very much would love it if I could meet him." Barry squinted at the strange pause but shook his head, too tired to question it. Danny however started to give him a smug look.

"You look like you're about to collapse." Barry yawned.

"You're not wrong." he remarked.

"Why don't you lay down and get some sleep? I've gotta do my homework anyway."

"But...I am asleep?"

"You might be asleep physically, but mentally you are talking to me. I'm guessing this is honestly a weird astral projecting kind of thing. Trust me, lay down, take a nap. You'll thank me for it later." Barry sighed, too tired to argue as he laid down on the, surprisingly comfy, ground.

Danny floated close by, the soft scratched of pencil against paper lulling him to sleep.

-----

Barry woke with a start, jumping from the ground, startling the floating teen. He quickly looked around surveying the area.

"Feel better?" He looked at the teen in surprise, because yes he did, he felt much more awake.

"How long was I asleep?" Danny shrugged.

"I don't know, maybe 20-30"

"Not bad for a 30 min nap." He said as he stretched.

"Yeah, no, sorry. You slept for 20-30 HOURS. Minimum." Barry froze.

"What?"

"Oh yeah, I actually just got back from school. You must have been really tired!" Danny grinned.

"How? Why am I still here? Why am I not home?!?" Barry began to shake as Danny raced up to the speedster.

"Hey, Barry, I need you to calm down. Time works differently, remember? Everything is okay." Danny grabbed hold of Barry's arm only to be thrown of as lightning started to surround him. "Barry, if you don't calm down Zippy is gonna come after you again. I need you to BREATHE!" It was too late, Barry could see him.

The black speedster.

He was coming for him.

Barry backed away from Danny and ran, he ran as fast as he possibly could he ran until-

-----

Barry jumped out of bed, running for his life and straight into a wall.

Iris jumped out of bed at the crash, racing over to her husband's side.

"Are you alright!?!" She asked as Barry groaned.

"Yeah, all good. Can't say the same for the wall." Iris turned to look at the cracked wall with a sigh.

"Barry, I love you. This is the third time this month. We have got to put some kind of cushioning on this wall if we wanna keep it."

Barry sighed, taking in his surroundings.

He felt better rested than he had in years. He grinned.

"You're probably right, I'll get right on that. But first, breakfast!" He smiled at his beautiful wife.

"I'm making waffles!" Iris laughed.

"Well you certainly got a good nights rest, huh. I think I'll get a little more shut eye while you cook." Barry laughed

"Sounds like a plan!." 'Today was going to be a good day', Barry thought with a smile 'a good day, indeed.'

@hypewinter@daemonlogical@crystalqueertea

#dc x dp au #barry allen #barry x iris #danny phantom #Barry needs a nap #I love barry and iris but I genuinely hate them together in the cw #ghost king danny #space #Danny is a martian manhunter fanboy

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longitudinalwaveme · 2 months ago

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You're No Flash (Fictober 2024)

Day 11: “Well, that worked out great.”

“Bruce, I really can’t thank you enough for offering to keep an eye on Central City for me while Iris and I take our Gotham vacation,” Barry said as he ran around his house, throwing things into his suitcase.

“You’re planning to patrol Gotham during your vacation. It’s only fair that I return the favor,” Bruce replied.

“Still, I really appreciate you thinking of it. I know that you don’t like to leave Gotham.” Barry disappeared from the room, then reappeared with a huge stack of old comic books, which he placed in his suitcase. A few seconds later, Iris walked out of their shared bedroom, dragging her suitcase behind her.

“Barry, are you still packing? We have to be at the airport in ten minutes!” Barry dashed off, then returned with a jumble of shirts, jackets, pocket protectors, pants, and bow ties, which he dumped haphazardly into the suitcase before zipping it shut.

“I’m done, I’m done!” he exclaimed. Iris laughed.

“I’ll never understand how the Fastest Man Alive is always running late,” she said. Barry shrugged sheepishly.

“Sorry, Iris. I just got distracted talking to Bruce. He was giving me the rundown on how to stop crime in Gotham City.” Iris frowned.

“Have you given him the rundown on how to fight crime in Central City?” she asked. Bruce was about to say that he was fairly sure he could handle two-bit punks like the Trickster and Captain Boomerang when Barry spoke up.

“Oh, that’s right! I knew I was forgetting something!” Barry darted off into his study, and then returned with a three-ring notebook.

“Here it is, Bruce—the Flash’s guide to Central City’s Most Wanted. I compiled it myself,” he said proudly.

“Thanks, Barry, but I really don’t think that I’ll—”

“Good-bye, Bruce, and good luck! Iris and I have got to run if we want to get to the airport in time,” Barry said. He grabbed his suitcase, scooped up Iris, and suddenly the two of them were gone. Bruce shook his head. He wasn’t sure he would ever entirely get accustomed to working alongside a man who could move faster than the speed of light.

Bruce’s first instinct was to change into the Batsuit and start his patrol of Central City, but he decided that it would probably be best to read through Barry’s guide to Central City before he did, just in case. He had always had a great amount of respect for Barry’s organization, scientific mind, and dedication to justice, and he had no doubt that reading the notebook would be beneficial for Barry’s insights into the city where he lived, if for nothing else. With that in mind, he sat down in one of the Allens’ easy chairs and started flipping through the notebook.

As Bruce had expected from a man of Barry’s logical, orderly mindset, the journal was excellently organized. The entries were sorted by both topic and alphabetical order, and Barry had even been thorough enough to include an index at the back of the notebook that would allow Bruce to easily find the information he needed on any major location in Central City, all of the important members of the city’s law enforcement, and all of the biggest criminals and criminal combines in the city.

But, as Bruce had also come to expect from Barry, the notebook was almost painfully earnest. He really believed that all the people who fought were equally dangerous and needed to be taken with equal caution, and he had written the journal accordingly. There was no other reason he could think of for Barry to have included four straight pages of detailed notes, complete with several diagrams and photographs, about a cheap hoodlum like Captain Boomerang.

Still, if Bruce had to choose between someone who was overly cautious in his record-keeping and someone who didn’t even bother to keep notes, he would take the former every single time.

After he finished reading through Barry’s notebook, Bruce got himself a cup of coffee, drank it, and then changed into the Batsuit and got ready for his first patrol in Central City.

*************************************************************************

After five days and four nights of patrolling, during which Batman had stopped exactly one carjacking and had otherwise seen no crimes other than jaywalking and candy wrapper littering, Bruce was perched on the roof of a crumbling old tailor’s shop when a mirror across the street suddenly seemed to twist and warp. A few seconds later, a man in an orange-and-green costume stepped out of the mirror, iced tea in hand. Batman instantly recognized him from Barry’s notes, police records, and the files in his own Batcomputer. Samuel Joseph Scudder. The Mirror Master.

Bruce glided down from the rooftop, cape billowing behind him, and landed in front of the criminal—who promptly dropped his drink in apparent shock.

“Batman? I…I thought you were—that you were—”

“A myth? A man as superstitious as you are should know that all myths have a grain of truth to them.”

“Oh, gosh, you’re real. You’re real and you’re here and—please-don’t-eat-me!” The Batman costume had been designed to frighten criminals, but it had been a long time since he had seen a thug this spooked by it, let alone a supervillain. It was nothing to complain about, though. The more frightened Mirror Master was, the less of a threat he would be.

Bruce heard the familiar whistling sound of a boomerang flying through the air just in time to dodge out of the way. He rolled to the right, landing on his feet just as the boomerang returned to the hand of its thrower—a small, lean man with a mass of brown hair and a look of low cunning on his face. Captain Boomerang.

“G’day, mate!” he said. He gave a tip of his cap, and Bruce, taking advantage of his obvious overconfidence, retrieved a batarang from his utility belt and threw it at the two-bit crook.

Only for the Captain to actually manage to grab it out of the air before it hit him. Apparently, he wasn’t quite as incompetent as Bruce had initially assumed.

“Gotta say, mate, this boomerang’s a beaut. Perfectly balanced, feather-light—but hard as steel. Unless you made it yourself, you must’ve paid a pretty penny for this. Mind if I give it a whirl?” The batarang came careening back through the air, and, although Bruce was able to dodge out of the way again, the batarang hit the wall behind him with enough force that it actually embedded itself into the brick.

Doing something like that required perfect form, precision, and not a small amount of strength, and Bruce mentally chastised himself for his earlier hubris. Even if your enemy was a two-bit thug who dressed in a boomerang-print stewardess outfit and called themselves “Captain Boomerang”, it was the height of foolishness to assume they weren’t a threat.

Mirror Master scampered over to the other criminal.

“Digger, we’ve got to get out of here! Batman’s real, and he’s going to eat us!” Digger laughed.

“You can walk through mirrors and tangle with the fastest man alive, and you’re afraid of a regular bloke in a bat costume?”

“How do you know he’s a regular guy? Half the stories from Gotham say he can fly and has super strength and eats people,” the Mirror Master asked.

“Didn’t you see him throw his boomerang, mate? It didn’t move any faster than the ones I throw. If he had super-strength, it would’ve moved too fast for me to even think about catching it,” Captain Boomerang replied.

Bruce was just about to take advantage of their conversation to disarm Captain Boomerang when a gust of wind suddenly knocked him to the ground. He looked up, and, floating about thirty feet above the ground, was a skinny man with wild black hair, holding a long golden rod. The Weather Wizard.

“The forecast predicts stormy weather ahead for you, Batman!” he boasted. A few seconds later, a small blonde man—more a boy, really; he couldn’t be more than nineteen years old—in a huge black-and-orange cape and hideous striped clothes jogged up to the Weather Wizard. The Trickster.

“That’s the Batman? I thought he’d be taller,” he said as he pulled out a yo-yo and began fiddling with it. From Barry’s files, Bruce knew that the Trickster’s gadgets weren’t as harmless as they appeared, but, for the moment at least, he didn’t seem intent on using this particular yo-yo as a weapon.

In fact, none of the villains seemed particularly interested in fighting. Captain Boomerang had thrown a boomerang, and Weather Wizard had bowled him over, but neither one of them had followed up on their initial attacks. Why?

“What’s the matter with you guys? Why aren’t you scared of him?” the Mirror Master demanded.

“Come on, Sam. We fight the Flash, who has super-speed. Batman is a normal guy with boomerangs, which basically just makes him Digger in a funny mask. And I’m not scared of Digger,” the Trickster said. Bruce pulled himself back to his feet and started calculating the best angle to use to knock the Weather Wizard’s wand out of his hand.

“But I heard that—” Mirror Master protested. The Weather Wizard waved his hand dismissively as Bruce pulled out another batarang.

“What? That he eats people? Even if that’s true, which I seriously doubt, he’s no match for a man who can bend the elements to his will.” Bruce released the batarang—only for it to be frozen in midair by a bright blue beam and fall to the ground. He snapped his head to his left to see a man in a parka, who was wearing a pair of blue goggles and holding a smoking purple gun. Captain Cold. Walking alongside the Captain was a giant of a man, at least six and a half feet tall and probably well over two hundred pounds, in a flameproof suit. Heat Wave.

“What’s the Batman doin’ in Central City?” Captain Cold asked. He kept his gun trained on Bruce, but he didn’t pull the trigger.

“Cleaning up the night,” Bruce replied. Captain Cold laughed.

“You think you can fight all of us?”

“I’ve faced worse odds before.” Bruce lunged forward and grabbed the Captain’s gun arm. Cold fought back, but he was clearly not a trained fighter, and it didn’t take long at all for Batman to gain control over the gun and disarm the Captain. A few seconds later, Heat Wave grabbed him from behind and pulled him off Captain Cold—-but in spite of his obvious strength, Heat Wave was clumsy and awkward, and Bruce was easily able to free himself from the man’s grip, turn around, and knock his legs out from under him. Bruce then turned his attention back to Captain Cold, and was about to punch him out when a strange melody began to play and he suddenly found himself unable to move a muscle.

A pale, slender man with long red hair walked forward, playing a silver flute. The Pied Piper. Like the Trickster, he was shockingly young, and he was dressed in a very ragged green polka-dotted tunic. He was also accompanied by a tall, athletic-looking man in a green-and-yellow striped leotard, who was clutching a blue-and-red striped top and wearing an odd-looking mask and a self-serious expression. Roscoe Neyle Dillon, better known as the treacherous Top.

“Good work, Piper,” Captain Cold said gruffly as he helped Heat Wave back to his feet. The Pied Piper lowered his pipe and gave a slight smile.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. The Top walked a tight circle around Bruce, looking him up and down, and Bruce felt a strong sense of unease. Something about the way that the criminal was examining him made him feel as though he was being x-rayed.

“So, this is Gotham City’s infamous vigilante. I must say, I’m a bit disappointed. Given your fearsome reputation, I was expecting something a bit more imposing than a man in a Halloween costume—especially after having fought the Fastest Man Alive. I’m afraid, in terms of menace, that you cannot top that,” he said coolly.

“Do you guys think the Flash is okay?” Heat Wave asked suddenly. If Bruce had been able to turn his head, he would have stared at him in surprise. If he didn’t know better, he would have said that the criminal sounded concerned about the Flash.

“Probably. Why?” Captain Cold replied as he picked up his cold gun.

“Well, if he’s okay, why didn’t he come to stop us?” Heat Wave said. Up in the air, the Trickster frowned.

“You’re right. He’s never sent in a replacement before.”

“And we are worrying about this, why, exactly? The Flash not being here can only benefit us,” the Top asked.

“I ain’t so sure of that. The Flash is faster, sure, but word on the street is that Batman is a whole lot tougher. The Flash don’t go around breakin’ bones, for one thing,” Captain Cold replied.

“That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time! Batman’s dangerous, and we need to get out of here before we get eaten,” Mirror Master insisted.

“Scudder, Batman doesn’t eat people.”

“Everyone keeps saying that, but none of you are saying how you know.”

“ I know he doesn’t eat people ‘cause word from Gotham’s underworld is he doesn’t even kill. He might crack your skull, but he won’t snap your neck—and ain’t nobody ever seen him with a knife or a gun,” Captain Cold replied.

“Fair enough—but if word in Gotham is wrong, and we get eaten, I’m blaming you,” Mirror Master replied. He unholstered a weapon that Barry’s notes had called a “mirror gun”, which could apparently produce a wide variety of effects, from creating mirror duplicates to shooting laser beams, and pointed it at Bruce, but didn’t fire it.

“Regardless of how brutal he is, he has no superpowers. We can fight the Flash; the Batman should pose no threat to us,” the Top insisted.

“No powers doesn’t equal no threat. We’re livin’ proof of that,” Captain Cold replied.

“Perhaps, but given the fact that we were able to totally immobilize him before he was able to incapacitate any of us does not give me reason to suppose that this Batman poses any significant threat to us.”

“Hey, guys?” the Trickster said.

“The Top’s got a point, Captain. Sure, his punches really pack a wallop—I learned that the hard way when I took that trip to Gotham last year—but as long as I stay out of his range, he can’t touch me. Not when I have the power of the weather itself on my side,” the Weather Wizard said. Bruce blinked, and realized that the hypnotic effect of the Pied Piper’s music must be wearing off.

“You mean the trip to Gotham that ended with the Batman sending you to prison?” Captain Cold asked.

“Uh, guys?” Trickster repeated.

“Maybe he got the better of me the first time we fought…but this time, I know what to watch out for. He’ll never be able to defeat me again,” Weather Wizard insisted.

“GUYS!” Trickster exclaimed.

“What?” Captain Cold snapped—just as Bruce kicked the flute out of the Pied Piper’s hands. As dangerous as the other Rogues’ weapons might be, eliminating the weapon that could freeze him in place without even needing to be aimed took priority. The flute went flying into the air, and cracked in half upon hitting the ground.

“That’s what,” Trickster said as Bruce grabbed the Pied Piper by the collar.

As Bruce stared down into the young man’s frightened face, he was very surprised to realize that he was looking into the face of someone he had met before—not on the streets, but at several high society parties. True, he was paler and gaunter than Bruce remembered him being, but after having attended dozens of soirees hosted by Rachel and Osgood Rathaway, there was no doubt in his mind that the criminal he was currently holding a foot or so off the ground was their son, Hartley. How had the scion of one of the wealthiest families in the country ended up with a gang of blue-collar criminals?

Only years of training prevented Bruce from taking the full force of the impact as the Top suddenly spun into him at super-speed, but the shock of being rammed into by a man-sized spinning top still caused him to drop Hartley to the ground, and he only barely managed to stay standing. Barry’s notes had mentioned that the Top could spin himself at superhuman speed, but he hadn’t mentioned that when he collided with you, it would feel like getting hit by a freight train. If Bruce wasn’t lucky, he would probably end up with a broken rib from the sheer force of that blow.

“The Flash would have avoided that attack easily,” the Top said haughtily as he tossed the top he had been holding at Bruce. Bruce managed to pull out a batarang and knock the top off its course, but then the Top spun into him again, grabbing him and slamming him into a wall.

“And you, clearly, cannot stop us from coming out on top.” In response, Bruce drew his right leg up sharply and kneed the Top hard in the throat. The Top cried out in pain and loosened his hold, but before Bruce could land a second hit, the Top dropped him and spun out of range. A few seconds later, a boomerang hurtled at him, and, when Bruce dodged the boomerang, a yo-yo suddenly slammed into his head from above.

“Gotcha!” Trickster exclaimed. Bruce shook his head to clear it from the impact of the blow—only for him to be knocked off his feet by another violent gust of wind. Bruce was knocked backwards—and right into a dozen Mirror Masters. Bruce jabbed his elbow into the face of the nearest one, and it shattered into glass. He spun around and slammed a fist into another Mirror Master, which also shattered.

“The Flash could’ve smashed through all my duplicates and found the real me in seconds,” the Mirror Master said. He sounded almost disappointed, which seemed counterintuitive. Given how frightened he had been of Batman earlier, one would have expected him to simply be relieved that Bruce was having trouble finding him—but perhaps his teammates’ insistence that Batman did not, in fact, eat people had given him enough confidence to start…being disappointed that he and his criminal cohorts were winning? No, it still didn’t make sense.

As he shattered another Mirror Master duplicate, Heat Wave shot a plume of fire through the air in Batman’s direction. Bratman managed to avoid it, but a nearby Mirror Master duplicate wasn’t so lucky, and promptly melted.

“The Flash would’ve put out my fire before it ever reached that far,” Heat Wave said.

“And he could’ve done it while avoiding lightning bolts from me,” Weather Wizard added. Two seconds later, a violent wind swept Bruce off of the ground, and, while he was able to roll enough when he fell to avoid any serious injury, it meant that he wasn’t able to avoid the beam from Captain Cold’s gun, which promptly froze him to the ground.

“And that stops him cold. Come on, boys. Let’s get outta here,” Captain Cold said.

“We’re leaving him alive?” the Top asked.

“We leave him alive. He ain’t our enemy, and we don’t need the kind of heat that killin’ a cape would bring down on us.”

“How is he not our enemy? He attacked us, did he not?”

“It wasn’t personal. It was business, just like it is with the cops. We don’t kill the cops who arrest us, we don’t kill Kid Flash when he hassles us, and we ain’t gonna kill him either,” Captain Cold said firmly.

“And it is for that very reason that the entire underworld derides us as jokes. They call us weak; say we don’t have the stomach to kill—and because of you, they’re right,” the Top snapped. Digger laughed obnoxiously.

“Mate, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you wear green-and-yellow striped tights. They’d be laughing at you no matter what.” Captain Cold turned to glare at him, and, while the Captain was distracted, Bruce slipped a tracing device onto his costume.

“Digger, shut up. You ain’t helping.” Captain Cold barked. Then he turned back to the Top.

“I don’t care what the underworld thinks about us. I don’t care what anyone thinks about us. What I care about is us stayin’ alive, stayin’ together, and, preferably, not gettin’ caught. We start killin’, and all three of those goals will be threatened.”

“Only cowards let fear impede their path to greatness.”

“And idiots who let their ambition blind ‘em to reality end up locked up for life or dead,” Captain Cold shot back. The Mirror Master started walking over to the two squabbling criminals.

“What do you know of ambition? You’re an illiterate lowlife thug. You were born trailer trash, and you’ll die that way—but that doesn’t mean that you have to drag the rest of us down to your level.”

“That’s rich, comin’ from a crazy, top-obsessed lunatic.” The two men were clearly on the verge of coming to blows, which made it all the more surprising when the Mirror Master stepped in between them.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Save your arguments for when we’re not in front of the superhero, please. It’s unprofessional, and it makes us look bad.”

“Who put you in charge?” Captain Cold and the Top said in unison.

“Technically speaking, I’ve always been in charge, seeing as I formed the group and everything. I just don’t care enough to play king of the hill. But since you two have decided to have one of your stupid alpha male competitions, I’m going to have to step in to settle the argument. I don’t want to force the rest of the guys to stand around watching you two argue when we could be doing something productive—like making sure all of our gear is in order for next week’s heist,” Mirror Master replied.

“And what, pray tell, have you decided?” the Top asked coldly.

“In this case, I agree with Captain Cold. Batman isn’t the Flash. We don’t have any quarrel with him, so there’s no reason for us to kill him—-and, more importantly, killing would split the group. Pied Piper, Trickster, and Heat Wave don’t have it in them to kill anyone, and you know it. Besides, if we started killing people, being the Mirror Master would lose most of its fun,” the Mirror Master replied.

“But our reputations—”

“Will be just fine. We defeated the Batman. If anything will get us respect in the underworld, it’ll be that,” the Mirror Master replied. This seemed to mollify the Top, if only slightly.

“Yes, I suppose that is something,” he conceded.

“See? There we go. Everybody’s happy. Now, let’s pick up Piper’s new costume from Gambi and get back to our hideout.”

****************************************************************************

Bruce’s specialized bat-de-icers melted through the ice that had frozen him to the ground after about an hour. As soon as he was free, he followed the tracer he had placed on Captain Cold to a broken-down old warehouse on the docks of the river and hid himself nearby. After his disastrous first battle with the Rogues, it was abundantly clear to Bruce that he would be defeated if he charged into their hideout with all eight of them present. As such, a wiser course of action would be to wait until most of the Rogues had left the hideout, defeat the few who remained, and then lie in wait for the rest to return.

Fortunately for him, the Weather Wizard—now in civilian clothes—left the warehouse only a few minutes after Batman arrived at the docks. He was wearing a black leather jacket, had his wild black hair styled into some semblance of order with a lot of hair gel, and had put on so much cologne that Bruce could smell it from forty yards away.

He was met by the likely reason for the cologne—an attractive woman with long red hair—about halfway down the docks.

“Hey there, babe,” the Weather Wizard said.

“Hello yourself, handsome,” the woman replied. The Weather Wizard showed her his weather wand, which she dutifully oohed and aahed over, boasted about how powerful he was, and completely failed to notice as she slipped her hand into his pocket and stole a credit card and at least a hundred dollars worth of bills out of his wallet.

“How’d you like to see the city from the sky, honey?” Weather Wizard asked.

“Oh, I’d love it!” the woman said. The Weather Wizard picked her up, waved his wand, and disappeared with her into the night sky. If there was any money left in his wallet by the time the night was over, Bruce would be very surprised.

About thirty minutes after the Weather Wizard left on his date, Captain Cold, Captain Boomerang, Mirror Master, and Heat Wave also left the hideout in civilian clothes. From their conversation, it was easy to tell that they were headed for a seedy local bar—although since Captain Boomerang was clearly already inebriated, he wasn’t entirely sure why they were even bothering to make the trip. Bruce wasn’t complaining, though; the faster the warehouse emptied, the more quickly he would be able to make his move.

Another hour later, the Top walked out of the warehouse in a tuxedo, complete with a yellow-and-green striped tie and a yellow-and-green striped top hat. Bruce wasn’t sure where he was going dressed up like that, but apparently he had hired a limousine for the occasion, because he climbed into one near the end of the docks, and it then drove away with him inside.

All but two of the Rogues were gone, and the ones who remained were the two youngest. Bruce would never have a better opportunity to defeat the Rogues than right now. With that in mind, he picked the padlock on the warehouse’s back door and slipped inside the dilapidated building.

As Bruce made his way through the hideout, he quickly discovered that, while his enemies would often convert the old abandoned buildings they took over into sophisticated bases with complex security systems and elaborate theming, Barry’s villains hadn’t put similar effort into fixing up the old warehouse. There was a TV shoved into one corner, a card table with four chairs, a very worn easy chair, a portable fridge, and the biggest mess that Bruce had ever seen. Beer cans, cigarette butts, money, Mark Twain novels, dirty magazines, textbooks about quantum physics, books of matches, sheet music, boomerangs, socks, mirrors, and hand puppets were strewn all over the floor, a dartboard with the Flash’s face plastered over it was hanging on one of the walls, and someone had stuck a sticky note to the portable microwave that read “Mick is not allowed to use this anymore”. In fact, the only part of the warehouse’s largest room that didn’t look like the Weather Wizard had sent a tornado through it was its right corner, which contained a clean workbench with a picture of a pretty young blonde woman and neatly organized rack of tools hanging over it, a swivel chair, a perfectly organized bookshelf that contained titles like The Fascinating History of Tops, Gyroscopes, and The Theoretical Principles Behind the Construction of Satellites, and an even larger shelf that contained nothing but hundreds of precisely-labeled, scrupulously-organized tops. Evidently, the Top possessed the hideout mindset Bruce expected from supervillains, even if his teammates did not.

Bruce considered performing a more thorough sweep of the room to see if he could uncover any of the Rogues’ plans, but decided against it. The place was such a mess that it would likely take hours before he managed to find anything useful. Instead, he started making his way through the warehouse’s four smaller rooms, starting with the one that branched off from the main room’s south wall. This turned out to be the bathroom, which had a grimy shower, a grimy sink, an even more grimy toilet, a very well-polished mirror, a few razors, and mountains of hair and skin products. A quick examination of the last revealed that, with the exception of two bars of soap and one shampoo bottle, the Top, Weather Wizard, and Mirror Master owned all of the beauty products, and that well over 75% of the lotions and shampoos and facial creams belonged solely to Mirror Master. As a member of high society, Bruce had to maintain a reputation as a well-coiffed man, but he didn’t own even a fraction of the hair and skin products Mirror Master apparently did.

The next room, which branched off of the north wall, had two air mattresses, one which had fire-print pajamas in a pile at the foot of it and the other of which had a faded, worn blue bathrobe and polar bear slippers lying on it, and one actual bed. The actual bed was surrounded by mirrors from every angle. There was even a hand mirror lying on top of the bed. Other than that, the room contained one snow globe with a polar bear inside, a poster of a blazing inferno, a picture of a blonde woman who looked very similar to the one in the photo over the Top’s workbench, and a closet that had been haphazardly shoved into a corner.

The third room, which branched off the west wall, contained one bed and one mattress on the floor. The mattress on the floor was surrounded by boomerangs, rotting food, unwashed clothes, and empty beer cans. A blue cap was lying on top of the mattress, and an Australian flag was hanging from the wall next to it. The bed, which was placed right next to the opposite wall, clearly in an attempt to keep as far away as possible from the hazardous waste dump that was the mattress and its surrounding area, was right under a rather large window that provided a perfect view of the river. A huge pile of novels—many of which were by Mark Twain—was stacked on the bed, and photo of two young men, one of whom was obviously the Weather Wizard himself and the other of whom, a bespectacled young man in a lab coat, resembled him enough to be his brother, was pinned to the wall next to the window. Strewn around the bed were more novels and several different pieces of paper with phone numbers on them. A set of drawers rested at the foot of the bed, and the clothes inside all clearly belonged to the Weather Wizard.

The final room, which branched off the east wall of the warehouse’s main room, was currently occupied. Bruce had heard the voices of the two youngest Rogues coming from it the moment he had entered the warehouse, and, given what he had found in the other rooms, it seemed safe to assume it was being used as a bedroom by the two of them and the Top. Bruce pulled out one of his batarangs and kicked the door open, prompting a gasp from the Pied Piper, who was sitting cross-legged on a cot and holding a pipe, and a shriek from the Trickster, who was holding his yo-yo and lying inside what looked like a children’s bouncy castle. He knocked the Trickster’s yo-yo out of his hands with the batarang, then managed to wrestle the pipe out of the Pied Piper’s hands before he could raise it to his lips. Pied Piper’s eyes went wide with fear, but, after a few seconds of initial surprise, the Trickster actually grinned.

“Hi, there!” he exclaimed cheerfully. Batman looked over the two supervillains, and was overwhelmed all over again by how young they looked. Neither one could possibly be much over twenty, and the Pied Piper was painfully thin. How, he wondered, had they ended up in the company of thugs and lowlives?

“The two of you seem very young to be a part of a group like this,” he said. The Trickster laughed.

“I get that a lot. From judges, mostly. I was sixteen when I made my grand debut,” he said cheerfully. Bruce did the math. According to Barry’s notes, the Trickster had first shown up three years ago. If he had been sixteen then, he was nineteen now.

“Wait. You’re only nineteen? Then why does Captain Cold think you’re twenty-four?” the Pied Piper asked.

“Because I told him I was twenty-one when I first teamed up with him,” the Trickster replied.

“You don’t need to tell me how old you are. I already know. You’re nineteen as well,” Batman said.

“How could you possibly—”

“Because Hartley Rathaway turned sixteen three years ago,” Bruce replied. The Pied Piper’s mouth fell open.

“You…you know? How could you possibly know? Even the Flash doesn’t know, and he’s been fighting me for months now!”

“I make it my business to know these kinds of things.”

“Besides, ‘Henry Darrow’ is a terrible alias. I don’t know how the other guys keep falling for it,” the Trickster added. The Pied Piper stared at him in shock.

“You know? How long have you known?”

“Oh, I figured it out two days after we met, once I realized that the fact that you didn’t know how to dress yourself or how to use the microwave or what a laundry machine was meant that you had to have been rich. And since the Rathaways were the only rich people in the area whose son had recently gone on a very mysterious tour of Europe, it wasn’t hard to narrow down who you probably were,” the Trickster replied. Clearly, he was more intelligent than his choice of clothing and weaponry suggested.

“And when were you planning on telling me that you knew who I really was?” the Pied Piper asked.

“Whenever it would be the funniest.” The Pied Piper sighed wearily, then turned toward Bruce.

“All right, so you know my little secret. I am Hartley Rathaway—but what’s that to you?”

“Your parents are two of the richest people in the country, and, while I’ve met plenty of wealthy criminals in my day, the ones who aren’t the heads of crime families tend to stick to white-collar crime. What are you doing running around with a gang of thugs?” The Pied Piper laughed quietly.

“My parents and I had a …...difference of opinion. The kind of difference of opinion that caused them to throw me off of the estate with no money to ‘teach me a lesson’,” the Pied Piper replied. For half a second, Bruce was surprised to hear that the Rathaways had kicked their own son out of his home. Then he remembered what Rachel and Osgood Rathaway were like, and suddenly everything made sense.

“Where did you get the mind-controlling musical instruments?”

“I made them. Ever since my parents paid fifteen million dollars to “fix” me, I’ve been fascinated with sound. Playing it, recording it, listening to it—and manipulating it. My parents were happy enough to take advantage of my playing, since having a son who could play the piano and the flute as well as I was taught to do was a wonderful way for them to show off, but they always dismissed my interest in manipulating it as “tinkering”, and never paid it much mind. They had no idea that I had started developing sonic technology a year before they shipped me off to a college I didn’t want to attend, or that I had actually made some pretty good progress on it by the time they threw me out,” the Pied Piper replied.

“And how did you end up in costumed crime?”

“My parents had made it pretty clear that they weren’t going to let me give any of my fortune away legally, so, after a month or so of selling off my technology in a desperate attempt to keep myself off the streets, I decided that I might as well do it illegally. I cut up somebody’s old shower curtains and made a makeshift costume out of them, then used my musical hypnosis to mind-control some thugs who had decided to rob businesses owned by my parents and took charge of the operations. The Flash just happened to show up before I could distribute any of the money to charity, and I went to jail—but I didn’t stay there. My parents paid someone at city hall under the table to have me released before I could go to trial, since they didn’t want anyone to know that the Pied Piper was a Rathaway, and they hadn’t had time to pay the FBI to give me a new identity yet.. As soon as I was back on the street, I—”

“He gave away all the money he’d made selling his fancy sonic tech to a bunch of widows and orphans and soup kitchens and almost starved to death! His parents never let him anywhere near the business side of their estate, so he has no money sense,” Trickster interjected.

“More or less. And, now that I’ve told you why I’m running around in polka-dots, why don’t you tell me why Bruce Wayne is running around in a bat costume?” the Pied Piper said. Bruce tensed. How could he possibly know?

“Good joke, Piper. Is Veronica Vreeland Batgirl, too?” Trickster asked.

“No, I’m serious. I didn’t notice at first, but I’ve attended enough boring soirees and business meetings where Bruce Wayne was in attendance to be able to know his voice, even if it is being electronically modulated by a speaker. It’s a pretty good auditory trick, but not good enough to fool my nanomechanical ears,” the Pied Piper replied.

“Wait…if Bruce Wayne is Batman, that means that Dick Grayson is Robin. I thought Robin’s acrobatics looked kind of familiar on TV,” Trickster said. Bruce grabbed the Trickster and slammed him against the wall.

“What do you know about Dick Grayson?”

“He’s a carny kid—just like me, only younger. Our paths crossed a few times on the circuit before his folks were killed,” the Trickster replied. Bruce dropped the Trickster back onto the bouncy house. Now that he thought about it, he distinctly remembered Dick enthusing about how he’d always known a talented young high wire walker would make it big. It seemed that that high wire walker had decided to go from walking on a wire to walking on air—and robbing banks.

“If you tell anyone—”

“Tell anyone what? It’s not like anyone would believe us if we told them that Gotham’s richest idiot was secretly the world’s greatest ninja detective,” the Trickster said.

“Especially when the only evidence I have for you being Bruce Wayne is the fact that your voice sounds exactly like his once my hyper-advanced nanomechanical ears filter out the effects of a voice modulator. Almost no one knows I’m Hartley Rathaway, so no one would have any reason to believe I’ve heard Bruce Wayne’s voice enough times to recognize it,” the Pied Piper added. Bruce relaxed fractionally when he realized that they were right. The odds of them convincing anyone else that he was Batman were slim to none—but that didn’t mean that they might not try to take advantage of their knowledge themselves.

“Do anything to hurt Dick, or Alfred, or anyone else that I care about, and I will make you regret it,” he snapped.

“I don’t know about James, but I for one am not about to travel all the way to Gotham, the horrible murder capital of the world, just to get the crap kicked out of me for attacking the loved ones of a hero I don’t even care about,” the Pied Piper said.

“Besides, going after a hero’s loved ones is cheating. Everyone knows that,” the Trickster added. Bruce was quite sure most of his enemies wouldn’t agree with that sentiment, and wondered what sort of charmed life Barry led to have so many costumed villains who held themselves to a self-imposed set of standards.

“You know what? We’ve been talking for the past ten minutes, and we never even thought to ask what you’re here for,” the Pied Piper said.

“I’m here to take you in—but, given how young you two are, I’d be willing to ask the courts to show you leniency if you surrender quietly,” Bruce replied. The Trickster grinned.

“Okay! We surrender!” he said. Bruce immediately went on edge. Usually, when supervillains took him up on that offer, it meant that they had something up their sleeves. Pied Piper was apparently just as surprised as Bruce, judging by the expression on his face.

“What do you mean, we surrender?”

“C’mon, Piper, it’ll be a great gag! Can you imagine the look on Flashy-pants’ face when he finds out that a random guy in a Batsuit was able to bring us in faster than he could? It’ll serve him right for going away and leaving us without anyone fun to fight,” the Trickster said.

“And we’ll look like idiots for being defeated by a guy with no powers,” the Pied Piper replied.

“I wear stripes and blue slippers, and you dress like an evil elf. Everyone thinks we’re idiots anyway, so we might as well have fun with it,” the Trickster said.

“I don’t care. I am not surrendering without a fight just because you think it’s funny,” the Pied Piper insisted. The Trickster hopped off of his bouncy castle bed and threw an arm around Piper.

“Well, if that’s what you really want, Piper, that’s fine. I’ll go alone—but before the Batman drags you away, I want you to say good-bye to Mr. Ducky,” the Trickster said. He pulled out a rubber duck from somewhere on his costume and waved it in front of the Pied Piper’s face.

“James, this is not—” The Trickster squeezed the rubber duck, some gas sprayed out, and the Pied Piper slumped into unconsciousness.

“Well, that worked out great! Good job, Mr. Ducky!” he said to the rubber duck. Then he turned to Batman.

“Sorry about him. He’s a nice kid, really, but he doesn’t know when to quit. I didn’t want him to end up with any broken ribs because he tried to fight off a ninja,” the Trickster said apologetically. Bruce, still half-expecting a trick, handcuffed the two criminals together with his Bat-cuffs, summoned the Batmobile he had had flown to Central City shortly before he had arrived there himself, and loaded the two of them into the back seat.

“Nice car. Did you build it yourself, or did you pay someone to make it?” Bruce ignored him and started the engine.

“Right. I forgot. You’re the strong, silent type. That’s another reason I like the Flash better than you. He has an actual sense of humor.” As the Batmobile started to drive down the road that would take him to the headquarters of the CCPD, Bruce started to wonder if his villains were harassing Barry about how they wanted to be fighting Batman instead. He couldn’t imagine most of them doing it, and as for the one who actually might—he wouldn't wish the Joker on anyone.

“Hey, what does this button do?”

Although, Bruce reflected as a parachute shot out from the back of the Batmobile, at least the Joker was predictable.

******************************************************************************

An hour and a half after dropping the Pied Piper and the Trickster off at the CCPD, Bruce returned to the Rogues’ abandoned warehouse hideout to find the Top sitting in his swivel chair, working on something. The Weather Wizard was leaning on the wall immediately next to the desk, the weather wand clutched in one hand. From the sound of their conversation, the two of them were comparing dates.

“You have a good night?”

“The very best. I do so love to make Lisa happy, and nothing makes her happier than roses, fancy dinners, and jewelry,” the Top replied.

My date was great, too. Thanks for asking,” the Weather Wizard said. The Top looked up at him in apparent confusion.

“I did not ask. And I do not care about your dates. Half of them are with desperate, lonely women who would date anyone who pays them a compliment, and the other half are with women who are taking advantage of your belief that you are some sort of Casanova to get money out of you,” the Top said. The Weather Wizard scowled.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Last week, you spent four thousand dollars on a necklace for a woman you’d met thirty minutes before in a bar, just because she was flirting with you and you wanted to impress her. Do you really think you’ll ever see her again?”

“I got her phone number.”

“You got what you think is her phone number.”

“You’re just jealous that I get more dates than you.”

“I only need one date. Lisa is perfection. And even if I had no date at all, I would still not be jealous of a man too stupid to realize why he has three times as many dates when he has money than he does when he’s broke. Haven’t you ever noticed that women aren’t as interested in you during the weeks when you have to beg Captain Cold or Mirror Master or Heat Wave for cash?”

“Why do you keep track of the number of dates I have in a week?”

“You boast about them so extensively it’s hard not to,” the Top replied.

“Since we’re on the subject, when are you going to tell Captain Cold that you’re dating his sister?” Weather Wizard asked.

“Never, if I can help it. We rub each other the wrong way enough without his overprotective older brother instincts making everything worse.”

“You do realize he’s gonna find out eventually, right?”

“Then I will cross that bridge when I get to it. For now, I do not have to put up with him scrutinizing every move I make, and I prefer it that way,” the Top replied. The Weather Wizard smirked.

“I guess I can’t really blame you. She’s a babe, no two ways about it—especially for someone who’s related to Len,” he said.

“She got all of the looks in the family. And all of the manners,” the Top said as he sent a top skittering across the desk. When it reached the end of the desk, it ignited into flames for a few seconds before extinguishing itself.

“Excellent. My flare top is working exactly as intended.”

“You’d better not let Mick see that, or you’ll never get it away from him,” Weather Wizard commented.

As the two criminals continued their conversation, Bruce calculated the angle that he would need to throw his batarangs at in order to knock out the Top and knock the wand out of the Weather Wizard’s hands. He had to take out both of them at once, because if not, whichever one remained standing would overwhelm him with the power of their attacks.

Then Heat Wave came through the front door, lugging an unconscious Captain Boomerang along with him, and Bruce was forced to alter his initial plan.

“Digger passed out, so I volunteered to take him home early,” Heat Wave explained. The Top shook his head in apparent disgust.

“I don’t know why we bother to keep that lout around,” he muttered—just as Bruce launched into action. One batarang knocked the wand out of the Weather Wizard’s hand, one went flying towards the Top, and Bruce himself hurtled towards Heat Wave and landed his fist on Heat Wave’s jaw. The Weather Wizard squawked in alarm as Heat Wave stumbled backwards and dropped Captain Boomerang. Bruce quickly followed up the initial punch with a roundhouse kick to Heat Wave’s head. Heat Wave slumped to the ground, unconscious, and Bruce was about to turn to the now-disarmed Weather Wizard when the Top slammed into him at full speed and pinned him to the wall.

“You missed,” the Top said coldly. Bruce struggled to free himself, but it seemed the Top had learned from their earlier fight, because he was now being held in such a way that prevented him from properly leveraging his body to attack.

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. No one tops the top. Not you, not Captain Cold, not even—”

Suddenly, a bright red blur zipped into the room and knocked the Top to the floor.

“The Flash?” Barry asked. There was a big smile on his face. The Top snarled as he got back to his feet.

“So you’re back, are you?”

“Yes, I’m back—just in time to help Batman take all of you back to prison,” Barry said as he grabbed the weather wand.

“I’m faster than lightning. Are you?” Barry waved the wand, and a bolt of lightning crashed out of the sky. It didn’t actually hit the Top, but the force of the strike was enough to knock the man backwards into the shelf full of tops, where he hit his head on one of the shelves. About a dozen tops landed on his unconscious body.

The Weather Wizard looked at the two heroes and raised his hands.

“I surrender, okay? Just don’t let Batman hit me. That hurts,” he said pathetically. Barry laughed.

‘I think that’s the smartest decision you’ve ever made,” he said. There was a flash of color and a rush of wind, and suddenly, Barry and all four of the criminals were gone. Barry reappeared a few seconds later.

“Thanks for helping me track the Rogues down. I’ve been trying to figure out where they were all hiding out for months,” Barry said. Bruce nodded.

“No, thank you. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, I don’t even want to think about what the Top would have done to me.”

“No problem. You want me to run you back home to Gotham?” Bruce nodded. Barry swept him off his feet, there was a flash of light, and suddenly Bruce was back where he belonged.

“I have no idea how you manage this place, Bruce. I was stopping so many muggers and murderers and carjackers that I barely had time to sleep—and that was before the Scarecrow showed up. I could never patrol Gotham full-time.”

“And I’ll be leaving Central City to you from now on. I can’t even begin to understand the logic your Rogues operate under—and even if I could, your Rogues seem to take it very personally when another hero fills in for you.”

#flash comics #flash rogues #batman #the flash #barry allen #iris west #captain cold #captain boomerang #mirror master #sam scudder #the trickster #james jesse #pied piper #heat wave #weather wizard #the top #fictober24

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supercap2319 · 2 years ago

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"C'mon Y/N, if no one else in this room is gonna save you from playboy Oliver Queen, then I will." Barry said as he forcefully grabbed Y/N's arm and pulled him towards the door. Something was wrong with Barry. He wasn't acting like himself. He was acting like a jealous ex, but worse. The way he threw Oliver across the room or how he insulted Joe, Caitlin, and Cisco for attending Oliver and Y/N's engagement party and he suspected that he might be under the influence of a metahuman.

They were almost towards the door when Iris stepped in the way and God she was so annoying. She had her hands on her hips and she wore a bitch face as Barry rolled his eyes. He may have tried to have sex with her and brought her here to crash the party, but there was no way in hell that Barry felt anything towards her. Obviously, she didn't get the memo. "I don't think so. Y/N is your past.. I'm your future." She told him with such certainly, that Barry almost felt sorry for her. Almost. She still had the sweet misguided notion that their future together was meant to happen. Oh what a fool Iris West was.

The Speedster grinned and chuckled. Iris frowns as she hadn't expected that reaction out of Barry. "What's so damn funny?"

"This is the present, Iris." Barry told her as he pushed past her and dragged Y/N away, shocking everyone at the party. Especially, Iris.

#x male reader #male reader insert #male x male #barry allen x male reader #barry allen #the flash x male reader #the flash #grant gustin x male reader #grant gustin

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kitkatt0430 · 2 months ago

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Barry's first fight with Zoom happens, he's dragged all over the city, dangled helplessly in front of the ccpd, and is left broken on the floor of STAR Labs after Cisco shoots Zoom to save his life.

However, David Singh is well aware that is his (secretly fav employee) CSI in that red suit (the urge to make santa jokes is real, he reigned it in desperately last December) and he is concerned.

Concerned enough that he just... shows up at STAR Labs the next day to check in, because he doesn't want to hear 'Barry's got the flu' he wants to hear 'Barry's not dead and will recover and maybe get some much needed therapy or at least talk to someone about his trauma'

David, realizing STAR Labs has shit security - Fixing that needs to be on someone's todo list. I'm now worried it's my todo list. Also is that Harrison Wells? I thought he was dead. And killed Barry's mom. Also, you know, a permanent wheelchair user?

Harry - ... I just have one of those faces?

David - ... *looks at Cisco*

Cisco - *shrugs* Do you want the actual explanation or the plausible deniability explanation?

David finally gets to see Barry. Joe quietly handing Iris fifty bucks in the background because she absolutely had an ongoing bet with her dad over whether Singh knew or not. David trying not to pout over the fact that Joe somehow genuinely thought David was that oblivious. Barry is not that subtle. He's just not.

Barry's just glad that he doesn't need to lie to his boss about having the flu in the middle of being temporarily paralyzed and in a shit ton of unmedicated pain. He's a terrible liar as it is, but he's most definitely not in the headspace to attempt it today.

#the flash #fic ideas #fanfiction #david singh #this would also have david meeting henry and immediately dishing out every embarrassing story about barry he knows #because henry deserves to know all the ridiculous things his son has done

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givemewallywestorgivemedeath · 2 years ago

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Absolutely heart breaking to me that Wally and Bart avoided Iris like the plague because they were terrified that she wouldn't remember them and they knew that they wouldn't be able to handle that.

They both ran. They couldn't even stand to be in Central City. Wally moved into Titans Tower and tried to bottle everything up and just hung out with his friends. Bart painstakingly put Young Justice back together and tried to bottle everything up and just hung out with his friends.

But circumstances (Barry dragging Wally kicking and screaming to Iris and Bart saving her from Eobard) forced them to talk to her.

And she remembered them 🥺❤️

because of their hair lol

#Bart and Wally are extremely fucking similar but if you tell them that they'll punch you #dc #dc comics #the flash #kid flash #impulse #wally west #bart allen #barry allen #speedsters #iris west allen #iris west

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practically-an-x-man · 1 month ago

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May I humbly request for Barry Allen to be kidnapped? And it would be splendid if thou included something meta/power dampening to do it.

You may indeed! Let's see what I can put together here...

____ An Exercise in Desperation

Word Count: 5.5k Content Warnings: heavy whump, blood and gore, tranquilizer darts, kidnapping, medical whump, self-mutilation, uncertain ending

Crossposted on AO3 ____

Barry tapped away on his computer, feeling restless. He'd been at this for hours, but something must have gone goofy with the lab's servers, because he'd had to reset this upload four times already.

He was starving, and his lower back was killing him from being perched on the same shitty office chair for so long, but he refused to take a break before he finished this. There wasn't any real sense in taking a break now, he thought - this was the last thing he had to do for the day, as soon as he finished the upload he could just lock up and go home.

His computer dinged once again. Signal interrupted. Upload failed. Barry wanted to scream. He should've been out of here by six, then off to grab some Chinese takeout, but the sun had set hours ago and his stomach was rumbling and he still hadn't finished the upload.

Talk about a nightmare.

Barry sighed and reset the upload. Again. Finally he hopped out of his seat and stretched, grimacing at the twinge in his lower back. If this one didn't work, he decided, he'd just bite the bullet and deal with it tomorrow instead.

He probably should have done that hours ago, but... nothing to be done about that now.

Something clattered from the far corner of the lab, and Barry's head swiveled towards the noise. It shouldn't have done any more than startle him, but alarm bells spiked in his head. He had the sudden, unshakable impression that someone else was in the lab with him.

"Hello?" he asked, still trying to peer past the blocky shapes of machines and equipment around him. Even with the constant whir of computer fans and the faint buzz of fluorescent lights around him, the air felt uncomfortably still.

Something else shifted, off to his left. There were two of them. At least.

Time to go. Time to grab his suit and call Cisco, call Iris, call someone so they'd know what was going on before he jumped too far into this, time to grab something to eat so he wouldn't pass out in the middle of a fight.

Something pricked his shoulder, not any more painful than a bee sting. Barry glanced over and found a feathery plume stuck into the sleeve of his hoodie.

He shrugged it aside. Plenty of people had tried that before, and failed. Those darts weren't made for metas, especially not with his metabolism. He'd burn it off in a matter of minutes, with nothing worse than a headache or perhaps a little nausea. Nothing he couldn't push through.

He darted for the door, vaulting over the last of the lab tables in his way. It was too cluttered here to speed away, too many papers strewn across the floor that could take his feet right out from under him, but as soon as he made it to the hall-

Cold fingers snared his ankle and his momentum lurched in a strange direction. He hit the tile floor with a vicious impact and immediately twisted to kick at his adversary - now more panic than strategy, all he needed was to get to the door but he couldn't do that if he couldn't get to his feet.

One of his heels made contact, and with a masculine grunt those grasping fingers retreated. Barry wasted no time, squirming up to his feet like an upturned cockroach and lunging for the door ahead of him.

Something heavy clamped down on his ankle, and the whole world slowed down.

His legs gave out almost immediately, his metabolism no longer keeping the drugs at bay. The lab spun around him in a dizzying array of gray and white. Already he could feel himself dragged under, a thick tide of darkness drawing nearer with every heartbeat that rang through his chest.

He wasn't going to make it to the door. Somehow that thought scared him more than anything else. It had become an emblem of safety in his mind, that getting out to the hall meant securing his escape, and now... he'd lost that safety. It took all his strength just to lift his head off the floor.

Barry caught sight of two figures, blurred and shadowed in the haze of the drugs, as they crouched above him.

Hands gripped his shoulders and lifted his limp body off the hard tile underneath him. The motion made his head spin again, and nausea bubbled up from deep within his chest. Barry let out a weak groan, hardly even realizing he'd done it until he recognized his own voice floating in the air above him. Vague silhouettes floated above him like ghouls.

"I told you," he heard one of them say, though his mind wouldn't or couldn't recognize the voice, "Doesn't take much."

Finally his mind gave out, and Barry Allen sank into the unknown.

____ He was not used to feeling weak. Not like this. From the moment he woke up, Barry found himself weighed-down like he hadn't felt in years- not since the day he was struck by lightning, not since the day he became more than human. His thoughts felt slow. His body felt heavy. Thinking was just as hard as moving, and moving felt like dragging a ten-ton sledge behind every limb.

Normally he bounced back pretty quickly, he thought. Injuries never lasted long, and chemicals like this should have burned off within a few minutes of waking up. Even in his addled state, Barry recognized the problem immediately.

A thick shackle around his ankle gripped his flesh tightly, rubbing a raw red band around his skin with every movement. It was heavy steel, with studded points sticking out like the face of a gear, and Barry could see a faint reddish light glowing from somewhere within. Power dampening. Of course.

One of those thick gear-teeth led to an equally heavy chain, each link nearly as wide around as his wrist. He had maybe eight feet of leeway, he thought, though that was an experiment for later- when he was strong enough to get to his feet instead of helplessly slumping against the concrete wall behind him. The end of the chain sank into a hole in the wall, bolted into something deeper where he couldn't reach.

It took a while for him to sort his thoughts enough to even process this. It took him longer to even consider doing anything about it. For a long time, all he could do was lean against the wall and wait for the world to stop spinning. Barry almost couldn't decide which was worse: the physical sensation of it all, the nausea and heaviness and general wrong feeling bolting him to the floor, or just how long it took before it dissipated enough to let him think.

Maybe speeding around had made him impatient. This was torture from the very first minute.

Nobody entered the room, even in all the time he waited. He couldn't even hear footsteps or voices outside the door, though that meant very little. They could have soundproofed the place. Anyone that could afford a power dampener good enough to slow him down could definitely afford to soundproof a couple rooms. The cell seemed big enough to have held a few more prisoners, and he could even see duplicate chains drilled into the opposite walls, but Barry was alone in the room. At least for now. He couldn't tell if that was a blessing or a curse.

He wasn't sure how long he was left there. Gradually the weakness dissipated - he still felt slow and heavy, but part of that was just the unfamiliarity of being without the Speed Force - and Barry tried to investigate his surroundings a little further. He walked in an arc as far as the chain would allow him, though that led him to nothing more than a slightly different set of dusty floor tiles. He dug his fingernails under the edge of the shackle and tried to pry it off his ankle. He grabbed the base of the chain and tried to tug it out of the wall. It didn't budge.

But his choices became trying or waiting, and waiting felt like giving up. Easier to try and fail than to sit down and accept whatever his captors had planned for him.

Time was difficult, and at one point he must have dozed off - when he woke, he felt a little more clearheaded and reasoned that most of the drugs must have worn off. His back and tailbone ached from being propped up against the wall. The raw skin around his ankle had torn in a few places and had begun to weep clear fluid. Hunger clawed at him from within: his last meal had been hours ago, and that was with the Speed Force accelerating things.

It wasn't unbearable, he thought, but it was certainly no picnic. And he knew it would only get worse from here.

"Mister Allen."

The voice, crispy articulated, made his head snap up so quickly he went a little dizzy. Barry shook it off, forcing his brain to process the first real sight he had of his captor.

The woman stood just past the length of the chain - close enough that, in theory, he could reach her if he stretched, but far enough that she had time to just step back if he tried - in a slate-gray pencil skirt and a lab coat. Her shoes were preppy but a little scuffed, with a slight heel. Her hair was a streaky dishwater blonde, perched on her head in a loose bun. She couldn't have been more than five-foot-three, heels or no.

She looked like a substitute science teacher. She didn't look like the type of woman to have him drugged and chained to the floor, but here he was. Barry wondered if he'd seen her anywhere before.

"Where am I?"

He didn't expect a response. Why would his kidnapper give him a response? But, like most things in his life, he figured it couldn't hurt to try. He was already chained and exhausted- how much could one question really make things any worse?

"You're in an underground laboratory beneath New Brighton. If you listen very closely, you might hear the train. It's not far." she said, "I'm sure if you got a decent look around, you could find your way home easily."

Something about her words rattled him. It was almost worse than not being given a response at all. Refusing to tell him where he was meant she wanted to slow down his escape, or keep him from calling in for backup. But she hadn't even hesitated. Hell- she almost seemed to prod him onward, to encourage him.

So either she wanted him to escape... or she was sure he didn't stand a chance.

"Now, Mister Allen, I'm sure you're wondering why you're here." the woman continued. Barry squinted to read the embroidery on the front of her lab coat: Dr. Beatrice Ralston, PhD. He wondered why she'd leave another detail like that out in the open - if it was her real name to begin with.

He was hardly even thinking about what she said until he caught the glint of metal in her hand.

The knife was a huge serrated beast, the sort of blade he'd imagine sawing through deer bones at the end of a hunting trip, and Ralston crouched to set it on the ground at her feet. It glinted wickedly under the harsh overhead lights, spilling fractured rays onto the floor tiles around it. It was so large and cartoonishly vile that it hardly looked real, more like a sprite from an M-rated video game.

"This is what I like to call an exercise in desperation," she said, calmly clasping her hands in front of her body, "I'm sure you'll figure it out eventually."

And just like that, she turned and walked towards the door. Barry lunged for the knife as soon as she began to move - desperate times, desperate measures - but she was still well out of reach by the time he reached it. He wrapped his fingers around the handle and drew the blade protectively in towards his body, thoughts still whirling in confusion.

"Hey, wait- what kind of game is this?" Barry blurted, stopping the doctor just before she reached the door.

"Escape or die." Ralston said, chillingly composed, "That's the game."

The door swung closed with a firm, definite click.

In the hours that followed, it did not open again.

Barry was a smart enough man not to try anything rash until he had to. First he just sat there and counted to sixty thirty times in his head, then thirty more. He knew that she - and whatever operation she was running, since she was too small to have nabbed him back at the lab - wanted to see him desperate, clawing at the walls like a lab rat, and he refused to give her that.

He knew he'd been wearing a smartwatch when he was back at the lab, and he had his phone in his hoodie pocket. He didn't have those now, and they'd probably been taken off him before he left the lab, but there was a chance that tech was still floating around here. And if it was, it could be tracked.

And then there was his suit - his ring was gone, but it could be tracked too, and it was a lot less obvious than his phone or smartwatch. As soon as Cisco realized something was wrong, he'd start looking. Barry figured he could keep his composure until then.

The first hour was met with dead silence. Barry readjusted position and began reciting Monty Python and the Holy Grail inside his head. He didn't give his captors the vindication of even doing that out loud. He didn't want them to know he was bored out of his mind, feeling every second trickle by like droplets from a leaky faucet.

He finished Monty Python. It went by awfully quickly when he could only remember half the scenes. Then he started in on Legally Blonde. It reminded him of Iris, in a way, and maybe that would help.

But he remembered even less of that one than he did of Monty Python, and it only took twenty minutes before he ran out of scenes and the hunger pangs started attacking him even more fiercely.

Rush Hour, then. He loved Rush Hour. Cisco loved Rush Hour, too. Barry even caught himself humming Mariah Carey's Fantasy under his breath as he thought about it. Mood sufficiently boosted... at least, as much as it could be boosted in a place like this.

Then he slept again, for a while. There wasn't much else to do. He woke when his throat got so dry he felt like he was choking, and it took ten minutes to convince his body to summon up enough moisture to ease the feeling. Barry was quickly realizing what his biggest problem would turn out to be, depending on how long this capture persisted.

And he had to pee. He'd been ignoring it for a while, but now it had grown past discomfort and into a sharp, piercing pressure in his gut that he wasn't sure how much longer he could ignore. He wondered what the most dignified option would be for... resolving the issue. There wasn't much dignified about any of this, but he wasn't ready to give it all up just yet.

He figured it out. Then he stood up and stretched for a bit, tried to work a little blood back into his lower extremities. Hunger still scraped away at his internal organs, thirst even more so. Already he could feel himself getting weaker. It worried him.

Barry didn't exactly know his limits without the Speed Force anymore. Sure, he knew the logic of it - three days without water, three weeks without food, et cetera - but individually, personally? He'd learned to balance out his accelerated metabolism and healing for so long now that he didn't know what he could really take without it. Did he have a full three days? One day? Hours?

And he thought about the knife. He thought about the cuff clamped around his ankle - not his neck, not his wrist, his leg. He was beginning to realize what she wanted from him. An exercise in desperation, she'd said. How long until his hunger, his thirst, his will to live, won out over his self-preservation?

Which life mattered more? Barry Allen, or the Flash?

If he waited much longer, he wouldn't have the strength to do it even if he wanted to.

Maybe he could still count on Cisco to track him down. Maybe he could still count on help arriving in time.

Or maybe he couldn't. Maybe it all came down to the knife in his hands. Maybe that was by design. Ralston gave him everything he needed to escape on his own, at least in theory. She told him what to do. She told him exactly where he was. Barry doubted that the door to the room was even locked, or that anyone would try to stop him once he got past the chain.

There were only three obstacles in his path: two thin bones and an impenetrable mental wall.

Okay, Barry thought, Here's the plan. Three more hours. If Cisco's not here by then, well... maybe they can reattach it at the hospital. But you've got to get out of here before you're too weak to move, and you know blood loss is gonna make you even weaker, so you've got to time this right or you'll die here either way.

He counted to sixty thirty times, then thirty more. It passed by too quickly. He almost didn't want to start on the second hour. Starting meant finishing, and finishing meant he'd have to pick up the knife, and picking up the knife meant doing something he could never get back.

He'd have given anything for the Speed Force. He'd have given anything for just a little more time. He'd given up on the thought of escaping this inevitability, and now he only wanted to delay it a little longer.

But if he delayed it he died. The thought loomed over his head like a stormcloud, like a guillotine.

Barry started counting again.

Sixty more sixties. A second hour put behind him.

He took a break. He walked as far as the chain would allow him (don't think about your foot don't think about how this might be the last time you feel the sole of it on the floor don't think about how the last time you'll walk steady will be while you're chained up like a dog don't think about it) and back. He took a few deep breaths. He tried to ignore the dryness of his throat and the cramping agony of his stomach.

He sat back down. He tried to stretch each second out as long as he could.

He slowed to a crawl, but he could not stop.

Barry's eyes wouldn't leave the door as he began counting out the seconds for his third and final hour. This time he found himself mouthing the numbers. His throat was too dry to even find his voice, but he needed something physical to tether him. He couldn't press forward if he kept it all in his head.

Just a twitch. Just a jiggle of the knob, or the sound of footsteps further down the hall, or an alarm with flashing lights, and he'd call it all off. Any sign that his friends had tracked him down, any sign that they'd come to rescue him, and he wouldn't have to go through with this.

Thirty repetitions, and the door still didn't budge. Barry's heart was pounding in his chest, stealing the breath from his lungs. He could feel the adrenaline spiking to life within him, exacerbating the dryness of his throat and the trembling in his limbs. He tried to purge it from his mind.

Thirty more repetitions until he got out of here. That was how he had to think about it. Thirty more minutes until he lost the dampener and got his powers back, thirty more minutes until he found his way home, thirty more minutes until he got food and water and safety.

Thirty more minutes until...

No. He couldn't think about it like that. Or he'd never go through with it.

Thirty trickled into twenty, and twenty trickled into ten, and before he knew it Barry had the knife in his hand and was feeling the cool polymer handle warm under his body heat.

Ten became five.

Five became three.

Three became one.

Fifty-eight... fifty-nine... c'mon, Cisco, open the door... sixty.

That was time. Maybe he could last a little longer, he thought. Maybe three hours had been sparing, and he'd be mutilating himself for no reason. Maybe Cisco and Iris were just beyond the door, bursting their way in, and it would just take a few more minutes of waiting.

But if he delayed it once, he'd just keep pushing it back. Maybe three hours was some arbitrary number, maybe he could last five or six or ten or twenty more before he fell too weak to move, but if he let himself back out now he'd never talk himself back into it. He'd keep sitting and counting and waiting around until his tongue shriveled from dehydration and his body collapsed from exhaustion.

He had to do this now or he'd die here.

Barry stripped off his hoodie and cut off one of the sleeves. He tied it tight around his leg, just under the knee, and pulled until his foot prickled with pins and needles. Good. Maybe that would dull the pain. He stuffed the other sleeve in his mouth and bit down hard.

One good, clean cut. The cleaner he made it, the more likely they could reattach it at the hospital. Or if not that, the more likely he could be fit for a decent prosthetic. The more likely he could run again. This deer-butcher blade was far from precise, but he'd have to do his best. He couldn't imagine not running again.

The operation was called hobbling, Paul.

Lawrence! No! Oh my God, what are you doing?!

Okay, Aron, here we go. You're in it now.

Suddenly his penchant for movies didn't seem quite so amusing. He knew how this story ended. It wasn't pretty.

Barry placed the blade against his skin, just above the top of the shackle. He'd use it as a guide, he thought, for a good straight cut, and he wouldn't cut off one millimeter more than he had to. The knife was so sharp that he saw blood begin to bead up from his skin even before he applied any pressure.

He thought about Iris. He thought about Cisco. They'd help him get through this. He'd only see them again if he did this. He could worry about the future later, but first he needed to make sure he had a future to worry about.

Barry Allen took a deep breath and let it out. Sparks flickered behind his eyes.

He pressed the knife into his flesh.

Pain jolted to life almost instantaneously, and his muscles locked into a rictus. He froze with the knife still lodged in his leg. His brain wouldn't let him continue. There was a lock there, Barry thought, the same reason he couldn't convince himself to bite off his own tongue.

I'm doing this, he told his own mind, If I don't, I die. How's that for your self-preservation instinct?

He pushed the knife in further, and something about that mental block disappeared. He was in it now. He'd already started. Bailing on it now would only cause him more problems.

The first few motions felt like cutting through a lean cut of beef, all sinew. He must've caught a tendon somewhere, because one push and he felt something snap up his calf with a fresh bolt of pain. Barry was dimly aware that he was screaming against the cloth in his mouth, but he was only focused on the task ahead of him.

It wasn't his foot. It was a prop, a bunch of ballistics gel and pig parts like one of the experiments on Mythbusters, and the blood came from some hidden internal tubing. It wasn't real. It didn't matter. It was a prop, and the pain was all in his head. It was the only way he could press on.

His vision tunneled, black and fuzzy at the edges. Barry forced himself to take a breath. His hands were shaking, clamped on the handle of the blade like frozen talons.

The blade caught resistance, grinding to a halt as it hit the first of the two bones. Tibia? Fibula? He couldn't remember which was which. His vision grayed out for a moment, and he clawed his way back up to lucidity with a palpable effort. Even with his makeshift tourniquet, blood continued to pulse and spurt from the wound. If he passed out, he might not wake up.

He had to finish. He had to get his powers back. He had to get out of here.

Barry bore down, sawing the serrated edge back and forth, putting all of his weight onto the blade. The resistance gave out all at once, and the knife sank easily into the muscle like he was carving a steak.

Nausea flooded him all at once, and Barry was forced to stop as his body voided his stomach onto the concrete beside him. The room stank of bile and blood. He remembered hearing about that somewhere, that most people vomited after a severe broken bone because of the bone marrow being exposed to the surrounding tissues. He figured nausea was the least of his worries now.

Halfway there. Barry watched the toes of his left foot twitch like the legs of a dying spider and nearly vomited a second time. He shut his eyes and bore down on the knife.

He was through the second bone much faster than the first.

Fibula, his mind told him, that's the thinner one. Tibia, fibula, calcaneus, talus, cuboid, navicular...

Somehow that helped. It brought him back to his college days, all the mnemonic devices and flashcards he'd put together for his anatomy classes. He thought about his professor with a slideshow clicker, scrubbing through images of crime scenes. He'd always found it bizarrely fascinating. He'd never been a particularly squeamish man. He didn't think he'd be able to get through this at all if he were.

Fresh, bloat, active decay, advanced decay, dry remains.

Livor mortis, algor mortis, rigor mortis.

Insects are one of the most important tools in PMI estimation. Blowflies colonize a body within the first hour, sometimes even within the first 5 to 10 minutes.

With a final push and another sinewy snap of a tendon, the last of the resistance gave way. The tip of the knife skittered into the concrete floor, accompanied by a heavier clatter and a sickening fleshy impact.

The Speed Force surged back to him so quickly his vision blacked out, and Barry slumped against the wall behind him. It was a strange sensation, some odd blend of fresh strength and overwhelming weakness, his healing enhanced even as his hunger exponentially multiplied.

He felt the flow of blood swell and then slow, first reacting to his heart speeding up and then dampening as his healing factor raced to seal over the injury. Barry Allen forced himself back into motion. He couldn't stagnate here. This wasn't over yet.

He forced himself to take hold of his severed foot (it's just a prop it's not real it's just silicone and fake blood it's like Mythbusters) and wrestle the cuff off the end of it. The stump looked like bloody hamburger meat. He pressed the raw edges of the wound together, his breathing shallow and his vision gone white with pain, and pleaded for the Speed Force.

Patch it together seal it over I can't lose my foot. It's still a fresh wound just make the connections you know if you get a tooth knocked out sometimes your body will seal it back into place if you're quick I'm quick just please please please seal it over.

He reached for the rest of his ruined hoodie and fumbled for the cloth. The sleeve became a sort of cuff, a desperate way to keep his ankle pressed close to the stump in the vain hope that his healing factor would still stitch them back together. The rest of the fabric he tied tightly around the stump, half tourniquet and half makeshift orthopedic boot, and watched the fabric darken with his blood.

He didn't want to stand up. He didn't want to give the wound the benefit of gravity, and he didn't want to be faced with the fact that his healing factor might not have been enough to mend those ragged seams. He didn't want to admit he'd done what he'd done.

But he was bleeding, and he was weak, and if there was any chance of keeping his foot it would only come if he got to a hospital fast, so Barry leaned against the wall and painfully hitched himself up to standing.

Pain and dizziness bloomed the instant he was on his feet (foot remember you cut the other one off welcome to the Paralympics pal guess what the Flash has one foot), and he nearly fell straight back to the floor. It was several long moments before the sensation passed. Blood pooled underneath him.

He managed a hop. His hoodie-cloth bindings held, albeit with a sickeningly loose sort of lurch. He still wasn't sure if his body had actually reattached anything or not.

Just a little blood flow, he thought, Doctors can take care of the rest but if the tissue dies there's nothing they can do and I don't have ice so i need blood flow.

Another hop, supported by the wall on one side. He wished he had something more solid than cheap cotton to hold things together. His thoughts seemed distant, detached, like he was watching all of this through a TV screen. The pain was the only thing that kept him from dissociating entirely, agony spiking through him like lightning with every motion.

He lost time. He found himself in the cell and then he was in a brightly-lit hallway. Somehow he must've found some tighter bandages, because there were rolls of gauze wrapped straight over his makeshift hoodie-boot. Each hobbling hop-step felt a little steadier than before, though it still felt like he was limping along on a peg-leg. The only sensation in his foot came from the agonizing pressure where the stump pressed into the jagged remains of his ankle. It was too vague an agony to tell where it began, if there was anything else underneath.

He kept moving. It was his only option.

The hallways warped around him. He thought he knew where he was going. Maybe he'd seen a sign some ways back, somewhere in that blank gray expanse behind him, and his subconscious still retained the information.

Or maybe he was wrong, and he was horribly lost, and he'd eventually bleed out without ever seeing the sun.

He preferred the first one.

If you listen very closely, you might hear the train.

There was a rumble up ahead. Soft, but getting louder. The wall vibrated beneath his palm as he leaned on it. Barry sped up as much as he was able.

He saw a door. He heard the babble of conversation and something tinny, automated, chiming out above it. His thoughts were drifting away but his body kept moving, some shambling zombie drawn to the promise of human life.

Barry reached the door and practically fell onto it, all of his weight dropping onto the metal release bar. He spilled out into a mess of bodies and briefcases, jarring his wrists on harsh concrete as he landed.

He couldn't get back up. His strength had fled him. Above him, people were gasping and chattering as they began to notice him. Someone screamed.

A face loomed below him, some trepidatious businessman in a suit swimming in his vision. The man's lips moved, but the sound was buried under the cacophony of the crowd. Barry heard the ocean rushing in his ears. The smell of something sharp and bitter filled his nose.

"Hospital," he croaked, "Please."

And he once again sank into the unknown.

#my friends!!!#angst-is-love-angst-is-life #answered asks #my writing #whump #whump writing #oneshot #barry allen #tw whump #medical whump #self inflicted whump #tw blood and gore #kidnapping whump

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