Arcadia City. It's a bustling metropolis found in the midst of Oregon in the United States. The city is home to many, but it is also most known for the prestigious Blackwell Academy and the legendary STAR Labs.
It was a quiet night in Arcadia's suburbs. For all the people there it was just a normal night. But it was a heavily disastrous night for some others. For Chloe Price and Max Caulfield, this would be one of the worst nights of their entire life.
Neither of them quite understood what was going on in front of them. A simple sleepover at the Caulfield household had unleashed pure hell on the Caulfields. The room was torn apart. Books littered the floor, glass from the windows were shattered onto the ground, and the coffee table was obliterated. Yellow and red lightning danced around the room, making even more of a mess. For the two young girls standing just outside of the room, it was pure terror.
"Run, Max, run!" Ryan Caulfield, Max's father, had yelled before he was knocked unconscious by the red lightning. The two young girls, paralyzed by fear, could not move a single inch. Despite the terror, Max tried to step forward. But she couldn't. For a single moment she saw him coming towards her. A man. A man in a yellow suit. He, with a knife in hand, ran toward Max. But that's when he was stopped by an unknown force. In the blink of an eye he was gone as Max and Chloe were brought outside the home by the yellow lightning.
Neither could say anything as they stared out at the home. The noise must have set off a complaint because within only a few minutes a single police car had arrived. And then another. And then another. Max and Chloe tried to explain the best of what they had seen, but the police wrote it off as trauma. She yelled out for her father as he was brought away into one of the squad cars. Alone. She was alone. The man in the yellow suit then appeared before her, that terrible grin plastered across his face. Then she screamed.
Max's eyes went wide open as she awoke from her usual nightmare. Again? It seemed that the nightmare was getting more and more frequent these days. The newly turned eighteen-year-old sighed a bit, agitated that she was awake already. She wouldn't need to be awake for another hour. Her breathing was unsteady, as she looked to her side a bit.
Ever since the incident, Max had lived with Chloe Price's family. Of course, tragedy was always near. Chloe was never the same after her own father died in that car accident, but Max was always there for her. A tether to the regular world. Despite that, Chloe had change. Her grades dropped, her life spun out of control, and she abandoned her former self. Even though they lived under one roof top, Max and Chloe had drifted apart.
Giving up a sigh, Max who had lived in a renovated part of the garage to turn it into a bedroom, got up from her bed and readied herself for her day. She threw on regular clothing, a pink Jane Doe T-Shirt and jeans. A grey coat covered her shoulders, as she walked up to the mirror in her room and stared at herself. Bags underneath her eyes were a testament to her bad sleeping patterns since the nightmares had begun. Taking a deep breath, she slapped her hands to her cheeks.
"It's only a dream." Max said to herself. "The man in the yellow suit isn't here. He can't hurt me." Max had been through years of therapy, all to convince her that the man in the yellow suit didn't exist and that it was a figment of her imagination to cope with what her father had done. But she knew better. What she saw that night wasn't fake. It was etched into her memory, her nightmares visibly showing that.
Shaking her head a little bit, she grabbed her bag off the floor and began walking toward the door to her room, before exiting it. The living room and kitchen were basically one room, with nothing really separating them in the Price household.
"Well good morning Max, you're up bright and early." She heard a voice say from behind the wall. It belonged to that of Joyce Price, the woman who had graciously taken Max in after the death of her mother and the conviction of her father. Joyce was making an early breakfast, usually for herself since Chloe would usually sleep in until ungodly hours and Max would be out and about right after Joyce left for work.
"Good morning, Joyce." Max said with a weak smile on her face, rounding the corner to sit down at the table. Today was a big day for Max, and the newspaper sitting on the table confirmed that. Today was the day that STAR Labs was to run its particle accelerator. While science wasn't Max's primary interest, she was given the opportunity by her photography teacher, Mark Jefferson, to go down to STAR Labs and take photos of the grand event for him. It was both exhilarating and nerve wracking.
"So today is the big day, huh? Are you excited Max?" Joyce waltzed over from the stove with two plates. She always made more than enough food when she cooked, and that was good news for Max. She would need the energy.
"I guess I am. It's really nerve-wrecking to be sent by Mr. Jefferson of all people. He really believes in me and… I'm a bit scared to mess it up, to be honest." Max sighed a little bit, as Joyce placed the plate of bacon and eggs in front of her. The brown-haired girl began to slowly pick at her food as Joyce sat across from her.
"You'll do great Max. You always have done great things with your photography, and I know you'll do a good job tonight." Max nodded a little bit and smiled.
"I hope you're right, Joyce." She replied, looking up at the clock on the wall a bit. "Is David still here, or did he leave already?"
"David's already left for work. He leaves way too early for a normal sane man; I'll tell you that much." Joyce mused a little as she drank from a cup of coffee. "He could take you to school if he didn't leave so damn early."
Max laughed a little.
"It's fine Joyce. I prefer walking and taking the bus. It gives me a bit of me time, you know?" Max wasn't the biggest fan of David, to be quite honest. He was always getting into blowouts with Chloe, and when Max would try to interfere, it would just become worse. So, she tended to steer clear of David at both school and home.
The two made pleasant small talk about the event at STAR Labs until it was finally time to leave for both of them. Max needed to get to get there early, mostly to trade in her polaroid camera for one of Mr. Jefferson's more expensive digital cameras. This was an important task for the girl, and she needed to make sure it was done well.
Soon enough the night came. School was rather tedious as it always was, but Max had been imbued with enough encouragement from Mr. Jefferson that she was able to make herself come. As she walked through the tide of people there to see the particle accelerator turned on, Max found herself in her own little world.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
Max was taking picture after picture,
"Chloe? What are you doing here?" Max asked, seeing her friend waiting around in the crowd of people.
"Didn't think I'd be seeing you here tonight. I know you're not the biggest science geek, so definitely didn't think to see you here."
"Well you're not the star picture of geek either, Chloe." Max rolled her eyes a little bit, as Chloe did the same. "I'm here to take pictures of the event for Mr. Jefferson."
"I see. Well I was looking forward to this a bit. Not like there's anything else to do tonight." Chloe said, trying to hide her own excitement towards the scientific breakthrough. Despite her rough exterior, Chloe was still Chloe. Excited by the wonders of science. "And you're just here too, huh. What a weird coincidence."
Things were getting a bit… awkward. They lived under the same roof, yet rarely saw one another. They shared a home, and things were never like they used to be. The two awkwardly stood there in silence, before Max decided to speak.
"Yeah… I need to go take more pictures though, mostly of Dr. Wells' speech." Max eventually worked up the nerve to say. Chloe frowned a little bit but nodded.
"Oh… Alright. I guess I'll catch you later then Max." Chloe missed Max a lot. But since her drastic changes, Chloe never found the right words to say to Max. She wasn't the same person as she was five years ago. Max nodded back to her as she made her way towards where Dr. Wells would be giving his speech.
Max, again, became lost in her own photography. She didn't hear a single word coming out of Dr. Wells' mouth, because she was so entranced with her task. Soon enough, Dr. Wells left the stage, leaving Max done with her task for the night. Sighing a little bit, she knew she had done an okay job at the very least.
She decided it was time to find Chloe and maybe hang around the blue-haired girl a little bit. Max wanted nothing more than to hang around with Chloe again, but Max was always way too reserved and quiet to be that type of person. The person who went out and partied, went to shows, etc. It wasn't the type of life that Max lived, but that didn't stop her from dreaming of the day when she and Chloe finally became close again.
Slinging her bag over her shoulder, Max made her way home from STAR Labs. It had been a long day and she knew she was in for a good rest. Hopefully. As she walked home, she could hear the thunderstorm clouds rolling in. The rolling roar of the thunder irked her slightly as she walked home. Staring up at the sky a bit, she felt a single drop of rain hit her.
"Damn it!" Max yelled at herself internally. She should have brought an umbrella with her. That's when it happened. A rumbling so loud, that it eclipsed the sound of the storm happening above her. She turned her head a bit to look around and saw something erupting from STAR Labs. She was… captivated for a few moments.
Unbeknownst to her the particle accelerator had just exploded. Max stared as she looked up to the sky for a moment. Nothing prepared her for when she was struck by lightning.
A whistling tune could be heard coming from a man. He was sitting down in a seat, watching a live feed of the STAR Labs particle accelerator explosion. He smiled a little bit, before turning his head away from his computer. Walking over to the side of the room, he looked at a small pedestal before turning away to face a mannequin with a yellow suit on it. He smiled widely as he touched the lightning bolt symbol emblazoned on the chest.
"It's about time you got here… Flash."
