Present, 2056 (Occupation)
Dammit.
Barry sank to one knee, feeling his energy drain after attempting to open a breach with Rip's Console strapped to his wrist. As expected, the familiar blue-and-white vortex was instead replaced by a formless, bluish mass of sparkling energy that fizzled for a few seconds before dying out completely. With no Tear created by a past breach, the dampening field could not be penetrated.
That really takes it out of you, Barry thought, slowly rising back to his feet. He felt like he had just run a few dozen marathons on an empty stomach, and he was slightly dizzy as he turned around, looking at the pure white beam of energy rising up to the sky in the distance.
Since the failed attack on what he and Oliver thought was a Dominator staging area in Central City thirty years ago, the compound had slowly fortified itself into the power station that had kept the dampening field up for the past ten years or so, when the ships in orbit apparently ran out of power. Through years of infiltrating human-populated labor camps run by the Dominators, Oliver had discovered that the beam from the power station provided energy to the field, using the dead ships as conduits. No beam, no field.
Barry had chosen to perform his breach diversion on the other side of Central City, and he could already faintly hear the shrieks of Dominator patrols closing on his position. Hopefully, that would soften up the defenses around the station.
He took a deep breath. Okay Oliver. I guess it's up to you now, he thought. His final conversation with the Green Arrow had been about details on the power station's surroundings and how Barry could infiltrate it with a combination of stealth, speed, and phasing. Oliver had literally died to get him that crucial intelligence, and now Barry was about to put it to the test.
As the Dominator shrieks grew louder around him, he sped away.
…
After an interminable series of quiet superspeeding, waiting for guards to pass, and vibrating through walls, Barry found himself in the center of the power station. He wished he had asked Oliver how in the world he had managed to give Barry such precise directions and recommendations, including which walls to vibrate through, but he supposed it was yet another secret he would never know about him.
The most dominant feature was the white energy column pulsating in the center of the room. The space was large, roughly the size of a school gymnasium, but the room itself was hemispherical with the walls constantly curving towards a large circular panel in the center of the roof. In the floor directly beneath it was an identical panel, and it was through these that the energy beam, clearly visible from the outside, was projected. Barry lost a few seconds as he marveled at the swirling cylinder of energy that rose from the floor, up to the roof, and outwards to the sky above before noticing the control console protruding out of the floor panel. He almost sped towards the blinking console to deactivate the energy beam before hastily stopping himself, remembering how many times he had run into invisible barriers in this war with the Dominators.
The walls and floor were all of a brownish red metal, like rusted steel, and light in the room came from an even distribution of lights around the dome. Carefully, he made his way forward towards the energy beam and the console that controlled it, picking up a small rusty screw that was lying on the ground along the way. Tossing it at the white energy beam, he was unsurprised to watch the screw vaporize against an invisible force field several feet radially outward from the energy column.
"So, you've learned."
Forty years ago, Barry would have been startled, but by now he recognized the taunting hiss in his mind too well. Tipping his head back and rolling his eyes, he slowly turned on the spot, facing a Dominator with white scar tissue over its eye. "You again, huh?" he asked.
The Superior snarled. "You should be more afraid."
"Why? You've always found ways to avoid fighting me. Locking me up in force fields. Running away. I'm in my sixties, and I can still take you out."
In response, the Superior raised a hand to reveal a remote with a single, large button, which it pressed slowly and deliberately. Barry heard a low hum all around him, and the floor and walls thrummed with some unseen energy. He shook his head. "Am I supposed to know what that is?"
The alien crushed the remote to pieces in its hand. "I've activated generators embedded in the dome to produce a force field just under all the plates in this room, both in the walls and in the floor." The Superior sniffed, amused. "You've run into a trap yet again."
Barry had just enough time to register that this meant no more vibrating through walls for him when the Superior suddenly disappeared, only to reappear directly in front of him, its clawed hand around his throat.
"Am I running now, Flash?" it taunted, eyes narrowed.
Barry's eyes widened in shock. How'd it do that?
The Superior lifted Barry into the air as he grappled uselessly at the alien grip around his neck, seemed to revel in how vulnerable a position Barry was in, before flinging his body several yards, leaving him to a hard impact against the metallic floor. He barely got to his knees when a stream of dark red-orange energy flew at him from the Superior's hands, and it took an immediate burst of superspeed to avoid getting cooked. Barry quickly switched direction and made a beeline for the alien, but once again the Superior disappeared. Confused, Barry came to a stop and looked around frantically, only realizing the Dominator had reappeared behind him when two projectiles came screaming at his head. He hit the ground, and the projectiles embedded themselves in the wall behind him. Looking up, he saw that they were thin and rectangular, largely featureless, except their color was the same shade as of a Dominator's skin, and their distinctive shape reminded him of playing cards.
Wait a minute…
A sinking realization settled in the pit of Barry's stomach. "What did you do?" he whispered. Getting to his feet, hands balled into fists, he screamed at his alien tormentor. "What did you do?!"
A hissing chuckle. "The fastest man alive finally catches up." The alien disappeared yet again, but this time Barry immediately sped away, dodging a clawed hand as the alien reappeared in the blink of an eye.
Peek-a-Boo.
More razor sharp projectiles whirled just past his head.
Double Down.
Streams of red-orange energy pursued him as he fled away, sideways, and backwards around the room.
Tokamak.
The Superior had harnessed metahuman powers.
…
Shit.
Barry lay on the ground, having gotten winged by a Tokamak blast from the Superior. He felt an odd dip in his strength, and his mind raced back to the football stadium in which he and Jax had fought the meta. Right. He can suck energy out of power sources.
The Dominator menacingly sauntered towards him, pulling new Double Down cards from within its own skin. "How does it feel Flash, to finally face your superior?" It flung the cards at deadly velocity towards Barry, but the speedster got to his feet and zoomed away, putting distance between himself and the alien.
"How?" he called out, outraged. "Why?"
"Most of my brethren sought ways to stamp out the metahuman contagion, as you know," the Dominator explained, clearly amused at Barry's distress. "But in secret, I sought a way to harness their powers, although many, unfortunately, died before I discovered the key to the procedure. I would've enjoyed controlling the weather," it quipped, sending another Tokamak blast his way. Barry sped to safety.
"All these years, and you show this off now?" Barry tried to taunt, though his voice betrayed how unnerved he was, and how sick he felt, thinking of all the other metahumans who had died in the Superior's experiments.
"Oh don't misunderstand me," the alien continued, almost conversational. "You metas are still abominations in my culture. If my colleagues knew I had imbued myself with such abilities, I would be cast out as a monster."
"You were always a monster," Barry shot back. The reply he received was more playing cards flying at his head. He caught them with his speed and flung them back, but the Superior had already teleported to a new location, where it continued talking.
"I have been unable to reveal what I've achieved for so long, but when the Green Arrow came skulking around our compound, I knew I finally had an opportunity to set a trap for you."
Barry's blood ran cold for a moment. The Superior knew about Oliver?
"I fed him details that would allow him to map the way to this chamber," the Superior continued, clearly enjoying its opportunity to brag. "Overheard conversations. Schematics left open on screens. He never knew he was leading his precious Scarlet Speedster to his final end." Another Tokamak blast, this one seemingly just for emphasis.
"And now here we are, sealed in by the force field around the chamber. No escape for you. No cameras or windows. No one to see what I can do. No one to see how I'll kill you."
"You know, I distinctly remember telling you to tone down the grandiose villain taunts," Barry replied. Despite the Superior's smug belief that it had played Oliver, its description of how it had fed information only convinced Barry that, in fact, Oliver knew exactly what the Superior was doing. There was simply no way he would have been duped that easily, which meant Oliver knew this was a trap and sent Barry in anyway. The only reason he would do that would be because he saw not a trap, but an opportunity.
He would only have sent Barry in if he knew Barry could win.
"Like I said before, when you taunt," Barry said, tensing up, "you get surprised."
…
Restrict its movement.
Barry's thoughts on Oliver focused his mind, getting him over the shock of a Dominator with metahuman powers. He fell back on the combination of Oliver's training and the science of S.T.A.R. Labs, two pillars that always served him well as he grew as a superhero.
Streaking around the dome as Tokamak blasts and Double Down cards pursued him, he used his speed to punch out lights he could reach and threw lightning at those he couldn't, quickly shrouding half the gymnasium-sized room in darkness before sharply redirecting himself towards the Superior. It teleported away, but as Barry expected, it could only get so far before hitting the edge of the darkened region, a fact that seemed to catch the alien off guard.
"Surprise," Barry said, before landing a thunderous punch. The Superior flew back several feet, and Barry sped away, aiming for more lights.
"What is this?!" the Superior snarled.
"You don't seem like you have a good bedside manner," Barry called out, taking out yet another light, "so you probably didn't bother to ask the metas about the limits of the powers you stole." Barry audibly tsked. "That's sloppy science."
"Stop it!" it screamed, sending more Tokamak blasts Barry's way but only hitting a blank part of the dome.
"Peek-a-Boo could only teleport within her line of sight," Barry explained, punching out yet another light. "If you can't see it, you can't get to it."
A Dominator shriek of frustration rewarded his efforts. Barry had now shrouded the majority of the windowless chamber in darkness, herding the alien to a far side of the dome, where it was zealously defending the final few lights that hung above it. It still had enough breathing room to give it a chance at dodging, but both of them knew Barry had negated one of its crucial advantages. Following the streak of light that accompanied Barry when he ran, the Dominator threw a huge fan of playing cards at him.
Take away its options.
Barry, now in a mental zone, zoomed through the field of cards, picking off most of them and sending them straight back at the Dominator in a wide fan of his own that left it nowhere to run within its lighted area. Having no other choice, the Dominator physically dove into the darkness, and Barry blew past it with another shuddering punch. "Surprise," he taunted, before running away again.
Enraged, the Dominator's body swirled with streaks of red and orange, and it extended its hands outwards for a massive Tokamak blast.
Use its power against it.
Barry, just managing to stay ahead of the Tokamak blast, ran behind the white energy beam in the center of the room and the invisible force field that protected it. In attempting to follow him, the blast ran straight into the force field, and a bright flash accompanied by an intense sizzling signaled a catastrophic shutdown of the system as the Tokamak stream drained away its power. The field protecting the energy beam, and the console that controlled it, went down, and without even thinking about it, Barry was at the console, thrusting both of his vibrating arms into the electronics until the entire mechanism fried.
"NO!" A sickening crack sent Barry's face sideways as his body suddenly lost its equilibrium, and before even hitting the ground, he was enveloped in red-and-orange tendrils, his energy being drained even as every single nerve burned with agony. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized the white energy beam itself was a light source, giving the Superior a small ring in which to teleport when the force field came down.
Though he wasn't sure how, he ended up on his back, the spindly, withered form of Earth's tormentor towering over him, a deadly claw extended. "You die," the Superior hissed, beady black eyes desperate for murder.
The Tokamak blast had done its work, draining the last of his strength. After opening the decoy breach, after running for his life around this dome, after having his energy sucked out multiple times, after four decades of war, he was done. He couldn't vibrate. He couldn't run. He couldn't fight.
No more, he thought to himself, his vision clouding as the light flickered in front of his eyes and a claw pierced his suit.
…
Author's notes: Again, there was inspiration from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in this chapter, specifically from Aida after getting her new body.
