Disclaimer: Flash, Wally West and all that DC stuff splattered around this story? It's not mine.

Legacies

Chapter 6: Explanations and Distractions

John Stewart, the ex-Marine turned Green Lantern, sighed as he looked up at the ceiling from the medical bay bed. He had just returned from a rather nasty battle in the Trithian nebula, and he had the burns to prove it. At least, he had when he had first arrived. Thanks to the advanced technology available at the Justice League Watchtower, his injuries had been tended to and almost completely healed in a matter of minutes. Of course, his burns weren't that bad in the first place. He had never been more grateful for the protective green sheath his ring provided in space battles. Booster Gold had ended up taking the most damage from the explosion, but he was going to pull through.

John was waiting to be told that he could leave, which was especially frustrating considering he had been tended to half an hour ago. Mari had visited him briefly before going off on a mission herself, which had left John laid on the uncomfortably stiff bed by himself again. He groaned and pushed himself out of the bed, walking over to the chair where his Green Lantern Corp uniform was slung. He got changed and left the medical bay and decided to get a cup of coffee before heading to the command center.

One quick visit to the mess hall later, John was stepping out of the elevator and onto the upper level of the command center. He looked over the different screens and suddenly felt very small and insignificant. It reminded him of when he was a child, and how he would spend hours at a time staring at the stars at night, and John remembered how small he had felt then. He hardly ever felt that way after he joined the Green Lantern Corp, but it did hit him now and then, especially after the new and improved Justice League was born. He looked over to see Mr Terrific working diligently at the controls.

A small red light started beeping on the control panel, indicating an incoming transmission. Mr Terrific pushed a button beneath the flashing light and got back to work.

"Watchtower," he said, never once stopping what he was doing.

"Yeah, this is Cyborg – from the Titans."

From the Titans? What could he want?

John walked over to Mr Terrific and stood behind him as he continued his conversation.

"What's the problem?"

"It's the Flash. He's in trouble."

John set his coffee cup down on the control panel as he leaned forward to hear more, and Mr Terrific gave him a slightly disapproving look before getting back to work.

"What kind of trouble?"

"He's got this new enemy who has all of his powers, but he… well, he's a lot more deadly than W-… Flash."

John noticed how he almost used Wally's real name and put his hand on Mr Terrific's shoulder.

"I'll take it from here."

Mr Terrific nodded and moved his chair out of the way slightly so John could move more freely.

"Cyborg, this is Green Lantern. When did you last see Flash?"

"About ten hours ago. He said he was gonna lead the guy away, but I haven't seen any news reports talking about them fighting. I tried to call him, but I get no response, whether I call his Titans communicator or his home."

John nodded. "All right, we'll check it out. Thanks for the heads up." John was about to terminate the connection when Cyborg spoke again.

"No, wait, listen to me. If you go and help him, be sure you take your most powerful guys with you. This guy means business – he took me apart in the space of about thirty seconds."

John nodded again. "All right. Thanks."

Cyborg sighed. "Just don't underestimate him. If you do, you could wind up dead. I almost did."

John terminated the connection and pushed another button on the control panel, bringing up a list of names on the monitor in front of him. He selected 'The Flash' from the list and pushed the outgoing communications button.

"Flash, come in."

The only noise he got in response was static. John pushed the button again.

"Flash, this is Green Lantern. Come in."

The static continued, and John grew more concerned by the second. He turned towards Mr Terrific.

"He's not responding."

Mr Terrific raised an eyebrow and tried the communication for himself. John would have felt irritated at this repetition of something he had just done himself, but he was too worried about Wally for it to bother him. Mr Terrific looked thoughtful for a moment, then looked at John.

"There're a few possibilities. One, he could have simply taken the communicator out. Two, he's out of range. Three, the communicator's been destroyed. Or four…"

He didn't finish his sentence, and John didn't need him to. He simply turned and headed for the landing bay.

"I'm heading down there."

"You should wait for backup."

John turned and smiled, holding his ring up to his face, letting it illuminate his features with a brilliant green.

"I think I can handle it."

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Wally looked at the tree ahead of him and exhaled noisily through his noise, trying his utmost to concentrate. He stretched and shook his arms, cricking his neck while he lightly jogged on the spot. He rubbed his hands together and extended his arm towards the tree, his fingers stretched outwards. He started to shake his hand as fast as he could. He began to hear a slight buzzing sound as his hand went faster and faster. He stayed with the feeling of the vibrations, allowing it to course through his entire body, just as Jay had told him.

Wally still had a hard time believing he was being trained in how to use his speed by the original Flash. He had read comic books about The Flash who fought in World War Two, but he had always thought him just that – a myth, a piece of propaganda to increase morale. And yet, here he was, sat patiently behind Wally in a wheelchair, having brought him out into the woods to tutor him in how to vibrate his molecules fast enough to pass through solid objects, just as Hunter had done in their first battle. According to Jay, it was this vibrating technique that had caused the strange marks found on Klann's body.

However, Wally had since learned, much to his relief, that Hunter was not solely responsible for his actions. An old enemy of Jay's was the reason behind Hunter's sudden powers and psychotic demeanour. That old enemy's identity was The Rival, another character that Wally had thought an invention of the comic books he had read as a child. Jay had told him the true identity of The Rival and how he got his powers, and Wally had been as wide eyed and enthralled as a ten year old.

The Rival was a scientist named Edward Clariss, who had become obsessed with super speed after Jay's first appearance as The Flash. Using his considerable intellect, he managed to duplicate the formula that had given Jay his powers, a formula that Jay had dubbed 'The Hard Water Formula'. However, the formula was only half of the equation when it came to speedster powers, as Wally knew too well – the powers he and Jay possessed were a mix of chemicals and the lightning bolt that hit them. However, Clariss only had the formula, and had hurriedly tried the formula on himself.

The formula accomplished its' task for the most part, with the added side effect that it adversely affected Clariss' mental health, which had already been precarious because of his obsession with super speed. He latched on to the idea that Jay had somehow stolen his idea for obtaining super speed, and set out to defeat him. The battle did not last long, however, as the formula that Clariss' had taken was only temporary, and his powers soon ran out. He managed to evade Jay long enough to retreat to his lab and take a dangerously high dose of the formula, increasing his powers to the point that even Jay couldn't match his speed. However, as Wally knew all too well, that kind of speed can be deadly, and Clariss became one with the Speed Force.

Wally had been confused at this story, as it still didn't explain how Clariss had returned, or how he and Hunter were sharing one body. Jay had said that Clariss could have been released from the Speed Force when Wally was pulled out by Shayera and rest of the League after the battle with Luthor and Brainiac. However, either because of the length of time he spent in Speed Force, or because of the temporary nature of his powers, Clariss had returned as a shadowy creature that could remain unseen to the naked eye.

Because of his extensive experience with the Speed Force, Jay had instantly felt something amiss when Clariss had escaped, and had begun tracking him, and was getting ready to confront him when he had bonded with Hunter. Clariss had obviously learned from past mistakes, however, and because of his time spent in the Speed Force, he had somehow learnt to control it.

He had bonded with Hunter, providing the formula side of the equation while also summoning Speed Force energy from the heavens to give Hunter powers as permanent and as deadly as Wally's. When Jay had told him the whole story, Wally had been filled with relief and dread; relief at the fact that his friend was being twisted and manipulated into doing these horrible acts, and dread at the fact that Wally was fighting an enemy with superior speed and experience, and one who couldn't be reasoned with or bargained with.

Jay had assured Wally that his speed was as great as Clariss and Hunter's, but Wally wasn't convinced. He still wasn't, even as he inched his vibrating hand towards the tree trunk. He had been able to vibrate through solid objects as Kid Flash, but it had always taken a lot out of him. Over time he had used the skill less and less to the embarrassing point where he needed to be trained in how to do it again. He winced and scrunched his features as his hand came within an inch of the tree. Wally pushed on, and his hand started to go through the tree. Wally's eyes widened in shock, and a slight smile appeared on his lips. However, the shock at this accomplishment had distracted him, and Wally's hand slowed, and the tree smashed apart around his arm. He quickly withdrew his arm and began nursing his stinging hand, turning sheepishly to look at Jay.

"Sorry," he said, rubbing his hand in a desperate attempt to get the throbbing pain to go away.

Jay closed his eyes and tilted his head forward nonchalantly. "It's okay, junior. To be honest, you're getting along much faster with this than I did when I first got my powers."

Wally smiled and shook his hand, relieved that the pain in his hand was subsiding. "Yeah. Right."

Jay raised his hand defensively. "I'm serious, junior. Don't worry; you'll get it. You just need some more time to work on it."

"Right," Wally sighed, sitting on a nearby rock so that he was facing Jay. His masked eyes lingered slightly on Jay's missing leg, and Wally decided to ask now and get it over with. "Mr Garrick…"

"I told you junior, call me Jay."

"Okay… uh… Jay. How did you… I mean, that is… how did you…?"

"Lose this?" he said, pointing at the stump hidden underneath the blanket that draped over his legs.

Wally nodded, feeling ashamed for even asking the question.

"Don't look so worried, junior. Frankly, I'm surprised it took you this long to ask. I lost it after the war. I was going up against a villain known as The Shade."

Wally frowned. "Shade? As in, black suit, top hat, cane that spits out black stuff?"

Jay nodded. "That's right. I'm not surprised if you've fought him. I've heard rumours that he's been around since the nineteenth century."

Wally raised an eyebrow. "He doesn't look it."

Jay let out a small laugh before continuing. "He was planning to activate some kind of device that would faze Keystone City out of existence, which he'd designed by working with two other villains, the Thinker and the Fiddler."

Wally smiled in spite of himself. "'The Fiddler'? You're not serious."

Jay looked over at him. "Deadly serious, junior."

Wally's smile faded and he remained silent.

"I managed to stop them," Jay continued, "But the machine became unstable and was going to explode. So, I grabbed the machine and ran as far into the ocean as I could. Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough to get away before it exploded, and…" he gestured down to the stump.

Wally suddenly felt very awkward and stupid for asking him in the first place. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…"

Jay raised a hand to stop him. "I've already said, junior, it's not a problem. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask you a question."

"Uh… sure."

"Why did you choose the name Flash?"

Wally shrugged and smiled. "I don't know… I move fast. What says that better than Flash? The Streak? The Whizzer?"

Jay chuckled. "I see your point. But… you were Kid Flash as well, weren't you? Why be Kid Flash first, and then move on to The Flash?"

Wally was silent for a moment, the easy smile he had worn fading into a look of sadness as he mumbled his response. "I've got my reasons. I'd rather not…"

Jay nodded understandingly. "I understand junior. It's not important right now. Right now, you need to be the best damn Flash you can so you can beat Clariss and save your friend."

Wally clapped his hands on his knees and pushed himself up off the rock. "Right," he said, nodding in an all business manner.

"All right, but I think we'll move onto more dense objects now, like rocks."

Wally's frowned and raised a worried eyebrow. "Rocks? Are you sure? I mean… they're pretty solid."

"That's the point, junior. Now, before you get started, I want to give you some advice; stop thinking."

"Huh?"

"You're thinking too much." Seeing the clueless look on Wally's face, Jay sighed, and then continued. "Look at it this way; when you run, do you think about running?"

"Well… it's either that or go running at mach 3 into a wall, so yeah, I kinda do."

"Then you're thinking too hard. Let me guess, when your hand went through the tree you felt shocked that you did it, right?" Wally nodded. "And that's why you messed up and ended up shattering it. You were thinking about it too much. You need to become part of what you're doing to the point were you don't have to think about it anymore. You understand, junior?"

Wally's frown deepened into a look of confusion. "Not really. But I promise I'll think about it."

Jay grinned. "You're a very different Flash than I was, junior. And I think that's what's going to help you to win this fight."

Wally found a suitably large rock and began preparing himself. He only hoped that Hunter and Clariss weren't causing too much trouble back in Central City.

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John floated down so that he could get an overview of the entire city. Everything seemed calm on the surface, but John had learned from bitter experience that that usually meant that something big and nasty was brewing. While he was on his way in, he had called the other founding Leaguers to see if they had had any contact with Wally, with little by the way of results. He had gone to Wally's apartment and found it wrecked, which had worried him to no end. And so, he now found himself floating, both figuratively and literally, waiting until something happened. Much to his relief, there was the familiar sound or sirens coming from the city, and John set off after the noise.

By the time he arrived at the scene, the police car's siren had been torn away, and the front of the car looked as though it had been attacked by a jackhammer. On closer inspection, John found that the dents in the car were made by fists. He looked up and down the street and found no one. He used his ring to look for the thermal trail of footprints, and found a trail that twisted and turned so much that it would have taken any normal man a day to repeat the same motions.

That must be Wally's mystery enemy.

John encased himself in green energy and floated away, following the trail while staying high enough to avoid any trucks or buses that may come driving down the road. He turned left and followed the road ahead until he came to a junction. He looked left and right and was surprised at how little traffic there was. He heard the noise of sirens again, and abandoned the trail to find the source. He arrived on this scene much sooner than before, in time to see a man dressed in what looked like the Flash's costume, only with colours inverted. He was throwing policeman left and right, and John used his ring to cushion their fall, placing them safely on the ground.

He turned his attention to the yellow Flash and encased him in a green bubble. The villain seemed confused for a moment before he turned around and saw John floating in mid air above him. John brought the bubble up to him so he could look at the yellow Flash face to face.

"I think that costume design belongs to someone else. And I don't think he'd appreciate you wrecking his city, either."

The yellow Flash smiled. "Since he's not around, I thought I'd take the city for myself."

"It might be hard for you to do that from jail."

"I sincerely doubt you can hold me."

John smiled. "Knock yourself out."

The yellow Flash grinned back, and he held up both his hands in front of him. The hand began to shake until all John could see were two yellow blurs where his forearms and hands should have been. He slammed the two hands down into the bubble, and John grimaced as he struggled to keep the bubble intact around his foe. However, the yellow Flash's entire body began to shake, and the yellow blur sank down through the green sphere. John swore under his breath as the yellow Flash plummeted, a confident smirk on his face the entire time. He stretched his arms out to either side and began to spin himself, creating a miniature cyclone around himself. The cyclone reached the ground and the yellow Flash slowly span to a halt, crossing his arms in satisfaction as he looked up at John.

"Who are you?" John growled, irritated that he had so easily escaped from him.

"Zoom," the yellow Flash hissed, before running off to his left and up the side of a building. Once he became level with John he pushed himself off the building with speedster strength, propelling himself towards the Green Lantern with incredible speed, flipping over in mid flight so that both feet were facing towards him. John only just managed to create a shield before Zoom slammed into his feet first, sending him flying into the building behind him. John grunted as he went through brick and glass and landed in the middle of an office area.

Ignoring the frightened and confused looks on the office workers faces, John stood up and saw that Zoom was stood in the hole that he had created. John pointed his ring at the grinning villain and fired a beam of emerald energy. Zoom ducked beneath and shot straight towards him. Before John could do anything else, Zoom had already grabbed him by the arm and thrown him with superspeed diagonally down through the floor and out into the open again. John slammed into the street, only just protecting himself with a protective layer of green energy before the impact. He pushed himself up off the ground, and turned in time to see Zoom running down the side of the building and heading straight towards him. He raised his arm and Zoom half ducked in anticipation.

John smiled at the move and created a huge emerald wall in front of him. John prepared himself for the high speed impact, but was only greeted by a buzzing noise as Zoom blurred through the wall and slammed into John, sending him careening through the building behind him and into the next street. John put his hand on his head to sooth the pain, and was surprised that he was bleeding from a cut just above his right eye. John heard Zoom coming in for another strike. Surprised by his relentless attacks, John decided to put some distance between him and the golden villain. He encased himself in green energy and pushed himself up off the ground.

Before he could even get airborne, John was suddenly being tossed and turned by a Zoom created cyclone. Then, as suddenly as the cyclone had been created, it stopped. John faltered in the air slightly, disoriented from the intense spinning. That was all that Zoom needed. John looked up in time Zoom leaping towards him, grabbing him as gravity took control of the speedster. They both went crashing to the ground, Zoom positioning them so that John took the brunt of the fall. John gritted his teeth and pushed his ring hand in a fist against Zoom's stomach. He fired a bolt of green energy point blank, tossing Zoom backwards through the air before he crashed onto the top of a parked car behind him. The car crumpled under the impact, causing the windows to shatter and the car's alarm to whine in protest.

John forced himself to his feet, ignoring the pain coursing through his ankle as he realised it had been twisted badly in the forced landing, and looked at where Zoom had landed on the car. His eyes widened as he realised that he was gone. He was about to turn when he felt a burning jab of pain in the small of his back. He yelled in pain and fell to the ground. He struggled desperately to get up as he felt Zoom's boot jab itself into the center of his back.

"Move… and I break your spine."

John ceased his struggle, but began to quietly gather energy in his ring, pushing the ring against the ground while hiding the building energy beneath his stomach.

"When you see West again… tell him I'll meet him where Hunter Zolomon's end began."

John felt relieved that Wally was still alive somewhere, but more shocked that this… Reverse Flash knew Wally's name. Zoom spoke again.

"Of course, you'll be telling him from a hospital bed. That'll be two broken men he could've saved but didn't. I wonder how you'll handle being a cripple?"

John released the energy he had been saving, propelling himself and Zoom upwards, and destroying the ground beneath them, revealing the sewer pipes that ran beneath the roads. John encased himself in green energy and shot down into the pipe, hoping that Zoom wouldn't follow. He quickly navigated the sewer system, using a manhole to bring himself back out into the open and a suitable distance from the battle and Zoom. He looked up and down the street to make sure that the yellow Flash hadn't somehow followed him here, and put his hand to his ear to contact the League, and found that the earpiece was missing. He cursed and began to make his way to Metropolis in order to go to the Metro tower and bring back reinforcements when he was suddenly overcome by a wave of dizziness.

He managed to land on a rooftop before collapsing to the ground.

Must have taken more out of me that I thought, John thought, before the entire world went black around him.

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Wally brought his vibrating hand out of the rock and stood back, hoping that this time would be different. The past five attempts had resulted in the rocks exploding shortly after he had vibrated through them. He was improving in his skills though, despite the odd side effect. He had even managed to keep his foot inside a rock for about ten seconds. Jay was impressed by that, although he was very confused that all the rocks had exploded. He had taken cover behind a large tree, shouting encouragement to Wally from his hiding place.

Wally waited for thirty seconds.

A minute.

The rock remained a rock. Wally grinned and turned towards Jay, who was leaning around the tree to see what had happened. Wally gave him a thumbs up, and Jay smiled back.

"I knew you had it in you, junior."

Wally frowned. "But do you think it's enough to beat Clariss and Hunter?"

Jay's face became equally serious as he pushed his chair over to Wally and put a hand on his shoulder. "It'll have to be, junior. I don't think we can spend anymore time here."

Wally nodded and took a deep breath, blowing it out noisily. "Okay. Let's do this."

He helped Jay out of his chair and folded it up and put it on, using the straps that Ashley had attached to it to turn it into a makeshift backpack before scooping Jay up and heading back to Central City. Wally wasn't about to let some relic from the past destroy his city and his friend.

He owed it to Hunter to fight for him.

He owed it to Bart.

He owed it to himself.

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(A/N: Like? Hate? Or just confused? Whatever it is, review!)