Sudden Burst of Speed

by CRose

Ranma gets a chance to experiance the fabled Speed Force first hand, this is the story of his first adventure.

3. Chapter 02

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Sudden Burst of Speed

Chapter 02

Cory D. Rose - ertle2@msn.com

BlindmanX - blindmanx@hotmail.com

(c) 2003

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Crawling out of bed the next morning Ranma learned the first lesson every speedster had to learn in the first few weeks after learning how to use their speed. He groaned as he rolled over and sat on the edge of his bed and thanked all the Kami in existence that he wasn't using a typical Japanese bed. Every muscle in his body throbbed with pain as he sat there holding his head in his hands. He tried to stand up, but his legs felt so bad that he nearly collapsed to the floor when they refused to hold his weight.

"I do not need this right now." He muttered in Japanese.

"Ah, I thought I heard you moving around up here." Joan said as she looked into the room and smiled at him.

"I hurt."

She smiled again. "I thought so. Can you stand?"

"No."

"Then let me get you something to eat and you just lay there and get some rest. You will be up and about in a little while."

Ranma shook his head. "Can force self, need to move around little." Reaching deep within himself he found his Ki again and let it spread throughout his body slowly energizing his tired muscles and forced himself to stand up with a groan of pain. He could feel every muscle in his body settling as he stood there and forced himself to take a step. A tingling flowed down his back and he groaned again.

It wasn't the worst Ranma had felt in his short time here but as he slowly streached his body out as he leaned againts the wall near to the bathroom.the muffeled grunts were the only outward signs that some of the kinks on his sour back and arms were lessing. With a sudden almost mind jarring crack his back realined itself. When the burst of pain passed only the wall and his hands being on it kept him standinging.

"Don't push yourself to much dear." Joan said as she grabbed onto his shoulder and steered him out of the room. "You need a hot bath I think it will do you soime good."

"Sound good."

"I'll draw one up for your then."

A few minutes later, after using the wall to staggering down the hall with as much dignity as he could muster Ranma entered the bathroom and found a large bathtub filled with steaming water. It wasn't a furo like he was used to using, but it would work as far as he was concerned. Slowly stripping down, as not to send himself into a spiral of pain again he lowered himself into the tub slowly and let the heat seep into his body with a sigh and let his Ki continue to flow through his body. Within a few minutes he was feeling considerably better and he took a few moments to stretch his aching muscles the water helped ease some of the strain on his back, arms and especialy legs. He stayed there working out the kinks and relazing for quite a while before the water began to cool down.

Getting gingerly out of the tub, he grabbed a towel left for him by Joan and dried off and got dressed it took time he made certain that he didn't pull anything by just pulling the shirt over his head. The pain was still there but mercyfully he could feel his body adapting to it as he moved around and figured that within a few days he would be able to use his speed all the time without having to put up with muscles that sore again. He walked out into the living room tugging at the neckline of the clothing he was now wearing. Blue jeans and a t-shirt just didn't seem to suit him, neither did the slight itching of the fabric and he wondered if there was something else to wear.

"Are you feeling better Ranma?" Joan asked as he sat down at the table.

"A little, still sore."

Sitting across from him at the table Jay looked up from his paper. "We are going to do something about your English today."

"What?"

"You need to improve it and I know of a quick way to help you learn the language. We'll do that this morning when we stop by the library."

"Boring." Ranma muttered.

"You would be surprised." Jay said with a grin. "You can read an entire library worth of books in just a few mintues if you move fast enough."

"Can no read English." Ranma said.

"You will by the time we're done with you." Jay explained.

"Oh joy." An already bored Ranma muttered.

**********

The library that Jay took him to turned out to be on the other side of the river in Central City. At first Ranma hadn't even known that he had entered a completely different city, but Jay had pointed out that Central City and Keystone City were known as the Sister Cities. They were so intertwined with each other that they were hard to tell apart at times.

They had taken their time to eat finishing off the breakfast Joan had fixed them before setting out across one of the several bridges that crossed the Missouri river and entered Central City a few minutes later. The run had been a little slow. No where near as fast as he had been pushing himself the day before, but still faster than any car could travel. This was patrolling speed according to Jay. It allowed them to move fast and still see everything they needed to without pushing themselves to their limits in a matter of minutes.

Ranma wouldn't admit to anyone, but he was thankful that Jay hadn't pushed him too hard on the run into Central City. Even with the stretching he had done earlier he could tell that he wasn't up for a full speed run and that he needed to find a way to push himself to his limits again. His Ki was working over time to adjust to the new energies that were flowing through him as well and it was adding to the strain on his body.

Even with his spotty memory he knew that he hadn't been forced to push his abilities like this in a long time. Surprisingly he found that the speed energy was also making minor changes to him as well. Nothing to weird, but as and experienced martial artist he had trained hard to tell when the smallest change had happened to his body. It was a little hard to believe that only two days had passed since he arrived here and learned about the technique, but its effects were already in full swing.

The first thing he noticed was that his Ki was getting this electrical distortion effect about it. It wasn't really noticeable on the outside, but he could feel how it moved around inside him slowly making its alterations. This somehow seemed to make the speed energy flow throughout his body a bit smoother than it had at first. If he wasn't careful he could feel it trying to accelerate him even when was sitting still.

It did have a nice side effect though, making his reflexes faster than they had been and loosening up his tired muscles at the same time. Even the run was helping to fix his tired muscles. The blasted stuff didn't seem to have any effect on his memory though and he was still struggling to remember whatever he could with his bad memory. He could remember any fighting style or move he had ever encountered, but that when it came to his personal life and information almost all of it was missing. Unfortunately that didn't seem to be happening and it was irritating him beyond belief.

He hated the idea that he knew his name, but that there didn't seem to be anyway for him to remember his past unless he pushed his mind hard enough to get a migraine. From the number of scars on his body he could remember that he'd been training for years and had a story to go with each one. He knew the precise angle he had to be at in order to punch through a wall, but didn't know how to put it into words to explain it or who had told it to him.

At the same time he did remember some shadow demon punching him a few times when he didn't get it right the first time he learned the technique. Then there was another aspect that was starting to irritate him even more than his memory, his dreams. The last couple of nights had brought nightmares about that some shadowy, baldheaded devil and a pit filled with evil demons that wanted to strip the flesh from his bones. That last one had made him wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night and about to scream in terror.

He looked around the library as they entered and tried to distract himself from his thought. "This place big."

"I was told that there are over fifty thousand books in this library." Jay explained as he handed Ranma five note books and a couple of pens. "We have a lot of work to do and I don't want to be here to long, so let's get to work."

The sheer number of books astounded after he took a second to figure out just how many that was. "How read that many?"

Jay just grinned. "This morning you are going to work your way through all of these books by learning a new way to use your speed."

"You kidding?"

"No my boy, you have a lot of reading ahead of you. Now let's get started in this area over here." Jay said as he led the boy over to the children's section as he explained the process to Ranma. "I know you are still sore from all the running you did yesterday, so I won't push you to hard, but I expect you to finish this library today. Now I want you to start with these books here."

"I try." Ranma muttered as he looked at the sea of books around him. If he hadn't already experienced just how fast these guys could move he would have written the whole thing off as impossible.

"Good, I'm going to go and get some coffee and talk to the Librarian for a minute to explain what we're doing. It's why I dressed up in my uniform today. I'll be right back. Oh, and remember to start taking notes as you learn to read and write the language."

"Okay." Ranma muttered. He wasn't looking forward to it, but he figured that doing this was better than brooding over his missing memories.

He took a deep breath and calmed his mind as he let the energy slowly flow through him as he forced it to move the way he wanted it to. At first he couldn't really understand what Jay was talking about when he said to just ride the energy and give it a nudge every now and then. Then he started to understand and let the energy flow increase. Almost instantly multiple images of Ranma raced across the children's section flickering in and out of the visible spectrum. Ghostly images of Ranma as he started to slowly teach himself how to read at super speed.

They were sitting next to each other, each one looking through a different book or taking vague notes, and flickering in and out of sight as the seconds ticked by. The books themselves seemed to dance in the air as he worked his way through every book he could get his hands on. By the time he was over halfway through the section a couple of minutes later he was starting to fill the first note book up with printed letters.

He was using several pages for each letter of the alphabet as he learned. His confidence started to grow as the seconds ticked by and his images started to take on a subtle blue glow that he didn't seem to notice. They were no longer flickering as he sped up. Instead they were almost solid now and only lasted about half a second before they vanished.

A good number of the books were a bit fragile and took special handling, but he managed to make his way through them without hurting them to much. He did manage to rip a page here and there when he wasn't careful enough with them though. By the time Jay did return he was grinning as he walked into the section and spotted all the after images of Ranma reading book after book.

He counted over thirty images as he sipped at his coffee and knew the kid had started to master the technique. Then, just as the ten minutes was beginning to count down the images suddenly started to reduce in number until there was only one Ranma sitting at a nearby table writing down the last of his notes and proving that he had mastered how to print in English.

"So how much did you learn?"

"Quite a bit." Ranma said as he tested out his improved vocabulary.

"I knew this was the place to start. You learn fast, I saw that yesterday and figured this would be a great way to get you up to 'speed' so to speak." Jay said with a laugh.

"Oh ha ha." Ranma mumbled.

"How are you feeling? Did you work off your breakfast yet?"

"No, but I am feeling a bit drained after all that. My body still hurts of course. And let's not mention the headache I just created." He said as he massaged his temples.

"That can't be helped I'm afraid. As for the headache that is a given considering what you are doing. Taking in this much information at once is bound to cause some side effects for someone that has never done it before. We have the rest of the library to work through as well and I want to get home in time for lunch. Then I have a surprise. That is if you manage to finish all the books anyway."

"You sure I can learn all this in one day?" Ranma asked as the headache started to reduce a bit.

"Yes, but you have limits and I'm pushing you to find out just how far you can go before you reach yours. That's why there are so many books for you to go through."

"Ah, well let's get to work then. I want to finish this today before I die of boredom." Ranma said.

Jay handed him a bag. "Eat that and then we can continue on to the next part of the lesson."

Ranma pulled a sub sandwich out of the bag and ate it in just a few bites as Jay led him over to the side of the library.

"You will notice that there are twenty large stacks here, each one has five shelves full of books and a ladder to reach the highest shelves. The ladder is on rollers so you can move it along the stack easily. I want you work you way through each stack. Ten minutes for two stacks at once and I want notes taken on what you find in each of then. If you need more note books I'll go and get you some."

"That's more books than the children's section!" Ranma whined.

"I know that. Now that you have mastered how to read them quickly I want you to push yourself to go even faster."

"But..." Ranma muttered.

"Right now even Impulse could beat you at this, so you need to learn how to go faster."

Ranma sighed. The children's section had been a bit of an insult, but at least he had learned a lot from it. He wondered what else there was to learn from these other books and if he could do it without falling asleep. "Alright, I'm up for the challenge."

Reaching into his pocket Jay pulled out a small digital timer and set it for ten minutes. "Ready, set, GO!"

Ranma blurred and seemed to split off into forty different versions that swarmed over the two different sections. Once again books seemed to be dancing around the book shelves as he read them right there and put them back before anyone could even read the title. At the same time five different images worked at nearby tables taking notes and assimilating all the information. His pen flew across the paper and filled each page faster than the eye could blink.

"Ranma, you're moving too slow! Move so fast that I can't see after images!" Jay yelled out.

"Hai..." Ranma said from forty different locations and almost setting off an echo as the sound seemed to come from several different locations at once.

"Concentrate!" He yelled and nodded as he noticed that the images were starting to blur in and out of position without returning. "Faster!"

By the time the alarm on the clock went off Ranma was exhausted and still had about twenty books to go. His pride wouldn't let him skip even one book, nor to skim over the pages instead of reading them. So he was really disappointed that he hadn't managed to pull it off. Jay walked down to the end of the stack and looked at how far he had gotten.

"You almost made it, but you weren't moving fast enough and towards the end there you started to leave after images again." He pointed out.

"Sorry." He said as he gasped for breath. "I'll do better on the next one."

"Quickly now, finish off those last few books. You have two minutes to do it at a little slower speed and then come over to the desk and sit down for a few minutes." Jay said.

"Alright." Ranma said as he straightened up and quickly read through the last few books in a matter of seconds. And then he seemed to appear at the table almost as Jay arrived.

"Over the years us Flash's have read several libraries like this for various reasons. It was usually when we were fighting for our lives against a criminal that managed to outwit us." Jay explained. "Most of us could have finished this place within five minutes."

Ranma gave him a disbelieving look.

"You aren't even using your full potential Ranma. You were inside the Speed Force and when you go there you gain a link greater than the rest of us. If what Max says it true, you and Wally both channel the speed energies through your bodies at such high levels that there should be no limit to how fast you can go."

"I feel like I am at my limit now." Ranma muttered, looking a little lost and winded.

"You are limiting yourself because you have no clue what you can do and you are trying to rationalize what you are learning. I think you have to move beyond that limit to reach your full potential. Wally took years to do that, subconsciously making himself slower than the man that trained him. You are doing something similar only you don't have someone like Barry Allen to look up to."

"Who?"

"After reading all those books and magazines you still don't know who Barry Allen is?" Jay asked in surprise, then shook his head and remembered the kid had a case of amnesia. "We can swing by the Central City Flash Museum here after while and get you caught up on some of the Flash History."

"Cool."

"Anyway, you are subconsciously limiting yourself and you shouldn't do that with the speed energies. It might cost you like it's done to Wally on more than one occasion. Now get up, it's time to move onto the next two stacks and I don't want to see any after images this time. I just want you to use pure speed to read so fast that the images don't even have time to form. Once you are done with that I'll get you something else to eat so you can replenish your energies again."

Ranma nodded as he stood up, stretched a bit, and took a second to clear his mind as he walked over to the next two stacks. "Alright, let's get this finished."

Reaching out Jay tapped the clock and it started to count down again. "Go!" This time Ranma vanished from sight in a burst of electricity and Jay was a bit surprised that the kid didn't set off a sonic boom. Then again setting off that kind of effect in this sort of enclosed space was quite hard to do when you were as inexperienced as the boy. A part of his mind wondered what it would be like if Impulse would take the time to do things like this. How far along would the boy be right now if he had learned all this the proper way? He shook his head and decided that kind of thinking was a bit unfair of him.

His eyes tracked Ranma's progress though the stack and he was quite pleased to see that after just a few minutes Ranma was over halfway through the next set of stacks. He took a second to glance at one of the note books and was also happy to see that the boy's English was improving almost as fast as he was reading the books.

Sitting down at the table he flipped though the paper and slowly drank his coffee as he waited for the alarm to go off. He noticed that there was an article about the break in the night before and a list of what had been stolen. Some of the items reminded him of the old days when he had owned his own business. He looked up as Ranma came to a stop in front of the table and took a few seconds to slowly finish writing his notes down.

"Done." He said.

A glance at the clock showed that he still had three minutes to go before his time was up. "Excellent work!"

Ranma smirked.

"That means we can reduce the time."

Ranma frowned and collapsed into a chair with a long suffering sigh. "You want to kill me don't you?"

Resetting the clock to six minutes Jay sat it down and grinned. "The faster you go the quicker you finish."

"Can we take a break? This is kind of boring."

"Nope, you still have quite a ways to go before you are done, but I will give you a break here in a little while."

Ranma sighed again and took a second to stretch his sore muscles again.

After eating another large sandwich he tapped the start switch on the clock and Ranma was off again. This time he learned how to streamline his moves so that he could move about even faster than before. He moved so fast that he started a light breeze inside the building, strong enough to blow Jay's hair around a little.

And this was how it continued for the next forty minutes as he made his way through stack after stack of books, and finally ending the tortuous session doing the last four stacks with a two minute limit. He barely managed that one and by the time he was done he barely had enough energy to stagger over to a table and collapse into a chair and gasp for air. He couldn't remember a time in his life when he had ever been this wore out.

Looking up from his paper Jay turned the buzzer off and stood up, taking a second to fold his paper and put it back on the table. "You did it Ranma."

"Heh, I'm the best." He gasped out and held up a thumb.

"Not yet, but you very well could be the best one of these days." Jay said as he handed him another sub sandwich and a bottle of water. "I didn't expect you to actually go through all these books today either." He mused.

"You didn't?" Ranma asked in surprise.

"Nope, but I realized you just might pull it off when you almost completed the first test of your abilities." Jay explained. "Learning how to read and write in ten minutes, without having any experience at doing it and barely any instruction from me was incredible. It was amazing really."

"Well, like I said. I'm the best." Ranma said with a smirk.

"Now you get to spend the rest of the day learning the hard stuff."

"Hard stuff?" Ranma muttered.

"Yep, yesterday you learned how to dodge around obstacles and even caught that guy that fell. Then today you learned to refine your speed and taught yourself how to read and write and improved your language skills. The day isn't even half over and you still have time to learn more."

"Oh joy." Ranma muttered. "Bring it on I guess. I can do anything you guys can."

"Oh really?" Max Mercury said as he stepped in front of the table and a bit of speed energy arched around him for a second, then he looked over at Jay. "You show him the puzzle yet?"

"Nope, he just finished reading every book in the library."

"It took you all morning to do that?"

"Well he was moving all wrong and I had to explain some of the basics to him. I think the puzzle would work for the next step."

"Puzzle?" Ranma asked.

"Yeah, you have to throw a ten thousand piece puzzle into the air and complete it without letting any of the pieces fall on the ground. At first I'll let you use the picture as a guide and then move on to doing it without the picture by using the back of the puzzle. Average time should be three to five seconds at the most." Max explained. "It teaches you to refine your speed even more and boosts your hand and eye abilities."

"That sounds easy enough." Ranma said.

They started to laugh. "You say that now, but wait until you have to pick the pieces up off the floor. I'd make you do that one piece at a time too, just make you practice." Max said with a laugh.

"Still, at least it won't be as boring as this place." Ranma said and pointed over at the books with his thumb.

"Well I just wanted to check on you two and see if either of you needed any help. Wally needed some help with Impulse today, so I'll be around if anything pops up that needs my attention." Max said as he vanished as quickly as he appeared.

It didn't take Jay to long to find some puzzles, the library carried quite a few of them in their storage room for special projects and school functions. Jay took three different versions, a really simple hundred piece puzzle, a thousand pieces, and a ten thousand piece puzzle and took them back to the table. He started with the smallest one first and dumped the pieces in his hand and looked over at Ranma. "Watch."

He tossed the pieces up into the air and Ranma watches as the guy's hands seemed to move so fast that they vanished. In less than a second he had the puzzle was completely done and sitting on the desk in front of him. Holding it up he let Ranma get a good look at the picture before breaking it back into pieces again. "There you go. Think you can do that?"

"Looks easy enough, but what in the world is a Mighty Mouse?" Ranma said as Jay placed the pieces in his hands.

"An old cartoon character if I remember right. Now just toss them up and put the puzzle together just like I did."

He started out a bit slow, but a dozen or so tries later Ranma finally managed to get the dinky little thing put together before all the pieces hit the table. He wasn't all that happy with his results either. "I didn't think it would be that hard."

"It doesn't look that hard, but it takes even more speed than reading the books does. You are also going about it the hard way, trying to fit every piece together correctly and spending way to much time studying the puzzle."

"Then what do I need to do?"

"I'm not going to tell you, this is a test of your abilities after all." Jay said. "By figuring it out on your own you will learn something that you will never forget."

Pacing back and forth a few times Ranma tried to figure out what he was doing wrong and remember what Jay had said. He was trying too hard. With that in mind he tossed the pieces in the air again and kicked the speed energy into over drive. He didn't see Jay stare at him as an aura of electricity formed around him for a split second. The puzzle pieces seemed to just hang in the air as he started to move faster than they could fall and he started grabbing pieces and randomly trying to fit them into place. With a second flare of speed energy he reappeared holding the puzzle. "Like that?"

"Exactly! You don't have to carefully find each piece when you can go so fast that randomly trying each piece allows you to put the thing together even faster."

"I see. So I was over thinking the test?"

"Yep. Now I think it's time to move onto the thousand piece puzzle and see how long it takes you to get this one completed."

Now that he had the process worked out Ranma had no troubles getting the two puzzles completed in a mater of seconds. Although the ten thousand piece puzzle happened to take him several tries because he wasn't going fast enough to get all the pieces. By then it was midmorning and Ranma could feel himself getting tired every time he used the speed and no amount of food seemed to work.

They put everything away and Jay took a second to thank the librarian for letting them use the library to train. Ranma noticed that she seemed to be in a bit of a daze, but didn't really worry about it. He figured people around here must have been used to all this speed stuff.

"So what are we going to do now?"

"Well you're way ahead of where I expected you to be at so I'm not sure. I suppose I could give you the rest of the day off." Rubbing his chin, Jay looked Ranma over and wondered what to do with him. "How does that sound?"

"Sure, I wanted to explore around anyway." Ranma said with a nod.

"Excellent, I have something I need to take care of as well." Jay said as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone and explained how it worked. "If anything happens call Joan and she can get a hold of me if there is an emergency. Max is also in the area so he might be able to help you out as well."

Ranma took the phone, but he really didn't plan on using it even if he was in trouble. "Alright."

Half a second later Ranma lost sight of Jay as he sped away and vanished in the distance. He really was quite surprised to be out on his own, but he was happy to have a bit of free time as well. Perhaps it showed that they trusted him more than he thought they did. Being on his own was all fine and dandy, but he needed some money if he was going to get some clothes that would suit him better than what he currently had on. He would need one thing first. "Where the hell am I going to get any money?"

A little while later Ranma found what he as looking for down a side street on the far side of Central City. A Dojo. Grinning a little he walked in and looked around. The place wasn't the traditional type he was used to using, but it had a decent set up and from the forty or so students he could see out on the floor they seemed to have a pretty good business going. One of the instructors walked over when he saw him. "Good morning. I'm Deric Mason."

"Hello. I was wondering if you needed any help teaching for the day?"

The guy gave him a weird look. "How do you mean?"

"Training the students. I need to make a bit of money and I thought this would be the perfect place to earn some." Ranma explained.

"What styles do you know?"

"I know the basics to just about everything. I use a free form style called Anything Goes and I can easily teach the type you are using here though."

The guy, who was well built for his size, looked Ranma over for second as if debating something. "I do need some help with a class this size, but you will need to show me what you can do first. You do look a bit young, but I can tell by the way you walk that you are an experienced fighter. How long have you been training?"

He had to think about it for a few seconds, but he finally remembered when he started to learn so long ago. Though there were surprisingly few details he could truly remember of those early days he did recall that he was about five when he started. "About ten years ago, my father took me on a training trip."

"Ten years, huh? Not bad, I've got about the same amount myself. If you can help teach them I'll give you fifty dollars at the end of the day. Of course that is after we clean this place up. I also want to test your skill to see how good you are. It'll be a good show for the kids."

"Deal." Ranma said as he stepped over to the mat and took his weird looking shoes off. Then he followed the guy out onto the mat as the students moved off to the sides. They were all talking excitedly among themselves. Ranma noticed that most of them were midlevel students that rarely got a chance to see any real fighting.

Even before the test started Ranma had decided to stick to the style taught in the dojo just to show them what he could do. So when Deric attacked with punch and kick combo Ranma retaliated with a series of simple blocks and let Deric lead the fight for the next several attacks. It had been several days since Ranma had been in a real fight. One of the first things he noticed was that he had lost a bit of his edge.

His reflexes, though fast, weren't as fluid as they used to be. It came back to him quickly enough and within about twenty attacks he was holding his own against Deric. Every now and then they would throw each other to the floor or perform a kick that was promptly blocked. It was exactly what Ranma wanted and he could feel the tension in the air increasing as the fight continued.

"Ready to pick it up a notch?" He asked with a grin.

Deric just grinned and seconds later Ranma started to lead the fight across the dojo with a series of flips and sweeps that his opponent barely managed to avoid. Grinning, Ranma just did as he always did in a fight and slowly picked up the pace until he found his opponents full ability and pushed him to his limits. It was always more fun that way.

He ignored the part of his mind that said that he could easily take this guy down if he used his speed abilities and stuck to a normal fighting speed. Well it was normal for him anyway. Twenty minutes later, covered in sweat and grinning a bit, Deric stopped the fight with a forearm block to Ranma's spin kick.

"That's enough." He said.

Ranma, though tired from everything he had done a few hours before wasn't all that winded. "Oh?"

Turning to the class Deric had them all sit down in lines again. "Class, Ranma here will be helping out with the class today. Say hello."

"Hello Ranma." They said and Ranma just grinned. He remembered doing this before and it seemed like fun.

"So did you like the fight?" He asked.

The class all started talking at once and watched as Deric went to find a towel and led the class through some of the stuff that he had used during the fight.

**********

Winged helmet gleaming in the sunlight, Jay Garrick came to a stop in front of the small building and took a second to get his bearings as several of the uniformed policemen took notice of him and waved. A few decades before, he'd been asked to stop in front of the Police commissioner's building instead of blowing through it like a bat out of hell.

Of course he didn't always obey this request, but these days he was only here once or twice a year so it didn't matter that much. He still liked to keep on their good side though. He walked up the stairs leading up to the front door and wondered why his old friend had called him out of the blue like this.

Getting Ranma's training done was a top priority right now, but during the call his friend had insisted that he come right over. Only explaining that it had something to do with a request Jay had made some years before. Jay had no idea what it could be, but it had sounded important enough to make him get here as soon as he could. Ranma was old enough to take care of himself for a few hours anyway. With any luck he wouldn't be here to long and he could get back to Ranma and get to a few more lessons before it was time to go home.

Wally and Max were currently busy trying to control Impulse, so they were out of the question at the moment. On top of all that Wall had all that stuff with Linda was starting so he was a little too distracted to help Ranma learn how to use his abilities at the moment. Every girl had her secrets, but Linda had been a little strange lately.

The girl should have known that living with a superhero would be a bit rough and accepted it like his wife Joan had learned to do. Instead Wally was turning into a jealous boyfriend because of Linda's actions and only causing problems, but they would figure it out. He hoped.

"Hey Jay, how goes the war?" One of the officers at the admit desk asked as he walked through the front door and over to the admissions desk.

"Percy! They still got you on desk duty?" Jay asked happily.

The somewhat rotund man wearing a pair of glasses looked more like a gangster than a cop, but it took all types to do this job. "Heh, I got rotated in again."

"Punishment?"

The cop nodded and suddenly looked like he was completely depressed. "How was I supposed to know that shooting the gun at the firing range would cause that kind of thing to happen?"

Jay blinked. "Sorry, you lost me there..."

Percy laughed nervously. "I was test firing a gun, but the bullet went through the target, the back wall, and even managed to go through the wall of dirt on the other side and land at the feet of one of the rookies. Guy was a total wimp. He screamed like a girl, wet himself, and fainted right there in front of the Captain and the rookies family."

Laughing, Jay just shook his head and remembered that Percy liked to play with exotic guns, though this was a first. "I'm here to see James, is he in?"

"James Doogan?"

Jay nodded. "Yep, he asked me to come down and talk to him about something."

Percy reached across the desk and pulled a small book to him and glanced at it for a second then reached into a nearby drawer and pulled out a clip on visitors pass. "Here you are, Doogan called down and told us to send you up as soon as you got here. Sign this and here's your guest pass."

"Thanks, is he still on the third floor?"

Percy nodded. "If you want just take the elevator."

"Forget that, I've got to keep my reputation you know!" Jay yelled as he ran up the stairs about ten times faster than a normal person could move. Half a second later he was on the third floor, dodging around a couple of officers and stopped in front of his friend's office.

Adjusting his winged helmet he knocked on the door and opened the door to look in. His friend was sitting at his desk as usual and working on reports. Jay had once been a forensic scientist for the police, back when he kept a secret ID, but he'd given that up for the most part a few years ago. James was a friend from way back when, so the sixty something guy looked a lot older than he really was. James was wearing a rumpled brown suit, a fedora, and smoking a cigar in the fashion of all old time cops.

"Jay, glad you could make it!" James said as he stood up and they shook hands.

"Good to see you again. It's been a couple of years hasn't it?"

James nodded with a grin as he puffed at his cigar. "True, but I got a card from you and Joan at Christmas though."

Jay nodded and reminded himself that his wife could remember all her friends, all his friends, and for some reason all the friends those people has as well. It was an eerie talent that never failed to amaze him. "So what was the call about?"

Sitting back down, James stopped smiling as he reached into one of the drawers at the side of his desk and pulled out a piece of paper. "Some time ago, thirty or forty years ago, you gave me a list of things to look out for and asked me to tell you about them if they were ever stolen in a large quantity. As you know, most of the paper work for the whole city eventually comes across my desk if any kind of crime is committed. My computer helps me out quite a bit and during one of its weekly searches for various things it came across some matches for the items on that list."

"I don't recall..." Jay started to say. There was some nagging memory, but for the life of him he couldn't remember what it was. All those years were like an eternity for a guy that could move like he did.

"I never would have noticed this if it hadn't been found by the computer actually. It was on an obscure report several months old, hand written no less and only entered into the computer when the records it was filed with were to be incinerated." James handed the piece of paper over to Jay and frowned. "My notes on what that was for are completely gone and all I know is that you were to be informed if any of those items were ever stolen."

Glancing over the page, Jay was a bit surprised to see some compounds there that hadn't been used in some time. They had been replaced over the years by more advanced or trustworthy compounds. "This is familiar, but I can't recall what they were used for."

"Me either, but I think it has to do with one of the rogues gallery for the Flash Family, one of the early ones from your time as the Flash."

"I'll have to look this up back home, check over some of my own notes and see if I can get a match."

James nodded. "By the way, who is the new kid you've been hanging out with the last few days?"

Jay blinked. "You mean the kid with the black hair?"

Nodding, James leaned back in his chair. "The oriental one, several of the officers have been wondering what in the world you guys are doing with so many people using super speed to fight crime. It's got people nervous."

"That's ridiculous."

"I know, but you might want to be on guard, some of the higher ups are idiots and they have this funny idea that Wally is building an army of you guys to do something."

Blinking in surprise Jay burst out laughing and had to take close to a minute to stop. "Ah! That's the funniest thing I've ever heard!"

"Heh, thought so." James said with a laugh as well.

"See ya James, I have to go, but I don't think you will have to worry about the kid. He recently got a connection to the speed and we've been training him to use it wisely. Give him a few weeks and I think he will be helping us out around the city like a pro, he learns fast."

"Alright, good luck." James said as Jay left the office and ran out of the building. He leaned back and counted to one hundred to see if his friend would come back for any reason. Then he let out a loud sigh of tired resignation and sat up to grab his phone. Tapping out a short number, he dialled the extension that went right to his boss and started talking the instant it was picked up.

"Yeah, he was just here...I just gave it to him and asked about the new kid...there shouldn't be any problems, Jay is a good judge of character...Yes sir...Yes sir...No sir...Goodbye sir." He said quickly and hung up and glared at the phone before leaning back in his chair and sighing again.

"Inter-office politics sucks."

**********

"Charlie!"

Sitting on her hover bike as it hovered above the floor of the lab in her grandpa's garage, the girl in question turned to see him stalking through the door. She cringed a little and wondered what she might have done to make him mad again. They normally got along fine, but lately he had been getting more and more grouchy. It didn't take much to set him off and she had been trying to make sure she did everything she could to appease his anger.

So as he came to a stop and glared up at her she flipped a switch and the cycle went into an automatic landing sequence that rotated the hover plates where the tires should have been and gently sat the cycle down with a barely heard thunk. The short shock of the landing had jolted her a bit.

"Hi grandpa." She said nervously, pretending to smile.

"What did I tell you about using that?!" He yelled.

"Not to take it outside."

"No! I said not to use it at all until I finished some of the calibrations!"

Carefully dismounting from the bike she moved several steps away from him and tried not to look him in the eye. It would just make things worse than being yelled at. "I thought you were done with them..."

"I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THOUGHT!" He screamed, making her wince back. "GET OUT! OUT OUT OOUUUTTTT!!"

She fled the room and barely missed being hit by the door as it slammed shut right behind her and rattled the whole wall. Shuddering a little she glared at the closed door and stuck her tongue out at him, comfortable with the knowledge he'd never know. Spinning around on her foot she stalked down the hall and into the living room to find something to do that wouldn't set him off again. She wasn't really in the mood either, but the quicker she got him to calm down the sooner could get to the base and get that mission out of the way.

Her grandpa had even taken the time to get a hold of the layout of the base and mapped the locations of everything for her. She just needed to go in and get them. That was what the hover bike was for since they had recently stepped up security a bit. She didn't know why either.

The place had been peaceful and quiet for the two months she'd been looking into the job on a weekly basis. Now, for some reason something had changed and that had her grandpa worried. She wasn't all that worried, there was no way they could defend against a machine that had been designed to fight a superhero that could move so fast that that he could run around the world in less than a second.

Defending against that kind of speed was hard, but the computer on board her hover bike was designed to do just that and give her time to react. There was also something else her grandpa hinted at from time to time, but he'd never explained just what it could be.

She had planned her attack out weeks ago when she thought she would be going in on her bicycle, but now that she had the hover bike available she had to go and make changes to her plans. Doing something like this on short notice would also have been a pain in the ass, but she had been including a secondary plan for the use of all her equipment for the last few missions in case she had them available.

Grandpa insisted she start doing that a few months back and explained it as a kind of training for her mind, to help her think out al the possibilities that might happen. Putting that secondary plan into motion was simplicity itself and it had her excited as well. She would be able to go outside without her disguise for the first time since moving to Keystone City six months before.

She hated wearing this blond wig and would have gotten rid of it long ago if it wouldn't have gotten her grandpa mad at her. It was always getting in her eyes and looked even worse when she woke up in the morning and had to 'repair' it if she had to. She thanked all the gods that he had been backing off on that lately and allowed her to go without the damned thing a little.

Sadly, during the day that wasn't so and she cursed him under her breath and once again pushed the long blond hair out of her eyes as she looked at the plans for the base and once again went over her rout. If her luck held she figured she would be in and out within five minutes since all she had to do was blow a door off one of the buildings at the outer edge of the grounds and remove some rather normal parts from a small box.

"Charlie!"

Charlie sighed as she turned to see her grandpa standing nearby with a glare on his face. "What?"

"It's time for your medicine?"

She turned dead white and backed up several steps. "No! That stuff makes me sick! I don't want to take anymore!"

"Now Charlie." He growled as he held up a small bottle and a needle. "You will need it for tonight's raid."

"No I DON'T!!" She yelled and made a run for the door, but he seemed to phase out of existence and appear right in front of her.

"You will take it Charlie, or else..." He growled. "I've had enough of your screwing around for today, don't make me force you."

"But..."

He held up his fist and it started to spark with electricity sending a wave of energy flaring around his body as he stood there glaring at her with his evil eyes sparking like mad. To Charlie he didn't look like a man anymore, but a deranged parody of a human as the energy seemed to consume his whole body and for brief second electricity seemed to arc out of him in all directions and flare up the walls. Through the whole thing his eyes stayed relatively normal, burning a bright blue as electricity seemed to flow from them and out into the stream of energy all around him.

"Y-yes sir." Charlie gasped as she felt him tense to hit her again.

Within seconds her grandpa was back to normal and he took a second to fill the needle with the amber liquid from the small jar. He sat it down, roughly grabbed her arm, and wrenched it up and to the side so that her veins would stand out a little. It took every bit of control Charlie had not to cry out in pain.

Once a month for over a year this had happened and the only time she really went along with it was the first time he brought it up. She could recall being bed ridden with a high fever for close to a month that first time and suspected that she might have come close to dying. After that the down time had decreased significantly, from a week the second time to just three days the forth time. These days it only kept her bed ridden for a few hours, but the pain she experienced was enough to make her hate the stuff. By the time she weathered the stuff every muscle and nerve in her body hurt like hell.

She winced as the needle went in and she felt the liquid fire flow into her veins. Holding back a whimper of pain she pulled her arm away the instant he pulled the needle out and didn't see his grin as she turned away. The pain was instantly everywhere, setting off every nerve ending in her body with pain and agony. She staggered out of the room and down the hall to her room, barely able to walk and gasping for air as her lungs burned.

The old man walked along behind her calmly watching her progress as she struggled to get her door open with fingers that didn't want to respond. His cold eyes burned into her back as she finally entered her room, slammed the door shut in the old man's face, and collapsed on the bed before finally giving into the pain and curling into a ball.

Out in the hall the old man just continued to grin as he held the little bottle up in front of his eyes and laughed. "If one doesn't succeed the first time, then try; try again and again until you get it right." He muttered to himself as he walked away.

**********

After he had finished teaching classes at the dojo Ranma headed right for the nearest mall and wandered around for a while. He hadn't taken much time to find a decent clothing store and find himself some decent clothes to wear. It only took about twenty minutes to find a pair of black baggy jeans that looked like they could take a beating. Then he stopped at an army surplus store and bought some thin rope. The pants were a little to baggy around his calves so he used the rope to tie it in place and made sure his knees and thighs had plenty of room to move.

The next item on his list was some shirts. He only had enough for a one shirt, so he started looking around for something that would be durable and long lasting no matter what happened to it. Eventually he found what he was looking for, a sleeveless black silk shirt that matched his pants.

Then he stumbled across a pair of black cloth bracers with a golden dragon etched into them that he'd found absolutely fascinating. He checked himself out in the mirror to make sure everything was in place and walked out of the store with a dollar fifty to his name. He vaguely remembered wearing something like it before, but this was as close as he could come to the spotty memories he remembered.

For a little while he considered letting his hair down and letting it hang loose, but then remembered that he kept it in a pony tail just to keep it out of his eyes when he was fighting. He wore the clothes out of the store and ignored the looks the girls were giving him as he walked out the door. He had his old clothes Jay had let him borrow in a bag under his arm as he walked. There was only a little money left over, but he figured he had enough to grab a bite to eat before heading back to Jay's house. With that in mind he headed for the food court thingy to grab some food and relax a little.

He hadn't really bought his clothes to look good, they were more functional than style, but he would have been a bit embarrassed to know that he had a lot of girls looking at him. His messy hair and the tight shirt worn in that way just made him stand out. To the girls anyway, a few stores down from the food court something else was happening that would cause Ranma problems for some time to come. He just had no clue it was coming and no way to avoid it.

Just as he was passing an electronics store Ranma came to a stop when he sensed something dangerous. He looked around and spotted someone way in the back of the store that seemed to be stuck to the wall. The sight was just odd enough to make Ranma wonder what in the world was going on so he stepped into the store and made his way past several displays and book racks. Leaning up against the back wall was one of the employees and he appeared to be stuck in a large block of ice. The only thing not covered in ice was his head and hands.

He tapped the ice a couple of time to make sure it was solid before he punched it. Shattering it to pieces and catching the guy that had been entombed in it. Ranma was almost surprised to see that the guy wasn't dead. He caught him and carefully sat him on the floor before he injured himself. A bit of movement caught his attention and he looked up just as this large guy stepped out of the back room with a bag full of computer parts and a weird looking gun strapped to his arm. It was made out of some silver substance and seemed to mount along his forearm and come to a gun shaped barrel, grip, and trigger that he held in his hand.

"Who the hell are you?" The guy snapped as he took aim with the gun.

Crouched on the floor Ranma realized he had accidentally walked right into a robbery in progress. "&^%$"

The guy smirked. "I agree, cause now you have to die now."

"Yeah right." Ranma mumbled. "I ain't scared of no toy gun."

"This is the latest experimental weapon to be given a trial run." The man said with a slightly insane look in his eyes. "That guy behind you was the first to taste its sting and you can be next hero."

Ranma had already thought of about sixteen ways to take the guy down without hurting him, so he wasn't all that worried. He saw him tense and raise the gun up just a tiny bit to fire at his head. Lashing out, Ranma attacked with a blow to the guy's stomach. It never had a chance to land because the instant it was within an inch of his target this field appeared around him with a loud hum and a shower of sparks. Yelling in shock Ranma found himself several feet away laying back first against a book case. There were books piled all around him as he lay there. He could smell the smoke wafting off his clothes and for an instant he remembered the last time he had been like this.

Then the memory was gone, almost as fast as it had appeared, and he opened his eyes to see the guy smirking at him from a few feet away. Reacting on instinct Ranma rolled out of the way even as the gun fired out a stream of liquid that covered the whole book case. It instantly started to cover the whole wall in a sheet of ice. He came up and used his speed, he felt like he was cheating for some reason. In mid step he vanished from sight and the world around him came to a sudden halt. He was moving so fast that it would take hours, from his point of view, for the criminal to even move an inch. He slowed to a blur and came around behind him and grabbed the gun.

Then he appeared several feet way holding the gun and examining it. He had read quite a bit of Central City's history while going all those books and one of those was about a family that specialized in ice guns. They never had stood much of a chance against The Flash so long as they were caught quickly. He wondered if this was guy from the same family. Ranma knew that if this guy had taken a little while to ice the store before he entered the back room he would have been much harder to catch.

Running on ice was nearly impossible and Ranma didn't want to think about what would happen if he tried it. The guy was just beginning to realize that he had lost his gun as Ranma held it up and crushed it in his hand. A little Ki can go a long ways if used right.

"Missing something?" He asked mildly.

"How?" The guy muttered.

An arc of speed force generated electricity sparked out of Ranma's eyes, around his head and down to his body. The crushed in gun in Ranma's hand sparked and died a couple seconds later. He shot foreword and slammed the guy into the all and knocked him out before he had a chance to pull anything weird out of his costume. He had to admit that he had learned a lot from those books at the library.

Then he watched as the guy slid to the floor and collapsed completely at his feet. There was a bit of smoke coming off Ranma's clothes and realized that he had moved so fast that the friction had come close to setting them on fire. After a couple seconds thought he realized that he had moved at super speed but his clothing hadn't. Just like one of those books he had damaged. He was going to have to do something about that.

With a bit of effort he figured he would be able to run as fast as he wanted in any outfit when he let the speed flow through what he was wearing too. He turned back to the unconscious sales guy and wondered what he should do now. "Geeze the one time I need one of those guys here and they aren't anywhere to be seen." He mutters.

"Who isn't?" Jay asks.

Yelling, Ranma side flipped half way across the room and lands, ready to kick the ass of the person that had just snuck up on him. He sighed loudly when he realizes Jay is the only other person in the room. "Don't scare me like that!"

The old speedster looked around and noticed all the ice. "What happened here?"

"That guy," Ranma said and pointed at the villain "used one of those ice guns to attack this place."

"What did he call himself?"

"He had a name?" Ranma asked. He hadn't even thought about who he was.

"You're supposed to get their name then knock them out."

Ranma laughed nervously. "I hadn't thought about it."

"Also..."

"What?"

"What's with the weird outfit?"

"Just some new clothes." Ranma said with a shrug.

After Jay borrowed the phone and called the police they waited around for about twenty minutes for the Police to show up. Explained what had happened and left the area. Ranma didn't complain too much when Jay took credit for capturing the criminal when they were talking to the Police. He had explained that it wouldn't do to have everyone know that there was another speedster in Keystone right now. They sped out of the mall a few seconds later and headed across town. Jay figured he would have to report the fight to Wally when he had a chance so that they could look into the guns a bit more.

"Did you get a chance to see the Flash Museum while I was away?"

"No, spent a few hours helping at a dojo to make some money." Ranma explained.

Jay just nodded. "Well while we are in the area we might as well drop by. There are a few things I want to show you while we are there."

"Like what?"

"You'll see." Jay said with a grin.

They weren't running anywhere near as fast as Ranma had been forcing himself to go earlier at the library, so it only took them a few seconds to reach the museum after they left the mall. About a block from the large red building they came to a stop and Ranma got his first look at the building. It was two stories tall and had a central column rising from the center with a large Flash Lightning Bolt in the center.

Out in front were three large statues, two of which Ranma recognized as they walked towards the building. He instantly noticed that one of the statues was of the man he was walking next to. A little ways away was a statue of Wally West and between the two was a Flash he didn't recognize.

"Who's the third guy there?"

"That is the man that really put the Flash name on the map, as they say. Barry Allen. He knew more about fighting crime and using the speed than anyone alive. Then he gave his life to save the people of this planet and proved what kind of hero he really was."

Ranma was suitably impressed. He could respect anyone that was willing to die for the whole planet. Then he recalled some of the stories he had read while at the library and how some of them must have been talking about this man. "Cool."

"You sound like Impulse."

"So this was the first Flash?" He asked. Ranma still didn't know much about Impulse. They kept mentioning the kid and he was under the impression that he was a handful. He figured he would have to meet the kid at some point and he wasn't sure he wanted to.

"No, I was the first to use the name back in the forties." Jay explained. "When I retired Barry took over as the next Flash and did such a good job that for a time I was completely forgotten about. I didn't mind because I was retired though and he made the name what it is today."

"Are there any other Flash's I need to know about?"

"The Flash legacy has a lot of secrets you don't know about yet Ranma, but we hope to teach them to you one day."

"I'm no hero." Ranma muttered.

"You are more of one than you think. We all noticed after we got to know you better and yesterday when you saved that workman's life you proved it to us."

Ranma laughed and scratched the back of his head. "I just reacted, I wasn't thinking about being a hero or anything."

"That's what I mean. Right now you have mastered the basics of using the speed and if you want you can go home anytime you want. But I would like you to stick around and use your powers for a greater cause." Jay said.

"It's only been a few days. So I don't know."

"Let's head inside and let me tell you a bit more about our history."

"Sure."

As they approached Ranma saw that there were only a few people entering the building. An old man wearing a deep purple uniform and a white shoulder cape tipped his hat at them. Ranma noticed that he had short brown hair going white at the temples. "Morning Jay, tis good to see you again."

"Ranma, this is Dexter Myles, he's the official curator of the museum these days."

"Hello." Ranma said as he tried to look within the building.

"Feel free to look around all you want lad, I can give you a tour if you need it and I'd be more than happy too." Dexter said.

"No thanks Dex, I have a few things I want to show him." Jay said.

"Of course." The old man with a flourish and opened the door them.

Jay led them inside and the first thing they saw was a long hallway full of pictures. He pointed them out and explained the significance of each one. Which battle it depicted and why it had been remembered. Ranma saw numerous pictures of Barry Allen that had been taken by someone named Iris West, but he had never heard of her before. Then Jay led them around the curve of the building and they entered a second hall. Ranma could instantly tell that this hallway was filled with pictures of a different sort.

"This Ranma is the Hall of Villains. The Flash, no matter which one was running around at the time, has always fought a large number of villains. This guy here in the yellow costume and red lightning bolts is Professor Zoom or Eobard Thawne. He is the perfect example of a Flash turned bad. He has killed several times, traveled in time, and even impersonated Barry once.

Some of those that know him think he may have been the most dangerous villain we have ever fought. He didn't care about life as we do. His speed was used for crime and his own personal desires, it corrupted him completely. He has the distinction of being the only villain ever killed by The Flash."

"He was killed?" Ranma asked. He was quite surprised to find that any of these guys had ever taken a life before.

"I was an accident." Jay pointed out.

"It's still quite surprising. What about these guys?" Ranma asked as he pointed to the other pictures. Two different Rogues gallery and lot of solo villains that covered even more space than the Flash's fight wall. As he looked at the pictures he recognized some of the villains that Flash had been fighting.

"As Dexter would say, each and every villain here has their own unique story to tell. Take The Pied Piper here. His real name is Hartley Rathaway and is, to my knowledge one of the few villains to ever go straight and stay that way. There is quite a story behind that and a few other things that Wally has only hinted at to the rest of us. I know him and Wally visit each other every now and then."

They continued on down the hall and entered the next room, this one was big enough to fill over half of the building and it held hundreds of displays. "What are all these things?"

"These are various items that we have collected over the years in the hero business. A wand once used by the Weather Wizard, one of Piper's flutes, even an ice gun used we took from Icicle himself. There are hundreds of little things here that have a history of their own."

As Jay continued the tour and taking the time to tell Ranma about the history of the Flash Legacy two other people were touring the museum. Charlie was dressed in her blond wig and a simple dress as she moved from exhibit to exhibit. Her grandpa stood next to her in his trenchcoat, hat, and cane glaring at everything around them. She kept her distance and at the same time let him know she was there as they looked around.

Her muscles still hurt from the shot he had given her earlier and it would be a few days before she could forgive him for forcing her to go through that kind of pain again. After being in her room for an hour, barely able to move, he had came in and told her to get dressed so they could go out and check out the enemy. His glare was enough to make her get on her feet and get dressed for a day out on the town.

At first she had assumed they would be making a trip over to the Military Base to make a few last minute examinations. She had been quite surprised when they took the bus across the river over into Central City. With a firm grip on her arm he had dragged her into the museum and started to snoop around. Every now and then she would see him place a small circular device on or behind an exhibit before they moved on, but she didn't say anything. She had enough problems as it was and he wasn't in the mood to put up with her today.

"Can you believe all this crap?" He snapped.

"They certainly like to collect trophies don't they?"

"You notice something else?"

"Um…" She muttered.

"I'm not listed anywhere in the museum*." Her Grandpa snapped.

"Oh! Well I'm sure you are around her somewhere."

"I've been here before and looked through everything. They don't even have me listed among the villain's galleries."

"Well you…" She started.

"I will make sure they know my name. By the time I'm done I will be the most dangerous villain they have ever seen." He growled and glared about him like a bear on the prowl. Several of the other museum guests edged away from him nervously. He stalked from display to display for the next couple of minutes making pest of himself.

Charlie watched him out of the corner of her eye as he placed more disks and her curiosity got the better of her. "What are you doing?"

He held up a little disk, almost transparent and grinned at her. "I got these little beauties from an old colleague of mine in the Underground. He owed me a favor and paid me with these and a few other things that I've been installing in your bike."

She looked at the disk blankly. "Cool!"

"We're almost done here. Are you ready to take on your next mission?"

"Yes sir."

"That's good because I don't want anymore mistakes from here on out."

"Yes sir." It was the only thing she could really say when he was in one of his moods. Then she glanced across the room and gasped.

"What is it girl?" Her grandpa snapped.

"That boy over there is the one that I met outside the base yesterday." Charlie said and pointed at Ranma.

The old man turned, froze in his tracks, and started to grind his teeth together as he caught sight of who was standing next to the boy. Charlie paled a little as she got a good look at him moved several steps away from him.

"Garrick." He snarled under his breath.

"C-calm down grandpa." She said nervously and winced as his eyes started to spark.

"It's time to go Charlie." He snarled and stalked out of the room making several people jump out of his way. His trenchcoat fluttered around him like a living thing as he walked. His anger seemed to be radiating off him in waves as he moved.

Charlie followed after him a few seconds later and watched the old man that had set her grandfather off like that out of the corner of her eye. She didn't recognize him, but it was obvious that her grandfather did know the guy from somewhere. As she walked out of the room she had to run so that she could catch up. He had already walked out of the building and left her behind.

She caught up with him about a block away. "Where are you going?"

"Home!" He yelled.

"Then let's catch the bus."

"I want to walk!"

"Yes sir." She squeaked.

**********

As Ranma was led around the museum Jay took the time to explain every exhibit they came across. Ranma noticed as they advanced through each section that it would be devoted to one of the superhero speedsters. The first and biggest in the main hall was devoted to Barry Allen and his amazing carrier as a hero. Then had been a room devoted to Jay himself.

He had learned the most from that room because the stories Jay told were more detailed and gave him a better understanding of the history of the man himself. After that they had entered the Wally West wing. It was almost as big as the Barry Allen wing, but seemed to center around a smaller group of villains that he had to fight more often. Ranma wandered over to a case that he had noticed in the Barry Allen wing as well and looked at a set of yellow and red rings sitting majestically on bed of white felt.

"What are these things for?"

"Those are special rings. Barry and Wally used to wear them all the time. They contain costumes for them to wear when they needed to appear as The Flash." Jay explained.

"How the heck does a costume fit in something so tiny?"

"They are super compressed inside the ring. Barry invented them early in his carrier." Jay said.

"Do you have one?"

"Yes, but I never use it. It's at home in one of my drawers."

"Doesn't that make it hard for you to keep your identity safe?"

Jay laughed. "Not at all, I learned how to blur the features of my face a long time ago. That way no one can recognize me when I'm in costume."

Ranma looked a little confused.

"Like this." Jay said and pointed at this face.

Almost instantly Ranma's eyes lost focus on Jay's face and he couldn't make out any of the details. "That's amazing."

"Well it's a good trick, but I'm the only one that hides their identity this way. The others all wear masks to hide their looks."

"I also wanted to know about these shoes you gave me."

"They were designed by Star Labs several years ago when Wally started to go through a pair of shoes. Sometimes more than one pair a day. Regular shoes are not designed to withstand the kind of friction that seems to go along with running at high speed. Even our clothing will be ripped to shreds if we run around in them if we aren't lucky. When we run we produce a kind of speed field around us that allows us to ignore the effects of friction, but there are still some effects that happen over time.

That's another reason for the costumes we wear. They are designed to withstand the friction that gets through the speed field while we run. Impulse tends to run around all the time and can't make an outfit last longer than week before it starts to look a little frayed at the edges."

"Then I'm gonna have to get something a little more durable than this?" Ranma asked as he indicated his clothing.

"It would be a good idea."

"Yay, now I need more money."

"Joan and I can help you out a little, but I think it would be a good idea for you to get a job. If you do start helping us out you will need to wear one of the uniforms though."

"One of those spandex one?"

Jay nodded. "Yeah, though there is a reason for those too."

Ranma sighed. He really didn't like hokey costumes. "What would that be? As far as I can tell they just hide who you are and make you look silly."

"They aren't that bad Ranma," Jay said and laughed a little. "…though I have to admit that I've seen some costumes that border on the ridiculous."

"So what are they for exactly?"

"A costume protects you from the villains you fight."

"Huh?"

"If a villain knows who you are then they can track you down and threaten your friends and family. Some villains wouldn't even hesitate to kill your best friend or your father just to get back at you for defeating them." Jay explained, and then stopped as Ranma grabbed his head and groaned in pain. "Ranma are you alright?"

The instant Jay had said the word father Ranma had felt a tingling sensation start at the base of his spine and spread out from there. His head started to pound as memories of some kind started to flash through his head of a shadowy monster of some kind. There was no rhyme or reason to the visions as they appeared in a completely random order.

He suddenly found that he could remember the monster beating him up day after day for years. There were images of him being tossed off the top of houses, through walls, and even forcing him to fight against men far bigger than he was and fully expecting him to win. Even as he staggered a little and had to steady himself on the wall he remembered a name that filled him with conflicting emotions.

"Genma." He muttered.

"Ranma?!" Jay asked again as he tried to get the boy's attention.

"I'm….alright, now." Ranma said as he shook his head. "Just a memory."

"Of what? You nearly collapsed in the middle of the floor."

"My…teacher I think."

"Teacher?" Jay asked in confusion.

"I think his name was Genma." Ranma explained. "I can remember him teaching me things over the years. How to throw a hundred punches in ten seconds or less, or how to shatter stone with my bare hands and not break any of my bones. I can even remember him teaching me how to fall by throwing me off two and three story buildings in my sleep. There are too many memories to explain them all."

"They must not be very pleasant memories."

"No they aren't." Ranma said as he shook off the dizziness.

"I think we need a break. Want to go and grab something to eat?" Jay asked as he decided to ask about the memories later. Wally still didn't quite believe that Ranma had lost his memories after entering the Speed Force.

"I'm always up for food." Ranma said and smirked as his stomach growled.

"I see. Well then lets go and get something from this place just down the road." Jay said as he started walking out of the museum.

"Where are we going?" Ranma asked.

"To say goodbye to Dexter and then we can go and grab a bite to eat."

"Sounds good to me." Ranma said and followed after him.

They took a second to say good buy to the old curator and stepped out into the sunlight. Ranma looked around and noticed that they had been inside the building for quite a while. Then took off after Jay as he took off down the street so fast that he almost instantly vanished, but by this time Ranma was beginning to get the hang of using his speed at an instants notice and was soon on his heels. They flew down several streets and headed across the city and Ranma realized that close by to a speedster kind of depended on how far they wanted to run. He wasn't really paying attention to the people around him as he dodged around them.

So he missed the odd look the two of them got as they went around Charlie and her grandpa a little while later. Charlie had to restrain her grandpa as he snarled and reached inside his coat to pull something out. By the time he started cursing at the top of his lungs Ranma and Jay were several blocks away and dodging through traffic. They came to a stop in front of a fast food place and Ranma glanced up at the sign and noticed a large red and yell lightning bolt sign.

"What the hell is this place?"

"A friend of mine owns this place. He's been feeding speedsters for the last couple of decades."

"I don't see a name anywhere."

Jay laughed and pointed at the sign. "That's the name. The Lightning Bolt Café."

"Oh." Ranma muttered.

"Well let's grab some food and we can discuss the next part of your training."

That made Ranma perk up a bit. He had been thinking of the different ways he might be able to use his new speed ever since he took that guy down at the mall. "What do I have to learn next?"

"Well one of the first things a speedster learns is how to phase through objects by vibrating his way through them."

"Cool!" Ranma said as Jay opened the door to the café.

"Yep, Barry was the first one to figure out how to do it and got quite good at it. Wally on the other hand seems to have a problem with it."

"Why?"

"We don't know. He used to do it all the time and it's part of the skills that all speedsters use, but ever since he entered the speed force he hadn't been able to do it."

"Does that mean that I wont' be able to either?"

"I'm not sure if you can or not. I think Wally just has problems doing certain things with his speed. He's had problems for years. He's even lost his powers on more than one occasion. At least three or four times that I'm aware of, but there might be more that he never mentioned."

"Bah, I'll out do him by the end of the week." Ranma said as he looked around the café. "So what's for dinner?"

Jay laughed. "Let's get a couple of pizzas before we head home."

"Alright." Ranma said as they walked over to a table in the corner.

**********

It was time.

The sun would be setting in a matter of hours and Charlie knew that next few hours would either make her or break her. In her closet was a plastic wrapped costume that her grandfather had bought through an underground criminal organization that worked in the Keystone underground tunnels. They were a shadowy group of men and woman that she didn't know very much about, but they tended to encourage high profile crimes and villains to attack the city whenever they had a chance.

Her grandfather had only mentioned the Network in passing and even then seemed to a little scared of them. They had provided him with certain items that were almost impossible to get though normal channels. This had allowed him to speed up the manufacturing of her hover bike and it's special systems. She pulled her costume out of the closet, took the plastic wrap off, and sat it on her bed with care.

The costume, which was a glossy black with bright silver trim, had been designed with several special enhancements that would allow her to fight any of the speedsters in Keystone or Central City. It was the one requirement that her grandpa insisted on because of his past. She quickly stripped out of her clothes and tossed her blonde wig on the bed so that she could begin to get dressed.

The first item she picked up was a skin tight black armored spandex body suit that went on first. It had to be carefully pulled into position to allow her the freedom of movement she would require in a combat situation. Once it was in place she looked in the mirror to see that she was covered from her neck clear down to her ankles.

Her grandpa had sat her down and spent hours telling her stories about the various speedsters and their powers. How if she was ever punched by a speedster she would be killed instantly. Drilling her for hours to defend herself against everything he could think of. That was where the armor came in handy. It was designed to withstand blows that could break her into little pieces. It even gave her a strength advantage by almost quintupling her own physical strength and speed.

The boots came next, a special design that had been developed by Star Labs for their own security forces. They were a slightly refined version of the typically military boot with a couple of added pieces that her grandpa had included. He had placed a small pen laser inside the boot next to her ankle for an emergency.

After that she picked up her silver and black gun belt and put it on. Taking a second to make sure the holsters were tied to her legs and didn't move around. The empty holsters stood out a bit, but she needed to get her guns from her grandpa before she left.

From the belt she opened a side pouch and pulled out a small lead and plugged it into her suit. After a couple of seconds the suit warmed up and constricted around her to lend a bit of support to several areas on her body. It also hardened those areas to make it impossible for anyone to accidentally harm her in the middle of a fight.

After that she put on a pair gloves attached to a thick silver arm band that contained a couple of weapons that would come in handy while she was out on a mission. They had a little section that ran down the back of the armband that stood up a little when she placed her hand in a certain position and could fire a small chemical pellet developed by her grandpa.

It took a second to find, but she tapped a small button on the back of the bracer. Activating the second power source for the suit and plugged a second lead from the glove into the bracer. She felt her suit constrict a little tighter to give her even more protection. Once these were in place she took out a small ear piece and attached it to her ear.

She took a few minutes to strut around the room and settle the costume into place. One of the last items she grabbed was a pair of goggles. They had the same features as pair she had worn while on her first mission. But these were more streamlined and had a few other options that hadn't been available until recently. A small wire on the earpiece plugged into the goggles and activated the final part of her costume as she pulled it over her eyes.

A small LED screen appeared in front of her eyes as she ran a lead to the ear piece and started running a scan on the microfilament systems woven within the costume. She read through all the little indicators telling her that the costume was in perfect working order. The only thing she was missing were the readings on her guns. After a quick look in the mirror to adjust her spiky green hair she turned and walked out of the room. She headed for the garage where her grandpa was waiting for her as he made the final adjustments on the hover bike.

"It's about time you finished getting dressed!" He snapped.

"I had to make sure everything still worked." She explained as she walked into the garage.

"Whatever. The bike is as ready as it can get without these final pieces you are stealing."



Charlie nodded. She knew this already and it was boring hearing it from him for the tenth time in less than an hour. "Yes sir."

"Your guns are fully charged and on the counter over there." He informed her and pointed them out to her.

As she picked them up let the costume's systems recognize them. The little LED screen changed to show the guns and tell her that they were in perfect working order. She spun them around in her hands a few times and holstered them. The electronics inside the belt would keep them charged constantly and even recharge them in about ten minutes once she used up all the power. She was pretty sure she wouldn't be needing them, but it felt good to have them there just in case.

She climbed on the hover bike and tapped the start button. It revved to life as the hover jets kicked in and lifted it about a foot off the ground. "Running pre-flight check." She said into her microphone."

"The microphone is working perfectly." Her grandfather said.

"Excellent!!"

"Charlie!"

"Call me Kid Rocket!" She yelled as she flipped a switch on the dashboard and the garage door opened up and she flew out in a swirl of dust.

She rose slowly into the darkening sky and performed a couple of quick turns and rolls to make sure everything was working. Her boots were hooked into the bike and allowed her to suit to monitor the bike exactly like it watched over all her equipment. With the flip of a small toggle switch she brought up a map of the city on her LED screen and indicated the Military base. The screen fuzzed for a second before it seemed to zoom in on her target. The location was automatically uploaded to the bike and it rocketed right for it.

A lot of the bike's functions were automatic so she didn't have to do much except hang on and enjoy the ride. She would take over once she got close enough to the base to see it. From there it would just take a few minutes for her to launch a few tricks, get inside the storage building and take what she wanted. Within minutes she flew over a freeway and deactivated the autopilot.

She turned the bike and dove down towards the ground and entered the canal. There was only a little water in the canal and she sent up a mist of water behind her as she skimmed the surface of the water. She made her way through a small maze of twists and turns until she came out along the edge of the Military Base at the edge of Keystone City.

By this time the sun was almost all the way down the guards at the base were all tired from a hard day of work from rebuilding the base and parts of the city. According to her time tables over half of the men wouldn't return from the city for another hour. That would give her more than enough time to get in and out of the place before they returned. The LED brought up a second image of the base and indicated a building near the center of the base with a small arrow.

That was her goal. All she needed to do was incapacitate about two hundred soldiers with her weapons. She grinned and toggled the bike over to manual control. "Grandpa, I have arrived at the base."

"Good. Now proceed with that plan I laid out for you and get back here."

"Yes sir." She said, still a little ticked that he wouldn't let her use her own revised plan.

The bike responded flawlessly as she rose into the air, hit another switch and started speeding right for the front gates. Suddenly the air around the bike was started to hum as several hidden weapons snapped out and sent a couple dozen pellets flying at the guard gate.

"YAGHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" She screamed.

The guards had just enough time to bring their guns to bare before they were hit by the small chemical pellets. She flew over the gate at around a hundred miles per hour and just grinned at the guards. They weren't moving at all, standing there as if they were nothing but a bunch of dolls. Another toggle switch activated the automatic firing system and it started to fire out three pellet bursts at the approaching soldiers.

Within seconds the whole base started to come to life as emergency sirens began to wail and soldiers ran out of houses and barracks, perfect targets for her weapons even if they didn't know it.

**********

To Be Continued...

End Notes -

*The old man really is mentioned in the online Flash Museum that I found on the Web http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/museum.html. I'm just not going to say who he is until chapter three or four. That and I've been playing around with his history a bit because I wasn't aware of recent events in The Flash and JSA. I'll be touching on certain areas that people have pointed out to me so he won't come off too different from the Cannon information.

**********

Omake: Two

"Call me Kid Rocket!" Charlie yelled as she flew out of the garage and rose into they air. She flipped a couple of buttons and the bike wobbled in the air, nearly throwing her off. Was this why the old man had told her to wear the weird looking back pack?

Down below the old man held up his remote control device he'd installed to make sure the bike went where he wanted it to go. He tapped a button and moved the controls and the bike shot straight up.

Charlie screamed as she held on for dear life.

He grunted and flipped a toggle and tapped another button and frowned as the hover bike suddenly started to fall and he heard the girl scream again. Then he thumped the control and the bike suddenly strafed the freeway.

"Blasted substandard parts." He muttered. "Maybe I should have added in those balloons after all?"

"AGHAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" Charlie screamed as she suddenly flew behind her grandpa and ended up in a tree next to the garage.

"I guess it still needs a few adjustments." The old man grumped.

Charlie fell out of the tree and landed on her back with a thump. Her parachute suddenly burst out of her backpack and dragged her down the driveway until it caught on a nearby tree. She whipped around, lifted off the ground, and slammed into the roof of the house.

"What the hell! &%$#!&" She yelled. "Ouch! I'm gonna get sick."

"Get off your lazy ass and help get the bike out of the tree!" The old man yelled as he pulled her off the roof with the ropes attached to the backpack.

"&%$# you!"

Thump!

"Ow!" Charlie yelled from the ground.

"Oops, my hand slipped."

*****

Omake three: The Disclamer files

Normal Disclamers are done at the start of fan written works but this time around I figured that putting all six of the Disclamers down at once would make a great short omake, I thought up some funny ones and some cheesey one so feel the bong.

*****

(1)

Disclamer: I own all of this pay me.... BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I own all show me the money. I.... Rosewood what are you doing with that mallet.... Ouch.... AH.... mother.... don't hit me with that bat.... NO, not there... help.

*****

(2)

Disclamer: We don't own any thing but Kid Rocket and a guy named Bryan. All charater other than them are own by their respective owners... And I wouild say this even if Rosewood wasn't standing behind me with a base ball bat.

*****

(3)

Michael points upwards. "Look, up in the sky!"

Rosewood asks "Hey, its that a bird, or a plain?"

Michael turns his head to the side and says, "No thats a disclamer!"

*****

(4)

I said I didn't want any mustard on my disclamer... darn it now I can't use it.

*****

Omake five: Christmas story...Omake style.

By BlindmanX

It twas the night before Christmas,

And Ranma ran scared threw the house,

Away from the sight of a cat chasing a mouse,

("What's his problem?" Tom asked Jerry to which Jerry just shrugged for a moment and then kept running.)

The Christmas stocking were hung by the chimney with care,

Which lasted a second as Ranma ran past there,

With the bang, all the noise and the crashing, Jay and his wife awoke from hearing the clatter and rushed down stairs to see what was the matter.

Ranma was hung upside down tied to the tinsle with a rapper,

Joan, Jay's wife asked "What's the matter?"

Ranma fumed with himself as he thought of his plight. "What a weird chrismas... how did I get tied down so tight?"

The end.

^__^