You ever have a particularly bad day suddenly go worse? I was starting to feel like this was going to be one of those days when my Jeep Cherokee died on me on the way to a campsite deep in the woods. I felt like an idiot as I got out the tool bag I keep under my rear bench seat and opened the hood while I waited for the steam to clear from the overheating radiator. Just what I needed, one of my fans died. I tried to get it spinning bypassing the toggle circuit with a 12 volt switched jumper I made for testing stuff and hooked the fan plug to the battery, but it just wouldn't cut on. Just had to wait until the radiator cooled, and maybe I could coast it down the mountain.

I sat there for several minutes when I heard a heavy thumping sound. The telltale grunt immediately told me I was in deep trouble, so I grabbed my rucksack and threw my tool bag in the back. That was when I was struck in the back, hard. My arms closed tightly around the rucksack as I felt myself fly forward and hit what felt like a solid brick wall, my modified trench keeping me from scraping my arms and legs, even if the inside pockets had things that were fairly sharp with the impact of the wall I hit.

Getting my bearings, I noticed that it was dark, not midday like it was a second ago. That wasn't even the beginning of what was wrong because I wasn't even in a forest anymore but an alleyway laying up against an actual brick wall. My first thought was that I was dead or hallucinating because this shouldn't be possible. However, I took a deep breath and tried to focus on my surroundings, pushing fear deep down as I took stock of my situation. As Sherlock Holmes would often say, "once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Or close to it, as I'd often add, accepting that there are things out there I couldn't begin to understand. Standing up and making sure my arms and legs weren't broken and applying a pressure point massage to my shoulders to help with the sudden tension headache from the impact, stretching to help relieve it further.

"ok, first order of business, where am I?" I moved as quietly as I could and made my way onto the main sidewalk of a busy street, I must have looked incredibly out of place with people giving me strange looks as they walked past. Entering a small café, I ordered some hot water and picked up a newspaper from the rack by the door. "grock" I nearly shouted the word because the date had to be wrong, I was nearly a full decade in the past, 2013. Apparently it was December 6th 2013, and I was in some place called Starling city given the name of the paper, the Starling City Gazette.

As the waitress served the pot of hot water and glass I asked for I reminded myself to be careful about currency and picked out some dollar coins from the coin pouch in my coat to give her as a tip, in 2022 with the global crisis going on you can't always trust a debit or credit card, so I always keep about 30 or so on me. Pulling one of the bags of tea leaves from my rucksack I placed them in the tea strainer and set it in the pot getting the odd look or two but replying with my best smile and nod to disarm the situation. Calming down with the aroma of the white jasmine tea, I began reading the article on the front page. "Hood strikes again, drug lord arrested after crew tied up and evidence delivered." The article went on to describe the arrow wounds and concern over the vigilante running rampant over the city stirring up trouble after disappearing over the summer.

Great, just what I needed, I knew the name of the city sounded familiar, but apparently I was in a comic universe, or possibly the TV one, I'd know possibly for sure once I had more info. Good news is, I might be able to find a way home here, I couldn't exactly remember events from the TV show let alone the comics, but this seemed early yet for the TV series, which fit with the news article. So either I was pre-particle accelerator explosion, or post, either way Cisco wasn't a dimension hopping meta yet. I don't think Lex Luthor was opening dimensional portals either. That just left John Constantine, if I can find him, since he likely knew a way to get me home, or a way to find out.

Reading to the back of the paper, there was another article about an upcoming event in central city, S.T.A.R. Labs was going to make a big announcement on December 11th with a lot of people protesting it. "Crap baskets", I nearly facepalmed right there, in a few days hundreds of people, including a lot of idiots and assholes, would get superpowers.