Authors' Notes: I hate the dumb chapter selector on the right, it's made me include this useless note. The actual note is down below. Please read and review!

Chapter 1

Mr. Barry Allen

Bartholomew (Barry! Please for the sake of all that is good in the world call me Barry!) Allen yanked the rusty door shut, wincing as the high whine from the abused hinges drove straight into his brain. He pushed the key into the slot gently and twisted it repeatedly, praying that the sound of the engine turning-over would transition to the steady rumble he knew the van was capable of. It was an ancient thing, once bright red but faded with age until it was barely distinguishable from the bricks behind it. Time had been kinder to van's outsides than its inside, however, and despite his best efforts at preservation, every time he started a trip he worried that this would be the day it gave up on him. He dreaded the idea, he had… grown… attached. Yes attached, that was the best way to say it, was most definitely not weird at all to talk to a van, no sir-ee.

As he pulled out of the alley behind his previous home, one eye on the poorly lit Gotham back road and another on his Lord phone plotting a GPS route to National City, yes yes yes both eyes on the road at all times but honestly it wasn't like the Batman was going to jump out of the shadows and give him a driving ticket. The alley filled with the growling of the beat-up old Dodge and Barry reached out to pat gently on the paneling above the central console.

"There, there girl- bo- van…"

"I know it's a lot of cargo but circumstances out of our control have forced me to make an executive decision regarding our living arrangements."

Barry scoffed. 'circumstances' was an overly polite way of putting it, the conflict between the Dark Knight and that psycho clown had devolved to the point where every night the streets of Gotham were less 'socialite capital of the Eastern United States' and more 'Gangland-crazy town'. Barry may have dipped his toe into the criminal underworld-

Ahh…

A person who looked exactly like Barry Allen but who was definitely not him may have, hypothetically speaking, dipped his toe in the criminal underworld of Gotham City but he didn't really… fight… anyone. He just, sort of, pushed people and ran away.

This stranger, that looked exactly like him but wasn't him that is.

…

Not that he really needed to punch people, Barry winced at the thought of the convenience store hold up where a little over-excitement had broken the would-be thief's arm.

"Anyways Jessie- Oh! I can't believe I forgot to mention it earlier! Jessie!"

"Ahem- You are of course familiar with my confusion regarding your identity, We previously considered calling you Brenda… That did not end so well, I'll admit, not the flashiest name, but to be fair you didn't have to break down in the middle of nowhere just to tell me you hated the name, a backfire would have been more than enough to tip me off I think".

"...And of course, there were the issues with the whole… gender thing. All beautiful cars are she's, or so they say, but then I didn't really feel comfortable with the idea of sitting inside a woman all-day. Not to say that sitting inside a… man all day would be any more or less comfortable- about the same level of discomfort- yeah…"

"So yes, Jessie! Nice name, biblical- kinda-, very Sunday school vibes. It has the distinction of being ambiguously gendered. Which works out brilliantly for us. So whenever it feels too weird you can be Jessie the other gender- I mean the one you are not at that moment- van. Yeah… I think it works, I like it- Do nothing if you like it."

The newly christened Jessie rumbled smoothly as they made their way further west.

Barry grinned.

"Nice."

"Yeah Jessie, like I was saying, things are really not… looking so great in Gotham right now. I tried to help, you know I did. But, 'fastest man in the world' or not or not I am not- cannot- be anywhere near the Joker, especially not after what he did to Robin. There's just something not... right about that guy."

Jessie hiccuped as he pulled past a stop sign, indicating his agreement. Gotham seemed to excel at manufacturing whack-jobs. In a year or so he had spent in the city he couldn't go more than a few weeks without some new crazy crawling out of the woodworks.

"Besides the Batman's got it handled- caught it on the news as I was packing up there was a chase through downtown earlier, they said he was closing in on the Joker- so yeah things should be fine."

Jessie's smooth rumble did a little ratchet as she merged onto the Interstate.

Barry's eyebrows pinched and his mouth pushed into a pout.

"Don't give me that. They'll be fine. They will. And you know this whole vigilante stuff is still crazy for me. You remember that night when I ran into that Two-Face guy- there were bullets everywhere, I thought I was going to die like fifty times over."

He shuddered a little bit, none of the bullets had even come close to touching him of course. But that wasn't really the point now was it? Eugh- it still gave him chills, he was NOT eager to run into a hailstorm of crisscrossing bullets like that again.

"So… National City it is! Sunny skies! Beautiful weather! NO psychopaths and NO caped crusaders. Just you, me, and west coast chillin'. Like a vacation, from our trip, where we live in abandoned buildings and are legally homeless. A vacation sounds great honestly, couldn't get up close with very many metahumans in Gotham anyway, what with them being supervillains, so it's no big loss to be leaving ahead of schedule."

Barry opened up his phone again, navigated to his third favorite playlist and settled in for a few days of driving, this was always the worst part of moving. Jessie was a lot of things… fast was not one of them.

"Good Morning! Did you enjoy your stay?"

Barry froze at the receptionist's blinding grin, "Uh... yeah. Did enjoy- my stay, that is." Barry fumbled through his pocket and practically threw the key onto the countertop. He left quickly- No not that quickly- people were hard to deal with but not that hard to deal with. His ears burning at the encounter Barry walk-jogged across the lot to Jessie and prepared for the last leg of his five-day cross country trip.

Barry had gotten finding a home down to a science at this point- four years of living on the move would do that. He mentally ran through his golden checklist as he and Jessie trolled through the warehouse district of National City.

The Perfect Abandoned Wareho- The Perfect Home. By Barry Allen, patent-pending.

The building had to be big. Barry had a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. Most of it was his rig, 22 high-definition, specially modified- super speed friendly screens. The multiple network-linked, jury-rigged computers necessary to run the machine. His ever-expanding collection of books- he got bored sometimes and books were a 'go at your own pace' type deal that really worked for him. Barry was especially fond of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works- going so far as to collect the entirety of the Sherlock Holmes series. And his chairs. Admittedly a weird thing to collect but he had gotten attached and in his humble opinion there was a chair for every mood and a mood for every chair. There were also various other bits and bobs essential to a functional residence but really not worth mentioning.

So yeah... it had to be big.

The building is question had to be close to a power line- something Barry thought shouldn't really have to have been specified but apparently, most of the warehouses in Gotham predated the age of electricity and the new lines running near them were not big enough that he could quietly siphon off the power without raising eyebrows. His rig was pretty intensive and drew more than an 'abandoned' warehouse would, entirely defeating the purpose of constantly moving around to investigate metahuman reports on the down-low.

The building had to be near the essentials- running water especially. Barry had stopped hoping for a working bathroom early on in this lifestyle- and had abandoned all hope of ever finding one clean enough that he didn't feel like puking at the thought of it. His workaround that had been… honed... over the years, and included living in proximity to a YMCA or other twenty-four-hour gym and quietly, QUIETLY zooming in when he had need of the facilities. Running through the showers fast enough that the water was barely falling meant he had to look for an empty stall or in dire straits try and run through some of the free shower space while trying very very... hard to avoid looking at things no good Jewish boy should have to see.

Barry shuddered. Old… people were… eugh, he shook violently.

And perhaps most importantly, Food. Barry ate constantly- CONSTANTLY. He was eating right now. Barry rubbed his oily fingers on his pant leg before using the corner of his sleeve to wipe off stains on the steering wheel.

"Sorry Jessie", he muttered sheepishly. Jessie was fine with it, such things happened when one ate pizza in a car.

The building had to be close to a gas station or convenience store- snacks were a matter of life and death. Honest, they were.

As a side benefit, it was also in his best interest to pick a building close to the rail yard. Authorities would think the occupied building just another temporary home for vagrants and vagrants would stay away from him thinking he was one of them- turns out most hobos got very violent when they were territorial.

He found the perfect place after a half-hour. There had been a false alarm halfway through. An old abandoned arcade that ticked all of the boxes on the List™. Stepping into the place though had changed his mind very very very quickly, he wasn't superstitious by any means but something about that place gave him the heebie-jeebies. The experience led to the newest item on the checklist: No abandoned doll-factory-looking nightmare buildings. The list was a living document, constitution style. His salvation eventually came in the form of an old brick building, its outsides covered in faded graffiti- perfect, that meant the gangs and vandals had been here and moved on already.

Barry threw the tarp up and let it fall slowly over Jessie. The entrance to Barry's mansion #5 very conveniently had an alleyway leadup like Barry's mansion #4 and he had just enough space to slot Jessie into the end of the path after he had used- closer to abused honestly- his speed to move the many boxes into the building. His abilities had the interesting side effect of rendering objects he picked up practically weightless when he was 'in speed' meaning he barely broke a sweat placing the fifty-eight boxes on the ground in the middle of the warehouse.

The first order of business…

Box number thirty-two was dedicated to cleaning supplies- when you regularly breathed thousands of times a minute a dust-free living space was a necessary safety precaution rather than the luxury most homeless people would consider it to be.

Twenty-four seconds later and he was emptying the dustpan into the dumpster across the street for the sixth and final time. He was getting faster… at least that's what the numbers said. Well, that wasn't quite true. Barry's top speed was purely theoretical, unattainable, he couldn't even begin to design a way to measure his fastest speed. His one rule kept him within pseudo-scientific possibility, but even then...

Running is easy. Everyone can run (sorry, that's insensitive to differently-abled people; I meant most people can run), following the unwritten rules of running our subconscious minds have memorized through years of rote action. But running works best at running speeds. The aerodynamics alone indicate that to go any faster than it already does the human body would have to switch to a completely different technique. Like Naruto-running, anime's surprisingly insightful like that.

However, the rules changed entirely while running. In fact, the faster he went the less the normal rules applied and the more new ones did. It was the greater awareness of these new rules that presented itself as increasing speed. He was just getting better at being fast without breaking everything around him.

Putting aside the reality-warping superpowers almost criminally casually, Barry refocused on the two most important matters, food, and his computer rig. Food first... Barry spared a few moments to make a call to a nearby establishment and while he waited started unboxing his twenty-two screens and the hundreds of feet of cabling that went with them.

Barry made a conscious effort not to drop into the 'Speed Force' as he had taken to calling it- sue him, Star Wars was amazing- actually please, do not sue him. And really, technically speaking the comparison to the Force worked undeniably well, near as he could tell with his cobbled-together equipment and sensors, the Speed Force was a separate but parallel layer of dimensional reality that seemed to manipulate space-time and by dipping 'into speed' he expelled the extra-dimensional energy in a small area around him where classical mechanics sort of… violently self-destructed.

There was no point in doing this at speed anyways given he was waiting on the pizzas- really the best food, portable, easy to find, and endlessly customizable. He started to assemble the frame first, the rig was variable and could be organized in a wide variety of ways depending entirely on how he felt when he was putting it together. The screens went up next, and lastly the cables. Each meticulously laid out, organized and labeled- people who did not manage their cables were savages.

Some people just confused Barry… Well, most people confused Barry, but he was trying to figure them out, get into the rhythm of… humans (did humans have rhythm?). Barry's mind shot at max speed to an image of an old man dancing wayyyy too hard in the showers at a Star city YMCA- UGH, no yuck- enough.

As a scientist, his powers both fascinated and scared him, he had been able to find no explanation for them (beyond the lightning, and the chemicals, and the agony) and every new discovery was just added to the growing list of things that the Speed Force let him do. It grated on Barry- especially given that in moments of idle contemplation the seemingly limitless capabilities of his powers frightened him.

Four years ago, in Central City, just a week or so after the accident when he had been riding high on the speed, he had maybe- sort of- ill-advisedly mind you- gone out into the city proper on a run. And after the initial fear of being jumped by someone yelling "HAHA! We're all just pretending, this isn't real!" had faded, a startling realization set it. Barry had never fit in, always too scrawny, too smart, too weird, too... anything really- but now, as he ran through downtown Central, watching everyone else in the world frozen like statues he realized he might never really fit in. He could live years in the time it took others- took normal people- to live a day.

Barry sighed and put it out of his mind- worrying about existential dilemmas wasn't really his thing. Soooo many more real- tangible things to stress out about. Like having to make small talk with the cashier at the pizza place in abou-

Di-Di Di Di-Di-Di!

Now apparently. Barry finished plugging in the last monitor and braced himself to talk about the weather and 'that sports team that was doing really well this season didn't he think so'.

Pizza was amazing, he had said it before and would say it again. 11/10 would recommend- though really who hasn't had pizza yet- it would be criminal to deny it to those in need. The only thing wrong with pizza was that it ended, and now... Barry had more work to do.

On the plus side now that his computer was set up he could put some music on- working in silence was also inhumane. He should make a list- No pizza, working without music, things that should be outlawed by the Constitution of The United States.

His go-to work music was K-pop, more specifically at the moment BTS. One did not spend as much time as he did on the internet and avoid being exposed to the art-form. K-pop was… nice. It was bright and cheery and made Barry for an instant forget why he was currently squatting in a warehouse in National City and not coming back home to a happy nuclear family- and for him, a moment was more than long enough. Plus the energy that went into it- the colors and lights and all the 'K-pop-ness' of it- made him also forget the fact the most people felt so… slow.

Now that the essentials had been taken care of- the warehouse looking more like a home, with blaring screens, scattered chairs, one for every occasion, and piles of books around walking spaces. Barry moved to his baby.

Engineering- or more specifically science- came easily to Barry. From a young age, he knew that this was what he was here for, what spoke to him. And though he lived like a vagrant he had scraped and saved and slogged at three less than upwardly mobile jobs to put himself through college and spent every credit not devoted to his Criminalistics degree on STEM extracurriculars. The culmination of which was his baby.

Five feet and eleven inches of some of the most advanced engineering Barry had ever seen or heard about. His suit- because that's what it was, something so beautiful had to be a suit- it was not a costume. Had proven to be stronger, tougher, and more effective at its function than any other material he had come into contact with- its function being- letting him bypass some of the restrictions the Speed force didn't account for and allow him to run faster than anything on the planet could move. Plus.. you know… should something happen the suit meant he would not just… splat… against a building or something.

As Barry reassembled the mannequin and its stand he propped the helmet onto the stack of books next to him.

"I was talking about it with Jessie you know- Oh yeah the van is now Jessie, we talked about it and he-she-it-car liked the name. Anyways we decided. Matte black isn't really your look- well it's not my look- which is I guess the same thing but a paint-job is priority numero uno. Jessie and I thought that you would look best in red, the bright red like Jessie used to be, not the weird rust she-it-van-he is now. Oh... you're gonna look soooo good, maybe some gold in there to spice things up. What do you think?"

The helmet stayed propped on the stack of books, motionless. Barry grinned and began to start painting the prominent pieces bright red.

Barry had started working on the suit not long after his run through Central. Though walking in circles around a man waving down a cab while his eyelids crawled down into a blink was fun… there were times when Barry felt limited- when he could feel the fabric of his clothes straining and tearing. The… sort of bubble thing of Speed Force that popped into existence around him when he ran seemed to do a lot to protect him- most importantly in his mind preventing the atmosphere from catching on fire. But the bubble also seemed to have a limit. He would need something… sturdier if he wanted to keep doing this- and he did- so he needed something… more.

The first attempt was with athletic, friction-resistant fabric- it involved for the first time in his life Barry stepping into a sports gear store. It was… alien. Sadly, for all the effort that went into acquiring some form of running clothes, every time he pushed past a certain point- a certain speed- it became immediately apparent that his clothes were slowing him down… if he pushed even farther he began to feel them heating up. Thankfully for his dignity and the sanity of everyone else in the world he had managed to notice it before his clothes burned up and shattered around him completely. The most important lesson Barry took from that was that there was no commercially available product that would have suited his needs- he would have to put something together himself.

It wasn't until the fourth attempt, almost three months later that he stumbled onto quartz sand.

The middle two attempts at a suit… well the less said about them the better… but it was in the nature of science to build upon itself so when causal research into the LI-900 silica tiles, developed by Lockheed Martin, and used on the outside of the NASA space shuttles reminded him of the incredible heat-resistant properties of silica.

Copying the design of LI-900s for his suit wouldn't work, not only would any resulting product cost more than its own weight in gold it would also be ninety-four percent air… not very conducive to a defensive armor- a property that grew more and more desirable in his mind as images of a Barry-shaped stain on the side of a building danced in his mind. Plus… you know… the industrial espionage necessary was… ill-advised.

Some brainstorming had led to the idea of interweaving high purity silica fibers into the fabric like manufacturers of Kevlar did and a bit of trial and error proved that the idea was feasible. At the end of an eight-day long process, he stared down at dozens of meters of his new fabric and started cutting it into exact shapes based on his own measurements.

Quartz sand fabric was incredible- some tests with a blowtorch proved the fabric could not only handle temperatures as high as 1500 Kelvin but also withstand rapid cooling. However, for the actual armor part, Barry decided on a homebrew version of Polycarbonate plastic shaped into plates. Roughly two-hundred times as tough as steel and only a fraction of the mass… oh yes… this would do justtt fine.

Dozens of man-hours later he stumbled violently against the next part of the process. Yes, he was looking at quartz sand fabric tightly laid over polycarbonate armor plates but it still wasn't a suit.

Creativity wasn't really his strong suit- well specifically arts and crafts were a huge no from him… even more specifically, sewing was the devil's work. Needlepoint and marijuana, Satan's two-point plan to human damnation. And all the speed in the world or not this was a delicate process- one that required a finer... more... patient touch. One that he didn't have. And one that was made somehow even worse by the introduction of metal wires, after all, he could hardly use string to piece this together, that would defeat the entire purpose. He landed on tungsten after a few days of trial and error. Drawn out into wires it balanced tensile strength and weight effectively but it made sewing the different parts of the suit together hell on earth. Tungsten also ended up being useful in providing a ground for the Speed Force lightning that the bubble seemed to generate- trying to run around saving people wouldn't work nearly as well if he couldn't get near them without zapping them with electricity- at least, he thought it was electricity, some of its behavior was weird enough to cause persisting doubts.

Barry had never been so frustrated at something so stupid for so long as that brief four-day window. But at the end of it all… his baby- his masterpiece... complete.

Que the 'mwah' kissing sound with the Italian hand gesture, was that racist, maybe, he didn't know and there was no one to make a fuss so he ignored it and continued admiring his work.

Five feet and eleven inches tall- perfectly molded to him- a quartz sand fabric undersuit covered in the tightly fitting armor plates all held together by the fine tungsten wires. All in all, it weighed about twenty pounds, far heavier than normal armor but since weight was meaningless once he started moving he didn't sweat it so much.

The suit was almost completely closed to the world- all the better to serve its purpose- but Barry left his fingers exposed- as a scientist and engineer it was vital to him that they always be free plus when he began his kinda-sorta vigilantism the increased dexterity had come in handy. Barry also left the bottom of his face exposed, his facial structure and defining features were safely hidden by the sleek helmet but anything over his mouth would have only inhibited his rapid breathing when 'in speed'.

In bright red and gold, the suit went from beautiful to transcendental. Barry almost wished that he wasn't fast, so few people would receive the gift of viewing it. Barry polished the golden lightning-shaped highlights that ran across the lustrous surface one last time before forcing himself to stop fixating on the suit. He moved the mannequin into a niche next to his rig.

With the little time to kill before his first shift at his shiny new National city job, Barry decided to get through some of his course work. Criminalistics and Forensic science was a comfortable four-year degree, actually, it was usually shorter, most of the fourth year allocated to a fellowship or something similar. But Barry's minimum wage earnings and increased spending on groceries meant that it had taken him five years to get to the point where he was wrapping up actual courses.

In fact, this semester would be his last before he could finally stop forking over thousands to Central City University. He only needed a handful of upper-division credits to wrap up the course reqs.

Barry quickly typed out an email (his keyboard was geared to a hair-trigger sensitivity so his fast typing registered properly) to his dean assuring his health and safety- she got so worried… actually, it made sense given that as far as the University was concerned Barry was an invalid recluse working his way through a degree in an effort to connect with the outside world. It was a wonder no one had uncovered the ruse yet but Barry was a good student who kept his head down and coasted by- there were enough problems for the administration to deal with to bother with a slightly pitiable but nonetheless good student.

Barry checked in with his new professors- slightly guilty at having to lie to new, complete strangers about having to take the course remotely and, "Could they please accommodate him taking the course entirely online if it wasn't too much trouble."

Professors Miller and Williams of CHE 305- Applied Physical Chemistry- and CRM 307- Crime Scene Investigation- respectively, replied back within minutes, 'Oh! You poor thing of course! Take all the time you need to get set up.'. Barry could finish the courses at his own pace, in the downtimes between his jobs, most likely fully abusing his speed.

His jobs, of course, would take up most of his time. Two of them were entirely online- contract-based remote jobs where his skills in web page earned him a pretty penny in commissions. Commissions that together covered his main expenses, food, and tuition. His other job slot- one he tended to keep flexible depending upon the city he was in at the time- was more jobbier... than the others. As a self-imposed exercise in getting more comfortable around people and dealing with them on a regular basis, he forced himself out into the wider world. Jobs in customer service tended to fit the bill nicely and he was looking forward to his interview at Noonan's in…. Barry checked his wristwatch twenty minutes- damn! The restaurant and bar downtown had a very friendly sounding manager. He hoped this wouldn't turn out like the nightmarish months on the nightshift at the Big Belly Burger in Star City.

Barry smoothed down his denim button-up and fidgeted with the ironed crease on his jeans- a weird requirement for the dress code but not too dissimilar from his usual flannel so he wasn't complaining. Locking up the wide doors with a heavy chain, couldn't be too careful, Barry gave the alley one final look before disappearing in a flash of lightning headed west.

A/N:

Hello hello and welcome to my new story. This project has been in the works on and off for almost six months now. The idea was to fuse the CW DC shows and the new DCEU movies, taking the stronger parts from each to make an overall better world to play in. The touchstone points I've chosen specifically are the Supergirl show, CW's best showing IMO (last couple of seasons notwithstanding), and Ezra Miller's Flash.

Speaking for a moment about my other story on FFN The One Way Road, college sort of hit it over the head and dragged it into an alley. I still stand by the idea but looking back on it the prose is rough and could use a lot of work. I wouldn't be able to work on the story without starting from the ground up and rebuilding it which would take more time than I can devote.

I am proud to announce, however, that I have not been idle. Working together with TheUnholySmirk (FFN) & Curious_Teacup (AO3) under the name Parsek we have published a new story, Kleonauts: Rescue. Rescue is just the beginning of a planned epic, which we are all excited to work on.

Any comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

-KingRagnarok068