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 2

The Science of Motion

Barry was late… again… somehow. He didn't do this on purpose, honest, it just sort of worked out that way. How someone with superspeed could have trouble being on time still confused him, but luckily for his continued financial stability, his manager seemed to find his tardiness more amusing than anything else. Not far now, only a few more blocks.

While waiting for the light to turn green and the little man to appear Barry pulled out his Lord phone and considered the past few weeks. He had chosen National City after Gotham mainly because no psychotic killers were roaming the streets, but also there was a blog that had caught his eye a few months ago.

News on seemingly supernatural occurrences, or as he suspected, metahuman-related ones were few and far between so 'The Others: The Truth is Out There' by a 'WSJ' had proved a lucky find. In the weeks before his move, the author of the blog traced a series of disappearances, crimes, and murders stretching back almost a year, where the common denominator was a 'weird' person being involved. WSJ seemed to think that these events were proof that aliens lived among us. Not like Superman, because everyone knew about Superman—but other, less 'Truth, Justice, and the American Way' aliens disguising themselves as human.

For his part Barry was sceptical. Krypton was one thing, but what were the chances that if there were other alien species out there, they would choose Earth to hide on. In his opinion, it was far more likely that the crimes involved metahumans rather than aliens. However, in the time he'd been here, the updates had seemingly dried up.

On the plus side, he wouldn't have to hang around crime scenes awkwardly and explain to exhausted detectives that, no, he was not a creep. He was actually a CSI in training, just there to see what it was like and if he could learn anything. But as time went on without another credible metahuman sighting, his confidence waned. Something murdered his mom that night, but it had been fourteen years and he was no closer to learning what.

Spending less time tracking down metas would've normally meant that he could be out and about as a vigilante more often, but something insane derailed his regularly scheduled evening plans. Something he could never have predicted… Supergirl.

Just days after his arrival on the west coast, the second Kryptonian made her debut. Barry had followed the coverage in the news closely, it was fascinating. Everyone knew Superman's story. Lois Lane, a reporter from Metropolis, had won a Pulitzer for her exclusive interview with the hero, so the heartbreaking tale of Krypton's destruction was general knowledge at this point, but to find that another person had escaped with their lives and that they were Superman's cousin… it was a little sensational. The hype was perfectly understandable.

Supergirl… flying… onto the scene had meant he kept his zipping around even more on the down-low. She seemed to have National City's protection well in hand and had no issues stepping into the limelight to do so. More power to her. His usual method of wandering around at night and waiting for something overtly shady to happen wouldn't work if he wanted to continue avoiding attention.

Barry slid his phone back into his pocket as he arrived at Noonan's a minute and a half late—it didn't look like WSJ had updated today either.

Kara looked up from her phone to watch the waiter bring her another sticky bun. He was a new one, someone she didn't recognize from her own tenure at Noonan's. She had seen him a couple of times before but had never spoken to him. The waiter was tall and looked to be about her age. His strong features and sharp jawline gave him a handsome appearance but the most apparent thing was the frenetic awkward energy that he emanated, awkward enough to even give her pause.

She swallowed as he switched the now empty plate in front of her with a new one and more importantly, a new sticky bun.

"Mmm. Thank you."

The man seemed startled by her talking but recovered quickly.

"Ah… no problem."

He lingered now, taking her words as the implicit permission to continue the conversation.

"I've never seen anyone eat as much as me…"

The man paused, immediately recognizing that discussing anything remotely to do with eating habits with a lady was a bad idea. Before he could open his mouth and no doubt stammer out an apology Kara took pity on him. She smiled winningly.

"I'm an alien," she said with a straight face and watched the now thoroughly confused waiter try to come up with something to say.

"What's your excuse?"

"Sorry… what?"

"… Well, I'm an alien, that's my excuse, what's yours?"

"Ah…"

The man seemed to look everywhere but right at her for a moment.

"I… I do… competitive ice dancing."

Before Kara could register the answer, something she would later think to herself was the one reply in the universe weirder than 'I'm an alien', Alex walked up to her table. The waiter left quickly with the empty plate.

Barry walked as quickly as possible behind the counter, practically fleeing the pretty blonde woman. Competitive ice dancing... what? Just what... Where in the world did that come from. Barry put the plate in the collection bin a little more forcefully than he strictly had to, firmly ignoring the burning in his ears.

Barry sighed heavily and dropped into his favourite chair, snagging a slice of pizza from its box as he did. Almost two months in National city and so far things were... sub-optimal. Though his job and schooling were going well he kept running into dead ends on the metahuman front.

Trolling active crime scenes and less than reputable blog pages had turned up nothing. Following Supergirl's exploits was a little more effective, but the closest he had come to finding a metahuman in the past few weeks was that woman with the lightning-based powers. Her incredibly public confrontation with Supergirl and the vitriol she spewed regarding Cat Grant convinced him that she was a metahuman rather than an alien, it was unlikely that she would have taken so long to dip her toes in super-villainy if she had always had powers.

That had consumed most of his attention for the week. The woman's lightning had been the first thing in fourteen years that resembled the 'Man in Yellow' who had been present that night, except for him that is. And wasn't that an uncomfortable realization? So far the prime suspect for his mother's murder was himself. After all, theoretically, it would be possible to run back—Nope, nope, nope, not going down that rabbit hole again.

Supergirl herself seemed to be growing more and more active, appearing in the public eye to help with a variety of emergencies and criminals. Wonderful for the people of National City but not really helpful for Barry. At this point, he was even considering packing up and moving on. What was the point of staying when he hadn't even needed his suit in the past few days?

Chewing down on the crust of his seventh slice Barry wiped his hands on his flannel and turned to his computer; Rick and Morty always cheered him up. Just as he was about to press the play button, the ground began to rumble.

Barely a second after the earthquake started Barry realized what was happening and dropped unreservedly into the Speed Force—something he didn't do very often but this was definitely a special case. His zooming around may have been limited because of Supergirl handling most of the issues in the city but Barry refused to underestimate the destructive capabilities of a natural disaster. Besides, two heads were always better than one.

As fast as he safely could, faster than he had moved in weeks, Barry pulled on his suit and was out the door, leaving only a trail of lightning behind him. Barry headed straight for the city centre, most of the warehouses in the industrial district were on the smaller side and typically empty so they weren't as high a priority. Conversely, the skyscrapers farther west would be vulnerable to the earthquake and any of the tertiary effects.

Mere moments later Barry was over halfway to Noonan's, a destination he had chosen for his familiarity with the surrounding area, looking up he could spot the smoke already rising from the skyline. Even with all this speed, he was still late.

As Barry turned onto the home stretch to Noonan's he watched horrified as a four-door sedan barreled off the road and towards the side of a building. He ran up to the car just as the rear wheels were jumping the curb and came to a stop in front of it, still 'in speed'. As the lightning continued to crackle around him Barry pondered how best to deal with the problem. Just as the driver's eyes started to widen in horror at her altered trajectory and the woman riding shotgun started to scream Barry moved to enact the plan. The doors were locked so he would have to break a window, sorry lady, Barry pulled his finger back and poked slowly into the backseat window on the driver's side. The laminated safety glass bubbled several inches inward under the force, acting more like a liquid than a solid. Eventually, it shattered, the cracks crawling outwards to the edges of the window slowly. The window, now broken, was still held together as a pane by the lamination so Barry slowly pushed it out of the way towards the rear windshield, the last thing he needed right now was glass flying everywhere. He reached through the now... open window, twisting his arm carefully past the driver's head to unlock the doors from the door armrest console.

Hearing the locks click into place took an eternity from his perspective, an eternity during which the rear wheels fully jumped the curb and the front bumper of the car began to crumple against the concrete wall. Finally free to do his work Barry yanked open the door, pausing to watch it rip like Play-Doh off the chassis. Unable to come up with a better idea he nudged the door in the direction of the building so it would slam 'harmlessly' against the concrete rather than a person. Barry pulled the lady out of the car and ran her across the street to safety. He ran back to the car and pulled the lady's friend out over the central console just as the headlights at the front of the car shattered and dropped her off by her friend.

Taking a fraction of an instant to assure himself of their safety Barry dashed off while the poor sedan continued to wreck its front half against the building, shame about their insurance premiums but he didn't really have any way to stop a car.

As Barry passed Noonan's he moved towards the middle of the street, finding it easier to avoid the abandoned cars than the crush of people on the sidewalks. The earthquake had stopped ages ago by this point so Barry turned his attention to the fallout—most notably the fires that had sprung up due to electrical damage.

The first scene he ran to, the one closest to the restaurant, was being approached by the firefighters; he could just see the front of the truck pulling onto the street a few blocks down. Barry decided to make their work easier for them by evacuating the building. He braced himself and carefully pushed as fast as he could. As he slipped farther into the Speed Force the already crawling world stopped entirely, and the lightning that wreathed his body grew thicker as it branched off and sparked against the ground. If things were moving he wasn't around them long enough to notice.

Barry braced himself and gently poked the doors open, he couldn't help the smile as they flew open even as he slipped through. Active fires were dangerous even for him, smoke inhalation was not a big obstacle, by pushing far enough into the Speed Force he could go without breathing air entirely, at that point just existing as a swarm of charged particles—not to say that he didn't breathe, he did… just not oxygen. He hadn't figured out how that worked exactly yet. The hazard with burning buildings was their fragility, the already casual disregard he had for the durability of his surroundings while moving several times faster than sound compounded with the fire-damaged structure to create his worst nightmare.

Going floor by floor Barry poked his head into every room in the building. Taking care to step lightly, the speedster worked his way through every inch of the office by referring to the conveniently placed fire evacuation maps spread out around the building. Any doors he came across were shattered before him with a palm or shoulder; there was no time to waste right now and the property damage was hardly a priority with lives at risk.

Every person he discovered he ran down and out of the building with, dropping them in the open park just a few lots down. It was close enough to the skyscraper that hopefully the firemen would notice and realize they could focus immediately on putting the fire out. Fifteen seconds later as the firetruck screeched to a halt Barry put the one thousand three hundred and forty-second office worker down in the park and was already on his way to the next fire.

Twenty minutes later—minutes that, to Barry, had been hours and hours spent rescuing people—he stopped for a quick snack to keep his glucose levels up. As he stood awkwardly at a street corner hastily chewing down an edible (ish) nutrition brick of his own design he caught the end of Maxwell Lord's rant to a reporter on one of those shop display windows filled with TVs. He thought those only existed in movies.

Supergirl was missing… that was entirely unlike her. Barry pushed it out of his mind and threw the clingfilm in the trashcan next to him. It looked like helping out was definitely the right thing to do.

The next major crisis Barry came across was a series of explosions—probably a gas main. People were already streaming out of the building in question so things were fine on that front. What captured his attention however was the news helicopter spinning out of control. The chopper had been heavily damaged by the explosion and was spiralling straight into the panicking rush of people below it.

Barry ran to the 'landing' zone first, taking mere moments to pick up everyone in the way and drop them off a few hundred feet further away, safely outside the splash zone. When he finished with that he turned his attention to the CatCo helicopter roughly thirty feet from a grisly meeting with the tarmac.

Catching it was out of the question, though its weight shouldn't have been an issue he didn't know if he could push out the Speed Force in a large enough bubble to encapsulate the whole vehicle, and he wasn't willing to see it rip itself apart if he failed. He lacked the time to reason it out thoroughly, so decided to act on impulse.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, you got this…" he whispered, slapping his cheeks lightly. Deciding to bite the bullet and get it over with Barry ran straight for the building.

One of the aspects of classical mechanics that tended to go screwy when the Speed Force was involved happened to be gravity, it only took a few months after the accident for Barry to gather the courage to try to run up a wall. It went... well, actually a bit too well, Barry had almost flown off the lip into the air because he was running too fast, plus there had been the whole issue of running so fast he left a trail of footprints in the bricks. Something to keep in mind actually since this one was covered in glass.

Running up the side of the skyscraper, Barry made sure to avoid the slowly swinging blade before leaping off the side and grabbing onto the helicopter's side. Remembering the moment from earlier he grabbed the door on the pilot's side and pulled roughly. Barry watched wide-eyed as the door flew off, moving almost as fast as he could, before lodging in the side of the building like a demented ninja star. Ok... not doing that again.

Grabbing the pilot and the reporter, one over each shoulder, Barry jumped back out of the helicopter toward the building and put both people where he had moved the others in the way of the helicopter.

Disappearing from in front of the people in a bright flash of lightning Barry stopped in an alleyway entrance and peeked out to safely watch the news chopper crash into the street, as safe as that could happen anyways. There were explosions and fires but no one was close enough to be hurt, Barry wouldn't even know where to put a falling helicopter anyways.

An undetermined amount of time later (it was hard keeping exact count while in the Speed Force, it made his perception all screwy) Barry approached a silver sedan that looked stopped in the middle of the road, surrounded by four highways, dear god does National City road planning even exist. As he passed the car he came across a strange scene, four people crowded around an older man lying unconscious on the ground. Their faces seemed to be stuck in various states of horror. One of the women, who held a passing resemblance to the man—his daughter, perhaps—was in the middle of wringing her hands and… was that… Maxwell Lord?

That was Maxwell Lord. What in the world? Lord seemed to be checking over the unconscious man and from the defeat in his eyes, Barry doubted he was anything good.

Though he was loath to kidnap and run with someone, he didn't think these people would be too upset if the ultimate result was the man's survival. Barry turned towards the car, which at this point was proving a more attractive ground for his lightning than his suit's wiring—ugh, looks like the latest tweaks hadn't worked fully, he was still perfecting the thing. He managed to find the woman's purse and luckily she had a napkin and pen in there.

Scrawling out a note he ran back to the woman and left it clutched within her hands, ensuring that she would notice it, before grabbing the man, hoisting him over his shoulder, and heading straight for the hospital he had seen about a mile to the north.

Sorry to do this, but he didn't look so hot.

I'm taking him to the hospital north of here

He'll be fine

xoxo

—ϟ

In the three hours or so since the earthquake, Barry had saved more people than he cared to count, his body once more flooded with the heady rush of helping people. But he had been pushing himself harder than he had in a while, and he wasn't running on a full tank, to begin with. Seeing no one else in the vicinity that needed help after a final pass he turned and began to run back to his warehouse. At least he had been moving pretty much the entire time—fuel brake notwithstanding—so his anonymity should remain intact.

Barry stared at the online news article, the prominently placed picture featuring a splash of blue lighting trailing behind a smudge of red speeding along a street during the earthquake.

"NATIONAL CITY'S NEWEST HERO: THE FLASH!"

Most of his limbs and extremities were unrecognizable but his torso and head were clear enough in the picture that everyone could tell that the person in the scarlet suit was unmistakeably a humanoid man.

Barry didn't make a habit of cursing, but he felt that old Mrs Hendrikson (his foster mother) might forgive him this time.

"Fu-"

CatCo Worldwide Media

9846 Hill St

National City, 90014

3rd December 2015

Re: Offer of employment

Full reporter under Snapper Carr, Editor-in-Chief of CatCo magazine

Dear Miss Smythe,

We here at CatCo Worldwide Media have followed your work with great interest, notably your most prominent piece, the recent blog piece about National City's newest hero, The Flash. Our senior staff, and even Ms Grant, believe that you could achieve great things at CatCo and so, would like to extend an invitation to work at our company.

You will be working within the magazine writing offices under Editor-in-Chief Snapper Carr, to begin with, the exact position may change based upon how you fit in during the probation.

We would like for you to commence employment with us on the 7th of December, this following Monday. There will be a probationary period of three months within which the notice period of termination for you and Mr Carr will be one week. After the successful completion of your probationary period, the notice period will be two weeks and subject to change based upon future seniority within the company.

Should you be interested in accepting the offer, please report to Kelly Nykanen, on the 28th floor of the CatCo downtown office on the 7th for orientation.

Thank you, and we hope to see you soon.

—Kelly N.

Alex stormed back into the D.E.O. The whole drive back to the desert base had felt unreal, faded in memory as though it hadn't happened. Kara… wasn't Kara anymore. It was like some ugly, mean thing was wearing her sister's face, and she had been powerless to stop it.

The next coherent thought she had that wasn't from stewing in the sea of emotions swirling in her gut was shoving open the lab door. J'onn was standing behind Max with his arms crossed, watching the latter build his solution to the mess he had made.

"It is ready, yet?"

Max turned from the gun-shaped machine he was assembling, "Almost." He looked exhausted. Good, he deserved it. Alex sighed in impatience and made to leave the lab, to do something, to do anything. She couldn't just sit here while her sister rampaged around the city.

"Alex."

She turned to face J'onn as he asked how Kara was.

"She's gone, Hank… I don't even know who she is anymore."

Alex felt her mask cracking, the helplessness so unfamiliar to her flooding to the front of her mind.

"I don't even know what she's capable of."

J'onn sighed heavily, but any attempt at comfort was interrupted by Senator Crane. "You need to put a stop to her. I know this is personal for both of you. I understand. Supergirl saved my life; she helped me grow, become a better person. But that is not Supergirl. Lives are at risk. You need to use everything the D.E.O has to protect the city from her.

J'onn's hands came to his hips as they often did during a heated discussion, "I'm not going to kill her." Though she was relieved all Alex could think of was her sister, the current conversation washing over her but not really being processed. J'onn must have come to a decision because he reached up to his communicator. "Vasquez… activate the Hermes Protocol."

Alex broke out of her stupor. "Are you sure, sir?"

J'onn nodded resolutely, "We have no other choice."

As began filling in some of the other agents on the details Senator Crane came up beside them, "I don't understand Director Henshaw. What is this protocol?" Alex squared her shoulders and took a mental inventory of the duties her new orders entailed. She railed at them but compartmentalized her doubts, the senator was right about one thing, there were lives at stake.

"It's our contingency plan."

"Contingency plan… for what?"

"For Supergirl."

Max came out of the lab holding his heavily modified firearm. "If anything can reverse the effects of Red Kryptonite on your sister, this is it." Alex accepted the gun from the billionaire.

"It better."

"As you all know, I have been Supergirl's most outspoken champion, so you can imagine how difficult it is for me to tell you that I and CatCo can no longer stand behind Supergir—"

Click!

Barry turned the radio off as he pulled Jessie into his alley. Could he say that? His alley? No one else was using it. He pushed it out of his mind and pondered the recent breaking news, news that had been playing on a loop for the past few hours. An unstable Supergirl. It was a chilling thought for anyone with half a brain. If Supergirl was anything like her older cousin then she was capable of incredible destruction. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the entirety of National City was at risk.

Barry's mind flashed to shaky news footage from three years ago of Superman and the android Amazo wrecking swathes of Metropolis during their battle, the fallout of the fight leaving entire buildings shattered and thousands of bystanders hurt.

No… an evil Supergirl was definitely bad for the city. Barry unlocked the chains around the door handles and pushed the lever on the side of the breaker box to start the power-up, the overlapping sounds of K-pop and Cartoon Network reruns flooded the large room. Maybe he should do something about—

"Barry Allen. Hank Henshaw, Department of Extranormal Operations."

…

What?

"You say that like it somehow explains why there's a total stranger in my spot." Barry dropped his backpack and subtly braced himself to run. The stranger, Henshaw—now obviously identifiable as government black-ops type—stood up and slowly walked towards him. "Sitting in the dark… in my second favourite chair."

Henshaw pulled a sheet of paper from his file folder in his hands and turned it to face him.

"Tell me about this."

Maintaining direct eye contact Barry reached out and snatched the paper from Henshaw's hand, only looking down at it when he assured himself that the slightly taller man wouldn't move.

The paper was a blurry CCTV snapshot of him in a convenience store. The haircut pointed to roughly three years ago and his time in Happy Harbor. Man, that haircut was a choice—one he regretted deeply—but a choice nonetheless. In the bottom corner was a picture-in-picture close up of his face. He remembered this, a man with a gun and one of those cliche ski masks had tried to hold up the store while he was buying milk. He had poked the man into a wall and continued about his business without a second thought. He needed to start paying attention to cameras.

"This is a person who looks exactly like me but who is definitely not me." Henshaw raised an eyebrow at that, not even bothering to mask his disbelief. Weren't these Men-In-Black types supposed to be all stoic and emotionless? He turned away and walked back deeper into the clutter of his stuff. "A very attractive Jewish boy… Looks like he's out on a routine trip to the store." Barry glanced up nervously at the direction Henshaw was headed in but his mouth rambled on, "Shame about the haircut though; clearly, he's acting out for attention."

Henshaw stopped squarely in front of his suit and crossed his arms. Yikes. New rule: hide the suit. In fairness, Barry had never had people over and never intended to, something he stood by now more than ever. He was very, very uncomfortable.

"We know you have abilities, Mr Allen." Henshaw's gravelly voice was mirrored by his no-nonsense stance, shoulders back, feet evenly spaced and crossed arms with—by Barry's intimidated standards—bulging muscles.

Barry thought fast, "My special skills include viola, uh, web design… I'm fluent in sign language—" Well, gorilla sign language…

"We know that you're a metahuman. We know that you're the Flash."

Barry's entire body tensed and prepared to move with all of his speed.

"...And we need your help." This conversation was fast, way too fast, even for him. "The D.E.O works closely with Supergirl—a pooling of resources—to better combat alien threats and protect the world. Now, you've been in our files for some time but your actions on the day of the Earthquake allowed us to put the final pieces together."

Barry was stumped, for once in his life his mouth was not able to keep up with his racing thoughts.

"What we saw—what I saw—was someone I could trust. We need your help, Mr Allen; your abilities might be our only chance at stopping Supergi—"

"Stop right there; I'm in."

Henshaw looked confused. Admittedly it was an impulsive decision but those were the ones Barry was the best at making. And so far they had all turned out great… ish.

"Yeah. You seem like an alright guy—I mean you must be if Supergirl is working with you. And helping Supergirl can't be the wrong thing to do. But I have one condition."

Henshaw, though initially appearing slightly pleased—at least as pleased as one could appear with a face that didn't move—shifted at his last statement. The small light in his eyes went out and he shifted into business mode.

"You said the Department of Extranormal Operations, right?" Henshaw nodded in confirmation.

"We are an entirely classified federal agency, I only revealed its existence to you in the pursuit of good working relations."

"If I do this if I help you… I want access to everything your agency has on metahumans." Henshaw gave it some thought, staring straight into his eyes. He must have found what he was looking for because he nodded sharply.

"That can be arranged, Mr Allen."

Barry smiled, relieved that things hadn't gone sideways when he pushed the conversation. It was always a toss-up and Henshaw seemed like one of those government types with 'no chill', as they say. "What do you need from me?"

"For now, suit up." Henshaw turned away and brought his wrist up to his earpiece. "Vasquez, instruct the men to stand down. The recruitment was a success."

Barry started. "You had men here?" That could have gone very poorly.

Henshaw looked amused at his sudden discomfort. "Yes, just in case. You understand." It was not a question. Of course, he understood. Why wouldn't he understand?

Barry chuckled weakly and cleared his throat, "Yeah, just in case."

Barry, feeling slightly silly in his bright-red costume amongst a sea of tactical uniforms, awkwardly stared at the weird, gun thingy that another agent was pushing at him. All attempts at refusing it was met with dismissal. Apparently, 'I don't really do guns' was not a valid reason to turn down the sci-fi-looking cannon. The agent, a serious woman that not-so-secretly unnerved Barry, almost literally turned her nose up at him.

"You're going to need it; it's capable of reversing the effects of the Red Kryptonite. It'll bring Supergirl back to her senses."

"Red Krypto—what are you talking about?"

The woman frowned at him and pushed the gun into his hands, "Never mind that just go!"

Rather than spend any more time with the belligerent woman, Barry nodded to Henshaw once and dipped into the Speed Force. Tucking the gun underneath his arm like a football, not that he had ever once in his life played football, he ran in the direction specified by the intercepted frantic nine-one-one calls a few minutes earlier.

As the world distorted around him, everything outside his little bubble became faded and blurry as Barry tore through the miles to his destination. He arrived seconds after Supergirl sliced through a police cruiser with her heat vision like it wasn't even there. Taking the time to fish both officers out of the explosion, he pulled them out of the range of shrapnel inching its way from the centre and dropped them off across the street.

Lightning crackling around him, Barry dashed around the exploding car and picked the warped metal out of the air, before dropping out of the Speed Force and spilling the bits of metal out of his hands while trying desperately not to drop the gun. Jeez, how embarrassing would that be? Maybe he should look into some pockets or something for the suit.

Barry looked up and baulked as Supergirl floated in the air, her presence completely different than it usually was. Menacing instead of inspiring. Her usual red, blue and yellow suit was replaced by a snug black bodysuit with a red 'S' on her right collarbone. As he watched dumbfounded, she made to move towards the fleeing civilians. Damn! Uh… Oh, this was a baaad idea.

"Hey! Supergirl!"

The flying woman turned with anger etched into her features. "Yeah! Why don't you pick on someone your own size, eh?"

Though initially confused at the interruption Supergirl quickly barrelled straight past anger to incandescent rage. Ohhhhhhh boy…

"You! The Flash!" Here her voice took on a mocking tone, "National City's newest hero! But you're nothing, a nobody, just playing at being me."

"Ah, well I mean the name is still being workshopped, and hey, that's kinda rude you know?"

"Shut… UP!" Supergirl blasted through the air, shattering the sound barrier and flying straight at him with murder in her eyes. Literally. They were glowing. The moment she began to move Barry stepped entirely into the Speed Force, drawing more on it now than he had in the two months since the earthquake. Supergirl's dead rush towards him slowed exponentially, initially, she had been moving faster than most people could see but by the time she covered half the distance between them she drifted leisurely through the air like it was made out of syrup.

Huh. Barry was a little confused. Perish the thought that he lacked confidence in his speed but this was Supergirl. And she was… slow. Was she supposed to be slow? Superman was faster than her—Barry knew that for sure from trawling through scarily obsessive blog posts—but she should still be inhumanly fast. That was the point though wasn't it, 'inhumanly fast'—Barry had passed that milestone several light years ago.

Barry shook himself from his contemplation just as Supergirl got within a few feet of him. It was surreal to see someone moving through the air in a horizontal position like that in slow motion. Surrounded by the electricity emerging from the Speed Force Barry took a single, wide step to the left and plugged the hole in the back of his mind.

A fraction of a second later chunks of asphalt flew into the air as Supergirl ripped through where he was standing and ploughed into the street. Barry started backing away at normal speed, recognizing that being within range of the furious alien would be counterproductive for his continued health.

Supergirl pulled herself out of the street and seemed more confused than anything, in that sort of 'How is there not a puddle of gore around me right now?' way. She spun around wildly before locking eyes with him. From up close, Supergirl was obviously sick, prominent red veins crawling around her eyes, but Barry was a little distracted by the eyes themselves. Eyes that were flaring a dull red and getting brighter every moment. Getting hit would mean… not good things.

Barry ducked back into the Speed Force and booked it. As the lasers tore through where he was standing moments ago—how did those even work? They implied that Kryptonian eyes somehow emitted radiation, which made no sense whatsoever—he ran parallel to Supergirl and brought the gun in his hand up and aimed it at the convenient red target located over her left collarbone. Barry's left, her right that is. He probably should have led with it if he was being perfectly honest. Still in the Speed Force, he pulled the trigger back and watched in horror as the laser gun spun up slowly, its barrel glowing the same shade of red as Supergirl's eyes.

Note to self: just because he was fast, that didn't mean everything else was. As the gun fired Supergirl turned around in slow motion—what must've been faster than most people could blink took an age for him. But it was fast enough for her to dodge the palm-sized red beam that left the barrel of the gun.

Roaring once more—seriously, he'd heard her speak before; that couldn't be good for her throat—Supergirl grasped around for the closest thing to throw at him and within seconds had launched an empty SUV at him. Barry frantically side-stepped and preemptively charged the gun. By the time he was clear of the black automobile, the gun fired and he watched with satisfaction as Supergirl went rigid. Dropping out of the Speed Force he heard yelling that didn't make sense, he had just taken her down, what was with the terrified shrieking?—oh… the car.

Barry turned around, but like always, when it mattered most he was too late. The large vehicle was inches from Henshaw and two other D.E.O agents, they must have arrived at some point during the past few minutes, for all the good it was about to do them.

The car crumbled and screeched as it came to a halt before it was pushed out of the way to reveal a very tall figure in a cape. A very tall, very green figure, standing exactly where Henshaw was a moment ago. The agents beside him were already pulling their guns up and shouting at him to get down. This was not part of the plan, apparently.

Barry was a lot of things, but he was not stupid. If the agents could turn on the director of their own organization so easily, then he, a metahuman stranger, had no business being here. Barry dropped the gun onto the asphalt, glad to be rid of it, and left to the sounds of it clattering, the only evidence he had ever been there the blue-white sparks crawling across the ground. At least Supergirl would be alright. He hoped. No one had really told him what the gun did. Second note to self, or was this the third? No, he was right the first time, second: get better at this whole thing, just generally speaking.

Also maybe don't take guns from strangers.

Authors' Notes: Sorry for the big delay between chapters but life has finally conspired to allow me time to work on this story. Expect chapter 3 to be up in a much sooner fashion!

Again! I am once more proud to announce, that I have not been idle. Under the name Parsek we (TheUnholySmirk (FFN) & Curious_Teacup (AO3 and I) have continued our story, Kleonauts. We are now reaching the conclusion of Book 2, Panacea, so be sure to pay it a visit if you're interested in Percy Jackson and the Olympians, RPG stories or ancient Greece.

—KingRagnarok068