The Present…
Ellie found her father standing with hands clasped behind his back, staring out the windows of the Watchtower as the Earth glittered below.
"We did so much more than they did Els," he whispered, turning as she entered. Ellie stepped into her father's embrace, basking in the warmth of him, in the hum of electricity beneath his skin.
"What do you mean?"
"The old us. The destroyed universe, with the other me. They had all the resources we did. But they never used it. My other-self was so focussed on fixing his own life by the end that he'd stopped thinking about what he could do for everyone else. They never opened STAR Labs to the public again, never discovered light. And the walls between worlds kept him and his Kara just separate enough that they ignored what was in front of them. I… We've suffered our own share of horrors. Everyone has their demons. But Oliver, when he restarted the Multiverse, pulled us into this new reality, knew that. He couldn't take away what made us who we are. But he could make our burdens a bit easier to bare, and that made all the difference. We changed. We evolved. We grew together."
"We created the Justice League, we saved the world together, not alone like a grand competition. It was like some cosmic hand was holding them back from becoming something new. I hope to God that never happens to us."
Ellie rested her head on his shoulder.
"Dad… Mom will be fine, right?"
"Ally has taken her to the Forge. We have to believe she'll come back. She did it before, she can do it again. If anyone can stare the Destroyer in the face and make him blink, it's your Mom."
Ellie's power couldn't penetrate the Dark Multiverse, and neither could her father's. The Destroyer's own power was what governed consciousness and time within his prison. Only Ally could walk all three paths, and Ellie had to trust that her sister would protect their mother.
"I've been going over everything in my head," Barry said. "Trying to reconcile my memories. What happened to me, and what happened to the old me. And I keep coming back to the Thinker. The Dome… Remind me, what happened under the Dome?"
Ellie swallowed. She'd only been six, but she remembered everything—one of the not-so-great perks of being plugged into the universal consciousness.
"DeVoe wanted to enlighten the world. To move the Earth past petty squabbles for power and wealth."
Barry snorted, and Ellie rolled her eyes.
"Yes yes, free will is important and all that, but Dad, you haven't lived through the War of Power. Humanity practically rips itself apart before it realises the things that really matter."
"Doesn't justify turning everyone into mindless drones," Barry said. "I know you're more aware of humanity, what it can do, what it has done and will do than I could ever be, but you have to remember the people on the ground Els."
Ellie sighed. This was an age-old argument between them, and she knew it would never be resolved. Her father was just too much of an optimist. Having lived her entire life experiencing the best and the worst of people's thoughts, Ellie couldn't be like him. Growing up knowing whenever a man on the street is leering at you in their minds, the opinions of every teacher and 'friend' you ever had… It was not something she would wish on anyone.
"Well, the Thinker realised pretty fast after he failed with me that the Sage Force, unlike the other Forces, bites back. Hard. It doesn't like being used by anyone. It barely tolerates me, and frequently abandons me when it doesn't like my choices. Instead, he turned his attention to the Speed Force, hoping to accelerate the world, instead of enlighten it."
"We stopped him," Barry muttered, rubbing his forehead.
"You stopped him," Ellie corrected, rolling her eyes. "Dragged him straight through the Speed Force itself to try and help him, heal his brain, which was dying from what the Dark Matter had done to him."
"I just made things worse."
"All of us, DeVoe included, had forgotten Physics most important lesson."
"For every action," Barry recited, "there's an equal and opposite reaction."
Ellie nodded.
"The Still Force is an… an anti-force. The counter to the Speed Force, as Death is to Life. The difference is, it shouldn't exist up here. It's from the Dark Multiverse, one of the weapons the Destroyer created to counter the Enigma Forces. It stops time and entropy, and the Thinker thought he could use it to defeat you once and for all…"
THE FLASH: S4EP21 - Stilled (May 2018)
Barry stood in Central City Square, Ellie in his arms, his friends, family and enemies surrounding him, watching in horror as a wall of thick, green energy enveloped the city like a dome, blocking out the sun in an instant. Central City was plunged into emerald shadow, and everything stopped.
The wind? Gone. The sounds of the city, of cars and people and birds… all of them frozen solid in a single moment.
Thawne, wearing the face of Harrison Wells, standing with Captain Cold from Earth-12 and Amunet, doubled over, screaming in horror and pain.
"Barry! Do something!"
He watched, panicking, heart-pounding, terror gripping his very bones, as all life seemed to just… drain out of Joe. The cop just stilled. The light in his eyes went out, and his body froze, suspended by nothing. All around them, people on the street was stilling. Trapped in eternal stasis with the rest of the city.
Everyone, except the Metahumans.
"It's the Still Force!" Frost screamed, falling to her knees as Cisco grabbed her by the shoulders.
"Caitlin!"
"Not Caitlin! She's…. She's stilled with the rest of them! I can't feel her anymore!"
"Flash! Do something!" Snart yelled, dropping his gun to the tarmac before he too became frozen with the rest of the city.
Ellie went rigid in his arms. "Daddy! I… I can't hear anything. Everyone's gone."
"No! They aren't gone," Cisco yelled, stepping back from Frost and trying to open a Breach. "We'll bring in the other Flashes…"
But no Breach opened.
"Idiot!" Thawne snarled, stumbling to his feet. Amunet, hands covered with her metal gauntlets, was staring around at them looking very confused.
"The entire city has been cut off. From time, from entropy, from the Multiversal consciousness and the Orrery itself! You can't open a Breach when there's nowhere to Breach too. It's too late. We've lost."
Barry pulled Ellie tighter to his chest and stalked into the centre of the square.
"Now what DeVoe!" He screamed at the sky, knowing the Thinker would hear him, even if he didn't know-how.
"You've done it! Put us all on pause. What now!? You can't enlighten everyone if we can't think!"
The air before them shifted, and DeVoe, wearing Ralph's body, stepped through, a smug and satisfied smirk stretching across his face.
"It's not about thinking anymore, Flash. You've shown me the truth. Humanity, in its current form, can never be cured, healed. I've tried, so hard, to save the world. But you won't let me. Now, you get to live with your failures and watch as I wield the one thing you can't fight: absolute stillness. You refuse to remain in one place, to embrace the life you live, instead just rushing from place to place. Enjoy running for eternity as I reset Central City again, and again, and again. I'll rewind the clock and start again until I get it right: humanity built on strength, not weakness."
"Without freedom you mean," Barry hissed.
"Freedom is cancer. I learnt that. I suggest you do too, or the next few million years won't be very enjoyable for you or your friends."
Thawne raced past Barry, blazing with red lightning, but DeVoe simply raised a hand and froze him with rippling green energy. The Thinker rolled his eyes, then discarded Thawne with a wave of his hand. Amunet fired her metal shaving at him, but they too were simply frozen.
"The Negative Speed-Force. Just as pathetic as its positive counterpart. Enjoy your imprisonment Eobard Thawne, and thank you for making all of this possible."
Ellie gasped, pulling her head from Barry's chest and fixating on DeVoe, eyes glowing purple. DeVoe flinched, then vanished back through his dimensional window.
Barry sank to his knees, placing Ellie on the ground as Cisco and Frost stepped up on either side of him.
"He's going to wipe the city clean, again, and again, until he creates the version of humanity he wants."
"We have to stop him," Frost said, hands trembling, face stern.
"How?" Cisco exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air. "The only people still awake are metahumans, and Iron Heights is outside the Dome. Nothing can get in or out."
"He's right," Thawne said, pulling himself up. Amunet approached from the other side of them, weaving past the frozen Joe.
"I'm too attached to this lovely city to let some old white guy rewrite it for all eternity; get off your knees, and fix this Flash."
Ellie approached the point where DeVoe had vanished, hair glowing effervescent gold, and poked at the air.
"I could hear him," she whispered as if confused. "I couldn't before…"
Cisco's head snapped up.
"How'd he get here? If everything inside is stilled, his pocket dimension would have to be outside the Dome. Or Marleen would be frozen too."
He turned to Thawne.
"The Negative Speed-Force still works?"
"Obviously."
Barry grit his teeth, then stood up and built the Speed-Force within his veins, letting the lightning pulse through him. Then he lashed out, desperate, running straight for the Still Force barrier.
He crashed into the Dome at five times the speed of sound… and bounced backwards at the same velocity he entered. He crashed back, rolling along bitumen for several kilometres before he came to rest. Then he tried again. And again. And again. And again.
Each time, the Still Force repulsed him. But it wasn't like in the cells on Earth-X. His powers didn't react like they did with Thawne's. It was like the Still Force wasn't even there. He couldn't feel it at all.
The Dome flared, tendrils of energy stretching from its surface, reaching for the ground, and Barry ran back to the square.
"There has to be something we can do," Barry fumed. "The Still Force nullifies the Speed Force, its a counter. Which means the Speed Force has to do the same. Equal and opposite reactions!"
"But how?" Frost exclaimed. She was kneeling beside Ellie, who was still staring at the place the Thinker had vanished. "The Still Force dampens everything in its path. Even you. What chance do we have?"
Except it didn't.
Frost was still awake. So was Cisco, and Amunet and Ellie and Barry and Thawne. All of them Metahumans, all of them warped and infused with Dark Matter.
Matter from beyond the natural world, just like the Still Force.
Barry and Thawne met each others' gaze, and Barry could tell they'd come up with the same idea. They'd been together, rivals, enemies, even friends, for a long time. Barry and Eobard… they were a positive and negative duality. The same, yet opposite all at once. Working with and against one another. The Still Force was not a true opposite. It was a shadowed version of the Positive and Negative Speed-Forces which represented time in motion. The Still Force was rather the absence of time.
How did you fight when you had no time? Simple. You didn't. You had to make more.
"Will it work?" Barry asked his greatest enemy, the man in the yellow suit.
"I don't know. Even I didn't know something like the Still Force could exist before this."
"What is it? You've figured it out?" Cisco asked, grabbing Barry's shoulder.
"We have to run together, restart time inside, and collapse the Dome."
"How are you going to do that?"
Thawne grinned. "We're going to recreate the Particle Accelerator Explosion. Only this time, the particles are going to be us."
Cisco blinked. Then he blinked again.
"That's… incredible, but… but can't DeVoe just rebuild the Dome once you shatter it?"
The two speedsters paused. He was right. What was stopping the Thinker from just starting again?
"We need a continuous attack. A wall of speed to fight a wall of stillness," Barry said.
"But even you two can't be in more than one place at once," Frost said, "The Racer might not be able to get inside, but he'll be waiting."
Thawne chuckled to himself.
"I guess I have one more thing to teach you then, Flash." The Reverse-Flash reached out and grabbed Amunet's forearm.
"What do you think…"
And he pushed his lightning into her. Flickering red electricity flared across the supervillain's body, and she stumbled backwards, watching her hands as they vibrated, just as Barry's had when this all started.
"That'll do it," Cisco stated, jaw hanging loose.
"Now that's a rush and a half…" she whispered. Then, with a look of concentration, she flashed across the courtyard in a blur of lightning, skidding to a halt a few metres away.
"Holy hell."
Thawne folded his arms and shot Barry the expression Wells had during those first months, looking over the STAR Labs consoles with false pride in his voice and face.
"Sharing speed. Doesn't last long, but it'll last long enough for this. Hurry up, Flash or Central City is done for."
Barry gritted his teeth and placed a hesitant hand on Cisco's shoulder. He swallowed, then, not really sure how he did it, pushed a current of speed right into his friend's body.
"Yahtzeeeee!"
Cisco yanked from Barry's arm and started pin-balling around the courtyard, and Barry face-palmed. He'd done this before, he realised now. When bringing people into Flashtime. It was essentially the same process.
Thawne looked between Ellie and Frost.
"I need one more if this is going to work."
Frost stepped between Thawne and Ellie as Barry vaulted to his daughter's side.
"You can do it to me, Thawne. Touch her, and we'll all kill you."
Thawne snorted, but said nothing else, approaching Frost and repeating the process of pushing lightning into her body. Her form flickered to life, and she took a long, raspy breath as the power flooded into her.
"I… I understand why you love this so much," she whispered. Cisco flashed to a stop, the most genuine smile on his face that Barry had seen in a long time.
"That is… it's just wow."
Barry ignored them both, turning around and looking Ellie in the eye. God… she was just six years old. She shouldn't have to deal with this, telepathy induced maturity or not.
She took his hand and pulled him close.
"I can do it," she whispered. Barry nodded, for that was all he could bring himself to do.
Then he pushed his lightning into her.
She staggered backwards, golden electricity flaring around her, then it stabilised, and she took a long breath.
"Two Forces… they don't like sharing. We have to do this fast."
Cisco practically bounced.
"I've been waiting five years to say this. 'Fast? Its the only way we know how!'"
Frost smacked him over the back of the head.
The two groups lined up opposite one another, back to back. Barry held Ellie's hand, trying desperately to not watch as the tentacles of green energy pulled apart the tallest skyscrapers.
"Ready?"
"Ready!"
"Set."
"GO!"
All six Flashes, natural and temporary, raced down their highways, blurs of red and yellow lightning shooting through Central City. Barry's team reached the Still Force barrier, then turned parallel to it, running a metre from the wall. Barry kept his eyes on Ellie, making sure she didn't stumble. She couldn't run as fast as Cisco, certainly not as quickly as Barry, because of her smaller size. But her violet eyes were razor-focused, golden light rippling from her hair to become as much a part of her trail as the lightning.
She was his daughter.
Ellie smiled at him, then let go of his hand, running on her own.
They swept past the Reverse-Flashes, Barry making sure Amunet and Frost were holding their own. Frost was a natural apparently, though Caitlin watching Barry run for so many years probably had something to do with it. Amunet was far worse - worse even than Ellie. But Frost and Wells (not-Wells, Thawne!) were showing her what to do. Fortunately, going fast was not the point here. Just running.
Once, twice more they raced past one another, then Barry pulled slightly ahead of the other two.
"Get ready!"
Thawne zoomed past once more, seeing Barry ready, and held out his right arm. Barry did the same.
Next pass. Barry mounted the bridge that crossed the Mississippi. Thawne did too. They approached one another right on mach one… and clapped hands together.
A shockwave of electricity burst from their forms - positive and negative speed repulsing away from one another - and as it touched the rippling wall of green, the energy cracked. The entire Dome trembled, splintering from peak to ground. But as Barry and Thawne split up, Cisco was proved right. The Still Force started healing itself, whether by natural reaction or through the Thinker's efforts.
Then Cisco and Amunet clapped hands.
Another shockwave, smaller but more than enough to spark time flowing again. The wall splintered, fragments bursting into non-existence.
Ellie and Frost clapped hands.
The wall convulsed, trying to collapse inward, but something else held it steady…
Barry and Thawne completed another revolution and clapped once more.
The peak of the Dome shattered for a moment before reforming.
It was working.
Meanwhile, as the Flashes began the process of tearing down the Dome, the Speed-Canon deep in the bowls of STAR Labs, the one that was supposed to be inoperable, burst to life. A swirling, shimmering, black and red Breach opened onto Earth-Prime, and a figure stepped through. Tall, enveloped in a dark cape, with the symbol of a bat etched across his heavily armoured chest. To call the figure a man would be incorrect. He had been a man once certainly, but he was certainly not one any longer. He wore a cowl, as all his people did, but his was lined with dirty grey steel, thick spikes protruding from where the eyes, ears and nose should have been. Only his mouth was visible. And it was here that he distinguished himself from all others of his kind.
He wore a thick, bloody, red smile, razor-sharp teeth behind it.
"So this is what it looks like on the outside?" The Batman Who Laughs pondered as he strolled down the steps and into a real-world for the first time in his life.
"I thought it would smell nicer. Make a note of that would you, Red? We should fix that."
Two more figures stepped through the Breach before it flashed violently and collapsed into nothingness.
The first was a woman with gorgeous blonde hair and painted red lips, black paint creating the image of tears streaming down her porcelain skin. Like his, her suit was pitch black, but with an S sigil drawn from blood over her chest.
The second was taller than her, but shorter than him, and encased entirely in red metal armour. His chest was blazoned with a Lightning-Bolt, but it was surrounded by the S shield, and bisected by two… wings? Nothing of his face was visible.
Overgirl and the Red Death. All three of these were horrors. Nightmares born of fear and terror, repurposed by That Which Rules the Darkness, The Great Destroyer, as tools in his eternal war. They were just three of his Dark Knights; more would be coming soon. Indeed, a new Knight was already being prepared on this world.
Their task? Drag Earth-Prime, kicking and screaming, down into the Dark.
The Red Death snorted in disgust, then retracted his helmet, revealing dirty brown hair, a face many would describe as kindly, and deep red eyes.
He put an arm around Overgirl, and she giggled uncontrollably at his touch.
"Sure thing, Bats. I'll put it right under 'reduce the universe to scrap metal'."
"Atta boy, Barry."
Then the Batman Who Laughs drew from his belt a gun and pointed it at the far wall. He pulled the trigger, and a flag burst from the end, spraying confetti in all directions.
"Ha, ha! Gets me every time."
He switched weapons, then fired again. This time, what left the gun was not a flag, but a shard of metal that pulled all light that surrounded it inwards, absorbing and nullifying it. It struck the wall, and a haze of DarkLight formed there - a gateway useable by those for whom touching the power of creation is toxic.
Together, the trio walked through their gate, and it vanished behind them, leaving only a single sound in its wake.
"Ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
SUPERGIRL: S3EP22 - Worldkiller (May 2018)
Previously, on Supergirl…
Using the advanced technology aboard the Citadel, Alex has pinpointed the location of the Kryptonian city of Argo, which was set adrift in space by the destruction of Krypton. Now, as the Green Lantern Corps negotiates a truce over the Xanshin refugees and who gets control of Citadel with the Tamaraneans, Koriand'r has agreed to bring Kara and Alex to Argo. There, Kara has reunited with her mother Alura and learned the horrifying truth. Reign isn't dead as she was led to believe, and she's escaped her prison on Earth thanks to her creator, the Kryptonian witch Selena, who has stolen Kori's starship, leaving Kara, Alex and Starfire stranded on Argo with no way home…
Green Lantern John Stewart has been labelled MIA; his ring has yet to be found.
Earth…
Lena pushed a piece of rubble away from her, coughing and spluttering as she desperately tried to pull some oxygen into her lungs. Her side was throbbing something fierce, and bones were protruding from the skin of her right leg. The numbness of shock and Lena's iron will held back the pain for now, but they would fade before long, and she would be stuck here beneath the destroyed laboratory.
She'd been so close! The Harun-El, Black-Kryptonite, the material Winn had discovered and given to her, had worked. It had been separating Reign and Sam - splitting their consciousness. Sam had been winning! If she'd just had a few more hours of radiation exposure…
But she was gone now, and the Justice League's secret lab was utterly destroyed.
"Lena?!"
A voice? Who was that?
"Down here!" She croaked.
Two hands reached under the rock crushing her and heaved it out of the way, revealing…
"Mon-El?"
It was him, though he looked older for some reason. Kara's friend. The one that had left. His mother had kidnapped Lena the previous year.
"Can you move?"
"No."
He slid down into the crevasse in which she was stuck and lifted her with super-strength. A good thing too, because Lena's adrenaline was starting to run out.
"Reign's gone; Superman has gone after her alone…"
"What about the Flash? Can't he help…"
"He's stuck in Central City. Nothing can get in or out. There's this… this energy field around it, trapping everything inside."
Lena swallowed as Mon-El carried her towards the exit, getting in contact with the DEO for an emergency transport. It had taken the entire Justice League to take Reign down last time; Lena doubted even Superman could defeat her on his own.
As they reached the outside, the ground started rumbling… and it didn't stop.
Argo…
Kara and Alex stared in horror at the readings coming from Earth displayed on the High Council Chamber's enormous screen. The core was expanding, threatening to detonate the entire planet.
"Oh, Rao…" Kara breathed as Alex gripped her shoulder in a vice. "She's going to terraform the Earth."
"It'll kill everyone."
Barry! Ellie!
Kara's hands balled to fists, and she screamed, hoarse and guttural.
"Kara… honey, there's nothing we can do. We have no way to get there…" Alura exclaimed, rubbing a pattern into Kara's back she had so many years ago when Kara had been only a child.
"My husband is down there, my daughter is down there. I won't leave them! I can't."
Alura jerked back, stunned. Kara hadn't told her about Barry or Ellie. Alex, on the other hand, smirked something fierce.
"You married him. I knew you did! Why didn't you tell me!?"
"You're… you're a mother? I have a granddaughter…"
Kara could do nothing but stare at the screen in growing horror. There was no Stargate on Argo, they had no ships to escape.
"Kori… there has to be a way to call the Corps or Tamaran."
The Tamaranean Captain, standing a short distance away in respect, shook her head softly.
"Communications equipment doesn't work inside Argo, and we only had a small transport - my ship and all the other Tamaranean vessels are helping the evacuation of Xanshi."
"But there has to be…" Kara froze. "X'Light. I can hold X'Light just like sunlight. The Harun-El that powers Argo, Alex, could I use that as fuel?"
Alex shivered. "Even if you could, Kara, you can't survive the vacuum of space any more than I can. You can't just fly back to Earth."
But Kara wasn't thinking about flying.
She looked at her Legion ring on Alex's finger.
And had the worst idea in the history of worst ideas.
They descended into Argo City's reactor core, Alura following Alex and Kori in a kind of trance.
"What's her name?"
"Ellie."
A serene smile formed on Alura's face, despite the situation.
"Ellie… A good name. From Ellira?"
"Just Ellie. She's adopted," Alex explained.
Kori - currently the only one of them with powers - forced the doors open, hair flickering with fierce flames, and the four women entered the city's core. A giant shard of Black Kryptonite, connected to dozens of power rods, hung suspended in the centre of the room.
Kara shivered, then held her hand out to Alex. Biting her lip, she gave the Legion ring back to Kara.
"I don't understand? What is that?" Kori asked.
"It's a Legionnaire Surge Ring," Kara said, "Made of Nth-Metal from Thanagar, its capable of absorbing any form of Investiture, or Light, and use it to temporarily manipulate the fundamental forces of the universe. Usually, it's limited to personal flight, communication or softening high falls. However, if I overcharge it with Haren-El radiation, I should be able to tap the Speed Force and jump myself back to Earth."
"No way! You are not doing that. The Speed-Force will rip you apart! And that's if the Black Kryptonite doesn't do it first, and you'll certainly destroy the ring!" Alex exclaimed, trying to grab the ring back from her. But Kara had already placed the device on her finger.
"The Speed Force knows me, Alex. Through Barry. I'm the only one it might let through. And I'm not breaking any rules. The Speed Force is connected to all points in time. All I have to do is travel just far enough to stop Reign before she terraforms the Earth."
"Kara, don't be stupid…"
Kara locked eyes with Alex, desperate, pleading.
"You have to let me go. Barry is down there. Clark is down there. They'll both be fighting Reign. She… she almost killed them last time, almost killed me. Maybe they can stop her, maybe they can't. But I won't let them do it on their own."
Alex looked like she really wanted to argue, but in the end, acquiesced and gave her the smallest of nods.
"You are a hero, Kara Zor-El. X'Hal come again in truth," Kori said, bowing to her.
"Save your world if you can, but know that you will always have a place on Tamaran if you cannot."
"Kara…" Alura said, voice choking. "Please be safe. I just got you back."
"I'll try."
Kara spun back to the black rock and, ignoring her fear, her terror, focussed only on her need to save Barry, she pressed the ring to the Haren-El.
Purple, black energy flared all around her, and the Legion ring burned. Cracks started building in the Nth metal, a supposedly indestructible substance, and Kara, the radiation licking at her body, trying to scold her skin through the lead-lined suit, closed her eyes and searched for Barry's power. His lightning. The crackling surge of speed and energy and time that she had come to know so well.
She felt it, lying beneath the surface of reality, and in that torrential storm of lightning, she could almost see him - running laps around a wall of green energy. And she could see Ellie too. How?
Kara didn't have time to think about it. Instead, she grabbed hold of the lightning and pulled herself into the storm.
She opened her eyes and screamed as she plummeted down, down, through a sea of rainbow light and energy, islands of storm clouds all around her.
SUPERGIRL! YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE!
A voice, commanding, all-encompassing and all passionate and fierce, echoed through the force, the very sea of light tremble before it.
'I need to go home. He'll die if I don't!'
She didn't speak the words, but they transmitted across to the entity here regardless.
VERY WELL. SAVE THE RUNNER, DAUGHTER OF RAO.
A crack opened in the space below her, and she fell through it… and crashed into the DEO.
Kara rolled down the stairs, entire body smoking, electricity flaring around her and colliding with computers and lights. Coming to a stop, she groaned in pain, head spinning around and around and around. Her suit had melted in several places, and her right hand had burnt completely black, skin flaky, though thankfully she couldn't seem to feel it. Her Legion Ring was simply gone.
"Kara!"
Winn raced across the room, flanked by J'onn, Mon-El and a dozen guards.
"I'm… I'm okay. I think… Where's… where's Reign?"
"Kara?"
Sitting in a wheelchair next to the holo table, Imra, Evelyn and Brainiac 5 behind her, was Lena. She was in bad shape, more parts of her body in casts than not, and her face was caught frozen in an expression of… well, it wasn't horror or fury, so that was a good sign. Lena blinked, then she looked to Imra, blinked again, slid between Mon-El, J'onn and Winn, before finally coming back to Kara.
"I am the stupidest genius who ever lived."
J'onn dropped to his knees beside Kara and grabbed her burnt hand.
"What happened?!"
"Doesn't matter now," Kara said, gaze still on Lena.
'I'm sorry,' Kara mouthed. Oh, Rao had she just ruined her relationship with Lena entirely by accident?
Lena's expression softened into an awkward smile.
'I know,' she mouthed back, and a weight lifted itself from Kara's chest. She doubted they'd be entirely okay without a long-overdue conversation.
"Where's Superman and the Flash? Have they found Reign?"
"Superman's gone after her," Winn said, "we haven't heard anything back from him. Flash…"
"He's stuck in Central City," J'onn finished softly.
"Stuck?"
"With Ellie and the rest of his team. Nothing can get in or out."
Kara swallowed, nodding. Compartmentalise. You can't think about that right now. Stop Reign first.
"I'll go after Superman…"
"I know how to defeat Reign," Lena said, wheeling herself forward and pulling a cylindrical container from her pocket. It contained a dagger made of black stone. Black Kryptonite.
"It should split her back into Sam and Reign, then you can destroy the Worldkiller."
Kara nodded, and Imra stepped forward awkwardly.
"I can hold her for a moment, but only a moment before the Sage Force betrays me."
Kara's brain froze for a moment. The Sage Force? How could Imra... And then she felt just a bit like Lena undoubtedly did.
"Well Ellie," Kara said, raising an eyebrow, "this isn't how I expected my first bring your daughter to work day to turn out."
Kara's time-travelling daughter at least had the decency to look chagrined.
What none of them knew then, was that, on the opposite side of the world, another Speed-Force rift opened at the same time, spewing another Supergirl into a field of snow. Only, this Supergirl's left arm was burnt black, instead of her right.
One hour later…
Stephanie clung to the Batwing controls, her tears long since exhausted as she shot towards the source of the earthquakes rocking the Earth. Superman and Supergirl had to be there. They were her only hope now.
Dropping the plane below the cloud layer, she almost lost her stomach at what she found.
Two honest to god spaceships were playing dodge over what must be an alien building: a pyramid covered in spikes, but built from something that might have been obsidian. The first ship, which looked more human, was on the attack, pursuing a long, thin vessel with a massive thruster that spewed a red-tinted vaporous substance. Stephanie, trusting her gut, decided this was the enemy ship. Red was bad right?
She shot straight towards the thin ship and pulled her trigger. The Batwing's two retrofitted railguns started pouring rounds into the alien ship's hull, thunder cracking in her ears from the clouds and the gunfire. The ship exploded in a shower of fire and debris, and Stephanie banked sharply away. The second ship pulled off its run and angled towards her.
Meep!
Then her radio flared to life.
"Thanks for the assist," a woman's voice said, and Steph breathed a sigh of relief.
"Not a problem, alien bros," she said, instantly wincing. Alien bros? Really? Tim would be so mad at that… Dick would probably be proud, though.
"Um… maybe can you tell me what's going…"
Something crashed straight through the plane's right wing, tearing it clean off. It didn't even appear on the radar.
Alarms blared through the cockpit, and Steph swerved, trying to right herself. But completely down a wing, she had no choice. She was definitely going down.
She reached down and pulled her ejector seat, praying that Tim would be alive to chastise her for destroying another of Bruce's toys when she got back to Gotham. The cockpit flew off, and Steph shot into the sky. As soon as she reached the peak of her parabola and gravity reasserted its dominance, she flared her purple cape out behind her and started scanning the ground for somewhere she could glide or grapple to.
What she saw instead was Supergirl duelling with a figure in black in the air, beams of heart vision flaring all around her.
Holy motherfucking batfracks she hated her life.
Supergirl and Reign crashed back into the alien fortress, leaving an enormous opening in the roof for Stephanie to shoot towards. She pulled her grapple, and just as Babs had taught her, sighted on a ledge just inside. Hitting her mark, she folded her cape and snapped down into the hole.
An alien battle for the sake of the world. Yeah, she was so out of her depth it wasn't funny. But Supergirl and Superman… they were her only hope of finding Layla. She didn't know if Babs would wake up, Tim was in jail, and Cass and Dick were both just gone. He had them, she was sure of it.
The Supers were her only chance.
God, if she thought about what that fucking clown-faced psycho was doing to her baby girl…
She dropped to the dirt floor inside the fortress, and her jaw promptly fell open.
"Now, Mom!" A woman with glowing golden hair screamed, hands held to her forehead.
"I can help," a green alien guy exclaimed, rushing to glowing woman and placing his hands atop hers. Holy fuck was he a martian? That was so cool!
Superman, bleeding from a half dozen wounds, had Reign in a headlock. A man in a red suit was lying prone on the ground. Even from this distance, Steph could tell he was dead.
A few metres away from Stephanie, Supergirl rose from a collapsed wall, pulled a black bladed dagger from her boot and advanced towards Reign, lines of black tracing up her skin. Her right forearm was burnt black.
In the centre of the room was a giant pit like… Like a Lazarus Pit, but glowing with black energy. An alien Lazarus Pit.
"Hurry!" The golden-haired woman yelled, trembling something fierce as Reign snarled and tried to bite down on Superman's arm, screeching the entire time.
A new figure, dressed in gaudy total villain robes, rose from the far side of the pit and snarled, eyes glowing with red fire.
Kryptonian. Just fabulous. So what did Steph do? She shot her grapple line straight at supervillainTM, like a total dumbass.
The woman caught the hook with an uncaring hand, no doubt thinking it a bullet or ordinary projectile. She certainly didn't anticipate the line recoiling, and Stephanie's fist crashing into the side of her face. The bones in her hand all shattered at once, pain exploding up her arm, but it was enough to stagger the woman and send her heat vision off course. Twin beams of red hit the ceiling, as the two of them fell to the ground. Steph pulled a Batarang from her belt with her good hand and rammed it into the woman's eyeball. Not very elegant by her usual standards, but the eyes were always where you hit monsters in the movies. Unfortunately, Kryptonian eyes turned out to be just as invulnerable as the rest of her, so those movies had evidently lied to her.
As a result, Steph was the proud recipient of one hell of a punch to the ribs. She screamed, catapulting straight into the ceiling, and she only just avoided cracking her head on the obsidian.
But her distraction did its job.
Reign broke free of Superman's hold just as the glowing woman and martian man dropped unconscious like puppets, and Supergirl rammed the knife right into Reign's breast.
The alien monster creature thingo shrieked in utter pain, then she… she actually split into two different people, both of whom fell to the floor.
Supergirl then grabbed Reign and shot through the roof again. Stephanie face planted into the dirt.
"Ow."
Ow didn't really cover it. As after just two punches, she was more battered than after an entire brawl singlehanded back home.
SupervillainTM grabbed Stephanie's cape and hoisted her into the air.
"Hi, I'm Spoiler, nice to meet you. Can I get your stylist's name? Cause that cloak will totally go with my Death Eater cosplay."
Just as Stephanie's life was about to be snuffed, which was kind of annoying as she had shit that needed doing, Superman clocked her captor in the face, sending her crashing back into the wall. Then he caught Stephanie bridal style as she dropped like a sack of bones.
"I had that."
"Sure you did," Superman said. Usually, Steph would not have tolerated snark like that without responding in kind. However, given Superman's biceps were like ohmygod, and she was in a considerable amount of 'ow' right now, she decided to let it slide.
"It's over," came Supergirl's voice through a comlink in Superman's ear. Oh, thank God. "Reign will be serving an extended stay in the cold vacuum of space until she collides with the sun."
So they could just throw people into the sun? Maybe Supergirl would be willing to do that to Steph's literature teacher, the misogynistic ass.
"You're a long way from Gotham," Superman noted, and Steph nodded.
"Joker... he's going to destroy the entire city. He thinks it'll bring Him back. Now, Batgirl's in a coma, Red Robin's in jail, and Nightwing and Orphan…" Steph swallowed, whole body shaking, and not just from the pain.
"He has my baby girl. Please, you have to help me."
Superman's face hardened, eyebrow twitching.
Then he turned to the side. Martian man was gone, and a tall African-American man was now looking over the glowing woman and the dead guy.
"I'll take care of them. Help her."
Superman nodded, then raised his hand to the comm in his ear.
"Kara… I have to get to Gotham. J'onn and the Legion will bring Mon-El back to the DEO."
"… Okay, just… okay. I'll head for Central City. See if there's anything I can… anything I can do to help."
"Hold on," Superman said. Then they shot into the air, out one of the holes in the roof, and away into the sky.
THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES: S3EP18 - Hey, World
(April 2018, shortly before the Dome was placed around Central City)
"Why'd you call me here Z?" John Constantine asked as he stepped into the Particle Accelerator Ring of STAR Labs. The place was bloody garish, and though it wasn't used as a prison anymore, the cells still lined the walls. He also didn't think anyone had thought to dust the place in a while.
"I've just come from the Parliament of Trees. Swamp Thing called a meeting of the world's greatest magi," Zatanna said, stepping away from the door and walking out into the enormous ring. John followed, not entirely sure what the point of this was but going along with it anyway. He figured he owed her that much, given he'd helped create a magical theme-park/refuge for escaped magical convicts and not warned her about it.
"I didn't get an invitation," John noted, "Not very polite."
Zatanna rolled her eyes at him. "You aren't exactly the easiest man to invite these days, given you usually aren't in this time period."
"True," he conceded, "But you could have just left it in the House. I would have seen it… eventually."
Zatanna gave him a flat look.
"Oh. Right. Forgot I took away your key. My bad."
She continued onwards without comment, walking around the bottom of the accelerator ring. They continued until John could no longer see the cells or the door, though the ring itself looked basically the same.
"So, what did old Swamp Thing want?"
"He wanted answers. Answers none of us could give him."
John frowned. "What do you mean?"
Zatanna stopped suddenly, and, if not for his phenomenal sense of balance, he would have walked straight into her back. That… would not have been a good move.
"There's a blight infecting the Green. Something Swamp Thing has never seen before. He showed us an infected plant and… whatever it was certainly wasn't natural."
"Some kind of magical plague?"
She didn't answer immediately, instead reaching out with a hand and tracing a square shape in the air, muttering under her breath. A panel in the floor broke free, floating up into the air and revealing a ladder.
"Maybe. I did some research of my own, and, John… I found a lot more than even Swamp Thing knew." Now growing concerned, he followed her down the ladder. The room appeared to be some kind of storage or maintenance centre. Several old, empty crates lined the floor, and metal beams supported the roof. There was no illumination save the light from the entrance, so John drew a match from his pocket, threw it into the air, and used it to create a ball of fire. The flames revealed that the room wasn't far bigger than it had looked before. There was nothing special about it, save for a wooden table against a wall. It was towards the table that Zatanna led him.
"You probably haven't noticed it because you've been in the past, not to mention busy, but those of us more in-tune with the Source have started to sense it."
"Z, just spit it out already." Zatanna stepped up to the table and called his sphere of flame to her own palm. Lying on the table was a length of metal so black it seemed to suck in the light of the fire. He stepped up to it warily. It was shaped almost like a wizard's staff.
"There's a taint. A corruption leaching at our connection to the Source."
"That's impossible. You can't taint the Source. It's primordial energy."
"I don't know John!" She snapped, "But its there. Not in the Source, but almost obscuring it. Like a thin layer of oil. The Source is still pure, but you can't get to it without going through the filth. It's barely noticeable, and only when you're drawing lots of power, but its there, and I think it's what's causing the blight Swamp Thing found."
She turned to him, and John almost stepped back in shock. There was fear in her eyes. A deep, harrowing terror that made him shiver unconsciously.
"And I knew I'd felt it before. I only realised where when you woke Neron."
John glanced to the staff.
"On Earth X."
Zatanna swallowed. "The Source, it was blocked off there do you remember?"
"Yeah…"
"We could only use it once Cisco opened his breach."
"Like drilling a hole in the wall," he said, eyes locked on the metal.
"Exactly. Then, as soon as we arrived, the world started sinking into the pit. Into Its prison. I can't help but think that maybe Earth X didn't sink at all. Maybe…"
"It was dragged."
Constantine, steeling himself, stepped up to the staff. He twisted his hand, reciting a spell, and a network of red energy lines flickered into being around his hand like a glove. He held his hand out over the metal, and it immediately began to rattle on the table.
"I think… I think we might have fallen into a trap," she whispered, as if the louder she spoke, the more real it became.
"No think about it, love," he said. The staff started oozing a black tar-like substance, which immediately began to bubble upon contact with the air. The temperature immediately dropped, a dark cold falling about the room. The flames in Zatanna's palm died, and she lit her finger with a sphere of magic to compensate. John's breath began to frost. "We walked into it hook, line and sinker."
The staff shattered into a fine dust as a high pitched whine echoed through the room. The tar sat, bubbling on the desk for a brief moment, then, in a flash of bright white, it was sucked together into a sphere of darkness, which then promptly popped out of existence. Pulled back into the prison where it belonged.
They stood there in silence for several minutes, staring at the imprint in the table-top, before Zatanna spoke again.
"The destruction spell I tried to use on the staff… it should have blown it to pieces. It didn't, so we brought it back with us. After the attack, it was put in the weapons vault. I don't know who by. After I realised… I moved it down here, waiting for you to come back."
"That was an excellent idea," he muttered, "The curse on that staff… It was an Infection of some kind. Not Demonic… something lower than even Hell." He turned away from the table and looked towards the opening in the roof. The coldness was fading, but it was still deathly chilled. The cuffs of his jacket had frosted over.
"How long was it in the weapons vault?"
"A couple of weeks at least. We have no way to know who touched it. Who's been… Infected."
John placed a hand on Zatanna's shoulder. She was still looking at the table, at the scorch mark gouged into the wood.
She trembled in the cold, and though he couldn't see her eyes, he could remember the terror he'd seen there moments ago.
"All roads lead back to Darkness," she muttered into the shadows, "All roads lead back to Darkness."
THE FLASH: S4EP22 - The Pattern
September 2018
Barry skidded to a stop beside Ellie and Frost, both of whom were panting with hands on knees, and watched, transfixed, as the Dome came crashing down around them. Flakes of green energy falling to the ground like snowflakes on the wind.
Life returned to the city, everyone stumbling back to life as if they hadn't even noticed the Thinker's efforts. Those on the streets, people outside, could see the power raining down from the sky, and had at least a better understanding that something had happened. And given the Flash, Frost and Vibe were standing in the middle of city plaza opposite the Reverse Flash and Captain Cold, they naturally started screaming and running for their lives.
Thawne sucked in a deep breath.
"Oh, I do love that sound," he whispered. Then he turned to Barry and winked.
"See you next time, Flash."
Thawne's body blurred to lightning, then he grabbed Snart, who was just stumbling back to life, and Amunet, who was puking on the pavement, and vanished.
"Flash!" Joe, oh thank God or the Speed Force or whatever was up there that he was okay. Joe looking panicked, raced over to them, stopping as he caught sight of Cisco, leaning against a concrete railing with a dumb look on his face.
"We, so, totally, have to keep practising that. For science purposes."
"Hard pass," Frost said, holding her side as she scrunched her face. The next second, her hair faded back to brown, and her eyes shifted back to normal.
"Did something run me over?" She muttered, before collapsing to the stone, blinking deliriously.
"Dad… I can still hear him."
That snapped Barry out of his thrilled revelry. He turned to the side and found Ellie floating in the air, wrapped in violet light, eyes ablaze.
"Ralphy. I can hear his mind. Screaming, reaching for help. I… I think I can find him. Trace the pattern…"
Cisco pulled himself up as Barry stepped up to his daughter, cautiously.
"You can?"
"Not Thinker, just Ralphy. Maybe, because I knew him, it's different."
Barry glanced to Cisco as Joe helped Caitlin up.
"If Ralph's still alive, he'll still be in his body, right?"
"Right. Which means I can Vibe it, get us into DeVoe's pocket dimension." Cisco's eyes widened. "We can beat him. We can really beat him."
"He still has all the powers he stole," Caitlin reminded them, "And he still has the Sage Force."
"Not if I take them from him," Ellie said, an evil smile growing on her face as she dropped to the ground. They were starting to gather a crowd of onlookers.
"What do you mean?"
"He… he used me to hurt people. Now, I hurt him. I'm going to take away his toys."
Ellie - all of six years old, but seeming so much older at that moment - held her hand out to Cisco. He activated his visor, then grabbed her tiny fingers.
Both of them jerked, and a halo of violet light enveloped Cisco and Ellie both. Cisco yelled, then thrust his hand to the side, and a Breach formed in the middle of the square.
"I have it!"
"Dad! Follow the pattern."
Ellie threw out her own free arm, and… and a wall of shimmering violet light coalesced in the air, shimmering like a mirror.
Fuck it.
Trusting his daughter, Barry ran into the light.
He did not enter the Speed Force. This was very much not his domain.
It was an eternal abyss of pure nothing. Blackness eternal and infinite. But stretching through the abyss was a network of threads like the finest spider-silk, forming a great pattern that was utterly beyond his comprehension. It was on this network he ran, footsteps light as a feather, and with each movement, he gained a glimpse into the thread itself. Every string was a person somewhere in the Multiverse. He could even, incredibly, perceive himself—a golden thread crackling with electricity a short distance away.
A trail of violet led him along the highway of minds, pointed straight towards a thick, green thread entwined with a dozen others. The metas DeVoe had created.
'Unwind them, Daddy. I… Quickly, I can't hold this for long.'
He skidded to a stop inches from the Thinker's thread and hesitantly touched it.
"I'll try again!" DeVoe snapped, backhanding his wife into the pocket dimension's garish blue-white room.
"I can try again. I still have the Still Force. The Flash can't touch me! I will win in the end! I have all the time in the world, and the fastest mind to wield it!"
"They're going to beat you, Clifford!" Marlene yelled back, pulling herself off the ground as the Thinker sat down in his chair.
"Every time. You think emotions are a weakness, that attachment is a distraction? They prove you wrong every time, and you can't see it. Doing something over and over again but expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. You say these powers you've harvested, the bodies you've stolen, cured you? I don't think they have. You're insane."
Barry released the thread, then biting his lip, he touched one of the adjoining ones.
'Yahhhhh! Don't do that! Wait? Barry? Holy shit! Dude, help me out of here!'
Ralph. The idiot was still alive.
'I heard that!'
All of them were.
With delicate fingers, he started untying the threads the Thinker had wrapped around his own, and as soon as they disconnected, the silk lines yanked away from him, soaring across the abyss back to where the pattern dictated they should be. And each time, the Thinker's thread would shiver, weakening.
He grabbed the last thread, Ralph's, and pulled it free. And as he did, the green glow enveloping the Thinker vanished.
A smirk slid across his face, and letting Ralph snap back to where he belonged, Barry turned and raced home.
He shot out of the violet lightly just in time to catch Ellie as she collapsed.
A sonic boom cracked the sky, and then Kara was there, dropping to the pavement with tears in her eyes. She grabbed Barry's face, laughing with giddiness, and pressed her lips against his.
"Ewwww! PDA! Yuk!"
Barry and Kara separated, looking into each other's eyes and offering soft, loving smiles.
"Guys, there's still a bad guy to deal with," Cisco said.
"Go save the day," Kara whispered, pulling Ellie from him as she laughed. "I waited outside this fucking dome for five months, I can't wait a few more minutes."
Then Barry was springing away, running through Cisco's Breach and out into the pocket dimension.
Just in time to watch all of DeVoe's victims appear in flashes of violet light around him.
And every one of them looked supremely pissed.
The Present Day…
Kara Allen stepped into the Watchtower control room and smiled softly as her gaze settled on her husband and eldest daughter standing side by side, looking out at the world below.
Her world.
Ally followed as Kara walked across the metal gangway, and Barry turned around at the sight of her, grinning like an idiot.
Her idiot.
"Hey, you. Long few days?"
"Long few days," Kara agreed, stepping up beside him. He put an arm around her shoulder's, and Kara leaned up against him, breathing in the scent of him. Of electricity and ozone.
"Another us," Barry said. "Another multiverse.
"One where you married Iris," Kara noted with an amused grin. "And I thought the Bizzaroverse was bonkers."
Barry winced.
"Oliver… our Oliver. Do you think he knew what he was doing when he…"
"I do. I think, in his last moments, he must have seen his other self holding the power of creation. They must have worked together, helped each other. Its the only way."
She leaned her head against his shoulder, pulling Ellie into her side with her other hand while Barry pulled Ally to him.
They stood together as a family, looking out the window at the shimmering Earth, and knew that, for a moment, everything was perfect.
"I've been thinking," Kara said eventually, "that we should really take a holiday. A cruise-ship through the Caribbean maybe."
"You can't tan," Barry noted dryly.
Kara frowned.
"The Fjords then? We could do Alaska or Norway. Or maybe a skiing holiday."
"Sounds like a plan."
In unison, Ellie and Ally both winced. Kara and Barry looked to each of them.
"What?"
"I'd recommend skipping 2020 if you want to go on a cruise ship," Ellie said.
"Honestly, I skip 2020 as a rule," Ally added, shaking her head. "Lockdown is for people who can't time-travel."
The two girls laughed at their inside joke, and Barry shrugged it off. He had two beautiful daughters, his friends, a life, and Kara. In the end, that was all he'd ever wanted.
A family.
The End
Barry and Kara will return in Crisis: Knights of Metal