MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, JSA HEADQUARTERS
Jay Garrick, the original Flash, was cleaning up the museum section in the new JSA Headquarters. It had been a few months since the JSA had reformed with both old blood and new. Jay was happy to be a part of a team again and even happier to be teaching youngsters what being a hero meant. While the Star-Spangled Kid, Atom Smasher, and Hourman were fine heroes in their own right, they still needed some guidance at times, and Jay was more than happy to provide it. He was the second ever "Mystery Man" in recorded history, after all, he had a few notches on his belt.
Jay was losing himself in thoughts of the past and the future, friends found and lost, when an alarm began to sound throughout the headquarters. Jay dropped everything and zipped to the observation room, where he began to assess the emergency.
An amorphous red blob of a demon with tentacles, a mouth filled with razors, and a wet, fleshy texture had reared its head in Queens and was razing the borough. Jay watched, transfixed on the monitor as it picked up a civilian, and was about to roast them with Hellfire. That was all Jay needed to see before he snapped to his senses and tore out of the building and into Queens.
The world blurred around him as he made his way to Queens, where he was naturally the first on the scene, but he doubted the others would be far behind. The first order of business was evacuation. Kicking into overdrive, he ripped the civilian clear of the demon and dropped them far away, he returned to the street where the demon was rampaging and cleared the immediate vicinity of any bystanders. Once that was done, he switched to combat mode.
Circling the demon, Jay let the Speed Force lightning flow off of him and onto the beast.
The creature swatted at Jay and might have landed a hit had a line of green fire not restrained its tentacle. Turning for the briefest possible moment, Jay saw that Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern, who went by Sentinel these days, had arrived on the scene with Carter Hall, also known as Hawkman, and his son, Hector, the new Doctor Fate.
Alan constructed flaming green stakes that speared through the demon's tentacles and into the ground, while Carter's warrior instincts kicked in, and flew towards it with his mace raised and expertly cutting through the air to avoid the blasts of Hellfire from its fanged mouth.
Carter raised his Nth Metal mace above his head and brought it down onto the beast's bulbous body. Screeching in pain, the demon lashed out and strained against Alan's stakes, eventually ripping one free of the ground. Lashing out with incredible speed, the monster wrapped a tentacle around Carter and tossed him into Jay, sending them both flying back into a wall, dazed and disoriented. The demon then turned their way and opened its maw and another blast of Hellfire came hurtling toward the veteran heroes, about to send them to their maker. The orange glow was soon replaced with green radiance, as Alan had stepped between Jay, Carter, and the blast conjuring a bubble around the three of them. The shield Alan constructed with the power of the Starheart began to crack under the heat of the demonic flame.
Alan didn't frighten easily and didn't fear for his own safety, but he knew that if he failed to hold back the Hellfire two of his oldest and dearest friends could die" He concentrated his will into teleporting the three of them out of harm's way. What he failed to notice was Jay attempting to phase the three of them through the ground. The combination of Jay's vibrations and the Starheart's power ripped a hole in the fabric of space and consumed Jay, Carter, and Alan.
Seeing the loss of his father and compatriots, Doctor Fate, unleashed all his power on the demon in a seething fit of rage, tearing the boundaries of time and space apart, opening a gateway to the deepest pits of Hell, from which the demon would never escape again.
Once the demon was banished, Hector removed his helmet as tears fell down his face and he cursed the unfairness of it all. Three of the world's oldest and greatest heroes were gone just like that. With a mistake that shouldn't have been made after sixty years of cooperation.
MUSUTAFU, JAPAN, ANOTHER REALITY
Coming to his senses Jay felt the hard asphalt against his body. Jay also felt an electrical sensation in his body. It wasn't new. His dimensional frequency was out of sorts. It happened a few times before on adventures with Barry Allen, Jay's now deceased successor as the Flash. Like that time they went to the dimension that was straight out of those science-fiction novels Barry had loved so dearly. The next thing Jay did was out of habit after every time he got knocked out. He looked around for his helmet. Finding it a few inches above his head, he got on his knees and picked it up, setting it right back on his head. He then saw Alan and Carter on the ground. Carter was getting his bearings while Alan was on all fours, sweating and panting heavily. Looking up, Jay realized a crowd had formed around them.
Standing up, Jay dusted off his clothes and activated his comlink, but was unsurprisingly met with static. They were in a different dimension after all.
Jay took a moment to listen to what was being said by the crowd. It was in a language he spoke fluently: Japanese.
Carter finally stood up and asked Jay, "What's going on?"
"Stuck in another dimension. My frequency is all out of sorts and Alan doesn't look fit to be doing any teleporting. I think we're in a version of Japan, though," Jay explained.
As Jay finished speaking, another voice spoke up in Japanese, "Alright, coming through, make way!"
The man wore a gas mask and a cowboy hat with a large "S" on it and carried a handgun, which immediately made Jay think of his late friend Wesley Dodds, the Sandman. While Wesley's uniform was a three-piece suit, it was clear this stranger was going for a cowboy aesthetic. Jay still found the few similarities enough to make him miss his friend.
The man finished pushing his way through the crowd and stopped before the Justice Society members, asking "You guys heroes?"
Jay stood silent for a moment, caught off guard by the similarity to his late friend, before coming to his senses and saying in Japanese, which he once learned in about six minutes sixty years ago, "That we are."
"They call me Snipe. You?" Sandman-lookalike said, extending his hand to shake.
"I'm the Flash," Jay said, taking Snipe's hand.
"Hawkman," Carter introduced himself.
"Who's that? A villain? He looks pretty beat up," Snipe said, looking behind Jay at Alan's prone form.
"That's our teammate, Sentinel. He exhausted a lot of energy in a fight," Carter explained, also speaking fluent Japanese thanks to his many lifetimes of experience.
"Fight? What fight?" Snipe asked, looking around.
"It was pretty far away. Sentinel expended a lot of energy to get us to safety," Carter said.
"I see," Snipe said, looking at the lightning bolt emblazoned on Jay's chest and asked, "You got some kinda electricity Quirk?"
Jay began to answer when the sound of screeching tires and squealing sirens cut him off. Looking behind him, Jay saw a car round the corner followed by a handful of police cruisers.
The cars were headed towards the crowd that had formed around the heroes in the street.
Not wasting another moment, Jay transformed into a blur of motion as he zipped back and forth across the street, ferrying Carter, Alan, and the bystanders to safety. He was on his way back for Snipe when the native hero dove out the way of the oncoming car and fired his handgun, each bullet striking a tire. The car flipped over and Jay wasted no time jumping into the car in midair and getting the thugs to safety before the car landed onto its top.
After putting the thugs down, one of them pulled a gun on Jay and fired. Jay's perception of time slowed to a crawl and the colors of the world were muted into a bluish-gray. The slide on the handgun slid back, the shell casing ejected from the top and a bullet slowly exited the barrel as an explosion propelled it forward. Jay observed all these things as the bullet slowly swam through the air toward his face. Reaching out his hand, Jay plucked the bullet out of the air and dismantled every screw holding the gun together, making it fall apart in the thug's hand, and repeating the process with the other two. Jay was caught off guard when one of the thugs shot his hand out and oil spurted from his palm, spraying Jay in the face. Blinded, Jay could hear the thugs begin to scamper away, but they were quickly cut off by the wind blown by Carter's wings. The sounds of violence soon followed. When the cracking and thudding ended, Jay knew Carter stood victorious.
Jay vibrated at super speed, and the oil jumped off his face. With his vision now cleared, Jay saw the trio of criminals laying in a heap at Carter's feet.
The police, just now getting out of their squad cars, approached the dazed criminals and took them into custody.
One of the officers approached Alan, who was now lying on his back and still sweating and panting.
Jay zipped to Alan's side.
"Is he a villain?" the officer asked.
"No. He's my friend," Jay answered.
"I see. We're going to need your names for the report as well." the officer said.
"Flash, Sentinel, and Hawkman," Jay said pointing to each of them respectively.
"Thanks. Is your friend injured?"
"Nope. Just exhausted," Jay said.
"I'll be… fine… in a few…" Alan said, weakly raising his hand to wave away any concern that Jay or the officer may have had.
"I think we'd best be going," Carter said, approaching Jay and Alan.
"Agreed," Jay said.
Carter scooped up Alan into his arms and flew off, with Jay racing after him, the bystanders snapping pictures or watching in awe.
Flying to the other end of the city and making sure they were away from prying eyes, Carter flew up to a hotel window. After making sure it was unoccupied, Carter tried to open it, but the window was unsurprisingly locked. In a soothing tone, Carter urged Alan, "C'mon, pal, use some of that willpower and phase us through the wall. You can rest in a nice bed after that."
Alan groaned, sweat pouring down his head like a waterfall, but complied. Carter and Alan were engulfed in the Green Flame's energy and passed through the window. Carter set Alan gently down on a bed and opened the window from the inside.
Jay ran up the wall and climbed through the window and into the room himself a second later.
"So when does your dimensional frequency fix itself?" Carter asked, crossing his arms and gazing out the window, making sure they weren't followed.
"I'm not sure. Sometimes it takes hours, other times months," Jay said, "Besides, I'm not sure Alan is up for dimensional travel at this moment."
Carter grunted in response, taking off his wing harness and mask, and setting down his mace and shield before lying down on the bed opposite Alan, and closing his eyes for the night.
Seeing that both beds were taken, Jay opted to sleep on the couch, wondering what the similarities and differences this world had to their own.