"Is it just me, or do these guys always wind up needing our help?" Willow grinned, nudging Wally's side with her elbow. He chuckled, folding his arms and casting an amused look at the gathered heroes.

"Oh yeah, they can never finish a job on their own." Not a second later, both the young adults were driven back by the dual impacts of thin bodies moving at super speed suddenly crashing into them, arms grabbing on for a tight hug. Both Bart and Brett were blabbering out their apologies at super speed, too, regretful tears leaking from their goggles.

Once upon a time, neither Kid Flash would have been able to make out even a quarter of the words, but after six months absorbing energy from the Speed Force... Well, to their ears, the new KF's didn't even sound like they were getting the words out at full capacity.

Then the hug-fest grew when the adult Flashes charged in as well, getting their respective grips around around both the younger heroes.

"Uncle Barry... Bart... I know... you guys... missed me... But I need to breath." Wally managed to gasp out. Instantly, the grips loosened, though neither released fully. Barry pulled his head back enough to look his nephew up and down before speaking.

"Wally, I'm so sorry-" Flash had to pause to keep his words from devolving into sobbing like the teen beside him. "If I'd known, that you ended up here - we would have come a lot sooner. You know that, right?"

The redhead grinned. "Of course I know, Barry. But that's okay that you didn't, 'cause we've been dealing with a problem here that you guys wouldn't have even noticed until it was too late."

Instantly, the other speedsters, and indeed all the heroes who'd gathered close to see and smile at the long lost KFs, were listening intently.

"See, we're pretty sure you all have already heard about it by now, but there's a big, nasty interdimensional being that's gone and infested the Speed Force."

"We're calling it the Consumer, for lack of a better phrase." Willow put in.

"Yeah, because that's about all it does: absorb the energy, get bigger, and start turning out this misty stuff." Wally gestured to the clouds around them, giving several less mature minds the unsettling thought that they'd been walking through and fighting in monster excrement of a sort...

"And what's just as bad, as this thing's eaten more and more of the Speed Force, it's gotten some bonus powers. Before coming here, the Consumer was only able to shift itself over a dimensional barrier, and then had to stay where it landed to recuperate a while."

"But now-"

"But now it's managed to reach into two dimensions simultaneously and snatch over a dozen superheroes." Bart interrupted, anxiety taking over his features as the teen wiped away the last of his guilt tears.

"Right. The Consumer wants me and Wally to stop putting the kibosh on its eating habits, so the thing went and grabbed our oldest friends as hostages."

"And now, we've got to save them." The two KFs finished in unison.

-DS-

Seeing her mentor and boyfriend so close had ignited a desperate hope inside of Dixie, which had a hard time surviving after she and the others were pulled back through a fog bank. Even worse was the struggle to breathe, as the tendrils hadn't loosened their grip in the slightest. Everyone seemed to be having the same trouble, effectively silencing the earlier chatter. Dixie wished that Mar'gann and M'gann's telepathy was working in the weird place, because she really could have used some sort of noise to distract her.

Almost on cue, from the shimmering expanse of orange that extended off to the right, a distinct rumbling noise emerged. Dixie and most of the others squinted as they tried to discern what the cause was. Apollo in particular was keeping his eyes peeled, desperately hoping for something that wouldn't be possible. But, unless Brett had come to this place, there wouldn't have been anyone else...

"Th-there!" Artemis gasped out, just as a pair of figures burst from the glowing field and ran right underneath them. The pair were followed by another, and two more after that. All six of the runners continued on into the mists on the left, out of which the same unearthly shrieks of rage from earlier erupted.

Thoroughly confused by this point, Dick wasn't sure what to expect next - but it certainly wasn't for an airborne group of Thanagarians and Amazons to appear beside alongside the captive heroes. The Hawkwoman that he was familiar with hovered next to him, her mace crackling with orange energy as she swung at the tendrils holding him. Mere seconds later, Dick was able to breathe properly again, held and supported by an arm around his waist.

"Are you alright, Nightwing?" Hawkwoman asked as they quickly descended, the others not far behind.

"F-fine... I think." He answered after a moment. "What happened?"

"I think you'd take the explanation better from your former mentor." Setting the young man carefully on his feet, she began to guide him in the direction that the others should be waiting. A pair of furious tendrils snapped towards them, deflected by Hawkwoman's newly Speed Force infused mace. Her husband did the same, guiding forward a stumbling Rocket a few feet behind them. The group pulled closer together, the heroes not recently freed from captivity doing their best to defend those still weakened from being prisoners.

Then, the task became markedly easier when the rest of the League and Team arrived out of the mists, everyone easily pushing back the enraged tendrils after the energy upgrades the pair of Wests and endowed them with.

As a man of science, a part of Batman's mind was intrigued as to how the transfer had worked, but the majority of him was focused on fighting - an effort that was redoubled once he saw his grown ward being supported by Hawkwoman. Within moments, his orange-glowing batarangs had sliced through an overhead gathering of tendrils, and the Gotham hero took the brief reprieve to hurry to Nightwing's side.

The nineteen year old gratefully leaned into him as Hawkwoman leapt skyward, and Batman ran a careful eye over his boy's exhausted frame. "Okay?"

"I've had worse, you should recall." Dick gave him a fleeting smirk. "So, what exactly is going on?"

"We're in the Speed Force. An interdimensional entity has been consuming its energies. It tried to take you and the others as hostages, but Wally and Willow were able to-"

"Whoa, whoa, hold up - it is Wally? He's really here? Alive?!" Batman nodded silently, causing his old partner to break out into a massive grin. Suddenly, being suspended midair by slimy tentacles for hours on end didn't seem quite so bad an ordeal to go through, since it apparently meant the return of his formerly-deceased best friend.

Folks, I am so, so sorry. The months of non-work on this story have been among the most busy and pain-filled that I've had in many a year. I made it through high school, I started sending query letters to literary agents to get my first books published, I had a fall-out with my dad that means I haven't spoken to him in three months and don't plan to for the forseeable future... Oh, and I'm officially a college student now. That's a change, from Texas to Colorado. My roommate teases me about how cold I'm getting already...

Anywho.

I'll be going back to work on my older stories, and won't post anything new from my reservoir of creativity until AFTER this and other things are actually DONE. If you'd like to provide input on what stories I present next (be they Young Justice, Transformers or other), take a look at my profile page for a list of future projects.

Take care and please don't launch any rotten fruit at me for being so late with this,

-Triscribe