FLASH
Issue #8
"Futurebound – Part One"
My name is John Fox and I am so out of my league it's not even funny.
A few minutes ago seven intimidating looking individuals popped up out of nowhere and knocked on Jay Garrick's front door. Since he's the first Flash from the World War Two era, it's assumed that not everyone that comes to say hello is friendly. The man has built a list of enemies. And when the new arrivals appear to be alternate versions of some of the most powerful people I've ever read about in the history holos, you should probably ready for a fight.
"You want to run that by us again?" Jay asked. He's standing beside me with his arms crossed and I'll be damned if he doesn't look every bit the hero he used to be. I raised my eyebrow at his question, crossed my arms accordingly, and tried to fix myself up with the same stare he had going.
My stare was returned by several of the seven figures, the foremost of which looked to be an analogue for Superman. To top that, he even identified himself as Superman, which makes me all the more confused. He definitely looks the part: big shoulders, red and blue color scheme, a couple curls of hair dangling over his forehead, and what could be considered a broad emblem on his chest. But he's not the Superman I know. He looks more like an actor that plays Superman on TV.
While "Superman" opened his mouth to answer I noticed that the other six people behind him were looking curiously around the chamber I led them to. It's filled with a few odds and ends that I managed to salvage from the destruction of the Museum, and I can totally understand how it might appear to them. Even though the Flash Museum was lying in a pile of rubble seventy feet above our heads, where ground level is, the chamber constructed beneath it by what Jay described to me as the Dark Flash was still intact. I'm not sure on the specifics, as the history of this century was mostly lost due to several Crisis complications, but from what I understand hypertime was involved and a skewed version of Wally West.
(Check way back to Flash #150 from 1999 for that whole story! – D)
"We're the Justice Legion Alpha and we hale from the 853rd century," the pseudo-Superman replied. "I understand how this may seem strange to you, but—"
"No, I believe that part," Jay said with a wave of his hand. "What I want you to explain again is why you're here. You've been to our time period before and the last visit didn't turn out so well for us."
One of the figures, whose entire body seemed to be comprised of liquid, yet retained a solid shape and was somehow denser than water, shot a curious look to the brown-robed and silent man in the corner. Superman also paused and looked back at the robed one.
"Hourman?" Superman stated. "Are you sure you brought us to the right time?"
"My rex-circuitry is unable to make an incorrect calculation, Superman," the robed Hourman answered. He stepped forward and pulled down the hood of his robe, revealing a yellowish head with red lines where his cheek bones should be. He looked to me to be a robot of some sort. "This is the correct day and these are the correct people we sought. That one is John Fox, the key to solving our problem."
I would have blushed if my face wasn't already red. Now that I mainline the Speed Force, empowered directly by Wally West himself, I'm able to manipulate the Force into condensed energy, thus creating a stunning red costume for myself that covers my entire body, including my face. It's devoid of friction and even grants me limited protection from attack. I made sure to incorporate a yellow lash of lightning from shoulder to hip in honor of my namesake.
"That's me alright," I offered, but they didn't seem to be paying any attention to me.
Standing just behind Superman was an eerie looking creep dressed in black. He had points on top of his head that reminded me a little too much of a certain Dark Knight. "Perhaps Ares has done more damage to the continuum than we originally thought," he said, his voice low and scratchy.
"If that is the case," a chalk-white female added, "then we have no time to waste. My ancestor fought valiantly against Ares until the very end, and still she perished. His meddling with hypertime could very well be the end of us all."
(You did read the JUSTICE WAR event, didn't you? – D)
"Yes, Wonder Woman, the damage Ares inflicted on the realm of hypertime did cause fluctuations," Hourman said, "but the worlogog is intact, which means that our mission still stands as presented. Ares was soundly defeated with the majority of this dimension none the wiser."
"Unless I miss my guess," a man with long white hair said, "we should probably keep it that way."
"Mitch?" Jay suddenly asked. "Mitch Shelly? Is that you?"
"You know him?" I blurted out.
"Know him?" Jay replied as he walked over to sake hands with the man. "Who doesn't know the Resurrection Man?"
The two shook hands and I felt like a little kid watching a pair of sports stars meet on the pitcher's mound. The Resurrection Man was one of the few names and histories that had survived through the centuries. His adventures were ones that most kids studied growing up from my own timeline. Apparently Mitch Shelly had lived up to his name and stayed alive all the way until the 853rd century.
"It's good to see you, Jay," the Resurrection Man said. "I didn't want to say anything until you had recognized me. Messing with history and all that."
"So you're with this Legion group in the future, huh?"
"I'm more or less their tactician. But given some recent developments in our ranks I tagged along for the ride."
"Sorry to interrupt," I said. So sue me. It's not like I have to be the center of attention, but I hate being out of the loop all the damn time. "But I think we're getting a little off track. What do I have to do with your mission?"
"Through my studies of the worlogog," Hourman explained, "I have discovered variances in our own timeline that are shifting. The original cause of these fluctuations seems to be an altercation concerning Ares in an alternate dimension. That conflict has since been put to rest, but the connection between space and time is still askew. I hypothesize that the fluctuations we detect in our own time will eventually flow backwards until it reaches the beginning of creation, thus annihilating all of existence."
"So where do I come in?"
"One of the variances I have detected is the fact that your own history in our time has ceased to exist. You were meant to become a member of the Justice Legion Alpha but that event never transpired."
"So you're telling me that at some point in my future I travel to the 853rd century and join up with you guys? Cool."
"No," the Batman creep interrupted. Apparently future-Batman is just as rude as present-Batman. "What he's telling you is that you should have already joined us by this point in your life. You shouldn't be standing here right now."
Oh. Wow. Nothing quite kicks you in the brain like someone from the future telling you that you shouldn't exist as you are. I know that with this stronger link to the Speed Force through Wally I'm more deeply rooted in the time/space continuum. As a former tachyon physicist, I understand the subtleness of that link. I've done so much time-hopping that my body is infused with tachyons.
"Are you sure it's Ares' fault?" I said. "I don't exist in time like anyone else, thanks largely to the power source I'm linked to. Perhaps you're wrong—"
"No, he's right," Mitch said. "Hourman is never wrong. Not about this, kid."
"But since Ares was soundly defeated and the repercussions continue," the chalk-white Wonder Woman said, "it is now up to us to solve the problem. Since you stand out as an anomaly and you admit to having a unique link to the timestream, you are our best option in finding an answer before it is too late."
Hurray for me. I'm the chosen one, or something. "So what do we do now?"
"Now we track down whatever is keeping the problem going," Superman said.
Hourman stepped in front of me and held out a strange device to my chest. It was silver with several moving parts sliding into, around, and through each other. "This is the worlogog," the android told me, "a virtual map of time. Once I link it to your unique position in the timestream it should be able to lead us to the when the problem is."
"It will feel a bit…surreal," the man made of liquid, who just had to be their Aquaman, told me.
"Yes," Hourman added. "You may see some visual inconsistencies while I work."
And he wasn't lying, as I soon found out. A invisible pressure hit my chest, stemming from the worlogog. Hourman slid a few of the puzzle pieces in the device around, making adjustments as he saw fit. It was then that I noticed the only member of their group that had yet to speak, a relatively short woman standing in the back ignoring all of us. As the unseen force spread out to my limbs and sunk through my chest, anchoring my position in the timestream I assumed, I began to see images fade in and out around her.
She was beautiful. I was surprised that I hadn't noticed her before now. Even though a bird-like helmet covered the majority of her head, she carried herself delicately and her features looked soft and smooth. She was thin, making her short stature all the more obvious. She couldn't have stood higher than my shoulders. A yellow and green bodysuit covered most of her, except for her forearms, which were covered by thick golden gauntlets that matched her helmet. And, of course, there were the wings.
If this was a visual inconsistency, I didn't exactly hate it.
Rising out of her shoulder blades and looped over her collarbone to where they latched in the front of her neck was a stunning set of golden wings. The material, whatever it was, looked thin but durable. I hadn't ever met someone from Thanagar, but if that planet still existed in the 853rd century then I was sure she came from there.
The images surrounding her, fading in and out like someone was flicking through the channels, were mainly of a tall figure embracing her. She didn't seem to be aware of them, and as soon as the pressure of Hourman's procedure began to dissolve, so did the flickering images.
I shook my head and said, "Did I pass?"
"This was not a test," Hourman said quizzically. He looked over his shoulder at Superman. "We have the locations secured. There are three timeframes that demand our immediate attention, all of which are in our own time."
"We're coming with you," Jay stated.
"I do not think it wise to—" Aquaman began to say, but Mitch held up his hand.
"It would be an honor," the Resurrection Man blurted out as he clapped Jay on the shoulder.
Wonder Woman rubbed at one of her bracelets. "We should split up," she said. "Striking all three points in the timestream simultaneously would be prudent."
"Hold on a second," I said, causing everyone to look at me, even the bird woman in the back. "We can't just go trotting off through time at the drop of a hat."
"We'll be back a few seconds after we leave, I'm sure," Jay assured me, which prompted Hourman to nod. "Besides, you were the reason they came here. It's only appropriate that you go along. And it would be rude if I didn't come too!"
"Same old Jay," Mitch mumbled.
"Then it's settled," Superman said. "Three teams. Your objective is to locate whatever is maintaining the fluctuations and eliminate it. Hourman will supply us with the means to communicate through the timestream."
"Jay, Wonder Woman, and I will take one of the locations," Mitch offered.
"Fine. Batman, you lead Hourman and Aquaman to the second location."
"So that puts me with you?" I inquired.
"And me."
My attention was turned back to the avian beauty who had somehow managed to come within a few yards of me without making a sound. Her slim jaw hung under a soft smile behind her helmet, making me wonder just what the rest of her looked like. "I'm Hawkgirl, the newest recruit to the Justice Legion."
Yep. It was a good thing that my face was covered, otherwise I might have insulted the future-alien by staring too hard.
"They have left the past and are headed here."
A machine hummed in the background behind the two men staring off into the void that was the display screen of the machine. On it they watched as the Justice Legion Alpha and the pair of Flashes faded from view and entered the timestream.
"Yes, I can see that much for myself," replied a bearded man with a touch of disdain in his voice. "If this is all the information that you can offer me then you are no more useful than my own equipment. I designed this machine several hundred years ago, which makes you almost as obsolete as it now is."
"I can feel him moving through time," the first responded. "My own link to the Speed Force is as strong as it ever was, Vandal Savage. I will be able to anticipate their attack."
"Again, this is information I do not need." Vandal Savage, the immortal that had plagued a plethora of heroes for centuries, placed his hands behind his back and sighed. His purple coat was adorned with numerous metals he had not rightfully earned from countless worlds, and his hair was braided with strands of finely woven hairs from extinct animals from across the galaxy. "Seeing as how I was the one that placed the stop-gaps in the timestream and caused the repercussions moving into the past in the first place, I know exactly where they plan to strike. It is only a matter of patience at this point. In fact, I begin to wonder why I allied with you in the first place."
The other man, standing nearly as tall as Savage, bore dark skin and golden gauntlets. Other than his navy blue pants and boots, he was naked, unaffectedly by the cold of Savage's home. He was not accustomed to working with someone that could not bend to his will. He hated that he had to rely on this immortal for such simple things, but soon the guidance offered would be null and he would gladly sever their relationship.
"We had a bargain," he said as lightning flashed in his eyes.
"Yes, indeed," Savage said. "You empower my planetary engine and I give you John Fox. But once the Legion is here, could I not entice this Flash to do what you promised?"
"His control over the Speed Force is impressive, but he is no where near as knowledgeable as me. He would likely destroy your precious engine."
"What is risk to an immortal?"
"Betray me and I will ensure that John Fox is dead before you can 'entice' him."
Savage scoffed as he stroked his beard absentmindedly. "Very well. I see why you were once a powerful adversary to Wally West. Our deal stands…for now."
Vandal Savage watched through the display screen of his machine shift again, now focusing on another point in space and time. It was the first location that the Legion had dispatched to, which they would soon find to be a trap. Once John Fox was in his control and his engine empowered, he could kill his swift associate and be free to conquer.
He chuckled softly to himself, thinking of the looks on his enemies' faces when they saw just who his ally was.
Where time travel is concerned, there are too many variables going at once to make an estimated guess of several things. Positioning in the continuum is the least of my worries. Usually you land on your feet, but even if you don't you can usually right yourself with nothing more than a skinned knee and a little embarrassment.
But there will always be one constant: nausea.
The moment our physical bodies are wrenched out of the timestream I feel my insides do a back flip. I may be the Flash, but that doesn't give me a cast-iron stomach.
"We're here," Superman told me. He doesn't look the worse for wear. Of course he doesn't. He wouldn't be Superman if he did. "Jali, get a better look around while I use my super-ESP to scan the area."
"Super-ESP?" I inquired while Jali, Hawkgirl, lightly slipped into the air over my head by a few dozen feet and began to spiral as she ascended. "I don't recall Superman having super-ESP."
"My ancestor married into an alien race that granted my bloodline several more powers," Superman answered. "This area seems devoid of sentient life. We should keep moving."
The area in question was a barren dessert filled with nothing but rocks, a horizon, and sand. Oh, and the sand was blue. Hawkgirl sailed by overhead, pointing with an outstretched hand toward a butte in the distance.
"Hourman directed us there," she called down. "I don't see anything other than a cave nearly halfway up the formation."
Superman nodded and turned back to me. "Watch your step. This is one of Neptune's moons. The landscape was torn apart sometime during the 651st century. Aquaman said he recently encountered the Weaponeers of Qward here."
"I'll be careful," I replied. "You just try and keep up"
I don't consider myself a showoff, but with Jali watching I felt a little compulsion to, how do you say, exert some effort. A streak of red was left in my wake, juxtaposing the blue sand rather strikingly if I do admit. My feet punched into the soft terrain like pistons, leaving a pattern of alternating divots under my afterimages. The butte was coming up fast. I could have been there nearly instantaneously, but I wasn't looking to move faster than Hawkgirl's eye could follow. Where's the fun in that?
To my surprise, Superman appeared beside my after just a few seconds. Whatever happened to his bloodline, it sure hadn't been diluted over the centuries. He seemed just as fast as the first Superman and wasn't batting an eyelash at the pace I was keeping. He cocked his head to the side and shot me a smirk.
About halfway to the butte, the ground began to rumble. It wasn't enough of a quake to throw me off balance, but from the look on Superman's face I understood that this was out of the ordinary, even for one of Neptune's moons.
He pulled up short and I followed suit. Waves of indigo sand splashed up from the sudden dragging stop. Particles being pulled along from our run washed over us as the atmosphere caught up. Superman looked around with his head tilted as if listening.
"Quake? Or is someone buried alive down there?" I inquired.
"This moon's core was virtually obliterated during a Manta raid and all the tectonic plates were fused. A quake is impossible."
"I thought there was no sentient life."
"Me too," Superman answered.
As if mocking us, a humongous black sandworm exploded out of the ground only a few yards from where we stood. It's black coils were shiny and dusted with the blue sand of the moon, and it towered over us like a skyscraper. They sure make'm big in the future.
I dodged to one side and ran around behind it, hoping to stay out of it's immediate line of fire. Superman took to the air and headed straight for it's head, his fists outstretched over his head. For the life of me he was going to ram it.
I watched as his fist punch caught the thing just under the mouth. It buckled back and wavered, but as soon as it steadied itself it's huge mouth opened and a long, black tongue wrapped around his upper body. Superman struggled against the monster's tongue but was caught in place, at least for the moment.
Just then, a second black sandworm exploded out of the sand just behind me. I zipped between the two and avoided the second sandworm's tongue. It lashed at the sand and left a dent the size of a person in the ground.
"Flash!" Superman called down. "These are the Black Manta's left over Oceancrawlers! They're robots!"
Robots, huh? Perfect. That meant I didn't have to hold back. That was one of the biggest problems about having super-speed. If you moved too fast against an enemy that couldn't handle it, you could end up killing them. It usually paid off to just take things at a nice, steady pace, but if these monster-holo rejects weren't even alive then I could have a little fun.
A third Oceancrawler erupted from the soft blue sand right in front of my path, but there was no way it was going to even slow me down. I kicked it into high gear and everything around me slowed to a stop.
I tossed a quick look over my shoulder and saw Superman just beginning to break out of the metallic tongue around his body. The shards of the metal, whatever alloy it was, were beginning to split down the middle and in a few seconds he would be free. I was sure that he could handle his own Oceancrawler no problem, given that he freed himself with little trouble. That meant the other two Oceancrawlers were all mine.
I skidded to a stop, spun in place nearly a thousand times, and ran straight on for the closest snarling machine-beast. It barely moved a millimeter by the time I had raced two-thirds of the way up its smooth body, but all of the sand particles I was towing in my slipstream were moving just as fast as I was.
Carrying something big in my slipstream is pretty difficult, but grabbing onto little things with my aura, really tiny things like sand particles, was a piece of cake. The swarm of particles that had become super-heated from being spun almost a thousand times during my little maneuver sliced into the shell of the Oceancrawler as I raced up it's body. The blistering hot sand, most of which had turned to glass at this point, poked holes into the sandworm's skin and then dragged along as I ran, tearing long gashes in it's body.
I changed directions once I reached it's head, inertia even bending to my will at this speed, and raced back down it's body. The sand, still being pulled by my slipstream, rerouted itself accordingly while under the Oceancrawler's synthetic "skin" and tore tunnels all through it's insides.
By the time I stopped running about a hundred feet away, the Oceancrawler had fallen over lifelessly with all of its wires and parts showing. Now that's how you take down a giant killer robot sandworm.
"Nice work," Superman said as he crumpled the neck of his Oceancrawler, which was now functioning just as well as my own, which was to say, not at all.
"Still one left to – oh."
"Hyaahhh!"
Hawkgirl dove through the sky, held aloft by her golden wings. She had finally caught up with us while we were fiddling around and had engaged the last Oceancrawler herself. Large curved blades appeared on the outer sides of her gauntlets as she descended, reflecting the light of the sun brilliantly. She flapped her wings one last time, adding more velocity to her descent, and cocked back one of her arms.
The Oceancrawler roared but all it was really doing was offering a place for Jali to slice open. The blade on her left arm dug deeply into the monster's false flesh, beginning at the wide open mouth, and cut down through the length of the body. She extracted the blade just before touching down lightly on the ground and it disappeared back into the gauntlet.
The machine-beast wavered, and then split down the middle where she had cut. Damn, that was cool.
"You were saying?" she asked as she shot me a look.
I raised my hands in defense and replied, "Who me? I didn't say anything. Nope."
"Let's get to the cave and then join up with the others," Superman interjected.
I motioned for Hawkgirl to go first. Always the gentleman, that's me. She nodded and took to the air again and we left the scraps of mechanical sandworm behind us. The cave was halfway up the butte, which we reached without cause for alarm. Inside it was dark, although the casting light from outside coupled with the soft glow of my red uniform gave us enough to see by.
At the back of the cave the air looked distorted, as if an invisible pressure was being levied against reality. There was a strange haze to the air, like smog but without the vapors. A silver machine that looked like a box with several moving components sat against the back wall, humming quietly.
"Let me guess," I said. "That's the thing we're supposed to find?"
"This seems too easy," Hawkgirl muttered.
"You call those things outside easy?"
"I expected a trap," Superman admitted.
"Those Oceancrawlers probably were the trap. Let's just shut this thing down and go."
"Flash, don't—"
But Hawkgirl's warning came too late. As soon as I brushed against the thick haze surrounding the machine my stomach started to flip-flop again. I stopped in place, caught between ticking seconds on the clock. I was frozen in time and there was nothing I could do to get free.
The muffled cries from behind me signaled that I had just caused Superman and Hawkgirl to become trapped to. They had been right. The sandworms hadn't been the trap, this was.
And I had been careless enough to set it off.
NEXT ISSUE: The Justice Legion Alpha is taken off guard! Frozen in time, the heroes are sitting ducks while the mystery villain teamed with the future Vandal Savage makes himself known.