Chapter 249: Fat Girl Heroine And The Christmas Reindeer
Perhaps, this time, Reverse-Flash Eobard Thawne really wasn’t plotting any conspiracy.
When his body crumbled in the hands of Superman and The Flash, like a weathered sand sculpture disintegrating from the fingertips inch by inch, ultimately turning into a wisp of fine dust that dissipated with the wind in the heavy air of the particle accelerator laboratory, even his most destined opponent—The Flash Barry Allen—had to believe it.
Reverse-Flash might be cunning, cruel, and unscrupulous to achieve his ends, but he feared death more than anyone, especially this kind of erasure completely wiped out by the timeline.
After all, the destination of speedsters has never been that peaceful “Promised Land.” Even if cleared by a time paradox, the massive “debt” between the speedster and the Speed Force still needs to be repaid, which might be eternal exile, or something even more terrifying, a punishment existing in the shadows of the Speed Force.
It would become a slave of the Speed Force, those eternally pursuing lost souls of speedsters. For this reason, Reverse-Flash would never bet on his own complete disappearance.
Accompanied by Reverse-Flash’s disappearance filled with unwillingness, despair, and fear, the laboratory fell into dead silence, leaving only the low hum of machines and the noise from the world outside the window accelerating its distortion.
That was an unsettling faint sizzling sound.
“We… what should we do?” Moments later, Wonder Woman Diana couldn’t help but speak up, her voice carrying a barely detectable tremble.
At this moment, the super heroine had already walked to the window broken by Reverse-Flash, seeing the scene outside visibly intensifying its changes.
The outlines of skyscrapers twisted like melting candles.
Vehicles on the streets sometimes turned into old-fashioned carriages, sometimes into futuristic hovercrafts, and the sky’s color frantically switched between deep blue, dim yellow, and eerie purple.
As if some sun was about to rise… when there was already one.
“If the changes happening now are actually because we sent Ian back to the past… and his actions led to some established fact, then time has already completed some solid closed loop. The past changes because of the future, and the future solidifies because of the past’s change.”
“In just a few hours, reality will probably be completely fixed, with no possibility of reversal.” Cyborg Victor Stone immediately tried to analyze the situation, his mechanical eye rapidly scanning data streams, giving his judgment. It should be correct; after all, Cyborg is one of the few in the DC universe whose average IQ exceeds that of normal black people.
“Only a few hours?”
“This is worse than the Flashpoint I caused before; that at least took several days.”
“Barry! You’ve been hiding from us that you caused a Flashpoint before?”
“Uh, that’s not important; what’s important is the situation now!”
……
Cyborg’s analysis made everyone’s hearts sink.
“To be honest, if I were to say, we shouldn’t have…” At this, Aquaman Arthur was just about to chime in when his voice suddenly stopped, followed by him suddenly letting out a strange yelp.
“Damn it! What is this!” Aquaman Arthur lifted his right hand in utter terror, only to see fine, densely packed scales shimmering with iridescent sheen rapidly appearing on the skin of his strong arm, with even faint webbed connections forming between his fingers!
“Am I turning into a real mermaid? Fishman!? Or mermaid?” Arthur was shocked, his voice changing pitch; he seemed more concerned about the definition of his form than the world’s destruction.
“Arthur! And right now, what you’re most hung up on is the name?!”
Wonder Woman incredulously turned back to glare at him, fully confirming that the king of Atlantis might really have some “gifts” from the ocean in his head.
In layman’s terms, his brain probably took in quite a bit of seawater.
“What else should I be hung up on?!” Aquaman righteously waved his scaling arm, “Whether the lower body is a tail or legs matters a lot to me, okay! It affects my swimming posture and my dignity on land! I’d rather my head turn into a fish head; at least that would look more uniform!”
Perhaps he was worried about more than just that, like the little “Aquaman” that grew up with him. The only consolation was probably that Aquaman already had a child and didn’t need to worry about extinction.
Just as he was freaking out, changes began on Cyborg too. He let out a muffled grunt, those advanced Apokolips technology components flashing like faulty lightbulbs, with some more precise external armor even starting to become transparent and ethereal, as if about to vanish at any moment.
“Urgh… my system… is going offline! Those devices… are detaching!” He endured the discomfort and looked toward the only one showing no signs of change: Superman Clark.
His tone complex.
“At least he didn’t vanish into thin air like Reverse-Flash and Batman… Now we really need to worry if we’ll evaporate out of existence… Except you, damn Superman, you’re that guy’s father, so you’ll definitely be fine.” His words carried a hint of helpless meaning.
“…”
Clark’s expression was also complex; he really wanted to say “not necessarily,” after all, the weirdness of time paradoxes was unpredictable, but he carefully checked and found no anomalies in himself, as if the world’s drastic changes had nothing to do with him, so saying that might be seen as sophistry.
“Oh! No!!!” At that moment, Wonder Woman Diana also let out a terrified scream. She looked down at her body; it wasn’t becoming weak, but… uncontrollably expanding, fattening! A fatness full of adipose sensation, completely opposite to the fit physique of an Amazon warrior!
“What the hell did Ian and his gang do to me!”
Her armor emitted a groan of overburdened strain.
“Clark!!” Wonder Woman Diana shouted desperately; she couldn’t accept existing in this form, “Quick! Everyone, think of something!”
Her teammates in front of her were each undergoing terrifying changes.
Clark was burning with anxiety; he abruptly turned to The Flash, who had just snapped out of the shock from Reverse-Flash’s disappearance: “Barry! You must regain the power to travel through time and space again! Only you can stop this now! You must find Ian and the other kids before reality fully solidifies and correct the mistakes!”
The current Superman really regretted agreeing to Reverse-Flash’s plan; he should have realized that with just Damian, Jordan, and Jonathan in the past, how much trouble could they cause?
Just a scattered mess.
Now, the Justice League had directly sent the kid king over; Ian was probably forming a new Justice League right there in the past, and these superheroes had messed everything up again.
“Damn it!”
Who knows if this is a curse; whenever things go south, it seems related to the Justice League’s operations. Clark now regretted it yet again.
“I can try, but I can’t guarantee.” Barry was also panicking; he forced himself to calm down and rushed to the main console, “Using the parameters Thawne set earlier… maybe I can re-establish that connection, forcibly break through the Speed Force to reach their era!”
He frantically tried to maintain and adjust the particle accelerator settings, then golden lightning burst from his body again, and he charged unhesitatingly into the ring track where the energy had not fully settled!
This time, no guidance from Reverse-Flash, no teammates by his side, just him alone.
The Flash madly pep-talked himself in his mind: “Barry, you can do it! You definitely can! Run, Barry, just focus on running! For everyone!”
Not unworthy of being the talker.
Trash-talking enemies was one thing, but now The Flash was trying to trash-talk himself.
The Speed Force was stirred again.
Golden energy began to gather and weave inside the particle accelerator, attempting to build a bridge to the other side of time. Barry pushed his speed to the limit, feeling the familiar call of the Speed Force… However, just as the golden passage was about to form, a sudden change occurred very abruptly.
“Boom!!!”
An invisible yet immensely powerful repulsive force, like billions of invisible heavy punches, erupted fiercely from within the Speed Force dimension, slamming hard into Barry!
“Aaaahhh!!”
Barry Allen only managed a pained scream before his running center of gravity completely lost stability; the golden lightning around him shattered inch by inch like fragile glass, and his whole body was flung out like a kite with a cut string, crashing heavily to the ground and rolling over a dozen times.
After crashing into a row of instruments.
Superman arrived in time.
To stop The Flash.
Even so, The Flash was seriously injured.
“My leg! My leg! My leg is broken!!”
Barry let out a shrill wail.
He clutched his obviously unnaturally bent calf, but even more conspicuous was his face—bruised and swollen, black eye sockets, split lips bleeding, his entire head swollen like a pig’s head!
“What happened!”
Superman hurriedly checked Barry’s injuries while asking.
He carefully inspected his teammate’s wounds and found Barry’s leg bone indeed fractured, but the facial injuries looked even more shocking, as if tortured by some ordeal.
Not like injuries from tumbling on the ground.
Sure enough.
“The Speed Force! The Speed Force gave me tens of thousands of big slaps!!!” The Flash, with his gruesome pig-headed face, howled in pain and grievance.
His voice pitch altered.
“…”
Clark had no idea how to respond.
“Bruce…” Clark murmured his best friend’s name, punching his temple as if to force his mind, with its super brain potential, into overdrive.
“If, if Thawne’s view of you wasn’t wrong… if you really foresaw all this before vanishing… you shouldn’t have miscalculated this part!”
“Why!”
He frantically pondered Batman’s mindset.
If Bruce really realized before vanishing that things would reach this point, even leaving a backup plan, then in this near-total failure of the plan, what could Batman still count on to turn the tables? Did he have a deeper layout that even Reverse-Flash hadn’t detected?
“I have a way!” At that moment, Cyborg, whose Apokolips technology components had mostly vanished, revealing more human tissue, struggled over, his voice choppy due to system instability, “Although… it might only temporarily delay the timeline’s full solidification, but… doing it is better than not.”
“What way?” Superman immediately looked at him, a spark of hope reigniting in his eyes.
Cyborg raised his remaining arm, pulling up a complex mathematical model and energy parameters on the holographic projection: “Clark… how fast can you fly right now?”
Superman paused, then honestly answered: “Actually, I haven’t gone all out recently, but I feel… I’m getting stronger every day than the day before.”
No wonder it’s called OP.
This upgrade speed is practically getting stronger just by lying down.
“The stronger you are, the better!”
Cyborg nodded, pointing to that parameter.
“According to this model… theoretically, if you can reach this critical speed and continuously fly in the direction opposite to Earth’s rotation, generating enough powerful spacetime torsion… you could have a chance to forcibly create a time reversal field in Earth’s local range… delaying, or even temporarily reversing the timeline’s solidification process!”
Cyborg urgently explained. He was the only superhero left with substantial physics knowledge; counting on the fat chick heroine and fat fish Aquaman was definitely futile.
“This… can it work?”
Superman felt this sounded like pie-in-the-sky sci-fi nonsense.
“Theoretical foundation exists… but never tested. And the strain on you will be immense… we can only try.” Cyborg sighed.
He himself had no confidence in this plan’s success rate.
“Okay.” Superman didn’t hesitate. At this moment, any shred of hope must be grasped. He stopped talking, looked up at the ceiling of Star Labs.
“Barry, bill the repair costs to Ian; I’ve bought a ton of specialized insurance from him that I don’t even understand without knowing it.”
As the words fell.
“Boom—!!!”
The laboratory ceiling was instantly pierced with a neat round hole.
By the time everyone reacted, Superman had become a blurry blue-red streak, rushing into the sky at unimaginable speed, breaking through the atmosphere into low Earth orbit.
Then.
He adjusted direction.
He began flying opposite Earth’s rotation, pushing speed to unprecedented limits, starting this lonely, desperate “drag” of the planet.
And at the same moment Superman began circling Earth in reverse flight, in another dimension—the Speed Force dimension composed of the essence of time.
“What place is this?” A faint, crimson-tinged consciousness slowly coalesced like a candle in the wind, reopening its “eyes.”
“Indeed, not fully dead.”
The voice grew more despairing. That was the lingering soul imprint of Reverse-Flash Eobard Thawne; he hadn’t completely perished but had been drawn into the Speed Force’s depths in an extremely fragile form.
Realizing he would become a Time Wraith, his heart filled with fear; however, before he could observe this familiar domain and prepare for judgment from the Speed Force.
The next second, Reverse-Flash was utterly shocked by the scene before him.
“Gotcha! I’m the Pokemon Master! Captured the legendary Pokemon—Speed Force!”
An enormous Ian Kent, towering as if touching heaven and earth, stood in this space, grinning with the excitement of finding a new toy, extending his similarly gigantic hand to grab a figure constantly wildly changing forms.
That figure sometimes appeared as a golden lightning humanoid, sometimes as a raging river of time, sometimes as an aggregate of countless historical images.
But no matter the changes, it couldn’t escape that hand’s grasp!
This was the Speed Force itself in manifested form!
“No!!!!”
The Speed Force emitted a screech far more shrill and despairing than before in the particle accelerator, filled with panic of being desecrated and violated.
And an instinctual, deepest fear!
Immediately after.
Reverse-Flash witnessed the scene he’d never forget.
Ian grabbed the Speed Force.
Just like grabbing some qualification, irresistible, unopposable. The infinite golden Speed Force energy around them, representing the cosmic time cornerstone, no longer flowed orderly as in the past, but churned and roared like a lake struck by a boulder! Undergoing some unprecedented change!
And on Ian’s body, arcs of electricity began to burst forth… something Reverse-Flash had never seen!
Not pure golden Speed Force lightning, nor his reverse-order crimson lightning, but a brilliant sheen as if imprisoning the Speed Force itself.
This arc carried an indescribable “possession” attribute, like ink dropped into clear water, or a highly invasive virus, spreading and staining madly from Ian at the center toward the vast Speed Force! Some power was inscribing a clear mark on this universe’s cornerstone!
“God… God… is this right?”
The Speed Force’s wail.
Echoed throughout the dimension.
No wonder it slapped Barry Allen tens of thousands of times; look at the disaster Barry Allen brought it. It could feel its rules being altered the moment Ian grasped it—not Ian actively absorbing it, but it being forcibly integrated into him.
In the ether, the will altering these rules was the truly unchallengeable one.
“What’s happening!!”
Reverse-Flash’s soul trembled.
He felt the Speed Force’s eternal rules being forcibly rewritten, an unprecedented “tag” full of personal will being brutally branded onto the root of the time dimension!
“He’s enslaving the Speed Force!!” Reverse-Flash muttered to himself, his eyes filled with ultimate horror and shock.
Barry Allen is the Speed Force’s favored, its chosen runner; he, Reverse-Flash, is the Speed Force’s thief, the reverse shadow!
While Ian Kent… he’s not just aiming to be a runner or thief; he wants to turn the Speed Force itself, the universe’s cornerstone, into his private property!
He wants to become the true god of speed… who defines speed! Controls time!
“How is this possible!?”
Finally.
Reverse-Flash spotted the blind spot. At this moment, he belatedly realized what exactly he had sent into the Speed Force.
Turns out, what the Speed Force had always feared was this very situation! Not someone abusing its power, but someone “possessing” it from the root!
Who could have predicted it?
Anyway, not Reverse-Flash!
“Superman… what the hell did he raise at home…” Reverse-Flash’s knowledge from the future completely failed; he was witnessing the absolutely impossible.
At the same time.
Bone-chilling cold crept up his spine.
If the other succeeds.
Then he, as a Speed Force “slave”… where would he go? Vaguely, Reverse-Flash recalled what that boy had said not long ago about Christmas reindeer or whatever.
