| Keystone City - September 3
Wally arrived on the scene in his Kid Flash suit, yellow Speed Force lightning flickering and fading as he slowed to a halt.
He'd been running at Mach 5—his current limit. It wasn't close to uncle Barry's speed yet, but it was a far cry from the days when he couldn't even break the sound barrier. Ever since Joseph had given him the Speed Force formula, his velocity had skyrocketed, and the side effects from the flawed experiment that originally gave him powers—like the dangerously fast metabolism—had finally stabilized.
His mentor, Barry Allen, was already there, standing among police officers, firefighters, and paramedics. It seemed Barry had been busy the last few days since Wally had seen him at Jay Garrick's birthday party in the West family's home.
Barry had always been fast, but after Wally shared the formula with him, he'd become even faster—fast enough to run past the speed of light, break the time barrier, and travel into the past. Theoretically possible, but terrifying in practice. Wally dreamed of someday catching up to Barry's level, though his mentor had made him swear never to attempt time travel. "It could shatter the multiverse," Barry had warned.
Wally looked around. They were standing in front of Iron Heights—a maximum-security prison located three miles north of Keystone City, the twin to Central City. Or rather, what used to be Iron Heights.
Now it was a smoking ruin.
Charred debris littered the ground, and burned bodies—some barely recognizable—were scattered across the site. The entire facility had been reduced to rubble.
Wally swallowed hard. "What happened?" he asked, his usual humor absent in the face of the carnage. "Did Heat Wave do this? This doesn't match his M.O. He doesn't kill."
That was one thing he'd always appreciated about Central City's Rogues. Unlike Gotham's criminals, most of the Flash's adversaries had some sort of code. They avoided harming civilians. They played by rules.
Barry nodded grimly. "You're right. Heat Wave's obsessed with fire, not death. The security footage showed skeletons engulfed in flame—fire that came from nowhere but appeared beside him. And I think it's my fault."
Wally blinked, confused. "What do you mean?"
Barry took a breath. "Back when I ran fast enough to break the time barrier, I think I broke something else—the Force Barrier. Central City became ground zero for a surge of new Forces being released into the world. One of them, the Strength Force, hit Trickster, turned him into a giant brute, and then he vanished."
Wally's eyes widened. "You think this is another one of those Forces?"
Barry nodded. "That's my guess. I'm getting reports of similar phenomena in Corto Maltese and other parts of the world. I think something's happening, Kid Flash. Something big."
"And Trickster? Heat Wave? Where are they now?"
Barry looked away. "That's the scary part. I don't know."
**
| Thanagar - September 3
For the past several days, Nova had led a contingent of Thanagarians, including Shayera Hol, in clearing cities overrun by Gordanians. These missions saved countless civilian Thanagarians and Downsiders—Thanagar's oppressed underclass—and rekindled hope across the battered planet.
The Thanagarian high command, desperate to hold what was left, had armed the Downsiders with weapons and promises of better treatment after the war. These promises came from princess Shayera herself, who had publicly acknowledged the atrocities committed against them and vowed change—if they all survived.
Her sincerity earned her the nickname "Empress Shayera" among the people, much to the dismay of Hro Talak and other few loyalists to her emperor father and older brother who had abandoned the planet at the first signs of invasion.
The Gordanians fell city by city.
Nova moved between battlefronts in bursts of gold light, flanked by Thanagarian warships. His Nova Force had recharged just enough to be used in fights and flights, though he used it sparingly. No energy blasts or laser beams—just telekinesis, and the Strength Force.
Now, he hovered midair over another embattled Thanagarian city, surrounded by frozen chaos. He had activated the Speed State.
Under normal conditions, Joseph could remain in the Speed State for two subjective minutes—while only a second passed in real time. With the Strength Force passively flowing through his body, that duration increased to eight minutes. With intense focus, he could stretch it to sixteen. The cooldown afterward was still an hour, but he could manage that.
Pushing past sixteen was possible, but dangerous. The last time Nova had gone past the limit, it had flung the A.I. into the Dreaming. And after only just getting Nova back, Joseph wasn't going to take that risk again.
He wore a customized Thanagarian Nth-metal battlesuit, gold-plated and stripped of the wings and the hawk emblem. The Nth metal that had bonded to him after his battle with Despero, allowing him to reshape it at will was currently formed it into a greatsword, shrouded in Nova Force.
Moving faster than any eye could follow, Joseph sliced through Gordanian soldiers and pierced enemy spacecraft hulls with ease. Strength Force hardened his body and the blade, allowing him to tear through reinforced metals like a knife through butter.
Then, retracting the sword into his suit, he pushed his anti-gravity field to the limit—expanding it to cover five miles above the city. Under normal circumstances, his range was just 400 feet in diameter. But now, using the Strength Force, he spread his reach across the entire battlefield sky, 4000 feet wide.
The expansion weakened his physical body—he was even more fragile than a normal human—but it didn't matter. No one could touch him in the Speed State.
He scanned the battlefield with his enhanced eye sight. Every enemy ship and soldier caught within the field was pulled upward, suspended above the city. His arms raised, Joseph concentrated, holding them all.
Speed Force users could decide how the Speed Force manifests. So Joseph made it so that anything touched by the anti-gravity field didn't gain the Speed Force aura's protection. They would bear the full brunt of moving so fast.
Below him, over 100,000 Downsiders were hidden in the depths of the city. Thanagar's cities weren't separated by neighborhoods—they were vertical. The higher up you lived, the wealthier you were. The lower levels belonged to the poorer members. It was no surprise that many of them also happened to be wingless aliens.
Joseph couldn't risk debris raining down on them.
Just as the Speed State's eight-minute limit ticked past, Nova released it. To the Thanagarians below, it looked like magic.
One moment, they were fighting, the next, enemy soldiers and ships vanished from the fight. A massive sphere made of those same ships and troops exploded high above the city. But the fire didn't fall.
Instead, it was snuffed out, like the oxygen feeding the flames was depleted at once. And beneath that massive sphere stood a golden figure, arms raised like a conductor at the height of his symphony.
And for the first time in a long time, the people of Thanagar had hope.