Lightning Flashes….

Thursday 31 October 2013

Grace Choi had not had a good month. She'd failed to get sent to the finals of the competition for the Amazon Champion, beaten in the local quarterfinals by Kathy Kane, whose time as a soldier had made her a better fighter than Grace's time on the streets. She'd lost her job at the club where she'd been tending bar when they found out that her ID was fake, and that she wasn't twenty-one, was a couple of years away from it, in fact.

She'd ended up across the river in Central City, where she'd found a job that she actually liked, to her surprise; stripping. She had applied out of sheer desperation, not expected to be hired at all— she was below average height, slender, and not exactly stacked. While she knew herself to be attractive and was comfortable with her body, and knew how to dance, she'd not expected to be "traditionally" sexy enough.

When she'd found out that the person who both owned and ran the club was a woman, she'd thought she might have a chance at getting the job— and she'd been right. Frances "Frankie" Kane hired girls of any size, so long as they were fit and knew how to dance and could learn to strip. Grace had been surprised at the woman's youth— Kane was only twenty-four herself— but she'd inherited the club when her father died in a car accident, and decided to try running it. Despite the expectations of everyone involved (including Frankie), she'd turned Club Magenta from "barely in the black" to "the most popular strip club in the Midwest," often drawing guests from all over the country, and attracting many a Playboy Centerfold and Penthouse Pet as guest performers, all in just three years.

Grace had a job, but her savings had been… well, minor at best, when she worked at the bar, and when it came time to find a place to live, her choices had been… less than impressive. In the end, it had been a case of accept a ratty little one-room place right next to a busy rail yard, or take a chance on rooming with a girl she'd barely met from the new workplace. She'd never get any sleep at the place by the rail yard, and Connie Noleski, while not terribly intelligent or outgoing, seemed pleasant enough. She took Connie's offer of a room for token rent until she could get on her feet gratefully.

It hadn't been bad, at first. The apartment sat over a big, empty industrial space, across from an equally empty warehouse. There were three other apartments in the building, and a bunch of neighbors who were quite pleasant in a "make no noise, cause no fuss" fashion. Connie didn't mind Grace having a TV in her room, or using the Wi-Fi Connie paid for to surf the web. There were only two bad things about Connie herself; she was a slob, which bothered Grace some, and she wandered around the apartment nude all the time, which about drove Grace crazy with lust. The girl was painfully sexy, with a mane of thick, white-blond hair and a tight, toned body that was still very definitely female. And she was lamentably straight.

The first two weeks had only held minor annoyances. She was only getting three shifts of four hours each a week at Club Magenta, and, while that left her making more money than she had in forty-plus hour weeks at the bar, it still wasn't enough to kick her savings up to the point where she could get out of Connie's place and into one of her own. There had been a mission for the Amazons that, while it had been a success, had been one long string of improvisations and last-second saves from disaster, all due to some bad intelligence. It had run over the time estimate by enough to make her almost an hour late for work, which had been excused, but cost her money. However, Frankie Kane had been impressed to the point of offering to bump Grace to the top of the fill-in list when Grace showed the older girl her Amazon tattoo. (The Amazons had long since taken to wearing ink that could only be seen if you cast a minor magic on the person you wanted to show your tattoo to, and Grace had done so when Frankie had demanded an explanation before she'd let Grace work the last three hours of her shift.) Then, after getting bumped up on the fill-in list… no one had called in sick all week.

Six days ago had been the worst. The once-empty warehouse some forty yards from the building where Connie lived was rented out, and several trucks came in early in the morning, waking both Grace and Connie as they backed and filled and offloaded their cargo. Then came the loud music— REALLY LOUD, and not really music, at least not by Grace's definition. Or Connie's. Or any of their neighbors', either. It sounded like the worst aspects of old country music, nineties death metal, and gangsta rap, all rolled into one.

They'd actually turned it down (and left it down) when Connie went and asked. As she put it, "I go and ask a favor of a bunch of guys while wearing boy-shorts and a half-T in chilly weather? Yeah, I get told, 'sure, hey, anything you want.' Might as well use that."

However, they apparently couldn't do anything about the smell their manufacturing produced. They were making a chemical used in battery manufacturing, they'd told Connie when she asked, and there wasn't anything they could do about the smell that was rather like rotten oranges, acid and chlorine all rolled up in one.

Okay. Grace would deal. Nose-plugs helped with sleep, at least, but during the day… not so much.

Now, though… she wasn't sure she believed that the stuff they were manufacturing was any industrial chemical. She'd worked late three of the last four nights, come home after two in the morning… and each time, seen vehicles arriving or departing the building. Not your standard shipping trucks, either, but a series of RVs, pickup trucks with toppers on the beds, even a couple of minivans and one actual Volkswagen Microbus.

That made Grace thinking that they were making something illicit. Didn't meth produce some awful smell when you made it? A few minutes on the internet told her that it wasn't likely that this was a big meth lab— the smells were wrong. She couldn't find any drug whose manufacture produced a smell like rotten citrus, strong acid and chlorine, but there were always new drugs popping up, so that didn't really prove anything.

She'd decided to investigate on her own. She was an Amazon, a warrior, trained in the art of combat, capable of stealth and the penetration of hostile or potentially hostile territory. If this was a drug lab, she'd just let the cops know anonymously, and if it wasn't, she wouldn't create hostile neighbors or embarrass herself. She went at three in the morning on Thursday— Halloween, a perfect time to put on a ski mask and go sneaking around, right?

Grace made two serious mistakes; usually, she was magically augmented, made stronger, tougher and faster than a normal human, when doing anything with the Amazons. Also, she operated as part of a team, and while she was an excellent sneak and fighter… security systems hadn't been her department. Without a Selina Kyle or a Stephanie Brown (both women were fully trained burglars), she tripped an alarm. Worse, she'd tripped a silent alarm, and not realized it. She'd been hit from behind, knocked unconscious, and woken up bound and gagged.

Worst of all, the men who'd been surrounding her when she woke up had been discussing how to kill her, and her bonds were too efficient for her to escape and fight her way out of this place. As soon as the men decided how to kill her, she'd probably be killed.

"All right, enough," snapped a man who seemed to be in charge after several minutes. "In the first place, Len, we aren't raping anybody, that's freaking sick! In the second place she lives around here, so if she ends up raped, there will be an investigation, and we do not want that.

"However, she's also a stripper— I've seen her over at Club Magenta. This place isn't real close to the club at all. Mick, you and Scudder take her to that part of town, find a nice, empty building— look three or four blocks west, there should be something there, and since we're east of the place, that'll be good. You get her there, dose her hard, then hit her with one of those tasers that Buchinsky modified. That'll kick her into heart attack territory for sure, and the autopsy will stop at 'overdose of celerity,' like it always does."

Celerity, I've heard of that drug, Grace thought as the two men who'd been ordered to kill her picked her up and started carrying her somewhere. She didn't fight them, just feigned unconsciousness, as even if she broke free here, there were plenty of other men around to capture her again, almost certainly too many for her to successfully fight off. It's supposed to be like speed on… well, speed. Serious stimulant, gives a person crazy-fast reflexes for a while, as well as the drug rush. And makes you stronger, too? Maybe? Well, if I wait 'til they dose me, I can maybe fight them off, then… get to the club and someone there will call me an ambulance and the cops.

Not much of a plan… but it's all I've got. And if it works, I solemnly swear to never, ever be this stupid again. I should've hollered for help, not tried it myself. My sisters in the Amazons would have helped. Stupid, stubborn little snot that I am, I let my wounded pride at losing out of representing North America at the tournament to be the Amazon Champion get in the way of doing the smart thing. No more— if I live, I'll shout for help when I need it, I swear!

Grace stayed quiet, feigned unconsciousness, through being dumped on the floor of a van of some sort, and through the twenty or twenty-five minute ride that followed. Mick and Scudder, whoever they were, talked quietly, and whichever was driving stayed careful and legal.

Eventually, they stopped in what was probably an alley. When they opened the van's side door to get her out, Grace felt sure it was an alley— it smelled like garbage, urine, mold and mildew. She was carried inside, taken to the basement of whatever building, set carefully on the floor— and, before she could try to attack either man, the bigger, bald one punched viciously at the side of her neck, stunning her.

"You think we didn't know you was awake, honey?" he asked as he straightened up. "We ain't stupid, you know. Sam, here, he saw you testing the wraps we had you tied with. And, hey, by using wide strips of cloth like that, we avoided making it obvious you were tied up. Coroner won't think to look past the OD."

Grace managed to glare at the man, and made a sound that was close enough to "bastard" that he nodded and said, "I've been called lots worse, sweetie.

"Hey, Sam… you know, this place looks like it'd burn pretty well. Maybe we could torch it, add a layer of confusion—"

"Mick." The other man, Sam Scudder, she'd heard both of his names, glared at his bald companion. "We all know you got a thing for fires, but the boss said celerity and taser, so that's what we're doing. A fire would just… call attention to it in a bad way."

"Okay," Mick grumbled. "Fine, fine— at least let me zap her."

"Fair enough," Scudder agreed. He passed something that looked vaguely like a taser to Mick, though it looked more like a taser as designed by the prop department of some science fiction movie. He then pulled out what looked, for all the world, like a nicotine patch, and grinned. "You know, there were a whole lot of overdoses with this stuff at first. You're supposed to put the patch on an arm or a leg, but some junkies discovered that they got a better rush on the torso… gets into the brain more quickly, I guess, maybe— or the neck. Thing is, the neck? The drug gets to the brain in a larger, more concentrated dose, and BOOM!" He clapped his hands together sharply in front of Grace's face, and she flinched. "So we patch your neck, and with some of the stuff that ain't been cut properly, and you'd probably die anyway. That way, no one looks for any other cause of death.

"G'bye, girlie."

Scudder peeled a patch off of its plasticized paper backing and placed it on the left side of Grace's neck, where she'd probably have placed it herself if she'd been that kind of idiot to use the stuff at all. He pulled the gag out of her mouth, though Grace couldn't think of why he would do that— maybe he was afraid she'd suffocate? He ungagged her for whatever reason, straightened and stepped back, and Grace felt this insane rush of… something. Her head hurt as blood began to pound through her veins at a ridiculous rate. At the same time, her senses sharpened, all of them. She heard the heartbeats of both of the men beside her, smelled the food they'd eaten most recently, and the apple cider that Mick had washed his burger down with. She felt the cloth wraps around her arms, felt the caress of the silk, knew that even with the drug rushing through her system, she'd never be able to tear it. And she saw… something odd, maybe impossible.

Dimly, and only out of the corners of her eyes, Grace saw a dim shape flickering around the room, glowing dimly in scarlet and gold… man-shaped, but moving so fast she couldn't get more than that.

Then she heard a voice, a buzzing, vibrating thing that sounded pleased, amazed, and amused.

"Whattayknow," the voice said. "I dunno if it was being the first one in, or the whole 'speedsters and cosmic crises' thing, but I seem to have… kinda survived, for a moment, at least. I wonder why…?

"Oh. Oh, I get it. They drugged you, kiddo, which… chemicals. And that's a taser, or a taser's pissy big brother, so there… there's the lightning. You're going to be the new Flash.

"Okay. I can help, here, I just gotta figure out how. But while I'm thinking… you know, you remind me of an Amazon I knew before. Lots smaller, but you could be her little sister. Which is cool, given that she worked with Dick and Roy."

"I am an Amazon," Grace said, though she didn't think that the buzzing man heard her. Plainly, the other two men didn't understand her, and she realized that she'd spoken so fast that the words had been unintelligible. "If you can help, you better hurry."

The buzzing man had been looking at the taser Mick was raising, and now he reached out— and plunged his hand into the thing like he was a ghost of some sort.

The taser sparked in Mick's hand, making him yowl in pain, and a bolt of lightning— a small one, and tinged with red, but lightning, none the less— leaped out of the malfunctioning device— and struck Grace Choi in the chest.

It hurt, but only for a second. Then the pain changed, became a wave of… vibration. For a moment, Grace felt as though she was on one of those hotel beds with the "magic fingers" vibration thing, and that going full blast— then she passed out.

Grace had no idea how long she'd been out when she woke up, but she felt fine, and Mick and Sam were both gone. She wasn't bound any more, and there was light coming in the basement windows that hadn't been there before. And in the shadows to her left stood— sort of, he seemed to be flitting back and forth over a very small space— the red and gold buzzing figure who had… helped her?

"Oh, good, you're awake," the figure said. "I'm having a hard time staying here— I seem to be moving backward through the timestream, and I kinda think I have to, because I have a feeling I'm gonna have to play with some 'heavy water' and maybe inspire a math professor in the early forties, and maybe… I dunno, but I think I might be meant to be the speed force, which is kinda cool.

"Anyway, I wanted to make sure you're okay, and to tell you…. Look, I know things are different here than what I'm used to, I get that— what happened to Clark is mind-boggling, because I should not want to make out with Superman as much I do— but I hope you'll think about using 'the Flash' as your codename. Where I'm from, it was… it was the first legacy name, or at least the first one that went across generations.

"And hey, J— the first Flash, he was based right across the river. In… another place, the man who came after him, the man who was my mentor, my friend, and the second Flash… he made Central City his. So… think about it.

"I can't stay any longer, but… good luck. Do what's right, okay? And… have fun. Superspeed can be a lot of fun, and that's important. If you're having fun and saving lives?

"Then no matter what you call yourself? You are… the Flash."

Then she saw a flicker-blur that looked like crimson lightning passing through the wall— and she was alone again.

"I either just got super powers," Grace said aloud as she stood up, "or I just lost my mind. Let's see which it is."

She ran out of the building, ran as fast she could, and felt some disappointment. She wasn't any faster than before, she—

There was a pigeon a few feet from her when she ran out the back door of the building, and it seemed to be frozen in mid-air. Grace stopped and stared, and realized that she could see its wings moving… barely. If she stared for a few seconds, at least.

"Holy crap," she said softly. "I… okay, I hope I can turn this off, or things will be— yikes!"

The pigeon suddenly started moving normally, and panicked when it realized that it was about to fly into a person that hadn't been there before. Grace's powers kicked in again, and she managed to dodge the inevitable result of frightening a pigeon, and kept herself in "speed mode" this time, at least for long enough to get somewhere with no one around. She ran to a small park in the nearby suburb of Chubbuck. (Connie's place was in the Lawrence Hills part of Central City, closer to Mounds View and Central City Municipal Airport.) It was dawn, or a little after, so she hadn't been unconscious long, maybe three hours or a little more.

"So, the lightning-guy, he said… superspeed could be fun." Grace looked down at her clothes as a breeze hit parts of her skin that shouldn't have been exposed, and winced. "He neglected to mention hard on the clothes… okay. I need different clothes. I'm not exactly rolling in cash right now, but… I could afford something like a ski suit, or something like that, something tight that won't flap and tear in the wind I generate. Have to go back to Connie's for my wallet, but not being seen? Kind of easy at the speeds I'm moving. Hmm. Do I need to think about being careful of sonic booms? Maybe. But… first things first. A good racing ski suit, and maybe… I could look up that Flash guy's outfit online, because the name is cool, and gods know the JSA and the All-Stars were amazing, I could do a lot worse than to follow in their footsteps.

"I wonder if I could find a ski suit with a lightning motif…?"

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A pair of stirrup pants that were a bit small, a tight sweatshirt, and sneakers were enough to let Grace run off to find what she wanted for a costume without having her clothes tear off of her. She didn't run at anything close to full out, just ran at a speed she felt should maintain for a long time, but she did use her watch and a couple of highway mile markers to get a rough idea of her speed. Then she did it again, because she didn't believe the first estimate, despite triple-checking her math.

She was running— casually, and without tiring herself at all— at around five hundred and thirty miles an hour. She ran from the middle of Central City, maybe five miles on the Kansas side of the Kansas-Colorado border, to the Crystal Frost Ski Resort in the mountains west-northwest of Denver, a run of around two hundred and twenty miles, in a bit less than half an hour— and that was with stopping to check her speed.

She'd chosen this particular resort because she knew someone who worked at the pro shop there, knew Sigrid Nansen and knew her to be trustworthy— she was a sister of the Amazons. She'd been to Sigrid's small bungalow on the property of the Crystal Frost Ski Resort, the Amazons had staged a couple of missions that Grace had been included on from there.

Grace knocked on Sigrid's back door at a little after eight in the morning, and the other woman, small, pale, and white-blond, but with the sleek muscles of someone who exercised regularly and hard, answered in just a couple of seconds. She blinked at the sight of Grace Choi in stirrup pants, a sweatshirt and sneakers, but threw her door wide and said, "Come in, Grace, you must be freezing."

Grace went in to the bungalow's small kitchen, hugged Sigrid briefly, and said, "Actually, no. Which is weird, but very cool.

"Sigrid, I just ran here, and I'm not winded or at all cold."

"Ran here?" Sigrid said. "Are you at the resort, then? Why didn't you call me, or email? I'd have gotten you a break on the prices."

"Because I'm not staying here," Grace said. "Sorry, Sigrid, I'm still a bit hyper from… Sigrid, I ran here from Central City. Took less than half an hour, and I'm not tired, hungry… nothing.

"Something happened last night— well, stupid kinds of early this morning— and I have superspeed powers, now."

Sigrid looked at Grace sharply at that, and said, "That's… really?"

Grace nodded, looked at the dishes piled next to the kitchen sink, and grinned. She turned on her speed, ran over there, started the water, looked over at Sigrid as the other woman turned to see why her water was on, smiled, and said, "Really. Hang on a sec. Maybe a minute, so I don't make a huge mess."

Grace took about ninety seconds to do what seemed like the breakfast dishes from that morning and the supper dishes from the night before, even dried them and stacked them neatly on the counter. "I'd put them away, but I don't know your system, and you might need something, not be able to find where I put it."

For a long moment, Sigrid only stared. Then she took a deep breath, said, "By Artemis, that's amazing. Okay, you came here, so you must need my help. What can I do, sister?"

Grace smiled brilliantly, and said, "You said you split your time between giving snowboarding lessons and working in the resort's pro shop, last time we worked together. I need a costume, or the start of one, and I thought that maybe you could help. I can pay for what I need, but I want something super-snug, and I have thoughts about design, too."

"A ski-jumper's suit, then." Sigrid grinned. "Good thing we're one of the places the Olympic jumping team trains, we have those. The shop won't open 'til noon, but I have keys, and since I'm supposed to be the one opening today, I know we won't be interrupted. Let me get my shoes and coat."

Half an hour later, Grace, now about three hundred and fifty dollars poorer, hugged Sigrid, thanked her again, and took off for Central City. In the city, she stopped at a bookstore, found what she needed, bought it, read enough to know what she'd need for supplies, then went to a fabric store and bought those supplies. Her total purchases, including the stuff she'd bought in Colorado, came to just under four hundred and fifty dollars. She'd budgeted five hundred for the costume, so was pleased. (And grateful for Sigrid using her employee discount on Grace's purchases there.)

Back at the apartment— entered at speed, so that no one who thought her dead would see her— she read the rest of "the Complete Idiot's Guide to Sewing," then started practicing on the many fabric scraps she'd bought just for that purpose. Before noon— though the time was much longer, subjectively— she had her sewing skills up to the point where she could make the modifications she wanted on the ski-jumper's suit that would be the basis of her costume. By two in the afternoon, she had her costume, one suitable for a woman who would be calling herself, as the lightning man had suggested-requested, the Flash.

Grace had been up for a very long time, subjectively. She put her new costume on, made sure it fit right and covered her sufficiently, then put it away, took a hot shower, and lay down for a while. She slept for two hours, felt great when she got up, and decided to clean the apartment a bit before the trick-or-treaters started. (Apparently, there were a lot of kids in the neighborhood, and the other neighbors all gave out good treats. Connie said she'd had more than sixty kids last year, and she and Grace had bought candy accordingly.)

When Connie came out of her room at a quarter to five, she stared around, barely recognizing the place. The apartment was neat as a pin, probably neater than it had been since Connie moved in eighteen months before. "Whoa. I only went to sleep at noon, how'd you do so much so fast?"

Grace shrugged and grinned. "I just leaned into it, and it went by really fast."

"It looks great, thanks." Connie looked a little embarrassed. "I'll try to be better about picking up my stuff, now."

"It's cool, it's your place," Grace said. "Anyway, I'm gonna get into my costume— the kids are supposed to start showing up at around five-thirty, even though the 'official' start time is six."

"Yeah, last year they were out by five-thirty," Connie said, grinning. "I dig kids. Not in a hurry to have my own, but I like them. So, yeah, let's get changed."

Grace had gone with a Hogwarts robe, a wand, and, because of her Filipino ancestry, a Ravenclaw badge, and would call herself Cho Chang, if any of the kids asked. When Connie came out of her room, she had on a ragged, floor-length and modest green dress, a wig that gave her wildly wavy red hair, and a bow slung over her shoulder.

"Wow, you make a great Merida," Grace said. "Nice."

"You're a good Cho," Connie said. "Though really, you're almost too pretty for it. The movie girl was too blah, but then, they probably didn't want her looking better than Hermione, so may have deliberately toned her down some."

"Could be," Grace agreed, surprised by an observation of something that subtle from Connie. Maybe she'd underestimated her roomie's intelligence.

"It's what I'd want them to do, if I was playing Hermione," Connie said. "But then, I can't act."

They got the candy ready— Connie had paid for most of it, accepted some from Grace only when the smaller girl insisted. Because they were both young enough to remember the stuff they'd loved best, they'd splurged some. Each child would get a snack-sized bag of Gummy Bears and their choice of either a full-sized Snickers, a big popcorn ball, or a snack-pack of Oreos. They'd gotten plenty of stuff, planned to take the rest to work for their coworkers to snack on. You could burn up a lot of energy in a sixteen-to-twenty minute dance set, the sugary snacks would replenish it quickly.

The kids came, the kids dug their costumes, the kids got wowed by the treats, and Connie and Grace were glad they'd bought extra; through some sort of Halloween grapevine, the word had gotten around that the people in the building all gave good treats, and they had just over a hundred kids, all told, before nine o'clock, when they turned off the light over the apartment door, signaling that they were done handing out treats for the night.

"Whew," Connie said, doffing her wig. "That was a whole bunch of kids. Some awesome costumes, though."

"I think my favorite was the girl dressed as Lady Sif from the Marvel comics movies," Grace said with a little smile. "So much attention to detail, you have to admire that kind of work."

"She was good," Connie agreed. "But I liked the Hawkeye with her better." She slid the bow over her shoulder off and set it down. "We archers have to stick together."

They laughed, and Grace looked at the bowls of treats. "Fourteen Gummy packs, two Snickers, four packs of Oreos and eight popcorn balls left. That adds up to… we had a hundred and six kids. Wow."

"I'll take them in tonight, I got eleven to close." Connie grinned. "Halloween its usually a good night. Lots of guys in costumes, and a lot of the regulars will tip really well if you pretend you can't guess who they are under the costume."

Grace laughed. "I'll remember that, if I get called in, or work it next year."

"That's why I said it," Connie said. "Gonna shower. Probably a long one, that dress was pretty heavy, I don't want to stink when I go in."

Grace nodded, waited until the shower had been going for five minutes, then slipped into her room, hesitated a long moment, then put on her new costume. She didn't intend to be seen, not yet— she didn't want the celerity-making crew connecting a new female speedster with their arrest and the stripper they thought they'd killed, but better safe than sorry.

She changed into the costume in about a second, she timed herself. Once she was dressed, she looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the bedroom door, grinned— you couldn't see any of her skin, and given the golden look of it, provided by her half-Korean, half-Pakistani father, and her mother's Filipino blood, a complete-cover costume would be a good thing.

She stretched, moved around to make sure she wasn't going to pull the stitches loose on her modification to the suit, and moved out at speed, carrying her pay-as-you-go cellphone with her. It wasn't registered to her, there was no contract— and it had a built in camera.

Grace was very careful, this time. She moved quickly, and apparently, she was fast enough that not only was she not seen, the alarms never registered her presence. She scouted the building, found several places where she could see without being noticed, and went to those places. She snapped pictures, making sure to get faces and show men carrying weapons, and she was careful to get several photos of the storeroom where the drug manufacturers stored their ingredients. Celerity was pretty new, sure, but she figured the cops had to know what went into making it by now.

She went home, changed to casual clothes, printed the photos on the printer in her room—she'd bought photo-quality paper in Greeley, Colorado, so there wouldn't be any tracing it, she felt sure— and stuck them all in a manila envelope that she ran through the printer to print the address of the warehouse on the front of. Then she went to the closest working payphone at speed, stopped, and covered the mouthpiece with her phone's speaker. She also had an app that disguised her voice on her phone— Stephanie Brown had found it, recommended it to all her sister Amazons in case they needed to call authorities, or use a phone they weren't sure they could trust— and she used it as she called the police non-emergency number, just using her phone as a speaker to disguise her voice.

"I need to speak to a narcotics detective about a celerity manufacturing operation I know about," she said. "Can you connect me to someone?"

The man who had answered the phone said, calmly enough, "I can do that. I'm guessing that asking for your name would get me something like John Smith?"

"Good guess," Grace said, grinning. That voice-changing app was marvelous, he thought she was a guy. "Also, hurry, please— I don't want to stand here long enough for you to send a squad car to get a look at me."

"Okay, okay, I'll put you through to Detective Pierce right away," the cop sighed.

A couple of clicks later, a man's voice said in a businesslike tone, "Jefferson Pierce, Narcotics Task Force."

"Detective Pierce, I have information about a celerity manufacturing site," Grace said. "Further, I have pictures of the men involved, the inside of the facility, and the supplies they're using to making that garbage. Is that enough to let you get a warrant and go after them?"

For a moment, Pierce didn't speak. Then he said, his voice calm enough, "Absolutely. Can I meet you somewhere to get these pictures, or do you want my email—"

"Where are you now?" Grace interrupted. "I may be near you, and I can leave them for you."

Pierce gave the address of the main Central City Police headquarters, and Grace said, "I was right. I'm nearby." Nearby having a totally different meaning than you're used to, of course, since I have superspeed. And I know that area, well enough, thanks to looking up where Narcotics was headquartered before I left the apartment. "There's a McDonald's five blocks west of you. Men's room, behind the trash can, manila envelope with an address on it— that's where the facility is, that address. Goodbye, Detective Pierce."

Grace hung up the payphone and moved off at superspeed to the McDonald's she'd named, went in so fast she was invisible (though a lot of napkins and nearly-empty food containers flew around in the wind she caused), left the envelope where she'd said, and left. She ran past the CCPD headquarters, saw a large, handsome Black man just coming out the door, turned to look to the west already, and grinned. Pierce was taking her seriously, assuming that was him.

Grace went home, arrived before Connie even finished dressing to leave for work, and waited for her roommate to leave. Once Connie was gone, Grace put on her costume… and went out looking for trouble.

It took her almost no time to find a situation that she could help with; she practically ran right into what could have become a complete disaster of a car-and-pedestrian mess only a few of blocks from home.

Motion Central, a popular dance club a few blocks from the apartment, was very popular, and they had a beer garden outside, for the smokers. It wasn't terribly warm out, only about fifty degrees, but there were still a lot of people out there, many in costume, as the club was having a costume contest.

As Grace, in her new Flash costume, approached the club, she saw a pair of cars coming down the street next to the club, both going very, very fast, and the one in the back with flashing red and blue lights on its roof— a cop car chasing someone.

The lead car, a bright yellow sports car, was veering wildly through the moderately heavy traffic outside the club, and Grace saw what was coming in time to prevent a lot of people from dying. As the sports car tried to pass a slow-moving sedan, the driver realized that he couldn't— there was oncoming traffic in the other lane. The sidewalk on that side of the street was narrow, but on the side where Motion Central was, it was wide, more than wide enough for a car to drive on.

It was also filled with people, about a dozen in various costumes, approaching the club. And just past them was the beer garden, where the sports car might end up if it tried to avoid the club-goers.

Grace knew that she would have to be careful, as accelerating a body from normal to her speeds too suddenly could be as deadly (or more so) than them being hit by the car. She knew that if it weren't for her perceptions and thoughts being as accelerated as her body, she'd never have worked out what to do in time. As it was… she had plenty of time to work.

One of the guys at the edge of the beer garden was wearing a Thor costume. That provided the Flash with her best hope of not damaging people too badly. She ran in, snatched the big, heavy red cape the man wore— it was sturdy cloth, good, that made it more likely that this would work— off of him, moved to the sidewalk, and wrapped the cloth loosely around the person the car would hit first, getting the cape around him from head to just above the knees. That would prevent his head, neck and spine from whipping around when she pulled him out of the way. She dragged him across the street, as that presented the most straight-line course to safety. Fewer direction changes reduced the chance of injury.

Then back, and the cape went around a tall, slender girl in a purple and yellow bodysuit, probably a superhero costume, but not one Grace recognized. She, too, went to the far sidewalk and was left there.

The Flash got all of the people out of the way of the car, and it didn't veer into the beer garden. It got back on the street before the next corner, accelerated hard as the traffic cleared. The Flash smiled a hard, angry smile under her mask, and matched speeds with the car— then opened the door and hopped into the empty passenger's seat. Before the driver— a twenty-something white guy with blond hair— could do more than turn to look at her, she'd moved the car's gearshift into neutral, turned off the ignition and taken the keys. As the car drifted to a halt, the man tried to take the keys back from her— and the Flash simply got out of the car while it was still going forty or so, not a problem for someone with superspeed.

The police caught up, having had to wait for vehicles to pull aside, and they pulled to a stop just as the driver of the sports car jumped out and tried to duck into a restaurant near where he'd stopped. The Flash got between him and the restaurant, and the man froze for a moment, staring.

There stood a woman in a skintight costume that was a deep, dark blue at the feet, faded slowly to medium blue up her legs, then melted into a brilliant red a little above the waistline, and got darker as it went up to her head, where the cloth was a deep crimson in color. She had a breath mask of some sort, in the same red as the hood, over her lower face, and mirrored wraparound goggles covered her eyes. The cloth of the body suit, both red and blue, had realistic-looking lightning bolts in yellow-white spreading out from points on her chest and back, both in the general area of the heart. On the back, a stylized bolt of silver lightning started at the circle where the more realistic bolts started, went up over her shoulder, and down towards the center of her chest.

After a moment of staring, the man took a swing at the Flash— who simply moved several feet back in the blink of an eye, leaving the driver to stagger from the force of his own missed punch. He started that way again, but stopped when he finally realized that the police were telling him very loudly that if he didn't drop to his knees and put his hands on top of his head, they'd shoot him.

A moment later, a cop approached the Flash where she stood watching as his partner cuffed the idiot driver, and she turned to him.

"Uh, hi," the officer— a sergeant, Allen by name— said. "You uh… am I wrong, or did you get all those people out of the way back there, when ass-hat there, drove up on the sidewalk?"

"I did," the woman admitted. "Is everyone all right? I was as careful as I could be, but I had to move very fast."

"The unit behind us stopped, and they're reporting a couple of twisted ankles, a sprained knee, maybe," Sgt. Allen said, smiling now. "And that the people are so grateful to be alive that no one's actually complaining."

The woman before him visibly relaxed, and Henry Allen felt sure that, if he could see her face, she'd be smiling. "Excellent," she said. She offered her hand, and the cop shook it easily. "Hi, I'm the Flash."

"Yeah?" Allen said. "You the original's kid, or something?"

"No, sir," the Flash said. "Just… well, it's the best possible name for someone with superspeed, and… using the name will remind me of all the good he did, and I'll try hard to match him. I really hope he doesn't mind."

"I gotta tell you, Flash," Sgt. Allen said, looking back towards Motion Central, "you got off to a pretty good start."

"Thanks," the Flash said. "I really—"

Allen's radio squawked, and the dispatcher said "All units in the vicinity, we have reports of an armed robbery in progress at 1408 King Street, two suspects armed with shotguns or rifles in the building."

"That's only a half mile from here," the Flash said. "Excuse me, Sgt. Allen— I'm sure I can help."

The Flash disappeared in a streak of color and a burst of wind, and Henry Allen grinned widely and said to the air, "Go get 'em, kid."

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(From the Fawcett City Courier, Friday 1 November 2013)

Central City Superhero? (CENTRAL CITY, Kansas)

More than five dozen lives were saved and some thirteen criminals caught and charged in Central city on Halloween night, thanks to a young woman with powers of super speed, who told police and rescue workers (as well as a nine year-old girl she rescued from a probably-fatal fall) to call her the Flash.

According to Central City Police Sergeant Henry Allen, the new Flash is a fan of the original, and said that she hopes to do as much good as he did, and that he doesn't mind her using the name.

The Flash first appeared outside of Central City hotspot Motion Central, where she saved some fourteen people from very likely being hit by a speeding car that had been fleeing police since….

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Jay Garrick put down his morning newspaper after finishing the story about the new superhero who was using his old codename, and felt his cheeks burn with the width of his smile. "No, the original Flash doesn't mind you using his moniker, young lady.

"I don't mind a bit!"