003 ϟ open } { wake me up before you go go

[supertardiness]

Who: Barry Allen + YOU
Broadcast: Video
Action: First Breath + Visitors
When: December 1st

[action ~ first breath]

[Somewhere, many many Earths away, Barry Allen says goodbye to his family and the woman he loves and steps through into the speed force. All that really exists in the speed force is running, so that's what he does - he runs, as fast as he can and as far as he can, until he doesn't have to run anymore.

And on December 1st, in his room on the First Breath, Barry opens his eyes for the first time in thirty days. It's disorienting at first, not knowing immediately where he is or that he's not in the speed force anymore, so he instinctively does the first thing he can think of - he runs. He blazes through the halls of the ship in an endless look, a burst of red and god lightning that can't be caught and disrupts everything around him.

Pro: He is not running fast enough to accidentally phase himself through the hull of the ship and out to die in the vacuum of space, nor is he phasing through doors into private areas he shouldn't be in.

Con: Pretty much everything is getting blown everywhere, because running at superspeed is not subtle or unnoticeable.

Eventually he'll skid to a stop or someone will stop him but apologies to the other members of the crew - you're all getting quite the wake up call this morning.]

[video ~ fleetwide]

[And after he is caught, calmed down, and realizes where he is, he'll eventually make his way back to his bunk to try and reorient himself in general. Which is when an awkward looking Barry will appear over a network because he has a very important question to ask that probably shouldn't wait.]

So, hey guys. Sorry about being radio silent but I was ... out for a while. A really long while.

[That's mostly an apology to Kara and Mon-El - he doesn't really think anyone else beyond his crew was looking for him. He needs to be better at making friends.]

Anyway - has anyone else had one of those weird coma dreams where they go home and actually live some of their life and come back again? And if so, am I the only one who finds that super weird and disorienting, or can we all agree that that pretty much sucks?

[Please feel free to register your vote with the speedster present at your convenience.]

Comments

[supertardiness]

[Someone didn't need to.]

Oh, tell me about it. Alternate universes do nothing but make my life complicated.

[passingthrough]

Yeah, here? Another place like this? Home? All of the above?

[supertardiness]

Home, mostly. One of my best friends is from an alternate universe, actually.

[passingthrough]

You can cross the boundaries? Is it technology? Do you know how to recreate it here? [Maybe a little too eager and jumping ahead of herself.]

private ; to end }

[supertardiness]

[Yeeeeeeeeeah no, not exactly. But he will explain and make this private as a result:]

I'm a speedster. Sometimes I can go fast enough that I can do it by accident, but usually I need an assist from a breacher or tech that mimics their abilities.

private ; to end }

[passingthrough]

You're telling me you run fast so you can cross dimensions? Well, now I just feel like Pietro was holding out on us. [So unfazed by this news of powers, but a little disappointed. She thought maybe it was a lead. Maybe it still is.]

So, what's a breacher? And do you know anything about breacher mimicing tech? [And, well, if she's going to interrogate maybe she could give him a reason for why it matters.] I have a person to get back to and we're not exactly from the same world. I doubt I can just handcuff myself to Kara and expect the Atroma to send me back with her whenever they get bored.

[supertardiness]

Only by accident, and usually I need a little extra help to do it.

[But that's not really the point. And he follows that for a moment, before he squints a bit and decides to focus on what's clearly the most important part of this explanation:]

Wait, Kara Danvers?

[passingthrough]

You know her? I was...am with her friend, Winn. He and Cisco were working on ways to get us out of here, but they are both slackers who got disappeared instead, so ball's in my court.

[supertardiness]

[He nods.]

Kara is the aforementioned best friend from another Earth. Earth 38, actually. So you're trying to get there, but it's not where you're originally from?

[passingthrough]

You numbered them? I couldn't tell you the number of mine, [Earth 295] but it's definitely different. Like fall of civilization different? [Oh, the things we talk about so casually.] It's related to the other worlds with X-Men and Avengers though. If you know any of them from here.

[supertardiness]

I think I've met a couple.

[Steve. He's mostly met Steve and Natasha.]

We don't have them on my Earth. We do have the Green Arrow, the Flash and the Legends though.

[A beat.]

The Legends are not actually Legends, it's just ... what they call themselves. Somehow it stuck.

[passingthrough]

I met Oliver at my last place. [She's bad with caring about secret identities, and he was from Smallville. Details.] And there were a considerable number of speedsters there too. Legends would be the ones with the timeships? [Rip didn't tell her about it and Sara definitely didn't when she was here. But she did see some of Rip's memories thanks to the calibrations.] Maybe we should have just called ourselves the Awesomes.

[supertardiness]

I'm sorry for grumpiness that may have ensued.

[Sadly Smallville Oliver and DCTV Oliver are two very different beasts.]

But yeah, the Legends are the one with the time ship. I'm ... not really sure what they do, really. They haven't been around long enough to explain it.

[passingthrough]

Grumpiness? He seemed like he was in a pretty good mood most of the time. Flirty. [There was this night at a bar and...we don't need to go into details.]

I'm guessing screw with time. My least favorite.

[supertardiness]

Flirty?

[He blinks a bit for a moment, because that definitely doesn't sound like the Oliver he knows. Despite his playboy reputation.]

Must have been a different Oliver than mine.

[A beat, because hoo boy if Barry isn't guilty of that.]

Fix time, actually. They tend to leave the screwing it up to the rest of us.

[passingthrough]

Also possible. There's no shortage of versions of all of us in the multiverse. There was another Kitty with me in the last place.

[She tilts her head.] Why are the rest of you screwing up time?

[supertardiness]

Usually emotional distress or poor impulse control.

[At least as far as Barry is concerned.]

[passingthrough]

So only the best reasons then? [She smiles. Why not? He's never messed up her timeline that she knows of.]

[supertardiness]

[He laughs.]

Or the worst. It depends on who you're talking to.

[passingthrough]

I'm guessing anyone who knows their timeline shifted unless it was more of a "everyone wins the lotto now" timeline.

[supertardiness]

The last time I messed with time, I changed events just enough that my best friend's brother died in a car accident. He ... was not happy with me when he found out it wasn't the same originally.

[passingthrough]

Okay, that was heavy. [Not too heavy. Don't let her fool you. She's used to doom and gloom.] You couldn't fix it?

[supertardiness]

[He shakes his head.]

If I went back in time to change things again, things could get worse. This time it would be my best friend instead of Dante, and the dominoes would just keep falling faster. You ... have to draw a line somewhere.

[passingthrough]

Have you considered drawing it at not time traveling?

[supertardiness]

I have, actually, and that's pretty much the plan moving forward. Technically it was the plan before, but I'd just lost my dad and wasn't really in a great place so ... I wasn't really making the best decisions.