American comic book: My Father is Superman, am I just an NPC?

Chapter 249 The Chubby Heroine and the Christmas Reindeer

Perhaps, this time, Reverse-Flash Elberd Swann isn't really plotting anything.

When his body, in the hands of Superman and the Flash, crumbled from his fingertips like a weathered sand sculpture, eventually turning into a wisp of dust that dissipated in the heavy air of the particle accelerator laboratory, even his most destined adversary—Barry Allen, the Flash—had to believe it.

Reverse Flash may be cunning, cruel, and ruthless in achieving his goals, but he fears death more than anyone else, especially the kind of annihilation that is completely erased from the timeline.

After all, the ultimate destination for speedsters is never that peaceful "Promised Land." Even if they are eliminated by the time paradox, the enormous "debt" between speedsters and the Speed ​​Force still needs to be repaid. That debt may be eternal exile, or something even more terrifying—a punishment that exists in the shadow of the Speed ​​Force.

He would become a slave to the Speed ​​Force, the eternal soul that chases the speedster. That is why Reverse-Flash would never gamble with his own complete annihilation.

As Reverse Lightning vanished, carrying with it resentment, despair, and fear, the laboratory fell into a deathly silence, broken only by the low hum of the machines and the sounds of the world outside the window distorting at an accelerated pace.

It was an unsettling, subtle hissing sound.

"What... should we do?" After a moment, Wonder Woman Diana couldn't help but ask, her voice trembling slightly.

At this moment, the superheroine had walked to the window that had been smashed by Reverse Lightning and saw that the scene outside was changing rapidly at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The silhouettes of the skyscrapers twisted like melting candles.

The vehicles on the streets sometimes transformed into old-fashioned horse-drawn carriages, and sometimes into futuristic hovercraft, while the sky's color shifted wildly between azure, dusky yellow, and eerie purple.

It was as if some sun, wanting to rise even when there was already one sun...

“If the changes happening now are actually because we sent Ian back to the past… and his actions have led to some fait accompli, then time has completed a solid closed loop. The past changes because of the future, and the future is solidified because of the changes in the past.”

"In just a few hours, reality will likely be completely fixed, with no possibility of reversal." Cyborg Victor Stone immediately attempted to analyze the situation, his mechanical eyes rapidly scanning the data stream and giving his judgment. He shouldn't be wrong; after all, Cyborg is one of the few Black people in the DC universe whose average IQ exceeds that of a normal Black person.

"Only a few hours?"

"This is worse than the flash point coverage I caused before, which lasted at least several days."

"Barry! What other flashpoints have you caused behind our backs?"

"Uh, that's not important. What's important is the current situation!"

……

Steelbone's analysis made everyone's hearts sink.

"To be honest, if you ask me, we shouldn't have..." Aquaman Arthur was about to reply when his voice suddenly stopped, followed by a strange cry.

"Damn it! What is this?!" Haiwang Jing raised his right hand in terror. On his strong arm, countless tiny, iridescent scales were rapidly appearing on his skin, and even his fingers were connected by faint webbing!

"Am I becoming a real mermaid? A fish-man!? Or a mermaid?" Arthur was shocked, his voice changing tone. He seemed more concerned about the definition of his form than the destruction of the world.

"Arthur! Now you're actually most conflicted about this title?!"

Wonder Woman turned around and stared at him in disbelief, finally confirming that the King of Atlantis might indeed have some "gifts" from the sea in his mind.

To put it simply, his brain must have gotten a lot of seawater in it.

"Otherwise, what am I supposed to be agonizing over?!" Aquaman waved his arms, which were turning into scales, with an air of self-righteousness. "Whether my lower body is a tail or legs is very important to me, okay? It's about my swimming style and my dignity on land! I'd rather have a fish's head; at least that looks more uniform!"

Perhaps his worries extend beyond this, including the little "Aquaman" who grew up alongside him. His only solace is that Aquaman already has a child, so there's no need to worry about the line ending.

Just as he was startled, Cyborg's body began to change. He let out a muffled groan, and the advanced technological components from Apokolips began to flicker like a faulty light bulb. Some of the more sophisticated outer armor even began to become transparent and ethereal, as if they might disappear at any moment.

"Uh... my system... is offline! Those devices... are being stripped away!" He forced back his discomfort and looked at Superman Clark, the only one who showed no signs of change.

The tone was complex.

“At least he didn’t just vanish into thin air like Reverse-Flash and Batman… Now we should really be worried about whether we’ll just disappear into thin air… Except for you, damn Superman, you’re that guy’s father, you’ll definitely be fine.” There was a hint of helplessness in his voice.

"..."

Clark's expression was also complicated. He really wanted to say "it's not necessarily true," since no one could say for sure about the strangeness of time paradoxes. But after carefully sensing it, he found that he really didn't feel anything unusual, as if the dramatic changes in the world had nothing to do with him. So saying such a thing might be considered sophistry.

"Oh! No!!!" Just then, Wonder Woman Diana also let out a terrified scream. She looked down at her body, which wasn't becoming weaker, but rather... it was uncontrollably swelling and becoming obese! It was a kind of fat-filled obesity, a bloated mass that was the complete opposite of the Amazon warriors' muscular physiques!

"What exactly did Ian and his gang do to me?!"

Her armor groaned under the strain.

"Clark!!" Wonder Woman Diana screamed in despair, unable to accept her existence in this form. "Quick! Everyone, think of something!"

My comrades-in-arms are undergoing terrible changes one by one.

Clark was frantic. He turned sharply to the Flash, who had just recovered from the shock of Reverse-Flash's disappearance: "Barry! You must regain the power to travel through time! Only you can stop this now! You must find Ian and the other kids and correct their mistakes before reality completely solidifies!"

Superman now deeply regrets agreeing to Reverse-Flash's plan. He should have realized this sooner. But if Damian, Jordan, and Jonathan had been in the past, how much trouble could they have caused?

They're just a bunch of loose sand.

Now, the Justice League has sent the Kid King directly there, and Ian will probably go there on the spot to form a new Justice League. It seems that these superheroes have messed everything up again.

"Damn it!"

I don’t know if this is a curse, but things seem to be developing in a bad direction and it’s all related to the Justice League’s actions. Clark is now regretting his past actions again and again.

“I can try, but I can’t guarantee it.” Barry was also panicking. He forced himself to calm down and rushed to the control panel. “Using the parameters that Swann just set…maybe I can re-establish that link and force a breakthrough through the Speed ​​Force to reach their era!”

He frantically tried to maintain and adjust the particle accelerator settings, then golden lightning once again erupted from his body as he resolutely rushed into the circular track where the energy had not yet completely subsided!

This time, there was no Reverse Lightning to guide him, no comrades to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, only himself.

The Flash mentally rallied himself: "Barry, you can do it! You absolutely can! Run, Barry, just focus on running! For everyone!"

He truly lives up to his reputation as a talkative genius.

It's one thing to talk back to the enemy, but now the Flash is trying to talk back to himself.

The Speed ​​Force was activated once again.

Golden energy began to gather and weave within 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 take shape, a sudden change occurred.

"boom!!!"

An invisible yet immense repulsive force, like billions of invisible punches, suddenly erupted from within the Speed ​​Force dimension and slammed into Barry!

"Ahhhhh!!"

Barry Allen only had time to let out a painful scream before his center of gravity completely lost its balance. The golden lightning around him shattered like fragile glass, and he was thrown off the track like a kite with a broken string, crashing heavily to the ground and rolling around more than a dozen times.

After it crashed into and destroyed a row of instruments.

Superman arrived just in time.

That's what made The Flash stop.

Even so, The Flash suffered a serious injury.

"My leg! My leg! My leg is broken!!"

Barry let out a piercing wail.

He was holding his obviously unnaturally bent calves, but what was even more striking was his face—bruised and swollen, with dark circles under his eyes, cracked and bleeding lips, and his whole head swollen like a pig's head!
"what happened!"

Superman quickly checked Barry's injuries while asking him questions.

He carefully examined his teammate's injuries and found that Barry's leg bone was indeed broken, but the injuries on his face looked even more shocking, as if he had been tortured.

It doesn't look like an injury that could be caused by bumping into something on the ground.

as predicted.

"The Speed ​​Force! The Speed ​​Force gave me tens of thousands of large pen bags!!!" The Flash howled in pain and grievance, his head covered in a horribly disfigured pig's head.

His voice changed tone. "..."

Clark had absolutely no idea how to respond.

"Bruce..." Clark murmured his best friend's name, punching his temple as if forcing his super-brain potential to run at its limit.

“If, if Swan’s assessment of you is correct… if you truly foresaw all of this before you disappeared… then you shouldn’t have miscalculated this part!”

"Why!"

He frantically tried to understand Batman's thought process.

If Bruce truly foresaw how things would unfold before he disappeared, and even left behind a backup plan, then what can Batman possibly hope to use to turn the tide now that the plan has almost completely failed? Could he have a deeper scheme, one that even Reverse-Flash failed to detect?

"I have a way!" Just then, the steel skeleton, whose body had lost most of its Apokolips technology components and revealed more human tissue, struggled to walk over. His voice was somewhat intermittent due to the system's instability. "Although... it may only temporarily delay the process of the timeline being completely solidified, doing something is better than doing nothing."

"What's the solution?" Superman immediately looked at him, a glimmer of hope rekindling in his eyes.

Cyborg raised his remaining arm and displayed a complex mathematical model and energy parameters on the holographic projection: "Clark... how fast can you fly now?"

Superman paused for a moment, then honestly replied, "Actually, I haven't tried it at full strength recently, but I feel... I'm getting stronger every day than the day before."

That's why they call it cheating.

This upgrade speed is so fast that you can become stronger while lying down.

"The stronger you are, the better!"

Steelbone nodded and pointed to that parameter.

"According to this model...theoretically, as long as you can reach this critical speed and continue flying in the opposite direction of the Earth's rotation, generating a sufficiently strong spacetime torque...you will have the opportunity to forcibly create a time reversal field within a local area of ​​the Earth, delaying or even temporarily reversing the solidification process of the timeline!"

Cyborg spoke urgently. He was the only superhero who still possessed considerable knowledge of physics; after all, relying on Supergirl and Aquaman was definitely not going to work.

"Is this... okay?"

Superman felt this sounded like a fantasy from a science fiction novel.

“The theoretical basis exists… but it has never been verified. Moreover, it would place an enormous burden on you… so we can only give it a try.” Cyborg sighed.

He himself had no confidence in the success rate of the plan.

“Okay.” Superman didn’t hesitate at all. At this moment, every glimmer of hope had to be seized. He stopped talking and looked up at the ceiling of the Star Labs.

“Barry, you can ask Ian for the repair costs. I bought a bunch of incomprehensible special insurance policies from him without even knowing it myself.”

The words fell.

"boom--!!!"

A perfectly round hole was instantly pierced through the laboratory ceiling.

By the time everyone realized what was happening, Superman had already transformed into a blurry blue-red streak, soaring into the sky at an unimaginable speed, breaking through the atmosphere and entering near-Earth orbit.

Subsequently.

He adjusted his direction.

Starting in the opposite direction of Earth's rotation, it increased its speed to an unprecedented limit, beginning this lonely and desperate race of "dragging" the planet.

At the very moment Superman begins his reverse flight around the Earth, in another dimension—the Speed ​​Force space, which is composed of the essence of time.

"Where is this place?" A faint, crimson consciousness, like a candle flickering in the wind, slowly coalesced and "opened" its eyes again.

"As expected, he's not completely dead."

The voice grew increasingly desperate. It was the lingering soul imprint of Reverse-Flash, Elberd Swann; he hadn't completely perished, but had been drawn into the depths of the Speed ​​Force in an extremely fragile form.

Realizing he would become a Time Wraith, fear gripped his heart. However, he had not yet had time to observe this familiar area or prepare to face judgment from the Speed ​​Force.

The next second, Reverse Lightning was completely shocked by what he saw.

"I've got you! I've caught the legendary Pokémon—Speed ​​Force!"

A gigantic, towering Ian Kent stood in this space, grinning with the excitement of discovering a new toy, as he stretched out his equally gigantic hand and grabbed a figure that was constantly and wildly changing shape.

The figure sometimes appeared as a golden lightning bolt, sometimes as a rushing river of time, and sometimes as an aggregate of countless historical scenes.

But no matter how things change, they can't escape the control of that hand!
This is the very embodiment of the Speed ​​Force!

"Do not!!!!"

The Speed ​​Force emitted a shriek far more piercing and desperate than it had inside the particle accelerator, a sound filled with the panic of being desecrated and violated.

And a deepest fear that comes from instinct!
Followed by.

Reverse Lightning witnessed a sight he would never forget.

Ian caught the Speed ​​Force.

It was as if they had seized some kind of right, one that could not be refused or resisted. The endless golden speed force energy surrounding them, representing the cornerstone of cosmic time, no longer flowed in an orderly manner as before, but instead surged and roared violently like a lake tossed with a boulder! It was undergoing some unprecedented change!
And from Ian's body, an arc of electricity began to erupt... one that Reverse Flash had never seen before!

It wasn't pure golden Speed ​​Force lightning, nor was it his reversed crimson lightning; rather, it possessed a dazzling luster that seemed to imprison the Speed ​​Force itself.

This electric arc possessed an indescribable "possessive" quality, like ink dripping into clear water, or like a highly aggressive virus, beginning to spread and permeate wildly from Ian towards the vast Speed ​​Force around him! Some kind of power was inscribing a clear mark on the foundation of this universe!

"God... God... Is this right?"

The lament of the Speed ​​Force.

It resounded throughout the entire dimension.

How could it not slap Barry Allen's penny? Look at the disasters Barry Allen has brought it. It can feel its rules being changed by an invisible hand the moment Ian grasps it. It's not that Ian is actively absorbing it, but that it is being forcibly integrated into the other.

In the darkness, the will to change these rules is the one that is truly inviolable.

"what's the situation!!"

Even the souls of Reverse Lightning trembled.

He sensed that the unchanging rules of the Speed ​​Force were being forcibly rewritten, and an unprecedented "label" full of personal will was being fiercely branded onto the root of the time dimension!

"He's enslaving the Speed ​​Force!!" Reverse-Flash muttered to himself, his eyes filled with extreme terror and horror.

Barry Allen is the Speed ​​Force’s darling, its chosen runner; Reverse-Flash is the Speed ​​Force’s thief, the shadow that moves in reverse!
And Ian Kent... he wasn't going to be a runner or a thief at all; he was going to take the Speed ​​Force itself, the very foundation of the universe, and make it his own!

He wants to become the one who truly defines speed! The one who controls time... the god of extreme speed!
"How is that even possible!?"

at last.

Reverse-Flash discovered the blind spot. At that moment, Reverse-Flash belatedly realized what he had sent into the Speed ​​Force.

It turns out that what the Speed ​​Force has always feared is this very situation! It's not that it fears someone abusing its power, but rather that someone will fundamentally "possess" it!

Who could have predicted that?

Reverse Lightning is out of the question!
"What exactly is Superman keeping at home...?" Reverse-Flash's knowledge from the future has completely failed him, and he is witnessing a scene that should never have happened.

Simultaneously.

A bone-chilling cold also crept up his spine.

If the other party actually succeeds.

So, as the "servant" of the Speed ​​Force... what should he do? In a daze, Reverse-Flash recalled what the boy had said not long ago about Christmas reindeer or not.

(End of this chapter)