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

Chapter 259 Ian's Obsession! Reversing the Heavenly Gang!

Reverse Lightning instinctively wanted to flee.

The time-bender clad in the Reverse-Lightning suit raised its head, its empty eye sockets burning with crimson flames, and locked its gaze firmly on Alberd Swann before it.

Then, it let out a silent roar, filled with an obsession to destroy everything, and transformed into a black lightning bolt, rushing over fiercely!
"Whoosh whoosh!"

The stress response to reverse lightning is also very rapid.

They immediately began to flee.

They never even considered fighting their own undead.

Crimson lightning, carrying a terrified will, tries to shake off the Time Wraiths above the scorched earth and ruins. Elberd Swann, the speedster from the future, is being chased by the nightmare he fears most in his life.

That is himself.

The Time Wraith, clad in its tattered Reverse Lightning suit, was like a leech, relentlessly pursuing the enemy with boundless resentment and deathly stillness.

Reverse Lightning tried various sharp turns, utilized the terrain, and even created afterimages to confuse him, but the Time Wraith seemed to be able to see through all his intentions.

The opponent always manages to approach using the most direct and lethal approach.

"Damn it! He is me! Of course he understands my way of thinking best!" Reverse-Flash's fear continued to rise as he tried to tear open the time barrier and escape to other eras.

This is the ultimate tactic for speedsters when faced with insurmountable danger.

however.

Facts doomed him to failure.

The flow of time around him seemed to be frozen by some invisible force. The Speed ​​Force became viscous and resistant, and he was like a flying insect trapped in amber, completely unable to move.

Each collision with the barrier of time only resulted in a more intense backlash and excruciating pain on a spiritual level.

"No!!!! What's going on?!" Reverse Lightning was utterly horrified; he had never encountered anything like this before. Time seemed to have shut all doors for him.

He even used a futuristic technology-assisted thruster hidden inside his suit, unleashing speeds beyond his own limits, but he still couldn't widen the distance between himself and the Time Wraith. The black, death-laden lightning, like the shadow of fate, slowly eroded his escape route.

'This won't do! It's only a matter of time before we're caught!' Reverse-Flash's mind raced, searching for any glimmer of hope. Suddenly, he thought of Barry Allen, the Flash. That young speedster he considered both a key and a nemesis. If the two of them teamed up, perhaps…

But then he remembered how he had just kicked and broken Barry's leg without hesitation. A wave of regret washed over him; he should have known better than to break the Flash's leg.

Speedsters always seem to be tormented by things they can't regret, and Reverse-Flash is now experiencing the same feeling Flash had when he couldn't save his mother.

However, he quickly calculated the time. With the cellular activity of a speedster, plus the Speed ​​Force enhancement he inexplicably gained today, a fracture of the Flash's severity should have almost healed by now, nourished by the Speed ​​Force, at least not affecting basic running and fighting.

I absolutely have to get him to help me!

The will to survive overwhelmed everything. Reverse Lightning no longer hesitated; the crimson lightning abruptly changed direction, no longer attempting to escape, but instead rushing towards the Star Lab at top speed!
"Whoosh-!"

Inside the laboratory's control room, Barry, with Caitlin's help, had just removed the temporary splint and was trying to move his right leg, which was still a little sore and numb but no longer a problem.

Cisco is debugging the equipment.

They were trying to track the energy signals from reverse lightning and the nuclear blast zone. Meanwhile, "Dr. Wells," sitting in a wheelchair, was analyzing the data with a "serious" expression.

Just then, the crimson lightning struck again! This time, Reverse-Flash's target was crystal clear; he lunged directly at "Dr. Wells" in the wheelchair!
“Doctor!” Cisco and Caitlin exclaimed.

But Reverse Lightning is too fast.

He grabbed "Dr. Wells" by the neck, lifting him from the wheelchair. His crimson mask turned towards Barry, who had just stood up, and his voice, piercing through the mask, carried an undeniable threat: "Flash! If you don't want your dear doctor's neck broken, do as I say! There's a troublesome 'thing' following us outside. Take it down for me!"

This is threatening the Flash with his remaining time. Barry watched Dr. Wells struggling in Reverse-Flash's grasp, his face contorted in "pain."

He was indeed furious.

"Reverse-Lightning! Let go of the Doctor!"

hard to imagine.

Reverse-Flash has indeed established a very good image in the Flash's mind.

Barry definitely harbored feelings for the unrevealed Dr. Wells, a kind of emotional connection stemming from the loss of his own father, which led him to see Wells as a substitute for his own.

"Do as I say!"

Reverse Lightning roared a threat, its tone urgent.

at this time.

"Bang bang bang!"

The laboratory's reinforced glass exterior shattered like paper! A bolt of pure black lightning, radiating an ominous and deathly aura, followed closely behind.

It stopped outside the hole!

It was that Time Ghost!

The future Reverse-Flash did not immediately launch an attack. Its distorted, blurred face, with its eyes burning with crimson flames of hatred, first swept over "Wells," who was being held hostage by Reverse-Flash, then landed on Barry, who was on high alert, and finally locked onto Reverse-Flash himself.

What's chilling is that it actually spoke, its voice hoarse and broken, like countless shards of glass rubbing against each other, yet carrying an eerie calm that seemed to know everything.

“Running away... is pointless now, that’s how I was before.”

That voice, that tone... though distorted, Reverse-Flash and Barry could clearly recognize that it was essentially the voice of Alberd Swann!
The time spirit before me... it's intelligent! It can even communicate?!

This was completely beyond Reverse-Flash's comprehension and overturned Barry's understanding of time undead. Shouldn't they be remnants of time abandoned by the Speed ​​Force, left only with the instinct to devour?

"what are you saying?"

The Flash never expected that the trouble Reverse-Flash was talking about was actually a time ghost that Reverse-Flash himself created in the future. He was actually quite pleased to see Reverse-Flash in his time ghost form.

"Haven't you felt it yet? How slow-witted! All speedsters... while using the Speed ​​Force..." the Time Wraith continued in his broken voice.

Every word he uttered seemed to carry a curse, "which also meant... that the moment we started running... we had already become 'his' slaves."

slave?!
The word struck Reverse Flash and Barry like a thunderclap!
"Who is this 'he' you're talking about?!" Reverse-Flash roared in shock and disbelief, his grip on "Wells" loosening slightly involuntarily.

He couldn't imagine what being could regard a speedster, especially a future speedster like himself, as a slave! Even Savita was just a false god of speed!
"No, not Savita." The Time Wraith's burning gaze pierced through the mask, seemingly filled with endless mockery and pity, as he uttered that name in a deep voice.

"Instead, it was only now, in the current state of Ian Kent, that I realized that the boy was actually a member of the Infinite Family."

Reverse-Flash in the future certainly understood many things it didn't understand before.

Ian Kent! ?
The last name might not have been heard before, but wasn't Ian the name they were looking for? The Flash was also taken aback upon hearing this.

He instinctively looked at Reverse Lightning.

Reverse-Flash reacted with the same shock as himself. At that moment, Reverse-Flash and The Flash finally understood who this recurring, chaotic name referred to. But if the Time Ghost was real, they both wished they had never known the truth! An entity capable of enslaving speedsters?

This is more terrifying than any nemesis or any cosmic crisis!
"Our sudden speed...it's related to that person, isn't it?!" Reverse-Flash instantly connected the abnormal speed increase he and Barry had experienced earlier that day, and hurriedly sought confirmation from his future self. Of course, he was also stalling for time, trying to come up with a strategy.

“Yes, that’s right, he is the master of the Speed ​​Force.” The Time Wraith nodded slowly, his movements stiff and eerie: “Therefore, all the speedsters are his slaves.”

"The speed you suddenly gained is what he calls 'mercy,' a gift while enslaving the speedsters." Reverse-Flash was also very clear about Ian's thought process.

"Gift?"

Reverse Lightning's voice was filled with disapproving anger.

"What kind of gift is this?!"

The growth of power is accompanied by an inescapable enslavement.

It's practically a devil's contract!
He'd rather not have it!
Barry's focus, however, was elsewhere. He recalled the blurry images he had seen while tracking the nuclear explosion signal and realized that the speedster might be the so-called Ian.

"That three-headed, six-armed guy who's fighting Superman?" Faced with Reverse-Flash's transformation into a time ghost in the future, the Flash had no intention of helping Reverse-Flash.

He just wanted to figure out the message and understand what warning his future self was sending.

"Huh? That guy's name is Kent?" Reverse-Flash was also shocked upon hearing this. As someone from the future, he naturally knew Superman Clark Kent's identity.

After belatedly realizing that Ian's last name was the same as Superman's, which was definitely not a coincidence, Reverse-Flash's expression was incredibly varied and filled with disbelief.

The guy fighting Superman is actually Superman's son from the future?! At this moment, even the well-informed and cunning Reverse-Flash felt that the plot development was too absurd and bizarre, completely beyond his comprehension—a family drama mixed with cosmic-level power collapse and a Speed ​​Force enslavement contract.

What the hell is this timeline?!
……

Just as the atmosphere inside the Star Lab froze due to the Time Wraith's words, in the distance, above the battlefield where the nuclear explosion had not yet completely subsided and the rain was still pouring down.

The Paradoxical Lady, a mysterious figure holding a black umbrella and dressed in a Lolita dress, slowly withdrew her gaze from the direction of the Starry Sky Laboratory with little interest.

He paid no attention to Reverse Lightning, as if the story unfolding there, the drama of enslavement and escape, was merely a trivial interlude in her grand symphony.

"good evening."

The Paradoxical Lady slightly raised her head, her gaze piercing through the layers of rain and the still-lingering radioactive dust, landing on the top of a skyscraper that had not been completely destroyed by the explosion.

There, no one was there—at least not from the perspective of an ordinary person. But in the eyes of the Paradoxical Lady, another being stood there.

A woman shrouded in black gauze, exuding an aura of the end of all things and eternal slumber—Miss Death.

It's inaccurate to say that she didn't just arrive, because death is an omnipresent concept, so Miss Death is merely manifesting a projection of her consciousness here.

She, too, watched silently. Two women, beyond the comprehension of ordinary people, gazed at each other silently in the rain, separated by the chaotic battlefield. There were no words, no energy fluctuations, but a tacit understanding or game concerning the balance of the universe and the trajectory of destiny was silently unfolding at the point where their eyes met.

And where their gazes met was the very center of that earth-shattering battle.

Superman Clark Kent, this young god, has pushed his power to its limits. His heat vision sweeps across the sky like a crimson torrent, his freezing breath instantly condenses into a vast field of ice crystals, each of his punches is enough to shake mountains, and his speed is as fast as lightning.

However, although Superman is very strong, his opponent, Ian, who has three heads and six arms, has abilities that are so bizarre that Superman cannot even imagine them.

The grayish-white arc of the Speed ​​Force not only granted the opponent absolute speed surpassing his own, but also formed a peculiar "domain." Most of Superman's attacks, once they landed on it, seemed to vanish into thin air, being twisted, deflected, or even absorbed by some kind of rule-based force. The opponent's ability to teleport and self-destruct at will also left Superman with nowhere to hide.

"Ultra Bomb!"

Ian has exposed himself again.

Superman was blown up and covered in dust.

The massive mushroom cloud produced by the nuclear explosion had long been scattered and torn apart by the violent energy collision and speed impact between the two, leaving only lingering smoke and dust and still scorching air.

"Cough cough cough~"

Superman had lost count of how many times he had been repelled by the opponent's incredible speed and ability. He wasn't afraid of the explosion, but he was afraid of the so-called protein farts left inside.

The stench was amplified by a super sense of smell.

It was absolute torture.

"Who exactly are you?!" Superman demanded, as the opponent's fighting style was completely unpredictable, yet precisely targeted every one of his weaknesses.

It was as if they knew him inside and out.

This made Superman realize that something was wrong.

"I am the God of Speed! The Master of Time! The Focus of All Things! Call me Your Majesty!" Ian's reply was imposing, but the information he conveyed was still puzzling.

"You are absolutely not a god! No one in this world can call themselves a god!" The young Superman was still very temperamental, and with bloodshot eyes, he charged at Ian again.

Combat.

Fighting.

All of Ian's methods were for that ultimate goal—to seize control of Superman's fate by the scruff of his neck. He desperately wanted to carry out a revenge that would turn the tide of history!

It was this intense desire for revenge that finally, in a fierce battle, Superman was caught off guard when Ian found a weakness in his power!
"Hahahaha!"

An arm covered in gray-white lightning armor, as if breaking free from the constraints of time, gripped the back of his neck with precision and firmness at a speed that Superman could not even react to!
"How could it be so fast! What are you trying to do?!" Superman was shocked. All his strength instantly gathered, preparing to meet the opponent's fatal follow-up attack—many thoughts arose in his mind.

Why is the other person so fixated on their neck? Do they want to break it? Or is some kind of energy trying to erode their neck and then control their brain?

He had witnessed the monster's irrationality, and the worst possible scenario flashed through his mind. However, the excruciating pain, destruction, or enslavement he had anticipated did not come.

"Click~"

Superman's brain simply stopped thinking for a moment.

He was not injured.

The main problem was the incomprehension of what was happening—under Superman's completely stunned gaze, the "monster" gripping the back of his neck, from one of its other arms, actually... pulled out a very stylish-looking smartphone, completely out of place in this apocalyptic battlefield?!
"Click~"

The front-facing camera is already on.

A crisp click of the shutter.

Against the backdrop of battlefield ruins.

It seemed incredibly abrupt.

Extremely absurd.

(End of this chapter)