by Barry Lyga
So he’d forsaken those powers for a long time, not learning how to use them, especially the more offensively inclined powers, like the sonic vibe blasts he could shoot out of his hands. When absolutely necessary, he would open a breach somewhere or use his tactile clairvoyance to figure something out, as when he’d touched Madame Xanadu, but overall, he was happiest not as superhero Vibe but rather as Cisco Ramon, Mad Scientist–about-town.
Breaching from one universe to another was one thing. But for some reason—he hadn’t quite worked it out yet—breaches within a universe were difficult and often painful.
But sometimes you just had to step up.
“I’m here,” he said into his comms, ignoring the pain from his ankle. “Point me in the right direction.”
From S.T.A.R. Labs, Iris crackled in his ear. “Satellite tracking shows this ‘Power Ring’ heading north over Novick, bearing six degrees.”
Cisco spun around, oriented himself, and scanned the sky. “I got nothing. Your satellite is all fakakta.”
“It’s your satellite,” she reminded him. “And I’m watching his dot right now. He’s practically on top of you. And since when do you speak Yiddish?”
Frustrated, Cisco turned again, craning his neck up, looking for the green blur of motion Barry had described to him. Nothing.
And then it hit him. Duh! Idiot!
He rushed to the edge of the building and peered over the parapet. For a sickening moment, the distance to the ground seemed to contract, the street rushing up to him, but then his equilibrium settled.
And there, a couple of stories below him, floating in the air like he just don’t care . . . was Power Ring.
“I got him,” Cisco told Iris. The villain was smashing windows and walls with a giant green fist that glowed with malevolent energy. The building shook beneath Cisco’s feet, and debris rained down on the fleeing crowd.
Cisco licked his lips. Power Ring wasn’t looking up; all his focus was on the building and the damage he could cause.
Don’t mess this up. Don’t mess this up.
“Hey, Cisco, any day now!”
Cisco almost jumped out of his skin. A tiny metallic sphere had drifted over to him, utterly silent. He recognized it—one of Mr. Terrific’s T-spheres, a semiautonomous mobile computer.
“Buzz off, you Phantasm reject,” Cisco snarled. “I was just about to save the day.”
“We’re getting crushed by the crowd down here, so whatever you’re gonna do, do it fast!”
Cisco zapped the sphere with a stronger vibe blast than he’d intended. He’d meant to shove it away from him, and instead he sent it hurtling the length of the rooftop, where it spun around for a few seconds, then dropped over the edge and out of sight.
“Mr. Terrific,” he muttered. “No self-esteem issues on Team Arrow.”
Okay, Francisco. You can do this. You can totally do this. It’s only, like, thousands of lives and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage on the line. So, you know, nothing to stress over.
Licking his lips again, he cracked his neck left, then right. He leaned over the parapet again. Wiggled his fingers to loosen them up.
“Zippity-zappity,” he muttered to himself. “How hard can it be?”
With a deep breath, he extended his arms out to their full length, aiming both hands at Power Ring. Inside, from some well of power that defied physics, he felt the vibrations beginning, an almost cold sensation in the pit of his stomach. It was like a sneeze, building and building, only instead of feeling it in his head, he felt it at his core. And instead of coming out his nose . . .
Vommmmmmmmmmmmm
The vibe blast radiated out from his hands, sonic frequencies rippling the air. Power Ring never saw it coming, and by the time he heard it . . . it was already there.
“Ba-bam!” Cisco chortled, fist-pumping triumphantly as Power Ring shouted out in alarm.
And dropped out of the sky.
“Whoops,” Cisco said.
“Bar— Uh, Flash, this is Vibe. Look up!”
At the sound of Cisco’s voice over the comms, Barry and Oliver, who had struggled through the crowd to an empty spot of pavement, looked up. In stark relief against the black backdrop of the night sky, a human figure plummeted through the air toward them.
“We should step aside,” Oliver commented.
“He’s gonna hit!” Barry warned.
“Let him.”
“No!” Barry couldn’t believe Oliver was serious.
“He’s a bad guy,” Oliver pointed out. “I don’t want to kill him, but I don’t have to save him.”
Barry grimaced and took off. He ran up the side of the building, doing calculations in his head the whole time. Sure, sure—it looked easy: You run up the side of the building and jump out to catch the guy who’s falling. Piece of cake, right?
Nope. It was all physics and trigonometry. Everything had to be planned down to the microsecond. Push off from the building at the wrong time or at the wrong angle and you’ll either miss the guy entirely or—maybe worse—end up colliding with him so forcefully that you might as well have let him smash into the ground.
Superspeed was an awesome power, but it involved a heck of a lot of homework.
Barry thought, AONES.
AONES. At Or Near Earth’s Surface.
That was the relevant factor here. At or near Earth’s surface, objects—or stunned super villains—accelerated at a reliably understandable rate of 9.8 meters per second squared. Power Ring had been close to the top of the building, which was about 120 meters high, as best Barry could tell. Figure Power Ring’s mass to be about 80 kilograms. Barry knew the formula for calculating the velocity of a falling body: You simply took the square root of the quantity of the height of the building times two, times the AONES constant of 9.8. So, when Power Ring hit the ground, he would do so at 48.5 meters per second. Which was almost the same as being hit by a car going 70 miles an hour.
In other words, Power Ring would be paste.
Fortunately, it took almost five whole seconds to fall that far, which was longer than Barry actually needed.
Power Ring was already halfway to the ground, just beginning to shake off the effects of Cisco’s blast. The green ring on his right fist was sputtering and spitting little verdant sparks in all directions, almost as though it were a flooded car engine that just couldn’t catch.
Barry calculated the angle he needed, factored in Power Ring’s direction and velocity, and realized that he needed to jump . . .
NOW!
He shoved off from the building. Lightning crackled around him. The air smelled of ozone. He reached out with both arms.
Power Ring dropped right into Barry’s grasp. Barry tightened his arms around the villain. “Got you!”
Let’s hear it for math homework. And they used to laugh at me for actually studying during study hall . . .
Power Ring gibbered unintelligibly. They were still falling.
I hope Oliver has figured out the obvious by now . . .
Barry churned his legs in the air, creating an enormous amount of friction, as well as a windy updraft. The combination slowed them down, but not so much that they wouldn’t be pulped on landing.
Just then, he risked a glance below and saw Green Arrow, off to one side, standing perfectly still as hordes of frightened citizens flowed around him. Oliver was like a rock jutting out of a river, immobile, focused, his bow drawn, an arrow aimed.
Yes! Do it, Oliver!
Green Arrow loosed the arrow. It soared into the empty space just below the falling duo, then split apart. Strong cables shot off in all directions, and suddenly there was a stout net, anchored at four points on the building, a lamppost, and a nearby billboard advertising the Central City Diamonds baseball team.
Barry and Power Ring crashed into the net, which held . . .
. . . for about three seconds before breaking . . .
. . . and spilling them into the air again.
B
ut it had done its job—it broke their fall just enough, slowing their momentum, so that when they fell the last ten feet, it merely hurt.
Power Ring groaned and raised his fist. The green ring finally caught, and a wicked-looking mace appeared in the air.
Before Power Ring could do anything with it, though, Green Arrow crouched down and punched him once in the face. Hard. Power Ring slumped unconscious, collapsing on top of Barry, who’d borne the brunt of the impact.
“The only thing that doesn’t hurt on me right now,” Barry moaned, “is my eyelashes.”
He took a moment to twist around and remove the ring from the villain’s finger. It felt warm, pulsating gently in his hand. He shivered. It seemed completely harmless, but he sensed something malign and ill-intentioned about its power. Like a bad whisper in a dark room. He tucked it into a pocket.
“I knew you wouldn’t let him die,” Barry told Oliver.
“I was mostly trying to save you,” Oliver said, helping Barry to his feet. “That’s three down. And the worst one yet to go.” He pointed up, where Ultraman had begun ripping big air condensers off rooftops and dropping them on the fleeing crowd. Black Canary and Mr. Terrific were doing a decent job deflecting the pieces, but it was exhausting, and they couldn’t last forever.
“Time to bust out that kryptonite arrow,” Barry said. “Let’s go line up a perfect shot.”
“Hey, everyone.” Flash’s voice came through the comms channel to everyone on-site from Teams Flash and Arrow. “We need to draw Ultraman into Green Arrow’s line of sight, OK?”
“Ultraman?” It was Wild Dog. “Is that the name of the guy shooting fire out of his eyes up there?”
Sure enough, Ultraman was melting a mirrored wall on a skyscraper into a molten river that threatened to engulf some innocents below.
“Try to keep up, Wild Dog,” Mr. Terrific said as the Flash moved the potential mirror victims out of harm’s way.
“Cut the chatter,” Green Arrow growled, “and divert that guy off the main avenue and into the street that cuts in from the northwest.”
“Roger that,” said Wild Dog.
“Copy,” said Black Canary.
“Let’s do this,” Vibe chimed in.
7
Green Arrow was poised on a ledge on a low building at the point where Novick Street met Guice Avenue in a T-intersection. From here, he could see the entire length of Novick, all the way to the park. He had a perfect vantage point. Now all he needed was a target.
He nocked the kryptonite arrow. It looked like any other arrow, with a long, straight shaft, custom fletching, and a tapered steel head. But that steel was an illusion. It was a thin layer of painted aluminum that concealed the glowing, green kryptonite beneath. It had cost Oliver a fortune to synthesize the element, based on astronomical observations of the radio spectrum of the planet Krypton in a far-off galaxy. It had been worth it last year when he’d faced down the evil Supergirl from Earth-X, and it would be doubly worth it now.
“I’m in position,” he whispered into his comms.
“Copy,” Flash responded. “Let’s razzle-dazzle, everyone.”
Cisco ran across the rooftop and closed his eyes as he jumped over the edge. The Great Mark Hotel was five hundred feet high. He had something like six seconds before impact, plenty of time to conjure a breach, even if it took him a couple of tries.
He nailed it in one. A breach opened up beneath him, and he plummeted through.
On the ground, Mr. Terrific watched as Ultraman swooped overhead. “C’mon, Vibe . . .” he mumbled under his breath. “Any day now . . .”
Before his eyes, the sky ripped open just above Ultraman. Cisco Ramon dropped out of nowhere and landed right on Ultraman’s back.
The villain was completely caught off guard. He lurched in the air, trying to throw Cisco off, but Cisco had a good grip on Ultraman’s cape.
“Now!” Mr. Terrific yelled. He sent a flurry of T-spheres into the sky, swarming Ultraman like flies on a sun-spoiled carcass.
The T-spheres spun and whirled around the villain, flashing strobe lights and emitting high-pitched squeals at random intervals. With a snarl, Ultraman batted some of them away and vaporized others with blasts of heat vision. Meanwhile, Cisco rode him like a bucking bronco at the world’s worst, most dangerous rodeo.
“Canary! It’s you!” Flash called out over their earpieces.
Black Canary was poised atop a nearby building. She took a deep breath and screamed out her Canary Cry so fiercely that it tore at her throat. Cisco bailed, zapping Ultraman with a vibe as he released the cape and dropped out of the sky again, falling into another breach just before a sizzling ray of heat vision could hit him.
Between the vibe blast, the T-spheres, and the Canary Cry, Ultraman was disoriented, his rage building.
And anger would make him sloppy, Barry knew. It was time.
The Flash ran up a building, leaped, and bounced off another one, gaining altitude and momentum, then pushed off one more time. He was on an arc path that would lead to a collision with Ultraman, moving at incredible superspeed.
The villain had destroyed the last of the T-spheres. He puckered his lips and blew a hurricane-like wind at the rooftop on which Black Canary stood. She tumbled over, grabbed a ventilation duct, and hung on for dear life.
Barry closed his eyes and tucked into a ball, then vibrated as he neared Ultraman, hoping that Kryptonian molecular structure wasn’t too much denser than ordinary matter. Otherwise, this was going to hurt. A lot.
He vibrated straight through Ultraman. Whew! He hadn’t been sure that was going to work—until it did.
Ultraman actually froze for a moment, hanging suspended in the air like an ornament without a tree. He stared, tracking Barry with his eyes as the Flash tumbled through him and past him, then landed on a nearby balcony and ran down the side of the building.
“What are you?” Ultraman demanded, and flew after him.
Barry pushed himself even faster. His whole body was one big bruise, but he couldn’t give up now. He hit the street, turned left, and kept running. Ultraman tailed him, zipping down from above and cruising twenty feet or so off the ground, fists held out before him. Barry heard the crackle and pop of heat vision behind him; he darted left. A fire hydrant overheated and exploded, showering him with water and filling the air with steam. He fought to keep his footing on the suddenly slick road.
He raced down the street, keenly aware that he was only outpacing Ultraman by a few feet. Tossing glances over his shoulder, he juked left and right to avoid the sporadic blasts of heat vision. Sweat poured down his forehead, wicking into his eyes.
He cut a sharp left turn onto Novick Street.
Oliver watched as the Flash came around the corner and barreled down Novick toward him. He only had a split second—Barry was moving so fast that he was just a red blur and a yellowish coruscating cascade of lightning.
Right behind him was Ultraman. Barry put on a burst of speed and pulled ahead.
Oliver drew in a deep breath, then blew it out slowly. Archers never held their breath—the strain of holding all that air in the lungs could cause tiny muscle spasms, little vibrating shakes that could throw off the aim. He emptied his lungs, and when his body was completely at rest, he loosed the arrow.
With his speed-attuned senses, Barry watched the arrow as it left Oliver’s sniper’s nest. If the plan was working, Ultraman would be too distracted by his rage and his desire to kill Barry to notice something like an arrow.
The arrow sailed through the air, rising and then dipping ever so slightly with the motion of the air currents.
It’s gonna miss, Barry thought.
No, wait, it’s gonna hit.
He changed his mind ten times in a second, then stopped thinking about it. He had to trust that Oliver Queen, the greatest archer in the world, had compensated correctly for windage.
The arrow looked perfectly normal. And in fact, Ultraman spied it when it was halfway to him.
He assessed it instantly and realized it couldn’t hurt him. Pathetic. If the people on this Earth thought they could hurt him with an arrow . . . They might as well throw sticks and stones. Idiots.
So he ignored it, just as he ignored things like bullets, tank shells, surface-to-air missiles, and basic morality. All he cared about right now was getting his hands on this punk who thought he was Johnny Quick, breaking his stupid speedster legs in half, then ripping off the stumps. See how fast he could run then! Ha!
The arrow shuddered briefly and the aluminum shell split off, revealing the glowing kryptonite core. By now, it was less than two feet away from Ultraman, who was flying toward it at several times the speed of sound.
Barry spun around, running backward, grinning as the arrow and Ultraman ran into each other. A green puff marked the blast spot, and Ultraman pulled up short in the air, snatching the arrow by its shaft, snapping it in two instantly. The glowing green impact point of the arrow throbbed against his neck, pulsating like a heartbeat. Any second now, Barry knew from experience, Ultraman would drop from the sky like a clay pigeon at the Olympics.
The villain hovered for a moment, staring at the crushed arrow in his hand. He put one hand to his neck, where the kryptonite had hit him.
And then he laughed.
It wasn’t an amused laugh; it was the angriest, most outraged laugh Barry had ever heard. It echoed in the concrete-and-glass canyon of Novick Street, shaking the windows until they shattered and rained glass down onto the abandoned sidewalks.
Ultraman threw down the arrow and inhaled mightily, puffing out his chest. His muscles—already enormous—seemed to swell, and his eyes glowed a sick and harsh red that was almost black.
Barry’s mouth went dry and his heart hammered just a little too hard in his chest.
“Uh, guys?” Barry put out over the comms connection. He swallowed hard and paused. He couldn’t believe what he was about to say. “We may have a little problem. Seems like kryptonite makes this guy stronger.”
8
He should have realized. Everything on Earth 27 was the opposite of the same thing on Earth 1. Good guys were bad, the Rogues were noble . . . so of course kryptonite wouldn’t stop Ultraman.