The Flash was still thinking underwater, even as he ran across it.

He thought the prison was an extrapolation of the indestructible collar that he could still [i]feel[/i] hanging off of his neck. An act of mad science against the typically inalienable forces of the universe, some expression of mutancy or magic festering in the prison’s very foundations that put him in [i]deep[/i]. Past drowning, where the danger wasn’t the water filling your lungs, but the [i]pressure[/i], threatening to send cracks across your skull. So deep and black that no light, no matter how fast, could penetrate.

He [i]knew[/i] his speed would come back after he escaped. His field of view would seem to pull out as everything slowed to a crawl around him; his brain would accelerate to keep pace with his new view of reality. Instead, the only thing he could think about was the run.

The others he’d met in the prison were being flown across. Barry insisted on running it for himself. A dead sprint across open water, nothing like the twists and hairpin turns of Mojoworld’s trials. A chance to run and think and just maybe a chance to go fast enough to become whole again.

He had dashed over oceans in the blink of an eye. But those were [i]his[/i] oceans. Placid sheets of blue that to his eye moved only glacially, preserving the fish and creatures beneath as if in amber. This sea was alive, [i]angry[/i].

The water’s surface shifted as sands in a hurricane, dunes and valleys reshaping themselves before his very eyes. With every hand of brine that crashed across his costume, a boot would plunge into the deep, the force of his step and surface pressure mismatching, only to send him skipping like a stone across the water, legs pinwheeling above and beneath him.

A part of him wondered if this was another of the challenges. Maybe they were [i]meant[/i] to escape. An extended bout that would see them picked off, one by one. A massive VR rotunda with climate control and tide machines to sell the illusion. But the blown out remains of the moon hanging in the sky and the whirring device on his belt told him otherwise. The tides were real. So was the death that lingered beneath.

[center]---[/center]

The rooftop was a chance to rest and recollect, and to attempt to explain the intricacies of the multiverse to the uninitiated. In the prison there were other possibilities -- time travel, wormholes, pocket dimensions. But to Barry, it had been plain as day once he saw the others. He knew he was just [i]one[/i] Flash out of a community of red and gold runners in every shape, size, and variation, and knew that for the rest it was just the same.

This Steve Rogers was younger and yet sourer than his. He carried the same willful determination in his gait and his gaze, but the hopeful spark that Barry had come to associate with Captain America had long since gone out. He took the concept of the multiverse the hardest. In his world, he was the only costumed avenger, and now he was thrust into countless trillions of worlds chock full of them. Barry felt for the man, having his understanding of the world pulled out from under him. But at least he was alive, not cut down like the Batman they had crossed paths with.

And not a corpse like Damian. [i]Six[/i], Barry had to keep reminding himself. Not the Robin he had come to know, but a [i]body[/i] with glassy eyes and pale skin, cloaked in a symbiote of some kind. It wasn’t of the same ilk as Venom’s, a supervillain from his earth, but something to keep an eye on, nonetheless.

Then there was M’gann, this time without her innocence. Not a member of the Titans but a full fledged Martian Manhunter. At the least, she was easier to separate from her counterpart than Damian -- she wasn’t green.

Jonah Hex, Barry only knew of from history. From the endless tomes of Central City Library that he’d read cover to cover again and again. A western adventurer, bounty hunter, and sometimes-lawman eking out an existence in tumultuous times. This one was similar enough to the legends. A hardened cowboy type with an iron on his hip and snake in his boot or somesuch. He described himself as a man out of time. Not brought just from his universe, it seemed, but from his future as well.

For Hex’s sake, hopefully Mojo’s device could travel in [i]time[/i], too. He had been studying the device as the child scavenged for food, watching the symbols dancing and shifting in the top left corner of the screen. Sometimes they’d change so fast even [i]he[/i] would miss their transition. On his world he’d have been able to record every symbol a thousand times, test pattern variations, and determine for certain how to operate it. Instead he felt like a kid again in Central City Arcade, meaninglessly mashing buttons as Iris’ combos flattened him. Really, he shouldn’t have needed the damn thing at all. He could take everyone into his arms and run them [i]home[/i] to wherever that was for them. He could be fast enough to defeat The Rival. He could see Iris, [i]his[/i] Iris, one more time. He wanted to chuck the device into the sea, never to be found again.

But the device was coming to life in his hands. Symbols migrating from their corner to the screen’s center, growing in scale as the device began to ping, as it had done before sending them here.

[color=red]“I think we have another doorway coming, people…”[/color] Barry said. He looked out over the ocean, dead in every regard but for the warring tide on its surface. [color=red]“Unless anyone’s keen on finding this world’s Atlantis, it’s our best bet.”[/color]

Moments later, another rift opened in reality. With his full speedforce, Barry had slipped and slid through the walls between times and dimensions, but this was a [i]hole[/i]. Almost like a boom tube, a shimmering silver circle hanging on nothing that promised passage to elsewhere.

[color=red]“Well… Once more unto the breach.”[/color]