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Location: Central City
Post #1.06: Exit Light
It had been a couple of days since they had last seen this ‘Sand Demon’ though, that hardly seemed right. Thawne had been scourging his files from the time vault, to try and figure out who, or what it was. But he never could quite figure it out. As if this person didn’t exist - an abnormality. What had he done to destabilize the timeline already? He had barely even been The Flash for a month, and already time was messing around? He managed to go 17 years as Doctor Wells that one time and everything was fine.
Surely, this couldn’t be his fault. Nothing’s ever his fault. Eobard Thawne does not make mistakes. No, Eobard Thawne acts according to the plan. Always. Things go awry, it’s someone else who’s made a mistake… But it’s always another speedster. And there are none... Not yet.
He couldn’t quite figure out what was happening. Nor why he wasn’t getting faster. Barry Allen had mental hangups to get over to get faster. Eobard already knew all of the tricks of being a speedster. He taught Allen most of them. Yet, he was barely any faster than Allen was at this point. Was the speed force perhaps not powerful enough yet, still recovering from the damage caused by their battle?
There were a lot of questions in Thawne’s head, and not nearly enough answers. So, he did what a Speedster does best. He ran. Fast. Mile after mile added to his shoes, each step gave him clarity, an attunement to the speed force he hadn’t felt for many years. Like a soft caress, rather than the harsh wind he was used to feeling.
His headset beeped. Gideon had picked up the police scanner. The black dust monster was back, and so was the man who controlled it. Eobard wasn’t messing around this time, he had Gideon hack the traffic lights and sending out a faked call to the cops to set up roadblocks where the traffic lights wouldn’t work. By the time Thawne arrived, running across the water, he had 40 blocks of straight road to the bank vault the monster was attacking. Every step was filled with determination and more importantly, urgency. He needed to figure out who this guy was and what he wanted - how was he a different Meta than what Thawne’s records showed? What was his story?
The scarlet speedster approached, whooshing past the cop cars, the car's windows exploding as he rushed past, the policemen losing their hats. Thawne’s fist tore through the body of the monster, it collapsed as Eobard did not even stop to check, instead of looking for the source - the one whom the stream of black dust was recalling back to. He found him inside of the vault.
He was wearing a more flamboyant top hat now, and a fur coat. “... Are you a pimp?” Thawne asked the man in black who cackled “Not quite, my dear.” tapping the floor with his cane twice, the dark dust swirling under him, covering him and shrouding him. Thawne zoomed past him, yanking the cane before he could do anything else, pulling it far beyond his reach. “What the hell is this. Some kind of tech?”
“Give that back.” The criminal demanded, and The Flash felt his grip loosen around the cane. Some kind of telekinesis. Okay, he could work with this. He ran in front of the cane, delivering a punch to the thief’s nose, sending him to the floor, cursing. “You son of a whore. Didn’t they teach you pesky heroes any manners?”
“Not this one.” The Flash responded. “Now tell me, who the hell are you?”
“Who can call me... The Shade. And well, I’m the new master thief here in Central City.”
“But I’ve caught onto you twice.”
“Ah yes. Or perhaps you’ve simply fallen into my trap… Hero” The Shade said, tapping the floor again and the dust around him covered the entire vault, sealing it shut and completely dark. “Great, you turned out the light. Oh no. I’m so scared.” Flash taunted, sarcastically.
“Perhaps you should be, Hero.” As the shadows started attacking The Flash. He got hit in the face, then the gut. He quickly began running, The Shade was moving. “You’re fast. Can you outrun a shadow?” The energy generated from Thawne running lit the room up for a second, enough for him to find his opponent and come rushing at them, a punch, a kick and another flurry of punches were all negated like nothing by the black dust covering him. As he did, he was immediately smacked by the shadow puppets. Thawne regained his footing before he could be held down and continued to move. He couldn’t vibrate through them, he had already tried, and he wasn’t gonna risk going for the kill by vibrating his hand into The Shade’s heart - who knows what would happen then. He needed to move faster. Faster enough to generate enough energy.
He began running in circles, on the floor, upon the walls, the hands chasing him. He pushed off the wall, leaping at Shade, attacking him with a flurry of blows that the shadow hands all deflected, forcing Flash to retreat back into the darkness, while Shade was still covered in his shadow pocket. He ran further around the room, the walls, floor, roof, the box Shade had built began shrinking, and Thawne kept on running. He finally generated enough power.
The lightning bolt formed in his hand, and he staked the wall of shadows with his lightning, frying The Shade’s powers, as the lightning immediately lit the room back up, all the dust was vaporized and Shade was spazzing. “What the hell did you do?!” He cried, as he began to glow with a bright light, as if he was overloaded, in a pained scream he exploded, the dust he left behind vanished as if sucked into the thin air.
“... That was incredibly creepy. And that’s saying something, coming from me.”
The reporters who had been held back by the shadow wall stormed into the room, to finally get an interview with the scarlet hero, the only words they could get out to him was the answer to a simple question.
“Who are you?” The young Reported asked and Thawne grinned. “I’m The Flash.” Before he vanished in a blur, and suddenly headlines were printed at a speed that could make the Daily Gazette the fastest newspaper alive.
