Rushville was dying in pieces.
Smoke drifted above the town, turning the afternoon sky a dirty grey. Several streets had been torn open by explosions, leaving cars overturned beneath broken power lines. Storefronts had collapsed into piles of brick and twisted metal. The windows of the surviving buildings were shattered, and dust coated everything, from abandoned vehicles to the faces of people standing behind police barricades.
Emergency sirens had been screaming for hours.
Rescue workers moved between the ruins, calling for survivors while firefighters fought stubborn pockets of flame. Some residents watched in silence. Others shouted names into the wreckage, refusing to accept that the people they were searching for might never answer.
Whatever Rushville had been before that day, it was gone.
Barry arrived in a burst of red lightning.
He stopped at the edge of a damaged intersection, his boots skidding across the cracked pavement. For a moment, he simply stared. He had seen cities damaged by metahumans, alien invasions, and things that had no business existing outside nightmares. Rushville still managed to make his stomach tighten.
This wasn't damage confined to one battlefield. It had swallowed streets, homes, businesses, and the ordinary lives that filled them.
A rescue worker hurried past carrying a medical kit. Barry caught his attention before he could disappear into the crowd.
"Tell me where you need help most. I can search the buildings, move debris, get supplies wherever they're needed. Just point me in the right direction."
The man looked at the red suit, then toward a partially collapsed apartment building.
"Third floor. We heard someone calling from inside, but the stairs are gone. We've been trying to find another way up."
Barry was already moving.
He returned less than a second later with two people, one in each arm, and placed them beside the waiting medical team. Before the rescue worker could thank him, Barry was gone again.
He spent the next several minutes pulling survivors from damaged buildings, carrying injured residents to ambulances, and helping firefighters clear access to blocked streets. His speed let him cover enormous distances, but it couldn't make the work effortless. Every building had to be checked. Every unstable wall carried the possibility of another collapse. He couldn't simply tear through the rubble without risking the people trapped beneath it.
When he finally returned to the intersection, Superman was helping lift a fallen concrete beam while Oliver coordinated with the emergency crews. Batman stood beside a police vehicle, speaking with a local officer who looked as though he hadn't slept in two days.
Barry approached them, his expression grim.
"There's still a lot of people missing. The rescue teams need more equipment, and several buildings are too unstable for anyone to enter without support."
"Clark is handling the worst of the collapses," Oliver said, looking toward the distant street. "I've got volunteers and emergency services working together. Bruce has been talking to the authorities."
"Then we keep going," Barry replied. "Whatever happened here, we can argue about responsibility after we get everyone out."
Bruce turned toward him.
"Hal happened."
Barry looked at him, then at the devastation stretching across the town.
"Of course he did."
Oliver rubbed a hand over his face. "Bruce, now isn't the time."
"I'm not blaming him for every broken building," Bruce replied. "I'm pointing out that the man has a talent for turning a bad situation into a catastrophe."
"That's not entirely fair," Clark said. His voice was calm, but there was little warmth in it. "Hal has saved lives. He's also made decisions that other people have paid for. Both things can be true."
Barry glanced between them. He knew Hal, and he knew Bruce's opinion of him had never been particularly charitable. Still, seeing the destruction firsthand made it difficult to dismiss the conversation as another argument between two men who disagreed about how a hero should behave.
"Where is he now?"
Nobody answered immediately.
Oliver's expression tightened. "Last we heard, he was at the motel. The whole place came down during the final confrontation. Nobody's been able to get close enough to confirm whether he made it out."
Barry turned toward the wreckage in the distance.
"Then that's where I'm going."
Bruce caught his arm before he could leave.
"Careful. The remaining structure is unstable, and there may be unexploded ordnance beneath the debris. I don't need you creating another rescue operation while trying to finish the first one."
Barry looked down at Bruce's hand, then back at him.
"I'll be careful."
He disappeared before Bruce could offer another warning.
The motel had been reduced to a sprawling mound of concrete, steel, and splintered timber. One section of the building had collapsed into the parking lot, burying several vehicles beneath the wreckage. A fire smouldered near what had once been the reception area. The sign out front hung crookedly from a single support, swinging whenever the wind passed through.
Barry circled the site at super speed, listening for heartbeats beneath the rubble.
There.
Faint, but present.
He stopped beside a section of the collapsed upper floor. A thick slab of concrete rested at an angle against a tangled mass of metal supports. Beneath it, buried in darkness and dust, someone was still alive.
Barry crouched and placed a hand against the concrete.
"Hal, if you can hear me, don't try moving. I'm going to get you out."
He studied the supports, searching for the safest way to lift the slab without bringing the remaining structure down on top of them. Then he began removing the smaller pieces of debris, working carefully enough to keep the concrete from shifting.
It would take time.
For once, speed alone wasn't the answer.
Across town, John Stewart walked through the ruins with the power ring clenched in his hand.
His clothes were dirty, his body battered, and his face carried the exhaustion of a man who had been pushed beyond the point where anger could keep him moving. Around him, Rushville lay broken beneath a haze of smoke. He passed a burned-out car, a shattered shop window, and a row of houses whose front walls had been torn away.
He didn't stop to look inside.
Lianna waited near a temporary command post at the edge of the devastated district. The Guardian's composure remained intact despite the destruction around her. She had watched worlds fall and civilizations collapse. Rushville was another tragedy in a universe that rarely offered clean endings.
John approached and held out the ring.
Lianna studied it, then looked at him.
"You've completed the task you were given. The ring has chosen you, John. You have the opportunity to take your place among the Green Lanterns."
John's fingers tightened around the small object before he placed it in her palm.
"I've spent too long chasing this thing. Hal gave everything to keep it, and look at what happened. People are dead. This town is in ruins. I don't want the ring, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life pretending that getting it makes any of this worth it."
Lianna regarded him quietly. "You may come to regret this decision."
"Maybe. But at least it'll be my decision."
He stepped away, leaving her holding the ring.
For a moment, Lianna watched him go. Then her attention shifted toward the distant motel ruins, where a streak of red lightning flickered between the broken walls.
She had not expected another hero to arrive.
John followed her gaze. "Who's that?"
"Someone who has come to help," Lianna answered.
John watched the red blur disappear behind the wreckage. He had spent so long trying to become something extraordinary that he had almost forgotten what it meant to help people without a ring telling him where to go.
He turned away.
At the motel, Barry finally reached the space beneath the concrete slab. A bloodied hand lay between two broken beams. He carefully cleared the remaining debris, revealing Hal pinned beneath the wreckage, barely conscious.
Hal's eyes opened as Barry lowered himself beside him.
"About time," Hal rasped.
Barry let out a breath that was almost a laugh. "You're welcome. Next time you decide to bring down a town, try doing it somewhere with better parking."
"Who the fuck are you?"
"The Flash?"