Before the Flash came along, Central City had been utterly peaceful. Citizens went about their business, everyone diligently attending to their duties.
Now? Constant incidents. Major incidents. A bolt from the blue—that described them perfectly.
Following Gideon's directions, Thea finally located the source of her unease: Barry Allen! The waters around Central City were surging violently, forming waves dozens of meters high that roared toward the city. Barry was running around the city's perimeter at insane speeds, apparently trying to create wind resistance to block the tsunami.
He ran faster and faster. In places he couldn't see, Thea observed the time barrier showing signs of imminent breakthrough.
No question about it. This idiot was going to punch through time and create a temporal paradox. Whether he went back one day or two, Thea couldn't quite remember—she only knew that this crude method of time travel would cause damage to all intelligent life thousands of times greater than the harm from the potential deaths of Central City's six million residents.
Her peripheral vision caught the actual culprit standing at the pier's center—a throwaway villain similar to the one the Flash had defeated in his first battle. This guy also controlled weather, but was stronger because he had an actual name: Weather Wizard.
"Wizard" was obviously complete nonsense—he was just a metahuman who could manipulate local weather patterns.
The Flash was an idiot too. Why not just take this guy down directly? The moment the culprit was neutralized, the tsunami would lose its controller. At worst, some buildings would flood—casualty numbers might not even reach double digits.
If he time-traveled, though? The harm was incalculable. The entire universe would be affected. Maybe an accident that never happened would cause two planets to go to war. Maybe some office worker would get in a fatal traffic accident because they were late. Maybe some mad scientist would have a sudden inspiration and create something world-ending.
All sorts of accidents could happen. Time's variability exceeded even the ability of the most powerful computers and the greatest gods to predict or measure. It was simply too heavy a burden.
Thea herself wouldn't be affected. Diana, having merged with the Source—still slowly growing—presumably wouldn't be disrupted either.
Everyone else? Uncertain. Would Lois Lane in Metropolis have a miscarriage from some minor accident, ultimately dying along with her unborn child, leading to Superman going down a darker path? The probability existed.
Would Batman, Damian, even Moira and Oliver encounter accidents? All unknown. Thea absolutely wouldn't allow it.
Barry's current speed was too fast—already exceeding Thea's maximum speed. She could only draw energy from the magic network, establishing a thousand-to-one time dilation field ahead of him.
Time Stop—that's what mages called this spell, though it was somewhat arrogant. The principle was actually altering the time flow rate in a target area, a far cry from genuine time stopping.
Thea modified the spell slightly. Borrowing immense magical and divine power, her version's effect exceeded ancient mages' by several dozen times.
Barry, head down and sprinting mindlessly, charged straight into her time field. The drastic shift between normal flow and field flow snapped him out of his unconscious running. He watched as the external seawater hung suspended mid-air, citizens' faces frozen in panic while their bodies remained nearly motionless. The entire world seemed to have stopped turning.
Before he could figure out what he'd encountered, Thea appeared before him, face deadly serious.
"Mr. Barry Allen, do you know what you're doing?!"
Honestly, in all the time they'd known each other, this was the first time Barry had seen Thea speak with such a stern expression. As they say, when good-natured people get angry, it's terrifying. The young Miss was currently in approximately that state.
Still, the Flash had his own convictions and wouldn't back down over a casual comment. "I'm saving Central City."
Hearing his unwavering response almost made Thea laugh bitterly. Perhaps her slight smirk made Barry uncomfortable—his tone grew more serious too.
"Is this funny? You don't want to help—I don't blame you. Central City is my home. I have to protect it." He glanced around, noticing the seawater seemed to have risen slightly, citizens' bodies showing minute movement. "What is this place? Let me out."
"This is a relative time stasis buffer zone. If you use that ability that lets you read eight hundred pages in an instant, you could achieve similar effects." In Thea's memory, Superman had chatted with the Flash in a world where everyone else was relatively frozen. Different paths to the same destination—when any force reached its extreme, they'd all develop similar capabilities.
"You keep claiming you're protecting the city. Why not just take down that metahuman directly?" Thea asked, genuinely puzzled.
Barry looked left and right, unable to perceive anything special about this area. Time stop, relative time stop—these concepts were still beyond his reach. Hearing Thea's question now, he countered, "What about the tsunami? What kind of impact will hit the entire city? Have you thought about how many people will die?"
Thea fell silent. This was the difference between her and proper superheroes. They'd save every single life. While Thea would save people too, she lacked that conviction to save absolutely everyone.
In a situation requiring one sacrifice to save a hundred—assuming her family wasn't the one person—she'd choose to sacrifice that individual. If her family *was* that one person, she'd eliminate those hundred and save her own.
Superman, the Flash, and Captain America over in the other universe would choose to save everyone, even if it meant sacrificing themselves.
This moral quality could be called great. When watching it in movies or comics, it felt incredibly noble. But actually working alongside these people in reality created serious ideological conflicts.
Standing in the future, looking back at the Flash's actions, Thea found them extremely unwise. But from Barry's own perspective, this was his only choice.
"Mr. Barry Allen, I need to remind you—you probably don't realize what you're doing."
"If you continue running at your previous speed, you'll punch a hole in the time barrier. The kinetic energy involved is incalculable by human measurement units. Do you know what consequences that will cause?"
A hole in the time barrier? What was that? He had vague suspicions but wasn't certain. After all, he'd only wanted to create a wind wall, not punch holes in time.
Still, seeing Thea rush over in such a hurry that she hadn't even changed clothes, he couldn't help asking, "What consequences?"
"You'll travel through time. Central City will definitely be saved, because that man over there—" Thea pointed toward the distant figure in a long coat with a full beard, the Weather Wizard, "—will be caught by you. Which means the tsunami won't exist at the time point you travel to."