With his speed, breaking his father out of prison wouldn't be much harder than ordering pizza. He just didn't want to free his father using such dishonorable methods.
Now Thea was offering an alternative. Though he could tell it wouldn't exactly be fair either, at least his father could walk openly in public instead of hiding every day.
Should he uphold judicial justice or reunite with his father? The emotionally-driven Barry struggled between the two choices.
The kid actually had principles. Thea nodded approvingly. When the time came, she'd make a couple of phone calls and get him out. Controlling the criminal underworld's pipeline, extracting one person from prison was incredibly easy. It would be done without a trace, with no connection to Thea.
The Flash couldn't very well send his own dad back to prison after seeing him free, could he? He'd probably accept the fait accompli with some token resistance.
Dealing with these prideful heroes—the young lady had plenty of experience with that.
Setting aside Barry's father, Thea still wanted to ask about their attitude toward the Reverse-Flash. "What do you plan to do about him?"
Caitlin continued playing the wallflower. Cisco and Barry both looked conflicted.
First, kill him? Impossible. Forget their long time together—their feelings still existed. If the Reverse-Flash couldn't bring himself to truly hurt them, Barry and Cisco were even more reluctant. Add an "extra" to that reluctance.
Let him go? Also impossible. Barry felt this was his responsibility. He had to capture the Reverse-Flash.
"All right, I'll give you a hand." Thea pulled out Chloé Turgeon's compass and tossed it to Barry.
"This is Turgeon's Compass, a magical artifact. As long as you think of someone, the compass will automatically point to their location. Safe, non-toxic, usable by ordinary people." Thea explained how to use it.
The two scientifically-minded men treated it like a new toy. Cisco circled around Barry while Barry calibrated the compass. The result was perfectly accurate.
"What's the principle? Is it magnetism?" Cisco, whose spirits had been flagging, became visibly more energetic as his curiosity was piqued by the compass's mechanics.
Thea could only smile wryly. How should she know the principle? These science-oriented people tried to explain everything scientifically. Professor Stein from Firestorm was like this, and so were Cisco and Barry.
Though she'd lent them the compass, Thea wasn't optimistic about Barry finding the Reverse-Flash. Mainly because the Reverse-Flash understood him too well. Silently observing someone for fifteen years—the Reverse-Flash probably knew how many times Barry talked in his sleep each night and how many bathroom trips he made.
The intelligence gap was completely one-sided. Pursuing someone under these circumstances could only end in failure.
Actually, the best way to deal with the Reverse-Flash would be to have Madame Xanadu divine his location, then have several heroes swarm him together. Find him, throw down a bunch of speed-limiting magic, have the heroes unleash their abilities, and the Reverse-Flash would definitely go down.
But from Barry's attitude, he still wanted to investigate on his own. Thea wasn't particularly eager to see Madame Xanadu anyway, mainly because their relationship had become too awkward.
Before, it was just a simple senior-junior relationship. Ever since Xanadu and Malcolm got together, they'd become... affectionate elder and junior.
Illegitimate daughter and stepmother! Two people with no connection, now linked by Malcolm's involvement in this bizarre situation. How could one word—"awkward"—possibly describe this mess?
After saying goodbye to the three, Thea returned to Gotham to resume her role as Moira's campaign backdrop.
Along the way, she instructed her people to use roundabout connections to get Barry's father released.
Over the next few days, Barry remained perpetually excited. The breakthrough with Iris hadn't been undone by the timeline reset, and his dad had been freed too. Barry felt his life was overflowing with happiness.
Of course, the process wasn't entirely smooth. Officer Eddie Thawne, whose girlfriend had been stolen, was consumed with jealous rage and chased down Barry Allen for a beating.
Knowing he was in the wrong, Barry didn't fight back and took a solid thrashing.
Feeling everyone's strange looks, Officer Eddie Thawne left the Central City Police Department and disappeared from everyone's sight.
The young Black woman finally confirmed her true love and spent every day glued to Barry's side. If not for still having to hunt the Reverse-Flash, Barry felt he might forget his own name.
"He must have left Central City." A few days later, Barry told Thea over the phone.
Thea could only maintain limited attention. To be honest, the Reverse-Flash wasn't a bad guy in the traditional sense. He'd definitely killed people—Barry's mother, the original Dr. Wells—but to call him utterly evil and irredeemable? Not quite.
From a certain angle, by accelerating the Flash's emergence, he'd advanced human technological progress by several years. Cisco, who'd learned from him through osmosis for years, had absorbed plenty of cutting-edge future knowledge. His perspective and problem-solving approach had vastly improved.
In short, the Reverse-Flash had certainly committed wrongs, but his contributions shouldn't be ignored either. Thea's attitude toward him was basically: let him go. Earth had countless people worse than him. One more or less didn't matter.
She was just the Goddess of Trade and Wealth, not the Goddess of Law and Justice. Let Barry worry about the Reverse-Flash situation.
Moira's nationwide tour earned widespread praise. Some media outlets genuinely admired her; others had been paid off.
There were supporters and detractors. Thea deliberately allowed some media to smear them.
Under the current democratic system, forget Moira—even if they brought down Jehovah himself to be president, some would criticize while others praised. Some praise, some criticism—that was the real mainstream. Very American.
Universal acclaim and reverential worship were impossible under this system.
Some bold outlets attacked Thea and the other superheroes. The more timid ones seized on Oliver's tabloid scandals and milked them for all they were worth.
Various media pundits went to work, writing like novelists. They chronicled Oliver's pre-shipwreck life, churning out ten thousand words daily for over half a month. In Oliver's legendary story, his female leads had already exceeded the thirty mark!
Every day, attractive young women contacted newspapers and websites to share their untold stories with Oliver. Some were desperate for fame; others were genuine.
At least Thea's investigation showed that of thirty women, Oliver had slept with at least twenty-two.
Many women described their experiences with Oliver in vivid detail—length, depth, positions, favorite phrases, and so on.
This information was brazenly published by numerous unscrupulous media outlets. The direct consequence was that Shado requested annual leave and went back to Lian Yu to be with her father. If even someone as gentle as her couldn't tolerate Oliver's past misdeeds, you could imagine how much dirt the media had dug up.