Not so Heroic After All

Black Holes and Angry Heroes

Barry walked into CC Jitters casually, though he was anything but. He figured he should appear calm, otherwise the girl would scamper off again. The only way he could get answers from her was to outsmart her. She didn't want to talk? Then he would figure it out himself. 

"There you are Iris, I was worried you skipped town or something. At least text me before you run off next time," Barry laughed with a humor he did not really feel. The girl seemed to stiffen in his presence, sitting up rim-rod straight, panicked eyes looking to Iris for help. Well, she wasn't going to get any. 

Before Iris could respond, he had wedged himself between the girls, dragging a chair from the neighboring table to sit between them. The girl seemed much different now in the coffee shop. Less hard-edged somehow. He knew that whatever it was, this difference in her was the key to unlocking her secrets. 

"Barry, what are you doing here?" Iris asked, sounding slightly irritated. Barry smiled despite this, used to Iris's hot and cold temperate. 

"I was just passing by and I saw you guys in here. Thought I'd stop and say hello." Barry stared at Iris for a fraction of a second before turning to look at the nameless girl with a friendly smile. "I don't think I caught your name?"

"That's because I haven't told you yet." Iris put a restraining hand on the girl's shoulder, warning her to play nice. The girl rolled her eyes. 

"Fine, since you asked so nicely. My name's Violet. Violet Adams," she finally said. When Barry stuck out a hand, she stared at it blankly. 

Unfazed, Barry simply took her hand and shook it himself. Iris looked on, worried but somehow at peace as well. Maybe things wouldn't be so bad from now on. 

They were interrupted by Barry's cellphone ringing. He pulled it out, sighing heavily. Just as he was about to pry some answers out of this Violet girl. "Cisco, what's up?" 

"Remember the spike of radiation I saw in the accelerator earlier?" Cisco began, sounding out of breath. "Well, it wasn't just a spike." 

Barry frowned. "What do you mean?" 

Cisco went on. "That girl told us she was from the future, coming back to find the Flash and save her time period. But there was something she conveniently left out."

"What do you mean? What's going on?" Barry was already standing as he spoke, rushing over to S.T.A.R. Labs with the speed of a concerned metahuman. 

He sped into the accelerator, only to stop in his tracks, staring at what he could only describe as a giant ball of purple energy. "What the-"

He sped back to the main lab, finding Cisco frantically typing away at the computer system, trying to get a handle on things. 

"Cisco, what is that thing out there?" Barry demanded, mindlessly stomping out his sizzling Converse. He put on the suit and came back, ready to fight yet another anomaly from the accelerator that Dr. Wells, aka Dr. Evil, had created. He was getting awfully sick of having to clean up behind the man that ruined all their lives. 

"Well from what I can see it's the result of leftover antimatter in the accelerator, but it makes no sense. Antimatter can only be created from a particle collision, and there have been no particles inserted into the accelerator for it to collide. Even if there was a collision, the amount of matter should have been equal to that of the amount of antimatter, which means they should have canceled each other out. But instead it seems there's more antimatter than matter itself, which makes no sense."

"So you're saying that antimatter particles are what's causing the ball of energy? Then what happened to the rest of the particles? That defies the laws of physics. It isn't possible," Barry disagreed. "Maybe it's just matter that resembles positrons, they do look the same. There's no telling what sort of damage Dr. Wells did to this lab. We have to take that into account."