#flame core

The only break from the otherwise dark, dismal lights of the blackened sky and air came from the banks of the lava streams which illuminated the immediate area with auras of heated red light. Even so though, it did not help Barry with telling the time, though considering things were still visible enough to traverse the landscape he assumed that it was at the very least late afternoon.

From what Barry could tell, both Shadow and Rouge were focused on whatever destination they were heading towards, and with how fast the three were going there was no telling how far they had already traveled from the city.

Within a matter of minutes however, their destination was reached.

Overlooking a long canyon itself overlooked by one of the larger volcanoes, their destination was a small rocky, ash-stained cliffside with only two notable pieces of vegetation in the area - specifically two dead, dried out trees that remained standing in a permanent state of silent death. As Barry, Shadow and Rouge stopped the human man could only continue to ponder if this truly was an earthly realm or some far more demonic dimension.

At the very least, the lava that supplied most of the lighting was a distance from the steep cliff that they were on top of - making their bodies less heated by the reddened molten rock.

Waiting for the three was another trio who had already arrived before them - Sonic, Tails and Knuckles. Barry recognized the green-eyed blue hedgehog and the blue-eyed two-tailed fox of orange-yellow fur, though to him the purple-eyed red echidna with the almost lego-like silver plate on his shoes and the white crescent mark on his chest was a brand new sight.

I'm assuming this is that Knuckles guy they mentioned before….

At the very least, I'm not surprised by this anymore...maybe the memories are finally kicking in, though I'm not losing the old ones...

In a fitting fashion, it was Sonic who spoke first as Barry, Shadow and Rouge approached him, Knuckles and Tails:

"Wow" he snarked, "You guys sure showed up fashionably late. What took so long?"

"Oh, us?" Rouge remarked, "We just had a bit of a detour, nothing major though."

It was then that attention went over to Barry, who was in many more ways than one the odd one out of the group. Even though he was in his complete Flash costume, the first thing out of Tails' mouth once he looked the Flash up and down was nothing else but:

"Barry?"

"Huh?" Barry was shocked to hear that, not used to people just figuring out secret identities like that, still, he had to address it: "What, what are you talking about?"

"Oh, now I see it!" Sonic exclaimed with a snap of his fingers, "You're that guy me and Tails ran into back in Soleanna! Surprised to see you here! I'm assuming you got sent to this future with the rest of us, huh?"

"Firstly, yeah, I did" Barry answered, "Secondly, how'd you figure out who I was?"

"Hahaha" Tails childishly laughed, "It'll take more than to fool me! Got an I.Q. of 300!"

"Yep!" Sonic exclaimed, "Tails is quite the child prodigy!" - Tails continued to chuckle as Sonic ruffled the top of his head, with smiles on both their faces. It reminded Barry of himself and his nephews, though in a manner which made him softly smile.

"Ahem" with that sound, the sound of Knuckles clearing his throat, everyone's attention was driven over to him instead: "Guys, I think we can save this chat for later, in favor of ya know, getting back to where we came from?"

"Luckily" Rouge interjected, "We found just the thing to help us do that!"

It was then that Sonic, Tails and Knuckles saw in Shadow's hands the green chaos emerald achieved from the city prior to encountering Barry. Tails himself was pleasantly surprised, and exclaimed appropriately:

"You guys found a chaos emerald!"

"Of course we did" Rouge said as she snarked, "I'm a real treasure hunter, after all" and it was with a smirk that she added, "unlike a certain echidna I know."

Hearing that, Knuckles quickly stormed towards the gloating bat - Shadow silently following him with his eyes with arms folding him. All Knuckles did was say a slightly angered:

"What?", before he stormed back to where he was after a huff, with Shadow's eyes still silently following him. Rouge just kept the smirk on her face. With that small exchange over as quickly as it started, Shadow was quick to resume discussion of business and asked Sonic, Tails and Knuckles but a simple question:

"Have you guys discovered anything?"

"Yeah, actually" Tails explained with a nod of his head, "We discovered a lab in the city, and on one of the computers there I was able to discover a signal indicating there was a chaos emerald around here, possibly in that huge volcano over there!"

Rouge, surprised at the nation of traversing the vast, volcanic canyon before them, could only complain in surprise at the notion:

"You mean we have to go through there?"

Knuckles, with Shadow's eyes following him, yet again turned and faced Rouge directly as she said in a confrontational tone:

"If you don't like it, you can stay here."

"You've got to be kidding."

Once Knuckles huffed back to his place, that was when Barry finally had enough of observing and interjected his own words into the conversation as he was still having quite the struggle with processing all of the information his brain was receiving:

"Okay, okay, can someone just explain to me ho-"

"No time!" Shadow exclaimed, marching forward to be ahead of the others as he interrupted Barry's words, "Let's move!"

With Shadow, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Rouge rushing on into the volcanic, hellish canyon it was Barry who found himself left to shrug. He still had barely any idea of what was going on or what it was that needed to be done, but he followed his new allies regardless - at the very least they all seemed to be heroes like himself. Thankfully, he caught up to them all within a matter of seconds - a speed at which even Sonic was impressed:

"Wow Barry!" the blue hedgehog exclaimed as he and the blonde were virtually side by side rushing forward into the dark landscape, "You're really fast! Almost as fast as me!"

"Heh" Barry smirked, "Call me the Flash, and we'll be seeing about that 'almost' part."

"So we shall", Sonic was smirking in precisely the same way.

Sonic, Shadow and the Flash naturally led the charge into the canyon, finding themselves speeding down what appeared to be a flat highway of black earth with the heated air flowing past them as during any regular high speed run. There were brief appearances by what appeared to be lizard beasts made out of the molten rock and flames - though their entire forms were easily dispersed by being rammed by either of them ramming into the beasts at such high velocities of sheer speed.

Barry could hardly believe the geography of the place: one second he and the two hedgehogs were careening down a long, winding path faster than a speeding sports car. The next that same path turned into a loop made of darkened earth, before their speed sent them into the air to briefly overlook the lands before landing onto yet another winding pathway. All the while avoiding seemingly random pillars of fire that would sprout from the ground like geysers, requiring nigh perfect timing in order to avoid being scorched.

This is hellish, but exhilarating

Though, hopefully I don't fall into the lava…

He couldn't have thought that at a better time. Within moments it was apparent that the roads of rock they were racing down were descending, and soon they were mere feet if not inches away from a stream of the red molten rock that fed directly into a small lake of it complete with spires and even platforms of rock emerging from the top of it.

Luckily, all of this proved surprisingly easy to traverse with a good usage of momentum and acrobatics - though Barry could still feel sweat pouring from his body due to his proximity to the heat. He only hoped his suit would not glue itself to his skin.

Jumping from rock spire to rock spire and from platform to platform - making quick work of any lizard or 'bat' lava monster that manifested in their way, the group quickly found a steep wall that headed to a plateau, and headed there. The flat plateau was not very large, but did overlook a sea of lava as well as feature a closed off cave connection to it. The only trouble was the geysers of fire and the emergence of various bat and lizard demons as soon as their feet touched the ground.

What are these things…

The lizard and bat-like beasts were joined by other fiery faces however - large worm-like beasts that casme up from the ground with large flaming mouths that almost looked like two pairs of hooked tweezers, and one large, golem like beast that was humanoid in stance but incredibly large - about as large as that Doomsday beast had been. Though it was not as threatening since it's head was but a pure circle of bright, heated lava.

Still, seeing it triggered a small bout of Barry's headaches as well as purple vision. Though he avoided an outright hallucination, for a few brief moments the beast flashed into a screeching, growling paradoom while Barry himself grabbed his head and hissed due to the migraine.

This was not unnoticed by Shadow, who looked at the struggling Barry curiously while he was destroying one of the lizard beasts with a single chaos spear - alongside all of the others who also managed to take care of the monsters with relative ease. Tails, Knuckles and Rouge all had just as much ease defeating them as Sonic and Shadow: Knuckles' punches, Tails' tail whips, and even Rouge's martial arts kicks all managed to disperse the lava monsters in but a few hits - reducing them to nothing as though they hadn't even existed at all.

The only exception was the golem-like beast, which had enough blackened, heated rock to serve as armor that it seemed virtually impenetrable. It managed to disperse Shadow, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Rouge from getting too close to it by tossing explosive fireballs at them - evidently trying to lead them towards the geysers and their regular blasts of fire.

It did not take any account of Barry, however.

Once Barry recovered from the headache, he was quick to notice the predicament that the others were in - and just as quickly he knew what to do. It was actually rather simple really, a mad dash for the mountainous 'wall' behind it followed by a jump off allowed Barry to punch the creature's 'eye' with enough sheer momentum that it dispersed to nothing within a matter of seconds. Barry landed back to the ground as the cave behind them opened up, revealing a short caven illuminated by glowing purple gemstones as it led to another section of the canyon.

"Way to go, Flash!" Sonic congratulated. Barry responded with a smirk and a nod of his head, before the group pressed on to the rest of the canyon.

Hopefully we get back to the wonderful world of air conditioning soon enough.

The rest of the canyon proved rather easy to traverse through once all of the demons within it were proven to be rather physically weak. They continued emerging to attack the group, though just as quickly they were reduced to nothing once more.

The next major section of their journey was as beautiful as it was haunting: a deep waterfall made of lava, dropping down into a small lake miles beneath their feet, though platforms of stone stuck out from the lava flow along with other platforms and even weakened 'bridges' of rock to help them get over to the waterfall. Tails, Rouge and Knuckles easily flew or glided across the chasm, though the three speedsters had to use the platforms.

The entire time, it couldn't be stated enough how both haunting and gorgeous seeing such a large waterfall of lava was. With everything else around it being increasingly darkened by just how bleak this future world was, it served as both the largest source of light as well as a reminder of the doom that occurred many years before.

It also of course, served as a threat due to the heat it gave off. The heroes had no choice but to be up close and personal with it's radiating warmth, making many of them feel as though they were being slowly cooked alive. Having to keep moving at a fast pace did not help.

Nor did the fact that the bridges they tried to cross over began to collapse the moment they were stepped on. Had Sonic, Shadow and the Flash not been speedsters they would have fallen directly into the lake of lava beneath them. They would not have been able to properly jump up the 'lavafall' via the platforms jutting out from it, and from there navigate the small platforms being sent down it's current while land bridges turned red by it's heated light overlooked them from above, forming a pseudo cave-like area.

Beyond that, they reached another plateau where they had to face off with another small team of fire beasts before proceeding. There was little time paid to them, as all of the monsters were virtually now incapable of putting up any serious resistance to the team's attacks. Within a matter of seconds they were already rushing through a second short cave towards what would be their final segment of the outside volcanic canyons:

With the massive canyon that served as their destination now looming over them in plain view of their eyes, they now only had to avoid a steep drop into the wide volcanic river that rested miles beneath them. They had various bridges, platforms and spires of volcanic rock to help them from doing just that. Due to them having to avoid flaming chunks of molten rock raining down onto them like the polar opposite of a rough hail storm in addition to not wanting to breathe in any toxic fumes, there was not much talking between them at this stage. Though there remained easy defeatings of the various fire-based demons that sprung out to attack them.

Before they even knew it, they were all blazing through the air towards the massive volcano before them - on a direct collision course with whatever existed on the inside of it.

As they approached it, it dawned on them all just how large it was. It was the size of yellowstone's grand caldera from what Barry could see, except in the shape of a traditional volcano. Though he gulped as he descended towards it alongside his newfound allies, he had hoped that soon it would all be alright.

That would prove to take quite a while, however.

The descent into the massive volcano was hectic for all of them as they dropped down for what had to be miles upon miles of heated, dark air. They held their mouths shut so as to not take in any of the toxic fumes from the stacks of smoke emitting from the large triangular mountain - though their eyes were forced to struggle.

The stacks of fumes soon were behind them though, only to be replaced by another, arguably more pressing threat. Soon surrounded on all sides by circular walls of rock, the large team was left at the mercy of fire geysers lining the side of the chasm they were falling down. Once he realized what was coming, Shadow was sure to exclaim to the others:

"Watch for the fire!"

"Here it comes!" Knuckles' own exclamation came with him and Rouge having to latch themselves onto the wall around them to steer clear of at least four different blasts of fire that came from the wall-perched geysers. They managed to just barely dodge getting burned alive by the vicious streams. Thankfully, so did the others. Tails managed to grab hold of Sonic, and lifted him to a spot not being occupied by the streams of flame. Shadow managed to grab hold of one of Rouge's ankles, and for good measure sank one of his hands deep within the walls of rock so that neither of them would fall. Barry had to push himself to the wall and with his sheer momentum sank both his hands and his feet into the wall.

"Heh" Sonic chuckled, "This place sure doesn't hold back!"

"You can say that again." Barry muttered in response, agreeing with Sonic's cocky statement. The conversation was then taken over by Tails:

"According to the signal I found, the chaos emerald is in the deeper regions of this volcano, so we're really only half way there now!"

"Assuming we don't get cooked alive down here" Knuckles added in, there was little argument to his statement - since there wasn't much of one to make. Thankfully though, the streams of flame receded and allowed the group to press on for the remainder of the chasm - there were other geysers on the way down though thanks to their timing all of them to the groups' relief only went off after they had already passed by.

Landing on a large circular platform surrounded by a small stream of lava, the six looked around and saw that the cave immediately in front of them was their only way of continued travelling, and so proceeded to rush down the winding pathway connected to their landing sight. At the very least, the cave was well illuminated by the red-yellow-orange magma beneath them - turning all of the cave walls, stalagmites, stalactites and ceiling alike into a red color just like itself.

The pathway did not last long, courtesy of the six's sheer speed. Soon enough of the winding path led them to a much larger chamber of the volcano, one where the light was not nearly as strong as it was in the previous 'hallway' they had just gotten out of.

Almost immediately did they all find themselves struggling to see, the rock pathways they stood on becoming even darker, as did the lava and magma all around them - turning a much darker shade of red in conjunction with the rest of the room. They could tell that the room increased in height on one side due to the small lavafall before them, but they could no longer properly make out what path was safest to go down due to the sudden shift in lighting.

However, Sonic took quick notice of mysterious, levitating purple spheres of rock that were present. Without much in the way of hesitation, he impulsively curled into his ball state and homed in on them - his striking of one causing it to light up and provide a source of visibility for himself and the rest of the group in the immediate area.

"If we just hit these purple ball things, we should be able to find our way through this chamber!" Sonic exclaimed to the rest of the group, though Shadow was quick to remark back:

"Thank you for stating the obvious."

"Heh" Sonic snarked back, "You're welcome too, Shadow."

"Hmph."

The group quickly continued their journey through the cavernous chamber, with each of them making sure to make impact with any purple spherical rock they found levitating in the air once they were outside inside of any generated source of light.

With all of their speed combined, it was only a matter of seconds before they all found themselves out of that dimly lit chamber and in a section of the volcano's insides, one where at the very least proper visibility was a thing. Yet again were they hit with a sight that was haunting, yet at the same time strangely beautiful for their eyes to behold:

They were inside a tall, spacious, hallway-esque cavern, standing on yet another winding pathway of blackened rock, surrounded on virtually all sides by scorching hot, red, glowing and flowing magma. Yet, there was a strange beauty to the fact that out of many large holes within the cavernous walls, flowed large and seemingly endless streams of magma into the one beneath and around their only 'road'. Rather than the sounds of streaming water, was the sound bubbling molten rock and the fire that would occasionally spit out from it. Their flows actually fed into a large, incredibly steep lavafall situated behind them, though they did not venture to see what was beyond that. As horrifying as it was, it was just as mystifying in it's own hellish way. Rouge in particular made note of this:

"You know, as horrifying as this place is, some of these sights actually are strangely beautiful too."

"Yes" Shadow admitted, looking to Rouge with a blank yet agreeing expression, "In a way, they are….but let's keep moving."

As the group pressed on down the winding path through the boiling hot cave, all Barry could focus on was thinking ever fastly to himself:

She's not wrong, this place is kind of beautiful…

In the same kind of way Hell is, I imagine, but still...

Would much prefer a honeymoon in Niagara Falls to a honeymoon in whatever 'Falls' these are called, though, not gonna lie.

Maybe Robin and Raven would prefer this place, though. Maybe.

The winding path ultimately did not last long with how fast the group moved through it - and neither did their ability to properly see where they were headed. Soon enough the group found themselves in yet another chamber that was incredibly poorly lit - quickly forcing their vision to dim down along with it. The difference this time however was that the chamber had winding pathways of its own, ascending up the chamber's lavafall and beyond - along with various platforms and miniature plateaus situated around it at various heights.

There were however two glaring differences between this darkened chamber and the previous one they had been in: one was that there were no levitating pieces of rock, but instead more widely spread out purple-ish orbs of light that were currently turned 'off' from what it seemed. Second, was that the fire-and-rock demons were emerging in full force when it came to this chamber with all currently revealed types of them appearing as though they were adamant about preventing the six from progressing any further inside of the volcano.

It was evident to all of the six that the way to press on likely had to do with those spread out orbs, though with squadrons of fire demons guarding each one in addition to being present along the pathway itself it was evident the group would not be able to deal with this chamber as a single cohesive unit, as such Rouge did not waste much time in coming up with a simple solution for their problem:

"Looks like me and the echidna are gonna have to check out those light orbs while the rest of you guys handle these monsters down here!"

Pounding his fists together, Knuckles remarked:

"Works for me!"

"Just be careful" Shadow spoke to Rouge, "Don't fall into the lava."

"Shadow" Rouge winked, "You don't need to worry about me so much!"

"Hmph."

"Alright, that's enough talkin' for the moment!" Sonic exclaimed, his own loud-mouth self smirking up a storm, "Let's kick some monster butt!"

"You're speaking my language!" - Knuckles couldn't help but add that.

With those things all having been said, the group did as Rouge had suggested - herself and Knuckles took to the air and used the parts of rock that weren't too overly heated or fading slowly into flowing lava in order to climb to greater heights in order to more easily reach the orbs while the remaining four continued on the path and engaged in battle with the monsters before them.

Of course, small groups still attacked Knuckles and Rouge as well. However, they yet again did not prove to be much of a threat.

The lizard beasts proved that they could breathe fire, but being stationary while they did so left them open to drop kicks from Rouge or near kryptonian-strength punches on the side of their heads from Knuckles. They were dispersed to nothing without burning their foes at all. The bat-like creatures generated and dropped fireballs like miniature bombs, though with Rouge's skill at aerial maneuvers, Tails' own similar abilities, and Sonic & Shadow's jumping height they were just as easily reduced to a non-entity within moments.

The large, worm-like beasts along with the tall and armored golem-like ones were slightly more of a threat, though the worms could only take a bit more punishment before fading into oblivion while the golems having their weak point exposed usually only got one strike in before said weak spot was exploited by any one of the six and they were promptly defeated. A well placed chaos spear or even just an aerial punch or kick from Shadow made short work of them - let alone one from Knuckles or Rouge.

Getting beyond this chamber was little more than a matter of Knuckles and Rouge smacking the levitating orbs on either side of the chamber - getting them to light up with bright and almost blinding light, while the others slew the monsters down below with their various powers.

At times, entire circles of the worm-like beasts would emerge, only to be taken down by a stream of kicks to the head from Rouge from the air. Knuckles with a few combined punches made short-work of one ambitious golem demon that emerged in front of him at one point.

The lizard demons tried to burn the others with their fire breath, though more often than not they were taken out from behind as quickly as they started their attack. Lunging at the heroes proved even more fatal for them.

After what we went through with those Paradooms… - Barry thought - This is practically therapy!

Before long, all of the orbs were glowing brightly thanks to Knuckles and Rouge, and equally so all of the monsters that had emerged were reduced to those two objectives being accomplished, the six saw that their way to the next section of the volcano had opened up - like a sliding door, a portion of the cavern had sunk itself into the ground below to expose the way to them. Without any hesitation, the six continued on as a group of one.

What they found once they exited the cavern was the massive, spacious core of the volcano, complete with but one circular platform for them to stay on while a massive sea of lava virtually surrounded them. There were pathways leading other caverns within the volcano, though the sheer size of this chamber pointed to this being where the entire system led to. Behind them was not only the cave they had just left, but also the jagged, rugged volcanic rock that encompassed the outer walls of the chamber itself.

Far above them was the hole, the 'eye' of the volcano, with large towers of billowing smoke and sparks of fire floating up into and out of it into the dark world on the outside.

Most important of all though, was the glowing diamond-cut gemstone levitating in the air before them - spotted just as they looked upwards towards the hole far above them. It's color and glow gave off either a turquoise or cyan coloration, depending on which way one looked at it. Naturally, it was Rouge who with a smirk was the first to take notice of the emerald:

"There's the chaos emerald you guys were talking about earlier!" she said as she took off into the air, flying towards it, saying to it and herself in an almost greedy fashion: "Come to mama!"

However, it was not long before Shadow unfolded his arms as the realization that this was far too easy dawned on him. He quickly shouted to Rouge as loud as he possibly could:

"DON'T TOUCH IT!"

Luckily, Rouge managed to fly back onto the platform with a gasp as well as a flip - as within seconds of Shadow shouting that a massive eruption of flame occurred that completely shrouded and seemingly took the chaos emerald with it. Rouge would have been charred had she not gotten out of the way. Shadow instinctively stood in front of the group in a protective, battle stance as the others got into their own fighting stances - for once the flames and lava cleared, a true monster was revealed. With his eyes widened, Barry knew immediately what it was:

Iblis…

Iblis was certainly quite the beast. Barry was sure this was not his only form, though he did not want to wait around to see any others.

Iblis in the form he appeared to the six was similar to the weak worm-like demons that he spawned around the volcano, though extended to truly massive proportions, his head alone being virtually the size of a moderately sized building while his body was akin to the trailer one would attach to a eighteen wheeled truck - perhaps two lined up beside each other even. The entirety of the beast's body appeared to be made out of concentrated lava, from the massive snake-like body to the massive, armored head. The only exceptions appeared to be it's sharp teeth and the armor protruding from the body - the latter of which appeared to be made of black, volcanic rock. The armor around the hard was complete by the presence of three large, sharpened horns. One located between Iblis' prominent, dark green, triangular pupil eyes. The others were on either side of the beast's jaw.

Looking at the beast for the first time triggered yet another splitting migraine and flash of purple vision for Barry. He gritted his teeth and groaned in pain for another few moments as the beast's horrific roar bellowed throughout the volcano. He recovered once more, but still the creature did not go away.

To him, there was something strangely familiar about this beast once he looked at its eyes. It's green, yet soulless eyes. There was as much familiar as there was new, yet at the same time his brain was incapable of piecing it together.

Nor did it have the time to do so, as defeating Iblis was now top priority for the lot of them.

Before any of the six could even speak at all, Iblis let out it's booming roar and from it's smouth a massive stream of fire was unleashed upon the group. All of them gasped, some of them shouted, though all of them immediately jumped, glided or flew out of the way of the fire's radius.

"Heh!" Sonic snarked, "This must be the origin for those monsters from before! Guess 'mama's' come out to play!"

"Sonic, take this seriously!" Shadow exclaimed to the blue hedgehog, though Sonic was ever the cocky creature:

"Relax Shadow, I think we've got this one easy!"

With that having been said, Sonic rushed in the direction that the six had just recently come from - just barely grazing the large continuous stream of fire as he did so. With a slight grumble, Shadow did the same along the opposite side of the flame, until the two were racing along the mountainous walls of the dark chamber's exteriors. Practically in sync with each other as Shadow realized what Sonic's plan of attack was, they waited until they had just the right amount of height before launching themselves directly at the creature.

Iblis attempted to raise it's head to aim at them, but their sheer momentum more than outpaced it - their fists soon landed onto it's eyes, and their feet kicked said eyes as they bounced off of the creature once it's closed its eyes and writhed in pain from the blows, even being knocked back a bit from it's position due to the strength of both combined blows.

Luckily, Sonic and Shadow landed on two small pillars of rock that spared them from falling directly into the sea of lava beneath them. However, the snake-like demon lord was not finished with them quite yet. As it recovered from the first strike made to it, it attempted to swing the lower half of its body at all of them - first Sonic, then the four on the large platform, and then shadow. All managed to dodge it. Once it had completely flipped its body around, it submerged itself into the lava beneath itself - seemingly having retreated from the battle.

"Is that all?" Sonic questioned, before chuckling a bit, "Wow, what a coward!"

Shadow however, was not so easily convinced: his eyes were locked in battle-ready suspicion, looking around the massive caldera for any sign of the monster.

When Sonic was inevitably proven wrong, he was not surprised at all.

Crawling from the lava around the platform were hordes of Iblis' various relatively weak minions. The lizard demons crawled onto the platform itself, while the more worm-like beasts surrounded it best that they could and fired balls of flame at the grounded four while the lizard beasts attempted to lunge at them. Seemingly endless were their numbers, even if all of them were excessively weak to strikes upon their bodies.

Sonic gasped as he watch this occur, not wanting his friends to be hurt:

"Guys! Hold on!"

However, his panic was soon replaced by further shock as a massive stream of lava shot up at him - forcing him to gasp and jump out of the way immediately. He ultimately had to use aerial momentum to just barely latch onto the rock that Shadow was held up on. Shadow did have to slide himself down to the lower end of the rock in order to catch Sonic's hand though, lest the blue hedgehog fall directly into the lava.

Sonic gratefully looked back up to Shadow, using his free hand to give the black hedgehog a thumbs up:

"Thanks, Shadow!"

"Don't mention it." Shadow wasted no time pulling himself and Sonic back up, though naturally the moment they were on more steady ground was also the moment that Iblis re-emerged from beneath the surface of the lava surrounding them.

Lunging it's entire body high into the air, the beast with one more growl charged directly at them from above.

However, both Hedgehogs stood their ground. Only once the creature was just about to make impact with the rock did Shadow break his brave stance and make his move against it:

"Chaos Spear!"

One well timed blast of a chaos spear struck the base of the creature's center horn, which alone caused enough of a blast to knock the beast off it's collision course with the rock, though as if that wasn't enough Sonic himself spun himself into his ball form and quickly rammed the creature in the spot of impact as hard as he possibly could. Not only did it get one final shriek from the creature before it was once again submerged, though it visibly caused enough damage to the horn to make it start becoming looser as though it was now beginning to come off.

It should also be stressed that by running up the length of the creature's body as it descended into the lava and then jumping back onto the rock formation with Shadow on it, Sonic was able to save himself from falling into the molten liquid rock.

With Iblis once again submerged, Sonic and Shadow turned back to the remaining four of the group to make sure that they were doing well as well. Luckily, they were.

They were gathered in the center of the platform, focused entirely on not letting the endless horde of lava beasts get too much time to strike. While single punches, kicks or tail swipes took each individual out easily it was still apparent that their bodies were deadly to touch for long periods of time and that with enough numbers even these beasts could cause serious damage.

Thankfully, Barry's ability to create miniature vortexes of fast-moving wind using the momentum generated by vibrating & twirling his arms around proved too much for the creatures to handle as well as an effective strategy against the worm-like minions providing support for the lizards - who were mercilessly being picked up and tossed at the former as though they were nothing, and thus causing both types of creatures to meet their demise.

Both Sonic and Shadow were happy to know that for the time being, their allies were holding their own against the weaker minions. However, they still had to deal with the progenitor.

Speaking of which, Iblis wasted little time in yet again breaching the surface - though this time he paused right in front of the two small hedgehogs. Just as the two prepared for another round of their battle against him, Iblis tilted his head back to let out a deep roar before lifting it back in their direction to let out another stream of fire from its mouth.

However, as with the first time it attempted this, they avoided it by jumping into the air.

Instead of striking the monster's eyes this time, Sonic instead landed a ball-form strike to the scar at the base of the loosening horn, before also striking one of the eyes yet again for good measure. Sonic grabbed onto one of the jawline horns as the beast tilted it's head and roared in pain - thrashing it's head from side to side.

That was Shadow's opportunity to strike.

With a single, well placed punch to the scar created by his previous attack, the sheer force of the ultimate lifeform's strength was enough to get the horn to actually break off from the beast's head - complete with a loud, echoing cracking sound as it did so and promptly fell into the lava below. As Iblis yet again shrieked in absolute pain, it was revealed that a third eye had been hidden within the horn.

"Chaos Spear!" - Shadow wasted no time in unleashing a mid-air strike to the creature's now exposed third eye. Once the chaos spear struck the beast and caused it's third eye to erupt into an intense explosion across its face, Iblis virtually screamed in absolute agony. It thrashed itself around more violently than ever, eventually forcing Sonic to jump off of it before it yet again descended itself into the depths of the lava below.

Thankfully, Sonic and Shadow both maintained enough momentum be it from Sonic's speed or Shadow's rocket shoes in order to land on the platform with their four companions as well as a few remaining stragglers of Iblis' minions.

The remaining worm-like creatures were taken out quickly by Sonic bouncing off of their heads like he was a pinball ball, maintaining enough force to destroy all of them before landing back on the platform. Shadow took out the remaining lizard beasts by stomping on one's head and using that same foot to sideswipe one that was preparing to breathe it's fire onto him from behind. Knuckles gave a third straggling lizard beast an uppercut before it could sneak up on Barry.

With the last of the minions dispersed into nothing and Iblis submerged in the lava, the six heroes were all reunited in the form of their battle stances.

They all knew that it wasn't quite over yet. Though the chamber returned to silence for a few moments more, there was a sense amongst all of them that Iblis was not finished 'playing' just yet.

Their hunches were quickly proven correct.

Iblis emerged from the lava one more time, determined to finally finish off it's six enemies once and for all - in the form of making a final charge directly towards the platform that all of them were gathered on, displacing waves of lava in his wake as he roared angrily at his incoming prey.

However, it had underestimated the arsenal of the three speedsters that it was fighting.

Shadow, Sonic and Barry did not waste any time as it approached from the far end of the caldera. Following Sonic's strategy from the beginning of the battle, the three of them rushed at their top speeds up the rock walls behind them until they were at just the right height before launching themselves directly at the creature as it approached the platform like a freight train. Just as it opened it's jaws to roar did they make their impact.

Barry struck the left eye with a maximum momentum punch, and Shadow struck the right eye with a maximum momentum kick powered by his own personal strength. Sonic, in ball form, struck the center eye with maximum ball-state momentum.

A shockwave emitted from the impacts as the three speedsters successfully navigated themselves back to the platform with their four allies - watching as Iblis screamed in agony one last time as he was sent back to the wall on the other side of the caldera by the sheer might of their combined strikes. Not only that, but the collision that the beast made with the wall was strong enough to create a hole in the wall of rocks - the sound of crumbling rock and splashing lava echoing throughout the massive chamber as the creature tumbled out of it along with a newly created lava flow and also with one final cry, this time one of defeat.

With Iblis now forced into a different chamber of the volcano, it seemingly lost interest in the group and fled to deeper depths of the lava and magma in order to lick its wounds.

As silence returned to the group of six, the heroes turned to each other; all of them had but one issue on their mind:

"Does that thing still have the chaos emerald?!" Tails exclaimed, being the first to bring up the issue. To the happiness of all, Shadow quickly revealed that he had the cyan-turquoise emerald in his hands, having grabbed it from the creature during the final phases of the battle.

Everyone nearly sighed with relief after seeing it.

"What was that thing?!" Tails exclaimed after that had been settled, the second thing on his mind.

"I'm assuming that thing was Iblis" Barry remarked, remembering exactly what he had been told about this future, "The being that ends up destroying the world, and making all of this happen."

"Oh yeah?" Knuckles snarked, "Well for a destroyer of the world, he wasn't so tough!"

"More than likely, that was some kind of larval or transitional stage." Shadow was swift to explain, "It's almost certain that we did not fight that beast in its most powerful state, and I for one would rather get back to the present time before we actually do."

There was a nod of agreement from the others in response to his words. Absolutely none of the group wanted to stick around for that.

"So" Barry spoke once more, "How are we going to get back to the present, again? Are we just going to like, use the chaos emeralds or something?"

"Well, yeah" Sonic nodded, "Unless you got any better ideas?"

Barry thought about it, though he was hard-pressed to come up with any other idea on how to get back to the present. He knew he could theoretically create a fourth flashpoint, though knew that would change everything - if there was a method that would get them back to the present without causing yet another massive rift throughout the universe, he would certainly prefer it to another flashpoint. However, as he still needed an explanation on what the chaos emeralds were, he worded his response accordingly:

"Well, no," he admitted, "I don't have a single idea on how else to get back to the present. But, how exactly would the chaos emeralds help with that?"

"Simple" Tails exclaimed, "The seven chaos emeralds are each, essentially, generators of unlimited chaos energy - with each individual emerald giving off a different type of chaos energy. I can create fake emeralds with the same wavelength and overall properties, though my fake emeralds can only have a limited supply of energy while the real ones can both store and generate energy near endlessly! The chaos emeralds are a source of truly unlimited power, hence why it's always most important that they are kept out of the wrong hands! The only thing more powerful than them is the Master Emerald."

"Which" Knuckles interjected, "I am usually guarding, but since I had to come in and help you guys again I phoned in the Chaotix to substitute."

As he stood by and listened to every word that the young fox said, all he could picture in his mind was the idea of these emeralds existing on earth in his previous timeline. The things that people like Luthor and the innumerous other villains would do to get their hands on those emeralds was about as unlimited as the power they would give to them. He almost shivered at the thought of what Darkseid would be willing to do to get his hands on them, or what he would do if he did acquire them.

His thoughts were interrupted by Tails continuing to speak:

"For the most part though, the emeralds are only most useful if one acquires all seven of them. So I'm not entirely sure myself if two will be enough to take us back to the present, but I know that with one chaos emerald, chaos control does have the ability to temporarily freeze time in the immediate area around the emerald!"

Shadow nodded at that point, speaking out an explanation of his own:

"That's correct" he said, "In addition, the sensation I felt when I was sent to this time period felt very similar to my own chaos control, only transporting me through time instead of freezing it."

It was then that Barry remembered that certain something which was told to him earlier; regarding what chaos energy had similar properties too:

"I think trying with the two we have right now is at least worth a shot" Barry said with a nod, not bothering to explain why it was that he suddenly felt this way, "We might as well try it while we're here."

Sonic and Shadow turned to each other, and as Shadow pulled out his green chaos emerald he tossed the cyan one over to Sonic - who perfectly caught it in his hand. With one more exchange of nods between the two, they approached each other with the emeralds in-hand. Holding their emeralds close to each other as they held out their hands into the air, the two said in near unison:

"Chaos Control!"

And like that, the emeralds flashed a surge of bright light before within an instant a mysterious portal was opened through the sheer power of their combined energies, starting as a small white light that travelled upwards into the air before turning into the larger portal itself. The emeralds themselves seemed to disappear, being sucked into the rift that they themselves created - presumably to be found on the other side. Barry was stunned as it appeared like a ripple in both space and time had just occurred before his eyes within a matter of seconds, a swirling vortex of blue and white that had just materialized out of thin air. Or, out of the power of 'chaos energy'.

I definitely need to do more research on these things…

Before any of the others could even speak, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles rushed into the portal and disappeared into it - travelling to whatever was on the receiving end of it. Rouge took flight and was prepared to enter it, turning back only to see what Shadow and Barry were going to do.

Barry and Shadow both were about to follow Rouge as she flew into the portal and disappeared to wherever it led, though both were stopped by the sound of something behind them.

The sound of crackling fire.

Turning around, the two saw a small stack of fire burning beside a cloud of pitch black darkness. Peering their eyes, they were able to see movement within the darkness - Mephiles. Emerging from the darkness in a manner impossible to decipher whether or not he was coming from the darkness or the ground, he was fixated entirely on the fire in front of him as it burned and crackled with each passing second.

Only when he looked directly at the two did the fire intensify, suddenly growing larger and wider within a single instant as though the flame itself was inherently enraged with their presence.

Allowing Rouge to vanish into the portal and for the portal to vanish after her, Shadow and Barry silently opted to instead chase after their common enemy. While Shadow gracefully skated and Barry quickly ran, Mephiles seemed to not move his legs what-so-ever as he moved across the ground.

Nor did he or either of them say a single word.

He was quickly leading them somewhere, and even more clearly challenging them, though neither of them had any idea as to where they were being led other than the fact it was yet another chamber of the volcano.

Soon enough, Mephiles seemingly vanished from their sights just as they reached whatever section of the volcano that he had been leading them towards - yet another circular platform surrounded by lava within the area of the massive caldera itself. Above them was only pitch, black darkness though around them the flowing lava provided enough lighting for moderately decent visibility. A small wall of volcanic rock provided small lava falls which fed into the greater stream surrounding the platform they were on.

However, there was the matter of where Mephiles had gone.

The answer was that he was in this section with them, though was standing above them - looking down on them from a single spire of rock, directly above a mysterious purple orb that rested in the 'claws' of this spire.

He made sure to point out how 'comedic' he found their choices of actions:

"So, decided to void your return tickets, did you?"

"Mephiles!" Barry exclaimed as he glared at the demon standing above him, "You lied to me! You're the one who ruined this world, aren't you?!"

Mephiles softly and coldly chuckled in response, finding the human quite amusing so it seemed. This only response was a dry:

"The answer's yes, and no...perhaps it's better to show you two."

With a snap of his finger, something appeared before the two - something which shocked both of them, but Shadow far more than Barry. It appeared to be Shadow himself, trapped in a rhombus-like stasis pod, bright pink lights surrounding him as he appeared to be permanently stuck in some form of deep sleep with his arms and legs both restrained on the inside - as though he were nothing more than a prisoner. Looking at this sight brought back deep memories Shadow had from his past, not a single one of them present. The sight also made his eyes widen, almost as though he was having a hard time believing what he was seeing to be real.

Mephiles was quick to confirm:

"Yes" he said to the stunned Shadow, "That's you."

The demonic being was quick to continue his explanation while the two's eyes were locked on the apparition he was presenting to them:

"After the world was devastated by Iblis' flames, what do you think happened? A search for the guilty. Who did this you may ask? Society wasn't just jealous of your power, they feared it. They used this incident as an excuse, to hunt you down."

Shadow couldn't help but bow his head and turn away from the sight of himself as a prisoner of the very people he was created to protect. The very people who employed him. It was always in the background of his mind that something like this would happen, though actually seeing and being told that it was in store for him in the future, it was all too real even for him to take.

"Shadow…" Barry softly spoke as he saw the Hedgehog's response. He felt sympathy for his newfound ally, though of course his presence was not forgotten by Mephiles:

"And do you honestly think this would not befall yourself, Barry?" the entity said to the human, "Now that your powers have been restored, do you not think that eventually society shall turn it's back on you as well? The story is all the same. Today's heroes can just as easily become tomorrow's villains. Who's to say that this event would not have happened in the previous timeline you were in, following such devastation of your world? If it can happen to someone like Shadow, surely it can happen to someone such as yourself. "

Soon, Barry was reduced to a similar response as Shadow. Reduced to at the very least silence. The fact that memories of the previous timeline were yet again triggered in his brain did not help him either.

Seeing as how both Shadow and Barry were successfully silenced, Mephiles took the opportunity to continue speaking to the two of them:

"Come with me" he said, holding out a single hand, "Let the three of us punish this world and it's foolish society. It's only fair to give back what was intended for you! You have every right to want justice!"

Thankfully for all of existence, Shadow was not so easily manipulated. Lifting his head back up and turning to Mephiles he spoke defiantly:

"That's absurd!" he exclaimed as he glared at the evil being, "Whatever it is you want to do, you can do it alone."

Barry, with Shadow saying everything he wanted to say, nodded in response while glaring at Mephiles himself. Mephiles, for his part, seemed to be processing his next words. Whether he expected Shadow and Barry to reject his offer or not was difficult to decipher, though response presented the latter:

"You forgive this folly then?" he asked while gesturing a hand towards the apparition of the imprisoned Shadow of the future. Shadow only had one, defiant thing to say in response to that:

"I determine my own destiny."

Mephiles was silent in response to what was said to him. At first, it was as though he had completely been surprised by what was said to him. Within moments however, the look in his soulless eyes gave off the sense that he had accepted Shadow and Barry's responses - though he was far from being willing to simply let them leave. Most certainly not alive. Extending his arms out to either side of his body, soon he, Barry, Shadow and seemingly all that surrounded them were enveloped in a black flash - as though all of the light that there was in the world had suddenly gone out, though just as quickly that flash of black turned into a flash of blinding white as the light had returned before anyone could possibly comprehend it's prior absence. Once the bright light faded, Shadow and Barry could both now see what Mephiles truly was; for he had finally revealed what was undoubtedly his 'true' form to them.

While he still resembled Shadow's form, he was now far more demonic in appearance. Any resemblance to a pale flesh color was replaced with a pale, almost rock-like blue appearance. In fact, his entire body now appeared as though it was made of some mixture of both leather and rock, with his stripes appearing to be bright, almost blue yet also almost white crystals. The sclera of his eyes turned a deep, piercing red though the reptilian green pupils remained. His hands and feet no longer resembled Shadow's, only vaguely in shape. There were no rings or gloves, only a black hand with crystalline claws for tips. His feet had no shoes either, instead only some twisted mass of crystalline features that vaguely resembled some type of foot and had the same function as them. As if these details were not enough, the demon's face was now even more unnatural, as he neither had a mouth nor a nose any longer. For that matter, even his 'ears' now seemed to be curled in a manner somewhat reminiscent of demonic horns. All of this while an aura of darkness, a flame of black, purple and blue, was surrounding him - further bringing him into an appearance that seemed far more unnatural, even more so than the appearance he had been using up to this point.

Despite all of this, neither Shadow nor Barry dare showed Mephiles any fear. They readied their battle stances, knowing full well that they were in for a fight.

That said, Mephiles' attitude came off as though he hardly viewed this as an honest battle at all.

"Such foolishness" he commented as he gazed down upon the two from his perch, "Very well, let's see how long the two of you can entertain me."

Mephiles made sure that he made the first strike in the battle, and leaped from his perch in an aerial charge directly towards Barry and Shadow with speed nearly comparable to their own. Assuming that he was intending to strike them, the two swiftly jumped out of the way - only to watch as Mephiles vanished into the ground with yet another black cloud of darkness, accompanied by the entity's demonic laughter.

It didn't take long for them to realize what he was actually intending to do.

Within moments, a pulsing surge of darkness came over Shadow, Barry and the entire area around them. While it made a shiver run down the two's spine, it did not give them any real pain. What it did accomplish however was turning the flames and flowing lava around them from their natural red color to a more unnatural blue color - by extension changing the lighting around the area as well, to a point where things appeared to be darker yet at the same time neither Shadow nor Barry suffered from impaired visibility. Though this gave off the appearance that the area was now cooler, in reality this blue lava was actually notably more heated than the prior red, with both Shadow and Barry feeling it all too well.

Just as Shadow and Barry began to ponder where the demon himself had gone to, he materialized. Under Shadow's feet, as though he was part of the ground beneath him. Not only that, but it was as though he was Shadow's very own shadow himself - moving with any stance or movement that Shadow made, mimicking him flawlessly.

The moment Shadow looked down and saw that, his eyes widened in shock before turning into an angry glare. All he could hiss out of his mouth was:

"Your tricks won't work on me, I know who I am!"

Mephiles only laughed maniacally in response as he mimicked every movement Shadow made in flawless synchronicity. Though Shadow kicked and punched at the ground, even fired chaos spears and other projectiles or beams of chaos energy all he accomplished was creating craters in the ground. Mephiles remained his shadow. Barry could only watch, not knowing what to do.

Of course, Mephiles did not forget about him.

Distracting both Shadow and Barry, suddenly the blue lava surrounding them erupted into a tall wall of intense blue flame with an echoing roar throughout the area. From this fire materialized dark silhouettes - each humanoid in shape though of varying heights and proportions. As these silhouettes exited the wall of flame and became figures standing on the circular platform with Shadow and Barry, the latter's eyes widened as another shiver ran down his entire spine.

"No..."

He was virtually reduced to tears, though they were unrecognizable due to how much his body was sweating with the heat surrounding him.

"No" he repeated, "This...this can't be…"

Surrounding him and Shadow, was the Justice League as well as the Teen Titans. Barry recognized every single one of them. Superman, Hal Jordan, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Shazam, Hawkman, Cyborg, Mera, Aquaman, John Constantine, Zatanna, Nightwing, Starfire, Robin, Raven, Beast Boy, Blue Beetle, Wonder Girl, Superboy, Kid Flash I, Kid Flash II, Speedy, Bumblebee, Batwoman, Batgirl, and even Lex Luthor.

Every single one of them was just as Barry remembered, including Damian being the older and more handsome teenager that Barry last saw him as - though these were not the same figures that he remembered. All of them appeared to be without color, reduced to nothing but shades of black and grey - a look that made even Batman and Raven seem unnatural due to the complete absence of their natural skin colors as well as any color that their suits had. Of course, Hal and Beast Boy certainly looked the most unnatural, with their green being exchanged for a lifeless grey, and Beast Boy's suit now being a dark black.

That's not to mention the fact that none of them had their pupils, only pure red scleras that present not souls, but only lifeless and evil and obedience to the demonic being that summoned them to the playing field. Gone were Superboy's beautiful crystal eyes, Batman and Robin's white mask 'holes' and even the two Wallys' own innocent appearances as Barry's own nephews.

Barry quivered as he saw them, his guard being forcibly let down by the sight thrusted upon his eyes. All of his friends. Members of his family. They looked just as he remembered them previously looking, yet now were gazing upon him with soulless, emotionless looks to their faces - reduced to being nothing but pawns of a demonic entity. He didn't even know if these were really them, or just apparitions.

Only Shadow, who did not recognize these people at all, remained in a battle stance as these figures surrounded him and the Flash. He could see the Flash was emotionally distraught, though knew full well that it was important for his ally to remain focused:

"Flash!" he shouted, "These aren't the people you remember them to be! You need to focus yourself, let go of your past!"

Barry shook his head of the tears joining with his sweat, and responded with a nod. Though it pained him to no end, he knew that Shadow was right. He had to battle his mind, even though the more he looked at these 'nega' apparitions of his friends, family and allies the more his mind flashed with visions of them in their colored, lively states.

Mephiles only laughed in response once more, saying to the two of them in an almost mocking tone of voice:

"Try to forget all you want" he mocked, "There's nothing you can do to change the fact that you are why they are no longer part of this world."

"No!" Barry yelled, now more angry and distraught than ever before, "I didn't kill them! Darkseid did! The Paradooms did! I didn't kill them!"

"Ha" Mephiles almost chuckled, "Perhaps that is true when speaking of the literal sense, but let's see if they feel that way, shall we?"

With those words having been exchanged, the true battle began. The soulless copies of the Justice League, Titans and Luthor approached Shadow and Barry with full intent of causing harm to them, though the two living heroes were not going to go down easily. Superman, Superboy, Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl immediately charged at Shadow - with Superboy being one to strike Shadow first with a bunch. Though he was able to push Shadow to the edge of the platform with but one punch, Shadow did manage to use his reflexes and block the punch from striking his face, allowing him to keep his feet planted on the ground. Still, that didn't stop the much larger Superman from getting a direct blow from the side which did successfully knock Shadow to the ground as well as generate a good sized crater.

That said however, Superman was kept from flying upwards and landing on Shadow when Shadow used two beams of chaos energy from his hands to successfully disrupt Superman's planned attack. He later had to deal with Wonderwoman as well as Wonder Girl though, with Superboy flying overhead like some form of support.

With Superboy using his heat vision while Wonder Girl and Wonderwoman lunged at Shadow to kick and punch at the smaller target, it was a testament to Shadow's strength that he was able to hold his own at all against them. Whenever a hit was landed upon him, it was far stronger than any opponent he'd ever faced before, though only the ultimate lifeform would be able to withstand this kind of battle. Any normal mortal would have had their bones long destroyed by this point.

Shadow's own retaliation strikes were just as hard, as he was no longer holding anything back. Many times each of them would take turns sending the other barreling to the other end of the platform, only to charge at each other once more for a few more strikes. Even when Superman rejoined the battle, using his heat vision in tandem with Superboy's to send an airborne Shadow back to the ground, it only seemed to moderately harm Shadow rather than render him unable to fight further. However, scratches and signs of battle were increasingly present on all of their bodies, showing that the ultimate life was in fact fighting his matches.

Even so, he was going to press on until the bitter end.

While Shadow did his best to hold his own against the most powerful members of the minions, Barry was left with the rest. He had to use all of his speed to dodge the charge that Shazam made at him, and was equally lucky to evade a dropkick attempted by Batman. He had to swiftly jump to avoid his neck being cut open by Robin's own use of a sword afterwards - though unfortunately for him he was then swiftly brought down by both of his nephews slamming into him from either side with their own super speed.

"I didn't kill you! It's not my fault!" Barry exclaimed as he recovered, in just enough time to avoid the white noise blast of cyborg's arm cannon, managing to race ahead of it's blast until he gave up on trying, allowing the Kid Flashes to resume focus on Barry for a while as they quickly used their speed to race their uncle allowed the perimeter of the platform - the three all going in a circle while the younger two attempted to repeatedly ram into their uncle, with Barry having to speed up or slow down to successfully dodge either of them.

He did not want to hurt either of them. To his brain, this was perhaps the highest form of torture that any being could force upon him.

"Kids" he said to them, "I don't want to hurt you! Just, snap out of it, if it's really you! If it's really you, I know you're in there somewhere!"

"That's too bad!" Wally II remarked, his voice echoing as though multiple versions of him were speaking at once through his own mouth.

"Because we do want to hurt you!" Wally I added in, both him and his cousin now grinning almost ear to ear in the most sadistic of fashions, before they grabbed each other's hands and charged at their uncle. Barry managed to jump over them and was then behind them, but he did not seem to realize what their strategy was, as Wally I carried Wally II into a small impromptu tornado and soon enough threw him at Barry, with Wally II kicking his uncle in the face and to the ground before the former had even realized what was going on.

As he slowly recovered to his feet, Barry could only force himself to ask but one question:

"W-w-why?"

"Because" Raven said as she approached him from behind, holding hands with Robin who approached Barry along with her, "You did this to us" she coldly said as she used one of her black beam attacks aimed for Barry's head. Barry managed to dodge it, though was yet again knocked to the ground when Wally I rammed into him with his own speedster speed.

"Ugh" Barry once more groaned as he got up from the blow, but he continued to plead to those attacking him in a hope that their true selves were still underneath their soulless appearances, "I, I didn't do anything to you! It was Darkseid! It was his Paradooms! I didn't do anything!"

"If you hadn't travelled through time in the first place" Damian explained as he embraced Raven's hands with both of his own, the two gazing into each other's now reddened, soulless eyes, "Me and Raven would be together in happiness."

"Rather", Raven added just as coldly, "Than in misery."

Barry was speechless upon hearing the two's words, and was further rendered speechless as the two almost disturbingly kissed in front of him. Normally, such a sight would be beautiful - true love expressing itself. However here it was unnatural and not helped by the fact their tongues were elongated, forked and snake-like as they entangled and danced with one another even after the lips had already separated - causing saliva to drool from both of the two as they remained inhumanly embracing each other.

Barry attempted to use their distraction to his own advantage, though before he could speed away he was surrounded by a purple-black aura that lifted him above the ground and effectively stopped him in his tracks - Raven using her powers to stop him without breaking her 'kiss' with Robin.

Before Barry could even think about finding a way to escape Raven's grasp, the black aura dispersed - but only because he had been tackled by a grey colored Tiger: Beast Boy. Once the two were on the ground, the soulless version of the boy turned into a massive anaconda snake and wrapped himself around Barry with full intent of suffocating him to his demise, while others such as Batman, Blue Beetle, Hawkman, Lex Luthor, John Constantine and Zatanna gathered as if to ensure that if he escaped the snake's grip that they would ensure said escape would be futile.

As the choking, barely able to struggle Barry looked into Beast Boy's eyes, he still only saw that pure red, soulless, lifeless sclera. No pupils or irises. Not even those of the reptile he had turned into. Only pure red, glowing eyes. Just as with all of the others. He wanted to believe the boy he once knew was still in there, but another part of him feared the absolute worst.

It wouldn't be long before his rib cage would begin to shatter. It didn't help that as he was facing his potential end at the hands of what was once a titan, all he could hear in his ears were repeated words from the others, their voices sounding like a symphony of judgement, blame and scorn as they spoke at him:

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

Those words, repeating from the mouths of his former friends. In their voices, though each one sounded as though an army of them was speaking at once, thus creating a true orchestra of echoing words once the lot of them spoke these condemnations at once.

It was enough to make his mind begin to break, in addition to the rest of his body from the mounting pressure of a long, thick cylinder of muscle slowly crushing him.

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

Repeating on and on...

"It's your fault!"

"You did this to us!"

It was enough to get to him. As he gritted his teeth, as he closed his eyes tightly. It got to him. It did not take much longer at all before finally he snapped. The migraines kicked in. The purple vision yet again began to flash rapidly in his eyes, until the stress of all that was going on around him was too much for him to take anymore.

With one loud, enraged scream, a surge of purple electricity coursed over his body, making Beast Boy scream in pain as he felt the full force of it's electric shock. With his coils weakening, Barry was able to vibrate his body out of Beast Boy's grasp as the titan slithered away from him to allow the others to have their turn. However, even they took a few steps back from Barry - at least until he found the nagging headache too much to handle. Just looking at his former allies was enough to send it into overdrive, forcing him to his knees while he held his head in agony.

His so-called allies showed him no mercy, however. Not even 'Batman' - who in fact made the first strike. Batman first used some of the smoke bombs from inside of his utility belt, surrounding Barry with vision-impairing smoke while Batman himself leaped into the air and descended upon the Flash with his cape extended almost as though it was a side of wings. Barry successfully kicked to the ground and pinned by the man's feet - though of course he had enough sense to quickly vibrate before Batman could take out one of his sharp Batarangs and use it to slit Barry's neck wide open. Had he not vibrated out of Bruce's grasp, that would indeed have been his fate. Batman did jump out of Barry's way before he could be kicked from behind, though at the very least Barry had saved his own life.

For the time being, anyway.

Having a standoff with Batman wasn't precisely the best career choice for him. Nor did he ever want to have one. Yet here the two, standing before each other in their battle stances - even if it was an evil, soulless version of the man he came to view as a friend and an ally.

However, in focusing so much on Batman he neglected the various other fighters on the playing field. It was only mere seconds before Batman was standing idly by when Barry was suddenly grabbed from behind, flipped onto the ground, and seemingly dragged by invisible force into the same rock spire that Mephiles himself had been standing on prior to the battle. It was not an invisible force of course, Barry could see just barely that it was a strong grip of Martian Manhunter that had grabbed onto him. He was intangible and so appeared transparent, though his shape could just barely be seen by Barry's eyes. Still, his grip was strong - and his powerful mind worked fast, fast enough that he began relentlessly bashing Barry's head brutally against the rock, even managing to draw blood from the back of the blonde's head, at least four times before lifting him by the neck and beginning to suffocate him as he struggled to break free from the martian's grasp. The usually green though now grayscale martian did phase himself out of his intangibility, though it was perhaps only so that Barry would have a face to properly look at during his end.

J'onn was soon joined by Hawkman, who also without saying any words pulled out his nth mace and with as much strength as he could muster smashed Barry's right knee with it - making Barry let out a piercing whine as he could feel his bone actually crack wide open from the strike, let alone the mace's electric stunning effect and the spikes stabbing into his skin - yet again drawing blood from the speedster.

With how hard the hand of what once was his friend held down on his throat, the speedster couldn't even speak. All he could muster up the strength to do was gaze into his former ally's silent, soulless eyes.

There was not even a semblance of the martian man he recognized - and the same could be said for Hawkman, Katar. He began to doubt that there was any chance that the people he remembered and missed were actually still present in any sense of the word.

Though he wanted to keep up the fight, the fact that it seemed as though all of who were once his friends wanted him dead - blaming him for their horrible fates even, proved enough to break him. Slowly he allowed his eyes to close, silently accepting his fate.

At the very least, he thought as blackness took over his vision, this will all be over soon.

And, fortunately for the Flash, it was.

With the sound of a single blast followed by a familiar screech of alien pain, Barry opened his eyes to find that he was released from J'onn's grasp, and now the Martian Manhunter seemed to be screaming and writhing in pain - the arm that had been strangling Barry having just been severed at the elbow, with the Martian himself primarily screaming from the fact that the part of that arm still connected him appeared to be now on fire.

Both Flash and Hawkman looked to see Shadow glaring in their direction. He had scratches, cuts and bruises all over him as well as blood on some parts of fur let alone the fact he was panting as though he was heavily exhausted, but the smoke from his hand revealed he had done a chaos spear in order to save Barry. Knowing this, Barry and Shadow exchanged nods to one another mere seconds before Barry had to evade a swing of Hawkman's nth hammer.

Shadow motioned to join in Barry's fight, but was distracted when he caught the sight of Superboy charging at him from the air. Having the time to anticipate this, he grabbed the 'Nega' Superboy just before impact and with a twirl tossed him directly at Wonder Girl before she could use her lasso on the hedgehog - the two nega titans collided with each other, with a strong enough impact to send both of them back into the blue fire wall that spawned them.

"It doesn't matter how many of them you defeat, you know" Mephiles mocked from his position as Shadow's literal shadow, "I'm still your shadow, you can't even touch me."

"Whatever it is you're trying to do, it's not working on me!" Shadow barked back at Mephiles, though he had hardly any time to confront the demon directly - as within a matter of seconds he was met with Superman.

Having been able to see Superman charging at him, he was able to block the man's fists from punching him by grabbing hold of them. However, the sheer power of Superman was enough to push Shadow back complete with a shockwave from the impact of their hands meeting - though he hissed and grunted, Shadow planted his feet hard onto the ground and with enough straining was able to actually hold his ground against the kryptonian.

Just as their hands were liked in trying to shove the other, so were their eyes - locked permanently in a glare directed at one another. Both of them standing their ground. Both of them seemingly testing their muscles to the limit.

Barry would have been astonished at Shadow's ability to hold his own against the full grown kryptonian if he didn't have a battle of his own to focus on.

As he waited for his healing factor to kick in regarding his injured knee, he had to worry about the Hawkman still being fixated on him. With this speed impaired by his wounded knee, he could just barely dodge Hawkman's several attempts at swinging the nth mace at him, having an easier time ducking his head and body than jumping or moving from side to side to evade each swing.

Eventually, Hawkman did attempt to stomp his foot down on Barry, taking advantage of the man still having a weakened knee by stomping down on that same leg's foot. With a pained groan, Barry fell to the ground. Having to look back on what looked like his former ally as Hawkman lifted his mace into the air, Barry could only mutter out but one phrase in an almost grieving tone of voice:

"Forgive me…"

With one well timed creation of a wind vertex, Barry was able to blast Hawkman into the air just moments before the mace made contact with his head - giving Barry a few moments to recover his breath.

Hawkman managed to break his forced ascent by extending his wings, before immediately diving down from the air directly at Barry - still brandishing his mace. Barry closed his eyes and prepared for impact - not with his friend, but rather with a charged up momentum-propelled punch to Hawkman's face just prior to impact. Combined with the force Hawkman was flying, it was enough to send the thanagarian flying into the wall of blue fire from once he spawned - his nega form seemingly defeated.

Barry took no pleasure in having to do this. In fact, as he saw Hawkman disappear into the ghostly blue flames a vision of the man's brutal demise from the previous timeline flashed before his eyes - as vivid as though he was witnessing it in life. It was only for half of a second, but was enough to make Barry grimace in pain as he struggled to stand him. His knee would heal, but it needed to heal faster than it was - as the remaining combatants had no intentions of showing the slightly limping speedster any mercy.

He was first approached by his nephews, who were yet again rushing him virtually in tandem with one another. Just as quickly as he finally stood up on both of his feet, Wally II jabbed him right in the wounded knee, forcing him back to the ground with a loud hiss. Before he could even comprehend that, he was struck in the face and nearly fully onto the ground by a punch in the face from Wally I.

Having to do this was going to hurt the most. He couldn't even spare the time to take in a deep breath.

Never in a million years did I picture myself doing this…

But you leave me no choice…

Once he saw that both Wallys were running in opposite directions to one another, Barry swiftly formulated a plan. He could feel that his knee was healing just enough so that he could properly run again, and with a determined face waited until the last possible second to rush - causing both of his nephews to punch each other in the face rather than collide with him. The momentum of their punches both sent the two back a good distance, and gave Barry enough time to get his proper speed going well before the two got back up to their feet and rushed to fight with him once more.

He first slowed down so that he could dodge a direct ramming attack from Wally I, though this left him vulnerable to a rear strike from Wally II. Seeing this coming though, Barry easily turned the tables on his darker skinned nephew by turning himself to the ground and grabbing the boys first before he could properly land the strike. Before Wally II even had the chance to vibrate his way out of his uncle's grip, the older male flipped him over onto the ground with as much strength as his upper body could muster.

It brought tears to Barry's eyes, but he wanted and needed this to end.

To his surprise though, he did not see Wally II when he opened his eyes. Only the black ground of the rock he stood on, surrounded by the roaring wall of blue flames. There was no sign of Wally II either in the form of a speedster blur or even a body - as though the boy had suddenly vanished the moment he made contact with the ground.

There was unfortunately little time for Barry to properly comprehend this, for within moments his other nephew punched him directly in the gut and yet again nearly to the ground before speeding off in an effort to make another hit-and-run strike.

Before the original Kid Flash could land his next strike though, Barry's quick thinking mind successfully deduced what direction he was charging from, and Barry charged in that same direction at his own top speed. Colliding with Wally I within a matter of moments, with all of his superior physical strength and maximum momentum, Wally grabbed his nephew by his upper arms, headbutted him and then proceeded to throw him towards the lone rock spire on the platform - Wally I letting out but a whimper of agony as his body made enough of impact on the rock to not only get him to cough up blood but also make a notable dent in the rock itself.

What stopped Barry in his tracks however was the fact that his body did not vanish as his cousins did. Instead, it appeared as though color had actually returned to it. His costume returned to its yellow-and-red coloring. His hair returned to it's light brown coloration. His eyes were closed, though likely regained their blue irises and black pupils.

Tears streamed Barry's face as he saw this - his nephew, returned to a normal, living state. Only to be coughing up blood and whimpering in pain before falling to the ground with scarcely any movement at all.

Barry feared the worst. The absolute worst.

No...no...no no no no no no...

He instinctively wanted to rush over to Wally to ensure he was okay, but was denied that act of compassion when he was suddenly trapped inside of a black sphere of pure energy - courtesy of the colorless, soulless Hal Jordan. With his emotionless face and soulless red eyes, he denied Barry the ability to investigate Wally's sudden 'rebirth' any further and instead swung him around in a circle multiple times before releasing him into the air as though he were a slingshot - only for John Steward to use his ring to form a massive baseball bat which promptly smacked Barry back down to the impromptu arena, an impact crater forming on the ground when Barry landed.

Barry got up, though was attacked by Hal from behind - kicked brutally in the back, causing him to slide into the knees of Shazam, only to be got by a bubble generated by John Stewart, and from there only transferred to to be smacked around by a giant hand crafted by Hal Jordan, with the speedster making groans, hisses and shouts of agony with each hit landed upon him until he was again tossed towards Shazam, who this time restrained him grappling both of his arms.

Seeing Cyborg approach him with intent of taking advantage of Barry's restrained status, Barry knew he had to break from Shazam's grasp quickly.

Barry vibrated his way out of Shazam's grasp the best that he could, at just the right time so that Cyborg blasted Shazam into the wall of blue flame instead of the speedster himself. Of course, Barry had to yet again keep his pace ahead of Cyborg's blasts afterwards, only this time he performed a turn directly towards the half-robotic man. Though he swayed from side to side in order to evade Cyborg's attempts to attack him, he ultimately did make a direct hit to Cyborg's chest with enough force to send Cyborg flying back into the blue wall of flame from which he came - seemingly defeating him for the time being.

Just Barry recovered his breath from his run-ins with the nega of versions of those previous three, he was met with several figures approaching him in order to challenge him to the most unfair of battles.

Lex Luthor, John Constantine, Zatanna, Mera and Aquaman now stood before him with Hal Jordan and John Steward circling the group overhead. With Shadow still preoccupied with both Superman and Wonder Woman - Barry seeing the three still violently tossing each other around - only Barry was there to deal with these individuals.

"John" Barry said to John, remembering that he was the one who told him to create the flashpoint in the first place, "John, I know you're in there! You were the one who told me to 'clear the board'! This was your idea! You should know that more than anyone! If you're in there, you should be able to fight this demonic asshole! What kind of occult investigator are you if you let a four foot tall hedgehog enslave you like this?! The real John Constantine would have broken free of his control by now!"

The sound of Mephiles' laughter echoed through the 'arena' in response to that, and even the minions smirked and smiled as though they found amusement in what Barry had yelled out.

"Choosing the pen rather than the sword?" Mephiles yet again mocked despite not being truly present on the field though speaking as if he were, "I must admit, I am impressed by your attempt at diplomacy. However, fighting fire with words is rather, shall I say, ineffective."

With any words being said, John Constantine did as his master suggested and conjured up balls of fire which he swiftly launched in Barry's direction. Barry could only gasp as he used his feet to swiftly avoid the balls of flame, though his evasion of Constantine's magic made him distracted enough to be struck by several small rocks from the ground that were telekinetically thrown at him by Zatanna.

It was within seconds afterwards that he was yet again struck by the lanterns, both of them spawning enlarged fists from their rings, punching Barry from the back to send him through the air towards the wall of room - only to be grabbed by a black tentacle, which proceeded to wrap around his body briefly before slamming him to the ground.

Barry didn't even have the time to recover before he had the black boot of a certain Batman crushing down on his neck, the darkly dressed caped crusader yet again looming over him with only the light of the flames around them illuminating him. Damian, Raven, Batgirl and Batwoman were there soon enough, with the others following suit.

"Bruce" Barry pleaded with what little ability to speak that he had, "Please...are….are you in there?"

He received no response, other than the dark knight's boot crushing down further on his throat - slowly cutting off the speedster's air supply and making it harder for him to speak. It was just like his battle with Shadow, only without the opponent holding back.

Barry had many things he wanted to say, but he couldn't. Instead he could only think.

Bruce...please…

I know, deep down, you're not just his slave.

You were able to free yourself from Darkseid, you can free yourself from this asshole!

Can't you?

Are….are you even there?

Batman did not speak. He only did. Once it was evident that Barry had effectively been worn out of energy for the time being, Batman lifted his foot off of the man's throat, picked him up by the neck of his uniform, and shoved him back to the ground so that he was properly facing the others. Or, more accurate, he for whom the others had parted.

Mephiles.

Mephiles had re-emerged from the ground at the front of two separate rows of his apparition minions. Shadow was still occupied with Superman and Wonder Woman, leaving the exhausted Barry without any allies as Mephiles looked upon him with his emotionless demonic face. Looking up at his newfound nemesis, Barry glared angrily. There were many choice words he had for the entity standing before him, but the only ones he could muster the power to speak out were:

"What...what are you?"

"What I am does not matter to you" Mephiles shook his head in a condescending manner, "Not only would you not be able to truly comprehend it, but you will not be around long enough for it to be relevant to your feeble mortal mind. Be grateful that I am giving you the mercy of oblivion, the least that I can do."

Barry bowed his head in defeat at that point, accepting his defeat. He was outnumbered, outmatched, and exhausted. It was a miracle he had even lasted as long as he did.

As Barry looked up only to see how Mephiles intended to kill him - he saw a horrifyingly familiar sight. Two bright, red lights were forming on Mephiles' eyes. Piercing red lights, matching with his pure red scleras. It was the same type of light that emitted from Darkseid's eyes:

He...he can use Omega Beams?...

He closed his eyes the second he realized what was about to befall him, bracing himself for the intense burning that was surely awaiting him.

He was not the only one seeing this however. Having seen Mephiles emerge from the ground, Shadow was just freeing himself from the grip of Wonder Woman's lasso through his sheer will alone, and once he saw what Mephiles was about to do to Barry he prepared to charge at the demon, though was briefly stopped by Superman attempting to grapple him from behind. Curling into his ball form and effectively uppercutting the nega kryptonian was enough to free himself from his grasp however, and the ultimate lifeform broke from his fight in an effort to interrupt the execution of the Flash.

All of this happened in a matter of mere seconds.

When Mephiles fired his piercing red omega beams directly at Barry, Shadow successfully intercepted them - jumping in front of Barry just before they could have made contact with the flash. Barry watched as Shadow took the full force of the Omega Beams, but instead of being incinerated like a lantern or singed like a boy wonder the ultimate lifeform only grunted - feeling some form of pain, though not a single part of him seemed burned at all.

Mephiles himself for once seemed shocked as he saw it with his own eyes. Shadow had managed to not only withstand the omega effect energy, but was absorbing it. No mortal being outside of Apokolips or evidently Mephiles himself could do such a thing, yet in a most defiant manner Shadow now had a deep red aura surrounding himself - the power of omega energy enhancing him.

Barry, even the nega minions for that matter, were all speechless. Shadow himself however was fixated solely on Mephiles, glaring at the demonic being with the full force of his rage.

Only one thought crossed Barry's mind as his mind processed all of this:

He wasn't kidding when he said he was the ultimate lifeform...

The first one to make a move was Batman. Several batarangs were thrown at Shadow from behind to prevent him from making a move on Mephiles - however the omega aura surrounding Shadow caused them all to explode before their sharp wings could even graze Shadow's skin. From the black smoke came Shadow, speeding through the air in his own black ball-like state, barreling through Batman's very own chest and out his back with enough speed so that the dark knight couldn't even properly respond.

Barry was mortified as he saw this, unable to comprehend the sight. There was no blood. No gore whatsoever. It looked as though a hole had been burned clear through the world's greatest detective, and on the inside was only pure darkness. Batman soon vanished afterwards, a cloud of darkness remaining of him for only a few seconds. As though he wasn't even a true living being at all.

Still, Barry was able to use this distraction to rush to his fallen nephew's side.

Shadow had no time to waste on sights however, as he immediately fixated himself on the opponents surrounding him - with all of Mephiles' minions wanting a piece of him. Hal Jordan and John Stewart attempted to trap him inside of a bubble shield, though with one concentrated pulse of energy it was shattered as though it were an incredibly weak glass. The hedgehog then sent himself into the air with his rocket shoes and grabbed hold of Hal Jordan's hand by the wrist - the omega energy coursing around him having an incinerating effect on the lantern which ultimately caused the hand to be burned clean off. As it was the hand with the ring on it, this caused Hal Jordan to be reduced to a powerless state and fall to the ground - vanishing just as Batman did upon hitting the ground.

John Stewart followed not long after. The large fists he desperately generated from his ring were repeatedly destroyed effortlessly as Shadow charged at him - eventually burning directly through the lantern's body, causing him to vanish in mid-air not long after his entire torso had been destroyed.

Shadow then returned to the ground, making short work of Batwoman with a kick directly to her chest and Batgirl by grabbing her by her shoulders and viciously headbutting her with a full force impact. Lex Luthor was handled by a solid punch directly through his heart, while Aquaman, Mera, Blue Beetle and Cyborg were finished off by four chaos spears being unleashed at once by Shadow merely extending his arm out. With the spears also being endowed with omega effect energy, their forms were easily destroyed with a single set of four small explosions, vaporizing their darkness.

Bumblebee changed to her insect size to charge at Shadow from the air, while Speedy supported her by firing a stream of explosives at the black hedgehog. However, a single shield forged from omega chaos energy made every single arrow prove meaningless. A well timed charge from Shadow's spin dash easily turned Bumblebee into a dissipating puff of darkness - and decapitated Speedy, with him meeting the same fate once he fell completely to the ground.

The next challenger for the ultimate lifeform was Damian, who charged at him with his sword. Only for said sword to be caught by a clap of Shadow's hands - the omega energy turning it to useless stub of melted metal within seconds. Damian managed to evade Shadow's first attempt to strike him, managing to jump over Shadow and get behind him. However, before he could even pull out another piece of equipment the boy was slapped across the face by the back of Shadow's hand - his face disintegrating to darkness as he fell, before his body followed afterwards.

"DAMIAN!" The 'nega' Raven screamed with as much horror and emotion as her colored counterpart, before charging at Shadow with pure absolute rage at what she had just witnessed. With Shadow's omega aura making him resistant to telekinesis, she restored to her other abilities. Conjuring massive boulders, tentacles and even sharp shards of darkness to throw at Shadow - though the hedgehog tore through every last one as though he was super heated enough cutting through a mere stick of butter.

Raven herself eventually lunged at him soon after, though the rage she felt towards him blinded her. Though she had a black mass of tentacles and great power accompanying her, Shadow's unleashed power tore through everything she tried - and even herself as well. With Shadow slicing through her in her ball form as she tried to envelop him in her own darkness, she was soon reduced to nothing but the latter before even that dissipated into absolute nothingness.

John Constantine and Zatanna stepped up to the task next - with their magic shields successfully deflecting Shadow's spin dashes, allowing Constantine to fire a series of fireballs at Shadow once he was briefly sent back. Zatanna attempted to use her telekinesis magic though she could only find rocks to throw at Shadow - to little effect. Unfortunately for the two magical minions, they were soon destroyed when Shadow unleashed two chaos spears at them - shattering the shields they put up and destroying their bodies entirely.

With all of those individuals vanquished, all that remained to surround Shadow as he stood on the volcanic ground were Superman, Wonder Woman, Shazam, Nightwing and Starfire. Though they were glaring and snarling angrily at Shadow, it was difficult to truly discern if they were mourning those whom Shadow had just defeated or not.

They wouldn't have enough time to do so anyway.

The moment that all of them charged Shadow at once, Shadow jumped himself into the air and curled himself up as energy pulsated and electrified around him. Just before impact could be made he let out one mighty battle cry as he extended his body back out:

"Chaos…..BLAST!"

With those two words, a massive blast of pure omega chaos energy was unleashed from the hedgehog's body - completely incinerating the five beings charging at him within a matter of seconds as it's radius soon encompassed the entire stone platform - even managing to disperse the wall of blue flame surrounding the platform.

Barry watched as this bright red light emitted from Shadow's body and the burning explosion came in his direction. Grabbing Wally's body he rushed to the other side of the rock spire and shielded Wally as tightly as he could. Though his body was spared certain incineration thanks to the energy primarily eating away at the rock, Barry still screamed and hissed due to the searing heat all around him. Parts of his clothes and even skin that just barely grazed the energy were still singed as though he had touched an extremely hot stove.

Thankfully, it was all over within seconds. Once Barry, carrying Wally in his arms, emerged from behind the rock all he could see was Shadow standing on the ground with stacks of smoke surrounding him. The chaos blast had released all of the omega energy from Shadow, meaning he was back to his usual form - though still panted heavily after exerting so much power.

Still amazed and horrified, Barry addressed what had just happened:

"Did...did you?"

"It wasn't them" Shadow swiftly reminded Barry, "Whatever those things were, they weren't the people you remember them to be."

Barry looked down at Wally whom he held in his arms, the only one who returned to his living from out of the group. He didn't know what that meant, if the others were really themselves or not, but all he knew was that at the very least he had one of his nephews back. Or at least he hoped so, as Wally still had his eyes closed. Shadow, seeing the boy in Barry's arms:

"Is he?"

"My nephew" Barry explained without looking away from the boy, "And he's alive...only barely.." looking back up at Shadow hee said to his ally, "We need to get out of here."

Shadow nodded in agreement to those words, though it was at that moment which they were greeted with the return of Mephiles' diabolical echoing laugh. As Shadow readied his battle stance and looked around the ghostly blue volcanic field for where the demon was, Barry made sure to place the vulnerable Wally down by the rock spire out of the way before doing the same.

"Where are you?!" Shadow exclaimed angrily to the laughing entity, "Show yourself!"

Mephiles coldly chuckled:

"Since you so cordially insist…"

Emerging from behind Shadow as though he had been there the entire time, Mephiles folded his arms and swiftly extended them back out - releasing in the process a powerful concussive blast that sent both Barry and Shadow into the air - Shadow's spine smashing into the rock spire and proceeding to slide down to the ground, while Barry slid painfully on the ground until being stopped by one of the various impact craters created from the previous battle.

As the two recovered from the blast, Mephiles promptly addressed them in as menacing a tone that he could muster:

"You two have not the faintest idea of the sheer power you are up against."

Before Mephiles could approach the two any further however, all three had their attention taken by a sudden stream of machine gun bullets that fired at the ground in a line between them. Turning to the direction of these bullets, Shadow was astonished at where the bullets had come from:

E-123 Omega, the bulky, 'muscular' robot of red, golden yellow and black that he had no choice but to abandon back in crisis city, as much as it pained him internally to abandon one of the only two beings he considers a true friend. Now he was standing before him, at last fully activated and without any dust on his glossy metallic body at all. One of his clawed hands had shifted into the form of a machine gun, which had of course been the weapon used to gain Mephiles, Shadow and Barry's attention.

As he turned the gun back into one of his clawed hands, his robotic voice explained his presence:

"Now is designated time" he said to Shadow, "I shall assist."

While Shadow came closer than ever to smiling, Mephiles was more amused than anything else as he coldly remarked:

"You are nothing but a nuisance, robot."

Mephiles' first attempted attack against Omega was to generate a large, piercing bright beam of pure, concentrated energy from the palm of one of his hands - though Omega was able to jump out of the way and retaliated by turning one of his hands into an RPG launcher, firing a missile directly at the demonic being.

The missile did not get to make impact however, as Mephiles had managed to grab it telekinetically, surrounding it in a black aura akin to Raven's own powers, and then promptly sent it back on course to Omega himself. However, Omega destroyed it with a second missile anyway.

This moment may have been small, but did distract Mephiles just enough so that Shadow was able to strike him in the back of the head with a sweeping mid-air kick. It managed to knock Mephiles to the ground, though only because Shadow was not holding back any of his physical strength against the demonic being. Landing in between Mephiles and Omega, Shadow readied his battle stance - not daring to break eye contact with the demon as he waited to see what he was going to unleash next.

Though his face was virtually emotionless, it could easily be inferred that Mephiles was not precisely amused with this battle any longer. Or, perhaps in his own sadistic way he actually still was. Without any expressive facial features, his emotions were hard to decipher.

"You are quite the persistent annoyance, Shadow" Mephiles remarked, "But no matter, sooner or later, you will fall!"

Mephiles did not hesitate. Extending out his arms he began to command the lava surrounding the platform release nigh endless streams of piercing hot blue flames into the air, before the demon showed complete control over them; with the sheer power of his mind these streams curved towards Shadow and Omega as though they were flaming tentacles of some creature, proceeding to come at the two as though they were burning whips.

As it was futile to fire weapons at fire, Shadow and Omega settled for dodging and evading the literal whips of flame, though while it was easy to dodge the initial strikes - eventually massive blasts of blue fire came at them from behind while other streams of it rained down on them from above - forcing Shadow to do various acrobatic moves in order to avoid being burned. Flips both front and back, somersaults, he even narrowly avoided a stream that nearly struck him in his groin area. Omega was durable enough to stand a single blast - though even he knew the metal compromising his body had a limit at some point and so made a point to avoid the flames as well. He attempted to fire his missiles and even machine gun fire at Mephiles, though the demon often just used a single wave of blue flame to either melt the bullets or destroy the missiles before they could strike him.

Watching the battle unfold from the sidelines, Barry was lucky to seemingly be getting no attention from the demon. He decided it was best to use that fact to his advantage, and naturally rushed at Mephiles with the full force of his speed.

It didn't last long, unfortunately.

It was as though his speed had just stopped. As though he was frozen in place, moments he could land a punch to Mephiles' demonic face. As though he was parlyzed. Looking down he could see that underneath him was a puddle of pure darkness extending out from Mephiles - with the darkness latching onto the speedster's feet as though it was engulfing him from the bottom-up, some of it looking as though black tentacles were wrapping around his muscular legs and thighs while moving slowly upwards to do the same with the rest of him.

The worst parts were both that he couldn't vibrate himself out of their grasp, and that whatever this was it made it feel as though whatever they touched was numb - not hot or cold, only numb as though the limbs were asleep yet forced to be standing upright.

Barry could only struggle with his upper body as the lower half was slowly taken over by the darkness. Try as he did, he seemingly was fully unable to break free.

Without breaking from his fight against Shadow and Omega, Mephiles turned to Barry solely to mock him for his evidently failed attempt:

"Foolish mortal" the entity chuckled, "Did you honestly think that was going to work?"

Barry did not give Mephiles the dignity of a response. He only gritted his teeth, scowling, practically snarling even, at the demon who has put him through far more mental and emotional torment than Darkseid himself ever could have accomplished.

"No matter" the being continued on, "Soon it will be as though you had never even existed. It's no use resisting, you can't fight eternal darkness forever."

With the darkness increasingly engulfing his body, now passing over his upper half, Barry only had one thing to tell the demonic entity:

"Go fuck yourself."

Mephiles only laughed in response to that petty insult.

No longer willing to give himself up to the evil being, Barry continued to do all he could to struggle and fight the darkness consuming him - even though it's continued engulfing of his body told him that it was in fact futile. Even as Mephiles' mocking laughter was about all his ears actually heard.

At least until two other voices entered the fray:

"Initiating Zeta Energy Cannons!"

"Chaos Spear!"

In an instant, a single chaos spear managed to cut off the darkness engulfing Barry from Mephiles' shadow, weakening it enough for Barry to finally break free of it as it dissipated from his body. Before Mephiles could even conjure up a counter-attack however, a duet of two massive, bright purple beams of weaponized energy fired onto him with enough force to actually send him back to the edge of the platform.

Once the beams stopped firing, Shadow and Omega rejoined Barry's side - having freed themselves from the onslaught of blue flames.

"Thanks, guys" Barry said to the two during this brief moment he had, "He almost had me there, for a moment."

"Sensors indicate the target has not yet been neutralized, now is not time for idle chatter." - Omega was swiftly proven rather correct.

Within an instant the ground shook in a line extending out from Mephiles as though a small earthquake was suddenly occurring before their eyes, making the three jump out of the way as tendrils made of darkness emerged from the cracks in the rock to violently attempt in grappling the three - though well timed chaos spears and missiles managed to keep the darkness at bay.

A large mass of darkness attempted to ensnarl Omega before long, though with a swipe of his arms with his flamethrowers initiated the robot was able to disperse the darkness before it could get a proper hold of him - he also continued supporting Shadow and Barry by using his missiles to disperse any of the black tentacles before they could grapple either of them.

As to be expected, that wasn't the only hazard that Mephiles conjured for the trio as before long he spawned before him a series of telekinetically levitating spiked rocks with each encased in an aura of darkness, sending it at the three within a matter of moments to emulate Omega's own missiles.

With Omega handling the stream of darkness, Barry and Shadow had to divert their attention to these rock missiles - Barry was fast enough to evade them, though Mephiles conjured a thick wall of piercing blue flame and would send violent streams of it towards the speedster if he dared to try anything with his speed. Shadow was strong enough to home in on each in his ball form and shatter them to pieces, though the stream of them seemed to be endless.

Eventually however, Barry's quick thinking mind came up with an idea: with Shadow taking the majority of the rock towers, he decided to use the wind vortexes created from his arm to blow away the blue fire protecting Mephiles. Just as Mephiles taken aback by this and hissed angrily at Barry upon being exposed, Barry shouted to his ally:

"Shadow! Opening! Now!"

Seeing as Mephiles was getting ready to unleash a stream of darkness on Barry, Shadow yet again no time to waste. He diverted his attention to diving from a mid-air position directly to Mephiles - who naturally realized what was going on and abandoned his attack on Barry to charge at Shadow, the two colliding in mid-air within a matter of seconds.

Mephiles quickly slashed at Shadow's chest with his claws, drawing blood as well as making Shadow actually hiss in pain, though his other hand was caught by Shadow's own before he could do the same to the ultimate lifeform's face. Holding said hand by the wrist, Shadow did not give Mephiles any time to retaliate before punching the demon in his own chest at maximum strength - enough to send Mephiles barreling back to the ground below them.

The fact that punching Mephiles felt nearly like slamming his fist into a steel wall was not lost on Shadow.

With the stream of darkness dissipating, all three allies were able to surround Mephiles as he stood up to face them. Ever difficult to read, Mephiles grunted as he got up to face his adversaries - though it was hard to know if he felt defeated by them or not. Nevertheless, he did generate from one of his hands a large orb of dark energy - swirling vortex of black, blue and purple. At first the three assumed it was a final attack, though without saying a single word Mephiles leaped himself into it and vanished, just as the area all around them began to shake.

With the ground cracking and crumbling apart at the seams, the light of the blued magma shining from underneath as it bubbled up to the surface, Omega's words were readily apparent well before he spoke them:

"I am indicating an eruption of this volcano is imminent, we must leave this area at once!"

Shadow nodded, and looking towards the portal Mephiles had generated he could see that as massive stacks of steam lava erupted from the floor that it was still there, yet diminishing in size quickly.

"INTO THE PORTAL, NOW!" he yelled, himself Omega charging for it immediately. Barry was about to, but swiftly remembered Wally.

Just as Shadow and Omega jumped into the portal to follow Mephiles and escape the impending eruption, Barry swiftly rushed to Wally's still unconscious body. Scooping his nephew up into his arms, he just as swiftly rushed into the portal mere moments before it vanished completely - just narrowly avoiding being caught in the volcano's eruption, hearing the first few seconds of the final roar as the white flash of travelling through the portal took over his eyes.

When the bright lights of portal travel left him, Barry could see that he, Shadow, Omega and Wally had been transported back to Soleanna's New City district, evidently the present time from which they left. They landed on a tiled plaza, with a large clock tower behind them and the various brick-and-mortar buildings that blended in with one another surrounding them. The solace in all of this was that the sky was yet again blue as they reflected the beauty of the ocean, and the clouds were white, joining the sun in the sky as it yet again shined down upon the world - though Barry did have to adjust to seeing sunlight again after spending so much time in darkness.

Speaking of which, there was no sign of Mephiles. Shadow looked around for the demon, but shook his head in frustration once it was apparent the dark entity was nowhere to be found. Omega summarized their situation as such:

"It appears that we have been transported back to the present, though Mephiles managed to transport himself to a different location. I will assist in pursuing him."

Shadow nodded in response to that, though Omega was not the only one desiring to join the quest:

"So will I." Barry proudly declared, wanting more than anything else to track down Mephiles and see him defeated. Though Shadow did not seem to disagree with the sentiment, he was swift to point out one glaring thing:

"First, you need to get your nephew proper medical treatment."

Looking down at the unconscious boy in his arms, Barry closed his eyes and yet again shed a small tear from his eyes. Seeing Wally like that, fighting for his life, and the guilt that he was potentially who caused it, was almost too much for him. Turning to Shadow and Omega, Barry said:

"Where's the nearest hospital?"

The voice Rouge descending into the conversation was ultimately what responded to that statement:

"Unfortunately, the Duke Arturo Memorial Hospital is already filled to maximum capacity" she stated as she landed with the rest of the group, "However, G.U.N. has finally been able to institute both a blockade and a no-fly-zone, thanks to a recent change in Soleanna's leadership. We can take him to a med-bay on one of the ships, hopefully that will be enough."

As Rouge talked to her communicator device to get G.U.N. clearance to one of the vessels now surrounding the border of Soleanna's waters, Barry looked down onto his nephew and spoke softly to him in the vain hope that the boy could hear what he was being told:

"It's alright Wally, we're gonna get you help. You're gonna be back up and running in no time, just trust me, alright bud? We're gonna get you back up faster than I can even run! Promise!"

Of course, Barry knew that Wally was not the only one who needed some form of medical help. Though, he wasn't sure if there was anything that could be done to fix all of his problems at this point.