DC : The Template System

Max continued walking, enjoying the rare peace of a morning without explosions, kidnappings, or angry metahumans screaming about domination.

And then—

FLASH.

A blinding light engulfed his vision, and the world around him twisted like it had been yanked through a blender.

He staggered, eyes wide, suddenly surrounded by a glowing tunnel. Energy crackled all around, glowing gold and red and blue, stretching endlessly in every direction like a technicolor wormhole.

Just ahead, for a fraction of a second, he saw a familiar figure—a man in crimson, lightning trailing behind him, sprinting through the glowing chaos like it was just another jog.

Then—snap—the light vanished.

Max blinked and stumbled, back on the sidewalk where he'd been seconds ago. Same cracked pavement. Same humming streetlamp. A pigeon looked at him sideways like he was the weirdo.

"…WTF," Max muttered, spinning in a slow circle. No signs of energy. No lingering light. Just… reality, pretending like nothing happened.

But Max wasn't buying it.

He narrowed his eyes, dusted off his jacket, and muttered, "Yeah. That was definitely the Speed Force tunnel. I've seen enough CW nonsense to know that look."

It wasn't the first time Flash had played fast and loose with the timeline, but it was the first time Max had gotten a front-row seat.

He let out a slow breath, rubbing his temples. "Great. Just great. Flash is messing with time again."

He looked down the street, as if expecting a dinosaur, robot apocalypse, or alternate universe doppelgänger to appear.

Nothing happened, atleast from what he could see at first.

Max resumed his walk, a bit faster this time, constantly glancing over his shoulder.

Something felt… off.

There were fewer people on the street than there had been before the Speed Force flicker. The atmosphere was tense, quiet, wrong. Most of the buildings around him looked abandoned—shattered windows, boarded doors, dead silence humming beneath the city noise.

"Okay... something's definitely wrong."

He rounded the corner and saw a crowd huddled in front of a massive TV screen mounted on the side of a building. Curious and uneasy, Max pushed his way through, muttering apologies as he squeezed past civilians—many of whom looked gaunt, desperate, on edge.

Then he saw the broadcast.

> "ATLANTIS AND THEMISCYRA DECLARE TOTAL WAR — LONDON FALLS"

Footage played behind the anchor's grim face: crumbling buildings, tidal waves swallowing coastlines, burning forests, soldiers in golden armor clashing against armored sea creatures in the ruins of cities.

Britain... conquered. By the Amazons.

"No way," Max breathed, stumbling back a step.

He stared at the headline, at the chaos, at the panic on every face.

If things were what he thought they were...

Barry really screwed up the timeline.

Max's mind raced. He'd watched enough DC content to piece this together—animated movies,

This wasn't just some minor shift.

This was Flashpoint.

Barry Allen, depressed after being criticized by Doom that he always saves everyone except those who matter, had ran back through time… and saved his mother.

And in doing so, shattered the delicate balance of reality creating a new timeline called the flash point paradox where his actions created a space-time riple that altered the original course of events dooming the whole planet.

Hal Jordan never became Green Lantern. He would die trying to kamikaze Aquaman's warship.

Superman? Crashed in Metropolis, not Kansas. Thousands dead on impact. Captured by the government. Locked away. No sun. No hope.

Barry? Never got in that accident that have him the speed force so he never became the Flash.

Cyborg was a government dog, not a League member.

Bruce Wayne… was the one who died in the alley so Thomas Wayne became Batman.

Martha Wayne, shattered by grief, became the Joker.

And the war—the war—between Atlantis and Themyscira?

It began when Wonder Woman and Aquaman's secret affair was discovered by Queen Mera. She confronted Diana, and got beheaded.

Wonder Woman, ever proud, took Mera's tiara as a trophy.

And so the sea rose. The skies burned. The world collapsed.

It was all... a mess. A giant cosmic mistake.

Max stood there in stunned silence as the crowd murmured around him.

He needed to find flash and batman so he can fix his bullshit.

"Well, fuck this," Max muttered.

He rolled up his sleeve, revealing a seal-shaped tattoo etched into his wrist—an intricate swirl of lines and symbols, pulsing faintly with chakra.

He formed a hand seal. The tattoo glowed.

Poof.

In a burst of smoke, his uniform vanished—replaced by a long, black cloak patterned with red clouds, its hem swaying with barely restrained power. A familiar orange mask, single eyehole spiraled like a vortex, snapped into place over his face. On his feet—open-toed boots, ninja-style.

No more pretending.

If this was the Flashpoint timeline… it was going to be reset anyway. All of this—this broken, twisted world—would be wiped cleanand everyone would forget

Everyone except two people: Flash... and that red-eyed time-traveling bastard, Eobard Thawne.

And neither of them were around to see his face.

His one visible eye narrowed—and morphed. Red turned to violet. His iris rippled into concentric rings.

Rinnegan.

He raised one hand and slammed it down onto the pavement.

"Summoning Jutsu!"

A massive puff of smoke erupted from the ground, startling the surrounding civilians who had just begun to recover from the broadcast.

Out of the smoke emerged a gigantic bird—emerald green feathers, a razor-sharp yellow beak, and eyes that matched Max's own: Rinnegan.

Gasps echoed through the street.

Max didn't look at anyone.

He leapt onto the creature's back in a single smooth motion and gave a silent command.

The bird screeched once, wings spreading wide like sails catching a divine wind—then with one powerful beat, it launched into the sky, leaving a gale-force gust in its wake.

Max's cloak fluttered behind him as the city shrank below. Buildings, roads, people… all blurred into silence.

The wind howled past him as the bird soared across broken skies, the world beneath a war-torn patchwork of twisted fate.

Max crouched low on the creature's back, his cloak flapping violently behind him, his orange mask hiding all but his eye—the one glowing Rinnegan scanning the horizon for his destination.

Wayne Manor.

That was where Flash had gone. Max remembered the movie vividly—how Barry sought out Bruce Wayne for help, only to find Thomas instead.

And if Max's guess was right, that was where the speedster would be now. Trying to rebuild his speed. Trying to fix this.

But Max had bigger concerns pressing at the edge of his thoughts.

He leaned forward on the bird's back,

Why did he remember the original timeline?

He shouldn't. He wasn't native to this world. He wasn't part of its history. By all logic, when Barry rewrote the past, he should've rewritten Max too. Replaced him. Erased him. Or never let him arrive at all.

And yet… here he was.

Still intact. Still aware. Still… himself.

"Am I an anomaly?" Max thought, his expression tight behind the mask. "Is that why I wasn't affected? Or is the system protecting me?"Could be .

Or maybe the reason he remembered the original timeline... was because he was never part of it to begin with.

Looking back at how he arrived in this world—no ID, no records, no past—it started to make a strange kind of sense. By all accounts, he shouldn't exist. He had no anchor in this reality. No past here. Just… now.

If he had been part of this timeline, even in some small way, he should have been ripped away or rewritten when Barry Allen altered everything. And yet… he remained.

It sounded insane. But the only explanation he could come up with was this: he wasn't bound to this world's timestream.

That much was obvious. He was a transmigrator—a walking paradox. And still, despite all logic, he hadn't been ejected when Barry broke time. He was still here. Why?

His eyes widened as a terrifying realization hit him.

There is no other version of me in this world.

If there had been a doppelgänger… he would have been overwritten or erased because unlike Barry or Thawne he wasn't protected by the speed force. But he wasn't. Which could only mean one thing:

He existed outside of the time stream because if he existed in it he would have caused a paradox the moment he arrived in this reality 7 months ago.

End of chapter.