The events in this post took place the eve of March 13th.

For the first time in history, there was gunfire in the streets of Sternmont.

Varick paced in his study before the broad windows that overlooked the village, now in flames. There was shouting and screaming, horses galloping, and no doubt some poor fools on their way up to the mansion atop the hill to investigate and find him out. Tax collectors had arrived earlier in the day, accompanied by a small contingent of police officers, and the villagers attacked them. Many of them had been shot, and the officers were beaten to death, but a few of the government workers had managed to flee on horseback.

They had returned with more police officers and the entirety of a nearby garrison in order to quell the rioters and bring to justice those who had killed the officers. The entire village rose up against them, and now they were fighting in the streets. The Graf strongly suspected that none would be spared.

Now Varick paced his study, dust cemented into a large rectangular stain in the middle where his desk once sat facing the apocalyptic vista before him, walls bare, books being transported through the rift into Rhy'Din as he pondered this twist of fate. His gold pocket watch lay in his hand, ticking away, telling him all his serious thoughts would have to wait, but its warning went unheeded. No longer would safe travel from Earth to Rhy'Din and back be an available means of studying the Nexus. So far he had been fearful of traveling into other realms across time and space, choosing only those destinations others had traveled to in the past, to the great libraries of an extinct time-traveling race that lay under a barren desert, and then to destinations referred to in those libraries where he found... power, the likes of which he never thought his body would possess. Knowledge and enlightenment were to be expected, but this... He pressed his fingers against the watch's face, against the palm of his hand, not noticing what he was doing out of stress until the glass had cracked and broken parts began spilling out of the gaps in the busted watch. A further twitch of his fingers, and the watch burst, springs and gears shooting off in every direction, shattering the relative silence of his study and giving pause to his dark reverie.

"Sir?" His servant stood cautiously in the doorway, pink eyes lowered, rendered timid by his dubious breeding and his master's strength.

"...Place the dynamite, Augustus." He looked over his shoulder at the man... and smiled faintly. "This world is not ready for what we know."

Cthonis xelxis was sketched very clearly in his notes, with several pages all to itself. It was a creature that looked like a small white organ but for several tendrils that were almost rootlike, like a bulbous plant in the ground, but when they extended, they could stretch for nearly a meter.

It was a creature of impossible biology by Earth's standards, a parasite possessed with incredible strength, found buried in the archives of the long-extinct Yith, an intelligent race from another world. It lived in a place even further away, and again, only with the blessed, advanced knowledge of the Yith and his Nexic rift, Varick von Sternmont was able to reach that place.

Now seven of the creatures dwelled within his body, carefully slipped under his skin and into his muscles. His limbs took to twitching at rare times, and he had episodes where he felt an incredible itch and the urge to tear off his own skin... but he was comforted, where most would be horrified, with certain knowledge of what was going on in his own body.

Eaciellis. A microbial organism that acted as the blood for many sentient creatures on other planets, and helped them to achieve very long life, often thousands of years. What it took from the creature it dwelled in was not quite clear, but the environment of a body allowed it to produce a great amount of heat and some sugars that would replace most of the host organism's need for food and even oxygen.

He had acquired this organism very early on and gradually replaced his blood with it, as had the original dwellers of the temple at Sternmont. The Graf's odd scent thereafter had roused the suspicion and perhaps ire of the so-called "eternal" in Rhy'Din... but soon, he knew, it would no longer matter.

Countless other parasites, placed well and with the knowledge that would render the relationships with them not parasitic but symbiotic, acquired from the most exotic reaches of time and space, inhabited his body... but they were not enough.

The Graf, greedier still from the power he had so far attained, wanted his prize, and would stop at nothing to get it.

Rks'sten'n, from a feared place known as Azathot, a nuclear chaos said to be beyond the universe... though in reality, it was only a very, very, very long ways away, the direct path to it so riddled with impossible anomalies that its visitors had indeed been very few. None in millions of years, for sure. It was uncertain whether or not this was a living thing... but when it entered a being, his mind, his body, and his very consciousness would irreversibly change. The matter for miles surrounding him could be gently pushed and pulled away, siphoned bit by bit, energies absorbed like a sponge... and the closer an object was to the being, the more devastatingly and totally it could be controlled and manipulated. The being would become chaos, and he would inflict his disorder upon the world as he saw fit.

For years Varick had dreamed of the dark whispers of the legend that was Azathoth and the unstoppable power that lay there... but he needed more than the rift. He needed to charge it with the energies of someone with so much fire, so much spirit, so much potency that he would reach across the universe and achieve the impossible.

Then the haughty "eternal" of Rhy'Din, and the moronic heroes who grew uneasy around him, and moreso those who were fooled by his charade as a mere scientist, would no longer be relevant. Any who stood in his way would die, and worlds would be his, or they would disentegrate in the face of his will.

But he needed that potent one, and he knew where to get her. Where the Count had lost sight of the goal, Varick would succeed. He needed Charna Lyndria... and with the news of her leaving that miserable cowboy of a lover, he knew just how to get her.

The Crimson Flash was searching the city. From what little he knew of the man he sought, he had a lab somewhere in the downtown area. Unfortunately, that didn't narrow his search area down enough. He paused at an intersection, one hand coming up to rub at the back of his head as he looked one way, then the other. "Hell. I've been here already." A frown under his mask, as he thought about which way to try next.

The rapidly descending darkness and relative quiet of this section of Rhy'Din, very near the crushingly poor West End, is suddenly punctuated by several flashes of lights and resounding cracks that reached the Flash at his own speed. At the top of the hill, lightning erupts from a brick building, and there's not a stormcloud in the starry sky. The noise is followed by a deathly silence, as the people who heard it sit huddled in their homes, petrified.

Crim's head snapped up, to peer toward the disturbance. Brown eyes narrowed at the building on the hill.
"And before I asked God for a sign, even." Muttering, he started that way, a scarlet blur tearing through the streets, keeping just below the speed of sound. He couldn't be sure that the flashes and bangs had anything to do with his quarry, but they bore investigation.
Skidding to a stop before the building, he eyed the front door, then the windows, as though unsure where to enter, or perhaps just to guage who might be within.

When the hero approaches, there is a steady hum in the air, and he feels as if his skin is silently begging to stretch away from his body and escape into the atmosphere. Something is very wrong here... and up the stairs is a deep, rumbling voice. The downstairs is suspiciously empty and dark, but the few upstairs windows are so brilliantly lit, peering inside is impossible.

A sigh escaped, muffled by fabric, and he tested the door. When that held fast, he began checking the windows, moving around the entire first floor in a matter of a few seconds. They were locked. His gaze lifted, to those windows that were lit.
It was a simple matter for him to find purchase between the bricks and moorings, and scale the side of the building. A light touch, while hanging from the sill by one hand, showed that he would be able to get in this way, but he was hesitant to rush in, no matter what one might expect from one such as him. He lifted himself slowly, inwardly cursing the light, and squinted into it. From the ground, he had been able to see nothing, but he hoped to have some idea what he was getting himself into, now that he was at this level.

The light is slightly dimmed, and for a moment he can make out a large object in the center of the room, and a figure standing by it. Then the lights begin to rise, obscuring them both, and a bloodcurdling shriek he recognizes as Charna's rattles the windows, somehow elicited by great horrors from her semi-conscious form.

The Flash nearly bit the tip off his tongue to prevent himself from shouting, once he heard that scream. The muscles at the corners of his jaw twitched as he pulled up, sliding the window open as quietly as possible, and climbed inside. Of course, if that figure was facing his way, his red-and-gold costume would make stealth a non-option, but if he was lucky he would remain unnoticed.
Doing his best to avert his gaze from the light, he tried to gain a sense of the rest of the room. There were two things he sought, though he had a creeping suspicion that one was on or within that large object he had been unable to clearly see. That being Charna, and the other being a power source for the light.

All around the room is such a wide assemblage of levers, thick wires, towering coils and flashing consoles that one could barely comprehend their use, but for the steady hum and that eerie pull that threatens human consciousness. The large figure, none other than the Graf Varick von Sternmont, stands over another lever, leering over the console at the slab in the middle of the room, upon which a delirious Charna Lyndria lay strapped down... and over her head is the source of that eerie pull, where even the hero's eyes have trouble deciding what he was seeing. The world seems to fold in on itself there. It is a gateway, and it is where Varick attains his power. If he notices the Crimson Flash, he makes no indication of it.

The Flash drank in the sight of all those wires, and did his best to ignore the sight of reality seeming to have a seizure over the console. "Well," he muttered to himself, too quiet for even him to hear it over that hum. "If I start pulling plugs, I'll either shut down the works...or kill us all..."
So much for not rushing into things. He ran for the nearest wires which connected to the console in the middle of the room and set to work.

Varick senses the first change as the Crimson Flash yanks the first wire, dimming the lights and forcing the whole process to restart, but no sooner does the impossibly fast man go for the next plug than the large Graf is waiting there, large fist intersecting with the hero's chest with a strength he should not possess, and perhaps exerting less strength than he truly can, striking with the power to bruise and stress bone.
Angramanyu: A shower of sparks cascades down on them as Varick stares down at the Flash with a sinister grin, as the various systems attempt to deal with the stress of the detached cable.

Action, meet reaction. Crim's eyes shoot wide, and his feet fly out from under him. He scabbles back a foor or two while he regains his footing.
"Hey, you've been working out." A pause for a beat. "I swear, I just wanted to look at it. How was I to know it would do all this?" One gloved hand traces over his sternum to be sure it is unbroken, as the other points to the wire he pulled, eyes drifting to the bound woman. "Isn't the whole Frankenstein thing a little played out? And, you know, supposed to be done with dead bodies?" Yes, he's ignoring the tear in reality, looking back to the Graf.

A faint chuckle escapes the Graf's lips, and he begins to pace slowly. He had disappeared in the back alley when this superhero confronted him, and he could slip away again here. It stressed his body... but the Nexus could be used to his advantage. "Come now. We know each other... there is no need to be so rude." He raises an eyebrow: "Are you really so surprised? I think you suspected it from the very beginning... I should have killed you when I had the chance. Thankfully, you offer me that chance again now."

"Rude? You hit me, and now you're saying I'm rude?" He was stalling, looking over his enemy. He hadn't expected this much of a challenge; the man was faster and stronger than he thought he could be. "And death threats. My, oh, my. Listen, Vary, what say you let the girl go?"
As Varick paced, so did Crim, though as he did it, he attempted to get between the Graf and the console in the middle of the room. "That is my line, now, yeah? 'Let the girl go'?"

At times it seems Varick is playing into his hands, but frustratingly, he always ends up between the masked man and the console. "What concern is she to you? I would not have to kill you if these habits were not in your idiotic nature. You are a smarter man than this... you have approached an understanding of the Nexus, the very power that I use." His eyes light up at the mention of power. "You heroes are all the same... giving so selflessly, and why? Because it is right? By whose standard? Many of you have such great power... and yet you neglect it. You pursue sacrifice after sacrifice, giving up so much with every life you save... and so much more with every life you fail to..." His eyes narrow cruelly. "Until there is nothing left but what you truly are - a man. A simple man, mortal, idiotic... and worthless." He cools his face as he takes a step back, not yet at the main console, near others, and spreads his arms out. "You have outlived your worth, whatever name you go by, oh masked mortal... And now you both die." He yanks the lever, and suddenly electricity arcs between two devices that were previously emitting sparks, coursing through the masked hero, jolting his body for a slow, painful death by electrocution. The hum begins again, and Charna's screams begin anew as incredible forces tug at the edges of her consciousness.

The effects of an electric arc can be unpredictible, particularly when combined with a man whose body has the ability to move as fast as the scarlet speedster's.
First, the heat of that much power shatters the lenses on his mask, raining materials that would have stopped a bullet down on the floor, and leaving one brown eye and one blue wide and staring. Various circuits, trailing from his left arm to the microcomputer by that ear, spark through the red of his costume. The wings there over his ears, metal antennas, actually begin to melt. All this as his teeth begin to chatter, muscles spasming.
Muscles spasm, true, but with a man this fast, they do so at an increased rate. He loses his footing, starting to drop, but his flailing legs catch the floor on the way down, and he effectively throws himself across the room.
Not the most gracefull landing, crashing into a device of some sort, and falling to the floor twitching, but any racer will tell you, a crash you can crawl away from is a good one. And he is doing just that, muttering curses under his breath as smoke rises from his charred costume.

The humming becomes erratic, thrumming steadily, and the tugging passes mercifully away from Charna as the rift above the slab begins to move. It is drawn in slow arcs around the room, tugged by the devices now going haywire, sparks flying all over the room, electricity arcing. And Varick von Sternmont is fuming. "Fool!" One moment he is stepping forward, and the next he has moved again, seizing the Crimson Flash, striking him, and sending him to stagger onto one of the consoles with the lever, currently in the "Off" position. For the first time, the German is feeling pure, unbridled rage, the emotion consuming him like a flame. "You will pay for this..." His neck twitches as cells mutated by the forced Nexic travel destroy his nerves, and he lets out a snarl, unaware of the fact that the rift is now looming over his head as he stalks towards the fallen hero.

Crim's eyes shot open wide again, as the breath was knocked out of him once more. Slowly he turned, eyes drifting over the lever before darting to the rift, then the Graf. "Bill me." The words were practically spat, as he reached to slam that lever into the "on" slot.
Without stopping to see what that might or might not do, he was on the move, pushing himself to his feet and heading, wobbly, for Charna. He hoped whatever he just turned on would at least buy him a little time.

He reaches out, eyes wide as he sees his error, finally feeling the rift behind him: "No!" For once there is fear in the Graf's voice. Electricity shoots through his chest, one bolt after another, staggering him this way and that, the parasites that inhabit his body reacting violently, tearing at him from the inside. Blood trickles from his nose as the magnetic hum intensifies behind him, and he feels the tugging that lets him know that his time is short. He stares after the staggering hero, and calls after him: "Crimson Flash." His eyes narrow. "If ever I return... it will be for your head." And then it is tugging at him, grabbing him by the back of his head. He feels his consciousness stretched first over the length of the universe, then, particle by particle, each part of his body, his pain expressed in an eerily long, low scream. When he disappears, there is a rumble, and as the rift collapses, the incredible energy arcs back into the devices. They erupt into flame, and the foundations rumble as their emissions begin to shake the building apart.

"Yeah, yeah." Muttering, he made it the rest of the way to the woman, steps becoming more sure as he goes. A scowl, showing through the fabric, as the fires and the shaking started, and nimble fingers undid the various straps holding her there, and he gingerly lifted her. "Going to be a bumpy ride, babe. Sorry," he whispered, whether or not she's in a state to hear, as he cradled her in his arms.
He moved to the window, stumbling now not from weakness, but because of the floor beneath him rocking. Easing his upper body, and the weight he carried, through the opening, he balanced on the sill as best he could before leaping to the ground, landing in a low crouch and grunting as his body absorbed the force of the impact... and moved a good distance from the building.

No sooner did the hero move from the building than it collapsed, bricks tumbling into a pile and heaving dust in a plume into the air, leaving only the remains of busted electrical equipment as evidence that Graf Varick von Sternmont was ever in this place.