Prelude to the Reboot

Barry, what are you doing, Barry?!

The instant Leon realized the world was rebooting, his brain froze.

It was like heading out for hot pot, singing all the way, only to get robbed by bandits halfway there. Nothing could be more absurd.

But when he looked toward Central City,

his gaze pierced thousands of kilometers

and found Barry at home, cooking with his mother.

Barry looked so happy. The love in his eyes for his mother was impossible to miss.

How could that Barry be rebooting the world? He was still right there. So who was doing it?

Leon could sense the entire world's time shattering, then constantly taking shape again.

If time was a river, its upstream was drying out while its downstream was flooding.

Stuck in the middle, he could only wait for the water to fall until the riverbed lay bare.

As for the fish in the river, they would all die. New fish would be born when fresh water flowed in.

Seen that way,

the likeliest explanation was that Earth faced another crisis in the future.

A world that had lost most of its superheroes couldn't handle the disaster.

So the future Barry had no choice but to change the past and reboot the timeline.

Rebooting time in the DC Universe worked differently from Marvel.

Marvel would create a new timeline.

But after a reboot here in the DCEU, the previous timeline and everyone in it would vanish.

Or rather, they would be refreshed.

Like slimes that respawned on a schedule at some grinding spot in an online game.

When the old one died, a similar new one would appear.

The code might be the same, but it was a brand-new slime.

Leon had no way to stop this reboot.

Because it had already begun.

Trying