Barry And Hal

Not every great friendship makes sense on paper.

Barry Allen was a forensic scientist. He organized things. His coffee mugs were arranged alphabetically on their hook. His sock drawer was sorted by color. When he went to the grocery store, his list was organized by aisle.

Hal Jordan was a test pilot. He had once flown an experimental jet upside down at six hundred miles an hour above the Mojave Desert just to check if the radio still worked. It did. He considered this a successful experiment.

On paper, these two had nothing in common.

In practice, by the time of the Coast City mission, they had become the kind of friends who finish each other's sentences and argue about breakfast food with genuine passion.

Here is how that happened.

Batman sent them to Coast City — Hal's hometown, where he had grown up watching planes fly over Ferris Aircraft and wanting more than anything to fly them. The mission was supposed to be reconnaissance only. Brainiac had deployed a probe to the city's power grid.

Brainiac was an alien intelligence of the machine variety — cold, logical, without warmth — who traveled the universe collecting things. What he collected was cities. He miniaturized them with a shrink-ray and sealed them in glass bottles. He already had Kandor, a great Kryptonian city now tiny behind glass on his vessel.

"In and out," Batman said. "Read the device. Report back."

They arrived at the power station. The device was active, its countdown already running. Three of Brainiac's combat probes circled it on silent magnetic drives.

Barry and Hal looked at each other.

"I thought this was reconnaissance," Barry said.

"Plans change," said Hal.

Barry tried to run toward the device and immediately slowed to a jog. The shrink field destabilized his speed energy. He backed away, felt the speed return, and calculated quickly.

"I'll take two of those probes," he said, pointing. "You've got the third and the device."

Before Hal could agree, Barry was already leading two probes out the door.

Hal faced the remaining probe and the device. He built a containment bubble around it — thick as he could make it — then shaped his ring's light into precision shears to cut the casing. His jaw was tight. Each layer had to be exactly right; one wrong cut and the field would invert.

In the turbine room down the corridor, Barry was running. He led both probes around generator banks and up stairways until he was running a circle — smaller and smaller until the air in the center was spinning, a miniature vortex of churning wind. The probes' sensors jammed. They bounced off walls and went still.

Barry sprinted back. He found Hal at the fourteenth layer, the containment bubble cracking at one edge.

"I can vibrate at the device's power frequency," Barry said. "And if I match the oscillation —"

"Your vibration shows me the resonance lines," Hal said immediately. "Where the cuts are safe."

"Yes."

"Do it."

Barry stood perfectly still — genuinely the hardest thing he could do — and tuned himself. His body vibrated at a frequency that matched the device's pulse. The ring picked it up. Hal's expression went from tense to focused, and he found the seam — there — and cut.

The device went dark. Not with a boom. Just: dark. The countdown stopped. The field dissipated.

They sat on the walkway railing, side by side. Barry had already run downtown and come back with two plates of takeout pancakes.

Hal tried the syrup. He made a face.

"This syrup," he said, "is entirely wrong."

"It's maple syrup," Barry said. "Which is the correct syrup."

"It tastes like a description of maple syrup."

"That doesn't mean anything."

"I am a test pilot. I understand performance metrics."

"That is not relevant here."

By the time the pancakes were gone, they were both laughing — the real kind, the kind that makes your eyes water — about nothing in particular and everything in general.

On the way home, Hal said, "Next time, we bring the whole team."

"Absolutely," Barry said.

They both knew they would do exactly this again. Two of them, some impossible problem, no backup. And they were both looking forward to it.

That is what it looks like when two very different people fit together exactly right.

Goodnight.