"Speedin' on the freeway

Gotta get a lead way

(Speed demon)

Doin' it on the highway

Gotta have it my way

(Speed demon)..."

The tune of Speed Demon by Michael Jackson was what woke the man out of his much-needed slumber.

Grumbling under his breath about the annoying ringtone and cursing his best friend who was surely the culprit, he stretched a long, lanky arm out from under is sheets. After grasping at nothing but air for a few moments, he finally located his nightstand and grabbed his cellphone off of it, answering the call without even bothering to glance at the caller ID.

"...Hello?" He didn't even attempt to conceal the grumpiness or exhaustion in his tone.

"Hey!" The man perked up slightly upon instantly recognizing the voice of his girlfriend, Linda Parker, "Listen babe, I am so sorry I'm late. Things ran late at the studio and- you know what? Don't even worry about it. I'll just meet you at the place, okay?"

He sat up in his bed, groggily rubbing a sleepy green eye as he stifled a yawn, "What...?" He trailed off upon glancing at a sticky note he had probably written for himself hours earlier posted on the nightstand.

'Dinner date w/ Linda at 8 tomorrow!' It read. Underneath it was also the name of the restaurant Linda had made reservations at. He blinked incredulously. But, he had just written that! How long was he asleep? He could clearly recall scribbling that down right before he went to bed around 7 the night prior since at the time he was so exhausted it was almost comical. The missions had been getting harder and running longer as of late, plus he had university, and so many other things that only added to his stress...wait, he was getting off track.

...What was he talking about again?

"You forgot, didn't you?" His girlfriend's dejected tone coming through the phone snapped him back into reality. Date with Linda. Right.

He leapt out of his bed, scrambling to his closet and searching for clothes to wear.

"I-what? No! No, of course not babe! I just-" Darn it! Where were all of his clean clothes?! He ditched his closet and began scrambling through his drawers, "Um...I lost track of time is all! Right now I'm at the store buying you some um...flowers!"

"Flowers...right." Linda sounded unconvinced, "Baby, listen. If we need to reschedule..."

"No! Babe it's-it's fine! I'm leaving right now! Meet you there in five minutes?"

"Wally..."

"Five minutes it is then! I'll see you soon then, babe. Love you, bye!" Wally hung up before he could hear his girlfriend's refusal and let out a small sigh. So he now needed to change, wash up, and buy Linda some flowers before meeting her at the restaurant...all in the span of five minutes.

...Never before had he been more grateful for super speed.

Wally managed to make it to the restaurant just as Linda was checking with the hostess for their reservation.

"I-I'm here!" he blurted out before doubling over and panting while resting his hands on his knees. While under normal circumstances, he wouldn't be anywhere close to being this tired after performing such small tasks with super speed, recently he had been running on very little rest. Not to mention that he hadn't eaten anything since an hour before he went to bed yesterday, something his accelerated metabolism really didn't agree with.

"I-I...flowers! Here!" He said standing up straight and handing Linda the flowers he had picked up on the way there. Upon seeing her though, he felt severely under dressed.

Linda looked absolutely stunning. She wore a red dress, very form-fitting along with matching heels. Her dark hair, which usually fell freely down to her shoulders, was in a fancy up-do and she wore makeup-something she rarely did since it was "too much effort" in her words. He, on the other hand, had merely fished out a t-shirt and jeans from the very bottom of his drawers. His hair, a bright red in contrast to his girlfriend's dark black, was disheveled and wind-blown, since there was really nothing you could do about that when running a couple hundred miles per hour. Not to mention that the flowers he had given to Linda also looked rather worse for the wear-something else to attribute to his travelling speed.

Glancing around the restaurant, Wally could see that some of the other patrons had begun to stare. Heck, even the hostess was giving him an odd look.

Linda however, merely accepted the flowers with a smile and turned back to the hostess.

"This is the rest of your party, I presume?" The hostess asked Linda with a raised eyebrow.

Linda nodded, "Yes. Is our table ready?"

It did not take long for a waiter to escort them to their table.

"So you were able to pull it off? I'm impressed." Linda said, taking a sip of her water.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Wally replied.

Linda snorted, "Sure you don't."

Wally could feel a few prying eyes on him once again and leaned slightly forward over the table, lowering his voice to a whisper, "Why didn't you tell me we'd be coming to a fancy restaurant like this?"

Linda shrugged, "I figured you knew."

"I'm not good at knowing things! You know this, Linda!"

"No, you're not good at remembering things. Maybe next time you will."

Wally went silent in shock for a moment.

"...Traitor."

"Oh, don't be so sentimental." Linda replied, a small smirk on her thin lips.

While awaiting their ordered meals a short while later, the two engaged in conversation. Considering that Wally had been asleep for the majority of the day, that meant for him that the conversation was mostly one-sided with Linda speaking extensively about her day and anything else that came to mind with him nodding and contributing to the conversation with a few short comments. Linda had just excused herself to the restroom when the sound of two gunshots rang through the air.

The effect was immediate, customers flipped tables and hid behind them or scrambled for the nearest exit. The otherwise peaceful atmosphere of the restaurant quickly turned chaotic as the sound of glasses breaking and screams echoed throughout the restaurant.

A few men, all clad in black with ski masks over their faces walked in, all armed with guns.

"Nobody move!" One man-presumably the leader-yelled. As if to reinforce his point, he raised his gun and fired another two gunshots into the ceiling, unphased as a few pieces of rubble fell to the floor.

The first thought that came to Wally as he saw the men, all splitting up to block the possible exits with their weapons at the ready was, 'How cliche.'

It was obvious that they were all petty thieves if they chose to rob a restaurant rather than the bank that was literally closed and across the street.

Aw well... Wally figured, Guess it's better that there are some stupid thieves. Otherwise it'd be a definite pain to catch them all.

Wally knew he could take these guys out easy, even without the use of his super speed but at the moment, he was a civilian. And he was sure that he had already drawn enough attention to himself. Now he could have easily escaped undetected and ran back to his apartment to put on his Kid Flash suit before coming back and taking out these guys, but he really didn't want to leave Linda behind. Even if it would only be for a minute. Not to mention that Linda would leave the restroom eventually after all the chaos and wonder where he was. If he tried to lie, he knew that the woman would see right through it. Honestly, he was sure that she could qualify as a human lie detector at times.

So, Wally went for the next best thing. Ducking under the table, he decided to be old fashioned and wait for the police. It took an hour, but they finally arrived and the sheer number of them was enough to make the thieves surrender themselves.

God, if Dick found out about this He was sure his best friend would never let him live it down.

"Baby!" He was snapped out of his musings when Linda practically leapt onto him, enveloping him in a brief but tight hug, "I'm so glad you're alright! Oh my god, that was crazy! Darn it! Filming that could've been my big break!"

Wally couldn't help but smile slightly. Honestly, there were times that Linda reminded him so much of his Aunt Iris that it was unnerving. However, his grin faded slightly upon feeling a painful clench of his stomach accompanied by a loud growl. Frowning, he realized that he hadn't even had the time to get his meal before those pesky thieves broke in.

Darn it.

Linda giggled and gripped his wrist, "God. You're impossible Wally, you know that? Come on, I know a place."

Ten minutes later, the two sat in a diner, Wally greedily devouring a hamburger as Linda sipped an iced tea.

"Darn it, now I feel over dressed." Linda complained, taking a bite of a french fry.

Wally shrugged and swallowed his food, "At least you're not surrounded by a bunch of censorious, supercilious people."

"They weren't all judging you, Wally." Linda retorted.

"But you agree that some of them were?"

"...I'm not agreeing to anything."

Wally gave Linda a look before stuffing a few fries into his mouth.

"Geez, baby. Don't forget to breathe."

"Oh, don't you get all hypercritical of me too." Wally grumbled, though there was a hint of playfulness in his tone.

"I'm not-" Linda was cut off by a buzzing in her pocket, "Sorry." Pulling out her phone, she slipped out of the booth they were sitting in and answered the call.

She returned a moment later and slumped into her seat across from him.

"This," she proclaimed, "is officially our worst date ever."

Wally shrugged, "Well, it's certainly not one of our best moments..."

Linda gave him a look before her face slipped into an adorable pout, "I have to go." she said.

Wally nodded, "I'll see you later?"

"Yeah," Linda got out of the booth once again, slipping on her jacket and gathering her car keys and purse, "since this terrible date is pretty much on me, I'll pay at the front."

The brunette gave Wally a quick kiss on the lips before he could protest against her paying, "I'll call you later, babe." she called over her shoulder.

Wally was late. He was late, late, late, so late that it wasn't even funny.

Wally had to physically restrain himself from using his super speed as he sprinted to his morning science class at Stanford University.

"Ow!"

"Hey!"

"Watch it!"

Wally barely muttered an apology to the people he bumped into as he continued to race down the halls, mentally berating himself for even allowing himself to be this late. Contrary to his former mentor, Wally hated being late to anything. In fact, the speedster had made it a point to be slightly early, especially to his classes.

Today, however, he had overslept (which really made no sense considering that he had slept for nearly twelve hours the day prior) and as a consequence, he was stuck in his current situation.

Come on, Wall-man! Almost there...

He turned sharply to the right into another hall and his open classroom door came into his line of vision.

8:59:50...

His strides grew longer as he increased his pace.

8:59:55...

He was only a few feet from the door...

8:59:59...

So close...

9:00.

The door slammed closed just as he approached it and Wally sighed in resignation. Once his professor closed his classroom door, it wouldn't be reopened until class was over. Wally knew that from personal experience.

With a loud, exaggerated groan, Wally slid down the wall, both hands clutching a fistful of red hair.

Great. His day was turning out to be fan-freakin'-tastic so far...

His stomach growled loudly, reminding him that he had skipped breakfast this morning in order to make it to class on time...or try to make it to class on time.

...Was he cursed?

His stomach growled again, this time accompanied with a brief bout of pain and Wally shook his head slightly to clear his thoughts as he stood up. Man, he really needed to eat something if he was actually considering something as ludicrous as curses. IHOP...or IHOb, whatever they called themselves now, sounded really good right about then. And so, it was about fifteen minutes later that Wally found himself at said restaurant, eating a rather large stack of pancakes in an attempt to fill his bottomless pit of a stomach.

While the meal helped him feel a bit better, Wally was still upset over missing class. He may not have necessarily liked the professor, or the students, or the criteria, or just the whole class in general, but out of all his classes, that one was the one that was the most challenging to him. It wasn't necessarily the level of difficulty of the criteria so much as it was the work. He had to have been assigned a multiple paged essay to write at least once a week (seriously, who had the time to grade all that?) from that class and the tests were always insane. The professor had also refused to provide the class with a syllabus, giving out some bullcrap speech that it served as a "crutch". Needless to say, it was better to not miss that class.

Wally stuffed another piece of a pancake into his mouth with a small pout. He really hoped that they didn't do something important today.

After attending the rest of his morning and all of his afternoon classes, Wally found himself back at his apartment, bored out of his mind.

Sighing, he laid down on the living room couch and pulled out his phone, checking for any messages. Linda was most likely at work, Dick was probably busy with something superhero-related, and Roy was going through some...stuff, so he wasn't really surprised after seeing nothing. Wally turned his head to stare at the blank TV for a moment-he had lost the remote ages ago, and belatedly he considered doing his homework but it wasn't really due for another week so...no.

Ding dong.

Wally looked at the front door with a raised eyebrow. Very few people typically came to visit his apartment, Dick and Linda being the primary ones. However, Wally had given Linda his apartment key ages ago and Dick usually just let himself in. For a brief moment, Wally considered the possibility that it could've been his uncle but his relationship with Barry had been rather...strained for the past few months.

Ding dong.

"I'm coming!" Wally pulled himself off of the couch and walked over to the door, opening it. For a moment, he was surprised to see no one there before he heard a small voice that obviously belonged to a young child clear her throat.

"Um...excuse me?"

Blinking he looked down to see a girl, who looked to be really young, about five years of age if he had to guess. Her hair, a straight and silky blonde, was up in a high side ponytail that fell down to her mid-waist and her skin was a light olive tone. Both her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were freckled and she stared back up at him with wide and curious forest green eyes. What really alarmed Wally however, was the small pink duffle bag she held onto.

What the...?

"I'm Arlynn. My mommy told me to give this to you." She recited, holding up an enclosed envelope.

Wally blinked. What was going on?