13 year old Wally West lay on his bed in his tiny room off the kitchen of his parents' house doing his homework. This was annoying enough, normally. But he hated doing it more than ever now.
The weekend before, Wally, secretly teen super speedster Kid Flash, had gone up to the Justice League's Watchtower satellite as Flash's guest. For a science nerd like him it had been fantastic, seeing one jaw dropping bit of almost impossible technology after another in the working of the League and the functioning of the Watchtower itself.
He'd hoped to meet other junior heroes while there and was told he'd just missed meeting Wonder Girl, Robin and Aqualad. But Speedy, the teen archer hero, was there and Kid Flash had been excited at the opportunity to at least make friends with that young hero. He'd shared a room with Speedy but contrary to his hopes of making a friend of a comrade young hero he found himself getting almost relentlessly mocked by the year plus older and a few inches taller archer the entire time.
He'd been taken aback at first. Here he'd been teleported hundreds of miles above the earth and was getting made fun of the same way he was in junior high school in his civilian identity! He tried to get past it and engage Speedy in a normal conversation. One way was with questions about school. But Speedy had laughed at the very idea. He didn't go to school he told a stunned Kid Flash. His family was rich. They brought tutors to their mansion. Go to school?!
He snickered. "You go to school, Freckletown? Seriously? Ahahahahahahahaha!"
Kid Flash had gritted his teeth. Freckletown. The conspicuous dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose was still visible around the edges of his mask but he didn't think he'd get mocked for them by another redhead. And not by another hero. But here he was facing the exact same derogatory term as in junior high.
And Speedy informed him that Robin didn't go to school either and that Aqualad was a prince in Atlantis and he didn't go to a freaking school either. Speedy made it sound like he, Kid Flash, was a complete idiot for attending school like just another civilian. He doubled over laughing when Kid Flash explained that, not only did he go to school, but he let himself be humiliated at times in order to maintain his secret identity.
Speedy couldn't seem to imagine anything dumber and, in between giggles, pressed and pressed for Kid Flash to tell him about things he'd let happen to protect his secret identity. Finally Kid Flash had mumbled about the swirlies and the atomic wedgie. Speedy had fallen off his bed rolling onto the immaculate floor of their room gasping and slapping at the tiles. "You . . . let them . . . ," he mimed a hard yank upward at the back of someone's underwear then collapsed into uncontrolled laughter, "Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!"
So, Wally West was mumbling bitterly to himself as he did the stupid Algebra worksheets which, as far as he was concerned, were just stupid rehashes of the stupid problems that the stupid teacher had done on the stupid board in stupid class at his stupid school.
It was a very stupid place.
"Fricking Speedy doesn't go to school at all! He doesn't have homework. I bet Aqualad doesn't have to spend his time doing stupid homework either," he grumbled to himself. Or that little jerk, Robin, or Captain Marvel Junior or that Beast Boy kid with Doom Patrol, he thought, or anyone! No one else. No other hero boys. Just me!
He kept going down the sheets filling in answers, his mood getting worse with each additional one.
"Robin would probably like it," he grumbled as he inspected his penciled in answers one final time . "Little fascist in elf shoes. He'd probably leave apples on the teachers' desks, brown noser little bat. Boy wonder! As bad as my suit is, at least I don't wear . . a green speedo and elf shoes and get called the . . . Boy Wonder," he spoke the nickname in a mocking gasp.
But he had to do homework even though he was a superhero, even though he had a superpower. Even though, he reflected, he had directly saved 137 people in 20 months. 137! And he estimated that there were at least 500 more that he'd saved who weren't as directly in the line of danger. 500! And, still, he had to pretend to be just another thirteen year old boy which meant not having anyone at school or at home think he was anything special. He had to protect his secret identity at all costs. He'd promised Flash that he would.
He hadn't realized it when he made his promise to Flash but this mostly came to involve making himself the butt of jokes as much as possible. That day at school, a new girl had shown up and on first seeing him had remarked about how the orange hair that showed under his dark red knit hat was just as orange as Kid Flash's. Other girls had giggled. Wally West?! That super nerd?! Ahahahahahaha!
He and Flash had done such a good job on all the other students with J'onn Jonnz's amazing martian hologram tech at a pep rally the year before. Flash and Kid Flash were there and they had a hologram of "Wally West" altered to be four or five inches shorter than Kid Flash. Afterward, there had even been a picture at a bunch of on line sites of Kid Flash holding up "Wally West's" hat and making him jump for it. Every kid and teacher at Wally's junior high school now "knew" that Kid Flash was bigger than him, that they were two different people.
But this new girl didn't.
Wally had ground his teeth together at high speed. Why the heck is anyone changing schools in the middle of the year, anyway?! He eyed her angrily.
But, in the end, he knew what he had to do. He finally managed a long slow exhale facing the ceiling. He couldn't take any chances. Flash told him he couldn't. He'd known right away that he had to do something, something humiliating, like get another atomic wedgie in front of half the class or have upper classmen give him another swirly or . . . something! He knew he had to do something, something tremendously embarrassing so that the new girl would have no doubts in her mind that Wally West was not superhero material.
He chose a spectacular pratfall at lunch. He got in line right ahead of the new girl and had the lunch lady give him triple portions of mashed potatoes then set up a perfect pratfall just after he paid for his lunch, sending half the food on his tray flying and landing face down in his mashed potatoes. The whole cafeteria, three hundred kids, had roared laughter at him when he looked up and blinked his eyes open through a face covering coating of mashed potatoes.
His stupid, party girl sister and her stupid party girl friends were still making jokes about it. He just knew it. There was a mean, laughing at someone not about something quality to their gasping guffaws audible from the living room. A couple snickers about only clowns having orange hair could be heard distinctly.
He longed to march in there and tell them off, to change into his Kid Flash uniform and show them that he was a real superhero while, for all their superior attitude, they were just dumb party girls.
But he sighed. He knew he couldn't do that. They would spread his secret around the school five minutes later and by the next day the whole country, including every villain would know to attack his family but also Aunt Iris to get to him.
He could never let her be hurt because of him. So, he kept his head down and did the math homework, laboriously writing in the solution to every one of the 25 problems. Mrs. Larson didn't always grade it but she insisted that every student have it done on paper and have it out on their desk at the start of class. He hadn't been able to, once, because of being across the world, in Singapore chasing Mirror Master with Flash just minutes before that.
"Wally! Why didn't you do the homework?" she'd muttered, full of disappointment that the star student of the class had seemingly blown off the assignment. He could only sigh and shrug. Telling her his perfectly good excuse was absolutely impossible.
It was all so freaking unfair! Why was it so ridiculously hard to be a hero?! He had to wear a suit that might actually be tighter than his own skin resulting in everyone snickering at him. The police showed him no respect. Now he'd finally met a contemporary, another young superhero but he'd been shown no respect by him either!
Wally sighed. He remembered what Aunt Iris had said. "Kid, most of winning in life is just keeping your head down and plugging away. All the doubt and criticism and, pardon my French, bullshit, goes away and all that's left is what you got done."
He remembered her rubbing his back as she said it. He sighed a completely different kind of sigh and kept methodically going through the math homework problems till, at last, he was done. Just as he rolled over onto his back in relief, he heard the telephone ring in the kitchen. This was unusual because his sister with her "smart" phone and her friends with theirs never called anyone on a land line. Oh no, that wasn't high tech enough for them. A land line?! Ewwwwww!
Wally felt a flicker of hope.
Maybe . .
Oh, please!
He couldn't make out the words of his sister but he heard her put the phone down and then march over to the door of his room.
Oh, please!
She poked her head into his room. She rolled her eyes as if it was the most ridiculous thing ever as she told him "Aunt Iris is on the line and she wants to talk to . . you . . . of all people," she snickered.
Yes!
It was all he could do to control himself and avoid zipping to the phone at super speed in a microsecond. He dialed it down just enough to get there at hyperactive 13 year old boy speed instead.
"Aunt Iris? It's me, Wally!"
"Hey Kid!"
"It's good to hear from you, Aunt Iris. It's been a while."
"It has, Kid. I've been very busy. Listen, you saw my article last year about how Monsanto lied and how the feds helped them lie."
"Of course, Aunt Iris. I read all your stuff. That was great!"
"Well, I've been working with some people who filed a class action lawsuit against them. Only . . for reasons that will take a while to explain, the deck is kind of stacked against those people. I could use some of your special help in unstacking it because you're the . . luckiest boy in the world."
Wally grinned. He knew what Aunt Iris really meant. Oh boy! A chance to use super speed to help Aunt Iris!
"Sure," he said with great effort needed to sound normal.
"How . . fast can you leave home and join me?" she asked. "Because I need you here ASAP," she added giving him the address of the high end hotel where she was staying half way across the country. She also told him that he'd have to bring some normal clothes, not just your . . . workout wear.
"Okay Aunt Iris. I'll see you next time you come to Jump City!" he said loud enough to be sure his sister and her friends heard his conclusion of the conversation.
"I'll see you in a few minutes, Kid."
Wally hung up, turned to his sister and stuck his tongue out.
"I think she pities you because you're such a nerd loser," his sister snickered eliciting agreeing laughter from her friends. Wally went back to his room and waited two excruciating minutes then left his room with an empty book bag in hand. At the door, he announced over his shoulder that he was going to his friend Aaron's house to work on homework together and that he might be staying over.
He jogged down the street and out of sight at what felt like a glacial pace to the fastest boy alive then sped into the woods and changed into his red and yellow Kid Flash uniform, stuffing his regular clothes into his bag. He grinned and then sped off to a city half way across the country. He wasn't familiar with its layout and zoomed through half its streets before he found the big hotel where Aunt Iris was staying and then up a stairway before vibrating through the door and into room 1702 where he screeched to a halt, suddenly appearing in all his red and yellow awesomeness right in front of Aunt Iris.
"Aunt Iris!"
"Kid!"
She stepped forward and gave him a big hug and while a part of him wanted to assert how grown up he was since last seeing her a few months ago, he couldn't help but just melt into it. Being hugged by Aunt Iris was the best thing in the world. Aunt Iris wanting his help and then getting a hug from her!?
He sighed deeply in her grasp. "I'm sorry it's been so long since I saw you, Kid. I really do miss you," she whispered into one ear wing. He sighed again and hugged her back harder.
When finally she let him go, how much later he had no idea, it took him several moments to remember where he was and why he was there. She saw him blink once, twice, then a third time looking at the hotel room around them puzzled. She could almost hear him saying,"What's . . . ? Where am I? Oh yeah!" as it took him a few seconds to regain his bearings.
"You're taller, aren't you? Just since Christmas," she said patting the top of his head. He was still a couple inches shorter than his five foot eight aunt but closing the gap.
He nodded with a grin.
"Well, come on now," she said with a tug at one ear wing. "I need you to change into your civilian clothes. What I'm going to ask you to do you have to do as my nephew, the luckiest boy alive, not as Kid Flash, the fastest boy alive."
He nodded and grabbed his bag off the floor where he'd dropped it.
She turned around for a couple seconds and when she turned back he was not in his skin tight red and yellow Kid Flash suit but the oversized jeans and flannel shirt and hair covering red knit hat that he wore as a civilian.
"Okay," she said leading him into the next room of her suite. There on one of the two beds were a dozen documents laid out on top of the quilted comforter in three rows of four.
"I want you to start there," she said, pointing to the 5 page document in the upper left corner, "and read them in sequence," she said pointing to the order he should follow.
"Okay," he nodded and jumped forward picking up the first document and moving his finger along it at super speed, finishing it in under a second. He lay it back down and picked up the second. He was almost done reading that one when he felt Aunt Iris's hand on his shoulder.
"No, Kid, I want you to read them normally."
"But I did read it!"
"Your uncle says that when you two read something like that you can only retain the information for a little while."
"Well . . yeah, but-"
"I need you to really understand these documents. Because you need to know these in order to know what you're looking for. And that's why you're here."
He put the second document down and stepped back from the bed.
"Here's the deal," Aunt Iris began and as he listened with rapt attention, Iris explained how the firm she was working with, Rutherford, Volokh and Pearson, had filed a lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture and Monsanto challenging the determination that glyphosphate, the crucial ingredient of its horrible insecticide, Roundup, was not a health hazard and not a carcinogen. The lawsuit also said that the tactics Monsanto employed in trying to get farmers to use Roundup, had constituted violations of multiple antitrust acts.
These allegations had been made about Roundup and glyphosphate before, said Aunt Iris, but no one had ever been able to avoid getting the case dismissed by a Monsanto friendly judge. There was a strong suspicion that some of them had been bought off. No one had been able to get to discovery.
"What's discovery?" asked Wally.
"When a lawsuit is active and it's going to go to court, each side gets to ask the other side for information and gets to take depositions of people on the other side. But it's the getting to ask for their files that's the real point that's discovery. And we think that Monsanto has documents where their scientists admit that Roundup is terrible and that glyphosphate is terrible for people to ingest."
Aunt Iris explained to her nephew that international mega-corporation Monsanto had been able to get all previous such lawsuits dismissed. It was kind of a catch 22 in that no one had been able to get a hold of the conclusive proof that would show that they had cause for the lawsuit to go forward against Monsanto and let them get access to their files which would probably include conclusive proof that . . .
Well, everyone had been stymied until now. And, originally, the case was supposed to be ruled on by Judge Bader who had always ruled in favor of Monsanto and the government before, always. But Aunt Iris's investigation and expose about Monsanto, titled "Monsignor or Monsatan" had included evidence of the giant corporation using intimidation tactics against scientists. Depositions from the three scientists interviewed by Iris West were filed with the court attesting to how Monsanto had gone beyond what was legal to intimidate them into not revealing what they knew.
Aunt Iris said that it turned out that Judge Bader's family had some kind of business connection to one of the company officials accused by those scientists of intimidating them. She should recuse herself for that reason. But wasn't going to and would probably have still agreed with Monsanto's motion to dismiss the lawsuit but just days before the hearing the word was that she'd somehow fallen off a stationary bicycle at her home and had broken her nose and other undisclosed bones as well. No one knew exactly. At least that was the story. Aunt Iris said that the lawyers she was working with suspected that the accident story was a fake. Bader just didn't want to admit she should have recused herself in all the previous Monsanto cases, too. This gave her a way out without admitting that.
In her place, Judge White had thrown out Monsanto's motion to dismiss the case and allowed the case to go forward.
Since then, she explained, Monsanto's lawyers, Covington and Burling the staff of which Aunt Iris said probably commutes across the river Styx each day, had been playing a delaying game with both discovery and the start of the trial. For months now they'd been delaying both. They'd allowed a couple insignificant Monsanto employees to give depositions and those sour little corporate drones had lied their heads off and said that everything was wonderful with Roundup and Monsanto despite Japanese and Norwegian scientists having done studies saying that it was poison. But they kept filing ridiculous motions and stalling the release of Monsanto files.
Then they played their trick. First, they not only stopped trying to delay the actual start of the court case, they filed to move it up. Rutherford, Volokh and Pearson complained that they still hadn't gotten any real use out of discovery but they'd been saying for months that Covington and Burling's proposed court dates were ridiculously delayed so the judge wouldn't listen to their complaints now asking for more time.
And then, just the night before, two days before the start of trial, they finally produced the requested files.
All at once.
4.7 million pages.
And Aunt Iris told Wally that she was sure they threw in hordes of extraneous files, too. Those 4.7 million pages of documents, crammed into more than 1,300 boxes were now sitting in a series of small meeting rooms at the nearby convention center. Rutherford, Volokh and Pearson's small offices couldn't have fit a fraction of them. This was one tactic that big corporations often used to thwart discovery, snowing plaintiffs under with an avalanche of documents at the last minute to make meaningful review before trial impossible.
"And that's why we need you, Kid. To top if off, we're actually shorthanded. Volokh's out of the country and Pearson's wife's about to give birth. I wouldn't be surprised if those assholes at Covington and Burling, pardon my french, had spied on us and knew that. Rutherford and two other lawyers and six staffers are going to do all they can but that would still be around 10 people for 4.7 million pages or 470,000 pages each between now and Monday morning. If your Uncle Barry was here I'd ask him to help too but he's off . . . somewhere with those powerful friends of his."
Wally nodded. The Justice League.
"So, here's the deal," she said pulling her nephew to her side and kissing him on the forehead, just below his dark red hat, then releasing him. "We need your help real bad. I still don't know if it'll be enough. But we have to try. I want you to read these documents normally, read them normally and lock them in so that you understand exactly what our side is contending that sick fuck corporation did, pardon my-"
"Yeah, your french, again."
She shrugged. "Then we're going to go over to the convention center rooms and I'm going to introduce you to the other people as the luckiest boy aliver and that's going to be our excuse for how you find a needle of a document in a haystack of paperwork."
"Okay Aunt Iris," Wally whispered solemnly then picked up the first document again.
Aunt Iris went into the next room while Wally read all 12 documents, 78 pages of dense legal citations and jargon. He could overhear her on the phone as he was reading.
" . . It's not hopeless, Erik . . . It's not . . . Because my nephew's here . . . My nephew Wally . . . He's the luckiest boy alive. He . . . . I said, he's the luckiest boy alive. He'll find what we need . . . Fine, put Steve on . . . Steve-Steve . . . Steve? . . . Steve! My nephew Wally will find it . . . No. I'm fine. He . . . . or if he doesn't someone else will because they rubbed his head for good luck . . . No, I'm not in the least bit crazy. He's that lucky."
Wally only vaguely realized that Aunt Iris had hung up when he felt her rubbing his shoulder as he finished reading one of the documents it took him 20 minutes at maybe just a little bit sped up pace and when he looked up after finishing the last one, there was Aunt Iris with four meals on a room service tray.
Food!
She took one plate and watched him wolf down everything on the others at an uninhibited, humanly impossible pace. He was so focused on his food, glorious food, that he didn't even see her shaking her head at the sight of her little splinter of a nephew wolfing down enough food to satisfy a 300 pound power lifter.
He sighed and sank into a chair when he was done, temporarily sated. She watched him licking his fingers.
"The luckiest boy alive?" he muttered, not so sure about this.
"What else could I say? Besides, it's pretty lucky to get a super power from being hit by lightning in the exact same spot where someone else got hit by lightning and got that same super power, isn't it?"
He shrugged. Yeah, I suppose so.
She led him out of the room, to the elevators and then down to the lobby. Some of the people in the lobby pointed at her and he could hear them whispering, "Iris West . . . the one who wrote . . " and ". . that woman who humiliated that creepy, corporate weasel Anderson Cooper last week, Iris . . Iris West." He worked hard to suppress a grin of pride. He liked being with Aunt Iris but he couldn't be pictured here in this city when he was supposed to be back home. So he gave a tug on her sleeve and then zipped through the crowd and vibrated through the wall out to the sidewalk. There, he met up with her again and walked with her to the Convention Center.
She led him through a maze of hallways to some rooms in the back of the giant structure. There were four of these rooms each about 50 feet wide and 50 feet deep and full of the sorts of chairs and tables you sat on and leaned on while seeing some corporate presentation or other. Only in these rooms, every chair and every square foot of table space was covered by boxes. All the boxes where the same, about two feet long and one foot wide and there were 1,346 of these boxes.
Aunt Iris poked her head in each of the rooms. There was no one in one, a couple older men in another and a secretary, two other older men and the secretary's chunky blond son, Drake, a little older than Wally, in another.
She whistled for them all to follow her and they circled around her at the back of one of the rooms.
"Everybody," she began, gesturing with one hand like the presenters of prizes on game shows. "This is my nephew, Wally West."
He sheepishly raised one hand slightly. That's me.
She pulled off the dark red hat he always wore in public and fluffed his bright orange hair. "My nephew is the luckiest boy alive. And if we're going to have any hope-"
"Oh god, Iris, you're-you're serious about this?" grumbled one of the older men.
She gave him a patient but commanding look back. Not angry but perhaps one of disappointment. "My nephew is the luckiest boy alive," she continued. "And everyone here is going to rub his head for good luck."
"I can't believe you're the one pushing superstition, Iris," whispered another of the other older men.
Aunt Iris gave him a look of gentle forbearance. "Lloyd, I could bore you with a recitation of the 3 people who didn't get on plane flights that later crashed because of a connection to my nephew Wally, of the 4 people who didn't get in cars that sped into bridge abutments because they stayed with him, of how he always wins any game of chance he plays and how he's never lost at cards. But I won't. All I'll say is that my nephew, Wally, is the luckiest boy alive and that all the kids at his school rub his head for good luck.
Wally was happy that everyone went along with Aunt Iris but not as much after everyone else in the room stepped forward and fluffed his hair or ran their hand through it or patted him on the head like he was a golden retriever. Even the secretary's son, Drake, a fat blond kid the same height as him but maybe older, indulged in it as well, giving Wally a weird smile as he did.
"Okay," said Aunt Iris. "Now we should all try to sort through documents. Everyone knows what we're looking for. Wally will have the documents in the far room to himself, right Wally?"
He was caught off guard. What?
"Oh, right, Aunt Iris," he said realizing he couldn't have any of the others see him reading at super speed. "Your . . your auras are all wrong, all of you," he said looking around at them. "You'll-you'll mess up my reception of vibrational energies signalling good luck," he said matter of factly and added a nod of certainty at what he'd just said.
One of the older men threw his head back with his eyes closed as if in pain. "Sure, yeah, whatever," he said and everyone went off to one room or another and Wally jogged over to the most distant room. He quickly counted. There were 341 of them in all. He took a magic marker from a table just inside the door and, in a minute, wrote numbers several inches high on every box from 1 through 341. They were all stuffed to the point of bursting with papers and folders, mostly white but some yellow and lesser numbers of pink and blue sheets.
Wally took a deep breath. He'd done the math in his head. Each box had around 3,500 pages. Even one box was not easy. Another deep breath and a quick look behind him. The door to the room was shut but he zipped over and set a couple chairs in front of it so that anyone coming in couldn't help but make some noise.
He looked at the clock high on one wall and he started. He sped through the first box in 30 seconds, pulling out every single sheet of paper, running his index finger along the lines and reading as much of it as he needed to confirm that it didn't have useful information before returning it to the box. He moved the box aside, looking up at the clock as he did so. Time was so hard for him to gauge when he was using his speed. A second? 10 seconds? 30 seconds? A minute? He really couldn't tell how much had elapsed. The sweep of the red second hand on the wall confirmed that it had taken him 30 seconds. That didn't seem bad.
He pushed that box aside and started on box 2. Another bout of super speed reading, eyes scanning impossibly fast back and forth, index finger tracing some of the lines and he sighed. Okay, not that one either. He pushed box 2 to the side and looked at the clock as he finished. 31 seconds.
He went on to the next box and the next one and the one after that . . .
This wasn't so obviously draining as running a hundred miles but it took just as much out of him. It was still using his speed and it was a real effort. After 50 boxes, he looked up at the clock. He thought he was going through all of the documents at the same speed as the first one but that would have been an elapsed time of 25 minutes.
29 minutes had gone by. He frowned. With each additional box he was going a little slower. He rubbed the heel of his hand against his eyes. He'd read 80 or 100 pages at a time super fast a couple times before and it had been easy. This was much harder. There was no break and he had to read so much. God.
But he remembered Aunt Iris's saying about how most of winning was just keeping your head down and keeping going. He felt an angry surge of energy at these evil Monsanto corporate assholes. He glowered at the remaining 291 boxes in the room and zipped over to the next one. He started reading even faster than before. He could actually feel the speedforce surging through him like he'd only felt a couple times before, once when fighting Gorilla Grodd beside Flash and another time racing Flash.
He gritted his teeth and kept going.
It all became a blur, page after page after page of stunningly boring legalese, bullshit language fluffing up five words of facts into five pages of ass covering conditions and clauses over and over and over.
Afterward, he remembered that there had been several moments where things were getting hazy, where he felt like he was losing his balance and everything spinning. That's what he remembered the sensation being like.
What it was was Wally West passing out. He so completely exhausted himself that he used up every bit of speedforce in him and every bit of normal energy and passed out..
He woke up only very gradually, conscious gradually stirring like an orchestra before the start of a performance. First there was a weird taste of skittles in his mouth and a pinch at his nose. He started to come to a bit more and could vaguely tell that he was on his back. This made no sense but he wasn't conscious enough to make sense of anything.
He was lying on his back on a carpet with his shirt unbuttoned and an uncomfortable pressure on his chest. His eyes started to open and Wally could see Drake, the fat blond kid, leaning over him with his two sweaty hands interlocked over the middle of his chest and repeatedly pushing uncomfortably hard as he counted, "One . . two . . three . . four . . five!"
And then he remembered, through his still hazy vision, the chunk boy's face getting closer to his and the fatso squeezing his nostrils shut with two fingers and then, horror of horrors, putting his mouth over Wally's and blowing lungs full of skittles smelling breath into Wally's mouth.
"Don't worry, pretty boy!" the chunky boy muttered as he turned to lean over Wally's bare chest again. "I won't . . one . . let . . two . . you . . three . . die . . f-"
With a sudden rush that Wally later realized could have looked suspicious, he jerked back to full consciousness sitting up so rapidly to get out from under the misguided CPR of this kid that his cheek pressed against the chunky boy's as though he was hugging him. Wally continued that for a second and then scrambled to his feet.
"What were you doing?!" he demanded looking down over the still kneeling boy and buttoning his shirt.
"I came in here and you were almost dead. You were lying bent over across those boxes. Somebody could have taken advantage of you-"
"What?" Wally was completely puzzled. What the hell was he talking about?
"But I didn't. I just saved your life."
"What?!"
"Boy, you really are lucky. It's really true. If I hadn't come in to check on you, you might've died."
"What?!" I-I really don't think I was dying. I just passed out," said Wally as he scrambled to tuck in his shirt but the realization that he'd been, essentially kissed by another boy before he'd ever had a kiss from a girl struck him and the horror of it totally derailed his train of thought. Oh God. Boy lips on his! A boy's tongue . . ! He shook his head trying to dispel the fact of it.
"I didn't feel a pulse," said the fat boy. "So, I started your heart. You should thank me. I mean, I did save your life."
Wally wanted to get away from this conversation. He barely resisted the urge to use his super speed. At last, Aunt Iris and one of the older men came into the room. As they were approaching the door, Wally whispered to the blond boy, "Please don't talk about this. My Aunt worries too much about me already. Promise?"
The blond boy nodded, his multiple chins jiggling as he did. Wally looked away, repulsed. Still, a thought occurred to him. This boy really thinks he saved me. He really does. And how often had he, as Kid Flash, been irritated that someone he'd saved couldn't even bother to say 'thank you' to him.
He turned to the boy as the older man was going to the far end of the room and saying something about these boxes and whispered, "Thank you!" still facing the older man and Aunt Iris.
"De nada," said the blond boy and gave Wally a pat on the rear.
Wally shook his head and rolled his eyes. No good deed goes unpunished.
"What's the matter, Wally?" asked Aunt Iris.
He took a step forward and his legs almost went out from under him. He caught himself on a table edge. Aunt Iris rushed over and he admitted that he felt weak, shooting a hard glance at the blond boy. You promised!
It turned out that they were all going to get something to eat at a restaurant near the hotel. Food, and lots of it, was exactly what he needed.
But as they were all about to leave that room, Wally remembered something and held up one hand and closed his eyes as if sensing something due to a message from the great beyond. "I just remembered," he said. "The same 80 page report was in three different boxes." He opened his eyes looking to Aunt Iris and the older man. "That's cheating isn't it?"
"It is," said the older man now very angry. "Which boxes?"
Wally took a deep breath closing his eyes and seeming to ask other dimensions but actually only trying to replay his recollection of his super speed reading while he still retained it. "Um . . . 47 . . . 168 and . . . . . . 281."
The older man and Aunt Iris went to those boxes and from each removed identical half inch thick stapled reports.
"See?" said Aunt Iris to the older man.
"Well, he's caught them in a small bit of cheating but I don't see how it particularly proves that he's the luckiest boy alive."
"Don't you get it? He could sense that something was wrong that's he sensitive he is."
The older man only shrugged. Though it was getting late, the group of them trooped out to the street and down a block to a fancy restaurant. They all sat around a big leather booth with a couple of them in chairs at the open end. Wally sat between Aunt Iris and the fat blond boy.
Most of the meal was spent with Aunt Iris regaling them all with her stories of working as a real investigative reporter. With the cover of her taking everyone's attention, Wally was able to wolf down five entrees, a plate full of side orders and three large drinks. No one seemed to notice except the fat boy who was delighted. He tried to keep up with Wally but couldn't come close to the redhead's gluttony.
"Oh my god. You're gonna be bigger than me," he'd whispered excitedly to Wally as everyone was finishing up.
Wally shot him a derisive glance. "No way."
"Calories are destiny," the boy declared in complete solemnity as they were getting up from the table. "You're gonna burst out of those clothes."
"No, I'm not," said Wally over his shoulder as everyone was walking down the street back to the hotel.
"Your butt's already expanded," whispered the blond boy from a half step closer to Wally.
"What?! No it's not," Wally whispered back.
"Sure it is. Look how skinny you are. You shouldn't have that butt."
"I . . ! Look, I'm not gonna argue with you about my butt. This is ridiculous. How . . how many boxes of documents did you read?" Wally asked changing the subject.
This became the topic of discussion of the whole group now and It became clear that Aunt Iris, the older men and the blond boy's mother were successfully skimming through the documents at a pretty good clip. The blond boy was barely better than useless.
Wally wasn't sure if they would all go back to reading documents or what but it was after 11 and they went back to their hotel rooms. The law firm's employees who lived in the area had also checked into hotel rooms so that they wouldn't wasted any time commuting in to that city.
They all agreed to start early the next morning and Wally went back to Aunt Iris's room with her. Once inside she asked "What was that between you and that Drake boy?"
Wally sighed. He didn't want to tell her but she would just pry it out of him with questions if she wanted anyway. He told her. She gave him a sympathetic smile. "You're too handsome for your own good, Kid," she said with a pat of his orange haired head.
"All right now," she said with a shove toward one of the beds. "Get ready for sleep because we're gonna get up early tomorrow and be at it by 6. Tomorrow's a big day."
He washed up in a second and a half and had jumped into bed before she'd gotten her shoes off. A few minutes later she turned out the light in the bathroom and then the light on the table beside his bed.
"I wanted to find those documents so bad, Aunt Iris," he whispered.
"I know you did, Kid. But it's not worth you hurting yourself," she declared punctuating this declaration with a kiss on his cheek. "We'll try and keep you supplied with food all day tomorrow but no matter what you don't drive yourself to passing out. Promise?"
He nodded.
"Think of how great it's gonna be tomorrow," she grinned, "when you find documents that help stop those fuckers, pardon my-"
"French," he chimed in with her.
"-from poisoning people."
He grinned back at her and she hugged him and Wally drifted off to sleep feeling like maybe he was the luckiest.