It's All ! BEC's ! fault! It's ALL ! BEC's ! fault!
Standard legalese disclaimer. Wynter and Special Ops are mine. The rest is all invented, portrayed, and made money off of by other people. Crossovers properly ashamed of.
Flash!
"Three. Two. One." The youngest of the three boys clicked his stop watch. The two taller boys disappeared.
When they reappeared, both collapsed, gasping, in a cloud of dirt that obscured both the finish line and the stopwatch. The younger boy waved his hands in disgust, trying to clear a space to breathe. "Seventy-four seconds! SEVENTY-FOUR SECONDS! That was only twenty klicks round trip! What the hell is WRONG with you two?"
The dark-haired boy made a negative head motion, still on his hands and knees, panting. "I tripped. A rock."
"A rock wouldn't slow you down any more than a bullet does! Knowing you, you probably got lost. Or decided to head for Florida. Spring break is already over, Kal-El!"
"A green rock," the red-blond boy clarified, standing and catching his breath. "I had to turn around and get Clark back on his feet. Took him a few seconds. What's one of those things doing out here anyway? I thought you said they all came down in Smallville during that big meteor strike."
"Oh." The youngest boy, whose hair would have given Vidal Sassoon a near-lethal heart attack, scowled menacingly back along their path. "Can you show me where, Wally? I need to give NORAD a ration if they missed a track of anything new falling. Kal, you okay?"
Clark nodded. "Yeah. But I could use a pizza, even if we didn't beat our personal best. I pretty much lost breakfast."
"No penalties for circumstances beyond your control." The boy flipped his secure phone-transmitter open. "Mark? Wynter. We need a food truck at the race course. Yes, enough for Wally AND Clark. Yeah, probably chocolate too. I know, gross. And this from kids who won't eat anchovies. Thanks." He clicked off. "Ten minutes, guys. Can you survive that long?"
"That's a century at my speed," Wally moaned. Clark just sat back and made a pose of trying to wait patiently.
Wynter threw his hands in the air. It was a habitual gesture, especially when dealing with Wally or Kal-El, and most especially with both together. "Come on, Wally, let's try to keep you occupied. Run me through the course. At human speed! I can't see details past the sonic shockwave!"
"You could if you'd cut your hair," Wally shot back, lifting the smaller boy and pegging for only a couple of hundred kph.
"When hell freezes absolutely solid and I find a -- " the rest of his words were lost even to Clark's ears in the wind.
The only survivor of a destroyed planet sat back dejectedly. If there were more pieces of his personal radioactive poison coming to Earth, no telling how much more of the world was about to become a very unpleasant place. If Wally hadn't been there.... Well, his momentum had carried him pretty much out of range, but if there had been any more....
Wally whooshed back up with Wynter, both looking grim. (Clark managed a small bit of amusement that the high-speed trip had made no noticeable difference in the condition of Wynter's hair.)
"NORAD is off the hook," Wynter stated, in a voice as close to flat controlled fury as Clark had ever heard from the hyperactive youngster. "But somebody else's ass is definitely grass when I find them. Kal-El, that thing was planted. The mess you two made around it wiped most of the traces, and I'll need one of the -- Specialists, to look it over, but if it was dropped from any higher than your head, I'll eat it."
"Please don't. I've already had enough problems with meteor mutants to last me a few years."
Wally looked at Wynter curiously. "I thought you were already a mutant."
"I am, but not the Smallville variety." In fact, Wynter's DNA tested more or less normal -- Wynter ran the DNA sequencer himself -- though his brain activity had been sending EEGs into spasms since the day he was born. Mostly he called himself a mutant just to make it more comfortable for other people to deal with the fact that he'd been publishing papers and articles and advice columns as soon as his fingers were coordinated enough to operate a keyboard.
Wynter sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. (Wally ran a hand over his own hair, just to reassure himself that it didn't look that awful.) Wynter flipped what he liked to call his "communicator" (and customized to look like one -- Wally didn't know whether to think that was funny or tacky, especially after Wynter quoted him the various advantages and disadvantages of the different Star Trek communicators) back open. "John? We have a problem. And I think it might be bad enough to justify telling Wally the rest of the story."
* * * * *
Clark and Wally had met on a cross-country run, literally in passing. Since no one else would have been able to see either of them, the shock was enough to bring both of them to a screeching halt, much to the dismay of the property owners when they discovered the furrows a few days later.
Wally saved Clark the trouble of explanations when he blurted out "Barry didn't tell me about you!"
"Um, probably because Barry didn't know about me. Who's Barry? And who are you?" A quick glance at x-ray had dashed his first hopes -- that the boy near his own age that had blurred past him might be another refugee from Krypton -- but Clark had never met anyone with a speed to match his before, and Clark had had more than his fair share of dealings with the bizarre.
One fast stop at a donut shop filled each other in on the basics. Clark held back the part about the spaceship, but Wally had made an e-mail date with Chloe to talk about the meteors and the Wall of Weird before Clark finished his third donut.
Clark used the time to contact Wynter. It was a good thing the secure line came with an automatic volume control, because Wynter's shriek probably blew the speaker on his end, and Clark was still working at turning off his increasingly acute hearing.
Wally, on the other hand, had simply fainted, when he first met Wynter and found out that the man that his mentor, Barry Allen, had so often referred to with reverence as "one of the greatest scientists of all time," was not much more than half Wally's age.
Wynter "borrowed" (read: took over) a field ops station that had previously been used to snare a white-supremest militia group, conveniently out in the middle of nowhere, to run speed tests on Clark and Wally. Wally had learned that Clark had no problems keeping up with him, and didn't have anywhere near his problems with barbed wire or sharp rocks or burrs getting in his shoes or running into trees, except around certain green rocks.
Wally had discovered new styles of running, increasing both his speed and stamina under patient tutoring from a technician who was also a cross-country runner along with impatient lectures from Wynter. Long and short and smooth muscles, balance and stride length and foot placement and.... He was never going to complain about regular math homework again.
Wally had also learned that even at his fastest, and even after all of Barry's teachings, keeping up with Wynter's normal mode of conversation was a full-time proposition. He and Clark had both learned to conspire to keep anything with sugar or caffeine in it away from Wynter, and it was a damn good thing that Clark needed less sleep than he did.
(Wally was especially glad that Clark had never introduced Chloe to Wynter, though he suspected that any "great scientist" who knew about Clark would be keeping an eye on everyone around the Clueless Wonder -- even Wally couldn't believe how dense Clark could be sometimes -- to protect him from himself. Wynter would be especially interested in someone as curious and talkative and sharp as Chloe, considering how easily and thoroughly Clark could be exploited.
Wally was pretty much immune to that sort of thing himself -- he had no specific vulnerability except a weakness for pizza and candy bars, and threatening or blackmailing any of his friends or family wasn't going to buy anyone any secrets except just how fast Wally could move. The government and the cops could have that for free, for all he cared, and any bad guys would get a lesson in the shortest distance between two points. But Clark -- Kal-El? -- apparently had more to lose than his stubborn farmer parents and the whole world finding out that just being in the same room with a lousy meteorite would drop him like a hangover on top of the flu.
Chloe's Wall of Weird didn't include Clark. Wally didn't believe for one nanosecond that Chloe didn't already know that he belonged there. When it came to any mention of Clark in conjunction with the meteorites or anything else "unusual," she changed the subject about her "just a friend" faster than Wally could turn a corner.
And that was something else Clark seemed clueless about.
Wally thought he might like to get to know Chloe. But it wasn't any feeling of rivalry that made him glad she was not part of the Wynter and Clark team. The cautiously-mentioned-in-passing idea of moving at abnormal velocities not only didn't bother or impress Chloe, it made her even more hyper herself. If Chloe and Wynter ever started talking, even he and Clark between them wouldn't be able to keep up. Or keep the caffeine and chocolate out of their reach.)
* * * * *
Clark had been brought into the covert Special Operations fold that harbored people like Wynter as soon as they got the first hint that he existed, since its centuries-old founder figured that the most powerful person on the planet was better courted as a friend than risked as being distrusted, but Wally West was still an unknown quantity with nothing to offer except maybe fast mail delivery, and told only a little about the Specials on a "need to know" basis. Wynter's four-figure IQ was by no means the most dangerous secret they kept among themselves.
That someone had learned where they were and what they were doing, someone who could get close enough to put one of the deadly meteorites directly in Clark's path, upped the threat level of "need to know" considerably. At least, Wynter thought so, and whatever Wynter thought was usually law, even when it involved mixing raw sugar with his soymilk.
So it was that, after that phone conversation, Wally found himself riding in the back of the food truck (heh, he WAS faster than Clark, he'd gotten eleven of the pizzas to Clark's nine) to the not-much-better-than-grass-strip airport where he'd met these insane compatriots, so fast that, even at his speed, he'd barely had time to cram his stuff in his backpack. Whatever "the rest of the story" was, it was something big.
"We secure in here, Wynter?" Clark leaned forward to talk softly, counting it a good thing that Wynter either had no sense of smell or wasn't bothered by garlic breath.
"Mark's driving." Their food master was also a Special, a mutant whose particular talent was a near-atomic level of awareness. Listening devices cringed and self-destructed when he came near. Kitchen appliances failed him at their peril. "You first. Draw the lines wherever you want."
"Okay." Blast it, this never got any easier. "Wally, I'm not a mutant. I'm not from Smallville. I'm from," he pointed upwards and northeast, "somewhere around there."
Wally squinted at him. "Canada?" *
Wynter howled, and Clark glared. "No, moron. Do the neurons in your brain fire extra-slow to make up for the rest of you? I'm from ANOTHER PLANET."
"Right, which explains why you look like four billion people's wet dream. Where's your tentacles and four eyes and such?"
Wynter was choking on laughter. "You'll have to sh-show him, Kal."
"Show him what, the heat vision?" Clark was still glaring, and his eyes red-shifted. "I'm tempted."
"No, no, not inside anything with a fuel tank. Start with the, I don't know, the part about the differences in gravity and solar energy."
"Start with the pizza cutter," Mark called back. "I hate that thing. If I don't get some decent equipment, I'm going on strike." Wynter sympathized, but even most industrial kitchen equipment wasn't up to the load that the Specials put on it.
Clark sighed, shrugged, and picked up the edged piece of stainless steel. And brought it down at full speed and strength onto his splayed fingers.
Wally started to shout and started to try to knock his hand away, and barely had time at his fastest to shield his own face from the flying shards of metal.
Clark had waved his harder-than-steel hand in front of Wynter to deflect shrapnel from the super-brained boy's ordinary human body. "One pizza cutter, kaput," he informed Mark.
Wally gulped, his eyes going everywhere except Clark's. "What Wynter said about -- about a rock and a bullet -- that wasn't just a stupid joke."
"Wynter doesn't make stupid jokes. Bad ones, yes. Stupid ones, no."
"And the green meteor rocks -- what was it Chloe called them -- ?"
"Kryptonite. My native world's name translates as "Krypton," don't ask me why. The meteors are pieces of what's -- left of the planet. That's why they just hurt me instead of doing the weird things they do to everybody else."
"Left of the...?" Wally went pale. "You're not just here for a visit, mister spaceman?"
"Maybe I'll go help terraform Mars some day." Clark slumped. "No, I don't have a home planet to go back to any more. As far as I know, I'm the only one who survived."
Wally discovered a new power. Barry had tried to teach him, but apparently knowing it could be done and doing it had to be connected by some powerful demand. In this case, the need to get away.
He went through the rear of the truck without touching it, and only stopped shivering right down to the empty space between his electrons when his hands were buried in solid ground. He wished to hell he'd let Clark have those last two pizzas.
Mark cursed and hit the brakes. Wynter waved at him. "Keep on going. It's not as if he can't catch up to us."
* * * * *
(* a/n: old joke. "Canada" was actually the name of the nearest village. Look it up.)
* * * * *
The private jet the small team transferred to at the first major airport shut Wally up completely about any doubts concerning aliens. Mutants and aliens apparently came free with the territory, but a modified jet like this cost money.
Wynter shrugged it off. "Our boss made some good investments." Including being one of the founders of several small start-ups that had become multinationals over the past two hundred years, as well as slicing pieces off the top of various better-known spy agencies, but that wasn't need-to-know for Wally.
Clark knew, though. He wished hopefully every once in awhile for the day when Lex might be one of their allies instead of someone that their empaths still viewed with suspicion.
"The rest of the story," Wynter began earnestly, "Is that we're not just a science team interested in mutants. And aliens." He winked at Clark, who didn't know whether to flush or grumble, so settled for going to root through the cookies. "We're a collection of people with a variety of talents and a view of the big picture. We'd like to see the human race survive. We'd like to see the planet survive. Sometimes the long-range choices are pretty difficult to call. I don't pretend to be any more than one of several hundred advisers when it gets to that kind of questions."
"Secret masters of the universe, huh?" Wally looked a little less than pleased. "Or is this the movie about aliens and mutants out to take over the world for our own good?"
Clark disabused Wally of the notion of being faster when Wally suddenly found himself pinned against the bulkhead. "I don't like the way you said that."
"Kal-El, don't be so hypersensitive. He's just new to the whole idea. And as you remarked, his neurons don't exactly keep up with the rest of him. Wally, would it reassure you to know that we have an orthodox Jew, who was nearly killed by his own mother for being a third-rate distance telepath, working side-by-side with a Palestinian girl who was nearly killed by her own mother for being born with fur and fangs? She refuses to do werewolf costumes at Halloween, but her hearing and his telepathy make for a pretty good spy team. They're in," Wynter checked his mental file cabinet, "Morocco right now, but if you want to know why, you'll have to ask them yourself. Clark, let him go before one of you depressurizes the plane, okay?"
Wally had only seen a few examples of Clark's strength, but he was beginning to get the idea that it would be a very bad idea to piss him off. The comment about not being slowed down by a bullet was still trying to find a place to settle in his brain, too. "Oh. Um, well, Kal-El, huh?" he tried meekly, when Clark's hand released his throat. "Is that part of the super-secret spy team thing? Like a code name?"
Clark made a face and turned away, forcing himself not to stomp. "No, it's part of the being-from-another-planet thing. That's my Kryptonian name. And you may as well just call me Clark. Your pronunciation sucks."
"Geez, is he always this moody?"
"And your reaction the first day you found out you could outrun your dog was what, exactly? And you had Barry to coach you. Kal had nobody. Even we didn't find out about him until a few years ago."
"Huh, you knew about Barry, but you didn't know about me?"
"Oh, we knew about you." Wynter waved a hand. "Clark, quit hogging the cookies! We just didn't think you were worth contacting. Until Clark asked."
Wally made a disgruntled sound. Clark snickered. A war over the cookies ensued. Wynter made a pointed remark about Clark not being good enough at flying yet to catch Wally if he pulled his go-through-the-wall trick at forty thousand feet. The pilot and two techs hollered that they were all headed for kryptonite gas sedation if they didn't settle down and quit jostling the plane.
* * * * *
Standard legalese disclaimer. Wynter and Special Ops are mine. The rest is all invented, portrayed, and made money off of by other people. Crossovers properly ashamed of.
Flash!
"Three. Two. One." The youngest of the three boys clicked his stop watch. The two taller boys disappeared.
When they reappeared, both collapsed, gasping, in a cloud of dirt that obscured both the finish line and the stopwatch. The younger boy waved his hands in disgust, trying to clear a space to breathe. "Seventy-four seconds! SEVENTY-FOUR SECONDS! That was only twenty klicks round trip! What the hell is WRONG with you two?"
The dark-haired boy made a negative head motion, still on his hands and knees, panting. "I tripped. A rock."
"A rock wouldn't slow you down any more than a bullet does! Knowing you, you probably got lost. Or decided to head for Florida. Spring break is already over, Kal-El!"
"A green rock," the red-blond boy clarified, standing and catching his breath. "I had to turn around and get Clark back on his feet. Took him a few seconds. What's one of those things doing out here anyway? I thought you said they all came down in Smallville during that big meteor strike."
"Oh." The youngest boy, whose hair would have given Vidal Sassoon a near-lethal heart attack, scowled menacingly back along their path. "Can you show me where, Wally? I need to give NORAD a ration if they missed a track of anything new falling. Kal, you okay?"
Clark nodded. "Yeah. But I could use a pizza, even if we didn't beat our personal best. I pretty much lost breakfast."
"No penalties for circumstances beyond your control." The boy flipped his secure phone-transmitter open. "Mark? Wynter. We need a food truck at the race course. Yes, enough for Wally AND Clark. Yeah, probably chocolate too. I know, gross. And this from kids who won't eat anchovies. Thanks." He clicked off. "Ten minutes, guys. Can you survive that long?"
"That's a century at my speed," Wally moaned. Clark just sat back and made a pose of trying to wait patiently.
Wynter threw his hands in the air. It was a habitual gesture, especially when dealing with Wally or Kal-El, and most especially with both together. "Come on, Wally, let's try to keep you occupied. Run me through the course. At human speed! I can't see details past the sonic shockwave!"
"You could if you'd cut your hair," Wally shot back, lifting the smaller boy and pegging for only a couple of hundred kph.
"When hell freezes absolutely solid and I find a -- " the rest of his words were lost even to Clark's ears in the wind.
The only survivor of a destroyed planet sat back dejectedly. If there were more pieces of his personal radioactive poison coming to Earth, no telling how much more of the world was about to become a very unpleasant place. If Wally hadn't been there.... Well, his momentum had carried him pretty much out of range, but if there had been any more....
Wally whooshed back up with Wynter, both looking grim. (Clark managed a small bit of amusement that the high-speed trip had made no noticeable difference in the condition of Wynter's hair.)
"NORAD is off the hook," Wynter stated, in a voice as close to flat controlled fury as Clark had ever heard from the hyperactive youngster. "But somebody else's ass is definitely grass when I find them. Kal-El, that thing was planted. The mess you two made around it wiped most of the traces, and I'll need one of the -- Specialists, to look it over, but if it was dropped from any higher than your head, I'll eat it."
"Please don't. I've already had enough problems with meteor mutants to last me a few years."
Wally looked at Wynter curiously. "I thought you were already a mutant."
"I am, but not the Smallville variety." In fact, Wynter's DNA tested more or less normal -- Wynter ran the DNA sequencer himself -- though his brain activity had been sending EEGs into spasms since the day he was born. Mostly he called himself a mutant just to make it more comfortable for other people to deal with the fact that he'd been publishing papers and articles and advice columns as soon as his fingers were coordinated enough to operate a keyboard.
Wynter sighed and scrubbed a hand through his hair. (Wally ran a hand over his own hair, just to reassure himself that it didn't look that awful.) Wynter flipped what he liked to call his "communicator" (and customized to look like one -- Wally didn't know whether to think that was funny or tacky, especially after Wynter quoted him the various advantages and disadvantages of the different Star Trek communicators) back open. "John? We have a problem. And I think it might be bad enough to justify telling Wally the rest of the story."
* * * * *
Clark and Wally had met on a cross-country run, literally in passing. Since no one else would have been able to see either of them, the shock was enough to bring both of them to a screeching halt, much to the dismay of the property owners when they discovered the furrows a few days later.
Wally saved Clark the trouble of explanations when he blurted out "Barry didn't tell me about you!"
"Um, probably because Barry didn't know about me. Who's Barry? And who are you?" A quick glance at x-ray had dashed his first hopes -- that the boy near his own age that had blurred past him might be another refugee from Krypton -- but Clark had never met anyone with a speed to match his before, and Clark had had more than his fair share of dealings with the bizarre.
One fast stop at a donut shop filled each other in on the basics. Clark held back the part about the spaceship, but Wally had made an e-mail date with Chloe to talk about the meteors and the Wall of Weird before Clark finished his third donut.
Clark used the time to contact Wynter. It was a good thing the secure line came with an automatic volume control, because Wynter's shriek probably blew the speaker on his end, and Clark was still working at turning off his increasingly acute hearing.
Wally, on the other hand, had simply fainted, when he first met Wynter and found out that the man that his mentor, Barry Allen, had so often referred to with reverence as "one of the greatest scientists of all time," was not much more than half Wally's age.
Wynter "borrowed" (read: took over) a field ops station that had previously been used to snare a white-supremest militia group, conveniently out in the middle of nowhere, to run speed tests on Clark and Wally. Wally had learned that Clark had no problems keeping up with him, and didn't have anywhere near his problems with barbed wire or sharp rocks or burrs getting in his shoes or running into trees, except around certain green rocks.
Wally had discovered new styles of running, increasing both his speed and stamina under patient tutoring from a technician who was also a cross-country runner along with impatient lectures from Wynter. Long and short and smooth muscles, balance and stride length and foot placement and.... He was never going to complain about regular math homework again.
Wally had also learned that even at his fastest, and even after all of Barry's teachings, keeping up with Wynter's normal mode of conversation was a full-time proposition. He and Clark had both learned to conspire to keep anything with sugar or caffeine in it away from Wynter, and it was a damn good thing that Clark needed less sleep than he did.
(Wally was especially glad that Clark had never introduced Chloe to Wynter, though he suspected that any "great scientist" who knew about Clark would be keeping an eye on everyone around the Clueless Wonder -- even Wally couldn't believe how dense Clark could be sometimes -- to protect him from himself. Wynter would be especially interested in someone as curious and talkative and sharp as Chloe, considering how easily and thoroughly Clark could be exploited.
Wally was pretty much immune to that sort of thing himself -- he had no specific vulnerability except a weakness for pizza and candy bars, and threatening or blackmailing any of his friends or family wasn't going to buy anyone any secrets except just how fast Wally could move. The government and the cops could have that for free, for all he cared, and any bad guys would get a lesson in the shortest distance between two points. But Clark -- Kal-El? -- apparently had more to lose than his stubborn farmer parents and the whole world finding out that just being in the same room with a lousy meteorite would drop him like a hangover on top of the flu.
Chloe's Wall of Weird didn't include Clark. Wally didn't believe for one nanosecond that Chloe didn't already know that he belonged there. When it came to any mention of Clark in conjunction with the meteorites or anything else "unusual," she changed the subject about her "just a friend" faster than Wally could turn a corner.
And that was something else Clark seemed clueless about.
Wally thought he might like to get to know Chloe. But it wasn't any feeling of rivalry that made him glad she was not part of the Wynter and Clark team. The cautiously-mentioned-in-passing idea of moving at abnormal velocities not only didn't bother or impress Chloe, it made her even more hyper herself. If Chloe and Wynter ever started talking, even he and Clark between them wouldn't be able to keep up. Or keep the caffeine and chocolate out of their reach.)
* * * * *
Clark had been brought into the covert Special Operations fold that harbored people like Wynter as soon as they got the first hint that he existed, since its centuries-old founder figured that the most powerful person on the planet was better courted as a friend than risked as being distrusted, but Wally West was still an unknown quantity with nothing to offer except maybe fast mail delivery, and told only a little about the Specials on a "need to know" basis. Wynter's four-figure IQ was by no means the most dangerous secret they kept among themselves.
That someone had learned where they were and what they were doing, someone who could get close enough to put one of the deadly meteorites directly in Clark's path, upped the threat level of "need to know" considerably. At least, Wynter thought so, and whatever Wynter thought was usually law, even when it involved mixing raw sugar with his soymilk.
So it was that, after that phone conversation, Wally found himself riding in the back of the food truck (heh, he WAS faster than Clark, he'd gotten eleven of the pizzas to Clark's nine) to the not-much-better-than-grass-strip airport where he'd met these insane compatriots, so fast that, even at his speed, he'd barely had time to cram his stuff in his backpack. Whatever "the rest of the story" was, it was something big.
"We secure in here, Wynter?" Clark leaned forward to talk softly, counting it a good thing that Wynter either had no sense of smell or wasn't bothered by garlic breath.
"Mark's driving." Their food master was also a Special, a mutant whose particular talent was a near-atomic level of awareness. Listening devices cringed and self-destructed when he came near. Kitchen appliances failed him at their peril. "You first. Draw the lines wherever you want."
"Okay." Blast it, this never got any easier. "Wally, I'm not a mutant. I'm not from Smallville. I'm from," he pointed upwards and northeast, "somewhere around there."
Wally squinted at him. "Canada?" *
Wynter howled, and Clark glared. "No, moron. Do the neurons in your brain fire extra-slow to make up for the rest of you? I'm from ANOTHER PLANET."
"Right, which explains why you look like four billion people's wet dream. Where's your tentacles and four eyes and such?"
Wynter was choking on laughter. "You'll have to sh-show him, Kal."
"Show him what, the heat vision?" Clark was still glaring, and his eyes red-shifted. "I'm tempted."
"No, no, not inside anything with a fuel tank. Start with the, I don't know, the part about the differences in gravity and solar energy."
"Start with the pizza cutter," Mark called back. "I hate that thing. If I don't get some decent equipment, I'm going on strike." Wynter sympathized, but even most industrial kitchen equipment wasn't up to the load that the Specials put on it.
Clark sighed, shrugged, and picked up the edged piece of stainless steel. And brought it down at full speed and strength onto his splayed fingers.
Wally started to shout and started to try to knock his hand away, and barely had time at his fastest to shield his own face from the flying shards of metal.
Clark had waved his harder-than-steel hand in front of Wynter to deflect shrapnel from the super-brained boy's ordinary human body. "One pizza cutter, kaput," he informed Mark.
Wally gulped, his eyes going everywhere except Clark's. "What Wynter said about -- about a rock and a bullet -- that wasn't just a stupid joke."
"Wynter doesn't make stupid jokes. Bad ones, yes. Stupid ones, no."
"And the green meteor rocks -- what was it Chloe called them -- ?"
"Kryptonite. My native world's name translates as "Krypton," don't ask me why. The meteors are pieces of what's -- left of the planet. That's why they just hurt me instead of doing the weird things they do to everybody else."
"Left of the...?" Wally went pale. "You're not just here for a visit, mister spaceman?"
"Maybe I'll go help terraform Mars some day." Clark slumped. "No, I don't have a home planet to go back to any more. As far as I know, I'm the only one who survived."
Wally discovered a new power. Barry had tried to teach him, but apparently knowing it could be done and doing it had to be connected by some powerful demand. In this case, the need to get away.
He went through the rear of the truck without touching it, and only stopped shivering right down to the empty space between his electrons when his hands were buried in solid ground. He wished to hell he'd let Clark have those last two pizzas.
Mark cursed and hit the brakes. Wynter waved at him. "Keep on going. It's not as if he can't catch up to us."
* * * * *
(* a/n: old joke. "Canada" was actually the name of the nearest village. Look it up.)
* * * * *
The private jet the small team transferred to at the first major airport shut Wally up completely about any doubts concerning aliens. Mutants and aliens apparently came free with the territory, but a modified jet like this cost money.
Wynter shrugged it off. "Our boss made some good investments." Including being one of the founders of several small start-ups that had become multinationals over the past two hundred years, as well as slicing pieces off the top of various better-known spy agencies, but that wasn't need-to-know for Wally.
Clark knew, though. He wished hopefully every once in awhile for the day when Lex might be one of their allies instead of someone that their empaths still viewed with suspicion.
"The rest of the story," Wynter began earnestly, "Is that we're not just a science team interested in mutants. And aliens." He winked at Clark, who didn't know whether to flush or grumble, so settled for going to root through the cookies. "We're a collection of people with a variety of talents and a view of the big picture. We'd like to see the human race survive. We'd like to see the planet survive. Sometimes the long-range choices are pretty difficult to call. I don't pretend to be any more than one of several hundred advisers when it gets to that kind of questions."
"Secret masters of the universe, huh?" Wally looked a little less than pleased. "Or is this the movie about aliens and mutants out to take over the world for our own good?"
Clark disabused Wally of the notion of being faster when Wally suddenly found himself pinned against the bulkhead. "I don't like the way you said that."
"Kal-El, don't be so hypersensitive. He's just new to the whole idea. And as you remarked, his neurons don't exactly keep up with the rest of him. Wally, would it reassure you to know that we have an orthodox Jew, who was nearly killed by his own mother for being a third-rate distance telepath, working side-by-side with a Palestinian girl who was nearly killed by her own mother for being born with fur and fangs? She refuses to do werewolf costumes at Halloween, but her hearing and his telepathy make for a pretty good spy team. They're in," Wynter checked his mental file cabinet, "Morocco right now, but if you want to know why, you'll have to ask them yourself. Clark, let him go before one of you depressurizes the plane, okay?"
Wally had only seen a few examples of Clark's strength, but he was beginning to get the idea that it would be a very bad idea to piss him off. The comment about not being slowed down by a bullet was still trying to find a place to settle in his brain, too. "Oh. Um, well, Kal-El, huh?" he tried meekly, when Clark's hand released his throat. "Is that part of the super-secret spy team thing? Like a code name?"
Clark made a face and turned away, forcing himself not to stomp. "No, it's part of the being-from-another-planet thing. That's my Kryptonian name. And you may as well just call me Clark. Your pronunciation sucks."
"Geez, is he always this moody?"
"And your reaction the first day you found out you could outrun your dog was what, exactly? And you had Barry to coach you. Kal had nobody. Even we didn't find out about him until a few years ago."
"Huh, you knew about Barry, but you didn't know about me?"
"Oh, we knew about you." Wynter waved a hand. "Clark, quit hogging the cookies! We just didn't think you were worth contacting. Until Clark asked."
Wally made a disgruntled sound. Clark snickered. A war over the cookies ensued. Wynter made a pointed remark about Clark not being good enough at flying yet to catch Wally if he pulled his go-through-the-wall trick at forty thousand feet. The pilot and two techs hollered that they were all headed for kryptonite gas sedation if they didn't settle down and quit jostling the plane.
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