The Date
by Tim Durant
I'm going to be late. Stopping those jewel thieves should have been a piece a cake. But, nooo, one of them had to make a run for it. He was easy enough to catch, but by the time I got him back to the jewelry store, his partners had gotten away from the jewelry store's security guards and had taken off in opposite directions. I caught them as easily as I caught the first guy, but it still took time. Jessie's going to be there first.
Wally West zips through the busy downtown streets of Central City, easily maneuvering around the moving traffic. Two and a half seconds after leaving the want-to-be jewel thieves with his dad, Detective Joe West, Wally reaches his destination: Big Belly Burger.
Speed-changing as he streaks through the parking lot, Wally stops running as he reaches the glass double-door entrance of the most popular fast food chain in Central City. Now dressed in jeans and a sweat shirt, he tugs on the straps of the backpack slung across his back, his Kid Flash costume shoved into the hidden compartment at the bottom of the bag.
Wally scans the restaurant, looking for a familiar face. Spotting her in a booth near the back wall, he weaves between the people standing in line to place their orders. Making it through the throng of people, he finally reaches the booth and Jessie Quick.
"What took so long, slow poke?" she asks.
"Sorry I'm late, Jessie. I had to stop a jewelry store robbery on the way here."
"No problem, Wally. I was just people watching. It's amazing how different your Earth is to Earth-2, but you still have Big Belly Burger." Jessie recently migrated to Wally's Earth, Earth-1, so they could be together. He had asked her to stay the first time she and her father had travelled to Earth-1 to ask Flash for help, but she chose to return to Earth-2 after she had been given her own speed powers.
"This is our first date since you decided to move to our Earth," Wally says. "I really wanted tonight to be speed free."
Jessie gives him the bright smile he fell in love with the first time they met. "Technically, you stopped them before our date actually started, so we can still have a speed free date."
Wally returns the smile. "Deal." He leans across the table to kiss Jessie. But, their romantic moment is shattered by the sound of gunfire.
Two masked men with machine guns in one hand and empty canvas bags in the other push their way through the scared customers in the front of the store. When they reach the counter, they thrust the bags at the trembling teenagers working the registers.
"Fill them up," the masked man on the left says to the cashiers. The cashiers immediately open their cash draws and start fisting their contents into the bags.
Jessie gives Wally a conspiratory smirk. "I have the guy on the left."
Wally nods once. Too fast for the other customers to see, the couple don their costumes and . race to the front of the store.
Jessie reaches her target a fraction of a second first. She stops directly in front of the unaware gunman and slams her shoulder into the man's chest. He flies backward until he hits the white wall, bounces off the wall, and hits the tiled floor face first. He was unconscious from Jessie's attack before he hit the wall.
Wally keeps running as he confronts the second gunman. He runs around the startled man, sucking the oxygen out of the mini vortex. He stops running as the man begins to collapse; he does not want to remove too much oxygen and cause any permanent damage.
When the panicking crowd realize what happened, they stop pushing through the crowd in their attempt to escape the robbery. After a brief moment of silence while they process the events that just unfolded in front of them, the entire restaurant erupts in applause.
Without a word, the two speeders disappear through the front doors. Running around the block, they re-enter the restaurant from one of the side doors and return to their booth while everyone's attention is still on the two unconscious men.
Jessie reaches across the table and covers Wally's hands with her own. "I know you wanted us to have a speed free date, Wally," she says. "But, it's not going to be tonight."