Impulse: Beaned
(Disclaimer: Characters are property of DC Comics.)
(Author's note: this story was written in collaboration with Chris Oakley. I'll let him post the next one. Also, this is not a sequel to Running on Empty, but it's just as weird. Be warned.)
In retrospect, it should have been obvious.
You don't give a kid whose metabolism runs twice the speed of normal people's anything, anything, with caffeine. Especially not coffee.
But nobody thought that Bart would have any interest in coffee. Least of all Max Crandall, a.k.a. Max Mercury, Bart's "uncle" and mentor. When he asked Kon-El to accompany Bart to a Manchester AIDS hospice fundraiser, he couldn't have imagined that Bart was about to go on a coffee-fueled spree of reckless behavior . . .
"Hey, Bart, could you hold this for me for a second? I'll be right back."
Such simple words. Such a simple request. Such a recipe for disaster. Superboy could never have imagined how much trouble could come from that small favor.
"OK, Kon." Bart took the steaming cup of coffee while Kon went off to check something out—or rather, someone. He'd noticed an attractive female fan waving to him, and he guessed she wanted an autograph.
While he was gone, Bart looked at the coffee cup with interest. It smelled kind of nice. What would it taste like?
He took a sip, experimentally.
It was . . . interesting.
He took another sip. Then another.
Before he knew it the cup was empty.
Then the caffeine rush hit him. In fact, it didn't just hit him, it piledrived right into his skull and thundered all the way up and down his spine.
"YEAH!" Bart shouted, and raced off in a rather dramatic cloud of dust. "THIS ROCKS!"
Quicker than you can say "Speed Force", he was scrawling graffiti all over every available surface and pulling people's shirts up over their heads—including a very startled Arrowette.
"Eek!" Bart's former teammate shrieked, trying to yank her school sweater back down. "What was that?"
Back at Max Mercury's house, Max was enjoying a rare afternoon of peace and quiet. His daughter Helen was out buying books for Bart and wouldn't be home until later that evening.
"Now this is what I'd call a great way to spend an afternoon," Max said, stretching out on the sofa. "I could really get to like this . . ."
The peace and quiet lasted all of three minutes. It was shattered by a red-and-white blur—a very familiar red-and-white blur, going entirely too fast.
"Bart! Normal speed in the—" He started to say, but Bart was already long gone.
Great. Now he'd have to go after him. Well, somebody had to. And wouldn't you know it, this would be the one time that Wally West (a.k.a. the Flash) was out of town. "What's gotten into that kid? He's supposed to be with Kon-El at that fundraiser . . ."
As if summoned by Max's words, Kon-El himself showed up, via the window. (Pity it wasn't open.) "Is Bart here?"
"He was here—for about an eighth of a millisecond." Max was not happy. "He took off in that direction, I think."
"I don't get it. I left him alone for one second. Just one lousy, stupid little second. I asked him to hold my coffee . . ."
Max almost had a stroke. "You did WHAT?"
"I just asked him to hold the cup . . ."
"Kon, Bart's metabolism can't handle coffee!" Max spluttered. "What were you thinking?"
"I didn't know he was gonna drink it!" Kon replied defensively. "I just figured I could give it to him to watch for a second! How was I supposed to know Bart would drink it?"
"You know Bart—he'll do anything!" Max suited up (so much for a peaceful afternoon off) and, with Kon-El in tow, went off to look for Bart . . .
. . . who by now was halfway to Metropolis, leaving behind a trail of graffiti, pulled-up shirts, and empty coffee cups. "Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee . . ." he kept repeating, too fast for the human ear to hear. He was gulping down coffee like it was water—and sooner or later it would catch up with him. Caffeine was very incompatible with Bart's system . . . but at the moment all he cared about was how good the coffee tasted. " . . . coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee . . ."
Max and Kon were about a mile behind Bart by now. "Why can't Bart handle coffee?" Kon asked.
"Because his metabolism is hyperaccelerated already, that's why!" Max snapped back. "The more coffee he drinks, the worse the letdown will be when he stops drinking it . . ."
"Letdown?"
"Yeah. He's going to come down from a coffee high so fast and so hard that it might . . ." Max left the sentence ominously unfinished.
"Stop it, Max, you're scaring me! Bart's my friend, you know."
"I know. That's why we have to find him. Fast. The sooner we can get him down off the coffee, the better off he'll be. Soon as we catch up to Bart, we start giving him lots of herbal tea . . ."
"Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee . . ."
Nothing was stopping Bart now—least of all the possibility that he might die from caffeine withdrawal. Even if he had known the risk, there was no way he could quit—not while there was still coffee somewhere in the world.
They were getting closer now. Max could see the distant outlines of Bart's hair and feet just ahead of him.
"So how do we take him down?"
"As soon as we get within arm's reach of him," Max said, "I'll grab him and you use your cape as a braking parachute."
"What cape? You mean my jacket?"
"You don't have a cape?"
"Nah, the jacket's cooler."
"Whatever. Then we'll take him home and clean him out with lots of herbal tea—if we don't have to take him to the hospital first."
"Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee . . ." Yes, he was still at it. Bart was on his 19th cup of coffee, and he was so hyper that he made Jerry Lewis look sedate by comparison. ". . . coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee . . ."
By now he had pulled up so many shirts that he'd left a trail of missing buttons behind him a hundred miles long. He couldn't hold out much longer; he was running out of coffee shops. But he didn't want this feeling of euphoria to go away, so he kept zooming along, looking for people carrying coffee cups in their hands. He spotted one and moved in for the kill . . .
But Max and Kon-El got there first.
"Not so fast, Bart!" Max said while Kon opened his jacket like a parachute, slowing them to near-normal speed. "Your little coffee binge is over!"
"Nonononono! Musthavecoffee!" Bart blurted in a coffee-induced state of hyperactivity.
Max turned them around so that they were headed home. "Kon, you go on ahead and get the tea started. Bart and I will be right along."
"AfterIhavesomemorecoffee!"
"No more coffee."
"ButIneedcoffee! Pleasepleasepleaseplease!"
"Bart, you're way too hyper!" Kon said as all three of them came to a stop.
"NoI'mnotIjustneedcoffee!"
"Kon, go make that tea!" Max ordered him. "If we can get enough of it in him before the crash, he'll be all right . . . ."
Kon nodded. "No problem, Max." He flew off back to the Crandall home, leaving Max with a still jacked-up Bart.
"GimmecoffeeMax!"
"No!" Max held him as tightly as he could. "You've had way too much coffee already, Bart! Thank God Arrowette didn't see your face when you pulled her shirt up, or we'd have a very messy situation on our hands . . ." And on that note, Max took a loudly protesting Bart back to Manchester.
"Open up, Bart!" Max said, trying to force the boy's mouth open for his next dose of herbal tea.
Bart clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.
"Bart . . ." Max sighed. "You don't want to spend the next week feeling so jumpy, do you?"
"But I hate herbal tea!" Bart moaned. "It tastes like rat poison!"
"It does not! Now come on, open up!"
"I don't wanna . . ."Just then Bart began to feel his entire body deflate like a faulty blimp.
Max poured him some more tea. The crash was beginning, and it would only get worse from here on in.
"Yuuuuuuuck," Bart groaned. His whole body hurt something wicked, and his head felt fuzzy.
"You see what happens when you drink too much coffee?"
"Ooooooohhh."
"The herbal tea will help rid your system of the caffeine. Until then, I'm keeping one eye on you and the other on the teapot." He saw Helen coming in the kitchen and went to fill her in on the coffee crisis.
For the next three hours, Bart was plied with herbal tea until it was practically coming out his ears. He still felt crummy. "Oh man, I never should have drank that coffee!"
"Then why did you?" Kon-El demanded.
"I couldn't help myself," Bart answered with a sigh. "It smelled so good, and tasted even better . . ."
"Well, now we know," Max said, "that you can't drink coffee."
"Do we ever!" Bart groaned.
THE (blart!) END