As the top steered itself out of the library parking lot and into the crowded Main Street beyond, Sarah felt a twinge of concern. However skillful the Flash might have been at controlling his new form, the fact remained that he didn't have eyes anymore, and to step (or whirl, in this case) blindly into a stream of fast-moving traffic didn't seem like the safest thing to do.
As it turned out, however, her fears were groundless. Maybe the Flash's connection to the Speed Force was informing him of the motion around him, so that he was able to weave between the cars without getting crushed beneath their wheels. Whatever the reason, the top reached the other side of the street safely and quickly – more quickly, in fact, than Sarah, who hesitated for nearly a minute before finding a window in the traffic large enough to dart through.
Once she was across, she followed the top to a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet about three blocks from the library. The top halted in front of the door, apparently waiting for her to open it; she did so, and the top spun into the restaurant, then made a smooth 90-degree turn and headed for the women's bathroom. Its briskness surprised Sarah; she saw, of course, that, since she currently appeared human and the Flash did not, there was only one bathroom open to them, but she would have expected a male superhero of the old school to express some diffidence about having to enter a ladies' room. This one, in contrast, was acting as though he owned the place.
Oh, well, it didn't matter. She opened the restroom door, and the top spun inside and positioned itself under the sink, where it proceeded to engage in a most extraordinary series of abortive leaps. As near as Sarah could make out, it was attempting either to smash through the sink by main force (which was clearly hopeless, since it never got more than three inches off the ground) or to indicate that the sink was in some way important to its plans.
"Should I help you up?" she hazarded.
The top wobbled from side to side in a way that made it look as though it had been out on the tiles the previous night, but which Sarah guessed was intended as a shake of the head.
"Okay, then," she said. "Do you... want some water?"
The wobble this time was in a back-and-forth direction, and Sarah pumped a mental fist in the air. I'm not so bad at this, when I get started, she thought.
Hastily, she went out into the restaurant proper and snagged a cup off the rack by the drink machine; then she ran back into the restroom, filled the cup, and placed it on the floor in front of the top. "Now what?" she said.
But the top was making its head-shaking wobble again. (How it managed to stay on its apex when it was swerving so violently from side to side, Sarah had no idea, but at the moment she had more pressing things to worry about.)
"What do you mean, no?" she said. "You said you wanted water. I got you water. What's the problem?"
The top spun in place for a moment, and seemed to be considering how best to convey the concept in its mind; then it spun forward, stopped about five inches in front of the cup, and began to trace a circle around it about nine inches in diameter.
It took a few seconds for Sarah to decode this gesture. "A bucket?" she said. "You want a bucket of water?"
The top wobbled a nod.
At this point, a lesser girl might have abandoned the project altogether. After all, she might have said, I didn't ask to get involved with this crazy toy; if the kind of help I'm giving isn't good enough for him, he can darn well save the world by himself. But Sarah Palmer was made of sterner stuff; after heaving a brief but eloquent sigh, she strode back out into the main restaurant and positioned herself in front of the counter. (The reader will recall that it was still only ten in the morning; since few people think of Kentucky Fried Chicken as a breakfast supplier, Sarah was almost the only non-employee in the restaurant.)
After about fifteen seconds, she attracted the attention of a server: a young man of about eighteen, with thatched blond hair and a pallor that suggested either Scandinavian ancestry or too much time spent indoors. "Hey, there," he said, swinging around the oven and assuming a position of great diligence behind the counter. "Can I help you?"
"Maybe," said Sarah. "If I wanted one of those paper buckets your chicken comes in, but without any chicken in it, would that be a problem?"
The boy blinked. "You mean, just the bucket?" he said.
"Just the bucket," Sarah confirmed. (For some reason, an old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon popped into her head: Nothing's wrong... da dee doo ba... I just want a bucket to hold some... stuff. She resisted the urge to giggle; Calvin flooding his family's bathroom was not the image she wanted to project right now.)
The boy hesitated for a moment, and appeared to be wrapping his mind around this unaccustomed request. "Okay, then," he said at length, reaching back into the stacks behind the counter and pulling out a paper tub of the requested variety. "One genuine KFC chicken bucket, on the house."
"Thanks," said Sarah.
"Why did you want it, anyway?" said the boy.
Sarah hesitated. "Um... would you believe me if I said I was helping to save the Flash from one of his arch-enemies?"
The boy smiled sardonically. "Probably not."
"Oh," said Sarah. "Well, I guess I can't tell you, then."
And, flashing a cheerful smile at the bewildered young man, she turned away from the counter and carried the bucket into the bathroom.
Ignoring the impatient whirring of the top (she wasn't sure what made a whir impatient, but she could tell that this one was), she stuck the bucket under the faucet and filled it with water. Not all the way to the top, of course, but as full as she could make it and still get it out from under the faucet again.
"I just hope this thing doesn't leak," she said aloud as she balanced the bucket on the edge of the sink. "I just bought these shoes two weeks ago, and I don't think my mom would be thrilled to hear that I've been dumping water all over them."
If the top heard this, it gave no sign. Instead, it spun a little ways backwards and to the left, and began making the same abortive hops underneath the soap dispenser that it had previously made under the sink.
This caused Sarah a whole new set of problems. If her guide wanted a bucket of soapy water, the obvious way to get it was to hold the bucket under the soap dispenser and just squirt soap into it – but that, Sarah knew, was beyond her capacities. If both her hands were occupied in holding the bucket (and she wasn't nearly strong enough to hold a KFC chicken bucket full of water with one hand), the only way she could press down the lever on the soap dispenser was with her nose – and, while she was willing to do a lot to assist her hero, there she drew the line.
Of course, she could have simply gone back out to the counter and found someone to hold the bucket for her – but, apart from not being eager to go through that whole experience again, she was reluctant to share her mission with anyone else. She had felt from the beginning that this was her moment, her opportunity to do the Flash a great service; if she asked someone's help, it wouldn't be as special. She was aware that this was a slightly childish feeling, and was secretly a little embarrassed by it, but she let it guide her actions anyway (a decision that, some weeks later, she would come to regard as providential).
The solution she eventually came to was to hold the bucket steady on the sink with her right hand while, through a dexterous application of thumb and fingers, she squirted a puddle of soap onto her left hand, and then to swish her left hand around in the bucket until the soap had thoroughly mingled with the water. She repeated this process several times, until she had worked up a nice lather in the bucket; then she heaved the bucket off the sink and presented it to the top, lifting the latter up briefly so it could inspect the bucket's contents.
"Satisfactory?" she said as she put it down again.
The top wobbled a nod, then spun past Sarah and made its way for the restroom door, where it stopped and spun in place expectantly. Sarah picked up the bucket, cradled it in her arms, and went over and shoved the door open with her buttocks (in the process sloshing soapy water all over her skirt, her socks, and, yes, her shoes). Together, the two of them exited the restaurant, and Sarah followed the top back down the sidewalk and across the street to the Attica County Library.
By the time they reached the Flash's statue again, Sarah's entire lower body was a sopping mass of suds. Besides the spillage that had occurred both times she had opened a door for the top, it had turned out that the bucket did indeed leak – not much, but a drop every five yards or so adds up over three blocks. Furthermore, although the top had been able, with the aid of gravity, to get down the marble steps of the library on its way out, it turned out to be completely unequipped to climb those same steps on its way back in; Sarah had been obliged to put down the bucket and carry the top up the steps, then come back, pick the bucket back up, and carry it up the steps, all of which had added perhaps another cup of water to the small pond on her skirt.
Despite all this activity, however, there was still a gallon or more of water in the bucket when Sarah and the top arrived at the forgotten artist's Giambologna-esque effigy of the Scarlet Speedster. Sarah, of course, still had no idea what she was supposed to do with this water, but, after all the effort it had taken to get it there, she certainly hoped it was something important.
The top spun up to the base of the statue, and whirred in place for a moment as though pondering; then, abruptly, it revved itself forwards and rammed itself with all its might against the statue's marble base.
Sarah let out a small, involuntary yelp, thinking that her guide must surely have injured itself after such a violent collision with such hard stone. She had, however, reckoned without the durability of plastic; apart from a moment's disorientation, the top appeared to be completely unharmed by its action. Indeed, it repeated it two or three times, and Sarah eventually realized that this was another gesture indicating what she was required to do.
"Hitting the base of the statue," she said. "Does that mean that I'm supposed to throw the water at the base of the statue?"
The top wobbled a negation, and introduced a slight variation into its next collision. Instead of simply spinning along the ground, it made one of its small hops just before it hit the pedestal; it still didn't reach much higher than the lowest line of engraving, but it conveyed the necessary idea.
"Higher?" said Sarah. "So I'm supposed to throw it at the statue itself?"
A back-and-forth tumble confirmed this speculation. With a deep breath, Sarah stepped between the statue and a pillar, so that her act of vandalism (as it would probably be construed by an uninformed witness) would be seen by as few people as possible; then she lifted the bucket to her shoulder, and, with all her might, heaved its contents onto the Flash's marble body.
As soon as the water touched the stone, there was a loud bang, and a cloud of blue smoke emerged that temporarily blinded Sarah to everything around her. It lasted perhaps fifteen seconds, and then it cleared – and when it cleared, a tall, slender form was lying prone on the pavement in front of the statue.
It was not, however, the form that Sarah had expected. She was far from being a general expert on superheroes – her devotion to the Flash was too specific for that – but anyone with even a glancing familiarity with the Justice League could recognize the figure in front of her. The raven hair, the dapper black suit, and particularly the fishnet stockings, told the story: it was none other than Zatanna, the legendary Maid of Magic.
