Emerald City Knights
By Brendan Storm
Part 2: Quick Analysis
(Disclaimer and title block
in pt one)
My
name is Wally West. I'm the Flash, the
fastest man alive and I'm very scared of clowns. They drive me nuts. I
thought I'd share that now because unfortunately I have a feeling I'll be
facing that little hang up sooner or later. That's the kind of soul searching you do when you have to bring down the
(fingers making quote marks) Master of Fear (unquote).
Scarecrow. Batman's rouge's gallery has a lot more
psychos than mine. I inherited most of
mine from Uncle Barry, but they're just honest crooks, you know, made a life
choice to do things the easy way and use silly boomerangs or mirrors or tops to
do it with. Batman would mop the floor
with my guys, I always do. His guys on
the other hand, well, there's something about a million or so people stuck on
one little island that makes the evil ones just that much more evil. The mind shatters just a little more, horror
flick people read the paper in Gotham and get ideas off of page one. Oh sure the Midwest has its share of
cannibals and serial killers who put fifteen bodies in an oil drum and bury it
with four or five other drums in their lawn, but the costumed guys are, well,
just rouges. Thieves and bank robbers
who've been brought back from the dead, but guys Barry and I used to visit once
in a while and talk about football. In
the Midwest costumes mean difficult captures and interesting cases.
In
Gotham a costume means at least a three-digit body count.
"Jonathan
Crane, expert biologist and psychologist, thin and wiry. Do not underestimate his agility or his
hand-to-hand abilities. He is a
scientist first, though and will attempt to use his tailored fear toxins
first. Beware his gloves, or anything he
tries to touch you with. The toxins are
fast acting and each have a unique effect. The good news is that if you're exposed there is a common base to his
compounds that makes it able to be counteracted. We'll have antidotes for his most commonly used ones faxed into
your forensics units to begin production when agents become infected. The warehouse will be protected..."
That's Nightwing giving the briefing. He got into costume a while ago and has been in charge ever since. I hid the wig. How hideous, I think it was the one I used at his fake marriage,
the one where the minister didn't explode. He and Arsenal have been setting up the bust for about the last hour or
so. Doesn't take a genius to see why we
all elected him leader of the Titans way back when he was in the soprano
shorts.
My
yellow outfit looked awesome, his ... well it got him girls. Roy and I still don't understand that. Speaking of Roy, he's been acting all
business, weird for Roy. Except for
slipping once and saying Hellacool in a squeaky voice, he has been very well
behaved too. I decided against looking
for the pod that replaced him when he handed me the pictures of the
deceased. Those expressions were enough
to make anyone sober and serious.
The
situation was this; in the last four days over a hundred people had died of
related overdose in this city. It was
worse than the usual "get high on this and your heart explodes cause it's laced
with Ammonia or something" type of overdose though because it wasn't the
chemical compounds killing them. They
had all died of fright. Big glassy
eyes, mouths locked in contorted screams, grey hairs due to shock. Real nasty picture.
Robbie
had told me about the last time scarecrow had attacked him. Toxin made him sweat real bad, hallucinate all
sorts of nasties. Kept to himself
exactly what he hallucinated, but I have my suspicions. Former sidekicks like us always have a fear
of filling boots, letting others down, being unworthy. I had Barry's shadow, Roy has Ollie's clone,
time displacement, robot whatever, and Dick, well, he has "Grim and Creepy."
"You
all have your assignments, gentlemen. Good hunting." Agent Garrison,
Chuck to his friends, loomed above Nightwing as he stood up to close the
meeting. I did a double take when I
noticed the guy's tie wasn't Government Agent issued. It had blueprints for the Enterprise on it. Hellacool. "Nightwing, where will your team be while we're containing and securing
the area?"
"Well,
we figured we'd enter from the rooftop and make sure you don't have to expend
any agency resources," said Roy. "A
fast scout, a few well placed shots and Mr. Junior Scientist here to neutralize
the gas."
"How
come I get to neutralize the gas, Bow-head?"
"Cause
I don't wanna face my fears tonight, short pants, too close to Halloween."
"Good
idea so lets just send in Zippy and go enjoy a couple drinks on the bureau."
"Hey waitaminute! I'm the one with 'Ode to Her short hairs' on cassette here," I chimed in, smiling.
"Oh yeah. I
want that back by the way, Fleetfeet. You scout, I get the gas, Arsenal shoots from safety."
"Now, that's what I call teamwork." Chuck chuckled. "My men will be in position in one hour."
*** *** ***
I killed half an hour learning the streets of the
City that looks like a suburb. Then I
ran home and cooked supper for Linda. One of the nice things about generating speed is that I can boil a pot
of water in less than a nanosecond. I
can also make my own pasta from scratch. Aunt Iris taught me to cook and Uncle Barry taught me applied
thermodynamics.
I also managed to track down six soft cover editions
of "Sawdust and Chrome" a story about an aerialist and his beautiful but
wheelchair bound redheaded lover. Whipped up to the Watchtower to secretly replace a bag of Oreos that
Kyle didn't know wasn't fair game. Left
a copy of the book for Clark, Diana, J'onn, and Kyle. On a whim, I put one into Orion's inbox. I love being JLA, no secrets and bigger
prank payoffs. Fun thing is that Clark
reads almost as fast as I do. I was
putting a copy in Diana's mailbox when she walked in. She said she already had a copy. Didn't know she read that kind of thing. Kyle'd have some art beamed to the Titans Tower for me once he
actually finished it in about six weeks.
I also ran a copy to Alfred over at Brentwood
Academy. His eyes gleamed and he
promised something "appropriate." He
also said it was very droll. I have no
idea. I got back into position five
minutes before everything was supposed to go down.
Six minutes later all hell had broken loose.
(Continued in Part 3: Quick Discoveries)
