Emerald City Knights Pt 2: Quick Analysis

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)