Wally Gets a New Paradigm (bad word! bad word!)
(a/n: thanks to LaCasta for a correction on the psych here, even if she did give me a ration for using the word paradigm.)
Baron John's computer team included not just mutants, but trained spies and detectives, top-level people who'd gotten fed up with working for stupid bosses and bureaucracies and found their way, through various channels, to an organization where real work could be done. It didn't take them long, with the extra information provided by the Specialist trackers, to pin down how the Smallville meteorite had gotten somewhere it shouldn't have been.
"CIA," Bruce said grimly. "I might have known."
"Rogue CIA," Wynter corrected. "The ones who serve a second master. International profiteers. Traitors, not to put too fine a point on it."
"Traitors to the whole damn human race," Wally growled. Two days of indoctrination and training at Special Operations had reversed his opinion entirely on the advisability of his comment about 'secret masters of the universe.'
Just one hour in comm central, watching the hundreds of inputs from all over the world, and the desperate measures that Special Operations people were all too often having to take to keep bad from going to much much worse, had made him avoid the cafeteria for the rest of the day. The world was a much more dangerous and unforgiving place than he'd been brought up to believe. "Giving your all" no longer meant just trying to beat a stopwatch.
Clark stayed silent, but his eyes dropped. Traitors to the human race -- but maybe not to an alien who had been ordered to rule them.
Wally caught it and punched his arm, grinning at him. "Hey, I'd rather have you as a pal than any of them, space guy." He got mad all over again thinking about the 'them'. "Traitors to everyone and everything alive," he expanded angrily, as much for Clark's sake as from his own intense disillusionment. "Traitors to their own families, with their, what's the word, they think they know best for everyone and are going to shove it down your throat whether you like it or not. Traitors who kill and claim it's to save people. Traitors and liars and thieves and -- "
"Fanatics," Bruce supplied. "Blinded by belief. Incapable of reason."
"Psychopaths," Wynter added critically. "Fairly typical of self-important people with a low sense of self-esteem who try to make up for it with the conviction that they're entitled to more without having to work for it, and that it's someone else's fault that they don't have it. Narcissism. They look in the mirror and call themselves superior beings without ever seeing the truth. They see others happy with what they are, and have to find a reason to blame those others for not being happy themselves. Skin color, religion, special abilities.... The names of what they claim to oppose in the guise of self-protection are interchangeable. The problem is always inside their own head."
"But they're after me because I'm an alien," Clark muttered, still not looking up.
"They're after you because you're an easy target," Wynter said impatiently. "One, you're everything they're not. It has nothing to do with your uniqueness. Exactly the opposite, in fact. What fuels their hate is that you use your capabilities to epitomize ideals that they can't live up to, instead of for personal gain. In short, that you're a better person than they are. Two, they found a weapon to use against you that can't be turned back on them. And when we find out who told them THAT, Lake and Nicole will make room in their schedule to deal with them."
Wally looked curious. Bruce looked unhappy. Clark blanched.
"Wynter, maybe I could just -- "
"Bruce, you wouldn't scare people like this badly enough. Even as Hulk, you've only ever hurt someone by accident. You don't have the psychological profile for an interrogator. You're an empty threat in that department. So don't even bother to bring it up again, because you wouldn't be able to reconcile your ethics with the necessities of getting their attention."
Wynter considered the three, appreciating that everyone else in the room was keeping silent, understanding that operations planning sometimes involved the most unlikely parties. "However, since you're here, you could be one jaw of our trap. There's a problem with that, so anyone involved has veto power, but it's the best I can think of on short notice."
Wally blinked at him. Thinking of something "on short notice" for Wynter was about as likely as him missing breakfast. "What's the problem?"
Wynter looked at Wally and Clark reluctantly, as if they were going off to war. "You two would be the bait."
* * * * *
(becs is entirely to blame for the silliest part of this section, too.)
The idea of pitting himself against the bad guys didn't bother Wally in the least. In fact, he welcomed the chance to prove himself to his new comrades. To convince them that it would be worth their while to count him as a friend, and maybe be accepted as one of them. Wynter's comment about him not being worth contacting had annoyed him a lot at first, until he found out that it was the literal truth. Now it was driving him to prove otherwise.
He had lost a great deal of his immature indignation at being taken so dismissively upon his first visit to the workout room built to Nicole's standards. He couldn't even pick up anything.
Wynter warned him not to try the going-through-the-wall trick on high-density metals until he got a lot more practice at it. "Getting stuck at the atomic level might just kill you, or might produce an interactive nuclear-type explosion when your body tried to occupy the same space. But you can use the regular gym to work out like the rest of us. The walls there are only concrete, easily porous enough for practice."
Might *just* kill you. Only concrete. Practice. Like walking through walls was something everybody ought to be able to do, in between trigonometry and English Lit.
But he more than got the idea while watching Bruce and Clark doing their own tests.
Bruce closed his eyes, looked thoughtful, and began to change color and size. Wally started to yelp, started to look for a panic button, run for help, something. But Wynter was standing within five feet of the expanding, darkening body, arms crossed, watching critically, while Clark lounged casually against a weight machine that looked like it could easily double as a launch pad.
"Your metabolism is down," Wynter informed the Hulk. "You don't stand a chance against Kal-El unless you start eating better."
"I don't like greens," the growling voice responded.
Clark laughed. "Me neither, actually. But I'll bring some of our organic corn next time." He stepped away from the counterbalanced pile of metal and gestured with an elaborate bow. "You first."
Wally gulped when Hulk braced himself and lifted. He would have bet even money that there was no living force on Earth that could have gotten that mass off the floor. Hulk grunted, and tensed, and pushed it over his head.
"I am sufficiently impressed with Nicole's workouts," Hulk panted, lowering it carefully. "Your turn, mister Kent. Wynter, did I blow the sensors?"
"No, they're calibrated for Nikki, radiation and all. Good readout, in fact. We can compare your output curve all the way through. One minute, Kal."
Clark shrugged, positioned his hands, and shoved upwards. If it cost him any effort, Wally didn't see it on his face.
All of Wally's effort went to keeping his eyes from popping out of his skull. He'd actually been messing around with RACING this guy?
"Dammit! Kal-El, I meant for you to take a full minute! I didn't get more than ten seconds worth of decent readout!"
"Then use a complete sentence next time to tell me what you want! I can't read minds, you know? Especially yours!"
Wynter sighed. "Fine. When we check your heat vision and x-ray sight next time, I will be certain to explain to you exactly what not to look at. Until then, Bruce gets to pick out your next study assignment. You're as slow as Wally sometimes." He threw his hands in the air. "Excuse me while I go see if there's anything salvageable from the sensors. And run the weight sequence again. Slowly!"
Wally had decided that vibrating through plain old ordinary concrete walls would be a very comforting thing. It would be much too embarrassing to whine in front of the Hulk. And in front of Kal-El....
Heat vision? X-ray sight? Wally had to think that over about three times before he managed to chase and pin down the implications.
Clark. Crap. Clark, who looked like the boy next door, with an easy smile and a joking wink. Clark, who all but whined over donuts and then out-bench-pressed the Hulk. Clark could -- Clark had -- Clark wasn't --
He wasn't even going to try to think about what Clark was any more.
* * * * *
"No," Clark denied. "We don't need Wally. We don't need to put him at risk. It's me they know about, me they're after."
"Mister spaceman, you say that again, and I will hit you so fast you won't see it coming. I am NOT letting you go up against these creeps alone."
"I'll help you hit him," Bruce said mildly, but dropping his voice to a rumble as a reminder that he actually could.
Wynter sighed and ran both hands through his cat-fine shaggy mop. "Is everyone in this galaxy an idiot except John? Never mind. Clark, if anyone was watching to see your reaction to the rock they planted, and I'd bet a winning lotto ticket on somebody watching, they saw Wally too, which means he's already on the target list. If we're lucky, they'll just try to use a kryptonite bullet on him. If not, it might be a radioactive land mine. And until and unless you master his vibration trick, he's the only one who can get you away from at least thirty scenarios that I would really rather not have thought of."
"I could," Bruce offered.
"Which is why you're backup, not bait. But speed is the key. Oh, and guys, try to keep it down to three hundred or so. Momentum is a good friend but a bad master. Plus we want them to see you so that they'll show themselves."
Bruce nodded. "And my change is still too slow for that. And if they located Kal-El using any kind of energy detectors, they'll pick up on me too."
"We have a secret weapon there." Wynter grinned and flipped open his secure phone. Well, duh, the others thought, if there was any base Wynter and John between them hadn't already covered, they may as well give up here and now. "Kurt! Quit stealing the candy and get in here!" To Wally, "You haven't met Kurt yet -- for that matter, Bruce hasn't met Kurt yet -- because he's kind of excitable. And when he gets excited, he makes solar flares."
Excitable? Clark and Wally and even Bruce looked at each other in disbelief. Never mind the solar flares, but Wynter calling someone excitable?
"What did he mean about momentum being a bad master?" Wally muttered to Clark.
"Don't ask," Clark advised. "The physics homework is going to be enough of a pain as it is."
Bruce turned an unfamiliar color trying not to laugh.
* * * * *
Kurt was even more of a shock to Wally than Wynter had been. He was about the size of a nine-year-old, but there was something off about his appearance. Wally placed it after a few minutes: he was proportioned like an adult, in miniature. Not like a midget, but like someone seen through a distorted glass.
Of course, Wally reflected, someone who "made solar flares" might be a little something other than physically normal.
And he was, indeed, if not more hyper as Wynter, at least in the same class. Kurt ran in the room and jumped on Clark with a child's yell of delight. "Kal! Wanna see my new trick? I can melt steel too! Like this, watch!"
And then he wasn't just bouncing with energy, but radiating it. Wally backed up fast from the sudden intense heat, wide-eyed. Clark laughed, swinging the little boy in a circle. "Not around humans, big guy! You'll give everybody a sunburn. Later, okay?"
"I can keep it down!" the child protested. "And I can feel what you like now, even. Come on, we'll go outside, I'll do the whole sun, what's the word, spectrum? Wynter's teaching me. Electro-magnetic spectrum," he pronounced importantly.
"I bet you can. Okay, let's go out in the courtyard. You can melt down that awful statue if you put out a little too much."
"Hah, I can't put out too much for YOU."
"Probably not, but you might kick my energy levels up so high that I'll be the one to accidentally melt that awful statue. Let's aim for control, okay? Or Wynter will give us both more homework."
The boy nodded solemnly and then laughed as Clark tossed him in the air and caught him on an outstretched hand. "Again! I wanna do a flip!"
"Not until we're outside, big guy. And cool it on the microwaves!"
Wally looked over at Bruce. "I apologize for everything I ever said or thought about the Hulk. Kids THAT dangerous are hanging around here? And Clark does HOMEWORK?"
Bruce shook his head. "Son, as the saying goes, you ain't seen nothing yet." He thought for a second. "And a lot of it, you probably don't ever want to."
* * * * *
(a/n: thanks to LaCasta for a correction on the psych here, even if she did give me a ration for using the word paradigm.)
Baron John's computer team included not just mutants, but trained spies and detectives, top-level people who'd gotten fed up with working for stupid bosses and bureaucracies and found their way, through various channels, to an organization where real work could be done. It didn't take them long, with the extra information provided by the Specialist trackers, to pin down how the Smallville meteorite had gotten somewhere it shouldn't have been.
"CIA," Bruce said grimly. "I might have known."
"Rogue CIA," Wynter corrected. "The ones who serve a second master. International profiteers. Traitors, not to put too fine a point on it."
"Traitors to the whole damn human race," Wally growled. Two days of indoctrination and training at Special Operations had reversed his opinion entirely on the advisability of his comment about 'secret masters of the universe.'
Just one hour in comm central, watching the hundreds of inputs from all over the world, and the desperate measures that Special Operations people were all too often having to take to keep bad from going to much much worse, had made him avoid the cafeteria for the rest of the day. The world was a much more dangerous and unforgiving place than he'd been brought up to believe. "Giving your all" no longer meant just trying to beat a stopwatch.
Clark stayed silent, but his eyes dropped. Traitors to the human race -- but maybe not to an alien who had been ordered to rule them.
Wally caught it and punched his arm, grinning at him. "Hey, I'd rather have you as a pal than any of them, space guy." He got mad all over again thinking about the 'them'. "Traitors to everyone and everything alive," he expanded angrily, as much for Clark's sake as from his own intense disillusionment. "Traitors to their own families, with their, what's the word, they think they know best for everyone and are going to shove it down your throat whether you like it or not. Traitors who kill and claim it's to save people. Traitors and liars and thieves and -- "
"Fanatics," Bruce supplied. "Blinded by belief. Incapable of reason."
"Psychopaths," Wynter added critically. "Fairly typical of self-important people with a low sense of self-esteem who try to make up for it with the conviction that they're entitled to more without having to work for it, and that it's someone else's fault that they don't have it. Narcissism. They look in the mirror and call themselves superior beings without ever seeing the truth. They see others happy with what they are, and have to find a reason to blame those others for not being happy themselves. Skin color, religion, special abilities.... The names of what they claim to oppose in the guise of self-protection are interchangeable. The problem is always inside their own head."
"But they're after me because I'm an alien," Clark muttered, still not looking up.
"They're after you because you're an easy target," Wynter said impatiently. "One, you're everything they're not. It has nothing to do with your uniqueness. Exactly the opposite, in fact. What fuels their hate is that you use your capabilities to epitomize ideals that they can't live up to, instead of for personal gain. In short, that you're a better person than they are. Two, they found a weapon to use against you that can't be turned back on them. And when we find out who told them THAT, Lake and Nicole will make room in their schedule to deal with them."
Wally looked curious. Bruce looked unhappy. Clark blanched.
"Wynter, maybe I could just -- "
"Bruce, you wouldn't scare people like this badly enough. Even as Hulk, you've only ever hurt someone by accident. You don't have the psychological profile for an interrogator. You're an empty threat in that department. So don't even bother to bring it up again, because you wouldn't be able to reconcile your ethics with the necessities of getting their attention."
Wynter considered the three, appreciating that everyone else in the room was keeping silent, understanding that operations planning sometimes involved the most unlikely parties. "However, since you're here, you could be one jaw of our trap. There's a problem with that, so anyone involved has veto power, but it's the best I can think of on short notice."
Wally blinked at him. Thinking of something "on short notice" for Wynter was about as likely as him missing breakfast. "What's the problem?"
Wynter looked at Wally and Clark reluctantly, as if they were going off to war. "You two would be the bait."
* * * * *
(becs is entirely to blame for the silliest part of this section, too.)
The idea of pitting himself against the bad guys didn't bother Wally in the least. In fact, he welcomed the chance to prove himself to his new comrades. To convince them that it would be worth their while to count him as a friend, and maybe be accepted as one of them. Wynter's comment about him not being worth contacting had annoyed him a lot at first, until he found out that it was the literal truth. Now it was driving him to prove otherwise.
He had lost a great deal of his immature indignation at being taken so dismissively upon his first visit to the workout room built to Nicole's standards. He couldn't even pick up anything.
Wynter warned him not to try the going-through-the-wall trick on high-density metals until he got a lot more practice at it. "Getting stuck at the atomic level might just kill you, or might produce an interactive nuclear-type explosion when your body tried to occupy the same space. But you can use the regular gym to work out like the rest of us. The walls there are only concrete, easily porous enough for practice."
Might *just* kill you. Only concrete. Practice. Like walking through walls was something everybody ought to be able to do, in between trigonometry and English Lit.
But he more than got the idea while watching Bruce and Clark doing their own tests.
Bruce closed his eyes, looked thoughtful, and began to change color and size. Wally started to yelp, started to look for a panic button, run for help, something. But Wynter was standing within five feet of the expanding, darkening body, arms crossed, watching critically, while Clark lounged casually against a weight machine that looked like it could easily double as a launch pad.
"Your metabolism is down," Wynter informed the Hulk. "You don't stand a chance against Kal-El unless you start eating better."
"I don't like greens," the growling voice responded.
Clark laughed. "Me neither, actually. But I'll bring some of our organic corn next time." He stepped away from the counterbalanced pile of metal and gestured with an elaborate bow. "You first."
Wally gulped when Hulk braced himself and lifted. He would have bet even money that there was no living force on Earth that could have gotten that mass off the floor. Hulk grunted, and tensed, and pushed it over his head.
"I am sufficiently impressed with Nicole's workouts," Hulk panted, lowering it carefully. "Your turn, mister Kent. Wynter, did I blow the sensors?"
"No, they're calibrated for Nikki, radiation and all. Good readout, in fact. We can compare your output curve all the way through. One minute, Kal."
Clark shrugged, positioned his hands, and shoved upwards. If it cost him any effort, Wally didn't see it on his face.
All of Wally's effort went to keeping his eyes from popping out of his skull. He'd actually been messing around with RACING this guy?
"Dammit! Kal-El, I meant for you to take a full minute! I didn't get more than ten seconds worth of decent readout!"
"Then use a complete sentence next time to tell me what you want! I can't read minds, you know? Especially yours!"
Wynter sighed. "Fine. When we check your heat vision and x-ray sight next time, I will be certain to explain to you exactly what not to look at. Until then, Bruce gets to pick out your next study assignment. You're as slow as Wally sometimes." He threw his hands in the air. "Excuse me while I go see if there's anything salvageable from the sensors. And run the weight sequence again. Slowly!"
Wally had decided that vibrating through plain old ordinary concrete walls would be a very comforting thing. It would be much too embarrassing to whine in front of the Hulk. And in front of Kal-El....
Heat vision? X-ray sight? Wally had to think that over about three times before he managed to chase and pin down the implications.
Clark. Crap. Clark, who looked like the boy next door, with an easy smile and a joking wink. Clark, who all but whined over donuts and then out-bench-pressed the Hulk. Clark could -- Clark had -- Clark wasn't --
He wasn't even going to try to think about what Clark was any more.
* * * * *
"No," Clark denied. "We don't need Wally. We don't need to put him at risk. It's me they know about, me they're after."
"Mister spaceman, you say that again, and I will hit you so fast you won't see it coming. I am NOT letting you go up against these creeps alone."
"I'll help you hit him," Bruce said mildly, but dropping his voice to a rumble as a reminder that he actually could.
Wynter sighed and ran both hands through his cat-fine shaggy mop. "Is everyone in this galaxy an idiot except John? Never mind. Clark, if anyone was watching to see your reaction to the rock they planted, and I'd bet a winning lotto ticket on somebody watching, they saw Wally too, which means he's already on the target list. If we're lucky, they'll just try to use a kryptonite bullet on him. If not, it might be a radioactive land mine. And until and unless you master his vibration trick, he's the only one who can get you away from at least thirty scenarios that I would really rather not have thought of."
"I could," Bruce offered.
"Which is why you're backup, not bait. But speed is the key. Oh, and guys, try to keep it down to three hundred or so. Momentum is a good friend but a bad master. Plus we want them to see you so that they'll show themselves."
Bruce nodded. "And my change is still too slow for that. And if they located Kal-El using any kind of energy detectors, they'll pick up on me too."
"We have a secret weapon there." Wynter grinned and flipped open his secure phone. Well, duh, the others thought, if there was any base Wynter and John between them hadn't already covered, they may as well give up here and now. "Kurt! Quit stealing the candy and get in here!" To Wally, "You haven't met Kurt yet -- for that matter, Bruce hasn't met Kurt yet -- because he's kind of excitable. And when he gets excited, he makes solar flares."
Excitable? Clark and Wally and even Bruce looked at each other in disbelief. Never mind the solar flares, but Wynter calling someone excitable?
"What did he mean about momentum being a bad master?" Wally muttered to Clark.
"Don't ask," Clark advised. "The physics homework is going to be enough of a pain as it is."
Bruce turned an unfamiliar color trying not to laugh.
* * * * *
Kurt was even more of a shock to Wally than Wynter had been. He was about the size of a nine-year-old, but there was something off about his appearance. Wally placed it after a few minutes: he was proportioned like an adult, in miniature. Not like a midget, but like someone seen through a distorted glass.
Of course, Wally reflected, someone who "made solar flares" might be a little something other than physically normal.
And he was, indeed, if not more hyper as Wynter, at least in the same class. Kurt ran in the room and jumped on Clark with a child's yell of delight. "Kal! Wanna see my new trick? I can melt steel too! Like this, watch!"
And then he wasn't just bouncing with energy, but radiating it. Wally backed up fast from the sudden intense heat, wide-eyed. Clark laughed, swinging the little boy in a circle. "Not around humans, big guy! You'll give everybody a sunburn. Later, okay?"
"I can keep it down!" the child protested. "And I can feel what you like now, even. Come on, we'll go outside, I'll do the whole sun, what's the word, spectrum? Wynter's teaching me. Electro-magnetic spectrum," he pronounced importantly.
"I bet you can. Okay, let's go out in the courtyard. You can melt down that awful statue if you put out a little too much."
"Hah, I can't put out too much for YOU."
"Probably not, but you might kick my energy levels up so high that I'll be the one to accidentally melt that awful statue. Let's aim for control, okay? Or Wynter will give us both more homework."
The boy nodded solemnly and then laughed as Clark tossed him in the air and caught him on an outstretched hand. "Again! I wanna do a flip!"
"Not until we're outside, big guy. And cool it on the microwaves!"
Wally looked over at Bruce. "I apologize for everything I ever said or thought about the Hulk. Kids THAT dangerous are hanging around here? And Clark does HOMEWORK?"
Bruce shook his head. "Son, as the saying goes, you ain't seen nothing yet." He thought for a second. "And a lot of it, you probably don't ever want to."
* * * * *