Before he could finish complaining, the top few floors were ripped off and went sailing over the tops of the other buildings.
"At least I still have my quarters on the Watch Tower. Guys," he addressed the Justice League, "if we don't do something, people are gonna die."
The Justice League, led by Flash, yelled as they charged the line of villains. They scattered, doing things like flipping up backwards through the air to get an advantage when they landed or spinning at an incredible speed or using a specially-designed party favour that forced Flash on his knees, clutching his head from the sound, or whatever else they did to get away. Captain Cold just ran, but that's not really great.
J'onn made himself very dense and hit Trickster straight on, liberating Flash from his open captivity.
As soon as he was free, a familiar hand wrapped around Flash's neck.
"Oh, my Scarlet Speedster. It's been too long. I've been waiting for you." Magenta began lifting herself and Flash in the air, bending several iron girders as she did it. There was something different about her, but Flash couldn't put a finger on it.
"Sorry, babe. Red and pink don't go together." (3)
"You're quite the hero, you know. Too bad you were only," she snorted a laugh, "a Flash in the pan."
Before she could kill him, however, every other member of the Justice League pounced on the villainess. Flash stood up and brushed off his pants.
"And that's what you get for that pun."
Flash went speeding toward Captain Cold while trying to steer clear of his ice gun although he had yet to shoot at anything. Before Captain Cold could be reached, a ball of clay splatted around his left foot. Flash went crashing to the ground, twisting his ankle in the process.
Noticing what was on its merry way to his location, Flash desperately tried to pry off the clay footwear. It was not going. Right before he was about to try and vibrate his way out of it, a large transparent green (and might I say, really hard) wall slammed into him. It shoved him, the clay shoe, and a lot of the ground backwards about a hundred feet. Flash fell backwards when his ride stopped.
"Flash!" Green Lantern yelled, flying down to his location. "I missed," was his simple explanation.
Flash waved a flaccid hand to Lantern and opened his eyes. He sat up quickly, narrowly missing Hawkgirl's mace almost crushing his skull and splurting his brains all over the pavement.
Hawkgirl flew down to retrieve her fallen mace, apologizing sheepishly for dropping it. Green Lantern came to her aid.
"Oh, don't feel bad, Shayera. It's not your fault you dropped it."
"Um," Flash pointed. Another ball of clay was heading for him, this time aimed for his face. Lantern grabbed it out of the air and threw it at Top.
"That'll teach him to mess with my Shayera," Lantern said.
"Aww, this is all very sweet, but could someone get this off'a me!" Flash yelled.
Green Lantern put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. "Yo, Superman!"
Superman responded in a timely fashion, although his bedside manner left something to be desired.
"What!"
It's a pretty common reaction when the gum you just accepted from The Trickster explodes in your mouth and turns it blue, but it was still rude. (4) Rude or not, Superman punched The Trickster hard enough to send him flying backwards on his stolen, flying shoes and not get up again right away, then came over to Green Lantern. Only Batman noticed the slight shift in The Trickster's form.
"'Sup, Supes?" Flash said in that amiable but incredibly impatient way. He moved the leg owning the captured foot. "Think you could help out here?"
Superman shot it with his heat vision. The clay hardened and cracked, then broke into a dusty-orange powder with a decrescendoing pfff. (5) As soon as Flash was free, he ran (albeit with a slight limp) back into the battle.
"Hey!" Wonder Woman called, "Anyone see where Top and Reverse Flash went?"
Superman flew up to meet her. Lantern and Hawkgirl followed.
"I haven't seen Reverse Flash since everybody lined up."
"This does not bode well," J'onn said, solidifying beside them.
"Something isn't right here." Hawkgirl glanced at the scene below her. "Captain Cold is missing now, too."
"So what? He was just standing around anyway," Superman said.
"I know. Something isn't right here," she repeated.
"Lantern, bring Batman up here."
A large green hand grabbed the Dark Knight so he could be part of the impromptu meeting. He struggled against it until Green Lantern turned it into a platform.
Superman cocked his head to the side. "Super strength - check," he nodded.
Batman plopped himself down and sat Indian-style and pouted. Darkly.
"Have you noticed anything strange down there?" Wonder Woman asked him.
"Besides a polymorphic clay man aided by Flash's enemies? A little."
"We've not time to discuss it," J'onn reminded.
"Right," Superman agreed. "Something is going to hit, hard and soon. If we're going to keep Flash alive through this, we need to get him out of here."
"Without giving away why," Batman said. Wonder Woman scowled.
While the bad guys were busy swatting the police away like flies, Flash took the opportunity to find out why he was being ignored again.
"Hey," he said under them. As they were only about ten feet off the ground, there was no need for outside voices. "What's going on up there?"
Superman acted like he was still too high for the meeting to be directly interfered by Flash. "Flash is really going to have to L-E-A-V-E," he spelled.
"I can hear you," Flash said. "And I can still spell. And I'm not leaving."
"Who taught him how to spell?" he asked the group.
Remembering how J'onn had made such a lousy conduit, Batman said something low enough that only Superman could hear.
"The only way to save him is to piss him off," he barely whispered. "A mad Flash is better than a dead Flash."
Superman nodded with a raised eyebrow and pressed lips, not liking that he agreed. "He should be doing something while we talk," he whispered back. Batman furrowed his brow and barely shook his head.
"Oh, right," he said full voice. "Super hearing - check. Listen, Flash," Superman started, but Flash had already shot away. People were starting to get seriously hurt, and he couldn't let that happen.
"Batman said we need to make him mad," Superman told the rest of the group, "and that a mad Flash is better than a dead Flash."
"You'd think," muttered Lantern.
"If Lachesis has finished measuring and Atropos is about to cut, the only way we can save him is to take it up with them," Wonder Woman said. "And I know how. Word has it that Atropos tried to seduce Lachesis' boyfriend. I guess he likes older women. PS, Lord help the sister who comes between me and my man."
J'onn looked nonchalantly away as he thought to everyone without the slightest trace of an accent, 'Oy, that woman can be such a yenta.'
'Maybe you shouldn't watch the TV today,' Green Lantern postulated.
"Where do you suppose we go, Diana?" Batman asked. "I doubt we can leave Flash by himself while we try and find these Fates of yours."
"I doubt we can leave Flash by himself while we're having this meeting," Superman said.
On the ground below, Reverse Flash screamed toward Flash. It was a little challenged and awkward, but he didn't have that far to run. Flash was grabbed around the throat with a strength he didn't remember Reverse Flash possessing, and Reverse Flash squeezed. The other enemies surrounding Flash wailed on him, resorting to physical blows instead of their powers as if they wanted to feel his life ebb away with their own hands. This seemed personal.
They, too, had a strength they didn't have before. This was especially noticeable when Captain Cold managed to break three ribs in one punch. Flash even noticed with a fading consciousness that the Captain didn't even have his cold gun anymore, not that he had used it today anyway. Without having anything better to do, he wondered, 'Maybe it's outta juice.' Then he didn't wonder anything anymore.
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(3) Red and pink do not go together, and if I ever hear anyone say they do, I swear to Eminent Erinnyes . . .
(4) Seriously, who would accept anything from someone named "The Trickster?"
(5) I'm not entirely sure that's even a word, when something decrescendos like that. And I'm pretty sure that word I just used as an action verb is supposed to be the plural version. Uh, it gets my point across anyway.
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I agree with you, Hatake Naruto. Yeah, some of it crosses the threshold and spins off into ridiculousness. It depends on my sleep to caffiene ratio and how bored I am in class. I was actually going to upload an abridged version that left out some of the weirder stuff, but then I thought, "What the Hell?" It flows pretty well when you read it all together, I think, but I could be biased. Besides, I'm totally okay if you wanted to download the text and edit until your heart's content, then read it over and over and over and put your hands on your hips and knowingly tilt your head and say, "That invisiblescaper. She's really something else." And you'd better say it. I'll know if you don't.
By the way (not that I think anyone would do this, but just for the record), this is not license for anyone to download the text and edit until your heart's content, then put it up as your own. I'm not totally okay with that.
As for the phasing thing, that's what I found, too. But here's the beauty of humor/AU: not everything has to be perfect. Oy, some people are so strict about continuity, so if anything's out of line, I'll just chalk it up to it being an alternate universe. Hooryay for loopholes!
Oh, I'm leaving for Memphis tomorrowfor somewhere around a week. If I die on the trip, sorry. I guess the story'll have to end here, even though I'll probably finish the whole thing while I'm out there. Probably what'll happen is I'll finish it, get all the way back home, and get hit by a bus or something, ptoy, ptoy, ptoy. Wouldn't that be hilarious?