Wonder Woman groaned. "I thought we were done with all this Flash-dying stuff."
"It could be that he was meant to die today, and we stopped it," Batman hypothesized. "The time-space continuum tends to hate that."
"So what do we do about it?" Hawkgirl asked. "We can't very well keep him chained up."
"No, but he should be kept under constant surveillance," Batman said. "I say in the brig since it's toward the centre of the station and is relatively isolated from anything dangerous."
"I'm not sure the brig is necessary," Superman said. "He'll be fine in his room."
"I say we vote on it," Wonder Woman supplied. "You know, the Greeks-"
"No voting," said Superman, not because he was acting like a Justice Lord as was the impression, but because he was so sick of hearing about those blasted Greeks.
"Aren't you going to stand up for me?" Wonder Woman asked Batman.
Batman shrugged. Wonder Woman punched him in the arm and flew away. Hawkgirl went somewhere, too, 'cause I'm done with her in this scene.
"Trouble in paradise?" Superman asked. He was ignored, but he continued. "You know, girls never hit me. I think it's because I have super powers."
They started for Flash's room so they could inform him of their decision to ground him. Before they reached Flash, Superman leaned in close to Batman. "Super leadership ability - check."
"Now you're just making stuff up."
"It's a little thing I do."
A few minutes later, Flash's rest was broken when the door beeped. He sighed as his head lolled around to see the door, like that would help at all. (18) He finally decided to get up and open it.
Superman and Batman were housed in the doorway, looking very serious.
"You're going to get wrinkles if you keep that up, guys," he said with a halfhearted grin.
"We've come to a decision," Superman said. "It's like this-"
"You're staying in your room," Batman interrupted, cutting right to the point.
"What?" Flash snorted. "I'm grounded now?"
"It's for your own good," Superman said paternally.
"In other words, we've got too much to do to save you from every heavy object or projectile on the station," Batman said, um, siblingally.
"You get some rest-"
"And stay out of our way."
Flash screwed up his face. "Have you ever thought of taking this act on the road? You'd kill doing Vaudeville."
Batman closed the door as a reply to Flash's sass mouth. He turned to return to the command deck and get their sensors back into shape. Superman stood in front of the door for a minute before following Batman.
"You really think we'd make it big?"
Batman did not respond.
Before Flash could lie back down, there was a knock on his door followed by, "Flash? I got you something. It's to make you feel better."
Flash opened the door and saw Wonder Woman holding a plush gorilla toy.
"Um, I'm not so much a fan of monkeys anymore," he said, but tried to take it anyway.
Wonder Woman grip tightened on the gorilla when she saw his crutches and his bandaged torso and head and his wrist and that puncture wound and burst into tears. He was supposed to die today, sometime, and it was just killing her she couldn't tell him about it.
"It's not that bad, Princess," he said, trying to ease her pain that he didn't like her gift. Wonder Woman dropped the gorilla and flew away, covering her eyes as she was not able to stand to look at the poor man any longer.
Flash cocked his head and used a crutch to knock the gorilla into his quarters. "Eh," Flash said as he looked at the toy, "I'm not keeping this monkey."
On the command deck, Batman had just finished fixing the sensor console. No sooner had he put the protective cover on it did it begin to show very strange readings.
"There's a hull breech somewhere," he said. "Now several."
"Does it say where?" Superman asked.
Batman punched some buttons on the console and a schematic of the Watch Tower appeared on the big screen. One cubby was blinking red.
"That's Flash's quarters."
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(18) It's the same like what people do when announcements come in over an intercom and they have to look at it. Maybe they see something I don't.
· ¤§¤ ·
Oh! Hey . . . um . . .
I got nothin'.