Faster! Faster! Faster!
With a rumble from a barely avoided sonic boom from almost starting to vibrate his molecules too late trailing him, Kid Flash scorched along the interstates as fast as he possibly could, without even paying attention to where he was going.
For once the euphoria of using his super speed matched the events of his life. He zoomed across whole landscapes, valleys, mountain ranges and plains coming and going in less than the blink of an eye, his to call up and dismiss with his incredible sprinting. He let himself feel all the joy that using his power created. No need to bear down to patrol as well as possible or to figure out some crime. Just sprint at super speed and feel the joy of it, the joy of feeling like he had almost conquered three dimensions, like he could go almost anywhere on earth at any moment because he was specially in tune with the elements.
It had been a while since he'd tried to set new standards for his super speed. Recent missions hadn't required it. And he was almost 15, growing every day, probably able to sprint faster every month. He poured it on, running as fast as he could, going from state to state losing track of which one he was in at any time, just luxuriating in the sensuous feel of his power and how the pleasure of it finally matched the events of his life. JinxJinxJinxJinxJinx! Beautiful Jinx! My girlfriend Jinx! My girlfriend Jinx! Images of her as he kissed her, her glistening lips, the beguiling look of fascination in her eyes as she looked at the expensive book collection and Jinx laughing in the cafe all ran through the speedster's head.
Finally, near total exhaustion, his velocity down to just a few hundred miles per hour, he ran off the highway, down a ramp, looking for an open area. Things could get bumpy when his tank went completely empty. He saw a big parking lot and headed for it, finally coming to a standstill in front of a Wal Mart.
"Yes!" he shouted. "Yes!" with his arms raised over his head then dropped limply to his side. He looked around, panting but still grinning. The lot was almost empty. Light traffic whooshed gently past on the roads in the distance.
"Wal Mart, huh?" he muttered. "Well then there've gotta be soda machines."
Sure enough, there were, by the entrance at the corner of the building farthest from him. Kid Flash started walking toward them. He couldn't manage any greater speed at the moment.
There were a couple last to leave employees getting in their cars. One saw a brightly dressed boy walking across the parking lot and drove over to make sure there was no problem. He slowed a parking space width away, idling forward at the same speed as a walking and still hard breathing Kid Flash was making his way across the lot.
"Um, you okay son?"
"I'm . . great sir" he answered.
The man nodded as he tried to figure out why some athletic looking kid would get himself in some bright, skin tight suit and be walking across the parking lot of the store he managed.
"Mind my asking, why're you dressed up like that?"
"I'm Kid Flash"
"Yeah, I recognize the outfit. I've seen pictures on the news. My son really likes him. He-"
"No sir. I really am Kid Flash"
Kid Flash could see the man reach into his shirt pocket for his phone.
"Please don't bother anybody with a phone call sir"
The man kept hold of his phone but didn't flip it open.
"I get tired and I have to take a minute or so to regain my strength. Give me a minute and I'll show you some super speed." he said and took a dollar from under the wrist of his uniform and fed it into the machine. The machine spit out a juice and he practically poured it down his throat with no break.
"Aaahhhh. Just, um, just where is this, anyway? I wasn't paying much attention after the first few hundred miles."
"Oh, really" the man deadpanned skeptically "why not?"
"My girlfriend. I-"
"So, this is cuz of girl trouble?"
"You've got it all wrong. There's no trouble. Everything went terrific. We-"
"So, everything went great with some girl so you got dressed up in that tight suit pretendin' to be-"
"Mister! I really am Kid Flash! I'll show you. Just tell me where this is"
"Outside Memphis."
"And which way is west?"
The man pointed out the window.
"Okay, you said your son is a fan?"
The man nodded.
"Well, take a picture of me with that phone, if you can" said Kid Flash, feeling vitality returning with each passing second.
The man raised an eyebrow but flipped open his phone and took Kid Flash's picture standing there beside his truck and then watched as the red and yellow clad boy burst away from him as if shot from a gun, just a faint trail of color to indicate where he'd gone.
"Ho . . ly Sh . ."
Kid Flash sped away from the shocked man back onto the interstates to home and then vibrating through the side of the West house into his room. He switched to his civilian clothes and made his way to the bathroom. He took one of his super speed showers, lather his body in a quarter second and just need ten more to rinse clean and then put his civilian clothes back on. No need to explain a shower that way.
He ran a wash cloth over his face again and started brushing his teeth at normal speed, dancing to "I Like the Way You Move" playing in his head as he did.
The song was almost done in his mind when he heard a burst of giggles from the bathroom doorway.
It was his sister. She'd just snuck in the front door.
"Oh my
god" she laughed. "You! Dancing! You!". She doubled over
laughing, barely able to stifle the sounds.
"What got into
you?"
"I'm just in a good mood" he said after spitting out some paste.
She eyed him skeptically. "Did you meet a girl?"
"What's it matter to you?" he said, annoyed that she'd guessed so easily.
"Oh my god! You did!"
Damn, he clenched his jaw. How did she guess so easily?
"What kind of weirdo girl would be seen with you?"
"Never mind about me" he said and had to suspend his toothbrushing as she took over the sink to wash her face and then to put some toothpaste on her brush. He finally stepped forward to spit as she backed away to start brushing.
"Why do you wear those ridiculous pants?" she laughed tugging at the back pocket while he splashed water to wipe toothpaste from around his mouth and seeming to pull them a foot back of him.
"Hey" he swatted her hand away. "They're . . they're right for me"
"If you put on about a hundred fifty pounds" she smirked and gave another tug at the seat of his pants. "I'm surprised Aunt Iris ever let you pick stuff like that"
"She let me get whatever I wanted" he said, completely lying as he dried his hands.
She moved to the sink. "I understand the hat anyway. Thank god I don't have orange hair!"
"I like my hair. Look at this stringy rat's nest you have" said Wally spinning his fingers through her hair. She slapped at his hand.
"Maybe you have better hair than I do but the color's just too freaky. And if you like your hair so much why do you always hide it?"
Wally had no answer for her. And as she finished washing, a funny recollection occurred to her.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" she bounced in place. "At the party! At the party! They had a new name for you! You wanna hear?"
"No but you'll tell me anyway"
"These boys came in halfway through and they were all like, this is lame. So we were all like, no it's not. You're lame. So they were all like calling us names and we called them names back and when they like wanted to try to dis me, they said 'Oh, that's Gangsta Geek's sista'. Gangsta Geek! They called you Gangsta Geek" she said with a delighted giggle. "Gangsta Geek!"
"Yeah, I heard you the first time"
"It's perfect, with your huge ass pants and hat and and your attitude and your being such a nerd" She smiled at him hoping for an effect but it was the same as always, like a bullet bouncing off a tank.
"That really hurts" he deadpanned, "coming from a girl who thinks she should be able to use issues of Seventeen and Teen Vogue as the subjects of book reports"
"At least they're more interesting than Abstract Physic Security" she sneered then laughed at her ridiculous brother.
That was close to the real title of a book in his room on complex electronic security systems, The Abstract of Physical Security Systems. But she shouldn't have seen it. He blocked her escape from the bathroom.
"You were in my room, weren't you? How do you know about that book if you weren't in my room"
"I didn't go in your little geek ghetto. The door was open and I could see it on top of that stack of other ultra brainiac books, the-the, what was it" she giggled "The Forensic Ballistics Handbook!" she burst into laughter.
"You don't even make sense for a geek. The rest of 'em cram for tests while you're-you're . . I don't know what the hell you're doing. You know, you're so far out there you hurt my cred"
Wally smirked. "I'm so sorry. But I stay out of your room. You stay out of my room, Capiche?" he said.
"Wally! What are you doing up?" came the voice of his mother from behind him first at the top of the stairs than finishing at the bottom. Wally pushed his sister to one side of the doorway and out of view.
"I . . got in late mom" he said turning off the light in the bathroom and walking past her at the bottom of the stairs.
"I don't want you waking your sister. Who do you think you are coming in this late and making noise?"
Wally sighed. "Sorry mom"
"Don't let it happen again! It's bad enough you dress like a thug. I don't know why you are whatever it is you are but I'm not going to have you drag down your sister . . "
Wally's mouth dropped open. He sighed, nodded and shuffled off to his room, the converted breezeway off the kitchen. He stepped over the stacks of books and onto his bed, the tired old springs of the mattress creaking under his 123 pounds. He pulled off all his clothes, slipped under the covers and turned out the light. He was starting to doze off in just a minute when he heard his sister's voice from just outside his slightly ajar door in a sing-song taunt.
"Wally's got a secret girl-friend!"
"You brat!" he muttered.
"Wally's got a secret girl-friend!"
"Wally's got a secret girl-friend!"
"Wally's got a secret girl-friend!"
Wally shook his head with a smile dozing off with her words slowly running through his head. Wally secret girlfiend .. got . .secret . . . Wally . . . girlfriend . . . got . . . secret . . .
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZTTTT!
"Aaaarrrrrgggghhhh!"'
Wally woke with a surge of pain.
Zzzzzt! Zzzzzt!
Electric shocks seemed to tear at his internal organs.
"Aaaarrrrrggggghhh!"
His insides felt as though they were splitting apart from the pain. He could barely breathe. He tried to move, tried to run away, but couldn't. What the . . !
He had his Kid Flash uniform on and was somehow tied by the wrists and ankles to some kind of metal mesh in the middle of some half lit, semi-circular industrial sort of room. He started his molecules vibrating and tried to move through them but couldn't.
"What the . .!"
"Hehehe! I told ya! I told ya that's what he'd do!"
Holding his head up he saw Gizmo in front of him. But worse than that was that Gizmo was just one in a crowd of villains among whom were The Brain, Madame Rouge, Gorilla Grodd, Slade, Mammoth, See-More and a whole bunch of Billy Numerouses. Slade extended a prod forward and shocked him again. Kid Flash tensed every muscle in his body with the pain. He tried again to vibrate through the simple metallic looking bonds holding him in place but somehow couldn't.
"I told ya!" laughed Gizmo. "He's so predictable"
"Is no great achievement when it was actually girrel who prowided ze real information" snarled Madame Rouge.
"Girl?" said a frantic Kid Flash, suspecting what that meant and then seeing it confirmed as Jinx stepped forward.
"Did you really think I'd go good for some nice words and a few dances?"
"But Jinx . . "
"Oh, save it. You're such a sentimental sap. You make like you're Mr. Stoic Tough Guy but you're weak. Baby Flash is more like it. You babbled out all your secrets like nothing. How did we ever have trouble whipping your butt before?"
"But Jinx. Didn't you-"
Zzzzzzt Zzzzzt Slade shocked Kid Flash again. The pain was tremendous.
"I have no patience for this melodrama" he droned over Kid Flash's groans. "Let's try it"
"Try it. Try what!" Kid Flash blurted out and saw to his horror that some sort of silvery futuristic rifle was handed forth to Slade, who was standing off to one side of the group.
"Don't worry" he said in his usual dead monotone. "The purpose here isn't to blow you to pieces. On the contrary. We want you to live to see if the super speed eliminating capsule we're going to shoot into you works. If it does, you'll only be the first Flash to feel its sting and become just another guy, no faster than many of those in this room"
He brought the gun to his shoulder, as Kid Flash flinched, then fired.
"Yeeooww!" Kid Flash yelped as he felt the capsule go into the side of his hip. He desperately wanted to reach and pull it out, whatever it was, but couldn't move in his restraints. What was at first just a sting at that one spot on his hip spread all over his rear end and then all over his body.
"My-muscles are on fire" gasped Kid Flash. The fire seemed to continue and then he felt weak, exhausted even before slowly feeling his body cool and return to a painful approximation of normal. To his surprise, the bonds holding him retracted back into the metal mesh against which he'd been pressed. He fell to the floor but quickly gathered himself, with a fierce look over his shoulder at Slade.
He rushed him. But something was wrong. Slade was easily quick enough to block his flying kick and knock Kid Flash to the floor. He had executed it no faster than any other athletic boy his size might have.
"My super speed . . it's . . !"
"Gone" declared Slade.
Kid Flash got to his feet and ran for the door at the back of the room. A platform heel clad foot stabbed out from the crowd of snickering villain onlookers as the 8th grade boy was running past, at a speed not much different from other 8th grade boys. He was tripped and went cartwheeling forward onto his face. He looked back from the floor and saw a triumphant Jinx stepping forward. She was poised to bash him over the head with a "Caution, Wet Floor" sign but her swing was stopped by Slade.
"Let him go my dear." said the vile monotone. "He's nothing now. The best punishment for him is to let him go. He doesn't have you. He doesn't have a real family. He doesn't have friends. He's not special in any way. Let him go back to his life of isolated, grinding poverty. Ha ha. Ahahaha. Ahahahahahahaha!"
The villains all joined in laughing at him.
"Noooooo!" Wally shouted sitting bolt upright in the bed of his darkened little room and panting.
Rrrroww! Empress the neighbor's abyssinian knocked aside from his chest jumped for the window and then out of the house.
"Sorry, Empress. I . " Wally apologized but the cat was gone.
Wally jumped out of bed. He was bathed in sweat from head to toe. Slowly, hesitantly, feeling ridiculous but not certain he felt on the side of his buttock for any kind of mark. Nothing. Nothing but smooth skin. He sighed in relief. Hmmm.
"I-I should shower again" he muttered to himself, wanting an excuse to use super speed as much as to wash. He was in the shower. A millisecond, perhaps as little as a microsecond was all it took between the thought and his having arrived there.
"Just a dream. Just a bad bad dream" sighed Wally and he turned on the spray and lathered up in a quarter second. Ten seconds later he was out, dried and back in bed. She wouldn't do that to me.
Elsewhere, Jinx had gone home in a buoyant mood. The "escort" girls on their usual corner immediately saw something different in her walk and her look.
"You go girl!" cheered one with a fist pump as Jinx marched past. "You musta found a good one"
"No frog warts on this one, huh?" smiled another.
Jinx grinned to herself. Not this one.
She barely controlled her urge to run the rest of the way to her cousin's friend's apartment. She saved it for the last flight of stairs up to the third floor apartment. Her cousin's friend was out. She had a boyfriend somewhere in the city. He hadn't sounded like anything special from her descriptions. He wasn't like . . . Jinx didn't say his name to herself. She formed the picture of him at the table in the cafe and then waltzing in that mansion. He wasn't a ridiculous clown like that Beast Boy. Or overbearing like Robin. She'd worried that he would be an airhead behind that initial facade of charm and understanding or a controller. But . .
She sighed and shook her head with her arms wrapped tight about herself. Kid Flash.
She set up the futon for bed and turned out the lights wondering for a moment if she'd somehow missed something. Storybook never happened to me before. Was this what storybook was like? Was it too storybook? She fell asleep with a sigh.
She was outside the Crane mansion with Kid Flash. They each had their last sip from a flute of champagne. She gazed into his big, dazzling blue eyes.
"This couldn't be more perfect" she whispered. "It's like a storybook"
He nodded in agreement.
"Rrrrriiiiibbbbbiiiiiittttt!"
The spell of enchantment was broken.
"Wh-what did you say?"
"Kid Flash, fastest bullfrog alive" he proudly declared.
"What!"
"You heard me"
"I-I . . "
An uncommonly large fly had been buzzing around them. In a flash, his tongue snapped out of his mouth, over her shoulder a foot past her and snagged the fly in midair.
"Yuck!" she was repulsed and looked on in shock as first his peaches and cream skin turned a little green, then half green then dark green with a tinge of brown. As this transformation took place, his orange hair fell out and the shape of his face changed. His eyes became even larger and seemed to move to the top of his head while his nose practically disappeared as did his ears. His mouth got wider and wider. Then, his posture changed. He went from standing ramrod straight the way Kid Flash did, to slightly stooped then crouching, then poised to jump from all fours. Then he did jump, right out of his Kid Flash uniform to a spot at her feet.
Jinx looked down in horror at the super cute boy now turned into a 123 pound bullfrog. She stared and stared.
Him too!
As she watched, he took the giant fly, big as a robin, from his long elastic tongue and secured it under a slimy, webbed green foot. He stared back at her. There still seemed to be human understanding in him, it seemed to her. Finally, he spoke to break the silence.
"Could I get some mustard? This looks a little dry"
"What!" she demanded furiously.
"My fly. It looks a little-"
She sent out bolts of hex energy swatting him back into a lillypad covered pond. He splashed in and then came up, just the top half of his bullfrog face showing above the water. Two big blue eyes looked at her. One eye winked at her.
"Ew! No. You're a frog"
"Oh come on" said the giant Kid Flash bullfrog. "You sure wanted me on two legs. Am I so different? Or are you leg-ist!"
"Yes! I mean to the next to last one. I mean to all of them! I mean, of course it matters how many legs you walk on!"
But the aggressive Kid Flash bullfrog wouldn't take no for an answer. It leaped out from the pond all the way to her, grabbing her in its slimy green embrace. It pressed its huge bullfrog mouth to hers and then she felt its tongue, the same tongue used to snare flies in midair-"
"AAAAAHHHHHHH!" Jinx woke with a scream. The power in the building went out long enough for every alarm clock to reset to 12:00 and be hours behind.
She regained her bearings and lay back down to sleep with just a single thought before dozing off again. That's not him.