Kid Flash raced back to the Borders book store at top speed. As he approached, he saw an unmarked police cruiser in the process of turning into the parking lot. He sprinted to the back of the building and vibrated through the wall near where he'd gone through with Jinx a few moments earlier. He slowed to a stop inside the store and walked slowly through toward the door, making a good, conspicuous show of looking for Jinx. He went into a sprint and vibrated through the entrance doors before stopping beside the driver's side of the unmarked cruiser in a spot facing the entrance.

The driver rolled down the window. Kid Flash bent over.

"There's no Jinx in there" he reported.

"You're sure?" asked the plainclothes driver.

"Winston showed me her picture at the desk at headquarters. That girl is not in there"

"Jesus" snorted the guy passenger side. "That's a pretty hard thing to get wrong, isn't it, pink hair and eyes, I mean"

"Djou look in the women's bathroom?"asked the passenger side cop.

"Oh jeez, no" admitted Kid Flash. "Sort of a modesty, politeness thing with me"

"Brennan and Doyle will kill us if we don't check" said the driver. "MF'ing MH squad". So, the two cops got out and went into the Borders with Kid Flash. One went to the back of the store and knocked on the door to the women's bathroom before going in. No one. They looked around. No Jinx. After a few minutes they were all back near the entrance where Kid Flash noticed an older woman with a Borders bag eyeing him nervously from behind one of the displays.

"Don't most people leave after they've bought their books" he muttered to one of the cops nodding in her general direction.

"Let's see what she does if we flash badges" said the driver and, sure enough, once he and the other cop hung their badges on the waists of their jeans the woman ambled toward them, looking at the officers with relief but casting occasional nervous glances at Kid Flash.

"Oh, thank god. I didn't know if you were policemen or if you were with them" she said

"Them, ma'am?" asked the driver, the leader of the two.

"The villains and the mutants and the freaks" she said with a look at Kid Flash. "I don't know many of 'em but I knew her. I saw her on Hard Copy, the story about the Teen Titans. And she was in one of the pictures in The Star. Look!" she said and reached into her bag past what Kid Flash could see was a romance novel and a copy of the latest edition of Vanity Fair magazine to a copy of The Star. She flipped through the pages, exasperatingly thumbing at the last one before the intended page five times before turning it to reveal a picture of a fight between The HIVE and the Teen Titans.

"That's her. She was here. I'm sure of it. So, I called"

Kid Flash rolled his eyes at the other cop who had an expression of great forbearance and sighed.

"You're sure you saw this girl, ma'am?" said the first officer, pointing at the image on the page. She held up her right hand as if testifying.

"On a stack of bibles" she said. She had her hair in a scarf but you could see the edges of it and it was pink. Pink! I walked by her once and thought I saw her eyes. They're pink too, you know. She was talking to some hoodlum boy, probably planning something."

Kid Flash sighed.

"So, I went to the pay phone outside and called in that that villain girl Jinx was in the book store on this road and the-the dispatcher woman was asking 'are you sure' and I said that I was but I came back inside anyway. What if I was wrong? But there she was on the bench over" she said pointing to the bench on which Kid Flash in civilian clothes had been kissing Jinx. "She was with the hoodlum boy, practically putting on a sex show and at one point she-she was looking up at the ceiling smiling some . . sex smile-" the second officer and Kid Flash shared a quick glance "-and her eyes glowed pink. They glowed . . pink! It was her allright!"

"Well, ma'am, Kid Flash here and officer Colavito and I have searched the store but we don't think she's in here. Did she sneak out before we arrived?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm positive. I've been over here by the new non-fiction since I made the call. She never went out that door"

"Could she have gotten past you when you looked away, perhaps?"

The woman stammered indignantly before the second officer asked, "How about the boy, ma'am, the, uh, hoodlum boy. Is he still here? Could you describe him for us?"

She sighed. "Well, it's kind of hard. He was wearing those hoodlum clothes, you know, with the pants much bigger than his fanny and a hat indoors, and all, you know"

"Give it your best shot" he said pulling a pad of paper and pen from his pocket.

"Well, not to brag, but I do have a photographic memory-"

"Oh, good, ma'am"

"He was six feet tall and about a hundred eighty five pounds. Green eyes, blond hair. I saw just a lock or two under his hat, athletic and young, maybe a few years older than him" she said, pointing to Kid Flash. The officer wrote down her description. "Ah, eyewitness testimony" thought Kid Flash. From the theft detectors by the door, the two officers looked for a boy matching that description. Kid Flash made a show of it as well, zipping about the store before returning to the officers at the entrance. The first officer turned to the woman.

"Ma'am. Are you sure you didn't look down or away even once?"

"I didn't. I saw 'em go to the back of the store and, well, I looked down for a minute then, you see, I got this bunion and-"

"Well, that must be it ma'am. Hoodlums and villains are sneaky people they might have just been pretending to go one way only to head the other to escape"

"But how did they know?"

"That's their job, ma'am" said the second cop. "If they couldn't tell they were being watched we'd catch 'em all much quicker."

"Of course!"

The officer who'd taken down the description took down her name and telephone number and thanked her profusely as they all made their way out of the store. Kid Flash waved goodbye to her along with the officers and walked to their car with them.

"What jury wouldn't be impressed by a witness basing her positive identification on The Star, unless of course it's more of an Enquirer sort of jury." said Kid Flash. "Say, what I'd like to know is just what the charge against this Jinx is, anyway. Winston sort of sidestepped my question at the desk, which was kind of odd. Just bring her in for questioning. Questioning about what?" he asked.

But before the officers could answer, a Lincoln Navigator swung into the lot and went straight to them. The window rolled down and the driver, a guy in his late 30's with angular, almost too sharp features spoke past the passenger, a woman a few years younger, blond of brunette origin and pretty.

"Officers Strickland and Colavito, right?"

"Yeah, Captain"

The captain nodded to them.

Kid Flash raised one hand. "Kid Flash here, too, guess I won't get noticed till I wear something conspicuous, huh?"

The driver recognized him with a quick, unfriendly glance. "What've we got?" he asked Strickland.

"We got a somewhat batty old lady who thought she saw that pink haired girl, Jinx in the store" he shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not."

"Hey, sounded pretty ironclad to me, I mean, she had The Star as a reference" joked Kid Flash.

"What?"

"Yeah, Captain, she was comparing what she saw to a picture in The Star."

He rolled his eyes in resignation. Kid Flash stepped forward to the door of the navigator. "Captain, with just what crime was she charged?"

"You don't have a right to know that?"

"What? You were happy enough to send me in to take care of her if she was here but you won't tell me what the charge was?"

"Being a meta-human does not entitle you to restricted police information"

"A what?"

"Meta-human" he repeated. "People like you and that girl"

"Meta-human? That's a bit creepy. Sounds kind of eugenics and Third Reich-ish, doesn't it? Did Steel City have the copyright on Ubermenschen so you had to go with that?"

"Look, wiseass" he said shifting the SUV into park, "That's the accepted term in the community"

"Which community is that? I've always been called a hero and been proud of it. The guys doing wrong are the, uh, villains. You, uh, you wanna take notes or something?"

The captain swore under his breath then put the vehicle into drive and screeched into the nearest parking spot nearly jumping out of the vehicle and walking up to Kid Flash to stand over him looking down as the woman followed behind him.

"Listen skinny ass-"

"Whoa! Whoa! Before you even start" said Kid Flash "How 'bout backing off on the power postioning?" he said and took a long step back to be three feet from the captain, beside the unmarked car. "Okay, rant"

"It's in your file that you act like this sometimes. So I'm not surprised. But the days of people like you doing whatever they want are coming to an end"

"Time out" said Kid Flash making the hand signal and also glancing at the woman, now standing behind him to one side. "I just made a couple jokes. And as for doing whatever I want, I was with my girlfriend when this call came in and I answered it even though I would infinitely rather have stayed with her. Doing whatever I want! I-I've trashed my personal life a hundred times over to patrol and to answer calls like this. It doesn't mean much either way but if you want me to do dirty work for you I think I ought to be apprised of the charge. How will I know where to go from here in investigating her if I don't know what the charge is?

"There isn't a charge" came the voice from over his shoulder, the woman.

"Excuse me? You wanted me to capture a person against whom no charge has been filed?" said Kid Flash to the woman and Captain Brennan. "I'm so sorry about that Third Reich joke"

"Homeland Security, mister!" she said raising her voice and walking around to stand beside the Captain. "We can detain on suspicion," she explained.

"Suspicion of what?"

"Jinx is a meta-human" she said as if that was enough.

"She's practically a weapon of mass destruction, herself" added the captain.

Kid Flash turned to Strickland and Colavito. "You guys really need to be more careful about access to the drug lockup". Colavito smirked.

"She fires bolts of energy" he continued over Captain Brennan's furious expletive. "Hexes I guess. But I thought it was just a one on one sort of thing. And I've heard rumors that she's not even on the villain side of things any more, anyway."

"What a quaint, term" said the blond woman. "Villain. You seem like a very smart boy. You know history. You speak well. Do you realize how naïve the terms 'hero' and 'villain' are? Look at you. What are you, a 14, 15, maybe 16 year old boy?"

"In that area"

"And you could probably kill all of us in less than the blink of an eye, right?"

Kid Flash scowled. "I don't . . I don't think in terms like that. I don't go around thinking of-of whom I could kill"

She smiled. "Whom. Object pronoun. See. You're a very smart boy. And you know it's true. You have incredible power. You know just how incredible. Captain Brennan referred to your file. It's thick as a telephone book, all about you. We think we know what you can do. Shouldn't the city be at least a little concerned about all that power in the hands of a boy in the middle of puberty, his hormones raging, going through relationships with girls, his moods pinballing around? What if he pulls on his uniform some day in a particulary bad mood and doesn't feel like doing the right thing?"

"But I've always done the right thing! Don't I get credit for that? I've trashed my personal life in the process of doing this and I've pulled on this uniform in some of the blackest moods possible. But I've always tried to be a hero. Why doesn't that matter any more?"

Brennan jumped in. "You're more trouble than you're worth, that's why!"

"What?"

"The stats show it!" he added.

The blond woman stepped in as Kid Flash frowned at the ridiculousness of his statement. "Statistical analysis tends to show that clustering of villains" she made rabbit ear quotation marks "correlates with the presence of heroes." more rabbit ear quotation marks

"Um, it also correlates with concentrations of wealth and population, doesn't it?"

"Well-"

"And that doesn't prove weather the clustering of heroes or the clustering of villains was the antecedent condition or whether there's a predicating factor outside of either circumstance, does it?"

She scowled at him. He wasn't supposed to be this smart. The file just said wiseass and cocky. "Look, I don't have time to get into the whole study. The bottom line is that-"

"The bottom line is that you've got a conclusion that you can't defend against the alternative hypotheses that I raise. But you still want to make decisions on the basis of it"

She gave him a look that could kill. He met her eyes.

"But I'm the one whose power is troubling?"

"Listen, smartass. You two can debate the footnotes and ibid or ipso facto and all the studies on the side. The City's blown its public safety budget for three years running because of you meta-humans."

"Um, wasn't the City's budget blown by dealing with villains?"

"Allegedly good or bad, wherever there are concentrations of you people municipal infrastructure and budgets suffer. The supposedly good ones just attract the bad ones. And you get the same result"

"I like the way you just ignore my poking holes in that argument, but I think I get it. So much for Green Lantern and Green Arrow. Now, we'll fight crime with the newest hero, Green Eyeshade! Mild mannered accountant by day! And, well, mild mannered accountant by night, too."

"No, not just accountants. Think of it a little bit like the scenes in that movie L.A. Confidential. Did you see that one?"

"Sure"

"You didn't have trouble getting into an R rated movie?"

"No. I did the same as any other kid. I bought a ticket for a movie rated G then just walked into the theater for the R movie. Oh wait" he laughed "that must make me a criminal"

Brennan glared at him. "Well, you remember the scenes where they show the police captain supervising the beating of mob soldiers and capos to keep 'em out of L.A.? That's kind of the city's new stance about meta-humans"

Kid Flash raised an eyebrow. "Do you really want to cite, as a model for your new policies, proactive police brutality by a thoroughly corrupt film character who commits murder?"

The blond woman cast an angry glance at Brennan for doing such a poor job for their side.

"Of course that's not what we're proposing" she said. "But Homeland Security regulations give us broad discretion to make staying in this city uncomfortable for additional meta-humans"

"Glad I got in before the quota hit. And, again" said Kid Flash chuckling jovially, " I really want to apologize for that Third Reich crack. I don't know where that came from"

"What do you go" Brennan asked apropos of nothing as he advanced a step, "a buck thirty?"

"Less than that, I think. More like a hundred twenty five pounds or so"

"How old are you? Fourteen? Fifteen? What?"

"Like I told her, somewhere's around there. Why do you care?"

"I just don't think the public safety of the city should be hostage to the moods of a fourteen year old boy who hasn't shaved yet."

Kid Flash closed his eyes and sighed, regaining his composure before turning to Strickland and Colavito and shaking the hand of each. "Guys. I'm sorry about wasting your time with this poor debate. I just want you guys to know that I'm always trying to be on the right side"

Colavito nodded as he shook his hand and Strickland looked him in the eye as agreement. Kid Flash turned to the other two and offered his hand. Captain. . "

"Brennan" said the Captain trying to crush Kid Flash's gloved hand but finding that he was surprisingly strong.

"And . . "

"Captain Doyle" she said shaking his hand.

"Brennan and Doyle, huh? I might've thought people with irish surnames would be more friendly to a guy with orange hair. Oh well. We'll just have to agree to disagree. I say constitution. You say potahto"

With that, he stepped away from them and sped out of the Borders parking lot and then down the highway, at first visible to them, horizontal streaks of red at the bottom yellow in the middle and then a line of orange at the top and then so fast as to be impossible to follow.

"Can you imagine bein' able to do that?" sniffed Colavito looking the way he'd gone. "How fast does he go?"

"We've timed him from surveillance cameras at over mach 3 on city streets without somehow producing a sonic boom" said Captain Doyle. We used to think he stayed under mach 1 because he never boomed. But he gets over it easy. He's a very unusual boy"

Finally, Kid Flash sped home, changing to civilian clothes just up the road and walking the last hundred yards home. He went from the door to the fridge for some juice and an apple and to his room. What a weird night. So fantastic then horrible then kind of both again.

He wondered about what she had said. Did I do wrong for her? They didn't have jack on her but . . I didn't know that. But thinking it over, he realized that he'd felt as though he knew that she wasn't actively engaged in . . in evil, in crime. She couldn't kiss like that if she was doing stuff like that, could she? So real and pure, so complete. She couldn't be hurting anyone and feel like that. No way. Maybe it was technically wrong but, in the big picture I prevented her from being hurt. That's all I did.

Despite the evening's turmoil, he slept soundly. He had dreams of her and woke as if physically ready to act on them. He just made the bus and spent an exasperating day in school. The next to last day of school is frustratingly slow for kids everywhere. For a boy who could change how time ran around his person, it was excruciating watching the clock. He kept wondering, as he watched the second hand moving like a glacier, if he'd accidentally moved at super speed, just a hand or a turn of his head, perhaps and was moving through time at his own subjective rate so that he was creating extra time in between all the moments that everyone else experienced. He didn't want more time now. He wanted less. Much less.

The teachers barely made any pretense at all of there being any point to the day. He could drift off into thoughts of Jinx, of kissing her and start to become erect in his giant pants without anyone seeing. A few kids made fun of him, again, for getting his ass paddled and for getting thrown into the pigpen, but his reputation for an armor of indifference was well known. He looked blankly at a couple of the kids in the honors english class making fun of him and after a half minute they gave up.

He figured she knew that he would be in school till 2 or maybe 2:30, she didn't know his schools hours, but she'd heard him say that the teachers hated him and that he wouldn't read Catcher in the Rye. She would wait till some time after that to call. But she'd certainly be anxious. Who wouldn't be, waiting to find out what the deal was with the police being after you. She'd want to call asap so he had to be home right away. That way, also, he could answer the phone instead of his brat sister picking up the line and saying something stupid.

Finally, the bell of escape sounded and Wally strode rapidly out of school. He didn't stop at his locker, he just went from his last class, a room near the exit, out the doors. He was the first kid out so he felt free to run at what he imagined was top speed for Wally West. It was hard for him to tell. There wasn't a bright line of demarcation between his running as Wally West could have without super speed and running as Kid Flash could. It wasn't like the flipping of a switch. There was a whole spectrum of speed. At the intersection up the street from the school, he turned toward their house, jumped into the bushes and jumped out as Kid Flash, with his clothes tied into a neat bundle inside his shirt. He took off toward his house intending to vibrate through the wall of his room and be staring at the phone in the kitchen waiting for it to ring in a millisecond. But he saw an ambulance leaving the firehouse a mile back of him on a busy road crowded with cars heading to pick up kids from school.

He sighed with reluctance and sprinted ahead. He tapped the wing by the right ear of his uniform twice. Now he could hear police calls in that ear. Sure enough, there was chatter about a big accident at a certain intersection and shouts back and forth that the ambulance had better get there fast, people had already been down a while. He knew that intersection and poured on the speed to get there a fraction of a second later, sprinting between lines of stopped traffic. He zipped to a halt next to a policeman looking around frantically and intermittently shouting into a walkie talkie.

Two cars had collided and they'd forced two others off the road into a pole and a tree. Two more had had lesser introductions to jersey barriers in the median. Traffic was backed up for more than a mile in either direction making access for the ambulances extremely difficult. The road was under construction along that whole stretch and had no shoulder on either side. Getting past the stopped traffic was nearly impossible.

"Is there some way I can help, officer?"

"We've got some people hurt really bad, who need to be in a hospital 20 minute ago when this accident happened and all these jackasses" he said gesturing to the drivers from both directions, are blocking the way.

Kid Flash explained that he could get someone to the hospital in a blink as long as he could carry that person. The cop gave him a funny, unimpressed squint.

"I'm stronger than you'd think" said Kid Flash and the cop led him to a small car. Perhaps it'd been a Honda. It was hard to tell in its shredded and compacted state. There was a boy about eight years old in a twisted position in the front seat. The two of them pulled him free as gently as possible and the cop got a board from the trunk of his cruiser, sort of like the flat top of a gurney but without the padding. It folded in half to fit in the trunk and the cop unfolded it beside the car where they lay the boy down on it. Kid Flash knelt, picked up the board with the injured, bleeding boy on it and sped off. Ten seconds later a faint red and yellow blur materialized back into Kid Flash next to the cop.

"I had to stop and talk to the docs for a few seconds" he explained. He transported the boy's mother and little brother from the back seat on successive trips. He and the cop did a sort of triage judgement about which victim was most needy. There were a couple whom he couldn't carry, too. He told a 300 pound man that he was sorry and the man seemed to understand between groans of pain.

He delivered 11 people to the hospital before the ambulance even arrived. One woman might not have made it if forced to endure much longer before surgery and they told Kid Flash that another few minutes before injecting steroids into the eight year old boy and he might have been paralyzed by swelling at his 5th vertebrae. When he had to stop from exhaustion, kneeling in a shady spot, some of the motorists applauded him and a girl ran over with a soda for him. His picture was taken kneeling there beside the pavement just before the ambulances finally arrived to take away the remaining victims. A recovered Kid Flash sprinted for home after speaking to the EMT's and police and a reporter and photographer who'd made their way to the scene. He hoped Jinx hadn't already tried calling.

But she had. She thought about little besides Kid Flash all day after dreaming of him in her sleep. Wally? She frowned each time she said it. Wally? His name was Wally? That alone should convince people that he's not Kid Flash. He should be able to run around at near super speed with his orange hair showing openly and still have people say "Yeah . . but his name's Wally. So, no way. It's gotta be some other boy."

But as she considered him through the morning and into the afternoon, she started to see it differently. The name was given to him. He had nothing to do with that. But what attributes did he bring to it? He was so good looking and funny and kind and smart. Wally. That was Wally, cuter than any other boy, to her, and such a good kisser. That was Wally. Slowly the name came to mean his positive attributes and not the negative baggage she associated with it. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. She checked on her rose in its glass of water on the table like it was the symptom of her OCD. The previous roses had wilted brown rather quickly, just her luck, but this one seemed to be holding out fairly well. Hmmm.

At three o'clock on the dot she called. Area code then 555-4608. The line rang once, twice, three times. A girl's voice picked up.

"Yeah?"

She hadn't really thought about anyone but him answering. "Um, I'm calling for Wally. This is . . this is Jinny"

The voice on the other end of the line gasped in laughter and Jinx guessed that the girl had intended to put her hand over the mouthpiece but hadn't quite covered it. She could hear her talking to a couple other girls. "There's a girl(!) calling for him!" "Oh my god! No!" "Yes!" Shrieks and laughter "What kind of . ." "Okay, okay, shhhhh. Watch!"

"I've never talked to an insane person before" giggling in the background "or are you a blind girl?" more giggling.

"Is Wally there? If so, would you please just put him on the line"

"Wally West, right, that's who you want? With orange hair that he always wears a hat over?"

"That's him"

Giggling and more giggling, a few snorts and finally a gasping return to the line. "So, yo yo you wanna speak to the Gangsta Geek?" the voice affected a loud rap cadence barely finishing through hysterical laughter and Jinx could hear the two other girls also convulsed in laughter, and one laugh getting closer and finally, click, and a dial tone.

"What the hell!"

He's got a spaz for a sister. But her annoyance was mitigated by finding out another piece of information. Wally West, huh? Wally West. The boy's not only literate. He's alliterative. Wally West.

At 3:20, Jinx tried again. One ring, two rings, three rings.

"Yeah?"

Jinx sighed. The same stupid girl again. "This is Jinny. Is Wally there? I'd like to speak to him." This time, she covered the mouthpiece all the way. It took a good minute before she returned to the line and when she did she was gasping for breath as were the voices faintly audible in the background.

"Did you know he got his ass paddled by seniors in front of the whole school Friday? Everybody!"

"Is Wally there?"

"And then . . afterwards" Jinx didn't get it. She looked at her phone. The girl was making pig snorts and laughing hysterically as were the other two girls in the background. Again, one peal of laughter seemed to get closer to the phone and then, click, dial tone.

"You little frigging bitch!" Jinx looked angrily at the phone after hanging it up. Her eyes had glowed pink with rage. She could feel it. She calmed herself and in a great exercise of restraint, waited another 20 minutes to call.

One ring, two rings, followed by a laughing "Yeah?"

"Listen you little brat. He's my boyfriend. I'll see you some day and rip your empty little head off if you don't shut the hell up and answer this question. Is Wally there?"

The girl cleared her throat and Jinx could hear frantic whispering in the background.

"And after they paddled his geek ass, they threw Wally in the back of a truck and took all his clothes and then threw him over a fence into a giant pig pen. Nohesnothere!" she finished at high speed and then fell into convulsions of laughter before hanging up.

Jinx might have thrown off bolts of hex energy around the apartment but for the diverting consideration of that report. They took all of Wally West's clothes? They took all of Wally West's clothes and then threw him into a pig pen? They took all of Wally West's clothes. Wally West . . without . . any . . of his clothes.

Wally arrived home and for some reason his sister and her two equally ditzy friends fell on the floor laughing at the mere sight of him. His sister started to say something to him but couldn't get it out through her ridiculous laughter. He went to his room. A few minutes later the phone rang and he bounded out into the kitchen.

"I got it" he said and saw his sister and her friends fall off the couch onto the floor with their giggling. What the hell? He pulled the long cord so that he could get the receiver inside his room and close the door behind himself. Still, he spoke softly.

"Hello"

"W-Wally?"

"Jinx?"

"Yeah. Oh, you don't know what a relief it is to hear your voice."

"What's the matter?"

"Just trying to deal with that girl. Is that your sister? Trying to deal with her three times. I might kill her if I meet her"

Wally opened the door to his room and stuck his head out to look at his sister with homicidal intent. "Let's go upstairs" his sister anxiously advised her friends and they ran for the stairs.

"No jury would convict you" said Wally and she laughed. "I have mostly good news."

"Yeah?"

"There hasn't been a charge made against you"

"But . . you said that there had been a call and they wanted you to help . . "

"There was a call. This ridiculous old woman saw you walking with me and saw you and me kissing. She guessed it was you with the help of her effing copy of The Star"

"Great. Undone by a trash gossip tabloid"

"Well, the police don't believe her and it was like pulling teeth to get them to tell me what you'd been charged with and it turned out to be nothing, literally nothing"

"So they chase people who don't have any charge made against them?"

"I got in an argument with a police captain who's the new meta-human task force chief"

"The what? What's meta-human?"

"Apparently it's someone like you or me with powers"

"Why do they have a task force? What the heck's it supposed to do?"
"Well, they wouldn't tell me much of their plans but they don't include a whole lot of friendliness even to someone like me recognized as a hero. They've got this idea that even heroes are trouble for the city's budget because heroes attract villains and attract infrastructure destroying, costly fights. They want to discourage any meta-humans from hanging around in their city so they'll pick up villains even without actual charges and they'll be jerks to me"

"What? I can't speak for anybody else but in the HIVE, we wanted successful robberies, not fights with heroes. And why mess with you!"

"I-I destroy my private life patrolling and answering the calls that I get on my ring and the end result is that they just lump me in with the guys from the Brotherhood of Evil anyway. Damn! I was late getting home today because I was running people from a big multi car accident to the hospital. Apparently they believe Gorilla Grodd might do the same thing."

He let out a long sigh. "Anyway. I'll deal with it. The important thing is that there's no warrant out for your arrest. So, would, um, would you like to get together tomorrow night".

"Wally? How 'bout we take a little more time?"

"A-a little more time's okay . . sure"

"How about you meet me at that intersection where you dropped me off at noon on Sunday?"

"Sunday at noon. Got it . . " he fumbled for what to say. "I'll look forward to it, Jinx"

"Me too, Wally, bye"

"Bye".

Wally sighed leaning back against the wall. Sunday? So, we're going too fast. He let out a long slow sigh and heard his sister and her friends leaving going out the front door, he hung up the phone and went back to his room. He started reading a guide to modern handguns.

The phone rang, snapping him out of his concentration. He looked at it a second. Could she be calling again? Nah. He picked up.

"Hello, West residence"

"May I please speak to Wallace West" asked a deep voice that seemed oddly familiar to Wally.

"This is he"

"Is this line safe and are you free to speak," said the voice as Wally started to place it.

"Sure. It's the only phone line we've got and I'm the only one home"

"Good. This is Cyborg. Your-"

"Cyborg!" Wally could hardly contain his excitement. He suspected what this meant.

"-your application interview is scheduled for Thursday at 1 p.m. Can you make it?"

"Oh my gosh! You bet! Thurday! One pm! I'll be there! Thanks!"

"You're welcome. Good luck"

-click-