Part 0: Shadow of Youth
PG-13
Summary: Post DWF. As an accident saves Flash from his own metabolism (but not without leaving some changes of its own) an unknown benefactor is gathering information on the League's greatest weakness.
Disclaimer: The DC characters are not mine. I'm just playing with them. They'll be returned…eventually, not in good condition but that can hardly be blamed on me!
Author's Note: I must apologize to philosopher David K. Lewis (1941-2001). I've used some of his metaphysical principles in this chapter and undoubtedly I've messed it up. To any philosophers reading this story: Please don't hurt me!
Chapter 4 Magnum Bonum
The staring was getting old but there weren't a lot of words that could adequately fill the stunned silence. This is Wally? They continued to stare at him. Wally stared back. He'd never seen people in costumes like these. Was it Halloween? He wanted to ask but they were kind of scary so he stayed quiet.
They'd brought him to the orbiting Watch Tower, which hadn't been too difficult. The Javelin that Diana, Shayera and Green Lantern had taken down from the tower had provided transport, for all of them, back up. Little Wally had been noticeably nervous about flying in the plane and it had been a struggle initially to get him strapped in but Wonder Woman sat next to him and easily kept him calm during the flight. "A woman's touch," she had responded at the somewhat surprised looks the others were giving her and Wally.
The journey had been quiet –even Wally had been relatively well behaved. He'd looked around but had been silent for the majority of the trip. They'd all surmised it was only a matter of time before he was running around and trying to push all the buttons.
With Wally now settled on a bed in one of the Med Bay's private rooms the research into this strange scenario began. In the next room J'onn and Batman were running some tests to determine what exactly had happened to change Wally into a child with no memory of them.
Suddenly the bed, which only a moment ago the child had been seated on, was empty and the heroes looked around frantically. The doors to the hallway wouldn't open for Wally but there were adjacent rooms, plenty of places to hide and even more things that they had to keep away from an inquisitive child.
"Looking for this?"
Batman guided Wally out of the lab and back in to the private room. Batman's voice was more amused than anything but Wally looked a little perturbed by the encounter with the Dark Knight. He dashed for Superman.
"I guess he doesn't like you very much," observed Shayera. Batman made a non-committal sound. Shay looked down at Wally who was staring curiously at Batman. "It's okay. He doesn't bite hard." Wide green-eyes looked up at her.
"He bites?"
"He doesn't bite, Wally. She just has a bad sense of humour." The tall dark man smiled at him and Wally smiled back forgetting what they'd been talking about just a second before.
J'onn walked into the room with some papers in hand.
"So what have you found? How do we get our Wally back?" asked John.
J'onn gave them his findings. "The radiation had a signature I have only seen when we dealt with David Clinton, the inventor of the Chrono-suit. When he travelled through time there was a large burst of this radiation. We found the same readings in the soil at the explosion site and even more on Wally."
Diana shook her head. "That doesn't explain how Wally was turned into a child."
"He wasn't," stated the resident Bat.
"Clearly, he is a child."
Batman interrupted to explain. "We all were at some point. Lewis philosophised that people and objects are a series of causally connected time-slices and a collection of these slices over time gives us a whole person. What may have happened is that the explosion caused a regression in Wally's personal-time to the point of," gestured vaguely to the child in question, "this Wally. If he was just transformed into a child he should still know us."
Though they still seemed somewhat sceptical or confused Batman could see that Wonder Woman, GL and Superman looked more willing to accept the explanation. They were no doubt recalling time they'd been turned into children by Morgan Le Fay to thwart her son Mordred and they'd retained their memories.
"Then where's the Wally that should be here? And why does he still have his speed?" Shayera didn't understand what Batman had said but she wasn't interested in Earth philosophers. She wanted her friend back.
"His connection to the speed force must still be in tact. As for our Wally, technically, he's right here. To get him back we just need to find a way to undo the regression –get Wally's personal time to match back up with external time."
John knew it sounded easier than it was going to be. Nothing about time travel was ever easy. That's why people should just leave time alone.
Wally had listened but he didn't understand. Besides there were more pressing issues that required his attention.
"I'm hungry." Not a second after he'd voiced his complaint he was off at a run heading for the doors that would open for him. Unfortunately those doors lead to the lab. Batman had kept him out of trouble the last time but there were many chemicals that could be ingested and the results could easily be fatal.
A brilliant interception by Superman just as the doors were opening kept Wally safe.
"You can't keep running off like that."
"Why?"
Clark hesitated. He'd heard conversations that started like this; one 'why' lead to another and another. Superman looked to the others for help.
"Since you can keep up with him you've been drafted for baby-sitting duty," J'onn announced.
"I'm not a baby," came the quick and loud protest.
J'onn couldn't help a fond smile to the outraged child as he recalled his own children voicing similar sentiments. "In the meantime we will continue to search for a way to return Flash to normal."
Shayera thought of the man who'd been using the gun in Central City yelling about a partner. Strom didn't look the type to create such a strange and powerful device on his own but he could lead them to the person who had and they could be persuaded to give up the design of the weapon.
"I'm going to Central City. I'll get that robber, Strom, to tell me who his partner was."
"I didn't know you did interrogations," commented the Batman.
"I can be pretty persuasive." She patted her mace.
Batman raised an eyebrow behind the cowl. "Let me know when you have something. I'll be here with J'onn."
"Don't forget to tell Nightwing what's going on. He'll be worried." Ever the boyscout Superman couldn't forget the man they'd left on earth. Batman glanced at him but didn't respond. He and J'onn walked back into the lab needing to get information from their radiation samples before too much decayed away.
"I'm hungry." Wally was standing at the doors that lead to the corridor but it remained shut.
Superman sighed.
"Don't worry," John patted his shoulder. "Look how small he is. He can't eat that much."
+JLU+
Smoke curled lazily in the air creating a grey haze. The tip of the cigarette lit up as he took another drag. He held the smoke in before exhaling using his mouth to create rings of smoke. He smiled at his work.
"You look like you're enjoying that." The waitress refilled the empty coffee mug of the strange patron. A few inches over six feet tall and appearing to be approaching forty-five years or so, he'd come in just a few minutes after that terrible explosion near the river. He'd spent several minutes looking at the menu and asking questions about the different choices before settling on coffee, no cream, no sugar.
"It's a fascinating habit." He watched the tip of the cigarette glow. "It's poisonous, ultimately fatal, and yet so alluring…"
"It also stains your teeth, gives you bad breath and makes everything you eat taste like paper. Oh, and it's a bitch to quit." She was clearly speaking from experience.
"Which begs the question: why start?" The man looked at her as though she had the answer.
"…Um…I don't know…seemed like a good idea at the time…"
The man smiled and took another drag. "Enjoying, accepting, even condoning behaviour that leads to your demise. You're a strange species." Grey smoke drifted out of his mouth in slow waves. "And there's so much more of it left to explore."
The waitress was becoming unsettled by the man's tone and left to tend to another table. Feeling a little better a few minutes later she went back to the table only to find that the man was gone. He'd left a twenty for four dollars worth of coffee. Creepy but a good tipper –she pocketed the extra money –there were worse combinations.
+JLU+
The patter of small feet moving rapidly ended just behind the door to Clark's apartment. After a pause where the person on the other side struggled with the locks it opened a crack.
"You can't answer the door," came a stern but tired voice from inside.
"Why not?" a higher, younger voice asked.
"Just because…" Clark finished lamely. The patter of feet became more distant as the child ran off. J'onn and Diana let themselves the rest of the way in and it became abundantly clear that no man, not even a super-man could keep up with a child-size speedster. Clark's usually immaculate apartment was a disaster. There were pillows and couch cushion everywhere but the couch. It looked like something had spilt on the floor. An empty pizza box had yet to be cleared from the dining table. The TV was on and spouting the latest in indoctrinating children's program. All in all it was a strange sight.
"Hi!" Wally ran over to the newcomers. Now that he was feeling less uncertain he was more like himself.
"Hello, Wally. Are you keeping Clark busy?" Diana asked with a smile.
"Uh huh! We had pizza and soda!"
"You gave him sugar?" J'onn asked.
Clark shook his head tiredly. "I don't know what I was thinking."
"Who are you?" Wally suddenly asked of J'onn. The Martian had changed to his human form to be more inconspicuous.
"We met on the watchtower." He morphed back to his usual appearance.
"Oh! Mr. Green!"
Diana and J'onn looked at Clark. "He's got names for everybody, but we've had the discussion about keeping it all a secret."
Still a ladies man, even at three and a half feet tall, Wally dragged Diana to see the view. J'onn and Clark moved to the kitchen where they wouldn't be overheard.
"Any progress?"
"None that will help Wally but we've found something…unsettling." J'onn pulled out a small piece of debris. It had been cleaned of the carbon residue and the shiny metal underneath was visible.
"What is it?"
"Advanced circuitry, not available on commercial markets." He handed the piece to Clark. "Look closely."
Using his super-vision Clark focused on the circuitry and came across a small laser engraving. "LexCorp."
"We have no evidence that Luthor is involved directly."
"Then what's this?"
"Circumstantial."
Kent didn't agree. He knew Luthor. The man had an obsession with Superman and the League but what was even more dangerous was his obsession with power and his willingness to use it for personal gain.
Clark changed the subject. "Well I have some good news. The accident seems to have fixed Wally's metabolism. He still eats a lot but for him I think it's a normal amount."
J'onn was about to say something when they heard Wally.
"Wow!" His exclamation carried to the kitchen and had the two men heading over even before Diana could call them.
From Clark's high-rise apartment there was a spectacular view of the cities south-east side. But it wasn't the view that captured their interest now. It was the ball of fire rising from the business district.
"That's near the Lex Corp Building." Their fight with Luthor and Braniac had destroyed the top five floors of the building but the rest of the structure and all the valuable technologies inside were still intact. Even with the company's leader in prison awaiting trial Lex Corp was still a leader in technological development.
Clark pulled off his shirt revealing the primary colours of his Superman costume. "J'onn can you watch Wally? Diana and I will check this out."
J'onn, simply nodded. Clark opened the sliding glass doors of the balcony and he and Wonder Woman flew towards the disturbance.
By the time they arrived the assailants had left. The police were beginning their investigation but hadn't found the calling cards of the usual criminals. Even what had been stolen was not the most valuable technology. The current president of the company was speaking with the police but he didn't look like he had any insight into what had happened.
Superman picked up one of the items that had been stolen but accidentally dropped during the escape. It was just a piece of electronics hardware, nothing special about it. Not even very advanced and certainly not worth blowing a two-story hole in the side of the building. This didn't make sense.
"It doesn't look like we can help here," Superman said to Wonder Woman. She agreed. The emergency personnel had everything under control.
"Let's go."
+JLU+
"Did you get anything?"
Shayera landed on the roof of a high-rise condominium in Central City and sighed. "Only the name Dr. V. Strom says he gave him the weapon. He doesn't know anything else."
"I'll inform Batman."
"John, have you heard anything from Clark? How's Wally doing?"
"J'onn's with him right now but the kid seems okay. Hard to keep up with, but that's nothing new." John waited for her to say something else. "Shayera?"
"Yeah, John," she responded distractedly.
"Are you alright?"
He couldn't see her shake her head through the comm line. "You should have seen the neighbourhood, John. I can't believe Wally lived there. I didn't know things had been that bad for him." She'd taken into account that many years had passed so the buildings had decayed but it was easy to tell that it had not been a very nice neighbourhood back then either.
"You'd never guess by the way he acts." It was hard to believe that someone who'd apparently gone through so much at a young age was still as care-free and friendly as Wally was. John didn't know the whole story. Wally didn't talk about it and John knew not to ask.
"He never talks about it."
"There's not reason to. What would it change?"
Shayera crossed her arms and glared out across the city. "Maybe Batman would be less of a jerk." From across the link she heard John laugh. There were just some people who annoyed her. Batman was among them. He was smart and an important member of the league but he was also arrogant and there were just some things that Shayera didn't trust him with. Maybe that was the problem with the league. They recognized each other strengths but had trouble dealing with their differences. Those problems had nearly brought down the league before they'd even begun but since then the disputes had been tempered.
"Well, I'm going to see if 'the jerk' has made any progress. Why don't you check up with J'onn and the others in Metropolis."
"Alright. Shayera out."
+JLU+
Superman and Wonder Woman had decided to take a detour on the way back to Clark's apartment –a long detour. And three hours later they were no closer to figuring out what was going on.
They'd gone to see Luthor at the penitentiary he was being held at just outside Metropolis. His close encounter with Braniac had done some damage to Luthor's psyche and while his mind was still razor sharp and his wit still biting, the voices only he could hear were unnerving. After getting through all the red tape and the procedures the corrections officers insisted were necessary they'd finally been allowed to see Luthor. Lex had only laughed at their accusations and as usual insulted the League and ridiculed their efforts at world peace.
"This is getting us nowhere." Diana had turned a walked out, her patience lost at the third checkpoint they'd been made to go through. Superman hesitated before following her but Luthor's next words had him turning back.
"Your efforts have only inconvenienced me." Luthor smirked at him. "Close the door on your way out."
Superman looked back at the fallen villain trying not to hear how much Luthor had sounded like Brainiac. If ever there was a merger to be feared it was between those two. He closed the heavy door.
Luthor listened for several minutes making sure that they were gone. He stood up and went to the small barred window afforded to his cell. Metropolis, his shining jewel was not far in the distance. He could almost touch it. When he did, he'd touch his destiny, he'd put into practice what was inevitable, but first things first.
There was a certain hyperactive speed demon that needed to be dealt with. He'd underestimated that boy. He would not do so again. His new partner had forced him into a compromise that would put his plans on hold but he could not do it alone, not from prison, so he'd agreed. His partner wanted to make his own assessment of the League before they made a move. Until he had assessed to his heart's content Luthor was pretty much out of the loop. Hopefully that stupid Doctor had not gotten them into trouble already.
+JLU+
The group stared at the goodies on the table. It was everything they needed to take down their enemies. And all of it was top grade. Now was the problem of the price. They guy kept saying it was free but nothing was ever free.
Light bulbs dangled from the low ceiling casting shadows over the suspiciously generous man's face.
"What do we owe you?" a female of the group asked.
"Nothing, just use these well." He turned to go.
"Why are you doing this?"
The stranger continued slowly away, the shadows engulfing him. "A test."
"What happens if we fail?"
"This test isn't for you." He opened the exit, the light from outdoors making him a shadow in the doorway. "Your people failed long before today." The heavy door slammed shut under its own weight. The group of men and women stood in silence.
"Weirdo."
+JLU+
By the time Clark and Diana returned the sun had set and Wally was fast asleep on the pull out couch. Shayera and J'onn were in the kitchen conversing softly.
"He looks like a little angel," Diana commented as she and Clark joined them.
Shayera laughed. "Only when he's asleep. When he's awake he's still Wally."
"What have you found out about the attack on Lex Corp?" J'onn asked. He'd managed to see a few minutes of news coverage of the event on TV but Wally had protested and they had been forced to watch cartoons.
"Nothing important was stolen. Leaving us to wonder; why such a large explosion for something you can get almost anywhere?"
"Luthor was no help," added Diana. "He claims to know nothing about it."
"You don't believe him," J'onn inferred.
Diana wasn't sure. Compared to Superman and Batman her experience with Luthor was limited but the demented man in the small dark cell was not what she equated with a criminal genius.
Superman left the small group to changed into less conspicuous attire but upon returning stood quietly away from the group, thinking. Their brief encounter with Luthor at the jail had disturbed him. The amalgamation of his two greatest enemies had been the greatest nightmare he'd never imagined. During the battle he'd been determined to defeat Luthor but he hadn't figured out how. Even now he didn't know what he would have done if the Flash hadn't been there.
Clark walked out to the living room. Wally lay on the couch, a small hand curled into a loose fist next to his face. Clark drew closed the blinds to block out some of the bright lights of Metropolis, his city. He peeked out between the panels and stared at a small portion of what could have been lost. They all owed Flash a lot.
'He's their secret weapon,' he'd once overheard Green Arrow comment when some had inquired as to why Flash was part of the council when clearly he wasn't as mature as the rest of them.
Superman had been angry. Flash was a person, not a thing, and certainly not a weapon. But part of him had understood Green Arrow's comment and agreed –that had been the true source of his anger. He recognized Flash's potential for good and he recognized his potential for harm.
Speed is a powerful force. Maybe the others didn't see it. Maybe none of them wanted to see it, but Wally could be dangerous.
Yet with all that power at his disposal Wally was oblivious to it for the most part. Recently he'd learnt new tricks such as stealing and redirecting kinetic energy, and he'd been trifling with passing through solid matter but beyond that he had no designs on being anything other than a hero.
The Flash was a good guy. They all were. The young speedster reminded them at every turn. Whenever they doubted themselves, whenever their motives were in question, it was a simple statement delivered the way only the Flash could that brought them back from the brink.
We are the good guys.
End Chapter 4 A Great Good
I've only see the first couple of minutes of the first episode of season 5 of JL (or season 3 of JLU) so I decided to use the wacked-out Luthor in the fiction. I've been trying not to watch the new episodes since I don't want them to have too much of an influence on my fic, but I can only hold out for so long! Anyway, thanks for reading.
Sagga Bott…