On an otherwise uneventful Thursday evening, Hal Jordan was currently putting the final touches on his latest very bold and very ill-advised scheme. He had set up a round table right next to the Hall of Justice's large oblong table used for official League meetings. Atop his table, which he took care to outfit with a glass lazy Susan, were 8 different varieties of food. Well, if one cared to classify live animals and smoothied innards as… food.
Directly behind him, Oliver and Dinah were watching with varying degrees of disgust and curiosity. Standing next to them were the four people Hal roped into trying the game out first: Barry, Diana, Clark, and Bruce.
"Hal, the smell… is pretty terrible and I'm not even that close to it." Oliver lamented, pinching his nose. "Why did you decide to do this in here and can we move any future meetings to a different room until further notice?"
"It is not that bad," Hal claimed, rolling his eyes at the archer's dramatics. "Relax, guys, all it takes is a little Febreeze here and there and we're all good! And if you didn't want me to do it in here, you should've said something before I set all the food down!"
"Why are we doing this at all?" Clark asked, looking between everyone there for some sort of guidance. The reason they said yes, as he well knew, was because the game was just Truth or Dare, but grosser, and none of them were about to pass up a chance for some potentially embarrassing moments.
"Uhh, because I saw it on TV the other night and thought it looked fun," Hal supplied, surveying his table of goodies once more, before turning around to address everyone. "Also because I put a lot of thought into this, and stayed up until 3 AM and I would love if you could all appreciate my efforts. And! Because we really have nothing better to do right now," he finished with a shrug.
Hearing the others' non-committal sounds of what Hal would take as agreement, he clapped his hands together and ushered his four testers into their seats around the table. "Ok, so here's how the game works. Barry, you and Bruce are a team. Clark, you and Diana are a team. I have here, in my hands," he presented to them some slips of paper, "questions for you guys to answer. Truthfully, or you have to eat whatever the other team puts in front of you."
"Uhh, how many questions is this?" Barry inquired, putting a hand up. "And, like, what kind of questions… are we talking about?"
"You'll find out," Hal waved off his concern. "And 3 questions each."
"One." Bruce said gruffly, and without even having to make eye contact, Hal stuffed most of the paper slips back in his pocket.
"Yeah, one each. Great suggestion… because we want everyone to have a turn here, and this'll make it go by quicker."
Ignoring Oliver's, and now also Dinah's, complaints, Hal gestured to the table, spinning the apparatus around and declaring what each item was, reveling in his team's disgusted groans. "All right, so we've got here cow tongues, a pig intestine and szechuan pepper smoothie, raw chicken hearts, earthworms-"
"Hal," Diana interjected, poking one of the worms. "No."
"What?"
"They're still alive!"
"It's fine! They don't have parasites or anything, I got them at a pet store. I didn't think that would be the thing that gave you trouble, Diana."
"I hardly have an issue with them," she admonished, "but look at Barry! He's about to vomit."
Everyone turned to Barry, who had a hand over his mouth and a fearful look in his eyes. "No, no! I'm, blegh! Just hurry up!"
"Calm down, it's not that bad." Hal clapped the speedster on the shoulder, probably making his stomach lurch more. "Everything here is edible, I checked. Uhh, Carolina reaper hot sauce, jellied eels, straight from England, by the way, fried grasshoppers, and emu balls! As in their testicles… and those were the hardest to find, so don't eat too much of it."
"Don't worry," Dinah shouted out, "we'll save them all for you!"
"Shh!" Hal passed out his pieces of paper to each person and stepped back. "Here we go! I'm excited, you guys excited?"
Blank stares.
Hal just took it in stride. "Barry, you wanna start?"
Barry picked up his question and sighed deeply. "This… Hal, I… ok. Umm, guys, I'm sorry about this."
"It's ok, Barry," Clark assured him, "We're in this together. And we can get back at Hal together later too."
"Yeah, yeah, you can try. Come on, Bar, pick one for them!"
Cycling through his options, Barry was relieved that his opponents were two of the nicest people he knows, and not the Dark Knight staring daggers into his soul, as he slowed to a stop on the chicken hearts. Just four small bowls filled with 4 or 5 cleaned, raw hearts each. "I've had chicken livers before, I mean, they were cooked, but maybe it won't be so bad? Diana, this one's for you. Who is one hero that you have teamed up with that you would never want to team up with again?" He winced as he asked the question, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't at least a little curious.
Diana smiled back at Barry, calming his nerves a bit. "Oh, besides Hal Jordan?" That was met with some snorts of laughter from everyone on the sidelines and even a little quirk of the lips from Bruce. She sat back in her seat, giving the question some serious thought. "Honestly… no one!" As people started to object, she continued, "No, really! Anyone I've ever teamed up with got the job done and it all worked out! But ok, I guess that's kind of a cop out answer, so I'll just eat this."
She picked up one of the bowls, looked Hal dead in the eye, and poured the entire thing into her mouth. Jaws dropped. "They're not bad."
"Damn, girl, you're a machine!" Dinah called out from the other table, utterly amazed.
"Uhh," Clark piped up, already inching the hearts away. "She answered the question, so I don't have to eat it, right?" He caught Hal's look of disappointment and Bruce's amusement from across the table and just had to defend himself. "Don't look at me like that! I used to raise chickens, I can't just eat their hearts!"
"Ok, farm boy," Hal scoffed, but allowed the loophole anyway. "Moving on! Diana, your turn."
Reading the question, Diana stifled a laugh as she turned the table to the emu balls. "Oh… ok. You know, I gotta admit, this game is actually pretty fun." Talking over Hal's exclamation of thank you, she posed her question to Barry, who looked extremely uncomfortable even picking up the... bird parts. "Barry, if you switched powers with anyone in the League, who do you think would crash and burn the worst?"
"Oh, that's easy, Green Arrow back here, for sure!"
"Wha-? Hey!" Oliver cried out, indignant. He looked over to Dinah, who gave him a sympathetic look, but not necessarily one that said she disagreed with Barry. "Oh, come on, what about Plastic Man? Or even Arthur? Who's to say they could deal with that?"
"Arthur could definitely handle it," Diana affirmed, rolling her eyes at the mere suggestion that he couldn't. "Patrick, too, probably."
"You, Oliver," Barry continued, "probably wouldn't even be able to figure out how to stop."
"He'd probably manage by crashing into all the walls," Bruce added.
Oliver made an offended gasp and pointed a threatening finger towards the round table. "You're playing this game again, Allen! I'll make you eat those worms!"
Barry stuck his tongue out at him.
"All right, my turn!" Clark turned the table to the shots of hot sauce, reading through the question intended for Bruce. "Oooh, this is a good one. Bruce… which Robin is your favorite?"
"Are you serious?" Barry threw his hands up in exasperation. "He's not gonna answer that! Why with the hot sauce? You know I have delicate taste buds."
"Oh, sorry, maybe the jelly-"
"Don't ruin this, Clark!" Oliver popped up next to him. "I'm getting a head start on my revenge."
The room fell quiet as they all looked expectantly at Bruce, an unreadable expression on his face. A second later, he moved to take one of the shot glasses and Barry's eyes widened.
"No, no, wait!" Barry put his hand up on the table to act as a barrier. "Come on, Bruce, it's Dick! Just say it, they're not here! We all know it's him! Honestly, he's kinda all of our favorites. Sorry, the others are great too, he's just… Dick Grayson, you know?"
Bruce raised an eyebrow at everyone collected at the table, who seemed to all be considering this and making no motion to disagree with the sentiment. He smiled to himself, because yeah, deep down… he knew. Still though, he wasn't about to confirm or deny anything. "No comment." He threw back one of the shots.
Oliver grinned, motioning for Barry to drink his punishment. "Oh, come on, we all know it's the truth!"
"Doesn't matter, it's gotta come from Bruce or no deal." Hal claimed, backin Oliver up.
Before Barry got the chance to argue more, Bruce reached forward, grabbed his shot, and downed it without another word.
There was a fleeting, shared moment of shock, before Oliver sighed in defeat. "Well, I should've expected that. Just hurry up and ask Clark something."
Looking at his piece of paper, Bruce was about to spin to the intestine smoothie, but then he finished reading the question. He paused, focusing on Hal and fixing him with a particularly menacing death glare.
"What? Wait, which question did I-" Hal yanked out the other slips of paper from his pocket and quickly flipped through them. "Oh, shit, umm… Ok, so that one was just a joke, I don't know how it got mixed in there, I could've sworn I threw it out!"
When Bruce didn't respond, and simply kept glaring, Hal decided it was time to make himself scarce. "Oookkk, well, it's been fun, guys, but I gotta go, bye!" He flew up and out.
"What's it say?" Barry leaned over to look at the page and gasped in disbelief. "I cannot believe he asked this."
"What'd he ask?" Dinah walked over, took the slip, and burst into laughter. "Hey, do you mind if I say it?"
"Would it matter if I said no?"
"No, but thought I'd be polite anyway."
Bruce motioned for her to go ahead.
"Ok, it says: Clark, using your hands, show us how big the Batman really is!"
Stunned silence quickly broke way to raucous laughter as Clark slouched in his chair, turning almost as red as his cape. "Oh my god…"
Diana took in deep breaths between her giggles, wiping a tear from her eye. "This was a good game."
A/N: Hey, thanks for reading! Those poor cow tongues... just wasted.
