A/N: Yeah, yeah, enough stalling. Wally is actually going to sing in this chapter. I think.

Chapter 8: Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

.

Up on the stage Wally smiled nervously at the crowd of guests below him. What with the preceding altercation, he had already won their full attention.

'Leave it to me to snare the booby prize.'

Of course it was all the stupid Suck-A-Bus's fault that he had a gazillion eyeballs aimed at him like a firing squad comprised of (and that would be figuratively speaking comprised of) a platoon of Batmen at a time he'd hoped to just slip in and off the stage unnoticed. A regular unsung hero.

No such luck. Now Wally was getting all nervous and twitchy and he could already feel his brain's grasp on the material he'd memorized starting to slip away like Pinky & The Brain from a sinking three-hour cruise; and while FlashDucky was both aquatic and comprised of rubber, he was too small to make a decent raft that would save Wally's butt from being stranded on a desert island (Wayne Manor) with only The Skipper (Pennysworth), The Professor (Tim), and Mr. Howell (Bruce) for slapstick comedy companionship because the closest thing to Ginger was himself and that was not...no...because he was so very not wearing any sparkly dresses while he sang.

Hold the phone! What if his Little Buddy could effect a rescue? Maybe he could just let FlashDucky sing? That Jingle Bells tune with just the dogs barking had been a big hit, hadn't it?

What was his first song again?

The crowd must be picking up on his fear. There was no other explanation for why so many of them who hadn't paid attention as yet were suddenly cutting short their personal conversations in order to stare at him like a pride of lions at a lone gazelle.

Wally was pretty sure that first song wasn't supposed to be The Circle of Life.

-Strike one-

It was almost laughable.

Normally Wally West wasn't this shy around people. He liked people. People were for the most part interesting (especially when they were up to something they -legally- weren't supposed to be up to like that time he'd spotted Booster Gold trying to relieve Shayera of some plumage because Michael couldn't afford to buy a less exotic feather pillow for his 'Fragile: Handle With Care' head), and generally engaging in some fashion (even if it was only to plant Wally under the sod because he'd inadvertently called Shayera's attention to the fact that she shouldn't ought to mangle Booster like that as it was a great idea Booster had (stolen from Wally while he was muttering to himself) since he for one would love to receive a feather-filled bed pillow under his tree come next Christmas. Shayera...quite contrarily...seemed to think this was a rotten idea to which Wally had reminded her that at least Thanagarians were lucky enough to have such a ready-made and personal-type gift giving option available during the holidays. It wasn't like Wally could make presents from pure Speed Force. Really, she should feel blessed.)

Women. Sometimes they were so clueless when it came to seeing a compliment for what it was.

Of course there were other types of engaging things about people. The Rogues in particular came to mind seeing as they were hell-bent on creating one-of-a-kind super-destroyer-gizmos whose business end they insisted be aimed at all times towards Flash's own 'business end' while they waxed on with outlined presumptuous assessments of his mental capacity.

Which was all kinds of rude, really, because he'd meant to do what only looked to be stupid to the untrained eye since it threw his adversaries off their game if they wasted a precious second thinking 'what the fuck?' or laughing their rear off...which gave Wally a chance to get some top-notch strategizing time in.

Wait..was he thinking of the last encounter with his Rogues or that episode with Batz?

Anyway, all of that stuff was pretty much because real life was closer to what you found in a bad soap opera than most people wanted to acknowledge: evil dudes liked to talk a lot (again, mostly about their evil plans regarding his person) and generally it was amusing to listen to before he laid it all to waste. (Or the inverse where Batz was scarily silent while he devised evil retribution against Wally for...

Oh, that was a bad flashback. Better to skip that one.)

John had once theorized during a League meeting that there seemed to be a correlation between mental activity being hinged to mouth activity and a lack of brain power...as if the lower the intelligence, the more the need to talk. Wally had agreed wholeheartedly and went on to detail about that week's battle with the Rogues and his own frustrating encounter with a bona-fide Toyman life-sized robot parrot that had landed on his shoulder and kept repeating everything he said while Toyman made his get-away and wouldn't you know the idiot thing wouldn't stop talking and seemed determined not to let Wally get the last word in: kept returning quip for quip until Wally had been compelled to cut loose with so many rapid-fire Trivia Pursuit answers that the stupid bird eventually fried itself trying to keep up and that was why he had been ten minutes late joining them that day after the fruitless search for Toyman.

Why the other Founders had suddenly looked at him at that moment with those expressions was still an enigma...it wasn't like Wally had made any physical sign that he wanted to add anything to John's theory about Rogues and their need to outline their plans for world dominion.

Sometimes his teammates were just inscrutable.

The point was, this situation with being on stage in front of strangers was different from talking with friends about work-related stuff:

("Hey, Supes, what kind of detergent do you find keeps the primary colors brighter longer? This brand keeps turning my reds all pinkish and the last thing I need is for The Pied Piper to get any wrong ideas when I ask him for a hand on some job.")

...Or maybe your awesome exploits to a few known associates who shared a given passion for beating up googly-eyed sons of Godzilla and cousins to Ming The Merciless:

("Then our car fell off the roller coaster track at some point during the loopy-de-loop section and fell smack-dab onto the merry-go-round even while I was knocking out the bad dudes by imitating a twister, at which point the struts gave way and we were sent skidding into this whirl-a-round ride where my hand accidentally hit the control lever which sent that into max acceleration! Man, J'onn, if the carny ever designs a legit ride with g-forces like that I'm getting season tickets! So can you take over my monitor duty? 'Cause I'm taking Nightwing to the pizza parlor as a surprise celebration of our big V over evil and all that. Well, I am just as soon as 'Wing regains the ability to stand upright and walk straight.")

Even schmoozing with media anchors while a nation of strangers ogling him from beyond TV camera lenses was okay because he were safely 'anonymous' behind a concealing suit over a phenomenal physique that drew attention away from any odd bits of blue coconut shavings that may have escaped being removed from the pearly whites:

("Course The League all look to me when things get sticky. Why, just this morning there was some action over at the industrial food factory. If I hadn't dived in and carved out our escape by eating a pathway out of the goo, Wonder Babe would have suffocated in a vat of Alpine-CoNutCakes batter. Of course that was just before I stopped GL's ring from becoming one heck of a Krack-Jack prize when the oil that fell on him made it slip from his finger right into the popcorn mix with it's illegal drug ingredients the bad guys had added in. Lord knows how many boxes of the stuff we'd have had to buy with the petty cash fund before we found that particular doohickey.

What? how did Wondy fall in and the oil get dumped? Well, that's classified info because, hey, everyone's innocent until proven guilty. But those was nothing compared to what happened to Batman and the pink-cotton candy machine... Uh oh, folks, speak of the devil and he will start snarling over the old Justice League comm. Must be some bad stuff going down even as we speak as they need yours truly to get them out of a jam and you know these days that could well be a literal thing. Which reminds me of the time...Sheesh-watch the ear drums, Batz! I'll be there in a sec, okay? You are so impatient at times. Got ta go, people! I tell you, the League just can't do anything without my help. I'm indispensable!"

.

"Um...Wondy? I don't remember agreeing to play Truth or Consequences with you and since when did your lasso have to go around the neck to work? No, I am not vibrating my neck this hard in order to cheat the lasso's lie-detecting properties. That would be implying incriminating behavior-r-r. I think you should-d apolog-giz-ze"

"Circumstantial evidence, John! Honestly, it could have been anyone masquerading as the Flash and telling those embarrassing stories of you guys to the press. Maybe even an evil twin. You know how rampant those are this time of year what with all the clearance-priced Halloween costumes for sale. The burden of proof is on..."

"That's a fine and dandy bluff, Batz, but you know Supes swore he never uses that x-ray vision for frivolous purposes; right, Big Blue?"

"Say what? There's a Bat tracer planted on me where? How? Oh, that's just...freaky...and definitely a violation of my personal space."

"Oh yeah? Well, mind read this, J.J.! Next time you need fast, fast, fast relief after a choco binge, J'onn, I suggest you call FedEx for the medical delivery."

"Banned? You can't ban me without doing a vote. Oh...unanimous? You mean I actually caused Batz to agreed with Supes about something? Well that just shows how much you guys need...wait!"

"Man, I hate the teleporter.")

So much for the carefree days of yester-month.

He seriously needed to get around this bout of stage fright.

'Time to focus on the here and now...let the Force flow through you, padawan.'

Of course, Qui-Gon Jinn had done that and ended up with a terminal case of heart burn.

At times like this Wally was actually glad his supposed-to-have-died-a-hero-after-aiding-invading-aliens-trying-to-take-over-the-Earth-and-trying-to-sell-his-only-son-to-Russian-scientists dad had given him one piece of useful advice before the bum had taken off for parts unknown with his lusting fire demoness of a girlfriend after crashing mom's second wedding to a French spy who was named Rudolpho Valentino. (Yes, that did happen and was why he found Shayera's soap operas so unimaginative.)

Anyway, dad had told him:

.

"Wally, m'boy...if you ever need to make a sales pitch and get the willies...just picture everyone naked save for the greenbacks in their hands. I can't even recall one face of the people I suckered, but I can read palms better than a fortune teller."

.

So, yeah...his dad was in no danger of ever winning a Father Of The Year award unless they had a Worst Of category. Still, even scum could sometimes rise to moments of wisdom before plopping back down into the muck. Maybe dad had been on to something?

It was worth a shot. If he concentrated...concentrated hard on picturing his audience...

Wow! It was actually working! The image of a sea of death-dealing Batmen were morphing...changing...into a sea of death-dealing Batmen who were...nay...nah...nee...yee...yaah!

Abort mission! Abort! Abort!

Sirs...I'm picking up a blip on the long range scanners.

Watch it, Luke, there's an enemy shit approaching from starboard!

Uh...I think you mean 'ship', Han.

Don't try to tell me what I mean, kid.

This is Admiral Lobster-Head. Deploy all sty-fighters and prepare defensive measures, Captain Solo. They won't make us blind without a fight! May the Force be with you all.

You mean like it was with all the Jedi Knights in the prequels?

Oh, shaddup.

"This is Highly-Admirable WallyBrain to the Rebel Fleet Feet! Close all visual ports! CLOSE. ALL. VISUAL. PORTS! Switch to Emergency Daydream mode!

Switching...

Highly Admirable! There are reports of Image Port Cell short outs all over the ship and...sir, we've been boarded by Impalpable StarkersTroopers!

Shut down all imagination stations! Empty the memory banks!

*flush...swirl...gurgle...gurgle*

Mental visual screens terminated, sir!

.

Horrible! Horrible! If my visual receptors aren't fried... This is all your fault, Aretoo!

...AreToo, are you employing an asthmatic voice synthesizer program?

.

Sir...procrastination droid See'deTrinityP.O'd reports sighting a naked Dark Knight of the Snit approaching the bridge. Shall we evacua...aaagh!

(Hmm...I'll take that as a sign it's too late to slip away.) Darth Batz! I should have known you'd be here.

Admirable WallyBrain...(wheeze)...I want those stolen Death Moon River plans...

So you can destroy the Rebel cause, Darth?

No...(wheeze)...they were printed on my cape and your mind is rather drafty. How do you think I got this damned head cold? Now die!

Gah! Wally sucked in a steadying breath, still feeling those phantom fingers around his throat.

.

Of course picturing people au-naturel probably wasn't the best course of action anyway. Certainly not when you were facing a bunch of grumpy geriatrics who looked to be auditioning for the California Prune Pits chorus line, Wally decided.

'No wonder Batz chooses to haunt this city. I bet even Gotham's local McDougall's had custom-made Grumpy Meal take-out boxes that sport sneers rather than smiles.'

Wally sorely missed Keystone/Central with it's sunny skies and sweet people where the only ones who actively tried to kill you wore outlandish costumes that advertised their hostile intentions in advance.

Aboard the Watchtower washroom:

J'onn whimpered. Elderly nude Batmen invaders wielding red lightsabers. That... That was...

Good thing he'd shifted into a shape that could wash its own eyeballs in the sink.

Having already depleted the Watchtower's kitchen supply of junk food, the Martian went to check the various domiciles for hidden cache's of sugary sanity savers.

It was his own fault.

Dr. Fate had warned him not to accept any commission that involved rooting around Flash's inner psyche. This explained in glaring detail why the mystic would rather live in his nice, safe, speedster-free Tower rather than with the League. In fact, he had said he was working on the ultimate security system devised to fend off psychic attacks based largely on Wally's abstract thought processes.

Right now J'onn did not doubt that even Brainiac would be repelled by such a defensive shield.

"Ladies, and gentlemen," boomed out the conductor's voice from his podium, "tonight's selection of your requested songs will be sung courtesy of a talented newcomer to the musical arena."

'Talented? Oh yay! Did that mean Hassex's relief singer had come at last and his bacon was saved?'

I give you..eh" the conductor glanced at some ink on the palm of his hand, "Mr. Bartholomew East." (There was a spattering of 'polite' clapping as the band struck up the notes to his first song.)

'Aw...that would be a 'no', then. Best to just get this over with as quickly as possible. If he got there before closing time at the clinic, he might be able to talk James aka The Trickster into subletting his psychiatric room in exchange for a guaranteed partner at soft darts. So yeah, getting this over like lickety-split was good.

Because fast was always good.

(Really, in retrospect he should have realized the problem with that idea right then and there.)

Bruce Wayne raised an eyebrow, affecting a bemused air at Selina's continued wordplay and innuendo. Inside, he was anything but amused. Catwoman knew something Batman did not...or she thought she did. That could not bode well either way.

Setting down his glass, he trapped her wandering hands with his own. "I'd show you the i.d. in my wallet, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get the contents back. Now, before I lose my shirt on this venture, what is it that you find so comedic?"

Selina smirked, but did not go for another of his shirt buttons. Not yet, anyway. "Oh no. I'm not letting this cat out of the bag." She cast sly glances towards the main ballroom. "It is an extensive gathering of the well-to-do you have attending this gala, Bruce darling. Maybe I was merely referring to all the lovely kitty toys being displayed by the old tabbys here...and all of that catnip getting moldy in their bank accounts would buy a lot of lobster din-dins for my children. " His grim look prompted her to wink at him. "Besides, I'm sure you don't need your Irene Adler to spoil the surprise. You'll figure it out for yourself...Sherlock."

"Selina..." he warned. As much as he somehow always found himself cutting her extra slack, he wasn't going to let someone get hurt if he could prevent it.

"Ssshh," she playfully hushed him with a finger to his lips. "Let's indulge in our own private party for a moment. Then I want to hear the boy's caterwauling before either you, his discriminating audience, or...as I suspect...Alfred strangles him." She tilted her chin a bit and mused, "Although even an alley cat may look like a king so perhaps I am being overly catty. Who knows...maybe junior's got enough lives to survive the night."

"Selina?"

"Yes?"

Bruce gave her a dark look of warning. As much as he was drawn to her, he did not approve of everything she saw as 'having fun'. "I won't have anyone here used as a cat's paw."

"Just categorizing for future possibilities. Call it my little mad quirk but I just can't control the urge to color the world to my own fashion."

"Not even arrested yet and already claiming psychosis?" he smirked.

You're the one currently leashed by cathexis," Catwoman murmured.

Cathexis? Bruce blinked at her use of that word. It meant being under an unhealthy amount of mental scrutiny by another. What was she getting at? "What?"

"Just thinking a CAT scan might be right up your alley, lover. But for now...how about we stop playing Law & Order and switch to..." she started playing with his buttons again. "Pay per View?"

"Selina..."

"You know, your mind had trouble getting past my name earlier; does this mean you're going to restart the cycle? Although I do so love hearing my name on your lips. You make it sound so...seductive," she purred. "I think it's the sibilant way you begin with the 's'...an alpha tom hiss of warning that you won't be messed with...unless it's by a lady with classic feline wiles."

The corner's of his mouth started tightening in that so-very Batman way.

"Oh, don't go all pouty, Bruce...you used to love our nightly fun. Now, I just paid you a clue; therefore," she ran her fingers down his chest, "you owe me a view. I do so love our barter system."

Internally, Bruce sighed as he gave in. Just this once tonight in the interest of keeping her somewhat on a leash.

No other reason.

None whatsoever.

(pause)

Crud.

Beautiful cat burglars were his kryptonite.

The strains of old-time pop music came from the ballroom. Wayne realized that the band must have begun playing the requests people had put in earlier. Bruce didn't know whether to be relieved or to curse. He was leaning towards the latter, but his song request was a family observance of sorts. That took precedence over most everything else. Once more he reluctantly stopped her hands.

"I'm going to have to take a raincheck on that...at least until one song is over. Call it my own mad quirk, but it's a tradition. Care to join me in the ballroom until then?"

"Mmm...would this tradition be our song?"

He removed her hand from his trouser seat. "No."

"Damn. Well, of course I'll accompany you. Can't have that rain check fly off into the night like a bat out of..." He forcibly tugged her back into the ballroom. "...hell." Isis, but he could be such a man, Selina grinned.

Mama said there'd be days like this (if she played her cards right.) Mrr-eow.

Some minutes previously:

Alfred silently fumed. First Master Timothy had made himself scarce, then Master Richard had disappeared shortly after his arrival. Now Catwoman was surely attempting to make a meal of Master Bruce. On top of it all, his young student had explicitly disobeyed a direct command and was about to make a further mess of the gala by undoubtedly subjugating everyone to tinnitus and -sadly- Wayne Manor didn't have enough ear plugs to go around.

(The band struck up the first series of notes.)

He snuck some ear plugs into aural cavities.

Upon hearing his cue, Wally opened his mouth and sang out the classic lyrics for Harry Dacre's Daisy Belle. It was the first of the ones he'd speed memorized earlier and to put it mildly...it didn't exactly get his heart a'pumping.

Obviously, Batman had okay-ed this sucker of a ditty purely for it's crime scene value alone even if the villain's identity was pretty cut and dried.

.

"There's a flower within my warm heart,

Daisy, Daisy,

Planted one day by a glancing dart,

Planted by Daisy Bell.

Whether she loves me or loves me not

Sometimes it's hard to tell..."

.

Really, if this Daisy person wasn't Poison Ivy in disguise with her deadly flower darts and all, then Wally was a figment of someone's imagination. And if Harry couldn't tell by her attempts at murdering the guy that she hated his guts or was simply a black widow out for his cash...

Well... no, robbery couldn't be the reason for her murderous tendencies because obviously...

"It won't be a stylish marriage-

I can't afford a carriage,

But you'll look sweet upon the seat

Of a bicycle built for two."

They guy was flat broke.

So if money wasn't the reason for the crime, then it had to be because Harry had previously trampled over Poison Ivy's flower garden with his two-wheeler.

So the culprit was Poison Ivy, the murder weapon was a flower stem sharpened into a poisonous dart to the heart, and the reason was revenge. Pure and simple, end of story. Easier than a game of Clue.

So boring even The Question would have ignored the newspaper accounts.

He finished the last word of the song, amazed and happy he'd gotten through it without falling asleep or otherwise making a fool of himself because...that had been as tedious as playing Boy Scout to a geezer in a walker who insisted on going at his own pace.

The tempo of Daisy Belle being the curmudgeonly geezer.

Anyway, thank God that one's done!

Relieved, he looked out at the crowd to judge their reaction. Would they throw kisses or tomatoes?

Apparently neither.

Nothing came his way save for a few puzzled looks and most of those were edging towards the speaker system. One man appeared to be reaching to clear out an ear. In fact...

(The band struck up the second series of notes as his perspective continued to adjust itself back to normal speed.)

'Oh for heaven's sake!'

He'd sung the entire song so fast it had sounded to normal ears like speaker feedback.

Pinching his nose, Wally muttered, "Great..so the Senility Seventy didn't hear any of that."

The audience frowned, switching from eying the speakers to glaring at him with displeasure.

Um...

Wally glanced backwards at Hassex and pointed at the microphone near his mouth. "On?"

The sweating man nodded once. Sharply.

"Guess they heard some of it then."

Another pained nod.

Oh.

At this rate the crowd was more likely to be eating his hand rather than out of it and worse yet...

He had to sing that Turtle-inspired torture of a song -again- at an even -slower- rate?

"Mama said there'll be days like this, there'll be days like this my mama said..." Wally half sang, half cursed under his breath.

-strike two-

Watchtower: Manhunter sighed. Clearly Wally's mother had either been prophetic or simply knew her son extremely well. He downed a couple of marshmallows he'd found in Superman's room, humming along with the tune out of empathy. "Mama said there'd be days like this, there'll be days like this..."

"...If you find love hang on to each caress
And never let love go
For when it's gone you'll know the loneliness
The heartbreak only the lonely know."

The crowd clapped with some hesitancy. Wally couldn't blame them. Those were lousier lyrics than his sorry rendition of that Schwinn double-seater murder mystery. Between the depressing lines and the speed of each selection he was being put to sleep as surely as if they were doing a Brahma Bull's lullaby. It had been all he could do to stay awake through the whole thing let alone put any heart into it.

Well...onward into the fray. The show must go.

(For some stupid reason that he'd have to ask Zatanna about.)

Fly me to the moon and
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars...

Damn...he'd actually noticeably choked on that part, but it was the song's fault what with invoking imagery he really wanted to avoid. Even Alfred was shaking his head while Hassex was holding his while grimacing. The conductor had this smug "I told you so" look on his face even as he beheld the result of his Pyrrhic victory.

Smarmy Bastard.

Wally bit his lip. He was failing everybody who had put even a micron of trust in him. Still...only one more song to go before he could slink off and find something sugary to console himself with.

*sigh* 'Candy Mountain, that's where I want to be...by the Soda Water Fountain and beneath the gum-drop tree...'

Hey, maybe the last one would speak to his soul before his soul had to explain the entire sad story of his unexpectedly-shortened life to Saint Peter?

Now, what was the last special request?

He reached into his pocket to brush up on the song in question. (That was the problem with speedster-style 'cram' memorization...it didn't last very long even at the best of times and right now these were the downright crummy times. He was really feeling stressed and had trouble recalling the ending of Mrs. Mona Lisa last paragraph never mind the final lines.) No matter. He still had his cheat sheets courtesy of Mr. Hassex.

Here we go...

They just lie there and they die there
Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa?
Or...

Okay, he'd just sung that. No problem. Next page...

...On a bicycle built for two.

Huh? That wasn't right. Hadn't he sung those lines already? Worse, hadn't he sung them and not together like that?

'Damnit...I must have gotten the papers out of order!

Help!help!help!Help!help!help!Help!help!help!

Don't panic, Brain! Easy fix!'

He speed flipped through the pages faster, trying to get them into order before anyone noticed anything, but it was hard because they were wrinkled and crinkled from his having carelessly crammed them into the same pocket that already housed FlashDucky and he was panicking and moving too fast...

Smoke sprouted from the friction of paper brushing against paper.

Combustible paper brushing against...

Within microseconds flaming gray and black ashes were falling towards his shoes in slow motion as if to prolong the torture.

Holy, Great Caesar's Ghost caught in a compromising position with Hera, Batman! If this doesn't constitute being fired, I don't know what does!

[cue the Mission: Impossible theme music, maestro!]

'Gentlemen, we have a Peter Graves situation in progress. Despite our best efforts, our greatest foe, 'Rotten Luck', has stolen a song sheet (code named: Moon River) of unparalleled importance. It is vital we get it back. World peace between West and Eastern alliances may well depend on it. Gentlemen, the only way to save the Earth from rabid bats is to recover that song. Your mission...should you choose to accept it (and you'd darn better or it's playing Asteroid-Smash Derby for the rest of your miserable life)...is to restore that song sheet and sing like you've never sung before. Well, not like you'd -never- sung...you know what I mean!

I'd warn that this tape will self destruct in five seconds, but thanks to a certain agent's incompetence, there's been enough violations of the building's fire code for one...

KA-BOOM!

Never mind.'

Don't panic! Maybe he could rebuild it like they did with Astronaut Steve Austin before inflation made $6 Million worth of cybernetics seem like Dollar Discount Day at WayneTech?

Tetris! He was a pro at Tetris! A touch of speed had caused this and a touch of speed would fix it!

Wally, going deeper into speed mode, fell to his knees trying to sort through the pieces of ash for anything recognizable as the foundation of a page while adding 'that little extra' to his pleas to the Almighty at the same time.

'God, if you help me out here I swear I'll never pull another prank as long as I...never have a better idea for one cross my mind. I'll leave that possibility up to you because, it would be your call, Biggest Guy, what with being omnipotent like Supes and all. By the way, you ever consider wearing something besides that flowing loin cloth thing Leonardo lent you? Or maybe it was a choice of that for your portrait or your spandex suit and that's why you're against having any more pictures taken? I mean -no offense- but you're kind of pushing the eons there and I've seen some of those early super suits the Golden Oldies generation wore. Not exactly Kodak moments there.'

Okay, so he sucked big time at making small talk with the Almighty. (Poor Uncle Barry had been incredulous when that lightning bolt had defied the odds and struck him out of the blue? Pretty clear to Wally that it hadn't been the Speed Force marking him for power: it had been divine retribution for shooting off at the mouth during the previous night's bedside prayer session.)

Everything was cool, everything was cool...even if 'everything' was scorched bits of paper flakes sporting little flickers of heat like a forewarning the Lake of Fire.

'Ha! That looked like an 'oo'...and there was a definite 'th'...or a 'ch'? Great, great... All he needed was a fire extinguisher, some white glue...'

...and a high-powered microscope from Star Labs along with a team of archeological renovation scientists willing to do pro-bono work that could all be finished in the space of a normal person's eye blink.

"And now by a very special request..." Wally heard the conductor begin to pronounce in his relatively (slowed downed) slurred voice-

'Yeah, yeah, Moon River...working on it...' he snatched up another vowel and tried to find a match.

"...from our eminent host, Mr. Bruce Wayne..."

'huh?'

"...Moon River."

Wally looked up from his kneeling position in a state of paralytic terror as the conductor raised his little stick thing:

Who-what-when-where-how-why?

Bruce Wayne? Since when did Batman do special requests?

(Well, special requests that weren't cryptic commands to get the impossible done to perfection or else. So yeah,Batz wanting Moon River did make a sort of horrible sense because he must have known that Wally couldn't recall a word of it other than the damning title.)

(I wonder if you can still see Earth from the asteroid belt?)

- And strike three-yer out!-

In their hidden nook, Tim awoke with a start from Dick's elbow in his ribs. He rubbed his eyes and blinked away the remains of his drowsiness.

"Hey, the manor is still standing! Is it over?"

"Might as well be," Dick sighed, hand over his eyes. He purposefully did not look up at where the security camera showed the stage.

Nightwing had done everything in his power to help his misfit pal: first he'd arranged that the band for the gala was made up of professionals who owed Richard Grayson one rather than Alfred, hired Hassex to make sure Wally sang Bruce's beloved memorial song to his mother who had started the Wayne charity benefits to begin with...

Mama said there'd be days like this.

It had been the perfect plan:

Wally West could sing and pretty darn well. Dick knew it as a fact as he'd heard him a few times in the Teen Titan men's showers when the speedster was tired and thought he was alone.

Bruce would be so enthralled by Wally's rendition of Moon River that he would forgive the speedster all his past snafus. Basking in the light of Bruce's praise, his friend would gain some much need confidence...real confidence...not that fake bravado that Flash normally put on for public consumption.

He just hadn't factored in Wally's penchant for subconsciously sabotaging himself. Plus, his friend just had the worst luck imaginable whenever Bruce was involved. It was like their personal auras just conflicted or something.

"Oh," Tim sobered at the sight of Dick's crestfallen face. "In that case, remember I'm just the innocent kid in all of this."

A/N: I don't own anything in this story but the story itself. References are as follows:

Pinky & The Brain was a cartoon about a pair of mice out to "take over the world". One was like Luthor and the other was just dopey.

Three-hour cruise, Skipper, Professor, Howell, and Ginger were jokes on the TV sitcom Gilligan's Island where the ship passengers were stranded on a deserted island.

There is a famous song where Jingle Bells consists of varioius dogs barking to make the tune.

Circle of Life was the main theme song of Disney's The Lion King animated movie. It vaguely dealt with the concept of death and life being interconnected.

As far as I know, there are no such things as Alpine CoNutCakes, but Krack-Jack is a play on Cracker Jack's...a boxed snack with a cheesy 'toy' inside.

Truth Or Consequences was a famous TV game show.

FedEx is an international delivery service.

Yes, that was a bad parody of Star Wars.

McDougall's is a parody of McDonald's fast food chain with their 'Happy Meals'.

Clue is a mystery game.

Daisy Belle, Mona Lisa, Mama Said, Candy Mountain, and Only The Lonely song lyric snatches are older than dirt.

Peter Graves was the star of the TV version of Mission: Impossible.

Tetris is a game. As with all such fare, I imagine Wally plays them at the fastest playing speed possible.

Steve Austin was the main character of the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man...a cyborg who became a spy.

Kodak makes cameras and film. There most famous commercials featured the phrase: a Kodak moment.

If you spotted anything else it was unintentional...however if it was funny then I rescind that...it was on purpose.

If you enjoyed, please review...even if it is only to do this an emoticon or even this: wtf?