"Oh. Yeah." Red X, now in control of Kid Flash's body smiled at himself in Jinx's 3 sided mirror, the kind they had in the fitting rooms of high class stores. He slowly turned his now orange haired head from side to side just to confirm his complete control.

Oh no! What the hell's happened?! I can't control my own body! What'd you do?

"I didn't do anything, but however it happened, I like it," said the super thief now super speedster. He leaned in toward the mirror till just an inch away and inspected his fair skinned face and blue eyes. "Oh, yeah. I can score lookin' like this."

In the background he could hear a series of pained grunts and groans.

"What are you doing, Zippy?" he chuckled as he ran red gloved fingers through his swept back hair.

Trying to control my own fricking body! How can this be happening? This is a nightmare. I-I feel like a puppet or something!

"How do you think I liked it?" muttered Red X sounding, of course, not like Red X but exactly like Kid Flash and why not, the words being generated from the exhale from Kid Flash's lungs passing through Kid Flash's vocal chords and out Kid Flash's mouth. He inspected his hair some more. "Hmmph. Kind of extreme but I guess it fits with the pale skin and the blue eyes. Makes me look like a certain kind of pretty boy," he added then traced one red gloved fingertip over one of the wings attached to the side of his mask.

"A bit over the top," he muttered then inspected his new nose and teeth before tracing one gloved finger over his lips. He pressed lightly once, twice and then a third time trying to simulate the pressure of kissing on them.

"Full but not big and nice color. I like 'em."

I fucking hate this. I fucking hate this!

Red X just smirked and continued down the body in his inspection, staring at and patting the shoulders under the skintight yellow top of the uniform. "Nice deltoids. These shoulders are really pretty good. But these stick-like arms are nothing special, expecially these forearms. God."

Hey!

"What, you want to try to defend these wimpy guns," said Red X turning his arms back and forth in front of him in the mirror.

I'm not a-a strength guy. My power isn't the ability to bench press things.

"But, hey, these abs are awesome," said Red X, gently smoothing his palms over the eight conspicuous squares almost made more conspicuous by the skin tight Kid Flash suit. Then he felt, with both thumbs, the barely detectable narrow waistband where the uniform turned from yellow to red. He gave a slight tug upward.

"Dance belt, huh?"

-sigh- Yes.

"Mmm hmm."

That's all you're gonna say, 'mmm hmm'? You're not gonna make fun of me for that?

"No. Why should I? Besides, it deserves respect. It's working hard," he chuckled before cupping one hand over a certain bulge in the red lower half of the uniform. "And here I was thinking there wasn't a single ounce extra on this body that wasn't there for the purpose of running."

I don't know why I'm . . like that. I just am.

Red X chuckled some more at how self conscious Kid Flash was. It wasn't even his any more! Neither were these, he sniffed looking at the reflection of his backside in the three sided mirror.

"Damn. Zippy got back!"

He heard an annoyed sigh from Kid Flash in his head.

"If Sir Mix-A-Lot went looking for a skinny white boy on the down low he'd head straight for you, Zippy."

Fine. What. Ever.

Red X massaged his new glutes with his red gloved hands. "I could do a million squats and lunges and not get mine like this."

Another annoyed sigh.

Red X playfully slapped first one side then the other with a laugh.

Would you quit groping my butt! I can feel everything you do, you know.

Red X did it some more just to aggravate him. "I like this body and there's nothing you can do about what I do with it, Zippy."

Well . . how 'bout . . at least . . stop calling me 'Zippy', okay. It's usually either 'Wally' or 'KF'."

Red X wiggled his butt in the mirror one last time eliciting one more sigh from Kid Flash. "Fine . . KF. Oh, and great calves, too. I am gonna have FUN with this body. He glanced down at one relatively thin arm covered in tight yellow. He smiled and then turned to one side and whirled that arm as fast as he could, in a split second creating a cyclone within the room that immediately picked up anything not nailed down including his new body, slamming him hard against a bookcase, leaving him groaning on all fours as sheets, papers and books cascaded down around him for a minute afterward.

Unh. You idiot. What the hell were you doing? That hurt.

"I-I was doing that arm cyclone thing I see you do all the time."

You never saw me do it in a closed room, did you, dumbass?! It creates huge suction at the sides of the room away from the vortex in the center. That's why I never do it. And now we've gotta pick up all this stuff.

Red X, to all outward appearances, Kid Flash, slowly got to his feet and started zipping back and forth replacing papers, books and bedding as it had been with Kid Flash, in the back of his head giving a steady stream of instructions.

No, she likes the Len Deighton's chronological because they build on previous ones a bit. Ipcress File first. Right . . . All the Dinesen's go alphabetical . . .

Luckily, Red X had super speed, so replacing 500 books plus all Jinx's papers and sketches only took 30 seconds.

"Hmmph. I didn't figure her for the unicorn type," he sniffed as he put her last sketch book back in place.

There's a lot about her that you might get at first glance.

"One thing I gotta give you credit for, Zi-, I mean, KF. You saw the real her," said Red X continuing around the room straightening things. "I mean, the whole cat eyed bad girl thing did it for me, too, but as tough as she was on the other side, she was always a bit out of place. That team of hers just wasn't up to being with her."

Tell me about it.

"Once, I had this terrific scam worked out with a particular painting I'd stolen. See, I had this trick worked out with the head of the mob in Gotham City. Guy fancied himself an art collector. He didn't just organize the casino skim and steal union dues. Oh no. He was an art guy, or so he liked to pretend. Yeah right. I told him that I was going to steal a certain painting and get this genius forger I know to make a copy, then I'd put the fake back and he'd have the real one. Only I had the forger make two copies and I was selling him a worthless canvas, too, and selling the real one to this japanese billionaire. But, when I go to the meet at the warehouse, there's the fucking HIVE 5 or 6 or-"

Yeah, I know.

"Anyway. He thought it would be cute to have two separate exchanges done in the same place at the same time. They snatched some special bearer bonds or something for him. I never knew all the details, but I think they ripped him off, too."

Wait, so you ripped off the mob?

"I would have. But I put the painting up on an easel and Jinx comes over and starts staring at it. I tried to subtly get her away from there but I can't and I'm mostly involved with negotiating with said mob boss. We've just about come to terms when she laughs and goes 'This is shit'. I said, what, what the hell are you talking about? It's a beautiful Rembrandt. She laughs again and says how she loves Rembrandt and Vermeer too but points out how you can see the word 'Merde' in the lattice work of a window in the background of the picture. The mob boss comes over and she explains that even among forgers there's a bit of a sense of honor and it's their habit to sneak the word 'Merde', french for 'shit' into the picture somewhere. None of the other HIVE kiddies would've had a clue about something like that. Cost me three hundred thousand and put me in a tight spot. The guy was thinking that I'd cheated him. Which I had. He and the other guidos were all guns drawn and everything. But before things got so bad I had to go to full cloaking mode, I got all angry, swearing and stomping around about that damn forger and how he'd cheated me. I threw it all off on him and seeing as they didn't know who the hell Michel was, it didn't matter."

So, you never got your money?

"Are you kidding? I found another billionaire. Russian oligarch this time. I got more. And now," said Red X with a pat of his new speedster butt, "Let's go test these new wheels"

No, don't!

SMASH

In the middle of meditating in the next room, Raven slightly raised one eyebrow. She was used to hearing thuds and bodies, usually in pairs pushing against the walls in the next room. She just returned her focus to the delicate metaphysical lace of the barrier between this world and an adjacent dimension.

Red X rolled over from his back onto all fours groaning. "Oh, fuck, that hurt."

Aarrgghh. God. You idiot! I could tell you were gonna go too fast. I could feel you trying to access too much speedforce before you even started. This is why Flash trained me for months you klutz! This is like giving a 6 year old the keys to a Ferrari.

Red X staggered to his feet. "Look, voice in the back of my head. I'm anything but a klutz. I just . . I just gave it a little too much gas, that's all."

Everybody thinks my powers are so simple and easy, but if I run into a brick wall at a thousand miles an hour, I go splat and it's all over. Period. Everything I do has to be precise or my own power can kill me in nothing flat.

"Okay, okay I just-"

Go fucking slow at first! Okay? Get the hang of it and slowly build up. I couldn't go top speed right away either. What makes you think you can?

"I didn't . . I mean . . look, just back off, voice in the back of my head."

You won't have a head if you keep making mistakes like that.

"Fine. What. Ever," muttered Red X opening and closing the door to the room and walking out into the hall. After a little calculatiion, he decided to go and tell his team leader that he was going for a run. He jogged to the door to the stairway at normal speed and then up one flight at just triple speed and then started down the hallway to the communications center, where, from Kid Flash's memory, he knew to expect to see Robin.

Sure enough, there typing away at the main console, was the boy wonder. He walked over and squashed two jet black spikes of gelled hair down to Robin's scalp.

"Wally!"

"Hey tiny little leader. Goin' for a run, just wanna stretch my legs. I'll be back later."

"Fine," grumbled Robin trying to fix his hair with one hand while typing with the other.

On the way down the hall to the stairway, he passed Starfire and gave her a lascivious smile punctuated by a slight show of his tongue.

What was that for?!

"Maybe nothing. We'll see," whispered Red X. He ran down the 14 flights of stairs at a reasonable 4 times normal human maximum, made his way out the main entrance and grinned at the sight of Jump City Bay surrounding the island.

"I always thought this looked cool," he said then took off down stone steps and onto the water where, a hundred feet off shore, he summarily smacked into a chest high wave and went flying like a tumbling water skier.

Glug-glug. He spit out a mouthful of saltwater as he bobbed amid the waves. "Don't say it!"

Say what? That you're a freaking klutz who doesn't know how to use super speed and who's too stubborn to ask me? Is that what you think I'd say?

Red X treaded water as he spoke. "Something like that. But, seriously, man, I am not a klutz. This is just much harder to control than I thought."

Then ask me, first, before you try something so you don't kill both of us in the process!

Red X sighed. "Okay. How do you run across the bay?" he asked as a wave passed over him and he had to spit out another mouthful of water as he bobbed there.

Well, first of all, you have to go at least a little faster than that. Second of all, you never run over a wave. That's stupid. If it's calm, you can run straight across. If it's choppy like this then you run a serpentine path just along the troughs of the waves.

"Yeah, that makes sense."

Of course. But you have to think a bit. Everybody thinks there's nothing to being a speedster. Just squeeze into the suit and run, right? But there's a lot more to it than that. To use these powers right you have to understand science, coefficients of friction, momentum, linear and angular momentum, sound waves, aerodynamics, fluid mechanics-

"Allright, allright, I get the point. Now, just tell me, how do I get across?"

Use both hands, the same way you did the cyclone in the room to lift yourself out of the water and start your legs going as soon as you're above the surface. Then stop the arm cyclones and run. Go a little faster than you were going. A little! And run between the waves and head for that small beach by the glass building.

Red X did just as instructed, churning the water into a froth around him and then sprinting up onto the beach at the other side of the bay where he skidded to a halt leaving 50 foot long marks on the sand that ended at his boots.

Okay, now, just slowly increase your speed. Stay on main roads, interstates if possible. They have better quality surfaces and there are fewer places where cars will try to enter. But don't go above-

Red X immediately started to run and was on the main interstate leading east out of Jump City, still accelerating when . .

BOOM!!!!!

The speed of sound . . . -sigh-

All around that section of Jump City, people stopped and looked around frantically. Was that a bomb?! Are we being attacked by terrorists?! Red X pulled over to the side of the highway as cars streamed past.

"Okay, there's a way around that, too, isn't there?" he muttered, looking down so as not to be too obviously seen as talking to himself by passing motorists.

Of course there is. You have to vibrate something as you approach the speed of sound. It prevents the wave of air from building up and moving with you that makes the sonic boom.

"Something?"

I usually do a finger or two on each hand.

"Can you vibrate any part?"

Of course.

"Even . . " Red X smirked glancing down at the bulge in the front of the red bottom half of his unitard.

-sigh- Yes.

"Seriously? That's fuckin' great!"

But it's a lot easier to do when you're . . um . . ready to go. Fingers are much much easier when you're running.

"But, in bed, you could-"

Yes. Yes. Allright? I can. Allright?! Are you happy now? Could we get on with the rest of this and put that aside for now?!

"Between a super fast tongue and that . . . . . fuck!" laughed Red X before finally calming down and letting out a deep sigh. "Okay, I'm ready."

He accelerated from there, heading east on the interstate, listening to Kid Flash's instructions and sprinted across the country to the atlantic coast in 10 seconds. He made some more mistakes, going into a turn on Interstate 90 too fast outside Albany, New York, and pinning himself back first against the side of a box truck. But Kid Flash told him how to use a smaller version of the arm cyclone, one made with just one hand, to create air pressure against, say, his right side when he needed to make a sharp turn to the left.

After almost a couple hours of it, Red X was still rough around the edges at being a super speedster but at least not likely to kill them simply by running into something. The only remaining category of lessons was in vibration.

Red X was stopped somewhere in the desert in Nevada, at sunset, resting for a moment and enjoying the elevated sort of runners' high that super speedsters felt after using their powers.

"What a cool, mellow buzz this is," chirped Red X. "Do you feel like this every time you use your powers a lot?"

Yeah. I do.

"This is kind of like what people've told me certain drugs feel like. Jesus, you could never be uptight like your little leader feeling like this on the job."

I've tried to tell him that, obviously not quite worded that way. But I've tried to tell him that the speedforce creates these incredible endorphins in me when I use it. I just can't be 100% vigilant or, more like paranoid, like him. I just can't.

"Of course not. But . . speed . . force? That's what you said?"

It's . . it's the stuff, the energy, from another dimension, Flash is pretty sure, that powers me and him.

"So it's not all the food stuffed down this throat?" said Red X, touching his neck with one red gloved hand.

What? No! Not even close. Do a little math and you see that I could eat ten times as much as I do and it still wouldn't be close to enough.

There was a minute of no communication between them.

"I feel like you're hesitating about something now."

I need to teach you about vibrating your molecules. It's . . it's a big safety measure for speedsters. If you're going to slam into something, or let's say a Gorilla Grodd or somebody throws you into something, you can avoid the impact by vibrating through it.

"Like the vault door of a bank?"

-sigh- That's exactly why I'm hesitant to teach you.

"I figured. I just thought I should just say it instead of trying to bullshit around it."

I . .

"You know you need to teach me so that I don't hurt this body," said Red X running his red gloved hands from his chest down to his hips just as a station wagon with a mom, dad and three kids went by, two daughters frantically taking phone camera pictures of him. He gave them a big wave and a smile like he thought a friendly teen superhero might.

The voice in the back of Red X's head sighed and then relented. He went on to explain everything that Flash had taught him how the denser the object, the faster you needed to make your vibrational freqency, but how vibrating enough for the densest materials was really hard so they tended to vibrate just enough. You could tell if you weren't vibrating enough if the metal or wood or whatever it was seemed to offer any resistance. He had Red X practice first going through a cactus out there in the Nevada desert. He got through fine but, no, KF explained, things weren't supposed to explode after you passed through them. That meant way too high a vibrational frequency or a change in frequency in the course of passing through something. This tended to impart a lot of vibrational energy to whatever the object was. Red X tried some more and eventually got the hang of it. Kid Flash had him sprint on into California and go through the fountain in some town's downtown area practicing vibrating through till he came through dry. After that, he had him go through some thin metal barriers, the walls of an 18 wheeler's trailer and the doors of some abandoned houses.

The mood between them was, if not exactly friendly, at least very cooperative. As much as Kid Flsh didn't want to help the super thief, the guy might kill him by having no idea how to use super speed. He had no idea if he'd ever get control of his own body back but he sure as hell wouldn't if Red X killed both of them making them go splat against a bridge abutment.

And then, right when they finished, Red X sprinted down an interstate straight into Los Angeles to the main California office of the First National Bank.

You bastard!

"I never said this isn't what I'd do. I never pretended otherwise. See, I cased this one out. It's the feeder for all their branches in L.A. and it feeds the Orange County main office, too. The vault's in the back of the building one floor down, so, I figure I'll just vibrate through the wall to a spot above the vault and then vibrate and let myself drop right into the vault. Should be somwhere between 10 and 15 million in cash in that vault. Or, there was," he chuckled.

No!

But when he only took one running step toward the bank from the side street where he stood before feeling his limbs go stiff and become immoveable.

"What the fuck?!" he shouted in his head barely louder than his own grunting and groans as well as those of the voice in the back of his head. He struggled and strained harder and harder but could tell the the voice in his head was only doing the same. All the while, his speedster body was frozen in place, one leg in the air, a statue captured in mid sprint. A drunk woman staggered by giving no more than a glance to the spectacle of Kid Flash somehow immobile in mid stride in front of her before continuing on past.

Kid Flash hoped he'd be able to build on this and actually gain control of his body but when Red X relented and stopped trying to go toward the bank, he found he couldn't exert any control at all. Red X was still completely in command of his body. He just seemed to be able to prevent him from using it to rob a bank. It was at least some consolation to the humiliating predicament in which he found himself.

For his part, Red X was pissed off. He sped around L.A., randomly, challenging Kid Flash, "Okay, voice in the back of my head, stop me from going through the homes of movie stars in Bel Air! Okay, voice, stop me from vibrating through the girls' showers at that exclusive girls' school coming up! Stop me from going here . . . stop me from going there."

But Kid Flash couldn't. Finally Red X stopped up by an observatory overlooking all of metro L.A.

"So . . it looks like I'm in control as long as I don't rob a bank. Okay. Fine. There's a lot of other things I can rob."

Maybe I can stop you from robbing them, too.

"Yeah, and maybe I'll just pull the mask down like this," Red X said, doing just that, "on TV, and tell the whole world that my name's Wally West!"

And maybe, if I ever get control again, I'll tell the whole world that Red X's real name is Xing Fu Lee!

"What? How did . . . . . . . so you can access my memories, too?"

That's right, pal. I've mostly been busy trying to prevent you from killing both of us, but, yeah, I found that when I'm in the background, I can get to your memories just like you could mine. This is your driver's license, isn't it?

In Red X's mind he could now see his driver's license, just as he remembered it.

Okay. Black hair, brown eyes, six feet tall, 20, no, 21 years old as of last month and you live at 472 Skyview, unit 4802. Nice picture, pretty boy, and pretty nice digs.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Red X now taking a step back to sit on the low retaining wall beside the sidewalk on this side of the bank. "You've got something on me. But we don't know if it'll ever count. I might be in the driver's seat for good."

And what good would it do you to be me but tell the whole world my real name? Who are you sabotaging?

There was a hard silence between them. "Okay. Truce for now on this revealing identities, shit, deal?"

Deal.

With that, and uncertain what to do next, Red X sprinted back to Titans Tower. This time he made it smoothly across Jump City Bay and up to the 14th floor of the Tower, where, again, or perhaps still, he saw Robin typing away at the communications center console.

"Hey, little leader," he greated the boy wonder, and again flattened his gelled hair spikes against his scalp, Wally!, before continuing on to the kitchen and loading up a plate with some of the beef bourguignon that Jinx had made. He was just finishing the last few forkfuls when the wisdom of his decision to offer the secret identity truce became clear.

He felt like he was ejecting from the cockpit of a jet, still able to feel every sensation of this speedster body but falling, falling and never quite landing, suspended in air, just a voice in the back of the head of the body's owner.

And Kid Flash felt the incredibly invigorating opposite, suddenly vaulting or dropping into control of his body.

"Allright!" he half shouted from the table where he sat before letting out the huge belch that had been coming. From the stove where a pot of water was just starting to whistle that it was coming to a boil, he saw Raven raise one eyebrow.

"So," she deadpanned. "You like beef bourguignon almost as much as you like, well, everything else there is to eat?"

Wally nodded sheepishly. Raven poured her tea and took it back down to her room on 13 while he wondered if, perhaps, there might be something she could do. But what? He set it aside as a possible option but wanted to pursue a solution using the stupid transformer first. He pulled out his communicator from under the wrist of his right glove and looked at the time. Nearly 11 o'clock. Two switches of control in nearly six hours. He dialed *BB.

Beast Boy answered, sounding half exhausted. "Yeah?"

"Gar. It's me. How's it going?"

"It's really hard, Wally. I'm doing my best. This stuff is written like they're daring you to try to understand it."

"Well, just . . do your best Gar. The sooner you can figure it out, the better. I was just a prisoner in my own body for almost three hours."

"What?!"

"Almost three hours ago, all of a sudden, things switched and Red X controlled my body and I was just a voice in the back of his head."

"Ohmygod! Really?"

"Yes. We just switched again. I was telling him how to use super speed so that he didn't kill both of us running into the side of a building or something. It sucked. I could feel everything but I couldn't make my body do anything. It was like I was a puppet or something."

"Three hours, huh?"

"Yeah, almost, Gar."

"Um . . ten thousand seconds is like three hours, right?"

"Um . . yeah, it's . . two hours and forty six minutes and 40 seconds. Why Gar?"

"Well . . . um . . . when the transporter kind of did this to you, I think I remember a message about something being every 10,000 seconds."

"What?!"

"Dude! Calm down."

"I . . . I . . am . . calm . . Gar. Just . . just do your best to figure out how we can fix this."

"Sure, Wally."

Both Titans fipped off their communicators.

"You've been awful quiet all of a sudden," Kid Flash remarked to Red X.

I'm just trying to figure out the lay of the land. I get smacked back to being the disembodied voice and I notice you wondering, in your thoughts, if Raven might be able to help. I see Beast Boy not looking very optimistic and I wonder what my next move should be. I didn't make it away clean from every single heist I ever took part in by running around like an idiot before I had a plan.

"Well, I don't usually go to bed this early-"

No, you and Jinx usually fuck and read in bed.

"It's not just fucking . . I love her."

God, are you whipped. We make looooooove. We don't fuck like animals. Do you say that? Do you say the girl lines for her now?

"I don't have to justify myself to you. Anyway, as I was saying, I don't usually go to bed this early but I feel really tired. Can we agree to just go to sleep, both of us? If I'm exhausted or dehydrated or haven't eaten my powers are weak and I can't super speed nearly as long as when I'm rested."

Allright. Fair enough.

From the moment he pulled off his uniform and dance belt and slid under the covers, Kid Flash knew this wasn't going to be a restful sleep. There was too much tugging at his thoughts. He pulled Jinx's pillow, the one from her side of the bed to his chest and inhaled deeply. Just the faint scent of her made him feel a bit better. But soon his thoughts swirled. Red X was inside him and threatened to reveal his secret identity. He might hurt Flash, too. He might hurt all his friends. God, this sucked. And there had been those horrible three hours when he could feel everything but couldn't control his own body, like a marionette being directed by its strings. At last he dozed off . . .

And then, he was standing in the transporter tube in Paris and standing right behind him, out in the open, not cloaked or anything, was Red X.

Huh?

And there was a flash of white light as he heard Gar's voice telling him, "Don't worry. I'm doing this next one. I'm doing this next one."

And he heard sound of wood creaking and his body felt odd and he seemed to be tumbling through the air in the dark, through a blizzard of strings. He kept swatting at them trying to get them away from him but no matter how much he swatted, more and more of them stuck to him. And he somehow knew that it was extremely important to get them off of him but he couldn't. And finally, he muttered out loud, "I've got the strangest feeling I'm being turned into a full sized marionette of myself."

And then there was light and he could see and feel and hear but he couldn't move. And his chin was on his chest and from this limited perspective, he could see his feet but they couldn't be his, they looked like yellow, rectangular blocks of wood and they had broomstick thick shins leading down to them but before he could survey this terrible sight any further, Abra Kadabra, one of Flash's most dangerous villains, walked into the room. He lifted up an X shaped thing over his head and Kid Flash felt his arms and legs move as a result.

"And, how are the two new stars of my show feeling about their fate?" he fairly purred at them as he grabbed a similar X shaped thing over a full sized marionette of Red X. Only, it was a sort of caricature of him with big, flat, rectangular feet and skinny, broomstick thick shins and thighs connected by sort of wood ball joint knees, then a triangular wood block for his hips, a horizontal wood disk at his waist, a bigger block for his chest and more ridiculous, broomstick thin upper and lower arms. Atop it all was a sort of oddly shaped head, a caricature of Red X's head in his mask. And Kid Flash could hear pieces of this discontinuous Red X knocking together underneath his tight uniform. He was wood. He was made of wood!

And Abra Kadabra manipulated the things the strings were attached too and as much as he wanted to tell him to fuck off and to punch him, he found himself clapping along with Red X. "What's your reaction to my re-routing your molecules from the transporter to backstage of my show? Why, applause of course!"

He could not stop himself from clapping together his wooden hands and then Abra Kadabra moved him so that he was in front of a mirror and saw that his body was now the same sort of discontinuous caricature made of wooden pieces as Red X's. He wanted to scream but couldn't.

And then, Kadabra brought in another marionette just as big as them but in a chef's hat and outfit. "Captain Creampuff" he said he was called and he brought in two slightly smaller ones in some sort of cook's outfits that he called the "Sinister sous-chefs". He said that he and Red X would be fighting them. But how could that be? This was insane.

But then, he and Red X were somehow on stage with an audience of mostly kids watching and Kadabra manipulated their strings to make them chase after Creampuff and the Sous-Chefs but they could never catch them and the kids thought that was pretty funny. And Creampuff kept throwing handfuls of coconut custard in his and Red X's face, never once missing, and the kids thought that was pretty funny. And for some reason every time they got a faceful of custard, both he and Red X would stop and bend over putting one hand on the ground and their butts in the air and the Sous-chefs would jog over and drop kick them. The kids thought that was pretty funny but it felt like someone was drop kicking his actual butt and it hurt. And then one time they actually caught up to Creampuff and the Sous-chefs but somehow he and Red X ended up getting helicoptered, thrown after several revolutions by a Sous-Chef holding him by the ankles, to the edge of the stage, where he landed chin first and felt just as dazed as if he'd landed on his real chin.

And Kadabra got a standing ovation and he and Red X were hung up backstage. Then he could suddenly hear Red X talking to him though he was similarly paralyzed by his transformation. He could hear him in his head. "You gotta get us out of this! Flash got out of something like this, didn't he? You must be able to!"

"I can't!" Kid Flash protested. "Our powers aren't the same. He has molecular control that I don't have!"

"What do you mean, you can't?! If you can't, then we're stuck like this forever!"

Forever!

Forever!

For-

Kid Flash sat bolt upright in the darkness of his and Jinx's room, bathed in sweat and gasping for breath. He looked quickly around, reassuring himself of his surroundings and that it had just been a dream. He also patted his chest with one hand.

Jesus, thanks for the nightmare, asshole.

Wally muttered a weak "sorry" then zipped over to the bathroom. He took a quick, 15 second shower, toweled dry and got a set of clean sheets and pillow cases from the closet. He changed the bed and jumped back under the covers, again hugging Jinx's pillow to him. Sleep was, again, fitful.

And then, suddenly, he was on stage in a grand opera house in front of an audience of thousands. But it wasn't an opera. He was leaping and spinning across the stage and it was a lot of fun. He loved it. And then was carrying a beautiful ballerina over his head. And he put her down and saw a very handsome dark haired brown eyed guy he recognized but whose name he couldn't recall leaping and spinning just a bit beter than him and he saw that the guy was a ballet dancer and while standing there as he somehow knew he was supposed to, he glanced down and realized that he was a ballet dancer. Holy shit. He had on white tights that made him look ridiculous both front and back. Oh god. If anyone sees me! But no one was looking at him now. They were all watching the other guy, and he was obviously enjoying himself and the ballerinas thought he was fantastic. The performance ended to thunderous applause and everyone flocked around the dark haired, brown eyed dude and the two sort of lead ballerinas left the opera house with him and somehow everyone knew that he was going to have a threesome with them and that they'd be incredibly satsified afterward.

When, finally, Wally awoke, he did not feel as much rested as he should have from eight hours sleep.