A Flash by Any Other Name
Apr. 7th, 2006 01:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shankieWally's building has just been bought by a new owner and an attempt to thwart a bank robbery leads to disaster.
Part Two: Renovation
Wally hadn't yet decided whether or not he was cool with the idea of Bats swinging into his apartment in the middle of the night. At least not without stopping to say 'Hi', but then he wouldn't be Bats if he did that.
That morning he pulled on slacks and a t-shirt, ate three cartons worth of scrambled eggs and was reading through the paper dropped in front of his apartment door. He skimmed the front page and an article in the Business section on Wayne Enterprises, working his way to the funnies when he heard a knock on the door.
When he answered it, he found his landlady, Rita, standing there with a fist full of mail. She was a stout, dark woman, who looked capable of taking out the entire Quraqi army by herself.
"Here. I figured I'd bring it up, since I have to come anyway." He took the handful of envelopes and looked through them absently. "Building got bought out last week, new owner. Gonna rip the place apart and renovate, so there'll be work goin' on everywhere. According to the thing the guys gave me, they're going to replace some of the stuff in your place on Thursday during the day." Wally nodded. "So make sure you hide all the stuff you wouldn't want people seein' and all."
He looked down at her with a grin, which was returned with a sly, knowing smile. He suspected half the building knew he wasn't all he appeared to be, but he'd been living here for years without a problem.
"Thanks."
"Yup, yup. Take 'er slow, hun." She tapped her head goodbye, as she did, and went down the hall to the next door, leaving Wally to go through his mail and get ready for work.
* * *
Renovation was right.
On the first day, a crew of workers were ripping out the floors in the halls and the lobby, replacing them with hardwood. By the time he got home, another team had gone through and taken down the old paisley wallpaper on his hall for new coat of forest green paint.
On Thursday, he came home to find his storm windows replaced with new single-pane windows that swung out onto the fire escape, red light-blocking drapes had been hung, and the leaky fixtures and tiles in his bathroom thrown out for brand new ones. He'd expected to find a layer of dust from the work everywhere, but everything was spic and span.
Wally walked into the kitchen and reached for the last of the cookies, noticing that the counter-top, refrigerator, and stove had been replaced, too.
"Man," he said between bites, "must have had thirty guys blowin' through this place to get that all done in one day." He crumpled up the bag and tossed it away, then looked back at the new windows and red drapes suspiciously. "I'm smellin' a Bat again."
Surely enough, a quick visit to Rita confirmed that the new owner was none other than Wayne Enterprises. On his walk back up the stairs, he wondered if he should call up Bruce and ask what was going on. Or sweep the place for bugs. Then he remembered he didn't really know how to call up Bruce; it didn't seem like a good idea to use the League communicators to ask about it, the Watchtower being the haven of gossip it was.
"Man, what the heck." Trying to figure out the Bat gave him a headache, so he opted to go run around the city instead.
* * *
It was dusk and Wally was perched on top of a burger joint, working through his third bag of double-cheese whoppers. He usually wasn't much for heights, but it was only a story up, and he could watch the passing traffic on the bridge from here, as well as most of the financial district. He had monitor duty in the Watchtower in a few hours and there wasn't anything good on TV tonight, so he opted to just hang out and wait for bad guys to kill the time.
"Man, what the HECK." He yelled in frustration, then bit into another burger.
Far as he knew, Bats threw money at the Watchtower and all, but he'd never gone out of his way for any of the members. Sure, he gave people cash for Christmas and birthdays sometimes, people he liked. He'd even given Wally a couple grand one time, after word got out that he'd lost his job and was having trouble making rent. But that was before League members started getting salaries.
A bright flash of light and the unmistakable sound of an explosion knocked him out of his train of thought.
He ran across the roof and onto the next building, using his momentum to make it back to the street and over to the First Bank of Central City. The traffic in front of it had been knocked around and was creating a mass of cars, but no injuries that he could find. The bank itself had the wide front windows knocked out and laying in shards on the sidewalk, with puffs of black smoke still coming out of black smears on the inside, where the explosives must have been.
"Showtime." He whispered to himself with a grin.
The bank had already been closed for a few hours, so there weren't any civilians to help out or get hurt, thankfully. Wally blew through and stopped just outside where the vault had received a similar treatment. Acrid smoke hung everywhere and made it impossible to see into the vault itself, but he could faintly make out the conversation.
"See pooh, this is why we need to get out more!" He heard a maniacal laugh reverberate through the metal walls of the vault.
"You said it Mr. J! This road trip was such a romantic idea!" A woman sighed out, happily.
The Joker.
He didn't recognize the woman's voice, but he knew that Joker was a strange visitor to this neck of the woods. Wally took a deep breath, despite the heavy smoke, and ran in.
Sure enough, the purple-suited clown was in there holding what looked like a tommy gun against his shoulder, watching a woman in a red and black harlequin costume and a pair of thugs in black busting open deposit boxes and dumping them into bags. What Wally also noticed was that they were all wearing gas masks.
He started to panic.
His limbs felt funny, and when the Joker lowered his gun's sights at him, he didn't move; just felt overcome with laughter bubbling up harshly out of his throat.
"Haha, jeeze, what are you guys like, hahaha...." Wally felt his face, and realized it was stiff and contorted, and started howling with laughter. "Ahahahaha, oh god, hahaha!"
He fell to his knees and the crooks in front of him all started bursting out into laughs of their own, pointing and heckling.
"Oh speedy boy, so good I could count on you to rush in like this. But you see, we've got to get going now!" The Joker walked over, and through his tears of laugher, Wally watched him put his foot on top of his now prone form curling up on the floor, the gun still pointed at his head.
His guts were twisting in the worst fear he could remember and the howling he couldn't stop.
"I heard normally you blow right through these sorts of setbacks my dear boy, so I made you up a special batch of my toxin. What a gas!" Joker laughed again, and kicked Wally over with a hit to the gut. "Well, ta!"
Wally's muscles were burning and cramping, he couldn't think straight, and saw his vision starting to wobble. He managed to hit his communicator in his ear, but couldn't stop howling with laughter and fear.
"Ahahahaaaa, Batsssss, aaahhhaha!" He wrenched his eyes shut and clutched at his sides until he finally fell unconscious on the floor and the laughter stopped.
* * *
Wally's brain hurt. Along with everything else. He gripped fabric under his hands and realized they weren't anything like the thin cotton sheets on his own bed.
"Ughh..." He opened his eyes and found himself in a dark, opulent room he'd never seen before. The bed he was in stretched on for miles and the walls were hung with paintings he could barely make out. "Where am I?"
Wally rubbed his eyes and looked around again. This time he noticed a figure hunched over in a chair in the corner, watching him.
"B... Bats?" He tried to sit up, but his body rebelled with a bout of vertigo that made him fall back and close his eyes again. "Bats, is that you...? Please, please say that's you..." Wally coughed and decided that his brain didn't just hurt, it felt like it'd been pried open with a crowbar. "If not, I think I'm in trouble.. or dead. Hurts too much to be dead."
He felt someone take his hand and forced himself to open his eyes again. Bruce was standing over him with an unreadable expression thrown in deep contrast by the angled light.
"Bats?" Bruce began to wipe Wally's forehead with a damp cloth in his other hand, moving with a gentleness he'd never seen from the man before. "What happened?"
"Joker poisoned you. I got your call for help over the coms and brought you back here for treatment. You've been out for 6 days." Wally struggled through the haze of his mind and began to remember falling to the ground in the vault, gun to his head and... "You're safe now."
It was Batman's terse words through a soft voice. Wally couldn't help but smile, which also hurt.
"I knew you'd hear me... always listening... stalker..." And he felt his body pulling him back to sleep. He didn't have the energy to fight it, so he slipped back into the dark, Bruce holding his hand. He felt a gentle pressure on his forehead and returned to dreamland.
* * *
Art from this chapter by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wachey
Part Two: Renovation
Wally hadn't yet decided whether or not he was cool with the idea of Bats swinging into his apartment in the middle of the night. At least not without stopping to say 'Hi', but then he wouldn't be Bats if he did that.
That morning he pulled on slacks and a t-shirt, ate three cartons worth of scrambled eggs and was reading through the paper dropped in front of his apartment door. He skimmed the front page and an article in the Business section on Wayne Enterprises, working his way to the funnies when he heard a knock on the door.
When he answered it, he found his landlady, Rita, standing there with a fist full of mail. She was a stout, dark woman, who looked capable of taking out the entire Quraqi army by herself.
"Here. I figured I'd bring it up, since I have to come anyway." He took the handful of envelopes and looked through them absently. "Building got bought out last week, new owner. Gonna rip the place apart and renovate, so there'll be work goin' on everywhere. According to the thing the guys gave me, they're going to replace some of the stuff in your place on Thursday during the day." Wally nodded. "So make sure you hide all the stuff you wouldn't want people seein' and all."
He looked down at her with a grin, which was returned with a sly, knowing smile. He suspected half the building knew he wasn't all he appeared to be, but he'd been living here for years without a problem.
"Thanks."
"Yup, yup. Take 'er slow, hun." She tapped her head goodbye, as she did, and went down the hall to the next door, leaving Wally to go through his mail and get ready for work.
* * *
Renovation was right.
On the first day, a crew of workers were ripping out the floors in the halls and the lobby, replacing them with hardwood. By the time he got home, another team had gone through and taken down the old paisley wallpaper on his hall for new coat of forest green paint.
On Thursday, he came home to find his storm windows replaced with new single-pane windows that swung out onto the fire escape, red light-blocking drapes had been hung, and the leaky fixtures and tiles in his bathroom thrown out for brand new ones. He'd expected to find a layer of dust from the work everywhere, but everything was spic and span.
Wally walked into the kitchen and reached for the last of the cookies, noticing that the counter-top, refrigerator, and stove had been replaced, too.
"Man," he said between bites, "must have had thirty guys blowin' through this place to get that all done in one day." He crumpled up the bag and tossed it away, then looked back at the new windows and red drapes suspiciously. "I'm smellin' a Bat again."
Surely enough, a quick visit to Rita confirmed that the new owner was none other than Wayne Enterprises. On his walk back up the stairs, he wondered if he should call up Bruce and ask what was going on. Or sweep the place for bugs. Then he remembered he didn't really know how to call up Bruce; it didn't seem like a good idea to use the League communicators to ask about it, the Watchtower being the haven of gossip it was.
"Man, what the heck." Trying to figure out the Bat gave him a headache, so he opted to go run around the city instead.
* * *
It was dusk and Wally was perched on top of a burger joint, working through his third bag of double-cheese whoppers. He usually wasn't much for heights, but it was only a story up, and he could watch the passing traffic on the bridge from here, as well as most of the financial district. He had monitor duty in the Watchtower in a few hours and there wasn't anything good on TV tonight, so he opted to just hang out and wait for bad guys to kill the time.
"Man, what the HECK." He yelled in frustration, then bit into another burger.
Far as he knew, Bats threw money at the Watchtower and all, but he'd never gone out of his way for any of the members. Sure, he gave people cash for Christmas and birthdays sometimes, people he liked. He'd even given Wally a couple grand one time, after word got out that he'd lost his job and was having trouble making rent. But that was before League members started getting salaries.
A bright flash of light and the unmistakable sound of an explosion knocked him out of his train of thought.
He ran across the roof and onto the next building, using his momentum to make it back to the street and over to the First Bank of Central City. The traffic in front of it had been knocked around and was creating a mass of cars, but no injuries that he could find. The bank itself had the wide front windows knocked out and laying in shards on the sidewalk, with puffs of black smoke still coming out of black smears on the inside, where the explosives must have been.
"Showtime." He whispered to himself with a grin.
The bank had already been closed for a few hours, so there weren't any civilians to help out or get hurt, thankfully. Wally blew through and stopped just outside where the vault had received a similar treatment. Acrid smoke hung everywhere and made it impossible to see into the vault itself, but he could faintly make out the conversation.
"See pooh, this is why we need to get out more!" He heard a maniacal laugh reverberate through the metal walls of the vault.
"You said it Mr. J! This road trip was such a romantic idea!" A woman sighed out, happily.
The Joker.
He didn't recognize the woman's voice, but he knew that Joker was a strange visitor to this neck of the woods. Wally took a deep breath, despite the heavy smoke, and ran in.
Sure enough, the purple-suited clown was in there holding what looked like a tommy gun against his shoulder, watching a woman in a red and black harlequin costume and a pair of thugs in black busting open deposit boxes and dumping them into bags. What Wally also noticed was that they were all wearing gas masks.
He started to panic.
His limbs felt funny, and when the Joker lowered his gun's sights at him, he didn't move; just felt overcome with laughter bubbling up harshly out of his throat.
"Haha, jeeze, what are you guys like, hahaha...." Wally felt his face, and realized it was stiff and contorted, and started howling with laughter. "Ahahahaha, oh god, hahaha!"
He fell to his knees and the crooks in front of him all started bursting out into laughs of their own, pointing and heckling.
"Oh speedy boy, so good I could count on you to rush in like this. But you see, we've got to get going now!" The Joker walked over, and through his tears of laugher, Wally watched him put his foot on top of his now prone form curling up on the floor, the gun still pointed at his head.
His guts were twisting in the worst fear he could remember and the howling he couldn't stop.
"I heard normally you blow right through these sorts of setbacks my dear boy, so I made you up a special batch of my toxin. What a gas!" Joker laughed again, and kicked Wally over with a hit to the gut. "Well, ta!"
Wally's muscles were burning and cramping, he couldn't think straight, and saw his vision starting to wobble. He managed to hit his communicator in his ear, but couldn't stop howling with laughter and fear.
"Ahahahaaaa, Batsssss, aaahhhaha!" He wrenched his eyes shut and clutched at his sides until he finally fell unconscious on the floor and the laughter stopped.
* * *
Wally's brain hurt. Along with everything else. He gripped fabric under his hands and realized they weren't anything like the thin cotton sheets on his own bed.
"Ughh..." He opened his eyes and found himself in a dark, opulent room he'd never seen before. The bed he was in stretched on for miles and the walls were hung with paintings he could barely make out. "Where am I?"
Wally rubbed his eyes and looked around again. This time he noticed a figure hunched over in a chair in the corner, watching him.
"B... Bats?" He tried to sit up, but his body rebelled with a bout of vertigo that made him fall back and close his eyes again. "Bats, is that you...? Please, please say that's you..." Wally coughed and decided that his brain didn't just hurt, it felt like it'd been pried open with a crowbar. "If not, I think I'm in trouble.. or dead. Hurts too much to be dead."
He felt someone take his hand and forced himself to open his eyes again. Bruce was standing over him with an unreadable expression thrown in deep contrast by the angled light.
"Bats?" Bruce began to wipe Wally's forehead with a damp cloth in his other hand, moving with a gentleness he'd never seen from the man before. "What happened?"
"Joker poisoned you. I got your call for help over the coms and brought you back here for treatment. You've been out for 6 days." Wally struggled through the haze of his mind and began to remember falling to the ground in the vault, gun to his head and... "You're safe now."
It was Batman's terse words through a soft voice. Wally couldn't help but smile, which also hurt.
"I knew you'd hear me... always listening... stalker..." And he felt his body pulling him back to sleep. He didn't have the energy to fight it, so he slipped back into the dark, Bruce holding his hand. He felt a gentle pressure on his forehead and returned to dreamland.
* * *
Art from this chapter by
wachey
no subject
on 2006-04-09 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-04-09 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-04-09 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-06-29 04:38 am (UTC)BTW, I noticed this and thought you'd like to fix it since it's in the first sentence:
>>Wally hadn't yet decided wether or not he was cool with the idea of Bats swinging into his apartment in the middle of the night.
Change "wether" to "whether".
no subject
on 2006-06-29 05:05 am (UTC)And thanks for pointing that out! ::goes to fix::
no subject
on 2007-03-20 02:45 pm (UTC)all i could think was, "oh you didn't!"
"Man," he said between bites, "must have had thirty guys blowin' through this place to get that all done in one day." He crumpled up the bag and tossed it away, then looked back at the new windows and red drapes suspiciously. "I'm smellin' a Bat again."
I so love the fact that you have never dumbed down Wally like so many people generally do. *hearts*
The Joker.
Oh shit. The Bat is going to feel *so* guilty about this!
"Bats?" Bruce began to wipe Wally's forehead with a damp cloth in his other hand, moving with a gentleness he'd never seen from the man before. "What happened?"
oh god oh god, the woobie!! and ohh..
ok, this comment is *obviously* no better than the last but at this point you just have me capable of *reacting*, instead of analyzing which admittedly is annoying and very very good at the same time. :)
and he gets to stay at Wayne Manor!! yay! The Joker is *so* dead after this!
no subject
on 2007-03-24 06:42 pm (UTC)I've never been able to, haha. I've always figured an actual brainless ditz wouldn't have much of a life expectancy as a superhero.
The Joker is *so* dead after this!
As of right now, revenge has not entirely been had on our laughing friend; but it's foremost on my mind with the second sequel. I kept waiting for the right moment that never came. XD
Thank you! :)
no subject
on 2007-03-26 07:08 am (UTC)yeah. you have no idea how annoying it is for me to read Dumb!wally. he's in the freaking JLA and suddenly he has the IQ of a pea. not to mention that he's a SCI!!! grr. one of my pet-peeves.
As of right now, revenge has not entirely been had on our laughing friend; but it's foremost on my mind with the second sequel. I kept waiting for the right moment that never came. XD
lo. yeah. he *is* annoying. i wish someone would just kill him off without tipping the superhero balance of not killing law thingy, you know?
Thank you! :)
you are most welcome