Usual Disclaimers: Wally, Linda and all other well-known characters in this episode are copyright to DC comics, blah blah blah.
FDC Presents:
Issue #4
Running With the Dead Part 2.
With a loud scream, Professor Zoom flew through the air at The
Flash. The scream startled Wally enough that he did not move until
the flying body struck him directly in the chest. Professor Zoom
wrapped his arms around the Flash, trapping one arm and picked him up,
then using his speed, spun in a circle. The Flashes head, free arm
and legs were pulled by the centripetal force until there were two loud
pops and the Flash threw his head back and screamed in agony. Zoom
laughed and dropped the Flash to the ground, where his dislocated hip
sockets could not support him, and he crumpled into a heap.
'My god, he's ruthless. He's much colder now than when he was
alive' Wally thought frantically, trying his best to ignore the intense
pain his pelvic area was in. Watching Zoom carefully, Wally placed his
hands on his hip joints and carefully and slowly began to speed up the
healing of his injured joints and muscles on the fronts of his thighs,
torn when the hips were dislocated. He was lucky; the way that Professor
Zoom had thrown him to the ground seemed to pop his hips back into their
respective sockets.
"Soooo, my long time enemy, how do you like that?" Professor Zoom
screamed, "Enough pain for you?"
Wally nodded his head slowly, his face a facade of one grimacing
with pain, while he repaired his damage.
"Tooo BAD," Professor Zoom screamed and flew at the Flash yet
again. This time, however, the Flash was ready for him. He reached
over and grabbed a fistful of sandy dirt from the groud next to him and
threw it at Eobard, imbuing each particle with extra speed. There were
hundreds of mini-sonic booms and then the sand hit Professor Zoom,
ranging from his thighs up to his face. Suddenly, his yellow costume
was riddled with pinpricks of red that slowly grew. Professor Zoom
convulsed in agony, and fell to the ground writhing in pain.
"Owwwwieeeee, Mommie, that hurts," he cried.
"Now Professor," the Flash said reasonably, "There is no reason
for us to continue fighting. You want speed, and I can give it to
you." The Flash knew what Professor Zoom wanted: to get into the
speed force any way possible, and he had a plan.
"You want to get back to that feeling you had before, right?" the
Flash asked.
The man in the yellow costume nodded slowly, "Yes, yes I do. Can
you help me?"
The Flash nodded. "All you need to do is run as fast as you can
in a straight line. Leave the rest up to me."
Professor Zoom nodded again and took off as fast as he could run.
The Flash nodded, his eyebrows converging just above his nose as he
began to concentrate. He held out one hand in the direction that
Professor Zoom took off in, concentrated a bit more, and then with a
blink of bright light, a pulse of pure speed lept from his
outstretched hand to Professor Zoom.
Professor Zoom saw it coming, screamed in fear, "Nooooo, you
promised to help me, not hurt me again!" and tried to run faster. It
was no use, however. The speed force caught up to him in the blink of
an eye, hit him in the back, and his velocity doubled, then doubled
again. His limbs sped up enough to just become a blur, even to
Wally's speed-aided vision. There were mini sonic booms heard for a
few seconds, echoing throughout the landscape.
Then, there was a blinding flash of pure white light, and an echoed
"YES" and suddenly, the professor was no longer running. There was
just a minor wind blowing where Professor Zoom was not moments before.
"There, Professor," Wally said, "I hope you can find happiness on
the other side." He sighed, and began to look for Linda again.
Running down the only path in this ...forest... it was a land of
many trees without leaves, some of the branches twisted and broken,
Wally again began to despair. 'Oh, man where is she?' he thought.
'I'm never gonna find her!'
Then almost as if in response to Wally's thoughts, the same soft
voice that seemed to float on the wind, called "Wally, do not despair,"
and added with a little emphasis, "you will find her! Just keep going
down this path. It is only a little farther." Wally put on a burst
of speed, and then, after a few seconds of sprinting as fast as he
could on a slightly curvy, not quite clear path, he had to stop, and
stop fast. There was a wall made out of gray stone blocks directly in
front of him.
A voice boomed out from behind the wall, "Welcome, Kid Flash! I
have your beloved here next to me." Looking up, the Flash saw a very
muscular blond headed man in a green and silverish costume with a
green and red cape holding Linda by the back of her shirt over the
edge of the wall. "Come inside and lets make a deal!"
'Neron,' Wally thought, and then started at Linda for a second or
two, trying to make sure that was whom Neron had ahold of. 'Gee, that
shirt sure looks good on her when its that tight,' he thought, then
giving himself a mental and physical shake, he muttered to himself,
"Get back on track, hormone-boy. You've got to save her before you
can even think about anything like that."
He yelled up to the man in silver and green, "Okay. Lets deal.
How do I get in?"
Neron raised a hand, and a section of the wall in front of Wally
dissolved. "Right there, young man."
Walking through the hole-in-the-wall Wally thought to himself, 'I
think I know of a bar by that name,' and suddenly, down floated Neron
and Linda.
Neron let go of Linda, who sagged with relief and cried out
"Wa-Flash!" and ran to his side, pushing herself up against his left
side. Wally wrapped an arm protectively around her, pulling her
close.
"I see you two know each other," Neron said, with a hint of humor
in his voice.
"Yes, we do," the Flash replied. "What do you want?"
"Your soulbond," came the immediate reply. "But you have to give
them to me willingly. I cannot, in my own great conscience, take that
from you without your consent. So here's what we'll do. Flash,
you'll play a game with my friend here." He waved his arms in a
strange pattern, and a ... demon ... appeared. It was about eight
feet tall, standing on two legs, and had long tentacles instead of
arms.
"Oh? What game would that be?" Wally asked.
"Hmmmm...Ping pong," Neron replied and wiggled his fingers.
Immediately the ends of each of the demon's tentacle-arms turned into
a ping pong paddle. Wally felt something cold and hard in his hand.
Glancing down, he saw it was a ping pong paddle.
"Okay, so we play ping pong. If I win, Linda and I go free. If
that thing wins, we lose our love to you. Is that the deal?" asked
the Flash.
"PING PONG!?!?!? Flash and that...thing play a game of ping pong
for our love?" screamed Linda.
Neron nodded, "Yes. Now please be quiet." He lazily pointed a
finger at her, and a metal band wrapped itself around her head, covering
her mouth and nose. The band had a grid of holes at the bottom of her
nose, about where her nostrils ended. This arrangement allowed her to
breathe but not make much of a loud sound, let alone speak a word.
The Flash looked at Linda, then in an alarmed tone of voice, asked
"Are you okay?" and began to look at the metal band to try to find a
way to release her. Linda's fingers disappeared in between the metal
band and her cheeks and the muscles on her forearms trembled as she
tried to pull the metal band away from her face.
"She is fine, now play the game," growled Neron.
"No. I want to change the rules," replied the Flash. "If I win,
I want you to send us back home, plus what we discussed earler."
"Hmmm. Sounds reasonable. What do I get in return if you fail?"
"Me. I'll stay here with you if I lose. You will send Linda back
home no matter what."
Neron's eyes lit up at the thought of having a "Super Hero" at his
beck and call. "You will stay, and follow my commands?"
Linda's eyes grew wide in fright and she grunted frantically,
shaking her head back and forth in the classic "NO WAY" signal.
Wally looked at her and smiled, then winked slyly at her. "Yeah,
that's what I'm saying," he said to Neron.
"Deal. Now lets get the game underway!" Neron replied, getting
more and more excited as he said it. He wiggled his fingers and a
ping pong table appeared out of nothing. "Here's the table," and he
reached back into a fold in his cloak and pulled out a ball, "And
here's the ball!" He flung it onto the table right at the monster who
had taken its place on one side of the table.
The monster saw the ball flying through the air and swung about
half of his paddle hands at the ball, one of which connected and slung
the ball right at Wally's head. Wally ducked and reached up to catch
the ball.
"All right, here we go," he said and served the ball. "Zero zero."
The ball bounced once on his side of the table, then the other side,
but the spin on the ball bounced it off at an extremely awkward angle,
and the monster had no chance to get it, even though he stretched a
tentacle to its utmost to reach the ball.
And that's how it went. Wally, using his own speed just hammered
at his opponent, no matter if he served, or if the monster served the
ball. Finally the match was at game point, and the monster served,
"Ree oo gwengy" {three to twenty, for those who don't understand
monster speak} Wally yawned and swung easily at the ball, but then
concentrated on it adding speed to the top half of it, and when it hit
the table, he shifted his concentration, and lent speed to the ball
itself. There was a crack, and the ball went through one of the
paddle-hands of the monster and fell harmlessly to the ground for the
winning point.
Neron was shaking with frustration and anger at the outcome of the
game, "You were not supposed to know how to play ping pong so well!"
he screamed at the Flash, who just grinned.
"I want you to take that muzzle off of her now," said the Flash,
and pointed at Linda. Neron just stared at Wally, but the band
fizzled away. "Now send us home. And no funny business."
Neron concentrated, then waved his hand in a motion of dismissal,
and the gray world faded out, and slowly in faded a bay of water,
leading with that strange man in black talking to Aquaman. Aquaman
turned to an octopus, frowned and then both the aquatic creature, who
was holding a bruised and beaten man, and Aquamn dove under water.
The man in black slowly faded away, leaving Wally and Linda to swim to
the edge of the water, and the police force waiting there.
EPILOGUE
"Hey, you two! Stop!" voices cried as the couple climbed out of the
water. "What just happened here?" asked a police detective.
"I just stopped a villain from kidnapping this reporter," Wally
said.
"YOU?" asked the detective, looking skeptically at the two of
them. Linda tapped one finger on Wally's shoulder and pointed down,
all the while hiding behind his larger body. Wally glanced down and
noticed that he was naked.
"Damn that Neron!" he yelled, then he concentrated, trying to get
his "speed force suit" on. He frowned, then tried again. Nothing
happened. "What's going on?" he asked himself.
"What are you doing?" asked the detective.
"Ummm...nothing," Wally replied. Linda bent over and grabbed a
red piece of cloth, and handed it to Wally.
"Here, Flash, put this on." She said. Wally took it and found it
was most of his cowl. He pulled it over his head and it covered one
eye, his nose, and about half of his head.
The detective's eyes widened, and his mouth formed a large O. "You
are the Flash?" he asked? At Wally's nod, he handed him his hat.
Wally took it and covered himself, then the detective took his trench
coat and gave it to Linda, "Here, ma'am, use this." Linda wrapped
herself in the coat and finally stepped out from behind the Flash.
The detective handed Wally a business card, and said, "Here, send my hat
and coat to me here. When you are done with them, of course." He
then turned and walked back to his squad, waving them to start to pack
up. "Head 'em up, and move 'em out!" he yelled.
Wally waited for Linda to walk in front of him, then said, "Shall
we get out of here?" And at Linda's nod, he picked her up and started
to run.
After a few minutes of going at a snail's pace for Wally, Linda
asked him to stop. "What's wrong? Why aren't we moving at a pace
that would normally," she stopped speaking and thought for a minute,
"dry us off in an instant?" she asked, a very concerned look on her
face.
"I don't know," Wally replied. "Let me try something." He
concentrated, then frowned and tried again. Nothing whatsoever
happened. "Damn! I cannot touch the speed force. I have no super
speed any more!"
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End of the Running With the Dead Story arc.
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Send Comments to Bryan Albright- bryana@uswest.net
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