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Chapter Text

“Haven’t you ever felt that way about someone?”

“Hasn’t anyone felt that way about you?”

Bart doesn’t know what Inertia’s reaction would be to those words, but he would’ve never expected what happened next. Inertia’s eyes go wide and he slowly steps back, turning around after a moment. Bart thinks he hears Inertia say something but the Speed Force is too loud to tell. What Bart does see though, is Inertia starting to shake.

A moment later Inertia starts screaming “You lied to me! LIED TO ME!”

Then he starts to run at the wall of the Speed Force and Bart acts on pure impulse.

“I HATE YOU!! I HATE YOU A-” He doesn’t get to finish that statement, as one of Bart’s Speed Clones punches him upside the head, knocking him out instantly. Bart watches as the Speed Clone grabs Inertia before he gets swept away by the storm. However, the Speed Clone stops and stares at the spot Inertia was going to run into, looking intently at something. Bart and Max try to look for whatever the Clone is looking at and see nothing.

Eventually, the Clone shrugs and runs through the portal, Inertia in tow.

Bart decides he can deal with Inertia later, saving Max is top priority. So he picks Max up and runs into the core of the Speed Force.

Bart and Max walk out of the Speed Force with no trouble. They see Carol, Helen, Morlo, and Inertia, who is sitting on the steps leading up to the portal and staring at the floor. The Speed Clone is watching him like a hawk.

After a few minutes of “Are you hurt?”s and “Thank God you’re OK”s from everyone, Max walks over to Inertia and asks what he plans to do next.

Inertia doesn’t look up and says “I… I don’t know.”

“Well, you can stay here until you figure it out. Right, Morlo?”

Inertia whips his head up, shocked that Max is being even vaguely nice to him after the attempt on his life.

Morlo sighs dramatically and goes upstairs to get the inflatable mattress.

Once Bart, Max, and the others leave, the only ones left are Inertia and Morlo awkwardly sitting around waiting for the mattress to inflate.

About halfway through the inflation Morlo gets tired of watching him mope and gives Inertia some advice: “If Max asks you to stay with him, you should. He’ll forgive just about anything. Hell, look at me! I've tried to kill him a dozen times and he still considers me a friend!”

Inertia gives a quick nod and continues staring at the floor.

Craydl watches this unfold, deciding not to open a portal unless he’s asked to.

Back at Helen’s place, they're starting to plan a party to celebrate Max’s recovery.

Helen has a hushed conversation about whether or not it was good idea to leave Inertia alone. Max’s main defense is “He’s still just a child”.

Bart and the Speed Clone are asking Carol rapid-fire questions about what happened while he wasn’t there. Eventually, she has to tell Bart to re-absorb the Clone because she can barely keep up with one of him, let alone two.

So he does.

And he remembers what the Clone saw.

In the wall of the Speed Force he could see the faint outline of a figure. He thought his eyes were tricking him until the figure tilted it’s head and faded out after a moment. Figuring that it’s nothing, the Clone grabs Inertia and runs out of the Speed Force.

Bart considers telling Max about it, but he can do that later. He’s got way more questions to ask.

He forgets about it within the day.

Chapter Text

Thad wakes up the same way he has the last few days: super uncomfortable and generally confused. He's still staying at Morlo's while trying to figure out what to do next, but he still isn't any closer to a conclusion.

Max and Helen have even come over a couple times to talk about it. Helen is still uncomfortable with the idea of him staying with them, but is still willing to give him a chance. Max wants him to as well because he wants him to be able to live a normal life. (Bart doesn't want to even look at him so he doesn't come) This doesn't help Thad much though, as much as he wants to go with them, he also really wants to get even with President Thawne.

Today though, while Morlo is at Max's recovery party, Thad decides on a plan. He opens a portal to Craydl, gets in, and immediately tells him to go to the 30th century so that he can get his revenge on Thawne.

Craydl, for once, says no. Thad starts to complain (Very loudly, might I add) but Craydl cuts him off in the most disappointed tone he can muster, saying stuff like "Do you really think think doing that would solve anything" and "You should at least try living with them".

By the end for what he's saying Thad is looking at the floor and shuffling his feet. Craydl sighs and says "Look man, I just want what's best for you. And letting you do a suicide run at your crappy grandfather doesn't really fit under "best". Thad nods and starts walking back to the portal. Right before he leaves Craydl calls after him, saying "I'll be here if you need me!"

Thad smiles and steps through.

The next day, around noon, Thad is standing on the porch to Helen's house trying to think of the least awkward way to go about asking to stay with them. He paces for about 5-6 minutes before coming up with the perfect line. He walks confidently to the door and raises his hand to knock on the door. Then the door opens, hitting him in the face fast enough to put a dent in the door.

Thad stumbles back and falls into a bush. Before passing out, he sees Bart start to call for Max.

He wakes up on the couch, Max sitting opposite him. He touches his face and, while it's a bit sore, he's least glad that his nose isn't broken. Max notices that he's woken up and starts making small talk until Thad is fully awake.

Once he is, Max asks "Why did you come over here?"

Thad suddenly realizes that he has completely forgotten what he was going to say. (That door hit hard, OK?) So he says the first thing that comes to mind.

"Can I stay here?"

After a moment for silence he quietly adds "If it's OK"

Max smiles a bit and responds "Well, we asked you to stay first so you didn't need to ask."

Some of the tension leaves Thad, but not much. Max goes to get him something for his face, but before he leaves the room he turns to Thad and says "Make yourself at home."

Bart later reluctantly apologizes for smashing him in the face with the door.

Well, a month later.

And only when he does it again.

(Max still has to force him)

Chapter Text

For the first couple days Thad has to sleep on the couch. He's OK with it, really. He had to spend a whole week on an inflatable bed and he'd choose the couch any day.

Helen, however, doesn't like the idea of making a (possible) long-term resident sleep in the living room and she refuses to make him sleep in the basement because she doesn't want to give him the idea that they're trying to brush him under the proverbial rug.

Her and Max are discussing converting a room into a bedroom but there are very few rooms left that are big enough to sleep in, let alone live in. Bart overhears them talking and quickly comes up with a plan.

He walks up to them and says "Hey, I have an idea! We could get a bunk bed!"

Max and Helen look at him quizzically, waiting for him to say why he thinks it's a good idea. After a few moments, it becomes clear that he's not going to. (Possibly because he thinks it's obvious, or maybe because he wants to make them guess why)

So they bite the bullet and ask "Why?"

Bart sighs and says "Well, if we put him in a room alone we won't be able to tell if he starts doing shady stuff, y'know?"

They concede that maybe it's not a good idea to leave Thad unsupervised, so they decide to start looking into getting a bunk bed. The moment they turn around Bart starts silently celebrating until Thad sees and tells him "Stop that, you look like a total moron."

Max has a gut felling this isn't going to go well.

As soon as they get the new bed into Bart's (and now Thad's as well) room, the feud for top bunk begins.

It starts small, like most feuds do. It starts when Helen asks who gets top bunk and they both say, at the same time, "Me!"

They argue and argue all day about it, getting on the nerves of everybody around them.

Almost the moment Bart and Thad go into their room Max hears what can only be described as a ruckus, so he rushes to see what's happening. He's almost not even surprised to see them having a fistfight on the top bunk. He pulls them away from each other and demands to know why they want the bunk so much.

There is a silence as Bart and Thad try to think of excuses. Max sighs and (correctly) guesses that neither of them have a good reason for wanting the bunk. They start sheepishly fidgeting.

Max tells them that they should flip a coin and that if they keep fighting over this they'll have to get rid of the bed and think of something else.

Once they get a coin, they start fighting over who gets to flip it. Bart manages to get a hold of it he flips it as quickly as he can.

They don't see where it landed so they turn the whole room upside-down looking for it, until Thad looks up and sees the hole in the ceiling. After they stare speechlessly at the hole for a minute or so, the radio on the desk crackles and Craydl's voice comes through it, saying "It landed on Heads, if you wanted to know. Also, you guys forgot to call your sides so..."

Thad turns the radio off, never taking his eyes off the hole.

Bart and Thad look at each other and silently come to a truce: Max must never know of this.

So they start searching for a poster to hide the hole. They don't find one in their house so they run to all the stores in town, looking for a poster that looks like Bart might have actually had it beforehand. Thad finds jack-all, so he runs back to see if Bart had any luck and, well... it's a poster all right.

It has the words "NOBODY FOR PRESIDENT" written on the bottom, and above the text is a set of people that Thad can barely comprehend. There is a silhouette-man, a man with floating hearts for arms, a creature with a cluster of broken glass for a face, and a man with a birdcage for a torso. That last one doesn't surprise him, for some reason.

Thad lets Bart take top bunk and they agree to never speak of this again.

Hours later, Thad is finally drifting off when he is startled fully awake by a loud WHUMP right next to him. He looks over and sees Bart in a heap of blankets on the floor. He glares at in a "What the hell you woke me up" kind of way. Bart glares right back and climbs the ladder.

Thirty minutes later there is another WHUMP and Thad looks over and, same as last time, there's Bart on the floor. He glares at Bart until he's out of view.

Not too long later there's a third WHUMP, and this time Thad doesn't bother even looking, he knows exactly what he'll see.

Two WHUMPs later, Thad finds himself being jostled out of bed by Bart, who has had enough of falling off beds for a lifetime. Thad takes the top bunk and, much to Bart's dismay, doesn't fall out of it half a dozen times.

Bart is salty about it for years to come.

Chapter Text

Max is having some complications in his weekly Speed Force meditation. Partially due to Thad turning the house upside trying to figure out where Bart keeps disappearing to, but mostly due to the fact that the Speed Force isn't responding at all.

Thad is getting seriously ticked off not knowing where Bart keeps going. All Craydl is telling him is "He's not leaving city limits", like that's helpful.

The only clue Thad has is that twice a week Bart goes missing and comes back covered in mud. (Which is a nightmare to clean, by the way)

So now he's searching the whole house to see if there's anything hinting at where Bart's going.

However, in the middle of his searching Max tells him, with irritation laced in his voice, "Why don't you look for a place in town that has mud?"

Thad doesn't pick up on the tone of his voice but takes his advice anyways.

Once he leaves, Max goes back to meditating.

Still nothing.

Thad has been looking all around town for half an hour (that's a lot longer for a speedster) and he still hasn't found anywhere with mud, let alone anywhere with the amount that Bart keeps getting covered in.

That is, until he sees the swamp.

Well, he saw it halfway through his search but he didn't think that Bart would be dumb enough to trudge through a swamp multiple times a week. It isn't until it's the only option that he finally goes in.

After a long while trudging through the swamp Thad finally hears Bart behind some bushes.

Peeking through, he sees Bart playing in the mud with... some kind of monster man?

Well, it doesn't look like the monster is actively trying to kill Bart, so Thad decides to ask what the hell he's doing here.

Bart nearly jumps out of his skin when he hears Thad.

Once Bart manages to calm down a bit (and after throwing a rock at Thad) he explains what he's doing.

"Well, this is... omigod I forgot what his name was." Thad facepalms.

"Anyways," Bart continues, "he's just... a lonely kid, y'know?"

Thad looks over to what he just found out to be a child, who is currently trying to make something out of sticks (poorly).

He sighs and runs home, jumping in the river on the way back. (He didn't want to track mud everywhere)

Max is starting to get close to giving up his meditating when the Speed Force finally starts to respond, but before he can actually do anything with the connection he is suddenly sprinkled with just enough water to break his concentration.

He opens his eyes to see Thad flitting around the room, looking for something.

Max pinches the bridge of his nose and asks, exasperated,  "What are you looking for this time?"

Thad turns and timidly says "Some tools?"

Max tells him to "Check the shed".

Thad thanks him and runs off.

Max goes back to his meditating.

And he's right back to square one.

Bart is still hanging out with Hector (Bart ran over to his parents to ask what his name was) when Thad comes back with some building supplies. (Hammers, nails, some boards, the works)

Bart nervously asks "Hey, uh... why do you have that stuff?"

Thad scoffs and says "Look at that", pointing at the stick-structure "That won't last a day without any reinforcements!"

After a moment Bart starts laughing at Thad's extreme perfectionism, flustering Thad to the point of him throwing one of the hammers at him.

The three of them spend the rest of the day building stuff until Hector has to go home. They promise to come back in a couple days and run home.

Thad pushes Bart into the river on the way back.

Meanwhile, Max manages to connect to the Speed Force. (It only took four hours)

And what he sees disturbs him, to say the least. The Speed Force is silent.

Usually he can hear an ambient hum or the vague sound of people talking, but today there is nothing.

The only thing visually different is that there is a purplish tint to everything.

After probing for a while, Max comes to the worrying conclusion that the Speed Force is completely empty.

But just as he's about to stop meditating and contact the other speedsters, he sees a faint outline.

He starts to approach what he can now tell is the outline of a person, but before he can touch it or even see it properly, the figure turns to look him and Max is hit with a splitting headache, one so intense he passes out.

When he wakes up later, he figures that he fell asleep in the middle of meditating.

All he remembers is that he wanted to tell the others something, but he can't remember what that something was.

"Hmm" he thinks, "Maybe meditating later might help jog my memory."

Wash, rinse, and repeat.

Chapter Text

It's been two and a half weeks since Thad came to stay and Helen is still on edge most of the time, but that feeling goes away a little bit every time he does something genuine.

For example, completely forgetting the word "stairs", getting so caught up in reading that you could bang pots and pans next to him and he wouldn't notice, and those moments where he gets so excited just explaining things that he speeds up to the point that no one who's not a speedster can understand him.

However, Helen makes sure to never fully trust him because, well, he impersonated Bart so well that she doesn't trust herself to be able to tell if he's acting or not.

Meanwhile, Bart "I didn't think that driving the semi into that building would make it collapse" Allen is currently grounded from super-heroics for a week. (And video games. And comics.)

Bart thinks that's bullcrap.

Two days into the grounding, Bart gets a call from Kon saying that they're throwing a huge party at the Young Justice mansion. He starts rattling off what they've got: multiple ball pits, laser tag, no less then five bounce houses, live music, and whatever a "Marshmallow Buffet" is. (And much, much more)

His immediate impulse is to run there right away, but he stops himself when he remembers that Max and Helen have been checking in on him every hour.

He thinks of a plan for a long time (actually three seconds) and realizes that there's only one thing that would work. He hates it, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

After hours upon hours (five minutes) of begging and pleading, Thad finally caves and agrees to help. (In exchange for dozens of favors)

Downstairs, Helen feels a burst of wind pass her. Moments later, she hears the kitchen faucet turn on.

She peeks around the corner and sees Bart doing the dishes. Without being told to, at normal speed. Understandably, she is a bit thrown off by this. But she comes to the conclusion that Bart is just trying to get his grounding shortened. Since that's not really a problem, she leaves him to it.

A half hour later, the dishes are done, Bart takes the garbage out. And once he's done with that, he starts vacuuming. And after that, he runs upstairs and takes his homework into the living room and starts doing it calmly.

Now Helen thinks something's up. And, now that she thinks about it, his hair looks a bit... off. But there's only one way she can think of to confirm what she's thinking.

She changes the TV channel to cartoons.

Bart doesn't even glance up.

She leans over and pulls on a tiny bit of his hair.

All of his hair moves with it.

She yanks the wig off, startling Thad.

He starts to ask how she knew, but Helen cuts him off, demanding "Where's Bart!?"

He responds "At some Young Justice party!" and, as he says that, Craydl hijacks the TV and turns it to live footage of Bart outside the YJ mansion, just shoveling marshmallows into his mouth. In the background, they see Slobo jumping off the roof onto a bounce house. It deflates on impact.

Helen sighs in relief as she feels her blood pressure dropping. Thad actually looks pretty bummed out.

After a tense silence, Thad mutters "How did you figure it out? I did the same things I did last time I impersonated him."

Thad saying that gives Helen an epiphany: Thad was never a good actor, they only fell for it because of Max's condition.

Helen doesn't know how to respond in a way that wouldn't hurt his feelings, so she just goes for it.

"You're not that good of an actor."

Thad visibly deflates at that.

She quickly adds "But..." Thad turns away from the floor to look at her "there is a way you can get better."

She later calls Max to tell him where Bart went.  It is not an easy task making him come back, and it's only made harder when Max accidentally lets it slip that they're adding something to his grounding.

He only comes back when he's told that they're not adding time, just a little something extra he has to do.

A couple days later, Bart shuffles his way to breakfast, looking positively shell-shocked. He sits and looks across the table at Max and Helen, eyes haunted, and asks "Who told Thad about the Theater Club?"

Once he sees that he's not getting an answer, Bart lets his head fall onto the table. He mumbles "Just tell me what I have to do so I can get away from... from that."

Max says "You're not going to like it."

Bart replies "Please, I'll do anything!"

Max feels a bit bad saying what's next: "You have to help Thad with his line reads."

Bart slides out of the chair and onto the floor, whining "Whyyyyyy, he's sooooooooooo baaaaaaaaaaaad."

"Well, you were the one who brought it to our attention that he needed help."

Bart lets out an elongated groan before climbing back up onto the chair. If he's gonna have to do this, he's not gonna do it on an empty stomach.

He doesn't hate it as much as he thought he would. Well, most of his enjoyment comes from flubbing his lines and making Thad mad.

It's not ideal, but at least they're not trying to actively beat each other up for once.

Chapter Text

On a particularly lazy Saturday, Helen is filling out some paperwork in the living room. Well, she's trying to, but with Bart running to the window every time he hears a car slow down it's getting pretty frustrating having to hold the papers down every time a car passes.

Eventually, she asks why he keeps running back and forth.

He replies "I won a sweepstakes!"

"Which one?"

"...I don't remember."

Helen pauses for a moment and asks "How?"

"Well, I did enter every sweepstakes that Alabama was eligible in."

Helen rolls her eyes with a smile and asks "What did you win?"

"All I got was a call that said I would get what I won in the mail."

Helen thinks that might be one of the fishiest things she's ever heard but she doesn't want to rain on Bart's parade, so she lets it slide.

(Thad hands her a paperweight a few minutes later.)

An hour and a half later, the mail still hasn't come and Bart is now sitting next to the mailbox, just about ready to jump into traffic the moment he sees the mail truck.

Just as Bart is starting to wonder that maybe it's Sunday, (that happens sometimes) the mail truck comes. He almost causes a pile-up trying to get to it.

Bart nearly gives everyone a heart attack with how suddenly he slams the door open. He takes almost too much joy in shoving the letter in everyone's faces.

When Thad tells him to "Just open it already!", He tears it open and opens his mouth to say something but no sound comes out.

After about thirty seconds of Bart standing there, silent, Thad walks over and yanks the letter out of his hands and reads it. He squints and tilts his head in confusion. He turns to Max and asks "What's mini golf?"

As it turns out, Bart won a free month's worth of mini golf. At one course. He is not pleased about it. Mostly because one of the other prizes was a dirt bike, but also because he hates golf. Like, a lot.

Helen and Max were trying to be optimistic on the drive there, but when they get there they have to re-check the address they got to make sure they have the right place.

The course is, to put it nicely, rustic. If you're not putting it nicely, you could say that the place looks like it could have been abandoned years ago, were it not for the one person working there.

The one employee, who is a teenager who clearly does not want to be there, tells them that if they don't have clubs they can grab some from the bin in the corner. The clubs are... not in good condition. Some of them don't have grips, some don't have heads, and almost all of them are bent.

Somehow, mini golf is more boring than regular golf. The only thing that Bart is even remotely enjoying about it is that the club he picked is bent at a ninety degree angle.

On hole three out of ten, they see the employee get in his car and drive off. Max and Helen share a worried look.

Four holes later Bart yells "Hey! Watch this!" Everyone turns to look at him just as he winds up for a massive swing. Before anyone can tell him to stop he yells, at the top of his lungs, "TOUCHDOWN!!!' and swings as fast as he can.

He misses, and the club flies out of his hands and disappears into the clouds.

After a few moments of stunned silence, the transponder on Thad's watch turns on and a voice comes through it nervously saying "Hey, guys? There's a... umm..."

But before Thad can ask what Craydl is talking about a fireball falls from the sky, smashing the building they got the clubs in.

Once they recover from the shock, Max takes a step forward to see what fell. But the moment he does part of the wreck flies off, landing mere feet from Bart. They look at it and notice that it has NASA written on it.

From the wrecked satellite emerges a very tall (about seven feet), rail thin metallic man. He walks, unscathed, out of the fire.

He booms "Who do I have to thank for freeing me from my void-prison!", holding out a scorched golf club as he speaks.

Thad turns to glare at Bart while Max asks who the metal man is.

"My name is Katmos!", he says very loudly "And I was the ruler of this planet in the year eight million B.C.!"

Max asks what he was doing up there. Katmos responds "I was imprisoned in the void by your paltry military after I was denied my rightful place by that... that troglodyte that you call The Flash!"

"But now that I am free, I can continue my quest to reclaim my title as absolute ruler of Earth!"

Max walks towards him and says "Listen, you can't d-"

Before he can finish, Katmos strikes him upside the head, knocking him out instantly.

Bart and Thad rush in the moment Max gets hit.

They don't have much more luck.

Katmos struts away, laughing to himself as he goes.

Thad's transponder turns on again, but he's not conscious enough to answer it.

So Helen does.

Craydl says "Well, that sure happened."

Helen is in no mood for jokes and demands to know why he didn't help. Craydl responds "My Technoplasm is undergoing maintenance!"

"Your WHAT!?"

"Anyways", Craydl interrupts, "I can't really do much right now. Do you have any ideas?"

Helen brainstorms for a moment before coming up with something. She tells Craydl the plan and he says, through his laughter, "Oh man, I can get that done in ten minutes. God, I hope this works!"

Eleven minutes later Helen catches up to Katmos just as Craydl gives the go-ahead.

She drops to one knee and pledges her allegiance to him. Katmos cackles and says "Ha-ha! Getting my first subject was easier than I thought it was going to be! I didn't even have to use my mind-control gun! Follow me, my loyal servant! We shall go this nation's capitol and- wait, what's that in the sky?"

He points a tiny green spot in the sky. Helen smiles.

Suddenly, a dozen black dots come out of the green dot. Katmos exclaims "What are those?!"

Helen puts on a worried voice and says "It's the military! You have to run!"

"Why!? My might far exceeds theirs!"

"You've been space for years! You don't know how far they've advanced!"

Realization dawns on Katmos' face and he runs back the way he came. Helen yells after him "No, not that way!" He changes direction so suddenly he trips and falls flat on his face.

He runs back and says "Where am I supposed to go then!?"

Helen pauses, as she hadn't thought she would get this far. So she says the first place that comes to mind.

"Albuquerque!"

"Albuquerque!? Where's that!?"

She points in a random direction and says "That way!"

He starts running but Helen yells "You can't run there, the military can track you! You have to dig!"

He starts tearing at the dirt at a surprising speed. Just before he's completely underground Helen calls after him "If you see Bugs, tell him I said hi!"

Katmos pops out of the hole, looking almost absurdly stern. Helen thinks that maybe the jig is up, but then he does a gesture that she is almost one-hundred percent sure is some kind of ancient salute so she does it back. He smiles and burrows back underground.

After making sure he's gone Helen sighs in relief as the lab junk that Craydl repurposed falls from the sky.

On the drive back, Bart is laughing to the point of tears as Helen and Craydl recount what happened. Thad is confused By how hard Bart started to laugh the moment "Albuquerque" came up. And Max is just proud.

When they get back home, Max feels like they forgot something important. Oh well, maybe he'll remember it when he meditates later.

He remembers two weeks later, when the obliterated mini golf course shows up on the news. Nobody actually reported that it was destroyed, the traffic copter just happened to fly over the crater.

Chapter Text

Thad is 100% sure he's going to ace this essay on the French Revolution. That doesn't stop him from reading and re-reading it the entire bus ride to school, though.

After he's re-read it around 50 times, he takes a quick look around the bus and he sees Bart sitting next to Carol and Preston in the row opposite, trying to write his essay as fast as he can without tearing the paper or setting on fire. It is, at best, barely legible. He goes back to reviewing his essay.

When the bus reaches the school Thad makes sure he's the first one off the bus and first inside, which he does every day, so that he can minimize the amount of people he has to be in close proximity with. Hell, the only people he really talks to are teachers and the theater club, and that's just because he has to.

He gets to the classroom before the teacher is even ready and sits down, ready to blow everyone away with his essay.

For the last few weeks Max hasn't successfully meditated even once. He's "fallen asleep" every time he's tried. This sudden narcolepsy is rather worrying considering last month's medical crisis, but Max doesn't mention it in hopes that it will just pass. Well, that and he doesn't want to stress everybody out, especially not when everything is finally starting to calm down.

But today, Bart and Thad have just left for school and Helen is going to be at work all day, so Max is going to take the opportunity to try and meditate non-stop, and if he falls asleep he'll try again when he wakes up.

He realizes that this is probably a very bad idea, but he figures that if he manages to succeed just once, he can figure out and solve the problem before anyone else notices.

"Class, I hope you remembered to do your essa-" Thad stands up so suddenly his chair just about falls over, but a super-quick move prevents that embarrassment. He walks over to the front of the class just a little too fast to be normal.

The teacher looks at him quizzically and says "As I was about to say, I hope you did your essays, but if you haven't finished them yet, you can either finish them or review them to make sure you're actually done with them during recess."

Thad decides take this opportunity to reread his essay few more dozen times, just to make sure it's perfect. Around his tenth readthrough, he feels someone lean over his shoulder. His immediate instinct is to stab whoever just dared to violate his personal space. However, he doesn't have anything sharp within arms reach, so he decides to punch them instead.

Then he hears "So, did you finish this shitty assignment?"

Suddenly, all the fury in him disappears. Now, the only thing on his mind is a burning question, and after momentarily wrestling with himself, he turns to the boy with the eyepatch and asks:

"What does that word mean?"

Eyepatch Boy gives him a confused look and responds "Which word?"

"Shitty", Thad replies matter-of-factly.

"S-seriously?"

"Yes."

"Do you know any swears?"

Thad, starting to get more than a bit frustrated that he's not just saying what it means and wasting his time, snaps "Just tell me what it means already!"

Eyepatch Boy jumps a little at the outburst and says "Jeez, give me a minute!" and takes a moment to close his eyes and think. During that moment, Thad almost decides to take a millisecond to go get a dictionary, but Max and Helen do keep telling him to socialize more, and, not wanting to disappoint them, chooses to wait.

Eyepatch Boy snaps his eyes open and looks at Thad with a gleam in his eye that, if he could read people to any degree, Thad would recognize as pure mischief.

"Alright," Eyepatch Boy says confidently as he plops onto the bench next to Thad, "so there's shit, damn, ass, bitch, to name a few."

Thad gets lost in thought for a moment, silently berating himself for not knowing such simple-sounding words. Then he is consumed by need to learn, to fill in any cracks in his (vast, if you were to ask him) intellect, so that he can protect his ego from those embarrassing situations where he misses key words and responds to what he thinks they said.

Thad asks "Why did you call them swears?”

A vaguely malicious grin creeps across the other boy's face as he says "Because people swear by them, duh!"

Thad makes a mental note to drop his body into a whirlpool if he talks down to him liked that again.

Eyepatch Boy continues "You haven't heard them because they're fancy words, used only by the most distinguished people. Hell, most people have never even heard the words said out loud!"

At this point, Thad is starting to get suspicious, but he figures that of he was being lied to Craydl would start vibrating his watch at a frequency that signals "liar". Unfortunately for him, he grabbed the wrong one. The watch was made while he was impersonating Bart, and it was modelled to look exactly like Bart's, so that no one would ask where the new watch came from.

Meanwhile, Bart is starting to think his watch is broken. It's really hard to write an essay while your arm is about to get shaken off, so he puts it in his backpack.

"Alright class, step up and read your essays."

Thad doesn't need the prompt. In fact, he never even bothered to sit down.

He takes his place next to the desk and scans the room, looking at all the people whose lives he's sure he's going change with his essay.

He notices Eddie, who had introduced himself after helping Thad with all the different ways the words can be used. Eddie gives him a thumbs up.

Thad grins, clears his throat, does a short vocal exercise, takes a deep breath, and starts reading his rewritten essay.

The ringing of a phone startles Max from his meditation. He sighs and moves to pick up the phone, ready to tell yet another salesperson that he doesn't want what they're selling. He should really get around to asking the phone company to fix the caller ID.

He grabs the phone, but the caller starts talking before he can make a sound.

"Hello? Is this Maxwell Crandall?"

The voice on the other end of the line isn't a salesperson, surprisingly. It's a voice Max has unfortunately heard far too much of in the last year. 

The school's principal, Edith Crimbleton.

He steels himself and says "Hello, Edith. What did Bart do this time?"

"It wasn't Bartholomew this time. It was your other child, Thaddeus."

Max facepalms and responds, somehow sounding more tired then when he was sick, "What happened?""

"Thaddeus started... started... spewing such horrible vulgarities!"

Max is startled by the sudden outburst. He's never heard her get this loud, not even after that time Bart accidentally lit his desk on fire.

He opens his mouth to speak, but Edith doesn't give him the chance.

"Then he committed pugilistic actions against his fellow classmates!"

Max bites back a curse. He just knows he'll never hear the end of this at the next PTA meeting.

"I'll be there as quick as I can."

When he gets there, the first thing he does is have a superspeed talk with Bart, who is trying to set his broken nose so that it doesn't heal weird.

"'kay, so Thad was reading his essay, right? And there was so much cursing! Like, every fourth word was a swear!"

Max's face contorts into the visual equivalent of an exasperated groan. He already doesn't know how he's going to talk Edith out of expelling Thad, and he hasn't even heard the whole story.

Bart continues "And everybody's laughing, 'cause it was hilarious. But Thad just looked pissed."

"Language, Bart."

"Whatever. Like I was saying, Thad looked angrier than I've ever seen him. Like, he was so red I thought he was gonna explode!", Bart says while fanning his arms out in an attempt to mime an explosion.

"Then he ran over and started whaling on Evil Eye!"

"That kid with the eyepatch?"

"Yeah. So I went over to pull him off, and he kicked me in the grifein' face!"

"Bart. Just because Thad was swearing doesn't mean you can."

Bart looks a lot more hurt by that than Max would have expected, but Bart continues recapping anyways.

"After that everything's kind of a blur. Thad stopped when the teacher yelled at him."

There is a moment of awkward silence after Bart trails off. Max gives him a hand motion that says "go on".

"Oh!" Bart exclaims. "That's it."

Max pinches the bridge of his nose and steels himself for the difficult talk ahead of him.

Forty-five minutes of intense negotiating later, Max finally manages to convince Edith to not outright expel Thad.

Thad does get a month's worth of detention, effective immediately.

Max decides to give him the "Don't try to beat the life out of your classmates" talk when he gets home.

Thad has never felt so ashamed. He should have known he was being tricked! 

He looks around the detention hall and sees his deceiver, Evil Eye. Thad can see a black eye peeking out from under his eyepatch.

He wishes no one had stopped him from getting his vengeance.

Half an hour later, the teacher steps out for a moment and Thad hears a chair quickly move and quick footsteps coming towards him. He grips his pencil tight, ready to stab him if the first words out of his mouth aren't begging for an apology.

A hand slams down on his desk as Eddie loudly proclaims "I realize what I did was wrong, and I apologize." he extends his other hand and adds "Friends?", far too cheerily for Thad's taste.

Thad looks at his hand, then looks him dead in the eye and deadpans "You just want me to be your dumb muscle, don't you."

Eddie scoffs and says "What? No, of course not!"

Thad levels him with a glare that could peel paint. Eddie is completely unaffected by it, but he spills the beans the moment Thad starts to stand up.

"Okay, fine, you got me! But can you blame me? You have the quickest hands this side of Central City!"

Thad settles back down in his chair and retorts "I can and I will blame you, and if you try to trick me again you will regret it."

The threat, much like the glare, doesn't affect Eddie much. In fact, it doesn't even make Eddie miss a beat, as he immediately responds "Okay, okay, I get it, you're still mad."

An understatement, Thad thinks.

"But... I know a very good way to work it off."

Once it becomes clear that he won't say what it is until Thad responds, Thad sighs and begrudgingly says "Fine, I'll bite. What is it?"

"Do you wanna torch Herbie Hawke's car?"

Thad runs the name through his memory to see if he knows it. He doesn't. And, against his better judgement, he asks "Who?"

Eddie looks incredulous as he says "You don't know Herbie Hawke? The guy whose been campaigning for mayor since the last election? Two years ago?"

Now Thad knows he's being lied to. And he decides to voice that opinion.

"I'm insulted that you think I'm stupid enough to fall for that."

Eddie freezes, like he can't believe what he just heard. He then takes a single step to the side at points at the huge billboard across the street that has an image of a very pasty man on of and reads "HERBIE HAWKE FOR MAYOR".

Thad's not entirely sure if it's legal to put a political ad right next to a school.

In an attempt to hide his shame, Thad asks "And why should we?" in the most condescending tone he can manage.

'C'mon dude, just look at the guy!"

Thad glares at Eddie before taking a closer look at the billboard. There's not much to it, Thad thinks, just your average middle-aged, doughy, balding politician with an empty smile. What little hair he has left is brown, but it's only still that color due to the worst dye-job Thad has ever seen.

Then he looks into his eyes and a shiver runs down his spine. There is not a single drop of emotion behind them, the kind of eyes Thad could imagine on a serpent, one ready to strike the moment you turn your back on it.

While Thad is looking at the ad, Eddie begins to recite the laundry list of things that should bar Herbie from campaigning.

The list contains, but is not limited to: Drugrunning, blackmail, embezzling, attempting to rig an election, and at least one suspected murder.

Thad scrunches his nose up and asks "How do you know all that?"

Eddie chuckles and says "Both my dad and grandpa are career supervillains, so they know about a lot of the dirt that happens here."

Thad weighs his options; either ignore him and go about his day, or wreck some dirtbag's car in such a way he could easily make Eddie's death look like an accident. Only if Eddie betrays him, of course.

Thad thinks that this is maybe the easiest decision he's ever had to make in his life.

Around the time Max is wondering when Thad is going to get back, as he usually comes home the first moment physically can, the phone rings. Max prays to any god that will listen that it's not more bad news, and picks up the phone.

"Hello?" 

Max immediately recognizes the voice as Thad's, and an extremely bland conversation follows, the end result of which is Thad telling Max that he's going to patrol for a bit before he comes back.

After he hangs up, Max goes to help Helen with dinner, more than a little bit glad that Thad is at least trying to make up for what he did.

It's not going to stop him from getting lectured later, though.

Thad hangs up the payphone, feeling far worse than he thought he would about the lie.

He sneaks back into the bush across the street from Herbie Hawkes' mcmansion, where he and Eddie are waiting for night to fall.

The wait is an arduous task, but they pass the time by talking about stuff like "What is the best way to pickpocket somebody" and "Where is the best place to hit someone and knock them out without causing lifelong injuries".

The fact that they're talking about committing crimes while waiting to commit a crime against someone for committing crimes is not lost on them.

It takes an hour for it to get dark enough so that they won't be seen. They creep across the street towards the car parked on the curb. As Eddie gets to work picking the lock, Thad starts to wonder why Herbie parked his car out here when, in his line of sight, he can see the three-car garage connected to his house.

Suddenly, just as Eddie gets the door open, Thad is nearly deafened by an alarm. He vibrates his hand through the hood of the car and breaks the alarm as fast as he can.

Then, silence follows.

Neither of them dare to even take a breath until they're sure the coast is clear. A whole minute later, after no response, they share a sigh of relief.

Then a door slams open.

Thad and Eddie scramble to get underneath the car and out of sight. They hear the door-slammer screaming "WHY WON'T YOU GOSHDARN HOOLIGANS LEAVE ME ALONE!?"

The distinctive sound of a shotgun cocking is almost drowned out by the door-slammer's rant continues "I SWEAR TO THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY GHOST THAT IF I SEE ANY OF Y'ALL, I'LL SHOOT YER DANG HEADS OFF!"

He goes on and on like that for about ten minutes before Thad scoots forward to at least see what's happening, and what he sees is a middle-aged, doughy, balding man prowling the lawn with a shotgun, screaming at people who, under normal circumstances, would be miles away.

He is suddenly snapped out of his thoughts by the sound of Eddie hitting his head off the bottom of the car trying to get a peek at the action.

Both Thad and Herbie turn to the sound, Thad silently shushing, Herbie leveling his gun, poised to fire the moment he sees movement.

Thad would run away, but Eddie has a death grip on his leg. Normally this wouldn't stop him, but he found out that Eddie is Morlo's grandson when they were passing time, and he actually kinda likes Morlo so he doesn't want to get on his bad side.

Thad turns back to see Herbie creeping towards the car. It takes an agonizingly long time for him to get there, and when he does, Eddie looks like he's about to have a heart attack.

Just as Herbie starts to crouch a trashcan down the block falls over. Herbie breaks into a mad dash towards it, rounding the corner to chase the supposed vandal.

Thad and Eddie drag themselves out from underneath the car. Eddie pulls a bottle with an oily rag sticking out of it out of his jacket, prompting Thad to hiss "What are you doing!?" as Eddie yanks the rag out.

Eddie doesn't respond, instead opening the door and liberally emptying the contents of the bottle over the seats. Once the bottle is devoid of fluids, he hands the rag to Thad, who gives him a quizzical look as he produces a lighter and sets the rag aflame.

Thad immediately panics and throws it into the car, which instantly bursts into flame. Eddie belts out a victory whoop and runs away, Thad on his heels not a second later. They run and run and run until Eddie yells "Split!" and makes a sudden right turn down an alley. Thad figures this is the best time to go home and take a shower.

He has his hand on the doorknob when he realizes "Wait, cars have gas in them. Fire explodes gas." 

Cue desperate sprint back to the car. It takes him less than 5 seconds to remove the gas tank and make a break for it, tank under his arm until he can find a place to property dispose of it.

On his way to the dump, he sees something that makes him screech to a halt. He so did not want or need to fight a supervillain today.

The villain in question is one Thad has never seen before, but he looks a character from those obscenely bloody movies Bart always watches, what with his massive physique, hockey mask, flannel shirt, and coveralls, not to mention that he's as silent as a tomb.

The only thing keeping him from that aesthetic is the fact that he is currently attempting to steal a monster truck with what appears to be tons of psychically controlled mud.

Thad hears a crackling sound behind him, so he takes a peek over his shoulder and freezes when he sees the fire that has been trailing him since he took the gas tank.

He looks at the tank. Then at the villain. Then back to the tank. Infinitely done with today and not willing to take the time to think of an alternative, he chucks the tank as hard as he can at the villain, who encases himself in a ball of mud to avoid harm.

The tank embeds in the mud, exploding when the fire catches up to it. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, Thad forgot to consider if the truck also had gas in it, so that explodes too, the shockwave flinging the mudball over the horizon.

Thad wipes the sweat from his brow and runs home again, this time actually managing to get inside.

He immediately feels a ball of shame and guilt form in his gut when he realizes he missed dinner. Who does that? Who shoves themselves into someone else's life then denies their hospitality?

Thad is interrupted from his downward spiral by a gruff voice saying "There's leftovers in the fridge." 

Max walks past him and settles down on the couch, gesturing at the seat next to him. Thad had almost forgotten about the lecture.

He is in no mood to have this talk, so he decides to get out of it the most efficient way he can think of: the truth.

"Eddie and myself have come to an..." Thad stops to think of the right word. Grife, he hates these past languages. He finds the word, snaps his finger and says, a tad louder than necessary, "Understanding!"

"Uh-huh."

The almost non-answer doesn't stop Thad from continuing "So if we can do this tomorrow that would be preferable because I really need a shower."

"I can tell." Max deadpans.

Thad takes that as a cue to go, but he stops at the foot of the stairs and timidly asks "You're... you're not mad, are you?"

Max sighs and says "No, I just have a headache."

Thad, relieved by the answer, goes to take his shower.

Max turns the TV on and changes it to the news, which is trying to report two stories simultaneously; a supervillain attack, and the vandalising of a mayoral candidate's car. It doesn't take too much thinking to connect Thad smelling like gas, a torched car, and a villain defeated by a gas explosion.

Great, yet another thing he has to get Thad to explain.

They cut to an interview with the haggard candidate, who is ranting about the "degenerates" who wrecked his car.

The man goes on and on and on, making Max think maybe, just maybe, he'll let Thad get away with this one. On second thought, Bart would probably take it personally, so that's out of the question.

Eventually, the news becomes background noise and Max drifts off to sleep.

In the middle of his slumber, Max realizes that he is standing, but he cannot move any part of his body.

He stands there for what feels like ages until a tiny shock of electricity gives him just enough energy to open his eyes. 

What he sees leaves him with the most intense feeling of déjà-vu he has ever felt. His vision is completely taken up by an endless purple maelstrom.

Max suddenly recognizes where he is: The Speed Force. But something feels... wrong about it. But he can't place what that something is.

"Max, Max, Max, haven't we done this enough times today?" a voice drawls behind him.

A particularly hard smack on his back is followed by a completely featureless purple man swaggering into his line of sight.

"Well, technically I brought you here this time, but hey, semantics, right?" Max feels like the man would have a shit-eating grin plastered on his face if he had one.

"As you can probably tell, I am very busy." He gestures at the purple energy enveloping everything. "And I don't have the time to keep wiping your mind, as fun as it is."

"Now, I am a gracious host, so I'll give you a fighting chance." The man, quick as lightning, grabs Max's face. Instantaneously, the memories of the entire last month of meditation is returned to him.

Still reeling from the shock, he nearly misses the man say "If you can guess my name, I will let you keep those memories. Five minutes. Though I bet you'll get it before then."

Max immediately starts trying to deduct who the man could possibly be. He seems to think that Max has far more information than he actually does. His thoughts are only interrupted by the man chiming in for every minute passed.

Just as Max concludes that he has no idea who he is, the man cheers "Time's up!"

He reaches out his hand, crackling with electricity, towards Max as he says "One chance. No retries. Good luck!"

A bolt hits Max, giving him the energy to make at least one movement, maybe less.

So he does nothing.

It takes the man less than fifteen seconds to become irrationally impatient, saying "C'mon man, didn't I give you enough?" He blasts Max again.

Max remains completely still. He gets blasted another three times. Still nothing.

The man, who'd previously kept himself at arm's length, storms up to him, yelling "You'd better give me an answer before I do something you'll regret!"

So Max gives him an answer, in the form of a punch to the face.

The man explodes as the Speed Force screams and turns to a more reddish-purple.

Max then feels the unpleasant sensation of about two thousand fists colliding with him at the same time.

Suddenly the man is inches from Max's face, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, flinging him around like a ragdoll and screeching "HOW DARE YOU!? I'LL THROW YOUR DOG OFF A BRIDGE AND BEAT YOUR MOTHER WITH WHAT'S LEFT! I'D RIP OUT YOUR GUTS AND WEAR THEM AS A HAT IF I DIDN'T ALREADY HAVE ONE!" he points at his own head so forcefully that he makes contact with his head and he freezes.

He runs a hand over his hatless head and looks down at his barren torso. He lets go of Max's battered form and puts both hands on his smooth face, during which the Speed Force returns to it's previous purple hue.

The man sheepishly mutters "Uh... whoops. My bad." 

He pulls Max back to his feet and, brushing off nonexistent dirt, conversationally saying "No wonder you couldn't tell who I was!"

Once Max is sufficiently cleaned up and re-frozen, the man takes a step back and admires his handiwork. He then appears to get lost in thought for a minute, until a figurative lightbulb lights up over his head.

He jams his thumbs into where his eyesockets would be and twists them around until he's satisfied. When he pulls them out, two blindingly white orbs taking up the previously blank space. Not quite done, he grabs his jaw and tears open a jagged mouth for himself.

He looks over to Max and remarks "I'm doing a pretty good job, wouldn't ya say?" He then proceeds to cackle at his own joke for a while until he smacks his cheeks lightly and says "Right, back to work."

He digs his fingers into his hip and drags it up his chest diagonally, an upside down lightning bolt forming after it. He spins on his heel like a top before striking a pose like a stage magician, declaring "Now for the peace day resistance!"

Max wishes more than anything that he could do anything to make him shut the hell up.

The man gestures dramatically at the wall of the Speed Force and a chunk of iron flies out of it. He starts molding it like a sculptor would clay, rambling "You know, I was just as surprised as you are now when I found out that people aren't the only things that get sucked in here. You're probably thinking, "Oh, he's so cool! I wish I was as smart as hi-" Ah! It's done!" He holds up the finished product, a familiar helmet, with reverence.

"Well, it's almost done." He waves a hand and some copper wire flies into his hand. He quickly gets to work fashioning it into the shape he wants, saying "Gold doesn't last too long in here, so I have to make due. And... done!"

The man proudly puts the helmet, now complete with tiny wings, and struts up to Max, saying "Now to deal with you."

He puts his hand almost entirely over Max's face, leaving his eyes exposed. "If it makes you feel any better, I wasn't going to let you keep those memories even if you did guess my name."

Max clenches his hand into a fist, surprising the man.

"Oh! You're stronger than I thought. I guess I should tell you something about me." He smiles an almost friendly smile at Max. "Right? Right."

Then, faster than Max can comprehend, his head is slammed against the ground and held there.

The man, with a crazed look on his face, snarls "I. Have. No. Rival."

Electricity shoots through the man's arm and straight into Max's skull as the man says, chipper as can be, "See you in a couple weeks!"

Max wakes up so violently that he almost falls out of bed.

Once he composes himself, he tries to remember what the dream was, but his headache is so blinding that he can't. Oh, well.

He then starts his morning routine, which consists of the usual stuff people do in the morning; getting dressed, brushing teeth, taking a shower, making a detailed schedule of the day, and... huh.

He can't remember the last time he's meditated. Hmm. Of course, he thinks, now he has two kids to teach and he barely had the time to mediate with just one!

Routine finished, Max goes downstairs to get breakfast and to tell Thad that it's not okay to beat up your classmates or set people's cars on fire and no, it doesn't matter if you think they did something, you still need proof. He can't believe he has to have this talk again.

It's going to be a long day.

Chapter Text

"That's a terrible name for a dog!"

"Dox is a good name! You tried to name him Ivan! What kinda name is that!?"

"A great one!"

Max sighs and moves to break up this fight for what is either the dozenth or hundredth time. That day.

The squabbling youths are dragged apart before the squabbling turns into a mutual beating. They don't miss a beat in their argument until Bart leaves the room to prepare for their field trip.

Thad huffs and grumbles "I will lose my mind if I have to be in a bus with that dimwit, let alone the rest of them!" He turns to his mentor and continues "Remind me again why I can't just call in sick and do some extra tests?"

Max pinches his brow and points to the TV, where the local news station is still covering the now 3-day-old arson of the future mayoral candidate's car. (It's been a rough couple of days for that station)

"That wasn't my idea!"

"You didn't try to stop it, either."

"Well... that's because of..."

Thaddeus Thawne the second is in hell.

The clutter, the noise, the smell, it's all almost too much to bear. He considers tying himself to the roof of the bus, but then he'd be outside, during one of the hottest days on record, through the rankest farmland he's ever had the displeasure of smelling.

It'd almost be worth it to escape the shenanigans within the bus, however. Nearly every single student is being as loud as humanly possible, either complaining, scheming, or just trying to have a normal conversation over the din, all while the teachers are trying to calm their wards with some inane song about... passing bottles? Thad can barely hear it, but he's sure it's stupid anyways, so he stops trying.

Oddly, the only student who's not causing a ruckus is Bart Allen, who is staring out the window with a glum expression on his face, occasionally attempting to plug his ears to no avail. Thad doesn't particularly care about that either, so he turns to his own window and tries to ignore the kid who Thad is pretty sure is spitting on him on purpose.

The bus stopping is a source of only the most fleeting relief, because while he can stretch his legs, he now has to try to not vomit at the smell of the questionably built farm that some idiotic teacher decided was a good idea for a field trip.

Then, out of the house adjacent to the barn steps a man in his thirties, wearing a dirt-free t-shirt and spick-and-span jeans, holding a handkerchief to his mouth, stumbling as if the smell is literally killing him.

The man shambles to the class, saying "Howdy kids (and teachers), to Billy-Jim's Primo Ranch! We got the finest goats, chickens, pigs..." The man quickly scrambles to grab a note from his pocket. After scanning it far too quickly to actually register what it said, he continues "The finest cows, steers, bovines, hi-fers, and who could possibly forget, Horse you'll ever see!"

"..."

"Any questions?"

"..."

"Well don't all talk at once!" he jokes.

Once the class has decided that they've sandbagged him enough, Carol raises her hand and says "You don't seem very used to this."

Billy-Jim sighs and says "Not rightfully, no. I only got this land a couple weeks back when my Pa died and left me this here farm. And he told me, and this is God's truth, that if I let this place fall apart, he'd curse my line forwards and back. So I've been keeping this place up the best it's ever been!"

This statement is immediately put into question when they look around and see the holes in the barn roof and the rotten fences.

Then Rolly raises his hand, asking "Did you mean to just say 'Horse' instead of 'horses'?"

Billy-Jim Jr. takes another look at his note and says "Nope! It just says 'Horse" here!"

"Any other questions?" He looks around expectantly for a moment. "No? Well, come on! Let the tour begin!"

The first stop is the cow enclosure, which has neither heifers nor steers. Or a gate, for that matter. Just a huge wall of debris that is just sharp enough to dissuade the cows from coming close. The teacher says "Um... maybe we should reschedule?"

"Naw, there's no chance ol' Bessie's gonna get out."

"That's... not what I meant."

The class, except Bart for some reason, brightens at the idea that they can leave now, but the emergency bell in Thad's head rings; He has to do something, or else he'll be thrown back into two more hours of that hell despite not even having escaped it for 10 whole minutes!

So he turns on what Bart would call "Extreme Nerd Mode"

"What? No, we can't go yet! We haven't seen the rest yet, and we all really, really want to! Right, guys?" He turns to the class with a plastic smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. The class, still wary of him after his "outburst" a few days back, all nod in agreement. Bart shoots Thad a nasty glare, to which he responds with a mocking sneer before turning back to the tour.

Stop #2 is not-mentioned-in-the-note sheep pen. It's better than the last one (there's a door this time), but there are only two sheep in a space meant to hold at least 15.

On the way to the next spot, a small goat bounds up and starts prancing around the class in an attempt to play with them. Before they can, Billy-Jim Jr. shouts "Aw, consarnit, he got out again!"

He lunges at the animal, undershoots, and falls flat on his face as it runs out of sight.

"Welp, he won't go far." he says, walking towards the next enclosure.

The goat pen is empty.

Stop #4 is an immaculately built and upkept pig pen, with a series of county fair ribbons on a plaque next to it. Inside the pen are two of the biggest pigs they've ever seen; one almost as tall as Thad.

"Now, these here are my ol' Pa's prize winnin' hogs, Adonis and Atlas! They've got blue ribbon at every fair they've been at, and that's the truth!"

If the class actually cared, there'd be "Ooh"s and "Aah"s all around, but they don't so the only sound present is apathetic silence, hog snorts, and the distant bleating of a goat.

Bart however, isn't even looking up, instead looking his feet.

Thad finds himself vaguely worried, but decides to not do that, instead kicking dirt on his shoes at superspeed, too fast to be seen by the human eye.

Bart doesn't even try to retaliate.

Between enclosures, the teacher nervously asks "Hey, d-do you know where the horse is? Is it in the bar-"

Billy-Jim Jr. hurriedly says "Nope! Nothing in there, nosiree!" and powerwalks (poorly) further ahead.

Thad makes a note to run over there some other time. Not today, he's already too drained for that.

Stop #5 is an oddly silent, yet quite large, chicken coop.

Billy-Jim Jr. hits the wall of the coop and yells "Come on out, girls!"

There is no response.

He tries to assuage the class' worry by saying "Aw, they're probly just sleepin'." and moves on with the tour, Bart dragging his feet behind him

Thad grabs Bart's arm and pulls him back, tired of his moping, as the group moves on and demands "Alright, what could possibly be the problem?"

Bart is momentarily taken aback before whisper-shouting "YOU! You butted your way into my life and now I can't go 5 minutes without getting in a fight! I can't even call my dog or even be sad without you starting a fight!"

Thad opens his mouth to say something very stupid that would probably cause a hospital visit for both of them, but stops when he hears a tiny *peep*.

"Did... did you hear that?" Bart asks.

"Yes, I do have ears, you know."

Bart hits him in the shoulder before they move to the closed-and-locked door of the coop, the muffled peeping only getting slower and slower.

Bart vibrates the lock open and yanks on the handle, causing the door to pop off it's hinges.

The smell unleashed from the coop quickly takes the #1 spot on Thad's "Worst Smells" ranking, and #4 on Bart's.

Both of them fall backwards like the smell was a 2-by-4 that just hit them upside their heads. Bart disappears for a moment and comes back wearing a military grade gasmask. He almost steps inside, but Thad's attempts to keep his breakfast down are starting to get annoying, so he runs off and grabs a second mask.

Thad composes himself and they step in.

They were prepared but not ready for what they saw. They see about forty chickens, not a single one moving, some far smellier than the others. Bart has never felt more thankful that he can't see in the dark.

The boys search quickly and find, still huddled underneath it's mother, a baby chick that appears to be less than a week old, shaking very badly.

Bart feels a pit in his stomach form, followed by Thad, using a tone Bart didn't know he was capable of, simply say "Oh no."

Thad gently picks up the chick and heads outside. Bart walks up to him, staring at the chick. Then they lock eyes, and Bart nods, then runs off.

Max is having a fairly regular day for once.

That is, of course, until he hears a *whoosh* and peeping coming from the kitchen.

He walks over and sees a small cardboard box with wood shavings and a tiny baby chick inside.

Max stands over the box, trying to figure out what possible turn of events led to this.

Then he gives out a little huff, and prepares to go to the co-op to get some supplies.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Billy-Jim Jr. is walking the group around in circles, trying to make a game out of catching the goat. Or, as they soon found out, goats.

After about 15 minutes of that, Bart nudges Thad and says "Wanna break into the barn?"

Thad, eager to break any of this man's possessions, goes along.

They sneak in without breaking much, even though they really want to, but that would make far too much noise.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me." Thad says as he sees the 15-foot tall statue that only vaguely resembles a horse sitting in the middle of the barn. On the side the word "Horse" is etched into it. There is a piece of paper taped to the statue that reads "Winner of the 15th annual Birmingham Abstract Art Show"

"Well, I guess that explains where the "Horse" is, right?" Bart says with a sheepish grin.

Thad ignores that comment and raises his watch to his mouth and says "Craydl, run a search on Billy-Jim."

"You got it, boss-man." Craydl says, illiciting a deep sigh from the previously mentioned boss-man, who has specifically told him at least 5 times to not call him that.

After about 30 seconds that Bart spends watching people fail at goat catching, Craydl pipes back up with some info.

"Billy-Jim Sr. did die about 3 weeks ago so that part checks out. However, he didn't have any children, or family at all, for that matter. The man loved his hogs, though. Looks like whoever's out the is pulling some kinda grift. A bad one, too. Who does he think he's fooling with this? He can't even buy a door! And don't even get me started on-"

"Craydl. Shut. Up."

"You don't have to tell me twice."

Craydl cuts off his comms. It takes Thad a moment to realize he forgot to ask something very important. "Then who is he?"

"Oh, I thought you wanted me to shut up?"

"Just... do it."

Bart half-shouts "Nike!" from the other side of the barn. Thad chucks a clump of dirt at him.

"Facial scans say that guy is a conman who calls himself "Hick Slick", and he's got a rap sheet a mile long. Mostly larceny and grand theft."

Thad gets lost in thought trying to piece together what a conman would want with an old ranch.

"If it helps, that statue is valued at around $5000, the hogs around $1000 each."

"That'd probably be it." Bart chimes in. "So, when do we bust him?'

"Right n-"

Thad is cut off by the distant sound of a large engine.

They both go to the window nearest to the sound and look out to see an incoming dot on the plains. Bart squints and says "I... think that's a monster truck."

Then they hear Hick yell "Oh God, he found me!" followed by him running in the opposite direction, forcefully pushing children out of his way.

They promptly suit up and go to check out the truck. Inertia takes a run around the truck and finds that the dealership's plates are still on it. In fact, the only thing that sets it apart from a car on the lot are the 8 mudflaps drilled into the rear bumper.

Inertia runs up to the driver's side door and looks up to see the familiar visage of a man wearing a now singed hockey mask, flannel shirt, and coveralls.

Then he runs full tilt into a wall of mud.

With Inertia momentarily stunned, Impulse takes his chance to yank to passenger door open only to find a bucket of mud in the seat. The mud jumps out and covers Impulse, immobilizing him. Attempts to vibrate out only make him feel more stuck. He panics and yells "Why can't I get out?!"

Craydl uses their earpieces to yell, almost loud enough to burst eardrums, "Its magic, baby!"

Then, much quieter, "Sorry, I was blasting some tunes."

Back at the ranch, the teachers are panicking while the class is getting super hype over the fight.

The hype almost dies down a bit when the truck almost runs them down. Thankfully, Inertia recovers fast enough to move them.

He runs over to the scrap pile that is the cow's gate and start throwing everything he can at the tires, but the mud is shielding it too well.

Then he tries throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the car, but that too failed to distract to mudflap-loving crook from his single-minded pursuit of Hick.

Fresh out of immediate solutions and unwilling to directly help him, Inertia runs over to help the other speedster.

By the time he gets over there, the only part of Impulse still visible is his hand. Inertia is also unwilling to touch this mud, so he runs over to a nearby construction site and grabs some rebar, placing one end in Impulse's hand. When he gets a firm grasp on it, Inertia pulls hard, freeing his by-technicality brother, who doesn't let go of the rebar.

When they catch up to the truck, it's chasing Hick through the (still empty) goat pen. Inertia jumps onto the back to draw the crook's attention, and once the mud shifts to the back, Impulse leaps onto the hood and drives the rebar through the hood and into the engine, yelling "End of the road, Mudflaps!"

The truck sputters to a stop as Impulse waves at his fans. Inertia glares at him while struggling against the mud.

Inertia growls "Hey there, "Big Hero", help me out of this."

Impulse yanks the rebar out of the hood, points it at the driver and says, in an overly confident tone, "Let'm go, "Mudflaps", or you're in for a world of hurt!"

"Mudflaps" complies, and the dirt slides off the truck as he silently shakes with pure rage.

Then the truck starts moving.

The speedsters are thrown off balance by the sudden movement just long enough for the villain to punch through the windshield and climb onto the hood. He grabs Impulse by the throat and, with a voice not unlike two stones being rubbed together, growls "Drop the "s", it'll roll off the tongue better."

Impulse opens his mouth to say "What?", but is promptly spiked off the edge of the truck and onto the ground like football. Inertia runs over and hits him on the chin and solar plexus 50 times each.

The just-over-7-foot-tall man doesn't even flinch. Instead, he takes a step backward and stomps on the edge of the hood, essentially turning it into a springboard and launching Inertia 30 feet into the air.

Impulse, from his new vantage point of "laying prone on the ground with a backache", sees that the only reason that truck is still moving is because the wheels are now being rotated by the mud. He's not sure if that's actually necessary. He hoists himself up and makes a mini-tornado underneath Inertia to soften the fall before chasing the truck.

Hick Slick runs into the barn, locking the door behind him so that no one can steal his hiding spot. Then the front wall is torn asunder by a massive glob of mud.

He starts rambling to buy time and hopefully dissuade the masked menace from grinding him to a pulp underneath his wheels.

"H-Hey, bud! I-I know I haven't sold that statue yet, even with all that effort you put into stealin' it, but I swear to Christ above that I'll have your money by the end of the week!"

The truck slowly creeps forward. Hick decides that maybe pleading won't help him, he switches tracks to bargaining.

"Now don't you forget that old man I put in the ground for ya! That's gotta be worth some favor, right?"

The truck doesn't stop. In fact, the man standing on the engine block starts cracking his knuckles, so he reverts back to "Full Coward Mode".

"You can't kill me! I've gotta feed those hogs for ya! Hey! How 'bout this: You kidnap all them kids and ransom 'em or something!"

The truck slows by a fraction as a voice behind them says "You got all of that, Craydl?", to which a tinny voice replies "Clear as crystal!"

Then, quick as a flash, Hick Slick disappears.

A second voice comes from behind the back wall "This way, loser!"

That wall is almost instantly torn down.

Hick finds himself dropped in the cow pen alongside a few particularly vengeful goats.

Meanwhile, the rest of the ranch turns into pandemonium as muddy tendrils snatch at anything that moves, stopped only by one of the speedsters trying to get everyone out of the way.

The green speedster makes a bad step into a mud puddle and is quickly pulled under. Mudflap yanks the rebar out from the engine, moves directly over the puddle, and stabs it in.

He surveys the area for the other one and sees him climbing into a large stack of hay bales. He reckons he's trying to escape the fate his comrade had and goes full throttle towards the bales.

The premeditated murder doesn't go as intended, as the truck collides with something inside, nearly splitting the front end of the vehicle in two. Mudflap, having the unfortunate distinction of being on that front end, goes flying.

He has enough time to look back at the wreck and sees, as the hay flies off, a surprisingly solid horse-adjacent statue.

Then he lands in the pigpen, with a sound that can only be described as a "Splut".

Impulse pumps a celebratory fist into the air, moments before a mud-covered hand grabs his ankle.

He tries to pull the hand out of the mud, but fails. So he crouches down to try and dig them out.

Then a much larger hand bursts out and grabs him by the throat.

The other hand melts away as Mudflap begins to rise from the filth.

However, he doesn't get past the shoulder as a metal rod crashes down on his head, whack-a-moleing him into the dirt.

Impulse looks up to see a somehow squeaky-clean Inertia, green portal closing behind him, at the ready to swing again.

Once they feel like he's done for now, Impulse looks behind him and says "Ah dangit, he took the pigs."

Inertia whips his head around and sees that, yes, the hogs are in fact gone.

They are distracted from that by a scream and a *whump* behind then as Hick Slick, clothes now in tatters, dives over the fence while the goats continue to lazily chew on his torn clothes.

The speedsters tie him to the stolen statue and ask the most pressing question they have:

"What the hell made you think letting a field trip come here was a good idea?!"

Hick sighs and admits, embarrassed, "I got a call from the school right after I got back from the dentist so I was all loopy 'n stuff. Then I just kinda... well, forgot about it."

They hear distant sirens just as Inertia's earpiece buzzes.

Craydl says "You guys should get back to the class, the cops are almost there. Oh, I forgot to mention, I called the cops like, 15 minutes ago."

Once the police finish asking around (and after Bart quickly enters Craydl's complex for the fastest shower known to man), the class gets back on the bus.

The ride back is somehow louder than the ride there. Thad had expected something like this, and had grabbed some earplugs from Craydl.

He eventually turns around to yell "Stop fucking spitting on me", confident that no one but his target will hear. He cuts himself off when he sees Bart rubbing his temples, clearly suffering from a headache.

After a subjective minute and a half and consideration, Thad yanks out the plugs, shuffles his way through the crowded bus over to Bart, forces the plugs into his hand, then goes back to his seat.

He doesn't see the fleeting smile that crosses Bart's face, and proceeds to get one of the worst headaches of his young life.

But not before smacking that spit kid.

That afternoon, the boys return home to find a medium-sized plastic bin with a heat lamp attached to it in the middle of the living room, with a chick peeping happily inside. Neither of them expected this.

Bart calls out, to no one in particular, "Why are we keeping this?"

Max steps around the corner, removing a pair of oven mitts, and says "You two have been arguing for just about a month straight. It's way more annoying than I think you realize."

At this, Thad becomes sheepish, averting eye contact as Bart turns on some form of fake indigence that's usually reserved for when Max sasses him.

He continues, deadpan, "I figured that if you both had pets this war could finally end, and I could finally rest."

While Bart sasses back, Thad crouches down and carefully picks up the chick, musing "What should I call you?" Then, a devilish smirk appears on his face, as he says "How about 'Bessie"?"

Bart stops dead in his tracks, horrified, and stutters out "Y-you do that's a cow name, right? Right?"

Thad hums to himself and mutters, just loud enough for Bart to hear, "No, not that. How about Sushi?"

Bart is overcome with a wave of nausea as Thad, seeing him out of the corner of his eye, continues "I'll put that in the maybe box. Ah, I've got one that might stick: Hanson... would you like that? I'll think of more, just in case"

Bart falls to to his knees under the crushing despair-filled realization that this will be his life for the foreseeable future.

At about 11:24 PM, Herbie Hawke wakes up with an intense hangover.

He groans and tries to roll over, but the whisky bottles prevent this.

He lays there for another 5 minutes until the silence is broken by his front door opening.

Footsteps ring throughout the house, the person making to attempt to hide their presence as they search the house for the owner. Finally, Herbie's door opens, the figure in the doorway blocking most of the light. Not enough light however, to stop the politician from cursing them out.

The person gasps and quickly turns off the light, then says, with a breathless voice not unlike that of a schoolgirl whose crush has just confessed to her, "I'm sorry, Mr. Hawke!"

Hawke opens a bleary eye to see the owner of the voice: His (quite large) butler/indentured servant, Aloysius Masterson.

Herbie rasps, voice very hoarse for some reason, "Help me up, and keep it down you buffoon."

"Yes, Mr Hawke!" realizing the mistake, he covers his mouth with his hands and whispers "Yes, Mr Hawke."

Aloysius scurries over and does as he's told, pulling the weighty man to his feet.

In an attempt to make small talk, he says "Have ya seen what the papers have been saying 'bout you? I only got back in town a coupla' hours back, so I only saw today's."

Herbie sighs, wondering what garbage those vultures made up this time.

He stops wandering when he sees the headline "LOCAL POLITICIAN GOES ON 6 HOUR LONG RANT THAT SOME CONSIDER TO BE A HATE CRIME"

He crumbles the paper up, damning his ability to hide any and all visual or audible indicators that he's drunk. He looks up at his butler, who is looking back expectantly. He grumbles "It's all lies! All of it! Don't you remember what I've taught you? Say it with me now..."

Aloysius grins and recites along, both of them enunciating each word, "Those crooks at the papers are a bunch of dumbasses who don't know nothin' 'bout nothin'."

Aloysius looks far too proud of himself for remembering this, saying "Awright Mr Hawke, you go make yerself all comfy and cozy 'cause I got ya some hog, fresh from the market!"

He then winces, and whispers "Whoops, too loud."

Herbie chuckles and muses  "Oh Aloysius, I don't know what I'd do with out you."

This is, of course, forgetting the last few days are a prime example of what he'd do without him.

Chapter Text

It had been months since Iris had time to visit her grandson, (not counting the Max is Better Now/Clone Smackdown party) so she decided to pay a surprise visit because she could just sense that something big was troubling Bart. Well, getting kidnapped by a psychotic clone would trouble most people, she supposed. On the drive there, she sees a bigfoot-themed tourist trap and decides "Oh, what the hell" and buys a pair of giant furred bigfoot boots that Bart will inevitably lose or get taken away from him once he breaks something expensive.

Hours later, Iris enters the quaint town of Manchester. Well, that's what Max had told her, but she sees too many advanced science labs to actually call the place "quaint".

When she pulls up the house, she sees an empty driveway. The mailbox has been bolted together with the post cemented to the ground, presumably due to some speedster shenanigans.

She does her best job of sneaking up to the door (so that she can actually enter the house before Bart tackles her) and unlocking it (with the key that they gave her months back). Once she entered the house fully, a realization hits her that makes the subterfuge feel a little foolish: No one was home in the first place. Chuckling silently to herself, she turns the corner into the living room and freezes when she sees a familiar face doing an... unfamiliar activity. She rubs her eyes and looks again, but the room is empty.

Sighing, she makes a mental note to ask around to make sure no one is messing with Hypertime again, because she could have sworn she had just seen Bart, with dyed blond hair, reading a large book that undoubtedly had tiny words and a minimum of pictures, while a baby chick rested on his head. A shudder runs down her spine as she considers the alternative as to what she could've seen. She then hears a rustling sound upstairs growing in intensity. To break the silent tension, she tentatively calls out "Bart?"

The sound that greets her is one not unlike someone falling down the stairs, and judging by the already healing black eye and the fading limp that Bart is sporting, that is exactly what that sound was.

The next few minutes consist mostly of Iris trying to calm down Bart a bit so that they can actually talk, and Bart rambling with occasional bursts of rapid fire "Did you get me anything?"s, to which the response was "You just have to wait", as she isn't about to give the boots over without giving Max and Helen a chance to hide the valuables.

Not too long later, give or take thirty minutes, just as Bart calmed down enough to communicate at a speed humans can understand, Helen comes back home. This launches Bart into another spurt of hyperactivity as he excitedly informs her of their guest. It takes a few tries before his voice doesn't sound like a tape being played fast forward.

Once the teen has mellowed out yet again, the topic shifts to Bart's schoolwork, which Iris would not ask him about unless Helen or Max were present to confirm he's not lying.

Eventually, once that conversation wore out, Bart started an oddly long story, one that involved him, his local friends, a priceless spear, a cadre of smooth-talking pugilists pretending to be ghosts, and a pair of tiny mice in a mech suit. Bart thinks one of the fake ghosts might have been an actual ghost, but he's not sure.

When Max arrives, the first thing he hears is "Then, when Preston found the knife in the dumpst- oh hi Max!"

Max just sighs in response, as Bart has been telling the story to anybody who'll listen, and when he starts there's no stopping him. He settles down in the recliner and patiently waits for the story to end. (or at least he tries to)

After the thrilling conclusion of the story (part of which was being held captive by a man who vaguely resembled a sloth (Bart is convinced that he's an actual sloth given human form) in the back of a casino), Max asks "So, what brings you down this way?"

"Oh, no particular reason. I just wanted to see how Bart was doing."

Max responds with a noncommittal "hmm", which is... odd for him, Iris thinks.

Iris decides to change the topic to something that's more his (heh) speed.

"So, how's the heroing going for you two?"

Bart quickly launches into another spiel, Max correcting him when he "expands" the truth. Iris wants to laugh along with the tales, but there's something off about the way they're acting. Bart keeps stopping and correcting himself before he says some things, a detail that would most likely go unnoticed by everybody except her. The suspicions only get worse when she notices Max tense slightly every time Bart does that.

She shelves that line of questioning for later, as speedsters can give themselves almost infinite time to make up responses, and chooses to investigate another day.

Hours later, after many stories and talks that ranged from genuinely interesting to blindingly inane, Iris sees how late it is and decides to take her leave and find an inn for the night. Bart looks almost dejected, wishing that they had a spare room for her to stay the night. Iris gives her grandson a kiss on the forehead and a promise that she'll be back soon, walking out to her car and writing some notes in her journal:

"Call Wally and/or the Justice League about Hypertime" being chief among them.

Hours earlier, on the other hand, Bart's fun afternoon of video gaming was rudely interrupted by way of getting shaken so hard by his adrenaline-fueled clone that he almost got whiplash.

 "Someone is here for you, moron!'' Thad hissed.

"Who?"

"If you tell her I'm here I swear I'll-"

"Who's "her"?!"

"I'll snap your legs in half and leave you in a ditch do you know how many of those even Superman couldn't find you in-"

"Point A: That's terrifying, and B: Who's here!? I can't get down there if you won't let go!"

"Five! There are five ditches he couldn't find you in! I'd probably be cursed instantly for even being near three of them, but that's a risk I'm willing to t-" Thad is promptly cut off by a hard smack to the face.

After a moment, Thad raises a hand to his face as Bart says "I won't tell Max about that if you-"

Suddenly a voice rings from downstairs "Bart?"

The Bart in question immediately zips out the door. So fast, in fact, that he winds up clipping the doorframe and careening down the stairs.

After flinching at the sound, Thad has half a mind to make sure he didn't break his neck, but Bart starts clamoring seconds later, so he supposes he's fine.

However, he's still not confident that Bart can keep any form of secret, so he opens up a portal to Craydl, watching the surveillance of the living room closely until the coast is clear.

He tries his best to ignore the twinge in his chest.

About three days later, give or take, Iris decides to give them a call, betting on the chance that if there is something being hidden, a random phone call could surprise them enough to catch them off balance.

Helen answers, so she makes some small talk like hmm, I think I may have forgotten something there, and oh, there's something I meant to ask but forgot.

But moments before she gets into the real questions, a loud stomp is heard in the background, followed by bickering of which she hears bits and pieces of. Examples being "I think you broke my foot you troglodyte." and "What was I supposed to do!? these are stompin' shoes!"

Helen sighs and says "Sorry about that ruckus, Bart and Thad are going at it again."

Iris takes a sharp inhale and says "Bart and who?"

"...Oh, hell."

Within the next half hour Bart, Thad, Max, Helen, Iris, Jay, and Wally are all crowded around a dining table, with tense shoulders and unsure looks all around.

"So," Iris begins, "When were you going to tell us he was here?"

"About a month or two, give or take.", replies Max. "He needed time to adjust before dealing with all this."

"All this?! He nearly killed Iris!" Wally all but shouts.

"He was much closer to killing me and Max!" Bart snaps, surprising everyone.

"Is... is that a defense?" Jay asks, clearly unsure of what Bart is getting at.

"Well... I'd rather he get accused of stuff he actually did..." Bart trails off.

"Thanks. Reeeaal helpful." Thad says, sardonically.

"Okay then," Iris interjects, "Then do you have a reason for keeping him here? And let me tell you, you had better have a good one for how long you've been putting my grandson in danger."

"Don't worry, I can take him!"

"Not now, Bart." Helen says.

Max takes a breath and says "At the end, he was having a total nervous breakdown because he couldn't cope with both his mission being a lie and, I don't know the full story yet, but I presume identity issues."

Thad averts his eyes and shrugs in response.

He continues "After that we, meaning me, Helen, and Bart, had a long talk about what to do. A fair chunk of which was making sure Bart was certain that he wanted Thad to stay here."

Thad turns to look at Bart in utter confusion, and Bart mouths 'Later' at him.

A tense quiet settles over the table as half of it mulls over what's been said while the other brainstorms any responses to whatever may be said.

Iris looks to Bart and asks "Bart... are you sure? You're not under any mind control or anything, right?"

"I've been asked that a lot, and yes, I'm sure, and we can handle it if it goes bad. Also I'm not sure why he would mind-control me into stomping on his feet."

After a few more beats of silence, Iris sighs and relents "Fine, but" pointing her attention at Thad, "If you try anything, you will regret it."

Thad choppily nods.

As Iris gets up to get some fresh air, Wally follows, giving Thad one last threatening look. Thad rolls his eyes.

Eventually, people start trickling out of the room to have more private conversations, leaving only Jay and Thad.

After a brief pause, Jay takes a seat next to Thad, putting a hand on his shoulder and casually saying "I know you've already heard this from half the people in this house, but if you go back to a life of crime, it will go bad for you."

Thad looks and the hand on his shoulder, then back to Jay, saying "Out of all the threats I've gotten today, that one had the most weight to it."

Jay raises an eyebrow, saying "Really? I was trying to go for an "old & wise mentor" sort of a thing. What made you take it as a threat?"

"You're the only one who's intentionally killed people before."

Before Jay can interject, Thad continues matter-of-factly "The Faultless Four, Edward Clariss, a good handful of mobsters, a bunch of nazis, and probably a whole bunch more I didn't bother to read up on."

Jay takes a moment, then replies "I won't deny the mobsters, I was too young and inexperienced to keep the fatalities low. I certainly won't deny the nazis, they had it coming. I will say that the last I saw him Sieur Satan was still alive, but that was many years back. And Clariss basically killed himself from messing with forces he didn't understand."

Thad slowly nods, not sure how to react to Jay actually admitting that he's taken lives, and how to react to actually being wrong about a thing that doesn't involve interpersonal relationships.

Jay squeezes his shoulder a little bit and says with a smile "If it helps you any, I believe that you can be a good person, or at least one that'll make Thawne really mad."

Thad snorts at that and mutters "Thanks..."

Jay gives him one last warm smile and stands up, saying "Well, I'd better be heading back, I was helping Joan make preparations for a community cookout next week." He pauses for a second and then continues "You're welcome to come, by the way."

"Uh... I'll think about it." Thad replies, out of his depth, still not used to being himself and not Bart in these kinds of scenarios.

"I'll give you a call once the time's figured out."

Thad gives a quick nod and Jay takes his leave.

Not too long later when Iris and Wally are about to leave, Thad rushes to stop them, bigfoot boots in hand, sternly stating "Take these with you. He's been a menace with these, and if he breaks anything important that's not his I will forward you the bill."

Iris takes the boots from him and calls out "Bart, hon-"

"Yes?" Bart says, having materialized in the room halfway through the sentence.

"Please try to keep these at your headquarters, this place may be a bit too fragile for them. Besides, I'm sure Superboy would get a kick out of them."

A look of pure mischief crosses Bart's eyes before he takes the boots and speeds off, leaving them in the same awkward silence they have been for most of the last hour.

For once, however, the silence doesn't last too long as Iris says "There's something that's been bugging me ever since I found out you were impersonating Bart."

Oh grife he thinks, and prepares himself for the worst.

"Didn't you have a massive overbite the first time I saw you?"

"Reconstructive surgery." he quickly replies.

"Huh."

"Yeah."

"Did you ever consider... undoing it?"

"No. It was genuinely hard to talk sometimes and it was more than likely a cloning malfunction."

The conversation lulls after that, which Iris takes as a chance to say "I've got to be going, see you... soon?"

Thad replies with an equally awkward and terse "Yeah sure." before promptly speedwalking out of the room.

Iris chuckles despite herself, and heads home.

That night, in their shared room, Thad asks "...So why did you want me to stay?"

Bart unhelpfully replies "I know you tried to get rid of my boots, so you have to wait."

Thad heatedly responds "This is serious, Allen."

Bart sighs and says "I know, the boot thing's an excuse. I just... I justdon'tknowhowtosayityet.", effectively taking the wind out of the sails of the boat that is Thad's frustration.

Not knowing how to respond, he instead says "I'm going to go brush my teeth."

In the middle of doing exactly that, he asks the air around him "Did... did I mess up today?"

He then watches the mirror as a portal opens behind him and a large, green, and gooey hand slowly emerges from it, giving a huge thumbs-up.

Thad groans and smacks his forehead.

"Why did I even bother asking?"

Chapter Text

Alright so the next chapter was, upon thinking about it, a Very Easy place to get stuck on writing as it'd have a weird structure. It's both technically a "tie-in" to a JSA arc and also the villain roll call bc, let's face it, Bart's rogue's gallery is a bit thin and could use a few more members, especially considering that now he's gotta share it with Thad. I think I'll use line breaks to delineate chapters, but this one's just gonna be the one. Future parts will probably have multiple.

It takes place during the Injustice Be Done! arc of JSA (issues 16 thru 20), where Johnny Sorrow and his Injustice Society use the King of Tears to lay siege on the earth, and is also the arc where Rival is let out of the Speed Force.

Chapter starts on that scene, with Johnny Sorrow doing some magic bullshit to get him out, a streak of fire marking the path he made upon his escape. The Injustice Society catches him up on a lot of the stuff he missed in the decades he was gone for, but he gets caught on one bit: satellites and the pictures they take. He looks back at the fire and decides to write his name large in flames across the country, so his return can be seen from space, overestimating many things, like: how big the flame streak is, how good the cameras on the satellites are, and how many people actually know who he is. Before anyone can stop him he enacts the plan, but as he's unused to this level of speed in the physical world he can barely perceive the world as he runs, only stopping when he needs to start a new letter (and to check a map to make sure he hasn't overshot and messed it up, like he always seems to do). When The Rival finally stops he's in a house, with the only light being from the moon outside the blown in wall and from the TV, casting a dim light into the room. He shuffles on his feet, starting to feel bad about wrecking this stranger's home, which is when he steps on a... weirdly wet and sticky teddy bear? He can vaguely see a lamp in the dark so he turns it on and sees-

Well, what sees is something he will never tell another soul. His mind instinctively tries to make his body both throw up and cry it's eyes out at the scene that he created that he stumbled in to. But it doesn't. He no longer has a stomach to spew bile from or tear ducts to cry from. Realizing this only worsens his panic, his violent bluster he showed to Max Mercury evaporated in the face of it's reality. He's only broken out of it when he hears a noise from upstairs. A baby, crying. He knows what he has to do, to make sure no one finds out about this. That night, an infant materializes as if out of thin air on the stoop of a local orphanage, and the home of a family of four burns to the ground. Only the bodies of the parents are found in the wreckage.

Edward Clariss does not yet know that this is not a unique and horrible event in his little stunt. He doesn't know that he has left the bodies of almost a hundred men, women, and children in his wake without even a thought. He doesn't know that in the eyes of the world, he's already a monster. After all, he made sure to sign his name.

Right now, Clariss stands and watches the burning house, feeling like the lowest piece of scum in the world as his mind boosts into overdrive trying to make up inane justifications about how it's "not to blame", how "accidents happen every day", and how it's The Flash's fault... somehow. He'll figure out how later.

Insert a "The next day, Manchester, Alabama" scene of mood whiplash-inducng shenanigans. Said shenanigans are interrupted by the sky turning black as the King of Tears breaches into reality. The rest of the chapter is flipping between Max, Bart, and Thad protecting the town from the swarm of eldritch insects and vignettes from around the world of other characters dealing with them. The vignettes are the more important part here as they're all setup for later. I'll number them and realize how untenable this chapter would've been as I go.

#1: Rio de Janiero, Brazil. A Sean Connery James Bond-esque man (complete with suit) schmoozes his way through a party, surreptitiously hiding listening devices and cameras as he goes. His internal monologue reveals that the organization he works for has been hired to gather evidence to take down the crime family that's hosting this party. He doesn't know if the client is a law enforcement agency or a rival family, and he doesn't particularly care. Just as he's gotten the head of the family in private to try and trick him into letting some info slip, the large window of his office bursts inwards as one of the King of Tears' bugs breaks in, eating the don in one bite. The Agent flees the room and slams the doors behind him. When he sees all the partygoers scrambling around the foyer he gets an idea, one that he's sure will piss his handler off, but it'll get the same result either way and hey, it'll be way more fun than waiting around at a desk combing through video and audio files. He brings his hand up to the knot of his necktie and the holographic face he's been wearing blurs into a mass of pixels before reforming into that of the late and beloved don's. His artificial voice makes a similar change. He starts yelling escape routes to groups of people who have no reason to doubt him, they've sworn too much loyalty to the man whose face he's wearing to second guess him. This is a mistake, as one of his eyes is only seeing the camera feeds, showing him the exact places he needs to send people to put them directly into the mouths of the monsters. Once he finishes doing that, he leisurely walks to the main doors to get to his car, arguably the most fortified and safe place to be in the whole city. He's about to open them when he hears the clicking of a gun being cocked and he turns to see the don's wife, bloody and scratched up, pointing a magnum at him. The Agent almost launches into a spiel about how he's "So so relieved that his darling, beautiful wife is okay", until he notices the gun she's holding is the don's favorite... the one that he apparently dropped when being eaten. Well, shit.

He pushes a button on his cufflink as they have a tense standoff, broken by the sound of a roaring engine that prompts him to click his heels, which makes springs shoot out from the bottom of his shoes, launching him well above the top of the large doorframe. Before she can react a car breaks down the front door and runs her down. He lands safely next to the car and gets in, only stopping to grab the magnum (Hey, it's a nice gun, can't sue him for that. He thinks. He's not actually sure of most laws at this point, he's ignored them for so long he can't be bothered to remember them).

The Agent speeds off, turning off the holo-face, and by "off" I mean it just reverts to the pixelated mess that if you look really really close, you might be able to make out the true face underneath. The sound system comes to life with the sounds of his handler screaming at him for ruining the whole mission, the client wanted them to go down via legal means, yadda yadda yadda. He clicks the mute button. God, they've known each other since they were both babies and they've never gotten less annoying. It's a statistical miracle, he thinks to himself as he turns on the monitor to see the next assignment in the queue. His car goes on autopilot to dodge the chaos befalling the city as he reads. Turns out it's somewhere in Middle of Nowhere, Alabama. The mission is to investigate some new superhero that's popped up there. Must be another Waller case. He'd never say that out loud, he's not supposed to know the identity of any client, but it's so obvious he just wants to shout it from a mountaintop. And then probably ice Waller because god these missions are always so boring. He sets his GPS to the town and settles in for a long drive, blissfully unaware that his own arrogance will soon ruin his life.

(Note: This guy was thought up while listening to Secret Agent Man. This will be a recurring theme for the new antagonists.)

#2: A yacht in open waters. A group of the snobbiest college students imaginable are taking a cruise. Samantha Lancaster and Benthazar Hellstränd are having an absolutely riveting conversation about their stock portfolios while James Hollis and his old flame Kellay Pinkerton the 4th are throwing caution to the wind and mixing a bit of perfectly-aged wine into their artisan sparkling waters. All of them are hiding that they're all a bit peeved at their friend and colleague Chaz Gunnarson, who this whole trip was for in the first place, as he's been feeling a bit down (read: obviously clinically depressed) and he always said he liked the sea, so it was a no brainer to chart the most expensive boat they could get and get out on the beautiful blue sea. So why then, is he just laying on the deck and sighing wistfully while staring at the sky!? Doesn't he appreciate the effort they put into this? Besides, if he doesn't get out of this funk, they'll lose the badminton tournament for sure! Just as Samantha is about to really lay into him for being so selfish, the sky turns dark. Oh, they didn't know an eclipse was coming, this wonder of nature will surely do the trick! Chaz stares at a moving spot in the inky sky and sighs again.

Which is when the giant insect falls from the sky directly on his head, smashing him into the lower decks (and his head into paste, but this goes unnoticed). Pandemonium ensues, wrecking a fair mount of the boat. The only one of them who's ever been in a fight is probably going to need a hospital visit, so their attempts to fight the monster are ineffectual at best. Benthazar is halfway into the beast's mouth when a red blur smashes into it, knocking it over. The absurdly fast person makes quick work of it, pummeling it before throwing all the cutlery on board directly into (and through) it's head. Satisfied that the students aren't in any more danger, the hero leaves. Kelsay wants to go down to check on Chaz, earning a "oh you would, wouldn't you" from James. The ensuing argument both marks their 5th breakup in as many months, and Chaz coming up from the stairs with and absolutely bloodsoaked head.

"Who was that", he asks with a faraway look in his eyes and wonder in his voice as Samantha wipes his face clean. "The Flash, I think" she replies, weirded out by his weirdly baby-smooth face and the expression he's wearing. Just then, the monster starts to get back up. Seemingly going on pure reflex, Chaz grabs a large piece of metal debris as cleaves the massive bug in two with practiced ease. This, obviously, interrupts the argument. "Didn't we read some news about some... Kid Flash in Alabama?" he serenely asks. They nod, voices failing them. He ignores them after that, setting up a makeshift sail to get them back to land. Chaz stands on the bow of the ship watching the ocean as the waves crest against the bow, wondering when the last time he went on a true hunt was. This quarry is too good to take down without preamble and, if he's being honest with himself, he doubts he could win without a training round against a weaker foe with a similar skillset. His friends have so many questions, but the manic grin splitting his face ear to ear that he's had since his near death experience scares them far too much to risk saying anything.

#3: Arkham Asylum. Two guards are shooting the shit outside a cell that less than a dozen people know exists. Even less know who is inside it, and even less know why he's been in this windowless, unventilated cell for the last 15 years, with the only contact to the outside world being the food the guards put through the slot, his little CRT TV and the movie news magazines he begged a previous guard to order for him. The guards figure he probably reads them by the light of the TV, as there's not even a lightbulb in the cell. In fact, the only thing these particular guards know about their nameless patient is a fixation on famous preteen star Luger Van Zant. Once, through the slot in the door, they questioned him about the nature of this 'fixation" while trying not to laugh at him. His response was a genuinely confused "Admiration. What else would it be? He's living the dream!"

Today, however, would be a slight shakeup to this endless routine. It was a magazine day, so the guards are making their usual jokes about the gleeful "oohs", "ahhs" and "I can't wait to see that one!"s coming from the cell.

The breakout alarm comes to life, as it does at least once a week, so their reactions aren't as quick as they probably should have been. Really, they just feel bored of it all. Said boredom is broken by a giant insect claw pinning one of them to the door, punching a large hole in it. The bug is about to eat the other guard when a lanky arm sticks through the hole and yells "Let go of my friend!", followed by a blinding flash of light. When the guard opens his eyes, he sees that the monster has been utterly disintegrated... actually, it looks like the whole wall it broke through got vaporized. He looks up to the sky and sees what looks like a single shooting star streak across the pitch black sky, wondering if he even needs to report this as a breakout. The guy wasn't even on their records, after all. He doesn't bother to look into the cell as he runs to the medical wing. If he did, he might have noticed that the latest issue of the patient's favorite magazine was left open on the news that the next surefire blockbuster Luger Van Zant family comedy will soon be starting principal photography in Manchester, Alabama, and that they're hiring extras.

After so long in the dark, he's ready for the Limelight.

(Should be pretty obvious what song inspired this guy)

#4: The outskirts of Birmingham, Alabama. This one is going to make me sound like an utter lunatic but stick with me here. Those Three Dudes What Dumped That Toxic Waste in the Messner-Loebs run of Impulse are driving a sloten truck full of full body spandex suits, pure white except for a black minus on the torso, that have the special property to absorb any impact they're hit with. They stop at a minimart for snacks because none of them are particularly bright and don't consider the urgency of the heist they just pulled. The the same thing that happens in all the other vignettes happens, sky goes dark and bugs and all that hoo-hah. So they run back to the truck and put on some of the outfits for protection but forget that all it does is protection, so they just get flung around and ragdolled until one smashes into a dumpster, knocking it aside to reveal an old oaken trap door. They all scramble into it and tumble down the steps and see... a cozy little hovel occupied by a Literal Caveman, who is sat comfortably in a recliner watching a antenna TV that's getting poor reception (unclear if this is bc of the fact that it's underground, or on account of the King of Tears-based apocalypse happening).

The caveman politely, in perfect english, tells them to get out of his home. The crooks respond like Courage the Cowardly Dog trying to describe a monster. All at the same time. It is incredibly annoying. He gets up to trow them out of his home like a bouncer evicting some unruly patrons (an experience all three men are intimately familiar with) when one of the bugs sticks it's head through the trap door, trying to dig it's way down to them. They respond in kind by throwing everything in arm's reach at it. The caveman responds to that by grabbing an ornately carved club with which to bash them over the heads so they stop wrecking his home. Before he can do that, one of the crooks grabs an ancient box, one that almost looks older than time itself, clearly one of the most valuable artifacts in the world... and whips it at the bug, doing no damage and shattering it instantly, letting the page of papyrus within be blown away by the beast's wings. The caveman, aghast, rushes forward and, well, clubs the bug, breaking both it's head and the weapon, old with disuse. (Way too many commas in that last sentence I think, but whatever)

He turns to them and says that they have a moral imperitive to help him find what they just lost, lest the demon Shining Bright be loosed upon the universe, spelling certain doom for all living beings. If they don't help, it would be very easy to peel the costumes off of them like bananas and throw them to the monsters outside. They quickly agree, adding that, hey, if it went really far we'll need money and we've got super rad supersuits, so why don't we use them for more heists? And we've got this big dude with us now! So they sit in a circle on the ground and start workshopping a name for their group. The caveman (whose name they have not bothered to ask yet) is shocked into a stupor by how dumb these men are. One points out that the minus reminds him of a middle line on a domino, so they can just put some dots on each to tell them apart, and there's a whole bunch of combinations those have, right? So they can have as many crew members as they want! The caveman decides then and there that for the time being these guys are going to be his replacement clubs, just until he can find something sturdier... but he probably won't be looking very hard.

(So uh, the Domino Gang for all intents and purposes exists to throw as many weird little freaks into a team as possible. Eventually there'll be no telling what you'll find under those masks. It could be some Joe Schmo from Indiana or it could be a Qwardian Thunderer or a Parademon or a League of Assassins grunt who got ditched after one of the many times a swarm of them got beat up by the Bats. It could even be a mime under there, the possibilities are endless! Now, I have to admit: I had this idea for like a year before I decided to look up if DC already had a Domino gang. They do. They only showed up the one time in Flash 173, an appearance so minor they don't even have a page on the wiki. They all had domino masks on so there's no overlap, but I like to imagine the ones I've made as the New Earth version of that group. EDIT: Turns out, my mental image for the suits is almost exactly like the Loaded Dice Gang from the Secret Origins 80-Page Giant Arrowette story. And, despite them literally only ever existing on this one page that directly calls them by their name, the DC wiki calls them the Domino Gang. Fucked up!)

#5: A parking lot in Mississippi. A man is selling "magic" crystals out of the back of his Scooby-Doo style van outside of a Legally Distinct Wal-Mart. Onyx? Yep. Quartz? A-yup. Amethyst? Hell yeah. He's got all the best crystals... that he could buy in bulk from the clearance sale of a crystal store two towns over. He looks exactly like you would expect a man doing this would look like, which is to say "stereotypical hippie who looks like he walked straight out of the 60's". In fact, the only thing about him that really deviates from the stereotype is that his name is Dan Steel, which he tells everyone and insists that it's his birth name and not one he gave himself. Well, there's one other thing about him that's against type: he doesn't believe a word of the stock phrases he's using to sell his wares.

But what he wishes for more than anything else in the world, is for that idiot on the other side of the lot to just shut up. Nobody wants to buy Grape Nuts cereal out of what almost looks like a child's lemonade stand from some dude dressed like a 50's spaceman! Dan isn't the type of man to use his power willy-nilly, but this dolt hollering about the various nutritional benefits of grapes is making him second guess himself. Before he can get get fed up enough to stomp over there and revert the wood used in the spaceman's stand back into the trees used to make it, the sky turns black and giant bug-based hell breaks loose.

Dan, naturally, gathers his shit as fast as he can and slams the back of his van shut. He's about to drive off when he looks at his rear view mirror and sees that goddamn spaceman still trying to sell his cereal! To who??? The fucking bugs?!?! He lets out a wordless snarl and puts his van into reverse and backs very slowly towards the stand. Not slow enough to escape the bugs' notice, though. One of the insects slams into the side of the van, shattering the driver side window, and Dan instinctively grabs his trusty Self Defense Crowbar. He leans out the window and brings it down on the monster's head, driving the hook of it into it's head. He grabs a random stone and... honestly this is kind of a hard power to put into words? He can move the "time" of an object to another? Anyways the end result here is that the crowbar ages backwards into molten metal, frying the insect's brain, and the stone looks noticeably more weathered.

Another bug lands in front of the spaceman and smashes his stand. He is entirely unfazed, and decides the best course of action is to eat a handful of Grape-Nuts Flakes(tm). He then monologues "Do not fear citizens, now that I've experienced the nourishing taste of Grape-Nuts Flakes, I have enough power to stop this fiend!" He spies a crystal Dan dropped in his panic earlier and continues "Watch closely now, when I say 'VOLTO', my right hand magnetizes!" the crystal flies into his hand, which he moves to his left. "And my left repels! VOLTO!" The crystal flies out of his hand with more force than any onlooker would expect, blasting a fist sized hole through the bug's entire body, and through the back and front window of Dan's van.

Dan can only stare as the spaceman calmly walks to the now goo covered crystal, picks it up, and starts walking towards him. Dan peels out of the lot faster than even that time he pissed off the entirely of Salem Center's sewing community. As he speeds down the road, spaceman now jogging behind him, he wracks his brain trying to think of anywhere to hide from this freak. Then, it hits him! He's got a cousin down in Manchester that still owes him a favor! Maybe he can even get one of those dipshits in spandex to take care of his pursuer if he's lucky... but if he really had any luck, he would've been able to hear the man only known as Volto shouting "You dropped this, sir! Oh, if only that beast hadn't sullied the rest of my Grape-Nuts Flakes I could magnetize him back here with my right hand!" in the distance. 

 The next day, that small town's headline read "Cereal Mascot Destroys Hell-Insect With Obelisk Shaped Crystal???"

(Note: Inspired by Reelin' in the Years by Steely Dan. Very vaguely. As in "I was listening to the song and wondering what a Stand named after this song would do, and I liked it enough to bring it over. He's one of the... less developed characters, admittedly. Also Volto is an actual character that exists http://voltoarchives.pbworks.com/w/page/9545487/FrontPage, and I couldn't find a way to make him explaining why he couldn't just pull Dan sound less clunky, so I made it more so, bc that's funnier)

#6: Oklahoma farmland. Yadda yadda yadda, dark sky, bugs, you know what's going on. Important part here is the family hiding in their barn. The Hendersons had some decent crops in the last few years, but none of them are particularly good salespeople so they haven't had much luck in actually selling the stuff. Now, this year's crop has been compromised by a much larger pest than they're used to. Now, they're all cowering behind the old worn-out tractor they've had since their great-grandpa started the farm. Now, they watch in terror as one of the horrors from beyond the stars creeps towards them. Now, they're... incredibly confused by a line of dirt rising up towards them, surely caused by the biggest mole in the world? It stops underneath the bug, which itself is mere feet away from them. Suddenly a silver arm shoots out of the dirt, catching it's throat in a vice-like grip, and tears it out.

The Hendersons watch in awe as the rest of the being emerges, standing seven feet tall with skin like chrome. The being pulls out a paper and holds it towards them and asks "Where are we in this terrible land?" It's a map of the USA. The grandmother of the family, Caroline, points at Oklahoma on it. The being snarls with rage, tearing the map in half, shouting "How did I make another wrong turn!?" After a moment to compose itself, the being looks around and says that this place will have to do. Then, it stares down at the family expectantly. She asks why it's looking at them like that and it hollers "I demand a boon! I am the most powerful man you have and will ever meet, and I just saved your puny lives so I am owed a boon!"

The Hendersons can think of nothing to offer except... a job? "What kind?" he asks, and they tell him Sales. Taking a moment to ponder it he declares "Yes! I, Katmos the Conqueror of all things, am the most persuasive being in the universe! I could convince any man to walk on his own teeth for the rest of his days! I could talk the very stars down from their heavens just to light my dining hall! I could-" The family look nervously amongst themselves as he monologues, silently agreeing that if he somehow makes their sales go down, they can at least try to sell him off to the tabloids.

(God I missed writing Katmos. Him and the next character in this chapter are the two I've been wanting to write the most out of anyone.)

#7: The 30th century. President Thawne watches the Styrobands of his Inertia fighting side by side with an Allen in absolute contempt. He cannot believe he's been betrayed by his own blood, again. He storms to the cloning labs with murderous intent, ready to end this traitor before he opens his eyes for the first time. The scientist in charge reasons with him that he can't just kill this creation like this. President Thawne simply glares at her. She backtracks and clarifies that he literally cannot kill him like this, because if Inertia doesn't go back to the past, then Thawne can't see the betrayal and terminate him for it, which will reset time to what it was before. They'll be caught in a time loop, more or less.

He looks around the lab, chock full of tubes, each with it's very own prospective Inertia. Some of them are almost fully grown, some have children, toddlers, fetuses, even a couple ancient looking men. Thawne realizes that he doesn't actually know which one will betray him. Well, other than the ones that're clearly too old to be the abomination he saw. He briefly considers fighting fire with fire, but he doesn't want to risk even more betrayals. He walks up to a random tank, containing a physically 11 year old Inertia wearing a breathing mask. Lungs must be too weak to function normally Looking at the screen in front of the tube, he reads that this one doesn't even have a trace of the Speed Force. Useless. Should've been gotten rid of a long time ago. He presses a couple keys and it's VR headset pops off. The clone looks around, confused, until it sees President Thawne and it just knows instinctively that he's looking at the most important man in the world. It's training had been cut off long before it had learned any truly useful skills but a deep respect for the Thawne bloodline was, of course, the first thing it was taught. It swims over and puts it's hands on the glass. Thawne places his own hand over the useless creature's. He can't see it's mouth under the breathing mask it's wearing, but he can see it's eyes crinkle up in what must be a massive smile.

He then hits the trash button.

The bottoms of all but one of the tanks open and the clones inside are dropped unceremoniously down into the garbage chute that leads to the lab's designated private landfill. Since he didn't bother to turn off the VR for the rest of the clones, almost none of them react to the fall. Some get caught up in their headset's wiring, but the result is no less fatal. Thawne always thought the gallows were an inefficient method of execution, and the reactions of the clones caught in their makeshift nooses only fills him with the self satisfaction of being right. The clone he was standing in front of shockingly hasn't let go of it's tank's wiring, preventing it's fall. Thawne moves his hand to the button to disconnect them from the inside as he says, more to himself than anything, "Surprising strength. I wonder if it could survive the fall." The clone's eyes widen at that, before they crinkle into that same obvious grin as it lets go, falling to it's certain doom.

The President bursts out laughing, realizing that the stupid thing took that offhand remark as an order. He's quickly distracted at the sight of another clone crawling out of it's chute. Physically in it's 30's, headset still hanging in it's tank, fingers bloody from the climb. A look of absolute hatred in it's eyes. Just like it's creator. He presses the trash button again and the chute closes, giving the clone a stable place to stand. It immediately starts banging on the glass. He grins at it and says "Congratulations, son. You passed the test!" It calms down at this and nods astutely, as if this is a totally reasonable scenario. It's tank fills back up after a couple of keystrokes, and it shakily puts the headset on it's head. Thawne has to suppress a scoff when he notices the tears starting to trail down it's cheeks. Once it's secure, Thawne presses a couple more keys and a pattern of lights guaranteed to cause massive seizures plays as rapidly as possible on the headset. Once the clone finally stills after minutes of seizing, the trash chute opens once again.

He walks over to the last remaining clone, a mere fetus. "So," he thinks, "this must be the one that betrays me. Provided that the time paradox theory is correct, of course."  It showed the most promise genetically, and it's extended lifespan would allow for more training. What a shame. All that money wasted. He sighs in sheer disappointment and walks away, scrolling through his tablet to his handy list of assassins. It'll be a hard and costly sell to get ones that'll be willing to be flung through time, but every cent will be worth it.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the world, a small body tries to dig it's way out of a pile of it's kin. It's lungs are burning and everything hurts so so much and it just wants to cry but he can't disappoint his creator like this, if it can't even survive a little 200 foot fall what good is it? It is suddenly pulled by the neck from the pile by a gloved hand. The clone can't tell if the owner of the hand is naturally blurry or if it's eyes are just really bad right now. Speaking of, this person has weird eyes. The iris is like, glowing red and the rest of the eye is just black? Maybe? They look too big for the irises to match them, and they look connected to their mask and wow that's really yellow... waitasecond. It gasps out "Eobard?" The blurry man responds unnaturally slowly "Nno. Zzzzzooooommmmmm."

The clone responds the most eloquent way it can think of: "Cool."

(Note: The Clone was inspired by a Lemon Demon song, but I can't say which one yet. Also may or may not stick with It pronouns, to me they've always been a They but who knows where the writing will take me.)

#7-2: The Dark Multiverse,  Earth -847594. The 30th century. An Earth where the aftermath of the N52 Trial of Kid Flash went very poorly. Long story short, Kiran Singh, Solstice, has died. Bar Torr is taking this very, very poorly. The other Titans figh and fight and fight and die around him, but he can only look at Solstice. Kiran. The girl he just let die. He vaguely registers out of the corner of his eye Red Robin being bisected by a beam, Superboy being shot with a kryptonite bullet, but his thought are only on what's in front of him. He gets down on one knee and phases his hand into her chest, gingerly and carefully extracting her heart. Skitter is smashed into paste by a collapsed part of the roof. With more speed than he knew he had, he phases his other hand into his own chest and removes his own heart, then quickly puts hers where his used to be, vibrating it's veins at arteries into his own and rapidly squeezing it to make it start beating once more. Bunker is devoured by a giant bug. He calmly puts his heart where hers' was, and gently kisses her on the cheek.  He idly wonders where the bug came from, but ultimately doesn't care.

Bar walks outside, cradling Kiran in his arms as the city around him descends into chaos. They must've caused more of a ruckus than he thought. But he soon realizes the main reason behind the panic is that the world seems to be just... giving up on holding itself together. The sky is turning blood red, the earth is shaking, the air itself is shattering around them. He smiles. Now he knows that he's not alone. The world can't live without her either.

Out of the broken panes of sky crawl giant bugs, which he supposes answers his previous question. A squad of soldiers run to him and point their guns, shouting various things that Bar can't be bothered to pay attention to. Probably finding some way to blame him for all of this, he bets. He opens his mouth to tell them to kindly fuck off, but what precedes his words is a thick, weighty black smoke. Like hers. He opens his mouth wider to let more out and the more there is, the more he realizes he has some control of it. When it reaches the platoon, the man in the front tries to wave it away it the smoke grabs his arm and wrenches it out of the socket. The others start firing, but the smoke absorbs it all at keeps advancing. And then. Beating. Shredding. Maiming. The Sun explodes. Tearing. Screaming. Cassie is shaking him. Bludgeoning. Lobotomizing. She's begging him to stop. Amputating. Gutting. She's sobbing. Impaling. Skinning. It's beautiful. Auto-cannibalizing. Imploding. Gravity's gone. Bar lets go of Kiran. She floats up towards the ever-brightening sky. She doesn't need that body anymore. When she comes back, she'll want one that's not missing half it's skull. That body can be with the sun now.

Then.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling down into the holes of the broken universe. He sees the only other person falling with him. The only other survivor of the world. It's one of the Judges. Bar wonders just how hard he can punch. The force of his blow turns the judge into fine mist and tears a hole through the weak fabric of reality, sucking him in. Now he falls in a new void, this time the only other inhabitant is a large lump of cloth. He tears through this void too, and now he falls towards a forest. He's not used to slowing his fall with his speed, but he tries anyway. Landing harshly, he flops onto his back and watches the hole he made in the night sky close, but not before the lump falls through. Vague curiosity is the only thing that motivates him to use the smoke to make a landing pad for it. When it does, the smoke dissipates. Then, silence. Only the sounds of nature. Eventually broken by the cloth unfurling, revealing... dinosaur legs? Long, spindly hands snake out of what is probably a cloak as the thing seemingly checks to make sure it's alive. It smugly chuckles and whispers to itself "The wizard Kroz lives once more" before bounding off into the woods. For some reason Bar is reminded of that Wormtongue guy from that one movie he watched, but he can't place why.

Doesn't particularly matter now, he's got plans to make. He has to right the wrong beating irregularly in his chest. And he doesn't care how tall the mountain of bodies will have to be to reach that goal.

(So uh. Bar Torr is not a very stable man in this moment, huh. I had Bar's reasoning for being in this story kind of planned for a long time, but it always felt too mean to do. Then Dark Knights: Metal came out and gave me a much more guilt-free route to take. Anyways, a refresher on the Dark Multiverse if you don't know: it is a entire multiverse made of nightmares, where every horrible thought and fear lives out it's scenario and then self destructs. In this case, the fear would definitely be a combo of Bar's "Man I hope I don't get all my friends killed" and Kiran's "It would suck shit if my boyfriend was a super obsessive weirdo". I coulda found another way to get him in this main universe but the idea of having the King of Tears be such a multiversal threat that it even got there is fun to me.

Now for the weird elephant in the room. Kroz is a last minute replacement for another character, who got replaced for the sole reason that what I could do with Kroz was funnier, and by last minute I mean "literally a week ago, with the other character being part of it for almost the entire time I've had this AU. If you want a Kroz reading order for... some reason, here we go: Impulse #17. That's it.)

#8: The End of Time. The Time Trapper stands in a place that could be called a courtyard, watching a window that lets one view anywhere in time one so pleases. On the other side of the courtyard, the Time Trapper is talking to the Time Trapper about the intricacies of her latest scheme. Sitting on a rock on the outskirts, the Time Trapper silently glares at the blank sky above as he sharpens his blade. In the far distance, the Time Trapper prepares to open a portal to do battle with his most despised foe, Wildcat.

All of these people are the Time Trapper, and none of them are.

They also all have their own time windows in their respective lairs, but even megalomaniacs who live at the frozen point before all time ends need socialization too. However, the one important to this story is none of the ones previously mentioned. The noteworthy one here is hidden behind an outcropping, carefully watching the others plot and scheme. They aren't the tallest nor the shortest of the Trappers, cutting an average, if a little too thin, figure. They think information gathering would be easier if they just talked to the others, but they know better than to question it. They wouldn't call themselves an idiot, maybe a bit dull, yeah, but not stupid. They just know that this is a better plan than anything they could've thought up. After all, the smartest thing in all existence made this plan. They watch another Trapper walk too close to where the one with the sword is sitting, who lets out an annoyed -tt- and takes a swipe at them. This is when our Time Trapper is told to head back to their lair. Lame. They wanted to see if a fight was about to break out.

Back at their base, they listen carefully to the instructions and open a time vortex in the center of the chamber. A bit dangerous, sure, but for the plan they've been given to work they need a couple of pawns. They find the point they've been told, and pull their subject through. A head, middle aged, with slicked back grey hair and a goatee comes through the vortex. It then falls to the floor with a thud. The Time Trapper stares at it for a moment before hissing "Oh you have got to be kidding me, you couldn't have warned me!?" and scrambling to retrieve another thing from the vortex. They yank a giant biomech crustacean... thing with a head-sized indent in it out and jam the decapitated head into in. They open the control panel on the biomech and rapidly input the commands to turn on it's life support. After a few tense seconds, the head begins breathing. The Time Trapper sighs, listens, and says "Yeah, I probably should have grabbed him from a few minutes earlier. Sorry."

They drag the unconscious cyborg to the corner of the room and prepare to access a new point in time. And they listen. "Wait, McCulloch? ...I agree, he would be very useful, but there's not really an easy point to grab him from where no one would notice. ...I was thinking Scudder. You know, the one that died in the Crisis? If we could just grab him right before... No, if you want McCulloch I can... You don't need to yell, I... Okay fine, one Samuel Scudder, coming up!" They open the vortex to mere moments before Mirror Master's death, and they are immediately knocked on their ass by the explosion that flings Scudder through the portal and directly into the wall of the chamber. They sit up and assesses the situation.

Scudder is completely knocked out, heavily injured and just bleeding all over the place. But other than that he looks... wrong, like he could, for lack of a better term, evaporate into thin air at any moment. They figure that must be a side effect of getting exploded from before the birth of the multiverse to the literal end of all things. They calmly get up and use the biomech to dispense some healing nanomachines, knowing that since time doesn't flow here, death can't truly happen. Their hands don't stop shaking, though. Injecting them into Scudder, they ponder a solution to the whole "will vaporize the moment he time travels anywhere" conundrum. They spot his Mirror Gun on the ground and remembers the hand mirror they... borrowed from another Trapper. They use the gun to place Scudder inside the mirror, hoping that it's quantum state will protect him from his predicament. They mutter "You don't have to keep saying 'I told you so', I handled it... besides, he might be more useful to us like this, trapped in reflection."

The two conveniently wake up at about the same time, thankfully after the debate over whether or not to place the two of them in the pre-prepared chairs was lost, so neither saw the Trapper trying to balance a handmirror on a chair to exacting specifications so as to not look gaudy. The Time Trapper begins their monologue "Samuel Scudder. Anton Musenda. I have pulled both of you from the jaws of death for one reason and one reason alone. That is to-" "Did we beat that Anti-Monitor thing?" "...Yes. Your contributions were in no way helpful." "Damn." Musenda opens his mouth to speak, only to be interrupted with "Further questions will be answered later! Now, where was I... oh yes. You now live for one reason: to serve. You shall be at my beck and call, lest I rescind my generosity. Understand?" Scudder shrugs while Musenda nods with a skeptical expression on his face. "Good. Now, you may look around this abode. Your quarters are over there" they say, gesturing towards a hallway. "I must take a moment of repose. Do not bother me." The Time Trapper is almost out the door before adding "Oh, I almost forgot. Scudder, if you leave the mirror dimension, you will die. Help me and you shall be helped in return." Then they walk away.

"So... how does he expect me to explore when I can't even move? There aren't even any nearby reflections to look through!" Scudder complains. Musenda gets up from his chair, an easy task as his biomech body dwarfs it, and responds "I don't believe our gracious host is as competent as he lets on. Come now," he grabs the handmirror, "we're going to follow him." "Don't drag me into this! He just said he'd kill us if we messed with him!" Musenda chuckles, saying "I wouldn't worry about that, my new friend, what he doesn't know won't hurt us. And like I said," he looks at the chairs that they were both poorly placed in, "he's clearly not as smart as he's pretending to be. He even forgot to introduce himself."

The unlikely pair track the Time Trapper through the strange, desolate realm they find themselves in, making copious mental notes to ask where the hell they are. They find their "benefactor" stand at a cliff next to a sharp outcropping of rocks, staring out into to void. Musenda scuttles behind a boulder and begins his observation. After what feels like an eternity of silence, the Time Trapper begins talking to seemingly no one in particular. "Did I do good? I think I delivered that speech well. Perfectly on your script this time! ...Thank you. May I...? ...Oh, thank you! Hmm, what should it be? Maybe Pink... No? Did you want something specific? ...'Something foreshadowing the finale of the plan so our autobiography can start cool'? There's no one else here, can't I just do whatever and you can put something else in the book?" They flinch like a gunshot just went off next to their head. "Okay, okay, I'll think of something, sorry... I think I have something." The only thing the eavesdroppers hear for a moment is the Time Trapper mumbling something to themselves, and then they start singing.

Didn't know what time it was, the lights were low-oh-oh

The voice is quiet, almost anxious, as if waiting for approval.

I leaned back on my radio-oh-oh

Musenda smirks like he's pieced together a grand secret.

Some cat was laying down some rock 'n' roll "Lotta soul," he said

The singing grows louder, more confident.

Then the loud sound did seem to fa-ay-ade

They begin to emote the song with their arms, as if to make it more of a theatrical experience.

Came back like a slow voice on a wave of pha-ay-ase

Scudder taps his hand to the song's rhythm.

That weren't no DJ, that was hazy cosmic jive

For the chorus, they start belting oout the lyrics.

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds

He's not so bad at this, Scudder thinks to himself. Not great, but much better than that time Snart and Rory got wasted and tried to sing it.

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile

"Ugh. Wretched performance." Musenda mutters, trying to use one of his feelers to plug one of his ears.

He told me
Let the children lose it
Let the children use it
Let all the children boog-OW

Their arm lifts and slams their hand into one of the sharp rocks. But not in a motion that a brain would tell it to do, almost as if the muscles themselves decided to contract and loosen in sequence, one by one, to make it happen.

The Time Trapper cradles their injured and the their chest and starts frantically apologizing "I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry I forgot you don't like Bowie- ...No, please don't- ...I don't want to-" They audibly gulp. "Fine.. I'm a r-re- please I don't want to say it aga-" A full-body flinch. "I-I'm a re-ret... dunce. Might as well put the little cap on me and make me sit in the corner and throw garbage at me. Because I'm an idiot and I deserve it. Is that enough?" Another flinch. Their breathing starts sound wet. "I'm... I'm... a..." The rest of the sentence is said to quietly to hear, but both onlookers know what was said, and they're pretty sure it wasn't said just the one time. Musenda decides he's seen enough and takes his leave.

On the way back, Musenda begins speaking. Ostensibly to Scudder, but he's clearly not expecting a response. "So, we've found his weakness. He obviously has a dissociative identity disorder. Now all we must do is determine which one is the weak link, and how to exploit it. The one we couldn't hear is clearly the paternalistic father figure, intelligent and stalwart. Ergo, the one we've been talking to is akin to an unruly child, weak, pliable, and in constant need of correction from the father. We'll need to continue gathering data to decide which is easier to turn against the other."

Scudder has many thoughts, but he's talked to guys like The Top and Professor Zoom enough to immediately clock the kind of person who will talk circles around you for hours if you try to argue with them, and Anton Musenda is exactly that type. Still, he mulls over what he's heard. First, it seems like the question of setting them against each other is a moot point considering how quickly what Musenda called the "Father" turned against the other. And more to the point, Scudder's met a few guys and gals in the clink that that split personalities and none of them acted even remotely like that, and especially none that moved the way he did. Even if he's wrong there, he's still got to question Musenda's entire theory considering that they both heard confirmation that it was the "intelligent" one that forgot to introduce himself.

He's broken out of his contemplation when Musenda asks if there are any surfaces he could use to go back and spy on their "new boss" (said with derision). He looks around the mirror dimension, and sees a handful of small ephemeral reflections back the way they just came. He then looks Musenda in the eyes and says "No."

(Writing Time Trapper is hard, not because the dialogue or thought process is tough, but because because as I went the more I realized how visceral it was going to be. Like, what they were going to be forced into calling themselves was going to be an implied thing they heard and that they'd substitute for a different word and that'd be it... then I realized that, given the rest of the dynamic, there was no way they could actually avoid saying it.

Also I used they/them pronouns to make it more mysterious, but then I realized that I didn't really need to do that. But I didn't want to go back and change all that sooo... congratulations, Time Trapper! You've been assigned nonbinary via editorial laziness! Though Scudder and Musenda don't know that, of course. The other Trappers rose from the fact that there's like 10 of them in canon so why not make a whole bunch more? BTW, Musenda's sole appearance is the 2002 one-shot The Flash: Time Flies. This makes him one of like 6 characters mentioned in this chapter so un-noteworthy that they don't have a wiki page! I don't know what this says about me!)

Epilogue: Bart and Thad play an incredibly petty King of the Mountain game on a hill of dead eldritch bugs, which suddenly pop out of existence, making both of them land flat on their asses. Max pulls apart the slapfight the boys have started, trying to put aside the Incredibly Bad feeling he just got that something catastrophic has just happened on a cosmic scale. (This is because Jay punched Johnny Sorrow so hard it trapped The King of Tears and it's legion in the Speed Force. Not so much a spoiler as it is explaining what happened in that JSA arc. Never comes up again in the comics, somehow.)