3 02 - Bullet Time...That Didn't Work, What About Splash Time?

Chapter 02 - Bullet Time...That Didn't Work, What About Splash Time?

Written By Dr Armstrong

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->Flash POV<-< p>

"...broke into my house, Mr. Wilson. Can I be excused for the day? I was hurt by the robber...I can send a photo if you don't believe me..." Flash said through the mePhone as he called his homeroom teacher, Mr Wilson.

"Oh my God...did you call the police? Just don't worry about school for now, I'll sort it out." Thankfully, Mr Wilson was human enough to understand that a robbery should be taken seriously. 

"Thanks, sir. I appreciate it a lot." Flash said with a seemingly tired tone.

"No problem, son. Just focus on your health and recover quickly, okay?" Mr Wilson stated from the other side of the call.

"Alright..." He ended the call.

Sigh...

Flash plopped a hot macaroni pizza in his mouth as he chowed down, watering it down with some Pixie on the side.

He was quite mentally stressed out, add an egregiously empty stomach at that. Turns out, super speed also accelerated his metabolism...

If he had been a little peckish before, he was starving now!

Well...in the bigger picture, t'was but a small price to pay for superpowers...

The Pizza Tent delivery guy had a concerned expression when he saw Flash's broken window, but he was wise enough not to ask any questions, probably thought he was a wannabe gangster who had just been in a shoot-out or something... 

Flash did have the look...nah, not really.

Intending to grab another bite, Flash widened his eyes when he found zero pizza in the box. He had already wolfed all of them down and didn't even realize when all of that macaroni had been practically inhaled into his stomach as if he had been a vacuum cleaner.

"Uh...I'm still hungry." World hunger is one of the world's most prevailing issues, but an even bigger issue would be the ongoing revolution in the capital of Hungary, the city of Stomachia!

"I guess I'll just have to eat hot air and deal with it..." Getting another delivery would be a waste of money.

Flash hadn't informed the police just yet, still wanting to make up a false story as a cover for his leg burns.

The robber did it. Okay, but why the burns? They threw acid at my legs. Sure, but why is there melting hot asphalt seeping into your flesh and bone? Uh...

After doing some quick research on the net, he found out that doctors had a so-called physician-patient confidentiality agreement.

But of course, the hospital records would still be there and thus would be a great lead if any would-be super detective had suspected him, Flash Thompson, to be...

Wait, what was his super identity again? Well, he hadn't really done anything besides running across the states, so there was not really any need for such a thing, just 'Flash' would be too on the nose...

The Blur? Speed Demon? Reverse Flash? Flashed? F-Train? Zoomer? Lightning? Mach? Lightspeed? Sonic? Speedy Gonzales?

Meh, a problem for the future Flash, what a guy...

But still...what to do with the injuries?

—BAAM~!*

He slammed his fist against the table before abruptly standing up.

"Damn it, I'm super now! I should find a super solution..." That's right! As a super-speedster, there had to be some bullshit he could use to run away from his problems, right?

If there wasn't, then that would be some incredible irony...

As Flash pondered about what he could do with his newfound power, he subconsciously glanced back at the table, only for his gaze to meet once more with the pizza box...

"That's right! If superspeed supersped my metabolism...would it also speed up my natural healing?" This was most likely true. If he could really do this, then mundane wounds wouldn't be a problem!

Of course, something that a human couldn't heal from would still be debilitating...

To test this theory out, Flash quickly strolled to the first-floor bathroom before entering to face the sink mirror.

"Alright, go Speedy Gonzales!" He shouted as he started 'shadow-dashing', literally shuffling in place like Muhammad Ali getting ready to throw a punch.

Footsteps could be heard from the bathroom as Flash kept raising his legs in a reverse-L position, only to stomp them right back at the ground in rapid motion.

He had a rather fast sprint even without superspeed, Flash never slacked in cardio, he was called Flash for a reason!

For about ten minutes or so, Flash flew like a Butterfly and stung like a Bee. Yet even as sweat dribbled down from his forehead and the calories burned in his body...

...Unfortunately, no super-speed :(

"...Huff...gruff...uh, this shit isn't working..." Flash didn't actually know how to enter super speed, his first time had been an accident, after all.

Again, how did he enter super speed in the first place? Flash already realized that it was the Speed Pump that, well...pumped up his speed.

But it couldn't be a one-use item, right? He remembered the asterisked warning written on the tin can, the Speed Pump should be a power booster of sorts used by actual speedsters.

But when he, a normal teenager, got struck with a volatile super-charged Speed Pump, it actually gave him superspeed!

Was that mad dash earlier just a one-time thing? Maybe it was way faster than what his normal super speed should have been, but surely he still received superspeed, right?

It would be really anti-climactic if he didn't...

"Now that I think about it...was it the weird lightning that gave me super speed? And then the Pump just boosted that..." The storm that had been here was quite unusual, could it be some kind of dimensional space-storm vortex of cosmic radiation?

Well, he was just making shit up, but the fact that the storm vanished shortly after he got super speed was a bit odd...

There was also the question of why the storm's lightning bolts had been attracted to the Speed Pump, maybe there was some kind of weird chemical in the Pump's composition that acted as a magnet that pulled down thunderstrikes...

Regardless...

"...Hey, I outran death, that's kinda funny..." He considered as he remembered the second lightning bolt that had been the original reason he...ran...

"That's it! I need fear, absolute horror!" Of course, he had accidentally entered super-speed to run away from the lightning, in other words; death!

Fear, the fear of death, that was the thing that had jump-started his super speed. Naturally, it should be a suitable catalyst to awaken it again.

Quickly, Flash went up the stairs as he made his way into the second floor. Opening the closet in his room, he quickly retrieved a...Nerf gun.

"Damn, this thing is still loaded..." He held the colourful Nerf gun in his right hand, it still had a couple of shots inside, courtesy of primary school-era Flash.

"I'm not sure if this will work...but I'm not going to jump off of a building for powers, so here I go!" He pointed the Nerf gun to the sky, using the Russian roulette manoeuvre as the Nerf dart was sent into the air with minimal recoil...

...Only to bounce off of the roof and fall back without much impact, hitting his head like a damn eraser falling off of the sky.

"Well, that didn't work." There was no fear, he fully and completely knew that there was no danger here. A Nerf gun wouldn't do shit, maybe he did need to jump off a bridge...

He needed something that would give him some adrenaline, it didn't need to actually be dangerous, it just needed to be able to trick his brain into thinking it was.

'I have another idea...this one might actually work.' In contrast to the Nerf gun, this one could have some merit.

While it might not exactly awaken any fear in him, it would still get a little of his adrenaline rolling.

Flash glanced at his reflection in the bathroom mirror...blond hair, green eyes, square face shape, great jawline, yep, that's him alright. 

He rubbed his arms in silence as he remembered the painful sensation of the Speed Pump being absorbed into his skin, he vividly remembered the skin melting off from his flesh and bone due to the acid, yet it's all fine and dandy now.

That means he could use his powers to skip a visit to the doctor, he just needed to find out how exactly...

Leaving his pristine bathroom to retrieve something, Flash returned with a medium-sized plastic bucket he would fill with the bathroom's tap water, he made sure the water was as cold as humanly possible.

After it was about 75% filled, Flash proceeded to lift and hung it just above the slightly open door, creating a sort of water-based booby trap.

…It couldn't exactly surprise anyone though, the bucket was as obvious as a twinkling gem in the dirt, very conspicuous.

"Right, I hope this works…" He walked up to the door before he flung it completely open with unrestrained vigour. Subconsciously stepping back as he tried to avoid the freezing downpour that was to befall him, Flash stopped dead in his tracks as he saw a sight out of this world.

"…1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…" He counted the seconds it took for just one water droplet to make contact with his skin, literally dodging without effort as he stepped back, he then began counting again.

"19….20…23…28…30…holy hell, this is…" It took half a minute for the water to crash against the ground, Flash stood in amazement as he saw the once-in-a-lifetime visage that was real-life cinematic-style slow motion in action, the individual water droplets bouncing upward upon impact as if they were soft balloons.

It was damn beautiful, out of this mundane world like a piece of surreal art painted on a digital tablet by a stoned artist.

Focusing on the peculiar sensation that naturally came when being in superspeed, it felt…it felt like he was simultaneously spiritually pissing and shitting his bricks out, metaphorically speaking.

It was serene, even a little blissful. His body and mind embraced the sensation like a Vampire embracing its bloodied victim, it was just natural for him to do so!

Out of curiosity, he tried to hold his 'spiritual piss' in, closing his metaphorical tip and storing the waste liquid in his metaphysical balls…er, is that where piss is stored? He honestly forgot about that part of human anatomy, the balls should be where the, uh… never mind.

As Flash held the metaphorical stream of urine from leaving his body, he felt something intrinsically change about himself yet he didn't know what.

Raising his hand to try to figure out what changed, he instantly found his answer.

"Oh…that is trippy." His hand…no, it should be his body. His body was no longer in Superspeed, it was Superslow.

He released his hold over his spiritual phallus, releasing the stream of waste liquid once more as his hand regained their normal—their very not normal superspeed.

'So my mind and body are separate in Superspeed...?' If so, that would explain why had very flimsy control over his body the first time he ran. The Speed Pump boosted the speed of his body way over its natural parameters but didn't do shit with his mind.

This state where both mind and body are at the same speed should be the natural one, it's more like the world that is slowing down for him, not him just being faster than the world...

Flash then tried to keep his spiritual faeces from dropping. Immediately after doing so, he heard the water splash as his mind returned to normal speed.

But when he tried to move his hands, they blurred against the surroundings before moving faster than he could breathe.

He could not even see them as they moved, though he still fully felt that they were there...

Interesting, so is this how other people would see him once he entered Superspeed? Then he should be completely invisible to the people he passed over and they should only feel some strong wind in the background, though he wondered if that girl he phased through felt anything.

He placed it at the back of his mind for now as he focused on the current situation, Flash vanished with a blur before the small puddle on the ground splashed against nothing and disappeared as well.

The next second, Flash suddenly came into existence again while holding a small towel in his left hand, the object dripping wet on his arm.

'How fast am I...? It feels like I'm getting faster the more excited I am...' That could be true, he had used a falling water bucket to activate it, after all. Maybe his Superspeed had something to do with adrenaline? Food for thought. 

The door swung open loudly as he vanished to place the towel elsewhere before he reappeared in the same spot inside the bathroom, this time with a peeled banana in his right hand.

The robber who had stolen much of his food only targeted his fridge for some reason. There was a fruit basket in the living room that he didn't hesitate to use.

'It's normal speed for me, but it should be in Superspeed for everything else.' To test the theory, he threw a piece of the banana he was eating into the air.

Vanishing in less than a nanosecond, he made his return 2 seconds later with an apple in his right hand, quickly catching the banana before it could fall onto the floor with his left hand.

'That was like...three to four minutes for me...' He had not only used that time to eat the whole banana and throw the peel away but also to clean his hand before getting himself a ruby red apple and then making his way back to the bathroom.

During that whole time, the small piece of banana he threw hadn't even managed to touch the bathroom's slightly moist and dirty floor.

Placing the apple in his mouth as he began chewing, Flash ate at normal speed before stopping halfway through.

Throwing the half-eaten apple into the air, he blurred into Superspeed before returning with a knife in his hand.

Flash saw in slow-motion as the apple fell ever so slowly, holding out his knife, he began cutting into it...

...And it sliced right through as if he was cutting butter.

He didn't even need to go at it like some madman, just some casual slices with a little bit of effort.

He blinked as the apple slices continued to slowly fall from the air, picking them to eat he then inspected himself in the mirror.

'My eyes...are red...? And they're glowing too...' For some reason, his eyes were glowing a particular shade of red, briefly exiting Superspeed and reentering once again, he saw how the red eyes instantly went away only to come back again.

'It doesn't feel different though...I guess it's just a cosmetic thing.' He discarded the red eyes into the back of his mind, they didn't seem to do anything besides just...being there.

Anyways, he looked down toward his burnt feet. Whatever ability was protecting his body from the pressure of moving at Mach speeds had vanished when he had willed himself to stop after the Pump's effects had diminished enough for him to control his own body.

Maybe he should have run for a bit first, getting to know his superspeed before immediately stopping. He didn't know the protection would be gone the moment he tried to stop...

But since he could even heal from the burns he got from the acidic Pump, these road burns shouldn't be different, right?

Flash concluded that his internals were also moving in superspeed, which of course they did. Naturally, this would cause his body's natural functions to be accelerated to match his running speed, including his body's natural capacity to heal.

So as long as the human body can recover from it, he should be able to heal from the wound. This type of healing power wasn't the regenerative healing factor that some of those Mutants had, but just his natural healing accelerated to Superspeed.

Flash sighed as he felt his body and mind go back to their normal speed, he walked up to the shower at a mundane pace before hopping in.

Turning the shower on and making it rain cold water, he entered superspeed again as his body blurred but didn't move from its position.

"Oh...god." He cursed as Flash's body stopped vibrating in superspeed, all of the grey-black matter that had melted into his feet was nowhere to be seen.

he had just peeled them off of his skin individually, each fragment of asphalt feeling like ripping the bones from his body, still not as painful as stepping on a Lego brick though...

He gritted his teeth as he bore the pain silent and alone, he willed his mind to return slow down as he kept his body in Superspeed.

Now comes the waiting game...

--->Author's Note:

Thoughts?

Apologies for the wait, guys. It's exam season here in my school.

For compensation, I made a wiki-like auxiliary chapter on Flash's powers and abilities, which will be updated as he discovers more of them.

I'm currently conflicted about how he will be when he starts interacting with other people, Flash is a drastically different person when alone and with others, an element I took from myself.

Particularly with Peter Parker, as in this story, he has already become Spiderman. (Remember in a previous chapter, when talking about supes, Flash considered Captain America, the Fantastic Four, and Spiderman.)

I'm trying to be a better author, my previous works are always a significant improvement from their older counterparts. So I want advice from you guys, and to make the reader more attached too.

Should I keep Flash's character consistent with how he is in canon, or should he be drastically different? Regardless, he will still have a history of bullying, but his mindset would be different.

What do you gays think? I'm leaning toward keeping him the same Flash, but using character development to change his outlook, much like how the OG Flash ended up becoming a soldier, and eventually a super. 

Anyways, power stones?