Roanoke part - 4

Words 3,048

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You walk through a silent Gotham in a placid silence, interspersed with you keeping this reckless toddler from giving herself a general disease.

"Please don't touch the floating needle, you'll get AIDS. What's AIDS? Uh, well, that's something to ask your parents."

It's somewhere between dark alley #26 and rundown bar #4 that the weight of reality comes crashing down on your shoulders once more.

The world shimmers a violent golden, your heart throws itself against your ribcage with suicidal force, and the Threads of Time teeter.

The clock rings ominously. Tick Tock.

Inwards, it takes all you can not to simply release the veritable tsunami shattering against the walls of Will and let time flow, draining you of energy that no amount of food or sleep could easily restore.

Outwardly, you settle for a pained gasp and a grimace-like smile at the concerned toddler.

"Don't mind me," you assure her. "just defying the laws of reality for the past, let's see, oh, ten minutes and twenty-one seconds, to make sure twerps like you can give their parents grief tomorrow."

You receive a wizened nod and energetic raspberry for your valiant service.

"I can't wait to be rid of you."

You meet the sight of Gotham High with a sigh of euphoric relief, which is perhaps the first and only time the schools has invoked such raw and positive emotion.

A golden blur shoots past you, missing you and the toddler you're carrying by the barest of inches and tears through the open doors.Not a heartbeat later, zooms right back, passing through the still crackling electricity left in his wake and into the city once more.

Well, at least someone else is lifting their share of the weight, though you're doing the most, since you doubt any of these capes are bending reality to their whims.

A lance of hot pain tears through your stomach and you groan in pain. But in fairness to reality, it's also bending your insides to its whims.

Passing by the familiar scene of pristine hallways, closed classrooms and lockers on every side, you make your way to the gym, from where the only sounds of life are coming from.

And what you see is both curious and perturbing. The heroes are running in between long lines of frozen children, lined up in rows, sat precariously on beanbags and impromptu mattresses, but otherwise frozen like lifeless dolls.

They're all alive from what you can tell, but the golden threads still hang tight around, keeping them trapped in a single moment of time.

This means you have the unfortunate honor of having the only non-frozen child in all of Gotham clinging to your chest like some demented spider monkey.

You clear your throat. "Ahem, could someone get this face-hugger off of me, please?"

Abbie, who you are quickly coming to believe is some plant placed by one of your many enemies, decides to sneeze loudly into your recently-cleaned chest plate. A tumble of hot breath spews from your nose.

Your arrival and announcement startle the gathered heroes from their pacing, eyes darting to you with a healthy dose of suspicion.

The Atlantean stands quietly beside a line of children, like some bodyguard tasked with the safety of Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum. Dick, pacing around the length of the gym, spares you a glance before returning to his brooding. The Martian telepath, floating above, turns her back to you, but you can feel the fear and adrenaline radiating off of her intensely.

And Ravager, well, you catch sight of her somewhere off in the corner, mask removed and sitting placidly with a mixture of boredom and annoyance clear in how her expression twitches slightly.

Abbie's attempt at speaking, a conjoined mess of half-sounds and mumbles, breaks through their reservations. The power of toddlers, enough to bring even the greatest of heroes crashing to their knees.

The first supervillain who ends up harnessing such power would be unstoppable, you think.

"Why are you holding her like that? Don't you know how to hold a child?" Artemis asks as she rises from her seat on the benches

"No," you deadpan. "but since you're an expert on child-rearing, here you go." You hold the child out like an offering of a supplicant to some ancient deity. "Take it, please."

"It's not it," Artemis chides. "She's a-dor-a-ble, aren't you? Ow! She just-she just pinched my nose!"

The demon in a child's flesh suit giggles maniacally before reaching out for the archer's red nose again. You decide at that moment you're never going to have kids.

You nod sagely. "As I said, it."

Before she could once again protest your accurate description of the hellspawn in her arms, a golden blur leaving a trail of crimson lightning behind zooms to a jarring halt in the space beside you.

"City's clear, double-checked, and everything." Kid Flash says through the half-eaten hamburger shoved into his mouth, the other half of it and the remnants of whatever else he had clear in the stains on his face and gloves.

You're not judging because if someone put a dozen-course buffet in front of you right now, you'd be looking much worse. Your stomach growls in sympathy.

What'd you do for a cheeseburger right now...the Geneva Conventions didn't put food on the table, after all. The Martian girl looks at you weirdly, as though she could...read your thoughts.

You frown in thought, an intensive thing in of itself considering you're still singlehandedly tethering Gotham to a single moment in time, quite literally beating back an entire ocean of reality-warping force bearing down on you.

Through the pressure of a railroad spike being jammed into your cranium, you could still sense the slightest of buzzing in the back of your mind, reminiscent of the feeling when you shoved her in there for intruding.

Just another thing to file away for later. Luckily, a familiar annoyance makes himself known to break your line of thought.

"The plane's been dealt with?" Dick asks.

The Atlantean, Kal-dur if you remember correctly, which you do, of course, perfect recall and all, nods. "Yes, Superboy is currently relocating it to a sufficient distance into the Atlantic, he should be returning-."

"Done," Speak of the superman clone and he shall appear. "It won't be hitting anything but water for ten miles in any direction."

"Atlantean comms have been restarted under a few apprentices, I have communicated the situation to them, and they will deal with the plane."

Three cheers for environmentalism, the sardonic thought passes through your mind.

"At least that's something. Still no word from Aquaman?"

Aqualad shakes his head mournfully. "We have heard no word from our king or queen. All of Atlantis suffers the same, anyone above the age of 18 has just...disappeared."

"Zatanna can't get a read on any of the JL either, whoever did this, they've got some serious firepower behind them."

They better have enough firepower to hold back an irate Ravager as well, and an annoyed Deathstroke on top of that.

"None of us turn eighteen any time soon, right? Wouldn't want any of you to go, you know, poof." His hands pop outwards in a caricature of a mini-explosion for effect.

No one volunteers to answer.

"That explains why Red Arrow's com is dead, and why he didn't help us-" Dick stops short, eyes flickering to you.

You give a friendly smile belying the irritation you feel. "I'm honestly kind of flattered you brought the whole gang, Dick. Should have brought that girl on the transmitter as well, we could have had a whole little sidekick party."

"We are not sidekicks," protests the teenager dressed up in a copy of the crimson speedster.

"Whatever you say, Kid Flash." His face lights up red as you stress the diminutive.

"If you're done with the dick-measuring contest, we have bigger problems to address, like what we're going to do with all these kids." Ravager's sharp reply cuts through the tension.

"We could just leave them here until you know, we solve this whole crisis. You can do that, right?" Wally looks at you meaningfully.

"I can do this all day."

Objectively speaking, you've been doing this for less than a second, that's just semantics when it comes to your pride.

"Boys," Artemis grouses while plucking at her bow. "can you put away your egos for like two minutes? Just two!"

"That's a tall order for Wally, don't think it's possible for the other guy." Robin snickers.

"Tall's not a word that you should be using, Dick."

Every member of the fairer sex groans in varying levels of audible annoyance.

Hands with the strength to shatter buildings tighten into fists. A batarang appears in Dick's hand. The enmity between the two of you is old and has only festered with time like a wound left untreated, a fair summation of your time after leaving the care of Selina Kyle.

Getting a crack at Dick's face, or even the Bat's would be oh so very therapeutic.

The tall frame of Aqualad steps bodily between the two of you.

"I understand there is unresolved hostility between the two of you, but can you not put it aside just for now? If not for the mission then for these innocents?"

His voice reeks of earnestness and humble heroism that plucks at the heartstrings. You imagine he'll be giving speeches to a new generation of capes a few years from now.

A thousand pairs of frozen eyes belonging to frozen bodies bore into you wherever you look, peering through your mask and into your very soul. You had chosen this when you could have sat in your apartment and inevitably let the sidekicks solve this, you of your own willing volition rose up too. Now, you had to see this through.

Always Forward, Never Back.

The mantra echoes loudly from where it's carved itself deep into the stone of memory. And with great reluctance, you accede to the Atlantean's words.

"I have another five, maybe ten minutes, if we have to push it that far, to hold this spell. After that, I'm out and the whole thing goes down with me, so you'd better come with a plan, ASAP."

Dick accepts your second truce by not acknowledging it which is just fine by you.

"We have to get to Mount Justice since we have no idea what Zatanna has to report while inside Gotham. So we'll have to leave someone here to watch all these kids."

"I will need to contact Atlantis as well, this magic is impairing any attempt at communication. I am hopeful that Atlantis is faring well"

You need time for messages to get through, you want to shout, but settle for scowling behind your mask as they continue to squabble.

"Or we let them watch themselves, but the older ones in charge, explain to them what's going on in simple terms, and promise them a visit from the Justice League once this is all over," Artemis suggests.

"Can we do that? I don't think we can promise that." Wally questions through bites of a burger he had conjured from...somewhere.

"They don't know that. That plan might actually work." says the Boy Wonder.

"I don't know, won't they all be confused and scared?" The Martian asks where she floats fitfully above the frozen statues. "It doesn't seem right to just leave them all alone."

"If you have a better plan feel free to share, and besides most of them are our age, they can handle themselves."

The Man, well, Boy of Steel hurries to her defense. "Hey, she's just trying to help."

When no alternative solution is brought up, you take your queue to finally lift the veritable mountain crashing down on you. "Looks like we're in agreement. Get wherever you need to be because there's going to be a lot of crying kids in a few seconds."

Unfeeling tension builds in your body, golden threads fluttering in uncreated breeze, their golden hue incandescent, and burning. And with a snap of your fingers, the golden veil is lifted off Gotham, and Time resumes its inexorable march, heralded by crying, shouting, and a lot of vomiting.

The sudden ambush of half-eaten lunch from a thousand mouths catches everyone except you off guard.

Walls of water, trails of red lightning, and honed reflexes prove to be the only deterrents against the gastric onslaught.

There are still casualties.

"Ugh, gross!"

"My uniform! My eyes!"

"Blegh!"

What's happening before your eyes, well, it's best described as a D-rated slasher film where the entire movie budget went towards fake blood. Just replace blood with vomit and you could come up with a slight idea of what's happening in Gotham High's gym.

You'd give up all your powers if it means you could erase it permanently from your mind. Unfortunately, you don't have that option, so the power to control Time would now forever be attached to this horrific scene.

Even with exhaustion taking its toll, you can muster a hand wave to freeze one such blast from hitting Ravager in the back.

It clops to the ground with a sickening splat that makes your stomach queasy.

Unfortunately for your nose, there's more than enough others to make up for it. If you could describe what it smells like, it'd need to be added to the Geneva Conventions, because what was happening to your nose is definitely some kind of human rights violation.

Luckily for all of you, the deluge leaves as quickly as it had come, leaving only a few hundred inebriated teenagers and kids with recently evacuated stomachs and a team of sidekicks up to their knees in this afternoon's mystery meat special.

Thank the gods your mask comes with a respirator. You're going to be taking a long shower after this...and then maybe another for good measure.

Ravager nods silently beside you in agreement. Maybe you could comfort each other from such a shared traumatic experience. She'd be definitely up for that. Maybe.

You re content to remain where you are, just out of sight while Robin and his friends deal with the whole...situation.

You idly wonder if you could slow down time enough around you that smell doesn't reach you as fast. Too bad you're too out of energy to even attempt something like that. But you file it away for later alongside all your other bright ideas.

Like dry-aging steak in a minute, or make a seed bloom into a full tree in a minute, or rob Fort Knox in a minute, and many other do-in-one-minute-what-it-takes-normal-people-a-long-time-to-do. The list is unfortunately rather long.

Wow...you're really bored. Maybe you should reach out to Slade about doing some jobs, because outside of this and that Owl guy who tried to kill you, life's been too peaceful for your taste.

Too peaceful. It's not a worry you thought you'd ever have had looking back a few years ago.

"Time makes a fool of us all," you murmur under your breath.

Ravager props up on an elbow as she leans against the wall, looking around the room with narrowed eyes.

"Remind me again why I let you rope me into this? Helping these kiddies?"

"Because you love me."

"Doubtful."

"That hurts, almost as much as your legs do."

Your snickering gets louder when she glares at you.

The heroes finish up and make their way to you with war-weary eyes.

"Well, that's finally done. Do you know how I said we should get something to eat after this? I changed my mind."

"I concur with Wally. But we have more pressing matters."

"Yeah, like why that guy's quoting E.T. Bell."

You look at the Flash's protege blankly, more surprised by the fact that he heard you than anything else.

"Who's that?"

"World-renowned Mathematician? Bell Series? No?"

You know who he is. Ms. Ergrane had made you study power series until your eyes bled, proverbially of course.

"Yeah, never heard of him."

"Mathematicians aside, I've got comms from Mount Justice," Robin interjects. "all the radio signals are jammed with kids reaching out for help. No adults to answer, but a few of the other-"

"Sidekick," you offer. He looks at you balefully.

"A few of the other young hero teams scattered across the globe are doing what they can."

The Atlantean's own communicator begins to beep furiously. "Word from Atlantis. Blessed Poseidon, it seems that we did not feel the effects of this disaster as keenly as others. My friends Tula and Garth along with other members of the Academy of Mages have restored order to Atlantis."

No one asks about casualties, because not every city like Gotham has a resident Time-stopping meta on hand.

You all know it's going to be high. Very high.

"We're going to Mount Justice, and then we're going to figure out who did this, and end it." The Boy Wonder says firmly much to the agreement of his team.

Permanently, you think.

The teenagers and kids are left to their own devices, but not before some of the more likely-responsible ones are selected out to be in charge and given some nice inspirational words on the good they're going to be doing.

You give a cursory look over to make sure Abbie is fine before you exit Gotham High.

"How are we supposed to get your not-so-secret lair? I imagine we're not going to hitchhike there."

"You're looking right at it." He says with a smirk.

You study the empty surroundings closely but there's nothing there that you can see beside abandoned cars and trash littering the ground.

Then the air begins to shimmer and something with a shape that's...alien slowly comes into visibility. It's some kind of ship colored red and black and sleek in design, also nothing anything like you've seen on Earth.

"What is that?"

Miss Martian answers your question cheerfully. "It's a her first of all, and her name is Bioship!"

"Of course it is, what else would it be? Rose, pinch me, please. Ow! Not hard!"

"You asked."

"I call shotgun!" Wally says giddily as the ship lightly touches down, zooming through its open hatch in a display of super-speed.