WHO: Wally, open to all Titans and anyone else at the Tower. Please come help out a distressed speedster, or come laugh at him, whichever.
WHERE: Titans Tower
WHEN: Monday, November 23rd; Night.
WARNINGS: None.
SUMMARY: Being a victim of a prank and then finding out your power is not working as it should are both Not Nice Things.
FORMAT: Starting
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He didn't miss when Wally came out of his room in a panic, and walked out of his room to see the result, only to be met with a Kid Flash running into a wall.
If Dick had been cruel by nature, he'd have laughed at the scene, but instead he became immediately very worried that something was seriously wrong with Wally. And the dye had been a prototype -- what if it'd affected Wally's eyes or something?
He quickly approached Wally, still on the ground, and asked frowning deeply and concerned, "Hey, you okay?"
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The expression that presented itself on Wally's face could, mildly put, be described as utterly dejected. It took him a little while to find his voice, still too stunned to be all that coherent.
"Do you..." Deep breath, Wally. "Do you know if these walls are special?" He eventually managed to ask shakily. They looked normal and what he had felt at the impact suggested these walls were normal too but...he really, really hoped they weren't. That they were made of some sort of special material that wouldn't let things phase through or else...
They better be special.
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"It's lead lined and can hold against a lot of stuff. Only the jail and quarantine sections are --" vibrations proofed. Oh.
"You can't vibrate through it."
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Well, he doubted the couch was anything special but...his gaze went back to Dick. Just to be sure.
In the blink of an eye he had his hand on the younger teen's chest and he vibrated his molecules on the level he knew would allow him to pass through most things. The only problem was that it wasn't working, Dick was still solid beneath his hand and there was something about vibrating his molecules that felt...off, not right, just utterly wrong. So he tried different frequencies and in the span of a few seconds he had tried every possible frequency he could think of. None of them worked.
Wally pulled his hand back and stared at it, the look of panic steadily returning. "...Or maybe it's not the walls." Oh God.
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He snapped at him when he put his hands on his chest.
"Hey! Isn't it dangerous to vibrate through people?" He swung his arms not too hard in front of him, just to get Wally's hands off. "What do you think you're doing?"
He sighed. Again. He was going to do that a lot, wasn't he? This was ruining his prank, couldn't Wally be panicking about his hair? It was various shades of worn-out pink for Christ's sake!
"And no, it's not the walls. These walls," he waved at the one Wally had bumped into, "are not the jail's or the quarantine section's." There was a bit of a 'well duh, you have to listen sometimes' tone in his voice, but something told him Wally would most likely not even take notice.
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What if he combined velocity and a certain degree of molecular vibration different than the one he had used before? He just had to try it. Though he wasn't going to run into the wall again and he definitely wasn't going to try it on Dick. So instead, he took one step back and then suddenly sped forward and punched the wall.
The result was an almost sicking crack, a shudder of pain and a slight dent in the wall. All of which were wrong, too. It meant that not only his control on a molecular level was off but his barrier was gone too.
Wally really felt like losing it now.
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Dick moved quickly (for his standards, anyway) and put his hand on Wally's, not grabbing because he didn't want the other teenager to flip out any further and his hand was probably not feeling well at all right now if he didn't have some invulnerability powers.
"Woah! Calm down, it's gonna be fine. The Porter does stuff to people's powers. Just -- shit, how's your hand?"
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"It's all I have." Moreso than back home because back home he still had Aunt Iris and Barry for support, not to mention people being from his own time line and universe. Here it felt like his power was truly all he had.
"WhatifI'mlosingit?" His hands flew into his hair - his hideously pink-in-various-shades hair but this fact was forgotten for the moment - and he gripped it in frustration.
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He didn't make any move toward Wally -- if he wanted distance between them, he wouldn't force some ~reassuring contact~ or whatever it was supposed to be -- but he also didn't move away.
"You still got the superspeed. And whatever you have that makes you not care about your hand." Partial invulnerability? Healing factor? The last speedster in the Titans had had a healing factor so that was probably it. "You're not losing anything. I'm pretty sure Impulse'd lost his ability to go through walls, too. It's just the Porter being a bitch. You'll get it back when you -- go back home."
He was pushing on the lie, but only a little. He didn't know for sure the Porter would give him all his powers back and knew even less if he'd ever go back home, but it seemed like the highest possibility and the highest possibility was good. Maybe -- maybe -- it'd help out Wally a little.
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He took a few (quick) calming breaths and held up his hand in front of him. He wasn't sure what it exactly was, he never got hurt all that much but when he did he healed much faster than any normal person. "It's a speedster thing," he explained quietly as he flexed his fingers and listened to them crack back in place.
"So..." He was calmer now when he spoke, there was still a certain edge but at least he wasn't quite as freaked out anymore. "This happens all the time?"
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"Some people gain stuff -- like the other Robin, he's got a power now." Dick wouldn't mention himself since he didn't use his power, couldn't control it that well (although going to Xavier did do something about that) and just generally disliked the fact he had it. "But yeah, tons of people lose stuff, too."
He considered saying 'the most powerful ones do' but he wasn't going to stroke Wally's ego that much.
"Superman'd lost some of his. The first one we had here." The one who was dead and frozen in the Cave.
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"One thing I don't understand though," he started as he ran the previously raised hand through his hair nervously. "I've still got super-speed but I can't vibrate my molecules right? The barrier's gone too but those are all supposed to be part of my super-speed..."
It wasn't like he had separate powers like Superman. All of it made up one complete picture of super-speed, it didn't make sense for those aspects to be gone.
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As long as he knew the best way to defeat them, it's all he needed, really.
"I'm not the one who knows all these things, you can ask the other Robin if you want all the tech details. But -- your powers, they came from that Speed Force thing, didn't they? And it doesn't exist here. So technically you shouldn't have any powers at all anymore." He thought about it for a second. "The Porter probably countered by giving you some other sort of superspeed but didn't waste time on phasing and whatever else you're missing."
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"I..." He hesitated for a moment, unsure of whether this was something he should talk about or not. Then again it was Robin. Not the one he knew, of course, but he still seemed trustworthy enough. "I got my powers through a lab accident." Just like Flash.
"I don't know about anything about this Speed Force." What was explained made sense though, if it really had to do something with that Speed Force.
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Really, it all came back to asking Tim some information if Wally wanted to. "If you go purely with, well, physics, vibrating shouldn't make you phase. Even if it did allow your molecules to go through whatever, they'd most likely just fuse with the table or wall."
The picture of a speedster with his hand fused to a table was somewhat amusing, even if it was gore and horrible at the same time.
"So I don't know. Can't really help more than that."
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"Right, thanks." He'd have to gather more information later but he had something else to do first. "Anyway - I was gonna..." Do what again? He paused as he tried remembering what that something else prior to his distressing discovery was. It didn't take very long at all until he remembered.
The only warning Dick was going to get was the way Wally's expression darkened before he suddenly disappeared from sight, only to reappear behind him and give him a super-speed slap to the back of his head. Then Wally moved back in front of Dick again in the same second, looking very unamused.
"Not cool. You'll pay dearly for this," he said as he pointed at his hair.
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