Bad timing [open]

[thronor]

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

Comments

[goddamnrobin]

Dick had been alert since he'd come back from school, staying in his room with the door slightly opened (he was playing a dangerous game making that decision considering Wally was a speedster) so he would hear if something happened.

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?"

[thronor]

Wally didn't respond right away, merely kept staring at the wall as if it had deeply offended his very being and clutched his head while he waited for the dizziness to pass. Once it had, he lowered his hand and finally glanced over to Dick.

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.

[goddamnrobin]

Dick's frown didn't go away but his latent guilt at his prank wore off quickly. Wally wasn't blind for a mysterious reason. He still looked very panicked about something, but it wasn't his eyes, it wasn't even his hair, it was -- the wall?

"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."

[thronor]

"So it's the walls," Wally chuckled nervously. That was a relief but he needed to be absolutely certain that was actually the cause. He gingerly got back up on his feet and glanced around the room to find something - anything - he could try vibrating through.

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.

[goddamnrobin]

Wally was having a classic case of selective hearing but, well, he was also very close to a panic attack so Dick didn't snap at him when he made the comment about it being the walls.

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.

[thronor]

Wally had indeed not taken notice and what Dick was telling him was just making the panic attack worse. "Noit'snotdangerous," he replied quickly before he turned his attention back to the wall. An apparently normal lead-lined wall, which he should have been able to phase right through.

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.

[goddamnrobin]

Okay! This was not going the way it was supposed to go and it was also really really not Dick's fault that Wally was cracking walls and destroying his fist on them.

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?"

[thronor]

"No! You don't understand!" Wally's voice was more shrill than he would have liked but he couldn't bring himself to care and if his hand was bothering him it certainly didn't show when he slapped Dick's hand away and stepped out of reach. It was already healing anyway.

"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.

[goddamnrobin]

Dick looked at Wally sadly, understanding the distress but not finding the right words. They probably didn't exist.

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.

[thronor]

The lie at least helped calm Wally down a great deal. It was reassuring to know it was just something this place had done to him and not his power failing him. Though it certainly wasn't winning this place any points. Messing with his power on top of all the confusion? Yeah, Wally was starting to actually hate the place. So far not much good had come out of being brought here.

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?"

[goddamnrobin]

Dick nodded seriously, glad that Wally seemed to be feeling at least a bit better. It wouldn't be any good to anyone if he kept losing it over this: no one could change it and he was still a dangerous meta if he lost it (punching walls was really not the worst he could come up with).

"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.

[thronor]

"Supes did?" Wally raised an eyebrow in a comical look of disbelief. Now that was something that was hard to imagine but at least it showed it was something common here. He wasn't the only one and things would be alright, eventually. If he ever got home.

"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.

[goddamnrobin]

Dick shrugged. He wasn't the one with all the theoretical information about whatever -- that was Tim. Tim knew stuff and Dick didn't even hope ever knowing all he knew because, mainly, he didn't feel like sitting down and learning all these things by heart. He knew the important things and could tell what he needed to take time on, but knowing exactly how people's powers worked and how wasn't in that list.

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."

[thronor]

"Speed Force?" Wally echoed hollowly, giving Dick a look of confusion. That definitely sounded like something that would be important to him and he should know about but...he didn't. Barry had never said anything about a Speed Force. Surely he would have if that's where they had gotten their powers from?

"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.

[goddamnrobin]

"Oh geez." Dick looked unsure, passing his hand through his hair. "I don't know anything about it either but... the other speedster that came from your world and was in the Titans -- his name was Impulse -- he talked about it once or twice. I'd never heard of it before but the third Robin had."

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."

[thronor]

Wally wrinkled his nose in mild disgust at that rather unpleasant bit of mental imagery. "That or leave the molecules unstable." Which would not be a pretty sight either but this was one train of thought he'd rather not stay on. He'd always been fine phasing through things and even people, why bother with consequences now when he couldn't even vibrate his molecules right anymore?

"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.