Going Full Throttle // By Slipstream

Title: Going Full Throttle
Author: Slipstream
Live Journal: slipstream_chan
E-mail: slipstream_chan@hotmail.com
Rating: PG-13 for a little language and violence.
Spoilers: Maybe to some of the old Dixon Robin run, but not much. Summary: Tim's fast, but not fast enough. He goes looking for an edge.

Notes: Probably the biggest inspiration for this AU is a single line from Identity Crisis, when Boomerang's son (and I don't own the comics, so I don't know if he says this exactly) says (about his father's boomerangs): "Ever seen one of these thrown at super-speed?" It got me thinking about how speed might affect other powers, particularly fighting skills, and I remembered the run that first got me collecting Robin, which deals with some of these very issues. Draws inspiration from Robin #49-52, one of my favorite runs, and a lot of the classic Dixon run. You don't have to have read this run, however, to get the gist of the story. All you may need to know is that "aramillia" is an herbal drug that gives whoever takes it great speed for a short amount of time.

It's his birthday, and they were supposed to go to the circus. But Mummy and Daddy have decided to spend an extra month in Greece to take advantage of the sailing season, instead. Besides, the circus isn't going to stop in Keystone this year. There's been an accident in Gotham City, something about the trapeze and some flying people, and Timothy Drake is only four years old but he understands that it ended in funerals.

The week after his birthday, Timmy gets a bulky letter in the mail from Daddy. He can read it himself but he lets Mrs. Mac read it aloud to him because he likes the sound of her voice. Mummy and Daddy are having fun. The weather is beautiful. Daddy and some old friends are digging around some old Greek ruins. They have found mostly pottery and some old coins. Daddy has sent Timmy a coin to keep as his very own. Isn't that exciting?

He shakes the envelope, and a bronze disc the size of a quarter falls onto the carpet. He picks it up, examines it with his too-small hands. There's funny writing on it and a picture of a running man with wings on his feet and a big stick in his hands. "Neat," little Timmy says, and puts it in his pocket.

Working with Impulse always makes Tim feel so slow. Well, truth be told, it made him feel a lot "swifter" in certain areas (Bart can be a huge ditz about common, everyday things), but when it comes to actual physical power and speed, Bart can lap Tim in his sleep. Tied to the bed. And knocked full of tranqs.

200 miles per hour is an mind-blowing top speed for a human, and would be impressive if Tim was anyone other than the sidekick to a guy who can run at the fucking speed of light with a spastic, big-footed cousin who breaks the sound barrier without thinking.

Tim can't catch bullets, vibrate through walls, or dismantle cars in a blink of an eye, but he can outrun your average getaway car, which is what he's currently attempting to do. Bank robbers. He's having to keep a wide berth because they do have guns and are inclined to shoot him, but that doesn't mean that he has to let them go.

They're approaching the freeway, though, and now that they're out of the city the driver really starts to put the car through its paces. Tim curses, sweats, and tries to ignore the warning pulling of muscle in his calves. Damn these flat Kansas stretches that go on for miles! Tim pours on the speed in order to keep up, thinking rapidly about ways that he can stop the car before Impulse gets back from dealing with the other getaway car.

"HiyaTimdoyaneedanyhelp?"

Too late.

Tim grits his teeth to keep from groaning. It's frustrating, getting shown up all of the time by Mr. Big-Foot, but he isn't stupid enough to turn down help. The quicker they apprehend these guys, the less likely it is that innocent bystanders get hurt. "Yes."

Bart's grin is wide and goofy and gleeful, and Tim's resentment doesn't last long in the face of all that high-wattage innocence. "Hokay! Watchoutfertires'nguns'nstuff,'kay?"

And he's off, just like that, and they've done this before so Tim knows to veer sharply to the right to avoid the tanglefoot of disposed car parts. He does it just in time, too, but he notices that Bart's getting neater with his car dismantles. Used to be that he would just pull parts of willy-nilly, but today only the parts necessary to keep this car rolling—tires, hubcaps, lug nuts, and the axel—are littering the freeway.

Tim scoops up the guns and handcuffs the suspects (knocked unconscious by super-fast punches) while Bart flits off into the city to report to the police. He resists the urge to use the thugs as his own personal means of letting out steam punching-bag style, but its hard, especially after one of them comes awake enough to make a crack about the "Kid" in his name.



It's his freshman year at Keystone High. He's fourteen and school sucks. Tim Drake has always been too smart and out there and rich to really fit in with anyone. He plays Dungeons and Dragons with some guys from his English class sometimes and avoids guys who might want to beat him up. Then he goes home to his empty apartment and does his homework.

He still has that old coin his dad got him, and after he reads The Illiad he digs it out of his desk drawer to take another look at it. There are two small holes in the coin, big enough to pass a string through, and he finds a thin bit of leather and threads the coin on it and starts wearing it as a necklace. People think it's cool for a while, and then they forget about it.

One Monday he does something to piss off some of the jocks (he forgets what, now), and when they chase him down, murder in their eyes, he runs away even faster than he can believe. Everyone stares as little nerdy Timmy Drake leaves the star running-back to eat his dust. The track coach stares, too, and convinces Tim to come to track trials the next day.

On Tuesday Tim takes the amulet off so he doesn't lose it and does miserably in all of the events.

On Wednesday he leaves it on and breaks every single speed record in the school's history.



The kitchen in Wally's apartment is on the smaller side but the pantry is huge. He and Bart are sitting at the fifties style breakfast table that doubles as an island, the equivalent of a week's worth of food for normal people spread out between them. They have an open invitation from Wally to chow at his place occasionally, and they're using it to full advantage. Bart will eat most of the food, but Tim does have enough of the speedster metabolism to put a goodly-sized dent in the pile.

"You look depressed," Bart says around an apple. He tosses away the core and rips into a bag of Cheetoes, passing Tim the Funyuns. Despite his foul mood Tim digs in. He needs the calories. He feels bad for mooching off of Wally and Bart half the time but he can't start eating the way he needs in the dorm cafeterias without alerting suspicion. Most of his spending money goes towards food, now, and at school he has to be careful about spacing out his two lunches and multiple snacks so as not to attract unwanted attention.

"You expect me to be happy about getting outstripped by a stock sports car? Jesus Christ. Next thing you know Kid Flash's going to be bumming rides off of some stupid ricer with a neon green import."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," Bart says as he whips them both up sandwiches of Dagwood proportion. "You're doing a great job as Kid Flash."

Tim frowns at his sandwich, not really eating it. "Yeah, for now I'm doing well enough to keep up. But being Kid Flash implies that I'm going to be Flash some day, and that's just not going to happen. I can't even begin to do the stuff that you or Wally can, stuff that the Flash needs to be able to. Can you imagine how screwed the world would be if it was up to me to get the Time Treadmill up and going? "

Tim can always tell when Bart's thinking, really thinking and not just proving his namesake. His eyebrows quirk, his forehead wrinkles, and he gets all serious for a few seconds. Tim turns away, concentrates on his Zesti, and only looks back at Bart in surprise when the fleet-footed youngster puts his sandwich down. That signals more than anything else how much effort Bart's going to put into what he has to say next.

"Listen," Bart says, and stares at Tim plaintively with his wide, yellow eyes. "I know that sometimes you think that Wally gave you the Kid Flash costume to try to make up for not being there for your parents..."

Tim flushes a little. When Bart stumbles on a nugget of truth, he always manages to keep it close and know just when to use it, turning knowledge into a weapon.

"...but that's stupid," he continues. "You're as good a Kid Flash as Wally was. He gave it to you because you're smart and responsible and a good hero on top of being fast."

"But I'm not fast," Tim insists. "Not compared to you guys. I can't even come close to the speed of sound. Hell, you were there today. I can't zip around the world in a moment's notice like the two of you can. Face it, I'm stuck to a city or county at best. Kid Flash...Kid Flash needs to be able to grow up and be Flash. And the Flash doesn't just protect Keystone City."

"Oh yeah?" Bart shoots back. "If you're not going to be the Flash, then who will?"

Tim absently folds his napkin into strange shapes, stalling. "Oh, I dunno, I was thinking...you."

Bart freezes for a moment, and then his cheery grin is back in place. "Ha ha. Very funny. Don't be too hard on yourself. You're going as fast as that amulet-thingy'll let you."

"Yeah," Tim grunts. "Fast...but not fast enough."

He's surpised at the sharp smack he receives out of nowhere. He rubs the back of his head more for show and glares at Bart, who glares right back. "Would you rather I get Wally lock you in a chemistry lab in the middle of a thunderstorm?" Bart asks, slightly angry. "Because I'm pretty sure we could have that arranged."

Tim sighs. "No. I think I'll be okay without that."

Bart leans back in his chair, looking smug. Tim chews his lip and forces himself to give voice to his true thoughts.

"But I worry. I was nearly too slow today, and that was with the amulet. What if something happened to it, or somebody managed to take it away from me? Speed is my only real physical weapon. Without it and one of you guys to bail me out things could quickly slide into ‘majorly fucked' mode for me."

Bart waves his hand dismissively. "You're smart. You'd be able to figure your way out of anything."

Tim smiles a little at the compliment, but more for Bart's sake. "Thanks, but I think if I go out thinking like that that you'll be burying me sooner rather than later. Being smart isn't going to be enough against a lot of the guys we run against. What I need is an edge, a physical edge that can't be taken away from me, something not trapped in a coin or negated by Kryptonite."

Bart perks up. "You gonna be a ninja?" He disappears for a moment, his wake making the pile of food waver a little bit, and when he comes back he's dressed in some gaudy Halloween version of a ninja outfit, complete with plastic throwing stars. "Hiiiiiiiiiiiii-ya!"

The image is genuinely amusing, even more so because two-year-old Bart is pulling it off with flawlessly innocent enthusiasm. Tim chuckles. "Something like that. I've been thinking... Maybe I could ask Batman for some help. The Bat family is made of all normal people, right? Non-metas, I mean. They could probably teach me what I need to know."

Another gust of wind and Bart sits down again, ditching the costume. "I don't know, man. The Bats are S-C-A-R-Y psycho! Always have been, you know, but its gotten worse. Wally said that things used to be better-off when Robin was around, but Batman's just gotten nuts ever since he disappeared." He takes a big bite of his sandwich, crunching happily on what is probably (knowing Bart the way he does) a disgusting mix of vegetables, deli meat, and junk food.

Tim's mood drops again. He thinks back to the reports he's managed to find about Batman and Robin, the things he's been able to glean from the whispered conversations Wally has with other members of the JLA. "I heard he died. Murdered."

Bart covers his mouth as he burps. "So?"

"So? So... I don't know. It proves my point? Negates it? Jeez, super-heroing involves so much drama."

"Just don't think about it, man. I don't, and I'm doing okay."

Tim raises an eyebrow. "'Okay?'"

Bart has the decency to look a little bashful. "Well, better than I used to."

Tim can't help but laugh. He also can't help but know that despite Bart's reassurances, he can't even begin to forget about his troubles.



It's late at night, and he's sneaking into his father's study to paw through his books on ancient Greece. Tim Drake is a geek, a geek very good at research. It surprises him that he hadn't thought to examine his father's birthday present until now. The figure on the coin is easy to place—Hermes, with his golden staff and winged sandals—but it isn't until he translates the Greek that discovers the coin isn't a coin at all.

"A gift from Lord Hermes to his most faithful servant—a token of speed."

It seems weird and ridiculous and completely implausible, but Tim has seen Wonder Woman on the news, and so he checks his disbelief.

After school the next day, when everyone else is gone, he sets up a remote speed radar he lifted from an idling cop car (Hermes was also the god of thieves, his brain reminds him) and clocks himself at over 80 miles per hour. His disbelief all but disappears.

------------------------

Tim doesn't know much about the fighting arts, but he does know that the orient is a good place to start. He doesn't speak any oriental languages, though, and he thinks that could be a problem. He's pretty good with computer's, scary good, actually, and he does some digging and finds out that a lot of old masters exiled from their countries congregate in Paris. Tim does speak French. Good enough. He packs his bags.

Paris is dirtier than he remembers. His parents brought him once when he was too young to be shuttled off to boarding school while they traveled. He finds a hotel, but he hopes he won't be using it for long. He spends the next couple of days scouring the shadiest parts of the city, watching gangs of boys fight, listening in on gossip in the oriental quarter, and slipping twenty dollar bills to promising-looking informants. He eventually gets the name and address of a local master of good reputation, a man they call the Iron Hand. Tim checks out of the hotel.



It's a week after his parents were supposed to come back from their latest vacation. Tim is worried, but he doesn't know what to do, so he pours more time into his running and his increasingly obsessive investigation of the Flash. He knows just about everything there is to know about Wally West, even how much he paid in rent last month. Now he just has to meet the man behind the blur.

The Flash is fast, way faster than little Timmy Drake, but he doesn't always patrol at top speed. And when he keeps his speed down in the hundreds, Tim can keep up with almost no problem.

Still, it's a rush the day that he finally gets the courage to make his presence known, and he's always been a bit of a drama whore, so he makes sure that the experience is memorable as all hell.

Wally's legs are long, and Tim has to run up beside him to avoid being kicked inadvertently, and the fabric of his suit is slick and thin beneath his fingertips, just like he'd imagined it'd be. The heat coming off of him is incredible.

"Tag," Tim says. "You're it."



It has been a long and eventful week. Painful, too, Tim thinks as he rubs absently at his new collection of bruises.

It hadn't been too difficult to become a student of the Iron Hand. Politeness and five thousand dollars in unmarked US currency had quickly gotten him the place in the class left vacant when a boy named Shen Chi was kicked out for insolence. Most of the students are rich and bored, but they do not last long. Already seven have packed their things and left without a refund. It is just Tim and the serious students, now.

And what serious students they are. Tim is one of the few with very little martial arts training. But the Iron Hand is good about not letting his lessons degenerate into ritualistic beatings. When the more advanced students are studying with his assistancts, the Iron Hand holds private council with Tim, teaching him meditation, pressure points, and discipline. Sometimes the slow pace tries at Tim's patience, but he reminds himself that his life hadn't always moved at such a chaotic speed, and forces himself to think like young Timothy Drake, not Bart Allen.

He confesses early in the week to his gift, showing the amulet to the Iron Hand and demonstrating its gift of speed. After he is finished the old master sits a long time in thought, debating the best way to integrate this skill into Tim's training (and really, it would be stupid not to, if for nothing less than the fact that his speed gives him momentum that changes the force and timing of his blows, which must be corrected for). He finally decrees that Tim will do each exercise twice: once with the amulet, once without. It means double the bruises for Tim, but he doesn't mind. He came ino this knowing it was going to hurt. They do the speed spars at night, in secret, so that the other students do not grow jealous of his power. There are many thieves in Paris, even in the school of the Iron Hand.

He's fighting with Jae, most senior of the Iron Hand's pupils. Jae is quick and clever, surprisingly light on his feet for a man his size. Their spars are slowly teaching Tim his strengths and weaknesse. He is most vulnerable during his vertical jumps, when gravity and not the amulet dictates the speed of his fall. And if he gets too close, Jae's mastery of the fighting arts outdoes Tim's speed, and his blows land with their full force. Jae nearly always wins, proving Tim's theory about needing this training right.

Jae is nice about kicking the shit out of him every night. He always smiles after their spars, gives him a hand up.

He's pulling Tim to his feet for the third time tonight when Tim first notices the green eyes and flash of red hair watching their fight from a shadowed corner.

Tim closes his eyes, breathes in the scent of cinnamon and vanilla. Dava.



It's two years ago, right after the funerals. In his head Tim knows that there's nothing he could have done about Obeah Man, nothing anyone could do. He'd tried begging Wally to help, and eventually Wally and that Impulse kid had gone to investigate, but by then it had been too late.

He's running away again; not fast, more of a jog, really. A real, honest to God jog along an honest to god country road. The amulet is at home. Today's run is about building up stamina. Hermes gives him speed, not endurance.

Wally leaves a dust cloud as he skids to a stop in the road in front of him. Tim slows his pace, stops, and stands waiting, feeling the muscles of his legs twitch in protest to the sudden lack of movement.

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't trust himself to. His parents are dead and Wally West, the fucking Flash, is standing in front of him, too late, too late, and holding a folded square of red and yellow fabric in his hands

Wally's grin at least has the decency to be ashamed. "Hey kid," he says, and holds out the folded uniform. "Want a job?"



She falls into step with him as soon as he has returned the amulet to its hiding place in his room. Dava is another student of the Iron Hand, though they do not often spar. She is far more expert and shows only interest in learning the master's trademark single-strike blow: the whispering hand. She does not smile at Tim, but stares at him with a distant curiosity. This close, the spicy scent surrounding her is nearly overpowering.

"You are quick," she says, after some time.

He shrugs. It has been a long day and he is tired. "Thanks."

She catches him by the arm. Her eyes are hard and can fell her grip leaving bruises. "Too quick. How do you move so fast? Do you also know the secret of armarilla?"

"I--what?"

Her eyes bore into his for what seems like an eternity (Relative time. Bart has problems with it. The whole world is so slow when you're traveling at the speed of light, it's hard to pay attention, to not get bored...) before she turns away, laughing. She releases his arm, and Tim is amazed at how such a simple gesture can feel like such a dismissal.

"Of course you do not. Only I know its secrets. That is my edge. But you are fast. Incredibly so, for a normal boy. But perhaps you are no normal boy. Tell me, are you a member of the Bat family? Robin, perhaps?"

That one hits too close to home. The Flash family is notoriously lax about their secret identities, and that makes Tim nervous. He should darken the tint to his goggles, cover up his hair, invest in a full face mask... "Robin's dead," he says.

She looks taken aback for a bit. "Really?"

He nods. "For a while. Three years, I think."

She frowns, and then smiles. It is not pleasant. "That is why the Batman was so...inhospitable. I tried to go to him for training, but he was less than polite." Her laugh is callous, dismissing, and cut short by the intentional scrape of a clothed foot on stone.

"Arrogant child," a female voice chides. "Stupid child. To think that the Bat would ever train you."

They spin to face the intruder, falling easily into defensive stances.

"Who are you?" Dava shouts. "Show yourself!"

"You know who I am," the voice drawls. A figure emerges from the shadows, clad in black and wearing a mask shaped like some nightmarish demon. It drops the body of the Iron Hand on the floor and kicks it idly out of the way.

"Lady Shiva Woosan!" Dava whispers in awe. "The Tengu!"

Tim can't help but stare a little as the figure removes its mask, revealing the proud, beautiful face of a woman. Her skin is smooth and honey pale, her raven-black hair done in an intricate top-knot. Her almond-shaped eyes flash and burn with life but there is no humor in the grim setting of her mouth.

Dava laughs a little, shaking herself of her reverie, and shifts into a more offensive stance. "You have saved me the trouble of finding you, Tengu. It was you that I was to seek next once I mastered the Whispering Hand. You, the master of the Leopard Blow."

Shiva does not appear amused. "I would have killed rather than teach you the moment that your mouth, putting all those precious years of training to waste. I do not suffer fools in my presence."

Tim watches anxiously as Dava flushes with anger. He has not known Dava long, but there is something in her that reminds him of Bart. She is prone to dangerous impulses, both in conversation and in the dojo. Until now those unplanned outbursts have served her well, but Tim doubts it will work against this cold-hearted killer.

"I will show you that I am no fool!" she screams, and launches herself at Shiva faster than Tim would have expected, nearly as fast as him.

Lady Shiva is faster still. The scream is not yet out of Dava's throat before Shiva calmly blocks her blow, turns inside of her wide, spinning kick (the Wind Through the Reeds, she'd used it on Tim before in the dojo), and delivering a single, precise blow to her sternum.

Dava barely makes a sound as she hits the floor. She doesn't get up.

Shiva wipes her hand on her leg, as if touching Dava has made her dirty. "The Leopard Blow," she says conversationally in Tim's general direction. "What I would not teach her in life she learns in death."

Tim wants to gape at the Iron Hand's limp corpse, at Dava's twitching body, the blood gushing from her red mouth, but if he does that he's dead. Instead he turns and scrambles for his room. He's not an idiot. He has learned a lot in his time here in Paris, but not enough. Trying to face this demon-warrior without his speed would be the equivalent of performing seppuku.

She lets him go, but he can't help but feel like a mouse being tortured by a very clever cat. He dives towards his bag, digging frantically until he finds it. The leather thong ties into the old familiar knot in his hands, and he turns to find Shiva looming in his doorway.

"So, little one," she goads. "Shall I let you go or kill you as well?"

Tim doesn't respond. His advantage lies in his speed and talking is too slow. He comes at her low and fast, ducking under her defenses in the blink of an eye and snapping upward with his clenched fist. Her jaw, soft as it appears, is as hard as iron. He stumbles back a little from the force of the blow, but is quick to fall back into the defensive, ready for her to strike.



Shiva seems nearly as surprised as he is to see blood blossom from her lip. She touches it as if to make sure it is really there, then glares at him ominously.

"You are quick," she says, her words slow and careful. "Quicker even than the girl. Forgive me for underestimating you. But your body still screams its weakness to me. I will not make that same mistake again."

Tim moves in for another fast uppercut, but she intercepts him easily, catching his fist with one hand, twisting it painfully. He chokes back a scream. With her other hand, she grasps hold of the amulet and yanks, pulling it free. He stumbles to the floor, acutely aware of how slow his fall is.

Shiva holds it up for inspection, twisting and turning it each way. "Interesting. Very interesting. It is magic, yes? Gives you speed. More speed than the armarillia gave the girl. She was foolish to rely so heavily upon that drug. It works well for short burst, can even be used like a shot of adrenalin, but the longer you use it the slower it makes you. But this..." She weighs the amulet with her hand and smirks at him. "This is magic so ancient it does not wear off. It makes you dangerous, Little Hummingbird, more dangerous than you could imagine, I bet. Interesting. Very interesting."

Tim ignores her, pays more attention to getting up again. She watches him with cold interest as he regains his feet and settles into a defensive position.

"Oh, come now," she says, rubbing the amulet between her fingers. "Is the little hummingbird going to fight me without its speed?"

His left wrist feels broken. Tim ignores the pain. "Not unless I have to," he admits. "I'm not stupid. But you will give it back to me."

She snorts, though Tim could have mistaken it for laughter. "I can kill you just as easily as I killed the girl. And she had at least some sloppy mastery of nearly every single-strike move. What do you have? A necklace that I have easily taken from you."

"I know that," Tim concedes.

She frowns. "How, then, do you plan on getting it back?"

He licks his lips. He's taking a pretty big gamble. "By asking." He straightens out of his defensive position, bows his head a little in politeness. "Please return what you have taken from me, Tengu. It was a gift from my father, the only thing he ever gave me that I treasured, and I would like it back."

He doesn't look up to meet her eyes, but he can feel her gaze shift to that of mild wonder.

"Why are you here, Little Hummingbird?"

"I came to learn," he says to the floor. "Speed isn't everything."

"You show more wisdom than your little girlfriend, then. But still, surely you could have found better teachers."

"Who?" he asks incredulously. "You?" He bites his tongue as soon as he says it, closes his eyes and waits to die.

Seconds tick past. They seem like an eternity (relative speed...). He doesn't hear Shiva move across the room, but he starts more out of the gentleness of her touch than the touch itself. She cups his chin, lifts it up, and almost smiles when he opens his eyes.

"Yes," she says, letting one finger trail up the side of his face. "I only kill the rude upon first meeting, and you have proven yourself quite polite." She licks her lips, looks at him hungrily. His heart skips a beat. "Oh yes, there is great potential in you, Little Hummingbird."

She releases him, takes a step back, and Tim has to concentrate on not stumbling in surprise.

"First," she says. "You must find a place for your little trinket where it cannot be so easily taken away. Second, you must promise me that after I am finished with you, you and I shall fight. Speed versus skill, to the death."

Tim's thoughts are wild, fluid things, quickly calculating, weighing options. He does not need his amulet to think at super-speed. If he refuses, it is very likely that he shall die here, on this very spot, inside a dirty martial arts school in the middle of Paris. If he goes with Shiva he will become the fighter that he needs to be, no doubt about that. But what is the price of each? He doesn't know, not truly.

Shiva stares at him, her expression questioning, waiting, threatening.

He nods, his throat too tight at first to speak. "I promise."

Her smile is wicked, red and sharp, and it appears and disappears faster than even Wally can. She tosses him his amulet, and his eyes can't help but notice how much the figure of Hermes shines in the dim moon-light. "Good," she says. "Let us begin."



It's the first time he's ever worn the costume. So far he's stopped two muggings, caught a purse-snatcher, and shoved somebody out of the way of a hit-and-run. The bright sunshine of Keystone glittering off of the pavement is blindingly sharp and seems to flash in tempo with the beating of his heart. Never in his life has anything felt so right and so wrong as this does.

------------------------

His chest burns above his heart, right beneath the armored, off-center, redesigned Flash symbol. Tim tells himself over and over that he can't feel the biodisk containing his amulet that Vic Stone implanted under the layer of his pectorals, that the disk is too small and there simply aren't enough nerve endings in that area to register pain. But logic never prevails against phantom pain, and it fails utterly in the face of magic. Maybe the amulet burns because it hates being incased in human flesh. Maybe it burns because it loves it.

Tim soars above Keystone. He may be too slow to run across water, but he's fast enough to propel himself through the air. He can't quite leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he picks up enough momentum that he all but flies when he leaps from rooftop to rooftop, his path a long, lazy ark defined by speed and gravity.

Nighttime in Paris had seemed so much darker. But Keystone City, no Gotham by any right, does have its shadows, its night-time lurkers. Tim's new costume blends in with the dark, punctuated by the gold flash of his new belt, his gauntlets, and the Flash lightening bolt.



It's this summer, two weeks before his conversation with Bart, four before he leaves for Paris, and he and Wally are sitting on top of city hall eating pizza.

"Do we always have to eat so late?" Wally says, swallowing another slice. "I'd love the chance to sleep."

Tim takes a long swig of his Mountain Berry Power Aid and is careful not to let the blue liquid drip onto the light-colored parts of his costume. "I've been thinking about changing my schedule, going nocturnal. I've done some midnight patrols these past few weeks and I think it could do a lot of good. After we eat I'm going to tail some drug contacts. Wanna come?"

Wally burps and shakes his head. "Flash goes after more daytime villains, kid."

He frowns to himself, but really he's not surprised. "But those aren't the only villains here, Wally. There are nighttime ones, as well."

Wally stares at him like he's grown a second head. "Jesus, kid, you sound like Batman. Skulking around in the dark isn't the way we work. Maybe we could track them down the drugs and the guns and the illegal shipments down to their sources, but that takes time, time and patience we don't have. It's easier to wait until they pop up on the surface before going after them. Like Whack-a-Mole. And besides, what happens when you bust in on these mob dealers, huh? What would you do? Run around and make a nice yellow target of yourself?"

"I don't know," Tim says, but inside he does. He's got an appointment later tonight with the Tailor and a briefcase full of cash he got playing the stock market (Tim Drake is a smart kid and sneaky even without the extra help from the Greek god of trickery).

Wally smiles at him and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. "Just don't think about it, kid." He slaps Tim across the back, leaving sauce stains, no doubt.

"Okay," Tim lies. He doesn't feel too bad about it. It isn't the first time he's lied to Wally.



Tim crouches in the rafters of the old warehouse, waiting, watching. A new shipment of cocaine arrived early this morning to this seedy corner of the Keystone shipping yard, and the Manendaz gang are only too happy to unload and distribute it. Wally isn't a detective and Bart definitely doesn't have the patience for this kind of work. They've said so themselves. But Tim's buzzing with the high of it, and the rush of knowing that he has the paper trail all neatly lined up, nearly guaranteeing the maximum jail time guaranteed for each and every one of these thugs when they get tried is nearly as intoxicating as fighting.

Nearly.

The collapsible bo staff, Lady Shiva's final parting gift, fits snugly in its holder just between his shoulder blades. Tim takes it out and extends it silently. It is solid in his hands, but not too heavy. He's had a lot of practice with it.

He grins to himself, shifting his weight ever so slightly forward, preparing for the drop, death-from-above style.

He's about to get a little more.



It's his fight with Shiva. She's dying. Asphyxiation. He's managed through sheer dumb luck to hook an arm around her throat and is slamming her repeatedly at high speeds (his only advantage) into a wall to keep her disoriented enough to be unable to pull out of his grip. Its two agonizing minutes until her body drops limp in his grasp, another five as he prays to God for the first time in his life and performs the mind-numbing cycle of CPR. Fifteen pushes, two breaths, fifteen pushes, two breaths. He reaches into his belt to find the aramillia that he stole from Dava's things, slips some of the dried herb into her mouth. He resumes CPR, feeling the cinnamon vanilla burn of the drug as the kiss introduces it into his own bloodstream, and he has to fight through the warm, intoxicating haze to see Lady Shiva open those beautiful Asian eyes.

"Good," she coughs, and smiles. "Very good."

The rest of their fight is jubilant, a celebration, and it feels so good to fight someone this fast, to feel his body hum with a power he hasn't felt since the first time he'd tied the amulet around his neck, to scream and howl with each punch and kick and flip until he thinks his heart will burst with joy.

Tim screams, and the sound of it echoes out and back through the Speed Force.



At super-speed his bo makes a high pitched humming. It sings in his hands, sings like its glad to be alive, to be spinning and moments away from dealing near-death and destruction. One of the members of the unloading crew hears this song and glances upward in confusion. Tim doesn't give him enough time to change his facial expression from puzzlement to fear. His nose crunches neatly underneath Tim's boot.

The man crumples nearly soundlessly, out like a light, but the crate he was carrying lands with a loud bang, alerting the rest of the gang to his presence. But that isn't necessarily a problem, not now that he's on the floor and not tied to the constancy of gravity. Two more thugs are down before the sound waves even have time to echo off of the walls.

Shouting, except it doesn't sound like that when you're fighting at super-speed. It's more like a low, continuous moan, punctuated occasionally by the sounds Tim makes as he cuts his way through the gang members: the snap of bone, the grunt of a kidney punch, the slow sigh of someone surrendering to unconsciousness.

It is the symphony that Shiva taught him, a song that Wally doesn't even know exists, and Tim finds it addictively beautiful.



It's right after he'd killed Shiva and brought her back to life again. Tim thinks he should feel some sort of moral qualms about killing in the first place, and then about bringing back to life a cold-blooded murderer so that she could kill again, but he doesn't. They're lying on the roof of her estate in France, their clothes reeking of dried blood and old sweat, and watching the stars. If anything, he feels content.

"So, Little Hummingbird," she says. "You have upheld your end of the bargain."

"Yes."

"And now you will go back to America, back to your city and a mentor who does not know what a weapon he has in his hands."

He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.

"Pity," she sighs. "I've quite enjoyed your company. That doesn't mean that we won't fight again, or that I won't ever try to kill you. You know me too well to stupidly assume that."

He shivers, and not because of the cold night air.

Shiva rolls over, stretching languorously. "Will you continue to associate with the Flash family, Little Hummingbird? There are other, more violent circles, other families that would love your company."

"No," he says. "I'll be staying in Keystone. The Flash does a good job, but he isn't as thorough as he needs to be. And Impulse will be leaving soon. I'm needed."

Her bangs blow softly in the gentle breeze, but her eyes and mouth are as hard as steel. "You are no longer a child, Little Hummingbird. Your name should not reflect on you as such. It is the tradition of warriors to earn their reputations, but those reputations need a foundation, a name from which to grow. Have you thought of a new title for yourself, my protégé?"

Tim looks up at the stars, the bright, distant stars, and thinks—thinks about giving it all you've got, about pouring on the speed, about engines and maxing out the accelerating capacity of them, of himself, of the feel of Shiva's slim, muscular neck in the crook of his arm, and the life choking, choking, out of her.

"I have an idea," he says.



Its quiet now in Warehouse 4B, silent but for the rhythmic hum of the air conditioning. All but one of the drug-runners is out cold. Tim walks slowly over to where their boss, Too-Tall Tony, lies broken and bleeding amongst a pile of shattered crates. Some bags of coke ripped during the fight, and the white powder spilling across the floor crunches under his feet and glistens like snow in the dim moonlight that manages to filter through the windows.

He looms over Too-Tall, who squints up at him, his face torn between bewilderment and fear. Tim kept the basic shape of his costume the same, meaning that his hair is uncovered, and that and the Flash logo is apparently enough to set the wheels of recognition in motion. Something clicks in Tony's eyes.

"K-kid Flash?" he burbles around a mouthful of blood.

Throttle grins. His opaque goggles gleam menacingly in the dark.

"No," Tim says. "Not any more."


-fin