ꪮꪑ𝓲ꪀꪮꪊ𝘴

Campfire Stories

"Wow, so you wanted to be Aqualad?" Megan asks.

"Yes, the opportunity arose. I could think of no other path."

"Yeah? If you think he wanted to be Aqualad so bad? Let me tell you about how I got started," Wally says.

"Nobody cares," Phantom scoffs, obviously getting annoyed by his flirting attempts.

"It literally goes back a couple generations... Each generation of Flash started with a bang! Literally! Jay Garrick was in a freak lab accident. Boom! There it is!"

Phantom and Spook look at each other. "I'm confused..." Phantom whispers.

"Me too," Spook admits.

"During the 40's and the 50's he was everywhere! The fastest man alive! Jay Garrick was the world's first Flash!" Wally shouts. "Then one day this guy comes along, a huge fan of the Flash, wanting to know all about this Jay Garrick, back in those days Jay didn't really hide his identity. He contacts Jay and the two spend hours and hours talking about his adventures and about the accident that turned him into the Flash. This guy even goes so far as to recreate the accident that created the original. But where Jay Garrick's accident was a total freak thing, this guy recreated the accident under laboratory conditions. He set the whole thing up in a lab and tried to make it happen! Result? Still a big explosion! But, lo and behold he becomes speedy mcspeed-speed himself! Now he's the Flash! Well, not the original Flash but the new Flash... the Flash we all know! I mean, there's the Jay Garrick Flash and now there's the new Flash, you know, it just occurred to me that they could probably use different names." He gets off track and shakes his head. "Anyway... this time he's even faster than Flash, well, the old Flash... it gave him even more speed!"

"I think I'm following, but say it all again because I lost track," Spook jokes, earning a chuckle from everyone.

"Okay, so check this! The second Flash is a fan of the first Flash—Jay Garrick. It turns out great minds think alike, cause I was a fan of the Flash—the second one, not the first one," Wally continues. "Well, I was a fan of Jay Garrick, the first one, after I got to know him. He was a little before my time."

"Anyway," Spook interrupts.

"Anyway, long story short–"

"Is it really going to be short?" Robin complains.

"If you let me finish," Wally huffs. "One day I was in my uncle's house, stumbled across his notebooks and got the shock of a life-time. That was the day I found out my uncle was the Flash! Once the shock passed a bit, I kept reading. He was keeping a journal of all his experiences and experiments! Especially the one that made him the Flash, the second one, not the first–"

"We get it already!" the team shouts at him.

"When I found that out, I would kind of keep hinting that the Flash could maybe use a partner. I tried to convince him that Flash could use and probably needed a partner. I mean come on, by this time Bats already had Robbie over here and Green Arrow had Speedy! This was a no-brainer! I've got to admit, Flash was a bit resistant at first."

"Does this sound confusing to anyone else?" Superboy asks, arms crossed and rolls his eyes.

"Here, here," Spook says, moving beside him and giving him a high five.

"Just let me finish and you will be confused no more, Supey, Spooky," Wally says as the two roll their eyes at the nicknames. "So, having seen his journal just like he saw the previous Flash's, I try to recreate the experiment with my own chemistry set. And what do you know? I was able to do it!"

"The experiment actually worked?" Kaldur asks.

"Well... not at first, actually," Wally sighs. "It didn't happen at first, but a couple of weeks later... I was off and running. I couldn't wait to show Flash! You guys should've seen his face when I showed him! This time he jumped at the chance to have a partner."