What if time passed in the DC Universe, what would happen? Would there be those, who, in their...
Cold at Heart (DC/Flash AU)
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Part 1
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
What if time passed in the DC Universe, what would happen? Would there be those, who, in their age, want to pass along their knowledge and expertise? What if someone a little... bad did so?
It was a hard fact that the popularity of the second generation of superheroes had led to the current generation. The age that never ended, the seventies had been the reintroduction of civilian heroes for the first time since the forties. The red scare had ended superheroes from the Golden age, as they almost universally decided to hang up their capes.
There had been rumors, in the time leading up to formation of the Justice League, of individuals with abilities intervening in criminal situations, some with names straight out of the forties. Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, these names were timeless and legendary, but there were others too, Superman, Batman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman. Once a large enough threat reared its head, the individuals saw a need to unite, and form the Justice League.
What's happened since has been the worrying part. Years passed, time went on, the need for heroes, a necessity that was never unmet again, remained a critical part of society. Heroes came, heroes went.
The modern JLA was part old, part new. Some heroes had retired voluntarily, or had forced themselves beyond what was healthy for a person, and had been made to retire. The next generation seamlessly began to rise to the occasion of replacing their mentors. There was a worrying trend though. As some heroes retired and went public with their identities, safeguards in place and secure in their safety, they began to have families and lives outside their heroics. They became celebrities, and their children, called to their parents duties, followed in the footsteps.
Heroics became irrevocably mixed with the scrutiny of the public eye and the needs one began to have once in that eye. You needed to be the best, the savior of the most people, and you didn't get either of that by looking out for the little guy. When the little guy gets ignored, a lot happens between the cracks, and that's where my story begins.
I was born in the nice part of Central City. The part where you can regularly see some member of the Flash family running by. As I'm told, that was a good weekend before we had to go back to where I was going to live for most of my life. A small apartment in the worst part of Leawood. The Central City Stadium is in Leawood, and to it's credit, that part of the neighborhood is actually pretty nice. I'm from the part people warn you not to wander into.
I grew up there, I never once met a Flash. You say Central City, and you think Flash, everyone has a story about Flash saving them, or Kid Flash, or Impulse, or someone. Not in Leawood. Leawood was the worst area in the city, with the highest concentration of drugs, muggings, and murders. It's a joke in the 'Wood that we needed our gang members to out on costumes if we ever wanted someone to do something about them.
My name is Wyatt. Wyatt Garfield Granger Jr., to be exact.
It really began in January of 2019. I was on my way to school, walking my sister to her middle school before I went to East Central High. My sister's name is Darcy, she had just had a birthday. She was a Christmas baby and she was a genius. A true prodigy with the way she learned and played her instrument of choice, the piano, and her smarts were insane. She went to private schools on free scholarships and never struggled for a minute with making the grades. Truth be told, I was just bringing her for my own piece of mind. I knew about gangs in the area, who were notorious for going after people who were vulnerable.
Darcy was vulnerable because she was thirteen, and I was sixteen, 6'2", and even though I was out of shape and looked it, my 350-odd lbs made me seem like enough of a bother that they left me well enough alone. So I took her every day to and from Brighton Academy, the best school in the city. Then a quick subway ride for me to East Central High.
I hated Brighton Academy on principle, because of the Allen family. Barry Allen had died in the nineties and a few years later was revived by something and retired permanently to raise his kids. He wrote a book about the experience, made oodles of cash, and now his teenage kids Don and Dawn Allen, The Tornado Twins, were students at Brighton. They were the next generation of heroes, the Flash and Kid Flash were involved with so much in the way of super teams and global threats that they had relinquished control of the protection of the city to the kids. They were everything wrong with modern heroics. They only got involved with anything if it gave them a boost, and according to my sister, they ran the campus there. But I digress. Back to what happened.
We were walking past the stoop of a guy I knew was a member of the 41st Street Macros. He stopped us. He had a mean fucking look. This guy was born to be a gangbanger. His wispy beard and bulging eyes made him look like an alien rather than a human, and he had what seemed like tattoos over every inch of his body.
"Hey hold up for a second, holmes." He said, and his crew of fellows shut up as he walked towards us off the stoop. I positioned myself between them and Darcy.
"Can I help you?" I almost growled.
"Whoa, what's up with the hostility bro? I'm just saying hello." He scratched at the pubes he called a beard and looked around me at my sister. Darcy was an early bloomer, and looked more like a young adult than a thirteen-year-old. "How you living girl?"
"She's thirteen." I said, I usually slouched but he drew me up to my full height. I was almost twice the size of this guy, but he stared me down like he was twelve feet tall.
"Damn." He whistled. "She's looking fine at thirteen."
"Are you insane?" I asked. He looked at me and grinned. "She's a kid."
"You her protection? She got a goon bodyguard?" He said through his grill. His bandana and wife beater were stained, and his tan complexion was covered in a myriad of scars where he hadn't any tattoos.
"I suppose I am." I said, and he smiled even wider.
"Well, I guess we'll see how good you are then, eh?" He walked back to his stoop and lit a cigarette. "I'm in the market for a bodyguard."
We hurried away after that, he never took his eyes off Darcy. I turned and looked a couple times, and he was just staring until we turned down a different street.
Weeks passed. We avoided 41st Street like the plague. I would insist to walk Darcy everywhere and for a while she was cool with the situation. She had understood that sometimes people went missing, and if I was around, then she would be safe. But she was a teenager, and she wanted freedom.
It was a few months later that something happened. Darcy had left without telling me, and she had cut through 41st Street.
She ran inside our apartment and slammed the door. Her dress was torn and she was crying. I asked her what was wrong. She said she had left to go see a friend in Windsor Heights, a ritzy neighborhood across town. The nearest metro stop was 41st and MLK Blvd. She hadn't been thinking, I don't know. Those guys had tried to corner her and she had somehow got away.
I had asked if she had been hurt and she said she hadn't, swore up and down. But she never left the apartment after that. She lost everything in the matter of a month. Her scholarship, her piano teacher, all of it. It slipped through my sister's fingers because whatever had been done had been done.
She began to lash out at me and Mom. Dad had walked out years ago, and Mom worked two jobs to keep a roof over our heads. I was torn. I didn't want to commit to a part time job if she would pull through, but I couldn't stand to see her how she was. She was brilliant, a prodigy at everything. She had a future beyond marrying some Leawood girl and settling down to become an alcoholic, like myself. She had her mind, and she had her future, and now both were in shambles.
Maybe it was selfishness. Maybe. I wanted to help her so badly. It hurt me to watch her suffer. Maybe that was why I did what I did.
It was the middle of April, and I had been drinking. I was hopelessly angry. I was out of the house, in a common lot that was supposed to be a public garden, but had fallen into disrepair. I was breaking things, and I wasn't stopping. My muscles were burning, I was trashed, and I remembered something. My baseball bat, the Louisville Slugger that had been my Dad's last gift before he had cut off ties and disappeared. I finished the fifth of whatever I had. There was a man watching me from one of the buildings surrounding the lot. I only noticed him because he had a shock of white hair. I took off because I thought he was going to call the cops on me.
I ran home, fueled by liquor and impotent rage and snuck into mine and Darcy's shared room. She slept a lot nowadays, and Mom was out on her night shift. I grabbed the bat and made my way to 41st street. I knew the exact stoop, and I was ready. I'd kill him, and his friends for what they did, whatever they did.
They were sitting there, smoking, when I arrived. They didn't recognize me at first, until the main guy, his name is Miguel, the one who stopped me and Darcy, pointed and made a motion like sucking a dick. He started to laugh, and I saw red. I beat up two of them before they overpowered me and kicked the absolute shit out of me.
He stood over me, Miguel. He stood over me and whispered. "You got off lucky compared to your sister."
I don't know how, but I got up. I picked up the bat, and snuck up behind them. I slammed it into the back of his head with all I had. He went down, he was bleeding. I was satisfied, he wasn't going to be able to get up so easily from that. But there were still three other guys, and they weren't going to let me leave with just a beating. Then you showed up, and destroyed them.
"I haven't lost it yet." The older man said. The diner was scarcely patronized, and he was slamming back cups of coffee one after the other.
"So why'd you save me?" I asked my companion. "That's my story, anyway."
"Well kid, I guess I saw you and wondered what you were so angry about that you'd smash up shit in my building's garden." He ran a hand through his white hair. "I saw the beating you took and saw you get back up and slam that bangers head in. Took some real nuts."
"Are you gonna turn me in?" I asked, and the man laughed.
"You know who I am?" He asked, and I shook my head.
"Should I?" I wondered, and he nodded.
"Kid, the name's Snart. Leonard Snart. Friends call me Len." He sipped his coffee. "The Flash knew me by another name though. Captain Cold."
It was a hard fact that the popularity of the second generation of superheroes had led to the current generation. The age that never ended, the seventies had been the reintroduction of civilian heroes for the first time since the forties. The red scare had ended superheroes from the Golden age, as they almost universally decided to hang up their capes.
There had been rumors, in the time leading up to formation of the Justice League, of individuals with abilities intervening in criminal situations, some with names straight out of the forties. Green Lantern, Flash, Wonder Woman, these names were timeless and legendary, but there were others too, Superman, Batman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman. Once a large enough threat reared its head, the individuals saw a need to unite, and form the Justice League.
What's happened since has been the worrying part. Years passed, time went on, the need for heroes, a necessity that was never unmet again, remained a critical part of society. Heroes came, heroes went.
The modern JLA was part old, part new. Some heroes had retired voluntarily, or had forced themselves beyond what was healthy for a person, and had been made to retire. The next generation seamlessly began to rise to the occasion of replacing their mentors. There was a worrying trend though. As some heroes retired and went public with their identities, safeguards in place and secure in their safety, they began to have families and lives outside their heroics. They became celebrities, and their children, called to their parents duties, followed in the footsteps.
Heroics became irrevocably mixed with the scrutiny of the public eye and the needs one began to have once in that eye. You needed to be the best, the savior of the most people, and you didn't get either of that by looking out for the little guy. When the little guy gets ignored, a lot happens between the cracks, and that's where my story begins.
I was born in the nice part of Central City. The part where you can regularly see some member of the Flash family running by. As I'm told, that was a good weekend before we had to go back to where I was going to live for most of my life. A small apartment in the worst part of Leawood. The Central City Stadium is in Leawood, and to it's credit, that part of the neighborhood is actually pretty nice. I'm from the part people warn you not to wander into.
I grew up there, I never once met a Flash. You say Central City, and you think Flash, everyone has a story about Flash saving them, or Kid Flash, or Impulse, or someone. Not in Leawood. Leawood was the worst area in the city, with the highest concentration of drugs, muggings, and murders. It's a joke in the 'Wood that we needed our gang members to out on costumes if we ever wanted someone to do something about them.
My name is Wyatt. Wyatt Garfield Granger Jr., to be exact.
It really began in January of 2019. I was on my way to school, walking my sister to her middle school before I went to East Central High. My sister's name is Darcy, she had just had a birthday. She was a Christmas baby and she was a genius. A true prodigy with the way she learned and played her instrument of choice, the piano, and her smarts were insane. She went to private schools on free scholarships and never struggled for a minute with making the grades. Truth be told, I was just bringing her for my own piece of mind. I knew about gangs in the area, who were notorious for going after people who were vulnerable.
Darcy was vulnerable because she was thirteen, and I was sixteen, 6'2", and even though I was out of shape and looked it, my 350-odd lbs made me seem like enough of a bother that they left me well enough alone. So I took her every day to and from Brighton Academy, the best school in the city. Then a quick subway ride for me to East Central High.
I hated Brighton Academy on principle, because of the Allen family. Barry Allen had died in the nineties and a few years later was revived by something and retired permanently to raise his kids. He wrote a book about the experience, made oodles of cash, and now his teenage kids Don and Dawn Allen, The Tornado Twins, were students at Brighton. They were the next generation of heroes, the Flash and Kid Flash were involved with so much in the way of super teams and global threats that they had relinquished control of the protection of the city to the kids. They were everything wrong with modern heroics. They only got involved with anything if it gave them a boost, and according to my sister, they ran the campus there. But I digress. Back to what happened.
We were walking past the stoop of a guy I knew was a member of the 41st Street Macros. He stopped us. He had a mean fucking look. This guy was born to be a gangbanger. His wispy beard and bulging eyes made him look like an alien rather than a human, and he had what seemed like tattoos over every inch of his body.
"Hey hold up for a second, holmes." He said, and his crew of fellows shut up as he walked towards us off the stoop. I positioned myself between them and Darcy.
"Can I help you?" I almost growled.
"Whoa, what's up with the hostility bro? I'm just saying hello." He scratched at the pubes he called a beard and looked around me at my sister. Darcy was an early bloomer, and looked more like a young adult than a thirteen-year-old. "How you living girl?"
"She's thirteen." I said, I usually slouched but he drew me up to my full height. I was almost twice the size of this guy, but he stared me down like he was twelve feet tall.
"Damn." He whistled. "She's looking fine at thirteen."
"Are you insane?" I asked. He looked at me and grinned. "She's a kid."
"You her protection? She got a goon bodyguard?" He said through his grill. His bandana and wife beater were stained, and his tan complexion was covered in a myriad of scars where he hadn't any tattoos.
"I suppose I am." I said, and he smiled even wider.
"Well, I guess we'll see how good you are then, eh?" He walked back to his stoop and lit a cigarette. "I'm in the market for a bodyguard."
We hurried away after that, he never took his eyes off Darcy. I turned and looked a couple times, and he was just staring until we turned down a different street.
Weeks passed. We avoided 41st Street like the plague. I would insist to walk Darcy everywhere and for a while she was cool with the situation. She had understood that sometimes people went missing, and if I was around, then she would be safe. But she was a teenager, and she wanted freedom.
It was a few months later that something happened. Darcy had left without telling me, and she had cut through 41st Street.
She ran inside our apartment and slammed the door. Her dress was torn and she was crying. I asked her what was wrong. She said she had left to go see a friend in Windsor Heights, a ritzy neighborhood across town. The nearest metro stop was 41st and MLK Blvd. She hadn't been thinking, I don't know. Those guys had tried to corner her and she had somehow got away.
I had asked if she had been hurt and she said she hadn't, swore up and down. But she never left the apartment after that. She lost everything in the matter of a month. Her scholarship, her piano teacher, all of it. It slipped through my sister's fingers because whatever had been done had been done.
She began to lash out at me and Mom. Dad had walked out years ago, and Mom worked two jobs to keep a roof over our heads. I was torn. I didn't want to commit to a part time job if she would pull through, but I couldn't stand to see her how she was. She was brilliant, a prodigy at everything. She had a future beyond marrying some Leawood girl and settling down to become an alcoholic, like myself. She had her mind, and she had her future, and now both were in shambles.
Maybe it was selfishness. Maybe. I wanted to help her so badly. It hurt me to watch her suffer. Maybe that was why I did what I did.
It was the middle of April, and I had been drinking. I was hopelessly angry. I was out of the house, in a common lot that was supposed to be a public garden, but had fallen into disrepair. I was breaking things, and I wasn't stopping. My muscles were burning, I was trashed, and I remembered something. My baseball bat, the Louisville Slugger that had been my Dad's last gift before he had cut off ties and disappeared. I finished the fifth of whatever I had. There was a man watching me from one of the buildings surrounding the lot. I only noticed him because he had a shock of white hair. I took off because I thought he was going to call the cops on me.
I ran home, fueled by liquor and impotent rage and snuck into mine and Darcy's shared room. She slept a lot nowadays, and Mom was out on her night shift. I grabbed the bat and made my way to 41st street. I knew the exact stoop, and I was ready. I'd kill him, and his friends for what they did, whatever they did.
They were sitting there, smoking, when I arrived. They didn't recognize me at first, until the main guy, his name is Miguel, the one who stopped me and Darcy, pointed and made a motion like sucking a dick. He started to laugh, and I saw red. I beat up two of them before they overpowered me and kicked the absolute shit out of me.
He stood over me, Miguel. He stood over me and whispered. "You got off lucky compared to your sister."
I don't know how, but I got up. I picked up the bat, and snuck up behind them. I slammed it into the back of his head with all I had. He went down, he was bleeding. I was satisfied, he wasn't going to be able to get up so easily from that. But there were still three other guys, and they weren't going to let me leave with just a beating. Then you showed up, and destroyed them.
"I haven't lost it yet." The older man said. The diner was scarcely patronized, and he was slamming back cups of coffee one after the other.
"So why'd you save me?" I asked my companion. "That's my story, anyway."
"Well kid, I guess I saw you and wondered what you were so angry about that you'd smash up shit in my building's garden." He ran a hand through his white hair. "I saw the beating you took and saw you get back up and slam that bangers head in. Took some real nuts."
"Are you gonna turn me in?" I asked, and the man laughed.
"You know who I am?" He asked, and I shook my head.
"Should I?" I wondered, and he nodded.
"Kid, the name's Snart. Leonard Snart. Friends call me Len." He sipped his coffee. "The Flash knew me by another name though. Captain Cold."
Last edited:
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I have no idea, insofar as I have no frame of reference for what they've adapted from the comics. No specific plot elements from the show will be used for the making of this, it's basically a pre-flashpoint post-crisis comic AU with an OC as the main character.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Righteo, reading now!
Part 2
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
So there I was, sitting with one of Central City's most notorious criminals ever.
"You said your mother works." Leonard Snart, Captain fucking Cold, said to me.
"Y-yeah." I stuttered.
"Calm down Wyatt." He said. "If I wanted to ice you, I would've. If I wanted to ice anyone, I would. But I'm retired now."
"What made you do that?" I asked, wondering how this man wasn't permanently imprisoned in Iron Heights right now.
"The second Flash, Barry Allen. You know him but hate his kids on principal, apparently?" He asked, and I nodded. "He was a real sonuvabitch. That guy. Let me tell you. I was born after they had made all the superheroes from the forties hang up their capes. I grew up in that time, the days where people would tell stories about Jay Garrick, before he died. How he'd zip in and save people. Let me just say, if anyone needed saving, it was me and my sister."
"The Golden Glider?" I asked, and the man nodded.
"My dad was a real fucking scumbag piece of work." Snart said. His eyes glossed over a bit, and the frown that took over his gaunt face changed his appearance. Suddenly I could see it, the man looked like the mugshots from the internet with this scowl. "You ever see the Wikipedia page about me? They get it wrong, and I don't care to have this fact known, so keep it to yourself. He was an abusive piece of shit, but the reason I got into crime wasn't to escape him. It was so I could send Lisa off to some nice training program for her skating."
"Lisa is your sister." I supplied and he nodded.
"My granddad would always say shit like 'Lisa has a gift, Lenny. She could skate right up into the sky if she wanted.' Stuff like that. I loved my granddad, and I didn't know shit about figure skating, but he said it and it stuck with me. So I hit 18 in 1969, and struck out to make enough money for Lisa to skate. I tried to get a job engineering, I always had a knack for machines, but that was a bust. No degree and no chance for college, I couldn't give a shit about sitting in a room and hearing something I could learn myself.
I was always sort of a bad kid, I had to work out my aggression somehow, and that led to me finding myself a part of a heist, this was in '71, a few years before the Justice League. Some guy I went to East High with wanted me to help him plan a heist. I had a perfect plan, and he found these glasses that reduced muzzle flash, I'm sure you've seen them."
I nodded.
"Well, as soon as we get away, I'm planning everything I'll do with my cut. Send Lisa to some prestigious program, whatever the fuck I wanted, et cetera. Then a red blur stopped us."
"Barry Allen." I supplied.
"Exactly. A bunch of stuff happened after that, but that's how I got busted for the first time. Then I went to prison and broke out when I figured out my Cold Gun."
"Which you made." I said, supplying what little I knew of the man.
"I sure fucking did. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise kid. That shit is my baby, my life's work. That book of Allen's where he says I "may have stolen the technology"? Bullshit. He has one of my best guns ever in that fucking museum of his, and he still thinks I stole it? What a putz." The words sound angry, but reminiscing about the Flash seems to soften Snart's expression a bit.
"Why did you save me?" I ask, blurting out.
"Well, because I thought you were gonna die, and I was on one of my more generous streaks." Snart says. "But after hearing that story. I think you might be the guy to do something big for me."
"Which is?" I asked, suspicious of the sudden attention and praise.
"Well, I got to thinking a few years back." Snart said, draining his coffee and gesturing to the tired-looking waitress to fill his cup. "I quit when Barry Allen died, and then he came back to life, and I went back to work. He and that Kid Flash were always trying to stop me. Then he retired for good, and I thought 'why keep up the game with some kid The Flash picked to replace him?" He shrugged. "The Flash as we know him now is the old Kid Flash, right? And he's got a Kid Flash now, that Impulse kid. Then there's the Tornado Twins, Central City's newest starlets. Every fucking five feet there's a Flash." He pointed a finger at me, stabbing the air as he ranted. "You can't walk down the street without running into a damned Flash."
He paused for a moment.
"So, I thought. If there's a Flash Jr., why not make myself a Captain Cold Jr.? What's stopping me from giving some kid my gear and letting him loose on the world? Mirror Master died, and when he died, they gave his gear to some scottish prick!" Snart put his hand down, and affected a conciliatory tone. "As much as I love McCulloch, he's in a good place, clean now, but he was tripping halfway to fucking Gotham when I ran into him and brought him into the Rogues."
The waitress refills his cup.
"You want anything?" He gestures to the menu. "I'll have my usual, Dolores." He says, and I nod.
"I'll take the same." I said, and take a minute to think over his words so far. He's looking for a protege and I'm in fucking contention.
"The fucking government gave him his gear to kill Animal Man. Fucking Buddy Baker, can you imagine? What's he ever done to deserve sending a hitman who can go through mirrors at him? Starred in Goosehead? While I think that movie's a shitty attempt at cinema-"
"Do you want me to become a criminal?" I ask, trying to get to the gist of his spiel.
"Criminal? Maybe. I really don't give a shit what you end up doing. I was a criminal because I liked it. I did good too, sometimes. It isn't necessarily as binary as you might think." He confesses to me in a conspiratory way. "But what I really want is a legacy. Someone to bring the name Captain Cold to the modern era. Someone I can train to be exactly as good as me, and then let them go off into the world."
"I'm no criminal." I said, immediately.
"Pretty sure you just bashed in a guy's head with a baseball bat." He says, and I look to the bat he stashed underneath the table. It was a whirlwind, me, dazed and hurt getting pulled into a car after he saved me. I'm not exactly sure what part of town I'm in. "I think that makes you a criminal."
"What do you want for this generous gift of your secrets?" I asked sarcastically. He was giving ME the keys to the Leonard Snart vault? Just because I'd gotten the shit kicked out of me? Unlikely.
"I want a favor, TBD for now, but I have a good idea." He said, as our food arrived. "You'll be ready for it when the time comes."
"Ready for what?"
"Anything. I'm gonna teach you everything I know about being me. All my secrets, and you can go out, and be a fucking pediatrician with 'em for all I care. All I want is another Captain Cold out in the world."
"You really think you can make me ready for anything?" I asked. "Just with some training and a few gadgets?"
"Kid who do you think you're talking to?" He said, looking at me with an annoyed expression. "I used to go toe-to-toe with The Flash, the fastest man on earth, with a gun I made from a theory somebody had about bombing the Flash to slow him down enough to be captured. I made a gun with a homemade cyclotron that can slow anything down with just that idea. I faced a god, in the flesh, for kicks and cash, and I'm alive, and I'm rich. I made it out of the big game we all play when we put on masks with a fucking presidential pardon for valor in the face of extreme adversity." He stabs an egg with a fork. "I'm a certified badass, and even if I'm just fucking with you, don't you think that anything I know could be enough to protect your sister, or your mother? The shit I forget has made a man who can run so fast he can travel through time pull his hair out in frustration. All I want from you is a favor."
"You imply it'll be a dangerous task." I said, puttering a bit.
"A task I will more than prepare you for. I'm telling you this now, kid. Upfront. All I have is what's in my head, and I want to give it to you. I'll even throw in a bit of cash, so you can forget about your troubles with money for a bit while I train you, and all I want is for you to take my name and do something with it. Good, bad, whatever. Significance is what's important."
"All this because I got beat up?" I ask, and he scowls.
"I'm losing patience, kid." He puts up three fingers. "Count of three, you in or out?"
"1." He says, lowering a finger, and I think frantically for something to latch onto. It seems so fantastical that-
"2." He says, and I throw up my hands in surrender.
"I'll do it." I say, and he grins.
"Excellent. You in school?" I nod, and he grabs his chin with his fingers.
"We'll finish our meals, I'll get the check, and then you'll loudly thank me for saving you from those thugs. Loudly. I'll take the bat and get rid of it. Tomorrow, wait until it's dark and then meet me at my building's garden. We'll start there."
"Can I ask one thing?" I ask, and he shakes his body out, like he's frustrated.
"What?" He says, and I struggle to think of a way to phrase this.
"Why me?" I settle on this simple way to phrase it, and he looks at me appraisingly before I continue. "I'm fat, and lazy, and dumb, and I couldn't even save my sister from something that was so terrible she shut the world out. I'm useless."
"Kid, you fucked that guy up good. He beat the snot out of you and you stood up and made him pay for everything he did. If he wakes up, you think he's gonna fuck with you again? You think the world fucks with me? Nah, I fuck with the world. You stood up for what you cared about, and you hurt that fucker where it counts. You ain't pretty, and you ain't gifted. But neither was I. You got cajones, kid. Real big brass ones, and I'm not ashamed to say that I used to be like you. But now I got the tricks, and I see you, a good-for-nothing, do anything he can to get revenge on a guy for messing with his family? I see a little me on that sidewalk get up and bash that guy? I want to give you all I have because you can be like me, and I know it. Plus, you ended up here, with me, so that's some sort of serendipity, right?" He trails off. "I can be more eloquent when it isn't 4am. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, fuck it, why not you?"
There I was, half-drunk from being beaten up, half-drunk from actual alcohol, across from Captain Cold, and being told that he liked the look of me enough to offer me his treasure trove of secrets so I could "fuck with the world", and I was so burnt out from everything, that all I could reply with was: "Fuck it, right? Let's do this."
Leonard Snart looked at me and smiled, and I felt something click in my head.
This would change everything for me.
"You said your mother works." Leonard Snart, Captain fucking Cold, said to me.
"Y-yeah." I stuttered.
"Calm down Wyatt." He said. "If I wanted to ice you, I would've. If I wanted to ice anyone, I would. But I'm retired now."
"What made you do that?" I asked, wondering how this man wasn't permanently imprisoned in Iron Heights right now.
"The second Flash, Barry Allen. You know him but hate his kids on principal, apparently?" He asked, and I nodded. "He was a real sonuvabitch. That guy. Let me tell you. I was born after they had made all the superheroes from the forties hang up their capes. I grew up in that time, the days where people would tell stories about Jay Garrick, before he died. How he'd zip in and save people. Let me just say, if anyone needed saving, it was me and my sister."
"The Golden Glider?" I asked, and the man nodded.
"My dad was a real fucking scumbag piece of work." Snart said. His eyes glossed over a bit, and the frown that took over his gaunt face changed his appearance. Suddenly I could see it, the man looked like the mugshots from the internet with this scowl. "You ever see the Wikipedia page about me? They get it wrong, and I don't care to have this fact known, so keep it to yourself. He was an abusive piece of shit, but the reason I got into crime wasn't to escape him. It was so I could send Lisa off to some nice training program for her skating."
"Lisa is your sister." I supplied and he nodded.
"My granddad would always say shit like 'Lisa has a gift, Lenny. She could skate right up into the sky if she wanted.' Stuff like that. I loved my granddad, and I didn't know shit about figure skating, but he said it and it stuck with me. So I hit 18 in 1969, and struck out to make enough money for Lisa to skate. I tried to get a job engineering, I always had a knack for machines, but that was a bust. No degree and no chance for college, I couldn't give a shit about sitting in a room and hearing something I could learn myself.
I was always sort of a bad kid, I had to work out my aggression somehow, and that led to me finding myself a part of a heist, this was in '71, a few years before the Justice League. Some guy I went to East High with wanted me to help him plan a heist. I had a perfect plan, and he found these glasses that reduced muzzle flash, I'm sure you've seen them."
I nodded.
"Well, as soon as we get away, I'm planning everything I'll do with my cut. Send Lisa to some prestigious program, whatever the fuck I wanted, et cetera. Then a red blur stopped us."
"Barry Allen." I supplied.
"Exactly. A bunch of stuff happened after that, but that's how I got busted for the first time. Then I went to prison and broke out when I figured out my Cold Gun."
"Which you made." I said, supplying what little I knew of the man.
"I sure fucking did. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise kid. That shit is my baby, my life's work. That book of Allen's where he says I "may have stolen the technology"? Bullshit. He has one of my best guns ever in that fucking museum of his, and he still thinks I stole it? What a putz." The words sound angry, but reminiscing about the Flash seems to soften Snart's expression a bit.
"Why did you save me?" I ask, blurting out.
"Well, because I thought you were gonna die, and I was on one of my more generous streaks." Snart says. "But after hearing that story. I think you might be the guy to do something big for me."
"Which is?" I asked, suspicious of the sudden attention and praise.
"Well, I got to thinking a few years back." Snart said, draining his coffee and gesturing to the tired-looking waitress to fill his cup. "I quit when Barry Allen died, and then he came back to life, and I went back to work. He and that Kid Flash were always trying to stop me. Then he retired for good, and I thought 'why keep up the game with some kid The Flash picked to replace him?" He shrugged. "The Flash as we know him now is the old Kid Flash, right? And he's got a Kid Flash now, that Impulse kid. Then there's the Tornado Twins, Central City's newest starlets. Every fucking five feet there's a Flash." He pointed a finger at me, stabbing the air as he ranted. "You can't walk down the street without running into a damned Flash."
He paused for a moment.
"So, I thought. If there's a Flash Jr., why not make myself a Captain Cold Jr.? What's stopping me from giving some kid my gear and letting him loose on the world? Mirror Master died, and when he died, they gave his gear to some scottish prick!" Snart put his hand down, and affected a conciliatory tone. "As much as I love McCulloch, he's in a good place, clean now, but he was tripping halfway to fucking Gotham when I ran into him and brought him into the Rogues."
The waitress refills his cup.
"You want anything?" He gestures to the menu. "I'll have my usual, Dolores." He says, and I nod.
"I'll take the same." I said, and take a minute to think over his words so far. He's looking for a protege and I'm in fucking contention.
"The fucking government gave him his gear to kill Animal Man. Fucking Buddy Baker, can you imagine? What's he ever done to deserve sending a hitman who can go through mirrors at him? Starred in Goosehead? While I think that movie's a shitty attempt at cinema-"
"Do you want me to become a criminal?" I ask, trying to get to the gist of his spiel.
"Criminal? Maybe. I really don't give a shit what you end up doing. I was a criminal because I liked it. I did good too, sometimes. It isn't necessarily as binary as you might think." He confesses to me in a conspiratory way. "But what I really want is a legacy. Someone to bring the name Captain Cold to the modern era. Someone I can train to be exactly as good as me, and then let them go off into the world."
"I'm no criminal." I said, immediately.
"Pretty sure you just bashed in a guy's head with a baseball bat." He says, and I look to the bat he stashed underneath the table. It was a whirlwind, me, dazed and hurt getting pulled into a car after he saved me. I'm not exactly sure what part of town I'm in. "I think that makes you a criminal."
"What do you want for this generous gift of your secrets?" I asked sarcastically. He was giving ME the keys to the Leonard Snart vault? Just because I'd gotten the shit kicked out of me? Unlikely.
"I want a favor, TBD for now, but I have a good idea." He said, as our food arrived. "You'll be ready for it when the time comes."
"Ready for what?"
"Anything. I'm gonna teach you everything I know about being me. All my secrets, and you can go out, and be a fucking pediatrician with 'em for all I care. All I want is another Captain Cold out in the world."
"You really think you can make me ready for anything?" I asked. "Just with some training and a few gadgets?"
"Kid who do you think you're talking to?" He said, looking at me with an annoyed expression. "I used to go toe-to-toe with The Flash, the fastest man on earth, with a gun I made from a theory somebody had about bombing the Flash to slow him down enough to be captured. I made a gun with a homemade cyclotron that can slow anything down with just that idea. I faced a god, in the flesh, for kicks and cash, and I'm alive, and I'm rich. I made it out of the big game we all play when we put on masks with a fucking presidential pardon for valor in the face of extreme adversity." He stabs an egg with a fork. "I'm a certified badass, and even if I'm just fucking with you, don't you think that anything I know could be enough to protect your sister, or your mother? The shit I forget has made a man who can run so fast he can travel through time pull his hair out in frustration. All I want from you is a favor."
"You imply it'll be a dangerous task." I said, puttering a bit.
"A task I will more than prepare you for. I'm telling you this now, kid. Upfront. All I have is what's in my head, and I want to give it to you. I'll even throw in a bit of cash, so you can forget about your troubles with money for a bit while I train you, and all I want is for you to take my name and do something with it. Good, bad, whatever. Significance is what's important."
"All this because I got beat up?" I ask, and he scowls.
"I'm losing patience, kid." He puts up three fingers. "Count of three, you in or out?"
"1." He says, lowering a finger, and I think frantically for something to latch onto. It seems so fantastical that-
"2." He says, and I throw up my hands in surrender.
"I'll do it." I say, and he grins.
"Excellent. You in school?" I nod, and he grabs his chin with his fingers.
"We'll finish our meals, I'll get the check, and then you'll loudly thank me for saving you from those thugs. Loudly. I'll take the bat and get rid of it. Tomorrow, wait until it's dark and then meet me at my building's garden. We'll start there."
"Can I ask one thing?" I ask, and he shakes his body out, like he's frustrated.
"What?" He says, and I struggle to think of a way to phrase this.
"Why me?" I settle on this simple way to phrase it, and he looks at me appraisingly before I continue. "I'm fat, and lazy, and dumb, and I couldn't even save my sister from something that was so terrible she shut the world out. I'm useless."
"Kid, you fucked that guy up good. He beat the snot out of you and you stood up and made him pay for everything he did. If he wakes up, you think he's gonna fuck with you again? You think the world fucks with me? Nah, I fuck with the world. You stood up for what you cared about, and you hurt that fucker where it counts. You ain't pretty, and you ain't gifted. But neither was I. You got cajones, kid. Real big brass ones, and I'm not ashamed to say that I used to be like you. But now I got the tricks, and I see you, a good-for-nothing, do anything he can to get revenge on a guy for messing with his family? I see a little me on that sidewalk get up and bash that guy? I want to give you all I have because you can be like me, and I know it. Plus, you ended up here, with me, so that's some sort of serendipity, right?" He trails off. "I can be more eloquent when it isn't 4am. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, fuck it, why not you?"
There I was, half-drunk from being beaten up, half-drunk from actual alcohol, across from Captain Cold, and being told that he liked the look of me enough to offer me his treasure trove of secrets so I could "fuck with the world", and I was so burnt out from everything, that all I could reply with was: "Fuck it, right? Let's do this."
Leonard Snart looked at me and smiled, and I felt something click in my head.
This would change everything for me.
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Well, it is on the way. Thanks for reading!
He's my favorite DC villain, so I'm trying to do him right. Thanks for the compliment.
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
This will be addressed in a future installment. It's interesting how people phrase this. Sure, you could go corporate, but these people are all criminals by choice. I always felt that it was interesting how ignored that aspect of the character was. Sure, corporatizing is an objective way to view it, but isn't it more interesting that they choose to commit crimes instead? It says a lot about them as people.
Also, in regards to Flash, he's the same way. He influences the decorum of those he fights as much as Batman, but because he is more lenient, the crimes in his city aren't as dark or extreme.
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- Location
- alphen aan den rijn
well this just got a follow
- Location
- Texas
Watched. I like it. I like your characterization of Snart, and your MC is actually someone I wouldn't mind reading more about. That rarely happens.
I understand that as a supervillain is the MC's mentor, we might get some flavored commentary, but I do hope you don't plan to demonize the Flashes. Even if he doesn't replicate the "guarded mutual respect but still totally enemies" thing the Rogues had down, the Flash can be an antagonist without being a douche. We'll see.
Looking forward to more.
I understand that as a supervillain is the MC's mentor, we might get some flavored commentary, but I do hope you don't plan to demonize the Flashes. Even if he doesn't replicate the "guarded mutual respect but still totally enemies" thing the Rogues had down, the Flash can be an antagonist without being a douche. We'll see.
Looking forward to more.
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Thanks and totally agreed. The Flash's dynamic is so interesting because it's jovial. There's a respect in the understanding that there are criminals and heroes and they are bound to conflict with each other. I love that dynamic quite a bit and shall not forget about it.
Part 3
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I got home and crawled into bed. I didn't wake up until noon the next day, when it was too late to go to class. I quickly called the office, and said that I was sick, pretending to be my dad. They told me to call earlier next time and I apologized. Then I hung up and took a shower.
Hung over and beaten is a bad combination. My out of shape mass of pudginess was bruised all over, and my stupid brain didn't put two and two together until it was too late for me to hide my bruises.
"What happened to you?" I heard Darcy say from a doorway. I was wearing just a towel, and I decided to lie.
"I fell down some stairs." I grinned at her, in what I hoped was a convincing way. "Drank a bit too much last night. Can I use the room to get changed?"
Our apartment was too small to have me and Darcy get separate rooms. It meant a lot of strategic thinking for my necessary privacy, but it was better than being on the street. That was my way of thinking about a lot of things.
I had once lived on the street when I was 11 for a day when my mother had denied me something we couldn't afford. I slept in an alleyway that night and got so ridiculously sick the next day that by the time I got home, I was ready to pass out. It wasn't much in the way of actual life issues, but it taught me a lesson in humility and acceptance when I was ready to learn it.
My mom had been crying when I came back, too. That hurt the most. I didn't realize how much I had impacted one person. I hated how much she cared, and vowed to never let anyone care about me that much. She and Darcy were grandfathered in to that policy, but I never look to make people care about me because of it. In my view, if it led to this sort of pain when I'd leave, and I'd leave because people always leave, I'd rather avoid the process entirely.
I know I have a lot of issues, but there's no way I'm going to address them. Not with my insurance.
That was a joke. I don't actually have insurance.
The reason I protected Darcy was because she looked up to me for some stupid reason. Our Mother (a saint), Wonder Woman, Tchaikovsky, Thelonious Monk, and Wyatt fuckin' Granger. Her list of inspirational people, not mine, actually. She was proud of that list, too. When she finished it she showed everyone.
That was quite a while ago.
The timer on my phone went off, so I dried my hand with a towel to shut off the buzzer and with my other hand I turned off the hot water. A strict two minutes per-day, per-person, need to save money on that heating bill. The heat had warmed me up, and now it was time to face my chill for today. I usually didn't reminisce as much in the shower, but I had been distracted and now I needed to rinse the shampoo out.
I grit my teeth, the sensitivity of my bruised flesh and the few cuts where their kicks and punches hit a bit too hard and split skin were already through the worst of it. The heat was unbearable, so this, while unbearable in its own completely different way, was somewhat soothing.
I walked out of the shower once the cold water had washed out all of my soapy bits, and looked in the mirror, trying to objectively see what could make me seem any sort of Captain Cold-ish.
I tried grimacing, but it just made my pudgy face seem like Augustus Gloop being denied a sweet. Not very intimidating. My overgrown mop of curly coffee colored hair was beginning to grow into my eyes, a watery grey color, and when I squinted it looked like I had dropped a contact. I had a pubey beard that I didn't bother to shave, too. I began to rectify that. When I was clean shaven, I reflected on how baby smooth skin made me look like a mutant infant that had grown to huge size. My body was no prize either. My heft was wider than my frame, awkwardly jutting out at weird places. If I wore brown clothing I looked more like a potato or some big lumpy shit than anything else. Well, to be fair to myself, I looked like a big lumpy shit in everything.
I began to dress, putting my old Casio watch on and checking the time. It had only really been twenty minutes since I had woken up, and there was another late night ahead of me, if everything went according to Leonard Snart's machinations. I needed to decide how to play this.
I decided to go out of the house and try and figure out what I was going to do. Involving Darcy would be a bad idea, and there was no need to plan for anything long-term as of yet. I was sure that there wouldn't be any longevity to my candidacy as a Cold, if it wasn't for my wounds and my certainty that the events of the previous night.
I got onto a bus and looked around. There was a couple of young people, older than me, maybe college aged, who were casually talking. They seemed to be in-between. They weren't as intimate as a couple, but they seemed close, like they were feeling out each other's interest. They were talking about Spring Break, sharing casually horrible stories, about blacking out and filming drunk friends at incoherent states.
It struck me as dark, but I knew that I really wished I was in the place of the young man, he was speaking to a beautiful black girl who struck me as out of my league.
As the conversation switched to how they liked their coursework, I realized why I wanted to be the boy. The girl was watching him and cared. She wanted to get along with him, he was desired.
Even though I believed I needed to be above that want, to feel desired and loved, I was jealous, and I had a profound realization. That Leonard Snart was offering me an identity that came with the sort of privilege I wanted. To take what I desired and to be able to control my environment, to make it reflect myself.
I knew then that I had to absorb everything I could. I never thought of myself as worth anything and this was
This was my only chance. I wasn't smart enough to do something beyond labor, I didn't have Darcy's gift. Snart was my ticket into a world that would give me what I wanted. What did I want exactly, though?
That girl over there, the power, Snart's abilities, his gear, his reputation, a future. I realized the reason I had held a belief that people shouldn't care about me was because I couldn't effect what happened to me. But now, I could fuck the world.
It wouldn't matter that I didn't like anything mainstream, or that I was an ugly fuck. These things wouldn't matter if I could ice anyone who would fuck with me.
If I have power, I can make my own fate. I can be more than I was meant to be. I get to choose.
I wanted that choice, more than anything.
That night, after a long and hard think, I went to Snart's building. He was waiting there for me. The darkness made his gaunt features even more exaggerated.
"Hey, Wyatt. How goes it?" He asked, and I nodded.
"Just fine, Mr. Snart." I replied.
"Mr. Snart. I like that, yeah." He scratched his chin. "You ready to start?"
"Sure am." I replied.
He gestured to a box on the ground. An opaque plastic storage box I couldn't make out the contents of.
"Open it, kid." I nodded and walked over. I popped the lid off and looked through it. There were some tools, a fuckton of nails, and about 600 dollars in twenties.
"What's all this?" I asked, and he chuckled.
"Since you liked breaking it so much, you get to fix my garden." He said, and laughed fully, it was a wheezy guffaw, and I felt like I was being duped. "A few other tasks for you." The relief I felt when he revealed it wasn't just a ploy for me to fix his garden. "This is all for you to lose that gut of yours. A boot camp of sorts."
He pointed to the dilapidated flower beds. Loose boards had broken away from the bases and soil spilled out onto the cobblestone walkways. The grass was patchy in some places and overgrown in others.
"Fix the beds, seed the grass, and plant some veggies. I like hot peppers, but don't feel like you have to cater exclusively to me." He said.
"I feel like I should anyway." I replied, honestly.
"Good instincts. Can you do a push-up?" He asked, and I shook my head. "Does you school have a place you can work out?"
"I… think so." I replied. I knew there was some place the jocks worked out at my school, but I didn't know where.
"Well, figure it out." Snart said. "You have a second assignment. This is daily. Walk for a half mile on a treadmill, run for a mile, walk for a half mile."
"Why?" I asked.
"Kid, you're fat. Captain Cold isn't fat. You also need to eat less than 2000 calories per day. Learn it. If you fail at these two things, you will do 100 push-ups. I'll know."
"What else?" I asked, and he shook his head.
"Step one first. Lose 50 pounds and finish this assignment and I'll tell you step two." He said, and then walked away. "Take the cash. Use it for the repairs. Anything you don't use is yours, but that's all the money you get until step two. Understand?"
"I suppose so." I said, unsure of the way I'd accomplish this task.
"Don't suppose, know. Did you understand what I require you to do?" He said, sharper than before.
I nodded.
"What do you have to do?" He asked.
"Lose fifty pounds, run for a mile each day, and consume less than two thousand calories." I repeated.
"Don't forget the cool down. Walk for a half mile before and after. I don't need a delay in my timeline because you fucked up your legs working out like a moron." He said. "I'll be around if you need help, but this is a test. You have two months. If you don't weigh in fifty pounds less than you do right now, you're out. If you don't fix my garden to my standards, you're out. Learn how to eat healthy, you'll live past 35. Get in better shape, and you'll probably be able to handle my next steps to the finish line."
"You got it, Mr. Snart." I replied. He looked me up and down for a final time.
"You can handle it. If you do exactly this, and don't lose weight anyway, I'll take you to a doctor and we'll figure it out from there. But I'm betting that you've just got some rotten habits behind that heft." He said, pointing his finger at me. "I'll be in touch."
Then he walked off, leaving me alone with a bunch of cash, tools, and nails. I reflected on my new tasks and thought long and hard. It was time to take control.
Hung over and beaten is a bad combination. My out of shape mass of pudginess was bruised all over, and my stupid brain didn't put two and two together until it was too late for me to hide my bruises.
"What happened to you?" I heard Darcy say from a doorway. I was wearing just a towel, and I decided to lie.
"I fell down some stairs." I grinned at her, in what I hoped was a convincing way. "Drank a bit too much last night. Can I use the room to get changed?"
Our apartment was too small to have me and Darcy get separate rooms. It meant a lot of strategic thinking for my necessary privacy, but it was better than being on the street. That was my way of thinking about a lot of things.
I had once lived on the street when I was 11 for a day when my mother had denied me something we couldn't afford. I slept in an alleyway that night and got so ridiculously sick the next day that by the time I got home, I was ready to pass out. It wasn't much in the way of actual life issues, but it taught me a lesson in humility and acceptance when I was ready to learn it.
My mom had been crying when I came back, too. That hurt the most. I didn't realize how much I had impacted one person. I hated how much she cared, and vowed to never let anyone care about me that much. She and Darcy were grandfathered in to that policy, but I never look to make people care about me because of it. In my view, if it led to this sort of pain when I'd leave, and I'd leave because people always leave, I'd rather avoid the process entirely.
I know I have a lot of issues, but there's no way I'm going to address them. Not with my insurance.
That was a joke. I don't actually have insurance.
The reason I protected Darcy was because she looked up to me for some stupid reason. Our Mother (a saint), Wonder Woman, Tchaikovsky, Thelonious Monk, and Wyatt fuckin' Granger. Her list of inspirational people, not mine, actually. She was proud of that list, too. When she finished it she showed everyone.
That was quite a while ago.
The timer on my phone went off, so I dried my hand with a towel to shut off the buzzer and with my other hand I turned off the hot water. A strict two minutes per-day, per-person, need to save money on that heating bill. The heat had warmed me up, and now it was time to face my chill for today. I usually didn't reminisce as much in the shower, but I had been distracted and now I needed to rinse the shampoo out.
I grit my teeth, the sensitivity of my bruised flesh and the few cuts where their kicks and punches hit a bit too hard and split skin were already through the worst of it. The heat was unbearable, so this, while unbearable in its own completely different way, was somewhat soothing.
I walked out of the shower once the cold water had washed out all of my soapy bits, and looked in the mirror, trying to objectively see what could make me seem any sort of Captain Cold-ish.
I tried grimacing, but it just made my pudgy face seem like Augustus Gloop being denied a sweet. Not very intimidating. My overgrown mop of curly coffee colored hair was beginning to grow into my eyes, a watery grey color, and when I squinted it looked like I had dropped a contact. I had a pubey beard that I didn't bother to shave, too. I began to rectify that. When I was clean shaven, I reflected on how baby smooth skin made me look like a mutant infant that had grown to huge size. My body was no prize either. My heft was wider than my frame, awkwardly jutting out at weird places. If I wore brown clothing I looked more like a potato or some big lumpy shit than anything else. Well, to be fair to myself, I looked like a big lumpy shit in everything.
I began to dress, putting my old Casio watch on and checking the time. It had only really been twenty minutes since I had woken up, and there was another late night ahead of me, if everything went according to Leonard Snart's machinations. I needed to decide how to play this.
I decided to go out of the house and try and figure out what I was going to do. Involving Darcy would be a bad idea, and there was no need to plan for anything long-term as of yet. I was sure that there wouldn't be any longevity to my candidacy as a Cold, if it wasn't for my wounds and my certainty that the events of the previous night.
I got onto a bus and looked around. There was a couple of young people, older than me, maybe college aged, who were casually talking. They seemed to be in-between. They weren't as intimate as a couple, but they seemed close, like they were feeling out each other's interest. They were talking about Spring Break, sharing casually horrible stories, about blacking out and filming drunk friends at incoherent states.
It struck me as dark, but I knew that I really wished I was in the place of the young man, he was speaking to a beautiful black girl who struck me as out of my league.
As the conversation switched to how they liked their coursework, I realized why I wanted to be the boy. The girl was watching him and cared. She wanted to get along with him, he was desired.
Even though I believed I needed to be above that want, to feel desired and loved, I was jealous, and I had a profound realization. That Leonard Snart was offering me an identity that came with the sort of privilege I wanted. To take what I desired and to be able to control my environment, to make it reflect myself.
I knew then that I had to absorb everything I could. I never thought of myself as worth anything and this was
This was my only chance. I wasn't smart enough to do something beyond labor, I didn't have Darcy's gift. Snart was my ticket into a world that would give me what I wanted. What did I want exactly, though?
That girl over there, the power, Snart's abilities, his gear, his reputation, a future. I realized the reason I had held a belief that people shouldn't care about me was because I couldn't effect what happened to me. But now, I could fuck the world.
It wouldn't matter that I didn't like anything mainstream, or that I was an ugly fuck. These things wouldn't matter if I could ice anyone who would fuck with me.
If I have power, I can make my own fate. I can be more than I was meant to be. I get to choose.
I wanted that choice, more than anything.
That night, after a long and hard think, I went to Snart's building. He was waiting there for me. The darkness made his gaunt features even more exaggerated.
"Hey, Wyatt. How goes it?" He asked, and I nodded.
"Just fine, Mr. Snart." I replied.
"Mr. Snart. I like that, yeah." He scratched his chin. "You ready to start?"
"Sure am." I replied.
He gestured to a box on the ground. An opaque plastic storage box I couldn't make out the contents of.
"Open it, kid." I nodded and walked over. I popped the lid off and looked through it. There were some tools, a fuckton of nails, and about 600 dollars in twenties.
"What's all this?" I asked, and he chuckled.
"Since you liked breaking it so much, you get to fix my garden." He said, and laughed fully, it was a wheezy guffaw, and I felt like I was being duped. "A few other tasks for you." The relief I felt when he revealed it wasn't just a ploy for me to fix his garden. "This is all for you to lose that gut of yours. A boot camp of sorts."
He pointed to the dilapidated flower beds. Loose boards had broken away from the bases and soil spilled out onto the cobblestone walkways. The grass was patchy in some places and overgrown in others.
"Fix the beds, seed the grass, and plant some veggies. I like hot peppers, but don't feel like you have to cater exclusively to me." He said.
"I feel like I should anyway." I replied, honestly.
"Good instincts. Can you do a push-up?" He asked, and I shook my head. "Does you school have a place you can work out?"
"I… think so." I replied. I knew there was some place the jocks worked out at my school, but I didn't know where.
"Well, figure it out." Snart said. "You have a second assignment. This is daily. Walk for a half mile on a treadmill, run for a mile, walk for a half mile."
"Why?" I asked.
"Kid, you're fat. Captain Cold isn't fat. You also need to eat less than 2000 calories per day. Learn it. If you fail at these two things, you will do 100 push-ups. I'll know."
"What else?" I asked, and he shook his head.
"Step one first. Lose 50 pounds and finish this assignment and I'll tell you step two." He said, and then walked away. "Take the cash. Use it for the repairs. Anything you don't use is yours, but that's all the money you get until step two. Understand?"
"I suppose so." I said, unsure of the way I'd accomplish this task.
"Don't suppose, know. Did you understand what I require you to do?" He said, sharper than before.
I nodded.
"What do you have to do?" He asked.
"Lose fifty pounds, run for a mile each day, and consume less than two thousand calories." I repeated.
"Don't forget the cool down. Walk for a half mile before and after. I don't need a delay in my timeline because you fucked up your legs working out like a moron." He said. "I'll be around if you need help, but this is a test. You have two months. If you don't weigh in fifty pounds less than you do right now, you're out. If you don't fix my garden to my standards, you're out. Learn how to eat healthy, you'll live past 35. Get in better shape, and you'll probably be able to handle my next steps to the finish line."
"You got it, Mr. Snart." I replied. He looked me up and down for a final time.
"You can handle it. If you do exactly this, and don't lose weight anyway, I'll take you to a doctor and we'll figure it out from there. But I'm betting that you've just got some rotten habits behind that heft." He said, pointing his finger at me. "I'll be in touch."
Then he walked off, leaving me alone with a bunch of cash, tools, and nails. I reflected on my new tasks and thought long and hard. It was time to take control.
Last edited:
Part 4
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
East Central High was ironically not the easternmost of the city's secondary education institutions.
Famously, the closer to the Missouri River you were, the richer you were, and there was a lot of room to expand in the opposite direction from the river for cheap housing. People needed to work in those rich businesses and do manual labor after all, and with the west leading straight to Keystone City, there was really only one option that worked. Unfortunately, living in houses that were nice became a needed luxury and that same expansion began again with the goal of creating suburban homes.
These new populated areas became popular for allowing yuppie wasps to get a house, and gradually the borders on all sides of Central City became surrounded by suburbs. So there was the Uber rich west of the city, the hub central part, the suburban infill, and the small slums that remained for the lowest people, right in the middle. People infested Leawood, the area where storage warehouses for imported goods that traveled up the river that had become a cheap place to live due to various odors from poorly preserved fish and meats that rotted within their warehouses. The odors stayed long past when the warehouses had become dilapidated and disused, and shitty project apartments now rose from the ground like an infection of herpes.
It had nothing beautiful, no clashes of differing architecture that defined modern skylines, and the buildings weren't even that tall, just numerous. There were shitty Chinese restaurants what seemed like every four feet, and dingy alleys that made you feel like you'd be robbed, killed, or worse were the only type of alley that seemed to exist.
But it was home, I suppose.
East High was the melting pot, all the people that lived in the 'Wood got sent here eventually, and years ago a gang truce made the place a safe zone. It had been heavily renovated in the nineties due to a city-wide upheaval of education, but had remained mostly untouched since.
In terms of inner-city schools, it could have been worse. There was serious consequences from everyone if you tried shit there, and as a result, no one did. The school was a ghetto version of a TV high school, all anyone did was drugs or fuck, or both. The only people who got out were bookworms with serious brains, or jocks. To go with this theme, it had a lot of sports facilities and resources. Most of the money that went into the school came from rich alums or people obsessed with preserving our rep.
East High Giants, Central City basketball champs 18 times consecutively, a city record.
We had a daily uniform, an effort to try and get kids to stop dressing so revealingly so our teachers would stop ending up on the news. A tan polo shirt and black slacks, any shoes were okay, and you could "accessorize freely" according to the student handbook.
The cream at this school eventually rose to the top, and everything else fell to the wayside, as long as you didn't cause trouble. Smoke weed? Fine, just don't do it blatantly and don't give it to the students who mattered. Drink, screw, fight? Make sure the cops don't need to be called.
Every teacher was either inundated to the whole thing, or on their way to being so. I felt bad for them, some young guy or gal or whatever decides to make a difference in a shit school and inevitably they leave or submit to the casual hedonism that was rampant. But you have 35 kids per class per hour for six hours, and see how you keep. Low shelf life for our teachers. They either got bought or curdled.
But this wasn't what mattered to me today. I needed to see if I could work out without getting my ass kicked by fifty people who "claimed" a spot.
There were lots of nooks and crannies that were like little clubhouses, all around the huge-for-it's-type campus. One thing that I'll say about midwesterners, they sure knew how to make big things. Our school took up almost four square blocks, including a bunch of sports fields, storage sheds, and so on. We were funded well, thank God for that, but still, there were huge problems that needed to be addressed, but there were no shortage of small spaces one could claim. Each group had one, and I did too, just for myself. A small door that led out of the building and into a clump of trees. No overlooking windows so I was free to do whatever I wanted there.
I mostly drank and smoked.
But as I checked into the peace requirements, I also checked into the requirements that honored claimed spots.
So I went to see Jay.
Jay was an old friend. My code of distance had Darla and my mom exempt. Jay was almost exempt too, if only by virtue of me actually thinking he was worth a damn.
Jay was a native son of CC, like me. He and I had met on the playground in elementary school and we talked everyday about many of our common interests. He hung out in a disused corner of the campus with some of his friends where they smoked cigarettes and vaped during their free moments.
He was my friend, my tobacco guy, my weed guy, he was an anything-you-could-think-of guy, not that I ever really needed any other types of guys. He was the one who got me into debauchery when he and I used to try and tag along with his older siblings, and they took us on weird adventures in drugs. Good family, lotta heart.
East High is huge. It's gotta be, because no one else wants Leawood kids, so the tons of small areas around the place were either for privacy or to smoke a bowl when class is boring. For Jay and his friends, this was every class.
"Jay." I said, as I walked up to him the day after my quest from Snart was assigned.
"What's up bro!" Jay said, walking over to me. He and I had a secret handshake, nothing too crazy, but it was a nice friendship thing we enjoyed without irony together. "You down to toke with us for a minute? On me?"
"What's the occasion?" I asked.
"You know the guys on 41st Street? The Marcoes?" Jay asked, and I nodded. One of Jay's buddies piped up.
"The Macros."
"Those fuckers?" Jay asked, and I nodded. "Somebody fucked up their leader and some friends are moving quick into the market there. Profits are going to be way up." He pranced around his friends, interacting with them each in a personalized specific way as he did so. A handshake here, a toke there, a joke here.. He would change a bit about himself, just to be comfortable with them, engage in chat, and flit around like a hummingbird.
"Huh." I said. "No, I can't. I gotta lose weight. No smoking for now while I focus on my routine."
Jay gave me a look of pride, while everyone else laughed. The worst thing about being a big guy is that people notice you're big. My eating habits were known, a lot and often being the usual modus operandi. Even if I didn't want people around, when you had a friend like Jay, there was a lot of inevitable attention. He let me experience enough of popular people to know being different was a bad thing to then, and I was very different.
Now, this didn't mean I was bullied, far from it. I used to be, when we were all much younger, but I was a curiosity to the common people nowadays. Too big to be bullied, too weird to be accepted. When I was with Jay, there was inevitable clash, he was just too damn nice to everyone, but usually I was left alone.
"Hey, all of you-" Jay said, eyebrows knit close together in annoyance. "Fuck off for a minute." The group looked at him with exasperation, but they were his sycophants, they'd listen.
After they all cleared out, I sat with him.
"What's inspiring this, bud?" He asked, and I sighed.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." I said, and he nodded slowly.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Jay asked, and I thought about it for a minute. I wouldn't tell my family as to not worry them, but if I were to tell someone, it would be Jay.
I decided to wait to make a decision. If I could tell him now, I could tell him later, too. It still wasn't technically anything yet.
"Nah, but I do have a question." I replied.
"Shoot, dude." He said, and smiled. "Is it about that new Asian student?"
"What? No. I wanted to know if there are any gyms here I can use."
"You sure? He's cute." Jay grinned lecherously and I felt a bit uncomfortable. Not because he was trying to gauge my interest in men, whatever to that, but because I really was uncomfortable in regards to the intimacy of romance in general. It's always appealed to me in an objective way, but anytime I seriously think about it, it gets me anxious. I suppose it has to do with my intimacy hang-ups and the fact that my father left which means I think romance is doomed to fail. Or whatever, could be anything.
"Just the gym, please." I replied.
"Talk to David Ahlinnes, he's a good dude who'll support a real fitness kick. Avoid his sister." Jay said, and slapped me on the back. "I'm proud of you, Wyatt. You deserve to be happy."
"Ooooookay. Thanks buddy." I stood up and left, waving, and he grinned.
"Can you tell the guys to come back?" He said. "Those guys-"
"Would suck your dick if you asked." I joked, but he got a solemn look and nodded. "Jesus, really?"
"I'm a charismatic dude, Wyatt. How else would you explain me being friends with the surliest dude in Central City?"
"That's a fair point, Jay. I wouldn't call myself the surliest though."
After a bit more time catching up, I left and the group of Jay's posse filed back to the spot as soon as I left. I needed to find David Ahlinnes, the school's best basketball player. It was lunch period now, so I headed to the wretched hive of scum and villainy. The East Central High School cafeteria.
As I walked in, I saw the breakdown of students, the people broken into their little cliques of interest and race, each willingly segregating themselves into groups that made them feel the most comfortable. It was here that I felt the least guilty about separating myself from these people, who already were going to separate themselves. What if I wanted to sit with both an asian vehicle enthusiast AND a D&D nerd? There wouldn't be any solution in this place.
I spotted Ahlinnes as soon as I walked into the place. He was a tall dude, blonde and handsome, and as I walked up to him, he looked surprised.
"Hey David, can I speak to you?" I asked, and he slowly nodded. "I need a place to work out, I'm trying to get into shape." As soon as I said this, his smile became large enough to split his face.
"Seriously? I can show you a few things. Are you interested in playing for the basketball team? I think you'd make a great point guard."
"I'm still fat dude." I replied, a little surprised. "Why would you think I'd want to play basketball?"
"You're a young guy, you've got potential." He replied. "I could whip into shape in time for next year's season. Tall dude, good eyes, good mind-"
"Good mind?" I asked, confused. I was nobody's first choice for anything scholastic.
"Please. Wyatt, you think anyone thinks you're stupid?" He said, and started grabbing at his friend's arm. I was honestly surprised he knew my name. "Yo, Keroy, wouldn't Granger make a great point guard?" Keroy Douglass, a tall black kid and the team's center, looked me up and down.
"Can he shoot?" He said, in a low drawl.
"Can you shoot, Granger?" Asked Ahlinnes, and I shrugged.
"I've never tried, I guess." I looked at the group of guys sizing me up, and felt weird. Why would they want me?
"Raw, un-tempered. He'd be great." Ahlinnes said, gesturing down the table. "We could finally put Roke in center." Josiah Rokeley, or Roke, looked up from his meal, determined nothing of importance was happening, and went back to his meal.
"Roke can't shoot threes." Agreed Keroy.
"No he cannot." Ahlinnes looked me up and down. "You free after class? I can give you a workout list-"
"I'm really only looking to run on a treadmill at the moment." I said, but he shook his head.
"You gotta work out everything, or you won't get cut. Are you eating right? The basketball team has a nutritionist."
"Our books for english are so busted they can barely be used, and the basketball team has a nutritionist?" I asked, incredulously.
"Sure." Ahlinnes said, and Keroy nodded.
I sighed.
After school, Ahlinnes gave me a workout plan, which included showing me how to shoot a basketball, and a promise from me to "seriously consider" trying out next year, and training with them in the meantime. He said he had to get to practice, and after a few practice shots on the court outside, which were mainly whiffs, I went in to run my mile. Puzzling the whole time about my warm reception by the star athlete and his posse.
By the time I was done my "cooldown", I thought I was going to die. I was huffing and puffing so bad, my heart was pounding, but I had done it, and when I finished stretching, another point of focus from our star player, I took a shower and walked home, and began to puzzle out eating a set amount of calories per day. I had no idea what that meant.
It became apparent to me that caloric intake had become something I disregarded as I became an older person pretty apparently. My mom had always tried to keep me fed well, and I asked for large portions, so it made sense I ballooned up as I went through puberty and now I'm in my situation.
The breakdown was that my height, my bmi, et cetera, said if I exercised well and ate 2000 calories, I'd lose about two or three pounds a week. That wouldn't be enough, so I decided to crash course it. I asked my Mom for only healthy options. I said to her "Mom, I need to lose weight." She looked like she might cry. She had been worrying about me. She said she didn't want me to go away too soon, like my dad.
My dad was a real scumbag, he and my Mom met at a Skynyrd concert and that really defines the relationship in a nutshell. My mom was a bookish nerd all her life, smart as a whip, disciplined, tough. My Dad was the first guy probably ever who went after her. They ended up discovering that they lived very close, so my father, being an industrious and crafty man, went after it hard.
When my Grandma and Grandpa were alive, I asked them about my Dad, and they told me that he probably held onto what he had as long as he could. A very generous assessment. But two kids and an abandoned wife later, he was gone.
Mom cares so much about us. We're her everything. So when I told her I wanted to lose weight, she changed gears immediately. She wanted to avoid pressuring me, but was willing to do so when asked.
She wanted me to get into shape, and decided to take care of me on that front. No sweets, no junk, just diet and exercise. Home would now be a healthy zone. I didn't tell her why I was doing it, and it was beginning to become apparent that I would be keeping a lot of people in the dark about my motives. Everyone, really. She told me how to measure things out and what I needed to make a healthy lunch to take to school, which would be better than eating the swill they prepared.
She was so excited and hopeful, I decided to avoid the topic of being potentially recruited onto the star team of our school. Didn't want to give her hope I'd become something sort of functional. Thinking back to Ahlinnes' weirdly exuberant offer, it made no sense. "Good eyes, good mind"? I had mediocre grades, and sure I didn't need glasses, but whatever.
This was quick progress, a step in the right direction, and I knew that oddly, there were people behind my back, pushing me forward. Now all I needed to do was hide all the reasons why I was actually doing it.
Famously, the closer to the Missouri River you were, the richer you were, and there was a lot of room to expand in the opposite direction from the river for cheap housing. People needed to work in those rich businesses and do manual labor after all, and with the west leading straight to Keystone City, there was really only one option that worked. Unfortunately, living in houses that were nice became a needed luxury and that same expansion began again with the goal of creating suburban homes.
These new populated areas became popular for allowing yuppie wasps to get a house, and gradually the borders on all sides of Central City became surrounded by suburbs. So there was the Uber rich west of the city, the hub central part, the suburban infill, and the small slums that remained for the lowest people, right in the middle. People infested Leawood, the area where storage warehouses for imported goods that traveled up the river that had become a cheap place to live due to various odors from poorly preserved fish and meats that rotted within their warehouses. The odors stayed long past when the warehouses had become dilapidated and disused, and shitty project apartments now rose from the ground like an infection of herpes.
It had nothing beautiful, no clashes of differing architecture that defined modern skylines, and the buildings weren't even that tall, just numerous. There were shitty Chinese restaurants what seemed like every four feet, and dingy alleys that made you feel like you'd be robbed, killed, or worse were the only type of alley that seemed to exist.
But it was home, I suppose.
East High was the melting pot, all the people that lived in the 'Wood got sent here eventually, and years ago a gang truce made the place a safe zone. It had been heavily renovated in the nineties due to a city-wide upheaval of education, but had remained mostly untouched since.
In terms of inner-city schools, it could have been worse. There was serious consequences from everyone if you tried shit there, and as a result, no one did. The school was a ghetto version of a TV high school, all anyone did was drugs or fuck, or both. The only people who got out were bookworms with serious brains, or jocks. To go with this theme, it had a lot of sports facilities and resources. Most of the money that went into the school came from rich alums or people obsessed with preserving our rep.
East High Giants, Central City basketball champs 18 times consecutively, a city record.
We had a daily uniform, an effort to try and get kids to stop dressing so revealingly so our teachers would stop ending up on the news. A tan polo shirt and black slacks, any shoes were okay, and you could "accessorize freely" according to the student handbook.
The cream at this school eventually rose to the top, and everything else fell to the wayside, as long as you didn't cause trouble. Smoke weed? Fine, just don't do it blatantly and don't give it to the students who mattered. Drink, screw, fight? Make sure the cops don't need to be called.
Every teacher was either inundated to the whole thing, or on their way to being so. I felt bad for them, some young guy or gal or whatever decides to make a difference in a shit school and inevitably they leave or submit to the casual hedonism that was rampant. But you have 35 kids per class per hour for six hours, and see how you keep. Low shelf life for our teachers. They either got bought or curdled.
But this wasn't what mattered to me today. I needed to see if I could work out without getting my ass kicked by fifty people who "claimed" a spot.
There were lots of nooks and crannies that were like little clubhouses, all around the huge-for-it's-type campus. One thing that I'll say about midwesterners, they sure knew how to make big things. Our school took up almost four square blocks, including a bunch of sports fields, storage sheds, and so on. We were funded well, thank God for that, but still, there were huge problems that needed to be addressed, but there were no shortage of small spaces one could claim. Each group had one, and I did too, just for myself. A small door that led out of the building and into a clump of trees. No overlooking windows so I was free to do whatever I wanted there.
I mostly drank and smoked.
But as I checked into the peace requirements, I also checked into the requirements that honored claimed spots.
So I went to see Jay.
Jay was an old friend. My code of distance had Darla and my mom exempt. Jay was almost exempt too, if only by virtue of me actually thinking he was worth a damn.
Jay was a native son of CC, like me. He and I had met on the playground in elementary school and we talked everyday about many of our common interests. He hung out in a disused corner of the campus with some of his friends where they smoked cigarettes and vaped during their free moments.
He was my friend, my tobacco guy, my weed guy, he was an anything-you-could-think-of guy, not that I ever really needed any other types of guys. He was the one who got me into debauchery when he and I used to try and tag along with his older siblings, and they took us on weird adventures in drugs. Good family, lotta heart.
East High is huge. It's gotta be, because no one else wants Leawood kids, so the tons of small areas around the place were either for privacy or to smoke a bowl when class is boring. For Jay and his friends, this was every class.
"Jay." I said, as I walked up to him the day after my quest from Snart was assigned.
"What's up bro!" Jay said, walking over to me. He and I had a secret handshake, nothing too crazy, but it was a nice friendship thing we enjoyed without irony together. "You down to toke with us for a minute? On me?"
"What's the occasion?" I asked.
"You know the guys on 41st Street? The Marcoes?" Jay asked, and I nodded. One of Jay's buddies piped up.
"The Macros."
"Those fuckers?" Jay asked, and I nodded. "Somebody fucked up their leader and some friends are moving quick into the market there. Profits are going to be way up." He pranced around his friends, interacting with them each in a personalized specific way as he did so. A handshake here, a toke there, a joke here.. He would change a bit about himself, just to be comfortable with them, engage in chat, and flit around like a hummingbird.
"Huh." I said. "No, I can't. I gotta lose weight. No smoking for now while I focus on my routine."
Jay gave me a look of pride, while everyone else laughed. The worst thing about being a big guy is that people notice you're big. My eating habits were known, a lot and often being the usual modus operandi. Even if I didn't want people around, when you had a friend like Jay, there was a lot of inevitable attention. He let me experience enough of popular people to know being different was a bad thing to then, and I was very different.
Now, this didn't mean I was bullied, far from it. I used to be, when we were all much younger, but I was a curiosity to the common people nowadays. Too big to be bullied, too weird to be accepted. When I was with Jay, there was inevitable clash, he was just too damn nice to everyone, but usually I was left alone.
"Hey, all of you-" Jay said, eyebrows knit close together in annoyance. "Fuck off for a minute." The group looked at him with exasperation, but they were his sycophants, they'd listen.
After they all cleared out, I sat with him.
"What's inspiring this, bud?" He asked, and I sighed.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you." I said, and he nodded slowly.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Jay asked, and I thought about it for a minute. I wouldn't tell my family as to not worry them, but if I were to tell someone, it would be Jay.
I decided to wait to make a decision. If I could tell him now, I could tell him later, too. It still wasn't technically anything yet.
"Nah, but I do have a question." I replied.
"Shoot, dude." He said, and smiled. "Is it about that new Asian student?"
"What? No. I wanted to know if there are any gyms here I can use."
"You sure? He's cute." Jay grinned lecherously and I felt a bit uncomfortable. Not because he was trying to gauge my interest in men, whatever to that, but because I really was uncomfortable in regards to the intimacy of romance in general. It's always appealed to me in an objective way, but anytime I seriously think about it, it gets me anxious. I suppose it has to do with my intimacy hang-ups and the fact that my father left which means I think romance is doomed to fail. Or whatever, could be anything.
"Just the gym, please." I replied.
"Talk to David Ahlinnes, he's a good dude who'll support a real fitness kick. Avoid his sister." Jay said, and slapped me on the back. "I'm proud of you, Wyatt. You deserve to be happy."
"Ooooookay. Thanks buddy." I stood up and left, waving, and he grinned.
"Can you tell the guys to come back?" He said. "Those guys-"
"Would suck your dick if you asked." I joked, but he got a solemn look and nodded. "Jesus, really?"
"I'm a charismatic dude, Wyatt. How else would you explain me being friends with the surliest dude in Central City?"
"That's a fair point, Jay. I wouldn't call myself the surliest though."
After a bit more time catching up, I left and the group of Jay's posse filed back to the spot as soon as I left. I needed to find David Ahlinnes, the school's best basketball player. It was lunch period now, so I headed to the wretched hive of scum and villainy. The East Central High School cafeteria.
As I walked in, I saw the breakdown of students, the people broken into their little cliques of interest and race, each willingly segregating themselves into groups that made them feel the most comfortable. It was here that I felt the least guilty about separating myself from these people, who already were going to separate themselves. What if I wanted to sit with both an asian vehicle enthusiast AND a D&D nerd? There wouldn't be any solution in this place.
I spotted Ahlinnes as soon as I walked into the place. He was a tall dude, blonde and handsome, and as I walked up to him, he looked surprised.
"Hey David, can I speak to you?" I asked, and he slowly nodded. "I need a place to work out, I'm trying to get into shape." As soon as I said this, his smile became large enough to split his face.
"Seriously? I can show you a few things. Are you interested in playing for the basketball team? I think you'd make a great point guard."
"I'm still fat dude." I replied, a little surprised. "Why would you think I'd want to play basketball?"
"You're a young guy, you've got potential." He replied. "I could whip into shape in time for next year's season. Tall dude, good eyes, good mind-"
"Good mind?" I asked, confused. I was nobody's first choice for anything scholastic.
"Please. Wyatt, you think anyone thinks you're stupid?" He said, and started grabbing at his friend's arm. I was honestly surprised he knew my name. "Yo, Keroy, wouldn't Granger make a great point guard?" Keroy Douglass, a tall black kid and the team's center, looked me up and down.
"Can he shoot?" He said, in a low drawl.
"Can you shoot, Granger?" Asked Ahlinnes, and I shrugged.
"I've never tried, I guess." I looked at the group of guys sizing me up, and felt weird. Why would they want me?
"Raw, un-tempered. He'd be great." Ahlinnes said, gesturing down the table. "We could finally put Roke in center." Josiah Rokeley, or Roke, looked up from his meal, determined nothing of importance was happening, and went back to his meal.
"Roke can't shoot threes." Agreed Keroy.
"No he cannot." Ahlinnes looked me up and down. "You free after class? I can give you a workout list-"
"I'm really only looking to run on a treadmill at the moment." I said, but he shook his head.
"You gotta work out everything, or you won't get cut. Are you eating right? The basketball team has a nutritionist."
"Our books for english are so busted they can barely be used, and the basketball team has a nutritionist?" I asked, incredulously.
"Sure." Ahlinnes said, and Keroy nodded.
I sighed.
After school, Ahlinnes gave me a workout plan, which included showing me how to shoot a basketball, and a promise from me to "seriously consider" trying out next year, and training with them in the meantime. He said he had to get to practice, and after a few practice shots on the court outside, which were mainly whiffs, I went in to run my mile. Puzzling the whole time about my warm reception by the star athlete and his posse.
By the time I was done my "cooldown", I thought I was going to die. I was huffing and puffing so bad, my heart was pounding, but I had done it, and when I finished stretching, another point of focus from our star player, I took a shower and walked home, and began to puzzle out eating a set amount of calories per day. I had no idea what that meant.
It became apparent to me that caloric intake had become something I disregarded as I became an older person pretty apparently. My mom had always tried to keep me fed well, and I asked for large portions, so it made sense I ballooned up as I went through puberty and now I'm in my situation.
The breakdown was that my height, my bmi, et cetera, said if I exercised well and ate 2000 calories, I'd lose about two or three pounds a week. That wouldn't be enough, so I decided to crash course it. I asked my Mom for only healthy options. I said to her "Mom, I need to lose weight." She looked like she might cry. She had been worrying about me. She said she didn't want me to go away too soon, like my dad.
My dad was a real scumbag, he and my Mom met at a Skynyrd concert and that really defines the relationship in a nutshell. My mom was a bookish nerd all her life, smart as a whip, disciplined, tough. My Dad was the first guy probably ever who went after her. They ended up discovering that they lived very close, so my father, being an industrious and crafty man, went after it hard.
When my Grandma and Grandpa were alive, I asked them about my Dad, and they told me that he probably held onto what he had as long as he could. A very generous assessment. But two kids and an abandoned wife later, he was gone.
Mom cares so much about us. We're her everything. So when I told her I wanted to lose weight, she changed gears immediately. She wanted to avoid pressuring me, but was willing to do so when asked.
She wanted me to get into shape, and decided to take care of me on that front. No sweets, no junk, just diet and exercise. Home would now be a healthy zone. I didn't tell her why I was doing it, and it was beginning to become apparent that I would be keeping a lot of people in the dark about my motives. Everyone, really. She told me how to measure things out and what I needed to make a healthy lunch to take to school, which would be better than eating the swill they prepared.
She was so excited and hopeful, I decided to avoid the topic of being potentially recruited onto the star team of our school. Didn't want to give her hope I'd become something sort of functional. Thinking back to Ahlinnes' weirdly exuberant offer, it made no sense. "Good eyes, good mind"? I had mediocre grades, and sure I didn't need glasses, but whatever.
This was quick progress, a step in the right direction, and I knew that oddly, there were people behind my back, pushing me forward. Now all I needed to do was hide all the reasons why I was actually doing it.
Keep this up. I like this sorta street level tight focus the story has. The focus on personal character developments is good.
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Thanks. I have ideas for the future, but I think there's a sort of artistry in maintaining the street level guy as a major player. Captain Cold, specifically, operates as a very Flash-centric character, but also as a high-level player in his own right, and Wyatt must be, in his own way, a part of that in order to be able to be a good legacy.
Part 5
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I realized quickly that routine would be my friend. I didn't necessarily like eating lean turkey and salads instead of Chocos and cheeseburgers. I decided to swap to seltzer, that was worth it to cut out all the soda I drank, and swapped to coffee with skim milk instead of energy drinks.
The health stuff began to work almost immediately. As soon as I stopped with all the junk, I started to drop weight. The trick was to not fuck up. Not a master of that yet, but there was progress. I began to lift weights, to run. It wasn't exactly hard, it was physically taxing keep in mind, but it was more tedious than anything. I've never been much of a dreamer, it didn't seem like there was much point. I wasn't going to be Superman, or a movie star, or president, I was a poor kid born into a poor neighborhood, with poor prospects.
It had been a week of working out, and my soreness began to work through my resolve. So I only ran and took the day off to see what I could think of in regards to the garden. It wasn't going to go away, after all. So I went to the garden.
This was the step to the next step, right?
What was funny was, as soon as I got there, I saw Mr. Snart wearing sunglasses with a cooler of beer, sitting on a lawn chair, reading a book and wearing big expensive headphones.
I decided not to bother him, as it seemed like a poor idea to do so.
Surveying the damage was simple, it was all superficial, really. I just needed to repair and upkeep, but I didn't really know how.
"You run today, kid?" I heard from behind me. Snart had been drawn out of his peaceful afternoon.
"Sure did, Mr. Snart." I replied.
"How goes it?" He asked, getting up and grabbing a beer from the cooler and offering it to me.
"Just fine, Mr. Snart." I replied. "No thanks to the beer, I need to keep the carbs off."
"Really?" He laughed. "If you're doing it right, one beer shouldn't matter."
"If I'm not going to take this seriously, what will I ever take seriously?" I murmured. "Maybe another time, Mr. Snart." I turned away for a minute to ponder how he'd take a request for some help. I needed a hint, that was usually the best way for me to think.
"Kid…" Mr. Snart began. "I've decided to go with Captain. You can call me Captain when we meet up like this."
"Okay, Captain." I said, and then he grabbed my shoulder and turned me to face him. He looked very serious, his eyebrows were already knit together in focus.
"How do you do your best work?" He asked. "If I were a teacher assigning this, what would you need to complete this?"
"Uh, I guess a tip on how to get started." I said, and thought hard about it. "Like, how do I fix the garden plots?"
Mr. Snart looked around. "Use wood 2x4s to rebuild the boxes. Just place them over the frames."
"Will that work?" I asked, curious to whether there would . "It seems like there might be some structure issues if I do that."
"Structure? Here's a tip, kid. It's wood. Wood breaks down, this may be gone in a year. You either focus on the now or the later."
"Isn't that what you do? Focus on the now and later?" I paused. "You'd have to. The Flash is an ongoing issue for you."
"Good practical thought kid." He chuckled. "Get started."
And so it went. For two months I worked my ass off and learned quite a bit about landscaping and basketball. I lost 57 pounds with my crash course, and I finished the garden with a week to spare. There were hard times, but I would think about my sister, and how powerless I felt. I managed to gain a friendly repartee with Ahlinnes' team and David himself. They saw me like a curious project their fearless leader was trying to develop. I was fine with it, insofar as it enabled me what I wanted to achieve my goals.
I began to feel good. There was something physical I could achieve with this.
As the poundage shed, my discipline grew, and I realized what I had been doing would have ended with a morbid death in my thirties, and so I was focused on not regaining the weight I had put off. I began to try and find healthy supplements, fruit and such, to get sugar, which I was pretty sure I was addicted to. I got a vape pen to curb the smoking, but I decided to wean myself off everything but the very occasional cigar, my compromise to myself, as I enjoyed nicotine quite a bit.
On the day of the deadline, I walked up to the garden, it looked better, and the end of school had heralded in the weather needed for the veg and flowers to begin to sprout through. It looked pretty nice. I had added a weatherproofing varnish to the wood I repaired the boxes with, so they'd be better prepared against the elements, and there were already a few chairs belonging to surrounding apartment tenants lying around. It had been a dingy lot, and now it was a communal garden, and I had made it happen.
Truly, you get into the thought process when you're poor that you have no power over your surroundings. Money, strength, will, all these things seemed foreign to me, and I had discovered through this that all I needed to do was to take control and I could be better than I had been before. It was great, at least self-confidence wise. I couldn't be bothered with snickers from people who saw me work out, from those who made jokes about my efforts. Fuck them, I got what I wanted, and they weren't enough to stop me from that.
I was making real progress, fulfilling a life goal I never knew I needed, what did it matter what they thought?
It was musing through this that masked the arrival of my teacher. He walked up and put an arm on my shoulder. I had a few inches over him, but it felt like the hand of god descending from heaven to tell me it was my time.
"You did good kid. I can see you slimmed down."
"53 pounds so far, Mr. Snart." I replied.
"A good start. You also did this well." He said, gesturing around us. "It's not a total shithole anymore."
"Thanks, Captain." I replied, and a smile crept onto my face.
I hate people, as a rule. I think that we all exist to become wage-enslaved chattel led to slaughter when we have fulfilled our societal purpose. That we exist meaninglessly in this void, surrounded by those who are so evidently called to a greater purpose, it exists to cement into the mind that there is no story you can be apart of that will really matter.
In a world with people like Superman and Wonder Woman, how can anyone believe any different? How can anyone hope to matter to the universe unless they are called to a level beyond the personal?
This may be personal, but to me, this was like that calling putting its hand on my shoulder. I knew then that if I wanted to matter, I needed to finish this to the bitter end. I needed to become as cold as Mr. Snart was in his everyday persona, and dutifully absorb his lessons until I was the very embodiment of them.
Wyatt Granger II was a punk kid from Leawood, someone with middling grades and a poor future, and now I could become Captain Cold, a someone in a world of nobodies and somebodies, those called to the grand stage of superheroics.
How could anyone not want to be super?
I was going to become that way, I was going to be Captain Cold, a hero to some, a rogue to others, and I was smiling because of that.
"Now, we move on to step two!" Mr. Snart said, and pulled me aside. "To the gun range!" He began to lead me into his vehicle, and we pulled away from all my progress, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can say that was a bit of a symbolic gesture.
Now, I'm an inner-city kid. I've seen guns all my life. Bangers, Cops, everyone packs heat where I'm from. I never used a tool, but I've been given opportunities. In my situation, who hadn't?
Mr. Smart handed me a selection of guns to try and feel out. A few rifles, modern and the ones you hunted with, a shotgun, a selection of varied pistols, and there it was, the last piece was one of his proprietary inventions. He didn't hand that one to me
"These are the trick. You gotta be able to shoot to get The Flash." He handed me the biggest gun. "We're gonna work backwards. In all likelihood, you'll end up preferring the maneuverability of the cold gun as a pistol, but I want you to be a real renaissance man in regards to guns. Be able to use everything and you'll never be out of options."
"What about-" I began, in regards to the cold gun.
"Walk. Don't run." Mr. Smart cut me off and gestured down range. I picked up the large military looking gun and flipped off the safety. I pulled the trigger and the gun almost flew out of my hands. "Horrible." Mr. Smart said, and I nodded. "Lesson one. Gun safety and what needs to be disregarded if you wanna shoot someone."
We began to meet every other day to go over the tools. Mr. Smart commended me on my weight loss but said to dial it back some, that I now also needed to develop tools that would keep me at peak physical condition, rather than focusing on weight loss as a goal.
The basketball team was beginning to see me as less of a nuisance, they all wanted me to lose weight now, and I realized that my hatred for them was related to me. They were just sports guys who were unaware of anything else. They wanted to win and they led their lives in a way that won as much as they could.
I thought the majority of them were feckless morons, but they went from active targets of my ire to just being people, which was a first for me.
They genuinely thought I was doing well and supported it, which was odd. I'd go into the gym and work out and get a "lookin' good, Granger" or "G-Man! Get at it!" They all had nicknames, and slowly, by virtue of David's support and my own progress, I was earning my own.
It was legitimately insane.
Another thing that happened was that Jay invited me to a barbecue at his house, and I ate so little that his mom asked if I was okay. Not super significant, but odd.
Speaking of Jay, I was once walking with him on the way to our monthly diner session, our tradition was that once a month we'd go to a greasy spoon hole in the wall uptown and catch up, but as we were walking, some girls recognized him. They were from my school and totally decked out to the nines, make-up, revealing outfits, and they stopped Jay.
"Hey Jay, how's it going?" One of them asked.
"You know it, ladies." He smiled his gigawatt grin and winked.
"New boytoy?" Another asked.
"Naw, he's straight as an arrow." Jay smiled. "And single."
I was getting annoyed. Jay has so little time to spare to just hang out with me, that we only ever get this trip to the diner to catch up. It really bothered me when some rando would show up and divert time away from our meal. I was also starving. I also hated dealing with his female friends. There's not much to putting me in a bad mood, but all that, and the fact he was teasing me in front of those girls was really getting my goat.
"He's cute." One said, and another nodded.
"You got time for us?" The last girl said, and Jay shook his head sadly.
"Sorry lovelies, got to make a lunch. Busy day." He walked on, and I followed, mind utterly blown.
"Jay." I began, and he looked back. "What the fuck?"
"What?" He looked cross. "I didn't waste time talking, why you angry?"
"They said I was cute! What the fuck is up with that?" I was perplexed. No one had ever said anything about my appearance in a positive way excepting my mother in… ever. Ever.
"You lost weight and you're packing on muscle. You aren't an ugly guy, Wyatt. What did you think would happen?" Jay was grinning.
"I…" I began, and had to think for a moment. "I hadn't thought about it." It was true, this had all been for Smart, for becoming Captain Cold, but it seemed like most of my problems socially were going away one by one. I still wanted to grab a piece of the world, but it seemed like the side-effects of that were that I was slowly turning into some gross Chad.
"Why are you doing it, then?" He asked. "I mean, if it isn't for pussy, I really don't know what motivates you."
"You thought I was losing weight for chicks?" I asked, and suddenly realized that this was what could use for my cover. "You were right! I meant I hadn't thought about it working so quickly."
"Uh, okay." Jay said, and looked at me like I was crazy. "You coming?"
Off we went, and I had a healthy turkey club.
I had worked my way down to the smaller weapons before pistols when I brought this up to Mr. Smart. We were putting away at least a couple hundred rounds downrange each day he oversaw my training.
"Yeah, you're getting along in your progress well. You're building muscle, losing weight, but the important thing to remember is that you've got the same you on the inside. Nothing has changed, really. What matters now is taking yourself and adding in a mental note every time you feel like you're looking good."
I shoot downrange, and look over to him. "What message?"
"I'm still me." Mr. Smart says, and looks me in the eye. "You're still the same rotten self on the inside. No matter what happens, never forget why you do what you do. If you think you're better than other people, you become just as bad as the assholes that push you around your whole life. I want you to understand that."
"Yes, sir." I said, and put another downrange. Bullseye.
The health stuff began to work almost immediately. As soon as I stopped with all the junk, I started to drop weight. The trick was to not fuck up. Not a master of that yet, but there was progress. I began to lift weights, to run. It wasn't exactly hard, it was physically taxing keep in mind, but it was more tedious than anything. I've never been much of a dreamer, it didn't seem like there was much point. I wasn't going to be Superman, or a movie star, or president, I was a poor kid born into a poor neighborhood, with poor prospects.
It had been a week of working out, and my soreness began to work through my resolve. So I only ran and took the day off to see what I could think of in regards to the garden. It wasn't going to go away, after all. So I went to the garden.
This was the step to the next step, right?
What was funny was, as soon as I got there, I saw Mr. Snart wearing sunglasses with a cooler of beer, sitting on a lawn chair, reading a book and wearing big expensive headphones.
I decided not to bother him, as it seemed like a poor idea to do so.
Surveying the damage was simple, it was all superficial, really. I just needed to repair and upkeep, but I didn't really know how.
"You run today, kid?" I heard from behind me. Snart had been drawn out of his peaceful afternoon.
"Sure did, Mr. Snart." I replied.
"How goes it?" He asked, getting up and grabbing a beer from the cooler and offering it to me.
"Just fine, Mr. Snart." I replied. "No thanks to the beer, I need to keep the carbs off."
"Really?" He laughed. "If you're doing it right, one beer shouldn't matter."
"If I'm not going to take this seriously, what will I ever take seriously?" I murmured. "Maybe another time, Mr. Snart." I turned away for a minute to ponder how he'd take a request for some help. I needed a hint, that was usually the best way for me to think.
"Kid…" Mr. Snart began. "I've decided to go with Captain. You can call me Captain when we meet up like this."
"Okay, Captain." I said, and then he grabbed my shoulder and turned me to face him. He looked very serious, his eyebrows were already knit together in focus.
"How do you do your best work?" He asked. "If I were a teacher assigning this, what would you need to complete this?"
"Uh, I guess a tip on how to get started." I said, and thought hard about it. "Like, how do I fix the garden plots?"
Mr. Snart looked around. "Use wood 2x4s to rebuild the boxes. Just place them over the frames."
"Will that work?" I asked, curious to whether there would . "It seems like there might be some structure issues if I do that."
"Structure? Here's a tip, kid. It's wood. Wood breaks down, this may be gone in a year. You either focus on the now or the later."
"Isn't that what you do? Focus on the now and later?" I paused. "You'd have to. The Flash is an ongoing issue for you."
"Good practical thought kid." He chuckled. "Get started."
And so it went. For two months I worked my ass off and learned quite a bit about landscaping and basketball. I lost 57 pounds with my crash course, and I finished the garden with a week to spare. There were hard times, but I would think about my sister, and how powerless I felt. I managed to gain a friendly repartee with Ahlinnes' team and David himself. They saw me like a curious project their fearless leader was trying to develop. I was fine with it, insofar as it enabled me what I wanted to achieve my goals.
I began to feel good. There was something physical I could achieve with this.
As the poundage shed, my discipline grew, and I realized what I had been doing would have ended with a morbid death in my thirties, and so I was focused on not regaining the weight I had put off. I began to try and find healthy supplements, fruit and such, to get sugar, which I was pretty sure I was addicted to. I got a vape pen to curb the smoking, but I decided to wean myself off everything but the very occasional cigar, my compromise to myself, as I enjoyed nicotine quite a bit.
On the day of the deadline, I walked up to the garden, it looked better, and the end of school had heralded in the weather needed for the veg and flowers to begin to sprout through. It looked pretty nice. I had added a weatherproofing varnish to the wood I repaired the boxes with, so they'd be better prepared against the elements, and there were already a few chairs belonging to surrounding apartment tenants lying around. It had been a dingy lot, and now it was a communal garden, and I had made it happen.
Truly, you get into the thought process when you're poor that you have no power over your surroundings. Money, strength, will, all these things seemed foreign to me, and I had discovered through this that all I needed to do was to take control and I could be better than I had been before. It was great, at least self-confidence wise. I couldn't be bothered with snickers from people who saw me work out, from those who made jokes about my efforts. Fuck them, I got what I wanted, and they weren't enough to stop me from that.
I was making real progress, fulfilling a life goal I never knew I needed, what did it matter what they thought?
It was musing through this that masked the arrival of my teacher. He walked up and put an arm on my shoulder. I had a few inches over him, but it felt like the hand of god descending from heaven to tell me it was my time.
"You did good kid. I can see you slimmed down."
"53 pounds so far, Mr. Snart." I replied.
"A good start. You also did this well." He said, gesturing around us. "It's not a total shithole anymore."
"Thanks, Captain." I replied, and a smile crept onto my face.
I hate people, as a rule. I think that we all exist to become wage-enslaved chattel led to slaughter when we have fulfilled our societal purpose. That we exist meaninglessly in this void, surrounded by those who are so evidently called to a greater purpose, it exists to cement into the mind that there is no story you can be apart of that will really matter.
In a world with people like Superman and Wonder Woman, how can anyone believe any different? How can anyone hope to matter to the universe unless they are called to a level beyond the personal?
This may be personal, but to me, this was like that calling putting its hand on my shoulder. I knew then that if I wanted to matter, I needed to finish this to the bitter end. I needed to become as cold as Mr. Snart was in his everyday persona, and dutifully absorb his lessons until I was the very embodiment of them.
Wyatt Granger II was a punk kid from Leawood, someone with middling grades and a poor future, and now I could become Captain Cold, a someone in a world of nobodies and somebodies, those called to the grand stage of superheroics.
How could anyone not want to be super?
I was going to become that way, I was going to be Captain Cold, a hero to some, a rogue to others, and I was smiling because of that.
"Now, we move on to step two!" Mr. Snart said, and pulled me aside. "To the gun range!" He began to lead me into his vehicle, and we pulled away from all my progress, and with the benefit of hindsight, I can say that was a bit of a symbolic gesture.
Now, I'm an inner-city kid. I've seen guns all my life. Bangers, Cops, everyone packs heat where I'm from. I never used a tool, but I've been given opportunities. In my situation, who hadn't?
Mr. Smart handed me a selection of guns to try and feel out. A few rifles, modern and the ones you hunted with, a shotgun, a selection of varied pistols, and there it was, the last piece was one of his proprietary inventions. He didn't hand that one to me
"These are the trick. You gotta be able to shoot to get The Flash." He handed me the biggest gun. "We're gonna work backwards. In all likelihood, you'll end up preferring the maneuverability of the cold gun as a pistol, but I want you to be a real renaissance man in regards to guns. Be able to use everything and you'll never be out of options."
"What about-" I began, in regards to the cold gun.
"Walk. Don't run." Mr. Smart cut me off and gestured down range. I picked up the large military looking gun and flipped off the safety. I pulled the trigger and the gun almost flew out of my hands. "Horrible." Mr. Smart said, and I nodded. "Lesson one. Gun safety and what needs to be disregarded if you wanna shoot someone."
We began to meet every other day to go over the tools. Mr. Smart commended me on my weight loss but said to dial it back some, that I now also needed to develop tools that would keep me at peak physical condition, rather than focusing on weight loss as a goal.
The basketball team was beginning to see me as less of a nuisance, they all wanted me to lose weight now, and I realized that my hatred for them was related to me. They were just sports guys who were unaware of anything else. They wanted to win and they led their lives in a way that won as much as they could.
I thought the majority of them were feckless morons, but they went from active targets of my ire to just being people, which was a first for me.
They genuinely thought I was doing well and supported it, which was odd. I'd go into the gym and work out and get a "lookin' good, Granger" or "G-Man! Get at it!" They all had nicknames, and slowly, by virtue of David's support and my own progress, I was earning my own.
It was legitimately insane.
Another thing that happened was that Jay invited me to a barbecue at his house, and I ate so little that his mom asked if I was okay. Not super significant, but odd.
Speaking of Jay, I was once walking with him on the way to our monthly diner session, our tradition was that once a month we'd go to a greasy spoon hole in the wall uptown and catch up, but as we were walking, some girls recognized him. They were from my school and totally decked out to the nines, make-up, revealing outfits, and they stopped Jay.
"Hey Jay, how's it going?" One of them asked.
"You know it, ladies." He smiled his gigawatt grin and winked.
"New boytoy?" Another asked.
"Naw, he's straight as an arrow." Jay smiled. "And single."
I was getting annoyed. Jay has so little time to spare to just hang out with me, that we only ever get this trip to the diner to catch up. It really bothered me when some rando would show up and divert time away from our meal. I was also starving. I also hated dealing with his female friends. There's not much to putting me in a bad mood, but all that, and the fact he was teasing me in front of those girls was really getting my goat.
"He's cute." One said, and another nodded.
"You got time for us?" The last girl said, and Jay shook his head sadly.
"Sorry lovelies, got to make a lunch. Busy day." He walked on, and I followed, mind utterly blown.
"Jay." I began, and he looked back. "What the fuck?"
"What?" He looked cross. "I didn't waste time talking, why you angry?"
"They said I was cute! What the fuck is up with that?" I was perplexed. No one had ever said anything about my appearance in a positive way excepting my mother in… ever. Ever.
"You lost weight and you're packing on muscle. You aren't an ugly guy, Wyatt. What did you think would happen?" Jay was grinning.
"I…" I began, and had to think for a moment. "I hadn't thought about it." It was true, this had all been for Smart, for becoming Captain Cold, but it seemed like most of my problems socially were going away one by one. I still wanted to grab a piece of the world, but it seemed like the side-effects of that were that I was slowly turning into some gross Chad.
"Why are you doing it, then?" He asked. "I mean, if it isn't for pussy, I really don't know what motivates you."
"You thought I was losing weight for chicks?" I asked, and suddenly realized that this was what could use for my cover. "You were right! I meant I hadn't thought about it working so quickly."
"Uh, okay." Jay said, and looked at me like I was crazy. "You coming?"
Off we went, and I had a healthy turkey club.
I had worked my way down to the smaller weapons before pistols when I brought this up to Mr. Smart. We were putting away at least a couple hundred rounds downrange each day he oversaw my training.
"Yeah, you're getting along in your progress well. You're building muscle, losing weight, but the important thing to remember is that you've got the same you on the inside. Nothing has changed, really. What matters now is taking yourself and adding in a mental note every time you feel like you're looking good."
I shoot downrange, and look over to him. "What message?"
"I'm still me." Mr. Smart says, and looks me in the eye. "You're still the same rotten self on the inside. No matter what happens, never forget why you do what you do. If you think you're better than other people, you become just as bad as the assholes that push you around your whole life. I want you to understand that."
"Yes, sir." I said, and put another downrange. Bullseye.
Last edited:
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Thanks! I appreciate that
Part 6
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It took me about six months of training before it happened. The first time I held a cold gun, I was feeling very proud of myself. I was in some sort of fighting weight, I was getting consistently good with all manner of firearms, and I was making enough dough from Mr. Snart that I had little financial worries. I could even funnel some of it into my mother, telling her about my new job as some retail bullshit that paid well.
"So you decided yet?" Smart asked as I examined the weapon. We weren't at the range, instead we had occupied an old abandoned warehouse that hadn't been developed yet. He hadn't wanted to draw any attention to us, even the cold gun he used as a demonstration during my introduction to guns had gone away as soon as I had seen it.
School had ended about a month ago and I had hit 80 lbs lost very quickly after that. Apparently, when I wasn't shoving food down my gullet indiscriminately, I was the proud owner of a decent metabolism. Truly, the genetic lottery had blessed me.
"Decided what, Captain?" I asked, holding the gun in my hand, the unfamiliar weight perplexing and exciting me.
"Hero or crook? Or villain, I suppose. That's an option." He asked.
"You ever make that decision?" I asked. "Like, permanently?"
"Permanently? No. Long and short stretches of good and bad." He put his hand on my shoulder. "Wyatt, you've done everything I've asked of you up to this point. I had no expectations going in of you, but damn if I'm not impressed by you."
"W-what?" I stuttered.
"But not just because you did what I said. That'd be pedestrian. You have a specific mind, something geared towards finding solutions with only what you have. That's a valuable skill, I like to think I've taught you a lot that way. But we're moving into the big leagues. The real shit. I've got to give you two assignments."
"Okay." I said.
He gestured to the improvised range he had set up. It was a bunch of two-liters of Zesty Cola.
"This isn't an assignment. Shoot the gun." He said.
I lined up the shot with a trained eye and pulled the trigger. The gun flashed blindingly and there was now a coating of ice around the Zesty bottle.
Mr. Snart handed me something.
"Try those on." He said, and I looked at my new acquisition.
"Holy shit." I said. "Are these the real deal?"
"Sure are." He said.
They were a pair of his signature glasses. I put them on.
"It was a good shot, but try again with those." He said.
I lined up the shot. I pulled the trigger, and observed.
The gun's "muzzle" for lack of a better word, seemed to glow for a moment, and then cut out. Ice had quickly been formed around the bottle, and I thought hard, before I shot off a few more at bottles and items strewn about the warehouse and watched. My realization hit quick.
"It's fucking point and freeze." I uttered.
"Sure is. That's the single shot setting. See the dial on the side?"
Sure enough there was a dial and four notches. It was currently set at the lowest setting.
Mr. Snart gestured for me to hand him the gun and I obliged him. He pointed to each for in succession from bottom to top.
"Single, Wide, Stream, and Strobe. A setting for every occasion." He didn't give the gun back.
"Here's the rub." He said. "I gotta commit you now. You're in it, but you have an opt out, you can quit."
I almost chuckled. I wasn't going to quit.
"What I need now is to blood you. I need you ready to kill. Your two assignments are to kill someone, and to decide." He said. "Decide your path."
I looked at him and thought hard.
"Who?" I asked.
"You choose." He said.
"Anyone?" I asked.
"If you think you can handle big fish, let me say that I've taught you nothing in hand-to-hand." He said. "You can shoot. I taught you how to maneuver, but that's not enough to kill The Flash."
"So I have to kill someone, and I get to use your guns?" I asked.
"Good attention to detail. My firearms, but yes, you do." Snart said.
I pulled my hands through my hair and thought about my life. I was basically a shoo-in to be a basketball kid now, Ahlinnes was firmly of the opinion I was a rising star and we were buddies. That could lead to a scholarship somewhere, I could go to college, maybe. I had made some serious improvements.
But, I knew it wasn't enough. Despite the large secrets I was keeping, I was shooting like a genuine pro, I was learning so much about the world that seemed cut-off to regular humans— It was a dream come true. You see Superman and you feel safe, right? But you think "damn, I'll never be like that".
"I want to do exactly what I want to do. For the foreseeable future, if possible." I said. "That's my ethics choice. I want to protect Leawood, but I want money. I might rob some banks, I might save a few lives, but it'll be because I'm free to choose. Fuck labels."
"Ah, very hedonistic. Cut from my cloth, I like it." Snart said. He rubbed my shoulder, almost fatherly. "That's a good answer."
"Thanks, sir." I said.
"You've got a week." He said. "Ice someone. I don't care who."
We split up after he said that. My thoughts immediately turned to my family. I want to protect them, after all. So I went home. Only to see a streak of light fly by out of my apartment.
The first time I ever saw a Flash.
The next few minutes were confusing, scary, and tense as I ran up to my apartment. I stomped up the steps and feared the worst, that my double life was catching up in a way I hadn't considered, that The Flash Family would be onto Leonard Snart's goal of a protege.
But when I burst in, I saw my mom and sister laughing together.
"What's going on?" I shouted, and Darcy started and looked over to me in fear.
"Wyatt, what's got you so agitated?" My mom asked.
"I just saw—" I pantomimed a whoosh and my mom started to laugh.
"That was Darcy's classmate. Apparently all her friends want her back at Brighton!" My mom beamed.
"So wait-"
"It was Dawn Allen! She brought over the petition she drew up!"
At this point, I got irritated.
Let me explain.
I disliked the Flash Family for always being wherever serious crime wasn't. No one had saved Darcy, and now what? This token gesture seemed, to me, in the moment, as too little, too late.
I couldn't believe how it had turned around. Darcy wasn't important enough to save, but was now, as some sort of failure, important enough to "save"? That made me livid.
"What?" I said. "So now that it's a chance to help some 'poor kid from Leawood', a Flash shows up?!"
"Wyatt, it isn't like that." Mom said.
"Really? So it isn't the case that Flashes never come here? That those pricks abandoned the neighborhood?"
"Wyatt…" Mom started but I was ranting.
"That bullshit is insane. We keep getting fucked over here, and they think they can show up and-"
"Fuck off Wyatt!" Darcy said.
"What?" I was taken aback.
"Dawn's my friend. She's there for me. She actually spends time with me, and you're angry with her for showing up to say I might have a chance to go back?"
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"She made an effort to help me. All you've done is try and join a fucking basketball team! You think I'm not clued in?"
"No, you-" I said. "You don't-"
"Eat shit, Wyatt. Go fuck your hussies and become some basketball star. At least Dawnie-"
"You're friends with her?" I asked.
"Yes!" She screamed.
"You were going to the train. Were you… did it happen when you were going to see her?" I asked.
She immediately clammed up. She glared at me, and stormed off.
"Darcy, wait!" I called after her. "I'm just-"
I heard a door slam.
"Wyatt." My mom looked angry. "She's been through so much, and you can't even put aside your dislike for her friend?"
"She never told me!" I protested. "How was I supposed to know?"
"Wyatt. There's quite a bit you aren't aware of. You've barely been home lately."
"I'm trying to-"
"Wyatt, your sister has been through trauma. She's-"
"She won't even say what happened!" I said.
"She has." My mother said. "She's filed a police report. She's been seeing a therapist."
"How can we afford that?" I asked.
"The Allen Family Foundation-"
"Gah!" I shouted. "If they were half the good guys they claim to be, this wouldn't have happened." I pointed a finger out the window. "We live in a hole, we barely scrape by, and the Allen Family fucks up and now we-"
I stopped, and knew.
"I'm going out." I said.
"Wyatt, where are you going?" My mother said.
"Out."
I walked the streets. Hours passed as I thought about my family and how they changed. Eventually my feet took me to Mr. Snart's building.
I buzzed him. It was late.
"Who?" Came his garbled voice.
"Mr. Snart? It's Wyatt." I said. "Can we talk?"
"Ah shit. This must be the catch with you." He said. The buzzer went off and I walked up. I had never actually been in his apartment before. When I got to his door, I knocked. Mr. Snart opened the door and ushered me in.
"What's up? It's 3am." He said, flatly.
"I need some guidance." I said. "I figured I could talk to you about something."
"Okay." He said. He walked to his fridge and opened it, and grabbed a beer.
The whole place smelled stale, and Mr. Snart leaned against a bar in his kitchen. It seemed as though the place, while nice, was rather built up as opposed to being a nice apartment from the beginning.
"Nice place."
"Well, I own the building." Snart said. "My apartment had better be the best."
"Domestic life suits you." I joked, and he shrugged.
"Once you get to my age, it doesn't make sense to rob banks in a parka." Snart said. "Not to cut the chit-chat short, but it's 3 am, Wyatt."
"Apparently, my sister is buddy-buddy with a Tornado Twin." I said.
"So?"
"I guess, I was-" I was surprised. "So?"
"What does it matter? Have you met the twin?"
"She ran out of my place." I said. "Seemed desperate to leave the 'Wood."
"Sounds like those kids. So?"
"Well, what do I do?" I asked. I was lost. I always resented the Flash family, they never seemed to be there when I needed them. Now they were trying? It seemed too good to be true.
"You enjoy the cover." Mr. Snart said. "You have an excellent shield from being found out now. If someone suspects you, which they shouldn't be if I teach you anything properly, then you are the brother of the friend of a Tornado Twin."
"I don't want them to save us now." I said. "They don't get to step in at the end and make everything okay."
"Then get proactive." Snart said. "What do you have to do to get ahead of them?"
"Take care of the problem." I said. "I think I know who I'm gonna ice."
"Watch it with the puns. You gotta earn those." Snart said, annoyed.
"Sorry, Captain." I said. It was time for the new Captain Cold to make his mark.
"So you decided yet?" Smart asked as I examined the weapon. We weren't at the range, instead we had occupied an old abandoned warehouse that hadn't been developed yet. He hadn't wanted to draw any attention to us, even the cold gun he used as a demonstration during my introduction to guns had gone away as soon as I had seen it.
School had ended about a month ago and I had hit 80 lbs lost very quickly after that. Apparently, when I wasn't shoving food down my gullet indiscriminately, I was the proud owner of a decent metabolism. Truly, the genetic lottery had blessed me.
"Decided what, Captain?" I asked, holding the gun in my hand, the unfamiliar weight perplexing and exciting me.
"Hero or crook? Or villain, I suppose. That's an option." He asked.
"You ever make that decision?" I asked. "Like, permanently?"
"Permanently? No. Long and short stretches of good and bad." He put his hand on my shoulder. "Wyatt, you've done everything I've asked of you up to this point. I had no expectations going in of you, but damn if I'm not impressed by you."
"W-what?" I stuttered.
"But not just because you did what I said. That'd be pedestrian. You have a specific mind, something geared towards finding solutions with only what you have. That's a valuable skill, I like to think I've taught you a lot that way. But we're moving into the big leagues. The real shit. I've got to give you two assignments."
"Okay." I said.
He gestured to the improvised range he had set up. It was a bunch of two-liters of Zesty Cola.
"This isn't an assignment. Shoot the gun." He said.
I lined up the shot with a trained eye and pulled the trigger. The gun flashed blindingly and there was now a coating of ice around the Zesty bottle.
Mr. Snart handed me something.
"Try those on." He said, and I looked at my new acquisition.
"Holy shit." I said. "Are these the real deal?"
"Sure are." He said.
They were a pair of his signature glasses. I put them on.
"It was a good shot, but try again with those." He said.
I lined up the shot. I pulled the trigger, and observed.
The gun's "muzzle" for lack of a better word, seemed to glow for a moment, and then cut out. Ice had quickly been formed around the bottle, and I thought hard, before I shot off a few more at bottles and items strewn about the warehouse and watched. My realization hit quick.
"It's fucking point and freeze." I uttered.
"Sure is. That's the single shot setting. See the dial on the side?"
Sure enough there was a dial and four notches. It was currently set at the lowest setting.
Mr. Snart gestured for me to hand him the gun and I obliged him. He pointed to each for in succession from bottom to top.
"Single, Wide, Stream, and Strobe. A setting for every occasion." He didn't give the gun back.
"Here's the rub." He said. "I gotta commit you now. You're in it, but you have an opt out, you can quit."
I almost chuckled. I wasn't going to quit.
"What I need now is to blood you. I need you ready to kill. Your two assignments are to kill someone, and to decide." He said. "Decide your path."
I looked at him and thought hard.
"Who?" I asked.
"You choose." He said.
"Anyone?" I asked.
"If you think you can handle big fish, let me say that I've taught you nothing in hand-to-hand." He said. "You can shoot. I taught you how to maneuver, but that's not enough to kill The Flash."
"So I have to kill someone, and I get to use your guns?" I asked.
"Good attention to detail. My firearms, but yes, you do." Snart said.
I pulled my hands through my hair and thought about my life. I was basically a shoo-in to be a basketball kid now, Ahlinnes was firmly of the opinion I was a rising star and we were buddies. That could lead to a scholarship somewhere, I could go to college, maybe. I had made some serious improvements.
But, I knew it wasn't enough. Despite the large secrets I was keeping, I was shooting like a genuine pro, I was learning so much about the world that seemed cut-off to regular humans— It was a dream come true. You see Superman and you feel safe, right? But you think "damn, I'll never be like that".
"I want to do exactly what I want to do. For the foreseeable future, if possible." I said. "That's my ethics choice. I want to protect Leawood, but I want money. I might rob some banks, I might save a few lives, but it'll be because I'm free to choose. Fuck labels."
"Ah, very hedonistic. Cut from my cloth, I like it." Snart said. He rubbed my shoulder, almost fatherly. "That's a good answer."
"Thanks, sir." I said.
"You've got a week." He said. "Ice someone. I don't care who."
We split up after he said that. My thoughts immediately turned to my family. I want to protect them, after all. So I went home. Only to see a streak of light fly by out of my apartment.
The first time I ever saw a Flash.
The next few minutes were confusing, scary, and tense as I ran up to my apartment. I stomped up the steps and feared the worst, that my double life was catching up in a way I hadn't considered, that The Flash Family would be onto Leonard Snart's goal of a protege.
But when I burst in, I saw my mom and sister laughing together.
"What's going on?" I shouted, and Darcy started and looked over to me in fear.
"Wyatt, what's got you so agitated?" My mom asked.
"I just saw—" I pantomimed a whoosh and my mom started to laugh.
"That was Darcy's classmate. Apparently all her friends want her back at Brighton!" My mom beamed.
"So wait-"
"It was Dawn Allen! She brought over the petition she drew up!"
At this point, I got irritated.
Let me explain.
I disliked the Flash Family for always being wherever serious crime wasn't. No one had saved Darcy, and now what? This token gesture seemed, to me, in the moment, as too little, too late.
I couldn't believe how it had turned around. Darcy wasn't important enough to save, but was now, as some sort of failure, important enough to "save"? That made me livid.
"What?" I said. "So now that it's a chance to help some 'poor kid from Leawood', a Flash shows up?!"
"Wyatt, it isn't like that." Mom said.
"Really? So it isn't the case that Flashes never come here? That those pricks abandoned the neighborhood?"
"Wyatt…" Mom started but I was ranting.
"That bullshit is insane. We keep getting fucked over here, and they think they can show up and-"
"Fuck off Wyatt!" Darcy said.
"What?" I was taken aback.
"Dawn's my friend. She's there for me. She actually spends time with me, and you're angry with her for showing up to say I might have a chance to go back?"
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"She made an effort to help me. All you've done is try and join a fucking basketball team! You think I'm not clued in?"
"No, you-" I said. "You don't-"
"Eat shit, Wyatt. Go fuck your hussies and become some basketball star. At least Dawnie-"
"You're friends with her?" I asked.
"Yes!" She screamed.
"You were going to the train. Were you… did it happen when you were going to see her?" I asked.
She immediately clammed up. She glared at me, and stormed off.
"Darcy, wait!" I called after her. "I'm just-"
I heard a door slam.
"Wyatt." My mom looked angry. "She's been through so much, and you can't even put aside your dislike for her friend?"
"She never told me!" I protested. "How was I supposed to know?"
"Wyatt. There's quite a bit you aren't aware of. You've barely been home lately."
"I'm trying to-"
"Wyatt, your sister has been through trauma. She's-"
"She won't even say what happened!" I said.
"She has." My mother said. "She's filed a police report. She's been seeing a therapist."
"How can we afford that?" I asked.
"The Allen Family Foundation-"
"Gah!" I shouted. "If they were half the good guys they claim to be, this wouldn't have happened." I pointed a finger out the window. "We live in a hole, we barely scrape by, and the Allen Family fucks up and now we-"
I stopped, and knew.
"I'm going out." I said.
"Wyatt, where are you going?" My mother said.
"Out."
I walked the streets. Hours passed as I thought about my family and how they changed. Eventually my feet took me to Mr. Snart's building.
I buzzed him. It was late.
"Who?" Came his garbled voice.
"Mr. Snart? It's Wyatt." I said. "Can we talk?"
"Ah shit. This must be the catch with you." He said. The buzzer went off and I walked up. I had never actually been in his apartment before. When I got to his door, I knocked. Mr. Snart opened the door and ushered me in.
"What's up? It's 3am." He said, flatly.
"I need some guidance." I said. "I figured I could talk to you about something."
"Okay." He said. He walked to his fridge and opened it, and grabbed a beer.
The whole place smelled stale, and Mr. Snart leaned against a bar in his kitchen. It seemed as though the place, while nice, was rather built up as opposed to being a nice apartment from the beginning.
"Nice place."
"Well, I own the building." Snart said. "My apartment had better be the best."
"Domestic life suits you." I joked, and he shrugged.
"Once you get to my age, it doesn't make sense to rob banks in a parka." Snart said. "Not to cut the chit-chat short, but it's 3 am, Wyatt."
"Apparently, my sister is buddy-buddy with a Tornado Twin." I said.
"So?"
"I guess, I was-" I was surprised. "So?"
"What does it matter? Have you met the twin?"
"She ran out of my place." I said. "Seemed desperate to leave the 'Wood."
"Sounds like those kids. So?"
"Well, what do I do?" I asked. I was lost. I always resented the Flash family, they never seemed to be there when I needed them. Now they were trying? It seemed too good to be true.
"You enjoy the cover." Mr. Snart said. "You have an excellent shield from being found out now. If someone suspects you, which they shouldn't be if I teach you anything properly, then you are the brother of the friend of a Tornado Twin."
"I don't want them to save us now." I said. "They don't get to step in at the end and make everything okay."
"Then get proactive." Snart said. "What do you have to do to get ahead of them?"
"Take care of the problem." I said. "I think I know who I'm gonna ice."
"Watch it with the puns. You gotta earn those." Snart said, annoyed.
"Sorry, Captain." I said. It was time for the new Captain Cold to make his mark.
acidlime
workers of the world unite
- Location
- Maine
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Thank you! I appreciate the continued reading