Reset! - Chapter Eighteen

[randomality]

Summary: Faced with being shipped out to Denver to live with Jay Garrick after the disappearance of Max Mercury, Bart argues to remain in Manchester with Helen. Impulse begins to search for ways to save Max on his own and reaches out to friends and allies. AU.

Disclaimer: DC owns the DCU. Impulse created by Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo.

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Reset! - Chapter Eighteen: Clubhouse

Bart skidded to a stop in the garage and peeked his head into the timepod. Thaddeus was still in there, tinkering away. Bart tried to peer over his brother's shoulder, but he couldn't peek into the open panel without crawling all the way into the pod. "Are you coming?"

Thad looked up and set aside the multimeter that he found. "In a moment."

"Okay, but everyone's who's coming is already there," Bart remarked. "Anita's not coming, 'cause her parents are sick and she has to stay with them. Greta's not coming, 'cause she has a test and a report due on Monday and, if she comes, she's not gonna get anything done. That's was she says, anyways. She's probably right. Cissie's coming, 'cause she doesn't have any tests until Wednesday and she's going crazy in the dorms at her school. I even got Rob to come, even though he was complaining about school and stuff, too."

Thad finished tidying up and closed the panel while Bart spoke. "I don't need the insipid details." He hopped out of the pod. "This is going to be awkward."

"Awkward?" Bart tilted his head and tried to think of what Thad meant. He came up with a blank.

"I know them, but they don't know me." Thad ran his fingers through his hair to brush it back and smooth it down. "I was an imposter."

"It'll all be cool," Bart assured, "You already met Kon and Anita and everything turned out fine, right?"

Thad glanced back to the timepod. "I suppose." A harsh breath blasted from his nose. "Let's get this over with."

Bart paused and saw the frown on Thad's downcast face. "You don't have to come if you don't want to."

Thad's expression hardened and his voice took on a sharper tone. "Let's go."

The spaceship was tucked away in a large hangar on a private airfield. Bart didn't know the details of the deal that Wally struck to get the space and he didn't much care. Just inside the door of the vessel, Kon, Cassie, and Cissie were talking. They paused in their conversation when they spotted Bart and Thad climbing up the ramp.

Bart waved and grinned at his friends as he approached. "Hey! This is Thad. He's my twin brother!" At that, Thad rolled his eyes and sighed.

Kon raised an eyebrow. "You mean clone."

Thad replied with a smug grin. "No, I'm a twin. My mother isn't a test tube after all."

"Our mom told us all about it," Bart elaborated before Kon could shoot off a retort. "Our grandfather took him away when he was born and told Mom that he was dead."

"Point for the test tube," Kon quipped, "Test tubes don't have evil crazy."

Cassie stood face to face with Thad and frowned. "He's the one who pretended to be you? He's blond."

"Aren't you the observant one?" Thad sneered, "It's amazing what a cheap bottle of dye can do."

Kon raised his eyebrows and remarked aside to Cassie, "I said he was a jerk."

They filed into the common area and Bart meandered to the monitor center. It was not functioning yet, despite Bart and Kon's best efforts. It wasn't blown to pieces, which was a bonus. Robin was halfway under the station and working on getting the device installed. Bending to get a better look, Bart asked, "Still no good?"

"No," Robin replied with a frustrated sigh, "I don't know enough about either system to get them to connect and we don't have any manuals. I think I'm getting closer, but..." He trailed off, realizing that Bart had already left to pester Cissie. He continued staring at wires and ports, hoping that he would get a burst of inspiration.

Thad approached the defunct center and surveyed the panels. "What is this?"

"What's what?" Robin asked without withdrawing from the underside of the center. "Please don't say that there's a shiny red button up there that's blinking."

Bart darted to other side of the monitor center. "This is so we can see if there's anything we have to help with," he explained before running off to pounce on Kon.

Robin answered from under the center. "So, you answered your own question."

Thad inspected the controls a little more closely. "What are you trying to do?"

"I'm trying to get this connected to the ship, so we can use it." Robin reached out and tapped Thad's shoe. "Hand me the little screwdriver kit that's up there." Thad obliged and put the kit into Robin's outstretched hand. "I didn't notice this panel before," Robin remarked, "It might be what I was looking for."

A thump reverberated through the floor as Kon flipped Bart off of his shoulders. Laughing, they started a wrestling match, ignoring Cassie's orders to stop. Annoyed, she dove into the fray, easily tossing Bart aside to grapple with Kon. With a little assistance from his telekinesis, he pinned her to the floor. Bart pounced him again and reached for a tickle attack. Kon's hold on Cassie broke and a wicked grin curved on her lips.

"Oh, have we found something Superboy is not invulnerable to?" She tackled him with her own tickle attack, searching for the most reaction. Kon laughed and howled, begging for them to stop.

Detecting an easy victory, Cissie piled on. "More devastating than the Joker's gas!"

Robin pushed himself out from under the monitor station to see Kon squirming under the people pile. Then he realized that the mop of brown hair was there and not standing beside him. His eyes traced a path up to the serious face of Inertia. Shoving away, he scrambled to his feet. "Bart!"

The attack on Kon stopped and Bart was suddenly standing beside Tim. "Yeah?"

"Why is he here?" Robin asked, pointing to Thad.

"'Cause he's gonna get lonely if I leave him at home," Bart answered. Kon pulled Cassie into a telekinetically reinforced bear hug behind them.

Robin looked down at their shoes and his jaw slackened. "His feet are as big as yours!"

Both speedsters looked down and then at each other. Shrugging, they turned their attention to the monitor station. "I thought you said that Young Justice was disbanded," Thad remarked to Bart at a speed that was comfortable to him.

"Yeah, I did," Bart answered at the same speed, "But why not use this awesome equipment if we got it?"

"And you have a spaceship." Thad crossed his arms. "I won't ask how you got it. Do you even know how to use it? Maintain it?"

"Kinda. I know how to fly it. It's actually pretty easy. Slobo used to do all of the repair stuff for it, but now he's gone."

"So, you don't know anything on how to properly maintain it." Thad snorted and rolled his eyes. "Wonderful. Do you even know where engineering is?" When Bart nodded, Thad demanded, "Take me there. I'll do what you neglected to do and actually learn about the mechanics of this ship."

Bart opted to ignore Thad's nasty tone, brushing it aside as just how Thad talked. "Don't you wanna hang out?" Bart asked, "Nobody else is gonna be in engineering and it's no fun when you're by yourself."

"That might be true for you," countered Thad, "But not for me." Seeing Bart's crestfallen expression, he added, "I'll be a lot happier being useful there, than being bored out of my mind here. Besides, I won't have to go as slow."

"You sure?"

"If I get lonely, I'll come visit," Thad snidely assured. He jogged away in search of engineering. Not wanting to listen to another derogatory rant, Bart decided to just let Thad find the room on his own. In the meanwhile, he waited for the others to speak. Eventually, the syllables cohered into in a sentence from Kon. "What was that about?"

"Thad went to engineering to figure out the ship," Bart answered, taking care to drag out the sounds long enough for Kon to understand him. He pushed his hair out of his face. "I wonder why he's doing that? He doesn't want to stay in this time. Why would he do all this work with the timepod and this spaceship if he's just leave with Mom, anyways?" Then his eyes brightened with realization. "Oh! Maybe that's why he doesn't wanna hang out? He doesn't want to make friends and then have to leave them? I wouldn't want to do that, either." He paused for a moment and his shoulders drooped. "Oh. Yeah. Mom is gonna come and pick Thad and me up and take us back to the thirty-first century."

The following silence seemed to stretch on forever to him. He watched the faces of his friends slowly morph through emotions. Disbelief, shock, and surprise all made appearances. Was Kon even a little angry?

"When were you gonna spring that on us?" Kon demanded, "Or were you gonna give us a last moment, "Bye, everyone!" and run away?"

"Sorry!" Bart held up his hands in a warding gesture. "I kinda forgot about it." He ran his hands through his hair. "I guess that since I was gonna tell Mom that I want to stay here, it didn't seem all that important."

Robin approached the doorway that would eventually lead to engineering. "I don't think we should let him have free run down there. We can't trust him."

Bart zipped to Robin's side again. "I think he's okay. He's not working for President Thawne anymore."

"I want to believe that, Bart, I really do," Robin admitted, "But that doesn't mean that he won't try to hurt you or us either now or in the future. He's not..." He looked Bart in the eyes and sighed. "I guess he's here now and we've let Lobo join us in the past, so I guess Inertia can't be any worse." He cast a worried glance to Cassie.

Cassie tapped Kon's arm to signal that she wanted him to let go. Once released, she approached Bart. Her jaw was firmly set and it was obvious to Bart that she was going into leader mode. She always seemed to get so serious when she did that. The pause before she spoke seemed to last for hours. "He'll have to earn our trust, but if you want to give him a chance, we'll give him a chance."

Kon crossed his arms. "This doesn't mean that he's a card carrying member of our club, though."

"Yeah, I know." Bart stopped before he could say anything more. Thad ran into the room from engineering and hummed around the monitor center, kicking up a breeze. Before anyone else could blink, Bart zipped over to see what he was doing. "What-?"

"This is the wrong wall to install this on," Thad interrupted, "I'll open the correct access panel. You get the dumb muscle to move this equipment over there."

A little while and a salvaged power adapter later, the monitor equipment glowed to life. Robin's fingers flew over the controls, bringing up the local reports. Bart sighed and draped his chin and arms over the back of the chair. "So, now that we got that working, can we play some games or stuff? I thought we were gonna hang out." He pointed past Robin's head to the main display. "See? Look, the JLA and JSA got everything covered."

Cassie pulled Robin out of the chair and dragged him towards the couch. "C'mon, we have junk food waiting to be eaten and I want to see you versus Bart on Brawl."

After playing a few rounds, Kon opened a soda and leaned back on the couch. "So, Miami or Los Angeles?"

Robin didn't look away from the screen when he answered, "For what?"

"I'm thinking about moving again," Kon replied, "The, ah, Super family is great, but I don't think I'm really cut out for the lifestyle. The whole secret identity idea just isn't working for me. If Cadmus can't support me, I might as well support myself, right? So, I've been thinking about where I really want to live. I keep thinking about Hawaii, but I'm not sure they would want me back, considering that the freaks of the week are bad for the tourism business there. It's also a long flight from there to just about anywhere. So, I figured if it's the sunny, warm beaches that I want, there are a couple of other areas that might be willing to host a Superboy. It's just a choice between earthquakes and hurricanes."

Bart piped up with, "Miami's closer."

Cissie switched seats with Cassie and let her have a turn at the game. "I'm betting that Los Angeles is a little more open to weird."

Robin waited before starting another round to say, "How are you going to pay the bills?"

"Same way most people do," Kon answered, "Get a job. Maybe play to my strengths and a get a paid emergency rescue gig or something."

"You'll have to take classes and get certified before you can do any of that," Robin reminded.

"Seriously? Even with everything I've done?" When Robin nodded, Kon sighed. "Well, I might as well get the papers saying that I know what I'm doing. So, L.A. or Miami? Miami or L.A.? Miami's a lot closer to Gorgeous Gilly's neighborhood..." He trailed off with a worried expression.

Cassie failed to hide her sour scowl. "Of course you would want to be closer to a pretty girl."

"Uh, reverse everything you just said. You haven't seen Gorgeous Gilly." Kon cringed and shuddered. "A total low in my otherwise illustrious career. I still have nightmares about her." He shuddered again and swigged his soda as if to wash a bad taste away. "I think I've been permanently tainted." After chugging the rest of his soda, he added, "L.A.'s a longer flight to any of you and a little too close to Titan territory for my liking, but it's a far away as I can get from her without going back to Hawaii."

An alarm sounded from the monitor station, prompting Robin to abandon the game. Cassie followed him to the display. "We're not going after anything that's not in the neighborhood," she reminded.

"This one's in the neighborhood," Robin confirmed, "Looks like one of your friends, Bart. White Lightning's at it again."

In an instant, Bart was staring at the screen. "Aw, grife. What's she after now?" He frowned at the details. "A bank?" He shook his head. "But she doesn't go after banks. It's not her thing." He leaned away from the monitor. "This ain't right."

Cassie crossed her arms and turned towards him. "So, since she's one of yours, do you want to go after her?"

"Yeah," Bart answered, "Something's up. You guys let me talk to her, okay? She's not all bad. Maybe she's in trouble and needs some help." He frowned at the screen again. "She'll be long gone by the time we all get there."

Robin reached into his utility belt and stuck a tracking device behind Bart's ear. "We'll catch up." In an eyeblink, Bart was in his Impulse costume and gone.

Cassie took a step towards Cissie, "Are you coming?"

Cissie shook her head. "I quit, remember? Besides, I don't have any of my gear with me."

Disappointed, but not surprised, Cassie turned her attention to Thad. He had kept himself separate from the rest of the group, despite staying in the same room. "What about you?"

"I'm supposed to be in Manchester right now," he replied, "If I show up, then I'm violating my probation, and I'll have to deal with some self-righteous busybodies riding a power high. I'll pass."

Impulse slowed down just enough at the robbed bank to see the direction witnesses were pointing to police. That seemed like a good start in tracking White Lightning down! He kicked up a little more speed and weaved around nearly motionless cars. After a few blocks, he spotted the red and blue glow of the police car lights down one street. A sharp turn and he passed the cars. A passenger car ahead was in the process of pulling over to let the police pass, but there was a cyclist awfully close. With everything around him going so slow, Impulse couldn't tell if the car was going to stop short of the cyclist or not. Deciding not to take the chance, he hefted the bike and rider onto the empty sidewalk with a grunt.

Just ahead, he spotted the taillights of a motorcycle and a flying banner of a platinum blonde ponytail. There she was! She had a small crew with her this time, too. He raced towards her and noticed another motorcycle in front of her. Who was this? Since when did White Lightning follow anyone? The other biker was a girl, but that was all that Impulse could tell. Turning back to White Lightning, Impulse noticed that her face looked weird. He had seen a lot of her expressions in stills during all of his encounters with her, but she never looked as bored as this.

"We gotta talk," he said to her, despite knowing that she would never understand him at this speed. "But first I gotta stop your friends, so the police can catch them."

Most of the riders were just too big for him to pull off of the bikes on his own, so he sabotaged each bike by vibrating important-looking pieces off of them. He hoped that would make them stop running. After that was done, he peeled White Lightning's fingers off of the handlebars of her motorcycle and hauled her away.

From his perch on Superboy's shoulders, Robin directed the flight to meet Impulse. They spotted the distinctive white and red between the railroad tracks and the back fence of a self-storage facility. Sitting on the ground at Impulse's oversized feet was a woman in a blue and white outfit.

"Guys! She's not talking to me!" Impulse announced to his friends before they even landed. "She's just sitting there! I can't get her to snap out of it!" He frantically darted between their landing site and White Lightning until they closed the gap.

Kon grinned appreciatively at White Lightning. "Fighting her must be fun."

Cassie elbowed him. "You would think that." She stood behind Robin, who was examining White Lightning's eyes. "Anything odd?"

"Lights are on, but no one's home," Robin answered. "I don't see any evidence of drugs or injury." He tilted her head from on side to another. "I don't see any control devices, either."

Another woman's voice purred from the end of the fence. "Well, isn't this nice."