This, Wally thought, was a nice change of pace. No supervillains. No flaming buildings, no crashing planes. No physics textbooks, no multivariable calculus, no statistical mechanics or differential equations; no Barry to tell him to put down his phone and pick up his books, no Rudy to point out his numerous, embarrassing failures as not only a son, but a human being – no, there was none of that. There was just him, his friends, the bustling, ever-busy pulse of New York life, and Marv’s Pizza.

“Oh my gob – thish pizza’s sho good,” said Wally. The cheese. The tomatoes. Just the right amount of pepperoni. They all combined into a blast of such intense flavour, he didn’t know how to begin to describe it. He was already digging into his fourth pie, and he was in heaven. “I’m in heaben.”

He swallowed. “This is probably the one thing Flash and I can agree on. New York pizza’s the best.” He paused to contemplate, tapping his finger against his chin in a blur, and sighed. “Wait, no. He likes Chicago’s better. Say, Babs, are you uh… are you gonna finish yours?”

The redhead roused herself from where she’d been staring contemplatively out the window at nothing. Trying idly to figure out whether the busted street light outside increased her chances of hopping the subway turnstile without getting caught. More officers on the street, sure. But just traffic patrol, and I’m at least as good as Dad as far as they’re concerned…

“Maybe, maybe not,” she shrugged nonchalantly. “But do you really wanna test me?” Babs lips curled into something that was either smile or smirk, depending on how long a person looked.

“Absolutely. My feelings for pizza are stronger than my fear of you.” But he made no attempt at stealing her slice. “Shame Dick couldn’t make it. I didn’t expect to hear back from Roy, but it’d be nice to get Batboy out of his cave sometimes, y’know?”

She didn’t answer right away, taking a too-big bite of the slice before her, feeling sauce and cheese scald the roof of her mouth in a way that felt almost indulgent. Behind her, the place was loud with chatter and alive with the motion of people milling from door to table to pinball and back again. At the counter, a tourist was ordering two cheese slices in broken English. Babs thought she heard something vaguely Mediterranean in the accent. Outside, a motorcycle roared by, close. Somewhere on the far side of the room, a family groaned off-tune strains of happy birthday over a child’s ever-louder screaming. A radio overhead played decade-old pop hits from a former Disney star, static just beneath the dim glow and fainter hum of neon, and everywhere the sheer overpowering scent of mozzarella and tomato and oregano.

Babs chewed.

Three officers on the street, two at the corner. He’s gotta just be getting off a long shift, way he’s pacing like that. I bet he wouldn’t stop me if I jumped the turnstile. If he noticed...

She swallowed and looked back at Wally without ever having given indication that she’d left.

“He wanted to be here, but that’s the Bat-life.” She shrugged again, gave him a wry smirk, more genuine this time. “Think Barry’s bad? Try Bruce.”

“Nuh-uh. No thanks. My head’s already exploded from Feynman diagrams and atomic processes, I don’t need any more neurosis on top of my neurosis. Especially not the Bat-kind.”

"I don't quite see the big deal about pizza," Donna interjected, quizzically holding up a slimy triangle of bread and cheese with a look somewhere between bemusement and disgust. "It's mostly just grease, Wally. Fire-warmed bread wrapped in grease."

She turned to the squat figure seated next to her, what looked like a child no older than 12 with a shock of dark hair and bewildered look plastered on his face.

“A little different from what you're used to in Atlantis, Garth?"

The young Atlantean was currently quite discombobulated by the whole experience. The surface metropolis was like a forest of glass and stone, surrounded by the wheeled chariots that they called ‘cars’ -- some of which were the size of small whales!

Equally strange was this… pizza. Arthur had often brought souvenirs of his visits to the surface communities along the northern coastal regions, but those had been seal jerky, smoked fish, or whale meat. This was…

The boy held the triangular slice in his hands, as though trying to figure out just what it was. Grease and cheese ran down one side of his hand. Vibrant, violet-colored irises glanced up at the remark from the Themysciran Amazon. “I don’t think this would do well in the ocean,” the boy offered in a light-hearted manner.

At least it was a food that could be enjoyed with hands. Atlanteans didn’t have the same kind of cutlery as these surface dwellers it seemed. The miniature trident in particular confused the boy. “What’s… uh, what’s bread again?”

Koriand’r never liked zeta beam travel.

Being teleported through two beacons on separate ends of the galaxy was convenient, but it was also painful. For Kori it was like experiencing the worst of sensory overload and burning pain. She supposed the Rannian scientists who developed it thought the positive aspects outweighed the negative. The Princess of Tamaran obviously did not come to the same conclusion, though after being chased across an abandoned planet with her pursuers to her back she didn’t exactly think about the displeasure of zeta beam travel when she found a malfunctioning teleportation device in an old survey post. Kori knew the dangers of a working zeta beam transponder. But fortunately, instead of having her body deconstruct in the process of moving through time and space she found herself simply thrown into a laboratory halfway across the galaxy.

But Kori didn’t get the time to “take a breath” and try to figure out where she was. By the time she had gotten to her feet – her pursuers had made the courageous move to follow her through the malfunctioning transponder and Kori was not so lucky to have them end up missing their limbs or frying their brains upon contact. She had immediately screamed as she scrambled to her back just as the laboratory’s warning device screamed out in a language she did not understand; though she knew exactly what was happening when her eyes caught the device beginning to tremble and crack.

The transponder was going to go nova and the laboratory was going to explode.

She didn’t even have enough time to react.

The SS Sun Vista lay under more than two hundred feet of water, in the middle of the busiest shipping strait in the world.

The shadow passed through the halls of the majestic ocean liner. It was perhaps even more crowded inside now than in its golden age, when it ferried passengers between Italy and Australia in the late 1970s. Large schools of small fish moved in and through the wreck. Eels passed through shadow, tucked away in the cupboards and closets. A blue-clad hand passed through the lightless expanse, a fog of silt passing through the water.

A porcelain plate was withdrawn from the cupboard, disturbing an eel that spiraled along the youth's arm before shooting off into the inky darkness. The white enamel was emblazoned with colorful tones of lapis lazuli and gold. The plate shone under the violet light of a pair of vibrant purple irises that pierced through the darkness. The Atlantean boy turned the plate over in his hands, inspecting it for a moment, before he returned it back to the shelf and withdrew a tea cup that was emblazoned with a similar pattern.

The Prince of Idylls hovered in one of the galleys that had serviced the many lounges across the ship that had ended its career as a cruise ship. Much of the flatware was recognizable from Themyscira, when Garth had visited during the Isthmian Games, such as the spoons and knives. But the one object he could not identify was a most perplexing form. It was like a miniature trident, no larger than a spoon, with four prongs instead of three.

Turning the small utensil over in his hands, the youth hovered there in the galley looking over the object as he tried to imagine its purpose.

Come on, Tadpole. You can explore later.

The words were not spoken so much as they were thought. Transmitted might even have been the apt term. At the telepathic summons, the young Garth altered his buoyancy without so much as a thought to what he was doing. Effortlessly, the child rose up through the sea, emerging from the inside of the ocean liner that was resting on its side on the sea floor. Halting his ascent, the youth glided through the water toward where an iconic hero of orange and green waited for him. Why do they have miniature tridents? the boy asked, holding out the object that he had found.

The Aquaman was looking upward. Overhead, the silhouette of a large oil tanker blotted out the sun with its massive shape. A plethora of smaller shadows created large wakes around themselves, as the distorted sound of muffled gunfire tricked down through the water. Turning his head toward the boy, Arthur paused for a moment. A quizzical looked crossed his face at the question. It's a fork, he uttered simply. Now, come on.

With that, Arthur began rising up toward the surface. Garth followed beside, starting to push with strong dolphin kicks as he fought to keep pace with the Aquaman as the two built up speed. The surface of the water was coming up fast.

The pair exploded from out of the water. Arthur arcing through the air like some Greek hero of the ancient legends. Cresting from out of the top of a wave, Aquaman sailed from out of the sea to land on his feet atop the bow of the tanker.

Garth followed, shooting out of the sea like a flying fish. A brief panic knotted the pit of his stomach, as he felt the water fall away and the air hit him. Feeling a loss of control, the boy's arms floundered as he realized that swimming in the air really was not a thing.

The boy smacked down on the ship, face-planting as he effectively belly-flopped the landing next to Aquaman.

Keep your head down. Look out for any crew that are in trouble. Arthur's words echoed from inside the boy's head, as the Aquaman launched himself toward one of the small boats.

Pushing himself up from off the deck, the boy found himself gripped in a moment of vertigo as he slid with the sudden roll of the ship, listing in the open sea. Staggering, floundering, and possibly screaming, the boy struggled to find his balance walking upright on the moving deck of the ship. The sound of bullets whizzed by, men shouting in an indistinct language, as Arthur's orange and green form moved from boat to boat.

Holding a hand against the side of the ship's superstructure, the boy crouched down low as he traveled around where he imagined the crew would be. As he rounded the corner, a man wielding a rifle popped out of a doorway. For a moment, the two just stared at one another. Then the man leveled the gun at the boy.

"Ah!" the Aqualad yelped. Not at all sounding like a twelve year old girl. Nope, not even a little bit. Well, maybe a little bit.

Panicked, a sweep of the boy's arm to knocked the barrel away had the effect of smacking the weapon right out of the man's hand. As the rifle spun through the air, it was all that either could do to just watch in surprise as it sailed over the side and splashed down into the water. The pair then looked at each other again for a moment, before the modern pirate drew a machete.

Ducking to one side, the boy side-stepped his attack, then ducked as the man lashed out with a backhand slash that caused the machete to thwak hard against the side of the ship's structure. The man's arm came back for another strike, as Garth lunged forward with a shove.

This didn't go how either planned. In rapid succession, the two connected. Then they were no longer connected. Garth's foot slid out from under him, dropping the boy to his knees as he nearly face-planted a second time. The pirate, meanwhile, went airborne. Straight over the ship's railing.

The feeling of relief at no longer being attacked quickly drained aware to a feeling of impending doom at the sound of the man splashing into the sea. "Ah!" the boy yelped again, scrambling back to his feet and over to the side of the ship.

The pirate was floundering in the ocean, sputtering as he was lifted and pulled away by the seas. I can do this... the boy thought, as he brought his hands out in front of him.

You can't.

The child's purple eyes burned with a vibrant, violet light. He could feel the tide. I can do this...

You will fail.

You're just a tadpole. You can't do anything.

Sucking in a breath of air, Garth pushed his hands forward. As he did, a swell lifted the pirate up in the ocean. Turning his palms inward, the boy then made a rowing motion, pulling his arms back toward the sea. As he did, the swell transformed into a wave that swept back toward the ship. Gritting his teeth, Garth planed his hand out as the crest of the wave reached the side of the ship.

The wave crashed into the side of the ship, slamming the pirate against the superstructure. Bouncing off the bulkhead, the pirate slapped down on the nonskid deck.

Garth winced, shying back at how that had been... a little more rough than what he'd had in mind.

But wait... it worked? Purple irises shone brightly as he child looked over the water-logged, semi-conscious pirate. It worked. IT WORKED! "WAHOO!" the boy shouted, jumping up into the air with a newfound energy.

The sound of something landing on the deck behind him caught the boy by surprise. An Arthur-sized shadow passing over him. Withering, the boy seemed to shrink as he anxiously turned to look back at the Aquaman.

Arthur brought a hand up to sweep his water-soaked hair from out of his face. Looking over the nervous, suspiciously guilty-looking, hand-wringing Aqualad and the unconscious pirate sleeping in a puddle on the deck, it was all that the man could do to give the lad a nod of respect. Good job, Tadpole, Arthur remarked simply, before moving the boy aside so that he could reach down and pick up the pirate, then wordlessly moved to carry the man back toward where he had tied up the others on the deck.

Garth just watched, wide-eyed and breathless.

It had worked. It had worked. And... had Aquaman said good job? To him? A nervous giggle slipped from the child's lips, only growing louder as the boy tried to hold it in. Grabbing hold of the front of his red shirt, the boy cautiously walked out toward where Arthur was being joined by the crew of the tanker. They were coming out to congratulate and thank their hero.

His hero.

Shyly, the boy skirted back toward the shadows. He gave an involuntary jump when his back hit against the railing. Turning his head, he looked down the side of the tanker to where the sea looked inviting below.

Excited about your date with Donna?

Arthur's voice caused the boy to whip back around with a gasp. Then, he gave a scowl. Across the forecastle, Arthur was laughing with the crew, seemingly fitting right in with them. The man cast a spare glance over toward the boy.

It's not a date! Garth voiced in protest, an involuntary shudder passing across his body as he stuck his tongue out in disgust. A date? With a girl? Much gross. Many no thank you.

Wait, what day is it? the boy thought, panic taking hold as he suddenly remembered that Donna had said something about meeting some of the other kids that hung around the Justice League. They were going to some place called New York.

Which, why was it New York? Was there an Old York?

The boy's feet didn't reach all the way to the ground.

You do not belong at this table.

Awkwardly, the Prince of Idylls was squirming in his chair as he looked around the table. He wished that he could be invisible. It was just so amazing. The Kid Flash. The Batgirl. Wonder Girl. These were teenagers who were real heroes.

Not like him.

The boy was quiet as he watched the interaction between Wally and Barbara, taking cues from them as to how he was supposed to eat the pizza. Which, the hands was that it was okay to use hands. That suited Garth just fine. With all the stories that he'd heard from Arthur, about multiple spoons and needing to know the difference between which plates of food that they went with, Garth had some very peculiar ideas about what surface dweller table manners were like. But, these seemed like normal people eating normal flat bread. Which, was really quite good. They didn't have anything like this in Poseidonis. It actually reminded him of Themysciran flat breads, which were one of his favorite foods to get during the Isthmian Games or the Arrhephoria festival or Thesmophoria.

You definitely couldn't get flat bread at Thierna Na Oge's Thesmophoria celebration in the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Atlantean youth reached across the table, pulling out a salt packet. Opening the contents into a glass of water, the boy swirled it around for a moment before he brought the glass up to drink. It wasn't sea water, but it helped to mask the taste of that fluoridated tap water that had been supplied by the waiter.

In retrospect, Garth wasn't sure whether he heard or felt the explosion. A tremor rattling the windows as the loud BOOM rolled like thunder. The boy choked as he had been mid-drink, spilling some water on himself as he looked around the table.

The taste of concrete, the smell of gasoline.

Koriand’r winced, face down some amount of distance away from what remained of the laboratory she had found herself in. She closed her eyes and reopened them, trying her best to focus away from the pain and discomfort. The impact of the transporters overload had blown apart the lab’s easternmost wall, igniting the building with unnatural fire, and tossing what appeared to be a variety of primitive transport vehicles on their sides. Some people were crushed under debris and metal while others ran away in fear as Kori’s pursuers called out for her in a toxic, vicious tongue. She knew the words well.

Find the slave.

She couldn’t let the Gordanians catch her, but at the same time what kind of person would she be if she let innocent people be hurt simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? What kind of Princess of Tamaran would she be? These people had no chance against Gordanian weapons. The amount of energy she had left from X’chal was low, but she couldn’t just run away. She wouldn’t. A bright hue of energy surrounded her and she pushed forward, flying above the streets as her hands began to glow with neon green energy. She would do everything she could. Even if it ended in her inevitable capture.

“You chase me across the galaxy? Your master must be proud!”

The restaurant shook, and Wally dropped Barbara’s slice of pizza.

“Oh man, I was so close – ” His ears rang faintly as he looked down, for a split second, at the ruined slice, before what happened clicked in his ever-speedy mind. An explosion. He took inventory of the room, checking that everyone was okay – a waitress had dropped some glasses, shattering them all over the floor, and what kids were there wailed something awful, but no one seemed hurt. Okay, Wally. You know the drill. What now?

He glanced back at his table.

“You guys okay?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and taking out a golden ring. “I’m gonna – we should – I’m gonna go check this out.”

He stood up, placing the ring on his middle finger as he made for the door. “Back in a Fl– ”

But he was out of there before he could finish, his costume enveloping him, and with lightning trailing behind him, he ran towards whichever danger lay ahead.

The boy’s words may as well had been gibberish, but Kori had the feeling of his intent even though she old heard them as she let out a beam of neon energy at her attackers. Language was funny like that – tone traveled across all frames of spoken word. The boy was angry, displeased about those who would attack his home and endanger his people. Kori thought of it like the story of the Portkin. Much like the Portkin the two sides could not understand each other and Kori understood that the Gordanians were much much more irreverent than the Tamaranean hunters in the story. Gordanians didn’t rethink, or negotiate for that matter. Especially not when they were chasing after prey that would elevate their status among the confederate leaders they served.

Starfire spun underneath one of the electromagnetic blasts that exited the Gordanian weapons. Her brows narrowed, recalling how the beams felt when they touched her skin. Her people were strong against gamma beams and anything revolving around ultraviolet radiation. The Gordanians had developed weapons to counteract this somehow, weapons that revolved around electromagnetic energy. It was worse than being cold. It burned like fire, but with a bone chill that attacked her nerves. Energies that could slow and disorient. She still wasn't sure how the Gordanians got their hands on it.

As she blasted one of the aliens back into the ruined laboratory she shouted back despite knowing he wouldn't understand her, “They seek only destruction! Help your people!”

It was a futile effort, but maybe the alien could also decipher tone. However, just as she ended her sentence the loud hum of the Gordanian energy weapons became apparent as a flurry of more energy beams screamed past her head, hitting the buildings behind her. Kori immediately cursed in Tamaranean, ducking and weaving the best she could. She tried to count how many of her pursuers had followed her from Staphis, but between the fire that had begun to spread and the innocent people caught in the crossfire it was hard to keep focus.

At the very least there was at least a Thanagarian dozen.

She shot out another blast of neon energy as she flew down and kicked one of the Gordanians in their chin, sending him flying back into a few of his friends.

Large, violet eyes just blinked.

In the time it took him to do so, the Kid Flash had vanished from inside the pizzeria, leaving the young Atlantean to try to make sense of the words that he'd spoken. Had Wally suggested that they go check that out? Wait, check what out? The surface world? He didn't know the first thing about the surface world!

As anxiety crept through the dark haired boy, a sharp scream was muffled through the windows of the restaurant. Turning his head toward the sound, Garth watched as a panicked group was running through the streets as the people mulling about outside reacted to something that he couldn't see.

Not from inside the pizzeria.

Yep, totally outside the comfort zone right now.

Swallowing, the boy stood up from the table and started to make his way toward the door. Skidding to a halt just past the doorway, the small Atlantean turned his head. This strange urban jungle of glass and concrete was disorienting as he tried to look up in search of the commotion.

Whatever it was, it was happening on the other side of the restaurant.

Bracing himself, Garth leapt up into the air. Awkwardly, he fumbled about as he landed atop the roof to Marv's Pizza, which gave him a vantage point for seeing...

...well, he wasn't really all that certain.

There were a bunch of really strange looking creatures. They kind of reminded him of the gorgons of Greek mythology. Then there was a lady with red hair, who was swimming in mid-air. And she wasn't the only air-swimmer either, there was a teenage guy as well.

So, next question.

Who's the good guy? Or, gal?

Turning to look around, Garth was presented with the fact that he couldn't exactly ask that question. He'd left Barbara and Donna's side. And Wally wasn't in sight.

At times like this, the surface world's mode of verbalized communication was frustrating for its obvious limitations. Taking a deep breath, Garth's purple irises flashed as the boy paused to switch to a more familiar style of communicating. In his mind's eye, he could visualize Donna, Barbara and Wally. Touching each of their minds, the boy found himself reassured by the knowledge of their presence as the telepathic rapport was built between them.

Hey, guys. Question. Which one's are the bad guys?

The wind whipped around Wally, feeling its cold but not its stabs as he ran, cocooned in his small field of distorted physics. His feet feathered over the ground, and he pushed towards the source of the explosion, extradimensional energy arcing like lightning behind him. Inside his pocket of anti-physics, friction did not exist; he felt no heat, no drag. Just the blood coursing through his veins, the beat of his heart and the ticking of time, time in which rubble falls, and people scream, and get hurt – and he runs.

Aliens. Bad ones. Eight of them, by Wally’s count – nine if he counted the orange one – but she seemed distressed, fiercely fighting against the others, and he was willing to bet that even if she helped cause this, she deserved the lesser half of the blame.

In his bubble, inside his mind, time expanded. Milliseconds stretched into seconds. And in those seconds of seconds, he saw –

– Superman? No, that’snotClark, it’ssomeoneelsehelooksmyage, whoishe, whatishedoi –

– foam? Fire, putting it out, wherediditcomefrom, lookslikeitcamefromarooftopcan’tseeanyoneuptheremanifDick’sherethat’dbewaytoocool –

Hey, guys. Question. Which one's are the bad guys? Garth’s voice cut through his thoughts, slow and long, and Barbara’s followed after, slower still.

Yeah, hey, kiddo. Cute party trick, but this headspace is strictly PG13, cool? Or is intellectual property not so much a thing where you're from?

Woahwhatthethisisnew, thought Wally, and he realised that he was thinking faster than they could process, Sorrymybad I’llslow down. Go for the big ugly green ones, Garth, I’m gonna help any bystanders that need helping. Maybe you could see where Agent Orange and “Superboy” stand, they’re uh –

“Superboy” splattered an alien,

– a little hard to get a read on.

People were staring a little too close to the action. If they stuck around, they’d get hurt.

Wally curved around the aliens, making a beeline for the bystanders.

Kid Flash to the rescue.

The Gordanians snarled as one of them was immediately thrown aside with little effort.

But they were not afraid of a boy with the strength of a flamop, nor did they have reason to be. The Gordanians had feuded for centuries with beings of great strength and they had adapted to it. Tamaraneans, Thanagarians, and many others had been their sworn rivals. The ferocity of Gordanians was known to all of the races surrounding the Tamaranean Empire. As she fired several starbolts at her enemies, causing one of the Gordanian staves to explode in a burst of ion. As a group of Gordanians began to access the threat of her accidental rescuer one of the veteran hunters of the pack let out a loud snarl-like command, and it send a chill down Kori's spine.

Destroy him! The princess is mine.

Before she knew it all of the Gordanians minus the leader aimed their staff weapons at the boy and fired them at once while the one who had singled her out leaped through the air, his staff nearly hitting her square in the head. Her worries had been going to the people around her and her ally of convenience and it was beginning to effect her battle awareness. The warlord who trained her would be screaming at her if he could see her now.

As she dodged another strike from her enemy, the Gordanian twirled his staff, his finger slipping across a trigger and a blast of energy hit her in the face at point blank range. A blinding, bone chilling pain was the only thing she felt for a few seconds before she felt the Gordanian clutching her hair. Before she knew it she had been spun around and tossed like a ragdoll.

As her body collided with full force on one of the lightposts below. Before she could feel undazed the feeling of the staff slamming into her stomach caused her to regain her faculties, though not in the most ideal circumstance. She began to channel the energy she had left, drawing from the deepest of her reserves and in a few seconds her enemy was flying across the street from the expulsion of energy she had unleashed from her body. For a few moments she had time to compose herself, but she probably didn't have much more energy left. She coughed in pain before breathing long and deep.

It wasn't over yet.

Kori pushed her hand against the concrete underneath her, her vision was blurry, and there was a dull, reverberating, pain coming from the side of her head. Had she been at full power when she arrived on this new planet, she would’ve been in a far better position for a battle of such a scale. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, even if the beggars were beggar princesses. She was just glad she had timed her attacks against the “leader” of the group of Gordanians, otherwise she probably would’ve been in far worse shape.

She gritted her teeth and tried to refocus, looking in the direction her enemy had “flown”. Archaic buildings of steel and brick stood in the path with a Gordanian shaped hole in place of an exterior wall.

In a few seconds, she saw the silhouette of her captor-to-be, though before he looked at her he looked at his comrades-in-arms to see how they were doing. Gordanians didn’t have much facial muscles to express emotions, but Kori knew he wasn’t pleased. She didn’t even need to hear him snarl, his body language was all she needed. As his eyes re-met hers, she scrambled to her feet, remembering her training from her time with the Warlords of Okaara, changing to a defensive stance. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could last. But a Princess of Tamaran never went down without a fight; even if they were on their last breath.