Well. This was supposed to be a drabble. As you can tell, my drabbles rarely work. I need details, man. And this is what you got.

Also, sorry for laying waste to all that Chinese heritage. It was in the name of creativity, I swear. Standard disclaimers apply.

Oh, and somewhere in this fanfiction is a disguised reference to Starbucks. I don't own that either. Reviews and concrit are appreciated.

Edited - Because I started mixing up Japan with China… twice. How I did that, I have no idea.

“Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.”

-Chinese Proverbs.

Outside Noise.

China.

Damn. He hadn’t been expecting China.

Not that there’s anything wrong with China. He's pretty sure the locals like it, and those mountain ranges make great sprinting areas, there’s just too much out here that’s breakable (maybe that’s where the name came from).

Temples, for example, and ancient stuff in old museums, expensive stuff in new electronic stores, Parade Floats, bars and all the sushi restaurants. And for all the major fast food joints this country is supposed to have, he hasn’t found a single Sundollars since he got here.

Still, at least the food is cool. He supposes he could’ve run out here any time in the past, but the Burger Bars of Philadelphia have always had more appeal than chopsticks and raw fish and Kitsii Udoni or… whatever they call it.

Or is that Japan? Wally has no idea what the difference is.

Anyway by now, he’s regretting the lost time. He’s eaten a lot of noodles today. Had even been thinking he might try the sushi. Then of course Clayface had shown up and decided to pay the shrines a visit. (What the heck is he doing this far away from Gotham, anyway? And why isn’t Bats on the comm. when Wally needs him, damn it?) Things kind of went downhill from there.

All the way down. There are a lot of hills, for a place that’s in the middle of a city, and being thrown headfirst down two of them kind of makes him lose his appetite. For a while, anyway.

Because, seriously, how was he supposed to have expected Clayface? Here? In the middle of freaking China? The guy’is usually found in the same places as Batman is –shadowy corners and the undersides of gargoyles, for example– not in big, wide open Chinese cities with all their temples and breakable things.

He’d caught Wally completely by surprise Wally told himself, because no way in heck would he otherwise have consented to being thrown down the hill and into a pillar by a lump-of-sentient-plasticine from hell…

‘Oh-kay there, Clayface. We’ve already met. No need for introductions here. We do this the hard way or the easy way, p—’

Something that looks like it’s supposed to be a fist (it’s kinda hard to tell with this guy) shoots forwards at Wally’s face. He dodges it without breaking his sentence. ‘—al. The easy way involves nice, quiet Chinese prison cells and possibly noodles. Hard way involves broken moulds. That was a joke, and I meant it to be, man, and just watch where you’re putting those—!’

Slap.

‘—Urk! …Fists… Yeuch, okay, hard way it is, then.’

The lump of Plasticine from hell (who has just thrown him halfway up the walkway with all the bright red bamboo poles and is now proceeding to smash through them all, taking the pretty symbols with him) doesn’t seem to be deterred by Wally’s lightning fast wit, or his reflexes. Oh well. Wally’s sure he can handle it.

‘…Right, um… Oh-kay, we’ll try the really hard way.’

Clayface fires again (that’s really the only thing Wally can think of to describe it), shooting out bursts of solid, dark dirt that turn rock hard before they hit whatever crosses their path first. Like he’s controlling his own density at will. And Wally’s really not sure if Clayface knew how to do that before, but then he’s faced Clayface a grand total of three times and he’s never understood the guy (and this from someone who has –used to have- a Martian’s number on speed-dial and who hangs out with Amazons and Batmen and Kryptonians). How can something sink between cracks like water and yet still hit like a sledgehammer if you try to stop him?

And since when did Clayface take to beating up Chinese Temples, anyway? What’s the deal with that? Wasn’t he supposed to be one of those villains who just wanted to fix something he’d broken and got involved with illegal stuff to do it?

Not that it really matters right now. Stopping him before he can turn anymore of downtown China into a sludge tank – that’s important.

A normal person wouldn’t actually have time to think about these kinds of things during a battle, but Wally an get in a surprisingly large amount of thinking in-between blocks and dodges. (Mostly dodges.) And he can see the look in Clayface’s eyes right now as he pummels every available surface in a vain attempt to get at Wally. There’s something not human in Clayface’s not-exactly-human-anyway eyes. They’re black and dark like little bits of coal, and he’s angry enough to keep whacking the spot where Wally had been a whole half a second ago over and over like someone trying to crush a spider.

Wally zips back and reappears somewhere behind Clayface, trying to distract him away from the temple. He hasn’t seen any people around –it’s late, at least ten thirty pm but hey, this is Chinaso there should at least be some tourists around and he’d really rather Clayface didn’t run into them.

Clayface takes the bait, turning sharply (by his standards, anyway) to attack Wally head on, but by the time he’s shifted his body enough, the bait is already standing somewhere else. Wally keeps doing this for a while, shifting quickly to another position, every time Clayface catches a glimpse of him. It keeps him in one place, for a little while, and distracts him from attacking anything else. His eyes look totally utterly wild – black and red and… scary enough to make Batman seem tame.

And that’s scary.

Maybe that stuff isn’t important right now. Wally just wants to get him out of there and get back to looking for the bad guy he was sent here for. He’s pretty sure that bad guy isn’t Clayface.

‘Too fast for ya, big guy? Wait, don’t answer that. ‘Course you are.’ He dodges a few more times to prove it.

The lumps of clay aren’t especially fast but they’re everywhere and… it’s hard to avoid a guy who can pull his body apart like that. Clayface doesn’t seem to care. He’s more concerned with putting a rocky, gooey fist through Wally’s face –but he’s got to catch Wally first and be damned if he’s staying still long enough to let that happen. Now all he has to do is think of a way to stop him completely. He doesn’t have any ice or water handy, and he’s pretty sure Clayface can just reform himself after every hit he takes.

But what about if he gets punched a hundred times per second? A thousand? More?

One way to find out.

Wally dodges the next three or so blows, slips in between the next burst of clay and punches, revving his speed up enough to throw about a thousand more with every second. He’s not sure exactly where (hell he’s not sure exactly what) he’s hitting, but he goes at it for all he’s got and waits for Clayface’s normally unbreakable body to start giving and liquidising under the pressure and quickly rising friction-heat.

Except that it doesn’t.

Not even a little.

Wally’s been up against Clayface before, he knows what to expect and it’s not this. It’s like he’s hitting rubber. And then whatever it is, it’s throwing him backwards, like he wasn’t vibrating at roughly eight hundred VPM and it’s all he can do to stay on his feet and go into a circular run.

Another wall smashes to Wally’s left from a burst of clay propelled in his direction. Luckily it gets to the wall of pillars long before it gets to him, which reduces a lot of its mass before the hit. Instead of being bowled over, Wally only stumbles a little and gets a blob of clay in the face. No pun intended what-so-freaking-ever. He takes a tumble turn, which at the speed he’s going means he’s pretty lucky not to smash headfirst into the pavement.

‘Oh yeuch! This uniform is dry clean only!’

And now he’s all gunky. Wally hates being gunky. Gunk tends to have weight, weight tends to slow him down, and a slow Flash really isn’t much good for…

‘Whoa, whoa, time out ti—!’

Squelcrunch.

…For avoiding hefty blows from above. Of which Wally has just narrowly avoided half a dozen. Clayface shoots across the walls like liquid, or the energy coming out of a Green Lantern’s power ring, only sticker.

Wally hadn’t realized that something could sound like both the slap of a wet towel and a china vase being ground into dust at the same time, but apparently it can. He’s not entirely sure what it is in amongst all of Clayface’s goop which is making that strange, slapping-crunchy sound, but then again, he’s not sure he wants to know. So long as it’s not a part of him, then that’s okay for now, and few milliseconds later, he’s too busy trying to outrun it all and get Clayface away from the temple to even think about where the squelcrunching had come from.

Clay, rubber, and now liquid gunk. What’s next?

He circumnavigates the shrine another fifteen times looking for a quick fix solution and not finding one before stopping, a good twenty feet away from Clayface, who seems to have degenerated back into an oozing puddle for a moment, like he’s gearing up for another charge. By now there are gaping holes in the walls and nearby trees are coated with grey slime. He really doesn’t want to think what’s going to happen if Clayface decides to advance into the city because once –just once– Wally thinks he’d like to have a week where buildings weren’t blown apart –usually by the body of a superhero being thrown right through them. Not fun.

So. Clayface obviously has no interest whatsoever in talking to him. Actually, he hadn’t said a word since they started brawling –he just splashes about and screams a lot and tries to catch Wally in a grim, stone glare, eyes bleeding grey, like unset concrete. Which is a totally disgusting thought and actually a little disturbing, but very accurate.

Wally tries to move his feet.

And then he discovers what the squelcrunching had come from –the half hardening clay now clinging to his ankles. It sticks really well. As soon as Wally gets his feet in it, he discovers its consistency makes getting out of it rather like trying to get away from a lump of concrete mixed with glue and bubblegum. And when he tries to pull out, his feet are sucked right back into it.

Clayface blooms out of the puddle on the floor again and comes at him through the cracks of the wall like dirt down a drain. The too-weird-to-be-normal cascade all but slams Flash back into ground. He knows he’s in trouble.

Wally West has faced the apocalypse. He even single-handedly (mostly) prevented one, once. But that end of the world hadn’t involved massive wads of clay pressing down on his ribcage. He’d still been able to run. That mattered a lot.

‘Aw, man, I so don’t wanna go down fighting a giant lump of—’

Squelcrunch.

Yeah. The breaking noise was probably his ribs that time. And he thinks some of that awful half liquid might have just gone up his nose which would explain the sudden need to gag. Not being able to move is already making him feel claustrophobic. He hates it, and his ribcage hurts but the goop just won’t shift, no matter how much he tries to vibrate out of it (and right now, he doesn’t care what he makes explode).

‘Look ah… can we… you know, talk about this?’

…And for crying out loud, why did he even say that? They never “talk about it”. The bad guys just don’t listen to that line; it only makes them want to kill you more.

And Clayface had seemed pretty dead-set on killing him in the first place.

The next noise Wally hears, however, surprisingly enough, doesn’t come from his ribs breaking. And it isn’t really a squelcrunching noise, either –it’s more like the sound of a waterfall, or a hosepipe being pushed in your ear and turned on at full power.

First Wally’s all clay-like and now he’s all wet, and from choking on clay he goes to choking on water. Cold water, too, rushing at him like somebody just dumped the sea on them. It only covers his face for a second, but that one second feels like forever. Clayface makes a sound like a draining bathtub mixed with one of Shayera’s war cries, and then the water’s all gone again, except for a few puddles, lapping around his head.

Wally takes a moment to breathe and allow his body to catch up with his brain as he looks at where Clayface had been before –from the looks of it, something –someone– has doused Clayface with enough water to drown Aquaman and his entire kingdom. Whatever remains of him is thin on the ground, dripping and drifting around the shrine.

Wally vibrates a bit, trying to dry off. Icky, but it’s better than the clay. He takes a deep breath and tries to come up with the wittiest one liner he possible can, but it’s always harder when you’ve just had your ass saved by someone else, so all he can really think of at short notice is: ‘Man, what took you so long…?’ and that’s not really a quip at all.

‘Sorry. There wasn't a nearby water body large enough to cope with him. Also, it's pretty difficult to fly in a form capable of transporting that water’ someone responds, and Wally is surprised when the voice he hears is on the inside of his head rather than outside.

Of course, that can only mean one person but… Wally doesn’t see how it can be him, because they haven’t seen anything of J’onn since the last big apocalypse and…

No. Can’t be.

‘Wait… J’onn?’ Wally looks right and left and behind himself about fifty times, then gets a clue and looks up instead. Sure enough –there’s someone hovering above him, red eyes glowing in the creepy shadows. Whoever it is, they look kind of wet, too. ‘J’onn, that’s you, right?’

‘You have completely decimated the local shrine.’

…Oh yeah. That’s J’onn alright. The voice Wally hears is pretty annoyed, but there’s no doubting who it belongs to now. The weird sensation in Wally’s brain –however disappointed it might be, and however much Wally didn’t realise it was there until after it had gone– is warm, familiar and long missed.

A grin cuts through the annoyed feelings that Wally knows aren’t entirely his.

Wally grins and pretends his back doesn’t hurt as the clay slips away along with the water (except for the bits that don’t, and he just knows he’s going to be stinking of this stuff for a while. His suit will never be the same. Lucky he has another dozen at home) He thinks he can still hear Clayface gurgling and he really has no idea where J’onn must’ve gotten all that water (never mind how he got it all here), but he’s not exactly going to complain.

‘What, I… the temple? Oh, come on, it’s not that bad. I’m serious, I didn’t ask for him to be here. You know, if he’s broken anything important I’m not paying for—’

‘Damage has been done to many items of importance here, Flash, and most of them can’t even be assigned a price tag.’ J’onn descended from the ceiling and Wally vaguely notes the absence of his cape. J’onn looks really weird without one. ‘This temple is of great significance to the locals and it provides a popular tourist attraction. Anming is going to be very displeased when she finds out about this. Still, I assume you’re unhurt?’

Wally sits up and vibrates again. The water goes, but what’s left of the clay still sticks to him. The leftover mud squelches but it doesn’t start yelling or screaming, which he figures is a sign that Clayface is gone. For now, at least. Wally figures that if he just sits still for a few more milliseconds, he’ll be able to get back on his feet without the room doing that whole spinning trick it tends to do at moments like this.

‘…Uh, yeah, sure. I’m cool. Sticky, dirty and smelling bad, but cool. And about all of that –you know those vases back there weren’t completely my fault.’

He feels another familiar sensation. It’s kind of like how a mental-sigh might feel and it only happens when J’onn’s really annoyed. Wally wonders what else he’s broken.

‘Anming is human, Wally, not a vase.’

‘Uh… yeah. I knew that. Ming. Nice name. Any relation to the dynasty?’

There’s a moment of silence. A really long moment, even by Wally’s standards, and they just stand there (well, Wally kneels, since he’s not quite up to standing yet) and look at each other.

He kinda didn’t picture their reunion happening in the middle of some kind of life-or-death struggle, but…

Wait, hang on, what’s he thinking? Of course they were going to meet again in the middle of some kind of life-or-death struggle. ‘Jeeze, Wally, get with the program. Recover your brain from where Clayface kicked it.

…Stupid Clayface.’

At least there aren’t any aliens, (except for the one who had just saved his hide, obviously). He’d kind of expected it to involve evil aliens.

‘Wally, I consider us all immensely fortunate that you steered clear of Tokyo. But did you honestly have to visit Hong Kong?’

Wally stands up, wobbles a bit, but the hand on his shoulder stops him falling and also lets him know that J’onn’s not entirely mad at him, which is cool.

‘Well… yeah, I mean, have you tried the noodles here? It’s like eating pasta, only better!’ The sensation at the edge of Wally’s mind changes to amusement mixed with altogether alien brand of hacked off. ‘Anyway. Nice to see ya, J’onn.’

It takes another long moment, but J’onn’s disapproving face eventually dissolves into something more at ease.

‘The sentiment is echoed. Now please remove yourself from the cultural heritage.’