slowspeedster | Sometimes we all need guy time.

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terry

Sometimes we all need guy time.

Bart had an idea. Especially since the entire Bat!Clan was in a slump. He had a plan, but it probably measured up about as well as his typical plans. On the other hand, it might work. And he had the box with his Nintendo and games under one arm as he went to abscond with a future Batman.

Some things took a friend, not family. He'd done it from time to time for Tim, so maybe he could do it for Terry, too.

"Enough brooding, man. Otherwise I might think you really need that suit," Bart told him.

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"And here I thought that was part of the job." Terry gets up when Bart comes calling, but it's clear on his face he's still not particularly in the mood to play games.

"What are we doing exactly?"

"Proving that not everything retro is boring," Bart said, grinning. "It's a Nintendo. The original kind, but with some of the better accessories. At least I didn't get one of those crappy Power Gloves. It was like the worst VR controller ever. They forgot to sweatproof the circuitry."

Terry lets Bart talk on, half listening. If there's a quiz afterwards, he's sure to fail, but he at least looks attentive. It's hard not to appreciate; he even wishes someone had done that the last time he'd lost a father. But that doesn't mean his head's in the right place.

"Retro games huh? Schway."

"Part of the home game revolution. And ten times more interesting than pong. Which is really only good for when you're dying of boredom," Bart said, sighing slightly as he realizes it's not working.

"Want to talk about it?"

"Talk about what? Pong?"

Even if he wants to talk about it, Terry's not even sure where to start. "I don't think I've reached that stage of grief yet."

"So instead we beat the heck out of overly pixelated bad guys," Bart joked. "Since we aren't likely to find any of the real thing. One of the bad things about this place."

Terry has to agree right now. Bringing down vigilante justice is probably his favorite method of dealing with things going wrong in his life. Seeing as it's unavailable to him, he plays along with Bart.

"I'm guessing there's going to be a learning curve."

"Not much. Start pauses, only two action buttons. And beating the game before your hands go numb from the square corners digging in is a total plus," Bart said, joking on some level.

"C'mon, it's not so bad. At least I can't completely cheat."

"So...primitive?"

Terry quickly holds up his hands to show that he's kidding.

"Original."

"Restricted by the technology of the time. And if you're going to knock the system that created the home console niche, you can be Luigi," Bart said, pretending to scowl.

"Haven't you ever played Pac-Man? Or Space Invaders?"

"Space Invaders, I've heard of, but no. It's pretty hard to get your hands on a good copy of the older stuff these days."

Terry actually smiles at the face Bart makes. "Not knocking."

"We can at least still find an arcade version of it here and there, contemporary to island time. But you never know what the island will have show up for you when the gifts happen," Bart said, smiling fondly. "That's how I got this. And Boko."

With the way they moved, it wasn't really all that far to the rec room and the TV, setting up the machine and popping in Mario.

"You ready for a ride in the wayback machine?"

"Boko?" Terry asks, not entirely sure he needed the answer. There's no knowing what qualified as a pet around here.

Still, random presents are always a good thing. In theory.

"And I live on the wayback machine, are you kidding?"

"My very own giant chicken-horse, and Jessica likes to call him. He's a chocobo, like from Final Fantasy. I've been helping out at the chocobo stables since I arrived. Maybe someday I'll even get to race with them, but I suspect there'd be more of a chance for an island marathon," Bart said, unable to help a slight smile as the game loaded.

"So, this is Super Mario Brothers. Classic sidescroller. A jumps, B uses special powers if you have any, although in this one, there's only the fireflower. For the most part, your goal is to jump on and squash enemies, and hit bricks. If you've gotten a mushroom powerup to be big, you can smash bricks, too. You wanna go first, or should I plan on committing suicide when your eyes glaze over?"

"Giant...chicken-horse." It sounds like something that has to be seen to be believed, especially with the references that fly over his head.

The screen loads up and Terry takes it in. "Schway."

Bart grins at his response, and tosses over the controller. "Have at. This is the origin of all those 'the princess is in another castle' jokes. Maybe later I can introduce you to the birds."

Deftly, Terry catches and turns it right side up to point it at the screen. He can't remember ever having seen a display so simplistic, and yet still readable.

"So all I can do is go forward, huh?"

How symbolic.

"Yeah, which can suck sometimes. I swear they make sure the 1up mushrooms are designed to go the worst possible paths," Bart said, smiling a little.

"They did some 3d games when the computers got far enough with the characters, but I didn't enjoy them as much."

"We have full-on, three-dimensional immersion games," Terry replies, running Mario forward and missing a mushroom. "Step in, strap on the gloves and off you go."

"I grew up in a VR chamber. Full neuro-tactile immersion. When I finally got out, it was really confusing," Bart said, quietly. "But that is in the future, even for you. Right now, they have some gloves and other immersive tech, but it's all one way. The best they can do is put in some kind of vibrating alert to represent contact. No smells or anything more ephemeral."

"Heavy," Terry says. He pauses the game so he can turn his full attention to Bart. "I knew a girl who was raised, basically, in a tank. When she went out, she had to wear a vibro belt and even standing in the water, she wouldn't get wet."

He shakes his head, unable to imagine it. "Must've been strange."

"I didn't know any other life. The hardest part was realizing that in the real world, there is no reset button when you make a mistake," Bart said. As much as he wanted to shrug it off, he couldn't.

"I was born with superspeed, and I didn't know how to turn it off. The only thing that could keep up was a computer. I was something like twelve the first time I was really unplugged. And I was in high school before it really sank in that I don't even think like normal folks."

Again, Terry thinks of the people he's come across. There was a man, once, who couldn't turn off his power to walk through walls and sank to the center of the earth. He wants to tell Bart that it could be worse, but that's not the point of the conversation.

"Was it hard?"

"Which would you choose, given the opportunity? A life that catered perfectly to your every whim but didn't actually have any substance, or what's out here? I couldn't make mistakes that had any lasting effects to learn from, the way you have to.

"It was frustrating, more than anything. Not being able to do what I knew I was capable of because it would get those around me hurt. On the other hand, saving the world is certainly addicting," Bart said, not sure how to think about it, really. Things had changed so much since he'd first became Impulse.

"I mean, could you really see yourself going back to just being a 'normal' teenager? And all you Bats have is training and cool toys."

"I think you know the answer to that." Terry knows that he would never go back. No money. No measure of anything.

Maybe only if he could get his dad back.

"Which is why people tend to doubt our sanity," Bart quipped. "I don't mind the break here,though. Especially since I'm just a guy who used to be able to run really fast. Means best use I can do is evacuation and triage in a disaster."

It was part of why he was teaching running. Because knowing how much you could cover, and how quickly, without injury, the type of awareness it brought, that could save lives. He'd thought about joining the police or the task force, but they both required certain things he wasn't comfortable with.

It could be worse. Terry has to agree on that part. The flying car didn't come with him, sure, but at least he can still move and fight. Even if there's no crime coming.

"I'm still getting used to the whole break part of things."

"Well, you can go swimming in water you won't need a full medical workup after contact with. Learn something new. Check out the dinosaurs," Bart said. "Or just veg out and play primitive video games."

"Hey! Gotham's not...that bad. And, if it's all the same, I've had my fill of dinosaurs." Terry's only elaboration was to gesture to a faint scar that peeped out from under his shirt sleeve.

"But the video games can stay."

"Well, I remember Tim mentioning that there's a lot of Joker Toxin and stuff like that in the harbor. He didn't even like me running on it," Bart commented.

"And I'll trade you dinosaur stories...although I don't have any scars. Not even from the time Deathstroke kneecapped me."

"Uh, it involved Kobra, splicing, and a really weird kid trying to date my friend Max."

In the short version, it almost sounds funny, like a setup for a joke.

"Mine involved a spin on the cosmic treadmill and a pack of velociraptors following me home," Bart said. "It was really a pain to hold one long enough to get it back to when it belonged."

Terry finds himself smiling at the mental image. He's never really swapped stories with people; Barbara had only told him about the past in warnings and Bruce just didn't do stories. And here he is with Bart, just slagging it out.

It's not bad.

"They're slippery like that."

"You don't have to tell me twice," Bart said, shaking his head a little. "I never watched Jurassic Park the same way after that."

But it could have been worse. Maybe. "I think the Flash would have read me the riot act on that one if Max hadn't stepped in. I mean, it wasn't like the time Young Justice accidentally triggered a self-destruct of a secret base in Mount Rushmore."

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Sometimes we all need guy time.

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