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They’re…pink.

The stampede was noisy, but not deafening. Had the elephants been full-sized, they probably would have been louder, and would definitely have caused more damage. As it was, though – the elephants being roughly a tenth the size of what they should’ve been – they were mostly just a nuisance.

And also? Pink.

Wally couldn’t help but gape at them a bit. The things were everywhere, though most were consolidated to a herd of tiny pink elephants that was running up and down the streets of downtown Keystone City. Traffic was at a standstill, as none of Keystone’s residents really had any idea what was going on, nor did any of them want to injure the pint-sized pachyderms. Also, there was pretty much an understanding around town about things like this: when something strange happens, wait five minutes for The Flash to take care of it.

Unfortunately, that five minutes was fast approaching its end, and Wally – or, as the strangers around him would’ve referred to him, The Flash – was still just trying to process what was happening. He stood, in costume, at the corner of Broome and Fifth, his arms crossed over his chest, a somewhat puzzled look on his face, trying to decide what to do. He came up with a dozen logical ways to handle the situation, but every time he attempted to act on his plan, his brain would jump back to the statement that was playing itself over and over again in his head like A Christmas Story on Christmas day.

They’re…pink. And, I mean, they’re little, too, but…they’re pink. What is up with that?

He shook his head, as if clearing the cobwebs, and took a breath. Okay, West. They’re little. They’re pink. They’re elephants. Just another day in Keystone, right? So let’s do this thing and ask questions – and there will no doubt be many – later. First thing’s first: consolidation.

It was another minute before Wally remembered where the nearest sporting goods store was, but only eight seconds for him to find the biggest fishing nets they carried and tie them all together. With giant net in hand, the fastest man alive set off to collect the little pink elephants that were running rampant in his fair city.

The collection process was more tedious than he would’ve liked it to be. Given the miniature size of the elephants, and their general state of being all over the place, The Flash had to be extra-thorough and extra-careful about where he looked. The majority of those that weren’t out in the open were under cars, which in and of itself presented a problem for the scarlet speedster, who had a tendency to make things explode when he tried to vibrate his molecules through them. Slowing down to look under all of the cars he passed without causing any of them blow up frustrated him a bit, but at least, Wally thought, he wasn’t on any sort of deadline.

Others of the elephants had wandered in-doors – it was the middle of the summer, after all, and many of the stores and restaurants in downtown Keystone were used to propping their front doors open during this time of year. It was inviting to the customers, and also, apparently, to strange roving animals.

The net, which functioned now more as a bag than anything else, grew increasingly heavy as the scarlet speedster captured more and more of the little pink elephants. I’ve got to get these things out of town, The Flash mused to himself. He towed the giant sack over his shoulder, and it was nearly full. Without any real way of knowing if he had rounded up all of the little pink elephants, he determined that if he could remove at least the majority of them from the center of the city, people would be able to go about their business, and he could come back and take care of the occasional little pink elephant as the need arose. If anything was the goal of gathering up all of the elephants, it was restoring some semblance of order.

As he rounded the corner of Tenth St. onto Gardner Way, Wally noticed the load on his shoulder, to which he hadn’t added anything in nearly two seconds, grow considerably heavier. He thought nothing of it, that he was just growing tired, but a moment later, the load suddenly vanish from behind him, and the force of The Flash’s inertia carried him nearly out of the city before he was able to slow enough to stop without breaking anything. The net was still in his hands, and he inspected it carefully and quickly. A large hole told him everything he needed to know.

Oh, well, that’s just wonderful, he thought with a sigh. Now I get to do it all again! That’s…yeah, that’s just that, I guess.

He took off again, heading back down Gardner towards Tenth. As he neared where he had dropped the elephants, he heard something he hadn’t earlier: screams. And when he arrived at his destination, he understood why.

Gone were the tiny pink elephants. In their place was one giant pink elephant, easily three times the size of a normal elephant, if not four times. The bag got heavier, he thought. They merged, from little, into really freaking big. The large elephant wasn’t charging; in fact, it wasn’t doing much of anything other than looking around. It wasn’t sufficiently frightened at this point, Wally guessed. All it would take would be one errant car horn, though, to set the thing off and running. Wally looked at the net he was carrying, and let out a half-chuckle. “Well, this is somewhat worthless now, isn’t it?” He casually tossed the thing away, and started to step off towards the paralyzed pachyderm.

“Hey! Watch where your throwin’ your trash, fleetfeet!”

The nasal voice came from behind him, and The Flash turned and, to his surprise, looked down. On the ground, a few feet away from him, stood a little man, no more than two feet tall, in a purple suit. The man was bald, and wore a white dress shirt, purple bow tie, and a purple bowler derby. The net had landed right on top of him, and he was somewhat tangled in it.

Wally stepped back towards him and knelt down, grasping at the net. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“Clearly you did not,” the little man said sharply. “Guy throws a net over a poor defenseless dwarf. Where’s a cop when you need one?”

The Flash tried to take the net off of the little man, but it seemed to go on and on, the small man becoming more and more entangled in it as the seconds passed. It was then that the speedster noticed that he couldn’t find the end of the net. “What the hell…”

“Oh, f’r…lemme do it,” the little man said, obviously agitated. Wally stood and looked over his shoulder to see how the elephant was doing.

The enormous animal was still calm, walking around now, smelling things and looking around. As long as it stayed that way, Wally thought.

He heard the sharp sound of fingers snapping, and Wally looked back at the net. The little man in purple was gone.

Wally looked around, bewildered. He blinked, and the little man’s round face greeted him as he opened his eyes. “Wake up, Flasheroo! I’m outta that net,” he shouted – or maybe he was using his normal volume voice, but it seemed to Wally like the little guy was shouting – “no thanks to you, I might add!”

It was then that Wally noticed the little man was floating. It should’ve struck him immediately – how could a guy that small be right up in his face if he was standing upright? The scarlet speedster took a step back and looked at him, something clicking in his mind. “You look vaguely familiar…”

“Vaguely!” The little man threw his arms up into the air. “Vaguely, he says! How could you forget this face! This body!”

Wally shook his head. “You’re gonna have to help me out here…”

“Are you kiddin’ me? I made no impression on you whatsoever? I made you race Superman, for Pete’s sake! You remember that, right?”

“I’ve raced Superman a few times, honestly. It’s sort of an annual thing at this point.”

“Yeah, but I was there when you did it the first time! Remember? You in the red, Supes in the blue, me in the yellow and purple? No hablo englais?”

The Flash began to speak again, but the thundering sound of a car being crushed under enormous elephant feet interrupted his train of thought. He turned away from the impish man and took off toward the beast, which was just beginning to lash out at everything around it. Okay, so I think it’s safe to assume that short-round over there is responsible for the elephant problem. One well-placed half-mach-1 shot should put this thing down until I can get him to take it away.

As he neared the giant animal, The Flash reared back for the punch. He gritted his teeth. This was going to hurt a bit.

“Don’t you dare hit Stampy!”

Wally glanced to his left. The little man in purple was floating next to him, keeping perfect pace. His little round face was contorted, and he was obviously desperate and screaming. ‘Stampy,’ Wally mouthed to him.

“Yeah, Stampy! He’s my pet pink pachydermicus! Don’t you people have pets in this dimension?”

His eyes widened, and The Flash lowered his fist. He was fast approaching the elephant, and in lieu of knocking it cold and raising the ire of the man in purple, Wally developed a new plan. Veering off the right, he began to run circles around the agitated animal. Slowly, but surely, the elephant’s feet came off the ground, and the behemoth found itself trapped and mid-air, thanks to the powerful vortex that The Flash had created.

Murphy Park’s only a few blocks east, Wally pondered, and I’m going to need to set this thing down somewhere.

A few moments later, and the scarlet speedster had maneuvered his way – along with the airborne elephant – towards the small expanse of grass and trees that sat in downtown Keystone. Carefully he decelerated, and the elephant began to descend. It finally touched down, not on its feet but on its side, and the large creature lay there, breathing heavily, exhausted from its ordeal.

The Flash came to a stop next to the elephant. Super-speed was one thing, but super-equilibrium was another, and running in circles for nearly twenty seconds had left him incredibly dizzy. Carefully Wally bent low to the ground and placed a hand on the elephant, steadying himself. He took a few long, deep breaths.

The man in purple strode toward Wally and the elephant, a bounce in his step. “There you are, Stampy! Papa was worried sick about you!”

“I didn’t…” Wally gasped and stood. “He’s just tired.”

“He ran away from me! The ingrate!” The little man crossed his arms over his chest and walked, perfectly straight, up the side of the pink elephant, until he was standing on top of the animal. “Bad Stampy! Bad!”

He snapped his fingers, and Stampy the giant pink elephant disappeared into thin air. Wally was past the point of being surprised. He simply sighed and looked up at the little man, who was floating as if he were still standing on the elephant that had been there previously. “What’d you do to him?”

The little man smirked. “I removed him from existence.”

Now Wally’s eyes widened. “You what?”

“Relax! Stampy’s imaginary!”

“He’s imaginary?”

“Sure! Everything’s imaginary! ‘Til it’s not, anyway. Geez, for somebody that’s supposed to be super-quick, you’re not too super-quick, are you?”

The Flash crossed his arms over his chest. “Who are you?”

“Geez!” The little man leapt from his invisible perch, and landed with a thud in the air in front of Wally. “I can’t believe you still don’t remember! I mean, sure, I look a little different now than I did then, maybe I’ve put on some weight, but it’s ol’ Mxy!”

“McZ?”

“No no no! Mxy! M-X-Y!”

“Ooooooooooooh,” Wally said, feigning recognition. He reasoned that, maybe if he pretended to know who the little man was, it would make him go away. “I remember now.”

“Y’do?”

“I do, the whole thing, the race with Superman, all of it.”

“Finally! You’d think I was a nobody, the way this guy treats me!”

Wally smirked. “So what do you want, Mxy?”

“Oh, you know…hey, walk with me, will you, Flasher?” The little man, still in mid-air at eye-level with The Flash, strode away from the man in red, who followed quickly. “It’s been the usual 90 days, and I thought to myself, ‘Super and I, we have a great time, but after a while, it just seems to get old, y’know?”

“The relationship grows stale,” Wally interjected.

“Yes!,” the purple-clad imp exclaimed. “Exactly! Stale! And so I says to myself, ‘Mxy, who haven’t you seen in a good long while that you know is just dying to catch up with you? Who? El Flasheroo, that’s who!’ So I hopped the first flight out of the 5th Dimension, and here I am.”

“And you brought Stampy along…why, exactly?”

“Oh…uh…” Mxy stammered a bit, and Wally noticed his eyes darting around, as if he were trying to think of something to say very quickly. “I, uh, don’t like to travel by myself. Yeah, that’s it. I brought Stampy to keep me company! And he runs away from me! The nerve o’ that elephant!”

“Okay.” Wally took a step forward – one of his steps was roughly equal to three of Mxy’s airborne steps, what with the difference in lengths of their legs – and turned around in front of the imp. He looked him in the eye sternly. “Now why don’t you tell my why you’re really here.”

Mxy stopped in his tracks. He saw the seriousness in Wally’s face, and a giant tear welled up in the corner of his left eye. It fell hard, creating a rather large puddle and leaving The Flash’s bright yellow boots soaked.

“Guh. I hate wet shoes,” Wally said.

“I’m sorry,” Mxy said. “I don’t usually get this emotional. It’s just…it’s Gspy.”

“Gspy?”

“Gsptlsnz. My girlfriend. She left me.”

Wally frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, me too! She said I was irresponsible! She said I wasn’t in touch with my feelings! We’d been together for going on 387 years, and she said I wasn’t moving fast enough for her! That I’d missed my window for a serious relationship! Can you believe that?”

Scratching the back of his head, The Flash puzzled. “Three hundred and eighty…wow.”

“Yeah! And so that happened, and then I see you and that wife of yours, what’s-er-name…”

“Linda.”

“Yeah, that’s it, what’s-er-name…and I see you guys and you’ve got it all right, y’know? You’re happy. And I said, ‘There’s a guy who knows what to do. There’s a guy who can help me.’”

“What do you want me help with,” Wally asked, as if he didn’t already know in the back of his mind what the answer would be.

“I need you to help me get Gspy back.”

“Hmm.” Wally rubbed his chin. “Now look, Mxy, you have to know that there’s no sure-fire way to work this, right? Women are – and I say this with complete respect and love for them – largely irrational and incredibly complex. You have to be a little bit counter-intuitive with them.”

“I am counter-intuitive,” Mxy exclaimed with a bit of a burst. “I’m nothing but counter-intuitive! Show me something that’s intuitive and I say, ‘counter that’! I don’t get what I’m doing wrong!!”

“Well...this may seem stupidly obvious, and please, correct me if it is, but…have you tried just…talking to her?”

Mxy looked at him for a long moment, his brow furrowed, his eyes squinted. He exhaled slowly. “Go on.”

Wally smiled a bit. “Well, I mean, whenever I have a problem with What’s-er-name…”

“Linda,” Mxy corrected.

“Yeah,” Wally continued,” with What’s-er-name, it usually helps me figure out what I did wrong to talk to her. Now sometimes you have to act as if you already know what you’ve done wrong in order to find out what you actually did wrong, but talking to her is the easiest way to figure out what you did wrong and what you can do to fix things. Even if it does involve a little bit of acting ability.”

“So…” Mxy’s eyes brightened. “So if I go to Gspy, and I do this ‘talk to her’ thing, I figure out what I’ve been doing wrong, I fix that, and I’ll get her back?”

“Something like that, I think,” Wally said with a shrug. “Like I said, it’s not an exact science.”

“Trust me, Flasher,” Mxy said with a grin. “In the 5th Dimension, there’s no such thing as exact science!”

Wally smiled wrly. “Right. Alright, well, I guess you’d better be on your way, then.”

“Durn right! Thanks again, Flashe-“

“Mxy!”

Both the floating imp and The Flash turned at the sound of the little man in purple’s nickname. Running towards the two of them was a woman, only slightly shorter than Wally. She was at once slender and voluptuous, with long red hair that trailed behind her as she ran. She wore tight black pants, and a white top that fell off of one of her shoulders. She was, to put it mildly, alarmingly attractive.

Mxy gasped a bit. “Gspy?”

Wally’s head snapped, from looking at the beautiful woman to looking at Mxy. “Gspy? That’s Gsptlskm?”

“Gsptlsnz,” Mxy corrected. “Is it really you?”

Gsptlsnz stopped a few feet from them, gasping for breath. “I’ve…*huff* I’ve been looking all…all over for you! I thought you’d be in Metropolis like you usually are!”

“I took a little detour,” Mxy replied. “Look, Gspy, I really need to ta-“

“No, wait, let me talk,” Gsptlsnz interrupted. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ve realized what a mistake I made. You are short, and funny, and sexy, and easily the most counter-intuitive imp I have ever met in my life. You are the best thing that ever happened to me, Mxy. Honestly. I love you, and I’m sorry, and I want you back.” She took a deep breath, and looked into Mxy’s tiny black eyes with her own huge blue set. “So what do you say?” She blinked, quite purposefully. “Do you forgive me?”

Mxy looked at the woman for a long moment. He glanced toward Wally, who smiled back at him, and then again toward the beautiful redhead who was throwing herself at his mercy.

He smiled. “Gspy…not a chance!”

Gsptlsnz stepped back, uneasy. “What?”

“This is just like you! You think I’m just some piece of paper that you can throw away, until the time comes that you need something to write on again, so you dig through the trash can and pull the paper back out again and erase what was written on it originally and use it again! Well I’m not a piece of paper, Gspy! You can’t just erase it and make it all better! That’s not how it works, baby! That’s not how Mxyzptlk rolls!”

“Mxyzptlk!” Wally’s exclamation as he finally remembered the little imp’s name surprised everyone, including himself. Both Mxyzptlk and Gsptlsnz turned to look at him, and he smiled nervously. “I’m…just…being supportive, buddy,” he said, slapping the purple-suited imp on the back.

“You said it, Flasheroo!” Mxyzptlk turned and glared at Gsptlsnz as he continued to speak to Wally. “Thanks for your help, pal!”

“Any…um, anytime, Mxy. I think.”

“Now if you’ll excuse me,” Mxy said derisively. “I need to be getting home.”

A snap of the fingers, and Mxyzptlk was gone, leaving The Flash and Gsptlsnz standing there. Slowly, Gsptlsnz stood and move towards the scarlet speedster. The nostrils of her perfect nose flared slightly, and Wally stepped back unconsciously. “You…” she growled.

Wally looked around. “Mesa?”

“You did this! I could’ve had my Mxy back if you hadn’t told him to reject me!”

“Hey, now, that’s not what happened at all, okay?”

“Don’t try to lie your way out of it! This is all! Your! Fault!”

With each exclamation, Gsptlsnz poked Wally progressively harder in the center of the chest, right where the lightning-bolt insignia of his uniform lie. “Listen, I’m really sorry…”

“You bet you’re sorry, mister!” Gsptlsnz was shouting now. “You, Flash, are on my list!”

“You have a…I’m on your list?”

“My list! And you better believe that my list? Is not a place that you want to be!”

Gsptlsnz stared down the fastest man alive for a long moment. Finally she stepped back and took a slow deep breath. “Now,” she said, composing herself, but still staring at Wally. “I am going to go back to the 5th Dimension and try to get my boyfriend back. Hope, for your sake, that he listens to reason. ‘Cause if he doesn’t…I will be back. For you. When you least expect it. You got me?”

The Flash swallowed hard. “Yeah, I got you.”

“Good,” she said with a smile. Another deep breath, a snap of her fingers, and Gsptlsnz vanished into thin air.

Wally sighed. “Yeah, she’ll be back.”

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Next: Prestidigitation.

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