New York City...Today. A blood drive had recently gone on, with something along the lines of a thousand pints of the 'red stuff' collected for hospitals. A majority of these pints are stored at one B.C Medical Clinic, located in the heart of Downtown. Alex Elder, being the 'lil vamp he is, is scoping out the place from a nearby fire escape, which he haphazardly climbed up on. There's a brief but powerful gust of wind, the updraft catching fire-escape-dwellers and making it difficult to stand or perch haphazardly. Along with it is a red, white, and gold blur of light, too fast there to see much but the afterimage. Interuppting his thoughts of /finally/ not being nearly starved to death, Alex is quite suprised by the sudden puff of air. Since he was perching rather...haphazardly, Alex stumbles for a moment, trying to keep his balance, before finally falling off the fire-escape entirely. The entire time, Alex is thinking 'what the hell...?' And juuuuuust as Alex is about to make a hole in the pavement or something, something strong and warm and pretty damn fast plucks him out of the air. All the world is an incredible blur for a second, then everything comes to an abrupt stop. Wow, somehow you're in Brooklyn. "Sprock! re gs?e-rheetawaenhrI o oi vwwe" comes a slightly disgusted voice -- if your eyes are catching up with your brain, you see who's got you -- a kid about your age, wearing a mask with goggles. Then everything blurs again, and you're back in front of the blood bank. Translation: I over shot again - where were we? *blink*blink*blink* "Tourist...or something." Alex looks around for...well...whatever just turned his world upside for a moment. Suddenly wishing he had paid more attention to Ekimus's lesson on flight, Alex goes about the bizarre business of finding the strange kid that said something in Sanskrit...or something. Our protagonist won't have to look long, or too hard - because as suddenly as the kid disappeared, he's back again. Aaaand...that's definitely a sandwich in his hand. He takes a bite, swallows, then grins at Alex. "yt Suthtbrraoao , rmseit. eooyau Aryk?" Barely believing what he's seeing and hearing, Alex stands there silent for a few (looooooooooooong) moments. Finally, barely containing a grin, "Apesadumbrado, no hablo espaol muy bien. Puede usted decirlo otra vez?" All right -- figure one. The classic anime 'facepalm'. The sandwich is suddenly gone, and the young speedster in front of Alex is scratching his head. "Um," he says, frowning slightly. He points at Alex, then at the wingtip on one side of his head, then shrugs. He looks questioningly at Alex, then pats his arms and torso as if asking if you're all in one piece. Are you okay? Still smiling pleasantly, more in an effort to ease any confusion and look 'pleasant', thoughts begin to run through Alex's head. For instance, how -does- Alex answer this question? He is dead after all, but at the present moment he's pretty damn spiffy otherwise. Quirking a brow near the end of his train of thought, Alex finally answers. "Yes." Impulse flashes the young vampire a thumbs up and a grin, then gestures at the blood bank and looks curious. His eyebrows go up. "?" Alex blinks, rubbing his chin as he works through how to answer yet-another difficult question. He motions towards the Blood Bank, and then to his tummy. "Hungry." Impulse wrinkles his nose, looking doubtfully at Alex, then at the building. Suddenly he's right up next to you, trying to open your mouth and look inside. Is he...sheesh! He *is* looking for fangs. Hehehe. Alex gasps, backing up from Impulse. "Hey waitaminute there...you're not gonna find any of /those/ in there. I'm not that kind of person." His voice becomes noticeably irked near the end of the sentence. Impulse looks terribly disappointed. He does, in fact, snap his fingers. "Nass!" But then he pauses, and spocks a brow, cocking a thumb at the blood bank. If you're not, he seems to say, than whuzzup with the blood bank and the tummy-rubbing? Alex errrs, your last 'statement' really throwing him for a loop. "Okay fine...I need the blood to live, but I'm /not/ a vampire." He sounds pretty convinced. Impulse looks suspicious, but is grinning, so it's more of a 'Suuuuuuure you're not', instead of a 'Die, evil vampy critter!' He rubs his chin, eyeing the building. Taps his foot for a second - it sounds like the sound a rotary phone makes in your ear when you're dialing. Suddenly, he rushes the side of the building - but a little hesitantly - and slams up against it. "Owwww..." says he, looking annoyed and holding his head. Alex cringes in a sympathetic 'ouch'. He looks both ways at the street, and quickly weaves inbetween traffic to get over to the building. Stopping near you, he bends over. "This gets weirder and weirder...anyway, why don't you use a door next time? It might save you some headaches..." Impulse looks utterly uncomprehendingly at Alex. "...door?" he repeats. It sounds funny. He rubs his head again, then winces, then clambers to his feet. Giving the building an irritated look, he hauls back and kicks it, but there's no impact. His foot goes through and comes back - and he looks triumphant. "Hah!" Alex's jaw drops. "How in the...??" He blinks before heading towards the recently locked door. Ignoring your previous demonstration for the time being, he points at the door. "Door. Use them." Impulse looks puzzled, but shrugs. Okay. He grins, backs up a few paces, and runs blindingly quickly through the locked door. A second later, his arm appears through the door and makes a grab for Alex - if he catches him, he'll be pulled through the door as well. Alex says, "He-..." His sentence is cut off before it really begins, since he's promptly grabbed and dragged along for whatever ride Impulse has in mind. It's reaaaaally dark inside; the only lights are from blinky hard drives and red glowing exit signs. Bart stands there squinting for a second, looking around, then scratches his nose. "[okDwnooyu treewhe h l dsobio?" he asks. Alex does the smart thing: he casually flicks a nearby light switch. He cringes from the sudden encroachment of illumination. "They're blood in here all right...and lots of it." There's a big steel door off to the side - looks like a giant fridge room. It's got the temperature in digital numbers next to it, and it says 'Employees Only'. That's /probably/ where the blood is. Bart's squinting again, but now it's because it's bright. He looks questioningly at Alex. Where now? Alex wrinkles his nose, melodramaticly creeping over to the big metal door. He points a thumb at it, nodding slowly. He can't help but lick his lips, after all, it's been almost a day since he's had anything to drink. "This hasta be it." Impulse laughs quietly - sneaking around. We're the only ones in here! He pushes at the door a little, and it doesn't budge. Hm. He pushes at the door a lot, and it still doesn't budge. Giving Alex a look like, hey, you better be sure this is it, the kid backpedals a few feet and runs for this door, too, grabbing Alex's wrist at the last second. Alex gets an unforgettable look on his face, one which can only mean 'Oh-My-God-This-Can't-Be-Good'. The look of...well...the look only intensifies once you start towing Alex along for the ride. Luckily the look doesn't have to be there long -- when there's no impact, probably, you know, Alex can open his eyes. They're in a really really really dark, really really really cold room. Alex opens one eye first...and then the other. If he could sweat, he'd be a fountain right now. He fumbles around for a lightswitch, or /something/ to brighten the fridge up. "Darnit, why can't I find a lightswitch?" Silently running his hands across the walls, pushing at them, Bart ends up finding one - no wonder Alex couldn't find it, it's flush with the wall. Well, that's cool. He grimaces when the lights come on - darnit, that -always- is a pain. Then suddenly he's behind Alex, pushing him toward the racks - wwhich hold classified, categorized plastic baggies of blood, all carefully labelled. "urruy pH, ev mbiryapo!" Like a child on Christmas morning, Alex looks around at all the blood. He shuffles over to a baggie, examines it, and then goes on to the next. He examines bag after bag for a little while, before grabbing a couple random bags and sticking them under his shirt. "Now what? How do we get out of here?" Impulse gets a grin that's...well, the kind of grin that commonly makes other people say "Oh no not again" or "Uh oh". But he pauses - pats his torso again, and points at the racks of blood. You got a good hold on those? Alex gets 'The Look' again. "The door...the /door/...use the /door/!" All the while he's franticly pointing at the door. Shaking his head with a look like, 'What, you crazy in the head?', Bart points to the door and mimes pulling on it, straining, and it not opening. So he grins and shuts off the lights again, and you feel him grab your arm. There's a blur of light, quickly doused (as you go through the main room and Bart shuts the light out), then you're out on the sidewalk again. No alarms, no nothin'. Alex could have missed it in a blink, but thankfully, he didn't. He looks around at his nighttime surroundings, doing a quick check to see if he's all intact (and the blood, of course). "Man...how -did- you do that??" Not understanding the words, but definitely picking up on the gist of it, Bart laughs. He blurs a second, then is suddenly holding an apple. Between bites, he explains, "Weolct'mio ni tla isban," *chomp* "du aesd frnoepspe" *chew* "blrttoab aytihit e vei" *bite* "fpuslutseoom la yc oeme h" *schlurp, munch munch* "ltrmtm hetoiwra an." He grins and tosses the applecore. "Grok?" Alex manages to both raise one eyebrow while furrowing his brow, a feat many can do, but only a few do well. He keeps his words simple, and short, "Do. You. Speak. English?" From the speedster's utterly blank look, the answer is 'apparently not'. Alex hmmms, tapping his foot on the ground while he tries to come up with something to say. He ends up resorting to gesturing/point. First, he points at you. Then, he jabbers on about something inconsequential while pointing to his mouth. Finally, he draws a question mark in the air. Impulse hees. "Digna iaot !" he laughs, waving his hands in the air. Well, it's pretty obvious he -doesn't- speak English, and also that he's apparently very easily amused. Alex blinks. That method got him...nowhere. He goes back to the old method of just talking veeeeeeeeeeeery slooooooooooooooooowly. "What...doooooo...youuuuu...speaaaaaak?" Impulse rolls his eyes, and tugs his mask down. You see a very darn human face - er, heh, actually a lot like yours. "No English, me," he tries, hoping he got the right words from what Alex has been talking at him. "Interlac!" Alex is caught a bit off guard because of the entire appearance thing, but he takes it in stride. "Interlac! Oooookaaaaay...weeeeeee'reeeee...geeeeeeetttttting...sooooooooomewheeeeeeeere...noooooooooooooow.Wheeeeeeere...areeeeeeeeeeeee...yooooooouuuuuuu...frrrrooooooooom?" Impulse looks nonplussed. He crosses his arms. He wonders, vaguely, if Alex has any idea how fast speedsters tend to think and percieve things. In other words -- if Alex talks -too- slow, there's even less of a chance of Bart understanding him. He taps his foot for a second, then gets another 'bright idea' look on his face. Alex plasters the 'Oh-God-He-Has-That-'Look'-Again' look on his face. Hopefully biding his time, Alex gets out a baggie of blood and pops it open with a canine (not a fang mind you, just a canine). It's like a twisted version of those Capri-Sun bags. Even after a few swallows, Alex looks satisfied. "H hka tine Iw!" laughs Bart again, waiting for Alex to finish up, then carefully scooping him up - they're on the road again. This time it's a little under a minute that the world is a blur, and there seems to be a lot of water involved - and when they stop, it's a hot night someplace with palm trees and a *lot* of sand. The speedster deposits Alex on the beach and backs up about ten feet. Alex does a double...a triple...no wait, a quadruple-take. "/Now/ where are we? And how do you keep doing...that thing that you keep doing??" He prods the sand with his shoes as he talks, not really believing that a minute ago he was in New York, and nows he's...well, he's wherever he is. It's Hawaii - god superspeed is great - and the two metahumans are here because Bart remembered at the last second that vampires and sun - even if they say they're NOT vampires - don't mix. Otherwise it'd've been an open library somewhere. But no. It's not! Shaking his hands at Alex, Impulse walks up a couple steps, then drops to one knee and starts tracing things in the sand. The first thing he traces is a lightning bolt in a circle. He looks up at Alex expectantly. Alex drops to his knees a few feet in front of Impulse, just far enough so he can get a full view of the pictogram. "A bolt *sip* in a *sip* circle. And-...?" As he's talking, he pops open another bag and starts sipping away at it. "Ah-ha! It's...uhm...a symbol of something!" Impulse does a take to the camera. This is gonna take a while. With a little sigh, the speedster sits back on his heels. "Bart Allen," he says, pointing to himself. Then he puts a finger in the sand, making a dot. He labels it with four alien-looking symbols, and three of them are the same. Making an all-encompassing gesture, he tries to indicate 'now'. This is 'now', he just wrote '2000' in interlac. Hrm. Alex squints, tilting his head to one side to try to fully 'appreciate' the glyphs. "Bart Allen. A thingie, followed by 3 more thingies that are the same. Something, followed by Three more somethings. ABBB. 1000...2000...2000!" He nods appreciatively at his own super-detective skills. "Two thousand," repeats Bart cheerfully. He nods. Then he traces a line towards Alex. He stops about five inches away and puts an S-shield. Superman. He keeps going, and stops about ten inches away, then puts a picture that looks like Captain America's shield. Then he goes back to the '2000' dot, and points to you. Then he makes a looooong line, standing up and bending over to continue it; he stops ten feet away and traces another four symbols. CBBB, in other words. He points to himself. Alex chuckles, head still tilted to one side, "That one thingie looks like a monkey..." He pauses, "We have a Superman shield, a Captain America shield...and a squiggly monkey thing. Something, zero zero zero. 3000...4000...5000? 4000?" Impulse laughs, and points to you. "Monkey," he says, and grins. "Three thousand? Four thousand? Five thousand?" He shrugs, then gestures vaguely toward the end of the line. It doesn't matter much what year - just - far in the future. "a deenromftoIho'un rrm. algGnae endwuaayih lglom ecmn ieIaunr ar." Alex just stares. "I'm not a monkey, I'm the one that speak English here, and not Monkeyese or Jabberish or something." He follows the line up, and then looks up at you, "The future? Ha. Not likely. Maybe that bang on the head really messed you up or something...." Impulse shrugs again. Believe what you want. He puts his mask back on, then scoops Alex up again wordlessly and heads for the water. Running on water, awwww, yeah! Another thirty seconds or so, and they're back in New York -- Bart just leaves the young vampire where he found him, outside the blood bank -- and he's /gone/.