Infinite DC

Just for once, it would be nice for Gumball and Darwin Watterson to have a day that did not begin in chaos. In the span of ten minutes, the boys overslept, skipped breakfast, missed the school bus, and were currently chased by Tina Rex. They made a mad dash down the sidewalk of a suburban district, Tina raging behind them – stomping down Elmore citizens and knocking over vehicles and fire hydrants in her path.

This insane chase only occurred because of Darwin’s hygienic advice to Tina.

“You just had to go and say something about her breath!” Gumball grumbled in between breaths.

“I only told her because she got Banana Joe stuck in her teeth,” Darwin innocently said. “Look on the bright side: we’re getting to school a lot faster.”

“Darwin, remind me later to explain to you the benefits of not impulsively saying anything that would—”

SMACK!

In their dispute, the boys failed to notice the 11-foot-long black, extremely flat, non-reflective rectangular solid they smacked face-first into.

Factually peeling their faces off the structure, they took notice in how it was oddly parked right in the middle of the sidewalk – something Gumball criticized: “Who’d just put this thing here? I mean, what’s the purpose in…?”

The distant roar of the rampaging tyrannosaurus rex was a harsh reminder of the peril they were in at the moment.

“I really hope this thing is strong enough against a crazy t-rex!” Gumball shrieked.

The boys made the hasty decision of taking cover behind the bizarre object.

In doing so, they suddenly discovered it to be parted open in the back by a set of doors leading into a much larger interior.

“What the what?!” Gumball murmured.

They walked into what could only be described as a massive room encircled in bluish glowing walls decorated with roundels. In the center of this room was a bizarre, circular-shaped construct where they spotted the buttocks of a person in tight blue jeans and black rebel chain boots poking out from beneath while on hands and knees.

The owner of the buttocks swayed it to the tune that played loudly on speakers Gumball and Darwin neglected to see.

“Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur!”

By the register of the singing voice, the boys figured the person beneath the construct to be a woman.

“Excuse me,” Gumball shouted over the loud music.

The woman could not hear him, still singing along to the tune.

Gumball groaned. “Oh, there’s no better way to do this than this.”

He poked at the woman’s right butt cheek like a doorbell.

Startled by the act, the woman’s body jolted, bumping her head on the underbelly of the console.

“What the…?” She screamed, crawling out into the light for Gumball and Darwin to see her better.

She was indeed a woman (presumably in her mid-thirties) with shoulder-length blond hair and striking blue eyes. In addition to her blue jeans and chain boots, she wore a black leather jacket and cleavage-heavy t-shirt.

From out of her jacket, she retrieved a screwdriver-like device, pointing it in the air. It generated a low whirring sound and, consequently, the loud music switched off.

“Cool remote control.” Darwin complimented.

“Why, thank you.” The woman acknowledged. “It’s something that I’m rather—” She immediately stopped once reminded of the boys’ intrusion. “Hey, wait a minute! Don’t try and flatter me! What’re you kids doing in here? And what’s the idea of using my butt as a button.” She giggled and snorted. “Get it? Butt? Butt-on?”

Her amusement abruptly ceased at the resonant roar outside.

“Tina’s getting closer!” Darwin cried.

“Who’s Tina?” The woman scowled in question.

She was urged to stand up, towering over Gumball and Darwin with her adult height, and fiddle with the controls on the console.

A large view screen, across from the control console, scrambled on.

Gumball and Darwin were flabbergasted to see it there, believing it to have been just a section of the encircling wall that lacked the roundel decor. They should have guessed it to be a special portion by its theatrical design, complete with a weird insignia right above the view screen.

The violent, scaly face of Tina Rex could be seen stampeding their way on the monitor, terrifying Darwin and Gumball.

Alarmed at the display, the woman frantically operated the controls, turning knobs and pulling levers.

“Hang on, boys!” She instructed.

Gumball and Darwin detected heavy humming and grinding just as the whole room lurched, throwing them onto one of the few pairs of chairs bolted down to the control console platform. Large metal restraints appeared over their waists, buckling them during the wild ride.

“My name’s Cara, by the way,” the woman introduced in midst of the chaos, hanging off the controls in the reallocated space.

“Mine’s Gumball, and this is my brother, Darwin.”

He could hardly believe they were making acquaintances at a time like this.

“How can a cat and fish be brothers?” Another shift and tremor almost threw her over the platform railing. “Never mind! I’ve gotta shake off this rex! She’s got her jaws clamped down on us good! Probably gonna have to take her down the infinite D.C. with us!”

“Infinite D.C.?” Darwin repeated in confusion. “What’s that?”

“That right there,” answered Cara, pointing to a blue vortex that swirled continuously on the view screen. “That’s the infinite dimensional corridor we’re barreling down this second, boys. The ticket to unlimited parallel dimensions at our disposal.”

Gumball sweated with anxiety. “We’re going into a parallel dimension?!”

“Now we’re really going to be late for school,” Darwin noted.

They heard the humming and grinding again.

Then all was quiet.

“What happened? A-Are we dead? Please don’t tell me we’re dead!”

Cara put the panicked blue cat-boy at ease: “We’ve landed in the next dimension.”

They glimpsed to the view screen, seeing the dark alley outside.

“Is that Elmore?” Darwin asked.

“What part of ‘next dimension’ didn’t you get?” Cara derided.

As surprising as it was for him to believe, the stillness around them unsettled Gumball. “Wait. What happened to Tina?”

“Probably got lost in the dimensional corridor.” Cara submissively alleged.

“WHAT?!”

Their disturbed exclamation baffled her. “What? I thought you guys would be happy. She’s no longer a threat to you, us, or the T.A.R.D.I.S.”

“O.K., first off, I don’t know what a ‘T.A.R.D.I.S.’ is nor do I even care,” Gumball established, “and second, Tina may be a crazed, giant pain in our butts, but she’s still our best friend!”

“So what do you want me to do? Go out and look for her?” Just a second after the inquiry, she deduced, “You want me to go out and look for her, don’t you?”

Gumball and Darwin firmly nodded.

Cara carped. “Fine. But you two are coming with me.”

The boys gave a despairing sigh.

Together, they stepped out of the ship and into the alleyway.

“It’s nighttime already?!” Gumball firstly observed upon their exit, before realizing thereafter, “Oh, right. Parallel dimension. Got it.”

“I have to say, you boys are taking this all rather well,” Cara praised.

Gumball casually shrugged. “Meh. We’ve already ventured into a parallel universe before, so this is pretty much Tuesday to us.”

A roar sounded close by, cluing the trio in on the whereabouts of the creature it belonged to.

“That’s Tina!” Darwin recognized.

Horrified screams followed.

“And that would be trouble.” Gumball nervously identified.

They ran to the end of the alleyway, looking around the corner and spotting Tina Rex storming through a city block. Several terrified pedestrians scurried and rattled drivers crashed into one another to avoid her large, plodding feet.

Police sirens wailed in the distance.

“Oh, no,” a distressed Gumball said. “Tina could seriously get hurt or worse.”

The very thought made him and his brother pity the poor dinosaur that purposely terrorized them, mere moments ago.

“Tina doesn’t deserve that!” Darwin defended. “She’s just a kid!”

Cara angrily nibbled on her lower lip. “It always seems to be the nature of humans to hurt what they don’t understand. C’mon, boys. Let’s get to her before the cops do.”

“Say that again?!”

Barry Allen wondered if his speed might have interfered with the link in communication from the two miniature lightning bolt-shaped earpieces attached to the ears of his Flash suit.

He could have sworn Cisco spoke something of a t-rex in Central City.

“Not even joking, dude,” Cisco earnestly said. “It was reported on police radio: t-rex on fifth and main.”

Barry received the full confirmation as soon as he arrived at the intersecting area.

There it was – a full-bloodied dinosaur in the midst of the hellish scene.

“Somebody explain this to me,” Cisco said over the earpieces. “Since when do meta-humans become dinosaurs?”

“After King Shark, I can believe anything, man,” the awestruck Barry commented.

Approaching sirens supplemented an odd noise that corresponded with the materialization of a tall, peculiar rectangular solid. It manifested right in front of the t-rex before a blonde dressed like a biker chick exited out of the weird craft, joined by a goldfish and a blue cat that were right out of a cartoon.

They attempted to calm the hysterical dinosaur, while the Central City police – specifically the “Anti-Meta-Human Task Force” – reached the location and surrounded them.

Detective Joe West, Barry’s foster father and friend, was one of the officers who responded to the scene. Being the only one there that knew Barry to be the Flash, Joe stood right next to him and whispered, “Got any ideas how to take care of this thing?”

Barry shook his head. “I got nothing. I-I mean, we’ve never dealt with anything like this before….have we?”

“Please, Gumball. Don’t let them hurt me.”

Barry, Joe, and all of Central City’s police force jolted with astonishment at the t-rex’s ability to speak, albeit mingled in deep roars.

“I was only playing with you and Darwin,” she added.

“I know that, Tina,” said the blue cat, who Barry guessed to have been “Gumball.” “But they don’t know that.”

Intuition sparked in Barry, listening to this exchange.

“Joe,” he muttered. “Tell them to lower their guns.”

West trusted him enough to follow whatever plan he had.

“Lower your weapons,” he commanded his men. There was hesitation in some of them to do so, which provoked Joe to forcibly yell, “Now!”

Barry slowly approached the motley crew of characters.

“Where do all of you come from?”

Directing his attention to the red speedster, Darwin and his group were wide-eyed in bewilderment.

“Who are you?”

Barry smiled. “Flash. My name’s Flash.”

“O.K., ‘Flash,’” said Gumball. “You seem like a…reasonable guy. So I can tell you this: my friend Tina may look like a giant, vicious t-rex…well, she is… but she’s actually just a scared kid.”

“Scared kid,” Joe echoed, shocked at the prospect Gumball specified. “This meta-human t-rex is a little girl?”

Cara’s ears tickled at the diction he used. “Meta…human?”

Barry gazed on the frightened Tina.

He could see the genuine, childlike fear in her eyes.

And it melted his heart.

“Alright,” he said. “No one’s going to hurt her. But there is someplace where we’ll have to keep her, until we figure out how you guys got here.”

“Oh, that won’t be too hard,” Cara expressed with folded arms and a grin.

Gumball and Darwin were overjoyed for their large, reptilian friend.

“You hear that, Tina?” Gumball cheered. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

The boys hugged her huge, scaly legs.

Unfortunately, the heartwarming spectacle was not without a hygienic tip from Darwin: “You know, Tina, your legs could use a bit of moisturizing.”