Chapter 5
Observation Notes from B. Allen:
Nor and I were in one of my physics electives, and he was playing with the ball that I had borrowed recently from one of the boys on...I'm not exactly sure which sports team. (I'm sure he won't miss it anytime soon.)
Nor went to go walk through one of the glass displays the professor kept older experiments and knick-knacks in, but instead of it working like a "door" he walked face first into it, making everything in it rattle and a wave of snickering broke out. I'm not ashamed to say that I was also laughing, and he didn't drop the ball, so he couldn't yell at me.
Our professor didn't miss a beat though, they simply said that whose ever familiar had walked into it shouldn't have had the toy in their mouth or hand when they did so, and if they are stuck then whomever is paired to them needs to get up and help them.
I have never been so glad that Nor doesn't have opposable thumbs, I can only imagine what would have happened if he'd made it part way through and then the ball impacted.
Naturally after class, and for the rest of that weekend, we tested on our own what Nor could and couldn't go through when he had a familiar specific toy to carry around, or when he had a mundane object to carry.
He couldn't go through anything with a human only object, and he could only go through wood with a familiar toy. Glass, plastic, and metal (and let me tell you how hard it was to find those things when no one else was around!) stopped him every time. We think it's because wood, even when treated, is still the most natural thing and everything else is too man made.
We /still/ haven't worked out the science behind the familiar toys and clothing that makes it vanish when humans let go and only familiars are touching them. Kind of frustrating, but Nor says either I'll figure it out, or I'll find another nerd to explain it to me. Why is my familiar such a pain in my ass sometimes?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Barry had re-acclimated to being awake again pretty easily, especially now that he had his new found speed.
He would get up, now with Nor as his alarm clock, because the wolf refused to let Barry slip back into old habits of time mismanagement. Barry's new wake up call was the wolf leaping full body onto him a full hour before he had to be to work. Barry thought this was 1) rude, 2) hurt his ribs like breaking his wrist, 3) unfair because it took seconds for him to get ready and 4) sneaky as hell because all Nor was talking about was that forever damned toy store in Keystone!
Barry broke two and a half weeks into this new routine and slammed a sheet of paper with what looked like gibberish on it down in front of Nor. It wasn't technically gibberish, it was a code Nor had come up with when they had been 13 and Barry hadn't been able to speak out loud to him in class because he'd been written up too many times for it. His school notes had ended up covered in the code. They hadn't used the code since they had been in high school, so Barry bringing it back was a bit surprising.
"Will this work for you, or is there anything you want to change? Please tell me this is enough. I'm sick of hearing about this shop!" Barry whined as he looked down at his familiar.
Nor read over the plan, eyes scanning back and forth. Turns out that Barry had been listening to him these past few weeks as he rattled on and on every morning. Nor looked up at his pack mate to tell him as much when a tiny keg on a collar, of all things, was shoved rudely into his face.
"I'm not getting questioned about the code again, so you, my dear wolfie, are going to carry it," Barry said.
The smile on his face was no less than shit eating and Nor really wanted to be upset because he was /not/ a pack mule, he was a pack mate damn it, but the forethought in this was a good sign that Barry was actually going to follow through with getting him the ball, so he was willing to suffer the...wait a minute.
"Where, pray tell, did you get that ridiculous collar any way, pup?" The wolf asked warily.
"There's this fashion store in Keystone..." Barry started to say, shit eating grin still on his face, as he reached forward to put it on Nor, and the wolf, realizing what he'd walked into, snapped his jaws at just the right time.
---
"Mr. Allen," Barry heard Captain Singh sigh, "why is your hand bandaged and clearly bleeding through?"
Barry jerked his head down to look at his hand before replying to the Captain just as Nor jerked his head around to look at the same hand, and sure enough, several places were ruby red with blood from wounds that hadn't speed healed yet.
Barry gave a sour look to Nor before turning to the Captain.
"Funny story sir," Barry began.
"Did you get mugged?"
"What, no!"
"Was it an act of extreme clumsiness?"
"No..."
"Then what, Mr. Allen, did that do you?"
Barry didn't answer for a beat longer than what was probably acceptable and Singh quirked an eye brow.
"Did your soulmate do that to you, Mr. Allen," he asked softly.
Barry smiled sadly and said, "No sir, I still haven't found them. My familiar did this to me. I got him a gift that was admittedly very tactless, though I thought useful, and he bit me. Neither of us thought that this would happen, he'd nipped me before with nothing so drastic happening."
Singh pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, "Your familiar who can make everyone else's familiars upset even when you aren't around so that no one goes near you lab, and this surprises you?"
Barry boggled at the man standing before him. "How do you know it was my familiar that was doing that? Last time we spoke, before the accelerator, you just thought it was an experiment or something that I had running."
Singh gave Barry a hard look, "I didn't make captain because I was pretty, Mr. Allen. While you were in your coma the same thing kept happening. You weren't around to run any tests which meant it could only be a handful of things. Though I'll admit the familiar theory wasn't that high on my list until now."
"Please don't tell anyone, sir? Joe doesn't like it when I tell people that my familiar can do more than a 'normal' familiar," Barry said, putting air quotes around normal.
Singh quirked a brow, "Normal?"
"My familiar has been doing stuff differently ever since that night," Barry said softly.
Singh didn't need the clarification to know that Barry meant the night his mother died and his father was blamed for it and not the night of the accelerator accident. He rolled his neck on his shoulders then nodded, he knew better than most that a lot of people could get...uppity for things that were different.
"Go home Allen. I don't need you bleeding on any of my evidence today. Get that taken care of and come back tomorrow."
"But sir!"
"Go. Home"
Barry's shoulders slumped, but he nodded and turned around to go.
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