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. They get all the way to the elevator, which is mercifully empty, before Barry says, "this is your fault. You just had to go and bite me."
"You went to Keystone without me."
There was a beat of silence as the elevator dinged, too soon to be the lobby and someone else got on, forcing an end to the conversation.
A smile tugged at Barry's lips though and he whispered, "worth it."
A visible shiver ran up the officer's back that had gotten into the elevator with them, and he looked at Barry in the reflection of the elevator doors with a strange look on his face. Barry smiled brightly back at him but did nothing else. When the elevator hit the lobby the officer couldn't get out of it fast enough.
"Did you have to growl the entire time after I said that?"
"Yes."
Barry rolled his eyes and walked out of the precinct. "When do you want to do this then?"
"Well, we suddenly have a free day to plan, why not tonight?" Nor said, looking up at him, ears turned forward, all attention on him human.
Barry sighed, "I have a bad feeling about this."
Nor howled his delight.
---
"I have to learn to say 'no' to you. Two and a half weeks is a terrible record for me," Barry said from where they sat crouched across the street from the toy store.
It had taken them no time at all to get there with Barry's speed, and he was now much stronger and had no problems carrying Nor in his arms, despite that fact that Nor was taller if he stood up on his hind legs. They'd had to run in bursts though so nothing burst into flames.
Barry had not been amused when Nor had started doing fire based puns after that. Not amused at all. Or the now ever popular 'keep your shirt on' once Nor realized that Barry had, in-fact, run around and burned all of his clothing off and lost his shirt because of it. A tick was forming at Barry's temple.
"It's a wonderful record for me," the wolf said, all of his teeth showing as he did a wolffish smile.
"I hate you."
"You love me."
Barry sighed. "Go see if the coast is clear and then let me know and I'll go to the back door."
"I know the plan, brat, I am still wearing your little toy keg aren't I?" Nor said coolly.
Barry grinned back and tapped the collars decoration. "You'll love me for it later on, the ball will fit inside it. I already checked."
There was a moment as the implications hit Nor and his jaw dropped.
"Not only did you go to that sham of a clothing store, you went into the toy store and didn't bring the ball home!" Nor's face was slack.
Barry smiled brightly, "Yes."
Nor tried to bite him again and Barry dodged at lightning speed.
Laughing he said, "I knew that you'd want to be here with me when I got it, so it's not like I could just bring it home, you would have been even more upset."
Nor folded his ear back and gave Barry a thoroughly unimpressed look.
Barry ruffled the fur on his head and turned back to the shop, "you might want to get going before the night gets any older. Didn't you say you met my soulmate around here? The one you're playing keep away from?" Barry cocked an eye brow at his familiar.
"If you want an apology for having made you the prize in my game, I'm still not sorry," Nor said as he ran across the street and into the shop.
He looked all around, noting that the security was still just as bad. Barry would just have to disable the alarm at the back door and then it would be easy. Or maybe they hadn't even noticed from when he was here before. Nor went to the back of the shop and sure enough, the alarm was still disabled, but set up in such a way to make it still look functional. Barry was a little too good at this, such a pity that he wanted to be a CSI, but Nor understood the need to prove that their father was innocent and that the man with red lightning in the yellow suit was to blame. Wherever it was he was now, if he was still alive at all.
Nor stuck his head through the door and gave a quick howl. Barry was there in seconds, yellow sparks following him as he appeared. A black ski mask was already pulled down over his face, hiding everything but his mouth and eyes and he was pulling on not one, but two pair of black rubber gloves.
"Don't look at me like that, no matter how unlikely, it's still a possibility for someone to get a skin sample from the outside of a pair of rubber gloves no matter how carefully I put them on," Barry hissed.
"OCD," was all Nor said for his reply as he pulled his head back through the door. Both the front door and back door to the shop where wooden and Nor had to wonder if the owners had tested the way he and Barry had. Or if they just liked the look of the wooden doors versus anything else.
There was a soft click and Nor turned to see Barry was quickly closing the door behind him and facing the alarm panel, hands pausing when he saw that nothing was changed from his previous visit.
"Well," he said, turning to look at his familiar, "that'll do it."
Nor snorted and said, "I told you it didn't have the best security around."
Barry shook his head and moved farther into the shop, Nor moving ahead of him to get to the ball he'd been eyeing for months now.
By the time Barry got to the display case and had kneeled down, Nor already had the ball in his mouth and was waiting to be let out of the all glass enclosure.
"You are so ridiculous," Barry laughed softly, as he found the key for the small bolt and started to undo it.
There was a noise from the back where they had come from that had them both freezing and crouching down as low as they could go, which wasn't that low for Nor, who was refusing to let go of the ball.
A pale gold/white light entered the room and Barry sped himself up, dilating time around him, and he saw a cheetah at the head of the lightning trail. His jaw dropped. He quickly opened the door, pulled the ball out of Nor's mouth, hid it in one of his own pockets, and closed the door again, clicking the little bolt back into place.
A low voice reached their ears once Barry dropped back to normal speed and the cheetah was out of the room again.
"What did you see?"
"They're here."
Nor came out of the case and glared daggers at Barry.
"Don't look at me like that, I have it," Barry nearly said above a whisper. "And how did they know we'd be here tonight?"
"Because this isn't my first rodeo," the first voice said, "now stand up and let me see Nor's counterpart."
Barry and Nor looked at each other as if to ask if this guy was for real. Barry did stand though because he was wearing a mask.
Leonard Snart laughed, "apparently not yours either if you knew enough to wear a mask." The man let his eyes travel down Barry's body, eyes pausing mid way down and a smirk forming on his face, "or gloves. Don't want anyone to know who you are? Got a secret to hide?"
Barry didn't say anything and he kept his eyes locked on Leonard's. Nor moved to stand next to Barry, his hackles already up, teeth bared.
Snart smirked and rolled his eyes, the cheetah moving around behind him so that he was facing Barry and. Nor.
"So this is it, our first meeting as the four of us all together," the cheetah chirped as it cocked it's head to the side. It's big eyes boring into Barry's and he couldn't help but blink first.
Snart inclined his head slightly and glanced down at his familiar, it was picking up something he was not.
"What's wrong Chain?"
Barry watched as Chain shook his head and moved forward, Nor mirroring his movements so that as Chain went wide to Barry's right Nor went wide to Barry's left.
"Nor," Barry hissed, his eyes narrowing as he dared to pull his gaze away from the master criminal in front of him.
"Oh good, you can speak. I was starting to wonder," Snart snarked, the smirk, if possible, growing wider.
Nor huffed and moved back closer to Barry while he said, "just because he's not talking to you doesn't mean he can't talk. Just means he has nothing to say to you."
Barry wanted to either slap his palm to his face, have the ground swallow him, or let out a long suffering sigh, but he couldn't do any of them because it would break what ever image Nor had gotten stuck in Snart's head that Barry was supposed to be. He wasn't sure what the bigger let down was going to be, that he wasn't a thief normally, that he worked for CCPD, that he was starting to become some kind of vigilante hero, or that he was just some lanky nerd and not whatever Snart thought he was.
At least a super hero was cool enough to keep up with the kind of master criminal this Snart was supposed to be. Nor had given him the Cliff notes version of it all that last two weeks when he hadn't been talking about this stupid toy store. ...he was actually really starting to hate this place now.
Barry was suddenly thrown off balance when a furry body impacted him as it jumped onto his chest. Nor howled in rage and Barry knew then that it must be the cheetah, Chain.
"Why aren't you paying attention to us! I could see it in your eyes, you totally zoned out! We're trying to have a conversation here about us finding you and beating Nor's game and you aren't even listening!" Chain yowled in Barry's face.
"But you haven't beaten the game, you don't know who I am," Barry said back plainly, and dropped Chain from his arms. In a hardly perceived shock of gold lightning Barry was at the back door of the shop, Nor moving as quickly as he could once his own perceptions had caught up.
"Sorry Snart, you're going to have to try harder...next time," Barry said as he quickly bent down and reengaged the security system from whatever he'd down to disable it. He stood back up and smiled cheekily at the older man. "Hope you know how to get away fast," he said as he scooped Nor up and opened the door.
The alarm rang out immediately and Barry and Nor were gone the moment the opening was wide enough. Barry didn't run far, he wanted to see if he could spot Snart making his escape, but they didn't see anything and the pair made their own speedy retreat before the police got too much closer.
Once back within Central's boarders, and in between one of the bursts, Barry paused and looked at Nor side eyed.
"How long do you think we can keep this going?"
The look the wolf gave him would have sent chills down anyone that hadn't know Nor as long as Barry had.
"As long as possible."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Len and Chain were out the door the moment after their soulmates were, though admittedly not as fast. Len had parked his bike in the shadow of the building and was quick to get the helmet on and get the engine going before he was on his way, Chain pacing the bike easily.
He was unamused that while he had met his soulmate, and they weren't just as fast as Chain but faster, he'd been wearing a mask so he /still/ didn't know who his soulmate was! He was blaming the mongrel for this. It had to have been Nor's idea for his human to have worn a mask like that.
He was amused though that the other man had been able to re-arm the alarm and set it off before he'd rabbited. Talk about a game of cat and...well wolf, Nor wasn't meek enough to be a mouse.
He'd lead them back to a safe house that Mick and Lisa weren't at because he needed the privacy to be able to really loose his cool and interact with Chain, and while he had been doing that more frequently in front of them, it was still hard after so many lessons from Lewis had taught him not to.
Chain was already in the small, single story house before Len had even finished parking his bike and Len just shook his head. Unlocking the back door and flipping light switches as he went until he found the big cat, upside down on the sofa, waiting for Len.
"This situation seems all to familiar to me, you big kitten," he drawled, dropping down onto the floor in front of his familiar. "What has you so pleased /this/ time?"
Chain's tail flicked and he purred briefly, "my soul Len, I got to meet my other half!"
Len's poster eased some, "you are a big kitten, he hardly even acknowledged you before he dropped you and they both ran away."
"But he did speak to me! He was nervous, I'm not sure about what though. I could tell as soon as I jumped on him and he was supporting my weight. It was like my lightning and his helped our connection? I don't know, that doesn't make sense," Chain flipped upright, hopping down and climbing into Len's lap, pushing him back so that Len was forced to lean on his elbows.
Len huffed and lay down flat on his back, he always forgot how strong his cheetah was, so that when he did something that showed the strength it caught him off guard. Familiars weren't flesh and blood animals after all, they represented someone's soul, and souls weren't exactly things that could have their strength tested.
"What could he possibly have to be nervous about? He was wearing a mask and had gloves on, how were we going to figure out who he was?" Len snarked, a slight smear on his face. Couldn't his soulmate cut him some slack?
"We did kind of surprise him, we knew Nor was eventually going to go back there. Then there was theft reported from the shop next door a couples of days ago, and they have better security than the toy store," Chain lay his head down on Len's chest and started purring again. Len brought his hands up and started running them through the fur on his shoulders.
"Couldn't you have let me be mad for even a little bit? He got away and that mongrel is just going to be insufferable the next time we find them," Len said in mock aggravation.
Chain's only reply was to scoot forward some and nuzzle under Len's chin as he continued to purr.
Len sighed, "my soulmate is going to be more insufferable than you, isn't he? Just laying on top of me and happy?"
A spark ran up Len's arms from Chain's fur and he felt the vibrations of Chain's purring shift from the deep tone he was used to to a higher one and then they stopped all together.
Man and cat looked at each other for a moment, Len finding his voice first, "Don't you dare try anything new with me pin..."
The rest was cut off as Chain's purr started up again, first the deep sound and then oscillated back to the higher tone, the vibrations from it felt like a body massage.
Chain knew it too then moment that Len relaxed entirely on the floor.
"I hate you, and I'm going to hate my soulmate."
Chain just sparked and picked a new frequency to add into his purring.
---
Len and Chain were standing across the street from the toy store the following day, watching as KPD and their CSI went over the scene.
Len nodded in their direction and Chain loped across the street to listen in on what was being said. Len remained where he was, partially hidden and waiting.
Chain didn't come back until the CSI had packed up and was taken away. Len cocked an eyebrow and waited.
"They couldn't find anything. They said just one thing was missing, a ball, but no finger prints, the case wasn't forced open, the back door was the only one that had been open when the responding officers arrived on the scene last night, but the alarm system doesn't look like it was tampered with. The camera's haven't recorded anything in at least five days though, and the shop owners have no explanations for that because footage was showing up on the monitors. The CSI didn't say anything one way or another, but all the cops over there are thinking it was an inside job and that whomever it was tripped the alarm on purpose," Chain reported back.
"Five days lines up to when the other store was robbed. I wonder if the CSI will notice that," Len wondered allowed. "Looks like my soulmate knows what their doing at least. That'll be good when I bring him onto the crew. I won't have to waist time training him."
No comments:
Post a Comment