A/N: Julian hasn't been revealed as Alchemy yet in this point in time, therefore I am ignoring that totally dumb move. (He could have grown close to Barry and become Godspeed by the second half of this season or season four, which would be AWESOME) Also, he isn't jealous of metahumans, he just doesn't like them. And, Caitlin never attacked Julian, another metahuman did, so the attack still happened but Barry still has his job. Also, I really don't like earth 19 Wells, so Jesse and earth 2 Wells are still present.

Irony is a funny thing. Many people laugh at the irony of some situations, out of desperation or because it is funny. When something is ironic, it means that something completely contradicts another part of the situation, whether it is a person's personality or ideals, or something about the situation itself. Either way, irony is a funny thing, that can make the best or worst out of any situation.

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Julian Albert hated metahumans. Despised them almost. He was a man of science, and nothing within the laws of science could explain how a metahuman had all of these unnatural abilities. Take the Flash for example. Nobody should be able to move and process information that fast, and yet he did. Nobody should generate lightning by running, and yet he did. Nobody should be able to vibrate their face and voice box, and yet he did. He seemed to be a good person, you can't disagree with that. But he was unnatural, defying the laws of physics. The metahumans had to of been caused by the particle accelerator explosion a few years ago, that much was obvious. Julian had seen the wave of energy decimate things as it rolled away from STAR labs, and it had seemed just as unnatural as the phenomenons it created. He had been knocked over by it, as he'd been leaving the precinct that day. Lightning had actually hit the CSI lab he'd been in minutes before, and it had nearly killed Barry Allen. Thankfully, Julian had been heading home early that day. Still, he couldn't figure out how metahumans existed.

The best solution he could come up with was some unknown element was created with the explosion, but wouldn't all metahumans have the same mutation then? Or did their surroundings affect them too? He puzzled over this question for the first year after the explosion, and finally settled on that answer. The wave from the particle accelerator explosion passed through every living thing in the city at the time, yet not everybody was a metahuman. It seemed you had to be in the right place at the right time. Still, it did confuse him, because he could think of nothing that could possibly mutate the human body that much eternally, and yet usually have no visible effect. If their surroundings merged with them, wouldn't more of them end up like Joseph Monteleone, the meta who was literally made out of tar he could mentally control. Even in human form, he had tar running from his eyes and his skin was more gray than his old normal, white, human skin. Why aren't all metahumans like this? They'd be a lot easier to identify.

Even though Julian was a metahuman expert, he still had lots to learn about them. He had a theory that metahuman powers could be dormant in a person, only activated under extreme stress or possibly exposure to another metahuman's abilities. This would be the reason some metahuman criminals didn't show up until later, because their abilities were dormant. But why would some be dormant and some not? Were abilities that were mentally based, like those of Rosalind Dillon, more likely to be dormant? It would make sense, as there had not been many metahumans with mental abilities compared to the number of those with physical.

Eventually, Julian stopped wondering about the origins of metahumans and started pondering their weaknesses. Shawna Baez could only teleport where she could see, and as long as you didn't make eye contact with Roy Bivolo, he couldn't meddle with your emotions. Sometimes metahumans didn't seem to have weaknesses though. He'd never seen any villian use some action that affected the Flash's powers themselves. The only way they'd beat the Flash would be to out smart him or simply be too powerful for him to defeat the first time. Observations like this is what made him a "metahuman expert", even though the only person who could be a metahuman expert would probably have to be a metahuman themselves, who dealt with other metahumans daily and understood the seemingly nonexistent science that made their abilities work. So, the Flash would probably have to be the expert, even though Julian thought he had a team backing him up. He seemed to talk to air sometimes, and Julian doubted he was just crazy.

If a person was mutated to be a metahuman, that meant that their DNA was changed in someway. DNA writes out how your body functions, and something would have to of changed there to tell the body how to run at speeds of light. So, Julian decided to start on his next side project. It would take someone's DNA and check it for irregular anomalies, accounting for physical birth defects and any mental or physical disorders that were not metahuman related. With permission, Julian had taken blood samples from all of the resident metahumans at iron heights, and compared those to samples from normal people no-where near Central City at the time of the explosion and therefore unaffected on any level. After gathering samples from people with birth defects and mental disorders, he compared the samples and found a drastic difference in those from metahumans. So, using all of this knowledge, he created a device that could do this instantly instead of taking an hour.

The device wasn't functional yet. It still had a few kinks to be worked out, but he should be able to test it by the end of the week. Currently it was confusing some rare birth defects with metahumans, which would not work. It had to work perfectly. While he was trying to fix this problem, Barry came in. Completely ignoring him, he continued with his project until Barry spoke up.

"What are you working on there?" Barry asked him. Julian sighed. Barry had to poke his nose into everything.

"A device that differentiates between normal people and metahumans." he said, never even looking up.

"But isn't that a bad idea?" Barry asked him, seemingly alarmed. Julian looked up this time, and was confused by the look on his face. Doesn't everybody want to know if their friend or family member is a metahuman?

"If we know who is a metahuman and who isn't, then next time a metahuman robs a bank or goes on a rampage we can narrow down the list of suspects much faster. You work for the police Barry, you should be for this, not against it."

"But wouldn't that invade metahuman's privacy? I mean, if I were a meta, I wouldn't want the whole world knowing."

"Only the police would know."

"But a person's status as a meta would mean being treated differently by everyone in the precinct."

"If that is the price to pay for finding criminals faster, I am willing to pay it."

"Only because you're not a meta yourself."

"I'm sure I could find some metahuman that agrees with me."

"Maybe. But I doubt that would be the majority of them. What if someone doesn't know they're a metahuman? They do the blood test and are suddenly told "Hey! You actually are a meta, so every time a metahuman robs a bank we have to bring you in for questioning.""

"How would someone not know they're a metahuman?" Julian asked Barry, eyes narrowed slightly. He had never shared any of his theories about metahumans with him, including the one about some of their powers being dormant.

"Umm… wouldn't some of the metas of popped up earlier if they had metahuman powers then? The Flash didn't start doing things until like, nine months later." Barry said, but Julian could tell he was lying. He let it go though, as he was planning on finishing the device by the end of the week and needed to use this free time to do so. Or, he could stay up extremely late, but that idea didn't appeal much.

It didn't look like he would be that lucky though, because five minutes later Singh came in with a mountain of paperwork for both him and Barry.

"This needs to be done by the end of the week, and is a top priority." was all he said before leaving. Julian started it without any complaint though, because work did come first after all. He wasn't getting paid for identifying metahumans, he was getting paid to be a CSI that worked on metahuman cases.

This is an old story but I thought that I was obligated to post something after being gone so long. I haven't watched the show in a long time I stopped watching maybe a few episodes into season four? So if any of this makes no sense because of new developments in the show, sorry about that. This is me at least trying somewhat, I'm still seeing what I can do about new content...

Happy Reading!

-LeiaKasta