Ch. Summary: So, not every day is some life threatening disaster with an end-boss level like villain. But that doesn't mean Barry's not busy, and sometimes his sister kind of... drives him up the wall. And if Cisco makes another song reference about a telephone, Barry is just going to quit all Wednesdays for the foreseeable future.

A/N: Not the best, but I'm trying to get my writing groove back. Enjoy!

-x-

So far Flash had happened on a suspect resisting detainment by attempting to pants the arresting officer, a group of preteens-who couldn't actually drive-trying to commit grand theft auto with bobby pins (safe to say, it didn't work, and he just dropped them off at their parents' houses), Axel Walker-who was defacing public property with a bedazzler ( "Heyya, Flasher! See, someone tagged this building but I thought their artwork needed some sprucing up! So, really, I'm doing a justice to this community!" ), and three cases of petty theft in increasingly strange places (who robs a container store?), two dog burglars, five very specific misdemeanors, what would have been a fatal traffic violation, and (finally) a break in at a bedding company. The last, he had been dealing with for the past half hour now.

Today's been just a hell of a day, and it's barely two o'clock, Barry thought to himself incredulously, tying an honest to God goon in a jester hat up with superspeed. He didn't know what it was about Wednesdays, but apparently the day brought out a whole lot of… weirdos.

"Hey, so, Iris has been calling you non-stop for the past ten minutes," Came Cisco's voice, buzzing through the comms. Barry furrowed his eyebrows, having ducked into a crotch to avoid a chair that was thrown at him by an angry looking female bodybuilder with scales painted up and down her bare forearms. I'm a little busy, Iris! What could she possibly wan-oh. I was supposed to meet her for brunch to help her with that essay. Oh shit, Barry abruptly stood, startling the smallest of the bodybuilder's underlings, causing the boy in a mouse suit-Barry can't make this up, he wishes he could-to trip backwards on an empty cardboard box and sending him careening into the bodybuilder herself. In a stroke of pure luck (for Barry) this caused the woman to slip also and knock herself out on the conveyor belt. The conveyor belt that was still running. With a janitor tied up and strapped it. Typical.

Barry let his eyes flicker over to the janitor who was very slowly inching his way to an animated assembly line. Calculating how much time he had to subdue the rest of the group before the janitor could reach that point, Barry had only just turned in time to see one of the woman's thugs charging at him. Barry let the world around him slow, feeling a slipstream form about his person as he easily dodged the man and positioned himself on the man's other side. Barry blinked and his perception slowed down once more and the world sped up to meet him.

"Oo-um. Can you patch her through the comms and just...stay silent so she can't hear you?" Barry asked, breathlessly as he grabbed the leg of the particularly bulky thug in-(someone help Barry)-some sort of holographic mash up of something that might have been regal looking if the ensemble didn't scream 'Prince Poppycock reject costume', pivoted on the balls of his feet, and threw him into several cardboard cases of feather down blankets.

Because, apparently, robbing feather and blanket manufacturing warehouses was cool now. In their defense, Barry thought, righting himself and wiping sweat off of his brow, Pillows are pretty expensive. Although, it doesn't explain the… theme.

"Uh, sure dude. Un momento," Cisco replied after a couple of beats, clicking his tongue against his teeth as he fiddled with the system. Barry heard a couple of clicks, heavy static, and then-

"Bartholomew Henry Allen!" Lovely.

"Hey, I," Flash started, ducking another goon's punch.

"You have some nerve. You missed breakfast this morning." Her voice was taking on a shrill quality that Barry wasn't overly fond of.

"Sorry, I-" Flash dropped to the ground and kicked out his leg, swiping the assilent's legs out from underneath them, making them groan loudly in pain, "-overslept." He spoke the last word loudly, hoping to drown out the background noise. There was a beat of silence and then another guy ran at him.

"Of course you-uh. Barry? What was that?" Iris' impatient tone turned curious.

Barry had punched that guy solidly in the chest and it had made a satisfying thump, that apparently Iris can hear? Who made these microphones, Hartley?

"I, uh, ran into someone," Barry got out, and sped to the janitor, untying him and setting him on even footing. The janitor nodded at him and pulled out his mobile, presumably to call the police to pick up the plethora of oddly dressed unconscious thugs. Which, Cisco probably had already done anonymously, but it didn't hurt to be extra thorough.

Flash waved jauntily at the janitor and made to speed back to STAR Labs. Of course, a quarter of the way there Barry noticed something going down at the gas station at his immediate left. Better to be safe than sorry, Barry thought, deciding to investigate further.

Coming to a stop, he saw three men in ski masks. Of… course. Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Barry flashed into the corner store and clicked his tongue. The cashier slumped in relief, stumbling backwards and holding himself up on a shelf.

"Well, you're being rude-ignoring your sister." Iris ground out. Barry probably had missed something she had said before.

"I'm not ignoring you! Don't be ridiculous!" Flash admonished, maybe a bit louder than he intended. The robbers hitting the corner store looked at him oddly, one of them even asking the cashier, "Is he talking to us?" Barry waved them off, mouthing, 'not you.' The one with the ski mask nodded slowly while the one with the bandana around the lower half of his face looked incredulous.

"Hold on, I'm going to have to talk to you later," Barry rubbed his hands over his face and pressed his hand over the back of his comm link twice in a row, muting his side.

"Uh, excuse me. That was rude, sorry. Anyway, why don't we just call this a day, maybe? Make this easier on all of us and turn yourselves in?" Barry questioned. Not that tactic ever worked but. It never hurt to try.

"Barry Allen, did you just mute me?" Barry grimaced at Iris' voice, but studiously ignored her in favour of looking at the robbers expectantly.

"And what's in it for us?" One of the masked robbers asked.

"A lighter sentence and possible waived misdemeanor charge versus the sentence you would have gotten if you were inevitably caught?" Barry pointed out, "You guys look pretty young," he continued, with a frown.

"I recognise the bandana asshole in the middle, it's my dumbass cousin. He's seventeen," The cashier spoke, arms crossed and standing straighter, having gotten over being startled.

Barry blew out a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose.

.

.

.

Surprisingly, the situation turned out better than Barry had thought. After one of the masked guys had been identified, the cousin of the cashier took off his ski mask and burst into tears, falling to the floor and clinging to Barry's leg, sobbing about not wanting to go to jail and, "I just wanted to be cool and join their gang!"

The officers called to the scene looked as perplexed as Barry awkwardly patted the boy koala-holding his leg on the back.

Needless to say, the small gang initiation didn't go as planned.

-x-

Barry stepped out of the gas station after giving his statement and double tapped his comms, "Hey, I think I'm-"

"Barry." Iris' voice came, sounding very irritated.

Barry stopped cold. He had muted his comms for a good twenty minutes. He had really expected Iris to have hung up on him. Never underestimate Iris' stubbornness, he reminded himself. He could almost picture her having put him on speakerphone the moment he muted his mic to work on a report for one of her classes, not hanging up so she could continue grilling him. Sisters.

"Ha, sorry about that. I, uh, had to deal with, you know. Work." Barry stumbled out.

"Mmmhmm," The amount of sass in those drawn out syllables made Barry cringe. She was definitely going to have it out for his ass later. Sucking in a breath, he pulled the speed force into himself; feeling lightening burn his eyes, shoot down his legs, and then he was off.

-x-

Upon reaching STAR Labs, his comm link went off again.

"Just what was that loud static noise?" Iris asked harshly, having been startled by the offending noise. It took Barry a couple of seconds to figure out exactly which offending noise she was on about, but (given that he was never a slow thinker before the lightning) it didn't take him long to figure it out.

So the static interference from his running wasn't filtered out when transferred to mobile devices like it was for the communication channels. They would have to fix that. And by 'they' Barry meant Cisco.

"Sorry, I was going through a tunnel." Barry excused, causing Cisco to look up at him from his latest project.

"What? Barry, what in the world-" Now, in the Cortex, Barry noticed that both Iris' voice and his own echoed on the communication hub. Poor Cisco.

"Actually, I'm still… going through the tunnel," Barry spoke, stressing his words and giving Cisco a meaningful look, making a 'cut it' gesture with his hand near his neck. Cisco lit up and posed dramatically with his fingers near the control panel.

"Barry, don't you dar-" Yeah, Iris was going to kill him later.

-x-

Bonus: "Can call all you want, but there's no one home, and you're not gonna reach my telephone!" Cisco belted loudly.

"Cisco." Barry moaned, laying sprawled face down on the floor for-God, what?-the fifth time that day?

"Sorry, but dude. It's stuck in my head now," Cisco spoke, absolutely unapologetically.