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Run and Repeat

Sitting in the middle of the lair, Barry supposed he should have expected something like this to happen. Oliver telling Thea about the situation had been unexpected, as he wasn't entirely sure if Oliver's sister even knew everything about his life in Barry's time, but he supposed there were worse changes he could make to history than assuring a girl that her big brother was a hero.

Unfortunately, right now he was basically in a state where he didn't have anything else he could obviously do right now. Oliver and Thea might have basically moved into this lair to get away from Moira, but they were still getting on their daily lives for the most part, taking advantage of the fact that Moira wouldn't come down to the Glades herself and Oliver could plausibly let Diggle take his calls without tipping anyone off that something strange was going on.

Thea had kept up her community service with Diggle driving her to and from the club, and Laurel Lance had apparently accepted the explanation that the Queens were dealing with difficult personal matters. Oliver was working on finding planning details of the building that currently housed the Markov device before any of them made a direct move against the earthquake machine to give them a chance to find the second machine before Malcolm could deploy either of them, but until then, there was nothing they could do about Merlyn's plans but wait.

Barry had thought about asking if Felicity could help them, but he'd constantly stopped himself from actually asking the question out loud. From what he'd picked up during his brief talks with Felicity about Team Arrow's past during her first visit to Central City, it had taken Oliver a bit of time to feel comfortable bringing her officially into the team, and Barry wasn't sure what the consequences would be on the team dynamic if he suggested Oliver bring someone into the group rather than letting Oliver make the call himself.

Besides…

It wasn't that Barry didn't trust Felicity, but after what he'd heard about how she basically ordered the team to stand down after Oliver was missing presumed dead over Christmas, he had some doubts about her commitment to their mission. He appreciated that she'd shut the team down because she was concerned for Diggle and Arsenal's safety now that Oliver was apparently dead, but in Barry's view that basically amounted to Felicity deciding that she knew best, even when both men were the ones who chose to go out in the field, fully aware of the risks they might be facing and willing to take them anyway. If Oliver chose to bring her into the team in this time, Barry wouldn't object, but he wasn't about to deliberately seek her out either.

Barry had decided to try and use the current free time to recreate the mask he'd made Oliver in the future, but it had been surprisingly tricky to find that compressible fabric; he was just going to put that down to the lair at the moment not having the same resources it would have by this time next year. At the same time, as much as he appreciated getting back to his scientist roots on one level, on a practical sense it was hard for him to just sit still when he knew he had the ability to help out more directly. He appreciated that Oliver didn't want to risk himself becoming reliant on Barry's own abilities to deal with comparatively simpler problems, such as the archer's current plan to visit this 'Ken Williams' guy about the money he'd stolen through some pyramid scheme, but Barry wanted to feel like he was doing something…

His eyes fell on the date in the corner of the lair's computer screen, and Barry's eyes widened as he suddenly realised why that date had stuck out in his mind the first time around; at the time that he'd been captured, the Dodger had been the biggest crook the Hood had taken down.

OK, so the guy wasn't a large-scale threat like some of the people Oliver would face later, but he was a man with a not-inconsiderable body-count and reputation that he'd formed completely outside of Starling City, and he was going to be in the city…

The more he thought about, the more Barry found his mind racing over everything he'd managed to acquire from the official police reports on the Dodger's crimes after the man's arrest. Obviously intercepting the guy during one of his heists would be too risky in terms of exposing his presence here, particularly when the accelerator hadn't even been turned on yet but if he could just remember the relevant details…

"Derenick," he said, clicking his fingers as the name of the Dodger's first victim in Star City came to him. From what Barry remembered of the file, the man had been a fence that the Dodger had tried to use to sell his latest acquisition, but something had gone wrong and Derenick had ended up dead, and the two men he'd apparently hired to try and help him double-cross the Dodger had been left unconscious.

Oliver might not have Felicity on the team yet (Barry hoped he hadn't done anything to screw up that particular meeting), but the archer at least had the computer he'd been using to keep track of where his latest targets lived. Heading over to the computer, Barry tapped out Oliver's password- it hadn't been hard to watch Oliver enter it while he was moving at superspeed so the archer didn't realise he'd been watching- and ran a quick search to find the man's address. Having identified the man's living and work address, Barry checked Oliver's available equipment, and had soon pocketed a few zip-ties and other bonds that might be useful later.

The basic essentials gathered, Barry ran for the identified address, and wasn't entirely surprised to find the small art gallery where the Dodger would claim his first victims. Glancing inside the window as he ran past it at superspeed, Barry noted four men already inside the gallery; two bald men, one noticeably more heavy-set than the others, and a dark-haired man in suits standing on either side of a slightly overweight man with a thick beard wearing a blue bow tie, facing another man wearing a long grey coat over a three-piece suit.

Pulling out the small recording device he'd taken from one of Oliver's arrows, Barry put it in place near one of the gallery windows and then moved to a point where he could watch through the window until the time was right for him to move in. He could already see a large ruby in a suitcase on a table behind the man in the long coat, who had turned to address the bearded man as Barry returned to normal speed.

"I maintain a Swiss account for financial transactions," the man in the coat explained as he took out a piece of paper and handed it to the bearded man. "Here's the number."

Thanks," the bearded man said as he looked at the card. "I'll wire you the money. Assuming I don't misplace the numbers."

He tossed the card off to the side with a cool chuckle that was obvious to Barry even when he was looking at the man's back. "My bookkeeping method is a little sloppy."

"Really?" the man Barry was certain was the Dodger said with a cool smile, even as the bearded man's three bodyguards pointed guns directly at his head. "Clearly you're under the impression that you can have the Sherwood Ruby for a steal."

"Well, you're new here in town," the bearded man said. "We're not as refined in Starling City."

"I'm getting that impression," the Dodger replied, before he forced one of the guns up and pulled a small rod out of his jacket. Barry shifted his senses back to superspeed, but moved back to normality when he remembered that the other three men would come through this encounter alive, simply watching as the Dodger took them all down with a speed that even impressed the fastest man alive.

"Don't worry," the Dodger said, now pointing one of the guns at the bearded man Barry could now be certain was Derenick. "Your men are merely unconscious. In about seventeen minutes, they'll wake up with the ability to tell every other fence in this town that I'm not to be trifled with."

"W-what about me?" Derenick asked, his hands raised as he looked anxiously at the Dodger.

"I don't know," the Dodger replied, before he pulled the trigger.

As soon as he saw the man's finger start to move, Barry moved back into superspeed, grabbing the gun out of the Dodger's hand and the bullet out of the air. Recalling a nerve strike technique Oliver had taught him that he didn't often get a chance to use, Barry struck down both men before he returned to normal speed, allowing himself a smile as he watched them both fall to the ground, unconscious rather than dead.

He was fully aware that the Flash was 'needed' to fight metahuman criminals as his primary focus, but sometimes it was nice to be able to deal with the simpler opponents, particularly when these people didn't even know metahumans were a possibility yet. Quickly using the zip-ties to tie up the mens' arms before they could wake up, Barry then ran each of them to an alley off to the side of the Starling City Police Department (after confirming that nobody was in position to actually see him arrive) and then tied their zip-ties to each other, a phone with the recording on it pinned to the Dodger's shirt along with a note clarifying who these men were and what evidence the recording would provide.

He appreciated that it probably wasn't the way Oliver would handle things, particularly at this point in his career, but it was the best way he could think of to get those men off the street before anyone else died…

Hey… how did I know to look for that guy?

Barry remembered to keep running until he'd returned to the lair to ponder that particular question, but he couldn't shake the sudden question that had begun nagging in the back of his mind. He knew that the Dodger would have killed Derenick and his men if Barry hadn't stepped in before anyone could do anything fatal, and he knew that Oliver would have caught the man in a couple of days, but how had he known where to intercept the Dodger and Derenick at that point?

And how did I know those bodyguards wouldn't get killed by that taser?


Back in Central City, the man wearing the face of Doctor Harrison Wells stared at the screen in thoughtful surprise.

One advantage of possessing a computer system at least a decade or so in advance of what was available to the general public was that firewalls were basically non-existent to Gideon, so it had been simple enough to set up remote links to the camera networks in other cities.

Granted, he had expected that Barry would have gone to Gotham rather than Starling, but it was possible that his own interference with the timeline had led to a few more changes than he was expecting regarding which of his fellow heroes the Flash would first make contact with…

Still, the questions about the situation didn't matter so long as he was the only one who understood the situation. The flash of lightning that Gideon had detected was distinctly the Speed Force energy generated by the Flash as he ran, but it wasn't obvious enough for anyone else to pick up on unless they knew what they were looking for, and nobody in this time even knew that metahumans were a possibility in anything outside comics at this point.

He just needed a few more days to ensure that his equipment could properly channel the dregs of Speed Force energy he'd picked up from Allen's flat, and then he could focus on finding out exactly what had happened to put Allen in contact with the Speed Force so early…