"I have something to show you," Kara announced, striding into the Cortex and interrupting Barry's training. He flinched in spite of himself, startled by her sudden appearance. Until this very moment, he'd had no idea that she was involved in any of this.
"What is it?" Barry asked. Instead of answering, Kara glanced over at Cisco, who was still standing by the ping pong table, paddle in hand.
"You're lucky I stayed up all night working on it," he told Kara. "Otherwise your big reveal would fall apart right now."
"Working on what?" Barry asked. "Big reveal of what?"
"Follow me," Cisco said by way of answer. He set his ping pong paddle down on the table and led them both over to the same elevated work table that he'd had Barry's suit on just a few weeks before. Now, as then, it was covered in a tarp, and now, as then, he pulled the tarp off with a flourish, this time to reveal a dark blue jumpsuit with a gold belt, tall red boots, and a red cape. Emblazoned on the chest of the jumpsuit was a familiar symbol.
"This is yours?" Barry asked, turning to his sister. She nodded.
"But why?" Barry asked. "What happened to keeping yourself hidden and living a normal life?"
"Because if you're determined to do this hero thing, I'm the best person to keep you from getting yourself from getting yourself killed," Kara replied. "You're my brother, Barry. It's my job to look out for you."
"Besides," she went on after a brief pause, apparently to collect her thoughts, "if you can have a secret identity, so can I. Everyone will be so busy staring at Kara Zor-El that they won't even think to look twice at Kara Danvers."
"We're going to have to work on the name," Cisco shouted from the bank of computers in the center of the Cortex, where he had moved to while Barry and Kara had been talking, "but right now, we've got an armed robbery going down at 4th and Collins!" Barry looked over at Kara.
"You ready to do this?" he asked.
"After you," Kara said with a smile, gesturing toward the door. In seconds, Barry had his suit on and was heading toward the location of the robbery, trusting that Kara was as close behind him as she could be.
When they reached the robbery in progress, Barry glanced to his left to see Kara in mid-flight, her outstretched arms even with his shoulder, her cape fluttering in the wind. With a few unspoken signals, they split off from each other, Barry heading to the right to take out the robbers on the road, Kara going left to take out the ones on the armored truck that was clearly their target, stopping the robbery altogether. Barry was just starting to allow himself to feel triumphant when everything went wrong- one of the robbers, in apparent panic at the thought of being apprehended, shot the driver of the armored truck. Barry felt his stomach twist with dread in the same moment he heard Kara curse in Kryptonian.
"Where's the nearest hospital?" he shouted into his comm.
"St Andrews," Caitlin answered. "Seven blocks north, two east." Barry thought quickly, assessing his strategy. The driver was in need of urgent medical attention, but the robbers were getting away.
"Call the ER, tell them they have an incoming GSW!" he told Caitlin, coming to a decision. To Kara, he said, "I'll take care of the driver. You take care of the robbers." Kara nodded, and Barry scooped up the driver of the armored car in his arms and raced to the hospital.
"Did we at least catch the people responsible for what happened back there?" he asked, reconvening with the team back at STAR Labs a short time later, after getting the driver of the armored car to the hospital and making sure he would be okay. Kara shook her head sadly.
"They got away from me," she said. "I'm sorry, Barry."
"It's fine," Barry said.
"It's not all bad news, though," Kara went on. "I saw one of their faces."
"Really?" Barry asked, brightening. Kara nodded, and he said, "Could you give me his description? I can head to the precinct and pass it on to Joe." Kara nodded a second time and provided it in a quick, concise manner, aware of the necessity of finding this guy quickly. Barry nodded his thanks, and then he was off again, heading to the precinct.
"There," he told Joe a short time later, flipping through the mug shots he'd brought him until he found the one that matched the description Kara had given him. For the sake of maintaining her anonymity for as long as possible, however, he'd told Joe that he'd been the one who had seen one of the robbers' faces. As far as anyone outside of STAR Labs knew, he had stopped the armed car robbery all by his lonesome. "That's him."
"That's Leonard Snart," Joe said, examining the mug shot Barry had singled out.
"Leonard?" Barry asked, making a face. "That's almost as bad as Bartholomew."
"Snart ain't sexy either," Joe replied. A pause, then he continued, "Snart's father was a cop. A bad cop. He took his anger out on his kids, until he went to prison."
"Snart's dad's in prison too?" Barry remarked. "We should start a club."
"He shows up like every six months," Joe said, ignoring Barry's comment. "He cases a job for weeks before he makes his move. Then, he does the job, gets away."
"That was before the Streak was around," Barry said. He hated to keep taking all the credit, but he was determined to maintain his sister's anonymity until she specifically told him to do otherwise.
"Did you just refer to yourself in the third person?" Joe asked.
"I referred to the Streak," Barry corrected. Thinking that now might be the perfect time to test out the new name that Oliver had inadvertently given him the idea for, he went on, "Which I'm pretty sure I can top. I've been thinking of a new name. What do you think of the Fla-"
"Coffee break!" Iris interrupted, appearing apparently from out of nowhere, coffees in hand. "I thought I would bring Central City's finest java over to Central City's finest."
"Thanks, I'm off caffeine," Joe said coldly, walking away and leaving Iris still holding the coffee that had been meant for him.
"My dad's been mad at me ever since I told him about me and Eddie," she said.
"No, you mean he's mad at you because you didn't tell him," Barry replied as they headed toward his lab.
"Uh, first, that sounds like you're taking his side," Iris replied. "And second, you know how he does this whole 'I'm not speaking to you, but I have a whole bag of judgemental looks I'm gonna try out on you later'?"
"Yeah, I've been on the receiving end of those a few times," Barry commiserated, nodding.
"Speaking of communications, or lack thereof," Iris went on, "after all of these journalism classes, I got an idea. I started a blog."
"All right, what's it about?" Barry asked. "Your brownie obsession? Because you probably shouldn't broadcast that."
"No, something important," Iris said insistently. "Something that Central City needs to know about. The Streak. He's out there, Barry. Rumor has it he stopped an armed car robbery earlier. I was hoping that I could take a look at the file, and-"
"I'm not a liberty to discuss an ongoing police investigation with you," Barry interjected, remembering his promise to Joe and trying to steer Iris off of her current course.
"Since when, Mr. Blabbermouth?" Iris retorted.
"Take it from someone who's been investigating the impossible since they were eleven," Barry said evasively. "Blogging about this is only gonna bring the crazies to your front door."
"My blog is anonymous," Iris countered.
"All right, well, anonymous or not, it's not safe," Barry insisted as they reached his lab. "You never know what kind of weirdos are out there trolling on the Internet."
"I can vouch for that," a familiar voice said as they entered the lab. "The Internet is full of weirdos. And nerd rage. Lots and lots of nerd rage." Felicity was standing in the middle of the lab, almost directly beneath the skylight.
"Hi," she said to Iris. "Felicity Smoak."
"Iris West," Iris replied.
"Barry Allen," Barry said unthinkingly. When Felicity and Iris both turned to stare at him, he hastily added, "But you both already knew that." To Iris, he said, "Felicity is-"
"The girl you met in Starling City," Iris interjected. "The computerer, right? You two worked on one of Barry's unexplainable cases."
"Which, long story short," Felicity said. "Explainable." Pointing up at the skylight, she asked, "So, the lightning? Came through here?"
"Yeah," Barry said, the word coming out as a sigh, overwhelmed as he was by the suddenness of the subject change.
"I'll leave you two to talk," Iris said, backing out of the room. She flashed Barry a conspiratorial smile on her way out, which puzzled him. He couldn't figure out what she was trying to imply with it.
"And this is where my team monitors the police bands for criminal activity," Barry said as he entered the Cortex with Felicity in tow the following day, wrapping up the tour he'd been giving her of STAR Labs. They'd spent the previous day, after Iris had left, talking about Barry's new powers and the ins and outs of life as a crimefighter- or of life as someone who associated with one, which was what had led to this tour- Barry had promised Felicity that he'd show her where he worked and introduce her to the people he worked with, excepting Kara, who she had apparently already met while visiting him when he'd been in his coma.
"Check it out," he went on. "We have our own satellite."
"I know," Felicity replied. "I have hacked into it from time to time."
"Rude," Cisco put in.
"It is of course so wonderful to see you again, Felicity," Caitlin said. "I'm just wondering how much of our… operation she needs to know about."
"I'm good at keeping secrets," Felicity reassured her.
"Yeah, Felicity works with the Arrow," Barry blurted out.
"Sweet!" Cisco said.
"And you apparently are not," Felicity said exasperatedly.
"Of course, now it's all making sense," Cisco said, walking over to her. "You know who the Arrow is." Turning to Barry, he asked "Wait, do you know who the Arrow is?"
"Uh…" Barry said, trailing off as he quietly panicked and his mind went blank as a result. He did know who the Arrow was, but that wasn't his secret to tell any more than it was Dig's or Felicity's.
"Let's just say that my team has a similar setup, but with more pointy objects," Felicity jumped in, coming to his rescue.
"Welcome, Ms. Smoak." Wells' voice came from behind them.
"Doctor Wells?" Felicity asked, turning to face him. "The Doctor Wells?"
"Please, call me Harrison, Felicity," Wells replied.
"Oh, you know who I am," Felicity said, sounding surprised.
"Ranked second in the National Informative Technology Competition at age nineteen, graduated from MIT with masters degrees in cyber security and computer sciences," Wells recited. "I know who you are. I keep an eye out for promising talent in scientific fields. It's what brought me Cisco and Caitlin, and I foresaw great things from you." There was a hint of disappointment in his voice, as if he thought she had squandered her considerable talent spending so many years working a low level IT position in the now bankrupt Queen Consolidated.
If only he knew the half of what Felicity's been doing, Barry thought. Trying to lighten the mood, he said, "Speaking of great things, want to see something cool?" before leading Felicity to the room where they kept the specialized treadmill they used to test his speed.
Later, after the demonstration of the treadmill and the rather embarassing incident of having injured himself trying to run on it backwards, Barry brought up Iris' suggestion that he bring Felicity along to trivia night to the person in question. She readily agreed to come along, stating that she so rarely got to do anything at night that wasn't work. With that plan in place, Barry decided that he was going to do his best to enjoy himself despite the romantic overtones that Iris had clearly intended when she'd made that suggestion in the first place. His only goal for the event was to have fun spending time with the friend who, by consequence of there being 600 miles between Starling City and Central City, he so rarely got to see.