Barry surveyed the crime scene in front of him, studying it with a practiced eye. What he saw disturbed him.
"Hey," Joe said, walking over to him, and he acknowledged him with a short nod. "What are you thinking?"
"Look at the splatter patterns and the trajectory of the remains," he replied, pointing toward the relevant details. "Only a high speed collision could have done this. But to cause this type of damage to a human in this space? Whatever hit them would have to have been moving fast." As fast as me, he thought but didn't say, though it was clear that Joe must have been thinking it too, because the mood between them was suddenly tinged with fear.
"Get this," Eddie said, and they both turned toward him. "The witness says all he saw was a blur. Sound familiar?" He grinned triumphantly, and Barry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He'd been doggedly on his "the Flash is a menace who needs to be stopped" course ever since the incident last week where Barry had attacked him while under the influence of Bivolo's powers. Nevermind the fact that Eddie didn't know who the Flash was under the scarlet cowl, it was still irritating and quite frankly a little hurtful that he thought Barry could ever do something like this. Whoever was responsible for this had murdered innocent people in cold blood, the very same kind of brutality that Oliver was so often accused of by people who didn't have all the facts. Considering the situation, Barry wasn't sure he liked that association.
"You saw a blur?" he asked the witness, approaching him after exchanging glances with Joe. "What was it?"
"Whatever it was, it was looking for something," the witness- some kind of doctor or scientist, judging by his white lab coat- replied.
"Well, what did it look like?" Barry asked.
"Like a-a man," the witness stammered in reply. "In some kind of yellow suit."
"Okay," Barry said, nodding, and immediately pulled Joe aside, out of earshot of both the witness and Eddie.
"Barry, listen-" Joe started to say.
"I need to check my files," Barry interjected in a rush, knowing that he sounded panicked but finding that he didn't care. "You heard him, right? The man in yellow is back."
"I know," Joe replied grimly. "He's been in town for a few weeks now. He paid me a visit at home. He took all the evidence you had gathered that proved his existence. The files are gone."
"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?" Barry asked.
"I couldn't," Joe replied.
"Why not?" Barry demanded.
"Because he threatened to kill Iris," Joe said, and Barry was instantly silenced, his anger fading. Joe would do anything to keep Iris safe. He knew that. He understood that, because he would too.
"Okay," he said. "Let's figure out what he was looking for, and why he wanted it badly enough to kill for it." Joe nodded, and off they went.
Eventually, the trail led them to a prototype that Mercury Labs had been developing that utilized tachyons, superluminal particles that, according to Wells, if harnessed would allow a person or object to move faster than light. After an unsuccessful attempt to convince the head of Mercury Labs, Doctor Tina Mcgee, to let them use the tachyon prototype as bait to trap the man in yellow, Barry retreated to his lab to think everything over.
His brooding session was suddenly interrupted when he glanced out the window and saw the man in yellow standing on the roof of a nearby building. As if he sensed Barry's eyes on him, he suddenly raced down the side of the building in a blur of red lighting. Without thinking, Barry gave chase.
"It was you!" he shouted when he finally managed to catch up to the man in yellow. "You were the one in my house that night! You tried to kill me! Why?!"
"If you want to know that, you're gonna have to catch me, the man in yellow taunted, distorting his voice to disguise it the same way that Barry himself did. Then he was off again, and Barry was chasing after him.
"Not fast enough, Flash," the man in yellow taunted when Barry found himself facing him down across a football field. What followed was a fight wherein Barry was unable to lay even so much as a finger on the man in yellow. The next thing he knew, he was lying flat on his stomach, his face an inch away from the artificial turf of the football field, the man in yellow's foot on the middle of his back, pinning him to the ground.
"It's you destiny to lose to me, Flash," he said cryptically, and then he was gone.
Barry's recounting of the event was enough to convince Joe and Wells to redouble their efforts to obtain the tachyon prototype, and before long Barry found himself standing before the trap the team had built for the man in the yellow, accompanied by Joe, Wells, a half dozen uniformed officers, and, unfortunately, Eddie, though thankfully he and the uniformed officers were in the Cortex with Cisco, monitoring everything from a distance. Despite Wells' reassurances that the trap would hold, that it would keep the man in yellow contained despite how fast he was because force fields were impervious to speed, Barry couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to go horribly wrong. Even Kara's presence at his side didn't reassure him- super strength and impenetrable skin wouldn't do her any good against an enemy so fast that she couldn't see him coming. For the first time since she had come into his life, Barry found himself fearing for his sister's safety.
Suddenly, in a flash of red lightning, the man in yellow appeared inside the trap. He had taken the bait.
"Now that we have you, let's get some answers," Wells said, addressing the man inside the trap.
"Doctor Wells," the man in yellow said. "We meet at last."
"What do you want with the tachyonic particles?" Wells asked, cutting right to the point.
"My goals are beyond your understanding," the man in yellow replied in his distorted voice.
"I don't know, I'm a pretty smart guy," Wells said. "I knew that you were exceptionally fast, so any trap we manufactured would have to be invisible. I knew your cells could repair themselves at extraordinary speeds, so you can withstand the damage this is doing to your body right now. I knew all of this because your powers are almost exactly like those of the Flash."
"Oh, I'm not like the Flash at all," the man in yellow replied. "You might say I'm the reverse." That was when everything went wrong. There was a sudden fluctuation in the containment field, and in the moment before it went away, the man in yellow had Wells inside the trap with him and was beating him senseless. Then Eddie and the uniformed officers came charging into the room while Joe shouted at Cisco to shut off the trap. When he didn't, he smashed its power source and it flickered out and the man in yellow was free of the trap, murdering the officers who tried to stop him despite Kara's attempt at intervention, for some reason sparing Eddie before racing out of the building. Barry chased after him, determined not to let him get away, finding himself in the parking lot, where he quickly ended up in the same situation he'd been in only days before. This time, what saved him were fireballs that came plummeting out of the sky to strike the man in yellow, knocking him away from Barry. He looked up to see who had saved him, and saw a man he didn't recognize, his head wreathed in flames, more of them shooting from his hands and feet, keeping him in the air. In the next instant, he was gone.
"Our race is not yet done," the man in yellow said when he recovered his footing. "See you soon, Flash." Then he too was gone. In the immediate aftermath of the night's events, Barry realized that there was nothing he could do until the man in yellow- the Reverse Flash, he decided to call him, based on his comments to Wells- reappeared as he promised he would. But in the meantime, he could train and get faster so that he could be better prepared for when that day came. And once Wells had recovered from his injuries, Barry set to work on doing just that.
But his troubles with old enemies were far from over, however. About a month after he'd begun his training to prepare to face the Reverse Flash once more, Central City was struck by a strange robbery that, according to the evidence, had obviously been perpetrated by Leonard Snart. What made it strange was that despite it having every appearance of being a robbery, nothing had been taken. It wasn't like Leonard Snart to not finish a job, so something must have been up. It didn't take Barry long to figure out Snart's game- he was testing him, learning his reactions, his methods, his response times, just as he had done with the police. The moment this realization came to him, he went to STAR Labs to relate the information to the team.
"If Snart wants a fight with the Flash, let's give him one," he said once they had discussed at length what the man in question's endgame might be.
"Well," Wells started to say.
"You don't think I should?" Barry asked.
"I didn't say that," Wells replied. "But, Barry, as fast as you are, you cannot be everywhere at once, and it becomes then a question of priorities. Now, in the last month you have made a commitment to increasing your speed, enhancing your reflexes, and it's working. You're finally getting faster."
"Okay, but what am I supposed to do, just ignore Snart?" Barry asked.
"You don't have to," Kara put in. "There's two of us. You can keep your focus on your training, and I can go after Snart."
"The last time the two of you had a fight with Snart, a train derailed," Wells cautioned. "You were lucky to get all those people to safety. That was with both of you working together, Kara, and I don't like your chances going after him by yourself. Besides, if you don't give him the fight he wants, he may just back off, and then there'll be no casualties." Kara shook her head.
"I can handle him," she insisted. "And Barry's right. We can't just let him run rampant all over the city."
"I am simply trying to ensure that you are cognizant of the risks involved," Wells said evenly. "However, as I believe that the Reverse Flash poses a greater threat, to Barry and us all, I am grateful that you are so willing to take on Snart so that Barry can focus on his training." Kara accepted his thanks with a wordless nod.
"Okay," she said. "Call me when you have something." They all agreed that they would, and off she went. When she was gone, Wells looked to Barry, a silent question in his normally inscrutable expression.
"I have to get to work," Barry said in answer. "I need to let Joe know what we've decided. But as soon as that's done, I'll meet you guys at Ferris Air for more training, I promise." Wells nodded, satisfied, and Barry went on his way.
At the precinct, he informed Joe of his intention to keep his focus on his training, as he had told Wells he would, and let him know that Kara and the team would be the ones to help him and the police with Snart. Joe seemed suspicious of the reasoning behind his decision, but accepted it without comment.
Later that night, after Barry had exhausted himself with his training and was ready to drop, he heard that Snart had perpetuated another robbery, one where he had actually stolen something, and that the attempt by the CCPD to bring him in had gone catastrophically wrong when it turned out that Snart had a partner who was armed with a portable handheld flamethrower against which their specialized cold resistant ballistic shields had been useless. Kara reported with evident frustration that she hadn't arrived in time to stop Snart and his new partner from making off with their ill gotten gains.
"Hey, it's okay," Barry soothed, laying a hand on his sister's shoulder, realizing in that moment what a massive error in judgement he'd made ignoring Snart in favor of his training. "We'll go after Snart together from now on. The next time he and his pyro pal show up, we'll make them sorry they ever messed with us." Kara nodded, a hard look of fierce determination alighting in her eyes.
They got their chance sooner than they thought. The next day, Snart and his new partner, who they'd recently identified as Mick Rory, an infamous arsonist, appeared on the local news, the broadcast of which they had obviously hacked somehow, and it could be clearly seen that they were holding Caitlin hostage.
"Porter and Main, tonight, sundown," Snart said, wrapping up his speech about the existence of the Flash, the close camera angle making look bug-eyed. "Come out, come out, wherever you are, Flash. Show the whole world you're real, or this woman dies."
"No, don't come for me!" Caitlin cried. "Stay away!" Then the broadcast cut out. Barry and Kara exchanged looks. They knew what they had to do. They went to Porter and Main at the appointed time, breaking straight through the police cordon set up there.
"The Scarlet Speedster!" Snart called out when he saw them, marching toward them with Rory at his side. "And his red and blue friend! Any preferences on how you'd like to die? The flame or the frost?" When Barry and Kara marched toward him without answering, he said, "Not in the mood for chitchat. Gotcha. Ready when you are!" Barry and Kara picked up their pace until they were charging toward him and Rory, and they spent the next few minutes locked in pitched battle.
"Guys!" Cisco suddenly shouted in their comms. "Their weapons should cancel each other out, but you have to get them to cross streams!"
"Like in Ghostbusters?!" Kara shouted back.
"That movie is surprisingly scientifically accurate," Cisco muttered in reply. Barry looked to his sister and nodded, a silent signal. You go left, I'll go right. They took a moment to get , Snart and Rory to set their sights on one of them each- Snart on Barry and Rory on Kara- then they acted as they'd wordlessly agreed, Barry darting to the right in the same moment that Kara swooped left, and the beams that had just been fired from Snart and Rory's weapons met in the middle, creating a shockwave that traveled backwards toward the beams' points of origin and knocked Snart and Rory to the ground.
"Hahaha," Snart chuckled breathlessly from where he lay. "I didn't see that coming. I guess you win this time."
"There won't be a next time," Barry said, and stepped back to let the police arrest him and Rory. Then he and Kara, after confirming that Caitlin had been safely rescued from where she'd been held hostage, headed for home, both exhausted from the day's events, though Barry suspected himself of being more so than Kara.
Despite what he had told Snart, Barry couldn't shake the feeling that they hadn't seen the last of him. And sure enough, a few days later he found out that Snart and Rory had never made it to Iron Heights, that someone had broken them free during their transfer. The next time they showed their faces in Central City, though, Barry knew, he would be much better prepared to face them.