Cisco
November 25th, 2018
"Let me out of here," Cassandra said upon seeing Cisco and Caitlin enter the room.
"Yeah, can't do that," Cisco responded. Cassandra glared at him. Cisco backed up a step. She was slightly terrifying. Sue him.
"You said before that I wasn't your target so who is?" Caitlin asked. Cassandra didn't respond and crossed her arms instead. "Cassandra!"
"You can try and bully me all you want Caity, it wont work," she growled.
"You sure? She can be very persuasive," Cisco added. He was obviously referring to Killer Frost even though she was missing at the moment. That didn't make it any less true.
"I'm not scared of a level three traitor," she said.
"I'm no traitor," Caitlin said.
"You turned your back on the Realm," she snapped. "You and your mother decided to run away when things got too tough. You don't deserve magic." There was venom in her voice.
"You say I was unexpected but you seem to know an awful lot about me," Caitlin fired back. Cisco felt the ice from behind her. Killer Frost may be gone but Caitlin could still sting like a snowstorm.
"I know of you," she responded. "Not many people do what you did. I could never pretend to be something that I'm not. Not like you do. You're not mortal. Why are you protecting them?"
"Do I need to protect them?" Caitlin asked. "Are they your targets?" Cisco felt like he should be contributing to the conversation but Caitlin was in full on bad ass mode.
"Maybe," Cassandra responded. "Whether they are are targets or not, they will get hurt but it's going to take more than you to protect them."
"She has friends," Cisco chimed in.
"Magic friends?" Cassandra asked him. "Mortals can only do so much against us. Your weaponry is impressive but they don't have a proper understanding of spellcasters and magic. By the time you learn it will be too late." Cisco swallowed. Caitlin didn't say anything. She just stared Cassandra down with a steely look. Then she turned and walked out. Cisco followed her out, slightly terrified of his friend.
"The targets are mortals not spellcasters," Caitlin said upon storming into the cortex.
"She told you that?" Ralph asked.
"If she did I didn't hear it," Cisco said. "She was saying mortals would be hurt in pursuit of whatever they were doing but she never said that we were the target."
"Read between the lines. She was talking as if it was only her who was acting but her threats matched a much larger power," Caitlin said. "There have to be more spellcasters working with her. Plus, she directly said that by the time mortals learned how to properly combat magic it would be too late. If their target was just something on this Earth, or was a spellcaster, it wouldn't matter how mortals combatted magic. The only way that would matter would be in war."
"So, Cassandra and a team of ragtag spellcasters want to destroy the mortal world?" Iris asked.
"I don't know if they are ragtag and I don't know if destroy is the right word but there is definitely something bigger going on here," Caitlin responded.
"Great, more people trying to kill us," Ralph grumbled.
"We've got to figure out how to stop this," Cisco added.
"How? Run head first into the spellcaster realm?" Barry asked. "We have to wait for them to come to us if we even want to stand a chance. At least here we have to home court advantage."
"I agree with that," Cisco told him.
"We need to come up with a plan," Iris ordered.
"Yeah, but first we need to get more intel," Caitlin said.
"How do we do that?" Ralph asked. "I can take a crack at Cassandra."
"I was thinking that I could take a trip to the Spellcaster Realm," Caitlin asked. Alarm bells went off in Cisco's head.
"You can't do that!" he exclaimed. "You said it could be dangerous for you to go back. Plus, they obviously know that you left. Even Cassandra called you a traitor."
"She only knew because my father was in the royal guard, they probably thought that I could be powerful and specifically researched me," Caitlin assured. Cisco wasn't entirely sure but she had a point. "Plus, my mom was very public and proper with our exit, most of the time people just leave to avoid ridicule. The fact that my mom left the way she did could definitely be seen as back turning. In my mom's case it probably was but not in mine."
"So?" Barry asked. "They know about you, others might too. You can't go back there Caitlin. Even if you did how would you plan on tracking down and getting intel on Cassandra's death to mortals group?" Caitlin didn't respond.
"You don't have a plan do you?" Cisco asked.
"No, but I have to do something," she finally said, frustrated.
"Yeah but not this," Iris said. "Eventually someone will realize Cassandra is missing and they will strike again. How they react will tell us something about them. Plus, we have to be ready for it. We won't be without our spellcaster."
"Okay, fine," Caitlin said. "I won't go. Yet. That's as good as you're going to get." She added that last part after a series of looks.
"Okay, so what do we think they are going to do next?" Iris asked.
"They know about Caitlin now so they are going to take her into account with their attacks," Barry said. "We assumed they were testing the creatures out. Figuring out how they interacted with the human world. Now they are going to choose creatures with Caitlin in mind. One's she might have a harder time fighting."
"So, a creature focused on spellcasters and not mortals," Cisco said.
"Yeah, but the gremlin was certainly bad for spellcasters and they still sent that," Ralph said.
"Yeah but the potential for human devastation was just as present," Caitlin realized. "Barry is right. The next creatures are going to have me in mind."
"Is there any other creature that you can think of that can sense magic?" Iris asked. "I don't remember you telling us about one."
"Not magic specifically but I know something that will chase down anything it gets a whiff of," she revealed after a moment of thought.
"What is it?" Ralph asked.
"A haunter," she said.
"The Pokemon?" Cisco asked, confused.
"Same name, different everything else," she responded. There was a hint of a smile on her face.
"Okay, what is a haunter?" Iris asked.
"How much do you guys know about Greek mythology?" Caitlin questioned.
"Just what Percy Jackson has taught me," Iris said.
"Okay, well do any of you know what hell hounds are?" Caitlin furthered.
"Those disappearing dogs from hell?" Ralph asked.
"Exactly," Caitlin responded.
"See also, Supernatural and Hellboy," Cisco muttered.
"Right, well a haunter is basically that. It can appear and disappear at will unless a spell traps it in either state. It is also basically a magical bloodhound to the extreme," she exclaimed.
"Wait, why is it called a haunter and not a houndoom?" Cisco asked. "That's just a misnomer right there. Houndooms are literally based on hell hounds!" His mind was being pulled away.
"Cisco, spellcasters didn't name the Pokemon, I don't know what to tell you," Caitlin told him.
"Hey, guys, how sure are we that this haunter is what is coming next?" Iris asked.
"I mean, it could be something else but haunters are pretty easy to get their hands on, they aren't vicious unless they are trained to be, they are basically dogs with a kick," she said. "If they got one trained to track and kill then it could do some damage to the mortal worlds but especially to whatever scent they got a hold of."
"And if that scent was yours?" Barry asked.
"Then I just have to hope I can get the spell right to lock it in its visible state and knock it out," she said.
"Knock it out? Like, with a bat?" Cisco asked.
"Or a chair," she responded. "Maybe a ball. Anything that can be thrown or swung hard enough to take down a big dog."
"So Caitlin offends the crazy girl and now we have to deal with Kujo?" Ralph exclaimed.
"Not necessarily," Barry said but even he looked unsure.
"Let's just plan for the dog," Iris said. "If it is something else then we will figure it out. We always do."
"So we should stock up on baseball bats?" Ralph asked. Cisco couldn't tell if he was serious.
"I'm going to study up on that spell, the better I know it, the better I can cast it," Caitlin said before once again leaving the room.
"So this is crazy right?" Ralph asked, being annoyingly audible.
"It's...certainly something," Iris admitted. "I was just getting used to killer metas and evil speedsters."
"I just hope we're right about the dog, the odds of our guess being right are slim," Barry told them.
"Yeah, but dude, Caitlin knows how spellcasters think because she is one," Cisco responded. "It is at the very least a good approximation." Barry didn't look convinced.
"Well, whatever comes after Caitlin it will probably be susceptible to being hit with a heavy object," Iris interjected. "So let's split up and find something. I'm not sure I trust any of our regular weapons to work on magical creatures." The team agreed and split up. Cisco headed to his lab to get one of his older projects that it little more than a hunk of metal at this point. He found Caitlin sitting at the desk. She was pouring over one of her spell books with her wand next to her on the table. She hadn't noticed him yet, he stood back, watching her. Not in a creepy way, just to remind himself that she was still Caitlin. He may know she has magic now but she's still pouring over books, studying the information to try and save her friends.
Cisco also looked at her wand. He hadn't really had a chance to before. He expected it to be made of wood but it looked like some kind of synthetic polymer interwoven with gold. It certainly looked more modern than he expected. Though, his biggest experience with wands was the Harry Potter universe so he supposed basing all of his expectations on that was not the greatest idea. Suddenly, Caitlin's head shifted. She must have caught a glimpse of him behind her because she spun around, hand grabbing the wand.
"Woah!" Cisco called, launching out of the way. "Calm down Hermione, I was just looking for a hunk of metal." Caitlin released a breath and relaxed.
"Stop doing that!" she exclaimed. "One of these days I'm going to shoot."
"What's that thing made out of anyway?" Cisco asked. "The wand I mean."
"Oh, uh," she said, holding onto the wand with both hands, examining it. "Hard to say, they didn't exactly have it listed out in mortal lingo but I'd describe it as a birch colored poly(methyl methacrylate) with gold strands interwoven."
"So, synthetic power glass fashioned to look like wood?" he repeated, Caitlin nodded. "Only in the Spellcasters Realm does that make sense. That must be some modern wand than yeah?"
"Ish," she responded. "I got it on my sixteenth birthday. That was the last time I was in the realm. To pick it out. I had free passage on my birthday because it was dangerous to not have a proper conduit for my powers and I outgrew my trainer."
"Interesting," he told her. "Any luck on the spell?"
"I know what it is but there is still a lot that can go wrong," she responded. "If I say it wrong, don't do the wand movement correct or simply don't have enough power then it wont work."
"You have enough power," he said. "You just have to focus it." Cisco had no idea if Caitlin had enough power but she definitely wouldn't with her current attitude so he took a shot.
"Yeah," she said. She opened her mouth to say something else when an alarm sounded and Iris's voice came over the intercom.
"Incoming from the Spellcasters Realm!" she called.
"Make that multiple incomings!" Ralph added, taking over the mic. Caitlin and Cisco looked at each other wide eyed.
"Multiple?" he asked. Caitlin nodded and took a deep breath. "You ready?"
"As I'll ever be," she responded. Cisco smiled and grabbed what he came to his lab for, wielding it like a shot put.
"Then here we go," Cisco said. And they ran to their team, ready to face whatever creatures were coming at them. They were ready for anything. But, as they would soon learn, not everything.