Long days like this make me grateful for the ability to write.
Prompt from Lyco X. Follow up to chapter 25. The police department finds out about metahumans.
Barry was well aware of the suspicion about him being a metahuman, not just because of Iris finding out, but because plenty of officers had flat out asked him he was a 'mutant man.' He decided very quickly that he preferred the term metahuman. No matter what they called him, he was not surprised when he got called into Captain Singh's office.
"Are you?" The captain said as he gestured for Barry to sit down.
"Am I?" Barry knew exactly what Singh was talking about, but that didn't mean he had to let on immediately.
"Are you a . . . metahuman?" Captain Singh still struggled with the idea of people like him existing. "You don't have to hide from us. We just want the help of metahumans. You were struck by lightning the night people like that were created. You're our CSI, you understand why we believe you to be . . . different."
"Of course I understand, I just-" Barry started to deny his abilities, but was interrupted by gunfire, lots of it.
"If you are a metahuman, now would be a great time to prove it, Allen." The captain growled as they both went to the windows of his office to observe the situation.
"What exactly do you think I can do?"
"Something helpful."
One of the armed robbers that had been arrested late last night or maybe it was early this morning, Barry hadn't kept track, had somehow gotten out of his handcuffs and had gotten ahold of an officer's gun. He had shot the four officers assigned to babysit them until they could be transferred. He had retrieved the key to the handcuffs and was currently unlocking the other members of his team, occasionally waving his gun around to ward off the cops that surrounded him. When they had all been unlocked they each took a gun from a fallen officer.
Captain Singh's suspicions were confirmed when Joe looked over to the office where he knew Barry currently was and nodded.
"Now would be a good time to be something helpful, Allen." Singh prodded.
"Okay."
Barry sped out of the office and straight at the armed men. Before they even knew that something was amiss, their guns were in the captain's office, and they were once again handcuffed, but because they had already escaped handcuffs, they were also tied very tightly to four separate chairs with steaming rope that Barry had found in the basement of the precinct. He still wasn't sure why they had rope in the basement, but it came in handy so he wouldn't complain.
He hadn't had time to eat more than two thousand calories that morning, so he could feel himself on the verge of passing out.
"Joe!" Joe ran over to catch his collapsing son.
"Where are the 'Cisco Bars'?" Joe said quickly while everyone in the precinct just stared in shock at their goofy, dependent, always late forensic scientist. Well, not so dependent apparently.
"My locker, in the lab, in a duffel." Barry could barely keep his head up.
"Eddie, go!" Joe called to Eddie's already retreating form. "Hold on son, or do you want to STAR Labs to pump you with forty IV bags again?"
"I'm not dying Joe. By the way that's another thing that has been Cisco-fied. They've gotten me down to only needing two IV bags."
Eddie came back down the stairs carrying the duffel. I didn't want to . . . invade . . . your . . . space." Eddie struggled to speak. He set the bag between Barry and Joe and backed up as if he expected it to explode. Joe reached in and pulled out a calorie bar.
Barry chewed it and winced at the taste of earwax with a hint of taco. Cisco was still experimenting with the flavor.
"How much do you have to eat in a day?" An officer asked.
"About as much as a normal person eats in a year it seems." Barry sat up and looked completely normal.
"How many speedsters are there? You, the Flash, the guy in yellow . . ." Captain Singh asked. "I knew you were a metahuman, but I didn't think that power would be all that common."
"There are only two of us that I know of." Barry didn't want to tell them right away, it would be more fun if they figured it out on their own.
"Barry are you sure you're okay? He just listed three." Eddie knelt beside him looking in his eyes and around his head. Barry wasn't sure what he was hoping to accomplish because his inspection wouldn't have given him any information even if there was something wrong with him. There were plenty of things Eddie Thawne was good at it, but it appeared Barry had found the one thing he wasn't good at.
"Yep. I know."
Eddie paused. "Wait, what?!" He reached for Barry's duffel bag, no longer afraid of invading his personal space. He opened it and saw the red fabric within it. "No way. I would have known."
"Eddie, Iris is my best friend and has been for my whole life, and she didn't figure it out until she got a call from the station asking her if I was a meta." Barry tried to reassure him.
"You tried to kill me." Eddie said, unbelief clear in his voice.
Barry winced. "Yeah. Sorry about that. There was a crazy metahuman that gave people irrational anger by looking in their eyes. Something about the color his eyes turned shut down control functions in the brain. I was affected and it just so happened that it was during the time you were trying to get task force, so when my metabolism was no longer able to fight off the affects, I went after you. Words can't describe how glad I am that the Arrow was able to stop me. I don't want to think about what could have happened." He had a far off look in his eye like he was imagining all the ways that night could have gone worse.
"Okay." Eddie said simply.
"Okay?" How was trying to kill him okay?
"I believe you. The real you meant no harm." Eddie turned to the captain who had been standing against the wall for most of this conversation but was now standing right above the kneeling men.
"Task force disbanded, and you will be going into the field a lot more often."
Joe wanted to argue, but why? He was already in the field a lot, but now at least he would have backup of some sort. Things were about to change.