(HR POV)
I saw the newcomer walking into the cortex, nothing new crossing her face. It seemed like she's been here before.
That's great! I thought and flashed her a cheerful smile. Unfortunately, she didn't notice it and just greeted us, "Hi Cisco, Harry."
Harry, the handsome? She must have been mistaken, I concluded while Francisco had a confused look on his face before he asked a question, "Um, did we forget to tell you?"
"What?" she replied.
"This is not Harry, this is HR," he told her and pointed to me.
There was a moment of silence between the two before the girl replied with, "Who?"
"This is HR…" Francisco began before I cut in, wanting to give her an introduction myself.
"Hello there, pretty lady, my name is HR, or at least you can call me HR, HR Wells," I said, beaming happily. She ignored my facial expression and asked, "So why do you look so much like Harry?"
"The handsome one? Well that's because he… Francisco can answer that," I said and pointed to him. She looked kind of confused for a moment, but her facial expression changed to a normal one.
"Well, HR is from another earth," he explained,
"Huh."
After the kind of long, and confusing explanation of where I come from, they managed to figure out all her questions about me, something I should add to my book: The Tale of HR Wells.
"Ah Cisco, there's a monster," BA's voice said, coming from the voice thing-y, which alerted Francisco and the girl to the desk.
"What do you mean, Barry?" he replied.
"There is a monster in this city," he repeated.
"What do you mean, what does it look like?" the girl asked. Then Francisco started saying monster names to compare sizes and looks.
"No, I mean, an actual monster that's roaming the city."
Cisco did something which set up a city view and we saw a monster.
"Wow, have you seen anything like that on Earth 19 before?" Francisco asked.
I didn't know any technical stuff and I didn't want to disappoint them so I said, "you know, I'm just going to supervise this, just supervise." Then I took a bite from my sandwich. Francisco sighed at me and went back to doing his stuff.
Once they lost the monster, which a method to find it was using car alarms which I thought of, BA came back to the lab. He greeted the girl, whose name was Quake, and we started talking about it. I tried throwing ideas around, to seem like I was one of them. But I'm not.
But then BA thought that my idea of using rope to catch the monster was a good idea, so I tried to emphasise that it was my idea. So that they knew it, but Francisco looked at me weirdly.
"Anyways, one other thing that was odd," BA continued, "when the monster walked past a transformer, it exploded."
"Huh, how is that weird?" Francisco asked and I agreed.
"The thing is, the monster didn't even lay a finger on it, it exploded before it got to the monster."
"Hey, that's kind of like the movie where…" Francisco said, I kind of got the reference but not really. But that gave me in idea.
"Hey, maybe the monster emits some kind of electrical pulse which caused the transformer to explode, we should go check it out" I suggested.
"Well, we can't really do anything like that now, since the whole place is now a crime scene and Julian is leading the case," BA said, shaking his head.
"Who is he?" I asked, thinking that his name was familiar, "oh yeah, that's the CSI guy who you dislike, I mean…"
"Anyways." BA then left.
"So…" I said.
(Quake POV)
We were in a room with Cisco working on a project, HR telling a story and I was just there, fiddling with some tools. He was going on about an epic battle with gladiators, as coined by Cisco, until Cisco decided to speak up.
"Hey, I'm going to take a break," Cisco said, pausing from his machine.
"Yeah, I'll go too," HR replied, sitting upright.
"Actually, I think Quake and I will take that break," he said, looking at me before directing for us to go. I sat up and followed Cisco out the room.
"Huh, why did you leave him?" I asked.
"Somethings funny with him, he doesn't sit right with me," he answered.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"He, he's not actually helping us," he told me, "he's just saying what we're saying but making it slightly different."
"Well, he's not that bad," I replied, defending him.
"Don't defend him, he doesn't need to have followers."
"I wasn't, I just," I said, "I just was saying that he is not as bad as you say."
"Sure," Cisco replied, putting as much sarcasm as he could, before walking off.
I mean, he's slightly off but not super bad and useless as Cisco describes him, I thought, but that made me think of the weird scene that I saw last night, Crap! I forgot to tell them, I'll do it when Barry gets back.
When Barry came back, he gave us some new information.
"So, the transformers are the key. When the monster is near, the transformers explode," Barry said.
"Car alarms also malfunction near the monster as well," Cisco added, looking at his screen.
"The car alarms, the transformers, what is the big connection?" HR asked, to no one, "we just have to keep trying."
Suddenly, Cisco had a brain wave, "maybe the controller of the monster is pulling power out of the transformer and power the monster."
"Yeah, the power, the monster. That's it," HR said, "beat me to it."
"Yeah, but it can't be it HR," Cisco replied, "we should have detected a power surge in the Power Grid, so it can't be broadcasted."
"Maybe something like a portable Telsa Tower," Barry said, getting the same idea as Cisco.
"Yeah, a portable Telsa Power, "HR said.
"Telsa Tower," Barry corrected.
"That's what I meant, a portable Telsa Tower, that's it."
He then started to walk off, "Teamwork! On my earth, we call this amazing teamwork which solved this problem. I'm going to have a coffee." He then left after rambling about a short story which involved coffee. After a bit of silence, Barry spoke up.
"H-he didn't really say anything, not much teamwork towards him."
Cisco then slammed his hand on the table, "Thank you. It took me a bit of time, but I realised it, he's just recycling everything that we're saying into his own words."
"Well, he did have the idea to use the rope," Barry argued, and I nodded.
"No, he made you think that he had the idea for the rope, but in reality, he didn't."
"You know, we're not going to be caught off guard again," Barry said, looking at Cisco, "You should vibe him."
"Vibe what?" I asked, super confused.
"Cisco can… it's complicated," Barry explained, "You'll see later."
The duo then proceeded to walk off, before I spoke up, "Hey, there was also something, but I'll tell you after Cisco 'vibes'."
We walked into a computer room which had HR's bag. Cisco then started pawing through it.
"Cisco, that's not nice," Barry responded.
"Hey, I'm not going through his stuff, I'm just looking," Cisco replied, before grabbing a pen-like device, "Like, what the heck it this?" He then pulled something and suddenly, HR's voice came through it.
"Now, I've got all their trust, except for Francisco's-" it began, before HR walked in and discovered us, so Cisco turned it off.
"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"What are you doing here?" Cisco repeated, giving him a death glare.
"Huh."
"We know you're hiding something."
He then sighed, "I know, you've been burned twice by a man with the same face as mine."
What!? I thought.
"It must be hard to trust me after something like that, I imagine. So play it, play the rest of it."
Cisco then turned the recording back on.
After bit of confusion, it turned out that HR was actually writing a novel and he wanted to rebuild the friendship that was ruined with Cisco.
"So why didn't you tell us this earlier?" Cisco asked.
"Well, I just didn't think that it was relevant," HR said, "and, I didn't think you'd go through my stuff."
"That's all it is, I'm a scientist and an author. Can you trust me now, or does trust not exist on you earth?"
"Trust," a voice repeated behind him, it was Caitlin.
"Oh! You scared the tickets out of me," he said, jumping back.
"Trust who?" Caitlin asked. Suddenly the alarms went off and, once we briefly explained what has happened to Caitlin, we went back to the Cortex.
Barry raced off to the sight, with ropes in hand, and encountered the monster.
"Guys, I'm here," Barry said.
"So, what do you see?" HR asked.
"People in fear, and the monster."
"Great, so what is the plan?" Iris said.
"The plan is that we have fashioned some carbon-fibre ropes… we never actually said what we were going to do with the ropes," HR replied.
"Alright Barry, Empire," Cisco said, referring to the movie.
"Empire of the Sun," HR continued.
"No, Empire Strikes Back," Cisco corrected.
"Oh, Empire Strikes Back," HR repeated.
"The bigger they are, the harder they will fall," Caitlin said, walking up to HR, "Even I've watched Empire."
"Oh," Cisco and HR said.
Barry then muttered something before going to work. He tied up the rope to a light post and zoomed around the monster until it had nowhere to go. But suddenly, the monster continued walking and went right through the ropes.
"Guys, the rope didn't work and the monster went right through it, it's a hologram," Barry said.
Cisco then realised everything, "the ten-block radius, the transformers, the traffic cams going down…"
"Wait, CCPD were sent there with snipers, if it's a hologram, the bullets could hurt bystanders…" Iris said with Caitlin coming up with the same conclusion.
"Okay, where is it?" Barry asked.
"Give me a second Bare," Cisco replied, typing on his computer.
"We don't have a 'sec'," he said.
"HR, could you help me triangulate the signal to locate the monster."
"Uh, sure," he replied, "Let's do that now." He jumped on another computer and muttered the word triangulate and complaining that it was different on his earth.
"Oh, I knew it," Cisco said, "You're a fraud."
Everyone replied with "what?".
"You've just been acting like you're one of us and that you can do this but you can't."
HR then got off the computer and Cisco got on it, to do his job.
"Okay Bare, I found it."
After a whole situation with letting the CCPD know that the monster was a hologram, Barry went up to a building and found the person operating the monster, a kid.
Unfortunately, there was another officer there as well and almost shot him. So, Barry saved him and it was all good. Now, to work out what to do with HR.
We all talked for a bit and it was decided that HR could stay but if he messed up, he was sent back to his earth. Soon we all walked off, but that remined me of the strange thing I saw that night. So, I ran off to find Barry.
After some searching, it turns out that he was at work. So, I went over there and arrived at CCPD. I walked in and asked if I could see him. They let me and I went up to his lab. The door was open so I snuck in and saw Barry packing things in a box and another person leaning against a wall.
"Hey Barry," I interrupted.
"Yeah Quake," he replied.
"Quake?" the other person said.
Ignoring the other person, I told Barry, "I, uh, I saw something last night."
"Yeah, what was it?" Barry asked.
"There was a flash of purple-ish light that appeared and it left a man there but I'm not sure where he went."
"Purple-ish light, that sounds like a metahuman power," the other person said.
"Or maybe dimension travelling?" Barry said.
"Yeah, they both sound about right," I told the duo, "Barry and…" I realised that I didn't know the other person's name.
"Julian," he replied, "A metahuman specialist." Oh, Julian. The person that Barry doesn't like, I thought.
"Oh, cool," I said, "but do you know where he went?"
The two shook their heads.
Hey,
I'm sorry for the lack of updates but thank you for the number of followers and favourites my story has gotten. To reward you for waiting for me to post another chapter, I wrote a longer one. Also, Quake and Julian have finally met! Now we have a mystery on what the purple-ish light is. Anyways, keep reading.
Bye, :D