Chapter 6: Techna Renewed

I wake to the sound of ringing in my ears. The ground was hard and when I moved, my back cracked in protest. I rolled to my side to see three, blurry figures standing; one of them with his back to me, standing his ground against the other two.

"I've got your friend held as hostage," the man states almost proudly as he walks towards me in his fancy dress shoes. I grunt as his large hand comes down and grabs a fist full of my hair and uses that as leverage to pull me off the ground. "Heard you hang out with some of the "normal" people, Flash. You use them to help you fight us stronger, much more powerful metahumans… Silly. How you rely on them and not someone like me… I could've been Firestorm. I could have been amazing."

Although he continued to go on and on about how awesome he was, I ended up zoning him out, for only one thing stuck in my mind. "Normal" people… And then I couldn't help the laugh that escaped my lip. It just kind of happened as I felt a tickling sensation in the palm of my hands, the large, bright stadium lights that shone down on us seemed to be radiating off some heat I hadn't known before. But the more I laughed, the hotter it got. Was it also getting brighter?

"Wh… What are you laughing for?" Henry Hewitt pouted as he shook me roughly, trying to get me to stop.

I winced slightly, but not enough to stop the hysterical laugh that was leaving my lips. Because I should be scared. This new meta-human who was power hunger had me clutched tightly in his grip. But instead of scared, I felt this new, warm feeling building up in my veins. As if moving with the blood in me, it filled my whole body.

"You called me normal…" I continued to laugh as his eyebrows furrowed further in further in confusion.

Another voice then called out as Jax stepped forward. "Just let her go."

"Enough!" Henry shouted in my ear, seeming frustrated. He started to turn red again, the energy building up in the hand that wasn't fisting my hair tightly. He threw the ball of energy towards Jax and hit him straight in the chest. I watched as Jax flew backwards, landing on the football field painfully.

Barry flashed over to check on him as Jax sat up. Part of me was relieved that he was alright, yet the other part was harnessing this new warm feeling in a whole new way. My heart had skipped a beat when Jax hit his back and it took me a second to realize what Henry had done, but once I realized he had intentionally hurt Jax and the professor, the warmth changed immediately.

The kid may be new, but he was now one of us. And I had been watching him working hard and trying his best to cooperate with Professor Stein. I knew how hard it was to warm up to Stein at first, and I appreciated him trying. And he didn't know he was taking the role of my twin, he was just trying to be a good person. He wanted to do good in the world.

So, the warmth in my veins suddenly turned hot, uncomfortably hot. The ringing in my ears was very noticeable and loud now, and I was hyper aware of the stadium lights that burned down on my captor. Yet, my laughing wasn't stopping.

"You're an odd person…" Henry mumbled, trying to hold me tight with his grip on my hair. However, I had resulted in wiggling now, unable to escape from the heat that filled my veins. The tickling sensation in my hands was now very distracting and cramped. My wiggling increased as the giggles from my lips decreased.

"Stop moving! I'll hurt you!" He cried out, though his threat sounded weak.

I finally turned to face him, ignoring the painful way his hand tugged at my blonde hair. And I gave him one of the most mischievous grins I've ever managed. "You might not be used to hearing this, Doctor Henry Hewitt. But you're wrong."

"About what?" He mumbled, seemingly disturbed by the smile on my face.

"You grabbed the wrong person," I told him, flexing my hands towards the heat of the light, which surprisingly eased the tension in my palms immediately. "I am anything but normal."

I gasped as the tingling sensation in my hands immediately grew along the blood in my arms. As if wires, suddenly my whole body was alive and the stadium lights flickered intensely.

"W-what are you doing?" Henry whimpered, letting go of my hair and stepped back away from me.

I held my palms out in front of me and watched the glittering, sparkling electricity that once coursed through the stadium lights, enter the center of my hands and lay there like a caterpillar nestling itself on a leaf. The light was blinding, being much closer to me now, and lit up the whole area around me. And I felt something new.

I felt power.

I held my hands out, palms facing him and watched as he shrunk back in fear. I breathed out a sigh of pleasure as the energy rested completely in my hands, and I smiled once more.

"I'm trying something new." I pointed out, before pushing my hands out towards him.

The electricity left me almost immediately, finding residence on Henry's abdomen. I watched as the chain of electricity wrapped around his waist and crackled against his uniform for several seconds. His head fell back, his eyes towards the sky as he shook in tremors, before the electricity disappeared and he stood there, arms held out in surprise and his feet spread shoulder apart. He glanced at me for a split second before his body shook one more time and his knees gave out underneath him. I felt the warmth leave my body as I watched him hit the ground.

And then I followed only second after.

Laying on the ground once more, I stared up at the starry night sky. With the stadium lights blown out, the moonlight was the only thing lighting up the field. I took an exaggerate deep breath, almost as if my lungs forgot how to accept oxygen, and focused on the cool way the chilly wind brushed against the skin of my arms. I had almost forgot how cold it was out tonight after feeling that heat course through my veins.

What was that? I wondered in a sudden panic after realizing what I had done.

That was VERY new.

"Leah?" Suddenly, the face of Jax was looking down at me, his eyes still white and his head still lit in dull flames, letting me know that Professor Stein was also peering down at my weary, exhausted face. "Are you alright?"

I hadn't known I was breathing heavily until I tried to talk. I opened my mouth, letting out a huff of air before saying, "Yeah, I'm okay…"

"That. Was. Awesome." He told me as his smile grew from ear to ear.

I smiled along because he was young, and there was something about his smile that reminded me of that. But in the back of my head, the stress of what had just happened and all the questions I had no answers for still lingered.

Of course, I noticed the way everyone's eyes followed me once we got back to the cortex. Caitlin immediately led me to a gurney and hooked me up to one too many machines to check my vitals and make sure I was okay. I continuously told her I felt fine, because I really did, but she continued on with her work anyways. While she worked on her computer, I sat on the edge of the gurney, starring down at my feet.

"So what was that?" A voice exclaimed excitedly and I didn't even have to look up to know who it was.

"No idea." I answered shortly, trying to keep my frenzied emotions to myself. I had already caused the lights to flickering several times since I had gotten back and what scared me more was how much my body craved to manipulate the electricity that kept the lightbulb lit.

"Leah, that was amazing!" He told me. "That was like a WHOLE NEW LEVEL of Techa! I didn't know you could do that!"
"Neither did I."

"You completely knocked him on his a-."

"Does anything hurt?" Caitlin asked then, interrupting Cisco's excited interrogation.

I looked up to be met with her concerned expression and Cisco's amused expression soon changed to match hers. I sighed, "No. Nothing hurts."

She shook her head in disbelief, "Astonishing…"

"What?"

"Well, the professor and I were talking…"

Barry walked in then with an even bigger concerned look on his face. Once he stopped to stand at the end of the gurney and switch his gaze between the three of us, he continuously shifted his weight on each of his legs.

Cisco sighed before Barry could even open his mouth, "We never get a break, do we?"

Barry sighed right after him. "We have a visitor."

"But my security system…"

"Didn't work." Barry shook his head.

"Well, who is it?" Caitlin asked.

"Some stranger just casually walked in?" I added.

"Well…" I didn't miss the way he glanced at Cisco before returning his eyes to mine. "Well, she's not exactly a stranger…"

"Oh?"

He then turned to Cisco almost reluctantly, and his eyebrows were so furrowed, he looked like a lost puppy. "Um… She's asking for you, specifically."