Last of the "set during the first chapter's timeline" interludes. Oh boy.
Interlude: Free to a Good Home.
"Heeeey, Iris," Barry said, using a tone Iris West knew all too well as the "I need a favor" voice. She rolled her eyes, but smiled anyway. His favor requests usually turned into pretty funny stories. Usually. Still, she'd play along. He always looked like a kicked puppy when she led with " what now?"
"Barry? What are you doing here?" Iris asked. "You have a scoop or something? Or, no, let me guess, Linda?"
"Oh, uh, no. No. Um." Barry rubbed the back of his neck. "Does Eddie's apartment-I mean, your apartment, I mean- do you want a cat?"
"What?" Iris asked blinking, confused.
"I may have found a bunch of kittens. And they need homes. Good ones, with people I know and trust and stuff. And I know you always wanted a cat when we were kids, so…. do you and Eddie want one?"
"Oh! Uh-I'll have to talk to him. But I will. Are they at my dad's, or…?"
"Um, not right now. They're at Star Labs, actually, because there were so many, and we had to see if they were microchipped, and c'mon, Joe wouldn't let us have one kitten…"
"True," Iris laughed. " Remember when we tried to smuggle in that stray?"
"Moo-ki?" Barry covered his face. "Oh, man. How long were we grounded?"
"Like two days. I think he felt bad." An alert popped up on Iris's computer, and she sighed. "Lunch break's over. I'll talk to Eddie, and we'll call you?"
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I'm gonna go? I will see you. soon. Just, yeah. Ok." He left.
"Smooth, Allen, real smooth," he muttered to himself, checking his watch. "Crap." His shift at the station was supposed to have started three minutes before. Maybe he could bribe the head CSI, who mostly stayed in the actual lab on the main floor, with a kitten. She liked animals, didn't she?
Head CSI Sava did, in fact, like animals. She was also very allergic to cats. Still, it hadn't been an entire loss. She'd agreed to cover for him "this one time, Mr. Allen," in exchange for kitten videos. An hour or so into the shift, after Barry had called Cisco and asked him to forward a few of the videos Cisco had taken on his phone, the phone in the corner of the lab rang.
"That's strange." Joe would have come right up, or Eddie, and if it were for him personally, or him as the Flash, it would have come on his Cellphone. "Hello?" he tried. Hopefully it wasn't Singh, upset at some minor detail.
It wasn't.
"Allen, my office, as soon as you have a moment." Head CSI Sava said, her voice much softer and kinder than normal. "Please." Ok, so that was probably a sign of the End of Days. Barry glanced around his office. Maybe it was about getting some new equipment?
"This one." The woman said, jabbing at her computer screen. Barry blinked and came over, wondering if it were crime scene photos he'd taken, or-no. It was cats. One of the videos Cisco had sent, with the grey kitten "Havoc" living up to its name and one of Cisco's laser pointers.
"Excuse me?" Barry asked.
"You asked if I wanted a cat. That one."
"Um. Didn't you say you were…?"
"Yes, Mr. Allen, but that one is a Russian Blue. Hypoallergenic." She grinned. Barry wasn't sure he'd ever seen his boss smile at him. "I know cat breeds. I've been looking for a Russian Blue breeder in the area that doesn't want an arm and a leg. Have someone bring him by my place on my day off. I'll want to see how we get along, of course, but if it works out, there's a new centrifuge in it for you."
"Uh, yeah. Um."
"He's got spirit." Sava said again, pointing at the video which Barry saw was on a repeated loop. "He got a name?"
"Havoc? One of the guys who works there named him, but it might not stick-"
"Havoc. I like it. Now, shoo. Singh wants the paperwork for the Glenwood case yesterday."
Barry finished the paperwork in record time. It was fairly simple stuff, just filling out forms. His penmanship was getting a lot better with the super speed practice, although sometimes he'd write a whole sentence to discover the pen had gone dry midword. It was either a slow day, or Sava had tasked going out to crime scenes to some of her other underlings, down in the main lab, but Barry was able to slip out earlier than expected. Eddie caught him on his way out.
"Hey, Iris just called, said something about-"
"Kittens. Yeah. Kinda found, like, two dozen. Well, they found us? Star Labs that is. Not sure exactly, but anyway. We can't keep all of them, so…"
"We?" Eddie asked. Barry could have kicked himself.
"I-you know, I spend a lot of time there? Mostly check-ins, after the whole coma thing, but sometimes just to...hang out?" It wasn't entirely a lie. Eddie nodded in understanding. "Anyway, so there are a lot of kittens, and I said I'd...try to help. find them homes. and Iris always liked cats and so I wasn't sure if….And, if you want one, I mean, it's not just, me giving Iris a cat. If you want one, it's, or, they're-for you both. Late Christmas gift, or apartmentwarming, or-you can have cats there, right? I know some buildings don't..." he trailed off, awkwardly.
"Nice of you to think of us." Eddie paused. " I know things are...awkward. So, thanks, Allen. Barry. It means a lot. And yeah, that would be great, actually. It'd be nice." The blond detective took a breath. "I had a cat, when I was a kid. Little kid. It'd be good to have one again."
"Great, that's great. Um, so, there are a bunch of them. So many of them."
"I have a half shift tomorrow, and It's Iris's day off. We could come look at them then? If that works?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'll call Cisco, let him know," Barry said, mentally adding 'and hide any trace of The Flash in the kitten rooms. Did we set aside kitten rooms? we need to.'
"Oh my gosh she's beautiful, look at her!" Iris cooed. She was crouched on the floor, one of the golden spotted kitties-Doctor Wells had looked it up and said they were likely bengal cats, or part bengal-twining around her legs and shoving her face into Iris's hands. Cisco gave her some kitty treats, which Iris held out to her new Best Friend. She looked up at Eddie, who was standing, shifting from side to side as the other leopard-looking kitten switched shoulders.
"We're getting this one," she said, with no room for argument.
"And this one," he agreed. "They can keep each other company while we're at work."
Two kittens adopted, twenty-five to go. Barry took Havoc over to Sava the day after, along with some of the kitten supplies they'd acquired. He did not bring the kitten back to Star Labs, leaving the grey menace curled happily around the woman's sneakers.
Star labs was somewhat quieter after that. Somewhat. Mostly.
Barry was only a little surprised when Captain Singh asked to speak to him, he was far more surprised that it was about the kittens, and he was much further surprised that not only was the captain not upset that Barry was going around trying to find homes for a bunch of stray cats within the precinct, but he wanted one.
"For Rob, not me," Singh had said. Barry was fairly certain that was only a half-truth, when he saw the way the Captain handled the sleek black cat with purple eyes.
Rob fell in love with the kitten as well-Cisco had been calling him either Pounce or Faithful after some fantasy series- and three days later they took him home, with a new collar that read "Raoul" and a bag of kitten toys.
"Maybe this means he likes me?" Barry asked Joe one afternoon. The Captain hadn't yelled at Barry since adopting Raoul. Which was probably another sign of the End of the World, but Barry wasn't going to question it.
Several of the kittens, it seemed, did not have issue with locked doors.
"I promise, they were all in here ten minutes ago," Cisco said, looking at the Kitten Room, an old office that was now full of cat beds and litterboxes, food and water dishes and catnip mice, a climbing tree and scratching post, and only two kittens.
"So...what do we do? Where did they all go? How did they all go?" Caitlin asked, scooping up the tiny tabby that was sitting on her shoe and crying for attention. "No, Scrap, not the sleeve again." Unwilling to listen, the kitten crawled back inside the labcoat's sleeve and settled there, purring.
"I don't know?" Cisco sounded vaguely hysterical. "I mean, they were all-where did they go? I'm going to go check the cameras, maybe someone let them out?
They found a dozen kittens sprinting down the hallways. Three more had discovered the medbay and were fast asleep on top of the cot. Doctor Wells sat in his chair in the middle of the cortex when Cisco burst in, leaving Barry and Caitlin to corral the renegade floofballs. In his lap was the marmalade kitten Apricot, purring and chewing on a pencil with her tiny, needle sharp teeth.
"I believe a group of them might have gotten down into the lower levels." Doctor Wells said, a bit distractedly.
"Ye-eah," Cisco said, checking the computers. " They're in the Pipeline. And it's a Clowder. A group of cats is called a Clowder, or a Glaring, but that doesn't really fit these guys."
Caitlin and Barry ventured down to retrieve the kittens, listing off the descriptions as Cisco checked them off his Master List. Peanut Butter, check, Frieda and Georgia, check, Sue, check. With the others more or less contained in the kitten room, except for Scrap (still with Caitlin) Apricot (now chewing on Doctor Wells' cardigan), and Fuzzwhump, perched on Cisco's shoulder, that left…
"Yeah. Um. Have you guys seen Nyoom?" he called down into the intercom. There was a moment of hesitation. She was impossible to catch, always running around and never out of energy, so the name had seemed decent. It was that or CatFlash, which would only really fit if she was a superhero or something.
"Which one's Nyoom? The one without a tail, or…" Barry trailed off. "Found her." There was a crackling of static.
Five minutes later, Cisco was staring at his list, wondering how many more of the kittens had metakitty powers.
Just then, the silver tabby he'd nicknamed Khoshek levitated a full foot and a half off the ground.
Cisco scribbled that down, and frowned. He hoped that the kittens already adopted wouldn't have obvious powers. That could be a disaster.
Across the room, Peanut Butter ran through a wall and bounced off a golden bubble that formed around Moose, a reverse-tabby.
It had to be a tuesday.
So this is officially a Thing? like, I plotted out seven chapters and that's only a fraction? YIKES.
sometime next chapter or the one after we'll get a full list of the kitties names, descriptions, and powers. I have the list. I know all the names and powers and who adopts who. It'll be an adventure.
I am on tumblr, hedgiwithapen, feel free to shout at me there as well as below, I love hearing from you.