No kittens were harmed in the making of this chapter.

Interlude: Wreaking Havoc

Barry woke to a sudden inability to breathe as Nyoom pressed her side against his face. He reached up to nudge her aside and glanced at the clock.

"Nyoom, it's Five AM."

"Mrrow." (Food.) She mewed.

"No." Barry leant back into his pillows. It was his one day off, and he wanted sleep.

"Mrrow." (Food.) She repeated, patting at his face.

"Go pester Joe."

"Mrrow!" Nyoom pawed away the covers before Barry could get a good grip on them. Barry groaned.

"If I feed you, will you shush?"

"Mrrow."

Barry got up. "I swear to God, cat, if there is food in that bowl…." It was the work of a second to dash down the stairs, even with Joe's "60 miles an hour in the house, No I'm serious" speed limit. Nyoom's bowl was already full; the hourly mechanical release Cisco had designed was working fine.
Barry closed his eyes. "Nyoom. Why?"
She swished her tail over his bare foot and peered up at him with wide eyes, still kitten blue against her white and grey face. Barry sighed, and poured himself an industrial sized bowl of cereal, which Nyoom ate most of in the end. Then Barry scooped her up in one arm and went back to the blessed warmth and comfort of his bed, Nyoom curled up on his back, between his shoulderblades.

Hardly three hours later he got a call that one of the other techs had gotten sick and would he please, please, please come in, yes they knew it was his day off but they were already short staffed, it would only be for a couple hours and would count as overtime so he'd get time-and-a-half for it. Barry looked at Nyoom, and agreed. It wasn't like he'd get any more sleep, and maybe if she got tired out playing with Bear or Raoul, his doofusy cat would actually sit still for longer than ten minutes that night.
Somehow, he doubted that, but work was work, and getting into Sava and Singh's good graces a bit more couldn't hurt.

He learned exactly why Lorelei Sava was so stressed out roughly thirty-five seconds within entering her office to drop off some paperwork, Nyoom occupied upstairs with a large box and a half dozen rubber spiders left over from the Great April Fools Incident of 2014, something he was not sorry about missing during the coma. His supervisor was on the phone, arguing more than a little loudly—or, strangely, pleading.

"I know it's last minute, but Kelly, I am desperate. There'll be pizza. Lots of pizza, plus double the going rate for—yes, I know it's—I work for a police station, yes, I do in fact know how many parties there are tonight because it's going to—" She stopped and frowned. "She hung up. Rude. Why on earth would Jen recommend her in the first place I don't even know." She crossed off what looked like the last name on a list and glanced up. "Oh, Allen, yes, just put it in the basket and you can…" she trailed off.

"Um." Barry looked around nervously, wondering what exactly was going on.

"What are you doing tonight?" Sava asked abrubtly.

"Um. I…don't know?" He'd been planning on being on call as Flash, probably circling the universities since it was a major football game day or something and there were going to be a lot of parties that were bound to get violent at some point. "Nothing?" It seemed like a safer answer than "my superhero side-job". It was not.

"Oh thank goodness. I need your help. I know you're good with kids, all the little fieldtrips, and you're responsible, and I can certainly trust you more than..." she waved a hand at the list " second hand recommendations."

"Um."

She continued as if she hadn't heard. "My brother called me an hour ago to tell me he and his wife are going on a weekend getaway and I'm the lucky winner of babysitter. It would have been fine," she said the word in a way that Barry knew meant the opposite, "except that I have a meeting with a lawyer tonight. I've got to testify in the Hunter case, and it's going to take hours. And I cannot find a sitter."

"Uh…" Barry tried to think of a way out, but she was looking at him so desperately.

"There's 25$ an hour and a couple pizzas in it for you." Sava offered. "And first dibs on holidays off. Yes, I am resorting to bribery. Please."

Barry considered. If there was a disaster and Flash was needed, he could probably convince the kids to play hide and seek, which would give him a couple minutes.

"How old are they?" he relented.

"Seven and a half. Amy and Evan. Twins. Not allergic to cats, medications, or anything except cleaning their rooms, but otherwise well behaved. You know where I live, be there at seven."
Barry was pretty sure he was going to regret this.

The rest of the half shift went fine—Sava had also managed to call in one of the other techs to take the rest of the day, so Barry zipped over to STAR Labs to eat, Nyoom racing along next to him down deserted sidestreets and back alleys. Nyoom joined her kitten siblings, racing around the cortex for a bit before descending to the Pipeline with Peanut Butter.

"You know, Shawna's been…good." Caitlin said, rubbing Scrap's ears. "Less angry. Not that I blame her, exactly. Peanut's been good for her, and…" she paused, not sure what to say. Cisco nodded.

"She technically didn't hurt anyone," he said. "I mean, yeah, she took that money. And broke her boyfriend out of jail. Very illegal. But…I mean, she's not…dangerous, exactly, I mean, not like Nimbus the supposed to be dead murderer."

"We were supposed to be trying to rehabilitate them. The ones that aren't set on trying to murder Joe, at least," Barry sighed. "But if we let her go, what's to stop her from, I dunno, robbing another bank, or smashing up a club and bailing?"

"I looked into the money thing," Cisco said, prying Fuzzwhump off of his lap and settling her on his shoulder so he could hop off the table where he'd been sitting and pull up something on the computer. "The boyfriend owed money. They took enough to cover it and nothing else. That truck had four times as much as they took, easy. And with him gone... "

"We know how to stop her now." Caitlin said. "And maybe we could…I don't know. The cats can always find each other, right? I mean, I'm not saying 'bribe the metahuman with a cat' but…"

"Let's talk to Doctor Wells about it. But yeah." Cisco winced. "We've kinda dropped the ball."

At the word 'ball' Felix lifted his head from where he had been snoozing on an oversized catbed.
"Soon, though," Barry said. "Oh, right, I just wanted to give you guys a heads up that I'm going to be," he lowered his voice a little. "Babysitting tonight. For Director Sava's niece and nephew. So nothing the police can't handle perfectly well on their own, ok?" he said the last to Cisco.

"One of these days, it's going to be a little old lady," he snarked back.

"Yeah, yeah," Barry sighed, digging through a desk drawer of another of Cisco's calorie bars, this one labeled "S'moreos." "What is this?"

"You complained about the taste, I'm just trying to make some that aren't terrible. Gives me something to do, though I think Fuzz is worried I'll burn down the kitchen. She literally won't leave me alone any more."

"Well, I don't blame her," Caitlin said, shaking her hair back. "You almost died. You see how Scrap gets when I say anything about Eiling?" As if on cue, Scrap leaped from Caitlin's arms and grew larger in the blink of an eye. None of the other cats seemed terribly worried.

"Scrap, it's fine, Mom's making a point." Caitlin reassured the kitten. Scrap shrank again.

"No, but look." Cisco untangled Fuzz's claws from his shirt and held er out to Barry. The minute Barry had her, the kitten took on that characteristics of a fish—squirming and slipping from Barry's hold. Cisco took five steps, enough to get him beyond the doorway and just around the corner, his hand still visible. Fuzzwhump shrieked, bit Barry, and raced after him. (SCO SCO SCO SCO)
"see?" Cisco asked, coming back in. "I mean, it's nice to have her around. I've been—well, she's just really good at helping me focus and calm down if I have a, a bad dream, or something. But it's to the point where I had to make a nest for her in the shower caddy."

"Ok, that might be a bit extreme." Caitlin sighed. "Maybe Faulkner can understand us well enough to get a message across to her?"

"Maybe." Cisco rubbed his nose against Fuzzwhump's cheek. "I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do that again, you overprotective ball of fluff."

(Protect Sco. Sco safe. Not let wheel man hurt.) Fuzzwhump squeaked.

Scrap mewed (Fuzz, Wheelman not kill Sco. Know this. Sco home. Sco safe. )
(Sco still maybe need-) Fuzzwhump started, but Frieda poked her head in through the doorway

(Is. Napping. Let humans be loud, not know better. But you shush.)

Fuzzwhump gave a rippling 'mrt' of annoyance and Cisco settled her back on his lap, pulling a string from his drawer and dangling it for her. "Behold, the fierce and mighty tigress."

The effort to lighten the mood worked a little, but Barry was still grateful when his phone rang.

"Hey, Iris," he said after checking the Caller ID.

"Hi, Barry. Listen, can you do me a favor?"

"Anything," he agreed instantly, then winced. "Unless it's something for tonight, I kinda have a th—"

"Oh, no, no. I was just—well, I think I left my flashdrive at dad's the other night, and I need it for work. Could you dash it over?"

Barry froze. He could have sworn that she'd emphasized 'flash' and 'dash' but…that didn't mean anything, he was sure.

"Uh…yeah, I can do that. Might take me a bit, but sure. Where did you leave it?"

"Oh, I'm sure you'll get it here in no time, things move so fast around here. It should be on the counter?"

"I'll check." Barry put down the phone, raced back to Joe's, and found the drive. "Got it."

"Oh, great. Yeah, if you could run it by, that'd be great."

"Sure," Barry felt unease growing. There had definitely been unneeded emphasis on 'run.'
"You're a lifesaver." Iris said as she hung up. Barry looked at the flashdrive, at the others who seemed vaguely concerned, and at his sneakers, which had started to smoke. Of course.

Kenna Page looked at her cat, then back at the email she'd gotten from one Lorelei Sava, Director of CSI at CCPD. An invitation for the next Monday evening to meet with others who had adopted kittens in the last year with "abnormal abilities." She snorted. Eevee was a very smart floofball, and more cuddly than many cats, but hardly abnormal.
Then again, there had been that post on the Flash blog people kept talking about, about the Flash's new sidekick, a cat-shaped blur in the photo.
Maybe STAR Labs was experimenting on kittens, though…no, they'd seemed like nice people. She couldn't think that anyone who seemed as affectionate with the cats as Ramon or Snow could be condoning animal cruelty or testing, and the Flash would have put a stop to it, would have investigated his new pal's abilities or something.

Right?

"Should we go?" Kenna asked Eevee, who was chewing on her shoelace. "Maybe."

Eevee purred, fluffing out her fur.

"But if they try to take you away, I'll hurt them. Well. I'll run away as fast as I can, and we can go live in the mountains somewhere."

More purring.

"Well, maybe not the mountains. But we'll figure something out. If it's a trap or something."

More purring. Eevee gave up on the mangled shoelace and leaped onto the table.

"Down, Eevee."

Eevee did not jump down, but rather walked across the keyboard and helped herself to the remains of Kenna's lunch.

Barry arrived at Sava's house at quarter to seven, his backpack stuffed with his suit—just in case—and a couple of books pulled from the box in his closet, left over from his childhood. Nyoom had followed him, apparently taking notes from Scrap and Fuzz and getting in on the stalking/protecting gig. She'd hissed at no fewer than twelve cars on the run over.

Sava opened the door, looking harried but professional. "Thank you, again. Kids!"

Two kids raced in from a back room, Havoc clinging to the girl's shoulders. "Are you our sitter?" the girl asked.

"Boy sitters?" asked the boy.

"Yes, he's your sitter, and don't be sexist, Evan."

"Surprised," he corrected his aunt. "There're girl cops, there can be boy sitters. 'm not stupid."

Barry was pretty sure he heard the girl—Amy—mutter an "are too."
"Barry, these are the niblings, Amy and Evan. Niblings, this is Barry Allen. You behave. You listen to him. He tells you not to do something, you don't do it. Evan, remember that the roof is still off limits. Amy, the same goes for you." She looked at Barry.

"They've mostly eaten, but there's still an unholy amount of pizza left—you take home whatever's left—and bedtime's no later than 8:30 no matter what they tell you. There's some instructions on—" she patted her pockets and pulled out a folded paper, "here, and my cellphone, and the number of where I'll be. Should be back no later than 10, but it's Cadwell and you know how he gets."
Barry did know, Cadwell was one of the top lawyers in the city, and also one of the most difficult to work with.
Amy and Evan ran off again, Nyoom following daintily after Havoc meowed a welcome.
"Oh, you brought your cat. It's fine, I've got a new allergy prescription, but if she sheds …try to clean it up. Let me see, what else—that should cover it. The kids might give you some trouble, but they're generally pretty good if you don't let them walk all over you. No tv, they used their screen time for the day, but there's some laser tag stuff in the hall closet. Feel free to go wild, they won't try to kill each other if they gang up on you."

"Uh, ok. Sounds great." Barry said, growing slightly more nervous. Then he blinked. He handled criminals with superpowers every other week. This couldn't be that much harder.

Barry was wrong.
No sooner than the kids screeched "Bye Auntie Lori!" than Evan had snatched at Amy's newly acquired slice of pizza, because he "wanted that one" and Barry found himself longing for the chaos of 27 kittens, or maybe a fight with Mark Mardon.
There was a crash, and Barry upgraded the thought to both Mardon brothers. That, he knew how to deal with.

"Hey, don't slam the—" Barry started as a door slammed, bouncing open again on Havoc's paw. The kitten didn't seem to notice.
"Kids, hey, maybe don't…" he tried, following the sounds of chaos until he found them in the living room, pillows in hand. Barry glanced at the paper he still held. "Make your own authority." Well, that he could try.

"Hey, put those down. You don't want to break a window."

"I do." Amy said sweetly, throwing the cushion at her brother. It knocked him over, but he got back up and charged.
Barry caught him. "Nah, you really don't. Windows cost like, so much of your allowance." He picked up the fallen pillow, Evan still slung over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Barry dumped him on the couch.
"But lucky for you, I know a thing or two about pillow fights and how not to break windows."

"You're not gonna tell us to stop fighting?" Evan asked. Barry shrugged.

"Would that work?"

"Nope," they said in unison

"Then no, I'm not. But we only have an hour and a half til bed time, so if we wanna have a pillow war, we gotta do it right."

They eyed him suspiciously. "You're not gonna tell us we need to go to bed right now? So you can watch TV?" Amy wanted to know. "That's what the sitters do a lot."

"Nah," Barry said. "How about we play with your Aunt's laser tag stuff instead? We can use the pillows for shields instead of as projectiles. That way we won't break windows. Or pillows."

""What's a projectile?" Amy asked.

"Thing you throw."

"Cool. Ok."

"Pillows can't break." Evan said, but he let go of his pillow.

"That's what I thought, too. C'mon, we'll do teams. Think both of you can beat me?"

Barry set up the vests and lightweight Star Trek style guns, then thought back to the various ways babysitters had kept him and Iris from destroying whichever house or each other when they'd been five, six, seven. Give them a common enemy figure without being an actual enemy, because children could be vindictive.
"Ok, how's this. You guys are guarding a super secret treasure. I need to find it and bring it back to base," he pointed at the couch "without you getting me."
"Hah, you can't do that, there's two of us." Amy gave Evan a high five.

"Well, I'll have to just try, then. Pick a treasure and we'll hide it—just not on the roof, or outside." Barry remembered the incident with Havoc in the Herb Garden. "or down any drains."

Evan whispered something to Amy, who nodded.

"Ok. So, we're super cops, and you're a cat burglar." She said, as if that explained it.

"What am I going to have to find?" Barry asked, playing along. "Treasure? Paintings? We can use—"

"Havoc." Evan pointed at the cat. " You're a cat burglar-"

"-so you steal cats!" Amy finished. "Except, Aunty Lori said, you gave her him, so you're not really stealing."
"OK, you guys get the lights, and I'll give you a headstart."

They played two rounds as the clock reached 8:00, stopping for pizza breaks. Barry lost the first round, half by virtue of unfamiliarity with the house and the tag-team, half because he thought using his speed to beat small children at a game would be a scumbag move, but won the second time with some lucky shots and Havoc's co-operation. The kids had groaned when he told them this would be the last round, but agreed.

It was dark as he leaned around a corner, looking for the glint of Havoc's eyes, or the kids's reflective vests. Then Barry heard a noise from the living room like glass shattering, and went to investigate with a sigh. This was the end of the game, there was no way he was going to let anyone run around in the dark with broken glass… though he didn't hear the panicked shrieks of children who just broke something. He'd just made it into the room, far too dimly lit, and noticed that the sliding glass door had been smashed when a hand holding a wet rag was clamped over his face.

Barry's mind raced, whatever drug it was not even denting his metabolism, struggling. He wondered for a heartbeat if he was the intended target, but that hardly made any sense. He needed to get the kids, and get out. From upstairs, he heard a shriek. He let himself go limp, and as he'd hoped, whoever it was let him fall, leaving him there and heading towards the stairs. Barry cursed mentally, dared to wait until he couldn't see the shadow-on-darkness that was his attacker, and bolted for the front room and his costume, indoor speed limits discarded without thought.

There were three masked intruders, what looked like two men and a woman, holding what Havoc knew were guns. Guns made people hurt, or dead. His human did not like guns, and these were bad people who were scaring his human's littermate's kits. Havoc sat beside the girl's shoe, hissing and shrieking for the Nyooman to hurry up and make the bad people go away.
The kits were radiating Sad-Scared, and the Bad People were speaking very softly and very meanly. Havoc judged the distance, and leaped at the biggest one's face, he hit him aside and Havoc went sprawling.
Amy screamed, and another person came to the door, wearing the same dark clothes and mask. Evan and Amy clung to each other, crouching and crying.
Then, suddenly, the hall outside the room was filled with lighting. One of the intruders still had a gun pointed at the children, and pulled the trigger.

Before Barry could disrupt his aim or get in the way, Havoc was leaping again and thudding to the ground in a grey, fluffy lump.
Amy and Evan screeched again, but Barry and Nyoom ran, the cat jarring guns from hands and sending them skittering as Barry knocked each of them out with a harsher blow than was strictly needful. He didn't think anyone would blame him, they'd pointed guns at kids. A cop's kids, at that, or at least a CSI's niece and nephew. Nyoom returned with bedsheets trailing after her, which Barry used to bind them before pausing to catch his breath.
Barry looked at his charges, both still crying. He knelt so he was at eye level with them.
"Are you ok?" he asked, as gently as he could. Slowly they nodded. Barry glanced around for Havoc, not wanting to see the kitten's body.
Havoc licked one paw, and batted at a spent bullet that was lying on the floor. Barry shook his head in shock. It stood to reason, if a lawnmower and garbage disposal couldn't kill the cat, what was a bullet going to do?
"You're the Flash." Evan whispered.
"I am," Barry said, very, very glad for the cowl that hid most of his face. "I'm glad you're ok, but I need to go take these very bad people to the police."

"Wait!" Amy said, tugging on his arm like a much younger child. "Did you save our sitter? We like him."

"He's fine," Barry promised, touched. "It's going to be ok."

Barry dumped the unconscious criminals, still bound with bedsheets, on the police department steps, then raced back to the house and changed as quickly as he could, glad for all the times he'd had to practice.

"Amy? Evan?" He called, flipping on every light in the house. They kids half tackled him running down the stairs.

"You guys ok?" he asked, still worried. They might have only been trying to be brave for a hero, after all.

"The Flash saved us, he got them, bam-pow," Amy said, eyes huge. "And Havoc got shot but he walked it off."

"Are you ok? We thought maybe you got dead." Evan informed him. "'M glad you're not."

Barry returned the hugs, then extracted himself, ushering Havoc and Nyoom into the embrace instead.
"I'm going to call the police. And your Auntie." Barry said.

"Do we still hafta go to bed?" Amy pointed at the clock. 8:37. Barry shook his head.

"I don't think so. Here, while I call let's get you guys some hot chocolate."

The police arrived in minutes, and Sava with them—she'd flagged down a passing patrol car, and pulled the kids into a frantic hug as soon as she was in the door. Barry met her eyes.

"I'm sorry," he said. "They got me from behind, I couldn't do anything, I-"

"Auntie Lori, the Flash saved us, and his cat, and, and Havoc." Evan interrupted.

"One of them was gonna shoot me." Amy said. "But Havoc got in the way. Did you know, Havoc's a magic cat?"

"I did, Amy-otter." Sava nodded. "You're going to need to tell the police officer what happened, ok?"
While Amy and Evan told the young policewoman what they'd seen, Sava addressed Barry again. "You stayed calm. You helped them stay calm after…after. And you gave me the magic cat that took a bullet for my niblings. That's more than nothing."

"Niblings?"
"Like siblings, but for niece and nephew," Sava said. After you give your statement, you can go. My meeting is very firmly delayed."

Before Barry left, the kids gave him each another hug. "We want you to always be our sitter." Evan told him earnestly.

"Always and always." Amy added on.

"Allen." Barry looked up from his paperwork with a jolt to see Sava standing in his office doorway. "You didn't take the pizza home." She walked in. "I put it in the breakroom fridge with a note for you, and a threat if anyone else takes it." She handed him a cup of coffee and a bill, Barry took both and blinked.

"What?"

"I forgot to pay you for last night."

Barry looked at the crisp 100$ bill. "Um, I was only there for an hour and –"

"And you earned every penny of that, the pizza, and the coffee." Sava sighed. "It was connected to Hunter case. Jackass got out on bail yesterday, decided to take the kids to get me to recant and screw over the whole trial. Thank God for the Flash."

Barry nodded, feeling a mixture of unease and pride. "I'd say he earned this more than…" he trailed off, noticing familiar handwriting on the side of the paper cup, a lightning bolt and "the kids told me."

Barry gulped. "Um."

"Look, Allen. Barry. I'm not going to forget what you did for my family." She turned to leave.

"I really didn't, it was all the Flash," Barry tried.

"I know." Sava called over her shoulder.

Well that was long, but fun. I've been plotting the thing with Havoc, and the niblings for ages. And Iris's passive aggressive puns/wordplay. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, please leave a comment!