I hope you're ready for some action-let's get down to it.
(I'm not sure why I always feel compelled to write opening statements-old habits.)
Enjoy!
"Fitting, isn't it, for him to choose a barn?" Caitlin said.
"Why's that?" Iris fiddled with her sleeve, rolling it up, rolling it down.
"Well, you know, his brother chose a barn as his hideout back when Barry first became the Flash," Caitlin said.
"So it was a metahuman attack," Iris said. "Everyone was trying to convince me it was just a freak accident."
"Freak accidents." Caitlin barked out a laugh. "After this, I'll have to fill you in on some great 'accidents' involving our metahuman friends."
Caitlin stepped on the brakes and turned off the headlights of the car, beginning a quiet creep toward the barn. Her windshield wipers swung at full speed, huge globs of rain obscuring everything in their line of sight. With the headlights off, Iris could hardly see the road three feet in front of them, let alone the barn at the end of it. Yet Caitlin kept driving, her knuckles white on the wheel.
"So what do we do once we nab him?" Iris asked. "Do you send him to Iron Heights? Call the police?"
"Actually..." If Iris wasn't mistaken, there was a touch of guilt in Caitlin's voice. "We have our own prison in the pipeline of STAR. With cells specially equipped for people with abilities. Iron Heights doesn't have the appropriate equipment to handle metahumans. Not yet."
"Oh." Iris squinted at the road as they crossed over a particularly jolting bump. "So Barry knocks them out, speeds back with them, and you call it a day?"
"Pretty much," Caitlin said. "I guess in this case we'll just have to drive Mardon back to STAR. I don't fancy carrying him the whole way, do you?"
In spite of the circumstances, Iris couldn't help but smile. "I don't go to the gym much."
Her smile faded as Caitlin pulled to a stop outside of the barn. She pictured her dad in there, and she was met with a particularly nauseating image of him bloodied, maybe even dead. Don't think about that, she told herself. You can't think about that.
"Ready?"
Iris pulled herself out of her disturbing thoughts and nodded. "As ready as I'll ever be, I suppose."
"Okay, you grab the machine, and I'll—"
She never got to finish her thought. A bolt of lightning, glaring blue, struck the ground a foot away from the hood of their car, and a moment later another glanced past Iris' window. She screamed, and Caitlin's hand pushed her sideways.
"Get out!" she shouted. "Get out of the car, now!"
Without thinking, Iris did as instructed, unclicking her seatbelt and rolling out of the side door in one motion. She was soaked in seconds, and the torrential downpour made it impossible to see, impossible to move. She scrambled away from the car as another bolt of lightning struck close; the electricity in the air made her hair rise, her skin prickle.
She knew instantly why Caitlin had practically shoved her out of the car—one strike from that lightning would surely devastate the vehicle, not to mention the people inside.
And the machine that they had so carefully worked on.
Iris scrambled to her feet, Caitlin's name on her tongue, wanting to tell her that they needed to get the machine out of the van, that Mardon was targeting them and that he was going to destroy everything they'd constructed—
But then she realized that Caitlin was not out in the rain. She was still in the vehicle. And it was moving.
"Wait!" Iris yelled desperately, but another lightning bolt crackled down close to the driver's side door, and the van revved. Iris could only watch, blinking away water, as the van's tires spun in the mud and then lurched forward. The van accelerated fast, then collided with the barn door, bursting through to the inside. Wood exploded around it, and the air was momentarily filled with a cacophony of beams snapping and glass shattering. The lightning stopped, and Iris ran. She understood crystal-clear: under the roof of the barn, at least temporarily, the van was protected from the worst of the lightning.
Through shards of wood and dust-clogged air, Iris clambered through the rubble into the barn. The van, half-covered in broken beams, still grumbled with life, and Iris' attention went first to the driver's seat.
"Cait!"
Iris stumbled in her run to the door—the other woman's face was obscured as she lay forward against the steering wheel, one arm flung out and her hair covered with glass from the broken windshield.
Iris couldn't tell, yet, if the other woman was simply knocked out, or—no, she couldn't think of or—
As soon as she'd reached the door, her attention was drawn to a yelp from the middle of the room, a cry of warning. She whipped her head toward it and felt herself melting at the sight of her father, tied to a chair in the middle of the floor.
"Dad!" she cried. Nothing else crossed her mind, none of the typical warnings that might have prevented her from being so rash. She simply ran, tearing through the rubble in her insistence to touch his face, feel his life—
"Baby, look out!" he shouted, but it was too late. Halfway to him, a gust of cold air caught her in the side, and she was lifted off of her feet and thrown sideways. She landed in a heap of wood, one of the jagged pieces catching her along the arm and cutting a gash through the sleeve of her jacket. Her dad was screaming in the background, and the gash was like fire in her arm, but she pushed herself to her feet. Adrenaline pumped through her, making the world sharper. Mark Mardon, his hair damp with rain or sweat, faced her with his hands balled up into fists.
"What, more little girls come to try and stop me?" he said. "Don't you know I'm more powerful than you?"
"Don't you know that you're a self-entitled prick?" Iris panted, and she leaped out of the way as another gust of icy air was thrust toward her. Another blast came a moment later and she tripped over a broken slat of wood in her haste, sprawling to the ground again. This time she was faster, grabbing a wide piece of wood and holding it up just as a solid ball of ice was flung her way. Her arms ached with the impact, but she kept the makeshift shield up as she got to her feet and sprinted to a piece of machinery where she could hide.
The piece of wood dropped to her side and she wheezed, pressing her back to the metal. She was now on the opposite end of the barn from where the van had crashed. There was no way she could make it back to the vehicle and draw out the machinery before Mardon caught her—she'd be dead before she made it halfway across the barn. She slid sideways and pressed a hand to her bloody sleeve, mind racing. As much as she couldn't make it across the barn to the van, she couldn't just leave Caitlin there at the mercy of Mardon. And she couldn't let her dad be used as leverage against her.
For a split second she thought about the luxury screaming, of letting out her frustration vocally, but she knew that wouldn't help. She also wished, momentarily, that Barry was there—but she pushed that thought away too. None of those wishes would help her get out of this. She was here, and now. In this filthy, broken barn, with nothing but her own two hands and an out-of-reach piece of questionable technology.
Though maybe she wasn't completely helpless; her eyes caught a large stack of wooden crates at the other end of the machinery she currently hid behind, and she edged toward it more quickly. Meanwhile, the wind around her picked up, blowing her hair back, and she had to push against it as she walked.
"I've got no time for your hide and seek," Mardon called. "Why don't you come out and get this over with? I promise I'll make it quick for your dear dad."
Finally Iris reached the crates. She took a moment to gather herself, pressed up against them, before peeking out around the edge. Just as she'd anticipated, Mardon had moved toward her in the time she'd been hiding, and he spotted her now. She caught his smile just before she retreated behind the stack.
"I see you," he said. "Game's over."
The wind buffeted her even behind her shelter. His boots stomped closer. Closer. Iris picked up a plow resting against the barn wall and, bracing herself, rammed the handle into one of the crates.
The effect was instantaneous. The crate that Iris had hit splintered, broke, and the stack that it supported swayed. She gave the stack one last push, and the crates came tumbling down, a wave of crashing and cracking. The swirling wind stopped, and Iris bolted in the other direction, back past the machinery she'd once hid behind, around the room toward open space. Her lungs burned, and the sound of crunching boxes followed her, but she didn't stop. She sprinted across the barn toward the car, heart leaping when she saw Caitlin wrestling with the driver side door.
"Are you okay?" Iris called, wanting to stop but too intent on opening the back door of the van.
"It was a pretty stupid plan, wasn't it?" Caitlin said, wincing as she finally managed to get the door open and slid out of the vehicle. A new cut had opened up above her eyebrow, but she didn't appear to have any major injuries. As soon as she was free of the ruined vehicle, she looked across the barn, to the dust of the falling crates. Mardon was somewhere beneath them, but Iris didn't trust him to stay down.
"Quick, help me get this out," Iris said, reaching inside of the new tech.
On the way over, Caitlin had told Iris a story of their first encounter with Captain Cold, when they'd rigged up an old STAR vacuum cleaner to look like a modified cold gun. This new tech reeked of the same shenanigans, just a mish-mash of old parts, barely held-together, but it was, in theory, actually functional. That was the hope, at least. A large metal box with some glowing lights and switches, it was nowhere near as elegant as Cisco's Wizard Wand—but then, it didn't need to be.
The two grasped it on either side and pulled it out of the van, letting it drop ungracefully to the floor of the barn.
"We need to bring it closer!" Caitlin said. "Closer to Mardon, into open space!"
Iris nodded her understanding, but in that instant something collided with the van just beside her head. She and Caitlin both ducked, shrieking: a huge chunk of ice, bigger than they'd seen before, was wedged into the dent it had made in the side of the van.
Iris whirled, seeing Mardon pick himself up from the piles of crates. "Damn," she said. "I thought that would've at least knocked him out."
"I need you to distract him." Caitlin grabbed Iris by the forearm, below where she'd been cut. "Iris. Can you do that?"
Iris nodded. There was no time to waste, and the air between them crackled not with lightning this time, but with desperation. Caitlin squeezed her arm, and then she was off, full-tilt running straight at Mardon.
If she and Caitlin were going to continue this superhero-ing business, they were going to have to start getting into shape. CrossFit, maybe.
Another ball of ice came hurling her direction, and she just managed to duck and weave around it. She caught sight of her dad, straining against the chair on the other end of the room, and remembered what he'd taught her when she was younger. If someone's trying to hurt you, don't run in a straight line. Zig-zag. Don't become a predictable part of their trajectory.
She imagined he had been talking about running away from projectiles, not toward them—but what was the difference, anyway?
She ducked away from another ball of ice and hoped fervently that it wasn't instead hitting Caitlin. Mardon regarded her with a dark look, all humor gone, but she didn't hesitate. The closer she got, the more determined she became. When he raised his arms and the wind picked up, she dropped to the floor and dug her hands and feet into the dirt. The blast of wind pushed her backward; her feet stayed planted. Dust and soil collected under her fingernails. The blast subsided, and she picked herself back up again, running once more.
"You don't give up, do you?" Mardon said darkly. He raised his arms and Iris leaped for the nearest object she could reach: a pipe that had fallen loose either from Caitlin's dramatic entrance or from the wind Mardon himself had generated. Before Mardon could send another blast of wind her way, she threw the pipe with everything she had in her. The distraction temporarily worked, as Mardon was forced to shield himself when the pipe made contact. Iris' heel skidded in the dirt, and she reached for another object to throw.
Her fingers had just closed around a wrench when she was hit square in the chest by a concentrated stream of icy wind. It propelled her backward, and momentum carried her until she crashed into one of the tractors parked in the barn. A blinding pain erupted in her ribs, and she gasped, trying to regain her breath. The chill spread through her chest, constricting her lungs, causing her breath to come out in desperate gasps.
When she'd recovered enough to look up from her position on the floor, she saw Caitlin desperately struggling with the machine in the middle of the floor. She was down on her knees, adjusting one of the knobs, but Mardon had now set his sights on her and was collecting more snow at his fingertips.
Without a thought, ignoring the ringing pain throughout her entire body, Iris heaved herself upward and tripped forward. Her legs felt more like elastic than flesh and bone, but the only thing on her mind was run, Iris, run.
She caught the unsuspecting Mardon around the middle and they both toppled sideways into the dirt. Once on the ground, Iris knew she had the disadvantage; she attempted to pin him there with her knee, but the man launched her off of him in a second. She rolled in the dirt, and then he was on top of her. She kicked out and connected with his ribcage, but the blow appeared only to be glancing. With a growl, he lifted his hand and struck downward, his fist catching her in the cheek.
Dazed, she watched his hand rise again, this time curling around the air, particles forming in his palm: a ball of ice, the same he had used to kill the man at the morgue, the same he would use to kill her in front of her own father—
Then an intense whirring sound filled the barn, and Iris felt the air rush out of her. Every part of the world seemed drawn sideways, drawn as if by a magnet. Through her blurry vision, Iris saw the ball of ice disintegrate and pull sideways. Mardon's face contorted with surprise, then with determination. A new ice ball struggled to life in his palm; his face turned red with exertion; then that, too, was pulled away, and the world grew still.
Iris turned her head. Caitlin, her face shining with blood and sweat and triumph, crouched beside the machine they had built together. Iris could see shimmers of heat radiating from it, but it held. It had worked.
"You think I need my powers to take you down?" Mardon said after a beat. Iris was thrust back into reality as his fist raised above her again. She flinched away, struggling under his knee.
Then, in a blink, Caitlin was in her line of sight, Mardon lying on the ground beside her, out cold. It took Iris a moment to process what she was seeing, but she accepted Caitlin's hand and struggled to a standing position.
"Nice one," she said, stunned.
"Thanks." Caitlin tossed aside the pipe she'd used to knock out Mardon. It was hard to believe they weren't dreaming; Iris tried to fixate on the unconscious meta, the tangible reward of their efforts, but either her injuries or the surreality of it all made it hard to believe.
"All of that fancy technology and he goes out with a pipe to the head," Iris said.
"Well." Caitlin shrugged. "I guess you owe me a drink."
"Girl, did you see me save you out there? I think we're even," Iris said with a smirk, punching Caitlin lightly in the arm.
They both winced.
Thanks for reading! Believe it or not, we're not even halfway through yet.
Closing statements-also old habits. Please take a moment to leave your thoughts. See you soon!
Till next time,
Penn