A Different Kind of Story

Chapter 5: Secret

"What powers, you ask? I dunno, how 'bout the power of flight? That do anything for ya? That's levitation, Holmes. How 'bout the power to kill a yak, from 200 yards away… with mind bullets! That's telekinesis, Kyle!" – Jack Black (Of Tenacious D)

"Thanks for breakfast, Dad…"

Daniel silently stood up in the pin-drop silent living room; casually picking up the empty breakfast dish that he had just devoured and brought it over to the kitchen sink. As usual, he'd have the dishes. Daniel didn't want Dr. Well's to struggle with the dishes, especially with his predicament…

The sound of Dr. Wells' wheelchair wheeling into the room filled up the empty void of sound in the room. Daniel looked up and watched as Harrison wheeled into the room with an exhausted expression on his face and a cup of orange juice in his free hand.

Daniel turned on the hot water and pretended not to watch as Harrison pulled up to the fireplace area near the open glass ceiling. Every few seconds, the teenager would glance up to watch his father, making sure he was alright, and didn't somehow tilt into the fire. Fortunately, Harrison wasn't facing his direction and didn't notice his concern.

Not many people realized it, but Daniel was also greatly affected by Harrison being immobilized by the Particle Accelerator… Seeing his father confined to such a limited way of life made Daniel's heart drop. Daniel could clearly remember the days before he went in coma, when Harrison would joyfully go on long runs and hour-long strolls…

It hurt…

It hurt Daniel watch someone that he loved suffer, especially when it was someone that was so close to him. Unlike before, Harrison was now either always at S.T.A.R Labs from the early morning to the latest hours of the night, or he was busy doing some other business stuff that Daniel didn't know about.

"Are you alright, Daniel?"

Harrison's voice easily snapped Daniel out of his stupor; bringing him back to reality in a second. The blonde's bright blue eyes widened and his cheeks became flustered, when he realized that Harrison was staring directly into his direction.

"Oh, sorry about that… I was just thinking about something." Daniel replied quietly, avoiding eye contact with Harrison as much as possible. He couldn't tell Harrison that he was worried about him… Knowing the scientist as much as Daniel did, the teen knew that Dr. Wells hated for other to worry about his current problems, especially if it was Daniel.

"Are you sure that you're alright? You've been acting strange for the past few days." Dr. Wells replied casually, his calculating brown eyes watching Daniel carefully. The teenager turned his head back down to the dishes and continued to wash them.

Daniel knew that it was a matter of time before Harrison would realize that the whole S.T.A.R Labs secret thing was bothering Daniel. The fifteen-year-old had never been particularly good at hiding his emotions, especially from Harrison.

"I'm fine, I promise." Daniel replied silently, the sound of the dishes and the water almost completely drowning out his voice.

Harrison's eyes didn't move from his son, however, and after a few moments of stiff silence, the scientist sighed loudly; lowering his arm and placing his cup of orange juice on the table next to the fire place.

"If there's one thing I know from the 10 years I've been taking care of you, is that you're a terrible liar." Harrison said flatly, crossing his arms and looking directly at Daniel's flustered face.

"I'm not lyi-"

"Yes, Daniel, you are." Harrison interrupted Daniel's weaker voice easily, prompting Daniel to turn strawberry red and look away from Harrison's general direction.

The room fell into a deadly silence as Harrison waited for Daniel to crack. The teenager stared off into the far wall and his mind reeled through what he was going to say. He knew that Harrison wasn't going to start speaking until Daniel gave him what he thought was good enough to be considered true…

Although Harrison's outward appearance was silent and patient, his mind was bobbling around. There were multiple things that he knew Daniel was hiding from him, but this specific secret was something that Harrison was certain Daniel would willingly tell him…

After a few seconds, Harrison found himself trying to mentally will Daniel to admit the secret. To admit to Harrison that he was a meta-human… He'd need someone to comfort him now that he found out he was a meta-human, right? Who else would be better than his own father? After all, Barry told Joe before anyone else…

"It's just…" Daniel took a deep breath and turned back to face Harrison, a calm expression clearly on his face. "I know you guys are hiding something from me at STAR Labs… I just want to know what it is and why it's so important to you guys..."

Disappointing.

Harrison released the breath that he didn't realize he was holding. It wasn't what he had been expecting but after few moments of silence, Harry looked up at Daniel with the smallest hint of a smile on his face.

"You know that I love you right?" Harrison said offhandedly, keeping his chocolate brown eyes locked with Daniel's own sky blue eyes. Harrison's words sat in the air thickly, allowing Daniel to take it all in slowly.

He knew exactly where Harrison was going with this…

"Yeah I know, bu-"

"Have I ever kept a secret from you that would hurt you?" Harrison asked Daniel softly, the feeling behind the words clearly backing them up. Daniel tried to bring himself to speak opposing Harrison's point, but he knew that it was true.

"No…" Daniel replied quietly, keeping his crystal blue eyes on the floor as Harrison used his control to wheel himself over to Daniel. The teenager fiddled with his hands and the hem of his shirt nervously. Harrison stopped a few feet from Daniel and sighed as he looked up at the young Allen.

"I need your promise that you won't try and figure this all out." Harrison told Daniel firmly, just as he reached up with his right hand and gripped Daniel's arm tenderly. Daniel flinched at the touch of Harrison's hand and turned his head away.

Daniel couldn't promise. But if he didn't promise Harrison right now, who knows what consequences would come….

Daniel knew that his adoptive father was right though… He hadn't ever kept a secret from Daniel that wouldn't hurt him in the long run, so why would he start now? An intense feeling built up in Daniel's heart when he realized how much he could have been hurting Harrison's feelings every time he accused them of hiding something.

How selfish…

"I promise." Daniel said in the spur of the moment, locking both of his eyes with Harrison; who opened his arms and offered Daniel a hug. Without hesitation, Daniel hugged Harrison back, letting the warmth spread through both of them. However, what Daniel couldn't see was the thin lipped smile spread across Harrison's face.

His plan was going according to schedule…

Later at STAR Labs

"So, Cisco, what kind of stuff do you make in here?" Daniel's curious voice spread through the empty cortex loosely. Daniel sat down on one of the chairs near the computer desks, with his feet up and his face buried in a book.

The book was about armor. Modern day armor, such as Kevlar, PPSS, and proto-type meta-human armor. Daniel had gulped up all of the information from all 200 pages in little under an hour, and now had a new understand about the materials needed to make armor.

Now Daniel just needed to find out how to construct it…

"Well, we mostly do whatever Dr. Wells tells us to do." Cisco replied to Daniel loudly, simultaneously bouncing into the room with a half-eaten beef stick in his hand. "In my spare time, I like to make stuff, though. And I get ALOT of spare time."

Cisco took another big bite of his beef stick and walked straight to the open door that led to the corridor of the cortex. As he walked, the bubbly man waved Daniel to follow him, which Daniel did immediately. They walked for a few seconds until they reached another room with an open door.

"This is my 'happy' place!" Cisco exclaimed happily, a large smile breaking across his face when he took a step in. The mechanical engineer waved the younger boy in and Daniel awkwardly stepped in and looked around. Daniel placed his finished book in the small gap between his cast and his left arm, so that it wouldn't be distracting him.

From where he stood, Daniel could see most of the room. The room was a perfect symmetrical square, and was painted a lighter grey then the rest of the lab. There were multiple tables in the room and dozens of equipment laid out, seemingly scattered.

There were two things that caught Daniel's attention immediately. One being a large metallic gun with a blue tint around it. Daniel squinted his eyes and read the label as 'cryonic gun', before turning his attention to the other interesting object.

It looked like a ring from where Daniel stood. The interesting thing was the completely red color that it had to it and the strange lightning bolt design that it had. Due to curiosity, Daniel took a step towards it and reached for it, …

Cisco snatched it from the surface of the table faster than Daniel could blink.

"That's a prototype! I'm not even sure what it's really for yet! It might end up being just an accessory or… Or it might turn you invisible… like the ring in the Hobbit! That would be cool! So cool!" After a few more seconds of desperate babbling, Cisco took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to keep his gaze away from Daniel's extremely bewildered face.

"Anyways…" Cisco safely put the lightning bolt ring in his pocket and went behind Daniel, gently pushing him forward to make sure the teenager was in front of him at all times. That was close…

"So what's that?" Daniel asked, ignoring the event that just passed, and instead focusing on the cryonic gun that was on display in front of him. Cisco grinned widely and almost giggled when he saw that Daniel was interested in the gun.

"This…" Cisco picked up the cryonic gun and held it by the handle. "… is a Cryonic gun, but I like to call it the 'cold gun'. I used a combination of liquid Helium and liquid Nitrogen as the fuel and the rest was pretty easy to build." Cisco told Daniel casually, who looked at it with awe.

"Awesome." Daniel said in fascination, examining the gun with interest. Before he was struck by the Dark Matter, something like a cold gun would be in the realm of the impossible for Daniel to build, but now he could almost understand it.

"So all you needed to do was get the liquid Helium and the liquid Nitrogen and put it in that containment cylinder?" Daniel asked, taking a few steps closer to Cisco and the gun. That's right, and then all he would need to do is find a solid substance that wouldn't freeze over while the gun shot out the freezing substance.

"Correct!" Cisco exclaimed happily, handing the cold gun over to Daniel while he went off to grab a certain pair of blue tinted goggles from the table. Cisco put his phone down where the goggles previously where. While Cisco was looking for the goggles, Daniel looked the cold gun over a few times, letting his eyes roam over each and every detail with interest.

"And these are the goggles that you need to put on while firing it." Cisco told Daniel smoothly, appearing back in front of him with the blue goggles on his face. Cisco took the gun back from Daniel and pointed it towards an empty soda can that he had laying around.

"I'd recommend that you cover your eyes." Cisco warned Daniel excitedly, the large grin spread across his face showing Daniel that Cisco was really proud of the cold gun. Daniel covered his eyes with his right arm, his left arm still in the cast to cover up his meta-human healing.

Cisco pressed the trigger and grinned as the gun released the liquid as a fast moving steady stream of blue 'fire'. Of course it wasn't really fire, but the appearance that the liquid took as it went from the gun to the empty can looked like an icy inferno.

When the beam struck the can, it instantly turned icy blue, and the crackling sound of ice echoed around the room. Not long after, the can became engulfed by ice and the ice began to creep down onto the table to spread. However, Cisco released the trigger before it did.

"You can remove your hand now."

Daniel listened to Cisco in a heartbeat, quickly removing his hand to see the results of the cold gun. Daniel didn't even need to speak to portray the awe that he felt towards the invention. The teenager took a deep breath and turned to Cisco with an interesting glow to his face.

"And you made this?"

"Yep."

"In your spare time?"

"Pretty much."

"Why hasn't my Dad told me about this?"

"That's because he doesn't know…" Cisco said sheepishly, putting the gun down on the table and taking off the goggles. Daniel raised his eyebrow in confusion, keeping his eyes on Cisco's back.

"Why? If I made one of these, everyone would know!" Daniel told Cisco enthusiastically, trying to get Cisco to reveal why he was hiding it from Dr. Wells. Daniel pinned it to wasting resources but he had a feeling that it was something else.

"Because… Have you heard of the Flash since you woke up?" Cisco asked Daniel silently, bringing his voice to a whisper. Daniel bit the corner of his gum and nodded his head weakly. He'd heard a few people mention a Superhero reducing crime in Central City, but he didn't have much time to look it up.

"I've heard a few things about it. He's some kind Superhero Meta-human, right? I read on the news that he was at the school the other day? Daniel asked Cisco, who nodded his head and leaned forward, prompting Daniel to do the same. When they were close enough for Cisco to whisper, Cisco took a deep breath.

"Dr. Wells told you about the super-natural powers that metas possess right?" Cisco asked Daniel, who nodded in response. "Well, don't you think that there should be a defense mechanism for every meta-human we know about?"

Daniel's eyes widened when he realized what the cold gun was make to do. It was a defense mechanism made against the Flash. Now the cold nature of the gun made even more sense…

"The cold temperature that the gun generates should theoretically slow down the Flash's movements and make it easier to apprehend him if he ever becomes a supervillain." Daniel finished for Cisco, who's face lit up slightly when he saw that Daniel understood where he was coming from.

"Exactly!" Cisco exclaimed, leaning away from Daniel and reaching for a card. "But Dr. Wells has complete faith in the Flash and wouldn't have approved of me creating the Cold Gun. So I had to do it behind his back."

Cisco swirled the black card in his hand for a few seconds before handing it to Daniel. "This is my information just in case you want to do some science stuff together." Cisco told Daniel, an approving smile on his face.

Daniel felt honored that such an amazing inventor would want to make stuff with him, and took the card swiftly, placing it in his back pocket for consideration later. His body was brimming with excitement but he took a breath and calmed down, looking around the room.

"That'll be awesome." Daniel replied, trying not to sound too excited. "Do you have any blueprints for the gun?"

"Of course! They're right over here!" Cisco answered swiftly, simultaneous walking back over to the cold gun and picking up a large piece of rolled up paper. "This is everything I used to make the gun, and how I made it."

Daniel grinned and took the blueprints from Cisco's hand. He knew that Cisco wouldn't let him keep the blueprints, so he would only have a few seconds to see it. Fortunately for him, a few seconds would be more than enough time.

Daniel didn't even need to look where he was directing his attention. Cisco's phone. Cisco had put it down next to where the goggles previously where. Daniel opened the blueprints and exhaled loudly, his eyes quickly scanning over the entire sheet

"My phone!" Cisco groaned loudly, just as his phone fell off the table and connected with the ground. Did he leave it near the edge of the table? He couldn't remember, but what he did know was that if this phone broke, he would be royally screwed.

As Cisco bent down and scooped up his phone carefully, Daniel closed the blueprints and turned around to look at Cisco with a concerned expression wrapping his face.

"Is your phone okay?" Daniel asked Cisco slowly, not even slightly guilty that he was the one that slid it off the table. Cisco nodded and grinned widely when he realized that his phone was perfectly fine. Strange… A drop from that height should have definitely cracked the screen.

"Yeah, bro. It didn't crack at all…" Cisco said out loud, just as he checked the back of the phone to make sure that there were no cracks at all. Daniel smiled and turned to the door. Cisco didn't know it but it was because Daniel wrapped it in a Telekinetic wrapping that was strong enough to halt the vibrations from shattering the phone.

"Oh, there's a few messages from Barry…" Cisco said slowly, and the room fell into silence. Cisco's eyes widened considerably when he opened the first message and he looked up at Daniel with wide eyes.

"Crap! Barry told me to remind you about the lunch planned for later and I completely forgot!" Cisco realized, the room falling into silence for a few seconds. Cisco's face fell from shock to confused as Daniel didn't seem to have any outward reaction to something that he assumed would make Daniel rush out of the room.

"From that reaction, you're not too happy about having lunch with Barry and the Wests?" Cisco asked with hesitation, trying to get any sort of emotion from Daniel's still face. It wasn't more than a second after that Daniel exhaled loudly and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Barry isn't the problem…" Daniel told Cisco quietly. "Barry seems to think that I want to meet the people that adopted him."

Cisco silently crossed the room and went to the door, signaling for Daniel to follow him out of the room. Daniel followed silently and let Cisco close the door before walking ahead of him to the main room of the cortex.

"Barry just wants to have a happy family again." Cisco's voice reached Daniel loudly and clearly, but Daniel instantly knew something was wrong. Cisco's voice sent shivers running down his spine and not more than a second later, the voice began to assault Daniel's again

"He won't tell Dr. Wells about the cold gun, right? Of course he wouldn't. Daniel understands where I'm coming from. I only built the gun to protect the city just in case it all goes wrong. I'm in the right here…"

Daniel took a deep breath when the onslaught of Cisco's voice came raining in on him; causing an intense nauseating feeling to overrun him. It was Cisco talking to himself, and somehow Daniel was also listening to it. It didn't take long for Daniel to realize that it was another ability sprouting from his meta-human ability…

"Telepathy…" Daniel's voice unknowingly came out of his mouth in a whisper, forcing Cisco's attention to fall back on Daniel. When Cisco turned his head to face Daniel, however, his face went from relaxed to a deep concern…

"Dude, you're bleeding!" Cisco realized, quickly rushing over to Daniel to check if he was okay. Daniel looked at Cisco as if he was insane, before lifting his hand up to his nose and dabbing the blood with his hand.

The scarlet liquid dripped out of his nose like a broken tap, and Daniel's eyes widened when he felt the cold liquid on his hand.

"I'll go and get you tissue!" Cisco shouted out to Daniel, running off somewhere to go and find some tissue. While Cisco was gone, Daniel groaned and covered his nose with both of his hands, attempting to conceal the blood. These were the clothes he was supposed to be wearing to lunch later…

Cisco came back quickly with a bunch of tissue and Daniel took it thankfully, placing the large clump of thin strips on his nose. The blood quickly soaked up into the tissue as Daniel sat down on the floor in the corridor of the cortex.

"Dude, what happened?!" Cisco asked obnoxiously, forcing Daniel to take a deep breath and close his eyes tightly. No… He wouldn't tell Cisco about him being a meta-human.

"Go away… Forget that you saw anything…" Daniel spoke out weakly, feeling even more light headed then before. Daniel wasn't sure if he was even controlling himself when he had just commanded Cisco to go off, but whatever he just tried to do was very risky.

Cisco's face twisted into a blank glare, and the short engineer turned away from Daniel and walked off down the corridor. The fading sound of footsteps carried on until there was nothing but silence in the cortex…

Daniel exhaled and weakly stood up. It definitely was telepathy; but unfortunately it worked the same as his Telekinesis. Like a muscle… As Daniel walked to the main computer room of the cortex, he used the tissue to wipe up the remaining blood from his nose and chucked it into the nearest trash can.

Now that he overstretched it, it would definitely come back stronger… How much stronger, Daniel didn't know yet. However, that was what he was planning on testing out later.

Daniel glanced at his watch on the way out, outwardly frowning when he realized the time. He only had about an hour before Barry was supposed to swing by STAR Labs to pick Daniel up and bring him to the West household for lunch.

As Daniel reached the computer room and sat down at one of the desks, he knew exactly what he was going to do. After all, who would want to have lunch with complete strangers without knowing something about their past?

1 Hour Later – West Household

"You think he'll like us daddy?"

A slightly nervous voice rang through the house, followed by a few silent footsteps. The owner of the voice sighed loudly when she realized that she wasn't going to get an answer for now. After all, Iris knew that her father was just as nervous as she was about this lunch.

Iris West mumbled to herself as she set up the family table to accommodate four people for the first time in 7 years… The young reporter didn't know what to expect but even so, she was still extremely nervous to meet Barry's little brother.

Over the last month Barry spoke about Daniel nonstop, and Iris didn't blame him. When she found out that Barry was in a coma, she had been distraught for weeks… That was why it hurt Iris to find out that Daniel and Barry's relationship was becoming more and more strained over the last few days.

Obviously, Barry didn't tell Iris why he and Daniel were at a disagreement. Barry didn't tell her anything nowadays. It felt like the only thing she knew about him was that he worked at the CCPD and hung out at STAR Labs all the time.

What does Barry do at STAR Labs anyways?

"He'll like you, Iris…" Joe's voice came from the stairway, reaching her easily. Her father's powerful voice wasn't hard to recognize, and she looked up with a smile. She knew what he was hinting at…

"Daddy, don't sweat it. You'll be fine…" Iris said with a warm smile on her face, although on the inside she was uncertain. Even though it was her first time meeting Daniel, it wasn't the first time for Joe.

"For Barry's sake, I really hope that you're right…" Joe sighed loudly, his face forcing a small smile to cross his face. Iris frowned and a shimmer of worry showed itself in her eyes, before she smiled and turned back to setting up.

"Just think positively, and everything will be fine." Iris replied cheerfully, just as she finished setting up the table. This time, however, Joe didn't reply. Instead, the older man stood silently with his face wrapped in Bewilderment.

Clank!

The sound of the door being unlocked broke Joe out of his stupor sharply, and the realization of the entire situation weighed down on him harder than ever before. Joe looked up at the door slowly, releasing a lengthy and heavy sigh from his mouth.

"It's okay…"

Joe heard Iris's words of encouragement but they went into one ear and straight out of the other. Soon enough, the door creaked open and a bright faced Barry peaked into the house, a large smile spread on his face.

"If my nose is working right, it's telling me that you guys went and made my favorite food for lunch!" Barry called out from the slightly opened door, lightening up both Iris and Joe's face. The older Allen brother always seemed to bring joy to the Wests, even in the most nerve racking moments.

"Hey Iris, did you cook all the food?" Barry turned his attention to the rosy faced journalist, hugging the shorter woman when she approached him. As Barry hugged Iris, a rather steel faced blonde stepped from behind Barry and into the house, stiffly looking around.

It didn't take a psychic for Joe to see that Daniel didn't want to be there. Despite the enormous growth in height and the dramatic change in appearance, Joe could still recognize the pure hatred that he felt radiated off of Daniel whenever they were around each other.

The world went on without Joe as he examined the blonde boy that stood next to his adopted son. Joe could see that Daniel's arm was still in a sling, clearly from the day the school was destroyed by the crazy meta-human girl that was going after Daniel.

Joe continued to examine the boy, and soon enough, Joe looked up and was struck by two glowing sky blue eyes staring back at him. For a second, Daniel's sky blue eyes and Joe's dark brown eyes collided, and Joe instantly knew how Daniel felt about this.

"I'm sure you guys haven't seen each other in a long time, but you guys don't even say hello?!" Barry broke the awkward silence with a quirky joke; smiling wholeheartedly as put one hand on Daniel's shoulder on the other on Joe's shoulder.

"Good afternoon, Mr. West." Daniel said along with a forced smile, just as he offered his hand for Joe to shake. To keep the peace, Joe reached forward and took Daniel's hand in his own, gently holding Daniel's hand with a smile of his own.

"Good afternoon to you too, Daniel. Please, call me Joe." Joe replied smoothly, a large grin crossing his face as he did so. Daniel inhaled through his nose and Joe felt Daniel's grip tighten considerably, causing Joe to wince.

"Tight grip." Joe noted aloud, trying to bring attention to the meeting. If it wasn't for the fact that Daniel released Joe's hand and turned to walk over and meet Iris, Joe was sure that his hand would be completely useless.

Remembering the brief stare down with Daniel, Joe looked down at his slowly reddening hand and took a deep breath.

This was going to be the longest lunch of his life...

Enjoy the chapter? I know that I did! I planted a whole lot of stuff that you guys probably won't realize until later in the story (or much sooner than you think…).

For those wondering, the whole school situation will be explained in the next chapter. After all, I do enjoy writing le school vibe :)

Shout out to Wolf King 0811 for answering the question about the Red Kryptonite! It wasn't the complete answer, but it was good enough.

Red Kryptonite has many different effects, including;

Transforming into an ant-headed humanoid

Becoming Evil.

Gaining Telepathy

Rapid Aging.

Ect…

In other news, I really enjoyed the love that chapter 4 received! Thanks for the reviews and the follows and favorites! I love all of you guys! 3

Here is a new question for the chapter!

Who is Daniel West and what is his backstory?

R&R

Haise Kaneki