"She's on the move," Iris said, watching the screens in front of her. "She's gotten that motorcycle souped up since the last time we saw her."
"She keeps cutting back across alleys! I think I got her cut off now," Barry half-shouted over the 'comms. Cisco had noticed Barry was a shouter on radios. He'd ribbed him over it until the first couple of times Vibe had been in the field, and Cisco had almost squealed half the time.
"She's heading up the alley between Pasko and Lambert!" Cisco said. "Careful -- I'm detecting her gun's energy buildup. You don't wanna get hit by that thing!"
"Hey, where'd she get that gun again?" Caitlin asked, looking at Cisco from where she was sittingree near the medical monitors she kept track of when she wasn't out in the field as her Killer Frost personality. "It seems like we know where she got that gun."
"I didn't have a choice!" Cisco shook his head. "And besides, there's worse people out there who could have a gold gun! It's not... the worst thing I could have done!" The woman on the motorcycle was Lisa Snart -- sister to the late Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold. When Cold and his partner Heatwave had gone off with a bunch of other folks traveling through time, Lisa had been at loose ends for a while. It seemed like she had focus again.
"That's such a ringing endorsement," Harrison Wells said, following his own monitors. He looked like he had a migraine -- Wells was a native of Earth-2, and had been a member of 'Team Flash' for quite a while before an accident had burned out most of his superior intellect. He was back on one of his periodic trips to let Caitlin look at him in an effort to restore what he'd lost. "'Yeah, my girlfriend turns people to gold and steals anything that isn't nailed down, but hey -- she could be worse!'"
"Lisa Snart was never my girlfriend!" Cisco snapped. "How hard is it to -- whoa whoa whoa Barry watch out, I'm seeing extra energy buildups!"
There was a shout over the comms -- Barry in some pain, apparently, followed by his suit monitors reporting impact traumas and the gold-projection effect on one of his legs. "She mounted gold guns to her bike!" Barry shouted! She made a... kind of golden ramp and jumped and caught me off guard!"
"Barry? Barry?" Iris sounded worried, though controlled. "Are you okay -- those energies can turn tissue to--"
"Instant statue," Cisco breathed. "No, he's clear."
"I phased at the last half-second," Barry said. "Leg's out -- it'll take me a few to heal it! She's heading for the Central City Museum!"
"And we don't have Nora or Ralph here," Iris muttered. "Caitlin?"
"Caity's not here right now," came the response, along with the rush of cold air that announced Caitlin Snow's alternate personality -- the cryokinetic Killer Frost -- had taken center stage. "Hey Cisco -- give a girl a breach to the Museum?"
"Yeah, 'course," Cisco said, grabbing his Vibe-glasses. "Gimmie a sec and I'll suit up--"
"No!" Iris snapped. "Cisco, your hands are still recovering. Breach Frost there and stay out of it. Barry -- how's that healing coming?"
"...this isn't as fun as it looks..." Barry said, his voice tight with pain. Cisco looked at one of the side monitors -- a closed circuit traffic camera showing Barry on the ground next to a golden lump shaped like a ramp, holding his knee and rocking slightly. Barry's speed-healing was great, but wasn't instantaneous.
"Cisco?" Frost snapped. "A little focus?"
"Yeah, right!" Cisco opened another video window, showing the security camera footage of a storeroom. There were a number of newly cataloged finds, including an old, battered lamp that carbon dated as much older than its style or the kind of brass metal it was made out of would seem to make possible. Cisco had joked about someone rubbing it and making three wishes, but no one had thought it was particularly funny. Somehow, a man named Damian Dahrk had learned about the lamp and believed it was the key to some great power. Lisa Snart was using the gold gun Cisco made for her to steal it.
Getting a good mental image of the storeroom, Cisco reached out and let his connection to the vibrational forces of the multiverse flow and distort reality and distance, creating a breach that Killer Frost could jump through, putting her right in the storeroom.
Cisco was sweating as he dropped the breach. Iris was right -- when the evil Cicada had injured his hands, it made it more difficult to use his full Vibe powers. Until they finished recovering, he couldn't do all his usual tricks or keep up his powers in a fight. "She's in!" he shouted.
"And she's not the only one," Iris said, watching Snart's motorcycle smash through the glass doors and surge down the main hallway, guards and guests diving out of the way. "She's heading to the rear stairwell!"
"Triggering the automatic locks," Cisco said, typing as fast as he could with the soreness in his hands. "Her gold guns may be great at forming barriers but they're not so hot at blasting through steel doors--"
Snart banked, the motorcycle going into a slide before she fired what looked like twin emitters on the windscreen of her motorcycle, causing the door to ripple and become what looked like reddish gold-vapored glass with a spiderweb of facets running through it. She gunned her cycle and drove through the door, shattering it and riding the cycle down the stairwell, tightly navigating the landing.
"What, did you drop by her place and give her an upgrade?" Wells snapped.
"That's not in the spec -- I was there when I made that thing!" Cisco shook his head. "She... I don't--"
"It... urrrgh..." Harrison rubbed his brow. "Damn brain fog. Gold has a crystalline structure. Gold sulfate's water and acid soluble. Add something to approximate the effects of aqua regia and she can turn steel into broken shards! Frost -- those sulfates are temperature sensitive!"
"Glad to hear it," Frost snapped. She was in the storeroom, where it looked like the door was turning into the same kind of crystal gold structure. She projected intense cold, freezing it, just before the door imploded into ice and dust, but far less easily as the first door did, causing Snart's motorcycle to skid and crash, Snart jumping off and rolling.
Snart came up, gun at the ready, wearing a gold accented yellow leather jumpsuit, her helmet coming off and letting her brunette hair flow free. "Hey, frigid girl! Maybe this would be a good time to step aside? I have a date with a lamp."
"I'd clear my calendar if I were you," Killer Frost snarled, projecting ice and cold at Snart. To Cisco's surprise, Snart didn't dodge but instead ducked, lifting her arms to protect her face. Ice coated her jumpsuit, only to have the suit shimmer, the ice melting almost as fast as it formed.
"Sorry," she said, firing her gold gun at Killer Frost, who dodged behind a crate that got coated in a golden lump of metal. "As it turns out, having a brother who was into ice was a learning experience. You remember my brother, don't you? Before heroes like you killed him?" She fired again.
"I remember your brother was better at all this than you are," Killer Frost shouted, firing cold streams over Snart, forming icicles that dropped down at the criminal. Snart jumped back, avoiding being hit. "He always had a plan! What was yours? Ram things until they pushed back?"
"My brother's method of planning was four-part!" Snart shouted back. "Make the plan! Execute the plan! Expect the plan to go off the rails! Ditch the plan!" She threw a handful of what looked like large crystal marbles out from where she was taking cover. "Guess what phase we're in!"
The marbles exploded into plumes of smoke, which started crackling with what looked like gold lightning. Strands of gold curled down like curtains, dropping over the boxes and -- not coincidentally -- Killer Frost, who snarled even as she started freezing the strands nearest her."
"No no no no no!" Cisco shouted. "Don't freeze those -- they're gold wire! Gold's an excellent conductor and if you chill it it just gets better--"
There was a bursting sound as the web of gold wire electrified, causing Killer Frost to spasm. Her medical readings spiked, then showed her falling unconscious. "Not good!" Cisco shouted. "Barry?"
"I'm... I'm on my way--" the hero's vitals were still skewed and he was clearly limping according to the telemetry.
"Don't charge in," Iris said. "She's got way more in her arsenal than we're expecting. We need a plan B."
"She's got to clear the wires out of the way before she can reach the lamp in its storage case," Wells said. "Cisco... can you... can you breach the lamp out of there?"
"Not directly, not right now," Cisco said. "And if I do she'll be comin' right here for it. Anyone here got a good idea how to stop her?"
"Only general plans," Iris said. "Barry -- how--"
Barry blurred into the museum, reaching the stairs -- only to discover she'd coated them in a smooth, nearly frictionless version of her gold, causing him to slide into the wall with a jarring impact. "ACK! She's got more surprises!"
"Wait wait wait wait wait... hang on." Cisco wheeled his chair across the room and started typing. He had the specifications of the lamp as reported by the initial team who'd studied it. He grabbed them, transmitting... "I got a plan! Barry -- stall her!"
"You got it," Barry shouted. Cisco jumped up and ran out of the Cortex, heading for the lab level.
Cisco missed most of the fight between Snart and the Flash -- he'd been down in the lab -- but it was clear the Flash was having a bad time of it when Cisco breached into the room, landing next to a mesh of wires. He swept them aside using a vibe-gauntlet burst he'd built as a charge so he wouldn't need to use his own weakened powers. "Lisa!" he shouted. "You don't want to do this!"
Snart laughed, even as she coated the Flash in another layer of gold -- she wasn't transmuting his flesh this time, but he was clearly having trouble phasing through the gold. "Cisco, that you?" she shouted back. "They're saying Vibe is dead! Glad to hear your cliches are in good form!"
"Yeah, well -- I'm doin' my best! Lisa, you know you can't let Darhk get this thing! Whatever he wants it for's gonna be bad for everyone else! Including you!"
"Yeah, well... with my brother dead and his partner God knows when, a girl can't be picky," she shouted back. "I'm gonna glide in and out of this whole thing, Cisco. I don't want to hurt you, but I have expenses!"
The Flash's gold prison began to pulse back and forth as Barry began to create contrasting vibrations in it. No help there right away. "You know I can't let you do that!" he shouted back. "Can't we just call this one a mulligan?"
"Not how it works! Tell you what... in eight seconds I'm gonna nail the whole side of that room -- you won't even see it coming! Maybe you'd stick around, but your friend Frosty the Snow Bitch is over there too, and I don't think you're gonna let her get hurt! Seven... six... five..."
"No no no no no!" Cisco shouted. He dove for Killer Frost, grabbing her leg -- it was cold even through her uniform, but he managed -- and forced his power through his injured left hand to open a breach the two fell through, landing back in the lab, hitting a metal shelving unit and bringing it down on the two of them, covering them in toner and grease -- great. They landed on the maintenance supplies.
"Cisco!" Iris's voice sounded urgent over the PA. "Barry's gotten out, but Snart just created some kind of explosion down there. There's people on the floors above, and they're about to collapse! She's going to get the lamp!"
"She's getting a lamp," Cisco said, pushing up, and pulling the grease covered glasses off his face. "I sent the specs down to the high speed fabricator. If she was gonna plate the doors in gold, I figured I could plate a fake lamp in brass."
"She didn't plate the door," Wells said over the PA. "It was a transmu-- why do I even bother?"
"Not sure, since I invented the original gun! Doesn't matter. I have the actual lamp, and she has a fake she'll bring back to Dahrk. With a little luck, he won't figure out he's been had for a few days at least, and we can get this thing hidden." He leaned over to check Killer Frost. "Hey K-F. You okay?"
"...yeah, she's not here right now," Caitlin said, her hair brown again as she sat up. "UGH. What... are we covered in?"
"Office supplies and industrial lubricant. It's like the world's worst office Christmas party. Go get cleaned up and checked out -- I'll clean up down here." He looked at the lamp in his hand -- standing next to the storage case, he'd been able to breach the duplicate in and retrieve the original where he couldn't do it remotely.
Of course, the lamp was now covered in black powder and grease. "Aw man," he said. "Hey -- do we know if I can use degreaser on priceless antiques?"
"That's a hard no," Iris said. "But good work."
"Yeah, thanks." Cisco smiled a bit, nodding to Caitlin as she made it to her feet and headed for the door. "All right. I'm gonna get a few chamois and try to clean this off without ruining all the antiquity or whatever." He pushed up to his feet, walking to the other side of the lab. "...stupid Lisa screwing up stupid weekend plans with her stupid crimes..." He got a rag and began wiping the crud off the lamp--
There was a sudden explosion of purple and blue fire and light. Cisco fell back, throwing his arms up to shield his face as a bright corona of light burned in the background. "What in the--"
"...free! Oh this will do nicely!"
Cisco blinked as the light and fire faded, leaving a woman standing in front of him. She was in a purple jumpsuit with a silver jacket, a dark wave of hair curled to one side and highlighting blonde to the tips. Her eyes were amber, her skin deeply tanned, her lips as full as her body. She looked like one of the girls from Cisco's neighborhood if the girls in Cisco's neighborhood were twelve times hotter. And she was smiling at Cisco. "So I understand I owe you my thanks?" she said, sounding amused.
"...I don't know about that... but who are you?"
"Names are just names. I guess we can go with Ova for now. And you're Cisco Ramon... but if you don't mind, I'll just call you Master."
"...oh man," Cisco said. "I totally told them to rub the lamp but people don't trust the classics…"