The protest eventually produced results.
"Do you want an energy cube?"
Jude opened the System shop, looked at the price, and closed it again.
"Satsuki." He kept his voice reasonable. "This is Earth. Earth has gasoline. Earth has electricity. Why not think of those as local cuisine? Try the regional specialties before you start demanding imports."
"Energy is an Autobot's fuel and fighting capacity." Satsuki's headlights flashed in a manner that had become her reliable substitute for an eye-roll. "And I am a native Earth Autobot. Gasoline and electricity are home cooking. An energy cube would be exotic food — a treat. I have been running on gasoline for three full months. My exhaust almost smells like it. How much could one cube possibly cost?"
"Five thousand asset points per cube." Jude did not hesitate. "At that rate, a million points would last you roughly six months. We would go bankrupt."
"I have a modified power system — the System reduced my consumption below standard Autobot specs when I was built. It would cost nowhere near that. Show me the cube and let me calculate it myself—"
"Today's five thousand becomes tomorrow's five thousand, and then you sleep well and wake up hungry again." He crossed his arms. "I'm already considering a solar charging panel."
"You won't even buy me gasoline anymore?!"
A crack of thunder split the sky to the east.
All three of them — Jude, Yomogi, and Satsuki — turned at the same instant. One block over, against an afternoon that had been clear thirty seconds ago, a small tornado was making unhurried progress across the intersection.
Jude was back on the motorcycle before the thunder finished echoing.
"Satsuki. Full speed. Now."
"My energy cube—"
She was already moving.
They were too late.
By the time they reached the intersection, the tornado was gone — replaced by a wall of dense fog that rolled across the street and swallowed everything past twenty feet. Jude sat on the motorcycle at the edge of it and let out a long, slow breath.
Of course.
"Standard handcuffs," he said. "Not S.T.A.R. Labs-issue. They're not rated for metahumans." He shook his head. "Mardon's out. Should've seen that coming."
"Boss, what do we do, meow?"
"Same thing we said before. Only children make choices." He turned the motorcycle around. "Rest now. Tonight, we go to the farm and finish what we started." He paused, then addressed the System directly: "Quick question. Can the transmigration skill be used on a third party?"
Yes. Each transfer to another target costs 10,000 asset points. The target must have lost the capacity to resist — either physically or through lack of will.
"And when transferred — they'd follow the same process as me? Soul displaced to a body in another world, original body stays behind?"
Correct.
"Range?"
Five meters.
"Good." He filed it away. Then: "Satsuki. I want to add another transformation form to your inventory. Let's talk specs when we get home."
A pause. Then, with studied casualness: "...Does this mean I get the energy cube?"
Jude said nothing and kept riding.
Joe West had not spoken for most of the drive.
That, in Barry's experience, was worse than shouting.
"I sent you to Wells so you'd stay alive," Joe said finally, as they pulled into the S.T.A.R. Labs lot. His voice was low and even, which meant he was holding something back. "Not so you could turn yourself into — into whatever Clyde Mardon is."
"It's not the same—"
"I watched that man throw a tornado down a city street, Barry." Joe turned off the engine. "A tornado. And fog that blacked out an entire block. He is a madman with superpowers, and you ran straight at him."
"I stopped him—"
"You got lucky." Joe looked at him directly. "You're a CSI. Your job is the evidence after the event. Not the event itself. What happens the next time one of these people decides a tornado isn't enough? How do I go to your father and explain that?"
Barry didn't answer immediately.
"I've raised you for fifteen years," Joe said, and something in his voice shifted — went quieter, went somewhere more honest. "You are my son, Barry. You are my son as far as I'm concerned. And no father — no real father — watches his son run into something like that and feels fine about it."
He looked away through the windshield. "Iris wanted to join the force when she was seventeen. I talked her out of it. Spent two years talking her out of it. And now you want to go and—"
"Joe." Barry waited until Joe looked at him. "I know you're worried. And I know what it looks like — that I got some abilities and I'm acting on impulse. But this isn't impulse."
He took a breath.
"Do you remember the night my mother died?"
Joe was quiet.
"She was killed in the living room. Stabbed through the chest. My father was found there, and everyone decided he'd done it — and I was nine years old, and no one believed what I saw." Barry kept his voice steady with visible effort. "Two figures in the lightning. One red. One yellow. The one in yellow killed her. And everyone told me it was grief. A child's imagination. That I wasn't accepting what had really happened."
Joe said nothing. His jaw was tight.
"My father has been in prison for fifteen years for something he didn't do. Something impossible that everyone decided couldn't have happened because they couldn't explain it." Barry looked at him. "And then today — a man drove through Central City inside a tornado of his own making. A man who should, according to the official record, be dead."
He let that settle.
"What happened today proves that impossible things happen in this world, Joe. That there are forces in this city — in this world — that we don't have explanations for yet. And if that's true, then what I saw that night is possible. And if what I saw is possible—"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
"My father didn't kill my mother," he said quietly. "I've always known that. Now I might actually be able to prove it."
Joe sat with that for a long time. Long enough that they'd parked, gotten out, and were standing at the entrance to the lab before he spoke again.
"If that's what this is about," he said, "then you shouldn't be putting yourself in more danger. Not less." He stopped walking. "You can study the superpowers. You can use what you know to investigate. But there's no reason to go running into the middle of a fight, Barry. Your father needs you alive to clear his name."
Barry opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Is he right?
He turned it over as they walked through the doors and into the lab's main hall, and found, to his considerable discomfort, that he didn't have a clean answer.
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