No Man's Land

[catchacold]

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to Axel

[mostlyajerk]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're available for casual terrorism, yes?

[trickedya]

I'm currently blowing up rival territory so yeah. Why?

[mostlyajerk]

Who's your rival?

Anyway. I have a target, I'm discussing terms, I'm blackmailing them, but it'd help if they had more reason to take me seriously.

[trickedya]

Dunno, new gang sprung up, I'm taking them down.

Okay. You gotta pay me. What's on offer?

[mostlyajerk]

Aw, what happened to: I'll do everything for you if you wear those pants.

Do you want money or something else?

[trickedya]

I was drunk and horny and you're so not into it so why waste my talents.

Money is useless. Impress me. What do you have?

[mostlyajerk]

If you say so.

I have contacts, information, skills and parts. What are you after?

[mostlyajerk]

"Echo! Come back here." Hartley whistled to get his rat's attention and she finally gave up on whatever quest she was on, instead climbing up Hartley's arm when he bent down. "I know there's crumbs everywhere here, that's just the Cisco Ramon style of life."

He looked around the place again, the bag he'd packed looking pretty full. He had gotten some things he'd left behind last time, because it was better hidden and he didn't expect any of the idiots who raided the place to find it. But now he was pretty sure he'd found most worthwhile things, although there was still the feeling of something being off. Somewhere here was Harrison Wells' secret torture chamber or something equally or more unsettling and he had yet to happen upon it.

It was just a feeling, of course. Maybe it was just paranoia. "We won't have to come back here again for a while."

[viber]

Cisco didn't get why everyone kept raiding Star labs... well, no, he did. Free expensive tech for anyone who wanted it but why did they always have to go after his stuff? During the first blast, Caitlin's supplies had been saved by both of them after the initial panic and then from there onwards, everything else had been stolen, smashed or spray painted with curse words. The bed in the medbay, all his fancy tools, the treadmill. It sucked.

And all Cisco wanted from here wasn't tech, it wasn't tools, it was just some personal things. He wanted to get Barry's sweatshirt, Caitlin's iphone, maybe even find that picture he kept in his desk drawer of himself and Dante.

Instead, he was now hiding behind a partially smashed wall, trying to avoid Hartley freaking Rathaway finding him, unable to move without drawing attention. He almost got away with it until his foot slipped on the rubble and a pile dislodged, creating a not so subtle avalanche near him.

God damn it. "Oh no..." He whispered, closing his eyes and trying to hide himself better.

[mostlyajerk]

"Don't move!" Hartley called out before he even spotted Cisco - he had good ears, especially when he focused. Which meant he knew there was only one person and he had his gloves ready, activated in case he needed them. "I can hear you breathe."

Creepy words, slightly undercut by Echo taking this moment to nuzzle Hartley's cheek, but he was assuming that whoever's heart was beating so fast had no time to actually focus on these details. "Come out or I'll make you scream in pain."

It could be anyone, but the clear fear he got from him seemed like an obvious indicator that he had nothing to worry about.

[viber]

Oh great. Pain or giving himself up to that jerk, Hartley. Cisco wanted to be cool and all 'pain doesn't bother me' but he had sensitive ears and it just wasn't worth it. Slowly, Cisco slipped out from where he was hiding and held up his hands, a stubborn expression on his face.

"All right, relax, chill. Don't get twisted. I'm unarmed."

Wait... should he have told him that? He was trying to go for 'I don't want to get into a fight, let's just leave it' but instead he felt like he just exposed a weakness to the guy he kept in cell for about two days against his will. Oh boy, did he really regret not getting him thai food now. "I just wanted to -- hey, that's mine!" Hartley was raiding his stuff. Rude.

[mostlyajerk]

"Don't you know the new rule of the land yet, Cisquito? It's Finders Keepers. You always were slow to catch on." Hartley had his own hands ready as he considered Cisco, thinking about what best to do with him. Then slowly a rather sinister smile crept on his face and he stepped closer. "So lucky that I found you too."

Oh, he had a few ideas of what to do with that. He planned on getting twisted.

[viber]

"Look, people know I'm here, this isn't a smart move for you. Walk away." Cisco held up his hands and backed off. He just wanted a God damn iphone and a sweater, why couldn't things be easy? He wanted Caitlin to be able to text her mom and tell her she's okay, he wanted to give Barry something so he'd stop looking so dead eyed and depressed. Why did his good deeds have to backfire?

"You don't have the Flash after you."

[gotspeed]

It wasn't easy to get here, it took a lot of effort, will and general desire to get himself to the opera house. He didn't put on his suit until he was nearby, sensing a mob would descend if he walked the streets like it and running right now? He could only do it in small burst. If he overdid anything, the pain flared up in his back and leg and he'd be out of commission.

He had saved up all of his strength for his entrance, speeding into the opera house as if nothing was wrong, standing as tall as he could as he looked around for Hartley Rathaway.

Barry didn't want to do this but what choice did he have? "Piper!"

[mostlyajerk]

"Flash!" Hartley called from the stage, walking further until he reached the edge. He sat down, letting his legs dangle over the edge. He had one glove active, the flute in hand in case he needed it. However, from the looks of it he decided that there was no need to be too bothered. "So it's really you. People have been wondering where you'd wandered off to."

[gotspeed]

"I've been busy." Busy recovered, busy trying to get his head around everything, it'd definitely been a long time of just getting himself into a place where he even wanted to get up in the morning, let alone everything else. He wanted to drop down and stay down already but he couldn't, sitting down would show weakness and imply he was staying. He crossed his arms and glared up at Hartley. "What do you want, Piper?"

[mostlyajerk]

"Take a seat." Hartley gestured to the theatre. "I have rows and rows of them." To be fair, there were a lot of seats. A lot. Hartley leaned back, relaxing even more. No, he had nothing to fear from him, not today. "You look stressed." Not so surprising, that. What topic should he breach? Where to even start? "Seems like you're not that much of a hero in a crisis."

[gotspeed]

"I didn't come all this way to make small talk. Tell me what you want or I'm walking out." And he could. Cisco built him disrupters into his cowl to prevent Hartley's instrument from working. Cisco explained how it'd work but it just didn't sink in. All he knew was that it'd kick in as soon as any unusual frequency kicked in. "I'm not playing this game with you." Mostly because he was hurt, suffering and he didn't need to be kicked down by people like Hartley.

[mostlyajerk]

"Three things." Hartley held a finger up, marking the first thing he wanted to talk about. "First of all, I want to ask you a simple question. Do you know if there's a way to rid someone of their power?" He didn't mean to give away why he was asking, he wasn't even entirely sure he knew why he was asking. He was scared of his own power. More scared of how people saw him now. He wasn't an idiot and he didn't want to end up dead or worse.

[catchacold]

"If you need to get all this cheese, at least get the ones you shred yourself, this is just a waste of money." Sure, money was always for the taking, but watching Mick fill their cart with bags of shredded cheese was just getting ridiculous here. "When are you going to stop melting cheese on top of everything anyway? I thought that fad would die down eventually." He had his arms folded on the cart's handles, looking into all they had gotten so far. Mick really shouldn't go shopping when he was hungry.

[boilover]

"Money? Who cares about that any more?" The Flash was out, the city was a shit hole and hell, people were walking out of this store without even paying. Mick wanted to do that but apparently they had to invest in their city and generate an economy or ... something. He had no idea. Leonard explained it earlier. They had to make society tick again or it'd be boring forever. "Our city is fucked, my job is overfilled and I ain't got nothing else going on. So I melt cheese over things." It was still so much fun. Mick smirked at Leonard and then moved ahead, grabbing a load of ham from the fridges. What? Ham and cheese rocked.

[catchacold]

"Get two of those, there's a deal going on." Leonard rolled his eyes and looked around the store. "We'll get life to be more exciting again, then you'll have less time to think about what temperature cheese gets bubbly the best." At least his partner had priorities, he supposed. Not that he minded some things with cheese over them, he just liked to have other things to talk about as well.

[boilover]

"Then I'll stop buying so much cheese. Until then, it's food experiments and trash TV." They had fortunately managed to rob a TV recently, their old one got trashed in the first wave. Hell, their whole hideout was levelled and everything was trashed. Fortunately, they'd been in Iron Heights at the time or this could have gotten a lot messier. He wandered ahead, tossing various meat items into the cart. "Do you think he's dead? The Flash, I mean."

[catchacold]

"No." That was a very definite answer, while Leonard added some mint chocolate chip ice cream to their purchases, inspecting the other ice cream flavours on display. "If he was, we'd know by now. Trust me." Someone would have claimed the murder their deed, someone would have found him, any variety of options. Nothing like this. "He's injured. Licking his wounds. The kid's young, this was a major kick back. Probably bad for his ego. Do you want any ice cream?"

[boilover]

"Unless it's a cover up so we don't know and they're bluffing with it as long as they can. There's a lot of rumours he's dead." It was a tough call but Leonard always sort of knew what he was talking about and Mick was inclined to believe him. "He looks about eighteen, it'd be a shame if he got splattered across the pavement already." Mick shrugged and moved in to inspect the ice-cream before grabbing three different cartons. What? He was generating the economy. With ice-cream. "We need more waffles."