#unexpected development

Either way, as soon as Mick takes off towards the west side at a run, Barry can speed up to full Flash mode. Sure, he doesn’t have his suit, but that’s not necessarily an impediment when he’s moving faster than people can see.

The rest of the thugs aren’t a problem, either, as it turns out. The second they see lightning, they all shout, “The Flash!” and turn tail to run, dropping whatever bombs they have left.

It’s…kind of weirdly offensive, actually?

Barry’s a superhero. People should not be running scared like he’s going to hurt them or kidnap them or something awful. Not even bad guys!

Maybe Cold’s whole “it’s better for people to know about the local superhero as more than just a legend” thing has some merit to it after all.

...maybe not disappearing supervillains into the Particle Accelerator jail would help, too. Just maybe.

Something to think about.

Barry defuses the bombs pretty quickly – honestly, at this point he’s barely even following Mick’s directions, he’s just ripping them apart with his bare hands, but it still works pretty well – and then turns around and zips after Mick, only slowing down when he’s in the tunnel directly behind him so he can jog the rest of the distance like a normal person.

After all, if Mick saw him arrive in a burst of lightning, he’d probably be a little suspicious.

More than he’s already going to be, given that Barry’s clothing is kinda-maybe-sorta sizzling from how fast he was running and his sneakers’ heels are starting to melt a little bit from the friction.

Yeah. Definitely suspicious.

Which would be bad.

For…reasons that Barry will have to remind himself about later.

After all, if he's discovered, terrible things would clearly happen. Like, he might be blackmailed into helping support their fight for economic justice and against gentrification and there will be barbeque and sexy threesomes –

The secret identity thing is important. Barry has to remind himself of that.

But at least it's clear that Barry’s supervillains are obviously the best.

Oliver’s gonna be so jealous.

Not that Oliver’s going to get told about this whole disaster of a day. Ever.

Barry’s just going to...convince everyone in Central City to take a vow of silence about it. Forever.

Yeah.

That’ll work.

It's not like the media would pay all that much attention to a jailbreak from the middle of the CCPD headquarters –

Oh god, Oliver already knows.

Barry is so doomed.

But first they have to make sure that Cold isn’t.

Barry runs down the rest of the tunnel at his best attempt to mimic a more normal speed, which ends up being a sort of half-jog, half- skip sort of thing because if he actually tries to run he goes straight into lightning mode and wow he really needs to work on that, but one way or another he ends up catching up with Mick.

“Get ‘em all?” Mick asks when he sees him, and Barry nods. “Good.”

Oh, good, he doesn’t question why Barry’s there so fast or why he's skip-jogging instead of running. Secret intact! Barry mentally pats himself on the back. He’s doing great.

That’s when they both hear a blast.

“Bomb?” Barry asks, eyes wide.

“No,” Mick says grimly. “That was more like a truck hitting a wall real fast.”

A truck, yeah. Or a person.

Mr. Banana – it’s actually kinda funny how quickly Barry picked up that moniker, given that he’s called him ‘the man in yellow’ for years on end and Cisco has been campaigning to get ‘Reverse Flash’ in as the guy’s official nickname – is springing his trap for Cold.

For Len.

Damnit, Barry, if you’re going to sleep with them, you really ought to call them by their first names, not their supervillain names.

…okay, apparently at some point in this whole mess, Barry’s subconscious has decided he’s up for it if they are.

Which they wouldn’t be if they knew he was the Flash. Their nemesis. Their archrival. Their superhero enemy.

Well. You know, there's actually a chance that they still would; they did have all that discussion about the Flash being really attractive earlier, so maybe – but no, it would never come up, because Barry wouldn’t be able to tell them or else they’d know his secret identity and –

Wow, this is so horribly inappropriate to be thinking about when Mr. Banana is planning to kill Len.

Barry can barely force himself to stop from flashing forward and yelling “don’t you dare touch my (prospective) boyfriend (out of two) you bastard!” or something stupid like that if Mr. Banana is there.

Uh, boyfriend’s probably a bit premature, and that’s not even the biggest thing wrong with that sentence.

What is wrong with him?

(Answer: his libido. Clearly.)

And that’s when Mick barrels out of a tunnel and onto some rubble, Barry right behind him, and, shit, Mr. Banana is there, vibrating too fast to focus the way Barry can, and Len is on the ground just like Mom had been – oh God no, not again – and the Man in Yellow is saying something that Barry can’t hear through the roaring in his ears, and Barry’s shouting “No!” futilely because even at Flash speeds he won’t be able to get there in time to stop what’s going to happen because he’s just not fast enough and then –

Uh.

And then –

Okay, and then Barry’s brain needs to go reset itself because suddenly the Man in Yellow (Mr. Banana, Barry reminds himself) has a bright red lacey bra hanging on his head and he looks vaguely stupefied about it.

This may be the only instance in which Barry sympathizes with the bastard.

To reiterate: what just happened?!

It’s not the only piece of underwear, either; the next thing that happens is that someone, somewhere, manages to pitch what appears to be a pair of booty shorts composed about 90% of shiny pink sequins right at Mr. Banana’s face, followed by something involving bright blue tassels but not a lot of fabric otherwise.

Superspeed reflexes or no superspeed reflexes, Mr. Banana immediately drops all attempts at murdering Len in favor of batting the increasing shower of various pieces of underwear away from him.

“What in the world..?” he demands, sounding absolutely baffled.

Barry kind of agrees. Not going to lie.

“You know,” Len drawls from where he’s sitting on the ground, “this here’s union territory. You really ought to be careful about who you try to knock off; they take that personally.”

“Union?!” Mr. Banana exclaims. “What union?”

“Oh my god,” Barry says. It can’t be.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mick says flatly, briefly shutting his eyes as if that could make what’s happening stop happening by sheer force of willpower.

But nope, it’s happening.

There they are, appearing on all of the rooftops and in the alleys and all around.

Leonard Snart’s goddamn hooker union.

Barry bursts out laughing.

And not just laughing, full on belly-slapping, howling and hollering, tears streaming down your face laughing.

He can’t help it.

It’s just –

Do you know how hard it is to be scared of someone, even if it is someone who murdered your mother, framed your father, and traumatized you for life, when they have a set of red-white-and-blue flag-themed undies hanging off one of their lightning-shaped ear-spikes?

Also: how did it not occur to Barry how dumb those look? Man, he is seriously going to have to have a talk with Cisco about a few redesigns.

Mr. Banana twists around to stare at where Mick and Barry are standing.

Barry’s making hooting monkey noises again, he just knows it, but he can’t help it.

This is just so dumb.

This is the dumbest thing that has ever happened.

They’re literally just throwing underwear at him and he's paralyzed.

The great Man in Yellow, defeated by shiny stripper underwear.

Obviously the Flash needs to turn in his superhero card because this is clearly a superior crime-fighting method.

Maybe he should consider adopting it.

Oh, oh, and the underwear could have little lightning bolts on it -

Nope, now Barry’s laughing even harder.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mick says again, and his voice is still disbelieving.

Barry glances at him, still trying to keep from strangling himself laughing.

“It’s a pun. That fucker.”

“What?” Barry manages to choke out.

“Mr. Banana,” Mick says, and he looks up at the sky as if asking for help. “You said he calls himself the Reverse Flash, right? He wants to be the enemy of the Flash? And Len stopped him –”

That’s when Barry gets it and he has to cover his face because no. No. Len didn’t.

He did.

“– with a flash mob,” Mick finishes.

“I really hate the fact that I’m gonna sleep with that guy,” Barry says, aiming for a meme-appropriate despondent tone but probably not making it anywhere near because he’s still giggling.

“I feel you,” Mick groans. “What’s worse, I actually found that funny.”

Yeah, Barry too.

“I’m gonna suggest you get the hell off our turf,” one of the ladies (Barry is not calling her a hooker!) says.

“How did he even get all of you to come here?” Mr. Banana asks, absolutely bemused.

Someone sling-shots something sparkly at him. Barry’s not even going to try to figure out what it is, but there’s even less fabric involved than the thing with the tassels.

“Standing up for each other’s what a union does,” the lead lady says smugly. “Time for you to go now.”

She’s got something in her hands.

A phone, actually.

“And how do you plan to make me?” Mr. Banana snaps. He sounds angry.

No, he sounds pissed off, and that’s almost enough to get Barry to stop sniggering uncontrollably, because he knows how dangerous he is, but every time Mr. Banana spins around, the flag-colored underwear flaps around behind him like a little waving flag and yep, there Barry goes losing it again.

(Mr. Banana keeps glaring at him about it, too, which for some reason keeps setting Barry off again. He looks so offended, even through the blurring.)

“Clearly you don’t understand. I could kill each and every one of you in the time it takes to blink,” Mr. Banana continues, glaring at all of them. “And there’s nothing any of you can do to stop me! There’s no weapon fast enough!”

“Think the Flash might object to that,” Mick says.

“He’s not fast enough to stop me,” Mr. Banana scoffs.

Barry bites his lip, his laughter fading.

That’s true. He’s not fast enough. It’s on him, because if only he were faster –

No, wait. Len had been very clear, earlier, that the Flash’s weakness (Barry’s weakness) was that he kept playing into people’s expectations. He’d even proposed that Mr. Banana was setting up this whole trap to make Barry have to run faster.

It wasn’t that, of course, the aim of the trap was Len, not Barry.

…wasn’t it?

Mr. Banana could’ve killed Len a dozen times over before Mick and Barry got there, given how slow they were moving, but he didn’t.

Think, Barry, think.

He wants you to run faster. That’s why he taunted you – he wanted you set up the trap with the bait so that he could escape. He was playing you then, he’s probably playing you now.

He’s jealous of Len being your rival, just like Mick deduced.

So why not kill Len efficiently? Unless -

Mr. Banana wants Barry to see this.

But – why?

“You might be able to kill us,” the lead lady says with a sniff. “But we’ve got you on camera – on a lot of cameras, now – and we’re going to bring down the whole of Central City on your head.”

“Central City,” Len adds helpfully. “Not the Flash. Hell, there’s that army base outta town that’s been real into speedsters recently; I bet they’d be into helping out. And all the Flash’ll have to do is sit back and wait. Wouldn’t even have to take the time to fight you himself.”

Mr. Banana looks even more pissed off by that.

“You’re not gonna be much of a rival for the Flash,” Mick observes, “if he never even bothers to fight you.”

“Yeah,” Barry says. Oddly, Mr. Banana seems to be avoiding looking in Barry’s direction now that he’s no longer laughing, even though Barry knows he knows who Barry is. Almost like he doesn’t want Barry to look at his face too hard or something. “Not much of a rival at all.”

Mr. Banana looks super angry.

Mick is definitely right about him.

“The Flash will come out to fight me,” he boasts, but he’s looking around at all those cameras, scowling. Seems pretty clear he doesn’t want this to be made public yet.

Barry figures out what he’s going to do a second before he does it, but there’s no time to stop him and no way to stop him, not without speeding up himself and revealing himself in front of all those people – and he can’t do that, not with Joe and Iris and everyone depending on him –

He hesitates.

Mr. Banana flashes off, zipping around the square and grabbing all the phones. Barry’s the only one who can see fast enough to see what he’s doing, but it’s okay: he doesn’t hurt anyone, just grabs the phones. His restraint is weird, but Barry’s not going to complain, not when people aren’t dying.

But by the time he’s back in his original position, smirking, phones gathered in his arms, Len’s gotten his gun back and Mr. Banana steps right into a beam of frozen light that ices over his feet up to the knees.

Heh.

“If Len smashes him to pieces after freezing him, would that make him a Banana Split?” Barry loudly asks Mick, who groans.

“You’re goddamn perfect for him and he’s going to be so disappointed if you turn down his little offer,” Mick grumbles back even as he leads the way forward, gun pointed at Mr. Banana. “You know that, right?”

“He’s not going to say no,” Len calls back, grinning like a maniac; just as Barry had intended, he’d heard Barry’s question.

Mr. Banana is making a disgusted face, so he clearly also heard what Barry said.

Maybe he’s judging himself for setting himself up as Barry’s nemesis now or something.

Clearly, Len and Mick are a better class of villain.

So there, Mr. Banana!

But Mr. Banana kicks his way out of Len’s ice pretty easily – how does he know how to do all of this stuff?! – and stepping forward.

“Your stupid puns aren’t going to save you,” he sneers, ignoring Barry entirely. “And neither is your ice.”

“Cold,” Len says, sounding annoyed. “Not ice.”

Mr. Banana rolls his eyes. “Your cold won’t save you.”

“How about gold then?” a female voice drawls from behind him.

Barry looks.

There’s a vaguely familiar-looking woman there, brunette, in a slick leather jacket with gold chains, and she’s pointing what is a very recognizably Cisco Ramon created gun, colored dark yellow this time, right at Mr. Banana.

And, much to his surprise, Cisco and Caitlin are standing right next to her.

Well, to be fair, they’re slightly behind her, but that’s fair. She’s the one holding the gun.

She looks really familiar for some reason, but Barry’s pretty sure he’s never seen her before.

“Hey, sis,” Len says, sounding pleased.

Oh.

That’s why.

Len makes his excuses to Charlie and then double-times it through his set of bombs – it takes barely any time at all, the bombs being almost pathetically easy to defuse – then head westward. He’s certain that Mick can keep an eye on Allen and Allen had definitely seemed smart enough to handle a few bombs; between the two of them, he can trust that that section will be handled, and Charlie – well, he doesn’t have to like Charlie to admit that, cannibalistic instincts aside, Charlie’s not totally incompetent. He’s certainly capable of handling the bombs, and he has no reason to double-cross Len.

Besides, Charlie knows how Len deals with people who double-cross him. He wouldn’t dare.

At any rate, the bombs are even more stupidly made than he’d hoped they might be. It has to be a Flash trap: even if the Flash wasn’t particularly expert with bomb defusing techniques, a voice in his ear could walk him through the basics - sure, there's a whole lot of them, but he could disable them all if he ran at top speed, or maybe a little faster, which fits in with Len's theory about it being about getting the Flash to go faster.

Len wonders for a moment how Mr. Banana knows that the Flash would have access to someone with the right expertise. Well, they probably went up against each other and Flash talked to his earpiece the way he had the first time Len had fought him, but bomb-defusing experience seems like a specialization that you wouldn’t think a hero would necessarily think to have on his team. As quick as the Flash is, Mr. Banana’s left him a hell of a short time frame to find an expert if he didn’t already have one.

Something to think about.

Now, however, is not the time to consider such questions. Len’s got a city to keep intact.

After all, this is his city.

The good part about the tunnels on the west side of the highway is that they extend out from where the raised central portion of the highway, under the mostly deserted slum buildings just adjacent to it. The tunnels go up until they’re basically nearly at surface level, under the highway and next to the buildings, so a bombing here would be bad but not catastrophic – far fewer structural supports to knock down.

Still, he’ll be damned if a single squatter loses his life to some stupid hero-obsessed villain. Not while Len’s around, no sir.

He makes it to the tunnels, which are already deserted – the people assigned to come here have already planted their bombs and gotten the hell out of dodge, which is fair – and he’s listening to the countdown clock in his head that tells him he has plenty of time, but he barely takes two steps into the main space when there’s a gigantic boom like thunder and he’s suddenly thrown back against the wall.

Ouch.

Okay, when did he end up lying on the floor? He doesn’t even remember that happening.

Len’s head hurts, and there’s dust everywhere. He’s a bit dazed, but not nauseous, which at least means he’s not concussed.

What just happened?

That couldn’t have been a bomb going off already: there was no heat. He's been Mick's partner long enough to know that much about explosions.

And also…

“I tawt I saw a puddy cat,” he says, blinking concrete dust out of his eyes and absolutely mangling the impression. “Or at least I think I saw Tweety Bird.”

He pushes himself up on his elbows painfully and sits up.

Len’s not in the tunnels anymore; or rather, one of the tunnels is now open to the sky, but not because of the dead bombs that lie scattered on the ground. And they are quite certainly dead, he can see that; these bombs have been ripped apart and their pieces scattered everywhere. They’re never going to grow up to be nice big explosions, and won’t Mick be sad about that? But they definitely aren’t the reason that there was now a big hole in the wall under the highway, letting the evening light – half fading sunlight, half glowing streetlights – shine in.

There’s another cause for that.

Len’s never actually seen Mr. Banana before, but there’s no doubt that the man standing before him, vibrating so fast that the air around him shivers like an optical illusion, is the one.

“Holy crap –” Len says.

Mr. Banana raises his head proudly and smirks.

“– that is the ugliest shade of yellow I’ve ever seen,” Len concludes.

Mr. Banana looks taken aback.

But seriously, damn. Tweety Bird would be ashamed to be associated with that color. Big Bird would teach the audience a very special lesson about embarrassment just to cover it. The Teletubbies would think it a step too far.

Len’s still a bit iffy on the whole ‘Mr. Banana’ name, but he’s got to admit that he can see the basis. He’d shoot him with the cold gun just on principle, except that it’s lying halfway across the street.

Len twitches a foot.

Looks like he's somehow got no other guns, either: not the spare he’d tucked in the small of his back or the secondary one strapped onto his ankle. Mr. Banana must have grabbed them when he’d rammed himself thought the tunnel wall like a human-sized super-fast sledgehammer and then threw Len across the room.

Probably doesn’t want Len interrupting him in the middle of his carefully planned out solo number. Len gets that.

Doesn’t mean he has to like it when it’s being done to him, but, well, he gets it.

Evil Overlord rules, you know.

(If Mick didn't want him to quote them, he shouldn't have given Len a copy for his birthday this year.)

“Well, well, Mr. Snart,” Mr. Banana says. His voice reverberates strangely. Vibrating his vocal cords, the way the Flash tried to do early on and then just sort of gave up on. Kind of adorable, actually. This guy clearly has more practice. “You have been an admirable enemy –”

“Have we even met?” Len asks, reaching for his pocket.

Mr. Banana smirks. “You don’t know me,” he says. “But I know you. I’ve seen the work you’ve been doing so far, and you've become quite an impressive adversary for the Flash despite not having any powers of your own."

Gee, thanks. Always nice to meet a fan.

"Unfortunately," Mr. Banana continues, lengthening his syllables into a disdainful drawl which is clearly ripped off from Len, "there’s a risk that you’ll interfere with my plans with the Flash, and that’s – what are you doing?”

“Texting,” Len says, typing on the phone he’s just pulled out. “Obviously.”

“What?!”

“I know, I know, I’m a bit old to be a millennial, right?”

“Put that away and listen to me!”

“Sure, mom,” Len says, clicking send.

There’s a burst of lightning.

Len blinks at the space where his phone was. His poor phone is currently being crushed to death in Mr. Banana’s hands. Mr. Banana’s mask is doing a poor job of hiding his irritation.

Len shrugs and pulls out another one.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mr. Banana says with disgust.

Len holds up the phone and sets it to record. “Wait, lemme get a pic before you destroy this one,” he says. “Don’t worry, feel free to monologue; I swear I’m listening.”

Mr. Banana seems to be contemplating destroying Len's phone again, and possibly adding some pain for Len into the mix in the process; he crosses his arms and glares death at Len as he considers how bad the pain's going to be.

“Lemme guess,” Len drawls, intimately familiar with how to distract people in that sort of mood. “‘Put that phone away this instant, young man, or I’ll kill you even more dead than I was already planning to?’”

Mr. Banana struggles with rage for a moment – his eyes do this thing where they glow even more red and start crackling with sparks of lightning a bit, very Sith-lord – before he manages to rein it and smirk.

“I suppose you have a point,” he says agreeably, in the way rich people do when they think they have the upper hand and decide that they’re going to be all generous about it, just to rub it in.

If he survives, Len is going to find this asshole’s house and rob it, just out of spite.

It can’t be that hard to find. Look at this guy’s preferred color scheme! Definitely one in a million – his house has got to be the most garish collection of no-taste rich-guy stuff imaginable.

Len bets he has a chandelier.

Len's totally going to Phantom of the Opera the shit out of it.

“So, what’ve I been doing that’s been pissing you off so much?” Len asks. “Sorry, I wasn’t actually listening earlier.”

That gets an actual eye-twitch.

He didn’t even know that was a thing real people did.

“Captain Cold,” Mr. Banana says. “Your exploits against the Flash are impressive –”

“What time?” Len inquires, quite seriously. “The time I let his friends scare me off with a vacuum cleaner or the time he kicked my ass up and down the street? Really, I want to know; I’m keeping a ranking list on my wall and I can’t seem to decide which one should be number one.”

Mr. Banana probably thinks he’s joking, but Len really does have a list.

“They will be,” Mr. Banana says impatiently. “But I have decided that your interference in the Flash’s timeline is an unacceptable risk to my plans. As is such, regardless of my respect for you, I’ve decided to end your life. Are you listening now?”

Len’s brain processes the words that just got spoken, but he ends up with nothing but question marks and blue screens of death and gibberish. Nothing that just came out of Mr. Banana’s mouth makes any sense, but it also doesn’t seem particularly useful for the time being either, and therefore he’s going to put his questions aside for contemplation at a time when his life isn’t imminently in danger.

“You do realize I’m stalling for time, right?” Len asks instead.

He’s not too sure. Maybe Mr. Banana is like Charlie and thinks they’re having an actual conversation or something.

Mr. Banana smirks. “Your little friend won’t be able to help you –” he starts.

Len’s jaw drops.

Mr. Banana checks behind him. It’s a barely noticeable motion, but it’s there.

Ah, glorious paranoia.

Very useful – to the person trying to fuck with you.

“No, no,” Len says soothingly. “No ambush yet, relax. I’m just – that’s the first time anyone’s called Mick my ‘little’ friend. Have you met him?”

He gestures a bit with his free hand, a vague outline of ‘very large and intimidating man who is hardly little in any respect’. He adds in a 'if you know what I mean' gesture because really, Mick deserves it, and also it makes Mr. Banana look vaguely like he's bitten into a lemon.

Mr. Banana looks like he's going to say something - Len's really hoping for it to be a lecture on having some more class as a supervillain, he's always wanted to hear one of those - but speak of the devil and he appears.

Mick bursts through the tunnel entrance, heat gun at ready, but he’s still too far away to help if Mr. Banana decides to skewer Len. Allen’s at his heels, eyes wide in horror.

“No!” Allen shouts, even as Mick’s eyes narrow and take in the scene.

Len feels vaguely bad about that, actually. Poor, pretty little hostage – bad enough that the mission went south, but he shouldn’t have to see people who flirted with him die.

Assuming Len does die, of course. Len’s not quite willing to concede on that yet.

Mr. Banana’s face stretches into a smirk, like he was waiting for the audience to arrive for the grand finale.

There’s something’s ticking in Len’s brain.

Something he’s missed, though he’s not sure what.

Mick’d probably know in a minute; he’s always been better with people than Len, even if Len is better at plans and strategies and such.

Hell, Mick probably does already know – he’s been smirking it up like crazy the last few hours.

What is it?

“I do apologize, Mr. Snart –” Mr. Banana says, and Len’s been in enough fights – and watched enough bad movies – to know that Mr. Banana is gearing up for the final murder sequence, and all Len’s got is a bunch of bruises and no guns.

Oh, and his camera phone, still recording.

“–but I’m afraid our time – that is, your time – is up at last,” Mr. Banana says, eyes bright and his tone gloating. He holds up his hand and starts vibrating it as fast as a circular saw, which is a hell of a murder method if Len’s ever seen one, and he steps forward and –

His face when a lacey red bra smacks him right in the face is priceless.

And that would be the other ambush Len had planned via a little community chatting.

Len grins at his phone.