The Flash

Well, it’s been harder to adjust to the single life than I imagined. I mean I guess I’ve lived life as a bonafide bachelor for most of my years, but I was just starting to get into that whole relationship groove. To go from that back to the lifestyle of a single man at the drop of a hat takes a lot out of you! Even though Gypsy and I both agreed that we work better apart, and it was the right thing to do, it wasn’t what your boy was planning for. Heck, it wasn’t long ago that I was weighing the pros and cons of taking over for Breacher! Nothing could have prepared me for this sudden new void in my life! Did that sound dramatic? Whatever, it’s allowed.

Now I’ve been through my fair share of breakups before, so I’ve got a few tricks to distract myself and one of the oldest tricks in the book is to do something you couldn’t have done in the relationship. You get to open yourself up to something new while forgetting the ways of the old. This isn’t to say that Gypsy and I didn’t have a great relationship – we did – there was just some small stuff that I had to turn down when she was around. For example: it wasn’t a highly publicized fact, but Gypsy was lactose intolerant (milk is different on Earth 19 apparently) and I had to turn down a cheese tasting at the Central City Cheese Counter one weekend when she was visiting. So, to kick off this new chapter of my life…I’m gonna eat a whole buncha cheese.

Who doesn’t love cheese? Never has there been a more perfect food for any occasion. Joe is grilling some burgers? Throw some American cheese singles on there. Ralph takes you out to this weird club in town? They have fancy cheese cubes for sure. Oh, Barry and Iris are hosting a dinner party? IN COMES YOUR BOY WITH THAT CHEESE PLATE! It almost pains me that Gypsy has never been able to take part in the delicious dairy filled joy that cheese brings to lives all around the world. So, to mourn my loss of her, I’ve stocked up on some of the finest cheeses that money can buy – camembert, brie, gouda, jack – the gang’s all here.

Look, there’s no way around it. Things have been rough. It’s bleaker than the beginning of Alien 3! Though, after seeing Barry make a breakthrough with his grief in his battle with Siren-X, and returning to Dr. Sharon Finkel’s office, I decided maybe it was time for me to get my Freud jam on some Rorschach tests, and see what Finkel has to say about my old cranium. I was going to get some therapy!  

I went to Finkel’s office to set an appointment and ran into Barry and Iris on their way out. They had another successful session, but Finkel was closing shop to vacation in Fiji for the next few weeks. She was trading in her office couch for a hammock on the beach. So that was Strike One.  

I figured it was time to turn to my lady, but I couldn’t get in touch with Gypsy as she was out in the multiverse doing what she does best. And truthfully, I didn’t really want to saddle her with my baggage anyway. We barely get to talk these days with us both being so busy. So that was Strike Two.

My last shot was Leo Snart. He’s a therapist himself and mentioned how he helped the Legends through some of their grief. As we prepped him to head back to Earth-X I pulled him aside and asked if he had a few minutes to spare for a session. But, Leo said something about having to go back and wrestle his wedding rings from a tiger’s jaw, as part of some Earth-X wedding tradition so he didn’t have time. Luckily, he said he had something that might help and handed me a puppet… of me. I have to say; the hair was spot on.  He told me talk to the puppet. And there you have Strike Three.  

Oh where oh where can my cold powers be… a foe took ‘em away from me… Well, not me, Caitlin. But the Pearl Jam song in my noggin only works in the first person. Here’s the 411 – a meta named Melting Point stole the Killer Frost right out of Caitlin and I’m gonna find it if it kills me. The rub is that Melting Point doesn’t keep the powers he hijacks. He sends them to other unsuspecting people. What kind of freaking power is that? Imagine walking down the street eating a biscuit and suddenly you’re a meta-human! If only DeVoe hadn’t gotten to Melting Point I could ask him more about how to track down Caitlin’s powers. Looks like it’s all on me.

I fired up the old cold signature tracker and project ice-capade was in full effect. My first stop was a nail salon that was putting out mad sub-zero readings. I got duped into a mani, a pedi and something called crystal gel. Then the aesthetician (Iris and Caitlin say that’s what you call them) blasted my digits with liquid nitrogen to make the treatment “last longer.” A - I don’t want the treatment to last longer, B - There’s no way anything capable of absolute zero should be available to civilians, and C… I found the mani/pedi part of the experience rather enjoyable and I may or may not have purchased a membership.

After leaving the salon, I was $40 lighter and no closer to finding Caitlin’s frost. But I persisted. The next stop was Bubba’s garage. I purposely didn’t capitalize that, because Bubba is not a mechanic and his garage is not a business. I literally went to some dude named Bubba’s house and found him working in his garage. The nuts and bolts of that interaction was that Bubba’s an ice-pick connoisseur not a meta-human, and I am now an expert at Cisco-toned black-eye concealer. Suffice to say Bubba wasn’t much of a conversationalist.    

To breach or not to breach.  Cheese-factor aside, that’s seriously all that I’ve been thinking about for the past couple of days since I was offered the job of a lifetime by Breacher.  Well, that and his Hawaiian-themed “I don’t give a damn” ensemble.  That… I will never allow myself to forget.

Still, could I really become Breacher 2.0?  Look at all the positives: I’d be the most fearsome badass across all 53 Earths, I’d get to see Gypsy ALL the dang time, and I’d finally fulfill my lifelong dream of dressing like Neo from The Matrix all day, err day.

This offer may check off all the boxes for my #lifegoals, but I do need more time to process it.  In the meantime, I need a serious distraction to take my mind off of it.  No, I’m not talking about another 12-hour “Fortnite” gameplay marathon at Casa de Ramon.  I need to have responsible adult Cisco this time.

As my luck would have it, Iris just asked me to perform some major upgrades on her recently dusted-off laptop.  This thing is so old.  Seriously! I think it still uses floppy disks.  Or, at the very least, it was built before Obama’s first term (keep in mind, that’s like two “Spiderman” reboots ago!  ANCIENT I tell you!)  

Guys, it’s been a whirlwind of a week. If this keeps up for much longer, I’ll be known as Cisco the Grey around Central City. To catch up anyone who may have missed it, there was a little episode amongst our team where Barry suddenly lost his powers and Iris got them. It sounds just as weird when I type that out after the fact but when it happened, I was really bugging out. I mean, you can’t just expect someone to be able to harness the immense power of the speed force at the drop of a hat. It was a pretty scary situation…UNTIL COACH CISCO SAVED THE DAY.

When life gives you super speed you make a…well, I don’t really know where I was going with that one. All I know is that crime wasn’t going to stop just because Barry was powerless, so we had to make do with the hand we were dealt – Iris needed a crash course (probably not the best phrase to use) in her newly acquired powers. I’ve picked up a few tricks over the years and felt confident in creating the ultimate training ground for Iris to use on her journey of becoming Central City’s newest speedster.

I meticulously mapped out a course all over the city designed to test all of Iris’s abilities and prepare her for anything that could possibly be thrown her way. We headed over to 5th street, which has been under construction since before I was born. There she could learn to dip, dodge and zip past potholes, obstacles, bystanders and more – this was coming together perfectly. The best part of this course, in my opinion, is the fact that it went right past the newly opened Central City Chili Corner. It’s situated right between the stadium and S.T.A.R. Labs so naturally when I had Iris run into the stadium for a couple laps around the field, I placed an order of chili dogs for her to pick up on her way back to the lab.

What is up party people? We just had a pretty intense 8 minutes over here with The Flash stopping a nuclear bomb from nearly wiping Central City off the face of the planet.  All in a day’s work, and much quicker than usual thanks to the power of ye ol’ Speed Force.  

It was clear we all needed to chill out and with last week’s Olympic inspired Team Flash games in the rear-view I thought our winter sports adventures were over, until Ralph burst into my lab with two tickets to see the Keystone City Combines play ice hockey. Even though, Ralph said he was done being bummed about what happened to Izzy – I heard him bragging about how Big Belly Burger was having a special give away where for every ten combo meals you buy you get a free ticket… and apparently, he won two.  I’d say homeboy was still eating his feelings and I could tell he needed a friend, so I agreed to join him.  

The seats were fantastic, right down by the glass. The crowd was loud, and the puck was flying fast down on the ice. Ralph was having a blast. It was good to see him letting off some steam. Besides, what could go wrong at an innocent hockey game?  I’ll tell you… whenever team mascots are around, danger is never far behind. Cornelius Corn is the Combine’s mascot. He’s your typical anthropomorphic ear-of-corn, but with a hockey stick. Though, as far as sports mascots go, he always seemed a little too intense. You wouldn’t want this dude on your bad side. Unfortunately, the guy inside the corn costume knew Ralph Dibny and he was on his bad side. Seems Ralph owed him some money from an old botched P.I. case.   The moment Cornelius Corn spotted Ralph, he was up in his face. Ralph told him to get lost, but Cornelius Corn wouldn’t stop. The next thing I knew Cornelius Corn was swinging fists at Ralph. It was dangerous for everyone in the crowd, so I started helping get people away from the brawl. Meanwhile, Ralph thought fast and discreetly stretched out his foot like a rubber band and flung the crazed mascot up over the glass onto the ice. Cornelius Corn, jumped to his feet and started throwing a fit, screaming and smashing his stick onto the ice so hard he cracked open the ice. His hate for Ralph had turned into a King Shark level temper tantrum.  

So…the past few days haven’t been the brightest S.T.A.R. Labs has ever seen. But hey, if we’ve learned anything it’s that bad can always get badder. The long and short is that Ralph was feeling the feels for one of the bus metas who’s now… gone.  And Barry got put on an “indefinite leave of absence”.  Not from being the Flash, from CCPD.  You know, the gig that pays him and doesn’t involve him nearly dying on the regular.

But fear not, Olympic Cisco was here to brighten everyone’s day. That’s right, sports fans – I am an Olymp-a-ddict of the tallest order. And with the closing ceremonies now in the rear-view, I was jonesing for a fix.  So I figured what better way to feed my need and cheer up my comrades than to organize the inaugural Team Flash Games???

The kickoff event was a luge race in the hamster wheel. I even got Caitlin to ice it down for us. Barry promised not to cheat but I’m pretty sure he went full “kid who opens his eyes during Marco Polo” because he finished in three tenths of a second.

Next up was a freestyle jump off the S.T.A.R. Labs roof. Which may sound like a bad idea, but Ralph stretched into a trampoline for us to land on so it was actually kind of awesome. At least, I thought so. Joe was less amused after he landed on his sidearm.  But whatever, no one told him to go all Macho Man Randy Savage off the top rope.  

Since we were all tied up after the first two events – depending on how you feel about Barry being disqualified from the luge – we went to sudden death: curling. How could that not be the coolest thing since s’mores flavored bubble gum? Well, that question can be answered in one simple word… Harry!

Yes, against my better judgment, I decided to team up with the only man on Earth who may actually posses the ability to make an onion cry. Needless to say it did not go well. After much deliberation, “we” decided that being the sweeper was beneath Harry, even though I explained to him at length that the curler was a far less important job.

FREEDOM! My boy is back! After doing some hard time Barry is back where he belongs – with all of us in Star Labs. I don’t know if it’s the fact that we haven’t been apart for that long or what, but he’s been looking JACKED. Being the mastermind behind Barry’s suits, I’ve got his measurements memorized more than my own. But here comes the Sultan of Swole himself, outta the clink and bursting at the seams – literally.

Before I got down to the nitty gritty of designing a new suit to fit Mr. Olympia in, I got my priorities in order and sat down with Barry to ask him the ever important question – how can I get that jacked? Best friends to buff friends, am I right?!

Barry insisted that he didn’t do anything special, but I’ve seen enough episodes of LOCKED UP that I know there isn’t much to do in jail except get your lift on. After days of bugging him about it, I finally convinced Barry to join me at the Central City Gym to show me the ropes and the secret to a year round beach bod.

So there we are, two bros doing bro things. I’m feeling good, got my sweat on and everything. New year, new Cisco. Things are going great until Barry lifts an IRON BAR and places it above a bench. So THIS is how they get it done on the inside. I prep myself mentally – but wait! What’s this? Barry is adding a weight onto each side of the bar?! So much for easing me into this. You’re kidding me, right? Unfortunately he was not.

NOTE TO SELF:

If Ralph Dibny says he wants to “hang out”, just remember these three words: Run, Cisco. Run!

Here, I was thinking that our shared experience of being smaller than a limited edition FUNKO Pop! Figure would bring us closer together and Ralph would tone down being…Ralph.  But clearly, the years of being a sleazy and manipulative private eye have given him the skills to bypass my well-tuned “bull-crap meter.”

To be fair to yours truly, with Barry in Iron Heights, Dibny knew all the right buttons to push.  Saying things like: “Hey Cisco, we’re always fighting crime and taking down bad guys but we never really hang out.” OR “Hey Cisco, I know you’re writing that true-crime novel in your spare time.  You wanna come by my office and talk DeVoe?”  Uh… yes please!

What I thought was going to be cool bro-hang, turned out to be me cleaning his disgusting office and alphabetizing all his “old case files” like his own personal assistant.  But I’m not an assistant!  I’m Cisco Ramon! AKA Vibe!  AKA boyfriend to one of the most kick-ass women on all 53 Earths! Homey don’t play that!

Once I figured out what Dibny was doing, I VERY angrily finished alphabetizing his case files and throwing away all his stale desk-donuts (because cleanliness is close to godliness), and I gave him a piece of my mind!  He was all like: “Cisco, you’re so much smarter and better than me at organizing” AND “Cisco, I thought we were hangin’ out and being bros and talking DeVoe!”  The first thing he said is true but hanging out is NOT me cleaning while he cuts out Elongated Man articles for his scrapbook!

Next time we hang out, it is on my terms!

What do you do when your best friend is wrongfully sent to prison? The obvious answer is to wallow. Wallow like you’ve never wallowed before.  I was officially mayor of Wallow City, until Caitlin came to my rescue, with a one-two punch of emotional support and pizza.  Nothing makes a day better than Caitlin Snow M.D. showing up with pizzas.

We polished off the pies and discussed what we could do to help get Barry out of prison.  He could easily just phase right out, or I could breach him to another Earth, but Caitlin reminded me that would mean Barry would be a fugitive for the rest of his life.  He’d have to exist as a ghost, and that’s no way to live.  But as Caitlin said these words, it hit me, what we needed was a ghost of our own…    

Maybe it was the pepperoni, or just my desperation to set things right, but I had an idea of how I could possibly get Barry out of prison with a little supernatural persuasion! Caitlin told me not to do anything weird, and to just talk to Cecile, she’s the one who can find a way to save Barry. I probably should have just listened, but I was too psyched about my new plan. I explained it to Caitlin and she stared at me with disbelief.  Mostly, because of how insane she thought it was, but I understood why she wanted no part of it.

So, Caitlin headed out and I commenced with the operation. Dressed in a handy ghost costume I whipped up out of some old bed sheets, I opened a breach into the house of Prosecutor Anton Slater, the guy who helped find Barry guilty. What would be the harm of sneaking in and suggesting he rethink what he had done and be a haunting voice of reason?  Enter: Ghost-Vibe.  The house was eerily silent and dark, so in my ghost costume, I snuck along until I found Anton Slater nestled in bed, fast asleep in slumber land.  I stood at the foot of his bed and eerily whispered: Anton Slater, you have failed the justice system!  Oliver Queen style.  Anton sprung up in a daze. He blinked a few times and looked right at me and screamed.  I tried to calm him down, but he started weeping like a child who had just seen, well a ghost.  I said, I was the spirit of the judicial system and he should take a long hard look at his last few cases.  But he was blubbering and wheezing. Homeboy was really scared! I felt bad so I explained to him it’s all just a nightmare, probably something he ate, and to go back to sleep. I even sang him a lullaby. It worked because I have the voice of an angel. He lowered his head back on his pillow and I breached away into the night.

I admit that was a major fail, but I wanted to give it one more try. So, I breached into the living room of Judge Hankerson.  It was the middle of the night, so I figured he’d be sleeping too, but instead I found him awake and fully engaged, yelling at his TV.  What was he watching? C-SPAN? 24-Hour News political pundits?  Nope. Turns out Hankerson deals with insomnia by binge-watching episodes of The Bachelor.  I hate to interrupt someone in the middle of their favorite show, but a ghost’s gotta ghost.  So, I crept up behind him and whispered: How many innocent people have you sentenced?  Then I breached the frack out of there before he could even turn around and spot me.  

The next day, with the Ghost-Vibe costume safely locked away in my dirty laundry hamper, I stopped by CCPD to visit Cecile.  I asked if she had gotten any calls from Slater or Hankerson, but she hadn’t.  Suspicious, she asked why I would think they would call.  I came clean, well mostly, I left the ghost details out, and explained how I was hoping they’d seen the error of their ways.  Cecile promised me that she was doing everything she could to legally solve the Barry problem. She wasn’t giving up, so I shouldn’t give up hope yet.  

Guys, being a superhero is tough: training exercises, constantly being beat up, and facing literal nightmares. This pretty face can only take so much, baby. JK, it really is AWESOME! Sure, a lot of your time is spent fighting baddies, but then the rest of it is hanging out with OTHER superheroes.

Last night after defeating a meturglar (a meta who is also a burglar, yeah I’m good) Dibny, Harry, Killer Frost, and I went out. It was a little hard to convince Harry to leave the lab, but the key is the promise of a good brandy. Thanks for the tip, KF.

I thought we’d find a good one at the first establishment we went to, but apparently four-year-old brandy is way too young. Per Harry, “A brandy aged six to ten years is far superior, Ramon.” We entered into a battle of wits until Frost bought us a round of very fine scotch. They had good scotch, but not brandy?! Lame.

Before I knew it, we were at a second bar, then a third. KF really knows her way around town! Now this part gets a little blurry so stay with me. It was late. We stumbled upon an outdoor ice skating rink. Dibny made his hand into a key and lit up the place! Classic Dibny. Killer Frost made us ice skates. I felt so alive like Neo being unplugged in the real world. My man.

KF threw mist that crystalized into all kinds of ramps for us to skate off of. So that’s why my arm is throbbing! I did land on it quite a bit. I may have yelled, “I’m the King of the World,” more than once.

Dibny made himself into a slingshot so we could propel ourselves across the rink. That could’ve done it too, now that I’m thinking about it…  Then, we raced. I totally beat Harry, but not Frost. Ice. It’s her thing, you know? Did I race Dibny? Oh no I did NOT race Dibny. He was very busy checking out his reflection in the ice. Dude c’mon.

Happy Thanksgiving, COC readers! Now, you’re probably asking: “Cisco, did you recently get hit over the head and forget that Thanksgiving was last week?” First off, how dare you. My mind is a steel trap. But since you asked, Yes… I did get hit on the head fighting inter-dimensional Nazis and it’s a little bit of a sore topic for me.  Okay? But my friends, I’m referring to Thanksgiving on Earth-19 of which I had the honor of celebrating with Gypsy, her family, and her terrifying father….yay!

So, you’re also probably asking: “Cisco, how different is their Thanksgiving from ours?” Think of it like this: If Thanksgiving on Earth-1 is like getting paper cut, then on Earth-19, it’s like getting Tabasco sauce poured in your eyes while being punched in the stomach. Neither is particularly desirable but you’d have to be a special kind of wacko if you think the latter option sounds fun.  

Their Thanksgiving commemorates the day the invading hordes of Plastoids were successfully driven off the planet, ending a decades-long war. It’s somber, heartfelt, and Gypsy’s family takes it very seriously. So, instead of throwing the football around in the yard with dear old dad, all able-bodied family members are expected to head deep into the ancient forest to hunt for a creature that Breacher described as some sort of wolf/jaguar/grizzly bear hybrid. Upon hearing this, I very conveniently pulled a hamstring and offered to stay behind to help Gypsy’s grandmother Debbie prepare for the feast.

Debbie is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G by the way. She reminds me of my own abuela but way more badass. She told me all about the battles she fought in during the war, the piece of shrapnel she still has in her hip, and the time that Breacher wanted to be a professional jazz flute singer. Normally, I would be overjoyed with the thought of holding that kind of information over someone, but this is Breacher we’re talking about and I’d like to remain alive for at least another year.

When Gypsy and the rest of the family made it back from the hunt at sundown, we finally got to the most important part of any holiday: the food. Not to brag, but I brought my A-game with a few crowd-pleasing Earth-1 dishes. A green bean casserole here, some candied yams over there, and a Ramon family specialty: the most delicious mashed potatoes on all 53 Earths. Breacher tried to hide it, but after his fifth helping of my mash potatoes, I could tell I was slowly chipping away his icy cold hatred of me. I was a little disappointed in the lack of a jello salad. Apparently, all gelatinous foods are banned on Earth-19 due to their resemblance of their former oppressors. I’m still wrapping my head around the meaning of the mound of ash in the center of the table. I guess that’s some sort of cornucopia?

All in all, Thanksgiving on Earth-19 was actually kind of fun and Gypsy’s family is great when they aren’t trying to murder you!