Spidey & Speedy - Central City Rush

Chapter 4 - All Of These Words, Whispered In My Ear

***BARRY***

"You, uh..." I swallow my nerves and try to project some extra bravado into my voice. "Talk like you've got a pair," as Joe might say. "Funny you should ask about Wells - you just missed him."

"Bullshit," Snart scoffs.

"I'm not kidding," I say. "Did you see that black hole just now? Swallowed him whole like the shark from Jaws."

Speaking of sharks, Snart draws his lips back from his teeth in a freakish grin. The dark goggles really don't help. "I think I've had enough of your dumbass stories, Flash." He raises the cold gun, forcing Caitlin and Cisco to jump out of the way. I, on the other hand, run to the edge of the room, then back to the center where Snart is standing. I'm surprised by how easily he goes down - he's not as tall as I am, but he makes up for that with gym-sculpted muscle. There's no way he should-

"Oh, shit!" I see him draw a second, smaller weapon - a Sig Sauer-type pistol - from the inside pocket of his jacket. At the very last second, I dodge to one side - but I can still sense a blast of cold trying to catch my heels. "Not again," I mutter to myself - I have zero desire to repeat the experience of absolute zero negating my powers.

Then it really dawns on me - that's a second cold gun. But how? Cisco only ever built the one, and Snart has it with him already. Right?

There are so many impossibilities here, it's not even funny.

I catch Cisco's eye, and Caitlin's - they're crouched behind one of the tables. It's not going to protect them for long, though, so I silently gesture to them to GTFO, as the kids on the internet would say these days.

As they skulk out of the room as invisibly as possible, I round on Snart and say, "That's a fine-looking peashooter you got there. Shame if something happened to it."

"You like it?" Snart says, raising the pistol. Instead of firing, though, he goes on to say, "They figured it would be best to kill Wells with something he designed."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah. Why do you think I took it to Oscorp? Their team sucks at developing their own original projects - they're all faulty as hell. But when it comes to reverse-engineering the competition..." Snart finally fires, this time freezing the table where I'd been laid to rest, such as it were. "They're number one, son."

"Sure. Sure. You keep telling yourself that." Out of the corner of my eye, I see Caitlin coming back into the room. I'd tell her to leave, but I don't want to alert Snart to her presence. There' also the fact that she herself is holding a fearsome weapon. Not just any weapon, either - it's the opposite of Snart's cold gun. The heat gun.

Caitlin fires the heat gun, narrowly missing Snart. Instead, she blasts and warps the floor just behind his feet. He jumps to avoid it, but his boots are singed anyway, so he lands with the soles of his feet sizzling slightly.

Who knew that would piss him off enough to make him want to freeze her?

"Come on!" Caitlin yells as Snart levels his cold pistol once again. She does the same with the heat gun, ready to fire - and clearly hoping to not miss this time.

Before they can shoot, however, I run circles around Snart. Literally. Not only does it disorient him, but I also take advantage of that to grab his cold pistol and turn it against him instead.

"There's a time and a place to suddenly turn into the bravest shit-for-brains on this planet," I say to Caitlin over Snart's head as he whirls around, looking from her to me and back again. "Maybe this was that time, but I'm not gonna let you make me useless because of it."