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𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗥 𝗪𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗥

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
best friend duties

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"REMIND ME WHY I'm doing this again?" Juliet asked.

In order to pay for Francine's medical bills, Wally had been a part of an underground drag racing ring in Central City. Except even though Francine was gone now, Wally was still doing it. According to Iris, Joe was just letting him do it, but she wanted to know why.

Which was why Juliet was walking next to Iris towards where the drag races took place. She was wearing a short black mini skirt decorated with large white stars, a cropped white tank top, a dark jean jacket, and black heeled boots. Her hair was curled, half of it tied up, and her lips were painted a shade of red as bright as her energy. She could've been with Barry, pressing kisses on his face until his skin was littered with lipstick, but Iris had insisted she come.

And now she maybe knew why. As they walked towards Wally and some people he was talking to, passing by all of the cars, wolf whistles came from left and right. Iris had obviously played the part, too — blue streaks in her hair, short shorts, tank top, furry jacket — but girls did have strength in numbers, after all.

Iris gave her an innocent smile. "Because you love me."

Juliet sighed. "You drag me into way too many fucking things, Iris."

"And yet you always agree."

Juliet thought about it for a moment as they stopped in front of Wally. "That's . . . actually so true."

"What the hell are you doing here, aside from trying to send me to therapy?" Wally demanded.

"I told you, I did some research," Iris replied, her and Juliet following after him. "I thought it would be a good idea for a story for the paper, plus I thought this would be a great way for us to really get to know each other. I mean, I want to know what's so great about this that you can't let go, bro."

Wally looked at Juliet, honestly just seeming confused. "And what are you doing here?"

"Best friend duties," Juliet answered. "Wherever she goes, I'm not far behind."

Iris nodded in agreement. "We're a package deal."

Wally looked incredibly exasperated. "No one here is eager to get their picture in the paper, you got me?"

"And which part of the paper? The front where they put the mugshots or in the back in the obituary section?"

"Yo, why don't you just take a page out of your dad's book. Let me do what I'm gonna do, okay? I don't need a big sister."

"I know, you're gonna need an undertaker," Iris insisted.

"Last race of the night, people," a man called, his arms around two girls — obviously the leader of the races. "Our reigning champ, Tail Lights."

Around them, the people all clapped and cheered for Wally. Juliet glanced around for a second while Iris just stared strongly at Wally. Wally merely gave Iris a fake pout.

"Oh, what?" Wally taunted, getting into his red car. "No good luck?"

Iris glared at him before grabbing onto Juliet's elbow and taking them off to the side, away from the cars. Juliet let out a breath and crossed her arms over her chest. She watched as Iris pulled her phone out of her pocket and discreetly took a picture of the leader of the races.

Juliet leaned her head closer to Iris as the engines revved. "You know, I can always mind control his car to stop so he loses."

"No," Iris protested. "I've got a plan."

"You've got a plan?"

"I've got a plan."

"Okay," Juliet said. "Is it dangerous?"

Iris let out a breath. "I guess we'll find out."

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AS MUCH AS Juliet loved Iris, she had to tell the girl that Wally and his drag racing would have to ultimately be her responsibility. She would be on call, of course, but Juliet had her own issues to work out. One, Juliet was a superhero — she was busy at all times, trying to figure out how to stop Zoom. Two, she still had an important job — a CSI's work was never finished in this city, apparently.

Last night, there had been a murder at Roofing Tar Industries. When Juliet and Barry arrived on the scene, everyone was already moving around, searching the entire thing. Joe excused himself from talking to another one of the cops before walking up to them. Juliet would be lying if she said it wasn't weird without Patty — she had left for CSI school.

"Hey," Joe greeted. "Bad one."

"Really?" Juliet questioned, following him to the white sheet on the floor that had a blackened hand sticking out from underneath it. "What is it?"

"Uh, victim's name is Daniel Burge. Not exactly a Boy Scout, but managed to buy this garage two years ago. It looks like he was dipped in a volcano."

Juliet's eyes slightly widened as Barry lifted up the sheet. The body was completely black and cracked. She had never seen anything like it before.

"Oh, yeah," Barry agreed quietly. "Actually, the depth and uniformity of the burn pattern is something you would see if the body was covered in something like lava, but with a lower burn temp and an added chemical characteristic."

"The fire investigator didn't find a secondary accelerant," Joe revealed.

"So that means it's a Meta," Juliet stated. "We should probably get a sample to S.T.A.R. Labs and have Cisco run some tests on it."

"Good, I'm gonna go meet Iris for lunch. She wants to talk to me about Wally."

Oh wow. Juliet wondered what that conversation was going to consist of.

(She was being sarcastic. She already knew.)

"Yeah, how's that going, you and him?" Barry inquired.

"Great," Joe replied. "Well, good. I don't know, baby steps. I'm trying to give him space. I mean, he just lost his mom. Just met me and his sister. He's got a lot on his plate."

"Yeah, he just found the best dad he could've wished for."

"Oh, you say that now, but you didn't always think that."

Barry chuckled. "Well, you were pretty strict. That's for sure. But strict isn't always a bad thing, especially when you know it's coming from love."

Joe nodded a little. "I'll talk to you two later."

"Bye," Juliet replied before looking back at the body and slightly shuddering. "Oh, God."

"It's disgusting," Barry agreed.

"Yeah, you touch it first."

"You're impossible."

"Sure, I love you, too."

After finishing up at the crime scene, they did go back to S.T.A.R. Labs and give Cisco the sample. However, Cisco was way more interested in showing them his new Metahuman app that he had created. Juliet walked out of the elevator, peering over Barry's shoulder at Cisco's phone.

"Okay, now click here," Cisco instructed. "Bam, that's my app. See, the app just went live. So, you can sync up all social media postings about Metahuman activity. Somebody sees something cray in Central City, I get an alert about it."

"Yo, man, you have too much time on your hands," Barry voiced.

Cisco took his phone back. "Oh, I thought you were gonna say it was cool."

Juliet smiled at the sound of Barry's laugh. "I mean, it is kind of cool."

"See, your girlfriend agrees with me. Thanks, JJ. I know I can always count on you."

"Hey, Harry," Barry greeted when they entered the cortex. He then pointed at Cisco's phone. "Wait, so if that app gives you eyes and ears all over the city, then why don't you use it to find the next Ms. Right?"

Cisco stopped, staring ahead in thought. "Did I just make the Metahuman Tinder?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Nope, not starting that fetish."

"Metahuman Tinder honestly sounds so funny," Juliet admitted. "I wonder what that would be like."

Barry blinked at her. "Why would you need Metahuman Tinder?"

"I don't. Just, imagine a world where we aren't dating—"

"There's no world where we aren't dating."

Juliet gave him a look, although there was fondness written all over her face. "You're making this incredibly difficult."

Barry slung his arms around her and pressed a very exaggerated kiss onto her cheek. "You've already got me."

She giggled a little. "Yeah, yeah."

Cisco then disbanded to run the samples, and Barry and Harry went downstairs to try and go figure out the breach problem. Juliet sat at one of the desks, looking up any articles about the drag racing ring in Central City she could find to see if it would be any help for Iris. It was all information they had heard before, though.

"Hey, I ran your crime scene samples six ways from Sunday," Cisco announced. His eyebrows then knit in confusion. "What's wrong with you?"

Juliet closed out the browser and turned around in her chair. Immediately, she frowned. Barry looked . . . upset, and confused. She stood up and rounded around the desk to get closer to him and to see the results that Cisco had gotten.

"I was . . . uh, nothing," Barry responded.

Juliet raised an eyebrow. "You sure it's nothing? You look like somebody just kicked your puppy."

"I'm fine, J. What's up?"

"Two things, very strange," Cisco voiced. "One, definitely Metahuman cells in the oil."

"And two, he didn't die from his burns," Caitlin added. "It was suffocation."

"Suffocation?" Barry repeated, looking back at the screen. "That makes sense, actually. The burns indicated that the body was covered in something."

"Cross-referencing O2 levels in the organic matter, I found a direct match to animals trapped and preserved in an asphalt seep," Cisco explained. "The guy was fossilized."

Juliet blinked. "Oh."

"Woah," Barry agreed. "So whoever killed him is like a walking—"

"Tar pit," Cisco and Barry said together, but Cisco said it louder.

Cisco patted Barry's shoulder comfortingly. "Mmm, too slow. It's okay."

"So, this guy is pretty much drowning them in tar," Juliet stated, and Caitlin nodded. "Okay, sure. Yeah, that's not horrifying or anything. Why did he target Daniel Burge, though?"

Suddenly, Cisco's phone started to blare with music that sounded very suspenseful. Juliet tilted her head at it in confusion.

"Oh, that's my Metahuman social media app," Cisco announced. "That's right. There's an attack in progress. Sixth and Bell, downtown."

Juliet sighed. "I'll try not to get stuck in tar."

"Yeah, please don't do that."

She teleported into her suit before teleporting away to downtown Central City. Juliet landed, and Barry sped in next to her, only to see a crowd of people standing around with a girl at the front filming on her phone. There was one guy standing by a blue truck, but then there was another guy — Tar Pit. His body and clothes were blackened, and his hand was smoking.

"Remember me, Clay?" Tar Pit asked.

"We killed you," Clay insisted.

"I bet right now you're not thinking . . . yummy."

"Yo, are you guys seeing this?" Barry questioned.

"Oh, yeah, we see it," Caitlin confirmed.

Tar Pit summoned a hot, fiery ball of tar in his hand and threw it at Clay. Barry sped forwards and moved Clay out of the way just in time before the tar melted its way through the door of the truck.

"All right, any ideas?" Barry inquired.

"Viscosity of asphalt lowers as its temperature lowers," Caitlin said.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it hardens," Cisco stated. "Hey, find a way to cool him down."

Juliet glanced around, only to see a fire hydrant there. She smirked slightly to herself before teleporting right in front of it.

"Hey!" Juliet called, and Tar Pit turned to her, summoning another ball of tar to his hand. "Come and hit me."

Tar Pit grunted in anger before throwing the tar at her. Juliet teleported away back near Barry. Once the tar hit the fire hydrant, it exploded, water shooting up from the ground and dousing the street. Tar Pit's body melted into a sludgy puddle on the ground once the water hit him.

Cisco laughed. "Oh, yeah! Team Flash and Scarlet!"

Barry pulled up Clay from the ground. "Hey, buddy. We've got some questions for you. Let's go."

That didn't turn out well, though. They had brought Clay back to the CCPD, but no matter what Juliet or Barry asked as Scarlet or the Flash, he wouldn't answer. In fact, he seemed fucking terrified. So, back they want to S.T.A.R. Labs. Juliet stood, now in her regular clothes, in front of one of the screens. Up on it was Clay's mugshot and a very blurry picture of Tar Pit that Cisco had gotten from the cell phone video.

"All right, so Tar Pit—" Barry began, looking at Cisco for confirmation. "Tar Pit, that's what we're calling him?"

"That's right," Cisco agreed.

"Tar Pit was after one Clay Stanley. Stanley, as it turns out, is a suspected hit man that the CCPD has been trying to track for a while, but they haven't been able to make anything stick." Barry gave Cisco a look when he laughed. "No pun intended."

"Do we know why he was attacked?" Caitlin inquired.

"Not sure," Juliet answered. "Stanley wouldn't answer any of our questions. He was fucking terrified."

"When a hit man is scared, you know something's wrong," Cisco voiced.

Barry nodded to him. "Hey, did you get an ID on our Metahuman?"

"Yeah, I'm running it through five different facial recognition systems right now, so it should take a minute."

As if on cue, the system beeped. At once, it pulled up a mugshot of Tar Pit, except he wasn't all black with tar this time.

"And there it is," Cisco said. "Who's the best hacker in the world, people?"

"Felicity Smoak," Juliet, Barry, and Caitlin chorused at once.

Cisco stared at them. "What is wrong with you three? That's not friendship."

"Our Metahuman's name is Joseph Monteleone," Caitlin read.

"Oh, he looks friendly," Cisco commented.

"Monteleone was reported missing, surprise, surprise, the night of the Particle Accelerator explosion," Barry replied.

"And what's the connection between Monteleone and the two victims?" Caitlin asked.

Juliet shrugged. "Not sure. I'll call Joe and have him run background checks on all three, see what he can find."

Barry followed after her. "I'll come."

"Okay, I'm gonna run some tests on the tar samples, see if I can find his weakness," Caitlin added.

"Hey," Cisco called once Juliet and Barry made it into the hallway. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine," Juliet responded.

Cisco rolled his eyes. "Not you, Barry."

"Oh, fucking sue me for not knowing you were talking to him."

"Yeah, I feel fine," Barry cut in. "Why?"

"You're going slower than normal," Cisco admitted. "You clocked in at fourteen-hundred-fifty miles an hour."

"But, I'm sorry, how fast do I usually run?"

"Fifteen-hundred. Are you getting enough to eat?"

Barry swatted his hand away when he touched his forehead. "Yes, yeah, dude. I'm fine, seriously. The difference seems negligible. Fast is fast, right? See ya."

"Yep," Cisco replied.

"You know, I'm sure if Cisco saw the state of my apartment, he wouldn't be asking if you were eating enough," Juliet revealed. She laughed a little when Barry gently pushed her away with a scoff. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding . . . or am I?"

Barry shook his head, a fond smile on his face. "I meant it earlier when I said you're impossible."

"Yeah, and I meant it earlier when I said I loved you. So now we're even."

〖 ϟ 〗

I love making jules and iris besties they're so cute aren't they