DESEREY HAS BEEN ACQUAINTED With chaos since she was a girl.

Since gettin' shot by a cop and staying a week in a strange man's house, despite being a teenager at the time, because he taught her origami. Since growin' up and joining the police force herself; she did a whole ass car chase on the roof of her squad car that one time. Since she was held hostage by a delusional lunatic, and she thought it was a good idea to grab the knife he held to her throat by the blade.

Which means, when shit hits the fan, and Deserey finds herself at the scene of a hit and run with one man dead, she isn't surprised. Not in the least. It's not the worst wreck she's ever seen. But still. Dead is dead.

There's two cars flipped, one of which is the black mustang they've been looking for. The one that belongs to their perp. Their perp whose name Dez is pretty sure she knows. She's just waiting for confirmation at this point.

Never mind that he considers himself a god and everyone else considers him deceased. Never mind that he can do the nearly impossible.

But it all fits. Bank robberies? That's his MO. And she knows her guy here ain't above murdering some fuckers, cause he's done so before. And a guy like that? With abilities like this?

Deserey finds it chilling. Not 'cause the abilities themselves, necessarily. It's more so 'cause there's no real way to contain a person like this. Not in this city, anyway. Especially since no one here even seems to think something like 'bank robber with super powers' can be a thing. So, even if he is caught by the law now...

No. No, she refuses to think about it right this second. They'll just have to cross that bridge when they come to it. When everyone starts believing in the impossible.

So. Here's the scene: squad cars scattered around, the standard yellow caution tape surrounding the area and blocking traffic off, at least one ambulance (though who they're looking over Deserey has no idea since the only body they've found is a dead one).

Firemen and EMT hustle it to get the body out from under his car and secure the area. Within seconds the corpse is inside a black body bag and whisked away. And, just because the universe decided this picture needed to be painted in muted colors, a light rain begins to drizzle over the crime scene.

It's cold and musty. Deserey has never been a fan of dreary weather, but at least it looks right with the image playin' out before her. The rain reminds her a bit of home at any rate.

Deserey is taking statements from the only two (living) witnesses. There isn't much she can do for the man in the body bag. He'd been killed needlessly, senselessly. His family is going to grieve him now, for no reason at all, other than the fact that he'd shown up at the wrong place at

the wrong time.

It's always like that. Random, unfortunate, tragedy. A beautiful portrait, washed out in a splash of thick, black ink.

There isn't much she can do about it. What's done is done. But, but, Deserey can help catch the guy who caused the accident, and she can help figure out a way to hold him once everyone else sees exactly what the fuck this man is capable of. When they believe in the impossible.

Dez can do her job. So, she's here. Talkin' to the two living witnesses, who turn out to be Barry Allen and Iris West.

"That poor man..." Iris frowns, hands in her pockets, eyes on the coroners who're lifting the body into the hearse feet away. "The way that fog came in...I have never seen anything like it..."

This is the part where Dez is supposed to ask if they've seen anything out of the ordinary, if they remember seeing something that didn't belong there in the picture beforehand...But this is also the part where Detective West rolls up all, "Barry! Iris!"

"I'm alright, Dad," Iris sighs.

But Joe is rounding on Barry anyway and goin', "What the hell were you thinking havin' her out here?" And then it's back to Iris in a flash, "And I told you, when you see danger you run the other way! You're not a cop!"

"Because you wouldn't let me!"

"You're damn right!"

Deserey decides to hang back. Maybe this is a bit of an extreme reaction, maybe. Dez isn't sure how normal people react to situations like this. It's not like either of the two were expecting a car to flip in front of them, and neither has been hurt too terribly. Barry has a small cut on his head, and Iris has a microscopic bruise on the back of her leg. That's it.

So... It's fine?

Also, to someone like Dez, flippin' out over something like a car wreck seems... silly? It's bad, of course, it's bad, because someone is dead and a family is grieving, but also, just... It's not that bad?

There's other ways to go out, other horrors to have witnessed, that are a lot worse.

It could have been a gas leak or a gang shoot out or a mad doctor jumping out from behind the dumpster, wearing a pig mask, and Professor Pyg could have chopped their limbs off and reattached them to their foreheads.

It could have been a lot worse. A car wreck is a peaceful death compared to some other ways a person could go out, and it's the least traumatic event to witness. Compared to the alternatives, that is.

But also. Dez is a parent herself. She understands Joe wanting to keep his daughter out of harm's way at all costs, the incessant, nagging impulse to bulldoze all the threats from her path, to cover up all the ugly spots of violence drawn within the painting of life and make believe they were never there to begin with.

Believe her. Dez understands that.

She knows the extreme reaction, unfair or not, comes from a place of worry and care. From the desire of keeping her loved ones safe. The very reason the Dunets are in Central City to begin with.

Yeah. She knows.

So, she steps back and lets them have their little spat. She can talk to them afterwards, maybe.

Barry starts, "Joe, I need to talk to you."

"It can wait."

"No, now." Barry wrings his hands and steps away by a couple inches. He opens and closes his mouth once, then twice, before continuing. "I know who did this."

Dez stands a little taller at the sound of that. That's what she wants to hear.

"It's Clyde Mardon," Barry says.

Here, in this moment, hearing that name uttered, everything changes, doesn't it? The sun bursts out from behind the clouds and showers the scene with its light. An angel choir singing. Bells chiming, ringing out. The air warming. Even the mist sprinkling from the sky isn't quite as icy on her skin.

The picture of the scene switches up. A neon color pallet with orange and yellow and red instead of dull grays and russets and ebonies. 'Cause that's it. That's what Dez is lookin' for. That's what she wants to hear. This is her guy, right here. This is the guy she's after.

"I know everybody thinks he died in a plane crash after the STAR Labs explosion," Barry continues, "but he is alive."

Joe nods slowly, and when he doesn't say anything, Barry goes on, "Alright, something happened to him that night. I...I think he can control the weather."

Joe looks unmoved by this notion, and Deserey gets the feeling he's questioning his foster son's sanity. Dez knows better. Even if she hadn't seen it herself, nine months ago, she'd still believe it. It's not the weirdest thing she's heard in her life, anyway. There was this one time this street performer took a green pill someone dropped in his guitar case and ripped an ATM outta a gas station wall before his whole body crumbled into dust.

Dez has heard every story ever, so she'd believe him even if she hadn't seen Clyde Mardon herself, alive and relatively well after the crash.

But, in Joe's defense, Dez, unlike the man himself, has seen Crazy Cases (as Eddie likes to call them) all her life.

She knows better.

Barry apparently feels the need to keep going, and he says, "The recent robberies, they all happened during freak meteorological events. And when I just confronted Mardon, the street was instantly enveloped in fog."

He pauses a minute, taking in everyone's reactions, but when he doesn't receive any sort of response from Joe he sighs and shifts his weight. "Of course you don't believe me. You never believe me."

"Okay," Joe says, and he flicks his wrist and points at the ground. "You wanna do this now? Out here? Fine."

Deserey coughs into her fist, because she's starting to think they've forgotten about her being there, but Joe is goin' on anyway, "Mardon is dead. There is no controlling the weather, Barry. Just like there was no lightning storm in your house that night."

Dez stares at Joe, and goes, "Um." She doesn't know what the hell the context is for that statement, but she is positive she's not meant to hear it. It's none of her business, and this is sort of bordering on public humiliation whether he intends for it to be or not.

"It was your brain helping a scared little boy accept what he saw!"

"Um."

Barry's shakin' his head. "My dad did not—"

And then for some reason Joe is raising his voice? "Yes, he did! Your dad killed your mother, Barry! I am sorry, son, but I knew it, the jury knew it, and now he's paying for what he did."

"Dad enough!" Iris jumps in.

Deserey agrees. This is getting way too personal for her liking. This, the apparent murder involving Barry's parents, it doesn't have anything to do with her, or the case at hand for that matter. Bringin' it up is sorta a moot point, but whatever. Dez has what she wanted from the conversation anyway. That's more than enough for her.

She walks away from the three, towards the ambulance on the other side of the scene and under the yellow tape, but she still hears Joe lecturing Barry about whatever behind her.

Jeesh.

Eddie runs into her on the other side of the yellow tape, as she's making her way to her vehicle. He's just gotten there from the precinct, and he stops her and shows her the sketch he has in his hands, based on the witness' description from the robbery earlier that day. Dez can't help but to admire the artist's line work.

"Now, who does that look like to you?" Eddie asks, but he's already holding up Clyde Mardon's mug shot next to the sketch. The two pictures are identical, save for the hat he's wearing in the sketch. Again, Dez must admire the skills of the artist for creating such a life like image in such a short amount of time.

Deserey smirks back at him. She says, "O'mine own god hast hath returned anon I knoweth f'r c'rtain! Joyous day, joyous day!" Then, she points to Joe who's standing alone now where she left him a minute ago. His children must've stormed off after the lecture. "Go show him."

Maybe, okay, maybe it isn't her place to meddle, but she can't help it, alright? She can't. If you gonna yell at someone in public, then you're also gonna be made t'feel like a fool, ya know?

Petty? Yeah, prolly, but whatever.

West is technically runnin' point on this specific case, anyway, so he's gotta know about the finished sketch either way.

So. Yeah. Dez sends Eddie over to West, and she takes off for the precinct. There's a lotta shit t'do, still, and she can't hang around all day listening to other people's family drama.

{~}

It's mid afternoon when Barry comes to see her the next day. Which, if she's bein' honest, the visit does take her by surprise. She's only had, like, one other conversation with the guy, and that was hours before he was struck by lightning.

Dez is kicked back at her desk, talkin' with Chyre about Clyde Mardon's return and flippin' through the details of some other cases she's also working on (or one other case, rather, because there's several missing persons and Dez is sure they're all connected, but there's not a lot of evidence to work with).

"You sure you can focus on both cases?" Fred asks, eyeing Dez skeptically.

"Oh, yeah. I'm great at multitasking." Dez answers him without glancing up from the photo she's fixated on (a middle aged woman and her teenage daughter who both disappeared without a trace some time last week).

Fred still looks unsure, but he shrugs it off and goes, "So... Mardon, huh?"

"Mhm. That's who the witness described to the sketch artist."

(All the mother and daughter's belongings have disappeared, too, as if they never existed to begin with; the only reason they'd been reported missing at all is because the mother had missed the drop off for visitation with the girl's father.)

"Could just be someone who looks like him," Fred says.

"What makes ya say that?"

(The mother's landlord has a record. Somethin' 'bout embezzling money way back in the day, but all those charges have been dropped and the guy's been squeaky clean since then. Supposedly. Dez isn't sure. Could be he started up again, the mother stumbled on his little operation, and he got rid of her and the daughter to stop her from ratting him out.)

"'Cause no one could have survived a plane crash like that, right?"

"Sure they could, if they could control the weather."

(But then there's this other guy. An elderly man in a wheelchair, who lives all the way on the other end of the city, who's never met either the mother or the daughter or the landlord, but he still disappears in a similar manner. With his belongings and everything vanished.)

( There is at least one low level gang that hangs around that area; they could have abducted him. But the mother and daughter have no connections to the gang. Still, Dez can't shake the feeling these cases are all connected somehow. She just has to find it.)

She glances up when she realizes Fred has been quiet for a minute too long. He's staring at her. She stares back. It takes her a minute to realize he's holding back a few comments, all different variations of, 'your nuts.' Of course. It makes sense. Normal people don't believe in superpowers.

And it's times like these that make Deserey miss her old crew back in Jersey. Like. She's settled into Central City after being here a whole year almost; she's gotten used to things; she's gotten comfortable around her co-workers, sure. She might even go so far as to say she's actually enjoyed living here in Central City.

But she misses her old work friends. 'Cause they could have conversations like this back home. They could talk about wannabe gods with weird abilities, 'cause they'd all seen it before. Damn near everyday. It's normal where she comes from, the weirdness, the craziness, the chaoticness. That's all normal back home.

Here, she can't say things like, 'This guy controls the weather,' because people will end up lookin' at her with that look. The one that says she belongs in an asylum.

And, okay, look, she's tryin' not t'be too offended. 'Cause she sorta gets it? Sorta. It's normal where Dez comes from, but it isn't normal here, so of course Fred and everyone else would think it's weird. It's just frustrating is all. She didn't have to twist arms like this to have conversations like this back home. She misses that. The part where she doesn't have to fight people to make them believe her.

But yeah.

Dez and Fred are having a stare down, 'cause he don't believe in superpowers and she knows better.

He breaks first. "You don't really believe that do you?"

"I did sorta see him do it," Dez says. "At the crash site before he and his brother took off. And not for nothin' but I did also tell you they were both alive so..."

"Okay. Sure, but controlling the weather?" Chyre is talkin' with his hands now, the way Deserey does sometimes; he swings his wrist a little to the left. "Isn't that like saying you believe there's alligators in the sewers?"

Dez can't help it. She smirks at this, it's just—

"Well, I don't know so much about alligators, but I have met Crocs who live in the sewer."

Chyre is staring at her again, exasperated. "Crocodiles? Are you joking?"

Dez shrugs. "Technically he's a human. Just happens to look and sometimes act like a crocodile."

He's shaking his head now. "Unbelievable..."

"No, really. He was my friend, too, up until the cannibalism started..."

"You know who you sound like?"

That's when Barry appears.

Deserey hears his clumsy footsteps behind her, even before Chyre nods in his direction. She twists her head around in time to watch Allen narrowly miss bumping into a uniformed officer; he mumbles an apology to that person anyway before making his way over to where Dez and Fred are sitting.

"We should go to the barn where the Mardons were last seen," Deserey tells Fred. "A smart man might avoid circling back to old hideouts, but somethin' tells me Clyde Mardon ain't exactly a god of wisdom..." Then, to Barry, she adds, "Hi, there!"

Fred goes, "You really think he's still alive, then, don't you?"

"Hi," Barry says.

"D'ya need somethin'?" Dez asks Allen, then to Chyre, "Yes, I do."

"Um, yeah, but—" Barry starts, but he just ends up lookin' back and forth between Dez and Fred, like he's not sure if he's allowed to speak yet. "If you guys are busy, I can always come back later..?"

"Nah, it's good, I'm just making Chyre here question my sanity."

Fred starts to protest, but he must think better of it in the end, 'cause he just sighs and goes, "I'm going to go find Joe and tell him what you said about checking the barn again."

As he's leaving, Dez says, "Yeah, hey, I'm not kidding. You should look up Waylon Jones, too."

"Sure. Why not," Fred mutters.

Then, he's gone, and Deserey turns her attention back to Barry. "So. Whatcha need?" She leans back in her chair, and, yeah, okay, she ain't supposed to have her feet on her desk like she does, but she props 'em up there anyway.

"Right. Yeah, um. I was just in the evidence room looking into...evidence from the crime scenes over the past nine months," Barry says. "Most of them, or actually...all of them were cases that you worked on, so they need you to sign off on it before I can check them out..."

He's wringin' his hands and fidgeting a lot, Dez notices. Some people are just like that. She thinks Barry is just like that. It doesn't necessarily mean he's up to something.

But, but, hear her out, okay? Deserey has seen shit like this before. With CSI guys takin' shit out from where it's supposed t'be, and then it just vanishes. Then, the cases are shattered. She's not gonna deal with that shit here, okay?

Dez watches him fidget under her gaze for a minute. He does look too soft to sell the evidence on the black market or anything like that. From the way people talk about him, especially Joe, he's a fuckin' saint practically. But who knows. Joe is biased 'cause he's his foster son, and even "innocent" people are capable of awful things.

Deserey has only had two conversations with this guy before. She don't know.

So, she's watchin' him, and he's fidgeting, which looks suspicious to Dez. She grabs her pen and spins it between her fingers. "Whaddya want evidence from old cases for?"

Barry's eyes widen, apparently catching on to her skepticism. "Well, it's nothing bad. I just...wanted to catch up on anything I might have missed..."

She stops spinning her pen. "Oh, that's right. You were in a coma."

"For the last nine months, yeah..."

Dez can't find anything in his body language to suggest he's lying. And believe her she looks for a good minute. She hums, throws the pen back on her desk, and stands. "Mm. Okay. I'll sign off for you to take a couple boxes," she decides.

"Thanks, Dez."

Deserey stops. "Eeh, nope. You can't call me that."

"Oh, sorry." Barry immediately gets super awkward. "I-I didn't mean...I just heard Eddie call you that once, so I thought —-"

"I only let people call me 'Dez' if they know what it means."

"I thought it was a shortened version of your name?"

"Which is..? And no cheating!" She turns down the metal plate on her desk and flips her badge over on her shirt.

Barry just stares back at her. "Is it not Deserey...?"

"Congratulations!" Deserey claps once and grins back at him. A few people glance over from whatever it is they're doing nearby. "Now you can call me Dez."

"Oh, okay." Barry looks baffled, but he's too polite to question her antics. He just goes, "Well, thanks, uh, Dez..."

Dez shrugs. Maybe she's making a big deal out of nothing, with her name that is. She prolly is. She can't help it. It's just important to her, okay? It's important to her that people know what her name is.

Her name means something to her, and she won't have people erasing that meaning by callin' her whatever the hell they want.

"You're just lucky I enjoy writing my name so much," Deserey tells Barry as they make their way back towards the evidence locker room.

{~}

Evidence already has the boxes Barry's wanting gathered up and placed on the front desk. They've got the paperwork all laid out for Dez too, so she just scratches her signature down (she writes it twice because she really likes writing it) and that's that. She figures she'll be nice enough to help Barry carry them up to his lab, though.

"Don't have 'em out too long, yeah?" She places the boxes she carried up next to his computer.

Barry nods. "I'm sure I can get them back pretty fast."

"Yeah? You got super speed or somethin'?"

Barry trips as he's placing his own boxes on the desk, and he ends up dropping them and scattering the contents all over the floor. His eyes go wide. He's fidgeting again, rubbing the back of his neck and stuttering and fumbling over his words.

"S-super speed? Isn't that— I mean, isn't that...kind of...impossible?" He makes an attempt at leaning on the desk, but his hand slips and he almost falls over.

Deserey raises an eyebrow at the extreme reaction to her joke. She thinks maybe he does have super speed? Maybe? 'Cause otherwise he might've just laughed it off? Maybe he's just clumsy...? But she thinks the first thing.

Dez doesn't comment on it. Instead, she continues the bit. "Sure. Probably impossible. Unless you're an alien from another planet who uses solar energy to get super powers?"

"Uh, well, I ...am not an alien, that much I can tell you," Barry says. He relaxes a little, and they start to pick up the fallen items.

"Me too."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, 'cause you don't wear glasses."

"Aliens wear glasses?"

"The one I met did, which is weird, kinda, 'cause he also had super vision so..."

Barry watches her as they finish cleaning up his mess. She watches him, too. Just to make sure he doesn't have sticky fingers, 'cause, again, she's known forensics guys like that before, no matter how nice and friendly they seem, they're still capable of stealing evidence. Of course, he's already taking it, so stealing might be a bit redundant, but who the hell knows?

Dez doesn't see him take anything, but, but, if he does have super speed, would she even notice him swiping anything? As observant as she is, maybe, maybe, if he wanted to steal something, he'd be too fast, and maybe, maybe, she wouldn't even see him move at all...

Shit.

Barry's still watching her when he puts the boxes on the desk, and Dez has her eyes on the boxes. She'll have to look over the evidence herself when he brings it back, just to make sure nothing has gone missing, if he brings it back that is... She dunno. He might just take all the boxes and 'lose' 'em somewhere else.

Barry moves to the other side of the room, and he sits in the chair next to the white board. "So, you believe in the impossible?"

The question sorta catches her off guard. Just 'cause, she's gotten used to people brushing conversations like these off over the past year. She knows people have been comparing the two of them for a while, at least in terms of weird antics, but still.

The question catches her off guard, just a tiny bit, and she scoffs at it. She says, "Believe in it? I've lived in it. And all the chaos and insanity that comes with it."

She turns her head up towards the skylight ceiling, and it occurs to her, then, that this is the room the lightning had struck Barry nine months ago. If he does have super speed, Dez wonders if that's how he got it. From the lightning.

Does that make sense, even? Her line of thinking is: lightning is fast, thergo, lightning makes people super fast. Or maybe not. She don't know. She'll have to ask her brother later how that would work scientifically speaking.

Then, she realizes, if Barry's gonna steal something, he's gonna do it while she's not lookin', and her head snaps back to the young forensics assistant. He's still at the other end of the room (unless he's already moved via super speed?), lookin' back at her with curiosity.

"Have you ever met anyone who can move through lightning before?"

Dez raises a brow at him, just 'cause — well, that's a very specific thing to ask about. She recalls Joe saying somethin' 'bout a 'lightning storm in your house that night' earlier at the crime scene. Dez thinks that's probably what's prompted this question, maybe.

"Sure," Deserey shrugs. "Met a gal sorta like that couple'a years back, but she didn't move through it exactly. More like she became it. Girl could summon lightning at her fingertips and sorta teleport; she called it glitching. She's basically living electricity."

Barry stares back at her, mouth agape. Maybe he'd been expecting her to blow off the question.

Dez shrugs again and adds, "Moved to France and started a fashion company not too long ago. Can't miss it. It's the big ass building with the neon blue sign. Oh, and then there's that kid from Dakota who can sorta do the same thing, minus the teleporting..."

She watches Barry. Distracting her by gettin' her to go on about a shared interested would be a great strategy to force Deserey to lower her guard. Only, she's starting to think Barry isn't trying anything like that. Dez is just being paranoid because she's a bitch.

She's just known too many people like that.

But Barry is just sitting here with his head hung kinda low and a sad little frown on his face, that just looks all too real and genuine. It's very difficult to believe it's something he's just painted on to gain sympathy from others.

Dez is just paranoid. Probably. She don't know. People who're good at manipulation can make ya believe anything, ya know?

But Barry is sitting here with this sorta pathetic look on his face, and then he goes, "My mother was murdered when I was eleven."

And that catches Dez so off guard that all she can think to say in response is, "Oh." And, okay, maybe that comes off a little bit rude? But, like, what the hell else is she supposed to say t'that, huh? Who unloads somethin' like that unto someone they've spoken to twice, at most, anyway?

Unless it's a made up story to gain sympathy and trust from others before turning around and murdering them (or something worse). Then again, Joe mentioned this earlier, too, so the story's probably not made up. But that doesn't mean he's not telling it for sympathy points. Why else would he even bring it up?

Barry doesn't comment on Deserey's reply. He just goes on, "Everyone thinks they caught the man who did it, but they're wrong. My dad didn't kill my mother that night." Barry shakes his head to punctuate the point. "It was someone else. Someone enveloped in lightning."

Deserey, again, isn't totally sure why he's telling her about this, but she don't ask. Maybe she is being paranoid; maybe, he just wants someone to get it. Dez can relate to that, she guesses. Sometimes, you just want someone to validate your trauma.

Still a little weird to dump it on someone you don't know well, though. She's only heard people share their stories if they want something.

Dez don't know where Barry falls yet. She's doesn't know him that good yet.

So. She stays vigilant.

She squints back at Barry and goes, "That's...shocking."

He kinda laughs and rubs at the back of his neck. "Yeah..."

She's experienced shit like this, too, where someone's parents are murdered and they go bat shit tryna fix everything, save everyone else. She can think of at least two examples of that right off da bat.

Right now, Barry kinda looks like them, the two people she's thinkin' of. With the same determination in his eyes, the same hurt when he talks about his mother's death, the same conviction when he mentions the injustice behind his dad's imprisonment.

There's a pin board to her right, too. It's got random science nonsense written all over it, but Dez wouldn't be surprised if there's something behind all that. If there's old newspapers and articles involving his mother's murder and other Crazy Cases hidden somewhere behind all the science on the board. Another, secret board behind the first one, maybe.

There's an overwhelming sense of familiarity, here, and Deserey folds her arms. It doesn't do anything to get rid of the déjà vu, but at least she feels like she's doin' something when she moves.

When she sighs, a curly strand of her hair moves with her breath.

At least, now she's pretty sure Barry isn't going to steal anything from evidence. Dez has the idea that he's just gonna poke through the shit t'see if anything will lead him closer to his lightning lad. Probably.

{~}

"I'm not sayin' Mardon's alive, but if he is, Dez is right. This is the last place he and his brother hid out."

This argument has been goin' on since the four of 'em had left the precinct earlier that night. Dez is frankly tired of hearing it. They're either gonna find Clyde Mardon here or they're not. It's nothing to go on about, she feels. But whatever.

As they're getting out of the car, Deserey opens and closes her hands in the universal signal for 'blah blah blah.' Eddie gives her a slight grin in response.

She's just glad to be out of the car, if not to shut Chyre and West up, to put distance between herself and the others. It's been a whole ass year almost of working with these three men, but Deserey is still a bit iffy about driving places with them.

At least, they let her drive, anyway.

It's dark, but Dez can still see quite a bit through the beam of her flashlight. In the distance, the fence is still smashed from when the Mardon Brothers' plane went down the last time they (minus Eddie) were here. The barn's still chipping away, and the grass is still in desperate need of a cut.

But. But. There is something new. Tire tracks that circle around towards the back of the barn. Someone, maybe Mardon (probably Mardon), is here. Or at least has been here recently.

When Dez points this out to the boys, everyone gets their firearms out and at the ready (just in case). The four of 'em creep towards the entrance of the barn. This time, everyone makes sure to take cautious steps, even Chyre. No one says a word.

Inside is more or less the same as before (minus the sports car). Same barrels of hay and bent lamps; there's still bullet holes in the wooden beams holding the roof up. They find Mardon (Clyde) at the center of the room, His Lordship perched on a rusted metal stool with his back to them.

Joe glances at the rest of them, firearms pointed doward but ready to shoot at a moment's notice. The men are each wearing identical looks of shock and disbelief — how can Mardon possibly have survived the crash? — and Dez can't help it, she mouths, told you so.

Joe ignores her and calls out, "Mardon."

Chyre shakes his head to get himself back into the moment. He adds, "On your feet and hands on your head."

Dez isn't surprised when the murderous thief doesn't comply. They never do.

Instead, Mardon remains seated, hands limp at his sides. "You got me."

It's here that Deserey's sixth sense, of sorts, starts to kick in. She knows shit's gonna hit the fan any second now. They all need to get ready to move. Fast. Her leg muscles and shoulders tense, awaiting action. Eyes on Mardon's back, watching for movement.

He keeps talking, "The night of the storm, after Star Labs blew, after our plane went down, and I woke up on the ground alive, when I saw what I could do, I understood."

His voice is low, hardly above a whisper. The words are melodramatic, and drawn out from his lips slowly. Dez has heard speeches like this a thousand times over; she knows how it ends. They all end the same way. With the same complex, the same power trip, the same words, more or less.

"I am God."

Joe's response is automatic, his face twisting into something gruesome, voice raised maybe an octave higher than normal at the ludicrous remark from Mardon. "Shut the hell up."

Eddie and Chyre move forward to cuff Mardon, but he chooses then to stand from that rusted stool. He turns and tosses his arms in the air, spreading his fingers out like he's imagining himself with claws and making a face that Deserey thinks makes him look constipated.

The wind picks up fast. Metal objects are flying in every direction. The lamps are shaking. Leaves and dirt gets kicked up. Eddie and Fred lose their balance, getting a full blast of wind to their faces. Next to her, Joe is damn near thrown back outside and across the barnyard.

Deserey jumps into action.

She reaches out to stop Eddie and Fred, to catch Joe, something, but her fingers don't make contact with any of their arms like she's intending. Instead, the ground moves. The mud transforms into sand, and it spreads throughout the barn and over the property. Fills the entire room up to Dez's knees.

Outside, a wall of compacted sand materializes from the overgrown grass and stops Joe from slamming into the side of Dez's car. Dunes surround Eddie and Fred, and then they go sliding out of the barn, too, carried away in the grains. Over the property and next to Joe in the blink of an eye.

At first, she thinks it's Mardon's doing, but he wants to hurt them, not save them. She realizes it's her who's controlling the sand.

There's no time to wonder how she's controlling the sand. She just is, and that's going to help her bring in this asshole.

As the wind picks up to, Dez is guessing, over two-hundred, three-hundred miles an hour, the grains of sand wrap around Dez's legs, hardening so that her body doesn't budge against the current. She still throws her arms out for balance anyway. It's instinct.

Mardon narrows his eyes in front of her, hair flapping in the wind he's creating. "You're like me?"

A grill comes hurlin' at her from across the barn, but the sand raises up from the floor of the barn and swallows it whole before it even gets near Deserey. The sand shifts again, piling at Mardon's end of the barn, climbing up his legs, burying him, damn near. She's hoping it's enough to hold him. 'Least until she figures out a way to neutralize his powers.

Dez folds her arms. "You think that, but at least I use my abilities for something a lil' more creative than robbing banks."

She says that as if she has had these abilities for more than three seconds. Well. Technically, she has had these powers before, way back, but that's irrelevant right now. This go 'round, she's only just found out about, three seconds ago, but Mardon don't need t'know that.

So. She says what she says. And he says, "You're right. I've been thinking too small..."

He thrusts his hands out again, and a thick, gray cloud surrounds him. The funnel grows taller and taller and taller until it bursts through the ceiling, exploding, sending debris soaring into the night.

Shit.

The wind accelerates enough that it breaks through Dez's sand compacts. Mardon's makeshift restraints shatter, clumps of mud soaring across the room. The construct keeping Dez safe goes dry and falls apart. She goes hurtling through the air. For a moment, she's weightless. Somersaulting through the sky. The sand lifts off the ground in waves and catches her. Dez's vision goes beige and white.

That's all she sees for several seconds. Beige and white and beige and white and —

She's yanked to the left, stomach flipping, and then her feet are on the ground again. The sand falls and flattens at her feet.

Most of it has returned to mud, now, except for the small dunes gathered at Deserey's ankles. She has to squint against the dirt and leaves getting kicked up and against her hair blowing in her eyes. It's difficult to keep balance. The current is picking up by the second. It'll end up bein' a F-5 tornado at this point.

Jesus.

Mardon's funnel cloud is maneuvering towards the city. He's gonna try to destroy it, she thinks. Which is something she has never seen before. Super original idea, truly. Good job, Mardon. Way t'think outside the box!

Deserey watches the funnel for a moment with apathy. She really thought she left this madness behind in Jersey.

A tree rips outta the ground and slams down on the other side of the barn, way too close to where the detectives are stuck over by the car. Somehow, Eddie and Chyre have both been knocked out. Joe's try'n'a hold himself steady while also trying t'keep the other two from blowin' away in the wind.

Meanwhile, the funnel is inching closer and closer and closer to the city by the second. Deserey needs to do something; she's not sure what but something. Anything that isn't just standing here watching.

She takes a breath to clear her head. Okay. Okay, so there's a tornado headed for the city. Mardon is at the epicenter of that tornado. Maybe if she can get to the center of it, she can knock him over and make him lose his concentration, but she doubts she'll make it. She'll be blown over before she gets remotely close.

But tornadoes are formed when there's a humid updraft and cool downdraft; dust storms happen when particles are picked up by the wind. Mardon controls the wind, and Deserey, somehow or another, can control the dirt and dust particles and turn them into sand. Well, she thinks she can, anyway. She's not sure how exactly, but she's pretty sure that's what she's been doing this whole time, here.

Maybe, maybe, if she concentrates hard enough she'll be able to disrupt the flow of the dust gathered within the tornado, and that might allow her to get to the eye of the storm to stop Mardon.

Deserey crouches in the sand at her ankles; she imagines what she wants to happen. She pushes a fistful towards Mardon. The sand flings into the sky, joining the dust in the tornado's funnel cloud but leaving a trail hovering over the barnyard. Dez latches onto the floating grains, wrapping her fingers around the end of it.

The construct becomes hardened, solid, trailing through the air like a dog leash attached to the tornado. Dez tightens her grip and tugs; the sand around her feet holds her steady as the fast paced wind threatens to send her flying again. She's a little shocked that her idea works, but it does. It works! The tornado jerks to a complete stop twelve feet in front of her.

Dez can feel Mardon fighting against her, pulling the tornado, the storm towards him. They're playing tug-of-war with the fuckin' weather. Overhead, the sky darkens with thick gray clouds. The wind accelerates, and the roof of the barn, or what's left of it, rips from the building's structure, and it goes hurtling towards the three detectives by Dez's car. Joe tries to move the other too, but he doesn't have balance against the wind or the strength to lift two other men.

Deserey's breath hitches in her throat. She moves to do something, throw up a wall of sand to catch it, shift the ground to move them, anything, but before she can properly form a plan in her head the debris is gone. In the blink of an eye. Now, it's on the other side of the barnyard, a man clad in a bright fire engine red suit made of leather.

There's no time to wonder who he is or where he came from or what his motivations are. Deserey feels the sand slipping from her fingers, and she tightens her grip and solidifies the construct once more before Mardon can push forward with his tornado. At her feet, dirt is transformed into sand, and it lifts from the ground, swirling in circles around her body. This makes seeing a bit of a challenge, but between all the wind and sand she's hoping their visions are obscured as well. With two potential enemies on either side of her, it's better safe than sorry.

All four of her limbs are tight with effort as she struggles to keep a tight grip on her stream of floating grains connected to Mardon. Sweat drips from her forehead into her eyes; sand gets her mouth and grinds between her teeth. Dez isn't sure how much longer she can hold Mardon's attack back. The string of sand connecting the two of them is slowly drying out, falling apart; Dez can sense the tornado inching further and further away. Closer and closer to Central City.

The other guy hasn't done anything yet, as far as she can tell. Through the grains of sand surrounding her, she can make out the dark silhouette of the man, but he appears to be just standing there, watching the scene unfold.

Deserey grits her teeth and digs her heels into the dunes holding her to the ground. This can't go on forever. She has to get rid of this tornado before anything else can happen. Right here, like this, she's stuck. If the other guy decides he needs to fight her too, she's basically fucked. Even if the other guy is on her side, sooner or later her arms are going to give out. Sooner or later the tornado is going to be let loose on the city.

Deserey yanks her construct to the left so that it's nice and taught. She lets it connect with the dunes at her feet, the ground itself holding the wet, compacted sand steady in the air. Maybe, she's thinking, maybe she can get ahold of the sand and dirt that's trapped inside the winds of the tornado. Maybe she can get those dust particles to drop, and maybe that will make the winds somewhat less lethal. Maybe.

Crazier things have happened, she's thinkin'. So, she runs with it.

The experience is odd, since she doesn't really know what she's doing. She's dealt with these powers before, sure, way back when she was a teen, but that was forever ago, and she'd really only mastered the basics back then. Nothing like this.

Deserey isn't sure if she should be swinging her arms around or what, but that's what she ends up doin'. And now, she's thankful the other dudes can't see her, 'cause she's bettin' it looks pretty stupid. Still, there's a tug in the back of her mind, the tiniest of tingles, like lifting sand into her palms at the beach and letting it slip away into the waters of the ocean.

Dez latches on to this feeling and holds her hands out, only half expecting it when dust and sand and dirt come soaring across the barnyard from Mardon's tornado. Only, when it gets close enough, the dust from the tornado doesn't fall into her cupped hands; it joins the storm surrounding her body instead. Next to her, the construct rope is whipping around in the wind, but it's still holding strong.

For now that is.

Deserey keeps on, hoping she's doing something useful, but she's not really sure how much good it's actually doing. For every handful of dirt and dust she pulls into her own storm, that much more is tugged into Mardon's. Plus, with two storms blowing at once, Deserey might just be doin' more harm than good here, she admits that, alright? But still. At least, they're not in a populated area, and these storms are controlled for the moment.

The sand rope next to her strains. Something zips passed. With all the wind and sand goin' in every direction anyway, Deserey almost misses it. Another, newer gust of wind that damn near knocks her off her feet. She lets out a string of curse words as she regains her balance. Glancing off to the side, she sees the other silhouette is no longer visible through her sandstorm.

Shit.

From here, everything moves crazy fast, even for Deserey's liking. Her rope pulls hard; it begins, slowly crumbling apart before snapping in half all together. Deserey leaps, snatching it in the air. Pain shoots up the side of her rib cage as she slams to the ground again. She hisses, but pulls through, tugging the construct rope as hard as she can, fists clenched tight, fingernails digging into her palms, biceps on fire with the effort. Her side pinches as she twists her body the wrong way, and Deserey clenches her jaw.

Through the grains of sand above her, Deserey can see flashes of lightning. Zippin' here and there. Everywhere. It's moving so fast, too fast. She can't keep track of its path. It's all over the place. There's just enough time to question what the fuck is goin' on.

Then, then, it's over. Just like that. The tornado dissipates. The wind dies. Someone's gun goes off. Deserey lets the sandstorm drop just enough so that she could see what's going on in front of her clearly.

There's Joe with his back to her. And there's the guy in the red suit. He has his cowl down when he whirls around just as Joe is lowering the gun he's just fired. They're both standing over the still body of Clyde Mardon. But, then he catches sight of Dez in her sandstorm, and in a flash he has the cowl over his eyes again. Deserey covers herself in the sandstorm. She doesn't see the other man's face, and she doesn't think he sees hers. But, she blinks, and his silhouette stops on the other side of the storm.

Right in front of her.

Deserey hums to herself, ignoring her heart pounding inside her chest. "You know I was just talking to somebody about the possibility of superspeed earlier today. Weird coincidence, huh?" She folds her arms in front of her, even though the guy can't see her clearly through the sand. It just makes her feel better, okay? It makes her feel better to move around as they talk.

The guy doesn't comment on her statement; instead, he goes, "Who are you?"

"Good question. You go first."

"Uh, touché?"

She sees his silhouette fidget on the other side of the wall of sand and narrows her eyes. Something about those mannerisms seems oddly familiar, but she can't quite place who this guy is reminding her of. Deserey has known a lot of awkward types in her days. Most of them are dweebs turned psycho killers, so, there's that.

He steps closer to the wall of sand between them, and he starts to go, "Look—" Only to get a blast of sand to the face.

She's sure this guy just used his apparent superspeed to stop Mardon, but she's also sure that he got Mardon killed somehow. Plus, if past experiences are anything to go by, trusting someone right off the bat, especially if you don't know who they are is generally a pretty stupid fuckin' idea. So, sue her if she isn't ready to chat it up with Knuckles the Hedgehog, here.

She uses his momentary distraction to make her dramatic exit. The sandstorm gathers around her arms and legs, and it carries her away. She figures this guy's speed must be new to him, otherwise he would have realized that he could have easily caught up to her.

Deserey is a few yards away when her feet hit the ground and the sandstorm finally drops and melts back into regular dirt. Her hand goes to her red burner phone immediately.

Deserey's brother is on the phone the minute she calls him, answering with a gruff, "Dez?"

"Hey, B."

She shuffles the dirt with her shoe as she holds the phone to her ear. Now that it's all said and done, the shock is settling in. The bite of the wind seems a deadly kind of chilly, the sort that gives frostbite and hypothermia, the sort that floods everything away in whitewash. "I might need your help with some stuff..."

Her hands are shaking, just as much as her voice is, and her mind is painted with images from the past. "How soon can you get to Central City?"

Dez doesn't just ask for help, and neither does B for that matter. If Dez is callin' it's serious. B knows this, too, so he responds without missing a beat, "How soon do you need me?"