D & D

Don slumped down on the sofa. He blew out a breath before running a hand over his short-cropped hair. Soft curls bounced against slightly stiffer ones.

"You didn't have to be so harsh," Dawnie said, rolling her eyes.

"And if I wasn't, where would we be?" Don asked. "You saw how they were. We just went from being the overlords' guinea pigs to theirs!"

"That's not true," Dawnie replied though there wasn't much sincerity in her voice. "They just want to know how many calories we're consuming."

"There's something wrong with our Quell," Don finally said. He looked up at his sister who was pacing back and forth instead of watching television.

"What makes you say that?" Dawnie asked, coming to a stop.

"Because I'm hungry again, and I don't remember being hungry on Quell, even when we were skin and bones." Don clenched his fists. "We need answers about that."

"Then we get answers," Dawnie shrugged. "But what will we do about Mom?"

"About me?" Their mother walked into the room, fixing them both with a gimlet eye. "What about me again?"

"Uh," Dawnie stammered, eyes wide.

"Well, it's like this," Don said, snagging his sister's wrist.

******

"And I want to see this research you're doing on my kids," Iris West Allen snarled, eyes flashing.

"Now, Iris," Helena Carmichael, head of Wayne Biotech soothed. "No need to get upset."

"Upset? You haven't seen me upset. It's coming, though. I sincerely promise," Iris said, her eyes narrowing.

Helena's eyes went from Iris to the two teenagers behind her, trying to look small and inconspicuous. Dawnie was looking at a tablet, flicking through something quickly while Don was staring at the ceiling as if it held the secrets of the universe. No problem there discovering who'd spilled the beans. It wasn't even surprising since their parents were fairly intelligent. Obviously they'd kicked the supposed problem up their chain of command.

"We just wanted to know how fast they're burning energy. It's just to adjust their IWA bars."

Helena fished out a couple of the newly produced IWA bars; they were coconut honey flavored according to the wrappers. She didn't have the guts to try them. That would result in days in the gym to work off the extra calories. To the twins, this would probably get them through half a day.

"What do you mean how fast? They shouldn't be burning through more than usual since they're not running." Iris glanced at her children. Both of them were focused on the bars. Don was even drooling.

"That should be the case but it's not. According to our tests and observations, they're always in a state of acceleration. We've no clue why but it's probably related to the Quell the aliens used on them." Helena tossed the two bars to the twins; the bars disappeared before they could clear the desk and were suddenly unwrapped and stuffed into the twins' mouths. "See?"

Iris turned and looked at her kids. She frowned. Her husband did that but only of his own volition.

"You're saying that the way they were a moment ago?"

"Is because they were forcing themselves to remain at that level. When they relax that control—"

"—They speed up." Iris slumped into one of the chairs in front of Helena's desk. "How long has this been happening?"

"From what we can tell, they still had some Quell they were taking on the sly." Helena studied the twins who'd polished off the bars with happy looks. They were back to their previous behaviors as if they'd never moved.

"Then is it the Quell?" Iris asked. Helena shook her head. "Then what?"

"From what we can figure out, when they took the twins, they did more alterations than we knew. They seem to have altered their connection to the Speed Force." Helena sat back with a sigh. "I wish I could say we were doing spurious research, but not this time."

"I would ask about that 'not this time,' but I'm more worried about the twins. What happens if they have a larger connection to the Speed Force?" Iris stood up.

"We don't know. You'd have to utilize your own contacts and ask elsewhere," Helena responded with a wry smile. "Officially, we don't know about those other connections."

Iris mustered up a smile before turning to leave.

******

"How many Earths are left?" Iris asked, entering the main command center of S.T.A.R. Labs.

"A lot?" Cisco Ramone responded with a quirk of his eyebrow.

"And why are you asking?" Killer Frost asked, looking up from the magazine she was flipping through.

"I need to know about the Speed Force and what happens if you're using it nearly constantly. I know what happens when you suddenly use it too much," Iris added, holding up a hand to forestall Cisco's near automatic snark.

"What do you mean constantly? Speedsters only access it for—at most—minutes at a time." Cisco asked.

"No, not minutes, I'm talking days and weeks and possibly months at a time," Iris said. She paused, took a few steps back and hauled in her twins. "Tell him."

"Mom!" Don whined. Dawnie rolled her eyes in disgust.

"Both of you," Iris's voice hardened.

"We were fine with the Quell, but now we're out," Dawnie said, eyes flicking between Frost and Cisco. She could never tell if she was really speaking to Frost or Caitlyn; they might not notice, but Dawnie had seen those micro-expressions cross the woman's face. "Now we get hungry…a lot…"

"Define 'a lot?'" Cisco asked.

"I'm hungry now," Don volunteered, unwrapping an IWA bar and stuffing half of it in his mouth.

"He's eaten three of those that I know of," Iris told Cisco. "One of them was something Helena Carmichael and her labs cooked up with supposedly three times the calories of the usual."

"That's...disconcerting," Cisco said, straightening up. "The usual ones are what? 2000 calories or so? Then the new ones would be 6000 calories. Dude! How are you not 800 lbs. eating like that?"

Even as he talked, his fingers started flying over his keyboard. Frost's hair started warming up into shades of brown and blonde from its usual ice-white.

"Let's run some tests," Caitlyn said as she emerged.