93

"What are you doing?" Tracy Brand's eyes were wide Barry, Cisco, HR and I ran into the room she was in, where she was burning many papers, Barry putting out the fire with a fire extinguisher.

"You mean save you from a painful, fiery death?" Cisco stares at her as if she had gone insane, pointing at the torch she had in her hand.

"I had it under control." Tracy says, the torch clicking on, causing us all to jump.

"Okay, you know what, let's put this down while you still have eyebrows." Cisco grabs the torch, placing it somewhere.

"You're burning this all on purpose?" I let out a shaky breath, staring at her with slight wide eyes.

"Yes, I'm burning everything." Tracy nods, explaining once she noticed us all stammering, "My work. I don't know why they call it "work", especially since none of it works."

"This isn't exactly what I expected." Barry says.

"Yeah, me neither." I mutter.

"Um, Dr. Brand?" Barry calls for her.

"Oh no." Tracy shook her head, "Just Tracy. I failed my dissertation. Nothing like ten years down the drain and a pile of debt as a legacy."

"Tracy," I start, "We- were just hoping you had a moment to talk?"

"Oh no. My bus leaves in my five minutes." Tracy looks into the pot, "Please tell me I didn't burn my bus ticket-"

"Where are you going?" asked HR.

"Big Belly Burger. I hear they're hiring." Tracy said with full seriousness.

Barry laughs, but the angelic sound quickly fades when he sees she was serious, "Wait- you're serious? What about all your research?"

"Oh, you mean my "unsubstantiated and transactional" inquiry into the "purely suppositional" nature of extra-dimensional energy?" She asks.

"Yes-" We say in unison.

"A waste of time, or as Dr. Hersh puts it. "A total misapplication of the university's resources." I might as well start practicing, "Do you want fries with that?"" She mocks Dr. Hersh.

"Look, don't let the naysayers get you down.Your doubts, they're traitors. Don't believe them. Your mind is too fine to waste turning tubers into finger chips." HR told her.

"Finger chips?" She questions.

"He's from out of town." Cisco explains, a small eye roll following.

"You can't give up-" Barry starts, "Your work on relativistic quantum mechanics and its application to inter-spatial theory to manipulate matter on a subatomic level, it's groundbreaking."

I stare at Barry with wide eyes, my brain not processing any of what he had just said, the words being to sophisticated and huge, practically oozing science.

"I haven't shared that hypothesis with anyone, other than my therapist." Tracy calls out, "Who are you?"

"We're therapists." HR blurts out.

"I-" I start to back him up, "Yeah. We are- we go around, and help people, who need to talk. And, maybe instead of burning all of your work, you could talk about it, and talk about your feelings. I mean- that's our job, to listen and give you our best advice. I'll even throw in a ride to Big Belly Burger if you're interested." I turned my head and glared at HR.

Before Tracy could say anything else, the door behind Tracy broke open, the glass shattered, ice everywhere, Caitlin Snow, who was now fully Killer Frost stepping right through, "Admission here is so easy."

Everything happened so fast. One second, Killer Frost had thrown an icicle right for Tracy, but missed due to Barry's quick moves, him moving her out the way and shoving her in HR's direction, instructing for them to get out of here. When Barry was turned, she had used her powers to send him flying, falling onto the ground with a groan, the stool falling with him.

"So, you've gone all Killer Frost, huh? New threads and everything." Cisco stepped up, holding his hands out, "I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't." Killer Frost held her hands out, "But I will hurt her."

Using her powers, she sends him flying also, leaving me. She takes a step closer to me, my entire body hunching to the side, hopping onto the other foot, my other foot coming up and hitting her in the jaw with full force, her falling to the ground.

I exhale, staring at her, "I didn't want to hurt you, Caitlin."

"You think that hurt me?" She pushed up to her feet, a small speck of blood on the corner of her lip, as she grabs onto my waist, pushing me into the dress, using her abilities to start to freeze where her hands were put, the ice spreading, a gasp leaving my lips.

Barry was up, grabbing the torch, turning it on, snapping his fingers, creating a small bolt of electricity, the gas from the torch combining with it, sending it right towards Killer Frost, knocking her off her free and sends her flying, hitting the wall. She gets up, running off, Barry coming over to me immediately.

I cough lightly, my eyes slightly wide, as I felt my throat start to close up. Barry wraps his arms around me quickly, holding onto me tight, starting to vibrate. My eyes are wide at the feeling, but soon enough, I was warmed up and could breath.

"Are you okay?" Barry stops, holding onto my forearms.

"Yeah-" I assure him, running in Cisco's direction, "Cisco- hey- are you okay?"

Barry helps him up, Cisco nodding, "Yeah, that's gonna leave a mark."

-

"That's her Detective. Icy eyes and all." Tracy said to Joe, staring at the sketch of Killer Frost was made.

"Yeah, that's her." Barry sighs, looking at the photo.

"So I'm gonna spread this around so everyone knows to look for her. Uh, can you give me one second?" Joe tells her, before turning it around, handing it to me. Tracy nods, turning away, walking away from us.

I turn, along with Barry and Joe, walking the opposite direction, "Uh, so if Caitlin wants Tracy dead, I guess what you saw in the future was true and she's teamed up with Savitar."

"I just didn't think it was gonna happen this soon." Barry spoke, walking closely to us.

"I don't think any of us did, Barr." I say quietly, as I came to a stop, my head looking back, seeing that Tracy had her back towards us, my head snapping back forward as I dropped the paper into the shredder, the entire thing shredding to pieces.

"Zee-" Barry's eyes are wide, as he whisper shouts at me.

"Do you have any better ideas?" I look at him, "We can't have everyone at ccpd running after her. It makes things so much more complicated."

"Makes what more complicated?" Cecile comes up to us, joining the conversation.

"Uh t-there was a meta attack at CCU, and we just don't have much to go off of." Joe stuttered out.

Cecile shot us a look, "Really? It's a college campus. Isn't there video footage?"

"Uh, no." Joe mumbles.