End Of The Line // Ralph Dibny

Chapter 22 - Petty Lies And Real Truth

An hour or two later Dibny and Allen returned from the office. They had a run in with the meta but couldn't apprehend her, instead, they brought back the head of a medieval knights suit of armour.

"The same dark matter in this, is the same that was from the tiger statue," Caitlyn analyzed.

"Looks like our meta isn't restricted to just animating stone," Iris stated.

"No, but she does have limitations. Out of all the artifacts in the office, she could only control the knight," Barry added.

"So maybe she's restricted to effigies." Ralph snorted at her conclusion and I stared at him.

"Dude it just means 'statues'" I informed Dibny.

"Yea... I don't know. Sounds kinda dirty to me..."

I rolled my eyes and continued the conversation, "So if the statues look like people or animals she can bring them to life?" Barry nodded.

"There are only thousands of those in the city," Joe commented.

An alarm blared and Iris announced, "Oh! I got a hit on facial recognition!" On one of the monitors, the meta humans face and information popped up.

"Mina Chaytan, professor of cultural anthropology?" Barry read surprisingly. "She's a teacher?"

"Was," Iris corrected. "She became an activist but she lost her job six months ago after being arrested." Her mug shot also popped up on the monitor.

"Breaking and entering, trespassing, burglary- quite the activist. The charges were dropped, but the university still let her go." Caitlyn added.

"She was trying to reclaim several Sioux art pieces from the museum," Joe read.

"So, she was at this even before she was a meta," I pieced together.

"Yeah. except now she's upped her game to homicide. She wants that third piece of that necklace? Let's find it before she does."

"Willow and the Wests are on the case," I smiled and high-fived Iris and followed them out of the room.

"What's up with you?" I faintly heard Barry ask Ralph from outside the room and I slowed down.

"Iris I'll catch up, I have to... take a call," I lied.

"Okay! We'll be waiting outside."

"If I take to long go without me." She gave me a thumbs up.

"You let her get away," Dibny stated, "we could've caught her!" I turned around and slowly walked into the Cortex. I twisted my wrist to the right and imagined myself not in the room, hopefully making me invisible. I felt bad spying on them but I needed to know what happened today at the office.

"Yeah, I let her go, but I also saved Bank's life. That was the most important thing in that situation."

"Really, Allen? Because to me, when I was a cop, getting the bad guy, that was the most important thing." Barry sighed.

"You're The Flash! You could've saved him and caught her," Ralph continued.

"All right, look, Ralph." Barry started. "I'm always gonna make the decision to help the person in danger first," he paused, "That's what we do here."

Ralph scoffed and joked, "All right, well, we'll file that under 'superhero lesson of the day' you know?" He turned around and left Allen in the room. I moved to the side of the doorway so he wouldn't bump into me on his way out and cause the illusion to drop. Each step he took through the empty halls radiated anger and annoyance. I felt bad, I wanted to talk to him but couldn't do it without revealing I eavesdropped on them.