"Umm… what exactly is a metahuman?" Harleen Quinzel asked.
"How do I explain this…" Daniel muttered before looking at her. "You remember the particle accelerator explosion at S.T.A.R. Labs in Central City around eight or nine months ago?"
Harleen nodded slowly. Everybody knew about that incident. The explosion had blacked out part of the city and flooded the area with strange radiation that nobody fully understood even now.
Daniel already knew that event had been the beginning of everything. It was the incident that created The Flash, but Barry Allen wasn't the only one affected.
The dark matter released during the explosion had altered hundreds of people across Central City, giving birth to metahumans with abilities ranging from dangerous to outright absurd.
And unfortunately for society, the truly annoying ones always seemed to stand out the most.
"That incident created this asshole," Daniel said while looking at Jake. "And even if he doesn't look impressive, he does have a superpower. A pretty dangerous one too. It's just useless against someone like me."
"Superpower?" Harleen Quinzel asked, looking back at Jake in disbelief. "This guy?"
"Yeah," Daniel replied. "Persuasion through biological influence. His body releases some kind of abnormal hormone or chemical signal that affects the brain. Stay around him long enough and people start listening to him without realizing it."
He glanced at her briefly. "If I wasn't here, you probably would've lost your mind too."
Harleen felt a cold shiver run through her body hearing that.
At the same moment, Daniel let go of Jake's hair and grabbed him by the throat instead before throwing him hard into the wall. The restraints connecting the chair to the table tore free on impact.
"You fu—" Jake tried to stand.
Daniel was already in front of him.
"Yeah, one of us here is fucked," Daniel said calmly. "But it's definitely not me."
Jake's expression finally started changing from arrogance to fear.
Daniel stepped closer.
"Come on," he said quietly. "Let's take a look."
His eyes turned pitch black.
Not darkness. Something deeper than darkness, like empty space opening behind them. The room temperature dropped instantly as a strange pressure filled the air, heavy enough that even Harleen instinctively stepped back.
"Look into my eyes," Daniel said, his voice low and steady. "And see the torment you caused other people for your own amusement."
Jake froze.
"Look at your sins."
The moment their eyes met, Jake screamed.
His body convulsed violently as the confidence disappeared from his face completely. He heard crying. Begging. Bones breaking.
The last moments of the students he murdered replayed again and again inside his head, except this time he felt all of it from their side. Every second of fear. Every impact. Every ounce of pain.
The screaming suddenly stopped.
Jake's eyes lost focus completely, all emotion draining out of them before his body went limp and collapsed sideways onto the floor.
Daniel looked down at him calmly. "Well," he said, "now you can officially write him down as mentally unstable. He doesn't really have much of a mind left."
Harleen Quinzel immediately stood up and checked Jake's pulse.
Still alive.
Barely responsive, but alive.
She slowly looked back at Daniel. "What the hell did you do to him?"
"Nothing physical," Daniel replied. "Sometimes people can survive seeing the weight of their sins."
He glanced at Jake lying motionless on the ground.
"And sometimes their brains break first."
A few moments later the detective rushed into the room with two officers behind him after hearing the screaming from outside.
He stopped the moment he saw Jake collapsed on the floor.
"What happened?"
Harleen remained quiet for a second before standing back up and fixing her coat.
"He's mentally unfit," she said professionally. "He should be transferred to an asylum."
The detective's face immediately darkened.
Because despite everything—
That still meant the murderer was leaving prison.
After leaving the police department, Daniel and Harleen Quinzel spent some time walking through Central City.
Daniel was casually eating an ice cream while Harleen walked beside him with her own, occasionally looking around at the city and occasionally at him like she still wasn't sure whether bringing him here had been a good idea.
Then the world around them seemed to slow.
Orange lightning flashed through the street in thin streaks, moving between cars and pedestrians at speeds no normal person could possibly follow. It looked like electricity itself was running across the city.
Daniel's chewing slowed slightly.
His head turned.
And his eyes followed the blur moving beside them in slow motion.
The Flash had just finished stopping a bank robbery and was heading back toward S.T.A.R. Labs. From Barry Allen's perspective, the rest of the world was almost frozen. Cars barely moved. People looked like statues.
Then he suddenly felt it.
Someone was watching him.
Barry turned his head while running and saw Daniel looking directly at him.
Not vaguely in his direction.
Directly at him.
Barry's eyes widened slightly. Even while everything around them moved in extreme slow motion, Daniel's gaze tracked him perfectly, and a small smile slowly appeared on his face.
Then the orange lightning vanished.
Daniel kept looking sideways for another second before finally turning back like nothing had happened.
"What do you want to eat next?" Harleen Quinzel asked while pointing toward a nearby burger shop.
"No," Daniel said thoughtfully. "I want to try strawberry-flavored ice cream."
Harleen looked at the chocolate cone in his hand. "But you already bought chocolate."
"Yeah."
Before she could ask what that meant, Daniel leaned down and kissed her.
It only lasted a second.
Then he pulled back and lightly patted her head.
"Now I already tried strawberry," he said casually.
Harleen froze in place, her brain visibly failing to process what had just happened.
*****
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