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“You killed my brother,” the masked man said, “so now you die.”
“Oh my god,” Cisco breathed out, realizing exactly who this was.
“Dante,” he said, trying to sound as serious as possible, “run.”
“What?” Dante replied. “No! Are you crazy?”
“Dante, I’m serious, get out of here!” Cisco yelled. “Now!”
Dante got up and started running. He knew his brother worked with The Flash but could he really take on a bad guy all by himself? Did he have some sort of tech or weapon in his back pocket? Dante couldn’t just leave his brother alone. He hid behind a nearby car and watched, ready to grab Cisco if whatever he was gonna do went south.
Cisco slowly stood up.
“Dante…” he said, slowly stepping toward his brother’s doppelgänger.
“The name’s Rupture,” he corrected him, “Vibe.”
“Rupture,” Cisco said, as though the name left a bitter taste in his mouth, “I know what you’re thinking but I did not kill your brother. Zoom did. Okay? I saw him stab his hand right through his chest. And when we met…your brother was way more powerful than I even am today. You really think I could’ve killed him? The dude considered himself a god. I wasn’t even gonna try to fight him. You want justice for his death? Go after Zoom. I know it may not seem like it but we’re all on the same side.”
“Zoom said you’d say that,” Rupture responded.
“Of course he did…” Cisco said, rolling his eyes.
Classic villain trope.
“You’re going to pay, Vibe,” Rupture said, stoically.
Next thing Cisco knew, a surge of energy was being channeled through his scythe and heading his way. Cisco ducked to the side, avoiding the blast.
“Dante, please!” Cisco shouted. “I know you! You do not want to do this!”
“No, you don’t know me!” Rupture replied. “You know some pathetic, loser version of me who did nothing with his life…who still lives at home and works at a sporting goods store. To think you envied that idiot all those years.”
“God, you’re just as much a jerk as your brother was,” Cisco said.
Rupture threw another blast. It hit Cisco in the stomach, knocking him back on the ground.
“I told you, Dante,” Cisco continued, “You didn’t want to do this.”
Cisco raised a fist and threw a sonic blast…his first one ever. He wasn’t sure exactly what triggered it but he thought back to what Barry had told Zoom. Hatred was indeed a strong motivator. The blast knocked Rupture back several feet but because he was Reverb’s brother, Cisco figured that it couldn’t have done much damage. He was right. Rupture looked a little sore but he was still standing.
“Well, look at that,” he said, removing his mask and clipping it onto his belt.
A smug smile was spread across his face.
“Someone’s getting stronger,” he continued.
Anger began boiling up inside Cisco. He slammed his palm down on the pavement. All of sudden, the ground around him began to shake. A crack appeared in front of him and started making its way toward Rupture. It then started splitting around his feet, forming a circle.
“I’m impressed, Vibe!” he yelled over the sound of the earth shaking.
Suddenly, he fell through the ground. Cisco got up and ran to the sinkhole. When he got there, he stood over it and saw that it was empty. Cisco guessed that he had opened up a breach and gone back to Earth-2. That’s what he’d seen when he vibed him earlier that day: a breach forming in mid-air and Rupture stepping through it. With abilities like that, Cisco knew him and his brother wouldn’t be safe until Rupture was truly defeated…or they got him to realize the truth…whichever happened first.
Cisco ran in the direction Dante had gone and was shocked when he saw that his brother hadn’t run away. He had seen the whole thing. Dante looked down at Cisco’s hands and then back up at his face.
“Care to explain?” he asked.
“Explain what?” Cisco said, trying to sound convincing and clueless as he walked past Dante.
Dante ran after him.
“Don’t play that game with me, bro,” he said, grabbing Cisco’s shoulder and turning him around.
“What game?” Cisco said…sounding even less convincing.
Dante raised an eyebrow. Cisco was smart but he couldn’t have thought Dante was that much dumber than him.
“Listen, bro, I don’t know what you thought you saw…” Cisco said.
“I saw you shoot some sort of vibrational burst from your hand!” Dante yelled. “And create a mini-earthquake! What the hell?”
“I just…I modified some tech we had lying around S.T.A.R. Labs,” Cisco said. “You know my friend, Hartley, right? Glasses, kinda sassy, used to have an ego the size of the USS Enterprise…?”
“Modified tech my ass, Cisco,” Dante cut him off once again. “You’re…one of them…aren’t you? Like The Flash with…with powers?”
“A meta-human,” Cisco said. “Yes, Dante I am. …But listen, you cannot tell Mamá and Papá about this, alright? Nobody can know.”
“How long have you known?” Dante asked.
“…A little less than a year,” Cisco said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Dante asked, with a look that almost seemed like betrayal to Cisco.
“Because I wasn’t gonna tell anyone,” Cisco said. “Not even my friends. They just…found out. But, look, I’m still me. I’m still the same Cisco. Nothing to get riled up about…”
“Nothing to get riled up about?” Dante asked, shocked. “Dude, you have superpowers…”
“That I didn’t want and never asked for!” Cisco said. “Please, can we just drop the subject?”
“Alright,” Dante said.
“Okay,” Cisco retorted.
“But why did that guy look like me?” Dante asked.
Cisco shut his eyes. That was another explanation he didn’t want to get into…but Dante had already seen more than too much.
“Because he is you,” Cisco said. “From another universe.”
“Another what?” Dante responded.
“Sparknotes version: we live in a multiverse,” Cisco said. “What that means is that there are an infinite amount of Earths that occupy the same space but they never see each other because they vibrate at different frequencies. That guy you just saw was the version of you who lives on another one of those Earths.”
“He said you killed his brother,” Dante said.
“No, I didn’t,” Cisco said.
“Of course, I know that,” Dante said. “And even though you have these insane powers, you wouldn’t hurt a fly. So why is he here?”
“Because this maniacally evil guy my team and I are dealing with right now did kill his brother,” Cisco answered. “Francisco Ramon on Earth-2 is six feet under and your doppelgänger is convinced it’s because of me.”
“What are you going to do?” Dante asked. “Are you gonna get The Flash to help you?”
“Well, under the radar,” Cisco said, “The Flash doesn’t actually have his speed right now.”
“Are you sure?” Dante asked. “My buddy said he just saw him on Waid Boulevard last night!”
“Aha!” Cisco said. “Hologram courtesy of your’s truly.”
He winked at Dante. Dante shook his head, trying to process all of the information.
“So…is Vibe going to step up and take The Flash’s place?” Dante asked.
Cisco opened his mouth about to say something when he was interrupted by Dante.
“That is a horrible superhero name, by the way,” he said.
Cisco dropped his jaw, incredibly offended.
“Do you want me to hit you with a sonic blast?” Cisco asked.
“Nope!” Dante responded, immediately regretting what he said.
“Yeah, that's what I thought,” Cisco said.
They both started laughing as they headed toward the S.T.A.R. Labs van.