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Chapter Text

(Author’s Note: This took place 48 hours after the events that ended Love and Hate.)

At the Quiver…….

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

For two days, Oliver Queen had been trying to quiet his racing mind. Laurel had helped, especially that night after the wedding reception in a really nice hotel room they had rented. But still, his mind hadn’t stopped. And he knew why. Precisely.

It wasn’t a mystery, not really, but it was still something that needed to be solved. Ra’s Al-Ghul, the head of the League of Assassins, was back in his life again. And hearing that familiar deeply bass-laden voice, dripping with murderously polite intent, saying “you know my name” like he expected everyone to bow to his every word and thought had been like someone grabbing him by the collar of the shirt and dragging him back to his old timeline.

That was why he had panicked, and frozen, in front of the man. Even if, as he was quickly realizing, it wasn’t the same man he had once dealt with. Which, if he was being honest, made it worse. Because he wasn’t seeing his ghosts, and the mistakes that had drove a permanent wedge between him and the things that mattered. No, he was seeing the man who might kill him. And if he was going to beat his fear back, and be the protector this city needed, he needed to solve why he felt that way when he saw him again.

And for that, as was the case with most things, he needed information to get those answers. So, reluctantly, he tried to pull himself back to that night in the Golden Dragon. What had he seen?

For one thing, the Ra’s he had met was not a shambling old man slowly being driven mad by long-term exposure to the Lazarus Pit.

No, this was the Demon’s Head in full flower. He was deliberately polite, carried himself with an old-world gentility befitting a man who had been around when many of the etiquette rules others relied upon had been invented, and controlled the room like a king. Ra’s Al-Ghul was not a warrior playing at being a gentleman, he was a killer who had long since mastered the art of not being a killer unless it suited him.

So that meant, the Green Arrow realized, he couldn’t just go out and find where the man was staying and have a duel with him. For one thing, he had no intel on the man. Other than what Ra’s had told him, purely to provide more depth on the nature of what he was “asking”, there was no way of knowing what else had changed.

Did he move like Qaddafi now, with an elite cadre of all-female bodyguards trained using the same tactics as the Demon’s Head himself? Was there another school, a higher form of training, for those bodyguards that he and Laurel needed to study? Were the safehouses in the city still where they were in the last timelines, and how stocked with people and weapons were they? Too many questions, and not enough answers. He couldn’t get Ra’s now, even if he wanted to.

For one thing, he couldn’t destroy the League. He wanted to. He REALLY wanted to. But he couldn’t. If the old books in Nanda Parbat from the last timeline were true, and there was no reason to doubt that they weren’t, the League needed to stay strong and vital to stand as a bulwark against the oncoming Crisis. He hated thinking about it, but he needed to. Détente needed to be the goal here, rather than going into all-out war.

And there, in that admission only to himself, was the reason for the panic. He had to admit it to himself: He didn’t know if he really wanted to try and beat Ra’s Al-Ghul. The man was a coalescing together of all the worst parts of everyone he had faced up until now. He had the resources and charm of the Merlyns, meaning going hands-on with him before either he and Laurel had the proof they needed would make them fugitives and outlaws in a way they couldn’t survive.

As a tactical thinker and strategist, there was no doubt he was the equal of Amanda Waller.

And as a combatant, it strained credulity to imagine that the sultan of the League of Assassins could not handle himself on par with David Cain, Cassandra Cain, the Merlyns, or Helena Bertinelli.

No, this was going to take a while. So, while their intel file was being built and plans were being made, there was really only one thing left to do:

Think about what had happened. It wasn’t something Oliver wanted to dwell on, but he knew he had to.

Losing to Ra’s the first time had destroyed him, because of what it had made him do. Hearing the man’s voice again, and knowing the architect of that pain was back, had frozen him where he stood. If defeating Ra’s was going to happen, he had to overcome that fear.

And that, that fact, comforted him. Outside of himself, and maybe Barry and Patty, no one really knew what they were up against. He couldn’t let Thea and Roy go out in the field, knowing next-to-nothing about what they were dealing with, because he was too in his own head to put together a profile. As the Emerald Archer, he was expected to protect people. And his wife, and the students he and Laurel had trained, were at the very top of that list.

So, he could feel fear. It would be ok to accept that Ra’s Al-Ghul scared him. But it would not be ok to let that fear govern him, to guide him to hold secrets and walk his city, his students, and his wife into a trap because he was too scared to talk.

Glancing over at his wife, and boy did that sentence feel good to say out loud, he felt a sharp sting of regret. Dinah Laurel Lance did not need any protection, or anyone to watch her back. She was not a young and callow ingenue, untrained in combat or how to think. No, she was a master in her own right. But he had sworn to be the strength by her side, and in the first test of that promise, he had failed her.

So, with emotion more than logic, the Jade Samurai asked one question of the Queen of the Fist: “Are we okay?”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had heard a lot of things, in a lot of different languages, so it wasn’t like there was anything she was particularly unused to hearing. Except, of course, for Ollie asking her if they were okay after she had seen him have a panic attack. But as she was getting ready to mentally scoff at the question, the fact that it was Ollie asking made her stop and contemplate the question in good faith.

She knew she had heard enough little girls calling themselves women talking about their partner’s shows of vulnerability had made them less attracted to their partner, not more, that she could understand why someone might think it. Add to that the tactical failing of Ollie just freezing, and it wasn’t insane to ask if they were okay. But she knew they were.

She didn’t know if Ollie remembered it, but this had happened once before. It had been when Helena Bertinelli had retired Shado, and Slade had torn strips off of him for letting it happen. But unlike that last time, Henri Ducard wasn’t an ally. He was not a friend who could be reasoned with, and talked down from the ledge. No, it was obvious what Henri Ducard really was.

Ra’s Al-Ghul, as odd as that name was to say, was clearly a threat to Starling City. Even without any more information besides a name that translated to the Demon’s Head in most dialects of Arabic, and a public presentation that indicated he had old-world money and resources, just the way he moved was a sign that he was not to be fucked with.

Those suits that he had tried to give as gifts, even though they were obviously going to be wired with trackers and GPS, was proof he had access to top-of-the-line quartermasters and technology. In short, whoever he had been in Ollie’s last timeline was someone who was very dangerous. And him freezing, just like he had frozen when hearing Slade screaming at him, was not a sign of weakness or panic. It was that he had not expected to see a monster from his past again. But now that he was here, the Green Arrow was on the job. And that was a good thing. 

Because if Ollie was thinking about Ra’s, that meant that she could handle the other half of this father-daughter shit sandwich. Talia Al-Ghul, as strange as this was to contemplate in a time when everyone had some kind of a digital footprint, seemed to not exist. Sure, she was using every backdoor Curtis Holt and Barbara Gordon had carved out in every major and minor security database that there was. But she wasn’t finding anything, and that was disconcerting. But listening to Ollie’s grumbles in Arabic over by his own computer bay, before he just put the notepad down and headed over to the weight room, she could tell he was having the same questions she was.

For one thing, what did Talia Al-Ghul really want? Sure, she had been “promised” to Ollie for some sort of political alliance between whatever the League of Assassins was and the Green Arrow. But that being the only thing Talia was getting out of this didn’t particularly seem to track, so there HAD to be more. But what? What could she be getting out of that particular plan of her father’s? And then it hit, and the Black Canary could have screamed. (Not her sonic version, of course, but close enough. That was saved for what happened if she ever saw what she just KNEW was going to be some high-end supercar that the Al-Ghul’s\Ducards would be driving.)

Talia Al-Ghul, and this was difficult to do just by reading micro-expressions and body language since the woman never talked or spoke, seemed to want an heir. Someone to be the next head of the League of Assassins. And since that appeared to be her goal, why not try and get the Green Arrow to sire that heir? It was disgusting in the extreme to realize that someone thought of her Ollie, the love of her life and her soulmate, as breeding stock and breeding stock only. But since that was apparently the rules of the game that was playing, the Songbird of Starling knew that’s how she had to think of things too.

But why did she want an heir? What had her father promised her? That was something she’d need more direct contact with the woman to discover. But in order to get to them, to really stop whatever this League of Assassins was before innocent people died, she’d have to ask Ollie about what he remembered from the League in his timeline.

Laurel knew her love’s tells for just about every circumstance. Training alongside someone for 6 years, and loving them your whole life, meant you tended to know how they thought and moved. Add to that what they did in their lives, and it was just good practice to learn how to read someone’s moods so you could follow their moves without having to be given breadcrumbs. So, regretfully, the Queen of the Fist walked over to Ollie as he racked a barbell loaded with 280 kg after another set of heavy high-bar back squats and placed a calming hand on his sweaty shoulders.

“We need to talk, Ollie” she said calmly, hoping she’s not scaring him.

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“You know I don’t think anything less of you, right?” Laurel said carefully, pouring them both mugs of persimmon leaf tea that was a wedding gift from Bruce Wayne. A conversation like this needed to happen before Thea and Roy got here, because they needed to run the profiles and come up with rules and engagement. And that simply could not happen if Ollie was still in his own head.

“I know you don’t, Pretty Bird, but I do. I saw him and it was just like the last time. I couldn’t move. I could barely breathe.” Oliver says, his voice getting thin all over again.

“Center yourself, Ollie. We’re here. Have a sip of your tea, and remember where you are” Laurel says carefully, wrapping her hands in her husband’s to try and center him back to the real world.

“I see him, and I remember…. Flashes. Little hints of memories I’ve tried so hard to bury, to forget so I can be the man this city needs. The man you need” Oliver says, and right there Laurel sees it. He still sees himself as her protector, as the city’s guardian ninja. By and large, that was a good thing. But when this was what came with that, she wanted to take the pressure and stress off of him.

“Tell me about them. Holding on to them, carrying that weight, doesn’t do you any good. All it does is make you freeze when you see him, and if we’re going to stop him, you can’t freeze in front of him” Laurel said, and she could see by the look in her husband’s eyes that what she was saying got through. She knew him better than he knew himself, and understood that talking if it wouldn’t do any good was not something he was going to be ok with. But if there was a reason, if it would solve a problem, that he would gladly do.

So, he told her all he remembered. And as Laurel listened, she winced. This thing they were doing now, and the man Ra’s was apparently, was a whole different level from anything they had faced before. They could win, though. She knew that.

Didn’t she?

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20 minutes later, still in the Quiver………

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As Oliver Queen finished putting together a basic biography, he was bothered by what wasn’t here. For one thing, most of what he had here was incredibly speculative. When MI-6, the FBI, Mossad, the GIGN, the GSG-9, and Interpol has no idea about you other than rumors and innuendo it becomes clear that you are a ghost unless you choose not to be.

That concerned him, but only for a moment. Because the bigger question was why him and Laurel. What about what they were doing had so intrigued a man like Ra’s Al-Ghul that he had chosen to stick his head out and appear in public? And how did he know who was under the hoods of both the Green Arrow and Black Canary?

He didn’t like having this many questions. Well, he did. But he really liked the ability to get answers more. And right now, he couldn’t find any. Without even having to glance, except to make sure that the carafe of coffee between the two of them was where they both could reach it, he knew that Laurel was coming to the same uncomfortable conclusion that he was: The Al-Ghul’s were a family who they knew next to nothing about.

But while they didn’t have tangible information, what they did have was rumored crimes. And, somehow, that was even worse. From Monaco to Buenos Aires, and all points between where an excellent opera and culture could be found, there were bodies.

Shot with black-fletched and black-tipped arrows and impeccably grouped, because of course they were. You couldn’t have put a toothpick between some of these arrows, so he knew the League was still using archery as its primary mode of assassination. That was at least SOMETHING. Cold comfort upon realizing anyone could make arrows, and he had no idea of the metallic makeup of the shafts so it wasn’t like he could track them that way. But it was better than nothing.

The worst part of this was realizing he couldn’t destroy the League. Novu had been a lot of things, but the man had never lied. And even if he hadn’t believed what Novu had said, seeing the old books at the ruins of Nanda Parbat had been all the proof he needed. The League of Assassins was designed to serve a purpose, to mean something, and it was clear that it had strayed from that responsibility.

But how to convince Ra’s of this? It was pretty obvious to the Emerald Archer that the last thing to do in the situation he found himself in was to imply, in any sense, that Ra’s had been his mentor at one point. But those were questions for later. Right now, there was a simpler task.

Laurel and he had studied the Al-Ghul’s extensively, and knew that their students were probably not the target of anyone from the League. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t stumble upon some rogue cell out there while they were patrolling. And they needed to prepare them for that.

Oliver was over his fear. Now it was time to prepare.

(Thea Queen’s POV)

Seeing her older brother get married to her sensei had given Thea Dearden Queen ideas, ideas she was only all too happy to share with her mother. But those ideas, she was beginning to think, were going to have to wait for a while. Because, as she walked into the Quiver all bubbly and excited, she saw two blackboards, a tray loaded with baked goods and coffee, and she just KNEW.  This was about that guy at their reception, wasn’t it? This was a work thing. Sure, they were married now and should be on their honeymoon. But they were still the Green Arrow and Black Canary, so they still loved solving mysteries and protecting people. And whoever that guy and his daughter were, they clearly were very capable of stopping them from doing both.

But she had been hearing things on her end too. For one thing, Simon Stagg had been making a stink. After Brickwell’s part in his attempt to gentrify the Glades had been made public, the City Council and the State AG were going through his business records looking for everything they could find. And because this was apparently just what corrupt businessmen who don’t want to go to the Monroe Correctional Complex choose to do, Simon had blamed Artemis and Arsenal for the whole thing. Calling entrapment and everything else, because of course he was.

And if her informants were right, and she had no reason to assume they weren’t, Stagg was looking around for a hitter. She had heard names, but it wasn’t like they were anyone she needed to be worried about. But still, she wanted a look at the databases to see what those names were capable of.

And yet, the Princess of the Glades got a sense that now was not the time to look at those databases. Ollie being in no mood for fun down here was not a surprise. He always smoldered when he was in Green Arrow mode, so him not being in the mood for jokes wasn’t too much of a surprise. But seeing Sensei Laurel glowering at her computer, taking notes in what looked like Korean, was a whole different thing.

Whoever those people were, they scared Sensei Laurel and Ollie. And that scared her. So when Ollie and Laurel brought her towards the briefing room, she got focused. This wasn’t a little thing they were reading her in on. And as Roy came in from his auto mechanic’s job, Thea knew one other thing too: They were finally full-fledged members of the team. Not students or the “kids” as they called themselves. She just hoped that was a good thing.

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“This is Ra’s Al Ghul, who’s only known alias is Henri Ducard. What we know of him from a dive through the databases of every major law enforcement and intelligence operation in the world is remarkably scant. All we have here is his name. And that is only because he told myself and Laurel in person, with a room full of fellow heroes as witnesses. But what you know, what you saw, is only the beginning.

He leads the League of Assassins, an apparently ancient order of trained professional killers. They do not use guns, and would not here in Starling City even if they did. Strangely, these are people who believe in the idea of a balance between good and evil. They seek to serve that balance, and they wish that myself and Laurel join them in serving that balance. They do this by killing, and we cannot abide that” Oliver said, his eyes cold and purposeful.

“We’re telling you the little we know about them for this one reason. If you see anyone who does not look like a Yakuza, Triad, or Sons of Samoa member we request that you trail them. Do not engage with them. We need information much more than we need a fight” Laurel said, knowing what Oliver is about to do and preparing to support him.

“But there is something, and it’s something we could not have told you before right now. I have dealt with Ra’s once before, in another timeline. The Flash, and Lady Lightning for that matter, knew me in this past life and it was Barry’s choice to travel through time and give me a second chance. Some of our enemies, the people we’ve had to fight, are people I had a vague experience with. Ra’s is one of those people. And what happened to me is why I am telling you not to engage with him or any of his guild. We need to know the differences between the Ra’s I met, and the one we saw at the wedding reception” Oliver said, sensing Roy’s eruption a beat before it happens.

“Wait, you knew us once? You kept this from us for how long?” Roy screamed, a reaction that precisely everyone expected.

“Look, I know why you’re upset. And it’s a fair question to ask, and a fair thing to be angry about. But this was the best time to tell you. Any time before this point would have been bad tactics, Roy.  If you want to talk with me more about this, want to state your side more, we can. But let us finish the briefing first” Oliver said with steel in his voice.  

“That goes double for Talia. These are very dangerous people who we know next to nothing about. So, the last thing either of us need is to start a fight with an enemy whose capabilities we do not know. What we need right now is information, so everyone down here is going to continue doing their patrols and continue helping the people of this city when they need us. But we are also going to make damned sure this city doesn’t turn into a warzone if we can help it” Laurel said, and everyone knew it was time to go out on patrol.

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(Roy Harper’s POV)

Roy Harper had always trusted his sensei. When his sensei said “Go and run 10 miles, you need to get in top condition” he had gone to a track in the Glades and run until the color left his eyeballs. When Sensei Oliver had introduced him to the Flash and Lady Lightning and told him they were friends of the first order, he had made damned sure to treat them like allies and not like people who didn’t understand how grim things were in Starling City. But every decision now had a question behind it, and it was achingly similar: Was he being pushed as hard as he was because he wasn’t hard enough in the last timeline?

So, while Sensei Oliver did his final checks on the compounds that went in his specialized arrows, Arsenal walked up to him and asked the one question that had been bothering him.

“What was I like in the last timeline?”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Well, Oliver knew this question was coming. He hadn’t been surprised to think that Roy, a student who he never really had much of a chance to tutor in the last timeline, would hear about his sensei having lived a whole-ass other life and focus on the idea that he might not have been good enough in the last timeline. That, of course, was nowhere near the truth. It had been one of the great disappointments of his life, and this too could be laid at the feet of Ra’s, that he hadn’t really had enough time to teach Roy in the way he needed.

It was why, when his memories were restored, he had vowed to give Roy the full depth and breadth of everything he knew. From getting in peak shape, to martial arts, battle tactics, and archery, the Green Arrow was grooming Arsenal to follow in his footsteps when the time came. And now, as he put the miniaturized pepper spray balls in the last shaft of his very last arrow, it was time to explain it all to his student.

“I didn’t get as much time training you in that last timeline as I would have liked to, but I can tell you that you showed a great natural skill for this life. If I had been given the chance to have you as my protégé all the way until the end of the line, that would have been my genuine honor. But if you can believe it, the main reason why I was unable to get that time training you is because of Ra’s Al-Ghul. In that last timeline, he engineered a plot that required you to sacrifice yourself to save me and the rest of the team at the time. It was both proof of your nobility, and of Ra’s skill as a tactician. Please take him seriously, Roy.”

And without even realizing it, the Emerald Archer realized he was crying. Not anything heavy, but enough to be noticeable. He hated Ra’s, hated what the man had taken from him, and what beating him had required. If he could win this time, maybe without losing quite so much, that’d be the best outcome of this whole thing.

And then he saw Roy extending his hand for a handshake which he offered before bowing genuinely to his student. Things were ok between the Red Tornado and the Emerald Archer.

And yet, Ra’s still loomed. The demon wearing a suit and tie. The devil in Armani. This was going to be a long mystery.

Chapter Text

On a rooftop in Little Tokyo in Starling City outside the Golden Rose whisky bar……..

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had long since accepted that the world she now traveled in was nothing like the world she had known before she had taken a trip on a plane, and a rickety bucket of bolts that could barely be called a bus, to be trained by the world’s finest martial artists in a monastery in Indonesia. She had been trained to be a world-class hand-to-hand combatant, who was skilled in more disciplines of combat than most people could truly need usage of. And then, over time, it had become obvious to her that she needed more. So, she had moved to become a master detective, interrogator, and profiler with the same skill as she had learned martial arts. And she had managed it, even as she always felt there was more to learn and study.

The reason was, of course, simple. She was the Black Canary, the yin to the yang of her husband Oliver Queen who was the feared archer and master detective known as the Green Arrow. If any of the criminals who called Starling City home genuinely believed that there was a weakness in their partnership, the city would be weaker. And that simply could not be. So she grinded and studied and trained on all of her skills until, with a great deal of amusement, the Interpol file on her and Ollie included the words “World’s Greatest Detective” for the both of them.

But that was not the only change. Early on, she had come to see that there were people with powers beyond what she could have comprehended. Speedsters who could run Olympic-length marathon distances in two minutes and refugees from a dying planet with all the powers of gods. And yet, Lady Lightning and Supergirl still looked to her to set the standard just like the Flash and Superman did for Ollie.

 On balance, the changes in the world were a good thing. But dealing with something like the League of Assassins? That wasn’t. Not even close. This, from the bits and pieces Ollie could remember, would require all of their skills at investigation, interrogation, charm, forensics, criminology, and more than a fair bit of intimidation to get them anywhere close to where they needed to go. And they still had a whole city to protect.

So, as much as the Songbird of Starling didn’t like it, sending the League back to where they came from was going to be a slow-play thing. Time to handle some other business in the meantime. Namely, a long overdue investigation into what exactly the SCPD was doing with all the money they were supposed to be using for SWAT training. No one, specifically her and Ollie, wanted SWAT officers trying to deal with people like the Merlyns, the 12 Brothers of Silk, or the League. But they still wanted them trained enough to handle the Yakuza, the Triads, and basically not cause front-page news for Starling City. That seemed like a fair ask.

However, when they went to go and take down Clayborne, the idea that they could cut through the SCPD’s SWAT unit like there wasn’t any particular challenge had worried her. She knew it had worried Ollie, because they had also heard the rumors from neighborhoods just like this one that the SWAT guys were also dangerously incompetent when they did raids on behalf of Vice or Narcotics. So, time to trail a couple of the worse guys and see if they could get any intel. This wasn’t a snatch-them-up and put the fear of god in them sort of a thing. This was watch, track, and build patterns.

But trailing a SWAT cop without being seen, or doing something to trip their danger sense? That was another data point. Because Laurel was pretty sure they wouldn’t be noticed, and that made her sad. Sure, they hadn’t trained with ninjas to make sure they could hide in plain sight if they needed to. But the idea that a trained SWAT officer had such bad instincts that they couldn’t feel someone watching them just infuriated her. Being a police officer was supposed to be a sacred covenant. It was supposed to matter. And these guys having no instincts let her further know something she had heard: These were guys who got into being police for the wrong reasons.

And the Queen of the Fist was about to show them the right way.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen knew that there were things that would always be different about the way he and Laurel saw the world. Maybe it was that he had done this before, even if he thought more and more that his attempts at actually doing it were exceedingly amateurish.

But mostly, he could admit to himself, it was because he and Laurel had been trained in very different contexts. He had been trained by high-level spies and mercenaries, people who had a natural and necessary cynicism in regards to the general goodness of law enforcement. After all, in many contexts, the police would just get in the way of what they were trying to get done.

But Laurel had been trained by world-class martial artists, people who were far more interested in making sure she had all the skills and knowledge she needed. So, it had taken her a little bit longer to get cynical about the idea of the SCPD being functionally rotten.  Mainly, it was listening to the people of neighborhoods just like this one that had convinced her.

It was the thing he loved the most about her, if he was being honest. Her genuine hope for a better world, and her intense desire to see justice done, had rubbed off on him to do the same. Even if, he thought with a smile, he was a lot more grim than she was.

Ever since he had come back from Yeon-Og, and put the hood on, he had been ok with being the guy you didn’t want to see coming. He had always wanted to have an aura, to have an idea that came with his presence. And he wanted no one to fear him coming more than he wanted dirty cops to. It had always bothered him that, outside of a few exceptions, the badge meant nothing to the men and women of the SCPD.

And the Green Arrow knew where the source of the hatred had come from, at least in this timeline: Tempest. There had been an honest-to-goodness goddamned prison riot, and the brass downtown had been so corrupted by Merlyn that they had forced Quentin (who was a detective and not a command-level officer), and the vigilantes of the city to be the last line of defense between Slabside Heights and highly violent federal prisoners roaming around downtown Starling City doing god only knew what. And why? Tempest’s money. Of fucking course.

But that wasn’t all of it. He was beginning to realize that when you couldn’t get top-drawer talent, you ended up getting guys who wore the badge because it got them the chance to beat up on poor people. And those were the guys who caused more problems than they were worth, because they didn’t care about anything but putting hands on people and kicking down doors.

Sure, if he knew you were guilty, he made damned sure that seeing the Emerald Archer in your doorway was precisely the terrifying experience you had been told it would be. But that was because he had proved that guilt, through forensics and financial records. It wasn’t just on his own say-so.

More to the point, if someone wasn’t guilty, Oliver wouldn’t move on them. No matter how many people were asking, or how loud they were asking. There were some protestors, usually found in neighborhoods far from this one, who wanted to see him and Laurel burn the SCPD to the proverbial ground. But he knew that was as much bullshit as thinking every cop was clean. The SCPD was needed, especially for when he and Laurel needed to stop. He needed evidence, evidence that was more than just someone’s idea.

It was why he and Laurel had sat up here, because one of the SWAT trainers had spent quite a bit of time at this Japanese whisky tasting bar that was right on the edge of being unaffordable on a cop’s salary. And even if it wasn’t, a SWAT cop drinking at a whisky bar in Little Tokyo this much would ask questions that would be uncomfortable. This was still a Yakuza hotbed, after all, and it wasn’t a place cops needed to go. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

If the Jade Samurai could do anything tonight, he would find the right answers to the questions he had. The questions the wrong people didn’t want him asking.

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As Sergeant Mario Bailey finished his last highball made from top-of-the-line Japanese single-malt whisky, he nodded his head at the heavily tattooed bartender and headed for his car. Sure, he knew this was a Yakuza spot but he didn’t care. They weren’t bothering him, and his watch commander tended to send them on jobs dealing with the Triads or the Seven Star Mob. Besides, this was how things had always been done. People in Starling City got favors done for them, and they did favors for other people. To do anything else? It just wasn’t how business was handled.

But there would always be those people who didn’t understand how the world worked, and chief amongst them was those vigilantes the Green Arrow and Black Canary. Ever since they had arrived six years ago, they had tried their level best to make things fucking impossible to work right. And who precisely had given them that authority? The people of this city? Like they could deputize anyone to do anything. It was silly.

Sure, he had heard they were ninja lurking in the shadows and the rooftops. But he didn’t believe that. That was a bunch of scuttlebutt and gossip thrown around by gang members trying to do anything they could to cut a day off of their sentences. He didn’t even believe what Kreisberg had said about them. That man was an idiot. Anyone could have made him say anything. To get a shorter time on his sentences, he would have said ANYTHING.

The other SWAT guys talked about them too. And to a man, and it was only men who worked on Starling City SWAT, none of them were impressed with what these so-called Ninjas of the Emerald City were supposed to be capable of.

“Look at what they did to 40-David” said their captain Clint Bennett, and the only man who was somewhat willing to believe the Green Arrow and Black Canary. “Three of those guys are still in the hospital with broken bones, and every last one of them are going through hard physical therapy after bodyguarding Clayborne. They might be legit, boys.”

Captain Bennett was wrong, though. 40-David was soft. They were 20-David. They were the best.

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance didn’t know the name of the cop walking out of the bar they were watching, but she knew it was a cop. Badge on the hip opposite his dominant hand, so he could show it if someone stopped him or confronted him. Walking to make himself appear bigger and take up more space, which was apparently a training tactic used at the SCPD since the first class of cadets back in the late 1860’s. She wouldn’t be surprised, either, if this was the sort of guy who carried around a personal Desert Eagle or something like that. SWAT guys tended to want the biggest gun around for their own personal use.

And these SWAT guys, to a man, seemed to move like they were the toughest of the tough amongst the SCPD. She had heard the stories from the people of Little Tokyo, Chinatown, and Little Seoul. These were men, and it was obvious the SCPD only hired men for SWAT, who thought that putting up heavy weights in the gym and having the biggest guns around meant that you didn’t need to interact with people the right way. They didn’t speak Japanese, or Mandarin. They didn’t apologize when they went to the wrong house, and they put hands on people when they didn’t need to. And that she had found from just the official reports, and asking questions and listening to the answers. What was out there that she hadn’t heard? What were people too scared to tell the Black Canary and the Green Arrow?

She knew that, 6 years on, there were certain things about the symbol she had made herself into that simply had never been part of the plan. But the idea that people felt comfortable with talking to her, with telling her their problems, because they knew she’d do something about it once she knew had never been one of them.

If people came to her with a problem, she’d run it down. Sometimes that meant sending people to Wildcat’s so they could learn how to fend for themselves, because going in to deal with the bully of a tenth-grader was the equivalent of blowing up your house because you saw a spider. But when things like this showed up? She was duty and honor-bound to intervene personally.

It wasn’t that there needed to be no police. She had been a vigilante long enough by now that she understood that there were always going to be people who needed to be far away from public society. Some people were just dangerous, and pretending that they weren’t was foolhardy. But as long as there needed to be police, she didn’t want this to be who they were thought of being. And that was why this trainer, this Mario Bailey, was going to be their first target to make a change with.

On the way over, the Songbird of Starling had read his jacket and she was not particularly impressed. If this was an example of the people that the brass downtown was picking to be a training officer for people wanting to get into SWAT, it was no particular wonder why things were as rough for the SCPD as they were right now. Rated on all the weapons SWAT were required to be skilled on, but took three tries to get everything done. A cross-agency training with the FBI’s Enhanced SWAT unit had a note in Bailey’s file about how he had chafed under authority, which made it all the stranger that he was a training officer for SWAT and a Sergeant.

And now, seeing the man in the flesh, she was even less impressed. For one thing, he smelled like he had been dipped in Japanese whisky. A guy like this, so obviously drunk and in no condition to work if he had been called in, should not be a trainer. She wasn’t even sure if he should be a cop. And to be getting drunk at a Yakuza bar? It was the height of poor instincts.

Speaking of poor instincts, how did he not feel their presence? Laurel knew they had been trained by ninjas and spies, but even a quick check to see if you were being watched was something you should do. Especially if you were coming out of a Yakuza bar. It was just galling to see this, and realize that this was someone who was training officers to be members of SWAT. What else were they learning wrong?

This couldn’t continue. It absolutely couldn’t. This obviously drunk man was heading towards his car. With a nod to the Jade Samurai, she clipped her escrima sticks onto the high-strength cable that came from one of his grappling arrows and slid right down in front of a shocked Sergeant Mario Bailey.

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“Evening, Sergeant Bailey. Having a good night?” said the Black Canary, eyes never leaving an obviously inebriated sergeant.

“Why yes, I am. But what I don’t know is why you care” slurred Mario Bailey, glancing down at his personal Desert Eagle.

“Here’s why we care, Sergeant. You’re drunk, obviously, and you’re getting ready to drive. More to the point, you are walking home from a Yakuza bar drunk and we can only guess what you told them or what they told you to do. Do you get why we care now?” said the Green Arrow, coldness in his voice as he stares a hole through Sergeant Bailey.

“You don’t scare me, you know. Neither of you do” Mario Bailey said, trying to point a finger at the Emerald Archer and the Songbird of Starling.

“We don’t want to scare you, Sergeant Bailey. Neither of us do. Our job is to stop scary people. It’s what the city expects from us, because officers like you fell down on the job so many times no one trusts anyone wearing a badge anymore. We’re trying to change that, and some good officers are too. But right now, Sergeant Bailey? You’re our biggest problem. But we’re not trying to scare you” the Black Canary said, still managing to sound kind even as her disappointment bleeds through every word she said.

“Now, call a cab and go home Sergeant. Because if we hear you drove drunk, if we hear you endangered another life, we’ll be back to see you again. And this time, when we do come back, how we feel about you may change” the Green Arrow finishes up, before firing off a grappling arrow and leaving a shaken and decidedly not-sober Sergeant Mario Bailey with some thinking to do.

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen hoped that was all it took for Sergeant Bailey to straighten up and fly right. Because if it wasn’t, he really wasn’t looking forward to having to do that again. Sure, he understood the value of scaring people who had it coming. But what was more important to him than intimidating people was protecting the innocent people of his city from all the monsters who lived in the shadows and thought they could take whatever they felt like from whoever they wanted to. People like the Merlyns, Amanda Waller, and Helena Bertinelli. And, as was becoming clearer by the thought, Ra’s Al-Ghul.

He had been bedeviled by the chess game between Malcolm Merlyn and Ra’s in the last timeline, and it was only now that he could see that both of them had managed to use him as a pawn in a battle against the other. That would not happen now, he was sure of it. For one thing, Malcolm was off the board. He was, at last check, still in the custody of the extremely motivated US Bureau of Prisons. They weren’t letting him out for anything, and he was sure no one was getting in.

But when it came to Ra’s, he knew things would be different because of what one of his allies had done. He hadn’t said anything, because he knew the Flash would tell him the truth if he asked him to. But he was sure the Speed Force had supercharged his brain power, and done the same thing for Laurel too. It had enabled him to become a better hero because he was smart enough to use his brains to stop a criminal instead of always needing to rely on getting physical. That was what would beat Ra’s, and what would protect his city. Not just what he could do with his hands, but what he could do with his mind.

Glancing over at Laurel, who was taking notes in the notebook on her gauntlet, the Green Arrow had to smile. He had done this once before, without her, and it had felt empty. He was too busy fighting for his life to ponder it, but he knew why now. The Black Canary was the sunshine to his thunderstorm, and without it and her, all he could be was a grim punisher. He didn’t want to be someone who just hunted people down, beat on them until they confessed, and then repeated the process. He wanted to do this the right way, the way people would respect.

That, he was beginning to realize, required doing more for the city’s victims than just solving cold cases. They needed more. There weren’t enough good detectives to solve the murders that happened every night. It galled him. In fact, it galled him enough to do something about it. But where to go? Where to get started?

What he didn’t want to do was obvious. He didn’t want to bigfoot Tina Boland, or Rene Ramirez. Those were good police, and the last thing they needed is to be working a murder and look up to see the Emerald Archer and the Songbird of Starling polluting their crime scenes. But how many others were there? How many people were wearing detective shields who didn’t have a clue what they were doing, and had left families and innocent people still suffering because they weren’t smart enough to solve the tragedy at the red-hot core of some of the worst memories of these people’s lives?

After all, he thought with a snarl on his face and annoyance in his heart, he and Laurel had more resources at their disposal than the SCPD did. Better forensic labs, stronger connections with the FBI, and more understanding of investigative and criminological tactics. If he didn’t choose to use what he knew to help people mourning the loss of a loved one sleep at night, what kind of a hero was he after all?

And there, Oliver found the answer. Not doing anything when you could, when you knew how, was a sin. And he was not about to commit any more.

Still, the Jade Samurai knew he had to ask his wife. So, he broached the question.

“I think we should solve live cases” Oliver said, hoping he hadn’t made a tactical mistake.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance knew being a vigilante meant you stood on your own code, and you played by the rules your code laid out. And chief amongst those rules, at least for her and her husband, was the idea that they did what they could to make the city a better place. And considering that most of the SCPD had more bad apples, burnouts, and just plain bad detectives than they knew what to do with it was obvious that it was past time for her and Ollie to step in. But while part of her wanted to go in guns blazing, she knew this had to be done carefully.

The first thing was that none of this went near the First Precinct. That was obvious for two reasons. For one thing, the last thing her or Ollie needed was a fuming Quentin Lance deciding to call them on the carpet every other morning. She could hear her father yelling now about “I have 10 open cases, big ones, and I have to hear about vigilantes sticking their heads into them and blow months of investigative work because you morons didn’t have enough to do?” They had been there two years ago, when the Cains had distracted them from Vertigo exploding onto the streets. Just the memories of that was enough to make sure that never happened again.

The other one was that the First’s house had enough good detectives, or at least the makings of good detectives, that bigfooting them would actually be a sign of disrespect. Rene Ramirez, Renee Montoya, Tina Boland, and Maggie Sawyer were all damned fine investigators. And they were working Major Cases, which got them enough heat with the brass as it was. Last thing any of them needed was her and Ollie making their lives harder.

But, and she knew this to be true no matter how much it personally stung, the same could not be said for the vast majority of the SCPD. Outside of her father’s precinct, these were officers far less competent than she was ever going to be comfortable with. And judging by what she had just dealt with, the training officers who were in charge of getting them up to par didn’t have that much more of an idea of what was going on. These were people who swore an oath to uphold the law, to serve the people of this city. And at every turn, they had failed. Their way, their choice to take Tempest’s money and do the bare minimum to keep their pension, had gotten them here. And now, she and Ollie had to fix it.

It had started with cold cases, cases no one in the SCPD gave a damn about. So she knew that no one had too much care if the Green Arrow and Black Canary looked into things that were dead and buried. But this? She knew damned well the hornet’s nest that was going to be stirred up when they got going on this. But she could also admit to herself, and she knew Ollie felt the same way without even having to look at him, that she didn’t much care. Protecting people, making sure any crime that got caught got solved, was far more important than any political calculation could think about being.

And with Ra’s Al-Ghul somewhere in the city, although where was an open question, she was beginning to think solving an actual murder could serve another purpose. Maybe if they played this right, and did it bloodlessly, they could convince him that trying to make her and Ollie ally with him was just a bad fit. Sure, it was probably a pipe dream. But considering what they had already survived, was a pipe dream that bad?

Because what this city really didn’t need, and might not even be able to survive, was a gang war with what both her and Ollie suspected the League of Assassins might be capable of. They still knew a dangerously low amount about the order that Ra’s Al-Ghul had proclaimed himself the leader of. All that their searching in police databases, and discreet asking around to every counter-terrorism agency they had come in contact with, ended up giving them the same thing they had already: Functionally nothing. And that just wouldn’t do.

This was the height of the information age, where everyone who ran in the circles Ra’s Al-Ghul claimed to run in had a name and a signature. And yet, they could find nothing on this ancient order of assassins or the father and daughter who ran it? That left the Songbird of Starling with one option, one she didn’t like thinking about. Because thinking about it, and admitting it was true, meant Ollie was right to be terrified.

This was not a feeling she liked having, not one bit. She hadn’t been scared of anyone like this ever before, but then again she was beginning to get the sense that the Al-Ghul family was unlike anything she had dealt with before. If she could figure out who knew something about them, something they could use, maybe that would help with this.

And then she saw the only answer. It was a long-shot, and not the sort of thing she wanted to do, but maybe…. Maybe Nyssa knew. Before she had come to the city, she had trained sheikhs and what not throughout northern Africa and the Middle East. Maybe someone there, some old family who could track their legacy back to a caliphate, might have heard something. But that was a question for later.

And as she watched Sergeant Bailey stagger towards a cab, Laurel knew what the question was for right now.

“How can I help?”

Back at the Quiver…….

(Curtis Holt’s POV)

Curtis Holt was very proud of having been by the side of the Green Arrow and Black Canary since the very beginning of their mission. He had helped them understand so much about what they needed to do in order to become the heroes they now were. But it was becoming clear to him now that he was not needed in the same way that he once had been. Sure, if there was ever anything they asked of him, he’d come running. They were doing so much for the city that giving them aid when they needed it was the least he could do.

But they could run the computers, chase down intel, and build their own files. He was there merely to make sure nothing went too wrong. When it came to Artemis and Arsenal, though? He could still be the man in the chair, and still be useful to them. Sure, everyone’s primary was on track-and-notify with the League of Assassins. He got that, and he got why. The city was getting stronger all the time, but the SCPD wasn’t and there was no guarantee the city’s morgues wouldn’t get overrun if whatever the League of Assassins were up to included waging a blood bath against the city.

But wasn’t this just a variant of the ancient ninja shit Quentin had yelled at them about 2 years ago? And unless someone could convince him it wasn’t, he knew where he was the most needed.

Because Simon Stagg was not, in any sense, the sort who was given to street-level pronouncements. He was a businessman, and a well-known one. This was not someone who let his anger go out of control usually. So to hear that he was so white-hot with rage that he had been saying he was going to “take care of” Artemis and Arsenal meant he was serious, and that meant trying to figure out who was the most dangerous assassin on call.

Right away, using backdoors into the FBI, he had a name. Or more accurately, a set of names. These were all people who were well-known as being hired guns, for anyone willing to pay. Right away, Curtis eliminated Chien Na Wei. She was behind bars, and judging from what the Green Arrow and Black Canary had said, the debt she owed them meant she’d never take a job in Starling City ever again. That left others, people who would be only all too happy to take Simon Stagg’s money and rid Starling City of two vigilantes.

The only saving grace he could think of was that they wouldn’t be using guns. No criminal in this city did that, and the rule was enforced aggressively. But this one thing was clear: Thea and Roy were at the grownup table now, and they needed to be ready.

Curtis was going to make sure they were.

On the streets of Little Seoul………

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

It was still strange for Oliver Queen to be in his hood and suit and not have people look at him in fear. By this point, and he knew where this point was because he checked the calendar religiously and aggressively, he was forced to unmask and live out what was left of his life as simply a vengeful destroyer. This was not the case now, and he liked that. Even if being a symbol was never anything he had set out to become. He was merely, at least at the beginning of both timelines, trying to do what he could to help a city in desperate need of it.

But, as he had come to understand, Starling City needed heroes more than it needed anything else. It didn’t need another monster, or a vengeful destroyer who couldn’t understand humanity. It needed a protector, a guardian. And, just because this was Starling City and it was what people responded to, the city had taken two ninja and made them into those heroes. There would always be a darkness here, but he was ok with that. Making sure this place became the best city it could be had always been his goal, and the best place it could be wasn’t honestly too far off from where things were now. Sure, it rained all of the time here but the architecture was beautiful and the rain gave the city an atmosphere you couldn’t find anywhere else. He loved it here, and he wanted to make sure every single resident here loved it here too.

Keeping that promise was why he was on the back of his high-end superbike in Little Seoul double-checking his investigative kit as he held a conversation with a local food truck owner in Korean while Laurel bought their food from his daughter. The Green Arrow, whether he had wanted it to happen this way or not, had become a symbol. And since that was clear, he needed to make it matter. It needed to mean something. And that meant he couldn’t fall for “ancient ninja shit”, like his father-in-law had rightly accused him of doing 2 years ago.

What he could do, though, was easier. He could keep watch out for people, protect his city, and in short do all the goddamned things the cops were supposed to be doing. He knew, every other week, that the brass had those CompStat meetings downtown where they talked about arrest rates, seizures, and all of those other stats. But he knew, because his father-in-law told him this too, what they didn’t talk about. They didn’t talk about keeping the block safe.

That was what everyone down here, on the street, really worried about. Even now, without having to look, he could feel the presence of a handful of guys who thought they were tough a block or so away. And it didn’t matter who they were, or where they were from. These were bad guys, hanging out at 2 AM, hassling good working people coming home from a factory shift or a late night at Key Arena. A good cop, someone who gave a damn, would keep the corner clear. But he had seen how many black-and-whites driving by, and no one had made a damned move.

So tonight, the Emerald Archer would be what his city demanded. What it cried out for in public meetings, where equally selfish politicians talked about dealing with the “root causes of crime” while never stopping to think that the best thing you could do to stop crime was to make a neighborhood safe enough that you could work on the bigger issues. And they went back in their chartered car services to City Hall, and left it for everyone else to try and deal with.

This city needed a detective, an investigator to begin to solve its problems. And he intended to be that man. Because, as he put away his kit and began to tuck in to a really tasty-looking bowl of bulgogi hot pot with glass noodles, the alternative was something he couldn’t abide. And judging by the look on Laurel’s face, he could tell she couldn’t either.

Of all the things he had wanted to become when he was stuck on Yeon-Og, being Laurel’s husband had always been the thing. When it was cold and wet, and he was sleeping in a rusted-out fuselage hoping to god Slade or Shado found enough food to get them through another day, the thought of being married to Laurel kept him warm. But their bond wasn’t just romantic, or carnal. Not anymore. Too much had happened. Now, they shared a code and the willingness to go to the very ends of the earth to make sure that they could live up to it. And the bedrock of the code, the thing that made it matter, was that he protected his city from harm. And right now, that wasn’t from the League. Oliver knew where it was coming from: from some criminal who thought no one was paying attention.

The League could wait. Because the truth was that being the Jade Samurai was much more important.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance knew people expected certain things from when she was out in her suit and wearing her domino mask, and by and large, she was happy to give them the experience that they wanted when they got to meet her in the flesh. It was still weird to her to imagine that people wanted to meet her, to take pictures with her and ask her questions.

But when she thought of what the alternative was, she was quite ok with being treated like a genuine pop star. A city that hated everyone, that was miserable and hopeless, was not something she could be ok with. So, if guiding this city back into something that approached a city in the sun meant people treated her like a member of their extended families, she was fine with that.

Sure, she knew Ollie had his own fans as the Green Arrow. But the way he did what he did was to make himself seem everywhere, like some foreboding demi-god who was always watching to make sure you did what you were supposed to be doing. He radiated a deep sense of compassion and honor, but he was never warm. Because he couldn’t be. Doing what he did, in the way he did it, meant he couldn’t be a man of the people. He was their samurai, and that meant seeing him out in the public had to matter.

As Henry Fyff’s thankful family had explained to them when they had invited them over for dinner after they had brought their son back to them, “When our son was taken from us, we wanted justice. And we wanted the people who did it to know they couldn’t do it to anyone else. That was why we were so happy when Officer Diggle brought you to us. The idea that the Green Arrow, who we all think of as a big damned deal, was looking into our case made us know it would get solved. And we knew the Black Canary would make sure we knew what was happening every step out of the way.”

That responsibility, the idea that people knew she would keep them in the loop with what was going on, meant that solving actual honest-to-goodness murders was the only next step. She kept an eye on the birth and death rate numbers for the city, something Ollie had insisted on as a reminder to remember that the city still needed a lot more help. “Last time I did this, my mind was never on the small details. It was always on the big enemies, and the city suffered. We’re not doing that again” Ollie said passionately, and she knew it was the right thing to do.

And once she saw that information, the Black Canary knew something sickening. The numbers were being cooked downtown. She didn’t like to think about it, and liked even less to know it was true. But someone, and she was sure she had a damned fine idea who the list of people on this job were, was making it seem like there was less dying than what was going on. She’d have to be on-site in the morgue to figure it out, but she was pretty damned sure things were not how they were being presented.

And as long as that was true, she was going to make sure these people she loved and this city she adored had the same chance at a good life as she did. So, as she and Ollie finished up their food and paid with what she knew was a rather aggressively large tip, she got to thinking. Not about where to go. The police scanners hooked into her and Ollie’s gauntlets would tell them where to go. The question was this: What to do when they got there?

While the Songbird of Starling was thinking of that answer, though, she looked around and felt her eyes narrow. This wasn’t as bad a neighborhood as it had been 6 years ago, but it still wasn’t perfect. There were still people on the corners, hassling working people and flashing knives and clubs to anyone who looked like they were thinking of standing up for themselves.

And she hadn’t seen a single black-and-white drive by to clear them off, or a beat cop to threaten to take someone in. Tempest was gone, but what it had done to the mindset of the cops in this city was going to take a lot longer to clear out. Somewhere along the line, the men and women who patrolled this city had stopped giving a damn. They had gotten lazy, and the rot had set in. 

Knowing the rot was out there was one thing. But doing nothing to prevent it? That was a thing she could not abide, and judging by the cold glare in Oliver’s eyes as he glanced over at the corners, she knew Ollie couldn’t either. They had not suffered through hour upon hour of skull sessions with the finest investigators and interrogators in the world just to come back home and see that nothing had changed. It was galling to see it, but she knew it could still be fixed.

It’d take a lot of work, and a lot of cops who thought they were good would have to be taught how to do it right. But it could be done. Laurel didn’t even want to think about what would happen if she was wrong.

She had become Oliver’s Queen. Now it was time for the Queen of the Fist to help protect her other kingdom.

30 minutes later, on a fire escape outside of a small diner in Chinatown………

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Even on a typically rainy night, when the rain was coming down sideways and in sheets so heavy it looked like the heavens were going to open up, Oliver Queen could still spot the distinct red-and-blue light pattern of the Starling City Police Department’s cruisers. On nights like this, the lights lit up the bricks in a parking lot and bathed the whole place in this unnatural glow. Almost like trying to tell anyone who was around that these lights don’t belong here, and neither do the people who turned them on in the first place.

But that was a little bit more philosophical than he wanted to be. Because, in front of him, were seven bodies. And, admittedly without as close a look as he wanted, he could tell they were Triad hitters. The sort of people who shook down diner owners, civilians, and people who had no choice but to pay protection money to gangsters from their own country were now laying on this gravel parking lot dead to the world. But he couldn’t really tell what did it from this angle. It was too high. All he could see was that there were dead bodies down there, and even if they were criminals they still had families. They deserved to not be treated like sacks of meat, and their killer deserved to face justice.

And that was objectively not what was happening here. The two detectives who had caught this thing were laughing, making cheap jokes, and generally acting like there weren’t seven dead men in front of them in seven separate pools of blood. The Green Arrow wanted to scream, but he knew he shouldn’t. What he was going to do, instead, was better. These pricks wanted to carry a badge and act like this in his city, on a goddamned crime scene? They were about to get an education they’d remember.

Kicking the ladder out on the fire escape, the Emerald Archer stomped over to it and climbed down with the Black Canary right behind him. Normally, he’d let Laurel run this. She knew how to play the game, how to speak cop and smooth over whatever problems there might be. But considering what he had just seen, he was in no mood for playing nice and he could tell the Songbird of Starling wasn’t either. These detectives probably thought that the city’s most well-known and experienced vigilantes were coming in on a consult. How wrong they were about to be.

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“Green Arrow. Black Canary. How can we help you?” Detective Third Grade Joseph Bosworth said, trying to look professional instead of a man who looked like he had spent the night in a bourbon cask.

“Detective Bosworth, when did you get your detective shield?” the Green Arrow growls, keeping his intensity under control even though he wanted to throw this prick into a wall.

“1990, Green Arrow. Been proud to be a detective ever since” Detective Bosworth said, answering like this is another normal night on the beat and shamefully not realizing that the vigilante in front of him is both standing to his full height and looking at him like he’s nothing but a worm.

“What about you, Detective Hanson?” the Black Canary asks, hints of the bubbly and warm persona she usually uses evident but clearly nothing quite like what it was.

“Also in 1990, Ma’am. Myself and Detective Bosworth went through the academy together, and we’ve been partners since 1990” said Detective Third Grade Sven Hanson, a big Swedish-looking man who probably played linebacker at a small community college in the 80’s.

“That’s over 60 years of combined experience between the two of you, and yet you somehow BOTH manage to think it’s appropriate to act like this on a crime scene with SEVEN DEAD BODIES?” the Green Arrow boomed, and if people were coming out of their apartments to listen to this, he was paying them no mind. This needed to be public, because it needed to be embarrassing.

“The only positive thing we can say for you is that we’re sure you’re not corrupt. You’re not taking money, because you’re so incompetent you’d get caught as soon as you tried. But you’re bad detectives, and you shouldn’t be running this crime scene. Leave now, officers. Go back to your house and tell your captain the Green Arrow and Black Canary sent you running. We’ll take it from here” said the Black Canary, all warmth gone from her voice as she too was so deeply pissed off at what she had been seeing that the thought of screaming these assholes through brick and drywall had crossed her mind.

“Sure, they’re criminals. But that’s not the point, detectives. They’re still people. They still have families, whether here in the city or back home in China. People who will miss them when they’re gone. People who will mourn them when they hear word of what happened to them. People who will sleep better at night knowing justice has been done on their behalf. But to you, all these bodies will ever be is criminals. Leave now, detectives. And let someone who gives a damn do the job you should have been doing” the Green Arrow says, implicitly daring either of them to try and talk him off of his stance.

And knowing now’s not the time to fight, Detectives Bosworth and Hanson leave.

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As he and Laurel rolled the crime scene tape all the way around the scene and began taking photos of everything, at close range twice, Oliver took a moment for a long deep breath to center his mind and keep himself together. It would do no damned good to anyone, anyone at all, if he lost his temper while he was running this scene. These were people who mattered, whose lives had been ended brutally.

Sure, these were Triad hitters. Their clothes and the tattoos he could see on them proved that, but that wasn’t making him care less about who was responsible for their violent murder. They were still victims, and they lived in his community. And to him, that meant one thing: They deserved justice. But he knew, just like he knew whoever was responsible for this had to face justice, that finding this person would mean getting physical.

Because one thing was clear, before he got the bodies sent to the morgue: This was a violent killing. Deep slashes with a bladed weapon of some kind, and bruised bodies everywhere. Whoever did this wanted these men to suffer, wanted them to PAY. It was like a torture scene, so this was a forensics smorgasbord of the first order. Blood everywhere, cuts so deep the person who took them would be bleeding out slow, and generally the sense that this was a slaughterhouse assassination as opposed to a crime of passion. He didn’t want to make any particular guesses out here in the field, but this did look grisly. He could admit that.

Still, though, he needed to get info. So, moving quickly, he took samples of blood, bagged up whatever fibers he could find, and finished fingerprinting the seven killers in front of him. He already had the photos of the cuts to compare, but this didn’t look like the normal katana or jian he figured would be the most common sword out here.

This was very strange. And the Jade Samurai didn’t care for strange.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance was trained to be a detective. Not at first, really. The Merlyns had been too clever by half, so figuring what they were up to had not precisely been a work of Poirot-esque fact-finding brilliance. But once they had been locked in a pair of Supermax federal prisons, she had made herself into someone who could see what people were hiding and know precisely how to get it out of them. But her experience on working with actual crime scenes, that had actual bodies, was not as vast as she might like. She couldn’t let that daunt her, though. The job was still the job, and there were seven mothers or fathers somewhere in Starling City wondering why their children weren’t coming home.

So, she followed her routines. What were the facts on the ground, and what theories could those facts give her? For one thing, this was a TON of blood. They’d have to run tests on it back at the Quiver to be sure, but she didn’t think it was possible for seven people to be killed this way and no one try and fight back. Looking around, she saw pieces of what looked like high-tension cable. Just the sort Ollie used in his cable arrows, and from field experience she knew that if you got hit with those you weren’t moving unless the Green Arrow wanted you to. So, that was the first theory: Whoever this was, he or she had tied up seven Triad hitters and then got to what they really wanted done.

That led her to the second fact. These were seven people, and yet whoever held whatever blade this was hadn’t hurried. How good did you have to be to cut this deep and still be taking your time? Whoever was holding this blade had some real talent, and the Black Canary realized with a sigh, had some real help. Maybe, if you were a master with a blade, you could cut two people. But seven all alone? No, this wasn’t a one-person job. Which meant either there was a spotter, or they were looking for a crew.

And there was the third fact: In order to solve this, they’d have to find security camera footage, because she knew they weren’t going to find answers going door-to-door. Not for this. Either people hadn’t seen what was going on, or they had chosen not to see what was going on. Truthfully, she didn’t blame anyone for not seeing it. This, right here, was the sort of thing that caused whatever management of the Triad was still here in Starling City to get suspicious. And when that happened, the streets might just run red with blood.

Laurel tried not to laugh bitterly, because she had caught a bear for her first live murder. Seven dead bodies, all Triad hitters, with a ticking clock overhead before whoever was still in charge here got soldiers in from the mainland or Hong Kong and started a gang war. But that didn’t matter really. It needed to be solved.

That left her with only one more fact to work on: She couldn’t solve anything more out here. All the evidence had been sent back to the labs and the computers at the Quiver, where they could find more information on everything they needed.

So, she glanced at Ollie and they headed towards their high-end Italian superbikes. It was going to be a long night. Best for the Jade Samurai and the Queen of the Fist to get started on getting started.

20 minutes later, at the Quiver…….

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

When he had made the decision to become as much of an investigator as a vigilante and a master martial artist and archer, Oliver Queen had not known how to do a lot of things. Not just the nuts-and-bolts of how to actually run down a crime, but what he actually needed to have available to get done what he wanted to get done.

And then, he remembered something: He had friends in this timeline. Last time, his self-loathing and the darkness he had used as fuel had made his friends hold him at arm’s length and worry about him. But not this time. This time, people understood his intensity about protecting his home and were willing to help him do it when he asked them to.

So, he had asked Barry Allen, Patty Spivot, and Bruce Wayne to give him a shopping list of sorts. And then, in addition to building out the same contract for the Department of Homeland Security, Queen Consolidated had built him the bleeding-edge of everything he needed to protect his city using his brain power.

And tonight, he’d need to. Earlier, he had found an evidence smorgasbord that was going to need every last ounce of skill he and Laurel had built for themselves in order to get it solved. And they were damned sure going to get it solved. Because, even though neither of them wanted to say it out loud for fear of jinxing things, they knew what would happen if they didn’t.

The city had a peace that was hard-won, but was very new and consequentially very fragile. On the streets, and on the corners, people didn’t know who ran things. The Yakuza ran their bit, and so did the Triads, and the Sons of Samoa. There had even been rumors of one of the gangs from Seoul seeing if they could take a piece of things. If they couldn’t pull it together, and keep the heat down, the streets might run red.

That would be bad, in most every circumstance, but especially so now. Because the League of Assassins was here, and he wanted to give that ancient order of highly trained master killers no more incentive to think his city needed to be culled from the map than they might already have. The Green Arrow could still remember the story, clear as day, that Ra’s had told him about how the Mongols had done that once. Not only had they killed every man, woman, and child and destroyed every building, but also rerouted a river that passed through the town so that it would cease to be on the map. And here, in his city, he would move heaven and earth so that Ra’s never got the idea to try something like that here.

But in order to make sure that was plausible, he knew this murder had to be solved. Preferably quick as he could. But as he started running fingerprints, wincing at the sheer length of the jackets on all of these dead men, he could feel the beginnings of a theory. But he wanted to run the rest of his evidence before he let that theory be anything more than just the smallest kernel of an idea. And as he watched his forensic science software run blood types and scan the other information from the crime scene, he was now following where the evidence took him.

This was what he should have been doing. Not torturing, or getting involved in conspiracies, but solving murderers and helping people. But there would be time to grieve over mistakes later. Now, he was looking at evidence and coming to a very uncomfortable conclusion.

The League wasn’t just here. They were in on the action. One of Ra’s Al-Ghul’s soldiers had killed all seven of these men.

And when he saw it, he could say only one thing:

“Oh fuck.”

Chapter Text

At Wildcat’s Kickboxing and Muay Thai………

(Thea Queen’s POV)

Sure, she was a few classes away from graduating with her MBA from the University of Washington and one of the most famous teenagers in the country. But Thea Dearden Queen knew who she was at her core, and it was nothing like the girl she had been 6 years ago. For one thing, she was a hero now. She helped people, people far less fortunate than herself. It filled a hole she didn’t even know had been inside of her, and also gave her the adrenaline rush that prevented her from falling into the same kind of traps some of her party-girl friends had wandered into.

And secondly, and this was very important to where she found herself at right now, she loved kickboxing. LOVED it. She loved sparring and throwing kicks in both the Dutch and Thai style, and doing all the drills Sensei Ted and Sensei Laurel could come up with. Even if, she could admit, there were differences in how they did things.

Sensei Ted didn’t appear to, and she liked this, give a damn who her brother was or who her sister-in-law was. When she walked in Wildcat’s to train, she was treated like every other student who was working towards their second black belt. No special treatment here. If she didn’t do her conditioning work, or her neck bridges, she had to run 5 miles on the treadmill just like everyone else did. And she needed that.

Sensei Laurel, on the other hand, insisted on doing weights and conditioning that was less old-fashioned. Sure, she wanted her students absolutely wrung out and exhausted but they did it through swimming and through CrossFit. Not miles on the treadmill, or miles on an old cinders track at one of the high schools in the area.

But lest you thought you could cheat on your conditioning, Sensei Laurel’s skill at friendship meant that every Olympic-quality pool and CrossFit box in the Starling City Area filmed what you did and sent it back to her. You did your work, because you didn’t want to disappoint Sensei Laurel.

Together, even if they did it separately, they shared the same goal and provided the same service. And that was to get her ready for what came next. Whether it was running leaping kicks to get to the giant that was Danielle Brickwell, or training her to get all the explosiveness she could muster up, her two teachers wanted Artemis to be ready to pick up the fully-loaded barbell that was the responsibilities that the Green Arrow and Black Canary had.

They had done so much for this city. But now, every time she thought that, she remembered that Ollie had a head start. A whole LIFE of doing this first. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that, and really wasn’t sure if Ollie wanted to talk about it.

Just by seeing how he had looked at them all when he had explained, and the look in his eyes, made the Princess of the Glades sad and curious all at once. What had happened to him in his last life? She wanted to know. But not enough to hurt her brother by asking.

The other reason for that was simpler. Thea had plenty to say grace over in her own life, considering Curtis Holt had told her that Simon Stagg had sent feelers out to some of the world’s foremost assassins and professional killers after her and Roy. Until this was handled, and Stagg was behind bars, she didn’t think she had the time to act like a bloodhound on her brother’s mysteries.

She had plenty to do. Because her city needed her.

Meanwhile, back at the Quiver…….

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had never been one given over to lots of thoughts about violence. Being the person who intimidated, who made you think that this could be it when you looked into their eyes, was the province of her husband and he was damned good at it. But after this? After Ollie had shown her what the evidence he had put together, and she had looked at it with her own eyes and agreed with him? Right then, she wanted to kill everyone associated with this.

The League was a mystery to her, or at least it had been. Now, though, she was beginning to get a sense of what one of their order could be capable of. And it scared her. Because understanding that just one of them could be skilled enough with a blade to do THAT made her realize they were facing an enemy of the very highest caliber. But if the swordsmanship was the only thing that was here, she wouldn’t have been quite so concerned. No, there was more.

For one thing, all the Triad members were drugged. In and of itself, that was bad. But then she saw the bloodwork on all of them and she could have walked out into the Starling City night and screamed until every building and factory around the Quiver was turned into rubble. It didn’t track that the League killers would use opium that was easily tracked, until the Black Canary thought about it.

They wanted Ollie to know, and by extension her, what precisely they could do if their “offers of kindness” continued to be rejected. And so here she was, trying not to headbutt a $10,000 granite computer desk and seeing that seven professional killers had been drugged by opium slipped into their food at an obviously Triad-controlled restaurant. And they then had been dragged to that parking lot and executed one at a time with swords, while they were all conscious but powerless to do anything about it.

And that was so disgusting she couldn’t even put it into words.

From what Ollie had told her, the League was about restoring the balance between good and evil. And she supposed, if you stretched that idea like taffy, that cold-blooded murder when it was done to seven Triad enforcers could be considered serving that balance. But she didn’t buy it.

This wasn’t justice. This was someone using a lucky guess as to what these people were, and what they did, to try and prove a point. More than that, this was the death penalty made even more primitive than the death penalty actually was. This was an execution, and if she wanted anything to be said about what her and Ollie were doing, it was that they weren’t executioners. Sure, they’d bluff that they were if either one of them could see that the bluff would get their target to give up the ghost. But that was tactics. Nothing real.

But it was the drug in the bloodstream that confused her. Why opium? This was the modern age. There were plenty of synthetic drugs stronger, harder to find in the bloodstream, and more effective. And that made her go back to the pictures of the bodies, because something about the idea that the League would choose to use uncut opium made her think they were also showing something else to her and Ollie. But what, though?

So, she went back to look and then she saw it. This wasn’t a cut with a straight blade. No, this was a cut with a curve. And, without even needing to look, she knew where that took her. To the family of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African swords called scimitars by the Europeans. And now that she knew the family of what she was looking for, time to look a little deeper. Also, if she was being honest, time to thank Bruce Wayne for insisting she learn the history of bladed weapons.

She could still remember the speech, when all she had wanted to do was order some Pad Thai and a Thai iced tea instead of reading one more historical work on the Arabic saif, that Bruce had given her. “The day will come, Ms. Lance, when you face an opponent who is as familiar with a sword as you are with your eight limbs. When that day comes, would you prefer you know his tactics, his skills, and what his weapon can do? Or would you rather be blind?”

And the truth was that while she did love movies about a blind swordsman, the Songbird of Starling had no interest in being one herself. So, she kept to her studies. Right now, at the moment, she was happy she had. Because this blade provided her with another clue. For one thing, it was an Arabic saif. That led her to believe one of two things had happened, and she was not sure which was the most implausible: Either the League of Assassins had found the notes on how to make a sword from 5 centuries ago and use it like they had always been trained on it, or they had somehow managed to find a perfect replica of said sword and have all of their initiates train on it until they could use it like it was a familiar weapon.

And for the other thing, that meant she could guess where a possible safehouse might be. Not sure, of course, and she wanted to tread lightly in the looking. But a guess was better than no intel at all.

One of the things she had learned over the course of 6 years as a working vigilante in a city like Starling City was that there simply were places where she was not welcome. Not just because she was a woman, although that didn’t help, but more because of how she presented herself as a woman. There were still places, traditionally-minded places, where the concept of a tall, confident, American woman in form-fitting black leather made them deeply uncomfortable.

Normally, if all she needed from the people in those places was evidence or to check to see if they had seen someone, she would show respect to their religion and the culture that they chose to follow.

But there was a difference between showing respect to witnesses in their house of worship and bending the knee to an ancient cult of murderers who disrespected her to her face while acting like her husband was the only person in their partnership that mattered. Because she was damned sure that the people who were behind this were there, in those places. They would just have to deal with an in-shape woman in their spaces. Because they had killed people. And she intended to show the world, and that included the League of Assassins, what it was like to play games in her city.

For one thing, the Queen of the Fist was going to guarantee you won a prize. It just wouldn’t be the one you wanted to be winning.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Of all the things Oliver Queen had thought he was going to be doing when he put on his hood and protected his city again 6 years ago, the concept of running down a mass killing by the League of Assassins had not been on his radar. He could say, with the benefit of hindsight, that it should have been.

But hindsight was 20-20, and the families of these seven men who lay dead in a downtown morgue deserved better than someone obsessing over the past. They deserved to rest with their murderers dealt with. Just because the Triads were a scourge on the city did not mean their deaths were anything he wanted. He wanted a big case, on local news from here to Vancouver, where every Triad hitter and their bosses were sent to prison for life. Justice could be found in that. Not vengeance.  

But what he could say is that what his wife had found was fitting perfectly alongside what he was putting together. For one thing, the League choosing to go as bloody as they possibly could on this tracked. They had always held themselves out as representing a particular kind of violence in the service of a higher calling, and eliminating people like the Triads who exploited members of their own community did not seem too far from that understanding.

But it was the use of the sword, and specifically the time frame it came from, that had gotten him thinking. Talia was, at least in his timeline, a woman whose birthplace and lineage had never been something he had asked about. The same for Ra’s Al-Ghul. He was too busy trying to survive, and then trying to fool the Demon’s Head into believing he had accepted a role he did not want, to worry about where the man was from.

But if Ra’s and Talia had access to the notes and tools necessary to make an Arabic saif from the height of the Islamic Golden Age, that gave him a bit more information. For one thing, the Green Arrow was sure that Ra’s was 6 layers away from any of this. Whoever had ordered the killing would be a horseman, Ra’s right hand, but also well-understood to be capable of making their own decisions on who lived or died without directly consulting the Demon’s Head on such matters. So, unless either himself or Laurel could turn said horseman, it ended right there. And he very much doubted either of them could turn the enforcer of the League of Assassins against the man who rescued them from whatever life he had been living previously.

Secondly, Ra’s was obviously well-read and well-educated. Anyone who would go to the historical texts of the ninth-to-early-thirteenth century of Islamic history for the sole purpose of making sure his cult of killers used a sword from that time period was also the sort of man who could speak Arabic well enough to have his followers, and his horsemen, understand his every dictate. So the Ra’s of his timeline, the man driven insane by repeated exposures to the pit, was no longer here. Instead, what he was dealing with was an intelligent and authoritative leader, a skilled tactician, and highly educated.

Thirdly, Ra’s (and by extension his entire League) were deeply religious. Picking out weapons from the high point of the Muslim caliphates was not something one did for intimidation, or at least he did not think it was. No, Ra’s was a true believer. Probably the Sunnis if he had to guess, but that was of no concern. The fact that he had to now deal with someone who was of the belief that he was doing what he was doing on behalf of Mohammed was.

But it was the choice to use the Islamic Golden Age as Ra’s fulcrum that made him concerned. When he had spoken to Diana Prince about it, she had remarked that the age ended with a siege. The Abbasid caliphate had collapsed due to Mongol invasions and the Siege of Baghdad, and when it had collapsed, thus had ended the Islamic Golden Age. Did Ra’s see a siege coming? Did Ra’s know about Crisis, but not think the Emerald Archer knew and thus wanted to consolidate forces against the return of the Anti-Monitor? These were all big questions.

And, he guessed, the answer to every last one of them would be hidden under layer after layer of obfuscation and riddles. That was the other thing about Ra’s, at least this one. Everything he said, everything he seemed to mean, was cloaked in subtext.  And in order to beat Ra’s, without being again forced to fight him on a snowy mountaintop in ritual combat, he’d have to figure out a way to carve through that subtext and find what he was actually saying.

Reflecting back on that night at the Golden Dragon, seeing everything through the eyes of a detective and not a panicked newly-married husband, he could hear the promise that Ra’s made to show both himself and Laurel that their city was not safe and could not be safe for as long as they continued to reject his frankly indecent and disturbing offer. But Oliver knew he couldn’t accept that offer, no matter what threats came after and no matter how much said threats were lined in satin.

The concept of what the League would represent if left alone in his city was one thing. A horrifying thing to be sure, but one thing. The concept of again becoming a pawn in someone else’s game was a whole different piece of business, and he didn’t want to be a party to it in any sense. And, just as key, he would not betray Laurel’s honor and confidence in him.

Ra’s knew this. And what was more, Ra’s had to know the ask he was making was never going to get accepted. But, clearly, Ra’s had designed this entire thing with an endgame in mind. Because, even despite the fact his League existed outside the usage of firearms, the only reason obvious to him that the League would be so willing to make themselves a suspect in these killings was because there was some other game that was being played.

Well, the Jade Samurai didn’t much care about the back-and-forth. Seven people were dead. Someone had to answer, and he knew just who.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

While Oliver Queen was working himself into a lather, Dinah Laurel Lance was coming up with a problem that she figured needed to be solved before anyone in the League of Assassins got cracked in the mouth. Because she had to figure out where these people actually were, and that meant welding the profile her and Ollie had put together with what little information the League had given them. Because, make no mistake, they had given them some information.

She figured that was deliberate, though. From the little she had seen of this Ra’s Al-Ghul character, and his sphinx-like daughter Talia, it seemed that they were always used to running a game and acting like they were seven steps ahead of people.  And if she judged them on that basis, the information they had been given was designed to do what it nearly had done: namely, make them think they were up against depraved professional killers. But, she figured, they hadn’t counted on the fact that they were dealing with people who wouldn’t blink in the face of the abyss and would even ask for more.

And the Black Canary especially knew that they hadn’t figured on anyone tracking where they stayed. Because she had.

It wasn’t easy, of course. Henri Ducard’s name, and what he paid for, had been run through a collection of shell companies that were an insult to the concept of dizzying. But she had learned two things in the search: One, Henri Ducard was a VERY observant Sunni Muslim.

All of his shell companies were, if you paid attention and knew your history, references to great kings and warriors throughout the history of Islam. (The fact that no one had caught this made her think she very much needed to send the forensic accountants of the FBI and Interpol library cards, because she didn’t quite get how anyone could miss this.) And secondly, he lived as high a life as anyone could ever contemplate.

High-end supercars that were so rare that they were only produced in single-digits, closets filled with the highest of fashion from the greatest known fashion houses in the world, and well-maintained mansions in Monaco, Santa Prisca, and Dubai. This was a life of luxury heretofore unimaginable to her, and she knew unimaginable to Ollie.

But the supposed power of the League would not stop the Songbird of Starling, and she knew it would not stop the Green Arrow either. If they had come to be understood for anything in Starling City, it was for this and this alone: If you believed your money could shield you from doing the wrong thing, you would be hunted down and made to pay. It might take longer than some would wish, but it would always happen. Always.

Sure, she was still cautious enough to understand that they weren’t going to drive Ra’s and his daughter out of town yet. They were here to make a deal, and just because they hadn’t made it yet, didn’t mean they were going to stop trying. There was still more before they could say they were rid of the Al-Ghuls, or the Ducards, or whatever other aliases they used. But for this? For seven murdered people?

It didn’t matter. They had to make it so that those victim’s families would be able to bury them with some peace. Sure, they were bad people. That wasn’t even a question, at least not with anyone who studied this stuff for a responsibility or for a living. But they still deserved peace.

And the Queen of the Fist wanted to give it to them.

An hour later, on the underpass of an exit of the Easley Bridge…….

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had seen the bodies, even before tonight. She had always understood that the League used swords when they didn’t use the bow, and she had watched at how Ollie had blanched when he had seen the high-definition images of what the League’s archers had done. But those were intellectual understandings of what their apparent new enemies were capable of.

The emotion of it, what it all actually meant, had not hit until she had seen the mangled carcasses that had been left by the League’s swordfighters. These were killers they were up against, trained professionals used to dealing out death as easy as she threw a leg kick or as Ollie threw a right hand. And it had disgusted her.

She was no fool. There were people out there who could not be in polite society. That was clear. But they deserved life, and a genuine chance to atone for their crimes. Not to be tied by high-strength cable, hacked to bits, and left bleeding to death in a parking lot like they were a whole bull or lamb at a halal slaughterhouse. No human being, no matter how monstrous, deserved that.

So, the Black Canary was bound and determined to walk into the mouth of hell and go eyeball-to-eyeball with everyone behind those seven killings. And she was beginning to think that person was NOT Ra’s Al-Ghul. Sure, he had probably approved of the killings because she very much doubted anything went on with the League that he wasn’t in on down to the socks. But she was beginning to come up with an alternative guess as to who had ordered the murders.

Talia Al-Ghul looked like her father’s right hand, like his most trusted confidant and advisor. It was clear that he trusted her and saw her as very valuable in the future of the League, because if he didn’t, she wouldn’t have joined him at the Golden Dragon. And there most certainly would have been some form of objection to her father’s plan, even if it was non-verbal.

If you didn’t agree with what your father was doing, it was possible that Talia might have chosen to not make it known in public. But you couldn’t hide from body language. So that let her know Talia did whatever her father wanted, and backed his plays without a thought. And that meant, she figured, that it had been Talia Al-Ghul who had made the move to authorize the seven murders they were running down.

Not explicitly, of course, because that probably wasn’t done. But she could easily imagine that whoever was one of Talia’s most trusted lieutenants would do whatever she wanted without having to be asked, in the same way that Dad’s last partner could just get him coffee just because he knows he might want it without having to explicitly be told to get him coffee.

But that was a guess. In order to get more of an idea on how to beat Talia Al-Ghul, or Ducard or whatever other aliases these people carried, she needed a tell. And make no mistake, there was nothing more that she wanted to do than pop that woman in the mouth.

She could not imagine going along with being a broodmare for your father because he wanted to create an heir to take over his legacy after he was gone. It was the height of old-world thinking, from an era she was happy to see the back of, and it bothered her that someone as poised and elegant as Talia Al-Ghul chose to follow it to the extent she was.

But since she was working back on seven murders, the Songbird of Starling knew her personal philosophical beefs with how Talia Al-Ghul chose to think was not important. The thing that was, though, didn’t make any sense. Why had the League chosen to use things from ancient history? Opium, not cut by pharmaceutical means, was incredibly easy to find. Same thing with the sword cuts. Why had they chosen to make this so easy?

But to figure it out, she needed to see the Al-Ghul’s in the flesh. And to do that, her and Ollie were in an underpass doing something that would have made no sense to her 6 years ago. First, an informant had told them about some really rich-seeming people who were holing up in a hotel downtown near 348 Martinez Street. That had to be the Al-Ghuls, because the numbers 3, 4, and 8 were far too significant in Islam for that to be a coincidence. So, they began to plan.

They were, and boy did this sound odd to think about, trying to find the soft spots to enter the hotel without causing a firefight. It was not that she thought they couldn’t win it. Of all the things they had been trained to do, clearing a large building with nothing else in there but trained martial artists had become something they had done on multiple occasions. Two prison riots quelled were as good a proof of that as anything.

But it was because they could do it that she realized they didn’t particularly need to. Getting in there without throwing a blow in anger would mean the League had no more knowledge of how they moved and fought than whatever it was they already did. And that was key.

Laurel didn’t know anything about the League, minus the bare-bones of the profile her and Ollie had worked on after their brief meeting with the Al-Ghul’s and the way in which one League assassin had killed seven Triad hitters like they were white belts studying the way of the blade for the very first time.

That ease of usage, and the bloody result of it, made her sure of one thing: These were killers. Dangerous killers, and she wished to not pick a fight with them until she knew more about them than nothing. Who made up the ranks of an order like this? Was it lost souls who had fallen through the cracks, or underpaid soldiers brainwashed to believe in an ideal and allowed to let go of all of the codes they had once lived on? That question could be answered, but she needed to tread carefully to find the answer.

Tonight, for the people of her city, the Queen of the Fist would be what they had always needed from her and Ollie. They would be the people who scared the assassins, and made them regret the choices that got them here.  

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Here they were going after the League of Assassins, an order that had existed for millennia with skills above and beyond what any but the most well-trained ninja could even comprehend, and Oliver Queen felt a rush of emotion he could not define.

It was not joy. There was no part of him that wanted anything to do with dealing with them again. If it had been up to him, the League would never have appeared on his radar. For all it mattered to him, they could have remained ephemeral ghost stories in the Middle East and North Africa told to bad kids who went down a road their parents wanted them to stop traveling. But he was being forced to fight them, because seven people had died directly because of what he was damned sure was the actions of a League initiate.

It wasn’t fear either. At least not anymore. At the Golden Dragon, when he had been confronted by the one ghost from his past he thought he had buried, he could admit he had frozen in fear. Seeing Ra’s again, knowing what beating him had required, was not something he had ever wanted. But now? With his city on the line? He was bound and determined to make the Demon’s Head take a step backwards.

And then he looked around at Laurel and knew what it was. Precisely, without having to say a word, he knew what he was feeling. It was the memory of what he was supposed to be.

The Green Arrow was supposed to be a figure of intimidation. Seeing him in your presence was supposed to make you realize that you had committed a crime you needed to pay penance for, and he was the man who represented that penance. Sure, he wouldn’t kill anymore. But there was a long and deep road between pacifism and death. People needed to expect that he was capable of traveling that road as far as he needed to.

And yet, Ra’s Al-Ghul had come into his city and disrespected his wife. His WIFE. The woman he loved beyond all sense of being able to describe what the word love meant to him, and Ra’s Al-Ghul had talked to her like she was chattel. Like her hopes, her own loves and joys, meant nothing in the face of what the Demon’s Head wanted.

It could not be abided. And he was going to make sure it wasn’t.

He knew, even if he didn’t yet quite know everything he needed to about this timeline’s Ra’s Al-Ghul, that Ra’s would expect that his deal would be considered. In his mind, warped as it was by an over-reliance on old-world codes and his own ego, it might have been that his offer was thought of in cold logical terms. Make the alliance to avoid bloodshed more than what he had already shown he was capable of. To the Demon’s Head, this very well may have been a business deal. Not true love defiled. Not a betrayal of a vow. But business.

But for this, for everything he wished to be this time, he did not care about the business concerns. Ra’s had insulted him, insulted his family, and insulted his loves. Strange as it might be, based on his public persona as the cold and intense ninja in the shadows, the Emerald Archer knew he loved deeply. He loved the city he protected, filled with rain that hit like the world’s best blast beat on the cobblestones. He loved the smell of grilled meat on a Saturday night outside Memorial Stadium before a Huskies game, when the whole city unified to support their beloved team. And he loved being able to watch over the innocent, the people who just wanted to work for a living and live in a safe city and send their kids to safe schools.

And to do all of that, he needed to be a protector. Not the avenger who would beat Ra’s until there was nothing left of him, but the detective who would make his world smaller and smaller until he could be put away for good. Not a killer, but a ninja. So that meant something unfortunate: As much as it would make him feel good, he couldn’t storm that hotel and give Ra’s Al-Ghul what he had coming. If he did, innocent people would die. Both during the raid, and once Ra’s decided it was time to raze Starling City to the ground as recompense for the insult. No, this had to be played slow.

Besides the pragmatic reasons for not rushing, he did have a mystery to work on. Who had been the killer? He figured Ra’s and\or Talia had ordered the thing, but it would be a poor example of delegation to imagine either one of them personally walking out there swinging the sword. No, this was a horseman or someone else very high-ranking. Someone who could be relied upon to do a task without needing their hand held, or have orders explicitly given to them.

But Oliver wasn’t stupid. Speculating as to who the killer was did not mean he’d get a chance to question them. For one thing, there probably was a suicide failsafe on the person of every elite member of the League should they be captured. If a skilled enough interrogator caught one of his assassins, and could divine operational information, the whole game would be up. And he knew Ra’s couldn’t allow that.

For the other, this murder had happened in Starling City deliberately. The League, he was beginning to get the sense, was not above making a statement in blood. And that meant they had a plan bigger than just this. A plan that, unless he pulled off a miracle, he was never going to get from the horse’s mouth.

But the Jade Samurai didn’t mind. Someone, somewhere, would answer for what had been done. He couldn’t imagine anything else.

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Sitting behind the wheel of a high-powered Italian superbike, his wife and partner by his side as yet another Starling City rainstorm drenched the streets, Oliver Queen glanced over at Laurel Lance and they both knew what to do next. This wasn’t a job for newlyweds who had their wedding covered on the front page of the Starling City Post-Intelligencer, or a martial arts teacher and a renowned Michelin-starred chef. No, to do this and do it right, the city needed someone else. The city needed something else.

After all, there were seven bodies sitting in drawers in the city morgue. Seven families mourning their sons, and hoping for a good funeral. And if their families never got peace, never got the chance to say goodbye according to their traditions, that would be a crime. And didn’t the Green Arrow and Black Canary stop crimes?

Sure, they were wearing suits designed to not be seen until they wanted to be. But that was tactical prudence, not an attempt to be something they weren’t. They had run those seven murders down. Figured out the how, and the where, and the what. The only thing left to them was the why, and an ancient order of trained killers had the answer.

So, as they drove carefully through the streets of Starling City, there was silence. Just hand signals and nods at stop lights. (By mutual accord, both of them followed traffic laws to the letter and the spirit. Getting caught, and being given a ticket, was a complication that was truly underrated in the damage it could do to their secret identities.) Besides, the silence gave them time to do what they did best.

Oliver planned. A high-end hotel would make it their mission to make a guest who had the finances of the Al-Ghuls to provide them with every reasonable accommodation. And he just knew that would include Henri Ducard being allowed to have free reign of the penthouse suite, and the two floors above and below. And those floors would be stocked with the fruit of the League of Assassins, the most well-trained guards that there could be. So if he wanted to get to the Demon’s Head and his heiress, there would be where all of their skills needed to be focused. Getting there, though, was a whole different kettle of fish. So, as he drove, he worked out how to get in without being seen.

Laurel sparred in her own mind. She knew Ollie wanted to be quiet, so she would fight quickly. Getting bogged down anywhere meant getting heard, and that would not work. So she would throw her fastest strikes, the stuff she knew put people down. She wanted to be fresh in case there was something there they hadn’t planned for. This was going to be a long night. Time to get ready.

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In an alleyway off of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel……..

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Of all of Oliver Queen’s ghosts, of all of the people who he thought this new timeline had buried for him, Ra’s Al-Ghul had been the one he had wanted to deal with the least. Everything the man had done, everything it had required, was not a set of memories he wished to contemplate. But now that he was back, there was no way around it. To truly be free from the mistakes and the sins of the past, he had to defeat Ra’s Al-Ghul and Talia Al-Ghul.

Even now, with a whole new timeline, he could remember their fight on the mountaintop of Nanda Parbat where he had been toyed with as a father would toy with a child before being killed with ease. It had stuck with him, the memory of that, and had colored every decision he made until his death on Earth-38. To put it right now, to bury that last demon once and for all, was something he was looking very much forward to. But he understood, deeply, what getting there was going to ask of him.

This was not a defanged Ra’s Al-Ghul, looking for a heir and knowing he was on borrowed time. No, this was a man still in his physical prime to the point where he could fit into hand-tailored European-cut suits, smart enough to sneak into a city without being known about, and sociopathic enough to genuinely believe he could ask a newly married husband to cheat on his wife and think that was a deal he would ever get accepted.

And this was a Ra’s Al-Ghul who could credibly swear bloody vengeance when that deal wasn’t accepted. And by the end of the night, by the time they either walked out or fought their way out of the hotel in front of him, the Green Arrow knew he was going to make two enemies. Two very dangerous enemies.

Because he didn’t want to ignore Talia, either. The last memory of her was of her willing to help Thea form a new generation of heroes, but that wasn’t who she really was. That was someone who had lost power, lost the attempt to get it back, and was scrambling to make a backup plan.

No, the Talia Al-Ghul he knew was the woman whose rage had allowed her to unleash Adrian Chase on his city because she could not abide anyone else killing her father but her. And despite the new presentation, and the fact that she was by her father’s side now, there was no doubt that the rage of Talia Al-Ghul remained smoldering below the surface like a fire just waiting to be ignited.

Making sure she didn’t get her heir? That would be the match that lit the flame. But, and this he was pleased about, he could meet her rage with righteous fury of his own if it came to it.

This was his city. He protected it. He adored it. And Talia Al-Ghul, seemingly to prove what she could do if he rejected her silent demands, had decided to have seven people murdered on her implicit say-so. And on top of that, she had thought the best time to have these demands presented to him was right after the wedding to his one true love? Who did she think he was? Did she look at the symbol he had made himself into and genuinely think the Emerald Archer would be so pragmatic, so cold, that he’d turn his back on the love of his life? Did she think that murder, cold-blooded and pre-meditated murder, would sway her to his side?

It was clear what was happening here. There might have been a time, before those bodies drew his attention, where the Emerald Archer could have tried to use diplomacy to get his point across. Maybe negotiation, or something else. But now? Now it was obvious.

Seven men, criminals though they may be, lay in a morgue downtown. Their families would always wonder who it was, wonder if they could have changed things. And he knew who was responsible for it, for all of it.

And more to the point, Oliver knew what had to be done. To protect his city, to banish these monsters from it. 

Without saying a word, because for this he didn’t goddamn need to, he glanced over at the Black Canary and knew she knew too.

They could no longer choose diplomacy. It would not work. Today, the Jade Samurai chose war. 

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

As she slipped in her mouthpiece, throwing a quick combination to get her muscles warmed up, Dinah Laurel Lance could not help but think about just how far her life had taken her since being on the Starling City docks over a decade ago. There was no way, none at all, that young girl fresh out of law school could have ever imagined what listening to that bolt of lightning would do for her.

Because now here she was: Somehow getting ready to use tactics taught to her by surviving members of an honest-to-goodness ninja clan to get inside her city’s most famous hotel in order to confront the head and the second-in-command of an order of assassins in order to find out who amongst them was responsible for the killing of seven Triad hitters in order to prevent the Triads from starting a gang war and hitting whoever they thought might be responsible. What was her life exactly?  

But that was a rhetorical question, because she knew the answer. It was a life about purpose. Every night she put on her suit she knew she was making some dent in the problems that had plagued her city for decades before she had even arrived. The idea that she could be like one of her friends from law school, having a private driver and living downtown in Coast City while she worked for some big law firm protecting the worst of the worst, offended her. There were injustices, and she intended on correcting them.

And if the Black Canary was being honest with herself, nothing existed as an injustice quite like the idea that just because you were in a gang no one gave a damn when you were murdered. Sure, she wasn’t doing anything anywhere close to condoning the way those seven men lived their lives. But they deserved to be behind bars, to be leaned on to give up higher-ranking members of their gang, and for their families to have to drive almost to Portland to see them. They did not deserve death. They did not deserve for their bodies to be in a morgue downtown and have no one care what happened to them.

Every person who lived in Starling City, whether gang member or nun, deserved to know in their bones that there was someone out there who would work their murder until it got solved if they got killed. Not with bias, or expecting to see an outcome coming, but because justice was more important than personal biases. It was damned sure more important than making sure people got protected because the outcome of wherever chasing a murderer took you got messy.

She knew the SWAT thing, the thing with Sgt. Bailey, was still cooking. But as she looked at Ollie, and saw the cold purposeful anger in his eyes, she knew what he was thinking. And damn if she wasn’t thinking the same thing too.

Ra’s Al-Ghul, and Talia because there was no doubt she was in this up to the elbow too, had chosen to kill seven people in their city because they thought their status as criminals would make their murder uninteresting. But what they appeared not to understand was what the Emerald Archer, and the Songbird of Starling, had chosen to become.

Here, in this city, every murder got taken seriously. No matter who it was, no matter what they had done up until they lost their life, they were still residents of this city. And since they were, people needed to know someone was on the case. No matter where it took them, those murders would get solved.  

Trying to figure out who had been behind those murders had taken them here, to this hotel built in the late 1910’s and a monument to what the city had been once and what it could be again. And, as the rain kept pouring, she was beginning to understand what was going to come of this.

They were going into what was, by now at least, a luxury safehouse of a den of trained killers. And not just that, but they were also going in that house to tell them no. No to taking a deal to provide Ra’s with an heir, and no to letting a murder go unanswered. She couldn’t figure a way out of them having official war declared.

But, as she kept thinking about it, Laurel could admit she wasn’t all too bothered about it. Sure, the city was going to be a much tougher place to patrol. But if she wanted this to be the city she knew in her soul it could be, it had to become a place where no ancient order of ninjas intimidated anyone from doing the right thing. And bringing the killers of seven men to justice was the right thing.

And she could, if she used all of her training, bring those killers in. Why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t they?

Because, as she looked over at the Green Arrow, she knew damned well what he was thinking. For six years, she had worked and moved alongside him. She had trained herself to perceive his every thought without a word, just as he had done with her. None of this worked if you needed to always be guided to the next step, to have parts of the plan spoon-fed to you. And just by the look on his face, and the purpose in his eyes, she knew what the plan was.

And the Queen of the Fist didn’t mind it one bit.

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As he grabbed the works from his suit pocket and threw one small pouch towards the Black Canary, the Green Arrow glanced all the way up to the roof of the imposing hotel in front of him and sighed. Of course it had to be this. It could have been nothing else but this.

Helena Bertinelli was skilled as a hand-to-hand combatant, but she was not nearly as connected or as well-resourced. Amanda Waller was connected and well-resourced with high-level assassins on the payroll, but not a physical threat. This, what they were looking at now, was the pinnacle of everything. A pair of well-trained martial artists, even if their specific styles still remained mysterious, who were connected and well-resourced and leader of an order of elite killers. Had he and Laurel been training for this without knowing what they were really doing?

But those deep questions would come for later, back in the Quiver. Now, here, there was work to be done. And as he fired two grappling hook arrows to the very top of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, and started climbing up the southeast side of the structure carefully, he ran the plans through his head one more time. Stealth was the game here. Hard to pull off against an order of assassins who were used to moving in silence, but not impossible. Blood chokes and tranquilizer arrows were the name of the game. Good thing he was very skilled in the former, and kept an entire yazutsu of arrows that could be tuned to just that if he needed them to. And he needed them to.

There could be no mistakes here. No making noise unless it was mission-necessary. Because, if his mental clock was right, they were doing this while Ra’s and Talia were in the middle of their last set of prayers for the night. Being seen by either of them would be correctly imagined to be a grave insult against their faith, and the reprisals would be biblical. And since he knew that the direction most American Muslims prayed was to the north, going up the south side of the building would prevent them from being seen.

And as they finally made it up to the rooftop, groaning at the lush and verdant rooftop garden when so much of their own city only saw green grass at Husky Stadium or Memorial Stadium, Oliver Queen put his earbuds in his ears as Dinah Laurel Lance planted her feet and executed a perfect whistle note to blow the door to the rooftop garden entrance off of its hinges. Time to get where they needed to go.

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 (Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen was very unaccustomed to the idea of not knowing what to do in a given situation. Over the 6 years he had worn the hood this time, always having a plan for anything laid in front of him had become a big part of his core identity. He was the one who knew the answers, even when the question was a 50-part Pythagorean theorem he had to study backwards and forwards. In front of him, at this moment, was the hardest test he had. Because in front of him was a room full of partygoers, sipping champagne and enjoying what looked like duck l’orange in puff-pastry and other walking appetizers. If that was all it was, this would be easy. But, of course, that was nowhere near everything.

For one thing, he thought darkly, this particular version of Ra’s Al-Ghul was far more progressive than he had given the Demon’s Head credit for being. The man he remembered, from what little he had seen of how he operated, would not have cared enough about modernity to do what he was doing. This was, bizarrely, an investor meeting for…. Was this man fucking KIDDING? Did he genuinely name his shell company Al-Sahim Global Industries?

But, for now, he could ignore the cheap taunting. There was more than enough to actually concern him, namely based on what else he was seeing in this room. Every member of the all-female wait staff and bartender crew were all members of the League, and residents of Starling City. The latter was the more direct to figure, largely because all these waitresses and bartenders spoke in the way a lifetime resident of Starling City would. But as for the League affiliation?

It was the way the waiters and bartenders moved. They moved as though they were carefully watching every person in the room, surveying them all to determine whether or not they were a threat. At this moment, without having a plan on how to get out of here, the Green Arrow knew he could not get out of here by fighting. There were far too many skilled warriors, about whom he knew far too little, for that to be the choice he made.

Using their eight limbs as the avenue of escape would be the kind of thing that the old him would have done, and he was not that man anymore. Furthermore the Black Canary was undeniably a master martial artist, living on a level only topped by what Lady Shiva could reach, but even she could not be expected to fight cold against enemies she knew next to nothing about. But they were not merely fighters.

They had been trained in, well, every aspect of heroism that one might need. And at this moment, hiding in a very well-made but very obvious replica of the same Japanese garden he meditated in, he glanced at Laurel and knew what needed to happen. They needed to think as the ninja they had been trained to be by an ancient clan of warriors at the foot of Mount Fuji who shared their own desire to see justice done. What had they been called? The Hayabusa Clan?

But those trainings, those hours spent soaking up every skill and trick those masters possessed, would serve him and Laurel well. Because while the League taught their members how to hide in plain sight, the Hayabusa Clan taught their students how to move in the shadows. And, he realized with a smile, there were plenty of shadows for him and Laurel to move through.

They both, albeit with separate teachers because the clan still held strict to specific ideas of what the genders were to do in ninja training, had mastered the concept of what it was like to move without anyone hearing you. And right now, in this garden he knew like the back of his hand, the Emerald Archer and the Songbird of Starling walked carefully through this place just out of view of anyone who might be interested enough in the shadows to look at them.

Snarling at the door, picking it quickly, both himself and Laurel glanced back behind them and made it to the hardwood floors. Exhaling for a moment, he glances around and begins to plan.

At times like this, he can see outside himself. Not so much that it’s magical, but enough that it allows him to see in 360 degrees when he needs to. In front of them is a royal-blue Persian carpet of the finest quality, befitting for a luxury hotel of the type he and his wife have raided. Behind them is an investor meeting staffed by assassins-in-waiting that he and his wife have escaped with cunning and skill. To the sides are suites, beyond which may or may not lay more assassins. Thus, there was only one thing to do: Walk forward and be careful about it. Time to gather more information.

Pulling up the hotel registry on one of his gauntlets, beckoning Laurel to see what he is seeing, Oliver groans. Their targets, in the most broad sense of the term, are 4 floors below them. It, he figured, could be possible that they could get 4 floors without running into one assassin guard. But he doubted it, and judging by the look on his wife’s face he could tell she did too.

Well, he had been trained to fight in stealth too. And it was obvious now that he needed to.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance prided herself on her equanimity as much as she did her martial arts skill. A vigilante, a protector, who let their temper run rampant was always going to be someone who could be baited into making mistakes that would cause harm to innocent people. No matter what she saw, she kept cool. Especially in this situation, where keeping a level head and your mind focused on the business in front of you was of the utmost importance.

But right now, as she looked at the hotel registry that her husband was showing her,  she could admit to wanting to do nothing more than to roundhouse kick every single person who was vaguely associated with this bullshit.

For one thing she knew nothing about who was behind these doors, or what would happen if there was a fight. And that fact disquieted her. Not because she was particularly scared of a fight. She knew how she had been trained, and she knew who trained her. Furthermore, her continuing education had been with the best of the best kickboxers, taekwondo players, and kung-fu and karate masters. If there was no way out of it, she was sure she could handle herself.

But she didn’t want to have to fight if it wasn’t necessary. There was plenty she knew she could do now, plenty of skills available to her that didn’t require her to use her eight limbs in the service of protecting the innocent of her city. But, as she kept reading the hotel registry that her husband was looking at, she knew that was no longer the case. There was, barring a miracle of the highest order, no chance at all to get where they needed to go without things getting physical.

So, clasping hands with her husband, she walked towards one of the doors and made sure her gloves were tight before biting down on her mouthpiece.

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Kicking the door open, the Black Canary and the Green Arrow started walking. Softly at first, still using the tricks they had been taught in Japan to avoid detection. But it would not matter. And they both knew it. So, as they walked, they began a non-verbal conversation they had both gone through too many times to count. Each figuring out what they would need to do, and how best to do it.

And then, at the bottom of the stairwell, it began. A woman, tall and elegant dressed in a dead ringer for an outfit worn by the Persian immortals of the first Persian Empire and wearing a dark-green sash, sat kneeling in the stairwell deep in obvious prayer. And without even moving a muscle, or opening an eye, this woman turned her head and finished her prayers before speaking while her eyes remained steadfastly closed. And then, once her prayers were done, she remained seated with her eyes closed while she spoke with a strong and clear voice.

(Author’s note: This conversation took place in Arabic.)

“You do not belong in this place, either of you. You have rejected the kindnesses of my master and my mistress. And we have showed you what we are capable of, the superior form of justice that we can bring to your city. And yet, you still come here and still demand an audience with my master and my mistress. What gives you the right?” this woman said, and the Emerald Archer and the Songbird of Starling look wary. This was the tone of voice, and the words, of a true believer.

“We are here merely to ensure the people who showed your supposed ‘superior’ form of justice answer to the people of this city for what they have done. We have no interest in an audience with your master and your mistress, merely to ensure that the innocent families of the men you touched with your sword can know peace” the Black Canary says, keeping her voice deliberately light and calm. How she felt about this particular woman was unimportant. Getting past her without throwing a strike in anger, on the other hand, was.

“You wish to protect the families of drug dealers, of killers and enforcers for a crime syndicate? Why do you wish this?” the woman says, carefully standing up and immediately getting into a very advanced stance found in the Chaquan style of kung-fu from the Turkic regions of China. This, of course, drew the Green Arrow to speak. But he spoke carefully.

“We wish it because every citizen in our city is under our protection, whether they lived a righteous life or they did not. And while the men the League delivered may not have been righteous, their families were. And they need not mourn any longer without knowing anyone has to answer for what was done” the Green Arrow says, deliberately keeping the grit and power out of his voice. Now, he could sense, was not the time to play the enforcer and the intimidator. To Ra’s and Talia’s mind, he and Laurel would always be children. Acting like that perception was poor form.

But, they both realized, it didn’t matter. This woman, whoever she was, immediately threw a flash roundhouse kick and the Black Canary blocked it with her glove and returned fire with a shoulder-high kick of her own before throwing a double back hook kick before both stood at the ready only for the League member to drop like a shot as the Green Arrow threw a tranquilizer-loaded flechette that hit home.

There was more to do, and he knew it was time to get started.

As the door opened, and more League members blocked the area, the Green Arrow and Black Canary fought as hard as they could. But it was a small space. So they had to fight like it. There would be no flashy aerial pyrotechnics here. This was a fight made for the Jade Samurai, all close spaces and heavy brutality. So his short punches, crushing elbows, and rib-cracking knees carried the day. This was a time to remember what his Muay Thai training had provided him, which was all about power and force.

But, as the League members were soon finding out, going after the Queen of the Fist was not that much better. Because, while her style was usually found in flowing beauty and gorgeous technique, the Black Canary most certainly was not indisposed to the idea of a chest-to-chest brawl. In fact, as she threw these trained killers into walls and down stairs, it could even be said that she was looking forward to it.

Finally, after several minutes of brutal combat, the Green Arrow and Black Canary got done. Now, time to see the Demon’s Head and his daughter.  

Chapter Text

At the Olympia Fairmont Hotel in downtown Starling City, on the penthouse floor…….

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen had never been this tired. Not a day in his life. Not when Bruce Wayne, Lady Shiva, and Ricardo Diaz had made him do “sharkbait” drills when he fought 12 rounds back-to-back-to-back against some of the best unsigned middleweights in mixed martial arts, Thai boxing, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

Not even when he and Laurel had been run through the GIGN training program, including laying at the bottom of Puget Sound on a Washington Huskies home game as everyone’s sailboats and yachts went overhead and then being asked to do reasoning and memorization tests after running ten miles in his full suit.

Those had been brutal, and he had wanted nothing more than to eat and sleep in that order after everything was all done. But there was no doubt in his mind, and judging by the way Laurel was looking, he was willing to bet that there was no doubt in hers either. This had to have been the most tired either of them had ever been.

And, he thought grimly, of course the League was at the heart of the reason. If there had been any doubt in his mind that they were more dangerous than they had been in the original timeline, dealing with them here disabused him of that notion fully. Getting to the place where he was now had taken all his guile, some dirty tricks, and every ounce of fighting skill he had in him. But it was nowhere close to being enough. At least, not without his perfect partner.

In the last timeline, the Green Arrow had never really had a partner. So, he realized sadly, that meant he had to carry more of the weight of this mission than anyone should have ever had to. Tonight, though? Not for the first time, he thanked providence for Laurel. The Flash had given her the chance to find the skills that went with the pure desire for justice that Laurel had always had, and it had made her into the hero she always should have become.

And tonight, not for the first time, being alongside the Black Canary had saved him. Because she had fought tonight, not with the beauty she possessed both inside and out, but like the bruiser and intimidator he was. When he saw it, saw her fighting with a wildness and a brute force she had so rarely used, he could admit one thing: He had never, not even on his wedding day, been more in love with her than he was right now.

So as he stood alongside his wife, gulping in deep breaths of air, he used that love for fuel to let his mind distract his body for a moment. Physically, he might be tired. But mentally? Mentally he could play chess against an entire room full of grandmasters and never be tired. And playing chess was what Ra’s and Talia were doing.

He knew more about the League now, and he had grown to understand precisely how valuable it was to have any kind of information. Everything he was, every skill he had ever possessed, was built on having knowledge and doing what he could to make sure all of it was useful. And he was beginning to realize something very uncomfortable, but also something he should have known:

Ra’s and Talia had created a cult. A dangerous cult of true believers to the last, and believers like that were always the most dangerous opponent. This League was far more powerful than the one he had seen, hobbled and weakened by millennia's worth of civil war and inadequate leadership. And because that was true, that meant Ra’s and Talia could spend all their time training every assassin in the League’s house style with no fear of having to put down rebellion.

Last time, he had memorized their style and figured out where the holes in it were. Now, though? He could not say that, at least not without lying. And he would never tell a lie. Not like this, or about this. He knew he could beat the League’s forces, and so could Laurel, but it would be much harder now than it had been. To beat them, he realized, he needed to think not like a martial artist. Instead, he needed to think like a profiler.

And so, as he took his last gulp of air, the Emerald Archer re-tied the straps on his gloves and prepared to try and look into the eyes of the devil. That, of course, was not all he was going to be doing. But Ra’s did not need to know that, and neither did Talia.

He had no doubt in his mind, not anymore, about what the Al-Ghul’s truly were. They were killers, and always had been. They could dress themselves up in the finest garments from the finest fashion houses, and dine at the finest steakhouses throughout the city, but the core of who they were would never truly change. And since he knew that, he would do what he had not been able to do the last time he had seen either of them: He would not show them fear, or understanding.

But he could show them what he and the Songbird of Starling really were. Not the husband-and-wife Ra’s and Talia had tried to intimidate with a deal no sane man would take. But the protectors of a city. Yes, he knew his city was not perfect. It was dark, a noir film fantasy made real. But it did not matter to him. It was still his home.

And since it was his home, he guarded it and protected it like anyone who could ought to protect their home. There were people outside the door, demanding to break in and sully it. And Oliver knew, like he knew his own name and the promises he had sworn to make to Laurel as her husband, what the Al-Ghul’s were truly capable of. He could, and would, work on strangling their resources and soft power when he was back at the Quiver. But right here, in this moment, he needed to see them when someone did to them what they had done to him.

The question of how they reacted to disrespect, visible disrespect that they could not wave off in the heat of the moment, was interesting. Because as he well knew, silence was scarier than noises, a dagger was scarier than a firework, and a man in a jade-green hood with a bow on his back calmly looking into your eyes telling you how he’s going to ruin your life in a flat monotone was even scarier than anything some muscled-up superhero could ever dream of doing. The Jade Samurai wanted to find out how they responded to that fear.

(Dinah Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had fought hard, and long, to create a particular style that worked well for her. It had been countless hours learning how to throw combinations with more and more moves, and to use her long legs and slim frame to make herself into the platonic ideal of an outside fighter. And up until tonight, that had always been enough.

But just because she preferred to fight from range, to throw combinations that looked like beautiful ballet, did not mean that she could not bite down on her mouthpiece and get into a phone-booth situation if she had to. After all, Ted Grant had been one of her teachers too. And he loved going to the body. As he had said to her one time, “Pajarito, going to the body takes time. It doesn’t work right away. But if you keep at it, and just keep digging, you’ll end up finding really good results there. I feel like there’s a lesson there.” The Black Canary knew he was right, so she liked getting into a phone-booth fight at Wildcat’s just to keep those skills sharp and to show her students how to still set up your strikes when an opponent knew how to take your distance control away from you.

But that was at Wildcat’s, surrounded by elite taekwondo players, kung-fu masters, and world-class kickboxers. There she wanted to ensure her students could handle the fighters they might sometimes find themselves opposing on the other side of a tournament bracket. In the field was supposed to be different.

Tonight, maybe for the first time, she had fought not to subdue and disable but to hurt whoever was in front of her. It had been ugly, and slow, but she had gotten there. The fact that the League was responsible for that, of course, did not surprise her in the least. From what Ollie had said, and what they had seen in the crime scene photographs they had taken, they were skilled swordfighters.

But having fought them tonight, they were also clearly top-drawer martial artists. Even worse, they were not merely skilled but they were also very comfortable in tight places and utterly ruthless. So, she needed to re-assess what she knew was happening. After all, it was not what the Songbird of Starling knew. What she knew could be manipulated by personal interpretation, bias, or even missing certain evidence either by omission or commission. What she could prove, however, was a factual thing. It was based on evidence, and weaving that evidence into something that made sense.

For one thing, the members of the League were true believers. She could tell this because they fought with a recklessness she had only ever seen in people who believed that their lives were owned by another. Taking risks and trying higher and higher levels of aggressive strikes were never, to her way of understanding, something one did if you were particularly concerned about the prospect of being brought to justice. But that had not been the most worrying thing.

It had been the fact that every assassin had been a woman, wearing armor that were pitch-perfect replica of the Persian immortals. That was strange to her. The League had been heavily using Arabic history and myth, to the point where she thought they were seriously wanting to re-create the Abbasid Caliphate here in Starling City. And yet the League’s soldiers that they had dealt with here were dressed not as soldiers from the height of pan-Arabic military might, but instead as tribute to the Persians whose relationship with the Arabic world had always been fraught. Were they doing that to prove they wanted to be heirs to multiple great empires of antiquity, or was that a way to differentiate the elite from the rank and file?

But what she did know was clearer. Whatever the League was trying to do, they were an order of killers. They could hide that truth behind layers of piety for ancient traditions and myths, but she wasn’t fooled. The seven bodies in the morgue downtown were all the proof on that that she needed. There was her proof.

Ever since she had found those bodies, Laurel had thought every night of sneaking into the morgue and asking them one question. She supposed the detectives who were “investigating”, or the overworked medical examiner, had never bothered to ask this. But she wanted to. Simply, her question was:

“What do you want me to tell your family?” Someone, somewhere, needed to keep these victims front of mind. And that was why she was here, alongside her husband. God, her husband. Seeing Ollie as the Green Arrow was a treat she never got tired of, because she understood all the work it required to make sure he did that job with the solemnity and skill she knew it required. This was not a city for the faint of heart, for the weak or easily fooled. To protect this place? It was the best, and the hardest, thing she had ever tried to do. If she was being honest, it shouldn’t be easy. They were making enemies of people who had limitless resources to do things like the Undertaking, or start a gang war, or kill foreign leaders on American soil. Bringing them to justice, making them see that their money was powerless, required excellence. Not just being ok at a few things and making up for it with brutality and violence, but excellence.

And here, in this place for the well-heeled and powerful, there was another who sought to be a destructive force aimed towards this city. The League of Assassins had already shown they were capable of murder. They could not be allowed to commit any more.

The Queen of the Fist was bound and determined to stop them.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As someone who didn’t have any special powers or abilities besides a bow and a yazutsu of 60 nth-metal arrows, Oliver Queen had made himself used to the idea of preparing for a wide variety of opponents and spaces. It was like back at the Golden Tiger. His knife roll carried every kind of knife he could need, but it was all a manner of knowing what to cut and when to cut it.

Such was the case with the suit he now wore, and all the little pockets and pouches therein. If there was something he needed, he tended to have it. Extra flash drives for downloading sensitive information, a full fingerprinting kit with evidence bags, top-of-the-line collapsible parabolic microphones, a field medicine first-aid kit, and the thing he was using right now.

A lockpicking kit was, perhaps, not the bleeding height of cool. But all the specialty arrows in his quiver would not be nearly as useful to him as the ability to get into a room no one wanted him to get into, and find out information no one wanted him to know. And when he thought about the opponents he now faced, the need to be one step ahead of them was of the highest importance. If he had put together anything, even if it wasn’t 100% official, it was that this version of the League was far more ruthless in their dealings than the last one had been.

These were people who had set up shop in his city and killed seven people just to prove they could do it with no apparent reprisals. And if he and Laurel couldn’t make them face justice, what else would they try? How much more blood could his city stand being shed? The Green Arrow knew the answer to that question, intellectually. But, emotionally, he wanted to never know. So, reaching for the engraved lockpicking kit, he intended on making damned sure that stopped here.

This was the city he loved, the city he and Laurel had trained and sworn to protect. And it had already seen enough death. In this timeline, and in the last one, there had already been way too many lives lost here. He would move heaven and earth to make sure it never happened again. But as he got started, having done this enough times by now that his mind can handle both picking a hotel-quality lock and work on other problems, he started to catalog the things he figured he might see when he opened the door.

Proof of the crime, of course, was nowhere near the list at all. He hoped, but it wasn’t like he genuinely thought there’d be a smorgasbord of forensics and two swordswomen eager to confess on the other side of this door. Ra’s was eager to impress him, to make him want to betray his codes of honor, but he wasn’t dumb. And leaving proof of the crime out for anyone to find and use was so dumb it was miles beneath the Head of the Demon even at his most mentally afflicted. So, that was out.

But he also didn’t figure on the idea that there wouldn’t be anything here. After all, he wasn’t just some brute with a bow anymore. Honestly, as soon as he got done picking this lock, he was sweeping for prints. Unless the League’s assassins, the people who went out and did the dirty work, slept in full wool socks and gloves there’d be some evidence that someone was here. And since there’d be evidence, there would be prints that could be found in some database somewhere. No one, no matter how well they tried to hide their tracks, could be a ghost anywhere and everywhere.

But, as he kept working the lock, the Emerald Archer felt his blood chill as he realized something. It was true that there had been a long list of bodies in the most well-heeled of places, but there was one other thing those places shared with each other. These were places where if you knew who to throw the money at and how much money to throw you could buy justice. If he was right, and he was beginning to think he was, this might be why no one knew anything. The League had bribed people to make sure evidence went missing, interviews were bungled, and forensics were deliberately contaminated. And if you didn’t take the bribe, well it was obvious what came next. Ra’s Al-Ghul would not leave loose ends.

But he knew the League also wouldn’t have gotten sloppy like they had been if he wasn’t supposed to come here. That much was obvious to him, and he could figure it was obvious to Laurel. Those seven bodies had been a statement of intent. And he shivered, in his mind at least, with what they would try to do once he and Laurel told them to go fuck themselves.

But Oliver would not shrink in the face of that concern. Not anymore. And especially not by some man who thought himself the inheritor to the legacy of a caliphate.

So, as the Jade Samurai finished picking the lock and walked into the room, he finally saw the expanse of what he was up against.

And he didn’t like it.

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“Fuck”. It didn’t matter which one of them said it, because the point was still the same. This was as spartan a place as could exist in a luxury hotel designed to provide athletes, musicians, and other suitably rich men and women a safe haven from Starling City. There was a bed up against a wall, and both Oliver and Laurel guessed there was a bathroom with a toilet and a shower. But that looked like all there was.

And honestly, as both of them set up the crime scene, the Green Arrow and Black Canary knew just how this was supposed to work. The League ran a tripartite system. One part were the public-facing people, who spoke the nonverbal language of the rich and were charming. These were the people Ra’s and Talia sent in for intelligence-gathering, and no more. The trick was that these were people no one gave a second look to, because who spent time studying your waiter or bartender?

“Fuck” And then the Black Canary saw the second layer, and it was obvious that she said it this time. The actual killers, the women who did the dirty work, lived in small places like this. And they knew why. You wouldn’t want to make a show of yourself, to draw any attention on seeing a nice bed shipped someplace or ordering room service. No, the spartan room setting was the point. This was a place where you only looked at photos, read dossiers, and sharpened your weapon. Murderers slept here, and the League trained them to never leave a trace.

“Aw fuck” the Green Arrow saw it before his wife did. This was not a room for the League’s highest-ranking members, or anyone above a grunt. If they did find someone here, they would know nothing and would take a cyanide pill before the interrogation even began. They were still dusting for fingerprints and checking for fibers, because assumption was a death, but now they didn’t expect to find anything.

It was becoming clear to the both of them, no matter how skilled they might be as investigators, that there was nothing here for them to find. Whoever lived in this room were never coming back, and the answers to their question were going to be found somewhere else. Time to go and find that.

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As he walked out of that hotel room, his blue eyes scanning every corner of the penthouse hallway, Oliver Queen could admit to feeling a momentary sense of confusion. He prided himself, not without cause, on always having a play. No matter what was in front of him, no matter what available resources he had in front of him, he could always find a way to get an objective accomplished. And he figured he still could. But it would require more work, and more planning, than he had imagined at the start of this. e was going

No, that wasn’t quite right. It would be more work than he, and Laurel, had imagined at the start of this. He knew she was his partner, his second set of eyes, and they were working this case together to serve the same ending. And because that was true, he needed to get back to the basics. Not dry-ice arrows, or 900-degree kicks, but recognizing a pattern and studying how people moved. That was the key to doing this right, after all.

Ra’s Al-Ghul and Talia Al-Ghul may be the heads of this ancient cult of killers, but they were still human. They were still people. And that meant that he could find their habits, the things they did, and where they did them. No human, no matter how much money and their power, were immune from following their habits and routines. And if you knew where to look, you knew how to figure out how they thought. And that was all he and Laurel needed.

Because, somewhere and somehow, Ra’s Al-Ghul and Talia Al-Ghul were going to be held to account for their role in seven murders. No, not murders. That was too sanitized, too clinical. These were seven killings in cold blood. And he knew the SCPD, or at least the detectives from the Third Precinct who caught this, were too busy and\or too uninterested to work this thing. So, not for the first time, it fell to him and Laurel to make sure the families of those seven had peace. Because if the cops wouldn’t do it, they would.

Now, he knew how that would sound if he said it out loud. Bragging for the sake of bragging was never going to be something he did, unless it was obviously necessary to intimidate someone who had already shown the signs of being fearful about being caught. But the Green Arrow also wouldn’t lie about what he could do. It was a deep dishonor, a personal sign of disrespect to his city, to pretend he was less than he was. Just as it would be to make himself seem superior. So, he began to work on doing the things he could do best. And that was saving people, and solving mysteries others refused to even look at.

For one thing, this was obviously not the hollowed-out League of his timeline. If he did not know it from perception, and their show of clan strength and capability in the murder of seven well-trained Triad enforcers, what they had shown him in the stairwell proved it. These were dangerous people, who he had only beaten due to cunning and viciousness. And these were not even the League’s elite guard. At this moment, unless something changed, he could not beat that elite guard in a hand-to-hand fistfight. So, regretfully, a direct confrontation was out.

But that was not, in any sense, the only change from his old timeline. The League, and he only guessed this because he hadn’t yet made all the armed members, had an all-female fighting force. He figured that tracked too. Security guards would, for a variety of reasons that were too deep to deal with at this moment in time, be far less suspect of a pretty woman in a beautiful dress than they might be with a burly man in a three-piece suit. So if you needed to get someone in with a knife or a bow, and get them back out with no one the wiser, having a woman dressed well and being willing to charm was the best choice.

But it was, he guessed, this timeline’s version of Ra’s who was the biggest change. The man he had met, and killed in a swordfight, was a shambling old man broken by overexposure to the Lazarus Pit and desperate to keep his crumbling organization afloat. Not this Ra’s, though. This one felt like he was far more vital, and far more conniving, than he had remembered.

The Emerald Archer could admit that he was not sure how much of his reticence on making a move towards the Demon’s Head was about making sure he wasn’t being reckless, and how much of it was about his own memories of what had happened the last time he had dealt with the man.

But there was a crime committed, and seven bodies dead in the morgue downtown waiting to be identified and truly laid to rest. And whether it was tangential or not, Ra’s was at the magma-hot core of how it happened. These were bodies killed to prove a point. Not for the sake of business to consolidate a corner. Not to strongly dissuade anyone from going to the cops with information. Those were at least plausible reasons.

No, this was in service of an offer no husband could take. Ra’s sincerely believed, or at least appeared to sincerely believe, that offering his daughter Talia up as a broodmare was an offer that could ever be accepted. He didn’t know what else Ra’s got out of it, besides an heir. But if Ra’s wanted an heir, couldn’t he go anywhere? What about this city, and what about him, intrigued the Demon’s Head to the point that he had been the choice?

That was a mystery he would not find clues to by standing out here and making guesses. It would only be answered, and even this was a near thing, by looking into the eyes of Ra’s Al-Ghul and finding the answers there. Because, at least as far as he knew, the only way to know was to ask without asking.

If Ra’s had studied criminal psychology, at least well-enough to hide his true face, this would get nowhere. But if he hadn’t? Well then maybe he could get some more clues to work on.

Oliver didn’t know much about this Ra’s. But he was hopeful, that when he got out of here, he’d know more. And if he didn’t, if he couldn’t get the information he needed, there would be other ways. Perhaps, even, other people.

Because this was his city. His home. And he would be damned, literally and figuratively, if he looked into the eyes of the people who lived here and told them he couldn’t stop the League of Assassins from stacking body on top of body like the predatory motherfuckers they were.

Time for the Jade Samurai to finally grab his yumi and get to work.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had studied the human mind, backwards and forwards, to be able to tell if someone was lying to her or telling the truth on the briefest flash of a raised eyebrow or a minute shift in the shoulders. But sometimes there was more to understanding how the human mind thought and moved than simple black-and-white questions about truthfulness and deceit. And right now, as she watched her husband and her one true love glower beneath his hood, she was beginning to understand that lesson. Because, even without him saying so, she could see something he might not even understand he was communicating: He was unsure of his next steps.

She knew, because she thought of herself the same way, how Ollie saw himself. He was a detective of the very first order, someone who could solve a mystery and bring justice to the evil with the smallest and barest hint of evidence. He was an absolute force of nature as an interrogator, someone who could read body language well enough to force the truth out of others who might want to do nothing more than keep their lies straight. And he was a fighter par-excellence, someone who could handle himself against an endless stream of enemies. All of those things, every last one, made the Green Arrow symbol what it needed to be.

And right now, Ra’s Al-Ghul was in the head of her husband. She understood it, of course, because another Al-Ghul was in hers.

Talia Al-Ghul had given them even less to work on than Ra’s had. At least Ra’s spoke, albeit laced with menace and promise. But he had still talked, still given some hint about who he was and what his goals might be. Talia, on the other hand? She had spoken nothing, said nothing, and her face had never changed expression. Minus her ever-present smirk, the Black Canary would be forgiven for thinking that she had been looking at a statue that night. And that confused her.

Because she had said nothing as her father had offered her up to be a willing receptacle for the seed of the Green Arrow. She had not objected, demanded her own say, or anything of the sort.

All she had done was smirk, like she was hearing the world’s funniest joke that she could tell whenever she felt like it. It was a smirk of entitlement, as though it was simply expected for everyone else to bow in her presence as though she was a queen and all the world were peasants.

And yet, something else was clear. There was something lethal in that smirk, because there had been something equally dangerous behind the eyes of the person who had given it. She had seen that same glint in the eyes of Katherine Kane-Merlyn, even as she now understood it was laced with the fury of a spoiled brat. This was different, and worse.

Because, and this was a microscopic comfort, Katherine Kane-Merlyn had at least tried to enforce a certain rigid code of conduct amongst the criminal gangs of her city. The Songbird of Starling could simply not imagine a world where any gang, no matter how imposing they might appear to be, would have been allowed to do what the League had done here. But Talia Al-Ghul obviously did not care about this city, or the people who lived here. No, this was a woman who expected the world to bend around her whims. She had ordered, implicitly, seven people dead in order to do what? Seduce Ollie to her side?

And that was the part that bothered her. She didn’t mind fighting for her relationship, fighting for her love and her marriage. After all, if she couldn’t fight for her love, what kind of love did she really have?  But Talia Al-Ghul was the leader of an organization of killers, and she had implicitly instructed them to kill seven people for no other reason than what? To give a present to Ollie?

No, this couldn’t continue. But she didn’t know how Talia moved, what she was capable of. There would have to be more work done, and it would work best if she could look the woman in the eyes and hope to god the smirk left her face. And, as she kept walking towards a door she just knew to be where the Al-Ghul’s were, she was beginning to think she knew how to get that smirk off her face.

The Green Arrow’s investigative style, the way he interviewed victims of crime and interrogated the people who committed those crimes, was all about making himself feel as big and male and impressive as possible. He had been trained to seem like someone who could solve your problems if a crime had been committed against you, and someone who would be your problem if you thought doing injustice was your responsibility. That made it very difficult for people to think they could pull something over on him.

Laurel, on the other hand, chose to present herself differently. By keeping her hair long, and deliberately projecting herself as being a rock-and-roll vixen, people tended to not really keep their stories together. They made confessions against their personal interest, left key pieces of evidence out, and generally weren’t as disciplined in how they answered questions or carried themselves as they ought to be. She didn’t know why this worked, and to be honest, she didn’t care. If someone could pay for their crimes because they thought they saw something that wasn’t there, she was happy to present the illusion.

And that illusion, that distinctly American idea and conception, was going to be what got Talia Al-Ghul to play her hand. She didn’t have an expectation she’d see all the cards. Anyone who rose to the right hand of someone like Ra’s Al-Ghul was entirely too smart to fall for the sort of game you’d run on a mid-level underboss of a Triad cell. But she figured she could get something out of her just by acting like the one thing she figured Talia Al-Ghul could not stand: someone who didn’t bow to someone who thought themselves a queen.

She supposed that, all of her life, Talia had seen the world bow to her. Money did that for a lot of people, and the idea that anyone who got in her way ended up mysteriously compromised to a permanent end dealt with what the money couldn’t. But what would happen when someone didn’t bow to her?

The Queen of the Fist really wanted to find out.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As he walked down the hallway of this penthouse floor, realizing that they were getting closer and closer to what he figured was Ra’s Al-Ghul’s private quarters, Oliver Queen took a moment for a deep breath and began to mentally catalog the information in front of him. Of course the 4K body cameras in both he and Laurel’s suits were running, sending all the footage that was being collected here to heavily encrypted servers both back at the Quiver and at Mercury Labs, but there were some things you couldn’t see in a photo or a video. The subtleties of an investigation were oftentimes where the best fruit was found. The things people left out, the things they figured no one would particularly notice, gave you a sense of who they really were.

And if he was being honest, Ra’s Al-Ghul was perhaps the most difficult to track. Of course, this was not a surprise. One did not become the head of the League of Assassins, an order of master killers trained to end life without anyone knowing they were there, by being unsuited to the arts of subtlety and deception. This was not a man who would let you know the truth about what and who he was. No, they had to chase him here. To get past a room full of trained killers, and then fight off another room, was perhaps the Demon Head’s idea of an appetizer. And now here they were, getting ready to sit down for the main event.

Ever since the Golden Dragon, there had been no doubt that Ra’s Al-Ghul had wanted this specific confrontation. Not with Laurel, because he doubted that a man like Ra’s would ever respect anything Laurel said to him. But, instead, with the Green Arrow.

It was a strange feeling to realize someone knew what he was, who he was, and welcomed a confrontation with him regardless. This would not be an interrogation, too. A man like Ra’s, schooled for far longer than either himself or Laurel could comprehend in the arts of deception and interrogation, would not fall for such a thing. No, this was a discussion. Layered with subtexts and subtle threats, sure, but still a discussion.

Ra’s was a gentleman, or at least tried to present himself like one. Going in here all testosterone-soaked fury was precisely the wrong play. And then, with a smile on his face that he tried to make seem less predatory than it actually was, he saw it. Ra’s expected him to play the intimidator, to go in there all furious about the offer and forget his training and lose his cool. He still didn’t know why he had been chosen to be the stud farm for the next generation of the League of Assassins, but since he had been, he was intending on showing the Demon’s Head precisely what he thought of the offer. But to do that, he had to not fight. No matter how much he wanted to.

So, because he had no choice, the arrows would stay in his yazutsu. His bow would not fire. And, judging by the way Laurel was looking at him, the Songbird of Starling would not sing. This was not a time to get physical. There would be time later, many times later, to show what they could do. Now was not one of them.

And as they got closer, the Emerald Archer smelled something. Whole cloves, cinnamon, dry turmeric, and was that grains of paradise? Ah yes, he knew what the Demon’s Head was doing. Ras El Hanout was a common Moroccan spice, Arabic for head of the shop, and every family used their own blend and kept it as secret as families in the South kept their barbecue recipes. And he also knew what Ra’s was doing by letting him smell it. He was trying to make everyone here think of him as a kindly old Moroccan grandfather, the sort of man who you could invite into your home and not be fearful of.

But he knew, just as Laurel knew, what this man really was. He wasn’t anyone’s grandfather. He was a killer, a man who commanded killers, and a stone-cold sociopath. So he would stand up tall and straight and walk into this room, and stare into the eyes of a demon. Because he was no longer scared of Ra’s Al Ghul.

Those were words he could not imagine himself having thought a few days ago, but it was now true. This, of course, did not mean that he was going to be reckless enough to pretend the man wasn’t a threat. That was a level of arrogance that would lead to a calamity, he was just sure of it. But he wasn’t going to kneel and bow his head, either. He was sure of what would happen if he did.

In the previous timeline, kneeling his head and bowing had made his allies believe the worst of him, forced him to ally with a murder and psychopath who should have faced justice, and caused him to lose the connection to both his city and his own killer instinct. He did not want this, and so he would not do it. But he had to be careful.  

For reasons Oliver did not understand, the world still needed what the League was. So, as much as he might want to erase their history and their order from the known world, he could not. The Crisis might still be oncoming, and if it was, the world needed all the defenders it could muster.

But it did not need a League that had lost its way, that had allowed its mission to be perverted and sullied. How to do this, though, without implying he had been a member in good standing? This was a question he needed a really good answer to.

If he couldn’t figure it out, he was going to make an enemy. That was obvious. And his city had enough enemies, both inside and outside, for him to not really have any interest in having any more. This was a real problem, but the Jade Samurai knew he could solve it.

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Grabbing the lockpicking works out of his pocket, the Green Arrow heard the deep voice of Ra’s Al-Ghul tell him: “Please, come in. There is no need for you to try and fabricate an entrance. I am sure we have much to discuss.”

Raising an eyebrow, the Emerald Archer and the Songbird of Starling walk in and notice the women on every side of them polishing gleaming swords in the old ways. Wet stones of three different grades of coarseness, clove oil, the whole nine yards. This was what you were supposed to do with a blade. But for both Oliver and Laurel, their eyes were not on the blades. They were on the women polishing them. They did not have the eyes of killers. No, these were the eyes of people who did not want to be doing this work.

Which meant slaves. It disappointed the Green Arrow to realize Talia and Ra’s had slipped that far that they were willing to have slaves, which led to some really uncomfortable theories about who it was that they had been fighting in the stairwells and why it was that they had fought with such rabid aggression. But that would be for later. Right now, he and Laurel needed to get to Ra’s and Talia.

But as they got in front of them, the horsemen drew their blades and Oliver tried to school his expression. He knew that blade like he knew his own name. And he knew the woman who held it. What in the world was Tatsu Yamashiro doing here?

Chapter Text

Inside Ra’s Al Ghul’s penthouse suite at the Olympia Fairmont Hotel in Starling City…….

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen knew that, for a lot of people, standing in front of Ra’s Al Ghul was the last thing they would ever do. To rise from a lowly initiate to becoming the man who ran the League of Assassins required more than mere aptitude in the art of killing without being seen. It required skill, and familiarity. In short, to get to where Ra’s was, you had to become comfortable with taking life.

And running an organization like this one meant you had to be comfortable with killing people in order to make an example out of them, or to insure people knew what the vision you had was and what they were expected to do in order to follow it. Lord knew he had seen enough of that particular idea in the Yakuza and Triad command structures to be able to clock it in something like this. But even as he profiled the room, and the Demon’s Head, another question was nagging at him.

Tatsu Yamashiro, a stalwart ally in his old life, was here and a member of the elite leadership structure of the League of Assassins. Yes, she was wearing a hijab and her face was covered but he could never forget those eyes. He could never have forgotten Akio, either, and those eyes filled with rage when she saw his body. What had he missed? How could he have not found them, and protected them from whatever darkness had claimed Tatsu and gotten her to this place? But those were questions for when he returned to the Quiver. Because right now, he could not ask.

Asking, demanding to know how his friend and teacher had fallen so far, would lead to the knowledge of his past being in the hands of the one person who he wanted to know absolutely nothing. And more than that, it might trigger a battle. He desperately wanted to avoid that.

Because he was here in hopes of making sure Ra’s left his city without violence, and that whoever had killed those seven Triad enforcers downtown paid for their crimes. And the Green Arrow knew damned well he couldn’t get any of that done if this turned into a brawl over a hotly-stated question. So, he was left with no choice. Holding his powder was all he could really do.

But that was not the only reason. He needed to see Ra’s Al-Ghul, genuinely, in order to figure out how to stop him. At the Golden Dragon, he had not been able to. Every trauma response, every trigger of PTSD, had been hit that night. Breathing had been a challenge.

There was simply no chance he could have used all of his tools and training to make a plan of attack, both physical and mental, on the most challenging opponent he had ever faced. Not while he was full-on having a PTSD response. But now? With his fear properly handled and dealt with? He was damned sure going to see Ra’s Al-Ghul, and figure out where to hit him.

But not, crucially, with his hands. That would cause a fire he very much was not interested in starting, much less putting out. No, he needed to out-think someone who had probably played chess with the men who invented the game. 

And yet, he knew he could. He had been trained on how to think and read people from Deathstroke and the Celestial Archer, how to profile and interrogate from ex-BAU section chiefs, and how to understand the criminal mind from world-class criminologists. He knew what playing a game like this with the Demon’s Head would require, and he also knew Laurel would never genuinely get the chance to play.

The Emerald Archer wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that. He needed the Black Canary here, alongside him, but he also completely understood that Ra’s was never going to see her as anything more than a black leather-clad annoyance. In fact, if he was thinking like the man, Laurel had moved as far out on a limb as she could have by directly defying him the first time. Any more would be the gravest of insults, and that would be the thing he didn’t want. This needed to be played subtly, with all the threats being parenthetical and nothing being committed to. Directly moving on Ra’s, satisfying though it might be, would end up not getting justice done. And that was the whole point. So, she couldn’t be an active participant.

But Laurel could still listen, could still see what he was too neck-deep in the chess match to notice. He needed that, because right now, his mind was on just the thing that was in front of him. It had to be.

He couldn’t think about Tatsu, and what her history looked like. He couldn’t think about anything else other than playing this game with Ra’s. He had to win, because there were seven sets of mourning parents who deserved a hell of a lot more than to have the bodies of their sons lying in unmarked graves because people were too worried about reprisals to let the bodies be claimed. They deserved to turn on Chinese-language television and see the cowards who murdered their sons in front of a jury, having to answer for what they had done. And the only way he could think of that happening was for Ra’s to willingly give up those responsible, and that wouldn’t happen if emotions got heated.

So, Oliver knew, he couldn’t lose his cool. No matter what. He had to play to an audience, and play a role. This was not going to be physical. This was going to be a samurai defending his territory, and explaining why an injustice had been committed and asking for recompense. Not the ninja who lived in the shadows, but something more. Something more substantial.

Something like a Jade Samurai. With a Queen of the Fist reading his opponent for him.

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“What can I do for you, Al-Sahim?” Ra’s said, his voice dripping menace and condescension with a confident smile on his face. To both the Green Arrow and Black Canary, he looks like someone who knows he’s got the winning hand no matter what cards his opponent plays. Whether or not it’s a bluff is the question.

“An injustice has been committed, Mr. Al-Ghul is it? Or would you prefer Mr. Ducard?” Oliver said, counting on Laurel to read the room because they were still throwing out range-finding jabs at each other right now. Just testing the rhythm and pace, that’s what was happening here.

“That is a good question, Al-Sahim. I would prefer Mr. Ducard. Anyone who wishes to call me by Ra’s Al-Ghul would either be discussing business with me, or trying to bargain their way out of a very unfortunate occurrence. Neither of those apply here, so I would prefer you calling me Mr. Ducard” Ra’s said, knowing he’s in control here.

“Fine then. Mr. Ducard” Oliver said, feeling a shudder go up his forearms that are thankfully covered by his gauntlets. “My concern is for my city. Seven men lay dead in a morgue, massacred by one of your swords. I have no doubt that it was one of your swords, although I will leave it to your no-doubt high levels of knowledge to figure out how it is that I know. Their families demand justice for what was done, and so do I.”

“They demand justice, do they? Or is it you demanding justice? Whoever killed these men, and I have no doubt that you believe it is one of my members who did this thing, was doing a service to the community. These were criminals, no? Men who preyed on their own community, and you seek to punish the people who removed a cancer from that community? I do not understand, Al-Sahim” Ra’s said, a smirk on his face as he can tell his choice of honorific usage is having a rather interesting effect on the Green Arrow.

“Because, Mr. Ducard, their parents are not cancers to their community. Neither are their loved ones. And they cannot bury their children, or mourn their brothers, because no one outside of the people in this room know who did this. This city believes this was a war over gang turf, over control. You know it wasn’t. I know it wasn’t. But the people who it matters the most to, Mr. Ducard, have no idea. They believe the Yakuza did this, or the Sons of Samoa, or any of the other gangs fighting for territory. And since I cannot show them the truth, they cannot bury their loved ones fearlessly. As they deserve to” Oliver said, realizing he’s not going to get his dream scenario done here. But maybe, if he plays this right, he can leave here with something that could do some good.

And then he sees Ra’s Al-Ghul thinking, sipping from his tea like a sultan with Talia by his side like a grand vizier, and all his hope left him.

“You have made a strong case, Al-Sahim. I cannot, and will not, release those responsible for what was done to face your weak American justice. But I will ensure that my agents inform the families that they should fear no reprisal from any of the other street gangs, and to speak to you and to the Black Canary directly should any occur. However, Al-Sahim, this is the last time that there will be a last time. My offer remains unanswered, and as long as it remains so, my capacity for mercy will continue to dwindle. It is in your best interests to answer positively before it is gone completely” Ra’s said, and that choice made the Jade Samurai think. Why did this man, a professional killer, discussing mercy in any sense? What was he prepared to do?

And with that, knowing now was not the time to push, the Green Arrow left alongside the Black Canary. There was plenty to discover about what they had heard, but they would know nothing more here.

60 minutes later, back at the Quiver……..

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had never felt quite so utterly dumb in her entire life. She knew she wasn’t, of course. The FBI profilers they had trained with had insisted on both her and Ollie taking state-of-the-art memorization and intelligence tests, and seeing the number 200 written next to her IQ had stunned her so hard she had nearly fallen out of her chair. It had been useful to know she could retain information, think on levels she couldn’t have imagined thinking of, and acquire the skills they needed to be more than just street fighters.

This occasionally meant, and this was something she was quite ok with, that what she could do with her mind was just as key as what she could do with her hands. So she was used to having to read micro-expressions and body language, to look for small clues of evidence that would help her to find other leads that were more substantial. But here, dealing with Ra’s and Talia? She felt like a freshman in college, studying contract law all over again. None of it made sense. But, unlike last time, she would run it down. No more would there be an inarticulate scream of her danger sense that she would ignore. There was something here, and she was bound and determined to find out what it was.

So, it was time to ask the question that guided both her and Ollie as investigators: What did she want, what did she know, and how could she use the latter to get the former? Sometimes, this was an easy thing. But for this? It had rather quickly become a quite complicated question. But she could start with what she knew.  

For one thing, Ra’s Al-Ghul prided himself on decorum. That much had been obvious. And yet even in the rules of that formality, insults had still been delivered. Her Arabic was serviceable, not perfect, but even she could tell that calling Ollie Al-Sahim had been something of a parenthetical obscenity. And Ra’s had delivered it with a smile on his face, like he knew what he was saying and was just looking forward to seeing a reaction.

And then, as if someone opened up curtains and poured light into a dark room, the Black Canary saw it.

It was that line about mercy that clued her in. An assassin, a professional killer, did not seem the type who even understood the concept of mercy. And yet, here Ra’s was offering it to someone who he had made such an indecent proposal towards. Why? What did he think he would get out of this?

And then she knew. He would get a male heir. Whether by circumstance, or deliberate choice, his leadership council consisted entirely of women. His right hand, the future ruler of his order, was his daughter. His elite guard, the people he trusted to protect and guard him with their lives if it came to that, were all women. If Ra’s had a son, he would have inherited everything. But he had not. Instead, and she knew this galled a deeply sexist man like Henri Ducard, he had a daughter. And that daughter, though she was skilled and capable, was not a son. A daughter could not create a new generation of assassins. A son could.

But he could not just have anyone provide him with said heir. It had to be someone with the spirit of a warrior, someone he could use to create the next generation of assassins. It had to be Ollie. And so, the game was now afoot. So, she had to figure out what Ra’s win conditions were in order to figure out how to use them against him.

The truth was that Ra’s figured, and could probably act, on a very simple binary: Heads, he won. Tails, Oliver lost. Heads? The League breaks the Green Arrow, Ra’s gets his heir, and the League lives on for millennia with more power than they had started with.  Tails? They torture and kill her and Ollie both, draw out Oliver’s seed in his final moments of life, Ra’s gets his heir, and the League lives on for millennia with the world’s other heroes left broken and scattered. To his mind, he could win with bloodshed or without. He would still win.

And it was not like either her or Ollie could simply choose to not play the game. No, from the moment Ra’s had arrived, they were in this game whether or not they wanted to be. Seven people lay dead, after all. Getting justice for their families, even if all they could do was inform them that it was not a gang war but rather a case of the lives they led catching up with them, was not something they could ignore doing because of certain grayer realities.

So, then, what did she want? The League destroyed was the gold-medal ending, but from what Ollie had told her, that was something that could not be. Apparently, he had done this in his timeline and had removed what had been intended to be a key tentpole of the defenses for some crisis that sought to destroy everything that there had ever been or would be.

The Songbird of Starling felt the scoff leave her mouth at that, but then caught it. Considering she lived in a world where one of her maids of honor at her wedding was fast enough to nearly outrun the speed of sound, and she herself could let loose a sonic scream strong enough to disassemble a commercial locomotive, how precisely out of the normal might it be that someone somewhere would seek to destroy everything?

No, that made just enough sense to work. And if that were true, they would need all the defenders they could muster. So eliminating the League was out. But getting them out of the city? Returning them to whatever small fiefdom they ran, and making coming back to Starling City far too expensive to try? That could be done.

And she also wanted to utterly wreck Talia Al-Ghul’s dreams. Ollie and Ra’s were going to have their own meta-textual duel, and she would help her husband where she could. But Talia would benefit from the bargain in a way Ra’s might not understand. If there were any questions about her power in the League, carrying the future ruler of the order would do an awful lot to silence those questions. What was more, if Talia had any ideas on what to do with the League that were not her father’s, molding the heir that would create the next generation of the League would give her incomparable power and influence. None of these were good things, not at all.

Because, from what Ollie had told her, Talia was a psychopath. This was not a woman who needed to have control of a local supermarket, much less an ancient order of trained killers with footprints across every inhabited continent in the known world. This would be their worst nightmare, and not just for them. How many other heroes were there, people who lacked their training and their skills, that would find themselves cut down by a League who sought what Talia’s version of it would seek?

No, Laurel knew this had to stop here. Destroying the League was not what needed to happen, obviously, for a lot of different reasons. But preventing Talia from having control of that order was a needle she knew needed to be threaded. But how? This was a question that needed to be discussed. But, as she pulled her flash drive out of the gauntlet of her suit and started uploading the audio and video to be reviewed, she knew she couldn’t obsess on it. Spending all their time on one mystery, and one person, had been a thing that had been a sin the last time.

And she wasn’t about to commit it again, no matter what. Sure, Talia and Ra’s bothered her and she knew they bothered Ollie. But there were other people, people who weren’t criminals or the families of criminals, who needed justice done on their behalf too. This was still a city that needed help, and she was bound and determined to keep to her vows about protecting it.

She had promised to be by Ollie’s side, to be his trusted counsel, and to help him through anything. And right now, keeping him from thinking he only needed to focus on one problem was what he needed more than anything. Time for the Queen of the Fist to get down to work.

Meanwhile, at King Street Station……..

(Barbara Gordon’s POV)

Bruce Wayne had been at Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance’s wedding. He had seen Ra’s Al-Ghul, and his daughter, crash their wedding reception and make a threat. And what was more, he had heard through the grapevine of what Ra’s and Talia had done in Starling City. But he could not appear, without making questions for himself and for his friends that they could not answer.

That is part of why Barbara Gordon was here, and she was ok with that. The head of WayneTech Enterprises showing up in Starling City would be front-page news, the sort of thing that would prevent what needed to happen. Information needed to be delivered discreetly, and having Bruce Wayne here would prevent that from happening. But a regular research librarian, going to Starling City to acquire rare books for the Gotham City Library’s Chinese and Korean literature wing? That was a normal thing.

But if that was the only reason she was here, she wouldn’t need to be. That information could have been sent over secured e-mail, and that would have been that. No, she had her own work to do here. For one thing, she wanted to check with Curtis Holt about how his computer network was looking. There were always more kernel patches to do, and upgrades to put in, so that anyone who wanted to find out who the Green Arrow and Black Canary were would be very stumped. But again, that could have also been sent via e-mail.

No, the real reason was that she had finally been given a clean bill of health to go out full-time and fight alongside Batman and Robin. And the city had needed it. Sure, the Joker was gone. The GCPD had arrested him, convicted him, and sent him to the chair. Bruce had been fine with it. As he had said to her, “I don’t have the right to kill, Barbara. I have the right to investigate, to bring people to justice in ways the law does not allow. But I don’t have the right to take a life. That’s what the law is for, to determine who can no longer be in polite society.” But his death had caused the Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face, and whatever was left of the Falcones to try and control the city.

And when Bruce had asked Barbara to go to Starling City, he had said something to her: “You need to get trained up to fight like I know you’re capable of. And there’s no one better for that, no one at all, than Laurel Lance. Tell her I sent you. Tell her what you need. And she’ll have you ready to fight gods.” That level of praise, from someone who usually threw it around like manhole covers, made her wonder just how good the Songbird of Starling really was.

So, as she headed towards her rental car, Barbara Gordon made a plan. She’d drop off her intel, and get trained by a world-class martial artist. Hopefully, nothing else happened.

Back at the Quiver……..

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen had trained himself to be every single last thing his city required of him. For the criminals of his city, he would be the intimidator. With cold, hollow, dark eyes he could make you confess every sin you had ever committed while he made you slowly evaporate like an ice cream cone left outside on a hot summer day. But this was only but one facet of what he did, because his city no longer needed him to be just an enforcer of justice.

If you were a witness of a crime, he was thorough in the best possible sense. Making sure you knew whatever had been done to you, or you had seen done to someone else, was not going to be abided had become key to how he did things. He kept candy for scared children, lighters and chewing gum for dockworkers who smoked a cigarette and drank a boilermaker or two after work, and could do it all in whatever East or Southeast Asian language family he needed to. Sure, he would need information. But he also knew he did not need to re-traumatize anyone in the course of getting that information.

He was no longer the brute he had been once, because he could be better. He could be what his city needed. And for this, to protect his city from Ra’s Al-Ghul, he needed to be the man who saw everything.

And, as he put his bow and arrows away, he began to think about the most important thing he had seen earlier tonight: Tatsu Yamashiro was with the League of Assassins. Somehow, he had missed her. For 6 years, he had been looking. Searching in corners, using every database he knew to try and find her, and he had believed she had taken herself off the grid. Foolishly, as he was now beginning to understand. The truth was that something had happened to Tatsu, something serious, that had made her feel like the only choice was to join up with the League of Assassins.

So, as he put two full pots of Sumatran coffee on, the Green Arrow started looking. He could admit now that he had been looking in the wrong places. But he also knew why he had been looking there. Spending so much time around the Legends, and Sara in particular, had taught him about a time-travel theory called a fixed point. A thing that must happen, no matter what or no matter how. And it had been his greatest fear that Akio’s death had been one of those. So he hadn’t been looking like he needed to, because he knew what he needed to run down. And he didn’t want to.

To be quite honest, he still didn’t really want to know if that was true. But now, he had to. Opening up a backdoor into the death records for Hong Kong, he saw it and he could have cried. He had been right. Akio Yamashiro had died in this timeline, too. He wanted to rage at it, to blame the Speed Force for all of this, but he knew there would be no use in that. No, he knew what he had to do instead of raging impotently against a god. The truth of the thing was that someone was responsible for this, even more than Tatsu was. That person was, of course, Talia Al-Ghul.

Tatsu had been mourning, after having suffered an incalculable loss that would shatter anyone. And Talia had preyed on her, and made sure she stayed broken. It was a truly unforgivable thing, and he was very much looking forward to making it clear just how personally distasteful he found it.

What was more, he would do something Talia had never considered doing. Something that, if he got it right, would give Tatsu the peace that Talia had never even considered she might want. He would solve Akio Yamashiro’s murder. Later tonight, if none of his other dormant cases went hot, he’d read up on the case file that the Hong Kong Police had put together. Even if all he could do was find out where the men who orchestrated Akio’s death ate their dinner while bragging about killing a school-age boy, he would find out.

And once the Emerald Archer got that information, he would find more and more until he had everything he needed to find the truth. After all, as he had been trained to understand, it would be the littlest things that were often the clues that would make the difference in solving a major case. And as he started thinking, he realized his big problem could be solved by using the same idea. He could stop Ra’s by chasing down little things like, for instance, the particular smell of the cinnamon that had been used in the red herring of Ra’s attempt to make himself seem like a kindly North African grandfather. If you didn’t know what you were smelling, you would have been fooled. But he did know, and he knew Ra’s knew he knew.

This varietal was Ceylon cinnamon, the gold standard of the stuff. Not the sort of thing one just buys. You needed a connection for this. Someone who could secure the transport of said cinnamon through some of the most war-torn areas of Sri Lanka and then have it shipped to a spice market where it could be melded with all of the other things that made a good ras el hanout. It did mean “top of the shop” in Arabic after all, so it wasn’t like some cheap 99¢ spice blend that you could buy at a deli someplace. No, this had to be special. And that meant that the League’s headquarters was no longer in Central Asia.

He could get granular on this, figure out which country and where, but it wasn’t necessary. What was necessary was seeing what Laurel had, because he had been playing a game of chess with Ra’s and thus hadn’t really been able to get an outside view on the man’s tells. He needed all the fresh eyes on his situation that he could possibly find, and he trusted no one’s perceptions and insight more than he did Laurel’s.

Ever since the Flash restored his memories, Oliver had intimately understood he had made so many decisions with partners who were unsuitable for the man he now was. But with Laurel? They could just talk, and he felt like he knew he was always making the right decision. Sometimes, that meant holding his powder and finding more evidence. Other times, it meant kicking in a door and staring someone down until they gave up the information they were going to give up anyway. But he always knew, no matter what he needed or where they were headed, that he would always have a partner who saw what he couldn’t look at.

But that wasn’t her best asset. Her best asset was that she got him. She understood how to read a person, how to know when a signature was forged and what it meant, and the value of all the other skills that weren’t about how hard they could hit or being able to scream loud enough to stop a commercial locomotive in its tracks.

Being around Laurel, knowing that he was fully trained and equipped with all of the skills he needed, made him comfortable. Protecting the city could never be a one-person job. And after all, every Jade Samurai needed a Queen.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Over the course of her 6 years as a vigilante, Dinah Laurel Lance had learned the value of things she didn’t think she’d need to know about when she had been in law school. Some of them were amusing, like the relative differences between Thai-style and Mexican-style hand wraps for sparring and fighting on the streets. Other things were not, because they were about understanding the criminal mind and how they thought and worked. And after watching them both for what felt like the longest half-hour of her entire life, one thing had become clear. The Al-Ghul’s were a different class of criminal.

Sure, they were criminals. That much was clear to her. Anyone who ordered seven people’s deaths, purely as a way to imply that the heroes of the city were weak and powerless in the face of what was now here, was absolutely a criminal. But they were not common criminals, and she supposed that was the key distinction.

A common criminal, for one thing, would not have had the sophistication necessary to even conceive of the game that Ra’s was playing with Oliver. No, they were feeling each other out in that hotel room. Throwing jabs to see what worked and what didn’t, to see what they could use again during a later confrontation. And it had been her responsibility to make sure she saw what Ollie couldn’t, concerned as he was on not giving anything substantive to a man they both understood to be a very dangerous enemy.

That had been her focus, the one thing her mind had been set on. But as she watched Ra’s, the Black Canary was also watching the room. From the swordswomen who were obviously ready to attack, to the initiates and possible slaves who were polishing the swords of said swordswomen, every person in the room on the League’s side of the ledger were clearly eager for a fight. That concerned her deeply, because imagining what they would do if they decided to get physical was not something she wanted to spend too much time on.

And the more she saw Ra’s, the more she couldn’t help but see Talia. The way in which Ra’s was throwing jabs, trying to see what hit and what didn’t, was accentuated by looking at Talia Al Ghul’s eyes and seeing how they stayed focused on Ollie. She was studying him, running her own profile for her own needs. The League, to a woman, were trained killers. Not ninja, like herself and Ollie, who used fear, intimidation, and brainpower to walk those who pursued evil into the hands of justice. But killers, people who had no problem taking life.

And they had already done it once. Seven Triad hitters, left in the morgue downtown, just to prove a point about what they were capable of doing. So that left her with a question: How to handle them?

And as the Songbird of Starling got changed out of her suit, putting everything in garment bags before a clothes-washing process that had been hand-written by Cisco Ramón to ensure that no one dared ruin the suits he had spent time and great personal expense to make, she couldn’t help but remember the words of her father. Two years ago, they had obsessed over a similar problem and gotten distracted.

And her father had read both her and Ollie the riot act about it. “Too busy with ancient martial arts duels, and playing spy games, to get down on the streets and do what needed doing”. Dad had been right then, and if he was able to see what was happening now, he would have had the same rebuke to them.

And he would have been right. The League was always going to be here, and they would be dealt with. She had no doubt in her mind about that. That did not mean, however, that everyday working people needed to be put on hold while that was going on. No, that was what Ra’s and Talia wanted.

They wanted her and Ollie distracted, not protecting their city. So, as she put her mouthpiece back in and started listening to the police scanner, she quietly made another promise to herself: No matter what, the city came first.

 And then she heard it. Of all the cases they could have caught tonight, of all the things they could have done that weren’t fucking around with the League, it had to be this. There were two cases, running at the same time, on either side of town. One was a kidnapping in the Glades. The other was a…. holy shit really? A full-on hostage crisis at King Street Station.

This was the night. All hands on deck. If you weren’t at school, you were getting called in. Because it was time for the city to realize what she already knew: Artemis and Arsenal were serious people.

They weren’t getting anywhere near the hostage crisis, though. Laurel wasn’t stupid. A hostage situation in a whole-ass train station with all those corners and avenues of escape? That needed to be run by experienced hands. No, they’d work the kidnapping and they’d do that fine.

And when the sun came up, two things would happen: The city would be a little bit safer, and new heroes would be completely introduced to the city at large.

The Queen of the Fist knew it like she knew her own name.

15 minutes later, in the Quiver……..

(Thea Queen’s POV)

Thea Dearden Queen bounced into the Quiver, giddy to get to work something with some meat on it. Sure, her past few days had been all about low-level street crime. Small things to most people, but the sorts of things that ended up making people want to help you with the big stuff when it came time for it. And then she saw the pissed off expression on Sensei Laurel’s face, and knew it was not a time for joyous excitement.

Sensei Laurel was half-dressed in her suit, running through the salmon ladder. Ollie was in the weight room, doing full clean and jerks that looked disturbingly heavy while the fabricator machine refilled his arrows with fresh compounds. All the computers were on with topographical maps of the Glades and another set of maps of King Street Station, and in between each rep, both Sensei Laurel and Ollie kept reading from the file on the screen and having a conversation with each other in perfect Mandarin that even somehow managed to have the hint of a Northern Chinese accent. God, her sister-in-law and her brother were awesome.

But they weren’t looking at the map. In fact, Ollie kept nudging his head towards her and then towards the map like he wanted HER to see it. So, putting her bookbag away in her locker, she started looking at it and she could see all the places she knew. The diners where she ate while she was doing her homework, and where she chased out a few drunk guys being a little too aggressive with a waitress. The nightclubs where she danced till two in the morning, high on nothing more than how damned GOOD the DJ’s had been. And then she saw why the map was up, and she raged. A kidnapping. A 12-year-old Hmong girl, snatched from her home in a custody dispute.

These were people, shamefully, who already didn’t feel like anyone gave a damn about them. Except, of course, the 4 vigilantes in this room. And as she saw the maze that was King Street Station, she knew that the Green Arrow and Black Canary were heading there. Her and Roy were good, but that whole thing looked to be a mess you couldn’t reasonably expect the two of them to handle. They were still learning their trade, still studying the finer points of everything you needed to be to be protective of the city she loved so dearly.

But she could do this. Thea knew she could go door-to-door, house-to-house, and ask if anyone had seen anything. And if someone got fresh? She knew she could handle that, too.

She was the Princess of the Glades, after all. Time to prove what that meant.

(Roy Harper’s POV)

Roy William Harper had been trained to have a lot of skills. He had more than a handful of black belts now, and was looking to get some more. But some skills were just innate. Like, for one thing, never being able to let a mystery go. And right now, as he looked at what his partner was looking at, he could figure out that finding out more about what they were getting into was going to mean going to some pretty rough spots.

Places that, if he was being honest, Thea Queen would not be welcome. They’d take one look at the socialite in the fancy dress, with the expensive purse and the nice shoes, and act in a way he’d have to do something about. But Artemis? People loved Artemis. They saw her like she was their own little sister, and they looked out for her.

So if they had to go out and run down the kidnapping of what looked like a 12-year-old Hmong girl, they weren’t going to have to worry about the gangs in the Glades trying anything. After all, it was a rule. People could do whatever and it was fine, but kids were universally off-limits. If anyone had seen anything, they’d help. Because this, brutal as it was, was still a neighborhood. The Green Arrow and Black Canary protected it, because they protected the city, but seeing what they had cooking tonight made him realize they weren’t going to be here for this. And that was fine.

A hostage situation at a place as big and unwieldy as King Street Station was damned sure not a thing he wanted any part of. Let Sensei Oliver and Laurel handle that business. Roy knew damned well he wanted no part of that. No, he wanted to be the guy who stayed on the street. Let others handle the big game. He’d be just fine with being there for the working man. Just like his teacher taught him.  

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

She hadn’t had to say anything, because she never had to say anything. But Oliver Queen knew what his wife, Dinah Laurel Lance, was thinking without saying a single word. They were going to King Street Station. Sure, a part of him wanted to slip into that Wayne Industries-branded contrast therapy tub and just soak the soreness in his body and mind away. But he couldn’t countenance just laying down and doing nothing if there were people out there who needed help.

So, as he racked his loaded barbell like he had been taught to do and wiped the chalk off of his hands, he got ready. Sure, he couldn’t do everything. And honestly, he wanted no part of being the person who ran the entire city and had every non-governmental organization in his grip. That had been what his timeline’s Ricardo Diaz had done, and he had hated it so much that he had willingly gone to jail to see it ended. No, he wanted the people of his city to do one thing and one thing only: Live their lives to the best version of themselves. And if they worried they were getting screwed, they could feel him and the Black Canary out there and feel safe knowing someone was watching out for them.

Just that idea, the certainty that Laurel would always be there, was something he treasured. Remembering all of the things in his old timeline that would have been better if she had been there almost made him teary-eyed, but now was not the time for that. He had to get ready. Because someone had taken hostages in his city, and that could not be allowed.

But to stop it, he had to know what he was walking into. And that gave the Green Arrow pause. Because he knew who he and Laurel would be seeing when they got there: SWAT. He knew they weren’t precisely popular among the SCPD rank-and-file, but that was especially true amongst SWAT. They had beat the high-holy fuck out of them during that Justin Clayborne business, and then put the fear of god into one of their own when he was staggering around drunk in public. In a vacuum, both of those decisions had been necessary. That SWAT unit was working for someone willing to railroad innocent people for an embezzlement scheme, and Sergeant Bailey was out there probably being given poor people to tune up by a Yakuza cell. He didn’t want to imagine the world where he just ignored that.

But it did mean that, well, the SWAT units of the Starling City Police Department were more than likely very disinterested in the help of two vigilantes. That, to be honest, wasn’t a problem in the same way it might have been imagined to be at one time. The King Street Station was vast enough, and there were enough hiding spots, that they could still work the case while avoiding the local constabulary. What was proving to be more of a weightier concern, though, was the question of who had been made into a hostage. It couldn’t just be a regular working person. You wouldn’t shut down a transit hub for that. No, this had to be something that could command some attention. And he knew right what it was. Without even having to be told, he knew right what it was.  

It was a whole goddamned train. Whoever this was had stolen an entire goddamned passenger train, and for what? There had to be someone on here who was a big enough deal that you’d pay a handful of guys to take the whole damned thing. And more specifically, well-trained people. This was not a job you took on with whatever low-grade gang hitters you could find. No, you hired trained people for this. That, and the idea that the train was at King Street Station and not somewhere out of their jurisdiction, meant that whoever was the target had to be someone in Starling City. Someone big.

Ray Palmer was out. He was in Metropolis, negotiating to build a satellite office of Palmer Tech. Simon Stagg wasn’t big, really. Not like he had been, ever since people knew he had been a player in Amanda Waller’s scheme to try and put Vertigo back on the streets. Walter had a driver, and tended to take a private jet whenever he had to go somewhere. So who did that leave?

So, as the Emerald Archer opened up his yazutsu and filled his arrows with the crowd-control and infiltration compounds he had purpose-built over many years, that was the question on his mind. Who in the city was big enough to draw interest, but also kept themselves deliberately humble enough that they would go on a train for work? That left…. Son of a Bitch.  

It was Ted Kord. There was no else who fit the limits. And once he realized it, he also knew what the next step was going to be. Get him off the train, into a private car, and then take him somewhere and “encourage” him to give whoever was their boss whatever it is they wanted. He didn’t just know this because he had trained with former FBI-level hostage negotiators and profilers who had seen this gambit run a billion times. He also knew it because, when he had done it in his old timeline, that was precisely the same way he had run the same trick. 

This, he figured, was the difference between what he and Laurel did and what their friends did. This was a city of darkness, of grim purpose, and protecting it could not happen with super-speed or the literal lottery of powers that came with being a Kryptonian on an earth with a yellow sun. In fact, if someone like that lived in Starling City, that power might corrupt them.

Power here was a thing to be watched carefully, to ensure that the strength you needed to have it did not turn into the greed to believe you were the only one who could. This was a city where, in order to keep the people who called it home safe, you needed to be a detective and a ninja. You needed to know what it was like to be powerless, to fight for the people who didn’t know what having power was. And being powerless meant you had to use wits, charm, intimidation, and skill to always be one step ahead of whatever you were dealing with.

Without looking, without even asking, Oliver could just tell Laurel was reading everything she could on Ted Kord. This was the advantage of a partnership like theirs. They didn’t have to ask, “Hey, honey, can you read up on what Ted Kord is working on that might make him interesting?” or “Can you figure out the best way to infiltrate a packed transit hub so that we can avoid getting ‘accidentally’ shot by highly pissed-off SWAT officers?” They just knew to do that, because it was what their partner needed.

And then the Jade Samurai heard his phone ring.

“Green Arrow. It’s Batgirl. How can I help?”  

Chapter Text

Inside a cab in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Starling City…….

(Barbara Gordon’s POV)

Barbara Gordon had never spent very much time thinking about how people saw her as Batgirl. She was usually working on a case, or behind a computer delivering information to the members of her team in the field. In those circumstances, there was simply not enough time to sit and think about what being Batgirl meant to other people. But here was different.

The main reason was that she wasn’t Batgirl here. The circumstances as to why that was tended to be a weird thing to explain to people who weren’t in the game, but this was how she figured it: If chasing someone down brought you to another hero’s city, you told them you were coming. Maybe they’d help you, maybe they had more on the guy you were after than you did, but it was a courtesy to let them know you were coming. And if this had been an investigation, she absolutely would have called and they might have pooled resources.

But this? This was not that. This was a research librarian from the Gotham City Public Library who also had a PH.D. in computer sciences coming to see about some rare books on a long train trip. And if it just so happened that she left the city having upgraded a close friend’s workstation to be the equivalent of some of those super computers in Switzerland and dropped off some files for that close friend’s other close friends, well wasn’t that just a happy little accident?

So, she could feel free to think more esoterically about the way in which this city had shaped the heroes who protected it than she might do normally. And once she had decided she could do that, she noticed things. For one, Starling City was….. interesting.

Sure, she knew this was a modern city. There were top-of-the-line cars, electric cabs like the one she was sitting in, and all the amenities you’d expect anywhere else in a major city. But the way in which the city looked, and moved, made her think she was in one of those classic 1940’s film noirs like Double Indemnity. The King Street Station, where she had just come from, was a prime example. It was well-lit, but not from any of the modern ways these things happened. No, this was lit like the Bradbury Building in National City. It just felt like an old-time place, for a city that was in many ways a city out of time. Deliberately so.

And then once you got out of the station, it rained all the time. Not just a light drizzle. No, sheets. And with that rain came a damp atmosphere, and ash-gray skies. Before too long, with generations of people who got used to living here and living like this, you’d want to plot and scheme to get a little bit more power. To make yourself better than perhaps you were supposed to be, to get out of the rain and look down on all the people who were still struggling. She figured this was why people like the Flash, Lady Lightning, and Supergirl didn’t work here. Power like theirs? People would move heaven and earth to get it.

Because, here in Starling City, there was a stratified class of people. People who are on the front cover of magazines, interviewed for glossy sit-down interviews on business TV, and all the rest of it. These were people who held themselves out as the elite of the elite, the rich and powerful. And they would, without hesitation, use all of those resources to harm working people. People who wanted compensation for a fair day’s work, or for the insurance they counted on to actually be there when they needed it. All Barbara needed for proof was the knowledge that this city’s greatest villain, the man who tried to destroy this city and rebuild it in his own image, was a man who thought that building himself up from a humble son of a family of tv repair men into the head of a multi-national tech conglomerate gave him the right to do whatever he felt like to the city he called home.

These were people who paid off all the normal levers of justice. So, in a city like Starling where justice didn’t work, where were you supposed to go? That, being the answer to that question, was the Green Arrow and Black Canary’s greatest skill set.

You could rely on them being there for you without a second’s thought, without a question. If you came to them needing help, they made sure justice got done for you. No matter what it was. And as she was listening to her cab driver’s radio, hearing all this mess about a hostage situation at the train station she had just left, she figured that while she was in their city she could do the same damned thing.

So, handing her cab driver a handful of bills, she got out near an alleyway and dialed one number on her encrypted phone.

“Green Arrow? It’s Batgirl. How can I help?”

Inside the Quiver…….

(Dinah Laurel Lance’s POV)

In a city like Starling, where there were mysteries and conspiracies seemingly around every corner, Dinah Laurel Lance had grown to become comfortable with never believing that the thing in front of her was actually all that there was. There was always something else, something someone wanted to hide, and figuring out what that might be had become vitally necessary. All she had, really, was what she could do with her mind and her hands. That meant, simply, she always had to be at the top of her game. There wasn’t time to coast, to think she knew everything or saw everyone.

So, she kept paying attention. Because in Starling City, secrets were currency.. People were more interested in keeping their secrets, and what their secrets gave them, than they might be in doing the right thing. It was how the Merlyns had happened, and Helena Bertinelli, and a police force so rotted out by corruption and greed that it was a miracle anyone ever got arrested for the crimes that they actually committed. But she wanted that to change, and she hoped her and Ollie were making some headway on that. She wanted people to understand that there were people, both wearing a badge and not, who gave a damn about doing the right thing because it was the right thing.

It was why this hostage business was bothering her, because there were working people there. People who ran coffee carts, and staffed franchise outposts for donut places and things like that. People on an Amtrak train from Starling City to National City, who just wanted to get home and enjoy some nice views on the way. The one thing that they shared in common was that none of them, to the last, had ever expressed any interest in having their livelihoods or days affected by being pawns in a game that someone was playing with Ted Kord.   

The Black Canary knew it bothered Ollie too, and confused him just as much as it did her. Not just because she could see her husband, hood down but blue eyes cold and focused just like if the Green Arrow was in the field, studying the blueprints of the King Street Station like he was expecting to find something special in there. But also because he kept muttering under his breath about how poorly this whole thing was run, and how it didn’t make any kind of sense to pull a move this big for one man. So, while he kept trying to work out why it was being done this way, she picked up her part of this: Why it was Ted Kord in the first place.

Ted Kord was a brilliant man with a handful of PH.D’s, but his finest work was in the field of computing. Besides writing the gold standard book on digital database security, he had also been a forerunner in cloud storage, distributed processing, and now cyber-security. If it was done with a computer, Kord Industries was the place you bought the computer from. So whatever this was, whoever this was, needed access to what Ted Kord’s mind could be for them. So that took out the local talent of crime gangs. There was no world in which some Triad or Yakuza underboss would ever make this move. Theirs was a lower-tech operation, by and large.  You didn’t need high-end computer processing power to keep gambling debts, or send some thick-necked bruiser to run a protection racket.

So that meant she needed to be moving on to the companies in Starling City. She quickly knew Stagg Industries wouldn’t dare. They were dealing, full-time, with the public relations fallout of one of their “consultants” having been affiliated with someone who was trying to put Vertigo back on the streets. And Queen Consolidated and Palmer Tech wouldn’t even dream of running a play like this. They’d just hire one of Ted’s computer guys to a consultancy deal and that would be that.

No, this was somebody out of town. Someone who needed something big, and knew they couldn’t do it themselves. And that made her think of where the train was ending up.

The person who was running this would have to have been in National City. Someone who wanted what all the other companies in front of them had. Someone who needed to increase their market share, and didn’t mind breaking the rules to get there.

What was more, the Songbird of Starling knew how a man like Ted Kord would think. He’d take a business meeting on a train, especially with a competitor, because it’d be private and less likely to be revealed and potentially damaging. And considering the only logical option was a headhunter or something of the sort from a National City tech firm, Ted might not even want to be seen meeting with the person in public.

Somewhere in the passenger manifest was a clue. And for this, clues were vital. Because she had done all the profiling she could do. But she knew she was lucky, because she had friends who could help make this impossible job a little easier. Friends like Kara Danvers in National City, the Maiden of Might, who could very easily tell her about who was struggling in the National City business world. And then she heard the familiar sound of a breach being opened, and she knew what other friend had arrived.

Bruce Wayne had been, ever since his retirement, a human search engine. He knew everyone, had friends and allies in every organization with initials in every form of government and culture, and was only all too willing to make introductions when he thought it would do some good. But he still was Bruce Wayne to the public at large, and that meant he could not be everywhere. And he especially could not be here in Starling City without a cover story, and he did not have one for this.

And since Batman was well-known for staying exclusively within the borders of Gotham, the Dark Knight could not be here either. But that did not mean the Caped Crusader could not help.

Laurel knew just what he was doing. He had sent Barbara Gordon, most likely with information from far less official and more entrenched sources than either she or Ollie could acquire. But she also knew Barbara, brief though their interaction was in the haze of a post-wedding dinner that had been sullied by the presence of the Al-Ghul’s. There was no chance in the world that she wouldn’t help with putting this hostage thing to bed. None at all.

But she didn’t need another fighter. Ollie and her, together, could absolutely defeat anyone when things got physical. No, for this, they needed the one thing they would find the hardest to get in the field: information.

And from what she knew, the Queen of the Fist knew damned well that Barbara Gordon was an oracle when it came to find information.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Ever since his memories of the old timeline had been restored, Oliver Queen had tried very hard to not rely on them. They were patterns he could recognize and avoid, so that he didn’t become someone he no longer wanted to see in the mirror. It was why, for instance, he had vowed to never take a life. When he had returned home, his father had not told him to kill anyone in the way of saving his city. Talia and Waller had taught him that. Those lessons were useless to him now, because he had a new way. A better way.

Sure, that way might be harder most times. But hard, he had learned repeatedly, was good. Easy was aiming an arrow for the heart. Hard was making someone think you were capable of doing that, while actually recording their panicked confession in your suit and then delivering that confession along with the evidence you acquired to the appropriate federal agency so there was no chance your target would be free in their lifetime.

And right now, as he was looking at the blueprints for one of the oldest and biggest train stations on the West Coast, he could again see the difference between easy and hard. Easy would be him and Laurel going down to King Street Station, beating up every hostage-taker they found, and then dramatically rescuing Ted Kord from his kidnappers. As he saw that though, and relished in just how good that would feel, he knew it wouldn’t work. All this needed was one guy getting too scared to think straight, and hurting Ted Kord or worse, and the whole thing would go to hell.

No, this needed to be played slowly. And playing it slowly was going to be very hard. Because there were more conditions than he had initially seen when he had first realized Ted Kord had been kidnapped. For one thing, there was only one train going to National City from here. Just one. It was a train that carried over 400,000 passengers, and was run by Amtrak. It went through Tacoma, and some other smaller towns, before hitting Portland and then Coast City on its way to National City. That was lucky, as he could access the passenger manifest and see just how many people were on the train when it had been stopped in the station. Because, before he even contemplated storming train cars, he needed to know who he would be fighting.

First thing he knew was that the Green Arrow knew damned well that this was being run by someone who didn’t want Ted Kord hurt, but in a specific place where he could be aggressively negotiated with. Unless this went terribly poorly, terribly fast, this was not going to be a situation where things got physical. So that meant the muscle for this were going to be reputable operators, the sort of people who were told to just not let anyone leave.

That would be where the meeting happened. Unless this person was an idiot, they’d concentrate their forces around where they were. So, if this was played right, they could get really close before an arrow ever needed to be drawn or an escrima stick pulled from a sheath. Because, of course, this was going to be another close-quarters combat scenario. And that was the easy part of the puzzle. Easy being relative in this sense.

No, the hard part was going to be getting to the train. Because as he kept looking at these blueprints, he was seeing the entrance and he was seeing who would be at it. Namely, members of SCPD SWAT. And judging from his and Laurel’s last encounters with members of SWAT, it did not strike him as particularly implausible for one of them to “accidentally” shoot either himself or Laurel and then claim an accident after the fact. It couldn’t be helped, of course. Investigating them after the whole business with Clayborne, and then doing what they could to make sure Bailey hadn’t been asked to tune-up innocent people after he had been wandering drunk out of a known gang bar, was about making sure justice was served. But he did know that it had made enemies. And they already had too many of those.

But it didn’t matter. Stuck on that train was an innocent man, as near as anyone down here could figure. And rescuing an innocent man was what the Emerald Archer was supposed to do. Sure, he was a billionaire. But they had protected royalty before, because it was the right thing to do. That, he figured, was what the Flash had wanted to have happened when he had reset the timeline. And the Speed Force, he was willing to state with nothing but circumstantial evidence, had taken that idea and put some nitrous in it by super-charging the brainpower of himself and Laurel. But none of it would have particularly mattered if there wasn’t something strong underneath it. And what was underneath it was the very real expectation that you could not harm someone in his city, and run away from facing justice for what you were doing.

He still had questions, though. But those could be answered in the field. Questions like what SWAT had with them, and if the hostage negotiator had any info and was willing to talk about what he knew. Time to go and rescue Ted Kord.

Meanwhile, at the McMillan Housing Projects in Little Tokyo……..

(Thea Queen’s POV)

Thea Dearden Queen knew she was not her brother. And to be honest, more and more, she did not want to be. She saw what being the Green Arrow required, and what it meant for him to do it in the way that people expected it to be done. The sheer number of criminology, forensics, and psychological textbooks in the Quiver meant he had to study and keep up with the kind of continuing education that would make a PH.D student wince. But she didn’t have to do that.

Ollie had told her as much. “I got the chance to completely re-evaluate my life, Thea, and I wanted very much to do things better than I had been. Protecting this city, making sure its people can sleep at night, is what gives me purpose. But you do not have to do things the same way I do them. In fact, you shouldn’t. I obsess over this, Speedy. Because the enemies I’ve made, the people who come to the city looking to say they beat the Green Arrow and Black Canary, aren’t going to be your enemies. Your enemies are the people hurting the Glades.”

No, what she could do was simpler. She walked a beat in the Glades, and made sure everyone knew she wasn’t that interested in who drank from a bottle outside a corner store. She knew why they did it, after all. The corners in the Glades, and in all the ethnic neighborhoods that made it up, were the poor man’s lounge. Even when it rained, there was nowhere else to be to watch pretty girls go by. And it didn’t matter to her if they had a little bottle in a paper bag while they did it.

Because there were bigger things, and she knew it. And she knew everyone knew that she knew it. Things like this.

So, as Artemis walked into the housing projects in her rainbow-colored suit with her rainbow-colored recurve bow on her back, she nodded to the Hmong men sitting on the park benches discussing just how poor the Monarchs and the Huskies were this year. Under normal circumstances, like if Vertigo was being moved out of here, she’d clock them for being spotters for one of the drug dealers in the projects. But everyone here had a code. Sure, the lines were wider and grayer than Ollie and Sensei Laurel’s. But there were still lines, and a kidnapping of a child crossed all of them.

So she knew if these guys knew anything, they’d say so. And the nod was to let them know that she’d be asking, forcefully if necessary, some rough questions if this building didn’t give her the answers she was looking for. But she knew that people here wouldn’t be quiet about one of their own being kidnapped, especially here. Sure, the SCPD wouldn’t get anywhere on this. But she wasn’t SCPD.

For one thing, she knew how to speak Hmong damned well. It had been Sensei Laurel’s insistence for that. “There are things you can control about how your city sees you, Speedy. How you present yourself, the way you talk to them, and if you can speak their language. Everyone wants to be heard and respected. Speaking someone’s first language is a great way to do that.” So while she was doing homework or out on patrol, she was studying the languages of the people she looked after. Make no mistake, she looked after them.

Sure, this was a neighborhood where a higher-than-normal amount of people drank or smoked to take the edge off. But people knew that the Princess of the Glades made sure the weed you got was pure, not cut with whatever some unscrupulous weed dealer decided to put in there. Because people also knew that if you got high where you shouldn’t, she was going to make sure you never did that again.

So when she came here, asking a question, Thea knew no one was going to pretend they didn’t know anything. And if they did? Well, that was the other thing.

This was a neighborhood all about street power. Down here, a block made a difference. But she didn’t know all the players, not nearly as well as she might have liked. But do you know who the Rainbow Archer knew did? Arsenal.

(Roy Harper’s POV)

Roy William Harper Jr. knew what his role was. Sensei Oliver had, over heaping bowls of ramen over nearly 3 years, taught him what it was to be the second-in-command. Everything from training his eye to see what Thea couldn’t, to making himself as big and imposing as possible so no one thought they could get away with anything. And now that the secret of his sensei having lived this entire life once before was now out in the open, those lessons took on a new significance. The errors he was trying to avoid, the things he wanted his student to never do, were clearly things that had happened before. So, he paid attention. And soon, he could fill in Thea’s gaps for her without being asked and purely on sight alone.

He still tried to soak up all the knowledge he could, because he never felt like it was enough. If Thea needed someone by her side, he wanted to be there with every possible bit of information and sober counsel that would be useful to her in any and every situation. So when he knew they were coming down here to chase down a kidnapping, he knew what he was going to do. He was going to know precisely where to go.

The fact that this was a Hmong girl made this harder, of course. From everything he had learned, this was a deliberately insular community. Speaking their language, he knew, was just the beginning. You had to understand their culture, the things that mattered to them, to get their help. And asking around, to the few Hmong friends he had, he knew where to start. The McMillan Housing Projects.

The Hmong had their own community centers, their own cuisine, and generally handled disputes inside that framework. So to hear that a kidnapped girl was being allowed to be looked for by himself and Thea made one thing clear: As much as things like this were possible, that community trusted Arsenal and Artemis. And he wanted that to mean something. He wanted it to matter.

He knew how people saw the Green Arrow and Black Canary. Even down here in the Glades, where they didn’t appear as much as anyone would like them to, they were looked at as the best friends a working man could ever dream of having. He wanted that for himself and Thea here, and for the rest of the city too. He wanted the guys who toted lumber into the city, the guys who worked at the steel plants and in the mills that made paper and textbooks, to know they had someone watching their backs when they went home.

And starting that standard by being one of the people who went door-to-door in a dangerous housing project to make sure that an eleven-year-old girl got back to her dad because her mom had snapped and taken the girl was a good way to start.

This was a lesson Roy knew Sensei Oliver couldn’t help him with. Going door-to-door, with his reflex bow on his back and his crimson-red hood up so no one clocked that Arsenal was really a car mechanic, was not something the Green Arrow had ever needed to do. But car mechanics helped people too. How many kids from the neighborhood, who had scrimped and saved to get a beat-to-hell Toyota Camry, had he helped by making sure that car ran smooth?

No, he knew what he was. And he knew what this community needed. It needed someone to stand up against injustice. Like a Red Tornado.

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(Author’s Note: All Dialogue took place in Hmong.)

Roy figured this wouldn’t be easy. And as they knocked on door after door, getting nothing but single-word answers, he was right in his initial guess. But god, he hated it. He hated knowing that somewhere, in this city, there was an 11-year-old girl scared out of her fucking mind and he couldn’t find her. But he also knew he couldn’t obsess on it. This was a small community, and they would help him if they knew. And someone, somewhere here, knew something. They had to. Right? But every time he thought he was about to lose his hope, he only had to look over at Thea and see what the point of this whole thing was.

This was her city too, and she loved it just like Roy did. What kind of partner would he be if he didn’t help her get this done? So, as he knocked on what felt like the millionth door, his mind was on making sure they got some damned good answers. But the woman behind the door set every alert system the Red Tornado had on the highest of alert. For one thing, her body language. Every other woman here moved like they were sad, like they wanted to help. But this felt like she was hiding something, deliberately so. And then he looked in her eyes, blood-shot with the dilated pupils and he could just tell she was crazily high.

Like the kind of high you are when you’ve just finished doing something you know you shouldn’t be doing, and you have to get stoned to avoid the guilt of it. And then he saw the vial, green-colored, next to a bottle of soda and a bacon cheeseburger from Big Belly Burger and he felt a burning hatred begin to form in his chest. Vertigo. What kind of a fucking monster did you have to fucking be to get high on Vertigo with your kid around? Especially when it wasn’t even a kid you were supposed to have custody of.

And then Thea peeked in over his shoulder, and she saw a man counting pills on a kitchenette counter that had seen better days years ago. Here it was: Kid kidnapped by a mom, with her dealer in the room, who was going to do god only knew what with the kid in exchange for the mom getting her high. Without even having to look, without even having to say a word, Artemis grabbed a flechette from out of her suit. She wasn’t hitting the mom. She figured the woman was drugged out of her mind enough that she wasn’t even really here. So, while Roy kept feeding her soothing bullshit in Hmong, Thea aimed a flechette loaded with a very powerful tranquilizer at her Vertigo dealer and watched as he staggered and went face-first into the counter and then out cold. If you sold drugs to a smacked-out mom with her kid in the house, losing a couple of teeth seemed like a solid consequence.

“You’re going to go to rehab. Not tomorrow, not when you get cleaned up and realize what you did and what you made your daughter see. NOW. And when you get there, you’re going to tell every counselor in the place that you kidnapped your daughter to sell to your dealer so you could get high on Vertigo. And when they look at you with disgust, I want you to use that to get better. Because this can’t be your life.”

But Roy glanced over at Thea and knew they weren’t done. Someone was still running Vertigo in these projects, someone who didn’t care about crossing any of the moral lines any of the street guys used to hold. Whoever it was, whoever could conceive of sanctioning a thing like this, was a devil. And Artemis and Arsenal knew they had to be the ones to fight this devil.

Back in the Quiver…….

(Barbara Gordon’s POV)

Barbara Gordon knew well what she was expected to do here. Drop off the terabytes of information Bruce had acquired on all of the aliases of Ra’s and Talia Al-Ghul, and then head back to Gotham. That was what she was here to do. But she didn’t think Bruce, or Dick and Tim for that matter, would have ever been ok with her leaving and not offering her help with what looked like a massive problem in front of the heroes of Starling City. And make no mistake, from what she could tell, the both of them would need all the help they could get.

They were going to have to enter a train station, one of the oldest and most well-known on the West Coast, which was loaded with state and federal police officers who would be on high alert dealing with an incredibly stressful situation and thus would be in no mood to cater to vigilantism. And then, they would have to use all their skills as martial artists and ninja to clear a full passenger train and prevent highly-paid professional mercenaries from leaving the station with their principal and their hostage. All while avoiding being shot. This seemed like something they could not do alone.

Sure, from what she had watched in grainy surveillance footage and heard from Bruce Wayne, if anyone could do it they would be the ones who could. But why make them? Why force people to have to get lucky, to have to fly blind if you could help them? So, pulling up the King Street Station schematics, she allowed her other great skill to reveal itself.

Sure, she was a master researcher. But computers? There was not a system in the world she could not access and bend to her will. She had gone after super-computers, the sorts of things that were in those research labs in Switzerland, and made them give her all the information she wanted. Compared to that, hacking an Amtrak train hub to give her the intel she needed to get two heroes in and out without being hurt? Child’s play.

So, as Batgirl opened up the passenger files for the Coast Starlight train heading from Starling City to National City, she took a glance over at the theories that the Jade Samurai and the Queen of the Fist had left behind. She had to admit, these were pretty good. (Also, their handwriting was immaculate.) But they weren’t hers to run down. What she could help with here was not investigation, but with intel and guidance. Time to get started.  

In the King Street Station Parking Lot………

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Of all the skills Oliver Queen had grown to rely upon in his current life, paying attention to every detail and planning for every eventuality was the most important. When all you had to help you do what was right was your brains, a very expensive bow, and your skills as a fighter, knowing what you were walking into was not just a luxury skill. It was vital. Not seeing in 360 degrees, and being bit by something you hadn’t planned on, would be the death of himself and Laurel. Not in a metaphorical sense, but literally. He would die, and so would Laurel.

In this line of work, nothing was more vital than knowledge. He could have all the martial arts skill in the world, but it was less useful without the knowledge of the terrain you were fighting on. So, as he pulled his motorcycle behind one of the big mobile command unit vans the SCPD had acquired, he began to think on what he knew and how he could use it.

For one thing, this was a corporately run op. He wasn’t quite sure by who yet, but it had to be someone with some juice. You wouldn’t have the credibility to get the manpower you needed to try and hijack a passenger train, and risk federal time if you were caught, by being some low-level street guy. No, he was pretty sure he knew what this was. And he figured whoever was behind it had read some book, or asked someone how you were supposed to do it. This whole thing, whatever else it was, was at its core another hostage situation.

But that somehow made it worse. Yes, there were protocols for this situation and he and Laurel had been trained on them all. But those protocols were also very well-known and publicized. Not to the average civilian, of course, but to the people who were in the game. People like, he realized with a sigh, the “retrieval specialists” this job would require. God damnit.

So they’d know everything about what SWAT was supposed to do, and how to stall them while whoever their principal on-site was kept the negotiations up with Ted Kord. And the Green Arrow also knew that the SWAT hostage negotiator on site would have no idea they were being toyed with. So, again, it came down to him and Laurel to rescue Ted Kord from a train worth of highly skilled professional operators who were being well-paid to make sure their game wasn’t being messed with.

Why was this reminding him of the League? Because everything was reminding him of the League right now. Every last move he made, every chess piece he pushed to force another move, was reminding him of sitting in that hotel room with Ra’s Al-Ghul and realizing he was playing on another man’s board. And he didn’t care for it. But he also knew he couldn’t hit Ra’s. An entire year of going after a far less sophisticated, in-control, and intelligent Ra’s last time had required sacrifices above and beyond anything he wanted to do again. So, unfortunately, this meant he could not yet go to war against the League of Assassins without causing himself and Laurel a ton of problems.

But tonight, in this train station, the League was not a thing he needed to worry about. There would be time to handle them. No, tonight he was dealing with a different class of criminal. Not a musclebound idiot recruited from the parts of Starling City where the block you grew up on still made a difference, but professionals. People from reputable ex-Special Forces outfits, people who did corporate security and had long ago learned not to ask questions they didn’t want the answer to. So this was going to be a chance to let loose, to really remind the League everything that he and Laurel were truly capable of.

But still, there were things he was missing. And he knew it. The Emerald Archer was unsure who was pulling the strings on all of this, and why they hadn’t just had a meeting at a steakhouse over an old-fashioned and some ribeyes like normal people did. It was a brazen move when this really didn’t need to happen this way. There had to be a better way to do this in secret, without Bloomberg or any one of the other business channels knowing. The more he thought about it, and turned the tumblers of the plan as he was seeing it, the less sense it actually made.

Whoever was behind this would need to have reserved a business-class ticket, brought equipment for a presentation to Ted Kord, while also the whole time knowing they were just going to kidnap the train? It was the kind of thing you did as a diversion, the more he thought of it. And that made him wonder what the real game here was.

For one thing, he knew SWAT had no idea. They weren’t trained investigators. There would be no reason for them to know this was a stall play. Why would you even assume it? No, if you were the hostage negotiator or the unit commander, you’d follow the protocols that were laid out. And unless he and Laurel stopped them, they’d be giving whoever was running this precisely what they wanted.

Oliver had never imagined himself as being the sort of person who took pleasure in destroying the criminal enterprises of others, but here he was now doing it. Being a detective, using his brain and his understanding of how people thought, was far less physically taxing than fighting wave upon wave of well-trained enemies night in and night out. And even now, with the League looming and god only knew what else coming down the pike, he knew he wanted to do this as long as he was able.

Time to show whoever was behind this who the Jade Samurai really was.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance knew how her husband Oliver Queen investigated crimes. Watching his brain relentlessly work to dismantle even the most complicated plans of criminals who thought themselves to be smarter than him was always a thrill to her, because she knew just how much he thought of himself as a grinder and not someone truly gifted with any great investigative talent. What was it he had said?

“I can just tell when people are lying to me, Pretty Bird, or when something doesn’t make much sense. And when one thing doesn’t make much sense, it becomes easier and easier to find more things. And before you know it, you’ve found the key to breaking open the whole case.”

She loved running down cases with him, because she saw things he didn’t and vice-versa. Like right now, for instance. His mind was exclusively on how you’d run it, and how this entire thing seemed to be a distraction for something else. Her mind was going to one question, not that complicated really. Why would Ted Kord have agreed to take a meeting like this?

He was a billionaire, a certified computing genius of the first order, and someone who stayed on the cutting edge of science. What in the world could have made him want to take a meeting on a train with a competitor, knowing said competitor would want to manipulate him into doing something for them? It bent credulity to snapping, and that made her think about what else she knew Ted Kord was.

Her studies of him had indicated he was a brilliant computing genius, an engineer, and an honest-to-goodness billionaire. But he was also well-known for being someone who wanted to maintain his connection to the world. He didn’t travel on private jets, drive a fleet of expensive cars, or do anything that seemed to indicate he was as rich as he was. If you didn’t know better, you were forgiven for thinking he was just a regular guy.

So, the Black Canary figured he would travel on a commuter train. That made sense. He had a higher-than-normal chance of seeing how his products actually worked in the field, and altering what he needed them to do based on what his consumer base needed. But he also wouldn’t travel with security, because regular people didn’t do that. But that was not trying to stay humble. That was being dumb. On purpose. And because of that, now she had to rescue him.

But the question of who he was going to have to be rescued from? That was a lot more interesting. They had already figured that it was someone from a National City tech firm, considering the Coast Starlight train that was currently being held hostage had its last stop in National City. And someone who needed to increase the market share of their firm, or else…. And then it hit. It wouldn’t be the CEO, not really. Sure, they might know but they’d insulate themselves. The protection would be the point.

And that meant not the CEO, but a CFO was running this. Someone who could credibly bring a contract over, and spin some silk-smooth line of bullshit about setting up a deal. The whole damned time, of course, trying to get something out of Kord was the real play. But what? What could they want?

Then, as if cued by some grand author somewhere, she got her answer. Barbara Gordon, who had taken over the computers at the Quiver, had texted her with one simple sentence: “Samantha Arias.”

So, she started googling. Ollie was counting his arrows, and re-reading the blueprints for the King Street Station on the computer screen in his pocket. And judging by the gleam in his cold blue eyes, Barbara had given him access to the SWAT team’s radio feed so that he could hear what they were doing as they were doing it.

Knowing Ollie was handling the infiltration, and probably had an equally sharp idea on how it was he was going to get them both out when they got Ted Kord safe, meant that the Songbird of Starling could focus on reading up more on Samantha Arias. And….. whew. This was….. This was not good.

Sure, there was a way in which someone who was a graduate of the Wharton Business School who just happened to have become the CFO of L-Corp, who was getting beaten up every which way but loose by Kord Industries in addition to the regular suspects they had already worked out, happened to be on the train when a hostage situation occurred with Ted Kord on the very same train could be a coincidence. But she didn’t trust that. She figured no halfway-decent investigator would trust that either, really.

She couldn’t prove it, of course. At least not yet. But this Samantha Arias woman was in her city, holding her people hostage while she tried to wheedle some deal out of Ted Kord. It couldn’t be allowed to stand. And it wouldn’t be.

But getting Samantha Arias wasn’t the problem. It was trying to figure out if Samantha Arias was acting alone, or if Lena Luthor was trying to set up some form of a Chinese firewall so she had plausible deniability over what was going to go on here. That question, and a few more, couldn’t be asked here. They needed to be asked in front of Lena Luthor, so her and Ollie could tell how high the bullshit rose.

That meant, of course, one thing. When this was done, and Ted Kord was free, they’d be chasing down leads in National City. They’d call Supergirl to make sure they weren’t stepping on anything indelicate by showing up, but this needed to be answered. It was just the right thing.

Laurel understood this, right here, was the key to being a detective. Wherever the lead took you, wherever the evidence told you to go, was where you went. Not moving on a lead, letting a case rot on the vine, was malpractice of the first order.

She was the Queen of the Fist. And some interloper had tried to run into her kingdom. Time to send them packing.

Chapter Text

(Author’s note: This took place right after A Bird In The Quiver.)

Sneaking into the vents of King Street Station wasn’t quite climbing up a solid wall like they had done with Slabside Heights during their quelling of two separate prison riots, but Oliver Queen and Dinah Laurel Lance still treated it as though it was. Long ago, sometime after their disastrous battle with David and Cassandra Cain, the both of them had made the decision to approach things with humility and care. No matter the opponent, or the obstacle, they would continue to operate as though it was a challenge to be overcome, and nothing like a fait accompli. Down that road was another beating, and they might not overcome that one.

So, as they snuck into the overhead vents of King Street Station, the Green Arrow and Black Canary planned.

“Private security, right? Probably ex-CIA and Army Rangers. These are guys who are going to be armed, too. They don’t fall under the gun ban, so they’ll have serious firepower because if things get hot they’ll need to get out with their principal and their hostage” The Green Arrow said, seeing the moves and the countermoves even while he was talking.

“They’ll be trained with Army Combatives and boxing, because they’ll have grown used to the idea they need their pistols more than they need to be able to use their hands. You brought smoke flechettes right, Ollie?” the Black Canary said, a flirtatious tone in her voice even as she was getting her body ready to deal with privately funded professional security and allegedly well-trained SWAT operators.

“I have smoke flechettes, and the low-grade magnet arrows. We’ll be dealing with them hand-to-hand, and we’ll be able to get the drop on them” Ollie said, his trademark pitbull growl in his voice.

“Which them?” the Black Canary said, knowing what he’s not saying.

“Does it matter?” Oliver said, and then they had to move. Because they were on top of the train.

Climbing through the vents carefully, noticing the hostage negotiator continuing to talk and the SWAT team standing by waiting to be told to breach, the Green Arrow moved quickly with the Black Canary by his side. As they were partners, both in their suits and out, they didn’t have to make any serious conversation. They knew what they were doing, and why. Bear-crawling across the top of the train, reading the blueprints as they moved, they finally found the car they were looking for. Ted Kord was being held here, while Samantha Arias was more than likely trying to continue getting Ted to give her something she wouldn’t get anywhere else. Glancing either direction, knowing what they were about to do, Ollie took one deep breath and used a diamond-tipped flechette to cut a circle through one of the glass windows wide enough for a smoke bomb and a multi-directional low-power magnet flechette. The Green Arrow knew things were about to get loud, so it was best to move quickly.

So, he pulled one more flechette and hit the lights in the train car before turning on the night-vision goggles in his hood. He knew the constitution of his smoke, and both he and Laurel had trained in the darkness blindfolded until their forms were sharp enough to work perfectly in the pitch-black. And as the lights went out, the sound of fighting was noticeable enough to draw the DHS SRT officers and SWAT over. Scrambling, they got the lights on and found the private security tied up and Samantha Arias zip-tied on the ground with Ted Kord sitting calmly in a chair.

The Green Arrow and Black Canary had done what they were supposed to do. They had rescued Ted Kord, and made sure not a shot was fired while they did it. But they weren’t done. Now it was time to deal with the rest of it.

Back at the Quiver……..

(Roy Harper’s POV)

Roy Harper didn’t necessarily have the mind for investigation that his sensei did. He doubted many people did. But he did have skills that were useful for running down a crime, and the best of those was the idea that he couldn’t just let anything go without knowing why it mattered. For one thing, the idea that Vertigo was still on the streets bothered him. He wasn’t foolish enough to think people wouldn’t take drugs, but he also figured that whoever was running the shit in the Glades wouldn’t go anywhere near anyone who had their kids around. From what he had heard from people who were sobering up after kicking that habit Vertigo hit your fear receptors like a ton of bricks, and gave you a high on pair with straight heroin. Being around people, was dangerous enough. But your child? Your fucking CHILD? It disgusted him.

That was chasing a dragon that could catch you and do serious damage. He needed to find out who had sold those drugs. And he needed to make it clear that, if they didn’t act right and give him the info on where the supply was coming from, a Red Tornado would wreck their lives. Because whoever this was, whoever was sitting at the top of the pyramid that still had Vertigo on his streets, needed to know someone was coming for them. Someone with an arsenal of skills. And, he was thinking, an arsenal of friends.

Barbara Gordon was still here, uploading what he was guessing was League of Assassins-centric information into the Quiver’s computers. But as he uploaded samples of Vertigo into the chemical testing software, he figured he could ask her for some help. Because he wasn’t quite as good as understanding a chemistry report as he needed to be.

But that wasn’t his real problem. He could learn chemistry. What he really needed was to learn all the players in the drug game in Starling City. And Roy knew where he needed to go to get that done. He needed, and so did Thea, to see a cop about a drug dealer.

A few hours later, still in the Quiver……..

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen felt the beginnings of a headache, and wasn’t sure if it was due to dehydration and hunger or just because he was sick and tired of all the bullshit that had been dumped on his head as a direct result of Ted Kord’s case. So, while he made himself a French dip sandwich and grabbed an electrolyte-and-carbs drink from the stainless steel commercial refrigerator that WayneTech had installed down here, he got to thinking.

It could be possible, he figured, that a CFO for a publicly-traded company could just go rogue. Especially if they were looking at balance sheets all day long, and beginning to panic that their CEO would clean house in order to save their own skin in front of the board. He doubted it, but then he doubted all of his own theories. What he needed to know to prove it, of course, was to look the CEO of L-Corp in the eye. Which meant heading to National City.

Sure, this would be easier if L-Corp was in Starling City. But they weren’t. For one thing, the City Council had finally gotten off their ass and refused to allow any demolition of the old Merlyn Global building until whoever wanted to own it had passed a background check. So that meant L-Corp, who had bid on the building, was sat here waiting to be invited into the Pacific Northwest’s tech hub. So he couldn’t go to the L-Corp building and look around, because there currently wasn’t an L-Corp building to look around at.

For the other, even if there had been an L-Corp building, Lena would be distancing herself right now from the actions of her CFO. Either for plausible deniability, or because she was genuinely horrified. Those were questions that anyone in his position would want to find out the answer to. And he needed her comfortable enough to not see a threat coming.

She was a Luthor, after all. In his last run at things, he hadn’t met Lex all that much. But he remembered hearing Kara grumble about him, and especially remembered hearing some really ugly things about how Lena had an expectation of Kara to let one more person in on her secret. So, from what he could figure, Lena Luthor would have their guard up at the very first sign of the Green Arrow and the Black Canary heading into town. She needed to be put at ease, charmed, before things got a little bit more intense. And the best way to do that was to be in National City.

Of course, the last time he had gone to National City it had ended with him dead. Sure, a billion people had been saved but he had died. But was that also not routine? This whole year had been him dealing with his past sins. A more powerful Ra’s leading the most dangerous version of the League he could have imagined, with one of his old teachers as the heiress to the demon, and now he was returning to a place where he died. Something about this whole thing no longer seemed to him like it was a coincidence.

He took a moment to write down all that had happened, because it was a theory and he ran down theories. But he wanted to not be distracted by the question of a guessing game, of trying to figure out if someone somewhere was trying to give him something he hadn’t asked for. Because, at this moment, two things were true: Samantha Arias was neck-deep in a federal kidnapping case, and Lena Luthor had some heavy questions to answer.

This, he could admit, was the part of the thing he was looking the most forward to. Because, after all, Samantha Arias worked for L-Corp. That much was known. And while he didn’t 100% think that Lena Luthor didn’t have some idea what her right-hand woman was up to, it could be that Ms. Arias did what she did off of some misguided attempt that Lena Luthor had parenthetically told her to do it.

That had been known to happen, after all. But, in order to prove that, he needed to know what that relationship was really like. Were they just colleagues or were they friends? And to know that, he needed a journalist with connections in National City. He needed Supergirl.

It had been Kara, as much as Barry, that had prompted him to make the deal. Imagining Earth-38 losing its greatest hero, and its champion, was not something he could countenance. And that feeling had only deepened once he had gone to her earth to fight off the forces of the Anti-Monitor. Seeing how people treated her, how they relied on her and trusted her word explicitly, made him wish he could have been that for his earth. But the Emerald Archer knew he hadn’t been. Now, though, he had a second chance. Maybe, even, he’d run down one of her open cases for her.

Because he was coming into her city to solve one of his own. And that got him back on what he was doing. Samantha Arias had run a kidnapping plot in his city, with a train full of his citizens, and it strained every instinct he had to believe that no one knew she was planning it. Sure, he could imagine that Lena Luthor might not know. He didn’t necessarily trust that, of course, but it was a possibility. But a secretary, or some person working in the mailroom? They would know.

He had long since come to understand the one thing that unified people like the Luthors, the Merlyns, and every other rich asshole he had come across: If you didn’t have money, or connections, you were invisible. So, it didn’t seem to be too implausible that if he asked the right questions to people who didn’t get noticed he’d find more truth about things than perhaps the people who ran L-Corp would want out. But that didn’t matter to him. He went after people who committed injustice, who hurt innocent people. And one of the high-ranking members of L-Corp, whether she did it on the parenthetical or direct instruction of the CEO, had done that.

Samantha Arias had asked a question of this city, and by extension its heroes. And that question had been answered, thoroughly. Now it was time to find out why she had even bothered to ask.

But that left him with another question. Were the students he and his wife had painstakingly taught ready for what protecting the whole city looked like? He didn’t doubt for a second the Glades loved them, and would make sure things would go well for them. But the rest of the city? Oliver wasn’t sure quite how that would work. He was sure Thea had been taught how to talk to people, how to not make enemies. Mom would have insisted on that. They had gone to etiquette classes as a matter of routine, and he had kept up his lessons. Largely because he followed a simple truism: He never asked anyone who worked for him, or was a partner with him, to do anything he would not do himself.

Roy, on the other hand? Roy had never gone to etiquette classes. Because his temper, his burning determination to see justice done, that made him the hero he needed to be was also his Persian flaw. If he was going to be left in the city while this kidnapping case got ran down, Arsenal was going to have to put one more weapon in his toolbox: Knowing how to get information from people who weren’t in the Glades.

Instantly, he knew he’d have to talk with Roy. To make him understand that, when the time came for him to take over the mantle of being Starling City’s protector, he could not simply just patrol the Glades and have that be that. He still remembered Mia telling him about how the city had been walled off and split into two, and he did not want that for his home this time. And that meant Roy had to be ready to work for everyone.

But he had faith in his student to be able to get it done. Absolute faith. Because there were things that needed to be chased down, and people who needed to answer questions thoroughly. And the Jade Samurai intended to make sure that he, alongside the Queen of the Fist, were the ones who asked those questions.

(Barbara Gordon’s POV)

Watching the Green Arrow and Black Canary, seeing them work on investigative theories and begin building forensic profiles on their investigative targets, put Barbara Gordon in mind of a pre-retirement Bruce Wayne so much that she could not help but let the smile cross her face. She knew why Bruce retired, of course. Dick knew, too, and so did Tim. Alfred, especially, knew.

Bruce had no longer been able to hold himself to the impossible standards of being Batman, and so he had given him up. No one thought he would do this. But, as he had explained to her while handing over all of his logins and passwords, the reasoning was simple. “Batman is an ideal. The criminals of Gotham, and the people who live here, see that Bat-Signal and have expectations. And if I can’t live up to them, I can’t be Batman. But the city still needs Batman. So I know I’m asking Dick to carry this for a while, and it’s not what he wants. But I asked him to train Tim, to get him ready for what he needs to be.”

And to see two people who had appeared to study at the Bruce Wayne academy of investigative tactics, carrying on his protocols and the way he did things, just made her happy. But she could admit they did things, in some ways, better than he did. For one thing, Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance were a lot nicer to be around. She got why Bruce had to be so demanding, because his intelligence and all-around skill level meant he sometimes had trouble seeing why his proteges could not always reach the same heights he could. But, it did make him difficult to connect with emotionally. The two heroes down here, though? They were just as exacting in the standards they set, but it was more about teaching and correcting mistakes than about berating people. Right now, she could see the Emerald Archer having a conversation with his student and it was congenial and encouraging even as it became clear that this Roy Harper was not necessarily the hugest fan of whatever he was being asked to do.

And then she saw Laurel. Everyone in the martial arts world, both professionals and the people who used those skills to fight against injustice, knew precisely how good Dinah Laurel Lance was. It was well-known that if she had really wanted to, Dinah Laurel Lance could very easily have a room full of cups and title belts in her home. She was that good as a kickboxer. And yet, watching Laurel work was not about athleticism or style. Sure, her kicks sounded like bombs going off when they landed. But her footwork was also impeccable and she hit the same spot on the bag every single time. Not close to the spot, but the same spot every single time. What the Black Canary did best was meld the substance of textbook fundamentals with the style of explosive athleticism. It was beautiful to see.

And it was also intensely terrifying. Because Barbara had not been trained by the world’s finest martial artist, so her fundamentals were not so strong. She could not land kicks like that, because she could not reasonably say she had the lower-body strength you’d need to squat over 200 KG for reps on a regular basis. So she was, honestly, not quite sure what it would look like to be trained by the Black Canary. Would it be like training under a witheringly brilliant disciplinarian, someone who demanded perfection and would make sure you threw the same kick 1000 times? Or would it be like training with someone who didn’t know how to teach, and couldn’t understand why you couldn’t do rapid-fire combinations quickly?

So she could admit to stalling for that reason. But that wasn’t the only one, honestly. Because from the moment she had sent Samantha Arias’s name over, something about it had been gnawing at her mind. That name, and the company she worked for, had reminded her of something that she had been working on for Dick back at home. They had been trying to figure out how it was that Edward Nygma had built his company to rival WayneTech, and it hadn’t been until they had checked his shareholders that they had found the clue. Could it be that doing the same thing would give her the same answer?

So, she opened up the shareholders and found something specific.

And she knew she needed to tell the Black Canary about it.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had always found she was most comfortable grinding relentlessly to grab all the knowledge she needed for anything. It had started in law school, where she had stayed up all night to study her contract and fraud law books with nothing more than the aid of superlatively strong coffee and grit to get things done. It had continued in Indonesia with Lady Shiva and Sensei Ricardo, where there had been times during her five years away where she had legitimately been prevented from entering the gym because she would have trained all day and all night if left to her own devices. And now, it had become baked into her personality.

It was, if she was being honest, the thing she knew Ollie loved the most about her. To hear him tell it, nothing made him fall more in love with her than to feel her presence alongside him as they kept studying textbook after textbook or doing a kata again and again until they were sure they understood every last ounce of it. They shared a common mission, and a common desire to see it done only one way: The right way.

And now, as she did the footwork drills she had done tens of thousands of times and began throwing middle kicks on a heavy bag at 25% intensity, she came to understand that what she had always thought to be a personality defect was not that. Rather, it was a necessity. She could not become what the city needed of her, what Ollie needed of her, if she did not have the desire to keep working to solve a problem at all. Because there were mysteries out there in the world, things dangerous and powerful people wanted to keep hidden, and she was bound and determined to bring them all to light.

Chief amongst those mysteries, at the moment at least, was one thing: What did Lena Luthor know, and when did she know it? Samantha Arias, of course, was being properly interviewed by DHS agents in one of the fancy federal buildings downtown to determine how she had pulled this all together. And of course, those overpaid “retrieval specialists” who had done a piss-poor job of retrieving anything except their shattered egos on the floor were about to have a very bad time when the FBI got a hold of them all and explained that even if they thought it was a professional job conspiracy to commit kidnapping was still a federal crime. On those ends, this thing was handled.

But Lena Luthor? That was the heart of this whole thing. The Black Canary knew it, even if she couldn’t fully articulate the whole thing quite yet.

Knowing it, and proving it however, were two completely different things. Knowing it was a theory, an ephemeral thing. Proving it required evidence, a confession, or both. And since they weren’t able to get Samantha Arias’s confession without attempting some truly audacious infiltration, they would need evidence. A payment from a private account, an e-mail, something. Or, she thought with a grin that she hoped did not look conniving, something that could make Lena Luthor think they had all the evidence.

And then she heard Barbara Gordon speak the name “Fatimah Al-Fihri” as she listed off the names of the shareholders on the L-Corp Board. Something about that name was hitting her. Something from history. And then she remembered, and she could have rolled her eyes until they were on the floor. Because, now, they didn’t just have to prove Lena Luthor’s part in this thing. In fact, that bit might be easier now than it would have been before.

Now, also, they had to find a League of Assassins safehouse in National City. Because if the League had left this bit of evidence out in the open, thinking no one would find it, what else were they doing in National City that they thought no one else would notice?

But as the Songbird of Starling turned the Arabic-accented syllables over in her head, another thought began to form. And this one she liked even less than the strong supposition that there was a League safehouse in National City. Because this one meant that Talia Al-Ghul had put this together. Ra’s wouldn’t have bothered with trying to run a trick with her.

He hadn’t at the wedding reception, and he damned sure hadn’t at the Olympic hotel. To him, she would always be invisible. No, this was his daughter’s play. And if the League had a safehouse in National City, Supergirl needed to know. Because she was now playing a game she might not be built for.

It was part of why everyone loved Supergirl. She believed, wholeheartedly, in the genuine goodness of people. She had a kind heart, and she trusted everyone she came across without reservation. But that meant, sadly, she did not have street smarts. Usually, this tended not to matter. From what Kara said in their weekly phone-calls, it was not precisely like she was dealing with conniving super-villains all the time. Instead, her enemies tended to try and fight her like she was a god.

But it was clear that Lena Luthor was trying to be the first, if the way she was thinking of this was right, to try something different. She was trying to sneak around the Maiden of Might so that she could bury a knife in her back while she wasn’t looking. She might have even made it seem like she could be trusted, told secrets to, because she wasn’t like her brother. Whether or not that was a lie, of course, was a whole other thing. And not something Kara would look to test, of course. Because again, Kara had a good heart and tended to trust people first.

But that did mean that the Girl of Steel needed someone who didn’t, who saw the world sometimes for what it was rather than what it needed to be. And if anyone could do those things, could be those people, it would be her and Ollie. That would be what they could do for one of their favorite people.

Sure, they were going to National City to wrap up a kidnapping case. But that case now had more tentacles than they thought it did, and more people caught up in the maelstrom of it. So, of course, they had to peel back the layers and find what the truth was. Because the public perception of this thing, at least as far as she had figured, was that Samantha Arias had acted alone. She didn’t know, quite honestly, how long that would hold. Someone, whether it was an enterprising federal investigator or a skilled investigative journalist, would put two and two together.

And when they did, Lena Luthor would have a lot of questions to answer. Furthermore, depending on who was doing the asking, these questions might come with a congressional subpoena and the threat of federal prison time.

Laurel knew damned well what would be coming when that happened. Either Lena Luthor would throw Samantha Arias under every bus that was nearby, or Lena would confess and the walls would come crumbling down.

And the Queen of the Fist intended to be the one holding the sledgehammer.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen was, by and large, not particularly interested in the concept of atmosphere and setting a scene. Rather, when he was under the hood, he wanted you to live your normal life feeling like there was someone walking across your undug grave. You didn’t know who they were, or why they were looking at your plot and your plot alone, but they were looking. And then, as if by magic, here he would appear.

But that was here in Starling City, a city of shadows and rain and gray skies. There was more than enough atmosphere here for anyone. This was a city that demanded a detective who lived in the shadows, who knew how to act in a way others might find off-putting, and who could growl threats you utterly believed would be carried out.

But very soon, there would be a breach opening and he and Laurel would not be here. They would be in National City, running down leads and asking questions. Not on behalf of the train Samantha Arias held hostage, like DHS was doing, but on the innocent people who were kidnapped in the course of her game. And make no mistake, this was obviously planned. By a pro, no less.

And that meant Samantha Arias had been used. Sure, she didn’t have to go along with being used, so her upcoming federal sentence was not something he was mourning. But she had been none the less, and she was about to pay for the crimes of another party. Of course, because it had to be, he then heard Barbara Gordon say the name “Fatimah Al-Fihri” and knew who had set the plan up. It intrigued him to know Talia Al-Ghul was as much in the game as her father was, not the passive observer she had played herself off as being. But what bothered him, and it bothered him deeply, was that Talia had seemingly chosen to go after Laurel.

He still remembered, because it had left a scar on his soul that might never heal, how it had felt to realize that Talia had willingly trained a man who had made it his sworn mission to destroy not just him but everyone who had been allied with him. And now to realize she had chosen to go farther, chosen to target Laurel, made that memory all the worse.  He knew now that Talia’s plays at honor in the last timeline were false, nothing but smoke designed to obscure who she truly was. This was who she truly was, someone who would find no line too hard to cross if that line prevented her from getting what she wanted.

And, now, crossing that line included going after Laurel. She wasn’t just his partner on the streets. She was his wife, the love of his life, the thing that made this job worth doing because he wanted to imagine a city where they could raise their kids together and not have to worry about some punk with a switchblade deciding now is a good time to rob one of the Queen kids. That was the point, at least in his mind, behind continuing to do this. He knew Laurel saw it the same way, so it was why it felt so much like a betrayal that a former teacher of his did not. What Talia had never properly understood was that the Green Arrow existed not just for his dreams, but for the dreams of so many other people here. People who wanted to build a business without having to pay 60% interest because some Triad loan shark got pissed off someone built a 8-seater Fujian Chinese restaurant on their territory deserved the chance to make a life for themselves.

Families in the Glades who wanted schools that worked, where they could worry about making sure their kids didn’t just meet the state education standards but lapped them. That was why what he was doing here meant so much to him. And it was why he was bound and determined to stop the League before they decided destroying his city was the best way to get his attention. And that meant defeating his former teacher, soundly.

But neither she, nor her father, were going to make that easy. They were hiding their intentions, the true desires that they had, beyond diversions and allusions to Islamic history from the religion’s golden age. And to be honest, most people probably wouldn’t notice the allusions. Lord knew Interpol hadn’t come close to it, because if they had, they would have easily figured out that “Fatimah Al-Fihri” was the name of a Moroccan woman who had helped to establish major universities in Morocco after her father, a successful merchant, had left her his wealth.

 If you were well-read, and knew your history, it was not even necessarily hiding anything. It was a code left in plain sight, and yet professional code-breakers for international law enforcement had absolutely missed it. If he met an Interpol agent while he was in National City, he’d hopefully get across how sad he found their intelligence efforts. Because god damn, the idea that someone had missed THIS did not make him feel good about the state of international law enforcement.

But those were questions for later. The Emerald Archer knew what he was working on right now, and he knew why it mattered. Right now, there was a guy who had worked a coffee cart who had lost a day of pay because all of that. And he had nowhere to go to have his grievances noticed, much less redressed. Federal agents, the SCPD, and a small army of news media had descended on King Street Station and cast out all the people in there who needed steady foot traffic to pay their bills. It bothered him. And it especially bothered him that some fucking carpetbagger had made it happen.

It would have annoyed him intensely if it had been anyone in the city, too, but this was worse. This was some prick from out-of-town, who was using his city to stage a plot, and thought no one would care. Well, he did. And he knew Laurel did too.

It had been in their vows, after all. Not explicitly, of course, but rather as a shared understanding of intent. Without a code, without honor, the standard they set would crumble when they left the field. And standing up for that honor, no matter the personal cost, was at the core of what they had vowed to be for each other.

Talia could never understand that, and neither could Ra’s. But they would.

Because the Jade Samurai and the Queen of the Fist were going to make them. And, as the breach opened, he was looking very much to getting it done.

At the same time, outside the Starling City Police Department’s First Precinct……….

(Thea Queen’s POV)

Thea Queen had been told, directly and with crystal clarity, what she was expected to do while her sister-and-law and her brother were out of town. And she was going to follow those instructions to the letter, because it wasn’t just her sister-in-law telling her. It was also Sensei Laurel, Sensei Nyssa, and Sensei Ted saying so. In their own ways, they had demanded that she no longer be that smart-ass little girl who didn’t know when to keep her mouth shut. She was being expected to handle being the main hero in town, and handle that responsibility appropriately and professionally.

But it wasn’t just them. It was everyone in the Glades too, everyone she had tried to protect, who she hoped would understand why she was doing this. The whole city needed her now. These were people who would be relying on someone, anyone, to keep them safe from harm. And if the Green Arrow and Black Canary weren’t here to do it, she and Roy would have to.

But, she was thinking, she didn’t have to do it like their teachers did. Because something about that horrible thing in the McMillan Housing Projects got her to thinking, namely about what it meant for the future of the criminal underbelly in Starling City. Every day, boats came in ferrying new soldiers for the East Asian gangs here. Triads and Yakuza alike, each getting more muscle. But what wasn’t coming off the boats were leaders, the people who made things happen. And that made her nervous.

Because if her memory was right, the people running these gangs were jumped-up hitters themselves. Not someone who knew how to read the board, or enforce the rules that no one had bothered to explain. So that meant that there was a vacuum for power, for someone who would want it by any means necessary.

Which meant what they were about to do here was really important. They were going to have a “theoretical” conversation with Renee Montoya, who had been picked out from the standing SCPD duty roster by Barbara Gordon who had just smiled and said “she has experience that’s good for this”. What that meant wasn’t precisely clear to her, or to Roy for that matter, but Ms. Gordon knew plenty about a lot of things. Sensei Laurel trusted her explicitly, so that was good enough for Artemis. Still, though, she couldn’t help the fidgeting.

The last time she had been out here, Helena Bertinelli had gotten her. That had been the most terrifying singular night of her life, going eyeball-to-eyeball with an absolute psychotic trained killer and somehow not being added to the woman’s body count. So, while she was waiting with top-shelf coffee and a bag of local pastries (not doughnuts, because that cliché would serve no one), there was a part of her that would admit to panicking. Was there going to be someone else out here, someone bothered by the idea that she and Roy were looking into their business? Or would IA finally have gotten off of their well-dressed asses and decided that now was the time to investigate some of their own, after a Deputy Commissioner was in bracelets downtown on federal charges?  

The Princess of the Glades was worried about that. She didn’t know how to pull that ninja shit off that Sensei Laurel and Ollie did so well, so she’d probably have to just start running. But, glancing over to her left, she felt her nerves ease. Because Roy was here, and he was nervous too.

She had never listened in when Ollie was talking to Roy. Lord knew she had wanted to, but she needed to only feel the glacial stare from Sensei Laurel one time to realize just what would happen if she had eavesdropped on that. She could only imagine what her older brother was dealing with in everything that came about from having lived this life before. Trying not to ask about what it was, what she had been in that timeline, was a curiosity she did not feel the need to satisfy. As it was, here tonight, Thea Queen had plenty to say grace over.

(Roy Harper’s POV)

Roy Harper felt intensely uncomfortable being here, in an alleyway outside the SCPD’s first precinct, and he knew exactly why. He hated cops. It didn’t matter if they were good ones, like J’onn J’onzz or Sensei Oliver’s father-in-law, because they were usually so rare it didn’t matter. But, as he was beginning to understand, the man he needed to be under the hood had to have a better relationship with the SCPD. They would have information on people he simply couldn’t get. And, if he was being honest with himself, asking Renee Montoya if she had something useful was going to be a better usage of his time than trying to find this any other way. He figured they had at least some vague idea about who was running the Vertigo thing, whereas he and Thea had no clue what was going on.

That concerned him, because whoever was running this thing was preying on the innocents of the city. Unless you were getting high where you shouldn’t, or committing violence in the service of your high, he really didn’t mind all that much if you smoked a joint in the privacy of your own home. However, and this he knew Sensei Oliver would agree on if he was here, Vertigo was NOT marijuana. It wasn’t even alcohol, where you could have a nice drink on the rocks and scream at the TV when the Cougars were on like everyone else did. No, Vertigo ruined lives. People had their fear receptors set on fire, and their inhibitions turned off. If he and Thea hadn’t been there, someone high on Vertigo would have sold their toddler to their dealer for a fix. The laws of man weren’t just being ignored here. The very laws of nature were being fucked with.

To stop whoever was at the top of this scheme, Arsenal could get over his own issue with the police. Because if they knew anything, anything at all, it was important to him that it got found out. Back at the Quiver, with access to their computers and the ability to call on superior investigators, they could find out who was behind this and put an end to it. Because he was getting sick and tired of seeing what he was seeing in the Glades, and someone needed to help him stop it.

Maybe Renee Montoya could help.

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Drinking a coffee and looking singularly pissed-off, Detective Renee Montoya walked into the alleyway and saw Arsenal and Artemis waiting for her and knew what they were after.

“I don’t know anything. No one does. Whoever this new guy is running Vertigo, he keeps his name to himself. All we know is that he runs it out of the Fermin Housing Projects, and has his guys ship it in stolen sporting goods trucks. If you want to stop him, start there.”

And with that, Detective Montoya leaves. Grumbling under her breath about why it is she has to babysit vigilantes again. But that wasn’t a concern. How to get an in to the Fermin Houses, on the other hand, was.

Meanwhile, in National City at the Watchtower…….

(Kara Danvers’s POV)

Kara Danvers had been running herself ragged trying to deal with a problem on three fronts. Ben Lockwood, and the Children of Liberty, were the biggest problem. But somehow, and it wasn’t clear how, someone was trying to make a Kryptonian that supported every last one of Lockwood’s distasteful beliefs. And then there was Lena Luthor.

Lena had been giving interviews, being increasingly strident that Supergirl needed to be treated with more and more “aggressive caution”. It sounded like Lena envisioned her as some kind of a bomb to be defused, which just made her sad. Did she think there was ever going to be a chance that she could become dangerous enough that someone was going to have to use lethal force to stop her? God she hoped not.

So, when she had heard that her friends Oliver Queen and Dinah Laurel Lance were coming into town, she got happy. For one thing, they always had the best stories. Every time it was always these multi-layered plots where they stayed up all night drinking coffee and snacking on these gorgeous pastries until they found some clue and then went out and chased it down before the sun came up. It made them seem like detectives from all those great 1940’s noir movies her and Alex watched all the time, before she had gone off-world for a while.

(Author’s note: Study the Interlude: A Brand New Light to see where Alex Danvers went off to.)

Secondly, she just liked seeing them. They inspired her to be better, to be the kind of example to her city that they were to theirs. How often had she seen an article on them rescuing a family of five from being put on the streets in the dead of night just by “convincing” a slumlord that it was in his best interests to straighten up and do right by his tenants, or letting a murder victim finally rest by bringing his killer to justice? Every person mattered to them, and every injustice needed to be taken seriously. How could she live in a world with them and not want to be what they were to National City?

Laurel was awesome in all the best ways. She stood straight and tall in every room walked into, kept her eyes focused right on whoever she was interacting with, but she never demeaned anyone. She was the older sister everyone wanted, someone who was warm with you and had in-jokes that only you and her had. It had been a blast to be one of her bridesmaids and learn the secrets of what made her decide to become the Black Canary, to willingly submit herself to being trained by someone like Lady Shiva five hours a day, every day, for five years. Watching her train, even if she could never understand why it mattered so much that she chased down this 400-KG squat number, reminded her that if you didn’t have powers you needed to be great at everything else. All the time.

Oliver, and she called him Oliver because Ollie was only reserved for Laurel and Barry, was different. For one thing, and this would surprise people who only saw the master tactician, the Green Arrow gave GREAT hugs. But more so than that, he demanded more of her. Not by asking, but simply by example. Back when he had asked her to interview China White, he had known she was there with his eyes closed. It had taken her forever to figure out how he had done it, but once she had, she had asked if her guess was right and the coolest thing he had happened: Not only had he told her she was right, he had taught her how to do it. He wasn’t about to give away his secrets, but if you figured them out, he’d help you learn how to do it for yourself.

So, when she heard why they were coming, the Girl of Steel could admit she was as interested about what they were looking into as she was happy to see them. Because when she had heard about Samantha Arias being hooked in to a kidnapping plot, she had struggled to believe it. Sure, Lena Luthor had been occasionally accused of being a rabid businesswoman but nobody seemed to believe she would hire anyone who was capable of this. It just didn’t make sense.

But she also knew that Laurel and Oliver had evidence, and were just trying to chase down more. They were detectives, after all.

So Kara Danvers would hand over what she had found out, and watch the two finest detectives she knew get to work answering a question she didn’t think anyone would ever have to ask: What did Lena Luthor know, and when did she know it?

But, as she got ready, the Maiden of Might couldn’t help but feel like she was forgetting something.

Meanwhile, at the Hotel Casa Del Mar…….

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen knew this was the National City he was always supposed to have seen. Sunny and 80 degrees, with gleaming bright buildings and palm trees everywhere. This was the ideal of Southern California, just as much as Central City was. People came from miles around to be here, to make their names here and become famous here. And this was how he wanted to remember National City.

No part of him wanted to remember standing on a cracked cement rooftop, fighting off clawed demons with nothing but his bare hands in order to ensure just one more ship full of innocent people were saved. And yet, he did. He was still haunted by how little he felt like he had done to prepare for that Crisis, but it wasn’t something he felt guilty about. Not anymore. He wanted to be ready for it, to know his friends were too.

But that was a problem to be worked on later. Right now, he had to figure out where a person might need to go if they wanted to get some gray or black-market security. Samantha Arias had not contracted her kidnapping plans out to anyone legitimate. That was painfully obvious. Anyone legitimate would have sent her away, and probably thrown a discreet call to the National City Police Department as a chaser. No, to do this right, you needed people with low scruples and the ability to move the money you paid them around through god knew how many shell companies.

But he didn’t know where to find these people. And then it hit him full-force, and he could have fallen over with the simplicity of it. Talia Al-Ghul had not orchestrated this all up to get the Green Arrow to come to National City. She had done it to get Laurel here, so the clues would be for things related to what she figured Laurel wouldn’t notice. And, just like so many others had done before her, she had also drastically underestimated the Black Canary’s competency.

He figured Laurel had intended it that way. Between the muscles, the skin-tight leather, a bubbly and warm personality, and the shampoo-model hair, she had painstakingly cultivated a public persona that made people think she was all show, no go. And that, he also knew, was by design. If you saw a blonde bombshell with legs like tree-trunks in skin-tight black leather, you never bothered to look for a world-class forensic technician and crack detective who could read a crime scene and tell when you were bullshitting them with just a glance. If you saw someone who was easy with a joke and a smile, you never saw the steely-eyed martial artist who could fight a room full of black-belt karate-ka and beat them all in seconds. And if you saw someone who looked like she came off the cover of a men's magazine, you never thought you were looking at someone who had enough intelligence to have a room full of PH.d's if that was what she really wanted.

He loved being her partner, loved watching her become everything she should have been allowed to become. He could see now that having her around during that whole business with Deegan would have changed some things, and it might not have ended up that he would have been forced to give his life to protect Barry and Kara from harm. But if he had been, if there really had been no other way like he was beginning to surmise was the case, he knew something else: Laurel would have fought alongside him here. Not a doubt in his mind.

But he didn’t want to get too maudlin. National City, at least the one where he had died, no longer existed. And he did not want his memories of this sunny California oasis to continue to be tainted by those memories, so he would not let them be. No, the Emerald Archer was on a work vacation so it was time to get to work.

They had been drawn here, seen that Talia was involved, by a reference to a famous Moroccan woman from the past. Would she have bankrolled the security service Samantha Arias had gone to using the same trick? More than likely, yes. That led him to a disturbing conclusion, and could see Laurel coming to the same one.

Creating a security company out of the clear blue nowhere was one thing. You filed the appropriate paperwork, slipped the right people bribes, and there you were. But making the security company credible, on the other hand? That would take years. Even if you ran a black-market operation, you’d need time with clean clients to make sure people knew you were discreet and skilled. No, this wasn’t something that had been concocted overnight. It couldn’t be. For years, decades even, Talia Al-Ghul and Ra’s Al-Ghul had been operating underneath the noses and out of the view of anyone who might want to move to stop them. They hadn’t made any aggressive moves, until they had wanted to.

He had to give them credit for this, as loathsome as he found what they were after. Sneaking around, building a reputation and finding people willing to follow you, took time. No, this League business was not just his and Laurel’s problem anymore. That much was crystal-clear. This had become everyone’s problem. All of his friends and allies, to the last, would need to find the League presence in their own hometowns and root it out. Because if they didn’t, he could only imagine what came next.

And Oliver Queen had a very good imagination.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance knew Oliver Queen had seen something. It was not hard for her, at least, to figure out the various and sundry micro-expressions he used. She had known him, and loved him, for all of her life. And it had not precisely been a secret that, when he was under the hood, he had to make himself slip into a mindset that was so unlike Ollie that it enabled him to keep the vigilante and the husband separate. That sense of understanding purpose, of understanding what he needed to do to be what she and the city needed, was part of why she loved him. But, at times like this when she could feel his eyes on her like he was trying to guess just how much trouble they were both in, she understood why she needed him.

There were few people in the world who were better tactical thinkers than Ollie, so him pulling some elaborate plan together or divining what someone else’s plan was had never been the problem. Add to that the knowledge that he had real-world experience with both Ra’s and Talia, and always seemed to know the play and the tactics they were going to be using.  So whatever he was seeing, she trusted explicitly.

And then she felt the tumblers fall into place in her own head, and she could have screamed. Talia had snuck in under her nose, Ollie’s nose, and everybody else’s nose and built an infrastructure of League-affiliated services that criminals of a certain class could easily avail themselves of. These were not resources that would even be offered to low-level muscle, because to be honest, the people who needed it relied on having a certain kind of discretion and living in a certain economic stratosphere. No, what Talia was offering would be for people who had money and resources. People like Lena Luthor, or Samantha Arias.

And then the other shoe dropped. Talia had set that up, thinking that no one would see it. She had gotten herself onto the board of a Fortune 500-traded company using an alias that was of a well-known figure in Islamic history, and no one had tracked it. Whatever she was going to do now, that was going to be the clue to find it. And she loved finding clues.

The Black Canary didn’t know how it would be in National City, but in Starling City, people tended to be a little bit more ostentatious. Maybe it was because people genuinely were so convinced that the SCPD couldn’t find their ass with a flashlight, a map, and a GPS device that they tended to believe they were safe leaving out pieces of evidence where they could easily be found. Or, more depressingly, it was that they had budgeted for the idea of a bribe. She hoped she was changing that, and that the criminals of her city now knew that they could be caught.

But here in National City, people knew how to hide their hands. So there’d have to be a little bit more research. And that, she figured, was where Supergirl could help. Not as the red, yellow, and blue Maiden of Might. (Although that might be useful if they needed the world’s strongest one-woman SWAT team.)

No, they needed Kara Danvers and her knowledge of the city. But she did not want this to be a one-way thing. That was beneath her, and beneath Ollie. No, she was going to help Kara just as much. It was why she had been so happy when her husband had asked for the National City Times, National City Daily News, and the Orange County Register to be delivered to their suite.

And then she had started reading about everything that was supposed to be front-page news here, and she could feel rage percolating through each and every blood vessel in her body. Nothing had ever made her this mad. Because Supergirl had, without asking for any kind of help, found herself dealing with a white supremacist and his equally-misguided group of idiots.

As a general rule, and something that she tried to reinforce in her own dojo, the Songbird of Starling tried to apply only as much force as was necessary to put the person in front of her down. There was no need to soccer-kick an opponent if they were clearly out on their feet. But when she saw what these Children of Liberty were talking about, the Songbird of Starling felt an overpowering urge to kick them all in the mouth until they needed a mouthpiece to do things like chew gum or drink soup. And judging by how Ollie was reading those articles, she could tell the Green Arrow was intensely invested in making sure these clowns understood what true fear felt like.

But that wasn’t all. Sure, she wanted to make this Agent of Liberty person and his flunkies eat every ounce of his polluting rhetoric but that wasn’t all there was going on. Lena Luthor was here too, and she was putting on a command performance in passive-aggressive behavior. Every other word coming out of that woman’s mouth was about how Supergirl needed to be “neutralized”, like she was a barrel bomb or something. Was this how everyone in National City saw Kara, or was this one woman trying really hard to antagonize someone? And if it was the latter, why in the world would you ever choose to antagonize Supergirl?

It didn’t make any sense, but since Lena was only coming to her through black ink on a newspaper page, she couldn’t do serious profiling work. But the question of what Lena was trying to do was nagging at her, and making her more and more provisionally convinced that the L-Corp CEO was up to far more than her public persona might make someone think she was.

But fixating on Lena Luthor was a distraction, albeit a good one considering what she was apparently trying to do to Supergirl. Talia Al-Ghul was the main event. And it was becoming increasingly obvious, both to her and she imagined to Ollie, that Talia would never have conceived of the idea that she would have been followed to National City. She dropped that little hint in the list of the Board of Directors for L-Corp and might have figured no one was smart enough to have noticed it.

Laurel had known Talia was arrogant. It was not precisely the height of profiling technique to notice that. She had stood like she was better, and smarter, than everyone else. Add that to the fact that she seemed to go nowhere without a retinue of highly-trained female swordswomen, and it seemed to be that Talia Al-Ghul thought herself untouchable. Well she wasn’t.

If she could prove nothing else here before she had to leave National City, she had proved that. No one from the League, no matter how skilled in the arts of deception they might be, was untouchable. They could be found, and they would be made to answer for what they had done.

But it was finding the proof of what had been done that was proving to be so complicated. Time to go and get some answers.

Sure, this wasn’t their city. But the Queen of the Fist, and the Jade Samurai, still knew how to get people to confess their secrets.

As night fell in downtown National City in an alleyway outside Musso & Frank Grill……..

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As he moved through the alleys and side streets of National City, Oliver Queen began to realize a few things. For one, he had never been quite so happy to realize that Cisco Ramón had managed to make a suit that was all-weather-friendly. Of course, Starling City’s legendarily wet and damp atmosphere was one thing. But here? It was HOT. Like, 75 degrees even at dusk. And he didn’t feel any of the symptoms of being overheated.

The other thing, of course, was that there was no way he was going to get a refill of his yazutsu. If he ran out of arrows here, he would be OUT. No chance to refill from one of Curtis Holt’s drones was going to be on offer, so this needed to be something where he didn’t just machine-gun shots like conservation wasn’t going to be an issue. No, this was a time where he needed to rely on what he could do with his hands. And that put him in mind of his partner, who was currently polishing her escrima sticks with a microfiber cloth.

As a pure martial artist, Laurel was better than him. This wasn’t, honestly, a great shock. Laurel was better than most people, with one Lady Shiva-sized exception. But he also knew he could handle himself in a street fight if it came to it, and he was hoping very much that tonight it came to it. Because this whole thing, why he was here, was pissing him off.

The Talia he remembered, the one he knew was no longer in there, had very few redeeming qualities. But one of them had always been that she had wished to make her way in the world without her father’s hand guiding her. So to imagine her now, being so completely subservient to her father’s ludicrous planning, made him disgusted in her in a way he thought he could have only ever reached after her part in creating Prometheus had been revealed to him. And that hadn’t even been disgust, not really. No, that had been hatred mixed with betrayal.

This was disgust. He was ashamed to have ever imagined that any version of himself could have been willing to take any kind of advice from Talia. And he was even more ashamed to see someone he had once called a trainer, someone he had once thought had conviction, betray all of those ideals just because her father had said so. The Talia he remembered would have wanted no part of this, but that was no longer who he was dealing with.

But the Green Arrow knew he could not mourn the loss of a former teacher, because Talia was not someone to be mourned. She was someone to be stopped. It was her that had somehow turned Tatsu Yamashiro into one of her hired killers. And that was unforgivable. He had to rescue Tatsu, to save her from this life before she did more things that would darken her soul.

Killing seven men, even if they were Triad enforcers, had been a thing he knew was beyond anyone’s concept of justice. These were men who deserved a trial by a jury of their peers, not to be executed on their knees and drugged like they were nothing but pack animals who had outlived their usefulness. This was not something Tatsu would have abided in his timeline, and he doubted that this one’s did either. But he had to get to her.

Truthfully, he had to get to all of Talia’s allies. Some, like Tatsu, could only be convinced to leave her side through combat. Others, like the reason he and Laurel were here, could be dealt with another way.

Eve Teschmacher, the personal assistant of Lena Luthor, ate at this over hundred-year-old steakhouse all the time. That seemed abnormal for anyone, especially a 30-year-old woman. Steakhouses like this tended to be where old men with cigars went to discuss their business dealings over the same five reasonably well-handled cuts of meat, not a young woman with a degree in Nuclear Physics from Yale University.

It was that last bit that gave him pause. Why, precisely, would a woman so qualified as this Ms. Teschmacher appeared to be find herself willingly working for someone like Lena Luthor? Either there was some big character flaw that made her unemployable for the most well-known labs, or she really didn’t want to be a qualified physicist. The latter seemed to make even less sense than being Lena Luthor’s personal assistant. No, something was amiss here. But he also knew they wasn’t going to drop down and interview her coming out of here. No, he had a nagging thought there was more here than he might be seeing. And if that was true, the last thing that needed to happen to prove it was to get her when she was still cautious about being caught.  

So, they waited. And while they did, the Emerald Archer glanced over at his wife and fell in love all over again. It was not hard to do, but it still happened. Just seeing her grit her teeth, and bite down on what he knew was a custom-fitted mouthpiece, was like waking up to the sunshine all the time. He hadn’t understood what he had needed before, but this had been it. He didn’t need a fresh-off-the-runway natural beauty, although Laurel could do that if it came to it. He needed a girl who looked as gorgeous as Laurel did drenched in sweat and covered in fresh bruises. He needed someone with character, substance, and above all else…. honor.

What they were doing, what their home asked of them, required both of them to have these things in abundance. They could not defend their city if they acted like the criminals who sought to destroy it. That, he was beginning to notice, was the difference between the League of Assassins and what he and Laurel were building. The League had no honor, no concept of the right thing, and they took life while thinking of it as routine. Talia had conscripted Tatsu to take the lives of seven men, and then hired out her own personal security force to help Samantha Arias and\or Lena Luthor kidnap Ted Kord and traumatize an entire city in the process.

There was nothing about this that was honorable. In fact, the more he thought of it, the more he could see Ra’s fingerprints on the whole thing. Talia was just a tool to him, someone that he could use to create what he wanted. And since the man spoke in riddles and half-truths, all that they could really expect to know about the man was that he wanted an heir.

There was more to this, more layers to this problem, than he was seeing right now. Maybe if they ran this down, and got Ms. Teschmacher to confess what Lena Luthor knew about her CFO’s plot, they’d begin to pull this thing apart.

And so, as Eve Teschmacher went to get into what looked like an Uber and headed home, Oliver carefully and noiselessly went to get on his rented motorcycle with Laurel following along on one of her own.

And then the alley was bathed in an emerald-green light.

Was that….. Alex Danvers? What the fuck was happening here?

Chapter Text

(Author’s Note: This took place right after Leads.)

In an alleyway outside the Musso and Frank Grill in National City……..

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen had, ever since the Flash restored his memories of his old timeline, idly wondered what about his old life had simply never been allowed to happen. Meeting Bruce Wayne in the flesh had been one thing, of course. By the time he had returned from Lian Yu, he had figured that Bruce had become so emotionally hollow that it would not be too much longer before he had simply left the whole thing behind.

But now, as he saw Alex Danvers descend what could only be described as a hard-light construct of a spiral staircase, he remembered something that Earth-90 Barry Allen had said to John Diggle. Something about a ring, and that John Diggle wasn’t wearing his. He hadn’t had the time to ask the older man what he had been talking about, because things had gone to hell right after.

But now, seeing what was in front of him, two things were becoming apparent: He knew precisely what ring John Diggle had been supposed to be wearing, and Alex Danvers was walking right into his and Laurel’s goddamn case like nothing was going on. And make no mistake, this was their case. They had worked the angles, figured out the connection to National City, and had come here to get answers. To do all that just to get bigfooted by some sheriff-looking woman wearing a green ring?

But something about this was curious to him, and he could tell it was intriguing Laurel too. Why was Alex here? Sure, Alex was moving like a cop (albeit a very specific kind of one), but he wasn’t seeing any kind of a badge. All that was around that looked even the barest bit official was a green omega symbol on what looked like an Old West-style sheriff’s badge, and he knew damned well that wasn’t anything any law enforcement arm worth a damn wore anymore. That was, of course, before he even got to the two Colt six-shooters that were also on her hip.

Add to that the floor-length duster, heavily starched white dress shirt, green leather pants with white chaps, and an emerald-green cowboy hat with that same omega symbol on the front, and it was clear that she wasn’t working with the FBI anymore, or even Interpol or some unofficial operation.

So whatever this was, it was not being done on behalf of any law enforcement organization the Green Arrow had ever heard of. Which led to another interesting question: Why was Eve Teschmacher her target? He got it, theoretically, if it was one of the Luthors.

Lex and Lena were, seemingly more by every bit of research he and Laurel did on them, dirtier than anyone publicly might have suspected. But, unless there was something here he hadn’t really had the time to dig into yet, Eve Teschmacher did not seem to be the same. And yet, judging by how Alex Danvers was moving, there was something here he was not seeing.

But, as he tried to hide and avoid being seen by this big-ass light Alex Danvers was holding, he began to notice something that he was sure was leaving him with a giant ugly scowl on his face: He was being bigfooted in PRECISELY the same way federal agencies had always bigfooted local cops. It had gone down precisely the way Quentin bitched about it happening: Some fed had sauntered in here, with superior resources and a big cocky smirk, and pulled a good case right out of underneath both him and Laurel. And considering how Eve Teschmacher was frozen in place, like she was watching her life flash before her eyes, it was damned obvious this was a really good case.

He wasn’t read in for anything Alex had, and doubted he was ever going to be. Honestly, if it wasn’t going to blow their cover, he was pretty sure Laurel was going to call J’onn and talk about this like two parents whose daughter had stayed out past curfew and then crashed the Cadillac into a tree.

He felt that level of disapproval for what was happening here, but he knew that hearing it from him was not the right choice. But as he kept thinking about it, that disappointment no longer stopped at just one Danvers girl. No, the other one was in here too now. Why hadn’t Alex been told he and Laurel were here?

Thinking of it now, seeing it, he knew he had seconds to get this fixed. Alex Danvers, wearing that ring, was getting closer and closer to their suspect. If they didn’t move now, they’d lose the suspect. And that couldn’t do.

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Calmly stepping out of the shadows, a knockout-gas flechette laced in between his fingertips so that he could get to talking with anyone being heard, Oliver Queen kept his eyes on Alex Danvers the whole time while throwing the flechette which landed right in the midsection of Eve Teschmacher and put her to sleep as the Black Canary sent a text.

“Where were you going to take her?” the Green Arrow said, maximum growl and snarl in his voice until he sounded like James Hetfield circa 1989.

“What do you care? She’s not your concern, Green Arrow. She’s the Green Lantern Corps’ problem”, Alex said, and there it was.

“Do you not read the newspaper? Lena Luthor, that woman’s boss, may or may not be involved in the kidnapping plot Samantha Arias perpetrated in National City. And we were trailing her, trying to find out information before we made a move. We were trying to build a case, for god’s sake. And now, because of you and your interference, we can’t. Thank you so very much, Green Lantern” Laurel says, disapproval emanating from her voice.

“We know we told Supergirl we were coming. I guess she didn’t tell you, or if she did, you’d already decided to be a good federal agent and bigfoot the detectives coming down to run down their case. Is that what the Corps teaches you to do? Is that what you learned when you got that ring?” Oliver says, his growl somehow increasing in baritone as he glared at her underneath his hood.

But before the Green Lantern could say anything, it became clear what was actually happening. Because Supergirl flew down, along with her father figure J’onn J’onzz, and stood right by the Jade Samurai and the Queen of the Fist. And then, the Green Lantern turned off her ring.

“Fine. Tell me what you need. I’ll tell you what I’ve got.” Alex said, chastened.

30 minutes later, at a Green Lantern Corps outpost in National City……..

(Alex Danvers’s POV)

Alex Danvers, Green Lantern for Sector 2814, knew damned well what it looked like when a parent was disappointed in you. She had seen it with mom a handful of times, and it never stopped stinging. But considering that, nothing stung quite as much as seeing J’onn being disappointed in her. It had been him who had gotten her into Quantico after being arrested for drunk driving, because he believed she had potential far and above what she had shown up until then. And every day since then, she had always wanted to make him proud and make him never regret that choice.

And then she had blown the case of two people J’onn respected as much as she had known him to respect anyone, and it wouldn’t be a lie to say she felt an inch tall. On the way back to this small station, no one had said a word to her. They had all looked at her, though, like she had spit in someone’s birthday cake.

Because, she was beginning to figure out, she had. And when they got to the station, and she hung her Stetson up on a hook, J’onn simply handed her a paper with news about Samantha Arias’s trial in Starling City for federal kidnapping charges. When that hit her, she felt even worse.

How could the Green Lantern fix this? Because she needed to.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had thought, indirectly, about what it would be like to have kids. She knew she wanted to have them with Oliver, of course, but the thought had never crossed her mind actively. There was too much to do, and too much left to go before that was even a thing they could really consider.

But somehow, and she knew Ollie’s body language enough to tell he was impressed by this, she had pulled out a mom voice of the highest caliber. Because the truth was, she was very mad at the Green Lantern. (Yes, on the way back in a very uncomfortable silence as Ollie was still glaring at Alex Danvers like he had never been so disappointed with anyone ever in his life, Alex had admitted that she was a Green Lantern and the only one on the whole of the West Coast.)

For one thing, the last thing her or Ollie wanted was for Eve Teschmacher to have been picked up and taken to some interrogation room someplace. No, they wanted to follow her. Because, for what they were doing, evidence was the most valuable currency. Cobbling together proof of what Lena knew, and how they could use that proof to find out more answers, was why they were here.

That information was now a lot harder to get, because Eve Teschmacher was now looking at a jail sentence. Even worse, she was now looking at a jail sentence on another planet. There would be no reason for anyone to confess to anything else under that circumstance, and since neither her or Ollie knew what the rights of the accused really were for the crime Alex was prosecuting, it was very reasonable to figure that she would just clam up until her lawyer arrived.

No, she was beginning to put together, this was the difference between someone who walked a beat and someone who solved crimes. A beat cop, even a really good one like Alex Danvers appeared to be, never looked any deeper than the criminal in front of them.

Apparently, if the Green Lantern Corps wanted someone put away, Alex put them away. No thought to what other crimes they might be missing, or what other crimes they could find if they did even a little bit of interviewing. No, the Lantern Corps trained people to just arrest and let that be that. This was an approach a beat cop needed, because letting someone continue to terrorize a neighborhood could not be allowed. But for a detective, it was an incomplete tactical choice.

This was because, the Black Canary understood, it lacked imagination. To really stop crime and deliver justice to every victim that you could, sometimes you needed to let a small-time dealer on the corner lead you to the best way to crush the pipeline of drugs flowing into your city. Sometimes you needed to follow the money, dollar by damned dollar, through every shell company in town to find out who was bankrolling the mafia princess you were trying to make see the light. And either of these things simply could not be done if you took down every low-level criminal you saw.

This whole thing, everything they had wanted to do when they got here, was now up in the air. Which led to the second problem.

By this point, only an absolute idiot wouldn’t be wondering where their personal assistant was. And unfortunately, Lena Luthor was no idiot. So, even without having to strain, she could hear Eve Teschmacher’s personalized phone vibrating in her bag. This was not ideal, largely because they had been seen out there arguing. And this deeply galled her.

Being in National City was already uncomfortable for her, and she figured it was the same way for Ollie. This was not a city with blind spots, with corners and shadows made for a ninja to live in. No, this was a city where everyone had a presentation or a gimmick. Sunshine, bikinis, living on the beach with a cocktail. The whole thing gave off the aura that you needed to be something beyond who you were authentically. But the Songbird of Starling was beginning to realize if you knew what you were looking for, if you knew how to look behind the glitz and glamour, it was easy to tell who had substance and who was just playing.

Alex, no matter how annoyed she might be with her at the moment, had substance. She needed to just have more imagination, but she figured that might be difficult for someone whose entire power set seemed to be based around her own willpower. And Laurel could work with someone that had substance. All that was really needed was to do some work on making sure that the Green Lantern could get used to cooperating with people. Because Lena Luthor couldn’t just be snatched up with a power ring, after all.

To get her, the Queen of the Fist knew the job required a bit more….. finesse.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen wanted to throw someone through a wall. But he knew he couldn’t. For one thing, this wasn’t his city. He didn’t really know him anyone to do him favors here, and throwing some asshole through a wall in the service of running down a crime would not be perceived as well as it might be in Starling City.

It was strange to realize that people tended to think that if the Green Arrow got pissed enough to throw someone through a wall, there would be more people than not who wondered what the person who got thrown through a wall had done to deserve it. This level of popularity was…. strange to feel. But, at least back home, he could do some good with it. If people believed you were not someone to be fucked with, they tended to get to the point rather quickly. And when you needed to run down a case, getting to the point was necessary.

But here in National City, far away from home, he didn’t have that crutch. Here he was just someone else playing a role, and that meant he had to be really careful about what he did and how he did it. For one thing, he had to remain in control in a way he didn’t have to back home. People knew what he and Laurel were about in Starling City, and that meant people also tended to be very careful about what they said and did around the both of them. But here? That was not the case.

Here, and this made him smile to realize it, people had no idea how capable he was. Kara knew, of course, and he was hoping Alex would have some idea after he was done here. But by and large, to the everyday citizen of National City? They had no clue. And truthfully, he didn’t need them to. He didn’t work here, so it wasn’t like he had to worry about public perception. But when he thought about the difference between how the public saw him and what he really was, Eve Teschmacher was going to be the best example he could think of.

Because right now, as his hood remained down and his eyes studied the room, it did seem like Eve Teschmacher did not precisely appreciate the amount of trouble she was in. Because if she had, she would not be as calm as she was right now.

This was an old Valenzuela County Sheriff’s building here, a place Alex Danvers had made into her own semi-official stationhouse. And despite the age of the old girl, one thing was quite obvious: Crime was all that was worried about here. Sure, it wasn’t quite so blatant as it would be downtown. But this was still an interrogation room, and Eve Teschmacher was still a perp.

If he had to figure it, because guessing was an insult to what good criminal and psychological profiling actually was, Eve Teschmacher had probably never been in a place like this before. Her knowledge of a working police station was just what she had seen on TV. And she damned sure had no idea that the Green Lantern had a file on her. But Oliver knew. More than that, he knew what was in it.

It hadn’t been easy to get the file. After all, Alex Danvers carried as a weapon a ring that worked on the willpower of the bearer. And she was PLENTY willful, almost to the point of cartoonish stubbornness.

But, after she had been death-glared by both the Emerald Archer and the Martian Manhunter who had both looked at her like the disappointed fathers they both were, she had reached into a desk drawer and handed over a file. And as he read it, a low whistle came from his mouth without him even needing to think about doing it. Because this….. this was bad.

He didn’t 100% get the whole “Space Cops investigating crimes against the entire solar system bit”, but this was easy to understand.  Time to make sure Eve Teschmacher understood it too.

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Walking into the interrogation room, deliberately making himself as big and male and intimidating as he could think of being, the Green Arrow sat down carefully with his compound yumi and yazutsu still on his back. He knew Laurel was behind the glass, with Alex, J’onn, and Kara.

Kara had never seen him run an interrogation, and weird as it was to say, Alex was learning. There were non-traditional tactics he used, things that weren’t taught at Quantico, but that was not why Laurel was working with Alex. No, that was because Laurel wanted Alex to begin to be a bit more flexible. And watching a vigilante do an interrogation was a fine place to start.

“Ms. Teschmacher, I am sorry for the strangeness of your night. And I am specifically sorry for having to hit you with that sleeping agent earlier tonight. But, as I am sure you can understand, we had a lot of questions to ask you. And those questions could not be asked if you were egregiously aggressive on the way over here” the Green Arrow says, his voice deliberately more polite and less gravelly than he might have run things normally. Just by how she looked in here, he was figuring she knew how everything about this was going to go. And if he sounded like a professional, that might put her guard down and get her nervous. He wanted her on the back foot, unsure of what was happening. Not scared, though. Scared would make Eve Teschmacher shut down. And he really didn’t want that.

“Questions? What questions do you have for me?” Eve Teschmacher said, and the Green Arrow could see the play. And it was, in a word, pathetic. How cheap was this? Didn’t she have another move than relying on her sex appeal? He wasn’t about to flash the jade-colored wedding ring he kept in a sealed pouch around his neck, but he hoped it was obvious that he was spoken for. No, this wasn’t going to work. So, as he studied her carefully, it was time to dig the knife in.

“Ms. Teschmacher, I would like you to look where you are. You are in an antiseptic and claustrophobic anteroom in a Valenzuela County Sheriff’s Office, brought here by three vigilantes myself included. All that is here is a table, three chairs, and cold brick walls.  This is not the hundred-year-old steakhouse you were at earlier, and I am not a man trying to get into your pants by buying you a martini from across the room. You are not here because we are interested in your company, or getting to know you.  You are here because one of these vigilantes who took you to this office, the Green Lantern, is very interested in making sure that you stand trial for the crimes you have committed. I am your only hope that you end up not heading on a flight to a planet you’ve never seen to serve a sentence of which I cannot guarantee its length, or its severity. And all you have to do to avoid that outcome is to just tell me the truth. That’s all I need. That’s all the Green Lantern needs.” the Green Arrow says, deliberately allowing his voice to drop into a cold and focused register that he knew sent ice up the back of anyone who heard it.

“Crimes? What crimes have I committed? I’m just a personal assistant. That’s all.” Eve Teschmacher said, still trying to play the game even after she’s been checkmated. God, he liked breaking liars.

“Ms. Teschmacher, I have read the file of what you are accused of doing. You, and a few co-conspirators possibly, have trafficked in contraband alcohol not allowed to be sold on Earth because of its highly addictive properties and the fact that it is of a proof level above and beyond what is safe for anyone to consume. Furthermore, you used an image inducer to convince a bartender that he was in violation of his National City liquor license in order to convince him to serve said illegal spirits in his establishment. He has already sworn out an affidavit to this effect. Those, Ms. Teschmacher, are your crimes. This is what I know, what the Green Lantern knows, and what everyone on the other side of that glass knows. And with this affidavit, she can prove it. Once she has that affidavit, she gets the next step: A warrant to search that lovely Malibu beach home. Now, she might find some more proof of your crimes and your crimes alone. Or, she might find what I think she will: Proof you didn’t act alone. And then, Ms. Teschmacher, what do you think Lena Luthor will say? Or more accurately, what do you think she’ll DO?” Oliver says, and he could feel the unspoken gasp and see the catch of breath of the woman across from him. He knew he had her now.

“I’m not going to go against Ms. Luthor.” Eve said, trying desperately to remain defiant.

“Ms. Teschmacher, do you genuinely believe that I am here to make sure you confess your crimes to the Green Lantern? No, I am here for the people of Starling City. People like Li Huan, a coffee cart owner in the train station Samantha Arias closed down for a whole day while she tried to convince Ted Kord to sign paperwork for a merger that would benefit L-Corp and not him. Li Huan lost two days of business, and it was only due to the anonymous donation of a benefactor that he was able to keep his coffee stand open. Li Huan demands satisfaction, and the knowledge that everyone who had any part in that kidnapping pays for what they did. And that is why I’m here. Because, Ms. Teschmacher, I don’t believe Samantha Arias acted independently. I believe she was implicitly bankrolled by someone. What’s more, I believe that it’s the same woman who took a graduate of Yale University’s Nuclear Physics program and made her a personal assistant. I believe it’s the same person who’s spending more time pursuing a vendetta against Supergirl than helping her city. And I believe you want me to prove I’m wrong” the Jade Samurai said, confidence in his voice.

“Fine. She has a mansion in Beverly Hills. You’ll find her there.”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Later, at a mansion in Beverly Hills……..

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance studied everything in every field that was important to her doing what she needed to do to protect innocent people. Being the hero she wanted to be, that her city and the world demanded she be, meant she needed to have a lot of skills she could never have imagined needing when she left Lady Shiva and Sensei Ricardo Diaz’s monastery in what was left of the jungles of Indonesia. (Since she and Ollie hadn’t gone on a honeymoon, they had convinced everyone to donate to charities trying to restore the Indonesian ecosystem. Supergirl was helping with that how she could, too.)

She was, of course, always going to be a martial artist. Knowing what to do with her fists, knees, elbows, and shins was such a part of her DNA that she could not imagine being without it. But being a criminologist, trained crime scene technician, detective, and professional profiler? That mattered too.

She did not want to imagine looking one of the people who worked at King Street Station in the eye and telling them she couldn’t help them because she didn’t know how to. These were people L-Corp had fucked, deep and hard, and thought they could get away with not having to answer for it.

But beating up a roster full of security guards wouldn’t get them those answers, or the satisfaction everyone harmed by the events of what had happened at King Street Station required. No, this had to be done non-violently for as long as possible. It is why Laurel had run Ms. Teschmacher’s prints to discover that she had a degree in Nuclear Physics from Yale, but was still working as a personal assistant rather than in a lab commensurate with that degree. It had then cascaded to running a cold profile on her and figuring she needed to be talked to not by a warm motherly figure, but by someone who exercised control and exuded masculine intensity. And it had led to where she was now, and who she was with.

After seeing Alex Danvers work, and seeing the phenomenal records she kept, the Black Canary had felt a lot of disappointment with the Green Lantern fade away. For one thing, she did not think that anyone could have done a better job being there for the alien population of National City than Alex could have.

Seeing the interview tapes of her work with that one bartender who had wept on her shoulder about being forced to sell illegal spirits or lose the liquor license, and thus her bar, had made her realize that she had read the situation wrong. It was not that Alex Danvers lacked imagination.

It was that she struggled to cooperate with people. And she was beginning to think she knew why that was the case. When she had seen the interview tapes, she had noticed that everyone else before the Green Lantern had arrived had thrown some really nasty slurs around about the alien population of National City. These were not the people you shared intel with.

Add to that the well-earned reputation of the FBI for not always taking the concerns of local law enforcement seriously, and you ended up with someone with well-understood reasons for why they simply did what they wanted and forced others to follow along. But that lack of a cooperative instinct would need to change, and Laurel could see that Alex was seeing that.

As Alex had said on the way over here, “The previous Green Lantern was blessed with great will, yes, but he also seemed to take pleasure in telling everyone in this sector what to do and how to do it. Including, I am sad to say, many members of the Valenzuela County Sheriff’s Office and the National City Police Department. I don’t want to be like him, so I’m going to start making an effort to be less unhelpful in my dealings with those agencies while still protecting aliens from being discriminated against.”

And as to why she was here, on the grounds of this ornate mansion, those were also because of the skills her and Ollie’s new life had required they both acquire. Eve Teschmacher had told Ollie she knew the home existed, but did not know its address. From everything she had seen, that tracked.

Lena Luthor did not seem like the sort who wanted her employees to know where she lived. Whether or not that was down to the idea that Lena Luthor was emotionally closed-off, or she just didn’t want anyone else finding whatever secrets she might have, was an open question.

But just because Eve Teschmacher didn’t know where it was did not mean it couldn’t be found. It might take a little bit more work, but that was nothing anyone had a problem with. For one thing, Lena Luthor had one thing in common with her brother: Vanity. So, rather than hide, she acted like a titan with outsized delusions of grandeur. And sure, Supergirl hadn’t asked for their help like Barry and Patty had just over the river in Central City.

But the Songbird of Starling did not mind taking down an arrogant Hollywood billionaire, and if it happened that it made Lena Luthor straighten up and fly right around a Girl of Steel who now openly had friends well wouldn’t that be nice?

So, when she had found a puff piece on Lena Luthor’s award-winning Babylonian-style hanging gardens in the National City Times’s archives, Laurel had scanned the pictures in the article and grabbed hold of a Mercury Labs satellite to find where the pictures had been taken. And then they had come here. Herself and Ollie on their motorcycles, and Alex by of all things riding a goddamned horse from the Valenzuela County’s mounted unit.

Sure, Kara and Alex had grown up riding ponies after the death of their father. And Alex had openly said she had taken on this Old West ideal as a direct way to honor her father’s memory, so it made sense that she had kept up with her lessons until she could actually be a proper horse-riding sheriff if it came to it.

But as Alex had sent the horse away, relying on Supergirl to pick up the horse a fair distance down the road and return it to her office, Laurel knew this was another chance to teach the value of teamwork and cooperation.

And it was going to happen while the Green Lantern watched, having been given direct instructions to not use her power ring in any capacity. That thing emitted a tremendous light when it was used, and the last thing anyone here needed was for their work to be smothered by a big-ass lantern. And to be honest, Laurel didn’t really want Supergirl around for this either.

Not because she didn’t think the Maiden of Might was incapable of taking care of herself with her fists, but because there was a really high chance Lena Luthor was the kind of asshole who had found kryptonite and had figured out how to synthesize it into bullets or whatever other weapons might be needed.

God, she was really not starting to like this Lena Luthor woman. And now, as she and Oliver prepared to infiltrate her home, the Queen of the Fist really wanted to have an in-person talk with her.

(Alex Danvers’s POV)

Being an FBI agent, and then a member of the Green Lantern Corps, Alex Danvers had believed she understood what violence looked like. But usually she was cleaning it up, not seeing it happen in real time. So watching the Black Canary and Green Arrow, moving in shadows and darkness like they were built for them, take out Lena Luthor’s personally hired security like they were overmatched rent-a-cops was impressive. And it also showed her something she hadn’t been willing to admit to herself: Cooperation was a good thing.

She had her sister, sure, but she also had J’onn and Winn and James. When this was done, she’d ask them all for help. It didn’t make sense to do what she was doing, to do what the Green Lantern Corps was asking her to do, all on her own. Guy Gardner had done that, and he had become such a prick that no one in this town wanted to work with anyone carrying a Lantern ring. That couldn’t be how she did this.

She’d help these heroes solve their mystery, and then start to do what she could to make sure her city was better protected than it had been.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

As he pulled out his lockpicking kit, feeling the Black Canary standing over his shoulder with her hands on her hips ready to warble the door open if the works didn’t get the job done and the Green Lantern using a muted light from her ring to help him to see better, Oliver Queen had to fight hard to hold off a smile. Having her here with him felt great, and this really did feel like a couples vacation. But now really wasn’t the time for smiling. He had to get inside a building that he was pretty sure had been purpose-built to withstand a charge from an angry Kryptonian, so the security here was going to be robust. At least, it should have been.

This made more and more sense the more time was here, but it seemed like people were more worried about the strength of Supergirl than they were about her skill. And because that appeared to be what governed every decision people made in this town, they never stopped to think about who else might decide to pick apart their schemes.

He didn’t mean to say this to be cruel, because he loved Kara in the same way he loved Thea. But no one looked at Supergirl and saw her the same way they saw the Black Canary. She wasn’t a master detective who could read a crime scene, investigate forensics and do ballistics analysis in the field, or make a detailed psychological profile of the criminal she was chasing.

Instead, Kara was a tank in a size-4 dress. And for a lot of things, that tended to be enough. Hitting someone with the force of a bunker bomb, stopping their car, or tanking bullets tended to work against just about anyone. But, as was becoming obvious, Lena Luthor was not just anyone.

Either, she had implicitly and parenthetically sanctioned Samantha Arias’s decision to kidnap Ted Kord to try and force a merger. Or, she had not known but ran such a loose ship that people felt like they could commit federal crimes without it being disapproved of. This was not a person you could beat just by punching them, and Lena knew it. More to the point, Lena knew that Kara knew it.

That, honestly, was part of why Oliver was here. Supergirl had to keep a reputation above reproach, and that meant no one ever thought of her as going above and beyond the line. And that was important.

Because Kara chose to, endlessly, do good. And there was nothing that meant more to both him, and Laurel, than making sure she remained the paragon of hope that she needed to be. And to do that, to be what she needed to be, there needed to be people in her orbit who could do all the things Kara wasn’t ruthless enough to do.

So he was here, picking the locks of a private citizen’s home to answer a few questions he had. Because the people of Starling City, people who worked in the shadow of a train station that was still having cleanup done on it after what Samantha Arias had done there, deserved to know who had approved of what had been done to them. His home had been defiled by people from National City, whose greed and desire for more and more power and money seemed to have made them unaware of the possibility that there might be people out there who would investigate those who committed those crimes and seek to make them pay for it. And he and Laurel were those people.

He could remember feeling powerless, helpless, when he was on Yeon-Og. Greed was a scourge, a dangerous thing, that could destroy you if you let it. And it was clear that it had destroyed Lena Luthor’s moral fiber, and he and Laurel were going to make sure she saw that as she paid recompense to the people that greed had harmed.

But more than that, he wanted to know what precisely Talia Al-Ghul was getting out of the relationship with Lena Luthor. He knew what Lena was getting out of it, because it was the same thing she was looking to get out of that possible merger with L-Corp: Money. Lena Luthor needed cash, and market share, so that made sense for her. But what precisely did Talia need from Lena? Whatever it was, it would not be in plain sight.

Talia and her father had hidden using aliases so well developed even Bruce Wayne had not discovered them, until such a time as they wanted to be revealed. One of Talia’s agents, his former friend Tatsu Yamashiro, had killed seven men with a blade whose style tracked all the way back to the Islamic Golden Age. And Talia had drawn them here using the name of a famous Muslim woman who was well-known for establishing major universities. In short, the Heir to the Demon was not dumb enough to leave her secrets out where they would be easily found. But that was no matter.

Because there was nothing Talia could do, no gambit she could use or game she could play, that would end up with her getting what she wanted. From the moment this had all begun, Talia had wanted to be the woman who bore the future king of the League of Assassins and he was figuring that had not changed. But after being denied time and time again, the Emerald Archer was beginning to think that his former teacher from another lifetime was interested in pushing the issue a bit.

Did he think Lena would have security in here picked from the best of the best of Talia Al-Ghul’s personal retinue? It would not surprise him, really, but it also kept bugging him. What was Lena Luthor providing to Talia Al-Ghul?

There was a secret, here, but he couldn’t find it. That didn’t mean it couldn’t be found. But it was looking more and more like the Jade Samurai needed his Queen of the Fist to help him find it.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance could feel the suspicion radiating off of her husband, and she knew what he was seeing even if he was not yet able to find the words to voice it. And to be honest, she knew he was going to ask for her help as soon as he could. But she didn’t want to make him. Because, and this she was happy about, she knew what he was thinking before he even had to say a word. Something about this was something he couldn’t see. And if he couldn’t see it, he was hoping she could.

This was the strength she had always seen in him, even before he put on the hood and the yumi. Her Ollie, her true love, always kept his head clear. Sure, to the outside world, he was the dreaded Green Arrow. (Alex had joked, not unkindly but not untruthfully either, that it was possible a yellow lantern ring might come his way at some point. She then explained that the Yellow Lantern Corps gained their powers from harnessing fear, and the joke made sense.)

But she knew that dread, and the fear he could harness as easily as some might draw breath, would never serve injustice. He could never, would never, make himself into the kind of person who treated the innocent and the powerless like prey. No, for what he wanted to be, the Green Arrow would be the man who created nightmares in the rich and powerful. And that meant one thing above all other things: He had to know every answer to every question.

It might seem like an impossible standard to live up to, but when you thought about it, it actually made sense. If he didn’t know about something, and someone innocent was harmed in any way, he would be held responsible. Not legally, of course. But morally? In the ways that might make it harder for him to sleep at night? Absolutely.

And Laurel shared the same concern. Theirs was a city of mysteries, of people who always wanted to run a play and harm innocent people in the process. To not be capable of solving those mysteries would mean letting innocents be harmed because you lacked the cunning and the wits to stop it from happening. And that simply could not be.

In that spirit, then, they routinely read each other in on their cases when they were stumped. And the Black Canary could tell the Green Arrow was stumped.

To be honest, she could see why. It didn’t make any kind of sense that Lena Luthor was working with Talia Al-Ghul, and Lena was the only one getting anything out of it. She didn’t know a ton about how the Al-Ghul’s specifically tended to operate, but she knew the minds of criminals and businesspeople pretty damned well by now.

And the one thing that she had learned about all of them was that nothing, ever, was for free. So what did Talia want Lena Luthor to do for her?

Increased influence was out, because being old money like the Al-Ghul’s appeared to be came with it the very real fact that you could have sheikhs of very oil-rich countries and rainmakers of all types on speed dial should you need them. No, this had to be something scientific. Something only Lena Luthor could do. This, of course, meant that it had to be something only Talia Al-Ghul would want or even conceive of.

That left weapons or people. Weapons were out, because the League treated modernity as a tool to be wielded when it was appropriate and not as a thing to be embraced completely. Plus, only an idiot would take the kind of weapons Lena Luthor could make into a city with a hard-and-fast decades-old prohibition on using firearms of any kind. It would unite the city’s entire criminal element.

And considering she doubted Talia and Ra’s were dumber than she had seen with her own two eyes, that left one thing: People.

Or, the Songbird of Starling saw with a wince, not people. Assassins was more of an accurate explanation. Talia, and to a lesser extent Ra’s, needed a fresh supply of trained killers who would be willing to murder for contract. That meant not just bodies, but skilled professionals. But Lena Luthor, from what she knew of her, was a lot of things but a human trafficker was not one of them. No, there was something else. Something more dark, and more sinister, than even Laurel wanted to imagine existing.

And it was something that would be here. Not at L-Corp, where some janitor somewhere might stumble on it. No, whatever Talia had asked Lena to do, it would be on the premises. That was why no one was ever invited to Lena Luthor’s house, except people Lena Luthor could control. People who, amongst other things, would not go where she told them not to go.

But as she kept thinking, Laurel began to realize there was someone else here. Not just Ollie. There was someone who was studying them, watching them move and think as a unit to learn how to do her job better. The Green Lantern was here, and it was time for an in-the-field consult on someone Alex Danvers knew very well.

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“Green Lantern, does that ring enable you to speak in any languages other than English?” the Black Canary asked, careful hope in her voice. This was a conversation that needed to be full, but also needed to not be understood by eavesdroppers.

“I was an FBI profiler for a few years, Black Canary. I speak Spanish, French, Chinese, and Japanese without the aid of my ring. With my ring, I can speak any language you might desire” the Green Lantern said, confidence in her voice.

(Author’s note: This conversation took place in Mandarin.)

“Tell me everything you know about Lena Luthor. Leave nothing out” the Black Canary said, willing herself to see the angles she and Ollie both could be missing.

“For one thing, she’s a massive control freak. When I came back home to National City and started working with the Green Lantern Corps, a few L-Corp employees had gotten themselves mixed up in things they should not have. And whenever I came to L-Corp and spoke to their head of security, I left with the sense that no one in that office building or that company did anything without Lena Luthor’s direct explicit permission. Which is why it struck me as so odd that she has maintained Samantha Arias worked alone” the Green Lantern said.

“Either she’s lying, or she’s being forced to pretend like it happened just that way” the Black Canary stated, and at this the Black Canary and the Green Lantern saw it. But the Green Arrow was the one who said it.

“She has to say that. If it’s implied she knew what was happening, she would lose her company in a lawsuit and whatever else she’s doing here would be found out in discovery. Now we just have to find out what it is” the Green Arrow said, and just then, the Black Canary saw it. Lena Luthor was making weapons for Talia Al-Ghul. But not guns, or anything overly modern, because that would draw attention from the Green Lantern, or the FBI. No, this had to be simple and something that held up to scrutiny.

But it also needed to be easily maintained, in a way that wouldn’t seem too out-of-bounds. Something like….. Lena Luthor had made an injectable super-soldier serum. God damn. She had to tell Ollie. 

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

It was a strange thing to say, considering the man sat at the throne of an ancient order of assassins, but Oliver Queen had always understood Ra’s Al-Ghul had a code. There were always lines he would never willingly cross. And considering that Ra’s was a professional killer, those lines were perhaps farther along the path of morality than most might be comfortable with but they were still there. Chief amongst those lines had always been the idea that he would never recruit someone who was mentally unstable to the League of Assassins.

That had always struck him as a bit strange, considering his agents had found a madman like Malcolm and a grieving father like Maseo in the last timeline. But he supposed that Ra’s didn’t see the hypocrisy, or believed their grief had crystallized their choice instead of motivated it. Either way, that was the man’s line. And Talia Al-Ghul was trifling with it.

He figured Ra’s had been fine with his daughter’s elite guard being all-female. Less chance for any nasty palace intrigue or distractions from making sure she could bear the next Demon’s Head that way. But it very much seemed to him like that kindness would end if Talia was found to have violated such an iron-clad rule, even if it happened to be in service of the labyrinthine plot Ra’s was running at the moment.

A small part of him, he could admit with a wince, looked forward to the idea of Ra’s finding out what Talia was doing and the punishment that would come with it. But that was vengeance talking, pure unfiltered hatred, and he did not want to listen to it. No, as strange as it might sound, it would be an injustice to drop a dime on Talia Al-Ghul and have her more than likely murdered in her sleep by her father. And, to be honest, it would more than likely not work. Since he could not guarantee that Ra’s would believe it, there was no reason to try it. Committing himself to such an aggressive plan of action was not tactically sound, or pragmatic. It was a return to the bad old days of being the Green Arrow.

It was letting anger and guilt guide his actions, instead of thinking logically and seeing the whole board. And Laurel did not marry that man, did not swear her life to that man, and was not partnered with that man. No, he knew what he had to do.

He had sworn himself to a cause, an ideal of moral justice, and it was again time to keep up with that responsibility. Besides that, if he and Laurel were going to clean this up, it needed to be handled in a way that limited the amount of suffering. And that meant one thing: They had to find Lena Luthor.

From the moment he and Laurel had arrived in National City, Oliver had built a casefile on Lena Luthor. Small things at first, things you’d need to get a broader sense of who a person was. It was one of the cornerstones of good investigative procedure. Know who the person you’re going after is before you decide to start trying to make a case. And the more he studied Lena Luthor, the more he began to understand what she really was about.

The Green Lantern had helped with this, honestly. Everything Lena Luthor did, every move she made, was about controlling the world as much as she possibly could. But her executive assistant was taking private meetings at a steakhouse, and her CFO had engaged in a kidnapping plot. She was losing control of her trusted employees. Talia had gotten on the board, and somehow run a blackmail plot to get Lena to use L-Corp technology to do something for her. Lena was losing control of her company. And that left Lena with no one else to go to, no other moves to make, then return to her family. And that, he was guessing, was where Supergirl came in.

The Luthors, as a family, hated Kryptonians. Lex’s vendetta against Superman was well-known, and honestly the Emerald Archer knew he would be on the first flight to Metropolis if the Man of Steel ever needed him or some Starling City-related business took him there. They blamed Clark for every bad thing that had ever happened to Lex, so it did not seem ridiculous to imagine Lena would do the same thing with Kara. In interviews, and in public statements, her venom against the Maiden of Might was noticeable.

But as he read Laurel’s theories on what she thought Lena Luthor was doing, he began to realize where he had seen this before. Precisely this, as a point of fact. And he could feel the red mist descending as he was putting it together.

Somehow, Lena Luthor had found Mirakuru. Probably looking for any trick she could find to make an army of people capable of defeating Supergirl, because Lena hated the Girl of Steel just that much. And then, he was guessing, she figured out what else it could actually do. And when Talia had come to Lena Luthor, bam….she had the perfect thing.

If he had to guess, and he was going to interrogate Lena to make sure he could find out, she had probably reverse-engineered it to get rid of all of the impurities. But it would still be Mirakuru, and it was still a problem. It was a problem Oliver hated seeing, and he was going to deal with it.

But first, he wanted to find the Mirakuru stash here and destroy it. And for that, once again, he found himself relying on the Green Lantern. Sure, she had come to question Lena Luthor. But he was thinking she had figured the questioning of a corporate CEO was as far as this was going to go. But, as was often the case, the thing you thought you were solving ended up having a lot more layers than you might have initially believed. And honestly, for what they were getting ready to have to do, having someone who could do what Oliver was figuring the Green Lantern could do was incredibly useful.

“It’d have to be a lab working with steroids and steroidal properties, so lots of blood centrifuges and a CDC-quality hematology setup with a plasma filtration unit. Those take power” the Green Lantern theorizes, which draws a smile from Oliver and Laurel as they can now see how she can use her skills as a bio-chemist along with what her ring could do. And once she said it, he smiled because he had a working app on his gauntlet that could find precisely what the Green Lantern said he needed to be looking for. But he didn’t want to burn a flechette on it, especially since he didn’t have any. And getting Laurel to cry the wall down would make noise, and that wouldn’t work.

So he started walking down the hallway, tapping on the walls and looking for something hollow while his gauntlet looked for excessive power readings. In all of his understanding of where and how people hid things, false walls were usually the best damned choice. Finally he found it. So, the Green Lantern used her ring to make a noiseless circular saw and they saw it. A full lab, with vials of a clear liquid that he knew damned well was Mirakuru.

Pocketing a vial and slipping it into a pouch in his suit, the Jade Samurai said one thing to the Green Lantern:

“Can you burn this all without making a sound?”

(Alex Danvers’s POV)

Alex Danvers was very happy to have acquired her ring, and become a member of the Green Lantern Corps. But ever since the Green Arrow and Black Canary had shown up, and they had partnered with her, it had been like taking a masters-level class in what being an actual detective looked like. She wanted to learn more, to be better, because her city and the aliens and humans who called it home needed a hero. And she was beginning to get the sense that it needed someone who was a little bit more like the heroes in front of her.

They were so mentally agile, so quick to think of things behind what was in front of them, that it was inspiring. And honestly, if she could blend her skills as a profiler with the detective skills they had, this would be what National City needed. It was that profiling ability, though, that made her realize she knew who was under the hood and in the skintight black leather.

But she also knew she didn’t particularly care. They had come to her city, helped her figure out who she needed to be, and unraveled a conspiracy that included several felonies. And they had done it all in a few hours. Why would she care about their names? If she knew them, if she thought of them as people, they couldn’t be what National City needed them to be. Maybe they had a family, friends, people to care about them, real lives. Then they couldn't be what Alex needed them to be, what their city and this one needed him to be. Who the Green Arrow & Black Canary were under the hood wasn't important. Could she have even conceive of what it was like to be them? The decisions they would have had to live with? Day in, day out? That was a burden she could not imagine carrying, and they did it with skill and grace.

But with that said, God had they left her a mess. The whole damned thing would need to be cleaned up, and Alex knew she was the one who had to do it. But that was a conversation for later, with J’onn, Kara, Winn, and James. Right now, she was seeing this lab and realizing what it was: This thing was producing high-level designer steroids. The Green Arrow, for his part, had never looked quite so angry. Not disappointed, like he had when she had nearly blown his case to kingdom come. But white-hot, teeth-gnashing, beat everyone within 100 feet of this into a coma angry. And the Black Canary, who seemed to be the nicest and warmest person she had ever met, was just as furious.

Whatever this was, and whatever Lena Luthor role had to play in it, one thing was obvious to the Green Lantern: She needed to hang around. Because if this got ugly, and it was looking like it could, an actual law enforcement agent might be needed.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance had trained herself to understand the subtle ways that people expressed their anger. For some people, it was the whitening of skin and the slow narrowing of eyes. For others, it was how they squeezed something or how their voice lowered in both tone and depth. It was useful training, largely, because if you knew someone was angry when you asked them a question you could either lean on them some more or push off of that depending on the rest of what your profile looked like.

But she did not have to profile her husband. Not even a little bit. She knew Oliver was angry, and she knew why. Ever since he had told her about the previous timeline, there had only ever been one thing to provoke absolute venomous rage in him. And that one thing was Mirakuru.

“Mirakuru turned Slade, a man I considered a brother, into a murderous psychopath. It nearly destroyed my city, cost my mother her life, and cost me a large chunk of my family’s legacy. I pray it never exists in this timeline” Oliver had said, icy fury in his voice that she had only ever heard about the Merlyns.

And to see that it was here, having been found from somewhere and re-purposed by Lena Luthor for Talia Al-Ghul’s usage, filled him and her with the kind of rage she didn’t think she had words for.

She knew why he was angry. Seeing his greatest physical challenge now be armed with the thing that had destroyed so much of his life in the last timeline was something that would make anyone filled with rage.

But she was mad about it too, and it had nothing to do with memories from an old timeline. Laurel could see what Talia was going to use it to do, and who she was going to use it on. Elite members of covert intelligence units, specifically the female ones, were going to be snatched up by Talia Al-Ghul’s agents, dosed with an incredibly powerful steroid that she just knew had some mind-control agent in it, and then indoctrinated in all the ways of the League of Assassins. This was worse than what she had done with Tatsu Yamashiro, another ally of Oliver Queen’s from the old timeline, because at least Tatsu had made the decision. She had made the choice to use her skills in the service of evil.

Whether or not that choice was completely informed, or if it was in some way honed by grief, did not matter. The person who made it was sober, of relatively sound mind, and aware of what they were being asked to do. But this? There was no way anyone could consent into being made an assassin when they were under the control of this drug.

And then there was the next thing, which made the Black Canary’s skin crawl. If her theories were right, Lena Luthor had just given Talia Al-Ghul the one thing she needed to do the one thing Ra’s Al-Ghul had apparently always wanted to do: create a League of Assassins that could live on forever. That had been the idea behind the whole “Make Oliver Queen the father of the future Demon’s Head” plot. The League would live on after Ra’s death, and there would be a new Ra’s.

But if there could be more than one future king, staggered for time, there could always be a new king trained in the appropriate ways of the League. And the League would never die. It would live, past the heroes who were sworn to stop it.

Laurel had no doubt at all that wherever the League headquarters might be, there was a lab with professionally trained scientists constantly working on improving the Mirakuru serums that had been found here. There was no chance, no story you could tell her that she would believe, that this lab in Lena Luthor’s private house held all the Mirakuru Lena had made for Talia Al-Ghul. There was just no way.

Which meant there was a lot more work here to be done before the League of Assassins could be removed from her life. But that, and the calculations on how to get that all done, could come later. Because, as she turned the corner, she saw Lena Luthor.

Lena was in the situation she was in, objectively, because her greed and desire for success had blinded her to what and who Talia Al-Ghul actually was. But that was not abnormal to see. Back home, and she was now very interested in getting back home, Laurel knew there were quite a few rich assholes who thought only about how big their bank balances were and didn’t seem to much care about what their financial decisions did to the people of her city. Lena Luthor seemed to be the type who did things just the same way. And this was a thing the Songbird of Starling was accustomed to dealing with.

But this wasn’t her home. In a lot of ways she was fine with that. It felt strange for her to say, but she missed the rain and the dampness in the air. She missed the shadows, too, and the cobblestones on the streets. But it was the little things too. She missed smelling Szechuan peppercorns in the air around Chinatown, or picking up noodles from a local cart near Key Arena and asking the man selling food about their family. She missed home.

But she was going to draw on her memories of home, of all the people who thought that just because they had a degree and a big fancy title that made them better than anyone else, to get this case closed out. Because she knew how people talked about her.

Not Dinah Laurel Lance, world-class kickboxing coach and wife. No, that’s not who she was thinking of. Laurel knew how they talked about her.

 It was a source of pride, honestly, that hearing what she did under the suit affected so many bad people as acutely as it did. Sure, she wasn’t the terrifying physical force the Green Arrow was. But that was ok. She relied on something just as crippling to the criminal underworld of Starling City: Her intelligence, charm, and skill as a fighter.

As a point of fact, she had heard the gossip and ghost stories told about her in some of the criminal bars in the Glades while she was on patrol. Whether it was in terrified Japanese at a high-end whiskey bar, or overly cocky machismo-influenced Mandarin at a noodle house, everyone kept saying the same thing.

“The Black Canary spoke to me like I was a child, after she kicked me so hard in the stomach I nearly threw up my dinner and split my lip all in what felt like a blink. I’ve never been hit that hard that fast in my life”

“I thought I had all the angles for the numbers racket handled. And then in walks the Black Canary, sauntering in all cool, and telling me she burned the books of my debts. And she told me in perfect Mandarin, like she grew up in my grandparent’s village.”

“The most annoying part is that you can’t beat the Black Canary. She’s better than anyone in this town, or in the world, with her hands. So trying to brawl with her won’t work. The people you might lean on to get intel on where she hangs out end up liking her more than they like you, so an ambush is out. And she’s incredibly skilled with languages, knows the entire city like the back of her hand, and knows how to get you to confess to her with the smallest bit of information. And every couple of weeks, we get young guys fresh off the boats from Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Incheon thinking they want to become a big-time gangster only for the Black Canary to beat their asses in a second. It makes you tired of the criminal life. It really does.”

 That level of respect, mixed with a healthy dose of intimidation, was city-dependent though. It did not yet extend past the city limits.

And since it didn’t, the Queen of the Fist could see Lena Luthor had no particular respect for what was happening. But that was fine. Laurel had just the thing for that.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen would not, as a general act, be willing to be sent loose after someone because he had been asked to do it. But when it was Laurel, he knew why she was doing it. And he could admit he was looking forward to it.

Because, unless you knew her, you’d never particularly see the Black Canary as the sort of person who would break your well-constructed set of lies into so many tiny pieces. But for what this needed? What Lena could understand and respect, of course, was someone who radiated the very real sense of being a demon summoned from shadow and darkness to make sure you paid penance for your sins. He could do that. He could be that person for the people of Starling City.

Because, and he knew this, the reason people tended to see the Green Arrow as the most terrifying nightmare that had ever been was because they had done something so completely objectionable that they needed, deserved, to suddenly see the personification of fear waiting for them.

Even without the Mirakuru thing, which he figured Lena didn’t think he was smart enough to understand, Oliver wanted Lena terrified. For one thing, she had more than likely bankrolled Samantha Arias’s monstrous scheme to engage in a full-on kidnapping of Ted Kord to get more money and power for L-Corp and herself. But more than all of that, he had something else. Sure, it was petty and personal but it was his.

Lena Luthor hated Supergirl. It was obvious, and the hatred was visceral. And if Lena intended to continue on that path, continue to despise what the Maiden of Might was, he supposed there were worse diversions from his mission of protecting the people of Starling City to make sure Lena Luthor understood that you couldn’t, and shouldn’t, try and fuck around with Supergirl.  

It wasn’t blatant, of course. Lena Luthor was not dumb. Everyone had seen enough times where the Girl of Steel had put the hammer down to see what would go on if you provoked Supergirl past reason. But, and this he had to admit he credited Lena for, it was all parenthetical. Implications that Supergirl needed to be “watched carefully”, and that anyone with power like that could be easily tempted to “forget her role in the world”. And once he had heard that, the Emerald Archer had cold-read Lena, using everything from magazine excerpts to clips of interviews on every major and minor internet video platform, and one thing had become clear: Lena Luthor was not Ben Lockwood.

That may have seemed like a strange distinction to draw, but it was not. Lena Luthor did not hate aliens or meta-humans as people. What she hated instead was the idea that National City, Lena’s city in her mind, clearly was regarded as the home of Supergirl. Lena Luthor was a renowned physicist, engineer, and scientist. She had been a member of Forbes’s 30 under 30, a member of the Fortune and Inc. 500, and a well-known titan of industry. But this city was no longer hers.

 And she really hated that her company was bleeding market share like a hemophiliac in a razor-blade factory, while everyone loved Supergirl. That had been why, he was figuring, she had gone to Talia Al-Ghul. Money, if used appropriately, could stop the bleeding. (The fact that it hadn’t stopped the bleeding was something he was going to take great pleasure in letting her know.)

But Lena’s choice to partner with Talia Al-Ghul meant she had endangered innocent people. Not the spies, or covert agents. Oliver was not thinking of them when he said that, because based on what they had done, they were either criminals or very well-intentioned extremists. No, he knew that Talia would have these people get new names and identities and then send them loose to harm any enemies to the League of Assassin’s caliphate-inspired worldview. And that meant blood shed in the streets.

And he could not allow that. Laurel could not allow that. No good person, of character and moral fiber, could allow that.

Talia, and Ra’s, would have to be stopped. But it couldn’t be the courts, or the cops. The former’s justice would not matter, as they would simply choose to move to where there wasn’t an extradition treaty to the U.S. The latter wouldn’t have a chance either, because there wasn’t a law enforcement organization in the United States of America who could reasonably be expected to handle themselves against what the League of Assassin’s could do.  

But maybe, and this was a thought for later, there were people who could. People like a Jade Samurai, a Queen of the Fist, the Fastest Couple Alive, a Girl of Steel, and a Green Lantern. And remembering Alex Danvers gave him an idea.

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“Ms. Luthor. My name is the Green Arrow, and I’m from Starling City. As is the Black Canary. We are here for the people your CFO, Samantha Arias, traumatized. Not just the residents of that city who work to provide for their families, but the people on the train who had to sit there wondering if they would ever return home to their loved ones. And at every turn, I have heard you promised to make my city whole, to help the people whose lives your CFO helped destroy.

And yet, there has been nothing. All that you had for my city, the people your CFO chose to harm like they were nothing more than pieces on a Go board, were empty platitudes. Which leads me to a theory. A simple one, but one that I feel is stronger than just a base theory.

Your CFO, hired by you and working in the office next to you, engaged in a kidnapping plot where she attempted to blackmail a competitor into signing on to a merger that would only benefit you. Forgive me, Ms. Luthor, but I think you knew what Samantha Arias was planning” the Green Arrow said, his eyes cold and his stare deliberate and practiced. Far stronger women than Lena Luthor had crumbled into shards under the weight of that stare, and Lex Luthor’s half-sister would be no different.

“You came all this way to my home, broke in, and took down my security merely to demand satisfaction for the residents of some jumped-up fishing village? Who do you think you are?” Lena Luthor says, resorting to bluster as is a common response to what the Green Arrow does.

“We are people who see injustice and seek to remedy that injustice. For some, that means merely discussing their mistakes and allowing them the chance to make restitution. Up until about the moment we arrived in National City, that would have been where you were. We would have given you a thumb drive with the names of the people your CFO personally harmed, and ensured that you paid them all proper restitution for work lost and suffering delivered.

But that was before we discovered who you really are, Ms. Luthor. Beneath the public perception, beneath the face you show to the world, we know your true face. And the real you is a greedy, vicious, amoral psychopath. You instructed your personal assistant, someone you kept in a job far below her skills, to ensure that all of the bars in National City served contraband alcohol. The company that sold said contraband alcohol, Merlin Spirits, was a company you happened to have a controlling interest in. It did not matter to you that three people are now dead as a result of that scheme, because the alcohol you sold killed them. You got a greater bit of that market share, and wasn’t that always the point?

And now we know that it does not matter to you that you created a designer steroid designed to increase strength and the capacity for violence for the League of Assassins. Do you have any idea, any sense, as to what you have actually unleashed?  You have given a cult of trained professional killers all the skills they would need to do what they dream of doing: eliminating any enemy to their power. And for what? A little bit of extra cash?” The Black Canary said, scorn in her voice.

“So what if I did? You can’t do anything to me. Neither of you can. So sure, I instructed Ms. Teschmacher to ensure Merlin Spirits increased their market share, and instructed Ms. Arias to ensure Ted Kord understood the positive vision for what a Kord Industries and L-Corp merger could be. But if I can get a good lawyer, which I have, all you’ve really got me on is parenthetically insisting I did something. And who even is going to be the one to try my case? Neither one of you are actually cops. You’re jumped-up private detectives” Lena said arrogantly, only for her face to drop as the trap closed around her.

“But I can. Hello, I’m the Green Lantern. And I represent the Green Lantern Corps, an earth-acknowledged law enforcement body. My investigation, with the assistance of the Green Arrow and the Black Canary, was in the murder of those three aliens you cavalierly just admitted to organizing. And considering your personal assistant has just duly sworn out an affidavit to the same effect in front of members of the Valenzuela County Sheriff’s Department, Ms. Luthor, I would say it would be in your best interests to try and figure out what it is you can give the Green Arrow and Black Canary before your trial begins. Because, your trial will not take place on this planet…. And neither will your jail term” the Green Lantern says, Stetson on her head and six-shooters loaded with plastic bullets at the ready. (She had been told by J’onn and Kara that the Green Arrow and Black Canary would look unkindly on her if she took a life, so she didn’t. But the revolvers were still a deterrent.)

But before Lena Luthor could finish her confession, the window behind Lena Luthor exploded and a smoke pellet rolled through forcing the Green Arrow and Black Canary to pull their hoods up and roll. And when the smoke cleared, Talia Al Ghul was standing in the room with members of her elite guard which included Tatsu Yamashiro.

To Be Continued.

Chapter Text

At Lena Luthor’s Beverly Hills mansion…….

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

This was high-level chess, played with the lives of three people directly and many more people indirectly in the offing, but Oliver Queen did not feel nervous. No, for the first time in a long time, he felt comfortable of thinking along with someone who was supposed to be as crafty as Talia Al-Ghul had presented herself as being. Strangely, it was his time on Yeon-Og that had enabled it. Lian Yu had taught him how to survive, and that was a necessary set of skills. But those skills were mainly necessary for his old timeline.

But for this one? He needed cunning, the ability to think and plan on the fly, and above all else a keen understanding of human and criminal psychology. And Yeon-Og had been the first place where he had learned all of those skills. He supposed, right now as he kept his eyes on the room and everyone in it, that Slade and Shado would be very proud of him right now.

He supposed that, if he could put their names down for it without burning the rest of their lives, they would be the first people he credited for making him what he needed to be. But he could not get overly focused on emotion and sentiment. This was a time to be as sharp-minded and clear-eyed as he possibly could, because the wrong step would be fatal.

Not could, but would.

Oliver could see Talia’s right hand, elegantly manicured and smooth, itching towards the curved sword that he knew she carried on her for things such as this. On her back was a composite bow, something he knew was from the Hejazi Arabs in Saudi Arabia. He didn’t have to look to guess that the quiver was filled with arrows fletched the old-fashioned way, and the heads were sharp and barbed.

 And next to her was her personal horsewoman Tatsu. This one hurt to see. But again, sentiment was for later. For right now, he had to catalog this Tatsu in front of him. Not the one who he wished was here. But, instead, the one who actually was.

First, he saw the blade. It was not a curved scimitar like he figured the rest of Talia’s elite guard carried. No, this was a katana. And judging by its construction and the quality of the steel, it was a high-end blade. Furthermore, Oliver knew Tatsu knew how to use it. That was not even a question in his mind.

Secondly, he saw the cold emptiness in Tatsu’s eyes. The Green Arrow had been around killers. In both his old life and this one, he had seen them.

Tatsu looked to him like a killer now, and that concerned him.

Because, in his experience, it was a lot harder to talk down someone who had killed and found they were good at it. Someone who had not yet killed? They could be reasoned with, drug out of that life, and set on a better path.

But as he kept looking at her eyes, Oliver flicked a button and his body camera silently took pictures. He had seen something in her eyes, a glassy off-yellow tinge, that he remembered vaguely.

As Oliver kept looking around, seeing that same smirk on Talia’s face that he had always seen, his eyes went to the least physically capable person in this room. Lena Luthor looked terrified. He figured a large part of that was down to the fact that she was currently surrounded by a heavily armed space sheriff carrying six-shooters, a room full of highly trained assassins, and two world-class martial artists. To not be scared of that would not be brave. It would be suicidally foolhardy.

But more than that, they had been about to break her. And even if they hadn’t been, even if he, Laurel, and Alex hadn’t been recording Lena’s highly impertinent confession, Oliver still had her Mirakuru in his possession. This was a thing he would desperately need in order to do something he hadn’t done last time. He needed to reverse-engineer Mirakuru to find a cure. STAR Labs had done it for them last time. However, that whole thing had gone pear-shaped and relied on a domino effect he could not count on happening again. This time, he could do it.

And he was going to do it. Because something else had changed. Now, after seeing what she had sponsored, he hated Talia Al-Ghul. Anyone who created Mirakuru had his undying contempt. And knowing what she was going to use it for made that contempt stronger. But, and this was a sign of his increased clarity, the Emerald Archer knew damned well that his contempt could not blind him to his mission.

Pushing the League off the board was still the long-term end game. But here? In this precise moment? The mission was getting justice for the people of Starling City. And that justice had been found. The Green Lantern’s confession tapes would be sent to Lena’s lawyers, and the lawyers for the people who had been harmed by what Samantha Arias had done. And they would ensure Lena paid heavily.

But Lena had covered herself, at least somewhat, from any criminal prosecution. All that she had said was that she had instructed Eve Teschmacher to increase the market share for Merlin Spirits, and for Samantha Arias to convince Ted Kord to take the merger terms that were beneficial for L-Corp. She had not told them to do anything like what they had actually done.

So, there was nothing to do to Lena Luthor except hit her wallet. But, Oliver realized with a smirk, that would be plenty. Because this settlement would also be publicized. And that was the killer.

Lena Luthor valued her reputation. She valued being on the front cover of magazines, being thought of as an important person. And when it came out, because he would ensure that it would, people would know what she really was. Still, though, he couldn’t gloat about this. Because he was still in a standoff.

What made it all the more challenging, of course, was that it was not against some National City Police Department officers. These were against warriors highly trained and uniquely motivated, people who could not easily be bluffed or guided into a trap. These were people, and he was almost certain this was true in Talia’s case, who had read every major book on battlefield tactics all the way back to the time of the Crusades. He would have to come up with something truly audacious to get one over on someone that knowledgeable on how to think their way through a combat situation.

And to be honest, the Jade Samurai was beginning to think all the moves he might make were closed to him. Largely because Talia would have prepared for them all.  But then, he saw it. He had run out of moves. But, his wife hadn’t.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance did not need to look to her left to feel her husband’s eyes on her. Which was good, because at this moment, the most important thing she could do was to keep her eyes on every single person in this room. After all, she had been trained in all the major and minor detective arts just like Ollie had been. What was more, she had an advantage in this situation that even Ollie and the Green Lantern didn’t have. And that was this: Talia wasn’t looking at her. Not in the literal sense, really. Neither her nor Ollie, and probably even Alex Danvers now, thought Talia Al-Ghul was dumb enough to take their eyes off of anyone.

But Talia had always appeared to think that the only threat she had to worry about was Oliver. She was moving, and this amused Laurel greatly, like seeing the Green Arrow here was the thing she needed to move the most carefully about. It would have almost been disrespectful, if it wasn’t also so useful to what she wanted to have happen here.

Back home, around the criminals she knew, no one would have been as reckless as Talia was being here. Sure, she didn’t necessarily oppose people thinking less of her than was there. It sure was a trick her father had used in his life as a detective to devastating effect. But in Starling City, people knew what she was capable of and tended to try and cover their tracks to keep her off their scent. It didn’t work, of course, but she at least respected them trying it. Talia wasn’t even trying.

Which made even less sense. Because by now, the Black Canary figured Talia had some sense that Laurel was far more of an active participant in this whole thing. Unless, and this drove her mad, Talia thought Ollie had done all of this all on his own. But there would be time later to give the Heiress to the Demon a lesson in humility.

For right now, her mind was only on getting out of here not losing anything or showing Talia anything. That last bit was the most important thing. Laurel was not dumb, and figured a hand-to-hand confrontation was coming down the road. And she didn’t want Talia to have any idea of what she could do before that confrontation happened. It was like those sparring sessions at Wildcat’s. If you were a young fighter on the come-up, you never showed what you could do to someone you may have to fight later. So getting out of here was key, and keeping things under her hat was just as key.

But what move could she make? Fighting was out, because that would mean Talia saw some of what Laurel could do with her hands, elbows, knees, and shins. And running a distraction play on the Heir to the Demon seemed the height of a distinctly American sort of arrogance. That, obviously, would not work either. If Ollie’s reading of her was right, she was schooled on every military, guerrilla warfare, and para-military tactic ever contemplated. She would know everything Ollie knew, which was by extension everything Laurel knew.

But there was a thought. Sure, it was reckless but it would work. Laurel knew the Green Lantern carried six-shooters, and she knew that Talia abhorred pistols. And then, a plan began to form. Reckless, sure, but it was the best play. If, as she figured, Alex Danvers cared enough about being a modern representation of a western marshal she might have mastered trick shooting. Certainly enough to shoot out something like a light fixture. In the distraction, which would really be moments, they could jump through the open window. Maybe even text Kara, who could bring Alex’s horse back along with her and Ollie’s motorcycles. Yeah, that was the play.

So, glancing over at the Green Lantern’s belt and then up at the lights, the Queen of the Fist hoped the message got through.

(Alex Danvers’s POV)

Alex Danvers could not believe what she was being nonverbally asked to try. Not that it couldn’t get done, of course. But more so the idea that, in this situation, she was being expected to quick-draw and shoot out a light fixture in a room with what looked like some really hardened professional killers. But that was fine, because what she really wanted to know she couldn’t find out here.

What in the fuck was Lena Luthor doing hanging around these people?  The Green Lantern got that the Green Arrow and Black Canary lived a much more complicated life than she could have ever dreamed of leading here in National City, but assassins like the ones standing in front of her now was something completely different. And Lena Luthor was working with them, and Alex really wanted to know why.

Because she wanted these people gone from her city. Yesterday, if possible. And the best way to get them to leave, she figured, was to give them precisely none of what they wanted. And again, she was relying on the Green Arrow and Black Canary to know what that was. Alex did not like this feeling. She didn’t imagine any peace officer could. Going into a standoff was never ideal. Going into a standoff cold was somehow even worse.

There’d be changes that would have to be made. But that was for later. Right now, she needed to make a move. So, focusing all of her will, she quick-drew one of her revolvers and fired a perfect shot at the light fixture and then flew through the window, the Green Arrow and Black Canary right behind her. Hearing curses from Talia Al-Ghul behind her, Alex knew they had gotten out ok. But that was desperate, and the Green Lantern despised being desperate.

30 minutes later, at the Green Lantern Corps Field Office……….

(Alex Danvers’s POV)

There were limits to how much inspiration Alex Danvers took from the Old West lifestyle. For one thing, coffee. She did not want to imagine drinking the abominations to coffee that passed for what must have gone around in Tombstone, Dodge City, and anywhere else she could think of. No, real coffee made from a coffee maker and served in a cup was better than that. (Even if, she was beginning to realize, the Valenzuela County Sheriff’s Department had apparently gotten a line on one of those coffee brands that tasted like battery acid and got ice-cold in 90 seconds flat.)

But the other thing, after what she had gone through tonight, was the value of recording software. She could not imagine how frustrating it must have been for the Marshals in the 1800’s to have to keep the peace with nothing more than a set jaw, a six-shooter, and a trusted deputy. Fingerprint kits were the height of criminological luxury, for goodness sakes.

No, she was happy with living now. Because, amongst a handful of reasons, she had found evidence she could use against Lena Luthor. Not for a conviction, yet. She doubted very much that anyone could get a criminal conviction off of Lena with what she had. But what she could do, of course, was get a warrant. Sure, it wasn’t criminally binding. But Alex doubted any judge, anywhere, would hear what Lena Luthor had said and not think that the entire thing required more investigation. But, as she looked around at her dilapidated field office, she began to realize something.

She needed everything she figured the Green Arrow and Black Canary had. Access to multiple federal databases, a working bio-medical lab, and everything you’d expect a police department to require. Because after all, that’s what the Green Lantern Corps represented. Didn’t they?

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen wanted to be back home now. This had ceased to be, and maybe had never been, about just running down the last threads in a kidnapping case. No, he was sure now that the League of Assassins had not been interested just in Starling City. They probably had made deals with every one of their enemies too, and the enemies of his allies. Because Lena Luthor had not been personally involved with what he or Laurel was running. What she had done, implicitly and parenthetically, was to sponsor the actions that had convinced he and Laurel to look into what L-Corp was up to.

But now, they had made Lena Luthor personally involved. The Mirakuru in an evidence bag in his suit was all the proof of that fact he needed. And there were going to be more. They had to make this stop. But Oliver was not dumb. He knew going it alone would not get them there. He and Laurel would need allies, people who could protect their own cities while he protected his home. But the skills were only part of it.

It was also about what you did with them, and why you did it. It had to be about justice, and honor, and making sure to put the wrong things right. But as he thought about how to find the right kind of people, and was accessing his system remotely to close out this case’s file, his mind went to the next steps. Because he was sure there would be a response to this. It bent credulity almost to breaking to imagine that someone as conniving as Talia Al-Ghul was, who had the resources and the mindset she did, would not respond to one big plank of her grand plan being openly revealed.

No, she would restore her forces, figure out how it was that she had been found out, and then move to deal with the threat. Because this was a chess match, and Talia needed to recalibrate based on the move that had just been made against her. But so did the Green Arrow.

For one thing, an antidote needed to be made. He did not want to live in a world where there could be Mirakuru-enhanced spies and professionally trained killers running around, and there was nothing to be done except hope you were nearby a Kryptonian or a Martian. That would not do. So the antidote had to be made, which meant this Mirakuru vial in his pocket would have to be carefully studied. But Oliver knew he could not do that here in the Green Lantern’s patrol house. There was no chance this tiny outpost had the things he needed.

But more than that, based on what had happened tonight, the League’s forces were also marshaled in National City. That meant those forces were in every city he could think of. He knew Alex knew, which meant that by the time he and Laurel were back home that Kara would know. (Just to be safe, Oliver passed the Green Lantern a note to tell Supergirl about what had happened in Lena Luthor’s mansion.)

That fact, that Talia would be going underground further while she figured out her next moves, gave him a chill up his spine he could not easily explain to himself. And then he knew where it came from, and somehow, it felt worse to understand it.

If they were still playing chess, throwing feints out and what not, just now he and Laurel had made an aggressive move. But it had not been a particularly powerful one. They had not destroyed Lena Luthor’s lab, or put a serious kink in her supply chains. All they had done was snag a vial.

When they returned home, they would need to synthesize a working antidote. But the Emerald Archer knew damned well what else would come with that: A very subtext-laden conversation with Ra’s, Talia, or both. Of all the things he knew, in the old timeline and this one, the one that was clearest to him at the moment was that he couldn’t be expected to pull a trick like what he had done on the League with nothing coming back his way.

What that would be, of course, he was not looking forward to discovering. But he wasn’t scared of it, not like he would have been. But, of course, he wasn’t thinking about just him. That would be selfish, and he was not about being selfish any more.

He needed to get Laurel ready for what was coming, even though he doubted very much she couldn’t put it together.

It was time to say goodbye to National City. But the Jade Samurai got the sense they’d be back.

Meanwhile, back in the Quiver………

(Thea Queen’s POV)

Thea Queen was tired. It had been nearly a day, and she knew Ollie and Sensei Laurel were coming back in the morning. But still, she was tired. Chasing down a phantom, a myth, had proven to be incredibly exhausting. This wasn’t anything nearly as cool as Sensei Laurel and her brother had made it seem to be. For one thing, no one had told her just how boring building a casefile would actually be. She had been sitting at the computers in the Quiver, reading over witness statements and reviewing video footage, for what seemed like 600 years. And she had found nothing, which made it worse.

But she figured that had to be expected. In a city like Starling, running drugs was a terrible idea. Sure, the profit margin was GREAT. But sooner or later, you’d see the Green Arrow and\or the Black Canary outside your warehouse. And you knew how that ended. Your street dealers crippled, your operation in shambles, and you spending a lot of time in jail waiting for your drug trafficking case to kick off. It made sense then that someone would want to try a different path. And Artemis could admit that stashing yourself in the Fermin Houses was a good place to start.

But it would be this mysterious person’s end. Because this person had relied on the fact that the city would always keep the Green Arrow and Black Canary busy enough to not look into what they were up to. That calculation had appeared to not count on what she could do, or what Arsenal could do. Because they were different heroes, who operated differently.

For one thing, they stuck to the Glades more carefully than Sensei Laurel or Ollie did. Thea didn’t begrudge them that choice, nothing like that. She could not imagine having sworn to protect a city as big as theirs was, and she figured that there were a lot of people who had been saved by what their heroes had done for them who happened to live outside the Glades. But the Glades were her and Roy’s responsibility, and the people who lived here knew it. So, if the Princess of the Glades came asking for help, she figured there was a better than normal chance that people would give her what she was looking for.

 But what she actually needed was the question. From what she had been reading, in both autopsy reports and witness interviews, nobody knew anything. This was just an incredibly potent strain of Vertigo that no one had found the line on, besides the fact of course that it came out of the Fermin Houses. Which, Thea could admit, did her no good either. The Fermin Houses were a literal fortress, built by a fiat from the City Council during what she was guessing was the very apex of Tempest’s power and influence over the city. It had been said, albeit by uniformed and very obviously cop-looking police officers, that no one with a badge could get into the Fermin Houses and get out again. Well, that wasn’t a problem.

Because she didn’t wear a badge. And neither did Roy. But getting intel, and having a source, was still a problem. And then it became obvious what to do.

There was a person. The only problem was that she wouldn’t dare to talk to Thea Queen. But the Rainbow Archer? Cindy Burke would talk to them.

30 minutes later, at a park bench in the shadows of the Fermin Houses……

(Thea Queen’s POV)

In a few hours, the sun would come up and her brother and sister-in-law would be back in town. Thea Queen knew she had to move quickly then, before they came back and whoever was running this thing decided to go back into the shadows. And that couldn’t work. How many people were dope-sick in the Fermin Houses right now, willing to do what everything her dealer asked them to do just to get another fix? No, this had to be stopped. And she had to do it.

Ollie and Sensei Laurel were busy with the League of Assassins. But even if they weren’t, it’d still be up to her and Roy to stop this. The Glades were their beat and they walked the post and knew everyone on it. What was more, whoever was running Vertigo in the Glades had felt like they could do it underneath the noses of all the people who gave a damn. She didn’t like it, but Thea knew damned well why the SCPD couldn’t get anywhere close to it. For decades, before Ollie and Sensei Laurel had returned from their crucibles, people saw the SCPD as weak and powerless when they weren’t being seen as corrupt. If you were under the gun with someone, or needed a drug pusher taken off your corner, going to the SCPD was the last thing any reasonable person could be expected to do. So, that left street justice. Unfortunately.

Which meant that unless you were skilled enough to do it without getting caught, you relied on people like her and Roy. And Cindy Burke was sitting here on this park bench, like it was an old spy movie, because she knew she wasn’t skilled enough to pull it off without getting hurt. But Thea had heard she was talking about what she knew, and that had to be stopped. How she was going to do it made Thea smile. Admittedly, it was a bitter one.

Cindy Burke hated Thea Queen, but she came when the Princess of the Glades called. Without hesitation, she had come. She had even snuck out of her house to do it. Time to make this work. So, flicking on a voice modulator in her suit, the Rainbow Archer started talking.

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“Thank you for coming to see me, Ms. Burke. I know what I’m asking of you is very dangerous, but I also know our city needs all the people it can to stand up for justice. I know you heard about what happened with that Hmong woman, and her child. We know that Vertigo got that woman so fucked up that she was willing to let a dealer do god only knew what with her toddler just so she could get another high. That can’t be what this city is. But I also know the danger you’re putting yourself in right now, Ms. Burke. Go to the police. Tell them what you know. They can keep you safe.”

And with that, Thea Queen turns and walked away. She hoped Cindy Burke listened. Because every instinct was firing to tell her that going down this road, dealing with whatever THING was in the Fermin Houses, would get a lot of blood shed if it wasn’t played just right.

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In an alleyway near the Golden Dragon………

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen, holding the hand of his wife, stepped back through that aquamarine-colored breach he had grown uncomfortably used to ever since Cisco Ramón had irst noticed the existence of that power and took a deep bracing breath. He was back home, finally. Sure, National City was nice and he could get how a certain type of person could enjoy living here. But Starling City was his home, and he’d never get tired of it here. Every ounce of this place felt special to him.

And that reminded him of why protecting this place mattered to him. There had to be others who felt like this about Starling City, who saw the beauty others missed. Thinking of that reminded him of the person who was by his side, who saw the world the way he did and was as beautiful as any woman outside of the classic Greek fairytales. To Oliver’s mind, there had never been anyone more beautiful than Dinah Laurel Lance. But it was never just about the way she looked.

It was the depth of her caring for Starling City, for the people in it. By day, she taught people how to believe in themselves and find their own strength at Wildcat’s Gym. At night, when the sun fell, she helped to protect the people who could not fight back like she could. That love, that deep understanding of what this city was, had meant she would move heaven and earth to keep this city safe. Which, of course, was the thing that made him remember their problem at the moment.

This problem was a small multi-dose vial, the sort of thing you’d use for a sterile and injectable medication regimen. But inside it, there was the bulk of the issue. Mirakuru had made one man, one well-trained man, capable of near-godly levels of strength and speed. To imagine what it could do if it was in the hands of someone like Talia Al-Ghul, who would be using it to create more members of her elite guard from intelligence organizations all over the world, was the sort of thing that he did not even want to contemplate. That was why he needed to synthesize an antidote, and to do so quickly before anyone from the League got bright ideas about staging a retaliation.

But that was not all the Green Arrow wanted to get done. Seeing Tatsu again had been a heartbreaking thing, knowing that in every timeline Akio had been fated to die. In his, it had been because of the Alpha-Omega virus and that monster General Shrieve. He did not know how it had happened this time, but he was eager to discover it. But, also, he blamed himself. If he had looked more aggressively, dug under more rocks and called in more favors, he might have been able to stop it. But since he hadn’t, the only thing he could do now was to do good by Tatsu. And that meant stopping the League.

Because he knew she was being guided by her own grief and rage to do things she would have found objectionable in her right mind. And that wasn’t even all of it. It was that discoloration in her eyes, that glassy off-yellow tinge, that was rolling in the back of his mind. Something he remembered….. Holy fuck.

Well, that changed everything. Talia Al-Ghul was dosing Tatsu with pharmaceutical-quality Votara, which was a powerful mind-control agent. Malcolm Merlyn had used it to make Thea kill Sara in the old timeline, which made Oliver wonder what in the world Talia was using it for now. What did she want Tatsu to not remember?

It was looking more and more like behind every solved problem, there were mysteries he hadn’t even considered of that would require his attention. But he knew, also, this was just how the League tended to do things. They misdirected, tricked, and set up multi-layered plots designed to keep you from seeing the thing that was right in front of you. In the old timeline, he hadn’t been smart enough to counter them. That was his failing. But this time? He was.

But focusing on the League was, in its own way, just as much of a mistake as not understanding what they could do. There were still people in this city, working people, who needed what he and Laurel could do for them. And forgetting they existed, to get involved in some Three Days of the Condor-level spy game minutiae, would be a betrayal of every single one of his teachers.

So, as the Emerald Archer walked towards his motorcycle, he began to plan. Firstly, he’d open up his case files and see what was there. There had to be things that were still in need of being solved, people who still wondered what happened to their loved ones.

And once he started working on those cases, on actually helping people, he’d get the Mirakuru antidote working. That whole business would require time, and if he was right, time was one of the few advantages he still had. So instead of dwelling on it, he’d try and use it to help people.

But then he remembered. Thea and Roy had been left to run the city. He also needed to see if they needed help with anything.

The Jade Samurai smiled. His work was never done.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance was always working to find the appropriate balance between self-confidence and arrogance. She knew she was a very skilled detective, someone other heroes came to when they needed a theory checked or a lead run down, but she did not like to consider herself the “World’s Greatest Detective” as she had heard an awestruck Kara Danvers giggle about. But, as she climbed on the high-end super bike that both she and Ollie drove around Starling City, she knew all of their skills would be needed in order to get through what was coming next.

For one thing, she knew damned well Talia would not respond well to what had gone on in National City. Even if it hadn’t been this significant dropping of a bomb like it should have been, Talia had still seen her supplier turned, her scheme uncovered, and a vial that was proof of the scheme ferreted out. And furthermore, there had been nothing that indicated Ollie would accept her offer or stop coming after the League. Sure, it wasn’t a sprint kind of a chase. But she knew it wasn’t going to be.

From the moment the League had made their presence known in his life, they had both understood this was going to be a long and slow thing. Rushing this, moving it quicker than it needed to go, was the kind of thing that would mean the one thing that couldn’t be afforded: Mistakes.

And what was more, there was plenty to do here. Laurel knew the number of cold cases in the bunker had not shrunk. Those files were proof of what her mission truly was. Not destroying the League. But helping people.

How many had there been? Not lives lost, but lives saved. People who knew their loved ones were at rest, and could try to move on. Corrupt administrators or officers who people knew had paid for their part in destroying the city she loved. And if she spent every day until the day she finally hung up this suit for good saving more lives, she knew she had found her calling.

That was what the Black Canary was supposed to be. She was supposed to help people, to provide justice for those who could not go anywhere else to get it. And tonight, just like most nights, she would do what she could to help the good people of her city. But that wasn’t the only reason she was looking forward to being back in the Quiver.

Selfishly, she wanted to see how Thea had been doing. That Vertigo business, with the Hmong mother who had been so eager for another fix that she was willing to sell her own child, would have infuriated her. And considering there wasn’t really any line anyone had heard of about who was behind the Vertigo trade, Laurel could admit she would have been just as stumped by the whole thing as Thea would have been. But maybe, if her sister-in-law was ok with it, another set of eyes might find the clue that this whole thing needed.

More than that, though, she missed home. It was difficult to explain to people who didn’t live here how you could love a place like Starling City. To the outside world, it was corrupt, dark, wet and cold. And for damned sure, she remembered that “jumped-up fishing village” taunt from Lena Luthor. But it wasn’t that. It was a city where people worked for a living to get what they had, because nothing you got easy in Starling City was worth keeping. But it was also a city where the bleeding edge of technology existed, where people made the things the world used. It was a city that pulsed with life, with a heat you couldn’t feel unless you lived here.

And it was her responsibility, every night she slipped on her suit, to be what this city needed. Much like the promises she had made to Ollie in a Queen Consolidated plane all those years ago, the Songbird of Starling knew she would always do all she could to be what her city needed. In that spirit, of course, it was clear what her city needed.

It needed to be reminded that just because Artemis and Arsenal patrolled the city, and protected the streets, there were still people who needed to sleep fitfully until the sun rose. Because there were still people who Laurel wanted to see pay for what they had done.

And if it happened that one of those people happened to be in the general vicinity of the Royal Guardian Hotel, which would so happen to be a place that the League of Assassins had a safehouse, well then wouldn’t that just be a kick in the head? With both her and Ollie knowing kicks in the head very well, that was the sort of thing that she was going to look very much towards doing. But only if it happened in the middle of another case. Laurel knew not to chase it.

There was plenty to do. This city always kept her busy. And the Queen of the Fist loved it.

60 minutes later, in the Quiver………..

(Roy Harper’s POV)

Roy Harper hadn’t gone with his girlfriend to go and check in on the Cindy Burke thing. What he was to Thea was, by and large, a bodyguard. He was the guy who stood there with his arms crossed, and made sure no one took liberties with the Princess of the Glades. Thea was a lot of things, and almost every last one of them were great. But while everyone in the Quiver called her a “Strawweight violence machine”, it tended to be that a certain class of criminal didn’t see the willowy girl in the brightly-colored kunoichi outfit as the sort of person who demanded your undivided attention. But, when he was around, he knew his job was first and foremost to be the guy who made sure you paid attention to what Artemis was talking about. (Roy was pretty sure this wasn’t a gendered thing. Nothing infuriated him more than seeing some beer-drinking construction worker, who didn’t even look like he knew a guy named Jim, shit-talking guys in the lighter weight classes. And besides that, no one dared to even contemplate pulling that shit with Sensei Laurel.)

But that was not the only reason he hadn’t shown up, if he was being honest. Sure, he figured there was a chance Thea would stumble across someone who didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. But it was not like she couldn’t handle herself if it came to that. No, the reason Roy had not shown up was that he had made some calls to people who Thea might not necessarily want him to still be friends with. These were hard men, old-fashioned hard men, and he relied on their knowledge and their connections only when something happened that broke every code of the street that Arsenal had ever heard of.

And this Vertigo business was a fine damned example of that. To a man, every last one of those street guys had been appalled that a dealer hadn’t recognized someone so fucked up on a drug that their morals were gone for good. So they’d see what they could find out on their end, from sources that were a lot more willing to talk than people either he or Thea could find.

A Red Tornado would catch whoever was behind this. He was sure of it.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen understood intimidation. He trained to make himself the very personification of what fear looked like for people who thought a big wallet, a fancy sports car, and a mansion meant no one could get to them. He worked to study how to scare someone, and kept himself on the bleeding edge of every technique every interrogator had ever come up with to make themselves seem like the sort of guy you didn’t want to lie to. In short, he wanted it known: If he came to your window, or you found yourself in an alleyway or in some dark room with him looming over you, it was better to tell the truth than to deal with him finding out you were lying.

Because when it came to remedying all of the large and small injustices in Starling City, he wanted people to know that seeing him meant the game was up. That, Oliver could admit, was rather pleasurable. These were people with resources, power and wealth beyond the wildest dreams of so many, and a man wearing a bow showed up in the darkness to beat them all.

It was, if he was being honest, part of why he ran down cold cases. How many conspiracies had there been? How many of those people who ate from the $5000-dollar-a-plate charity balls people held downtown had actually been responsible for the damage done to the city? He wasn’t sure. But the Green Arrow could get the answers.

And, as he opened up his database of unsolved cases, that was the thing on the top of his mind. But as he kept looking, something kept flashing in the forefront of his mind. Tatsu. He knew he couldn’t tell anyone, outside of the people in this base, how it was he knew the League’s most dangerous horseman in a past life. It was the curse of that old life writ large: He knew what Tatsu had suffered, and what she had gone through, but to try and play on it in public was a dangerous game.

But Oliver desperately wanted her out of this life. DESPERATELY. Not just because it would be a great chess move to remove Talia’s most trusted and skilled horseman from her side. It was also the right thing to do. Tatsu was not a murderer, and she was damned sure not an assassin. But Talia had drugged her, manipulated her with promises that were never going to be kept, and then sent a grief-stricken and drugged kenjutsu master loose on all of her enemies. It was the height of dishonorable conduct, and Talia deserved to be punished for it.

But Tatsu also deserved to be free from that life. And to get her free, to give her the peace and time to grieve for Akio’s death, there was only one thing he could think of to do. He needed to give her peace, to make an innocent boy’s death be more than the jumped-up basis for turning his mother into a cold-blooded killer.

But he didn’t want to go this alone and keep secret what he would be working on. The Emerald Archer could remember doing that, and had heard stories from J’onn, Alex, and every other cop he had met in this life about what happened when they started working cases and didn’t read their partner in. No, he wasn’t going to be that person.

If this needed to happen, and he knew damned well that it did, he didn’t want to even open up a notepad without Laurel’s approval and assistance. She had gone through all the training he had, learned every trick of the book and roll of the dice he could use, but that wasn’t why he wanted to make sure she was ok with this.

Oliver wanted to make sure she was ok with this because she was his wife, and he would always be selfless in how he acted in their relationship. But he really did want to solve this.

So, gritting his teeth, the Jade Samurai asked the question.

“What do you think about solving the murder of Akio Yamashiro?”

(Dinah Laurel Lance's POV) 

Dinah Laurel Lance had trained herself to never be caught off-guard. It was the responsibility she had from the very first moment she threw a strike in anger at Lady Shiva’s Indonesian monastery. A martial artist who fell for easy feints, or didn’t see counters when they were there, would be a martial artist who would never become as good as they were supposed to be.

And from the moment she had arrived under Lady Shiva’s tutelage, there had nothing that had seemed more like a grave personal insult than to be accused of not living up to her potential. Not just because Sensei Ricardo had told her that she could be a world-class martial artist very early on in her training, but also because she knew Ollie was suffering and didn’t want to imagine him having gone through all of that for nothing. That feeling of having to be the best she could, both for herself and to be what Ollie needed, had stuck with her through everything.

But Ollie, the love of her life and the best partner she could ever dream of having, had just said something that absolutely had put her off guard. So, not knowing what to do, the Black Canary answered the only way she could.

“Who’s that?”

Chapter Text

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

From the very first moment he had been reminded of his old timeline, and his old life, Oliver Queen had guessed a day like this might be coming. There was just so much to remember. Add to that the idea that there were plenty of new things to keep his attention on, and something like this was bound to happen. But the idea that it happened with Akio was not something he liked.

Akio had mattered to him in his last timeline, and he had known what his death had done to both Maseo and Tatsu. But this time? This time he could do something about it. He could avenge that injustice, and put the wrong things right. But he had not told Laurel about it, and so he needed to. Because anything he did, any decision he made, had to have Laurel’s unquestioned support. And if she said no, that it was unwise, he would not move on it.

Theirs was a love built on shared commitment, on responsibility. And Oliver knew there was no greater responsibility that there could ever be than to tell the truth. And the truth was that this was the best way to solve two problems. One, of course, was to get Tatsu’s eyes opened to the fact that Talia Al-Ghul had lied to her about why it was that she needed to join to the League. Maybe even the idea that Akio’s murder had been closed, and he could be buried in the rites appropriate to Shinto, might be powerful enough to break through the effects of the mind control.

Secondly, Akio deserved to rest knowing his killers had been brought to justice. The Green Arrow did not like knowing that Akio Yamashiro’s death might genuinely be a fixed point, a thing that needed to happen and would always happen in any timeline. But that did not mean his murderers had to walk free. If all of his training, all of the knowledge he now had, could not be used to make sure that an innocent child’s killers were made to pay for it then what was the point? But, he caught himself.

If Laurel didn’t want to run this down, he wouldn’t. No matter how much it would nag at his mind, he would let it go. Because lying to his wife was something he was never going to do. So, Oliver knew what came next. He would have to show her what was going on, and hope that she understood why he had to run this down.

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Opening up the database, Oliver Queen opened up his arms and smiled as Laurel snuggled into him.

“We know Tatsu Yamashiro as the right hand of Talia Al-Ghul, a master swordswoman and the most trusted enforcer of every single one of her dictates. But in my research, I discovered that there is something else about Tatsu. Something she shared with her previous timeline’s self. Namely, the death of her son Akio. In my original timeline, Akio had become a little brother to me when I was stuck in Hong Kong after being lucky enough to have survived Lian Yu. But he was killed, when a corrupt US general released a bio-weapon to start a war with China. <Laurel raises an eyebrow at this, and Oliver nods minutely. Yes, his world really was that horrible. But now was also not the time to dwell on it.> Tatsu mourned, and removed herself from public life. Her husband, Maseo, joined the League and attempted to use that bio-weapon to destroy Starling City. Tatsu killed him, and then retreated again. She was a steadfast ally, but she had suffered far too much to become that ally.

And from the moment I discovered Tatsu was alive in this timeline, and working for Talia after Akio’s death in Seoul, I have been trying to figure out a way to release her from that obligation and allow her the chance to have the peace she deserved. But it was last night, when we confronted Talia Al-Ghul and Lena Luthor, that I saw something disgusting. Talia Al-Ghul is drugging Tatsu with a powerful mind-control agent. I know of this agent, because it was used to convince my sister to kill your sister and not remember for a moment that she did it. Until we were able to get visual proof, Thea never knew what she had done. Tatsu might have had the memory buried that her son was killed. But I am sure he was, and I want to bring that killer to justice. And if we can bring Akio’s killer to justice, that knowledge may be strong enough to break through the control that mind-control agent has on her. And not only will we give Tatsu Yamashiro peace, but we hobble the League at the same time. What do you think, Pretty Bird?”

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance understood that her husband had suffered in his last timeline. He had talked about it with her, and explained near tears that “Those 5 years were five years where nothing good happened”. But what she had not understood, until precisely right this moment, is that everyone else in his relative orbit had suffered also. In fact, outside of him telling her that her timeline self had suffered from a drinking and pill addiction, Ollie had made it a point to not tell her too much about what she had gone through during his first try at this. Sure, he smiled when Cisco brought her that first suit which was capable of withstanding every kind of blade that existed in the world. But he had kept that life a secret, except when it held some tactical or investigative benefit to bring it up.

Clearly, Ollie believed that her knowing what this mind-control agent was capable of met that responsibility. And she could agree that it did. Hearing that there was a mind-control agent out there was not surprising. Hearing that Talia had acquired it was even less so. But to hear of its power, to realize that Ollie had been expected to pick up the pieces from the aftermath of his own sister killing Sara, was something completely different. This thing could not be allowed to continue.

And to hear that it was being used on a grieving mother to turn her into a killer, and make her forget her son’s death, was so despicable that Laurel genuinely did not know the words to describe the depths of her hatred for Talia Al-Ghul. Manipulating a grieving woman into becoming what Tatsu obviously was for Talia was a sin. There were no other words to describe it. And the Black Canary knew there was nothing else to do but stop it.

How, though, was the question. Part of her wanted to focus entirely on this, to delve deep into the police reports and the witness interviews. She wanted this solved, and solved yesterday.

But, she could see a problem.

Was this not a prime example of the very thing Dad had told them not to do during the whole Helena Bertinelli thing? Sure, she knew getting the League of Assassins even a tenth weaker was perfect tactical strategy. But she also didn’t want to have it seem like Starling City was taking a backseat to something that had A: already happened and B: had happened in another country. She didn’t want to neglect her home.

But Laurel also really didn’t want to leave Tatsu in Talia’s grip any longer than she needed to be. This was the problem, she figured, with getting to know the people you were chasing down. She knew what Talia was capable of, had seen it, and wanted so badly to see it stop. But she also knew the families in Starling City needed protection too. Just as bad as Tatsu did.

Not for the first time, the League of Assassins was getting on her fucking nerves. If they hadn’t shown up, none of this would be happening. How much work had they been distracted from doing because these assholes had showed up in her city, and made move after move designed for the endgame of getting Ollie to breed Talia? How many families were still waiting for peace of mind because of what the League was doing? No more.

They’d help Tatsu. But the city came first. And then she saw the compromise.

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“Ollie, I want to help Tatsu. And I want to make the League pay through the nose for what they did to her, and what they’ve been doing to our city. But, she’s not the only ones who need our help. We’ve got to be about protecting Starling City too, and if we spend all of our time running this down we can’t do that. So, what I’m coming to think might work best is a compromise.

This is a bottom-drawer case for us. Whenever we can work on it, whenever we can find time, we build evidence to prove who killed Akio Yamashiro. So that when we move on this, Talia Al-Ghul and her scumbag daddy can’t protect Tatsu from hearing the truth. But this isn’t our primary responsibility. Does that work for you?” the Black Canary said, hoping it would work.

“Of course. I want to put this to bed, and I want every family whose cold case is in our files to have the same peace I want Tatsu to have. So yeah, we’ll bottom-drawer this thing.” The Green Arrow said, his eyes alight with focus.

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

From the moment Laurel had started on her compromise idea, Oliver Queen had seen the brilliance in it. Of course, Starling City was so plunged into corruption that it needed all the people it could scrounge up to make damned sure that the place didn’t suddenly become an open-air bazaar for all different types of crimes like this was a Costco for murderers, thieves, rapists and god only knew what else. No, this was the place that needed what he and Laurel could do.

In a city like Starling, drenched in rain and dampness, the heroes couldn’t be gods made flesh. Here, in this city, power you did not earn was not a gift. It was a nightmare. Power corrupted here. It warped attitudes, turned men into monsters. No, here in Starling City, the people who had power needed to be watched the most of all.

This city needed to be protected by people who moved in the shadows, who snatched gang enforcers out of the alleyways and made them pay penance for how they harmed innocent working-class families. And this city needed detectives, people who wouldn’t let a mystery remain unsolved.

So, he opened up a sub-folder in the database called “Hikidashi” and placed Tatsu Yamashiro’s case file in it. There would be time for this later. In fact, as he saw it, he knew who he could get some damned fine intel from. But that meeting, fun as it might be, would come later. For right now, his mind was on something else. Rather, on someone else.

The Ling family. It was heartbreaking. The father Tian, an immigrant from Northern China, had been working three jobs just to keep his family above water in some corner apartment in Little Chinatown. And for the relatively harmless act of reporting a murder in front of his house he had not just been killed but burnt alive to make sure everyone knew to not talk. In front of his kids, if being burnt alive was not yet enough of an insult.

The Green Arrow had suspicions about how this had all gone down. But since all he had was the case file, all he really had was suspicions. So, opening up the case file, he began to look.

For one thing, Tian Ling had done everything he hoped anyone in his position would have done. He had gone straight to the closest stationhouse, and gotten an interview with a detective. That detective was, of course, one of the old dinosaurs. That meant asking the new sergeant what wasn’t in the report. And that was going to be a fun consult.  

Because the other thing Oliver had in this case file was the medical examiner’s report. This was a chemical fire, the sort of thing you planned. It wasn’t a Molotov cocktail thrown into a car and have that be the end of that. No, Tian Ling had done the city a favor. He had gone out of his way, at great personal cost, to try and stop the killer. And what was the thanks he had gotten? Someone had set him alight in front of his family home.

This was the sort of thing he was supposed to stop. Being the Emerald Archer, protecting this city as its guardian samurai, came with high expectations. And giving a family like the Lings a chance to sleep at night knowing the man who murdered their patriarch was behind bars was what he could do to fulfill them.

Tian Ling deserved to watch his children grow up, make their own lives and their own names. He deserved to be there for them, to smile at their weddings and graduations. He deserved to know what they became. In no sense did he deserve what had happened to him.

It enraged Oliver that no one had looked into this. But he figured he should not be surprised. Tempest was at fault for this, but not completely. The truth was not just that the SCPD had been defanged from doing what the cops in National City, or Central City, could do. It was also that they didn’t want to try. And it had fallen to him and Laurel, two vigilantes in Kevlar and black leather, to pick up the slack.

But it didn’t matter why he was here. The fact that he was here, doing this, was the point. And since he was, he was going to be what his city demanded. A Jade Samurai, glaring through the sheets of rain to make sure everyone was safe.

30 minutes later, in the parking lot of the Starling City Police Department’s Third Precinct………

(Sergeant Patrick Collins’s POV)

Sergeant Third Grade Patrick Collins had never been quite sure how to feel about the idea that he ran a precinct in a city filled nearly to bursting with vigilantes, and the two most well-known were also better detectives than every single cop with a shield in his entire house. It had not been this way in Coast City, that was for fucking sure.

But when they put a big roadblock in front of you, and parenthetically suggest that your desire to arrest a Deputy Mayor for beating a 17-year-old schoolgirl half to death is the reason, the chance to start over again in Starling City was just too good to pass up.

But here in Starling, in addition to having to hear his wife and teenage daughter complain about the rain and damp weather doing an absolute number on their haircare routines, Sergeant Collins realized that there were a frankly stunning number of underqualified and overpaid detectives in his house. So he was left relying on vigilantes. But if they were bad, he would be even more pissed.

Thank God, he knew they were good. How could he not? Lord knew, he had seen their work on some of the cold cases the SCPD had left for them and realized he would never have thought to take some of the angles that they had. Near as he could figure, they really were the World’s Greatest Detectives. But it still bothered him that they came to this precinct and took over the cases his officers had worked so long on.

But while it bothered him, he wasn’t going to let his uniformed officers or the old dinosaurs he was trying to clean out have any notion of mocking how this worked. That choice was because the Green Arrow and Black Canary knew they had the entire SCPD by the short hairs, and never made a move to act anything other than utterly professional. When they got stuck, rare though it might have been, they always asked good questions of whatever detective was the lead man on the case. They weren’t people out to rub anyone’s faces in the idea that someone had to come along and fix what hadn’t been done right.

In fact, from what he had seen and heard, they were nothing but wholly professional people. They asked good questions, did their own crime scene and forensics work, and genuinely put the victims first ahead of any biases or preconceptions. As much as it pained him to say it, Sergeant Collins could admit that the Green Arrow and Black Canary were damned fine investigators.

But, through a network of back-channels and clandestine statements, he began to realize they were here because they were working a case. And he knew damned well which one it was. Tian Ling had been a thing he had wanted no part of. Not because he wanted anyone to think that the Third Precinct was some kind of a place where people did whatever the hell they felt like doing. But because the people who had done the interview were children, who didn’t know how to get a witness out of the building safe. And now, because of that, a man was dead. SO whatever the Emerald Archer and the Songbird of Starling had to give to him, he’d have to swallow. Goddamnit.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

 Dinah Laurel Lance had seen just about every flavor of bad cop. Before Tempest, they were usually guys who were lazy. Filled out the basic amount of paperwork to avoid getting a suspension, tended to not give a shit about walking the beat right, but not evil. Just lazy.

But after Tempest? Those were worse. Because these were the guys who didn’t want to retire. These were the guys who felt like “tuning up” an uncooperative criminal was just what you did. As it happened, these were also the guys who said things about the Chinese and Korean people who made up the beat in the Third that would be horrifying. So, on her way over here, she had listened to the dictation software reading the Tian Ling file and she was pissed off at just how bad the police work was on this whole damned case. For one thing, she could not BELIEVE no one had found an interpreter for this man. That wasn’t some bullshit accommodation, nothing like that. No, this was a man who had seen a horrific crime being expected to tell the authorities about it in a language he found unfamiliar.

But the disrespect had only increased from there. Laurel knew how to get a witness back home without them being seen, because in Starling City being a witness to a crime was a dangerous thing. But these cops? They walked Mr. Ling through a full squad room, almost as if they knew what was going to happen. Once that was done, they left a known witness to a murder out in front of a bus stop. And look who won the pony. A hitter, from a gang that was more than likely a Triad cell, set Tian Ling on fire.

No, this couldn’t be how things went down. This was how you did things in some third-world banana republic, not here. Laurel knew her home was still not perfect. There was still too much crime, and too many guys who thought that a few gang tattoos and the willingness to take a life made you a tough guy. But this? This was what happened when no one feared any consequences. And that couldn’t be.

And then she got to who the two detectives were that were at the eye of this particular storm of bullshit, and the Black Canary rolled her eyes so hard that she could feel them going to the back of her head. Of course it was Bosworth and Hansen. It had to be. It had been their crime scene that had been the first clue that the League was here, and what precisely what they were willing to do to get what they wanted.

And now, with her and Ollie knowing what the League could do and the rules they had chosen to break, it only tracked that Bosworth and Hansen would have found themselves again in a position they should not have been in. Except this time someone was dead.

Laurel wasn’t sure quite yet if it came because of negligence, or because of something more sinister. She hoped it was the former, of course. But they’d have to do interviews, get more information from the medical examiner, and have a look at the crime scene.

But that was not the most important thing. No, Laurel knew what that was. It was figuring out if Sergeant Patrick Collins was as much of a dumb fuck as the detectives he had inherited, or if he was serious about making things a better place and couldn’t get his own guys in yet. That was a question she also wanted answered.

This city was trying so damned hard to clean itself up, to stitch up the open wounds and fistulas that Tempest revealed. And yet, rather frustratingly, the Songbird of Starling kept finding more. But she was hoping this was just a little cut, something that could be cleaned up.

She wasn’t in the mood for having to get another asshole to do their damned jobs, so she really wanted that to not be what was happening here. But that was not something she could count on, after all. This was a city of gangsters, and of cops who were under-gunned and out-manned in any attempt to defend said city against the gangsters who ran it. So it needed more help. It needed what she and Ollie could do.

And this was a prime example of that. Internal Affairs was borderline incompetent, and they couldn’t do anything if they were on top of their game. And the Sergeant was still trying to figure out who he could trust and rely on, so he was out of the game. It came down to her. It came down to Ollie. Just like always.

And when she saw Hansen and Bosworth heading out of the precinct, the Queen of the Fist knew it was time to get going.

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 Without even having to say anything about Sergeant Collins standing nearby, the Green Arrow took the lead. This was the sort of thing that you had to get pissed about. And of the two of them, the Green Arrow was the sort who you wanted if you needed to flow with anger first.

“Detective Bosworth. I’d like to speak to you the Tian Ling matter, namely your part in it” the Green Arrow said, his voice cold but laced with deep foreboding.

“I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t heard anything about Tian Ling since we interviewed him about a murder in Chinatown” Detective Bosworth says, and immediately the Green Arrow feels the mist descend.

“Tian Ling died. He died after you interviewed him without an interpreter present. He died after you walked him through a full squadroom where the murderer he was testifying against had members of his gang sitting in public, and left a murder witness out to catch the 24 bus back home to Chinatown. He did you a favor, Detective Bosworth. He went out of his way to try to do what he could to bring a murderer to justice. And the thanks he got was that, because of your negligence, he got SET. ON. FUCKING. FIRE. That’s what I mean” the Green Arrow said, cold fury in his voice.

“Wait, you think we had something to do with that? You think we’re those kinds of cops? How dare you?” Detective Hansen said, trying to get his back up and the Black Canary couldn’t help but smirk. In fact, the more she thought of how dumb this detective sounded, the more that smirk turned into a snarl.

“Detective Hansen, if you didn’t have something to do with this, answer a question for me. Why did neither you or your partner get Tian Ling an interpreter? Being a witness to a murder, in this city, can very easily become a death sentence. And to consent to that, to know that responsibility, can’t be done in a language you don’t think in, or dream in. It’s a moral responsibility, and you and your partner failed it” the Black Canary asks, snarling righteous disgust in her voice. And behind her, like a locomotive with no brakes and an engine loaded with nitrous and high-grade race-quality diesel, comes the Green Arrow.

“Now, that’s just you being an asshole. Not great but not uncommon. But then, you walk Mr. Ling past the fucker who he was trying to bring down. Did you not learn how to protect a witness in the academy, or has it been so long that you forgot the rules? You walk a guy out the back door, and have your two biggest and meanest-looking beat cops drive him home. You don’t walk him through the entire squad, and then leave him at the bus stop like he’s a guy who came down to pay a ticket. Are you fucking serious?” the Green Arrow says, his eyes cold blue slits as if he’s daring either one of these detectives to try something.

“You did this. Either by omission or a commission, you set up a circumstance where Tian Ling died. You have to live with that. And we have to fix it” the Black Canary snarls, turning to walk away.

“You don’t get it. Neither of you do. When Mr. Ling came in, we were working twelve felony murders and 8 manslaughters. That’s a normal case load for a homicide detective. It’s not like how it looks on TV, or how you make it look to the people in this city. So yeah, knowing what my day looked like, we didn’t get an interpreter. We got him sat in an interview room, took his statement, and then walked him out the front door. We didn’t have a radio car free to take him home. And we’re NOT the gang unit, so we didn’t know we were walking him past gang members. Give us some grace. We’re not dirty. We’re just overworked” Detective Bosworth said.

“Regardless of why, a man is dead. A man you interviewed. We have to make that right. And you have to be ok with what comes next” the Green Arrow said, knowing this was going onto the official record.

Time to do some more work.

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

If he had learned one thing over his many years being under the hood, under all the assumed names that he had chosen to use, Oliver Queen had come to understand who was telling the truth and who was lying because they didn’t want to get in more trouble. It was a skill he had needed, but one that hadn’t been as sharp then as it was now. Lord knew if he had things together like this back then, he would have been able to correct so many mistakes.

And, he could also admit, it meant that sometimes his preconceived notions ended up being just that. He had come here, and so had Laurel, thinking these cops were dirty. What he was beginning to realize now, funnily enough, was something worse. They were overworked, and they had cut corners to keep up. It was a condemnation he hadn’t voiced. It wouldn’t have worked, for one thing. Telling someone you’re sure they’re not dirty, because they’re too STUPID to be dirty, is perhaps not the thing you want to be saying.

Tian Ling wouldn’t be helped by it, either. This was a man who had been burned alive. His family, his girls, deserved to see his killer brought to justice. And that meant focusing all of his attention on being what he had heard someone say he was: “The one guy you want catching your case if you end up dead somewhere.”

That idea, the belief that people would want him to run down their deaths, never ceased to be flattering to Oliver. And since he knew it had been said about Laurel too, it made him feel so proud of her he could barely stand to not smile. But at this moment, smiling was not an appropriate thing. After all, this entire precinct and the bus stop outside was the scene of a crime. He didn’t think smiling while he was also trying to figure out how it had happened that someone had been set on fire was appropriate.

There would be time later to grin, when that family was given the chance to bury their father with the honor due to him. But now, it was time to work. And that led him to a very simple question: Who around here had heard something?

Someone out here would have had to. That much was clear and obvious. The Green Arrow very much doubted that you could set someone on fire, with all that entailed, and no one didn’t hear an ignition sound or the sound of Tian Ling screaming. It just didn’t make sense to him at all.

Oliver also got why people weren’t talking. While the SCPD couldn’t find it, or stop it if they had found it, this neighborhood had a robust whisper network. Lord knew he and Laurel had used it before. But in this case, word of this murder and how it had happened had spread through every row house, apartment building, and project in this entire precinct. People would be terrified to say what they had seen, because they feared the same guy would come back for them if word got out they had been talking.

But they wouldn’t have to worry. He’d find out who did this, and he made sure that person understood what you lost when you decided to fuck around with the good people of Starling City. Living here was bad enough. It was the height of injustice to add more fear on top of that.

But in order to let people in this neighborhood sleep well at night, he had to figure out what had actually happened here. That was harder than he would have liked it to be, of course. But not, he thought with a smile, impossible.

For one thing, he had already found the Arson Investigation Unit’s evidence report and it gave him something to go on. It had already been pretty obvious that this wasn’t the work of one of the professional hitters they had on their database, because that’d be overkill. Any idiot with an empty liquor bottle, a rag, access to a fuel source, and some matches could make a Molotov cocktail. Why waste the money on dragging some hired gun from somewhere?

No, this was the sort of thing where a guy made a phone call and so it was done. But that left more questions. Who did Tian Ling see get murdered? Oliver doubted it was a civilian, because it wasn’t like any of these gangs really gave a damn about people knowing they took life. Understanding that they did that, honestly, was part of the point of the exercise. So that wasn’t it.

It had to be something that couldn’t come out in open court. Whatever this was, knowing it would cause a gang war. And that got Oliver to look back at the evidence. And right then, he saw it.

Southeast Asia, and East Asia too, was infamous for its liquor variety. The Emerald Archer had known, even without the aid of a second run at this, that you could throw a quarter into a map of Southeast Asia and East Asia and find some spirit somewhere that was guaranteed to get you fucked up. For some reason, it was a point of pride. He had never understood it. But he didn’t need to. And in Starling, each neighborhood bar made it a point to serve alcohol from back home. But in Chinatown, that wasn’t nearly specific enough. If you wanted to get drunk here, you could get drunk on the alcohol from your family’s village if you knew where to go and who to pay.

And the firebomber, of course, had done exactly that. They had gone to some local dive and bought a bottle of the alcohol from Tian Ling’s home village and set the Molotov that way. But the firebomber had also shown the issues with having your gang be made up of criminals fresh from their home countries.

For one thing, they didn’t seem to understand the basics of how not to get caught. In some of these small fishing and farming villages, the community handled law enforcement. So these kids came to America and never bothered to change their tactics. And that made this case really damned easy to solve.

Because it wasn’t precisely a Holmesian leap of logic to figure out that the kid who put their whole-ass hand on the liquor bottle was probably the guy who did it. And then when you put that together with knowing that the fingerprint was of a guy who had several assaults and had as a known associate a junior lieutenant in a Chinese triad cell known for its viciousness, it was as open-and-shut a case as he might want. But that wasn’t all of this. Because this kid, who looked to be 12 years old even though his birthdate put him at 20, was going away for a felony crime because some old man told him to.

Someone here had seen something, or heard something. And it was time for the Jade Samurai to start asking around.  

(Dinah Laurel Lance’s POV)

These FUCKING IDIOTS. And Dinah Laurel Lance was not sure who fit that description more. The young kid who had been requested to commit what was quite obviously a felony murder rap, or the two alleged detectives who hadn’t bothered to run fingerprints on a liquor bottle because they didn’t want to get involved. Wasn’t that the curse of Starling City? Detectives of the SCPD, sworn officers of the law, not wanting to get involved with a murder. And not because it was out of a particular precinct’s jurisdiction, or because the murder was a federal crime. That she could get. Lord knew they had dropped enough people off at the FBI, or a similar agency, to get how that worked. It had been because they hadn’t wanted to catch another case.

A man had died. And it hadn’t been caught by anyone serious because they didn’t want to open up another manila file folder and fill out some more paperwork. What made it worse is that it wasn’t precisely the Black Dahlia Murder that was being solved. This was a thing that would have taken 20 minutes, a trip through fingerprints, and a call to the gang unit. Not precisely a three-day case you never talk about with anyone but other cops who might get it. 

No, Bosworth and Hansen had been too damned lazy. That much was obvious. But what she wanted to know, what wouldn’t rest in her mind, is why Tian Ling had to be murdered in the first damned place. She had seen Oliver figure out who had done it, and the why wasn’t a question. But as Laurel kept thinking, she realized that wasn’t all the way true.

What had Tian Ling seen that had required his death like this? The Black Canary got the necessity behind killing witnesses. But this was above and beyond, even for a city that didn’t use firearms. If you wanted to just make sure people didn’t talk about what you were doing, there were ways to do that without making your victim’s corpse unidentifiable without using dental records and DNA. You only did that if you were trying to make something disappear that would cause you more trouble than killing a witness.

Laurel knew that wasn’t too many things. This would have to be something huge, something that needed to be nipped in the bud before it got out of hand. She just hoped it wasn’t already there. And then she glanced to her left, and she could have melted.

Here was Ollie, in his hood and looking big and intimidating, sitting on a stoop talking in what she just knew was perfect Mandarin with a grandmother who was not a day under 80. This was the Green Arrow she wished everyone got to see, the kind but thorough investigator making sure everyone he came across got all their questions answered and all their fears eased. She knew why it didn’t happen all the time, of course. But when it did happen, it was beautiful.

Starling City was a city of darkness and shadow. Hope was hard earned here, but it could be earned. And Laurel knew what the Green Arrow did could be a perfect example of that. She had seen it countless times. Scared witnesses and survivors of terrible criminal acts lit up when they saw her and Ollie. To the people of this city, they saw justice in the presence of the Green Arrow. He could do what others couldn’t, was smarter than people who were paid to be smart, and knew aspects of the city others ignored.  

And if Laurel wanted to be what this city expected of her, it was going to get done by figuring out a crime that the police of this city wanted nothing to do with.

Right now, the Songbird of Starling knew what the SCPD thought had gone on. They were figuring Tian Ling had seen a regular everyday murder. But she knew better. What he had actually stumbled on was a killing that, if anyone knew it happened, would start a gang war like this was the bad old days again. And that meant one thing above all other things: Another Triad cell was in town. Goddamnit.

And if this cell was doing what she thought they were doing, they didn’t seem to have any particular fear of her or Ollie. Whether or not that was down to arrogance, or they thought they had something, she did not know. But that was not the same as saying she did not care. If the Merlyns, the Cains, Helena Bertinelli, Amanda Waller, and now the League had taught her anything it was this: It was better to never over-estimate your opponent. And right now, this new Triad cell was her opponent.

So what did that mean? More information. Because she was not going into this cold. There was no chance that she and Ollie were going to run a cold profile. Not for this. Because, if they were wrong, they wouldn’t just be watching a gang war. They’d have been the ones who lit the fuse on the thing that started it.

If she was being honest, and she wanted to be, the trail seemed to get cold right at the man who threw the firebomb. No part of her thought that wasn’t by design. But since they didn’t have an in yet, it was also clear that this was what there was. And she didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So, the Queen of the Fist got ready. Time to start setting standards.

(Sergeant Patrick Collins’s POV)

Sergeant Patrick Collins had been a Navy cop, served in some of the hottest zones in the world, and then had made himself into a sergeant in Coast City. So to say he figured he had some idea about how cops were supposed to do the boring work of being cops was an understatement. So, when he saw the Green Arrow and Black Canary working, he wasn’t quite sure how to feel. For one thing, the both of them had excellent rapport with everyone. They were naturals.

Just seeing them, taking down notes and charming people like they were the king and queen of the city, made him realize just how much work his own beat cops had to do. But that was not all of it. They were not just phenomenally proficient walkers of a beat.

Detectives Bosworth and Hansen had not been his first choice in any real sense. It was part of why he kept them far away from younger detectives, or the new ones freshly minted after being patrol officers. They kept bad habits, and he didn’t want his people learning the job from them. So, when the Green Arrow and Black Canary had started upbraiding them over mistakes made, Sergeant Collins had enjoyed listening. But then something else started to happen.

Sure, he knew they knew the city. It was obvious they had lived here all their lives. But they also were masters in police tactics. And that was something you didn’t just learn. You had to study them, to know how officers were trained to think in a variety of different situations. Add to that his already-noticed knowledge of their investigative skills, and Sergeant Collins knew they had picked the Tian Ling case up and solved it as well as it could be. And he also knew he was going to be called on the carpet for his detectives not solving it.

And to a point, he understood it. This whole thing had been bungled, and everyone involved with this damned sure knew it. So if they yelled at him for not having serious people on it, he’d agree. But that was about where it needed to stop.

Again, he had not been here that long. He had inherited this department, and the detectives in it. Yes, he did want to change the culture of this stationhouse. But that would be a thing that would take time, and a fresh flow of new patrolmen and officers. This, he knew, was the burden of command. To not be able to do everything you wished, because you didn’t have enough money or resources, was the curse of leadership.

But he could not, in good conscience, allow this department to be denigrated by anyone. He still needed to lead this place, to make it into an example just like Quentin Lance was doing in the First Precinct. And that couldn’t happen if his officers thought he just rolled over and let anyone talk about them any way they felt like.

Well, time to get this over with. Standing in front of him, looking terrifying, were the Green Arrow and Black Canary. And then they started talking.

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“Sergeant Collins, the man you’re looking for is Jian Hanzhou. He can be found at 1300 Buhner Drive. I’d recommend letting detectives other than Bosworth and Hansen have this collar, as after this, they don’t deserve it. But that’s only part of what we want to talk to you about” the Green Arrow said, his voice sounding deep and rich but not cold. What had caused the change?

“You need to go downtown tomorrow, Sergeant Collins, and you need to ask for more detectives. What you have here is untenable, and it can’t continue. This city deserves better.” The Black Canary said, before they got on their bikes and headed out. Well that wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

And then he saw them heading towards Dets. Bosworth and Hansen. Oh shit. This was gonna be fun.

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

All day, ever since he had found this case, Oliver Queen had needed a reason to not be pissed off. The League was still looming, and their response to what he and Laurel had pulled in National City would be biblical. He was quite sure of that. Ra’s, and Talia too by the look of her, did not seem to be the sort of people who would take a loss lying down. Sure, it wasn’t the loss he and Laurel might have hoped. But it was still a loss. And since that were true, Talia would strike back regardless.

He didn’t much care, or feel personally offended, about what might happen if she came after him or Laurel. Oliver knew they could handle themselves. The innocent people of Starling City? People like the ones here in Chinatown, or the others in Little Tokyo, Little Vietnam, and all the other neighborhoods in this city? They might be targets too. And that couldn’t be. So he was already more than willing to beat 10 shades of hell out of any League member he saw.

Hooked in with this, of course, was Mirakuru. Of all the things that could have possibly bit him in this new timeline, he could freely admit that Mirakuru was the one that he was the most concerned about. Knowing what Slade had done with it was one thing. Imagining a master tactician like Ra’s Al-Ghul, and his daughter Talia, having control of a super-steroid that could make their initiates into as close to invulnerable killers as could exist was a nightmare he wanted no parts of. And considering it was found and being refined by Lena Luthor, Oliver knew there would be no hint of the increased long-term health risks that he knew had felled the Slade of his timeline.

So all night, he had been working this while trying to keep a level head. Trying to figure out what Talia’s next play was, while having Akio Yamashiro’s case in the bottom of his drawer of unsolved murders. And then he caught THIS case, and it had been too much. An innocent man, who had done nothing wrong, had gone to the SCPD to confess seeing a horrible crime. He had gone out of his way to tell the SCPD about a murder, so they could get a killer off the streets. And the thanks he got for this? He was burned alive in front of the 24 bus stop like a common animal. No, that wasn’t right. Like he wasn’t even human. And that had been the line.

He understood the differences between the city he and Laurel protected, and the ones his friends did. And usually, the Green Arrow was quite alright with them. He liked working in a city where there weren’t guns, for one thing. But this? This wasn’t noir affectations where people dressed like this was a Humphrey Bogart film. No, this was barbarism. And he couldn’t let it stand.

But he also knew he couldn’t lose his temper. His anger guided why he did things, why he took the cases he did. It no longer guided how he chose to do things. Tian Ling’s family did not deserve to see the Hood show back up, torturing people and crossing every moral line a person could cross. They needed a detective, an investigator. This case needed to be handled by the book.

But since the case had taken thirty minutes to solve, there was still the anger. And then Oliver saw Detectives Bosworth and Hansen. This was his chance to be the other part of what he was under the hood. It was rare, but now he was going to show these two lazy assholes just coasting until their pension vested what it was like to feel fear in every bone in their body.

He wasn’t going to torture them. At least not physically. That was a thing Waller believed in, and there was no part of him that was ever going to be that man again. But he had learned how to scare people without ever raising a hand in violence. With most skills he had acquired in his life, Laurel had learned them and used them too. But for this? For what he was about to do? Laurel had wanted no part of knowing how to do this.

It was not because she was squeamish. It was, as Oliver remembered her saying, “because this partnership does not need two intimidators. It needs someone who can encourage too. Someone who any young criminal stuck having to go to a gang for family and community can go to without fear of being castigated for it. There are times when a criminal needs to be scared. But there are also times when they need to be helped.”

He really liked that, so he tried to keep that rough perception of him down to a “tell me all the truth you can, and leave nothing out” sense. It had worked on Kreisberg, and Clayborne, and a handful of other idiots whose crimes were as much against morality and the laws of genuine good conduct as they were against a particular statute. And without even having to ask, he knew Bosworth and Hansen fit that benchmark perfectly.

These were people who coasted, who got by with the bare minimum and thought it was good enough. Well it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. If he stood for anything as the Emerald Archer, it was making sure that people knew what the right thing was and that they did it. But he didn’t want to burn them to a crisp, because it wasn’t necessary. No, he was going to show them what it looked like when they were faced with something they probably hadn’t seen since the academy: A superior officer.

He knew for certainty that Laurel was a damned fine better detective than either of these two idiots could have ever thought about being. And since he had trained alongside her, studied from the same masters, he could say he was better than they were. Not like that was a great accomplishment.

But what Oliver wanted now was not for them to admit their inferiority. It would be nice. But it was not what he wanted, or what this needed. What this needed now was for them to realize their own flaws, and work to get better at them. And that would only happen if they were faced with someone who was better at them, and knew it.

And the Jade Samurai knew he could be that man.

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Walking to the two detectives at the eye of this particular storm of bullshit, the Green Arrow spoke. Calmly, carefully, and clearly.

“Gentlemen, the Tian Ling murder has been solved. We know who did it. We know why they did it. And we know who it was. Your sergeant has been told, and he has sent a unit to arrest that man and see him interrogated where he will more than likely deal to save his own skin. And you were nowhere near it. You won’t get credit for the bust, and you won’t get a commendation. Your sergeant knows who you are now, and so do we” the Green Arrow said, ice-cold disgust pouring through every word. Seeing them getting ready to speak, the Jade Samurai took a moment to take one deep breath and then channeled his inner drill sergeant.

“Detectives, do you remember the first time we crossed paths? Because I do. The Black Canary certainly does. You were laughing at a crime scene with seven murdered bodies in front of you. Seven sons. Seven brothers. Seven fathers. Seven people. And you were there. Not canvassing the neighborhood. Not guiding a forensic tech through the scene. Instead, you were laughing. Like this was all a joke. Like death was a joke.” the Green Arrow growled, seeing the Black Canary behind his shoulder with full snarl on.

“That’s not our fault. If Tian Ling….” And at that, the Green Arrow lost it.

“Tian Ling gave his life trying to do the right thing. He gave his life to protect his city from a murderer, and you did nothing to help him. You looked the other way, and sent him out here to die. If you had any sense of honor, you would fall on your sword and take whatever punishment comes your way. But you won’t. You’ll just coast along, because doing the job is less important than living off your pension. So, Detectives, listen to me carefully. This city is ours. It is no longer yours. You serve the people of this city. The next time we have to come by this precinct, we want to see you here doing your job to the letter. Do we have an understanding?” And with that, the Black Canary and Green Arrow turn and leave.

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30 minutes later, back at the Quiver……..

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Even when they closed another case, Dinah Laurel Lance always felt like there was more to do. This wasn’t just about the computer screen up in the Quiver that told them how many cold cases they still had left to clear, plus whatever specialized cases the SCPD was simply under-resourced and under-skilled to handle. It was about the responsibility that she had to her friends, her family, and her city. And that responsibility would only end when her watch did.

So, while she logged in the case file and felt a frisson of relief when another SCPD-issued case number went from open to closed, she began to think about what else here was open. She wasn’t working traffic, or vice. Those units, surprisingly, were staffed by competent officers who weren’t important enough for Tempest to even consider buying them off. So they were out. No, she worked homicides usually. Robberies too, and the sort of things that didn’t end up with the SCPD. Because to believe the city’s police were the only agency incapable of protecting the citizens was a fool’s game.

Changing out of her suit, pouring herself a tall cup of incredibly strong Indonesian coffee, Laurel kept thinking of what she wanted to run next. Between her and Ollie, their list of open case files just kept getting longer. And it wasn’t like they were going to be easy. Sure, the SCPD kept the forensics on file and she was pretty good about reading a crime scene now.

But the longer she waited, the less likely she could coax the truth about the case out of the investigating detectives. And then she saw a text on the screen in one of her gauntlets. The Green Lantern had a lead on her bit of the Lena Luthor thing that was bringing her to National City, and she was asking to meet up to go over the case.

 That was really good news, if she was being honest. When she and Ollie had gone to National City, the Green Lantern had been a cowboy in all the wrong ways. Sure, Alex Danvers liked costuming herself up like she was Marshal Matt Dillon but she also acted like she was the only one who could arrest people. But, by the time she and Ollie had left, it seemed like Alex was beginning to understand what doing the job right entailed.

And then she read the text fully, and the Black Canary could have screamed until her throat bled. Apparently, Eve Teschmacher had not just rolled over but had done so with such enthusiasm that the Green Lantern had more leads than she knew what to do with. And one of those leads was about another Luthor-owned property in Starling City. Under normal circumstances she wouldn’t have cared. But after Mirakuru, and what that had implied Lena Luthor was capable of coming up with, she was never going to ignore anything related to Lena Luthor ever again. It just wouldn’t be prudent.

Imagining the League of Assassins having access to something like Mirakuru kept her up nights, even if her knowledge of it was based nearly entirely on what Ollie had told her. Just from what she had been told, having an entire division of the League with access to Mirakuru was legitimately a terrifying thing. It had to be eliminated. And if that meant having the Green Lantern show up to help her and Ollie stop it, that’s what needed to happen.

But Laurel knew nothing could be that simple. This was Starling City after all, where ghosts popped out of every corner and even the most basic thing turned into a mystery. So, she read the address carefully with a hunch rattling around the back of her mind. 3131 Fontaine Way. Yup, that was right in her mother-in-law’s district.

This, of course, meant that there was another question. Did they want Lena Luthor and the League to know they had been found out? Or did they want this kept quiet? That was an obvious answer. The League wanted to play games. They wanted what they were doing kept quiet. She and Ollie could play by those rules, and still win.

And considering there was a not unrealistic chance that this property might actually be a League safehouse-slash-laboratory for people who would be getting some Mirakuru-infused bloodwork done, the last thing the Songbird of Starling wanted was for this to get out of hand and get public. But they also needed to get Lena Luthor the hell out of Starling City, and get the rest of their friends and allies to start looking for this in their own cities. The idea of League members who might be metahumans suddenly also having Mirakuru-enhanced powers on whatever else Thawne’s particle accelerator gave them was somehow worse than she could have ever imagined.

So, she pulled up the city’s maps and tried to figure out a way in without being spotted. Laurel could admit this was not something she had ever imagined to train for. But this was the world she lived in, and the city she had to defend. Starling City was a place that required craft, cunning, and brainpower. This was a city where everyone knew what telling a lie looked like. And ever since she had gone to National City, it was obvious that there were people well-schooled in the fundamentals of lying there too. Because Lena Luthor was full of shit.

Lena Luthor had made more Mirakuru. Of that, there was no doubt. Talia would have insisted on it, and probably insisted on it at the point of a blade. So whatever this place was, it was most definitely a place where Mirakuru was being synthesized. And that meant it had to be shut down. Safely, of course.

And then she saw Ollie glaring over her shoulder, icy-cold determination radiating off of him, and knew what was going to come next. The League had fucked with him, fucked with her, and fucked with their city. It was time to make a move.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen got the same texts that his wife did, but his reaction was different. For one thing, he already knew how to get in to that building without making any kind of noise. But nothing was quite that simple, so he opened up the mapping software for the Starling City Housing Department and input 3131 Fontaine Way. And as it came up, he could have screamed. Because, why in the FUCK did this have to be an abandoned hospital? Had he not gone through enough shit?

What was more, this building hadn’t been here in the last timeline. Preventing the Undertaking had done a lot of good, but it also had meant that there was far more density in his hometown that there had been last time. It was places he didn’t remember, people he hadn’t interviewed, and cultures he had to learn about on the fly. But it was still his home, different though it was, so he knew what to do.

But that was not unfamiliar. Ever since he put the hood on he knew what to do. Oliver had been taught the value of heroism. Of doing the right thing, the right way, for the right reason. And everyday, he looked over at Laurel and saw the proof of it.

There was no better partner that a man like him could ever dream of having. The Black Canary, in her suit, did things he could have never been capable of no matter how long he trained or how much weight he lifted. For one thing, as a martial artist, she was nearly without equal. Of course, Lady Shiva was better than her. But that was not surprising. Lady Shiva was not a fair comparison to any person he had ever met. She possessed a skill that was, charitably, something approaching godly. Trying to meet that standard was nearly impossible. The mere act of stating you were as close as any human could get was very impressive.

Also, she was a first-rate profiler. With the barest hint of information, Laurel could figure out what somebody needed to have in order to feel comfortable confessing secrets. Watching her break Lena Luthor, with nothing more than a vague understanding of the woman’s megalomania, had been such a wonderful thing that it had taken all of the Green Arrow’s training to not break out in a proud smile on the spot.

And it was those two skills that made him see what she was seeing. She knew, just like he did, that this abandoned hospital would be loaded with League soldiers. She also knew why they had set up here, and what they were guarding. It was the lab, where you could make entire boxes of medical-grade Mirakuru with no one being the wiser. And that meant the centrifuges, the computing systems, and the actual samples would be guarded by the best people Talia had.

It was a trap. That much was damned obvious. A huge hospital, loaded floor-to-ceiling with highly-trained League assassins, was not the thing he would raid if he had a choice. But Oliver knew that he didn’t have the luxury of having a choice. Even if it was a trap, he had to stop more Mirakuru from hitting the streets. The normal version had been bad enough. Imagining what this medical-grade version could do was a nightmare.

This was what he felt himself best at. Planning a siege, because that’s what this would be, had been the sort of thing that Yao Fei, Shado, and Slade had drilled him on. He and Laurel would be going into a place they had never seen, with an opponent they had struggled with intensely the last time, to stop a super-steroid from being mass-produced. And the only ally they could have was a space cop cosplaying as an Old West Sheriff who had a ring that could do whatever her willpower desired. If she could get here in time.

As siege works went, this was going to be pretty bad. But he was not afraid. And that, he knew, was really what the Emerald Archer was supposed to stand for. Not brutality, or vengeance. But being the one who was always a step ahead of the people who wanted to hurt his city. He wanted to be the person who kept his city safe, and if it meant going into an abandoned hospital to fight off an order of killers as old as time itself, he would do it.

And there was something else. Talia was probably going to be here supervising this whole thing. Both he and Laurel had given her a sharp jab to the mouth. Talia wouldn’t respond to it well. If they could catch her again, and give her another one, maybe the Heiress to the Demon could be walked into losing her temper or something else beneficial. Because he really did want to save Tatsu. He remembered, still, what it felt like to wake up the first morning after the Flash gave him his memories back. Instinctually, he had thought to try and find Mia. And then he had remembered. And it had nearly broken him.

Oliver did not know if Tatsu remembered every morning that Akio was gone. It would not surprise him if Talia let Tatsu remember, and then dosed her with the mind-control drugs it was obvious were being used. That was the sort of petty cruelty this version of Talia appeared to go in for. And ending that cruelty, and ending the League in this current form, was its goal.

The annoying thing was that he could not thoroughly end the League. He wanted to, and he knew Laurel did too. But it could not happen. As objectionable as he found it, it needed to exist. Novu had done a lot of things, and pushed him and his friends in a lot of different directions. But he had never, ever, lied. And since there was no doubt in the minds of the people who did remember that a Crisis was coming, having as many defenders ready to protect the world as could exist was never anything he was going to be opposed to. But the League would only ever be counted in that number because they had to be.

Right now, Talia was getting operatives from the world’s clandestine services and dosing them with some protocol of mind-control drugs and steroids. It was disgusting. These were people who deserved proper healthcare and to retire with some dignity, not to be turned into killers and pointed at whatever the Al-Ghul’s wanted to destroy. And with the trappings of being the heirs to Saladin’s holy army, just to make it all the more objectionable.

Well, the Jade Samurai was going to join his Queen of the Fist and they were going to stop Talia Al-Ghul and the League. And they would get started tonight.

60 minutes later, at 3131 Fontaine Way………

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance looked at the tall concrete-and-brick building that was once James Memorial Hospital and felt a growl in her chest. The hospitals in this city were overworked and understaffed. (The realization that she had put more than her fair share of people in the Emergency Room of those hospitals was not lost on her.) When they were done here, she knew what needed to happen. This place needed to be rebuilt, and there needed to be more hospitals built.

This, of course, was a problem that extended far beyond just Starling City. It was an issue everywhere, because for some reason people didn’t particularly show a lot of interest in doing good unless they were forced to. And she and Ollie could be that force.

But those were conversations to be had after. Right now, in the building in front of her, sat an army of professional assassins guarding a super-steroid that could easily make those assassins into nearly undefeatable killers. It couldn’t be countenanced, or allowed. But, Laurel had a problem.

These were not Yakuza foot-soldiers, trained in the forms of karate she had been seeing openings in since she was a white belt. These were not even members of the 12 Brothers of Silk, or any of the other martial arts-adjacent houses of criminality they had confronted. No, this was the League of Assassins. People trained in how to fight hand-to-hand on a level matched only by that of Lady Shiva and Sensei Ricardo, with all the ruthlessness and bloodlust that her teachers had never bothered to instill in any of their students. And, as was becoming increasingly frustratingly clear, this meant they challenged her skills to the utmost.

But Laurel liked the challenge. This, precisely, was the point of all of her training. To take what she had been taught how to do, and use it in service of the right thing, was what she had always wanted to do. And now she could.

The Black Canary knew this wasn’t going to be easy. The first time hadn’t been, and that was more of a recon and fact-finding mission. Now, they were dealing with the guard corps. These were people who were trained to keep people away from things. And judging by the intel they had received, chief on their list of things to guard would have to be the Heiress to the Demon. After last time, it just made sense that Talia Al-Ghul would be here to make sure nothing went off without a hitch.

Last time Talia had confronted both her and Ollie, it had not ended in a way that the Heiress to the Demon would have appreciated. Although whether or not that frustration was about the League losing their high ground on having Mirakuru, or because Laurel had been the one who helped to crack the whole thing wide open, was an open question. And here, at this hospital, it was going to be answered.

But she wasn’t going to do it alone. Of course, Ollie would be here. Talia and Ra’s had disgraced their wedding day by demanding what they had demanded at the wedding reception. It was the height of insult, and she and Ollie had built their entire world both in the suit and out on the bushido code of honor. Refusing to respond to an insult like that, and the threats that explicitly came with it, would be a betrayal of everything they had chosen to stand for.

But it was about more than the motivation. Her husband was also the finest tactical planner and strategist she had ever known. It was why she hated playing chess against him, because he always had moves and countermoves ready for whatever decision she might come up with. And raiding a building like this would be something he wanted to do anyway. Add to that the presence of Mirakuru, and he was truly ready to go to battle with these people. Curtis had already filled up an entire row of drones with refills of arrows, as both he and Ollie really did figure this was going to be like the prison riots all over again. And to be honest, so did Laurel.

The Songbird of Starling held no illusions about how difficult beating the League of Assassins was going to be. They had been here, in this hospital, for lord only knew how long. Setting up siege works, planning traps, all of it. And they were guarding their golden goose.

Mirakuru was the thing. Talia wanted an army all to herself, that was loyal to her. Not even to Ra’s. Just to her. That got Laurel worried. Sure, she knew what Ra’s wanted. He wanted an heir. But what Talia wanted somehow seemed worse.

She wanted to run the League according to her dictates and philosophy, and was obviously more than willing to take grand risks to get there. And there was nothing that was quite as much of a grand risk as Mirakuru. It had to be destroyed, all of it. And this was where it was.

Not for the first time, Laurel understood what needed to be done. So, taking one last deep breath, the Queen of the Fist started the business of doing it.

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First, it was the ambulance bay where Oliver Queen started to notice something. Sure, the people here were wearing League adornments but these were not the people he expected. It felt like they were fighting lower-ranked people than they ought to be. But he couldn’t dwell on it. Instead, he had to keep fighting. So he was. The lucky people just got taser arrows. He didn’t want these people killed, at least by his hand. He wanted them to be arrested, and maybe flipped if a detective who knew what they were doing got a hold of them.

But the unlucky ones could only WISH for being tased. No, these ones got hit with the stuff from the Muay Thai and Lethwei playbooks the Emerald Archer had kept in reserve. Most of the normal people they fought could be dealt with just by using kickboxing techniques, or kung-fu if they were especially hardy. But the League? They needed a full dose of power and aggressiveness. They needed to be reminded what fucking with the Green Arrow looked like.

And the Black Canary was in the mood too. Sure, she didn’t just run people over. But she didn’t have to. She was like a ballerina when she got moving, all grace and otherworldly agility until it seemed like she was floating. And when a strike landed, it landed like it was supposed to. But beneath the beauty, there was a sharpness and a raw power that defied cute descriptors. She hit like someone who was 12 inches taller, and 100 pounds heavier. It was a fascinating thing to watch from the outside, but an impossible puzzle to solve if you had to face it.

Walking into the lobby, seeing more League members, the Green Arrow and Black Canary kept fighting. Even though something felt off, something big, they couldn’t just leave. If they were wrong, if their well-trained instincts were lying to them, the League would have Mirakuru and a medical-quality delivery system. They needed to keep going. Heading into the emergency room, arrows were loosed, kicks and knees were thrown, and bodies dropped.

Going up the stairs, they made it to the ICU and then they saw it. All the TV’s in the ICU flickered with static. Except one. And that one had Talia Al-Ghul’s honeyed and sinister voice on it, while a waiter wearing a tuxedo adorned with a golden dragon walked forward into the main dining hall of Oliver Queen’s restaurant.

(Author’s note: This was said in Arabic.)

“Green Arrow and Black Canary, you took my father’s offer and you spit on it. You took the chance to take a lover of my distinct quality, and you spit on it. You took the offer of mercy from an order of trained killers, and you spit on it. You mistook our promises for threats, and then believed those threats to be bluffs. There will be no more mercy. Now, we will show you. The League will show you that we have always known what your weaknesses were. And we have always been able to strike them.”

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At the Golden Tiger……..

(Moira Queen’s POV)

Moira Dearden Queen had always figured this day was coming. Sure, she had been annoyed Laurel had made an end-run about it by proposing to Oliver at a barbecue joint in leggings and a t-shirt. But she understood that it was just how they did things. She just preferred elegance over whatever that might have been.

But her daughter? She had always understood how a Queen woman was supposed to act and behave, so when Thea had asked if her and Roy could take their mom out for dinner, it was not precisely a feat of investigative brilliance to figure out what was happening. Roy was getting ready to marry into the family, and he wanted to ask for Moira’s approval.

And he would have it. Roy had always been good for Thea. Without his example, she might not have grown so interested in what Queen Consolidated could do for the people of the Glades. She definitely wouldn’t have become a determined and skilled cook, or someone who understood how to be diplomatic and politically adroit while never losing sight of what she couldn’t bend on.

So, she put on her finest Ralph Lauren dress and sat down to have food at her son’s restaurant. Interestingly, she had managed to beat Roy and Thea to the restaurant. But that was fine. Nyssa Raatko, her bodyguard, took personal pride in sniffing around the place and making sure there wasn’t anyone here who didn’t need to be.

As she sat down, she could admit it was nice to be here and be responsible for a great night in her daughter’s life. She wanted her daughter happy, and as she saw Roy and Thea heading to the front door, she knew she was going to have that tonight too.

 But she also wanted tea. As a waiter came over with tea, she vaguely smelled almonds. And as she took her first sip, a coolness came over her.

The world, it seemed, was beginning to disappear. She felt sleepy. Thea and Roy, she could hear them. But it was like they were in a tunnel. She could feel Nyssa, her bodyguard, rushing over asking for an ambulance. With arms that felt heavy, she tried to wave it all off. But she couldn’t. And then she fell.

And Moira knew, with her last thought, her son, her daughter, and her daughter-in-law would avenge her.

Chapter Text

At the Golden Tiger…….

(Detective Rene Ramirez’s POV)

Well, this fucking sucked. Every part of this was terrible, and Rene Ramirez could not figure out which took the lead as being the worst. For one thing, here lay Councilwoman Moira Queen dead. Stone-cold dead. The only thing that made this not terrible was that the coroner, who looked like he had aged 200 years in 15 seconds when he saw this whole thing, was pretty sure the councilwoman had not suffered. That was cold comfort, though, from the shattered look on Thea Queen’s face. Every single time he saw a dead body, he always knew that the next part was the worst. Telling someone that their loved one was dead never, ever, got easier.

And then he had put together it had happened at her son’s restaurant, and he knew somehow it was going to get worse. The image of his mother, dead on the floor of his restaurant, was bad already. Realizing that patrol was taking a waitress downtown who had served the councilwoman her tea was going to be a scandal. From everything he had seen in the press, Oliver Queen took special care in making sure he hired from the parts of the city that had been underserved the most. To tell him that one of those waiters had served the beverage that had killed his mother was not going to be a kindness. More than that, Rene knew how these rich people operated.

He could just see Queen, in a three-piece suit with a waistcoat on, standing in front of the news cameras offering some gargantuan reward for information. It’d be a fucking nightmare. And it wasn’t like Rene could talk him out of it. It would put suspicions on him that no one would really want.

No, they had to run this right. There was no shortage of suspects, and until they got the autopsy done, not nearly enough evidence to get anywhere with any of them.

God this was fucking awful.

(Nyssa Raatko’s POV)

Nyssa Raatko had prided herself on her skill as a bodyguard. No one got a meeting with Moira Queen without being thoroughly checked. But now, as the stretcher came out and took her principal away, she was beginning to think there were more skills that were needed.

She could shoot well-enough as an archer, and could handle herself well enough to be the Black Canary’s sparring partner. But was that enough? She was no longer sure. There had to be more to learn, more to study. But she also knew she could not do it in Starling City. This city, someone in it, had killed her principal. It had killed her friend.

She could not avenge her here. Moira would not want that. Moira would not want blood to be shed in her name. No matter how righteous it would be.

No, she needed to become something better. And she needed Moira’s family to help her do that.

Meanwhile, at the Quiver…….

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

It had been a silent ride back to the Quiver from 3131 Fontaine Way, but that was for the best. Oliver Queen was in no mood to talk to anyone about anything. Because he had been beaten, and it had cost him his mother’s life. It had started with Eve Teschmacher, who had sold the Green Lantern a bill of goods knowing she would pass the tip on. Of course, the tip would have to be run down and acted on. The concept of just letting Mirakuru run rampant on the streets because you weren’t sure if the tip an ex-FBI agent and current space cop had received was legitimate did not seem like a good idea. So, they had run the tip down and found League members waiting in the abandoned hospital. That had been the clue that something was going on there, so there had been no choice but to chase it down.

And then Talia had been the voice in his ear as he watched his mother take her last breaths, knowing he had been powerless to stop it. He had watched one of his waitresses, a person he had personally interviewed alongside his French-trained maître d’, serve his mother the tea that killed her. And now, if the past hour or two was not enough of an insult, he had to carve out an alibi out of whole cloth to avoid being a prime suspect in his own mother’s murder. But luckily for him, he could make one work well. After all, he was also a world-class executive chef.  Walking up the stairs to the ghost kitchen at the front of the warehouse carrying boxes of the halal provisions he had been expected to use, Oliver kept thinking.

But his mind was not focused. And, sadly, he knew why. Mom was gone again, and again he hadn’t been able to do anything about it. He was far more qualified to stop it than he had been before, and yet all he could do was watch it happen impotently. Because he had been trapped, but that wasn’t all.

He hadn’t seen the League as being ruthless enough, being lethal enough, to go after his mother to hurt him. That had been his failing. Under the hood, as he had been just a few hours ago, the Green Arrow was supposed to be as close to omniscient as a mortal man could be. He was always supposed to know what came next, to understand how the worst monsters humanity could produce would think and use that hard-won knowledge to beat them in order to protect the city he loved and called home. And again, with his family on the line, he had failed.

And for the first time since he knew what he was supposed to be doing, he couldn’t think. That was the worst part. He didn’t know what to do. He could feel, really feel, Laurel looking at him and he didn’t know what to do.

And his mom was dead. Suddenly, without meaning to, the weight of that hit. This wasn’t the last timeline, where he had to watch Slade kill her and be powerless to do anything about it. This wasn’t even Earth-2, where an anti-matter wave took everyone from him. No, this was his fault. And before the Jade Samurai could find his emotional control, he broke. He felt the sobs coming and he didn’t care to stop it.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

The Green Arrow never cried. And Dinah Laurel Lance knew why. It was not a thing about him being too proud to express his emotions, nothing like that. When he wasn’t under the hood, he was loving and kind in the best ways. No, it was because the Green Arrow needed to represent a specific thing and that symbol could never be seen crying. He needed to be foreboding, cold, and brilliant. And that couldn’t happen if he was caught sobbing in the field.

But here? Here he could cry. And there was a damned good reason to. His mother was dead. And it wasn’t even down to dying of old age. She had been murdered, and Oliver had been forced to watch.

But as she hugged her husband close to her chest, seeing his broad shoulders and wide back heaving with sobs, she felt like she wanted to cry too. Moira had always been good to her, always treated her like a second daughter. And now she was gone.

And it had been their fault for letting it happen. For one thing, Laurel knew she had blown the profile. The whole time, she had thought that Talia was trying to make an end-run around her father’s rule and influence to get something else. But that wasn’t what had happened. Talia wanted the League of Assassins to be super-powered, and to have Oliver Queen’s heir at the head of it. Those things, it turned out, were not as opposed to each other as she once might have thought.

But there was something worse, something she hadn’t even considered before Talia’s trap. Lena Luthor was in the game more thoroughly than had been previously believed. This was well past a business alliance, because why would just a business alliance require a patsy to send a false lead down the line? No, they were allies. And that meant Supergirl needed to be read into this, and so did the Green Lantern. Hell, Lady Lightning and the Flash needed it too because Hartley Rathaway probably had some skin in this game too.

But how to do it in a way that wouldn’t get the League’s spies buzzing was the problem. Normally, this would be Ollie’s thing. But seeing her husband still trying to compose himself, she knew now was not the right time to ask him to become the Green Arrow again and come up with some perfectly-refined 100-step plan to get their friends in, come up with a strategy, and get them out again without being spotted by the League. No, he was still grieving. This had to be something the Black Canary did.

Sure, she wasn’t used to being the one who came up with the plan. But she knew plenty about how to do it. For one thing, as she saw Ollie run his hands through his hair and put on the shorts and t-shirt he usually wore to bed, wherever they met was going to have to be a place away from prying eyes. And more to the point, a place that could be guaranteed to not have any League-affiliated double agents wandering around the joint. That was not the Golden Tiger, first of all. Not anymore. And maybe, it never had been.

That thought festered, but Laurel knew she couldn’t dwell on it. There was plenty left to do without trying to stick her head into reasonable suspicions about how many sleeper agents of the League existed in her city. No, her first step was figuring out what Talia and Ra’s could have on her friends. Supergirl was obvious, because Lena Luthor wanted nothing more than to make sure the Maiden of Might always hid her light under a bushel. Same thing with Rathaway and Barry and Patty come to think of it. Rathaway wanted to control the Flash and Lady Lightning.

That was, she guessed, what Ra’s wanted. Sure, Talia was the public face of this but Laurel in no way thought that Ra’s wasn’t directing her to do precisely what he wanted done. Sure, she had blown the profile last time but she was sure that her instincts on this were still good. A man like Ra’s, who presented himself as the strategic heir to the great kings of Arabian lore, would not deign to allow anyone to speak for him if he didn’t agree with what they were doing.

So, where to meet her friends and allies? Absconding to Central was out, because it would be the height of gauche for Oliver Queen to leave before his mother’s funeral. There was no alibi in the world strong enough to hold up to that kind of scrutiny, and she knew it. So, it would have to be here. But also not where she was standing right now. Because this would soon become popular for what it was above ground.  It needed to be someplace in Starling City where people wouldn’t go looking. Someplace abandoned.

And then the Songbird of Starling saw it. Mercury Labs had a warehouse in Starling City, a place that they used for storage mostly. It’d work just fine for what they needed. Everyone knew Kara Danvers would be here to cover the funeral of a well-known public figure like Moira Queen, the former CEO of a Fortune 100 company. Barry Allen and Patty Spivot had been seen at his wedding, as had Hank Henshaw and Alex Danvers. It was not ridiculous to imagine they would all show up to support Ollie through a hard time, and if they stayed longer than a day, who could be the wiser.

And then, as if cued, she saw Ollie straighten up to his full height. Sure, his eyes were red because he had been crying. And he looked deliberately exhausted. But that didn’t matter. His mom needed him. One last time, she needed him. Not the terrifying Green Arrow, but the son who was strong enough that he could look into the eyes of a detective with no fear and clever enough to lie his ass off to protect his family.

So, if he was going to be the man his mother wanted, she would be the wife he needed. And that meant going and getting changed. Because Laurel could not meet the SCPD while she was also the Queen of the Fist.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen had spent an entire timeline, an entire life, wracked with guilt over the choices he made and the ones he had refused to make. And in that timeline, the one thing he had always wished to correct was his dealings with one man: Not Merlyn, or Chase, or even Slade. No, it had always been Ra’s. The whole affair had been about him being led around by the nose and being forced to play catch-up. There had been nothing he could do about it.

But now, nearly 6 years on into his second chance? He found it a dark coincidence that here he was again, playing a game of chess against a master such as Ra’s Al-Ghul. And make no mistake, that is who was really playing here. Talia, he knew, was operating on her father’s orders. Sure, she would get her own benefits if the League won the game but she was making the moves her father demanded. And, in accordance with a man who might very well have been there when the first proper playbooks on how to play chess were written, they were playing a very long game.

But Oliver could not call it a game anymore. It had ceased to be that from the moment Ra’s trap closed around him, and he had been forced to see his mother’s death be carried out in front of him in real time. Now, this was something different. Something worse. Now, it was a battle of wits with very real and very serious consequences.

But the question on how to win that battle would come later. Because right now, he was too grief-stricken and heartbroken to think. And this, he knew, his mother would understand.

Mom had never liked that he needed to be the Green Arrow, needed to carry a compound yumi and a yazutsu to protect his city from all the people and things that wished to harm it. But she had always understood why it mattered. The city was the one thing that they both loved, and they tried their best to serve it. After all, as he had heard too many times to count, “The Queen Family stood for leadership”.

And as he thought about what his mother meant by that, and what his family meant to the city, he began to have a much deeper and richer understanding of that sentence than he might have once before. It wasn’t that his mother wanted to be the next mayor, although he doubted that she would have turned it down if some enterprising flack from the party machine had come to ask her about it. No, it was that for her leadership meant serving the people who mattered. Not the rich who thought their money gave them a free pass to the front of the line. Her constituents were what mattered the most to her.

And in a few short days, when his family laid her to rest, Oliver knew the church would be full of those constituents. People she helped with all of her charm and grace. People who loved her. Just like he did. But how to honor her?

And then he knew. He knew what his mom would have wanted him to do. She would have wanted who was ever behind her murder to pay for their crimes, but humanely and with mercy. She had not raised an avenger, and would not countenance the crossing of lines in her name. But she would not be opposed to a little subterfuge.

Right then, the Emerald Archer knew what he was going to do. For one thing, even though he had never quite felt this low ever in his entire life, he knew he needed a little bit of fun to not make himself any more miserable. And to be quite honest, he could think of nothing more fun than playing a game of three-card monte with Rene Ramirez and Tina Boland.

One of the things Oliver figured no one outside of his allies and Laurel thought about, but would become very interested in if they ever did, was that he knew every single detective roster for every precinct house in Starling City. And he kept up on who got promoted from traffic, the railroads, or any of the smaller units into the ones that he knew who were riven through with dirty cops. That, making sure the working people in Starling City had a voice, was always the point. Making sure the people with badges and guns understood the power of that voice was also a good thing.

And while he had met them well enough to know they cared about some of it, this would be the big test. Because this wasn’t just a murder. This was an assassination too. Sure, he and Laurel knew that’s not why this had gone on. But the SCPD didn’t know that, and he doubted very much now would be a good time to explain it. No, Rene and Tina had come here to do a check of his alibi. And they’d ask if he knew anyone who wanted his mother dead, above and beyond the general white noise of people saying they could kick her ass in an election or not liking her votes on a particular issue. It was all very routine, all very best practices, and he hated having to be involved with it.

Because to be involved with it meant his mother was dead. Again. Slade had killed her to try and bring more suffering to Oliver’s life. The anti-matter wave on Earth 2 had been the proof he needed to see that the Anti-Monitor was a real threat, and not just something Novu made up to get a willing soldier. This time, though? This time, the League had decided to make an example of her. Because he hadn’t wanted to be a stud farm for Talia and Ra’s.

No, he’d get them back for this. But with wisdom, and care. Not with anger. Never again with anger. But before he could get them back, the Jade Samurai had to survive his interrogation.

(Tina Boland’s POV)

Detective Tina Boland knew, without being asked, that she was going to be the one who talked to Oliver Queen and his wife. It wasn’t just that Rene had no bedside matter, it was that he would also know just the wrong kind of question to ask. This was the son of a sitting City Councilwoman who had been the CEO of one of the city’s most well-known companies before that. And his wife was one of the Sarge’s daughters. To say that this was going to be the kind of thing that got a lot of attention was an insult.

 And the very best way to get the Sarge’s heart acting up, and a bunch of assholes in suits remembering the First Precinct existed, was to have one of his most senior detectives acting like an insensitive asshole to his son-in-law and his own daughter. No, this had to be played right. Because this murder wasn’t just a murder.

In a legal sense, it was an assassination. Which meant that there would be a casefile of possible suspects an inch high by the time she and Rene got back to the house, and she really didn’t think the city’s most well-known couple would have anything to do with it. But she still did need to ask.

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Walking into the front door of the warehouse, Tina Boland and Rene Ramirez were taken aback by the rich smells in the warehouse. And then, Rene figured out why. The entire place was a food haven. And right in front of them was Oliver Queen.

And he looked like he had just been told. But that wasn’t a surprise. The idea that your mother would drop dead in your restaurant and you wouldn’t know was an insult to common sense. But they still had to ask.

“Mr. Queen, I’m Detective Boland and this is my partner Det. Ramirez” Tina said, noticing that Oliver was focusing perfectly on them even with his eyes red like he had just gotten through crying.

“Thank you. I know you’re just doing your job, but to be honest, I don’t want you here. It’s nothing personal, but any time a detective shows up after what’s happened tonight it’s to ask the kind of questions I really wish I didn’t have to answer” Oliver said, thickness and sorrow in his voice.

“I understand, Mr. Queen. But what I do need to know is why you weren’t at your restaurant tonight. Did you not know what your sister was planning?” Rene Ramirez said, trying to keep the suspicion out of his voice. But it was weird. And he could admit it was weird. But for right now, unless they hit the weird Triple Crown, it could be easily explained.

“I knew, vaguely, what my sister had planned. I’ve grown close to Roy Harper, and have already vetted him personally to make sure he’s a good match for my sister. But I knew this was a time for them and them alone, so I took advantage of the fact that I don’t have to be behind the line every night to work on some new recipes here at my private prep kitchen. My family’s happiness matters to me, Detective Ramirez, and Thea would not have been happy to have her big brother there for what was supposed to be a surprise for her mother” Oliver said, and with that there was really nothing left to ask.

“Thank you, Mr. Queen. If we have any more questions, we can meet you here or at the Queen estate?” Det. Boland asked, and Oliver nodded his head as the detectives took their leave.

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

 As Dets. Boland and Ramirez took their leave, Dinah Laurel Lance sighed as she felt the smallest source of her stress leave her. The day her husband, or her for that matter, couldn’t snow two cops was the day both of them needed to retire. Continuing to force themselves into their suits past the day they had slipped that bad was not a humble piece of self-sacrifice for a city that needed them. It would be ego, plain and simple, and she never wanted that for herself or for Ollie.

But what stress was left for her was another thing. For one thing, looking at Oliver, she could tell the grief of what had happened had not yet hit him. He had played like it had, of course, but that was a gambit to get the cops to stop asking questions. And that meant she was concerned he would lose his emotional control out in the field. And that could really be a problem. The Green Arrow’s mystique was about the idea that he was harshly direct with the criminals he saw in the world. He ran on fifth gear all the time, and never let anyone who needed to be in his sight out of it. But if you were a working man, someone who put in a hard shift anywhere, you never had anything to fear from him. This city hummed best at night, and the people who kept it running needed to know they never needed to see their protectors menacing anyone other than those who tried to do harm.

But tonight, Laurel knew her husband would be mourning. And with that grief would come a hurricane of emotion that would hit him like a tidal wave. She was not yet sure what that wave would do to Ollie’s finely honed emotional control, but she did not wish to know the answer. But she also knew he would not want to sit in the Quiver, grieving and powerless. Being here with nothing but his thoughts would make him spiral. So, not for the first time, she looked at her husband not with the caring and supportive eyes of a lover but with the careful and expert eyes of a profiler and a trainer.

 For one thing, she could see his hands weren’t active. It was perhaps a strange thing to notice, but when Ollie was sharp and locked in, he constantly took notes on everything from new compounds for his arrowheads to theories on open cases he had been stuck on. Hell, he would occasionally go and find one of the striking dummies and run through some lower-belt striking drills just to clear his head. But not now. Now, he was just sitting with his hands steepled together in monk-like silence.

And then the Black Canary saw his eyes and she really knew. The Green Arrow had eyes that analyzed every centimeter of every room, and every person in it, like he was studying a textbook. It was how he knew who he needed to caution, who to intimidate, and who he needed to let her take the lead on because they needed a softer touch than he could provide. But now, he was just gazing off into the distance with no real passion or vigor in his eyes.

And thus, the decision had been made. Her husband was mourning, and she would mourn with him. She could not imagine being the sort of person who could see the person they loved dearly suffering, and leave them to suffer alone because of a ‘mission’. Especially since she loved Moira too.

Sure, she knew the Queen family matriarch had never been comfortable with the idea of so much of her family being tied up with vigilantism. But she never condemned her children for it, or asked them to stop. What she did do, though, was noble. She simply asked them to be the best at it that they could be. After all, the Queen family name meant the world to Moira. Even if it could never be revealed outside of a chosen few, it would have still been important that the Queen family name stood for excellence and leadership. And, as long as anyone in this place had anything to say about it, it always would.

But Laurel was also skilled enough in how to read the only man she had ever contemplated loving outside of her father that she could see something else in there with the mourning. Frustration. And she accepted that too. Because she knew she had blown the profile, just like Ollie had come up with the right solution to the wrong problem. And if there was going to be a victory over the League, they needed to figure out what had went wrong and what it meant.

And that meant bringing in the other person from this family who had suffered. Thea. Her suffering was more direct, more in the moment. Because it had been her plans to propose to Roy that would always be tinged with a nightmarish reminder. And considering Thea’s Persian flaw had always been her temper, the idea of Artemis rampaging around the Glades wracked with grief was not something she needed to be doing. Tonight could not be a night where the heroes of the city could be seen at anything less than their best.

And then, the Songbird of Starling heard thunder off in the distance and couldn’t help but smile. Not because she was unused to the sound of thunder or lightning. After all, she called home a city where every night seemingly included rain, thunder, and lightning. But, ever since she had stood on the Starling City docks, she had always remembered one specific sound of thunder. It had been the one that sent her to Lady Shiva’s monastery where her life had been changed. The one who had been there whenever she needed a friend to get advice from, or an ally to listen to.

But right now, Laurel knew Ollie needed the Flash much more than she did. She knew he lived a whole other life, and had suffered losses in the course of that life. But she also knew there were secrets from that life he could never confess, failures that he only would be ok with mentioning to someone who had lived the same life. Because she knew he wasn’t trusting himself right now. He had misjudged what Talia would do, not planned for his mom to have the appropriate kind of security, and now Moira Queen was dead as a result of those misjudgments.

That was, of course, an oversimplification of what happened. But Ollie would not see it that way. And he would need someone with some distance on it to ensure that the truth of what had actually gone on would be seen.

So, as Barry Allen and Patty Spivot sped in with trails of gold and wine-colored lightning behind them respectively, she smiled. But then she saw J’onn J’onzz, and Kara and Alex Danvers, and the Queen of the Fist could admit to being confused.

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“We heard. All of us did. And we knew you’d need us, because this League business has gone on long enough” J’onn J’onzz said, and even a grieving Oliver Queen started to perk up. Both because he knew that the way J’onn said business was as close to profanity as the Martian Manhunter would ever utter, and because he genuinely had never expected to see all of his friends come to see him in his darkest hour. He had been beating himself up over this, wondering what he had missed, and to see his friends come to help him felt good.

“The only ones here who haven’t dealt with them directly are Barry and myself, and we were thinking we probably have and just haven’t realized it.” Patty Spivot said, pulling in in a haze of wine-colored lightning as Laurel looked on impressed at the maturity of the speed of the Fastest Woman Alive.

“So tell us everything that went on, and we’ll figure out a way to clean the League up once and for all” Alex Danvers said, hanging her power ring around her neck. Once she said that, Laurel knew it was time to explain the rest of it to the few people who didn’t know.

“You’re right, Green Lantern. This does include all of us. It started here, at the reception for our wedding, when Ra’s and Talia Al-Ghul asked us to accept an offer. That offer was to let Oliver sleep with Talia in order to produce an heir for the League of Assassins. We rejected this offer out of hand, even as we knew what would happen when we said no to the League. They responded with the brutal murder of seven members of the local Triad cell. And then National City became involved” Laurel said, nodding as the Green Lantern took their lead.

“Yes. Lena Luthor, on the apparent advice of Talia Al-Ghul, deputized her COO Samantha Arias to orchestrate a kidnapping of the well-known businessman Ted Kord. The former brought the Green Arrow and Black Canary to my city, because they believed they could trail Lena Luthor’s personal assistant Eve Teschmacher to where Lena Luthor lived and then question her about her role in Ted Kord’s kidnapping. In the course of that meeting, they discovered my reason for being interested in Eve Teschmacher. Namely, Ms. Luthor owns a spirits company called Merlin Spirits. It is clear that there is no relation to the domestic terrorist Malcolm Merlyn, but rather a poor allusion to the magician of Arthurian legend. Those spirits were sold exclusively to the alien bars in National City, even though they are so powerful that it is lethal to human and alien physiology alike. Three aliens, in fact, have already lost their lives as a result. This was not a thing they were initially concerned with, but it soon became obvious that Lena Luthor needed to be interviewed about what she told Samantha Arias to do and also what Eve Teschmacher had done. In the course of entering Ms. Luthor’s house, we discovered that Lena Luthor was producing a serum called Mirakuru. <Barry and Patty whistle lowly at that bit. They remember the Mirakuru problem, and knowing it’s back in the world is a very dangerous thing.> According to the Green Arrow, Mirakuru is an injectable liquid steroid that drastically increases the strength, speed, and durability of the taker. This was made under Lena Luthor’s direct watch. Knowing she was in trouble, Eve Teschmacher surrendered herself to the Green Lantern Corps. She then further confessed to the knowledge of a lab making Mirakuru” Alex Danvers said, proving her words as her ring began to show HD-quality footage of Eve Teschmacher’s interrogation. Meanwhile, the Emerald Archer blinked once, wiped a stray tear from his eye that everyone pretended they never saw, and finished the debriefing in the manner that everyone expected from him.

“Because that briefing told us where it was, namely an abandoned hospital, we went there and found a League of Assassins trap. But it was subterfuge. It was designed to pull us far enough away from the city that we could not reach my restaurant in time to provide the cure for when a League sleeper agent poisoned my mother with a fatal dose of poison” the Green Arrow said, and everyone catches what he’s not saying: He and Laurel have been checkmated. The world’s greatest strategic and tactical thinkers, the best martial artists and profilers, are asking their friends for help.

“We’ll stop them. All of us together.” The Flash says, and everyone agrees.

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen knew his life was different now than what it had been before. On balance, that had been a good thing. Less direct trauma and loss, and he had Laurel by his side all the time to help him through the dark places. But he was beginning to realize the best benefit, and it came while he was still in the middle of grief he never imagined he would feel again. He had friends now. Unlike last time, where Earth-38 Lois Lane called him a jerk sight-unseen, he was respected by allies. People he had worked with, and trusted, were willingly coming to him in his darkest moment and offering him their help. And make no mistake, he and Laurel needed it.

This was the sort of thing he would admit to Laurel in private moments, when it was just them, but he had blown the tactics for the hospital raid something terrible. He should have figured it was a trap from the moment the forces they had fought were far easier than they should have been. But since he hadn’t, he had led himself and Laurel right into the heart of Talia Al-Ghul’s gambit. But that made him realize something. Something he should have known, but had not internalized until precisely this moment.

The League of Assassins had made a choice to present themselves as far less technologically sophisticated than they actually were, and he and Laurel had bought it lock, stock, and barrel. He had no doubt, for instance, that the hotel had been thoroughly wired for audio and visual study by some cell of the League for precisely the purpose of determining how their enemies moved. Everything from how Laurel planted her feet for one of her incredibly powerful kicks or how he drew and aimed his compound yumi was being studied at this very moment. Of this he was absolutely certain. 

But as he sat and meditated, trying to find a way to experience the grief without letting it overwhelm him, the Green Arrow began to orchestrate a plan. For one thing, he knew how the Black Canary had been trained. Sure, she could plant her feet and throw bombs if that was what was needed. But she thrived on distance control, constant movement, creating odd angles from which to strike, and the best footwork he had ever seen from anyone ever. Talia could send a generation of well-trained martial artists after his wife, and they would never be able to solve her defense before she knocked them all into another state of consciousness.

For the other, his friends were helping him solve the problems Talia had put at his front door. Barry and Patty were checking the chemical signature of Mirakuru, Kara was making calls to sources to out Lena Luthor’s role in a kidnapping and murder conspiracy, and Alex was getting the autopsy of his mom sent over by using the Green Lantern Corps name to imply that it was a part of an ongoing investigation. Hell, Laurel was watching the security tape of the Golden Tiger’s dining room to see if she could spot anything special or particular about the waiter who had served his mother.

Everyone here was working. And it made Oliver proud to realize it took five people to get done all the things he and Laurel did just by themselves. But it wasn’t six. Because J’onn J’onzz was watching him as he meditated. He could feel him, without opening his eyes. And honestly, if he was going to have a minder, he couldn’t genuinely think of anyone better to do it than the Martian Manhunter.

He hadn’t spent a lot of time with J’onn, outside of getting his help with a profile here and there, until the National City business with the Green Lantern and Lena Luthor. It had been then, when J’onn had shown up, that he truly understood who he was. For one thing, he was the kind of deeply honorable father figure he wished he had been able to find on the island. Slade came close, and honestly he wouldn’t mind seeing his blood brother interact with J’onn, but there was always that undertone of being an ex-spy in how the man interacted with the world. J’onn had none of that baggage. He was a man of superlative honor. You could just tell.

 For the other, you didn’t lie to J’onn J’onzz. He didn’t know how it worked with the absolute psychopaths he dealt with in his past life in the FBI, but J’onn radiated such a powerful aura of respect and dignity that lying to him felt like stabbing your grandfather. It was blatantly unnecessary.

So when the Emerald Archer felt the Last Son of Mars reach out for his hand, he knew they were going somewhere. Somewhere away from his friends. And as they headed back up into the ghost kitchen, he was beginning to get the sense he knew what J’onn was thinking. It was nice to be understood.

Oliver knew he had a reputation to keep up with his friends. And he knew J’onn knew it too. Right now, everyone down there knew he was mourning. They could see it. But he didn’t want to talk about it around them. He didn’t want to talk about it at all, but he knew that wasn’t an option. If you make yourself the paragon of accountability, it is the height of disrespect to then deny others the chance to hold you to the standards you hold the world to.

And then he heard the familiar sound of his electric stove being turned on. It had been a thing that was important to him, to make sure J’onn and all his friends had a place to come if they were ever in need of it. And since that was true, he wanted it to be a place where fire existed sparingly. Sure, the forges in the Quiver ran on gas but he needed that to create the carbon-fiber of his arrow shafts and the chemical compounds that went in his arrowheads. Up here didn’t.  

And then he smelled the familiar smell of Chinese cinnamon, and then black Sichuan peppercorns. J’onn was making chili oil. And those smells, just those smells, brought up a raft full of good memories. So, the Jade Samurai started talking.

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“She knew. Even before I said I was going to do it, even before I put my first arrow in my yazutsu, she knew. And all that mattered to my mom was that I was the best I could be at it. She bankrolled all of this, every thing you see here. Because she wanted me to be the best I could be. When I told her I was going to culinary school, she just asked if I was going to work hard. My mom loved being a Queen, and she pushed us to understand what that meant” Oliver said, his eyes half-closed as he saw the Martian Manhunter fill a squeeze bottle with the chili oil.

“What would she want you to do now, Mr. Queen?”  J’onn said, sitting down next to the Green Arrow.

“She’d want me to bring her killers to justice, just like a Queen was supposed to. She’d never want me to embarrass the family name, and that means always conducting myself with honor” Oliver says, his voice slowly adding the gravel and intensity of the Jade Samurai.

“What else?” J’onn said kindly, sitting down next to his friend.

“She’d want me to protect other people, too. She would want me to work as hard as I can to make sure everyone in this city knows what it’s like to have someone look out for them” Oliver says, feeling his purpose return. And then he saw his baby sister, and knew what else he had to do.

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(Thea Queen’s POV)

 Thea Dearden Queen had come here on autopilot. She had been interviewed by a detective, that tall woman named Tina Boland, and that had been the last thing she remembered. It had all been a haze, until she saw Ollie. Right then, she knew she needed her big brother. Mom was gone. It all had happened so fast, but that was the one thing screaming at the top of her lungs: Mom was gone.

And she didn’t know who else to talk to about it. Roy was good, but she could tell he was just as shocked as she was. No, she needed Ollie. He had seen death before, on that island. He had to have. More than that, he was always good at knowing just what to say. And she needed that too.

But when she walked into the base, and saw Oliver with his head down and J’onn J’onzz by his side, she realized he was just as shattered as she was. Right then, J’onn left which Thea really did appreciate. Because this needed to be just for them.

They were Mom’s first. Before she was the head of a multinational business conglomerate, and before she became a city councilwoman with designs on running for mayor someday, she was still the matriarch of the Queen family. It had been Mom, even more so than Ollie, who Thea had gone to with advice and questions. Now, because of the choices Mom had made her kids strong enough to make, she was gone.

Soon, there’d be a public statement from the Board of Directors. And right after that, there’d be lawyers talking about what came next. But for right now, this needed to be just her and Ollie.

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“I couldn’t stop it.” As an opening line, Thea knew it was a big one. But it was true. She was outside the restaurant when it happened, and had never wished to have super-speed more than at that precise moment.

“Neither could I, Speedy. Neither could I. It was the League punishing all of us for me saying no to Ra’s demand. Mom was innocent. But Ra’s and Talia knew they could hurt me, and hurt you, by taking Mom from us. What they don’t know is how Mom raised us. Ra’s and Talia came to our home, and disrespected our family name and legacy. Do you think Mom would let that stand?” Ollie said, hugging his sister tightly.

“No she wouldn’t, Ollie. She’d want us to be Queens.” Thea said, and without even having to quote her, Ollie and Thea both finished the sentence.

“And the Queen family stands for leadership”.

It wasn’t a long conversation, because it didn’t need to be. Mom would have wanted them to lead, to set the tone. And Thea knew that her and Ollie were going to do what their mom wanted.

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

As she saw a sad Thea Queen and a focused Oliver Queen heading down into the bunker, Dinah Laurel Lance let her mind return her to the first week after the news hit that Ollie’s boat had capsized in the Yellow Sea. It had been heartbreaking to hear it, and she had been a teary mess.  Even though she remembered the man of lightning telling her Oliver would come back, she did not think his boat would capsize. Weirdly, the first thing that had worked had been Lady Shiva seeing her. With her typical coldness, Lady Shiva had grabbed her by the arm and pointed her to a mango tree before delivering a lesson that had stuck with her for the five years she had been training at Lady Shiva’s school.

“Grief is a human emotion. In my school, while you are here, you are not human. Kick the tree.” And weirdly, that had worked. This was why her kickpads were still on, and her custom-made mouthpiece was in her mouth. It was the sort of thing she would always do whenever her anger at the city’s politicians got too much for her to deal with, even if it meant a completely understanding Ted Grant had to fly in professional kickboxers to get her the release she might need. So she understood if that was what Thea needed.

But, as she understood, their circumstances were quite different. Thea was not in the Indonesian forests learning how to become what the love of her life needed to become, all while the love of her life was suffering through 5 years of pain and torment on an uninhabited but militarily key island off of the Korean peninsula. Thea had just lost her mother to a poisoning courtesy of an ancient cult of Islamist assassins who had done it to try and force her brother into giving up his sperm to create the next leader of said cult.

It was a lot to process.  And it would be even harder if, by some miracle, Thea’s Persian flaw did not reveal itself at this precise time. She loved her sister-in-law, and her student, to the nth degree. But even Laurel could admit that Thea had a problem with her temper. To imagine her losing her temper was not precisely a Holmesian leap of intellectual derring-do. So, if it helped her to keep her emotions under control, sparring would be what had had to happen down here.

But the Black Canary could let that happen when it needed to. For right now, she needed to be one of the people working to avenge Moira Queen. There was a clue here in this tape. She was sure of it. But it would not be obvious. That, doing things in plain sight and without subtlety, was the province of far less cunning criminals than what she was up against now. No, the League had proven itself as a dangerous outfit a while ago. But that danger had only seemed martial. Now, she was beginning to think, soft-playing all that they could do might have been the point.

They were skilled enough in tactics and negotiations to create a business alliance with Lena Luthor, and understanding enough of science to get a pharmaceutical-grade variant of Mirakuru made and shipped to their safehouses not just in Starling City but worldwide. And now, she knew the last thing they were capable of doing: Being cunning and ruthless enough to kill an innocent woman merely because of who her son was, while making it seem to be nothing but an accident. This would have to be the work of someone with the resources to acquire everything they might need to pull a play like this off, and the patience to wait until just the right moment to unleash it.

No, these were people who had spent their whole lives relying on the idea no one was smart enough to keep up with them. And, up until now, she was beginning to realize they had been right. But Laurel was unafraid, and she knew Ollie was too. Because while the League was running smart tactics, they were also quite arrogant. And that meant that they would leave clues, and not realize they were doing it.

Clues, for instance, like the fact that the waitress who had served Moira Queen had a complete Egyptian ankh on her deltoid. Stopping the tape to pull the image of the tattoo against all the footage taken from her and Ollie’s body cameras, she noticed something. She was the only League member with any kind of visible ink at all. Which meant their waitress had not lived a wholly pious life before her conversion.

Could she be turned? Possibly. Perhaps the League did not dose their agents with the same highly-potent mind-control compounds that they did for their assassins. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more that made sense. This was an ancient order of professionally trained killers, and increasingly an all-female one. They needed different things from different strata of that order. For the killers, they needed loyalty, ruthlessness, and skill with a blade, a bow, and their bare hands. But for the sleeper agents?

The Songbird of Starling knew those were the pawns, the people who needed to be charming public faces of an operation that existed to soak the world in death. And when they were done being useful, when they were made or apprehended, that was the end of them. Someone, some other agent, would eliminate that loose end to prevent anything from being discovered about how the League operated. She knew this.

And then she felt Ollie over her shoulder. Without even looking behind her, she reached out for his hand and squeezed it. It had been too long since she had touched him, and that was not a thing she liked having happened. Just being there, in each other’s presence, made her feel complete in the best way she knew. But she also knew he needed his space, needed his time to come to grips with what happened.

The last thing she wanted was to force him to talk before he was ready. It would be at his pace, and in his way, that he grieved. Trying to change that, trying to force something out of him that was not there, would not be a kindness. And there was nothing more important to Laurel than being kind to the man she loved.

So she would be here, holding his hand, as she felt the man she considered to be the World’s Greatest Detective come back online. Was he back to himself all the way yet? There was no way to know. But what she did know is that she needed his well-schooled eyes on what was in front of her, seeing what her life experience left her blind to.

Ollie had lived a less pure life before he returned to Starling City than she had. He had been trained how to think by spies and double agents, people who had grown used to suspicion and needing to stay a step ahead of even the most mundane eventuality. That meant he had real-world experience with the sort of dark tactics she never would have even contemplated existing, much less needing to know. So as she saw him looking at the video she had studied, she knew what Ollie would see.

And then the Queen of the Fist heard the Jade Samurai’s sharp intake of breath and his even sharper grunt, and knew. This was going to be bad.

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“This is the waitress, Pretty Bird?” the Green Arrow said, his eyes cold and focused as he begins to analyze the footage.

“Yeah it is. It took me a while, but I found her” Laurel said, unsure why he’s asking an obvious question.

“Pretty Bird, if I were Ra’s Al-Ghul and I had a sleeper agent who did what I asked them to do, what would I do with that sleeper agent now that my need for them was at an end?” the Green Arrow said, quickly putting his suit on and grabbing his compound yumi and his yazutsu even as he finished asking the question.

“Oh that’s easy. You’d…. FUCK” the Black Canary said, before she was sped over to her suit and back again by Lady Lightning. Wiggling her fingers, feeling her escrima sticks in their scabbards, Laurel headed towards their motorcycle bay and started up her Aprilia. They had to be in a hurry. But not so fast that Ollie couldn’t say something to his little sister.

“I have to get answers about how Mom was killed. But as soon as I’m back, I’m here for anything you need” Oliver said, warmth in his voice that you might not normally expect from the Green Arrow.

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen could admit to not really wanting to go and rescue the waitress who played some part in killing his mother. A larger part of him than he would admit to respecting wouldn’t mind if she died. But that could not be the way he lived, or the way he chose to act. For one thing, he valued life. Everyone’s life. No matter how good it might feel, he would never drop another body ever again. There might be more vengeful heroes who could handle it, who could cross that line and sleep at night. He knew himself well enough to realize that he no longer was that person.

For the other thing, he needed information a hell of a lot more than he needed to read another dry and impersonal autopsy report. That, after all, was the currency of any investigation worth a damn. So that meant he wanted to find out how deep the League had their tentacles in his restaurant. He served the city at the Golden Tiger, and the thought that the League had infiltrated the place just made him disgusted with them. If it was just a waitress, he’d be having words with his head waiter about not properly ensuring the people he hired were given the thorough background checks everyone in the back of house had gotten. But if it was more?

Well, he’d be really pissed off. More so than he was now, to be honest. And to continue that streak of honesty, he hoped the League would be at the King County correctional facility when he and Laurel got there. Because, as he saw his wife climb on her motorcycle just as he got on his, he knew what she wanted without ever having to hear her say the words.

Laurel wanted a fight. Sure, people knew the Black Canary as easy with a smile, a warm comment, or even a joke when it was appropriate. But in her soul, she was a fighter. She fought beautifully, with grace and movement that made watching her like watching a ballerina with knives for hands and surgical-quality scalpels for legs. She was not about power, not in the way people tend to think of it. Sure, one of her high kicks could have stopped Supergirl if it landed on the button (and if Supergirl was in a red sun room). But her power came from timing, laser-perfect placement, and the kind of movement that made you never see the kick until it landed right on your jaw. And that meant she had the skill to never really need to put the hammer down. When you were a flawless technician, brawling like you were a four-round opening fighter at some smoke-filled nightclub somewhere didn’t really serve what you could do best.

But sometimes, Laurel just wanted to use every technique she knew. And tonight appeared to be one of those times. Because tonight, in a correctional facility that should have the ability to protect a murder suspect from being killed, they were going to have to fight like hell to keep someone alive. Again.

Ever since this had begun, the Green Arrow had known this was a thing that was his province. Sure, he hoped the SCPD could carry 95% of the weight of the sort of people who came to Starling City looking for this trouble. But the League was a leading example of that 5%, and he knew it. No officer, no matter how qualified or well-trained, could hold the line against the League of Assassins if they wanted someone dead. And make no mistake, he knew they were going to want this woman dead.

But, and this he was unsure how to feel about, he also felt a strong and primal pull of raw anger. The League had orchestrated his mother’s killing, and made him and Laurel watch it while his sister was powerless to stop it. But that was not even the most galling part of it. The worst was the very real idea that Talia Al-Ghul, and Ra’s for that matter, still saw this as a chess game. This was not a fucking game. Nowhere close.

This was real-life. Eight people were dead because of what the League had done since they had arrived. And lord only knew how many were in further danger of being harmed because of the Mirakuru Talia had chosen to make, with Lena Luthor’s help all the way down. Simply put, in the most basic terms, people were suffering great injury because of what Talia and Ra’s Al-Ghul were willing to do in order to make sure that he and Laurel did what the League wanted to do. And they were treating it all like something they’d be doing in between stays at a villa in the Middle East.

So, as he opened up the digital screen on one of the gauntlets in his suit to try and find the quickest way to get where they needed to, Oliver could feel himself wanting to do nothing more than to shatter the chessboard into tiny little pieces. But he knew that was just foolhardy anger talking. Losing control of himself meant he would walk into more traps, and what that meant for his city was not something he wanted to contemplate any longer than he might have to. No, to beat the League, he had to make aggressive moves. And right now, that meant saving someone’s life.

This decision, in particular, was about honor. The Emerald Archer and the Songbird of Starling’s. Because letting a person die when you could save them, and when you should save them, was the height of the kind of dishonorable conduct he never wanted to engage in. And since this decision was also about making sure the people who killed his mother paid for it, he also wanted to do things in a way she would be proud of. He knew what that was. Without even having to think about it, he knew precisely what that was.

Oliver knew his mom had always liked that he, and Laurel too, used their minds as much as they used their fists. She was prouder of the fact that he had gone out there and told the city that they needed to redouble their efforts to educate the children, and that that was truly the best way to make it so that he would someday never be needed. So, he would use his brainpower and his education to beat the monsters who killed her.

And then he heard the familiar crackling noise of lightning and turned around to hear the voice of his closest friend that wasn’t his wife.

(Barry Allen’s POV)

The Fastest Man Alive had not come to Starling City for shared purpose. The League had not publicly made themselves known in Central City yet, although he was confident they might. And he had not come here for vengeance. (As he had long ago learned, being angry slowed him down. Literally.)

No, Barry Allen was here because his friend was grieving and he could think of nothing else better to do than to console his friend. Sure, he knew Ollie wasn’t one for hugs. The Green Arrow’s skills and abilities had expanded far beyond what they had been last time, but the man was still the same. And that man was not a huge fan of tactile love.

But that was ok. Because over the years he had known the man, he had come to understand there were other ways to show Oliver you cared. And this was one of them.

“Ollie, what do you need from me and Patty?”

Chapter Text

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oliver Queen had never been quite so happy. Sure, at this point happiness was relative. But the point still stood. He felt good about how things were going now, in a way he hadn’t at the start of this whole thing. For one, he had clarity. He knew now how to beat the League, how to drive them from his city in a way he hadn’t known when his anger clouded his judgment. To be sure, there was going to be no kindness shown to any of the trained killers who showed up in his city looking for trouble.

He would meet them all at the door and he would break their bones. Because this had gone on long enough. But his mother, he knew, would have understood that. Some people you simply cannot treat with compassion. And the League had already pushed him as far as he was going to be pushed. So tonight he was going to show them all the things that made Ra’s Al-Ghul want him, and then tell the last League soldier standing to tell Ra’s to go fuck himself. Because this was going to end.

Not tonight, of course. That was optimistic but foolhardy. And besides, he was damned sure the people he needed to convince weren’t even here. Sure, Ra’s had called it and Talia had made sure it happened. But you could make sure a thing like this was enforced from anywhere with an above-average Wi-Fi connection. They would not be in Starling City, where they could be grabbed up and made to surrender.

But their minions would be. And that was the other thing that made him very happy. Unlike last time, Oliver had friends who understood his mission. They got why it mattered, and wouldn’t judge him for his approach to it. And right now, with an ancient and well-powered order of trained killers on his back, the last thing he needed was to not be understood.

He knew how Laurel, who was by his side listening and watching carefully, would always get the way they needed to do this. She had been a fellow student through everything they had learned together, and it had been her who had stood up for him at the Golden Dragon when he was too shocked to function. So she understood what he needed to do, and how it needed to happen. He didn’t even have to say a word to her about it, which he appreciated.

And honestly, he didn’t have to say it to Barry too. With just a glance, and a raised eyebrow, the Flash picked up what the Green Arrow was putting down. But still, he respected the Scarlet Speedster enough to actually say it.

“There was a suspect, Barry. Laurel and I are going to save her, and then interview her. Tell Alex to call over to Quentin to get her moved to a secure location, and then have her show up with a warrant from the Green Lantern Corps. If we’re lucky, the League hasn’t taken care of their last loose end. And for anything else you might be able to say about the SCPD, they do act right if another government agency is coming for a prisoner. But if we’re not, we need the body secured.”

“But what can Kara, J’onn, Patty, and I do?” Barry asked earnestly, and right then Oliver saw it.

“Thea’s here too, so is Roy. She’s not ready for what Laurel and I are going to have to do. But she does have a case. Maybe my friends can help her with it” Oliver said calmly, knowing there was more that two well-trained investigators, an FBI-trained profiler, and a world-renowned journalist could do for Thea. He would help too, when he and Laurel came back, but Thea was not yet ready to hold the line against the League. He was barely sure he and Laurel had what it took to be.

Nodding his head, the Fastest Man Alive sped back into the Quiver. Putting his hood all the way on, the Emerald Archer glanced at his wife and partner and started heading towards the Starling City Jail.

Would they get lucky? He wasn’t sure. But the Jade Samurai sure could hope.

20 minutes later, at the back door of the Starling City Jail……..

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Dinah Laurel Lance stepped off of her motorcycle, ignoring the handful of wolf whistles and cat-calls from the alleyways and the dive bars nearby, and studied the building in front of her. Earlier on in the process, she would have just kicked the door down and gone in there ready to fight like the devil and that would be that. But now, she had allies and the intelligence to know when it was appropriate to fight and when it was appropriate to use her brain, and her friends, to get things done.

Right now, for instance, she knew damned well that the Green Lantern calling in a favor with her father was going to work. And not even because she had already seen a text from Alex on the HUD in her gauntlets, and another from Dad with just the emoji of rolling eyes. She knew her father, and how important it was for him to be “good police”. He was never going to make any move that dishonored that, or gave the people under his command the perception that he could be doing anything other than serving the cause of justice. Sure, he wouldn’t get how it was that a case was being taken by an agency like the Green Lantern Corps. But he’d understand it happened, and he’d make sure their suspect was just fine.

That led her to the other bit of knowledge she knew she had. She and Ollie had been here before. Protecting Henry Fyff from Kreisberg and Spencer’s idea of making sure he suffered an “accident” in custody meant she knew the catwalks and the shadows like the back of her hand. And that meant, as long as they didn’t go too far, the jail was theirs to patrol.

And Laurel knew they needed that advantage. The League, even their weakest members, had required more of her skills than she thought she would have to use. She had been trained by the finest martial artists in the world, and mastered rare styles of combat that had been seemingly lost to time. But the assassins the League had conscripted were just as well-trained, and far more lethal than she could ever imagine being.

She had never been scared of a fight, and this was not about to be where that changed. But shifting the playing field? Using every trick available to her to make sure she had a leg up? That wasn’t fear. That was fighting smart. But she also knew she wasn’t going to be fighting for a while.

Because the Black Canary had another thing to worry about. Namely, figuring out the whole story about Moira Queen’s murder.

Dets. Ramirez and Boland were fine investigators, so she knew they were thinking of Moira Queen as the victim of a political turf war and interviewing every politician in a district who might have had a problem with her. That was a perfectly fine theory. But she knew better. She knew what this was really about, and to be honest, it wasn’t particularly about the person who had poured the cup of tea that had killed Moira Queen.

This was about the shadows that the Al-Ghul’s represented, and the people they hired to do the things the Al-Ghul’s needed done. For instance, the waitress and obvious League sleeper agent on the other side of this door. They had not seen the woman’s face, but it was obvious she worked for the League. And they had a name. Farida Ahmed, someone who had been born in Cairo but moved to Starling City to study engineering and botanical science at the University of Washington.

But Laurel knew that didn’t matter. Because right now, the League of Assassins was coming to kill Ms. Ahmed to eliminate even the possibility of any kind of loose ends. Because Ra’s did not care about bloodshed, and Talia certainly didn’t. All that this had ever been about was one thing: Punishing Ollie for saying no.

And since this had been about punishment, making it so that the World’s Greatest Detective could never solve his mother’s murder was just the sort of thing monsters like Talia and Ra’s Al-Ghul would do all the time. They had told him, and told Laurel parenthetically, that there would be no more mercy coming. And Moira’s death was proof of that.

But saving Farida Ahmed, it could be said, was not just about getting information on how the plot to kill Moira Queen had come together. It was about justice too. Yes, it was obvious that she had been hired to kill a sitting city councilwoman by an ancient order of professional killers. But this woman still had a family, still had people who loved her and would wish to see her pay penance for her crimes in an appropriate way. And death was not an appropriate way. Life, living, was. Answering every question the Songbird of Starling and the Emerald Archer had? That was too.

Because if there were more killings that followed this model, done this way, more families could rest. And to find out if that was true, they had to save her.

But it did not have to be polite. Just because they were making sure Farida Ahmed did not die did not mean that they were going to be overly kind in how they got it done. The League, and their agents, had killed eight people. Seven with swords in an alleyway like they were slabs of meat being sent to a slaughterhouse, and Moira Queen with some fast-acting poison.

These were killers. No one doubted it. They lacked mercy, but not conviction. There was nothing anyone could say to make them stop.  And since they could not be reasoned with, Laurel had a plan for them.

Her and Ollie would meet these killers at the door, or wherever else their shadows darkened, and they would break their bones. They would make operating in this city so expensive that it would be no longer worth doing. This was the way to get justice for the people of this city. For the families of the seven men the League butchered, and for Moira Queen.

Taking one deep breath, the Queen of the Fist planted her feet and belted out a perfect A5 cry as the door came off the hinges.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

No matter how many times he heard it, Oliver Queen never got tired of seeing the vibrating sound waves through the air that his wife could produce. And yet, it was not the most impressive thing about her. His wife was a genius kickboxer, trained in the Dutch and Japanese styles equally, along with heavy knowledge of Thai boxing and every form of kung-fu he had personally ever heard of. She was also a genius profiler, a master interrogator, and a top-drawer strategist. He wanted no one else by his side for what was going to happen next.

Because he knew they were going to be fighting a lot of people, and the chances were high that they were not just going to be League members. The point of this was to provide justice for his mother, and he was never going to forget that. But he could not lie, he did think it was going to be fun to hurt some people tonight.

His anger was not a gift. He had learned enough over his last timeline about what happened when he moved without thinking, when he had relied purely on emotion and channeling his own darkness. But, in the right hands and pointed the right way, it could be a weapon. And he intended to use that weapon to destroy the League of Assassins bit by bit.

These people had killed eight citizens of his city. Especially his mother. That, he could not forgive. And sure, Farida Ahmed would never know it was Moira’s son under his hood. But Oliver knew she didn’t need to.

 In fact, it worked better if she didn’t know. To make this woman think he was going hell-bent for leather because a citizen had died was incredibly useful to make her understand the depth of her mistake. Pissing off the Green Arrow, he knew, had become a thing that Starling City’s darker corners universally agreed was a bad idea. Making that idea powerful was his responsibility, and saving the woman who had killed a sitting city councilwoman just to put the fear of every god imaginable in them was the sort of thing he knew he had to do.

But he had rules for it. Making someone scared of what they thought he could do was one thing, but he never needed to cross a particular line. He never needed to put hands on someone he interrogated, because he could always make them think he was one wrong answer away from losing control of his temper. The day that he couldn’t make himself believably intimidating as a physical force was the day it all ended.

But here, in this jail? Oliver knew he wouldn’t have to play sleight of hand with this. Sure, he was not the martial artist his wife was. But he was also not incompetent with his eight limbs. Training his Thai boxing in the Chute Boxe style, along with all the other martial arts that served his natural power and explosiveness, meant he could stalk down and beat just about anyone who decided they wanted to get physical. And if they wanted to rush him, he had loaded his yazutsu with every manner of disabling arrows he had come up with.

So if the League wanted to come for him, to hurt the city he defended and the people he loved, he was going to meet them at the door and hurt them until they started running. This had gone on long enough, and he wanted them to understand what it looked like when you fucked around too much.

But the Emerald Archer knew getting physical wasn’t the only thing he needed to do. He needed intel, and gathering it meant relying on skills people who saw him only as a bruiser would never have expected him to have. For one, he spoke damned good Arabic and knew enough about Islamic tattoo principles to understand that Farida Ahmed had not always been the pious young woman membership in the League of Assassins would indicate. No, she had lived a life. A western life. And then the League’s agents had come to recruit her. Which made him want to know how they had done it.

He needed to know that answer, and he was going to get it.

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With their presence announced courtesy of a Tarja Turunen-esque belt, Dinah Laurel Lance knew they would be seeing company on the other side of the door. So she got ready. First, she opened up her HUD and got the map to the holding cells. And then she put her Cisco Ramón-milled earbuds in, because she knew she was about to make noise. In her hands, wrapped around her gloves like rosary beads, were the sonics grenades Cisco had thought were just the coolest things ever. But those weren’t for the League. Not really.

Those were designed to keep any other interested parties precisely where the fuck they were. So as she rolled them down the hallway, the noise rattled everyone except her and Oliver. And whoever decided to peek their little head out got a death glare from the absolutely terrifying Green Arrow, who was obviously in no mood. Soon, as the Black Canary predicted, they saw company. The first League member got dispatched with a perfect question mark kick, but that was nowhere near the problem. She was throwing everything now, every trick Lady Shiva and Sensei Ricardo had taught her. And with every kick and knee, she ended up coming up with some mementos of the evening. A few body shots from her opponents got through, and a sharp elbow left a small but aggressively bleeding cut on her hairline, but she just kept pushing. And before too long, she got the timing down. Body kick blocked? Feint to the body and then land a curving elbow to the jaw. And then she started throwing high head kicks. Not something she did normally, but the League required no limits other than lethal strikes.

Meanwhile, the Green Arrow was being exceptionally brutal. He did not have his wife’s flexibility. He knew it, and so did she. But what he had that she didn’t was raw power and explosiveness.  Anyone who could clean a few KG off of the world record for the 85-KG class had to be able to move a lot of weight fast, and Oliver knew he could. So if people decided they wanted to see what that felt like, the Emerald Archer was all too happy to oblige them. Withering liver kicks, powerful head kicks that landed like shotgun blasts, elbows that would split open God himself, and suplexes and slams that rattled concrete. And that was the less painful of the options.

Because if any League assassins were too far away for him to grab, and Laurel wasn’t directly kicking their ass, they were getting stuck with cable flechettes and tear-gas arrows. These were not people who needed to be treated softly. To beat the League, putting the throttle down was the only way.

But as he and Laurel kept fighting, something began to become noticeable. There was more of these people than he thought, and it was becoming harder and harder to fight them all. And as Laurel kept throwing kicks and he kept landing elbows and arrows, they both began to realize they were being overwhelmed. Not knowing what else to do, the Queen of the Fist pressed a button on one of the gauntlets in her suit and bit down as she kept throwing kicks. Seeing what she was doing, and seeing it was right, the Jade Samurai did the same thing.  

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Back at the Quiver………

(Alex Danvers’s POV)

Ever since she had first worked with the Green Arrow and Black Canary, Alex Danvers had known the day would come when she would be needed to rescue them from a tight spot. But knowing it, and understanding just what constituted a tight spot, was not the same thing. In fact, looking at the closed-circuit HD camera feed from their suits, she began to realize that they were far better fighters than she had ever understood. Maybe it was because when she had first interacted with them, it had all been about pulling some disparate threads into making a case. But now she understood that when people talked about the Green Arrow and Black Canary being top-drawer martial artists, they were underselling the point. They had taken out more people with just their hands, elbows, knees, and shins than she thought two people could. And now finally they were wearing down. Not worn out completely, but enough where they needed a hand.

So, as she slipped her power ring back on and grabbed a quiver’s worth of arrows, the Green Lantern was going to give them that hand.

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Continuing to hold off the League as long as they had was beginning to wear on the Green Arrow and Black Canary. Oliver was nearly out of arrows and Laurel’s strikes were losing some of their snap and speed. Sure, they were still fighting but this was getting bad FAST. And then behind them, the sound of a Colt.45 revolver firing into the air made them smile. Because the Green Lantern was here, and quickly firing off non-lethal rounds with her Colts and lassoing whoever was still left standing. Tipping her Stetson to the both of them, the Green Lantern handed Ollie a replacement of arrows and brought Laurel a pressure bandage while Alex worked on securing the scene before following behind the Emerald Archer and the Songbird of Starling.

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At the Starling City Jail……..

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

As Dinah Laurel Lance put a pressure bandage over the small cut on her hairline, she opened up the encrypted link back to the computers in the Quiver and started pulling up what she could on Farida Ahmed. She knew Ollie was going to take the lead, and she was fine with that. It was his mother, and it happened in his restaurant because of a devil’s bargain he had said no to. Not letting him take the lead on this was a disrespectful and dishonorable act.

But what she was going to do was to keep an eye on him. Because the anger he had to be holding had been only somewhat let out by beating the fuck out of the League members in front of him. An awful lot of it was still in there, though, and she could admit to being afraid of what might happen if he kept it all for himself. Truthfully, she wanted to be angry about this too.

Sure, Moira wasn’t her mom. But she loved her all the same. It had been Moira who had eased Laurel’s mind about marrying into a family as well-known and as old-money as the Queens were. It had been Moira who had let her crash in one of the many beds at the mansion when one of Dad’s cases extended into the days and weeks while Mom was off at a conference somewhere. It had been Moira who provided the example of the kind of woman she wanted to become one day.

More than that, she knew how she would feel if some asshole slipped a drug into her mother’s coffee while she was teaching art history at UW, and the rage was really easy to feel. Alongside the rage, though, she knew they had to remember their purpose. The League had to be beaten, and falling into the trap of chasing vengeance would not get them anywhere on that front. No, they needed to get justice for Moira Queen.

And she also knew they could get something for Farida Ahmed. They could, if they played it right, get her out of the League’s vice grip. Because she knew that Farida Ahmed had been brainwashed by whatever imam the League conscripted to convince malleable women like her that the Quran called for an ancient order of assassins to follow its dictates about restoring the balance and removing evil from the world. And she had even known how it had been done.

After all, the Black Canary had been trained as a master detective too. And the one thing she had retained from all of her information was that criminals liked patterns. They did the same things the same way, and relied on people not noticing. Even someone like Talia, who had to be given their proper due as a strategic thinker, had tendencies you could pick out. And one of them was that she recruited people who had suffered a great personal tragedy, before drugging them and swaying them to her cause.

Tatsu Yamashiro had been the first one, and her skills in kenjutsu had been used to kill seven Triad enforcers to try and prove Ollie’s way of justice to be weak. And now Farida had been the second, but she had perpetrated Ra’s plan with an entirely different set of skills. Skills, for instance, like Farida Ahmed’s understanding of botany to create a poison that was fast-acting and undetectable to anything but the most thorough testing. And the purpose of that had been to show Ollie, and those he considered friends and allies, that they could be gotten to anywhere. By anyone, at any time.

This, of course, led Laurel to a question. What precisely had been Farida Ahmed’s personal tragedy? She knew, albeit dispassionately from reading the case file in Cantonese, that Maseo Yamashiro’s death had been the breaking point for Tatsu. But what had it been for the waitress? What had she suffered that got her to the point where she was willing to be an agent of a monstrous evil such as the League of Assassins?

And then she knew. The ankh tattoo. At first, she had thought it to be just an identification. But what if it had been something more? What if it had been a tribute, a way to pay tribute to a loved one taken from her? So, she kept digging through the waitress’s  internet footprint and then she found it.

And in just a moment, she sent it over to Ollie’s HUD too. He needed to know this, and what it meant for the person they were trying to talk to. Because the Songbird of Starling understood something about the Emerald Archer that no one outside of their friends and allies did: He could be aggressive, intense, and direct but he was never cruel.

Sure, it was never a good idea to take the scenic path when he was asking you a question. But that was about delivering justice on behalf of those who did not expect to ever find it, so he did not hold a great interest in ensuring that feeling was delayed. But he asked questions kindly, and never made sure he inflicted fear on witnesses to crimes or people who could point him in the right direction.

Or at least, she realized with a wince, he usually did. The Ollie she knew, the Green Arrow she had trained alongside, was always in control of his emotions. His intensity, the piercing way he stared at people, was a way to mask the fact that he knew what everyone was going to do and he never let the heat in his voice get to where he treated people poorly. But an Ollie who was grieving, who was filled with righteous wrath? She had no way to know what that version of him could be capable of.

She doubted he would cross the lines he had made for himself, but she could not be sure. So, while trying to do it as unobtrusively as possible, she was going to keep an eye on things. Because while intensity was good, anger weakened the Green Arrow. It made him not see clues he would need, and blunted the force of his questions. And for what came next, that could not be something that could ever happen.

The Queen of the Fist could guarantee that much.

Meanwhile, back at the Quiver…….

(Barry Allen’s POV)

Barry Allen knew why the Flash couldn’t be in Starling City, even if he didn’t like the reasoning all that much. For one thing, Ollie didn’t want the League of Assassins to have any particular idea of the existence of speedsters and then get down to the work of figuring out precisely what he and Patty could do. The fact that they did know, and probably had arrows with whatever formula for imitation ice Hartley Rathaway had come up with, was a truth he supposed he didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about.

But the main reason he knew he couldn’t speed over to the jail was that Oliver had asked him not to. Asked, with his words, for his friend to do something specific. And considering that had never been a thing Ollie had done very much in the original timeline, he wanted to ensure he was doing something to help his brother through a very hard time.

But as he and Patty took a look at the case notes of Thea Queen and Roy Harper, he winced and he could feel Patty do the same thing. It was not uncommon to see young cops struggle with writing reports. Unless you planned on staying in patrol for the rest of your life, you needed to learn how to make sure your information was easily understandable by not just yourself but by whoever else needed to refer to it later. Of course, the detectives had it the worst. They needed to catalog who they spoke to, what they knew, and how they could prove it all. These were skills you needed to be taught.

And Artemis and Arsenal had not learned them. What was more, they hadn’t finished doing the chemical examination on the strain of Vertigo that had brought the whole business to their attention in the first place. Here, if you knew what you were looking for, were all the clues. But Thea and Roy hadn’t looked, and for the life of them he couldn’t understand why.

And then Barry saw Roy Harper giving him the evil eye and began to figure out what was happening. This was a common thing sometimes, and he had gotten used to knowing how to deal with it. It tended to be that people from certain socio-economic backgrounds looked at anyone who carried a badge and saw the very worst of the profession. And because he was a working CSI back at home, he happened to carry a badge. Sure, it was more protocol than anything but it was still a badge. Add that to the fact that he could arrest people if he wanted to, and he was beginning to think Roy was one of those ACAB people.

Truthfully though, as long as they didn’t mess around with his crime scenes, the Flash was live-and-let-live about the whole thing. (People had been arrested for evidence tampering, and it had made him happy that even the most rabidly anti-cop people in Central City understood that there were lines you didn’t cross.) And to be honest, he had heard enough of the ideas behind the theory that he understood how you could get there. He hadn’t, but he could understand how you could.

But the way in which Arsenal and Artemis were handling this whole thing was less about some objections about being seen like cops, and more about general inexperience.  And that couldn’t be allowed. Not because he had some problem with Roy or Thea, but because he could figure Oliver and Laurel’s time as the protectors of Starling City was close to the end. Since that was true, the Scarlet Speedster wanted to do one last favor for the Emerald Archer. And that was to get his student ready.

(Roy Harper’s POV)

In just a second, Roy Harper felt himself grabbed kindly and moved over to a quiet corner of the Quiver where Barry Allen looked at him and asked one question:

“Do you really want to be like this, or do you want to be better?” And at first, he had taken that as the insult it had been intended to be. But then it actually hit what the Flash was asking him. And he had to admit, being told you could do better by someone like the Flash was the height of a humbling experience.

Barry Allen could, very easily, be a god. He was fast enough to travel the world in a breath. And what did he use his power for? To do good, endlessly. The only non-heroic thing that anyone had ever heard about Barry was that he occasionally bopped over to Paris, or Beijing, to get cute little treats for his wife. It jarred him, because Barry was also a cop. And Roy HATED cops.

They never did anything good for Starling City, except fill the pockets of the assholes downtown. These were people who routinely stole, committed crimes worse than the criminals in most cases, and had been bought by too many gang leaders to count. And they certainly didn’t give a shit about the Glades, not like he and Thea did. But just seeing the Flash in front of him, asking him if he wanted to be better than what he was, made him think. Could there be a different way? Could he do this, and never turn into a cop?

Because Sensei Oliver wasn’t, not really. Sure he was a detective, an investigator, but that was because there were so many people who had been failed by detectives in the city that they needed someone who knew what they were doing. Didn’t the people being plagued by Vertigo deserve better than whatever the SCPD would come up with, if they ever even got around to it?

So, he answered. “Yes, I want to be better.”

Back at the Starling City Jail, just outside interrogation room 2……….

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Every chance he got, Oliver Queen sought to remind himself of how much better things were in this timeline than in the one he remembered. For one thing, and this would always be the first thing, he had Laurel by his side. Just feeling her presence, her gravity, made nights like tonight a little bit easier to handle.

That led into the next new benefit. He hadn’t been forced to keep going out there when he shouldn’t have, and taken beatings he didn’t need to because there was no one else who could do what he could. In that timeline, people relied on him. They needed him to always be the one taking the lead, to be bold while ignoring the personal cost. It had become an obligation, something that became a burden by the end. But this was no longer the case anymore. He could run cases now, solve problems without always having to get physical, and this was a fine example of that.

Here he was, reading a full breakdown of all the evidence that had been found and discovered on his mother’s death, with his wife peeking over his shoulder watching him come to the same conclusions he knew she had. Chief amongst them was this: Farida Ahmed was not the sole person responsible for his mother’s death. Of course she was on some level responsible. The toxicology report proved that it had been her tea, dosed with fast-acting and highly potent cyanide, had been the cause of his mother’s death. That fact was indisputable.

But considering Oliver couldn’t find any hint of any other crimes committed, it began to look like she was not the sleeper agent they had once thought. It might have been, simply, that someone on his wait staff simply told her to put down a glass of tea in front of his mother without him being necessarily there to tell them to do it. He figured, as he thought about it, it would be overkill of the first order to have spent resources on turning a singular waitress. It would be better, and more advantageous, to turn someone closer.

But to know who it was meant leaning on Farida Ahmed until she fell over.

Because when he opened this door, he knew he would have the chance to draw out information that Farida Ahmed didn’t think was relevant. Because right now, she had to be nervous. Unless the League had trained her for interrogations, and he doubted they had, being trapped in a small cold brick room was precisely the sort of thing that would get anyone panicking.

And this, he understood, was the difference between how he did things and how Laurel did things. Laurel was the person you wanted to go to if you needed help, or someone to confess to while feeling like you were being heard. But the Green Arrow was not that person, and he was okay with that. He was never going to be what Laurel was as the Black Canary, because being that would not make this a partnership. It would be a symbiotic relationship, and he did not need that. She did not need that.

No, he was damned fine with being the guy who made sure that criminals knew damned well what it felt like when the shadows decided they were out to get you. And sitting, alone and helpless, in a cold brick room with the only light being a milky bulb that had ceased to be state-of-the-art when the Kingdome was still built was a perfect way to set the tone. But then he caught himself.

Farida Ahmed had poured the glass of tea that had killed his mother. But had she known what she was doing? Or had she had her sense of hospitality abused by the actual sleeper agent of the League? These were the questions he needed answers to.

And, as he opened the door carefully before flicking the light switch on and pressing play on the recording software in a gauntlet on his suit, the Emerald Archer was going to get those answers.

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“You have moments, Miss Ahmed. Not hours, not minutes, not seconds. You have moments before the people sent to kill you recover their forces and try again. Now, the reason that they want you dead is twofold. Firstly, because you have information myself and the Black Canary can use. And secondly, because you let yourself get caught. I am sure your handler, whoever she might happen to be, informed you of what you were supposed to do if you were apprehended. And you did not do it. So you have found yourself here, relying on the League’s enemies to save your life” the Green Arrow growled, not wanting to play this soft at all. Sure, she might be a pawn in a larger game. But she still had made the moves the chessmaster had wanted, and there had to be a price paid for that.

“I have nothing to say to you, Al-Sahim” Farida said, trying desperately to stay strong and in control of the situation. But Oliver could tell the bluff when he saw it, and it did not impress him.

“Miss Ahmed, there is no shame in being scared. This would be a scary situation for most people. At this precise moment, the shadows are out to get you. You, for reasons I understand but do not accept, chose to make a deal with a devil. That devil is now here to collect their marker. But if you want to survive the night, the only way to do so is to confess to what you know. Leave nothing out, and we will deliver you to justice. That justice will keep you alive. Any other choice you make, and the devil will find you” the Green Arrow said, and he could feel the Black Canary’s pride.

“I’ll die.” Farida said.

“If you come with us, and confess in your part to how Moira Queen lost her life, you will not die. Your life will not be what it was. That would be a lie to say that it would be. But you will live, and would that not be better?” the Black Canary asked, kindness radiating in her voice as she began to see that Farida Ahmed really was a scared college girl who had made a bad choice and was now in deeper water than she could have imagined being.

“You’re right. I want to live. And that’s why I’ll tell you what you need to hear. Firstly, this city is broken. One of your cops killed my father, and all that was done was that he was drug before some commission and put on suspension. His life was not made forfeit, as he made my father’s life forfeit. This is the city you swore to protect, and the justice you endorse. It is why I took up with the League. But to see you willing to protect me, regardless, makes me think I may have been wrong. Which is why I will tell you where I got the tea and who my handler was for all the good it would do you. I got the tea from Golden Jasmine Tea Shop in Little Tokyo, and my handler was Oliver Queen’s head waiter. The League turned him in hospitality training in Tunisia” Farida Ahmed smirks, and the Green Arrow fights the urge to groan. More questions. But those could come later. For right now, they had to deliver Farida Ahmed to the Green Lantern who would then deliver Farida to the State Police before her trial.

Fuck.

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

At times like this, Oliver Queen could admit that he felt fortunate that the Ra’s that he had dealt with in the old timeline was a shambling old man, and that the Talia Al Ghul that had trained Adrian Chase was excommunicated from the League. It was strange to say that out loud, considering that the former had corrupted his relationship with the city until it was untenable and the latter had trained his most vicious tormentor. But it was true. Because at this precise moment, the League of Assassins had discovered and created medical-grade Mirakuru, allied with Lena Luthor and god only knew who else, and committed 8 known murders including his own mother.

Despite all of that, he knew the League of Assassins was going to lose. For one thing, they never considered Laurel as a threat. In fact, the more he was realizing it, they never considered her at all. Every ounce of attention had been on him, trying to force him to break his honor and accept the bargain the Al-Ghul’s had made. They had ignored the Black Canary with absolutist zeal, and that had been their mistake. They did not realize she was his equal as a detective, and his superior as a martial artist. But that was only half of the pie here.

The other half was, of course, something else Oliver felt fortunate about. He had allies. Not just the Green Lantern, who had been here by their side and served as the legal backstop for everything they were doing. But also the Flash, Lady Lightning, and Supergirl. Truthfully, though, no ally in a cape or cowl could be as useful to what he and Laurel needed to get done as the regular working man. And in this, he shared a common vision with his mother.

It had always made him smile to see his mom holding court with her constituents, listening to them ask her questions about everything from getting more buses into Chinatown to asking if the city council could do anything to get the Bowens to sell the Rockets. She had inspired him, and he just now was beginning to realize he hadn’t told her that nearly often enough.  

But those regrets, those mistakes and poor choices, might be forgiven someday. Letting his city fall, breaking his code and turning into a man his mother would never be able to recognize, would never be forgiven. And as he kept walking, glancing at the Black Canary to his left and the handcuffed Farida Ahmed between the both of them, the Green Arrow began to work together a plan on his next steps.

What he kept coming back to, of course, was the city. It was the people in it who were good, and innocent, and just wanted the system to be fair. They didn’t want a leg up they hadn’t earned, but they also didn’t want to feel like they were being pushed behind the 8-ball because some prick somewhere wanted a new Ferrari and didn’t care how it got to his driveway. These were the people he swore his code for, alongside Laurel, and these were the people his mother stood for. Sure, she played the hostess a lot. But that was because, as he remembered her telling him after one of her ”meet Councilwoman Queen” events, “People feel at ease at a party, Oliver. If you make the conversation intriguing, and the atmosphere right, you’ll find out what people really are interested about. Sometimes it’s the Rockets, and sometimes it’s trying to find out how to sweep those same three drug dealers off of the corner since the cops won’t do it.”

Which is how, of course, he understood that people in Little Tokyo knew about the Golden Jasmine tea shop but didn’t want to interfere because they knew it was ran by dangerous people. And they damned sure didn’t want to get caught like Tian Ling, which made him remember with a scowl that of course the SCPD hadn’t been able to keep that grisly piece of business out of the public. So, if he was going to get intel on this whole damned thing, Oliver knew it’d be a lot of time doing surveillance to figure out if it was just a happy accident or if this was a cover business.

If that was the only thing, that would be plenty. Of course, then, that meant it was not. His head waiter, the closest person to him at the restaurant he created to serve the underserved people of the city, had been a League sleeper agent the whole time if Farida Ahmed was to be believed. How had this been missed? Instantly, though, he knew. It didn’t take a master detective to figure it, either. There was no need for a background check beyond checking references and for honors, because it would have been a waste of time. Now that he suspected his maitre’d had been turned, the question of how to interrogate the man who had helped build a world-renowned steakhouse from concrete and dreams was front of mind. And that meant asking around the neighborhood to see if anyone knew where his maitre’d went when he was off the clock. A local mosque, a bar where the tough guys hung, anything would work. But again, he needed to work that angle back at the Quiver.  

As the Emerald Archer kept walking, his eyes seeing in 360 degrees to make sure no one jumped out of a corner or a cell to try anything, he saw the Green Lantern at the end of the hallway and relaxed a hair. Nothing too big, of course, because he didn’t think there was any chance Talia’s hand-picked forces weren’t going to try again. But if they did, he at least felt like there could be a shot they’d get out of this without having to expend too much more energy in the working. While he didn’t precisely understand how that ring of hers worked, he did know that Alex Danvers could handle herself. Anyone who worked duel-wielding Colt 45’s and had her skills with a lasso was the sort of person he knew he could rely on in a tight spot, and this damned sure fit the definition of a tight spot.

Which was, of course, why as he got to the end of the hallway he felt it. Because he had to. But it wasn’t the League, not this time. That would have made this tenable. Instead, he was looking at a three-row deep setup of the SCPD’s SWAT units, and every last one not wearing a badge. He knew what this meant, and looking over at Laurel and Alex, he knew they did too.

This was usually the sort of shit that got done in banana republics, or places where the government was hooked in lock, stock, and barrel with ARGUS. But this wasn’t an Amanda Waller play. At this precise moment, there was no Amanda Waller. Which meant that someone else had gotten SWAT here, and convinced them it was in their best interests to make sure Farida Ahmed never got to the front door.

It would be spun to be an accident, of this he was quite sure. Prisoner escapes, hits her head on the bars or commits suicide by cop, and that would be that. Arranging it so that the city’s most controversial extra-judicial figures would be implicated in the whole thing was just a nice benefit, he could tell. But what whoever was running this had never counted on was the existence of the Green Lantern. Because if it had been just him and Laurel, it could have worked that way and people might have believed it.

But the Green Lantern Corps was a well-known law enforcement agency, and Alex had come with a warrant. (Listening to Alex talk about the Lantern Corps, and the various aliens who made it up, made him want to ask who had precisely gotten the warrant signed. But the Green Arrow knew now was not the time.) So the accident play needed to include that somehow Alex Danvers had been shot in the course of the prisoner escape, which would be a problem.

Well, this was a problem for later. Right now, the Jade Samurai had to get to the door.

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Every time there was a fight, the Black Canary and Green Arrow showed how their differences made them the perfect partner. Because with just a glance between them, they had split their objective into two different parts. Laurel knew these were still cops, even if they weren’t acting like it, so they were trained a generation behind the bleeding edge of kickboxing or Thai boxing. Those skills, the ones she taught every day to everyone from MMA fighters to teenagers just wanting to make sure no one took their umbrellas, would make damned sure these officers were felled without suffering serious injury.

Oliver, on the other hand, wasn’t particularly interested in showing off the purity of his kung-fu. These were people, armed people, who were between him and getting someone to their best chance at anything that looked like a new life. More than that, this was about justice. Killing someone who had committed a crime, and would stand trial for it, was not something he could stand for. So if Laurel was going to fight them with pure kung-fu, that was good. Someone here should be doing that. It just wasn’t going to be him. These cops were going to be drug to whatever boutique clinic existed, and given top-of-the-line care. Best to let their overpriced doctors have to do a LOT of work.

So, he charged. It was short-range close combat, with flechettes loaded with knockout gas stabbed into the ribs, leaping knees designed to break bone, and heavy elbows that were hitting with concussive force. They had pissed him off, pissed this city off, so they would pay for that.

Meanwhile, Laurel was moving like a ballet dancer. Every kick flowed into open-hand strikes which flowed back into a kick again, like she was dancing. Except, at the end of every set of steps, there were a few people who fell to the floor. Before too long, they had made their way to the door. Handing over Farida to the Green Lantern, the Green Arrow and Black Canary glanced over at each other and had the same thought.

It was time to get to work.