1.01
"Noooooo!" screamed Oliver as he tried to stop Adrian Chase from killing himself.
He was too late. Suddenly, he turned and watched as the Island of Lian-Yu exploded behind him. Quickly, he threw himself over his son to protect him from debris…
…and promptly Awoke.
Oliver Queen was standing in front of his girlfriend, Laurel Lance. She was showing him a picture of herself. He was quite nervous, as her sister was supposed to arrive at any minute.
"Have a nice trip!" Laurel waved goodbye as he boarded the Queen's Gambit.
"Huh. Something is off about this." He thought.
The he regained his memories of the last ten years of his life.
"Ohhhhhh nooooooo…." Escaped his lips in a pitiful groan. As he sat in his cabin waiting for Sara Lance to arrive, he mulled over the options for what exactly had happened.
1: He was dead and this was some kind of twisted afterlife. Come to think of it, while he had never much believed in the afterlife, but considering the kinds of things he had seen John Constantine do, he wasn't as surprised by that possibility as he could be.
2: Speaking of John Constantine, Magical Outside Interference. This could be result of one of his brushes with the magical world. He didn't know of anything that could do that, but hey, he didn't know much about magic either.
3: Space Aliens. While sounding improbable out loud, he had frankly already been captured by the Dominators and put in a hallucination once, so it was certainly possible. So, had he been captured again? Or had he never escaped at all? He did remember thinking at the time that the illusion hadn't been as convincing or as hard to get out of as it could have been.
4: He was actually going to kill Barry Allen. Time Manipulation. He had heard of the effects of Flashpoint, but himself hadn't been able to discern anything different. He wondered if this was, perhaps, a new experiment. It could be an aftereffect of Flashpoint.
Of course, he as of yet couldn't think of any way to prove one theory over the other, at least until he got the chance to talk to a magic-user or a speedster. But what to do about it?
Coming clean and trying to get help probably wouldn't help, especially now when he didn't have any non-normal friends, unless he was trying to get in to a mental hospital.
It seemed as if the best course of action would be to follow along with the primary course of events, not letting on anything was wrong, until he first met John Constantine. Then he could try to get some answers.
Moral dilemma: was he going to allow people to die when he could stop it? Was he going to repeat earlier mistakes?
Well, following his earlier line of reasoning, either he was hallucinating, or he was back in time. If he was hallucinating then he was probably not hurting anyone who actually existed. If he was back in time, well, the Legends dealt with that question all the time, and they tended to let things play out the normal way. Otherwise, he supposed, there would be far reaching effects on the timeline.
His mind made up, he greeted Sara as she arrived.
"Sir!"
The leader of the Lian-Yu drug operation looked up.
"We found this man wandering around outside."
John Constantine was brought into the tent.
"Hey ya wankers, get your bloomin' hands off me!"
Oliver sighed. Honestly, spending the last four years trying to match his previous actions as clos as possible had gotten grating. Maybe it was finally time for a change. Besides, he really didn't want to have to kill Taiana again. Quick as a flash (ha ha puns) he had subdued the two guard and was pointing a gun at Reiter, who was, of course, pointing a gun at him. Luckily, by this point, Constantine had managed to get himself free. With a flick of his wrist, Reiter was on fire. Dropping his gun Reiter began to run around screaming. Oliver and Constantine, using this as a distraction, managed to sneak away from the camp.
"I gotta say, that there was an impressive rescue. I'm John Constantine."
"My name is Oliver Queen. After five years in hell, I came home with only one goal: to save my city. But five years later, something happened. I awoke at the beginning of my hellish years, with no one else noticing anything wrong. To survive I've had to relive my whole transformation, becoming someone else. Becoming… something else. I am the Green Arrow!"
"Whoa, mate. That was a mouthful. You memorize that or somethin'?"
"Nope. Honestly, it kind of just happens."
"Weird. Well, as for your other problem, I don't know what might have caused that. Sure, there are some obscure magical artifacts that could possibly manipulate time, but I haven't felt any disturbances of magical origin over the last few years, so… sorry mate, but your problem isn't magical."
"Right." Oliver thought for a second. "Well, it looks like I need to murder Barry Allen."
"Barry, can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Sure. What's up?"
The archer and the speedster left their group of friends to continue training for the upcoming battle with the Dominators.
"I've been waiting until now to talk to you about it, because now is when you're most likely to know about it."
Barry gave him a confused look. "What do you mean?"
Oliver sighed. "I've already lived this."
Barry looked more excited than surprised. "You did? Is there something bad we need to know about the Dominators?"
"That's not it. I've already lived the next year or so. I was fighting Prometheus, and he killed himself. Everything around me exploded, and suddenly I woke up about nine years ago, about to board the Queen's Gambit."
Barry's eyes went wide. "You've seriously waited the last nine years to ask about this? Gosh, now I feel bad. I'm going to be honest, I have no idea how that could've happened. It might be related to Flashpoint, but I highly doubt it."
Oliver just looked resigned. "Well, I guess I might as well go kill some aliens."
1.02
"Noooooo!" screamed Oliver as he tried to stop Adrian Chase from killing himself.
He was too late. Suddenly, he turned and watched as the Island of Lian-Yu exploded behind him. Quickly, he threw himself over his son to protect him from debris…
…and promptly Awoke.
Oliver Queen was standing in front of his girlfriend, Laurel Lance. She was showing him a picture of herself. He was quite nervous, as her sister was supposed to arrive at any minute.
"Have a nice trip!" Laurel waved goodbye as he boarded the Queen's Gambit.
"Huh. Something is off about this." He thought.
The he regained his memories of the last ten years of his life.
"Oh, screw this."
He walked right back off the boat. "Hey dad?" he yelled.
"What?" Robert Queen called to his son.
"I think the boat's been sabotaged!"
The Queen family sat in their spacious living room, discussing the events of that morning.
"Well I don't know how you did it son, but you were right. There was an explosive charge in the engine room."
Oliver was still trying to decide what the heck he was going to do. All he knew was that, ironically enough, the once-strong-willed archer was about to lose his sanity.
Of course, that decision was quickly taken from him. Malcolm Merlyn waltzed through the door with five men in suits.
"I must say, Moira, that I'm sorry. But I'm afraid you family is too much of a security risk to remain alive."
With that, all five men took aim and fired… at Oliver.
1.03
Oliver Awoke.
At first, he was happy to see that it wasn't in front of Laurel Lance.
Then his brain computed who he was standing in front of. Realizing his brain now had memories different from the usual ones, he checked finding his last action to have been stepping forward and saying, "You have my bow."
The Dwarf in the courtyard also stepped forward. "And my axe."
This was going to be… different.
As the council was leaving, Oliver was pulled aside by Gandalf the wizard.
"I'm sorry sir, but I haven't seen you here before. I must say I feel inclined to ask as to whether you have recently had troubles with time repeating itself?"
Oliver was immediately overcome with a sense of relief. "Yes! Do you know what's been causing it?"
Gandalf smiled. "It seems I get to give you the 'welcome to the Multiverse' speech. Come with me."
Oliver followed him. Once they had reached the small back room Gandalf had chosen as their destination, the speech began.
"I should first ask as to your name."
Oliver gave his automatic response.
"My name is Oliver Queen. After five years in hell, I came home with only one goal: to save my city. But five years later, something happened. I awoke at the beginning of my hellish years, with no one else noticing anything wrong. To survive I've had to relive my whole transformation, becoming someone else. Becoming… something else. I am the Green Arrow!"
Gandalf simply blinked at him. "I was under the impression that the DC universe was already looping. Have you not had this explained to you by one of your compatriots?"
"That's actually a really good question." Apollo turned to look at his friend. "Where did you find this guy?"
Morpheus sat back down. "Do you remember when Thor managed to take some of the slightly corrupted code from his universe and condense into another one?"
"You mean the Marvel Cinematic Universe?"
"Exactly. So, I was thinking, with the similarity of our two loops, why couldn't I do the same, so I went rummaging through, pulling out alternate versions of some of the smaller characters, and voila! Anyway, the working title for now is the 'Arrowverse'."
Apollo looked incredulous. "And Zeus actually let you do this?"
Morpheus laughed. "Not exactly, but I once I convinced my grandmother to have another 'chat' with him…"
"Good point." Apollo replied, turning back to watch the show.
"No. And I've actually asked most of them beforehand, and none of them seemed to know anything about it."
"Odd." Gandalf stroked his beard. "anyway, your universe is only one of many. There is an entire multiverse of worlds out there. This may sound familiar."
"I think Barry mentioned something about it to me, especially when we were dealing with Black Siren."
Gandalf, looking confused for a moment, continued. "It begins to differentiate here. See, this multiverse is actually a computer. It runs all the universes. Now, this worked just fine until something damaged the computer. Now the admins, essentially the higher beings that make sure everything runs smoothly, are working to fix this. While they do, they have put many of the universes into a looping state, protecting them until the system is full online. Now, to make sure these loops are stable, each one has a person known as an 'Anchor'. This person will loop every time. It sounds as if you are the anchor of your world. Over time, based on how much contact a person has with the anchor, others will begin to loop as well."
"How many times have you looped?" Oliver asked.
"I stopped counting once I reached the thousands."
Oliver was surprised. "How have you not gone insane with boredom?"
"I was actually about to get to that. You see, while there are what we call 'baseline' loops where everything is the same, there are two other kinds of loops. The first are variant loops. They're like the baseline loops, but different in one way or another. It could be small or large. For example, I once had a loop as Gandalf the Green. Yet, another time, I had loop where everyone was a wizard. Those are probably the most common loops. The other type I've yet to talk about are fused loops. We're having one right now. Sometime, elements of two loops will cross over. You could cross into a loop with a completely different universe, or have other universes' inhabitants loop into your own. You may also be a part of an Anchor exchange. Namely, you cross into a different loop while that loop's anchor crosses into yours. See, all universes must have an anchor, or they destabilize."
Oliver interjected here. "I'm sorry, but if you're the anchor for here, and I'm the anchor for my loop, who's stabilizing my loop?"
"Ah, I believe I know the answer. Would you be within your first five loops?"
"This is my third."
"Then quite simply, your universe can still be easily stopped. I suspect that there may be some admin interference sending you here, so they most likely temporarily stopped your loop. Do not expect it to happen again, however, as it can only be done before the loop gains it's more self-sufficient state, after the first five loops."
"I think I understand."
"One more thing." Gandalf reached into thin air and drew out a tuba. "Us loopers overtime gain access to a 'subspace pocket'. To put it rather crudely, we can store objects in our soul. This allows us to carry objects over from one loop to the next. Now, you pocket grow over time. Right now, for example, you would be rather lucky to shove a penny in there. However, this tuba Is the nowhere near the biggest thing I keep in here. I've met some loopers who keep spaceships, portable labs, and other things in there. I've even heard a rumor that Harry Potter keeps a replacement Earth in his."
"Harry Potter? You mean he's real?"
"I'm Gandalf, aren't I? Almost all of these universes tend to appear in others as works of fiction. I would not be surprised to learn you have you own book series somewhere out there."
"Why is Harry Potter so powerful?"
"Ah. He is one of the original seven loopers, the first seven to ever start looping. I'm afraid I can't remember the names of the others off the top of my head, but they are most likely some of the most powerful non-admin beings ever."
"Wow." Oliver sighed. "This is a lot to take in."
"Well, I'm afraid we don't have much time to relax, as our fellowship is leaving tomorrow. I do seem to recall your unawake self volunteering for the position. However, I'm sure your admin would be happy to arrange an Equestria loop for you to relax in." At this, Gandalf pointedly stared at the stone ceiling above them.
Morpheus sighed. "He has a point. Keep an eye on them, will you? I might as well check in with Sleipnir."