A/N #2, PLEASE READ: So some days past I received a review from a guest, leaving me unable to reply, so to them if they should read this, or anyone else for whom the other note below, which has appeared on every one of these prelude stories, has not settled, as the review demanded "What's with the weird arrowverse one-shots? Just write a full story." these stories, along with the ability to start putting awareness that the big story was coming, are set to allow me to share and for any of you so kind as to read to have an establishing of this alternate universe which will be the setting of the 100-day/chapter story Once More Unto the Breach which will serve as this year's countdown to the new seasons (for the third year running :)). The prelude stories give space to some needed exposition that would have otherwise clogged the main story and would have needed to be rushed.

We are now on to the final preludes, the last of which is to go up on June 30th. After this, the big story is set to premiere July 15th 2018, the final chapter to go up on the day the last of the four shows premieres, this year being Legends of Tomorrow, on October 22nd 2018.

A/N: I was meant to start writing and posting these back in January, however life happened, and progress didn't happen, so now here I am, a little over two months late but finally kicking things off! This coming July, as I've done for the past two summers, I'll be leading a 100-day countdown story set across the Arrowverse (featuring Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow). I decided to do things a little differently this year. For one thing, the entire 100 days will be a single story spread over 100 days, one chapter to every day. And for another, the more planning I did, I saw the possibility and the need to lay in some ground work in the form of preludes.

Twenty-four prelude one-shot stories, six each to the four series (again, it was meant so that each month from January to June would have one of each show, but now… yeah ;)), posted every 5 (or 6) days.

The story this will all be leading to, Once More Unto the Breach, is an alternate universe story (not another Earth, ha :D), which will soon become evident enough. It's very possible you do not watch all four of the shows, but I highly encourage you to seek out the other preludes, as they will help to fill in this world I'm very excited to share with you guys!

Alright, enough chit chat, let's go! If you have any questions, send them my way and I'll be happy to answer them!

RUN ALONG, QUEENS
Prelude to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
(24 of 24)

Location:
MAIN EARTH, THE CITY BENEATH THE BREACH
(ARGUS designation)

Oliver Queen had little memory of the day that had changed his life forever. Twenty years had gone by, which might have had something to do with it, but it could have been twenty, or ten, or one… and he would have been no nearer to remembering, not the parts that mattered. What he did remember… He remembered…

He had been twelve years old, just weeks shy of thirteen. He and his sister, who had been all of three at the time, had been left into the care of a friend of their parents, who at the time was still a detective. It would be a few years still before he'd make police captain. Oliver had only met the man once before, though he was sure he'd heard his parents mention him before. It was hard to forget a name like Anatoly Knyazev.

The then detective had kept them at the precinct for a while, and to have to sit there, minding his hyperactive toddler of a sister was complicated enough when he was growing so stir crazy already. He could practically feel his legs prickling with the urge to move. As hours had started to draw them into lethargy, there had been this feeling… this…

Nothing.

He couldn't explain it, couldn't find the words at all, like for a moment he'd been falling, and then… all was well. He doubted he would have even remembered this moment, if not for what had happened later. After the moment, boredom had gained the Queen children, and they'd fallen asleep. Later, Detective Knyazev had awakened them. He was taking them home. His home. When Oliver had asked why they were going there, the man had stared at him, a sad look in his eyes. There'd been no point in delaying the truth, so he'd told him. His parents were dead. The detective was to be their guardian.

It was all so much for him to process, as they'd driven off from the precinct, his little sister asleep across the backseat of the detective's car, while he looked out the window, still holding her hand. His mother… his father… how could they be gone? Not just gone, dead… He would never see them again, never get to talk to them, and that would have been traumatic enough without having to contemplate growing up with questions never to be answered. Did the detective know? Did he know what he and his sister were, what their parents had been? Did he know they were not human?

To be fair, he hadn't known he wasn't human, not for the first… eleven years of his life. His parents had never said anything, and it wasn't as though he was green, or had two heads, five eyes, anything like that. He looked like any other kid out there, so why would he have ever assumed he was anything else? And then, when he was eleven years old, he had learned the truth. His parents had told him, having had no other alternative really, when he'd come into the power he had, the same power his parents had attained long ago: speed.

Now that day he remembered perfectly. He remembered running through the school yard, chasing after a few classmates, and then… the world had slowed to a crawl around him. For a moment he thought maybe they were playing a prank on him, but if that was the case, how had they gotten everyone else in sight to do the same, just for his sake? That wasn't possible, so then what was this? A thought had come into his mind then, a thought almost too strange and too impossible to have been real, if it wasn't for… well, all of this. What if it wasn't that they were moving very, very slow? What if it was that he was moving very, very fast?

Then he'd just run. All the way back home and then to school again… When he'd left, one of the other kids had been throwing a ball to their friend. By the time he'd returned, the ball wasn't even in its catcher's hands. Oliver had seen this and, so mesmerized as he was, he'd walked over to the ball hanging in mid air. He'd reached for it, pried it out of the air like an apple from a tree. Then he'd gone back to where he'd been standing when this had all started and soon after that… the world had started to move again. The catcher's momentum had been met with an absent ball, much to his confusion. Oliver had looked down to the ball in his hand… and he'd grinned.

He had fully intended to keep this discovery to himself, at least for a little while. But then he'd gotten home from school that day, and maybe it was purely coincidence, though he didn't think so, but that was the day his parents had told him where they'd come from. It was like they could sense the change in him and they'd only been waiting for it to happen for them to tell him the truth. They hadn't actually mentioned the speed though, not once, leaving the smallest space for him to believe it was coincidence that this was the day they'd told him they weren't human. They'd told him a brief tale of their coming to Earth before he was born, and his ability to assume they were messing with him had diminished to nothingness the longer this went on, the more he looked at them. His parents had never been known to have enough of a sense of humor to have suddenly thrown him some 'we're aliens, ha ha, kidding!' sort of joke. This was real… he was an alien… also he was super fast… but an alien. Now he had two secrets to keep from the world.

That had been barely a year before his parents' death, before he and Thea had gone to live with Anatoly. He'd told them to call him that, though at three even that had been hard for Thea, and she'd just call him Toly, which came off like Tully. It hadn't take her long to grow attached to the man, the memories of their parents fading into the recesses of her young mind. It had been harder on Oliver. Why him of all people? Did he know about what they were? Did he know what he could do? Their parents had entrusted him with their care, so they must have believed they'd be safe, right? Even so, he hadn't mentioned anything, not for years, not until he'd had to.

In those years, much had changed. He'd grown, of course, though it didn't affect him nearly as much as to see his baby sister go from a toddler to a child and getting ever closer to a teenager. All this time, it had been the three of them, him and Thea and Anatoly, who had finally made captain, living as normal as normal could be… mostly… Just because no one knew about his speed didn't mean Oliver didn't use it now and again… more than now and again… but always in secret. It had its ups and downs, and he'd had to discover them on his own. That might have been some of the times he realized how much he missed his parents most of all.

After Thea had turned eleven, he'd started to watch her closer and closer. He'd been that age when his speed had first shown. If she was going to have it, too, then this might be when it would come, no? Truth be told, he had tried to bait her a few times, to see if something would happen. Nothing ever would, of course, and she'd just startle and ask him what he was doing. He'd just shrug and claim clumsiness. Many a mug and plate had been sacrificed to the cause.

It hadn't all been in vain though. The speed had come to her. She'd only been twelve instead of eleven.

She'd called him in a panic, saying she and Anatoly were at the hospital, that 'Papa Toly' had been hurt. He'd sped off to meet her, telling her he'd been just around the corner when she'd called, though she was probably too distraught to even see how that made no sense. It was nothing major, though their guardian had a broken leg and a few scrapes. When Oliver had asked his sister what had happened, she'd looked at him, at a loss for words that felt a little too familiar. He'd looked her in the eye and asked her plainly: had the world slowed to a stop? Her eyes had grown wide and she'd thrown her arms around him.

As she'd eventually explain, they'd been crossing the street when a car had come out of nowhere and almost hit them. Thea had reacted, and that was when it had happened, everything slowing around her. She hadn't known what to do, except to try and move them both out of the way of the car. She hadn't been strong enough to pull him though, and then everything had started to move again. The car hadn't hit Anatoly head on – as it would have – but he hadn't been completely spared. Now there they were.

It had been a few days before anything had come of all this. Thea was still traumatized, and Anatoly needed looking after. Oliver had waited, waited… He knew he'd need to talk to her, to the both of them, but he wanted it to be the right time. And then, one night, after Thea had gone to bed and he was helping Anatoly to go and do the same, his guardian, without missing a beat, had given him some advice.

"You should tell her the truth," he'd said. Oliver had given no reaction, only continuing to help him forward. "Oliver," he'd spoken again. "Tomorrow, you will tell your sister about what the both of you are able to do and where you got it from. I will, if you don't, and she should hear it from her brother." He'd said it all so calmly, with all the care they'd always known him to have, like it was anything. Anatoly had given a laugh at the pressed silence Oliver maintained. "Sad excuse for a detective I would be if I didn't see through these sad excuses for lies you've been peddling all these years."

"My parents…" he hesitated.

"Told me little of what to expect but the basics… in the event they might not return." Oliver had turned his head to find the man staring back at him. He'd always been led to believe it had all been some accident, at least… Actually, thinking back, he wasn't sure just how directly any of his questions had ever been answered… until this one. They'd known they might not return. They'd known, when they'd left Thea and him with Anatoly. "Tell her, Oliver."

So he'd told her. He'd told her she wasn't human, and neither was he, and neither were their parents. He told her that the thing she'd done that day was something he could do, too, for a decade already. He could show her how to do it, and the extent of her abilities. She hadn't entirely believed him at first, but then there'd been little else for her to do but believe when he'd started teaching her. And as more of it had dawned on her… she'd pulled away from him. She was upset, no doubt rightly so, that he had not told her all this time. The freeze out period had not lasted more than a couple of weeks, and already by then it was losing some of its steam and would probably have melted away on its own even without Thea's discovering the third secret in his life.

After handing him that very small nugget of information, Anatoly had not told him anything more about what had happened to his parents, and he wasn't going to. He said it was because he had promised Robert and Moira Queen that he would safeguard their children and this… whatever it would turn into if he tried to dig, it would only put him in harm's way. Anatoly wouldn't help. Well then that left him only one choice. He was going to have to be the one to figure it out for himself… or someone else would. His alter ego.

Over the years, there had been some instances where he'd used his speed to save people now and again. He'd never stayed long enough or slow enough for anyone to see his face or identify him in any way. Now and again a story would pop up of a mysterious blurry shape. No one would know it was him, and that just made it funnier. But now, if he was going to go digging into this thing with his parents, it would possibly mean a more direct involvement. So then maybe a costume of some kind would be in order. Within days, a sighting of the costumed speedster had been made, and so had a connection to the legend of the blurry man saving people across the city. It earned him a name, too… They called him the Flash.

He'd made it two weeks before Thea busted him. Of course, she'd know it was him, after he'd told her all about their power. What she wanted to know was why he was doing it. Deciding that secrets had been the thing to bring them trouble for too long, he'd just told her, about what Anatoly had told him, and what he wanted to do.

So now she knew. And she wanted to help him.

If there was one thing he could say for sure it was that, whether or not he said yes, she would do it. The best thing he could do in that case was to make sure she would be the best she could be. He would show her everything he knew, everything he had figured out on his own for the past ten years. Weeks of training and a matching costume later, the media had been presented with new images, new reports, revealing that the Flash had taken on an associate, apprentice or sidekick, depending on the source. Whatever the short statured speedster was to the other, in no time they had baptised her Kid Flash.

The duo had been speeding through the city for many years now. The search for answers surrounding their parents' deaths continued to be something they looked into, whenever any small clue actually presented itself… which was not something in the habit of happening. But the longer this had drawn on, the more they'd had to face the fact that their talents were far more likely to be put to use in doing what Oliver had been doing in secret for since he was almost as young as his sister had been the first time she'd suited up. They may not have been of this Earth, but they been born to it, and its people, and they could think of no better way to honor their fallen mother and father than to use their gifts to keep as many of them safe as they could.

In the meantime, life went on. Anatoly continued to look after them. They may have been adults now, but as he said it, they would always find a way to get into some scrap or another where not even the ability to whiz about in a streak of lightning would not help them, and when that happened, it would be up to their faithful guardian and trusty police captain to do his part. The early years, when Thea had first stepped out in costume, he had been less inclined to support it. She'd been the closest thing to a child he'd ever had, raising her from a toddler, and he couldn't stand for putting her in harm's way, but like Oliver he had known she was too headstrong to be kept still, and with the years his resistance to the involvement of 'Kid Flash' had become more for show than anything else.

They would be called on, every so often, by the crew of the Waverider. It was always easier to be aware of what they needed to be aware of when they had more eyes across this Earth or the other to keep aware of any disturbances that might have called for their involvement. And a couple of speedsters, well that was something worth many a pair of eyes at once. None of those aboard knew their true names, only the aliases given to them by the media and the public, just as the Flash and Kid Flash were only aware of the crew and less so of any other associates or acquaintances they might have had.

So when one night the Flash and Kid Flash were intercepted by the one called the Green Arrow, the last thing they expected was to be called by their own names. And yet…

"Oliver Queen. Thea Queen," called the woman beneath the hood. They had already started to run, the archer's movements slowed down at once, but then he stopped when he saw something dangling from the neck of the woman in green. Instead of running away, he'd run to her, snatching the pendant away from her and holding it between them.

"Where did you get this?" Oliver shouted, not bothering to disguise his voice. "This was my mother's, where did you get it?" After a moment, the woman reached under her hood… and pulled it down, slipping off her mask as well, revealing blue eyes, blond hair.

"Mr. Queen, my name is Sara Lance. I have a message from your mother and father."

THE END

Check out the premiere of Once More Unto the Breach, coming July 15th!