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!

THAT WE MAY SERVE
Prelude to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
(20 of 24)

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

Hovering high in the sky, overlooking the city, she could so easily let herself think of little more than that city, and its people, and their wellbeing. She would think about how the three of them had come to this planet, too, about how none of it had gone quite as it had been intended to go, but to be up here, flying free… it was as though the distance from the ground also distanced her from her problems. Sooner or later, she'd have to go back down, she knew, but… not now. Not yet.

Years ago, far from this sky, from this Earth, they had barely been a team when they had been tasked with finding and apprehending a runaway criminal from their world. It had started out like most any case, a relentless hunt setting off, and then something had gone wrong. For a very long time they hadn't known just what had happened. All they could know was that their ship had come into some distress, enough for them to take some measures of precaution, activating pre-launch of their escape pods. The pods wouldn't launch, not unless they could gain back control. And then… nothing. The last any of them remembered from 'before' was sitting in their pods, working relentlessly not to let their target escape them, and then what came after that, well it all depended on who you asked. They hadn't all woken up at once.

There had been three of them on the ship, on the team. That was standard, for this type of posting. However their team had been somewhat unique. There was the captain, a bright young mind who had been climbing the ranks long before she took to enjoying the skies of Earth. Her second-in-command had been a prodigy in his own rights, and the two of them had grown up together as something like family. And there was the third, their pilot. There was no denying his skills, they had gotten him on the team after all. But he had not come from their world, not exactly. His planet was a sister world to their own, and their two people… didn't get along. That underlying animosity had not been absent among the three of them in the beginning, much as they'd tried to remain professional. They had never let it get to the point where they might have jeopardized their posts, but it had come close, a few times, enough that they had all made a promise to one another, to try harder, to show that it was possible for their people to work together. And it had been working, started to at least, before this hunt, before the incident.

The second had been the first to awaken, so he had been able to tell his teammates his part of it. At some point, his pod had been ejected, though it would remain afloat in space. And when he woke again, disoriented and free floating, his first thought had been for his team, their ship. Why hadn't the pod gone and flown off for a safe landing as it was meant to? Where was the ship? He had managed to locate it, and confirming the presence of two life signs aboard, he had piloted his pod off in search of the ship.

One of the pods had failed to eject, the other had started the procedure but remained trapped halfway disconnected. In both cases, the passengers would have been put into stasis, to protect them. The same thing had probably happened to him, he'd realized, but in learning this, it left him facing the very real possibility that things might not have been exactly as he had thought them. Soon after he'd been able to reenter the ship, he'd confirmed it. All three pods had been put in stasis, and they had gone on protecting their passengers as they had been programmed to do. They had done everything right. And they had done it for over twenty years.

There had been no time to wallow in the meaning of this turn. The families and friends who would have written them off for dead, the target who would not only have escaped them but might also have used those two decades to wreak even more havoc than he already had. No, first he needed to see after his crew. The pod which had failed to eject had been the pilot's, the one left perilously dangling on its clamps had been the captain's. The second had done all he could for them. The pilot's pod had been firmly clamped, so he could have gone to the captain first, but logic told him that he would need the pilot's assistance in rescuing their captain. So he had pulled him from his pod, carried him off to their small infirmary, to wake him. It couldn't be done. He wasn't dead, but the effects of the stasis were not lifting away, and alas there was no waiting for him to come around. The captain's pod was too close to slipping from its clamps. He had to go about it all on his own after all. It had been a close call, but he had pulled her free and into the ship, too. She was even worse off than the pilot.

With both of his teammates incapacitated, his options had been few. They were so far from home already, and even if he managed to keep the two of them alive until they got there… after all these years… So what was the other option?

After he'd gotten back on the ship, before he'd even set to rescuing his teammates, he had activated a search to follow their target's trail. He'd done it by reflex more than anything, but as he'd been left to figure out his next step, it had paid off. The trail didn't lead to any one specific location, and after all this time it was no wonder. But it had given him something. A planet. Earth. He could make it there much faster than home. He could get help for his captain and pilot. And maybe… maybe they could find their target after all.

There was no telling what to expect when they'd reach Earth, whether they would be seen as a threat to guard from or welcomed into the hands of allies who would help him tend to his people. Maybe it would have been the first, maybe the only reason it ended up being the second thing went to the people who actually found him and aided him upon crash landing in a field.

Many things had happened following their arrival on Earth, some good, some bad, some… defying expectations. The captain and the pilot had made it through the landing as he had, but they continued to be unshakeable from their slumber, and they would remain in this state for some time… if they ever recovered at all. The second-in-command could only hope that they would, that the same thing that happened to him in this place would happen to them too and lead to their awakening. What happened to him, oh…

Even as he'd first set foot on the Earth, under the bright warmth of its yellow sun, he had felt different. It was hard to explain, but he had never felt stronger. On the ship, as he'd been attempting to rescue his teammates, he had felt weak, sluggish, but not here. Here he was wide awake, and strong… and he could fly. The extent of his abilities would come to reveal itself with time. The strength, the flight… the invulnerability, the speed… and a few more, too. He had spent some time after his arrival on Earth remaining in hiding, looking after his comatose partners. But the call of the world had been too strong, the call of people in need of assistance. He had all these powers now, what was he supposed to do, pretend like he didn't have them?

His new friends had warned it might be best to think of his future here, to separate the part of him that the world would take notice of as soon as they saw what he could do… and the part who would be able to walk this same world unseen. And that was how he had come to bear his human name. They had called him Roy Harper. As for the other side, the one soon to be discovered… He would soon make a name for himself, too, only it would be granted to him by the media. They called him Superman.

And for a year after the landing his presence had only become more and more known, as were his many deeds, coming to the aid of those in need of rescue. At the same time, Roy Harper was making his own way in life, learning the ways of Earth… and continuing to look after his captain and his pilot. They would not wake, and yet it was clear from examination that they, too, had been changed by their presence on Earth. And then, finally, the pilot had awakened.

By some fortune, Roy had been on hand when the pilot opened his eyes in this new, unknown place. As shocked as he was, the familiar face had been of some reassurance. Roy had been quick to catch him up to speed on the stasis situation, their coming to Earth, the year he had been asleep, and their captain's ongoing unconsciousness. And then there were the powers.

They looked no different from one another, or from the humans of Earth, but they were of different worlds, and in their abilities it showed. The pilot could not fly, though he could leap incredibly high. He had great speed, and invulnerability, and strength, yes, though this in lesser amounts compared to the second in command. And then there was the one vulnerability they had found in him: lead. For all the ups and downs of these discoveries, he had initially struggled to decide what he would do with these abilities he had. He wanted to find their target. If he was still out there, it was imperative that they should find him and take him back as they had been instructed to do. For the time being, it was all he could think to do. At the very least, he needed his own human identity established. He would be known as Rory Regan.

For a few months after this, he had focused on attempting to track down their target. But then now and then, when Roy… when Superman would fly off to attend to one situation or another, he would call on his teammate for assistance. And the more he jumped into action at his side, Rory would feel better and better about it. His search for their target wasn't going too well anyhow, but this… helping the people of the city… that was something he could do, something with results. And in the end, the people gave him a name, too. They called him Valor.

Then, one day, almost three years after being pulled from that teetering pod, the captain had opened her eyes.

She had been alone. Alone in a strange room, confused, disoriented… Whatever part of her had managed to snap into alertness first, it had only one thing in mind and it was to find answers. Where was she? How had she gotten here? Was she captive or free? Where was her team? Where was her team? And in the frenzy and panic, the first of her powers manifested, without her really understanding what it was all about. A flourish of sound had swept into her ears, overwhelming her at once. She'd slapped her hands over her ears but she could still hear it all. Voices and heartbeats and machines, everything… everything… And as if that wasn't enough, her eyes had felt as though they burst, through walls, showing her shapes that looked like people, down to their bones, moving around, completely unaware of the madness she was experiencing. She couldn't keep it together anymore. She screamed.

When her teammates arrived, called back as Roy, even far off across the city, had heard her scream, she was sat in a corner, hands over her ears and eyes shut tight. No one had dared to approach her, knowing what the others could do when they weren't confused out of their minds. Thankfully, seeing their faces had gone a long way in calming her, in seeing her through resting her hearing and her sight. And once this had been achieved, they had been able to tell her everything that she'd missed. It was overwhelming for a whole other reason. So many years she had slept, first in stasis, and then comatose… All that was lost…

Despite the time they had spent on Earth while she slept, Roy and Rory both still looked to her and saw their captain, and they would defer to her choice as to what they would do next. They had not tracked down their target, and though they had been far for so many years… so many years… maybe they could just go back. Just fix the ship and go home. But if they did… if they just ran back home empty handed after all this time… No. They couldn't just go back, not until they knew for sure there was nothing for them to bring back. Their target had evaded, carrying with him dangerous things, and they were loathe to imagine what he might have done with them.

Once it was decided that they would stay, for the time being at least, they had taken her outside, to find the world that lay beyond this building where she had slept nearly three years. She had seen the sky, that wonderful sky. And then Roy had lifted off the ground… and he'd told her that he could fly, that she could fly. She wouldn't have believed it if she hadn't seen it, but she had seen it, and likely for that reason she had been able to do just as he did.

She had been told of the lives the two of them had made here, as humans, as Roy Harper and Rory Regan, but also as heroes to the people of the city, as Superman and Valor, as they used these abilities granted to them under the yellow sun of Earth, and they had extended to her the same possibility as they'd come to embrace. They wouldn't abandon the mission that had brought them here, costing them so many lost years, but so long as they were stuck here, then they could do a lot of good. Would she join them?

The people of the city, those who had branded her teammates with names to reflect what they had become for the rest of them, they had no idea who they really were, where they were from. They didn't know she was their captain, their leader. They had shown her images, reports, so many things, and it was clear… They would always look to Roy, to this Superman, as the first of them to appear, as the one in front, leading the way. She didn't mind it. Whatever they saw, they saw. The time before, on the ship, chasing their target, before the incident, the stasis, all of it, it was still fresh in her mind but there was a disconnect, too. Their old lives were there and they were gone, too. The three of them knew where they stood, and that was all that mattered.

And so the world was introduced to a third superpowered hero, leaping into action along with Superman and Valor. And, no doubt due to the fact that her abilities matched those of their first hero, they quickly came to call her Supergirl. When she wasn't off in the sky, down on the ground, she had to do the thing that came a little harder. She had to learn to live as a human, in a world she didn't know, learn to respond to the fabricated name of Felicity Smoak.

Four years had gone by now, and in a lot of ways the three of them had truly embraced their new lives. They couldn't, wouldn't forget where they had come from, who they had been, but at the same time… The world they had left behind, even if or when they went back to it… Everything would be changed by then, nothing left for them to find except distant memories stripped apart and changed. On Earth… On Earth they had built something by now, something real, even if so much of it was based on lies, fake names, aliases, costumes… Would they go back? Yes. I have to. No matter what, I have to. That was all she could think about when she asked herself the question.

But then there was the other thing. Their target. For so long she had continued trying to locate him, they all had. But in the end… In the end she had been the one to figure out what had become of him, at least in part. At some point, it seemed, while the three of them still floated in space, locked in stasis, after he'd lived here on Earth for years, he had just… disappeared. There was no trace of him anywhere, except in the records of his human alias. There was no telling what he had been up to since he'd come to this planet or where he'd been since his disappearance, but they would hold to what they had. And someday, someday… They would find him. They would find the man who had come to Earth and taken the name of Malcolm Merlyn.

THE END

Check out the next prelude, coming June 15th!