Fire was an element with which Talia closely associated. Fire was cleansing, fire was pure. It was beautiful to behold. As she stood above a pit of fire, hardly a girl of thirteen, Talia felt no fear. The heat was almost unbearable, but this is what she had chosen as her rite of passage, as a way of proving to her father that she was worthy to be called his heir. She knew no other life than the League of Assassins, an organization dedicated to affecting change on a worldwide scale, and one day she would rule that mighty fist of nature with even more ruthless than her idol: the second man to bear the title of Ra's al Ghul, a battle-hardened man from the great nation of Japan. He had killed the first Ra's during a trial by combat. Survived the sword after murdering one of the League's finest in 1522. Been given the ring, had largely been unchallenged. That was, until Talia, daughter of the first Ra's and the woman for whom she was named, stood up to him. She had fled, so the legends say, after being defeated. The Great Desert Flower of Egypt, her olive skin kissed by the sun, had tried to spare a large settlement from the League's wrath. This new Ra's burned the place to the ground and put the entire population to the sword as a demonstration of his power. Talia, supposedly, died in childbirth some years later and her child was smothered to death.
Talia continued staring out the window of her apartment in the Glades, the tale replaying itself in her head over and over like a silent film from the 1920s. The will of humanity was malleable enough given the correct incentives. Oliver Queen and his people were already divisive among both the common people and law enforcement. Talia would provoke them into killing each other, or at least give them the proper extra incentive. Their ire would be the gasoline used to set the fire that would cleanse the ground upon which this corrupt city stood. Like Gotham before it, Starling would fall or she would die in the quest.
"What the hell do you mean you have a sister?" Oliver was incredulous. "Why wait until now to share this with us?"
"Until yesterday, Mr. Queen, I believed her to be long since dead! The information was irrelevant. Now I find that not only is she alive, but also that she has killed our father and taken over the League."
"All right, so how do we stop her," Laurel piped up. "I imagine she doesn't have as much restraint as your father."
"Considerably less. Talia is ruthless and extraordinarily persistent; she will use and everything at her disposal to achieve her endgame."
"And what is her endgame?" Diggle inquired.
"Talia was raised to be wholly loyal to the League's vision of balance and purity as set forth by the first Ra's al Ghul six centuries ago: humanity is fundamentally corrupt, and the most corrupt of us must face righteous judgment."
"So she wants to destroy Star City?" Oliver again.
"As a start."
"Oh, look," Felicity deadpanned, "we're finding out that some well-connected psychopath wants to destroy the city. Must be November."
"She also desires to murder the entirety of the city's population. Brutally and in the most drawn-out manner possible. Men. Women. Children. It does not matter to my sister. She's always been a fundamentalist, but this is a new level of insanity. I came back to Starling in order to honor my deceased lover. I may not like it, but it was her home and I shall not see it annihilated. You need me. All of you will need me."
Oliver stared into Nyssa's eyes, trying to detect some sort of lie or half-truth. Was this some sort of elaborate fiction to let her on the team? She was dangerous. She was an assassin.
"I was not too different from you when you returned, Oliver," Nyssa answered his unspoken argument against her.
"She has a point," Diggle inserted.
"Fine. But only until Talia is dealt with."
"Very well."
"Welcome to the team."