Chapter 9

Oliver watched through the camera's he had secreted into the club Bane, knowing that Thea liked to hang out there and would go there as a safe place to discuss the revelations that had been revealed to her and the Wilson children. A slight smile graced his face as they worked it all out almost immediately.

He was marginally annoyed that Sara had already tried to pull Thea away from the Wilson's knowing full well that Sara didn't trust Slade, and was greatly amused by Grant's history lesson on Deathstroke – six members indeed. He also frowned slightly at the very generous amount of alcohol consumption, the 'asshole family member' comment and the continuous allusion to the amount of people that they had killed as Vigilantes; but aside from that, he was quite pleased that they were not nearly as angry as he originally thought they would be.

"Have they worked it out yet?" Slade appeared from upstairs, jumping over the railings, ignoring the stairs in favor of just jumping down, and executing a perfect roll onto the training mats.

"Almost straight away and they aren't nearly as angry as we thought they'd be."

"Well that's one positive thing that came out of today." Slade grumbled.

"Let me guess? She defeated you again." Slade despite being possibly that most skilled close combatant that ever walked the earth, often seemed to lose to the young Chinese women, and Oliver always repeated in his head the lesson Slade had attempted to drill into him.

The greatest downfall for men was women and the distraction they posed. It amused Oliver to no end on how much Slade had lectured him about not falling in love or being infatuated with a women by their looks, only for himself to fall prey to Shado soon after.

Slade, clearly unwilling to admit he had lost to Shado yet again, grabbed the tablet from Oliver's hands and watched his children with an intensity that surprised even Oliver. He missed them more than he would ever admit, even more so since arriving in Starling City.

Oliver knew how he felt, to see their family so close and yet so far, to be able to watch them from afar, but never have any true contact with them. It was painful, an ever constant reminder of the precious time torn from them. A reminder of the little pieces of their soul that had been chipped away since the last time they had seen them.

Oliver glanced at his watch. 4:00pm. More than enough time for some serious training before Felicity, Shado and Yao Fei turned up, ready for the night of 'fighting' crime, if one could call smashing ineffective bodyguards to the floor and intimidating pathetic corrupted businessmen 'fighting'.

Oliver began his usual sequence of push-ups and muscle strengthening exercises. Hanging upside down, pulling himself up on the Salmon Ladder that Felicity insisted on putting in, hauling up his body on a thick rope, and practicing with the bamboo sticks in the 'cage' as it was nicknamed – a maze of iron poles at odd angles, the aim was to dance between them, hitting each one multiple times without losing momentum – it was a lot harder than it looked.

Slade eventually stopped watching his children and joined in. For the next two hours, they engaged in intense brawling, Slade ultimately winning most of them, particularly in the sparring sessions with bamboo poles. Slade would no doubt always be a better hand to hand combatant than Oliver ever would be, his experiences as Deathstroke and his natural ability would always insure that, but that didn't mean that Oliver was a bad fighter, quite the opposite, but Oliver's greatest skills had always lay in long ranged combat, torture, and manipulation.

His skill with a bow was only matched by Yao Fei and Shado, not even a league of assassin's member could come close to the skill the three of them displayed and continuously horned. Oliver's ability to manipulate, lie and play 'chess' – as Felicity called it – with people's lives, was unusually excellent. Slade of course was still their best battle tactician but Oliver was known to outmaneuver Slade on the occasion – something very few could do.

Oliver, under Amanda Waller, had discovered his unusual and frankly sickening talent of interrogation. It was scary how easy he could physically and mentally break a person beyond their conscious mind, forcing them to eventually spill their darkest secrets, if only for the promise of a quick painless end.

Although Oliver had always been good using people to do what he wanted, he didn't realize actually how good he could be until an incident in Hong Kong where he was forced to play 'chess' like any 'good' businessman or large scale criminal. Apparently Oliver had inherited more than good looks from his father, when it came to 'business' he was a natural.

Combined with his now instinctual ruthlessness and determination, there was little on the business side he couldn't do. And what he did do was not easy by any standards; he started and managed his own business in Hong Kong – calling it Verdant – by blackmailing various criminal organizations into giving him enough money to invest interest in many small yet powerful companies.

Now he was back in Starling the company grew on its own, Oliver paying other men to take care of it, and had evolved into an international company, with major branches in Russia and China, as well as several smaller branches all across the world, including a recently opened Starling City department.

Oliver planned for a massive drop in the company's fortunes in the future, so when he was Oliver Queen the billionaire playboy again, he would slowly buy up his own company and, with a little manipulation of the market, Verdant's worth will skyrocket and he will suddenly be in possession of a very powerful company.

It would also offer a perfectly reasonable excuse for all his time spent away from his family and provide almost unlimited financial access for their night activities. With Slade playing his bodyguard, Shado would take the place of his therapist for his years 'alone' on Lian Yu and Yao Fei would be his Tai Chi and Meditation instructor to help 'calm' his mind.

Oliver fully intended to play the PTSD card, which should counteract his intense change in behavior, this would hopefully slid off any awkward questions about the Island. Doing this would also allow for regular daily contact between all four of them without suspicion, as well as provide them all with untainted alibis if any of their operations went wrong or if the police somehow became suspicious of them, and any of their wounds and absences could be explained away easily without mistrust.

"Are you done smashing each other to bits or do you need a jackhammer to complete the job?" Felicity felt particularly sarcastic for a moment, "Not that we actually have a jackhammer now that I think of it, or any other construction or demolition equipment. Not that we'd need it I suppose, you too both destroy anything that comes within arm reach. I mean, really! How the hell did you two manage to practically break one of the pure metal supporting shafts? I'm just glad that it was not that important otherwise-" Felicity drew in a breath and realized how long she had been ranting, "I'm doing it again aren't I?"

Oliver laughed lightheartedly and with one final successful strike at Slade, he jumped nimbly off the training mat, replacing the bamboo poles, and taking his favorite place by the computer table, still shirtless and sweaty. Slade placed his own set of bamboo with the others and pulled a thin cotton black shirt over his body.

Oliver was thumbing his way through the List, the symbol had been a mystery until Roy was kidnapped and was going to executed in the old subway tunnels by the so-called 'Savior', Felicity remembered pulling up the map and Yao Fei leaning over recognizing the connection immediately, and then expecting everyone else to see it as fast as he had and no one understanding, except Oliver whom was smirking his arrogant self-satisfied smile in the corner, for at least ten minutes until Shado finally worked it out and explained it out loud to everyone else.

Oliver was like that sometimes, he knew about things that were yet to happen or knew about them just before they did. Those moments were slowly decreasing but still predominate enough that everyone secretly thought that Oliver was holding back some special source of information about basically everything.

He was always the least surprised despite the fact that many of the recent revelations had a connection to him before the Island, except when they were bugging Malcolm Merlyn's car at the very beginning of their campaign. The bug picked up a highly confidential conversation between Moria and Malcolm about the Queen's Gambit after an old associate of Robert, Walter Steele, stumbled upon the destroyed boat.

Luckily they were able to get Mr. Steele well out of the city and underground before he could be killed but Oliver was angry for days afterwards. Particularly over the fact that his Mother not only fully supported the Undertaking, but did not care for her former dead husband, still hating him for the Isabel Roshev incident and the numerous other affairs he had.

Another convenient change. For every ally he had saved in this timeline he lost someone at home from before. Tommy for Slade, Walter for Yao Fei and now Moira for Shado.

Oliver himself was not mentioned it but the thought alone that his mother would chose Malcolm Merlyn over her own son made him feel more isolated than ever before. It was then on Oliver decided that no one from his younger years as playboy Oliver Queen was to be trusted with anything, aside from Thea, because if she hated him there would be nothing left of Ollie Womanizer Queen, nothing left of the young Oliver Queen whom Speedy so happily chased after. Only the Emerald Archer, the Green Arrow, Oliver the survivor.

"Not to be rude or anything and interrupt your philosophical thoughts about life or whatever you were thinking about. That's not to say that you don't have philosophical thoughts about life or anything else really just it's like more of a Yao Fei or Shado thing. You know with their inner Zen aura thing… Please just stop me?" Felicity sighed.

Oliver smirked once more at Felicity's incessant babbling. The back door then opened to reveal Shado, Diggle and Lyla. He slid off the table, quickly grabbing a simple grey shirt to cover his well scarred upper body, unexpectedly surprised by their sudden unison entrance.

Slade, typically, pulled Shado close to him, giving her a simple kiss on her cheek. He looked oddly tame when Shado was close to him, another constant source of amusement for Oliver whom was well used to Slade's tough guy persona, which only ever seemed to fade around Shado and his children. Then Slade turned towards Lyla and Diggle.

"Any news from A.R.G.U.S.?" That was usually why Lyla visited the foundry, unless Diggle was here late and she was here to see him.

"Not exactly. Deadshot is back in Starling."

Diggle swung around to face his wife, "What?! He was still deep in Russia a few days ago."

"It seems that someone wants an assassin mercenary and seeing as he is the best sniper on the market at the moment, it not a surprise that he isn't staying underground for very long. The most worrying thing is that he must have been offered astronomical amounts of money for him to come back here again after the beating Slade and Oliver dealt out. There are few directly in Starling that would have that quantity of cash on hand."

"Only three from my databases." Felicity, always efficient, had already looked it up in her massive databases cross compiled with the List, A.R.G.U.S. files, SCPD records, the legal Archives, Interpol, the Media and several other useful sources. "Malcolm Merlyn, Frank Bertinelli and Isabel Roshev."

"Wonderful. A mob boss, a psychotic bitch and an assassin." Diggle was less than impressed by the list of possible dealers.

"I doubt that Malcolm would bother with a sniper with his own skills." Oliver said.

"Maybe he doesn't want to kill him as the Dark Archer fearing that someone might make the connection." Lyla suggested.

"Then he'd hire a local hit man, someone that if they failed would not be as suspicious as Deadshot, very few can afford Deadshot and even less now because of his recent failures in Starling." Oliver's reply was fast and almost without thought.

"So, Malcolm Merlyn is most likely out. We'll have look into him anyway. But just from a quick scan of the three of them they all have masses of enemies and people whom they'd want to kill." Felicity called out.

"Alright, we'll need to find another way to get more specific information. Shado and I will look into Miss Roshev, she is less likely to recognize either of us. Yao Fei can look into Malcolm Merlyn. And Oliver – you get Bertinelli."

Immediately suspicious from the cat like grin on his partner's face, Oliver narrowed his eyes and asked, "Why do I get Bertinelli?"

"He has a rather lovely daughter whom has an odd fetish for leather and crossbows."

"You… You knew the whole time." Oliver sputtered, unable to believe it. Oliver had carefully hid his prior knowledge of the Huntresses identity, the fact that Slade had worked it out and didn't say anything at all surprised him.

"Yes, yes I did." Slade didn't even try and act like it wasn't true.

"You knew that the Huntress was Helena Bertinelli. As in the crazy Vigilante that turns up and flirts with me every time we do a mob hit." Oliver decided that he should play it safe and act like he knew nothing about her identity and he wouldn't if it wasn't for his past memories.

"Isn't that a conflict of interest? Her father's a mob boss. Why would she want to destroy his criminal empire?" Shado frowned.

"Oliver can find that out for sure." Slade was not gonna let Oliver wriggle out of this one. It was far too amusing to watch him squirm, and Slade was not going to let this precious chance go.

"I will get you back for this, Slade." Oliver vowed as he grabbed his bow, ear piece and leather. He stormed out not waiting for the others to catch up.

…/|\...

Oliver looked down from the roof tops at the black van being guarded by several balaclava-wearing armed guards. Approximately ten more men, also fortified and masked, cautiously approached the vehicle surrounding their leader in a circular fashion, apparently the recent failings occurring due to the Hoods and the Huntress was causing both the mob and those that still dared to do deals with them to take harsh measures and increased security in the pathetically obvious hopes that enough men meant no attacks.

It was the solution of a simpleton, both the Vigilantes and the Huntress had gone through far more men before on their own, but together the thugs would stand no chance. It was almost an insult to see just how pitiful their new safety procedures were.

Oliver scanned the other rooftops, Slade was opposite him on a fire escape, his duel swords gleaming, ready to jump down the second he started to fire arrows, and the Huntress was hiding in the shadows on the dark railings above the second lot of thugs, her purple crossbow aimed at the unfortunate men.

Oliver waited patiently for the men to begin the deal, the main arms dealer stepped forward, convinced that the area was clear, from the brief and contemptible search carried out by the mob men. Oliver slowly, careful not make any audible noise, drew one of his signature arrows from his quiver, and nocked the green shaft into the taunt bowstring. Breathing gently he watched the arms dealer leader open his mouth to speak. The two men aside the dealer fell to the ground, each killed by a green arrow within a second of each other.

The Huntress took this as the cue to begin firing her own deadly, if not nearly as accurate or fast, ugly purple crossbow bolts down upon the disorientated men. The Onyx Dueller jumped down into the scene, lopping off limbs with scary ease further panicking the already fearful arms dealer.

The Emerald Archer ran across the rooftop and hurdled off, grabbing a pole to slow the fall, and landing on top of one of the few unfortunate thugs that was still alive from the bloody melee. The last few men were dealt with simultaneously by the Onyx Dueller and the Huntress. The Emerald Archer stalked towards the unfortunate German dealer, flanked by the other vigilante's.

It was the Onyx Dueller whom started the menacing intimidation. "Selling multitudes of guns to the mob that were eventually be used for nefarious purposes that led to many innocent deaths upon this city's streets."

"You have used your own influential friends to avoid arrest. You have manipulated and threatened innocent people for your own greed and pleasure. You never care for the deaths that lead from your own actions. Death for you is a mercy." The Huntress continued.

The emerald archer drew back his bow hostilely and reiterated his signature line, "Leo Muller, you have failed this city."

He let a green arrow fly through the air and dispatch the German. Helena stowed her crossbow on her belt, Slade sheathed his bloody swords onto his back and Oliver hooked his bow over his left shoulder.

"I'll leave you to talk." Slade cheekily stated before climbing back up the walls back to the rooftops. The two vigilantes stared at each other heedless of the bodies surrounding them.

"You have excellent aim." The Huntress purred from under her purple mask.

Usually Oliver would have rebuked her somehow, but with the new found urgency for knowledge on Frank Bertinelli, he easily slipped into his former womanizing ways, "It comes with practice, lots of practice." The suggestive undertone as easily apparent as he stepped closer to her.

The Huntress smirked believing that the Green Vigilante had finally fallen for her charms, "They do say practice makes perfect." She too stepped closer to him so they were only a few feet apart, "And I would be only too happy to help with your practice."

They leaned in closer, now only a few inches apart, their eyes met from under a hood and mask. Oliver decided to make the first move and bent down and pressed his slightly chapped lips against her full purple-lipstick ones. Helena, unsurprisingly deepened the kiss, placing her hands on the back of his hood.

Oliver copied her, and soon slipped his tongue into her mouth, his body far more sensitive than usual for it had been months since his last proper contact with a women, having not touched another women since he had arrived in Starling City. Police sirens whined in the distance and the two vigilante's broke apart; one resigned, one reluctant.

Oliver took her hand and led them up onto the rooftops, together, they free ran towards a vantage point to watch the police scramble around like ants on a stamped nest. Yellow tape and markers soon were strewn out into the streets surrounding the site.

Satisfied that their point had been made after they finally broke into the van and discovered the hidden cache of weapons, the Vigilantes parkoured through the rooftops, splitting up and returning on equally expensive motorcycles. Helmets on, they raced through the streets, eventually Helena led them to a small but expensive motel.

Oliver followed the Huntress up the decorated wall façade, through a small window and into a luxurious bedroom. Their lips met once again in a frenzy, not bothering with the lights, the couple soon made their way to the silken double bed. Leather was soon strewn upon the thickly carpeted floor.

Sometime later, Oliver slipped out of the soft bed and began redressing in his green vigilante leather. Checking that Helena was still sleeping, he placed some almost invisible bugs on her phone, purple costume and some of her clothes that he found in the wardrobe. He placed a soft kiss on her head and exited through the window once more.

He slowly lowed himself down the wall and replaced his dark helmet, looking up at the window once more, seeing Helena staring desirously out at him. He ignored her longing look, having got what he wanted from her, and revved up his bike and lost himself in the city's bright lights and dark alleys.

…/|\...