++++++ So in this chapter there's a few little things I hope you like.

Please enjoy.

I do not own ++++++

Thirty-Five

"Damn this traffic sucks balls," Charlie moaned from the backseat of the Porsche. We were on our way back from dance practice with Austin so she was lying in the backseat and I could hear her stomach growling in hunger from here.

"Is your stomach going to eat you from the inside out?" Suki questioned from behind the wheel. "It's making disturbing growling sounds." Suki was now mine to train, previously she had been Oliver and Sara's but now she was mine since they were training Roy. She wasn't too bad, her close combat skills were getting better but she was still better at long range.

"I think there's been an accident," I frowned, sticking my head out the window to look ahead. I couldn't see much apart from a few flashing lights and a truck overturned. "We'll just have to wait, not like we can go anywhere."

"So how did the due date scan go?" Charlie asked. Whilst she'd been at practice Suki had come with me to my due date scan since Roy wasn't able to come.

"May 11th little baby Harper should come into the world," I answered. "The OBGYN is a friend of Bruce's so she knows the logistics of what is going on. I have to go in to see her once every month to get samples for study." So after much consideration, I had decided to keep the baby which I do admit everyone was thrilled about. Felicity was teaching me how to utilize the computers in the lair for when I decided it was time to step aside.

Suki looked out the window when someone ahead screamed. Seconds later an explosion rocked the bridge, actually making it sway backwards and forwards followed by a second explosion underneath the bridge. "I have a bad feeling about this," the girl spoke, looking around as people ran. "There's a chemical smell and then there's a C4 smell."

"You can smell it?" Charlie asked. She opened the sunroof with a frown and climbed out. "River! There's a car gonna go over the bridge!" she shouted as a third explosion took out a section of the bridge where the burning truck was. People were thrown everywhere, there had to be some casualties which made me think instantly of Slade-he'd been far too quiet of late. Suki and I managed to get out of the car before running along to other cars helping people out.

Charlie threw her jacket back into the car and slid off the front as she took off running to the car balancing over the edge. The ground underneath was shaky as I scrambled back into the car to grab our bags, there were some things in them that couldn't afford to be lost.

"CHARLIE!" Suki screamed. "River!"

I climbed out just in time to see the car all over the edge, noticing that there were people inside. "GET OFF THE BRIDGE!" I yelled at Suki as a news helicopter flew overhead.

Charlie took as many steps back as she possibly could then ran straight at the edge, diving over. I ran to the edge, Suki coming up beside me as we watched the car and Charlie fall straight at the water, hundreds of meters down.

"She'll never survive that," Suki whispered.

Suddenly a giant hand burst out of the water below, reaching up as if to grab the car and Charlie. We watched in total awe as the water around the bottom of the giant hand turned into solid ice, making its way up the arm, freezing just in time to grab the car. Charlie's body hit the hand with a thud, the crowd that had gathered on the edge of the bridge to watch gasped as she rolled off the edge, a second smaller hand gently grabbing her in its palm. After what felt like forever, the hand cracked open, Charlie was standing there like nothing had happened at all. In the first hand, the people trapped inside the car all managed to get out, standing on the ice hand worried it would collapse at any time.

"Oh my god," I whispered as people around us started taking pictures and videos. The age of smartphones ladies and gentlemen.

"We have to get her before the helicopter does," Suki whispered.

Charlie looked back up at the bridge and waved before she leapt straight into the water, disappearing from sight.

"Where will she go?" Suki asked me.

"Back to the lair," I shrugged. "There's police everywhere and we can't leave the car otherwise we can get in trouble for leaving the scene. We'll just have to wait…on the other hand…wow…look at that." There were two giant ice hands sticking out of the river underneath Star Bridge and a huge chunk of road missing where it used to be. The gap was wide-wide enough that it would take weeks, if not months to fix.

"Why do I get the feeling that the city is getting cut off from everything?" Suki asked me.

"Because it is." I replied. "Slade's gonna make his move soon and we have to be ready. I thought he'd been too quiet of late."

This made me feel sick…what lengths wouldn't that man go to to kill everything Oliver loved?

A few hours and a couple of interviews later, Suki and I came back to the lair-the sound of vomiting was the first thing we heard when we got there. Roy had come to SCPD to pick us up when the cops let us leave. Hopefully I could get my car back in a couple of days.

Oliver was leaning up against a table beside Diggle and Sara whilst Felicity was holding Charlie's hair whilst she threw up in a bucket. "Twitch! Suki!" Oliver called out, crossing to hug us both. "Glad you guys are okay…we saw the news."

"She just dove off the bridge, Ollie," I sighed, dumping my bag on the table. I crossed to help Felicity, I tied back Charlie's hair to make it easier for her to throw up. "Is she okay?"

"She used up a lot of power," Felicity answered. "I don't know how these abilities work exactly but I took a sample of her blood and looked at it, it's like she got the Flu or something. Her body is missing a lot of vitamins and minerals so she's reacting the only way she can. And she keeps passing out."

"She feels wet," I frowned.

"Yeah well," Sara coughed, "look at her hand." One of the hands holding the side of the bucket was completely see-through like water. The hand was holding shape but it was still disturbing. "When she made a joke the other day about the key to her abilities been behind a locked door-well I think she kicked the door down."

"She's right here!" Charlie coughed, sitting up. Her entire body was pale, very pale and she looked unwell. She fell back on the ground and Felicity hugged her. "Just kill me now. I don't understand how I did it."

"The media caught it pretty quick," Diggle confessed. "Patricia Tesla even gave her a name. Aphrodite."

I snorted. "Aphrodite? Really?" Looking down, Charlie had fainted again. "Roy can you get her home? I'll go to the chemist on the way home and pick up some vitamins to get her back on her feet. We can talk about the baby when I get back." I tucked a strand of hair behind Charlie's head, pausing when I noticed how much paler it was in contrast to the rest of her hair. It made me think-we needed to know what was going on with her body and I knew just the alien to do it.

++++++ And no, Aphrodite is NOT Charlie's vigilante name. It's just a name the media gave her ++++++