Chapter 19: Doomsday Clock
Present Day….
After alien invasions, invasions by Nazis, and a crisis that saw their friends taken from them, you could not blame Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance if they wanted to just STOP being heroes. They had sacrificed more, and more deeply, than anyone would have ever been expected to. But they couldn't.
It wasn't, isn't, just about the sacrifice. It can't be. Because otherwise, why do you do any of it? Why does any of it matter if all you ever think about is what you lost?
Because the Green Arrow and the Black Canary gained a lot. And one of the first things they gained, through battle as it turned out, was a sister-in-law.
Five Years Ago, in Starling City….
If not for the fact that they were on business, and both of them knew it, Nyssa Al Ghul and Sara Lance would have just been making goo-goo eyes at each other. They were that thoroughly besotted. But, whether by training or by circumstance, they both realized what they were here to do. This wasn't a time to flirt, not even a little bit.
Their two teams both understood that a war was coming, and preparation for it was going to be vital. So, the Orange Dragon gave the woman known as Al-Shaytana the 25¢ brief on everything that she thought they would need to know. Simple stuff, really, like where the good supermarkets were and which doctors were more amenable to patching up fighting wounds without asking questions.
But soon, the woman feared the world over as the Demoness began asking other questions, more personal questions. Where were you trained? What fighting styles are your favorite? How did you get your nickname? Things like this.
(For the utterly curious, the answers were right here in Starling City, Mongolian Kung-Fu and Chinese san-shou, and because orange was her father's favorite color and she wanted to honor him. The dragon part was because her trainer is the heir to the Dragon Lineage, and she wanted to honor him.)
Eventually, though, business returned to the forefront of their minds. And when it did, Nyssa remembered she had to let Al-Kanari reintegrate with her family. While she had always hoped, dreamed honestly, that Laurel would consider Nyssa her sister too, she understood what it would feel like to know your sister was alive and never see her.
"Al-Kanari? Could you join us please? And there is no need to be asked. I am assuming that our guest will be more than pleased to see you without one" smiled Nyssa, feeling a sudden warmth at the idea of making this woman she had barely met happy.
And so, Al-Kanari appeared. Right then, right at that EXACT moment, you could have told Sara Marie Lance that the world was going to end in the next 15 seconds and she would not have cared. Nothing that anyone would have told her in that moment would have mattered.
Her sister, the one who had always looked out for her, was back in her life. Even if she was different, harder and more self-assured than she had been, this was still her. It was STILL Laurel, and that was all she needed to see.
"Sara-Bear?" said Laurel, before launching herself at her sister for the hug she didn't realize she wanted or needed until right now.
"It's me, Laurel. I'm so glad to have you home, even if it's under really weird circumstances" she said, and boy oh boy were these the definition of weird circumstances. Then, like a cold knife in the heart, she remembered. But before Sara could say anything, Nyssa did it for her.
"Laurel, I am sure this is already difficult for you. To come home after Starling City, and everyone you loved in your past life, thought you were dead must be hard enough to bear. But we are here on business, and we are sad to say that the business we are here also involves your family" said Nyssa with deep heartbreak in her voice. "Laurel, my sister, your father was assassinated by an enemy of the League, a man we understand you and Al-Sahim both know closely. His name was Carter Bowen, and we believe he did this on the instruction of my sister."
But before Nyssa Al-Ghul says another word, a loud bellow almost like a strangled bull comes from the other side of the hanger and an unmasked Al-Sahim stomps across the room, his face contorted in absolute rage.
"CARTER BOWEN!" he yells, so consumed by his anger he doesn't notice that Sara's jaw is somewhere on the ground. "I knew it. All those years Mom bragged about how much smarter, and better, he was than me. And this WHOLE TIME, he was just as much of a pollutant to our city as anyone else was. But it wasn't enough for him to deal drugs and send people through hell they don't deserve to get put through. No, that wasn't nearly enough. When he finally was about to pay for his crimes, he found someone darker and more depraved than him. And they decided to assassinate a pillar of justice, a man who knew more about right and wrong than he ever could. I'm going to make him pay. This League will make them regret the day they ever tried this."
And then, Oliver Queen turned and noticed Sara Lance, his girlfriend's little sister.
"Sara-Bear!" The anger he had held in him was gone. He embraced his family, the people who had been there for him when his mom was standoffish or cool to him. These, right here and right now, were the people he loved. But as he thought of it, he was forgetting someone. Where was Thea?
His sister, the one person he KNEW would be missing him. They'd see her. He would make sure of it. But for right now, he was home. And that was tremendous.
Meanwhile, across town…..
Thea Queen could not wait to see her brother. But she also knew why he was here, and what it meant for the city she had grown to love and sought to defend. All of her life, at least the parts she could remember, she had been the city's princess. And while she was never going to give up her money, and the ability to get things done in her mission to defend Starling City, she understood that people would always have some concern about whether her motives were genuine.
All the soup kitchens and the job fairs seeded with Queen Consolidated money might not ever be enough to let people know she really did care. But if she fought for the city as hard with her Heavensong bow and the martial arts she had been taught as she did with her charm and political skills, people might finally listen when they were told the Queen family was really trying to make it a better place.
So, she trained. She drilled her body on every bit of the capoeira, judo, and taekwondo Richard Dragon and Sandra Wu-San taught her that she could remember. When she wasn't doing that, she grabbed one of the Olympic bars and ran through a deadlift workout and did pullups. If this city really was about to go to hell in a handbasket, she figured it would be good to be ready.
But, and this was the one secret she kept from everyone, she wanted to save the city to make sure that someone she was having strong feelings about stayed alive. His name was Roy Harper, and he was a bartender at, of all places, the same club Tommy Merlyn worked at. She liked him.
He was funny, and most importantly, didn't give a damn about her money and social status. She got the sense he liked her for her, and not what she could provide for him. Ever since she was old enough to know how different her life was, she had never enjoyed the realization that people WANTED things from her. Roy Harper didn't. He just wanted her.
And, even as she was preparing for a war, she wanted to be worthy of that want. Maybe after this, she'd be able to tell him she was Artemis and prove to him just how worthy of it she was.
Meanwhile, in a run-down apartment in the Glades…
Genshin had long ago believed that the Americans enjoyed filth and degeneracy. Their popular culture, and the way they believed themselves to be the enforcers of a type of justice, only further cemented this opinion.
However he admitted, albeit after much prodding from his long-time lieutenant Kushimaro, that there were things about the American culture he could understand and respect. For example, one did not just wander around a city randomly attacking people you thought had wronged you. For a war like this, it had to be declared.
So, he did. He instructed one of his retinue to bring him a piece of paper, the Black Spider Clan seal, and a fountain pen. If he was going to break those monks in the League of Asssassins, he would do it on their terms. He would show them, using their tools and traditions, how much better he was than them.
But what to say? Who to send it to? These were problems he never contemplated having, he would admit to honestly.
Eventually, the thought came to him. He had long ago remembered what the League's smoke system looked like. He made one of his own, and waited for the League to see it and know the battle was intended to begin.
War had been declared, and soon someone's clan would fall.
Simultaneously in Central City…..
Eobard Thawne was not perfect. He could admit this to himself. And right now, as he re-checked his calculations for the particle accelerator that had been painstakingly created to bring the Flash to life and thus return him to his time, he realized the depth of his mistake. He had calculated the distance number for one zero too many. So, instead of merely creating meta-humans in Central City, he had created them…. WORLDWIDE?
Oh this simply would not do. But as he thought about it further, maybe it would. Maybe that damnable boy scout Barry Allen would become the Flash sooner with all these new threats, and he'd get to go home.
But before that, a quick check to make sure his mistake hadn't done some permanent damage to the timeline. "Gideon" Eobard Thawne asked, sotto voce. "Is the timeline unchanged?"
"No, it has been changed. The Black Canary being on Lian Yu, and having developed her powers, means she will not die as she was fated to. She will lead the Justice League alongside Oliver Queen."
FUCK. This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all.
