A/N: The first few chapters have really lacked action, but the story really starts picking up now. The next few chapters will feature a lot of action and will introduce the main villains of the story!

"Got him!"

Mia's exclamation drew Oliver's full attention as he immediately jumped off the salmon ladder and walked over to her.

"Moreno? Where?" he asked.

"Rowan Lane. Vehicle plates: WDC0304. He's nearing the city outskirts, I won't be able to track him through CCTV for much longer."

"Just keep me updated. Tell me when and where you've lost track of him," replied Oliver, quickly grabbing his bow and suit jacket.

Their facial recognition algorithm had finally picked up on Anthony Moreno, who surprisingly turned out to be quite adept at hiding from CCTV cameras and the police. It had taken them three days to finally get a lead on his location.

It was unlikely that Moreno was heading to Diaz now, so Oliver planned to tag him with nanite trackers so that they could shadow his movements more effectively from here on out. Zipping through traffic, Mia's voice spoke in his earpiece just as he turned onto Rowan Lane.

"I've lost him. Terrance Boulevard. Where do you think he's headed?"

"He must be meeting with someone. There's an old motel on Terrance Boulevard, it's worth checking out."

Pulling up in front of the motel, Oliver scanned the plates of the vehicles in the parking bays, and surely enough, 'WDC0304' was there. The little noise generated by his electric bike allowed him to maintain his element of surprise as he approached the building.

Moving to the doors of each room, Oliver placed a small device against the doors that would pick up and transmit any noise inside to his earpiece. On the first door, he immediately pulled the device away and staggered back, having unintentionally picked up on a couple having the time of their life. Regaining his composure, he continued for the remaining doors, which were either empty or the occupants sleeping. On the fifth door was where he found what he was looking for.

"This is all the cash? Don't lie to me, cabron. You been stealing?"

That had to Moreno.

He placed the device back in a pocket before nocking an arrow and kicking the door open.

Four men occupied the room. Moreno, two enforcers and the street dealer. Both of the enforcers had arrows in their shoulders before they had a chance to raise their firearms. With them out of the way, Oliver chose to take care of the dealer first, pinning him to a wall with an arrow through the arm. The decision gave Moreno an extra split-second which allowed for him to scramble for his pistol and raise it.

But Oliver was still too quick for him, shooting the weapon out of his hand before he had the chance to fire. He hoped that Moreno would be smart enough to leap out of the window behind him, but as expected, he wasn't. He charged forward, winging out a telegraphed punch which Oliver evaded with minimal effort.

While young and fast, Moreno had not the skill or composure to compete with Oliver for a single second. All of his punches were blocked, dodged or parried, not knowing that he was still in the fight only for the lone reason that Oliver was not planning on taking him out. Waiting for the right moment to feign a loss of footing, Oliver purposely slipped when the opportunity arose, allowing Moreno to land a clean punch. Being a vastly seasoned combat veteran, Oliver rolled with the blow to lessen its impact, but he stumbled away, giving the impression that the strike had hurt him.

This time, Moreno was smart enough to make a run for it as he sprinted towards the open door. He had no idea that he was doing exactly what Oliver wanted him to. Just before he was out of sight, Oliver jumped to his feet and fired the nanite arrow, aiming for the tip to skim past Moreno's neck and ever so slightly cut him. That was all it would take for the nanites to inject.

He leisurely walked out of the room, spotting Moreno just as he started his car and started to speedily reverse away. Mia's voice spoke on the comms, confirming that the plan had been successfully executed.

"The nanites have activated, I'm getting the signal right now."

While Oliver was thoroughly pleased with the way the evening unfolded, Captain Smith wasn't.

"You must be getting slow in your old age," he said disdainfully, as Oliver approached him and Mack Morgan at what had become their customary meeting place.

"Father Time gets to us all," joked Oliver, but Smith was having none of it.

"Letting Moreno get away like that was damn amateurish!" he exclaimed. "Hell, even Morgan over here would've tied him up. Now, we've lost our only lead on Diaz."

"No, we haven't."

Oliver's nonchalant attitude only irked Smith more. "Oh, really? You know something that I don't?"

"Nanites, courtesy of Ray Palmer," replied Oliver. "I tagged Moreno with them, and I'll be tracking his every move from now on."

"You're saying that you let him get away?" asked Morgan.

"Yes. Now he's going to lead us right to Diaz."

"Is he even going to visit Diaz again now that he knows you're on his case?" asked Smith.

"I don't know, but what I do know is that there's a far greater chance that he does while he's out there rather than from the cell that you have waiting for him at Iron Heights. A little faith would go a long way, Captain. I know what I'm doing."

"Yeah, sure," replied Smith as he turned away, realising that he'd gotten overzealous, "Let us know if he goes anywhere interesting, will ya?"

"Will do."

[PHILADELPHIA – 22:37]

"What do you think of her?"

Patrol officer Benson Ramirez of the Philadelphia police force posed the question to Alan Jones, his fellow officer, as they stood by a hotdog stand waiting for their late-night patrol snack. Jones was the senior of the two, having spent over a decade in the force while Ramirez had only served a quarter of that time.

"What I think don't matter, son," replied Jones, "What matters is what I know, and all I know is that she's credited with twelve arrests thus far. She's thwarted six muggings, three 'B and E's', two vehicle heists and one attempt of graffiti at the Liberty Bell."

Like Star City, Central City and Gotham, the city of brotherly love has its own benefactor. On the other side of Philadelphia, the lady that the two officers were speaking about stood atop a rooftop, looking and listening intently for any petty crimes that were taking place. Her fingers clasped around the grappling hook device in her right hand, her grip tightening as her concentration intensified. She wasn't enhanced in any way nor was she a metahuman, but she had an indomitable passion to help others.

Part of it came from an impossible encounter she had twenty years ago when she was just nine years old. Visiting distant relatives in Gotham, she and her mother were snatched right off the street in the middle of the night and shoved into a van by human traffickers. Only nine and with the trauma of the experience distorting her sense of time, the ride seemed to last a lifetime until the van suddenly tumbled.

She'd heard the rumours. The myths of a demon that prowled the rooftops of Gotham City and hunted the wicked. She never thought of them as anything more than an urban legend until the doors of the van ripped open. She was the only one conscious at the time, her mother and the traffickers having been knocked unconscious by the crash. Having been paralysed by her state of shock, she couldn't even scream as the black entity approached her.

She could only repeat a single phrase over and over. "El Diablo…. El Diablo… El Diablo…"

But when it neared and helped her out of the van, she realised that it wasn't the devil, or a demon. It was just a man. A man seeking to do good, and from that day on, she sought to do good just like him.

She had chosen to call herself Virago.

Having trained martial arts since she was a child, she was now a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and a brown belt in Tae-Kwon-Do. Having started her career as a vigilante two months ago and fighting crime at a street-level rather than on a large scale like the Green Arrow and the Flash, she was only now starting to gain some notoriety.

"No! Someone, please help!"

Having picked up on somebody's cries for help nearby, she fired her grappling hook and began swinging to the approximated location of the scene. But she made a fatal mistake in doing so…

She swung right into the crosshairs of a sniper.

With the rifle having a silencer attached to the barrel, she had no idea what caused the cord of her grappling gun to snap. Meters high above the ground, the fall into an alleyway broke several bones as well as cracked her skull. Helpless and in excruciating agony, she struggled to compel words out of her throat. Her whimpers for help were nothing more than a whisper until she eventually heard the footsteps of someone approaching her.

"Help me, please. Help."

But the person didn't. Using the little strength she had left, she lifted her head to look at the masked man standing over her. A black mask completely covered his face, the lack of eye holes doing little to quell the feeling of his gaze piercing through her. The outline of two white circles were woven into the fabric of the mask. A truly ghastly sight, making her wonder if she was already dead and if this person was merely a hallucination.

"Who are you?" she asked.

He dropped a small card in front of her, causing her to lower her gaze to read the single word written on it.

"'Bang!"

A second later, he raised a large pistol and fired…

Bang!

This time, the bullet went straight through her skull, killing her instantly. He ripped her mask off her face before finally speaking.

"Call me… Onomatopoeia."