Tempest: Chapter Twenty: Masquerade


There was an abundance of plant-life on Starfish Island. Amara remembered Oliver mentioning how he had to find out about which plants were poisonous and which weren't the hard way, but Amara had always had a way with plants and flowers (and she still had no idea why Barry had been so against her being involved with anything plant-related).

Jade was busy picking up some information on their planned heist later that week so Amara had the whole island to herself, for a time, at least.

The sun was shining brightly above her, dappling shadows through the branches of the trees as she picked her way through the wild grass to come out into a field clear of wild-flowers. The view was stunning, like most of the island (Amara had seen it from an aerial view and it made her want to bring a camera up with her the next time she was hovering that high up). There was something distinctly wild and untamed about it that resonated with Amara, but she was here for a reason, not just the view.

Amara's gaze focused on the plant-life, searching for something she could use during their heist…which basically meant she was searching for anything that could be ground into a fine powder and was capable of knocking someone out. Given the plants on the island, Amara didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter, unless she wanted to fly to Fiji and try her luck here –seeing as it was the closest civilization to where they were– but that didn't seem like a very good idea. So Amara opted to deal with what she had on hand.

She knelt down in the earth, pulling her mortar and pestle out of her backpack to grind some of the flowers. Valerian root was said to have sedative-like effects, as did poppies and passion flowers…but apart from that, it didn't look like she'd find anything else of use in the field, so Amara got to work, pulling a few poppy clusters around her and beginning the grinding process, when she heard the sound of careful steps over grass and broken branches.

It wasn't Jade, that much she knew, Jade didn't waste her time in being silent and her steps were much lighter.

Then Amara heard the click of the hammer being pulled back on the gun (Jade had spent a day teaching her the parts of a gun and how to accurately fire one even though Amara still really didn't like them).

"Don't move," came the warning, low and dark and Amara froze carefully, suddenly grateful that she'd decided to wear her spelled earring from Zatara in an effort to get used to wearing it while she and Jade were on the job.

"Stand slowly and turn around," he ordered and Amara did as he said, standing slowly, raising her hands in surrender but knowing full well the position of her bo-staff in her bag, ready to be grabbed.

The man pointing the gun at her was very large with a thick, reddened burn across a good portion of his face. Anyone who hadn't had Amara's training might have found him a bit fearsome, but at this point she just looked mildly interested.

"Who're you?" he demanded.

Amara thickened her voice with a heavy Russian accent (Russian being the only foreign language that Amara knew and could replicate adequately). "Elisa Jäger," she said, using the name of the alias she was currently using, before diving to the side as the gun went off, grazing so close that it ripped a small hole in the side of her shirt.

She dropped to the ground, grabbing up her bo-staff in a single instant, giving a sharp flick of the wrist in order to extend the bo-staff to its full length.

"Not League of Assassins, yes?" Amara asked thickly, arching an eyebrow and smirking widely. "Assassins kill smarter."

He raised his gun a second time and Amara shot out her bo-staff, knocking the gun out of his grip, but that only gained her one advantage; her enemy now didn't have the ability to shoot her. Unfortunately, that didn't really even the odds stacked against her. If this was Jade's idea of a test, Amara was going to kill her when she got back.

She twirled the bo-staff, swiping it towards his midsection, a movement that he easily blocked, but Amara had been expecting that and she brought her staff up to block the strike far faster than she would have been able to before Jade had started training her with using pipes instead of batons.

Her opponent, unfortunately, seemed to be well versed in defense, which came as no surprise, given the size of his massive muscles. His arms could take every strike of her batons which, frankly, was a bit irritating, especially when Amara got a punch to the face, earning her a bruise and a split lip for her effort.

"I don't like it ven my enemies see me bleed," Amara remarked coolly, spitting into the grass before grinning as she dropped the batons. "Zis vill hurt."

Amara leapt forward, using his knee to vault upwards before twisting around, locking her arms around his neck and generating electricity through her hands. It was difficult to do it where it was hardly visible, but Amara had worked at it (Masquerade didn't have any atmo-kinetic abilities, obviously).

His body went rigid, shaking from the voltage before he collapsed on the ground, knocked out.

"Nicely done."

Amara glared. "Was this you?"

"No," Jade said, though there was a considering tone in her voice that said she clearly wasn't above it. "Probably a treasure hunter…we get them sometimes; they think pirates stored treasure on these uninhabited islands…fortunately the League never leaves anything of particular value here."

"Great," Amara drawled out, pulling herself upright. "Well you clean the mess up, I've got sedative powder to make."

She started walking away when Jade called after her: "The accent was a nice touch!"

"Fuck you, Jade!" Amara retorted without even pausing.


"Masq? What the heck kind of name is that?" Wally asked, slurping up his soda as they sat outside Big Belly Burger, perched in chairs that were just this side of uncomfortable, snagging a few of Roy's fries when he wasn't looking; Dick wasn't even eating his burger, instead tapping his fingers across Amara's laptop's keyboard.

"A username, obviously," Roy said, rolling his eyes. "I think we should be more concerned with whoever it was finding out that it was Robin who was using Oracle's laptop."

"Our electronic signatures are nearly identical," Dick had to concede, drawing back for a few moments to grab a bite of his burger and swallow thickly. "She did learn hacking from me…but our signatures are very different once you get deep into the code."

"What does hers look like?" Wally asked curiously.

"It looks like this." Dick turned the screen around so the other two could see the code on it. It was incredibly detailed and intricate with numbers and letters and symbols –too many to count– completing an image of an ivy leaf.

"Ivy…" Roy murmured furrowing his brow before chuckling. "Of course."

The younger sidekicks shared a confused glance.

"It was this thing she said after her parents decided to un-ground her back when she went AWOL for a week," Roy explained, "I asked her what kind of flowers she wanted on her grave after she ate some of Ollie's chili, and she said poison ivy so that she could cause me discomfort from beyond the grave."

Wally snorted and Dick laughed; it did seem like something that Amara would say.

"Anyways…who exactly is this Masq?"

"If they're a thief like they say they are, I haven't picked up any trail on the BlackNet," Dick had to concede. "Whoever they are, they're staying out of sight and out of mind and I still have no way to connect them to Amy…if they met on BlackNet, I can't find any proof."

And Dick had spent a lot of time on BlackNet since Wally had handed off the laptop to him in an effort to find out just where Amara had gone, but Dick hadn't found any trace of Amara on BlackNet since she'd gone missing.

"I can tell you who Amy was 'favor-friends' with, though," Dick added when both his friends deflated.

"Favor-friends?" Wally repeated dubiously.

"I mean like they did each other favors all the time," Dick said, clicking on a string of old data. "Amy did her a favor and she did one in return…Oracle and Cheshire working together, who would have known?"

Roy choked on his swallow of soda, flushing in his embarrassment. "She was working with Cheshire?" he demanded.

"Yeah," Dick said, faintly amused by Roy's response while Wally had to stick his hand in his mouth to keep from laughing too much. "She and Cheshire had a lot of correspondences over her time as Oracle, put until she vanished."

"She's friends with Cheshire?" Roy squawked in incomprehension.

"If they're not friends, then they're pretty close to it," Dick said with a frown before taking another bite of his burger, swallowing quickly to continue talking. "But the only thing they seem to talk about is business, things both of them need, that sort of thing."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Roy insisted. "Amy got nabbed by Cheshire back when she still needed her wheelchair. She kidnapped her and made her track down Sportsmaster for her! Why would she work with her after that?"

"Unless she wasn't kidnapped," Wally corrected, swiping a few fries from Roy with just a small amount of super-speed that made the red-haired archer throw him a glare. "Maybe she just said she was because she knew how it would look…it's easier to say that you were kidnapped and coerced by an assassin rather than saying that you're exchanging favors with an assassin."

It did look rather bad, Dick knew that much. He wondered just how Batman would react if he found out about Amara's extracurriculars on BlackNet.


The sedative effects of the flowers Amara had picked were rather potent, forcing Amara to wear a cloth over her mouth and nose to keep from breathing it in. (Amara may have accidentally knocked out Jade an hour ago, but she'd never admit it and neither would Jade).

She ground the passion flowers and poppies into powder before pulling the bag of powder she'd already ground up.

"I hope you're not going to be doing that all day," came Jade's annoyed voice outside the plane's broken hull, clearly choosing the safest option of remaining far away from Amara while worked on the flowers.

"Probably not," Amara said with a snort, "but it's not like you've got anywhere to be."

"Perhaps I should remind you that I am an accomplished assassin who can easily kill you with a pair of sais."

"Maybe…but I think my birth mother wouldn't be too pleased about it," Amara said slyly.

She had been trying for the better part of a month and a half to get Jade talking about her mother's identity, but so far she'd been unsuccessful and now was no different.

"Nice try."


Running errands for Oliver and Dinah wasn't something that Roy exactly liked to do, but as it was, his investigation into Amara's disappearance with Dick and Wally had gone cold, so right now it was the only thing capturing his interest.

Next week there was going to be a masquerade ball at Star City's famous Museum of Art and Antiquities and Oliver, Dinah, and Roy would be attending –Oliver being a rather prominent figure in Star City and Roy being his ward and Dinah being his girlfriend– since the Queen family had given some money to sponsor the event, the proceeds going towards a charitable cause. But the other reason they would be attending was because the Star City heroes were currently investigating the museum's director for fraud, among other things.

And if there was anything that Roy really hated, it was dressing up for black tie occasions; Oliver might be used to them by now, but he wasn't. And being surrounded by a sea of people in masks didn't exactly sit well with him, which was ironic since he spent most of his time with people who concealed their own identities, but it was different when it was people you didn't know and didn't trust.

He was shoving the tux –and Roy wasn't entirely sure that it counted as a tux with how…decorated it was– into his bag to better lock it behind his motorcycle when he accidentally jostled someone on the street. He opened his mouth to say something, but she beat him to it.

"My apologies," the girl said with a thick Russian accent that made Roy pause even as she turned away, allowing him to only catch a glimpse of the green that was her eyes.

Roy had memorized the exact shade of his partner's eyes, but he knew he was seeing things where there was nothing. Amara was a little shorter than the girl he'd knocked into and her hair grey –or black–, certainly not red, and she'd never looked like she'd spent some time on the beach (if anything, Amara had always seemed to be permanently, perpetually pale). And Amara definitely didn't sound like that; there had always been a throaty quality to her voice but it had never been thick.

He chanced a glance back to the girl, but the last glimpse he got was of a leather jacket and crimson hair whipped by the wind before she took a right off the main road. Roy frowned; there was something about that girl that was off…


Amara breathed a sigh of relief, leaning heavily against the alley's wall, trying to control her breathing. She had passed so close to Roy; she could have reached out, grabbed his hand, told him everything that happened, spilled her heart to her best friend. But Amara didn't do any of those things. Amara stuck to the plan and kept her accent and didn't even try to make eye contact with her partner.

She raked a hand through her hair before leveling her breathing and making her way out of the alley and walking calmly to the hotel she and Jade were staying at.

"You took your time," Jade commented, examining several blueprints on Amara's laptop ("That's mine," Amara said with annoyance one day when she'd awakened to find the assassin on it. "I know," Jade replied without a single care in the world.) while Amara pulled her jacket off with ease, tossing it onto a bad before making her way to where Jade was sitting.

"I had to double-back just to be sure I wasn't followed," Amara said, arching an eyebrow at Jade. "Your crippling paranoia is rubbing off on me, I think."

"All right, first of all, it is not crippling, and secondly, that paranoia could save your life one day."

Amara rolled her eyes. "Are you going to give me the run-down or am I just going to have to take the laptop?"

Jade turned in the chair, smiling slyly at the green-eyed now-thief. "All right, six months ago a precious artifact was stolen from England and later appeared on the black market before it wound up here in Star City. It's a necklace known as the Diamond Riviere that once belonged to Queen Mary. It's worth well over one million dollars."

Amara's eyes widened.

"Now, the monarchy never admitted to the theft and they can't just go and accuse the United States for stealing a precious artifact, especially with how the black market works," Jade explained. "However, they are willing to pay what the necklace is worth to have it returned without a scratch on it."

"They'd resort to illegal means to get it back?" Amara asked dubiously.

"You underestimate how much they want it back." Jade smirked. "And it looks like you'll be doing all the leg-work."

The meta-human's brow wrinkled in confusion. "What're you talking about?" she asked.

"I've got outstanding warrants on me," Jade pointed out, "and the museum's software is surprisingly sophisticated, but, luckily, Elisa Jäger has nothing against her and can pass through a camera's line of sight and not set off alarms."

"And what if the League's set up an alert on me?" Amara asked wryly.

"They haven't," Jade said, "I checked. Besides, before you leave, you'll look nothing like Amara Allen, so it won't even be an issue."

"Great," Amara drawled, that single word spoken heavy with sarcasm. "And just where is this highly expensive and stolen necklace that I'm supposed to steal?"

She had a feeling that she was going to regret taking this job on, just by the wide grin that the assassin threw in her direction.


Really, Amara didn't know what she was supposed to expect when Jade showed her Masquerade's outfit. There was the skintight black jumpsuit that could only not be considered odd at a masquerade ball event, and then there was the material thrown on top of it. It was red like blood giving off the appearance of high quality but Amara could feel its durable quality, sleeveless and falling down her legs, to the untrained eye it would seem like a lovely dress, but Amara couldn't work in a dress, in fact it ended in rather loose pant-legs.

But the heels Amara could have lived without.


So a week later Amara found herself standing in line with the other guests, her invitation in hand and her sedative powder hidden in the cloth bag around her wrist that anyone else would assume was holding her phone or other valuables inside. She got through the crowd without any trouble.

The problem arose when she caught sight of Roy, Oliver, and Dinah not too far away from her position. She swallowed thickly before turning away and Roy looked up, only catching a glance of a golden mask and a head of red hair as she vanished into the crowd; his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Of course, Amara couldn't just search for the necklace, she needed to steal someone's security badge first…but that was proving to be a bit difficult, especially since the director of the museum was rather paranoid, reaching back to check that there was a badge still hooked to his elaborate jacket –clearly he'd been taking some cues from the French– which meant Amara was going to have to switch it with another badge to give her enough time to grab the necklace.

Amara brushed against one of the security guards with a muttered apology, sliding away with their badge hidden in the palm of her hand.

"I give you ten minutes before he notices that badge is gone," came Jade's voice in her ear.

"Just ten?" she murmured thickly.

"If you're lucky. Knowing you, you won't be."

Amara's red-painted lips smirked as she swept past the director, swiping his badge with the one she had just filched, and then she disappeared through the crowd before he could turn to see the person who had just jostled him, allowing Amara to duck past the main room's corner, taking her down a darkened hallway.

She blinked and the darkened lenses of her mask activated their night-vision, allowing Amara to see where she was going.

"You shouldn't run into any guards, they've already done their rounds and should be preoccupied with the party and the cameras are all running on a continuous loop, you should be in the clear…take your next left."

Amara's heels clicked loudly in the silence as she complied to Jade's command. In all honesty, she would much rather be wearing her trusty combat boots and her tough leather, but she had to make do with what she had. There were a lot of things she'd rather be doing than robbing a museum of a stolen artifact, yet here she was. Barry and Iris' faces flashed in her mind and regret flooded through her system before she ruthlessly squashed it.

She had a job to do, and she couldn't afford to let her feelings get in the way, especially not now.

"All right, take the stairs to your left all the way down to the bottom and the door should be the first thing you see when you get there."

Amara peered down the stairs and scowled and the number of them.

"You just luff to make life miserable," she said quietly, her accent as thick as the day she had first used it.

Jade's laughter was static in her ear.

So Amara pulled one of the golden bangles off her wrist to extend it to full length, locking it around the rail before throwing herself over the edge in what could have been considered a very dangerous move if Amara didn't have complete control over her weight distribution. Instead, Amara merely swung to the basement floor, landing lightly on her feet and smirking when she saw the simple security-badge lock on the door.

"Zey make this far too easy," she said, sliding the key into the door, unlocking it with ease, but when she saw what was inside, she gave a loud groan.

"What is it?"

"I owe you twenty dollars," Amara grumbled, "zere are lasers."

And there were, a startling number of them, but that was to be expected, after all, the necklace was worth a great deal.

"Zis vill take time," Amara said thickly, stepping out of her heeled shoes, her eyes focusing on the lasers as they moved carefully around the pedestal in the center onto which the diamond necklace had been mounted.

It was going to take some serious acrobatics to maneuver around the lasers, but Amara was up to the challenge.


Roy never went anywhere without his collapsible bow, a habit that Oliver should have gotten into, but right now Roy was the only one with a weapon as he notched the arrow and pointed it at the girl who was carefully pulling straps to criss-cross over her front, holding two batons over her shoulders that were similar to the ones Roy had seen Amy use, and kept one gun in position on her left side.

"I thought I saw that mask somewhere," he said, making the girl turn to face him and she gave him a crimson smile.

"Did Robin like his little present?" she asked as lightly as she could manage.

"No…Masq, the thief who never stole a thing until now," Roy continued, "what changed your mind?"

"Masquerade needs a little excitement in her life. Besides, stealing somezing that vas already stolen doesn't really count."

And then she dipped her hand into her pouch and blew a cloud of powder at Roy, making him cough in an attempt to clear his mouth and nose, but the powder was easily absorbed and fast-acting, making his vision blur and the room sway; not enough to knock him out, but enough to knock him off his game.

Masquerade was fast, he'd give her that, but he'd seen faster. And Roy wasn't about to let her get away with what he was sure was a priceless item wrapped around her throat.

He took aim and fired.

An arrow was released and a bullet fired and then there was silence that deafened.


AN: I have no idea how to actually write a Russian accent, I tried looking it up by google wasn't very helpful, so if any of you lot can be of help, it would be most appreciated.