Chapter Three: Oliver
Oliver stepped into the foundry lair the next night to find Felicity already hard at work. She had a tracking algorithm running on one monitor to find Kraven, and some kind of suit project running on another monitor as she talked on Skype with what appeared to be someone at Star Labs.
"Is that for me?" Oliver asked causing Felicity to calmly but not-so-subtly close both the Skype connection and the suit project.
"I guess not." Oliver chuckled, "What's up Felicity?"
"The tracking algorithm is running based on all of Kraven's cases in America - specifically New York." Felicity started with a tone that suggested the subject was changing whether Oliver wanted it to or not, "Now we just have to wait for it to actually give us something."
"No offense," Oliver said as he leaned over the desk and looked at the monitor, "But this looks like you had some help in setting it up."
"Are you seriously doubting my abilities right now?" Felicity asked with a look of shock, "I don't grade your archery performances for plagiarism."
"Okay, fair enough." Oliver chuckled as he straightened up and held his hands up at his chest in surrender.
"Sorry, I'm just a little stressed with stuff outside of here." Felicity breathed as she started pulling up some other files to help Oliver with the night's work.
"Do you need to talk about it?" Oliver asked as he turned and leaned back against the desk in front of a monitor Felicity wasn't using.
"No, I'm fine." Felicity smiled her thanks, "It's just a friend I haven't seen since college, but would take a bullet for, came to town yesterday and is crashing at my place. I just don't want him finding out about any of this."
"Do you need me to run preemptive interference?" Oliver asked as he crossed his arms.
"No, nothing like that." Felicity replied, "I just may not be able to fully focus while he's here, or I may have to leave early or come in late."
"Well, if it's someone you'd take a bullet for, that makes them family right?" Oliver asked before adding, "Family comes first - if you're on good terms with them."
"Thanks." Felicity said softly, knowing how much it meant for Oliver to say that cliche phrase.
"I hate to interrupt," Dig called out across the room as he came down the stairs from Verdant upstairs, "But Oliver should probably suit up for a long night. This just hit the news about ten minutes ago."
Dig tapped across the large Smart Board table/monitor and brought up the local news feed from a few minutes ago.
"-been confirmed as a hostage situation." The news anchor was saying as live footage of the SCPD was being shown outside of a fallen building in the Glades, "Again, the only details we know for sure indicate that Kraven the Hunter is inside with an unknown number of hostages, however two have been confirmed as SCPD's finest. No demands have been made as of yet, we are monitoring the situation and will hopefully know more shortly as we send out a correspondent."
"Get me exact location on that building, Felicity." Oliver calmly ordered as he stepped to the case that held his suit and began to suit up and his mind wandered back to the terrors of the island.
Ivo and his men had been buried in a mass grave. A message had been sent to the boat offshore which had promptly burst into flames as the men on board started celebrating which turned into an out of control riot. It didn't matter though, Slade had wanted a proper funeral for Shado, so Oliver had rallied Sarah to help provide a proper funeral. Now they all stood over the gravesite on the mountain as Slade carried the last stone.
"I should've told you." Slade solemnly said as he placed the stone on the pile that covered Shado's body, "I should've been there. I should've stopped Fyres."
"Slade," Oliver started calmly, "You can't blame yourself for all of this. No matter what happened or happens after this, you're only one man."
"I'm one man who fell a tree with a human body." Slade quickly replied.
"But you were unconscious, we thought dead, when Ivo found us." Sarah interjected, "Ivo subjected all of us to this. He took Shado, he made all of our lives a living hell, and he is the reason that you weren't there to save her."
Slade took a breath, then stood while keeping his head down. His fists clenched at his sides as he slowly turned his head back to the others.
"But I could've waited to use the mirakuru, or used it earlier." Slade said slowly.
"Slade, there are always gonna be a thousand 'what-ifs' or 'I-could'ves' to every single thing that happens in life." Oliver started, "We could've just used Fyres' missile launcher to take over his camp and gotten home, we could've made a plan to kill him instead of messing with his equipment. Everything happens in life without room to go back and fix it. Shado's gone, we all miss her, but right now we need to move on and figure out another way off the island."
Slade was quiet for several minutes before turning his whole body to Oliver.
"Will it honor her memory?" He asked somberly.
"It will," Sarah cut in, "And when we get home, we can figure out a way to get her home to her people."
Slade turned back to the pile of stones, then back to Oliver and Sarah.
"Alright," He started with a new edge to his voice, "Let's figure out a way off this rock."
As Slade started slowly walking away, Oliver put a hand on his shoulder and felt the muscles stiffen before relaxing. Not for the first time, and definitely not the last, Oliver wondered if it was time to reopen that bottle of vodka hidden away on the plane.
Before he could pose the question, the sound of a helicopter suddenly filled the air as a military style chopper suddenly buzzed over the mountain heading towards the still blazing Amazo in the harbor. Just as Sarah stepped to raise her arms in a sign for help, a hatch opened on the side of the chopper and a missile was launched directly at what was left of the boat causing a large explosion and fireball. As quickly as it came, the hatch closed and the helicopter turned around and went back to wherever it came from, not even bother to hover for a second over the three ragged figures on the mountaintop.
Back in the present, Oliver slowly crossed a cracked and slanted rooftop across the street from the building where Kraven was keeping his hostages. Using a specialized pair of binoculars, Oliver gauged the distance to the building, which window was best to enter the building, and using thermal imaging he could see how close Kraven and the hostages were to a building or if there were any traps or other hostiles standing in his way.
"I would suggest not immediately engaging him if you can help it." Diggle's voice came in over Oliver's earpiece as both he and Felicity were watching a live feed of Oliver's binoculars and a camera hidden in the bridge of his domino mask, "He'll either grab a hostage, or kill one outright."
"Then what am I supposed to do?" Oliver asked in reply, "Knock on the front door and hope he offers me a beer?"
Before Dig could reply, movement down the street caught Oliver's eye. As he turned his head, all he could see was a figure clad in red and blue running across another rooftop as they fired what looked a line of cable onto a nearby support column from a separate fallen building. Oliver watched as the figure then used their own momentum to swing around the column, up into the air and through one of the windows in Kraven's building. Realizing the figure could escalate the situation to a possibly irreparable place, Oliver then fired a zipline across the street, converted his bow - a custom-made gift from Felicity with quite a few surprises stored inside - into its motorized-winch form and scaled the zipline quickly and leaped through the same window as the red & blue figure.
As he converted the bow back into its original form, Oliver tried to believe what he was seeing. The red & blue figure, which wore an almost completely homemade outfit as far as Oliver could tell, was firing thin cables across the room periodically and swinging around the room like Tarzan while firing what looked like balls of the cable at Kraven - who was wielding a double-ended spear to block the balls of cable - from what looked like oversized watches on their wrists. When the figure wasn't swinging around the room, they would stop on a section of wall, seem to stick in place and either use some more cable lines to pull a hostage out of Kraven's way or place a small red device before swinging to another point in the room.
"Get down here Spider!" Kraven yelled in thick Russian.
"Kraven, buddy, this is America." The red & blue figure called back in a voice that sounded like a very young man, "The Cold War ended like 70 years ago."
"No war ever truly ends, Spider." Kraven called back in English as he readied a throwing knife, "As American, you should know this."
"Yeah, okay, kinda swung into that one." The Spider called back as he landed on another section of wall and placed another device behind him while keeping his eyes on Kraven.
Before the Spider could say anything else, Kraven launched the throwing knife at him with alarming strength and accuracy. Oliver quickly knocked and fired an arrow at the knife, causing it to embed into a section of the ceiling while the arrow fell to the floor with a metallic ping. With no time to react, Oliver's vision seemed to slow down as another knife sailed through the air directed at his head. Feeling the wind of the blade two inches from his face as it was redirected, Oliver then became aware of the sudden line of cable coming from the Spider as he jumped through the air and spun himself to aim the blade at the last device he had placed. The Spider then slammed himself into Oliver as the sound of the knife connecting with the device was heard before the spray of several lines of cable shot from various points around the room anchoring Kraven in place with one hand raised and the other unable to wield the spear.
"Ta-da!" The Spider announced as he stood up and motioned to Kraven struggling in the web of of cables that now ensnared him, "I call it, 'Modern Art.'"
Oliver sat up with a groan and looked up to see the Spider now helping the hostages, including the police officers, out of their bindings and out of the room. He could see that the Spider's suit was definitely done on a low budget; a bandanna mask, a beanie, a zip-up vest over a sweatshirt, and jeans with the most expensive equipment being the cable launchers, the shoes - which appeared to be nearly indestructible - a pair of goggles and the hidden utility belt laden with extra cable devices.
"There are some very lovely men and women with badges outside that will take you all home," The Spider was saying as he helped some of the hostages stand, "And there's medical personal if you're injured or in need of a trauma kit."
As the last of the hostages left the room to head downstairs and outside, Oliver weaved his way through the web of cables toward the Spider, noting that a wad of the cables had been sprayed over Kraven's mouth to keep him from talking.
"You have a very impressive set of skills." Oliver said through his electronic growl.
"And you have a very impressive bow." The Spider said as he leaned in to examine it further, "Is that a carbon-fiber composite material? Also, did you originally have it in some kind of winch mode on the way in?"
"Let me finish." Oliver said firmly to get the other vigilante to quiet down and listen, "You have a very impressive set of skills, and I...appreciate the...assistance. But if you don't leave town, tonight, you're gonna have to deal with me. And I don't share the same moral conviction as the Russian over there."
"Moral conviction?! You think he as an ounce of-? Oh…" The Spider started intensely before quickly coming to realize what Oliver meant.
"Oliver, I know you like to mark your turf, but do not pick a fight with this guy." Felicity demanded over the earpiece.
"This is my city." Oliver replied, both to the Spider and Felicity, "I want you gone by morning."
Oliver then turned expecting that to be the end of the discussion.
"If it's your city, maybe you should do a better job of not letting in crazy knife-wielding hunters." The Spider called back before Oliver whipped around and fired an arrow at his chest.
With blinding speed, the Spider ducked under the arrow and fired a line of cable directly onto Oliver's face pulling him face first into the ground with a thud. Standing back up straight, the Spider took a ready stance.
"Oliver, seriously, do not fight this guy!" Felicity practically shouted.
"Why do you keep saying that?" Oliver groaned beneath his breath as he began to slowly stand.
"That's Spider-Man - the vigilante from New York." Felicity said, "He followed Kraven here. He's dealt with far worse and far crazier than the Undertaking. Let him go!"
"I'm not backing down!" Oliver yelled in his growl, both to Spider-Man and Felicity, "I will not fail this city!"
Oliver then grabbed, knocked, and fired an arrow in one motion. Just as he went to pull another arrow from his quiver, Oliver saw Spider-Man fire webbing onto his bow with such speed that it stopped the first arrow immediately after being fired and tethered it to the bow.
"Don't come looking for me, Arrow." Spider-Man called, "Kraven isn't the only reason I'm here. Others came from New York. I'm just here to clean up their mess and leave. Let me finish what I started, and I'm gone."
Before Oliver could respond, Spider-Man lifted the front of the vest and sweatshirt to show the buckle of his utility belt before it blasted Oliver with red light. After covering his eyes, and feeling an instant hit of humility for being stupid enough to fall for a blinding flare, Oliver looked to see Spider-Man had left leaving Kraven in the web and the sound of police pounding up the stairs. With barely enough time, Oliver leapt from the window, rode the zipline back across the street, cut the line, ran across the rooftop and parkoured down to the alley where he left his motorcycle and began the ride back to the lair under Verdant.
In the penthouse office of the Starling branch building for Oscorp, Norman Osborn leaned back in his desk chair as he looked out on Starling City.
"Merlin may have sunk almost a quarter of the city into the ground," Norman began as he turned to the man he had summoned, "But that just means there's still three quarters we can use."
"Losing Kraven was a serious blow." A methodical voice said from behind darkened goggles from across the desk.
"True," Norman replied as he opened a desk drawer and rolled up his right sleeve, "But there are still five of us left."
Norman pulled an injection syringe out of the drawer that had been preloaded with a nearly luminescent, green serum.
"And with the Spider here in Starling with us," Norman said as he injected the serum into his arm with a grunt, "There's no one else he can call on to keep us busy."
"No one but the archer." The goggle wearing man replied calmly.
"Let Merlin deal with him." Norman said through a strained breath, "Their about to have their own set of problems anyway."
"Of course, Mr. Osborn." The goggle wearing man replied before turning away.
"And Otto," Norman started in a much more demented version of his voice, "Send Adrian to Verdant. We need to have a word with Mr. Merlin."
END CHAPTER THREE
