Hey so decided to upload this second chapter rather quickly
Next morning in the living room
Oliver sitting on the couch is finishing eating some bacon and bread from a plate. Didn't get much sleep before the nightmares took over and got up around an hour ago. First went down to check to see if the muggers from earlier were still on the pavement but all of them were gone.
Hearing light movement, Oliver momentarily tenses but relaxes upon recognizing the footsteps belonging to Sara.
"Morning" Oliver replies "There's some left-over bacon in the pan if you want it. I know you can cook better than your sister but figured you wouldn't mind."
"I'm not and I remember how mad she used to get when we would point that out. Though given some of her burnt meals we weren't incorrect" Sara says wistfully leaning against the door frame "I'm surprised your up early through."
"Discovered on the island when I'm not hungover, I tend to get up earlier," Oliver says.
"Let me eat and get dressed then will start your plan," Sara says.
"I'm thinking of the press conference first," Oliver says.
"Don't you want to contact Moira and Thea first?" Sara asks.
"Gives Waller too much time to come and find me. I'd rather take that option off the board the fastest I can" Oliver says.
"Makes sense," Sara says then grimaces before adding "For Thea, I think you need to know" but doesn't finish.
"That my sister is doing drugs and following in my footsteps, I know" Oliver replies looking at her.
"How do you know?" Sara asks.
"Yesterday I was at the graves where I watched Thea score drugs from some dealer" Oliver replies grimly.
Mind you Oliver figures it's wise to avoid mentioning being at Tommy's birthday party for right now. Mostly given the dead drug dealer and that's a conversation he's not ready to have with Sara yet, if ever.
Sara doesn't say anything knowing it couldn't have been easy for Oliver to see that. Been gone for years and probably the first time he sees his sister is no longer in pigtails but fallen into a crowd worse than anything Tommy or him ever did.
"I need you to stick to your normal routine," Oliver says.
"No problem but why do you want me to not help you?" Sara asks.
"You are helping me. Because it's best we don't give anybody any indication that anything is different for right now. Besides, you'll be safer in public then sticking with me" Oliver replies.
"Alright but just note I don't exactly like this idea," Sara says.
Giving a light nod "Thank you" Oliver says, "Do you have any of my shirts in dark colors?"
"There's the old black turtleneck you never found much use for" Sara replies.
"I'll take it. Better if none of the news reporters see me with my current hoodie" Oliver replies.
"And I'd say you probably need a shower. You can use the bathroom back there if you want" Sara says.
"Thank you," Oliver says getting to his feet and walking off with disappearing around the corner.
An hour later in the alleyway behind the CRNI
Wearing a black turtleneck and blue jeans, Oliver runs a hand through his short blonde hair. Before leaving Sara's apartment, he gave himself a trim leaving a five O clock shadow and shorter hair.
Couple of minutes ago, Sara went into the building but he's going to hang around for a while. Or at least just enough for their tail, who followed Sara's car since leaving the apartment building, can finally meet him in person.
Although he didn't tell Sara since not needing her to worry and better to pull off a trap if less people know about it.
Hearing footsteps Oliver can see two agents in normal street clothes are approaching and, in a few minutes, are only standing a couple of feet away from each other. One is Maseo not exactly surprising, and the other is an agent he met in passing known as Rick Flag Jr.
"You can either come with us or we can go inside and hurt your girlfriend" Rick growls.
"Flag, quiet" Maseo says warningly then returns his gaze to Oliver "Please come with us and we will leave Sara and your family alone. You know they are going to kill my family if you don't."
"Your family is fine because it's what she uses to control you, Amanda may be many things but stupid isn't one of them. I'm surprised it took you guys this long to find me" Oliver says.
"Are you going to come or not?" Maseo asks, reaching for the handgun under his jacket.
"No, I'm done" Oliver replies.
"Fine by me," Rick says pulling out his handgun.
"I didn't want to do this but you're coming with us," Maseo says.
"I'm not going and if you make me, I will kill you both" Oliver replies.
"You didn't even kill those men last night, so you won't kill us," Rick says.
"You willing to bet your life on that?" Oliver replies coldly. After all, it makes sense ARGUS took those muggers to find out what they knew about Sara and him.
Making a quick dash, over to Rick Oliver grabs Rick's wrist twisting it causing the agent to drop the gun before Flag gets placed in a backwards chokehold. Oliver snaps Rick's neck then drops the body to the pavement.
Realizing no way, he can get to his gun and be able to use it, Maseo goes for a kick towards Oliver's head who doesn't move in enough time. Getting knocked to the side, Oliver is unable to stop the series of rabid punches to his upper body before a kick to his chest sends Oliver painfully back into the brick wall.
Falling to the ground, Oliver glances up at Maseo who is walking over.
Maseo goes to deliver a punch to Oliver's head but the castaway survivor blocks his attack before coming up with delivering a blow to the man's stomach. Oliver gives double punches to Maseo's chest, then sweep kicks Maseo's legs out from underneath him.
As the agent crashes to the ground, Oliver places his boot on Maseo's chest with applying enough pressure on the man's rib cage making it hard to breathe.
"You going to kill me?" Maseo asks, gasping out.
"I don't know. No one threatens my family and I know you of all people understand that." Oliver growling
"I won't… keep fighting" Maseo replies.
"Wise choice," Oliver says then removes his foot.
Maseo climbs to his feet with going to extend his left hand for a shake to apologize, while silently removing a pocketknife from his right coat pocket. Only Oliver catches on mid-way into going to shake his hand before placing his friend in a chokehold with applying enough pressure to render Maseo out cold then drops him to the ground.
He didn't want to kill Maseo because Slade's death still weighs on his soul enough and Oliver really doesn't want to take Akio's father from him if he doesn't have to. Plus, Slade was too far gone from the Mirakuru and Maseo is just trying to protect his family by following Amanda Waller's orders.
After opening a nearby dumpster, Oliver walks back over to Rick Flag with picking up the body fireman style then moves over to the dumpster before dropping the dead agent inside.
Removing the cellphone from inside Flag's left pants pocket, Oliver knows it's the stranded issue disposable burner phone all ARGUS agents carry. Closing the dumpster lid, Oliver places the cellphone inside his pants pocket.
Turning around Oliver walks out of the alleyway.
Few hours later in the lobby area of Merlyn Global
Once getting far enough away from the CRNI, by using the skills learned on the streets of Hong Kong and Lian Yu to remain unseen while getting in touch with Malcolm, on Rick's phone.
After meeting up in the parking garage of this building, Oliver explained he needed a press conference but left out any details concerning ARGUS other then somebody was after him.
Which his original plan was to go to Walter Steel but knew that was too risky on the chance of running into his mother. Another thing Malcolm had done is ordered security to keep everybody off the lobby floor and security themselves to keep quiet, with even confiscating any electronic devices like cell phones, from the men.
"You ready?" Malcolm asks, snapping Oliver from his thoughts.
"Let's do this" Oliver replies.
Exiting the double doors Malcolm steps up to the microphones set in place and observes the crowd of news-hungry vultures. Especially clamoring to see what the elusive Malcolm Merlyn has to say given he's never done interviews from at least returning from when his wife died.
"Now I'll keep this simple. Two hours ago, I was visited by someone long thought to be gone and here I give you Oliver Queen who died nearly three years ago" Malcolm says stepping aside.
Oliver walks out with flashing his perfect fake playboy smile for the reporters with stepping up to the microphone.
"Hello and man, it feels to be good to be back home. For the past near three years, I was trapped on an island in the North China Seas until I was rescued a week ago. Since I know you'll ask this yes, I am, the only survivor of the Queen's Gambit. Now no more comments" Oliver replies.
The news people go crazy with an assault of comments and their usual less than pleasant actions of pushing and shoving each other, as security men try to hold them back.
Giving one more fake smile Oliver heads back inside the lobby then Malcolm and him begin walking to the elevator while being escorted by the security guards.
"I'm reminded about why I hate those vultures," Malcolm says.
"Yeah, I hope I never have to deal with them again for a long while" Oliver replies.
"Given I don't see you getting into your old habits that shouldn't be a problem," Malcolm says.
"Very true" Oliver replies.
Inwardly Malcolm knows he doesn't have to worry about getting any information from Oliver because of learning Robert died on the Queen's Gambit as Oliver was getting washed out to sea. Making it impossible for Oliver to ever learn anything about Tempest or The Undertaking from his father.
Oliver is glad of the already arranged a car to leave from Malcolm's personal garage so he can avoid the paparazzi. Also, due to a private lawyer, he called while waiting "Oliver Queen" is already legally declared alive. So now he can go see his mother and sister properly for the first time in years.
At the CRNI building
Placing the glass cup containing paper clips on her desk, Sara takes a step back to glance over the desk being sure everything is where she likes it. Never had any plans of leaving Starling City, no she is going to be making a difference right here in the heart of The Glades at the CRNI.
"Hey, did you hear?" Jonna inquires approaching "You just might want to check the news."
"Why?" Sara replies, doing her best to play along but having a feeling of what it is.
Sara and Jonna walked over to a round table where all her colleagues were gathered around, looking up at the TV, which was showing the news, detailing Oliver Queen's survival after the very public press release just did at Merlyn Global.
Through Sara is tempted to turn it off after hearing her sister being one of the deceased but decides not to, given the people still watching the news. Plus, she already knew what happened to Laurel for some time now.
Suddenly Sara's cellphone begins ringing as Sara flips it open and answers with not at all being surprised who it is.
"Did you see the news? That son of a bitch is alive while Laurel is still dead" Quentin says angrily.
"Yeah dad, I'm watching it now" Sara replies.
"All because of him, he took our family from us. I can't wait for him to get caught because I'm going to" Quentin begins but gets cut off.
"What? Kill him? Listen I don't know if your drinking or not but I'm going to quit listening. Bye dad love you" Sara replies with immediately shutting her phone lid closed.
Placing her phone back in her left pants pocket, Sara would prefer to not deal with her father and one of his ramblings right now. Just hopes her father doesn't do something stupid which is going to get him in trouble with losing his job.
"Let's get back to work" Sara says.
"All right, so who is our first client?" Jonna asks.
"Somebody connected to Frank Bertinelli" Sara replies.
Hope you all enjoyed this chapter and leave a review letting me know what you think if you want.
Now for Oliver beating Maseo in combat when apparently unable to do that in season 3? Well here's the thing Oliver by the time the season 2 flashbacks ended was skilled in combat of he was able to handle himself against Ivo's men.
Then in season 3 was the start of Oliver's apparent decline of those skills outside of a few instances and continued into season 4. They course corrected themselves in the season 5 flashbacks surprisingly.
Bottom line Guggenheim and his crew decided to decrease Oliver's fighting skills in the past, so nobody would be asking questions for present-day Oliver getting so bad in combat for explaining why he needs an ever-growing team. Putting aside ever increasing Olicty take over.
Meaning the new people on Team Arrow like Thea and Laurel who only had limited combat training compared to Oliver couldn't be better than him. It kept going with Rene, Curtis, Dinah Drake etc. like where in season 6 Oliver lost to Ricardo Diaz a common street thug after Oliver had training by Ras al Ghul.
So, they decreased Oliver's fighting skills to give justification for a bloated, unneeded Team Arrow.
I have to laugh since in the Arrow series finale one of the few things they did get right was Oliver as The Hood taking on I'd say well up to thirty, if not more former black ops operatives and trashed them single handily. Proving he does not need a team.
While Oliver may not have learned under Talia in this story, he's not completely useless because trained by Slade in combat for several months and kept those skills sharp while an ARGUS operative.
Until next time