Chapter 134: Placeholder

"Here you go, Speedy," Oliver said, handing over the ice cream cone to his little sister, "Mint Chocolate Chip. Your favorite."

"And your favorite too," Thea pointed out, nodding towards the cup of ice cream Oliver was holding in his other hand. Her big brother shrugged, guilty as charged, and quickly accepted the next ice cream cone the ice cream man was handing out: Laurel's much beloved Rocky Road. Thea, in turn, accepted Tommy's Pistachio.

The siblings headed over to a nearby picnic table, where Laurel and Tommy were setting down a table cloth. Sitting on one of the benches was a large picnic basket, where a number of different foods were stored in several resealable boxes. "You know this is going to spoil our appetites," Laurel pointed out as she accepted the ice cream cone her boyfriend happily gave her.

"Yeah. But it's not like any of us could resist when we saw the truck."

"He's got a point, Laurel," Tommy cheekily added.

"Who can resist ice cream?" Thea asked, as the final cherry on the top.

Laurel simply shook her head, amused.

They all sat at the picnic table, Oliver and Laurel on one side and Tommy and Thea on the other. They spent a few minutes finishing up their ice cream before Oliver picked up the picnic basket and set it on the table, taking out the plastic boxes that held their lunch, along with two two-liter bottles of diet coke. After the combined bomb of his impending promotion and the Pestilence Crisis, Oliver had elected to take a day and enjoy some time with his girlfriend, best friend, and little sister.

Especially Thea. They hadn't been able to spend a lot of time together lately. Oliver moving out to move into his new place with Laurel coincided with an increase of school work and projects for his little sister. It had, in fact, been several days since he had managed to see her in person, something he hadn't liked at all. He would need to figure out a way to spend more time with her that accommodated for this new change in addition to the recent increase of his responsibilities.

"So where's Kara? I'd thought you'd invite her and Kal," Thea said wonderingly, before biting into the ice cream cone and chewing slowly.

Oliver hummed at the mention of his other little sister. "Her aunt's in town. She and Kal decided to show her around while she's here."

"You mean that maternal aunt of hers she only managed to get back in contact with last year."

"Yup."

The college student let out a theatrical sigh. "Maybe it's a good thing. I doubt the amount food we have right now would have been enough to feed both her and Kal."

Her big brother snorted. "Speedy, if Kara and Kal had accepted my invitation to come, I would've made a lot more than one picnic basket's worth of food."

All four laughed at that. They continued with preparing the picnic, Laurel taking out and passing around the paper plates, plastic cups, utensils, and napkins while everyone else started opening up the plastic boxes. Thanks to the design, the food was as warm and fresh as it was when Oliver first made it.

Thea inhaled the scent of her brother's hot dogs and sighed. "Ollie, you've missed your calling as a cook," she mused, stabbing her fork into one of the sausages and lifting it into one of the hot dog buns. "Are you sure you don't want to open restaurant?"

Oliver shook his head. "Not any time soon, Speedy. You know, with my new responsibilities and all." He sounded a touch bitter about it.

Tommy winced. "Still mad about that, huh?"

"A little, but at this point I'm just resigned. Mom and Dad aren't budging, and I know better than to push. I just wonder why it's coming out of the blue like this. I knew they were prepping to make me CEO eventually, but this soon?"

Laurel shrugged, nudging shoulders with her boyfriend in a comforting gesture. "Maybe you were doing better than they thought you would and they felt the company would be better off in your hands than your dad's?"

"Maybe?" Oliver still had something of a perplexed expression on his face. He took one of the bottles of diet coke and began pouring it into one of the plastic cups. "I still think they're rushing though. And besides that, I'm don't really want to be CEO at all, to be honest."

Thea blinked. "Really? But Ollie, you've been raised to be heir to the company all your life!" She then winced. "Except, you know, when…"

"I was on the island," Oliver finished for her. "And that's kind of my point, Speedy. Business is nice and all, and I'm surprisingly good at it, but my heart is really in philanthropy. I like helping people — I never felt more fulfilled than when Kara and I opened that affordable outlet mall in the Glades. Before Mom and Dad tapped me join the company, I wanted to do more of that kind of stuff: opening soup kitchens, homeless shelters, that kind of thing."

"Well, nobody said you can't while being the CEO of the company, Ollie," Tommy pointed out. "In fact, I'm pretty sure there's an entire branch dedicated to that kind of philanthropic outreach."

"Corporate philanthropy," Laurel clarified, swallowing a bite of her hot dog. "Regardless of whether it's for optics or for altruism, it is very much still a thing. CNRI gets most of its funding from those kinds of ventures."

Oliver sighed, rubbing one of his temples. "I know what you mean, guys, but it kind of lacks that personal touch, you know? It's one thing to attend an opening of soup kitchen that others in your company developed and helped build, and another to do it yourself, with your own hard work and resources. I kind of miss that."

His three dining companions thought that over. "I get that," Laurel final said, looking contemplative. "It's why I work at CNRI and not the DA's office. You don't get interact with your clients and do a lot of the legwork for your cases with the latter as much as you do the former. Even with my promotion to Director, I still find time to do a case or two of my own and really connect with my clients on them." Nothing, after all, was more satisfying than helping people you really got to know, people whose plights you saw firsthand.

"Exactly," Oliver nodded. "That's the kind of thing I want to do. Truth be told, guys, I'm going to take the job, but only hold it as long as I need to."

"Really?" asked Thea, blinking in surprise. "Who are you going to pass the company onto?"

"You of course, Speedy."

"Me?"

"Well, do you not want it?" Oliver asked her in return, furrowing his brow.

Thea reddened slightly, and she looked down. "Well, actually, I wouldn't mind having the job. Before you came back, Mom and Dad were pushing me more towards the business kind of stuff anyway, and I found that I kind of liked it. That's why I majored in Business Administration."

"And why you're eventually planning on an MBA at Harvard," Oliver added, causing Thea's blush to deepen. "That's exactly what I mean, Thea. You were groomed to be the heir to the company while I was gone, but unlike me, who was beginning to resent it, you flourished under it. As far as I'm concerned, and as long you don't mind, you're the real heir to the company and I'm just your placeholder. I have no doubt QC will blossom in your hands, unlike mine."

"Ollie…" Thea gasped, one hand to her mouth, looking genuinely touched.

Oliver shrugged. "Just saying the truth, Speedy. Nothing more, nothing less."

Laurel and Tommy exchanged smiles as Thea darted out of her seat to give her big brother a hug. "You're the best brother in the world, you know that?" she said, affectionately pressing her cheek next to his. Oliver simply smiled and patted her on the hand.

After Thea let go and sat back down to continue the meal, she began to frown. "Now that you're saying all this Ollie, I'm beginning to realize that you're right about something: when has Dad ever been into politics?"

Oliver frowned as well. "That's what I asked Mom. She said Robert and her talked about them all the time, just never around us." He glanced at his girlfriend and best friend. "What about you guys? Did they ever talk politics with you or around you?" Laurel and Tommy, after all, were much older than Thea. His mother and father would've been far more comfortable talking about those sorts of topics around them at things like parties then they ever would with their underaged, sheltered daughter. Especially if they were afraid she might become interested in politics and land on Malcolm's radar even more than she already was.

"No," Laurel responded, shaking her head. "Never around me, Ollie."

"Same," Tommy concurred. "Maybe it's something they best felt kept under wraps? You know, to make sure QC remained apolitical?" Nobody noticed one of his hands under the table, tightened into a fist.

Oliver sighed. "Maybe," he conceded.

As the conversation went into a new direction, Tommy felt himself relax, releasing the fist he had made and wiggling his fingers. Disaster averted.

"I have no idea how you're keep track of all of these," Barry commented as he lifted up a solid tie and a regular patterned business tie. "I mean, seriously? Or hell, Oliver — he's always good at dressing me up whenever we have to do those parties in Star. I don't know how he keeps track of these either." He wasn't lying — for all that Barry was a scientific genius, stuff like this was always going to bewilder him.

Eddie shrugged, smiling slightly. "Comes with growing up with it, I guess. I was taught at a young age about what to wear and what not to, depending on whatever function my parents were dragging me to. I don't know if I ever really struggled with it — it just comes naturally now."

"Lucky you," Barry grumbled. "I'm gonna have to learn it myself when I reveal myself as the new head of S.T.A.R. Labs."

His friend patted him on the back. "I'll teach you. And Oliver will too, I believe."

"Thanks." Barry paused. "I'm still sorry I can't come."

"Don't worry about it, Barry. I should be fine on my own. After all," and here, Eddie's expression darkened up a bit, "nobody knows how to handle my parents better than me."

This, Grace Parker — no, Pestilence — thought as she extended her golden nails, is amazing.

Of course, nobody noticed. This was Metropolis, and all big cities had something of a personality. Pestilence was just another face in the crowd, even if that face had strange eyes and stupidly long nails. Everyone else was too concerned with themselves and their own troubles to notice a danger within the midst of them until it was too late.

The ignorant, selfish nature of humanity. An all too familiar thing to the woman once known as Grace Parker. All her life she had been told by her now deceased adoptive mother that as long as she did good, good things would happen to her and to others. Karma, in essence, and young Grace, who loved her mother and believed her words were gospel (because they literally were) took those teachings to heart. That stupid, foolish girl — how Pestilence pitied her as much as she hated her.

That idealism carried her into college, through a biology degree, medical school and her residency. A surgeon, so young and at the top of the world. She saved lives, so many lives, until her name was household among Metropolis's medical community. "The best surgeon in all of Metropolis!" one of her co-workers had toasted to her after a particularly difficult and harrowing operation. Such a title should have filled her with pride.

Instead, it just filled with her hate. A reminder of a world falling apart the seams, the lies her mother told her. Good did not beget good. Grace had done so much good, and yet all she had to show for it were increasingly long hours and demands, forced to partition and triage the lives of the needy for the sake of the lives of the wealthy. Watch as she had to turn down patient after patient because they couldn't afford to be gouged out by the healthcare industry. It was all sickening.

When Pestilence awoke within her, it felt like all her problems had finally been solved. She had the power to change things, to purge the world of its wickedness and cleanse it back into something beautiful again, before humanity tainted it with its darkness. This is what she deserved, what she sought, what being a surgeon had failed to give her: power, over life and death. To choose who lived and who died without any restrictions. No laws or wealth or dubious claims of morality. Just her decision, and her decision alone.

That is, perhaps, why she had returned to Metropolis. Honestly, she wondered why she had left in the first place. Perhaps it was avoid to suspicion? That was the kind of thinking Grace Parker would have. For all that Pestilence and her other half were of the same mind, they had different ideas of how to do things, of their confidence against those that would seek to stop them.

The Justice League, Pestilence scoffed within, thinking of the spandex-clad fools who had cornered her back in Houston. Pestilence had wanted to fight, to crush that worthless general and those jumped-up rats called heroes beneath her heel, but Grace had fought her way to control and forced them to flee. She had not been as nearly as confident of their chances, and a look at her other half's memories had made it slightly understandable. Grace was not yet aware of all they were capable of. She didn't know that not even the likes of the Justice League were no match for them.

But, at least, it had allowed her the opportunity to return to Metropolis. The Justice League would never think to find her, at the original scene of the crime. They would think she would go elsewhere, try to spread the plague farther across the lands, evolve her powers to make it infectious and contagious so she'll no longer have to do the dirty work herself. An understandable belief, an approach she would've preferred. There was much filth to scour out, after all.

Metropolis, however, still needed much cleansing. 'The Greatest City in the World', and yet its criminal underbelly, its corruption, was just as terrible as any other city. Perhaps even worse. They dressed themselves up and pretended to be more than they actually were, tried to fool the world into believing they were respectable instead of deplorable. It was those kinds of people that needed to be wiped out more than anyone else, because it would remind the scum that it didn't matter how much they prettied themselves up — they were still scum, and they were still going to be purged.

But enough of that. Enough of all of that.

Pestilence smiled as she gazed up at the magnificent acropolis that made up Metropolis's City Hall.

It was time to get to work.

"Carter!" Kara adopted a strained smile, gripping Kal's hand tightly. They were currently walking around the Downtown shopping plaza, showing their aunt some of their favorite stores, before running into the bane of Kara Danvers's life: Carter Bowen. The man had immediately zoomed onto them and all but sped his way there to take another shot at his quarry.

The young woman's cousin was doing his damndest to loosen her hold while watching the upcoming scene with a kind of resigned acceptance. Kal had attended enough parties to be aware of the man who had been hitting on his big sister for years, trying to make her his wife, and didn't like him any more than Kara did. Unfortunately, Carter had glommed onto the fact that the way to Kara's heart was likely through Kal, and had done his best to ingratiate himself to the teenager, to no avail.

Off to the side, Astra observed the man greeting her niece with narrowed eyes.

"Kara," Carter said with a smile might be charming to some but only made the Kryptonian cousins want to grimace. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Same," Kara replied, gritting her teeth even as she tried to keep the smile up. "What are you doing in town? Didn't you have that medical conference up in Seattle this week?"

The surgeon shrugged. "There was this incident with one of the other surgeons, and it degenerated into this huge debate over laparoscopy…" He continued to talk, not noticing how Kara's polite smile had finally given out into a much needed grimace.

"Carter, yes?"

Carter blinked as his lecture was cut off. "Yes?" He asked, directing his attention towards Astra. "And you might be?" He asked, in a dismissive tone.

Astra smiled. It was not sincere. "Astra Clark. Kara's maternal aunt."

And just like that, the dismissiveness was gone. Carter lit up, a greedy glint in his eye. "Oh! It's nice to meet another member of Kara's lovely family," he spoke with a certain sort of fake sincerity that almost sounded genuine but actually wasn't. He reached out and took one of Astra's hands and gave it a kiss, ignoring the way the older woman practically ripped her arm away from him.

"Though, Kara," and here Carter addressed the object of his affections directly. "It thought you had no blood family except for Clark here."

"Aunt Astra works for the government," Kara answered quickly, defaulting on the backstory they had developed for Astra after she joined the JL and adopted an alternate civilian persona for her off-hours. "Her work is top secret and takes her out of the country for months at a time. It's only in the past year that she's managed to reconnect with myself and Kal."

"Indeed," Astra concurred, smiling grimly. She walked up to the man who had designs her little one and placed a hand on his chest, locking eyes with him. "My niece and I have always been close. When she and Kal had been lost, I spent all my resources trying to find them, and when I couldn't, all these years mourning them. So you can imagine my joy when I found them again, alive and well."

"Right…" Carter trailed out, starting to look and sound very awkward.

"There's nothing in the world I would not do for them," Astra continued, as if he hadn't spoke. "Nothing. Including with making sure that any… unpleasant elements around them disappear." She smiled, saccharinely sweet. "Benefits of being a government agent. Lots of holes to throw your enemies in, and all that."

Now Carter was starting to look pale. "I…see…"

Astra continued to smile at him. Carter swallowed. "Well, Kara," he now said, smiling shakily. "It was nice seeing you and Kal. See you at the Kord Benefit next Saturday?"

"That's the plan," Kara confirmed, blinking.

"Well, good. I'll see you then. Bye!" He fled.

All three Kryptonians watched him go, Astra with a smirk, Kara and Kal in disbelief. Slowly, the latter two turned to their aunt, gaping at her. "…Wow," Kal breathed out.

Astra simply gave Kara's a shoulder a squeeze before taking Kal's other hand. "Come. You said there was a candy shop here that I would like, correct?"

Astra's human last name is Clark because that is the maiden name of Martha Kent, who is Kara's maternal aunt in the fake backstory Barry made up back before they were about to leave the League. Since it's easier not to modify it so Astra is her dad's sister, she's Eliza's sister in the backstory, which makes her Martha's sister too. Hence, the last name 'Clark'.

Well, next is the Pestilence fight, and then the last major part of the act. And man, once we get there — well, you are going to be shocked. It's going to be when shit really hits the fan.

As always, feel free to make comments, flames will be ignored and deleted, and don't forget to update the TV Tropes page!