AN: Sorry...filler chapter...but no worries! If you review lots I'll post the next chapter sooner! 'Cause now we aaaalllll know that Random can't hold out for two weeks...thanks to all who reviewes/alerted/favorited! So without further stalling I give you...chapter two.

Do. Not. OWN! Would I be writing this if I did?

I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind,

I left my body lying somewhere in the sands of time,

I watched the world fall to the dark side of the moon,

I wish there's something I could do.

~3 Doors Down: Superman

She was gone.

He had discreetly gone to her apartment to check on her only to find her not there and a male voice outside the door. He sounded and determined, definitely not Shadow material. But the voice didn't matter; he was probably his daughter's plaything. All that mattered was that his beautiful ex-wife was missing.

He knew why she had been taken. His daughter was getting harder and harder to reach. And with the end in sight, they wanted to make sure that the blond archer's betrayal made them stay ended. So to be sure that his young daughter betrayed them, they took the only other family member that didn't still belong to them.

His daughters' mother.

His ex-wife.

Paula Crock.

The tall blond man was walking unmasked through the Gotham City streets of the Narrows. The beauty of the soft light of streetlights and the misting rain of the on coming storm was lost on the ugly, corrupt city Gotham really was. He was looking for his daughter, who usually came to the Narrows to relieve some frustration. Why the Narrows? Because in the Narrows, pretty girls get attacked, giving her the perfect excuse to beat the mess out of some poor soul who thought that she was an easy victim. He was thinking about what he had created out of his little girl when he came to a rusted gate.

The fence was broken down at every place except for the gate. The pure irony of the fact that they still kept a lock on the gate was enough to make even the stupidest of people laugh. The man didn't crack a smile as he moved around the gate and surveyed the broken bodies before him.

Six guys, all brutishly huge, from steroids most likely, were lying unconscious in the dead grass.

Unconscious.

Not dead.

Still breathing no matter how shallow and painful it was. He grunted, she had made her choice.

As he turned to leave, he saw her, standing in the shadows, glaring at him with her mother's coal eyes. Silently accusing him of her mother's disappearance. He said nothing, showed no emotion, he merely turned around and left. He made his choice too.

Artemis blamed him for everything. She blamed him for her mother's accident, blamed him for her constant pain, blamed him for her own emotional pain, and blamed him for her mother's current situation. She blamed it all on him.

When her mother had gone to prison and her sister skipped out, no one was there to protect young Artemis from her father and the Shadows. Soon her focus slipped from keeping their family together to just staying alive. Her daily struggles focused on pleasing her father, which never happened no matter how hard she tried. It wasn't until her mother was released from prison and discovered what her daughter had become when she was able to rescue her from them, or so she thought.

Artemis looked up at the cloudy black sky, sensing the rain that was coming. Looking back down at her watch she noted the time. 4:13 am. She had to move. Wally was probably reading the letter and she wanted to be as far from the Gotham City limits as she possibly could when he finished the letter. She started toward her motorcycle that she had taken from Mount Justice. The forest green paint job reminded her of what had just ended. "It isn't over yet," She told herself. "They only think that."

It was true, her new family, now old team, had probably discovered her "letters" of resignation in her bedroom and the kitchen. They were probably trying to figure out how they could prepare for that night. She shook her head before putting her helmet on, trying to shoo them from her head. She had a job to do. She had an elaborate game of chess to win.

The motorcycle roared to life in the quiet morning city of the worst side of town, but it didn't matter, the city was a dead tonight. So she charged off into the darkness, no one to care, and no one to stop her.

AN2: Reviews are like chocolate...one can never get enough.