PART ONE: FAMILY VALUES
CHAPTER FIVE: META- HUMAN?
OLIVER, STARLING CITY, USA
Oliver's chest constricted at her words. "Dig, we need to go!" he shouted, knowing his friend would have heard exactly what he just had. Felicity was in trouble. He knew he shouldn't have left her there but he had thought, no, convinced himself that with all the people and the added security on their basement she would have been safe. He had been wrong.
The bangs echoed through his earpiece and made him cringe at the volume with every blow. He hoped that it was the door the sounds were coming from, that Felicity was still safe behind it and the thing wasn't in there with her. He pushed the motorcycle harder than he normally would have, zipping past the speed limits easily.
His mind whirled as Verdant came into view, the line still un-moving on the sidewalk. Oliver breathed a sigh of relief, if there was no chaos that surely had to be a good thing. "Do you see that Oliver? She has to be ok," Diggle must have came to the same conclusion Oliver himself had.
"I hope you're right Diggle. Felicity?" He tried calling out again, but was met by more banging and the shrieking sounds of metal scraping and bending. He pulled into the alley beside Verdant and made for the fire escape to stay out of the prying eyes of the public that lined the front. Screams filled his earpiece and he nearly lost his grip on the rails, tearing the bit out of his now ringing ear. He moved faster now with a renewed sense of purpose, whatever it was, was in there with her.
"I've got your back, go, go!" Diggle shouted as Oliver threw the door open and made into the dark hallways of the restricted employee space. As they neared the basement the screams became louder. Diggle watched the doors, prepared to keep people out until necessary, Dig stopped and waved him on. "Call for me if you need me!"
"Felicity!" Oliver shouted as the destroyed door came into view. The metal was mangled, torn open like the top off a can and the scene inside was all the more grisly. He could see her hiding behind a rack of arrows, one gripped tightly in her hand as she slowly backed away from the advancing creature. Her eyes were wide as they flickered to the door and then the creature and then back to the door again.
"Oliver!" She screamed and he drew an arrow.
"Get down!" He shouted and she dropped like a sack of potatoes as the creature swiped at her. His arrow struck home and the beast let out a howl, but it didn't have the effect he had hoped for. He stared at it in disbelief as it tore the arrow from it's chest as if it were a toothpick. He saw Felicity then, the arrow clutched in her hand as her fingers fumbled with it. He drew and shot at the beast again and it turned towards him. He fired again and again, until the arrow flickered to life in her hands - detonation, in 5 - 4 - she raced forward and plunged the arrow into it's back. The terror was clearly written on her face as she turned and crawled under the nearest table.
The beast spun in search of her, claws outreached and Felicity screamed and clutched her arms to her chest. Maneuvering herself into an impossibly small ball on the floor. Oliver flood with serious panic for the first time that night. He was torn. This was Felicity, if he got closer, injury to himself was eminent, if he didn't with the proximity it had to her now,she would be dead. "Crawl Felicity, go!" She hesitated, and he could see her breathing heavily as she took a second to register what he was saying. "Go!" he cried again. She crawled, frantically across the floor and Oliver drew and advanced again with the intention of shaking it from her trail but he didn't have the opportunity.
The arrow detonated in it's back and it let out a savage howl. Flesh and fur tore away from it's body with a splatter of blood, and he instinctively ducked. When he looked again he couldn't believe what he was seeing. It's body seemed to absorb the shock of the explosion. Forcing his body to move again, he slowly circled the room towards Felicity. He kept his bow drawn and waiting for the creature to move. A large wound covered his back now but it didn't seem to stop the beast, if it was a hindrance, it didn't show it.
It lunged at Oliver and he never had the chance to move. It struck him in the chest with an astounding speed, knocking the wind out of him as his body smashed against the concrete floor. "Oliver!" He heard Felicity's, fear filled voice but it seemed distant. His mind focused on the beast atop him, it slashed and he twisted, it's claws whistling past his ear. He made to strike it but it was gone before he had the chance, out the door and disappearing into the club. He expected to hear screams, from the other side but none came.
"Oliver, Oliver," he heard a hasty shuffling sound accompanied by the smack of hands on concrete. He turned his head to see a crawling Felicity reach him. Her hands moved frantically over him. "Are you ok? Are you hurt? Say something!" she shouted, her voice cracking. He couldn't help but laugh, a wheezing laugh that had hardly any air behind it but a laugh all the same as he slowly sat up.
"I could ask the same of you," he said, slowly getting to his feet before pulling Felicity up into a tight embrace. He couldn't help himself as the relief flooded his system, his lips came to rest on her forehead and he pulled her back to get a better look at her. She had a stunned look on her tear stained face.
"That's not quite how I pictured that happening -" she started and Oliver laughed again and shook his head as she began to ramble and then audibly wince. He frowned, looking over her again, his eyes coming to rest on her arm. Blood ran down her fingers as she clutched it in front of her now. Footsteps at the top of the stairs made both of their heads shoot up, tense for another attack, only to see Diggle. He himself had obviously come in contact with the beast at some point, a gash on his own head and his gun in hand.
"What the hell was that thing?" he demanded, and then looked to see the blood dripping from Felicity's arm. He looked at them in alarm, Oliver just shook his head and guided her towards their makeshift surgery table to, as Felicity had put it before 'play doctor'. Diggle did the honors. His stitching was better than Oliver's, and though Oliver wouldn't admit it, his hands were shaking far too much to have even been able to attempt.
He paced the base, assessing the damages, anger bubbling up inside of him. He should have been ready for this thing, he should have focused all of his attention on it. Now the place was a wreck, not to mention the door they would need to replace - immediately. How he was even going to manage that in time for the base to not be found out, he wasn't sure but first thing was first.
"I think it's time you see that footage Felicity."
"Oliver, do you really think that's such a good-"
"No! I want to see it! I need to know what that thing is! Is it some kind of meta-human? I've never seen anything absorb a detonation like that. It shouldn't have been physically possible."
"Me neither. We might just have to contact our friends in Central City," he grimaced, not particularly liking the prospect. They were great and all, but he thought it was reckless having so many people know his identity. All the same, he couldn't deny their success rate - his team knew their stuff. Felicity, on the other hand seemed to light up at the prospect of more lighthearted comrades in the 'Arrow cave' as they liked to call it. They took things too lightly, in his opinion but he would never tell them that. He seemed to be the only one of that mindset when he had tried to voice it before and he had learned his lesson.
Oliver grabbed his own laptop and brought it over to the table where Diggle was beginning to wrap Felicity's wound. He powered it to life and plugged his USB into the side as the screen flickered to life. "You know, you should really wait until the computer is powered up before you-" She trailed off as Oliver gave her a blank look. "Never mind," she muttered and remained silent as she watched him navigate the screen at an impossibly slow pace.
With one last click, the footage filled the screen and Felicity took in a sharp breath as she stared at the frozen image of her pristine car. Oliver hit play and they all sat silently, watching as the minutes started to tick away in the top corner of the screen.
A man walked into the frame, dressed in black jeans and a blue t-shirt. He looked around, as if he was searching for the all clear. When he was satisfied he approached her car and tried the handle. The door didn't budge and Felicity now wondered if her car might have stayed intact had she have left it open. He struck the side of the car with his fist and a dent crumpled the metal of the door. Felicity gasped at how he seemed to pull away unscathed.
If she had been shocked at that, Oliver thought she would go over the top at what was about to happen next. Her nose sunk closer and closer to the screen, as she watched the unbelievable unfold. The man had pulled away from her car and looked around again, and this time, instead of striking the car again he started to strip. She flew back and shielded her eyes and Oliver couldn't help but laugh a little at her reaction. "Oh, ok! What is this, a male strip club?" she shrieked.
"Watch," Oliver demanded and she slowly peeled her fingers away from her eyes to watch the naked man approach her car. She let out a disgusted sound as she imagined the defiling of her car. Then his skin began to crawl, literally. It was as if the bones and muscles were moving under the skin, as if something inside of him was trying to get out. She gasped in horror as his body contorted and bent in directions it never should have gone.
"Is- is he?"
"Transforming," Oliver confirmed, watching her reaction more than the monitor in front of him.
The man was no longer on the screen, in his place stood a beastly looking thing. A creature that was hunched and menacing with patches of grey-ish fur all over it, a creature that looked just like the one that had torn their base apart. In that moment, Felicity was more than sure she had found the Beast of San Fransisco.
"It has to be some kind of meta-human," Diggle reasoned, watching the footage himself for the umpteenth time.
"Well, what else could it be?"
"A werewolf," Felicity whispered, thinking aloud. Her mind snapped to every movie, tv show and book she had read. The images were all the same throughout, bones twisting and snapping, bodies morphing and contorting into a beast.
"Felicity, you can't seriously think that?" Oliver asked, taken aback by the voice of reason suggesting something so fantastical. She ignored his question and pushed off of the table towards the destructed mess that used to be her computer setup and she began searching.
"Hmmm... ah... aha!" she cried in victory, hastily shoving a broken monitor out of the way. She grabbed the handle of her yellow purse and tugged. Oliver could see it wasn't about to go anywhere and put his laptop down to go help her. He easily lifted the piece of desk her purse was wedged under, not understanding the sudden urgency she had in having it. She grabbed it, but Oliver had been mistaken, she tossed the bag aside and brandished her laptop.
She walked back over to the table they had sat around, a new confidence in her disheveled appearance. Her fingers tapped a mile a minute compared to Oliver's leisurely pace and he watched intrigued. "Look at this," she demanded, and Diggle and Oliver closed ranks, moving in tight around the computer.
The screen was filled with various windows, the one at the forefront was a picture of a wall. "Right, so after I went home, I did some research."
"Of course you did," Oliver said, rolling his eyes and Felicity stiffened and then relaxed when she realized she had mistaken his matter of fact tone as one of sarcasm.
"Anyways, I couldn't figure out what kind of animal could make marks like that. Until I found this," she said, enlarging the image. "The photographer had captioned it 'The Beast of San Fransisco'. I didn't think much of it at first, but you have to admit, that looks a lot like the marks from the parking garage." Oliver was skeptical, but he had to give her that. These marks did look a hell of a lot like the ones that had torn down the side of her car, not to mention the basement door and the rest of their equipment.
"Alright, so where are you going with this?" She closed the image and it was replaced by what looked like a blog of some sort.
"Well, I searched the Beast of San Fransisco and found a lot more than I had thought." She scrolled down the page and picture after picture came up of different items and buildings and areas marked up with the same distinguished set of claw marks. Oliver's eyebrows rose and he looked over Felicity to Diggle, who's look seemed to mime his. "Are you watching?" she asked impatiently.
They focused on the screen once more and she showed them blog after blog of pictures and sightings and stories. "This many pictures, this many stories? This is more than a folktale."
"When were these taken? Recently?"
"That's just it. I'm not sure what we're looking at here, but some of the articles I've found date back to 2007 - that's nearly ten years ago,"
"I may not be as smart as you Felicity, but I can count." Oliver quipped. She murmured something incomprehensible in return and refocused on what she was showing them.
"Wait, that's long before the particle accelerator explosion. Can this still be meta-human?" Diggle asked, his brow furrowed.
"I don't know, but look at this," Felicity responded, closing a number of screens and narrowing the screen down to one solitary window. The page was an article labelled '2007 Murder Linked to the end of the San Fransisco Beast'. The trio shared a look.
"If the beast is dead, how is it here now?" Oliver asked, cautiously, looking back up to the broken door once more, as if it might still be waiting there.
"I don't know, but I think if we find her killer, we might find that answer."
"Her killer?" Diggle demanded, stepping back from the table. "Are you saying there might be more of these things out there?" The room was silent, no one wanting to think of that.
"How the hell did they kill it?" Oliver asked, clearly thinking along a different trail than the other two. The unanswered questions were mounting more and more in a gathering silence between them.
"All it says was she was killed by a gunshot wound to the chest,"
"Something tells me that won't work with our beast," Diggle responded calmly.
"Not when a detonating arrow didn't do anything," Oliver reluctantly agreed. "So you're trying to tell us that this thing really is a werewolf? Felicity, you know I trust anything you say but werewolf?"
She looked as unsure as he felt, but she looked at the screen again and answered with confidence. "Well, there's one way we can find out."
"Do you think you can find them?"
"It'll take some work, and we'll probably need detective Lance's help," Oliver snorted and leaned back, staring at the floor.
"Like he'd hand over a secure file like that,"
"He might not, but Barry or Detective West might," Felicity said confidently, looking up over her shoulder to Oliver. Oliver sighed reluctantly and looked to Diggle, who was purposely avoiding his gaze. Could they never deal with a meta-human themselves? The answer seemed to be a clear and resounding 'no', that irritated Oliver to no end.
"Alright, alright! Call Barry Allen, see what they can do for us."
"Wait a minute, are we seriously considering looking for a murderer? When did we become an investigation team?" Diggle demanded, clearly concerned.
"Well, unless you have a better idea Dig, than it looks like it's our only option." They all shared a look and then Felicity, eager to get out of the tense situation responded cheerily.
"Right, well, I'll get started on that!"
A/N - I hope you enjoyed, let me know what you think! And yes, you all sensed Olicity feels before because Olicity 3