Months had passed; the damage and destruction was still fresh, a sense of loss hung in the air that was palpable, a living breathing entity...one second in the Glades and it was almost suffocating. An earthquake device under the control of Malcolm Merlyn had leveled the area. Five hundred and three people lost their lives; thousands more had been injured, and entire city blocks had been turned into nothing more than rubble and memories. All of it served as a reminder of his failure; the crusade he had been on to right the wrongs of his father, to save the city, it had been a pipe dream and nothing more. A fool’s quest. Oliver’s best friend had paid the price; along with countless others. Darkness had spread through Starling City; a hopeless that infected all of the citizens as fast as any biological pathogen. Overwhelming didn’t begin to describe his sense of guilt. This was a man who operated in the mindset of kill or be killed; who didn’t flinch when the stakes were at their highest…and he had fled. Back to Lian Yu; the island that had left twenty percent of his body covered with scar tissue. To make sense of it; to find clarity...or just to be alone. The place that had shaped the person that he was now; being halfway across the world didn’t provide an escape from his problems. They weighed on him; crept into his mind no matter what activity he was engaged in, haunted his dreams. Everything ‘The Hood’ had stood for fell short; a vigilante wasn’t what was needed to solve this, but a hero was the last thing he believed he could ever be. A hero didn’t fall short in the end; they arrived on time, they stopped suffering...things that he hadn’t been able to do.
Diggle and Felicity had convinced him to come back; reasoning to his sense of responsibility, that his family and the company needed him. The time away, how many different scenarios had played out within his mind, and things were still worse than he could have anticipated. People were going missing; whispers about monsters….bodies found with bite marks. Disaster could bring out the best in people; they would band together, join in a sense of community, and try to rebuild. It also brought out the worst; predators could see the opportunities that presented themselves, and they took advantage without mercy or hesitation. Was there anything more powerful in the world than fear? When everyone was already teetering on the edge and there was nothing to anchor them...that was when they were the most willing to give into those emotions. Oliver had been adamant that he wouldn’t put the dark green leathers on again; he had tried to make a difference and had been found wanting. All it had taken was a day; a single day of driving through the worst parts and he understood that inaction wasn’t an option. Standing idly by while his city slowly died; the guilt from that would have destroyed all that was left of him. To say that he made a choice would imply that there had been another way; in his mind, one didn’t exist. The path was clear now. Whether his convictions or methodology had changed was completely irrelevant; it was now or never. Despite the reserves of willpower and self control Oliver had built up from the crucible he had been forced to endure; it hadn’t changed the simple truth about himself. Deep down, he was still a ‘close your eyes and jump’ kind of person. All in or nothing at all.
The sun had set over an hour ago; white pin points of stars littered the night sky, the most prominent illumination being provided by the full moon that had always provided a slightly eerie feeling. It was the first sighting of Starling City’s vigilante in months; his ‘patrol’ had barely begun and rumors were already flooding the streets. The looters; petty street gangs, those were the easy things to deal with. Arrows met their target; his accuracy was almost superhuman, and not a single one had been fired with lethality in mind. They scattered; like cockroaches when the light was shone on them...but they were only a symptom of the disease, and for every single one that was put out of commission, there would be someone else to take the now unfilled role. His concern lay with whoever was creating the body count; it seemed to grow every night, without any indication that it was going to stop. The quadrant of the Glades that Oliver had ventured towards was the formerly industrialized area; buildings that had been abandoned long before the quake hit, when jobs had dried up and relocation was inevitable. Busted street lights. This was the part where only the brave or the desperate dared to venture; and both of those groups were the favored prey. In the distance, he could hear a scream...distinctly female, and there was no faking the shrill terror that had been expressed in it. Gravel crunched underneath his boots as he took off in a dead sprint; adrenaline spiked in his system, proving extra speed to his already long strides. Complete tunnel vision; he was attuned to where the sound had came from, nothing else mattered, that kind of hyper focus was something that you could only learn in trial by fire.
Banking hard to the left, Oliver cut through an alley, his lungs burned, but the pain was something that he had learned to ignore. A second later and he was out in the open; the woman, whom he assumed had been the one in panic, almost crashed into him as she fled in the opposite direction. The reason why became apparent as he glanced towards the docks; there was a fight happening, from the distance and angle he was currently at, the details were almost impossible to make out. His grip on the bow tightened; instincts took over, more than thought, those split seconds decisions...he charged forward, unrelenting. A promise had been made; standing in front of Tommy Merlyn’s gravestone, that never again would he be too late. Only when the distance was closed did something happen beyond his comprehension. Where a man, the aggressor, had been standing only a split second before, turned into nothing more than explosion of dust. Oliver had only seen it from behind; he hadn’t witnessed the creature’s deformed face, fangs, or yellow eyes. The end result had still been unnatural; he had seen things on the island that defied convention or reason. Now in front of him was a blonde woman; attractive, young, a wooden stake gripped in one hand. With surprising quickness, he reached back to draw an arrow from his quiver and notched it on the bow, aiming it towards her heart. “Drop the weapon,” he growled out in a distorted voice. Part of him realized that this woman was the reason another person hadn’t died. But he didn’t have an explanation for...that man exploding. “Now.” Was she a murderer? She couldn’t be...and who was he to judge? He had killed in the name of justice.