Part One: Strange New World
Word Count: 4423

Notes: First of all, thank you so much for 1000 reviews and 40,000 hits on Technical Assistance. You are fantastic and amazing. I find myself in a difficult position: I'm a writer with no words appropriate enough to express my gratitude. So I think I'll just say, "thank you," and you guys can know that I mean that times infinity, to the power of infinity-squared. Thank you.

Secondly, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'VE JUST DONE. I've had this idea in my head since I started writing AU Arrow fic, and now it's finally happened and spiraled way out of control. I've had so much fun with it, but it's still a monster of a fic, and it's only going to get more intense in following chapters. Basic rundown of what's going to happen: I'm going to tear your heart out, stomp on it, pick up the pieces, and glue it back together. :P You've been warned.

This story was supposed to be a one-shot, but it's told in three parts instead because I'm over the AO3 posting limit. The basis for this is Naughty Dog's Jak and Daxter franchise for PS2, but I'm only using parts of it. Most of the storyline is coming from Jak II and I'm skipping the first game entirely, but there are some Jak 3 elements built in because the Count Veger and Spargus things were too awesome to pass up.

All the chapter titles are taken from the names of cutscenes in Jak II. "Strange New World" is the opening video that introduces the basic plot line, and a lot of the first scene is inspired by that.

Part Two goes up Sunday.

Reviews and comments are much appreciated, but thanks just for reading! :)

Roy Harper has seen a lot in his life, but never anything like the sight before him. He entered the complex expecting to find a beaten, broken prisoner, but instead he finds the man he was sent to exfiltrate strapped to a horrific-looking chair in the middle of the room. It's hard to tell anything about the man under the long hair and beard, but Roy doesn't think it looks like he's breathing.

Which, if this guy is as good as they think he is, that is the worst possible scenario if the Underground is going to win this war.

"Third floor: body chains, torture devices," he mutters to himself as the small lift pulls to a halt, and he drops the duffle bag on the floor as he moves forward. The cells in the back don't look too good, either, and the machine attached to the chair still buzzes with energy. One look tells him that it's the ominous purple glow of Dark Eco, and that is definitely not good. Now he knows why the guy is so important; he's been selected for the Dark Warrior program, and Slade only finds the best for that.

But if they've already injected him, he's also probably dead because Slade's program also has no survivors.

Roy jams his fingers to the guy's pulse point, surprised to find a faint throbbing against the pad of his fingers. "You're a tough one," he can't help but note. "Everyone else Slade's pumped full of that poison is dead. You should probably be dead. Or at least insane, which could still be the case." He rolls the prisoner's head over to one side to get a better look at him, and Roy is surprised to find two blue eyes staring up at him.

The guy instantly struggles against the metal restraints holding him in the chair, and Roy holds his hands up. "Easy, big guy, I'm here to get you out. My name is Roy—I'm with the Underground fighting against Slade." He turns to the control panel, afraid to touch the buttons but unsure how else to get him out. Maybe he should have learned Russian after all; it would be useful in reading the print on the machine. "Now I just have to see how to get you out of that thing."

Instead of answering, suddenly the restraints break, and the prisoner's eyes are jet black now—no pupil, no iris, no white space; the entirety of both eyes go black. "Or, you know, you could do it," Roy adds as an afterthought. He watches slowly as the clearly-not-completely-normal prisoner's eyes turn normal again, and then swallows. "Okay, remind me not to piss you off."

His first words to Roy are a declarative announcement of five words, clear despite the rasp in his voice: "I'm going to kill Slade."

Simple, declarative, and to the point—Roy can work with that. At least he's not some sort of mute; Roy doesn't like to be the only one doing the talking. "I'm okay with that," he answers slowly. Then he takes the duffle from the lift and tosses it to him. "I think you're gonna need some new clothes—you can't run around Starling City in a prison uniform, unless you want to wind up back here." He hesitates. "You have a name, right?"

"Oliver," he answers. He doesn't offer a surname, instead focusing on trading out raggedy, prison uniform shirt for the new gray sweater in the bag. The action exposes a myriad of scars across his back, probably from Slade's hospitality.

Roy goes over to the computer terminal to mine any further data from the systems, only to find it locked. He reminds himself to do the one computer thing he knows so that their resident expert can access the files later, and by that point Oliver is ready to go, looking for all the world like just another Starling City resident.

"Come on, Tall-Dark-and-Gruesome," Roy says finally. "Let's get you out of here so you can go meet the rest of the happy family."

Oliver Queen watches the boy little older than his sister charge ahead of him, discussing what's changed in Starling City over the past five years, when Oliver was in his own personal Hell. Roy Harper has a sardonic sense of humor, forged by the oppression of Slade and his regime. Vaguely, Oliver wonders if the changes in Starling since their parents were killed have hardened Thea, too. Then he wonders if she's still alive. Then he wonders about his friend, and he decides it's not a good idea to let his mind wander of life and death.

Especially not the possibility of their deaths.

Roy slows his pace after a minute when he realizes that Oliver isn't paying attention, frowning at him as they keep pace with one another. "Do you know anything about Starling? Maybe I can leave out the boring parts."

"A little," Oliver admits after a long moment, unsure of how much he wants to give away to the kid. "I've been in Slade's prison for five years." He looks around at the damage and destruction of the Glades. "I remember the city as it was then."

Roy's eyebrows go up. "Well, you missed all the fun," he answers dryly. "Five years ago, Slade was just a blip on the radar. He wanted the city, and he found a way to steal it out from under the Queens." Oliver flinches at the reminder, but the kid doesn't seem to notice. "First he pays to get Sebastian Blood on the Council. Guy's a few monks short of a choir, if you ask me, but he's good at convincing people—convinced them he was their savior or something. Anyway, Blood starts pointing out all the things that are wrong with the city after that. Says that it's because of Robert Queen." He snorts. "I was just thirteen at the time, so I wasn't paying attention to politics, but I always thought that was a load of crap.

"Tables turned for Queen, and, next thing you know, One-Eyed Wonder is sitting pretty on the throne. There was a war—violent and bloody—waged between him and Queen's supporters, but eventually Slade won. That's how the Glades were destroyed, how Queen lost his head—literally. Moira got out a little easier, though." Oliver's ears perk up at this; he'd thought his mother was dead after everything that happened. "Slade wanted her to be his wife or whatever after dethroning Queen."

He waves a hand and rolls his eyes. "Blondie says it's some sort of shit out of Hamlet—something about lying with the queen to cement position as king." He shrugs, and Oliver wonders vaguely who Blondie is, but decides that it's not important. "Some of us didn't get a high school education. Anyway, Moira Queen didn't want to be his queen, so things there went nasty fast." He chuckles slightly. "Rumor is that, whatever she did to him, he can't have kids now—a miracle in itself. But Slade wasn't happy with that, so he had her banished—sent to live in that godforsaken desert outside the city."

He shrugs again. "Most of us figure that she died soon after, but me? I think Moira Queen was tougher than she looked. I mean, she managed to take Slade down a peg, anyway. My guess is she's built a nice little palace in the sand out there, and she's the reason why those monsters keep migrating toward the city's defensive walls—even if it's bad for us. Hell, I'd run from her, too, if the story about what she did to Slade is even half true."

Oliver is glad for the brutal honesty in the statement because it doesn't allow him to hope. His mother and father are dead, no question about it, despite what the boy says about his mother. He doesn't mourn because he knew that to be the case the moment Slade had thrown him into into the dungeons. Still, he allows himself one question: "What about the Queen kids? There was a son and a daughter."

Roy shrugs. "Don't know. Rumor has it that the boy was sort of an ass and that he slept with Slade's girl—though why anyone would want his brand of crazy is beyond me—and that Slade was going to take care of him personally." Oliver is impressed at the efficiency of the Starling rumor mill; it's accurate enough. "The girl, though... no one knows. She wasn't there the night everything went to shit, and she's missing. Underground's been looking for them ever since, but Slade went all totalitarian and outlawed even saying their names. Most of us don't even remember them anymore, and the ones that do are too afraid to talk."

Oliver opens his mouth to respond to the wealth of information, but a guard in a red set of plate armor turns the corner in front of them and turns his plasma gun on them. "Everyone in this sector is under arrest for harboring fugitives," the guard tells them in a robotic voice. "Surrender and die."

Oliver stares at the guard in confusion before asking Roy, "Doesn't he mean, 'Surrender or die'?"

Roy frowns. "Not in this city," is his dry response. "We need to get back to the boss, and we don't have time for this shit." He flashes a gun from the pocket of his hoodie. "You feel like some payback, big guy?"

Oliver doesn't answer, only pulls the plasma gun out of the guard's hand and then elbows him in the face before disconnecting the cartridge. Roy whistles in response, then fires the gun over Oliver's shoulder at another guard. "I have an extra," Roy says, offering him a second pistol, but Oliver shakes his head. He doesn't use guns.

That's a rule he's not going to break.

It doesn't take long to radio in backup, and suddenly they're looking at a swarm of several guys. Oliver makes sure to protect the kid from any damage, but he takes several shocks from the stun guns that don't seem to be powered up high enough to zap him into unconsciousness. He snaps one of the guard's necks, using him as a shield against some of the other weapons they're using. He blocks the butt of one of the guns from coming down on his head, then punches the guard to make him release it.

All the while, he knows something is very wrong. He's familiar with getting hyped up on adrenalin, the familiar sensation of a rapid heartbeat, sharper senses, and a dulled sense of pain (which helps because he's pretty sure his ribs are cracked). But something is different; his heart is beating more rapidly than usual, and he can feel it in his throat, in his fingers. Then excruciating pain shoots through him, and everything goes completely black. It's not unconsciousness because he's still very alert, but his awareness of his surroundings is completely gone, as though he's closed his eyes.

It's all he knows for a very long time, and then the pain is far worse than he the first time. He watches sparks of purple race across his skin when his eyes open, and he's breathing far too hard. Then he sees the soldiers lying across the ground, all not breathing and most of them covered in blood. It takes him a moment, but he realizes he was the one to kill them all—at least twenty, after a new drop of reinforcements.

"Whoa," Roy breathes from behind him, and when Oliver turns, he finds the kid's eyes wide in something between awe and fear. "That was cool," he adds finally. "Think you can do it again?"

Oliver frowns at the sparks of purple still traveling along the lines of his veins, his muscles screaming in protest against whatever the hell just happened to them. It takes him a moment, but the memories start flooding back: black claws, long teeth sitting oddly in his mouth, and death.

It's been a long time since he's killed, and it weighs heavier on his conscience this time.

But he doesn't think about that—not yet, not with everything so fresh in his mind. "Something's wrong," he finally says to Roy, even though speech is painful and his voice is raspy with the effort. "Slade did something to me back there, injected me with something." He looks at Roy helplessly. "I can't control this."

"The Dark Warrior program," Roy offers finally. "It was Slade's master plan to destroy the Underground once and for all. Eco is the source of life and all that shit, right? With all of its various forms—Blue Eco for motion, Red for strength, Yellow for power, and Green for healing. But then there's Light Eco, the basis for all life, and then Dark Eco, the energy of destruction." He swallows once. "Slade... wanted to harness Dark Eco to create soldiers and tools for destruction—human weapons he could control. He's been working on it for the past five years, injecting certain candidates with huge amounts of the Dark stuff to make them warriors." He hesitates. "You're the first one to survive."

Suddenly Slade's words come back to Oliver, and he realizes that the kid is telling the truth. You should at least be dead, with all the Dark Eco I've pumped into you, kid, he remembers Slade saying to him after the last round of torture. His body may not like what Slade did to it, but the dark matter hasn't killed him. Yet.

That has to count for something.

Roy pulls Oliver into a back alley, weaving them between dilapidated buildings. He isn't so vocal this time, leaving Oliver to his thoughts. Finally, they make a turn into a dead-end alleyway, and Oliver tenses because he's been ambushed in one too many alleys like this one. Roy seems unperturbed by this, motioning Oliver forward with a careful hand.

He motions to a block of graffiti on the wall of the abandoned alleyway, and Oliver faintly recognizes the emblem: a bow nocked with an ornate arrow, painted in shades of green. It strikes him for a moment how beautiful it is, and how powerful. He'd sworn that the city's downfall would be the end of his hero days, but fate, it seems, has other plans. But the symbol is clear and, when Roy pulls the wall back to reveal a hidden passageway, Oliver realizes that the Underground is using it as their symbol of hope.

The city still remembers him, then, even if not by name.

The stairway is narrow and dark, opening up into what appears to be a mix between a war room and a barracks. Bunk beds line the walls by the entrance, while a mess of maps and papers cover the table in the back. Another hallway leads down from it, and Oliver thinks it might be a city underneath Starling itself, a safe haven for everyone oppressed by Slade and ready to stand for it.

A man stands in the middle of the room, pouring over the papers with an expert eye. He's old for a Starling City resident now (based on what Roy has said, people in the Glades don't exactly have a good life expectancy), and his hair is graying at the temples. It sticks up at odd angles and he looks to disheveled to have slept in the past twenty-four hours, but there's no doubt that this man is the one in charge.

He looks up when Roy walks in, though his eyes study both men. Oliver thinks he looks somewhat familiar, but he can't place the face—not after five years in prison and five years of hard living for the other man. "Well, you managed to get one right, Harper," the man says in a gruff, raspy voice. "Miracles do happen."

"Bite me, Lance," the kid answers, and Oliver places the name immediately. Quentin Lance, former head of the family guard. He's older now and the time hasn't agreed with him, but it's definitely him. "You ordered Prisoner 5862, and you got him. By the way? Slade's Dark Warrior program? It works." Lance's eyebrows go up in concern. "But the lucky guy who survived all the Dark Eco treatments hates Slade more than we do, so it's all good." Roy slaps Oliver's arm with the back of his hand. "Isn't that right, buddy?"

Lance moves forward to study Oliver before finally extending a hand that the heir to a crumbling city shakes firmly. "Good to have you back, Oliver," he says after a long moment. "No matter how." He motions to a locked safe. "I managed to find your gear in the ruins of Merlyn's old club after the quake in the Glades. It was intact, so I saved it for you." Oliver studies him for a moment, but the older man shrugs. The use of the singular instead of plural doesn't escape him; Oliver told two people of his secret. "You survived a whole lot worse than Slade Wilson. Didn't think he'd be the one to break you."

Oliver chooses to talk about a more important subject. "Where's Thea?" he asks quietly. Lance was the one responsible for her, and the last thing he remembers of his sister is her screaming as Lance hauled her—and his own daughters—out of the palace. Oliver wasn't so quick, but it didn't matter because he always knew his sister would be safe.

"Thea?" Roy asks blankly, his eyes narrowing. "The hot bartender down at Verdant who passes information to us? What does she have to do with this?"

Oliver rounds on him instantly, and he can feel that same angry pulse threatening to take over. This time he knows what it is, though, so he bottles it up and asks Roy as calmly as possible, "Thea is my sister." His jaw is still taut, though, and Oliver thinks he needs to improve his control over his anger.

Apparently Roy isn't too sure about his tenuous control, either, because he swallows loudly. "Sorry, man—I didn't know she was off-limits," he answers after a long moment, and Oliver decides that's good enough for now.

He rounds on Lance as the last part of Roy's statement comes back to him. "You have her helping the Underground?" he asks, trying to keep his composure—trying to keep the monster back. "Do you realize how dangerous that is for her? If Slade gets to her, he will kill her. She should be lying low and staying quiet until I can kill the son of a bitch." His voice turns dark at the end, the words more snarl than statement.

If the venom in his voice bothers Lance, he doesn't show it. "That's what I told her," he states flatly. "After Dinah died in that mess, I raised the girls as best I could on my own. But every damn one of them took a different approach to this war."

He chuckles, but there's no humor in it. "Your buddy Merlyn is in a tenuous spot now—Merlyn Global supplies Eco shipments, so they're striking deals with Slade for the power systems, but he's running some... less-than-legal ventures, too. Most of the deals take place at Verdant, so Thea went to work for him so she could pass us information." He crosses his arms. "Laurel went the other way—she's one of Blood's legal eagles, and she's in charge of the task force working to shut down what's left of this resistance." A deep sigh comes from him. "And Sara is in the most dangerous spot of all of them—she worked her way up to a Krimson Guard captain, and she feeds information from the throne room itself."

His eyebrows knit together. "So I'm sorry if your sister is in danger, Oliver, but all of us have something at stake here. Yeah, if Slade catches her, he'll kill her. But if he catches Sara, if she gets cocky, it'll be worse." Lance's eyes turn tortured. "He'll let her live."

Oliver knows what he's saying—they all have it rough. Nothing is going to be safe until this whole thing is over and the throne is occupied by someone other than Slade. And if anyone is going to stop Slade Wilson, it's going to be Oliver—he'll make sure of that.

Finally, the question that has been burning his throat escapes, the one that's been bothering him for five years: "And my partner?" He says it quietly, already afraid of the answer. He knows that Lance would have sent her to break him out instead if it was an option for them, and there's little doubt in his mind about her fate in this war.

Lance claps his shoulder with a sad expression, confirming it without a word. "She stayed in the basement of the club that night," he answers in a quiet tone. "You told her to go home, but we both know how stubborn she was." The past tense burns, gnaws at him, but Oliver bites down on the emotion. "I left just after you did, and somewhere in that escape was when that induced quake cut through the Glades. The club collapsed in on itself." He shakes his head. "We still haven't recovered all the bodies."

Oliver doesn't remember anything that hurts more than the revelation—no gunshot, knife, poison, or broken bone has ever hurt the way this does. He'd spent the last five years imagining how he'd find her again, and now it will never happen. Never again will he watch her lips curl up in a surprised smile when he teases her, or listen to her yell when he's wrong. And he'll never be able to watch her lie across the couch on slow nights, staring up at the ceiling with a bored expression while twisting a strand of dark hair around her finger absently in thought.

Still, part of him can't help but cling to the option. "You haven't found her yet," he breathes, surprised at how hopeful his voice is to his own ears. Hope is a strange emotion now; in five years, it's been beaten and stripped from him until he has nothing left to hope for. Now he does.

Lance knows him too well—knows how he thinks. "Not yet," he reiterates. "But Oliver, I saw that scene, and there's no way your girl survived, as much as I'd like to tell you otherwise." He hesitates for a long moment before adding, "Some of them weren't even bodies anymore—they were in pieces. She's in there somewhere, and she's better off stuck there than she would have been if she'd lived." He chuckles humorlessly. "She would have done anything to get you out, and Slade would probably have her right now, too."

Oliver accepts that after a long moment because it's the truth. Though it's selfish, he's glad that Slade doesn't have her, that she wasn't able to go after him. Because, while her death certainly will always haunt him, it's nothing compared to the agony he would have faced as a man free to roam the city while she rotted away. There's no doubt in his mind he would have charged into those prisons after her again, probably to his own death sentence. And it probably would have been hers, too; Slade sees people as bargaining chips, and with Oliver dead, she would have quite literally outlived her usefulness.

Finally, he nods to show that he understands Lance's message. "What do you need me to do?" he asks, crossing his arms. The last thing he wanted to do was get involved in a war again, but fate has other plans for him. Besides, war is the one thing Oliver seems to do well.

Lance offers him something that looks like a smile before unlocking the safe and dropping a duffle on the table. He motions to it, and Oliver unzips it, surprised to find the green suit, quiver, and bow in it. "Get your gear. You can clean up in the back." He offers a sardonic grin before adding, "You look like hell, Oliver."

Oliver lets out a breath in a huff, the best version of laughter he can manage in the moment. "You should see me on a bad day," he responds dryly, earning a chuckle from the other man.

"You should probably go see Merlyn—he'll tell you more than he'll tell us," Lance continues. "Merlyn houses a lot of our guys in the city, so he'll know of a place to put you up, too." Lance motions to Roy. "Take the kid with you. He's not good for much, but he knows this city better than any of us and he can use just about any weapon you can get your hands on."

"I get to play babysitter?" Roy asks, then crosses his arms. "Why do I always get the shit jobs around here, Lance?"

"Because I don't like you," Lance answers dryly. He opens another safe and tosses a gun and a second piece to Roy. "Eco guns are rare in this city, so try not to lose it like your usual arsenal. That's a Scatter mod—" He stops mid-explanation, he and Oliver both watch the kid slip the pieces together in a quick motion, then tests the weight before priming it, pumping the shotgun-like barrel with one hand.

"I got it," Roy says finally, stating the obvious. He studies the gun for a moment before looking at Oliver. "Babysitting you might not be a bad thing if they give me the good guns." He looks over at the duffle bag full of Oliver's old gear. "What about you? You use guns?"

"Guns are unreliable," Oliver answers. "No control." He pulls the jacket out of the bag to unveil the bow, pulling it out and testing the draw. He'll have to make a heavier draw for it, but it will do for now. "Archery is all about control, about making each shot count."

Roy isn't even looking at the bow. "You were the Arrow five years ago," he breathes slowly, as though he can't exactly believe it. Then his eyebrows pull together. "Wait. If you don the hood again, won't Slade know who you are?"

Oliver grips the bow tightly when he answers, "I want him to know it's me who's hurting him."

Playlist:

"Three Cheers for Five Years (Acoustic)" - Mayday Parade
"Viva la Vida" - Coldplay
"Riot" - Three Days Grace
"I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" - My Chemical Romance
"Monsters" - Matchbook Romance