Chapter 4
Underground

Oliver had his best neutral poker face on as he took in the situation, evaluating his options.

Slowly, he made his way over to Cisco, kneeling down next to him. He gently put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it ever so slightly.

"Hey, focus," Oliver murmured gently, not allowing his voice to waver. "I need you to focus."

Cisco blinked a few times and swallowed hard, looking down at his hands as if they were covered in blood. He had dropped the gun just before falling to his knees... He glanced over at it then quickly away. Oliver noticed and picked the small but devastating weapon up. He put it away in his jacket, out of sight and as out of mind as it could be.

Oliver snapped his fingers a few times in front of Cisco's face. "Snap out of it. Look at me," he said, quiet but firm. "Look at me."

The younger man pulled his gaze up off of the floor and away the scene before them and instead focused on Oliver's eyes, gentle, calm, and focused steadily back at him through the holes in the ski mask obscuring the rest of the man's identity. "I-"

Oliver shushed him gently. "I know. Come on." He gently coaxed Cisco to his feet, his arm looped around his shoulders for support. He didn't wait for Cisco to steady himself before setting off at a brisk pace for the door, going through their actions in his head to make sure they weren't leaving behind any clues. The guns would have to be disposed of thanks to the bullets at the scene, but other than that, he couldn't think of any traces they may have left behind.

"You're all clear," Diggle confirmed, almost as if he had read Oliver's mind.

Cisco almost came to a frozen halt, but Oliver forced him to continue forward by practically dragging him away. "H-He's dead..."

Oliver had refused to spare the body a second glance as he pulled Cisco to safety. He'd seen murder before, the same blood pooling around someone who would remain nameless until the police identified them and made their family see the truth. He didn't need to see any more; his only concern in that moment was Cisco.

There was only silence from their earpieces as Oliver mounted his motorcycle, gently encouraging Cisco to do the same behind him. It was as if the kid was in a trance, just stumbling around, mutely following orders. Oliver was almost worried that he might fall off the bike, but that worry vanished when he felt how hard Cisco was hugging on to him.

He started up the cycle, pulled up the kickstand with his foot, and set off back home just as he started hearing sirens in the distance.

THISAIN'TASCENEIT'SAGOSHDAMNPAGEBREAK

Everyone back in the Arrow Cave had figured out what had probably happened, but none of them wanted to be the one to confirm any suspicions they had. They merely sat there in a stiff, tense silence, unaware of the passage of time.

Finally, Oliver walked down the stairs and into the base. Cisco was following close behind, his head down and his hands in his pockets. Everyone looked up at the sound of their footsteps. They both seemed to be in one piece, but Oliver's downcast expression and Cisco's demeanor only proved to them that their suspicions were true.

Barry and Caitlyn stood and rushed forward as soon as they saw their friends, waiting anxiously at the bottom of the stairs. Oliver ignored them and headed straight for Felicity. Cisco paused for a moment then hesitantly continued forward, refusing to meet their eyes. The other two didn't say anything, but as soon as he was within reach, they were there with comforting hands that Cisco refused to respond to.

"I killed him," he murmured, his voice broken and his shoulders trembling. The sound of it broke their hearts.

"It wasn't your fault at all," Barry said gently.

Cisco had squeezed his eyes shut as Caitlyn spoke, but now he opened them and looked up slightly at Barry with angry disbelief written all over his face. Caitlyn hugged his shoulders when she saw how pink and wet his eyes were, as if he had cried on the way back to the base.

Barry continued, "Cisco, it really wasn't your fault. We are dealing with a hypnotist of some kind. Apparently he manipulates people verbally, and that's exactly what he did to you. You didn't have any control over what you were doing."

The anger was slowly slipping away from Cisco's expression, leaving only weary confusion in its wake. Barry offered him a small, sympathetic smile before he continued. "I've been thinking about that song, and how you and Oliver were behaving when it was being sung. Oliver was being all calm and stoic like he usually is, but you were on edge. You were terrified. I think that our meta used that against you."

"He used my emotions against me," Cisco repeated quietly for his own benefit. It was hard to tell whether he thought that the news was comforting or not.

"Yeah," Barry confirmed. "Just like he did to Oliver the first time they met; he got to him by making a connection to his traumatic backstory." Oliver heaved and unamused sigh in the background. "With you, he just played on your nerves and survival instinct, I'm guessing. But it's more than that!" he suddenly exclaimed, turning from the others as he had a mild epiphany. "He wasn't just calm, he was almost entirely detached from the situation! That might be it; it's not just your emotions, maybe it's your emotional attachment! He plays on that with a few carefully chosen words."

"So it wasn't my fault..." He still didn't seem very comforted.

"Exactly." Barry jogged over to the computer, leaning around Felicity to get to the keyboard. She moved for him as he began typing. "The song he was singing...apparently iiiit's...Frontline by Pillar." He pulled up a page of lyrics for the song and read aloud; "'Everybody with your fists raised high, let me hear your battle cry tonight, stand aside or step aside, we're on the frontline.'

"And here's the part we heard the meta sing; 'And we'll be carrying on until the day it doesn't matter anymore, step aside you forgot what this is for, we fight to live, we live to fight, and tonight you'll hear my battle cry. We live our lives on the frontlines, we're not afraid of the fast times, these days I've opened up my eyes, and now I see where the threat lies...'"

"And that last part is when Cisco shot the man?" asked Oliver, who had been reading over Barry's shoulder.

Barry paused, giving Oliver a confused look. "Didn't you guys hear it?"

"Yes," Cisco answered, walking towards them finally with Caitlyn at his side. "It was like I could hear it and knew what it was saying, but it was almost too clear, you know? Like, even over everything else that was going on, I could still hear it really well."

"I was too busy trying to deal with the cashier to really pay attention, apparently," Oliver reluctantly admitted. He really hated how incompetent he was being recently... The sooner they handled this mentalist, the better.

Barry hummed thoughtfully. "Maybe he was still affecting you a little, too, but just not as much as Cisco... The lyrics do say 'we,' not 'you' or 'I.'" He nodded at the monitor which was still displaying the lyrics to the song.

"You're still giving us a lot of maybes, Barry," Roy pointed out.

"Do we know enough to try and get him yet, or do we need keep playing his game and try to find out more?" asked Oliver.

All eyes were on Barry once again. "Well... We don't know the full extent of his abilities yet, but even though that can be a dangerous situation, it's not unmanageable; in fact, it's something my team has to deal with all the time," he thought aloud. "We don't know his real weakness for sure, either, but we do know how to find him and it seems reasonable that as long as we can't hear him, then he can't whammy us."

"So what's the plan?"

"We shouldn't go in full force yet, and we don't want him to stop trusting Oliver just in case our first try to catch him goes south, so I say we use Oliver as bait again, but this time, Roy, Diggle and I will follow and try to catch him off to the side. Say he got on our bad side, so now we're hunting him down by using Oliver without him knowing."

"Smart," Oliver remarked.

"If we wanted to go a step further, then maybe we could even have Barry dress up in Oliver's suit to make sure the meta suspects Oliver even less?" Roy suggested. "I'm basically a sidekick. If I show up as Arsenal without Green Arrow, then he might get to wondering where the Arrow is, and that could make him question Oliver."

"But what if he catches the hood on fire?!" Felicity interjected suddenly, nearly jumping to her feet.

Barry, who had been struggling to contain the fangasm he had been having because of the mere thought of him wearing Oliver's hood, deflated visibly at Felicity's point. "She's right; I don't seem to have much control over that. Sometimes I can run all the way across town without even smoking, and other times I burst into flames after just a mile."

Oliver narrowed his eyes. "I'll get you a replica of the hood to wear. The rest I'm okay with risking."

"Wait, we're actually gonna have me pose as the Arrow?"

"Yes," Oliver verified. "It's a smart precaution." Roy smirked slightly at that.

"Barry," Cisco said quietly, "if you can run and grab a few sets of your spare earpieces, then I can modify them to block out sounds better. Should help you guys avoid getting hypnotized."

"Thanks bud," Barry replied. He turned to the others. "If nobody has anything to add...?"

Nobody spoke up, and Oliver shook his head after a moment of thought. And with that, Barry zipped away for a quick trip to Central City.

Time to get this dark poet...

A/N:

Pobre Ciscito... I'm so mean. And I officially am at the spot where I have no idea what's gonna happen next! So that should be fun... Before I at least had some idea, but now my original point B is in the foggy distance and my original point A bit the dust a looong time ago, so... Yeah. Hopefully the meta will develop a mind of his own to help me out some. Fingers crossed! $10 says he does something horrible.

-Mumble

I agree. Poor Cisco. He never gets a break, does he? On the show and in fanfic. Plus, I dig the idea of Barry in Olivers suit. Bad guys are just going to have to get used to happy little squeals coming out from under the hood.

-2whitite