Come out upon my seas, cursed missed opportunities...

They say the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist

The greatest trick James Jesse ever pulled was convincing the Devil that he wasn’t a threat.

It’s the big secret that most of the mystic heroes deny the truth of and most of the mundane heroes aren’t aware of; that a simple con-man and sometimes super-villain named James Jesse (a.k.a. The Trickster) managed to single-handedly save the world by cheating the demon lord Neron out of his due.

For the most part, the fact that hardly anybody knew what he’d done suited James Jesse just fine. Having your face broadcast on the news does wonders to kill your career as a con-man. And he certainly wouldn’t want to be a superhero, even if most of the community had been as understanding as The Flash regarding the many shades of grey in the world and the fact that there are Heroes, Innocents, Villains and Rogues. James was quite definitely a Rogue.

Still, The Trickster decided it would do his soul some good to try and play the side of the angels a little more often. So James Jesse became something of a Robin Hood; using his wits and his cunning to take money from The Villains then turning it around and using it to make things better for the Innocents.

It was this new desire to do good that lead James to top himself and defeat Neron a second time. With Neron chasing after all of The Rogues following their escape from Hell (long story) James sent the rest of The Rogues after a holy artifact called The Sun Disk of Meshta. Meshta was an obscure but powerful god of Light and his Sun Disk was said to have the power to repel even the most powerful of demons. The Rogues thought the plan was to steal the disk to protect themselves. But as always, The Trickster had an angle.

James had been contacted days earlier by an old girlfriend, Mindy, who told him about the Meshtan religion and explained that her son Billy was the new Majee – a holyman who is selected by Meshta once a millennium to usher in a new golden age. Billy and the rest of the monks of Meshta had been kidnapped by a warlord who sought to use the legend of the Majee to subdue the populace and to convince them to surrender the region without fighting.

To make a long story short, James’ plan to save Billy AND The Rogues worked, although not quite as he had intended. Most of the warlord's followers scattered following a “manifestation” of Meshta that was created by a mixture of Trickster illusions and Pied Piper sound effects. Neron manifested only to be struck down by a true manifestation of Meshta that Billy summoned forth. Neron was injured severely, forcing him to make a deal with James to forget about the Meshtan Monks, Billy and all the Rogues … except James, who said “I want you to remember the guy who fed you two plates of crow!”

Neron did remember. He remembered the name of James Jesse well. So when James Jesse died after being unceremoniously shot in the head AND heart, he was not at all surprised to find that Neron was waiting for him and had lain claim to his soul by Right of Insult. (Ever read Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits? Same thing.) James was however, somewhat surprised when Meshta appeared and said that the beating Neron received before would be nothing compared to what would happen that day...

...Unless Neron was ready to make a deal.

For not only did James put himself in Meshta’s good books by saving his Sun Disk, his temple, his monks and his chosen one; James was the biological father of The Chosen One. In going to help out an old girlfriend, James inadvertently wound up saving his own son and – through Billy – developed a direct line to The Powers That Be Upstairs. Who, it turns out, have a pretty good sense of humor.

The short version is that James Jesse is now free of Neron’s clutches and no longer has to worry about his past deeds taking him into the fire. The bad news is that Meshta, who has need of agents on Earth, now owns him... body and soul. This does beat the Hell out of the alternative (the alternative literally being Hell, of course) but James Jesse is too wild at heart to like the idea of owing anyone a favor and having to follow orders all the time. Luckily Meshta is understanding about this and finds amusement in James’ token efforts at rebellion.

Regardless of how he feels about it, James Jesse is now a man with a mission from (an aspect of) God. Basically, the mission is a rather vague standing order to keep doing what he was doing; steal from the thieves and give to the poor. But, and this was a pretty big but, be ready to move if your son calls and says you need to do something.

James hasn’t made contact with any of his old buddies in The Rogues – he’s moved past them and he’s not too sure how they’ll feel about his new mission. Besides, being legally dead is rather useful in most circumstances for somebody who makes a habit of pretending to be other people. In fact, the only piece of his old life that he’s accessed recently is his collection of “procured” super-villain weapons, which he was studying to make some new “tricks”. And that’s where he was when Billy called him and said that he needed to get Walker Gabriel’s old watch out of the safe it was locked in.

And that was how James Jesse came to the rescue of our time-lost heroes and set everyone on the road to restoring the time-stream. James was rather relieved to see Ollie (such as he was) and noted that he’d have been glad to have helped them out with this even if he weren’t “getting orders from the boss” to do so. “I owe Ollie a big one,” was all James would say on the subject.

Ollie was confused by this but accepted James at his word and agreed to dismiss any debt that James owed him.

So why did Meshta care about so much about restoring the time stream, apart from the obvious reasons any deity/demigod might wish to ensure that reality stay intact? Believe it or not, it was because of love. Above all else, Meshta is a being of pure love and one of the few times he is able to take a direct hand in matters in the Earthly realms is when great destruction would result due to the death of a true and noble love.

Ollie and Dinah’s love is such a love. A love forged in destiny the destruction of which would have dire consequences for the world at large.

(Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a romantic sap at heart….)

There is one problem though; Per Degaton saw this coming and has an army of his Red Morgue soldiers waiting. And in their current state, none of Team Arrow are in fighting shape...

Except Cissie King, who in this moment finds the purpose she was seeking and the connection she’d longed for as the Arrowette of this world became a real hero.

The basic end result is that the timeline will “settle” into something very much like what we have now. Some of the fine details will be changed (i.e. retconning away the stuff that doesn’t make sense) but for the most part everyone will show up back in front of Ollie’s brownstone. Including The Trickster, who will ask if Ollie or Dinah have any objection to him relocating to Star City. He needs a new place to start a base of operations and he’s pretty sure – given the city’s history with demonic invasions – that they could use the help of someone who has some experience in thinking his way around the boys downstairs.

They agree to give it a shot - after all, it’s not this is first time anyone in the family has made arrangements with a semi-reformed villain who has settled into the city, after all - Deadshot’s ex and daughter are still around somewhere and Catman is still on the Christmas Card list.

So James begins to set himself up as The Shade to the Arrow family’s O’Dares; a rogue but an honest rogue who will help them with the trials to come. And Oh Brother, are there going to be trials to come…


***


I freely admit - this one is just for me. Because I don't think anyone did him justice after what he did in Underworld Unleashed and I HATE the way he died like a punk in Countdown.

Still, I think I've done a fairly good job of giving him a reason to be the savior at the end of this story and a supporting player in a Black Canary/Green Arrow book I'd write.

And yes, I do plan to tell the story of why he owes Ollie one. Later.

Confusion never stops, closing walls and ticking clocks...

Posting this one a little early, since I am tired as all get out and have to be at work early tomorrow.

You're welcome. :)



Yes, rejoice Dinah fans. Because this really has been all about her the whole time.

It’s a little hard to fully describe Per Degaton, even to somebody who reads comics and is familiar with all the tropes and clichés of the genre. The short version is that he’s a time-traveling Nazi with a grudge against superheroes in general and the Justice Society of America in particular.

Power-wise, Per Degaton is literally untouchable since he lives outside the regular flow of time. He can travel anywhere at any time at will. Also, there are a few different versions of him – chronal clones – wandering around the time stream; all plotting ways to build an empire based on the ideals of the Third Reich. In fact, his only real weakness is that while nobody can touch him in the 4th dimension, he’s equally unable to touch anything in the three-dimensional world without the right electronic equipment and is usually dependent on recruiting agents to act on the foreknowledge he offers.

And even then, affecting change is difficult since changing the time stream is like forging metal – you have to heat things up a lot in order for things to bend a little and even then it takes a lot of care and craft, hammering things at the right points, in order to make things wind up in exactly the shape you want. And since there’s all sorts of agencies and free-lance heroes running around policing the time-stream who are watching for this sort of thing, it’s all but impossible for one villainous mind to keep a divergent timeline stable long enough for it to become “accepted continuity” by the rest of the universe.

Which is why, if you’re really serious about changing time, you need to move at angles within angles. And Per Degaton has become very good at that. He nearly destroyed the JSA once with a few carefully planned crimes in 1951 and a few carefully planned murders around the turn of the 21st century. It was only a matter of time – relatively speaking – before he tried something else. And he’s had the benefit of being able to see the whole of time across multiple realities and all the changes and fluxes before picking exactly when and where he wanted to strike.

So he thinks; I want to destroy the superheroes. Their biggest strength is their ability to come together in a time of crisis. I really want to destroy the JSA early on but The Linear Men, Rip Hunter and Booster Gold and the like will be watching that era closely after my last attack. If I move forward into the days with the JSA is relatively inactive and the JLA is still new… what would be the best way for me to go about this?

And while he’s pondering this he notes a change. A change in the far future where he can’t see past a certain point. And just before that is when he sees it; his own death. His true death. Three generations of heroes on three teams, united by a common legacy in common cause against him by one leader. And that leader is Dinah Lance.

And that’s when Per Degaton realizes the perfect target. The only founder of the Justice League with a direct tie to the Justice Society of America? One of the heroes who would go on to rebuild the Justice Society of America into a team that matched the glory of its’ first incarnation before exceeding it? The first long-lasting field agent of Oracle, whose solo adventures would pave the way for one of the best covert operative groups in the world? Yes, removing her from the picture or otherwise weakening her and preventing her from becoming the effective leader, confident combatant and master of multiple martial arts she was destined to be would definitely strike a blow against his enemies; maybe even cripple the JLA and JSA forever.

Paranoid as Per Degaton is, he refuses to consider a direct attack. His mind has become so twisted in isolation and his enemies among the time-traveling heroes too numerous for him to send an agent to strangle Dinah Lance in the crib. So he attacks through the angles again… and conceives upon a plan where he will use another time-traveling villain to use his powers to summon forth a mundane villain beneath notice to alter the time stream in such a way so that the alteration seems to be an attack upon Green Arrow, when the actual target is Black Canary.

Because while Oliver Queen considers his failure to give Roy the care he needed to be his lowest moment and greatest failing, the incident was also a major moment in Dinah Lance’s life too. For a while she had been rebelling against her mother and the nice, safe life she had tried to build for her… even while trying to uphold her mother’s legacy as a heroine. She’s abandoned the florist trade to take a few months to find herself, traveling across the country – occasionally crossing paths with Hal and Ollie on their own journey of discovery. And in the moment that she comforted Roy Harper and saved his life, Dinah had a revelation that would have a profound impact upon her life and personality.

She had always been a nurturer; making things grow and caring for things drove her interest in botany as a child. And as a member of the JLA, Dinah naturally fell into the role of a den mother, trying to keep “the boys” in line when tempers flared. Yet Dinah resisted the idea of settling down (as her mother wanted her too) and falling into the routine of work & family. She rushed into marriage right after high-school and quickly realized her mistake. She wanted something bigger for herself – which lead to her decision to adopt her mom’s old costume and identity and use the training her uncles secretly gave her to good use.

And yet, in that moment, as Dinah tried to care for Roy, she realized what she might be giving up in the name of independence. Logically, she knew that the life of a vigilante did not lend itself well to that of a parent; she had too many sleepless nights waiting for her beat-cop father and superheroine mother to come home NOT to realize that.

But in that moment she thought that maybe she could avoid those mistakes that had forced her to grow up too soon. Maybe the idea of having children and being a heroine wasn’t too outrageous. She dithered on the subject for a while, telling Ollie that she would love to make babies with him but she wouldn’t make orphans. But eventually, her natural desire to nurture and her love of children won out.

Of course with Roy dying before that faithful night had begun, things changed. Dinah abandoned heroism completely, her idealism having died along with Roy as the one man she thought she truly loved proved to be as unreliable and selfish as her first husband. She fell in with Hal as much out of mutual need as attraction (she did flirt with him a bit their first year in the JLA and Hal always joked his weakness to yellow applied to Blondes as well but the attraction stayed even after he found out she wore a wig) but never really had any desire to keep in the business of heroism after the move to Seattle.

And without a Black Canary… well, even without the scandal with Ollie destroying the JLA (Something Per Degaton didn’t predict but was not displeased by) Dinah’s absence would have had a major effect on the newly reformed JSA, who didn’t survive long after their first battle following their reunion, what with Dinah having been vital in stopping Obsidian’s plans to absorb Milwaukee into The Darklands. And logically The Birds of Prey – if formed at all - never would have formed into the tightly-knit sisterhood that they were with Dinah as their field leader. All the negative effects of Ollie’s absence (such as the destruction of Metropolis) were unintended benefits and useful red herrings – at least from the viewpoint of a crazed time-traveling Nazi hellbent on causing as much damage as possible.

Of course knowing all this doesn’t do our heroes a lick of good. They’re still trapped in the Borrowed Time dimension and none of them have the power it would take to manipulate the time stream or even move themselves someplace where they could undo the damage that Parallax and Tockman have done. And the more time passes, the more it “cools” into its’ new shape and the more their “true” memories become false. So how do they get out of this mess?

Luckily, Ollie has a plan – a plan he says will send them halfway across the country to look up an old friend who isn’t around anymore but who owes Ollie a favor and may hold the key to their rescue.

Come out of things unsaid, Shoot an apple off my head...

Eventually, the six of them (Ollie, Dinah, Hal, Mia, Connor and Cissie) wind up in front of what was Oliver Queen’s mansion, with the conflict between the memories of ‘what was’ and ‘what is’ becoming worse and worse.

Actually, Cissie was already there since the mansion she and her mom live in now was once Queen Manor and the crowd in front of the estate gets her attention. She doesn’t know anyone but does recognizes Ollie’s name from her mom’s stories. Yet something about the fallen hero doesn’t jibe with any of her memories or what little she knows about Oliver Queen from her mom’s stories.

Everyone else is feeling similarly confused and conflicted. Ollie is sobering up and the DTs are starting to take over. Dinah is finding it a lot harder to hold her temper at Ollie’s nonsense disrupting her life AGAIN. Connor is fighting to maintain his calm with a meditation technique he just remembered although he doesn’t know why he knows it. Mia is holding it together somewhat better, though she is worrying about what will happen when Richard finds out she didn’t go to her appointment that night, even as she remembers the homeless man SAVING her from Richard.

The only person who doesn’t seem to be having these feelings – apart from a vague feeling that something IS wrong - is Hal Jordan. He doesn’t remember anything like what the others are describing but he does suggest that they should tell what they remember and try and piece together where things went wrong.

What they figure out is this; The DC Universe as we know it continued as we know it up to a certain point; the night that Oliver Queen discovered that his adopted son, Roy Harper, had become a heroin addict. Ollie had failed to notice this, having been too busy with his own quest to “rediscover and save America”, being on the road with Hal Jordan for months at a time, leaving a lonely 15 year old boy to fend for himself.

Ollie’s reaction wasn’t exactly stellar parenting. He kicked Roy out of the house, told him not to come back and then went on the war path to find the exact drug dealers who had gotten his boy hooked. Hal Jordan, figuring that as Ollie’s best friend he was best equipped to try and track Ollie down and talk some sense into him, delivered Roy to Dinah Lance’s doorstep, explained the situation and asked Dinah to take care of Roy while he searched for Ollie.

In the world that was, Dinah saw Roy through the first of many long nights as he went through withdrawal and began to fight his addiction. But in this world… things changed. Because of William Tockman and one time bomb explosion on Dinah’s street.

Because while she was investigating the explosion, William Tockman – ever the master of good timing – managed to get into her apartment and deliver a lethal dose into Roy Harper’s system, leaving just enough time for him to step outside, fade away back into his own future and allow Dinah to arrive just in time to have Roy die in her arms.

From there, things went from bad to worse.

With Roy dead, Ollie never got the chance to try and make up for his horrible reaction to finding out Roy was an addict. Dinah dumped Ollie because she couldn’t be with any man who would abandon his own son in a time of need. Dinah reported Roy’s death to the police and the subsequent media circus (Ollie was still a local newspaper columnist at the time, so his son dying was big news) led to Oliver’s secret identity being revealed to the world along with all the details of his negligence.

Once the real story leaked out (Dinah had no reason to cover for Ollie and Hal was too honest to lie…), Ollie was kicked out of the Justice League and would have become a social pariah had public demand not led to Ollie being arrested on charges of child neglect and manslaughter. Ridden with guilt, Ollie pled guilty and served his time, eventually being released years later into a city that hated him.

But Ollie’s conviction wasn’t enough for the public. Questions would be raised about just how clean the rest of the nation’s super-powered teens were. The Teen Titans would break up under the intense scrutiny and The Justice League followed suit later as the legality of organized superhero teams and their right to make citizen’s arrests would be questioned. Heroes still joined together informally, of course – but there was never the great sense of cohesion that the various Justice teams brought.

Bonnie King, at this point a single mother with a lousy job as a secretary, would make a desperate bid for fame and fortune using the one thing she had left; a good scandal story. A tell-all book proclaimed that Green Arrow had abandoned her – first by forcing her out of the hero business and then by leaving her with child and no child support. The money from the first book, the film rights to her story and the subsequent string of book deals and paid appearances left Bonnie with enough capital to get started on a dream she had; a dream of having every girl in the world wanting to be Arrowette; not the heroine Bonnie King was but the heroine she always dreamed of being.

And so began the Arrowette Empire, with Cissie being groomed and pressed into the role of playing a superheroine on TV while making personal appearances at staged “combats” around the country. Think Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana with trick arrows and you have some idea of the cash cow that Bonnie created. Cissie, for her part, had little to complain about. But she couldn’t help but feel like she should be doing something more important with her life.

Hal was drummed out of the Green Lantern Corps in disgrace – his great social experiment to teach the Lawful Neutral Guardians the value of a Chaotic Good approach to fighting evil with Ollie and The Old Timer being declared a failure and Hal’s own judgment as a Green Lantern being called into question. Marooned on Earth and between jobs, Hal went to Dinah looking for help… and found a lot more than he bargained for as two lost souls, abandoned by someone who had changed their life so much, found a new life together. The two moved to Seattle and opened a florist business with Dinah’s savings, and Hal taking a job as Dinah’s deliveryman.

The lack of a Green Arrow in this world would have other, more subtle effects on a great many other people. Just to name a few...

Without the positive example of a Green Arrow, an angry young Connor Hawke, who had been in constant fights at school before hitting puberty, would never have been inspired to ask his mother about going to the Buddhist Ashram/school where it was said Green Arrow spent some time.

Without a Green Arrow to sacrifice his life destroying the biological weapons of the Eden Corps terrorist group, Metropolis (and most of the people in it) would have been destroyed. This caused Superman to distance himself from The Earth, in favor of protecting the Universe as a whole – his greatest connections to humanity having been destroyed along with his city.

Without the example of Green Arrow, Bonnie King wouldn’t have been as obsessed with her daughter proving herself better than her former idol/lover and her stage mom tendencies would have pushed Cissie toward a life as a performer and athlete, not a hero.

Without a Green Arrow, Mia Dearden never would have been inspired to escape from the life of a teen prostitute that was forced upon her after she ran away from her abusive father.

The question remains then; who set this up? And who COULD set this up?

Who would have had a grudge against Oliver Queen as well as the ability to set all this up? Who would be willing to burn the Earth just for the sake of revenge? Sure, there’s a host of time-traveling baddies out there but how many of them would know about Green Arrow much less care about him?

The answer comes to both Ollie and Dinah at the same time...

Because along with all the other problems caused by the lack of a Green Arrow in this world, no Green Arrow means no one was there to pull off the one-in-a-million shot to take down a Hal Jordan who possessed all the power of The Guardians as he was psychically and secretly possessed by Parallax; an entity of pure fear. Between that and Ollie’s position as Hal’s best friend giving him a unique place to talk to Hal and get him to realize that the way he was acting was not in his character and that something had to be manipulating him… Parallax had every reason to get Ollie out of the way.

Yes, it all makes perfect sense… except that with Hal having been drummed out of the Green Lantern Corps in this reality, there was never a chance for Hal to gain the power of the Guardians and be possessed by Parallax. “It doesn’t make any sense!” says Ollie.

“All the things that have happened to you – all of you – and THAT’S the first thing that makes you realize nothing makes sense anymore?” sneers Hal as yellow light comes from his eyes.

Yes, Parallax has been hiding in Hal all this time. And yes, he’s just as much a prisoner as they are since he has been denied the power of The Guardians in this new reality – the pocket dimension of borrowed time they now live in. Because while it was Parallax’s hand that pulled William Tockman out of time and guided him to the proper time and place to strike, the plan to set all this into motion came from another time-traveler.

Someone who came to Parallax at a time when everyone thought Parallax was just the name Hal Jordan had adopted when he went crazy and not the name of a separate being.

Someone who showed Parallax a future that was coming and his inevitable defeat at the hands of a reborn Green Lantern Corps.

Someone who said he had as much to gain from ruining Green Arrow’s life as Parallax would.

Someone who lied to Parallax about his true goals and how manipulating the time-stream the way they did would allow Parallax to rebuild the universe into a realm of pure terror as he intended and how that coincided with his own goals… neglecting to mention that the paradox created would trap Parallax as well.

That was the goal of the Borrowed Time dimension, Parallax explains – to trap each of them inside one of their worst fears made real – Oliver as a failure to his family. Dinah living the safe life her mother had wanted for her. Connor in the life he might have lived had he not gained the balance he needed. Mia trapped in the hellish existence that was her life before meeting Ollie. And Cissie living a shallow, purposeless life as her mother’s living Barbie Doll.

And then Parallax explains what he has realized; his partner’s goal wasn’t to remove Green Arrow from reality…. It was to remove Black Canary!

THIS JUST IN: Megan Fox Doesn't Want To Play Wonder Woman; WW Fans Everywhere Celebrate

SOURCE: Megan Fox: ‘Wonder Woman Is A Lame Superhero’

“Wonder Woman is a lame superhero… She flies around in her invisible jet and her weaponry is a lasso that makes you tell the truth. I just don’t get it. Somebody has a big challenge on their hands whoever takes that role but I don’t want to do it.”

And now, a video simulation of the reaction of every Wonder Woman fan on the planet to the news that Megan Fox does not want to star in a Wonder Woman movie.

Lights go out and I can't be saved...

William Tockman’s life was one sick joke from start to finish.

It was a joke before William became a costumed criminal, forced to abandon a life of his own in order to take care of his invalid sister.

It was a joke when he was told by his doctor that he had only six months to live and – since no life insurance company would take him at that point -William decided to embark on a life of crime to secure the money his sister would need to live in comfort after he was gone.

But the biggest joke of all came after William Tockman was captured by Green Arrow and imprisoned… only to find out that his doctor had accidentally switched the results of his physical with another patient’s! And what is worse his sister, with no one else to care for her, had been put in a state-care facility and died from neglect.

Most people would probably get ready to file the biggest malpractice and wrongful death lawsuit in history. But William Tockman was not most men. He swore unending revenge upon Green Arrow AND the doctor who indirectly ruined his life, readying himself to rain hellfire and brimstone upon them… at least up until he was persuaded to become a superhero with a bunch of other ex-Injustice League members and join Justice League Antarctica.

That cost William Tockman whatever street-cred he had left with the villain set. Not because he had a stupid name and a gimmick that didn’t even make sense anymore. Not because he didn’t have any powers. Not because he had a lame costume. Not even because he was an even bigger joke as a hero than as a villain.

No, it was because he actually joined a Justice League – the one Rubicon no respectable villain can ever cross. You can allow yourself to be bought off. You can be press-ganged into service for a higher cause. You can afford to have quirks like not taking children hostage. You can play at being an anti-hero or “reformed” as much as you like. But the minute you put a JLA communicator on your belt – game over.

That was why Tockman – once he gave up heroics – was forced to form his own supervillian team with scrubs like Radiant, Sharpe, Acidia and Crackle. That was why he agreed to join the Suicide Squad – because nobody else would have him and even Captain Boomerang mocked him. And so it was that – on a mission for the Suicide Squad –William Tockman was unceremoniously shot and killed; an ignoble end to a sad and pathetic life.

Or so it would have been, had it not been for one quick twist of fate.

Suddenly, William Tockman found himself back in Star City. A voice told him that his death had been delayed and that he was once again living on borrowed time. The voice said he had been chosen because he was so unremarkable, had a grudge against Green Arrow and because he would not be noticed until it was too late.

William Tockman didn’t care at that point. He actually longed for death after years of mockery and jokes. So long as he finally got his revenge in the end, that was all that mattered. So he listened as the voice told him what to do... what would happen that night... and how for want of a nail and a few minutes delay, Green Arrow’s life and the lives of untold others would be ruined... for all time!

Cut to Now.

Oliver Queen wakes up in an alley. His hair is long and dirty. His beard is grown out completely. He is in the body of a very unhealthy man pushing sixty. He remembers going to sleep next to Dinah but that seems so long ago…and his memories don’t quite fit anymore. All he remembers is the shame. Deep shame and remorse.

Dinah Lance wakes up in the bedroom of a loft apartment over her floral shop… next to Hal Jordan. She remembers going to sleep next to Ollie… and yet has all of these feelings that she hates him more than anything. She asks Hal if they can find Ollie and Hal seems surprised… because the last he cared to check Ollie was rotting in a cell over what happened to Speedy.

Hal Jordan is very confused and concerned as to why his common-law wife is suddenly asking after his former best friend, her former boyfriend and the man whose crimes, once exposed, broke up the Justice League and got him kicked out of the Green Lantern Corps. Yet somehow, he can’t put a finger on why… something doesn’t seem right to him either. And it’s starting to make him feel afraid for the first time since he was a kid.

Roy Harper is dead. Died at the age of 15 of a heroin overdose.

Lian Harper never had a chance to exist.

Connor Hawke wakes up in a prison cell – his home since one fist-fight too many in a Zero Tolerance school district saw him charged with assault and put in a facility until he was 18. One fist-fight later and he was on probation. One fist-fight later and he was away for five years. He remembers fighting. A lot. But he also remembers a costume... and a father who doesn’t match his mother’s description of a jerk who got put away but still didn’t get what he deserved…

Mia Dearden wakes up next to her pimp Richard in another motel. She recoils in horror as she realizes where she is and who she is with, though he seems surprised since she was “so loving the night before”. She vaguely remembers a man in green who saved her… a man with a bow. A man who inspired her to fight back against the boyfriend who sold her out to anyone with one Benjamin an hour…. but that seems so much like a dream now.

Cissie King wakes up in the mansion she shares with her mother. Another busy day of personal appearances and orchestrated “fights” planned. Of course the money and fame is nice and oddly familiar. But somehow, she can’t shake the feeling that she shouldn’t be going along with everything her mom is telling her to do. That there was someone else whose example set a tone that seems to be missing in her life.

What did William Tockman do? Who put him up to it? And how will six virtual strangers who remember the pieces of a past that never was come together when a world descended into chaos begins to rip apart at the seams?