brand new you

[bossymarmalade]

“Barely in Star City for seventy-two hours and *already* you’ve found new clientele? You Coast City fellas sure move fast!”

The Coast City drug dealers looked up, startled, as the big frame of Green Arrow dropped down from the roof of the shuttered garage that they were conducting business behind. The Star City people in this equation had taken off the instant they heard his voice, being more familiar with the way things operated in these parts, but from the groans and cries of pain and resignation Ollie heard from their would-be escape route, he could tell they’d run into Speedy.

One of Ollie’s set off running and the other two pulled out their guns, so he dealt with the close-range ones first — easy enough, step up to them and swing them into unconsciousness with his bow and his fist, because if you did it fast enough and without flinching then nine times outta ten they’d never get a shot off — but that last guy must’ve been in track and field or something, because he was out of sight by the time Ollie raised an arrow to where he’d been heading.

Cursing lightly, Green Arrow ran in that direction past the adjoining garages, into the back service alley and past the dumpsters where he could hear running footfalls echoing. Speedy landed a few feet in front of him in a flump of red and yellow, down from her position on the roofs, and the two archers fell automatically into pace, Mia speeding up and Ollie slowing down.



“What is he, half speedster?” Mia panted. Ollie grinned, slowing even more as they approached a bend in the alley.

“Even if he is, he doesn’t know this city. All these alleys were built as dead end hooks with no escape, back at the turn of the century, when the immigrant labourers were ghettoized here. That’s what happens when the police commissioner and the city planners are in cahoots and hate unions and agitators. Remind me to take you to the Villa Park Riots Memorial sometime.”

“You realize that ‘turn of the century’ could also mean thirteen years ago,” Mia remarked, nocking an arrow to her bow. Ollie glared at her.

“See now,” he said, “that’s the kind of remark that’s just not call—”

He didn’t get much further because the Coast City drug dealer, as it turned out, was somewhat more enterprising and invested in escape than he was interested in retaining his product. As Speedy and Green Arrow swerved around the corner and into the dead end, they were accosted by an enormous gritty cloud of white powder as the dealer flung his stash into their faces.

“Fucking HELL!” Ollie bellowed, but that was as far as he got because he started sneezing rapidly, a new one cutting him off every time he tried to start talking again. Finally he just waved Mia towards the dealer, who had run to the back wall of the dead end alley and was shakily drawing his gun. Speedy was coughing and spluttering too, but Ollie could barely get it together enough to focus through all the sneezing. She’d have to be the one to take the guy down.

Mia attempted to shield herself from the powder with pulling her hood and cape over her face. It didn’t really help though when you accidentally took a giant breath before and inhaled what Mia was going to bed was like all of it in the air.

She coughed and hacked but still managed to keep her composure more then Oliver did who may have well been dying for how much he was carrying on. Mia hadn’t really read up on what this drug did but she figured she’d be ok, and ran after the dealer who didn’t seem like he was really super ready to fight anyone. So, that was lucky because neither was she. “Don’t even think about it.” Mia managed to say before attempting to hold back a cough but just really hurting her throat. All the while pulling out an arrow from her quiver.

“Put… the gun down!” She coughed more and her ears were ringing so she didn’t hear exactly what the guy was saying. But it was probably some empty threats. “I will too shoot you!” She argued not even sure if he was arguing with her about that.

To prove her point that was what she did, she shot the guy in the shoulder making him shout in pain dropping his gun. Instead of going down like she assumed he was going to he started running at her. Maybe that caged animal metaphor actually worked for this guy. But even without much breath she moved to the side quickly and grabbed the guys arm that she had shot pulling it and pushing him to the ground getting out a pair of handcuffs and cuffing him. “Nice try.” she said with a shaky breath tripping over her own feet as she started back towards Oliver.

“I got him Old man, You can stop pretending like you’re dying now.” Mia teased and pulled her hood off reaching back and fixing her ponytail, flipping her hair over her shoulder. But she stopped short because usually when she did that, she’d see a flash of yellow across her shoulder, but she didn’t see her hair at all. “Ollie?” Mia said bringing her hand up, but duh it wasn’t like she had any exposed skin because of her costume. She she pulled her hair in front of her face reaching up and tugging at it. It was totally there, it just… wasn’t there.

Mia crossed her eyes not seeing the tip of her nose, bringing her hand up poking it but not poking anything. “Oh my god Ollie I think I’m tripping.” She didn’t feel like it though. These drugs sucked.

Ollie’d managed to gather himself enough while Mia was taking down the last guy, wiping his streaming eyes and nose and making sure that Speedy wasn’t in any danger — she wasn’t — before picking up and investigating the torn plastic baggie that had contained the drugs.

He wrinkled his tickling nose rapidly in both an effort not to sneeze again and in growing distaste, smoothing the bag out in his hands. Double Smile drugs. Those two purple smiley face stickers were starting to be a real pain in his craw, gaining popularity up and down the state … and increasingly in Star City, which pissed him off the most.

The last emergence of the Double Smile drug had been when Guy and Kyle had taken down that country music girl or whatever, Taylor Swyfte, and it had made her singing abnormally loud and painful. Which, at the time, Ollie had assumed was just some weird trick of genetics or acoustics. But then again…

Mia was coming over. And the guy was lying on the ground behind her, securely cuffed and with an arrow through his shoulder. And Mia seemed kinda unsteady on her feet, and was talking about how she was maybe tripping on the Double Smile. But that wasn’t the part that made Ollie’s jaw drop, itchy eyes getting rounder and rounder.

“Ollie?” Mia prodded, her voice starting to get worried.

“Honey,” Ollie said, “honey, you’re … invisible.”

She wasn’t really listening to Oliver when he spoke. She was busy trying to attempt to see her nose, and her eyes were beginning to hurt. “What?” She asked absently glancing up at Oliver and furrowed her eyebrows when it hit her what he said. “What?”

Mia glanced down at her hands before pulling off one of her gloves and not seeing her hand. Obviously she wasn’t actually invisible. Right? They had just taken drugs, they were just thinking she was invisible. But if that was the fact then why did she realize that. Usually when you were under the influence of drugs you didn’t really have the capacity to rationalize that you were on drugs and what was happening wasn’t really happening. These drugs sucked.

She tore off her other glove and shouted slightly because that hand wasn’t there either. “Ollie! What the hell do these drugs do? Did you even check before you sent us in after them?” She shouted at him. “I can’t be invisible. My visibility is what makes me so great!” She was panicking slightly, yes. Obviously, wouldn’t you be? But she looked down at her hands again that looked like they were fading back in.

Taking a deep breath when it looked like she was totally back to visible she shook her head and reached back grabbing her ponytail to make sure she could see that too. “Alright it’s all over.” She nodded. But when she reached up to touch her face again she watched as she started to fade away. “Ollie! What did you do?” Mia pulled her hood on as far as it would cover attempting to look up at Oliver as she did.

“Me?!? I didn’t DO anything!” Ollie slung his bow over his shoulder and stepped closer to Mia, tugging back her hood and examining her as best he could.

She was invisible, all right.

Or at least she was in patches, fading in and out here and there, depending on what she was focusing on. As he watched, she rubbed her forehead hard with her forearm and it swam back into solidness from elbow to wrist, but nothing else.

“Kate and me got kinda dosed with this stuff months and months ago, right before the whole Four Horsemen thing went down,” Ollie recalled, frowning, “but it was nothing like this. That was just regular cocaine, cut with a few choice medicine cabinet ingredients. Maybe they were just testing out distribution points then, setting lieutenants in place for when they wanted to start shipping out the real stuff. Whatever this real Double Smile does.”

Picking up the baggie he’d dropped, Ollie turned it over in his hands. “Dammit, it’s too bad Bruce isn’t around right now. He’s the best at isolating what these weird jumped up designer villain drugs do, after all those years hyper-obsessing on Joker venom and Scarecrow whatever.” He scowled some more, folding the bag up and tucking it away, and when he looked up at Mia she was an empty hood again, turned in his direction. *Christ* but this would all go faster if Bruce was available for chemical analysis.

“You ready to go?” Ollie asked. Mia’s little red hood shook a ‘no’, and then she reached out and took Ollie’s wrist, towing him over to one of the reflective windows on the side of a furniture refinishing unit.

“These drugs suck,” Mia intoned dolefully from the depths of her hood, her faceless reflection looking up at Ollie. As he stared at the reflection of himself that looked just like Bruce Wayne (right down to that scowl he’d been doing) until it started shifting back into Ollie Queen, he was very much inclined to agree.

Mia was torn between wanting to bury her face in her hands and laugh, or cry. She wasn’t quite sure which.

The situation wasn’t funny. She was invisible. How was she supposed to go to school? How was she supposed to go to rehearsals? How long was this supposed to last? What if she never learned how to become visible again? What if she was invisible for the rest of her life?! She wasn’t really into the whole criminal thing so going around and robbing places wasn’t really in the cards for her. She had just scolded Ollie about walking around naked so it wasn’t like she could do that to be completely invisible she was just going to be a fabulous clothes shell for the rest of her life!

At that point she did reach up and bury her face in her hands and started to laugh. The situation wasn’t funny. But it was ridiculous. And that last though along with seeing Ollie as Bruce was just too much.

“I’ve never wanted superpowers Ollie.” Mia said looking up at him, grateful he looked like himself again so she didn’t start laughing more then she already was. She reached up and grabbed his shirt finally turning serious. Serious enough that she even came back into view not that she realized it, “I’ve never ever wanted superpowers. Being invisible is seriously going to ruin my life. So, you’re going to track down the best science people you know and figure out what the hell is going on. And if it doesn’t fade away or… something then find a cure!”

She stomped her foot on the ground for emphasis and let Ollie go becoming invisible once again as she spun around and walked over to the dealer who was still whining on the ground. Mia grabbed him and tugged him along, “This guy is going to help you. You both got that?”

The truth was, Ollie wasn’t any happier than Mia about this. He’d never wanted superpowers either. That had always been an Arrowfamily *thing*, that they were normal flatscan humans among all their meta friends and colleagues and fiercely proud of it.

And now this? Mia invisible under her cape as she hauled the dealer to his feet, and Ollie shapeshifting into people he was thinking about? It was a horrible thought.

“Yeah, I heard you,” he said, removing the agitated dealer from Mia’s clenched grasp. “But this guy won’t know anything useful. There’s no need to drag him around with us, best to leave him here for the cops.” Giving the criminal a sayonara salute, Ollie put his hand against Mia’s back and wheeled her in the opposite direction.

“The sooner we get home the better,” he said urgently. “The last few formulations of this drug last for two or three days, from what I heard about that Taylor Swyfte character. I’ve got the sample, I’ll get somebody more science-minded on it right away, Midnite or Zauriel, there’s gotta be some egghead who can handle analysis—” Ollie cut himself off in horror as he felt a sudden intense pressure against his shoulder blades and heard a loud schripppp as a pair of enormous, snowy white wings tore through the back of his tunic. He closed his eyes.

“ohgod. I’m the angel, aren’t I.”

“Don’t say you can fly us home,” Mia said immediately. “You’ll turn back into Ollie and we’ll both die.”

“Let’s just get the fuck out’ve here,” Ollie growled, the two of them breaking into a smart trot as they headed towards the south Star City zeta pad.

This was gonna be a miserable few days.