Chapter 5: The Queen's Gambit Returns
The news broke during Ben's morning class like a bomb going off in slow motion. One moment he was demonstrating proper stance to a group of mothers who'd scraped together membership fees from grocery money, the next moment the ancient television mounted in the corner was broadcasting the impossible across every channel in the city.
"—confirmed alive after five years presumed dead. Oliver Queen, heir to the Queen Consolidated fortune, was rescued from a Pacific island by Chinese fishermen and is currently en route to Starling General Hospital—"
The gym erupted.
"No fucking way," breathed Lisa, the single mother who'd been Ben's first real student. "That rich boy actually survived?"
"Five years," said another woman, shaking her head in disbelief. "Five goddamn years, and he just walks back like nothing happened."
Ben felt the world tilt sideways as he stared at the grainy helicopter footage of Oliver Queen—older, harder, carrying himself like a weapon instead of a party boy. The sight triggered a cascade of memories from the show: Robert Queen's suicide in the life raft, Oliver's guilt and desperate need for redemption, the list of names that would become his crusade.
It's starting. Everything I've been preparing for, it's actually starting.
Marcus spat into a towel and glared at the television with the kind of hate that came from watching the privileged survive while good people died every day. "What good did billionaires ever do for neighborhoods like ours? Kid disappears for five years, probably partying on some private island, and now he's a miracle. Meanwhile, how many people from the Glades went missing this month? You think anyone's sending helicopters for them?"
The bitterness in his voice cut through the room's excited chatter, reminding everyone that while Oliver Queen was returning to a fortune and a legacy, they were still trapped in the same cycle of poverty and violence that had claimed their neighbors, their friends, their children.
"Class dismissed," Ben said quietly.
As the students filtered out, still buzzing with speculation and resentment, Ben remained transfixed by the television coverage. The reporters were calling it a miracle, a story of hope and survival against impossible odds. They showed file footage of Oliver before his disappearance—laughing at charity galas, stumbling out of nightclubs, everything that screamed entitled waste of space.
If they only knew what he's about to become.
The coverage shifted to Queen Mansion, where a black car was pulling through ornate gates past a crowd of reporters. Ben caught a glimpse of Moira Queen's composed face through tinted windows, and for a moment he could see her as she really was—a mother whose complicity in Malcolm Merlyn's conspiracy had cost her more than she'd ever imagined.
"She knows. She's known all along what Malcolm is planning, and now her son is back to complicate everything. She thinks she's protecting him by keeping him ignorant, but she's actually setting him up to become the very thing that will destroy her world."
The realization hit him with sudden, visceral intensity. These weren't just characters from a television show anymore. They were real people, with real motivations, real fears, real blood pumping through their veins. And the drama that was about to unfold would have consequences that extended far beyond entertainment value.
Sin materialized at his elbow with the silent grace that had kept her alive on the streets. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Something like that."
"Think it'll change anything? Rich boy coming home?"
Ben considered the question carefully. Oliver Queen's return would trigger a cascade of events that would reshape Starling City forever. The Hood's crusade, the discovery of the Undertaking, Malcolm's ultimate plan—all of it flowed from this moment.
"Yeah," he said finally. "I think everything's about to change."
That night, Ben found himself walking different routes home from the gym. Not random wandering, but carefully planned paths that took him through areas he remembered from early Arrow episodes. The warehouse district where Oliver would store his arrows. The abandoned factory where Diggle would first confront him. The industrial zone where petty criminals had been conducting business for decades, unaware that a hooded figure with perfect aim was about to make their lives significantly more dangerous.
His Prescience stayed quiet during these walks, no blue afterimages warning him of immediate threats. But there was something else—a tension in the air, like the city itself was holding its breath before an earthquake.
Three days. In the show, Oliver became the Hood three days after his return. If the timeline holds, I should start seeing signs of his activities soon.
The thought made his pulse quicken. He was about to witness the birth of the Arrow universe's first vigilante, the beginning of everything that would follow. But more than that, he might finally see how his developing powers interacted with someone who operated outside normal human parameters.
On the third night, he got his answer.
Ben was passing an old warehouse in the industrial district when the screams started—short, sharp, terrified. His Prescience exploded to life like a signal flare, blue afterimages cascading around him in impossible profusion.
Too many futures. Too much happening at once.
But through the chaos of overlapping visions, he caught glimpses: armed men in expensive suits, someone begging for mercy, and moving through it all like death personified, a figure in dark clothing with a bow.
Oliver.
Ben pressed himself against the side of an adjacent building, heart hammering as the sounds of violence echoed from the warehouse. Through grimy windows, he could see muzzle flashes, shadows moving with inhuman speed, the distinct whistle of arrows finding their targets.
His Prescience was going haywire, showing him not just three seconds into the future but what felt like dozens of possible timelines branching and converging simultaneously. The overload was worse than anything he'd experienced, vision fragmenting as his power tried to process Oliver Queen's presence.
"It's like he exists in multiple possibilities at once. Like he's operating outside normal causality somehow. Or maybe it's my knowledge of his future that's creating paradoxical predictions. Either way, I can barely function when he's this close."
Through the sensory chaos, Ben caught a clear glimpse of the figure emerging from the warehouse—hood up, bow in hand, moving with the lethal grace of someone who'd been forged in hell and tempered by necessity. Oliver Queen had died on that island. What had returned was something else entirely.
The Hood.
For a moment, the figure paused, head turning in Ben's direction as if sensing observation. Ben held his breath, pressed flat against concrete that felt cold even through his jacket. If Oliver discovered him now, before he was ready, before he understood how to control his powers around the vigilante—
The moment stretched into eternity. Then the Hood melted back into shadows, leaving behind only corpses and the kind of silence that followed sudden, decisive violence.
Ben waited a full ten minutes before moving, legs shaking from adrenaline and power overload. By the time he reached the warehouse, police sirens were already wailing in the distance. Inside, he caught glimpses of bodies and blood, arrows protruding from walls and flesh with surgical precision.
It's not like the show. It's messier, more real. These aren't actors falling down dramatically—these are actual people who were alive five minutes ago and now they're not.
The weight of that realization followed him home through streets that suddenly felt different. The Hood was hunting now, and Starling City would never be the same.
But more immediately terrifying was the discovery that his powers couldn't function normally around Oliver Queen. If he wanted to operate in the same city as the Hood—if he wanted to help prevent the disasters he knew were coming—he'd need to figure out how to manage that interference.
Because one thing is certain: hiding in the shadows and hoping not to be noticed isn't going to save anyone when Malcolm's earthquake machines start tearing the Glades apart.
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