R.I.P. Ralph, the Arrow

Arrow was dead.
I couldn't believe it.


The rest of that evening was just a blur. I couldn't seem to focus on anything. I contacted my father and let him know what was happening. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have told him anything. That just goes to show how upset I was. I had just finished talking to my father when I got the message:


ALL URBAN 30 MEMBERS - REPORT TO HEADQUARTERS AT 3:00 PM FOR AN EMERGENCY MEETING.

I sighed. Now what?


I called Leroy to make sure that he showed up. I think Leroy was just as dazed as I was. In a way, I was more pissed than anything that this had happened on my watch. Debating for a few minutes, I sent back a positive response.


If something like that could happen so fast, what hope was there?

Like a good little superhero, I showed up at the meeting a few minutes early. I needed time to pull myself together before talking to the rest of the team. I sat in the peace and quiet, wondering where Dispatch was hiding. Every time he called a meeting of everybody, there was bound to be some confusion.


After a few minutes, other members started to trickle in, one by one. Most waved to me as they came in, but others gave me strange looks. I guess the word must have spread about me being there when he died. I heard some of the others wondering if maybe Dispatch wanted to have a memorial service for Arrow. I didn't think so, but far be it for me to burst their bubble.

I saw Leroy finally arrive and gaze in disbelief that people were still trickling in after him. Knowing him, he probably thought he'd be the last to arrive. I heard someone talking about the time when Ralph launched right into the side of a billboard, or the time he landed in the kitchen of the burger joint and blew up the fry machine. They laughed softly, tears in their eyes, because they had lost one of their own.

Most of the soft laughter disappeared when Todd appeared in the doorway, dressed in plain clothes and crying like a banshee. I didn't realize a man could cry so loud. I watched as Leroy waved him over and talked softly to him.

I got the feeling from the expression on Leroy's face that whatever he said to him was a complete shock. Hm, I'll have to check in with Leroy later on and find out what he said. I finally got tired of waiting and started walking down the hall to go find Christopher to figure out what kind of progress he was making.


Before I could step away from my chair, I saw Dispatch and Christopher walk in. I sighed as I sat back down Dispatch reached the podium, Christopher trying to look like an authority figure beside him. Honestly, I really didn't want to hear anything he had to say. I had defended him on more than one occasion.

But now?


He's on his own......
Let the rest of the team tear him to shreds. He should have never sent somebody that untried to try to back me up.

I glanced over at Leroy and saw his eyes narrow and Christopher and Dispatch. After a few minutes, everyone calmed down enough for Dispatch to start speaking.


"Its always sad to lose someone so dedicated to the cause. But im sure if the Arrow were here,
he'd want us all to solve this mystery and make things safe. Not just for us, but the city and ultimately, the world."


I looked around to see how people were responding. "Some of you are wondering why we are at less than half, tonight," Dispatch continued. "Most of us have already lost our powers; those that havent, quit for fear of that very thing. But those of you who are here, must continue on... the way the Arrow did."

I saw Leroy shake his head out the corner of my eye and Todd put his face down in his hands to start crying again. It struck me as funny watching the two of them....Dispatch and Leroy have some of the same mannerisms...

I knew dispatch could be a cold bastard, but he seemed almost unaffected by what had been happening. Then again, he had always been more on the outside than one with the team. All i could keep wondering was...'why in the hell is christopher here?' I soon had my answer.

"In light of our decreased numbers, we will be reorganizing for maximum coverage."
I sat up and frowned. What the hell was he up to? Low murmurs started as he called off pairings of the U30 member who were left, then looked directly at me before dropping the bomb.

"Dr. Christopher Davidson has been temporarily activated to work with the Urban 30."
I heard a "What the fuck?" come from the back of the room, but i wasn' t sure who said it. I started shaking my head even before he finished. "He's going to be working with his wife, Terra."


Dispatch and Christopher were dead men.

Not the Time to Mess with Me....

I cannot believe I have to train a newbie.

Arrow's okay - a little on the naive side - but I just don't deal well with new kids. I guess this is a testimony to just how bad things have gotten. Under normal circumstances, Dispatch would have never paired me with someone who hadn't been in the field for at least six months.

Because of his powers - he's literally an arrow - there's not too much that I can really bring him in on. I mostly make him watch from the sidelines, where he proceeds to pout with his arms crossed.

This particular day, everything had been pretty quiet, which was good. I felt that my cycle was about to start, and that was never pretty.

Unlike human women who bleed to death at least once a month, mine only shows up once a year. Most women would be dancing with joy at the chance to have one cycle a year, as a matter of fact, a lot of them take all kinds of pills and crap to try to achieve this. I wish mine was that simple.

Mine only happens once a year - and granted - only lasts for a day, but for that one day, it's like I've been possessed by a demon from the lowest regions of hell. On this day I don't interact with others for their own safety.

So there I was, lying on the couch in pain, my powers going completely haywire. The only thing that seems to help is this concoction I discovered shortly after I came to this planet. I mix half a bottle of ArmorAll with a couple of spoonfuls of Lime Away. This would usually make me kind of mellow, but since giving birth to Kara, it just didn't cut it anymore.

The only thing I could really do was weather it out. According to the clock on the wall, I only had twelve hours left before it would be over. I couldn't wait. If I was real lucky, nobody would bother me today.

No such luck.

I rolled over and groaned when I heard my cell phone began to buzz. I know Dispatch was not calling me today of all days. I made sure to leave him a voice mail this morning when I couldn't reach him.

I snatched the phone up and flipped it open. "What in the HELL do you want!" I snapped.

I almost started laughing when I pictured the expression on his face. He cleared his throat before speaking. "I need you to take your team and go down to Northern Avenue. We've got a disturbance going on down there. "

"Tony...did you get my voice mail earlier?"

He was quiet for a moment. "Um...yeah, I did."

"And what part of that message did you not understand?"

He paused again. "Terra? Are you okay?" he sounded concerned. Woop-de-doo.

"No. I'm not." I sighed. "Why can't you call someone else?"

"There's no one else. Mack's powers got zapped the other day. Raz's still in the hospital and Tam isn't leaving her side. Everybody else is already off on a call, and I dare not leave headquarters with all that's going on."

I sighed. There was no way out of it. "Alright. I won't need the rest of the team."

"Terra, I don't want you going out there alone -," he started.

I hung up the phone, took a quick shower and got dressed. I heard the phone buzzing as Dispatch tried to call me back, but I ignored it. Gritting my teeth, I went upstairs to the roof and made it over to Northern Avenue in record time. I saw the disturbance before I even got close. Seven guys dressed up in Egyptian costumes were blasting out the front windows out of one of the smaller Smithsonian's.

Too bad they're bad guys, the one on the left is built like nobody's business....

"Yo fellas!" I yelled out. "It's a little too early for Halloween dontcha think!"

The bodybuilder started walking towards me. Looking him up and down, all I could do was shake my head. "Damn, what a waste," I muttered just before four tentacles stretched out to grab him and a couple of his friends. "I'd love to stay and draw this out with you guys, but I'm not at 100% today. So just cooperate, and I can go back home and back to bed."

Everything was under control. At least I thought so. Until the one I hadn't noticed before came up behind me. He stung me with something in my shoulder that caught me off guard. It didn't hurt me - just pissed me off enough to drop his friends.

I started to swing around to him when I noticed Arrow zooming in out the corner of my eye. "Dammit, Dispatch!" I muttered. Now I was going to have to babysit, too! One of the egyptian hotties got up and ran towards Arrow. I have to admit, the kid could fight. He had managed to knock all of the guys out and then turned towards me. I saw him kick his leg back against the building so that he could shoot over to me. That's when everything started going in slow motion.

He was flying across the grass to where I was when I saw a strange expression come across his face. The guy I was fighting with stepped out of the way, causing Arrow to run into the wall. Instead of the wall bursting open like it usually does, I heard something snap and he crumpled into a heap.

Forgetting about the guy I was fighting, I knelt down to check his pulse. Out the corner of my eye, I could see the others get up and run into the museum, coming out with something that looked like a canopic jar. I didn't care anymore.

We had just gotten our first casuality.

Arrow was dead.

New Assignments

Somehow, I was able to get through the hospital visit yesterday without killing Christopher. Tomeika never moved the entire time he performed his tests. It was depressing to say the least. It was a relief to drop him back off at headquarters. He kept trying to get me to respond to his little comments about us getting back together. When I refused to answer, he finally got the hint and shut up. I took the time to think about the totems and the power they possessed.

Who in the world controlled enough magic to create something like that?

I didn't sleep well that night. I started to call Leroy, but decided to wait until I had something more substantial. I didn't want to get him riled up for it to all lead to nothing. I went to work the next day early, as usual. Today, I was able to work until almost twelve before the new intern, Samantha, popped her head into my office. "Hey Terra!" she eased into my office and shut the door. "They sent to girls over to the other office."

Frowning, I asked who.

She shrugged. I can't remember their names, somebody just said something about last year's christmas party. Oh, and somebody said that other guy, um, Brice?" Her face squinched up like she was in pain. "Yeah, Brice. Somebody said they had seen him."

I sat up straight in my chair. "Brice is back?"

"Yeah. That's what I heard anyway. I still haven't seen him." She leaned forward. "What does he look like? Is he cute?"

All I could do was shake my head. Why did these kids love talking to me?

"I don't think of him that way. You'll have to judge that for yourself."

"'Kay. Well, I've gotta go up front to cover the desk for lunch. See ya later!"

She bopped out of my office towards the front. She was just too bubbly. I stood up to stretch and go get something to eat when my cell phone began to ring.

"Terra."

"Starting today, you've got a new partner." Dispatch said.

"But-,"

"His name is Arrow. I'll text you his cell number." He added quickly.

"What happened to-," he cut me off again.

"Report back in to me after you've made contact with him." He hung up in my ear.

Damn, I hated when he did that. There was nothing I hated more than training rookies.

Time Limits

I walked over to the nearest chair and sat down. "Damn. So how in the hell do we stop this from happening?"

Dispatch nodded towards my notorious ex. "Christopher. We use science to fight magic."

This was not what I wanted to hear.

Christopher walked over and stopped in front of me. It was all I could do not to flinch when he touched my shoulder. "I've gone as far as I can from here. I've studied the totems - ," he started.

My head snapped over towards Dispatch. "You still have them?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I've had them put away for safe keeping. But they're not the originals. They're just copies meant to throw us off."

"As I was saying," Christopher continued, frowning. "I need a live subject to study. There are a million possibilities for what could be happening. I've developed a new machine that I want to use to test out what could be wrong - ," He stopped at the expression on my face.

"She's not a damned guinea pig, Christopher." I turned to look at Dispatch. "Why can't you take him?"

Dispatch's face shut down.

Sighing, I stood up from the chair. "Never mind." I turned to look at Christopher. "Get your toys and come on. The clock's ticking."

Nodding, he walked into a back room and came out with a rolling suitcase with handle. Dispatch reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. "Here, use my car. The tank should be full."

"You own a car?" Tony didn't even look old enough to have his license.

He gave me a little half smile. "It's downstairs in the garage."

We followed him down to the seldom used garage. Off in the far corner, sitting in the shadows, sat a silver Lamborghini. "That's your car?"

"It's a few years old." As we got closer, I noticed that that it was a 1980. "You bought this used? Looks like it's in mint condition. I bet they still tried to charge you an arm and a leg for this."

"No. I bought it new." he said.

I looked at the car again and back at him. I knew a lot of things about Dispatch, but there was still so much I didn't know. I unlocked the doors while Christopher put the suitcase in the trunk. Once I was in and settled, Dispatch leaned over into the window. "Be careful. We don't know how any of this is going affect you. We might get lucky. So far, nobody knows you're not human. That might work in our favor."

Nodding, I glanced over as Christopher climbed into the passengers seat. "You know I'm not happy with this situation." Dispatch's eyes flicked briefly over Christopher.

"I'm not either. But what choice do we really have?"

A Reason for Everything

I stood there in amazement. "You! You're the Tin Can?"

His eyebrow arched. "The Tin Can? Is that what you've been calling me?" he growled.

"Well, what the hell else was I supposed to call you. You weren't exactly trying to give out a lot of information," I snapped.

He turned from me and wiped a hand down his face. "True. You have a point." He shook his head. "I never intended for anyone to find out it was me."

"Why not?" I asked. "With your power, we'd have the city on lock-down in no time!"

"No. That's not the way it works. The more I use my powers, the more it takes over me. My emotions get out of control. I can't have that."

"Why were you doing it anyway?"

"It was part of my bargain with Christopher. He would only agree to help find a solution if I made sure that you were protected at all times." He nodded when my eyes narrowed.

I was silent for a moment while I watched him. "I'll keep your secret." The tension melted out of his body. "On one condition."

"What condition is that?" He stepped forward to try towering over me. That intimidation crap doesn't work with me. I stepped up to meet him halfway.

"You take me to Christopher, now." He hesitated for a moment, then turned and walked out of the door. I followed close behind him, down hallways I didn't realize existed. Finally, he stopped in front of what looked like part of the wall. He waved his hand and part of it slid back to reveal what looked like an apartment. I followed him inside and he turned to the left and opened another door into a laboratory.

Christopher stood off to the side, writing notes in a spiral bound notebook. It took him a moment before he realized we were standing there. "Well, what do we have here?" he muttered. He walked over towards me and stopped less than six inches away. "I've missed you, baby."

I smirked. "Too bad I can't say the same."

"Don't be like that, Terra. I'm a changed man."

Hmm. Yeah right. "I want you and Dispatch to explain to me what's going on? I know you know what's making Tomeika sick."

They exchanged a look over my head and I saw Dispatch nod. Christopher turned back to me. "It's not a what, Terra. It's a who."

Dispatch spoke up. "The totems. Someone's using the Totems against us. Powers are being drawn through the totems and absorbed."

"So that's why she seems like she's in a coma?" Christopher nodded again.

I glanced from one to the other again. "What aren't you telling me?"

Christopher spoke up. "We've got about 36 hours to retrieve her totem and reverse the affects. If not, we'll never wake her up."