Oliver, now fully reformed, couldn't just sit back while his girlfriend went home to her family. It was also a good chance to avoid the media frenzy. He decided to head to Lian Yu to lay low.
The tabloid scandal festered and spread. Soon someone dug up the story of the Lance sisters—Laurel Lance and Sara Lance—fighting over one man. If they'd all gone their separate ways never to meet again, that would be one thing. But they literally ran into each other constantly. So awkward.
Seeing Oliver about to leave for Lian Yu to fish, Laurel and Tommy decided they could use a few days off too. Malcolm had left Tommy all his overseas assets and properties except for Merlyn Global Group—making him a stealth billionaire. He even owned several small islands.
The couple found an island to vacation on, conveniently escaping America's gossip mill. The group held an awkward meeting and immediately decided: Green Arrow team on hiatus for one month. Before leaving, Oliver entrusted Star City's safety to his little sister.
Moira's campaign had reached a pause point. The remaining matters didn't need Thea's involvement, so she treated it as a vacation and planned to spend a few days in Star City.
Returning to her home turf, the young lady felt quite refreshed. With the Green Arrow team's four main fighters collectively traveling abroad, the remaining Sara Lance and Shado al Ghul were more like refugees from Talia's tyranny than actual team members—external allies at best.
That left only one rookie: Roy Harper, currently codenamed Arsenal.
Facing the current version of Thea, Roy—the original timeline's Thea 1.0's boyfriend—was nervous as hell.
Thea simply gave them all vacation time. With her personally holding the fort, Star City wouldn't have problems.
This period was a rare buffer. The leather jacket man and angry middle-aged man she'd recently acquired entered her new research program.
The first could absorb Barry's energy—actually, any kind of energy. The second possessed anger from the emotional spectrum.
Cloning was a complete failure. The angry middle-aged man could be cloned, but not the emotional spectrum. His clones had no emotional power whatsoever. Whether she used scientific means to recreate that day's scenario or used psychic powers to trigger anger, nothing worked.
With no choice, Thea could only slowly absorb from the original. Unlike fear and compassion, she didn't need to spiritually experience anger. As a deity, she could forcibly control it with divine power. The obvious downside: anger became rootless for Thea. Once used, it was gone. To use it again, she'd have to draw more from the middle-aged man.
Absorbing him every few days, watching the anger in her mental realm grow from hair-thin to finger-width—the process was incredibly slow. But accumulation added up. When her controlled anger reached the size of a lantern ring, she'd have fully mastered the anger emotion.
Research on the leather jacket man hit a dead end. His clones had no issues, but his absorption limit was fixed. This was genetically determined. Unless Thea resurrected the leather jacket man and let him grow stronger, the clones would forever remain at his pre-death level.
Was this ability powerful? Thea would say yes, very. But the leather jacket man's innate limitations prevented a powerful ability from emerging. Thea had tried many methods but couldn't increase the clone's limit even a fraction.
The idea of creating hundreds or thousands of clone soldiers flashed through Thea's mind before she rejected it. One or two clones could have their brain functions removed at the embryonic stage, but not large quantities. Moral factors needed consideration, and those mysterious karmic threads required attention too.
Mortals fear consequences; bodhisattvas fear causes. The more Thea knew, the more careful she became.
She sealed away the leather jacket man's corpse and was about to leave the lab when her secretary walked in.
Faced with the lab's numerous bloodstained unknown objects, Miss Mercy wasn't surprised at all. She'd seen identical scenes too frequently working for Luthor.
Though this new boss had questionable interests, her former boss Luthor had his own issues. Late at night, the secretary couldn't help thinking: did all these geniuses have problems?
"What is it, Miss Mercy?"
"Yes, boss. Three minutes ago, someone took control of Star City's television station and is currently broadcasting live." The secretary handed Thea a tablet.
Summoning a ball of water to wash her hands, Thea took a drink before accepting the tablet.
On screen was a young woman with terrible fashion sense. Her hair was already pale yellow, yet she wore a bright orange jacket. Combined with those huge black-framed round glasses, she looked completely ridiculous.
Unaware she'd been judged ridiculous, the woman was currently dancing excitedly. She shouted at the camera: "Queen Consolidated morons! You rejected the world's greatest invention! You and that superhero boss of yours are complete idiots!"
"Pfft—" Thea, who was drinking water, sprayed it out. Not because of the insult, but because judging from the woman's words, she had some connection to Thea's company? She'd thought this was just Star City trouble, but apparently the target was herself.
Ignoring the madwoman on screen, Thea asked her secretary, "Who is this person?"
The secretary, having been recruited by Luthor, was genuinely capable. Plus, with her blue lantern ring now, investigating anything was easy.
She'd already compiled the information. Hearing Thea's question, she answered directly: "This woman is Brie Larvan. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in biomechanical engineering and joined Queen Consolidated three years ago."
"She's a very intelligent robotics expert with innovative ideas. She developed agricultural micro-robotic bees, but her pace accelerated too quickly. Just before weaponizing the bees, Dr. Hoffman deemed her research extremely dangerous and terminated her employment."
The secretary recounted this with a calm expression.
Thea frowned slightly. She vaguely remembered this person—a decent scientist, apparently. But why was she Thea's employee? Shouldn't she be from Central City?
She recalled that the Flash had nearly been stung to death by this woman's mechanical bees. Thea was too lazy to think further. It wasn't a big deal. Just handle it.
Bringing the secretary along, she teleported to the television station. Police and Queen Consolidated security had already arrived, but the studio was firmly controlled by the bees. Unable to use heavy weapons, the situation was at an impasse.
Everyone was used to her suddenly appearing like this.
"Dr. Queen, about this situation...?" The station owner's face was full of bitterness.
"Please don't worry, Mr. Pearle. I'll handle it. Queen Consolidated will cover all the station's losses. Send the damage list to my secretary later."