HUNTRESS.
036. | ❛ be the huntress. ❜

"Professor's in the MedBay. Promises not to blow up while he's on board, which I thought was considerate." Leonard came into the room the team was in, discussing and worrying about what was about to happen. He leaned next to Crystal, who was still holding a grudge on him but still got a hold of his hand, lightening his spirits a bit.

"Yeah, the Professor's condition is the least of our worries, I'm afraid." Rip informed

"Yeah, much to my chagrin, it turns out everything we've done, maybe even our whole lives, has been determined by the Time Masters." Ray added on making Crystal confused.

"What?" Crystal asked, furrowing her eyebrows.

"The Time Masters have this thing called the Oculus, which allows them not only to gaze into the future, but to engineer it." Rip explained making it sound like a manipulative of all of their choices.

"A future where I'm dead, apparently." Ray interrupted

"And why would they want you dead?"

"Have you ever listened to what comes out of his mouth?" Mick asked Crystal, who snorts at that before Rip grasped everybody's attention again.

"Now, in my opinion, Dr. Palmer's death is not part of their plan."

"No, that's not reassuring."

Mick gets closer and smacks Ray, "Ow!"

"You saying the Time Masters wanted me to do that?"

"What I'm saying is that they've been engineering our lives to move in very specific directions. And we are playing out that script even now."

"So we can go to 2016, but that might be what the Time Masters want." Crystal said dragging Leonard closer to the table, "Or we can go get Kendra and Carter..."

"Which could also be what they want." Leonard finished her sentence.

"Then we need to do what they don't want. If the Oculus is what they're using to control us, then we need to destroy it." Ray offered an interesting preposition

"But how do we do that if the Time Bastards are pulling our strings?"

"Well, Druce told me that the Oculus' ability to control our actions doesn't work in the Vanishing Point, most likely because the Vanishing Point itself exists outside of time."

"Explains why we were able to escape."

"And why we might actually have a shot at destroying this thing. I'm with Ray." Crystal says smacking her arm on his shoulder like Mick did a little while ago.

"If I'm gonna be someone's puppet, I'm gonna be the one who cuts his own bloody strings."

"And I like blowing stuff up." Mick came out with his irrelevant comment

"We set out on this mission to stop Savage and save the world. To become legends and change our fates. That mission hasn't changed."

"This is madness. I like it." Leonard smirked at Crystal, who nodded at him.

"Gideon, plot a course to the Oculus Wellspring."

"Team... I think it's about time we seized our destinies back."
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Crystal laid on her bed with Leonard quickly approaching due to her vampire hearing. He stopped on the doorway and waved a deck on cards in the air

"Not in the mood."

"I was gonna apologize for pulling a gun on you, but apparently I was just following a script."

"Doesn't make you any less of a jerk."

"Guilty. So what do we think of Rip's plan?"

"Does it matter? Apparently everything we're going to do has already been predetermined by Rip's former bosses." Crystal said lifting herself off her bed.

"It's funny, I've always prided myself on being the guy who doesn't play by the rules. Come to find out, I'm the one being played."

"I don't know. I still feel responsible for everything I've done. And it still keeps me up at night."

"It's the things I didn't do that keep me up at night."

"What's that?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's being on this ship traveling through time I started to wonder what the future might hold for me... and you... and me and you." He smirked lifting his eyebrow up

"Well, you did propose to me." Crystal rebutted his comment and making her way over to him

"But you did kiss me." Leonard said wrapping his arms around her waist

"You didn't resist," Crystal started focusing on his lips, almost close enough to touch them but still teasing him a bit

"Because maybe it's because you're a great kisser." Leonard leaned down with Crystal still resisting his lips as he attacked her neck with kisses.

"Is that why you chose to marry me?"

"Nope it's because I love the woman I asked to marry me."

"Speaking of the marriage, do you have any dates?" Crystal asked

"How about when we get back?" Leonard bluntly said

"Are you serious?"

"I want to get married to you before anybody can ruin my happiness."

Crystal finally attached her lips to Leonard's, both of them smiling at the other's happiness.

"Okay, because that means I can blow your mind with my vampire sex." She whispered in his ear leaving him anxious for the wedding night.
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"Based on Captain Hunter's description, the Oculus is a massive temporal computer, most likely powered by a scaled-down supernova contained at the bottom of the Wellspring. Why aren't any of you more excited by this?" Stein asked after giving a scientific explanation leaving most of the team bored as they suited up.

"We're excited to blow it up." Crystal said strapping her bow and arrows on her back.

"Dr. Palmer will deactivate the core contained supernova, which should create an anomalistic event."

"A very big explosion."

"Sounds like a plan."

The team walked out all together with their weapons in hand in the middle of the courtyard. Marching their way to the Oculus, guards came out and surrounded them with guns and Time Master Druce greeting them.

"Hello again, Rip. Right on schedule."

"Uh, I think we've walked into a trap." Ray said

"No, it's destiny. I must say you've all played your parts well. As with everything else you've done, I'm afraid it was all for nothing."

"All your posturing. All your claims about doing what's best for the timeline, about protecting history, and it all comes down to cold blooded murder."

"The difference between murder and execution is only a matter of authority. I have it. You don't. Kill them."

The guards loaded their weapons, with Crystal getting in fighting stance. Out of nowhere, the Jumpship comes out and starts firing at the guards. When it lands, the absent of their team comes out

"Returning the Jumpship to the Waverider. Good luck, Mr. Jackson." Gideon spoke

"Hope I'm not too late." Jax says

"No, Jefferson, you're right on time." Stein said grabbing a hold of Jax's hand and merging into Firestorm

"How did you..." Rip asked Jax before getting interrupted.

"What? You thought you were the only one who knew a thing or two about time travel?"

"Good work. We need to get to the Oculus before reinforcements arrive."

The team hurried to get inside to destroy the thing, with Ray going first and looking inside.

"Take about two minutes to figure out how to self-destruct this thing."

"We'll buy you some time. You lot guard the entrance. Mr. Rory, Ms.Pierce, you're with me." Rip commanded

"Hurry up, haircut." Mick said pointing his gun at the entrance

"How much longer?" Crystal asked him, watching what Ray was doing.

"Well, just about to reverse the polarity matrix. Once I do that, I say we have about two minutes before this whole place goes boom."

"How big of a boom?"

"On a scale from one to ten... a googolplex." Ray groans as he takes off his helmet

"What are you doing?"

"I can't work with all this gear on."

"You can't."

"A programmer needs his hands."

"Ray..."

"I got this, don't worry."

"No, you don't. This is what I saw. This is what Druce showed me. This is how you die." Rip said causing Mick and Crystal to become light hearted.

"It's okay. All my life I've wanted to make a difference. Creating a future for you guys without the Time Masters influence, that counts." Ray said

But not a minute later, the four of them heard indistinct chatter and people firing lasers. Mick and Rip started to fire back with Crystal launching her bows and arrows.

"That said, I'm in no rush to die, so keep 'em off me, okay?"

"We got you." Crystal responded. The three of them fired and mostly avoiding the shots being fired at them.

"All right. Almost done. Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh?" The all said in unison

"There seems to be a failsafe to prevent tampering, which probably includes trying to blow this thing up."

"English, haircut." Mick asked

"I have to maintain contact with the failsafe it order to destroy the Oculus."

"Not that much English. "

"Get back to the ship." Ray said

"We are not leaving without you." Crystal responded

"You've already seen the future: I'm dead already."

"You're right." Crystal says grabbing the butt of her bow and hitting Ray in the head, leaving Rip and Mick surprised. Crystal quickly takes the place of Ray and puts her hands on the fail safe.

"I got this. I'll hold them off. Now get outta here." Crystal commanded with Rip a little hesitant before shrinking Ray down and leaving with Mick. Crystal started chanting causing the guards to drop one by one slowly to keep them at a distance.

"Crystal!"

"Get outta here." Crystal said

"Not without you, Crystal."

"Ray said I gotta hold this stick for the ship to blow. So I'm holding this stick. Now leave!" Crystal yelled at him.

Leonard quickly took Crystal's cheeks into his hands and held a firm kiss.

"I love you," Crystal said with tears in her eyes

"I love you," he responded back, "and it's why I love you that I have to do this."

Leonard injected a needle of vervain into Crystal's neck causing her to lose balance and feel even weaker than normal.

She falls onto Sara, who caught her just in time.

"Get her outta here."

Crystal tried to fight with every bone in her body to escape Sara's grip.

"Leonard! No, please!" Crystal yelled as they got further and further away until they were out of the warehouse. And it wasn't until they were outside that Crystal couldn't hold on any longer and let the weariness consume her.
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The whole team sat around and mourning the death of Leonard.

"He traded his life for ours. He was a hero. Which I'm pretty sure is the last thing he wanted to be remembered as." Ray said

"But that's what he was." Crystal finally spoke up, twirling the lousy ring that he planted on Crystal, "but to me, he'll be a legend."

She wiped her tears before getting up and walking away in a hurry to lock herself in the nearest room on the Waverider.

Crystal looked around and saw that she was in their shared room, and she did what her heart felt; she broke down.

She fell to her knees and cried out in pain for her fallen love. All she could feel was sorrow and pain, the type that could rip apart the individual. With all she felt, what she did was lie down on the floor and stay there until Sara came and hovered over her.

"This isn't going to bring him back."

"Nothing is and I guess that's the point." Crystal said still on the floor.

Sara gave in and decided to lie down on the floor next to Crystal. Sara grabbed her hand and squeezed it for Crystal to let out what she felt.

"I feel like I'm moving in slow motion. Like I'm moving in slow motion and everything around me is moving so fast and I just wanna go back to when things were normal. When I wasn't poor Crystal laying on the floor with her, her, dead fiancé. But I am. So I can't. And I'm, I'm just stuck. And there is all this pressure cause everyone is hovering around me waiting for me to do something. Or say something. Or flip out. Or yell and cry some more and I'm happy to play my part. I'm happy to say the lines and do whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing if it makes everyone feel more comfortable. But I don't. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be this person. I don't know who this person is."

Sara huffed before sitting upwards and grabbing Crystal's hand to sit her up as well.

"Then find out who this person is. Leonard would've wanted for you to be the strong, bold, and stubborn person he met on the roof. Be the hero he wanted you to be. Be the person that made people quiver in fear. Be the Huntress."