Danger is as close to a normal thing as anything when you do the sort of work the Al-Sahim and Al-Kanari do. And after the Battle of the Glades, when their home was in ruins and bodies were laid around the McMillan Projects, it did feel at first like normal. But then the aftertaste of what they had done, and this one burned like white-hot lava coming back up. They, two students still not wholly educated in the League of Assassins' ways, had delivered a vital blow to the Black Spider Clan's operations. They had also arrived in their home unmasked. This meant that their family, the people they had thought they never would see again, now knew they lived and would demand to see them. Despite this, the city had suffered a loss. The police scanners that the League had indicated the police, and EMS that had been called in from the tri-state area, were still pulling bodies from the wreckage.

And then Nyssa received a communication, not through falconry as was their normal way but through a phone call while they were making their way back to the safehouse, their masks and hoods back on fully. So they weren't seeing anything wrong with Nyssa's face, because they couldn't see her face at all. And then, her body quaked and they knew. They just KNEW.

It had to have been Slade. He had demanded to be, as he put it with his usual gruffness, a "rear echelon motherfucker" while the rest of the League went to settle up with Talia, Merlyn, and Genshin. They had to retrieve his body, and handle his death in their formal ways. Above everything else, this had to be handled with grace, lest the Black Spider Clan decide now to be a good time to gain revenge for Genshin's fall.

But what they didn't know, couldn't know, was that the Black Spider Clan had never left town. Some of their highest-ranking members had been kept out of the fight for precisely this outcome. And now that they knew they were needed, they struck with vengeance and cold fury.

At the Black Spider Clan safehouse in Bludhaven…

Kushimaro was angry, concerned, and more than a touch terrified. The notion that the whelp pretending to be the guardian of the Dragon Lineage could have gotten the better of his master, and friend, Genshin was something he could not abide in any meaningful way. But honestly, and this he spoke of only to his wives and concubines, his association with Talia Al Ghul had always worried Kushimaro.

He understood why Genshin had wanted to do it, of course. All of them who were in on the decision got the reasoning behind it. Genshin was trying to keep the clan's mission and power base strong in a time where HIVE, and the Ninth Circle exist. Suffice it to say that there were plenty of organizations eager to do evil, and battle against a League of Assassins that had sworn to uphold the balance and live to do justice that others could not.

But, and this was the part where he was concerned, there were EXPECTATIONS the Black Spider Clan had always had for its leader. And right now, the power vacuum meant that there was a real chance none of them were going to be followed for the first times since the clan's formation. In order to be its leader, the ichizoku no shihaisha, one had to be three things in addition to a master swordsman, excellent strategist, and ruthless beyond all others.

First, and perhaps most important, was that you had to be full-blooded Japanese. Lord knows there had been enough ninja guilds like this where one leader was half-Chinese, or half-Korean, or whatever else, and the gods responded by breaking the clan apart. Genshin did not want that for his order, did not want to see the work that they had done since the clan's very formation be broken apart by something as simple as this.

Also, you had to be a member of the Kumohara clan. Shinsuke Kumohara and his brother, Hideo, had formed the clan in the wake of the destruction of the Tokugawa shogunate. And ever since that time, whoever it was that was the head of the clan could trace their lineage back to those 2.

And finally, they had to swear a blood oath to battle the Hayabusa clan, and seek to exterminate the Dragon Lineage wholly. This, honestly, was the whole point of the organization.

Talia Al Ghul had done, or could not do, any of these things. And yet, as it now stood, he was the only one standing between her and complete control of a ninja order he had served since he was old enough to fight.

But Kushimaro knew something else. He could not go into the field anymore. Years of battle had weakened his legs to the point where he could not move with the grace, and skill, someone in his position needed to possess. He had been lucky, luckier than he deserved, that his close friend Genshin saw him for the skilled planner, networker, and keeper of secrets that he was. Because now, in this moment, he realized what he had spent all the years seeing Talia Al Ghul garner more and more influence trying to deny: His time at the head of the Black Spider Clan was shorter than he wished.

Right then, clarity hit. He was able to read the changing tides around him, and knew that Talia had slowly been replacing his loyalists with people who were willing to do what she was. And he could not live with the notion that the Black Spider Clan would not serve the same masters it always had. So, in his final acts as the lieutenant of the Black Spider Clan, Kushimaro hatched one more multi-faceted plot. First, he instructed one of his aides de camp to put together a secretive note, not on the clan's usual stationery, and send it off to the Hayabusa village so that Ryu, and whoever else was in his camp, knew what they were up against now. Secondly, he burned all of his notebooks which held all of the spells Talia, or anyone for that matter, could use to revive those who were dead. He was no fool. As long as that magic existed, he knew she would want to revive those who could serve her mission. But he could not, would not, make her work easier.

With that done, he grabbed a small short sword, said a final prayer to the gods who had guided his way and an apology to Genshin, and committed suicide right there. The traps he laid, the things he set in motion, would change his beloved clan forever.

Meanwhile, back in Starling City…..

"Forgive and have mercy upon him. Excuse him and pardon him. Make honorable his reception. Protect him from the punishment of the grave, and the torment of the fire."

These were not words Nyssa Al-Ghul relished saying, or that Al-Kanari and Al-Sahim relished hearing. But they knew, to the very depths of their souls, that Al-Dhiyb had earned this honor many times over. And so, here they stood in Starling City's potter's field. While they knew they would have wanted to bury him back in Australia, where he could be surrounded by his loved ones and family, this was the best way. None of them could be sure that Talia didn't want to use a Lazarus pit, or some other necromantic ritual, to raise him from the dead. And because that was the case, they'd have to bury him here. So no one would know that Slade Wilson, 2-time winner of the Victoria Cross of Australia for gallantry and one of the finest men and warriors that they had ever known, had died. That was how it had to be, for the world's safety.

But precisely none of them liked it. They wanted to honor him properly, not bury him in an unmarked grave with no ceremony other than a rapidly-whispered League of Assassins prayer. It felt dirty and cheap, far beneath the man and the warrior he was.

Once that was done, then, Al-Sahim and Al-Kanari prepared to leave and return back to Nanda Parbat. But Nyssa Al-Ghul had one more task for them.

At the Queen Mansion….

When she had heard it, Moira Queen could scarcely believe it. First, she had mourned her only son who she thought dead in a boat crash. Now she is told that their close family friend Malcolm Merlyn was behind the crash, and that he planned on destroying the entirety of the Glades with the aid of something called "The Black Spider Clan". Then, if that wasn't enough, it turns out Oliver was alive and had been conscripted, along with Laurel, into an ancient order called the League of Assassins. If not for the fact that it all sounded plausible, she would have wondered if she had too much wine with the chicken cordon bleu Raisa had made earlier that night.

But, surrounded as she was by her baby girl Thea, Dinah Lance, and Sara Lance, she realized it had to be true. And in something else she wouldn't have been able to admit out loud, she was looking forward to seeing them.

So, when the door yawns open and three hooded people walked into the foyer, she knew right away which one of them was her son. Even if she was blindfolded, she could always tell whenever Oliver was in the room. There was a light that emanated from him, a feeling of goodness and innocence, that she always treasured. And so, without even considering it for a second, she ran at her boy and hugged him as tight as she could.

The floodgates opened after that. Thea joined in on the hug too, and Dinah and Sara hugged Laurel.

But that affection only lasted for a little while. Work has to be done.