"Interesting."
Thea wasn't the type to be cautious when she didn't have to be. She floated at a leisurely pace, taking in the view—until the Rachi made their move. In under a minute, seven warships surged out of the planet's shadow, bizarre half-biological, half-mechanical hybrids with their guns already charged.
No preamble. The moment she entered range, they opened fire. Energy shields snapped up as their main cannons began to cycle.
Thea wasn't stupid enough to tank a main cannon. She was here to do business, not start a brawl. Her figure flickered left and right, threading through the incoming fire with unhurried ease, slipping through a gap between two warships in the space of a heartbeat before dropping toward the planet's surface.
BOOM. She'd barely entered the atmosphere when two white laser beams lanced toward her. Without even looking, she batted them aside with a wave of her hand—and redirected them straight back to their owners.
Two explosions. She touched down.
Desolate silence. Rock. More rock. Not a trace of vegetation anywhere. The Rachi homeworld had been dead for a long time.
A rapid series of sounds rang out. Seven or eight beetle-shaped mechanical suits closed in around her—blue-black, chitinous, unmistakably combat-configured.
"Huh? Humanoids on this planet—that's unusual." Thea stared at the exoskeletal mechs and felt a vague flicker of recognition. "You're not Rachi, are you? Why are you fighting for them?" Who were these again? Something in her memory stirred—a hero, she was almost certain.
The armored figures exchanged curt, rapid signals—not language, more like an encoded frequency. They scattered into a wider formation, their suits beginning to reconfigure. Some sprouted cannon barrels. Some extended blades. The hostile intent was unmistakable. Only one of them held back at a distance, gesticulating wildly at her.
Curious, Thea glanced over at that outlier—and the memory clicked. Blue Beetle. Teen Titans. But what was he doing all the way out here? This was Sector Nine. Earth's Sector 2814 was half the known universe away.
She didn't have time to think about it. A circle of itchy trigger fingers had already closed around her.
"Cannon fodder," she said flatly.
Both fists drove into empty air. Invisible ripples radiated outward. Every mech in the formation froze mid-movement, locking into rigid, blank-eyed stillness.
Her understanding of soul energy had deepened considerably in recent months, and with it, her technique. The aliens inside those Rachi-built suits didn't stand a chance—a single soul-impact pulse, and every one of them stood there like a statue.
Thea strolled out of the encirclement and stopped in front of Blue Beetle. She looked him over with mild interest.
She'd dressed for negotiation today—casual. The plan was to start polite and turn rough only if necessary.
A cream leather jacket and blue jeans—sharp, stylish. Completely out of place on a barren alien wasteland.
She knocked on his visor.
The Blue Beetle's right arm transformed into a long blade and came up at her in a diagonal slash from below.
"Hey." She caught the blade between two fingers. The armor threw everything it had into the attempt. Not a millimeter of give. "If you can't control that thing, I'm not going to be polite about what happens next."
The mechanical assembly seemed to recognize the futility. The blade retracted back into gauntlet form, and Thea let go.
Like an old machine winding down, the suit's faceplate cracked open with a grinding clunk, and a young face slowly emerged from inside the armor.
The boy had clearly Mexican features—round face, an open expression—and every last one of those features was currently arranged in barely-contained panic. The moment he registered Thea's face, he grabbed on like a drowning man finding driftwood.
"You're—you're Miss Queen, right? You're from Earth, right?! Did the Justice League come to rescue me?!"
He craned his neck immediately, scanning for Superman and Batman behind her.
Thea studied him for a beat. The kid was too shaken to think straight. The League isn't going to cross half the universe for one civilian. "The League isn't here. I was passing through."
"I'm from Texas—my dad runs an auto repair shop—this thing just decided I had to go fight in a war—I want to go home, but I look like this now and I can't—"
He pointed at his armor and kept talking, looping back to the beginning, starting over. Thea stood with her arms folded and let him go.
When he mentioned wanting to go home for the third time, she cut in. "Your name. Kid."
"Jaime Reyes. I — " He slowly wound down. He took a real look at her. A cream jacket and jeans. Standing on a dead alien planet like she was waiting for a coffee order. He had a full suit of alien battle armor. She'd apparently strolled out here in street clothes.
She came out here for an alien war in street clothes.
"All right, Mr. Reyes. How did you end up this far out? Earth's a long way from here."
Jaime launched into the story. He'd come across a blue beetle figurine—fist-sized—in the middle of a gang altercation. The usual comic-book origin story: blood hit the relic, the device activated, the Blue Beetle symbiont woke up and chose him as its host. The armor had picked up a Rachi combat signal—the incoming assault on the Blue Lanterns—and simply taken off, dragging him across uncountable light-years back to its origin point. He'd been terrified for the entire trip. And then she had dropped from the sky.
"Right, straightforward enough."
He wanted to say this is not a story, but found he didn't quite dare.
"Your armor's interesting. Here's what you do: head back to Earth and call this number." Thea pulled out a pocket notepad, tore off a sheet, wrote it down, and held it out under his baffled gaze. "She'll help you look at it—see if she can adjust some of the command protocols so you can actually drive the thing yourself."
Lady, can our phones even reach this far?
Then Thea's hand moved, and a warm teal glow rose around her. A swirling vortex opened in the air in front of him.
"In you go. You said you wanted to go home, didn't you? I don't have a portal locked onto Texas, so this'll drop you in Star City—you might need a connecting flight or two."
Jaime almost dropped to his knees. You're a lifesaver. Star City, Antarctica, the bottom of the ocean—he didn't care. He squeezed his eyes shut and threw himself through the portal.
With that minor detour wrapped up, Thea activated her enhanced vision and began scanning. She needed to find whoever was in charge here and see what kind of trouble they had.
...
Any Rachi that clawed up from the ground, she slapped flat.
Any that used cloaking, she torched into fireballs.
Any that spat acid, she answered with lightning.
Thea moved at a deliberate, unhurried pace—not rushing, not slowing. Partly to put on a show of strength; partly to get a proper read on what this hive was actually capable of before she decided it was worth dealing with.