He was too proud to chase anyone around like a lackey, but standing there doing nothing wasn't an option either.
Thea tossed him a ring. He caught it, looked at it, and paused.
A Green Lantern ring.
"What does this mean? This ring—it doesn't feel right." As the man once named the greatest Green Lantern of all time, he knew a standard ring better than he knew his own wife. The counterfeit built from The Green's energy registered as wrong the instant it hit his hand.
"No time for the long version: Arkillo and the others are there to hold. Black Lantern constructs can't be destroyed by any conventional weapon—the only methods that work are Green power combined with any other emotional energy. You've worn a Green ring before. You can wield two emotional energies, right?"
Her counterfeit Green ring could only pull power from The Green when in contact with it—planetary surfaces with living plant life. Open space was out. That ruled out giving it to the three-corps members; their emotional range didn't extend outside their own spectrum. She had no better option. Sometimes flattery worked better than logic, so she let the challenge hang in the air.
Sinestro wasn't slow. He was just proud of it. The hardest tasks suited him best; he'd always believed that. "Of course I can."
He put the counterfeit ring on without hesitation, and frowned. Left hand: Yellow. Right hand: Green. He spent a moment absorbing the difference between the two—the mechanics were identical, but the feel of the source was strange. Disorienting in a way he couldn't quite name.
Sinestro moved to the front line with both rings active. Thea turned her attention elsewhere.
Behind her, Zamaron's violet power battery had been destroyed from the inside.
The first Hawkman and the first Hawkgirl rose from the ruins of the energy source. Prince Khufu of ancient Egypt. High Priestess Chay-Ara. The enormous black sigil blazed on both their chests as their skeletons hauled themselves upright and flesh re-grew—muscle and skin returning to the form they'd held in life, but drained of warmth. Still. Dead.
The Black Lantern copies carried every memory they'd held. They didn't know they were puppets. They simply looked around the way they had in life. Their eye sockets filled with the cold light of the dead.
The Star Sapphire guardians surrounding the ruined battery stood frozen. They'd listened to the story of this pair for thousands of years. Now the subjects of that story were standing in front of them, wrong in every way they couldn't describe, and not one of them knew what to do.
Khufu and Chay-Ara looked at each other and smiled—and the expression had no warmth in it. Their black wings spread. One warhammer each. They went through the assembled Violet Lanterns like a scythe.
Wait. That's actually impressive.
When Thea arrived, the two of them were in the process of chasing down thirty-plus Violet Lanterns for a sustained beating. That gave her a moment of genuine surprise. Hawkman and Hawkgirl were never supposed to hit this hard. How were they doing this much damage?
She revised the conclusion quickly. The strength wasn't theirs. It was the weapons.
Nth Metal.
The hammers. That alloy amplified everything: strength, speed, endurance. Layered on top of those buffs: damage reduction and accelerated recovery. She watched with her own eyes as a Violet Lantern hard-light construct shattered against Chay-Ara's body—that was what Nth Metal looked like at full expression.
The hammers also had a second property: they struck directly at the soul. Each blow induced a brief disorientation at the metaphysical level. The Violet Lanterns were only managing to hold together through group formation; casualties would've been severe otherwise.
Powerful weapons. Tremendous buffs. Attack and defense simultaneously reinforced. The hammers were a complete package.
But those hammers were also their ceiling. Nth Metal objects couldn't be carried into reincarnation. It was pure metal—a pair of several-dozen-pound warhammers. No mother in history had given birth to one. So Khufu and Chay-Ara at their first life were at their strongest; every subsequent incarnation had progressively less to work with.
This weapon belongs with me.
Thea looked at the hammers in their hands and the gauntlet on Khufu's arm, and decided this quietly.
But the hammers could wait. Her attention had been caught by something else—a vast form nearby, shifting in and out of visibility. Bone-frame body, elongated alien skull, long tail. It moved as if it didn't want to be seen. And then it caught her watching it and bolted.
"You there—where do you think you're going? You're the Predator, aren't you? The Sapphires' battery entity. Get back here."
She didn't go for fire or wind—this was a manifestation of love, and she used her least-practiced element: earth. Masses of ground heaved and rolled, coiling around the Predator and pinning it in place.
At the same moment, Khufu and Chay-Ara locked onto her and charged.
"Leave this to me. Go help your people." She waved the Violet Lanterns off and sent three air-coil constructs to bind both revived Hawks simultaneously. "And someone contact your Queen—tell her however you normally handle that entity, send someone to take over."
Chay-Ara strained against the coils with everything she had. Her strength wasn't quite enough.
Khufu was stronger. The Nth Metal gauntlet on his forearm began to pulse with faint light. With one full-body flex, he ripped the air coils apart. He shifted his hammer to his left hand and raised a gale with his right, cutting through Chay-Ara's bonds with the same motion. Both Hawks had their eyes on Thea. They called something in ancient Egyptian and came at her together.
"Get out of my way."
Her left hand opened flat, palm facing the void between them. A wall of fire erupted. The two Hawks had no angle to turn in time—they hit it at full charge.
"I know your Queen. I'm here to help." She turned and addressed the cluster of Violet Lanterns who were still watching. "If any of you have time to stand here gaping, you'd be better used outside helping your people." One of them—seemingly the ranking officer—exchanged a rapid communication with someone, then bowed and led the group out at speed.
The brief distraction cost her half a second. Khufu and Chay-Ara came back through the fire.
She had to admit: their original incarnation was genuinely strong. And the Black Lantern state had layered on a new set of properties that made the matchup annoying. No soul to exploit—her primary technique was neutralized. They were immune to mental influence, so her emotional-spectrum projections were blocked at the entry point. Her weakening spells fared no better; the Black Lanterns' terrifying regeneration erased most lingering effects almost immediately.
They were immune to instant death, confusion, and a full range of disabling effects such as petrification, slowing, restraint, and stunning.
With stacked immunities on top of Khufu and Chay-Ara's already formidable physical abilities, plus Nth Metal, their combined power was comparable to Diana when she'd first come off the island.
But the rings were their vulnerability, and Thea didn't intend to match them in a straight fight. She slipped every attack without effort, then raised both hands—Green and Yellow—and put four beams into them without rushing.
Khufu and Chay-Ara fell apart into dry bone.
Now she had time to deal with the tug-of-war on the other end of the room.
The Parallax entity—Yellow, fear—had the energy of a middle-school edgelord. The Proselyte—Indigo, compassion—read more like a very small, very sheltered girl. And the Predator—Violet, love—felt like the spectrum's version of a love-blind teenage girl.