Nekron reacted exactly as Thea had predicted. He didn't move a single step. His left hand caught the arrow in midair and crushed it to powder.
But the scarlet energy didn't dissipate with the loss of its carrier. Instead, it crept up his palm and along his arm like living flame.
"Ha ha! Rage! That's the heat of boiling blood!" Atrocitus saw the fury blazing hotter and brighter across Nekron's hand and went wild with excitement—as if this were his personal victory. Morale soaring, he drove an elbow through one Black Lantern and spat a faceful of blood-energy onto another.
What is he celebrating? Thea stared at Atrocitus, who looked moments away from breaking into a victory dance, and couldn't quite process it. She didn't slow down. Hope, fear, compassion, rage—four emotions cycling through her arrows in rapid rotation. One shot, one reposition. She circled Nekron in a relentless barrage.
He wasn't moving his feet. That was a problem. She needed to force him to move.
Between volleys, Thea experimented with blending multiple emotions into a single arrow. Without the kind of cheat code that Destiny had handed Kyle Rayner on a silver platter, she had to build up the combinations manually through her divine foundation. Rage and fear were straightforward negative emotions. Hope was positive. Compassion leaned positive but was remarkably inclusive—one only had to look at how freely Indigo-1's people could channel the other six spectra to understand its versatility.
Thea used compassion as the base and layered the others on top.
Nekron just stood there taking hits without retaliating, almost helplessly. She couldn't figure out why he refused to budge, but she wasn't going to be polite about it. Arrows poured in.
Crack. A fissure split open across Nekron's left hand. A stench of putrefaction billowed out, and with it came four colors of emotional energy—all of them corrupted beyond reabsorption.
"Help!"
Thea caught a faint sound from inside Nekron's body. Barely louder than a mosquito. And somehow familiar—it sounded like Deadman and the Atom.
Right now, Nekron's feet were locked to the ground, his left hand was busy purging the emotional contamination, and his right hand gripped the scythe. He was wide open.
Two miniature versions of herself popped up in Thea's mind. One urged her to rush in and grab the scythe—the thing carried an instant-death effect, power beyond measure. But snatching weapons in a fistfight felt a little beneath her. She was a goddess, after all. The other miniature Thea clapped her hands and cheered: Yes, go, go!
She didn't have time to deliberate. In the gap while Nekron purged the emotional residue, she coated one palm in soul power and seized the scythe. Simultaneously, she flooded the weapon with divine energy. She'd noticed during their earlier exchange that the scythe demanded extreme purity of power—it operated automatically when clean, but any foreign energy forced Nekron to control it manually. Afraid he'd recall it mid-grab, she dumped everything she had into the weapon without a second thought.
"Heh. This thing and I have a certain affinity." Whether it was a source-weapon or not, she'd take it and study it later. Thea thought it, and she did it.
One pull—nothing. Nekron was rooted to the ground like a tree, grip iron-tight on the weapon. Thea's suspicion deepened. She had to make him take a couple of steps.
Whatever the enemy wants, we destroy. That logic was sound.
She'd initially intended to maintain her composure, but no matter how hard she pulled, Nekron didn't budge a millimeter.
Is he really that strong? She switched from one hand to two. Still nothing.
She wasn't a strength-type fighter, but the gap shouldn't have been this wide. And what was under his feet? Could it be the Entity itself? Whatever he was trying to do, she had to stop it.
"Diana, help me! Kara, Faora—everyone, get over here!" Thea's dignity threshold had always been flexible. Seeing that she was losing this tug-of-war badly, she shamelessly called for backup.
As Black Lanterns converged, Earth's superheroes were plunging into fierce combat across the board. Superman, Supergirl, the Justice League, Justice League International, and some scattered heroes—all present and fighting.
The Seven Corps' main forces had arrived too, emotional light of every color hammering the Black Lanterns. Despite the enemy's endless numbers, the heroes were finally pushing back.
At Thea's call, Diana and the others rushed over.
"Don't touch the scythe! Grab me and pull backward!" Thea shouted her orders.
Diana wrapped her arms around Thea's waist. Kara and Faora each seized one of her feet. Four women, pulling with everything they had.
"Harder! Pull!" They were playing tug-of-war with Nekron. Between the four of them, they could have dragged a planet out of orbit—but Nekron still hadn't moved.
"More! I need women, strong ones!" Thea kept recruiting.
Her reputation carried weight. Raven, Cassie, Starfire, Stargirl, the newly appointed Hawk and Dove sisters, Mera, Fire and Ice, Zatanna—anyone who could fly and considered herself "strong" piled on.
Nobody was stupid. The enemy standing perfectly still for no apparent reason? There had to be something under those feet.
The female heroes had abandoned all pretense of dignity. Not that they cared—Superman and the others below were gawking so hard their jaws had gone slack.
"Stop grabbing my chest—who is that back there?" Kara's expression twisted as she looked over her shoulder, trying to figure out who'd just copped a feel.
"Hold my waist, not my skirt!" Starfire couldn't tell who'd been yanking at her skirt. The whole group was chaos.
The scene was spectacular in the worst possible way. A mountain of female heroes stacked on top of each other, all straining against Nekron's scythe. Thea's goddess persona had been flung into orbit. Since nobody could touch the scythe directly, they could only grab onto her—waist, thighs, ankles—and the resulting tableau was, frankly, unwatchable.
But Nekron wasn't looking much better. The imperious death-lord aura had thinned considerably. He couldn't afford to leave the emotional residue rampaging through his body unchecked any longer—he needed his weapon back. His feet stayed planted, but his knees bent into a rough approximation of a horse stance, both hands white-knuckling the scythe handle.
The goddess's image: demolished. But Nekron hadn't fared any better. The cosmic death-emperor mystique he'd opened with was gone. He looked ridiculous—a stiff figure locked in a tug-of-war against a pile of determined women.
"We have enough raw power—we need a higher tier!" Thea was getting frustrated. Why wouldn't he let go? Her reputation was in tatters.
"Ganthet! Arkillo! Carol! Indigo-1—release the entities!" Before the battle, Thea had negotiated with the Lantern entities. Bonding now would be seamless. Nekron wasn't just the enemy of sentient life—he was the mortal enemy of every entity as well. After all, the dead didn't feel emotions.
Ion, the Green Lantern entity—the eldest of the emotional embodiments—found Diana first. The Goddess of Courage paired with the entity of courage. A perfect match.
After years wearing a Yellow ring and mastering the Book of Parallax, Faora fused with the fear entity.
The Predator, the Violet entity, chose Kara—whose heart brimmed with love and a willingness to sacrifice for it.
Finally, Thea merged with Proselyte, the Indigo entity. Fitting—she was already using compassion as her emotional foundation.