She removed the ring. The borrowed courage departed with it. Thea suppressed the distinction between external and internal emotions and reached for the Orange ring.
Emotional accumulation wasn't additive—it was multiplicative. Each new emotion compounded the strain on her psyche.
Fortunately, she had a working foundation in avarice, and the ring helped guide the process. She brought it under control relatively quickly.
How did Kyle Rayner ever manage this? Thea was baffled to the point of speechlessness. She was essentially stacking dominoes—one tiny error could collapse the entire structure and leave her seriously injured.
After careful adjustment, she opened her eyes. The light behind her had become too intense to look at directly. Red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, blue—six colors swirling together in an indescribable pattern. She needed one more.
Violet love occupied the same extreme end of the emotional spectrum as Red rage. Both were fundamentally radical emotions.
The Star Sapphire Corps' creed was simple: love justifies everything. If love, then anything is permissible. If a Sapphire fell in love with an arsonist and murderer, that was simply another expression of love.
Thea despised that kind of extremism. It was exactly why she'd saved love for last.
But the moment she slipped on the Violet ring, a massive sense of disharmony crashed through her.
She rushed to fine-tune the six emotions, trying to coax Violet into alignment. No luck. The love-energy was actively rejecting her.
Is this a problem on my end? She considered it and decided no. Lantern rings were idiot-proof devices—put it on, it works; take it off, nothing happens. She was stronger than any rank-and-file Star Sapphire. Even with zero love in her heart, she should have been able to brute-force compliance. Emotional energy sounded mystical, but at its core, energy was energy.
Yet Violet refused to engage. It was like a wealthy heir who'd prepared eighty-one brilliant stratagems to woo a woman to dinner—only to discover there was no such person.
Thea's situation was exactly that. Violet wouldn't even give her a chance. All her power was useless.
Is it the sequence? She hurriedly restructured the emotional layers. Keeping compassion as the base, she rearranged everything into proper spectral order—red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, blue, violet. The existing emotions wobbled dangerously before finally stabilizing.
Surely you'll cooperate now? Another cold splash of rejection. Violet was still resisting.
What the hell is wrong? Sweat beaded on Thea's forehead. Was there still some sequence she hadn't gotten right? Was this really exclusive to Kyle Rayner?
Impossible. She refused to believe it.
"Not enough... Earth's... not enough..." A voice, barely there, drifted into her awareness.
The Entity? Thea's pulse spiked. What's not enough? She was ready to climb walls. The Entity was taking its sweet time telling her "not enough," and she wanted to scream. Not enough WHAT?!
She replayed the original timeline in her mind, searching for whatever she'd missed.
Black Hand's emergence—yes. Scar's betrayal—yes. Energy collection—yes. Nekron's summoning—yes.
The early steps matched perfectly. The deviation was later.
In the original timeline, the Entity surfaced, Sinestro and Hal went through a whole ordeal, eventually resurrected Black Hand, and severed Nekron's connection to the material plane. None of that had happened here—but that was the endgame phase and shouldn't affect what she was doing now.
She thought and thought, and finally identified one discrepancy. The Entity was buried deep within Earth, meaning the White Lantern entity—the physical embodiment of life's emotions—was composed of Earth's emotional spectrum.
If she wanted to channel seven emotions into white light without relying on the Entity itself, she needed to draw from the planet directly.
Seven cosmic emotions alone weren't enough. They came from the universe at large. Thea needed seven Earth-sourced emotions as catalysts to complete the convergence into white light.
She wasn't sure the theory was right. She alerted the Justice League, and Martian Manhunter and Miss Martian rotated in to relieve the seven Lanterns.
"What's going on?" Sinestro was irritated. He'd felt the upper hand was theirs; being pulled off the line didn't sit well.
Thea kept her eyes closed, maintaining six emotions in suspension. Through a telepathic channel, she whispered to Ganthet.
Ganthet's face soured. You think of me whenever there's scolding to be done. What a pal.
But the little blue man had perspective. The line of people who wanted to yell at him could wrap halfway around the universe. A few more wouldn't matter.
He studied the seven Lanterns carefully, snapped his fingers, and spoke a single word.
Six soft pops in rapid succession. Every ring except Hal Jordan's produced a duplicate. The copies hovered for a heartbeat, then shot off in different directions.
"What the — ?!" Atrocitus roared and rounded on Ganthet.
"My ring—oh no, my ring!" Larfleeze didn't hold back this time. Fat tears streamed down his cheeks in thick rivulets, soaking his tunic in under three seconds. First Thea had taken one, now another had flown off.
Thea was still playing the mystic-in-meditation act, eyes closed, but she spoke up rather than let Ganthet take the heat alone.
"The Guardians embedded a protocol backdoor in every ring's original manufacturing code. They can duplicate any active ring and assign it to a new bearer."
Seven pairs of eyes locked onto Ganthet. The little blue man winced. That was worse than saying nothing. At least Larfleeze, upon hearing the word "duplicate," looked marginally less stricken.
Thea continued: "I need six Earthlings to channel these emotions. To help me fight him." She nodded toward Nekron.
Hal looked around. His ring was the only one unchanged. "Why wasn't I affected?"
"Earth already has four Green Lanterns. Courage is sufficient." She almost added that courage's abundance was exactly why Kyle Rayner had achieved white light so easily—little Earth had four Green Lanterns now and two more in the future, for a total of six. The Guardians' rule of two Lanterns per sector wasn't arbitrary. It was calibrated with exacting precision around emotional balance.
One planet with one or two Lanterns generated more than enough emotional resonance. Her Yellow and Indigo spectra technically had Earth-based bearers too, but the Yellow wearers used their rings as glorified smartphones, and the Indigo-wielding secretary barely touched hers. Better to get fresh representatives for safety.
Six temporary rings. She authorized them all.
With the battlefield full of heroes, Violet, Blue, and Indigo found their bearers quickly.
The Violet ring compared Diana and Kara, weighed them briefly, and made its choice.
Diana glanced at Thea. Thea gave her a nod. Only then did Diana put on the Violet ring.
"Sentient being locked. Diana Prince of Earth—your heart holds profound love. Welcome to the Star Sapphire Corps."
"Sentient being locked. Barry Allen of Earth—you possess the ability to instill unwavering hope in others. Welcome to the Blue Lantern Corps."
"Sentient being locked. Ray Palmer of Earth—your heart holds boundless compassion. Welcome to the Indigo Tribe."
Flash and the Atom accepted on the other end. The instant they did, Thea felt the faintest tremor of acceptance from the Violet ring—love was finally, tentatively, beginning to integrate. Between guesswork and luck, she'd gotten her answer.
Three positive-spectrum rings found bearers on the spot. The three less-positive ones took a few minutes longer before returning one by one.
Yellow Fear chose Scarecrow. Orange Avarice chose Lex Luthor—who had been hiding in an underground bunker when the ring physically dragged him out.
Neither surprised Thea. The original timeline had made the same selections.
Red Rage's choice, however, left everyone—Thea included—stunned.
The Red ring chose a housecat.