Guardians No More!
1
Guardians No More
Jon Stewart
The Guardians who had first stolen The First Lantern’s technology, and then fought him off before giving birth to the first Green Lanterns, were gone; Jon Stewart could find them nowhere in the Multiverse in any period he ran a search for them.
This was far worse than the times they had turned against the Galaxy they defended, worse than them being lost and far away in some distant place.This was terminal, in Jon Stewart’s own opinion.
“What will we do without them?” he asked himself in hushed whispers in the early morning hours, briefly after finding they ceased to be.What else would also cease to be?Oa? The Central Battery? The rings themselves?
Lantern Stewart wouldn’t call what was happening to him just then panic, exactly; after all, even before he became a Green Lantern, panic had been bred out of him, but he was feeling anxious, and also that this wasn’t the time for him to save the day himself, to discover the hidden parts of the enigma he faced.
“This is Green Lantern Corps Leader Jon Stewart and this broadcast is of Utmost importance! Sometime in the last hour, I discovered an anomaly unlike any before: The Guardians of Oa are no more.I know what many of you may be thinking because I did as well: How much of an emergency is this?Hasn’t this occurred several times over recent years?No, I am saddened to say, it never has,” he paused.
He felt anger rising within him, quelled it, and continued, “They are not missing, nor kidnapped, nor lost, nor in a far, distant place—they no longer exist in any reality, plane, or timeline for which I have been able to run a scan on.
“I am now and remain until I am informed otherwise or my life is extinguished in my final, desperate breath, Corps Leader.This is not a suggestion, request, or favor I ask. Still, an Order of such stark immediacy that anyone who hears this and wears a power ring of any color or description harnesses the abilities that The Emotional Spectrum grants us, or anything marginally similar to such technology, I demand you get to Oa.Now!
“The readings of the emotional spectrum that I have been pouring over are alarming, bizarre and reveal extreme inconsistencies and variances in The Emotional Spectrum itself, I fear, and what I implore upon you is that if The spectrum is compromised, we all—regardless of ring color, personal vendetta, prejudice we carry or any other number of major malfunctions within us are also compromised whether we are Sinestro’s Lanterns, soldiers of Atrocitus, or an acolyte of Black Hand—are also duly compromised.
“This alert is All Hands on Deck—unless facing a threat of some kind, in which case by all means defeat the threats….they pay a larger amount than we will, if at all, and that kind of the way I like, it lol
“The readings of the ultimate fear and what I see is largely based on the military whom I had decided wasn’t my thing,
Someone taught me and all of us that no matter how much you need a foot rub, if someone is struggling or hurting, it’s your cue to draw on all your resources to help them.We all are in danger, and from any number of foes and directions, so if unengaged, I beg of you: open trans luminal space and get to Oa!
Guardians are no more, and anything we rely on may be the next target.”
2
Hal Jordan
“Anything good?” Lantern Hal Jordan asked,again.“Any change? Something I can punch?You must know somethingh now, Jon!”
“Hal, I wouldn’t keep anything from you—these readings are beyond strange, and while I haven’t uncovered what and where they were, or how they got here, I can tell you that we have more trouble than I initially reasoned.
“And the real good news?” Hal joked.
“Oh, that was sitting in the wide fucking open and prone to just about any enemy out there; you get that?”
Jon: “That was the original consensus, hon.” He grinned mutely.“I want so badly to sleep, but it’s waiting—the enemy, that is—and now I need a snack—a nutritious bug, maybe?”
Jordan: “Go sleep a few hours, Jon.I wanted to put out some feelers for The Watchtower and see what Oracle says,” Hal explained.
“Do that—maybe the league, well I don’t think they know about it, exactly, but it and its other legs have a long reach and longer memories.”The whole point was that in the spirit of a conscious bond, all the galaxy was united in a galactic early warning system.
“Oracle, Hal Jordan here; Oa is in big trouble, come back?” he said.Instead of the artificial female voice of the Justice League’s illegal supercomputer, there was only a series of clicking he couldn’t identify.Was she on standby for some reason?
“Oracle, Lantern Jordan, Big Problems on Oa…reply!” he tried next; he thought it would surely trigger something, even only simulated annoyance.
“Lantern Stewart, Hal here,” he spoke into his ring.
“Go ahead?” Jon’s voice, distorted replied,
“Watchtower on stand-by, Jon.The Justice League may have its complications.I should check in; Oracle may have newer or different information instead of it.Requesting permission to return to my sector?”
A few moments pass.
“Probably for the best.This could get hairy.” Lantern Stewart allowed,“You seen Kyle? Or anybody else for that matter?Oa should be a hornet’s nest of activity as we both should understand.”
Lantern Raynor, the strangest of all of Earth’s Lantern Ringbearers was a creative, fragile soul; once he lived as a simple artist.He is the only ringbearer to harness all seven Emotional Spectrum parts.In short, Kyle could bear any ring of any color.
“He’s missing, too, I think,” Hal Jordan reported to Corpsman Stewart.“He is vital now that we’ve lost the Guardians as our symbols of order, our pinnacle of the White Light of Hope.Damn it, with any luck I run into him.Jordan en route to Watchtower, Stewart.”
3
Kyle Raynor
While neither Hal Jordan nor Jon Stewart knew, Kyle Raynor had never left the Lantern Home World of Oa.And yet he seemed as much at a standoff with whatever strange, indescribably alien sentience that now shared his thin, narrow body.
He had heard the desperation in Corps Leader Stewart’s demand for assistance from anyone with a ring or otherwise powered by the emotional spectrum that the Guardians had once harnessed to forge the first of the ring against, all the strange, sudden, fierceness and alarm of possible enemies, Volthoom who had once come to meet them on the day of the Big Bang from Earth-2 using his Travel Lantern—they took it, changed it, applied a dogma to the idea and then dumped it on the first ringbearers!
While Kyle Raynor was awkward but not exactly strange in his appearance, he wasn’t his relaxed, easy-going self.And that was for the simple reason that any number of psychic and similar attacks overpowered him.
“What are you?Where did you come from?” He asked, albeit a little eagerly.“You don’t have to possess me, friend!” Kyle insisted, “Don’t you understand I need to learn more than physics and algebra?I have been tasked with a higher calling.I could tell you but you’d dismiss the concept as a statistical improbability at the least”
“We are peace, unity, all, and now we have asserted ourselves inside you, Kyle Raynor.Your vessel is profound and able to resist the usual disappointments just fine,” a cacophony of swirling entities declared as if impressed.
“And you think I won’t resist?” Kyle laughed at them.“I can wield any power ring; I am the only single being ever to pass through the Source Wall; in short, you sure picked the wrong Lantern! I am the White Light of Hope!”
“We did not; you were chosen for these excellent reasons, Lantern Raynor.Would you like to see where this regrettable self-righteousness you wield against us truly leads? We will show you that we are not the adversary, Lantern.We are the solution to an error in judgment as old as time.
“May we show you?”
Intriguing by this new evolution inside him, Kyle Raynor agreed to see what his invaders would show him.
