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[b]March 20th, 2005
02:39am[/b]

Carol Danvers lay asleep in her bed beset by dreams of tumbling through the air over an Iraqi sky and a cockpit filled with smoke. She tossed and turned in her bed, clearly distressed by what she was seeing, until he sheets were soaked through with sweat and her covers lay crumpled at the foot of her bed. Most of Carol’s nights had been like this since she’d come home from Iraq. It wasn’t the dreams that got to her so much as the waking up. Never once had she dreamed of herself without her legs and each time she opened her eyes from some fresh nightmare, she stared down at the stumps where once her legs were and let out a heavy sigh. Tonight would have been no different were it not for the flash of green light that shook Carol’s tiny apartment. A buzzing noise sounded and beside her table a green ring rattled around noisily until Danvers opened her eyes and noticed it. She pulled herself up and slipped the ring over one of her fingers.

There was another flash and a hulking figure appeared as a light construct in Carol’s bedroom. It was Kilowog, Carol’s closest friend in the Green Lantern Corps and the Corps drill instructor, but from the look on his face something was wrong.

Carol reached for her covers, pulling them up to obscure her stumps from sight. “Kilowog? What’s going on?”

“You had better get to Oa, Carol, something’s going on here and I have a feeling we’re going to be needing all our heavy hitters on this one.”

It wasn’t often that Kilowog hailed her privately and even less often that he looked as distressed as he did. People passed by Kilowog in the background, some she noticed and others she didn’t, but they too seemed to be moving with an urgency that was worrying to say the least. Something was definitely going on.

“What’s happened?”

Kilowog let out a guttural, earthy snort. “What always happens? Some poozers need their heads cracking. I’ll explain more once you’re here.”

With that there was another flash of light and Kilowog disappeared. Carol threw the covers away from her stumps and waved her hand, creating two green prosthetic legs out of energy, and stepped atop them as she began to ready herself for the journey that lay ahead. She stared down at the pictures that adorned her bedside table: one of her parents in happier times, one of Carol stood beside a fighter jet, and one of herself in full military uniform with the Purple Heart pinned to her chest. In half an hour she would be further from Earth than any human barring Alan Scott had ever been before but her memories of home would weigh on her even there. There was no place she could run or fly where they wouldn’t follow her.

It had taken her longer than she anticipated getting to Oa but when she did the whole place was bustling with movement. Her arrival turned a few heads, as it always did amongst the recruits, but outside of that the other Lanterns were too concerned with whatever was going to notice. Danvers was the first terran Green Lantern in decades and though she’d only been one for nearing two years was well regarded in the Corps, especially by Ganthet, which had earned her the admiration and disdain of some of her fellow Green Lanterns in equal measure. She spotted Kilowog’s pink skin amongst several Lanterns outside the dining hall and strode up beside him. 

He looked round and with faux annoyance barked in her direction. “What took you so long?”

“I’m here now, that’s all that matters. Are you going to explain to me what the hell’s so important I had to haul ass halfway across the galaxy in the early hours?”

“Some newbies have gone missing,” Kilowog grumbled. “The Guardians thought it was nothing to begin with, some technical glitch or something caused by being that far out, until it started happening across a few sectors. They sent Sinestro out there and there wasn’t a trace of the poozers.”

Carol shook her head as she followed after Kilowog, making their way towards the Central Meeting Hall. “That’s not good.”

“Talk about an understatement,” Kilowog said, exhaling through his large nostrils. “Sinestro found some of that negative energy there, thinks someone dragged the newbies off to the Negative Zone, and has been kicking up a stink trying to get Ganthet to let him invade the damn place on his own. You know how Sinestro gets.”

That she did. Sinestro had rode Carol harder than any other Green Lantern from the second she’d arrived there. Kilowog had told her once that he resented her for bearing Mar-Vell’s ring and the way she’d rose up the ranks at the Corp so quickly. Mar-Vell had been the greatest Green Lantern of all time, proven by the fact that he was the only Lantern that Sinestro had ever deferred to. They weren’t friends, they had never been friends, but it was clear from the way that Kilowog spoke of Mar-Vell that Sinestro held a deep respect for his abilities and would had followed him into hell and back. He seemed to have the opposite opinion of Carol and had been intent on making her life difficult at every turn. He succeeded more often than not.

“Yeah, well even Sinestro needs help sometimes.”

Carol and Danvers made their way past the crowds of confused Lanterns assembled outside the Central Meeting Hall and passed through its doors to find Sinestro stood before an assembly of Guardians. He looked exasperated, annoyed even, and was gesticulating angrily as he spoke to them but stopped dead in his tracks when he heard Kilowog and Carol approaching.

A wry smile appeared on Sinestro’s pink face. “Look who it is, Ganthet’s favourite daughter finally decides to grace us with her presence.”

Carol let out a little laugh as she descended the steps with Kilowog and stood beside him. “Behave, Sinestro.”

There was something about Sinestro that Carol couldn’t quite put his finger on. There was no denying that he was charismatic and his will was legendary even amongst Green Lanterns but there was something more than that. Danvers had met someone with as much purpose as Sinestro. Everything he did, every move he made, even the words he used were decisive to the point someone that didn’t know him might believe they were selectively chosen or painfully rehearsed. It was that purpose that gave him his strength, that unwavering self-confidence that made him shine so brightly even amongst thousands of Green Lanterns, and it was what made him so dangerous. Only Sinestro dared lecture the Guardians.

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“Four Green Lanterns are missing, Danvers, and I mean to do something about it. Negative Zone or not, Green Lanterns are Green Lanterns wherever they may be and if we allow this insult to stand it will undermine our authority across the entire universe. We must act.”

A voice emanated from amongst the row of blue faces that belonged to the Guardians. “You know we have no jurisdiction in the Negative Zone, Sinestro, and the evidence you have compiled is sketchy at best. We must bide our time, investigate further, before we rush headlong into incurring into enemy territory on some half-cocked hunch.”

Only Ganthet had Carol spoken to privately and only Ganthet showed some semblance of understanding or displaying human emotion. The rest were completely expressionless and still to the point it made Carol uncomfortable. She could see from Sinestro’s face that the last sentence had rankled him.

“A hunch? Whilst you dither our brothers and sisters suffer unimaginable torment.”

Kilowog stepped forward, his footstep so heavy it shook the ground they were on, and pointed in Sinestro’s direction. “You watch your tongue, poozer”.

Sinestro smiled. “You don’t hand the orders out around here, Kilowog.”

The two men stared one another down for a few seconds and Carol watched on, uncertain of what might happen, before she spotted Ganthet gliding from behind the other Guardians to the forefront. He hovered in front of Carol, Sinestro, and Kilowog.

“Enough of this bickering. What say you, Lantern Danvers? What course of action do you advise? Would you follow Sinestro into the Negative Zone or have us bide our time?”

Carol looked from Kilowog to Sinestro and back as she considered her options. Kilowog’s face was sympathetic, understanding the pressure that Danvers had been placed under, but Sinestro’s emblazoned with conviction and he stared at her intensely as if willing her to agree with him. Carol thought of the pain those Lanterns could be suffering in the Negative Zone, the possible consequences of intruding into it without good reason should they not be behind it, and what would happen if they did nothing. She’d done plenty of stealth runs before. She was the best goddamned pilot in the world, even without her legs, she could get in and out of that place without being seen. She was sure of it. 

“Send the two of us. Sinestro and I will go into the Negative Zone, find out what happened to those recruits, and get out without causing a scene.”

A broad smile appeared on Sinestro’s face. There was the briefest flicker of doubt on Ganthet’s but he nodded, accepting the judgement of his most prized Green Lantern, before floating back towards the other Guardians. As he did so, three words escaped his lips.

“So be it.”