early days

[overcame_fear]

 
[Inspired by Secret Origins #32 (1988)]
 
Short, blue Guardians of the Universe. An entire Corps of Green Lanterns. The Oath. Hal has a lot to think about on the way back from his first visit to Oa. Which is why he doesn’t really pay much attention to the meteor at first.

It’s on a trajectory for Earth orbit, but that doesn’t bother him much. Most meteors never make it through the mesosphere, and if this one does, Hal isn’t going to have any problem diverting it away from a populated area. So he goes back to being pre-occupied by the last few days.

By the time he notices it again, the meteor is already well through the stratosphere, but it hasn’t lost any mass at all. Startled, Hal moves to intercept before it slams into somewhere in Africa. Hal would have the ring tell him where, but he’s still learning how to do that and—say, is that meteor speeding up?

OK, Hal thinks. This is going to be interesting.

And that’s even before the meteor craters into the earth—far from the nearest town, fortunately—and hatches into a giant bird.

Hal has never had a problem with birds. Not unless they were getting sucked into the intake of whatever jet engine he was using to keep himself forty thousand feet up in the air, anyway.

But even back before he had the ring, a giant bird would have been something he could do without. And these days, a giant yellow bird would count as a problem if Hal ever admitted to himself he could have one.

So, ok, giant yellow bird. Fine. Is it hostile?

Well, judging by the beams it’s starting to shoot from its eyes, turning every nearby animal into a rampaging beast with wings, Hal would have to say, Yes. And, oh look, they’re turning into yellow beasts with wings.

Hal wonders whether he should be taking this all this personally.

“It had to be yellow, right?,” he grumbles.

Ok, fine, yellow or not, the ring’s only limit is his own willpower, and Hal has plenty of that. If he can’t stop the bird directly, a giant magnifying lens appearing in the sky right above it on a bright sunny day ought to get its attention.

Yup. It sure does.

Hal had been hoping for more of an effect than a few singed feathers, but at least that’s made it stop changing the animals. He falls into a steep dive as the bird comes after him. Maybe he can tire the bird out a little.

Whoa, that thing is fast! Better do a quick turn before--.

Hal feels the claws snap around him before he even sees the bird closing in. No real bird that size could have pulled off that hard a turn. What the hell is this thing?

Hal struggles hard to break the grip. No good. And the ring isn’t going to be any help at prying open those yellow claws. If he’s going to get out of this--arggh, he gasps as they squeeze harder—he’s going to need something radical.

The bird is moving fast now. Hal has no idea what it plans to do with him, but he’s damn sure he won’t like it. There has to be something, something---there. A raincloud.

If he had a moment to think about it, he probably would have talked himself out of the crazy idea, but once Hal is focused on a problem, there’s no distracting him. A green burst shoots out from the ring and expands, ballooning out around the cloud until it engulfs the whole thing. Hal grimaces, half from the still squeezing claws, but more from exerting the will for the next part: forcing the base temperature of the cloud to drop. A rainstorm is good. But a snowstorm, that’s better.

Hal concentrates his will, forcing himself to ignore the bite of the claws as he draws the cloud over to them. The bird is picking up speed, and that isn’t helping, but now that he has a clearer idea of what to do, the ring is making it easier to pull off. The cloud steadily draws closer as Hal pulls.

With another burst of will, Hal snaps the construct, and the cloud lurches forward, directly ahead of the bird. With a triumphant grin, Hal lets go, and the green balloon evaporates. The bird flies right into a wall of snow and hail.

OK, good news: the snow is giving that bird a serious chill. Bad news: I’m getting the same treatment.

But it works. Thrown off by the pelting snow, the bird loosenes its grip just a bit, enough for Hal to shove back on the claws and fall away. A second later, he’s back in action, after getting hammered by a few hailstones himself.

That could have gone better. Still getting the hang of this stuff.

And now he has another problem. Whatever that bird is, being in its grip is having the same effect on him that the beams from its eyes had on those animals. He can feel yellow feathers starting to erupt all along his arms.

Ok, this is just weird.

The bird has recovered too, though, and it’s already diving after him again, its claws poised for another grip. Hal has a feeling this time it’s just going for the kill, and there isn’t another storm cloud nearby. But maybe what he needs is a different kind of water. Like that waterfall right below.

Still smirking, Hal drops like a stone, which is harder now that he has yellow feathers up and down his arms. But he can still outpace the bird, and with a 45 degree dive he bets that Aquaman guy would appreciate, Hal plunges right into the waterfall.

Hal is already braking and turning before the bird follows him in. He didn’t expect it to go full speed through it and into the cliff behind, but he was hoping momentum would keep it going, and by the time he’s back out of the falls, sure enough, he was right. The bird is flailing around in the water, pushing back against the cliff wall with its great claws while it tries to keep the force of the water from blasting it down to the rocks below.

So Hal decides to give it some help by freezing the water.

Ok, maybe ‘helping’ it wasn’t what he had in mind.

He’s not even sure how he gets the ring to drop the temperature again this time. He just thinks about what he wants, and the ring does the rest. But that ends up taking a lot out of him, and he’s glad to see the bird is well trapped inside the frozen waterfall.

“HA!” Hal yells. “Got you!”

Looks like he’s going to have to practice doing all kinds of things with the ring. He can’t afford to have it draining him like that every time he tries something a little different.

And he isn’t sure what to do now about that frozen waterfall, much less the giant bird inside it. But he figures they should stay put long enough for him to get the transformed animals to the nearby zoo in Livingstone. Those yellow wings might be gone now—his are too—now that he had the bird in a deep freeze, but for all he knows there might be after-effects. And while the vets are checking out the animals, maybe Hal can have the ring give him an exam too.