So yeah, I'm a big fan of RWBY. I love the action, the humor, but most of all, I love the characters.
And like anyone with investment, I was shocked, heartbroken, and enraged at the latter half of Volume 3. Oh, it was a good season, don't get me wrong, but as I sat there, watching the credits roll on the final episode, one thought was screaming in my mind and making me rant and rage.
No. It can't end like this. The bad guys don't get to win. Not like this. NOT LIKE THIS!
And it was like that that I, like so many others, formed a bandwagon of NO, IT DOESN'T END LIKE THAT!
I have a couple of ideas, one of which I may detail later, but I thought I'd get down one of my more...esoteric ideas. I spent half a day writing this, getting all the details right, and what I came out with was so good I thought, 'screw it, I'll post it.'
I don't know if this is something I'll continue, but for now, I present you with this crazy little idea
At the very last moment, Pyrrha is snatched from the jaws of doom by the power of DEUS EX SPATIO!
...
I know what I said.
"Do you believe in destiny?" she said, teeth gritted in an attempt to fend off the pain.
The answer came in a cold voice, accompanied by an equally cold and hateful set of eyes.
"Yes."
So this was it. This was how Pyrrha Nikos died.
Deep down, she supposed she accepted this. She tried to stop it all, she tried her hardest. It just wasn't enough.
But as the cold woman with the power of hellfire nocked an arrow and pulled it back, as time slowed and her life began to flash before her eyes, another voice rose up, roaring a message.
I don't want to die. I can't die. Not like this! NOT NOW!
Her heart increased its beating as faces came to her mind. Family, friends, and one who might be more.
Her mother. Her teachers. Nora, Ren, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Yang…
Jaune.
She could still feel it, still taste it on her lips. She could just smell the woodsmoke scent of that shampoo and the musky odor of sweat and adrenaline. Still see his eyes, caring and trusting. Full of…was it love? Could it have been? She wanted it that way, but was it?
The voice roared again, and every fiber of her being joined it.
No. This is NOT how I die!
And as she struggled to move her tired muscles, bent and strained to try and dodge or counter somehow, as her entire being filled with unshakeable will, a miracle happened.
Something appeared on their battlefield, streaking down from the sky like an emerald thunderbolt. It twisted about the dragon and slammed into Cinder's side, the sheer force throwing her across the room. It hovered there, small but burning large with verdant light.
It was a ring, just floating there in midair, and Pyrrha could almost imagine it looking at her, judging.
And then, a deep voice issued from the ring.
Pyrrha Nikos of Remnant. You have the ability to overcome great fear.
It flew forth and twisted about her before sliding itself on the middle finger of her right hand.
Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps.
The light surged around her. She felt hot and cold at the same time, her senses alive with energy. She could taste the light, sharp and biting. She could feel it molding around her, filling her with new strength. Her pain vanished, quickly followed by her fatigue.
And when the brightest part of the light faded, she could see herself changed. Her clothing was different. Red had become a rich green, and bronze had given way to black. Her personal sigil, the stamp of personality that she wore at her hip, had been redrawn in brilliant white. Cloth now covered the space between her neck and breastplate, and another symbol had been drawn on a field of white, a green shape that reminded her of an old lantern.
But one thing kept pricking at her consciousness: the feeling of power. Her every cell felt charged with energy. Green light licked at her body like fire, but it felt as soothing as an embrace and as mighty as a churning river.
Before she could fully process the change, she saw Cinder rise out of the corner of her eye and aim an arrow at her. The projectile came fast, and Pyrrha only had enough time to brace herself, crossing her arms defensively.
She heard something shatter, and when she looked, she shared Cinder's shock at the broken arrow on the floor.
"What just happened?" Pyrrha found herself asking.
Cinder fired another arrow, and Pyrrha saw what had happened. Barely an inch away from her, the arrow shattered like glass against the green aura that covered her.
As she studied the arrow remains and the green light pooling in her hand, Pyrrha began to smile.
"Well…the tide has turned."
With a cry of rage, Cinder charged, hellfire wreathed about her as she swung a fiery fist at Pyrrha's face. On instinct, Pyrrha caught it, and again found the green light protecting her from harm, the burning flames not able to pierce the shining barrier coating her skin.
Pyrrha made a fist and threw it at Cinder's face. Halfway through the motion, the light around her hand shifted, forming a facsimile of an armored gauntlet.
Later, Pyrrha would realize that she had idly wished for greater striking power before throwing that punch, and realized that the light had acted on her subconscious desire.
Regardless, it did a number on her opponent, and for the first time in their battle, Pyrrha felt like this might be a fight she could win.
Cinder stumbled back and felt at her mouth. The sheer force of the blow had rattled her and caused her to bite her lip.
She now had incredible powers, she was now a godlike being, and yet this young woman had made her bleed.
Confused and furious, Cinder charged again, burning like a small star and striking with all of her considerable hate.
Pyrrha met her charge, the green coiling around her and flaring brightly.
Flame of hate and fury met light of courage and will.
Will won.
As Cinder was pitched off the tower, the power behind the blow sending her flying, the Grimm Dragon decided that enough was enough, that it was going to kill this upstart, damn what the dark woman thought.
It roared and reared its head back to strike, but Pyrrha stood firm, the light around her now reaching the brightness of a nova.
"You don't belong here!" she shouted, right hand reaching out toward it, "GO AWAY!"
And then everything went green.
oOo
"James, she's a child."
"A child that sent a Maiden flying and smacked a Grimm Dragon so hard it fled. A child that slew countless lesser Grimm and sent more powerful ones scurrying back to the shadows in one blow."
"I'm concerned too, but in your efforts to figure this out, you run the risk of forgetting that there is a person attached to this power, one who is no doubt just as confused as we are."
"Ozpin, I get that you're worried about her well-being, but she did things that, by all forms of logic, should be impossible. I want to know how and why, and I can guarantee I'm not the only one. That media blackout you've got going on isn't going to last forever, and the Hunters who have come forth can only field the questions for so long."
Pyrrha slowly regained consciousness, feeling stiff and uncomfortable. As she groaned and shifted, a hand found its way to her shoulder.
Blinking to adjust her eyes, she saw Ozpin staring at her with concern.
"Pyrrha?"
"Ugh, did anyone get the number of that truck that hit me?" she croaked, "What happened?"
"We were hoping you could tell us that. Miss Rose found you atop the tower, surrounded by debris."
Pyrrha cast her gaze down her body, finding it in a hospital bed. Curling at lip slightly at the hospital garb on her, she slowly sat up and rubbed her temples, but felt something shift against her fingers. Looking at her hand, she saw a green ring, and it all came flooding back to her.
"Oh my God. That actually happened," she said, voice flat as a table for but a moment, "Oh my GOD, that actually happened! How? What? Where's Cinder? Where's the dragon? Is Beacon still standing? Is everyone okay? Did anyone die? Oh God, did Jaune make it out? Please tell me he made it out!"
"Miss Nikos, relax," came another voice, and she saw General Ironwood standing there, "Beacon is fine, we got everyone out of danger with minimal casualties, and no, your boyfriend was not one of those casualties. He's fine."
"He's not—wait, I kissed him, he probably is. He's not mad about the locker thing, is he?"
"That's something you'll have to ask him," Ozpin replied, "As for Cinder and the dragon…well, those answers are tied to the ring on your finger."
"We found a person-shaped hole at the base of the tower," Ironwood picked up, "Dimensions match that of Cinder, and we found several of her hairs at the sight. She was either retrieved by a third party or she walked off a several-story drop, as impossible as that sounds. All the Grimm, including the dragon, were either dead or cowards. There is no sign of Grimm activity anywhere in the vicinity of Beacon."
"Really?" asked Pyrrha, "What happened to them?"
"Best we can tell, you happened. People saw the green light for miles around, and every Grimm it touched was either killed on the spot or wounded. The dragon got smacked so hard it made a trench in the middle of the Emerald Forest, and booked it back to Mountain Glenn afterward. It's perched atop the mountain right now, just sitting there and looking at everything, no sign of any other movement."
"But what happened to me?" Pyrrha cried, full impact of everything finally hitting her, "What is this ring? How did I-"
"We don't know," Ironwood growled, frustrated, "Every test we ran came up nothing. The metal it's made of is like nothing else on the planet. When we could get a reading, the energy wavelengths were completely unique. It's unresponsive to all stimuli, but it lit up to protect you if we came at you with anything more dangerous than a butter knife. And to add insult to injury, we can't remove it."
At that Pyrrha scrabbled at her hand, trying to tug the ring off, but it gripped her finger tighter than glue.
"Don't bother, that was the first thing we tried. Short of cutting off your finger, we can't think of a way to get it off, but again, nothing more dangerous than a butter knife."
Pyrrha finally took several deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. The ring flared for a moment, encasing her had in an aura of light. It felt like someone holding her hand, stroking it gently and calmly, like a mother comforting her child. The light stayed for a moment before fading.
"What was that?" Ozpin asked softly.
"It…it knew. It knew I was freaking out. It felt like someone was holding my hand, trying to calm me down."
"Maybe it has some rudimentary intelligence," Ironwood mused, "Can you get it to react again?"
Pyrrha stared at her hand and concentrated, rubbing the ring intermittently. They all sat there for a few minutes, but the ring remained dull and unresponsive.
Frustrated, Pyrrha shook her hand.
"Do something! Why won't you work?"
Power at five percent. Safe mode initiated. Protective measures active. All other features disabled.
They blinked at the voice issuing from the ring.
"Well, that answers that question," Ozpin said, "Whatever you did drained the battery. It's not going to do much until it recharges…somehow."
He suddenly grew very stern.
"But that was a very dangerous thing you did, going up against Cinder. If that ring hadn't come when it did, you might have died!"
Pyrrha shrank on herself, muttering, "I had to do something. I couldn't just let her win."
"Time and a place, soldier," Ironwood intoned, "In that situation, it would have been better to retreat, live to fight another day."
Pyrrha processed that before changing the subject.
"Where are my friends?"
"I'll see if I can scrounge up your team," Ironwood said, "They're likely worried. You've been out for two days. Whatever you did with that ring took a lot out of you."
"Best not to try anything big with it until we know what we're dealing with," Ozpin agreed, before patting Pyrrha's shoulder and bidding her to get some rest.
The two men left, leaving the young woman to gaze at her new accessory in deep thought.
"Green Lantern Corps? What does that mean?" she muttered.
She shook her head and rose, grabbing a robe that had been left at her bedside to cover her hospital garb. Rest could wait. She needed to find her friends.
She padded out of the room, looking around before spying a familiar form down the hall.
"Jaune!"
The boy whipped his head around, stood in shock for a few seconds, then crossed the distance in an instant and wrapped her in an embrace. Their lips met, each of them pouring as much feeling as they could into the action, before Jaune broke it and held onto her tightly, giving her a small shake with every word he spoke.
"Never. Scare. Me. Like. That. Again."
Pyrrha just hugged him tighter.
oOo
The hospital was flooded with people, but there were actually few serious injuries. Jaune, Nora, Weiss, and Ruby had gotten out of everything with bruises and exhaustion, and Ren was on the mend as well.
Pyrrha was more worried about Blake and Yang, given the more serious natures of their injuries. Blake was on a lot of painkillers, and a portion of her large intestine had to be removed, having been shredded beyond repair. She slept most of the time, her lucid moments few and mostly spent crying over Yang. To be fair, Yang was hard to look at, missing her right arm from just below the elbow. But despite her weakened state and depression, she had somehow managed to slide her bed closer to Blake's. The entire time she and Pyrrha talked, Yang wouldn't let go of Blake's hand.
"Blake has a lot of good things going for her, but she has a habit of running from serious emotional issues," Yang explained, "I'm just making sure she doesn't. She needs us right now."
"One could say you need us too," Pyrrha said.
Yang didn't respond to that, just squeezing the Faunus' hand tighter.
Shortly after, a few doctors came in to measure Yang for a prosthetic, and Pyrrha found it sweet and not a little sad how Yang refused to let go of Blake, despite the doctors' arguments.
"My missing limb is on the other side, work around that!"
Pyrrha left after that to stay out of the way, warning an incoming Ruby to wait a few minutes before going in.
After being given a clean bill of health, Pyrrha tracked down Ironwood and asked about Penny. The general had reluctantly brought her to where they were trying to repair the android.
"She's actually fairly lucky," Ironwood said, "The cuts were very clean, most of the work is just reconnecting things. I'm a bit more worried about her power core and central processor."
"Her heart and brain," came Pyrrha's amendment.
"Yes. Her heart took some electromagnetic damage, and after so sudden a shutdown, I'm worried about the status of her mind."
Pyrrha managed to reach around an engineer and gently stroke Penny's cheek, whispering apologies.
"If you're worried about that, don't be," said the engineer, "I've known Penny for a while. She doesn't hold grudges. I'd be half convinced she had no idea what a grudge was if it weren't for the fact she loves crime dramas."
After that, Pyrrha went down to Beacon, where multiple people were trying to repair the damage. She spent a few hours there, pitching in where she could. No one had anything nasty to say to her, considering the ending of her match with Penny, only greetings and words of encouragement. When she asked someone about it, the reply was simple.
"Everyone saw that look of horror on your face, and everyone heard the message from that Cinder woman. Wasn't much of a stretch to figure out you'd been tricked somehow. Now, me personally, I don't rightly care what exactly happened, but let me ask you something. Do you regret what happened to that Penny girl?"
"God yes!"
"Good enough for me," came the reply with a shrug, "Pass me that hammer, would you?"
After finishing, she ran into Jaune, who had been looking for her.
"With Beacon is less than stellar condition, all the students got moved closer to Vale. Bunch of motel rooms got rented out for us."
"Ah, good, I was wondering where we were all going to stay. Where's Miss Goodwitch in all this? Couldn't she fix the school much faster?"
"She burned herself out fighting Grimm and then fixing parts of Vale. She's not supposed to do anything until her aura gets back up to par, doctor's orders, and even then, she's supposed to take it light."
Pyrrha nodded, then took Jaune's hand. They didn't need to say anything. Actions spoke with the voice of thousands.
oOo
Days passed in much the same manner. Teams RWBY and JNPR would check on their injured members before going about their business. The two teams seemed more like one larger team in the days that followed, mixing together and working on making Vale and Beacon livable again.
Ren recovered rapidly, but Yang and Blake would take longer. Yang would need time to get used to her new bionic arm, specially commissioned by Ironwood himself by way of an apology, and Blake had undergone fairly invasive surgery.
As Yang predicted, when Blake regained full lucidity, she had immediately tried to distance herself from everyone, the guilt over Yang and the White Fang's rampage eating her alive. Yang had quickly disabused her of the notion that it had been her fault, and remained by her side near constantly.
Ruby and Pyrrha had found it both hilarious and adorable when they came in one morning and found the two cuddled up close and asleep. Pyrrha wished she had taken a picture, but Ruby's squeals of giddiness had woken the two up and ruined the moment.
Jaune and Pyrrha spent many of their spare moments together, talking, kissing, and generally enjoying each other's company. Every time they were together made her feel like she was walking on air, and it distracted her from the worries of the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, one worry would always stay with her. The ring continued to cling to her finger, unresponsive most of the time. The few times it showed any life were when she was trying to get it to do something.
She knew it still worked, and not just because it talked when she asked. A green shield burst to life briefly to protect her from falling rubble. She had played it off as a knee-jerk aura reaction to the people nearby, but when she checked later, the ring responded with the same message as before, save for the part about protective measures being said with a little more force.
As time passed and answers continued to be as reachable as smoke, Pyrrha began to grow frustrated with the ring. Her friends, the only ones besides Ozpin and Ironwood who knew the whole story, quickly learned not to bring the ring up in conversation. Only Jaune could get away with speaking of it at leisure, and only briefly.
This was where he found her now, sitting on the motel's rooftop and flicking her gaze between the ring and the stars above.
"Still nothing from our little green lifesaver?"
"Ring, status," Pyrrha replied in an offhanded manner.
Power at five percent. Safe mode initiated. Protective measures active. All other features disabled.
"Anything else to say?"
The ring was silent.
Jaune rubbed the back of his head as he sat down.
"I'm sure the answers will come."
"But when?" Pyrrha asked, "I can't get a thing out of this stupid piece of jewelry, and I don't think I will until it recharges. But if the past few days are any indicator, time is not a factor in that process."
"I get that you're upset," he replied, hugging her from the side, "This thing saved your life and the lives of a lot of other people, then practically welded itself to your finger, all with no explanation. I'd want answers too."
"It's not just that!"
Jaune looked at her askance and asked, "What do you mean?"
Pyrrha looked confused for a moment before her eyes went wide.
"Did I say that out loud?"
"Pyrrha, what aren't you telling me?"
She looked conflicted for a moment before sighing.
"Before I continue, I need a promise that you won't tell anyone."
"Wha-"
"I mean it Jaune!" she snapped, "No one! Not even Ozpin and Ironwood know this. I'm trusting you, can I do that?"
"Pyrrha, you know you can trust me," Jaune replied, his voice full of concern.
Pyrrha stood up and began to pace.
"When the ring arrived, it didn't just make a Grimm-killing explosion. It…changed me. I felt super-charged. It was like nothing I'd ever felt before."
Her eyes danced as she was lost in memory.
"I could feel the power racing through every fiber of my body. I could taste the light. I felt like I could move mountains just by trying hard enough! I felt like hard things I could do quick, and impossible things I could do with just a bit more time. I felt like I didn't have to fear anything from the darkness, because I had a seven million watt candle. That was also a knuckle duster."
She spun towards him, eyes full of wonder and victory.
"Cinder Fall was a proverbial goddess, and I hit her so hard she bled!"
Jaune only needed a minute to process that.
"Damn!"
"I know! But now look at me. All that power at my fingertips, enough power to help everyone, to be anything, and now it's gone."
Pyrrha looked forlorn, staring at the ring as she continued, "You know what I told you before, about how I've always felt like I was meant for more. What if…what if this is it? This ring is the key to everything, I can feel it, but the answers are so far away, this thing might as well be on the moon. If I can't figure this out, what am I supposed to be?"
Jaune's hand covered hers, folding over the ring.
"You're supposed to be Pyrrha. Friend, protector, and the woman I love more than anything."
This got a slowly-rising smile out of Pyrrha, and they embraced.
After some time spent enjoying each other's presence, Jaune yawned and Pyrrha sent him off to bed.
"I'm going to stay up for a bit longer. Insomnia."
He nodded and left, and Pyrrha was once again alone with her thoughts and her stubborn little friend.
After some time, Pyrrha suddenly jumped in shock as the ring spoke up.
Incoming Lantern signal.
"Wait, what? What do you mean?"
As if to answer her question, a streak of green light raced across the sky like a shooting star, then turned and zoomed toward her.
Pyrrha leapt out of the way, but she didn't need to, for the streak suddenly stopped, hovering in the air over the edge of the roof.
It was a strange being, tall and dressed in green and black. Its head was scaly, and it sported a tall frill atop, like a webbed Mohawk. The face had human-like eyes, but in place of a nose and mouth, there was a parrot-like beak.
But what caught her eye was the symbol on the chest, a green shape on a white background: a lantern.
The beak opened and a strange noise garbled out of it. Pyrrha blinked in confusion as the noise changed pitch several times, as if part of some sort of language. The being then grumbled and flicked its forehead, as if in self-deprecation. It then raised one hand, a ring glowing faintly for a moment, then flashing.
"Apologies," it said, this time in a raspy but masculine voice, "I spend much of my time in a sector of space with a unified language, so I've developed a bad habit of turning off my ring's translator and leaving it off."
"That's…okay?" Pyrrha said hesitantly, "Who…what are you?"
"My name is Tomar-Re, and I have been sent to find you. Your ring should have taken you to Oa for processing and training, but when you never showed up, despite Mogo reading your ring as active, I came to investigate."
"Processing? Training? I don't understand?"
Tomar-Re tilted his head in confusion.
"Didn't your ring tell you anything? About the Corps or the Light of Will?"
"Mentioned the first, no to the second."
The two stared at each other for a time before Tomar spoke up again.
"Before I make anymore stupid assumptions, when you received the ring, did anything happen to you that put you in a state of extreme danger?"
"Does being attacked by a homicidal witch and a dragon count?" Pyrrha replied, inflection flat as paper.
"Oh Guardians, you're serious. Let me see your ring."
Pyrrha hesitantly extended her hand, and Tomar looked over the ring, green spectacles appearing on his face as he did so. His eyes darted from side to side and he muttered under his breath, as if reading something.
"Five percent? What did you do with this, Pyrrha Nikos, a Taser Sweep?"
"What's a Taser Sweep?"
"An advanced trick where the wielder pumps most of the ring's energy into a single radial blast that devastates anything perceived as an enemy."
"Sounds about right," Pyrrha nodded before pointing towards the horizon, "It sent the dragon flying. In fact, he's still at Mountain Glen, just sitting there."
Tomar looked, the spectacles warping and extending into a device not unlike binoculars. He suddenly cringed.
"Wow, that is HUGE. I assume that crack on its skull armor is your doing?"
"I cracked the mask?!" Pyrrha shouted in shock.
"Well, either you did, or the fall did. My money's on the former."
Tomar turned back to her before continuing, "I think I see what happened. The ring came to you in a moment of great danger, and you relied on instincts rather than any training to get out of it, but the Taser Sweep took so much power, there wasn't any left to bring you to Oa, or get you up to speed."
"And I suppose that's what you're here for?"
Tomar waved his hand, and light poured from it, splitting in two and solidifying into a pair of chairs, to Pyrrha's amazement. The two sat down and Tomar began to explain.
"To start with, as you might have guessed from my appearance, this world is not the only one with life upon it. And where there is life, there is civilization, and where is civilization, there must be rules. A group of beings from the universe's oldest sentient race dubbed themselves the Guardians of the Universe, and used their tremendous power to create the Green Lantern Corps. We are a peacekeeping force, policing the universe to protect the innocent and stop the guilty from committing their crimes. To whit, each member of the Corps is given a power ring, one of the most powerful weapons in the known universe. The rings grant their wielders, the Lanterns, several abilities, from protective shields to fight to universal understanding of languages spoken and written. The rings can be used to communicate across great distances and access a vast database of knowledge. But the most important ability is that of constructs."
Pyrrha knocked on the arm of her chair, making a solid thunk.
"That's right. The light emanated from the ring can be shaped into most anything. The only limits are the Lantern's will and imagination."
"That explains the gauntlet that appeared on my arm for a moment when I was fighting Cinder. Just before throwing the punch, I wanted to hit her as hard as possible, then the gauntlet appeared mid-punch. The ring must have picked up on my thought."
"One of the first lessons learned is how properly create a construct without the ring picking up on errant thoughts," Tomar nodded, "Very important to not suddenly make the wrong tool during a fight while a hundred different thoughts of how to survive are running through your head."
"Yes, that would be useful to know. So, what happens now?"
"Now, I give your ring a jump start and take you back to Oa for training."
A million thoughts ran through Pyrrha's head, but one chain of possibilities screamed to the forefront of her mind.
What if they come back?
"I…I can't."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I can't go with you," Pyrrha said, standing, "There's too much going on right now. That witch I mentioned, Cinder? I didn't actually beat her. I made her bleed, but I didn't take her down. She fell of the side of a tower, sure, but they never found the body. I want to believe the fall killed her and an ally of hers recovered what was left, but my gut says she survived. Cinder's still out there, I can feel it."
Pyrrha swept her arm towards the far-off mountains.
"And what about the Grimm Dragon? It's not just going to sit there for the rest of its days collecting dust. Sooner or later, it's going to decide it wants to wreak havoc more than it wants to avoid another big green sucker punch."
Pyrrha then turned and looked out into the city, which still showed the scars of the invasion.
"And there's about a million other things besides. This city, this kingdom and its people…they're still recovering from a battle against an array of forces that would see them destroyed, headed by things thought impossible to stop…"
Her right fist clenched, and the ring shimmered.
"Until I got the ring. Until I became something more than a single Huntress. I'm the only one who can stand against Cinder Fall if she comes back. I have the power to lay that dragon low if it tries anything again. I can beat back the Grimm and the White Fang and a million other things besides if they crawl out of the shadows. But if something happens and I'm not there, if they make their move while I'm out traipsing around the universe…people could get hurt. People could die."
Pyrrha turned her gaze back to Tomar, eyes blazing with will.
"I won't let that happen."
Rather than be angered by her refusal, Tomar-Re chuckled.
"Spoken like a true Green Lantern. One moment."
He strode off, muttering to his ring about a 'Ganthet'. The ring projected a small cone of light, and a small man with a large head and thinning hair appeared in the cone. Tomar exchanged hushed words with the image, and it briefly looked over to Pyrrha before continuing the conversation.
Finally, Tomar walked back over to Pyrrha, the image of the small man still there.
"Boss, meet our latest recruit, Pyrrha Nikos. Pyrrha, meet Guardian Ganthet."
Pyrrha gave a respectful bow, and Ganthet made a noncommittal sound before speaking up.
"I understand you have responsibilities on your home world, young one. Ones dire enough to keep you there indefinitely and thus preventing you from undergoing formal training on Oa."
"Yes sir."
"Are they truly important? The odds of this Cinder Fall making another move this quickly are-"
"With all due respect, sir, I don't care for the odds. I can't take the risk that they might be wrong. What is more sure is that if…when Cinder returns, a lot of people would be caught in the crossfire before she could be stopped. I'm not going to leave this world in the lurch when lives are at stake, not when I can stop it."
Ganthet was silent for a time, before giving a small smile.
"Oh, I like you. You have a good heart and a strong spirit. The ring chose well. Tomar-Re, I am approving the Iolande Protocol. As the Lantern of the neighboring sector, you will be responsible for her training. If you are unable to attend to the training at any point, you are responsible for finding a suitable replacement, as dictated by the rules of the Protocol. Do you accept?"
"I do."
"Then may the Light of Will grant you both strength. And Miss Nikos? Welcome to the Corps. Ganthet out."
The image dispersed, and Pyrrha looked at Tomar expectantly.
"Iolande Protocol?"
"One of our more well-known members, Iolande of Betrassus, Sector 1417. She's a good Lantern, a cunning warrior with a compassionate heart. She is also the Princess of her people, ruler of her world. When she received her ring, she was initially unable to report to Oa for training, for obvious reasons. It wasn't the first time a recruit's responsibilities prevented them from reporting directly to Oa, but it was the biggest in recent memory. After some debate, the Iolande Protocol was made. In essence, if a new recruit had responsibilities on their home world that were deemed great enough, they would be allowed to learn from a veteran Lantern on site as opposed to attending training on Oa. Aside from a few quick trips off-world down the line, you'll be staying put while you get a handle on ring-slinging."
Pyrrha breathed a sigh of relief, and Tomar gave a chuckle before continuing.
"Now, first things first, care of your ring."
Tomar pointed his ring at the ground and a beam projected from it. Where the beam landed, a shining portal began to spiral outward. Rising out of the portal came an object. It was shaped like an old railway lantern, similar to the symbol on the rings, but made entirely of green metal. And Pyrrha would see, contained within the lantern, the flicker of emerald light.
"The rings can do a great many things, but they have a set charge. In order to keep the lights on, you must recharge your ring via a power battery like this one. Each Lantern gets their own, but I'll let you borrow mine for this."
"A little conspicuous, don't you think?" Pyrrha asked, regarding the lantern with a raised eyebrow.
"Most Lanterns store theirs in a pocket dimension, a sort of 'bag of holding' that they can either anchor in one place or keep with them. There are other alternatives. I know of one who disguised his as a novelty lamp on his bedside table."
"That's…actually, not a bad idea. So what do I do?"
Tomar told her, and she nodded, touching her ring to the 'lens' of the lantern. She could feel it, the power. It licked at her hand, just shy of touching it, waiting for the sign to come.
Pyrrha took a deep breath and spoke the words that would seal her destiny:
"In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight.
Let those who worship evil's might,
Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"
As she spoke, she felt the rush of energy, felt it fill her being and pulse like a living thing. She welcomed the surge, feeling her clothing shift and her skin tingle.
In a flash, she was once more clad in green and black. She let out a breath and smiled.
"I think I could enjoy this job."