The Gold Corps: Chapter 7: Betrayal

Megan Morse, as she was known on Earth, came in from cheerleading practice so tired she wasn't even sure she could stay awake during her shower. But she did, and, donning her street clothes, prepared to go to the secluded area where she normally changed into her green Martian self (in itself a disguise, as she was actually a nonhumanoid white Martian), in order to fly back to Mt. Justice. Sighing, she picked her way over the broken ground, thankful that nobody ever seemed to come here. With her Martian powers, she wasn't really afraid of any muggers or anything, but she didn't want to give away her secret identity if she could help it.

She was just about to change when she heard a calm, very familiar voice behind her. "Excuse me. Might we talk?" She whirled around. There he stood, not twenty feet away. "You!"

"Yes," replied Ragnar. He held up his hands in a placating manner. "I am not here to fight you. Can we talk a moment? Privately?"

Nightwing! That yellow lantern is standing right in front of me!

Stall him, Megan. We're on our way.

He looked askance at her. "I sense you are contacting the others in your group. I had hoped we could talk, just you and I. But if not…" He rose up into the sky.

"No, wait!" He hadn't made any threatening gestures… "We'll…talk, if that's what you want to do. If that's all you want to do. It is, isn't it?" Nightwing! Hold off on coming to the rescue. Let me see if I can talk to him first.

You're in danger, Megan. That means we mobilize.

I may not be in as much danger as all that. Be ready, but let me see if I can talk to him, okay?

(Grudgingly) Okay. But if he so much as gives you a hard look, we're there.

He settled back down. "Of course. Why would I…say something that was not true?"

"A-alright." She sat down on a log, crossing her legs. She'd shifted her skin into the green coloration she normally employed, there being no one here to notice.

Well, nobody except for the guy they were supposed to bring in, who was supposed to be highly dangerous. "What do you want to talk about?"

Ragnar was silent for a moment. Then, "I find myself at odds with the stated goals of this Sinestro Corps, as I am given to understand them. What can you tell me about them?"

Megan considered. She didn't know what motives this yellow lantern could have; he might be setting her up for some ferocious attack, but, although she couldn't read his mind, she didn't think that was the case. He sounded sincere. "Uh, well, we, ourselves, in my group, haven't had all that much contact with them, but from what we've gathered, their goal is to basically rule the universe through fear and intimidation. I mean, that seems to be pretty much it."

He nodded. "So I am given to understand, myself. I tapped into the large computers on the orbiting station high over your world, that housed so many enhanced power beings. That correlates with what they say, too."

"You attacked the Watchtower?"

"Is that what it's called? Yes." Here he shifted uneasily, pulling a knee up to his chest. "I felt I needed to know its defensive capabilities, and how the enhanced beings within would react."

"But, but Ragnar, you can't do that!"

He looked puzzled. "Why not?"

She saw what he meant. "I don't mean you physically can't. Obviously, you can. But it, it's not a good way to behave, here on this world. Now you have every super-powered being there is out there, looking for you."

"They were looking for me before." A thoughtful expression crossed his face. "But I believe I see what you mean. I've antagonized them. Well, perhaps it was, what's the human expression? A bad first impression?"

"Well, yeah..."

"But I am trying to understand this strange world, and what my role in the universe is. Somehow I get the impression that this is where I will find it. But from what you have said, and from what I have gathered…I do not think I particularly care for the goals of the Sinestro Corps. You say they wish to rule the cosmos. I don't want to rule anything. I had thought that my purpose in life was to make others to be afraid, to teach them what to do when they are afraid, so they would be stronger. But…" And here, he remembered the defenseless prey animal back on his home world. "To cause fear simply because I can cause fear seems pointless to me."

"Ragnar…I don't believe you're really an evil person. I think you just…happened to fall in with the wrong crowd."

Startled, he looked up. "I didn't fall."

"I mean, you got caught up with some bad people. But you aren't bad. I've seen you in action, back there at the nursing home. I spoke with Tommy, at the school. You have the instincts of a superhero, not a villain."

He sighed. "That is what Sarah keeps telling me. But I don't-*"

"Who's Sarah?"

"She is a friend of mine. She goes to the school where Tommy was. It was through her that I met him."

"Is she a teacher there?"

"No. I believe her to be a student. Why?"

"Well, I guess I'm surprised. On our world, kids are taught to not have anything to do with strangers, especially adult strangers."

"Why?"

She blew out a sigh. He had so many questions…he was what Kid Flash would call a "babe in the woods." He used to say, "a fish out of water" until Aqualad threatened to pole-axe him. "Sometimes, some adults hurt little kids. So most mothers teach their children not to talk to strangers or go with them anywhere."

"Why would an adult human wish to harm an immature one? There is surely no survival benefit in such an action."

"Trust me, that's a longer story than either of us really has time to go into. But tell me about Sarah."

He shrugged. "I don't really know much about her. She took me to a place of eating, and gave me something called money so I wouldn't, as she put it, get into trouble by just taking the food items."

"So that's what happened at the Taco Bell. We all sort of wondered about that. But you just didn't know, being so recently arrived here, did you, about money?"

"That is correct."

"But wait. You said Sarah gave you the money at, at the other place? The McDonald's, where you ordered the cheeseburgers?"

Another puzzled look. "Yes. I didn't want to take it, feeling like it was hers, but she said it was okay if she gave it to me, and even told me about the appropriate food items on that lighted board behind the table."

"Aaand…she was right there with you, the whole time?"

"Yes, of course. Why do you ask?"

Megan twirled a lock of her hair, a gesture he found oddly…appealing, somehow. Overall, the female herself was…strangely easy to look at. He found himself enjoying talking with her. He could sense this wasn't her true appearance, but one thing his interstellar travels had taught him was to look beneath the surface of things. She was…nice. Yes, that was the word. She was nice, and it didn't matter what she really looked like."Well, it's just that we spoke with the manager after you'd left, and she said-*" But her words were cut off by a whistling sound, as Kid Flash shot out of the undergrowth, making a beeline for Ragnar, carrying, in his hands, a pair of stasis-cuffs, at such a speed that he was almost a blur.

It was only due to Ragnar's innate paranoia that he was not caught in the trap completely. As it was, Wally bounced off of a standing forcefield, projected by Ragnar's ring. Ragnar gave a surprised shout, and immediately blasted the general area where he'd seen the yellow and red blur, rising up into the air with the same fluid motion. Kid Flash was caught in the outer shockwave of the blast, and hurled a full twenty feet into a dense bush, landing painfully among the thorny branches.

Ragnar turned angrily to Megan, who recoiled at the fury in his expression. "You! I trusted you! But, but you, you betrayed me! And, and I actually thought…I was actually thinking…!" But he was too angry to finish the sentence, and instead, sped off into the sky.

"Wait! Ragnar! Don't go, it wasn't me! Please!" But he was already gone.

Miss Martian turned angrily onto Wally, just now extricating himself from the thornbush. He'd have some cuts from all this. "Damn it, Wally! We were just talking! You mucked everything up! What were you thinking?!"

"I, I'm sorry, Megan. I, I guess I just thought-*"

"No, you didn't think! That was the problem! Now, he'll probably never trust us again! See what you've done?"

Her comm link activated. "Okay, people," said Nightwing's voice, "I think we can all agree this got royally fubar'd. Wally, we're going to have to have a talk." Wally winced. "Yeah, that kind of talk. You had no business acting without orders. Now matters are more complicated than ever. We may have to bring in the League, or at least Hal and John Stewart. You know how I hate doing that. But we—and by that, I mean you—clearly fumbled this ball. Both of you, back to Mt. Justice. We have to plan our next move."

….

Mt. Justice: Nightwing placed a conference call with the Watchtower. J'onn J'onzz, Hal Jordan, and John Stewart were on the other end, with Arisia and her team tele-attending from out beyond Jupiter. "Well, what have we got?" asked the Martian Manhunter, his usual direct way of opening conversation.

Dick spoke up. "We have a better feel for his mind, sir. Megan—I mean, Miss Martian—is convinced that he isn't an evil person at heart. But he did come into a yellow power ring, and wielding one takes one down a certain path. After all, the ring is fueled by fear, in part, so basically, he's gotta try to inspire fear in order to keep his ring charged. But so far," he grimaced, "he hasn't seemed to've been doing such a good job of that."

"The technicians up here might disagree with you," cautioned J'onn. "He certainly seemed to do quite well then."

"Excuse me, J'onn," broke in Hal Jordan, "I'm not trying to play devil's advocate here, but, to be honest, his attack struck me as, well, as half-hearted."

"Meaning?"

"If he was able to interface with our control system to the point where he could hack into our database, and evidently start the core to going critical, I don't see any reason why he couldn't have simply blasted the entire core out into space. That would've crippled the Watchtower, and probably sent it on a downward spiral, resulting in a crash, and the loss of who knows how many lives. Instead it seems like he was, as Miss Martian says, testing us, seeing how fast and how well we reacted to such an emergency."

"All of which indicates a somewhat less than totally friendly attitude towards us. Who's to say his next attack won't do precisely that, now that he's gauged our abilities?"

"We are. We now know he's here, and we know something about his capabilities. And I'm not saying Sinestro Corps members aren't dangerous; they are. But I think we all agree this one's a little different. He's never met Sinestro, was never formally indoctrinated into their Corps, didn't actually, willingly, join up. He just happens to have the ring, and happens to be from a planet where, evidently, he had to fight to survive." Hal spread his hands. "You get right down to it, he hasn't really done anything truly evil, not on a scale such as we're accustomed to seeing."

"Tell that to my bruises," grumbled Arisia. "But I have to admit, you have a point. But remember, Hal, it's just like you said: the ring has a certain effect on its wielder. Even if he was a total innocent before, the very fact that he owns this ring means he's probably no boy scout."

"And yet," began Nightwing, leaning back, "and yet, he does seem to function way out of character. The little boy, the people at the nursing home. And he seemed willing to talk to us, there, at that time. And, he sought out Megan for the same thing, only he was…interrupted." And here he stopped and shot a scorching look at Wally, who squirmed in his seat. "Hey, I said I was sorry! What more do ya want?"

"I see only two courses of action," interjected John Stewart. "Either vigorously pursue his capture, or…try again to engage him in some sort of conversation. A conversation that, yes, would include the possibility of capture. We certainly can't leave him to do as he pleases, not after all this."

Miss Martian cleared her throat. "Suppose we choose option B." She looked around the table, and at the monitor screen, split between those on the Watchtower, and Arisia, far out in space. "Exactly how would we go about doing it? I don't see him as trusting us again. Not after what happened last time." And she shot a scorching look at Kid Flash, who squirmed in his seat even more, but made no reply.

"Perhaps the key is this girl whom he's befriended, this Sarah. He did say she attended school at the same school as Tommy Walker."

"I've already checked on that, sir," said Nightwing. "Turns out there's about two dozen girls who go by that name. And all we have is a first name. It would be painstaking to interview them all—assuming their parents would give us permission to do so. That's not a given, you know. A lot of parents would prefer not to get involved. We'd need a description, or at least a last name, and we don't have one."

"Blue skin," muttered John Stewart.

"What?"

"Blue skin. All the reports describe him as having blue skin. Don't they?"

"Ye-es, they do." Nightwing clearly didn't see where this was going. "Why? Is that significant to you?"

"Yeah. I don't know why,but something tells me it is."

"What about this girl, though?" inquired Wonder Woman. "The manager at the restaurant said he was talking to someone who wasn't there. And you," here she pointed at Miss Martian from the monitor, "said he said she was there with him, in the restaurant. Yet apparently nobody else could see her."

Megan shrugged. "I got the distinct impression he's lonely. He grew up alone. Maybe it's not so surprising that he basically imagined up a companion, with his ring."

"But he gave the clerk a five dollar bill," Hal Jordan mused, scratching his chin. "Neither our rings nor yellow rings can create something of a permanent nature, like that. So where'd he get the money?"

"We're arguing in circles, over minutae" stated J'onn. "We need more information. M'gann." His niece bolted upright at the mention of her name. "Did you get any impression of where he could have come from? Anything at all?"

She shook her head. "Sorry, Uncle J'onn. For some reason, I seem to be unable to read his mind. I don't think he's deliberately blocking me, and it doesn't feel like it's the ring's doing. I can't describe it any better than that."

"Well, first priority hasn't changed. We must first find him. Any ideas?"

"Take out an ad in craigslist?" Kid Flash tried to make it sound like a joke. Then he saw the looks the others were giving him. "Okay, okay, bad idea."

"Okay, everyone. Let's explore some ideas," directed J'onn.

To be continued…