4.

As the gathered members of the Crime Syndicate of Amerika wound their way to the monitor room, the alarm continued to scream throughout the labyrinthine hallways of the Panopticon like a runaway banshee; screeet, screeet, screeeeeeeeet. As usual Johnny Quick got there first, already flickering between the various computer screens and terminals at super speed when the others arrived. And as usual, he's just getting in the way, Owlman thought bitterly as he barged past the blurred after images of his hyperactive teammate.

"Sensorshavepickedupanobjectheadingwayfromtheearth," Johnny Quick verbally ejaculated; his fugue-like state from earlier having evaporated as adrenaline (and an increased dosage of Speed Juice) flooded his system.

"Away from Earth?" Power Ring asked, trying to take in the various telemetry readings and camera images that were flashing across the screens. "Does that mean this things coming towards us?"

"Based on current trajectory and observable exponential speed increases, object's course is projected to impact with local yellow dwarf star in less than five minutes time," whispered the voice of Volthoom, from deep within the titular power ring on Stewart Johns' hand.

"Your ring is right," Owlman snarled, his eyes scanning the monitors around them as his drug enhanced super-cortex worked overtime to process all the information they were receiving; it annoyed him no end that that damnable monk Volthoom had beat him to the punch. How exactly did a dead poonghie inside a piece of jewellery know so much about astrophysics anyway? "Our mysterious object is on a collision course with the Sun!"

"But what is it?" Superwoman asked. "Is it a missile? Is it Ultraman?"

"No, it's none of those things," Owlman replied tersely, ignoring the slight pause he'd heard in Superwoman's voice when she'd said her husband's name; that small, involuntary waver. He would deal with that later. For the moment, his attention was needed on the strange object hurtling up, up and away from the Earth at an ever increasing speed. Although it was small and moving fast, it was emitting a very powerful energy signature, one that the Crime Syndicate had encountered before. It wasn't a missile, and a certainly wasn't Ultraman, although it did belong to one of his Vampire Syndicate. Even Owlman couldn't keep the surprise from sounding in his voice when he announced what the object actually was;

"It's a Lantern."

The Shadow Lantern, to be precise. Merged with the Ring of Shadows, it served as a repository for the distilled energies of the Lords of Chaos and Order; a perfect fusion of the primordial powers that were ever at war for the fate of the Universe.

And now, thanks to Ultraman, it carried within it a new, ancient power as well; an even more primordial force, darker and more terrible still.

It carried within it the Black Blessing of Mandrakk.

"I'm on it," Power Ring said and before Owlman could berate him for rushing in without thinking, he was already away and racing, chasing the Shadow Lantern as it hurtled inexorably towards the Sun. After all, he didn't have to take his orders from that smug, self-satisfied bastard Owlman anyway. He was done taking orders; had been for some time now. Jordan Harrolds might have been content to play a supporting role to the Ultraman-Owlman-Superwoman show back when he was Power Ring, Stewart Johns wasn't! He wasn't just some Made Man, to be kicked around like a common dog; while he may not have been an original, he was a fully-fledged member of the Crime Syndicate of Amerika, and one of the most powerful members, at that.

Hell, maybe even the most powerful, when you really stopped to think about it. After all, he was the one with the magic ring, he was the one with the power to literally make all his wishes come true; if he could imagine it, he could have it. And all he had to do was put up with some annoying old monk crawling around inside his head, trying to make him feel some kind of remorse for his actions.

Remorse! What a joke! Remorse was for weaklings, like Harrolds had been. Harrolds, who had slowly gone insane from the guilty conscience that the mad monk Volthoom had slipped inside him. Harrolds, who had tricked him into taking the ring, thinking he could escape the terrible curse he believed it had brought upon him. But the joke was on Jordan Harrolds; it wasn't the ring that was cursed, it was Harrolds himself! He had carried his own curse around, deep inside, even after he had given up the ring of Volthoom and taken up the Ring of Shadows in its place; he had carried the curse of his own weakness!

Oh, sure, the power ring from which they took their super-villain name did indeed, literally, have a curse upon it, but it was Harrolds who had ultimately lacked the strength with which to fight that curse. Harrolds who had been weak his whole life, a hopeless bindlestiff who had simply let himself be blown about by the winds of fate; he had a hunger within him, yes, but he had lacked the conviction of his courage. Lacked the killer instinct that would have seen him seize the world by the throat and bite down until the blood was flowing fast and thick.

Stewart Johns didn't have that weakness.

He couldn't afford to be weak, not when he was sold into the slave marine when he was still just a teenager. Not when he was forced to fight for his life in the backwater wastelands of Amerika's enemies, always knowing that he had to survive, to bite and claw his way through to the other side. Everything he had, everything he was, he had had to fight for it. To kill for it. He didn't feel remorse when he was fighting in Malcolm's attack squads, slaughtering women and children in some foreign country or another, and he certainly didn't feel remorse just because some long dead monk was trying to give him a case of the sads.

That was something that the rest of the Crime Syndicate never realised about him, especially that arrogant bastard Owlman; they thought he was just another weakling with a magic ring, like Harrolds had been before him, or that other Power Ring, the one whose very life he had overwritten. Someone to be dismissed, to be overlooked. Just another supporting player, easily replaceable. It was high time he showed them all otherwise…

To Stewart Johnson, the Shadow Lantern hardly looked like it was moving at all; instead it seemed to hang there in space before him, a smear of the deepest blue-black almost imperceptible from the blackness around it. But it was moving, and at quite a tremendous speed at that, getting faster and faster the further it travelled. Using the power of his own ring, Stewart was able to match the Lantern's speed, increasing his own so that he could catch it before it reached its final destination.

The Shadow Lantern had belonged to Jordan Harrolds, and so in some perverse way he had felt a sense of responsibility towards it. It was a sign of Harrolds weakness, resurrected along with its former owner to fulfil some diabolical purpose; and Stewart Johns, the current Power Ring, wasn't about to let it get that chance.

It was so close now, all he had to do was reach out and grab it; to pluck it from space, like a piece of fruit gone rotten on the vine. As his hand grasped the handle of the Shadow Lantern, he realised too late that he had become so adept at drowning out the voice of Volthoom inside him, had been so wrapped up in his own thoughts, that he hadn't even noticed that the mad old bastard had talking to him the whole time… No, not talking; screaming at him!

Volthoom was screaming warnings in his disjointed ghost voice, until suddenly they weren't warnings anymore… the monk was simply screaming, period! Screaming and screaming, as the Shadow Lantern opened a conduit into the mind of Stewart Johns and the Black Blessing of Mandrake came upon him. Screaming and screaming, until he could taste blood in his throat and he realised that it wasn't Volthoom that was screaming at all…

And then there was silence. The Shadow Lantern continued inexorably on its way towards the sun, leaving Power Ring dead in space…

No pun intended.