Green Lanterns, Oa, Thanagar and all other related materials are property of DC Comics and are used without permission on this non-profit story. Shira Talo and Isect belong to me and anything Amzenian belongs to my friend Zearth/Trackula and neither of them can be used without our permission. So if you do plan to use them for anything, please ask first.
Occupational Hazards
Shira Talo scowled as she flew through the vast emptiness of space towards her destination. As a member of the Green Lantern Corps it was her job to keep the peace in her sector, even if that meant dealing with certain... undesirable elements. It wasn't the massive space battles she could find herself involved in that she hated. In fact, as a Thanagarian warrior she welcomed those kinds of challenges. She actually found it quite enjoyable.
No, what she hated dealing with was the more mundane things. Petty smugglers, space traffic violations, cruiser hijackings, those kind of small things that seemed below both a Green Lantern and a Thanagarian in her opinion. But of course all of those would have been MUCH more preferable to what she was about to deal with. Again.
"Are you sure there's no one else who can handle this?" she asked into her ring which was currently displaying a small bust shot of her sector partner, Isect.
"Nope, just you," the insectiod Corpsman replied.
"And why can't you deal with them?" she asked in annoyance.
"Because I'm busy elsewhere in this sector dealing with a minor uprising on Tweenis 12."
"I would gladly switch places."
"Oh come on Shira don't be like that. You know they wouldn't accept my help anyway," he retorted and if his mandibles allowed it, she was sure he'd have a smug grin on his face. "They just want to talk to YOU. I think they like you."
"More like they think they own me," she grumbled. "Can't we get that new Earth girl to handle this? Given her some on the job training?"
"Sorry, not her sector."
Shira just rolled her eyes behind her bird like mask.
"Fine. I get it. I'm on my own. I'll check in a bit. Shira out."
"Good luck," Isect remarked jokingly before his image faded.
The winged warrior sighed again as her destination came into few. It was a small planet that really had nothing on it. Or at least it didn't until a few years ago. That's when it was "conquered" by one of the most annoying races in the universe: the Amzenians.
By all standards they were a galactic joke. They talked about themselves as if they were great conquers that even Darkseid himself should fear but all the planets they "conquered" were barren wastelands or had nothing more complicated than simple animals on it. It didn't help their cause that they were only about a foot tall by Earth measurements so it was even harder to take them seriously.
The only thing they really had going for them were their big mouths, their ability to sneak into places because of their small sizes, and some truly unbelievable creations worked despite all the laws of physics and common sense. This made them more of a nuisance than anything else and for some reason whenever they DID act up it always fell on her to deal with them. She regularly wondered which cosmic beings she pissed off to earn such a punishment.
When she entered the orbit of the planet, called by the oh-so-original name of Amzena-394, she dropped the protective aura the ring provided her as well as its flight capabilities so she could fly with her own wings. After a few minutes of flying over barren wastelands she finally spotted something that resembled a city.
The city was large... by Amzenian standards anyways, the buildings towering at least fifty feet in the air, or higher and usually lined with the small red and purple creatures crawling along their surfaces for shortcuts, or flying around in their oddly designed sharp and overly intimidating looking sky cars. The effect lessened by the fact that they were no bigger than shoeboxes.
There was some sort of celebration underway as the entire population seemed to be gathered in the streets, looking up at the sky. Well, not including the many busy gorging themselves or having sex pretty much everywhere.
At the sight of the Lantern in the air, several lights on the main Government complex focused on her. Their current governor Gaoza standing on the roof and crossing her two secondary arms, tapping her foot as she waited impatiently for Shira to approach.
Shira's eyes narrowed and her scowled deepened as she descended down onto the roof of the building. Once she landed she crossed her own arms over her green bustier covered chest and glared down at the small official.
"What did you do now?" she demanded irritably.
Gaoza pointed accusingly and shouted up to the Thanagarian, "About time you got here, Inferior Lantern Bird! How day you make your masters, the great and immortal Amzenian Empire wait on this, our day of celebration!"
The taller woman sighed and placed a hand over her helmet-covered face.
"Two seconds here and I'm already annoyed," she mumbled to herself. She then refocused her attention on Gaoza. "Okay I'll bite, what are you celebrating?"
"Ah! Yes, excellent question, Sky-Dwelling alien vermin!" Gaoza nodded proudly, "But first, some background! You see, our home planet, Amzena-Prime gave us a daunting task the other day! We were told... to do something awesome!"
"Yes, I'm sure you were," Shira noted in an unimpressed tone as she idly flipped her long, sandy blonde hair hanging out of her helmet.
"Silence, green stink-beast!" Gaoza shouted in annoyance, before suddenly grinning and continuing. "First! We were going to blow up our moons! But that's been done to death. Second, we were going to awaken and tame the cosmic doom-beast we found underground the other day... but it ran off to eat stars or something the moment we woke it up!"
Shira blinked and her posture quickly changed from bored to completely alert.
"Wait. I just started paying attention, what?" she snapped.
"That's not important anymore!" Gaoza waved off. "I'm sure it's having the time of its life eating stars and planets and fulfilling some ancient apocalypse prophecy it was going on about. It'll be back here eventually. But that left us with needing a third option!"
She made a mental note to check on that "cosmic doom-beast" thing once she was finished here, but for the moment continued this line of, most likely useless, questioning.
"Would you just tell me what you did already?" she growled, tapping the handle to her tri-bladed mace hanging off her belt.
"Well..." Gaoza grinned, suddenly pointing up into space, "We're about to combine this planet's five moons into a giant moon robot made of moons!"
Shira just stared at her for several seconds, her usually sharp mind at a loss. Which sadly was a far too common occurrence when dealing with Amzenians.
"There's... no way that would work," she tried to rationalize, even though she knew it was a mistake.
"It can and it will, Lantern-fool!" Gaoza shouted back, "Do not compare our super-advanced Amzenian technology to your pathetic bird-ring stuff!"
"Okay, how about this: I'm not going to allow you to do this, that work better for you?" she challenged.
Gaoza smirked and placed all four hands on her hips, "My poor dumb inferior Lantern... I gave the order for combination ten minutes before you arrived!"
With that, the entire planet began to shake as gravity shifted violently, several planetary bodies in the distance, cracking open to reveal ridiculous amounts of machinery pulling together. Gaoza laughed maniacally at the resulting combination, ignoring the building windstorms around her. "We are Amzenians! We laugh in the face of your inferior and really boring physics!"
Shira ignored Gaoza's screaming as she concentrated more on trying not to be swept up by the blowing winds. A feat made much more difficult by the fact that the rampaging winds were catching her wings and it took her strength just to stand her ground. Eventually she used her ring to create a safety barrier around herself. She then created a tether that shot out of the barrier, wrapped around Gaoza, and then pulled her inside where Shira held her tight.
"Are you INSANE?" she shouted desperately.
Gaoza just laughed and declared proudly, "I am so sane it hurts! This will make us the most famous Amzenians ever!"
Her communication system suddenly announced, "Grand Governor of Amazingness, our awesome robot appears to be destroying our planet's crust simply from its proximity."
"Amazing! Such power!" Gaoza smiled brightly, stars in her eyes. "This is going even better than I expected."
"This is going to KILL all of you!" Shira again tried to reach her.
"Hmmmm... I don't... think it will..." Gaoza muttered while rubbing her chin after a brief moment of consideration.
"Yes. Yes it will! And as much as I would LOVE to have all you out of my hair, sadly I HAVE to save you from your own stupidity!"
With that she tossed Gaoza out of the shield before she shot off into the upper atmosphere of the planet. It took her much longer than she would have liked as she was tossed around by the rampaging winds and even when she could control her flight, she had to avoid all the debris flying all over the place.
She let out a small sigh of relief when she finally got out into space and away from the chaos. Unfortunately, she still had a colossal moon robot to deal with.
"Really hate these little idiots," she muttered as she pulled out her Nth metal mace.
She charged it up then went about what Thanagarians did best: smashing things up with brute force! She hacked and slashed away at the connecting tubes, using a combination of her mace and ring constructs to sever them.
As the planetary bodies began to separate, an enormous black shadow began creeping towards the sun, its entire body a mass of enormous jet-black tentacles and giant gaping teeth.
One of the moon pilots turned to the other and smirked, "I told you it'd come back. Now pay up."
"Good cause that's *just* what I need right now!" Shira growled when she saw the creature drawing closer.
Hoping to swat it way and not just piss it off she flew of over to the creature and gave it a hard whack with her mace, slicing off the tip of one of its tentacles.
The giant beast shrieked, ominous black energy building in one of its many mouths before sending out a maelstrom of physical darkness careening towards the Green Lantern.
Gaoza glared and looked over at her attendant, "Send Oa a receipt for one moon robot and one damaged doom-beast!"
Shira flew out of the way of the blast, which just so happened to hit the remaining connector tubes, and shattered them.
"Well that's ONE problem solved," she remarked. She then turned to the beast. "Now I just have to deal with THAT."
"I WILL DEVOUR THIS UNIVERSE AS THE PROPHECY FORETOLD!" The creature shouted as it launched more waves of energy at the Lantern.
Gaoza blinked, and looked over at her attendant, "Hey! Write that down. It sounded cool."
The thoroughly overworked Lantern moved out of the way of the other blast then looked over at the moon closest to her. She flew down towards the command center and landed just in front of the window. She then used her ring to create an image of herself just in front of the drivers.
"You two, pilot this thing towards that thing," her image ordered, pointing to the beast.
"I dunno, should we?" One asked the other.
"How often do you get to blow up monsters with moons?" the other exclaimed, before quickly turning the moon around and accelerating.
"Good. Does it have an automatic?"
"Hell no! That's for wimps, and Green Lanterns!" Both shouted in disgust.
"Of course," she sighed.
She then hardened her image into a construct of herself that ripped off a piece of equipment off the wall, and then moved the pilot out of the way to jam it into the steering column. The construct then grabbed both Amzenians before turning into protective barriers for them and dragging them through the window. The real Shira grabbed them then flew towards the planet as quickly as her wings would allow avoiding the blast.
Both glared and shouted at the Thanagarian bitterly, "Hey! We were gonna go out in a blaze of glory crashing our moon into that monster! Now you ruined it!"
"And we were gonna screw each other and finish at the moment of impact, cause that would be awesome!" the other shouted.
"You honestly have no idea how much I wanted to leave you two there but as a Green Lantern I'm dedicated to protecting lives. Even yours," Shira growled bitterly.
"Jerk!"
"Loser!"
"Just shut up!" she snapped as they all landed on the building roof again in the slightly calmer planet. She tossed them both down then created a cage around Goaza and pulled her up to her face level.
"Now order your troops to put the rest of those moons back in place. NOW!" she shouted, rattling the cage violently.
"Ow hey!" Gaoza glared as she was rattled about. "I don't answer to fashion-challenged bird losers!"
The blonde growled then switched hands with the cage so she could hold her mace up to it.
"You know with all this chaos going on it'd be SO easy for you to suffer some kind of 'unfortunate accident' here," she threatened.
"I don't think so, these stupid green bubbles are pretty sturdy," Gaoza frowned, tapping on the inside with her knuckle.
Shira rolled her eyes and sighed.
"Do it or I'll mace you good," she clarified.
Gaoza ignored her, "Well I suppose we've done enough awesomeness for one day."
"Azoag!" Gaoza shouted down to her assistant. "Tell the Moon Corp of Badassness to get back in place! I just had an excellent new idea!"
"This idea better involve cleaning up this mess," Shira growled.
"Messes clean themselves," Gaoza rolled her eyes, "No! Azoag! Tell our scientists to make better rings than this loser Lantern has!"
Azoag adjusted her glasses, nodded, and ran off on all sixes.
The "loser Lantern" was about to protest when a brilliant light lit up the night sky. After the blinding light passed she blinked a few times before she looked up to see the sky completely clear. She realized that could only have been the moon colliding with the beast and destroying it. She also noticed the blast helped put the remaining moons back into their proper places.
"Well...that was convenient," she noted. "But at least that finally put it end to this thing." She then looked back at Goaza who was still in the cage. "You are NEVER going to do this again. You got that?"
"Hell no, that'd be tacky!" Gaoza shouted up at her indignantly, "We have way more ideas that that!"
"I...I'm sure you do," she sighed before she set the cage down and dissolved it. "But when you do, I'm going to make sure I send Isect in my place and let HIM deal with you idiots for a while."
"No way!" Gaoza glared, shaking her head. "The Amzenian Empire in this sector refuses to deal with any inferior Lantern that isn't you, Bird-loser!"
"Why? Why me?"
"Because we like you, duh!" Gaoza rolled her eyes.
"I thing you just like giving me grief," she sighed with a shake of her head.
"We totally do!"
"Whatever," she remarked as she attached her mace back onto her belt and turned around. "I'm going to go now and I better not have to come back here anytime soon. Got it?"
With that took the air and made her way off the planet as quickly as she could.
Gaoza smirked and nodded proudly to herself, "Another great day for the Legend of the Amzenian Empire."
The End
Author's Notes: Well this one was little hard to place. See it's actually part of my Teen Titans universe, but it doesn't feature anything really Teen Titans related so it didn't feel right to put it there. But it also isn't set in the Green Lantern comics' continuity so it feels weird putting it here, but it's a close a place as I could find. Even though it also takes some stuff from the Justice League/Unlimited continuity such as Shira's biological wings and…well I did just kinda gank her costume from Justice League's Hawkgirl design and made it more GL influenced.
Anyway, the story itself it just a bit of randomness I and my friend Zearth/Trackula came up with and wrote over MSN. The Amzenians are purely his creation and he wrote all of them. They are quite an…interesting species, wouldn't you say? I'm honestly struggling for a way to describe them other than just completely insane and delusional. But that IS what makes them so much fun to play with. Hopefully they're fun to read about as well.
Oh and if you want to see what one looks like just go here:
http:/ . com/ art/ Nezma-154401823
That's all I really have to say. I'll go back to concentrating on the stuff I should be working on rather than all the random stuff I just have lying around on my hard drive.
Oh as for what Shira's mace looks like, just look up the Nerf Mace and that's the design I used.