This one's a bit of a longer chapter, covering a fair bit of ground, and revealing that the Grandmaster is more than a tad more Eldritch than he seems. As is Harry, come to think of it, and that can be a little disturbing for those not accustomed to him.

Hal Jordan was an ordinary human being; previously a talented fighter pilot, more recently a lawman in a lawless reality. He was sitting in the back of a perhaps excessively luxurious flying limousine with a cosmic god and an immortal legend. And of the three of them, he was the one who was glowing with unearthly power.

There was some kind of moral to that, though hell if he knew what it was.

It definitely sounded like one of those 'three people walk into a bar' moment.

Of course, they'd left the bar and the club as a whole, with the large barman now taking over as a chauffeur. Hal had taken a sneaky scan of him, and got nothing new, other than a sardonic look in the rear-view mirror.

After that, he'd mostly just sat back in his seat and wondered at what had just happened, at the spark of hope that for the first time in who knew how long he was actually daring to acknowledge. His battery had been all but dry when he'd got it, and a mix of Adam Brashear's genius and his sheer stubbornness had kept it going ever since, but its charge had always been slowly dribbling away. He might be able to keep the fires burning, but they'd been running out of stuff to burn.

He wouldn't say he'd been fine with that, exactly, but he'd accepted it. He'd resolved to keep doing what he could, as long as he could, eking out the charge, and he hadn't really hoped that anything would change. As he'd learned a long time ago, as these things were measured on Sakaar, hope led to expectation, and expectation led to disappointment.

Then, a teenager had snapped his fingers, recharging the battery and all five rings of the gauntlet, turning Hal from the Green Candle Stub to the Energizer Lantern, and asked him to believe in miracles.

And god help him, he thought he might be. He felt wired, like he could take on the universe, except he had a suspicion that even now, he was still the least powerful person in the car. Or at least, second least powerful. He still had no idea how powerful Julie was, or what her technology could do. It could certainly do a lot – which led to a few questions about the clunking from below before she'd withdrawn a deep blue clutch purse with a brass catch from the draw, which he was now half-convinced could contain anything from make-up and hygiene products to a miniaturised Ark of the Covenant.

In any case, he had no idea of what he could or couldn't do now, and he also had doubt that she could carve him into steak and ribs without getting out of her seat, so it was all rather academic.

In the meantime, those two had guided him into a seat as they set a course for Kadesh, making sure he wasn't about to burn up and/or freak out too spectacularly, before chatting as if the impossible was something they did twice before breakfast. Given what the kid – the Prince of Asgard – had casually alluded to doing in the past (sewing up the universe, that was an image he wasn't going to get out of his head any time soon), his almost absent-minded certainty that he'd leave Sakaar, as if it was a foregone conclusion, and the corresponding awe he held Julie in… maybe they did.

Certainly, they were discussing Julie's plans for deposing the Grandmaster and saving all the billions on Sakaar with the ease of planning a night out on the town.

In fact, there was an air of more or less professional experience about it, for all that Julie was clearly only sketching the situation and letting Harry work out the gaps (and if that wasn't class in session, he didn't know what was). Granted, they occasionally went on tangents involving very technical discussions on swordsmanship, a subject on which Harry clearly hung off her every word and yeah, he could kind of see why.

Hal knew exactly nothing about swordsmanship beyond his own experience of people trying to carve him up or stab him, and his trying to make sure they didn't succeed, but he was a brilliant pilot. In fact, he'd mastered it. And like any master, he knew the difference between raw talent and total mastery when he saw it. Their respective fights with the Beetle had showed that.

If the Grandmaster knew that someone that skilled was on Sakaar, they'd have been dumped into the Contest of Champions, for a few exhibition matches at least. By revealing that skill, Julie was sticking her neck out, which added credence to the whole 'she has a plan' theory – and to the 'it needs the kid' theory. Or, to be fair, he added to himself, it could involve the kid's aunt instead – she'd come with him, after all, and he'd managed to get his supercharged gauntlet to link up with some of the feeds. Her 'fight' with Lobo had been instructive. And, okay, it had been hilarious.

Listening with half an ear, he heard class continue.

"… no, Sif is wrong. She's as brilliant as I could have hoped, and she has become the kind of teacher I'd hoped she would, Fandral likewise, but she is wrong. I saw your fight with the Beetle, I can see both of them in your style – Sif's preference for direct attack and Fandral's tendency to flourish. Neither is by any means a bad thing; not even the flourishes, they can do wonders for your wristwork and keep your opponent guessing. But you have options that they don't, and you should use them. There is no need for you to fight like just an ordinary warrior. You have the skill to multitask now, rather than simply focusing exclusively on pouring all your power into enhancing speed and strength, and you need not worry about leaving yourself vulnerable – you have strength to spare. Besides, from what I can see, you won't even need to do that so much anymore: your Asgardian powers are coming along nicely. Try sparring a few times without enhancing yourself, you'll get a nice surprise."

"Okay, wow, absolutely. Um. How is Sif wrong?"

"Her estimate of your current skill trajectory is correct, but there's one small issue: Sif has never trained a telepath, let alone one of your calibre, with Asgardian reflexes to boot. She has overlooked that and in doing so, she has been neglecting an opportunity. With a telepathic link, either of us could have you as a master swordsman on pure technical skill by seventeen, measuring by human metrics or by thirty if you're measuring by Asgardian metrics. And that is by my standards."

It was like listening to Chuck Yeager give a lecture at the Air Force Academy. This wasn't the first such digression he'd heard, and if anything, it was the least technical. Yet they managed to almost seamlessly return to their previous subject, in the kind of way that Hal had only previously associated with the most experienced squadrons in a debriefing room.

Distracting himself until he heard something he could usefully contribute to, and from the seething power running through him like a livewire, he looked out the tinted windows.

Travelling anywhere across Sakaar was usually An Experience, well deserving of the capital letters. Time pools were just the start, especially if they became rivers. For one thing, the criminal scum and predators treated travellers much the same way lions treated migrating herds. For another, Sakaar itself came with all sorts of natural and unnatural hazards, ones that changed periodically based on who knew what. Logic rarely came into it.

However, the districts and sectors largely stayed as they were, allowing people to carve out their homes and find their way around those homes. At this point, they'd just passed over the Machine-Territories and skirted the Wildlands, crawling into the rolling towers and city-forests of their destination: Earth-Town, home of humanity on Sakaar. Well. Most of it.

It was an odd name, he had to admit, since a fair chunk of the humans weren't actually of Earth origin. Quite a few of them had never been there, nor heard of it anywhere outside of legends or ancient histories, which he had to admit was intriguing as hell – though many of the latter usually vanished to District Up-Time soon enough. People generally preferred to associate with those at least approximately of the same era. Hal broadly approved of this, as it meant there was more likely to be shared values, and therefore fewer fights. Heh. 'Fights'. That rather undersold some full-scale wars, both civil and between territories and sectors.

Of course, those were usually clamped down on quickly enough. The Grandmaster might see violence as entertainment, but he didn't like it if anyone but him was initiating it on too grand a scale. Too much risk of something getting broken that he didn't want broken. At that point… he'd express his displeasure. At best, it would be by proxy, which was bad enough.

Hal had tangled with the Darkstar once. He'd been lucky to still be breathing afterwards. Actually, it had been… well.

He smiled slightly. What the hell. Maybe he did believe in miracles.

Sooner rather than later, the limousine dipped into the parting waters that led into the inner sanctum of Kadesh. The Future Foundation was pretty big business in Earth-Town, and surprisingly big on Sakaar as a whole: it was a place where the ultimate problems found the ultimate solutions.

The name sounded like a bad joke in a place like Sakaar, but if you spent any length of time around the people there, you understood what it meant. It was about a hope for a better tomorrow, a determination not to give in. Hal wasn't so good on hope, but determination? That, he could get behind.

Regardless, they were known for being both brilliant and creative, able to solve more or less any problem given time. Even the so-called 'ultimate problems'. Except, of course, for the real ultimate problem: how to get off Sakaar alive.

Even then, though, they still had faith, Kadesh's founder most of all. Adam Brashear had been on Sakaar for the equivalent of eighty years, that he'd gone that long without showing any sign of Fading, always ready to believe that each step was a step towards a solution, always ready to be fascinated by the wonders of Sakaar, always willing to persevere despite how long he'd been waiting without a solution. That, Hal had to say, was one hell of a thing.

The look on his face when he greeted them in Kadesh's rear docking bay, most especially when he set eyes on Hal himself, well. It was probably the same kind of look Hal had worn after Harry Thorson had snapped his fingers.

"My god," he breathed, momentarily forgetting his courtesies and rushing over. "Hal, you look…"

"Like I just rolled out of bed?" Hal quipped.

"I was going to go with 'powerful'," the older man said, taking Hal's gauntlet-hand and examining it closely, quickly studying each of the five rings, progressing up through the power-lines, then onto the battery on his back. "The power levels you're giving off are incredible. Godlike, even." He nodded slowly. "Incredible," he said again. "You've been completely and utterly recharged."

"And then some," Hal said wryly.

"No, actually this kind of power lines up with what I'd have expected if the battery was fully charged and the rings were properly fuelled," Brashear said absently, still totally absorbed. "I made some projections when I was building the gauntlet. For purposes of comparison, you understand. I never thought that I'd see it happen – I always hoped, of course, I imagined, but I never really believed."

"Well, I'm a believer now, doc," Hal said, and nodded to Harry and Julie, who were watching with some fond amusement. The chauffeur, meanwhile, seemed to be thoughtfully examining the design of the hangar, as well as all the vehicles, equipment, and clutter within it. "You can thank the kid for that."

Brashear blinked, then looked distinctly embarrassed. "Oh lord, I'm so sorry," he said, sticking out a hand. "Madame Maupin, it has been far too long since we have been blessed with your company."

Hal blinked in surprise, and Harry's eyebrow raised slightly, but nothing more.

Julie smiled warmly, bypassing the handshake, instead embracing him and kissing him on both cheeks. "Adam, the pleasure is mine," she said. "And please, call me Julie, Madame makes me feel either mysterious or old. I'm trying to cut down on one, and no lady appreciates the latter – even if it is technically true."

"I'd have called you eternal," he replied. "All the loveliness of youth and all the wisdom of age, in perfect balance." He smiled slyly. "You can't call it flattery, either – as I recall, you once called yourself the same." At one confused and one intrigued look, he added, "'Amara'. It means 'eternal' in a fair few widely spread languages. The etymology also comes up with a few other meanings: 'grace', 'love', 'immortal'… and 'bitter'. Some are more similar than others."

"Words twist and evolve, just like all old things if they want to survive," she retorted.

"That they do," he said, and looked her with the kind of gentle smile that Hal remembered from his first days on Sakaar when he was adrift, lost and devoid of purpose once he'd managed to secure his survival. "Some of the hints that you've dropped, I'm inclined to think it came from you rather than other way around."

"You are inclined to think many things, Adam Brashear, and quite a few of them might even be true," she said archly. "Some, meanwhile, are quite a way off. Right now, it is Julie, by the way."

"And very rarely will you tell me which is which," he said ruefully. "All right, I'll stop fishing, Julie. Very appropriate, by the way. Julie D'Aubigny, a very colourful historical figure, very appropriate for you."

"I'm glad you think so," was the pert response. "Since she was me."

He stared at her for a moment, then chuckled. "I'm not sure why I'm even surprised," he said. "I won't ask how many of the stories are true, I've had enough for today."

"You say that now," Hal muttered.

"I suppose I am speaking prematurely, from what you've said already, and I have been very rude," Brashear said, sticking out his hand once more. This time, Harry shook it. "Doctor Adam Brashear. I run this place."

"Harry Thorson. No one with any sense lets me run anything."

Brashear chuckled, then gave Harry a considering look. "You've got quite the impressive power signature of your own, Mr Thorson," he said. "And Hal said you were responsible for recharging his battery."

"There were embers, I fanned them into flames," Harry said, shrugging as if this was an everyday sort of thing.

Brashear frowned thoughtfully as they began to make their way towards the lift. "I'd have imagined that the problem was more complex than that," he said. "After all, you would be generating a considerable amount of a very specific kind of power. Even if you used the extant embers as a template, performing such a precise energy transformation is no mean feat."

"It probably is," Harry admitted. "There's probably a lot of very complex science and magic involved in explaining it, much less replicating it."

"Believe me, there is," Julie said dryly. That got her a briefly assessing look from Brashear, but not a surprised one – something that Hal found surprising in itself. Clearly the two knew each other, and quite well, and yeah, that didn't surprise him.

If you were the chief information handler for a significant chunk of Sakaar, and spent as long there as she'd implied, then you'd meet a lot of people. Especially if they were the same species, and from the same world, as you. Plus, the Future Foundation had resources – the kind of resources that, it now occurred to him, someone as teched-up and tech-savvy as Julie might want access to at some point.

However, she'd never previously given any indication of knowing anything about the Lantern, beyond the loose familiarity that some on Sakaar had with the Corps. Well, there'd been the hint that she'd known more, but he hadn't thought much of it. Every knowledge broker worth the name at least acted like they knew more than they did, and he'd figured that if she did know more, it probably wasn't useful. Given that and the fact that she enjoyed cultivating an air of mystery, he'd dismissed it.

Yeah. He was starting to think that maybe that had been a mistake.

"Of course, actually performing the act is fairly intuitive, if you have the power," she went on. "The power source of a Lantern is magic, raw magic. There is little in the universe that is more intuitive than that."

"Wait, what?" Hal asked, startled. "I thought you said it was some kind of exotic energy."

Julie smiled faintly as Harry snorted and Brashear sighed. "'Magic' is exotic energy, Hal," he said, a little apologetically. "In fact, it's a fundamental force of our universe. I just haven't come up with a better name for it yet."

"Why not just call it what it is?" Hal asked, shrugging.

Brashear looked like he'd just been asked to call Pi 'three and a bit' and have done with it.

"I know what it is," he said, sounding somewhat pained. "But calling it 'magic' carries so many connotations of the unknowable, implying that it cannot be understood, when it very much can."

He looked at Julie, then Harry.

"Of course, one thing I was never very clear on was how it worked," he went on. "The fundamental forces are interactions, classical physics at its most, well – fundamental. Gravity, for instance, is the attraction between two objects with mass. It's actually arguably the weakest of the forces, as it's practically imperceptible unless one of the objects has significant mass, whereas the others can be perceived as having effects down to the sub-atomic with ease. Electromagnetism is more complicated, involving the interaction of particles with a positive or negative electrical charge, which covers far more than you'd think: if gravity is what quite literally keeps your feet on the ground, then electromagnetism is arguably why we're alive at all, as it allows stable atoms to form, and thus chemistry, including the chemistry of life. Magic, on the other hand… that one is much harder to pin down."

As the lift rose, the older man seemed to be mulling it over. Harry was listening attentively, frowning slightly in concentration. Julie was leaning back, relaxed in such a way that might make one think that she was just letting it roll over her, when Hal had no doubt whatsoever that she understood every word and then some. Hal, for his part, really was mostly letting it roll over him.

He understood more than he'd necessarily admit, much more. He could pretend to be the dumb pilot, but you didn't get in the air without knowing some serious science. Not if you wanted to come back down in one piece, anyway, which Hal always had. Granted, the same couldn't always be said for his planes, but that was a matter of testing limits. He knew a thing or two, and picked up a fair bit more than that. He was also willing to admit when he was way over his head and wait until he heard something he thought would be helpful. He liked Brashear, he really did, and had masses of respect for the man's vast intellect – nearly as much as he did for the man's determination not to give in to despair. However, when he got going, not much slowed him down.

"Magic is where science blends into art," he said. "Its rules, such as there seem to be, are closer to those of poetry and music than to mathematics. It exists independently of human – or rather, sentient – perception, but it is affected by that perception. There is an absolute psychic component, in the sense that it interacts directly with the mind, though 'why' is unclear."

"That's how I kept my gear powered for that long," Hal said.

"And how you managed to make a ring spark in the first place," Brashear agreed. "There is an order to it, one that Doctor Richards has been studying at some length, but most of the answers are related to how it works and what it can do, rather than the most fundamental 'why'. In simple terms, gravity interacts with mass, electromagnetism interacts with charged particles, strong nuclear force with neutrons, protons, and nuclei, allowing the formation of matter, and weak nuclear force with gauge bosons, allowing neutrons and protons to turn into one another via beta decay."

"That was simple?" Harry muttered quietly, echoing Hal's thoughts exactly. However, though he concealed a chuckle, he was also pretty sure that the kid was keeping up with at least the gist of events, his expression sharp and attentive.

"Relatively," Brashear said lightly, with a small smile, before his expression regained its former consternation.

"With magic, however, there are so many unanswered questions," he continued. "We know that it interacts with psychic energy in terms of minds, but it does not necessarily require significant degrees of psychic energy in the first place, instead seeming to confer it. Indeed, there's enough evidence of magically based technology to make plain that it is not required at all. How, one has to wonder, does one build up a magical charge?" He shot a meaningful look at Harry, then at the battery pack. "Or, indeed, build a magical fire."

Hal, for his part, eyed Julie, expecting her to answer. After all, she seemed to understand both super-science and magic – or at least, she had more than a passing acquaintance with where the two met.

"Life."

Hal blinked, and looked at Harry, who was meeting Brashear's curious gaze.

"Magic is life and life is magic," the teenager said simply, carrying an un-adolescent sense of gravitas. "It's the fire of creation, tied to the soul, and to life in general. You wanted to know what it interacts with? Life, Doctor Brashear. It interacts with life." He looked thoughtful. "You'll probably find that magic's stronger where there are more living things, especially people, especially if they're interacting. It binds them all together, and it can do everything from lighting candles to rearranging the stars in the sky."

"Fascinating," Brashear breathed, pulling out a notebook and industriously scribbling away. "Does that relate to the chemistry of life, then? That might tie it to electromagnetism, perhaps leading to a unification, like that of electromagnetism and weak force at sufficiently high energy levels. Or does it require an organism sufficiently complexity to develop consciousness before it becomes perceptible? How does this fit with records of 'cosmic leylines', what some term 'space magic', stretching through the vacuum of space or on worlds inimical to life?"

This time, all the air of gravitas was gone, leaving Harry looking rather amusingly like a deer in headlights.

"Magic interacts as much with potential as it does with reality," Julie interjected, reserving an amused glance for Harry. "As long as there is the potential for life, the ingredients… there is magic. It is the force that interacts with all of the others, unifying them and affecting them all. If mass and therefore gravity is the lead weight on the rubber sheet of the universe, then life is the hand that bends and shapes the sheet and magic is interwoven with every molecule of it. It is wondrous potential and endless possibility." She idly examined her fingernails. "Once you understand that, you can begin to understand how to use technology to manipulate it."

Hal eyed his gauntlet. "So, you're saying that my rings – and my battery – are incredibly advanced technology," he said.

"Very," Julie said casually. "You see, technology has many meanings."

"Indeed," Brashear agreed. "Essentially, Hal, technology is anything we use to manipulate the environment around us – including symbolic language. It's so easy to look down on our ancestors, from so-called 'cavemen' to any pre-industrial civilisation, but how many of us could create a language? How many of us could design a ship capable of crossing the Pacific and a mythology of the stars as mnemonics to remember guidance across thousands and thousands of miles? How many of us design an aqueduct, forge a sword, or write a symphony? How many of us could, with nothing more than an angle, the distance between two objects, and the sun, calculate the circumference of the Earth to within 145 miles – an error of merely 0.6%?"

He shook his head.

"We hold our ancestors and our predecessors in contempt, dismissing their intelligence on the grounds of magical thinking or quite simply lacking the knowledge and technology that we do, and in doing so we commit our gravest mistake. In doing so, we discount the truly remarkable feats they were able to perform. As it has been said for a thousand years, we have come as far as we have because of those who have gone before; in the words of Sir Isaac Newtown, 'if I have seen further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.'"

"Except that you said these Rings aren't human technology," Hal pointed out. "I mean, you're right – without the Wright brothers and everyone who came after them, we wouldn't have heavier than air flight, let alone jets, let alone space shuttles. I know that there was a Ring on Earth, there has been for ages. Heck, I saw it in action in London. But the Corps was from all over the universe."

"Yes," Brashear said, frowning. "I never quite worked out where they came from, I'm afraid. The database is still proving frustrating to access. However, now that your rings are recharged…"

"Wait, you think you can pull the database from them?" Hal asked, blinking. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Harry's eyebrow rise. Interest, maybe? The kid had said he'd been at the Battle of London, and he'd probably seen the Ring too.

He grimaced inwardly. He still couldn't believe that. Yes, the kid could quite clearly handle himself, in ways that made that the understatement of the millennium. However, even if he'd been as terrifyingly powerful, disturbingly nonchalant, frighteningly competent as he was now (something Hal severely doubted)… kids shouldn't be anywhere near that sort of fight. They just shouldn't. Yet he had been, and Hal would bet all his flying hours gone and yet to come that surviving that experience was part of just how he'd become that nonchalant, competent – and, for that matter, powerful.

"Given the nature of the technology, I think it's a possibility," Brashear said thoughtfully. "What do you think, Julie?"

"I think that practically everything is possible, Doctor Brashear," the woman replied with polished elegance and a hint of mystery, before striding out of the lift. "And some more than others."

Hal enjoyed the sight, because he was only human, then raised an eyebrow at the kid, who was staring fixedly at the ceiling as he stepped out of the lift into the bizarre combination of labs, dorms, and penthouse that made up the accommodations of the senior staff the Foundation.

"Trying not to stare?" he asked, amused.

"What?" Harry asked, startled, looking down, before going pink as he realised what Hal meant. "Oh, no, I was just… reminded of something. Besides, I have a girlfriend."

Hal chuckled. Sometimes, it was hard to remember he was talking to a teenager. Sometimes, it was all too easy.

"Well, not staring is certainly just good manners, but having a girlfriend doesn't mean going blind, you know," he pointed out.

The flush deepened. "I do know," came the slightly grouchy answer. "I really was just reminded of something."

Hal raised an eyebrow and his lips twitched. He probably was at that, though he'd put money on the idea that that wasn't all he'd been thinking about.

"Fair enough," he said. "Care to share?"

"Not yet," Harry said, his gaze locking onto an opening door and two other figures Hal recognised in it. "This is the place where the ultimate problems are solved, right? Except for the real ultimate one of figuring a way out."

Hal twitched. The kid must have plucked that out of his head – and going by his own look of surprise, must not have even realised it.

"Pretty much," he said.

Harry smiled at him, suddenly sly, his eyes dancing, and cracked his knuckles. "Like I said earlier: watch me work."

OoOoO

Doctor Susan Storm, Harry had to say, was a sight for sore eyes. While he knew intellectually that Hal Jordan had been trapped on Sakaar for more or less the exact same length of time as her, that he hadn't physically aged in a relative decade and a half, and he was utterly determined to free him and everyone else from this gods-forsaken reality, this was the first time he'd actually met Hal.

Sue was another matter.

When he'd last seen her… it had been a lifetime ago.

Well, actually, strictly speaking it only been a year of normal time. However, he had spent six months in the Red Room, and maybe six months in the past and now here – time had flown, especially in the emotional purging process with Shou-Lao. More like two years, really.

Two years in which, he was acutely aware, everything had changed.

The last time Sue Storm had seen him, he had been a shy thirteen year old, slowly opening up and coming around to the idea that love – especially familial love – was not and should not be conditional. Small and spectacled, a little verbally clumsy, and as innocent as Clark in many ways, seeing things if not in black and white, then with rather fewer shades of grey than he did now. The closest that he had come to combat was an admittedly unnerving run-in with the Disir, some Doom-bots, the Basilisk, and Quirrell. His idea of verbal dexterity and manipulation had been a somewhat fumbled but successful attempt to set up Sue and Lex.

Yes, he had been innocent. Innocent in so, so many ways.

Two years of blood and battle and pain; of love and adventure and learning. Years of power, years of helplessness, years of suffering, years of joy. Years of blindness and years of enlightenment. Years of wonder and years of horror. Years that had, eventually, taught him how much he had still to learn.

Once, not so long ago, that musing would have attracted either a mournful sigh or a wondering at how he had been so naïve.

Now, he knew better. He looked back with fond, wry amusement, and the occasional wince. There was a touch of wistfulness about it, perhaps, but not maudlin moping. Yes, there were things he regretted doing (or not doing), and changes that he regretted. That was inevitable. Not all the things or changes had been inevitable, necessarily, but that there were going to be regrets? That was inevitable.

However, what was done was done, and all they could was move forward. If a mistake was made, apologies and recompense could be made, and it could be learned from. As he had long ago accepted but now truly understood, he had changed, and he would continue to do so, because life was all about change. This last period had helped him appreciate more than ever, and all things told, he quite liked where he was right now.

Well.

As a person, anyway.

Still, he thought, pulling himself out of his musings, he wasn't at all surprised when Sue's reaction was one of brief puzzlement followed by dawning recognition and deep shock, then a mixture of astonishment, a spike of delight at familiarity, and dawning horror.

"I know," he said dryly, as she opened her mouth. "You were expecting someone shorter."

"Harry Potter, is that you?" she asked in disbelief.

"In the flesh," he said, with a small smile. "Though I prefer Harry Thorson these days."

She stared at him for a few moments, cataloguing changes and comparing his face to probably faded memories of someone quite, but not so very, different.

"Harry," she breathed eventually. "Oh no, no – I mean, it's wonderful to see you, but here, no, you can't have been caught up in this."

"I take it you two know each other," Hal and Brashear said in identical ironic tones, before exchanging surprised looks.

"We do, though not as well as I would have liked," Harry said, reaching out to shake her hand and getting pulled into a tight hug instead.

The part of him that craved contact to make up for a decade or so of Dursley neglect and was too relieved to question affection closed his eyes and enjoyed it as he returned the embrace. The part of him that the rest rolled its metaphorical eyes at also enjoyed it, because there was a good deal to enjoy about hugging Sue Storm and fine, Hal was right, having a girlfriend didn't make you dead okay he got it shut up.

After several long moments, she released him, and began to study him anew. "God, how long has it been?" she asked. "Five years? Ten?"

"Eight," Harry said, then added, with a smirk as she began to nod, "months. Eight months since the Battle of London, though more like fifteen since we last saw each other, in linear time. Of course, I haven't been entirely in linear time so it's actually a little over two years, from my perspective."

Sue looked him up and down once more, then chuckled ruefully. "I'd say that you've grown, but that would be stating the blindingly obvious," she said, before her smile faded. "How did you get here? I… would imagine Hal has told you about Sakaar."

"I gave him the basics," Hal commented. "Didn't seem to bother him too much."

"I've been in tighter spots," Harry replied. "And it would take something much cleverer than this to keep me from leaving."

There was a long pause, one that carried both disbelief and a certain chill.

"With respect, young man, you're talking about my life's work," Brashear said with commendable steadiness. "We have reached into the depths of science and sorcery, and studies beyond either, trying to find a way out of this cage. You are undoubtedly incredibly, even exceptionally, powerful. But this place has held gods, demons, and living concepts, and the only one who can open the door is the Grandmaster. I have every faith in the power of our ingenuity to change that and unpick the ever-changing lock someday. But it will not be a simple matter."

Harry blinked at him, then flushed as he realised his misstep.

"He can do it, Adam."

Everyone to the until now largely quiet Julie, who was wearing a serious expression.

"We have never lacked for ingenuity, and between us, we have hit upon the means," she said. "What we have lacked – the only thing that we have lacked – is the power." She nodded at Harry. "He has that power, Adam, he can burn holes in our reality just by exerting his powers for too long in one place, and his power is as alien to this reality and its creator as the Grandmaster is to ours. By its very nature, it is designed to destroy places like this, or at least before they can begin." She smiled wryly. "Needless to say, that didn't go as planned. And yet, the point remains: Positive to Negative, Matter to Anti-Matter, Yin to Yang… never shall the twain meet without consequence."

"I don't have some clever solution," Harry said, rather embarrassed. "I, uh. Well. I've got the cosmic equivalent of a blowtorch."

"Indeed," Julie said dryly. "Who needs a lockpick when you have a supernova?"

"That… is probably an understatement," Harry said.

"An interesting hypothesis," the so-far silent third scientist said. He was pale to the point of being pallid, with dark eyes and light brown hair streaked with white at the temples, though perhaps more from stress than age. He was fingering a blank golden helm, a subconscious motion born of habit or perhaps thought. There was something vaguely familiar about him, Harry felt, and something distinctly odd about that helm. "Especially if my own analysis –" Here, the light motions became a more insistent drumming. " – of our guest's power signature is correct. It is exceptionally rare, but very distinctive."

Sue and Brashear both looked at him, and then, in unison, at the helm. When they shifted to the latter, there was a tinge of unease in their expressions, but also a hint of hope.

"However," he added. "Every hypothesis requires –"

Harry interrupted him without a word, without anything more than a flick of his fingers. A bolt of blinding white fire lashed out and struck empty air, which caught like touchpaper, a perfect circle burning to nothingness like a magnesium flare, slicing a chunk out of the floor. Hal swore, loudly.

"... proof," he finished, trailing off slowly, and staring at Harry's handiwork.

It was a hole in the air, no, a hole in the world, ten feet in diameter, displaying a field of stars. It was immediately obvious, even from a glance, that they were profoundly different from anything on Sakaar. Indeed, there was nothing bizarre about what they saw, which in the context of Sakaar made it perhaps the most bizarre thing that they could have seen.

Harry examined it, then raised index finger and thumb and brought them closer together, and the view narrowed rapidly, zooming in on a thriving planet. The inhabitants were small creatures, hardly up to Harry's waist, with large heads, enormous eyes, and at first glance they seemed to be made of orange gelatine. They were also ones that Harry recognised, bringing a small smile to his lips. He was glad to see that they were doing well.

"Will that do?" he asked mildly.

"Can we pass through it?" Brashear replied.

"I'd need to tweak it to reach ground level, but sure."

"How has there been no air exchange or equalisation of pressure?" Sue asked. "You're not just burning through reality, you're folding space. Reed, please take that helmet off. If Nabu wants to grace us with his insight he can do so without you wearing him."

The other man, Reed, seemed to only be half paying attention, intently studying the portal despite the fact that he was now wearing what seemed to be an all-covering golden helm. At Sue's comment, he paused, gave it a final and very literally long look, before removing the helm. As in, his neck was stretching out to get a better look, while his fingers split and contorted, growing eyes on their tips to get what seemed like a very all-round look at the situation.

"My apologies, Susan," he said. "However, while Nabu can advise us and contribute in the form of his helm, intermingling our minds is the quickest and most efficient way to come to a conclusion. The result is greater than the sum of its parts."

"I am not sure if the sum is worth the price," she retorted.

It was a tribute to Harry's tolerance for oddness that this all barely gained a passing raised eyebrow, and a sharp, assessing look at the helm. As for Sue's question, he paused, grimaced, then shrugged apologetically. He had no clear answer.

"It's a subconscious calculation," Julie explained. "In much the same way that, for instance, we can instinctively judge the flight of a moving object to catch it, or to throw it with sometimes remarkable accuracy. In the case of an ordinary person, they have the supercomputer that is the human brain to make such calculations. In the case of someone wielding powers derived from a fundamental aspect of our universe, they have the supercomputer that essentially is the universe to make such calculations. It comes through as instinct, intuition, and an ability to bend the laws of nature to your will. Up to a point."

"Of course," Harry continued. "This isn't our universe, and it doesn't have our laws of nature. It doesn't like me, or the power I'm carrying around, very much – and it probably hates my aunt."

"She came with him," Hal added helpfully. "Landed somewhere different. Met Lobo, dressed him in lingerie, and slugged him into the upper atmosphere with his own bike. He went up, up, and a very, very long way. For all I know, he could still be coming down."

"I'm guessing that this is an aunt on your father's side?" Sue asked dryly.

"Technically a many times removed great-aunt, but yes," Harry said. "I should mention that while I'm really from only eight months after you left – you were taken – I've time travelled a bit. I was wandering around somewhere around… 38,000 BC? Something like that. Anyway, she's been doing this whole thing longer than I have." Before anyone could ask about that, he turned to Brashear. "So, Doctor Brashear, you have an incomplete database from the Lantern Rings."

"With an emphasis on the incomplete aspect," Brashear replied. "Though I'm hopeful that the recharge will have rebooted the data storage systems. Still, the history I've gathered so far is fascinating." He turned to one of the computers and started typing rapidly. "We can't necessarily date when each ring is from, but we have an image from the very first moments of the Corps."

An image appeared; a powerful figure with an expression of utmost resolve, statuesque and cast in emerald green, burning white, and shimmering gold.

"Huh," Harry said eloquently.

"Impressive, isn't she?" Hal remarked, with a kind of crooked, reflected pride. He was, after all, looking at the founder of the Corps whose mighty boots he aspired to fill as just one man (and, Harry thought, had more than succeeded in doing so, though good luck persuading him of that). "Apparently she's some kind of powerful higher being, an ancient goddess of some kind. She forged the first Lantern rings."

"The former is up for debate," Brashear said. "The timeline is unclear, though thanks to Nabu and Hal, we know that there's been a Green Lantern Ring on Earth since ancient times, and many of the rings we've found are ancient on a truly cosmic scale. They've played a major part in our universe's history, its past, and its future. The latter, though… that seems undeniable. I spent a few years digging for answers, but I never got them. Now you recharged the Ring, I'm hopeful that we can dig up something, anything – perhaps even just her name. It would be something to find out who created the Corps."

"Mmm," Harry said, carefully maintaining an absolutely steady expression. "Or I could tell you right now." He tilted his head. "It's a good likeness, I'll say that. Though your information is a tiny bit garbled. She founded the Corps, yes. She didn't create the original Ring, though. Actually, the damn thing wouldn't leave her alone."

Several heads turned to look at him. "Wait, you've met her?" Hal burst in, startled.

"Oh yes. Many times, in fact."

"How?"

"Well, for starters, she's my girlfriend."

"What. The. Fuck."

OoOoO

"… so, yeah. I'm sort of a host of the Phoenix, though not exactly the normal way," Harry finished.

It had been decided that it would probably save a lot of time if they – and by 'they', it was mostly meant 'he', since Julie seemed to favour an almost-Strange-like reticence (or to use her own fencing adjacent metaphor, "I prefer to pick my moments.").

"I have all the powers, though it takes a bit longer to get them revved up than most," Harry continued. "And my fragment was designed for a different purpose."

"Which includes your dead mother intermittently possessing you to wreak havoc on those who would harm you," Sue said, with admirable calm.

Unlike most people encountering the insanity that was Harry's present, let alone his past, even the concise version he'd provided just now to get them up to speed on the relevant parts (with occasional input and hints from Julie), she managed to keep focused rather than looking like she'd been whacked between the eyes with Mjolnir.

The least of what she'd been told was that the sweet and innocent child she'd last seen had, in the space of the fifteen months/two and a bit years since she'd last seen him (depending how you counted), changed quite dramatically. To be exact, into a literally battle-scarred warrior coming off the back of a vaguely sketched but truly horrific case of PTSD, being a somewhat philosophical personality who regarded danger with a mixture of interest, amusement, and professional calculation. Considering all that, her composure was quite impressive.

Though in Harry's opinion, he could probably have done without Julie nonchalantly interjecting as he tried to elide some of the more nerve-wracking details with, "'it's do or die; hey, I've died twice.'"

The fact that it was delivered in a perfect soprano made it even worse.

However, all of those present were either career military or career scientists (and in the case of Doctor Brashear, a little of both), and knew well enough not to interrupt until he was done. No matter how much some of them might have wanted to, going by the expressions.

"My mother's not exactly dead and not exactly able to intervene with me directly anymore, let alone possess me," Harry replied. "Ask the possessed helmet. By the way, Doctor Richards, I am absolutely supporting Sue – Doctor Storm – on this. I've seen mental influence before, and personality merges. They're not always pretty, even when they're personalities derived from the same person. When they're, say, a stupidly ancient ex Sorcerer Supreme who now inhabits a semi-indestructible golden helmet – and I say 'semi' because I like a challenge – because they don't seem to trust the universe to hang on without them… even worse idea. On the other hand, I think you were meant to find him."

"You claim that Doctor Strange intentionally put Nabu in my path," Reed remarked, intrigued.

"Well, going by a memory that a very irritated Nabu is currently radiating, Strange told him to make himself useful for once, then literally drop-kicked him into a chaos rift. But yes, pretty much. Which, again, makes me think that enough is enough and you should keep that helmet off. What? Oh, shut up, I'm not a 'chaotic influence'. You're just annoyed that I'm onto you, you unnecessarily over-priced talking hat."

"Harry?"

"Sorry, got distracted. Nabu started whining."

"Yes, he doesn't seem to like you very much."

"He hates my teacher, which I can't really blame him for, and he's also incredibly suspicious of anything to do with chaos magic. Since my godmother is pretty much the chaos witch, I've been possessed by the Elder God of Chaos and Black Magic – who I kicked back out of reality by the way – and my godmother installed a chaos based blessing that's visible on me if you know what to look for, and he's an uptight Order-obsessed blinged out hard hat… he's really not likely to like me very much."

"The fact you keep insulting him probably doesn't help, kid."

"… he started it."

OoOoO

Once Harry's explanation was done, things rapidly got more sombre. Given that it was the turn of the Future Foundation to start explaining things, this was not entirely surprising.

In fine scientific tradition, however, the first thing they had was questions. One of them was why she had kept so quiet about Harry's coming, when it seemed that he would be the key to their liberty.

"Firstly, there was no guarantee that he would come," Julie replied. "It was a very significant possibility, well over 97%, but it was by no means guaranteed. Secondly, he is only one-third of what will be needed to pull of what I intend. Another is his aunt, the odds of whose presence were similar to his, though the odds of their joint presence were rather lower. Thirdly, I have been designing back-ups, ones that I would really rather not use."

"Why is that?" Reed asked, frowning curiously.

"Because I would rather avoid committing genocide, Reed," she retorted, verging on a snap.

"Hold up, genocide?" Hal demanded. "Care to explain that?"

Julie raised a finger. "First of all, penetrating the barrier between realities and maintaining that resultant wormhole requires vast amounts of energy," she said. "To maintain a large enough and durable enough wormhole to evacuate even the smallest fraction of Sakaar, let alone protect it from the Grandmaster's interference –"

"– would require drawing on the only power source strong enough: vacuum energy from Sakaar itself," Brashear interjected, eyes widening.

"And the more strain that was put on it, the faster the zero point energy would be drained entirely," Sue said suddenly.

"And thus, entropy would increase exponentially," Reed picked up. "Leading to…" He faltered.

"Leading to what?" Hal demanded, sweeping the three suddenly very grim looking scientists.

"Leading to the total collapse of Sakaar," Julie said softly. "And the death of countless billions that we would not be able to save."

"We couldn't just do it slowly?" Hal asked.

"A sort of trans-universal underground railroad?" Brashear suggested. "No. The power requirements would likely be too extreme, and even if it were possible… the Grandmaster would most likely notice. He would either not be pleased, or he would be far, far too pleased. One of his aspirations has been to establish stable two-way gateways rather than the extant one way portals, to reach into our universe and draw from it as he pleases, rather than simply feeding off the scraps that fall through cracks in reality."

"That's why you need both of us, me and Sunniva," Harry realised, looking at Julie. "One to power this escape tunnel, and one to fight the Grandmaster."

"Yes," Julie said bluntly. "Though it will be rather more sophisticated than a tunnel, and if needs be, I could have managed with one of you. One thing I state beyond doubt is this: the Grandmaster cannot be allowed to establish a foothold in our reality." Her gaze snapped over to the others. "All my plans have something in common: they need the Future Foundation. They need your work. They need your studies, your intellect, your will. Power alone, even the raw might that a Phoenix can muster, is not enough. It needs to be distributed, directed, guided. A machine cannot run without power, but power cannot substitute for the machine."

"What kind of machine?" Hal asked.

She met his gaze and smiled a crooked smile. "The kind that, with good luck and a following wind, can do the impossible," she said. "Save everyone." She eyed Harry, who had straightened up. "Though before we do that, hatting up and heroically saving the day, we will need to prepare our moves with some flair and a very great deal of care. This is not the Nevernever, Harry, or Asgard, or anything like any realm you have so far encountered, save perhaps the White Hot Room. This will be different, and you should understand why."

Brashear nodded. "While I can't claim to know any of those places, I have encountered a few other dimensions and pocket realities in my time," he said. "Doctors Storm and Richards have encountered still others, as have a few other members of staff."

He paused.

"This is not one of those." He shook his head. "At first, I believed it to be so, that it was merely another dimension, a bubble created for the Grandmaster to rule over everything that he has either managed to salvage or steal through the cracks between our reality and him. It is not."

"Then what is it?" Harry asked, echoed by Hal an instant after, the former with thoughtful curiosity, the latter with growing dread.

"It is his body; Sakaar is him, specifically his digestive system, his gut – all that falls into it is slowly altered, digested and processed and transformed. As our food and drink become flesh and fat, muscle and bone, energy to keep on moving and growing, all matter and energy that enters Sakaar is also transformed. Transformed, eventually, into more of him."

There was a dead silence.

"It happens slowly and subtly to living matter, much more so than to that which is dead," Reed picked up, after a few moments. "So far, I am unsure why, though we have our theories. Extradimensional energies, and magic, tend to have differing effects on organic and inorganic matter, as well as that which is living and that which is dead, even if it is by philosophical standards rather than technical ones. And not all life seems to be considered equal, either…"

"Regardless," Sue said, gently but firmly cutting across Reed. "That is how it happens, and it is so slow, so subtle so that it's very easy to miss what is happening until it passes the point of tipping point. We've come to call that phenomenon 'Fading', because sufferers begin to do exactly that: fade. Over time, they become listless, hopeless, and aimless. They are somehow thinner, like photographs in sunlight or mist in the dawn – more than ghosts and less than living."

"They're being hollowed out," Harry said quietly.

"Yes," Brashear said, grim as he took up the narrative once more. "That is actually a rather apt way of putting it. Like a spider's prey, they are essentially injected with digestive fluids, then dissolved from the inside out, becoming an easily processed soup. As I say, it is not obvious. In fact, with a very few exceptions, it is happening to all of us right now."

"Almost all," Julie murmured.

"It affects people at different rates, and if it is caught early, it can be slowed, arrested even, but every delay is temporary," Brashear continued, shooting Julie a sharp look that encouraged elaboration. None was forthcoming. "If it is not… then there is nothing that can be done other than to give them a choice: to die as they are, or to continue clinging to every last moment of existence. I judge neither choice. It is as reasonable to wish to die as yourself as it is to hang on, to wring out every last heartbeart of your life. Choosing not to end it before the final transformation, however… that is another matter."

"Transformation?" Harry asked sharply.

"Eventually, they are devoured entirely, the result nothing more than a shade, a shadow of their former selves, devoid of all identity and will," Brashear said heavily. "Featureless hooded creatures, clad in ragged remnants of their former clothing, lying crossways to even such rules of reality that there are here. Neither matter nor energy, neither living nor dead, they are a perversion of what they were and everything that is. Fades, Lurks, Shades, and Phantoms, they go by all those names and a million more, and they hunt others. How they go about that takes two forms."

He raised one finger.

"In the first case, they find another body, another person they deem vulnerable," he said. "Often someone close to the tipping point in their own right. They exploit that vulnerability, climb inside them and devour everything that makes them who they are, wearing that body and identity as their own. Eventually, they depart, leaving behind nothing more than an empty husk. These are sometimes known as Soul-Eaters."

He raised a second finger, as Harry sat bolt upright, catching everyone's attention. However, like Julie, he did not elaborate.

"In the second… they don't bother climbing in," Brashear said. "Instead, they are drawn to those with strong emotions, those who, perversely, are often furthest from transformation. They drain those emotions, that identity, from the outside and, again, leave behind the empty husk of their prey. I believe that in both cases, they seek to replace the identity they have lost with that of their prey, something to fill the yawning voids that they have become."

He exhaled.

"They sometimes leave behind such husks when they transform in their own right," he said. "There is no pattern to it, no rhyme or reason, though why I would have expected one I really don't know. Like their prey, it is nothing more than an empty husk. The Grandmaster finds uses for them – they have been known to stand up and walk away from where they fell, directed remotely to wherever he wishes them to go. It is… profoundly disturbing."

"It's completely fucking freaky," Hal translated.

"The Fades bend to his command as well," Sue interjected. "Their numbers fluctuate, but usually decrease when he pays attention." Her lips thinned. "Husks, after all, are much less interesting to him than people."

"But he finds them useful?" Harry asked, expression unreadable.

"Useful, sometimes. Amusing, likewise," Brashear replied. "He has been known to use them to walk among his people or test out a new form, as if trying on a new set of clothes. More often than not, he eventually transforms them into what some call the Shadow People. Others call them 'Paper People'. Most just call them 'Husks'. All the names are apt enough: they look like they are made of a mixture of shadows and ashes. They aren't particularly powerful, or intelligent, though they serve well enough as thugs for the Grandmaster when he feels the need – or simply the desire."

Brashear stood up.

"You may have noticed that Sakaar is a rather… hedonistic place," he said. "Where the maxim of 'eat, drink, and be merry' has been adopted all across the realm because death is only one short step around the corner. The mundane explanation is the lack of any real law or order, save that which we scrape together ourselves, giving free license to all. The deeper one is that on some level or another, everyone realises an essential truth: we are all doomed. Slowly but surely, we are all being eaten alive. And eventually, everything and everyone in Sakaar becomes nothing more than another part, another aspect, of the Grandmaster."

"Which means," Julie warned, as she spotted something gleam in Harry's eyes. "That simply incinerating him is not an option. Not unless you wish to emulate Chthon during the Battle of London. If you succeeded, you would be destroying everything. And that is if you succeeded. You have fought him before, or part of him, though your aunt handled the most part. He is changed now, more intelligent, more dangerous, and here, you are in his reality, his place of power, not your own. Being invasive and corrosive to this reality gives you advantages, but there are also many vulnerabilities, too."

"The invasion he mentioned, that he encountered, that was the Grandmaster?" Sue interjected.

"It was," Julie said. "The Beast of Annihilation, Annihilus as he is sometimes called, is an earlier, lesser, aspect of the Grandmaster. One that, it should be said, highlights how vicious he can be if he so wishes. His methods have changed since then; for Harry it has been less than a day, for the Grandmaster it has been comparative eons, he sits outside time and it has little meaning to him. That event led to, and perhaps inadvertently caused, the formation of Sakaar – he was left a dwarf galaxy's worth of matter and energy, half-digested, and a few questions about what to do with it." She eyed Harry. "Which does not mean it is your fault."

Harry raised his hands defensively. "I know, I know," he said. "I've had that kind of sentiment driven into my head, over and over again."

"Good," she said simply.

With that, Harry suddenly turned to Susan.

"Sue," he said carefully. "You mentioned that others came through with you, shortly after the Battle. One of them, your friend Ben, ended up as a gladiator."

"He did, yes."

"And the other…"

"… was my brother." Sue's expression tightened. "He's one of the Grandmaster's favourites," she continued, answering the unasked question. "If the Grandmaster thinks we've been helpful, or is feeling indulgent, we're allowed monitored visits."

Harry nodded slightly, as if this was more or less what he'd expected. "I was told that bounty hunters were looking to scoop me up because I could be a contender in the Contest of Champions," he said quietly. "I was also told that I was the type of good-looking that he likes. I didn't meet your brother many times, but from what I remember, he was good-looking too."

He leaned forward.

"I know what that's like," he said, voice still quiet and absolutely steady. "I know what it can mean. If he's just an ornament, a courtier, a jester… we can table that. But if there's something else, happening then I'll rearrange my priorities and I will do what I did at the Battle of London."

"What is that?" Doctor Brashear asked.

Those emerald green eyes burned and they burned cold.

"Make an Elder God scream."

There was a moment of absolute silence, and Hal exhaled slowly. For the most part, he'd seen two sides to the kid: first, well, there was the teenager, who actually acted like a fifteen year old with superpowers should act; cheeky, mischievous, a bit cocky, a teeny bit flustered by attractive people, and excitable around someone they idolised. Then there was the experienced spec ops agent, SHIELD style; clinical, hyper-observant, cool under fire, and at ease with the weirdest of situations – reminiscent of Clint Barton, actually.

The contrast between the two was jarring, if only because in the latter case, teenagers should not act like that. Half-Asgardian or not, he shouldn't be in battle, he shouldn't be that comfortable in battle, and he shouldn't treat something like being dumped on Sakaar as an everyday kind of thing. But he did.

Then, there had been moments when he'd seen a third side; the cosmic god, wielding vast and unknowable powers, powers that took him well past unsettling into downright eerie, and probably had a lot to do with why he was so confident of getting off Sakaar and taking everyone with him.

Still: all three sides were of a fundamentally good-natured kid. A fighter, certainly, but not a killer.

This was a fourth.

This one was different.

Hal had been a cop for a long time, and military before that, overlapping with organisations like SHIELD. He'd spent most of his life surrounded by both dangers and dangerous people, and frankly, he was pretty dangerous himself. He knew dangerous.

And he was looking at it right now.

There was no posturing in his stance, no lies or bravado in his voice. Just a promise, made of a fury so cold that it burned. If Doctor Storm said the word, then the kid would make good on his word. He might even have the power to pull it off. He looked like he was already planning it. And if he did it… Hal was pretty sure that he wouldn't even blink twice. It was all in the eyes. No kid should have those eyes.

"He hasn't."

Everyone turned to the sombre looking Julie.

"I've been keeping an eye on him," she said. "The Grandmaster's tastes and whims are peculiar to say the least, but mostly, he sees his favourites as collectables or ornaments – pretty baubles, rather than objects of lust. Toys, at most. He's not exactly an ordinary being: he doesn't procreate the traditional way, if you follow me. Any traditional way. Or non-traditional way, come to that."

"You're suggesting that because he doesn't have the instincts that would drive desire," Reed said, frowning.

Julie nodded. "I can only theorise beyond that, regarding the psychological and cultural aspects, but the simple fact is that while he takes a humanoid form, he is anything but," she said. "Even 'he' is a fairly arbitrary designation, based on his apparent preference. Form does influence function, he is a total hedonist, and he certainly has a wide if eclectic interest in the cultures of our reality – especially Earth. That interest has led to… phases, shall we say, but they are both brief and infrequent." She shrugged. "For the most part, he simply doesn't see us that way."

Her expression turned grim.

"Would that he did."

"What do you mean?" Sue asked, voice low and intense.

Julie's gaze met hers.

"I mean that that would be easier to manage or prevent. I mean that the alternatives are, somehow, worse." Her gaze flickered to Harry, who was watching her with the narrowed eyes and coiled tension of a falcon on the wrist. "And I mean that at least one of us has seen them before."

Her gaze flicked back to the others before this could be explored.

"Johnny's fate is no kinder. The Grandmaster sees him and those like him as a source of entertainment – everyone, really, though those in particular – and therefore expects to be entertained, whether it is by being or doing. He is a curio. If he ceases to amuse in his own right, then he will become perhaps a cat's cradle to be toyed with, a puzzle to be pulled apart to see how it works, or a clay doll to be shaped, stretched, and reshaped on a whim. Or be discarded entirely."

Sue closed her eyes. "Reed – Fate – has said the same sort of thing," she said. "This time, I appreciate the lack of effort to comfort me."

"Comfort is useful, when there is nothing else you can do," Julie said gently. "It helps you cope in the bad times."

"Kindness is rarely wasted," Harry said suddenly. "Misguided, perhaps, but never wasted." He smiled wryly, with little humour. "Though platitudes usually are."

The air of rage around him, soft and deadly, seemed to have vanished as quickly as it appeared. But Hal didn't trust to impressions – especially not after he'd missed something like this. And he always watched the eyes. It wasn't gone, not entirely… just banked to embers. As this last day or so had taught him, where this young man was concerned, embers could very quickly become much, much more.

Even now, there was a mildly unsettling air about him, as he stood up and tilted his head, concentrating as he revolved on the spot, waving away enquiries as to what he was doing. It wasn't unlike the way he'd responded to that creepy helmet that Richards sometimes wore, reacting to half of a conversation that no one else could hear. Once again, there was a sense that he was sensing something beyond the ordinary. Cautiously, Hal engaged the rings on his gauntlet in his own scan, and was surprised when there was a sudden overlay on his vision: Julie, overlaid in the same emerald green as his gauntlet and the rings, threaded through with indigo and violet, and a thick streak of blue. Will, something whispered to him. Will, Compassion, Love, Hope. He blinked, trying to blink it away, but it was still there as he glanced over to the others.

None of them had any shortage of Green, of Will, though it was threaded through with yellow in Doctor Richards' case, surprisingly strongly, (Fear, that same voice whispered), as well as frankly far more Violet Love than Hal would ever have credited the absently detached scientist with. There was a great deal of Indigo and Blue in Doctor Brashear, too, with the fading remnants of red (Rage, another whisper). Residual anger at what Julie had said nothing of, perhaps?

Doctor Storm also had plenty of Green, and more than a chunk of Indigo and Violet, which didn't surprise him in the least, and a solid amount of Blue Hope. But what he really noticed was a rapidly thickening element of Yellow, of fear, as she looked at Harry; she suspected or feared something that the others did not, what was that?

And Harry, Harry was almost a shimmering rainbow, all seven colours swirling around him, yellow fear the thinnest, red rage being subsumed by violet love and indigo compassion, and Hal was getting a headache because now it was all fading into blinding white light as the teenager spun in a blur and reached through the air, grabbing something and –

The overlay faded, as Hal cursed and tried to blink spots out of his eyes. Once he had done, he could immediately feel the tension in the room, so palpable you could almost cut it.

"What the hell is going on?" he demanded, thinking as he did that this summed up most of his feelings about today as a whole. Then, his eyes settled on what a very surprised – and now intensely curious – Harry was holding. That surprise, and that curiosity, seemed to be matched by the contents of his arms, which were staring up at him in fascination.

As Hal stared, as he caught the expressions, a mind honed by a decade and a half of policing raced to its conclusions, realising that he was not simply looking at something rare, but at something downright unique.

He looked up at Doctors Storm, Richards, and Brashear, all of whom were frozen, and at Julie, who didn't even look the slightest bit surprised whether in fact she was or not. At his mute question, Susan closed her eyes and exhaled.

"Hal, Harry… Julie," she said. "This…"

"Isn't what it looks like?" Hal suggested. "Because it looks like something that is supposed to be impossible."

"Not impossible," Harry said quietly, and smiled, largely for the benefit of the one he was looking at. "A miracle."

Sue managed a slight smile. "Yes," she said. "A miracle. A most unexpected miracle." She looked at Hal and took a deep breath. "This is our son. Francis Benjamin Storm-Richards. By our count, he is six years old. And to the best of our knowledge, he is the only child ever to be born on Sakaar."

Hal gaped.

"Yes," Julie said, into the silence. "This would be where things start to get complicated."

Oh yeah. That is exactly who you think it is. I've been looking forward to this, too. Little notation on the name: that will be discussed. Suffice to say, if you quickly skimmed Sue and Johnny's backstory in this fic, and you would have to because it's such a long damned time ago that I'm the only one who remembers, there are reasons that they can't really call him Franklin. The why will be touched upon, and it will start to unfold things that have been years in the planning and will be years in the coming.

Also, the emotional spectrum making a cameo does not mean that the various Corps will be appearing, I just thought it would be a neat filter and nod to Lantern lore.