B'dg waited patiently for half a minute as the green light slowly faded. The patient still hadn't stirred—his breathing and expression unchanged from before.
She blinked her big round eyes. The squirrel Green Lantern hesitated, choosing her words with care. She didn't want to agitate her new colleague. The ring was powerful, but it had limits—it was a tool, not a god to be worshipped.
"..."
She'd just opened her mouth to suggest that Simon might want to let go of this particular hope—when she snapped it shut again.
Because the patient had woken up.
The effect was immediate and absolute. B'dg could swear on the Squirrel God herself: one second ago, this man had been in a full vegetative state. One second later, he was completely alert. A little weak—B'dg suspected hunger, mostly—but cognitively and physically intact in every way that mattered.
"Good lord," she breathed. "You really are a miracle worker, Simon."
Miracle Worker. The title would follow Simon Baz for the rest of his life, and his legendary career began the day he met a giant squirrel.
He didn't linger to talk with his brother-in-law and friend. As far as Simon was concerned, if the ring had answered him—if it had accomplished what should have been impossible—then he owed it something in return. A life for a life. He'd stake everything he had on solving Earth's current crisis, and if he could manage it, he'd avenge the ring's original owner: Hal Jordan.
As Simon Baz stepped onto his path as a hero, Earth had already erupted into chaos.
Several of the faster heroes had fanned out across the globe, throwing everything they had into destroying the Third Army.
Star City—Diana had volunteered for this particular assignment, for reasons everyone already understood.
Working alongside Green Arrow and Mister Terrific, she'd already brought down hundreds of people assimilated by the Third Army, and they hadn't even had time to rest before a silver shape blazed in from the distance. It didn't slow down at all—the figure cut diagonally past Green Arrow at full speed, no deceleration.
Oliver wasn't wearing his mechanical exoskeleton today—just his hood, his bow, his arrows. He'd had no warning. Even with Diana grabbing at his arm, the silver blur carved a clean groove across his shoulder.
No time to bandage it. He rolled, pivoted, and fired in the direction of the attacker.
In the same instant, Mister Terrific's T-Spheres deployed a wide electric net.
The attacker moved fast—graceful as a swan through open air—and evaded both the incoming arrow and the net with a single elegant mid-flight turn.
A young woman came to a hovering halt above them, poised and imperious. The most striking thing about her was a pair of immaculate white wings.
"Vanessa?" Diana studied her carefully. This was nothing like the girl she remembered—the one who used to follow her around begging for Greek mythology stories. What could have changed her this much?
"Wonder Woman..." Vanessa seemed half-lost in her own world, murmuring under her breath.
"I've told you before—you can call me Diana. You're my friend."
"Ha." The sound Vanessa made wasn't quite a laugh. "Your friend. You have so many friends. All these years—have you visited me even once? I've been watching you from a distance all this time. Have you ever once thought of me?"
She was shouting loud enough that deafness was the only excuse for not hearing her.
Oliver pressed a hand over his shoulder wound, his expression going quietly strange as he looked between Vanessa and Diana. Mister Terrific—operating at the absolute peak of human intelligence—tilted his head with the look of a man who had just understood something unfortunate.
Diana was furious. This was baseless slander, delivered at full volume, just in case anyone within a mile radius hadn't gotten the message yet.
She'd always been considerate of others' dignity. But on this particular subject, she could not be vague. "To me, you're just a friend. Nothing more. There is nothing between us."
"Just a friend." Vanessa's voice dropped. "And what about Miss Queen? Is she just your friend too?"
The moment this touched his sister, Oliver's bow was up and drawn. What Silver Swan had done on arrival—that first strike—had been aimed to kill. He wasn't going to offer her a second chance.
"Thea Queen." Vanessa's voice turned knife-edged. "Born with everything—a lover, a family, power. Do you know, Diana? I can walk again because of Queen Consolidated's nanobots. But I don't thank her for it. I hate her. Hate her with everything I have. And I hate you too."
She's out of her mind, Mister Terrific muttered under his breath.
Apparently that landed somewhere tender. Vanessa's lips parted—and a wave of ultrasonic force rolled out of her.
Mister Terrific was roughly comparable to Batman in raw ability. Given preparation, he could neutralize eighty percent of his enemies. Without preparation and without the plot armor that heroes tend to take for granted, he'd be as good as dead. Diana stepped in front of him fast—she'd tanked Circe's direct spellwork before; a sonic attack wasn't going to do much—and stopped it with one hand.
"You've changed," Diana said quietly. "You used to be a kind girl."
A short, hollow laugh. Vanessa produced a folded drawing from somewhere and spread it open before the three of them. "I'm not Vanessa," she said, her voice dropping to something cold and certain. "That fragile, pathetic creature is dead. I am Silver Swan—reborn." Diana was a New God; Green Arrow's eyesight was exceptional. They could both see it clearly: two figures against a blue sky—Diana in the foreground with sword and shield, Vanessa with wings spread wide in pursuit behind her, a crowd cheering somewhere far below. A plausible fantasy.
Silver Swan tore it to pieces.
"That's all over. I'm going to make the Queen family pay for everything they took from me."
"You're not well," Oliver said, making a quiet decision. This isn't complicated. Just an obsessive stalker who'd latched onto Diana and built herself an elaborate delusion. The treatment was a proper psychiatric facility. He was going to subdue her and put her somewhere she could get real help.
Diana's assessment was similar, though kinder in its framing. Saying something like this on television might not seem too serious in isolation, but the truth was—not just Diana, Thea herself had admirers, and none of them had ever reached this level of pathological fixation. If this story reached Thea's ears, Vanessa's situation was going to become very hard to describe.
She'd known the young miss long enough to understand the pattern: all smiles to your face, claiming nothing was the matter—and then, later, quietly having you bagged and dropped in a river. Now that Thea had the entire Underworld at her command, that was only truer than ever.
"Vanessa—you need help. Let me help you, the way I did before."
Diana meant every word. For just a moment, Silver Swan's eyes flickered—something struggling against something else.
Then the struggle collapsed. What replaced it was solid crimson. Vanessa's voice shook slightly, but the tone was ice-cold—like something that had crawled up from very far below.
"You all deserve to die. You took everything from me. I'm going to tear you apart."
The silver wings snapped open. She launched like a thrown spear, the crack of displaced air trailing behind her—feinted toward Diana, curved wide, and came straight for Mister Terrific.
Oh, come on. Michael's internal monologue was not entirely civil. Picking on the soft target, are we? He was, without question, the most brilliant person on Earth. He just happened to prefer operating at the front line. He threw himself into an entirely undignified rolling dive and survived.