Thea had mastered anger, fear, hope, and compassion. Greed was coming along—a first step in. Diana held courage, and love at that same threshold.
A perfectly complementary pairing.
"For the sake of completely mastering the White Lantern—I'm going to learn to master love!" Thea said, in a voice that could have dissolved solid objects, her teeth lightly grazing Diana's ear.
The God of Courage's position, conveyed with characteristic simplicity: by all means, do your worst—if I so much as frown, I can't call myself a hero.
The study session proved harrowing. Diana brought everything she had. Love and courage have always been deeply intertwined, and when both resided in the same person backed by formidable divine power, the combination was overwhelming. Thea begged for mercy repeatedly and declared they would continue another time.
To be fair, Thea's learning aptitude was above average. Fold in certain confounding variables, however, and that assessment became considerably more complicated.
A full night of study had produced no meaningful progress in either courage or love.
Acting with total abandon—the way Diana could throw herself entirely into a fight, or into love—was genuinely beyond her current capacity. Too many thoughts. Too many considerations. That was simply her nature.
The silver lining was real: as someone who had already mastered four and a half emotional spectra, she could receive love and courage passively. Emotional frequencies had a natural absorption and conversion effect—the process was slow, but given enough time, both spectra should eventually come within reach.
The prerequisite, naturally, was being in a position to receive them.
"For the White Lantern. For all life in the universe. I yield the next few days to you." She delivered this with an air of noble sacrifice, which earned her a single withering look from Diana—followed by further instruction.
Neither of their respective "study sessions" interfered with the day's work in the slightest.
The next morning, they put on layers and made their way to Star City.
At the Green Arrow Archery Club, the environmental protection subgroup was meeting to work out a strategy for maintaining the transformed landscapes.
"Hi—I'm Thea Queen, and this is Diana, my girlfriend." Thea extended her hand to a man nearby, her delivery perfectly confident.
Curtis looked slightly comical at first glance. His first expression was one of sudden realization; then he broke into a wide, slightly theatrical smile. "Curtis Holt. Codename Mr. Terrific."
Mr. Terrific was Green Arrow's newest recruit. Oliver had found himself in a thin stretch: his wife was pregnant, his closest friend had gone to Gotham, and his protégé had been pulled to the Teen Titans. He'd been running a one-man operation, which was showing—particularly with Star City's crime rate starting to climb again. He and Curtis had clicked immediately, and they'd partnered up to keep order.
Curtis looked slightly comical at first glance. In practice, he was among the most formidable minds on the planet. The debate over whether Batman or Lex Luthor claimed the title of Earth's sharpest intellect remained unsettled—but that Mr. Terrific was third was beyond argument.
He'd started working through Einstein's papers and Fermat's theorems at six years old. He spoke many languages. He held fourteen doctoral degrees across different disciplines—and for scale: Bruce Banner, who was by any measure a serious academic, held seven. That comparison made the achievement fairly self-evident.
The peak of mortal intellect, uncontested.
They exchanged a few brief words before Batman and the Atom arrived in succession.
Batman had clearly stolen time from an active crisis—with Rao gone, the Joker had refocused his attention, and the two of them had been locked in a running back-and-forth across Gotham for days.
The small environmental working group was now formally constituted.
The agenda was straightforward: preserve as much of Rao's transformation as possible.
Greenland—the easier assignment—went to Green Arrow and Mr. Terrific.
Eastern Siberia went to Batman and the Atom.
That left the deserts to the two of them.
The Sahara. The Libyan Desert. Through to the Taklamakan.
"Our assignment is impossible," Diana said flatly, staring at the numbers. "Eighteen million square kilometers—nearly seven million square miles..."
"Agreed—that's excessive," Thea said immediately.
"I'm sorry. There's no one more suitable—desert management should be broadly similar across regions, and besides, there are countless civilians out there now..." Batman's implication was diplomatic but clear: this wasn't just an environmental assignment. It was political. The territory formerly covered by those deserts now had millions of people living in it. Which country did those people belong to? Who did that land belong to? Which nation could claim eighteen million square kilometers of newly arable terrain?
At the moment every major government was consumed by its own internal crises and hadn't turned its eyes in that direction yet. When they did, and found a prize of that scale sitting unclaimed, the scramble would be immediate and ugly.
The heroes needed a unified position. Major powers needed to be brought to the table. Smaller nations couldn't be ignored either—out of reach, unsatisfied, and now in possession of advanced weaponry, they were a genuine risk factor.
This brought up the other crisis Rao's redistribution had created: nuclear proliferation. He had "equally distributed" nuclear weapons as well. Of the fifteen thousand warheads that had existed globally, approximately five thousand had ended up in the hands of small nations and non-state organizations.
Thea's first reaction to that news had been a brief, cold shock. She had gone directly to Superman: forget the public image rehabilitation for now. Recover the warheads first.
Superman hadn't wasted a word. He'd pulled in the Martian Manhunter and Supergirl—who had been at home eating donuts—and the three of them had run themselves ragged, stealing and seizing warheads by any means necessary, working with intel from numerous agents. They'd recovered just over four thousand.
Without a deal that satisfied the remaining holders, there was no guarantee they wouldn't gamble.
Thea accepted the desert assignment without further argument. Going to see the situation firsthand was the minimum she could do.
———
"Brother Aziz—see that camp up ahead? Get there and you can reach the oasis from there. Now, about our arrangement..." A man with a calculating expression gestured to the elderly figure beside him, making his meaning clear.
The old man was weathered—a visible scar at his temple, a thick pack on his back. No traditional robes; just a loose, wide-sleeved upper garment. His sandals were in rough shape, one red and one black, clearly scavenged from the road at different points. The words "fashion" or "style" wouldn't occur to anyone looking at them.
He nodded earnestly and offered a stream of sincere thanks, then carefully extracted a roll of bills from his pack and handed it over.
"Father—will they take us in over there?" A young boy stared at the distant camp. Heavily armed guards controlled the approach, some carrying weapons the boy recognized, others that looked impossibly advanced to him. He'd watched a car try to force its way through just minutes ago. A guard's silver-white rifle had reduced it to dust—no blood, no explosion, just absolute and unimaginable obliteration.
The old man's eyes held a quiet thread of hope. "God willing—once we're there, we can start a new life."
The boy's voice was barely audible. "It was Rao, though..."
Father and son paid their toll without further incident. The guards rifled through their belongings, found nothing worth taking, and jerked their chins forward.
Their experience was only one small example. By the time Thea and Diana had flown in, they'd spotted more than a dozen checkpoints exactly like this one—armed extortionists operating under no authority except the weapons Rao had placed in their hands, bleeding the last of the savings from people who had almost nothing left to give.
"Damn it." Diana drew her sword again, blood still on the blade.
"I've got it." Thea's voice was perfectly even. She raised one hand, and an area-effect petrification spell swept through—several burly men in the camp turning to stone where they stood.