Rao's oasis gave the destitute a glimpse of hope. The climate was mild, the land fertile—work hard and you'd be rewarded. And with no one skimming off the top, it was paradise in the eyes of the poor.
People from the nations that had once bordered the Sahara—those whose lives had become unbearable—were streaming in, ready to begin again.
They were being naive.
Crime bred faster than anyone could have imagined. Many of the early arrivals had spotted opportunity in the chaos. They reinvented themselves: guides who demanded payment at checkpoints, enforcers who sorted the arrivals, killers who buried bodies. A full-service operation. Those with something worth taking were held; those with nothing were let through.
The two goddesses swept through it all—killing endlessly. They could reshape the heavens and the earth, but they couldn't reshape human nature.
"Maybe Rao never actually intended to strip intelligent beings of their freedom..." Thea said, quietly.
Short of psychic domination and brainwashing, she had no idea how to guarantee that the most vulnerable came out ahead rather than exploited. Even the most beautiful intentions, given enough time, became unrecognizable.
They made a full circuit of the former desert—the land of plenty it had become.
In just a few days, those with vehicles had already pushed deep into the oasis. They looked far more like opportunists than survivors.
Meanwhile, families like that father and son from before could only go on foot, carrying nothing but hope.
"They have absolutely no shame." Diana watched a convoy herding more than a hundred ordinary people like slaves—dozens of armed men walking alongside, weapons in hand, laughing loudly. The dust thrown up by the vehicles stretched across the land like a great earthen serpent. The only difference between those who suffered and those who didn't was whether a gun was in their hand.
"Anarchy," Thea said, more to herself than to Diana. "The armed ones instinctively position themselves as leaders. They consolidate the refugees, build up their numbers, establish camps—then fight other camps until a winner emerges."
Both women's expressions were grim.
"So what do we do?" Diana had spent a century in human society and studied many forms of government. Most of it was theoretical, but she had a basic grasp. "Just wait?"
"Well..." Thea had been about to say: take out the bad actors, arm the good ones, let them maintain order. But she stopped herself. Power corrupts—arm good people and they may become just as bad, possibly worse than whoever was in charge before.
"Let me think. Let's observe more first." They surveyed several desert regions before calling a video conference with Green Arrow, Batman, and the others to discuss options.
The same problem appeared everywhere. Establishing order from nothing required bloodshed; growing it required more; eventually competing with established nations would require more still.
If you took the pragmatic view—less involvement means fewer problems—you could simply dispel Rao's power and let the desert return to what it was. That would sidestep a lot of conflict.
But the heroes wouldn't have it. Oliver and Diana were deeply committed to seeing this through.
So Thea—not exactly eager—found herself dragged along by the others to come up with something.
It was beyond doubt that Rao had faced the same problems at the start. 250,000 years, trillions of intelligent beings—and not all of them were Kryptonians.
Rao had probably tried every approach to curb greed and reduce strife. Every one of those efforts had come to nothing. In the end, he'd fallen back on the crudest solution available: alter a small part of an intelligent being's brain to make them worship him and do as he said.
That wasn't something Thea could do. She could only sit with it and think.
She chose her words carefully. "First—none of us can be the face of this. If a superhero has to be involved, Mr. Terrific works."
It was the same as the nuclear warhead situation: the president's children, and her daughter's close friend, had no business appearing publicly. Their identities were too sensitive; they'd invite exactly the kind of interpretation they wanted to avoid. A question this fundamentally political carried the same risk. Batman wasn't right for this either—too visible, too high-profile.
Mr. Terrific, though, was perfect. Low-profile, sharp mind—and Black.
"Just me?" Mr. Terrific looked up from the video call with his wide mouth slightly open, a little surprised.
Thea was tempted to say yes, exactly that—but she knew it wasn't realistic. "Talk to the Teen Titans first. See if they'd be willing to help?"
Kids tackling something like this would draw far less political scrutiny.
Eyes brightened around the call. It was, honestly, a very good idea.
The Teen Titans weren't a Justice League subsidiary—they were an independent organization. They were proud; you didn't give them orders. Thea and the others each began reaching out individually.
Batman contacted Tim. Diana reached out to Cass. Thea contacted Raven. Green Arrow called Arsenal.
It came together quickly. The Titans were at loose ends, and Tim treated this group mission with genuine seriousness.
The opposition was nothing more than armed militia—weakest of the weak in terms of actual threat. But the significance of the mission was enormous. Eighteen million square kilometers, with more than ten million refugees projected to enter the region. An undertaking of that scale was perfectly aligned with what the kids believed in, and it was exactly the kind of thing that would let them prove their worth.
The chaos might quiet down for a while under a team of young heroes. But the governance question—what then? Anarchy? Self-rule? Even the combined intelligence of Batman and Mr. Terrific couldn't crack it.
Heroes' work was heroes' work; politics was politics. Thea had no choice but to pass that particular problem to her mother.
Moira was impossibly busy. So was every other world leader.
This was where having boosted her mother's constitution paid dividends. The heads of those countries had already collapsed from exhaustion. Moira was still directing operations—quietly, steadily, and gaining the upper hand without anyone noticing.
As for eighteen million square kilometers of new territory, she had no particular interest. With extraterrestrial trade filling the country's resource gaps, there was no need to claim that much land, invite hostility from every nation on Earth, or upset the domestic balance.
Moira wanted to be a good president. She had no ambition to be an empress.
"Use religion. Those people worship Rao, don't they? Use it as a banner—rally their faith, give people something to unite behind. It might work. The prerequisite, of course, is that Rao is actually dead. He is dead, right?"
"Dead and gone—completely. Don't worry." Thea gave her mother the reassurance she needed. She had to admit it was a genuinely good idea.
Raising Rao's banner again had both advantages and costs. On the positive side: ordinary people had benefited from his presence. Even those who had been controlled and brainwashed still carried their memories—no one could deny what Rao had given them. And those priests, for what it was worth, had remarkably little in the way of personal greed.
The complications came from the major world powers and the nations bordering the desert. But an independent state was going to draw hostility regardless—whether the hostility level registered at five hundred or a thousand, there wasn't much practical difference.
With enough political dexterity, and by playing the divisions between nations against each other, a new path might just be possible.
Thea walked everyone through the approach. Batman still had reservations. "Are you absolutely certain Rao isn't coming back? Or are you planning to establish a new religion?"