10th July 2012
15:23 GMT
I frown as my armour's computer informs me of the exact time and date. Yes, I… Think that sort of thing was very important to
I want to remember. I loathe the idea of my recall decaying, of the mental networks that make me me becoming unreliable.
me-.
I wince as another strand of orange light extrudes from the Orange Central Power Battery and flows into me.
"Are you you yet?"
I don't change my posture, but shake my head as Hinon floats into my field of view.
"I don't know. No. No, I'm not. I've got… I've somehow recovered most of my memories… I think. At least enough of them to make sense of things… But I don't know what I've lost, and the… The self-awareness I had…"
I shake my head.
"I suppose it can't be self-awareness if those bits literally
aren't part of my self any longer."
"Hm."
"As much as I appreciate you checking up on me, I've got a lot of mission reports to go through, so..?"
"I've got a present for you."
She removes her left hand from her sleeve, an orange power ring held between her thumb and forefinger.
"I had thought that next time you felt the need for a new ring, you would be the one making it yourself. Since you clearly can't do that, I made a rush order."
"I'm… Sorry."
"Whatever for?"
"For… Getting the rings destroyed. Larfleeze's ring, and the one you nearly killed yourself making-."
"Larfleeze's ring was a near-useless antique that I'm still not completely sure that Krona didn't have some sort of backdoor to. As for my ring… Frankly, that wasn't my best work."
"It wasn't?"
"As you correctly observed, I put myself into a coma creating it, splitting my focus in all too many ways. And then it went into the Bleed, and frankly it's a minor miracle that it wasn't completely destroyed."
I frown. "Miracle? Do you mean literally or metaphorically?"
"I know that you consider me old, but Triarch worship was well before my time." She shakes her head.
"I doubt that any deity you know -most of whom are younger than me- would intervene to deliver a power ring to someone like you. And that's before even considering the awkwardness of delivering it to a reality like yours."
I carefully extend my left hand and take it from her.
"So this is… Better?"
"Better than the ones you were using. About as good as the ones we've forged for the rest of the Corps."
I frown, then nod. "Because all of the Controllers who've forged them have had access to the Orange Central Power Battery, so there's no reason for them to be any worse."
"They're slightly worse. There are… Things you can do, when you know the prospective Lantern as well as I know you."
"Hinon, I'm not sure that
I know me at the moment."
"No, I do. You'll work to get back to full mission fitness, because you hate the idea of losing bits of yourself. Which means that you'll be the person I made this ring for eventually."
"I…" I nod. "Intend to, but I've got no idea how long that will take."
"Then you'll have a mildly-suboptimal ring until then. It should still be better than the one you were using." She frowns, turning to look at the Central Power Battery.
"Have you tried talking to the Ophidian?"
"No. I didn't think that was a good idea. And I don't… Exactly remember what she's like."
"No?"
"I've got the records, and I remember some of what we did together, but I don't have the… Intuitive understanding of her mindset that I used to have. I remember that it.. used to feel like she was… Next to me, but invisible, the whole time." I shake my head. "And I
really don't feel that way right now. Has..? Have any of the other Lanterns tried talking to her?"
"Talking at her, certainly. But she appears to be a one-Lantern snake."
I smile. "
That's kind of nice."
I exhale, sliding the new-. No, no,
my new power ring onto my left ring finger. My environmental shield engages at once-.
"Oh! Damn it!"
"Is something wrong?"
"I can't use the Honden at the moment. It would-. Probably take me
years to fly back to Earth like this."
"Why would you want to return to Earth?"
"I don't right
now. But I will probably want to within the next few years."
I stand, pointing my left hand at the Central Power Battery and
wanting my-. My
self back. What had been occasional threads becomes a mist, and I-.
It's quite a relief to-. Huh,
ice cream. Not.. just ice cream, but the
days out with the extended family association that had slipped my mind.
"So what actually
happened?"
"You flew up to a Reach ship which contained a surprising amount of qwa-matter. The Weaponer's beside himself. It's the most entertainment I've had in ten thousand years."
"So..?"
"Normally I'd say something like 'so don't do that again you silly man', but the Reach can block most types of ring scan and we didn't have any reason to believe that they had anything like enough qwa-matter for something like that. The unfortunate truth is that it's not possible to predict everything a sufficiently clever enemy might try." She huffs.
"Having examined the site, it looks like you were completely disintegrated."
"I woke up in a body."
"After you told Lantern Gozzi that you could see spirits, she decided to create a physical duplicate and hope for the best." Hinon frowns.
"Normally, I'd warn you about a woman showing that much interest in your body, but since she's coluan you're probably alright."
"And… Between my affinity for the orange light and her ring… That was enough?"
Hinon looks at me like I've said something stupid.
"No, of course not. You drew a tiny portion of the Honden into the material universe, a part associated with the Leentniar. When your physical body was destroyed, it… Dumbing it down a great deal, it snapped back, taking a lot of you with it."
I nod.
"Do you have a plan for getting the rest back?"
"Yes. I'm going to need a wizard and a lift back to the Leentniar's system."