Half Pint
Eviledd1984
Guardian Angel Haruki
Supermaxx
GreenGrenade
Simple Unicycle
Lexisheeps
LG
IzurichIn the interstellar justice system, the people are represented by two sides; the Green Lanterns who investigate crimes and the Guardians who prosecute the offenders. The call came in at seventeen forty-seven, Oa Standard Time. A suspicious death in Sector 2814. That made it my problem. My name is Kai-ro. I carry a ring.
THE PLANET
U N G A R A
"Aren't you a little short to be a 'ringer?"
Hildabrant von Buron was, among many other things, an autopsy technician and a qualified coroner. She was also something of a legend in the medical community. During the Kree-Xandar War, the fiery red head had been a medic enlisted into the Nova Corps who had been among the first responders to the Scylla III massacre. Images of her running the battlefield and dragging injured back with her had made her something of a poster girl of the war and earned her the name 'Hot Ice Hilda,' a moniker that had stuck with her through the decades -- even though few today knew of the famous Scylla images of a red headed girl sprinting under fire with a Xandar twice her size over her shoulders.
Today, Hilda's red hair had hints of steel gray at the temples. The Kree-Xandar War had ended decades before the young monk had been born, and had lasted decades of hostilities broken up by intermittent ceasefires. Even today, with both government signatory to the Oa Accords, attitudes persisted from the Cold War era.
Holding up his right hand, a holographic representation of police credentials flashed into existence; created through the green energy resonating from the ring on the boy's middle finger. "The facts, if you would, please, ma'am." The young monk wasn't actually speaking English. He spoke in the Lahsa dialect of Tibet. Even still, for all her educational accomplishments, Hilda didn't speak or understand any Earth language. Hell, she'd never even heard of Earth and had no idea what species the short, bald alien before her represented. What he said, and what she'd heard, hadn't been entirely the same. He was speaking Tibetan and she was hearing the Xandar language.
It was another facet of the ring on the boy's hand.
Forged from the battery of green energy on the planet Oa, the ring had served the cosmos for generations. It had first belonged to Starkaðr. Like him, a Green Lantern. One of many, part of an organization dedicated to preserving peace and order through the rule of law. After Starkaðr's death, the ring had chosen a member of this planet, an Ungaran, named Abin Sur. Like the Green Lantern before him, Abin Sur had put his life on the line to serve and protect the people of an expanding universe. But everything that had a beginning must also have an end.
The search for a successor to such legendary heroes as Starkaðr and Abin Sur had brought the ring to the most unlikely of places, a world whose people had yet to reach beyond the atmosphere of their own planet and whose society and technology were not yet ready to join the galactic community. There, in a Buddhist monastery atop the Himalayas, it had found a boy. A young monk of Tibet, humble in demeanor and meek in speech. Such qualities could be quickly dismissed as weakness, yet the ring had seen something else. Something deeper.
It had chosen him, and by so doing brought him into a larger universe. One in which the Green Lanterns functioned to try and maintain the laws laid out to keep spacefaring civilizations functioning as populations bloomed across worlds seeded throughout the 3,600 sectors of known space.
"Male Grund, age thirty-five," the former Nova Corps medic stated, pulling back the sheet that had covered the body of a squat, rotund alien. The yellow pigmentation of his skin had faded to an off white.
A green light leapt from the boy's hand, sweeping across the body a moment before a muted chirping noise emitted from the device on his finger. "Cause of death was a myocardial infarction, likely triggered by the toxins in his digestive tract prompting sudden organ failure."
The woman looked surprised, momentarily speechless, before she postulated, "Synaptic interface?"
The ring was connected to his mind, like a monitor connected to a computer. "Correct," the boy answered simply. "Which does not account for how the toxins came to be there."
"Sometimes medical scanners are no match for an old fashioned postmortem," Hilda opined aloud, gesturing to several trays containing a series of organs, fluids, and other unattractive facets of biological life better kept on the inside of a body. "He was body packing narcotics. Glitter, it's a..."
"...psychotropic compound, from the pollen of the genus lyca suplentae found on the planet Nok," the boy supplied seamlessly. "First developed as a pharmaceutical for the treatment of disassociative disorders in Quists, until further testing revealed strong addictive effects and organ damage in most humanoid races. It is banned in forty-seven jurisdictions, considered a class-IV biotoxin on Lotaria, and..."
"Fancy ring. Expansive database. Got it," the doctor said, holding up her hands in defeat. "The bag burst, and the drug was absorbed through the intestinal tract into the bloodstream."
"Lyca suplentae is incapable of growing in the environment on Ungara," the young Lantern noted aloud, brooding as he tucked his chin down and tapped the side of his face with one hand. So the narcotic had to originate from somewhere off world. The Ungarans had a respectable system for screening passengers arriving to their world so, logically, the Grund had been working as a courier.
So who on this world had the narcotics been intended for?
And who had gotten packed the drugs inside of the Grund?
Questions. Neither of which he was going to answer here. Glancing back up, the boy merely gave a nod of his head in respect as he said, "Thank you for your assistance."
THE PLANET
U N G A R A
"Aren't you a little short to be a 'ringer?"
Hildabrant von Buron was, among many other things, an autopsy technician and a qualified coroner. She was also something of a legend in the medical community. During the Kree-Xandar War, the fiery red head had been a medic enlisted into the Nova Corps who had been among the first responders to the Scylla III massacre. Images of her running the battlefield and dragging injured back with her had made her something of a poster girl of the war and earned her the name 'Hot Ice Hilda,' a moniker that had stuck with her through the decades -- even though few today knew of the famous Scylla images of a red headed girl sprinting under fire with a Xandar twice her size over her shoulders.
Today, Hilda's red hair had hints of steel gray at the temples. The Kree-Xandar War had ended decades before the young monk had been born, and had lasted decades of hostilities broken up by intermittent ceasefires. Even today, with both government signatory to the Oa Accords, attitudes persisted from the Cold War era.
Holding up his right hand, a holographic representation of police credentials flashed into existence; created through the green energy resonating from the ring on the boy's middle finger. "The facts, if you would, please, ma'am." The young monk wasn't actually speaking English. He spoke in the Lahsa dialect of Tibet. Even still, for all her educational accomplishments, Hilda didn't speak or understand any Earth language. Hell, she'd never even heard of Earth and had no idea what species the short, bald alien before her represented. What he said, and what she'd heard, hadn't been entirely the same. He was speaking Tibetan and she was hearing the Xandar language.
It was another facet of the ring on the boy's hand.
Forged from the battery of green energy on the planet Oa, the ring had served the cosmos for generations. It had first belonged to Starkaðr. Like him, a Green Lantern. One of many, part of an organization dedicated to preserving peace and order through the rule of law. After Starkaðr's death, the ring had chosen a member of this planet, an Ungaran, named Abin Sur. Like the Green Lantern before him, Abin Sur had put his life on the line to serve and protect the people of an expanding universe. But everything that had a beginning must also have an end.
The search for a successor to such legendary heroes as Starkaðr and Abin Sur had brought the ring to the most unlikely of places, a world whose people had yet to reach beyond the atmosphere of their own planet and whose society and technology were not yet ready to join the galactic community. There, in a Buddhist monastery atop the Himalayas, it had found a boy. A young monk of Tibet, humble in demeanor and meek in speech. Such qualities could be quickly dismissed as weakness, yet the ring had seen something else. Something deeper.
It had chosen him, and by so doing brought him into a larger universe. One in which the Green Lanterns functioned to try and maintain the laws laid out to keep spacefaring civilizations functioning as populations bloomed across worlds seeded throughout the 3,600 sectors of known space.
"Male Grund, age thirty-five," the former Nova Corps medic stated, pulling back the sheet that had covered the body of a squat, rotund alien. The yellow pigmentation of his skin had faded to an off white.
A green light leapt from the boy's hand, sweeping across the body a moment before a muted chirping noise emitted from the device on his finger. "Cause of death was a myocardial infarction, likely triggered by the toxins in his digestive tract prompting sudden organ failure."
The woman looked surprised, momentarily speechless, before she postulated, "Synaptic interface?"
The ring was connected to his mind, like a monitor connected to a computer. "Correct," the boy answered simply. "Which does not account for how the toxins came to be there."
"Sometimes medical scanners are no match for an old fashioned postmortem," Hilda opined aloud, gesturing to several trays containing a series of organs, fluids, and other unattractive facets of biological life better kept on the inside of a body. "He was body packing narcotics. Glitter, it's a..."
"...psychotropic compound, from the pollen of the genus lyca suplentae found on the planet Nok," the boy supplied seamlessly. "First developed as a pharmaceutical for the treatment of disassociative disorders in Quists, until further testing revealed strong addictive effects and organ damage in most humanoid races. It is banned in forty-seven jurisdictions, considered a class-IV biotoxin on Lotaria, and..."
"Fancy ring. Expansive database. Got it," the doctor said, holding up her hands in defeat. "The bag burst, and the drug was absorbed through the intestinal tract into the bloodstream."
"Lyca suplentae is incapable of growing in the environment on Ungara," the young Lantern noted aloud, brooding as he tucked his chin down and tapped the side of his face with one hand. So the narcotic had to originate from somewhere off world. The Ungarans had a respectable system for screening passengers arriving to their world so, logically, the Grund had been working as a courier.
So who on this world had the narcotics been intended for?
And who had gotten packed the drugs inside of the Grund?
Questions. Neither of which he was going to answer here. Glancing back up, the boy merely gave a nod of his head in respect as he said, "Thank you for your assistance."
