Yaruba V, Gh'rag's base:
Hal slowly woke up, his head swam with dizziness, and his vision was blurry at best. After a few moments his head began to clear and his vision returned itself to normal. Opening his eyes fully now Hal could see he was out of uniform, more specifically, his ring was gone. He was currently lying on the floor of what looked to be some kind of prison, apart from him there was a bunk bed, and thick metal bars blocking him from the rest of the world.
"Ah, Lantern I can see you're awake now!" A large alien spoke. Turning around Hal could now easily identify the voice. The alien was Gh'rag, he was wearing a necklace made of smaller skulls, and his armor consisted of a bloody chest plate and damaged armored leggings.
"Where am I?"
"Ha! You should have known that tangling with the Chief War Brute Gh'rag would have left you in defeat Lantern! But of course it's not every day I find a Green Lantern in my jail cells!" Gh'rag taunted, spewing spit out of his mouth between words. Hal visibly showed his disgust as he wiped his pilot uniform. Gh'rag motioned for someone to come closer, another being approached. The new alien was orange skinned, bird like in respect to his small frame, beak, and head fins.
"My second lieutenant Abare-Gi. He's fairly new, but he has proved himself in battle." Gh'rag continued gloating, and in a few seconds he gave a strong chuckle.
"He's been pretty bored lately, so I'll leave him to you." Gh'rag spoke with a sinister smile; he promptly left through a door to the far right of the room, indicated by a soft hissing noise. With Gh'rag gone Hal began to eye his interrogator, only to realize he was Tomar-Re, the Green Lantern of this sector. The metal bars slid into the side of the walls, allowing Abare or rather Tomar, and Hal physical access to each other.
"To-!" Hal had almost voiced his friends true name when he was forcefully shoved into the wall, his mouth was soon covered by thin fingers.
"I might need some privacy for this." Tomar said with a frighteningly evil smirk. Rising off the ground, leaving Hal to tend to his aching body, Tomar tapped multiple buttons on the wall. Turning back around the bird like alien grabbed Hal softly and helped him rise.
"Sorry about that, I needed it to be convincing."
Rubbing his chest slightly Hal began to speak up again.
"All good, but what are you even doing here? Aren't you supposed to be on some special mission? Don't tell me you've turned traitor?"
"Nonesense, this is the mission. As you may have noticed Gh'rag is a primitive brute, this technology, all of it, is decades ahead of his planets best scientists." Tomar replied, gesturing to the entire room as he spoke.
"Yeah, his army had some strangely powerful stuff."
"Exactly, originally my mission was to go undercover and attempt to uncover his new supplier. But witnessing your defeat in the skies brought another concern to me. Our rings are supposed to be the strongest tools in the universe, but these beams whatever they are, easily pierced and destroyed your construct. When we get back to Oa the guardians need to know about this power."
"Speaking of which, where are our rings?"
"Yours is being held in his trophy room after he figured out he couldn't use it. As for mine." Tomar then gestured to his necklace; its centerpiece was a fairly large black gem.
"As soon as I leave you should prepare yourself. Gh'rag will throw you into his gladiator matches to entertain himself. While he does this I will attempt to bring back your ring, when I bring it back to you I'll reveal more of my-." Suddenly a loud banging could be heard, it echoed slightly within the prison.
"Don't rough him up to much, I want to see how a Lantern fairs without his ring!"
"I'll reveal my complete plan to you at a later time. For now good luck, and for future reference, I'm sorry for doing this to another corpsman." Tomar then began to cock back his right arm, sending a right hook into Jordan, following with an uppercut, and knocking Hal to the ground drawing slight blood.
"How is that guy so strong?" Hal mumbled as he wiped the blood from his mouth.
Yaruba V, Gh'rag's arena:
Hal was shoved through a giant opening, revealing to him a large coliseum, with a bright dome above. Whether it was real sunlight or artificial lighting, it still forced Hal to cover his eyes. The coliseum was overly large, as if all the time in the base had been spent around its construction, and that everything else was merely an accessory. The crowd was loud, shouting various words of either encouragement or disappointment at Hal's entrance. A large box could be seen on the far end, decorated in skull designs and gold trimmings, a curved window separated its occupants from the rest of the arena. Down inside the arena with Hal were a multitude of bloody bodies, broken weapons, and other surviving prisoners scattered around the arena.
"Ha! How many of you believed that I would bring you a Green Lantern of all things here to fight? How many of you wondered how one would survive here?" Gh'rag's opening seemed to rouse even more incoherent shouting and cheering.
"Well wonder no more!" Somehow Gh'rag managed to raise the spectators’ volume. Gh'rag continued again, this time he was speaking to the prisoners, currently occupying the role of gladiator.
"You will all fight if you want to survive today. However should none of you take up arms, you will all be punished." Gh'rag added, emphasizing on the word punished. Not needed any other reason the remaining prisoners all picked up various clubs, weapons, anything they could grab, and rushed each other. Hal glanced to his side and examined a fallen body of a previous prisoner. The armor was in pieces, but his weapon a lance of some kind was only damaged in the tip.
"Sorry buddy but I need this more than you right now." Hal whispered as he bent over, reaching for the fallen warrior's weapon.
Gh'rag's arena, Trophy Room:
Tomar calmly entered Gh'rag's trophy room, the guards outside had learned to trust him as well and thought nothing of it as he entered. The trophy room had very few things related to technology, besides the lights there was a computer present on a wall extended terminal, remains of various alien weaponry, and multiple shattered or broken animal skulls. Looking past the stuffed animals and display cases Tomar found what he was looking for, Hal's ring in its own display case, but that would come later. Noticing the contents of the computer Tomar had found multiple orders for weapons and what looked to be recordings of Gh'rag's supplier. Staring at the logs and the messages between the two Tomar's eyes widened in surprise.
"But how..I thought that-"
"Thought that you could trick me? I thought it was funny you didn't show to watch the matches with me, and here you are spying on me!" Gh'rag shouted as he angrily marched into the room.
My cover's blown. Tomar thought as he flipped the cover off his necklace revealing his ring, and in that same motion he slipped on his weapon. As Tomar secured his ring energy shot from the ring and surrounded his bird like frame, replacing his former armor with the Lantern Corp uniform.
"A Lantern? I should have known!" Gh'rag then reached behind himself and pulled out a small silver scepter with a yellow orb attached on top.
Tomar took Gh'rag's surprise as an opportunity to make a grab for Jordan's ring, and to launch an attack. Aiming his ring up at Gh'rag he sent a stream of neon green energy at his new weapon; simultaneously a smaller beam extended, breaking through a display case and collecting Hal's ring.
"Fool, my benefactor has provided me with more than enough to kill your kind!" Gh'rag shouted as his own beam blasted from the scepter, completely shattering and piercing through Tomar's attack. With his opponent now dazed Gh'rag shot a yellow wave of energy from his scepter throwing Tomar, and Hal's ring through the wall and into the coliseum. As the ring fell through the gaping hole it began to shine momentarily, then as if called it began to fly off in a brilliant green glow.
Yaruba V, Gh'rag's arena:
A few minutes had passed, and during that time Hal was patiently eyeing his future aggressors. Eventually some of the prisoners had fallen, some were too exhausted to continue and simply collapsed either from their wounds or fatigue. Unfortunately not everyone had fallen, a few had remained standing, and only one seemed to be in the right mind to notice Hal standing. The red skinned alien seemed to enjoy his work as he toppled over the other prisoners; his armor was shattered and nonexistent in certain places giving off the image of a veteran.
"I'll feast on your bones for being so underhanded Lantern! So swears Atrocitus!" After his hateful death threat Atrocitus sprinted towards Hal at a frightening speed, as if he was invigorated by his victories, Hal barely had enough time to bring his broken lance into a defensive position, and braced himself as the red skinned alien slammed a large hammer down. Hal gave a grunt as he struggled to keep Atrocitus's weapon away from him.
"How disappointingly weak!" Atrocitus shouted as he continuously slammed his weapon down onto Hal's, forming cracks in his weapon. Bringing his hammer down for a final time Hal’s weapon shattered.
Rolling to the side Hal narrowly dodged the ancient weapon as it collided with the ground, throwing dirt in the air.
Really wish I had my ring. As if on cue a bright glowing object made its way to Hal, and then to his finger.
"No!" The red skinned Atrocitus shouted as he rushed to slam his hammer onto Hal, but a barrier seemed to repel and push him back.
"Oh yes!" Hal shouted gleefully as he pushed back Atrocitus with his own green hammer, the red skinned brute fell to the ground into an undeserved peace.
"Ring power levels at 25%." A voice emanating from the ring spoke in an emotionless tone.
"You need to get into the habit of charging before missions Jordan." Tomar said as he quickly formed up with Hal.
"Get ready, Gh'rag has some kind of weapon." Tomar spoke as he quickly dodged a yellow blast, after passing by the bird-like alien it crashed into the ceiling above. As the rubble came crashing down the audience had decided to quickly vacate, announcing their intentions with panicked screams.
"Seems like his weapon can't help him fly."
"Indeed, we seem to have the advantage. So make sure it stays that way." Almost as if they were linked in mind the duo began to barrage Gh'rag's position with multiple streams of green energy.
"Even if there are two of you, my weapon is more than a match!" Gh'rag shouted, almost laughing. The brutish alien launched his own beam, it collided with Hal and Tomar's beams simultaneously, and pierced through them as easily as a knife through butter.
"Even our combined power seems to have no effect on his weapon. Think fast Jordan!" Tomar shouted as the beam came ever closer, missing the duo narrowly just like the first shot, and this shot also hit the roof bringing down a collection of burned debris. The debris from the stray shot was destined to squish some of the 'innocent' spectators if nothing was done, spotting this Jordan quickly formed a giant catcher's mitt to hold the debris, as soon as the people cleared out from underneath Hal decided to use the collected scrap as a weapon and flung it towards Gh'rag. In defense Gh'rag had summoned a giant wave of energy in an attempt to shoot down the rubble, but the wave wasn't nearly as strong as he needed it to be, while he had burned some of it away, some of the scrap managed to hit him. Specifically, a larger chunk that was split in two managed to hit his arm, forcing a grunt of pain from Gh'rag, and forced his scepter down.
"I've got the weapon!" Tomar shouted as he quickly swiped the silver scepter with a beam of Oan energy.
"And I've got Gh'rag!" Jordan announced as Tomar secured the weapon. Forming a giant boxing glove Hal wasted no time in slamming his 'fist' into the alien, forcing him to fall back unconscious, much like his prisoners.
"What now?"
"Now we get back to Oa, and tell the Guardians about this power. We can signal the local authorities that this has been handled." Tomar responded as he fidgeted with the scepter's orb slightly. After broadcasting a message the duo quickly left through the various holes in the ceiling, provided by their previous battle, and proceeded to their shared headquarters Oa.