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Home This sequence, where the de-frocked Spectre |
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ADVENTURES IN THE FUNNYBOOK GAME Cody was at it again. WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF! Jennifer Lynn Hayden screened out the dog’s barking as she leaned against the door to Kyle Rayner’s Greenwich Village apartment. In a midriff-length suede bolero jacket, hip-hugger jeans and Sketchers, Jennifer’s sensual beauty and her startlingly emerald skin were both in abundant evidence, proof indeed that sexiness was beyond skin color. The woman was green as a popsicle and drop-dead gorgeous, which irritated Kyle to the extent that, whenever he and Jade—as she called herself—went to restaurants or clubs, all eyes would be on her. I mean, the fish would stop swimming. And the very next reaction, every single time, would be a mass pivoting of heads toward Kyle and a quizzical look, as if to say, How’d a dweeb like him get a girl like her? Kyle loved Jade. Loving her was easy enough to do. But she was rough on Kyle’s already shaky self-esteem. I hadn’t yet arrived, but all events are recorded in Creation, and the Spectre’s near-omniscience allowed him to speak to Creation and know what he was motivated to know. It was a lot like doing a Google search. Things Hal could not know at the time are now clear to the smallest detail, as I am again the Spectre and the Spectre is again Hal Jordan. WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF! Jade had been waiting for twelve minutes. Her key was in her hand. She wasn’t sure she wanted to use it. This was her home, too. A place she’d shared with Kyle for quite some time. Their relationship was what it was, but Jade recently discovered a dimension she hadn’t realized existed. A whole new reality, where Kyle was apparently having a different relationship than she was having. Like the mystery dirt you find when you pull your refrigerator away from the wall, Jade discovered things between them that had always been there but she had not seen. What frightened her was, perhaps she didn’t want to see them. Perhaps she couldn’t handle seeing them. And, yet, there they were: her having lunch with Eddie Roach, the exterminator guy, and Kyle asking her to marry him because of it. Marry? Is that why you marry somebody, to keep them from having an innocent lunch with Eddie Roach the exterminator guy? Or was there something more to it. Mystery dirt behind the fridge. How innocent was the lunch, really? Eddie—whose name really wasn’t Roach, it was just fun to call him that—was a handsome guy. A funny guy. An exterminator guy. He worked with his hands. And he popped into their lives right around the time Kyle started flaking out on Jade. Right about the time Kyle had started emotionally checking out. Women have a radar about those kinds of things. Women like Maybelle ignore the warning signs. Women like Jade start packing.
Kyle had found an
early pregnancy test kit in their bathroom,
a discovery that had made Kyle even weirder.
The notion of a child should have brought
them closer together. Instead, it seemed to
Jade that Kyle had started running from her.
Reviewing his options. Wondering about their
future, about his love for her. Things Jade
thought were set in stone. For many women, “baby” means a the beginning of “the dispensation of mommy.” For many men, “baby” means The end of naked pizza. It’s like getting a chip in your windshield; you know it’s only the beginning, that a massive crack will eventually spider-web across the entire glass and the whole thing will need to be replaced. Baby will expose any weakness in your relationship. One minute you’re nuzzling someone and whispering your greatest secrets, fantasizing about a long and happy future. The next, he or she has emotionally checked out, become one of the walking emotionally dead we see shuffling aimlessly through shopping malls across America. Ever see that? That dead look in the guy's eye as he reluctantly sidles along with his wife while pushing the ubiquitous umbrella stroller with the fussy child who came as a surprise to them both; a child who is most certainly loved and, at least in Dad's case, most certainly regretted. His is the mask of desperation. Kill me. Kill me now. Please. Jade could always tell the married couples in a restaurant by seeing who's not talking. If you see a couple, with or without the regretted child, who seem bored and aren't talking to each other, they are most surely married. And, whether they admit it or not, they are both looking for the nearest exit, which is likely to be some stupid, meaningless fight that simply presents an opportunity to end the misery they are both enduring. These are the same people who once couldn't keep their hands off each other. Who used to talk all night long, take interminable walks, who cried and prayed and demanded of God an eternal bond with each other, now rendered mute by the tyranny of pancakes and Simulac. That was Jade at the door, telling herself she’d just come to pick up a few things and then back to her dad’s house in Gotham City. She thought she and Kyle were on firmer ground than that. She thought things were fine. Instead she got the jittery excuses and emotional back-up of a man terrified of being more than who he imagined he was. And then the totally half-baked marriage proposal—first behind the business with Eddie Roach, then, after the dust settled, when Kyle needed to prove he wasn’t a schmuck by being a schmuck. You don’t ask a woman to share the rest of her life with you just to protect your damned ego. It was so wrong and so awful and God, Kyle is such an idiot and what am I doing here, in the hall, listening to the damned dog bark? WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF! I’ll just get my things. Jade turned the key. Kyle’s apartment appeared to have been robbed. Virtually everything had been turned over and destroyed. Books, paintings, drawings. Drawings of Jade. Everywhere. Torn. Ruined. “Kyle,” she whispered, figuring this for some fit of rage on Kyle’s part. I mean, who’d want to rob that joint? She scooted down and started organizing some of the chaos. Tears hit some of the papers in her hand before the emotional edge of it cut her. Things were going bad to worse. We were fine, she thought. Everything was fine.
But she knew, if that
were true, she wouldn’t be there, alone,
picking up the ruined pieces of their life
together. Jade collected stacks of things and began organizing them into general categories of Junk Kyle Really Should Have Thrown Out Years Ago and My Stuff. She couldn’t stop crying. Now she needed a tissue, so she made her way through the chaos to Kyle’s drawing board and grabbed a Kleenex from the box. The TV was still on blue screen. Kyle’s desk lamp was on, and there was a fabulous drawing of a duck that had somehow survived the carnage. The duck did it’s job—it made Jade smile. At least for a moment. She plopped down among the debris, becoming part of the chaos. She thought about visiting Eddie Roach in the sanatorium. Yes, Eddie’s encounter with the happy couple had left him clinically insane. She didn’t want to see Eddie so much as she wanted someone to touch her. My God, please touch me. She wanted the world to make sense again. She wanted the lie back. Jade wasn’t pregnant. Wasn’t planning to be pregnant. The early pregnancy test hadn’t even been opened. Why? Because it belonged to someone else, her friend Sonya, The Czechoslovakian model. The woman had spent the night instead of dragging herself all the way back to Brooklyn after day one of a two-day shoot a few months back. She thought she might have been pregnant so she bought the test but ended up leaving it behind, unopened. She was, after all, a model. And blonde. Then Kyle found the test and the wheels just came off the wagon. Jade chewed her lip, getting angry now. She needed to find Kyle. Not that they needed to talk so much as she needed to vent. It was “me time,” the certain self absorption the puts women well on the road to becoming Maybelle. But anger was better than hurt, so Jade balled her fists and decided she was going to— —Jade stopped in her tracks. Though she had seen it several moments before, what she had seen finally registered in her head: Kyle’s Green Lantern ring in the soap dish.
Jade sprang up,
suddenly at Red Alert. She suddenly realized
this wasn’t about a lover’s spat— this was
an attack— Eddie Roach had been a Sleeper—possessed and converted by the Sinestro Ring given to his grandfather back during World War II. One Sleeper. And he nearly destroyed the solar system, all by himself. Now Jade was battling three Sleepers, by herself. She didn’t recognize them— they could be Kyle’s neighbors or the Comcast guy or the Mail Carrier—didn’t matter. All that mattered is they all had Sinestro Rings and were firing at Jade as she dodged and fired back, manifesting the emerald plasma energy she’d inherited from her father, Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern. The battle was fierce and swift, blowing holes in the walls and bursting windows, glass raining down to the street below. Jade was hit by one of the Sleepers’ blasts, knocked through a wall into the bedroom, the wind knocked out of her as she returned fire, keeping the Sleeper at bay. But it was a losing battle. These Sleepers were not as far along as Eddie had been—they had not been completely changed to Sinestros yet. Even so, there were three of them, and only one of her, and she was hurt. Jade decided to make a strategic retreat, blowing a hole in her bedroom wall— —only to find three more Sleepers waiting on the other side, bursting into her bedroom from the adjacent apartment. The mutated Cody was with them as they pounced on Jade. “Nooo!” Jade screamed as she unleashed her power at full blast, hurling the dog and two of the Sleepers back, but they were racing back toward her before she reached the bedroom door. Jade ducked into the living room, diving for the floor, and the Sleepers in there were hit by antimatter bursts from the Sleepers pursuing her from the bedroom, buying Jade precious seconds to reach the door. Near the door, she turned and fired back a huge blast for good measure, then whipped the front door open— —to find Carol Ferris aiming her pistol at her. “Down!” Carol ordered. Jade ducked as Carol fired off a wide-angle neutrino burst. Several Sleepers screamed in agony and collapsed as several more raced out of the bedroom, aiming their Sinestro Rings— —and were hit by a barrage of incoming arrows. Jade whirled to see Green Arrow, holding his longbow and now wearing his costume and mask, racing out of the bedroom, having entered the apartment through the wall. “Got us a problem, here,” Arrow said, thumbing behind him. Cody, the mutated Sinestro-Dog, galloped through the bedroom and leaped at Green Arrow. The dog had several arrows stuck in him but showed no signs of slowing. “Jeeez!” Ollie snarled as he was bowled over by the massive beast. Carol had given G.A. special arrow tips designed to emit neutrinos on impact. Three of them should surely have severed the link between the parasite and the dog. “Why isn’t this working?” Carol exclaimed as she fired her plastic gun at the dog. I ran into Kyle's apartment, still wearing the humiliating orange prison jump suit, hoping not to get myself killed. “The neutrino emissions are severing the connection to the parasites,” I said as I tried to pull the dog off, “but he’s still a really big dog!” “Little help, here!” Arrow snarled as he barely evaded the massive maw, a dozen pairs of eyes focusing on him. “And get this mutt a breath mint!” Jade blasted the dog, the force carrying the dog, Ollie and myself backwards, the three of us slamming into a wall. And then, quiet. Ollie, pinned under the unconscious dog, snarled at me. “So,” he said. “This is your big move?” “We need to get to the JLA Watchtower,” I shot back. “To the moon, Arrow! Now, I don’t know of any way to do that without outside help!” “Aquaman told you Kyle was wearing a Sinestro Ring,” Carol said. “We needed to find out what happened here after Hal left.” “Well, here’s what happened,” Arrow sneered, “a giant dog fell on him!!” He struggled against Cody. “Get this thing offa me!” “Excuse me, gentlemen,” Carol said as she removed the Sinestro ring grafted to Cody’s paw, dropping the ring into another of her containers. “I’ve got the rest of the rings.” “Yeah, well,” Green Arrow said as he finally managed to extract himself from Cody, “looks like you’re gonna need a whole lot more containers.” “Not if we get this done,” Carol said. “All Kyle had to do was emit a neutrino pulse, which would cause the rings’ antimatter signature to, well, bleep or something—it’ll help his power ring locate them.” “Yeah,” G.A. said, dusting his costume off, “and then what?” “Then you lock in and bring all of the rings to you at once,” Jade said. “You just command the power ring to do it.” “Then a trip to the sun, and take out the trash,” I said, still a bit annoyed that Kyle hadn’t managed to accomplish something so simple. Arrow started backing toward the door, his bow at the ready. “All righty then, let’s get to it. The longer we stay, the more of these things we attract.” “Good deal,” Carol said. “Jade—did Kyle leave his real power ring here?” Jade was a little puzzled by the question. “How did you know? Who are you?” “A friend,” I told her. “Jade, Kyle was taken over by these things. He’s in the sick bay at the JLA Watchtower. He’s all right, but he was wearing a Sinestro Ring, not his own power ring.” Jade grabbed Kyle’s ring out of the soap dish, “Well, we’d better get up there, get his ring to him—” “Jade—there’s no time for that,” Carol said. “The JLA transporters are off-line and the Watchtower is in a special lockdown alert mode. Getting in will take some time.” Jade turned toward her. “What are you saying?” “I’m saying that Aquaman is dying and we don’t know Kyle’s or John’s status. I assume the rest of the League are on their way, but every minute we delay hundreds more Sleepers—each with the power of Sinestro—are activated. We’ve got to act now.” Jade whipped out a cell phone. “All right, then, I’ll call my dad—” “Jade,” Carol said, softening, “your father is welcome to help. But we need to move even faster than that.” Jade instinctively knew where Carol was leading, but didn’t want to even consider the journey. “Jade, we’ve got to put that ring to use now.” Jade looked at the ring. She began to put it on, “I haven’t thought of myself as a Green Lantern in a long time—” “Jade.” Carol was firm. “Kyle’s ring has security lockouts that prevent others from using it. The only person who could possibly use it....” Carol searched for the right words, “...is the ring’s original owner.” Jade stared at Kyle’s ring. She wanted no part of Carol’s suggestion. It was Kyle’s ring. Kyle’s ring. Jade clenched the ring in her fist. “Absolutely not,” she said. Carol tried to draw her out, “Jade—” Jade pointed at me, “That man is a killer. A destroyer. A murderer.” I bowed my head a bit, stung by the words. Words I’d said to myself a million times, but they still did damage when uttered by someone else. Jade sneered at me. “He betrayed his oath. He destroyed the entire Corps! And now you want me to just give him Kyle’s ring? Give him Kyle’s power—Kyle’s future?” Carol grabbed Jade’s arm and looked her in the eye, “Jade— there won’t BE any future if we don’t shut these Sleepers down. Kyle battled one Sleeper and almost lost the solar system. We’re facing thousands.” Jade sneered as her eyes welled up. She wasn’t nearly there, yet. Not nearly ready to even stand in the same room with me.
“Listen, gals, love me
that Oprah crap, but time’s a’wastin’,”
Ollie said, looking over his shoulder for
more Sleepers. “And maybe he’s fixed and maybe he’s not!” Arrow exclaimed. “Lady—the fate of the whole danged planet is hanging on your soap opera! Give Hal the goddamned ring already!!” I protested a bit weakly. “Jade—” It sounded so insincere I didn’t believe it myself. “Do what you think is best.” Jade shot me a hateful look. A tear streaming, now. “What I think is best?” “Yes. We’ll do this any way you decide.” Jade felt played. She hated this, hated being there. Why did I come here? She sneered at Ollie, who sneered back. Screw you, kid. She looked hatefully at Carol, who gave her no energy. And back to me. The very last thing she thought she’d be doing today was handing over Kyle’s future to a mass murder. She stepped over to me, standing very close now. “Promise me you won’t go insane and destroy entire planets again.” I gave her the Look. “I can’t.” “Promise me this plan of yours will work.”
“I really can’t.” I
had no promises for anyone. I didn’t want
Kyle’s ring any more than she wanted me to
have it.
Jade held the ring up
to my eye level. “This,” she said, “belongs
to the man I love. He will be expecting it
back.” “Let’s move, kids,” Green Arrow said from the hall as he followed Jade. Carol touched my arm as I stared at the ring in my hand. I looked up from the ring and into Carol’s eyes where, for the first time in many, many years, I saw compassion. And, perhaps, a bit more than that. “We’ll give you a moment,” she said. She followed Jade and Ollie— —leaving me standing among the ruins of Kyle’s apartment, staring at the biggest mistake of my existence.
I wasn’t sure this was entirely a good idea. In theory, all I’d need was a few minutes. A half-hour at most. Then the threat would be diminished, and I could return Kyle’s ring and get back to spooking people as the Spectre. But, things rarely work out the way you expect. I turned the ring over in my hand, wishing someone would tell me what to do. No matter what you do, Martin Jordan won’t be home for dinner.
“Lantern,” I said. It was a whisper. Nearly a prayer. Across the room, Kyle’s power battery shimmered into this plane of existence. I walked toward it. I prayed for wisdom. Please... don’t let it happen again. I slipped the ring onto my hand. Aiming my fist at the polished bell of the power battery, I looked for the courage of my convictions. In brightest day... I pulled my hand back. This was an incredible mistake. An alcoholic takes a sip. I started to call to Carol—we’d just have to find another way. But, then I looked around at the unconscious people at my feet. People who may never be fully human again. There was a legion of Sleepers out there, the certain destruction of Earth and possibly all Creation. There simply was no time. And that was the excuse that worked for me. I aimed my fist at the battery once again. I swore the oath. I meant the oath.
In brightest day
Green Arrow, Jade and Carol waited together on the street below. No words were spoken. Ollie looked about furtively and Jade tried to contain her anger.
Carol’s eyes drifted
skyward, and a yearning deep within her
threatened to burst through her chest. God,
how she missed it. How she needed it—the
power of Star Sapphire. Being stuck there,
on the ground, like some... some...
mortal... was damming to her, especially
now, when she could make a real
contribution, make a real difference.
Especially now that, slowly descending from
high above her, was a vision of everything
she once had... and everything she’d lost— |
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