Guy Gardner

The world was a scream of tearing metal and shattering rock. Guy Gardner's last coherent thought before impact was a string of profanities directed at the yellow-bellied Sinestro Corps coward who'd clipped his wing. His ship, a one-man interceptor, cartwheeled through a sickly yellow-green sky before plowing into a dusty, ochre plain with the force of a meteor.

He came to with a groan, the taste of blood in his mouth and the acrid smell of burnt wiring filling his lungs. The cockpit was twisted around him, the viewscreen a spiderweb of fractured glass. Through the cracks, he saw a landscape of jagged, blood-red mesas and scraggly, thorned trees under a bloated, bruised-purple sun.

"Son of a..." he muttered, pushing himself upright. Pain lanced through his side—a broken rib, maybe two. He ignored it. His left hand instinctively went to his hip, to the reassuring weight of his power battery. It met only the torn fabric of his uniform.

Panic, cold and sharp, cut through his usual anger. He patted himself down frantically. Nothing. The battery was gone, probably ripped away in the crash.

"Ring, status report," he growled, holding up his glowing green fist.

*POWER LEVEL AT FORTY-ONE PERCENT. CHARGE DISSIPATING AT ACCELERATED RATE DUE TO UNIDENTIFIED LOCAL ENERGY FIELD.*

"Unidentified field? Great. Just great." He clenched his jaw. Forty-one percent. Without the battery, that was a death sentence. He needed to find it, and he needed to get off this rock. Now.

He ripped the mangled door off its hinges with a snarl and a flash of green energy, stumbling out into the oppressive heat. The air was thick with the stench of old blood and something else... something primal and foul. He was in a canyon of sorts, its walls lined with crude, intimidating fortifications of wood and bone. Skulls of massive, horned beasts were mounted on spikes.

This wasn't just an unidentified planet. This was a *hostile* unidentified planet.

A guttural roar echoed from the canyon walls above him. He looked up to see hulking, grey-skinned figures with tusks jutting from their lower jaws leering down from the ramparts. Orcs. He'd seen enough horror movies to know what orcs were.

"Alright, you ugly motherlovers!" Guy yelled, his ring flaring to life. "Which one of you green-skinned rejects has my power battery?"

An arrow, tipped with jagged black flint, thudded into the ground at his feet. That was his answer.

"Wrong move, jackass," Guy snarled. A massive green sledgehammer materialized in his hands. He hefted it onto his shoulder and broke into a lumbering run, his injured side screaming in protest. His plan was simple: punch through the line of snarling infantry, get to open ground, and figure out a way to scan for his battery from the air.

He was halfway to the crude gate when a different voice cut through the grunting and snarling of the orc horde. It was a deeper, more resonant voice, chanting in a guttural, arcane language. From a higher parapet, an orc clad in dark robes and adorned with bone fetishes raised a staff carved with writhing symbols.

Guy felt a tingle, like static electricity, just before the ground in front of him erupted. Not with a simple explosion, but with grasping, skeletal hands made of shadow and earth, clawing at his legs.

"Get off me!" he roared, swatting the phantoms away with a wide arc of his green hammer. But the wizard wasn't done. The orc shaman slammed his staff down, and a wave of invisible force slammed into Guy's chest, sending him stumbling backward. It wasn't a physical blow; it felt like his will was being directly attacked.

*POWER LEVEL NOW AT THIRTY-SEVEN PERCENT. LOCAL MAGIC IS INTERFERING WITH CONSTRUCT STABILITY.*

"Magic? You gotta be kidding me!" Guy spat. He tried to form a pair of giant green fists to pummel the gate, but the constructs flickered and warped, dissolving into green sparks before they could fully form. The wizard was disrupting his focus, draining his power just by being nearby.

Another spell. A bolt of sickly purple energy, crackling with necromantic energy, shot toward him. He threw up a shield, but it was weak, translucent. The bolt slammed into it, shattering the construct and hitting him in the shoulder. He cried out as a numbing cold spread through his arm, deadening the nerves. His ring sputtered, its light dimming.

*POWER LEVEL AT THIRTY-TWO PERCENT.*

He was trapped. Behind him, the orc infantry was advancing, rusty blades and notched axes gleaming. In front of him, a gate he couldn't break, manned by a wizard who was actively neutering his greatest weapon. He was surrounded, outnumbered, and his power was bleeding away.

For a moment, pure, unadulterated rage warred with tactical sense. The Gardner part of him wanted to charge the wizard, to beat him to death with his bare hands if he had to. But the Green Lantern part, the part that had fought in wars and led corps, screamed at him to use his head.

He was burning through his charge. He was hurt. And these things had magic, which his ring had no defense against. This wasn't a fight he could win. Not now.

"Alright, you win this round, you pointy-eared bastards!" he yelled, more to himself than to them. He took a deep breath, ignoring the pain in his ribs and the cold in his arm. He couldn't go forward, and he couldn't stay. That left one option.

He pivoted, ignoring the advancing infantry, and focused on the sheer canyon wall to his left. He poured every ounce of his remaining willpower not into a weapon, but into a single, focused tool.

*POWER LEVEL AT TWENTY-NINE PERCENT.*

A massive green drill, spinning silently and furiously, erupted from his ring. He slammed it against the rock face, and stone and dust exploded outward. He tunneled with frantic speed, a worm of pure green energy boring through the earth. Arrows clattered against the opening behind him, and he felt the wizard's magic claw at his mind, trying to disrupt the construct. He held on, gritting his teeth, pouring his anger and his desperation into the drill.

He burst through the other side of the mesa wall into a hidden gorge, tumbling to the ground in a heap of exhaustion. The drill vanished. His ring was now a dim, flickering ember on his fist.

*POWER LEVEL AT TWENTY-FOUR PERCENT. WARNING: RECHARGE REQUIRED.*

Guy lay there, panting, his body a symphony of pain. He'd escaped, but barely. He was alone, wounded, and trapped in a world that wanted him dead. And as he looked up at the alien sky, a grim realization settled over him. He wasn't the hunter here. He was the prey. And for the first time in a long, long time, Guy Gardner was well and truly screwed.