PROLOGUE

At the end of Forever, there is a Wall.

Stretching into infinity in all directions, it is made of the calcified bodies of the Promethean Giants, ancient gods who dared to plumb the secrets of the Source, that unknowable energy from which everything that is and will be in this universe sprang. As vast as the Wall is, there are few who have actually laid eyes on it. Of those, most have been Gods... and even they have felt privileged and awed by the sight.

All is silent at the Wall... but if one were to look to a certain point down its infinite length, near the stone visage of a certain Promethean, his face frozen forever in the proud surety that cost him and his comrades everything, one would see a small but significant flash of light. Out of this burst, a small one-man spacecraft would flicker into view, its engines smoking from overtaxing and near-burnout.

Inside the cockpit of this craft, a green-skinned man gaped in wonder through the forward viewing port. The Wall. Sweet Colu, had he truly made it?

It could be nothing else, Berl Vox decided. Setting his jaw against the cry of triumph that wanted to spring from his throat, he moved into the rear of the craft to don his spacewalking gear. He was a Scientist Third Grade in the Coluan Conceptual Physics League. He would not allow himself even to trust the evidence of his eyes until he had some tangible proof to take back to his comrades.

Several minutes later, Berl was descending from his ship to the stone face he'd materialized next to. Despite his convictions, he couldn't help the racing of his heart and the foolish grin plastered across his features. They'd all said it was impossible, argued that it was unlikely the Wall even existed, and that Berl Vox's time and funds would be better spent dealing with more tangible goals. It had taken him years to perfect a ship that would transmat him to the edge of the Wall, and never had he received a word of encouragement or any sort of help.

But he had found it, curse them. The greatest discovery - the greatest artifact - of all time, and the credit went solely to Berl Vox. No wonder he couldn't stop smiling.

He dropped down onto the giant's face and went to work immediately. He retrieved some small cutting tools from a utility belt he wore around the transparent spacesuit, and proceeded to collect sample scrapings from the stone of the Wall. Once this was done, he withdrew another device and set about classifying and recording the amplitudes and types of energy radiating from the artifact, as well as the ambient energy of this area of space. There were waves and particles coming off this stone giant that the databases of Colu had never even heard of.

As he studied these readings, Berl Vox caught movement at the corner of his eye. Startled, he spun around.

It took him a moment to find his visitor, perched squatting atop the ridge of the giant's nose. The alien's skin was utter black - only the gleaming silver of its eyes and the absence of any stars within its form separated it from the inky darkness of space. It was roughly humanoid in shape - two arms, two legs, primary sensory organs on top of the torso. All these observations tumbled through Berl's mind as he stared at it.

"I... I come in peace," he finally managed to stutter across all known radio wavelengths, remembering to engage his universal translator halfway through the sentence. "I come in peace," he repeated.

The alien cocked its head, as if listening... then the thing's mouth came into view, as a wide grin split the otherwise solid black of its lower face. The teeth in that grin were as silver as its eyes... and sharp as razors. As it smiled, tentacles sprang into view from behind its back, waving and darting restlessly in the vacuum.

This was too much for Berl Vox. He panicked and went for the taser at his hip.

He never made it. The alien descended on him, gutting him in one stroke with claws hidden at the end of those long arms. Vox had time to scream just once before the thing slung wide its jaws and bit off his head.

The Predator at the Wall loped across the stone face of his home, his stomach full for the first time in centuries. The little green man had been slight, but after the hundred years fast the Predator had just endured, little was better than nothing.

He was not the only one of his kind, but he was one of few. He knew the others were out there, scurrying over the Wall, hunting those who dared trespass here, but he hadn't actually seen another Predator in millennia. Which was fine. There was no love lost between the members of his species, and living food was scarce enough here that none wanted to share what they could find. The Wall was infinitely vast, after all, and chances were most of the trespassers here got away without even encountering one of the Predators. The hunters were jealous of the prey they could find.

The Predator halted, the olfactory tentacles along its back flailing wildly as it tasted the void. There was another intelligence nearby, and even as faint as it was, the psychic residue and the char of recently-fired synapses stuck out like a supernova to the Predator's senses.

Crossing several hundred kilometers in the relative equivalent of half an hour, the Predator found what he was looking for: the upper half of a human skull, constructed half of red metal and half of flesh and bone. Wisps of grayish-black hair sprung from the fleshy half, and the eye on that side was squinting in what must have been rage in the cyborg's dying moments. The Predator plucked the skull from where it was hovering and sniffed at it with its tentacles. After a moment, the Predator stuck out its prehensile tongue and licked the inside of the skull's brainpan.

"Jrrr... den," the Predator growled, the intensity of the slain cyborg's death-thoughts still apparent. "Grrrn... Lnn... trrn..."

Food, the dead but still screaming intelligence of the cyborg promised him. Food and the greatest hunt.

The Predator was extremely intelligent, despite its limited vocabulary. What it could not decipher at a glance, it could often absorb from those it came in contact with. Deep within a mind made primitive by its simple life and needs was an intellect powered by the Source of all Life.

The slight green man had come here in a ship. The Predator was suddenly certain he could use that ship to pursue the cyborg's dying promise. The greatest hunt, it had said.

Tucking the skull under one arm, the Predator turned and started back in the direction it had come.

END PROLOGUE

The Emerald Crusader....

TOTAL CONTROL
Part 1

Green Lantern #1
January, Year One		 By Russ Anderson

New York City, New York.

It was mid-day in the Big Apple. A light breeze with the scent of salt and cool air was blowing in off the Atlantic and the sun was shining in all its glory. Kyle Rayner glanced up at the cityscape before and below him, then returned his eyes and his pencil to the page in his lap. Joan Osborne was belting out her throaty, discordant rendition of "Right Hand Man" from the portable stereo nearby, and Kyle thought for just a moment that this was what peace meant. Just him and his music and his art... and the pigeons too, of course - the glowing green lawn chair he reclined in was perched atop a stanchion on the Brooklyn Bridge. People didn't get up here much and it showed, as the surface was painted nearly solid white with pigeon droppings.

Still, it was a great view. One of the perks of being one of the world's premiere superheroes was that you got to cop views like this. And draw them. And relax.

It wasn't like he didn't deserve it, after all. After that whole Sun-Eater business,* followed by Hal Jordan's funeral,** followed by saving the world from an invasion of white Martians alongside the rest of the Justice League,*** he could use the downtime. Of course, he'd rather be spending this time with the apple of his eye, the object of his affection, Ms. Donna Troy - but Donna was unfortunately one of those people who had to work for a living. She'd been called in at the last minute to sub for some woman's magazine's fashion photographer today.

(* See DC's Final Night mini-series - Russ)
(** See DC's Green Lantern #80 - Russ again)
(***See DC's JLA #1-4 - Russ one more time)

Kyle paused in his sketching and took another look at the piece. It was a detailed sketch of the Manhattan skyline, as seen from his perch. The sun was blazing above the penciled city, and hovering over it all like some beneficial deity, was the smiling face of Donna Troy.

He laughed and tucked his pencil back into the front pocket of his shirt. "God... I am such a dork! A big, fat, dork. And a sap."

The eggbeater pulse of a nearby helicopter fluttered the edges of his sketchbook. He turned and caught sight of a police chopper approaching like it meant business. Dropping the pad and dissolving both the lawn chair and the portable stereo back into his ring, he willed his civilian clothes to go away. A heartbeat later, he was wearing the black, white, and green garb of Green Lantern.

"Attention!" someone bellowed through a megaphone from the side of the chopper. "You are in a restricted area. Repeat, you are in a restricted area. Please put your hands where we can see them and prepare to be taken into custody."

Smirking, Green Lantern put his hands up, palms out. Then, as the chopper drew closer, he rose up into the air to meet it.

"Halt! Return to your previous position and prep-what the hell?"

"Sorry officers," Lantern said, coming to a halt at the helicopter's side door. "I was just taking in the view. Didn't think there'd be any problem."

"Who are-" The officer realized he was still speaking through the megaphone and clicked it off. "Who are you?" he shouted.

Kyle stared at the man blankly for a moment, then pointed to the lantern symbol on the right side of his chest. "Green Lantern. I'm a member of the Justice League."

"Only Green Lantern I know has brown hair and wears a domino mask, son," the officer responded. "Now who are you really?"

"You have got to be kidding me!" Kyle insisted, dropping his hands. "Green. Lantern. I've been operating in this city for four or five months now. I helped the Justice League take down the Hyperclan."*

(* See the aforementioned JLA #1-4 - Russ, who's done with the footnotes for real now)

"Sorry, don't recognize you," the middle-aged officer replied, shaking his head. "You're still gonna have to come with us."

KRAKA-BA-DOOM!!!

The officer and Kyle both spun at the sound of the explosion. The city seemed to go suddenly and frighteningly silent at the noise. Smoke billowed up from a street several blocks off the river.

"What in God's name..." the officer started. He turned to order the flying guy into the chopper again... but the kid was already gone, flashing across the sky towards the explosion and leaving a fluorescent green trail in his wake.

The destruction was incredible, even for a city that was used to being razed by supervillains every other month. From the looks of things, a solid body had come flying out of the sky like a meteor, punching a hole through three office buildings on its downward arc. In the middle of a workday. That meant a whole lot of people were probably dead now. Kyle didn't want to dwell on how many.

Two of the buildings seemed structurally sound, but the third and last building struck was starting to come apart. People were screaming and hanging from windows, stampeding the exits, trying to get out before the stone and mortar came down around their ears.

Green Lantern dove into this, the stylized lantern ring on his right hand flaring to life. It wouldn't be enough to hold the building up, he saw. He was going to have to shore up the lower levels to keep them from crumbling under their own unsupported weight. A glowing green spider's web appeared around the building's bottom five stories, and a ten-story tall green replica of Lou Ferrigno materialized to wrap its arms around the upper half.

Now... what had done this?

Kyle turned about, still hovering above the street and keeping part of his will hooked into the web and Lou constructs, and searched for the impact site. God, there were cars hurled everywhere, bodies... what on earth could have done this?

The object's arc of descent ended in the street. There was a massive crater in the sidewalk, with upended cars piled all around it and maybe a dozen people in various stages of shock wandering its edges. Kyle descended to street level and approached the scene carefully. A green Geiger counter appeared between his fists and he checked the reading. The ring seemed to think radiation levels were Earth normal here. How was that possible? Something that had punched through the atmosphere like that should have been giving off some kind of radiation, shouldn't it? Donna would probably know, but Donna wasn't here right now.

One of the cars piled up around and on top of the crater suddenly shifted, and a human hand appeared from amidst the rubble. A strong, Caucasian hand.

"Oh hell... Superman?" Kyle said. Who else could it be? Who else looked human and could survive a fall like that? For just a moment, Kyle Rayner dropped his guard.

The car finished sliding out of the way... but the man who pulled himself from the rubble was definitely not Superman. He was built like Supes - like an NFL quarterback - but his features were all wrong and his hair was so blonde it was almost white. He was dressed in a tattered blue cape and a red bodysuit.

"Who-?" Kyle began. That was as far as he got. The blonde man crossed the distance separating them almost faster than the eye could follow. Kyle instinctively threw up his arms and the ring translated this reaction into a glowing green shield that sprang up between the two men.

The blonde man swung one of his huge fists anyway. The impact hammered the shield and Kyle backwards, across the street, through a department store window, through the building that housed the department store, across an alley, and through another brick wall.

"Ouch. Guy sure hits like Superman..." Kyle muttered as he pulled himself out of the rubble. He glanced around the building he'd been knocked into - a bank, by the looks of it. There were a lot of very scared people staring at him from behind counters and desks, but nobody had been hurt by his entrance, fortunately.

He turned... and the blonde guy was there again, standing in front of him with his fist cocked. He was saying something this time, but it wasn't in any language Kyle Rayner had ever heard. He was ready for the blow this time. He ducked down and caught the big guy's swinging fist in the barrel of a green cannon.

The cannon fired, sending the blonde's fist - and, consequently, the blonde - hurtling back through the holes Kyle had made and back into the street he'd landed in.

"You like that maneuver?" he asked, following the bad guy back out into the street. "See, if you'd had Looney Tunes on the planet Obnoxio, you might have a chance in this fight. As it is-"

The sound of screaming nearby caught his attention, and he turned to see the constructs he'd created to support the crumbling building starting to flicker and fade away. The structure wasn't evacuated yet... and neither was the street around it. Kyle turned his attention towards the web and Lou, reinforcing them with his will.

And he turned his back on his opponent. The blonde man, pulling himself out of the wreckage of a Ford Ranger, noted this, and hurled himself across the pavement again.

"Green Lantern! Look out!" someone called from the sidelines.

An enormous green anvil with 40 TONS stenciled on its side fell from the sky and smashed the blonde man into the ground. Green Lantern turned to look at it with a grin.

"What'd I tell you about Looney Tunes?"

"Donna, come look at this."

"What is it, Tracy?" Donna Troy asked, popping open the back of her camera and loading a new roll of film. "Tyra is due back in a couple minutes, and I've got to get this drop set up."

"Some superfreaks are tearing up downtown," Tracy replied. She was sitting in a folding chair with a small portable TV in her lap. Donna came over, the camera automatically winding in her fist, and looked over her assistant's shoulder.

"-tween the new Green Lantern and an unidentified man who apparently... er, fell from the sky... (did I read that right? oh, alright). Authorities have not yet determined the cause of the battle, or who Green Lantern's opponent is, but WNBC will keep you informed of the news as we get it. We take you now live to the scene with our correspondent, Jacob Frank."

"Damn town is turning into Metropolis," Tracy muttered. "Superhero fights every two minutes."

Donna shushed her and watched as the anchorman on the small screen was replaced with a slight black man on a New York street. Behind him was a police cordon, and behind the cordon was the flying debris and smoke of a battle.

"Thanks, Carter. As you can see, police are still trying to evacuate this block on the Lower East Side where the battle is taking place. If you look over my shoulder here" - the correspondent gestured and the camera zoomed toward the battle behind him - "you can catch a glimpse of the combatants..."

Donna Troy's breath caught in her throat. One of the combatants was Kyle alright. The other guy though, the blonde - his costume and his square-jawed features, the powers he seemed to be exhibiting, similar to Superman's...

Donna Troy had spent months as a Darkstar, a member of a galactic police force. She had also spent most of her childhood as a superheroine, first named Wonder Girl, then Troia. Consequently, she had a better-than-average knowledge of known alien races.

And Kyle Rayner, her friend and lover, inexperienced inheritor of an Oan power ring, was battling a Daxxamite.

And, worst of all, she doubted he knew what he was up against.

"Gotta go," Donna said, dropping her camera into Tracy's lap, snatching her coat off another chair, and heading for the door. "Tell the model I'll be back within the hour."

"What?" Tracy demanded, the gum snapping in her mouth as she stared at her boss in disbelief. "Donna, you can't leave. What'll I tell the editor?"

"Tell her I'll be back within the hour," Donna repeated, and then she was out the door and dashing down the hall to the elevator.

"Maybe if you told me what this is all about," Kyle said, watching his enemy tear his way out of the jaws of a construct that looked more than a little like Godzilla. He'd remembered after dropping the anvil on the guy that his ring could translate foreign and alien speech for him, but now that he was ready to listen, the guy had shut up again.

The fact was, he needed to get this nutjob away from the city, maybe take him out over the ocean, but he didn't want to let Lou and webs out of his sight either. The building could come down the moment he let those constructs dissolve, and he wasn't sure whether the police had cleared everyone out yet.

The blonde's eyes flashed red, and the tarmac at Kyle's feet suddenly exploded into flame.

"Jesus!" he cried. Heat vision too? This guy could do everything Superman could. Maybe, just maybe - as much as it hurt his ego to even think this while an enormous green fire extinguisher worked to put out the flames - maybe he was the tiniest bit out of his depth here. He had about as much experience as a superhero as Oscar de la Hoya had as a pop singer, after all. Maybe it was time to use that signal device J'onn had given him and call in the rest of the JLA.

The blonde charged him again and Kyle manifested a giant flyswatter that smacked him back down into the pavement. So far he'd done exactly no damage to this guy. He was fighting an offensive battle, and too many lives and too much property had already been lost.

"Green Lantern!"

Kyle looked up and saw the same chopper that had tried to arrest him half an hour ago hovering above the battle. The same cop was hanging out the side with his blowhorn at his face. "S.T.A.R. Labs has identified your opponent as a... how's that pronounced...? oh, got it... a Daxxamite. They want you to try hitting him with lead."

"Lead?" Kyle replied under his breath. "What the hell good is that going to do against this guy?"

Ka-POW!

Green Lantern was suddenly flying through the air again. His ring had protected him from the blow, fortunately, but he had to stop allowing himself to be distracted. He caught himself and swooped up into the air before his hurtling form could barrel into the bystanders behind the police cordons. Enough was enough. He'd give the lead thing a try, but first he was calling in the big guns. He reached into his glove for his JLA signal device.

Before he could pull it free, his opponent was on him. He'd thought the guy had moved fast before, but that was nothing to the speed he came at Kyle this time. He grabbed Green Lantern by the collar of his uniform, shattering the protective aura he'd put up, and tapped him in the temple. Kyle sagged in the man's grip, barely conscious. His signal device toppled out of his hand, fell thirty feet, and shattered on the pavement.

"Let him go!" a voice commanded from the street.

The Daxxamite looked down, his eyes scanning the crowd until they alighted on a raven-haired woman standing at the cordon. She was glaring at him with an intensity that might have knocked him from his perch had he been a lesser being. When their eyes met, his suddenly went wide.

"You?" he whispered in perfect English. "One of the failed ones."

"Donna..." Kyle moaned, reaching out to her from where the Daxxamite still held him aloft. He was barely conscious.

"Let him go!" Donna repeated. A policeman was trying to force her back, but she wouldn't budge. When he tried to press the point, she grabbed him by the shoulders, swept his leg out from under him and planted him on his ass in the street.

The Daxxamite's jaw set. He seemed to be considering her order, but then he shook his head, tapped a finger twice against his own temple, said something in a language Donna didn't understand, then vanished in a brief flash of light and a hollow "pop" of imploding air.

The constructs Kyle had erected to hold the collapsing building together flickered and dissipated, and the entire structure came tumbling down a half a block from where Donna stood. There was a rumble and crash that felt and sounded like the end of the world, and the crowd screamed in renewed terror - though it looked like everyone had managed to get clear.

"Kyle," Donna whispered, dust from the collapse sweeping past her and stinging her eyes.

Green Lantern was gone. And there was no way on Earth of finding out where he'd been taken.

NEXT: "Total Control" Part 2. The Controllers. Warworld. More on the mysterious Daxxamite. Be here.

RUB THE LAMP

Welcome to the first issue of JLU's Green Lantern. I hope you're ready for a bumpy ride, 'cause "Total Control" isn't going to get any easier for Kyle after this issue. In the meantime, let me tell you what you can expect from my run on the Emerald Gladiator.

Comments on my virgin effort in the DCU are always appreciated. Drop me a line at RussLee74@comcast.net if you're so inclined, and be back here next issue to find out where that Daxxamite (aren't those guys cool, by the way?) took our hero.

- Russ Anderson
31 January, 2001

Story © 2001, Russ Anderson. Most characters presented are property of DC COMICS