I have a story for you:

In the beginning, there were the Guardians.

And the Guardians were good. In fact, they cared so much for all of creation, that they harnessed a great emerald power and, housing it in a planet called Oa at the very center of the universe, used this great power to energize a corps of galactic policemen. They recruited only the best and the most fearless for their corps, and they called this noble grouping the Green Lanterns.

The Guardians were not perfect. Their methods were often suspect, their selection of Green Lanterns sometimes faulty, but their goals always remained noble.

Until the day one of their mightiest Green Lanterns killed them. On that day, the last of the Guardians bequeathed the last ring, the last conduit to the great emerald power, to an inexperienced youth, a random being from the same world as the Guardians' killer.

That youth went on, through many trials, to learn about and earn the power with which he'd been entrusted. But in the end, he was only one being, one Green Lantern where once there had been a corps of thousands.

And the universe was discontent with the protection this one being offered, and together they cried, "If there can only be one Green Lantern, let it be the most capable fighter in all the cosmos!"

And the Controllers, a race of distant cousins to the Guardians, a dying race, heard this cry and began to scheme. Began to plot the methods by which they would use this discontent to make the universe -- and most of all themselves -- forever safe.

But that is another story. To be precise, it is this story...

	The Emerald Gladiator.... TOTAL CONTROL Part 4
Green Lantern #4 April, Year One	By Russ Anderson

Kyle Rayner took a knee to the chin, felt his teeth crunch together and saw tiny white lights flash before his eyes. Only one thought spun through his overtired mind:

This is stupid.

Without a doubt, he knew this to be true. Rolling clumsily away from his opponent -- an exotic beauty from a dead world called Xanshii, who'd learned how to fight from some of the greatest trainers in the galaxy and how was Kyle supposed to match that when most of his hand-to-hand skills came from a couple of odd brawls in fourth grade? -- he clambered to his feet and blasted himself into the sky. He needed distance. He didn't stand a chance against this psycho up close. Had to start using his brain and stop counting on the ring to solve his problems.

She was on him in an instant, using the yellow ring that mimicked all the abilities of his green one to propel herself into the sky to meet him. They grappled, and Kyle somehow managed to knock her battlestaff out of her grip. He began to congratulate himself on the minor victory, but then a yellow tendril whipped out from Fatality's ring and snatched the staff back to her, and his heart sank.

If only he could get out of this damned arena, away from this crowd of anonymous aliens demanding he prove himself worthy of this stupid ring. Again. But that wasn't even remotely a possibility, not with the Daxamite known as Von-Lo flying above, ensuring that neither of the combatants fled the arena without finishing the battle. Not with...

He looked up into the sky to track the path of the flying alien with all the powers of Superman. And paused, almost not feeling the blow to the kidney he took for his distraction.

Von-Lo was nowhere to be seen in the sky above the massive arena.

Kyle Rayner smiled. And a rudimentary plan began to form.

Von-Lo hovered several hundred miles above the surface of Warworld, considering the shattered, metallic landscape of the artificial planetoid below him. The arena, and every lifeform on Warworld, were located below the surface now, below the damage done by Warworld's multitudinous failures.

It was not a new sight to the Daxamite, Von-Lo. In point of fact, it was starting to bore him.

And so he turned, and faced the fleet of Khund battleships charging down on the planetoid.

"Humanoid, identify yourself immediately."

"I am Von-Lo of Daxam," he replied across the subspace channel the flagship had hailed him on. "State your business, Khund, then be gone."

There was a pause from the other end of the line, probably while the Admiral of the fleet picked his lower jaw off the floor. Remarkably, the Admiral did not respond to Von-Lo's disrespect by opening all batteries on him. Instead, he said, "The people of Khundia wish to be involved in the selection of this new Green Lantern."

"The people of Khundia are a loathsome lot that would more likely be jailed en masse by a Green Lantern than have any say whatsoever in the selection of same."

"Mind your tongue, Daxamite--"

"Further, the people of Khundia were not invited to participate, and they certainly were not invited to bring half of their planetary fleet. A race that had evolved more than a single-celled thought center would perhaps have determined the proper thing to do in such a situation is to stay away."

"The Khunds are as much a part of this galactic community as any others!"

Von-Lo frowned. There were many things he disliked about his self-imposed service to the Controllers, things they had him do that he wanted to question or refuse so badly... but this... he had no problem doing this. The entire Khund race were bullying vermin, and his masters had been right to first not bring them here, and then send him to intercept them when they arrived anyway.

He shifted his visual acuity a couple of notches up the invisible spectrum, then sent word out on a new frequency.

"They're priming their weapons. Getting ready to fire."

The reply from his Controller masters came immediately. Tell them such a move would not be in their best interests. Tell them... roughly.

The explosion of firepower from the lead ships came in the next instant, most of it targeted on Von-Lo. He avoided nearly all of the bursts -- not because he thought they could actually harm him, but because it was stupid to take chances with Khunds. When the first volley was finished, the Daxamite hurled himself across space, using his body as a missile to pierce one of the lead ships. It decompressed explosively, and Von-Lo turned to see if this show of force would perhaps, inconceivably, have convinced the Khunds to go home.

No luck. The ships were pivoting to target him again. Some of them were even firing pointlessly at the wasted planet below.

Von-Lo sighed, wondering how the barbarians he was facing had ever stopped fighting long enough to develop space travel. Then he went to work.

The admiral of the Khund fleet stood on the deck of his flagship, watching the alien make short work of his frontline forces. He had not expected to find a Daxamite here, and so his ships were not equipped with Earth lead -- that race's only weakness.

His fleet had no chance against the Daxamite. A yellow sun burned nearby, and Daxamites were damn near invincible under the light of such a star. The only reason his flagship had not been destroyed yet, he knew, was because the Daxamite still hoped to turn the fleet back without destroying all of them. He obviously knew enough about the Khunds to know that, if he killed their leader, they would be honor-bound to fight to the last man to achieve his death.

No, the commander had not been expecting a Daxamite. But he had been expecting trouble and trickery -- you always expected trouble and trickery where the Controllers were involved... if you hoped to escape the encounter with your skin, that was -- and he had come with a backup plan.

He turned to his first officer, his enormous pink jaw twisting in scorn for this situation. "Order Genos Squadron to launch for Target Veda."

"Aye, Admiral."

The Khund leader turned back toward his screen, grinning as another one of his ships, another 300 of his people, winked out of existence. This was going to be good.

Kyle's ring had confirmed a few minutes ago that Von-Lo was nowhere in the immediate area. Knowing how fast the Daxamite was -- guy could give Superman a run for his money, though probably not the Flash -- his not being right over the battlefield would only give Kyle maybe a few seconds to make a break for it. He couldn't risk just leaving, not with Fatality around to chase him down, so he needed to sow a little confusion. And to do that, he had to wait for his opponent to get in just the right position.

It didn't take long.

He dropped low to the ground, shooting along close enough to it to split the sand of the arena's floor in his wake. Fatality followed, apparently confident she had the Terran on the run.

So she wasn't expecting it when he twisted in the air and fired an emerald ram's head battering ram at her.

The blow didn't do her much harm -- she had been trailing far enough to give her time to throw up a shield -- but it did knock her for a loop, sending her careening backward until she crashed into the low wall that divided the arena floor from the audience.

The wall didn't stand a chance. It crumbled immediately, taking with it the first five or six rows of spectators for about twenty feet on either side, all of it coming down on Fatality. Kyle dropped to the ground and turned to face the destruction. Didn't look like anyone was seriously hurt -- the fall hadn't been far for the spectators and, after all this crap, he thought his conscience would let him get by with breaking a few alien legs, and of course Fatality had her ring to protect her.

"Come on," Kyle muttered. "Drag your shapely butt out of there. You can do it."

The crowd was booing. The spectators that had taken a dive with Fatality represented only a tiny portion of the audience -- this arena was huge and every single seat in it seemed to be occupied -- but it was obvious the Terran had deliberately run his opponent into the grandstand. Kyle's Q-rating had dropped drastically.

None of that would matter, though, if the psycho pulled herself out of there in the next couple seconds...

Ah, here we go.

Fatality shrugged off the rubble, tossing aside some of the sentients lying atop it in the process. She was covered in dust, but even at half the width of the arena, Kyle could see her brown face was flushed with anger.

"That piss you off?" Kyle muttered. "Come on then. Come and get it."

She did, firing herself across the floor of the arena like an angry yellow spear. She was ready for trickery, he saw. Ready for him to juke to one side or the other before she reached him.

What she wasn't ready for was him to hold his ground, to meet her head-on.

The explosion when the two met was huge, a massive green ball of flame and billowing energy that sent Fatality hurtling down the length of the arena. The flash was blinding. Several of the races with unusually sensitive eyes in the audience began screaming in pain, and all of them had to turn away from the light show.

When the light had faded, they all looked back, every single one of them expecting to see two dead combatants strewn across the field, perhaps in pieces, and then what would they do about the Green Lantern situation? Instead, what they saw was one semi-conscious combatant -- Fatality -- pulling herself to her feet.

The Terran had tricked her, sucked her like an amateur right into a trap a stripling would know enough to avoid. And while she and the audience had been recovering from his sound and fury, he had made his escape.

Kyle Rayner, the last Green Lantern, was nowhere to be seen in the massive arena.

Von-Lo!

The frantic voice of the lead Controller cut through Von-Lo's ear canal like a scythe. He turned toward Warworld, furious at the distraction.

"What is it?"

The Terran has escaped! Quickly, you must--

But Von-Lo was already hurtling back toward the surface of the planet, his incredibly fast brain already calculating the most likely directions of flight from the arena. He barely noticed the two proton torpedoes that whisked by him from the direction of the Khund fleet, assuming they were random shots that would now explode harmlessly on the wrecked surface of Warworld. No harm done. He would be back to finish off the fleet as soon as he restrained the Green Lantern.

He was not watching as the torpedoes curved around the surface of Warworld, nor was he watching when they made a very precise hit on the scarred face of the planetoid.

He couldn't miss it, however, when an explosion the size of a small continent rocked the entire planetoid, centered on the point of impact of the proton torpedoes. And then, of course, the screaming started. Millions of voices, in hundreds of thousands of languages, calling out to deities and loved ones over every conceivable radio band. All of it pounding in the Daxamite's eardrums.

Von-Lo accelerated, unsure what even he could do to fix this.

Moments earlier.

Kyle took a moment to study the map his ring had projected onto his faceplate, then took a left at the junction of the sewer tunnels. He wasn't sure how his ring was able to describe the layout of this place -- maybe Jordan had been on this rock back when he'd worn the ring -- but he sure wasn't going to complain about it. He was also thankful that the tunnels were big enough that he could fly without putting his feet in the sewage... he had no idea what the residents of Warworld ate, but from what he saw beneath his hovering feet, it had a lot in common with corn.

It had been simple to peel back one of the plates in the floor of the arena, the ones that dropped into several massive chambers like the one he'd been stored in when he'd first arrived here. The ground was so torn up from his and Fatality's battle, it would take a while for her to figure out which gouge he'd escaped through. From there he'd found his way into the place's sewer system and -- if his ring really did know this place as well as it seemed to -- he would be out in the next few moments.

His portal to freedom was basically a manhole cover but, since it led up to the exposed surface of Warworld, it was a hermetically-sealed airlocked manhole cover. Kyle closed his protective aura and cut the cover away.

He was immediately sucked out into space. He let it happen, even took a moment to weld the cover back into place once he was in the void. Then, even though he knew his best bet was to get into hyperspace before Von-Lo found him, he paused to look around.

There was a fleet of ships near the horizon to his left, firing on something small and fast. That explained where Von-Lo had gotten to. Kyle turned and looked to the other horizon.

And his eyes went wide.

Hundreds of thousands of miles away from Warworld, but still very, very close in galactic terms, was an enormous coruscating cloud of green. It was the size of a planet, easily.

It was Oa. If Kyle hadn't recognized it, his ring would have.

This was what was left of the planet after he'd destroyed it stopping Hal Jordan. He hadn't been back since, though more than once he'd wondered where the power of his battery was coming from if the planet that contained that energy was gone.

But the emerald power didn't need the planet to contain it. It was still there, and it answered at least one question -- how he'd copped a charge from thin air in the middle of the fight with Fatality -- while opening up a whole bunch of others.

What in god's name were the Controllers playing at here?

He didn't have long to consider it. Two points of light zipped overhead, flying out of sight past the horizon in an instant. There was a distant flash, and then a wall of white fire was charging across Warworld's surface toward him.

He tried to run, but he didn't make it far before the explosion engulfed him.

The crowd in the arena wasn't happy. Fatality knew just how they felt. She had encountered -- had killed -- many former Green Lanterns since the actions of one of that number had resulted in the death of her planet. And in that time she had developed a grudging respect for them, an acknowledgement of their almost universal courage and honor.

But this coward who possessed the last ring... the depths of her anger surprised her. He had to die, because he wore the mantle of her people's killer, but more than that, Fatality wanted him dead because he didn't deserve to wear the ring.

She looked at the yellow ring on her fist, the ring the Controllers had given her back when this all began. They claimed to have retrieved it from the Weaponers of Qward. Fatality had wondered then, as she wondered now, why the Controllers were bothering with the emerald rings when they could apparently have yellow rings that performed the same functions.

Still... this was no time to dwell on such matters. Her quarry was still out there. She thought her ring may be able to track his, if she could figure out how to make it do so. She wondered how best to--

And then the entire arena shook, throwing Fatality off her feet. There was a sound of metal screaming and groaning at once, and then artificial gravity was simply gone. The audience shrieked as one as they were hurled from their seats and out into the air over the arena.

The Green Lantern had caused this, Fatality was sure of it. Her ire only increased by this further act of cowardice, she concentrated on making her ring do what she needed it to do.

"What has happened?"

The second Controller turned from the dim screen and considered his brother. They were almost identical -- tall, lanky, pink-skinned, their only distinguishing features were the differing patterns of tattoos and markings across their scalps. Their third brother stood nearby.

"The Khunds have performed a precision strike on Warworld's gravity generators."

"Can they be repaired?"

"Not in the time we have left. At the moment, the only effect is loss of gravity in the planet's population centers, but within minutes the entire planetoid will lose its stability and begin to tip."

"And then?"

"Then it will begin to plunge into Oa's sun."

The first Controller snarled. "Unacceptable! We've planned too long to see it all undone by those filthy Khund!"

"And yet, we must survive to plan anew, brother. We will do neither if we remain here."

The first Controller nodded. "Very well. Contact Von-Lo and instruct him to see us safely off of Warworld."

"And the other races gathered for the contest?"

"They can look after themselves. The survival of the Controllers is all."

The admiral of the Khund fleet smiled a satisfied smile as the entirety of Warworld -- that metal monstrosity that had been more trouble than it was worth to its owners ever since Mongul had lost control of it -- tilted off of its axis and began to tear itself apart. He should take his fleet and go home, he knew. The Daxamite would surely survive the carnage yet to come, and he would take his revenge on the Khund... but the admiral wanted to see this. He wanted to see the latest scheme of the Controllers -- whatever that scheme was, exactly -- undone. And if a whole bunch of diplomats from a whole bunch of races that thought they were better than the Khund perished also... so much the better.

The admiral laughed as Warworld, unprotected by its gravity generators, began its inexorable plunge toward the yellow star at the center of this system.

NEXT: Finale!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

- Hal Jordan did indeed visit Warworld prior to his death, in the massive "Panic In the Sky" storyline in DC's Superman titles.

- Kyle was kept in a chamber beneath the Warworld arena in issue #2.

- Oa was destroyed at the climax of a battle between Kyle and Hal in DC's Green Lantern #0.