In the spirit of looking out for one another, the Blue Lanterns notified the Sinestro Corps and the Indigo Tribe. The Blue Lanterns were the most sensitive to energy; the Yellow and Indigo Lanterns lagged considerably behind. Tipped off by the Blue Lanterns, both corps checked their own holdings, and discovered their own Emotional Entities were also missing.
They went on to ask the Star Sapphires. After their homeworld was destroyed, the Sapphires had stored their Entity on Odym for safekeeping. The result was a foregone conclusion: missing as well.
"I thought Mogo was watching the place. Who in the universe could pull off a heist like that, slipping in and out without a sound?" Thea was genuinely surprised. Mogo's mental capacity was leagues beyond any human, and even though she was still young, a sentient planet paired with a Power Ring was a formidable combination indeed.
She couldn't think of anyone who could pull off something like this.
Before Detective Thea could turn up a single suspect, more bad news rolled in. Ion, the Green Lantern Entity, had taken off on its own, right under everyone's noses.
Larfleeze of the Orange Lantern had been hunched over his Christmas list, scribbling out his own present requests, when something cold-cocked him. He woke up to find Ophidian, the Orange Entity, had vanished too.
The moment Larfleeze laid eyes on Thea, he reacted as if seeing a long-lost relative. Sure, Thea barked at him constantly and put him to work like some grunt, but she'd never taken anything from him. If anything, she'd sent him several shipping containers full of "treasures."
Now, finally pushed past his limit, he could no longer contain his grief. He launched into a textbook five-meter sprint, a five-meter kneeling slide, and a leg-hugging finisher. Thea was faster: one kick sent him flying.
Larfleeze sobbed like a kicked puppy, snot and tears streaming, begging Thea to right this wrong on his behalf.
Thea was speechless. When exactly had she become the chief of the Seven Corps? She didn't recall signing up for that.
A hunch was forming in her mind, and it was confirmed when a battered crew of Red Lanterns dragged themselves to Odym.
"Krona, it was Krona! I couldn't have mistaken him!" Atrocitus ground out the words through clenched teeth. He was covered in wounds. The red of his clothes hid it at first glance, but a closer look revealed his blood had soaked the fabric clean through. This long-lived being was hurt far worse than he appeared.
Krona had been one of the Guardians. Hundreds of millions of years ago, behind the backs of his fellow Guardians, he had secretly altered the programming of the Manhunters and triggered the massacre of Sector 666.
His intent, in his own mind, had been simple: to prove that machines could not be trusted. Only emotion could master emotion.
The consequences had rippled across the universe.
Krona had been exiled. The Manhunters had been scrapped. The Green Lantern Corps had become the Guardians' new agents. Atrocitus had taken up his vendetta. Even Blackest Night, not long past — all of it traced back to that one massacre.
In the entire DC universe, you could count the true black-tech geniuses on one hand. If you ranked them: Batman would come in third, old Jor-El second. Krona, Krona was first.
And his "first" was unprecedented, and likely never to be surpassed. He had built a cosmic probe sophisticated enough to look back at the moment of creation itself, and in doing so had spawned parallel timelines, dragging the universe into its multiversal era. He represented a possibility: that technology, too, could reach the summit, that science could peer back at creation. Even the New Gods, the Monitors, and the Anti-Monitor couldn't manage that.
But the identity of this perpetrator was what truly threw Thea. She gave Atrocitus a puzzled look. "Krona is dead. If my intel is right, his corpse is still on your homeworld."
Someone with technology like Krona's: of course she'd prepared for him. Through Herupa's memories, through her four advisors in the underworld, through Ganthet and Sayd, every Guardian, living or dead, she'd asked about. As Krona's student, Herupa carried a vivid impression of his old teacher. The advisors and the Guardians had been unanimous: Krona was dead. Dead and gone.
His corpse had been stolen by Atrocitus, but that was long ago.
In Herupa's memories, Atrocitus had an inexplicable attachment to Krona. He believed Krona was the one who had made him what he was today. Thea had read it as a kind of Stockholm syndrome, only several orders of magnitude worse.
Atrocitus would drop in on Krona's corpse from time to time, just to talk, to take the edge off. The remaining Guardians all knew about it.
So what was happening now? A man dead for who knew how many ages, back from the grave?
Her expression cooled. "Atrocitus, don't tell me you're the one who revived him."
The Red Lantern leader almost roared a denial, then he saw Thea's expression and understood she knew him far too well. He swallowed his fury and shook his head. "It wasn't me."
She studied him a moment longer, then took him at his word. Hatred was the foundation of his power; his feelings about Krona, complicated as they were, wouldn't make him abandon that hatred.
That Krona had slipped in and made off with four Emotional Entities from Odym wasn't surprising either. To young Mogo, Krona would still register as a Guardian. She'd have watched him stroll right in and walk back out with the Entities, unconcerned.
But how had he come back? Thea couldn't quite get her head around it. The recently dead could be revived; she could see that, leaving some failsafe behind, some hidden mechanism. But this man had been dead for over a hundred million years. His corpse had dried into a specimen. How was he walking around again?
And why steal the Entities? The Entities were earmarked for Kyle Rayner...
She fell silent for a few seconds, thoughts colliding at speed. Losing the Entities at this exact moment was catastrophic. If Kyle couldn't carry them through the Source Wall and recharge the Emotional Spectrum Reservoir, this universe would detonate from emotional drought. The technical term was hard reboot.
A line of sweat broke across her brow. As the universe's premier black-tech mind, Krona almost certainly knew about this too. Cut the supply line, sabotage the whole operation. So he'd grabbed every Entity in one go.
Find him. She'd throw everything she had at this: find this man, anywhere in the universe.
The Seven Corps, her own people, the Reach insectoid forces, Lady Styx, the Trade Alliance, all activated in tandem. He had to be found, fast.
It wasn't long before Batman's comm pinged through.
"Something strange showed up on Earth—"
Thea cut him off. "There's a serious, a really serious problem in the universe right now. Earth is in your hands. We'll handle the rest after I'm done here."
"...All right." Batman closed the line.
Two minutes later, Diana's call came through. "You really should come take a look. This one's not like anything I've seen before."
When Diana said it that gravely, Thea finally paid attention. A quick look couldn't cost her much time.
She left Odym and returned to Earth. The moment she walked in, the entire Justice League was already there. She looked between Diana and Batman, waiting for someone to explain. A weirdo? Who?
"What's going on? If it's not urgent, can it wait? There's a major crisis brewing in the universe." She honestly didn't want anything else on her plate.
"You'll want to see for yourself. Outside the Watchtower, early this morning, something strange just appeared. It's been watching us. Doesn't speak. Doesn't attack..." Diana filled her in quickly. They hadn't gathered much intel themselves.
Thea did care about Diana, more than she cared about any cosmic crisis, at least where her own heart was concerned. A quick glance wouldn't hurt. She lifted her gaze toward the Watchtower in orbit.
What she saw nearly unhinged her jaw. A figure with an enormous head, blank pupil-less eyes, a thin little neck: the silhouette of a certain Chinese tech mogul scaled up by a factor of ten. The figure seemed to sense her attention and turned its eyes toward her in return.
Of course, Jack Ma wasn't actually intimidating: kindly features, almost approachable. That part didn't matter. What mattered was that Thea recognized this figure. If her eyes weren't deceiving her, that was Uatu, the Watcher, from the Marvel Universe.