green lantern imrainai joins the young justice team
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The ring comes to her without any accompanying disaster, at first. It comes when she's on her way home from work (she hasn't been to school in weeks), following her along and giving off a distinct sense of importance, if not urgency. Karen's not an expert on alien military tech, but she knows weird stuff when she sees it, and she's pretty sure that she's not the sort of person who should be called on to field weird stuff. Like, there's her niece, her niece is pretty weird, but that doesn't mean she's someone who can stand up to an all-out weirdness free-for-all.

"Go home," she tells the ring. "Or - maybe not home, if it's far away, but you can fly places, right? You should go talk to the Justice League in DC. Or, uh, float up to them and let them do the talking, as the case may be."

The ring gives no sign that it intends to go anywhere else. She sighs and puts it in her pocket; she doesn't put it on. She can mail it to the Justice League with an attached letter in a couple days, when she has the energy to do stuff like mail letters to people.

As it turns out, she doesn't get to mail the ring in a couple days. Azalea does another something in her room, something with latin chanting and weird ominous lights coming out from under her door, and someone somewhere is tipped off to the presence of something other-than-human in their house.

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The Order of Mercy surrounds their block in the night. They haven't been able to determine what building the child is in. As they have no supernatural means of pinpointing her location more precisely, they resort to breaking and entering. The first house they enter contains no children, and they leave after determining this. The second house has five children; they kill the three under five years old, after immobilizing their family members. The third house contains no children, but it does contain a woman with a deer rifle, and she doesn't take kindly to having her home invaded by shadowy masked cultist members. Within a few minutes, one of their order has been shot, the woman with the rifle is dead, the woman's house has been partially caved in, and more or less everyone on the block is awake.

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She looks out the upstairs window and winces as the masked guys break down the door of a house that's practically across the street from her.

The ring beeps plaintively from her desk.

"You'd better not make this any worse," she tells it sternly, and then she puts the ring on. 

At first she thinks the only things it gives her are flight and the nifty costume (which comes with a mask, after taking a couple seconds to notice the fact that she's worried about getting in trouble for this). That's not enough to stop them, but it's probably enough to pretend to be some kind of lesser-known league member, and since the masked dudes appear to be armed with swords she isn't super worried about them shooting her. She flies out of her house.

"Gonna get a ton of fines for that if you don't give up soon!" she says, hovering above a knot of the masked dudes. "That's breaking and entering, vandalism, reckless endangerment - "

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The Order seems unimpressed with a list of its crimes. They do seem worried about the Green Lantern in the sky, but not worried enough to stop what they're doing. Just worried enough to telekinetically throw a nearby car at her, which is what they do.

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OH SNAP THEY CAN THROW CARS.

She fails to dodge and instead just throws her arms up in front of her, wishing she had some kind of shield or something - at which point she suddenly does have a shield, a big green construct that shatters on contact but which manages to protect her from the impact. 

OH SNAP THIS IS GREEN LANTERN'S RING. 

Why doesn't Green Lantern have his ring? Why does she have Green Lantern's ring? Why are the masked dudes breaking into people's houses? Why does -

The Order throws a tree at her, at which point she decides that she's just gonna have to imprison them somehow and get them to the authorities. Somehow. This would be easier if they weren't spread out over the entire block, but as long as she can maintain enough constructs to trap them all in cages - or, wait, telepaths, how is she gonna prevent them from throwing more trees without just beating the tar out of them -

She gets hit with someone's lawn table from the back, without seeing it coming; the suit takes some of the impact but her head still feels like something smashed into it really hard. She decides that beating the tar out of them is maybe an allowable strategy, and hits the tree-thrower with a massive green ball and chain. There's a sickening crunch of breaking bone, and then she decides that no, actually, beating the tar out of people is bad and maybe she should stick to getting the civilians out of here or something.

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The Order is not at all OK with her evacuating the civilians! They redouble their efforts to knock her out of the sky.

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She is, in fact, knocked out of the sky by the next tree. The next one they try to smash her with, and that doesn't work; she sees it coming and cuts it in half with a giant green scimitar. She has about a second to think that she's getting the hang of this green lantern ring thing, because after that it turns out that someone on the block has a swimming pool, and that the masked dudes have fine enough control to pick up the water and surround her head with it, and whatever her mask's virtues the thing isn't waterproof and doesn't come with an air supply.

She tries flying out of it, but whoever's controlling the water keeps pace with her. She could fly further, but she doesn't know how fast or how far or whether she'd be able to make it back before they killed anyone (are they planning to kill anyone - she can hear screams - she can hear what sound like the screams of terrified little kids), and she can't see right and she can't breathe -

Focus. Metaphorical deep breaths. Green Lantern can make scalpels as easily as sledgehammers; he's versatile like that. She tries making a helmet, but the thing is still waterlogged. It occurs to her to pull her mask up and create a snorkel, and hey, that one works, isn't she good at this and not in danger of drowning anymore.

She lashes out at the cultists in front of her, still not able to see very well. Hopefully someone has called the police already, please God let someone have called the police already - 

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There is a blur, and suddenly there are fewer terrified screaming children in the immediate area. The Flash carefully deposits two kids at a safe distance and goes back for more. 

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That's - probably good? She can't actually see what's happening but probably that's a good thing, most people who could be intervening right now are probably not on the side of the people who are making random houses fall down. 

She can't see well enough to tie them up, and she's not sure how the telepathy works anyway, but she can at least make a big green fish tank and trap most of the cultists in that. That should at least prevent them from using their swords on anyone, at least until they shatter it.

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It seems like the sort of thing that ought to slow them down, anyway. While the cultists are distracted dealing with the glass box they find themselves in, the reddish blur continues to zip around moving all the civilians out of the danger zone, which basically means they're getting put down a block away. 

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This is a big problem! The child is probably somewhere in that group! On the other hand, the cultists think that they are probably not going to be able to defeat whoever's about to follow this weird Green Lantern and the Flash to the scene, so they smash another car into the box construct and attempt to flee the scene. In their haste to leave, they drop the water; it doesn't seem to be drowning the lantern very well anyway.

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Karen lets her snorkel go and coughs up water for a bit. 

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His usual protocol would be to catch the fleeing cultists, tie them up and leave them for the local cops, but somehow he doesn't think the local cops are equipped to deal with telekinetics. 

Ah well. Catching them and tying them up is probably still a good first step, and then the other Green Lanterns can decide what to do with them when they show up. What's taking them so long? Oh, right, Flash was closer and also moves faster than they can, which is why he's the designated responder for superpowered emergencies in five different states. That and everyone else is based on one of the coasts, with Flash in Central City as the lone exception—

All of this is going through his head while Karen is taking her first unaided breath of air. As she's coughing out water, he speeds after the cultists to grab them and stop them leaving. They can try to hit him with things if they like, but it's kind of hard to aim telekinesis at something that moves too fast to see. 

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The cultists do have kind of a hard time with this, though a few of them try. A few others attempt to levitate away, though they're not as fast as Karen was and it seems like they don't all have the ability to even attempt this. The ones on the ground attempt to scatter in different directions.

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Now that she can see (and breathe, breathing is good), she flies up in an attempt to make sure there are still eyes on the cultists.

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Flash is fast—it's kind of in the name—but he's not quite fast enough to be everywhere at once, although it probably feels like that to the cultists. A few of them seem to be getting away. 

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Is this her job? She doesn't want this to be her job. Probably this is her job.

She makes more fish tanks and traps the cultists under them, like oversized spiders under cups. This time, she hoists the fishtanks into the air and flies up, hoping that the telekinesis has a range limit and that if they're high enough they won't be able to reach the ground for materials.

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Glowing green boxes surround the remaining cultists and lift them into the air too. 

There are now three Green Lanterns floating in the sky above St Louis. Some of the rescued civilians seem to be taking photos. 

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Now all the bad guys are contained, Flash stops blurring around trying to catch them and starts being a visible member of the Justice League, talking to the crowd and trying to calm everyone down. 

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The part of her that's relieved that the situation is contained is really very nearly outweighed by the part of her that's dreading having to explain herself. At least maybe she can give the ring back now? Except the green lanterns already have their rings, so what the heck does she have?

(Azalea is going to be so worried about her. Aaaa.)

"Hi!" she says, because a greeting seems in order and she cannot for the life of her think of anything else to say. "Should, uh, should I be putting these people somewhere - ?"

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"I can take them," one of the Lanterns offers. He makes some boxes around her fish tanks. "The League will figure out how to deal with them later." 

After we figure out how to deal with you, he doesn't add. 

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"Thank you, I have no idea what I'm doing or how long the thingies last or - actually anything," she says, letting her fish tanks go. "Um. There were people breaking into houses and there were gunshots and then they made a house collapse and I told them to stop and then they threw a car at me." Should she even be talking right now? Why is she talking. But probably they'll tell her to stop talking if that's a problem or tell her to talk more if they need to know something, they seem like they know what they're doing.

She stays in the air and fidgets.

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The rest of the cultists are transferred over to the control of the same Lantern. The other one floats closer to Karen and directs her down towards to a part of the block that's relatively clear of civilians, well away from where Flash is running crowd control. 

"I'm guessing you only just got your ring?" he asks as they descend. "I didn't think Earth needed another Green Lantern." 

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"It probably doesn't!" she says quickly. "But yeah, it floated up to me a couple days ago."

She will just. Try not to say anything that's likely to get her in any more trouble.

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He nods, seeming unimpressed but not too disapproving. "Is this the first time you've used it? What have you done with it so far?"

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"...Nothing? I was gonna try to get it back to you, just, the thing happened before I remembered to do that. I hadn't even put it on."

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