- I guess those things are not really morally very different, are they.

I - can do that. You're sure?

I mean, if you are definitely going to keep the ring powers then I would recommend waiting, because - it's not urgent on the scale of a day and we can think more. But if you aren't sure - yeah, I think you should do it now.

I'll go kill him then. Thanks.

She drops the mummies (and Alex) off in front of the military base. And she files off.

Is beheading him enough to kill him, she asks, half a minute later.

....yes. Should be entirely adequate. There's apparently a nest of Skarti demons in Vancouver who eat babies and have been disavowed by the Skarti government but no one's had the resources to go in and clean them out.

I think I need more than that to find them, if I pick you up can you give me directions?

- also this goes without saying but I am firing bullets as fast as I can right now and if you aim them badly I am gonna be mad. Just - so we're clear on that. Even though we probably already were.

Yes, of course. I can give you directions.

'Kay. Let's have a real productive thirty minutes.

She picks him up and flies to Vancouver, then zeroes in on the nest. 

Do we need to sweep for civilians in this situation -

They didn't think so but weren't 100% sure.

We killing the demons or transporting them to the military base.

Killing them, this kind's really hard to hold apparently.

Okay.

She creates a giant set of hands that rip the roof of the structure off, very suddenly. There are no non-demons. She sets to work creating constructs to restrain each of them individually. When she tries more than one at once, they break out of the constructs in a matter of seconds, but she can hold them for long enough to follow up with the sword she killed Lurconis with. It cuts through bone about as easily as water. In a few minutes she's cleared the nest.

Ring is better for big monsters than for armies, I think. If that affects our next target.

I'll let them know. ...Himalayas. Underground worm-thing.

'Kay. Tell me where.

And she can fly to the Himalayas and go kill an underground worm thing. It's very big. The ring lets her start out crippling it with constructs without objecting that stabbing the thing is liable to kill it. At some point the constructs do dissipate, and she finishes the job by cutting its heart out with the sword. The whole procedure takes about six minutes, now that she's getting better at handling her constructs.

Can do another. I think.

Democratic Republic of the Congo, details forthcoming -

- okay, it has twelve bodies, each of them giant spiders, they think they know where they all are but they have to be killed either all at once or before any pieces of the ones killed earliest touch the ground.

Oooooh. How close together are the bodies - I guess we'll see -

Guess we will.

They're a ways apart, and take some time to track down. They're too tough to contain in bubbles for very long, but she can use constructs to toss them up into the atmosphere pretty successfully, and they can't fly, so as long as she can keep track of everyone she's juggling, she can control the battle pretty effectively. Once she has everybody she can slice up the individual spiders one by one - still juggling both the living and dead ones, which is difficult and nerve-wracking and gets more so the closer she gets to completion - but eventually she stabs the last spider and all of the bodies crumble into dust.

11:41. Past time to be flying back.

How many kids is it.

Three hundred twenty safely contained, eight still unaccounted for, we think they might be ghosts or bugs or other things that are hard to pick up.

We don't know a way to selectively reverse it but we might discover one eventually.

She flies back. She unbubbles him. She does something else with her ring.

"This is the Green Lantern of sector 2814, attempting to contact Oa. Please respond, Oa. Request emergency communication with any member of the Green Lantern Corps."

The ring is silent.

Well. Not directly erasing trillions of people by undoing it. I don't think.

Does Giles know how to - 

He thinks Rayne does. 

Can I ask you to help read his mind, if I - 

I don't want you to give it up. You'll be able to do much more, this way. Save lots more people. But - you can't exactly make people be superheroes.

If you reverse it, then - then that's what you do. And we'll work with what we have. We'll try to help you figure out how to reverse it, if - if that's what you decide. 

- maybe all of the thoughts I have on this front are stupid, but there isn't time to go through the reasons and check all of them, there's barely fifteen minutes left - specifically because I was doing other things that needed doing, right, and - I - 

- I don't think a real Green Lantern would keep it.

What do you mean by that?

There's not - ugh - this is stupid - 

- the Green Lantern comics hold that the Green Lanterns were created by the Guardians of the Universe, to replace their original peacekeeping force, which was - an army of robotic law enforcement officers that could only evaluate whether something was legal or not, whether someone had acted in a way that was against the code that they had been created to enforce. Their programming was - inflexible. It did not stand up to the complexities of genuine interpersonal conflicts. They committed atrocities and were ultimately defeated and replaced with a living peacekeeping force. A peacekeeping force that could temper their commitment to justice and logic with a humanoid capacity for compassion.