“You’re kidding me…you’re kidding me, right? Two new Green Lanterns from the same planet in one day? That’s ridiculous!”
Pinkie glanced at Killowog, a look of slight worry on her face. “What’s wrong with having two Lanterns from the same planet? Guy and Hal are both from earth, and Equis already had a green lantern when I got my ring…what’s wrong with having one more?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having a bunch of GL’s from the same world. The problem is that you’re a rookie and so is this new GL. That’s two rookies from the same world within a day of each other, in a sector that already has an active GL. Normally we send new recruits to their own planet to start off their career as a GL and have the other GL in that sector try to act as a kind of mentor…” Killowog started to explain.
“The problem is that according to regulations, the corps can only have two on duty GL’s assigned to a sector at a time, and there are three from your sector now, two of which are new recruits. No matter how we set it up, we’re either going to end up with two rookies trying to cover a sector by themselves or with one of you getting assigned to a completely different sector, which is going to make early field training a lot rougher than necessary.” Hal finished through Pinkie’s ring.
“So basically, it’s either allowing the blind to lead the blind or essentially banishing one of us from Equis for a while.” Pinkie surmised.
“That’s the basics of it, yeah, but to be honest we’re not entirely sure that those are the only options available. As far as I know, we’ve never recruited two GL’s from the same world within such a short span of time before. This is pretty much a new experience for everyone.” Hal paused for a moment before continuing. “Anyways, I can see Equis up ahead. I’ll be sure to call back if something you need to know comes up. See you later.”
With the communication terminated, Killowog had no choice but to go back to taking care of Guy Gardner, who had managed to get a rather large number of other GL’s to gang up on him at the same time. Pinkie merely remained seated, and reapplied her ice pack to her aching head.
“I wonder who the other new Green Lantern is…”
*
The guardians sat in their room, waiting patiently for the new green lantern to arrive. He had touched down moments ago, and was likely to be there at any second. The doors were flung open, as the newest Green Lantern entered. One of the guardians opened their mouth to speak, but was promptly cut off by the lantern in question, when he struck a pose. “Introducing, for the first time ever on your little planet, the one and only Iron Will!”
He was big, about the same size as Killowog. His body was covered in blue fur. He had yellow eyes with black irises, and a pair of bull horns on top of his head. The new lantern was bipedal, having arms with hands and legs with hooves. The lantern uniform he wore was, as usual, mostly black and green. It consisted of a black pants and a solid green long sleeved shirt. There was a white circle over his heart, with the green lantern symbol in it.
In an instant the large blue creature was standing mere feet away from one of the Guardians of the universe, pointing a finger directly at their face. “You small blue creatures are doormats now, but when Iron Will is through with you, you’re going to be lean, mean, assertive ma-!”
Within seconds Iron Will was curled up in a ball on the floor, clutching his stomach in pain. Ganthet did his best to suppress a chuckle.
Between Pinkie and this Iron Will character, things are going to be getting very…interesting.
“Iron Will of planet Equis, Green Lantern of Sector 1847, welcome to Oa and to the Green Lantern Corps. As a Green Lantern, you will be expected to adhere to the laws of the guardians, and show us respect.”
“I apologize…” The Minotaur managed to say in between groans of pain. “I didn’t realize you were already so assertive.”
“Yes, well, it’s certainly not the worst we’ve dealt with today. In any case, you arrival has caused a bit of a…scheduling problem. We will work it out. For now, go out into the hall and have a green lantern take you to see Killowog. He and Guy Gardner will be in charge of your training.”
*
Pinkie dodged another attack from Killowog, leaping and flipping out of the way of his barrage of energy blasts, before creating dome shaped shield around her, as he swung a hammer construct her way. The massive mallet hit her protective bubble hard, causing it to crack and threaten to shatter.
“Come on, Poozer, I know you can do better than that!” the large alien shouted. He raised the hammer again, and brought it down for a second strike.
Pinkie dismissed her construct and leapt out of the way of the attack. Killowog raised the hammer once more, when the party pony suddenly sent a Pegasus construct flying forth from her ring. It slammed into the hammer like a bullet, shattering both of them. Surprised by the sudden offensive tactic, the alien trainer barely had enough time to react when Pinkie summoned up a unicorn construct and began using it like a gatling gun. He managed to put up a square barrier between him and the pony construct/assault weapon before any of the shots hit him.
“Better, but still not good enough!”
The large alien sent his barrier forward, using it to slam Pinkie against the far wall, breaking her focus and causing her construct to vanish. The pony slid down the wall when her trainer dismissed his own construct.
“You’ve got a decent amount of will power, and you’re not half bad with your ring, but decent doesn’t get the job done and you’re severely lacking in the physical department. At this rate you’re going to be in training for years, which makes you a waist of everybody’s time.”
Pinkie glanced up at the large pink creature, clutching her now severely bruised chest with one foreleg. “Is this is supposed to be one of those drill sergeant speeches, where insulting me is supposed to provide me the motivation to do better next time around?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Okay, just checking…can we take Lunch break? I haven’t eaten in a while, and when I get hungry, I become super annoying to be around.”
*
The doors to the training room burst open, as Iron Will walked in…
…only to find it completely empty of all but one other life form.
“Who the heck are you supposed to be?”Guy Gardner asked, as he dismissed the punching bag construct he’d been practicing with.
“Iron Will is my name, training ponies is my game. I take pathetic little doormat’s like you and turn them into-”
WHAM!
*
“What the hay is this stuff?” the pink pony asked as she poked at the strange fruit on her tray. “I thought you said they’d have food I was familiar with.”
“They did…but I decided against getting it for you for two reasons. First of all, you need to get used to eating alien foods, since you might be spending a lot of time on strange worlds once your done here. Secondly, I know the other lantern of Equis, and even though I still wish she hadn’t, she’s wasted a lot of my time explaining the dietary needs of an Equestrian to me. Cupcakes and lollipops are not the kind of thing I want to give a recruit whose biggest problem is a lack of physical strength. From now until your training is done you’re on a diet, Poozer.”
Pinkie grumbled a bit in reply to that, but didn’t argue with him. He did have a good point, after all; living in a sweets shop did her no favors for staying in shape. She picked up one of the fruits and stared at it curiously. It was neon blue with orange vertical stripes, and vaguely resembled a cross between a pomegranate and a pineapple. Even though she knew Killowog wouldn’t actively try to poison her, the equine GL was still hesitant to take a bite, on the off chance he’d made a mistake and the fruit was actually something hazardous to her health.
She was also hesitant because it was pokey, and she had no idea how she was supposed to eat it without stabbing her tongue on one of the spikes. She directed a questioning glance towards Killowog, silently asking for instructions on how to avoid such a thing, only to gag upon noticing what was on his tray.
Are those…maggots?! Gross! I think I’m going to be sick!
*
Iron Will pulled himself out of the dent he made in the wall upon his collision with it, and gave an angry snort before lowering his head and charging straight at Guy. The senior green lantern used his ring to summon up a wall between them, which halted the Minotaur’s charge with a mighty “Crash!”
*
After she had managed to successfully keep the contents of her stomach inside her stomach, Pinkie set herself to the task of trying to unravel the mystery of how she was supposed to eat the spiky fruit she had been presented with.
Is there supposed to be some way to peel it, or am I supposed to cut it open, or say some magic words or something? How am I supposed to eat something that’s covered in spikes?
Using her ring, she levitated one of the curious fruits off of her tray and examined it closely, turning it this way and that. The pokey piece of plant life was a perplexing and puzzling problem that Pinkie’s powers of perception couldn’t provide an answer to.
So she simply stuffed the whole fruit in her mouth and swallowed.
“Mmm…tasty.”
*
Iron Will let out a ferocious battle cry as he tackled Gardner from behind, knocking him to the floor. The minotaur got up and grabbed the human by the head before slamming him face first into a nearby wall.
“How do you like Iron Will now?!” He slammed Guy into the wall again. “You think you can push Iron Will around?! Then you’re wrong, because nobody can push Iron Will around!”
*
“Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!”
Lanterns from across the universe gathered around, some watching in horrified fascination, others in extreme amusement as they chanted.
Pinkie gladly obliged their wish, quickly scarfing down more of the strange fruits and vegetables placed before her. She was going so fast she didn’t even know what half the stuff she was devouring looked like. Still, it was probably better that she didn’t have a chance to judge most of it by its appearances.
She was just about to break a record for “most varieties of food consumed in one sitting” when an alarm went off. Pinkie swallowed what was in her mouth and turned to Killowog, as everyone quickly started rushing out of the room.
“What’s that alarm? Is there a fire? An Earthquake? A half off sale on used couches?”
“There’s a containment breech in the Prisoner holding cells. Come on, Poozer, we’ve got work.”
*
“I hope you realize this is your fault!” Guy shouted at Iron Will as he punched an escaping prisoner in the face.
Iron Will had his arm wrapped around the neck of a particularly large adversary and was attempting a choke hold. He glanced over at Guy. “On what crazy world is this Iron Will’s fault?!”
One of Guy’s first constructs slammed into a large Toad like Creature, sending it flying. “In the universe where you started the fight and you punched me through the training room wall and all the way into one of the prisoner containment blocks!”
“Iron Will seems to recall you hitting him first!” The Minotaur countered.
This was the scene Pinkie and Killowog had walked in on. An entire Cell Block, about a mile long and twenty stories high on both sides of the room, full of containment cells holding dangerous criminals, had been cracked wide open. All the prisoners were rioting, each one wanted for a ludicrous number of unbelievably heinous crimes, and the Lanterns were all doing everything in their power to get the situation under control again, while Guy Gardner and Iron Will played the blame game.
She had a lot of questions, but no time to ask them as she was already hard at work trying to avoid the attacks of several prisoners that had marked her as an easy target.
A Crystal Spider looking creature attempted to stab at her with its legs, which she dodged with a backflip, causing her to bump into some kind of reptilian gorilla creature, which took a swing at her. A shield from her ring stopped the blow, but not without visibly cracking under the force of the blow. The third, which looked like Hal’s race’s equivalent of a Pegasus, moved for the door while she was distracted, but she dismissed the shield and cartwheeled over in front of him to block his path, wrapping a chain construct around him to keep him from getting away.
Her focus was broken, however, when the crystal spider thing leapt at her, forcing her to defend herself with a Trampoline construct. The arachnid bounced off of it, and smacked straight into Guy Gardner, who didn’t take it very well.
There was no rest for Pinkie, however, as the lizard Gorilla and the bird-man were back, both rushing her at the same time. She quickly threw a Pegasus construct into the face of the bird man and took flight to avoid his scaly friend, who proceeded to start climbing the wall in an attempt to catch her.
The Pink pony fired a few generic blasts at it, hoping to knock it off as she continued to fly upwards, and it continued to chase her. The shots did very little to stop it, as it leapt at her, narrowly missing, but managing to grab ahold of the ceiling which she had failed to notice was immediately behind her now. Thinking fast, Pinkie made a construct on the ceiling that resembled a seesaw, and then kicked upwards, hitting the end that was near her, and letting the leaver smack the creature’s underside and knock it off the ceiling. It fell and landed directly on top of Guy, who had just finished dealing with the last bad guy she had sent his way.
She was about to relax a bit, when the bird-man slammed into her from the side, causing them both to collide against the wall. Pinkie hit it left-side first, and heard and felt her foreleg snap, almost distracting her too long for her to get out of the way of her assailant’s next attack, which she ducked under, twisting to face him as she did so.
The party pony bucked out with her back legs, kicking the bird-man in the stomach, but this inflicted more pain on her back legs than on her opponent. He took another swing with his fist, but she let herself drop into free fall for a few seconds, causing him to hit the wall and putting a bit of space between them, vertically at least. He came down at her with a dive attack, and she attempted to move out of the way, but his fist managed to make contact with her face, which was the last thing she remembered before everything went black.
*
Pinkie woke up for the umpteenth time in what she hoped was the same day, to find a strange creature looking down at her. It was Bipedal, about Hal’s size, with a matching amount of limbs. She couldn’t seem to make up her mind if it looked like a bug-man or bird-man though. Its skin looked like a slightly shiny carapace of some sort, and it had mandibles, but also a crest or horn like feature on its head, and talons on the tips of its fingers, not to mention the general body shame seemed somehow more avian than insect like. Speaking of fingers, it had two plus an opposable thumb on each hand. It wore its ring on the left hand. Its lantern outfit appeared to be a full suite of combat armor designed for its race, minus the helmet. There were green markings on its face, like some kind of war paint.
“Well, I see someone is finally up.” It said. Its voice was strange, but sounded distinctly male to her. “You took quite a beating. Not everyone can get pummeled by a Thanagarian and survive, especially when their as…soft…as someone like you. Frankly I’m amazed you survived, even more so that you’re up already.”
“A Thana-what-ian? Soft? I’m sorry, who are you?” Pinkie asked.
“I’m Serugis of planet Palaven, Green Lantern of sector 3400, former xenobiologist and medical doctor. I take care of a lot of seriously injured lanterns, anything basic first aid or a battle field medic can’t fix.” He said as he scanned over her body with his ring. “Thanagarian is the name of the race of the prisoner that took you out, the humanoid one with the wings. And while you are rather soft and furry I suppose a better word for what I was trying to say would be weak. You’re physically weak compared to most of the corps. I will admit that you did pretty well in spite of that. A good training routine and some proper nutrition, and you should be ring slinging like a champ in no time.”
He finished scanning her and looked over the data for a bit, while Pinkie started to get off the bed she was on, glancing around the circular room around her. It looked pretty similar to most rooms on Oa; mostly white and green, with maybe a bit of black mixed it here and there. There were screens and monitors along with fancy looking alien Cabinets, most likely holding medical stuff.
“Hmm…Your blood’s Ph level is point-zero-zero-seven higher than it should be. Then again, I may be wrong. I only have one other source of data on your particular species, so I can’t really make a definitive conclusion on that. I’ll have to look into that later, if I have the time and opportunity.” Serugis said, bringing her attention back to him. “Everything else seems to check out.”
“So I’m good to go?”
“Well, I would say take it easy for a few days, but your behind on your training with Killowog enough as it is. Still, if you develop any intense pains anywhere that you didn’t just get hit or start bleeding at any point, stop the training and come straight back here to see me. I can’t have you dying after all.”
“Okay. I should probably get back to Killowog for training then. Thanks for taking care of me.” Pinkie said to her newest friend, before putting a yo-yo on the bed and leaving.
Serugis stared at the door she’d left through for a moment, and then at the yo-yo, before he picked it up, examining it curiously.
“What the heck is this thing?”
*
“What do you mean he already left?” Pinkie inquired as she got started on the five hundred pushups that she had to do as a warm up. “How could Iron Will have already left? I’ve been here for days already; he can’t have gotten that far ahead of me in training, could he?”
“Well, you are scrawnier than him, and once he and Guy stopped trying to beat the snot out of each other, it was kind of easy to train him. He’s certainly not lacking in willpower or physical strength.” Killowog said as he fired a few shots at another lanterns construct to check its strength.
“Oh…well that’s good for him…” Pinkie replied halfheartedly. If Iron Will was done, that meant he was going to get stationed back on Equestria, and Pinkie was likely going to end up somewhere else. Who knew when she might see her friends again? But…on the other side of things, if she was stationed someplace else, she’d get to meet lots of new people and make lots of new friends.
She smiled and redoubled her efforts. The sooner her training was done, the sooner she could make new friends and go back to see her old ones again. She could see the training montage in her head already…
Risin’ up, back on the street,
Did my time took my chances,
Went the distance, now I’m back on my feet,
Just a mare and her will to survive.Pinkie attempts to continue her pushups, as sweat drips off of her, but she collapses to the ground in failure.
So many times it happens too fast,
You change your passion for glory.
Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past,
You must fight just to keep them alive.Pinkie attempts to mimic the moves of Serugis as he practices fighting, which resemble some sort of foreign fighting style, but ends up falling over.
It’s the eye of the tiger,
It’s the thrill of the fight,
Rising up to the challenge of our rival,
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night,
And she’s watching us all with the eye,
of the tiger.Pinkie attempts to continue jogging laps, but is clearly winded and tired. Several Lanterns in the training room shake their heads, feeling she’s a lost cause.
Face to face, out in the heat,
Hanging tough, staying hungry.
They stack the odds till’ we take to the street,
For we kill with the skill to survivePinkie using a wall construct to block shots from a number of other lanterns, while simultaneously attempting to reach Killowog’s 500 pushup goal. However, she falls down in defeat again
It’s the eye of the tiger,
It’s the thrill of the fight,
Rising up to the challenge of our rival,
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night,
And she’s watching us all with the eye,
of the tiger.Pinkie sits down to eat. There is an assortment of strange looking alien fruits on her tray. On the tray of the lantern next to her, there is a cupcake. She reaches for it, but is smacked on the head by a rolled up newspaper construct, courtesy of Guy Gardner, who is enjoying his job just a little too much.
Rising up straight to the top,
Have the guts, got the glory,
Went the distance, now I’m not gonna,
Stop just a mare and her will to survive.Pinkie rests in her bed in the room she’s staying in while on Oa, looking at a picture of her and the rest of the mane six, clearly homesick.
It’s the eye of the tiger,
It’s the thrill of the fight,
Rising up to the challenge of our rival,
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night,
And she’s watching us all with the eye,
of the tiger.Pinkie is running laps again, this time with alien attack dog constructs chasing her. She does manage a good time on all her laps though.
The Eye of the Tiger
Pinkie successfully completes 500 pushups with weights on her back
The Eye of the Tiger
Pinkie is mimicking the moves of Serugis again, and is managing to keep up with him, even pulling off the more complicated moves.
The Eye of the Tiger
Pinkie Reaches for a cupcake while in the line for food, but Guy smacks her with his construct again. Pinkie retaliates by dropping an anvil construct on his head, and stealing the cupcake off of his tray. Everyone in the room cheers.
The Eye of the Tiger
Pinkie collapsed to the training room floor, exhausted from her most intense training session yet. “Okay…so…same time tomorrow?”
Killowog shook his head, much to Pinkie’s surprise. “Nope. You’re done Poozer.”
Shock and outrage went across Pinkie’s face when she heard this. “What?! Are you kidding me?! You put me through tartarus and back again with training, and you’re going to kick me out of the corps now?!”
“What?! No! You finished your training. I told you this was going to be your last session three solar cycles ago. Iron Will got himself transferred by making the guardians mad. You’re going home.”
The party pony turned Green Lantern blinked, her brain processing the information. When it finally all clicked into place she leapt up into the air and took flight around the room. “WHOOHOO! I’m going home! Finally! It only took me-!”
*
“I’m sorry sugar plum, but it’s been a full year since she disappeared. It pains me to say it, but…I don’t think Pinkie Pie is ever coming back.”