"Your Majesty, don't leave yet!" Truthfully, when Two-Face first learned his new boss was Thea—a superhero—he'd been worried for days. He'd tolerated the righteous-crusader routine back when he still had his looks. These days? Hard pass.
What he hadn't expected was the reality. Once he settled into the job, something became abundantly clear: his coworkers told him everything he needed to know.
Just look at the people he worked alongside. Demons. Death knights. Evil gods. Assassins. Banshees. Compared to that crew, Two-Face was practically a model citizen.
Back in Gotham, the worst he'd done was push a little product and collect protection money door-to-door—all while living in constant fear that Batman might drop from some random rooftop. On the evil scale, he wasn't even in the same league as his new colleagues.
After a stretch in the Underworld, Two-Face had finally figured it out: this superhero's sense of right and wrong was terrifyingly thin. The boss was pure neutrality in a cape—she just happened to be very, very good at pretending otherwise.
"What is it?" Thea looked at him with mild curiosity. The man had found his niche perfectly. He was born to be a chief of staff.
In Gotham, he'd been a crime boss—slicked-back hair, commanding presence. Down here, the slick-back had been swapped for a neat side part. He didn't grovel the way Charon did, but his posture communicated deference without sacrificing an ounce of self-respect.
"A few arrivals I can't classify. They have merits—significant ones—but their offenses are considerable too."
Thea raised an eyebrow. If Two-Face, the workaholic, couldn't make the call, she was curious.
The truth was, the Underworld's sentencing guidelines were dizzyingly complex. The rules had come bundled with creation itself—an elaborate legal code she'd had no hand in writing and no authority to casually amend.
There were mountains of them. An entire library's worth of volumes, every page packed with regulations. Thea had pushed open the door once, out of idle curiosity, and promptly retreated. She hadn't read a single line.
Eventually she'd dumped the entire corpus on Two-Face. The man hadn't been Gotham's district attorney for nothing—he held a law doctorate.
She followed him to the judgment hall. One look at the defendants, and she broke into a grin.
Four Guardians of the Universe. Standing ramrod straight, eyes fixed forward, carrying themselves as though they were still on Oa. Down here, though, they had no bodies—no ability to hover—and at their diminutive height, the effect was significantly less imposing.
"Well, well. Where did you four come from?" Thea asked, knowing full well.
The four little blue men had learned humility. The aloof arrogance they'd carried for eons was nowhere in evidence. The one in front—the largest head of the group—began: "Your Majesty, we—"
Thea cut him off. "Why is it always you talking? Are the others mute? Do you think I'm not worth addressing individually?"
They winced. When you lived under someone else's roof, you bowed your head. Each stepped forward, preparing to introduce themselves.
Thea knew all their names—H'ruba's memories contained the full roster. She simply wanted to cut them down to size. This wasn't Oa. This was the Underworld.
She waved a hand. "I don't need your names. Harvey, register them. Under 'Name,' write Bystander One, Two, Three, and Four. File it."
The teasing was cathartic, but she had places to be. She took the Underworld ledger and began reviewing their records line by line.
Despite appearances, the Guardians had done plenty of good. In the ten billion years before Earth's civilization arose, they'd saved the universe from annihilation on multiple occasions. Without them, the universe would have detonated long ago—and without a universe, there'd be no Earth.
They had undeniable merit. Enough, by rights, to earn a spot in Heaven with an angel's halo to spare.
But the sins were equally substantial. The Manhunters, reprogrammed by Krona, had exterminated every intelligent species in Sector 666. That could be pinned on Krona—but was it the Manhunters' only transgression? The Underworld records said otherwise. There had been others. More than one.
The Green Lantern Corps' rise to power—had that been bloodless? Had there been no innocent casualties along the way?
Every corner of the cosmos had celebrated the Corps' founding? Clearly not. Sarah Kerrigan and Lady Styx, who'd held their sectors through wars of attrition and raw stubbornness, could testify to the contrary. The title of "universal peacekeepers" had been earned through body counts.
And then there was the selection criteria. The rings chose bearers independently. "Possessing great courage" was the qualifier. But did courage automatically equal virtue?
Finally, the Third Army. How many planets destroyed? How many species erased entirely? The numbers were incalculable.
Great merits. Great sins. That was why Two-Face had been unable to decide.
"Fine. I'm a merciful soul—can't bear to see people suffer. Since we're all acquaintances, I'll spare you the pit. You claim to be guardians of the universe? Then your sentence is reincarnation as mortals. Go experience firsthand how hard life actually is."
In the Underworld, Thea's word was final. This was the ultimate judgment—neither Two-Face nor Minos had the authority to overrule it.
Two-Face scrambled to document the verdict per regulation. Thea signed it with a quick scrawl. Effective immediately. Off you go.
The four Guardians were led away to the reincarnation queue. She flipped to the last page of their file and only then noticed how they'd died: killed by Atrocitus.
The Fate Clock's toll had knocked them unconscious. Thea had chased the First Lantern. And while the Guardians lay helpless, Atrocitus had happened to come across them.
When enemies met face to face, words were superfluous. The Red Lantern's leader, eyes blazing with the rage that defined him, hadn't wasted a breath. He'd torn into them on the spot. Literally. They'd been unconscious, unable to resist, and had died without ever understanding what had happened.
By the time they regained awareness, they were already in the Underworld. Thoroughly, completely bewildered ghosts.
"Only these four?" she asked Two-Face.
"Just the four."
So Ganthet and Sayd had survived. Someone must have intervened—a passing Good Samaritan, perhaps—and rescued them. The eight Guardian wardens from the First Lantern's prison also appeared to still be alive. The bearded one had fainted before the Fate Clock struck and had avoided the worst of it. He'd already come to and was tending to the others.
Everything in the Underworld was in order. Thea hurried back out into space.
Exactly as she'd anticipated, several factions of Lanterns were in a shouting match around the Fate Clock.
John Stewart and the newly minted Green Lantern Simon Baz had brought a dozen-odd Lanterns to form a protective ring around the eight Guardian wardens. The bearded elder had fainted during the First Lantern's jailbreak and was therefore spared the clock's shockwave. He'd since regained consciousness and was already on his feet, working to revive his companions.
Across from them stood the Red Lantern Corps. Atrocitus, already naturally scarlet, was now drenched head to toe in blood. Killing intent poured off him in waves so thick they were nearly visible. At his feet lay the four Guardians' remains—mangled beyond recognition, no longer identifiable as having once been anything at all.
The depth of his hatred for the little blue men was written in every shattered bone.