Again with the Green Lantern.
At this point, compared to the second half of the agreement the Martian Manhunter mentioned, Joey was more curious about where their hostility toward the Green Lanterns came from.
The old Kara—who had seemed fragile and meek—had dared to kill Abin Sur, the Green Lantern assigned to Sector 2814 of Earth's universe.
And now, upon first contact, the Martian Manhunter was showing unprecedented hostility toward Starfire, someone he had never even met before.
Seeing Joey's expression, the Martian Manhunter simply sighed.
"I suppose you're wondering why we Martians harbor such hatred toward the Green Lanterns?"
Joey nodded. "You probably don't need to guess. Aren't Martians mind readers? Is there something wrong with her?"
"No. My people and I cannot use telepathy right now, and we have no idea whether there is anything wrong with her."
The Martian Manhunter pointed to a metal band on his wrist. Joey could clearly see traces of native Kryptonian technology in it.
"This is one of the problems your Kryptonians need to solve for us. We absolutely cannot use our telepathic abilities at the moment."
Martians did indeed possess telepathy. When pushed to its limits, it could function like mind-reading, even overwhelming or controlling another's thoughts.
But most of the time, Martians used this ability to form a psychic network—a way to communicate with one another.
Without words or gestures, they could instantly share love, hatred, and everything in between with their family and friends. It was a sensation the Martian Manhunter deeply missed.
"Kara used that band to suppress your telepathy? She's coercing you?"
Having just been beaten by Kara for no reason, Joey immediately assumed the worst about his cousin.
"I can free you right now—as long as you leave Earth and return to Mars."
Superman was being too merciful. Cyborg didn't believe these people would simply leave once they regained their telepathy—they would definitely strike back.
Cyborg tried to signal Joey with his eyes, but realized his current body could only flash RGB lights, so he gave up.
Neither the Martian Manhunter nor Joey noticed his silent objection.
"No. She did give us these bands, but this isn't coercion or enslavement. It's protection. As we said before, this is an equal agreement."
The Martian Manhunter continued explaining why he and his people could not use their telepathy:
"Mars once suffered a deadly plague—a psychic epidemic, a curse from the Martian god H'ronmeer."
"It nearly infected our entire species, including the shared psychic network we once all possessed."
"If we carelessly use telepathy and connect to that network, the infection spreads along it."
Once infected, the fire of thought ignites within our minds, burning us alive from the inside out."
"How does that work?"
As one of the most powerful entities on the internet, Cyborg tried to analyze it from the perspective of viral transmission, comparing digital networks to the Martian psychic network—but he couldn't make sense of it.
"If connecting to the network infects you, and infection kills you instantly, then how did it spread on such a large scale?"
"'Virus' is just a metaphor. If we must define it, it's more like an emotion—a deeply ingrained, extreme fear that all Martians possess… a fear of fire. We fear it to death."
With the Martian Manhunter's explanation, Joey finally understood how the Martians' fear of fire—similar to Kryptonians' fear of Kryptonite—actually worked.
Physically, Martians weren't truly vulnerable to fire. With bodies comparable to Kryptonians, ordinary flames shouldn't be able to burn or kill them.
Their fear of fire was rooted in their minds and souls—a primal terror.
And the problem was that their minds were simply too powerful.
For ordinary beings, fear of fire might only cause panic and loss of composure.
But for Martians, their immense psychic power turned that panic into something lethally real.
Once flames ignite outside their bodies, their inner fear of fire manifests outward under the power of their own minds.
Most Martians who are burned to death are not killed by the initial flames applied to them, but by the fire of their own minds.
In other words, a Martian's fear of fire can quite literally scare them to death.
As Joey listened to the Martian Manhunter's explanation, he finally remembered to look up. Under the night sky, he cast his gaze toward Mars.
What he saw was nothing but desolation—no visible traces of civilization at all.
Only beneath dozens of meters of red desert could one occasionally spot faint remnants of artificial structures.
"This isn't what I expected…"
In Joey's original assumption, the Martians, backed by their home planet, had secretly infiltrated Earth in preparation for invasion, eventually forming an alliance with the equally covert Kryptonians.
As for why they would want to conquer Earth, that was hardly worth questioning.
Militarism, chauvinism, hegemonism, imperialism…
When you are strong enough and possess any one—or several—of these ideologies, any weaker neighbor is inherently burdened with original sin.
Being conquered becomes their only purpose for existing in this world.
But now, Mars was nothing more than a lifeless, dead planet.
"What happened to Mars? Where are the others?"
"They are the others."
Martian Manhunter counted the 372 individuals present and methodically introduced each one by name before continuing:
"Aside from a few cowards who refused to join our cause, this is all that remains of the Martian race. I already told you—the 'virus' is a thought, an extreme form of fear."
A biological virus cannot spread widely if it kills its host too quickly—but thoughts can.
The terror of being burned alive spread rapidly through the psychic network, through what was seen with the eyes, and even through rumors, creating a chain reaction. In a very short time, it infected and wiped out most of the Martian population.
"We are Martians from thousands of years ago. Decades ago, during an uncontrolled time tunnel experiment on Earth, we were accidentally pulled into the future—your present era."
"That experiment was full of coincidences and chance. Combined with the vast difference in difficulty between traveling forward and backward in time, even with the intelligence of all of us and Earth's greatest minds, we could not replicate it in reverse."
"We had no choice but to return to Mars in this era, only to find that everything there was already gone."
"No one on Mars survived that catastrophic psychic plague."
"And by sheer accident, we became the ones who escaped it."
"Now, let me answer the question you were most interested in—why we hate the Green Lanterns. It's because all of this is inseparable from the Guardians of Oa behind the Green Lantern Corps."
"Are you sure?"
Joey wasn't certain whether this was true, but he had his own suspicions.
Fear of fire is a natural instinct—it's true. All animals on Earth fear fire. Those that didn't were likely wiped out by wildfires long ago.
But today, humans have a significantly lower instinctive fear of fire compared to wild animals—that's why people can light campfires to drive away beasts.
This should have applied to Martians as well. A species that naturally evolved and developed civilization shouldn't have such an extreme psychological reaction to fire.
Unless their evolution had been interfered with by something unnatural.
"So your fear of fire wasn't a result of natural evolution."
"That's right."
The Martian Manhunter clenched his fists. His already crimson eyes burned even deeper red, and his humanoid form could no longer conceal the ferocity beneath.
"After thousands of years, our people turned to dust, our civilization became wasteland, and we became the last remnants of Mars."
"And in the eyes of those who call themselves the guardians, the extinction of our entire species was nothing more than a trivial price to pay for a more peaceful future."