Chapter 6: Origins - Part 6
The Galvan Central Archives stood alone—a defiant monument amidst the apocalypse.
While the rest of the city burned and bled, reduced to skeletal ruins and smoldering craters, the Archives remained untouched, as if protected by some invisible aegis. It rose like a crystalline needle toward the bruised orange sky, its surface a seamless expanse of blue-green metamaterial that seemed to hum with contained energy. The tower stretched upward for nearly two kilometers, tapering to a point so fine it appeared to pierce the clouds themselves. Geometric patterns traced across its surface—circuits of golden light that pulsed in rhythmic waves, carrying data through optical pathways embedded within the structure's very molecular lattice.
It was the tallest building on Galvan Prime. The heart of their civilization. The repository of knowledge accumulated over millions of years—scientific breakthroughs that had reshaped the galaxy, technological schematics that bordered on the divine, historical records that predated most sentient species' first crawl from the primordial soup.
And inside, it was falling apart.
---
The main research chamber—seven levels below the surface, shielded by meters of reinforced alloy and energy dampeners—looked like a hurricane had torn through it wearing steel-toed boots.
Rubble littered the floor: chunks of shattered wall plating, fragments of broken computer terminals that still sparked weakly, shards of transparent aluminum from blown-out viewscreens. Data storage cylinders—sleek tubes filled with crystallized information, each one containing the equivalent of a billion human libraries—lay scattered like discarded toys, many cracked open, their contents leaking in faint streams of luminescent powder that dissolved into nothing when exposed to air. The acrid smell of burnt circuitry hung thick and choking, mingling with the metallic tang of coolant leaking from ruptured conduits in the walls.
Emergency lighting cast everything in harsh red and amber, throwing deep shadows that made the destruction look even worse than it was. Warning klaxons blared somewhere in the distance, muffled by the reinforced walls but persistent, a constant reminder that time was running out.
At the center of the chaos, in front of a massive holographic display that flickered and glitched but stubbornly refused to die, stood a figure barely six inches tall.
Azmuth.
He was Galvan—elderly even by their standards, his gray skin dull with age and stress, marked by faint scars that spoke of a long life spent pushing boundaries. Like all his species, he resembled an anthropomorphic frog, bipedal and slight, with skin that had a faintly sticky texture, evolved for gripping microscopic tools with precision no other species could match. Gills fluttered along his neck, drawing oxygen from air that tasted of smoke and fear.
His eyes were large and bulbous, glowing a soft green that had dimmed with exhaustion, rectangular black pupils contracted to slits as they tracked across the holographic data streaming before him. His eyelids—thin, translucent membranes—blinked horizontally, a slow, deliberate motion that betrayed his concentration.
Four thin tendrils hung from his lower jaw, twitching occasionally like fingers counting invisible numbers, while two longer tendrils draped from his upper jaw, framing his face in a way that gave him the appearance of wearing a beard—though these were sensory organs, not hair, capable of detecting minute changes in air pressure and electromagnetic fields.
He wore a green Galvan tunic, traditional in cut but reinforced with practical additions: black sleeves that extended past his wrists, a black stripe running down his chest and abdomen like a scholar's sash, and a black utility belt cinched around his waist that held datapads, micro-tools, and a compact energy cell. Silver plating covered his neck, shoulders, and wrists in segmented armor—not for combat, but to protect against industrial accidents and high-voltage systems. More plating covered his legs and feet, leaving only his webbed toes exposed, allowing him the tactile feedback he needed when operating delicate machinery.
His eyes, normally bright with the fire of insatiable curiosity, now appeared smaller, squinting—a human expression he'd picked up from decades of working alongside other species. Stress. Frustration. Grief held at bay by sheer stubborn refusal to stop working.
Azmuth's fingers—long, delicate, evolved for manipulating circuitry at the nanometer scale—flew across the small hovering keyboard suspended before him, each keystroke precise and deliberate despite the speed. The keyboard itself was a marvel: a flat plane of hardlight projected from a palm-sized emitter clipped to his belt, keys that appeared and disappeared based on what function he needed, responsive to pressure that would've been imperceptible to human touch.
The holographic display before him showed... something. A schematic, intricate beyond comprehension, rotating slowly in three-dimensional space. Concentric circles within circles, geometric patterns that hurt to look at too long, equations scrolling past in languages that predated written Common. At the center, a shape—simple in outline but impossibly complex in execution—pulsed with faint green light.
It looked almost like a watch.
But it was so much more.
Azmuth didn't look at it. Couldn't afford to. His focus was absolute, pouring every fragment of his formidable intellect into the final calculations, double-checking subroutines, verifying quantum encryption protocols that would make the device—
Stop.
The thought crashed into him like cold water.
How did this happen?
His fingers paused, hovering over the keyboard, trembling with exhaustion and something darker. Rage. Guilt.
He had been careful. Obsessively, paranoid careful. The project had been classified at the highest levels, buried under layers of misdirection and false data trails. Only the guardians of oa and two people in the entire galaxy knew the full scope of what he was building. And he'd trusted them with his life.
Someone had talked.
Or someone had been compromised.
Or someone had died screaming while their mind was peeled open layer by layer until the secrets spilled out.
The result was the same.
The information had leaked. Word had spread. And they had come.
The invaders. The Knights. The army that had descended from that monstrous warship and turned Galvan Prime into a graveyard in less than an hour.
So many dead.
The weight of it pressed against Azmuth's chest, heavy and suffocating. He could see their faces—colleagues, friends, students he'd mentored. Brilliant minds, extinguished. Lives cut short because he'd dared to dream of something better.
The Galvan Council had warned him. Too dangerous, they'd said. Too much power in one device. What if it falls into the wrong hands?
He'd dismissed them. Arrogant. So certain he could control it, could ensure it would only be used for good.
And now Galvan Prime burned.
No.
Azmuth forced the grief down, locked it away in the same mental vault where he kept all the other failures, all the other regrets. There would be time to mourn later—if there was a later.
Right now, he had to finish.
Because if he didn't, if the device fell into their hands incomplete, unfinished, unstable—then every sacrifice, every death, every drop of blood spilled on the streets above would be for nothing.
His fingers resumed their dance, faster now, desperate. Code compiled. Algorithms verified. Quantum locks engaged.
Come on. Come on. Just a little—
BOOM.
The explosion was massive, a physical shockwave that rolled through the Archives like the fist of an angry god. The floor bucked, throwing Azmuth off balance, and he had to grab the edge of his hovering keyboard to keep from tumbling. Ceiling panels cracked and fell, crashing to the floor in a shower of debris and sparks. The holographic display flickered violently, half the projection vanishing before stabilizing.
Azmuth's sensitive gills flared, catching the sudden shift in air pressure, the taste of displaced atmosphere that meant only one thing:
Breach.
They were inside the Archives.
Alarms shrieked to life, deafening even through the reinforced walls—a high-pitched wail that set Azmuth's teeth on edge and made his tendrils twitch involuntarily. Red emergency lights strobed, painting the chamber in hellish crimson flashes.
A synthetic voice—calm, emotionless, infinitely more terrifying because of it—echoed through hidden speakers:
"WARNING. PERIMETER BREACH DETECTED. UNAUTHORIZED ENTITIES ON LEVELS ONE THROUGH FOUR. SECURITY LOCKDOWN INITIATED. ALL PERSONNEL EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY."
No time.
Azmuth's fingers became a blur, hammering the keyboard with reckless speed, abandoning caution for sheer desperation. Subroutines he'd planned to triple-check were approved with a keystroke. Redundancies he'd wanted to build in were skipped entirely. Safety protocols meant to prevent catastrophic failure were bypassed.
It wasn't perfect.
It would have to be good enough.
"Come on," he hissed, voice hoarse, tendrils quivering. "Come on, just a little—"
The final algorithm compiled. The last quantum lock engaged. The holographic schematic pulsed once, twice, then stabilized, glowing a steady, triumphant green.
SYSTEM COMPLETE. PROTOTYPE READY FOR EXTRACTION.
"—and done."
The word came out as a gasp, relief and exhaustion crashing over him in equal measure. Azmuth sagged against the keyboard, legs trembling, gills fluttering rapidly as he dragged in air that tasted of victory and ashes.
He'd done it.
Against all odds, against the clock ticking down to oblivion, he'd finished.
The hovering keyboard shifted beneath him, responding to his weight, and Azmuth allowed himself to collapse onto it like a raft in a storm. The hardlight platform held steady, surprisingly solid despite its ethereal appearance, and began to rise, carrying him upward toward the heart of the computer system suspended above.
The core was a spherical lattice of crystalline processors, each one no larger than a grain of sand but containing computational power that exceeded most planetary networks. They pulsed with inner light—blue, green, gold—data flowing through them in streams too fast for organic eyes to follow.
And at the center, nestled within a magnetic suspension field that glowed faintly violet, was an orb.
Small. Unassuming. Roughly the size of a human fist, its surface smooth and featureless, polished to a mirror sheen that reflected the chaotic lights around it in distorted fragments.
Azmuth reached out with both hands, fingers trembling—not from fear, but from the sheer weight of what he was about to hold.
This was it.
This was everything.
His fingers closed around the orb, and it came free with a soft click that felt far too quiet for something so monumental. The magnetic field collapsed, energy dissipating in a faint crackle of static that raised the fine hairs (or what passed for them) along Azmuth's arms.
The orb was warm in his hands. Alive, almost. Humming with potential energy that vibrated against his palms like a second heartbeat.
Azmuth stared at it, and for a moment—just a moment—allowed himself to feel the full scope of what he'd created.
Was this worth it?
The question echoed through his mind, unbidden, unwelcome.
All the secrecy. All the sacrifice. All the DEATH. Was THIS worth it?
He thought of the bodies in the streets. The Plumbers cut down defending a project they didn't even know existed. The Green Lanterns who'd answered the distress call and been slaughtered for their courage.
He thought of Galvan Prime burning.
And he thought of what this device could do.
It has to be, Azmuth told himself, the words firm despite the doubt gnawing at his heart. For peace. For a galaxy where theirs no discrimination, where both the weak and strong could work together, understand each other
It HAS to be.
The hovering keyboard descended, carrying him back to the floor with the gentle precision of a parent lowering a sleeping child into bed. Azmuth's feet touched down on cold metal, and he hopped off, still cradling the orb.
A larger sphere—twice the size of the orb, made of the same polished material—floated before him at chest height, suspended by anti-gravity emitters built into the floor. Its surface was seamless, unmarred, waiting.
Azmuth approached it, reverent despite the alarms still screaming, despite the sound of destruction growing closer. He placed the orb inside the larger sphere with the care of someone handling a live grenade.
The sphere recognized its contents. Panels shifted, internal clamps engaged, and the two halves began to close—
KRAAAAAASH.
The wall behind Azmuth exploded.
Not cracked. Not damaged. Exploded, as if hit by a artillery shell, chunks of reinforced alloy and metamaterial blown inward in a spray of deadly shrapnel that screamed through the air like horizontal rain.
Azmuth threw his arms up instinctively, shielding his face, debris pinging off his silver arm plating with sharp metallic tinks that would've shattered bone if not for the reinforcement. Dust billowed in choking clouds, thick and gritty, coating his skin and clogging his gills.
Through the haze, through the settling rubble and the acrid smoke, a figure stepped into the chamber.
Massive.
The being had to duck to fit through the hole it had created, shoulders scraping the edges, and when it straightened inside, it seemed to fill the entire room with its presence—a monument to brutality made flesh.
Nine feet tall, maybe more, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, clad in the same black nanotech armor that had turned the battlefield above into a slaughterhouse. Crimson circuitry pulsed across the surface like exposed veins, and those heavy boots—each step a thud that cracked the floor—carried it forward with the unhurried confidence of a predator that knew its prey had nowhere to run.
And then the helmet retracted.
The black nanotech receded, flowing backward like liquid shadow, peeling away from the head in smooth, organic motions that defied physics. It retreated down the neck, exposing skin and features that made Azmuth's blood run cold.
Pale-green skin stretched over a skull that seemed too large, too angular, marked with yellowish spots that clustered around the jawline and temples like diseased growths. The nose was absent—just two vertical slits that flared with each breath, tasting the air. No outer ears either, just smooth skin where they should've been, giving the head an unsettling, streamlined quality.
But it was the eyes and the tentacles that truly marked the being.
The eyes glowed red—not metaphorically, not poetically, but literally glowed with inner light that pulsed in time with the armor's circuitry. They were large and unblinking, pupils vertical slits like a predator's, and they fixed on Azmuth with an intensity that felt like being dissected by lasers.
And from the lower half of the face, where a mouth and jaw should dominate, hung tentacles—thick, muscular appendages that writhed slowly, independently, like serpents tasting the air. They dangled in front of the being's face like a grotesque beard, green-skinned with those same yellowish spots.
The being was unmistakably male—something in the bone structure, the breadth of the shoulders, the way he carried himself spoke of masculine aggression distilled to its essence.
And Azmuth knew him.
Oh, he knew him.
The name rose in his mind, dragged up from intelligence briefings and classified reports, from whispered warnings exchanged between Plumber Magisters in secure channels, from the growing list of conquered worlds that stretched across three sectors like a trail of corpses.
Vilgax.
Warlord. Conqueror. The being whose mere name made entire star systems mobilize their defenses.
The Chimera Sui Generis who'd turned military conquest into an art form, whose fleet had reduced civilizations to ash, whose reputation for brutality was matched only by his terrifying intelligence.
And he was here.
Standing in Azmuth's laboratory.
Staring at the device.
Vilgax's lipless mouth—little more than a horizontal slit beneath the writhing tentacles—curved into something that might've been a smile if smiles could carry that much malice.
When he spoke, his voice was deep, resonant, carrying the kind of authority that came from knowing you were the most dangerous thing in any room you entered.
"Azmuth."
The name rolled off his tongue like a death sentence, slow and savoring.
"First Thinker of Galvan Prime. Creator of the Ascalon Project. The mind behind a thousand innovations that reshaped the galaxy."
The red eyes narrowed, glowing brighter.
"And the fool who thought he could hide from me."
-----------
The final bell rang with the same shrill, electronic brrrrring that had marked the start of the day, and Madison Elementary School exhaled—a collective sigh of relief from four hundred students simultaneously released from the prison of desks and worksheets and teachers droning on about subjects that felt designed to suck the life out of childhood.
The double doors burst open, and kids poured out like water from a broken dam, voices rising in that particular cacophony that only exists when ten-year-olds taste freedom: shouts, laughter, the scuff of sneakers on pavement, backpacks hitting shoulders with dull thumps, the distant jingle of someone's keychain shaped like a superhero logo.
Ben, Gwen, and Kevin emerged in the middle of the pack, carried along by the current until they broke free near the flagpole and regrouped on the sidewalk.
Ben looked like he'd been through a war. brown hair poking out in defiant tufts that refused to stay contained. His backpack hung from one shoulder, zipper half-open, a folder threatening to escape. Dark circles shadowed his eyes—not from lack of sleep, but from the particular exhaustion that came from six hours of pretending to pay attention while your brain screamed for literally anything else.
He groaned, a sound pulled from the depths of his soul, and let his head fall back dramatically. "Five. Five homework assignments. Five. What kind of monsters do they think we are?"
Gwen, walking beside him with her backpack perfectly centered on both shoulders and every zipper closed, raised an eyebrow. "The kind that are supposed to be learning?"
"Learning is what happens in school," Ben shot back, waving one hand in the air like he was presenting irrefutable evidence. "Homework is just... it's cruel and unusual punishment. It's probably against the Geneva Convention."
Kevin snorted, hands buried in his hoodie pockets, slouching along like gravity had personally selected him for extra attention. "Pretty sure the Geneva Convention doesn't cover math worksheets, Tennyson."
"Well, it should."
They walked in silence for a few steps, the afternoon sun warm on their faces, the smell of cut grass and car exhaust mixing in that distinctly suburban way. Around them, other kids scattered toward bus stops, toward waiting parents in idling cars, toward homes where snacks and cartoons and blessed, beautiful freedom waited.
Ben's mind, however, was not on freedom. His mind was on the five assignments currently weighing down his backpack like anchors designed to drown him in responsibility.
Math. English. Science. Social Studies. And—most insulting of all—a reading log where he was supposed to document thirty minutes of reading every single night.
Thirty minutes. Every night. Like he had that kind of time.
An idea began to form. Desperate. Probably doomed. But when you were drowning, you grabbed whatever floated past.
Ben turned to Gwen, plastering on what he hoped was a winning smile—the kind that said I'm your favorite cousin and you love me and also I would do literally anything for you.
"Soooooo, Gwen."
She didn't even look at him. "No."
"You don't even know what I was gonna say!"
"You were going to ask if you could copy my homework."
Ben's smile faltered. "I—well—okay, yes, but—"
"No."
"Come on!" Ben jogged a few steps to get in front of her, walking backward so he could look her in the eye, arms spread in supplication. "It's not even copying, it's like... collaborative learning. Teamwork. You know, family helping family."
"Family helping family would be you doing your own work so you actually learn something."
"I learn better by example! Visual learning! It's a thing, I swear, I read about it—"
"When? During the reading you're definitely not doing for your reading log?"
Kevin laughed—sharp and loud, the sound of someone enjoying a spectacle. "She's got you there, man."
Ben shot him a betrayed look, then turned back to Gwen, desperation creeping into his voice. "Okay. Okay, look. What if—what if I did something for you? Like, a favor. Anything you want. I'll—I'll carry your books for a week. I'll do your chores. I'll—I'll cover for you if you want to sneak out or something—"
Gwen stopped walking. Ben nearly tripped over his own feet trying to stop too.
She looked at him, green eyes sharp and calculating, and for a moment Ben felt a flicker of hope. She was considering it. She was actually—
"Act like a monkey."
Ben blinked. "What?"
"Right here. Right now." Gwen gestured to the sidewalk around them, where a handful of other students still lingered, talking in clusters, waiting for rides. "Do a full monkey impression. Scratch your armpits. Make the noises. Hop around. If you do that, I'll consider letting you look at my homework."
Ben stared at her. "You're joking."
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
She didn't. Her expression was perfectly neutral, almost serene, the face of someone who held all the cards and knew it.
Ben glanced around. A few kids were already looking in their direction, sensing drama. Marcus from his homeroom was nudging his friend, pointing.
Ben's face burned. "I—no. No way. That's—"
"Then no homework help." Gwen shrugged, stepping around him and resuming her walk. "Your choice, cuz."
Ben stood frozen for a heartbeat, pride and desperation wrestling for control. Pride won—barely.
"You know what? Fine. Fine. I don't need your help. I'll just—I'll figure it out myself. I'm smart. I can do this."
Kevin clapped him on the shoulder as he passed, grin wide. "Sure you can, buddy. Sure you can."
Ben jogged to catch up, muttering under his breath about tyrannical cousins and the cruel injustice of a world that forced kids to do homework and denied them access to the smart people's answers.
The conversation shifted as they walked, tension dissolving into the comfortable rhythm of friends who'd had this exact argument a hundred times before.
"So," Kevin said, stretching his arms overhead until his shoulders popped. "Harley's Arcade. What's the game plan?"
Ben's eyes lit up instantly, homework forgotten in the face of something actually important. "Dude. Dude. Sumo Slammers Revolution. They got the new cabinet last week, the one with the updated roster. I heard they added Yokozuna Supreme and like six new special moves—"
"We played Sumo Slammers yesterday."
"Yeah, but I didn't beat the boss! I was so close, Kevin, like one hit away, and then you distracted me with that thing about the—"
"I'm just saying, maybe we try something else? They got that new shooter, Nebula Strike? Heard it's got co-op mode, we could—"
"Sumo Slammers has co-op!"
"Sumo Slammers has versus. That's not the same."
Ben was already counting on his fingers, animated, backpack bouncing with every emphatic gesture. "Okay, but listen—listen. They got six Sumo Slammers games at Harley's. Six. We could do a full rotation: Classic, Turbo, Revolution, Ultimate Showdown, Legends, and then—then—we finish with Galaxy Warriors, which is basically Sumo Slammers in space—"
"That sounds like the same game six times."
"It's not!" Ben's voice pitched higher, indignant. "They all have different mechanics! Different rosters! Turbo has the speed boost system, Ultimate Showdown has environmental hazards, Legends has the—"
Gwen, walking slightly ahead, glanced back over her shoulder. "You two are such dweebs."
Ben and Kevin exchanged a look.
"Yeah," Ben said.
"Totally," Kevin agreed.
"But we're cool dweebs," Ben added.
Gwen shook her head, ponytail swaying, but there was the faintest hint of a smile tugging at her lips. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."
They turned the corner, Madison Elementary shrinking behind them, and the neighborhood opened up: tree-lined streets, modest houses with chain-link fences, the distant hum of traffic from the main road. The afternoon sun hung low, casting long shadows that stretched across the sidewalk like reaching fingers.
Ben was mid-sentence, explaining the intricate differences between Sumo Slammers Turbo and Sumo Slammers Revolution (something about frame data and hitbox adjustments that Kevin was clearly only half-listening to), when—
WHOOOOSH.
A sound like wind through a tunnel, high-pitched and sharp, cut through the air above them.
All three heads snapped upward.
A green streak shot across the sky, maybe a hundred feet up, moving fast—faster than any plane, faster than anything that had a right to move in atmosphere. It carved a perfect arc against the pale blue, trailing a faint luminescent contrail that shimmered and faded almost immediately, like the afterimage of a camera flash burned into the retina.
The light was unmistakable: emerald, brilliant, alive.
Green Lantern.
Ben's jaw dropped, eyes going wide and glassy with the kind of awe usually reserved for finding out school was cancelled forever. "Whoa. Whoa. Did you see that?! That was a Green Lantern! An actual Green Lantern!"
Kevin squinted, tracking the fading contrail. "Yeah. Moving pretty fast too. Think something's going down?"
"Something's always going down when the Lanterns show up," Ben said, practically vibrating with excitement. He spun in a circle, trying to track where the streak had come from, where it was going, already constructing elaborate scenarios in his mind. "Maybe there's an alien invasion! Or—or a space criminal on the run! Or maybe they're teaming up with Superman and—"
"Or maybe," Gwen interrupted, tone dry as dust, "they're just passing through and you're getting worked up over nothing."
Ben whirled on her. "Passing through? Gwen, Green Lanterns don't just pass through. They're intergalactic peacekeepers! Space cops! If one of them is here, it's because something important is happening, and—"
"And the last time a Green Lantern showed up, they trashed half of Central City."
Ben blinked. "What? No they didn't. That was—"
"Two months ago." Gwen held up her hand, counting off on her fingers. "Green Lantern and The Flash were fighting Gorilla Grodd and Captain Cold. They had their big showdown in downtown Central City. Remember? Constructs smashing through buildings, ice everywhere, that giant gorilla throwing cars?" She lowered her hand, eyebrow raised. "Ring any bells?"
Ben's excitement dimmed—but only slightly. "Okay, yeah, but—but that was an awesome mess! The Flash did that thing where he ran up the side of a building, and Green Lantern made that giant boxing glove construct and—"
"And seventeen buildings were damaged, forty-three people were injured, and the mayor had to declare a state of emergency."
"But they won," Ben insisted, undeterred. "They stopped the bad guys. That's what matters."
Gwen opened her mouth, clearly ready to launch into a lecture about collateral damage and civic responsibility and all the things that made her sound like a tiny lawyer-in-training.
Then she stopped. Sighed. Let her shoulders drop.
"You know what? Never mind. Why do I even bother?"
Ben grinned, sensing victory. "Because you love us?"
"Because I'm cursed," Gwen muttered, but there was no real heat in it.
Kevin laughed, the sound warm and genuine. "Come on. Arcade's this way. If we're lucky, we can get in a couple hours before your parents start calling."
They resumed walking, the green streak already fading from the sky, swallowed by distance and the indifferent blue of late afternoon. Around them, Metropolis hummed with life: cars passing, distant sirens (always distant sirens—it was Metropolis, after all), someone's lawnmower buzzing in a backyard, a dog barking.
Normal and safe, but boring.
Ben shoved his hands in his pockets, and let his mind wander. Somewhere up there, Green Lanterns were flying. Heroes were fighting. The world was happening, big and bright and full of impossible things.
And here he was, walking to an arcade to play video games, worried about homework he hadn't done.
Someday, he thought—not for the first time—someday, something cool was going to happen to him.
Not just watching heroes fly overhead.
Not just hearing about battles on the news.
Someday, Ben Tennyson was going to be part of something that mattered.
He just didn't know it would be sooner than he thought.