Back on New Genesis, Thea didn't overstep her bounds. Each of the New Gods went off to handle their own duties—she was no longer an employee here. Her status was more akin to a leader's consort and visiting dignitary.
The Life Equation was officially in hand. Nobody mentioned it, as though they didn't know, and she was happy not to explain. Before she could study it in detail, Kyle Rayner came looking for her, wanting to ask about the Emotional Spectrum depleting again.
"Uh... speaking personally, I'd obviously prefer to see the Green Lantern Corps rebuilt. They're indispensable. You can't sacrifice the present for the sake of the future—that's where I stand."
Kyle's attachment to the Green Lanterns ran deep. Even now, wearing the White Lantern Ring, he still considered himself a Green Lantern at heart.
"But if it depletes again, do you have a solution?" After being thoroughly brainwashed by Saint Walker over the years, Kyle had developed a healthy respect for Thea. He wasn't about to prostrate himself, but in his mind she'd reached something like living-saint status.
"Sure."
"What is it?" Kyle's face lit up.
Thea gave him an odd look. "You. The solution to Emotional Spectrum depletion is you. If it depletes again, I'll just pull the present-day you forward through the timeline. Problem solved."
Kyle stared at her, completely lost. It took him a solid minute to work through the logic. "You... you're saying that billions of years from now, when the Spectrum depletes again, you'd yank the current me into the future?"
The mental image of being dragged out every few eons to have his corpse flogged—no, wait, to slam into the Source Wall—was not exactly a pretty picture.
He'd actually been mulling over finding a successor, a generational torch-passing system to handle future cosmic crises, each Torch Bearer handing the White Lantern down to the next. Now Thea had casually proposed the most elegant shortcut imaginable: lock onto one guy and run him into the wall on a recurring schedule. Just him. Forever. Charming.
One crash didn't kill him. Two crashes didn't kill him. Every time a crisis hit, drag him out for another impact, then toss him back to lie there until the next one. His mission wouldn't end until the universe itself expired.
Kyle had a nagging feeling this plan was both absurd and somehow the most airtight option on the table.
Thea had always sensed something was off about Kyle. This time, when he'd emerged from the Source Wall, she'd finally pinpointed the issue. His situation was similar to Batman's—by voluntarily crashing into the Source Wall, he'd fractured his own timeline completely.
Even with Thea's perception, she couldn't tell whether the Kyle who'd entered the Wall and the Kyle standing in front of her were the "same" person.
His essence was unchanged, but the Kyle chatting with her right now might well be a version of himself from some point billions of years in the future, one who'd emerged from the Source Wall at a different node. On Kyle Rayner's timeline, he existed the way a speedster might—with multiple versions of himself coexisting simultaneously, all because of the Source Wall.
The Wall had split him in two: the before and the after. The Kyle who went in might be version A; the one who came out might be version D. That was also why he could wield all seven emotional colors—through countless accumulated lifetimes in the future, he'd mastered the White Lantern, and because the Source Wall severed the link between entry and exit, that mastery fed backward to the origin point.
None of this was worth explaining to Kyle. It would only add to his psychological burden without any upside.
She dismissed him back to Oa with an answer that sounded like a joke. Believe it or not—either way, they had billions of years. Plenty of time.
She was a deity who could live for countless years and she wasn't worried. The Green Lantern Corps, a bunch of mortals, were overthinking it.
She stayed by Diana's side in silence and began studying the Life Equation.
This force existed on a plane far above the distinction between good and evil. It was like a program: once activated, it wouldn't stop. It would simply keep releasing energy.
By Thea's estimate, the program could bestow life on any object, rewrite any being's form of existence, and turn the impossible into the possible. The concept of life and death simply didn't apply in the face of the Life Equation. It could make a rock speak, so what was bringing back the dead?
In just two days, her power skyrocketed. Within the Death hierarchy of the Endless, she'd already climbed to seventh, and her rate of growth showed no signs of slowing.
Then Diana finally woke up.
"How do you feel, Your Majesty?" Thea performed a theatrically exaggerated curtsy—knees slightly bent, both hands lifting her skirt, eyes brimming with adoration.
"You goof." Diana rolled her eyes and clenched her fists, testing her new power.
Immense. Overwhelming. The conviction of Justice fed her a boundless stream of strength. It felt as though she could shatter a planet with a flick of her wrist and annihilate any enemy. If she faced Krona again now, she'd last at least several dozen rounds.
Then she looked at Thea, and the longer she looked, the stranger it seemed. "Why do I feel like you've gotten weaker? Are your injuries still healing?"
"I think I could push you around now..." She pinched Thea's cheek. Good elasticity, but this didn't feel like a deity.
Thea swatted her hand away. "There's an Eastern saying—'return to simplicity.' That's roughly where I am. Approaching the absolute peak, all energy drawn inward. On the surface, I look no different from an ordinary person."
Privately, she wanted to grumble about it too. A max-level account forced to masquerade as a level-one newbie, just waiting for some fool to pick a fight and get face-slapped?
But at this stage of development, it was an inevitable process. Lucifer did it all the time—strolling through the mortal world as a regular person. God was even worse, manifesting an avatar as a dog, without a shred of powerful-being energy.
She latched onto Diana's arm and put on her most pitiful expression. "From now on, I'll need Your Majesty to protect this helpless little maiden..."
Diana knew she was clowning around and finally let go of her worry. Her beloved had already transcended some threshold—and she was rather proud of that.
Three more days passed before Diana's coronation ceremony was formally held. Every New God attended. The Magic Legion had risen to prominence as the new power center, but Highfather's former Guard couldn't accept the change. Even with Orion pleading, more than half of them walked out.
As the Underworld's head of state, Thea watched from the viewing platform throughout, offering no comment. But she committed every one of those saboteurs to memory. Stay alive as long as you can. You really don't want to end up in my hands.
After the coronation, in the interest of promoting harmonious coexistence and the new strategic partnership between New Genesis and the Underworld, the two leaders selflessly locked themselves behind closed doors and continued their talks late into the night. They talked, and talked, and the talks grew deeper and deeper. The next morning, the New Gods noticed their new God-Queen's gait was a touch unusual, while the Goddess of Death's voice had gone a bit hoarse.
Of course, the process was beside the point. Everyone was practical—results were what mattered. And the result of their marathon discussion was that both sides agreed their cooperation could stand to be even closer.