Recap / With This Ring Episode 16

Episode 16: Contingency

Takes place 14-16 October 2010.

Short version

The Team enters an Unwinnable Training Simulation, but Miss Martian makes them forget that it's not real, and Paul fuses with the Embodiment of Avarice to save his friends — which doesn't go away when the scenario ends.

Longer version

The Team undertakes a telepathic training exercise run by the Martian Manhunter, placing their minds in a mental simulation of an alien invasion. Paul is unimpressed and dismissive at first, pointing out the many unrealistic aspects of the scenario, from the out-of-character behaviour of the Justice League, to his ring's inability to decrypt the alien communications. However, when Robin is "killed", Miss Martian is so affected that she instinctively seizes control of the scenario and makes the participants think it is real.

As team mates continue to fall and the invasion spreads over the Earth, Paul — now sincerely desperate — turns to extreme measures: he speaks his Lantern Oath in full for the first time, forming a connection to the Orange Central Power Battery and allowing the Ophidian to leave the battery and enter him. With access to the Ophidian's power, Paul easily defeats the invasion fleet, despite the scenario's best attempts to escalate. However, by that time, the Martian Manhunter has entered the scenario and attempts to end it by "killing" Miss Martian. The shock of her death, combined with being forcibly ejected from the scenario, seeing everyone alive again, and remembering that it was just a simulation, causes Paul and the Ophidian to fuse more closely.

In the Renegade timeline, Artemis is killed by the aliens first, as in canon, and the Renegade then recognises that their reactions to her death do not match their reactions to the deaths of their mentors a short time earlier. He uses his anti-telepathy training to break them all out, which ends the illusion, and is furious with Martian Manhunter for failing to take sufficient precautions with M'gann's strength.

Equivalent canon episode: "Failsafe". "Contingency" likely refers to Paul's fallback plan of summoning the Ophidian.

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• All for Nothing: Paul merges with the Ophidian to save his surviving friends and Earth from an Alien Invasion during its Darkest Hour, only to find it was never real and no one was in danger.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Paulphidian mentions after saving his friends and the planet Earth, that he will repaint the signs in Happy Harbor to be spelled correctly!
• Badass Boast:
  • Paulphidian lets one out to the aliens in the training scenario when he finally turns the irony.
    Paulphidian: Your communications are still intact. I know you can understand me. And I want you to understand me when I tell you this. And I want you to relay it to every other unit your people have on Earth and Mars and anywhere else. Are you listening? Yes? What I'm going to do is, I'm going to tell you where you went wrong.This planet? It's called Earth. It's not really all that important to the wider universe, pretty primitive, a bit out of the way, but, it's mine. Mine. That building is mine. You damaged it and I had to repair it. I could live with that. But what I can't live with is what you've done to the people. My friends. Because, you see ahem, THESE PEOPLE ARE MINE! AND NO ONE TAKES WHAT IS MINE FROM ME! (Proceeds to curbstomp)
• Badass Creed: Orange Lantern finally says his:
  This is my power
  This is my light.
  Be it bright of day or black of night.
  I claim all that lies within my sight.
  TO TAKE WHAT I WANT, THAT IS MY RIGHT!
• Be Careful What You Wish For: OL complains endlessly over the sloppiness of Martian Manhunter's training scenario, that it's uncreative and unrealistic because the Justice League in it act very uncharacteristically. He definitely gets his wish for realism.
• Chekhov's Gag: Paul's fear of Telefragging unfortunately comes back...
• Chekhov's Gun: Alan's condition as a partial green construct is discovered and Paul thinks that he can't do anything to help his mentor.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Paul actually breaks the simulation with the help of Ophidian, and simply starts assimilating all the alien ships. He gets up to seventy motherships under his control before J'onn manages to snap M'gann out of it.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: Downplayed. Paul merges with the Ophidian to save his friends and while Paulphidian is still largely benevolent and supports the good guys (their team), he/they cannot feel any emotion besides Avarice and so they no longer understand why they are so attached to them. One of their first actions is to rebuild the Hall of Justice with unbreakable walls and statues of the Team, and when the Team dies in their Last Stand in the Watchtower, all Paulphidian feels is mildly inconvenienced that he has to track down Ra's al Ghul to make Lazarus Pits and bring them back.
• Disconnected by Death: Paul calls Luthor in hopes of Luthor giving the team back-up. Unfortunately, Luthor's company building is also being attacked and Luthor was making a Last Stand by keeping a protective shield to protect fleeing employees. Luthor gives Paul his technological database before the call disconnects when the building is annihilated.
• Downer Ending: Paul has thoroughly lost himself and his sanity and is possessed by/is possessing the Ophidian. Paul is now a Mad God and he's loose...
• Dramatic Irony: From the beginning, both the Team and the reader know it's only a training simulation and nothing is real. But it doesn't protect the Team the deeper they get involved.
• Dull Surprise:
  • Paul's reaction to the death of the Justice League: snarking at the unoriginality of it before his friends tell him to take it more seriously.
  • His friends died making a Last Stand? Mild annoyance that he has to track down Ra's al Ghul to get them back.
• Exact Words: Paragon!OL gives his lantern back to the then-dead Alan. He then takes it back in hopes that he is technically no longer bound to his vow to Gaia as the vow didn't cover him stealing it back, plus Alan left the lantern to him in his will.
• False Crucible: Despite Paul knowing at first that he was in a training scenario, that goes all out the window when M'gann accidentally hijacks it, making the Team believe it's real.
• Fountain of Youth: Whenever Alan Scott gets exposure to the Green Light, the years get taken off him. After he gives Paul his lantern and his ring runs out of power, he regains his age.
• Fusion Dance: Paul willingly merges with the Ophidian due to wanting the power to save his friends more than he wanted to remain himself. Paul gets the power of a Physical God while the Ophidian gets Paul's sanity to guide it. The shock of seeing M'gann die, and finding out that the scenario wasn't real, fuses the minds together.
• Godzilla Threshold: When Earth is falling to an alien invasion with the Justice League and some of their friends dead. OL gets desperate, so desperate that he wanted power more than he wanted to remain himself, which he gets by summoning the Ophidian.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: Attempted, but to no avail. The Team themselves ends up being this for General Lane and the remnants of the U.S. army defending Washington D.C.
• Gone Horribly Right: Orange Lantern summons the Ophidian to help turn the tide, only to succeed...
• Gone Horribly Wrong: In Contingency, the Team were in a training simulation which unbeknownst to them was supposed to be difficult and purposely fail them to give an Aesop on dealing with failure. Then M'gann's subconscious hijacks the simulation...
• Heroic BSoD: Paul enters one when Kon dies. He fully loses it when he finds out the scenario wasn't real after traumatically watching M'gann be murdered by her own mentor which causes him to lose control of the Fusion Dance and allow the Ophidian to merge with his mind.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: OL's fusion with the Ophidian goes both ways as he's possessing the Ophidian as much as the Ophidian is possessing him.
• Hope Spot: Kid Flash finds out that the alien invaders used zeta beams on the things and people they beamed. Kid Flash hopes that means Robin is alive somewhere. Paul tells him that it's unlikely as since the outer parts of buildings crumbled when they were sucked in, it's probably a Gauss flayer. Which causes death by Telefragging.
• Immunity Disability: Because Alan's body is suffused with green light, he could in theory live indefinitely with a personal lantern. But it also means he can't be healed with orange light, and he doesn't have his personal lantern any more — because he gave it to Paul, who turned it orange.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone's reaction to the fact that something came out of the scenario with Paul.
• Mood Whiplash: Paul having a fun time at dinner with Artemis and Paula is interspersed with the utter disaster that was the scenario with his friends dying and Paul becoming more desperate.
• Mugging the Monster: Invoked by Paul during his trip to Gotham; with his power ring it doesn't matter if his presence provokes some gang-bangers. Sure enough, the gang-bangers try picking a fight with him. They immediately back off when one of them notices Paul's eyes and practically piss their pants when he shows off a little bit.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: When M'gann accidentally traps the Team in a training simulation. Martian Manhunter has to shock M'gann to end it. He kills M'gann to end the simulation...right in front of the Ophidian-infused Paul. Watching M'gann die in front of him after he already failed to save his friends, traumatizes him and causes Paul and the Ophidian's minds to fuse. Not to mention that it provoked them into killing Manhunter's simulated self and leaving a glowing orange brand on his real body.
• Not What It Looks Like: Paul helps Artemis try on a power-suppression collar when they were discussing the pros and cons of giving Artemis the Danner Formula. It's not until Artemis's mother, Paula, walks in that Paul realizes that he's putting a collar on Artemis.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: The composed Orange Lantern slowly losing his grip on his emotions.
• Painting the Medium: When Paul initially Fusion Dances with the Ophidian, the text is entirely orange except when other people speak. Paul has large orange paragraphs indicating his internal monologue and he refers to himself in the first person while the Ophidian makes the occasional comment in orange italics. Once Paul goes through a Heroic BSoD and his mind merges with the Ophidian, Paulphidian then refers to themselves in the first person plural.
• Point of Divergence: The first member of the Team to die in the training exercise differs between the two timelines.
  • In the Paragon timeline, Robin is first to die.
  • In the Renegade timeline, Artemis dies as per canon.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Paulphidian wins the Unwinnable Training Simulation by overwhelming the scenario, only to find out that it wasn't real and he is stuck with the consequences.
• Royal "We": Paulphidian refers to themselves as "we" as they find it more honest, since they're a Fusion Dance of the Ophidian and Paul. Although they also address themselves in the Third-Person Person when they address emotions or actions one of them did.
• Sanity Slippage: Paul slowly goes mad over the course of the episode.
• Superhero Origin: When Artemis asks Paul about the two Lanterns that he know that whom he feels earned their rings, he tells her and Paula the Backstories of Katma Tui and Saint Walker.
• Tempting Fate:
  • OL expresses his concerns with Martian Manhunter about the safeness of the training simulation and his fear of accidentally using constructs while sleeping. Manhunter tells him that his fears are unnecessary and the simulation is perfectly safe...yeah, about that...
  • Paul spends the first half of the training scenario complaining of the plot holes in said scenario. The death of the League? He complains that the death of three Green Lantern would have at least had Oa investigating. Paul is asked to take the scenario more seriously.
• Unwinnable Training Simulation: In the story's version of Failsafe, Renegade!OL and Paragon!OL have very different reactions to it:
  • Renegade!OL immediately figures out something was wrong when his Willing Suspension of Disbelief broke over Robin and Kid Flash's emotional response to Artemis' death and he breaks out of the scenario.
  • Paragon!OL believed that the training scenario was real and he was truly seeing his friends die in front of him. Paragon becomes so desperate to turn the situation around that he resorts to drastic methods to win.
• Wham Episode: This episode upturns the status quo and marks the first true separation of the Paragon and Renegade timelines.
• Wham Line:
  Batman: Orange Lantern. What did you do?
  Orange Lantern: Kon was dead and Robin was dead and everyone we cared about was dead or stuck in an unwinnable fight. We needed more power. We.. he.. connected his personal lantern to the Orange Central Power Battery and called us.. it.. the.. the Ophidian, through.
  Batman: The Avarice Elemental.
  Orange Lantern: Embodiment. Far more than an elemental.
  Batman: Contact with something like that must have been a shock.
  Orange Lantern: Contact? Contact? It's still here-(points to themself)-in us. We are the Ophidian, and the Orange Lantern.
• Word of God: OL's oath is explained a bit.
  • Alan might have gotten John's ring if things had been a little different. The Guardians didn't want him to be a member because he is independent and anomalous.
  • The Guardians are unlikely to create the Third Army.

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