Recap / With This Ring Episode 20

Episode 20: Half-hearted

Takes place November 6-11

Short version

After helping to clean up the wreckage from the world split, Paul participates in stopping five flying Ice Fortresses that are causing snowstorms across the United States, and captures one intact.

Longer version

Paul and Zatanna go to London to find help in their mission to separate Nabu from Zatara. They meet up with John in the Tate Club and the three of them summon another Lord of Order, Lord Kilderkin. Kilderkin doesn't think there is any need to interfere, but notes that he may change his mind if Klarion were dealt with. They then go downstairs to talk with Clarice and Albert to discuss what they should do to proceed. During this talk, Clarice urges John to tell something important: that Zatanna's mother died when she and Giovanni helped Constantine out in the past. Zatanna becomes emotional and leaves the room. She only returns after OL gives her advice and tells her that they can leave if she doesn't want to go through with their plans.

After they're done making plans, OL and John go to help Knight, Squire, and Captain Cornwall who are investigating the appearance of the Praexis Demons. The trail leads them to a building containing a number of people corrupted by black light, along with a necromantic abomination created by Dark Druid. Druid appears briefly to taunt Paul, then teleports away. John is successful in saving most of the victims, although the Invunche is beyond help.

Then Orange Lantern spends several days in post disaster body clean-up. He goes back to Mount Justice, unable to have the motivation to do anything. Then he gets a phone call from a GBS intern for an interview which he accepts.

Several days later, five Ice Fortresses appear and cover the USA in a blizzard. The Team and League work together to bring them down, with Paul succeeding in capturing one intact. This serves as his base of operations for re-glaciating the polar ice caps, as well as providing a working example of Captain Cold's technology for him to copy.

The Renegade timeline sees substantial Power Ups for the team. The Renegade reveals that by combining Desaad's research (recorded in the Father Box) with his power ring, he is able to expand the capacity of human souls, allowing them to slowly grow into gods associated with whatever their existing talents were. Having become disaffected with the Justice League, he nonetheless offers this Awakening process to his teammates, whom he actually likes. He also turns Superboy into a full Kryptonian, removes Miss Martian's fear of fire, and offers Apokoliptian armor and equipment to everyone.

Equivalent canon episode: "Coldhearted". The canon plot of Kid Flash delivering a heart transplant is in the background, only mentioned briefly. "Half-hearted" might refer to Zatanna's sorrow after losing her father to Nabu.

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• Allohistorical Allusion: The World With Adults is treated as horrific world wide terrorist attack with the governments' confidence shaken and scrambling for a way to defend themselves.
• Ban on Magic: Senator Knight proposes a law to ban magic to act as a starting point to discuss any ways to defend against it. Unfortunately Orange Lantern took it at face value and points out how such a law would be more harmful to civilians, researchers and heroes and the villains wouldn't care.
  Orange Lantern: Mass murder is illegal, but that didn't stop them. The best way to prevent something like this happening again is to have people study magic and learn how to counter it.
• Body Horror: The Invunche, created by torturing a baby to death and magically animating+transforming the corpse.
• Brutal Honesty: Paul gives Cat Grant his thoughts on Senator Knight's plan to ban magic and nearly destroys his career with it.
  Paul: It's moronic. That's like saying 'oh no, the Soviet Union has nuclear weapons. Quick; let's keep ourselves safe by banning fire. Ugh.
• Death of a Child: The Invunche is a reanimated dead baby and the immediate aftermath of Displaced is the death of thousands of children all over the world. The Renegade gives the example of the head Chairman of China, who has a niece. He had a nephew.
  Renegade: He tried to cook some rice for his baby sister, because she was hungry. He spilled boiling water on himself. He lived until just after the worlds reconnected. It's the personal stories that get you, isn't it?
• Dropping the Bombshell: Constantine reveals that he was (partially) responsible for the death of Zatanna's mother.
• Erotic Eating: Danni eats cake for the first time this way.
• Extreme Omnivore: Paul's Praexis Demon Construct-Lantern is able to directly consume heat in order to freeze more of the Arctic Circle.
• Fate Worse than Death: This is what really happened to the wizards in the Renegade timeline.
• Honesty Is the Best Policy: Since he wasn't ordered otherwise, Orange Lantern tells Cat Grant exactly what happened during Displaced. The world had no idea what happened for the past week while the Justice League were trying to either recapture the terrorists responsible or trying to clean up the aftermath.
• Is This Thing Still On?: OL doesn't realize that his Q&A session with Cat Grant is live rather than being recorded.
• Lethally Stupid: In-Universe, this is how people see Senator Knight after OL berates the former's ignorance.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste: Being the only person connected to the Justice League willing to talk to the news and tell them what happened leads to Orange Lantern becoming the unofficial spokesperson
• No Mere Windmill: Senator Henry Knight is dismissed by the public and made a laughingstock when he made an ill-informed bid on banning magic after Orange Lantern mocks him in an interview informing the public on the events in Displaced. But Senator Knight was acting in response to an event caused by evil magicians that killed thousands of children when no politician dared to touch the topic.
• Physical God: The Renegade offers to set his teammates on the path to this, expanding their soul capacities so they can gradually become gods aligned with their existing talents. Effects typically include increased strength, toughness, agelessness, regeneration, and sensitivity to magic, plus special abilities specific to the individual and domain, such as improved control of metahuman abilities.
• Rage Breaking Point: At the start of a phone interview, Cat Grant asks what Orange Lantern is currently doing. He answers honestly that he's at home debating between watching tv or playing video games. Cat Grant then indirectly accuses him of laziness by bringing up the death toll. Infuriated, Orange Lantern tells her exactly what he's been doing:
  Orange Lantern: Miss Grant, I really don't need this from you, alright? I haven't eaten anything for five days. I haven't slept for five days and whenever I try.. whenever I close my eyes all I can see is piles of mangled wreckage and children's bodies. I'm sitting at home right now because Wonder Woman ordered me to. She ordered me to stop because I'd got to the point that I couldn't cope and I'm.. I'm sorry about that, I realise it's so much worse for the parents, but don't think I'd be much use to anyone at the moment.
• Rousing Speech: Orange Lantern gives on in his interview when detailing a solution to the world's utter defenselessness against magic.
  OL: Mass murder is illegal, but that didn't stop them. The best way to prevent something like this happening again is to have people study magic and learn how to counter it. For goodness sake, this is vital to the world's defence. To America's defence. Why isn't this happening already? It's so completely obvious. You don't deal with a threat by sticking your head in the sand, you deal with it by studying it until you know how to beat it.
• Rule 34: The Renegade accidentally found some NSFW art and/or videos about Wonder Woman offscreen.
  Oh, Wonder Woman. You aren't merely on a sticky wicket, you're on a couple of twigs floating in a vat of olive oil. And wasn't that the last time I googled your name with the search filters off. Wasn't even a good likeness...
• The Scapegoat: Senator Knight is made the unfortunate scapegoat for their world's lack of ability to actually deal with magic users.
• The Unmasqued World: Despite the fact that places like Atlantis and heroes like Doctor Fate were around, very few people believed in magic. Then Klarion became responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and they couldn't ignore it.
• There Are No Global Consequences: The World Without Adults shakes the confidence of the world governments and is a harsh wake-up call that they have no defense against magic.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: OL stares at the area around him without really comprehending anything due to emotional burnout after spending days cleaning up the various bodies of children who died as a result of the World Without Adults.

• Word of God:
  • If the Green Lanterns told the British government what Dark Druid using the black light might mean they'd send Manchester Black to kill him.
  • The wizards executed by the Chinese in the Renegade timeline are never coming back.
  • Justice League SOP when capturing villains is explained a bit.
  • Ghost Fox Killer is very happy with the help the Renegade has provided.
  • If the Joker died, Jack Napier would go to Heaven.

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