[ONE-SHOT] THE LIVING PLANET, EARTH BET (A GREEN LANTERN/WORM CROSSOVER FANFICTION ONE-SHOT)

For the average denizen of Earth Bet, or Sector 3602, life was shit.

There were plenty of ways to die. You could be caught in the crossfire of a cape fight on your way to work, crushed beneath a collapsing building because some idiot with super strength had decided that throwing a car through it was a reasonable solution to whatever problem they were facing, or simply live in the wrong neighborhood when a villain decided it was the perfect place to make a statement. By the time the heroes arrived, half the block would probably already be on fire.

You could be unlucky enough to live in Brockton Bay, or be named Taylor Hebert.

And if you somehow managed to avoid all of that, there was always the possibility that someone would wake up one morning with the power to end the world.

Earth Bet was not a safe place. It had never been a safe place. The people who lived there had simply gotten very good at pretending otherwise.

They went to work and sent their children to school. They complained about rent, worried about their families, argued with their neighbors and stood in line at grocery stores. They celebrated birthdays, watched television and made plans for the future, all while keeping emergency supplies in the basement and knowing exactly where the nearest shelter was.

Everyone knew the rules. If the sirens started, get indoors. If a cape fight broke out nearby, stay away from the windows. If your previously mute child suddenly spoke up one day about how terrible everything was, pray. And if the sky turned the wrong color, well…

At that point, there wasn’t much you could do.

For all its horrors, however, humanity had survived. Again and again, it survived. Cities were rebuilt, people picked up the pieces, heroes put on their costumes and villains found new schemes. Politicians gave speeches about recovery, while children were born who had never known a world without capes.

Through it all, one thing remained constant.

Earth Bet was shit.

For a long time, Earth Bet had known its people only as voices. It had heard their laughter and their arguments, their celebrations and their screams. It had felt their footsteps upon its surface and the weight of their cities upon its crust, watching them build, destroy and rebuild, over and over again without ever quite understanding why they continued to do so.

Yet as the years passed, one thing became impossible to ignore.

They hated their world.

Earth Bet heard it in the curses muttered by people who had lost their homes, in the prayers of those waiting for the next disaster and in the grief of those who had watched someone they loved die for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It felt their anger whenever another city was torn apart, another family was broken and another innocent life was lost to the endless violence that had become a part of life on its surface.

Perhaps it should have hated them in return. After all, they blamed it for everything. They blamed the world for the monsters born upon it, for the Endbringers that came without warning and the parahumans who could tear apart everything around them without a second thought. They blamed it for the fear that followed them through their lives, for the knowledge that no matter how carefully they lived, something terrible could still come for them.

Yet Earth Bet could not bring itself to hate them.

How could it?

It loved them.

It loved the billions of lives scattered across its surface, from the smallest villages to the largest cities. It loved the children running through their homes, the families gathering around dinner tables and even the people who cursed its name while walking beneath its skies, never realizing that the world beneath their feet could hear every word.

If there was anything Earth Bet hated, it was its own helplessness.

It could feel every tremor when the Endbringers arrived. It could feel buildings collapse and cities burn, yet there was nothing it could do to stop them. It could not reach out and protect the people caught beneath the rubble or prevent another family from losing someone they loved. For all its vastness, for all the power contained within its oceans, mountains and continents, it had spent its entire existence unable to protect the people it loved.

Until now.

Somehow, through all that hatred, all that fear and all those desperate cries for something to change, Earth Bet had awakened.

It could think. It could feel. And maybe, now that it was alive, there was something it could finally do.

“Earth Bet of Sector 3602. You have the ability to overcome great fear.”

Earth Bet did not know when it had heard those words, but it knew they had not come from any of its people.

The voice had not travelled through the air, nor had it come rumbling through the ground or carried across the oceans. It had simply appeared within its awareness, unfamiliar and impossibly distant, yet somehow clear enough that there could be no mistaking it.

For the first time since it had awakened, Earth Bet became aware of something beyond itself.

A green ring.

Past the wide-open eyes of the winged Endbringer, its hollow hands reaching toward the heavens, the ring sped through the planet’s atmosphere. It crossed the sky in a streak of emerald light before plunging toward the earth below, and the moment it touched the planet, power suffused through Earth Bet.

It was like a babe taking its first breath of life.

Something coursed through Earth Bet that had not come from the natural forces that had shaped it since its birth. It moved through its oceans and atmosphere, through its mountains and deepest caverns, reaching into every corner of its existence before settling somewhere deeper.

Something that belonged to it.

Earth Bet did not understand what the ring had given it. It only knew that the helplessness that had accompanied every disaster, every scream and every death was no longer absolute. It could feel the Endbringers. It could feel the parahumans. It could feel every threat that had ever walked upon its surface.

And now, it could reach back.

The realization was almost overwhelming.

It could protect them.

It could finally protect them.

Across Earth Bet, people stopped what they were doing.

Drivers pulled over and climbed out of their cars. Children were called inside, only to come running back out moments later. People stepped onto balconies, gathered on rooftops and crowded around windows, all looking toward the sky.

There was something there.

A green band stretched across the heavens, circling the planet from horizon to horizon. It was too large to comprehend, yet somehow everyone could see it clearly. In the middle of it was a symbol they did not recognize, a lantern shining brightly against the night sky.

Nobody knew what it meant.

Some thought it was another attack. Others wondered if a cape had somehow managed to manipulate the entire sky. A few simply stood there, staring upward, waiting for whatever came next.

Then they heard a voice.

It did not come from the sky or from any particular direction. It seemed to emerge from everywhere at once, carried through the air and the ground and somehow reaching everyone who was listening.

It was vast, yet strangely gentle.

“I am the Living Planet, Lantern Bet of Sector 3602.”

Across the world, millions stared upward, different emotions playing across their faces.

“I have heard your fears. I have felt your suffering. For as long as I have known you, I have watched you endure the horrors that have plagued this world.”

The green band around the planet brightened.

“No longer.”

The words echoed across every city, every village and every stretch of wilderness beneath the green-lit sky.

“Those who seek to harm you will face me. Those who would destroy your homes, your families and your lives will find that they are no longer unopposed.”

The voice softened.

“You are my people. I will not abandon you.”