(THE LIVING PLANET, EARTH BET) CHAPTER ONE

The day Earth Bet had readied itself for came when Leviathan attacked Brockton Bay.

The planet had not known what it was waiting for when it made that promise to itself. It had only known that someday, something would happen that would demand more from it than watching. And for a while, nothing did.

There were disasters, of course. There were wars and cape fights and all the smaller tragedies that filled the lives of its humans. Earth Bet watched them come and go, learning more about the people who lived upon it and slowly becoming accustomed to the endless stream of things that demanded its attention. There were even times when it wondered if the day it had imagined would ever come.

Then Leviathan started moving from where it had remained still, deep in the ocean, and Earth Bet regretted ever wishing for that day to come.

The feeling came suddenly, before it had even fully understood what was happening. It remembered wanting something to happen, anything to break the monotony of simply watching the world go by. Now something was happening, and the planet wanted nothing more than for it to stop.

It felt the movement long before the Endbringer reached Brockton Bay.

Leviathan.

Recognition came with memories of destruction, of other cities and other attacks, of the terrible things the Endbringers had done to its humans. Earth Bet had always understood that they were dangerous, but understanding that was one thing. Seeing the aftermath of their attacks was another. Seeing Leviathan in action drove home the sheer terror its presence elicited.

The Endbringer was enormous. The planet could feel its movements beneath the water, the displacement of entire sections of ocean as it moved toward the coast. There was something wrong about the creature, something that made Earth Bet recoil whenever its awareness settled upon it.

It was not simply the destruction Leviathan could cause. It was the sheer power behind it, the sense of inevitability that seemed to follow its every movement. Earth Bet could feel the ocean around the Endbringer and still could not stop it.

The city was already in chaos by the time the capes began converging on the Endbringer. Water surged through the streets as Leviathan drove the sea inland, buildings collapsing beneath the waves and roads disappearing beneath the flooding.

Earth Bet felt the capes as they arrived.

They came from across the city and beyond it, moving toward the destruction rather than away from it. Some attacked Leviathan directly while others focused on evacuating people and protecting what they could. Wherever the Endbringer moved, they followed.

They were fighting it, throwing everything they had against Leviathan. Their attacks slowed it, forced it back, and bought precious moments for those still caught in the city. Whenever the Endbringer broke through, the capes moved to meet it again, refusing to give it the ground it had taken.

But they could not hold it forever.

Leviathan kept coming, and the city continued to suffer beneath it. Water poured through the streets. Buildings collapsed. More of Brockton Bay disappeared beneath the flooding despite everything the capes did to stop it.

The planet felt every impact against its surface, every piece of the city that was torn away, every life that disappeared beneath the water.

And there was nothing it could do. It could only watch its humans fight, and the helplessness it had come to know so well came over it again. again. Beneath it, however, was something equally as familiar.

Fear.

Earth Bet was afraid of Leviathan.

It was afraid of the other Endbringers too. They were too powerful, too alien, too monstrous for Earth Bet to understand. Humans were different. The planet could understand their fear, their anger, their desperation. It could feel the things that drove them, even when it could not always make sense of them.

The Endbringers gave it nothing to hold on to.

They simply came, and things died.

For all its size, Earth Bet had never felt smaller.

Then its focus returned to the humans.

They felt the same helplessness and fear it did. Earth Bet could sense it in them, see it in the way some cried out or prayed for help, in the way others shook as they faced something they knew could kill them.

Some were heroes. Some were villains. Some had spent years trying to kill one another. Others had barely begun their lives.

None of that seemed to matter now.

They knew what Leviathan was. They knew what the Endbringers had done to other cities, and they knew that whatever strength they possessed might still be nowhere near enough to stop one.

Yet they went toward it anyway.

Earth Bet watched one of them fall, only for another to take their place. Then another. They were not winning. Leviathan was still tearing through the city, people were still dying, and every attempt to slow the Endbringer seemed to cost them something.

Still, they fought.

The planet had seen its humans endure before. It had watched them rebuild after disasters, mourn their dead, and somehow find a reason to keep living. This felt different.

There was no certainty that Brockton Bay could be rebuilt. There was no promise that they would survive the battle. They were standing against something they knew could destroy them, and they were doing it anyway.

Earth Bet felt their fear because it knew that fear now. It felt its own fear too, and for a moment, the two seemed almost indistinguishable. 

Then it understood the difference.

Its fear told it that Leviathan was too powerful. It told it that there was nothing it could do.

Its humans were afraid of the same thing.

They fought anyway.

Something shifted within Earth Bet.

It did not stop being afraid. Leviathan was still terrifying, and the other Endbringers remained just as frightening as they had been before. But Earth Bet no longer saw its fear as a reason to remain helpless. If its humans could stand against things that terrified them, then maybe it could do the same.

It thought back to the promise it had made when it first awakened. It had wanted to help its humans. It had wanted to do something more than watch.

Now, watching them fight, it knew what it would do if it ever got the chance.

It would fight too.

Maybe it would be afraid. Maybe it would discover that it was not strong enough. Maybe it would fail.

None of that mattered. It wanted to fight, and it would hold on to that desire until the day came when it could finally act.

Fear could warn it. It could tell Earth Bet when something was too powerful, when something could hurt it, when retreat might be the safer choice. But fear did not have to make the choice for it.

And just as that realization settled within it, a loud voice rang out:

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

Across the world, across vast continents and hidden locations, people froze as they heard the alien voice. In Brockton Bay, where the battle for survival had been raging only moments before, the effect was even more profound. Leviathan itself had frozen in place. And though the Endbringer lacked any facial features that could reveal its emotions, the way it inclined its head to the side made its confusion evident.

An emotion shared by every surviving hero and villain alike.

Then, 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. And in the middle of it was a symbol they did not recognize, a lantern glowing brightly against the afternoon sky.

Nobody knew what it meant. Some thought it was another attack, while others wondered if a cape had somehow managed to manipulate the entire sky. A few simply stood there, staring upward and waiting for whatever came next.

Leviathan, however, recognized the symbol.

Whatever passed for thought within the Endbringer was far removed from human intelligence, shaped by the crude emergency measures that had gone into its creation. Yet somewhere within the instincts inherited from the greater power that had created it was a memory of something that power feared, along with a warning attached to the symbol now blazing across the sky.

The lantern was the symbol of the Guardians of Oa and their enforcers, the Green Lantern Corps.

Its drive pushed it toward Brockton Bay’s aquifer, seeking to deprive the city of resources necessary for survival, but that primal fear overrode everything else, causing it to abandon the attack and flee back into the ocean.