Then and now, a tale of two hunters.

[Thaal Sinestro]

The two sat in the parked car, under the buzzing light of an electric streetlamp on a dirty corner near the “downtown” of Carrefore. Dean’s eyes flashed black as he squeezed the wheel hard enough to hear the creaking of the leather, jack locked and brow furrowed. Sinestro stared out the front window, his fingers steepled and his eyes narrowed in focus. People passed by in small flocks, Stormtroopers occasionally looking in as they passed.

They sat in silence for minutes, though the felt like hours as they brooded over their problem. “We got two options,” Dean finally said, though he could barely part his lips to do so. “We got a larger trap that uses white sand, the ground bones of the wrongfully dead mixed in.”

“Well we have plenty of those lying around after her rampage,” Sinestro said, his brow quirking.

Dean ignored the comment and continued, “The other is just a bucket of white paint for the symbol, but you gotta use it in conjunction with a ritual.”

“What’s the ritual like?” The korugaran’s voice was soft, serene, tempered by the will that granted him so much patience.

Sighing heavily, the demon growled out, “We would need a crucifix, gold ore, hemlock, mace and a bit of blood to summon her. Before you ask, the circle don’t work unless we summon her.”

Blinking, the deputy shook his head, “Well, we can summon those items with omnilium, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue.” He unfolded his fingers and looked at Dean, “That is, I think so. What exactly is a crucifix?”

Dean’s anger abated for a moment as he jolted back in shock, “You don’t know what a crucifix is?” The red alien’s blank expression answered him. “Oh, it’s like, well it’s like a cross but it’s got Jesus hanging on it.” The ex-lantern’s expression remained unchanged, but he offered a slow blink. “Aw, man, like, Jesus. Lord and savior? I guess they don’t have Christianity in comic books,” he grumbled. “It’s a cross with a dead guy hanging on it,” he finally snapped.

“Ah. How lovely your Earth religions are,” Sinestro said dryly, turning his gaze back to the windshield.

Dean scoffed, wrapping his right arm over the top of the seat as he turned to face his hunting partner. “Oh yeah, and what do you people believe in?” he asked, his anger diminishing, or at least redirected.

“I outlawed religion on Korugar,” the ex-lantern said dispassionately, “My people were better than bending at the knee to the pedantic ramblings of preachers or succumbing to the dated wisdom of fairy tales.”

“Heh, yeah, I never really bought all that God crap either,” the demon said, looking up in remembrance of his home reality, “Hell, even after I saw it all firsthand I still don’t buy into it.” He smirked and shook his head, “I’ve been to Hell and back, saw angels and became a demon. I’ve heard the literal word of god and met a few of his prophets… and none of that crap has given me even a lick of faith in the powers that be.”

Shaking his head, Sinestro smiled, “We come from very different worlds, indeed.”

Snapping out of his temporary reverie, Dean cleared his throat. He looked around the car and began to gather his meager belongings in the attempt to prepare for their mission. “Yeah, well, we’re here now. We got a Reaper to kill and a bunch of components to summon. I’ll cover the Earth stuff and you summon the paint, gold and the blood.”

The deputy held up his hand and shook his head at the hunter, “I’m afraid I can’t.”

“Why?” Dean asked incredulously, “You not a Prime after all?”

“I still don’t have my ring,” the ex-lantern snapped in rebuttal, “I cannot waste an ounce of omnilium until I have it.”

His face crumpling in shock and frustration, Dean held his hands out, “Well I’d say this isn’t really a waste here, man. We’re killing freaking Reaper! It wasn’t gonna be free!”

“I will not use what I have, not until I have my ring. This is not up for debate,” Sinestro snarled, his hands forming dramatic claws in front of him as he spoke. “We will have to find another way.”

Dean threw the door of the Impala open and stepped out into the gritty light of the street, the crowd mingling past him as he slammed the vehicle back shut. “Don’t worry about it, your Majesty; I’ll get us the stuff. You just find us a place to lay down this paint while I get it all ready.”

Sinestro stepped out of the car, planted his hat on his head and crossed his arms in front of him. “If this creature and this ritual are from your world, it’s likely best that you summon the requisite items anyways. I will repay you as soon as I am able.”

“Save it,” Dean spat, a sphere of scintillating energy already forming between his hands. “If you’re just along for the ride and don’t wanna buy a ticket, the least you can do is shut your pie-hole.” A squat, flat-topped cylinder began to form between his hands, the bright swirling lights coalescing as he focused.

Sinestro tilted his head down, allowing the brim of his hat to coat his face in shadow, “You should know I’m good for my word, Dean. You’ll get everything you put into this and more as soon as I’m able to repay you.” Dean remained silent as letters began to form on the fuzzy label that wrapped around the cylinder. “I can speak for the fact that the Lords of the Arid Waste do not renege on their promises, whatever they may be.”

“Yeah?” Dean thrust the can of paint towards his partner, “Well I can’t say I give a damn. I’ve heard too many promises. Sammy, Crowley, even Cas. They all made promises, and not a single one of them ever meant a damn thing. Sure, we kept the world spinning, but other than that?” He paused, his eyes distant for a moment, “It barely even matters. Now go paint this.” He pointed at the lid of the paint can, which carried an intricate arcane pattern within a circle, “Somewhere where we can trap the damn Reaper.”

The deputy reached out and took the bucket from him, the white paint sloshing within. He cast a careful stare at his partner, gazing into his empty eyes before he tipped his hat down, concealing his face in shadow. He studied the image shortly and nodded. “I can do this. How perfect does this symbol have to be in order for it to work?”

“The closer to the image the better, but even a rush job might work in a pinch.” He shrugged, going back to the business of summoning more of the reagents. “Shouldn’t be too hard, I do it all the time.”

“Not even a straight edge or a circle to base it off of?” Sinestro asked, somewhat surprised. He began to look over the symbol again; its faultless lines and immaculate angles more intimidating that he had originally noticed.

Dean shook his head, “Nah, they usually come out great. Guess it just takes some practice.”

Sinestro shrugged, “It will be done. I won’t be far.” He began to walk down the street, the paint bucket swinging at his side. It wasn’t long before the busy streets took him in, the throngs of people concealing him.

“And don’t get killed you idjit!” the demon yelled after him in frustration, the next item of the ritual forming between his hands. He wondered if it would even matter if the man died but let the thought slip away as he concentrated on his work.

-----

The buildings of the recently deceased weren’t hard to find. A few questions with the locals and he had more gossip than he knew what to do with. Death frequently sprung up from the sands like an unwelcome weed, and the origin or purpose of it was scarcely determined by the overtaxed authorities. Thaal knew the source of the most recent string of mysterious killings, but it didn’t truly matter in this case. All that mattered was that a building was empty.

Sinestro’s mind automatically focused on the tool he wished to use, a carryover from the long years of being able to simply create what he thought of. Instead, he banished the thought from his mind and began to look for a pry-bar of some kind to crack the sealed doors of palatial estate.

It stood in the corner of town, just close enough to the center that it was easily found, but just far enough that he wouldn’t be noticed while he did what needed to be done. Its architecture was of the colonial period of the American west, faint hints of Greek revivalism apparent in the tall white fluted pillars that spanned between each story. The structure itself was mostly brick, though white stucco archways and moldings wrapped over the numerous tall windows of the three story home. The peak of the structure was a stucco dome surrounded by a long balustrade on each side, though at that height the sand and heat had significantly discolored the whiteness of it. Decorative urn festoons were set atop all of the doors, of which there were two in the rear and one in the front. The front door was at the level of the street set onto a short porch, and the two rear doors led into their small, dry garden.

Sinestro curiously looked through the waist-high planters and vases, each of them dead and dry. Pushing his hand through the soil, her pulled free a mound of dirt and sorted through it with his thumb. He found what he had suspected: a surplus of planting seeds, each of them dry and empty.

“Wonderin’ why they didn’ grow?” a voice came from the darkness, causing Sinestro to spin and cock the lever of his rifle. An old woman stood at the corner of the garden, her back proud and straight, a revolver pointed at the deputy.

Sinestro’s hands opened, allowing the rifle to spin on his finger and point to the sky. The elderly woman had gotten the jump on him, and he had no interest in garnering the attentions of the Empire with unnecessary gunfire. “I’m not looking for any trouble,” he said with as much calm as he could manage.

She smiled, stepping into the light. She had long black hair worn in two braids falling over each shoulder. Her clothing was simple, but clean and cared for. “Well then I guess I’m not either,” she said with a faint humor, but he weapon didn’t lower. “Why are you snooping around my daughter’s house, boy?”

“I’m a Deputy of the law, investigating her murder,” he said, almost lying.

She frowned, tilting her head back in suspicion, “I thought you fascists had decided it was an unsolved case after I couldn’t pay you nothing?”

Grinning, Sinestro slowly revealed the golden star pinned on the underside of his poncho. “I never said I was from the Empire.”

The old woman tilted the barrel of her weapon up and uncocked it. “Well, damn,” she said in somewhat of a state of awe. She walked over to the red-skinned man, and pushed her hands into the soil as he replaced his weapon on his back. After a moment of sifting through the dirt, she grasped one of the seeds and held it up in the light of the moon. “The man who made this seed did not put into it the value of life.”

“What?” Sinestro gawked, genuinely confused.

Rolling the seed between her fingers, the old woman continued, “When you make something here, you must give it a spirit, the will to live. Omnilium makes what you imagine, but if you do not imagine that something will grow, if you do not imagine what it is for, it can never be that thing. If you do not know the value of the object or what it will become, it will never become it.” She cast the seed to the ground and crushed it under her heel. “The man who made these seeds did not value the life they would grow into, and so they never did. He sold my daughter stones to push into the ground and took her money with him when he left.”

The prime looked over her shoulder and into the planters. “I see. I suppose an item can be worth more than what it appears to be on the surface, in this place even more than the world we lived in before.”

The woman nodded, “Yes. In this place, the spirit world and the physical world live together more obviously than in the last. Before, we could only look at the spirits and the rare few could change it, but here the spirits are all around us; they let us move them and change them as we see fit.”

“An interesting interpretation,” Sinestro conceited to the woman.

She walked toward the door and retrieved a key from her pocket. As she slid the key into the door, her soft voice continued, “This was not my home, it was my daughter’s. She married a rich… creature.” She pushed the door open and stepped inside, the blissful cool washing over Sinestro as he followed. “He was strange, and from a very strange land, but he was good to her. They were in love, and that is all that mattered.”

They made their way into the living area, fine rugs and carpets covering the wooden floor. A large rawhide couch sat in front of an anachronistically advanced television, and soon the other advanced technology within their home became evident to Thaal. “Last week, both died. He died in mourning after she passed,” she said, lifting up a yellowed black and white photograph of the couple. “They could not make babies, but they were happy.”

Sinestro placed a hand on her shoulder. “I want to bring the creature that has done this to justice,” he said, a true conviction in his voice.

Smiling, the old woman placed the photo back on the table. “There is no justice that can be brought from anger, deputy.” Her old eyes found his, and he could not help but be lost in the dark brown depths of them. “Order is not always justice. You would be good to remember that.”

His eyebrows furrowed and for a moment, he saw her eyes in the old woman’s. He cleared his throat and placed the paint can on the ground with a thump. “In any case, she cannot go on killing,” he said abruptly, his gaze avoiding her. “I will make sure that it can’t take away another family.”

“Do what you have to do,” she said and turned towards the door. “This place no longer has anything for me.” She gaze the lawman one last glance, “But maybe it does for you.”

He watched the woman leave through the door, his silhouette backlit by the broad windows of the living room. When she was gone, he knelt down and open the can of paint.