Episode 105: Over Reaching
Takes place 3 July 2012.
Short version
The war against the Reach Interstellar Empire begins.
Longer version
Vril Dox sends Paul a top secret message summoning him back to Maltus for immediate deployment against a Reach base that supports a segment of the border. Dox has arranged for a fleet to be magically shielded, so that Paul can transport them through the Honden of Avarice and strike before the Reach knows they're coming.
The transit is successful, and the assault begins well, with Paul leading a force of Lanterns to catch escaping ships while the main fleet advances on the base. However, a gordanian fleet unexpectedly appears, led by Grayven, and annihilates the Reach before Paul's forces get there.
Dox is not responding to communications at this point, having been overwhelmed and temporarily incapacitated by Grayven's god-speech, so Paul takes command of the fleet and has the Lanterns project a large shield to protect their withdrawal. Grayven fires on them, but is unable to penetrate the shield, and confronts Paul face to face, revealing that he intends to break the Reach as a political entity and then rule over the survivors, and has no particular respect for the Corps. They agree to keep out of each other's way while fighting the Reach, but expect to clash eventually.
Dox's next target is a world that the Reach have for some reason conquered for generations without having exterminated or genetically modified the dominant species. Overwhelming the military presence is simple enough, but the local Reach official reveals that she has a system prepared to kill all the world's infants if they don't leave her in peace. Paul reaches out to the Ophidian and uses what he's learned from the mages who shielded the fleet to simultaneously pull all the babies into a pocket dimension, then kicks the official off the planet and helps the locals rebuild.
In the Renegade timeline, Artemis has difficulty adjusting back in her original time period. The Renegade brings her to Equestria in hopes that the magic of friendship will help her.
- Call-Back: The 'Unending Conquest' Gordanian clan turns up to fight the Reach, after last being seen in Episode 76: Foundation and Episode 87: Jiggity-Jig.
- Combined Energy Attack: Or rather, defence; Paul raises a shield between the L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet and the gordanian dreadnaught, then calls on the other Lanterns to contribute. And gives their desires a subtle nudge toward cooperation to help fuse their efforts together.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Paul's first assault, with three other motivated Lanterns against a fairly ordinary ship, isn't close to a fair fight. The ship's primary weapon is too slow to hit them, its secondary weapons have trouble tracking them and are easily dodged or blocked, and any one of the Lanterns is capable of throwing attacks that can break its shields and cripple it. Paul doesn't even open fire; he just lets the Blood Knights have it.
- Dead Man's Switch: The Reach Assimilation Specialist has a dozen types of linked triggers to kill all the infants in the world if she decides to or if she's killed. Paul decides it might be easier to target the killing device itself rather than try to disable all the triggers.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Lantern BroBranBrak resents the Controllers for their help and resents Paul for offering to teach his teleportation technique — in fact, zhe intends to kill Paul eventually. But zhe hates the Reach slightly more and is coming along to kill them first.
- Double Entendre: Pinkie Pie sings about how Apple Jack swings her haunches and bucks the trees to harvest the apples. It never steps outside of being a literally accurate description, but there are enough innuendos to give Artemis a much needed laugh.
- Improperly Paranoid: Robin keeps thinking that Artemis has changed because she's been brainwashed, when she's just changed due to having decades/centuries of life experience in a very different time period. In fairness, her deepest loyalty is now to the Renegade, who was her partner through all that time, and the Renegade does have multiple forms of Mind Control at his disposal and is estranged from the Justice League, so it's not an entirely unreasonable suspicion.
- Internal Reveal: Paul finds out that the 'Unending Conquest' Gordanian clan is led by the Grayven.
- Kill Steal:
- Lantern Velus is wary of doing this to Paul and suffering his retaliation, until Paul confirms that he doesn't care who kills what as long as the job gets done.
- Grayven does this on a grand scale, annihilating the Reach fleet and base before the L.E.G.I.O.N. fleet can get there.Paul: I realise that this is a bit of a disappointment to many of you, but we'll destroy a different Reach fleet shortly.
- Leave No Witnesses: Paul's first targets are the ships that try to run, to reduce the information getting back to the Reach.
- Mass Teleportation: The Orange Lantern Corps hires mages to provide shielding for a fleet to temporarily survive in the Honden of Avarice, allowing Paul to drop the whole fleet on the target system before the Reach knows they're coming.
- Music for Courage: Paul uses singing to rally the Lanterns to defend themselves from the gordanians and withdraw in good order.Paul: Oh, come on. Most of your cultures have a concept of music! And the rest of you-
[Hyper-blaster fires again, blotting out the stars]
Paul: -can just chant it? - My Skull Runneth Over: Dox has the Super-Intelligence to handle a level of data input that would overwhelm human beings and most other species, but when he started also getting feedback on Grayven's divine aura, which was a type of data he wasn't used to, it pushed him over the edge and incapacitated him.
- No-Sell: The combined shield of the Orange Lanterns holds off even Grayven's divinely empowered hyper-blaster. Paul makes sure to nonchalantly turn away while it's firing.
- The Only One Allowed To Kill You: Grayven is presumably giving Paul a compliment when he tells him that, "I hope you die to no hand but mine." Paul just thinks hostility is pointless when the Reach are a much better target.
- Out of Time, Out of Mind: Continues to be averted for Artemis, who barely recognises any of her old team mates, or even her mother, and has to keep reminding herself that she isn't the Queen of anywhere and the technology around her isn't alive. Her loyalty has shifted, too; the Renegade is now the person she trusts the most, to Robin's consternation.
- Psycho for Hire: Lantern Velus is an unabashed sadist who just can't stop killing people. He's affable and friendly enough, though, in an environment where he has plenty of targets, which is presumably how he was recruited. It's also how Paul selected him for the initial task force to hunt down escaping ships; he wouldn't have been able to remain patient for long otherwise.
- Revenge: Most of the Lanterns who come on the preemptive strike are ones who really want to strike back at the Reach, rather than more broadly useful and stable candidates. The Clicker who saw his team killed around him and wants to hunt down the Scarab responsible is the nicest of the ones Paul brings to hunt down escapees.
- Switching P.O.V.: The episode feature's Artemis' POV as she tries to acclimate to being on Earth again and not completely succeeding, leading to the Renegade bringing her to Equestria to get her mind off of it.
- Take No Prisoners: Technically Paul does authorise his Lanterns to accept surrenders if there is no threat and they're not needed elsewhere. But they're not actively trying; a crippled ship is an invitation for a kill shot, not an ultimatum, followed by a boarding action to finish off anyone who's left.Paul: But this isn't about capturing intelligence assets. It's about sending a violent message that we can crush them.
- Troll: The Renegade decides to play around with Robin's paranoia by fixing the control panel for the external Mountain access, but adding in random purposeless junk, just because he knows Robin will probably spend hours trying to find what the Renegade has done to the machine.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Grayven's dreadnaught is equipped with a hyper-blaster capable of not only vaporising battleships but shattering moons. Especially with Grayven magically empowering it to strike down his enemies. And it strikes faster than light.
- Worthy Opponent: Grayven comes to see Paul face to face because he was at least mildly impressed by Paul's shield, and felt that his eventual victory would be more meaningful if he knew Paul personally.
