Yue

 3rd January

21:38 GMT -5

"Hey, Lantern!" Mr Hamill waves at me from his bench. "Over here!"

I nod, and make my way across the interior of the bar. When I get to within non-shouting distance, he indicates his co-drinkers with his bottle.

"This here's Mike-" An overweight Caucasian man. Solid looking arms, though. "-and this is Dan." Trim black man with a thin moustache.

"Good evening, gentlemen." I nod to them both, then sit down next to Mike. "I'm Orange Lantern."

Mike chuckles, shakes his head, then pulls out his wallet. He extracts two ten dollar notes and passes one to each of his companions. "I ain't even mad. This is crazy."

"No, just unusual. Mister Hamill-."

"Ah, call me 'Joe'."

"Joe, how are you feeling?"

"I haven't drunk enough of these to find it funny yet, but I'm definitely getting there."

"Okay, but before you do… No lingering side effects that you've noticed?"

"Nope. Just a regular Joe." He grins at his pun. Yes, not too far from finding it funny. "But… I don't know if it's the dial or whatever…"

"Yes?"

"Maybe… If I knew before I turned it on that I could turn it off… Maybe I coulda got more out of it."

Mike looks at him with an expression of disbelief. "You just got done saying that you hated the whole thing."

"Yeah, yeah, I did." He takes a drunk from his bottle. "'Cause I thought I was stuck like that. By the time I got the dial back all I could think of was turning if off. But if I'd kept hold of it at the start… Coulda been fun."

Dan shakes his head. "Fun..?"

"Fly around for a bit, look down on the whole city… Maybe the whole world. Maybe prank a couple of people…"

"Joe, please, if you ever encounter devices like that in the future, just hand them straight over to the police or to the Justice League."

He makes a gesture of appeal. "What's wrong with having a little fun? I wasn't going to hurt anybody."

"The problem is that while the dial is fairly user friendly, an awful lot of artefacts like that very much aren't. I'm very glad that this turned out okay, but…" I shake my head. "The vast majority of uncontrolled exposures don't work like that. I've… Been to hospital wards-."

"Okay… Yeah, I guess… God knows I wouldn't want to be stuck like that."

Dan nods. "Don't play with matches, railroad tracks or super weapons, got it."

"Hey, ah…" Mike leans forward. "Joe didn't say what happened to the dial."

"Our best guess is that it self-destructed. It's actually pretty common for supervillains and superheroes to put stuff like that in their technology."

Mike frowns. "Then why didn't it go off before?"

I shrug. "Joe said he was turning the dial randomly. We know that he entered 'hero' at some point, because that was what turned him back. But it's perfectly possible that he dialled something else first."

"Oh." Joe winces. "Ah, sorry?"

I shake my head. "Don't worry about it. Even if that is what happened, it was clearly an accident. And the dial doesn't have a legal owner."

"So…" Mike gesture towards me with his beer bottle. "How about them other dials?"

"Once I knew what I was looking for, tracking them down was a lot easier. Or… At least, tracking the ones which aren't immune to ring scans."

"What about the ones that are?"

"How would I know about it if there were any?"

"Huh?" He frowns, then gets it. "Oh, yeah."

"We're going to keep an eye out for sudden bursts of superpowered activity by multiple individuals… Or rather, we're going to be aware that it could be due to a dial rather than a team. And we've sent out a message to all police forces with a description of every version of the dial that we're aware of. But short of binding Mister Reed with Diana's Lasso of Truth there isn't much more we can do."

"You..?" Mike shrinks in on himself slightly, then presses onwards. "You need any ..? Volunteers for testing them dials?"

"Not at this stage, but if you're interested I can pass your details on."

Joe frowns in incomprehension, shakes his head and makes a lower gesture of appeal.

"What? You said if you'd known you could turn it off you'd'a had some fun with it first?"

"Well, yeah…"

"And it doesn't usually turn guys into chicks, right?"

"Most people who have used it on record either retain their original sex or are rendered sexless. And everyone on record has turned back physically fine."

"Then there's basically no downside."

"That's.. not.. completely true. There have been instances where people in powered states have shown radically different behaviour to what they showed in their unpowered states. We're not sure why, but it's something to consider before signing up."

He nods.

"Joe, before I go, there was one other thing I wanted to talk to you about."

"Yeah? What?"

"Several of my colleagues have commented to me that -while you were transformed- it was inappropriate of me to refer to you in the feminine, as she rather than he. I don't believe that you directly stated a preference, but… I don't have a great deal of contact with people in your position."

"Buddy, I don't think anyone's been in my position." He frowns. "Wait, is that what that Squire chick was talking about?" I nod. "Huh." He strokes his chin with his left hand. "Is that a tranny thing?"

"The way different cultures deal with sexual identity varies with-."

"Wait, they think I'm pissed off about that?" I nod again. "Shit, man, you helped me get my body back. I don't care about… I mean, I guess I was a woman? Like… Not inside, except, like, literally. 'Cause… I actually transformed, it wasn't an illusion or whatever." He stares at his bottle for a moment. "Man, it is too early in the evening for this. I was a woman…"

He brightens up slightly.

"I got it! If that dial had put my mind in Wonder Woman's body, I'd be Wonder Woman, right?"

… "Sort of."

"And Wonder Woman's a woman. So I guess… 'Electro Lass' could be a woman without Joe Hamill being a woman. So I guess I was a woman but I wasn't exactly me. Does that make sense?"

"It probably makes as much sense as anything else anyone has said on the subject." I stand. "I hope you gentlemen have a pleasant evening."