Post by Wachter on Dec 3, 2016 10:29:55 GMT
Lantern #6
The Flash of Coast City Pt. 1
Emerald Lightning
My name is Wally West and I’m not the fastest man alive. Might not even be the fastest kid. Doesn’t matter. I can still do some pretty cool stuff. Stuff that you can only imagine in a world where you believe the impossible to be possible. Take a second and think about that. I got the time.
Amazing, right?
I lived my life dreaming of being a superhero. What kid doesn’t? Yet the truth is I’m happy being a hero to one person… Okay, maybe two. But really all you need is that one person to believe in you and it changes your entire world…
Sector 2814, Earth
Coast City
Now
The palm-sized card nearly vibrated between Wally’s fingertips. He read the name over and over again. Kyle Rayner. He’d memorized the font-face and the other information. There were two cards just like it in his wallet, crinkled and bent from his and Lin’s nonstop examination of them. And here were more, scattered about like the owner knew he had to have some but didn’t particularly care for it. Or maybe not. The place was kinda messy for three people living in single room together.
“You listenin’ kid?”
Wally pocketed the card and another one within his reach. “Force fields are mostly unconscious. They’re instinctive. The constructs require focus. Imagination. Yeah, I’m listening.”
Guy Gardner looked the worst for wear. The beer in his hand didn’t help matters. His beard was badly in need of shaving or at least a trim. It was slowly approaching Santa’s Helper in length. Here Wally was expected to take his teaching seriously. It was kinda funny now that he had time to consider it. When you think about your mentor into Mystic Artes of the Cosmos then Guy was the farthest thing from the wise old man even if he was starting to get the stereotypical beard.
“Good, now I think your problem is – “
“I don’t have a problem,” Wally compared the ring on his finger to the one clinking against the other redhead’s beer bottle. “These things don’t work the same no matter what you say.”
The ring was a light sea-green instead of a shiny jade like Guy’s. He closed his fist, concentrated, and the aura expanded over his hand, sparking like emerald lightning.
“What else can it do?”
Then
The jade ping-pong ball bounced back and forth from green paddle to green paddle. Guy with his damn sports training cursed Kyle. The ball, the tennis table, and the tiny little net with the perfect diamond-shaped patterns… they were all of Kyle’s construction. He willed the ridiculousness into existence, focusing all the energy through his ring. The only thing that wasn’t a byproduct of his imagination was the other Lantern’s paddle.
This required more concentration than one might first think. Also didn’t help matters that Guy played to win. Or that at key moments during the game, Jessica would flick something at Kyle or turn on music at deafening levels and other things that could distract him. She’d even pinched his butt right as he went to serve once. And that wasn’t the worst part. Any time his willpower wavered for so much as an instant, it was twenty laps around the block and right back to the most annoying game of table tennis ever.
Kyle was exhausted mentally and physically after nearly a full day of this, after days of crazy training methods after crazy training methods. Mr. Miyagi had nothing on Mr. Gardner. Things had only gotten worse since Ch’p had left. Guy had taken to drinking more than his usual hourly intake. Sometimes it left him bitter and acting like an ass that no amount of excusing his behavior as prep for potential Manhunter attack could take credit for.
Sometimes he was a drunk, plain and simple.
Ch’p… The D.E.O. had come for answers. Guy warned the Remnant that they would have to pay up somehow. Something would have to be sacrificed for the greater good. Someone rather. It had to be done to keep the Manhunters from unleashing their full fury on the Earth. Guy, Ch’p, Jessica, the extremely stern yet reasonable sounding Deputy-Director… none of them would explain to Kyle the importance of Ch’p’s ring and why it had to be kept out of Manhunter hands. That was a mystery Kyle was not yet privy to.
The table flickered but thankfully Guy didn’t notice as he gulped down yet another drink and returned the serve with enough force to break someone’s hand if they didn’t have a nearly impenetrable force-field protecting their body.
That wasn’t Kyle’s fault. He knew that immediately. His ring had done it. Well, obviously his ring had some part in it but the actual ring had faltered. It wasn’t Kyle’s focus or doing. There wasn’t a lack of charge. They covered the whole he didn’t need Jessica to amp him up like Guy’s ring required for a jumpstart. It was all about concentration where Kyle was concerned. He’d been concentrating. His ring had reacted on its own accord.
The ping-pong ball vanished into the ether before it could shoot through his fridge. The table followed soon after. Guy’s shout was silence to Kyle’s ears. He was listening to his ring. Then he was looking to the north end of the city through his studio’s skylights.
Before he knew what he was doing, he’d dashed halfway across the room to where Jessica was prepping for her next distraction. She stared at him in wide eyed surprise. His fist connected with the side of her temple, or his ring did, it wasn’t fully clear to him. Only a second later, Jessica had collapsed unconscious in his arms and he was shouting for Guy.
“Dome!”
Years of hearing that commanding tone in dangerous situations left no room for questions from Guy. He covered them and most of the apartment in a green protective bubble just as the storm filled the sky. The sound of shattering glass herald the arrival of the storm.
The footage replayed before 2814.116’s eyes time and time again. He couldn’t stop watching it. Korugarian Agents in the same armor he wore literally ripped to pieces by a yellow construct, their innards spilling over a crowd of frightened onlookers. No amount of nanites could have saved them. And as horrible as that was, what happened to 1417 had been worse. The Bellatrixian had been stripped of everything that made her a Manhunter in front of the universe. Manhunters couldn’t censor it. That had been live. Their network wasn’t that good.
Thousands of planets had seen Boodikka’s torture and death.
These Yellow Lanterns, this Sinestro Corps, had done in less than an hour what the Impurity had been working towards for nearly two years. The fear was spreading. It’d strengthen both these new Lanterns and the one Sinestro vowed to fight. What sane mind thought you could fight Fear with fear?
2814.116 heard Boodikka’s silent scream. His internal sensors displayed every agonized response from her until the last of the nanites had been pulled free and the screen went to static. He switched to a different feed. The speech again. Boodikka’s last stand as a Green Lantern. People cheered in fear for their fallen hero.
This could not be allowed to happen on Earth and no matter what Spencer said, it could. Neither had heard from 2261 in some time. He’d gone silent which wasn’t all that unusual in all honesty. Even the most powerful psychic in the universe needed to recharge. However, there couldn’t have been a worst time for it. The Manhunters needed their orders and the Sector Operatives were too diverse a lot to come to a consensus over the matter.
Someone needed to do something.
2814.116 stiffened. His sensors detected a spike in energy corresponding to the Emotional Spectrum approaching. He double checked his potential armament, ready for anything.
Sector 2814, Earth
Undisclosed D.E.O. Base
The elevator closed and sealed itself behind John. He stepped into a world of rock walls augmented by concrete and steel. It was almost exactly what one expected when thinking about a clandestine government organization designed to keep the most outrageous threats hidden from her people. Pale ceiling lights illuminated the walkway. They cast small shadows around him.
The air had just the right amount of disturbance to it to give John goosebumps. Instinct told him that he wasn’t alone down here. He reached for his shoulder holster and checked the safety of his sidearm. Slowly, keeping his steps light so as to not echo, he stalked his way down the underground passage. There were no guards here. They were unwanted but not exactly unneeded. Some secrets were kept even from his Agents.
He turned a corner, gun raised, and nearly shot one them between his bespectacled eyes.
“Are you out of you goddamn mind, Zolomon?!” John did not lower his weapon. “What the hell are you doing sneaking around down here?”
Hunter Zolomon, his suit perfectly pressed as usual, had his hands raised in as an unthreatening manner as he could manage while being found in a restricted area. The sunglasses resting on his nose were the same issued to nearly every Agent and Special Agent in the D.E.O. who operated in the field. He didn’t show an ounce of fear except for the single bead of sweat sliding down his cheek.
“Pursuing a lead involving the recent incidents in Coast City.”
Keeping the gun steady, John took one hand off it to tap his earpiece. Unlike his agents, he didn’t need sunglasses. A holographic feed appeared before his eyes while he checked the recent requests and access to this floor. There was Zolomon’s name. He’d been down here for hours. That alone was strange. What was stranger was the request never reached John’s desk.
There was no choice but to holster his weapon at that point. The blond man lowered his hands and removed his glasses. He had strength to his character that he didn’t back down before John’s outraged glare.
“Given your close proximity to the matter and the possibility for a conflict of interest,” the Agent kept his voice controlled, correctly guessing the Deputy-Director’s unasked question, “I thought it best to ask the Director himself.”
“I know how to keep my personal and professional life separate, Agent.” John tapped his ear again to end the feed. “What lead are you pursuing or am I not privy to that information?”
“Why the Lanterns are fighting so hard. It’s just a ring that if your sources are to be believed, nearly every other planet in the cosmos willingly surrendered to the Manhunters except Earth. Gardner refuses to give up his and Jordan’s Power Rings. You refused to hand over one of the nine. I want to know why. I need to know why so I don’t get my partner killed with misinformation or fail in my duties to keep the Earth safe from alien threats.”
“The last ring is not here.”
“I know, Deputy Director,” he got closer to John’s face than he thought the man had the balls to do, “it’s not anywhere that I can find.”
“You don’t have the proper clearance.”
“Perhaps. Or maybe the D.E.O. doesn’t actually have it.”
Before John could remind the other man of his place, both of them howled with an emergency alert that hurt their ears. Zolomon quickly put his glasses back on while John checked his phone. They both cursed “Ferris Air.”
“Get West on the line. Find out what happened in the lab if you can. I’ll assemble a task force to contain it.” Though how he could control a storm was beyond him at the moment.
Their footsteps echoed across the cavern’s walls as they raced back to the elevator.
Sector 2814, Earth
Ferris Air, Outside Coast City
There are times when coincidence makes things worse. This might have been one of those times. Carol Ferris had no reason to check in with her company’s main project but something drove her to make the drive and do the rounds. She gave new employees and old greetings alike, staying long enough to make some conversation with those who had been around since her father’s days and ask about their families. That’s how Ferris Air had started. A family. A couple of men with ideals about flying through the sky got together and founded it mostly through force of effort and the love of their families propping them up. It grew into one of the greatest aeronautics firms in the world and under her leadership she would bring the family business into a new frontier.
However, Carol couldn’t stay talking for long. The itch in the back of her head – and in her gut – kept her moving deeper into the high-tech facility. She slid her access card through the required slot and placed her hand over the palm reader. This part of Ferris Air would change the world. And they couldn’t do it alone. The government, STAR Labs, and more had all come together – like those men decades ago – to solve the growing issue of a potential energy crisis. And she had in her possession the one thing that could lead to a breakthrough for sustainable energy the world over.
The security guard in this part of the wing seemed oddly distracted. Tenser than usual. She had to call his name multiple times before he noticed her.
“Sorry, Ms Ferris,” he smiled sheepishly, “thinking a girl might be a bad influence on my son. It has me –“
“It’s fine, Rudy, but think of it this way. Your family has finally joined you here in our beautiful Coast City. Your son, if he’s anything like you, could be a good influence on her instead.” Her voice took on a sterner tone. “But don’t let that distract you to the point where a woman in heels clicking against tile can walk past your desk without you noticing.”
“Once again, sorry. Go on ahead. Mr. Kalmaku is already waiting in the observation room.”
“Tom’s here?” Strange. Maybe he was feeling the same strangeness as Carol.
“Arrived about an hour ago.”
That sped her up. There would be no missing the noise of her heels practically racing down the hall. She took the stairs up to observation two at a time instead of continuing through more sealed doors. The door hissed open as she approached and the copper skinned man inside gave her in a nod in hello.
“Was about to call you.”
The observation room was a dome overlooking an even larger room housing Ferris Air’s greatest secret. Beneath them was the solution to any energy crisis today or in the future, a battery that never ran out of power and it was small enough to lift with one hand. A series of tubes had been connected to it, spanning the room in a spider’s web of wires, leading to the walls and other rooms that sucked the energy it released into even smaller batteries. A giant ring had been concocted around it made of clear pipes of unique design meant to continuously draw out the power. A brilliant breakthrough on the part of the creator to trick the battery into thinking it was serving its original purpose.
Normally the ring cast the room in an eerie green glow. Tonight, it shined the color of the sun. It hurt to look at the light. Closing your eyes simply made you see yellow through your eyelids. She wondered why Tom hadn’t set the observation room’s windows to a deeper tint then she realized he had. It wasn’t enough.
Fear stretched his features into a grimace. It wasn’t the fear that this might ruin them as a company. It was the fear that this light had brought ruin to the bravest man they had both known. They thought they could tame the Green, use it as a renewable power source that had no ill effects on the environment that could power the most complex of machines and entire cities. That’d been their dream. It would have been Hal Jordan’s legacy on Earth. The legacy they could share with the rest of the world.
“Arthur’s already down there,” Tom explained worriedly. “I told him not to risk it but he refused to listen to reason. It’s his life’s work he claimed and he’d be damned to let it end like this.”
Damn it.
Carol rushed to one of the monitoring stations. It said all the valves were closed, that all connections to the battery were closed off. That obviously wasn’t the case based on what she was seeing. This was reaching critical stages and they had no godly clue what would happen when it did.
She glanced at Tom, his arms crossed, gray in his hair and skin white with worry. He had a wife and two children in the city. Rudy outside had his wife and son that had moved out here for this job. The same for Arthur down below.
“Order an evacuation. Lock this lab and the surrounding wing down.” she ordered it as calmly as she could before opening a comm. channel to her leading expert. “Dr. Park, what’s the plan?”
“A very simple one, Ms Ferris. I disconnect the Green Lantern Power Battery manually.”
“That doesn’t seem too complicated. Why haven’t you done it yet?”
”Well, you see, my feet don’t want to listen to my brain. I had to circumvent my intentions entirely just to make it this far.” She could see a bulky shadowy figure wave at her from down below. He was about five feet away from the battery going by her best guess. “I have one of your drone pilots controlling my containment suit.”
“You don’t sound all that frightened, Dr. Park.”
“Oh, I am completely terrified and very happy that you based these suits around those you designed for astronauts. Very enlightening to experience the Yellow Light from up close. I can understand why those Guardians I believe you called them chose to utilize Green far better now despite its nature requiring another color in order to properly control it.”
Carol brought up the readings on Park’s suit. She scowled. His heartbeat was racing, his blood pressure was through the roof… At this rate, he was going to die from fear yet he acted thrilled over the fact. Then she noticed something far more alarming.
“You haven’t moved in two minutes.”
“The Light has a hold on me but its grip lets up every so often and I can take a few more steps. It’s slow going but I have faith I’ll reach the main battery in time.”
Even as he spoke, she saw what he meant. It looked like the Yellow energy was being drained from some outside source. It faded to a fog for mere moments and in those precious seconds, Park’s suit rushed forward. He was nearly to the battery when it happened. There was a spark of green that flared in the core. Carol heard a voice in it.
She reached out with her hand and pulled Tom to her as he struggled to relay her orders throughout the facility. Her lips closed around his in a kiss his wife would kill him for if she ever found out. It was deep. It stole more than his breath. It filled his lungs with something more than air. Desire. Adoration. Love. A cocoon of violet wrapped around the two of them as he began to kiss her back.
It wasn’t enough. A kiss could not do it alone. Carol thought back onto her past, about what she truly wanted. She remembered Hal’s cocky grin. That smarmy smirk as he flew off into space for the final time. She recalled slapping that bastard Gardner and demanding answers about where he was. Was Hal alive? Dead? Worse? She channeled her obsessive desire to know the truth about the love of her life into the kiss.
The Yellow Light exploded out from the battery, carrying with it sparks of Green energy. It traveled through walls and people. It shot into the sky high above Ferris Air, spreading to form a storm over Coast City. Yet not a single strand broke through the barrier Carol had erected around them.
She pushed Tom away and felt like vomiting. It wasn’t his fault. It was hers. And it felt like a drug asking for her to do more, demanding for her to call on it more. She stomped down on that emotion and got back to business.
Readings were back to normal in the room below. There was only the Green Light of Hal Jordan’s Battery illuminating the room… illuminating the unconscious body of Dr. Park.
“Get a medical team to check on Arthur ASAP!”
Tom could only blink in a daze.
“The feeling will pass,” she consoled him, “but I need you with me here and now.”
“Hal ran away from that kiss?” His eyes had a purple tint to them. “Must have been insane.”
“He was perfectly sane. I was the one who was insane. Now can you get back to following orders?”
“Yes… Uh, sure,” he touched his lips with his fingers and blushed. “Medical team. Arthur. Got it.”
“Good. Our micro-batteries don’t seem to be corrupted by whatever the hell that was.” She brought up the quarantine protocols to lock down the rest of Ferris Air. “Have Cowgirl suit up and load the Sapphire-prototype onto the catapult deck. We’re going to have visitors soon and until the D.E.O. pry that battery out of my cold, dead fingers… I’m not going to surrender it to a bunch of thugs taking orders from some alien hivemind.”
Despite his very understandable confusion, the mention of the Sapphire sobered Tom right up. “You want to risk the Sapphire in combat? We haven’t even begun field testing the weapon systems yet.”
“Yes.” She massaged the bridge of her nose. “Nobody else is to leave the building until I say so. We don’t know what sort of effects that Light might have had on them.”
Suddenly, Carol felt dizzy, as if she was being dragged off her feet and out of the room. She gripped the console tightly but the pull only increased. Below, a medical team in containment suits rushed in to check on the unconscious Dr. Park. That was one matter resolved. She glanced towards the door. The pull was almost visible.
It reminded her of the seconds before the explosion when the Yellow Light had faded. Suspicion filled her gut. It made her remove her heels.
Sector 2814, Earth
Coast City
The crunch of popcorn rang between his ears. Linda and Wally made their way through the throng of their fellow movie goers with only mild jostling. The tiny girl beside him practically vibrated with excitement. She just had to be there on opening night. It’s what a true fan of superheroes would do. Just like they would wait until after the credits stopped before leaving. That was the only way to watch a comic book film.
Personally, Wally could have waited until the matinee next weekend.
“The Gray Ghost Returns was great,” Lin began excitedly, “buuut I think it would have been more faithful to the source material if it was Rated-R.”
“We wouldn’t have been able to watch it alone then,” Wally replied between mouthfuls. He’d splurged a bit and got the collectible tin. There was still a lot left to eat.
Lin gave him the look that he had come to recognize as meaning ‘he could be the most boring person in the world sometimes.’ He enjoyed meeting those big brown eyes of hers even when they judged him like now. They’d become inseparable since the incident at the Airstrip. A part of him wondered if she followed him around in hopes of finding another story to put up on Watchtower. Only a small part. That night, after the gruff robot had told them to go home, something had sparked between them. He could feel his crush return some of his affection.
It took a lot of bravery beyond mere chivalry to stand in front of the defenseless knowing that death would be immediate. Lin saw in him some sort of hero. She’d seen what he’d done in the classroom. He’d protected her at the Airstrip. Instinct to throw himself into danger or to see it coming. However… she did call him an idiot for it.
“Of course we could have.”
“Do rules and laws mean nothing to you?” Seemed like the required response from a boy who had grown up in a cop-family.
They made it outside the theater. He felt more than noticed Lin stretch out her arms and he could just imagine her mischievous grin. There was no sense of her lowering her arms though. Wally glanced over his shoulder to find her frozen, looking to the north.
In the evening sky, one could see the rolling clouds in the distance. Storm clouds that shouldn’t exist, that shouldn’t be moving as fast as they were, green and yellow lightning flaring in the sky before crashing down to the earth. In moments it would be over them. Not long after that, it would probably spread across the whole city.
“Phone, phone…” Lin muttered to herself and searched for her cell.
Too late.
Bolts of lightning rained down around them with the ferocity of something unnatural. Cars went flying. Pavement exploded. People screamed and started rushing into buildings. And Lin’s first thought was to record it all.
Wally snatched her by the arm, ready to drag her by force if he had to, but his initial thought had been right. It was too late to run. He threw her out of the way as golden lightning hit him.
The world stopped.
The world started.
Nothing had changed.
Linda watched him with open mouthed amazement from where she’d braced herself against the building. “You’re blue again…”
Lightning struck twice.
The emerald bolt ignited every nerve in his body. Wally found himself floating in the air with a sense of infinity filling him. Everything was sharper. He could see clearly now. The cloud no longer looked like a cloud above. He could see it for what it was.
Energy. Sparkling, crackling, energy.
It was beautiful and it was dangerous.
My name is Wally West and my origin story hasn't even started yet.
