JLU 2001 Fanfiction - Green Lantern #12

Green Lantern The Emerald Gladiator.....

"WEAPONS OF MASS CONTROL"

Part 5:

Green Lantern #12 - December, Year One by Gary Jones

“Donna it’s time to get up now.” Alan Scott had just come around to find himself in a plain, featureless cell. The room was made of some kind of metallic substance and no seam or crack could be seen in its flawless smooth walls. Lying next to him had been Donna Troy and while he had woken, she had yet to.

There was a large cut on her forehead; a wound received when she had been slammed into the moon’s surface by a Fist of the Guardians robot, and while the wound no longer bled, Alan feared that it’d had caused more damage than it had appeared to.

“You called me Donna?” a mumbled question came from Donna’s lips, “not Miss Troy.”

Despite their situation Alan couldn’t help but smile that she was okay. “Sorry about that but when I put on the suit, I tend to put on a rather stodgy persona. It just helps me keep my home and …professional lives separate.”

Donna grasped the hand that was offered her and was grateful to be pulled to her feet, her head still pounding. “So do you have a plan to get us out of here?”

“Well despite this place being shielded against my powers, I think I’ve managed to use them to detect where the release system for this cell is.” Alan shrugged slightly. “The problem is…”

“You can’t blast through whatever is coating this place to get at it,” Donna sighed as she finished Alan’s sentence for him.

“Exactly right and I doubt they would have let you keep the Darkstar uniform if it could have been used to break us out of here.”

“Could Green Lantern energy get us out of here?” Donna asked as she grasped the collar of her Darkstar uniform.

“It’s possible,” Alan replied. “I think the Controllers would be arrogant enough not to bother shielding against corps energy now that they are gone. The problem being of course that we don’t have access to any Green Lantern energy until Kyle returns.”

“We do,” Donna said quietly as she reached a hand just inside the collar of her uniform and pulled out a green locket. “Kyle made this for me. He said as long as he loved me the necklace would never vanish.” She unfastened it hesitantly and handed it to Alan. “Think you can do anything with this?”

Alan held the construct in his hands, using his Starheart born powers to reach out to the energy contained in the necklace. There had always been a connection between his powers and the energies of the Green Lantern Corp, even if it hadn’t been clear exactly what that was.

“I think that this might just be our way out,” Alan said as his fist began to glow with his… connection.

The blood pumped in Donna Troy’s veins as she ran toward her quarters. The old excitement of going off on a mission came rushing back to her and she didn’t even try to stop it.

    Kyle’s words of comfort had helped of course but he couldn’t understand, not really.
He had been a hero for such a short time and while it was an important part of his life, most of his life still revolved around being Kyle Rayner.

    But for her being a normal woman was hard. For the majority of her life she had been a super-hero. Perhaps it was that fact that stopped her understanding Terry’s, her ex-husband’s, point of view on her former heroic life.

    Donna skidded to a stop as she realised that she had passed the door that led to her old room. A few steps back and she quickly entered the room that she had quite often called home.

    The Controllers did at least let their Darkstars have some small piece of home onboard ship. Donna’s room was constructed much like an ordinary Earth bedroom although the wooden furniture contained within was quite obviously not from Earth, much of it actually seemed to still be alive.

    “I knew I should have set the housekeeping machines to take care of the furniture as well.” Donna pulled at the vines that were holding the doors of the wardrobe together.

    Along with a small selection of blouses, skirts and trousers, the wardrobe held the first uniform Donna wore as a member of the Darkstars.

    The full body suit was almost completely coloured a deep red, a white diamond shape began just below her hips and ended just below her neck, a bold feather-like effect came from the bottom of either side of the diamond and ended at the bottom of her ribs. A black star was placed in the centre of the chest.

    Once the costume was on, Donna pulled the zip up to the collar, all trace of the zipper vanishing into the costume when the two sides were joined together. The only sign that the zipper had been there was the ring-pull at the top.

    At the bottom of the wardrobe was the exo-mantle that was designed to absorb power that was beamed to it by the Controllers. Donna lifted it up and fixed it onto her shoulders. The mantle looked like a smaller version of an American Football Player’s shoulder pads and they were fixed together by a thin strip of metal that ran along her collar bone.

    The final parts of the costume were the light gold covered gloves that finished at the centre of the bicep.

“That was great Jorge.” Jenny-Lynn Hayden smiled as her finger clicked on the camera for the final time, taking one last photo. “If this new portfolio doesn’t get you noticed, nothing will.”

    “I appreciate the help Jen.” Jorge was a man too handsome for his own good, and he flashed Jenny a smile, which showed he knew it. “I know you’ve been busy recently.”

    “Not a problem,” Jenny replied as she popped her camera into its computer docking station. “If you hadn’t set me up with your agent, I wouldn’t be getting all the work in the first place.” She flashed a smile back, which said ‘not in this lifetime buddy’.

    Jorge grabbed up his duffle and Jenny opened the door for him to leave when a sharp pain ran through her head.

    “Are you okay?” Jorge asked with concern, as Jenny rubbed her temples.

    “Fine, just a little run down,” Jenny lied as the pain continued. “Like you said, I’ve just been busy recently.”

    “Then I’ll be off to let you get some rest. Call me if you aren’t feeling any better by tonight though.”

    “I will,” Jenny replied, as she practically manhandled him out of the door.

Jenny threw up the moment she reached the bathroom; her hands gripped the sides of the pan so tightly, it could almost have cracked.

    She vomited until there was nothing left in her stomach and then dry heaved for several minutes more. She briefly thought of the feeling she used to get when her brother Todd was in trouble but it had never felt anything like this. This was so much more… extreme.

    She dragged herself up from the pan and gripped onto the bathroom sink like her life depended on it. She looked at her reflection in the mirror and sighed. She had a gallery showing that very evening and her eyes now had some decidedly dark rings around them.

    Another burst of stabbing pain ran behind her eyes and her vision blurred. As it came back into focus she no longer saw her reflection in the mirror but an image of her father and a woman she recognised as Donna Troy.

    They were standing in front of a wall, a hole made in the middle of it, the smoke rising from it showing how recently it had been made. The pair slowly and hesitantly moved through the hole and instantly took to their heels as bursts of green tinged flame streaked past them.

    “DDDDAAAADDD!” she cried out as her view of her father faded, the pain in her head quickly easing. She fell to her knees, tears flowing freely from her eyes. “Pull yourself together girl,” she said steeling her voice. “Your Dad won’t get help from you crying.”

    Jenny quickly got to her feet and splashed some cold water on her face.

    Jenny grabbed her coat from the closet and ran for the door to her apartment. Somehow she knew what she had just seen was real. It had felt similar, although a LOT more painful, to the connection she shared with her brother Todd.

    All she needed now was help to reach her father and only one name was coming to her mind… Green Lantern.

Kyle had been sent back to STAR Labs by the Batman without another word but as soon as he had appeared on the Lab’s teleport pad, an electronic spike had been sent after him, frying STAR’s equipment and preventing any possible trace of where Kyle had been and returned from.

    The residual charge that had been in the ring, which had changed Kyle’s clothes into a Corps uniform, had quickly faded and Kyle was left to run through the streets of Manhattan back to his Bleecker Street apartment. The run left him breathless and he nearly turned into Radu’s Coffee Shop, an instinct built up by far too many late nights at the drawing board than needed large amounts of caffeine to fuel.

    He passed by the front of the Coffee Shop and sprinted up the fire escape until he reached his apartment window. It was left slightly open as usual, a risk to be sure but Kyle had always felt safe in this neighbourhood, even more so with the added JLA security.

    He was a little surprised then to see someone sitting on his couch, a female someone, a someone who looked at their watch several times in just the thirty seconds that Kyle watched them.

    The window squeaked as Kyle pushed it open and the woman turned around. Kyle would have recognised her even without the green skin. It was Jenny-Lynn Hayden and she was the daughter of Alan Scott. They had met briefly at the memorial service of Hal Jordan after he had died to stop the Sun Eater and reignite the sun.

    “Do you always come in by the window?” Jenny questioned as she shot to her feet.

    “Only when I’m in a hurry,” Kyle replied, desperately sucking in air into his lungs. “Listen, I don’t have much time to explain but the short explanation is that I’ve screwed up and your Dad and my girlfriend are probably dead.”

    “Well I appreciate the honesty,” Jenny said looking a little stunned, “but they’re not dead,” she added with a smile on her face.

    Kyle looked both stunned and elated with equal measure. “How can you know that?” he asked with a renewed sense of hope.

    “I had a vision,” Jenny replied, looking a little sheepish. “It was something like the connection I share with my brother but stronger and a lot more painful.” She walked over to Kyle and rested a hand on his shoulder. “But I saw them alive and on the run.”

    Kyle acted with a renewed vigour. “Listen, I’ve got this.” He held out a hand and showed Jenny the power ring he had received a short while ago from the Batman. “It’s one of the old Corps ring, weak to yellow, needs a charge every day but more importantly it can duplicate itself. So how about I make you a copy and we rescue the people we love,” Kyle asked as he slipped the ring onto the middle finger of his right hand.

    “I’m in,” Jenny said with a smile. “It’ll be nice to have an ace in the hole,” she said making an Ace of Spades card with her own powers. “But if that ring can make copies, why just stop with one?”

John Stewart and Guy Gardner sat at a table in the newly opened Warriors Lounge in Manchester, England. Each was drinking a bottle of Budweiser while John’s girlfriend, Merayn Dethalis, was arguing animatedly at the front doors with a delivery man about a consignment of vivid pink napkins.

    “Think we should lend a hand?” Guy asked with an amused expression as he gestured towards Merayn.

    “Not likely.” John smiled, taking a drink from his bottle. “It’s never wise to put yourself in the firing line when Merayn is in full flow.

    Suddenly she let out a stream of words in her native language and even to those who didn’t understand it, it was fairly obvious that they weren’t polite ones.

    “Okay, now we go help,” John said as he wheeled himself backward. Guy got to his feet trying not to choke on the mouthful of beer he had just taken as he tried to stifle a laugh.

    As the guys arrived at the door ready to stop Merayn attacking the delivery driver they were all bathed in a green light. The delivery driver took one quick look at the people in front of him and how happy they seemed at the arrival of the pair above him, snatched up the parcel he had being trying to force Merayn to sign for a dashed to his van and quickly drove away.

    As John and Merayn conversed in her native tongue, Guy grabbed Kyle in a bone-crushing hug. “Glad to see you’re going back to the classic outfit.”

    “Damn, I’d forgotten,” Kyle said as Guy finally released him. “Better switch back to normal.” A flash of emerald energy and the uniform of the Green Lantern Corps had been replaced with the one he had designed with the help of his late girlfriend, Alex.

    Guy looked a little disappointed but then turned toward Jade with his arms wide open. “At least I get to give a hug to one person with a Corps uniform on.”

    “I don’t think so,” Jade said holding Guy at bay with a large green hand. “We’re here for your help, not your hugs.

Inside Warriors, Kyle told the three people he had come to see what had happened out in space. “So I’m not so stupid to think I can go up against the Controllers and Guardian technology on my own. I don’t think they’d be so inclined to send me back to Earth again.”

    “We’d love to help, you know that,” John said with a look to Jade, “but with the exception of Guy none of us have powers.”

    “That’s why we have these,” Kyle said as both he and Jade held out their right fists so the threesome could see the Green Lantern rings on their middle fingers. “Don’t ask me where they came from. I don’t think he’d be happy if I told you, but since we can make more of these rings… well I think you can see where I’m going with this.”

    “”Well you’ve got a hell yes from me,” Guy said as he got up from the table they had all been sitting at and walked over to a glass display case which held a model of him in his Green Lantern outfit. Without a word Guy smashed it open and pulled off the ring that had been on the model’s finger and put it on his own.

    “That’s a real ring?” John asked with shock. “If you’ve had that all this time why did you need a yellow ring?”

    “What, you think the Guardians or Jordan would have let me keep this if they’d knew I still had it. Plan was to wait for some universe threatening battle and then swoop in as a GL to save the day and get back into the good books.” Guy looked at another case that held a model of a youthful Hal Jordan in his original Green Lantern outfit. “Some things just don’t ever work out how we plan,” he said mournfully.

    “I can’t speak for Merayn but I’m willing to come along as well,” John said before being interrupted.

    “A little payback on the Controllers for abandoning the Darkstars will be most welcome,” Merayn said with a stern look at John, which told how she couldn’t believe he could think she wouldn’t want to join him.

    “Well, now that’s settled,” Kyle grinned, “let’s see about getting you all powered up.”

    He closed his ring hand into a fist. It glowed for a moment and two Green Lantern rings were created which he promptly handed to John and Merayn.

    “Just think about a new outfit and the ring will create it,” John said as he altered the uniform into a copy of his old outfit. “The next time you return to your street clothes, it’ll become the default uniform.”

    “That’s okay,” Merayn said as she twisted to look at herself in the uniform of the Green Lantern corps. “I think I’ll stick with the classic look like Jade.”

    “You got something I can cop a charge off?” Guy asked as he looked at the others in their new uniforms.

    From his left gauntlet Kyle pulled a small sliver of green metal. “I finally managed to cut this off my battery.”

    “After shouting many words you wouldn’t expect a superhero to know,” Jade said stifling a laugh.

    Kyle set the piece of battery on the table and it almost immediately formed itself into a clone of the full battery. “I don’t know how many charges this’ll be good for but it should be enough for the duration of this mission.”

    “Then lets get started,” Guy said walking up to the table. He’d removed the jacket from his model as well and was pulling it on. Kyle shivered as he did so; Guy’s outfit bore more than a passing resemblance to the Fist of the Guardians robots that he had faced a short time ago.

Sentinel and Donna hung back in the shadows on a gantry above a room where twenty people were being held fly-like in an amber-like substance.

    One by one the amber-like substance was cracked open and the people, from a dozen different alien races, were dragged screaming to an array of machinery where their bodies began the conversion into a member of the Controllers’ Effigy Corps.

    The pair of fugitives had only seen the beginning of the process, where the people were strapped into the machinery. Whatever happened next was taking place elsewhere in the complex but by the screaming that could be heard, it wasn’t pleasant.

    “I think the silence is worse,” Donna said as the screams from elsewhere finally stopped. “We have to try and stop this.”

    “The problem is how?” Alan Scott, the Sentinel, replied. “Our powers don’t damage anything in here and your necklace only has enough energy in it for me to use it for one more blast.” Alan held out the hand that held the necklace that Kyle had given to Donna. It was now covered with thin, hairline cracks. The power from the construct had initially been drained to free Alan and Donna from their holding cell.

    “Then we get out of here and go planetside and wait for Kyle to come back with help.”

    “I admire your optimism,” Alan smiled in reply, “but…”

    “It is sadly misplaced.” the lead Controller stepped out onto the gantry; the other end blocked by a pair of Fist of the Guardians robots.

    “Impressive isn’t it,” the Controller said as he gestured to the events taking place underneath them. “The problem the Guardians had with the Corps, and by brethren with the Darkstars, is that they were all too mortal, with all the weakness that come with that mortality. What we are doing here is removing that weakness, internalising the power that will enable the Effigy Corps to police the universe with greater success than either of their predecessors.”

    “This is monstrous,” Alan barked in retort. “You are stealing these people’s freewill and you can’t bring peace to people by denying them that.”

    “Freewill is wasted on most people,” the Controller said, crossing his hands behind his back. “All they do with that freewill is war and bring chaos. We, the Controllers, can bring our will to bear and eliminate that chaos.”

    “And yet when war came you abandoned the people who had put their faith in you,” Donna said, her hands glowing with mazar energy. “We needed the Darkstars; we needed you, when Grayven was making his play for power.”

    “What happened to the Darkstars was… unfortunate. Many of them would have made excellent members of the Effigy Corps, but our power was needed to bring the Effigy Corps to life.”

    The Controller stepped passed Alan and Donna, who didn’t take their eyes off of him, and gestured to the Fists of the Guardians. “Now you will both be taken to add to our numbers.” His eyes fixed on Alan. “Your bond with the mystical power of the Starheart will make the Effigy Corps unstoppable.”

The Fists of the Guardians stepped forward but suddenly the whole base rocked, as if something had hit the moon itself with incredible force.

The Controller spoke into a communications device that was woven into the fabric of his robe. “What is occurring?” he asked with a concerned tone. Nothing should have been able to make the base shudder like it had just done.

A garbled message, full of static, came back over the link. “Under bzzttz green bzzttzz.”

‘Could that simple human have had another ring?’ the Controller mused.

His thoughts were cut short as the roof of the base collapsed inward. There was a sudden rushing of air which emergency force fields immediately held in check.

The whole vastness of space was now on view - and one man. “I’ve come for my friends and to shut you down,” Kyle said with steel in his voice.

The Controller threw back his head and laughed. “Foolish child. You could not withstand our power before and this time you are alone.”

“The last time you were facing a lone Green Lantern, this time you’re taking on the Corps.”

“About damn time kid,” Guy Gardner grinned as his ring sparked with energy. As he and the others floated into a position they could be seen. “About damn time.”

To be concluded…

Authors Notes:

Well this issue has taken a long time coming. Somewhere back then I just lost all enthusiasm to write, I had the odd spark but nothing where I could go back and write what I needed to do.

Hopefully now that time has past and I can get back onto the fan fiction trail properly.

The next issue of Green Lantern, my last will be issue 13 and it’ll be a blast. I promise it won’t take as long to arrive as this one did.

Make sure to check out what is happening with Donna Troy currently over in Matt Hrubey’s excellent Wonder Woman series.