July 04, 2017:
Kyle Rayner responds to a distress call to fight a Red Lantern…and be saved by a Yellow Lantern (Emits by Starfire)
Characters
![class="image1"](http://cmbeta.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images//class="image1"/medium.jpg)
NPCs: None.
Mentions: Antipathy, Soranik Natu
Plot:
Mood Music: None.
Fade In…
"Ka—- PowG… Power Girl is not in a good state. She went Red.
You need to get back to the Interceptor Kyle. Green H is not taking it well.
She wears Black and Red where her white used to be…
Starfire sent the transmission to Kyle while he was on his mission to Oa for delivery, and as Starfire could not even fathom the depths of a Red Lantern despite Hal's directives to her during their battle, she is seeing it unravel now as they hold one captive.
A friend.
The path Kyle had to take back though, was not clear of other things, an interruption in the sector just beyond Colony 14, the outskirts there where a tiny planet bearing a light flicker of solar flare makes a final pulse of light and then dies.
Alerts are already sent out as from the planet undergoing a change that is encasing its surface in a blackened shell bears many tiny pods of evactuation spilling from between crevices of incoming husk.
Miners and their families stationed there to work the planet for its precious metal are evacuating in a scatter that looks more like a colony of disturbed bees when their nest is suddenly lit aflame -
- or snuffed out by a heavily booted foot!
From that moment the feeling could be skin crawling through the ripples of vaccuum, darts of red lining seem to split through a crack, one final one bearing dying light of the planet and an eruption that funnels towards the cosmos like a volcano and then in a fast-paced rewinds sucks back in… The crust beneath formed by the dying star emitting a light show that when combined, goes orange with the cusp of a red netting cast over the top to try and veil the outburst.
Perhaps too late.
Within that shell, beneath the attempted closure of the rapidly cooling star-planet, Antipathy stands upon acavernous crag that bleeds deep into the heart of the planet itself, the guards stationed either having scattered… or the last remaining…
A hand clad in the black on red ganuntlet swings his way, like the *snip* of scissors closing that construct of Red ends him in twixt, his torso spilling down the side of the mountainous peak while the almost 'battery-like' object in her hand is fed what the planet has to siphon, glowing eyes smiling in their narrow from behind a mask that rest outlining them and contrasting dark blue skin.
*
Too late. Perhaps.
Kyle Rayner has only been a Lantern a handful of years. He's seen many things, many strange and dangerous things. He's fought aliens, altered the path of planet killing comets, but such an immediate evacuation of a planet within seconds of its death? It's a new one. A horrifying one. With thousands, if not millions at risk, Kyle Rayner is not one to disregard a disturbance when he sees it, but with such a display of horror for the mining colony, speed saves lives.
Perhaps.
High above the planet, a green star flickers. The spatial warp that is the channel of the Lantern's stellar travel kicks him out of the warp as it ends. It feels like being shot from a gun. Every time. The muscles in Kyle's abdomen stiffen to hold back the neaseating feeling it brings.
"Lantern 2814.2 to all available channels!" Kyle calls out, sending his voice to be translated through the ring and the glowing, emerald-hued beacon that it creates upon his arrival. "Code Zero Zero Eight on my location! Planetary evacuation is failing. Requesting backup!" Kyle kills the transmission, loading up a new one, sending it out on a vector towards the Interceptor.
Red? Red how? I-Star, fuck, I can't yet
Emergency. Planet in danger. Will hurry soon.
Distress call I can't miss.
Kyle mouthed a curse to himself as the transmission is sent, and he arcs his flight path towards the overshell crust of the planet. Head first, he scans for an entry point, for survivors who have broken free.
*
The crust is forming and closing, like ice over water suddenly met by a super-sonic freeze as the sun would sink and bleed black on Earth, leaving Antarctica with nothing despite the fragments of light it clung to!
Spiderwebbing of the black-shell is encasing, but Kyle can find an opening easily, but in his path that webbing is still forming like a network of sudeenly cooled lava strings set to sub-arctic levels, having to keep a speed to crash through them!
Time is limited…
Red like hatred, red unlike a fire I have…
Where are you?!..
What is going on?!
… KylE?!?! Send coordinat—-
Interceptor: "Aya… Did you get that? I may have to go.."//
*You should not leave. It is not the wishes of…*
"AYA! ….Please…" If there ever was a moment akin to the moment in Shrek where Puss gave the sad eyes…
Survivors are either loading into pods that have not been decimated, or they are hiding just beneath a layer that can oversee the descent of the torso of the very last guard they had to stand his ground, huddling together in their homes that were built into the mountain sides like indiginous people od Aztecan ancestry, but here, the races vary, as the Colony emplyd those willing to work.
And now they hide.
Antipathy looks upward towards the sealing cosmos above as the drain of the core is coming to its end, and her timing must be…
Green?!?.
The comet now entering atmosphere has lips of black peeling from her teeth, that visceral spill peeling 'tween teeth before she clutches that 'battery' in one hand and in the other?
Twin spires stretch! A sweep of hand in a chop across the line of plexus to attempt to strike Kyle from his path once entry is had!
*
Out past Colony Fourteen! Something's…SEALING it
I'll be okay, just be safe!
Trailing with green light, Kyle's sleek, black and green form lowers to just above the webbing as it forms. The grunt of effort that escapes him as he pushes for more speed to race ahead of the webbing is audible over the channel he has open with the Interceptor. The pop and crack of molten rock cooling is a cacophony over the transmission.
They're both stuck in Hell, for now.
"I've got backup called, Star, I'll be okay!" Kyle points his toes backwards and creates a construct that stretches out, a gigantic, ape-like hand that finds the edge of the cracks and pulls him the rest of the way, and over, the edge towards the colony below.
"Stay with Hal! You'll be safe! And tell him th-"
CRACK
Kyle's transmission is cut with an impact unexpected. The force feels like a baseball bat rapped across his chest, which snaps his concentration and leaves Kyle Rayner spinning head over heel towards the mountainous landscape. Dust and mortar explode where he lands in his own self-made crater. Dizzied from the shielded impact, he rolls onto his side blinks past the flickering white and blue lights in his vision, trying to see what he hit.
"Wh—the F-" Kyle begins…
*
//"AYA!"
/He is just outside of where we departed, but the level of safety has lessened as/ …
"…KYLE!" //
In the backdrop those eyes go from a plea to that of trails of emerald as Stafire seeks out Hal in the holding quarters to relay the transmission.
Antipathy sneers, that smile bleeding over blackened lips, razing them in the furious and feral projection of a smile as her impact is had and she lunges in to follow upon the Gren Lantern that dared to interfere!
Atrocious prevail!
The blue-skinned woman is only visible in glimpses beyond the shadow and blood hue but what las dominant and glowing is the tailored effigy of the Red Lanter Corps insigni upon the curvature of breastplate upon attire.
That is, if Kyle can blink away his /stars/ before her impact nearly seeks to drive him deeper into the rut his body made a skid-mark over!
The planets failing crust easily gives beneath the attempted weight of attack, the Red Lantern known as Antipathy seeking to press him lower and as done the civilians hiding in Fear beneath scatter as their 'Sanctuary' is collapsing upon them.
Men, women, children. All shuffled, harnesses clicking as bungee clips put them in place to scale the surface as known through lifetimes and work has trained them. This does not stop the cries, and between Kyle and them, stands the woan whose eyes framedin a black bat-like mask, narrow upon him, her hand that bore constructs and the heated glow of Red falling to her side.
No words… Just the sudden spew of blood-kin saliva that omits like napalm from her lips in the sudden scream!!
*
Starlit eyes on molten sky open, blurring past the incoming shock of red and…pain.
Pain. Something Kyle Rayner hasn't truly felt in some time.
The crushing blow from above digs the crater deeper. Though Kyle's shielding blocks the worst of it, the seeping ache in his bones and the pure concussive force that turns into a miniature explosion renders the rock about him with fresh, sharp cracks.
Having bit his own lip upon impact, the blood runs freely against Kyle's tongue and lips as he pushes back, frenzied to rise, to avoid being crushed a second time.
"I don't suppose I can ask you to leave this planet freel-" Kyle can't finish a sentence to save his life. The ring makes quick work of floating him to a hovering position, ring extended, a threat to the Red Lantern(?) he's met for the first time.
They come in RED?
But the sentence never finishes as she vomits superheated blood, which, not expecting such a thing, cuts Kyle's words off quickly in a shuddering dodge to the side that splatters his shoulder with the blood. Even though droplets, the way his skin cooks brings a scream of pain.
Move, Kyle. MOVE!
Kyle Rayner rockets away in the beginning of a chase, with an array of automatic bolts peppering towards Antipathy to help buy him a few free seconds of flight.
"STOP!" Kyle yells, loudly, to be heard. "These people are trying to get out. You can HAVE THE PLANET. Let. Them. GO!"
*
Interceptor: Radio silence~~~ The communications have been severed and blocked for now…
Things have gone frantic…
His scream makes Antipathy laugh, something that seems -hard-boiled, choked upon, gargled and birthed from an abyss as it spews forth more of that ichor to bleed from the corners of parted lips, descending downward from lips to neck, razing red lines in the path that disappears beneath the Red Lantern suit opon display!
Stop he says?
Let. Them. Go!
… He demands!
Antipathy does not even pay them any mind now. Clawed grip has clutched to her what she came for, and in the other the reforming crust of the dead planet about to combust, she streaks a red scimitar into the webbing, batting splinters to Kyle's form in flight while she pursues him at high speeds.
No words, there never will be any, not to a Green at least, as Antipathy's directive seems to be to drive him away from the crust and back towards the core… Back to where it is the farthest from escape.
The back of her hand bearing the 'battery' sweeps over the bubbling birth of deep red, a cough thrusting it forth in a projected geyser as she tries to herd Kyle in a directive that allows the citizens to depart, but…
…Not him
… Never a Green!
*
Kyle rolls and dives beneath the crust, wincing as the occasional sliver of rock pierces through and leaves fresh cuts behind. The landscape is an upside-down obstacle course, crumbling quickly from above and sealing tighly above him. Like flying in a cave…and Kyle Rayner, bristling with his own stink of fear, enough that Parallax would nurse such fear like beer in a bottle, comes from the uncounted numbers waiting for him to save them.
He may just fail.
But will, will shall not stop trying.
There is no such thing as acceptable losses to Kyle Rayner. Ever. He'd failed his ex-girlfriend, his mother, his…
"Alright! We're doing this!" Kyle spins away from the geyser of blood. Emerald light spins all about his body as a construct forms out of his ring. A platform, with hooked fins and glowing engines, lined with turret weaponry, slams into the crust and pierces through, digging fresh holes in.
Upside down?
The camera, as it were, suddenly upends. Up is down, down is up, and Kyle's feet slam down on the platorm as it opens fire from four different corner blasters. Panting, he holds his burning shoulder, and wobbles in place.
Behind Antipathy? Resumed evacuation efforts. Now? Kyle needs time. Time that, if the planet doesn't stop getting worse, might kill him.
In Brightest Day.
In Blackest Light.
"What?" Kyle calls out to Antipathy. "Are you angry that a challenge showed up and you couldn't handle this in easy mode?" Rock explodes around Kyle, raining down (upwards?) from Kyle as the construct cuts wide paths in the crust.
*
Aya: The power of the crimson red,
Can lead your soul away from dread,..
…Doing it alright! Antipathy only sneers at the deflections and the construct of Green that Kyle nearly 'surfs' upon like a pro! But if he taes a moment to note…. The only ones laying deceased upon the dying planets crust are thosee who opposed her directly…
Families, hiding moles, flee'ing lemmings!
All free to go.
Not her directive, not of the Red's goal!
But Kyle!
He got in Antipathy's way, and he is Green!
… There is a goal.
Losing control,
Of what I could not change!
Kyle's diplay gave her a pause, one that glistened black-on-red attire a halogen of blinding effect before her body is encased in the pure adultery of her rage in an orbital to cast affront against the battering of Kyle's formed weaponry, but in a sudden explosion of her own constructs (never known to be a part of Red Lanterns) it shatters and peels away in splinters, taking that crust, core, and planetary essence of solar harnessing and pure metalli—-
Beware your fears made into light!//
There is a blur of Yellow!, a concussive force that cuts through obstructions sought in the cavernous decline of the planet, allowing those laden in the very scent of Fear to escape in their final salvaged pods!
The figure of Antiathy buried in the barrage of green, absorbing the backfire of green until her body moved into feeble, nearly felled… And took the route just passed the comet of yellow that had joined the fray to clear a path left by ricochet of green…
… the retreat of Red…
But in hand, Antipathy has what she came for.
Who else does
That gaze blazes lightning like strokes of yellow bazes from corners, lined in noir lightly but utterly framed in red facade lined in a darker pattern of 'tatto'd' patches and pattern…
"Kyle?"
Interceptor: /That is not wise, 2814.2 stated you remai—-/
"Let Hal know I will be back with his /partner/, Aya.."
*
The force of Will itself has a stance to it. Unlike Antipathy, teeth clamp down hard behind close lips, and in Kyle's forward lean, heart held beating quickly like a prayer, he channels deeply. His will to save lives is greater than his fear to fail them, but it feels like prayer at the bedside of a dying loved one. Kyle Rayner…must resist.
The lightshow of green energy assaulting Antipathy ticks the power percentage of his battery to half strength.
If it dies. He dies.
The concussive WHUMPF of yellow energy and the flight of Antipathy kicks fresh breath out of Kyle's lungs like a bellows. Exhausted already, he clings to his blood-weeping shoulder, arm coated in three degrees of burnt gore seeping through his costume.
Antipathy flees. The construct Kyle stands upon disintegrates as well, leaving Kyle rushing forward with ring cocked back towards the Sinestro-Corps clad yellow form of…
"Soranik?!?"
If Kyle could skid through the air he would, but rather than strike, he thrusts past Soranik with all-white eyes filled with one part relief to two parts confusion. He spins to get a second look, disbelief written on his face, and his body crushes against a falling chunk of debris, his body exploding through it in an uncontrolled spin that he quickly rights.
A lasso of green slings out, wrapping about a pod, damaged and crackling with failed thrusters, catching it in its plummet to the molten core below.
Weakened, Kyle falters, pushing up hard to drag it to safety.
"Help me!" Kyle calls out, sweating through the heat and expenditure of strength that comes from fighting blackout from his burned arm. He looks out and over to Soranik, getting his first true look at her. His lips part, though the request, in his eyes, remains the same.
Kyle Rayner is losing this fight. "Just this last one then…"
*
Antipathy has no need to feel… visually…
and yet the innocnts, lived, escaped beside the Red streak that broke through atmosphere after clearing thrug a tunnel formed by Fear Itself!
The red skinned female clad in black on yellow sneers as Antipathy passes. Venomous, and in a near pivot of spne, hips and….
His voice…
His face
..anathema of my soul!
A pivoted brake is applied by Soranik and those eyes of mated lightning shoot his way…
The attept to strike and /whiff/ with itent,
to come upon impact by said ball has Soranik standing in the more placid semblance of surprise at the very sight of Kyle…
Let alone Kye getting hit by a space-freightliner!
Let those who try to stop what's right…
The blackened form of smoke in afterburn of the spiraling pod paints a trail of poolutant near the decorated ride of cheek, that flesh *jumping* in a tic of a moment had for any female species…
But she is Sinestro's daughtr and right now the —-
Kyle's plea goes unheard, but what she sees filtering through clutch before it parts from his arm in a spray that nearly hangs in limbo before it sprays into the sector… A flux of throat in the swallow against the mid-collar of parted suit Soranik wears and she is moving in before he passed 'Hel-!'
A lash of Yellow light and the Pinto to the rius of pods is grappled in a yellow light like a Lacrosse srick laced ro catch and rebound with the Green's own! But simultaneously, her other hand grips his good arm ad drags him up!
.. Towards the only opening left behind the pod they just cast into it.
… "Kyle… Don't.." But Soranik /did/…
*
"Soranik, it's our j-" His. Job. Kyle's words unravel and make it clear that he's seen the yellow; he's noticed. She's more than Sinestro's daughter now.
She's one of his CORPS.
"I'm losing it. Soranik, I'm gonna lose it if you-" Kyle hisses as the yellow energy impacts the green lasso around the pod, fizzling his yellow out. The construct retracts back into his ring, and as both he and the pod are clamped and drawn free, his pain-laced will is weak to her power.
In the end, she's got it. And him. Kyle slumps his shoulders and shivers against the burn in his arm, letting himself be pulled from the crust of the dying planetoid. In trust? So hard to say. Kyle steals glances to the emblem upon her breast, checking it three times, as if he's simply just not looked at it right and that he'll blink and see green again.
No, she's definitely not a Green Lantern, anymore.
"Soranik." Kyle waits until they're free from danger before he's looking up from his bleeding shoulder to her face. She knows the questions; they've known each other too well. So once free, he tries to turn his good arm, turning to better face her, swallowing hard.
His arm stiffens, nearly trying to break free to return to the surface, but his ring flashes: Remaining Life Signs: Zero.
Kyle slumps and rubs at his brow with a clean spot on a mostly bloody arm.
"Soranik, what-" Kyle stops the question and looks to her face, brows bunching hard together in the center. "-I don't get it. How?" Kyle lets out a pained breath. "Are…we supposed to hug or fight?"
*
Soranik's grip upon Kyle is firm, under the uninjured appendage to lift him with her as she re-gains momentum in her flight to aid the reverse pitch of the survivor's pod her would have died to save. She knows the coundown on the power in the Lantern's ring well enough.
Faces of the survivors are seen as silhouettes against the glass hull when they speed passed them and exit through the reforming crust Soranik shattered on her entry into the planet's dying surface atmosphere.
It was Fear that caught her attetion. Stars die every day by the hundreds, but when that feeding and guiding light is so evident as well as the parting hives of escape pods wracked in a terror pass her by on her patrol, she has to dig deeper.
The last time she thought she would see Kyle was definitely not like this, but something similar - not here - now NOW.
His asessing gaze over her attire and the emblem emblazoned in Yellow draws a dark brow upward as she tugs him to her side, draws back in her light from the pitch towards safety to encase them while she presses back the way the pod was thrown to dip, weave, and shatter through the stalagmites that shoot outward in reach to reform the dying encasement and end the planet in a cocoon of black before it is devouredinto the vaccuum to be nothing but history if even remembered save by those who survived this night.
"How, what? Kyle, my father is captive of the Guardian's, someone had to step up. I am always my father's daughter, as you are your mother's son." Does that answer it? Even if thereis a bit of embittered scald on her tongue she does not hug him, nor fight him, though her grip does tighten. One or the other displayed as she looks towards the injured side.
"I need to look at that and stop the burning path, quickly." Napalm will keep moving and spreading if nt stopped and only one way… The yellow shield only peels away from that wound, exposing his injury in part to the chill of space in their flight, a flash freeze of seconds is all it took but which pain is worse? What would be worse?
"Just stay awake until we get to where I can…"
*
"But my mother's gone, and your father, he-" Kyle catches himself again. It was the point of their last conversation before his reassignment. His mother was gone, a return for burial, so sensible, but to return watch over a grave is no different from Soranik being sent further away from the prisons. "-I don't want to fight, not now." Kyle says behind strained teeth, the burn creeping worse through his skin, a constant lance of pain.
The Yellow energy claims his arm, clamping over the site of a dozen splattered wounds and melted flesh, dripping and seeping. With little warning, Kyle gasps as the seal is removed, then releases a long, growled syllable as the burn is neutralized by the cold applied. He slumps, clinging to Soranik's shoulder, forehead to her arm, panting breaths as black clouds creep into his vision.
Kyle throws an arm around Soranik's neck and holds on, ironic of all things, face nearly presed to the Sinestro Corps logo on her upper breast.
"Not. Blacking. Out. In Brightest Day…" Kyle chuffs, awake through the force of will alone as his eyes close shut and he allows himself to be blindly tended to. "…fuck, Soranik," Kyle wheezes. "We've got a lot to talk about." Kyle's voice pauses, between breaths. "I set a beacon, they're gonna come. You're not our enemy; you've got friends with us, but if they come…"
Kyle trails off, blinking through the sweat brought forth through pain.
"This is a thank you, Soranik."
*
"…is gone too." Soranik states it, although not comparable, she is keeping her poise and focus as what is important and truly her core, is focusing on stopping the path of the burn that traces along Kyle's arm, even if in an impromptu manner that is just as painful if not more. But the tissue needs saved to mend it and leave as little scarring as possible, as well as depth of the toxin seeping further.
"We're not going to fight. It would not be fair."/Kilowog would not approve…/. But that thought does not speak out it remains in the backdrop as well as everything else… It has to:
Not long ago…
Soranik stood there as Kyle insisted her leave, clad in a similar suit of black and green, akin to the yellow but matching Kyle's. A Green Lantern like her father had once been until her formed Sinestro Corps for his own means, finding his own power in Yellow and the strike of Fear. Uprising a new enemy to the likes of Green, and yet Soranik refused him and remained despite his desires for his 'daughter' to be by his side and learn the 'New Ruling Order'.
Saying goodbye is sometimes the hardest thing to do, and having no choice in one matter when it came to Kyle, she took a choice in another as whispers passed through the Corps about her Father and intentions. Just like Kyle, she had to do the right thing…
.. for family.
… For herself.
For the Corps.
Now:
A furrowed brow and her eyes cast down to sweep over him as he nearly folds upon her and mumurs to keep his wits. Her other hand lifts, almost as if she would embrace around his shoulders and hold him a bt tighter, but the words of the call being let out to the other Green Lantern Corps in the vacinity of this sector has her brows lifting and her hand rises, opening a hole. "In blackest night…"
Instead of the clutch under his arm it drops to entwine around him, holding him fast. "You know the drill, then."
<Even in fun they ran, they hid, they taunted Kilowog and their trainers, they knew what would come of it, but they did it anyway.»
The opening to blink them from one place to the next is thrust toward in a speed that leaves only a yellow blur through that short distance made immeasurable by near-lightspeed…
Behind and below them:
Streaks of Green burst thrugh in a gathering of call, the smaller and less nubile pods met with a friendly face renown to the System and the people. Those needing aid are getting it while the dead star of a mining planet is circled and coated in a webbing.
Just behind them a comet's trail arrives, the flame dancing in a spiral behind Starfire as she looks from one to the next, her fists ablaze in that perse glow while pupiless emerald gaze shoots from one matching colored Lantern to the next, only up in time to see Yellow fade to Black.
*
Not one, but two buried in Kyle's absence. When word had traveled back about his mother, a second failure, Kyle's grief had been nearly insurmountable. If there were rings for every stage of grief, he'd had gone through all of them in a matter of hours. The kicked over table in his apartment on Oa came long before his hands on Soranik's shoulders, eyes seeking for her to understand.
"It's not about getting revenge!"
Yes. It was.
Kyle had gone, anyway. Willpower, when wielded for the right reasons, can overcome any threat. Or so says the Book of Oa.
It doesn't speak much about how will can also lead you to your doom; the chain tied to the anvil.
"No evil shall escape my sight…."
Old memories flicker behind Kyle's all-white eyes on his metallic-seeming of a mask. An old vestige of the Earthen Lanterns, hiding their faces where few others do. His mask nods weakly against the Yellow Lantern's shoulder as he tightens his grip around her neck and settles in. His shoulder twitches, spasming with the furied burn that'll be in danger of infection anywhere but the void of space.
"I never got to tell you…" Kyle's eyes roll back in their sockets; the mask begins to peel away as consciousness seeps from his features. "…you were right…about…"
As the warp begins and Kyle's consciousness begins to fade, he slumps into a locked pile about Soranik's shoulder. Green and black costume chips away into a half-melted Chicago Cubs jersey and a pair of jeans.
When the Corps and Starfire arrive, there's a brief flicker of green away from the dying star. Brief as Kyle's field dissipates, but the ring is not left behind. As if sucked into nothing, the whereabouts of Kyle Rayner, Lantern 2814.2, are set into a search pattern as Lanterns link up with Starfire to scan for his presence beneath the hardened crust of the dying star.
Kyle Rayner has fallen silent, with trace elements of his blood left behind in orbit.