DocTachyon

Rogue Continuum: The Singularity Crisis (A DC and Marvel RP)

I have several ideas for this, but I think I'm going to wait to see what sort of concepts get thrown down so I can fill in any gaps in the team. Just wanted to pop into the thread and voice interest.

Doc's Chop Shop

F A N T A S T I C F O U R

T H E G O L E M

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^{_{B E N G R I M M ♦ R E E D R I C H A R D S ♦ S U E S T O R M ♦ J O H N N Y S T O R M}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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"אֱמֶת"

Some gunk about the concept, how it varies from canon, etc.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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but why tho

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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Notes

C A T A L O G:

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Catalog

None yet

①⑨⑥⑧

GREEN LANTERN in: DON’T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD III

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Hal hadn’t prepared for a fight, his one trick was The Highball -- and that couldn’t quite shoot out Superman’s heat vision yet -- but, as he saw the mass and numbers of the enemy force descending on them through the firework cover, he was damn glad that Kilowog had.

Only a handful of the green creatures had broken from formation to attack Hal and the refugees, the rest buzzed like a cloud of hornets, whirling around a green point of light that popped and exploded from the heart of their formation; Kilowog had decided to put on his own fireworks show.

But that meant it was on Hal to help these yahoos against The Wicked Witch’s flying green monkeys. The girl threw herself headlong into the action, jumping straight off the building and swinging her cuffs around like a cudgel. Flying straight off the building, Hal corrected himself. Was flying just a part of the basic space alien suite? The girl managed on her own, but the others were using jetpacks soldered into the winged framework of their armor, and the blue guy’s armor produced propulsion as quick as the surface of its arm rolled over itself to form into a shield. Hal was the only one left on the roof, slack jawed as the aliens traded blows.

It was finally coming true. Everything the old Flash Gordon serials from Hal’s childhood had promised the arrival of aliens would be, but now in technicolor, and happening awful close to him. For a moment he had the instinct to run, a quick seize across his muscles and the memory of lightning splitting the sky. Kilowog and the others could mop it up, give him more time to figure out something with the ring to protect himself.

Protection, that was a new thought, it almost earned a laugh. Before the ring that was his last concern. Screw the FAA guidelines, forget takeoff procedure, and always push the screaming engine a lot damn harder than the techs tell you to, just to prove that you can; just to get your butt into that sheepskin seat cover and fly a little while. Growing up they told him Martini Jordan had his first combat flight in a stolen cessna, with no guns and tissue-paper armor, even without any kind of safety net, he still gave those Kraut sons-of-bitches the what for... Oh, what the hell.

Hal’s feet took him off the structure and his ring brought him into the air, forming the electric lime field around him and slinging him past the bolts of alien energy that rocked through the sea spray. He knew his sheathe wouldn’t stand up to that kind of punishment, the projectiles were as big around as baseballs and hummed like a Coast City powerplant, fancy flying would be the only way out of this mess.

Hal threw a barrel roll, jerking his muscles in accordance with the movement to dodge another bolt by a hair. It still didn’t feel like he could quite move right inside of it, the flight construct sat on him like a lead suit, restricting his motion and keeping his body in flight position. He may as well have been jammed in a cockpit.

Then, The Highball sharpened on the edge of his vision, forcing something to his attention. It was one of the aliens, diving under and back up into the fray, bringing its weapon up for a blaster shot on the blue guy’s exposed side.

“Hey!” Hal was on the alien, cutting over his path and slamming the bugger down. His flight construct buckled and went turgid on contact, shimmering energy pulsed and ballooned as it tried to correct itself from the impact, setting Hal’s teeth to rattle in his skull.

He and the alien tumbled through the sky, Hal’s arms locked firmly around its waist. The creature squawked at him in a language the ring refused to translate, swinging an arm that had to be the size of Hal’s whole torso to swat the human off. Hal squirmed and shifted, forcing his weight up until he could wrap his legs around the monster’s waist and get his arms over its neck. Hal squeezed.

It was like trying to choke a redwood tree. Its skin was like a toad’s, bumped and warted and slimy, Hal could tell even through the layers of his construct, protecting corded muscle as strong as steel beneath.

“Who the hell let you uglies in through the blockade?” Hal shouted, trying to kick at the monster’s stomach only to be met by a plate of gristle, “we’re not having an intergalactic kegger down here!”

Hal’s flight construct was normalizing, returning to hold its shape around its master, but the alien wasn’t having it. Its brawn shifted and it torqued him. Hal’s sides screamed while the alien twisted him, begging him to release his hold or at least the construct squeezing in on him.

What would Kilowog do? Certainly not let go. What would Martini do? No weapons, no armor, no nothing, just his way to fly… His way to fly.

Hal screamed and closed his eyes, keeping his legs locked tight around the alien’s trunk and willing his construct to flow over the creature, no longer keeping him airborne but keeping the thing locked into a new emerald cage.

Wind and spray whipped Hal’s hair and clothes and stung his eyes as he opened them, now wrestling with the sealed pocket around the alien, thrashing and vocalizing as the construct kept it locked within. It was like fighting a sleeping bag. Its jetpack was failing, whining, uselessly pouring plasma and fire into growing bubbles on the construct’s back as the green energy wibbled, barely keeping them in the air.

They were losing altitude, streaking towards the surface of the bay, at least, but at this height it’d feel like kissing concrete, but it was all he could do to even force his structure to keep its coherence, and hang onto the creature for dear life., digging his fingers into little wells in the construct.

“Hey! A little help!?” He screamed at the figures above.

①⑨⑥⑧

GREEN LANTERN in: DON’T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD II

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"I believe it is you that cannot 'park there'," was the first thing out of the hippie’s mouth, "The Green Lantern Corps is expressly forbidden from entering the Vega star system. What business have you here?"

“I, uhm…” Hal stammered, “tell you the truth ma’am, I’m no navigator, but I don’t think this is Vega.” Hal tried to remember what Kilowog had called their local system. He’d heard him mention it a few times, in the gravelly background of his voice chatting up the space boys over communications. As he reached for it, the ring supplied the missing information over his lens.

“We are in Space Sector 2814, Sol system.” Hal’s ring worked as he spoke, stitching a visualization of the path from Earth to Vega on his retinas, an arcing green line rising from the surface of an Earth in miniature. There was no scale, but as the path grew the Earth shrunk, until there was nothing but a strip of emerald in Hal’s vision, “... and it looks like you’re a long way from home.”

Beside them, the blue guy struggled with his own arm, wrenching it this way and that as he babbled to himself. The surface of his… Skin? Armor? Shifted, unable to settle on a definite form. It reminded Hal of when Kilowog had first taught him about constructs, and the only thing he could produce were wibbling heaps of green. Maybe the big blue’s armor was something like the ring.

"I'm not gonna shoot somebody who hasn't done anything wrong! Besides he doesn't even seem to be here for us... and why do you have a plasma cannon?!" The boy shouted. His accent sounded local, Earth local anyway… But whatever the hell he was wearing certainly wasn’t. Hal put his hands up.

“Listen, buddy, I’m not packing anything but this ring,” Hal waggled his hand, “and at this point the thing might as well be toy jewelry. I’m just supposed to tell you guys you’re not supposed to break the blockade,” Hal gestured up as another chorus of fireworks sang above them. In the distance, Hal saw a jeweled green point of light rising from the surface of the bay. Hal nodded towards it to indicate.

“That’ll be my partner fishing your ship out of the bay, he’ll tell you the same thing… And, sir, I’d really appreciate it if you don’t point that thing at me, dig?”

Doc's Chop Shop

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

H U L K

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^{_{B R U C E B A N N E R ♦ P H Y S I C I S T ♦ V I E T N A M ♦ B. 1920}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."}

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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-The Hulk's battles with Superman and other heroes are, of course, pending their respective player's approval.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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sample

old ver.

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

H U L K

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^{_{B R U C E B A N N E R ♦ P H Y S I C I S T ♦ V I E T N A M ♦ B. 1920}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."}

In the wee hours of July 16th, 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer's Manhattan Project would change the world forever in a single, blinding flash. We would never forget the bomb that sundered the heavens; or the single minded wrath of the creature that emerged in its wake.

The Hulk, as the monster would come to be known sprang forth from the body of one Doctor Bruce Banner, as the young scientist sacrificed himself to shield one Rick Jones from the effects of the Manhattan Project's bomb, Banner found himself afflicted by deadly gamma rays. The Hulk was, for a time, the best kept secret of the United States Government. A green skinned boogeyman that lived in the heat mirages of the desert, wanting simply to be left alone, and destroying all those that dared to pursue. During this time, the US Military would stage a series of anti-Hulk black operations in and around the New Mexico desert known as The Hulkbuster Program, deploying experimental weapons technology developed through the combined efforts of Lex Luthor and General Thaddeus Ross, that would later find its way to the warfront. Ross' crusades against the creature culminated in Ross' transformation into the so-called 'Red Hulk'.

Following the Red Hulk's defeat, Banner would flee New Mexico and remain in hiding for some time, evading military search and capture procedure and showing, for the first time, a remarkable degree of control over his transformations into The Hulk. This period would be marked by a dramatic drop in Hulk sightings: some theorize that this drop is associated with the rumored relationship between Banner and one Betty Ross, but Ross has denied any affiliation with the monster.

The Hulk's appearances at this time would often coincide with sightings of many of America's mystery men, including The Spider, in an encounter The Daily Bugle Press would describe as a "Clash of Villains!". The Hulk would also find himself the sometimes friend and sometimes foe of the Justice Society, battling alongside and against them in a handful of critical battles across the country.

In 1961, following the election of John F. Kennedy and The Hulk's intervention in an otherwise sanctioned US Military Gamma Radiation test, the government mounted a new Hulkbuster program, this time calling upon America's heroes to defeat the beast and place him in federal custody. This period would see Hulk battle The Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and other members of the Justice Society before his ultimate defeat at the hands of Superman.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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-The Hulk's battles with Superman and other heroes are, of course, pending their respective player's approval.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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sample

①⑨⑥⑧

GREEN LANTERN in: DON’T LET ME BE MISUNDERSTOOD

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“I told you when I met you Hal, part of being a Green Lantern is this, doing daring things in dangerous places, so quit your bitching. Besides, this one should be a milk run for us.” Kilowog said.

“But why’d it have to be New Jersey?” Hal grumbled.

They flew over the ocean, high enough to be beyond the fogged out vision of any passing fishing trawler, but low enough to see the blooming fireworks that crackled above them. They were somewhere over the eastern seaboard by now, tracing the hazy outline of the coast until they reached Jersey.

“At least it didn’t land on Mars,” Kilowog said, “MPs there like to get their grubby mitts on everything. Jurisdictional nightmare.”

“There are people on Mars? Really? You’re not yanking my chain?” Hal asked.

“Used to be, anyway… I think we’re getting close,” Kilowog said. Hal could tell he was right from the sky, the infinite space of the open ocean waned into pure black sky before the lights of New York, broken up only by swells of light and color exploding above them.

“Clue me in on the sitrep one more time?” Hal’s shifted the ring on his finger as he asked, it felt tight today. This was the first time the Corps expected him to do something that wasn’t training. And there was Carol’s Ferris Air New Years Bash that he was missing, again, but at least this time he was giving a raincheck for a real reason instead of a killer hangover.

“Scans show a civvie-class vessel entered Earth atmosphere in the past few hours, with one life form aboard. Ship is of Tamaranean make, so we’re probably looking at a refugee situation, on account of some deep space politics, which is why the Corps didn't blow it out of the sky. But we need to take a look in case those boys figured wrong, and hope whoever it is doesn't pitch a fit that they’re stuck planetside until the current shitstorm subsides.” Kilowog reported. He still hadn’t shown Hal how to use the ring to tap into Green Lantern frequencies, leaving Hal to drift beside Kilowog as he thumbed at the holographic computer console emanating from his ring.

“So, we rock up, fish them out of whatever hole they landed in, and tell them to settle in for a nice long stay?” Hal summarized. They were over Newark by now, the teal ocean waves yielding to the stout grey of the city before it.

“That’s the gist.” Kilowog started their descent, guiding them down steady, like he expected them to come into a runway. It was how Hal had been landing, without the control to swoop through the air and stop on a dime like Kilowog could.

“Shouldn’t I have a real combat construct going into this? Just in case?” Hal said. Refugee or not, everything Hal had met from space so far had proven capable of putting him out on his ass.

Kilowog’s ears flitted down, like a cat’s, which was apparently the Bolovaxian equivalent of an eye roll. “Remember, milk run. If things go sideways I’m always here as your security blanket. And you’ve got that eyeball thing to rely on.” Kilowog said, which prompted Hal to roll his eyes.

“It’s really more of a parlor trick.” He said. He’d been tinkering with it since his encounter with Sinestro, mostly focusing on making sure it didn’t hurt so damn much when he put it in. But Kilowog had taught him a thing or two about the capacities of his ring, assorted scanners and meters and bits and bobs. Now the ring’s data was overlain with his view of the world, reporting air pressure, coordinates... Hell, it was like being back in the cockpit.

“Mhm. Speaking of, you named it yet?” Kilowog asked.

“No. Do I have to?” Hal looked back at Kilowog, incredulous, but his warthog face remained stoic.

“Everything’s gotta have a name,” he said. He had a point, Sinestro had called that ball thing something… Ganthet’s whatever-it-was. Which surely meant the lightning trick was called Sinestro’s Forehead Size Ego.

What’s in a name, anyway? He picked Highball as his callsign because they called dad Martini back in the war, and Hal though it’d be right to name himself after a drink, too. He didn’t figure out that the Highball was just a kind of glass until later, but Hal thought it was the sentiment that counted. What was wrong with Highball, anyway?

“I’ll call it The Highball,” Hal decided.

“Eyes up, we’re here. Ring’s reading something extraterrestrial in the bay down a ways, but… I can’t see for shit. You got anything?” Kilowog asked.

“Well, now you mention it,” Hal stalled in the air, letting the focus of his energy concentrate in his eyes, shifting the shape of his lens until the light filtered just so, and he finally had the magnification to see the surface in all its detail.

There were two figures below, one a woman, wreathed in a curtain of fiery locks, the other wrapped in deep blue chitin armor. They were an odd pair to be sure, but certainly no stranger than Hal and Kilowog traipsing through the sky. He might’ve taken the blue one for a bug, but they looked… Human, more or less. Maybe the big bad galaxy out there wasn’t so different. They stood across from each other on a patch of gravel rooftop, close enough to the bay that the girl’s hair listed in the sea breeze.

The ship, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen out across the rippling water, light up with the booming echoes of the fireworks above. Maybe the new alien packed camouflage.

“I’ve got a, uh… Orange hippie and a blue guy. Ship’s not in sight,” Hal reported.

“Sounds like our Tamaraenean found a friend. You talk to them, I’ll see if I can’t find the ship,” Kilowog said.

“Me talk to them? Alone?” Hal stopped, the edges of his flight construct wibbling in the wind. So far, Kilowog had been with him every step of the way, and having someone that big, ugly, and pink on his side had done a thing or two to allay his worries.

“Ha! You think they wanna seethis poozer’s mug instead, do ya? Time to fly the nest, Jordan. Catch you in five. And Hal?”

“Yeah?”

“The Highball sucks, we’ll brainstorm when I get back.” With that, Kilowog rolled to the right, disappearing in the night’s haze.

And just like that, Hal was alone, dipping lower and lower in the sky until he didn’t need his lens to see the detail in the hippie’s clothes, purple and green that moved as easily with the wind as her hair. If Kilowog said he could do this, he could. Right? They couldn’t kick his ass worse than Sinestro.

His gaze flitted to the blue one, tracing the inlays and patterns of his armor, and the slope of his arm down into a… Was that a cannon?

Milk run, milk run, Hal repeated to himself. Maybe it was just a sign of Tama-whatsit greeting. He’d drawn close enough that he could hear their voices echoing below each snapped explosion above. It was his time to say something, something profound. These weren’t just more Corps boys, but real honest to goodness visitors to his earth from the beyond. This could be their first contact with humanity. It had to be good.

“Hey, this, ah, sector is on lockdown by the… Esteemed Green Lantern Corps,” Hal jerked his thumb out to the bay, “and I can’t let you park there.”

①⑨⑥⑧

GREEN LANTERN in: EIGHT MILES HIGH

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“You ready?” Kilowog asked.

“Asking me a fourth time won’t make me ready,” Hal said.

The two Lanterns flew side by side, green dots against the swathes of gray dominating the clouds. It had only been days since Hal had started flying, but something felt different today. Like the air slid past his body too easily, the atmosphere didn’t drag so heavily on his body. Lower air pressure, maybe. A storm was brewing.

Hal hated storms growing up. All it took was one drum roll of thunder to send him running to cower underneath his mom’s bed sheets. He didn’t like them much more as an adult. A storm was a day you couldn’t fly, when the universe reminded him that his feet had to be planted firmly on the ground…. But maybe this ring could change that.

“Thought you might’ve prepped on the way over,” Kilowog said. His flight was different than Hal’s. Where the human flew straight and true, pointed like an arrow, Kilowog drifted with the breeze, up and down, side to side. He had two nubs of green energy on his shoulders, sticking out from the rest of the energy sheathe that coated his body. They looked almost like the remnants of wings, long since fallen off.

“... You’ve been with me this whole flight. You’ve asked me on this flight,” Hal said. He banked in the air, now facing Kilowog, who had summoned a shimmering green panel, interfacing with it as he flew.

“You went five minutes without complaining. I thought you calmed down.” Kilowog’s fat fingers squished against his console, prompting flashes of emerald and sending digits flying across the screen.

“Shove it, Kilowog. Are we there yet?” Hal asked.

“A minute out or so. He’ll be waiting for us above the clouds,” Kilowog said, dismissing his readout. Hal never liked the way Kilowog talked about him, the man they were going to see: Thaal Sinestro. Kilowog was always joking with Hal or ribbing him, telling Hal the parts of being a Green Lantern he knew and bullshitting the parts he didn’t. When it came to Sinestro, all the cumulative hours Hal had spent learning what each twitch of muscle might mean in the aliens expression meant nothing. His big, dopey hippo jaws were set against one another, and his brow closed down on the black points of his eyes.

It was a little like what he imagined Carol must look like, hunched over the control console while Hal pulled some stunt or other in Ferris Air’s jets, her asking him to slow down for just one minute. Hal had come to think of it as business mode. And Kilowog? Well, when it came to Sinestro, it looked like he meant business.

Hal and Kilowog shifted their paths and shot up through the cloud cover, to find themselves greeted by a sheet of green force, situated firm and flat against the top of the clouds. It had to be as long as a football field, but looked as thin as a sheet of paper. One man stood in the center, garbed in the same black and green uniform as Hal and Kilowog. As they neared, Hal realized the man wasn’t standing so much as floating off the platform, keeping his body as taught and measured as his red face that was coming into view.

“Are you prepared to begin, Lantern Jordan?” From the platform Thaal Sinestro had an inch on Kilowog, but if they were level, Kilowog had him by a foot and a half. Most of his face was forehead, to better contain his ego with Kilowog had said, rounding out a face of hard edges and high cheekbones. There were no blemishes to him, unless you counted his permanent frown or the trim mustache that lived above it.

Hal and Kilowog touched down, and Kilowog thumped Hal’s back. “Show ‘im how it’s done, little poozer.”

“Yessir,” Hal said, half to Kilowog and half to Sinestro. “It’s just a quick lesson, right? I’ve been playing hooky with my job for a week now because of all this, and my boss is starting to get --”

“You will provide whatever time the Green Lantern Corps requires of you,” Sinestro cut him off, “approach me.” Hal glanced back at Kilowog, but the big guy was staring straight through him, eyes locked on Sinestro. Hal stepped forward.

“As a Green Lantern, you are expected to study, develop, and apply a variety of techniques with your issued power ring, be they for combat or otherwise. Against most threats, you will find typical constructs next to useless, especially those generated by a Lantern that is… Well, as green as you,” Sinestro said.

“On this occasion, it is my duty as your superior to introduce you to these concepts in a simple trial. The technique I will demonstrate for you today is known as Ganthet’s Alembic.” Sinestro presented his hand as the light from his ring began to pulse and glow, collecting itself into a bubble the size of Hal’s head. It may as well have been any other construct, green shapes broken as easily as they were created, but there was something… Different about this one. About the snaking flow of the energy within.

“Your task is to overcome this technique, and, if you are able, to score a hit on me.” Sinestro said.

“Uh huh...” Hal spread out his stance, trying to remember the bits and pieces he’d heard from Kilowog about fighting, or the half-forgotten memories of his schoolyard tussles… But this was probably going to be a little different. “Got any words of advice, teach?”

For the first time, Hal saw Sinestro smile. “Remember, Jordan. No fear.”

Sinestro flicked his wrist and the ball launched from his ring as fast as any fighter Hal had ever been in control of. Dodging was out of the question. He did as he had been taught, searching in his heart and his mind and making something manifest of his will. Hal’s ring sparked to life and an aegis leapt from it, directly in the path of Sinestro’s attack. Get through this you son of a --

The ball collapsed Hal’s shield on impact, causing it to crumple and fold in, like the attack was a black hole. The constructs sparked against each other as Hal’s sputtered and died, energy consumed by the ball. Now past his only line of defense, the ball subsumed his ring hand, and locked itself in place.

But he was… Fine. Hal wiggled his fingers inside the sphere. Nothing. Wrist felt a little heftier than usual, maybe.

“What is this thing? A Green Lantern boxing glove?” Hal shouted over to Sinestro. The other Lantern was still, balancing himself in flight. He beckoned Hal.

“Come find out.” Sinestro said.

“Your funeral,” Hal joked. He brought himself into the air and surged forward, sending out bolts of emerald from his ring. Sinestro swerved, dodging each in turn, but something was wrong. Hal had done this before, shooting beams at old cans with Kilowog, but something about each of his shots looked weaker than usual. Less glow, less speed. His flight balance didn’t feel right, either, like was drifting to the side.

Hal dropped back to the platform and shook his hand out. His wrist was heavier, his whole hand was, even more than before. He tried to waggle his fingers and it felt like dragging weights over sand. What?

“Are you quite finished shooting?” Sinestro called to him. Hal ignored him, focusing on the sphere. He could still move his hand at least, but if it got any heavier there would be problems. Hal chanced a look back to Kilowog, whose beady eyes were still firm on Sinestro. No help from there. Thunder cracked somewhere in the cloud cover below. The storm was starting. Hal’s heart thumped heavy in his chest. He swallowed. He could do this.

Experimentally, Hal willed the energy to flow steady from his ring, suffusing into the sphere around it. His hand grew heavier still, it was starting to feel like he was lugging around a steel block instead of a hand. He stopped the flow, and just as quickly the weight stopped growing. Could it be that my ring is...?

“Ganthet’s Alembic is so called for its apparent alchemical ability,” Sinestro said, “converting your energy into mass. But understanding this will no longer help you, you’ve already lost your freedom of movement,” his smile widened, “feel free to tap out.”

“We’ll see about that!” Hal shouted. If there was any one thing he knew about constructs, it was that, unless destroyed, their creator was always in absolute control of them, which meant he had to get Sinestro to release it…

Hal took off at a sprint, boots thumping against the green platform, he brought his hand to bear and swung the ball at Sinestro. He sidestepped, and Hal came around for another strike, throwing his body weight into it. Sinestro dodged backward and Hal threw himself off balance, tumbling across the platform. Hell. Hal eyed Sinestro, and then the open sky above him.

No fear.

Hal locked his left hand around his right wrist, supporting the weight as he rocked up to his knees. He pushed himself into the air, kicking off the platform and using his ring to bring him higher.

Sinestro observed from below, showing no expression but for the remnants of his smile. Hal had to be high enough by now, a hundred feet in the air over his opponent, but he could still hear the roar of the thundering clouds beneath. He banked hard, yanking the alembic along with him -- dive bombing Sinestro.

“Dodge this!” Hal’s ring pulsed as he dropped, funneling more and more energy into Sinestro’s construct, letting its weight pull him down faster. It felt like he was guiding a freight train. Hal’s vision was too blurred to quite see -- the Green Lantern domino mask didn’t come with prescription glasses, unfortunately -- but he hoped he’d wiped the grin from Sinestro’s face. Whatever way he’d try to dodge Hal could follow the blob of his body. No matter what, this haymaker would hit home.

In the last moments before impact, Hal caught Sinestro’s face. No smile, no frown, just a brow crinkled in concentration. Sinestro’s ring flared and the ball around Hal’s hand exploded into a plume of green light and smoke.

The explosion threw Hal like a ragdoll, slamming him shoulder first into the platform and then streaking over it, bouncing and crushing his shoulder against the platform, again and again. Hal pushed himself up. It felt like someone hit his shoulder with a sledgehammer. Hal rolled over to face Sinestro. He’d already recovered from the explosion, but there was a tear across the front of his costume, leaving the Lantern logo sagging.

“Did I pass?” Hal asked, chest heaving. Sinestro had definitely lost his smile. He displayed his ring. Lightning sparked in the clouds below.

“Count yourself lucky, Jordan. I am going to further your education.” A green sheathe began to manifest across Sinestro’s body as Hal struggled to his feet.

The green outline forming around Sinestro seemed to sizzle and pop, reacting to the air around it. Hal couldn’t quite make out what it was from this distance, not without his glasses. It was some kind of full body construct, but not like the ones most Lanterns used for flight.

Something hit Hal, laying a weight across his chest. He teetered backward. It wasn’t a projectile, or any kind of attack -- it felt like the wind itself was moving against him. Through the semitransparent platform, Hal saw the clouds roll and shift as electricity crackled between them.

The weight shifted and Hal jerked the other way, wind whipped across his skin and ruffled the folds of his Lantern outfit while his hair ran freely, no longer constrained by whatever product goop was holding it steady before, come loose in the gale. Sinestro maintained his calm, sweeping his arms around him in movements that seemed practiced, yet forceful. He was like a typhoon. Whatever this was, Hal couldn’t beat it, at least not without seeing it.

He was sure he couldn’t just wave his ring around and hope it would work. Kilowog said that any good construct only needs two things: will and understanding. He had to believe he had the will. The ring chose him, after all. But understanding…? Well, Hal had been wearing glasses all his life, hadn’t he?

Hal stumbled across the platform. The wind was picking up, it was like feeling turbulence in his jet but this time he got to feel it against his skin, shaking him to the bone, it felt like the wind could just grab him and throw him away. Thunder screamed below them, shaking the surface of the platform. Hal shuddered. He had to act fast.

Hal turned his ring on himself, drawing out motes of energy. This would need to be precise, the shaking in his hands be damned. The motes struggled against the wind, winking and sputtering as thunder crashed beneath, but they made it through the holes in his domino mask, laying themselves onto his eyes.

It felt like when he opened his eyes in a chlorine pool, a stinging burn that made tears well up, but Hal fought the urge to close his eyes as they adjusted. The energy settled in, molding to them, settling themselves as a lens, fit just to his prescription.

Through the sundering gale Hal finally got a true glimpse of Sinestro. The other Lantern had made himself a suit, wired by glowing pipes into the platform below, feeding gaping holes all along the suit’s arms and chest. The wind was ferocious enough near Sinestro that Hal could actually see it, rippling across the surface of Sinestro’s construct. Sinestro shifted, raising an arm and sending a zephyr Hal’s way. It was like he was guiding it, somehow… But there was a change.

A well appeared in Sinsestro’s half of the platform, opening to the fabric of the sky beneath, and a cloud began its ascent, through the whole and being vacuumed into Sinestro’s armor. Sinestro wasn’t bothering to hit Hal with wind, he was winding up for something. Hal caught notes of dashing yellow, spriting and weaving all across Sinestro’s armor.

Could it be?

A sound like thunder welled up, a roaring rumble of the whining construct and the hiss of raw electricity. He felt it then, the fear, rising up through his chest and making an electric cage around his heart. Every beat sounded like a bass drum. Thump. Thump. Thump.

He was a little boy again, hiding under mom’s covers, and this was it.

“Enough!” It was Kilowog. Big man could move quiet when he wanted to. He planted himself in front of Hal, surging with energy like Hal had never seen, where there had once been vestigial nubs, it was like there was a whole green creature growing from Kilowog’s back, its flesh riddled with boils that popped with Kilowog’s movement.

Sinestro jerked his hand upward and a rainbow erupted from his hand, spewing color and light, flashing and zagging as the main arc of his thunderbolt split the sky above.

“Enough, indeed.” Hal could hardly hear Sinestro over the ringing in his ears -- had the thunder really been that loud? He felt Kilowog’s arm slipping under him, rough pink skin dragging across the back of his costume as Kilowog hauled him to his feet. The energy had left Sinestro’s body and he stood as them, but another Lantern.

“You have passed this trial, Lantern Jordan, despite your partner’s interference. Leave me. You will both receive assignment shortly.” Sinestro did not break Kilowog’s gaze as he spoke.

“Let’s go, Hal.” Kilowog guided him to the edge of the platform.

“What… What was that?” Hal asked, but he already knew the answer. It was no simple construct, no trick of the light or the senses, but the power of the ring, no, of Sinestro’s technique, used to its fullest potential.

“It was something you shouldn’t have had to see. Can you fly?” Kilowog asked.

Hal rolled his shoulder. It still stung like a mother, but that shouldn’t stop him. He nodded.

Hal didn’t look back to Sinestro as he stepped off the platform, but Hal could feel his yellow eyes following, like electricity down his spine.

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So turns out I enjoyed fucking around with Sgt. Pepper, and decided to try superhero-ing another album from the time period. It's not perfect, but enjoy!

original

new

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@Cybermaxx Blame Uni, he made me. That's Richard Dragon.

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C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

G R E E N L A N T E R N

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^{_{H A L J O R D A N ♦ T E S T P I L O T ♦ C O A S T C I T Y ♦ B. 1944}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

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^{"In brightest day, in blackest night... Uh, line, Kilowog?"}

Coast City never treated Hal Jordan well growing up. It had its own wonders, certainly. Beaches up and down the coast as far as the eye could see and rolling tracts of perfect morning dew suburbia in the hills beyond the city proper. But in Coast City, awash with lights and crowded in by the restful giants of the wartime ammunition factories beyond, you could never see the stars.

By Hal's measure, the war was the cause of all of his problems. Not Korea, the really big one where everybody joined in, Hal always had to specifiy, the one dad bought the farm in. That crack always bought him a bop on the head and some grumbling about "respect", so Hal supposed that the admonishment was the war's fault, too. It was the war that pushed the light out of the sky, changed it from the town of his parents' childhood that made Mom's voice perk up when she spoke about it into a thing of iron and concrete. It was the reason Tommy Tanaka from next door had gone, too, and he was the only kid that Hal could get to play pretend Flying Ace and Red Baron with him.

"Ma says its coz' of the war we got ta' move."
"How's that?"
"Ma says the people here used ta' keep us in cages, then. N' that things ain't got any better since."
"No better...? Do you got cages in your house?"
"I thought about that too, but Dad says this city is just a great big one."

Hal and Tommy, 1950

And then there was Dad, who Mom cried about when she thought Hal had finally drifted off to sleep. Hal figured he must've been a real important guy. In the stories Mom told him, he had some kinda magic in his heart that he must've plucked out of the sky that Mom said let him fly faster and higher than anyone else. For Hal that settled it, if Dad could do it maybe he could too, maybe even finally reach up and touch the stars that had gone missing over the city.

But flying wasn't in the cards for Hal. Instead he was saddled with a pair of coke bottle lenses and instructions to make sure to eat his carrots if he wanted any kind of shot at the controls of an airplane. Hal's first kiss ended up telling him he had carrot breath, but he figured it was worth the trade. As long as he could look forward and keep stepping towards the sky, he'd make it through anything, school, college, break ups, even every damn page of his aeronautics textbook.

Still, for every carrot he swallowed and every precaution he took to keep his eyes in mint condition, it was a miracle he got any position at all. A battery of failed FAA eye exams meant he'd never be a combat pilot, he'd be lucky to even get a job flying rubbernecking tourists across the country.

But Ferris Aircraft didn't need a combat pilot, it needed a technician that knew his vehicle inside and out. It helped that Dad did some work for them at the start of the war, that old man Ferris had a long memory, and that his daughter had a knack for finding the best in her flyboys. Hal wasn't combat-ready, sure, but he could piece together more about the quality of a test aircraft just after takeoff than most pilots could after full flights in them.

It was like this for some years, mornings spreading his wings over the Californian desert, and nights writing aching reports about every bump and hassle and errant knob his craft had on offer. That is, until the night he saw his first Coast City shooting star, a twinkling emerald jewel that came down, down, down.

It is he who shall next bear the ring, the star told him as it slotted itself upon his finger, leading him to the corpse of its former wearer. Abin Sur was dead -- and an alien, but Hal ultimately decided that the dead part was the more pressing concern -- murdered in his own spaceship.

Over the next days, the organization Hal found himself conscripted in, The Green Lantern Corps, would place a sector wide blockade on the planet. No entry or exit from Earth's solar system under any circumstances, the powers that be wanted a locked door mystery. Leaving Hal and the remnants of Abin Sur's team to keep the peace among an increasingly restless population of aliens who didn't expect to be staying on Earth for quite so long.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

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Green Lantern Year One, you've heard the song a hundred times before but never from these instruments. Truth be told this is a boilerplate Green Lantern set up, chock full of power rings, intergalactic law, and more aliens than you can shake a Kilowog at. My main goal here is a pretty steep difference in execution, less a space police procedural with the nigh-omnipotent protectors of the galaxy, and more a journey of willpower and deceit as Hal navigates the increasingly complicated politics of the Green Lantern Corps and the people its meant to protect, couched in the adventure of a Green Lantern that has to figure out far too much of this for himself.

This is a story about cops and power, about lurking murderers, long shadows, and the infinite reaches of space. Most of all, this is a story of the power of human resolve.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

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I'm changing some things about the Green Lanterns, eat my shorts. The things of import are as follows.

GLC Changes

-The power rings tend to be much less powerful than they are usually portrayed in the DCU. All but the best Green Lanterns often have trouble maintaining constructs of significant power, leaving such applications of their ring much less useful. As well, the ring overall does much less of the work, each Lantern must earn every benefit the ring bestows upon them, even the Lantern basics of flight or interstellar travel.

-Speaking of changes to the rings, each bearer tends to have a specialty. I won't say too much about what exactly these can do, but know that a Green Lantern can do more than a fnacy light show.

-For my story, the nature of the power rings toes the line between the mystic and extraterrestrial technology. They are said to be as old as Oa, the agents of a power that is still not fully understood.

-As well, Green Lantern Corps members are not the only ones that have gotten their hands on these handy dandy power rings, even the green ones. The Corps is instead simply the largest organized conglomerate of ring bearers who, with the assistance of their Guardians, have forged an organization dedicated to intergalactic policing.

Supporting Cast

Carol Ferris: Hal's employer and sometimes girlfriend. Yes, it is complicated, and no, you shouldn't ask.

Kilowog: A fellow Green Lantern. A big pink alien dude who worked and trained under Abin Sur for a time, who is now responsible for teaching Hal the basics.

Sinestro: A fellow Green Lantern and an asshole. He's in charge of Hal and Kilowog while the Lanterns wait for the immediate crisis to blow over.

S A M P L E P O S T:

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Issue 0

GREEN LANTERN in: LITTLE WING

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“A Green Lantern’s first flight is a rite of passage. It is a demonstration of his mastery, not just of the fundamentals of his ring, but of the infinite force of his own will. Through flight, a Green Lantern is--”

“Kilowog,” Hal interrupted the creature standing two heads over him, “I asked for advice, not Sinestro’s flying speech again.”

Hal was still getting used to reading the big guy’s expressions. The structure of his face was somewhere between a warthog and a hippo, with rough pink skin that looked like sandpaper. His face shifted, opening up his parapeted lower jaw and cracking what Hal assumed was a smile.

“It’s all the advice they ever gave me, poozer. You just gotta work with it,” Kilowog said. He was sitting on the remains of one of the lawn chairs Hal had dragged out here for them, sagging with splintered plastic legs that had cried out and collapsed under the alien’s weight. But still, he sat in it, evidently it was better than getting California desert sand all over the ass of his uniform.

They were out in the reaches of Death Valley, hidden from prying eyes by plumes of cacti and the endless expanse of desert all around them. Hal liked it, out here. Away from the lights of the city, where the stars could come out of hiding and whisper of their mysteries unabated. It was like being out in the far ocean, with rolling waves that stretched to the horizon beyond and where the sky seemed to swallow up the whole world. But here in the desert, the rippling waves were frozen as sand and grit, no longer moving with the tide but sitting in meditative silence.

According to Sinestro, Hal and Kilowog’s boss, meditation was exactly what he needed if he ever intended to get his ring to take him into the sky. That was one of the things he didn’t understand, flying from his angle was never about meditation. It was about reflex and constant movement, keeping an eye on all your dials and instruments, keeping your hands flowing like water across the test console to be wherever they were needed.

“Well, fat load of good that’ll do me,” Hal said, “we’ve been out here an hour and my will definitely doesn’t feel infinite.”

“An hour that you’ve spent, nonstop, trying to take off like Superman,” Kilowog said. He scratched at the icon of a lantern on his chest with a white-gloved, four-fingered hand.

“What, you have any better ideas?” Hal whapped the ring on his finger like it was a malfunctioning TV set.

“Have you tried asking the ring?” Kilowog shifted in his seat and more plastic snapped and broke, bringing him closer to the desert below.

“Asking the -- okay, you know what? I’ll humor you.” Hal turned his gloved hand over, staring now at the icon of the lantern embossed on his ring. “Ring, how do I fly?”

There was silence, except for Kilowog’s snorting laugh. “Ask it to fly, dummy, not how.”

Hal took a moment to stick his tongue out at Kilowog before extending his arm and sticking his ring into the sky. “Ring… Fly.”

Nothing.

“Hm… Ring… Go?”

Nothing.

“Ring zoom. Ring flash! Ring alakazam!” Hal shouted. Kilowog couldn’t keep it together anymore and guffawed, his shoulders heaving and his hippo-jaws jumping open and closed.

“Kilowog! Goddamn, I knew you were hazing me.” Hal kicked the ground and sent up a plume of dust.

“Aw, man, that one’s a Corps classic,” Kilowog wiped tears from his eyes, “what is ‘hazing’ by the way?”

“I -- you don’t?” Hal rubbed his temples. “When I was growing up, I worked at one of these big chain grocery stores that were popping up all over the city. And one day, we got this new kid, Matt, and I told him to head down the checkout and grab the shelf extender. Checkout sent him to the deli. Deli sent him to produce. On and on, until he finally gave up looking for it. That is hazing. What you did to me is hazing.”

“Right. But what happened to the shelf extender?” Kilowog asked.

“There was no,” Hal saw the same smile creep up on Kilowog’s face, “no, no, you won’t get me again. C’mon, let’s figure this out. How did you do it, your first time?”

Kilowog pawed at his chin. “Hm. It’s been awhile… I just thought about what it would be like to fly. And I made the ring do that.”

“Very helpful, Kilowog.” Hal slumped into the sand beneath. Why couldn’t Green Lanterns just use planes like everybody else? If they could make these rings then they could certainly figure out the concepts of lift and drag.

Wait. Why couldn’t he use a plane? He’d already been taught the basics of ‘constructs’, simple shapes and objects he could make manifest out of the ring. What would stop him from…

“Stand back, big guy. I think I have an idea.” Hal said.

“Standing back,” Kilowog said, staying firmly planted in his seat.

Hal started small, as he had been taught, willing the first mote of twinkling green energy from the ring, causing it to coalesce into an elongating rectangle of emerald, gaining more detail as it expanded. The shape curved off from rectangle into tube as it grew beyond Hal, tapering into a distinct nosecone. The rest spread into a shape Hal knew well, forming a canopy over his head and spreading a delta of wings out behind him.

“Woah Jordan, you’re not flying anywhere in that thing. Probably can’t even maintain a construct that big, let alone --” Kilowog started,

“Just, just lemme try this, alright?” Sweat beaded on Hal’s brow as he defined the space around him, eking out his dials and instruments from the featureless green before him, his altimeter, airspeed indicator, the works… But it wasn’t enough, not yet. It didn’t feel right.

“Kilowog can you, ah…” Hal hoped the alien couldn’t see the red on his face through the shimmering jet canopy, “can you pretend to be Air Traffic Control, or something?”

Kilowog nodded solemnly and covered his mouth. “Breaker breaker nine to five, this is Biiiig Poozer, you read me Highball?”

“I changed my mind, shut up,” Hal snapped. He closed his eyes and focused, tighter. The swoop of his craft’s aileron, the way his stabilizers swept into the air around him, the press and shudder of what it would feel like to his the airbreak...

“This is Highball, reading you loud and proud Big Poozer…” Hal mumbled to himself, “let’s get this show on the road.” Hal reached for the throttle, right where it would be in his test plane, and his hands closed around something solid. He pushed forward and felt the engine spinning up in his heart, imaging the plane creaking forward steadily around him. More, more.

He reached out for the instruments, feeling their smooth plastic and glass surfaces and knowing instantly what they would tell him, arranged just so in the cockpit. He knew what they’d do, what they’d tell him as he rose into the sky, information streaming through his eyes and telling him every practical detail of his plane. He knew this, and he knew it well, just like he knew the feeling of air whipping across his skin and sweeping his hair. He knew how high he was, of course, he had to, he could practically feel it from the air pressure. His heading, his vertical speed, his navigation, that all came to him, too, as the great body of the plane rose up about him and the notion of his instruments faded into the background.

Now there was just Hal and the plane, Kilowog and Sinestro and Carol and the job and the ring and Abin Sur all seemed so far away. No, instead there was the lift and drag across his jet, the ripple and roll of each piece of his fighter, working all together in one contiguous whole, one of the finest flying machines every built.

Hal was there, the place he always reached in the sky, where the plane stopped being a plane and instead became an extension of himself, the wings slicing through the sky were his own, forging his path forward. But… He had forgotten one detail.

He never disengaged the landing gear. He reached for it in his cockpit, as he had with the throttle, and his hand passed through empty air. Nuts. Hal’s eyes opened to search for the missing instrument.

There was no landing gear.

There was no plane.

He was flying.

P O S T C A T A L O G:

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00 - Little Wing - See above!
01 - Eight Miles High