Link : https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/in-blackest-night-dc-black-lantern-si.268662/reader/
WC : 150k+
Plot : Shadow Lantern. Herald of death. Yada, yada, yada.
Chapter 1
Arc 1 - Inception
Everything hurt. Everything. Dying… dying sucks. I'm just minding my own business, living my life, trying not to be murdered by the physical gods constantly flying around this place, and it seems my luck has finally ran out. I always knew I would probably die like this. I live in Coast City, so not exactly the safest of environments. I'd figured one day I'd be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some super villain would take me hostage or hit me with an ice beam and that would be it. Despite the so called super heroes running around, civilian casualties still happen. Just my luck that I'd die right in the middle of the fracking-super zombie apocalypse. Better get used to munching brains and eating hearts, am I right?
I coughed up blood as I tried to chuckle. I didn't even know what was injured, because literally everything was still hurting, though it was a bit dimmer now. Everything was dimmer. It wouldn't hurt too much longer than. I idly noticed that those black rings that seemed to be the source of the latest apocalypse were frantically flitting around, latching on to whatever dead body they could find.
The light bright brigade seemed to have figured out how to kill the blasted things, too late for me though. Maybe I wouldn't end up cannibalizing too many of my fellow humans before they brought my corpse down. I cringed again as I felt my body spasm, and I felt my heart stop. Huh… That's not… so… bad.
I stopped feeling.
I didn't feel anything for a while. It was like sleeping.
Then I felt a spark.
SPENCER ERICSON OF EARTH
My eyes snapped open, and I frantically looked around. I was alive. I felt numb all over, but I was very clearly alive. I looked down, and saw a wound in my stomach stitching itself back together. I'd been conscious for half a second before a piercing scream slammed into my brain. It came from nowhere, and everywhere, and it would not shut up! Intellectually, I knew it should hurt… but it didn't. Nothing hurt. And then the scream just… cut off.
RISE
I stood. My legs completely yet unexpectedly stable. I looked around, and the chaos that had been present not two minutes ago had grown into a sort of quiet stillness. No more rings flitting around, no more flashes of rainbow light coming from in the sky or from behind buildings. Just stillness.
I went to release the breath I'd been holding, only to realize I hadn't been holding my breath. I hadn't been breathing at all. I expanded my lungs, and I felt nothing. I didn't feel air entering or exiting my mouth. I didn't feel the pleasure of respiration or the burn that comes from not performing such a necessary function. I frantically patted myself down, only to realize I was numb everywhere. No feeling whatsoever. I pinched myself. Nothing.
Was I dead? Was this some kind of afterlife waiting stage before I shuffle off to the hereafter? Was I a ghost? One thing I did know was that I was scared. When I'm scared there's a nervous habit I perform. I ball up my right hand into a fist and bite my index finger. If I hadn't surrendered to that habit I might never have noticed the ring on my right middle finger. The black ring.
Oh. Oh hell.
Okay, don't panic. You are dead, but you aren't just some mindless zombie. I let my mind go blank for a minute, trying to see if there was some latent desire for brains, but I didn't feel anything of the sort. I also noted that I seemed to be feeling my emotions just fine. I was still me, just a little deader than I used to be.
I looked my body over, and from what I could see, while I was a lot paler, I didn't actually look like a desiccated corpse. I still looked mostly okay. I wandered over to the nearest window I could find, and looked at my reflection. My hair was motley, and a little thinner, but it seemed fine. My cheekbones were more visible, and my features in general had gauntness to them. My eyes, I couldn't quite tell from the window reflections, but my eyes seem to have lost their previous brown color and faded to a dull gray.
I idly noticed that my clothes were no longer the colors they had been. I now wore an entirely black outfit. My jeans, my boots, my t-shirt were all a deep shadowy black, with the sigil present on the ring slapped onto the center of my shirt in white. Yeah, inconspicuous thy name is spencer.
I of course knew about the green lanterns, hell, who hadn't heard of them? But this whole rainbow corps thing was new to me. Apparently the entire rainbow got a representative on the ring team, and black was apparently death. Did that mean there was a white lantern for life too? Maybe if I could find a white lantern they could fix me. I really didn't want to be undead. Don't get me wrong, I'd much rather be undead than dead-dead, I'm not looking a gift ring in the signet, but still, I kind of miss… feeling. And breathing.
I'd sigh, but it just isn't the same when you can't actually feel it. In fact, a lot of my old habits seemed kind of pointless now. I stared at the ring on my finger, wondering what could have gone wrong with it that I was still me.
"What the hell are you?" I asked to no one in particular.
Designation: Black Lantern Power Ring
"Oh holy crackers the ring talks!" I shrieked, jumping back and waving my right hand around before realizing how utterly stupid I must look. I'm dead. Not exactly at risk here from anything other than the rainbow squad or a shotgun to the head, and I couldn't see any of the former nearby and was pretty dubious about the whether the latter would even actually work.
I finally got myself under control, and decided to interrogate the piece of jewelry… and I realized how stupid that sounded as soon as I thought it.
"Um… uh… ring thing? What are your… uh… functions?"
Full list of specifications would take 96 hours, 47 minutes, and 22 seconds to recite. Do you wish to proceed?
"Um… no, what are your most commonly used functions by… by other black lanterns?"
This ring is capable of mimicking the powers and abilities the host body held in life. If no abilities were present, this ring is capable of mimicking the abilities of other power rings through use of power from the Central Power Battery. Addendum: cannot connect to Central Power Battery. 99.98% power remaining.
That's not good. "So what happens if the ring runs out of power?"
Black lantern necromantic construct will cease to function.
"So, I'll die? Like completely?"
Black lantern necromantic construct will cease to function.
"Okay, if I can't connect to a power battery, how do I recharge you?"
Black Lantern Power Rings can be alternatively recharged from the hearts of sophonts who produce high levels of emotional spectrum energy. Each heart provides a .01% charge to the Central Power Battery. Addendum: cannot connect to Central Power Battery. Each heart can provide a local ring charge of 12%.
"So I'd have to… kill?"
Affirmative.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. That's just asking for the Justice League to come down and re-kill me.
"I'm on the clock then. I either have to recharge the ring some other way, or find a theoretical and probably non-existent white lantern who will either resurrect or perma-kill me, or just use this second chance I've been given in the time I have left."
I sighed again, and it really was not at all as cathartic as it used to be. I really missed breathing.
Okay, so I know Green Lantern can fly, and if this ring is telling the truth, I should be able to mimic that. I focused my will, and focused on flying.
Nothing happened.
"Ring, why can't I fly like Green Lantern?"
Black Lantern Power Ring only mimics effects, not modality.
Huh. So the ring only mimics the effects, but not how they're activated. I might as well learn what my potential powers are before asking how to use them.
"Explain what the emotional spectrum is, and what the powers of the different rings are."
The emotional spectrum is the physical and energetic embodiment of emotions created by free-thinking beings throughout the universe. First harvested by the Guardians, all seven colors have since been utilized to create a respective lantern corps.
The parts of the spectrum are Red/Rage, Orange/Avarice, Yellow/Fear, Green/Will, Blue/Hope, Indigo/Compassion, and Violet/Love.
Red specializes in weaponizing the blood of the host and use of a corrosive emotional aura.
Orange specializes in stealing energy from rival lanterns and creating constructs of slain foes.
Yellow specializes in creating constructs of fear, and becomes more effective in environments high in ambient fear energy.
Green specializes in creating constructs fueled and limited only by the host's will and imagination. It is the most emotionally neutral color. WARNING: Combining green with any other color of the emotional spectrum can destroy Black Lantern Power Rings. Yikes.
Blue specializes in healing, is symbiotic with green rings through power generation, and is only capable of higher functions in the presence of Will.
Indigo specializes in channeling other emotional spectrums when present, and is also capable of point to point teleportation.
Violet specializes in converting the hearts of enemies to its own cause, and locating and protecting endangered love.
"Okay, I think I got it. So how do I copy those effects?"
Ring operation requires the intent to cause an emotional response.
"What. Wait. You're telling me... that I have to intentionally try to get a rise out of someone in order to use my ring!?" Oh god. The ring was a troll. And the people nearby who were most likely respond to me on an emotional level were the god damned super heroes!
Affirmative.
"I'm dead, not suicidal!"
I stared at the thrice damned black ring on my hand. If I wanted to use it, I had to use it with intent to provoke the emotions of someone. Presumably this somehow facilitated the ring's original mission of whatever it was the rings were after. All it did now was keep me from doing anything awesome… like flying. With no one around to "emotionally provoke" I was grounded.
So I walked.
Now I'm not an idiot, I walked the hell away from where the lightshow had been previously coming from. I'm not going to waltz into a group of trigger happy supers who just ended the apocalypse in my fancy zombie suit, with built in zombie logo, and snazzy zombie decoder ring. I'm going home to my apartment, I'm going to figure out this ring, and then I'm going to contact anyone I think can help over the phone so I have half a chance to explain myself before they kick in my door and vaporize me.
I was a little ticked off at the moment. Here I am, second chance at life, whole bunch of super powers at my fingertips, and I can't even use them without risking imminent re-death. Seriously, this was origin story stuff right here. If this were those fruity comics from the fifties I'd be costumed up as Deadman and fighting crime right now… too bad Deadman's already taken. That would be a sweet super hero name.
To try to cheer myself up, I tried to think of a super heroic alter ego. All the good names were taken. Specter? Taken. Shadow? Taken. Ghost? Taken. I am not calling myself Zombie Boy. Unless I thought of something massively better, I was probably stuck calling myself Black Lantern, which I was reluctant to do given the obvious connotations and history the name came with. I ended up in a worse mood then when I started, and I stopped trying to think of super hero names. I tried to focus on getting home unseen.
I stuck to the shadows and back allies as much as I could. Despite the fact that the world had been ending, there were still plenty of people hanging around. The world nearly comes to an end on a fairly regular basis. You get used to it. I didn't want to call attention to myself just yet. My plan was to lay low until I had a handle on the situation, then proceed with caution.
I should have known that the universe had other plans.
The first sign that something was off was the sound of breaking glass. It wasn't hard for me to figure out what was going on. Someone must have figured that since the world was coming to an end (again) that they could take advantage of the situation. Frankly, I was content to let them. I didn't really care. Just about everyone, myself included, carried insurance for this kind of situation, so whoever was getting robbed would be fine in the end.
Then I heard the screaming. So not an ordinary robbery. Fine. You want me to intervene universe? I'll intervene.
I was currently in an ally way, and the sound of glass breaking and screaming had come from around the corner. So I creeped around the corner with as much subtlety as I was capable of managing. The break in was occurring in what I assumed was a pawn shop. The fact that the sign above the door labeled it as such confirmed my suspicions. I looked inside and saw the source of the commotion. Two very suspicious looking thug like individuals were currently shoving assorted jewels and knick knacks into actual burlap sacks. Off in the corner was some poor girl huddled in the corner, a visible cut just above her left eye. It was hard to see though, since she seemed to be glowing yellow.
FEAR
"Seriously guys" I said as I walked into the store, "the world's ending again and everyone just goes nuts. You'd think people would be used to it by now." I tried to be calm and not panic anybody, but I couldn't just walk away now. The poor girl in the corner couldn't be older than 16, she just seemed to be manning the shop.
The two thugs dropped the bags and whirled around to face me, one unslinging a shotgun from behind his back and pointing it as me. Okay, I can still salvage the situation. I raised my right fist and pointed to my power ring with my left hand.
"No one needs to get hurt, just put the guns down and leave, I'm going to count to three. One…"
And my head exploded in a shower of bone and blood.
Losing your head and surviving the experience (for a given definition of surviving) is a rather novel experience. Finding out you don't even need your head to continue functioning really changes your perspective. I didn't seem to have a sense of touch to start with, so I was nearly insensate without my head. The only sense I seemed to retain was the ability to sense the emotions of the three nearby individuals.
FEAR
RAGE
FEAR
My body was lying on the ground, and I could feel new tissue growing from the stump where my head used to be. My lower jaw came into existence, and the rest of my head grew out of the top of that. My ears reformed next, and suddenly I could hear again.
"…gn on to kill people man! I just want to help my kid!"
My head finished reforming, and my eyes filled their sockets like someone pouring liquid jello into a mold.
I sat up, unnoticed, and was greeted with nothing less than the scene from a horror movie. The girl who had been unobtrusively hiding in the corner had been shot, and was currently bleeding from the stomach. She was crying silently, not even able to breath enough to make a sound.
"You didn't have to shoot the girl!"
"She saw our faces jackass! She was never going to live through this! Even more so since she saw us ice that lantern wannabe."
I crawled towards the girl, trying to avoid notice as they continued arguing. I was an idiot to think I could just walk in and solve this without violence. What was I thinking? The one guy seemed reasonable, but that other guy... I wasn't sure I could let him go after this.
"Ring" I whispered, "you said you can mimic blue right? Can you fix her?"
Affirmative
I flinched and looked towards the two criminals, but they didn't seem to hear the ring. That was good to know. I looked at the girl, and I focused on triggering an emotional response in her. I wanted her to hope.
"Everything's going to be alright." I whispered.
The ring took on a black glow, and a construct of shadow formed in front of the girl. A woman I didn't recognize held out her hand and cradled the girl's cheek in her palm. The girl's yellow aura faded but was still present, but was replaced by a beautiful azure light. Blue always was my favorite color.
Heart is ready for harvest.
"Shut up you stupid bloodthirsty thrice damned ring" I hissed.
"Did you hear that?" Rage thug asked.
"I didn't hear anything man… I… I can't do this. I need to…"
He was cut off by the retort of the shotgun.
"Chickenshit asshole… where'd that guy's body…"
"Two" I said as I stood up, resuming my count.
"You! I shot you in the head!" Rage was now mixed with fear.
I couldn't resist, I really couldn't. "I got better."
He fired again, and again, only for it to bounce off a hexagonal shield I'd manifested in front of me. So I was an anime fan, sue me.
RAGE
FEAR
His red aura was rapidly diminishing, and was flaring yellow. That yellow spiked as his gun clicked empty. Good.
I fired a pulse of kinetic energy from my ring, flinging him into the far wall. Bands of shadow wrapped around his wrists and waste and held him there. I looked down at the other robber, the one who'd been shot by his own partner. The one who was only here because he cared for his child.
FEAR
The man was even worse off than the girl had been, a ragged hole blown in the left side of his chest. It was clear he couldn't even breath.
I mimicked the light of hope again. This guy wasn't dying on my watch. The construct that appeared for him was that of a little girl, six maybe seven years old. He gurgled, reaching out to the construct as his flesh knitted itself back together.
HOPE
LOVE
"Amanda…" he muttered before losing consciousness.
That was it. I was al… intact. The girl was fine and unconscious, the other guy was fine and unconscious, and rage roid was thrashing against the bonds I'd restrained him with. His fear had once again been replaced by rage. I was beginning to think he was some kind of idiot.
I picked up the man I'd just healed in a fireman's carry, and Crazy McShotgun floated bound behind me. I got tired of his yelling and snarling, so I slapped a shadow gag over his mouth. I dropped the guy off who hadn't tried to kill me a few blocks away in a well-lit, nice looking part of town, and flew off with my captive.
He continued to struggle, and I saw tinges of yellow creep back into his aura. I think he began to suspect just what he'd gotten himself into. I continued to fly low to the ground, looking for something specific.
"Ring? Capacity" I said.
96.10%
I finally found what I was looking for. A pile of bodies strewn about the street, their hearts ripped out. I'd seen just what my fellow undead had been doing to my former fellows among the living, and I had come to a decision some point between healing the girl and hearing him shoot his own partner. It surprised me how quickly I'd gone from deciding I wasn't going to kill anyone to my current course of action, but this guy had made a very convincing case fore himself. I needed to keep my reserves up if I wanted to stay unliving, and this guy was not someone who needed to stay in the world.
I dropped him in the pile of bodies that had yet to be collected and landed next to him.
"You shot me. You shot a teenage girl. You shot your own partner!"
And I'd destroyed all evidence that he'd done so by healing his victims. It was their word against his in a court, and I couldn't take that chance. His eyes grew wide in realization, and then narrowed in anger.
FEAR
RAGE
Heart is ready for harvest.
I pulled back my hand, shadows forming above my fingers and sharpening into claws.
"I'd say I'm sorry, but I don't think I am… Three."
I reached into his chest. I tore out his red and yellow pulsing heart. I watched as the light drained from it and flowed into my ring.
Ring Capacity at 100.00%
I dropped the quickly cooling corpse into a pile of its fellows.
Then I walked home.