Blue Lantern: Origin

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Blue Lantern: Origin

Post by Kytross »

The kid was holding the ace of diamonds and the king of spades. He hadn't bet hard but he'd raised a few times. The flop had given them the ace of hearts, the two of clubs, and the jack of clubs. Not a great hand, all he was holding was deuce aces, but that was the best hand available at this point, so the kid had raised once, and then called to stay in the game. The turn had revealed the ace of clubs. Trip aces, a great hand. But the turn had also opened up the possibility of a flush, which beat trip aces. Everyone else at the table dropped out except for the kid and the fat man. The fat man bet heavy, raising the table limit. The kid raised twice and then called the next time. Trip aces was a great hand, and he was pretty sure the fat man was representing more than he had, but he couldn't bet everything he had on less than a sure thing. His rather corpulent opponent burned a card and dropped the river.

Ace of Spades.

The fat man started betting heavy, but this time the kid matched him bet for bet until all of the kid's money was in the pot. The fat man called. The kid finally betrayed some emotion when he smiled, flipped over his hole cards and raked in the pot.

It was a lot of money, nearly $200. Imagine what the kid could do with that kind of money. He'd be able to eat for a month! If only he could keep it.

The kid stood up from the table, gathered his winnings and walked away. Once he was out of the illegal gambling room, he took the money, kept $40 for himself, and folded the rest up in a napkin. The soup kitchen was closed for the night, so the kid climbed up the side of the building to the administrator's office. Prying the window open the kid tossed the napkin on the desk, shut the window and climbed back down. After all, the other people in the city needed to eat too.

The kid smiled to himself. It was a good day.

It was about to get better.

After his anonymous act the kid went to go find a place to sleep for the night. It took over an hour before he found an alley he trusted. The kid wrapped himself up in cardboard boxes and tucked in for the night.

He was woken up by a concussive crash. When he opened his eyes the alley was filled with a blue light emanating from a ring laying in the center of a small indentation in the asphalt. The kid shook his head and rubbed his eyes. The ring was still there, glowing. Overcoming his fears the kid stood and walked over to the ring. He picked it up and put it on.

Lights blazed around him and the kid found himself clothed in a skin tight outfit of mostly black with a dark blue swath on his chest and a blue mask on his face. His mouth began to move and the kid found himself saying:

In fearful day, in raging night
With strong hearts full, our souls ignite
When all seems lost in the eternal fight,
Look to the stars-- for Hope burns bright!
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes!" - Except, apparently, that one.

"And Anarchy, I think we can agree, is only fun some of the time." - Ducky
Posts: 674
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 3:42 pm

Re: Blue Lantern: Origin

Post by Kytross »

The world was gone behind him and the kid was in the depths of space with stars zipping past him as streaks of light. As soon as he had spoken the words of the oath the magic ring had given him an impromptu flying lesson. Well, that was being generous. The ring had pulled him up into the heavens moving steadily faster until they cleared Earth's atmosphere. The kid freaked out for a second, but once he realized he was still breathing just fine and wasn't explosively decompressing he calmed down.

As his speed increased exponentially every second it was occurring to the kid that the magic ring of his was very powerful. Already it let him fly and protected him in space. Maybe it was some kind of space magic! Which wouldn't make much sense to someone more familiar with the cosmos and aliens in general, but everything the kid knew about aliens he got from reading novels about super heroes. While quite inspirational, they weren't heavy on hard facts.

Once he was free of the solar system's gravitational pull the ring really kicked it into gear. “Sheesh, it's warp factor ten,” the kid muttered as the darkness of space turned into incredible brightness as the stars turned from points of light into long streaks. His knowledge of relativity and quantum theory came from old sci-fi movies he'd seen at the various foster homes he'd lived at until he ran away from the last one a few years ago.

The trip through space came to an abrupt stop that was surprisingly not jarring in the least. One minute he was going faster than the speed of light the next minute he was floating on the edge of a completely different solar system. The kid looked around. He knew which planet the ring wanted him to go to, but apparently he was back in control. The problem was that there were thousands of huge, derelict ships floating in space between him and the planet. The ships were big, he estimated at least a mile long, longer for the bigger ones, and looked really cool like the ships in Star Wars. The kid really wanted to explore the ships, but the ring wanted him to head down to the planet. He sighed and started flying around the ships.

He wasn't sure why he trusted the ring, but he didn't question it. Anyone else probably would have questioned it. But then, the ring didn't seek anyone else out. It had sought out the Kid, fulfilling it's last command.

The kid also didn't question how he suddenly knew how to use the ring to fly either. He just flew. Or how a 'magic' ring allowed him to fly or survive in space. Faith was a powerful thing, especially when you don't know you've got it.

Maneuvering around the ships was child's play. He kept going faster and faster, making a game of it, until he slipped and crashed into one of the ships. Or rather through it. The Kid had smashed into the reinforced hull of one of the ships moving at many multiples of the speed of sound and instead of getting flattened by it he was perfectly fine. Apparently the ring was protecting him, which was good.

He was inside the ship and there were a number of alien bodies floating around him, which probably should have freaked him out, but it didn't. The truth was that he had expected as much. Ok, the aliens were blue humanoid cyborgs that reminded him of the Borg from Star Trek, but someone had to man this armada and he didn't expect it to be humans. What he didn't know is why the ships had come here, or what had stopped them. They were all of the same general design, implying they all came from the same empire or planet or whatever. The same place. Whatever. He was close to the planet now and even though he wanted to explore the ship he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to read anything he found anyway, and it didn't look like any of these things had any power left in them anyway. Besides, he could spend hours wandering just one of these ships. Who was he kidding, it could take days to fully explore even one of the smaller ships. No, getting down to the planet was what the ring wanted. Hopefully when he got there the ring would show him why it brought him there.

The Kid floated himself up and out of the hole he made when he crashed into the ship. He was getting closer and closer to the planet, and it was starting to occur to him that it was getting darker the closer he got. He could see fine, but then, he was glowing blue and assumedly had been since he put the ring on. It was just less noticeable when it wasn't so dark. Plus, the mask his ring gave him seemed to help with the no light situation somehow. The Kid wasn't questioning it so much as making notes in his head of all the amazing powers his magic ring had.

He cleared past the last ship, one of the largest ones yet, it was miles long in every direction, but he finally flew around it and got his first look at the planet. The Kid blinked. He looked again. It was pretty disappointing. The world was dark, as dark as the space around him. For some reason he had expected the world to be luscious and green and blue like Earth, with white polar caps and wisps of clouds swirled about it. Instead it was just dark and black. He floated there, watching it turn on it's axis and sighed.

“Why did you bring me to a dead world?”

The ring answered by tugging gently on his hand. The Kid shrugged and gave himself a burst of speed, going from zero to supersonic and letting the ring guide him. They crested the horizon and that's when the Kid saw a bright blue glow. It probably wouldn't have been so noticeable if it wasn't the only light surrounded by darkness. As he flew closer to the surface he realized the land was covered in sheets of ice and snow. The white landscape faintly reflected his own blue glow back up to him. The Kid flew on, marveling at the landscape; it looked as if this world was once a beautiful, life filled world, much like Earth, but now he saw only tundra followed by more tundra broken up by mountains and valleys all covered in the same uniform layer of white. Even the oceans he passed over seemed to be cove3red mostly in ice.

Heh, it should be freezing cold, but the ring seemed to protect him from the cold. Actually, it protected him from the cold of space, why wouldn't it protect him from a world-wide ice age.

Moments later he came to a sudden stop near the blue light, floating in mid-air. It seemed that around the blue light there was a circle of-

BOOM!

The Kid was sent tumbling head-over-heels as the air shattered in some kind of explosion. He didn't know anything about traveling so fast the current could create an explosion from your movement, or sonic booms as they're called, so once he recovered himself he was looking around for whatever attacked him. He must have spent ten or fifteen minutes floating around the area looking for what had hit him before he gave up and flew off to the source of the blue light. He found it sitting on a small island in the center of a river. It was a tall cylinder with a sphere in its center. Surrounding it on either bank of the river was a lush over abundance of jungle: trees, shrubs and familiar but different plant life. Alien birds sang their beautiful and unearthly melodies as water rushed below him in the river. The Kid smiled. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

He landed at the base of the giant blue column. He stared up at it for a long moment and then reached out with his right hand, the hand the ring was on, and touched it. There was a flash of blue light and the Kid could see this world from space. It was different, the desolate armada was gone. The light from this planet's sun reached its surface and life grew in abundance all over the planet. Hey, the world had two moons. Who knew?

The Kid pulled his hand away from the column and the vision faded. “So that's why you brought me here. I'll push all the ships away, maybe stack them up on one of the moons. How does that sound?”

Anyone else would have felt idiotic talking to an inanimate blue column, even a glowing one, but the Kid waited a moment for a response, but all the column did was continue to glow blue.

“Yeah, well, even if that's not why you brought me here I can't leave this world dead when I can do something to fix it.”

Then he was gone, bursting up through the air at supersonic speeds, pouring on the speed so he'd have enough momentum to push one of those giant miles long ships out of this planet's atmosphere. He braced himself as he got close, getting ready to give the ship a big push.

He punctured the hull and plowed straight through it, making a tunnel through the dead ship.

“Oh right, I already did that once today.” The Kid stopped. He was talking to himself. Living on the street the last few years had never gotten him to start talking to himself. Odd that being in space would do it to him. “Or maybe I got hit by a car and this is all some coma dream. Nah.”

He flew up to a different ship and put his hands on it. He accelerated slower this time. It took a few minutes to see any results, but eventually the ship started to move relative to the ships nearby. He was going good for about forty-five seconds before his ship slammed into another ship, the vibrations knocking him silly and sending him ricocheting off of the other ships like a pinball.

“Well, I guess I better start from the outside. Like peeling an orange. This is going to take longer than I thought.”

It took a month.
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes!" - Except, apparently, that one.

"And Anarchy, I think we can agree, is only fun some of the time." - Ducky
Posts: 674
Joined: Sun Dec 17, 2006 3:42 pm

Re: Blue Lantern: Origin

Post by Kytross »

You would think that at some point during a month of moving gigantic, derelict space cruisers out of orbit of a dying planet that the Kid would get hungry. But he didn't. Not even once. Oh he had to stop every day to sleep, and he certainly got tired during the day, but the magic ring he had found seemed to sustain him just fine. That was the last ability he had noticed. So far the list was: flight, invulnerability, a neat costume and mask that helped him see in darkness, a faint glow, and sustenance. Boy, did he ever pick the right alley to sleep in that night.

The Kid could already see the snow starting to melt on the planet the ring had brought him too. He flew down to the blue column to visit it one last time before he went home. He didn't know why he was drawn to the column or why it was there but the Kid definitely felt some connection to it. He landed in front of it, standing in the river. He stood there for a few minutes and then walked over to a big rock and sat on it. He stared at the column for awhile, letting the water flow over his legs and feet, amused at how well he could feel it without it getting him wet.

“Well, I'm gonna go home now,” the Kid said. He waited for a response or a feeling or something. Nothing. “Well, hopefully we're ok. The ships are all stacked up on the moons. Uh, I'm not sure if there's anything else you want me to do, but you've been fairly quiet so like I said, uh, I'm gonna go.” He waited another few minutes. Nothing happened.

The Kid shrugged. “Up, up and away.”

Flying was easy now. Well, it was easy before, but after a month of doing nothing but flying, it was much, much easier. The Kid broke atmosphere and smiled. Even covered in snow the planet was breathtakingly beautiful. He smiled and turned, accelerating away. He zipped up to speed until the stars were lines around him again.

If someone would have asked him how he knew which direction to go in the Kid couldn't have told him. He just trusted the ring to bring him home without even considering it. It had brought him here, he never considered it couldn't get him home.

And he was right. Earth was even more beautiful than the blue column's snow planet. He floated for awhile, the ring keeping him afloat. A few satellites swung by in his view, but still, Earth was amazingly beautiful. The Kid smiled. His life hadn't worked out so great so far, but it was about to get a lot better. He was a superhero now. He could make the world a better place. And thanks to the ring he'd never go hungry again.

All he needed was a good superhero name. Superman. Batman. Spider-man. Iron Man. Maybe he could be Ring Man. Or Blue Man. Or... well something.

Man.
"Only a Sith deals in absolutes!" - Except, apparently, that one.

"And Anarchy, I think we can agree, is only fun some of the time." - Ducky
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