IN BRIGHTEST DAY - Mod Plot [LOG POST | 1 | THE RINGS CHOOSE]

[relativityspeaking]

Who| Everyone participating in the plot
What| Finding the lost Lanterns and getting Lantern rings
Where| The remains of the sentient, once-living planet Mogo, at the edge of the galaxy
When| After the network post
Warnings/Notes| N/A for now.

Their little adventure took them to the edge of the galaxy. Towards the end, they couldn't even use the threshold gates anymore, due to star-weights and gravity wells crushing and constructing the way there. Instead, they had to rely on the stargate abilities of their ringwielding allies.

Their journey ended in a strange and beautiful nebula at the very edge of the galaxy, one that had swirling gases in blue and green and violet and indigo. There, they found a dead, broken planet, the remains of the being once named Mogo, with four ancient structures.

The Green Lantern Central Power Battery. The Central Power Battery of the Star Sapphires -- the violet Lanterns. The Blue Lantern Central Power Battery. The Indigo Tribe Central Power Battery.

And in piles and piles around these ancient sources of power...were rings. Countless rings in all four colors. All without owners.

"Who dares disturb the resting site of the Green Lantern Corps?" an ominous voice said from the shadows after they landed.

"We come in peace," called out Kid Quantum. "Several groups of ringwielders were pulled against their will into this universe from a time and place when the War of Light was still ongoing. Some of those ringwielders were from the red and yellow Lantern Corps. Those who wear rings of green, violet, blue, and indigo, want to stop them from reigniting the war in this universe. They want to capture the red and yellow Lanterns and take them back home to their universe and time."

"And who are you?" the man asked.

"Kid Quantum, of the Legion of Superheroes. The Legion protects the people of this galaxy, the citizens of the United Planets, and we offered our aid to these displaced Lanterns. We heard that remnants of the Corps that were allied against the Red and Yellow Lanterns possibly existed on the edges of the galaxy. We've come seeking your help."

"It does my heart glad to learn of you," the voice said slowly. "We wondered if anyone else had ever risen up to take our place. But we had to stay here, to guard the last remnants, to watch over the Power Batteries and the rings. To make sure they were never used again. With the various Corps gone, anyone seeking them would only have wanted to misuse them."

The man stepped out of the shadows and now he glowed with the light of his green ring.

"I am Sodam Yat." He gestured to two other glowing figures that joined him. One was just a teeny speck of light, as if the being was normally too small to be seen by the naked eye. This was because the Lantern was a benevolent, superintelligent smallpox virus. The other was a battered robot that used his ring's energy in replacement of some of his parts.

"This is Leezle Pon." The speck. "And Stel." The robot. "We're the last of the Green Lanterns."

He looked at the Lanterns the Legion had traveled with and was clearly overcome with emotion at seeing faces that were, for him, 1000 years gone.

"I never dreamed that this could happen." He inclined his head at them all. "It's wonderful to be able to welcome you home."

Comments

[captainbuzzkill]

Dipper didn't really attract any rings other than green. He could be compassionate but he was hardly ruled by it -- and sometimes he got too monofocused on a mystery to remember to worry about people. He certainly loved people but that was more Mabel's territory, and he could have hope sometimes but it wasn't really an ironclad thing. It took work for him, and sometimes he needed to be reminded there was hope.

But willpower? He had that in spades. And he'd overcome great fear more times in his first summer at Gravity Falls than most people had to overcome in their whole lives.

Dipper wasn't surprised at all when a green ring flew onto his finger.

[wieldtherainbow]

After the ring was on his finger, it spoke. An explosion as one of the other new Lanterns tested out their rings blocked the sound of the ring saying his first name.

[--PINES, OF EARTH. YOU HAVE THE ABILITY TO OVERCOME GREAT FEAR. WELCOME TO THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS.]

All of those that were accepted as Green Lanterns felt power surging through them the moment they received their rings. The power of the green rings was steady and true -- and one that altered the minds of its wielders the least.

Like all of those accepted into the Green Lantern Corps, his costume changed so that it had green and black and white on it, with the symbol of the Green Lanterns emblazoned somewhere on his person. And like all of those accepted into the Corps, he'd find that he had the ability to change said costume.

OTA!

[captainbuzzkill]

"Oh man, this is the coolest!"

After messing with his costume to get it the way he wanted, Dipper was rapidly using the ring's power to create constructs in all different shapes and sizes. Everything from household objects, to fantasy creatures like dragons, to...a duck with a deerstalker hat?

"You really can make anything!"

Then he started to make constructs of...creatures. Swarms of little gnomes with sharp teeth. A long limbed monstrosity with a saggy, shapeless body and smiley face mask for a face. A creepy, half-formed metamorph with a lamprey mouth. A horrible humanoid spider-creature.

He seemed to have no concept of how hideous all the creatures actually were, especially as skittering constructs, moving in ways most living things weren't supposed to move, and kept summoning one after the other with delight. What did he have to fear from them? They were all things he and his sister and Grunkle and friends had overcome and it wasn't like they could hurt him now.

[kingtyrantranger]

"Kid, you're leaking creepy on the floor." Honestly, Jason had seen uglier up close and personal, but that didn't mean that he was specifically looking forward to seeing more of the same. Ugly was ugly, and he'd much rather end up

There was probably something a little wrong with the guy if these were the first things he worked up with a ring. Then again, maybe Jason was still a little irritated at his own ring telling him that he lacked the imagination to do stuff that he wanted... But that's a possibility that Jason dismisses as soon as he thinks about it. No, there was a big difference between trying to jumpstart your powers and putting on a John Carpenter fun fest.

[captainbuzzkill]

That wasn't really something Dipper was expecting, though on second thought, it occurred to him that maybe he should've been.

"Oh no, I'm not making any of these up, if that's what you're thinking," he said, thinking that the issue was Jason thought he was making up all the creepy on his own. "This is all stuff I've actually seen."

He went back to the gnomes. "These guys pretended to be a teenage boy and tried to kidnap my sister to be their gnome queen. Then they transformed into a giant gnomitron to chase after us. My sister and I beat them with a leafblower."

The construct flickered to the saggy long-limbed thing. "That was a candy monster made of all the gross candy nobody wanted that tried to eat us for not having the Summerween spirit."

The spider creature flashed. "That was an Arachnimorph that pretended to be a single older lady that tried to eat my Grunkle."

The construct went to the metamorph. "And that was an evil shapeshifter. This form wasn't really that bad, he was capable of way scarier ones. See?"

The construct shifted to a hideous form that looked like it was partly made of Dipper and partly made of a little girl that looked just like him, molded together into a skittering monstrosity.

[kingtyrantranger]

He's torn. On the one hand, the skittering mouther there was pretty creepy. Maybe not quite the ugliest thing ever, but not something he'd want to run into in a dark alley. On the other, while he didn't want to tear the kid's accomplishments down, Jason didn't quite get why Dipper was so cool with popping monsters up all over the place. It didn't seem like he was showing off on purpose. Jason just didn't get the idea that people could be so casual about it.

He hesitated for a moment, scowling at the construct, and waved his hand before finally finding his voice. "Man, it's... It's cool that you managed to take care of all these things and all. It takes guts not to be scared of them. But other people might not be quite as comfortable with it as you are." That argument might stand up better if they weren't surrounded by superheroes. "You might just want to rein it in just a little, you know?"

[captainbuzzkill]

"Oh. Okay."

Now he felt weird.

He dropped the creepy constructs and started making things that were less creepy. He tried just imitating things from TV, like Ducktective and Tiger Fist. Things that looked cartoony.

"I just figured...we're going up against some really scary bad guys, right? I was trying to figure out things to fight them with that maybe they'd even find scary."

[kingtyrantranger]

Man, that felt like kicking a puppy. He shook his head. "Nah, man. Like. Being scary is one thing, but you don't want to alarm your team, you know?"

Because, seriously, kids shouldn't be whipping up that kind of thing in the first place. The cartoons looked a lot less worrisome.

"Maybe pull those things out if you need to, but a lot of people won't have dealt with two-faced skitterbeasts or monster gnomes or whatever." Consider your audience. All this would do would get Dipper nailed as the super creepy kid. "All I'm saying is save it for the bad guys, you know?"

[deafleppard]

"Um, wow. Just... wow." Gwen had to wonder how Dipper actually got the idea for all the stuff he was building. Like, seriously. The one that looked like a spider? Could have probably come out of someone's nightmares.

Oh sure, she probably could've actually addressed the time that they both beat each other up. You know, that topic they had yet to really... come back to. But nope, Gwen was too busy wondering if she should be concerned over Dipper's imagination.

[captainbuzzkill]

"Oh. Uh. Hi."

Dipper stopped making constructs, but then he felt stupid and awkward because that meant he was just standing there not doing anything.

Doing nothing. Yep. Nothing at all. Staaanding there looking like a moron not doing anything.

Dipper tried to awkwardly break the ice.

"How are you...doing? Lately?" A pause. "I mean how have you been doing -- you know what I mean. Hi."

[deafleppard]

Dipper wasn't the only one standing around being awkward. Not doing anything. Because Gwen was pretty much doing the same thing. What would've made it even more awkward was scratching behind her head and doing the whole 'briefly looking away' part.

Yep, there it was. Right on queue.

"Oh, you know. Just uh, doing Legion things. I just can't get enough of those, and...the usual, yeah."

God, so awkward.

"It's great. I love it."

[captainbuzzkill]

"Me too. Just been around. Doing Legion things. Yep."

Dipper stood there for longer, looking awkward. Then -- like children sometimes did -- he told the truth, even though it was a particularly blunt truth.

"You know I'm not mad at you for punching me repeatedly in the face, right? In the Medbay, they said my nose wasn't even broken. You were yelling things at me that didn't make sense, and -- and it was like that for me at first, too. I saw someone else instead of you, somehow I hated."

A pause.

"Which is, by the way, why I'm sorry I hit you with my teke a couple times, too. Because I am. Sorry."

[deafleppard]

"No, it's, uh... I mean..." God, why was this so hard. She'd just gotten an apology from him, so why was she fumbling around her words so much? Oh, now she remembered, because of the thing they had gone through.

"Look, I... Neither of us, were really ourselves back then." Granted, Gwen did punch people in the face often enough. Just not her friend's faces! "So it's fine, you know? I mean, it's not fine that we slugged each other like that but I'm not... holding it against it you or anything." Which was all fine and good, except Gwen was still making this more complicated on herself than it needed to be.

"But I'm glad, that your nose is fine. And so is the rest of your face. That's looking pretty solid right now. And..."

Come on already, just out with it.

"I'm sorry. Oh god, Dipper, I'm so sorry."

[captainbuzzkill]

"Hey. It's okay," Dipper said gently, and he walked over and took her hand in his, un-self-conscious about it in that way children sometimes were when they wanted to comfort someone that was upset.

"It happens," he said, with experience someone his age really shouldn't have had. "Sometimes there are things that mess with your head. That trick you. That's how some bad guys work."

He knew that better than most.

"The thing I saw in your place when we were in there? It was this demon that nearly ended my world. He messed with my family -- and he tricked me. More than once. He even stole my body for a little while."

He squeezed her hand gently.

"When something tricks you like that? It's never the fault of the person who was tricked." He shrugged with one shoulder. "It's always the fault of the people doing the tricking. So don't feel bad. That whole thing was just one giant trap that was left for us."

[deafleppard]

Kids could be pretty dumb, and wrong about a lot of things. Heck, you didn't even need to be a kid for that. Some people just... didn't grow out of being idiots. But then you had people like Dipper and herself (most of the time, maybe) that had been forced to grow up before they were ready.

Yeah, was true that neither of them were at fault, but she still felt unbelievably crappy about the whole thing. What she had seen and knowing that she had struck a friend.

It... reminded her too much of what happened with Peter.

She didn't know what else to really say, so she just turned to give him a hug.

Hugs were nice.

[ex_eraserhead411]

Aizawa, adjusting to being able to hover around, did so without any hint of grace. He just sort of slumped in the air, leaning against nothingness. He barely managed to look as if he were flying rather than simply drifting on nothingness in a posture that would have been uncomfortable if he were on anything solid.

He watched as Dipper came up with various constructs, a but curious as to where he was getting those ideas.

"You've got a pretty active imagination."

[captainbuzzkill]

"Oh no, I'm not making any of these up. That'd be, uh, that'd be preeetty creepy, right? If I was just making these up. Out of nowhere."

He wasn't that creepy, no sir. The constructs shifted again to some good ol-fashioned zombies.

"I figure with all this it's just like what they say with writing, right? Write what you know?"

He practically had Journal Number 3 memorized front to back.

[ex_eraserhead411]

If Aizawa had any doubts that Dipper was, in fact, a child--then, they were quickly erased as the young man decided that making a hard light construct of multiple zombies was entirely the right thing to do then and there.

It was refreshing and terrifying at the same time.

Fortunately, Dipper had an incredible, powerful tool at his disposal that he could use for his own sake. Despite that being an issue in a normal environment, it would be necessary very soon for him to have such a dangerous thing.

"It's a good saying to bear in mind, certainly. I hope you'll remember to avoid taking risks while you're at it too, alright?"

[captainbuzzkill]

"I'm used to taking risks," he said in something of a non-answer. "I'm not really scared of stuff like this. Careful, but not scared."

That was a good way to put it. He wasn't stupid. He was sometimes rash but most of the time he was pretty cautious. This wasn't one of the kinds of situations he was rash in -- usually those involved uncovering some kind of mystery. This was different. This was a fight and he knew to be calm and careful during those.

"I know how to handle myself."

It wasn't said resentfully or sullenly. It was just honest. He'd had to face life or death situations before.

"I've dealt with stuff like this before -- only without superpowers then."

[ex_eraserhead411]

It wasn't as if Aizawa was pleased to hear that sort of thing coming from a child, but he couldn't do anything to help someone who had already experienced something that serious. Aizawa leveled a sigh and offered Dipper a little shrug from within his cocoon.

"Even so, I hope you don't mind if I try to help you elevate your level of precaution. I may still be able to give you some helpful advice," He wouldn't stop Dipper at that point, but Aizawa would always operate against rationality if he had to protect someone. He wasn't sure if it would be a point of pride or not. "Would you mind that much?"