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

[deafleppard]

And so they went, with Gwen following Hal until they were a good distance away from everyone else. Privacy was what she was looking for, and a lack of interruptions. This wasn't going to be easy for her and she was wondering to herself why she was even doing this to begin with. The whole ring thing was the main motivator, yeah. Gwen didn't really want to harm anyone.

Not again.

"Okay, this looks good."

She took off her mask and pulled down on her hood.

"You know, now that I'm here with you. It's like... where do I begin?"

[ringslinging]

"Yeah, I know. I've always been bad at talking about this kind of thing." Talking about the past was always tricky, and he'd been getting a good workout with it since he wound up with the Legion. A few too many people either had some inkling of his sordid supervillain phase, or it found a way to come up with the people who didn't know about it. It felt like it was understating things to get it down to the bare facts, but neither did he really want to get into all of the fine details of the worst years of his life.

He was in no way going to judge if things were a little disjointed, was the bottom line.

Still, there was one obvious question that came up first when you were trying to discuss a loss, so maybe that was the place to start. "Who was it?"

[deafleppard]

"His name was Peter. Peter Parker. In some parts of the multiverse, he was the one with powers instead of me." While her other versions were usually busy being dead. "But the two of us we...were just a couple of lonely kids in high school who became friends. That's how it works, yeah? Misery loves company and all that. So when I got my powers, he saw what that meant. The sort or freedom it could give."

And what kind of bullied teenager wouldn't want that?

"He idolized Spider-Woman. He just wanted..."

"I just wanted to be special."

[ringslinging]

Hal was silent for a moment. Almost anyone could relate to wanting that. He hadn't been a teenager, but when he was younger, fresh out of the Air Force, stuck on the ground because his father's old friends were willing to hire him but not to let him fly...when he'd gotten his ring, and taken that first flight, it had been one of the most liberating moments of his life. The dishonorable discharge, the estrangement from his family, every stupid problem in his life - they'd all been down on the ground, and he didn't have to touch them until he landed.

He'd tried giving up the ring, once, for Carol.

No matter how strongly he felt about her, he couldn't do it.

So it wasn't hard to imagine how much a kid trying to scrape through high school without getting stuffed in too many lockers would want that, once he knew it was there.

"And that didn't end well for him."

[deafleppard]

"Peter was a smart kid, way smarter than I could ever be. I was his friend, and I looked out for him but... He still wanted to be like his hero, you know? And he got his wish, somehow."

She could remember it all like it was yesterday.

"I'm not sure how he did it, but it wasn't... He wasn't in control of himself. He turned into this... Lizard, and went on a rampage. I had to stop him, you know? I couldn't just let him hurt anyone. So I stopped him, but I didn't actually know that it was Peter until it was too late."

He just wanted to be special.

"While I was busy doing talk shows, all Peter could think about was how he could be like me. And it got him killed. I got him killed."

[ringslinging]

Ah, guilt.

Well, at least she'd found someone to unload on who could completely sympathize with that.

It didn't mean he was good at saying the right things, but there were a lot of things it would've been good to have someone around to say to him, when he was her age. So he couldn't not try.

"That's the thing, about what we do. We do things big. You put on the mask and go out there, and nothing you do is ever inconsequential. Our mistakes, our tragedies - we do those big, too." Loss of life. Major property damage. The end of the goddamned world, if some of them really screwed things up. It was so rare that a misstep was just oops, guess I'll be more careful next time. It was always more than that. "And we will have mistakes. Tragedies. There's not a cape I've met in my life who hasn't screwed something up and wished they could have a do-over."

Knowing that didn't make things better, really. But not being alone was worth something.

"Learning to deal with that is the roughest part of the learning curve, I think. I've crashed into a few asteroids, accidentally punched myself in the face with constructs - but that's the easy stuff."

[deafleppard]

"So how? How do I make it so I don't lay awake at night thinking about it? Thinking about how I could've done better. Thinking about... how I should've been able to save a single goddamned life." He was her best friend, too. Having him around... made those semesters just that much less sucky.

And all she ended up doing for him was get him killed.

If she couldn't figure it out now, when trying to cope with losing one person, what the hell would she be doing with herself? With Spider-Gwen?

[ringslinging]

"You never stop. I've been trying for years, and trust me, it doesn't work." Hal shook his head. "Even if everyone else manages to forget that I'm the guy who went off the deep end, wiped out the Corps, caused the Zero Hour - I'm still always going to be that guy to me."

Way to be reassuring, Hal.

But he wasn't going to say anything he didn't mean because it sounded better. Their lives sucked. The things that happened sucked. And you felt the ripples of that every single day, no matter who you were or how much you'd done.

"But we get up, keep going, and try to do better. Because anyone who's not the type to do that - well, they don't last long, in this lifestyle." Some failed. Some cracked. Some just quit, and if they were happier for it, that was their call to make. "As long as I know I can still do something good, I won't let the bad I've done overshadow that. Doesn't mean I'll forget it, or that it'll stop eating at me. But even if you can't save everyone, there are still people out there you can save - if you're still willing to try to."

[deafleppard]

She didn't expect to find some sort of magical answer that would've instantly solved her problems. Definitely not. Would've been nice to hear but yeah, no. What he was saying made the most sense, it was just...

"I want to keep doing this. I owe it to myself, and to Peter. I want to make Spider-Woman someone worth looking up to." How many others out there actually looked up to her? Not just here, but back in her part of the multiverse?

"I can't be the one who ends up crashing and burning at this."

[ringslinging]

"If you want to make the name worth something, that's the most important part. There are always gonna be mistakes, things you think you could've done better - that's not just superheroing, that's life. But what keeps people like us going is knowing that at the end of everything, we've managed to do more good than bad."

[deafleppard]

Doing more good than bad was what Gwen needed to work on. Not that she had actually caused any more troubles, but... Nobody else seemed to really feel that way about her. So she'd just have to work at it more, then? Lots more. "That's what keeps you going, too?"

[ringslinging]

"Right. I've got a damned lot of bad to make up for. Can't quit now, can I?"

A lot a lot. A "how do even quantify" lot.

[deafleppard]

"I mean..." Gwen scratched the back of head. "You don't really seem to me like the type to just up and quit."

But what did she know?

[ringslinging]

"I'm a little stubborn."

Polite understatement.

"Too stubborn to quit, too stubborn to let someone else win, too stubborn to sit back and let something I'm ashamed of be the only thing I'm remembered for."

[deafleppard]

"That doesn't sound too bad to me. But what is it you do wanna be remembered for?"

[ringslinging]

It's a harder question than he expected it to be.

"Who I am," he said finally. "Not what I did."

[deafleppard]

"Right. I gotcha." Made sense, really. Now if she could just... do just about everything he said to her. She'd be all set. Or at least, better off than before.

"Thanks, then. For... all that, and talking to me about and stuff."

[ringslinging]

"Anytime." He gave her a warm smile. "It's a lot to take on. But you've got the benefit of us old-timers around to tell you about all the exciting ways we screwed up, at least."

He wished he'd had some fuck-ups to look to, in his early career. Sinestro didn't count until he counted a little too much, and that wasn't really the same kind of fuck-up they were talking about.