IN BRIGHTEST DAY - Mod Plot [LOG POST | 3 | NO EVIL SHALL ESCAPE MY SIGHT]

[wieldtherainbow]

Who| Everyone involved in the plot
What| For some, time to catch their breath, for others a living nightmare
Where| The Red Lantern base, the Yellow Lantern Base, and the Green/Blue/Violet/Indigo Base
When| After the first battle
Warnings/Notes| At the yellow base, torture/brainwashing, trauma, all that kinda stuff

The first battle left many dead, especially since the Green Lanterns now had deadly force authorized. Fortunately for the good guys, they hadn't lost that many blue, green, indigo, or blue Lanterns, and quite a few reds and yellows had been killed or captured. The retreat of the yellows and reds was a tactical necessity, necessary so that they didn't lose and all get captured.

But their retreat came with a cost. A few of the Legionnaires had claimed -- or been claimed by -- yellow and red rings. With the automatic recall functions of the rings it meant they'd been spirited away during the retreat, with no way of being traced.

All the Legion, Green Lanterns, and their allies could do was regroup and hope for some kind of new attack or lead to try to find their missing friends.

Comments

RED LANTERN BASE

[wieldtherainbow]

The red Lanterns gathered around the red power battery which was on an abandoned planet that had been changed to look like Ysmault. An everlasting pool of blood fountained around the power battery.

While the Red Lanterns had very little ability to reason, the Legionnaires that had found themselves with red rings were capable of at least some awareness, enough to understand some of what was going on around them -- like a suspicious meeting of the reds and yellows.

[ooc: People who get red Lantern rings and get spirited away to the red base can thread here.]

[headinjuries]

Disregarding the fact that the red ring left Sam harboring murderous feelings towards just about everyone he saw, there was still a particular spark of hatred in him for the yellow Lanterns. He didn't retain the mental faculties to understand it or remember that it was because of what one yellow in particular had done to him and Dipper. All he knew was that when he saw that uniform, he wanted their blood on the ground more than anyone else's.

He was a short distance back from the meeting with the yellows. He wasn't making any moves (at least not yet), but there was murder in his eyes as he stared at whatever was going on.

YELLOW LANTERN BASE

[wieldtherainbow]

The Yellow Lanterns were smart enough to not set up their base directly around the Yellow Power Battery. They had several bases now, guarded by yellows. Their new training camp was set up on an abandoned world separate from their main base.

This was where the people who have been captured by the yellow rings' recall functions found themselves, on a remote world, surrounded by enemies.

Screams rang out every so often -- not every potential yellow survived their training.

[ooc: People who get yellow Lantern rings and get spirited away to the yellow base can thread here.]

Intro - Hal, Dipper, Nick, and Parker

[wieldtherainbow]

They only received the briefest of warnings. When Sinestro initiated the retreat of the yellows, the rings bleeped with a message:

[PREPARE TO TRANSPORT SENTIENT BEING.]

Then the automatic recall functions of the rings got to work. The process of being teleported forcibly almost felt like being ripped apart and put back together again, and then they all found themselves on a lifeless planet. Not Qward, but the rugged landscape was similar.

They were right in the center of one of the base camps of the yellows, which meant that they were surrounded by a giant crowd of hostile sentients that gathered around them, making it clear that there was no chance of escape.

"Don't bother trying to stargate away, you'll find that the rings won't let you." He added, "And why would you want to go? If you were chosen by the yellow, you don't belong with the Legion, you belong here. You belong with my Sinestro Corps."

He nodded his head.

"But the choice is ultimately yours: stay and be trained as yellow Lanterns, and accept the honor of wearing a yellow ring. Or go back to the Legion. I can't make any promises as to what state you'll be in by the time my Corpsman get you back to the others but I suspect it would be in pieces. What will it be?"

[ringslinging]

Hal folded his arms across his chest and gave Sinestro a look that was somewhere between in my imagination, I am punching that smug look right off your face and I am so incredibly exhausted of you and your shit.

"It's cute how you sugarcoat it, but if you're going to be cliche enough for the join us or die thing, just cut the crap and say it straight, Sin."

[captainbuzzkill]

Oh noooo. No, this was bad. Dipper understood what this was. In all the creepy fights with the supernatural he'd been in, there'd been at least one absolutely horrible moment that was the scariest during each conflict, and this wasn't even that.

No, this was the worst moment against the worst thing he'd fought. This was just like when the journals had been burned by Bill, when everything was at its worst during the apocalypse. This was being in the middle of Weirdmageddon, wandering the streets, dodging eyebats and rooting through trash for food.

Except this time...he wasn't alone.

With an odd mix of shyness and shamelessness, he hovered in close, pressing himself against Hal's side, and slipping his small hand in Hal's. He needed it. He needed the tangible reminder that even if this was about to get really, really horrible, he wasn't alone this time. There would be no days of wandering and hiding and wondering if his loved ones were even alive. He had a lifeline, even if all that lifeline could do was be there while everything was at its worst.

But that was better than nothing. The only thing worse than going through something horrible was doing it alone.

"Uuuh, this is the part where my Great Uncle Ford told the other yellow bad guy I know that he'd never join him," said Dipper, eyeing all the teeth and claws around them. He went on dryly, "Which was also the part where he got petrified and put into a giant throne of nightmares?"

He added thoughtfully, "I really like to think of myself as the kind of person who learns from the mistakes of others, so bad guy training it is! For some strange reason, I feel like you'll all have a much greater appreciation for all the horrible monstrosities I like summoning for my constructs, anyway."

Yep, time to join Team Evil. Until they could escape or get rescued, anyway.

Orrr until they died. He was really hoping it'd be the former.

[thethinzooline]

Welp.

Nick knew a deadly situation when he saw one. And like he did every time he found himself backed up into a corner, he shoved aside any other feelings he had, stuffed down whatever fear there was, and turned on the BS.

He held up both paws, managing to keep them from shaking through sheer force of will alone.

"I don't need a magnifying glass to see the writing on the wall. Count me in."

There had to be a way out of this -- they just needed to stay alive long enough for it to happen.

Hal and Sinestro

[wieldtherainbow]

As the others were dragged off to start their initiation, Hal finally got his moment alone to talk with Sinestro.

"You said we needed to talk. Then talk."

His expression made it clear he had at least noticed the urgency in Hal's voice, enough to understand that maybe it wouldn't be more of the same moral disagreements. This was an alien universe and perhaps there was something he truly needed to know.

[ringslinging]

One bright spot.

As frequently as Hal professed to be completely done with Sinestro, there was always still something, buried down deep, that was convinced that the man was redeemable. His intentions had been good, even if his methods were unacceptable. It wasn't sheer sadism that drove him, even if half his corps seemed to revel in it. He'd been willing to call temporary truces when there was a truly disastrous threat on the horizon.

Sure, blowing up Hal's planes and strangling him was apparently how he said hello, but he wasn't unwilling to listen to reason.

"There's something bigger out there that needs to be dealt with. I'm talking bigger than Krona. We let ourselves get dragged down with this -" A vague, emphatic handwave, encompassing the yellow base but really meant more to indicate everything. The yellows, the reds, this entire war.

"It's going to make the Blackest Night look like a tea party."

[wieldtherainbow]

Sinestro regarded Hal carefully, as if trying to figure out if this was meant to be some kind of trick. But then...that wasn't exactly Hal's style, was it?

Even after all this time, he knew that when it came down to serious things, when it was most important, Hal told the truth. And this did sound important. Vital.

"I'm listening."

He'd do that, at least. The tentative respect between them and his own desire for Hal to see things his way meant he could do no less.

[ringslinging]

"It's called Chronoblivion. Sentient universe. Eats other universes, gets more powerful with every one. And from what we've learned, once it eats this one -"

Hal shook his head. "That'll be the boost it needs to go after every other universe that exists. Ours included, naturally."

He eyed Sinestro as he said that, watching for his reaction. Sinestro was smart, and everything bad he'd done, regardless of Hal's disagreements, he did do in the pursuit of order. Order couldn't exist if nothing else existed. He had to see why this was so important.

PARKER - CONDITIONING

[leverageintceo]

The Yellow Lantern version of 'basic training' wasn't nice or fun or going to be something Parker wanted to remember too clearly, but she hadn't grown up in very nice places. Her impulse to stab that mark with a fork when he got too close and personal with her hadn't come from no where; and she had accepted hand-to-hand training from one of the best hitters in the business. Parker fought mean and dirty because she knew she needed to so that she could get out.

Unfortunately, getting out of basic training meant getting into conditioning, and nothing in Parker's life had prepared her for that.

Get out of my head,, she thought woozily, trying to bring her focus to bear so she could make it stop. It's my head. My head. Mine, not yours, mine, not yours, mine not yours mine mine mine mine mine mine--

[wieldtherainbow]

In this conflict, the Legion had seen six colors of the emotional spectrum. Love and compassion and hope and will all working together against rage and fear. But there was a seventh color they hadn't seen yet: orange, tied to avarice. Greed. The selfish desire to have more of something.

Back home, Parker brought hope to honest people in danger, but fewer honest people back home knew about her than criminals, and a lot of criminals feared her. But she didn't set out to cause fear. It wasn't something she sought, not like the sentients in the Sinestro Corps. But she was very familiar with greed. One might even say intimately so.

Just enough to call forth a spark of orange.

Unnoticed by the Sinestro Corpsmen trying to bend the woman from another Earth to their cause, that spark lit on her finger and transformed into a ring.

[PARKER, OF EARTH. YOU WANT IT ALL. WELCOME TO THE ORANGE LANTERN CORPS.]

[leverageintceo]

Parker threw her head back and screamed, screamed like it was coming all the way up from her toes, like someone being turned or just turning themselves inside-out. The Sinestro Corpsmen were thrown back in a wave of orange light as her black-and-yellow costume transformed into black-and-orange.

[CONFLICTING EMOTIONAL RESO--]

The yellow ring didn't so much fall to the floor as shoot off her finger in a second wave of orange light. Parker screamed again, flinging herself to her feet and surveying the room with glowing eyes.

"IT'S MINE!" she howled, and lunged.

[thethinzooline]

"What fresh new hell--oooo, that's new."

That was...different.

He wasn't sure if if it was bad different yet. But really, it couldn't be much worse than the yellows themselves were.

"Hey, hey. Hey Parker, about how crazy are you right now? Within tolerable levels?"

ESCAPE ATTEMPT/CONDITIONING

[captainbuzzkill]

After Nick and Parker's escape, the yellows moved to a new base, dragging Hal and Dipper with them.

Dipper was a mess after "basic training" but he'd survived it. Barely. (And only by digging into reserves of viciousness he didn't know were there.) He was brought before Hal, dragged along, barely able to stay on his feet, tossed into the little bubble they kept them in when they needed to keep an eye on them, usually in between stages of "training."

Dipper looked dazed as he stumbled in.

"I just choked out a tentacle beast," he said fuzzily.

[ringslinging]

They kept Hal's ring away from him, of course. The yellows were vicious, but they weren't stupid - or at least, not all of them were. That, however, did nothing about the fact that Hal retained some power in this universe without a ring to channel it. There might be a way out of this, but getting out of the bubble was only the first in a long line of things that needed to go right to get them out.

Hal was right there when Dipper made it in, supporting him to get him to the middle of the bubble and sitting down. "You look like hell, kid. So I'm assuming you gave them some." Dipper really was tough, for a kid his age. Hal had already seen that, so he didn't let himself consider the possibility that basic training would be enough to do him in. They might be in yellow now, but Dipper took to the green as naturally as anyone ever had.

Which was good. They were going to need that, to get out of this mess.

[captainbuzzkill]

"They said we're going to 'conditioning' next. Whatever that is."

Dipper leaned against Hal and stared at the bottom of the bubble, his expression miserable.

"This is my fault. If I hadn't taken that stupid yellow ring..."

If he'd kept his green ring, this wouldn't have happened. Hal wouldn't have taken a yellow to try to teach him a lesson (which boiled down to "don't take a yellow ring.") The recall functions wouldn't have trapped them.

Why hadn't he listened? Why hadn't he tossed the stupid thing away the moment he felt it making him more aggressive?

[ringslinging]

Hal slung an arm across Dipper's shoulders. "Hey. Don't start the blame game. You want to know about some colossal screw-ups, when we get out of here I'll tell you what I got up to when yellow got the better of me."

It was, to put it lightly, a doozy.

And while it was a story Hal wasn't fond of going into the particulars of, this was for a good cause, and considering that his past was at least somewhat known on Legion World, it was the kind of thing he'd rather people got straight from him than hear murky details of that left the rest to the imagination.

GREEN LANTERN BASE

[wieldtherainbow]

With the battle over and the captured reds and yellows handed over to the Science Police where they could be imprisoned until the greens, blues, violets, and indigos could return to their home universes with them, the Lanterns all headed back to the broken remains of Mogo and the green, violet, blue, and indigo power batteries.

The attack had been in civilized UP space, but they knew the bases of the reds and yellows had to be somewhere near the edges of the galaxy. While some of the more scientifically-inclined were working on a way to trace the yellows and reds so the Legion could retrieve their missing comrades, so far they weren't having any luck. All they could do was wait and hope a breakthrough was made or hope the reds and yellows somehow gave up their locations.

In the meantime, they had a chance to take a breather, regroup, and plan on what to do next.

[ooc: People with blue, green, violet, and indigo rings can thread here. This can be where some people perhaps attract new rings to switch to them or that can happen during the final battle itself.]

[nerdninja]

Donatello was pulling an all-nighter.

Omnicom in one hand, ring on the other, both scanning and projecting starmaps and spectrographic data in front of him. Eyes flicking rapidly between screens, making adjustments to both - with his powers and his mind, not manually. And occasionally, muttering something incoherent but clearly annoyed under his breath.

"There's got to be a frequency we can find them on."

[kingtyrantranger]

Jason, arm bandaged and uniform reformed over it but sans helmet, leaned in over Donny's shoulder, frowning at the information that was absolutely meaningless to him. "Couldn't we just take one of the rings off of the prisoners and trace them using that?"

For all he knew, they were already doing that. But he had to feel like he was contributing something. And, from what he knew of magic or science or whatever, power sources tended to be linked. Like the Power Coins and the Morphing Grid.

[nerdninja]

"It's a good idea, but two problems," Donnie said, a bit absently. The data scrolling along the screens slowed only slightly for him to give a bit of his attention to the conversation.

"One is whether we'd be able to get them to work in the first place. Aside from their search mode, when they're trying to find a new master, they only seem to be operable by someone with their chosen qualifications. Unfortunately, that means the people in our group best suited to them are all the ones who've been taken. If we can't get them to work, and none of them are in search mode, we don't have active energy readings to work with and definitely no access to whatever links them to the rest of the rings."

He paused, leaned in closer to squint at one of the readings...and frowned. Another dead end, apparently.

"The other problem is that if we can operate them, it'd be questionable whether the risk is worth it. The way the yellows all teleported out together - it looks like they've got some kind of recall function that lets their leader grab anyone wearing one at once. If that can be activated remotely, and if he's keeping an eye on which rings are active, we could lose someone else. And the red rings...well, I don't think we want anyone to put on one of those."

[wherenoonegoes]

"Does it have to be their rings?" Hiccup asked. He was definitely worried about Dipper, and while he knew Hal would look after the kid, he would feel much better if he was there himself.

"The Indigo rings can channel any of the colors as long as it's close enough to the right kind," he said with certainty, having jumped all over the spectrum during the battle, "can we use that to track them?"

THE BLACK RING EMERGES

[got_gud]

In the fallout of the earlier fight back at Cargg, two things had happened. The first was that one Alexander of Astora died as a result of his wounds during the battle.

The second was that an artifact of unspeakable evil was released: the last remaining ring of the Black Lanterns.

Sinestro, leader of the Yellow Lanterns, had kept this little surprise as an ace up his sleeve, should he need to cause chaos among the ranks of his enemies. Following the battle at Cargg, he released it for just such a purpose. Even a single Black Lantern could pose a significant threat, after all.

And so it was that the last Black Ring in all of existence streaked through the cosmos towards Cargg stopping only when it came upon the body of Alexander of Astora, almost eagerly settling on his finger.

[ALEXANDER, OF ASTORA. RISE.]

But as the ring began the process of reanimating Alexander, something unusual happened. After all, the Black Ring was never designed to raise a corpse that still had a soul within it, let alone the millions of souls the once Chosen Undead carried within him. But more than that, it had never attempted to raise any corpse filled with Humanity, fragments of the ancient Dark Soul, forever connected to and tainted by the Abyss, that ancient, hungering darkness.

It was this link to the Abyss that corrupted the ring even as the ring corrupted Alexander.

Black fire engulfed his body and he began to scream in agony, the ring and his Humanity battling for control. In the end, neither truly won. Instead, each corrupted the other, and in essence both the Ring and the Abyss took control of what was once Alexander.

In moments, his armor twisted into a new form, reminiscent of the ancient Darkwraiths of Alexander's world, and designed to strike fear into those foolish enough to stand against him. He looked down at his hand, black and red energies flickering like an obscene flame around his clenched fist.

He turned his head to the stars, to where the next battle would take place. As one, Alexander and the Ring both spoke.

[THE ABYSS HUNGERS.]

Without hesitation, he flew off into the cold darkness of space towards his next battle.

Soon, all would be Dark.

[OOC: The Ring would probably be picked up on the Legions and the various Corps' scanners, if anyone wants to react.]