[ Written by Joygirl. Plotted by Joygirl and Avenging_X_Bolt. ]
For the rest of WotRL, future updates, and a glance at the full roster, check out (and make sure to recommend!) the Wrath of the Red Lanterns user list, which will be acting as the library and central hub for this title!
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Veon struggled against his bindings endlessly, spluttering plasma and snarling, his single massive eye bulging and bloodshot with rage. He never calmed down. He couldn't calm down. He was incapable, physically, of feeling anything less than the most intense frenzy – there was no hope of him simmering down or acting rationally, no hope of reasoning with him. He couldn't be told that everything was okay because nothing would ever be okay again, not for him. Not for the purple, frothing alien that Ratchet now carried behind him in a hardlight straightjacket, within a hardlight cage, at the end of a hardlight chain. Not for Veon. Never for Veon.
His cage landed on the lumpy, dust-carpeted surface of Ysmault with a clunk, and Veon spluttered, letting out a crazed scream and slamming his head against the cage. Hard, herbivorous teeth locked and crunched around the bars, trying to rip them away. His body squirmed against the jacket, little rips appearing in it as he tried to burst it with the strength of his body alone.
As Bleez, Guy Garder, Arisia, and Tomar-Re landed lightly on the surface, the colored trails behind them already fading, Ratchet tended to the slobbering alien, placed under his charge by Atrocitus. He had been tasked with curing Veon, making him better. He'd kept him in this cage for so long now, tried sedating him. Tried... tried everything. And....
“I have done you a disservice, my ring-brother,” Ratchet whispered, turning his tiny eyes to the other three lanterns before acting. He waited for them to move into the citadel at the helm of the Blood Ocean, waited until he was out of their sight. “I have done you an injustice – and it is one I shall now remedy, no matter the cost to myself.”
Ratchet exhaled, and adjusted the crimson construct containing the frenzied alien. The back wall of the cage opened, the construct extending into a long, wide chute that led away from Ysmault, led back into space. With a solemn wave of one tentacle, he dissolved Veon's straightjacket, and the creature shot out of the cage like a bullet, following his predetermined pathway along the chute. Within a second he had broken out of the atmosphere and was back in the cold harshness of space, where he belonged. “Be free."
Now, Veon was responsible for himself. For his vengeance and his survival. No longer bound by the Corps. If he could regain his freedom and his mind in enough time to recharge his ring, then Ratchet would have saved his soul. If not....
Ratchet didn't like to think about that.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
“You don't belong here, Gardner. You never did,” Bleez growled as she led the ragtag team of green lanterns towards the Citadel of Ysmault. Ratchet seemed to have wandered off with Veon, which was for the best. It wasn't like Bleez was particularly afraid of these three, she'd fought most of them before.
“Ya certainly got better at the whole “talking” thing, huh redwing?” Guy snarked, looking around around him as he walked on behind with his distinctive swagger. “You guys sure fixed the place up, too. I dig the palace.”
“I was a different person when you knew me. I hadn't been blessed by the Blood Ocean, then. I was mindless, crazed. Probably why I let you live for as long as I did.” The havanian woman folded her wings against her back as she walked into the citadel – a dismal place running with rivers of blood, built around the Red Power Battery – her eye out for Atrocitus.
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Guy snorted. “And whaddya mean I never belonged here? I was a Red just like the rest of you goons.”
Bleez paused, then turned, a thin brow arched. She took a step back towards the human man, her full height easily equaling his. “It is only Atros's fascination with your... kind... that allowed you to attract a ring. I have tasted your pain and rage, and it never matched the True Rage that should be experienced by a Red Lantern. You never experienced complete loss. Pain that destroys your very being, so intense that it devours the person you ever allowed yourself to be. You're pathetic, a pretender. You always were."
“Hey! That ain't true, and you know it! My best friend died in my arms!” Guy stepped towards the winged woman, pointing one finger in her face so closely that it nearly touched her nose. Arisia stepped back cautiously, while Tomar-Re set one gentle hand on Guy's shoulder.
“Don't do this, Guy....”
“...That's it?” Bleez's eyed widened briefly, genuinely stunned for a few seconds. She then let out a peal of maniacal laughter. “Your friend died? Your friend died?! Hahaha!” The havanian cackled with delight, making a buffoonish face and imitating Guy's voice to further mock him. “'My friend died in my arms! Oohoohoo, boo hoo, I'm so angry, rawr!'”
“Oh yeah? That's so funny? What happened to you, then, redwing?!”
“I was raped!” Bleez roared, grabbing Guy's coat with one clawed hand and holding him up. “For days! I was mutilated, tortured! I had my mother slaughtered in front of me! They beat me, cut me, crushed my wings between taking their turns with me! Your friend died? I'm so sorry!” Red plasma trickled down from Bleez's lips, spluttering from between her fangs. “Peoples' friends die every day, and they don't attract a red ring! There's not a single special thing about you.”
She casually tossed Guy aside, who was promptly caught by a green-light sofa from Tomar-Re. “Where is Atrocitus?!” Bleez bellowed, turning and walking back through the citadel.
A cough came from one of the citadel's wings, the “barracks,” and the little fleshy blob called Zilius Zox floated towards the quartet, a sheepish look on his face. “He's gone,” the round, thick creature rasped. “He left this morning.”
Bleez turned from the three green lanterns, back to Zilius. “Who did he leave in charge then? Where's everyone else?”
“He didn't–” Zilius paused, then coughed again. “He, um. He left Razer in charge.”
“Razer?” Bleez echoed, her face blank. “That's nonsense. Very well, where is Razer?”
“He, Laira, and Skallox are off-planet. Tamaran, I think they said."
Bleez folded her arms beneath her breasts, turning away from Zilius and back to Guy and his companions. “Well, you know what that means, right?”
Arisia shuffled her feet slightly, speaking for the first time since arriving on Ysmault. It was her first visit to the place and it didn't exactly make her feel welcome. “We have to wait for him or Atrocitus to return?”
“Wrong.” Bleez snarled. “It means that I'm in charge.”
“Atrocitus was very specific abou–” Zilius tried to interrupt, only to have his mouth entirely wrapped up with red-light bandages.
“Be silent, Zilius.” Bleez turned back to the green lanterns. “Now, why did you come here?”
Still somewhat staggered from being tossed by Bleez, Guy dusted himself off, more as a gesture than out of any real necessity. Rage brimmed with him, sizzling at being manhandled this way, at being... what was the word... invalidated. Yeah, that was it. Bleez had invalidated his pain and his loss. Even if he had Kyle back now....
There was a nearly-silent hum from the power battery in the center of the citadel, and with a thought, energy formed into a red ring that started zipping towards Guy Gardner, destined for his finger. The human man turned towards it, a hesitant grin spreading across his face as he reached out for it –
– Only for it to be snatched out of the air by one of Bleez's clawed hands. She gave a dry look to Guy and crushed it between her fingers, shaking her head. “If red rings came so easily to everyone else as they did to you, every impudent toddler who didn't get his way would be a Red Lantern.” She let the pieces slip between her fingers onto the floor, then continued as if nothing had happened. “Now, why did the three of you come here?”
Tomar-Re was quick to step forward. This already hadn't been going well, and if it wasn't patched up soon, someone might not end up going home. “We came to inquire about a pirate freighter that was blown up not long ago. Debris from the ship killed a great deal civilians from a nearby planet, we simply wanted to inquire about what the Red Corps had to do with the event before taking action.”
“A simple answer. We were feeding the Battery with the blood of the guilty – those pirates and slavers. They had some form of technology that we had not expected, something powerful, that captured one of our own. We had to destroy the ship to free him.” Bleez tapped a fingertip to her crimson lips. “We have an away team seeking out the source of this little glitch so that it doesn't happen again.”
“It'd better not...” Guy growled. Bleez's sizzling yellow eyes turned to him, and her ring began to pulse.
“Guy, why–” Arisia attempted to interject. It was far too late.
The havanian Red Lantern swept forward, ramming her claws into Guy's chest and lifting him into the air, flying up alongside him and tilting him down so that she was above him. The human reacted quickly, summoning an emerald construct – a massive fist – and swinging it at Bleez. She shattered it with her free hand, then yanked Guy's head back. He opened his mouth to scream, and Bleez shot a thick column of scarlet plasma down his throat with a cacophonous gushing sound.
For a moment, just a moment, Guy Gardner's world became pain. The brief loss of Kyle Rayner now seemed like only a hiccup in his life. Everything that had ever happened, everything bad, seemed to pale in comparison to this singular, all-consuming sensation. His skin began to pulse crimson, veins glowing intensely before sizzling away. His eyes bulged, became bloodshot, and then burned from his skull. His green ring pulsed, then faded, then slipped off of his finger.
There was silence.
[ Green Lantern of Sector 2814 deceased. ]
Guy's corpse collapsed onto the floor of the citadel, minor limbs like his fingers, toes, and nose crumbling away into dust. The green ring sped away, away from Ysmault and into open space, seeking out its new wearer.
“Enough of him,” Bleez growled, settling her feet back onto the floor and turning to the other two lanterns. “Now, unless there was something else the two of you wanted, go back to Oa. You aren't needed here.”
“I...” Tomar-Re began, then fell silent.
Arisia swallowed the lump in her throat, and spoke. “We want Laira's body. She deserves a decent burial.”
Bleez tilted her head to the side. “Body? Ah. I suppose she must not have... visited you, before returning to Ysmault. Laira is alive and well. She bears the red ring, and it is not so easy to release its servants into the afterlife.”
Arisia gasped silently for a moment, then closed her mouth solemnly, nodding. Both she and Tomar-Re turned their eyes to Gardner's body.
“His corpse belongs to me.” Bleez said firmly.
The two green lanterns nodded. There was silence as they lifted off their feet, drifting away, out of the citadel and off of Ysmault. Bleez inhaled through her nose, then turned to Zilius Zox, who remained silent behind her. “What?”
“Nothin',” Zox said quickly as the red wrappings vanished from over his mouth. “That was just super badass, is all.”
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Hours had passed. Bleez had caught sight of neither Ratchet, nor Atros, nor the away team. Besides Zilius furiously masturbating in the other wing of the citadel, Bleez was alone with her pain. She shifted on her cot, exhaling and laying on her side, now. In her anger she had not considered what her actions may bring about, but she had to consider it now. She had killed a Green Lantern, a Green Lantern of Earth no less. It had felt fantastic, delicious even.
But she had not heard the last of the consequences. Guy Gardner's death would bring enmity, perhaps even war, with the Green Lantern Corps. Atrocitus would blame her for it, and rightly. No other lanterns but Zilius would take her side, and his word meant nothing. Even worse, she had chosen a time when the Red Corps was divided and weakened.
“Prr?”
Bleez opened her eyes, looking around for the familiar red glow of Dex-Starr's red ring. “Mew,” the tiny blue creature said, crawling onto Bleez's cot and into her arms.
“Hey, Dex,” she whispered. “I was wondering where you'd gotten off to.”
Bleez do good.
“Yeah?” she snickered. “You always were a crazy one, weren't you?”
Dex nuzzled up to the havanian woman, pressing his soft, fluffy body against her chest. Not crazy. I good kitty.
“Yeah, Dex, you're a good kitty.” Bleez folded her arms around the little blue cat and kissed his forehead, closing her eyes again.
“Prrrrrrrr.”
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