[ 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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A single, slim tentacle extended as Ratchet awoke from his period of dormancy. While a lot of the Red Lanterns didn't sleep, too fueled by their rage and too maniacal to enter a contemplative state. Ratchet, however, was... well, he was different. He was damaged. Of all those in the Red Lantern Corps, those who had suffered, those who had been hurt, even those who had been mutilated (Bleez came to mind), none had suffered the sort of permanent damage that Ratchet had. Not been permanently shifted to an entirely different sort of creature.
Ratchet pushed aside the glowing, acidic red plates that made up his shell, guarding his frail, tiny body while he rested. He was big when he was wearing his armor – looked big, anyway, with his massive head and long tentacles – but beneath the red-light exoskeleton that he frequently wore, Ratchet was tiny. His brain alone was larger than his body and limbs combined, and after the damage he had sustained at the hands of his own people, even that tiny body was deformed and weak, crippled. Without the ring he couldn't walk or move, and it was only the ability to fly and use constructs that allowed the tiny, intellectual alien to function at all.
He took a deep, rasping breath as his shell opened, and quickly created a small rebreather to fit over his tiny, cherubic face. Lifting up into the air, the shards of his shell formed into a sort of scarlet armor, a high-tech system of tubes and hard, segmented plates that covered his pitiful figure. It was as much life-support as it was combat defense... even with the red energy replacing his circulatory system, he needed it. He needed all he could get.
Feeling out around him with his tentacles, Ratchet started speeding through the air, heading towards the Blood Ocean. As one of the top three most intelligent members of the Corps beside Bleez and Atros himself, though not as powerful as either of them, Ratchet was often given the “tricky” jobs that he could handle outside of his personal cycle of rest. Most of these jobs, unfortunately, involved Veon – Atrocitus was too busy himself to deal with the feral violet freak and he needed someone who was both clever enough to handle him, and... damaged enough, to have insight into Veon's pain. Ratchet was a natural choice.
He found Veon in the kennels, still breathing deeply and covered with alien blood after having been taken out on a “training mission” with Razer and another undipped recruit. That big, blank black eye turned to Ratchet, and all he could see was madness. Whether Veon had been psychotic before whatever event had attracted the red ring would be an important part of curing him, but so far Ratchet had made very little progress. Repeated dips into the Blood Ocean seemed to enrage Veon further, leading to a few dangerous “incidents” that Ratchet had been harshly reprimanded for.
“You have so much pain,” Ratchet whispered in a soft, warbled voice that was partially smoothed by the machine over his face, leading to an almost robotic monotone. Plasma dripped from Veon's mouth, but the stare remained fixed, unchanging. “Just let me cure you.”
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