Space was...dull...all things considered, she had no interest in floating lumps of rock or gas. But with the ring dragging her along, she had nothing to occupy her time. No sooner had she thought that then the red ring started playing a music box tune, one that made her eyes widen as she recognized it.
Lilium.
She had enjoyed the pretty tune. It was something her and Kouta had shared once, in the brief, happier times she had in her life. Now...as much as she treasured the song...it was like a wrecking ball to the gut. Hot tears ran down her face as her anger flared even higher. The memories leaving an ashen taste in her mouth as the self-loathing she felt after realizing she's poisoned her chances of a future where she and Kouta were together by listening to that damned Voice that urged her to kill everyone grew stronger.
The ring and the red light that came from it seemed to want to do everything in their power to piss her off, provoke her into aggression.
Lucy grit her teeth, if this damned ring was trying to piss her off, it was doing a good job of that! It was like this godforsaken, damned ring was reaching into her head and finding ways to make her anger worse!
She was SERIOUSLY tempted to cut her own hand off, and remove the ring along with it. But in response to her growing rage, the ring pulled her faster, as if attempting to flee.
That was when she saw that she was nearing a rather inhospitable-looking world.
Ok...she would REALLY need to work on the landings! Her whole body trembled as she emerged from the crater she'd made to look upon her location.
A rocky wasteland with poison fogs and hemorrhaging seas...
Looking around her, Lucy suddenly clutched at her head, hissing with outrage as she heard it. No! She heard her...again!
As the pain subsided, the horned girl's eyes widened and then looked at her surroundings with even more distaste. So...that damned Voice again...The voice of the entire Diclonius race. The DNA voice. Her killer instincts in manifest form. It only desired to kill all mankind and replace them with Diclonius. Her darkest desires, pleasures, and emotions...
And the DNA Voice actually liked this place?! Oh...that settled it! First thing when she found out a way how to pull it off, this lump of rock was getting blown to hell!
With a snarl, Lucy grit her teeth and threw her head back to let out a scream of outrage, but instead, a geyser of her own blood shot up from her mouth, the crimson fluid erupting into flames upon contact with the air, the crimson tower coming from her going up an impressive two thousand feet. Her senses screamed with the stench of burning flesh and something more acrid, yet she didn't care!
She hated this mess she was in, too! The ring which provoked her, this place her DNA Voice felt at home at, why was it everything that was good and made life worth living was denied to her?! What reason did the ever fickle whims of life have for keeping her from EVER being filled with anything but anger?!
WHY?!
Looking over the central power battery, Atrocitus noticed something.
A pillar of the plasma that a Red Lantern could vomit due to the internal rages' effect on the blood of the Corps members, and acted liked napalm and acid mixed together.
A beacon?
Then the sense of rage him like the shockwave from a bomb going off. Atrocitus winced and braced himself. This rage...what kind of life could contain such anger?! It felt absolutely undiluted. As if the being sending it out had never expected to receive any form of love, or even acceptance from others, and knew nearly nothing but cruelty, heartbreak, and anger!
Who was giving it off?! He had to know!
Flying off in the direction of the pillar of napalm, eager for this rage's source, Atrocitus' eyes widened as he drew closer and beheld an unfamiliar, yet unquestionably powerful, Red Lantern.
Landing before them, he bellowed as loudly as he could, "You! Who are you? What are you doing on the planet of Atrocitus?!"
She looked human, save the small horns made of a mixture of bone and cartilage on the parietal section of her skull and resembled cat ears from certain angles. Beyond that, only her dark pink hair and red eyes were unusual.
The shout got her attention, and she clamped her mouth shut, ending the torrent which had drawn the attention to her, in order to dully glare at the red-skinned alien before her.
"Keep staring and it'll cost you a limb." She said, her voice sterile and cold, bled dry of all feeling by hardship.
Atrocitus was shocked.
This girl...most Reds, especially newly made ones, were virtually rampaging, animalistic beasts with acidic napalm pumping through their veins. Upon taking the ring, members undergo a form of indoctrination, making them give into the rage and hatred in their hearts until it is all that they know, an all-consuming need for revenge and destruction, in turn taking over their minds. The Red ring replaces the heart of its bearer, rendering it useless. The blood spoils, and the ring expels it from the bearer's mouth in a vomit of violent rage. A Red Lantern's veins stretch as they fill with the liquid fire of the red light.
But this horned female was different. She was actually coherent!
"...The ring...it had no effect on your mind...?!"
The girl tsked, "This ring DID fuck with me, but just who do you think you're dealing with? I'm known as a casual serial killer with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Trauma shattered my mind a long time ago so damn bad, I don't even feel safe in my own head. Because of there being so many cracks in it, there were a lot of places for the red stuff to pass through without causing too many psychological problems. Now...Send. Me. Back."
"You dare give orders to Atrocitus?!" He thundered, addressing himself in the third person. The next instant, he was hit by what felt like a punch in the gut and was sent flying and crashed into the ground. As he landed, something grabbed him by the throat and clenched, making him struggle on instinct.
"...I got a score to settle..." she hissed, her posture hunched forward, almost animalistic, as she stared down her target from behind her hair as it shadowed her face, one eye glaring out from under it being all that could be seen; an aura, not unlike a wolf hunting prey coming off of her.
Halting in his struggles against whatever force the young woman was manipulating in order to strangle him, the survivor of the Massacre of Sector 666 stared. Then a dark, wicked smirk crossed his features. Ah. So that was it, was it? Heh...no wonder she was compelled to return to where she had been before...
"You were pulled to Ysmult just as you were going to hunt down and have vengeance on those who wronged and enraged you. I see...in that case, allow me to accompany you to ensure the vermin is unable to flee."
She stopped, considering. Backup to make sure that her enemies couldn't get away, huh?
"...Fine." Lucy said, withdrawing her vectors from him, "But get in my way, even accidentally, and you're just another lump of dead meat for me to shred apart. Got it?"
Far from threatened, the alien nodded, fully pleased. "Of course. I would expect no less from a Red Lantern, our vengeance must be utterly pitiless."
Lucy shrugged, utterly pitiless, huh? That'd be easy enough for her to do. "Call it vengeance, call it justice...either way, I don't give a shit, I just want my enemies dead. And I don't care who I need to go through to do it. Even if they're on my side."
Atrocitus nodded, pleased at that as he rubbed his throat while he stood up. It seemed he'd been granted a dangerously overqualified lieutenant by the Red Light.
Oh, he realized he would need to be very careful around her, but that was a given about any of the Red Lanterns. The Red Light was uncontrollable violent action with no consideration of consequence, after all. And the way she's admitted to being a casual serial killer with Dissociative Identity Disorder...before the death of his Sector, he had trained to be a psychologist because he wanted to help people. Because of that, he understood what she was saying. He was aware of how dangerous she was. A casual killer, a serial killer...all with a trauma-shattered mind...good thing she'd been imprisoned and hidden away from the populace at large. If this girl had become one of Thaal Sinestro's Corps, even Atrocitus might have dreaded her. Yet now, he welcomed her nature. She was indeed the best choice as a second-in-command, an ideal weapon for which he would exact his revenge on the self-proclaimed "Guardians" of Oa.
Feeling something twist around her ankles, Lucy looked down and saw a Russian Blue cat seemingly trying to gain the attention and affection of the Queen Diclonius. Lucy spared the cat a glance as it hissed at her, then with a thought, it exploded in a burst of gore.
"...prefer dogs..." she said simply, then walked off.
Scowling, the leader of the Red Lanterns watched her go. This was why he had most of the others in the Red Lanterns mindless and as little more than weapons. Weapons were supposed to be dumb. You give a weapon a mind, and all of a sudden, you had to convince it to do what you wanted, that wasn't what Atrocitus needed.
"Hold!"
With dismissive contempt, a vector shot out and the psychokinetic limb clamped onto his ring hand and started to crush the limb. "I told you, I have a score to settle. You're getting in the way."
Honestly frightened at the concept of the loss of his ring—as it assumed the functions of the heart, a Red Lantern cannot remove their ring without risking death—the last of the Ryutt felt a stab of panic, he couldn't die yet! He still had to kill the Guardians of Oa for what happened to his world and sector!
"Before you go and claim your rightful vengeance, I wish to see how proficient you are with your abilities and the ring!"
The pressure on his arm didn't release, but it did lessen at that.
Lucy scowled at having to wait to bathe in the blood of her enemies, yet still...recalling how she'd needed to get used to her own vectors after those first murders in the Little Miracles' Orphanage, she supposed that the red hulking berserker needed to see her limits with this red ring added onto her abilities as a Diclonius. Not unreasonable, especially with how dangerous she was before the ring found her. Stopping, she considered that point a moment. A field test for what she could do now, huh?
"What do I need to do?" She said, her vector letting go and retracting as she turned to the alien.
"Cold science and cruel blood magic are what was mixed to form this ring." Atrocitus informed her, holding up his fist as his own ring glowed brightly for an instant. "Enter the Blood Ocean of Ysmult. I will show you one with which you shall make a statement of in regards to the Red Lanterns' power. One of the heroes that permits wrongs to fall upon those such as ourselves in order to give themselves meaning, my dear."
Lucy snorted. Heroes?! Ha! Those were non-existent as far as she was concerned! If they had, then why hadn't any helped her before murder became second nature to her?!
Atrocitus nodded, sharing her feelings.
Looking at it how an ordinary, defenseless person saw things, it was clear that, to a "hero", it was all nothing but just a game. Catching the bad guys, them escaping, killing a few hundred innocents, and then the "good guys" catching them again. But as an ordinary human, how do you see the situation when the bad guys break out of prison and start killing again? And for what?! The people the "heroes" stupidly risked their lives to protect every day had no qualms about murdering others in cold blood for the most petty and pathetic of reasons!
That was why only fools were heroes, morality was a delusion, and laws were nothing but words! That was why the Red Lanterns existed for: Not heroics, but bloody retribution, to do what the "heroes" didn't want to do and kill those that deserve to be killed!
Yes, Atrocitus understood the way the Diclonius felt about heroes...
"...If this turns out to be a trick to control me or a waste of my time, I kill you instead." she warned, then waded into the crimson liquid around the barren stone, not even bothering to close her eyes or plug her nose as she went under completely.
Above the surface, the only other coherent Red Lantern plunged the hand with his ring on it into the Blood Ocean, eager to see what his shamanistic hemokinesis would lead this new member to prove her worth to the Red Lantern Corps.
Meanwhile, as she waited for something to happen, a blue and red clad, muscular male figure appeared within Lucy's mind. Then a name, an alias, really: Superman.
She gripped her skull as it pounded, her mind being filled with information on the being—a Kryptonian, she learned due to the information being injected into her mind—and while she couldn't d most of it, there were bits that her mind did snatch and compare her own life to. And what she immediately understood caused her to snarl as the entire ocean of blood started to boil from the force of her anger.
*Superman grew up with loving foster parents who accepted him no matter what; Lucy grew up in an orphanage where she was tormented endlessly until she snapped and killed people.
*The things that differentiate Superman from humans were Super Strength, Flight, Super Speed, Super Durability, Super Senses, X-ray vision and heat vision, and Super Breath; the things that differentiate Lucy from humans were just her horns, vectors, eye and hair color.
*Superman found acceptance as a hero; Lucy had everything blow up in her face whenever she tried to do good.
*Superman was inhuman due to being an alien from another plant; Lucy was inhuman due to a mutation she was born with despite being born to humans.
The more she thought about it, the angrier she became...that damned Kryptonian...why was it fortune favored him so much?! Why did he get that kind of life?!
Well, whatever his power or combat prowess, Lucy could bypass Superman's durability since she could use her vectors to do things like influence heart attacks and damage arteries in the brain. And vectors could not be seen, touched, or otherwise acted upon by outside forces, aside from by other vectors. And anatomy-wise, Kryptonians were identical to humans, just more sturdy. And what living creature could keep internal damage from affecting them? While Kryptonians were powerful organic lifeforms, they were not immoral, and could still be hurt. And Lucy was good at hurting others. Magic, she learned, was also another Achilles' Heel for him, as the Kryptonian's dense molecular structure and bio-electric aura was not able to naturally defend him against it. And Artocitus had pointed out that science and magic were mixed to form the power rings of the Red Lanter Corps.
With a scream of utter envy and loathing, the horned young woman shot into the air, jealous rage fueling her as she set her sights on the distance and zoomed off, a sonic boom in her wake as her anger-powered flight took her in the direction of Space Sector 2814.
Alone now on the world of the Red Lanterns as far as any other thinking creature went, Atrocitus gathered up the remains of Dex-Starr, and put them to use for his blood magic castings taught to him eons ago by the demon Inversions Qull, Roxeaume, Dal-Xauix, and Orphram to see what his lieutenant was capable of.
And as he sacrificed the blood of the dead feline, he was answered as to her abilities. As he looked over what his castings showed him, he rose a brow.
So...that horned girl used a form of telekinesis known as "vectors", did she? Looking over the rest of the information his blood magic showed him.
For simplicity's sake, it was easy to think of the vectors as invisible arms which seemingly sprout from Lucy's back. While these vectors resembled hands, they could not be seen, touched, or otherwise acted upon by outside forces, aside from other vectors; and they could manipulate objects, act as shields by decelerating projectiles, and slice through things, giving them the potential to be massively destructive if used offensively.
She cold sprout up to twenty-eight psychokinetic vectors at once, and the typical length of them was seven feet long. As well as controlling their length, she could also manipulate their width to expand to at least one mile wide.
When she really pushed her limits, her vectors could reach up to 2, 464.4 miles in twenty seconds; up to 440,000 miles per hour, over five hundred times the speed of sound. And could strike with approximately 31,000 tons of TNT and was literally compared to nuclear fusion in terms of the sheer explosive energy the kinetic force they could generate.
And all of that was without the red ring as a factor...
Atrocitus stared, before he suddenly the back his head and laughed cruelly. A fittingly, dangerously overqualified lieutenant and an ideal weapon for which he would exact his revenge on the self-proclaimed "Guardians" of Oa, indeed! By Ryutt...what had he done by creating this type of monster?!
"Good hunting, my right hand of destruction!" The last of Space Sector 666 declared, looking in the direction the outraged female had taken off in, a malevolent smirk on his face.