Chapter XI: One Last Stand
Date: January 17th, 2031
Time: 8:32 PM
"I don't care what you have to do to find them, just do it!" Lantern roared, his eyes flaring with the rage so vast that even the Hulk would be positively green with envy (amongst other things). The others all cowered before him, fearing for their lives if they were to anger him any further. Lantern had been bad before, but now that Jetta was nowhere to be found he was a true force to be reckoned with. It was all Lucy could do to keep her machines running given the amount of power the lab was sucking up, let alone operating at maximum potential.
She had tried to explain to Lantern that there was only so much power for them to use. She had tried to explain that her machines, however efficient, were not infallible. She had tried explaining a hundred different things in a thousand different ways, but he would have none of it. With each new excuse, his expression would grow colder, his eyes grow steelier, and a cold shiver would run down her spine in fear of what he could do next. Even when he wasn't around, she could practically feel his breath glancing down her neck. It was an uncomfortable, ominous feeling.
"We're trying boss, but it's like they've vanished into thin air!" Voltwing tried to explain, cowering as Lantern sent a life-threatening glare his direction. If looks could kill, Lucy decided, they would all be dead ten times over.
"Well, the last time I checked, there was only one of them in their entire little posse who could do that. Do you remember any others Frost?" Lantern chided, creeping behind the lackey in question with no regard for personal space in his mind. Frost gave a nervous shake of the head in response. "I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. I asked, do you remember any others who could vanish into thin air, Frost?"
"No sir!" Frost stammered, shivering a bit out of sheer nervousness.
"And you Voltwing? Archangel? Remember anyone else?" Lantern continued, practically daring them to try something funny. Both shook their heads repeatedly, issuing responses at the speed of light to try and appease him. Lantern, however, was not appeased. "Well, Lucy here's machines got a lock on their location, didn't they Lucy?"
"They're not a hundred percent accurate," Lucy tried to explain, only to be cut off by a withering gaze from the former hero.
"I don't recall asking about their accuracy. What I asked was, did they have a lock on the location?"
"The joke shop on the edge of the Bronx," she spat, gritting her teeth in frustration.
"We checked that place twice boss, no one's there!" Voltwing pleaded.
"Well then find them!" Lantern roared, slamming his fist down on the table. Just as he did, the lights in the room began to flicker, even as a slight, crackling voice began to emanate from the speakers.
"You know JJ, if you really missed us that much, you could've called," Gwen taunted through the machine. Lantern's eyes widened in surprise, then immediately narrowed in fury as his shoulders began to tense.
"Lucy, prep the serum," he growled. Lucy's eyes widened at his order, laughing nervously in response.
"Um… JJ? I thought that was supposed to be a last resort type of-"
"I know what we said!" he roared, Lucy taking a step back in shock. "Prep the serum, now."
"I can't JJ, this isn't what we signed up for!"
"What did you think you were signing up for Lucy? One supervillain, one radical, one murderer? This is about sending a message, and she's blocking the transmission!"
"I can't Jack," Lucy stated flatly, staring directly in his eyes. "I can't."
Tension filled the air as the two stared each other down, Lantern's eyes narrowing as he took a step forward. "I'm going to give you one last chance to do as you're told. Prep the serum."
"Not happening," Lucy said coolly, placing herself between him and the machine in question. Silence filled the room, Lantern glancing between her and the machines.
"Fine," he remarked. "I'll do it myself." It was at that moment that a burst of green energy exploded out from his ring, and Lucy went crashing into the wall at the other end of the lab, slumping to the floor unconscious.
"Boss, we could use some help out here!" Voltwing yelled over the intercom, a massive flash of light shining through the window immediately after as the com-link crackled with static.
"I'll be out in a moment," Lantern responded, grabbing a reinforced vial from the nearest machine and slipping it into his pocket. "Just calling pest control about a little bug problem."
It was at precisely that moment that Lantern's legs were knocked out from under him, sending him sprawling to the ground as Rachel stood over him, a fire burning in her eyes. She was ready for battle this time, her gloves equipped with retractable, razor-sharp claws made of an unidentifiable metal. Her suit was a light-weight fabric armor – dusty silver in color – while her face was concealed by a darker gray ninja-style mask, her chocolate brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her belt was laden with tools of various styles, a whip attached to the left side. Lantern smirked at the ensemble, clearly not troubled by her appearance in the slightest as his ring began to pulse with his usual green energy.
"Someone's been making upgrades, haven't they? Does the bug know you carry around big-girl toys like that?"
"Unlike you, I prefer to use lethal force as a last resort," she growled, eyes narrowing. "Regardless, it is best to always be prepared isn't it?"
"Oh, I agree," Lantern remarked. "It's just that… I'm really not sure how prepared you are."
A concentrated ray of energy blazed forth from his right hand, but she easily sidestepped it, whirling around and retrieving a metal staff from her back as she slid into a fighting stance. Another beam fired at her head, which she slid under with ease, slamming the butt of her staff into Lantern's head and following up with a roundhouse kick directly in his temple. Lantern went reeling back, then materialized a pair of energy knuckles, ramming his fist directly into her face in kind. Rachel flew back from the blow, but back-flipped in midair, landing on her feet and firing three shurikens at his torso. A shield materialized and caught them with ease, dropping them to the ground harmlessly once the shield dematerialized. Harmlessly, that is, until they hit the ground and the attached mini-grenades exploded with enough force to blast him through the brick wall and into the street below.
He crashed into a parked car, denting the roof and rolling onto the concrete below. Rachel leapt down from the window with ease, her boots designed to cushion long-distance landings. Lantern struggled to his feet, a green hammer slamming down from above to crush her beneath it, but she dove out of the way just in time, grabbing a lid off of the nearby sewer grate and hurling it at him. It bounced off of his shield in midair, and he retaliated with several blasts of emerald energy. She sidestepped the first and ducked under the second, but the third hit her full force and sent her crashing backwards into a light-pole, her armor singed and smoking as she shook off the daze. She struggled to her feet, and lantern materialized a bus-sized green sledgehammer, hurling it directly at her. She had no time to sidestep and closed her eyes as the hammer came her way, only for Erik to teleport in and pull her away at the last second.
Lantern grimaced in distaste, then felt a massive tug at his back as he was hurled into the window of the building across the street, Gwen dangling from the traffic-light behind him. A bolt of lightning struck the pole, and she leapt off just in time, leaving the light fizzling and sparking in chaos as Voltwing streaked by, Sol soaring after him as his armor blazed with his heated aura. Frost slid down from the roof of the building across the road, materializing a sheet of ice a few feet in front of him with every step to skate into the mass, tackling Erik to the ground who proceeded to kick him off and roll to all fours, hands on a rapier on his side. Frost landed on his feet, sending a car-sized icicle towards the group at fifty miles an hour. It would have hit them full force, but a dumpster flew through the air and slammed into it, causing it to explode into a powdery snowfall, courtesy of Jetta.
Lantern flew out the window seconds later, grabbing Gwen and hurling her into the air, slamming her against the wall and ramming a fist into her side, receiving a quick knee to the gut in kind, followed by and elbow to the face. Down below, a blast or ice slammed into Sol, extinguishing the heat of his armor as Voltwing fired another bolt at Rachel, Jetta quickly intercepting and firing the electricity at Archangel as he dive-bombed Erik from above. Voltwing rushed at her to take her down physically, only to run smack down into a concealed van, hidden from his sight by another of Isaac's illusions.
Gwen tried to pull away from Lantern's grasp, but the grasp of his energy-fist was too strong. He began to pull the vial from his pocket, depositing it into a syringe and holding it in front of her. Her eyes widened, her spider-sense refusing to operate around the liquid. Only one time on earth had she experienced that, and that was around the liquid Vortex had injected to her all those nights ago.
"You recognize this don't you?" he smirked, rolling the syringe between the fingers of his free hand. "Took a while to reverse engineer the chemical from your bloodstream, but Lucy got the job done after I convinced her it was a 'necessary counter-measure'."
"You're not thinking straight Lantern," she croaked, barely able to speak through the hand squeezing her throat. "It's the Symbiote, it's making you do things that you would never do otherwise, you have to snap out of it!"
"We aren't doing anything except fulfilling our own desires!" Lantern roared, his eyes taking on a reddish tint as his veins began to grow darker.
"And who is we?" she muttered. "You and the voices in your head?"
"We are many," he growled, his eyes completely manic now, holding no trace of the Lantern she considered her friend. "We are stronger together."
"Stronger than who?"
"Than anyone!" he roared and pulled the syringe back, ready to inject it into her bloodstream. "And now you will be as weak as they are to match." He stabbed the syringe forward, when out of nowhere he was tackled to the ground, his hand wrenched off of Gwen's throat as he was hurled through the air directly into Archangel, who was just now getting to his feet. The figure responsible, a girl in bronze roman battle-armor, quickly picked up the car Lantern had dented previously, and threw it straight at Frost, who had been aiming a flurry of icicles at Jetta's head only seconds beforehand.
Jetta stared at the girl, her mouth open in shock as she began to blush uncontrollably, turning her face away. Gwen's eyes widened beneath her mask as she and Jetta had a silent conversation that ran something along the lines of: "Wait… you… with girls… really?" Jetta gave a non-committal nod of embarrassment, to which Gwen shrugged and leapt down, firing a net into the street below to catch Voltwing as he zipped down the street. Lantern tried to roll to his feet, only to be hoisted into the air, a blade held to his throat as Frost and the rest of Lantern's team quickly took several steps back, realizing their leader was defeated.
"You meddle in things you do not understand green one!" she barked, her eyes narrow. "Stand your ground or suffer the consequences."
"We don't believe we've met before, have we tried to kill you lately?" he asked, laughing despite the threat to his life. Clearly, he was too far gone to care.
"Not as of yet, but you have caused too much destruction to keep going unnoticed. Now I am going to give you one more chance to stand your ground," she responded coolly, applying a bit more pressure to the blade. Lantern only laughed in response.
"Absolutely. We'd love to. Only, you aren't really in a position to command us, are you?" he giggled, then his eyes rolled back in his skull and slumped back as a red ooze leapt off of his back and onto Jetta. She began to contort and roar in pain, her back arching until she let out a monstrous hiss, her eyes bloodshot and her green energy now red in coloration.
"Jetta?" Erik asked cautiously, only for Gwen to wave him back, standing stock-still in fear. Jetta rose to her feet, cocking her head to them with a malevolent gaze.
"No… not Jetta… not anymore," she rasped, clenching her fists.
"And who are you then?" Michael prompted, taking a step forward as his armor began to glow. Jetta chuckled and turned her gaze to each of them in kind before settling on Gwen, her eyes narrowing.
"We are Hybrid, and we will finish what we started."