Text

"Ring Speaking"

"Telepathy"

"Dialogue"

"Dialogue in a language I can't understand."

Breaks…..

Chapters in this story will be named after Sum 41 songs

Chapter 2: Underclass Hero

Day 1

Once I was able to get my bearings I noticed that I was extremely cold and I am in a sea of darkness. The only light is the faint glow of the blue ring on my right hand and an even fainter glow on the blue suit that now covered my body.

I should probably get some answers. I raise my right fist to my face and whisper "Uh... Ring? Where am I?"

"You are in the land of Death, you need only wait until Death notices that you are still alive and you will be returned to the mortal realm," the Ring replies.

"Death? Like scary spooky skeleton Death or the cute goth girl that is Death of the Endless?" I ask.

"Cute Goth Girl?" a feminine voice questions from behind me.

"Oh crap," I mutter under my breath.

I turn around and see a teenage girl with black hair, black clothes, pale skin, a silver Ankh necklace. When I meet her gaze I also notice that the skin around her right eye looks like it has been painted to make it look like an Eye of Ra.

She looks slightly younger than she did in the comics, maybe she is trying to seem more approachable by looking closer to my age?

Because I can't really think of anything else to do or say (Meeting Death right after talking to what might have been God tends to do that to a guy) I just lift my hand in a slight wave and say "Hi I'm Jon."

She just nods her head and says "Nice to meet you but it seems that you already know who I am and that is very, very unusual."

I don't think that she is trying to be intimidating, I think she is just curious. But she is Death so I am pretty nervous.

"Uh… yeah, I'm a pretty unusual guy…" I reply.

"Yes you are, not only do you know who I am and what I look like, but you are also a living person in the land of me. Also, you look a Blue Lantern and those don't exist," as she is saying this she walks closer and closer to me, by the end of the sentence she is right in front of me.

This world is probably pre-war-of-light if I am the only Blue Lantern, I guess that makes me Blue Lantern 0001?

I should probably just tell her the truth, sure she is Death but in the comics she seemed like a pretty okay person.

"Well, a shiny dude with mystical powers took me from my original universe, gave me this ring, and brought me here. The reason I know who you are is because in my world you are a comic book character," I reply.

You wouldn't think that anything could shock Death, but this does. She blinks her eyes in surprise and says "I didn't think he would ever do something like this."

"You know who he is? Is he God? Not like Ares or Thor God but the big G.O.D.?" I ask.

"As far as I know, yeah," She replies.

"Woah," I state.

She chuckles and says "Woah indeed."

She takes a step back from me and does a quick pirouette and says "Jon, even though you seem like a nice kid you can't stay here. I'll send you back to the material realm, free of charge. Where do you want to go?"

She waves her hand and some sort of magic hologram of the earth pops up, then she gestures for me to touch it. It reacts almost like a 3-dimensional version of Google Earth. I give it a spin for fun. Then I zoom, out. I zoom out so much that I can see the moon, zoom out some more and I can see the whole solar system. An idea starts forming in my mind.

"So I can go anywhere right? I ask.

"Yep."

"Okay," I lift my ring up again and said, "Ring, if I were to be dropped off in the asteroid belt would I have enough power to mine an asteroid and head Earth?"

"Yes if you conserve as much power as possible you will be able to complete these objectives with an estimated 23% power remaining," The ring replies.

That sounds a little pathetic, the Green guys can fly across the damn galaxy and not even break a sweat. Well, the emotion powering them is probably stronger.

"Hey, Death, can you put me right next to the asteroid with the most gold and platinum in the whole belt?" I ask.

If I'm going to be fighting a bunch of supervillains I'm going to need money, money to get a base, buy equipment, buy food, and maybe even hire some help. Considering I have a power ring with no moral restrictions on it I can actually use it for personal gain.

"Sure thing kid, see you in about 65.7 more years!" She says as she raises her hand.

Before anything happens I blurt out "Wait! I have a couple of requests before you send me back."

"Such as?" She questions.

"Well, there are a few things that I want to be able to say even under the influence of things like Wonder Woman's lasso, honestly just stuff to make me sound cool. Stuff like "I stared into Death's eyes and Death blinked first, I've danced with Death, I've cheated Death." I answer.

She agreed and over the next few minutes we had a staring contest that she let me win, we danced a little bit and she let me cheat and win at a game of rock-paper-scissors. It was kind of fun, if not completely ridiculous.

"Anything else?" She asked.

"No, I think that's it," I reply.

"See you around then," She says as she lifts up her fist to "fist pound" (Oh yeah, it's 2009).

When our knuckles touch she seems confused.

"Something wrong?" I ask.

"No… nothing. It's just that normally when I touch mortals the skin where I touch them temporarily turns all black and "me" like," She answers.

I think for a second and say "Huh, maybe it has something to do with how I was brought to this world?"

"Maybe…. Anyways! Goodbye! Oh, if you see Dream tell him I say hello and that he should visit!" She says this and waves her hand.

The world fades to black again.

…..

When I get my bearings this time I notice that the world is still black, but the darkness is interrupted by a seemingly infinite number of stars, some of the planets, and to my right is a giant asteroid.

"Ring, I'm in space right?" I ask.

"Correct," the ring replies.

"Nice."

…..

Using the ring I slowly float to the asteroid I make my ring scan it and find the biggest gold vein that is close to the asteroid's surface. With my mind, I imagine a jackhammer. The first attempt shattered the moment the jackhammer touched the asteroid, but after a moment of concentration and a little bit of pumping myself up, I was able to form my first construct.

After an hour of jackhammering I picked up a ton of gold chunks that were worth about 65 million dollars and put them in a subspace pocket that my ring told me I had, an action which conveniently cost almost no energy. (And I do mean a literal ton, apparently, that asteroid had several trillion dollars worth of gold and platinum on it.)

After that, I started flying back to Earth a trip which took me another two hours.

During the trip, I asked the ring a few questions.

"Where is my Lantern?"

"In the subspace pocket."

"Do I have an oath?"

"You can use the regular Blue Lantern Oath for now, but due to how little those words mean to you it will only be 35% effective. You will need to make a more personal Oath for a more efficient recharge."

"How will the whole villains from Marvel thing work?"

"Villains from that world will show up on Earth without any warning or knowledge of who they are. There will be a total of 12 of them with a 13th that is not going to be from any universe you know. However, the first person you will fight is an exception to the rule as I have been given some knowledge of him."

"What can you tell me about him?"

"He is a mutant name Daken who has bonded with the Carnage symbiote, they are both-well known mass-murderers from their native universe. He will arrive will arrive in 4 days, 18 hours from now somewhere in the North-Eastern United States."

"Alright, so I'll need to stay away from his pointy claws, keep him away from civilians, and bring some fire and sonic attacks."

"That seems like a viable option, but first I would suggest trying to get some training in. You are not combat ready."

I don't want to admit it but he is right, but where could I get some experience before fighting a big baddy? Probably in Gotham considering it's reputation for violence and crime.

"Ring, set a course for Gotham!" I yell heroically.

"You don't need to yell for me to register your commands, you don't even have to say them verbally. I can be communicated with telepathically."

"Oh, okay. I mean. Oh, okay," I say, first verbally, then with my mind.

…..

As I approach Gotham with the help of my ring I can see that it is in Southern New Jersey and that Metropolis is to the North, relatively close to New York. They all show up in a sort of H.U.D. that my ring provides.

I slow down as a reach the city limits and drift in between the buildings, I asked my ring to adopt a stealth mode so now I am no longer glowing. I check my energy and I have a 21% charge left.

That's when I hear a woman scream "Somebody! Please help me!"

I look below and see a man running with a purse that he stole from a visibly upset woman. It's probably a bit cliché but I guess I have to start somewhere.

I fly down in front of him and say "Hey, stop dickhead."

He grinds to a halt, and in a panicked voice says "Hey now, I don't want to deal with a superhero! Please don't break my face!"

Since these guys have Batman guarding their city I'm sure that most of the petty criminals have learned that it is easier to just give up immediately when a superhero is involved instead of getting the shit beaten of them by a man in spandex.

"Alright, drop the purse and follow me," I say to him.

He does as I ask and drops the purse, the woman he stole it from picks it up and wacks him over the head with it a few times.

"Ring, where is the nearest Police Officer?" I ask.

"There is an Officer just around the corner, I will set a destination now."

After I handed the purse thief over to the Officer he seemed surprised that there was a non-bat-themed superhero in Gotham. I told him that I was just passing through and I flew off.

…..

After a few hours of beating up various criminals and handing them over to the police, I was starting to get the hang of basic construct creation. Sure they were pretty weak but they worked on normal people just fine. I definitely don't want to get in a fight with a metahuman yet.

It's starting to get dark and I realize that I haven't figured out a place to sleep yet. I can't exactly show up at a hotel with hunks of gold and it would be pretty rude to show up to Wayne Manor and just ask if I can sleep over right after I meet them.

Maybe I can go on a roof and make a bed construct for tonight?

I've noticed that by now I am in one of the nicer districts of Gotham, I fly onto the roof of an expensive looking building and notice that a good amount of it is glass, if I look through it I can tell that there is a swimming pool. I guess the roof is glass so they can let the sun in while they swim.

While I'm looking through the glass I can also see my reflection and I notice something odd.

I'm not wearing glasses.

"Ring, why am I not wearing glasses and why can I see without them?"

"When you were first brought to this world some minor changes were made to prepare you for your new crime-fighting lifestyle. This is nothing that you wouldn't be able to do if you had sufficient hope powering your ring."

"What "changes" were made?" I ask nervously, I feel like there should be certain consent forms to be signed for this sort of thing.

"Only two for now, you now have perfect vision and your athleticism has been improved."

That's when I look down and notice the six-pack. After that, all of my ethical concerns vanish.

While I am flexing and admiring myself in my reflection I hear a feminine voice call out from behind me "I knew heroes where self-obsessed egomaniacs, but even this is going overboard."

Crap.

It happened again.

Quick think of something!

I turn around and say "I was just… testing my new suit! Yeah! It's uh... new and I was seeing if it… moved well… while I was… flexing…"

After I turn around I realize who caught me, its Rose Wilson, A.K.A. Ravager, A.K.A. One Eyed Wilson 2 (Electric Boogaloo).

Her costume looks pretty similar to the one she has in Teen Titans Go, but thankfully she looks like a normal human being, not some oddly proportioned cartoon person. If I had to hazard a guess I would say she is probably 15 or 16, making her a little bit older than I am now. In fact, I would say that she is the very opposite of oddly proportioned, I would say that she is very well proportioned. Wait, is that gross? I'm 13 now but I wasn't 13 all that long ago. Eww… Alright from now on I am just going to assume I'm 13 and treat all situations regarding age as me being 13. So the final verdict is that it is not gross… yeah…

So all in all her costume looks like the TTG one but she looks like she does in the comics.

Whatever.

When I realize that she is about to respond to my earlier bluff I snap back to reality.

She draws her sword and says "Yeah, like I'm going to believe that. Listen, I have never heard of you so I'm just going to assume your not worth hearing about. So just step aside, let me rob this house and you into a blue shish kabob."

Is she here to steal something? Not kill somebody? She is a mercenary so I guess she'll do anything as long as pays well.

Oh yeah! She's a mercenary!

"First off, that was very rude. I didn't expect you to talk to a potential employer that way," I respond.

She perks up at that and says "Oh, I guess you are not actually a hero, villains can have egos as well. So what do you want me to do? Help you take down your arch nemesis? Steal some ancient magical artifact? Slap the Police Commissioner in the face with a pie?"

"No I'm a hero, or at least I'm trying to be. Today was my first day. Anyway, I'm going to be making a team to fight villains who will be coming here from another reality. Someone with your talents could be useful. So, what's your monthly rate?" I ask.

"You want to hire me… to be a hero?" She asks.

"Yep," I reply.

"Alright, 50 thousand a month to keep me on retainer and 75 for exclusivity. Which means I won't take any other contracts while I'm employed by you. All contracts are confidential so I won't blab your secrets to other people I work for in the future," Rose states.

If I don't get the exclusivity thing she might kill somebody on another contract while she is working for me and that could bring a lot of negative attention towards our fledgling group.

"I'll do the exclusive contract, can I pay in gold?" I ask.

She chuckles and says "Gold is even better than cash, its harder to trace."

"Good," I say as I instruct my ring to take 75k worth of gold out my subspace pocket. I hand it to her and she puts the gold in a duffle bag she was probably going to put the things she stole in.

When she puts the gold away Rose says "I'm going to put this gold somewhere safe, where is your base? I'll meet you there in two hours."

"I don't have a base yet like I said this is my first day," I say.

Rose sighs, rolls her eyes and says "I'll get us one, you can pay me back later. If you don't pay me back I'll kill you. Do you have any requests?"

After a moment of thinking I say "Preferably somewhere in the Northeast, Far away from most other people so we can stay anonymous and if we are attacked there wouldn't be any collateral damage. Somewhere where we could stay well hidden. Oh, and it has to be defendable and it has to have room for more people. I plan on expanding the team."

"Do you have anyone I know in mind?" She asks.

"I don't know, I also don't know who you know. Soo… maybe? If you have some people in mind I'm open to suggestions," I say.

"I'll make a list, see you in a bit kid, Call me in a couple of hours." She says.

Rose walks up to me and writes her phone number on my hand, she gives me what I think is a wink and starts walking away.

That gives me an idea "Hey ring, would I be able to fix her eye?"

"Scanning… yes, over several sessions you would be able to repair her eye."

"Hey, Rose, I could probably fix your eye if you'd like. It might take a while though." I asked her.

She freezes and after a few moments, she says "We will talk about how you know my name later, but yes… I would like that."

She jumps down to the street and I hear an engine start.

I probably should have used her name.

Yeah.

After that, I set my ring up to give notifications about anything like an alien invasion. Also any news about anybody I know of and their secret identities.

Not long after I finish I get a notification.

"Huh, that's just about the last person I expected."

…..

Hope you guys like it!