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Rookie3,431 words
Past No Longer3,077 words
Manhunters3,047 words
Orders3,028 words
More Than Partners3,003 words
Blue Lantern's Plight3,172 words
Team Work3,436 words
Mechanical Care3,083 words
Piece of the Puzzle3,154 words
A Little Thing Called Love3,213 words
Things Go Wrong3,114 words
Empty Space3,020 words
Mastermind2,986 words
No Way Out3,437 words
Love's Demise3,033 words
As All Hope Dies3,052 words
Desperate3,042 words
Planet Filled with Fear3,020 words
They Don't Get Along3,003 words
Extinguished Light3,107 words
Heart-Wrenching Agony3,036 words
All Will Be Well3,074 words
Hope Burns Bright2,999 words
Emotionally Unstable3,178 words
Dawn of the Final Day3,024 words
War on Will3,036 words
A Rainbow Of Death3,088 words
Where There's A Will...4,387 words
Lantern's Never Retire3,328 words
The Emerald Torch3,387 words

Mastermind

"This is unnerving. Scratch that, this is just plain freaky," Sweetie whispered to the other Lanterns as they slowly floated through the metallic tunnels that seemed to go on for miles. "I mean, giant fortresses I can handle. Bases made of metal that are the size of the moon, I can somewhat understand. But..." she wavered as metal paneling shifted and moved behind her. "This place almost seems alive."

"Stay focused, Sweetie. If this is where the Manhunters are being built, then we could be overrun at any given moment," John muttered as he placed his back to a corner and slowly peaked out around it, waving the other two forward when he discovered that it was clear.

"Does it feel like this place is trying to lead us somewhere?" Spike asked the other two as they floated along, noticing how some pathways closed off while others opened up for them as they flew. "And if it's leading us somewhere, what are the odds that it's a trap? Because this seems like a trap."

"I agree with Spike, this is not right," Sweetie agreed, but john seemed far to preoccupied with his ring to notice what the two were saying.

"Damn it all, I can't get a reading in this place," John snarled as he pointed his ring at the wall and started a scan, yet a flash of yellow light went off and disrupted the scan. "Whatever this place is made of, it's preventing my ring from scanning it or creating a map. Sweetie, can you do any better?" Sweetie unleashed her own blue light upon the metallic structure, but twin flashes of yellow and red went off and her own power was disrupted.

"Darn it, work ring," Sweetie growled as she shook her head.

"Great, whoever is behind this knows how our rings work," John muttered as he started to fly forward, before the sounds of a drill tearing through metal reached his ears. He spun around to see that Spike had used his ring to rip through one of the sealed doors with a large drill. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"This base is leading us somewhere and ten to one it's a trap. So I made a call to not follow the death trap and try somewhere else," Spike argued, getting John to clench his fists in frustration before he sighed and took the lead, flying into the newly made hole with a motion for the other two to follow his lead.

The group had barely made it ten feet before holes in the wall opened up and metal tentacles raced out of the holes, each of them trying to grab hold or straight up kill each of the Lanterns. John was the first to react and managed to create a shield around himself that deflected the first attack. While Spike was slower to react, his first instinct was to construct a giant chainsaw that he used to rip through one of the tendrils that lunged at Sweetie. Sweetie returned the favor by pulsing her blue light through another tendril, causing it to erupt from within.

"Ugh, this reminds me of that giant octopus we had to fight!" Spike growled before one of the tendrils whipped him in the back and slammed him into the metal walls, where it slowly began to wrap around him. A blade to the tendril convinced it to release the Lantern, and a second swing from John cleaved the tentacle in two, allowing him to help Spike back up.

"Sweetie! Find or make an exit and do it fast!" John ordered as he started blasting at the seemingly hundreds of tentacles that were continuing to crawl out of the woodwork. Sweetie nodded before concentrating her full power into a single beam that sliced into the metal wall, where she began to cut a circle through the metal.

"Ugh, remind me never to eat calamari again," Spike groaned as he entered back into the fray, constructing a giant harpoon that speared a number of the tendrils. But for every one they struck down, it seemed that ten more took its place until the whole corridor was filled with metallic doom. "Great, I don't like it and it sure as hell doesn't like me! How's the escape plan coming Sweetie?!"

"Almost there!" Sweetie yelled back before the metal wall gave way and collapsed, allowing Sweetie to fly through the hole with the other two Lanterns following her a moment later. John and Spike lifted the cut out metal and jammed it back into the hole, using their rings to weld the sheet of metal back into place.

"Okay, that should hold them," John sighed in relief when the tendrils stopped banging against the metal. "We should be safe for now."

"Safe is not the word I would use." Spike and John turned to see that Sweetie was right and that the three of them were far from safe. They had cut their way into a room that was the size of a small city, which was filled with thousands of Manhunters that were either in sleep mode or being constructed by numerous machines. Both Spike and Sweetie looked up at John for guidance and the elder Lantern held out a hand to keep them quiet.

"Say nothing and move as silently as you can," John whispered to the pair as he slowly started to float through the thousands of Manhunters, Spike and Sweetie following behind him as quietly as they could while their eyes stayed glued to the thousands of machines. For ten minutes the three silently avoided the Manhunters as best they could, yet when they finally reached the top of the gargantuan room a flash of blue light stunned all of them beyond words.

"It can't be," John muttered as his eyes took in a large machine filled with Manhunters that each rested in separate pods, pods that were all connected to a large tube--a tube that held a familiar, blue clad Lantern that the group had seen not too long ago. "Brother Toro."

The Lantern was trapped in a large glass tube that seemed to hold him in suspended animation, yet what drew John's full attention was the fact that he was still holding onto his ring and that his battery was floating above his head. He still seemed to be alive, relieving John while also concerning him at the same time.

"He's still alive!" Spike sighed in relief before floating over to the chamber with confusion. "But what are they doing to him?" John looked down to see at least a dozen tubes that were all connected to Manhunter pods, narrowing his eyes when he saw blue light pulsing through the tubes and into the pods. He flew in closer to investigate and immediately felt his power increase, confirming his fears.

"This is it. This is how whoever is behind this is making the Manhunters with Lantern powers," John muttered with fear as he looked inside the pod next to him to find that the Manhunter within glowed with a blue light not unlike the one that shone from Sweetie. "They're using the captured Lanterns as a power source to fuel the Manhunters within with even greater power."

"What? Then we have to get him out of here and put a stop to this!" Spike said as he took aim at the tube with his ring, but in a moment John was beside him and angled his arm away from the tube. "John, what are you doing?! We have to get Toro out of there!"

"Who knows what kind of security measures are in place in case that happens? If you break him out we might have every one of these Manhunters after us," John scolded as he looked around the room to make sure none of the Manhunters were moving. "Our best bet is to find out how this machine works and to shut it down, without drawing any more attention to ourselves."

"But...how are they doing this?" Sweetie asked, turning both Spike's and John's attention to the mare. "I thought that only the chosen ring bearer could access the power ring, no one else. It should be impossible for anypony to steal the power from a Lantern like this."

"While it is unlikely, it's not impossible for the rings to be tampered with," John muttered as he placed a hand under his chin, thinking long and hard. "But the technology that runs this rings is light-years beyond anything Earth or most other planets have. There are only a handful of beings in the cosmos that have the technical know how to..." John's thoughts died a horrible death when a new, far more devastating thought crossed his mind. With horror starting to take hold of his heart he gazed at the mass production of the Manhunters, to the trapped Lantern, and finally the Manhunters that were being enhanced with Lantern light.

"John? You okay?" Spike asked when he saw the look of sheer horror taking hold of John's face.

"We need to find a computer terminal, an access point; something I can plug my ring into and confirm my thoughts," he whispered in terror before flying ahead.

"Wait a minute, what are we going to do about Brother Toro?" Sweetie called after him.

"Leave him. If my suspicions are right...it will take everything we have to save ourselves," John called back as he rocketed ahead, forcing Spike and Sweetie to abandon the other Lantern to chase after John. The elder Lantern flew through room after room, searching and searching for something with growing panic in his eyes. Finally, in one of the smaller rooms, he spotted a large computer with a holographic screen that got him to slow down. He flew right to it and started to search around for an access point, while Sweetie and Spike landed behind him.

"John, what's going on? Why do you look so terrified?" Sweetie asked, but John didn't answer as he plugged his ring into one of the access points and started to hack into the computer. The moment the ring started to access the computer, alarms started to blare all throughout the station.

"John! I thought we weren't supposed to alert the enemy to our presence!" Spike roared as holes in the ceiling and walls opened up and a combination of tendrils and Manhunters started to pour in. "John, the bouncers are here and I'm fairly certain they know that two of us are under age! We need to go now or-!"

"NO! You two have to hold them off until I'm done finding what I need!" John ordered, shocking Spike and Sweetie with his sudden burst of rage and fear. The two shared a glance with each other before they both turned and looked up at the tendrils and Manhunters that were closing in on them.

"Time for the Cyan Kirin?" Sweetie asked as she wrapped her hoof around Spike's hand.

"You know I hate that name for it, right?" Spike asked in reply as the two's lights began to merge into one.

"Well, if you hate it so much, you shouldn't have lost that game of cards we played to decide on its name." In a blinding flash of light, green and blue became one, causing a massive construct of a unicorn and dragon fused to rise up in the center of the room. Its body was a pure blue with thousands of scales that glittered like stars, while its mane and tail burned like a fire of the purest emeralds, yet its eyes shone with a cyan that held both will and hope within. And on the center of its chest was a symbol, the combined symbol of hope and will that shone far brighter than any sun. The massive construct took up nearly half of the insanely large room and towered over everything else in it, yet without a moment's hesitation the Manhunters and the tendrils lunged for the Kirin.

"YOU CANNOT HOPE TO WIN," the Kirin said as laser fire and tendrils slammed into its constructed form, yet the massive beast barely registered the attacks from its foes. The Kirin quickly spun and whipped its tail across the air, slamming through a number of the Manhunters that had been flying near them. Cyan fire erupted from its maw and incinerated the tendrils that had started to wrap themselves around the Cyan beast, yet once again more tendrils and Manhunters began to pour into the room.

"JOHN! WE CANNOT KEEP THIS UP MUCH LONGER!" the Kirin bellowed as it crushed three Manhunters under hoof, yet roared with pain as a number of Manhunters wielding the power of Rage, Fear and Greed began to blast the Kirin with their Lantern powers. The gargantuan construct began to flicker under the endless pounding of laser fire from the dozens of Manhunters that continued to pour into the room. With one last roar the Cyan Kirin unleashed a wave of blue and green that slammed the machines and tendrils into the walls, keeping them pinned there as the Kirin slowly began to shrink back down to Sweetie and Spike.

"Dammit...we couldn't hold them off," Spike growled as he pushed himself back up before running to the collapsed Sweetie's side. He pulled her into her arms before turning and floating over towards John. But the sound of more Manhunters entering the room caused him to turn to see that the Manhunters that had just been destroyed were already being replaced. "Sweetie, you doing okay? I hate to ask this, but can you fight, because I don't think I can handle all of those by myself."

'Spike, ring charge at ten percent,' his ring informed him.

"Crap...give me a minute, we...never held the Cyan Kirin for that long before," she grunted as she struggled to her feet, Spike supporting her as the two pointed their rings at the swarm of machines that barreled towards them. But then, to the confusion of both Spike and Sweetie, both machine and tendril stopped in mid air and ceased to move, getting confused looks from the both of them before John called out.

"No..." they heard him whisper, getting them to turn towards the Lantern who was standing straight up with fear consuming his eyes. "No...we need to move! We need to get out of here now!" he bellowed before turning and hurling himself towards the nearest exit, forcing Spike to pick Sweetie up and scramble after John. John tore through door after door in a desperate search for the exit, but when he came to a large number of tubes and corridors he was forced to come to a stop, allowing Spike and Sweetie to catch up.

"John, the hell is going on?" Spike growled at the senior Lantern, who only just then seemed to notice the other two.

"We need to get out of here! That terminal...it had everything. Who was behind the attacks, what they're capturing the Lanterns for and...we need to get to the Interceptor. We need to warn the Corps!" John said with panic in every word.

"Whoa, slow down. You know who is behind all this? Then tell us!" Spike demanded. John opened his mouth to answer, but in the next moment hundreds of tendrils shot out of one of the doors and wrapped around the group. John and Spike struggled as best they could as the tendrils dragged them down into the belly of the beast; a large, circular room that was filled with hundreds of screens that showed what was going on at every moment within the ship. The tendrils slammed the Lanterns into a metal circle that made up the hovering floor, where they picked themselves up while beginning to look around the room.

"Ugh, where the hell are we?" Spike asked as he gently helped Sweetie up to her hooves, letting her lean against him as he looked around. He turned his gaze to John when the Lantern didn't answer, and found that John's eyes were locked straight ahead, with a look of rage and hatred upon his face--as well as hidden fear.

"You are in the center of my brain, of my very being. You are within me." Spike and Sweetie turned their heads to see a figure floating down from above, one that was humanoid in nature yet clearly spoke with a robotic tone. It had a purple suit with silver armor on its chest and legs, but its hands and head were a bluish gray. Yet, instinctively both Sweetie and Spike's eyes were drawn to its head, where three connected green circles rested upon it's forehead.

"John, you know this guy?" Spike asked the senior Lantern, who was shaking with rage and fear as he glared down the robot.

"As Lantern Stewart seems unable to respond, allow me. I am Brainiac."

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