Chương 27: Spreading Fear

"Soul, divine power, and magic?" Kaelvorn closed his fist, something genuinely thrown crossing his face.

"I can feel something extra sitting in my body now, but..." He didn't finish the sentence. His expression went serious all at once. The itch he'd assumed had settled down once the "evolution" finished came roaring back out of nowhere. With nothing else distracting him this time, Kaelvorn locked onto the actual source of whatever kept shifting his body around, fast.

He gave Rachel a quiet gesture, glanced up at the corrugated roof of the abandoned factory, then lifted slightly off the ground and drifted toward the warehouse doors. Nightwing killed his earpiece, shifted position carefully, and peered back through his old viewing hole. The lot outside now held only the gray-robed girl. Kaelvorn had vanished. Not good. Right as Nightwing braced to relocate fast, a voice cut through the air behind him, a little too amused for comfort.

"What are you doing up here?" Nightwing went rigid instantly, holding his breath on reflex, scrambling for an excuse. He already knew Batman had sent him mainly to keep tabs on Kaelvorn. But three days spent staking this kid out in every corner of Gotham meant Kaelvorn definitely had his hair, his voice, his build memorized cold by now. Factoring in a body that ran close to Kryptonian spec, a costume change and an extra domino mask probably weren't fooling whatever senses this guy actually had.

Nightwing turned around, a little sheepish.

"So, private investigator moonlighting as a superhero. That's a pretty reasonable arrangement, right?" Except Kaelvorn wasn't even looking at him. He was staring up at the sky, dead serious, pointing at a wash of yellow-green light that had swallowed half of Gotham's skyline.

"What is that?" A low, rough voice answered before Kaelvorn could get another word out.

"Green Lantern. And a Yellow Lantern ring hunting for a candidate who can spread fear." A black shape had settled onto the edge of the factory roof at some point without anyone noticing, and it was watching Kaelvorn with total wariness. Batman's eyes stayed locked on Kaelvorn's face. He'd already worked out who the yellow ring was actually here for, and he'd run into his fair share of Yellow Lantern Corps members before, so he had a decent sense of what that outfit actually produced.

What exactly about Kaelvorn was pulling in a yellow ring, though. That part was harder to pin down. The only real question right now was why the ring kept hesitating instead of committing.

"Spread fear?" Kaelvorn put on a convincing show of confusion. In reality, he had a decent memory of what Yellow Lantern rings actually were, and he understood exactly why this one kept drifting back and forth over Gotham. Because the second his soul had finished merging back into one piece, he'd rejected the call coming in from deep space entirely. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. That wasn't enough to make the ring give up the search outright, though.

Partly because Gotham likely had more than one person who could qualify as a Yellow Lantern candidate. And partly because the ring could still sense Kaelvorn's presence, faintly. The ring's onboard intelligence just couldn't make sense of why the host that had drawn it in so powerfully a moment ago was now putting off such a weak, muddled signal.

"The Yellow Lantern Corps operates at the same cosmic scale as Hal's Green Lantern Corps. But where the green light seeks willpower, the yellow light seeks warriors capable of spreading fear. You seem to fit the profile." Batman kept his eyes on Kaelvorn until Kaelvorn stopped watching the sky and finally met his gaze directly.

"Ah, I see. A whole Corps built around spreading fear. Honestly sounds like someone tried to manufacture a version of Viltrum's civilization from scratch." Something like realization crossed Kaelvorn's face, right on cue, and he turned a loaded, meaningful smile toward Batman and a slowly retreating Nightwing. Then he raised his right hand slowly toward the sky. The confused yellow ring stopped wandering instantly. Its onboard intelligence had locked back onto Kaelvorn's signal.

A powerful being who could spread fear with total ease. In the ring's targeting protocol, Gotham below had apparently just lit up like a beacon overpowering everything else around it. It shook off a furious Green Lantern and dove straight down without a second thought.

"Sentient life confirmed!"

"You belong to the Yellow Lantern Corps!"

"What are you doing?! Kael!" Nightwing's eyes went wide, a shout tearing out of him before he could stop it. He didn't know the full weight of whatever Kaelvorn had lived through, but he genuinely couldn't square it. The mild, easygoing kid he'd spent three days with had just heard the basic pitch on the Yellow Lantern Corps and made this call without so much as a flicker of hesitation.

Beside him, Batman stayed silent, though he'd already dropped into a low crouch, three explosive-tipped batarangs gripped tight in one hand. No expression on his face at all. No surprise either. Whatever choice Kaelvorn was about to make, Batman had already run this exact scenario through his head more times than he could count. Behind the yellow ring, up in the sky, Green Lantern had already thrown Batman's warning out the window entirely, roaring as he dove down after it.

The only person whose expression hadn't shifted at all was Raven, strolling out of the factory at her own pace. She pulled her gray hood back into place, tipped her head up slightly, and watched the whole scene unfold above with a completely flat face.

"So boring..." Every ounce of tension in the air cut off cold the instant Kaelvorn's hand changed position. Right as the yellow ring was about to slide onto his finger, he yanked his arm back sharply, then snapped it forward again fast, closing his fist tight around it. Nightwing nearly buckled his own leg from the sheer whiplash of that move, sliding hard across the rusted sheet metal underfoot.

Green Lantern had already balled up a massive fist of green light, ready to swear on his life that whoever down there dared become a Yellow Lantern in front of him was getting punched clean off the planet, ring and all. But the second he actually got a clear look at what the kid had just done, he slammed to a dead stop in midair. Nobody understood better than Hal Jordan exactly how hard it was to catch a ring with no current host.

There were documented cases where even Superman hadn't been fast enough to stop a ring from forcing itself onto whoever it had chosen. And this kid had just closed his fist around one like it was nothing. Hal coughed, embarrassed.

"Uh, so, hey, that's not a toy you're holding. That's an extremely dangerous cosmic-tier strategic weapon, and I'd really, really appreciate it if you handed that over." Batman, after a rare half-second of genuine surprise, quietly tucked the batarangs back into his belt without comment.

"Everyone's awfully tense. It was just a joke." Kaelvorn gave his fist a small shake, brilliant yellow light still fighting its way out between his fingers.

"Honestly, it's a genuinely rare find. This light actually pushes my body toward evolution." He drifted slowly over to a still-silent Batman and held out the fist wrapped around the ring.

"But I clawed my way off Viltrum for a reason, and joining another cosmic organization built around spreading fear isn't it."

"Yellow Lantern Corps? Hard pass." Kaelvorn looked at Batman's continued silence, then at Green Lantern drifting down toward them, and raised an eyebrow.

"You two can hold onto this, right? I've also got a few extra questions about this particular ring."

"Hold onto it? The fear spectrum's radiation is genuinely dangerous. There's nothing on Earth that can actually contain..." Hal had just started angling to take custody of the ring himself, planning to haul it back to Oa for proper processing, when Batman reached into his belt and pulled out a small black box. His low voice carried total, unshakable certainty.

"Put it in here. This box blocks spectrum radiation completely." A sharp click sounded as the box sealed shut. Hal stared, first in shock at the Green Lantern ring on his own hand, which had genuinely gone quiet, then in something close to alarm at Batman.

"Wait, hold on. Where did you even get that? Oa specifically told me that material doesn't exist anywhere in this galaxy!" Batman ignored Hal's rising panic entirely, snapped his cape into a sharp turn, and dropped clean off the edge of the factory roof.

"Take it up with me at the Batcave.".... +40 advanced chapters on Patreon [email protected] /YATOOOO