Green Lantern Corps. General. 053. Earth.
Title: Pit Stop
Fandom: Green Lantern Corps
Characters: Kyle Rayner, Connor Hawke
Prompt: 053 - Earth
Word Count: 1647
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It is a statistical impossibility for two superheroes to make a cross-country drive without Things Getting In The Way.
Author's Notes: Takes place between Green Lantern v3 #76 and Green Arrow 110.
“Excuse me.”
At least, Kyle reflected, this individual was polite after having stepped out in the middle of the road in front of Kyle’s ringed construct car.
“I couldn’t help notice that your car is green, and glowing, and just the slightest bit translucent.”
Short brownish-blond hair, freckles, and muddy green eyes gave no clues as to the gender of the possibly crazy person who’d jumped into the road, and neither did the stocky body encased in loose clothing that was also gender-indeterminate. It was really starting to bother Kyle, although of all the things that he could have worried about, whether or not the person standing in front of him was a girl probably shouldn’t have been high on the list.
“So I thought maybe one or both of you were superheroes, and if that’s the case, I sort of have a favor to ask.”
Even the voice didn’t give any hints - it was deep for a woman and high for a man, right in the middle of the very narrow range of overlap.
“What do you need?” Connor asked easily, as if he got this kind of thing all the time. He probably did.
Relief spread over the person’s face. “This is probably going to sound ridiculous, but there is something very strange about the remains of the mine shaft a couple miles that way.”
More detailed questioning - mostly on Connor’s part - elicited the story of some odd activity and odder sightings centering around an abandoned mine that had very probably been part of the one that had featured so prominently in the story Ollie had told Connor about his and Hal’s visit to the town of Desolation. As much as Kyle wanted to keep going and find his father, he couldn’t in good conscience ignore what could very possibly be an alien invasion or mad science or who knew what wackiness, although he really wished the police had been saddled with this instead.
Perhaps an hour later, hiding behind a very large tree with the occasional bullet whizzing past his ears, Kyle reflected that simply driving around the androgynous crazy person would have been the better option.
”You go first,” Connor had said. The two of them were hiding behind some trees and some very large rocks that might or might not have come from inside the mine shaft many years ago. They were growing moss, so they certainly hadn’t been moved recently. Kyle’s ring hadn’t shown any sign of aliens or mad science inside the mine, but it had detected massive quantities of firearms hidden behind a very clever blind that explained the locals’ conviction that the mine was both caved in and empty when the alleged visitors from outer space weren’t actively using it. Connor was a little relieved that the strange invaders had turned out to be perfectly normal gunrunners instead of aliens - it was more familiar ground. Aliens were a Lantern’s purview, not an Arrow’s.
“What am I, your canary?”
“You’re invulnerable. You go first.” Connor paused and added, “If you get shot, then we’ll find another way in.”
"Look, I don't know what you might or might not have heard from anyone about how this thing works -" Kyle waved his left hand vaguely in Connor’s general direction, wiggling his ring finger "- but mine does not automatically protect me from lethal damage."
“Quit whining,” Connor told him, politely not mentioning Kyle had been waving the wrong finger, not to mention the wrong hand entirely. “You can make stuff. So make stuff. Go see if anyone’s in there.”
Muttering to himself, Kyle encased himself in a thin green shell and moved towards the mine shaft in what he obviously thought was a sneaky manner. Connor nearly buried his face in his hands - Kyle still had a lot to learn about being a superhero, most powerful piece of jewelry in the universe on his finger or not - but he valiantly kept watching his friend’s silliness in case something went wrong.
Actual danger came in the form of a veritable hail of bullets that knocked Kyle flat. Connor couldn’t see where they were coming from, but he had an arrow nocked anyway, ready to run out and drag Kyle back to safety in what would be a brief pause following his shot. It turned out to be unnecessary, as Kyle crabwalked back behind the nearest object big enough to hide him from the gunmen, letting his green armor go as soon as he was there.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Kyle called out, brushing wood chips out of his hair.
“You said no such thing,” Connor replied calmly.
“Fine.” Kyle ringed a mirror to peer around the tree, and it was promptly shattered by a flying bit of lead. He frowned and ringed the next one to be intangible. There were at least three men with large guns standing inside the entrance to the shaft and possibly more behind them. “You know what, I got this.”
The act of creating a warhorse with armor and weaponry to match didn’t go as smoothly as Kyle had imagined it, but he didn’t actually fall off and the armor stopped the new wave of bullets as he swept toward the mine. The smugglers’ look of total shock as he swept down was enough to make Kyle laugh in exhilaration. One, two, three and the three shooters were laid out. He let the charger vanish, landing lightly on his feet, and was turning back to grin triumphantly at Connor when the fourth smuggler clubbed him upside the head and everything went very strange for …
Flickering orange light pressed against his sight when he could finally see clearly again. Connor was crouched in front of him, but his voice sounded wavery at first, and it wasn’t until the second repetition that Kyle figured out that Connor wanted to know how many fingers he was holding up.
“Three?”
“That’s a better answer than pudding,” Connor said, which made no sense at all, so Kyle ignored it.
“Where are the, uh…” Kyle’s head hurt, the pain traceable to a knot on his skull, which told him that logically they’d been fighting someone, and he clearly remembered not running someone over although he probably should have (the logic of that particular conviction escaped him, so he ignored it, too), which might or might not have been the catalyst for the chain of events he didn’t quite remember that had ended up with a campfire and a headache.
“Police,” Connor said. “But after that riot in the diner, I thought maybe it was best if they found the smugglers and not us.”
“Oh, come on, that was miles and miles away.” Kyle knew he was on firm ground here. They were probably in another jurisdiction entirely.
“Yeah, well, if someone had been able to keep his temper in check,” Connor said under his breath. Kyle let it go, more interested in the size of the knot on the back of his head than whose fault the diner brawl had been. “How are you feeling?” Connor asked, in a voice that very closely resembled the ideal of “out loud.”
“Peachy,” Kyle said, wincing as he found more pain than he would have liked. “What did I get hit with, a bus?”
“A really big gun, in your words,” Connor told him. “We can camp out here, if you like, and keep going in the morning.”
Not driving sounded like a good idea. Kyle voiced his agreement and wiggled around until Connor was no longer between him and the campfire. It was warm and bright, and this was possibly the first time he had ever had a campfire, but that didn’t explain why Connor was laughing quietly.
“What?” Kyle asked.
“It’s just that most of the trouble you get into seems to involve women,” Connor said, and a bit of the fog around Kyle’s memory lifted. The possibly crazy person of no identifiable gender who had jumped in front of his car was clear in his mind’s eye, although that was not the memory he wanted.
“Wait, that was a woman? How could you tell?”
Connor gave him a strange look. “How could you not?”
For a moment, Kyle wondered if he was forgetting something else, but Connor’s mouth twitched and he realized that he was being teased. “Hardy har har,” he said. “I’m going to get some sleep.”
“Uh, that might not be -“
Kyle waved his ring. “This’ll fix most damage.”
“I thought your bruises from that diner brawl healed quickly.” Connor started poking at the fire, doing arcane and obscure things to it that didn’t have much effect as far as Kyle could tell. One more thing to not pay attention to.
“One of the advantages to this thing.” Kyle grinned at his friend.
“If your constructs would stay in place with you asleep, it would be even more useful.” Connor stretched out next to the fire, head resting on his arms. Kyle imitated him, stretching, but he was all cold down one side and the nervousness about meeting his father - suppressed in the fight and its aftermath - was giving him a chill that had nothing to do with temperature.
Kyle would later blame the irrationality of his actions on the side effects of having a probable concussion, but at the moment, crawling between Connor and the campfire and using his friend as a pillow seemed like a good idea. Connor didn’t even blink, his infamous Zen calm apparently extending to being used by friends as a combination heat source and security blanket. “Good night, Kyle.”
“Mm.” The nervousness was still there, but it was manageable now. Whatever his father turned out to be like, he could handle it as long as Connor was there with him. “You too.”
FINIS
Nalanzu's little damn table.
Fandom: Green Lantern Corps
Characters: Kyle Rayner, Connor Hawke
Prompt: 053 - Earth
Word Count: 1647
Rating: PG-13
Summary: It is a statistical impossibility for two superheroes to make a cross-country drive without Things Getting In The Way.
Author's Notes: Takes place between Green Lantern v3 #76 and Green Arrow 110.
“Excuse me.”
At least, Kyle reflected, this individual was polite after having stepped out in the middle of the road in front of Kyle’s ringed construct car.
“I couldn’t help notice that your car is green, and glowing, and just the slightest bit translucent.”
Short brownish-blond hair, freckles, and muddy green eyes gave no clues as to the gender of the possibly crazy person who’d jumped into the road, and neither did the stocky body encased in loose clothing that was also gender-indeterminate. It was really starting to bother Kyle, although of all the things that he could have worried about, whether or not the person standing in front of him was a girl probably shouldn’t have been high on the list.
“So I thought maybe one or both of you were superheroes, and if that’s the case, I sort of have a favor to ask.”
Even the voice didn’t give any hints - it was deep for a woman and high for a man, right in the middle of the very narrow range of overlap.
“What do you need?” Connor asked easily, as if he got this kind of thing all the time. He probably did.
Relief spread over the person’s face. “This is probably going to sound ridiculous, but there is something very strange about the remains of the mine shaft a couple miles that way.”
More detailed questioning - mostly on Connor’s part - elicited the story of some odd activity and odder sightings centering around an abandoned mine that had very probably been part of the one that had featured so prominently in the story Ollie had told Connor about his and Hal’s visit to the town of Desolation. As much as Kyle wanted to keep going and find his father, he couldn’t in good conscience ignore what could very possibly be an alien invasion or mad science or who knew what wackiness, although he really wished the police had been saddled with this instead.
Perhaps an hour later, hiding behind a very large tree with the occasional bullet whizzing past his ears, Kyle reflected that simply driving around the androgynous crazy person would have been the better option.
”You go first,” Connor had said. The two of them were hiding behind some trees and some very large rocks that might or might not have come from inside the mine shaft many years ago. They were growing moss, so they certainly hadn’t been moved recently. Kyle’s ring hadn’t shown any sign of aliens or mad science inside the mine, but it had detected massive quantities of firearms hidden behind a very clever blind that explained the locals’ conviction that the mine was both caved in and empty when the alleged visitors from outer space weren’t actively using it. Connor was a little relieved that the strange invaders had turned out to be perfectly normal gunrunners instead of aliens - it was more familiar ground. Aliens were a Lantern’s purview, not an Arrow’s.
“What am I, your canary?”
“You’re invulnerable. You go first.” Connor paused and added, “If you get shot, then we’ll find another way in.”
"Look, I don't know what you might or might not have heard from anyone about how this thing works -" Kyle waved his left hand vaguely in Connor’s general direction, wiggling his ring finger "- but mine does not automatically protect me from lethal damage."
“Quit whining,” Connor told him, politely not mentioning Kyle had been waving the wrong finger, not to mention the wrong hand entirely. “You can make stuff. So make stuff. Go see if anyone’s in there.”
Muttering to himself, Kyle encased himself in a thin green shell and moved towards the mine shaft in what he obviously thought was a sneaky manner. Connor nearly buried his face in his hands - Kyle still had a lot to learn about being a superhero, most powerful piece of jewelry in the universe on his finger or not - but he valiantly kept watching his friend’s silliness in case something went wrong.
Actual danger came in the form of a veritable hail of bullets that knocked Kyle flat. Connor couldn’t see where they were coming from, but he had an arrow nocked anyway, ready to run out and drag Kyle back to safety in what would be a brief pause following his shot. It turned out to be unnecessary, as Kyle crabwalked back behind the nearest object big enough to hide him from the gunmen, letting his green armor go as soon as he was there.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Kyle called out, brushing wood chips out of his hair.
“You said no such thing,” Connor replied calmly.
“Fine.” Kyle ringed a mirror to peer around the tree, and it was promptly shattered by a flying bit of lead. He frowned and ringed the next one to be intangible. There were at least three men with large guns standing inside the entrance to the shaft and possibly more behind them. “You know what, I got this.”
The act of creating a warhorse with armor and weaponry to match didn’t go as smoothly as Kyle had imagined it, but he didn’t actually fall off and the armor stopped the new wave of bullets as he swept toward the mine. The smugglers’ look of total shock as he swept down was enough to make Kyle laugh in exhilaration. One, two, three and the three shooters were laid out. He let the charger vanish, landing lightly on his feet, and was turning back to grin triumphantly at Connor when the fourth smuggler clubbed him upside the head and everything went very strange for …
Flickering orange light pressed against his sight when he could finally see clearly again. Connor was crouched in front of him, but his voice sounded wavery at first, and it wasn’t until the second repetition that Kyle figured out that Connor wanted to know how many fingers he was holding up.
“Three?”
“That’s a better answer than pudding,” Connor said, which made no sense at all, so Kyle ignored it.
“Where are the, uh…” Kyle’s head hurt, the pain traceable to a knot on his skull, which told him that logically they’d been fighting someone, and he clearly remembered not running someone over although he probably should have (the logic of that particular conviction escaped him, so he ignored it, too), which might or might not have been the catalyst for the chain of events he didn’t quite remember that had ended up with a campfire and a headache.
“Police,” Connor said. “But after that riot in the diner, I thought maybe it was best if they found the smugglers and not us.”
“Oh, come on, that was miles and miles away.” Kyle knew he was on firm ground here. They were probably in another jurisdiction entirely.
“Yeah, well, if someone had been able to keep his temper in check,” Connor said under his breath. Kyle let it go, more interested in the size of the knot on the back of his head than whose fault the diner brawl had been. “How are you feeling?” Connor asked, in a voice that very closely resembled the ideal of “out loud.”
“Peachy,” Kyle said, wincing as he found more pain than he would have liked. “What did I get hit with, a bus?”
“A really big gun, in your words,” Connor told him. “We can camp out here, if you like, and keep going in the morning.”
Not driving sounded like a good idea. Kyle voiced his agreement and wiggled around until Connor was no longer between him and the campfire. It was warm and bright, and this was possibly the first time he had ever had a campfire, but that didn’t explain why Connor was laughing quietly.
“What?” Kyle asked.
“It’s just that most of the trouble you get into seems to involve women,” Connor said, and a bit of the fog around Kyle’s memory lifted. The possibly crazy person of no identifiable gender who had jumped in front of his car was clear in his mind’s eye, although that was not the memory he wanted.
“Wait, that was a woman? How could you tell?”
Connor gave him a strange look. “How could you not?”
For a moment, Kyle wondered if he was forgetting something else, but Connor’s mouth twitched and he realized that he was being teased. “Hardy har har,” he said. “I’m going to get some sleep.”
“Uh, that might not be -“
Kyle waved his ring. “This’ll fix most damage.”
“I thought your bruises from that diner brawl healed quickly.” Connor started poking at the fire, doing arcane and obscure things to it that didn’t have much effect as far as Kyle could tell. One more thing to not pay attention to.
“One of the advantages to this thing.” Kyle grinned at his friend.
“If your constructs would stay in place with you asleep, it would be even more useful.” Connor stretched out next to the fire, head resting on his arms. Kyle imitated him, stretching, but he was all cold down one side and the nervousness about meeting his father - suppressed in the fight and its aftermath - was giving him a chill that had nothing to do with temperature.
Kyle would later blame the irrationality of his actions on the side effects of having a probable concussion, but at the moment, crawling between Connor and the campfire and using his friend as a pillow seemed like a good idea. Connor didn’t even blink, his infamous Zen calm apparently extending to being used by friends as a combination heat source and security blanket. “Good night, Kyle.”
“Mm.” The nervousness was still there, but it was manageable now. Whatever his father turned out to be like, he could handle it as long as Connor was there with him. “You too.”
FINIS
Nalanzu's little damn table.