Against My Will 10

Laughing.

He was laughing.

Too much and too hard, and he couldn’t stop.

Not that he was really trying all that hard when the laughing was coming out of ribs that hurt so much less than they had seconds ago and a body that felt light and strong instead of weak and weighted-down.

The laughter kept coming, the feeling hitting the top of his chest as that burning in his veins that made the rest of him so cold was burned away under the light. Copper on his tongue was just copper on his tongue, the actual source of it just not there.

It was because of the green.

The green was all over, the whole room almost made of it; everywhere from the glass walls that shined like emeralds to the drain next to his cot where they hosed him down with hot water and chemicals that stung and smelled. All of it was the same sick bright green leaving him and coming back in four directions.

Four directions.

Two sources.

One on his right hand, the ring back on his middle finger like it’d never left.

The other was hanging off his left fist by the handle.

When’d I grab— The lantern shone bright with no answer at all. Where’d you come from?

He knew the ring, he’d seen it fly — felt it — but this was a whole other question…

Doesn’t matter. He had it now and he was freeeeeeeee, the straps to his wheelchair on the floor all in pieces… somehow.

He didn’t really remember how that happened, but it didn’t matter. Doesn’t matter.

He had it.

“Get down!”

Somebody was talking, plate carrier on and gun up as they kept running their fucking mouth like they could tell him anything.
“Get down on the—!”

Orin’s arm was already coming up, green glow brightening around him as the lantern went into the side of the man’s head. The weight behind it wasn’t small but it didn’t make sense either, the way the guy’s head just popped across the inside of the glass.

The spray went left, right, and up; red all over like someone flicked a paintbrush.

Huh.

“Man, you…uh, you good?” His own voice went higher than it’d been since he was thirteen, a laugh cracking in halfway through. “Nah, you’re not, huh? Imagine how that feels!“

Second one behind the first came up, hands on a black rifle as he screamed bullshit. Orin stared at him and two others, all of their guns up and moving their mouths as if he could hear anything but his own heartbeat stronger than ever.

One of them stepped up, still shouting and gun shaking.

“Shut!” Orin threw his hand up and a block came up — green, square and the size of a fridge with corners sharp at a perfect 90 degrees — and went out. He blinked the second it flew forward, the block suddenly where the guy was before it just kept going; into a wall, and a wall and then a hallway and then another wall. “…up?”

He stood there with his arm up, the ring still shining bright as he stared at the square hole and no guy behind it. “Oh…”

A blood-stained mouth split open at the corners as he looked down at the ring. “No anti-kill?”

[AGREEMENT]

“Agreement.” The word left him in a honk that he knew should have hurt every inch of him, Orin just bobbing with laughter. “Okay, okay, agreement, lil guy. Cool. I love that for us.”

The world lit up with sounds and sights, gunfire going off in the enclosed space loud enough he flinched back. The second he did so, green came up in front of him before he told it to, or maybe he had?

Either way, the rounds hit the green and flattened there, dozens of little gray coins pressed up against a thin flat wall of light for a half-second. In brightest day—

Orin shoved out and the whole hallway was cleared through, green flying down it in a straight line. The three guys who were still shooting went with it, dragged off to paint the glass with fresh red until he was alone again.

Just his green light against the pale blue of the corridor.

The laughter kicked up hard again, Orin unable to hear it as much as he felt it. His ears rang too loud for any other sound to come through, a long tone in the middle of his head — the world’s tiniest whale song.

—in blackest night—

Everything came apart in pieces, the light and the walls.

Especially the walls.

Green against red light, alarms spinning and spinning with every blink.

His mouth was open, Orin screaming and laughing so loud he couldn’t hear his own thoughts as green burst out of him, walls carved and cratered and crushed to concrete powder against his emerald shell. He laughed louder, blasts of green tearing out rapid fire and dusting the place with white, all of it threatening to mix with the blood into something close to paste. A body flew over him, or maybe he threw it?

Either way, it vanished completely under a blast of green, either thrown too far or nowhere to be found. Oops?

He was still laughing and couldn’t bother to check anyway. By the time he thought go at a doorway, he was already through it; all other thoughts forgotten as he was already through the other side with door frame in his hair.

Another attempt to fly and he was up, up through the ceiling with tiles and ducting and vents and lights giving up against his face as he tore through all of it.

Floor.

Wall.

Door again.

Every thought became an order, the whole problem suddenly clear when everything else still wasn’t. Move became a demand to bullrush through whatever was in his path, no care for direction or pace or even brakes, because the ring didn’t give a damn about brakes or seem to have any at all.

Either way, he went through one metal corridor as a green pinball as he tore past a — vending machine? — tore through a vending machine on the wall with two bags of Funyuns clutched in his ring hand, bouncing wall to wall and putting craters in building material as he polished them both off.

Rebar came out of concrete as he cleaved through it, messy dust going all over the place with a break room demolished against his body; somebody’s full-size Almond Joy left on the counter immediately shoved in his mouth as Orin took in the taste of chocolate and coconut.

“Contact, Subject Jade in C-corridor! It’s in C-Corr—”

“Stop saying ‘it’! Stop saying Jade!” Out of his own mouth, to nobody no longer there— a single hand wave wiping out the one who interrupted his snack. “I’m right here!”

A rifle butt came around and a ringed fist rose up to meet it, something building in the air like a hand made out of Legos in the dark. Lumpy, too big, and barely stable, it shot out anyway and the soldiers in his way went missing above the waist.

The Oath was still tumbling out of his mouth too, at least when it wasn’t full with something he raided from a fridge, but the words weren’t staying in order. For some reason, he kept getting halfway through and coming out the other side in the middle of a different line.

Am I saying it out loud? He threw himself through another wall and charged down the hallway it led him into, blinking through building material as he did his best attempt to mimic an emerald comet. Am I?

Or was it just the ringing?

The ring was humming back at him either way, a tiny pitch that somehow felt like the loudest thing in the world.

For the first time — maybe since he got the ring, all the way since orbit — Orin thought stop and the ring actually listened.

Bare feet met the floor again and he was suddenly standing, both feet down with his scrawny weight in his heels in the middle of a wide hallway— surrounded by walls that would probably have looked gray if it wasn’t for that red light still going round and round.

“Okay.” Breath went in and out of him. Strong breaths, but nothing too steady at all. “Okay, there it is. I got this. I got this.”

[QUERY?]

He blinked down at the ring. “…we got this?”

[AGREEMENT]

Needy little fucker, ain’t ya? He almost laughed at the ring out loud again, but the sound of something clicking took priority and forced his head up. Huh…

Twelve of them.

Maybe more.

And they were big.

Not big like those guys in the black bodysuits with the plate carriers had been big either— these guys were barely built like people. Old-style Midwest builds with too much muscle stared back at him, all of them too thick through the neck and shoulders and upper arms as they stood there stuffed into gray-blue bodysuits with the SHIELD patch on the shoulder.

It was like somebody had put a whole offensive line on juice and shoved them into a firing squad.

And every single one of those juiced-up farmboys had a weapon on them — shiny and chromed out for no reason — that looked like someone had built a rifle around a car battery.

All aimed square at his chest, a blue-white light getting bigger at the end of every barrel as they whined low; low and loud enough to get past the ringing in his ears.

“…oh, shit.”

They fired all at once in that stupid Power-Rangers formation, no countdown or yelling or even a warning. Just twelve barrels going from glow to go in the same half-second.

The whole corridor went blue-white, walls and floor and the red klaxon washed out and bleached flat— No!

That was the whole thought and it was enough to form up green around him.

Plates, a bunch of them, snapped together unevenly around his body at angles that didn’t properly meet and with gaps in them he could’ve shoved his hand through.

The barrage hit it before he could shore up those weaknesses and Orin found himself pushed back, body thrown down the corridor in a slide that had his bare heels dragging against a cold floor. The plates buzzed and shuddered but they held all the same as the blue kept hammering off the green in pale blue sheets that went up the walls.

After what felt like forever, it finally stopped and he was still standing.

Sort of.

Orin had his back to the wall, plates hanging there around and off him with something like smoke coming off the edges of the green as he stared at them through it.

Twelve over-sized dudes in navy blue with big-ass car-battery guns, barrels venting and smoking and one of them already slapping something into the side of his.

It only took him a split-second to start laughing again. “Fuck you, F-Fury!” His voice cracked out halfway in the middle, throat hoarse and ragged, but he couldn’t care. “And your fucking freaked-out firing squad!”

Barrels came back up.

Move! He thought it at the wall to his left and his feet rose off the floor, corridor rotating around him as the ceiling was suddenly under him. No, other way! 

The correction was bigger than the mistake as the wall on the right came at him instead.

Rebar. Pipes. Concrete.

All of it gave way until Orin was sucking down air again.

Cold air, wet air, rain splashing against his body through the green of his aura as his eyes went wide under the night sky. I’m… I’m outside!

His eyes dropped down to water, water a long way down; gray-black and choppy with the wind under bad weather but he was outside!

All of a sudden, he dropped — stomach suddenly in his throat and rain going the opposite way as the water got closer— no, no, no! UP!

The ring answered like he’d kicked it, stomach suddenly in his asshole and nearly left him behind as the building went by him in a smear of glass and metal. Orin spiraled his way through the rain, screaming and laughing with nothing to hold onto.

“I can’t fuckin’ fly, ring!”

[QUERY]

“What do you mean, ‘what am I supposed to do about that’?” He screamed down at his fist like a crazy person, half wondering if shaking it would do anything. “Nigga, help me!”

[CONFUSION]

“What is your deal?”

Before he could get more of an answer out of the ring, something whirred to life and roared below him— several somethings coming up off the roof of the building on columns of fire. Each one thick and overly round, painted bright as easter eggs with red metal over yellow and arms half as wide as trash cans. 

Giant ugly Iron Man… He blinked at the actual number of them. Iron Mans.

“Oh, c’mon, man—”

He tried to go up and found himself spinning left, body twisting in a loop-de-loop worthy of the word before something hit his body from below and kicked him sideways across the sky. Orin barely had a second before something else got him in a shoulder tackle and he bounced off that into another part of the sky, each hit knocking him around like a pinball off a bumper.

Eight hundred feet up and getting bashed around and blasted by bootleg Iron Mans and some part of his brain took a moment to consider getting pissed.

Alright.

His head snapped down to the closest one, just two armlengths distance with a fist coming right at his head. Orin reached for it.

The ring reached farther.

Green formed into a hand— big and ugly for something big and ugly, fingers the size of fence posts with edges all green and hard and flat and looking more like something drawn by a blind persons idea of a hand.

But still… a hand.

He closed his and the green one closed with it, metal screaming inside it as he heard a voice do the same. Plating folded like a soda can, the fire under the things boots sputtering out with little pops.

Orin threw it and the armored thing went across the harbor, a long flat arc impacting the water with a splash the size of a house.

“Who’s next?!”

Another one fired, the blast hitting the shield plate by his head hard enough to ring his teeth. “A volunteer!”

Ring. He pointed at it, nothing fancy in mind as he just thought ‘fuck that guy.’

That was it.

What came out of his finger was a lot— the construct big as a truck and green as anything else Orin had thrown out in the last half-minute. With something that could only have been a sonic boom, it swallowed the armor whole and kept going past it and down into the building he’d just freed himself from.

A whole corner of that roof fell away, the remaining material steaming with what looked like bright green smoke as Orin blinked down, ears still ringing. “…ha!”

He was bleeding still, he could taste that. 

What he couldn’t taste much of was food, a hollow under his ribs where a burger could definitely go right now. Honestly, he’d been drugged so many times in the last three months(?) that he still wasn’t sure he wasn’t dreaming.

“—brightest day—”

He felt too good to care, his whole body one big bruise but he was grinning through it all, mouth so wide the split in his lip had already opened back up. More fire kept coming at him from the Iron Guys still left, his shield plates catching it as a laugh spilled out of him.

“—blackest night—” The words came back up from his throat, almost interrupted by laughter he had to force down. “No evil shall escape my sight.”

One eye on the ring tight on his middle finger and the other on the lantern he never once let go of — the light in the middle of both of them shone bright. “Let those who worship evil’s might…”

He brought the ring up high. “…beware my power…”

The green came in.

Off his hands and up out of the lantern as it built, and it kept building past anything he knew what to do with.

“GREEN LANTERN’S LIGHT!“

The sky went green, all of it bursting out of him in every direction at once, a small supernova of  light going out across the sky and down across the whole harbor as the water underneath became one huge flat emerald mirror all the way out to the shore.

When the light went away, he was falling.

Toward the city.

A smile on his face.

…fuck, yeah.