Okay, let’s recap my current situation:

I’m just a regular guy who got handed a powerful alien weapon by some dying alien that lets me make anything my imagination wills. So far I’ve faced a guy who can cover the world in darkness; an undead hulk of a zombie; a guy who used a puppet boy to try to hypnotize me; and now I’m fighting something that can alter its form into whatever it touches.

But that’s all small stuff compared to the fact that I’m probably going to die with my little brother hating me over the argument we had this morning. If nothing else, I need to beat this… whatever it is so I can apologize in person. Or I can just let this alien asshole crush me to death. Decisions, decisions…

THE HUNTER

Part II

By Tobias Christopher

Green Lantern was dazed as he watched the alien Hunter’s diamond coated form jump into the air, ready to crush him with one final blow.

“Nope,” Green Lantern said as he held out his ring, creating a jack-in-the-box. A giant jester’s head sprung out, punching the Hunter up into the air, giving the hero a second to recover. “Need time to focus on a strategy.”

Aiming his ring into the air, Green Lantern created a large pinball game, knocking the Hunter around, with pinging noises filling the air as he tried to think of a better plan.

“Okay, this guy can take the form of whatever he touches, so maybe I can trick him into becoming something I can contain,” Green Lantern said as he saw the Hunter fighting his way out of the construct. “In the meantime, I need to find a way to fight something that’s made of diamond. But what can shatter diamond?”

The Hunter destroyed the pinball machine construct and landed on the roof, just in time to see Green Lantern having hooked his iPhone up to large green constructs of speakers that stood almost ten feet high.

“Hope you like classic music,” Green Lantern said as he turned the phone on, letting Mariah Carey’s ‘Emotions’ play at full blast. The Hunter only stared confusingly at him as he charged forward, just as Mariah hit an extremely high note. The Hunter covered his ears before vibrating and shattering into dozens of shards.

“I can’t believe that worked,” Green Lantern said as he saw the shards started to merge back together. “…. Shit.”

“Stop lying to me, little brother.”

“What? I didn’t say anything!”

“It’s what you’re not saying that’s telling me that you’re lying about what you’ve already told me. You’re my brother, I know you, remember? Now, tell me what’s going on,”

Wendy sat across from her brother Marvin at the restaurant where they were meeting for lunch. Marvin played around with the salad he’d ordered, wishing he could have a nice, juicy hamburger, but he had to stay in shape. If Terry were here, he’d push Marvin not to starve himself so much and have something besides rabbit food for once.

“Nothing’s going on, I’ve just been busy with work,” Marvin told her. “I’m just a beat cop right now, but I’m hoping to make Detective someday.”

“Oh, so you’re going to solve crimes, save the city, and then go home to an empty apartment?” Wendy asked. “Some girl broke your heart, didn’t she?”

“I’m gay!” Marvin blurted out loud enough for everyone around to hear. Outside of Terry and Captain Stewart, no one else had ever heard those words from him. He stared down at his salad, his lip trembling as his voice broke while whispering. “I’m gay.”

“Well, it wasn’t just me imagining things then, thank God,” Wendy said.

“You… knew?”

“Duh, everyone kind of had a feeling about it,” Wendy said as she took a sip of her milkshake. “Every boy wanted to have their birthday playing Lazer Tag. You had yours at a Madonna concert. So, what was his name?”

“Terry,” Marvin told her.

“Did he cheat on you?”

“I dumped him,” Marvin told her. “But that’s all I can say. I’m sorry to dump this on you just before you go. It actually feels good telling you this before you left.”

“I’m not leaving just yet,” Wendy said. “I still have things to do here, and now I’m adding help my twin brother fix his love life to the list.”

“You really don’t have to–“

“Too late, no one tells Wendy White ‘no’ once she sets her mind to something,” Wendy told him. “Now finish your salad, because we’re getting your love life back on track.”

“This was supposed to be a nice, normal day,” Green Lantern said as he kept shooting at the shards in an attempt to keep them from reforming. “I can’t keep doing this, I’ll wear out the ring’s charge. I need to get this thing to turn into something I can contain. How did the previous Green Lantern manage to trap this thing to start with?”

Green Lantern looked at his ring. “If you know something, tell me now before this situation gets worse.”

The ring suddenly started shining a bright light into Green Lantern’s face, dazing him. The hero rubbed his eyes, and suddenly found himself floating over a smoke-filled landscape in his street clothes. The place had devastated, with no life whatsoever able to survive in such a landscape.

“What the hell?” Kyle asked. “Where am I?”

It was then that Kyle saw a Green Lantern fighting the same creature he was trying to defeat  on that rooftop.

“That’s not the Lantern that gave me my ring,” Kyle said. This one had purple skin with pointed ears, slicked back black hair, and was wearing a standard Green Lantern costume as he fought the Hunter, who had taken a lava form. “Ring, is this a playback of something that’s already happened?”

“Your path of evil ends here,” Sinestro said. “No more lives will be lost to you.”

“I will destroy every life until the Guardians are but dust beneath my heel,” the Hunter said. “I will have my vengeance!”

“Not today,” Sinestro said as he floated above his opponent, his ring sensing what he needed to stop the Hunter for good. With one good blast from his ring, Sinestro hit the ground, causing a geyser of water to burst up into the air. Using his ring to funnel the water, he directed at the Hunter, causing his lava form to cool and harden until the creature could no longer move. “Now to take you somewhere where you can no longer pose a threat to any living creatures.”

Using his ring, Sinestro carried the Hunter on a green platform into the depths of space, placing the stone statue on a small asteroid that was just floating through the universe with no particular destination.

The ring’s light faded as Kyle found himself back on the rooftop in his costume, while the Hunter’s diamond form was pulling itself back together.

“Well, that just raised more questions, but now at least I have an idea of how to stop this thing,” Green Lantern said as he watched the Hunter finally get his last pieces into place. “Alright, you want to fight? Then I’ll show you a fight, but first you gotta catch me!”

Green Lantern flew off into the sky as the Hunter smirked. “No one out runs the Hunter!”

The Hunter spotted a powerline and jumped up, grabbing the wires and taking on an electrified form before flying after his target, shooting bolts of electricity at Green Lantern, who created a rearview mirror to look back at what was coming.

“Are you fucking kidding me!?” Green Lantern asked. “Gotta get this thing out of the city before he ends up frying someone. And I think I know just where to take him. Hey, Gremlins 2! You want a piece of me, you’ve gotta catch me!”

“Catch you, I shall, Lantern!” the Hunter shouted as he shot more bolts. Green Lantern created a green knight’s shield on his arm to deflect the blasts as he watched the Hunter speeding up. “First Marvin, now this guy? I get it, God, I’ll start hitting the gym more!”

The hero gave it everything he had as he reached the outskirts of the city to the lake was, passing by a large sign that read ‘Lake Jjoyd’. As he headed out over the water, the Hunter flew over his, shooting down bolts of energy at the hero, one of the landing a blow as Green Lantern yelled in pain, falling toward the water.

“Now to finish this,” the Hunter said, waiting for his target to come back above water. “Could the Green Lantern have been finished so easily?”

“Yeah, I’ll really miss that construct, thanks for destroying it, asshole,” Green Lantern said as he flew over the Hunter, hitting him with a large hammer that was roughly the size of a semi-truck. The Hunter’s electric form hit the water, causing him to scream in pain as the electricity and water mixed. He shorted out soon washed up unconscious on the shore as Green Lantern scooped him up into a large green glass. “Good thing the weather’s too cold for anyone to actually go for a swim in the lake. Now I just have to find a place for this guy where he can’t bust out.”

STAR Labs

Metropolis

“Superman mentioned you guys deal with these kinds of… things, I thought you’d be interested in this,” Green Lantern said as he looked into the room. The Hunter had deprived of gravity, rendering his strength useless while floating in a heavily padded room. No matter what he touched, he’d only be able to transform into something soft and non-threatening. “Don’t let him around sharp objects.”

Returning home, Kyle walked through the door and saw Terry standing at the counter. Neither man wasted words, instead just hugging each other in a tight embrace.

“I’m so sorry,” Kyle said. “I was out of line. You were right, you’re an adult now and I shouldn’t be making decisions about your love life for you.”

“I shouldn’t have gotten so pissed off, either,” Terry said. “You’re my big brother, you just want what’s best for me. But now that we’ve made up, I need your help… with Todd. I think he’s in trouble.”

As Marvin sat on his couch after Wendy had left for the night, Marvin picked up a picture of him and Terry at a carnival, having shared their first kiss in a photo booth. Terry was so strong and brave for admitting who he was, but Marvin? The big, bad police officer was too scared to even admit that he’d fallen for someone as nice and sweet as Terry.

Picking up the phone, Marvin started dialing Terry’s number, then quickly put the phone down.

“I love you, Terry,” Marvin said to himself. “But I can’t put you in danger.”

After Wendy had left Marvin’s later that night, the young woman headed downtown to what seemingly looked like an old furniture warehouse. As she headed deeper inside, it became so much more. The lower level was completely high-tech, with people sitting at computers and monitoring things worldwide.

“We’ve been waiting for your report, Ms. White,” an old man said as he sat with his chair’s back to her. “Have you found it?”

“Not yet,” Wendy said. “I’m still looking for clues, but I believe your intel was wrong.”

“Our intel is never wrong,” the man said. “We have an alien object of massive power in this city, and it needs to be brought to us before it gets millions killed.”

Wendy opened the file to look at it again, seeing a complete file on Kyle Rayner and his girlfriend and family.

“Get us that object and kill anyone who poses a threat to your mission,” the old man said.

To be continued…