Lantern Xor and I watch impassively for a moment.
"Is this a good training method, or has she missed the point?"
I rather fear she has, no matter how
useful it might look.
"I lost my fear of heights by flying regularly. Even without my ring I don't really feel anything anymore."
"Again!"
Which is impressive. Falling is a
primal fear for any creature limited to the ground. Admittedly, he's not saying it's completely
gone, it just isn't very strong, eh?
"Of course, Lantern Toren doesn't want to cut her wings off, and she probably doesn't believe that he can-. I mean, doesn't know for certain that he can in the way she's certain that I could."
But while I could shoot out her defensive construct with a crumbler round or anti-construct ray, and while that might provide a better lesson that having her block attacks she knows that she can block, I'm not going to do that unless she specifically asks for it.
And even then, it'd probably be better to talk her through things. After all, there are always accidents possible with any kind of training. A mistimed dodge or momentary flutter of fear that drops a shield and she'd be spending some time getting patched up.
Xor watches them for a moment.
"You can see our souls."
"Something like that."
It's a gross oversimplification of the mechanics of empathic vision or Ophidian's Eyes, and I have no doubt
Desires are the clearest part. But basically yes.
"You know our fears. You know why we fear things."
"I either know or could find out with relatively little effort, yes."
Which makes me wonder about the capabilities of a Yellow Lantern... After all, what better way to focus their efforts to play upon your
fears if they can
see them?
"Then why this?"
"Because I don't need to know. You need to know. You need to go through the necessary mental steps toward that realisation yourself. Me just telling you isn't the same thing. And in some people… Like Lantern Dul, there's resistance to being told about things like this by someone else."
Pride. The need for independence. Distrust. Hatred of the one speaking... There's any number of reasons for that sort of personality quirk.
"But not me."
"I don't think you'd fight against the ideas I present you. But I still think you'd have an easier time internalising them if you went through the steps-" My ring blinks. "-yourself. Illustres here?"
Ah, the outside world calls, eh? Wonder if it's a local looking for an interview, or something happening back at the Front?
Lantern Onik's face appears.
"Great Master, in light of what we discussed I am visiting my former monastery. If possible, I would appreciate it if you could visit later today and speak with people."
That's actually a sensible decision. Presumably Onik would like to introduce his Illustres to his old friends. See what they make of him.
"Certainly."
He smiles. "Thank you. I know that-."
His face vanishes.
...Oh, that's not good.
Definitely not good. Time to break up the training session and haul ass.
"Lantern Xor, follow me."
I
step out, the line representing Onik's desire to speak with me leading me directly to
Dangit, OL, Xor can't move
that fast! On the other hand, he can grab Dul and Toren, get some backup on the way.
his previous location, construct armour forming around me and absorbing a rocket barrage from.. that robot. Cheap and cheerful Spider Guild model, devastating to unprotected civilians and light infantry but-
I put a destructive pulse through its central processor and each of its targetters. Those things are usually set to blind fire their rockets if the signal from the CPU gets interrupted, but if I destroy the launch system-. Yes, dead.
Oh, for... Because of course
something's got to make trouble. And the Spider Guild groups aren't all as
friendly as the Vegan branch.
"Lantern Onik, re-"
Plasma bolts punch through the wall to my left, slamming into my environmental shield! I form a construct shield and respond with destructive pulses.
That's two.
Presumably.
"-port."
I'm getting good returns on my scans, though the robots aren't mentally complex enough for me to see with empathic vision. Spider Guilders tend to fight Lanterns using ships, legions of regular robots or small numbers of super-robots. There aren't enough here to stop me. The only thing that makes sense is that it's a terror raid.
Because I doubt the battle-bots are designed to take prisoners... But what would this
gain them, besides the attention of the local Green lantern? ...Or is
someone else trying to direct Toren's attention elsewhere?
I think I may need to have a word with some people. Starting with the local defence force.
Ring, analyse robot computer program.
Won't take too long, it's probably not all that complex.
Compliance.
The Guild isn't supposed to have Lantern-compatible interdiction systems, but I settle for flying through what's left of the wall and shoot dumb railgun rounds through the plasma repeater robot. As it falls I grab the overloading plasma bottle and-
Because
of course it's got a self-destruct/fail-dangerous function. If it's amongst enemies strong enough to bring it down, why
not try to take some with you?
And as we're under a dome on a dead planetoid I can't just throw it into space, darn.
-stick it in a safe construct as it explodes. No hole in the dome so they can't have punches through there. Tunnels, tunnels, there. Don't know how they got this close, but that's a problem for five minutes from now.
Yeah, stomp mobs first, check leads later. Trying to interact with quest objects is always a pain under fire.
"Lantern Onik, report."
If he'd died then his ring should come to me, so I'm assuming that's not what's happened. I can see flares of desire and hope throughout the building but nothing that specifically looks like Onik.
Looks like he made a quick exit. Or was taken by whoever left those bots.
Analysis complete.
I head for the closest path to the interior of the monastery, calling my heavy armour out of subspace and phasing through a wall. Two robots are holding position inside and this time I send filaments to burrow into their CPUs and rewrite them to answer to me. Records… They don't even record the route they used to get here. They're just reacting to environmental cues. I disarm their if-destroyed directives and switch their targets to robots.
Definitely a frame-up.
Someone wants people
scared...
Simple programming. No one's watching and no one's feeding them instructions. They're shielded against electromagnetic radiation at levels that wouldn't fry organic creatures as easily as it would them. No easy way to destroy them.
Or rather, no easy way to destroy them all at once.
And the other bots won't even think of the subverted ones as threats until they start shooting. But no-one in control? they're
definitely a diversion.
I send filaments ahead of me, having them latch onto any robots they find as I head for what looks like the monks' panic room.
"Orange Lantern Illustres to anyone listening. Report."
Ah, the joy of content that isn't level-scaling, when you're monstrously overlevelled. Just casually walk through the combat encounters...
A swarm of vaguely spider-shaped minibots fall from the ceiling and land on my construct armour, trying to stab me with electrified leg-knives. They get nowhere in the few seconds I allow them to persist before subverting them and tossing them aside.
"Another Orange Lantern? Please, we're in our fastness but the robots will break through soon."
...And focus on the plotline details. At least there
are survivors. Who knows how many got in the way of the bots...
"Nearly there."
Down a corridor, down another, and there's the fortified retreat. And the heavy siege robots trying to blast their way through the force fields, and the dead defence turrets they targeted first.
No great threat. To a Lantern, anyway.
Filaments go first, easily subverting the medium robots. Unfortunately, the siege robots have integrated force fields which means that I need to hit them with a crumbler construct-
And ignore the weak laser fire from their point defences.
Not even a threat unless they were orange...
-before breaking into their control centres and turning them to my purposes. There are still robots in the monastery and me destroying them will cause far less collateral damage then letting my robots to it, but finding out what happened to Onik takes priority.
"Do you know what happened to Lantern Onik?"
Presumably it wasn't good if he wasn't able to interfere with the bots...
"I… I think the Yellow Lantern took him."
Wonderful.
Well, that leaves just
one suspect... Unless the Yellow Corps has already gotten started.
