Legion World Forums LEGION OUTPOST Bits o' Legionnaire Business The Devil's Lament (a Tyroc story)

Hi all,

A story focused on Tyroc...this is one of those things where if I actually WAS writing the Legion, I would wanna run this by an editor before going ahead and doing it, because it's a big character change and I kind of half love it and am half unsure if it's a good idea long-term, so feedback is welcome.

For anyone unfamiliar with the series; Light Lad is a Winathian Legionnaire with Ayla's old powers, the "Green Lantern Corps" is pretty much just the three women in this story at the moment.

On with the tale-telling!!

**********
TITAN
The Time Institute
Eight Legionnaires stood outside the famed Time Institute, ready for anything. Dream Girl looked over her hastily assembled team; Ultra Boy, Shadow Lass, Lightning Lass, Light Lad, Wildfire, Dawnstar and Element Lad. She had basically called on anyone who had happened to be at the Legion of Superheroes’ headquarters at the time, but fortunately there was a huge pool of experience to draw from in this group of heroes. That experience would help them greatly if they were going to have to confront the Green Lantern Corps. Dream Girl only wished she had seen more that could help them. What she had seen filled her with coldness. Three Green Lanterns pooling their might in one awful flash of energy, and wiping Tyroc’s interdimensional home Marzal utterly out of existence. She didn’t know why the legendary Green Lantern Corps would do such a thing or what the Legion could even do about that kind of power, but they had to do something.

“So tell us again why you dragged the lot of us to Titan, Dream Girl?” Wildfire asked sardonically. “You do remember Night Girl’s leader now, right?”

“How could I forget when you remind me every couple of minutes?” Dream Girl snapped back. “If I thought we had time to wait for her and Cosmic Boy to get back from Braal I would have waited, Wildfire. I called her on the way here and explained the situation, it’s not like I’m doing this behind her back...and you know how much power there is in one Green Lantern ring. If we have to face three of them, I want as many Legionnaires as we have available.”

Dawnstar tilted her head towards the far off sun. “The Green Lanterns approach now, Dream Girl. I can sense them.” Sure enough, all the Legionnaires soon saw three distinct emerald trails of light descending through the atmosphere.

The Green Lanterns stopped in midair, hovering before the assembled Legionnaires in front of the Time Institute. All three of them were female. The first seemed to be green light actually shaped into the form of a bald woman. She had an easily discernible face, but aside from this was completely featureless. The ring she wore on her right hand was the only thing about her not entirely composed of emerald energy. Next to the neon woman was a feisty teenager with a mane of wild red hair, some of it tied into braids. She seemed ready for action at any moment. Completing the trio was another redhead who was only a year or two older than the first, and the one Green Lantern some of the Legion had already met.

“Hi, Legionnaires!” she greeted them warmly. “For those of you I don’t know, I’m Zoe Saugin. My friends are Jordana Gardner and Celeste--”

“Neon,” the energy woman interrupted with a voice that sounded surprisingly earthy.

“Sorry!” Zoe conceded. “This is Neon. We’ve come to see Tyroc, is he in here?” Sheathed in a green aura, Zoe made her way towards the entrance to the Time Institute.

“Tyroc and Brainiac 5 are currently engaged in critical experimentation,” Dream Girl answered, blocking her path. “They can’t be interrupted.” This was the truth. Brainiac and Tyroc didn’t even know the other Legionnaires were here. What Nura didn’t divulge was that the two men were trying to use Tyroc’s power to breach the Flashpoint barrier so that Superboy and Supergirl could return home. While it had quickly become common knowledge that the two ancient heroes had rejoined the Legion’s active membership, the Legion thought it prudent that as few people as possible knew that the Kryptonians were trapped in this era.

“That’s okay!” Zoe shrugged good-naturedly. “We can wait!”

Shadow Lass approached Dream Girl and the perky Lantern. “What does the Green Lantern Corps want with Tyroc?” Tasmia asked with a touch of suspicion.

Zoe opened her mouth to answer, but was interrupted by the other redhead. “That’s classified information,” Jordana Gardner said abruptly.

“Classified by who?” Ultra Boy challenged her. He floated up until he was looking down his nose at the teen Lantern. “We’re the Legion of Superheroes, kid.”

“That’s nice,” Jordana smirked at the Legionnaire from behind her distinctive mask. “The Green Lantern Corps has a little more authority though, beefcake. So have some respect.” She raised her right arm and Jo saw her ring spark with green light. He suddenly felt himself yanked backwards, and looked down to see a giant pair of green pincers clamped around his waist.

“Hey!” Jo switched his ultra-energy into strength and freed himself of the hardlight construct. “Not nice, Lantern.”

“Ultra Boy,” Dream Girl began, “Don’t--” She stopped mid-sentence, falling to the ground in a daze.

“Dream Girl!” Lightning Lass shouted. “What did you do to her?!” She stretched one arm out before her and fired arcs of lightning at Zoe while Shadow Lass carried the prone heroine to safety.

“I didn’t do anything!” Zoe protested, spinning around to face her assailant. “But if I hadn’t had my field up, that might have hurt!” She gestured, but before anything could happen she suddenly found herself a couple dozen feet above the assemblage of heroes. “Wha--?” She looked around, confused.

“Thanks, Darvan!” Ayla thanked her fellow Winathian, Light Lad. She supercharged her own body with electricity and became a living lightning bolt as she charged Zoe. “Let’s show these girls what it means to take on the Legion of Superheroes!”

The energy woman named Neon began to move towards Ayla and Zoe before she found herself hemmed in by a barrage of anti-energy blasts.

“Not so fast,” Wildfire addressed Neon as she turned to face him. “More than enough of us to go around without ganging up on Lightning Lass, don’t you think?”

Element Lad stood back and watched as the chaos unfolded before him. The Green Lanterns were certainly as powerful as expected; Zoe was holding off both Lightning Lass and Light Lad, Neon was dealing with Wildfire and Dawnstar, and Jordana was pushing Ultra Boy’s ability to switch between his own various powers to the limit. From where Jan had been standing when Dream Girl blacked out though, he had seen for himself that Zoe had been blameless. He was beginning to wonder if perhaps both sides had been too eager to enter hostilities. Jan rushed to Shadow Lass and Dream Girl’s side. Dream Girl was only now beginning to come around.

“Dream Girl, are you alright?” Element Lad asked. “Did you have one of your visions?” He flicked his wrist and erected an inertron shield to protect the three of them from one of Neon’s stray blasts as he spoke.

Nura’s piercing blue eyes fixated on Shadow Lass for an intense moment before turning to Element Lad. “I - I’m fine, Element Lad. It was my power, but...nothing that matters here. This has gotten out of control though.”

“You’re not wrong,” Jan agreed. “We need to stop all of this before somebody gets hurt.”

“I can help there.” Shadow Lass stood up and spread her arms over her head. A wave of impenetrable blackness engulfed the entire battle site, encompassing friend and foe alike.

Voices rang out from inside the darkness.

“Hey!”

“Shady, what’s the big idea?”

“This won’t stop us for long--”

“Tasmia, let them go.” Shadow Lass, Element Lad and Dream Girl all turned to see Tyroc standing inside the open entrance of the Time Institute, Brainiac 5 and an Asiatic woman in a lab coat behind him.

The darkness dissipated into thin air, leaving behind eight disoriented combatants. Before anyone else could make a move, Tyroc inhaled and released a mighty scream. Every one of the combatants including Wildfire and Neon grabbed their heads, reeling with sudden dizziness. “Now that I’ve got everyone’s attention,” Tyroc announced, “Maybe you can all stop this idiotic free-for-all and the Green Lanterns can tell me what they want with me? Dr Li here was alerted by the Time Institute’s security program and she fetched us.”

“Quickly if you please,” Brainiac added without looking up from an omnicom in his palm. “You’ve interrupted some very important work.”

Zoe Saugin shook herself free of Ayla’s grip and allowed herself to land on Titan’s surface. “Your team started this,” she complained, “We just wanted to let you know...Troy Stewart, you’ve been chosen to become the newest member of the Green Lantern Corps!” She held out her palm and revealed a green ring identical to the one she herself wore.

Tyroc was visibly taken aback, as were most of his teammates. “M-me?” he stammered. “But I’m already a member of the Legion of Superheroes!”

“It’s not like that’s an impediment,” Jordana piped up. “My ancestors were vital members of Earth’s Justice League in the past, yet they served the Corps proudly.”

“Well, I - I suppose it’s an honor, but why me?” Tyroc asked, eyeing the ring in Zoe’s outstretched palm strangely.

Zoe and Neon shared an awkward look. “It was decided that we should recruit people who have a history with the Green Lantern Corps,” Zoe explained. “Jordana’s family have ties with the Corps that go back as far as the 21st century. We felt that we should try and find someone with a similar pedigree...and the ring led us to you.”

“That’s crazy!” Tyroc laughed. “I wasn’t even born in this dimension! My people left Earth’s plane for the first time a long time before Earth had ever heard of the Green Lantern Corps!”

“Be that as it may,” Jordana noted as she and Neon approached the third member of their party, “The ring has identified you as the descendant of Green Lanterns, the same as I am.”

“Your damn ring’s wrong then!” Tyroc bellowed, slapping the ring out of Zoe’s hand. “Just leave me alone, alright?” He turned away from the Lanterns and screamed a different sound than anyone had ever heard from him previously. A hazy portal opened in the fabric of reality itself. An advanced city lay beyond which some of the Legionnaires recognised as his home, the island Marzal. Before anybody could stop him, Tyroc fled straight through the open portal. Zoe retrieved the ring she had brought for Tyroc in a green snare and the Green Lanterns immediately flew in after him. While Brainiac 5 stepped in front of Dr Li in a protective stance the other Legionnaires attempted to follow, but the portal closed quickly and only Shadow Lass, Dream Girl and Element Lad made it through before it vanished completely.

“I know I’m new and all,” Light Lad wondered aloud, “But is it just me, or...did Tyroc sound afraid?”

**********
INTERDIMENSIONAL SPACE
Marzal
With a city full of people below watching, Tyroc led the Green Lanterns on a chase through the multi-colored skies of the sovereign state. Element Lad, Dream Girl and Shadow Lass followed close behind.

“I said leave me alone!” Tyroc shouted. He turned to face his pursuers and bellowed a familiar ululation. Beneath the Green Lanterns, enormous tree trunks split the ground and exploded upwards. The trees grew so suddenly that Zoe and Jordana barely arrested their flight in time to prevent a collision. As it was, they still found themselves entwined in quickly growing branches and vines. Neon powered straight through, her energy form leaving a sizzling hole in the middle of one of the largest trunks.

“Tyroc, let us help!” Dream Girl called him on her flight ring, to no response.

Element Lad began to issue an instruction but Shadow Lass raised a hand and interrupted him. “Way ahead of you, Element Lad. Let’s see how well these two deal with that out-of-control vegetation when they can’t see what they’re doing.” She brought the same hand around in front of her, and with a theatrical wave blanketed Zoe, Jordana and the whole thicket of trees ensnaring them in darkness. The three Legionnaires circumvented the weird black cloud and carried on ahead. Tyroc himself was already out of sight, but Neon’s emerald flight trail was only too easy to follow.

“Why are you being so sprocking crazy about this?” Neon asked, pulling ahead of Tyroc. “You’re acting like we’re your enemies!”

“Stop hounding him!” Shadow Lass snapped. She raised her hand to shroud Neon in darkness as well when a solid green blindfold suddenly wrapped around her head. “Hey!” She tugged with both hands, but couldn’t remove it.

“Annoying not being able to see anything, isn’t it?” Jordana Gardner asked sarcastically, hovering behind the Legionnaires with Zoe beside her.

“This is ridiculous,” Element Lad frowned. “Everyone, just stop.”

“Element Lad is right,” Dream Girl agreed. “Tyroc, for goodness’ sake, why are you running? Nobody can force you to join the Green Lantern Corps if you don’t want to.”

“We have no intention of forcing anyone to do anything,” Zoe added, “And we’re really sorry if that’s the way we came across. Jordana, let Shadow Lass see.”

“Fine,” Jordana grumbled, dissipating Tasmia’s blindfold. “But the rings don’t make mistakes. The ring matched your DNA to John Stewart and if you would just put it on--”

“I don’t even know who that is!” Tyroc exploded.

“He was a Green Lantern from Earth,” Zoe explained. “According to the ring, Tyroc...you’re his direct descendant.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Tyroc shouted. “I already told you...Marzal was settled long before Earth had ever even heard of the Green Lantern Corps!”

“Tyroc, why don’t you just put the ring on?” Shadow Lass sighed. “The sooner this is over and done with, the sooner we can go home.”

“Fine,” Tyroc said flatly. He snatched the ring out of Zoe’s hand and placed it on his index finger where it brushed against his flight ring. The instant he donned the ring, his eyes grew wide in silent shock.

“Tyroc, what--?” Dream Girl reached for him.

Shadow Lass turned on the three Green Lanterns. “What’s it doing?!”

“Tasmia,” Tyroc gasped, leaning on Dream Girl and Element Lad for support. “It...it’s okay. I just - I just remember now. Not everything, but...enough.”

The Green Lanterns traded concerned glances. “This didn’t happen with any of us,” Zoe explained. “Tyroc, what do you mean, you remember? You remember what?”

Tyroc collected himself, his expression changing to one of dire resignation. “I’ll show you,” he said with a mixture of sadness and anger. He flew higher into the skies above Marzal, the others following him. When they were high enough that the whole island was visible below them floating in the dimensional ether, he inhaled and released a long loud anguished cry. Having heard Tyroc at his loudest once before, Zoe created green earmuffs for herself and the Legionnaires to dampen the volume as much as possible with Neon and Jordana soon following suit. Before the group’s astonished eyes, the entire island state of Marzal turned transparent before them. People froze in their tracks, air vehicles simply stopping in mid-flight. Tyroc screamed himself hoarse and then took several harrowing breaths. “That...that’s the best I can do,” he hacked.

Dream Girl removed her earmuffs and fussed over her hair. “Am I the only person who has no idea what’s going on here??”

“Marzal is a lie,” Tyroc said, his voice breaking with barely contained emotion. “My whole life is a lie, Dream Girl.” He stared down at the Green Lantern ring on his finger intensely, and jade-tinged holograms illustrated his tale as Troy Stewart explained everything he could. “My father was John Stewart of Earth. My mother was Celise of New Genesis. Both were Green Lanterns...a long time ago...I developed my powers as a child, maybe from exposure to the Green Lantern energies when my mother was pregnant....maybe from exposure to the Source...maybe both.

My parents were not without enemies...one of them was a man named Hector Hammond. He hated my father and he learned to hate my mother...he hated me. He took me and...and did things to me...” The ring showed a young Troy Stewart’s brain being pulled apart layer by layer while he was forced to watch, kept in pained consciousness through the ordeal by advanced machinery. An elderly man with an enormously oversized head watched gleefully, veins pulsing in his gigantic forehead. “He tried to steal my power...to enslave it to himself.”

“That’s a power battery!” Jordana pointed at the distinctive energy source in Tyroc’s visual reproduction. With dozens of cables feeding into it, the power battery was clearly what was powering Hammond’s equipment. “That’s impossible! The Guardians would never let their own technology be used for torture like that!”

“It’s a yellow power battery,” Tyroc clarified. “Hammond used it to...to take my power...my whole identity...I was too young then, I didn’t have the control over my power that I do now...and I couldn’t stop him.” The young hero’s voice began to quiver at the memory of the agonising torture Hector Hammond had inflicted upon him, and Dream Girl bit her lip as her own eyes welled with tears of sympathy.

“But how did you go from there to here?” Neon asked as tactfully as she could. “If he took your power centuries ago, how did you come to be on Marzal now?”

Tyroc could no longer hold back his own tears. He wiped them away from his eyes with the back of his gloved hand. “Hector Hammond didn’t just steal my power...he stole me. He absorbed everything about me into himself...and in a last ditch attempt to be free, I screamed like I’d never screamed before. I tried to shatter everything. I just...I just wanted it to end, you know?” He took a moment to gather his resolve before continuing. “And I did shatter it...I shattered Hammond’s personality. But not his mind. Not his power. I was still trapped in his dead mind, with all his power, and all the power of the yellow power battery, and all that fear and my own power...” Tyroc could no longer maintain enough focus to use the Green Lantern ring, and the images flickered and faded.

“So how did you escape?” Zoe asked in a hushed whisper. She too was on the verge of tears now, biting her thumbnail nervously. “How did you..?”

Tyroc forced himself to raise his head and look into her eyes. “I didn’t. Not for nearly a thousand years. And when I did...when I finally managed to pull myself together enough to leave the engorged corpse of his mind...when I...when I reconstituted myself from the astral plane to the material plane again...I had to try and piece together what I could of myself from him...from my fear...and I created...I created Marzal as an explanation that would make sense because...because I didn’t know what made sense anymore.”

“Are you saying..?”

“Marzal is what I turned Hector Hammond’s mind into to keep myself sane. And now...now with the help of the Green Lantern ring, I’ve pieced together more...and I know this is all false. The family and friends I remembered here, my life outside of the Legion...God help me, it’s all a fantasy I sold myself because I didn’t know who I was anymore.” He finally broke down, unable to suppress the wellspring of emotion inside of him anymore. Shadow Lass embraced him and they all allowed this to sink in, Troy Stewart’s wracked sobs the only sound to be heard.

Finally, Dream Girl broke the silence. “Tyroc...Troy...how are you this powerful? How have you maintained this whole society for so long..?”

“I don’t think he is,” Neon remarked sadly. “Not on his own...I have more of an innate connection with the emotional spectrum than the others do just through their rings. Tyroc may have created this place, but he’s not its energy source. This whole place is permeated with fear...Tyroc...we’re inside the yellow power battery, aren’t we?”

“There is no yellow power battery anymore,” Tyroc cried. “The power battery...Hammond...me....we’re all the same thing now. I’m just...I’m this evil horrible...thing!”

“No,” Zoe said with unexpected strength. “No, you’re not. And we’re not going to let you be trapped here a second longer.” She raised her arm and her ring flared to life. Jordana and Neon joined her while Tyroc released centuries worth of tears into Shadow Lass’s cloak. Dream Girl hugged herself, closing her eyes. She didn’t want to see what was coming a second time. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Element Lad’s silent gaze. Jan’s expression seemed to say that as horrific as all of this had been, they had to watch this. They owed Tyroc that. Nura forced herself to watch along with him as the female Green Lanterns pooled their might. The world around them was suffused with emerald light. The light overcame everything else, and with no sound or fury, Marzal was gone.

When the light subsided, the seven of them were once more standing on Titan’s surface with the other Legionnaires outside the Time Institute. “Tyroc?” Dawnstar asked. “What happened there??”

Tyroc stood back from Shadow Lass, wiping the remaining tears from his face. “It’s alright,” he coughed. “It...it really is. I feel like some infection has been burned from me. For the first time in a long long time, I feel like me again. And I’ve got you all to thank for it.” He smiled sadly at the Green Lanterns, then took off his own Green Lantern ring and handed it back to Zoe. “But I’m not one of you. I can’t ever get back what I’ve lost...all my real family, everything I knew is long since gone. The Legion is the only life that I really have now, the Legion are what’s going to pull me through this.”

Zoe took the ring back solemnly. “I wish there was more that we could do...”

“If you ever need the Green Lantern Corps,” Jordana added in the same tone, “You just need to call on us.”

“Thanks,” Tyroc sniffed. He turned to the rest of his teammates. “Let’s go home, huh? I think I’ve got some adjusting to do.” Shadow Lass placed an arm around his shoulder and led him away while Element Lad approached the other Legionnaires to let them know what had happened.

Unnoticed by anyone else, Dream Girl watched Shadow Lass and Tyroc walk off. I’m glad my vision wasn’t what it seemed when it came to the Green Lanterns and Marzal, she thought to herself.

I just hope I can say the same for what I saw for Shadow Lass....

I clicked the scroll bar by accident the first time I saw this and read the second post without noticing that there was a post above it! Made for a 'thrown into the deep water' sort of story, to be sure!

I like the characterization details, such as Zoe about to spill the beans to the Legionnaires without a care in the world, only to get stopped by Neon, or Jan being the one to withhold from combat rather than fly off the handle, and Shady's decisive ending of things with a darkfield (which, in theory, might be a more effective weapon than one would think, against foes who make constructs out of light).

It's interesting that you chose to use his classic 'scream and stuff happens' powers (this scream grows plants! this scream teleports me! this scream sets stuff on fire!), instead of his new sonic powers. From a narrative standpoint, his original powers are much more challenging to write for, so that's a bold choice.

Troy Stewart having some connection to John Stewart does make a bit of sense, although I'm a *huge* fan of 'hidden lands' like Atlantis and Skartaris and Themiscrya and Feithera and Azarath, and yes, even Marzal, and hate to see any of them destroyed! It seems that having a super-hero come from your special land (or planet, in the case of Tamaran!) that's been in existence for *millenia* is a great way to have your secret land blowed up within five years...

Still, it's not like we ever really saw Marzal, in much detail, so it's less of a 'setting' and more of a 'place mentioned in Tyroc's bio.'

I not entirely clear on the resolution. Tyroc is some combination of Troy Stewart, Hector Hammond and the yellow power battery, them all having merged into a single entity over many years (centuries, whatever)? As an origin, that could make for an interesting character, able to, like Dani Moonstar, materialize the fears and nightmares of others (after psychically sensing them), using a combination of Hammond's psychic powers and the yellow fear battery's construct-creation powers.

Thanks for the comments, Set! I much much prefer Tyroc's original power set to him just being another sonic screamer, and I don't think it makes things any more difficult than having a couple of Kryptonian level characters or Quislet on the team...

The more I think about my whole John Stewart/Marzal/Hector Hammond thing though, the more I think it should have stayed in my head. Blehh.

The one thing that I really really hate about Fabian Nicieza's writing is his propensity to needlessly overcomplicate things to the Nth degree, which is what I think I have done here. If you can't explain the concept of your story in a really simple way, I think it's too convoluted. Ah well, live and learn I guess!

Nice story, Set. That's an interesting twist on Tyroc's story. I'd prefer it more as an Elseworlds than a development in the current book, though - it sure sounded traumatic.

And yes, I love the characterization. Jordana is very much like Guy; Neon is more no-nonsense, and Zoe is careless but compassionate (just like the Zoe I loved!). Well done!

That's Raz's story, not mine! I just happened to be the first to reply to it!

Yep, Set is right...I have to take the blame for this one, lol

I agree with you though IB, now that I've actually written it out I like it better as an alternate possibility moreso than something I am gonna have to be stuck with as part of my own canon now...

Thanks for the characterisation comments too! I tried to make the GLs distinct from one another with the limited space I had to work with them, so I'm glad that came across!

Due to his unsteady launch, back in the day, Tyroc has always felt like retcon-bait-waiting-to-happen, so I'm not as put off by such a dynamic change to his backstory as I would be if, say, Winath was retconned to not be twins, or Colu's ties to Brainiac were severed, or whatever.

Indeed, I welcomed his powers being changed to a more generic sound-manipulation mix. I'm not the hugest fan of change-for-change's-sake in the world (kicking and screaming, I will be dragged into the future...), so it says something that I *prefer* this character to go through some radical re-interpretation.

Other than my Saucy Jones stuff (where she gained some weak space/time manipulating powers by messing with the source of Marzal's space/time jumping ability), I haven't really given Marzal a ton of thought, although way, way, way back in the back of my head, a plot bunny involving Chronos, Angle Man, Professor Zoom and a few other time-manipulating villains attempting to travel through time and space to seize control of Marzal as their own untouchable base of operations / Restaurant at the End of the Universe, occasionally rears it's head...

D'oh! Apologies, raz. I'm afflicted with this condition wherein I mean to say/type one thing and inadvertently type another.

Readdressing my congratulations properly - CONGRATS RAZSOLO, THIS IS AWESOME!

I agree with you, raz, that Tyroc's powers becoming more defined and limited is a good thing. Keeps him from becoming used as a deus ex machina OR being forced to sit battles out just because the writer can't figure out what to do with him.

Your story idea about villains taking over Marzal sounds interesting. The island's weired "properties" could make for some interesting battles!

as someone who knows almost nothing about Tyroc i personally liked this story because it set up some interesting developments for the character to come.

maybe even a psychic split in personalities??

so is this going to stay in cannon for you Raz or is it definitely going to be an else worlds tale?

Thanks for the feedback, Omni! It is interesting hearing someone's opinion who isn't already familiar with the characters...this will definitely stay in canon; I don't think it was my best idea, but I will see if I can make lemonades from lemons

you can. i think there's lots of places you can go with this plot thread down the road.

its clear that it will have ramifications!