My Self - Insert Stash

-SI gets a Yellow Power Ring and trains under Arkillo.

*The writing is honestly pretty good, + it's the only Teen Titans/Justice League SI fic that I know of.

ˋ( ° ▽,° )

Sypnosis: Adding in a summary because why the hell not. Listen to the story of hate, fear, can-can dancers, and poker playing fish. An average psychopath from Earth is pulled into the DC universe by a Sinestro Corps ring, and reality ensues from there. Expect Lovecraftian imagery, mind f.u.c.kery, politics, and six teenagers with attitude saving the day.Rated: T

Words: 200K

Posted on: forums.spacebattles.com/threads/i-want-to-play-a-game-teen-titans-justice-league-si.271255/#post-12016745 (Chairtastic)

PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (´ー｀)

-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)

Chapter 1+2

I once saw a gif on the internet; the word 'sonder' defined over a busy highway near a big city I didn't recognize. According to the image, sonder means that every person ever seen from the viewer's perspective has a story, and that their part in it can be just as profound, or unimportant as the viewer is in theirs, using more flowery words. I couldn't help but wonder if that's what word applied to me, being mugged on my college's campus. Sonder didn't seem to fit.

Well. Mugged wasn't exactly the right word to use, either. A gaunt black man with a knife, demanding cash I did not have. Farce; that seemed better. Comedy drawn from horseplay and ludicrous situations. He was slightly taller than me, skinny to my fat; I recognized him. I had given him twenty-five dollars for gas outside the station a couple months previous. Farce was becoming a better fit by the second.

I glanced up, we were by one of the lesser buildings on campus, but some staff were still around. None of them with window offices, though. I didn't look the mugger in the eye, but slightly to the left of him and smiled, then told him I had no money for him.

It upset him, he moved forward slightly and jerked the knife sideways through the air; a Swiss Army knife, surprisingly. He told me to empty my pockets, turn out my backpack and computer bag. I noticed he had come within arms reach of me. This farce was growing less funny.

I put my free right hand into a coat pocket, lots of pens in there, and a cell phone; aha. I pulled it from my pocket, and showed it too him, semi-touch screen, internet connectivity, b.a.r.e bones for the modern world. He reached forward to take it, and I swung my computer bag, along with the seven-hundred dollar computer inside at his head.

The crack from impact was satisfying and infuriating. The mugger hit the ground, groaning and letting go of his knife to clutch at his now bleeding temple. Idiot. A swift kick removed the weapon from sight, and a second put the black man on his back, where I could easily plant my foot on his neck and put three-hundred plus pounds of weight to good use. I leaned over him, increasing pressure to kill (heh) his thrashing, putting him in my shadow as I blocked the street light.

"You didn't account for someone fighting back, did you?" I wanted to kill this man. Who brandished a weapon at me, who demanded money of me, and caused me to possibly break my beloved computer. He desperately shakes his head no, trying to push my foot off his most vital of areas. I curled my lip at him. "This isn't amateur hour, you know. Having a second person as backup would have you out of this situation." I raise my phone, sliding to unlock and start dialing nine-one-one.

"Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?" a middle-aged woman answered, and I placed the phone to speaker mode.

"I have a African-American male, looks to be mid to late thirties, who just attacked me with a lethal weapon, attempting to rob me. I am uninjured, he is currently incapacitated, could you send the sheriff to the community college, the parking lot by the elementary school?" I keep my tone even, a slow grin creeping on my face, an urge to let the triumph show itching at my skin.

"A squad car is on its way sir, please stay on the line. Can I have your contact information, sir?"

I gave my name and number, and a moment later, she patched in the sheriff, who inquired about the mugger's identity.

He didn't seem like sharing at first, so I decided to chime in, "The nice man asked you your name, sir, it's rude not to answer." If pressed I could maybe have remembered the name I had written on the check, but I was not in the mood for such diving. Still he didn't answer, so I put progressively more of my considerable weight onto the neck I was stepping on. His eyes started bugging out from the strain, and he rasped out his name. I was likely going to get in trouble for this, and I didn't care.

For years, I had been waiting for someone to try this, to see if I could do exactly this (well, not exactly, but assert dominance). The power was...delicious.

A sudden flashing light made me look up, thinking it was the sheriff, but instead it was a mote of yellow zipping through the air. I just stopped and stared at it, unable to process seeing this occurrence, the mugger followed my gaze and for a time seemed to forget that there was a fat man standing on his windpipe.

The mote floats around, leaving a tail of yellow light to linger for a second behind it, then streaked at me, prompting me to back up off the mugger's neck, and bring a hand to my face. The light grew blinding for a moment as something clamped down upon the base of my middle finger, squeezing tight.

"You have the ability instil great fear." A mysterious voice from nowhere. Not a good sign. "Welcome to the Sinestro Corps." What? What?!

Then suddenly I'm being dragged skyward by my hand. The mugger quickly fleeing as he, the campus, and the town it was attached to begin to shrink.

The fact that I am flying didn't hit me until I could see the Mississippi River. I didn't start panicking until I could see St. Louis. Flailing at whatever was tugging my hand, and trying to process what could cause this.

Then the blinding yellow light comes again, and the scenery changes. No longer the Midwest, the sky, or even Earth- for certainly Earth was not this yellow.

A cavern, a city of yellow metal build into the walls. A massive palace at the center, with a courtyard where a yellow object sits: a sphere with two cones coming from the base and top, along with wing-like beams coming from the sides. The shape...is wrong. Something about it shouldn't be. An itch forms at the back of my neck, my heartbeat grows loud in my ears as whatever force drew me to the sky, and to this place drew me now toward that edifice.

A fight or flight response, I dimly acknowledge. What do I do?

A deep breath. Calm, in control, think. I had the potential to instill fear? This wasn't earth? Too many questions, not enough information.

The yellow glowing geometry nightmare was glowing closer, and near it I could see a few figures, partly dressed in black which stood out from the yellow dais both they and the structure stood upon. Patience, see how deep the hole you've dug yourself into is before you do anything.

Don't make a bad first impression. Bad enough you're wearing khakis to another planet.

Here's hoping their fashion sense is as bad as their color scheme.

--

I have this fic planned a fair bit ahead; not a complete skeleton yet, mind. Feedback is appreciated, and critiques welcome. I apologize for taking up one of these, but I had the itch. I'm going to post these when I can, life is hectic right now (when is it not?). I'll try for at least twice a week, and you're free to set me on fire if I miss a post without a good reason.

Chapter 2

The touchdown on the dais is surprisingly smooth given I had the aerodynamics of a flying whale. Actually, come to think of it, some whales would be pretty aerodynamic, given they had to swim constantly. The aerodynamics of a flying boulder, then.

There was a moment of silence while I looked at the people (liberal definition of that word), and they looked at me. A blue woman, not properly dressed, with a flowing cape was to the right. A book floated in front of her, about half the size of an unabridged dictionary, with the...disturbing symbol etched onto the cover; a yellow circle with two lines branching off like wings at the bottom, and another forming a sort of handle shape at the top. A chain of yellow light flowed from the book to her wrist, so it was likely important, and by extension, she was too. Her expression was distant.

To the left, a twelve foot, musclebound pile of f.u.c.k you with a face like one of those extinct proto-elephants sans the trunk and ears. He (I thought it was a he, anyway), was dressed in a yellow and black uniform with the wrongness symbol, and given the radically different facial structure, was impossible to tell expression.

And at the center was...I had the feeling I had seen that person before. Yellow armor, magenta skin, a vague look of Adolf Hitler... "Sinestro," I said, pieces finally fitting into place. "You're Sinestro."

"I am." His voice wasn't all that intimidating, given his history. No echoes, no unnatural elements, just a vaguely English drawl. Oh god. Sinestro was one of the biggest villains to exist; and he was standing five feet from me, looking vaguely annoyed.

I took deep breaths, trying to keep the panic from running rampant. "Sinestro, sir, what...how...what is this?" I was messing up, I could tell from the increasing annoyance in the pink man's face.

"Good question, human," he tilted his head over to the woman, and gestured at me, "what is this?" She flipped a page in the book, disinterested apparently, then spoke.

"David TiBalt, Sinestro Corpsman of sector 2814. The ring's coding checks out, and shows no sign of tampering." Her voice, unlike Sinestro's, had a subtle warble to an otherwise lofty tone. This couldn't be happening, I must have been dreaming from watching the Green Lantern movie. I never actually had a lucid dream before, and no idea how to wake up; or if I could. The cliché of pinching myself wouldn't actually work, would it?

"Um," I said, deciding to press on before I found out if I could die in a lucid dream, "is that unusual, sirs, madame?"

"Such manners," Sinestro said, his tone of bland surprise, and he approached me. His expression grew more intense as he came near, I wanted to back away, but found my legs would not move. The pink man was slightly shorter than me, but given the size of the elephant-thing, I hoped he wasn't against looking up to people. "It is unusual, yes, because this ring," he grabbed my arm in a vice and raised my hand up, "was destroyed six months ago, and has not been remade."

I didn't understand what he was saying, at first, but then saw a bauble on my middle finger. A ring of gleaming yellow, with an inset design of the wrong-ness symbol- Sinestro Corps symbol, I realized.

I said nothing for a moment and then asked: "Um...could it be because I'm not...from here?"

"Elaborate." The vice on my arm tightened, causing the bones to pop in their joints.

"Ow. Um. Where I come from you, sir...you're not real." Again the grip tightened, and the pink man- I had to remember his species name at some point- tilted his head forward in a way I chose to mean he was losing patience. "I mean, um, you're a character in a story where I come from."

Sinestro released me and walked back toward the- central battery I now remembered it called, though not the same design as what I grew up with. "Lyssa, Arkillo, theories." If Lyssa was the woman that meant elephant-thing was Arkillo.

"I suspect that the Guardian's method of destroying the ring is at fault here; it could be that they use a means that apparently vaporizes an object, but in reality displaces it." She turned to Sinestro's back, her light chain not making a noise as it moved. Freaky. "Or it may be an inherit power of his universe, that things destroyed in other universes manifest there."

"I say," okay, this Arkillo thing's voice was off-putting; like two rocks grinding against each other, and it made me want to clench my teeth for hearing it, "that the Weaponers have hidden a few features in the rings, so that they could build up a number of them and use them against us."

"Both equally likely," Sinestro admitted, looking up at the central battery's glowing core. "Boy, TiBalt, was it? Describe your universe, in detail this time."

He sounded long-suffering, and I forgot my fear and narrowed my eyes at his back. "No rings, no heroes, no villains, no magic. Earth hasn't gotten out of its solar system yet."

"That is hardly in detail, but useful nonetheless. You say we're a story, describe that then." Okay, I was now going to explain to a potentially real and very powerful man that I didn't follow his existence closely. A sudden parallel between this and me standing on a mugger's neck earlier came to mind, and I cursed karma as a sadistic bitch.

"Um. Well," I rubbed the back of my neck, and looked away. "I don't really follow your story closely. The main medium is comic books, and I don't...didn't live near a store for them. I know this story in general started in...the nineteen-forties? After Earth's second world war."

"Your planet had two world wars?" Arkillo said, making me wince from his voice. "What, did you not do it right the first time?"

"Arkillo." Sinestro's tone was light, but the giant man stiffened, "business first."

"Yeah, well," I resumed, "I didn't go back and read those comics, but the mythos has been restarted a few times anyway. There have been a few new Earth Green Lanterns, anyway."

"Name them."

"Um, Hal something, Guy Gardener, him I know virtually nothing about, and John Stewart, him I know the best because he was most recent."

"Was this from a high turnover rate of Earth's lanterns, by chance?"

"No, Hal and Guy got too busy fighting...someone to actually police the sector, so John took over." Sinestro made a hmm sound, and I continued while shifting on my feet. "You used to be a Green Lantern, one of their best, but you split from them for ideological reasons that ultimately proved wrong-" The pink man whirled to glare at me again.

"Wrong how?"

"I don't know, but recently you were shown to be a Green Lantern again-"

"How recently?" Sinestro was approaching again, looking agitated.

"I want to say like a year ago, maybe two?" This time I had control enough to back away, but only for one step. "The Indigo Tribe tried to force you to atone for the wrongs you did, I know it resulted in their central battery being broken, but not much else, and you went back to the Green Lanterns."

"Who are the Indigo Tribe?"

"You don't know?" A claw of yellow energy formed from the air and lifted me by my neck, squeezing hard enough that I couldn't breathe for a second, before slamming me down on my back, the small pink man looming over me. For that moment he looked taller than Arkillo, and half as pleasant.

"I am not in the business of asking questions for which I already know the answer, boy, now let's try this again. Who are the Indigo Tribe?" I coughed for a second, hurrying to answer.

"Wielders of the Indigo light, it's compassion based, it's infectious, targeting people with high compassion or extremely low to fill the empty space in them with compassion or something."

"Where are they based?"

"A planet called Nok, I think? I looked them up on the wiki, I don't think it was shown where Nok was, though."

"What is a 'wiki?'"

"Digital encyclopedia of knowledge, sir."

"What is the state of the Sinestro Corps when last you checked?"

"I think you relocated them to your homeworld?"

"And why did I do that?"

"There was a war, um, I think Qward," was I pronouncing that right, "was invaded?" Sinestro moved out of my sight, and I tried to stand, to see Lyssa looking intently at her book, while Arkillo bared fang -ye gods those things were huge- at me.

"This is your opportunity to atone for making me repeat myself, boy." Sinestro spoke slowly, face turned into a considering expression. "Volunteer some information that I would find useful."

"The white lantern power battery is somewhere on earth?"

"The what?"

"White lantern power battery, white lanterns are derived from the power of life. They oppose black lanterns who draw from apathy and death."

"Good enough, I suppose." He shared a glance with Arkillo. "What is the status of the Green Lantern corps last you recall?"

"Um, at war with the Red corps, I think? A super-android destroyed Oa once, I'm not sure if they happened in the same version of the story, though."

"Amusing. But none of this addresses that you possess a ring that was dest- why are you shorter?" I blinked rapidly, unable to comprehend that statement, however Sinestro's reaction to repeating himself earlier was stuck in my head, so I took a moment to phrase my counter-question.

"I don't understand, sir."

"You are shorter than you were a moment ago. In fact, you are increasing to grow shorter now. Explain this."

"Um..."

"Useless," The pink man- Korugar, I remembered, that was his home world, so he must be Korugaran- snarled, "Ring of Sinestro Corpsman 2814, diagnosis."

"Anomaly," a robotic voice from my hand said. So the ring...my ring, could talk. Yet another weird thing to happen today. Given my ease of accepting that, I believed I had gone into shock. "Corpsman is venting mass at an accelerating rate. Vented mass being converted into negative chronotons then decaying. Cause unknown."

"Magnificent. Corpsman, I no longer have time for this 'riveting' conversation. Arkillo, Lyssa, return to your duties. Come to me when the corpsman is ready for deployment, or the ring has been dispatched to find someone else." He paused a moment. "And lower Earth's priority rating in its detection, if needed." Then he was enveloped by a faint yellow glow, and rose off to the cavern's ceiling.

Lyssa closed her large book, and elected to walk rather than fly, and Arkillo cleared the space between he and I with one massive step. "Alright, meat. Until I say otherwise, you are a dead man walking." The massive elephant-thing's voice was even worse when he was trying to be intimidating, which he turned out he was. From where I was, I could tell that he had a lot more teeth than I had originally thought, and a very unpleasant equivalent of a smile. "I'm the drill sergeant for the Corps, means I have to make you into a functioning warrior. You know how the ring works?"

"Um." Suddenly Arkillo was all in my business, snarling something fierce.

"No more of that 'um' bullshit. I ask a question, you give an answer, or I take your face off. Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"And that sir stuff isn't going to get you any points. Respect is good, but you also need a spine. And I'm going to beat that into you." I was not a good, kind man. Sinestro got away with talking down to me because he was legitimately smarter than I, and I respected him as a person. This Arkillo, I had no knowledge of. I ran through my mind, reviewing what I knew of the rings; they were limited only by imagination, and required the user to will items into being.

I clenched my hand, pictured the first big gun that came to mind; the gatling-shield from Gundam Heavyarms, and willed it to me. Yellow light surged around my hand, forming a heptagonal shield over my forearm, and a long gattling gun from my hand, pointed at Arkillo, revving up. "And you, sir, need to learn to tell the difference between respect and being polite." Arkillo looked at the whirling barrels in his face for a moment, and started laughing.

A full laugh, like it was the best joke he had heard in his whole life. "Damn, meat, you're the first newbie that made a construct before training. Maybe you're not worthless." And then he lashed out with one of his meaty hands, which had claws on his fingers, I found out, and struck me across the side, sending me up into the air, and across the courtyard, to hit the ground twenty feet away. "Don't do it again."

I g.r.o.a.n.e.d, as the construct I made dissolved. Landed right on my keys.