FBI: Chapter 69/70

Chapter 69: Emotional Spectrum Version of the Sage of Six Paths

Butcher was completely stunned after seeing Dante successfully awaken the Ancestral Red Lantern Ring.

Sure, he was a newborn Lantern Beast—but still a Lantern Beast—bound in symbiosis with the Ancestral Lantern Furnace.

He could grow within the Furnace, tap into its power to possess Lantern Ring wielders, and even manipulate it to some extent. But influencing which Corps member the Ring chose? Yeah, that wasn't part of the package.

As a Lantern Beast born of Rage Red Light, he came with a preloaded wealth of knowledge and instinct. In his experience, Rage Red Light apostles were always in a state of unfiltered fury and hate.

Even if they started out controlling their minds and bodies, that tiny sliver of humanity would eventually get eroded by eternal rage, until only a rage-puppeted body remained.

Wasn't their default expression supposed to be "say one word and I'll rip your face off"?

Yet after Dante slipped on the Ancestral Red Lantern Ring, not only did he not fly into a berserker frenzy, he even... smiled gently?

At first, he'd assumed it was the Will Green Light resisting the Rage Red Light, keeping him sane.

But the little Ox quickly realized: because Ion Shark had forcibly merged during its juvenile stage, temporarily becoming Ion Man, the Ancestral Green Lantern Power Battery and Ring were both drained—and the Green Lantern transformation had already dissipated.

In other words…

This was all him?

No wonder the Lantern Beast archives all say, "Don't mess with lone Green Lanterns." The advantage Will Green Light has when facing other Emotional Spectrum colors alone is no joke.

"What are you muttering about?"

"I learned a lot today," Butcher blinked his giant, innocent-looking eyes at the man who had just shifted from Ion Man to Red Lantern Devil. "You're holding both a Green Lantern Ring and a Red Lantern Ring. What do you call that? A contradiction in terms?"

Dante looked at the "very dumb, very innocent"-looking Butcher and couldn't help but wonder if he was fated to collect all the newborn Lantern Beasts.

What was this, Emotional Spectrum Edition of the Sage of Six Paths?

Anyway, speaking of Lantern Beasts—Ion Shark, after disengaging from its Ion Man merge, had immediately scurried back into the Green Lantern Power Battery to nap.

Dante knew that activating Ion Man's ridiculous power-up had been way too much for the newborn Shark and the Ancestral Furnace.

For now, he'd have to bid Green Lantern power a temporary goodbye.

Seems like Ion Man's power was best reserved as an emergency trump card going forward...

After all, he couldn't just keep draining the little shark dry.

Thankfully, the Ancestral Red Lantern was more than enough to fill the void.

And when it came to raw destructive power and aggressiveness, Red Lantern was arguably better.

Plus, this Ancestral Red Lantern—created using Ion Man's power—didn't come with as many nasty side effects as the original version.

Sure, it still amplified rage, hate, and rebellion against injustice, and the risk of falling into Eternal Fury was real. But maybe because it was molded with Will Green Light and Ion Man's energy, the fury was more... containable.

After transforming, the searing red energy would still course through his veins like lava, but none of the usual horrors applied—no heart-replacement shenanigans, no dying the moment the Ring was removed.

In a way, the Red Lantern's "evil" traits had been heavily diluted.

Dante was genuinely pleased with that result.

He'd been afraid the Red Lantern Corps would end up being nothing but a psychotic demolition squad that would completely destroy his rep.

Meanwhile, Dr. Jack Bright—who'd watched the entire thing go down—was still frozen with his jaw dropped.

"Hey, Jack, you dead or just buffering?"

Jack's soul—which had definitely yeeted out of his body—snapped back into place with Dante's voice.

What the hell had he just witnessed!?

That was a Dimensional Devil God. No—a High Divinity—living in the Crimson Cosmos, crossing multiversal boundaries just to handle a human.

And then that human just casually morphed into another High Divinity—well, maybe a bootleg version, definitely not at peak form, but still...

What kind of FBI agent was this!?

Jack had always assumed the Foundation Universe was the weirdest one out there.

But now?

He had to admit: it was no longer "the weirdest." Just "one of many."

"Did you just... rewrite reality?"

Whether it was severing the High Divinity's connection to the real world or altering the Crimson Gem's core properties—it was all clearly permanent.

This wasn't some cheap parlor trick by those annoying "reality warpers."

Plus, ever since his soul had merged with SCP-963, no matter which Universe he visited, the Universal Will would always tag him as one of the "Constants."

Which meant that any instance of reality-warping near him would automatically ping his awareness.

"I guess?"

Dante scratched his head. Ion Man, being one of the Lantern Corps' ultimate endgame cards, had some seriously busted feats.

Time manipulation, reality rewriting.

Even going head-to-head with Superman-level glitch characters, blowing up several Universes in the process.

As for Butcher—judging purely by endgame potential—he was still a tier below the Lantern Beast big dogs, Ion Shark and Entity.

But compared to the rest of the pack, he was already in another league.

Of course, this was based on the assumption that the Lantern Corps and Lantern Beasts had been around and had matured for a long time.

Right now? These two baby Lantern Beasts under Dante's care could barely survive a fusion session without blacking out.

Honestly, it wasn't a Green Lantern Corps or Red Lantern Corps at this point—it was more like the Ion Shark Nursery and Butcher Daycare.

"Anyway, now that we've wrapped up the big problem—have you made up your mind?"

Dante summoned a blazing-hot pointer crafted from Rage Red Light and hooked it through the ruby pendant hanging around Jack's neck.

"You coming back to the FBI with me quietly?"

"Or are you gonna put up some pointless resistance... and get buried by me in an ocean trench that never sees sunlight?"

(To be continued.)

Chapter 70: Only Thor is Really Breaking Out of Prison

Dante and Jack Bright walked out of the Warden's building side by side—only to find no signs of a fight anywhere.

Instead, the three Asgardian siblings were standing there, studying the giant collapsed on the ground.

"By Odin! Is this thing even human? I've never heard of a Midgardian growing this tall."

"My dear brother, just because you haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Look how uncultured you sound."

"Both of you shut up! Did you forget what I just taught you!?"

Hela, at this moment, didn't look like a goddess or even an older sister—more like a war-hardened commander, drilling her greenhorn recruits on how to handle enemies in deep-space combat.

"When facing an enemy with absurdly high durability and defense, you have two options. One: charge up your strongest attack and hit a single point hard enough to pierce through the whole."

"Or two: use speed and magic to strike critical organs and weak points with precision."

"Once you're on the battlefield, don't think of yourself as a god."

Her methods were strict, but undeniably effective. Loki had been getting chewed out like this for nearly a month, so he was used to it by now.

But Thor, who had only recently rejoined his siblings, clearly hadn't received enough beatings yet—he puffed out his chest and actually argued back.

"But everything you just said is different from what you yelled at me earlier! Didn't you call yourself the 'Goddess of Death' every time you smacked me!?"

Before Hela could answer, Dante jumped in.

"Come on. When your sister was beating you, that wasn't war."

That was domestic violence.

Of course she brought out the whole 'Goddess of Death' thing—it was for suppressive purposes.

Thor's jaw tightened. He opened his mouth a few times as if to say something, then just gave up with a defeated sigh.

It was bad enough that he couldn't beat his older sister, who had a millennium head start, but now even this random "FBI agent" from Midgard was verbally dunking on him.

And he'd just spent who-knows-how-long imprisoned by a multiversal-tier Devil God.

Midgard was exhausting. He wanted to go back to Asgard.

Not because he was afraid. No. He just... missed his mother. Yeah. Frigga.

Loki snorted softly to himself.

He recognized that expression on Thor's face instantly.

It was the face of a man whose worldview had been shattered into a fine powder and was now being rebuilt from scratch.

He'd made that face once too—back when he got wrecked.

Although Dante only knew that Loki had been launched by Clark Kent and then scooped up by Doom in green robes, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

That punch from the Kansas Big Guy had knocked him from Metropolis all the way to New York.

That was the physical beatdown.

What came next in New York was magical obliteration.

He'd been stuck in freefall for a solid hour... and then got yeeted straight into Latveria.

The memory alone made every hair on Loki's body stand on end.

He had to get stronger.

Even if it was just to survive comfortably on Earth, he couldn't keep being everyone's chew toy.

As for Thor's slow-booting brain? He could take his time catching up.

"So, this guy on the ground—is that the body you abandoned earlier?" Dante asked Jack.

"That's right. Originally just some short, skinny guy. Never expected that 'Juggernaut' power to bulk him up into a meat tower. Honestly, if I'd known earlier, I would've given it a spin. Never had a body that swole before."

Dante frowned—not because he had any issue with Jack Bright, but because the face under Juggernaut's helmet looked... weirdly familiar.

Wait a second.

Juggernaut collapsing from exhaustion?

That didn't add up.

"Hela, what happened to him? Why's he down like that? What's the situation?"

"Looks like you handled that source of crimson power... and actually managed to manipulate it?" Hela looked at Dante with surprise in her eyes. "I could feel it. In that moment, the spatial distortion just vanished. Then that thing calling itself 'Cyttorak' lost its All Father-level aura, said something like 'Playtime's over,' and poof—this guy hit the floor."

Dante nodded.

The original soul inside Juggernaut had been devoured by a sliver of Cyttorak's will, and when Cyttorak pulled out, all that was left was a husk.

It didn't revert to its base form because it was still wearing Cyttorak's matching gear.

"So, my dear Queen, did your Green Lantern Ring mutate, or did you get your hands on a different color?" Hela said, turning to Dante.

"Please allow me to introduce... the Red Lantern—wielder of the red of rage."

Dante struck a dramatic pose, presenting the Lantern Furnace in her direction.

And then...

Nothing happened.

"Huh?"

Dante blinked.

Had he been wrong this whole time?

The Red Lantern Ring didn't respond to Hela at all?

That couldn't be.

She'd been treated like Asgard's crown jewel, prince, marshal, and even a war buddy by her own father for literal millennia—only to get sealed away on Midgard like trash.

If that didn't qualify as apocalyptic resentment, what did?

In one particularly messed-up universe, a similar character made his dad sit on a golden toilet for eternity—only able to pass the time with a broken Bluetooth speaker.

So why... no reaction?

But Dante wasn't the kind of guy who got stuck over a weird hiccup like that.

He lived by a simple truth:

There's no such thing as difficult—just stuff not worth doing.

Whatever.

Instead, his attention was pulled back to the Juggernaut husk lying on the ground.

Even though the body had bulked up to over four meters and was warped beyond recognition, it still gave off a weird sense of familiarity.

Dante reached out to remove Juggernaut's iconic dome helmet—but the moment his hand touched it, the last lingering trace of crimson energy was absorbed by the Red Lantern Ring.

The armor disintegrated.

The bloated, twisted body shrank back to normal size.

Dante wiped his face—and then froze.

Good grief.

Wasn't this T-bag?

The same T-bag he'd been complaining about non-stop before the mission even began?

What kind of alignment is this?

Started with ranting about T-bag, ended with ranting about T-bag.

And in between... where the hell was the actual Prison Break?

Wait—never mind. There was one.

Thor.

[Mission: Prison Break, Brother – Completed]

[Related Characters: Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Constantine, Thor, Juggernaut (T-bag)]

[Acquired Skill: Captain Cold's Genius-Level Mechanical Engineering]
[Acquired Trait: Heat Wave's Literary Foundation]
[Acquired Ability: Constantine's Traditional Black Magic]
[Acquired Power: Thor's Lightning Manipulation]
[Acquired Trait: Juggernaut's "Unstoppable Incarnation of Power"]

(To be continued.)