Just one of those things
Nate Grey &
Jack T. Chance
location: Earth's moon and the space around
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It could have happened at anytime, it could've happened in anyplace...
Bad timing all around.
The mutant known, more often than anything else, as the X-man was levitating between Earth and the moon. Frustrated beyond all endurance at the damnation that was his tenuous grasp on a continued existance, he was raging in all directions with his near unlimted power. He smashed small fragmets of rock and other space debris, laying a seeming siege on all those little things that would normally burn up in the upper atmosphere.
He was making quite a display that, while not necessarily very visible from anywhere beyon the immediate area, was alarming astronomer's the world over. Radio broadcasts and televised newscasts were being made on the phenomenon, speculation going up and down the range from alien invasion to some sort of space disturbance that might threaten the planet. Still, this was mainly centered around the immediate area...
...except to anyone with a power ring and a short fuse.
The green lantern, Jack T. Chance, was in the outer edge of the solar system killing time. No longer restricted to just his own system, he'd been spending a lot of time travaling around all of Creation doing the galaxy guardian riff. There was no real GL Corps left anymore so he figured somebody ought to be doing it. That and this neck of the woods, so to speak, was always big with the major bad doings so he might as well peek in now and again so he could find something to pound for the good fight.
Still, there were days Chance just wanted to pound something for any old reason that presented itself...even if he had to slightly exaggerate the situation sometimes. He didn't much care so long as he could pound someone...since he got the ring he hadn't run into many challenges so he made the most of it by getting into lots of fights rather than waiting for one decent bout.
He was just about to pick a different bend in space when his ring picked up the broadcasts from a very panicky Earth. He narrowed down a fix as to where it was centered and then headed that way at his top speed, opening up a warp point and slipping between what is real and not.
Nowhere close to calming down, Nate blazed even brighter, not paying so much attention to how far his influence was going so much as he was making sure he didn't actually threaten the Earth in any way. Much as he was pissed off, he didn't want to actually harm this pristine world...not that it really was but in comparison to the world of his birth it might as well be.
On the vaguest edge of his conciousness he could feel a minor distortion in space just behind him but when he turned to look, there was nothing to see. So, he turned back to where he'd had his gaze before...at nothing inparticular.
Which is when the warp point exploded open and Chance slammed into Nate full speed, away from the Earth and making a beeline toward the Moon.
They came down hard together, the ring protecting Chance from any harm but he was disappointed when he got up and didn't see the guy he'd crashed with anywhere about. Kind of hurt that it was over so fast, least he comforted himself with the knowledge that there'd be a lot less scared people on that blue and green ball up that way. Just as he was about through dusting off his coat, the ground exploded out from under him and he was back on his butt.
Nate came up and glared down at his blueskinned attacker, not recognizing him and not caring. He'd been in a bad enough mood before but now he had a more specific focus for that rage. Cutting loose at him with a massive telekinetic burst, he blasted Chance, and a good potion of the surface, about a mile away.
More or less within a ring bubble, cursing the...dare he think it...chance that this guy's power was yellow in nature, he rolled with the impact. The ring was vulnerable to purest yellow, which was the main fluctuation to this guy's power unfortunately. He could partially defend against it but it did make this a bit trickier than he'd thought at first.
Chance grinned and made himself a space bike, charging back at Nate, and breaking out with a battlecry that no one could hear for the fact they were in a vaccuum. Kind of made him wonder how this guy was surviving out here without some kind of atmosphere but he didn't much care really. Just so long as he stood up to a lot a of punishment to make this worthwhile.
Coming to a stop on the Moon's surface, Nate watched the guy as he came back to him. The bike came as a bit of a surprise so he tried a cursory scan of the blue guy's mind. This didn't work out so well, something about the thought processes was messing with his telepathy. The most he got were some basics on the ring and that this guy really wanted a fight.
That suited Nate just fine...
The space bike was just in range when Nate tore it out from under Chance who, even as he fell, blasted Nate off his feet with a forcebeam to the chest. Nate rolled back to his feet, using his TK to compensate for the lesser gravity, and erected a shield as Chance slammed down on top of him with a massive hammer. He held the shield against the continued battering as he started scooping up boulders from the surface and chucking them at the GL.
Chance dodged under the first one but couldn't get out of the way of the next so he blasted it into pebbles. Scooping them up, he made a sort of semi-automatic rock shooter and started firing them back rapidly at the X-man. That barrier the guy had up was a problem so Chance opted for a less direct approach; while keeping up his attack, he sent a few beams beneath the surface and scooped up the ground out from under Nate. Getting a firm hold on that, he blasted the mutant back up into space.
A bit off balance, Nate recovered quickly and cut loose with a massive TK burst. Unable to do much else, the GL brought up another force barrier but the coloration of the mutant's blast was beginning to seep through. Gambling on the usual space debris being helpful, he pulled as much of it together as he could and formed it into a sort of shield, reinforcing the strength of it with the ring.
It seemed to work, enough so that he could divide his attention wide and send directed energy blasts around it back at his opponent.
Seeing them coming, Nate extended TK shields around his initial blast but kept pouring on the energy to his main assault. He'd already figured out there was something in his power that was able to get through Chance's constructs so he figured that raw power was the way to go. He kept upping the strength of his barrage, forcing the GL back down to the Moon's surface.
Chance was beginning to see this as a problem. He figured they were about on the same power scale, more or less, but the other guy had seemingly no limit to the amount of energy he had backing him. His ring on the other hand did have a limit, though he was stil many hours away from when that would become an issue.
The problem was that he could see this fight easily lasting that long.
Opting for another tactic, as using the ring to effect other objects seemed to buy hin some time and was pretty effective, moreso than using the rings energies directly, he fell back down to the moon and lay flat on his back. The mutant stopped firing for a second, totally confused as Chance had hoped he'd be, channeling his ring to the gavitational field of the planet he decided to really up the ante.
The bigger they are, the bigger the things you hit them with. Localizing the gravitational effect to his immediate area, he rolled to the right as the ring centered that effect directly on the X-man, slamming him into the surface like a man shot out of a cannon.
Essentialy, Chance had hit him with the Moon. Getting to his feet, he waited for the next attack but nothing happened. Waiting patiently, making a fake cigarette with the ring to smoke, he sat back on the surface and waited.
After half an hour he figured he'd won. The guy probably wasn't dead but he sure wouldn't be causing any more touble anyime soon. Figuring he'd done his good deed for the day, Chance headed back up and then out of the solar system, looking for more trouble.
As soon as he was gone, Nate peeked out of the crater. It had gotten to the point that he wasn't even sure if fighting the blue guy, just for the sake of venting his inner turmoil, was really worth it. Better to play possum and put an end to it...that and he was bushed. He didn't often have to really push his abilities, as powerful as he was, but he had just about reached a point where some strain was beginning to be evident.
Taking a deep breath, his TK supply of oxygen running pretty thin, he headed back to Earth.