The Control We Ought to Have (Sinestro)

[jessilynn]

This wasn't how her evening was supposed to play out. There was supposed to be a simple trip to the deli - her favorite little hole-in-the-wall place. Possibly a coffee run, and then definitely a movie that called for popcorn. The place wasn't far, and so Susan had decided to walk. That's where she'd gone wrong.

Susan hadn't slept much the night before, and it made her senses groggy. Her reaction time was greatly decreased when she was tired. Which probably explained why her small handbag was now in the hands of a tall man and his two burly companions and she was being shoved back up against a brick wall down the side alley.

It had started off with a feigned autograph request. Susan had politely declined with just a bit of a guilty twinge. She hated giving them. She wasn't a celebrity or a creature to be gawked at. She certainly wasn't a hero.

Now, the men kept pacing back and forth like vultures waiting to dive in on their dinner. Susan probably should have been more afraid than she actually was, but it wasn't like they could keep her here.

One of the men came in close and grabbed her by the jaw. With two quick flicks of his wrist, he turned her face back and forth, looking her over as if she were a piece of fruit at the market. Anger flared as her steel blue eyes studied his face. There wasn't much to be read there. Susan twisted at the waist, lifted her right leg, and wrapped it backwards behind him. One swift jerk sent him tumbling and freed her jaw. Amateur.

As the fellow scrambled to pick himself up, the other two advanced. Susan extended her arm and sent a pulse of energy at the nearest, knocking him into a trash can. The other grabbed her wrist and jerked her sideways. It took a second to regain her balance. Tossing her hair back from her face, she delivered a solid kick to his stomach. The man's smirk disappeared as he wheezed and clutched his abdomen, cursing.

A black metal barrel rose level with her face.

"How original." Probably not the wisest choice of words. She immediately regretted them.

Susan froze. Holding her hands up with feigned innocence, she focused on the dead space between them. Unseen energy moved, almost tangibly to Susan, as an invisible wall rippled in front of the gun. Hopefully the fellow's aim wasn't perfect or he'd end up with a ricocheted bullet in his shoulder. What was she thinking? She hoped it was dead on.

This was the control she had grown accustomed to. Being able to rise to the top of any situation that life threw her way. Well, at least as close to the top as any being could possibly climb. Sometimes the mountain of life was just too high.

It was in that wandering moment, brought on no doubt by lack of sleep and insufficient caffeine, that Susan lost sight of the third man in her peripheral. Not for long though. He jerked her attention his way with a sharp jab to the back of her hand. She hadn't seen the knife. Not until it was too late.

Susan felt the warm stickiness before the moment really even registered. Damn. Then there was pain. Not unbearable, but distracting nonetheless.

The man who'd managed to separate himself from the trash took advantage of her diverted gaze and pinned her against the wall. No. Her barrier. She could feel it draining as her mind went in all different directions. His grimy fingers wove into her hair. No. Focus! Concentration was supposed to be her strength.

Susan Storm scrambled to collect her thoughts. If should couldn't, this night would end worse than she'd thought.

[Thaal Sinestro]

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[atrb=background,http://i182.photobucket.com/albums/x126/Gotta_love_gits/Sinestro/random%20images/greenmiddle.png] Sinestro was by no means a well alien. After surviving a fight with a mad, magically inclined woman out for revenge, ending in a massive explosion that had never ripped him to shreds, he should have been lying in a hospital bed. He should have still been unconscious in a hospital somewhere. He had been for a while. But there was something about unsophisticated human hospitals that just… rubbed him the wrong way. And since his will was strong enough to allow him to be awake when anyone else would have been in a coma, why not force it to be strong enough to take an early leave from the dreary place? Anyway, it wasn’t like he didn’t have things to do. A Lantern’s job was never done. Getting his ring recharged had been a little annoying, but nothing that wasn’t impossible for someone like him. Okay, well, maybe he had just been lucky, but it hardly mattered one way or another. All that really mattered was that his ring was back to a full charge, and he was back in the air, patrolling for trouble like normal. He would not let something like serious injuries keep him from doing his job. Normally, his ring would heal him, but thanks to some curse that bitch put on him before fleeing for her miserable life, his wounds would not heal as they were supposed to. Time, he imagined, was all he could leave them to. Annoying. As he flew though the air, he let his ring scan for trouble, wanting something to do to distract himself from his miserable luck. A mugging. A bank robbery. Anything. It was starting to feel like the place was crime free, just to mock him, when his ring finally indicated a disturbance not too far from him. Readings showed strange activity in the area, like the very air was being manipulated. Curious, he floated his way to the side street, hovering above as he watched a simple-looking woman take on a few thuggish brutes. Her powers, as he observed them, were quite impressive. She looked like she could make shields with… her mind? Her surroundings? He couldn’t tell for sure, but there was something going on. Still, it wasn’t a perfect art, it seemed, and soon enough she looked like she was in a bit of a tight spot. Since helping people was kind of his thing, he knew he would need to swoop in and play hero. Hey, he was looking for something to do, and he had found something more interesting than he would have imagined. With a bit of a smirk, he pointed his ring at the man holding onto her hair, a green blade appearing suddenly above his arm, hacking it clean from his elbow. The man screamed, a green light covering the wound to keep it from bleeding. Since letting someone bleed to death had caused such drama last time, he decided not to let it happen again. See? And people said he wasn’t growing. Lowering himself to the make shift battlefield, he used a construct fist to knock away another one of the thugs, giving the woman some room to recover from her trying encounter. Perhaps it would help her regain the battle she had been winning not that long ago. “You don’t have to be concerned,” Sinestro informed her in a tone that was less comforting and more annoyed, “I will make sure these thugs learn their lesson. Why don’t you be a good little girl and take a breather? You look like you could use one.” Though he was making fun of her, he knew he wasn’t in much better a state. But at least he had a ring to protect him from further injuries, even if it couldn’t do anything about the current ones. Hovering still, the green lantern made sure his feet did not touch the ground- with his leg being the most damaged of his person, he couldn’t really walk without looking like a complete invalid. Not on his list of things to do.