American comics: Starting with Luke the Maker

“You need to give me your trust.”

Beneath Bruce Wayne's mansion, in a cave converted into a laboratory, Rogers was repeatedly, almost hypnotically, reminding Bruce Wayne.

The ring on his hand emitted a beam of light, stretched out long and thin like a thread, circling Wayne. Driven by Rogers, the tip of the thread repeatedly approached Wayne's body, tentatively touching it before quickly retreating, as if testing something.

After dozens of attempts, the light seemed weary of this game, displaying an air of disdain. It distanced itself from Bruce Wayne, refusing to approach any further despite Rogers's constant urging.

“Is this a failure?” Wayne asked, a hint of helplessness in his voice upon seeing this.

“You can't trust me, so you're rejected by the ring's energy. It's like a naive child, only close to those it feels affection for.” Rogers withdrew the energy, realizing that the test to allow Bruce Wayne to experience the ring's energy was facing difficulties from the start.

“Trust requires time and a foundation. And I rarely give my trust to others,” Wayne replied.

“Then, to help you eliminate the hidden danger, I'll have to choose the alternative plan,” Rogers said. “I'll go and take care of Scarecrow and bring back his Scarecrow mask for you to study.”

“As Batman?” Wayne raised an eyebrow, his expression thoughtful.

“You can choose. I can impersonate you, or I can be myself,” Rogers said, shrugging. “I need to remind you that this is just the beginning. If you can't master this energy soon, many of the troublesome criminals you encounter in the future may possess similar powers. This city is too suitable for the growth of negative energy. This means they'll be more active and more likely to find hosts.”

“I'll have a Batsuit custom-made for you,” Wayne nodded. Although cautious, he felt a sense of trustworthiness and conviction emanating from Rogers. Anyone else might have succumbed to this influence, readily placing their trust in Rogers.

Despite controlling his emotions and reason, maintaining a degree of vigilance and doubt towards Rogers, he was willing to take a risk to verify things.

Having the other party act as Batman was clearly part of this risk.

…

“Hey, wait, where are you taking me? What's wrong? What's happening?”

A streak of green light flashed across the cosmos like a meteor, and within it, Hal Jordan was yelling in terror.

He realized his ring was out of control!

This had never happened before. He had never encountered this in any records from his predecessors, nor in the Green Lantern usage guidelines.

He was on a mission in his assigned sector when the ring suddenly took over, enclosing him and entering travel mode.

And if the star charts he had been memorizing lately were correct, the direction seemed to be his home!

During the journey, Hal Jordan constantly tried to communicate with the ring and tried every possible way to regain control of its energy. But everything he did was in vain. His ring was single-minded, ignoring its wearer's thoughts, like a starving person rushing to a feast, unstoppable.

…

“The power of fear? No, only I possess complete fear! Parallax is mine!”

In the cosmos, Thaal Sinestro, as if sensing something, gazed in a certain direction. He instinctively realized that a new competitor had appeared. After a moment's thought, he rushed towards the sensed direction.

He couldn't accept anyone sharing the mantle of fear with him! He needed to eliminate the sudden competitor.

…

“The emotional energy in Sector 2814 is unusually active. Has something changed?”

At the Green Lantern Corps headquarters, the department responsible for managing and monitoring emotional spectrum energy and the Green Lantern Corps, a few small blue beings with blue skin were puzzled as they observed the emotional energy in a certain cosmic region far exceeding the index's activity level.

The emotional energy in that sector was as if it had come alive, constantly emitting vigorous active fluctuations, with an extremely high rate of increase.

“Perhaps we should send someone to investigate. Who's responsible for that sector, let me see. Oh, found it, it's Hal Jordan! He's a promising rookie, notify him to investigate what exactly happened in his area that caused the emotional energy to continue to grow so actively.”

The little blue being flipped through the files, muttering to himself. These were troubled times. An elite and powerful Green Lantern had recently abandoned the Green Lantern Corps and embraced another terrible emotional energy. They were hunting him across the cosmos, preventing him from further contact and mastery of that terrible energy.

The Green Lantern Corps warriors were currently searching the cosmos for Thaal Sinestro's trail. If they couldn't stop him, once he mastered that energy, they might face a cataclysmic disaster in the future.

…

“Look who it is? The famous, yet fleeing Batman?”

In a slum of stacked illegal buildings, Scarecrow, while instructing his men to continue installing the collection devices he had been manufacturing these past few days, looked at the familiar yet subtly off black figure on the wall in front of him.

“Why do you dare to appear before me again? Do you want to experience that profound fear once more?” Scarecrow approached Batman with a maniacal laugh. At the same time, red and yellow energy began to emanate from his body. During this time, with the passage of time and the installation of the devices, his energy and power had grown significantly. In other words, in a short period of time, his strength had increased far beyond the Scarecrow who fought Batman a few days ago.

Of course, without filtering the fear, he was also more deeply influenced and eroded by this emotion. Perhaps he himself didn't realize it, but Rogers, with his experience, could tell at a glance that the other party had almost merged with the Scarecrow mask, and his mind was controlled by the negative energy it gathered.

The other party's mental will was clearly not as resilient and strong as Rogers had imagined.

So, under Scarecrow's astonished gaze, he saw golden light emerging from the Batman in front of him. Those lights, like the red and yellow lights emanating from his body, formed a layer of golden energy armor.

“Damn it! How could you also master my energy!”

Scarecrow felt as if he had been cuckolded, jumping up and down in a fit of rage. His mind had been in a state of excitement these past few days. He was intoxicated with fear, and he especially wanted everyone to be immersed in fear with him. All those who stood in his way were enemies.

Especially the energy emanating from the person opposite him, which had a taste he hated.

Red and yellow energy formed a large hammer, held in the skinny Scarecrow's hand and smashed towards the opposite side. The energy poured into the hammer was so great that the hammer, condensed from energy, was as big as a small house, plus a nearly ten-meter-long handle. Compared to its huge volume, the Scarecrow wielding it was like an insignificant insect.

However, Scarecrow was not hindered by the hammer's massive size at all. His hammer had great destructive power, and the ground was smashed into a deep pit, with cracks spreading in all directions. The ground shook as if there was an earthquake, and the surrounding stacked buildings shook, scattering large amounts of dust and small "parts". One unlucky Scarecrow subordinate installing the device was directly hit on the head by a door panel falling from above and collapsed to the ground.

Rogers, disguised as Batman, circled halfway in the air, dodging the hammer while using the hammer's concealment to transform into a yellow light and quickly approach the Scarecrow.

The fist landed on Scarecrow's body, and a look of surprise and undisguised pain flashed across Scarecrow's face. He flew backward, smashing through a wall. He scrambled to his feet in the rubble, full of confusion.

Why could the other party break through the protection of the energy armor and hurt him?

Why did he feel so much pain when the other party's fist landed on him?

Why did this hooded, faceless, nosy guy possess such powerful power after only a few days?

However, Rogers didn't give him a chance, launching a continuous offensive against him while taking advantage of his victory.

Scarecrow's fighting skills were not considered excellent in Gotham City. He relied on his brain and potions to commit crimes. The last time he was able to easily suppress Batman was because he had greater sharpness, faster vision, quicker speed and agility, and strong protection under the amplification of the energy armor. Of course, the most important thing was the erosiveness of his own energy.

Fear made him weaken Batman's strength to a very low level, and his own increase in strength easily crushed Batman after his strength was greatly weakened.

But this Batman not only resisted the erosion of his power of fear, but also shook the rule of his power of fear!

The other party's energy could penetrate the protection of the energy armor, causing some damage to his body. Under continuous beatings, as the power of fear gradually subsided, Scarecrow, whose IQ suddenly went online, finally realized what he had always felt was abnormal.

“You're not Batman! You're a fake imposter!” Scarecrow shouted.

Rogers's eyes flickered. Just as he was about to knock Scarecrow unconscious, subdue him, and take him back, as if sensing something, he suddenly looked up at the sky.

A streak of green light flashed past in the night, falling rapidly towards them.

“No no no no! Not like this! You can't leave me!”

Amidst a series of sudden voices, a green light separated from the person who landed and shot towards Rogers like a swallow returning to its nest. However, just as the green light was about to approach Rogers, it was firmly blocked by a layer of golden light.

Rogers sensed a strong sense of disgust and dissatisfaction from his ring towards the green light. This disgust and dissatisfaction was even stronger than the disgust towards the power of fear on Scarecrow's body.

The green light, blocked outside, hit the light barrier a few times head-on. After finding that it couldn't break through, it circled around Rogers like a firefly, searching for gaps up and down, while constantly sending waves of green light towards Rogers, as if telling him something.

This peculiar scene stunned Rogers.

Amplified, his eyesight surpassed Superman's. He had already seen what was wrapped in the green light, it was a ring!

A ring that seemed to have something in common with the ring on his hand!

He looked in shock at the source of the ring, a person who looked very human, also staring at him in disbelief. However, compared to his gaze towards the other party, the other party's eyes were full of resentment and disbelief.

“Is it yours?” Rogers cleanly chopped Scarecrow to the ground with a chop of his hand, forcefully pulling off the mask that was reluctantly clinging to Scarecrow's head like glue, while pointing to the green ring circling around him like a satellite, asking the stranger.

“Of course it's mine,” Hal Jordan replied, constantly summoning the ring using the telepathic connection he hadn't broken with the ring.

However, Hal's actions seemed to stimulate the ring, making it understand something. Its entire body shone brightly, and then it became restrained.

Green Lantern Hal was completely frozen, completely stiff. He found that his telepathic connection with the ring had been completely severed just now. What he couldn't accept even more was that the ring, which had actively severed the connection, kept its distance from him as if it had been seen flirting with other boys by its boyfriend.

He was clearly the original partner!

He was the wearer and owner of the Green Lantern ring!

But now he could only watch the ring after disconnecting, frantically approaching the strange man wearing strange clothes and looking dishonest in a more simpering posture.

Rogers was also very embarrassed. He now had to try to appease his ring, lest it violently fight with the green ring.

There wasn't much energy left in the ring, and the collection speed in this city with a bad atmosphere was also slow. He didn't want to waste too much energy on a ring for no reason.

So the situation on the field now was that the two rings were frantically fighting [scolding] each other with some kind of energy frequency, and the two wearers were staring at each other with wide eyes, not knowing what to do.

“Mind if we talk somewhere else?” Captain Rogers finally broke the awkward silence, forcing a smile, even though he was wearing a mask.