Hello, internet! Welcome to yet another revived project, as well as my first ever straight-up Green Lantern project. As I conducted research into the Red Lantern Corps skills and abilities, the more they began to remind me of the Incredible Hulk, and that got me thinking. What if there was a Red Lantern who was something like an anti-hero, whose rage was tempered like a sword, or at least they could control it enough to at least aim it? I guess what I'm trying to do is create a Jason Todd/Red Hood to Green Lantern's Batman, seeing as they did something similar with the Flash in the form of Godspeed. Anyways, time for the rubber to meet the road!

Chapter 1: The Promise

Now then, Hal, I want you to take a moment, and think about all the things that define your life. All the people you love. Your job and your coworkers. Your home and your family.

And now imagine if one day, in a flash, all of that vanished. Would you simply accept your new life and continue on? Or would you do whatever it takes to get back what was taken from you? Because I can assure you, Mr. Jordan. I will get everything that was taken from me, and I will have my vengeance and get justice for my family's murder… which you could've stopped, I might add!

You asked me who I am. My name is Malcolm DeWitt. I am the Red Lantern of Sector 2814. And this is my story.

…

Coast City-11:34 PM

Two women, one stumbling slightly, the other walking with a certain degree of grace as they walked down the streets of Coast City from a local nightclub, both of them hoping to meet someone, but had had no dice.

"Becki, you know that much alcohol in someone's system can kill, yes?" The more graceful of the two spoke up, a light accent permeating her speech. She brushed a few stray brunette bangs from her forehead. The black dress clung to her like a second skin.

"T-Talie, y-you knouu I like livinnh on tha edge…" The inebriated woman giggled out, looking at her companion through her spiky black hair. She wore not a dress, but jacket and pants, which were very much like her body, white with hints of blue and purple. A certain degree of infemininity could be gleaned.

"I think a big part of that is 'living'."

"Talie", or Natalie as her proper name was, chuckled as she looked to the sky. The moon had risen while the two women were in a club. A few scattered clouds, light breeze, not too chilly. A good night.

"Hey, Talie, you knou thish guy followinh ussh?"

Natalie cast a quick glance behind her. A man behind the two was toying with a cigarette. His pale skin was a stark contrast from his black jacket. The jacket's hood was upon his head, but a few strands of cyan-ish hair stuck out beyond its placement.

Something about the man unsettled Natalie. Perhaps it was merely a sense of paranoia on her part, but Natalie nonetheless grabbed Rebecca's hand and increased pace. She made an effort not to walk too fast, but nerves fought with her critical thought.

Everything's fine. Everything's fine, Natalie.

Glancing over her shoulder again, Natalie saw that the man was keeping up with them, and that he had four friends joining him in the chase.

Everything's not fine.

"Talie, was goin' non," slurred Rebecca in both drunkenness and confusion as Natalie sped up to a noticeable degree.

"Becki, don't panic, but I think we're being followed." Natalie noted the panic seeping into her voice. Natalie heard footfalls behind her. She thought things like this were a myth, that they only happened in movies. Right?

Perhaps against her better judgement, Natalie pulled Rebecca into a dark alleyway, following it to a hypothetical safety. Four more men blocked their path.

"Ladies!"

Natalie turned. The man with the hooded jacket stood surrounded by his fellows. Natalie noticed that he had a switchblade in his hand, which made her tighten her grip on Rebecca's hand, "I-I don't want any trouble. So, if y-you could just-"

The man smiled, "Sweetie, I don't want any trouble. I mean, I mean, boys, have I ever gone out seeking trouble before?"

The men murmured various negations, aside from a single individual, "I mean, not unless they try anything. Then you do somethin'."

As Rebecca snickered, the man with the hood punched the man who spoke in the chest, causing him to double over in pain.

"Gary, what have we told you about facade?"

Gary coughed and made an exaggerated scowl, "I get you, Mark."

The man made a noise of disbelief, "And what did I say about anonym-Fine, whatever, I'll deal with you later."

"Ladies," Mark said as he forced a smile, "it's like they said. I'm not unreasonable, I'm not violent. I'm just in a bad place in life."

Natalie tightened her grip on Rebecca's hand. Rebecca chuckled drunkenly, "Well, that's not good."

Mark clapped his hands together, "See? She gets it! I'd like to get out of this bad place, but poverty is a pretty…constricting force. So, since you two seem so nice, I'm assuming that you'd want to help us out. A donation, perhaps?"

"D-donation?" Natalie recoiled slightly.

"Give us your money!" Gary shouted out. A smack sent him into silence.

"As my…" Mark cast Gary a look, "partner… said, we need you to hand over all of your money right now- YAAHHHHHHRGH!"

What caused Mark to cry out was quickly made obvious as what looked like some kind of thick red acid began to burn away at the flesh on his face. Then, a powerful voice spoke out from the shadows.

"Get the Hell away from them, you filthy little maggots, or I will tear your hearts out!"

Everyone in the allyway looked up in the direction the shout came from, and saw what appeared to be a teenageer no more than 18 or 19 at the oldest, with short black hair and wearing a red and black leather jacket with a black shirt that had some kind of insignia not dissimilar to the one found on Green Lantern's chest underneath, black jeans, black leather boots and fingerless gloves to match, and a demonic blood red domino mask that exposed the lower part of his face, including his mouth, which was dripping with red liquid and underneath which his eyes glowed pure red as he hovered down to the ground to face the attackers. On the middle finger of the teen's right hand was what appeared to be a gleaming red ring similar to the one used by the Green Lantern.

Gary scoffed, apparently unafraid of this apparently new hero who had just appeared, despite the fact that his friend was lying on the ground, crying and screaming in agony as. "And just who the Hell are you supposed to be?"

"I'm the Red Lantern, and I'm gonna do what Green Lantern won't if you don't turn around and start running for your lives; making you all burn from my hellish hate, like your friend down there," snarled the so-called Red Lantern, pure venom in his voice.

Gary chuckled and pulled out a baseball bat. "I don't think so. Leave enough of them to be identified, then take whatever they have on them," he said.

Red Lantern gave a dark chuckle as the gangbangers drew their weapons and advanced towards the women and himself. "You know, I thought that we could settle things the smart way, but I guess the fun way is always good," he said, before he fired a burning red blast of concussive energy from the fist that had the ring on it. The blast sent one of the men flying through the air and out of the alleyway, where he crashed through a parked car and out the other side, before he crumbled against the wall, apparently dead as a doornail.

One of the other thugs tried to bum rush the Red Lantern, but without so much as a change of expression, the Red Lantern made a blood red construct of a sword and rammed it through the man's heart, repeatedly.

As the fight continued, and more of the thugs were murdered in cold blood, Natalie could only stare in shock. Rebecca was beginning to sober, if only by a margin, "Talie whass happenin'? Who'sss that?"

Natalie grabbed Rebecca's hand and began to step back, something that Red Lantern couldn't help but notice.

"Go on, run! I don't need you pussies gettin' in my-OOF!" said Red Lantern, before Gary hit him in the back of the head with a wooden baseball bat. The monster of a teenager fell to his knees, coughing,

"Y-you know, don't hit the prisoner in the head. Gets them all dizzy, can't feel anything else…"

The bat swung towards his head again, but Red Lantern's arm shot out and grabbed it in midair. Red Lantern then pulled the bat out of the man's hand and began to viciously beat him so fast and so viciously that his actions merely looked like a blur. Red Lantern continued beating the poor man even after he'd stopped moving.

Mark picked himself up from the ground, the pain from his acid-soaked face making his eyes tear up. He saw the two women staring in shock as Red Lantern continued whaling on Gary

Mark growled, "You bitch!" before he ran at Natalie, who started to run off. Mark tried to grab at her, but caught the hood of Rebecca''s jacket instead.

"Becki!" Natalie cried out.

"Freak! Get off Gary now, or this little one gets it!" Mark snarled as he pulled Rebecca into a choke hold, placing a knife at her throat.

Red Lantern stood up and tossed aside the remains of the baseball bat. "Not entirely sure that's gonna help him now," he said moving aside to reveal the bloodied mess that was once a human being.

"You animal!" roared Mark in anger and pain.

"You're one to talk, trying to mug people on the streets like you do," said Red Lantern, sounding almost disappointed as he slowly approached. "Clearly if scumbags like you are allowed to do as you please, this goody-two-shoes Green Lantern guy isn't getting the job done. Some 'hero' he is if he can't even take rats like you off the streets."

"What the Hell do you mean?!" Mark yelled as he pressed the knife harder against Rebecca''s throat, a thin line of red beginning to trail down.

"You don't stand for anything…" Red Lantern said, acidic blood dribbling down his mouth as he continued to walk closer, "You're like little animals just surviving. You aren't living! Just like the monsters who took my family from me!"

"Don't get any closer! I'll kill her, I swear to God!" Mark cried out.

"Swear to me!" snarled Red Lantern, raising his power ring, ready to blast this piece of crap to oblivion. "You see, unlike you, I stand for something. I believe in something. I believe that this city needs someone who's willing to take a life in order to ensure true peace and justice. That this city needs a true hero, one who can't be bought, bullied, or negotiated with. Someone like me. With Blood and Rage of Crimson Red, ripped from a corpse, wrongfully dead! I'll kill them all with pain and hate! My Red Light shall decide their fate!"

After he recited his personal oath, Red Lantern fired an energy blast that struck mark full in the face, but also caused his knife to burrow itself deep into Rebecca's throat, causing them both to fall to the ground with little to no chance of surviving.

Natalie ran over to her dying friend's side and cradled her head in her arms. "You… you monster!" she snarled at Red Lantern, pure venom in her voice. "How could you do that?!"

"She'll be fine. I'd check her myself, but I didn't go to med school and my power ring has a thing against showing even the remotest sign of love or compassion, so I really have no choice but to be an asshole," explained Red Lantern, sounding very irritated at the girl, "But I am very angry right now, so sit back and watch." he said as he took the knife from the downed woman's throat and immediately put his ringed hand over her wound, and focused. His rage at the wound being so deep, his anger about them being targeted by such worthless scum, his fury forcing, no ordering with all his hellish hate, that the wound heals to the point it looked like it never existed to start with. Red Lantern rose from Rebecca's unconscious form as the sound of sirens reached his ears. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a city to tear apart to search for, at least, some of the bastards who killed my family."

With that, Red Lantern took to the skies and flew off to another part of the city, to do God-knows-what to another group of gangbangers and thugs.

And as he flew above the city's streets, Red Lantern's mind began to wander back to the day Malcolm DeWitt had died, and the Red Lantern was born.

…Six Months Earlier…

Malcolm DeWitt, who was a young man of 18 years old, who had short black hair and wore a blue hoodie with a white shirt underneath, blue jeans, and black and white sneakers, got of the public school bus and made his way up the stairs leading to his large town house. His parents worked for the US Government, working on some top secret project. Malcolm had seen enough military movies to know that if his parents told him what they were working on, they'd have to kill him, even though he was their youngest son, and he'd learned to mind his p's and q's whenever one of his parent's friends from work were around. Especially Ms. Waller.

Malcolm walked up to the front door and put his key into the lock… only to discover that the door was already open. Upon closer examination, it looked as though the door had been kicked in. Feeling a small surge of fear start to creep into him, Malcolm entered the house. The fear he felt grew even stronger when he saw the place was a wreck.

"Wha…? What happened here?" Malcolm whispered to himself as he crept through the trashed interior of his home, jumping slightly as his foot landed on something soft and squishy. Moving his foot, Malcolm saw that he'd stepped on the corpse of his pet cat, Sugar Foots. Seeing the body of the cat he'd had since he was a small child seemed to trigger something in Malcolm, as he began to stumble through the house in some kind of trance or daze… he needed to find his mother, father, brothers and sister. He NEEDED to know they were okay, and that he wasn't alone.

As he made his way through the house, Malcolm found the bodies of his brothers and sister, his feeling of dread growing stronger by the second, until, finally…

No.

Malcolm began to feel weak at the knees, on which he fell and started crawling to his parent's lifeless bodies and shook them, hoping to get some kind of a response from them, but to no avail.

Finally forced to accept the truth, Malcolm let out a painful scream of pain, anguish, and rage at the loss of everything he'd ever known.

…Two Weeks Later…

Malcolm stood facing the five freshly-dug graves for his family. His mother was buried on the far right, while his father was buried on the far left. His brothers and sister were buried in between. After his family's bodies were moved, Malcolm had been taken to some government facility somewhere and asked a whole bunch of questions he didn't know the answer to. What was taken? Did you see anything? Did your parents tell you anything about what they were working on?

Malcolm had always answered with "I don't know," "No," and "I was worried if I'd asked, they'd have killed me." But, now he didn't need to worry about his parents killing him… now he needed to worry about hunting down and killing those bastards responsible for killing his entire family.

Malcolm sank to his knees before the row of graves before him. His voice was empty and hollow as he spoke.

"I swear to you… each and every one of you… I will do whatever it takes to get justice for you. If I have to sell my soul to the devil himself, if I have to become a monster myself in order to catch the monsters who took you all from me, then I'll do it! I'll kill them! I'LL KILL THEM ALL!" he said with the purest rage he could muster.

As Malcolm continued his vow of vengeance, a red ring began glowing before him, begging him, pleading him, to take it.

To avenge them,

to kill their murderers,

and Malcolm, took it and placed it on his finger.

Almost instantly, Malcolm could tell something was wrong with him. His anger, his rage, his hatred was literally making his blood boil. His heart began to have trouble beating, and blood began to leak out of his eyes, nose, and mouth. As his heart stopped beating, he heard a voice thumping through him as the blood began to form a demonic red domino mask that spread over his face.

Malcolm DeWitt, your rage is greater than the brightest star.

You belongto the Red Lantern Corp.

And as the blood formed over him, the Ring illuminated the graveyard, casting it in the light of Hellfire, as Malcolm raced into the stars towards his new home, Ysmault.

Well, I personally think we're off to a pretty good start with this one! Big thanks to LegionnaireBlaze for his help with this one, and I hope I can count on him to help out with future installments! Just as I hope I can count on you to drop a fav, follow, and review. Don't be shy in the reviews, I really want to know what you think! Am I doing an okay job? Is there anything I can improve on? Come on, thrill me, chill me, just don't be a jerk to me, as it really ruins my mojo. In any case, I'll see you guys next time for Malcolm's training in the art of the Red Lantern Corps!