Author's note / Disclaimer: I would firstly like to say thank you for taking the time to read this story. It is, with pleasure, that I submit to you something that I have not yet done before and that is to put a DC character into the DBZ world. I especially wanted to read a story where Kara or Kal ends up in a variation of Toriyama's universe but it's mostly always the other way around so I was left with no choice, haha!

Anyway, this Kara deviates from Issue 7 of her titular series in The New 52. It helps if you've read it, but I don't believe it's entirely necessary to enjoy this story. Also, unlike most of my previous stories, I am going to be active in answering questions posed in PM's and reviews related to this story. I'll also keep a close eye out for people skilled in providing constructive criticism and may consider consulting a beta reader who is also willing to contribute good ideas to this story since collaboration has the potential to make things even better.

And, lastly, I do not own any DC or Toriyama creative works.

-"text"- = reader translated Kryptonian

"text" = regular dialogue

'text' = thoughts

"The Sun And The Moon"

Chapter One: Ruins

Kara Zor-El bid a tearful farewell to her parents, friends, and all the long passed families who had survived inside the city of Argo, following Krypton's destruction, as she watched the ruins of said city drift ever closer to oblivion in the tightening spiral of the blue sun's gravitational pull. Her old life, still fresh in her mind, was gone from this world but would live on in her heart. At least now she knew, without a doubt, Kal really was who he said he was. It was going to be awkward apologizing to the grown man who, from her perspective, had been a baby with a poopy diaper less than a week earlier but, she figured, since there was the more pressing issue of a Worldkiller crashing the party of her cousin's adopted planet that he would give her a pass for helping him save it.

With that thought in mind, the last daughter of Krypton summoned the remainder of her waning yellow sun power to fly back through the space portal and attempt to retrace her path back to Earth. She didn't notice the scorch mark on one of the emitters or the tiny sparkling embers that were as red as the careless beams she had unleashed during her encounter with that female Worldkiller.

Kara nearly lost the breath she still held as the expected freezing sensation she felt on the first trip through the gate was replaced with electrically charged fire. She was hurled forward into normal space, after a moment, and let herself drift at speed while she gathered her bearing. That had been entirely unexpected but whatever worry she may have had about it faded when she noticed the stars were as they should be and that she was once again in proximity to Earth's solar system. She didn't even register the absence of this side's portal. The pain had significantly sapped her strength so she needed to hurry and get back before it gave out.

Her eyes widened to saucer like shapes when she finally spotted her destination. Without realizing how she had done it, her telescopic vision had brought the blue and white planet into extreme focus - only to reveal that there wasn't very much blue or white left of it. Dark clouds and dried up wasteland covered most of it's surface. Was she too late? Had the Worldkiller overcome her cousin and laid waste that quickly? Her fear slowly abated, as the warmth of the yellow sun did it's job on her, and was replaced with determination to find out. With a furrowed brow and steeled resolve in her eyes, she rocketed herself across the remaining distance to Earth. Her furious entry into the atmosphere was likened to a meteor crashing into an ocean; the penetration sent a shockwave of force that cleared the black smog for miles in a ripple effect.

The blonde teenager exhaled the long breath she had held since leaving Argo as she took in the sight of an Earth far different than the one she had landed on only days ago. Sunlight illuminated the ruined skyline of an expansive metropolitan city. Glass, concrete, and steel mingled in the jagged gashes of high rise buildings and piles of rubble littering the streets below. This wasn't her planet, nor were these her people, but Kara couldn't help the tears that welled up at the fringe of her vision. She felt responsible. -"Kal...if only I had been faster, I'm-"-

Her attention was suddenly and immediately drawn to the sonic boom created in the distant atmosphere followed by the rumble of a collapsing building. She shifted her gaze toward the dusty event and unconsciously employed her X-Ray vision. At the heart of the destruction she saw a boy, around her age, throw a slab of steel reinforced concrete off of himself before launching into self powered flight. His blonde hair whipped about his face as his fierce teal eyes focused on something away from Kara's path of sight. She followed it up toward the sky before identifying two beings that appeared to be related. A blonde girl and brunette boy, with similar hairstyles and odd taste in clothing, slowed their flight as the blonde boy in the light purple jacket reached altitude and met them above the city. It wasn't her intention to eavesdrop, but her ears seemed to have a mind of their own today.

"Tsk, tsk, you never learn, do you, Trunks?" the brunette said in a flat, yet amused, tone. He had his arms folded over his chest. "What do you think, Eighteen? Should we make today the day?" he added with a sinister smirk.

"You're boring me just as much as the whiny kid, Seventeen," the blonde replied with her half-lidded gaze. "He's still years away from threatening us, remember? Weren't you the one who's been complaining about having zero challenges? If you want to kill him right now, that's fine with me, but I'd better not hear a word from you about it afterwards."

The boy with blonde spiky hair came to a halt about one quarter of a mile away from the pair. A fiery golden aura burst into visibility around him before he spoke in a voice shaking with anger. "I'm not just some fly on the wall! If you think I'll make this easy for you, then you're in for a disappointment ... hrrrRRAAAAHH!" Following that war cry, he unsheathed the sword on his back, closed the distance between them, and stunned them with a diagonal slash that cut gashes into their clothing - all in one explosively fluid movement.

The alien language they spoke made no sense to Kara but it was obvious who was against who. The question was; which, if any, of them had the answers she sought? And, for that matter, how was she going to get those answers? The brunette crashed into a decaying spire, after the blonde boy kicked him in the stomach, before said boy peppered his enemy's crash site with a salvo of solid light energy orbs that turned out to be explosive. 'Well,' Kara thought, 'If they kill each other, then I'll be back at square one. Better step in and break it up before it escalates any further...'

"You ripped my blouse, you little shit!" Eighteen screeched as she charged at the young swordsman. Trunks rushed in to meet her, after sheathing his blade, with a fist cocked back to counter her own. Then, appearing out of nowhere, a blonde girl clad in blue and red deftly caught their two fists in each of her palms.

Kara grimaced as her knuckles turned white and pain shot up both of her arms. They were much stronger than she had anticipated. She started to rethink her decision to get involved as she struggled to hold them back.

"Who the hell are you supposed to be?" Eighteen gritted through her clenched teeth.

"Zalish khāp, si rrip sokao nahgrhahdh kulahn krep si ehwor? Khāp sem bem ahvrig tiv raozh. Īv rrip kehp tiv fehl?"

Trunks, Eighteen, and Seventeen - who had already dug his way out of the wreckage - all wore similar expressions of confusion on their faces. "A friend of yours?" Seventeen asked Trunks as he indicated the newcomer with an incline of his head in her direction.

The blonde boy stopped pressing his fist into Kara's palm, much to her relief, and lowered his arm before floating himself back a few feet.

"That's a stupid question, Bro," Eighteen said, mockingly, as she followed suit by removing her fist as well. "All of his friends are dead. We killed every - last - one," she said with punctuation and a seductively evil grin. It was an intentional effort to push Trunks' buttons.

"Android bitch!" Trunks spat those words like they were the most foul tasting thing one could have in their mouth.

"Urvish!" the newcomer yelled in a commanding tone as she glared at him from over her shoulder.

Her eyes darted between him and the two not-technically-androids. She was keeping a careful watch over all three of them. She had to be a formidable opponent if she was able to step in and stop them just like that. Trunks blew out a breath of frustration and collected himself. "I don't know her," he said after a moment. "I don't even recognize the language."

Seventeen's eyes lit up. "In that case, I call dibs," he said before carefully floating over to her with his hands up in the universal "I surrender" gesture. "What say you and me go somewhere private so I can properly welcome you to Earth?" he added with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows.

Kara turned her nose up in disgust. She recognized that look and that tone.

"A-Are you serious? Is he serious?" Trunks turned his head to the blonde android to ask her incredulously.

"God, you're such a pig, Seventeen," Eighteen snorted while rolling her eyes. "What happened to 'Hey, let's go kick around the kid today'?" she added, lowering her voice as deep as it would go in a passable imitation of her brother.

"Oh yeah..." Seventeen drawled before shrugging it off. "Get lost, kid. We'll settle up another day," he said, making a shooing gesture with his hand. "I got a date to - guhhhh!"

Kara pressed her fist further into Seventeen's stomach and forced the last bit of air from his lungs while she spoke in a low threatening tone. -"You disgust me. I'll never..."-

"...zhadif zhaol ish udol fün!" the blue and red clad bombshell punctuated her rejection with a kick to Seventeen's groin area. His eyes bulged from their sockets as small tear droplets leaked from the fringes of his eyelids.

Trunks cringed slightly in response; though not because he pitied the brunette android. His hands unconsciously moved to guard his package as another instinctively male reflex kicked in.

"Not that he didn't deserve that, but I still won't tolerate anybody that isn't me humiliating my idiot brother!" Eighteen yelled as she went on the offensive against the other blonde girl.

Kara brought her arms up to defend but was surprised when the swordsman stepped in to upper cut her attacker before she got within reach. He flashed her a roguish grin before saying something she couldn't understand. His point had gotten across to her, though. Together they went on the offensive; she took the pervy boy who had hit on her while he took the girl who had been mocking him.

Trunks used Eighteen's staggered state to press his advantage. His blurry fists succeeded in making it through her hastily erected defenses and pummeling her from midsection to face. He finished the furious combo with a wide angle palm blast at point blank range and a series of sword slashes so fast that invisible blades of wind blew away most of the cloud of smoke that had sprung up around the girl. A vein in Trunks' forehead throbbed slightly as beads of sweat rolled down his brow and he caught his breath. The only way to be effective against artificially powered beings that never ran out of energy was to go all out, all of the time, for as long as peak power could be maintained. "Damn it..." he cursed under his breath when he saw that she had managed to cross her arms in front of her head and successfully defend. He had expended a lot of energy already and the girl was barely starting to get serious.

"You're going to pay for that, punk" Eighteen said through gritted teeth. She waited for him to blink and then launched a furious assault.

Kara deflected a jab with the flat of her right palm then blocked a low kick with her left knee and blasted the brunette boy away with her red eye beams. She kept the heat on him until she heard the pained shouting of her new ally, who seemed to be having a difficult time. Her eyes searched briefly before finding him doubled over the other blonde girl's knee under the shadow of a dark cloud. Her momentary lapse in focus cost her as her opponent paid her back with a very effective haymaker which sent her plummeting to the abandoned streets of the ghostly city. Concrete crumbled against her back as her uncontrolled flight drove her through two buildings before she slammed against a sturdy wall in a basement just below the surface. Clouds of dust distorted the dim light shining through the hole her crash had made. 'Decision making time,' she thought as she pulled herself out of the wall crater and brushed some debris off of her shoulder. Her swordsman friend was obviously fatigued. She had no way of knowing how long he had been fighting before she had arrived. It was also apparent that he was her best bet at getting answers since the other two seemed to prefer the continuation of hostilities as opposed to establishing communication. With her mind made up, she employed her X-ray vision to search and then locked on to the two partners, who had decided to double team her ally, before carefully unleashing two eye blasts at them from her position under cover.

Trunks was blown back several dozen feet by the concussive force of red energy that detonated against the Red Ribbon siblings who had been putting him through his paces. Blood ran from a gash on his forehead and a split lip. He could feel Super Saiyan waning quickly. Never one to waste an opportunity, though, he used their distraction to focus his energy before calling their attention back to him. "Hey, assholes!" he shouted as he brought his hands up, making sure they looked, before he squeezed his eyes shut. "Solar Flare!"

Kara halted her rapid ascent right beside the cylindrical peak of an old tower when everything became a blinding shade of white. To her surprise, her advanced eyesight automatically compensated by filtering out the excessive light and she was able to see her two assailants grasping at their faces while suffering the full effect of the swordsman's trick. Then, said swordsman appeared beside her and grabbed her wrist as if to lead her away. He must have expected her to be blinded as well because he verbally announced his presence so she would recognize his voice and come willingly. Needless to say, he was quite surprised when she turned and acknowledged him with eye contact. He quickly shook off his amazement in favor of saying something while gesturing toward the two people who were still reeling with blindness. She nodded her head in understanding when she realized he was trying to tell her that it was only temporary and that they needed to escape while they still had the chance.

With that settled, Trunks let go of her wrist and rounded before propelling himself into subsonic flight toward a horizon blanketed with ominously dark clouds and distant lightning. When he saw how easily she matched his speed, he grinned. He would have broken the sound barrier, as a playful challenge, but he didn't want to give away which direction they were headed by creating a sonic boom for the twins to follow.

The young daughter of Zor-El followed the sword wielding boy closely as he led her away from the dead city onto a sky trail above wastelands with rocky terrain and dried out soil. She began to have doubts about her initial theory involving the Worldkiller. The degree of degradation she was seeing indicated things had been like this for a very long time; years, perhaps even decades, had transformed this formerly beautiful planet. There was no way all of this ruin could have been created in the dozen or so hours that she had spent out in space. Her mood turned even more grim as she entertained the idea of yet again being displaced in time. She prayed to Rao that she was wrong.

"It's just up ahead," Trunks said over the wind. Even though he knew she didn't understand a single word that came out of his mouth, he had been compelled to capture her attention and distract her from whatever dark thoughts had made her expression turn sour. It seemed today was an especially bad day for her as well. He sighed as he thought about the bad news he still had to deliver to his mom. He hadn't been able to scavenge any of the parts she had asked for because of his encounter with the twins. "Here we are," he said as he slowed to a halt above a canyon with a dried up river bed at the bottom.

Kara followed his slow descent into the canyon until he landed on a ledge below the cliff face with a cave opening dug out of it. She suddenly had doubts about following a strange boy, that she had just met, into a cave on an alien planet. He must've noticed her apprehension because he paused to give her a reassuring look before his spiky blonde hair suddenly fell down into mostly neat lavender tresses. It wasn't just his hair that changed, either. His fierce looking pupil-less teal eyes became a deep crystalline blue and his bulging muscles shrunk noticeably. His entire presence became instantly less threatening and he flashed a genuine smile showing her his amusement at the stupefied expression that she knew now covered her face. Her cheeks flushed in embarrassment as she averted her eyes.

Trunks shook his head and sniggered before leading the way into the place he had called home for the last few years. Motion sensors detected his presence and immediately lit the curving path in crisp fluorescent light. He could hear the girl's light footsteps echoing off beat to his own as they trekked further along the downward slope. Eventually the tunnel opened up into a very large chamber with a path running through the stalagmite formations on the floor and the distant sound of rushing water reached his ears from further ahead.

'Wow...it's amazing in here,' Kara thought to herself. She finally understood, at least partly, why he would choose to make his home within this network of caves. A supply of fresh water was vital in any environment and she had barely seen any at all, fresh or not, during her brief time on the surface. With her X-ray vision, she found the source to be a naturally occurring spring hidden deep within the rocky territory. The boy grunted when she accidentally walked into him. He had stopped at the front door to a large, man-made, domed structure while she wasn't paying attention. She looked sheepish before excusing herself.

"Sokao zhalish," the girl said to him, in apparent apology. Trunks waved her off before replying, "It's fine but, man; we gotta do something about this speech problem." The blonde nodded her head in agreement, seeming to have made the connection. "Nahvruht khāp," she said. The last survivor of the Saiyan race simply shrugged before placing his right palm on the bio scanner mounted beside the entrance to the current Capsule Corporation headquarters. The door slid open after the light on the device turned green and he led the foreign girl inside. "Well, this is it," he said after turning around and indicating the unkempt living room with a wave of his arm. There were old newspapers and magazines spread haphazardly across the coffee table as well as a few schematics sitting beside a not-quite-empty mug that looked to have been there for a few days. A basket of unfolded laundry took up one of the seats on the ratty looking sofa and the television looked liked it had seen better days. In fact, every piece of furniture and domestic appliance within the dwelling appeared extremely outdated. "Hope you don't mind the mess. It's been years since we've had any guests. Hey, Mom, we got company!" he yelled after tilting his head in the direction of the arched hallway.

Kara quirked an eyebrow as a metallic clatter and hiss of a sliding door preceded the appearance of a disheveled woman from the hall. The woman's soot covered white coat was singed around the edges and the goggles she lifted away from her eyes were nearly as big as her head. Awkward silence ruled over the group before a sly grin settled onto the older woman's face.

"Oh, you two must be serious if you brought her all the way here to meet me. Have you decided on a theme for your wedding or were you just going to elope like your father and I did?" Bulma said that last bit with all the exaggerated wonder of a girl in love while making doe eyes at them. "With legs like that, I'd throw caution to the wind too, Son," she added with a suggestive smirk.

Rolling his eyes, Trunks replied in a decidedly unamused tone. "Teasing me in front of her is pointless since she doesn't speak our language," he said while folding his arms over his chest. "Good try, though," he added.

Interest piqued, the reigning queen of the Capsule empire shuffled forward to get a closer look at their guest. "Hm...a foreigner you say? How foreign is she? Miles or lightyears?"

"Well...she did sort of descend from the clouds..." Trunks said as he absently rubbed his chin between thumb and forefinger.

Bulma produced a pen and scruffy looking notepad from her lab coat, then began jotting things down as her son ticked them off.

"...at least as strong as a Super Saiyan...eye beam shooting...armor-ish outfit...other wordly proportions -". He paused abruptly before exclaiming, "Of course! It was so obvious, I couldn't see it at first! Seventeen has never shown any interest in human girls; actually, I was beginning to wonder about his preference - the way he looks at me sometimes is scary... Anyway, she absolutely has to be an alien! It's the only thing that makes any sense! Wait, no - no, I guess she could also still be a man...but those proportions just don't add up... Aw, who am I kidding? Gohan was the problem solving and ass kicking math wiz, not me. All I know how to do is break things and get hurt," he said, dejectedly, before plopping down on the sofa. The old couch frame buckled under his weight and dropped his butt onto the floor. "I hate my life."

Bulma's face was a cross between strained smile and cringe as she ushered the young girl toward her lab, in the back, while attempting to laugh it off. "Don't mind him, dear. He tends to get mopey after a concussion, or two, and, from the look of it, you guys ran into those filthy abominations today. Come on and let's see what I can do about fixing this communication problem of ours."

Kara looked worriedly back at the boy who still had blood running down his face from the gash on the side of his forehead, but allowed herself to be led away by the friendly, albeit eccentric, lady. She was escorted into a workshop that was even more dingy than the front of the house and offered a seat on a swivel chair situated beside a stainless steel table overflowing with mechanical clutter. Then the lady excused herself and was gone for several minutes before returning with the boy, who now had a significantly wrapped head and a glass of water in hand.

"Ugh..." Trunks droned before popping the pills his mother had given him and washing them down with the water.

The older woman gave Kara a reassuring smile before opening a metal cabinet beneath one of the many workbenches and bending over as she dug around inside of it for what seemed like a long time. The last daughter of Krypton may not have spoken these people's language, but she recognized the frustrated mutterings of the woman as the string of curses that they were. A moment after that, however, the lady's skyward behind paused from it's rhythmic swaying as it's owner punctuated her success at finding whatever-it-was-she-had-been-looking-for with an outstretched leg and a "Yatta!" - whatever that meant.

Bulma pulled the basket with her old collection of scouters out of the darkness and used her free arm to sweep a pile of junk from the counter top to the floor before she set the basket down on the newly cleaned surface. She first demonstrated by lifting one to her right hear, and securing it to her head, before tossing one to her son, who fumbled with his before doing the same, and then finally passing one off to the girl. The blonde alien hesitated only briefly before she followed suit. Bulma then indicated the big red power button with an index finger before activating it and causing the transparent eye screen to come alive with illuminated text scrolling across its surface.

"Wow, Mom, what are these things?" Trunks asked as he marveled at the information about the environment being relayed to his ocular.

"Remember the stories I used to tell you about Goku and how I met your father because of him?" Bulma asked her son. When he nodded in affirmation, she continued. "Well, these things are replicas of the scouter he used to use to measure power levels when he was still employed by Frieza. That was before he learned how to sense energy on his own, obviously."

"Ok, cool...but that doesn't explain why you gave these to us," he replied.

"Why? Because they've got universal translators built into them, of course," the bluenette told her son, as if it had been obvious. "You didn't think everyone in the galaxy spoke the same language, did you? That would just be way too convenient."

"Huh? Uh, no...of course not! That's absurd, right? Eh-heh..." he said with a weak laugh. 'Shut up, Trunks! Just shut up, already! You've embarrassed yourself enough for one day.'

"Right..." Bulma said, glancing sidelong at her son. "Anyway, the neural link should be finished decoding her language any second now. Then, we'll all be able to understand each other as long as we're wearing these scouters. Nifty little gadgets. Good thing I keep stuff like this around."

"Hoarding is more like it..." Trunks muttered under his breath.

"Oh, wow, I could understand you just now," Kara said with an awed grin plastered onto her face. "Is that what these things are for?" she asked as she pointed at her own piece of headgear. "I've never seen this kind of technology before. You humans are more advanced than I thought you'd be."

"Aha! So she is from another planet," Trunks said triumphantly. "Oh, that is - what I meant to say was - crap... Uh, hi! I'm Trunks Brief and this is my Mom," he said, inclining his head slightly in embarrassment.

"Bulma," the thirty-something human woman introduced herself with a satisfied smile. "And you are?"

"I am Kara Zor-El of the planet Krypton. Thank you for inviting me into your home."

XxxxwwwxxxX

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