Primalverse Supergirl

by Dylan Clearbrook

After the end of the Continuum Worlds Multiverse, a new Universe is started...with major historical differences. Players of the old City of Heroes game will recognize some of the names and places. A map of the Metropolis/Gotham City/Paragon City area can be seen here: /fanfic/images/PV Splash images/Metropolis-Paragon g

1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Arrival

© Dylan (Clay) Clearbrook

It all started with Superman!

While not even close to being an accurate statement, it is true that it was Lois Lane, Ace reporter for the Daily Planet, who brought the matter of Meta-Humans to the center stage with her series of exposes on the colorful metahuman vigilantes that began to appear in the early 1930's: Starting with her expose on the metahuman from another planet….SUPERMAN.

During that tumultuous period at the beginning of what would later be called the Great Depression, lawlessness ran rampant not only through the United States of America but many countries throughout the so-called industrialized world.

Starting with the stock market crash in October of 1929, a day that would be called Black Tuesday, huge fortunes were lost in minutes. The ripples from that crash were eventually felt around the world as countless businesses collapsed and employment became scarce.

These days of hopelessness and despair were fallow ground for anyone who could even suggest better times ahead.

In the United States, it was Roosevelt and his so-called New Deal. (in actuality, there were TWO New Deals, the first having been struck down by the Supreme Court.)

With the stroke of a pen, President Roosevelt struck a major blow against freedom and set the stage for future Administrations to constantly meddle in the Marketplace. Later economic experts would verify that Roosevelt's actions, though greeted with enthusiasm by an ignorant populace, extended the hardships of recovery by as much as seven years, giving government even more time to get its greedy claws even further embedded to control the marketplace!

Yet the United States was not alone in following a charismatic leader in the march away from Freedom.

Germany, still reeling and broken from the Great War, was an even more fertile ground for the charismatic Austrian by the name of Adolf Hitler! Even so, historians agree that Hitler's Nazi movement would have come to naught had it not been for the intervention of a mysterious backer who would later be identified during the Nuremberg Trials as Vandal Savage.

With the backing of Vandal Savage and access to technology never seen before, The Nazi Party eventually took control of Germany and Adolf Hitler became Der Führer! All experts believe that Vandal Savage was, in the beginning at least, the power behind the throne! It was these events that set the stage for what was to come.

Superman was not the first official Meta. Some historians have even produced proof that so-called Meta-humans have shown up all through history, and have claimed that many of the gods and goddesses of mythology might well have actually been Metas, there is no way at this point in time to prove or disprove such claims. While it is a given that Superman was alive and living among us, he had not yet revealed himself to the world when Hitler rolled out the infamous Ubermensch! These 'supermen', wielding various powers, created great swaths of destruction amongst the Allies. One such group of Ubermensch was the infamous Storm Korps, led by a meta of tremendous destructive abilities known only as Gotterdammerung, was charged with only one task…the complete and utter destruction of the Allied ability to wage war against Nazi Germany!

It was then that Superman made his first appearance, beating back the Storm Korps time and time again, first in Africa and then in Europe. Yet even will all the power at his command, Superman could not be everywhere. Every time he beat back an attack; one or two other attacks, taking place elsewhere, succeeded.

Perhaps Superman was an inspiration or simply an example of how a person with Meta abilities could and should take part in a war that had engulfed most of the world. Whichever it was, Superman soon found that he was not along on the battlefield. Metas of various degrees of powers and abilities soon made their presence known. At first, there was no coherent structure. The Allied Heroes simply appeared wherever they felt they could be used with little to no cooperative planning between them.

It was Superman who recognized that for all their good intentions the disorganized Allied Heroes could be as much a danger to the Allies as the Nazi Ubermensch. With the first hero to go by the name of Batman and a newly revealed heroine named Wonder Woman, Superman pulled several other heroes into an organized group which they named: The Justice Society!

In the end, it was not the Allies that brought the war to an earlier end than expected but a coup attempt by certain members of the Ubermensch themselves. Hitler was assassinated but the outcome was not exactly what those Ubermensch, who sought to take over the Third Riech imagined it would be. Instantly there was division in the ranks as Ubermensch fought Ubermensch and the German war machine crumbled.

It took a couple more years before Nazi Germany officially surrendered. Hitler was dead and, though some of his General Staff chose suicide as a way to escape justice, many others, including Vandal Savage, simply vanished. But not all of the Ubermensch had been accounted for, chief amongst them being those attached to the SS and, most notably, the leader of the Storm Korps: Gotterdammerung!

Allied victory had not come without a price, however. Aside from the massive loss of life among civilians and soldiers on all sides, the ranks of Metas involved in the war were decimated. Nearly all the Ubermensch, as well as those metas fighting for Japan and Italy, were killed or maimed. Among the Allies, the Meta losses were just as traumatic. Most of the original Justice Society perished. Hourman, Dr. Mid-night, the husband and wife team of Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle (leaving a son orphaned back in the states), Wildcat, Wonder Woman, Shazam, Starman, The Phantom Lady, Plastic Man, the list went on and on.

After the war, many of those metas that were known to have survived faded back into obscurity. They put the past behind them and strove to live normal lives.

The genie was, however, out of the bottle and there was no way to put it back. For better or worse, the Age of Metas had begun.

Twenty Years ago

Somewhere in the Arctic

For over three decades it had slept. Not sleep as most humans would recognize. Rather it had simply powered down non-essential peripherals, channeling power only to critical areas while placing all routines other than passive information gathering routines, defenses, and sensors on standby. Superman's Fortress of Solitude went, for the most part, dark…waiting.

Twenty Years ago

Smallville

The rental car sat in the driveway of the old farmhouse, engine idling as the occupants took in their surroundings.

"So this is where your family came from." The dark-haired woman in the passenger seat nodded slowly in answer, her tightly curled hair swaying slightly, and looked from the old home to the man with short-cropped blond hair seated beside her behind the steering wheel.

"My great-grandfather built the original home here before the First World War." She said. "His oldest boy, my great-great uncle Jonathon, took it over when he came back from Europe. My great grandfather signed it over to him and stayed on in New York to finish Medical school and then went back into the Army as a doctor when the Second World War started up."

Benjamin Danvers took in a deep breath. If his wife's grandfather had been in New York…

"No." Liz Kent-Danvers shook her head ever so slightly, her eyes returning to the old home. "He wasn't there when Gotterdammerung all but wiped it out in '47."

The devastation of New York and the surrounding area by the Nazi Ubermensch called Gotterdammerung was the stuff of legends. A holdover from the war, Gotterdammerung was bitter and blamed the Fall of the Third Reich on America and her Meta population. Specifically, he blamed Superman.

Superman and his Justice Society had ruined Germany and the dream of the Third Reich so he would do the same to the place Superman called home. By the time the smoke cleared, New York City, for all practical purposes, had ceased to exist.

Gotterdammerung had timed his attack perfectly. He had waited until Superman was occupied elsewhere. Though Superman had been unable to return in time to stop Gotterdammerung, other heroes had stepped up to prevent him from widening his circle of destruction. In the end, it had been the hero Talos, along with a magic-wielding hero who remains a mystery still, who stopped Gotterdammerung. Talos grappled with the massive Ubermensch, holding him in place while spell cast by the unnamed magical hero transformed the villain into a giant statue. He did so knowing full well that he would be caught in the spell as well. When the smoke finally cleared, three of the boroughs of New York; Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, had all but been erased. It was in the center of the borough known as Brooklyn that they were found. Two behemoths of lifeless stone; locked forever in combat.

There were many that said the destruction of New York had preyed on the Man of Steel's mind, causing him to become careless.

In the aftermath of Gotterdammerung's attack, each of the five Boroughs that had gone to make up the Mega City that had been New York was established as separate cities in their own right. Of those five; Manhattan, Staten Island, the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, only Manhattan and Staten Island retained their original names. That area of the old New York that, before Gotterdammerung, had been the Bronx now became Gotham City. The borough that had been Brooklyn became Paragon City. Like its predecessor, Paragon City was divided up into separate boroughs: Atlas Park, Steel Canyon, Astoria, Independence Port, Peregrine Peninsula, and the Talos Isles. Last but not least, the borough of Queens became the city of Metropolis! By 1952 all five of the new cities had been rebuilt…and six years later…Superman died protecting them!

"When Gotterdammerung showed up, my grandfather was in Europe dealing with the wounded soldiers and civilians from the War." Liz continued. "He and my grandmother had a home in Brooklyn. When Gotterdammerung showed up, my grandmother was home but dad was spending the summer here in Smallville, helping out his aunt and uncle on the farm for the summer." She sighed. "After Gotterdammerung, Granddad was called back to the states to help deal with those injured during the attack…and to identify the remains of his wife."

Ben said nothing, letting her talk. Following in the footsteps of her grandfather and father, Liz had gone into medicine. In all the years he had known her she had never talked about her extended family. So it had come as a surprise when she suddenly announced that they had to take a trip to some hole in the wall place in the middle of Kansas called Smallville. She would not explain why the sudden urgency but simply stated that it was something that had to be done and it had to be done now.

"Just before great aunt Martha passed away, she contacted her nephew…my father." Liz continued. "It seems that my line of the family was all that remained of the Kents and she had something important that she had to tell him." She looked at Ben and shrugged. "I can't tell you what they talked about because dad never told me and this all happened a year or two before I was born. I didn't know anything about this until dad was diagnosed with stage four cancer. That is when he told me about talking to Martha. He still did not tell me what they talked about. He said it was better if I didn't know just in case nothing ever came of it. Then he gave me something Martha had given him and made me make a promise to him."

"What kind of promise?" Ben prompted when she grew quiet. For an answer she dug into the small purse she clutched in her lap and removed an object that, except for the metallic color resembled an old style beeper. She turned it over and showed it to him. With only two exceptions, the object was featureless. The two exceptions were the blinking green light below an emblem that no one could fail to recognize…the stylized S of Superman!

"My father made me promise that I would come here if this ever started blinking." She looked around. "He told me that the house would be taken care of and that the farmland had been rented out to the neighboring farms." She shook her head, her short brown curly hairs waving gently as it framed her face. "Dad said he did not believe anything would ever happen. But he had promised Aunt Martha and he made me swear that I would keep his promise." She gave a humorless chuckle. "He even made me promise that I would pass it along to my children."

Ben winced and, taking the device in his right hand, squeezed the hand that had held it with his left. It was still a painful topic for Liz, he knew. Many couples would try for years before they decided to get tested. Being a doctor, Liz hadn't waited. After the first year of trying…doing everything they could think of to optimize the chances…she had run the tests. Even before the results came back, she had convinced herself that she was the problem. That there was something wrong with her that would not allow her to get pregnant. Thus, when the results showed that she was, indeed, barren, she was prepared. The Kent family would end with her.

They had talked about adopting but as yet they had not gone beyond discussing it as a future possibility.

Liz shook herself and squeezed Ben's hand, giving him a smile that showed that she appreciated his support. She took a deep breath and, taking the device back from Ben, looked at the blinking light then opened her car door.

"C'mon." She said. "Dad left explicit instructions on what to do if the light ever blinked."

Ben followed her from the car to the small porch of the farmhouse. He made a soft exclamation of surprise when the porch light flashed on the instant Liz's foot hit the first step.

"Yeah, it freaked me out the first time I came here." Liz laughed.

"You've been here before?" Ben demanded.

"I've been here twice." Liz admitted. "What can I say? Curiosity got the better of me. I had to try to find out what was so damned important that Dad used most of his dying breath to convince me to swear." She stopped at the front door. She stepped to the side and beckoned for him to open it. Frowning, Ben put his hand on the knob and…nothing. The knob wouldn't turn and the door would not budge."

"Locked." He said. "I hope you have a key."

"Nope." Liz shook her head and her hand replaced his on the knob. It turned easily and the door swung open. "Dad told me that only a member of the Kent family could open the door. By Family, he meant blood relatives." As the door opened into the main living room, a light came on, illuminating the plastic covered furniture. "Oh, I checked on my first visit here. This place is still connected to the local electric network….but if you look at the meter out back you will see that it is running backward."

"Backwards?" Ben glanced around, his eyes narrowing. "So the house is producing electricity and sending it back to the electric company."

"Yep. That isn't the only odd thing going on with this house." Liz announced. When Ben looked at her she waved at the shrouded furniture. "Dust, Ben. Where is the dust? If this house has been empty for years, there should be dust covering everything in here. But this place is spotless." Eyes widening, Ben looked around and noted that Liz was right. "The last time I visited was before you and I got married. That has been a couple of years…and this place looks just as clean as it did then…or the time before that!"

"You're right." Ben ran a finger over one of the covers and looked at the result. "No dust. None at all." He looked at Liz and then followed her when she took his hand and led him through the living room to the doorway that led to the kitchen. She didn't stop to look around there. Instead, she made a beeline for another door and opened it, showing it to be an entrance to the basement. She stood there for a moment looking down into the darkness. Without looking at her husband she began to talk.

"According to Dad when Clark, Great Uncle Jonathan and Great Aunt Martha's adopted son, went missing Martha contacted him." She said. Ben said nothing but his eyebrows rose as Liz spoke. "She had a favor to ask. Of course, she needed him to come out here. Alone."

"I've seen the pictures." Ben mused, nodding. "The photo albums your mom kept. There was one with an older couple and two teenage boys: One dark-haired and one blonde."

"That would have been Jonathan and Martha Kent." Liz replied. "The blonde boy would have been Dad and the other would have been Clark." She shrugged. "Until the end, Dad never talked about Clark much at all."

"So your dad coming here had something to do with Clark?"

"Oh, it was about Clark alright." Liz snorted. "Martha knew Dad had been on the team that had worked with the body of Superman."

"I think everyone in the world knows the names of the people on the team of scientists and doctors that worked with Superman's body." Ben frowned. "Especially the name of the man who determined that it was the radiation from the meteor he saved Metropolis from that killed him!"

"Dad always refused to take credit for that." Liz shook her head. "He claimed it wasn't his field."

"Perhaps not, but it was your dad that pointed out that Superman's cells had characteristics of exposure to lethal radiation. That is what led the team to discover the link between him and that green stuff."

"Kryptonite." Liz remarked. "Fragments from his home planet."

"Which does nothing to explain here and now." Ben prompted. "Or what that had to do with why Martha needed your Dad to come out here or what it had to do with Clark or why your dad thought it was important enough to pass a promise he made on to you!"

"Officially, Clark was listed as missing and presumed dead during a visit to Korea as a war correspondent for the Daily Planet." Liz continued. She reached into the darkness and felt along the wall until she found the light switch. Light flooded the basement and she started down the steps. "That is still the official story." She paused at the bottom of the steps and looked around. "By then Martha had already been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Dad tried to get her to move to Metropolis but she refused. She told him she had to stay here."

She stood in the middle of the basement, looking around as if lost. While newer homes might have elaborately finished basements divided up into individual useful spaces the basement of the Kent consisted of a single large room. Against one wall sat a washer and dryer and a folding table. Above them was a laundry chute. The North wall of the basement sported a sloped ramp that led to an outside entrance. The south wall held a workbench and a large pantry full of emergency supplies. Sensible since Smallville just happened to be located smack dab in the middle of Tornado Alley.

The west wall, however, was completely bare.

Ben frowned as he looked around. Other than being unnaturally neat and clean, there was nothing spectacular or seemingly out of place. He watched as Liz moved to what had obviously been Jonathon's basement workbench. Above the bench was a faded picture of Martha and Clark. With trembling fingers, Liz reached out and touched the picture.

"This is as far as I ever got." She said, turning back to face her husband. She held up the device in her hand, looking it over. "This S symbol is actually a button. Dad made me promise that I would come back here…down here in the basement and push the button if the light ever started blinking."

"Let me guess." Ben stepped up beside her and took the device, looking it over. "You came here the first two times, and nothing happened when you pushed the button." When she nodded he shrugged. "So what makes you think this time will be any different?"

"Actually, I don't. Expect anything different, that is." She told him with a shrug.

"But your dad made a promise to his Aunt and you made a promise to your dad." Ben stated, standing straighter and handing the device back to her. As he did, he turned slightly and got a better look at the picture he had been looking at then he looked back at the device. Liz saw his reaction and actually snorted in laughter.

"Dad wouldn't explain." Liz continued. "But I figure he knew I would put two and two together."

"Clark…." Ben couldn't finish the sentence but Liz nodded.

"Was the Smallville Superboy and then, later, Superman." She said. "That much I was able to figure out. Of course, Dad knew I would. That is why, even though he would not tell me, he also made me promise that I would never reveal anything I might conclude on my own about Clark." She shut her eyes and turned back to the workbench. She placed her hands on the top and leaned heavily. "People always wondered how Superman developed his ethics." She slapped the workbench with a hand and pointed at the picture. "This is how. Jonathon and Martha!"

She was silent for several moments, lost in thought. Then she turned and held up the device.

"So. Here we are." she said, her voice still a bit tight as she straightened and looked around. She then looked at the device. "Dad was precise in his instructions. If the light started blinking, I was to return here. Not just to the farm, but here…in the basement. Then I was to press the button."

She then looked at Ben and, with a shrug, pressed on the emblem. They both gasped as a portion of the west wall swiveled aside to reveal steps leading even further down. Beyond the revealed doorway, they could see that the bare aged concrete of the basement gave way to shiny metallic walls. Unlike the wooden steps leading from the home to the basement, the spiral staircase that was now revealed was also made of metal.

"Well that didn't happen the last two times I pressed that button." Liz breathed.

Without speaking further, as if drawn against their will, they moved through the opening and down the staircase until they reached the bottom and gazed around as they entered into a large chamber that looked as if it had come from an elaborate science fiction movie. Consoles and view screens lined the walls and four different darkened hallways led off in the four cardinal directions.

"Mary Elizabeth, thank you for coming." Both of them jumped when the voice sounded. One of the viewscreens now showed Martha Kent. Her image gave a smile. "I probably won't be wrong to guess that Benjamin is there with you."

"A recording." Liz whispered. She then shook her head. "But how? She died before you and I ever met!"

"By now you have guessed much of what I could not tell your father." The recording continued. "At least about Clark." Her image looked around as if she were examining the room in which Ben and Liz now stood. "He made this all, with a little help from Jonathon, while he lived with us. At first, it was what he called his base of operations. When he created a Fortress in the Arctic, it became more of an outpost." Her expression became serious. "Clark showed me how to secure these computers and how to give access to others should the need ever arise." The image paused. "It was Kelex, however, that showed me how to impress my consciousness on this computer before cancer completely ate my body away. That is how I know about you…both of you. Forgive an old woman for keeping an eye on all the family she has left. Before you start asking questions, let me tell you what I…or rather the original me…told your father. Yes, all of this is Kryptonian technology. And yes, I could have used it to cure the cancer in my body. Kelex even offered to do so. I couldn't let that happen. The most I would let him do was take the pain away. If this had all happened in YOUR time, I might have reconsidered. With the advancements humankind has made in medicine a cure for cancer would not be so farfetched. But in my time, it would have raised too many eyebrows and Clark's secret might have gotten out. I could not afford that."

"But why?" Liz could not help the demand for an explanation. "Clark was gone. What would it have mattered if people learned that he was Superman?" She was not expecting a response so when the eyes of the image turned to her she placed a hand to her mouth.

"If it were just about Clark, you would be right, Liz" the image of Martha Kent responded to her directly, changing her form of address to the diminutive of her name that Liz preferred. "But it isn't just about Clark or the past. This is about the future…and about why you are here. Why I made your father promise that he…or one of his children…would be here at this time."

She looked back to Ben.

"Benjamin Danvers." She smiled again. "Or should I say, Detective Danvers? As Liz said, the original version of myself did indeed die before the two of you met. Yet part of the programming of this version of me was to keep tabs on the remaining members of the Kent family. So when the last member met and married a police officer, I figured it would be good to learn what I could of you. A policeman with the Leesville PD before moving to Metropolis where you advanced to Detective. Impressive." She turned her eyes back to Liz. "I have now added him to those with access to this facility." She stated. The image appeared to take a breath though Liz knew it was merely an illusion. "I know you have questions, but now isn't the time to answer them. This is why I couldn't leave here, Liz. Someone had to stay here and watch. When my time was done, Kelex helped me impress my consciousness on this system so that I could continue to watch and wait. I would be more than willing to speak with you about all of this later, but for now simply accept that even though this computer system is giving the impression that I may still be alive somewhere inside, trust me that I am not. My consciousness was impressed…or copied…not transferred. I am constrained by the built-in safeguards within the computer itself. What must happen now requires an actual human presence, not simply a computer mimicking a human. I asked your father, or one of his children, to return here if you received a signal on the device I gave your father. Basically, I passed on to your father a trust that Clark gave to me and your father, in turn, passed on to you. You see, this is actually more than just an outpost. It is a remote monitoring and guiding station. It becomes active if there is no one at the Fortress."

Liz closed her eyes briefly. Of course, there was no one at the Fortress….Clark…Superman…was dead. She opened her eyes and, looking back and forth between the viewscreen and Ben she voiced the first thing that came to her mind.

"What, exactly is it monitoring?" She demanded. "And what is it guiding?"

The image of Martha faded and the image of a strange world replaced her.

"The last day of Krypton." Martha's voice narrated. "Clark was able to obtain this footage from a monitoring satellite that survived the destruction that was to come. This is where Clark is from. Krypton was a very advanced world. By comparison, when Clark came to us, coming to Earth from Krypton would have been like someone from this time traveling back to the Stone Ages. But even with all their science and knowledge, they couldn't save their planet. They had become a bit too arrogant. They had come to believe that they were in total control of everything and refused to listen to those who were trying to sound the warning that disaster was coming. Two of those being Jor-El and Zor El. Brothers."

The screen flickered again to show two men working together in a lab. Liz gasped as a particular scene showed a close up of one of the men.

"Jor-El." Martha's voice identified the man. "Clark's biological father. In fact, Clark's real name was actually Kal El. When the powers-that-be on Krytpon refused to listen to their warning and even went so far as to forbid them from trying to inform the populous they decided that they would at least try to save their families and themselves. They quickly discovered, however, that they had misjudged the time they had left. They wouldn't have time to construct a vessel large enough to hold them all. So they made the hard choice. They constructed two smaller vehicles."

The screen flickered again to show two children. One a dark-haired baby boy and the other a young blonde girl Liz would have judged to be five or six years old.

"This is Clark and his cousin Kara mere moments before they were placed in separate vehicles and launched from the planet. First Clark and then, moments later, Kara. Those few moments seems to have caused a lot of problems. Clark's ship was able to escape the planet's gravity well and go into what science fiction authors here on Earth have called Hyper-drive. Kara's ship did escape the gravity well, but was just starting to go into Hyper-drive when the planet exploded. Both ships were pre-programmed to come to Earth where Kara was supposed to help take care of her young cousin. Obviously, it did not work out that way. Clark's ship came through and the rest is history, as they say. But when Kara's ship was scheduled to come out of the Hyper-drive, all that came through were radioactive chunks of Krypton."

Martha's image now returned.

"Of course much of what transpired after Krypton exploded was only pieced together later by Clark." She went on. "He had only the vaguest of memories of Krypton and Kara, but the images were still there in his mind." The image changed again, this time showing the ship in which Clark had come to Earth. "Jor-El was nothing if not thorough. Included in the ship were records, entire libraries of knowledge from Krypton, advanced teaching devices, everything. Each of the ships was also fitted with beacons and systems that would allow them to home in on each other."

"Oh My God!" Liz gasped. Ben gave her a puzzled glance. Despite everything being thrown at them, his wife was still able to make an intuitive leap that still eluded him. Instead of explaining, she pointed at the image of Martha.

"If you received the signal on the device I gave your father, Liz, it can mean only one thing." Martha's image was saying. "It means Kara's ship has finally arrived and is waiting for instructions. You have to bring her down to Earth, Liz!"

Several Years Later

Smallville

There was nothing she could do.

Kara Kent-Danvers sat beside Liz, holding her hand, as mourners lined up to pay their final respects to Benjamin Danvers. The small funeral home was filled almost to overflowing. Not only were there people from Smallville but friends and colleagues from both Leesville and Metropolis had shown up as well.

The decision to relocate to Smallville had been an easy one. If anyone was surprised when such a prestigious doctor moved, lock stock and barrel, from Metropolis to enter into a private practice in a hole in the wall place like Smallville they had never let it show. Nor had they complained when a notable Detective left Metropolis to take a position with the Smallville police department, eventually rising to become the Chief of Police.

Ben and Liz, with their blonde haired daughter, had moved into the Old Kent place…after it had been extensively renovated, of course. Rather than keep up the arrangements with the neighboring farms for use of the Kent land, Liz had simply signed the portions they were using over to them, retaining only about three acres surrounding the house itself.

Moving from the hustle and bustle of Metropolis to the laid back Smallville had been hardest on Liz so, in addition to becoming a family practitioner, she had taken it upon herself to become involved with the sad excuse for a library that was all Smallville had at the time. Now, years later, that Library was a thriving institution, with several satellite libraries located in nearby communities.

None of which meant anything right now. Ben had known all along that he was just as susceptible to the heart problems that had plagued the male members of his family for generations. He had, of course, taken all the precautions he could. A healthy diet, regular check-ups, etc. None of which had done a thing to help. It was as if some divine being waited until a Danvers male reached a certain age and then began rolling the dice. Every roll was a win until the dice came up snake eyes. When that happened, the divine being would flip a cosmic switch and that Danvers would die of massive heart failure with absolutely no warning.

Of course, the truth was a little less spectacular. Nothing more than a genetic defect. Science and medicine had advanced so far in the past twenty years that most heart problems could be spotted and dealt with long before they became life-threatening problems. Most but not all. As Ben often said, it is not what we have found that will kill you, it is what we have missed! Of course, he had also said that the chances that humanity would completely eradicate death due to heart problems were nil. Liz, being the doctor of the family, could only agree.

As she sat with Liz, Kara allowed her thoughts to wander. She knew very well what the mourners that passed by, saying their final good-byes and offering their condolences to the widow, saw. As far as they were concerned they saw nothing more than a grief-stricken girl in her mid-teens. The daughter of the man lying in the casket. A few of them might even know she was adopted, but not most.

When she had awoken years earlier in a room bathed in red sunlight she had been terrified. It had been the calming voices of Liz and Ben that had stopped panic from taking over. Of course, she had not understood a word they were saying until, following instructions her father had given her, she activated a translating device he had attached to her wrist comp.

It had taken some time for it to sink in that something had gone wrong. It had taken even longer for Ben and Liz to realize that, though she was no different in appearance than an average Terran six-year-old child, her maturity was closer to that of a Terran child three times her age and there really was no way to compare the knowledge crammed into her mind with that in the minds of most Terrans, no matter their ages.

But despite the differences, she was nevertheless a child and would often surprise Liz and Ben by acting exactly as an Earth child would.

The first thing she had demanded, when she was sure the Kents could understand her, was the location of her cousin. Her mother and father had impressed upon her that looking after Kal would be her responsibility.

She had been at a complete loss after Ben and Liz showed her the recordings Martha Kent had left and let her access the computers Kal had left behind. Kal had grown and then died…and she had not been here to help or protect him!

Neither Liz nor Ben had ever tried to force their will on her. Instead, they had offered her the choice. Her world was gone. Her cousin was gone. But she lived. Earth would be her new home and, though they would never try to replace Zor and Alura in her heart, they would do whatever they could to help her live the kind of life Clark lived. Where she went from there would be totally up to her.

A Few Years Later

Somewhere in the Arctic

Kara floated in the air far above Superman's fabled Fortress of Solitude.

It was the dead of night yet still lights could be seen from some of the various camps that ringed the area. Over the past few years, she had come here several times yet never had she gotten any closer than she was right at this moment.

She knew that each of those camps had sensors trained on the Fortress, trying to ferret out secrets Superman might have hidden in there.

It had taken a full decade after Superman's death before any of the world's governments made the commitment to find his hidden fortress. While some countries, the United States included, had been more than willing to let the Fortress remain hidden, they could not afford to let some foreign power find it and possibly gain access. Who knew what kind of technology they might discover that could become weapons of destruction?

Though they had located the Fortress fairly quickly, that was as far as any of the governments involved had gotten. Once they found it, they discovered that gaining entrance was not going to be easy at all. Not when the Fortress could actively defend itself. In fact, the searchers quickly discovered that they could get no closer to the fortress than a half a mile. So they had set up permanent armed camps around the Fortress. They might not be able to gain entrance, but they were going to make sure no one else did without their knowledge.

Kara knew she could enter the Fortress. The records she had uncovered at the Kent home had informed her that Kal had keyed the Fortress to his own genetic code and that only someone who shared that code, ie a member of the El family, would be able to enter.

Her problem was the camps surrounding the Fortress.

She wished she could have consulted with Kelex. Unfortunately, this extension of the El family robotic servant, which had been included with Kal's ship, was offline. Even Kryptonian technology required human maintenance every now and then.

Which brought her to the here and now. The system installed beneath the Kent home had sounded the warning. After over fifty years, the power systems within the Fortress were in danger of failing. Without intervention, the power available would begin to decline and systems would start to go down…including the defensive systems.

This time she did not have a choice. She would have to enter the fortress, reactivate Kelex, and then go from there. She frowned and tugged at the blue cowl that rose up from the neck of the blue suit she wore to cover her head and most of her face. Behind her, a long red cape flapped in the air and the El family crest that Superman had made famous…the so-called S Symbol…showed prominently over her chest.

The costume had been Liz's idea, complete with the cowl that hid her hair and face. With today's facial recognition software, there was no way she could have gotten away with the simple addition of glasses to hide her identity the way Clark/Kal had. While Kara had agreed with the concept, the execution of that concept was definitely uncomfortable. With the exception of the cowl, the rest of the costume was a near if not an exact duplicate of what Kal had worn as Superman. While it might have worked during Clark's time period, fashion had, thankfully, evolved since then. If she ever had reason to wear a costume again, which she doubted since Earth had enough superheroes, it wouldn't be this one!

"Kara Kent-Danvers, you are not getting anywhere just floating here." She scolded herself. Her choice of names, names that had become as much a part of her as her own arm, snapped her out of her hesitation. In an instant, she went from floating miles above the Fortress to standing before the massive doorway. She could hear alarms going off in several of the camps as the sensors aimed at the doors noticed her presence. For the moment, she ignored them as she looked up at the double doors before her. She was standing before the entrance to the Fortress her cousin had constructed long ago…while her ship was still wandering in space. Though the massive doors, colored white to mask their presence, did not appear to be 'alien', the engravings along the edges were in a language that had never been developed on Earth. They were Kryptonian. Those engravings reminded her that, though she might be Kara Kent-Danvers now, she had been and would always be Kara Zor-El as well.

Straightening her spine, she stepped forward. There was no need for a key or some magic word to open the doors. Though a normal human might not have noticed it, her enhanced vision allowed her to see the low-frequency light that played briefly over her. In the time it took her to step forward and place the palm of her right hand on the smooth plate where, on most doors on Earth, a handle would have been the security protocols Kal had installed within the Fortress had scanned her, taken note of her genetic make-up, and positively identified her as a member of the El family. When her hand touched the plate, the massive doors swung silently inward and Kara stepped into the main entrance hall of the Fortress. Even as she stepped in, she sighed. While human eyes might not have been able to see scanning light, the sensors the camps had trained on the door would have picked up on it. Another piece of data that would, eventually, allow them to gain entrance. She pushed the thought aside as the massive door swung shut behind her.

Looking around at the chamber she found herself in, the first thoughts that entered her mind were probably not as full of reverence as they probably should have been. As she looked around the chamber she felt only relief that the multiple movies that had been made about her cousin were wrong. Nowhere was there any sign of the hideous crystalline structure that Hollywood had invented. It was as if Hollywood thought all Kryptonians were hip crystal waving navel-gazers. Of course, she understood the mentality. When faced with the task of trying to explain some of the advanced science of Krypton, the movie makers had taken the easy way out. They had equated the science of Krypton with mystic crystal mumbo-jumbo and called it good. But then they had gone further and created a mythological fortress. The actors who played her cousin might as well have been waving magic wands. Presto chango. Instant Fortress. Just add water.

The earlier comics that had been inspired by Superman had actually come closer to the truth. Kal might have had some help from Kryptonian technology, but this Fortress was no Crystal wavers orgasm but rather a series of elaborate chambers carved out of the ice and the side of the mountain in which it resided.

A console stood in the middle of the entrance chamber, just below large full-color statues of Kal's parents holding aloft a globe representing Krypton. The console was similar to those Kara had seen in her father's lab and that of her Uncle Jor El. Again, thankfully, no crystal mumbo-jumbo. Just sensible controls that would, at first, seem familiar to even an Earth person. She looked down at the console and smiled. On Krypton, such a console might be labeled much as a Terran computer console would be. The language used, however, would be Kryptonian. This one was labeled in English.

During her stay in Smallville, she had all but taken apart the systems Kal had left beneath the home as she researched everything she could get her hands on. One thing she had noticed right away was Kal's tendency to use English. Not too surprising since, to him, English would have been his first language and Kyrptonese a secondary. Despite all their advancements, Kryptonians were still a member of the same family Terran Humans sprang from. Though, of course, you would not find many Terran Humans that would believe any such thing. As far as they were concerned, they were either created out of mud by some divine being or had evolved from some branch of the Ape family.

But the relationship between Earth Humans and Krytponian Humans was as obvious as it was surprising. In fact, the relationship was much closer than probably even the Kryptonian scientist who knew about Earth were willing to believe. In most cases in nature, when members of the same species evolve apart from each other, each going in separate directions, the chances of interbreeding between the two would decrease the more time passed and the further apart they evolved. Tests Kal had done had shown that not only were Krytponians and Terrans fully compatible with each other, there was less difference between the two than there was between a Terran Human and a Chimpanzee. In fact, according to his findings, Kryptonian Humans were more closely related to every other Terran species than they were to ANY species that evolved on Krypton! Though she had been skeptical at first, following the same path Kal had taken in his research Kara had not only confirmed his findings but found that she agreed with his conclusion that, in some distant past, Earth Humans had been taken and altered so they could survive on a new heavy gravity world. That world had been Daxam. It would be the Daxamites who would later in their violent history eventually colonize the planet Krypton! A rule of thumb to determine which species had evolved on Krypton and those that had been transplanted to Krypton was to count the number of limbs of the mammals. All Kryptonian 'mammals' had six limbs. Those that Kal had believed had originated on Earth had four! Of course, this had only included the three species Kal had been aware of: Humans, Canines, and Felines.

All of which boiled down to the fact that despite their advances in the various sciences Kryptonians were still human and still had the same limitations! In Kal's case, those limitations had been his age. When Jor-El placed baby Kal in his escape ship he had been much too young to undergo any of the teaching methods used by Kryptonians. Kara had only been old enough to proceed partially through what was known as First Tier Training. Though biologically the equivalent of a Terran child of five or six when Zor had placed her in her ship she had the knowledge equivalent to what Terrans might gain after one or two years of college. A fact that had made going through Smallville schools extremely boring.

Of course, Kal had made up for lost time by utilizing the training aides Uncle Jor had included in Kal's ship much as Kara had continued her education through Second Tier Training using the aides her father had provided for her. The problem was the timing. The Tier Training system had been developed to go hand in hand with the growth of the child receiving the training. Though he had gained knowledge, had learned about his biological parents and their world, that knowledge which should have been written to a clean slate had been added to a mind that already had years of experience. The result was that whatever Kal learned remained at a distance rather than part of him. In the end, Kal was more Earthling than Kryptonian. Of course, she, Kara, had the same problem, if not to the same degree. Even with all the training aides her father had provided, the environment in which she now lived made continuing through the Fourth and higher tiers of education useless, if not impossible. She would continue through the Third but after that….

She ceased her musing and looked down at the console. She read the power levels indicators that showed that the fortress had placed itself in hibernation mode after a considerable amount of time. So Kelex had not malfunctioned after all…it had simply gone to sleep. Of course, it had done so in such a way that only the most catastrophic events…or a human hand…would awaken it. She touched a series of buttons and a schematic of the fortress appeared in the air above the console. She studied it for a moment and then smiled again. She doubted Kal had ever realized that he had carved out this fortress with the exact floor plan Jor-El had used when he had constructed their new home in Kryptonopolis. A flickering on one of the gauges caught her eye and she frowned. The power levels were, indeed fluctuating and dropping. It would not have been much longer before they had dropped to a point that waking Kelex would have become impossible. Further checks determined that it was the constant effort of keeping the Earthlings gathered in camps around the Fortress out and blocking all their attempts at scanning the interior of the fortress remotely.

"Okay, Kelex." She muttered as she touched a few more controls. "Nap time is over. Time to get back to work."

Two weeks later alarms in the camps around the fortress went off again. Tensions had risen dramatically when the unknown individual had appeared and entered the fortress. For two weeks the camps of the various governments had eyed each other warily, daring anyone to make a move. Thankfully cool heads were in charge and no overt movements that would require a response were made. Now, as the alarms sounded once again, the tension rose still higher.

"What's happening?" Colonel Ben (Buddy) Raines demanded as he entered the Quonset hut that had been made into the control center for the camp. He pushed the parka hood from his head and stripped off his heavy gloves as he glared at the technician on duty. The technician shook her head and pointed to one view screen.

"The doors, Colonel." She said. "They're open!"

"Did our mystery girl leave?" Buddy mused, leaning over the shoulder of the tech to glare at the screen. Though they could not identify the person that entered the fortress, the images they were able to get showed clearly that she was a female.

"No, sir." She shook her head. "At least not that our cameras and sensors could see." She shrugged. "The doors just opened and they aren't closing." She turned to glance at another screen and stiffened. "Sir, the sensors are indicating that there is no power whatsoever coming from the Fortress. Nothing!" She turned to look at him. "With no power that could mean that the barriers are down!"

Buddy studied the readouts and then, snagging a chair, planted himself beside the Tech.

"Yeah, they probably are." He shook his head. "Turn off the alarms and have the camp stand down."

"Sir?"

"Whatever was in that Fortress is gone." Buddy said. "Oh, I imagine we'll find some stuff in there, but nothing we don't already have or could readily develop on our own. Whoever that girl was, she cleaned house. I'll bet on it!"

It took a full day of negotiating with the various governments represented by the camps before a small delegation was selected amongst them to explore the Fortress. Buddy was among them when, after years of trying to get in, they finally walked through the doors.

The first thing they saw was an empty chamber with the exception of a life-sized statue of Superman. A closer inspection around the statue would later reveal that it was a newer addition…probably replacing a control console that had stood in that spot. The second thing they noticed were the words burnt into one of the walls.

"This place was my cousin's Fortress of Solitude. It would be nice if you made it a monument to him! – Supergirl"

"Supergirl?" Buddy Raines smiled and turned to the tech that had accompanied him just as his counterparts were turning to their aides. "I think we need to inform Washington that we could possibly have another Kryptonian."

To be Continued…..