Author's Note/Disclaimer: I did not invent these characters. I do not know if their creator has already penned complete back stories for them. Until then, I'm fantasizing my own.
I love it when characters like these pop up. Alternate versions of superheroes and villains, relatives and ancestors, names that are thrown for no other reason other then a reference to a past encounter and that's it.
So I dream, and scheme, and think up stories for them. Stories that might be far off, or might be right on the head. Stories of who they are, where they come from, and how they got to where they are now.
I was inspired to write this story for Overgirl, the Supergirl of Nazi-controlled Earth-10, the cousin of Overman. Introduced in Final Crisis #3, she may be a Nazi, but she was interesting. And you wouldn't believe how happy I was to find more info on her in Final Crisis Secret Files, which I bought this Friday, January 2. God Bless Grant Morrison's messed up mind and the artwork of JG Jones. I really hope she isn't dead. There's potential if they keep her and her cousin around after the Crisis ends.
This is a short back-story. It may be true, or it might not.
That's the point of fan fiction, isn't it?
Final Crisis Secret Files
Overgirl
In
Dreams that Bleed
She left the note on his desk, written on his stationary. He was having a meeting, discussing that old man and his group of ramblers. Rambling in the voice of the dead. Karl was meeting with the valkyrie, the bat, and the one who smells like dead fish. She hates him and his leering, creepy eyes.
Kara Kant contemplated her next move, looking up in the sky, at a blue, shining jewel. A shining paradise lost in time-displaced darkness. The oasis of Earth.
All people live in peace. All people live in harmony. All people are one race and one color. All people live in hypocrisy.
There is no wind on the moon, in the Sea of Tranquility. Was it the Sea of Tranquility? She didn't care at the moment. Her blonde curls stay in place. Her black cape still. The only movement comes from the blinking of her blue eyes, and the rising and falling chest, covered by her Schutzstaffel symbol. It never occurred to her that that red lightning bolt in a black triangle might resemble an S. She had her right hand on her band, her Swastika band, on her left arm. A chill went down her spine. Her beige uniform with shorts wasn't suitable for the moon.
Kara Kant. The cousin of the Overman. The Overgirl. An example of what all girls should hope to be. A figurehead. An experiment.
Lately, she has been having dreams. Dreams that disturb her. These dreams, they are more like wounds. Dreams that bleed out of her mind as they wound the soul, as she wonders. What does she wonder? She wonders about this world. She wonders about her cousin. She wonders about herself.
The first dream was murky, but it kept insisting itself onto her, and the picture was getting clearer. A man and a woman. The man has brown hair, the woman is blonde, like her. She's very little. The woman is crying, and the man is holding her for support. They are her parents. Of course, it is very simple. She is dreaming of the day they took her away.
She is not Karl's actual cousin. She is a cousin in the loosest sense. Related by donated DNA samples, spliced into her biological makeup. The only child to survive. Imagine the Reich's surprise when they learned a girl was the only survivor unscathed. Still not as powerful though, but it brought up a woman's credibility by half. The only other survivor was better off dead. The Antihuman. By all means her brother and her shadow. A half-finished abortion shambling on twisted, super powered limbs.
She shifts in the dust, floating a inch above the ground. She stretches her arms and yawns. Sitting still for too long.
Since then, she has looked up to her cousin. Karl. Everyone else must refer to him as Overman, the Ubermensch. But not her. She is really the only family Karl has left. His parents, dead years ago, even with all their advances in medical science. Always a paragon of virtue, who strived so long to turn this world into a utopia for all. A glorious dream of peace.
Her dreams, they continued beyond that. She remembers…
The first time she donned her uniform.
Meeting the Justice League. Brunhilde. Leatherwing. Underwaterman. The Holy Lantern.
Fighting Uncle Sam and His Freedom Fighters.
Discovering the Antihuman.
And discovering the truth.
She discovered what this world had really been made from. Genocide. Mass murder. Torture. Extinction. She saw learned there was another face behind the Overman, behind Karl Kant. Riddled with guilt and a soul bitten away by the past' atrocities. So many races which had either been wiped out or destroyed. And the leftovers… she's seen them.
Such maddening guilt was in his eyes. Such sorrow. Jew, Black, Indian, American, Asian, Mongolian, Spanish, Portuguese, Polynesian, Aborigine, so much. Homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, androgynous.
They have been locked. Locked beneath the surface. Those that survived the genocides. The labs. The labs that made her. The labs that won the war. They have tried their hardest to wipe out any and all racial impurities left. Experiments. Gene-splicing to change their skin color. Their identities stripped and their cultures burned in ovens.
And not just them. The ones born different and strange. Victims of births that weren't supervised by the state. Men and women born with illnesses of the mind. The ones who do not hold to their respective genders or find themselves attracted to the same kind.
Kara could not believe her eyes. Horded in cages and shot in bunkers. So much for moving ahead. The ovens smell of burning flesh and bone. Sterile and white, metal stained with blood.
She saw a little boy. A boy whose skin was as brown as dirt, like mud. A little boy no older then five. He looked at Kara with such sad, pleading eyes. It frightened Kara. And she swatted him away like a bug. He was a bug.
And then the dreams started again.
The first dream, it was a nightmare. It simple though. She woke, rising from her bed. She yawned and walked to her vanity mirror. And her skin was as dark as the little boy.
Her screams shattered every window in the building.
Kara is no longer on the moon. She is floating in the star-filled void. She wonders where the planet Krypton had once been. Maybe she should've asked him. But, then again, she wouldn't even tell him about the dreams. Why worry him? She hadn't told anyone, not even her friend, Barbara Gordon, Blackwing, daughter of Burgomaster Gordon and aid to Leatherwing.
Maybe if she DID tell someone they would've stopped. But they kept on coming. She was once again dark-skinned in the next. And then, she was another shade, Oriental. Indian. Changing every time she closed her eyes. Was it guilt? Guilt from swatting that child, who never did anything to her? Maybe now she was beginning to understand the sadness in Karl's eyes.
And so, she did research. The forbidden libraries Karl, and only Karl, was given access to. She drank in the knowledge that was moot to every living being. Cultures, religions, policies, laws, customs. She wanted to understand what made these people inferior. Some, yes, the cultures which ate their children and their people. The ones that crawled on their bellies in the dirt and reproduced like animals in heat. The heretics who claimed God had no son. The ones which had no understandable language. The ones who lived in chaos and put unjust and unacceptably chosen men as their leaders.
But, what of the art? The wonderful creations made by their hands. Paintings, sculptures, jewelry, melodies. And the stories. The stories that so fascinated her the most.
But then the dreams became more than that, as Karl and the League had more problems to deal with. Natural disasters that should've been averted. Weird electrostatic charges in the air. Molecules and particles in hypertension. Clamoring, mixing, running, as if they were afraid. Unexpected arrivals. Clocks running slow and running fast. People arriving to destinations in mere minutes when it would take hours. People wandering for what seems like days when they are just crossing the street. And Uncle Sam didn't make that easier. Uncle Sam, that English-speaking old man and the rebels. Phantom Lady, the Human Bomb, Black Condor, the Ray, Magno, Neon the Unknown, Miss America, Hourman, the Red Bee, the Invisible Hood, the Jester, Midnight, Spider Widow, Raven, and Torchy. Fighting for a country that no longer exists.
She awoke, one morning, and she was in a different place. An apartment building. She, she was not Overgirl. She did not understand as she watched outside her building. Not just white. Most cultures, and some that she had never heard of, some which were probably just dreams. She, she saw Karl. Only, only it isn't Karl. He, he is a symbol of hope, for all. There is no guilt in when she looks into this dream's eyes. He is, the Superman. And she, is his cousin, Supergirl. His actual cousin.
And when she woke, there was no fear. But she wondered, wondered about everything. Her dreams, her world, her cousin, her life.
She floats in-between the Earth and the Moon.
It is time.
She decides to head back, back to the Earth. And discuss it, finally discuss what she has been feeling.
But, there is a rumbling sound, a sound like thunder. But, there is no sound in space. And then, the wind, it is picking up. Wind in space? No!
She looks on in horror, as the atmosphere is plunged in a red glow, pulsating like blood. A moan. And then, the atmosphere starts to suck her in. And cracks into red stained-glass.
She tries to fly off, but it is too strong. And in the glass which was once the sky, she sees it.
Her dream, herself!
Her dreams they… they've come true!
She sees! She sees in the red, beating sky as it cracks like eggshells, sees herself, living life after life.
"Grosse Krypton." She whispers.
She has curly blonde hair, a head band, Supergirl, once again. Being cradled in her cousin's arms as she dies.
Hair, cut short as a bob, a very different costume with no symbol. She is with a woman in purple and is searching for someone.
Again, she has wings of flame, flying off into heaven. An angel.
Again, she is saving someone. Somehow, she feels that it is NOT her, but, she watches on, as she saves a woman with brown hair, and their hands, they seem to merge into one.
An angel again, only different, the girl from before.
Again, she is not herself, married to her cousin, with a baby. But that world is dying soon, thanks to the Spirit of Vengeance.
Again, a clcokwork world, the concepts made by Nietzsche. The Super-Man, his wife, and his baby girl, Kara. Over Metropolis.
Again, she is not Overgirl. A smiling, happy family in red with thunderbolts.
Again. She is flying out of a rocket. So happy, and smiling.
She sees her smiling cousin, watching over her. Again, and again, and again.
And then, she learns the horrifying truth of her existence.
The truth is this. The world is an insignificant microbe in a test tube. A grand fixture in an orrery, watched by the dying members of a race of super-intelligent monitors in a macro void. An egg.
And the world's shell has cracked.
She is sucked in, into the arteries that pulse all around us. The Solution of 52. The Bleed. Down. Down further. Down into the deepest darkness, negative space, negative void, where even death has died. Nil.
Where IT is found. The ultimate gravesite at the end of the world. The tomb lies. Bound by chains of ultramenstruum. They stir.
"No! Dear God, no!" She sees it in her red and green eyes. Kara cries as the thing has awoken. Unimaginable, inhuman, ungodly, they can't described this.
"Karl, where are you?! I need you!" She screams. The doors creak.
No! No! The Beast! The Angel of Contamination! The God of Hunger is stirring!
And she sees it! And Dear God, IT sees HER!
A black god of non-life fallen through the depths, acting as his disciple while the Balance tips! Tips in his favor!
She's being dragged down, deep into the depths. The Sepulcher of Mandrakk, the Dark One! Absolute hunger!
"No!" She screams.
It is too late! Too late!
The beast is awake!
Awake!
AWAKE!
…
"-call an ambulance!"
The crash was so hard, through concrete pavement, pipes, and cars. Massive property damage. The red has vanished.
"I… I am… Overgirl…" She tries to say.
Her blue eyes stir as flesh cooks. She can't believe what she sees. A woman. A woman with tanned skin and black hair. Touching her. Her skin burns and bones have been broken. To breath is to cause great pain. What is this horrific beauty she sees before her. Is this heaven, or hell?
"Shh!" The woman tells her, trying to soothe her. "It's okay! Help's on the way." Such compassion she's never seen in a mongrel. Would it be alright to still call them a mongrel? Not her anyway, in this delusional state of pain before death. It does not matter. It is too late.
"No…" Kara says. They can't understand her.
"It's the… the sky is bleeding. Hell… is… is here…"
It is coming. And nothing has meaning anymore. Nothing can save us as she closes her eyes for what might be the final time.
"What did she say?"
We are in hell. We all are hell.
And Mandrakk wakes.
…
Name: Overgirl.
Actual Alias: Unknown.
Homeworld: Earth-10.
Created By: Grant Morrison and JG Jones.
First Appearance: Final Crisis #3 by Grant Morrison.
"Overgirl is the only successful result of the experiments to seed a human child with Overman's genetic material. All the others died - except for the horrific aberration known as ANTIHUMAN." "Overgirl has less than half of Overman's strength, speed, stamina and endurance, which is still considerable." "She if the first person from Earth-10 to cross the Bleed barrier between Multiverses."
~ Excerpt from Final Crisis Secret Files (February 2008)