Alexandra 'Alex' Danvers is, if one thing, smart. She's not witty, but she is smart and clever. Having a photographic memory isn't something that makes her smart, either – though it certainly helps her understand things when she can remember explanations with clarity, able to play things over and over in her head till it clicks. For example, Alex once saw a documentary about the 9/11 Attack and listened to a man explain that, without the help of the several alien immigrants with powers of flight working in the tower, over a dozen more people would have died. However, she saw the news broadcasts and the videos on TV, watching those very aliens who'd saved lives get arrested right alongside Arabic men in turbans and floor-length dresses.

Alex had come to the conclusion, eventually, that Americans are shit when it comes to immigrants – aliens included.

Working in a downtown clinic rather than a fancy hospital in Seattle is part of her fight against the treatment of immigrants and the downtrodden. She works a fourteen hour shift, often taking the night-shift instead of the day and afterwards, once a week, she'll go to a warehouse five blocks from her apartment and treat those that can't pay medical insurance or don't have a social security number or green card. Aliens included.

Aliens always included.

Another of the volunteers at the warehouse – because they're a group, at least eleven of them from clinics in the area, Alex one of the lucky few who doesn't have to come from the other side of National City – refuses to treat aliens and Alex and the others think she's a bitch of a woman for a little while, until she does actually treat an alien and upon coming into contact with their blood, shifts to completely copy them, a clone. Only when they touch another human do they return to the almond-eyed, dark-haired white Canadian woman that Alex has known for three years.

"I've got a life," she says, "Two lives, actually. I just lost one, there. I only have three forms to keep and the one I just lost was my supposed mother. I'll file a missing report, soon."

It's a new perspective of aliens, for Alex, to think of aliens living among humans without being caught. To be fair, until 9/11, most of the country ignored that fact. Even Guardian and Nightwing aren't really talked about a lot for being off-worlders, despite their well-known story. Alex knows that the infamous Shadow is a Kryptonian, too, though Shadow herself hasn't been seen in nigh on twenty years, since the first few appearances of Guardian.

On one of her vacation days – because, strangely enough, for a poor downtown clinic, they do actually have mandatory vacation days – Alex goes to the park. She sits on the grass and leans back on a rock, messaging her foster-sister, Susie.

VASVERS: lilbro decided to join me at work

VASVERS: please save me. Boss actually likes him.

VASVERS: shit he's been hired

Alex coughs, there, stopping herself from actually spitting her coffee out. DR ALEX MD: No fucking way. The little shit actually got a government job?

VASVERS: he could have gone so fucking far and got famous or something at like LordTech or RAO-Inc but noooooooo lilbro decided that security of the world is more important. Oh and apparently boss has been waiting until Winn started hacking them out of boredom shit this is like a paid blackmail job.

Alex would have replied, but all of a sudden National City Park's lake explodes, drenching most of the residents and emptying the bowl. Head hitting the rock she'd been lying against, Alex sees stars, coffee falling from her hand, phone whipped up against the rock. Her head pounds and a voice echoes through the park.

"I am the invincible T-Minus Twenty and I will destroy National City, if it's the last thing I do!" Alex looks up and sees a man who looks like a millennial on holiday, with tan board shorts, a white t-shirt and blonde hair, but he's got grey boots on that are emitting some kind of blue light, keeping him high up in the air. He puts an arm out, the glove on his hand blasting what looks like a blue shockwave towards the CatCo building. Alex watches it hit, the glass cracking but – thankfully – not damaging the infrastructure.

Staggering to her feet as the man goes bonkers with his gloves, firing shockwave after shockwave at surrounding buildings and trees, Alex struggles to decide which direction to go. The lakewater is turning the grass to mud as she thinks and pretty soon, the choice is taken from her as she moves forwards, slipping down the incline and the surprisingly steep hill to the basin, ending up in wet sand and dirt, pondweed tangling up in her ankles.

Alex looks up.

'T-Minus Twenty' looks down.

Dammit, Alex thinks as he swoops down, using his gloves and boots to fly before he grabs her wrists and tugs her up, high up.

"My first hostage! What's you name, sweetheart?"

"Fuck off and let me go," Alex snaps, trying to stay as still as possible. He grins at her from behind sunglasses.

"Fine, have a nice time."

Then, to Alex's horror, he lets go and she goes tumbling through the air.

I'm going to die, she thinks, swallowing her scream. My parents are going to watch me die on CatCo Vision or something and Winn and Susie are going to be at the DEO and see it on a drone and I'm going to die-

Arms wrap around her waist and she's still falling, but her descent slows before she's being switched into a cradle and Alex gets a good look at her saviour. In a single moment, Alex's life is changed as she sees the familiar white mask of the long-gone Shadow, auburn hair flowing around her shoulders and a jawline that could kill right in front of her eyes.

A very fucking familiar jawline.

"Astra?" Alex stares, her girlfriend licking her lips before setting her down on a nearby cement path. "Astra, you can fly."

"I'll tell you everything later, I promise you, my love, my brave one," Astra whispers to her hurriedly, "but I need to stop this idiotic young man. Guardian and Nightwing are both indisposed."

"How the fuck can they be indisposed?" Alex questions hurriedly, before Astra leaves her, flying through a shockwave to knock out the pitiful – but damaging – villain. Remembering some small facts on superpowered Kryptonians, she mutters with venom, "Until you explain, you are sleeping on the couch tonight, Astra Callaghan."

Later, Alex is informed that Astra's real last name is In-Ze, but that's only after she meets Kara fucking Grant, also known as Guardian and her cousin, Kal-El Grant, aka Nightwing.

Astra still has to sleep on the couch.