2
At 6AM in the morning, Harry Clinton and his son, Barty Clinton, named for his grandfather, were up and about on their cattle farm twelve miles outside Acuff, Arizona. It was a small town of only 1,308 people, but they liked it. Harry had been raising cattle for almost seventy-five years, and he had risen this morning to fix the back fence on his property with his son before the mid-day sun rose, and the heat escalated into the triple digits. They were ten acres from the main house and repairing the barbwire fence when they heard the rumble in the sky above and looked up expecting to see storm clouds. When they looked up into the empty blue sky above them, they discovered two figures coming from the horizon going to Phoenix, speeding over their heads in speeds over a hundred miles an hour and disappearing into the distance of the Mogollon Rim several miles away.
Her hair flowing backward in her jetstream, Linda Danvers rose up and down in the wind currents she was riding. Aerobic and graceful in her movements, she was a ballerina in flight, bobbing in and around the younger Kara Danvers in this high speed flight clipping the northwest corner of New Mexico and approaching Colorado. Kara was grinning and laughing free from the pangs of her previous problems. Like two reunited sisters, they streaked across the skies of the nation, bobbing near and close to each other in the absence of gravity. Kara would tag Linda then streak ahead daring her to catch up, but when she came to a sudden stop a mere distance from Smallville, Kansas, Linda suddenly caught up with her and tagged her as well. Emerging from the Smallville Star newspaper office, Chloe Sullivan stepped from the building, arched her head to the two flying females and chuckled under her breath as they sped off toward the northeast corner of the state for Iowa.
In a few more minutes, the two almost divine young ladies were actually approaching O'Hare Airport and buzzing the surface of an aircraft. Passengers started whipping out cell phones to snap photos of the two flying females in the sky keeping up with the plane, but Linda gestured to Kara and the two were soon streaking across Lake Michigan, flying even more further east toward the Northeast United States. Below them, miles of suburban neighborhoods, dense woods, sparkling lakes and Midwest towns were speeding by under them. Her hands keeping her balanced in her flight, Kara looked up with sparkling admiration for the girl known as Linda Danvers. Their histories were almost identical. Both survivors of different Kryptons in separate realities, their lives were different versions of the same biography. Kara had been taken in by Jeremiah and Eliza Danvers of Midvale, California, who had treated her as their own daughter. Linda had been adopted and raised by Fred and Edna Danvers of Midvale, New Jersey. Both of their cousins had become famous media personas in the tabloid press under the name "Superman." Kara wanted to meet Linda's cousin, but she also wanted to know if she could get back home. If anyone could pull something like that off, Linda knew there was one man could do it living in New York City, and as the two Maidens of Might sailed on the cool Atlantic winds of the great metropolis, a red and blue figure in webbed attire swinging on a web landed on the tower of the Stanley Hotel off the West Side and gazed on the two attractive ladies flying into his city.
"There's two of them now?" He quipped in a stunned Tobey McGuire voice.
Gliding up Park Avenue twenty feet above the traffic, Kara continued following Linda to meet her authority on trans-dimensional physics. The trip had taken them across the country to Manhattan and up the side of a huge skyscraper at 200 Park Avenue known as Four Freedoms Plaza. Resembling a huge colossal spear with a small landing pad attached, Linda dropped down on to her feet on a small balcony to a figure laying in a deck chair with Kara right behind her. The young man tanning himself sipped his soda and set it aside to lift his sunglasses to the shapely beauty blocking his sun.
"Linda, might I say just how hot you are looking today." He looked over to the young beauty in the predominantly blue version of her costume. "You got a little sister?"
"She's not my sister…. She's passing through…" Linda responded. "Is Reed in?"
"He's in his lab."
"Johnny!" A loud gruff voice sounded inside the building.
"Gotta go, ladies…." Johnny jumped up to his feet and ran for the edge of the building to jump off. "Flame on!" His body burst into flames as he sailed off the building ahead of a huge seven foot tall man composed of orange rocks. A cream pie covered the top of his head where two eyes peered out from the rocky face of the creature. Kara posed to fight it, but Linda placed her arm before her.
"You've got to come back sometime!" Ben charged to the edge of the balcony. "I know where you live!" He shook a huge rock covered arm at the fleeing fiery prankster, wiped off the pie on his head then turned around to his company with his weight creaking through the concrete walkway. "Hey, Linda…" He noticed Kara. "You've got a sister?"
"She's not my sister…." Linda repeated. "Is Reed here?"
"Yeah…" Ben responded in his gravelly voice. "He's got something going on inside…"Ben led the way into the building with the two Maidens of Might behind him. Two steps inside, Kara tapped Linda on the shoulder.
"What planet is he from?"
"Earth." Linda answered as they followed the huge rocky hero into meet his best friend in the halls of the penthouse. Once the MetLife Building in its history, and later Stark Tower in recent years, the seventy-five story behemoth had been sold to Reed Richards recently by Tony Stark following the Sokovia Accords. The structure had the ideal wiring and clean energy required by Reed for his projects, and the power in it sustained his experiments without knocking out New York power grid as it did at his old location. In the bowels of the penthouse under the living quarters, Reed once again immersed himself in his work by assisting Stark long distance on the West Coast over telemetry readings in the area.
"According to my readings, your satellite detected a small burst of extra-dimensional space exploding over National City, California with signatures comparative but not wholly different to the one the Chitauri used when they invaded." Reed was reading the long-distance data being sent to him as Stark appeared to him above his console as a large holographic visual. "Now, it wasn't big enough for an army, but it was big enough for something to slip through, but whatever it was is long gone."
"The local news and media reports are giving me much to give on." Stark was patrolling the area between National City and San Diego in his Iron Man battle suit. "There were a few robberies last night, some kids stole a car and a little old lady dinged her car with the local drug store, but no one described anything resembling Predator or the Terminator lurking in the area."
"I thought Peter did the pop culture references." Reed looked at his wife Sue standing by his side. She was consumed with distressed worry. She and Reed had been involved with Arthur Molekevic, a mad millionaire in control of a subterranean empire in Central America when that alien race had invaded New York City. After defying the accused "Mole Man," they had returned to New York City to find the city in ruins and their home at the Baxter Building almost devastated. They had to see the carnage from the news outlets, but the thought of it happening again without the Avengers this time to help terrified her.
"Yeah, I guess the little doofus is rubbing off on me."
"Tony," Sue leaned in to be seen. "Have you seen or heard from Steve lately?"
"Uh, sorry… Going through a tunnel. Didn't catch that." Stark was crossing over the Hancock Tower and passing over the Jerry Siegel Bridge over the Sweetwater River in the National City of his reality. Below him, the locals were excited to see him in town. They saw Supergirl all the time, but he had not been in the area since he had moved to the East Coast. After crossing the river one more time, he suddenly wondered to himself. Where was the last daughter of Krypton?
"Hey, Reed, we've got guests." Ben called from the stairs to the living quarters, and Sue looked over to the bright red boots of Linda's Kryptonian attire coming down behind him followed by the more crimson boots of her younger counterpart. Sue and Reed exchanged brief glimpses with each other before welcoming Linda back into the fold as an old friend. Nervous and feeling out of place, Kara looked at Linda hugging each other then glanced to Reed distractedly bracing himself on his computer console. In the hologram, Tony peered past them to the missing Maiden of Might.
"Reed, Sue…" Linda began. "Let me introduce Kara Danvers… a visitor from another reality." She stepped aside to show off Kara in her alternate reality version of Linda's costume. Instead of red, blue and yellow like the Man of Steel, it was predominantly blue, and the red was darker, practically crimson unlike the bright red of Linda's cape. Kara shined her brightest smile and shook Sue's hand; she looked like how she remembered actress and model Jessica Alba, and Reed looked as distinguished as a young British actor.
"You got a little sister?" Tony's image spoke from the console.
Linda, Kara, Reed, Sue and Ben turned to look at Tony.
"That would be another explanation for the temporal disturbance we picked up." Reed realized as he reached out for a piece of equipment he had developed, his arm extending the extra five feet to pick up the device he wanted and contracting his arm once more to check his readings with Kara's presence. "If you don't mind me asking, what caused you to jump temporal boundaries?"
"I was shutting down an artificial black hole in a lab that exploded." Kara confessed."You can get me home, can't you?"
"Theoretically, yes…" Reed turned back to Stark on watching in the hologram. "Tony, how much that Chitauri technology is still available?"
"Which part?"
"The transverse warp technology." Reed answered. "If I can identify Kara's specific temporal signature and match it to a reality within the broad spectrum in inter-dimensional space, I might be able to theoretically relocate the remnants of her pathway and re-open it on this end, giving her enough time to pass back through."
"I'm on it."
"Hey, Parker…." Ben noticed the young man peeking in through the window of the lab. "Why don't you come in and say hello to Kara instead hanging outside the window?"
"I'm good…" The wall-crawler waved embarrassingly smitten by the second Girl of Steel, fired off another web line from his wrist and disappeared back on his patrol of Manhattan.
