Hello again and thanks very much for the enthusiastic response to the first chapter! I'm glad people are interested in seeing where this goes. So this chapter's a bit on the short side and I apologize for that, but I felt this was the best place to stop for now. The following chapters will be on the longer side, I promise. Enjoy!


Kara was fighting with all of her might not to lose consciousness as the strange group of armed soldiers closed in around her.

"Why are you dressed like that?" a male voice demanded. Kara felt the cold metal of a gun's muzzle press against the side of her head. "Is this some kind of trick?"

Kara was too weak to answer but she tried to push herself up onto her elbows. In response a heavy blow came down on her head, knocking her back to the ground. Still significantly weakened by the kryptonite, she collapsed under the weight of the assault. She could feel the heal of a boot pressing into her back.

"Stay down," an angry male voice demanded. Kara's head was splitting and her entire existence had boiled down to a blur of pain and confusion. She obeyed the order.

From somewhere nearby, Kara heard her sister's voice. "Get off of her!" Alex shouted, grabbing the gun from the nearest soldier and using it to hit him squarely in the face. The soldier crumpled to the ground in a heap, clutching his nose, but two of the others rounded on Alex, tearing the gun from her hands and grabbing her arms.

Alex continued to struggle against the soldiers' hold, but her appearance seemed to have provided a much needed distraction. Kara sucked in a breath as she felt the weight of a boot disappear off of her back. She could feel a small amount of her strength returning and managed to push herself up onto her knees, breathing heavily.

The soldier that had been threatening Kara a moment ago had turned to face the commotion. He seemed to have been caught off guard.

"Alex?" he said, his voice holding a clear note of confusion.

At the sound of her name Alex stopped struggling and turned to face the soldier who had uttered it. The two soldiers who had been holding Alex's arms released them and also turned to look towards the one who had addressed her.

"How is that possible?" the soldier asked. He dropped his gun to his side, clearly forgetting about Kara for the time being, and removed his helmet.

"Winn?" Alex gasped. Kara followed her gaze to the soldier's face and also let out a gasp.

The face under the helmet was in fact Winn's, but at the same time it wasn't. He looked like a Winn who been to hell and back. The right side of his face was almost completely dominated by the scars of what seemed to have once been a particularly angry burn mark. An eye patch covered his right eye and the hair on that side of his head was nothing but a patchy stubble. His remaining eye looked haunted, and was ringed by dark, tired bags. He was looking at Alex as though he was seeing a ghost.

Kara staggered to her feet and Winn, seeming to just remember her presence, turned and trained his gun on her again. His left eye showed deep confusion and uncertainty.

Kara put up her hands defensively, "Winn, what the hell is going on?"

The rest of the soldiers had started to converge on Kara and Alex by this point but Winn held up a hand to them and they all froze in place.

"Shit! Shit!" Winn said, clearly beginning to lose his composure, "Just give me a minute to think." He turned around to face Alex, "Where did you come from? How are you here?"

"Winn, what are you talking about?" Alex asked, taking a step forward, "Why do you seem so shocked to see me?

"Because you're supposed to be dead!" he shouted, his voice breaking as he once again dropped his gun to his side.

There was a moment of complete silence following this outburst. Alex looked as though someone had slapped her, and she was staring at Winn in complete disbelief. No one moved for what seemed like an eternity.

"Oh my god," Kara said, breaking the silence as a wave of realization broke over her, "We're on the wrong earth."

Everyone turned to face Kara at this. Winn focused his attention on her again. "What did you say?" he barked, eyeing her warily.

Kara put her hands up in front of her in a non-threatening gesture. "We were travelling between dimensions, coming from a parallel reality. We were supposed to go back to our earth, to our version of National City, but I think our portal malfunctioned and we ended up here."

"Sir?" one of the other soldiers, a female, addressed Winn with uncertainty, clearly unsettled by his loss of composure. Winn ignored her.

He was still looking at Kara with distrust, but his angry expression had softened to one of disbelief. "So what are you trying to tell me? That you're- you're her but from another reality?"

"Yes," Kara breathed, relief starting to flood her now that it appeared she might be getting through to Winn, "Neither of us is supposed to be here."

"Sir, you aren't really going to trust her are you?" one of the other soldiers asked, an incredulous tone to his voice, "This could be some kind of trick!" He had his gun trained on Kara and she could see the faint green glow coming from the barrel.

Winn was staring intently into Kara's eyes now, almost as though he were searching for something. After a moment he lowered his gun. "No," he said slowly, shaking his head, "No, I don't think it is. Look at her."

The other soldiers inched closer, bracing as though they expected Kara to leap out and attack them at any moment.

"She looks just like she did in the old days," one of them breathed, voice heavy with disbelief.

Kara was becoming steadily more uncomfortable with each passing second. She was confused and still aching from the earlier attack and now she felt like a zoo animal on display. "Will someone please explain to me what exactly is going on right now?"

Winn let out a sigh and raked a hand through his remaining hair. He ignored Kara's question and addressed the soldiers that he was apparently in command of. "Don't you realize what this means?" he said to them, "This could mean hope."

The soldiers seemed to have relaxed their guard slightly, transitioning from wary to curious. One by one they began to remove their helmets. Kara didn't recognize any of their faces, but she was struck by how young some of them were. A handful could still be in high school.

Now that the action had settled down, she could see that the armor they wore was extremely makeshift. It looked like it had been fashioned together in a garage or a basement laboratory. The pieces were mismatched and fashioned out of different materials, though they seemed held together well enough. Despite this, their guns seemed curiously state-of-the-art in comparison to the rest of their ensemble. Kara ignored this for the moment, still intent on getting some answers.

"Hope of what?" Kara asked, throwing her arms up in frustration. She was growing annoyed that no one seemed to want to explain any of this to her.

At her sudden outburst, all of the soldiers but Winn took a sudden, nervous step backwards. Winn looked her dead in the eyes, his face the most serious she'd ever seen on her normally goofy friend.

"Defeating Supergirl"