3

Kara had never been to New York City before in either her native reality or any other. Sue had loaned her and Kara clothing to go into the city for some sight-seeing and lunch, and along the way, Linda filled her in on some of the history of her reality. In Kara's timeline, the so-called Age of Heroes had started when her cousin had arrived on Earth in the Eighties, but in Linda's world, it had started forty years before when an Army recruit named Steve Rogers became Captain America to fight HYDRA. He was followed just a few months later by the appearance of Wonder Woman, who Kara remarked looked like the President in her native reality. Linda's cousin had arrived on Earth ten years before Kara's Superman, followed by media reports of the Batman, the Flash, Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and several other costumed crime-fighters during the Chitauri invasion several years back. Following the Avengers recent break up after the assassination of King T'Chaka of Wakanda, billionaire Bruce Wayne of Gotham City, New Jersey had financed the creation of the Justice League of America for the government comprised of Superman, Wonder Woman, the Batman, Flash, Green Lantern and Linda herself as Supergirl. When Kara asked Linda about the X-Men mentioned in passing, all Linda could say was that they rarely worked with others. Meanwhile, as Kara was learning about these heroes, others were learning about her.

"I just heard about this new costumed menace flying through the city…" J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of the local Daily Bugle tabloid, stood in his twelfth floor office looking out the window and puffing on the stub of his cigar. "What are we going to call her?"

"I think they're already calling her "Super-Girl." His assistant Gus Hoffman spoke up.

"No, we're not calling her that." Jameson had the spark of an idea in his crafty mind. "I got it. Super-Babe." He posed smiling with his cigar butt in his fingers.

"That could get us prosecuted for libel, J.J." Publisher Robby Robertson spoke up. "Not to mention lawsuits from every woman's anti-defamation league in the city."

"How about Super-Chick?"

"More lawsuits…"

"Super-Blonde?"

Robby started shaking his head.

"How about Sky Girl? Can we get away with Sky Girl?"

"That might work…" Robby and Hoffman looked at each other. The nervous assistant editor even put two thumbs up to approve the decision.

"Great, what about photos? We need photos…" Jameson started puffing on his stogie again as he sat on his desk. "For once, I don't want those goons at the Daily Planet scooping us."

"Peter's here." Robby looked out the windows of Jameson's office and noticed the young photojournalist talking to Betty, Jameson's secretary at her desk. "Maybe he's got something?"

"What? Parker get in here!" Jameson's voice blared through the office like a hungry lion, shaking up several nervous columnists and employees. Hearing that roar, Peter shared a feeling of being unappreciated with the lovely young secretary and hopped up on to his feet. An orange envelope tucked under his arm, he nervously strolled into Jameson's presence, waving around Robby and standing next to Hoffman. Noticing the envelope, Jameson snatched it up from him without a word, surprising Peter with his brashness, and pulling out the photos in it.

"Crap… crap… crap… super crap…." The impetuous editor critiqued his work. It was several photos of the Kryptonian in flight or sitting on the ledge of the former Stark Tower; in one, the young heroine was sitting in a chair and laughing with Sue Storm. Peter must have used a telephoto lens from the Stockman Building across the way to get the shots. "I'll give you $150 for them."

"Perry White is buying them on the Internet at $100 a photo." Parker spoke up. He had nearly taken up the offer, but feeling an oath of loyalty to Jameson, he had held out until now.

"Dollars?" Jameson scowled in response. "Two hundred and not a dollar more!" He grabbed a photo of the young lady flying over the Bugle and passed it to Hoffman. "Run this photo. Caption should read, "Extraterrestrial Menace Looms over the City."

"She's not a menace!" Robby shot a look at him. "Is there anyone in the Avengers you haven't insulted yet?"

"The red head with the big bazongas." Jameson grinned with his stogie in his teeth, picked up his Black Widow bobble-head and shook her so it looked like she was nodding at him. Peter and Hoffman were soon rolling their eyes in their hurry to get out of the office, but Peter was actually in a run for the stairway where he was quickly pulling off his shirt to his red and blue webbed costume. Stashing his clothes in a forgotten maintenance box on the roof from the 1940s, he was almost immediately swinging off the roof in his secret identity and sailing up Broadway in a hurry to make the bay. Linda had promised Kara she would take her to see the Statue of Liberty and down the coast to Metropolis to visit her cousin, but as courteous as Kara tried to be, it was more urgent for her to get home, even if she had to hang around with Ben and Johnny at the Four Freedom's Plaza vying for her attentions, but as she returned, she found the place strangely serene and oddly abandoned.

"Sue?" She strolled into the penthouse. "Reed?" She descended back down into Reed's workshop and lab and stopped just a few feet from a strange box before her on the floor. It looked like a face, a man's flattened face squashed into a square container. After a few seconds more, she realized it was Reed trapped in this state by forces she did not understand. In the corridor to the elevator, she now noticed Linda sprawled across the floor in a green light. Weakened and slowly dying, she looked up with the green radiation filling her body, driving out the solar energy that created her powers. Realizing what it was, Kara turned around for the source of the light and was knocked to her feet by the force of another similar beam.

"I must offer Lex Luthor an apology." The hooded figure in the metal mask spoke. "He wasn't sure if the kryptonite of our reality would affect you." Her adversary glided over to her in the form of a Bond villain from the "Star Wars" universe. "If anything, you seem much more susceptible to it than our counterpart."

Kara struggled to lift herself up, but she felt dizzy, sick and nauseous. Her body felt as if it was being inundated by a billion needles all at once, her stomach and lungs felt like mush and her head had become a lead weight pressing upon her eyes. She could barely lift her head under the affects of the green kryptonite radiation.

"Who are you?" Kara gasped. "Why are you doing this?"

"Why?" An elegant voice came from behind that steel mask. "To see a world without cosmic-powered heroes, web-slinging morons or boy scouts in blue. A world with one infernal hero who can be taken down with one simple rock… A world that will soon know the name of Doom."