New Daughter of Krypton #7
Written by Cody Fett
Edited by Bob Regent and Cyclone
Japanese Translation by Shinzakura
When Rei and Shinji entered the gym the day after the bust, they once again found their DI there before them. Strangely, she was talking with Lt. Ibuki about something, but when Rei made a move to listen in with her sonar-like hearing, they stopped talking, and Maya left the room. The blue-haired pilot was curious to know what was going on, but wasn't in a position to ask.
"OK, you two, sparring time. Rei, you're up first," Diana said calmly with a jerk of her thumb. "Today will just be a little match or five to get a feel on your progress; we'll continue the training tomorrow."
The blue-haired pilot walked over to her side of the sparring mat and took a fighting stance. Diana did the same and soon gave the signal to start. Sixty seconds later, she called an end to it after being floored four times.
Rei gave a slight grin at this. Sure, she had used a little of her super strength, but why wouldn't she? Diana had been planting her into the mat for a while by then, and it just felt good to let loose once in a while, even if just a little bit.
Diana . . . Diana had a strange look on her face though, and just for a moment, Rei wondered if she had let her win.
"Shinji, you're up," Diana said to the male pilot of the team.
Where Rei had easily won against Diana, Shinji fared . . . less than well against the tall woman. He was laying face down on the mat five times before he was let up. When he finally made it back to the sidelines, he was panting and groaning.
Diana's expression was once again inscrutable, and Rei couldn't help but wonder what was going on in her head. Was it cultural differences and the expression perfectly normal? Was she actually a supervillain and planning to destroy them? Was it some sort of DI scheme to destroy them? She didn't know, and it was driving her nuts.
"You two, against each other now," Diana said, interrupting Rei's thoughts.
The First Child got up easily, while the Third struggled to get back up. Rei might not have been that good at reading people, but beating people up? That she knew.
Rei climbed into the lower ionosphere with a smile on her face. She was happy, and she had reason to be, in her oh so humble opinion. She had stopped her first supervillain, restored confidence to many in the T3PD, struck a serious blow against Intergang, finally stopped the ringing in her head, succeeded at the latest sparring session, and was flying at that moment.
Now, she was going to see Ms. Lane, having been called over by a message relayed through Dr. Hikawa. She wondered if she was going to congratulate her on a job well done. Indeed, it was possible that she would be so delighted that she would go and take her out to eat at a Metropolis restaurant, or a hot dog cart, she really wasn't that picky.
A few minutes later, a quick check over Metropolis confirmed that Lois was waiting for her again, so the Girl of Steel began her rapid descent towards the ground. 5,000ft above the surface, she leveled out and started a more gentle descent towards her goal. Using her super senses, it was easy to plot a way to the apartment that would bypass any surveillance; it was also easy to complete the route and land on the apartment balcony; it was significantly less easy to avoid Ms. Lane twisting her ear.
"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Rei repeated, wincing at the newfound level of pain.
"Come inside, young lady. We have a lot to talk about," Lois told her sternly before turning around and marching them inside.
"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Rei continued.
"What the . . ." Lois began angrily before stopping herself and silently counting to three. "What happened out there?" she continued, pointing to a copy of the Daily Planet: Japan Edition with the headline showing a picture from the raid.
"You can read Japanese?" Rei asked, surprised.
"Mochiron, watashi wa nihongo o rikai shimasu! Stay focused on the issue at hand, which is using excessive force when taking on Intergang," Lois snapped.
"What do you mean?" Rei asked evenly.
Lois picked up the newspaper and began reading off parts of an article. "Broken arms, broken legs, broken backs, pulverized bones, fingers ripped from their sockets and found still gripping rifles several meters away, mutilation, permanent disfigurement, on and on."
Lois put the article down, her eyes burning with such fury that Rei had to look away. "Look at me," she told her, and the superpowered girl did not comply. "Look at me," she repeated, moving the girl's head with her hand and reaching up to take off the red-eyed girl's glasses. "You've never done this before. Why did you do it?"
"They hurt me," Rei said instinctively, finally looking Lois in the eyes.
"Now I know why Clark's room had Romans 12:19 on one of the walls," Lois said off to the side and then turned back to Supergirl. "Rei, you can't do that. You can't . . . Everyone deserves a chance at redemption. Everyone deserves their day in court. Everyone deserves the chance to walk through life without being crippled.
"Clark, Superman, always used the minimum amount of force necessary to bring a criminal in. He did this so that they would be fully capable of making the choice to become an upstanding member of society. He did it because he knew that it would be the right thing to do, and it's something you're going to have to learn too."
Rei stayed quiet for a bit, her eyes cast downward, unsure of how to respond.
"Rei . . . I'm not very good at this," Lois admitted. "Clark always did this stuff better, but he's not here anymore," she said with a sigh at the end. "You were feeling vengeful the other day, I should have seen it, and because of that, you acted out of anger, but do you understand why it is bad?"
Rei . . . wasn't sure how to respond to that. She tried to think of something to respond with, anything to respond with, but all she could think of was what the Sub-Commander had said about Superman. He had said that he was a symbol, that by not saving people he would have tarnished that symbol, and she somehow knew that washing it in the blood of the critically injured would have done the same.
Superman, Clark Kent, wasn't a symbol though, he was a man. He was, from everything that she had learned, an incredibly moral and compassionate man. The young girl wearing the blue and red costume tried to imagine what he would look like, what he would say if he was right in front of her that moment, but all she could picture was his mouth, and it was slack with disappointment.
All of a sudden Miss Lane's arms encircled her, and she was embraced in a hug.
"Rei, do you want to hurt people?" Lois asked.
"No," Rei got out.
"That's all I needed to hear," Lois said softly. "Just don't cripple people again."
"Hey, mack, just who they hell do you think you are, showing up here again?" the Intergang rep yelled across the warehouse.
"My name is Walter Shreeve. I am here to find out why my technology failed in the recent fight against Supergirl," the man in the white and black suit said evenly.
"Cheese, scientists . . ." the Intergang rep cursed under his breath. "You know, most people skip town after Intergang gives them a clean sheet, but you want to know why your technology failed, Shreeve? You really want to know? It failed because it didn't measure up."
"Impossible,. The technology is infallible; it must have been user error," Shreeve said defensively.
"Infallible?!" the Intergang rep repeated before breaking into laughter. "No technology is infallible! Especially not when dealing with a Kryptonian whose reflexes are faster than most computers. Your technology wasn't fast enough, it wasn't powerful enough, and it certainly wasn't advanced enough to take on Supergirl. It didn't measure up."
"You're wrong," Shreeve repeated.
The rep advanced towards Shreeve and tapped his finger against the suit's chestplate while speaking. "It. Didn't. Measure. Up."
The cold and unfeeling panel on the front of the suit's helmet that looked like a cyclopean eye stared down at the rep.
"You. Are. Wrong."
The Intergang rep shrugged his shoulders and walked away. "Sure, whatever you say, buddy. Not like it matters anyway."
"You're wrong," Shreeve repeated. "I shall prove it."
The Intergang rep spun around on his heels at those words. "Excuse me? You plannin' to go up against a Kryptonian by yourself?"
"No. I shall kill an Angel. Then Nerv will see that they were wrong too. They'll all see," Shreeve said confidently.
The Intergang rep just blinked twice and walked away again. "Alrighty then. Intergang will be with you in spirit. Lord knows we could do without the giant monsters."
With that, Shreeve left the warehouse, and the Intergang rep sighed in relief. He would get to see another day. With Supergirl and this new Bat on the scene, that was the best he could hope for.
Rei grunted as she was thrown into the mat again. It was the seventh time that day, and it showed no signs of stopping. She had been right the previous day; Diana had been toying with her.
"Get up," the dark-haired giant ordered her.
With little strain, the Kryptonian got off the mat, but still, there was strain.
"What is the problem? You're clearly not with it today, and I want to know why," Diana demanded of her.
Rei looked at her, knowing that she could neither lie nor tell the truth, and decided to spin things as best she could. "I recently engaged in a conversation with a confidant in which they revealed to me that some of my actions might be reckless and immoral, and have been shaken by the experience."
There, Rei thought, that is a correct statement in the broadest sense of the term.
Diana sighed at this. "Well, I'm going to respect your privacy regarding whatever 'reckless and immoral' activities you engaged in, but I suspect that if what your confidant told you is really bothering you, then you probably already know they're right."
"What should I do then?"
"The answer is simple, if a bit difficult to implement sometimes: stop," Diana replied. "Whatever you're doing that you know is wrong, just stop doing it."
Rei knew she was right, but was still confused. "But what if I engaged in these activities while in the process of doing something that I know to be morally right?"
"Oh, well, that's corruption, and just as bad, so my advice remains the same," Diana said easily.
Rei raised an eyebrow and metaphorically chewed on her instructor's words. "So you're saying that I should commit to the good acts while leaving the troubling?"
"Essentially," Diana said with a shrug. "You also should get your head back in the game. Your form is off, and you're easily flippable."
"Action stations. Action stations. Set condition one throughout the region. Action stations. Action stations. Set condition one throughout the region."
Rei shifted as she stood on the second floor of the command tower in the central command center of Nerv HQ. It was, she had often reflected, an extremely tall position, and she couldn't help but think that the designers had been wasting money making something that big instead of something that was all level. It certainly would have stopped the late Doctor Akagi from ending her life in such a messy manner.
"All units are to keep their distance and hold fire until otherwise ordered," General Hardcastle ordered from his observatory position just above the main command center but below the commander's desk.
The other two generals that had accompanied him during the first Angel attack were gone, and in their stead was a General Hizen and his aide-de-camp. Rei did not like them. There was something uncomfortably brash and brazen about Hizen, like an unrefined Hardcastle, and his sunglasses-wearing aide was just unsettling, even if there was nothing outwardly wrong about her.
"I don't know why you insist on coming here if you're just going to tell your troops not to do anything," the Commander quipped from his desk.
"Don't worry, Commander. We'll be out of your hair soon enough. The new HQ should be finished by the end of the week," Hardcastle replied.
An Angel was attacking, of course. It was the Fourth Angel, Shamshel, if Rei's memory of the designations served. The defense would be handled by Unit-01 piloted by Shinji in his first battle, leaving her on the sidelines.
She was confident that everything would turn out well, though. Shinji had been trained well, and he had plenty of support in the command center, including their instructor. The odds of success were greatly in their favor. It was an opinion that didn't change when the Angel arrived and was engaged.
Then, suddenly, everything on the cameras went quiet. The only sound in the room came from people typing on their keyboards. All to the great confusion of the people in the command center.
"Check the lines. There has to be a problem with the equipment," Captain Katsuragi ordered.
The question was answered when sound was finally released through the speakers.
"NERV! . . . You laughed at me! You said my inventions were useless! Intergang said that they didn't measure up after they squandered them against Supergirl! But I'll show them. I'll show you. I'll show you all! I will use my inventions to kill the Angel! Not the Eva! Me! Walter Shreeve!"
Shreeve, the name flashed through Rei's mind in recognition. She had seen an article of The Torch about a scientist being kidnapped, and someone in Nerv's cafeteria mentioning his contract falling through. He was either being controlled, or he was trying commit suicide. Either way, he had to be saved.
This, Rei thought as she walked out of the command center, is a job for Supergirl.
Thanks to her super speed, Rei was out of the GeoFront and flying through the sky towards Shreeve in seconds. To her great surprise, he was wearing a suit similar to the one that the thug named Kenta had worn when he tried to kill her, but it was clearly much more powerful. It was firing sonic beams that were actually pushing Unit-01 and the Angel back.
"Shreeve!" Supergirl shouted as she touched down on the same roof as him.
Remarkably, he stopped firing and turned around to face her, allowing the two titans behind to continue fighting. She couldn't hear them still.
"Supergirl," Shreeve said darkly.
"Shreeve, we have to get you out of here; it's too dangerous," the Girl of Steel told the suited-scientist while advancing towards him.
"Yes, I suppose it is . . . for you."
"It's dangerous for you too. I'm here to get us both out of here," Supergirl replied calmly.
"No! You humiliated me in front of the whole world! Now I will show them that you, and Intergang, and Nerv, and everyone else were all wrong. I will show the world my true power . . . and destroy you," Shreeve declared dramatically.
"No," Supergirl replied, shaking her head. "No, I don't believe you want to do this. You can't. I've heard others talk about you, Walter. They say you're a good man."
"You heard wrong," he stated before raising his suit's arms.
Supergirl's eyes widened, and in the blink of an eye, she moved out of the way of twin beams of sound that tore apart the roof where she had been standing. The Kryptonian tried to fly around to grapple the mad scientist, but Shreeve fired another pair of sound beams at her. She dodged, and he fired his sound generators at the ground.
The building he was standing on was destroyed, but incredibly, he flew! Rocketing up into the air, Shreeve alternated beams to attack Supergirl. She dodged every one, but only barely. All the while, though, she was advancing, and when the time was right, she attacked with a burst of speed that allowed her to plow into Shreeve's suit at subsonic speeds.
"It's over," Supergirl said as they hurtled towards a part of the city where the Angel and Unit-01 were fighting, sound having come back to the world.
"Yes, it is," Shreeve replied before blasting her with his sound beams.
Supergirl screamed in pain, and let go of Shreeve to clutch at her head. The demented inventor hurtled out of her grasp and flew right across the nose of Unit-01. He fired his sound beams behind him, and when he reached the top of a building, the Angel sliced apart another building in front of him, sending rubble flying everywhere. The sonic sultan caught a piece with his sound waves and then threw it at the Kryptonian.
Supergirl dodged the massive piece of rubble but turned around to track it and felt her heart stop. Her super vision allowed her to see four people on the part of the central mountain that the piece of rubble was now flying towards: Hikari, Kensuke, Toji, and his sister Sakura.
"NO!"
With speed only she had, Supergirl smashed through the sound barrier and flew in front of the rubble block. Incredibly, luckily, miraculously, she caught it in time, just a few meters above the heads of her classmates. Unfortunately, Shreeve wasn't far behind, and he hit the ground with a tremendous crack.
"Run to the sewers!" the Girl of Steel yelled as she held up the block. "Go! Now!"
She saw and heard them leave, and somehow knew they would make it out alive.
"A noble gesture, Supergirl, but you cannot fool me," Shreeve declared. "You care not for those around you, leaving a trail of broken bodies and shattered lives wherever you go."
"You're wrong," she retorted simply before chucking the piece of rubble at Lake Ashi.
"No, I'm not!" Shreeve yelled back. "I'm not wrong! Try and dodge this!"
She moved forward cautiously, ready to dodge, only to stumble as sound pulsed out from Shreeve in all directions. She staggered back and could feel her teeth rattling. It was like the first Shriek all over again. He stepped toward, the sound coalescing into a focused beam on her.
"Do you know what's happening right now, Supergirl?" he asked conversationally. "Your skull may be impenetrable, but it also serves as an excellent medium for transmitting vibrations... vibrations such as sound. That vibration is sending your brain rattling around, battering itself to jelly inside that skull of yours. You're essentially getting a thousand concussions a minute. Even your physiology can't withstand that for long."
He was right. He was also now less than a meter away from her, and the urge to pound him to a pulp emerged. But no. She couldn't - wouldn't - do that. She lunged forward in an uncoordinated tackle, catching him across his midsection. As they flew through the air, her right hand lashed out blindly, smashing the sound projectors on Shreeve's hands. She flew to a part of the city where the Angel battle wasn't going on and dropped him.
"Now, it's over," Supergirl declared.
"No! No, you're wrong!" Shreeve shouted before raising the damaged projectors to fire at her. They exploded, and an adrenaline-fueled moment of slow motion Supergirl saw what happened with her x-ray vision.
A feedback loop started in Shreeve's helmet. If it continued for just a few seconds ,he would be rendered permanently deaf. In an instant, Rei remembered Lois' words and acted.
She flew towards Shreeve as quick as she could and yanked his helmet off of him. She then grabbed him and flew towards the nearest hospital. Supergirl smashed the doors down and flew in, finding only someone on a television screen.
"This man needs medical assistance!" she declared.
The man on the screen jumped at the sight of her and hit a nearby button. "Put him on a stretcher. We'll be up momentarily to collect him."
The Girl of Steel found a nearby stretcher and laid Shreeve down on it.
"You saved me. Why?" he asked of her, small amount of blood leaking from his ears as he did so.
Rei looked at him, and tried to find an answer, before realizing that there was only one. "Because everyone deserves the chance to change for the better."
Rei had a slight smile on her face as she closed her locker door. Shreeve had been taken away by the doctors, who had in turn called the T3PD. They had told her that his hearing had been saved, and she had breathed a sigh of relief.
She hadn't been lying when she had told Lois that she didn't want to hurt anyone. All she wanted to do was help.
"Feeling reflective?" Diana asked.
Rei spun around and looked up to find the pilot's DI towering over her. Diana was, strangely, smiling. The blue-haired girl was more surprised than anything.
"Open up your locker again. I think it's time for another spar," the black-haired woman told her.
Rei sighed internally, but still spun around again to get her gym clothes.
Later that night, she was sighing externally as she lay in bed. Diana had ended up winning most of their sparring matches, but Rei had managed to land a few wins herself. Not only that, but she had also learned more CQC techniques, and Diana promised her that they would start on weapons the next day.
She wasn't sure if Lois would approve, but she was still an Evangelion pilot. The work on Unit-00 would be completed soon, and when that happened, she would need to be prepared to use all the tools in her arsenal. That was for the future though.
For the present, Rei just curled up in her bed and went soundly to sleep.
Cody's A/N: This chapter was a bit of a drag this week, mostly thanks to the conversation with Lois. I was making little progress till my ma commented that Lois and Rei's conversation being awkward is only natural given that they're both neophytes to their new rolls who never expected to be in them. I guess that just goes to show that if your parents were/are nerds then it would behoove writers to listen to them.
General A/N: This week marks the last time simultaneous updates will be given. At least one update a week will still be given out, or we'll try to at least, but our team needs to have time to do other things. Four (soon to be five, and then six, and then seven) updates a week is just crazy as far as a schedule goes.
