A/N I'm so sorry for the huge delay, but life stuff happened, university happened, and such. I'm also sorry that it's only a short chapter too, but I'm hoping to get another chapter up very soon to make up for it.

Disclaimer; Nope, still don't own 'em. Both Young Justice and any character seen within this work of fiction belong to DC Comics and Warner Bros.

Aeaea
January 4, 18:00 CET

"Well-" a small beep that emitted from Kara's belt drew her attention away, and she stepped back, placing a hand to her ear, "Supergirl here... What?... Is nobody else..." She sighed, and looked back at the team for a moment. "Fine, I'll be right there."

She stepped back over to them, "I need to go. There's an alert, and the rest of the League isn't immediately available. Can you complete this mission without me?"

"Why the need to ask? Don't you trust us?" Connor grumbled from where he was still sitting on a tree stump.

"you know I trust you Kon, but with Wonder Girl here, circumstances are different. We have a responsibility, to her and Wonder Woman."

"Kara, we will be fine, as will Wonder Girl," Aqualad assured her.

She stood silently for a moment, "alright then, I'll try to get back to you as soon as I can." Those were her parting words, as she flew off into the sky moments later, speeding back towards the U.S.

"This had better be good," she grumbled in her mind.

Metropolis
January 4, 12:10 EST

As it turns out, the call was good. One of the many ways Batman and the League protected the secret identities of it's members and allies was by constantly monitoring every aspect of their secret life.

For Kara, this meant her and Linda's apartment had been wired up to security on par with the Batcave, and that was before Red Tornado had inadvertently leaked the location to T. .

So when there was an alert that not one, but three unidentifiable, and inorganic trespassers were ransacking the apartment, Kara was notified. Fortunately, none had made a move on Lana Lang, who was already being secured.

The blonde made it to the apartment building not long after taking off from Aeaea, and landed on the roof. Normally she'd take care to avoid being seen by normal bystanders when landing on this roof, but regardless, she quickly moved to enter through the doorway up there, and sped through the tight hallways to her own apartment.

On the outside, the room looked just as it should, but a quick X-ray scan showed the apartment's inside had been ransacked, and a lithe android with long blades for forearms, and legs resembling a cheetah's more than a humans stood at the other end pf the living room. Two more were in Kara's and Lana's rooms respectively, and all three pulsed with a bright red energy in their cores, giving off a radiation she could identify through the door. Red sun energy.

Whoever made and sent these androids here had clearly done their homework. Kara supposed she'd have to speak with Batman about how they found her home, as they were clearly built to combat Kryptonians.

With a deep breath, the blonde gripped her doorknob tight, though not enough to actually break or bend it, and sped inside, taking the first android by surprise.

She flew into the apartment in a flash, closing the door behind her as she moved, and sped over to the still mostly unaware android. She stopped just as she found herself behind it, and thrust her arm forwards.

Her hand pierced the android's back, exiting through it's chest, wiring and machinery clutched in her fist. The android gave a weak buzz, and shuddered, before going limp, and falling to the ground in a heap once Kara pried her arm from the newly created chest cavity.

The sound of it's weak death cry must have attracted the attention of it's two comrades, as the moment Kara turned, two identical androids rushed out from where they had been hiding, and leapt towards her, sword arms extended.

The first she managed to avoid, twisting to the side, and watching as it harmlessly swung through the air in front of her. However as she ducked to avoid the second, the blonde was unable to dodge the whole attack, feeling the blade slice through her suit, and leave a long, but relatively unimportant slice in her upper arm.

Hissing at the sting, Kara rolled across the room, and jumped up to her feet, facing down the two robotic assailants. Silently, they lunged at her once more, one android moving slickly over the coffee table as if it weren't there, and the second hugging the wall, rather it was literally running along the vertical surface, it's claws cutting through the plaster.

In one swift motion, both androids launched themselves at her again, once more swinging their bladed arms towards her. If she wanted to come out of this fight unscathed, she'd have to find a way to separate them, so she could focus on one android without worrying about the other.

Keeping this in mind, Kara dropped to the ground, and rolled back to the other side of the apartment, right next to the window, and turned back around as the androids landed, their blades slicing up the carpet.

"Come on, show me what you got," she taunted, still crouching slightly, ready to move at any second.

In time yet again, the androids leapt at her, this time one going for a high attack, and the other a low, forcing the blonde to jump between them in an awkward way, resulting in her cape sustaining a long slice from the lower android.

Although rather than move back to the other side of the apartment, she stopped her movement short, and kicked her feet in the chest of the higher attacker, pushing him through the window with a loud smash, and down to the alleyway below.

However, with this attack came a much smaller area between herself and the remaining assailant, who easily swung at her again, this time opening a deeper cut along her leg, which she hissed at, trying to move away from the android, but finding that putting weight on the limb seemed to aggravate the pain.

Now, she stood face to face with a single android, it's thin black frame far more menacing in the moonlight pouring through the open window. Without missing a beat, it lunged at her again, and rather than try to avoid it's attack, Kara readied herself to intercept it, her arms extended.

Once it got close enough to attack, the blonde moved to grab it's arms, just below the blades, and while she was able to catch one, the other slipped past her attempt, it blade slicing through her upper arm, causing her to cry out, but quickly correct her grip, and take hold of it again.

She could feel the red sun energy pouring off the android, weakening her, and pushed herself to end the fight quickly, by pushing against the arms, and pushing the metallic assassin back.

She was trying to bend it in such a way that enough stress would be out on the metal, allowing one swift stomp to snap it's spine in half. But these android were quite clearly built with the sole purpose of combatting her, and it'd flexibility, and speed easily made up for it's inability to withstand her strength.

Once she bent the android back enough, she moved to throw her foot down into it, only to take a kick to her own face, as it threw it's legs up, and turned the position into a flip. Now the android was facing down, while she was bent of it's head. Outside, she could hear the other android already climbing up the side of the building to reach the apartment once more.

In this moment of distraction, the android attack again, throwing it's head into her gut, winding her, and forcing her to release the grip she had on it's arms.

With it's primary weapons once again free, the assassin lifted them up to bring them down, but Kara quickly ducked to the side, leaving both blades to skewer her cape, leaving a pair of long gashes through it, and nothing else.

At the thought of the long garment draped over her shoulders, Kara had an idea.

She unclasped the cape, and took hold of it in one hand, then faced the android again, goading it to attack once more, which it did silently, thrusting a blade at her, which she deftly dodged, allowing it to sink into her cape, and then the thick form of the couch she had been standing in front of.

With the cape and the android now pinned in place, she began speeding around it, tearing the cape into a thinner, longer strip of material when necessary, wrapping her attacker in bright red. By the time she finished, it was weakly swinging at her with it's remaining arm, all limbs effectively tied to it's body.

But the sound of slowly tearing cloth brought her back to reality, as did the clanging of the metal coming from the other assassin just beginning to reach the window. So thinking quick, Kara took a hold of the still free arm of the trapped android, and bent it around it's own body, then thrust the sword into itms own chest, killing it finally.

Next, she turned to face down the last android, but found nothing in her immediate vision. Suddenly, an excruciating pain erupted in her abdomen, and she looked down to find a long blade, coursing with red energy had pierced her, from back to front, just below and to the right of her chest.

Just when she thought the pain couldn't get any worse, from her back there were several more stabbing pains, but it was different. In the reflection of the nearby mirror, she saw long, thin, razor sharp spines of some crystalline substance burst from her back, and impale the android behind her all over it's body, with one last, thicker and larger spine blasting through the centre of it's chest.

The burning pain soon gave way to a cold numbness, and she dropped to her knees, clutching the profusely bleeding wound tight, once the sword was pulled back from her body, it's wielder likely dead.

As darkness surrounded her vision, the last thing she heard was the muffled, panicked calls of what sounded like Wonder Woman.

The Watchtower
January 5, 09:30 EST

Light suddenly entered her eyes through tightly shit lids. Kara opened her eye, slowly to allow herself to adjust to the light, and found herself staring up at a smooth white ceiling, resembling that of the Watchtower infirmary.

Beneath her, she felt softness, and over her warmth, but when she shifted to sit up, pain shot through her from her abdomen. She gingerly lifted the cover, and saw the area was heavily bandaged.

Then she remembered the drones.

"So that's what getting stabbed feels like," she mumbled.

"Yes, and you're lucky to be alive," a voice suddenly replied, making her jump. Standing beside her bed, somehow hidden up until that moment, was Kal, a worried frown etched deep across his face.

"I take it J'onn sent someone in to back me up as soon as they were available?" The blonde asked him.

"Yes. Diana found you in the apartment, surrounded by destroyed androids and... Well, she said there were... Spines? Coming out of your back?"

"It's true," a third voice confirmed, as Wonder Woman and Batman entered the infirmary. The Dark Knight held a hunk of crystal, and presented it to the girl. "This is the substance Diana found sprouting from your body.

Kara inspected it quickly, but recognised it with ease "it's sunstone, it was a common construction material on Krypton. It's also what the Fortress of Solitude is made up of," she explained.

"And how did it... Come out of you?" Asked Kal.

"Well, sunstone is a mineral with a self-replicating capability. In the right conditions, it can literally regenerate itself to grow from a particle, to a skyscraper."

"Then the sunstone must have been mapped to your DNA, and responded to the near-death situation, producing the spines we found," Batman suggested.

"Like a defence mechanism?" Kara asked.

"Exactly. The question is how it was mapped to your DNA."

"Well... I have an idea. A long time ago, when I was just a little girl, my parents often took me on trips to various places on the planet. Forests, caves, lakes, they liked to show me the natural beauty of Krypton. Unfortunately, when I was about five, they took me on a trip to an old sunstone cave for a picnic of sorts.

"Being a child, I decided to go exploring, I wanted to see the sunstone up close in it's raw form, but I tripped, and landed on a small stalagmite. It impaled me through the leg, leaving a small scar, but I was relatively fine, afterwards." Kara explained. "But, that doesn't explain the timing, I've been harmed before, even impaled in the arm, and that childhood event certainly wasn't life-threatening."

"Maybe not anymore, but a child tends to perceive events as far worse than they actually are," Diana suggested.

"Regardless, this is a priority security breach, and needs to be dealt with accordingly." Batman changed subjects. "Lana Lang had been notified of the incident, and the League is dealing with moving you both to a new, more secure apartment elsewhere in the city."

"How did they find me?" The blonde asked.

"We think it may have something to do with when Red Tornado inadvertently leaked the location to T. O. Morrow," Wonder Woman told her.

"The androids you encountered were clearly built by Professor Ivo, but a scan through their memory revealed similar software to that used by Morrow in his own androids, such as Red Tornado." Batman explained. Kara decided not to mention how she had encountered similar androids before.

"But, you should get some rest, we can continue this another time. I think you've earned a little time off," Kal smiled kindly, exiting with the other two, and leaving Kara alone with her thoughts.