Once upon a time, on a little planet called Earth, there was a Key. It had existed before the time of man, when the Celestials walked amongst the stars, and it would exist long after the last man had turned to dust. If the Space Gods were the source of the Key, or if they knew its source at all, they have revealed it to none. Contained within the Key was power - power beyond imagining - a power that could unlock the gates between all dimensions, between all worlds. It was a transcendent thing, existing simultaneously in every reality and within itself. And as time passed, as shadows stretched and became darkness, as humanity rose and from them was birthed the Eternals and the Deviants, the Key remained. On one parallel world, far distant from Earth 616, a group of monks known as the Order of Dagon were formed to protect it from those their founder feared would abuse its power.
One day, a selfish exiled goddess trapped in human form learned of its existence and butchered the Monks of Dagon in order to take the power of the Key for herself, to rip open the gates between all dimensions, and so to return home. She was a petty, short-sighted creature, and though she was stopped, it came at great cost: Buffy Anne Summers. 1981-2001. Beloved sister, devoted friend. She saved the world a lot.
At least, that's how it would have gone, but for Xander Harris, and the bet that he lost with Cordelia Chase.
Once upon a time, on a little planet called Earth, there was a girl who still sometimes thought of herself as Xander Harris. She wasn't. She was a perfect copy of his consciousness created within the mind of the female Kryptonian that Xander had dressed as on Halloween. Xander Harris still lived in Sunnydale with his friends, fighting the good fight and assisting the Slayer with the understanding of Kryptonian technology that he had gained on the very same Halloween night that had created her - but she remembered being him, and despite her merging with the clone of Kara Zor-L known as Divine, she still wanted to be him and not herself.
It is difficult to pinpoint the precise beginning of the change. Beginnings are delicate matters. Sometimes you can change a thousand things within a scenario and end up with an identical result. Sometimes a single change will transform everything going forward.
Certainly the seeds of change were planted on Halloween itself. Much was altered that night. Many vampires were slain by an angry Power Girl who otherwise would have gone on to kill untold numbers of humans, innocent and otherwise. Perhaps it was the confrontation with the Judge, in which Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris combined their respective budding magical talent and knowledge of Kryptonian technology to MacGyver together a single-use, immobile, and extremely expensive Phantom Zone projector that they used to banish the Judge into that dark realm of shadows beyond space and time.
Perhaps the seeds of change began to germinate afterwards, when Karen returned to Sunnydale seeking closure, and she and Power Girl scoured not only that place, but the surrounding countryside of every dark thing they found, though their focus was on saving humans and not on killing monsters.
The visions of the vampire Drusilla saved the unlives of Spike and Angelus that night. And Angelus was a clever, dangerous creature. He saw what had happened, learned that there had been two of them this time, and his thoughts immediately returned to Halloween, and the costume Xander had worn.
Someone was changing the game, but that was just fine with him. He knew how to change with it. So it was on a mild evening in Sunnydale not long after the Judge's banishment that Angelus turned to his companions with a grin and said, "Change of plans, kids."
For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost. For want of a vampire, the careful plans of the Powers That Be, millennia in the making, were undone. And the stories of Glorificus, of Dawn and Buffy Summers, of Angelus, and of Karen Zor-L would never be the same.
The New World
by P.H. Wise
A BtVS, Power Girl, DCU, and Marvel Comics crossover fanfic
Chapter 1: Of Keys and Kryptonians
Disclaimer: The DC Universe and its associated characters is the property of DC comics. The Marvel Universe and its associated characters is the property of Marvel Entertainment LLC. I'm honestly not sure who owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer anymore, but it used to be Fran and Kaz Kuzui.
No one had moved. Karen, Irma, and Noriko still stood just inside the door to Karen and Noriko's room, faced with a tall brown haired teenaged girl that none of them recognized.
"Who?" Karen asked.
Dawn frowned. "You know me, Xander. Dawn Summers. Buffy's sister."
"Summers?" Noriko asked.
Karen was still totally at a loss. "Buffy has a sister?" Since when? … No, she distinctly recalled Buffy being an only child.
Irma looked thoughtful. "She's not lying. Or at least, she honestly believes that what she's saying is true."
"Wait," Karen said, her eyes narrowing. "You're not that telepath who sidetracked me into an alternate universe when I was coming back here from Sunnydale, are you?"
Dawn looked confused. "Uh, no?" A beat passed. "You…" Her voice cracked. Her eyes grew wet with tears as yet unshed. "You took me trick-or-treating on Halloween?" It was more a question than a statement. "When everyone turned into their costumes, I was terrified, but you turned into Power Girl, and you protected me, and…"
More details came into focus. The way the girl's lower lip trembled. Her eyes became more and more bloodshot, her skin blotchy as she began to cry. Damn it. Karen shut her eyes and tried not to hear the buzzing of the girl's breath through her mucus membranes when she breathed out through her nose, or the smell of everyone's teeth. She was pretty sure she'd have been able to tell exactly what Dawn, Noriko and Irma had last eaten based on that alone, and it was annoying. She tried to ease her brain into filtering out the extra information that her Kryptonian senses were giving her. It worked. The extra layer of information faded into the background - still present, but not important. A background color and nothing more.
Karen opened her eyes. "We need to talk to…"
Emma Frost stalked into her bedroom like a woman with a mission. It was late, and she was wearing a white cape over a modified white bandeau with white elbow-length gloves, skin-tight white pants and, uncharacteristically, flat shoes in the place of her more typical high heels. Scott Summers was already asleep in their bed, but he'd fallen asleep on top of the covers. He hadn't changed out of his clothes. 'Scott,' she sent telepathically. He didn't stir. He was dreaming of… oh, damn it all. For a split second, Emma considered replacing Jean with herself in Scott's dream. Then she discarded the idea. There wasn't time. She reached out and shook him, then, calling aloud this time, "Scott!"
Scott blinked open his eyes, which she only noticed because of his thoughts suddenly incorporating visual data: his glasses his everything. "Wh… what?"
When Emma spoke next, she did so in a voice filled with cold fury. "Five minutes ago, someone or something attempted to rewrite the memories of everyone at the school."
Scott snapped instantly to full wakefulness, his eyes wide behind his all-concealing glasses. "What?" A beat passed. Then he was out of bed and putting on his shoes. "Do you have any idea where it came from?" he asked. "Do you know what they or it was trying to do to our memories?"
Emma shook her head. "No," she said. She looked towards the interior wall of the room at a downward angle that put her eyeline roughly on the level of the older students' living area. "But I did detect a new mind inside the school which wasn't there before the attack, and was present immediately afterwards."
Scott looked grim. He replaced his ruby glasses with his visor. "Right," he said as he snapped the visor into place. "Let's go."
They left the room together, heading for Karen and Noriko's dorm room.
Scott Summers and Emma Frost rounded the corner at the end of the hall.
"... Emma?" Karen asked. She hadn't originally intended that to sound like a question. It was too far for her voice to carry, but Emma had probably heard it all the same.
Dawn kept on crying. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't dignified. It was just raw human pain, and seeing a girl in pain like that stirred up her protective instincts. His protective instincts. Whichever. And if she really was Buffy's sister... Karen wasn't sure. At the very least they could ask Doctor Strange to contact Buffy in Sunnydale about it.
"Xander," Dawn said thickly, "You have to help me. I don't know where I am, I just… woke up in that room, and the only reason I didn't completely freak out is there was a picture of you with some other kids on your desk, and I don't know how I got here, and..." She was clutching Karen like she was a lifejacket, now, and Karen put a hand on the girl's shoulder, feeling awkward as hell as she did it. Her other hand hung in the air even more awkwardly - she had no idea whatsoever what to do with it - as Dawn's voice rose to a shrill, tear-choked shriek, "... and I DON'T KNOW WHERE MOM AND BUFFY..."
"That's quite enough of that," Emma said from the doorway.
Dawn's eyes glazed over and she collapsed into Karen's arms, instantly unconscious.
Karen frowned at Emma. "OK," she said flatly, "I assume there's a good reason why you just did that. Explain."
The look Emma gave her in response was cold enough to have frozen the entire mansion, and it suddenly occurred to Karen that Emma was one of the few people who could actually hurt her if she wanted to. She swallowed, and continued in a more placating tone, "Uh, if you don't mind explaining, Ms. Frost."
Emma's expression lost some of its cold edge, but her eyes were still hard when she spoke. "Ten minutes ago," she said, "Just after we met you arriving in the Blackbird, in fact, someone or something attempted to rewrite the memories of everyone in the school. I stopped it. Immediately afterwards, I discovered a new presence here: a mind that wasn't here before the attack."
All eyes went to the unconscious girl in Karen's arms. A shiver went down Karen's spine, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. "... Oh," she said.
"We are going to get to the bottom of this," Scott said, "And we are going to do it right now. Karen, bring the girl. The rest of you? Go to bed."
Karen gave Noriko and Irma a helpless glance. She hesitated.
"Now, Karen," Emma said.
With the briefest of goodnights to the other two girls, Karen hefted Dawn Summers in her arms and followed Emma and Scott, first to the elevator, then to a sublevel of the mansion, then to the infirmary.
Henry McCoy was already waiting for them when they arrived, blue-furred and leonine and wearing a lab-coat over the shorts he'd been sleeping in. A brief explanation followed, after which Dr. McCoy eased Dawn's unconscious form into one of the diagnostic beds they'd acquired from the Shi'ar.
"Do we know anything about this young woman's identity apart from her possible involvement in a psychic attack on the school?" the blue-furred doctor asked.
Karen swallowed, not at all comfortable with how this was going. "Her name is Dawn Summers. She… she said she was Buffy's sister."
Dr. McCoy furrowed his brow. "Summers?" he asked, glancing at Scott.
Scott shook his head.
"She's a mutant," Emma said. "That much is obvious."
Karen blinked. "Wait, what?"
"To a telepath," Hank explained, "The mind of a mutant has a… resonance of sorts that is quite distinct from anything a normal human would possess."
"Seriously?" Karen asked, looking at Emma. "You can just tell that about people by their brain wavelength? Their brainlength?"
"Never use that word again," Emma said. "But yes."
A holographic representation of Dawn's body sprang up above the bed, surrounded by various equally holographic controls. Hank began to manipulate them, his fingers sliding across the semi-solid hologram as he went about his business. "She seems to be in good health, at least. I am beginning a genetic analysis now. Once that is complete, I shall compare her information to our records of all known mutants for whom we have genetic data available, pre and post M-Day."
There was little to do then but wait. Emma, Scott and Hank talked for a few minutes before settling into a watchful silence. Karen sat down on one of the beds. Her eyes drifted shut.
Thirty minutes later, the sound of raised voices startled her awake. Karen still didn't feel sleepy, exactly - she wanted to go back to sleep, yes, but she knew that she could just have her body draw the energy it needed out of the solar energy stored in her cells. She could function on that indefinitely, and she'd survive, but she wouldn't be happy, and she wouldn't be as healthy as she would otherwise be.
Karen regarded Emma tiredly. "Ms. Frost?" she asked.
Emma turned.
"Can I…" Karen began.
Emma nodded. "Goodnight, Karen. We will both see you in the morning. Bright and early."
Karen left the infirmary without another word.
Noriko wasn't in the room when she got back. Her bed was made and her things had been picked up from the floor. Irma was there, she had showered, she wearing a nightgown that was a little bit too small - probably one of Nori's - and was lying under the covers on Karen's bed. "Hey," Karen said.
Irma stirred, and looked at Karen over her shoulder. "Hey," she said sleepily.
Karen thought about asking where Nori had gone, but dismissed the idea not long after. Irma didn't say anything about it.
"Everything all right?" Irma asked.
She asked. She didn't just go into Karen's mind and get the answers. Karen smiled, though it was not an untroubled expression. "Yeah. Sort of. … I guess I'm not sure what to think. Buffy didn't have a sister," The smile faded, "But that girl knew me. She called me Xander. If she's not a telepath who just stole those names from my brain, then let me state for the record that I'm officially wigged out."
Irma yawned. "The record will so reflect," she murmured.
Karen grabbed a tank top, panties, and pair of shorts out of her closet and headed into the bathroom. Once there, she stripped out of her uniform, bra, and panties, and got into the shower. Afterwards, fully clean for the first time in days, Karen brushed her teeth, pulled on her tank top, shorts and panties, dumped her unstable molecule costume that didn't actually need cleaning into the hamper along with her dirty underwear, and then climbed into bed beside Irma. She hesitated, but Irma didn't - she put her arms around Karen and pulled her close.
It was good. Irma's body felt soft and warm against hers, and she could feel her heartbeat through the thin layer of the nightgown. They were both asleep in minutes.
Karen's dreams tended to be a mixed bag. Sometimes, she had pleasant dreams. Sometimes she had nightmares. Sometimes she had dreams so unremarkable that she kind of wanted to forget them even while she was having them. Sometimes she dreamed of things from Kara's life, or from Divine's. And sometimes she dreamed about various times when she'd made a total and complete fool of herself.
Guess which kind this was.
One would think that given the lovely young woman who was sleeping in her arms, she would have dreamed of something pleasant - and she actually did for all of ten minutes or so. Then her dreams took another turn. Irma vanished, and their ocean-view hotel suite vanished with her.
A moment later, Karen found herself with Power Girl standing atop the R.H. Kane building, with the Gotham riverfront shining in the night below them. The lights of the city - and especially of the massive Knights Dome Sporting Complex and the ferries that made regular traffic there - made even the water itself seem to glow, though it washed out the stars into a uniform black. Power Girl had only just finished taking her on an aerial tour of the city, and they planned to visit New York next, and to meet up with the New X-Men there. Somewhere in her awareness, she recognized that she was dreaming of something that had already happened, but that knowledge didn't end the dream, nor did it allow her to alter it.
Both of them heard the grappling hook strike home on a spire above them. Then a masked figure in red and black swung onto the rooftop. He was quiet, but so far, the only human who had ever snuck up on Karen was Batman, and this guy, whoever he was, was no Batman. He looked vaguely familiar, but that was true of a lot of people from this universe. Xander had grown up with DC comics. He'd never been completely obsessed with them the way that Jonathan and Tucker (and Tucker's brother, what's his name) had been, but he'd enjoyed them, and they'd given him comfort in the worst days of his life. Almost everything was at least familiar, but this guy wasn't someone he had followed.
The masked man smiled as he saw Power Girl. "Power Girl," he said. "He said you were in town. It's been a while. That the new sibling?"
Kara smiled in turn, nodding to the man. "Red Robin," she said, and her tone just happened to fall from a higher tone to a lower one between the first word and the second.
Karen blinked. Really? The guy was named after the… Oh, come on. You couldn't hand her that opening and not expect her to take it. "Yum!" she sang, completing the jingle.
Red Robin and Power Girl both stopped and looked at Karen with an identical nonplussed look.
After an awkward couple of seconds in which Karen realized that neither of them actually got the reference, she flushed with embarrassment. "It's a restaurant chain that..." she tried to explain only to trail off. It sounded lame even to her ears. She took a few steps away. "I'll just… stand over here."
Red Robin gave Power Girl a sidelong look. "PG, your sister is weird."
Power Girl nodded. "Sorry. Yeah. She does that sometimes."
The actual incident had improved after that, but in the dream, things went downhill from there. Cordelia and her panel of distinguished judges consisting of Principal Snyder, the Master, and Spike only rated that incident a 7.3 on the 'you're a schmuck-o-meter,' and felt that her attempt to stop the Sandman from robbing a bank shortly after her arrival on Earth 616 was by far the superior incident (though even that paled in comparison to Xander's seventh birthday party back in Sunnydale). After some discussion, Cordelia hit the big red button to start the next humiliating scene, replacing Gotham with the Sunnydale High cafeteria, with Larry only a few feet away.
The Hyena incident came next. Cordelia called, "Roll the tape!" and away it went. The whole world reshaped itself around her, but the group remained at their table, separated from the scene by a transparent fourth wall.
And while Cordy and her panel provided color commentary to his possessed encounter with Buffy, a man opened the room's plain wooden door and walked slowly along the back wall until he stood directly behind the panel. He was exceedingly ordinary: one of those seemingly interchangeable white businessmen in their mid forties. Mouse brown hair and dark eyes, a body language that spoke of casual authority and privilege: About the only thing that might have made him stand out in any way in a crowd of his fellows was the excellent physical shape he was in. He wore a full black business suit, white shirt, and black tie, and his shoes clicked when he walked. And when Karen saw him, her heart all but leaped into her throat.
She stepped through the transparent wall and into the room with her critics, leaving an empty spot in the world where she'd been in the memory. The group at the table fell silent as the man walked around the table, not stopping until he stood directly in front of Karen. She was trembling, now, and looking at his feet. He reached out a hand, took her by the chin, and slowly, gently raised her gaze to meet his.
"I waited for you," she whispered. "At that house in Stamford. I was sure you'd find me. That you'd know what to do."
"I know," he said.
"... but you never did," she said, still speaking in a whisper. She felt… she didn't know what she felt. All at once, a storm of conflicting emotions seemed to race through her body, gathering around her so thickly that they felt like a second skin "Why didn't you find me?"
"I've found you now," he said. "I won't leave you alone again."
A simple, wonderful warmth rose in inside her chest. "You promise?" she asked.
"I promise."
The storm receded, fading into the warmth, and she smiled.
And in her bed at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, Karen woke up with a start. Her heart was racing, and her eyes were wide. It was dawn, and she was pressed up against Irma's body, spooning with the other girl from behind. And they both had bed-hair the likes of which even God had never seen.
Karen stifled a desperate giggle, and then, as quietly as she could, she slid out of bed and got ready to face the day. Just a dream. Thank God. The memories of humiliation were something she could handle, but having Maxwell Lord in her dreams? That was beyond creepy. Better than having him there in real life, she supposed, even as part of her disagreed.
She really, really needed to talk to Emma about this.
Scott Summers' office was meticulously organized. Everything in its proper place. Everything exactly so, and precisely symmetrical. Scott Summers and Emma Frost were waiting for them when they arrived, and neither was sitting down. The whole group of students filed in at 7:45 AM, one after the other.
He let them wait for a good five minutes before he ever spoke, and Karen felt her discomfort growing with every second that passed. Then, at last, he spoke but a single word: "Explain."
They did, each of them contributing in turn.
When they were finished, Scott looked upon the New X-Men, his face as stern and merciless as a thundercloud. "So," he began, "Let's review where we are. You - all of you - lied to us. You left without permission, and in defiance of the standing orders of Emma, of mine,I and of the O*N*E commander. Karen violated her house arrest again. You stole a Blackbird. You flew it to Asgardia, and then you put all of your lives in terrible danger, you picked fights with beings orders of magnitude more powerful than you are, you got an Avenger killed, and you all nearly died multiple times. Do you have anything else to say for yourselves?"
They stood, all of them, Karen and Noriko, Irma and David, Julian, Sooraya, Josh, Santo, Laura, and Cessily, and where once they would have stood with eyes upon the floor, downcast, feeling like children who had disobeyed their parents, now they each stood before their furious teachers and were unmoved. "Yes," Noriko said, speaking for her team, "I have something to say for myself." There was no childish whine in her tone, and no tremble of fear. Only confidence and calm acceptance of whatever was to come. "We helped save three entire universes from being destroyed. One of those universes we saved was Kara's. We did it for her, and for Karen."
Emma's expression was utterly unreadable, but Scott grew visibly more angry. "Anything else?" he asked in a dangerous tone.
"Only that we did the right thing," Cessily said.
"And we'd do it again if we had the choice," Santo finished.
"And you all agree with this?" Scott asked.
Each of them nodded.
Scott's anger vanished as if it had never been. In its place, he had a very slight smirk. "Good," he said.
The New X-Men exchanged glances. "... wait," Karen said, "You're not mad?"
"Logan briefed us both on what happened," Scott replied. "His report was impressive. But even so, if you had given any other answer than what you gave, I would have hit you with every punishment I could think of. And then every punishment Emma could think of. It's one thing to say you're ready to be full members of the team. It's something else to prove it."
Emma gave an approving nod. "We're proud of you, X-Men," she said, and Scott nodded.
The New X-Men started to grin, then, and exchanged relieved looks. "You had us worried," Karen said.
That little smirk grew into a genuine smile. "Get to class before the late bell rings," Scott said. "You might be X-Men, but you're still in high school."
Naturally, the day went downhill from there.
Classes at Xavier's were hard, and not just because it was difficult to concentrate on anything knowing about the psychic attack last night and Dawn being down in the infirmary unconscious. Almost everything they taught was college prep material, and back when she'd been Xander, Karen had never been more than a strictly average straight-C students. She came into first period - World History - without having done the reading. Or the homework. It didn't help that Logan was their history teacher, and that he accepted no excuses and gave zero fucks. Of the group that had gone with her, only Irma and David had actually done the homework. While they were in an alternate universe. Fighting for their lives.
Second period - human anatomy - was worse, though for different reasons. Although it was an elective, it hadn't been Karen's choice to take the class: she'd been enrolled in it by her advisor. … Who was Emma Frost. Why was it worse? Well…
The class was human anatomy. Taught by Betsy Braddock. She was wearing a black single-breasted blazer over a white button-down shirt and a black skirt. The outfit was thoroughly ordinary. The woman wearing it made it look like a fashion statement. And she got the attention of almost every boy in the class (and Karen, and a few other girls, too) every time she took a particularly deep breath.
"Good morning, class," Betsy said. "Given that we finished up with the endocrine system a day early, today we're starting our unit on the human reproductive system. If you've taken sex ed, then you've probably covered some of this information before, but this is going to be a much more in-depth approach. Get all of your giggles out now."
They did. Apparently, all it took to send a group of almost-adults back to the maturity level of children was to bring up the subjects of sex and sexuality in a classroom setting. Some things didn't change.
Karen sighed. This was… not really a subject she was comfortable with anymore. It wasn't as bad as it used to be. She'd more or less accepted that she had girl parts now, but it was still weird. Though that was really only half of the weirdness of the subject. The other half was the fact that she had no idea how much of what they were learning in this class was actually applicable to her situation. Did her Kryptonian, uh, girl parts work the same way as a human's? … Yeah, ok, so maybe she shouldn't have cut the conversation short when Kara had actually tried to talk about it with her.
They broke up into small groups after a few minutes of overview to begin the first activity, and each group got a different question to discuss amongst themselves. Karen's group - herself, Noriko, Julian, and Laurie - were assigned the question, 'How are the male and female reproductive systems similar?'
"Well?" Julian asked, looking Karen's way expectantly.
Karen blinked. "Well what?" she asked.
Julian looked at her expectantly "You're the only one of us who's been both, right? Got any insight for us?"
Karen blushed with embarrassment, and Laurie frowned. "Leave her alone, Julian," she said.
Julian held up his hands, "Hey, I'm not trying to be an asshole or anything, I'm just curious. Karen's got a, a unique perspective, you know?"
Noriko nodded. "I'd kind of like to know, too, if you don't mind sharing it, Karen. What was it like to be a boy? How different is it now that you're a girl?"
Karen thought about it. Willow had asked her the same question when she'd gone back to Sunnydale, Rao, it felt like a lifetime ago. Her answer hadn't been a very good one. 'The same,' she'd said, 'but different.' Was that still true?
"I don't know," she said honestly. "I mean, it's really, really different, but I don't know how much is different because I'm, you know, an alien, and how much because I'm a girl. I mean, I can remember things more clearly than I ever could before, and I know I'm acting different, and I feel different, and, um, differently. But is that because I'm a girl, or because I'm an alien, or because I have super powers, or something else?"
Laurie nodded thoughtfully. "Huh. Guess that would make it hard."
"What about the obvious stuff?" Noriko asked.
"Obvious stuff?" Karen asked.
"Yeah," Noriko said, looking at Karen expectantly.
Obvious stuff? What obvious… oh. Right. Karen blushed. Having Susan Storm talk her through her first period had been the most embarrassing moment of her life. Worse than any of the subjects hit upon in her dream last night. She hadn't had a period since that first one, though, and she had no idea if she was going to start again now that she was in her own body instead of… in Divine's body, she mentally amended, and grimaced. She added the lack of periods to her mental list of things to ask Kara about. "Can we talk about something less completely mortifying?" Karen asked. She gestured to their completely blank discussion page. "Like the differences between the human male and female reproductive systems?"
"Sorry," Noriko said.
Julian followed up a moment later with, "Man, if what happened to you ever happened to me? I'd go straight to someone like Wiccan or Doctor Strange. Have them turn me back into a boy. Maybe I wouldn't be human, but I'd still be a guy, right?"
Karen blinked. Then the full implications of Julian's statement hit her like a ton of bricks. Then her jaw dropped open, and her lips moved, but no sound came out. After a second she managed, "I'm dumb." Then she stood up.
The whole class stopped its discussions, and every eye focused on Karen as Betsy asked, "Ms. Zor-L? Did you need something?"
Karen sat back down, her cheeks burning.
The rest of the school day moved far too slowly for Karen's liking, and there were conversations she needed to have. She needed to talk to Irma's sisters, for one. The fact that they'd gotten into a fight over whether or not they'd be coming with her to New Earth was… well, she needed to talk to them. She also needed to talk to Emma. She'd been intending to do so after the meeting in Scott's office that morning, but she'd forgotten. It just hadn't occurred to her to ask her if she could talk for a minute. She made a mental note to go find her when she was done with lunch. When lunch finally did come around, Karen walked into the cafeteria, picked up a tray, collected her food, and tried not to think about the girl named Dawn Summers who was asleep in the infirmary.
Irma and her two sisters were seated at their normal table, alone. All three had grim expressions, and their eyes were glowing as they held a silent conversation. Irma looked up, met Karen's gaze briefly, shook her head, and sent a single word to her telepathically: 'Later.'
Karen nodded once in response, and then went to sit with Noriko and David. Laurie and the New Two were there - New Two being the name the school as a whole had given to Joan and Mindee, who were the new pair of Stepford Cuckoos - and Laurie had a math book open in front of her, and was plugging away at her homework for next period.
"Hey Karen," Noriko said as she sat down.
"Karen," David echoed.
"Nightwing," the New Two said in unison, with exactly the same inflection.
OK. That was another thing: She really, really needed a new codename. Nightwing had sort of worked, but it just didn't feel… hers. "Hey," she said.
Laurie didn't immediately look up. Her expression was one of intense concentration.
"So," Karen said. "We saved three universes. I say we party."
Noriko and David smiled at that, and the New Two looked briefly confused before they gathered the necessary context telepathically. After that, they looked awed, instead.
"Have you seen any of the people from the other world since we got back?" Karen asked.
Noriko shook her head, but David said, "I haven't seen any, no, but Superman sent me a message. Had Iron Man deliver it. He said some guy named Kyle Rayner is coming to meet me today after class. He's a Green Lantern. Like me, I guess."
Karen nodded, going over what she could remember about Kyle Rayner in the few Green Lantern comics she'd read. And basically all she could recall was that his girlfriend had been murdered, chopped up, and stuffed into his fridge for him to find. And that was way more horrifying now that she knew Kyle Rayner and his deceased former girlfriend (whose name she couldn't recall) were real people and not just comic book characters. Wait, Iron Man delivered a message? "Iron Man delivered it?" she asked.
David nodded. "Yeah. He showed up just after the lunch bell. I saw him heading down to the lower levels."
Karen made a non-word sound somewhere in the neighborhood of a closed-mouthed 'huh.'
"So was Kyle Rayner in those comic books from your old world?" David asked.
"Yeah," Karen said, "But he wasn't really in any of the books I followed. I was more of a Superman, Batman, and Power Girl guy. Maybe some Justice League and Justice Society on the side."
David made 'hmm' sound of acknowledgement. "Bare basics?" he asked.
"Umm," Karen said, giving the sound a distinct edge of uncertainty. After a moment, she shook her head. "Sorry."
David sighed. "All right. Thanks anyways."
"Mmhmm."
Something about their conversation had amused Noriko. Had was trying not to grin, and failing, and was right about to comment on whatever it was she had heard that she'd found funny when Laurie let out a pained groan, dropped her pencil, and let her head sink down to thunk gently against her notebook.
Karen looked Laurie's way. "Everything all right?" she asked.
Laurie blinked, and then looked up. "Oh! Karen! When did you get here?"
"Five minutes ago," Karen replied.
Laurie blushed. "Sorry." She glanced down at her notebook, then up at Karen. "Hey, you're good at math, right?"
Karen blinked. Nobody had ever suggested that she was good at math before. The very concept was alien. She had always been a straight-C student, and nothing more. "I think you might want to talk to David," she said. "Or, you know, anyone who isn't me." Laurie raised an eyebrow at that, and after a moment's hesitation, Karen said, "No. I am not good at math."
Laurie frowned. "But Kara's great at math!"
Karen shrugged uncomfortably. "I'm not Kara."
"Even identical twins have differences in their natural capabilities," David interjected.
"But you're not an identical twin," Laurie said. "You're her clone. With the exception of your hair color, you're genetically identical."
Karen felt even more uncomfortable at that. "I don't really know what to tell you," she said.
Laurie frowned. "What's the square root of 546?" she asked.
Karen didn't even had to think about it. Her brain flashed through the necessary calculations in less than a second, and the solution was completely obvious. She rolled her eyes a little, and said, in the exact same tone she had meant to say, 'I have no idea', "The square root of 546 is 23.36664289109585."
David blinked. Then a green calculator energy construct appeared in front of him and he checked her math. "Huh," he said. "She is correct."
Karen stared straight ahead, her eyes wide, looking just as shocked as she felt. "What."
"You might have been a straight C student before," Laurie said, "But Kara's brilliant, and you're her clone, now. I think you might be surprised what else you're able to do."
Karen had no idea how to respond to that, so she just kept staring with an expression of shock on her face. "What?" she asked again.
Laurie rolled her eyes.
After lunch, and after she'd recovered from the shock of being able to do complex math in her head, Karen left the cafeteria just in time to see Stephen Strange come in through the school's main entrance and into the atrium. She froze in place for a split second, more out of surprise than anything else. "Doctor Strange?" she asked.
He looked up. Only a few other students were milling about in the atrium, and one teacher: Something Drake. Karen hadn't really interacted with him much, but as a walking, talking man-shaped ice sculpture, he stood out. Ice-guy stood up and moved to intercept Doctor Strange.
"Ah," Strange said, "Ms. Zor-L. I trust today finds you well?"
Karen nodded. "Uh, yeah. You?"
He smiled. "It has been lovely thus far. I pray that it may continue to be so."
"Me too," Karen agreed. "Do you have a minute? Or will you have a minute? I was hoping to ask for your help with something, and…"
"Hello, Doctor," Ice-guy said as he drew closer.
The door opened again, and two men entered in quick succession. Almost simultaneous with the first man's arrival, the sound of one of the Blackbird jets could be heard approaching the school from the north. Few others would be able to hear it just yet, but Karen's ears pricked up slightly. One of the men was dressed in a black bodysuit that showed off his impressive physique, with twin pale lightning bolt designs going down either side of his chest to meet just above his crotch, and what looked like a tuning fork set into a downward-facing equilateral triangle on his forehead. The other was Namor of Atlantis. Karen blinked.
"Hello Black Bolt. Namor," Ice-guy said. "Welcome. The Professor should be landing any time now, and Stark and Richards are already in the infirmary with Emma. You're all welcome to join them."
Doctor Strange smiled apologetically at Karen. "I'm sorry, Ms. Zor-L, but I am very, very busy today. Perhaps you could schedule an appointment to meet with me at my home? I believe you have the number."
Karen frowned. "Yeah, sure." The Ice-guy started to lead Doctor Strange, Black Bolt, and Namor off towards the elevator to the lower levels, when Karen realized their probable reason for being here. "You're here about Dawn, aren't you."
Strange stopped. He didn't turn around, but he stopped.
That was all the confirmation Karen needed. She immediately moved to follow them. She might not know the girl, but the girl knew her, and she said she was Buffy's sister. Maybe Buffy had a sister she never talked about. And that there were no pictures of in the Summers house. It was unlikely, but it was possible. Hell, maybe she was Buffy's sister from an alternate universe or something. Either way, she had come to Karen, and if these people were going to be deciding what to do with Dawn, she was going to be there.
Doctor Strange resumed walking, and the ice-guy glanced her way as she began to follow them.
"Kara, right?" he asked.
"Karen," she corrected.
"Karen," he said. "Don't you have a class to go to?"
She did. She also didn't care. "I feel ill," she said. "I'm going to the infirmary."
"The school infirmary is down the hall," the ice-dude said, pointing in the opposite direction from the one they were headed..
"I know where it is," she replied, and kept walking.
The elevator doors opened. Strange, Namor, and Black Bolt all stepped inside. The ice-man stopped short and said, "This isn't a meeting for students, Karen," he said. "I can't let you come with. Sorry."
Karen pushed past him and into the elevator. It was absurdly easy. The main challenge was just in not breaking him while she did it. "The girl they're here to see came to me for help," she said seriously. "She was lost, and in pain, and she needed my help. I can't just stay out of this."
The ice man looked annoyed, now. The air grew a little colder. "Like I said," he repeated, "I can't let you come with."
Karen glared at him; unbeknownst to her, her eyes flashed red. "Right," she said. "Maybe you should grab that guy who can stop me. What was his name? Michael McDoesn't-exist?"
The ice guy's eyes narrowed, but before he could reply, the elevator doors slid shut, and it began to descend.
Steven Strange regarded her with a raised eyebrow, and she flushed red with embarrassment.
Namor seemed more amused than anything else if his smirk had anything to say about it.
Black Bolt did not react at all.
"... I," she began.
"Peace, Ms. Zor-L," Strange said. "I heard your reasons. I will not attempt to stop you. Ms. Frost may."
Karen grimaced. Contrary to her bluster, there were people who could stop her, and she knew it. Emma was one. Doctor Strange was another. She tried not to let her worry show on her face. She mostly failed. "Well," she said, "here's hoping she's in a kind and understanding mood."
Emma's mood was neither kind nor understanding. When she saw Karen in the company of Doctor Strange, Namor, and the Black Bolt, she regarded the young Kryptonian with an awful, cold anger. If she had read Karen's mind to see what she'd said to Drake whatever his name was, Karen couldn't tell, but she flushed red with embarrassment all the same. "Ms. Frost," she said.
Emma's telepathic reply was terse, to the point, and cold as an arctic gale. 'Do not speak until or unless you are called upon to do so.'
Karen swallowed audibly and shut her mouth.
A number of chairs had been brought into the infirmary. Reed Richards was seated in one, sipping from a styrofoam coffee mug with one hand while he typed on a holographic keyboard with the other. Dawn was still asleep, lying on a bed behind a privacy curtain. Iron Man was standing, leaning against the wall. Both took note when Karen walked in. Tony's expression grew hard behind his mask; Reed only raised an eyebrow. A few short greetings were said by the new arrivals. Otherwise, a stony silence held.
Footsteps echoed down the hall through the open door to the infirmary. Someone was approaching. The footsteps came gradually closer, and then a bald man of indeterminate age. He was handsome, with sharp cheekbones and kind blue eyes. He had one of those ageless faces combined with good skin and a fit body that made any guess of how old he was beyond 'fully mature adult' utterly impossible. He was dressed in a black business suit, white shirt, black tie, black shoes. It reminded Karen of… The thought halted. Hadn't she wanted to ask Emma about something? She couldn't remember what. Whatever. It would come back to her if it was important.
Charles Xavier considered each person in the room in turn, pausing only when he got to Karen. He glanced at Emma, and something passed between them before he moved on and sat down next to Reed Richards.
When all of the men who were going to sit had been seated, Emma Frost sat down next to Charles Xavier, leaving Karen to stand behind her. "Gentlemen," she said, sweeping her gaze across the room to take them all in. "Before we begin, I understand that there are a few questions you'd like answered. You may vocalize them if you like."
Iron Man glared at Emma from behind his mask, and only Karen saw it. His tone was unmistakably suspicious and hostile. "Let's start with how you knew to call us all in in the first place." He looked to Xavier. "This group was supposed to be a secret, Charles. How does Emma Frost know about it?"
Emma made a facial expression where the corners of her mouth turned up and she showed her teeth, but it wasn't a smile. "Honestly, Tony. Even discounting the fact that I am an Omega class telepath whose power is rivaled only by the man sitting next to me, I'm afraid that your operational security for the meetings of your quaint little club just hasn't been as good as you thought it was."
"We took every precaution," Iron Man began.
"Yes," Emma said, interrupting him in mid-sentence. "Your on site security was always impressive. The rest of it less so. Reed Richards is one of the most famous men in the world. So are you. Charles is equally recognizable in the mutant community. Namor is Atlantean royalty, and his government notifies ours whenever he is on American soil. Doctor Strange is the world's Sorcerer Supreme, and I have it on good authority that other practitioners of his art can sense his power for miles around if he does not take care to suppress his aura. Even when he does, his preferred style of dress is not one which lends itself to remaining unnoticed. Each of you save Charles wears a flashy, attention-grabbing costume, and you don't seem to make a habit of changing into anything less conspicuous for your secret meetings. In fact, you're wearing those costumes now. People notice you. The last time you all gathered in once place, Karen arrived at our doors shortly thereafter."
Karen blinked at that. "Wait, what?" she asked.
Emma continued on right over her interruption without pausing. "The time before that was just before the Hulk disappeared. The time before that was just prior to the creation of the new Avengers team. It wasn't difficult to piece together. If I've worked it out, you can be assured that others have done the same."
Each of the men at the table exchanged looks. "It seems we will need to review our security measures for these meetings once we are finished here," Reed Richards said.
"Quite," Emma said.
"And Karen Zor-L's reason for being here?" Iron Man asked. It was almost inaudible, but the hostility in his tone did ever so slightly increase when he spoke her name.
"Will be made clear shortly," Emma replied, displaying no sign whatever of her irritation with Karen's presence. "Were there any other questions before we begin?"
"None but the obvious," Doctor Strange said. "Why did you call us here?" He already knew. He'd showed that much in the atrium. The best Karen could figure, he was asking for the benefit of the others.
"She did so at my request," Xavier said. "Emma contacted me while I was making my final approach to Earth after an extended trip into Shi'ar space. She apprised me of the situation, and given that she already knew of our group's existence, I advised her to call each of you in."
Every eye in the room went to the bald man for a moment.
Emma picked up where Charles had left off. "Last night," she said, "After her and the other New X-Men team's return from Power Girl's native universe, someone or something attempted to alter the memories of everyone in this school. I put a stop to it. Immediately afterwards, I sensed a mind in the school that had not been present before: a girl who claimed to know one of my students, who claimed to be the sister of one of her friends, but whom she had no memory of."
Emma looked to Karen. 'Pull back the curtain, if you please,' she sent.
Karen hesitated only a split second before she walked to Dawn's privacy curtain and pulled it back, revealing the unconscious girl behind. The men turned to consider the girl.
"Gentlemen," Emma said, "Meet Dawn Summers." She gave them a moment, and then asked, "Professor, what's your impression?"
Charles looked thoughtful. "She's a mutant," he said. "An active one, too. The psionic resonance is unmistakable. She is not a telepath, however."
"Doctor Richards," Emma said. "How old would you say she is?"
"Difficult to tell for certain without an extensive genetic analysis, but I'd guess early to mid teens. Thirteen, perhaps fourteen."
Emma smiled grimly. "Hank was up most of the night running tests, and then re-running them to double and triple check the results. She's less than a day old."
Xavier looked up sharply at that, and even Namor and Black Bolt took note. "Is this some sort of magic?" Namor asked, "Perhaps alien science?"
"We don't know. What we do know is that someone created a teenaged Summers child, placed her in the room of one of my students, and attempted to alter our memories as they did so."
"Summers child," Xavier murmured. He looked up. "Scott and Jean?" he asked.
Emma shook her head, "No. Thank God, no. Not Scott, not Jean, not Madelyne Pryor, Redd Dayspring, or any other clone, alias, or permutation thereof. No, this one's Alex and Lorna's."
Namor smirked. "At the rate the Summers family and their lovers are acquiring mysteriously fully grown children, I expect you'll have a son or daughter from the future of your own showing up at this school any day now, Emma," he said.
Karen winced, immediately remembering the Cuckoo clones, and how almost a thousand of Emma's children had died in the fires of the Phoenix. Emma, however, didn't visibly react to it. Instead, she just seemed to consider Namor's words, tilted her head to the side, and said, "Perhaps." She looked to Doctor Strange. "Doctor, your opinion?"
Doctor Strange rose to his feet. "If the rest of you will step back for a moment, I will examine the girl in the all-revealing light of the Eye of Agamotto! Perhaps thereby I may determine if her origin be magical or mundane in its nature."
The others moved back, and the amulet at Strange's throat began to glow with a gentle golden light, like sunlight had suddenly kindled within the amulet and spilled out now upon the sleeping form of Dawn Summers. The gentle glow seemed to kindle the air around her, revealing an impossibly vast green iridescent… something suffusing the girl, surrounding her body and … creating her body? Within her and without her. It made Karen eyes water to look at it: it was like a sphere, and there were spheres inside it, connected to it on five different axis, unfolding within the structure and without the structure, and everything connected in ways that shouldn't be possible, and with no hard angles, no straight lines, and it hummed weirdly in a way that caused the beds and the displays and the lights and the walls to hum in sympathetic resonance that grew louder and louder even as Karen watched, her eyes wide. And as the all-revealing light showed them the Key, so too did it show the Key them. It saw them. Though it had no eyes, It looked upon them, and the weird hum grew louder still, and the light rippled in a way suggestive of strange malignancies and ancient dooms long since lost to the waking world.
Yet the Green Glow of the Key was not the only new source of light within the room. Doctor Strange shone with weird magics, and it physically hurt to look in the direction of Black Bolt, Professor Xavier, Emma Frost, and Namor. … and she herself was glowing. Karen looked down at herself, startled by the light within her own body. In the all-revealing light of the Eye of Agamotto, her whole body blazed like a living star; it was not blood that flowed in her veins but liquid sunlight, resplendent with the potential for destruction of a nuclear maelstrom.
"By the Hoary Hosts of Hoggoth!" Strange cried, his voice rising above the weird hum. He staggered backwards, and the amulet around his neck winked out. When the all-revealing light was quenched, so too was the light of the iridescent green whatever it was.
Reed Richards performed a flawless Vulcan-style eyebrow raise. Just the one. No hint of movement in the other. "Fascinating," he said. "The," he hesitated, "The entity's structure resembles certain 3-sphere models." He looked to Doctor Strange. "Stephen, can you tell us anything?"
Stephen Strange's eyes were wide. "Ms. Frost was right to summon us for this," he said. "Although I do not know precisely what the entity is, its power is almost unimaginably vast. Yet an enchantment has created a human being around and within an entity which has as little in common with us as we have with an amoebas. The power required for such a feat is simply enormous. Prohibitively so. That someone was able to transform such a being into a human is troubling. That they also had the power to reorder the memories of those who surrounded its entry point is only to be expected. That it would then botch that reordering, that it could be blocked by even the strongest of natural telepaths, no offense to Ms. Frost is perhaps the most worrying fact of all. So much power expended to bind the entity, to transform it, to make it a girl, and yet the spell to make you all remember her was so poorly targeted..." He stroked his beard thoughtfully. "I will need time to think on this. To conduct the proper research, and to perform divinations." He spoke the words of a spell, moving his hands in complex gestures as he did, and a wind stirred the air. "I have send a message to Wong. He will bring the needed supplies and materials. In the mean time, I would like to speak with this girl. Awaken her, if you would."
Emma did.
Dawn Summers opened her eyes and woke up with a gasp. Her eyes darted around the room, wide with fear, and she sat up and scooted as far back from the people in the room as she could without falling off the bed. "Xan… Xander?" she asked.
"I'm here," Karen said, walking to Dawn's bedside slowly so as not to startle her. When Karen responded to the name 'Xander,' Iron Man took note.
As soon as Karen was in arm's reach, Dawn grabbed her into a terrified hug, putting Karen between herself and a room full of strangers. "What happened?" Dawn asked. "We were talking, and then I woke up here, and…" she trailed off, struggling to find the words to communicate her distress.
"Dawn, we're trying to figure out what happened," Karen said, trying not to think about the Entity that was within and around the girl now embracing her. "It's really important that you stay calm until we can, OK?"
"Sure," Dawn said, a note of terrified panic entering her voice. "I only just woke up in a weird hospital surrounded by even weirder old men, you, and Skanky the Wonderstripper with no idea how I got here. Why wouldn't I be calm? This situation just SCREAMS 'keep calm and carry on." By the end of her last sentence, she was all but shrieking her words, and was visibly hyperventilating.
Karen shot Emma a placating look, and then regarded Dawn seriously. "Dawn, that's enough." When she spoke, her voice was filled with quiet authority, with calm reassurance, and Dawn seemed to respond to it, and almost too well. Karen didn't glance at Xavier or Emma. The girl stilled, going from full blown panic attack to simply sad, her eyes filled with unshed tears. Like someone had flipped a switch in her head. It was one of the creepier things that Karen had seen, and she directed a mental glare at Emma. 'Stay out of her head, damn it,' she thought, knowing that whichever had done it would hear here.
Professor Xavier looked questioningly at Emma. Emma didn't visibly react.
It took Karen a second before she was able to go on, but go on she did, "These are good people," she said, "and they're going to help us figure this out."
"... Okay," Dawn whispered. She swallowed heavily, and then looked up. "But Xander?" she asked.
"Yeah?"
Dawn cast a suspicious look at the assembled Illuminati. "If these guys try anything weird," she said, "when Buffy gets here, she's going to beat them to death with her new pernach."
"Pernach?" Karen asked.
Dawn nodded. "Giles gave it to her. She named it Perny."
Karen couldn't help cracking a smile. "I'll make sure they know," she said. It was strange, and a little hard to explain: Karen had never met the girl before, but there was a certain easy familiarity about her. Buffy hadn't had a sister, but Dawn acted like what Karen would have figured Buffy's sister would act like. "Do you think you could answer a few questions?"
Dawn shrugged, performing disinterest like the teenager she appeared to be. "Whatever," she said.
Doctor Strange took that for assent. "Ms. Summers," he said, "My name is Stephen Strange. I am the Sorcerer Supreme of this world."
Dawn regarded the man suspiciously. "I'm guessing that means more than just you being served with sour cream and tomatoes."
Doctor Strange looked spectacularly unamused. "Quite," he said. "It means that I am the greatest living magic-user upon this world. I was chosen to be the guardian of this world, and I am the highest magical authority within it. Do you understand?"
Dawn nodded. "I understand," she said.
"Do you know what you are?"
Dawn blinked. "What I am?" She looked at Karen questioningly, and Karen shrugged. Fear crept back into Dawn's eyes. "What do you mean?"
"Do you know what you are?" Strange asked again. There was a sense of rising power in the air. He seemed to grow taller in the infirmary.
"Um. A teenager? Very confused?"
"Thrice I ask and done," Strange said, and there was a strange weight to those words, "Do you know what you are?"
Dawn flinched, and then shook her head, "I don't understand what you're asking," she insisted.
"Thank you, Ms. Summers," Doctor Strange said. He turned to the others. "She speaks the truth," he informed them, and Emma and Charles both nodded in agreement. Strange made a gesture and muttered a few quiet words. There was a faint light which quickly faded. They began to talk, then, Iron Man, Reed Richards, Doctor Strange, Professor Xavier, Namor, and Emma, and though their lips moved, no sound came from them, and there was a strange blurring of the air that made lip reading impossible.
Karen looked to Dawn with a half-smile. "Believe or not, I know exactly what it's like to suddenly find yourself in an unfamiliar place surrounded by weirdos," she said.
Dawn didn't smile. She was too busy trying to look unaffected, like she didn't care what those people were talking about despite the fact that she desperately wanted to know. "I guess," she said.
"Hey," Karen said, "Just be glad you didn't wake up in a new body like I did."
Dawn looked up at Karen. "... Xander?" she asked.
"It's Karen, now," Karen said. "Anyways, don't you already have a Xander?"
Dawn frowned slightly, "He's not…" She stopped herself in mid sentence. Whatever she'd been about to say, Karen would never know. "Right," she said. "Karen. You don't have any idea who I am, do you." It wasn't a question.
Karen's lips thinned. She didn't really want to say 'yes,' even though she'd already said as much.
Dawn looked down. "I thought maybe earlier you were just being mean," her voice cracked, "but you really don't know me."
She could lie to the girl. Claim to remember her. Claim to know all about her. It would fall apart pretty quickly, but she could do it. When Karen saw the look on Dawn's face, she almost did it. Almost spoke the lie. But instead, she swallowed, shook shook her head helplessly, and admitted, "No. I don't."
Dawn shut her eyes. "I wish you did," she said. She waited expectantly. Nothing happened. Her face fell.
What the hell had that been about? Unsure of exactly how to respond to that bit at the end, Karen just smiled sadly. "Sorry," she said. "But if you really are Buffy's sister, I'll make sure you stay safe until she finds you, okay?"
Dawn didn't answer.
"Okay?" Karen asked.
Dawn looked up, and Karen saw that she was crying. Something clenched in her chest at the sight. "Okay," Dawn whispered.
After that, there was little to do but wait. Karen could hear the distant ringing of the bell signalling the end of class in the school above. She'd missed Emma's ethics class. Emma had, too. She looked towards the classroom to see if Ms. Pryde was substituting again, but it was too far away, and through too much material. There was plenty to see through the walls even if she couldn't see clear to the classrooms, though. A few rooms distant, in Beast's laboratory, the blue-furred, leonine mutant was using some kind of scanner to examine a man with dark hair in a black and white costume. The man, whoever he was, seemed more bored than anything else. Above above her and a couple of floors removed, a bald chinese man was walking through the atrium. His heart kept a steady, sedate beat. She could see it peeking out between his ribs if she didn't actively pay attention to the surface of his skin. Dawn's heart was beating a lot faster. Dawn had said something. She'd repeated herself twice, and was frowning at her now. Karen's attention snapped back to her immediate surroundings, and she smiled apologetically. "Sorry," she said. "Spaced out there for a second."
Above, another bell rang, signalling the start of the next class. Karen was now missing Advanced Combat. Also, the Xavier Institute had advanced combat classes for its students. Which was simultaneously awesome and terrifying. There was a rotating teacher for that one. Colossus had just finished his unit, and she wasn't sure who was going to be covering it today. "So Dawn," Karen said, "Tell me about what's happened in Sunnydale since I left?"
Dawn seemed agreeable to that. So they talked about Sunnydale, what Dawn remembered, and what had happened since Halloween, and the place Dawn remembered really did seem identical but for the fact that there had never been a Dawn Summers in Karen's Sunnydale. Wong came and went with Doctor Strange's supplies, and Strange went into a side room to begin his divinations. The privacy spell Strange had put up came down as he left the room.
"...So after Mom got mind-controlled by an evil robot and his mind-controlling cookies, we decided that from then on, all potential boyfriends had to be tested for signs of being robots, vampires, or demons before the first date," Dawn said.
"Mrs. Summers knows?" Karen asked.
"About the supernatural? No. She's totally in denial."
"... Ah." Karen thought about that. "Was that before or after you learned that getting tattoos can lead to being possessed by demons?"
Dawn shrugged. "After."
Karen grinned a little at the sheer absurdity of what she'd heard. "... I miss Sunnydale," she said.
"You could always come back," Dawn suggested, and her tone was just a tiny bit too much like someone trying to sound casual.
You could always come back. Karen looked down at the ground, her good mood evaporating. "... You've already got a Xander," she said quietly. "You can't miss someone when they're not gone. What would I be going back to?"
"Your friends? Your family?"
Karen didn't reply.
When Kyle Rayner arrived upon Earth 616, he hadn't been sure what to expect. Sure, he'd been there before, back during the Kroma incident, when the Justice League had been pitted against a team from Earth 616 called the Avengers. He'd even gotten to know some of those Avengers. Hawkeye had been surprisingly good company, and despite the years that had passed since the last time he'd seen them, he still thought of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver as friends. He was actually hoping to visit the three of them while he was here if he got the chance.
He emerged from a green crackling portal generated by his own ring and took a moment to situate himself. He had left the New Earth universe at Lagrange point 1, and arrived in 616 at the same point. The creation of the portal between the two worlds had been easier than he'd expected, and he wasn't entirely sure why. Something to investigate later, when there wasn't an enormous refugee crisis brewing and a brand new Green Lantern - the only one of his kind in Earth 616 - who the Guardians had decided that he made the best person to train. With an act of Will, Lantern Kyle Rayner shot off towards Earth 616. He hit atmo in less than a minute, decelerated, and came down north of New York City, heading for the coordinates Iron Man had supplied.
"Ring," he said as he descended, "Search local databases for contact information for the Avengers, Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff."
A moment later, his ring reported, "Contact information found. Connecting to Avengers Tower private message center. Connecting to Pietro Maximoff private voicemail. Connected."
Kyle grinned. "Send a message. Message follows: Wanda, Pietro, Clint, it's Kyle. Long time no see. I'm in town, and will be for the immediate future. Are any of you going to be free in the next couple days?" He rattled off a cell phone number which would automatically be connected to his ring's communications system as his contact number, and then concluded his message.
"Confirmed," the ring's AI said. "message sent."
He spent the rest of his descent with a smile on his face. Well, the rest of his descent until he was met by a pair of giant flying robots. He'd contacted the locals ahead of his approach to the planet, but he hadn't been expecting anything like this. When Kyle actually reached the school, he looked about in open disbelief. The place surrounded by thick concrete wall topped with barbed wire and with regularly spaced guard towers, each of them manned by American soldiers. The property was pretty clearly divided into two major sections: the school and its immediate surroundings, and a refugee camp that was slowly becoming a refugee city. Most of the buildings were still large tents and other temporary shelters, but construction work was apparently ongoing. A dozen new buildings stood amongst the tents and temporary shelters, and a dozen more were under construction. It wasn't as run down as most refugee camps he'd seen, but it still had all the signs. The people in the camp didn't look you in the eye. They didn't linger about, not travel alone, as if they feared predators. The presence of armed soldiers didn't help. Most striking of all, though, was the sheer contrast between the parts of the property set aside for the school and the parts dominated by refugees. The staggering disparity of wealth between the two was almost unreal. His ring beeped, then, indicating that it had completed its scan of the refugees, and his eyes narrowed at the results: they were all metahumans. All of them.
Something was very wrong here.
Doctor Strange came back into the room an hour later looking tired. There were circles under his eyes that weren't there before, and Karen could smell the faint aroma of recently dried sweat. The others looked up when he came in, and all conversation ceased.
"My friends," he said, "The news I bring is… dangerous. Simply knowing it may make each of you a target. Before I share what I have learned, I would give each of you a chance to walk out the door, and so retain the safety of ignorance."
Dawn got up and started to walk for the door. She stopped when Iron Man stepped in front of the door. "Very funny," he said.
Dawn shrank back from power-armor clad man, clearly intimidated.
"Perhaps Karen should depart," Reed Richards suggested.
"Not gonna happen," Karen said.
"Very well," Doctor Strange said. And then he told them. Told them all about the Old Ones, of their nature, that the entity within Dawn was one such creature, bound and transformed into a human girl. "She is an an innocent who nonetheless is and contains within her a transcendent being which both is and governs the borders between realities. She is the Key, child of Tawil At-U'mr, and kin to the dread Shuma-Gorath who walked the Earth in the Hyborian Age. I have traced the spell that thus transformed her and transported her here to its source, and it is a place well familiar to me, but more familiar, I think, to Karen Zor-L."
Dawn stared at Doctor Strange, her jaw dropped open. "What?" she whispered.
Strange looked apologetic. "I am sorry that you had to learn of it this way, child. But you deserve to know, and I would not see this truth kept from you."
Dawn's face was ashen, her eyes wide, her jaw still dropped open slightly. "No," she whispered, backing away. "It's not true. I don't believe you." Her voice rose to a shout, "I don't believe you!" Then she turned and sprinted away faster than any human could possibly have run, directly into the back wall of the infirmary. There was a roaring sound, and a flare of heat and blue light as she ran through the wall, leaving a perfectly round hole and a lingering smell of ozone in her wake. Another roar and another flash came an instant later.
'Holy crap,' Karen thought. 'What kind of power was that?' The others in the room all rose to their feet, but Karen held up a hand. "I'll go after her."
Emma nodded.
Karen flew through the hole after the distraught young woman; behind her, the Illuminati exchanged dark looks.
She found Dawn in a storage closet down the hall from the Danger Room, sobbing loudly. She didn't look up when Karen opened the door, and her tears weren't pretty. Her face got blotchy, and her makeup - not terrible for her age, but still too much and inexpertly applied - was running. "Hey," Karen said.
Dawn didn't answer.
Karen sat down next to the younger girl, and Dawn tried her best to ignore her. So Karen just sat down beside her on the floor of the storage closet, not saying anything, just being there, her arm around Dawn's shoulder. After a few minutes, Dawn leaned against her and kept crying. It took a good ten minutes before she looked up at Karen with red eyes and a runny nose and asked, "Am I real?"
That question hit a little too close to home. "Yeah," Karen said, her voice thick with emotion. "Yeah, you are."
"But I'm a thing, right? A monster that just looks like a girl?"
"Join the club," Karen replied. "I'm president. You can be treasurer, if you want."
Dawn tried not to smile. "No way," she said, pretending she wasn't utterly devastated, "If I'm joining the club, I'm at least Vice President."
They didn't say anything after that. They just sat there together on the floor of the supply closet, the door left open, Dawn still trembling and leaning against the much taller Karen. They were still there when Emma Frost found them twenty minutes later.
Karen looked up.
"We have come to a decision," Emma said.
"I heard," Karen replied. When Emma raised an eyebrow, she indicated her ears. "Super-hearing." And so she had. She'd heard their discussions. They'd gone through a number of unpleasant options. Namor had suggested having Doctor Strange simply undo the girl, and return her to her Old One self. No one at the table had liked that idea, not only for the moral reasons, but also because they had no idea what the release of so much energy would do. What if it destroyed Westchester? What if it destroyed the Eastern Seaboard? Or worse? The possibility of relocating her to the Negative Zone was discussed, but no one was willing to risk what might happen if a transdimensional being reacted badly with being sent through a portal to that or any other plane until they knew more. Sending her to Shi'ar space was out: there was a bit of a revolution going on there at the moment. Sending her elsewhere was also out, and not just because they thought that Karen would probably follow her and cause an intergalactic incident, and not just because it could be delivering a potential weapon into the hands of someone else, but also because Reed Richards's long range sensors had begun picking up some disturbing hyperwave distress signals coming from the region of space around the Nova Corps' home territories. Something was on the move in the cosmos. Something dark. Other locations Dawn might be sent presented similar, if unrelated problems.
"Given how many things we do not know about Dawn, the Key, the magic that created her, and the nature of what mutant powers she inherited from Polaris and Havok," Emma began, and Dawn shivered at the reminder, "We have elected to wait and see."
"What does that mean?" Karen asked.
"It means that until her sister arrives to collect her, this school has acquired a new student," Emma replied.
Dawn blinked. "... Wait. You're making me go to school?"
The look Emma gave Dawn could have slain Galactus at a distance of seven parsecs.
Dawn shivered. "Right. School. Yay school!"
"Come with me, dear, and I will get you sorted out and settled into a room in the girls' dorm." When Dawn hesitated and looked at Karen, Emma arched a delicate eyebrow. "You can tell Karen all about it when you see her again later this evening," she said, placing a slight emphasis on the word, 'Karen.'
Dawn rose to her feet with some reluctance, but nodded and moved to follow Emma. It was only then that Emma paused and looked back at Karen over her shoulder. "Ms. Zor-L," she said.
Karen stood up. "Um, yeah?"
"You have publicly flouted the authority of a teacher who was acting properly and within the bounds of his responsibilities. You disobeyed his direct instruction, behaved towards him in a manner that was so disrespectful that it beggars belief, forced your way into a secret meeting in the restricted area of the school, and you have an unexcused absence from three classes for the day." Emma's voice had grown so cold as to be practically arctic. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?"
Karen shook her head. "No," she said.
"Very well," Emma said. "Detention. You are giving me your lunch period every day for the next two weeks plus suspension from all mission duties for any X-Men team for an equivalent period. This is your only warning, Ms. Zor-El. This will not happen again. I may give second chances, but I do not give a third. Do you understand me?"
Karen swallowed, getting that awful sinking feeling in her stomach. "I understand," she said.
"Good." She gestured to Dawn. "Come along, Ms. Summers."
They walked away.
Classes were over for the day by the time Karen got back up to the main levels of the school. The Three-in-One were waiting for her by the elevator. When she emerged, Irma smiled at her, and the Phoebe and Celeste each nodded. Karen glanced back and forth between them, not entirely sure what was going on. Then Phoebe and Celeste moved off towards the Girl's Dorm, leaving Karen and Irma alone. Well, as alone as you could be in a boarding school that was doubling as a mutant refugee camp.
"Hey Irma," Karen said, "Do you know how to get in touch with the New Avengers?"
Irma looked at her inquisitively. Then she apparently glanced into Karen's thoughts, because her expression became completely neutral. "Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked.
Karen hesitated a bare half-second before nodding. "Of course I'm sure." She frowned. "Do I not look like I'm sure?"
"You seem pretty sure," Irma said.
"Good," Karen said. "Because I am. Sure."
"Sure," Irma said.
Karen frowned suspiciously. "So can you get in touch with Wiccan?"
Irma nodded. She produced her phone - an advanced model like what Karen had, which were way better than the phones people had had back in Sunnydale - tapped on the screen, and then waited. About ten seconds later, her phone buzzed.
Karen blinked. "What was that?" she asked.
"I send him a text. He responded."
"What's a text?"
Irma regarded Karen with a look of flat disbelief. "You can't be serious."
They had left the atrium by this time, and gone out into the courtyard in front of the school. "I keep forgetting it's still 1997 where you're from," Irma said. "Do you have your phone with you?"
Karen nodded, producing the device. Irma spent the next three minutes showing Karen how to use it. How to send texts, how to use it to check her email, and so on. That was about the point that Karen realized that she hadn't checked her email today. Waiting in her inbox was a message from S.H.I.E.L.D. confirming that the charges against her had been dropped, and she was no longer under house arrest. She grinned. "Hey, I'm a free man!" She paused. "Woman." Another pause. "Soon to be man again." Another pause. "So what did he say?"
Irma didn't roll her eyes, but she gave the impression of it. "He said we can come on over."
Karen was about to lift off into the air when a loud male voice called from nearby, "Mother? Is that you?"
Karen lifted off, certain that nobody would be using that word to refer to her.
A well muscled blonde man with deep blue eyes put his hand on her shoulder, and she jumped a little. "Woah," she said, spinning to face him.
"Mother?" he asked again. "You… colored your hair?"
Karen felt a full body shudder of pure wigginess coming on at being called 'mother.' "Do I know you?" she asked.
The man set his jaw. "This again? Mother, surely you can not have forgotten your own son. Surely you can not have forgotten Equinox!"
Every student from the Xavier institute in hearing distance stopped what they were doing and turned to listen to the conversation.
Karen stared at the man - at Equinox - recognition slowly dawning. Oh. Oh hell. "... weren't you retconned?" she asked.
Equinox looked confused. "I am uncertain as to your meaning, mother."
Karen grimaced. "Yeah. Look. I'm not your mother, and I'm pretty sure Power Girl isn't, either. I know you think I'm Kara Zor-L, but I'm not. I'm her clone. Sister. Sister-clone."
"I am not sure I understand," Equinox said.
"You know what an identical twin is?" Karen asked.
Equinox nodded.
"I'm that. I'm Kara's twin sister. Karen."
"Oh," Equinox said. Then he brightened. "I did not know mother had a sister," he boomed cheerfully. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Aunt Karen."
Karen managed not to cringe at being called that. She forced a smile on her face. "How did you get here? Is your… um, Great Grandfather with you?"
"He is not," Equinox said, his voice thundering through the courtyard. "Arion the Immortal refuses to see the error of his ways in supporting Pandora's crusade within the Flashpoint. He remains a prisoner of the Stratans. I…" he hesitated, "I was wrong to have assisted him. He said it was vital to securing my destiny. I am here because the Stratans have encouraged me to visit with the people of this world. Under supervision, of course. My chaperone is not far away." He pointed to a woman with dark pink hair, smooth blue skin, and overlarge eyes who lingered a few dozen yards distant. "They have said it would be good for me to meet ordinary humans and ordinary metahumans. That it would broaden my perspective."
"Ah," Karen said. She wasn't sure what to say next. "You had a falling out with Arion?"
Equinox's face fell. He looked down at the ground. "I…" he began in that same booming voice only to trail off. He started again, this time his voice merely inappropriately loud, and tinged with sadness. "After mother's most recent revelations, he would have nothing to do with me. I am a failure, Aunt Karen. I was to be the Chosen One. A prophesied child whose birth heralded the dawn of a new age. A messiah, born of the granddaughter of Arion the Immortal and the royal blood of the True Atlanteans, born into a world that only I could save. And it was all a lie."
Equinox sighed. "My great grandfather has no use for a failed messiah, never mind that the circumstances of my birth were his fault to begin with. On top of that, my mother does not know me, and despite my prophesied role, the woman whose destiny was only to give birth to me seems far better able and equipped to save the world and usher in a new age than I could ever hope to be." A note of deep bitterness entered his voice. "I am a failure. A failure before I was ever born, and useless for the very purpose for which I was conceived."
"Don't say that," Karen said.
Equinox looked up. "Why not?"
Karen shuddered. "Because hearing you call me 'Aunt Karen' creeps me the hell out. Probably not as much as Kara hearing you call her 'mother,' but ye gads, man."
Equinox's expression grew stony. "I see," he said.
Irma spoke up then. "Karen, you're overreacting," she said, disapproval clear in her tone, "And you're being needlessly cruel. He's your nephew from an alternate timeline that may never have existed in the first place. It happens all the time."
Karen gave Irma a dubious look. "Well," she said sarcastically, "When you put it THAT way…" she trailed off suddenly. "Oh God, you're serious."
"Yes," Irma said..
Karen sighed. She was tempted to just leave, but guilt made her stop. As much as she might despise the character and everything he represented, it wasn't his fault he represented everything that was terrible about comic books in her mind. As much as his very existence irritated her, he had opened up to her, thinking that she would be sympathetic, and she'd thrown it back in his face. That wasn't right. She'd gone over the line. She turned back to the man. "Listen, Equinox?"
He didn't look up.
"A lot of people like to talk about fate and destiny. It's your destiny to do this. Your purpose to do that. It's why you were made. One of my best friends once walked to her death because she thought it was destiny."
"I am sorry for your loss," Equinox rumbled.
Karen shook her head. "She didn't stay dead. I kinda went after her. She drowned, but I got there in time to bring her back with CPR. Just because something is destined doesn't mean it's inevitable, and just because someone tells you what your purpose is doesn't mean they're right. You've got free will. Use it. Your destiny? Screw destiny. Screw destiny right in the face. Nobody gets to decide what your purpose is except you. Just like nobody gets to decide mine except me, and nobody gets to decide Kara's except her."
Equinox's let out a breath, and his expression softened. "... Thank you, Aunt Karen," he said.
It still felt really, really weird to be called that, but Karen nodded. "See you around, Equinox."
Power Girl descended, coming down next to Karen and Supergirl on the rooftop. Gotham city lay below them in all its nightly splendour. Supergirl looked up as she landed. "Kara," she said.
"Kara," Power Girl replied.
Karen had blinked at the sight of them both together in the same place. It was only really then, in that moment, that the fact Power Girl had been de-aged really sunk in. Power Girl was now the same age as Supergirl. And aside from different haircuts and Power Girl having a bigger bust, the two were identical. "Wow," she said.
Supergirl and Power Girl both glanced at Karen, and then at each other.
Supergirl frowned irritably. "Well, I see you've spawned. And gotten younger. Dare I ask?" Despite her harsh words, there was an easy familiarity in her tone, and a sense that it was all right for them to be harsh to each other sometimes. Karen briefly considered reminding Supergirl that she'd already explained her own origin. Then she figured it wouldn't help.
Power Girl smiled faintly. "It's a long story."
"I'll bet," Supergirl said.
Karen caught sight of her own reflection in the window right next to Supergirl's and Power Girl's. Right. Her dark hair and their busts aside, there were *three* identical girls, not two. It was more than a little bit surreal standing here with the two of them, looking like identical triplets plus a dye job and a breast reduction surgery. "Apparently, this is now happening."
"Apparently so," Supergirl confirmed. "This is weird. Alternate universe self. Clone of alternate universe self. Me. I thought having evil clones was more Kal's thing."
Power Girl shrugged. "I don't think the Cyborg Superman or really counts as a clone. Superboy is more 'weird unconventional offspring' than clone, and I still don't know what the heck Eradicator was."
Karen thought about that. Superman clones. She vaguely remembered one of her least favorite stories from when she was a kid younger. A moment's thought brought it to her mind more firmly. "Do Superman Red and Superman Blue count?" she asked.
Supergirl and Power Girl replied instantly and in perfect unison, "We do not talk about Superman Red and Superman Blue." Supergirl followed that up with a suspicious look as she asked, "How do you even know about that, anyways?"
"Karen?"
Karen blinked, coming back to the present moment. "Hmm?" she asked.
"We're here," Irma said. Right. New York. Karen decided that she needed to stop having flashbacks in the middle of flying places. Wasn't safe.
Wiccan's house was surprisingly nice. Sure, it was crammed in right next to the others around it with basically no yard, and that felt weird for someone from a suburban Sunnydale neighborhood, but it was three stories tall, will these really lovely terraced windows and a small flowering garden on either side of the tiny little walkway that lead from the street to the house.
They went up to the front door and knocked. Wiccan answered. He was skinny and ridiculously handsome. She almost would have called him… ok, no. Karen was not going to call a boy beautiful. No. Wasn't going to happen. He was about 5'8", and he had to look up to meet Karen's eyes. But there was a surety to his stance. A calm sort of assurance, a confidence that most teenagers just didn't have. He had strength in him, and not the kind that felt a desperate insecure need to be constantly asserting itself at others' expense. Karen actually got a little weirded out by how attractive she found him. Especially since she'd not ever had that reaction to a guy before. Sure, he wasn't Noriko or Cordelia level attractive, and he didn't even come close to Irma, but he was hot, and it was weird. Then she remembered Willow's 'sexuality is less binary and more spectrum' talk, took a deep breath, and forced herself to relax.
"Hello, Irma," he said politely. Then he looked at Karen, and there was recognition in those eyes. "I don't think I've met your friend," he said.
"Hey Billy," Irma said. "Billy, this is my girlfriend, Karen Zor-L. Karen, this is Billy Kaplan."
Billy offered a hand, and Karen shook it. "Nice to meet you, Karen," he said.
"You too," Karen said.
"Come on in," Billy said, gesturing in a welcoming fashion. "My parents are out at the moment, but they won't mind me having people over."
They went in. Billie closed the door behind them and then led them into the living room, where he sat down on a nice leather chair. A couch was free just across from it, and they sat down in it, hip to hip. "So," Billie said, "Irma's message said you needed my help. What can I do for you?"
Karen told him.
Billy blinked. "Are you serious?" he asked.
"People keep asking me that," Karen groused. "Can you change into a boy or can't you?"
"Sorry. Yeah, I can. It'll take a minute, though. You want set up a time, or just do it now?"
"I just wanna feel comfortable in my own skin again," Karen said. "Do it."
Irma said nothing.
Billy shrugged, and then held up his hands. Power began to gather around him, and he spoke the words, over and over like a mantra, "I want her to be a boy, I want her to be a boy, I want her to be a boy…"
Karen felt something shifting inside her. The feeling of her body changing was incredibly disconcerting. Her breasts visibly shrank and her shoulders widened… and then her shoulders and breasts both reverted to normal.
"Wow," Billy said after a few seconds, "Your body is really stubborn about not being transformed." He looked closely at her. "Is that chaos magic in your aura? It looks… kind of familiar."
Karen frowned. "Does that mean you can't change me?"
"Oh, I can do it," Billy said. "It's just going to be harder than I thought." He started casting his spell again, pouring more and more power into it. Red energy seemed to curl around him and around Karen both as her body shifted, slowly, one part at a time, from female to male. Finally, Billy let out a breath. "There we go," he said.
The comfort Karen had been expecting to feel from being himself again, from being a guy again, it wasn't there. There weren't any mirrors in the living room, so Karen looked to Irma. "What do you think?" he asked.
Irma looked Karen's very male body up and down, taking in every detail. "I think you make just as gorgeous a boy as you do a girl," she said, and winked. "What do you think, Wiccan?"
Wiccan nodded, not at all shy about his own appreciation for the now breathtakingly handsome Kryptonian male with his sixpack abs and his perfectly toned... Wiccan forced himself not to continue that train of thought. 'Think of Teddy,' he urged his brain. 'I'm in a committed relationship, but I'm not blind,' his brain replied. "Uh..." he said.
Irma grinned wickedly. "There, you see? He's speechless." Her eyes flashed, and Karen saw an image of himself floating in the air in front of him, and he stopped.
"... Wow," Karen said. She stared at the image, a sense of vertigo coming over her. Him. "Just… give me a second to get used to it."
They did. Karen waited, and seconds turned to minutes. One minute became two, became five, became ten, became half an hour. Billy got up to get drinks. Irma took a sparkling water, cracked it, sipped at it. Karen continued to wait.
He didn't want to admit it. He didn't want to admit that like this, his whole body felt wrong. His center of gravity was wrong. The weight between his legs made his skin crawl. The way his chest felt now was just… off. The boy in Irma's image, the body, his body, it wasn't Xander. It was a male version of Divine. He was every bit as perfect a male specimen as she was a female, and yet…
… and yet…
A single tear traced its way down his cheek, and when he sighed, it was the death-knell of a dream. He shook his head. "It doesn't feel right," he admitted.
"I didn't think it would," Irma said.
Karen tried to glare at her, but his heart just wasn't in it. "Why'd you agree to take me here to have Billy change me into a boy, then?" he asked, disappointment making his words taste bitter.
Irma reach her arms around him, pressing her body to his as she kissed him. He responded, and it felt incredibly weird to have an erection. Especially in clothes that were now too small for him. "Because you asked me to," Irma said.
"... do you think there's something wrong with me?" Karen asked. "Am I some kind of pervert who gets off on being a girl?"
Irma shook her head. "No. Karen. It took months for you to get used to being a girl, and I'm sure you could get used to being a guy again if you wanted to, but you're not the same as you were when you were first transformed. Nobody is ever the same as they were. We're all changing, all the time. You ten years ago would probably have a hard time with you five years ago. But you didn't just change over time the way everyone does. There's also…"
"Divine," Karen said.
Irma nodded.
"I… I took her into me. I didn't kill her. I didn't try to smother her. I could have, but she was just a kid. Mentally, I mean." Karen looked a little uncomfortable. "So instead of smothering her, we became the same person."
Irma nodded again. "And Divine has always been a girl. Even so, it's up to you, Karen. This is about you being comfortable in your own skin. Do whatever you need to do. Do you want to give this a chance, spend a few days or weeks as a boy to see if you can get used to it, or do you want to go back to being a girl?"
Karen was silent for a full minute before she took a breath and said, "Change me back,"
Billy nodded, and began the spell. It was easier than turning her into a guy had been. Far easier. Her body didn't resist this change, nor did the magic that was still bound to it.
Change me back. How weird was it that that was how he thought of returning to her female body? Back before she'd merged with Divine, she'd never thought that way. Of course, before she'd merged with Divine, she'd been in Kara's body, and she never would have done this if it had meant forcing Kara to be a guy - the very idea of Power Girl as a guy made her skin crawl. But as the change took place, and his male body returned to female, Karen sighed with relief. There was no going back.
... hang on a second. Something felt 'off.' She was female, sure, but there was a... weight. She looked down, noticing the slight bulge in pants that were designed to fit her, and saw what was beneath with her x-ray vision. And she had both. The male organ sat directly above the female one, growing right out of where the… oh boy. And she had no balls for some reason. Oh. Right. Because she had ovaries. Or whatever kryptonians had that did what ovaries did. Didn't look quite the same as what humans had when she looked at herself with her x-ray vision, but it did the same thing. Well, it probably did the same thing. She shot Billy a baleful look. "Very funny," she said.
Billy smirked. "Sorry. Let me handle that for you."
Karen blushed to the tips of her ears. "Could you maybe rephrase that?" she asked.
Irma began to laugh.
Billy's smirk widened into a full blown grin. "Nope." Then he spoke the words to make it go away, and Karen let out a breath.
"Thanks," she said.
"Any time." He paused. "Seriously. Any time. Teddy's gonna be pissed I didn't take any pictures of that last part."
"Teddy?"
"My boyfriend," Billy said by way of explanation.
He said it casually. It wasn't any kind of grand revelation to him. It wasn't deviant. It wasn't a big deal. It was just his boyfriend. Back in Sunnydale, when she'd been Xander, that would have been weird. She'd have been okay with it after a while, but it would have been weird. Here, after everything she'd been through, it just didn't seem like that big of a deal. In fact, what DID seem odd about that statement was something else entirely. Karen blinked. "Your boyfriend has a fetish for…"
"Just sometime," Billy said. "Mostly we stay the way we are, but every now and again…" He winked, "Shapeshifters. They like to mix things up. Go figure."
Irma finally got her laughter under control, bringing it down to the level of the occasional giggle. "Billy Kaplan," she said, "you're horrible."
Squick. Oh so much squick. "I'm just going to go repress this memory and pretend you changed me straight back into a girl," Karen said.
Billy laughed. "Repress away," he said cheerfully.
"And thanks, Billy," Karen said. She looked him in the eye, then. "Thank you," she repeated.
Billy nodded. "You're welcome."
The sun had gone down by the time Karen and Irma left Billy's house, and they didn't fly away. They walked. Karen had been about to lift off into the air, but Irma gave her arm a tug and gestured to the sidewalk. At Karen's questioning look, Irma had smiled enigmatically. "It occurred to me," Irma said, "That we still haven't gone on that date."
Karen's eyes widened slightly, and her heart beat a little faster. "Now?" she asked.
"What do you want to bet that if we go back to changed, something will happen that prevents us from leaving?" Irma asked. "Now."
"I don't know if I'm really in the mood for much after…" The memory of what it felt like when Billy had turned her into a guy came rushing back. Her stomach sank, and her skin crawled.
"That's why," Irma said. "When was the last time you went out and did something fun? Just to do something fun?"
Karen thought about that. "I don't remember," she admitted.
"That settles it, then," Irma said. "It doesn't have to be romantic if you're not up for it. We can just be two friends going out together and having a good time."
Karen smiled. "Okay."
They took the subway to the Times Square 42nd Street station. It was the middle of the evening rush, and the subway station was crowded, full of people who were on their way home, or heading out to dinner, or heading out to catch a show, or a thousand other things. It was crowded enough that Karen felt a little uncomfortable. People were too close. She got jostled a few times, bumped a few more, just on account of how many people there were, and people - mostly men - followed her with their eyes. Not everyone, but enough that it was noticeable. At one point, she'd had to shove a guy who got a little too close even within the tight confines of the crowded subway car, but she didn't think anything of it at the time. Person way too close to her, shove person away, person dealt with.
"Are you all right?" Irma asked as they exited the car.
Karen blinked, not really sure why she was asking. "Sure, why?"
Irma looked at her for another second before she seemed to relax. "Nothing," she said.
They left the subway station and walked out into Times Square. It almost overwhelmed Karen. There was so much light, so many people, signs and music and the buzz of the crowd, and honking car horns, and she was right there in the press, not floating above it like she usually did, and it was beautiful. It actually took her a second to make sense of what she was seeing visually, but once she did, she grinned. "Wow," she said.
Dinner came first. There was a shawarma place about a block away that Irma wanted to go to. Karen wasn't actually sure what a shawarma was, but she figured she'd give it a shot. Turned it It was sort of a wrap with slow cooked meat and hummus, tahini, pickled turnips, and other vegetables, and it was pretty darn good. They talked for a while. Not about themselves, but about other things. Silly things. Things that didn't matter, and were therefore incredibly important. Favorite movies and television shows at first, music later. Only when they were about to leave did their conversation hit on things closer to home. And then, as they were walking out, Karen said, "Hey, can I get your opinion on something?"
Irma nodded.
"My code name, Nightwing. It's not me. Do you have any ideas for a replacement that aren't of the awful?"
Irma thought about it. "Gemini?"
Karen blinked. "Gemini?"
Irma nodded. "You know. The twins?"
Karen rolled her eyes. "I see what you did there." She paused. "I was thinking maybe something like Defender or something, but that seems a little generic."
"More generic than Spider-Man?" Irma asked.
"Point."
"You could call yourself Supergirl," Irma suggested. "Though you might not enjoy being stuck with 'girl' in your name when you're older. Next time you see her, ask Power Girl what she thought of being Power 'Girl' when she was twenty five. See what she says."
"Maybe something like… Valkyrie?"
"Already taken," Irma said.
"Ultra Girl?"
"Again with the 'girl' in the name."
Karen frowned. "Right." She thought. "Flamebird, maybe."
Irma considered that, then nodded. "Could work," she said. "Though that will associate you with the Phoenix in the minds of anyone who knows of it."
"Hmm," Karen said. They were back at Times Square, now, and the crowds became very thick again - thick enough that they had to stop talking about superhero code names. "All right," Karen said. "Where to next?"
Irma gestured to a big display out in front of a theatre. "Have you seen Wicked?" she asked.
Karen looked. The banner for the musical had a woman all in white whispering into the ear of a surprisingly sexy looking Wicked Witch of the West. "Never heard of it."
That settled it. They bought tickets and went in. The next showing was beginning in forty five minutes, and they got reasonably good seats. Karen was surprised by how much she liked the show, even if Irma was disappointed that they didn't have Idina Menzel in the lead anymore. Afterwards, they went to a club that Karen could only suppose was what the Bronze wanted to be when it grew up. Neither was old enough to get in, but when they presented their IDs, Irma looked at the bouncer, and his eyes seemed to relax, and he waved them both in.
They danced for a while, and it was good. Awkward at first, because Karen's dance moves were a bit on the unimpressive side, but Irma showed her how to do it, and it got more fun as time went on. There, in the light and the haze, most of the people around them just having a good time, most of them drinking, letting the music roll over them. The rhythm of it got inside you in a way that was hard to describe, but it was fun. A few times a guy got it into his head to try to dance with one of them. Irma took a few up on the offer. Karen didn't. Things went well until Irma had to step out to the ladies' room for a minute.
Karen stood alone off to the side, sipping at the drink she had just bought and watching the crowd. Just a coke. She was quite rationally terrified of the thought of a drunk Kryptonian, so had avoided the alcohol.
A voice filtered through the crowd, then, unfamiliar, but unmistakably the voice of a young man. "Woah. Check out that big-tittied slut over there."
Her first reaction was disbelief. Did that guy just call her… holy shit, he actually had.
"Woah," another young man said. "I dunno, man. She's probably a mutie."
"Why do you say that?" the first asked.
"You think there's a way to get those tits and that ass into that shirt and those pants without some kind of mutant power involved?"
The first man laughed. "If she is, then she's only good for one thing," he said lightly. "If not, maybe she can make sandwiches, too. Hey, I bet you I'm boning her by the end of the night." He was tall, maybe 6'3", with pale skin and short dirty blonde hair, and was wearing a polo shirt and trousers over golf shoes. Karen supposed that he was good looking as guys went, but he didn't do anything for her. Thank Crom.
"Nah, man," his friend said, "She's here with another girl."
The music was loud enough that no non-Kryptonian would have heard him, much less his companion's reply. Karen did. She sighed.
"Ain't no thing," the first guy replied cheerfully. "Tits and an ass like that is worth working for. You distract the other one when she gets out of the bathroom. I'll hit her up. And hey, maybe you'll get lucky, too!"
"... And I'm pretty sure she's hitting for the other team. I saw the way she and that blonde she was with were looking at each other, and I'm pretty sure they kissed at one point. It was totally hot."
The first guy grinned. "Nah, that just makes it hotter. Wouldn't be the first time I boned a lesbian. All it takes is some deep dickin', and they come around sooner or later." Then he repeated something he'd already said, and didn't seem to be aware that he'd done it, "Hey, when the other one comes out of the bathroom, I want you there by the door to distract her. Imma go score me some boo-tay." He slid his right middle finger back and forth through a ring formed by his left thumb and index finger in a demonstrative fashion, and then weaved his way through the crowd towards Karen.
"Hey," the guy said. He looked her in the eye and smiled at her, and it was nice smile. It made him look handsome.
Karen forced down her bubbling irritation and met his gaze. "Hi," she said, her tone completely neutral.
"So," he said. "Is that a mirror in your pocket?" He waggled his eyebrows. "Because I can see myself in your pants."
Karen's jaw dropped open ever so slightly as she regarded him incredulously. "Excuse me?"
His aw-shucks grin was a little spoiled by his blush. "Sorry. I usually do better than that. But hey, at least I didn't say something really bad, like," he put on an overly dramatic voice, "With great penis comes great responsibility." He held out a hand. "I'm Will. And you are?"
Karen almost laughed at the guy's sheer audacity. She might have if the whole experience of being hit on by the guy weren't so utterly creepifying. His blinking rate came into synch with hers, which was weird, and was something she only noticed because, hey, Kryptonian senses give you a lot of things to notice.
She didn't take his hand.
Seriously. Did this sort of approach actually work? On women? … Uh… women who weren't her? Maybe if the woman in question had no standards and just wanted to get laid? Yeah. OK, that made sense. Didn't make the guy any less creepifying, but it made sense. "So very not interested," she said. She glanced across the crowd. No Irma yet. Damn it.
His smile didn't slip. He didn't lose momentum for a second. "Bet you would be if you gave me half a chance. I'm a decent guy." He matched her breathing rate next, and Karen felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. "I can be good." His hand brushed against hers. There was something predatory in the movement.
Karen didn't move. She stood there facing him directly, looking him straight in the eye, fists clenched at her sides. "Don't touch me," she said.
He didn't break eye contact, but he seemed to realize that this wasn't going the way he wanted. There was a strange glint in his eye, and he reached out for her again. "Hey now, I understand. You're picky about the guys you let approach you. I get it." He grinned. "That just makes it more fun."
Karen started to move her hand away, but he moved just a tiny bit faster, taking her hand. She didn't break eye contact. "I said, don't touch me."
He didn't let go of her hand.
Her anger finally reached a boiling point, and Karen was talking before she actually intended to be, her anger spurring her words onwards, "Listen, Will," she said, and jerked her hand out of his, surprising him with her strength. "I'm going to explain this using very simple words so you can understand. You cannot have me. I am not interested. There is nothing you have that I want. There is nothing that you can do that will be anything more than mildly irritating to me. You cannot hurt me. If you try, you are only going to injure yourself. Now go away." She didn't know it, but her eyes flashed with an angry red light as she spoke.
For a split second, Will looked completely shocked, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. "You're a mutant!" He said it loudly, and it attracted the attention of other eyes. Then his eyebrows drew down and his lips thinned as he glowered at her from beneath lowered brows. "How dare you speak to me like that, you mutie bitch," he hissed. "Nobody talks to me like that. Nobody."
She still didn't break eye contact. "Go. Away."
Will's lips curled up to show teeth, and there was something very dark behind his eyes. He broke eye contact and stormed stormed away, and the crowd parted to allow his passage.
Irma returned a moment later. She hugged Karen, looking at her with concern. "Everything okay?" she asked.
Karen shrugged, allowing her anger to drain away. "I'm fine," she said. "Just not used to dealing with cavemen." She paused. "Dealing with cavemen who think I'm their prey." She paused again, this time with a disturbed look on her face. "... Holy monkey balls, that guy treats women like they're prey. Is that normal?"
Irma shook her head. "No," she said. "Most guys aren't like that."
"You've got but face," Karen said. At Irma's raised eyebrow, she amended, "Um, most guys aren't like that, but…?"
"Enough are," Irma said.
Karen felt something cold in the pit of her stomach. She felt eyes on her. A lot of people took note of her in the club. A few jealous looks. A few filled with desire. One or two looked upon her with contempt. A new song began. Something with a driving beat and a throbbing bass that she could feel in her chest when it hit notes that resonated with the building. She was about to ask Irma what she meant, but instead she asked, "Do you want to get out of here?"
Irma nodded. "Sure," she said, and took Karen's hand and squeezed it comfortingly. Karen squeezed back, though she took care to do it as lightly as she could.
They left the club hand in hand. The exit they took put them out in an alleyway. It was a narrow place, wide enough for one car to pass with only a little room on its right and left. The walls of the buildings on either side were covered in graffiti, some artistic, some not. There was a manhole a ways down the alley, and steam billowed out of it into the evening air
There were five men waiting for them in the alley. One of them - one wearing a white Friends of Humanity t-shirt over blue jeans looked up as they came out the door. "Ladies," he said.
Karen and Irma both paused.
That was when Will let go of the door and hit Karen from behind. He struck her on the back of the head with a beer bottle, hitting her as hard as he could. The bottle shattered against her skull. It didn't hurt her, but she wasn't expecting it and hadn't set herself against it. She fell to the ground. That didn't hurt, either, though it mussed up her clothes a little.
There was a confused moment when something was hit her head a couple of times, though it felt more like someone was very lightly tapping her head; there was a sickening crack, and Will took a sharp, pained breath. Then Karen grabbed the guy and, in spite of her anger, shoved him away from her as gently as she could. He staggered back into the other guys but didn't go down. Will and the other five guys began circling them like wolves who had cornered a deer. The truth was closer to wolves that had 'cornered' a pair of battle tanks, but they didn't know that.
"Back off," Karen said. "Last chance."
Irma began to concentrate.
"This the mutie who thinks she's too good for you, Will?" one of the other guys asked.
Will nodded. "And her girlfriend." He said that last word with contempt. He was limping, now, and trying not to show it. "How about we teach the two of them a lesson they won't ever forget?"
The other guys kept circling. Karen continued to stand there, not moving. Irma's eyes glowed, and the air in front of her shimmered.
"They're both mutants," the man with the Friends of Humanity shirt noted.
"I can't believe these uppity muties think they have some right to mingle with the rest of us," said a second man. "You'd think they would have gotten a clue after most of them lost their powers."
"Enough talk," Will said.
Will and his friends moved in for the kill.
Karen forced herself not to react. Irma could take care of any number of them, and she, despite how despicable these men were, she needed not to kill them. She was tempted. It would be easy. She wouldn't have to try hard. They had no idea how thin the thread was that their lives hung from. But that's not what Power Girl would do, and it's not what Superman would do. She opened her eyes. She was ready for this.
They split into two groups: half went for Irma, the other half for Karen.
Friends of Humanity guy came at Karen, delivering what, to any human woman, would have been a one hit knockout blow directly to her jaw, and would have shattered her jaw besides. She tilted her head slightly with the impact, trying to reduce its impact on the man. He still broke every bone in his hand. He howled in surprised agony even as Will and the other one came at her. Will still held part of the broken bottle in his hand, wielding it like a knife. He stabbed her with it, hard, jabbing it savagely into her belly.
The knife shattered against her impenetrable skin. Physics did the rest. Will screamed at the jagged shards of glass sliced open his hand, blood spraying from a laceration that had nicked a vein.
The third man, his eyes wide in terror, stopped short, backed away, and drew a gun from his jacket. Karen just looked at him. He leveled it at her and pulled the trigger twice. The first bullet hit Karen in the eye. It bounced. The bullet bounced off of her eyeball and went flying into the foot of one of Irma's attackers, who howled in agony. She plucked the second shot out of the air with her bare hands. Before he could fire the third, she had taken the gun right out of his hand, took it in hers, and crushed it into a ball of metal about the size of a ping-pong ball before his disbelieving eyes.
Karen blew a puff of super-breath at the man, and it knocked him off his feet. He lay there on the ground, stunned. She looked to Irma, then, whose three opponents each lay unconscious at her feet. None had gotten close enough to attack her. She felt a sense of fierce pride at that.
Will stared at her in utter disbelief. "... Who are you?" he asked.
"Who am I?" Karen asked, "What, now you want to know?" Karen drew herself up to her full height, a full six feet tall, and looked upon him as if he were the most utterly insignificant creature she had ever had the displeasure to look upon. "I warned you, Will. I told you there was nothing that you could do that would be anything more than mildly irritating to me. You cannot hurt me, and you can not have me." Her eyes flashed red as she spoke the next three words: "I. AM. DIVINE." She missed Irma's worried look. "And you," she let out a quiet snort, "are beneath me."
Will's face fixed itself into a rictus of hate. "You… fucking… bitch," he hissed.
She moved forward, then, ripping his shirt right off of him, the fabric tearing as if it were made of rice paper. She tore it into strips. "What are you doing?" he demanded.
"Making sure you don't die."
Even as Karen carefully, patiently wrapped his heavily lacerated, bloody hand in the remains of the shirt, he opened his mouth to spit out some new, vile, hateful thing. Karen interrupted him. "Hold still and shut up or I'll break your legs," she said cheerfully.
He shut up and held still.
She tied off the makeshift bandage and gave him a once-over with her x-ray vision. Aside from the lacerations on his hand, he'd broken his other hand punching her, and had a broken foot from where he'd stomped repeatedly on her head. Friends-of-Humanity shirt guy was in a similar state. All of the others were unconscious. A moment later, with Irma's telepathic assistance, Will joined them in that state. Karen turned to Irma. "What did you mean, 'enough are'?"
Irma studied Karen's face - or more likely, her thoughts - for a moment before answering. "When you lived in Sunnydale, as a guy, would you ever have gone out walking in a cemetery by yourself in the middle of the night?"
Karen blinked. "Of course not," she said.
"Why not?" Irma asked.
"Back when I was a guy," Karen made a face, "and there's a sentence I never thought I'd utter - I didn't have any powers. I wouldn't go into a place like that without at least having Willow with me."
"Why?"
"Because of the vampires," Karen said.
"Right," Irma said. "And if you were at the Bronze by yourself, and a really attractive girl you've never seen before was coming onto you, and wanted you to leave with her, would you?"
Karen shook her head. "No. Two reasons. One, because I don't wanna be a vampire's dinner. Two, because even if she's not a vampire, there's always the chance she'll be a Preying Mantis Lady or a dark witch who wants my blood for a ritual or something." She smirked a little at Irma's expression in regards to the last two. "Don't look at me like that. Those things are more common than you'd think."
"Dark alleys late at night?" Irma asked once she'd regained her composure.
"I'm gonna go with no," Karen replied.
"So you had things you did to avoid being taken by a vampire?" Irma asked.
Karen nodded, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. "Lots of things. Crosses. Holy water. Never invite anyone into your home. The best one was hanging out with the Slayer. Why are you asking me about…?" she trailed off as it all clicked together in her head. "Oh," she said. "Seriously?"
Irma nodded. "You and I probably aren't in any danger: not from strangers, not from people we know. But most girls don't have superpowers, Karen. What it comes down to is power and fear. Who has it. Who wields it. Individually, and as groups within the culture. When you lived in Sunnydale, you were afraid. That was rational. It was the Hellmouth. There really were terrible monsters in the night that were just waiting for the chance to have you. There probably aren't as many guys like Will in New York as there were monsters in Sunnydale. Now, guys like Will aren't actually monsters. They're human beings who should know better. But we live in a world where if a woman gets raped, there's a hundred people ready to explain all the ways that 'she was asking for it,' and the men who should know better? Well, 'boys will be boys'. There's more to it than that. A lot more. It's complicated, and there are a thousand things I could say on this subject and not even scratch the surface. But that's the best I can do in five minutes."
Karen thought about that. "I…" The subject was making her uncomfortable, and it showed on her face. "I don't know," she said.
"What do you think would have happened to us tonight if we'd both been flatscans in the same situation?" Irma asked.
Karen really didn't want to think about that, but the answer seemed obvious enough. She shuddered. "Point," she said.
They used Will's cell phone to call 911 and report the incident. The woman on the other end of the line wanted them to stay on the phone, but Irma just let it drop from her telekinetic grip. Irma's telepathic voice whispered in Karen's though, then, with a distinctly wry tone, "All right, we've summoned medical help for the people who hurt themselves trying to hurt us. Anything else you'd like to do before the night's over?"
Karen thought about that. "... Yeah. I think there is. Come with me. I want to show you something."
"OK."
Karen picked Irma up Superman style. "Can you handle the upper atmosphere?"
Irma nodded, and with an effort of will, shifted into her Dark Phoenix costume.
Karen shot into the air, then, and the wind of their passage pressed Irma close against her chest. Up, up, and away they went into the clear night sky, higher and higher into thinner and thinner atmosphere until they could see the whole curvature of the Earth below, the lights of the eastern seaboard shining like stars upon the planet below. The moon and the stars were impossibly bright, impossibly clear, and Karen saw all of it; not just the visible spectrum, but the whole universe laid out above her, the lingering glow of the Big Bang suffusing it, objects and constellations in the night that no human eye could see, the radio-songs of the stars and the planets like distant music. And the sounds of the Earth below: every radio signal, every thermal glow, the hum of the cities, the sounds of conversation, a baby's first cry, the distant, desperate cry of a grown human drawing his last breath.
"Listen," she said, letting Irma float in the air under her own power now.
Irma raised an eyebrow.
Karen tapped her own temple with a finger. "Listen."
Irma Cuckoo listened. She listened through Karen's ears, saw through Karen's eyes, and in that moment, she saw and heard… everything. She stared down at the planet. '... All the time?' she asked telepathically.
Karen nodded.
Neither one spoke for several seconds. And then Karen let go of Irma and said, "Come on."
Irma didn't have to ask what she meant. She saw it in her thoughts. 'Mother is going to be very annoyed,' she sent.
Karen grinned, and without another word she rocketed back towards the Earth, breaking the sound barrier as she went. Irma's eyes flashed, and a very faint fiery bird shape coalesced around her before she shot off after Karen's distant form.
There were people out there who needed saving.
END CHAPTER 01
Thus begins the next story arc for A New World in my View. :D
