Chapter 44: Hi, Mom!

Disclaimer: All things Supergirl/Superman belong to DC. No infringement is intended.


The girl with no name (except possibly Supergirl, she liked that name) was sitting in a chair and wondered whether this had really been such a great idea after all. On the plus side, she was currently sitting on a space station with an awesome view of the world below. That was pretty hard to beat and had the added benefit that she doubted anyone would dare follow her up here. On the negative side, of course, she was currently being stared at suspiciously by the world's greatest superheroes.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. She needed help if she wanted to stay free (and certainly didn't intend to spend the rest of a hopefully long life hanging out in warehouses). So when she happened to see Superwoman herself flying over Metropolis, she hadn't really spent much time thinking things over. She had launched herself into the sky and cheekily greeted the world's most famous superhero, trusting in her charm and cute looks.

She had not expected the woman to nearly pass out from shock and stare at her as if she was seeing a ghost. Maybe calling her "mom" had not been the greatest idea she ever had.

"So start talking, girl," the Batman growled at her.

With Superwoman looking as if she was going into some kind of panic attack, the girl had not dared say anything else until more people arrived. Superwoman had radioed someone for assistance and only a few minutes later Wonder Woman had shown up, followed another a few minutes later by the Batman in some kind of bat-shaped airplane (he was really living his theme). And now they were in a space station high above the Earth, brought up here by some kind of teleportation beam.

The Batman was clearly taking the lead in the inevitable grilling, seeing as Superwoman still looked pretty shaken and Wonder Woman seemed to be busy consoling her about something. The girl still wasn't sure how she had managed to mess this up in the first few seconds and with just two words.

Two others were present as well, the guy in the red and white flying suit she had met before, and a really big, really green alien-type guy. Should the presence of a green alien freak her out more? Well, it wasn't like her life had been in any way normal before, so why start now?

"Let's start with: who are you?" the Batman asked, getting in her face. For all that he was (probably) just a normal man with no super powers, the guy sure knew how to intimidate. Not that she would ever admit that. She was Supergirl, after all. Yeah, that sounded really good.

"I don't have a name as such," she finally said, shrugging. "They only ever called me 'the Subject'. I think they also had a number for me, but I didn't bother memorizing it. I was kind of hoping I could go by Supergirl."

The five adults stared at her, clearly not having expected this answer. "Who is 'they'?" Batman finally asked.

"They call themselves Cadmus," she explained, not enjoying the memories popping up in association with that name. "Some kind of science project or other, I'm not sure. They... well, they made me. I'm a clone."

She looked up. "A clone of Superwoman, to be precise, at least that's what they told me."

"A clone?" Superwoman repeated, still looking unnaturally pale and likely to be blown over by a moderately strong breeze right now.

"Is that even possible?" Batman asked Superwoman.

"I... I didn't think it would be," Superwoman replied, "at least not with Earth's current tech base."

"She does look a whole lot like a younger you," Wonder Woman said, her hand never having moved from Superwoman's shoulder, almost as if she was holding her up. "And she seems to have your powers, too."

"Not all of them," the girl admitted. "I still haven't figured out the whole laser vision thing. But flying is really cool."

"Why did you call me mom?" Superwoman asked, almost in a whisper. She was clenching her fists so hard the girl expected to hear bones break any second now.

She shrugged again. "Yeah, sorry about that, I... well, I figure if I'm your clone, then you are kind of my mom, right? And it seemed, well, it sounded better than saying 'Hi, clone template', you know?"

This caused the guy in the red and white suit to chuckle, earning him a grim look from the Batman. "What? She's right, it does sound better."

Superwoman didn't seem to be in a laughing mood. She looked at the big green alien guy, clearly waiting for him to say something.

"She is telling the truth," green alien guy said. "At least she believes she does."

"Of course I… wait, how would you know?"

"Never mind that," Batman said, bringing her attention back to him. "So you are a clone of Superwoman, created by some kind of science project named Cadmus. How does that lead to you hanging out in Metropolis' warehouse district and saving people out of burning buildings?"

"I escaped, okay? I didn't fancy living my entire life in a cage, being prodded by creepy scientists. When my strength really kicked in, I didn't waste any time and busted out of there."

The Batman seemed set to continue the interrogation, but a side-glance at Superwoman apparently changed his mind. The girl was sure she was missing something here. What was going on? Was Superwoman really that creeped out by having a teenaged clone?

Was she really that repulsive?


Kara was sure that Diana's hand on her shoulder was the only thing keeping her from suffering a total breakdown and crumbling into a crying mess. This was too much. She had barely managed to get back to her feet after the Black Mercy, after losing her people all over again and seeing her daughter fade away in her arms. Little Kona, who had never been real. But now there was this girl, looking just like Kara had when she had just arrived here on Earth. Looking like Kona might have if she had been real and given the chance to grow up.

She needed every bit of will power to stop herself from simply launching right through the wall of the Watch Tower in order to get away. Her blood was roaring in her ears to the point where she could barely understand a word being said by the others.

"Adam, would you mind showing... Supergirl here the galley and getting her something to eat?" Bruce asked.

Adam clearly got the message and steered the girl out of the room. The moment she was out the door, Kara collapsed into the nearest chair, her hands covering her face. She felt like her heart was about to burst out of her chest.

"Just breathe, Kara," Diana said, rubbing her back.

"I can't do this," she whispered, hyperventilating. "I can't!"

Kona, her little girl, held tightly in her arms only to fade away like smoke. A flying teenager calling her mom, wearing her own face, Kona's face. Her little girl, pleading with her, telling her that she didn't want to go. Her face was flickering, the features of a 4-year-old fading in an out on a 13-year old clone.

"Rao, I can't breathe," she chocked out, fully aware that she was having a panic attack, but that knowledge didn't help in the least.

A green hand gently came to rest on her head and a soothing blanket seemed to wrap itself around her racing thoughts, forcing them to slow down, blunting the edges. J'Onn's familiar presence was like a cold breeze across her overheated mind, not intruding or suppressing, simply the mental equivalent of a loving embrace. Slowly her breathing began to even out, her heart no longer threatening to burst.

"Thank you, J'Onn," she finally whispered.

"That's what family is for, Karen," he simply said, withdrawing his hand.

"I'm sorry," Bruce said, sitting down beside her. "I should have waited to..."

"Not your fault," Kara said, waving him off. "I didn't expect... Rao, I'm a mess!"

She'd had panic attacks before, especially during the first few years on Earth. The walls closed in, resembling the escape pod she had been sealed in. The blinding light of her world's death flash seared her eyes and she could hear the screams, even though there had been none in the vacuum of space. It had been years since she'd had one this bad, but ever since the Black Mercy… ever since Kona...

"I'm not sure any of us would have reacted differently," J'Onn assured her. "I don't even want to imagine what it would have been like to see someone looking like my daughter simply appear out of the blue."

Kara nodded, recalling that J'Onn hadn't simply lost his people on Mars, but also a wife and a daughter. If anyone could understand how she was currently feeling, it was him.

"Why now?" Kara asked, voice barely audible. "Why, of all the times this could have happened, why now?"

Diana seemed to muse this over. "Maybe it's fate?"

"What do you mean?" Kara asked, looking up to meet her best friend's soft gaze.

"I mean, Kara, that life dealt you a terrible blow, and not for the first time. You have suffered so much, dear sister. Maybe... maybe the gods decided that you were due some compensation?"

Kara rolled those words around her mind. Compensation? What was she talking about?

"You lost your daughter," Diana told her. "She might not have been real, but she was to you. Maybe the gods decided that you deserve to get her back?"

"That girl isn't Kona," Kara whispered, shaking her head.

"Of course not. But she is here. And in a way, she is your daughter, strange as it may be."

"That is something we should verify first," Bruce interjected. "Even with J'Onn reading her thoughts, all that we know is that she was told she's your clone. Doesn't mean she really is."

Kara pulled herself together, focusing on the mission at hand.

"You're right. Step one, we verify her story. Step two, we find out what this Cadmus thing is all about and, if necessary, put a stop to it. If some scientists are really creating super-powered children from a test tube and keeping them in cages, that isn't something we can ignore."

"And step three?" Diana asked her.

Kara took a deep breath. "I'm not ready to think that far ahead yet."


Fully aware that she had been sent out of the room so that the adults could talk, the girl simply enjoyed a good meal for once. Adam, as he had introduced himself, had brought her some stew and a coke, both of which she inhaled. She might not need food as much as regular people, but it didn't mean she wasn't hungry.

She had tried to listen in on the conversation next door, but her enhanced senses were pretty much a come-and-go thing at the moment. Also, the doors here seemed to be really, really sound proof, too. Which was too bad, because she really, really needed to know what would happen next and how she had messed everything up.

"Does she hate me?"

The words were out of her mouth without ever passing through her conscious mind. Adam paused from where he was putting together a second helping for her, looking over. She hadn't meant to ask this question, but she was still desperately waiting for his answer.

"She doesn't hate you," he finally said, sitting down to her. "She... let's just say she had a really, really rough time recently. Really got put through the wringer. She simply wasn't ready for the revelation that there is a mini-her running around. It's got nothing to do with you, kiddo."

The girl looked down. "Not like I asked for this."

"No one asks to be born," Adam told her. "We all just try to make the best of it after it's happened."

She scoffed. "Can you call it being born if you got made in a test tube?"

Adam shrugged. "Well, you're here now, aren't you? Counts as being born in my book."

The smallest hint of a smile graced her lips. She figured Adam was a pretty good guy, at least, and maybe, possibly somewhat on her side. She wasn't sure that went for anyone else here.

The door opened and the other four adults came walking in. Superwoman still looked pale, but not quite as fragile as a few minutes ago. Her steps faltered for a moment, but then she approached the table the girl was sitting at and sat down beside her.

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," she began. "First of all, you and I are going to go to a place where we can verify if these Cadmus people have been telling you the truth. Whether or not you really are a clone of me."

"You don't believe me?" she asked, surprised how much that hurt.

"I believe you," she assured her. "Not sure about the people who held you captive, though."

Which was a good point, the girl had to admit.

"Meanwhile the rest of the League," she motioned towards the others, "are going to investigate this Cadmus project. Can you tell us where they held you?"

"Some kind of underground facility near Metropolis," the girl said. "At least that's where I came out when I escaped."

Batman seemed to think of something. "There was something near Metropolis a few weeks back, some kind of explosion opening up some underground tunnels that weren't on any map. Superboy was close by at the time."

The girl looked down. "Yeah, that was me. Well, not the explosion, at least I don't think so. They tried to stop me with a bomb, I think. Anyway, that's where I came out."

"It's a start," J'Onn said. "Emergency services have been over the site a few times, but maybe we can find something they missed."

"I'll contact Green Arrow to meet us there," Adam said, getting up.

The other League members filed out of the room. Wonder Woman remained behind, still standing close to Superwoman. Apparently she was coming along.

"Where are we going?" the girl asked.

"To the one place on Earth that has the necessary equipment to decode Kryptonian DNA."


Kara tried to remember another time in her life when she had felt so torn. It was as if her body was split right down the middle, with one half wanting nothing more than to run as far away from this ghost-made-flesh as was possible, the other wanting to hold her tight and never let go. She wasn't sure how much longer she could stand this.

Flying down to the Fortress took but a few minutes. She hoped she wasn't making a mistake in showing this unknown girl the Kryptonian outpost, but it really was the only place on Earth with the proper equipment. Getting everything from the Fortress to the Watch Tower would simply take too long, never mind that the systems probably weren't compatible in the first place. And she needed answers now, not whenever.

The girl was deeply impressed by the Fortress, Kara could see it. In fact she could read the girl's face like a book, mostly because it was her own face and she had seen it in the mirror often enough. It was rather strange, in fact, how closely the girl's situation mirrored her own when she had been that age. At 13 she had been lost in a world she didn't know, uncertain what would happen next. Well, at the very least this girl hadn't seen her entire world destroyed. On the other hand, she had spent the first part of her life as some scientists' laboratory experiment. Kara wasn't sure that was better.

They headed directly towards the Fortress' medical station. Thankfully that was one part of the base that hadn't been destroyed by Kara's fight with Mongul. Quite a few other parts were still under reconstruction. She directed the girl to sit down on an examination couch, hoping that this didn't invoke too many memories of her previous life.

For the next ten minutes the Kryptonian scanners analyzed every inch of her, sequenced her genetic code, all in an effort to figure out whether the impossible was actually possible. Whether the girl who looked almost exactly like a teenaged Kara-El was really an Earth-made clone of a Kryptonian. No one said a word while the scanners worked.

When the examination was finally over, Kara studied the readouts. She was aware of Diana's continued presence, thankful that her best friend was there to have her back in this impossible situation. She was also acutely aware of the girl, who as now sitting on the edge of the examination couch and doing her best to seem unconcerned.

"So what's the verdict?" the girl finally asked when the silence became too oppressive. "What am I?"

"Well, that's a far more interesting question than you might think and I fear I do not have a simple answer for you."

For all that the girl did her best to show a façade of not caring to the entire world, Kara could easily see the subtle tension in her body. It was like looking into a mirror that reflected across a decade and more, showing her the young girl she had once been. She distinctly remembered how much effort she had put into appearing confident and untouchable, especially for Clark, despite being on the verge of a nervous breakdown more often than not. She remembered how badly she had wanted answers as to why all this had happened to her, answers she knew she would never get.

This girl didn't have a Clark to keep her sane, to give her life meaning. But at least Kara could give her some answers.

"You are not a clone for one thing," Kara said, sitting down beside the girl. "While there are quite a few similarities between our genetic profiles, they are not identical. Roughly 70% of our DNA is identical, which is less than would be the case if you were a clone, but more than if you were my natural offspring. Usually this degree of genetic similarity is only seen among siblings."

The girl frowned, clearly trying to wrap her mind around the answer. "You mean I'm your younger sister?"

Kara shook her head. "No. That might have been a possibility if not for the fact that the remaining 30% percent of your DNA is not Kryptonian. It is human. Which could be the reason you share some of my powers, but apparently not all of them."

The girl's eyes widened. "I'm partially human? How does that work? Did some Kryptonian travel to Earth and knock up a local girl?"

"Definitely not," Kara shook her head again. "Despite our superficial similarities, Kryptonians and humans are far too different to successfully interbreed."

"So... what am I then?" the girl asked, not quite managing to hide the fear in her eyes. She had built her sense of self on being a clone of Superwoman, Kara realized, and now that self was being put in question.

"I have a theory. I know that there have been attempts in the past to create clones of me. They did not succeed, as Earth's technology is still not able to decrypt Kryptonian DNA in its entirety. But if someone were to take those parts of Kryptonian DNA they were able to decrypt, and then go ahead and basically fill out the rest with human DNA, it might just be possible to create a viable human-Kryptonian hybrid. It's still far more advanced than Earth science ought to be, but it's the best explanation I can come up with."

Seeing the lack of comprehension in the girl's eyes, Kara leaned forward and took her hand. A part of her was screaming in denial, telling her to not say what she was about to say, but the other part and her common sense overrode it. "In simpler terms, it looks like you actually are my daughter, though in a very non-traditional way. A combination of my DNA and that of a human donor."

The girl's eyes switched between Kara's face and their joint hands, all pretense of nonchalance rapidly fading.

"So... what now?" she asked in a small voice.

And that was the million dollar question, wasn't it? What now. Kara briefly looked over at Diana, who was simply returning her gaze with a soft smile. Kara didn't really believe in fate or gods. Well, she did believe in Diana's gods, having met them, but she didn't really consider them gods in the classical sense. She still considered herself a daughter of Great Rao, but that was more a cultural thing than an actual spiritual belief.

But could it be that Diana was right? Was this fate somehow? Little Kona appeared before her eyes, as she often did ever since the Black Mercy. Her little girl, the daughter that had never been real. The daughter she had known WOULD never be real, simply because there was no chance of her ever being born in a universe where Clark and her where the sole survivors of Krypton.

And now, quite suddenly, there was this girl. This girl who the Kryptonian scanners told her was created partially from Kara's DNA. Could her best friend be right? Was the universe somehow looking to balance the scales? Was Great Rao somehow looking after his surviving children? Was some greater power or force giving little Kona a chance to be a real girl?

Her rational mind refused to believe it. But her eyes were locked on that teenage girl before her, looking so lost and uncertain about what the future would bring. She herself had been lost like that. And someone else had taken her in her arms that day, someone who was a stranger and became her mother.

Could she really do any less?

"Well, for starters," Kara finally said, doing her best to smile and praying to Rao she was doing the right thing, "we should come up with a name for you. Supergirl sounds cool when you're in action, but it doesn't work well across the breakfast table."

For a moment, she imagined a 4-year-old girl standing there in the room with them, looking at her with a toothy smile and giving her a firm nod. It was just a phantasy, she knew that, but it still made her feel lighter somehow.

"How about… Kona? Kona Kara-El?"

For the first time since they met, the girl gave her a truly genuine smile. "I like it."


End Chapter 44

Author's Note: As experienced DC Comics readers have surely surmised, Kona / Supergirl is my universe's equivalent of Kon-El / Superboy, the teenage clone/son of Superman. Given that she was created from Superwoman's DNA, it made sense to have her turn out female. Whether or not the donor of the human part of her DNA is the same as in the comics (not telling here for those who don't know), well, we shall see.

Also, Kona's full name is Kona Kara-El, as I have established for my story that teenage Kryptonian's carry the full name of a parent (usually the father) until their maturity (Clark is technically still Kal Jor-El) and Kara is the only parent they currently know of.

Next up: more on Supergirl's origins.