A/N: You'll probably have to wait a month until the next update, but I've loaded this chapter with a lot for you guys and then once I'm back, the story will likely be completed by the new year :)

The next 45 hours of travel felt like they had passed by rather quickly. Over that time, not a whole lot more words had been spoken, something which rather disappointed Ellis. It stemmed from the fact that the Kara Zor-El she heard about was far different from the one in front of her right now. She would have loved to spend hours on end just talking to her, picking her brain about any and everything. She would have done just that with the "old Kara", but this "new" one? Just a couple of conversations with her were enough for Ellis to embrace the silence between them and let it be.

It's not that Ellis didn't expect Kara to be different and blamed her for it. The more Ellis sat beside Kara, the more she slowly began to understand, and became even more amazed that Kara was even still alive today. The survivor's guilt set on by her curse of immortality would have been enough to drive most people into complete lunacy, if not towards suicide. Becoming as cold and calloused as she seemed was probably the best-case scenario for someone like her.

Much of the journey was slept away by Ellis, finding the passenger seat to be an extraordinarily comfy spot compared to her previous ship. She was woken up with two frugal slaps across her face from Kara, who told her that they had almost arrived.

She watched Kara as they began to near Earth, seeing her constant and now familiar indifferent gaze ever so slightly change into one that subtly conveyed distress as the blue planet became clearer and clearer.

"Did you ever think that you'd be back here?" Ellis asked.

"Never," Kara replied, her eyes wandering to Mars, "What are Martian relations like with Earth?"

"Mutually non-interactive. We don't meddle in their affairs, they won't meddle in ours."

"J'onn J'onzz still alive?"

"No idea."

Kara switched the ship back to manual piloting to guide them to the dark side of Earth. The outlines of the USA's coasts remained visible due to the specks of light stemming from heavily populated areas. Kara knew exactly where to go. Having flown many times across the West Coast, the shape of the coastline had been burned into her memory and it didn't take her long to zone onto their destination.

"I've seen photos of how the city looked in the past," Ellis said, "It's different now."

"Think I won't recognise it?" Kara asked.

"You won't."

Ellis' words seemed to carry the substance of a warning, something which Kara tried to ignore as they entered the atmosphere and began their descent. An array of clouds blocked their initial view of the city, and just before they broke through them, Ellis offered just a few final words to mark their arrival at their destination.

"Welcome to Knight City."

Kara felt her heart momentarily stop beating for the first few seconds after she laid her eyes on what was once her beloved city. It had grown at least three or four times in size, with large skyscrapers and concrete infrastructure stretching out over what used to be a beautiful landscape. She tried to spot familiar buildings, but it was impossible as new buildings had popped up while old ones had been renovated beyond recognition. Arrays of neon lights around the vast city center's skyscrapers were blinding, contrasting with the even larger, more destitute areas that surrounded it, which seemed to be shrouded in darkness. Aerial vehicles were scattered like fireflies in the airspace around buildings, oftentimes passing through the large holograms of different kinds being projected in the skies.

One building stood above all others in the center of the city. It stood so high it almost brushed the clouds at its very highest point where two words glowed brightly – Lord Technologies.

"You good?"

Ellis' inquiry almost fell on deaf ears. Kara had become hypnotised and only just managed to catch on to the question being posed to her.

"What? Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just… taking it all in," she replied, her words getting caught up in her throat.

"Head East, past the city. There's an abandoned airstrip where we can park this thing."

Kara followed Ellis' directions to the airstrip, landing the ship in a neatly conspicuous hanger. Ellis had prepared well for their arrival, having hidden her car away in the corner of another hanger. The drive back into the city took no more than five minutes.

Seeing the city from above brought shock and hypnotism. Seeing it on a street level brought misery and despondency. They passed through desolate areas upon immediate re-entry with worn-down buildings and a homeless camp at almost every third stop-street.

But as they got closer and closer to the city center, it became more of a methodically structured metropolis. Every fourth person Kara could fixate her eyes on had a visible implant. Some implants were more aesthetically pleasing than others, like chrome arms or legs, but others had entirely restructured their faces with cyberware, appearing more machine than human. Everywhere she looked, there was a screen or hologram screaming something at her with a plastic optimism. Perhaps the most downright disturbing images for Kara were the holographic projections of trees on walkways where she remembered real trees once stood tall. The more she watched the people of Knight City, the more she wondered if they were holograms too. Just like the holographic images, the people seemed programmed in their movements and very nature, carrying lifeless expressions in whatever they did.

They finally passed by a place which Kara could recognise. Just like the rest of the city, real trees had been replaced by holograms, but other than that, the bay seemed like it had hardly changed. She spotted a large metallic figure in the distance, remembering that her statue had once stood there. It was still up when she'd left, and there was a tiny part of her that hoped it still would be. As they drove closer though, her realistic assumption that it had long since been taken down proved correct, but it hadn't just been taken down. It was replaced.

"Is that…"

Ellis glanced at Kara to see where her eyes were fixated, eventually shifting her own to what was a statue of Maxwell Lord, in the form of Knight's body, erected in the exact same place where Kara's had once been.

"Yeah, that's him," Ellis somberly replied.

Kara's stomach churned while burning at the same time as she glanced at the statue. The removal of her statue to be replaced by his own conveyed a truth that it had taken her a long time to figure out: It was never just about getting rid of Kara and taking away everything she cared and stood for. Lord had a God complex. He was jealous that Kara was everything he wasn't and he so desperately wanted to be acknowledged like how she had been for the longest time. Part of the reason why he hated her was because she didn't acknowledge her own power. She lived an ordinary life while downplaying the fact that she was a god amongst mortals, and he believed that to be a waste of her supreme abilities. She didn't want to be worshipped, but he did, even if it meant forcing an entire city at gunpoint to bend the knee to him.

At the very center of the city were the richest, a small group of elites who were all human. At the edge were the lowlifes, where the poorer humans and a lot of metas and aliens resided. Ellis' apartment building stood somewhere between the two. It wasn't quite as perilous as the edge, but nowhere near as furbished as the center. Garbage still littered the streets and criminals lurked at every second corner. Every time Kara could catch a glance at a neck, she spotted a neural port. It seemed to be a necessity to exist in the city, as she would come to find out that just like in outer space, all money was now digital. She didn't feel like she was back on Earth, nor did a single ounce of her feel like she had returned to the place that was once her home city.

She felt the furthest away from home she'd ever felt. National City was long gone.

Welcome to Knight City.

The splash of cold water on Kara's face was the fifth in just as many minutes. Each time, she hoped it would wake her up from this nightmare. Each splash came with the hope that it would jolt her to consciousness, and she'd wake up in a profuse sweat back on Sadostia. But this was reality, a reality she had chosen to face. There was no turning back now. She stared long and hard at the soul in the mirror opposite her, coming to grips with that fact.

Her hearing caught on to another muffled voice engaged with Ellis outside of the bathroom. Ellis had contacted the person she said could help them for free. He hadn't sounded too happy on the phone but agreed to meet up with them. From the sounds of things, he still wasn't happy.

"A merc? Are you out of your goddamn mind?! Even if I had a week, I couldn't list all the reasons why venturing off-planet to recruit mercs for this is a terrible idea," Kara heard him say.

"Maybe I wouldn't have if you weren't such a pussy to help me do it," Ellis replied.

"Yeah, Ellis, I'm scared to do it. I'm scared because I know that you're going to die in the process and I don't want you to."

"Not if you help me. We have this merc as well now, so I'll be fine. You're just going to have to work with her."

Kara realised that was her cue to introduce herself, opening the bathroom door and stepping out.

"How'd you even convince this poor woman to come alo-" The man's words were cut short as he laid eyes on Kara.

He and Kara appeared a mirror image of each other in many ways. They were paralysed into silence for the first few seconds upon seeing each other, with both their eyes widening and jaws almost dropping. Both were stupefied at the sight of the other, but there was a single difference in that he was overcome with an emotion of which Kara possessed none of for him – Anger. Pure, unadulterated rage.

His name eventually left Kara's mouth.

"Jordan?"

There was never a chance for this to be a joyful family reunion. Jordan Kent was propelled entirely by his fury as he sped over and swung his right hand directly into Kara's jaw. The powerful blow knocked Kara to the floor. She hadn't tasted her own blood in quite some time and spat out what had spilled into her mouth from a large gash on her inner cheek. The Kryptonian blood in her nephew slowed down his ageing process just like it had hers, but he did look different compared to the last time he saw her. He still looked a bit boyish with a modest physique in 2082, but he had since matured.

"You've got some fucking nerve coming back here," he spat out.

"Is that how you greet your family?" Kara quipped back, spitting out blood once more before rising to her feet.

"Call me family but you didn't even have the fucking decency to say goodbye before you left. Before you gave up."

The truth was that she couldn't bring herself to. She knew that he and Jonathan would plead with her to stay, and that they would have had the best chance of anyone to convince her to. It's not that she didn't have the "decency" to say goodbye. Decency was the wrong word. Fortitude seemed more accurate. Kara didn't have the fortitude to say goodbye to their faces and still do what she needed to despite how they would have reacted. She only told Esme and Nora about her departure, knowing that they would relay the information to anyone else who would need it.

"You call it giving up, I called it retirement," Kara replied.

"The least you could have done was stick around for his funeral," Jordan growled, "He passed in '92, put him next to mom and dad. He would have liked you there, you know."

Kara immediately knew that he was referring to his brother and her other nephew, Jonathan. His relationship with Kara had always been stronger than Jordan's. She didn't exactly know why, but perhaps it came from living in other people's shadows. It took her a long time to shed the label of "Superman's cousin", become her own person and forge her own legacy. For Jonathan, he was always in Jordan's shadow. Jordan's powers manifested naturally, but Jonathan didn't have such luck. He was set to live an ordinary life in an ordinary body while his brother would be extraordinary. Kara had never felt like she regretted leaving Earth but coming face to face with the fact that she hadn't been there for one of her last relatives in their dying moments challenged that notion.

"Sorry that I wasn't," Kara apologised earnestly.

Jordan was in no mood to be cordial as he cussed Kara out again. "Don't apologise, you bitch! We still needed you. If you had stuck around, maybe things wouldn't have gotten this bad."

"Sure, keep telling yourself that."

Jordan's self-control which kept him from sending another fist her way was almost broken by her nonchalant reply. Unable to handle the sight of her anymore, he turned back to Ellis. "You really couldn't have picked anyone else in the fucking universe?"

"I was the only choice," Kara quickly retorted, "I've got a stake in this."

"You don't have shit!" Jordan exclaimed, sticking his finger in Kara's face, "You don't get to after being gone for 64 years."

"Lord took Alex away from me," Kara snarled.

"And you got your revenge. Things are different now. You don't belong in this city. Hell, you don't belong on this planet anymore." Jordan turned back to Ellis, "Good fucking luck. I'm not working with this pathetic waste of space," he said of Kara before pacing towards the door.

"Jordan-" Ellis tried to call him back, but he resisted.

"You've really done it this time, Ellis! Fucked up big time," he shouted, chastising her with his parting words before he shut the apartment door behind him.

Somehow, that had gone even worse than Ellis expected. Jordan had told her himself how it bothered him that Kara left without saying goodbye, but she never expected such a volatile reaction in both physical and verbal manners. If she didn't know him better, she would have thought that this would be the end of it and that his help was lost.

"Sorry about that," Ellis turned back to Kara, "I should've told you-"

"Don't sweat it," Kara cut her off before she could finish the apology, "That 'Mr Complicated'?"

"How'd you know?"

"I'm perceptive," Kara replied, shrugging her shoulders while wiping the blood that was still trickling down a corner of her lips.

"He'll come around, he just needs time."

"You sure about that?"

"Yeah. He knows I'm not fucking around now, so he won't let us go into that tower without being there himself. He's the only help we'll have for the actual raid."

If his help was a guarantee like Ellis said it was, that would be a huge boost to their chances. While Kara didn't expect her relationship with him to mend over the next few days, she still felt she could trust him to contribute to the mission. Yet, hearing that he would be the only help for the raid struck a thought in Kara's mind. If Ellis was close with Jordan, she figured there had to be a chance that they knew of other metas who would be willing to tag along. Two, in particular, came to mind.

"You heard of Nora and Bart West-Allen?"

"Heard?" Ellis smiled, "I've met Nora."

"Where are they now?"

"Nora's still in Central City, but she's retired now. Bart… he was killed a few years back. That's another reason why Jordan is so mad at you. He feels Bart might have lived if you had still been around."

Kara shook her head. "As usual, everything is my fucking fault."

"You heard him. He sees it like you abandoned us."

There was just an ever so slight hint of vitriol in Ellis' voice, one that Kara was perceptive enough to pick up on.

"Do you?" she asked.

Ellis waited a second before replying, contemplating the best way to give a truthful answer. "You did leave, Kara. That's the truth."

The attempt to put it euphemistically hardly went over with Kara. She could too easily tell that Ellis, though not as intensely as Jordan, felt the same way. Not that she could blame them for it, but it still annoyed her. She fell back onto Ellis' couch and took out a cig, but she was quickly shut down.

"No smoking in here," Ellis quickly chided, "My apartment, my rules."

Reluctantly, Kara tucked the cig behind her ear and shoved her lighter back into her pocket. While Kara was happy to wait for Jordan to come around, she wasn't keen to sit around and do nothing while they waited for him.

"What can we do in the meantime?" Kara asked.

"Let's go to the tower. Let me show what we can expect at the ground level."

Of all the things that had changed since Kara had left, the only thing that hadn't was the name of the area where she had once stayed. Midtown was a large area, encompassing much of the middle ground between the city's luxurious center and penurious outskirts. It provided a median between the two extremes of the city. While residents weren't wealthy, they weren't deathly poor. Gang activity and crime were common, but the area maintained some form of order with mild police activity.

On the outskirts, crime was rampant and gangs controlled everything with little to no police resistance, while the city center, named Morgan Plaza, was a safe haven for the elite. Kara could immediately tell when they were out of Midtown and into Morgan Plaza. The cars appeared grander, the buildings became pristine and the people looked much different, appearing more youthful and often possessing stylish gold implants that were clearly of vastly superior quality than those available to the rest of the population. Crime at a street-level was completely non-existent, with police and private security vehicles constantly patrolling or being parked at nearly every street corner.

Almost nothing had been recognisable to Kara upon her return, but the setup of a little joint just a couple of blocks away from Lord Tower caught her eye. Its startling familiarity stopped Kara in her tracks for a few seconds as it became her sole focus. The glowing sign above read "Fire and Ice", but she remembered it to once be Noonan's. The common meetings with her friends here, the countless amount of potstickers eaten, grabbing coffee for Cat Grant every day… the hundreds of memories that had been made here started flooding back into her mind.

"Remember this place?" Ellis asked.

"Was something different when I was around," Kara replied coolly, brushing off any indication that it had once meant something to her.

Kara most assuredly knew this was a suicide mission the second that it had been brought to her. Jordan's hesitancy to go through with it strengthened that belief, but upon seeing the security measures in place around the tower first-hand, Kara realised that perhaps even "suicide mission" was putting it lightly.

"Keep walking. We don't want to appear suspicious for even a second," Ellis muttered, with Kara following her advice as they walked past the tower on the opposite side of the road.

The area in front of the actual entrance into the tower was barricaded off by large metal walls which brandished several cameras and active turrets. At the wall was the first security checkpoint, where a platoon of guards and four large mech drones were stationed.

"First layer of security," Ellis began explaining, "You need to present a digital access tag to get in. If you can't or it doesn't work, those guards, mechs and laser turrets all light you up. You make it past that, there's another checkpoint at the door. There's a biometric scanner you have to walk through when you enter. Profiles are stored on the Lord subnet, which has ICE that's damn near impossible to break through."

"ICE?" Kara asked.

"Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics. Net security software. We could fabricate the access tag, but that biometric scanner will make us out immediately. Then we've got to worry about a hundred other armed personnel and drones inside."

They continued walking until the edge of the street, where they still had a view but were just far enough to be inconspicuous to watchful eyes.

"Turrets aren't just at the wall. They're all the way up the building to deter aerial attacks as well," Ellis added.

"So, assuming we can make it past all of this into the building with all security dealt with, we'd still need to get our hands on Sinclair without harming her and make our way to Soulkiller even though we have no idea where it is," Kara said.

"Yeah. But at least we know Sinclair and Lord are in there."

Kara shook her head. "Jordan's a pussy, alright, but not because he doesn't want to go through with this."

Upon returning to Ellis' place, they only had to wait a couple of more hours for Jordan to make his return. The knock at the door came while Kara had taken her first bite of a beef burger, albeit a synthetic one, in 66 years. The texture of the meat had become greatly unfamiliar to her, having never found anything on her intergalactic travels that replicated anything quite like it. It was almost enough to turn her off the burger after her first bite.

Kara peered towards the door, seeing through it with her x-ray vision to confirm that it was Jordan. Ellis answered it, allowing him in. The dour expression on his face slowly turned into a scowl as his eyes immediately locked with Kara's again.

"Look who's back. Gonna punch me again?" Kara quipped.

"No," Jordan replied, "No, I came back to shoot you."

Kara grinned, deriving some pleasure from poking at his nerves. While he was merely joking, Kara in truth wasn't entirely sure if he would be able to stop himself from putting hands on her again. She pushed her plate away as he and Ellis approached, standing up to be ready to evade any strike that came her way.

"And?" Ellis asked.

Jordan sighed. "Let's get a couple of things straight. Number one – I still hate you," he said to Kara, "And number two – This plan is our only option, but it is still dumb as fuck. I don't want you to die, Ellis, and you're right that you probably won't with Kara and I by your side. So, I'll help."

"Thank you," Ellis expressed her gratitude with a half-smile, "We need a couple of things before we take the tower."

"What are they?" he asked.

"A supervirus, one that can disable the tower's security systems and give us a much better shot getting in."

"That's impossible. Lord's ICE is too tough, there's no way we could breach it from the outside."

"I know that," Ellis immediately retorted, "But it's won't hurt looking, you never know what we might find."

"I'll make some calls, but don't expect anything."

"Just do what you can. Also, we have no idea how the construct transfer procedure works, how to do it or where Soulkiller even is in the tower. We need to find someone who we can get that information out of, perhaps a scientist who worked on it."

Recognition flickered in Jordan's eyes. "The guy you'd be looking for is Konrad Jensson. I did some probing while you were gone. He's the bioengineer who developed the procedure and perfected it."

"Where can we find him?" Kara asked.

"Finding him is the least of our problems. That'll be easy, getting our hands on him won't be. There's nobody that Lord cares about more than himself, but Jensson is up there. After Sinclair, he's the most important person to him. He's never without a security convoy wrapped around him and once we make contact, if we do, Lord will know immediately and he'll be on our tail."

"We'll just need to act fast," Kara replied, "There's no way we should go in that tower blind."

"Can you hone in on him?" Jordan asked Ellis.

"Sure," she replied.

Ellis took a seat, relaxing her posture before pressing her fingers to the side of her temple and closing her eyes. If someone was near, she didn't have to concentrate nearly as hard and her powers worked almost passively. She immediately sensed that Jensson was nowhere close in proximity. Kara and Jordan waited patiently, but rather awkwardly as they waited for an answer from Ellis, both taking care to avoid glances at each other.

"He's not in the city," Ellis eventually said, opening her eyes, "Few hundred miles away, at least, but I feel like he's on the move. He's hard to pin down. It could take us a while to find his exact location."

Using her powers wasn't the only way to track someone down. Jordan could see the cogs in her head turning, searching for a solution to their dilemma. Her eyes eventually lit up but did so cautiously.

"I can see you have an idea," he said.

"Maxxine," she replied.

"No."

"Yes."

"Who's Maxxine?" Kara asked.

Ellis explained, "Maxxine Moonlight. One of the top fixers in Knight City, but her influence expands beyond the city. I've done jobs for her before. She could give us more precise intel on him."

Jordan was less enthusiastic about the idea. "Yeah, but you know how it is with her. She's not going to do anything for you unless you can do something for her."

"We could always back out of the deal," Ellis replied.

"Okay, fine, just don't trust her for a single second."

Maxxine Moonlight owned a nightclub called Empathy not far from Ellis' apartment building. Midtown, by virtue of its placement, attracted souls from both ends of the city. Empathy was a place that attracted more of the corpos than lowlifes. It might have looked a little out of place in the middle of Morgan Plaza, but it was definitely no place for a repulsive gangbanger. In the city that was now a vessel of unfamiliarity to Kara, every now and then she something partially, vaguely recognisable – Certain buildings that had maintained the same structure, restaurants that had only undergone name changes, intersections that were just as busy as they were decades ago due to the same faulty traffic light settings.

Each of these pieces started to come together to form a bigger picture in Kara's mind. She slowly began to realise that she wasn't just in any other ordinary part of Midtown. When she finally arrived at the entrance of Empathy, analysing the surrounding area and the building itself in relation to the city center, she realised she was in the one part of Midtown where she had formed most of her dearest memories. The former Hammersmith Tower, the very building in which she'd once lived, had been converted into Maxxine's nightclub and base of operations.

"Fuck."

The curse involuntarily escaped Kara's mouth with a heavy exasperated breath.

"What's wrong?" Ellis asked.

Kara dismissively shook her head. "Nothing," she replied, "We going inside or what?"

While the lady at reception indicated that an entrance fee was required tonight, one of the guards recognised Ellis as a merc who had done business with Maxxine before, allowing them to enter free of charge. The interior design of the building had been completely broken down and rebuilt to serve its new purpose. Ellis directed Kara to a completely transparent glass elevator, taking them to the club at the very top of the building.

The nightclub itself possessed a ground and upper floor with balconies. It appeared that the rougher crowd settled on the ground floor, while the balconies above were reserved for the corpos and other high-rolling patrons. Although the interior had been completely broken down and rebuilt, Kara still managed to trace her eyes to the area where apartment 4A used to be. Surprisingly, it was the only room that hadn't been completely demolished. It was now an enclosed glass box that sealed off a small portion of the balcony, with a slender woman inside it watching the proceedings below.

Tonight was a night that was far busier than others. A circular cage had been set up in the middle of the ground floor with two combatants locked inside in a duel. One of the combatant's fiery red skin made it blatantly obvious that he was an alien. That fact didn't prove to be much help against his opponent though, who bossed him around the cage with his superior strength. While the red alien was in good shape, his opponent dwarfed him in stature, possessing the mass of a bodybuilder without an ounce of fat on his body.

"What's this all about?" Kara asked.

"Maxxine runs fights. Aliens vs Metahumans. Some agree to do it, some are forced to," Ellis explained.

The contest was a mismatch from the start. The red alien had never stood a chance against his bigger, stronger, more experienced opponent. After beating the alien from pillar to post, the meta ended the contest grimly by ripping his opponent's lower jaw away, killing him and spilling blue blood all over the canvas. He raised his arms and roared triumphantly in victory, that moment being the one where Ellis and Kara's eyes flickered back up to the lady in the glass box. Her gaze was now transfixed on them, having somehow singled them out from the crowd.

"That's her," Ellis said.

Kara followed Ellis up the separate staircase to the office. If it weren't for the advanced anti-ageing procedures of the 22nd century, Maxxine would have aged to about 60, but she looked to be not a day above 40. In a sharp suit and with straightened shoulder-length silver hair, she looked the part of a corporate bitch who exploited those weaker than her without actually having the standing of one. As a wise friend of hers who dealt with a lot of them over the years once said, the only thing worse than a corporate bitch is a wannabe corporate bitch. Maxxine immediately took a step back from the glass pane and turned to them as they entered.

"Well, well, well, look who the cat dragged in," she crowed, speaking to Ellis and snubbing Kara. "Here I was thinking that you made hefty scratch from the scraps of that Nitro Corp transport and fled to a tropical island. Without your sister, of course. Sorry about that, by the way."

While a heavy blasé weighed on her voice, Ellis heard a hint of empathy in them and appreciated that. "Thanks."

"What happened, sweetie?" Maxxine asked, taking a step towards them, "Did you run out of money? Or did you finally realise the cold, harsh truth that once you become a part of this city, you're tied to it for eternity? No matter how far away you run, no matter where you go, it'll always find you and slowly reel you back in."

Though she hadn't even looked in Kara's direction yet, her words seemed to be directed exactly at her. Having changed her look and been gone for 64 years, someone other than Lord recognising Kara hadn't been a concern. Kara sensed the uneasiness developing in Ellis because of that. She was feeling it too, but it was stifled by her incensed disgust at what the place she once lived in had become. She would have rather the whole building be demolished than turned into what it was now.

"Who is your dashing friend?" Maxxine asked, finally turning her gaze towards Kara, "What's your name, darling?"

While it appeared that Maxxine didn't recognise her, Kara wasn't about to risk tempting that by giving out her real name. The element of surprise was going to be one of their most useful weapons in the raid, and it couldn't be lost at any cost. A series of names ran through Kara's mind in a second.

"Thara," she replied, settling on the one that belonged to her childhood best friend.

Maxxine stepped forward towards Kara until they were mere inches away from each other. Maxxine's head edged around to Kara's left, her breath caressing her neck.

"You smell… entrancing," Maxxine exhaled rather suggestively. Though it had appeared to be a seductive gesture, her gravitation towards Kara's neck was merely to confirm that she did not have an installed neural port. Nobody in Knight City lived without one, and that was a dead giveaway that Kara did not belong.

"You're not from around here, are you?" Maxxine continued, "There's a flavour on you that I can't quite put my finger on, I guess you could say, it's… out of this world."

"I'm from Axan," Kara declared, bringing up the first planet that came to mind.

Maxxine grinned. "Interesting… well, I'm sure it is, wherever it is. So, Ellis, why are you and Thara here?"

"We need your help," Ellis replied.

"Oh, of course you do," Maxxine replied, finally stepping away from them and taking a seat at her desk, "Need scratch? I've got new gigs, moderate risk, but decent pay."

"No scratch, just intel."

"Intel, you say. On who or what?"

"Konrad Jensson. He's a bioengineer who works for Lord Tech. We need to know where he is and how he's travelling."

The mention of Lord Tech seemed to strike a nerve with Maxxine, whose coquettish mannerisms suddenly halted. "What business do you have with him?"

"He has information we need. We just want to talk with him."

"That sounds a little more personal than business. Personal is messy, and I don't like messy. Tangling with Lord Tech is for lunatics who have a death wish, of which I am not and do not have."

"Didn't you always say you had a soft spot for me and Cody?"

Maxxine pouted. "Indeed, and I still do. You'll have what you need in no less but no more than 24 hours. But… nothing comes for free in this city, especially not with me. I think it's only fair that if I scratch your backs, you scratch mine."

"What do we need to do?" Kara asked.

"Just you, Thara. Just you… I see you caught the ending of the main event. That was our defending champion, Xenon. He's been running through the competition with ease this year and I happen to know some very, very wealthy individuals who will pay good money to see him lose not just a fight, but his life."

The proposition seemed simple enough. Kara would have to fight and kill Xenon, and they'd get the information they needed. Ellis remained cautious though.

"Could Thara and I have a moment to disc-"

"I'll do it," Kara blurted out, interrupting Ellis.

"Excellent. Tomorrow at midnight. You'll get the intel after. Now scurry along, I've got other business to tend to," Maxxine said, sending them away with a wave of the hand.

Kara walked away somewhat happy. They were assigned a task much easier than either of them were expecting, or at least it seemed that way to her.

"You shouldn't have agreed to it just like that," Ellis scolded Kara, following her down the stairs to the bar.

"Why not? All I have to do to beat somebody up and then we get what we need. Sounds like a steal to be honest," Kara said as she took a seat on a barstool. She called a bartender over, requesting the strongest drink they had before turning her attention back to Ellis, "No shit, the way she was looking at me, speaking to me… I thought she was going to ask for a night with me."

"Would you have done it?" Ellis asked.

Kara thought for a second. Rather cheekily, she tilted her head with a smirk and downed the shot that had been placed in front of her, drawing a chuckle from Ellis.

"Look, we still could have bargained, maybe figured out something a little less dangerous for you."

Kara raised an eyebrow. "You consider cage fighting dangerous for me?"

"Against Xenon, probably."

"What's so dangerous about him?"

"Did you not just see him rip a dude's jaw right out of his face?"

Kara shrugged her shoulders. "Wouldn't let that shit happen to me," she said before downing another shot.

"He's strong, quick, experienced, ruthless. Hasn't lost a fight in three years. If he doesn't kill his opponent, he at the very least cripples them."

"Huh," Kara muttered as she digested the information, "Still don't see why I should be afraid of him."

"You really didn't hear a single thing I just said?" Ellis carped, becoming irritated by Kara's indifference.

"Ellis, I've been dropping people with my fists for like 130 years. You seriously don't think I can take him?" Kara replied while lighting a cigarette.

"Your collection of guns says you're out of practice. And I don't think that cigarette and those shots are going to do your body any favours for tomorrow."

"What good was it bringing me here and then not having faith that I would be able to handle whatever is thrown at me? Lighten the fuck up, Ellis." Kara turned to the bartender, "Hey, can I get something for her? Something light. Sorry, you don't strike me as a heavy drinker."

"Probably because I don't drink at all. Just a Sage Blue for me," Ellis indicated, requesting something non-alcoholic.

"Don't drink, don't smoke, you sound like no fun. No wonder you and Jordan got along," Kara remarked.

Ellis rolled her eyes. "Very funny."

"Why didn't it work out?" Kara asked rather earnestly.

"A few reasons. He's too busy doing his own thing, covering more than one city on the West Coast. I'm busy here. He feels like he needs to live up to his dad's legacy and that he's always failing to do just that. We only met a few years ago, which bothered him because he felt like he should've been there for us from the beginning. Between trying to be a hero everywhere and managing the farm, it just got a little too difficult for us."

"He still has the farm? Thought it would have been gone by now."

"He would never allow that. Not with his parents and brother buried there."

"So, it sounds like the hero life has come between you two?"

"Yeah, that's partly to blame."

"Now you get it. If you want to be a hero, don't have time for that relationship shit," Kara spat out.

"Jordan's dad was married," Ellis retorted, "So was Barry."

"Think it was all sunshine and roses?" Kara replied, squaring up to Ellis and looking her dead in the eyes, "Their relationships with their families suffered because of their profession. Lois and Iris were put in danger multiple times, and Barry and Kal weren't always there when their children needed them. You said it yourself, he's got daddy issues. In the end, they found a way to keep it afloat because they had someone to ground them and hold the fort while they were away risking their lives."

"So, what, you and Oliver could never find that person?"

"No, we couldn't, and not for lack of trying. But we had each other and that's all we needed."

"How exactly did it start between you two?"

Kara scratched her head trying to think back over a century ago. "Shit, I think it was 2019? We'd known each other for a few years at that point. Was a night out, everyone was there, but they all left before me and him. Was just the two of us at the bar talking for a while and then shit, next thing I know we're in a bed. Met again two weeks later at a game night, same thing. Started meeting up frequently after that."

"Did the others know?"

"We kept it on the low at first but eventually they found out," Kara replied, pausing for a moment to take a long drag of her cigarette, "It's the strength, right?"

"What?"

"Jordan's got super strength, doesn't he?"

"Yeah?" Ellis replied hesitantly, completely unaware of where Kara was taking the conversation.

"So, he had to be careful when you guys used to fuck?"

Ellis grimaced. "Fuck, Kara, did you really have to say it out loud?"

Kara shrugged her shoulders. "Just wondering. I mean, I had to control my strength with Oliver. And trust me, it wasn't easy with him. Your great, great grandfather knew what he was doing."

"I'd like to change topic now. That would be great."

"Still awkward to openly talk about sex in 2146. Some things really do never change."