Supergirl and all related characters and indicia are owned by DC Comics/Warner Bros. This work of fan fiction is written for pleasure, not profit.
Susan pulled off her helmet and looked around. The Fortress of Solitude! In a day filled with wonders, this was a big one. Not quite at the top, of course. Learning Kara's, and especially Clark's, secrets had that honor. Meeting Kara's 'reinforcements' - Black Canary, Fire, and Steel - had been anticlimactic in comparison. Even the flight from Smallville to Antarctica, stunning as it was, took a secondary place.
As Kara helped her out of the environment suit Susan remarked, "You know, I still can't believe I never figured out Clark's secret, or yours for that matter. I mean, I've know the guy my whole life. I used to call him 'uncle' for Heaven's sake."
Kara just grinned. "Psychology, Susan. Most people, be they human or argoan, never look beyond the surface, and to a great extent, they see what they expect to see."
"What do you mean?" Susan asked.
Kara stepped back and struck a pose, her feet wide apart, her hands in fists on her hips. "What do you see?"
"Supergirl," Susan answered.
"And how does she appear to you?"
Susan frowned thoughtfully. Kara's uniform had always seemed a bit skimpy to Susan, especially the micro-miniskirt, but it did look good on her. "Proud, confident," she offered, and Kara grinned again. "Cocky as hell, too," Susan added sharply. Kara just grinned wider. She held up a finger in a 'wait' gesture, then spun into a blur. When she stopped she was wearing jeans, a tee shirt and sneakers. Her hair was in its usual ponytail, and she was wearing her glasses again.
"And now?" Kara prompted. She was slouching a bit and biting her lower lip the way she always did when she was nervous. Susan shook her head. "Unbelievable," she muttered. "Even knowing, I have trouble imagining you as Supergirl."
Kara beamed smugly, "Which is exactly how it's supposed to be."
Susan glared at her and Kara relented. "C'mon," she gestured, "The library is this way."
The library was not that impressive. It was smallish chamber hewn, like the rest of the Fortress, out of solid rock. The floor had been leveled and polished, but the walls and ceiling were rough, bare rock that glistened with condensation. Two simple pillars were the only furnishings. Above each floated a silvery sphere about the size of a volleyball.
"Brainiac?" Susan whispered.
"Yep," Kara confirmed.
"Which is which?" Kara pointed to symbols carved into the front of each pillar. Kryptonian writing, Susan guessed. Kara gestured to the right and left globes in turn. "Krypton. Argo." She walked to the Argo globe, beckoning Susan to follow.
"All we have to do is touch it," she explained. Susan moved her hand out, a little hesitantly. Her fingers brushed the surface. It was smooth and cool to the touch. Kara laid her hand beside Susan's. The air seemed to crackle with static electricity. There was a flash, and Susan found herself standing in...something. A chamber of some kind. It seemed to be a projection, because she could still see the walls of the library chamber, if only dimly. A smooth baritone voice echoed in her head.
"Greetings Kara In-Ze. Greetings Susan Ross. I am Brainiac. How may I serve you?"
"It speaks English?" Susan gasped. Kara shook her head.
"Not exactly. Well, sort of. It's not actually talking. I mean, it isn't generating sound like CD player does. It's directly stimulating the areas of our brains that process speech and vision in such a way that we see and hear what its trying to tell us. As for the English, well," Kara shrugged helplessly. "Ah, screw it. I never really understood how these worked," she confessed. "I just know how to use them."
"Can't he tell us?" Susan asked, nodding at the globe.
Kara gave her a pained look. "I 'm sure it could," she allowed reluctantly, "but do you really want to sit through a who-knows-how-many hours long lecture on brain chemistry, quantum mechanics, remote matter manipulation, and a half dozen other highly technical subjects?"
Susan grimaced and shook her head. "Since you put it that way..."
Kara returned her attention to Brainiac. "Give us a background brief on the planet Argo," she commanded.
A three dimensional diagram of a star system appeared in the air in front of them. The voice spoke again. "Argo was the third planet from the main sequence red giant commonly known as Rao." Susan nudged Kara.
"I thought Rao was the name of your god," she whispered.
"It is," Kara confirmed. "The earliest Raoists were sun worshippers."
"Since the destruction of Krypton," Brainiac went on, as the diagram changed, "Argo's orbit has shifted. It has moved away from Rao, out of the life zone, and passed beyond the orbit of Apynn. I estimate there is a ninety-nine point six percent probability that Argo will crash into Rao's sixth planet, the gas giant Zinn-ol, in seven thousand eight hundred and fifty-two years."
"Show," Kara said hesitantly, "Show the Great Disaster, from my point of view."
The scene shifted, and Susan found herself looking at a room. It was a lab, or a workshop, or something. At least, it didn't look like a home. A younger version of Kara was playing with some of the equipment in the room, while an older woman Susan recognized as Kara's mother led a man and a boy around the room.
"That's my uncle Del, and my cousin Dar," Kara said quietly. The woman was speaking, in Kryptonian apparently. Whatever it was, Susan couldn't understand a word of it.
"What's she saying?"
"Translate into English, Brainiac," Kara commanded. An strange, atonal chime sounded, and the young Kara turned an ran to a screen mounted on a nearby wall. Symbols like the ones on the pillars were visible on it. Over top of them, inserted by Brainiac, were English words that read, 'Incoming transmission. Point of origin: Krypton. Caller: Pala Nan-ad. Kara choked.
"This is going to be hard for me to watch," she cautioned. "Don't worry if I break down."
The young Kara touched controls, and the screen lit with the image of an equally young girl with dark hair.
"Pala!" Susan heard. "I haven't heard from you in days!"
"Hello, Kara," the dark haired girl answered. "Is it safe to talk?"
"Of course, Pala, what's the matter? You're calling so late over there."
Pala looked anxious. "Last night my parents had some of the Council over, and I heard them arguing about some rumor that something terrible is going to happen to Krypton."
"Did you ask your parents about it?" Kara asked. Pala nodded.
"They said everything was fine, that Brainiac said Krypton was safe. I trust Brainiac, but some of the Council members sounded so worried... Kara, I just can't stop thinking something horrible might happen!"
"I'm sure everything's fine," Kara said dismissively. "You know how grownups love to worry."
Pala seemed to relax. "I guess you're right."
"Of course I'm right," Kara proclaimed. "If they're not worrying, they're trying to make us worry." Kara's voice went mockingly serious. "Young lady," she said pompously, "You come straight home, or the General will get you!"
Pala laughed. "Right! Or, 'You better behave! Brainiac is watching you!'" The girls started giggling. Susan heard a soft sound beside her. A glance revealed a stricken looking Kara, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
"Hey, what's -" Susan turned again at the sound of Pala's voice. The image on the screen was breaking up.
"Pala!" Kara exclaimed.
"K-kara? Everything's sh-shaking. I can hear people screaming outsi-skssszz." The room Pala was in was trembling, like there was an earthquake. As the screen went dark Susan heard one last, plaintive cry from Pala. "Mother? Father?"
The cold words 'Transmission Interrupted' appeared on the screen. Kara cried out, "Pala!" She turned and ran to her mother. "Mother, something's happening on Krypton!"
Kara's mother and uncle fiddled with some of the room's equipment.
"I can't get through," Kara's uncle said. "Their satellite uplink isn't responding."
"Ours is," Kara's mother announced. "I'm getting visuals. They'll tell us if anything is happening..." A new image appeared on the screen. "On Krypton," Kara's mother faltered. The screen showed a view of a planet from space, its surface fractured, with wisps of fire emerging from the cracks. Susan gulped. Those 'wisps', she realized, must have been hundreds of miles high, if she could see them at this scale. Krypton's surface roiled like boiling water and then...
The view shifted to a stylized view from space. Rao gleamed red in the distance. Krypton and Argo, and their relative positions, were shown by icons.
"Analysis of archival records suggests that Krypton was destroyed by an ancient doomsday weapon, left over from the Civil Wars. In any case, Krypton exploded with enough force to hurl its mass away at greater than escape velocity." Almost as an afterthought Brainiac added. "Fifty-seven billion Kryptonians died instantly."
The icon representing Krypton seemed to swell. A green sphere grew out from it, followed by a slower moving blue one. "High levels of electromagnetic radiation, including x and gamma rays, spread out in all directions at the speed of light, followed by slower moving, but still energetic neutrons." Brainiac's voice was as dispassionate as if it was reading from the dictionary. "Two minutes, eleven seconds after Krypton exploded, the wave front reached Argo." The view zoomed in on a blue white globe that reminded Susan of Earth. There was a flash of green. Argo's atmosphere seethed.
"Argo's ozone layer was burned away," Brainiac intoned. "Everyone on the day side received a fatal dose of radiation. Those that didn't perish immediately were finished off when the neutron flux arrived minutes later." The view swung around to the shadowed side.
"Those sheltered by Argo's mass had only a temporary respite. Most of Argo's orbital facilities were destroyed or heavily damaged, along with most of its ships. And, three hours after the initial effects, the first debris arrived."
Susan watched as small rocks, highlighted by streaks, hurtled past Argo or slammed into it with the force of hydrogen bombs. "Any chance of long term survival ended on the third day, when a chunk of debris that, based on impact effects and velocity, was massive enough to be, if spherical, six point two four U.S. statute miles in diameter, struck the planet."
Susan watched in awe and horror as the scene of worldwide devastation unfolded. "It's just like the opening of that Bruce Willis movie, 'Armageddon'," she whispered.
"That's exactly what it was," Kara sobbed. "The end of everything." She quit fighting the tears and began to shake with grief. Her heart torn, Susan moved to comfort her friend, embracing Kara gently. Kara didn't respond.
"I can't even hug you!" she wailed.
Susan understood. One uncontrolled twitch of those slender arms would crush her with less effort than it would take Susan to kill a fly. She shuddered at the though, but didn't pull away, just stood there while Kara's grief ran its course. Eventually the weeping subsided. Kara pulled away, turned, blew her nose and wiped her eyes. She took a deep breath, then looked at Susan. She smiled. It was a little forced, but not too much.
"Now that you've seen how my world ended," she said, "would you like to see how it began?"
