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.
"The first thing I remember," Kara said softly, her eyes going distant, "was hearing voices. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but at the time I thought it was just me not thinking clearly. I didn't realize they were speaking a different language. Then I tried opening my eyes. That didn't help. I couldn't make anything out, because the light was so bright, and the wrong color on top of everything else."
Susan gave Kara a blank look. They had returned to the kitchen, both for a snack, and to let Susan digest what she had heard from Brainiac. Kara crossed to a control panel and moved a switch. The intensity of the light didn't change, but it shifted down the spectrum to a bright red.
"See what I mean?" Kara asked, gesturing at the room and its contents. Susan did see. She could make out details well enough, but not colors. Everything had a reddish tint. It was weird. Kara flipped the switch again, and the light returned to normal.
'Or at least normal for me,' Susan thought, watching her friend as Kara returned to her seat.
"Then a man bent over me," Kara went on. "I found out later that his name was Emil Hamilton, and that he was the head of STAR Labs' medical department, but at the time, he was just a stranger." Kara laced her fingers in an almost prayerful gesture. "On the other hand, he was the first new person I'd seen in a year or more, which could only be a good thing. It was only after looking at him for a moment that I realized he wasn't dressed right."
"Dressed right?" Susan repeated, her brow furrowing in puzzlement.
"He was wearing surgical scrubs," Kara explained, "But I didn't know what they were at the time. I was also not fully alert. I remember thinking that he might be a looter or something, but I was awake, and warm for the first time in long while, so I decided to wait before jumping to any conclusions." Kara inhaled deeply, then let the breath out slowly.
"He said something then, that I suppose was meant to be reassuring. Of course, I didn't understand a word of it. That was unsettling. Krypton and Argo only had six major dialects, and I was at least passing familiar with all of them. What Professor Hamilton said was unlike any language I'd ever heard, and that frightened me."
Susan offered Kara a wondering glance, and Kara smiled thinly.
"It was the implications, Susan. I wasn't consciously aware of them, but looking back they're plain enough: either a very long time had passed or, despite appearances, I was looking at some kind of alien creature, that intended Rao knew what."
"Or both," Susan added, and Kara smiled again, much more warmly. "Or both," she allowed, and Susan chuckled.
"It's odd to think of myself as an alien," she said, "But I suppose that all depends on your point of view."
"Anyway, as that sank in, I'm afraid I started to panic," Kara said quietly. "I sat up and demanded to know where my family was. Of course, Professor Hamilton couldn't understand me any better than I could him. He put his hand on my arm and tried to push me back down, all the while saying more stuff I couldn't understand. So I pushed back. Hard." Susan gulped.
"Did you...?"
Kara shook her head. "I didn't kill him, but only because I was lucky. He went flying across the room and hit the wall."
"Was he hurt?"
Kara nodded, her face red with embarrassment. "I broke most of his ribs, bruised his heart, and gave him a hairline spinal fracture." Susan winced in sympathy.
"That's when Clark spoke up," Kara continued. "He was dressed as Superman, of course. The other doctors in the room seemed to defer to him, and I guessed he was someone important. He said, 'You'll have to be careful, young lady. You're quite a bit stronger here.'" Kara looked at Susan. "He was speaking in Kryptonian, and as you may have gathered, I wasn't all that fond of them. But at least he was speaking a civilized language, so I asked the obvious question: 'Where is here?' 'A planet called Earth,' he said. The name word meant nothing to me, but from what I had seen of it so far, it was as primitive a place as I'd ever imagined." Kara said the last with an apologetic half smile, and Susan grinned.
"Perfectly understandable," she assured Kara.
"Then I looked around the room I was in. I guessed it was a hospital, but the equipment all looked like something out of an ancient history museum. There were other beds, but they were empty. I asked, 'Where is my family?'" Kara's eyes teared up. "The look on his face told me what had happened before he could speak," she sobbed. Susan rounded the table and put an arm around Kara's shoulders. Kara wept quietly for a few minutes, then dried her eyes and blew her nose.
"I asked him who he was, and he said 'Here they call me Superman, but on Krypton I was called Kal-el.'" There was a slight edge to Kara's voice as she said Clark's birth name.
"Was that good or bad?" Susan asked.
Kara gave Susan a sheepish glance. "The House of El had been one of the most prominent families during the time of the Science Council," she explained. "After the revolution, there were purges, as the common folk avenged themselves on their former overlords. Most of the old families were wiped out, but a few, like the El's, survived by going underground. When the fervor died down a decade or so later, they reemerged, and started working their way back to power and prominence."
"I take it they weren't terribly popular," Susan guessed. Kara shook her head. "Not really. Oh, there were exceptions, of course, but for the most part they were very traditional, clinging to the old ways, even flaunting them."
"What sort of 'old ways'?"
Kara made a face. "Keeping to themselves, only mating with members of other old families, continuing to engineer themselves genetically, and not reproducing the normal way."
Susan said nothing, only gestured for Kara to go on.
"Random combinations of egg and sperm weren't good enough for them. They'd take DNA samples, screen them for the genes they wanted, combine them to form an embryo, and put the whole thing in an artificial womb called a birthing matrix." Kara said the last like it left a bad taste in her mouth. "And they didn't always limit themselves to one man and one woman, either."
"What do you mean?"
"They'd take snippets of DNA from as many donors as they wanted to, and they didn't always feel the need to include both genders." Susan looked ill.
"So Clark is some kind of clone?"
Kara smiled. "That's his heritage, what he came from, yes. He's the ultimate product of millennia of deliberate genetic engineering and selective breeding. However," she said, holding up a hand, "Apparently his father Jor-el was part of the House of El's lunatic fringe. He and Clark's mother, Lara, actually combined one of her eggs with one of Jor-el's sperm. From what I've seen of the history Jor-el sent along with Clark, Lara wasn't keen on carrying the fetus herself, so they used a matrix, but apart from that Clark's conception was fairly normal."
"Clark looks so normal though!" Susan protested.
"He isn't though, even for a Kryptonian. Compared to the average Kryptonian male, Clark is faster, stronger, smarter, more resistant to illness, has a much longer potential life span, things like that."
"Wow!"
Kara grinned a slightly wicked grin. "It's not without its downsides, though."
"Like what?"
"Well, he's a lot more powerful than I am, even with age and gender taken into account, but he's also much more susceptible to some things. For example, expose him to red sunlight and his powers go away instantly. Mine take about a minute to fade completely. Kryptonite weakens him immediately, and can kill him in a few minutes. It hardly affects me at all. Clark is also much more vulnerable to magic than I am."
Susan shook her head in amazement. "You'll have to explain that later. Getting back to the story, though, after Clark told you his name, what happened?"
Kara's smile faded a bit. "Well, I had a hand on one of the bed rails. When he said his name my fingers clenched. I felt the rail crumple up. That weirded me out, because it was clearly made of metal, stainless steel. I tried again on a different section, and the same thing happened. I barely noticed when Professor Hamilton was taken away. Some other people came in. They seemed upset with me, but Clark said something in English, and they went away." Kara grinned again at the memory. "That led me to form a wrong conclusion. I still didn't know where I was, or what was going on, but I figured Clark was some kind of ruler, and that I'd better be polite, so I said, 'What is happening to me, My Lord?'"
Susan choked. "You called Clark 'My Lord'? Mild-mannered Boy Scout Clark Kent? Like he was a king or something?"
Kara blushed and shrugged. "Hey, he was an El, I didn't know when he'd left Krypton, and everybody seemed to defer to him, so..."
Susan didn't know whether to laugh or not. The idea of Clark as a king was so unlike the man she knew that it seemed ridiculous, but it also occurred to her that Clark could easily have made himself the King of Earth. Still could, if he wanted to. It was a disturbing thought, and Susan pushed it from her mind.
Kara either didn't notice Susan's discomfort, or just declined to mention it. Instead, she started talking again. "He seemed surprised by that too. He said 'I'm not a lord. Kal-el is the name my biological parents gave me, but they sent me away from Krypton just before it exploded. I was an infant when I was found and adopted by a human couple. I grew up being called by a human name, and that's how I think of myself.'" Kara threw Susan a quirky grin. "That surprised me, somehow. I guess I'd never expected an El to be modest about anything, especially his origins. I tried to remember the other name he mentioned. Naturally, I didn't get it right. It came out something like 'Zuffermon'. He just smiled. 'As for what's happening to you: Earth circles a yellow star. Somehow that yellow sunlight gives Kryptonians tremendous physical powers, like strength.' I didn't really hear what he said after 'yellow star'. I knew I wasn't on Argo, but to be in a completely different star system was a major shock. I guess I must have mumbled something about the yellow star, because Clark took my hand and said 'I'll show you.' He helped me up and led me to a window, then drew the shades back. It was a view of the Metropolis skyline with the ocean beyond, but what I remember most is the sunlight." Kara had a dreamy expression on her face as she remembered. "It was late morning, I think. Sol was high in the sky, shining directly into the window. I just stared at it. Its rays were coming through the glass, and it was warm. I hadn't been warm in such a long time I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven." Kara smiled again. "I totally forgot what Clark had said about being careful.. I laid my hands on the glass and pushed without thinking. That's when I found out Clark could fly."
Kara chuckled at Susan's bewildered look and explained. "The pane popped out in one piece and started falling toward the street. Clark dove out the window, caught it, and flew back up. As he was hovering outside he gave me a stern look and said 'Remember, you have to be careful.'"
Susan laughed out loud, as much at Kara's imitation of Clark's words and expression as the incident itself.
"Well," Susan said when she regained her breath, "That covers your first impression of Earth, I guess. Now how about telling me about how Kara In-ze became Kara Kent?"
