Part 7: Out in the Open
#
"Thank you congressman," Kara said with a smile. "This was a most enlightening interview."
Hal Jordan gave her a smile of his own, one that had broken the hearts of quite a few women over the years. He was no longer a test pilot, of course, that dangerous business was a young man's game. Somehow he had retained the air of a dashing daredevil, though, and his eyes sparkled with a sort of smug charm.
For all his friendliness and charm, though, the interview had not availed Kara much. Well, it would enable her to write Karen Kell's next article and keep the money coming in, but that was all. This Hal Jordan had never encountered a dying alien named Abin Sur. He had never been given a ring of power that could turn thoughts into reality. And the mention of one Barry Allen, his best friend in another world, had not produced so much as a spark of recognition in his eyes.
"It's always a pleasure dealing with the press," Hal said as he shook her hand. "Especially if they are as lovely as you are, Ms. Kell."
They exchanged a few more pleasantries before Kara managed to slip out of his office, walking out into the pristine air of Washington DC. With a defeated huff she sat down on the steps of the congress building and looked out across the sights, yet her thoughts were busy elsewhere.
She knew that all the others were busy as well, investigating those people they remembered as their friends, trying to find some common element that might have prevented them from becoming heroes. Maybe the same something or someone that had destroyed Paradise Island. They were also looking for other occurrences they knew should have taken place. Things like a rocket carrying the last son of Krypton to Earth.
Again and again Kara found her thoughts drifting off towards her cousin. He thought her dead. He had buried her body. God, how lonely he must feel now, she thought. Yes, there were other survivors of Krypton out there, but Kal and her had been the only ones living on Earth, the only ones within reach. Family to each other, the only true family they knew.
Shaking her head, she brought her thoughts back on track. She just hoped the others were having a bit more luck than she. Hal had known exactly zip about aliens, even though she had managed to steer their conversation in that direction a bit when she asked him whether he had ever seen any UFOs during his test pilot days. He had simply laughed and disregarded the notion as ridiculous. Had he lied to her she would have known, so this was a dead end.
Diana was in Central City, she knew, arranging for a chance meeting with one Barry Allen. Dick was impersonating a law professor applying for a position at Midvale University, hoping to have one Ray Palmer show him around the campus. Helena was looking into the background of the man who should have been her father some more, hoping to find some clues as to why this world's Bruce Wayne had not gone vigilante after his parents' death.
Looking out across the city with eyes that could count the grains of sand on Mars Kara found nothing that could be of any help to her. While some of the gloom that had descended upon her after her arrival had lifted due to the presence of the others, she still found little to smile about in this strange new world. And it wasn't just the seeming hopelessness of their situation or the question of whether or not their homeworld, any version of it, still existed somewhere out there.
It was something about this world, Kara concluded. Somehow it seemed so much harsher than her own, so much more brutal. There were no villains in flashy costumes here. No one broke open bank vaults with super-strength or freeze rays. All the crimes she could observe here seemed so much more mundane and yet often ten times as brutal.
This world seemed like a dark reflection of her own. All the evil that, in her world, appeared in the guise of bald evil scientists, purple aliens, or laughing clowns, was spread out amongst the normal people here. Terrorist attacks, wars, religious conflict, all these seemed so much more intense here than back home. So much more violent, so much more real. Could it be that they had simply never noticed due to their preoccupation with the costumed criminals and invading aliens? The thought disturbed her somehow.
Kara was so preoccupied with her gloomy thoughts that she almost didn't notice the screeching sound in the air until it became audible to merely human ears. She looked up, confused, and her superior eyes immediately zoomed in on a large shape descending towards the city of Washington at frightening speed.
An airplane, she realized a moment later. An airplane with one burning engine and quite obviously out of control. Within less than a second she calculated its angle of descent. It would crash right into the middle of the city. Hundreds if not thousands of lives would be lost unless she did something and fast.
Kara reacted purely out of instinct, not spending so much as a heartbeat thinking about what she was about to do. She simply took off, shedding the coat she had worn, revealing the shirt with the S-symbol she wore beneath. A sonic boom travelled in her wake as she bridged the distance to the doomed plane in less than a second.
Even as she hurtled towards it her senses picked up on several other things. The plane was being painted by targeting systems. Of course, this was Washington. The White House was down there, the Congress, the Supreme Court. Even before September 11, something she had read about at length, the skies above this city would have been carefully watched. Now, with terrorist paranoia still running high, it would be a matter of seconds until some overzealous military man gave the order to shoot the plane down rather than risk it crashing into the city.
All of which meant she had even less time than she had thought.
It was not the first time she had had to catch an object this size. She knew all the problems it entailed. It wasn't simply a matter of strength, something she had in abundance. There was no way she could simply catch and stop such a large and fast-moving object without it going to pieces on her. She had to stabilize it, level it out, and be careful not to apply too much of her strength to the fragile metal hull.
She quickly zipped right towards the burning engine. A gust of super-breath took all the oxygen away from the fire, extinguishing it quickly. The engine was quite thoroughly ruined, though, so she quickly tore its remains free of the wing, careful to drop the pieces where they wouldn't do any harm. A moment later she moved herself into its place, replacing its thrust with her own power of flight even as her senses continued listening to the targeting lasers trained on the plane.
No surface to air missiles came streaking her way, though, and slowly the plane began to come out of its descent, the pilot regaining control of his craft. They cleared the buildings with plenty of room to spare and headed directly towards the airport, where emergency vehicles were already scrambling out into the runway.
Kara saw several people, crew and passengers both, peering out of the windows of the plane. They were looking at her with wide eyes. She gave them a jaunty wave.
Only then did she realize what she had just done.
For a moment she had forgotten where she was. In her world there was nothing unusual about flying people stepping in to prevent (or cause) catastrophes. Granted, airplanes weren't caught in mid-tumble every day, but it happened. Her cousin was a well-known sight in the skies above Metropolis and other cities. Him or some other hero catching a plane wouldn't be worth a front page even.
But she wasn't in her world here. She was in a world that had never before seen a flying person before. A world where the mere idea of someone flying up and catching a crashing plane was so ludicrous as to be banished into the pages of comic books.
Even as her thoughts were racing to find a way out of this new dilemma her body went through the motions. The plane set down on the tarmac of the airport and fire trucks, ambulances, and a dozen other vehicles came screeching towards it with barely any room to spare. Kara didn't linger. Some people had seen her, yes, but if she just moved fast enough there wouldn't be any concrete proof of her ever having been here. Maybe the ramblings of the passengers and crew would be dismissed as some kind of mass hysteria.
The moment the plane was safely on the ground she zipped away at super speed, moving too fast for anyone to see or follow her. She picked up her coat and bag in front of the congress building without even slowing down and was racing beyond the city limit a heartbeat later.
Every kilometre back to Gotham City, the place where their small group stayed for now, was spent berating herself. How could she be so stupid? There must have been another way to save that plane without giving her existence away as blatantly as that. Maybe she could have extinguished the fire from a distance, stabilized the plane with well-applied gusts of super- breath that no one would have been able to differentiate from normal wind. But no, she had to go right in there and let herself be seen by everyone on board that plane.
Within minutes she reached the large apartment Richard had organized for them. She still hadn't asked where he had acquired the money for it all and didn't intend to. No one was currently there. All the others were still busy with their own assignments and none of them could return home as fast as she could, not even Diana.
She dropped down onto the couch, sighing deeply. Maybe she was concerned about nothing. In a world where superbeings were considered nothing but comic book material she doubted anyone would take the words of the shocked passengers seriously. The pilot would only be too happy to claim sole credit for saving the plane. She had left too fast to be seen by anyone on the ground. Everything would be okay. Nothing but a funny urban myth would come from this. They were perfectly safe.
Kara absentmindedly reached for the TV remote and flipped through the channels, needing something to distract her right now.
Her fingers froze as she ended up on CNN.
"These astonishing pictures are just coming in from one of our news crews at Washington airport," the announcer said. "It appears that the Delta Airlines flight 7431, coming in from New York, was saved from a potentially fatal engine failure by what appears to be ... a flying woman."
Kara could only look on in shock as the disbelieving voice of the announcer accompanied a short video sequence that clearly showed her supporting the damaged airplane's wing as it came in for a landing.
TO BE CONTINUED
#
"Thank you congressman," Kara said with a smile. "This was a most enlightening interview."
Hal Jordan gave her a smile of his own, one that had broken the hearts of quite a few women over the years. He was no longer a test pilot, of course, that dangerous business was a young man's game. Somehow he had retained the air of a dashing daredevil, though, and his eyes sparkled with a sort of smug charm.
For all his friendliness and charm, though, the interview had not availed Kara much. Well, it would enable her to write Karen Kell's next article and keep the money coming in, but that was all. This Hal Jordan had never encountered a dying alien named Abin Sur. He had never been given a ring of power that could turn thoughts into reality. And the mention of one Barry Allen, his best friend in another world, had not produced so much as a spark of recognition in his eyes.
"It's always a pleasure dealing with the press," Hal said as he shook her hand. "Especially if they are as lovely as you are, Ms. Kell."
They exchanged a few more pleasantries before Kara managed to slip out of his office, walking out into the pristine air of Washington DC. With a defeated huff she sat down on the steps of the congress building and looked out across the sights, yet her thoughts were busy elsewhere.
She knew that all the others were busy as well, investigating those people they remembered as their friends, trying to find some common element that might have prevented them from becoming heroes. Maybe the same something or someone that had destroyed Paradise Island. They were also looking for other occurrences they knew should have taken place. Things like a rocket carrying the last son of Krypton to Earth.
Again and again Kara found her thoughts drifting off towards her cousin. He thought her dead. He had buried her body. God, how lonely he must feel now, she thought. Yes, there were other survivors of Krypton out there, but Kal and her had been the only ones living on Earth, the only ones within reach. Family to each other, the only true family they knew.
Shaking her head, she brought her thoughts back on track. She just hoped the others were having a bit more luck than she. Hal had known exactly zip about aliens, even though she had managed to steer their conversation in that direction a bit when she asked him whether he had ever seen any UFOs during his test pilot days. He had simply laughed and disregarded the notion as ridiculous. Had he lied to her she would have known, so this was a dead end.
Diana was in Central City, she knew, arranging for a chance meeting with one Barry Allen. Dick was impersonating a law professor applying for a position at Midvale University, hoping to have one Ray Palmer show him around the campus. Helena was looking into the background of the man who should have been her father some more, hoping to find some clues as to why this world's Bruce Wayne had not gone vigilante after his parents' death.
Looking out across the city with eyes that could count the grains of sand on Mars Kara found nothing that could be of any help to her. While some of the gloom that had descended upon her after her arrival had lifted due to the presence of the others, she still found little to smile about in this strange new world. And it wasn't just the seeming hopelessness of their situation or the question of whether or not their homeworld, any version of it, still existed somewhere out there.
It was something about this world, Kara concluded. Somehow it seemed so much harsher than her own, so much more brutal. There were no villains in flashy costumes here. No one broke open bank vaults with super-strength or freeze rays. All the crimes she could observe here seemed so much more mundane and yet often ten times as brutal.
This world seemed like a dark reflection of her own. All the evil that, in her world, appeared in the guise of bald evil scientists, purple aliens, or laughing clowns, was spread out amongst the normal people here. Terrorist attacks, wars, religious conflict, all these seemed so much more intense here than back home. So much more violent, so much more real. Could it be that they had simply never noticed due to their preoccupation with the costumed criminals and invading aliens? The thought disturbed her somehow.
Kara was so preoccupied with her gloomy thoughts that she almost didn't notice the screeching sound in the air until it became audible to merely human ears. She looked up, confused, and her superior eyes immediately zoomed in on a large shape descending towards the city of Washington at frightening speed.
An airplane, she realized a moment later. An airplane with one burning engine and quite obviously out of control. Within less than a second she calculated its angle of descent. It would crash right into the middle of the city. Hundreds if not thousands of lives would be lost unless she did something and fast.
Kara reacted purely out of instinct, not spending so much as a heartbeat thinking about what she was about to do. She simply took off, shedding the coat she had worn, revealing the shirt with the S-symbol she wore beneath. A sonic boom travelled in her wake as she bridged the distance to the doomed plane in less than a second.
Even as she hurtled towards it her senses picked up on several other things. The plane was being painted by targeting systems. Of course, this was Washington. The White House was down there, the Congress, the Supreme Court. Even before September 11, something she had read about at length, the skies above this city would have been carefully watched. Now, with terrorist paranoia still running high, it would be a matter of seconds until some overzealous military man gave the order to shoot the plane down rather than risk it crashing into the city.
All of which meant she had even less time than she had thought.
It was not the first time she had had to catch an object this size. She knew all the problems it entailed. It wasn't simply a matter of strength, something she had in abundance. There was no way she could simply catch and stop such a large and fast-moving object without it going to pieces on her. She had to stabilize it, level it out, and be careful not to apply too much of her strength to the fragile metal hull.
She quickly zipped right towards the burning engine. A gust of super-breath took all the oxygen away from the fire, extinguishing it quickly. The engine was quite thoroughly ruined, though, so she quickly tore its remains free of the wing, careful to drop the pieces where they wouldn't do any harm. A moment later she moved herself into its place, replacing its thrust with her own power of flight even as her senses continued listening to the targeting lasers trained on the plane.
No surface to air missiles came streaking her way, though, and slowly the plane began to come out of its descent, the pilot regaining control of his craft. They cleared the buildings with plenty of room to spare and headed directly towards the airport, where emergency vehicles were already scrambling out into the runway.
Kara saw several people, crew and passengers both, peering out of the windows of the plane. They were looking at her with wide eyes. She gave them a jaunty wave.
Only then did she realize what she had just done.
For a moment she had forgotten where she was. In her world there was nothing unusual about flying people stepping in to prevent (or cause) catastrophes. Granted, airplanes weren't caught in mid-tumble every day, but it happened. Her cousin was a well-known sight in the skies above Metropolis and other cities. Him or some other hero catching a plane wouldn't be worth a front page even.
But she wasn't in her world here. She was in a world that had never before seen a flying person before. A world where the mere idea of someone flying up and catching a crashing plane was so ludicrous as to be banished into the pages of comic books.
Even as her thoughts were racing to find a way out of this new dilemma her body went through the motions. The plane set down on the tarmac of the airport and fire trucks, ambulances, and a dozen other vehicles came screeching towards it with barely any room to spare. Kara didn't linger. Some people had seen her, yes, but if she just moved fast enough there wouldn't be any concrete proof of her ever having been here. Maybe the ramblings of the passengers and crew would be dismissed as some kind of mass hysteria.
The moment the plane was safely on the ground she zipped away at super speed, moving too fast for anyone to see or follow her. She picked up her coat and bag in front of the congress building without even slowing down and was racing beyond the city limit a heartbeat later.
Every kilometre back to Gotham City, the place where their small group stayed for now, was spent berating herself. How could she be so stupid? There must have been another way to save that plane without giving her existence away as blatantly as that. Maybe she could have extinguished the fire from a distance, stabilized the plane with well-applied gusts of super- breath that no one would have been able to differentiate from normal wind. But no, she had to go right in there and let herself be seen by everyone on board that plane.
Within minutes she reached the large apartment Richard had organized for them. She still hadn't asked where he had acquired the money for it all and didn't intend to. No one was currently there. All the others were still busy with their own assignments and none of them could return home as fast as she could, not even Diana.
She dropped down onto the couch, sighing deeply. Maybe she was concerned about nothing. In a world where superbeings were considered nothing but comic book material she doubted anyone would take the words of the shocked passengers seriously. The pilot would only be too happy to claim sole credit for saving the plane. She had left too fast to be seen by anyone on the ground. Everything would be okay. Nothing but a funny urban myth would come from this. They were perfectly safe.
Kara absentmindedly reached for the TV remote and flipped through the channels, needing something to distract her right now.
Her fingers froze as she ended up on CNN.
"These astonishing pictures are just coming in from one of our news crews at Washington airport," the announcer said. "It appears that the Delta Airlines flight 7431, coming in from New York, was saved from a potentially fatal engine failure by what appears to be ... a flying woman."
Kara could only look on in shock as the disbelieving voice of the announcer accompanied a short video sequence that clearly showed her supporting the damaged airplane's wing as it came in for a landing.
TO BE CONTINUED