Kara had been depressed for weeks. She couldn't explain it. She had felt it before, right after she landed and Eliza had helped her through it but there was no one to help her through it now. She couldn't tell Alex about it. Every time she tried the words just wouldn't come out. She didn't know how to tell her sister that her most beloved Aunt might be in league with the aliens she had been fighting her entire career with the D.E.O and that she was likely responsible for the near death experience they had just had.
What's worse was Kara didn't have concrete proof Astra was even alive and she didn't know what could have changed from Krypton to Earth. If Astra was part of the attack on her what had changed from her trying to save her to trying to kill her? Did Astra think Kara had been in on the trap set to capture her?
Kara hadn't been. She had been excited to see her Aunt that day. The woman had mentioned she had something big to tell her and Kara had been trying to guess what it was going to be all night. But when Astra had shown up with a special treat Kara had gotten so sleepy and Astra had taken her straight to bed. Now Kara realized she was drugged but at the time, at that age she hadn't suspected anything. Her parents hadn't been home and Astra always told her a story and tucked her in when they were gone and she visited.
Kara closed her eyes and leaned back to float with her face to the night sky. She had been floating in lazy circles around the city for hours trying to clear her head. Trying to come to grips with her feelings.
On one hand she was angry. Angry with her mother for using her, tricking her for so long with fake mail from Astra. But on the other hand she was angry at Astra for tearing their family apart. Why did she have to join a terrorist group and inadvertently kill people. All Kara's life she had preached at her to protect the innocent.
Behind all that anger was a deep sadness. She knew if Astra was alive she would have come for her when her pod crashed. If she was alive and she didn't….it was obvious Astra's feelings for her niece had changed. Kara wondered if she really blamed her for her imprisonment. If perhaps love for her couldn't have survived whatever Astra had endured behind the walls of Fort Rozz.
"Supergirl you there?" The microphone in her ear chirped with Alex's voice. Kara straightened in the air and pressed on the hidden device so she could reply.
"I'm here." If Alex had noticed Kara's recent mood she had been thankfully quiet about it. Kara knew she wouldn't be for long but she wanted to work through her feelings for her family on her own before she shared them. And she wanted proof her aunt was alive before Alex could sic the D.E.O on her.
"There is a robbery going on at Max Lord's. It doesn't sound like humans. We are en route. I figured you might want to meet us."
"I do." Kara turned and flew as fast as she could toward the tall skyscraper that was home to Lord's industry. She hated the man but that didn't mean she was going to let aliens steal his technology.
"My agents will have Kryptonite bullets so be careful okay." She could hear the worry in Alex's voice and somehow she didn't think it was Alex that wanted her on the mission. Alex had made it clear to her after the Hellgrammite incident that she didn't want Kara around Kryptonite weapons. Like Kara could avoid them, they sparred in a Kryptonite room for Rao's sake. Despite the warning she was proud that Hank was finally giving her a little more responsibility, no one else could order her sister to call her in. She was grateful he was finally starting to trust her, he wasn't an easy man to please, though she had to admit he was fair.
"I'll be careful. Just tell them not to shoot me." She joked lightly, trying to put as much of her usual pep into it as possible.
"Not funny." Alex complained.
"Well not if they shoot me." She agreed. Kara could hear a few other agents chuckling on the same frequency.
"Don't worry, Agent Danvers, is killer with target practice. We got good aim." One promised her. The others obviously agreed about the killer target training.
"If you shoot Supergirl target practice is the least of your worries. I'll let you be the civvies in the next roomie training exercise."
"We definitely won't shoot Supergirl." Kara couldn't help but chuckle. Whatever that had meant was obviously terrifying to them.
"I'm here." Kara could see the aliens scattered about defensively inside, she relayed their position to Alex and tried to use her x-ray vision on the rest of the building. Not surprisingly the lower levels were obscured by lead lined walls. She really hated Max Lord. "They are all wearing masks, Alex. It's the same ones that attacked us….well shit." They were either Kryptonians or just had super hearing because every head turned in tandem toward her when she got closer. Two took off after her and she was forced to circle the building to keep away.
"Supergirl?!" Kara vaguely wondered how Alex always remembered not to use her name when they were in situations like this. She would have screamed out Alex for sure and blew her cover the first fight if their roles had been reversed.
"I'm fine just get here, there are a few two many for me to handle alone." She admitted. It became obvious after a few seconds she couldn't outrun them. Her training with Alex would help but she hadn't been able to train for fighting while flying so Kara quickly lowered herself inside the building. If there was going to be damage from a super fight she wanted to do her best to keep it contained to his building. He could afford the repairs.
Surprisingly however none of the men attacked. They circled her, kept her contained, but they made no move to engage. Not even the two that had forced her to land.
"What are you doing here?" She kept her tone confident despite being out numbered.
"We crashed." One of the men growled at her. She barely stopped from rolling her eyes at his sarcastic comment.
"Here at Lord's labs." He didn't really need the clarification.
"We are taking something back that was stolen from us." Kara turned toward the voice. The man from the warehouse was coming up from the labs below. The ones she couldn't see into. He was carrying a large lead lined metal case. The kind that people cuffed themselves to in movies.
"You're the ones stealing." She protested. She could hear the vehicles squealing to a stop and she expected the aliens to make their move as the agents streamed in with weapons trained on them. They didn't seem to care. But they didn't know about the Kryptonite bullets either.
"Drop the case and surrender peacefully." Someone demanded. Kara wondered if that ever really worked.
"No. I don't think I will. Good to see you on your feet again Danvers." He addressed her sister arrogantly. "I will enjoy breaking the bones myself."
Alex glared at him. "Drop it asshole."
"Make me." Kara didn't like his tone. He knew they had the knife, she had seen Hank shove it into his arm. He knew the humans had weapons to use against them. Kara didn't like his confidence at all.
The man waved his hand and the aliens around them rose into the air. At Alex's signal the agents opened fired….and nothing happened. The bullets bounced off of them. The agents stared in apprehensive shock.
Laughter echoed in the large lobby. "See you shouldn't have let me keep the knife. We are more advanced than you." Their leader tapped the glowing blue device on his shoulder. It must have been something to keep them impervious to Kryptonite. Kara wondered just what kind of technology they had to have made something like that so quickly on Earth. "You are very lucky our orders were clear. We get what we came for without bloodshed."
Kara's ears perked up. She had assumed perhaps he was the one in charge, if it wasn't him…. "Who gave those orders?" Kara caught his gaze while moving herself to stand between him and the clustered human agents. They had grouped back around Alex now that they knew their weapons were ineffective, though they hadn't retreated.
"That's not your concern Kara Zor-El." He said her name like a curse. Spit it out in his obvious hatred. "We leave." His men took off, each in different directions so they would be impossible to track together. They likely had a plan to avoids Earth's satellites it wasn't going to be that easy to find their home base.
"Alex Danvers." The Man called over his shoulder as he lifted easily into he air. "When next we meet I'm going to drive a dagger through your heart." Kara growled and leapt into the air after him, ignoring Alex's protests.
"Your not getting away that easily." Kara told him. He said nothing, he threw the case in the air and Kara barely blinked before another swooped in and took off with it.
"Your mother killed our planet." He told her hostilely. "She ignore all the signs, imprisoned those that would do what it took to save it. She imprisoned her own sister. Astra died there." He lied, making Kara flinch from the news. He took off his mask and tossed it down at Alex's feet. The humans all had their weapons trained on him but they were useless and he knew they wouldn't risk hitting the vulnerable superhero.
"Uncle Non." Kara sank down to the floor. She couldn't imagine him lying about Astra. She hadn't seen him much, even as a young child, but his love of Astra had always been so obvious. She sank down to her knees and shook her head in disbelief. "Your lying. She isn't dead." He only laughed. It sounded bitter and cold.
"The guards and prisoners tore her to pieces! Alura Zor-El's twin sister! The very image of the woman that put them all there, your mother sentenced her to death and she knew it!"
"Kara." Alex kept her gun trained on the man but moved closer to her clearly distraught sister. She had never heard Kara mention Astra before but it was very clear the woman had been dear to her.
"No." Kara refused to believe it.
"Yes. You can't escape the truth. Your mother took everything from Astra. Her freedom, her life… she even took her child." Kara stared up at her uncle in shock. Astra didn't have a child. Surely her mother wouldn't have sentenced her to prison on Fort Rozz pregnant.
"All because of you. Because Astra loved you." Kara shut her eyes on the tears she could feel there. It was too much. She couldn't handle being the very reason her Aunt had been caught and subsequently killed.
With a cry of pain she launched herself up and into her uncle so hard she cracked the concrete floor with her ascension. He took the blow easily despite his surprise and slammed her in the roof of a nearby building.
~A~
Alex was calling in backup, for what little good they would do, and instructing her men to swap out their Kryptonite rounds for regular bullets. The best they could do would be distractions until the helicopter showed up with the missiles. Even those wouldn't do too much damage to a Kryptonian.
She wasn't surprised to see Kara able to keep up with the man she called Non now. Kara had really taken the training seriously and despite flying she was doing a fairly good job countering his blows. Still he was stronger and had far more experience. Alex watched on fearfully as she kept an eye in the sky surrounding them for signs of the others. She had been far too surprised by their numbers already. And something about the entire situation felt too rehearsed. It felt like a trap. Alex felt so helpless watching the fight from the ground and it was a hell of a fight.
~N~
Non was surprised at Kara's new found strength. He also knew it wouldn't save her. Getting her angry, knocking her off balance had been his goal. He needed to study the way she fought and he was scoping out the humans, trying to figure out if they had any other weapons capable of damaging them. It was she coming increasingly obvious by their uselessness that they didn't. He only wished he had brought the dagger he was going to use to end his darling niece's life. He would have liked nothing more than to plunge it into her chest.
"Do you feel guilty I wonder?" He taunted while avoiding the right hook she sent his way. She was clumsier in the air. He made a mental note as he slammed into her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and spun around, using the momentum to launch her into a billboard some thirty feet away. She immediately got up but he could tell she was about to break. He fight had been all emotional rage. Grief was quickly replacing that.
He avoided a few more of her hits and took a half assed kick to the chest. Once he righted himself he raced towards her and grabbed an arm. He was stronger than her and she couldn't get free. She tried to swing her free arm around and hit him but he only grabbed it to and pressed it against her own chest as he flipped her around and jerked her into his front.
"I am going to kill you. Maybe not now, I will give you time to mourn the loss of Astra. But then I'm going to kill you. And the rest of your pathetic excuse for a family." Something in Non's ear buzzed, Kara couldn't make out what it was even with her advanced hearing but he launched her away and took off like a shot through the air.
She landed gingerly next to her sister and rubbed her wrists subconsciously. They were bruising. She had never bruised before. "Are you alright?" The other agents were moving back to their vehicles. A helicopter was now circling overhead. The eyes in the sky as they completed their retreat, their mission having been a complete failure.
"No…I.." she couldn't explain the depth of her grief. She had just been given hope that she still had family, that Astra had lived. That maybe she hated her and was trying to kill her but that she was alive. Now even that small glimmer of hope had been busted up. And instead of her Aunt leading the Kryptonian terrorists it was her estranged Uncle. An uncle out for revenge.
Alex hugged her tightly. "We will talk okay. Just not here." Kara nodded. Not everyone at the D.E.O had clearance to know about their family dynamic. They couldn't talk about Astra surrounded by agents and Kara couldn't afford the break down she knew talking about it would cause.
"I'm….I don't feel….I'm going home, Alex."
Her sister nodded and watched quietly as Kara shot off into the air in the direction of her apartment. Alex was going to get the agents back and head straight to Kara's apartment. The girl may have been made of steel but her emotions were not and her little sister definitely didn't need to be alone tonight.