Chapter 98: Ripples of Infinity (Great Darkness Saga - Part 4)
Disclaimer: All things Supergirl/Superman and Legion of Superheroes belong to DC. No infringement is intended.
Fortress Journal Entry, Kara-El
Making this journal entry might well be futile, seeing as what we are about to do might cause the entire fabric of time and space to be torn apart, reset, rebooted, or whatever else might happen if time anomalies get out of hand. Not even Metron knows, so we are breaching unknown territory here and the danger levels are beyond anything we have ever attempted before.
I guess it all started with the vision I experienced while under the influence of the Black Mercy. I imagined a world where I successfully led a mission back through time to rescue the population of Krypton before my world's demise. It was a mere phantasy, of course, ridiculous in scope, impossible to execute, but even after I was free of that imaginary world, it stuck in my mind and refused to let go.
I spent endless hours going over my limited knowledge of time travel. I drew up and discarded dozens, hundreds of plans how it might make this impossible idea a reality, each one more ridiculous then the next. I was ready to give up, truth be told, but then the impossible happened: Kandor! An entire city of Kryptonians had survived the destruction of my world and just appeared in orbit above Mars. And while I could never be quite sure, everything I learned during that incident pointed to one conclusion:
I did that, or rather, I would do that. I would be the one who took Kandor from Krypton, years before its destruction, and sent it spiraling through time. I wrote down everything I remembered, every detail of the technology I had witnessed, did everything I could to prepare for the day it would happen, for I was certain it would come sooner or later.
Now that day is here. Today is the day I rescue Kandor and bring it into the future to help us defeat Darkseid and rescue my son.
It is dangerous, no doubt. Horrendously so, in fact. How did Metron describe my original travel through time? A pebble thrown into the fabric of space-time, the ripples spreading outward until they caused an entire world to be shifted forward in time. Now we are about to follow-up the pebble by throwing a city-sized rock into space-time, hoping against hope that it will somehow cancel out the damage already done instead of expanding it.
The first thing we needed, of course, was time, as ridiculous as that might sound. Darkseid was just four days away from Earth (in the era of the Legion) and we had no idea how far-reaching his gaze might be. So the first thing we did was to move our operation into a different time era. My present, to be exact. Brainiac 5, Saturn Girl, Star Boy, Ultra Boy, Phantom Girl, Wildfire, and Light Lass came along, with Brainy carrying in his head the sum total of time travel knowledge available in the 30th century.
Here we met up with our present-day allies, which included Vril Dox, the newly named Brainiac 2. Something I have not even begun to wrap my head around, to be honest, but it will have to wait for now. The meeting between the two Coluan geniuses was... interesting, to say the least. Querl told me that, despite their shared family name, there is only a very low probability of them actually being related, as the name Dox is rather common on Colu. Either way, the two of them immediately began discussing temporal physics and while I do consider myself a pretty smart girl, they quickly left me behind.
We spent four weeks building the necessary equipment, refining the technology, and going over every single thing those of us who had been involved in Kandor's first appearance could remember. We are playing a dangerous game here; nothing must go wrong, or the resulting paradox might well tear the universe apart.
Which, again, probably makes this journal entry here superfluous, but I do want to leave a record behind… just in case. This is the most dangerous mission we have ever undertaken, and I find myself plagued by self-doubt. Are we doing the right thing? Are we doing it for the right reasons? Am I allowing myself to be blinded by my desire to get my son back and save at least some of my people? Is that worth risking the entire universe, past, present, and future?
Yes. Rao have mercy on my soul, it is.
Planet Krypton, 29 years ago
Transporting four of five people through time inside a time sphere required truly immense amounts of power. Transporting over a dozen people, alongside hundreds of tons of equipment, required power on an entirely different scale. They had had to build a custom ship that was little more than cargo space and immense capacitators to channel all the necessary power. The time barge, as the Brainiacs had called it, shuddered and groaned as its systems barely managed to control the immense flow of energy from three fusion spheres and one Kryptonian Omegahedron, all of them focused on empowering and enlarging the energy field generated by a lone figure running on a treadmill.
"Shutting down the treadmill in five, four, three, two, one, and shutdown!"
What had so far been nothing but a red blur surrounded by electricity became a humanoid figure once again. Wally West, the Flash, the Fastest Man Alive, slowed down to normal speed and sat down on his butt.
"Did we make it?" he asked, out of breath. He had travelled through time before, yes, but never before had he even attempted to take so many people and so much tonnage with him. Without the extra power provided by both 30th century and Kryptonian technology, it would have been a fool's errand that would probably have killed him. As it was, he was simply exhausted.
"We are stable," Brainiac 5 said, manning the primary controls. "We have left the time stream and are back in synch with local time."
"Are we in the right time and place?" Kara asked, her super vision penetrating the walls of the time barge. Her breath hitched as she saw the red orb immediately in front of them.
"Planet Krypton," Brainy said solemnly. "Eleven years before its destruction."
"Are you sure you can do this?" Imra whispered to her from her place at Kara's side.
"Of course," she merely said, her gaze firmly fixed on the planet below. Her planet. Her home. More than a decade before she had seen it die.
"You are crying, Kara," Imra told her softly.
Kara angrily wiped the tears from her eyes. This was not the time to wallow. Krypton was gone, she had long ago accepted that fact. There was nothing she could do to change that, not without cataclysmic repercussions. But there were half a million of her people inside the city of Kandor at this very moment. These were people she could save. These were people she had to save, both for their own sake as well as that of the future and her son. They would help her defeat Darkseid and save Clark.
She ruthlessly pushed that cruel voice inside of her aside, the one that kept telling her that, for the third time now, she would be leaving her planet and her people behind to die.
"Everyone is clear on the plan?" she asked one final time, looking at the team surrounding her.
As a child, Kara had seen recordings of the disappearance of Kandor. Several observation satellites had captured footage of that pivotal moment in Kryptonian history. She distinctly remembered the bright yellow beam coming down from the sky, how it scooped the city out of the planet like a giant spoon, only for everything to disappear a moment later in a flash of light and the loud boom of a sudden vacuum.
Now it was up to them to make sure that history went down as intended.
"Born ready, mom," Kona told her, giving her a jaunty salute. Kara returned a brittle smile. Taking Kona along had not been her first choice, but there were only so many people available to them with the sheer power levels required to pull this thing off. Kona had apparently made it her own personal mission to be as upbeat and optimistic as possible about everything, which made Kara want to hug the stuffing out of her.
"The Zeta beam is charged and ready," Adam Strange said, manning the device created by his father-in-law on the planet Rann. It was large enough to transport entire space fleets across the galaxy. Hopefully it would also suffice to teleport a city.
"Cloaking field is holding," Brainy told them. "We need to be really careful. Kryptonians might no longer be expansionist in this time period, but that does not mean they have neglected the safety of their home world. I'm picking up more than a dozen heavily armed defense satellites in our vicinity. If they detect us, they will destroy us."
"Ok, everybody! Time to suit up!"
Kara vividly remembered the black armored figure she had briefly encountered during her first visit to Kandor. Now she was looking at that very same suit of armor standing empty in front of her. Once again, the deeper implications of time travel, time loops, and what it all said about free will and causality made her head hurt.
"Traversing the time stream unprotected is a death sentence for anyone who is not invulnerable," Brainy had explained to them. "The force field generators we will install underneath Kandor will protect the city itself from the rigors, but we might well have to move about outside it without being incinerated in the process."
Everybody had been briefed on the plan numerous times, so there was no more talking. Those who would move outside the time barge donned the black protective armor, which would not only render them invisible to Kryptonian technology, but also had the added advantage of obscuring their identities from anyone who did see them. Such as younger versions of themselves.
"Go!" Kara yelled and half a dozen figures in black armor dropped out of the cloaked time barge and fell towards the red planet below.
The city of Kandor was easy to find. Its crystal towers glittered in the red sunlight and her enhanced hearing picked up the chatter of half a million people. Living people. Half a million living Kryptonians that she would save. She would not fail. Not again!
"Okay, we have three minutes for this part of the operation," Brainy's voice came over their coms. "Starting… now!"
Kara, Diana, Kona, J'Onn, Wildfire, and Ultra Boy crashed into evenly spaced spots around the perimeter of Kandor and quickly dug down into the ground. Using their superior strength, speed, and energy projection abilities, they quickly dug beneath the bedrock of the city. Kara really would have liked to have a Green Lantern or two along on this ride, their rings could have done this work a lot easier, but the idea had been nipped in the bud by Sinestro.
"The Guardians of the Universe are connected to the green power and thus to all the power rings that access it," the senior Green Lantern had explained. "They would immediately notice if a new Green Lantern ring were to suddenly appear out of nowhere and draw on the central battery's power."
With the mission as delicate as it was, the timing of things as important as it was, no one thought it a good idea to risk some kind of intervention by the Green Lanterns' bosses in this time period. Gardner and Sinestro were along for the ride and would render assistance if it became unavoidable, but only then. Right now they were simply sitting on the time barge, their rings discharged and inactive, with Gardner grumbling about how he never got to participate in the really good stuff.
"There are several alerts going off inside Kandor," Brainy told them. "Sensors have no doubt detected the seismic tremors. Two minutes left!"
While the six of them busied themselves with underground excavation, a seventh figure was silently creeping into the city itself. Tinya Wazzo, codename Phantom Girl, was a native of the planet BGZTL, a world sitting right on top of a dimensional rift and always slightly out of synch with the rest of the universe. Her native state was to be out of phase, intangible, a phantom, and nothing and no one could touch her while she was in this state. So she easily slid into a specific building inside the city and emerged into a room protected by state-of-the-art Kryptonian security systems without any bother.
"Intruder alert," a metallic voice intoned. "Intruder..."
The voice of Kandor's local Brainiac node was cut off as Phantom Girl detonated the 30th century's equivalent of an EMP grenade. The localized pulse wave fried every circuit within a certain range and deleted every last bit of the Brainiac program from the local hardware.
"Brainy 1 is out of commission, Brainy 5," Tinya reported in, giggling.
"Very good," Brainiac responded without any trace of humor. "90 seconds left!"
Kara tunneled through the solid bedrock beneath Kandor at terrifying speed, her route tightly coordinated with her five comrades. In less than two minutes they had basically separated Kandor and the ground it stood on from the rest of the planet. Speeding through the freshly dug tunnels once again, the six of them quickly planted a number of Nth metal plates provided by the Hawks. The miracle alloy would play an important part in the next phase of their plan.
"Light Lass, Star Boy, you're up," Brainiac ordered.
Thom Kallor and Ayla Rannz were two Legionnaires with abilities that appeared rather similar on the surface but were actually very different. An encounter with a runaway comet had given Star Boy the ability to affect one of the fundamental forces of the universe, gravity. Ayla Rannz' abilities were the result of two separate accidents, one an attack by a Lightning Beast on the planet Korbal, the other an explosion in a laboratory, the combination enabling her to change the mass of any given object. Working in unison, the two of them focused their abilities on the city below.
As gravity reluctantly lessened its hold on the city and its mass shifted to become lighter, the Nth metal plates below activated and began to further negate Krypton's grip on its most famous city.
"Okay, everything is ready," Brainiac reported. "The Zeta Beam will teleport the city into high orbit, where the shielding generators and chronal field enhancers will automatically attach and activate!"
"Flash, you ready?" Kara asked, emerging from the ground, and shaking off the dirt. Stopping for but a single moment, she scooped up a handful of soil and put it into her pocket. One last souvenir of home, she told herself.
"All set," Wally reported in, no longer sounding exhausted. He had gorged himself on food in the last few minutes to recover his strength. "I'll start sending us back into the time stream the moment you give the word!"
"Coordinates are set for the 20th century," Brainiac added. "Are we sure that is the wisest course of action? Kandor might have appeared above Mars in your era, Superwoman, but would it not make more sense to take the city directly to the 30th century?"
"We are trying to close the open time loops, Brainy," she replied, rising higher into the sky, "not make more of them. Kandor already appeared in the 20th century, we are merely making sure it happens as intended."
Her eyes were sweeping across the red landscape. She barely managed to keep the tears at bay at this point. Focus on the mission, she reminded herself. It was the only thing that mattered.
"Zeta Beam is ready on your mark," Adam reported in, his hand hovering over the activation trigger.
"Okay, everybody," Kara ordered. "On my signal!"
For one last time she allowed her gaze to sweep across the lands of her birth. The red sand, the crimson sky, the higher gravity, the denser atmosphere. Odds were that she would never experience it again. It was far too dangerous to travel through time and mess with causality, never mind the damage it was doing to her soul. She would never return.
Suddenly, without warning, her gaze fell across a hover car that was speeding along the highway that led towards Kandor. She knew that car. She remembered that car. She had ridden inside it as a child a thousand times. Without any conscious thought her eyes penetrated the car's outer hull and she saw the two men sitting inside of it. At that very same moment her conviction crumbled.
"Dad?" she mumbled. "Uncle Jor?"
"Kara, we are waiting for your signal," Brainy's voice came across her com. "What's the matter?"
She did not register his words. Her dad was down there, travelling towards Kandor. She tried to remember whether he had ever told her about this day. She had only been two years old back then – well, now – and maybe he had simply never mentioned it to her, the memories of seeing an entire city disappear into thin air not something he cared to tell his young daughter about.
Or maybe something else was happening? Was the timeline changing? Was destiny giving her a second chance? A chance to say goodbye to her father? Or, Rao, maybe she could change things after all. All she had to do was wait until her dad and Uncle Jor entered Kandor, then she would be able to take them with her. She could save them. She could have her dad back!
"What's wrong? Why isn't Kara answering?" Star Boy asked, his voice strained as he was focusing all his power at the city to make it easier for the Zeta Beam to pick it up.
"Anyone have a visual on her? Kara, what's going on?" That was Diana, but she did not care.
Her mind was running in circles. She could save him, her dad! But what about Uncle Jor? If she saved him, too, then he and Lara would never have Kal. Her son would never be born. But how could she just leave them here? Maybe if she travelled to Argo City at super speed, snatched mom and aunt Lara, ... no, she would have to take her own younger self, too, otherwise... no, that would not work, either, but there had to be a way! She could not simply leave her dad to die!
Kara, we have to leave now! Imra's voice spoke directly in her head. You cannot save them!
"That is my father down there," she whispered, her eyes glued to the car that was moving ever closer to Kandor. "I cannot abandon him! Not again!"
Precious seconds ticked by, her mind ablaze, dozens of scenarios running through her head over and over again, none of them working. Her body was frozen, she simply could not move, could not look away. Her dad was down there. She could simply fly down, have him take her into his arms, just like he used to do. It would only take a second or two.
Suddenly a small figure barreled into her with tremendous force and Kara found herself unceremoniously dragged along back towards Kandor.
"I got her," Kona said, her tactile telekinesis practically gluing her smaller form to that of her mother. "Flash, start running!"
"No, let me go, Kona!" Kara screamed, hands reaching out to the car that was getting ever smaller as they sped away from it. "Dad! Please, dad!"
"I'm so sorry, mom," Kona whispered, but did not change course. Had Kara been thinking straight, she could easily have countered her daughter with her own power of flight, but as it was, she could only flay helplessly as she was carried away, tears streaming freely from her eyes.
As they passed into Kandor, a bright yellow Zeta beam shot down from the sky and enveloped the city. Just a few seconds later there was nothing left but a huge hole in the ground and a mystery the Kryptonians would fail to solve before their demise.
Kara's screams faded into sobs.
Orbit of Mars, 3 years ago
Warning messages were scrolling across the screen in front of Brainiac 5, even as alarm claxons were screaming for his attention. The time barge shuddered and energy surged through overtaxed systems.
"By the muses," the young Coluan muttered, his fingers flying across the controls. "I really hate a predestination paradox."
"What is happening, Brainy?" Imra asked, standing next to him.
"Remember that Kara told us something about Kandor being unstable when it appeared in the 20th century and some stuff blowing up?" Imra nodded. "Well, better hold on tight, because that's exactly what's happening right now."
"The force field around the city is fluctuating," Star Boy reported in. "All the generators are past the safety limits."
"Must be the time disturbances surrounding these events," Brainiac muttered, even as he was furiously working the controls. "The force field should have been strong enough, but apparently I did not properly account for the additional stress factors."
"Are we back in normal time?" Imra asked, seeing a distorted image of a red planet on the view screen in front of them. A different red planet this time.
"Not quite," Brainiac replied. "There is some kind of disruptive harmonic between the force field and the time bubble generated by the Flash. We are still slightly out of synch with local time."
The door to the time barge's control room opened and Kara and Kona walked inside.
"Well, it seems everything is happening just like it did before, then," Kara said, her voice deceptively calm.
Imra walked over to her and gently grabbed her shoulders, looking into her eyes.
"Are you all right, Kara?" she asked, easily seeing the emotional turmoil in her friend's eyes even without the use of her telepathic powers.
Kara took a deep breath. "I am... no, Rao, I am really not. But that does not matter right now." She turned towards the fidgeting teenager standing beside her. "Thank you, Kona! You kept me from possibly doing something monumentally stupid."
Kona hugged her. "I'm so sorry, mom. I wish we could have saved them somehow."
Kara simply nodded, not trusting her voice.
"Okay, people," she said, visibly gathering herself. "We know how events are supposed to proceed from here on out, so let us make sure that they will. We need to repair the damaged equipment and make sure that we can continue our voyage to the 30th century. We will also soon get visitors from this time period, so we need to make sure that neither they nor the citizens of Kandor see more of us than they should."
Everyone scrambled to get to work, even as the planet Mars loomed ever closer in the time barge's view screen and a call for assistance was making its way from Kandor to the nearby planet Earth.
"I think I see the problem," Adam Strange reported in. "One of the chronal field enhancers was damaged when the Zeta Beam teleported Kandor into place. Positioning was probably off by about half a centimeter or so, so part of the casing is now fused with Kandor's bedrock. We'll need to replace this one."
"Be careful to stay clear of the force shield," Brainiac reminded everyone. "We are still roughly two micro-seconds out of phase with local time. That might not sound like much but it's quite enough to tear you apart and scatter your atoms across parsecs of space and several years of time."
"Important safety tip, Brainy," Wildfire quipped, even as he fused the replacement shield generator into place. "Thank you for the consideration."
Kara hovered at the edge of the force field, keeping an eye on the repairs, and occasionally letting her eyes sweep out across nearby space. If her memory could be trusted, someone should be... ah, there they were.
"Heads up, everyone," she called out. "We are about to get visitors. Everyone stay of out sight and double-check your stealth fields."
Her eyes easily zoomed in on the approaching flotilla, two Javelins, accompanied by two Green Lanterns and two Kryptonians. She swallowed hard as her eyes focused on one of them.
"Clark," she whispered, her heart aching terribly.
Her son was out there, three years younger than when she had last seen him, uncorrupted by Darkseid, and still looking so very, very young. It took every little bit of will power she had left to keep herself from simply flying out there, because she wanted nothing more than to grab him and never, ever let go again. Rao, she was not strong enough for this. First her father, now Clark... she had no idea how she was supposed to make it through this.
"Can you handle this, sister?" Diana asked, hovering close by. Kara figured that her family wanted to ensure that there would be no repeat of her near breakdown on Krypton.
"I will have to," she merely said, clenching her teeth. Her eyes now focused on the woman flying beside her son. That was her, three years younger as well. Physically there was very little difference between them. Kara would probably still look like a woman in her twenties when she was well into her fifties. Still, she was easily capable of seeing how very different this younger woman was from her. Damaged by losing her world, yes, but yet unmarked by the trauma of losing her son.
"I will bring him back," she made a promise to her younger doppelganger.
The universe blinked as another ripple went through the force field around Kandor. Kara knew that all the people inside were currently experiencing brief flashes of the past and the future, the result of being slightly out of synch with the rest of space-time. The suits of armor they wore were protecting them from these disturbances to a certain degree, but they would not last forever.
"We are losing force field cohesion," Brainiac reported. "Sinestro, Gardner, charge your rings! We will need you to bolster the field until repairs are complete."
They had talked about this, especially as Kara remembered the Javelins' sensors detecting traces of Green Lantern energy as part of the exotic energy mix around Kandor. There was still a risk that the Guardians in this time would take notice, but with this era's Gardner and Sinestro and their rings close by, odds were that the time-displaced rings would not be no detected.
"On it," Gardner called in. "Finally get to do something around here!"
A few seconds later the force field stabilized somewhat, though it was easy to see that it was still quite unstable. Which, again, was just like she remembered it.
"We need to find cover," Kara told Diana, the two women accelerating towards the cloaked time barge. "Imra, you need to make sure that you are cloaking our mental presences from J'Onn!"
Observing without being seen, the time travelers watched as a small group containing the younger Superwoman, Batman, Sinestro, Hawkman, and the Martian Manhunter made its way inside the force field and into the city. Kara just had to close her eyes to remember these events, every second of it burned into her memory. To walk in a Kryptonian city again, to realize that a large number of her people had indeed survived the cataclysm... it had been one of the happiest moments of her life.
"Check in, everyone," Brainy called out over the com. "According to Kara's memories, something should be exploding any minute now. How is the equipment looking?"
"Everything steady over here," Ultra Boy called in.
"Generators are still maxed out, but stable," Star Boy reported.
"I've got the replacement field enhancer in place," Adam said, "and everything should be... oh crap!"
Kara started to move even before her friend had finished speaking. In a blur of super speed she was by his side, even as the force field generator directly in front of him started to explode. Not hesitating, she grabbed her friend and threw him towards the time barge.
Then the explosion caught her and sent her tumbling into the unstable force field surrounding Kandor.
"Mom!" Kona screamed.
Before Kara could answer, she was simply gone.
Time: unknown
The universe around her becomes a kaleidoscope of images, flashing by too fast to make sense of any of them. Voices ring in her ears, some she recognizes, some are utterly foreign.
"We're out of time, Jor! We need to launch now!"
For the briefest of moments she is back on Krypton and sees how the world breaks, the sky catches fire, and a desperate family launches its two youngest members into space, hoping against hope to save them. She can feel tears in her eyes, but the emotions slip away as quickly as the images in front of her.
She is bathed in purple light and feels so much love that she fears her heart will shatter from it. A voice rings in her ear even as a glittering purple gem rests on her palm for a fraction of a second.
"Careful! The jewels created by the Zamarons for their Star Sapphires are incredibly dangerous. They harness the extreme end of the emotional spectrum, the power of love. It sounds ridiculous on the surface, I know, but the danger is very, very real"
The name 'Sinestro' flickers across her consciousness, but once again she finds herself wrenched away before the events have a chance to settle in her memory. Lightning churns around her, the winds of time itself whip by, and a familiar voice rings in her ear even as the stars themselves become so many streaks of light.
"Just one of those things that need to happen! You'll understand eventually, I promise!"
She sees a giant hand cradling a nebula, watches as stars ignite and galaxies form. A tiny object races past her, the last two survivors of the planet Krypton escaping the doom of their world through hyperspace. She averts her eyes as the sun explodes, having reached the end of its life span, and a figure so bright she cannot directly look at it gently cradles a world in their hands, protecting the fragile orb from the supernova.
"So whatever happened to the Seeder of Worlds?" a young voice asks, the tone somehow conjuring the image of a classroom where attentive students are listening to the lecture of a teacher.
"She is not dead," another voice says, though now she imagines vast fields of wheat and corn and the sun shining down on them. "She will be back!"
She now stands in a long corridor, metal walls all around, and a man takes his last breath in front of her, arrogantly telling her that he has the last laugh after all even as life flees his body.
"The last laugh? No one is laughing today," she hears a voice sounding almost like herself say. "Not you, not me, certainly not your victims! Not even Great Rao is laughing today. He merely weeps for his children gone astray!"
The universe blinks, time and space settle down like children finally coming down from a sugar rush, and Kara sees herself looking back at her.
Orbit of Mars, 3 years ago
"Superwoman's armor is damaged," Brainiac said. "It's no longer keeping her safe from the time disturbances!"
"I am picking up her mental presence, she has just reappeared in the city below," Saturn Girl reported in. "I cannot quite read her thoughts, but she is confused and in a lot of pain."
"Even her near-invulnerable form cannot take the strain of uncontrolled time shifts for long without the protection of the armor. We need to stabilize her!"
"I'm on it," Phantom Girl said, quickly phasing through the hull of the time barge and dropping down into the city below. Superwoman had briefed them all on her memories of encountering time-lost Kandor the first time, so Tinya had a very good inkling as to where exactly their friend was right now.
Still cloaked from sight, Phantom Girl emerged into the city and saw a younger version of Superwoman confronting a person in black armor, not aware that she was meeting her own future self.
"Okay, this is not good," Brainiac said. "We have the same person from two different points in time in close proximity. We need to get Kara out of there quickly!"
"You… must... leave!" the older Kara told her younger counterpart, the armor hiding her face and distorting her voice. "Quickly! While... while there is still… time!"
"Who are you?" the younger Kara asked. "Did you kidnap Kandor? What are you doing with it? Why are you here now?"
"No… time," older Kara said, staggering back to her feet. "Chrono field… unstable! Not in synch with... current time zone… City will... be destroyed unless… we can move it back... into the... timestream!"
"The time disturbances are increasing in strength again," Brainiac said. "Quickly, Phantom Girl, before she is thrown into the time stream again!"
"I can't interfere yet," Phantom Girl replied. "Remember? Kara told us about this conversation! We have to let it run its course."
"Who is 'we'?" younger Kara demanded. "Who are you?"
The city shuddered as, outside, a single young Kryptonian did his best to keep it from tumbling down onto the surface of Mars.
"Go!" older Kara demanded, stumbling forward. For a moment the two versions of the same person were almost within touching distance and reality itself seemed to shiver in the space between them, screaming out as if in agony.
"Don't let them touch," Brainiac implored.
"You need to go," older Kara said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Please!"
Phantom Girl did not hear the rest of the conversation between the two, but it didn't matter. She knew what was being said. Finally younger Kara straightened up and looked at her team.
"Let's go," Kara said, turning around. "We have a city to save!"
The moment they turned away, Phantom Girl darted forward. Thankfully the very, very smart people on their team had foreseen the eventuality of one of their armor's getting damaged, so they had included an emergency buddy system in the design. Phantom Girl hugged Kara from behind and her own armor automatically interlinked with Kara's, extending its stabilizing field to protect the other woman as well until repairs could be made.
"Kara, are you all right?" she asked.
"I have been better, Tinya," Kara replied after a few seconds, sounding utterly exhausted, her voice shaking. "But we cannot rest quite yet. Brainy, how are the repairs going?"
"Ultra Boy and Adam Strange are installing the replacement force field generator right now, it should be online in less than a minute."
"Good. Will that be enough for us to continue our journey?"
"Unless they somehow manage to blow up another generator, yes."
Kara nodded. "Okay, then we have but one more problem. I need to make another appearance outside, but without a second suit of armor clinging to mine. Do we have time to repair my suit?"
"No, I'm afraid not."
Kara thought on that for a moment. "Diana, feel up to another round of the old impersonating each other again?"
From the safety of the time barge, Kara watched as Diana acted out the other part of the conversation she remembered from her younger self's point of view. Younger Kara and her team finally left, heading outside the now stabilizing energy field around the city.
"Do you think we should have warned them?" Kona asked, standing beside her. "I mean... I know that we should not tamper with time any more than it has already been tampered with, but... this seems so... I don't know."
"Believe me, baby girl, I know," Kara said, pulling her daughter closer against her. "I know."
"All systems are stable again," Brainiac told them. "We are ready."
"Flash, up for another sprint?" Kara asked.
"Well, seeing as I've done nothing but rest my legs and stuff my mouth while you were out lifting cities and riding out explosions, I'm good to go."
"Then hit it, Flash Boy," Kona chirped. "Next stop, 30th century!"
Planet Sanctuary, 1,000 years in the future
Time and space split apart, the universe blinked, and where moments ago there had been nothing but empty plains, there now stood a city. Crystal towers shone in the light of the yellow star high above as the citizens of Kandor looked up at the clear sky, the energy bottle around their city finally fading away.
"We made it," Brainiac 5 said, sounding deeply exhausted. "Readings show that we arrived three months before we left, as planned."
Kara nodded, a tired smile on her face. They had done it. Kandor was saved. Half a million of her people were saved from extinction.
"Are you all right, mom?" Kona asked, hugging her once more.
Kara nodded. She felt utterly exhausted and spent. The near breakdown upon seeing her father alive had been a humbling experience, the uncontrolled fall through time had been frightening, but it was over. Against all odds, the mission had been a success. They now had three months for the Kandorians to power up on yellow sunlight and gain at least a rudimentary control over their new abilities to easily handle anything short of Darkseid himself. It would not be easy, especially as they also had to tell them about the fate of their planet and how they had been moved forward in time, but it would work. It had to work.
For the first time since Clark had been taken from her, Kara dared to hope that everything would work out all right.
End Chapter 98
Author's Note: Thus ends our wild ride through time (well, discounting that we're still 1,000 years in the future). Kara and her family have saved Kandor, as was hinted at in chapter 50 (and make sure to reread that chapter if you want to refresh your memory of what else happened in Kandor during the events of this chapter here. I certainly had to). Now half a million Kryptonians stand ready to spread their wings and save the future from Darkseid. Surely all will be all right now, won't it? I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
Up Next: Rhythms of Darkness