AN: My advanced New Years gift to you all, an actual update in all its un-betaed glory!
This has been a whole lot of fun to write and once I got on a roll there was no stopping me.
Furthermore, this is basically a wink/nod to one of my most favourite games/universes. Give me a shout if you recognise what I'm on about.
Minor Edits: 07/01/2017
Like the Heavens itself had opened, a star fell from the sky. A celestial hammer falling, striking and crushing the side of a mighty mountain as it continued its Earthbound trajectory.
Finally, it came to a rest; scarring the ground where it passed.
The pod let out a pneumatic hiss as it slid open and its sole occupant heaved and released a breath.
Shakily, the Last Daughter of Krypton lowered herself to the ground, awed by the sheer amount of green around her and beyond the cliff-edge her ship landed by; the likes of which she had only seen in depictions of a rainforest planet in the Crystalline Archives on Krypton.
Krypton… it's gone… it's all gone.
Something inside Kara seemed to snap; the world was suddenly so loud.
Moving water from a river somewhere sounded like rolling thunder; wing strokes of colourful flying birds were like harsh claps inside her skull and the puttering of wildlife was a veritable stampede and riot.
The Kryptonian scrambled away from the edge and back into her pod, sealing it behind her as violent sobs rocked her form and she tried to get her breathing under control; tried to get some semblance of control.
Eventually, the world seemed to fall away and everything grew quiet once more.
My name is Kara Zor-El and I am now the elder of the noble House of El.
She had a mission; the most important task ever set upon her shoulders; the dying request of her Mother, Father and her Uncle Jor-El and Aunt Lara: Protect her little cousin.
She held her Mother's necklace—it was hers now—to her heart and thought of Alura and her last beautiful heart-breaking smile.
I will not fail you, Mother. May you all rest eternal in Rao's light.
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Though Krypton was not a warring race it was still a planet of fierce warriors. For not only were they strong and very skilled in combat, trained from the age of fifteen, but they also had the cunning and supreme-intelligence to reinforce their brawn. Kryptonians' thought processes were faster, capable of thinking of millions of scenarios, problems, solutions, strategies and so on within tenths of a second after being presented with new information or situation.
While Kara would never have the chance to receive her combat training—as is required of every member of her House since it was one of the ruling Houses on Krypton and the time may come to fight—she had been thinking, studying, learning since before she could walk. By the age of three she was already capable of solving complex equations and her knowledge base only grew from there. She was a genius, a prodigy even among other geniuses.
So—emotions aside—Kara plotted her course of action.
Kal-El's pod left not too long before hers. Her Father had told her that her coordinates had been interlocked with those of Kal's so step-one would be to find his pod.
Her Mother had explained to her that she would acquire great powers on Earth and she had already seen and heard that first hand. She had been able to see for miles through the low morning fog, the canopy of the woodland and the trees themselves. It was rather terrifying to see the skeletons of the small and larger animals moving around.
There had to be a better way to find him than bombarding her newly enhanced faculties and potentially doing harm to herself or others. She didn't even have a clue as to what she was now capable of.
Think, Kara, think!
She almost wanted to slap herself. The answer was literally right in front of her face.
Kara activated her pod's command console and her HUD came to life. The Kryptonian re-arranged certain crystals until her ship began transmitting its beacon and she hoped that Kal's pod would ping her back. She also started a search through different frequencies in case her cousin's ship was already broadcasting but just in a different frequency.
Time ticked by, she tried to be patient but her mind was abuzz and so to stop herself from fidgeting, she decided to do something more productive: learn about the alien world that will be their new home.
Hours must have passed judging by the height of the yellow sun and how it had now burned through the low fog. According to the data the crystals had on Earth (and there was a lot), Krypton and this planet's solar cycles were similar although Earth and its Sun were much, much younger than her home world and Rao.
Still, nothing from the beacon. She was starting to feel claustrophobic in the pod. Were the walls coming closer? No, that's silly.
Kara opened her pod once more, the HUD disappearing but she knew it was still scanning and transmitting.
She breathed in the cool crisp air. Thankfully the fires had died down in the humidity and the worst of the smoke burning smell had been carried away by the wind, though apparently her nose seems to have exponentially improved along with her other senses because when the breeze stopped she was hit full force with everything.
Kara coughed and wheezed, trying to keep calm because panicking will only make things much worse. She concentrated on breathing through her mouth and the feel of the earth, the stones, the grass and rustle of leaves and then she heard it… voices…
Screaming…
She thought about Krypton; how she watched, helpless, as its citizens screamed and scrambled for safety as the world crumbled around them. But nowhere was safe. The whole planet was trembling.
She watched, helpless, as her Mother and Father held each other, how their brave smiles withered into sorrow as she shot past them…
She thought of her mission. Looking back at her pod, still scanning.
She decided.
It can wait a few more hours. I'll be back.
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For the second time in her life, her world was fire.
The screaming she had earlier was that of a boy a few years older than her with dark brown skin wearing clothing from made of animal skins whom she now followed as she passed by the high wooden walls that surrounded a village with numerous longhouses. Everything was on fire.
The wounded lay on the ground; some were helping others try to breathe while others were running, crawling or trying to shift piles of burning debris. The cloud of smoke was thick and the cries of despair threatened to drown-out the sheer cacophony of the crackling inferno around her.
Through the chaos she heard the boy's voice again. She didn't really know how, logically, she had never been to this planet and never seen or heard of its many dialects of which she learned there were many in her perusal of the data crystals—she would later learn that even in her sleep she had been learning about Earth from the crystals—but she instinctively knew and understood what the boy was saying.
He was calling for his mother.
Not caring for even a nanosecond that her white Kryptonian robes were thoroughly getting blackened by the soot and ash, she ran after the boy, not noticing or simply disregarding the looks she drew.
Her stomach rolled as some debris fell towards the boy but was surprised at his agility and grace as he tucked and rolled, neatly avoiding the wreck and continuing on to navigate the rest of the burning longhouse and getting out the other side.
Kara followed, finding that she wasn't at all bothered by the heat of the fire and that she could jump high as she did so to get over the flaming rubble. So, thick skin and high-jumping, huh? Not now, focus!
She rounded the corner and finally caught up with the boy who was futilely screaming and pounding at a door having finally reached his house and found his mother.
"Stand back!" she yelled, unknowingly and instinctively in the boy's native language as well.
The boy whirled towards her, hope in his eyes at the prospect of having more help in reaching his mother. He ignored the fact that he had never seen this girl before and that she looked weird with light hair and skin and strange clothes. He just wanted to reach his mother.
He also ignored the fact that with what seemed like a very small push, the door basically blew open. He just knew that it was open and his mother was right there and she was hurt and she was trapped.
The stranger followed him inside and he essentially latched on to one particularly heavy looking beam among the many that lay atop his mother and tried to lift it with little success. Then, the stranger came to his aid once more and lifted the beam up over his head and moved it to the side.
He couldn't help but gape a little bit until the girl looked to him again, "We need to hurry or the roof will come down on us!"
Nodding, they scrambled to move aside the wreckage much to his mother's distress as she pleaded for them to run.
Kara's heart stopped at the sound of groaning. Her head jerked to the ceiling and the world around her came to a screeching stop. For all the millions upon millions of neurons that flared in her brilliant mind, she acted with no thought; just pure instinct.
In the fraction of a second she had to do something, she took a harsh intake of breath and then blew.
The burning ceiling that began to fall towards them seemed to change its mind as it went up and out instead and Kara threw herself over the boy and his mother to shield them from the smaller pieces that still rained down on them.
Mother and child could only stare as this outsider, a stranger in every sense of the word, seemed to perform impossible acts, as if she were a spirit sent by the God of Life himself.
They were broken from their reverie when the blonde moved the last sizeable beam and looped an arm around the mother. The boy joined her, muttering assurances to his weakening mother, and quickly but carefully they dragged his mother out the door just as the rest of his house began to fall down.
More help came. Other villagers seeing the commotion and his bloodied and wounded mother lying in his arms. The boy only caught glimpses of the stranger through the tangle of limbs around him as the girl looked out at the rest of the village.
He wondered idly as his mother grew slack in his arms, whether he would ever see her again as the White Spirit ran right back into the fire.
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The Kryptonian had lost track of how long she spent in that village, helping blow out fires with her newfound arctic-breath, pulling people out of gutted ruins with her strength, trying to save as many as she could, but even with all of her new gifts she couldn't save them all.
Her whole planet exploded and everyone she ever knew is dead now but this was the first time she had ever seen a dead body. It wasn't like the bodies of her fellow Kryptonians whom she watched and prayed as they flew away in ceremonial pods to enter Rao's light; those were clean, preserved and given the best and finest the living could give to the dead for their next life.
These bodies were burned, charred; their eyes glassy and faces frozen in perpetual agony. She lost track of how many there were, but she would never ever forget.
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The world was in turmoil, it seemed.
That was what she learned when she befriended the boy whom she first met and helped. Unfortunately, his mother hadn't survived, her wounds too great for even the best healers in his village. Though Kara didn't know her that long, or at all really, she shed a tear for her loss. She heard the pain and desperation in her voice as she pled for them to leave her and run. A mother's love knew no bounds. She knew that well.
The boy introduced himself as Ratonhnhaké:ton—she sounded it out a few times as Ra-don-ha-gay-don and the boy nodded in approval—and they met again in one of Kara's many journeys around the forest and back to her pod. The scans had gone out a few hundred miles, the radius extending further and further out every passing day while Kara searched on the ground and on rare occasions, the air when she jumped so high she thought she may never come back down. She had hoped that it was some sort of malfunction or that her cousin's pod was somewhere that her scans couldn't reach so she had to go get him herself.
But even her hope was dwindling. Something must have gone very, very wrong. She knew that when Krypton exploded her pod had been caught in the blast. Her last memory had been of a swirling light and then nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Ratonhnhaké:ton had been tracking her for a while after she left his village and had seen many of the feats she was able to accomplish, further reinforcing in his beliefs that she was a good White Spirit. Kara had tried as best as she could to explain where she had come from, pointing out where her star was among all the others in the night sky and showed him her ship.
That didn't help much. Ratonhnhaké:ton and many of his villagers had seen the sky light up before the sun had even risen. They heard the mighty thunder as her ship hit the mountain. Still, he stopped bringing it up so often at the girl's protests.
He saw her state of dress. What was once crisp and white was now blackened and dirtied by the multitude of Kara's adventures in the few days she had been on this planet. He asked her to follow him, the blonde did, thinking that they would return to his village but instead they ventured further south than she had ever gone. They found a dirt road mostly used by horse-drawn wagons, hunters, travellers and peddlers and followed it.
Along the several hour journey through the forest—Ratonhnhaké:ton called it 'The Frontier'—Kara had many questions for Ratonhnhaké:ton, mainly about who he was, what he did and what was happening in the world. They respectively avoided the topic of their homes and families.
They eventually found and caught up with a peddler heading into Boston and her new hunter friend reached into his satchel to sell an assortment of animal pelts and other hunting spoils he had collected for a reasonable amount of pounds, "The accepted currency around these parts." Ratonhnhaké:ton explained lowly, switching from English back to his native language.
Kara's very keen eyes caught the edges of a map folded into the peddler's book as he settled back into his seat and the horse wheeled the wagon away.
"Wait, sir!" She called out to the man, speaking English as naturally as she spoke Kryptonese. "May I see your map?"
"Planning to get lost are you little girl? The Frontier is no safe place to be just wandering about." The peddler advised even as he handed the map over and the blonde nodded and smiled her thanks.
Kara could only stare, confusion masking her face as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.
"Something wrong, lady?" The peddler asked.
The Kryptonian shook her head slightly and pointed at the map. "Where's the rest of it?"
"The rest of what?" The peddler was now getting confused as well as Ratonhnhaké:ton looked at the map himself over her shoulder but saw nothing wrong with it.
"The rest of the map. Where is everything west of… Louisiana?" In fact, well over half of the map, the very shape of the land was indistinguishable from the map of Earth she had studied in the crystals. The large printed words 'UNKNOWN LANDS' glared at her. Dread pooled in her stomach as the doubts she had been having roared back to life with a vengeance. Rao please let her be wrong.
The man laughed uproariously, jolting the two teens slightly.
"We got plenty enough problems on this here side of the Frontier what with the Crown and all that; gotta sort this mess out before we go looking for more messes to deal with out west." He took the map back from her loose grip.
"You're not from around these parts, are you girl?" The peddler looked at her with an amused smirk.
"Something like that. Everything's just a bit… alien, to me." Kara smiled sheepishly.
"May we ride into the city with you on your wagon, sir?" Ratonhnhaké:ton asked politely and the peddler looked at them thoughtfully.
The Mohawk boy was a hunter, by the quality of the pelts and spoils he offered he was very handy with the bow and arrows, knives and tomahawk he had on his person and yet he stood almost protectively beside the girl and not an ounce of hostility came from him despite his formidable appearance. Not unless something or someone troubled his strange friend, he guessed.
The girl was an oddity. Even dirtied as they were, he had never seen any clothing like hers and though her questions were odd, even as young as she looked he couldn't deny that both she and the hunter were intelligent. Their speech was fluent and smooth, their English clear and understandable. They were not fools and he liked to think of himself an honest and honourable man… but he still needed to make a living.
"Tell you what," he gestured to the back of his wagon. "Give me £50 for the fare and I'll throw in whatever clothes and shoes that fit the girl you find back there."
"Deal." The hunter shook hands with the peddler and the teens climbed onto the wagon.
They travelled on the road in silence, both men respectfully had their backs towards her while Kara rifled through the wagon, eventually finding a loose puffy armed plain white blouse, sturdy-looking dark brown trousers and the smallest boots she could find. She tucked the large blouse into the equally large trousers which thankfully had a drawstring that she pulled tighter around her waist. She folded the excess length of the trousers and tucked them into her new boots as well.
"How do I look?" Kara asked her friend as she waved her arms around her, admiring the puffy sleeves.
"Very silly when you do that." Ratonhnhaké:ton laughed as the blonde pouted but soon the two were smiling at each other. Even through all the darkness and pain they had been through in such a small amount of time, they found that there were still things they could smile about and the two felt a strong camaraderie between them.
"You clean up pretty well, girl." The peddler turned to face them, taking the conversation and laughter as indication she was decent. He held out a hand. "The name's Jonathan. Jonathan Alcott."
"My name is Kara Zor-El, this is Ratonhnhaké:ton." The blonde smiled.
"Radon- what?"
"Ratonhnhaké:ton" the Mohawk repeated as he neatly packed the Kryptonian's dirty clothes and boots into his satchel.
"Saying it twice real fast ain't helping just so you know." Jonathan could only laugh as half an hour of hilarity and chaos ensued when two teenagers tried to teach the old peddler the pronunciation of the hunter's name.
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As their few days stay in Boston stretched into several weeks, it became apparent that it would only take a very small push before widespread violence finally erupted between the colonial citizens and the British Army.
At least once a week after dark, Kara would slip out of the spare rooms on the top level their new friend Samuel Adam's print house where she and Ratonhnhaké:ton had been allowed to stay after they drew the man's eye when they showed they were quite handy at defeating several tax collectors that were brutally attacking a man for refusing to pay—or rather, the Mohawk hunter showed finesse and agility in combat; Kara just tried not to hit people too hard or simply pulled the men away, sending them flying. They were subsequently hunted by the Regulars for a short time after that until Samuel intervened and helped them.
Kara would always make sure to tell her friend when she would leave before she walked to an empty and quiet part of Boston near the outskirts. Once there and after ensuring there was not a human soul around, Kara ran at super-speed until she hit the Frontier where she could use the trees as cover for when she took off and finally flew.
She would make the trip back to Boston from her ship within the hour. Even knowing that it was probably futile, Kara still had one spark of hope that eventually, maybe not tomorrow or the next day or the one after that but eventually, her scans and transmissions would pick up another Kryptonian ship entering the atmosphere.
She was right, after all. Something had gone wrong during her journey to Earth. She had arrived at her designated coordinates, that being Earth, but she had arrived in the wrong time. And she hadn't a clue what the 'right' time was.
Kara was now living in the North American Colonies, 1773.
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For Ratonhnhaké:ton, the tipping point was when he learned that agents of the British Government were turning their sights to claim the land which his recovering village stood without their consent.
Trying to stop her friend from doing anything brash, Kara went out to gather information using the diplomacy skills she learned as a member of the House of El and the information she had on the intricacies of politics in Colonial America.
She eventually returned to Samuel's newspaper print house and reported her findings: That the main income of the British Government and Army came from the East India Company's direct shipments of tea into the harbour.
Samuel left, asking them not to do anything hasty lest they get themselves killed while he gathered a few 'friends' to draw up a plan of action.
They found out a few weeks later after several failed meetings and diplomatic negotiations what 'The Plan' was and it involved… throwing tea into the water…
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After several trips back to Ratonhnhaké:ton's village, all done within a day since Kara carried the hunter on her back when she ran and flew. The hunter was not pleased.
"I can run and jump through the trees!"
"And I will just hover around looking silly waiting while you look around for the next best tree to jump to!"
"That is not—"
"And bears! You could be eaten by bears! Or cougars, or wolves, or…" and so on until the hunter admitted defeat.
They returned to Boston and handed out the disguises and paints to Samuel's friends, The Sons of Liberty who wished to send a message that England could not ignore.
Now clad in their Mohawk-villager disguises (Ratonhnhaké:ton having simply changed back into his normal hunting gear that usually drew too much attention), Kara, Ratonhnhaké:ton and several men of The Sons of Liberty stood outside the Old South Meeting House as they waited for Samuel Adams' signal while Kara listened in on his whole speech.
"This meeting can do nothing further to save the country!" The signal.
Samuel exited the Meeting House and bade them farewell and good luck.
Their procession grew when more men spilled out their homes and taverns, having been clued in on 'The Plan'.
They arrived at Griffin's Wharf and boarded the three ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver carrying the precious cargo. Kara and Ratonhnhaké:ton made sure to stay by each other's side aboard the Eleanor, both watching each other's backs and not wanting any harm to come to them—though Ratonhnhaké:ton acknowledged that it was rather silly since he had seen this girl walk right through fire, jump from the top of waterfalls on to solid ground and have a knife break against her skin but he merely shrugged at her and said that it was the thought that counted.
A large mob had formed all along the docks as citizens roared and cheered their support, it was total chaos; a cacophony of ruckus that threatened to overwhelm the Kryptonian's senses even as she easily hefted a large crate of tea in each hand and threw them into the waters below.
Though there were hundreds if not thousands of eyes upon them, Kara still couldn't shake the feeling that she was being watched. She pulled the hood over her blonde head of hair down further.
Adrenaline spiked in her veins when she heard the dreaded call, "Regulars!" someone roared over the noise. Heads turned towards the entrance of the wharf where the crowds began to part. Over the peoples' heads they could see the ends of the bayonet-tipped muskets swaying as Redcoats began swarming the dock.
The stand-off was broken when a gunshot was fired. From which side it came from no one knew but from then on, all hell broke loose.
Kara heard the shuffling and clink of metal on metal behind her and turned to see a line of British Regulars coming up behind them on the ramp of their ship. With Ratonhnhaké:ton occupied fighting off three Redcoats at the same time Kara picked up a crate and hurled it at the soldiers, the crate smashing on impact and sending the men tumbling into the drink.
The Kryptonian didn't know for how long they fought or when she got separated from her friend in the mayhem. She was too busy either throwing tea or putting the rudimentary combat lessons the hunter had given her and a bit of her enhanced strength and speed to good use whenever a Redcoat dared to come at her or point a gun at her and those around her.
The feeling of the hairs on the back of her neck set her on edge and she broke from the trance-like state she had been in she searched the sea of bodies on the ships for her friend and resorting to her X-ray vision when she was unsuccessful.
There!
Ratonhnhaké:ton had somehow found himself over on the Dartmouth where he and two other men were cornered, a firing line of five Redcoats taking aim at them and Kara's eyes flared.
It was like that fateful night in the burning village.
Time stopped and Kara just moved.
One second she was a ship away, the next, she was knocking down the two Patriots and then covering her friend's body with her own just as the muskets fired.
The bullets passed harmlessly over the heads of the two on the ground and bounced uselessly on Kara's back. They gawked as the little body of a—girl? Yes, it was a girl—slowly turn towards them and the men may have soiled themselves when they saw her eyes glowing a demonic red under the hood like hellfire begging to be unleashed.
The angry Kryptonian moved with the force of a storm; a tempest personified.
The men saw nothing but a blur as the muskets were ripped from their hands and sent over the side with a splash before they suddenly found themselves also following their guns into the water.
"Are you alright?" Kara frantically scanned the hunter's body for injuries but aside from a few cuts and bruises he seemed fine and he said as much.
"What happened to 'stick together'?" she punched the Mohawk in the arm, her concerns turning into annoyance as the boy grinned sheepishly as he rubbed his now sore arm. Did she really have to hit him so hard?
"I… got carried away?"
The Kryptonian's eyes narrowed and the hunter wisely apologised and tried to distract her by pointing out her eyes were glowing again. It didn't work.
The fighting eventually dwindled down as the Regulars became outnumbered and outgunned.
Finally, Ratonhnhaké:ton and Kara held the last two crates in their hands. They grinned to one another as they symbolically raised it above their heads and threw them into the harbour. Cheers rose all around them and Kara's hearing picked up something about… teapots?
"Let's go!" Ratonhnhaké:ton tapped her on the shoulder and ran off, the blonde on his tail. The patriots on the ship also began dispersing to avoid the reinforcements that would no doubt be arriving soon.
Kara slowed from her leisurely pace (a full-on run for Ratonhnhaké:ton) as she passed by a building.
She could have sworn she saw something catch the sunlight and heard movement on the roof.
Kara's gaze snapped back down to the street when she heard her friend call her name, having noticed that she was no longer running with him.
With one last glance at the rooftop, she jogged a little and caught up with the hunter.
In their haste to escape, neither saw the figure watching from the shadows.
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They laid low and waited with baited breath the next few days after the Destruction of the Tea in Boston as everyone seemed to be calling it. They were half expecting Regulars to burst through the doors of the print house and arrest them for taking part in the events of that day but it seemed the disguises have done their part and the officials were unable to collect enough evidence to carry out any arrests.
After the fifth night of there being no arrests made Kara felt that it was safe enough, even though the tensions in Boston had reached even greater heights, to make her biweekly pilgrimage to her crashed ship.
What she saw when she arrived confused her greatly.
She slipped into the pod and double-checked the HUD to make sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her.
Her beacon had pinged something far into the Atlantic Ocean but it wasn't the Kryptonian ship she had been hoping or waiting for.
As far as Kara knew, the best forms of communication anyone had were either the word of mouth, messenger runners or pigeons and letters. No one had even the barest clue what a radio was and the most she had seen of electricity was when Benjamin Franklin was showing off his fancy new lightning rods.
So how in the world could something out in the ocean have picked up her transmissions?
Perturbed, the Kryptonian lifted herself out of the pod and closed it behind her. She started to fly into the sky when she felt something wrap itself around her ankle and the next thing she knew; she was being hurled into the ground below.
Her impact made a crater and left her dazed, stunned that something could catch, let alone throw her down from the air. Then, the rope tightened and started dragging her into the trees. Kara clawed at the ground in a panic, unable to find any purchase.
With a shout, her eyes flared to life and the Kryptonian unleashed two beams of pure energy and heat into the treeline. Her concentration was broken when the beams came right back at her and the blonde was sent flying into the cliff side. Her head was knocked back by the blow sending her heat-vision astray and wildly into the tops of the trees and the cliff, easily cutting through everything and sending a shower of rocks and burning logs down over her hunched form as she clenched her burning eyes shut.
The small mound of debris exploded outwards as the Last Daughter of Krypton emerged from underneath and flew high into the air—
Where she was abruptly punched in the face and sent hurtling back down near her pod again.
"It may not seem like it now but this is for your own good!"
A woman—the epitome of beauty, grace and untold power—hovered over the downed Kryptonian with a shield in hand while a sword remained strapped on her back.
Kara scrambled to her feet when two more women wearing the similar type of armour appeared not too far away. "Who are you?" She knew her voice was uneven at best, she recognised that she was not only outnumbered but completely and utterly outgunned and outmatched.
The hovering woman landed, no doubt about it that she was their leader. "I am Princess Diana of Themyscira and we have been searching for you for a while now."
"Themyscira? What- how did you find me? What are you?"
"We are Amazons, born of this Earth whereas you are clearly not and we have been graced with blessings of the Gods which allow us to perform the great feats you witnessed. As for how we found you," Diana gestured to alien ship behind the young girl.
"We knew something had fallen to Earth from the stars but we believed it to not be of any concern. Then, weeks later we began to receive a strange signal that grew stronger every day—your beacon. My mother, Queen Hippolyta sent myself and my sisters to investigate and here we found your empty ship."
"We did not know who you were and whether you were a friend or a threat to this world. We searched for days until we came to the city where you had been staying."
Kara sifted through her memories and recalled all the times where she had lately felt on-edge, feeling like the eyes of the world were always on her. It must have been these Amazons all along.
"But you said you didn't know who I was…" Kara trailed off, thinking of all the times she may have shown she was not as human as she appeared to be until it came to her. "The destruction of the tea."
Diana smiled lightly and nodded. "You showed heart in that fight; the way you defended your friend and how, even in the rage you were in—with all your powers and abilities—you did not take a single life or dealt any lasting harm." Then Diana face hardened slightly.
"But you also showed, both that day and this night, how little control and experience in combat you have." She gestured to the scarred mountainside and the smouldering forest around and below them. Kara opened her mouth in protest but Diana beat her to the punch.
"How close were you truly to hurting those men that threatened your friend? How close were you to burning them, cutting them to pieces with your eyes as you did to those trees and the mountain?"
The Kryptonian's mouth shut with a click. She had been moments from releasing her heat-vision on the Redcoats; she had felt the seemingly endless well of power behind her eyes but she had tamped it down and smothered it at the last second, realising what was about to happen, what she could have done to those men.
The Amazon took her silence as confirmation of her suspicions and she slowly approached the girl, finally resting a gentle hand on her shoulders. Kara dropped her head in shame and guilt.
"Let us help." Diana urged the girl softly. "Return with us to our island, it is paradise. There you will not be alone, a Goddess among men who will never understand that a girl such as yourself is destined for greater things. You will be among sisters with abilities not unlike your own. Who better to train you than us?"
"But I'm not alone," Kara countered. "I have a friend, Ratonhnhaké:ton. I can't just leave him behind, especially not with everything that's going on with the British and the colonies."
"He cannot come with us to Themyscira; no man is ever allowed on the island, but…" Diana raised a hand, forestalling the girl's response.
"Come with us to the island; let us train you and when war comes—and it will come; you and your friends' actions that night at the harbour were so bold, so daring that it will have many and long lasting consequences that will shape the very land that which you stand on—you will return, no longer the young, lost girl that you are now but a fierce warrior, a force of nature with all the power in the world and beyond and the skill to wield it wisely and you can protect those you wish to protect and defeat those you wish to defeat."
Diana stepped away the girl with so much potential, giving her room to think. The warriors waited patiently. After all, they had all the time in the world.
Kara rested a hand on her pod as she looked out over the valley. If she used her enhanced senses she would be able to see the village that was burning not so long ago, the night she met one of the best people she had ever known. She looked to the stars, there were so many that night. She thought of her cousin out there somewhere, eventually he would come and she would protect him. She would have to. The Kryptonian had learned the hard way just how dangerous this world could be; how violence always seemed to just a wrong word or look away.
She needs to get better, be better so she could protect them. Kara spent so much time just fumbling around in a fight, trying not to kill or hurt anyone too much while Ratonhnhaké:ton moved like a hurricane, whirling and wading through his opponents—he didn't kill, just incapacitated them due to her urging. That night on the harbour when they had been separated, he had come close to being gunned down and she had been on the verge of accidentally killing people. That was unacceptable to her.
Kara held the familiar necklace to her heart and she imagined what her mother would have said to her had she been standing beside her now. The blonde let out a small chuckle when she figured it would be along the lines of 'follow your heart'.
"You will do extraordinary things." Alura smiled at her daughter, moments away from sending her away forever.
Finally, she turned back to the waiting Amazons and Diana couldn't help but smile at the new fire that had kindled in the young girl's eyes.
"I will come with you but… there's someone I have to say good-bye to first… and I need to take my pod with me."
Diana nodded, expecting as much. "Meet us here at sunrise after you have said your farewells. I will carry your ship to Themyscira when we leave."
The blonde nodded gratefully and turned to fly off but was halted once more by the Amazon's voice.
"I have given my name but have yet to receive yours. What is it?"
The alien turned in the air to face the warriors and she smiled. "My name is Kara Zor-El, the Last Daughter of Krypton and the noble House of El."
Diana smiled after the girl flew off. The Princess sensed great things to come from the girl.
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"We will see each other again someday soon. When the time comes and you need a kick up the backside, I'll be there." Kara told him with a watery laugh.
Usually he would save face and deny showing any emotion but this was Kara and he'll be damned if he denied that the girl had an impact in his life. Even in all the darkness of the world and what they had been through, the loss they had experienced, Kara was the light.
A storm was coming; he could feel it in his bones. But he would rest, he would wait and he would train and be ready to fight like Kara will be. He will be damned if he wasn't there to see Kara return and be the light in the storm.
Ratonhnhaké:ton finally reached the top of the cliff, heaving himself over the edge and he stared for a moment at the flattened ground where the vessel that had carried his friend across the stars had been.
Shaking off the sadness and pang of loneliness, he smiled when he sighted a reasonably large boulder nearby and he removed the hammer and chisel from his satchel. He was by no means a skilled carver—it was Kara who had the affinity for the arts—but he needed to leave a better mark than some flattened dirt and grass to show his friend had been here.
And so he worked that whole day, the rhythm of hammer, chisel and stone carried by the wind until finally, his work was done. Written in stone in his native tongue:
On this here Earth, A Spirit fell from the Stars. A Guardian. A Protector.
She watches over us All.
The most striking of all was the large and painstakingly carved 'S' inside an angular shield.
Metropolis
To say that the two reporters were shocked would have been a gross understatement.
During the course of Kara's retelling, the Amazons had shifted from water to tea while their hosts had sat, enraptured by the words coming out of the older Kryptonian's mouth.
Lois, as usual, was the first to come out her daze and she laughed, smiling brightly at the blonde woman. Clark once again would deny that he jumped at the sound of her voice.
"That is absolutely brilliant! You're telling me that you were there when American history was made! You and your lot were behind the Boston Tea Party! Ha! You helped shape the nation!" Lois crowed excitedly.
Kara could only laugh and smile sheepishly. "I was just there to help my friend stop the sale of his land and to keep an eye on him." she explained to the still grinning reporter. "I didn't know it would become such a big deal and be the start of everything."
Diana scoffed slightly, looking amusedly at the blonde. "I did. And I told you as much didn't I?"
Kara shrugged and made a non-committal noise as she pointedly sipped her tea. The older Amazon laughed and shook her head at the younger's antics.
"Wait," Clark finally processed the barrage of information and something stood out to him. "Did you actually come back? When the American Revolution finally broke out, did you actually come back and fight?"
Kara nodded sadly, her expression growing distant, a faraway look in her eyes. "Yes I did. I trained hard and faced the Trials of the Amazons and succeeded. I returned to America and searched for my friend. I helped him out from time to time on his mission and kept him from going off the deep end at other times." Kara summarised vaguely.
Clark looked horrified. "You went to war when you were just a teenager?"
"A teenager trained by the best and fiercest Amazon warriors, each with thousands of years of experience. A teenager blessed by Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and War herself." Diana said sternly in Kara's defence. "We would not have sent her off to war had she not been prepared."
Kara smiled gently at her cousin, touched at the concern he felt for her even only after meeting her a few short hours ago. "Tell me, Clark." She interrupted the staring match that had erupted between her friend and her cousin.
"How old were you when you started using your powers? Did you use it to save someone? To protect a friend?"
Lois smirked, knowing the older Kryptonian had the Kansas farm boy beat on that. "Smallville was 15 and he caught saved Lex Luthor's life when he crashed his fancy-ass Porsche into a river, isn't that right cupcake?" The reporter chirped happily, patting the speechless man on the back loudly before getting up to get more coffee and tea for them.
"The only thing different between our finding ourselves and use for our powers are the circumstances. The world was already on the brink of war when I arrived. I'm now very grateful that you didn't arrive on Earth when did. I don't know what I would've done." Kara smiled her sad-yet-happy smile before she playfully frowned and kicked him lightly on the shin. "I'm still miffed that you took so damn long getting here though. I waited centuries. Very rude of you."
Lois laughed, having heard the tail-end of their conversation when she returned and handed out more drinks.
"Okay, okay I'm okay now." The reported calmed herself down, this was probably one of the best days of her life; she learned that there was an entire race of super-badass female warriors; there was another living Kryptonian and said Kryptonian happened to be a part of history and finally, the three most powerful being on the planet were all in her living room sipping tea and coffee. How was this her life?
Oh, right. Alien Kansas farm boy, duh. Shame I can't write about this… Lois hmmed lightly as squinted at the only man in the room and Clark started feeling irrationally worried.
"Anymore Earth-shattering news you can tell me, Kara? What else did you get up to being the immortal Kryptonian-Amazon that you are?" The reporter leaned in, sipping at her coffee.
Kara hummed as she formulated a response and Diana rolled her eyes and smirked behind the rim of her mug.
"Well… at the top of my head… I was there when the Declaration of Independence was signed, World War One…" Kara nudged Diana next to her who rolled her eyes more pointedly and nudged the younger woman back. "And I watched as the Berlin Wall fell."
Lois really shouldn't have asked just as she was drinking her coffee.
AN: Still more to come, I'm just getting started. I still haven't written about some of my favourite characters (read: ALEX) and perhaps some others we haven't seen (or will ever see) in the Supergirl universe.
If you have the time, please do leave a review. It would be great to know what you the readers are thinking, what you like/dislike about what I am doing. It would be a great help.
Happy New Years everyone!