I do not own any DC Characters used herein, and am only employing them in a story meant for entertainment purposes only.
Man Of Steel
Original Story by LJ58 (Inspired by Twisted-Wun)
Edited and Reposted (With Permission) by LJ58
19
"It's like home," Kara remarked in wonder as she walked through the 'Fortress.'
"So I've been told," Kal-El told her as he showed her around.
She frowned. "By whom? You said we were the last…."
He reached the main control center, and smiled. Lifting a large, glowing crystal, he inserted it into the reader, and twisted it just so.
"Kara. Say hello to Jor-El."
"Welcome back, my son," the holographic construct appeared, bowing to him.
"Father, this is Kara."
"Kara Zor-El," the ghostly image smiled as if reacting to her. "Did your parents survive, then?"
"No," she sighed, staring at the translucent man she remembered so well. "Only I did. Thanks to Kal-El."
"Indeed. Then, welcome to Earth, Kara. I know my son is fortunate to have found another Kryptonian to share this world with."
Kal-El sighed.
"I am the one lucky to be found by him," she remarked.
Jor-El said nothing.
Kara looked back at Kal-El, and asked, "This is how you have lived? This is how you grew up?"
He sobered now.
"Not….exactly. I did not learn of my true heritage for some years."
"I don't understand. If Jor-El was with you….?"
Kal-El shut off the hologram, and then gestured for her to follow him.
"It's a long story. And a somber one. Not everyone will welcome you, Kara. So you must be especially careful around this planet's authorities. Let me explain."
And he began to tell her just how he had come to Earth.
Kal-El waited for her reaction once he finally finished, but she seemed to just be staring now as she sat there where they had settled in his private living quarters. He glanced around for a moment, giving her time to assimilate, and knowing she still had a lot to accept.
That had been proven when she spoke to him in privacy after leaving the others.
"I didn't want to say this around the humans," she had told him as they reached the planet after departing the Watchtower, "But…. Do I have to be one of them? You know, a hero? I mean, back on Argos, all that mattered was….surviving. But….all this? I never expected to wake up with….powers and abilities beyond reason. Somehow, flying around hitting people seems….juvenile. And…. And…. I just don't want…..that."
"Kara," he sighed, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "No one, not even I, will force you to do, or be something you do not wish. I can't begin to imagine all you've gone through. What you lost. So I would be the last person to try to make you follow a path that isn't right for you. I'm just showing you what is here, so you can appreciate what your available options are just now."
Kara smiled faintly now, looking up at him.
"You sound so much like Jor-El just now. You're like him, you know. I mean, you look like him, but…. You sound like him, now, too. He was always leaving you to decide things after he laid out the facts, as he put it."
Kal-El only smiled as she suddenly embraced him, and she whispered in his ears, "Thank you for finding me. Whatever I do, I'll never forget that. Never forget you, Kal."
Before he could respond, he looked away, and frowned as he heard something. Something very faint, but troubling.
MoS
Huntress moved through the shadows, following the lieutenant who had risen unexpectedly in a certain gang after the old leadership disappeared.
Literally disappeared.
Gossip claimed they were vaporized.
Huntress believed the gossip.
Street gossip always had more truth behind it than most realized. It was how she had found her father's killers. How she had tracked them to their true lair, and unmasked their secret organization. It was why she had killed them without mercy when the rest of the so-called heroes had wanted to slap their collective wrists, and give them a cushy jail cell.
Huntress was not a woman of half-measures.
The guilty died.
Period.
She paused in the alley near the old brownstone where the three boys, nearly adults, had just passed the lieutenant through their obviously strong security.
No casual check, either. Someone in disguise wasn't getting in without being one of the real bangers that belonged here.
She had the feeling that anyone else wasn't getting turned away. They were getting dead.
She knew the locals had sent in two different investigators since the gangs started consolidating. Neither man had returned. That was all she needed to know. When Batman himself risked coming to her with his own suspicions, Huntress accepted for her own reasons.
The last thing she wanted in her city was a new threat rising to fill the power vacuum she and Batman were creating from their respective assaults on the powers-that-be. Notching her crossbow, she loaded not three, but four small darts, and eased back to the corner where she could eye the stoop.
She eyed the pair on the stoop, knew the third was close to the door since he had just disappeared, and guessed a fourth had to be close since they did seem to be more cautious of late. Still, they were kids. Full of themselves. Certain they were untouchable. That meant the likely didn't have too many more, if any, near the door.
She stepped out, fired twice in rapid succession, and the two scruffy teens dropped instantly, the special curare blend on her darts paralyzing them instantly.
As expected, a third teen burst out of the half-open door when they fell, eyes scanning the street rather than looking toward the alley where she stood just out of sight. He held a silver weapon that was half the size of a sawed-off, but fatter, and deadlier looking. The flared barrel suggested one of Batman's alien weapons rather than one of the BG-80's the kids were calling Toastmasters just now.
Either way, she realized it was bad news in that gangbanger's hands.
She fired again even as he turned from the street, only then starting to scan the sidewalks.
Too bad he was too slow.
He hit the ground, too, the weapon falling from his hands, and clattering to the steps where it landed on the sidewalk near her feet, since she had quickly dashed over to intercept it by then.
No fourth boy showed.
Amateurs, she dismissed them.
"Don't worry," she sneered at the boy who stared up at her, eyes wide at seeing her, but unable to even blink. "It'll wear off. This time. I see you again, though, and next time you go down permanently. I hope you don't think I'm bluffing," she added pointedly for the other two staring at her as she scooped up the alien weapon before she stepped over them, slid into the door, and closed it behind her.
Frankly, she'd have just killed them from the start, but she promised the Bat she would leave them alive for him to question.
This time.
To demonstrate she was working within his parameters, she had made twenty new darts. All with the paralyzing, but nonlethal drugs on the tips. Of course, after the twenty, it was back to business as usual. Which meant if there were more than twenty thugs in here, someone was going to have a bad day.
She tried to pretend she cared.
Helena Bertinelli had stopped caring the day she buried her parents after a drive-by that proved to be a preplanned hit.
Her dad was mafia. A former crime boss. He never hid that truth from her. He did try to go straight, and get out of the old life, hoping to give his family a life away from the usual crime and corruption that ruled their world. Instead, he was gunned down, and not one man on either side of the law cared.
Helena, however, had a different view on the matter, and the Huntress was born.
She moved down the hall, sharp eyes tracking wear patterns in the dirty carpet, and noting where dust was left undisturbed, and where a lot of traffic seemed to go.
Not to the rooms. Or even upstairs.
Almost predictably, all the foot traffic, and the faint sound of voices, seemed to be coming from the basement door.
She mentally reviewed the hours of tape and recon she had personally conducted. At least fifteen targets down there. At least. There could be more. There might be a static guard that she never saw. She had counted just over a dozen that came and went regularly, but even she knew that might have just covered stationary guards watching their new arsenal.
This, she knew from Batman, was one of the sites where a weapons drop had been made. Batman knew, because he had decided to let one of the shipments go through just to see where it went after he began growing suspicious of what was really going on.
She prepped another four darts, then considered changing to a larger magazine. Still, that cut back on accuracy. The weight would change the dynamics of her favored weapon, and if there was one thing she prided herself on, it was accuracy.
Just in case, she had two more cartridges ready in her belt, and a favored knife in her free hand. The gauntlets with their special needle-daggers were her last-ditch weapon of choice, usually saved for covering her retreat when necessary. Only five in each gauntlet, but just as potent as her favored mini-arrows when it came to stopping power.
The lethal kind.
The alien weapon was slung over one shoulder under her short cape.
Slipping around the half-open door, she let her eyes adjust to the faint illumination in the alcove before she started down the steps.
She moved slowly. Carefully.
Once a stair creaked, but no one reacted.
Too sure of themselves. Too sure that no one would dare intrude.
They should know better.
Especially in Gotham.
She dropped into a crouch near the end of the stairs, and pressed to the wall where the shadows remained deeper as she neared the main floor. The voices were clearer now. More distinct.
They were, predictably, arguing.
"…..telling you, we don't need to wait for some stupid, old fart. We can rule the streets, bros," someone was saying. "These cannons can even take out the cops. Nobody could touch us," someone was bragging. "Nobody!" Huntress couldn't help it.
She targeted the teen by his voice and fired. He dropped almost instantly, and she couldn't help growling, "Just call me nobody," even as the gang embers shouted in confusion and fury as one of their own went down before their eyes.
Chaos erupted a second later.
MoS
"….you've cost me time and money for the last time, boy," Dabney Donovan spat. "I'll figure out how to correct your deviancy in the next generation," he said as five men with futuristic weapons attached to large power-packs on their backs moved to face him after a high-density ram had finally broken through the vault door he had jammed.
"Says you," Connor shot, pointedly keeping himself between the men, and the more helpless genomorphs behind him.
"Fire," Dabney growled.
Just before a rush of wind knocked the men over, and left them fumbling for weapons they no longer held.
"I'd be very careful about sparks just now, gentlemen," Kal-El growled as he dropped the weapons he had torn free of their fuel tanks. Dropping them on the ground even as the men realized their tanks were draining to pool around them.
The men looked horrified as the moved to carefully remove the tanks, and backed away. Very far away.
"Talk about timing, big guy," Connor told him. "This freak was about to execute all the genomorphs he felt weren't pulling their weight."
"It appears my reassurances that Cadmus was changing were amiss," Kal-El said, and turned to eye the genomorphs that watched from their cells/containment facilities. "You are safe. You have my word," he told them as Dabney only sputtered, and cursed.
"You….alien….have no right to dictate to Americans!"
"And you have no right to play god with innocent beings," Connor spat.
"Where is Guardian?"
"I helped him get away. They were going to kill him, too."
"It appears I returned just in time. You people are too fond of trying to bury your mistakes. That ends now."
"Now see here….."
"You recall Ms. Lane from the Planet," Kal-El turned to ask Connor.
"Well, yeah," he blushed slightly, not about to admit he had been using her as a press agent for his own publicity at the start of his own 'career.'
"Go find her, and bring her here. It's time the public got a firsthand view of just what Cadmus is doing."
"You don't have the authority….!" Connor was already gone.
"It isn't about authority," Kal-El told him. "If we follow your example, it's obviously about who has the might, and power to enforce their own will. Am I not correct?"
Dabney just glared.
MoS
Kara walked through the crystal halls, pausing now and then to study holographic displays. The one of Kal's parents touched her most.
From her perspective, it still wasn't that long ago that she had seen them. Jor-El had refused to leave Krypton with them, citing an important project that had to be completed. Now, she understood. In all history, no Kryptonian had ever left their system. Not one. They had explored their immediate star system. Colonized a few habitable moons. Only none of them ever left their space. Their home. It was, to Kryptonian minds, unthinkable to even attempt such a journey.
Yet Jor-El had obviously arranged to send his son away all the same.
Rather than try to survive, and ride out the disaster that proved far more devastating than even her father had realized, Jor-El had spent his final hours ensuring his son escaped the devastation that claimed their home.
Even her father had thought Argo might be a safe sanctuary when they first fled there. Even he thought they might yet survive, and rebuild.
Only the green sickness followed them. The tremors of the forces unleashed by Krypton's death throes had devastated the entire system. Too late, they realized there was no second chance. No escape. Zor-El, hoping to spare his family the madness he still felt would eventually pass, and put them into stasis to try to sleep through the worst of it.
Only they didn't survive.
Only she did.
And from Kal-El had told her, it had been a very close thing.
She sighed, and walked through the halls after her restlessness had her examining his library. His communications system. And most of the fortress.
Only reviewing a history that meant nothing now didn't hold her attention.
And it hurt to see anything that reminded her of just how much she had lost.
She had told him she didn't want to flit about, playing 'hero' as he seemed to be doing, but as she studied Earth through his many monitors, she had the feeling these people needed far more help than even they realized. They seemed on the brink of their own cataclysm. Only they seemed determined to hurl themselves off that brink. It was madness, and made no sense.
Of course, her final conscious days on Argos had made no sense either.
She sighed, and stopped near the hatch that led outside onto the polar landscape.
Drawing a deep breath, she stepped outside, and still found it astonishing that she could know it was lethally cold here, and yet she felt nothing. She sensed the wind blowing. Heard the ice crystals crunching under her boot, but she felt nothing.
She raised a hand, and flexed her fingers, still shocked that just being under this yellow star could so energize her metabolism that she became….
She wasn't sure what she was. Which only added to the confusion about what to do next. Kal-El left her life in her hands.
"I would never try to force my will on anyone," he had told her. "Let alone my own cousin. You are more than welcome to stay here as long as you need. Or to go investigate the world on your own. It is, after all, your home now, Kara. Like I," he had told her. "You must find your own way here."
She appreciated he wasn't being heavy-handed with her.
Still, a part of her wished he would just….nudge her just a little. Because she truly didn't have a clue what to do with her life.
She and Kal were literally the last living Kryptonians from all he knew. So what now?
What now?
She sighed, and lifted herself into the air, tears misting her blue eyes as she wondered what her mother would have thought of this world.
She wasn't even sure what she thought of it, but logic suggested she couldn't truly know it by staring at monitor screens, and watching others. She had to meet people. Interact. It was….logical.
Turning south, she rose higher into the sky, and began a leisurely flight toward the nearest civilization. It was time to meet humans. Not costumed heroes, but….ordinary people.
MoS
"We have a situation," Amanda Waller barked as she rushed into the general's office where Captain Atom was still giving his report to the man regarding their very surprising trip. So far, though, he was keeping as much back as he reported. The side trip to Krypton, and the discovery of the cousin remained his secret for now.
The miraculous Boom Tube that brought them home so far, and so fast also remained a secret.
For now.
Kal-El was right. Eiling was more interested in weapons and defenses than anything else about the New Gods. He was far more curious about taking any such weapons than he was accepting any aid. If he didn't know better, he would have thought Eiling wanted to set up his own little kingdom. Only the man really was just a hardliner that felt America should be number one. Period.
Unfortunately, his vision had a lot of others buried under his boot.
Metas being just one more group he despised.
"What now," Wade Eiling demanded, eyeing her as Captain Atom accepted the interruption, and simply fell silent.
"Your Superman just invaded Cadmus. Again. In fact, he had that Planet reporter Lane brought down, and she's doing a live report from the facility right now!" General Eiling paled.
"What?"
"Captain, you need to….."
"I know," Nathaniel nodded. "But by the time I arrive, I wager everything will be settled. I'll catch up with him when he leaves. Find out what he's planning. Meanwhile, I want to see Angela…."
"Now isn't a good time," Wade told him.
"I don't care," he told him flatly, and walked out of the office.
"He's getting willful," Amanda remarked.
Wade shot her a curt glare, but didn't comment in that regard.
"Just tell me you have an idea?"
"Not yet. For now, the alien is going to have his moment."
"What about the Suicide Squad," he demanded.
"They aren't ready. They certainly aren't in his class. I hope to have a final member drafted soon, though, that just might tip the scales in our favor."
"I hope you're right," the general spat. "Unchecked alien contacts. Increasing meta presence operating outside channels. This is fast getting out of control. We need a lid clamped on this one, Waller. And we need it now."
"Patience," she told him. "If I'm right, this new member could be just what we need to tip those proverbial scales. I just have to sway the conscript to our way of thinking."
Wade Eiling only snorted at that.
"Just get them ready. I'm ready to have that caped interloper put down once and for all."
"As I said, General Eiling. Patience. And be careful about pushing Adam. The captain isn't stupid, and if he ever finds out how we played him, I don't think we could stop him. I don't think the League could stop him."
"The man is a soldier. He'll follow orders," Wade growled.
"I certainly hope so. You're playing a dangerous game here. I tried to tell you that from the start."
Wade just shot her a curt glare, and demanded, "If all you did was show up to tell me what you can't do, why are you even here?"
"To test Captain Atom's reaction to Superman's reported actions. I don't think he knew what he was up to there, since he was as surprised as you were."
"Sometimes I wonder just whose side you're on, Ms. Waller," the old officer muttered as she left.
Needless to say, she wasn't there to reply.
Continued…..