4. Reunion

Superman cut an imposing figure – he floated a few yards above the ground, past the barbed wire, chain link fencing, and concrete roadblocks hastily set up by the army as their encampment's perimeter. His red cape fluttered almost majestically in the light breeze, and he faced outward, his arms by his side, as he looked out into the barren desert. Behind him, an array of military hardware ranging from tanks to attack helicopters was at the ready.

Barry, for his part, was watching Superman from an oblique angle, positioned outside the nominal perimeter of the army's base behind Superman but within the perimeter of area that Lieutenant General Swanwick had noted they constantly monitored. The two of them were lying under what Barry could only describe as a flat camouflaged tent, barely visible since they were positioned on the other side of a small knoll. Swanwick had also noted that they were invisible to thermal detection, with the tent mimicking the properties of the surrounding environment. That mostly meant that Barry was also sweating buckets in his suit.

"Are you good?" Swanwick asked, looking through a pair of binoculars. "This crazy plan you guys came up with only works if you don't overheat on me." He lowered his binoculars and rummaged behind him, grabbing a plastic water bottle. "Here, hydrate." His tone left little room to argue, sounding more like he was barking an order at a soldier than talking to a civilian.

"Thanks, general," Barry said, grabbing the bottle and greedily drinking. He pulled off the cowl of his suit and wiped his brow. "Zod's going to kill me through heatstroke alone."

Swanwick took a look at Barry, shook his head, and pulled his binoculars back up to his eyes. A few more minutes went by, with Barry trying not to die and Swanwick constantly looking out at the horizon.

"I see them," Superman suddenly said, crackling to life over their commlink earpieces.

"Lantern, are you in position?" Batman's voice came through.

"Ready," Lantern replied.

"Go," Batman ordered. Barry could imagine Hal flying toward the Kryptonian ship, though he couldn't see or hear it.

"There," Swanwick said, pointing out into the distance. "A dropship incoming. That means it's almost your time to shine, Mister Red."

"Finally," Barry whispered.

"Video feed is online," Batman stated. Swanwick pulled out a rugged-looking tablet from his side, powering it on to tune into the video feed of the state-of-the-art miniaturized camera that was nestled in Superman's hair.

Flash leaned over to see what was going on; after all, he needed to know when he had an opening to blitz for the dropship. Said dropship, on the video feed, skimmed across the surface of the desert, blowing up a plume of dust and sand in its wake. It came to a stop just in front of Superman, and a ramp lowered onto the ground. Two armored figures, with masks tinted, walked out, and Barry got ready to run. His window was coming.

Both figures' masks turned transparent as they approached Superman, revealing their faces. The front one appeared to be that of a pale woman who Barry didn't recognize, but the second one caused him to stop and freeze on his way up.

It was Kara Zor-El. Superman's cousin. The one that he remembered from the doomed timeline.

A series of jumbled thoughts made their way through Barry's multiverse-addled brain. How was she even with Zod? The series of events that would have had to occur to lead to that was enough to make his mind hurt a little. Was she anything like the Kara he knew? From Arthur, Barry could expect that she only had the same face without any of the memories, but Arthur was still, well, quintessentially Arthur despite it being a different universe. Did that hold true for everyone that he could recognize?

"Flash!" Swanwick's sharp tone came from behind. "Stop dilly-dallying and go!"

"R—right, go!" Flash said, and he felt the Speed Force energize around him as he pushed off. Orange-yellow lightning flickered off of his suit as he ran fast, making sure to take a circuitous route to flank behind the Kryptonians and sneak onboard. Coming through the desert, he could see the dropship in front of him, Kara and the other woman's backs, and Superman looking almost directly at him. Even at this speed, Barry had little doubt that Superman could see him, which meant that if Kara or the other Kryptonian were to turn, then the ruse was over before it really began.

Barry zipped past the dropship, took a sharp u-turn, and slid right up the ramp into the dropship. It was a fairly cramped affair inside, though the layout wasn't as alien as one might have expected; he had seen that coming from the inside of Clark's ship in the Arctic. There was a set of stairs that led to an upper deck—presumably where the controls were—so Barry parked himself under the stairs, obscuring himself with a crate that was placed there, and waited. Thankfully, he could see hear all of the talking through Superman's side in his commlink.

"Kal-El," an unknown female voice said, leading Barry to assume it was the female Kryptonian that he didn't recognize, "I am sub-commander Faora-Ul. On behalf of General Zod, I extend you his greetings." There was the sound of shuffling, like someone walking closer while another walked away.

"Kal," another voice breathed out in what sounded like slight disbelief, this time one that Barry recognized as Kara's familiar, relatively deep timbre.

Barry could almost hear the frown of confusion that must've been setting itself on Superman's face. "Do I… know you?" Superman asked.

"No, no. You don't," Kara responded. "But you should have, had things not gone wrong. The last time I held you, you were a tiny baby. And now…" she trailed off.

"You held me as an infant? How?"

"Kal, my name is Kara Zor-El, daughter of Zor-El and of the House of El. My father was your father's brother. I am your cousin."

There was a relatively lengthy pause. "My… cousin," Superman stated, his tone slightly incredulous. "How?"

"It's a story that takes a little time to explain," Kara clarified. "We were supposed to leave Krypton together, and we did, but something went wrong, and I didn't make it here to Earth with you."

"Kara can tell you the rest onboard," Faora interjected. "We should not keep General Zod waiting. I have already informed your military that we will be ascending into orbit now that we have you."

"Very well," Superman agreed. "We should go, then. I would like to speak more with you, Kara."

"And we will, Kal."

Flash quickly tuned off of his commlink as he heard the sound of footsteps coming closer toward the dropship, and within moments, three sets of footsteps sounded on the metal plating of the dropship's floor.

"Wait here," Faora said, turning to Kal before climbing the stairs. Thankfully, she didn't see Flash hidden underneath.

Neither did Kara, who turned to Kal for a few seconds before following Faora up the stairs to the cockpit. Superman stood there in the hold of the ship, looking around at the interior before his eyes settled on the spot under the stairs where Flash was hiding. And based on Superman's expression, Flash could tell that he had been spotted. A small head tilt was the only indication on Superman's part before he returned to feigned curiosity, and the dropship lifted up into the air, accelerating at rapid-enough pace that Barry felt himself being pushed into the floor.

Quickly moving, he unstrapped a rebreather prepared by Batman to his face. There was a little oxygen tank that he could swap over to once the recycled air had negligible oxygen content left, but generally speaking, the plan called for a faster pace than that. If he was still on the Kryptonian ship after he ran out of oxygen, asphyxiating to death would probably be the nicer way to die.

The dropship began to decelerate, presumably because it had reached space, though Barry wouldn't have known because the ship seemed to have some form of artificial gravity that kept it at a nice and pleasant one-g for him. Before long, there was the tell-tale sensation of the dropship coming to a stop with a slight rumble, or at least it was tell-tale insofar as that was the indication in all of the science-fiction Barry had grown up consuming. Still, his suspicions were confirmed when both Faora and Kara walked down the stairs and guided Superman out of the ship.

Steeling himself, Flash tapped into the Speed Force and bursted out, making sure to avoid the direct line-of-sight of any Kryptonian. The hangar seemed to be largely empty, with Faora, Kara, and Superman all facing the opposite way as Flash zoomed through open doors. He whipped out a small handheld device—also provided by Batman, as was tradition—to pinpoint Green Lantern's location and zipped toward him. The ship seemed mostly empty, which was beneficial to the Flash as he zoomed through corridors.

Lantern was apparently in one of the cargo holds in the ship's bowels. Flash came to a stop in front of him, causing the former Air Force pilot to raise an eyebrow behind the green eyemask he wore.

"Having fun?" Lantern intoned. Like him, Lantern was also wearing a rebreather, though he had also noted earlier that he didn't need one; Batman had insisted, though. It seemed like Lantern was wearing it just to get Batman off his back, though the rebreather did also contain useful data that was being routed back to the Dark Knight.

"I scouted out a good half of the ship, but I didn't see anything," Barry said. "I also hardly saw anyone, too."

"It doesn't make sense," Lantern stated as he frowned. "There's not enough Kryptonians on this ship to amount to much of anything, and there's barely anything in cargo holds either. I mean, look at this one." Lantern gestured around. "It's practically empty."

Barry looked around, curiosity getting the better of him. "Lantern, can you float me up to near the ceiling? I want to see this room from above."

Lantern raised his right fist, emanating green light out from it. In the form of an arcade claw machine grip, he picked Barry up.

"Ha, ha, very funny," Barry mirthlessly said.

"It is to me," Lantern grinned in return.

When Barry was lifted to the top of the room, he took it all in. The room was large and rectangular in design, with uniform shelving units stacked on top of each other and lining the room in columns down lengthwise. However, they were all largely concentrated on the corner of the room to Barry's left-front, toward the entrance he had ran through to enter and away from the cargo bay doors behind him that he assumed led into space.

"It seems like they removed supplies before they got here," Barry thought out loud as Lantern lowered him back to the floor. "I think Batman would've said something had he noticed the Kryptonians offloading stuff in orbit."

"That was one of my first thoughts," Lantern concurred. "But where did they move it to?"

"No idea," Barry admitted. "Even if we narrow it down to them doing it in the Solar System, that still leaves anywhere between Jupiter, when they busted the deep space satellite, and here."

"Deep space satellite?" Lantern frowned.

Barry waved him off. "Not important right now. The point is that there's a lot of empty space to cover in that distance, so we're back to square one. We should probably get out of here while we still can."

"Check your commlink," Lantern suddenly said. Barry flicked his back on just in time to hear Zod's voice.

"Welcome onboard, Kal-El. The Sword of Krypton greets you."

"Sword of Krypton?" Superman asked. "And what would that be?"

"The means through which we will resurrect Krypton," Zod said cryptically. "But come, Kal – this is a time for celebration, not conflict. You have returned to your rightful home."

There was a faint crackle. "I… feel strange," Superman gasped out. "Weak." He coughed.

"You're adapting to your natural environment, Kal," Zod could be heard saying. "You've spent a lifetime adapting to theirs, and now you must remember what Krypton's was like."

Superman continued to splutter and cough until the commlink went silent.

Flash and Lantern looked at each other. "Well, shit," they simultaneously said.

"Batman to away team," Batman's gruff voice came online. "I assume you both heard that?"

"Yeah," Lantern replied. "It sounds bad. Superman isn't doing well, and we have no idea what's going on in this ship. There's no evidence here of anything, just a suspicious lack of it."

There was a silence for a few moments. "Find and retrieve Superman, then evac out of there."

"Gotcha," Lantern said. The commlink went silent. "We've got our orders, fast-boy."

Barry shook his head, lowering himself into his running stance. "You really need to work on your name game. It's really, really bad." Without waiting for a response, he took off in a burst of electricity.

He zoomed through the corridors, skipping the rooms he had already checked and phasing into the ones he hadn't to see if it was where Superman was. Either he was in a medbay of some kind, or he was in a prison cell. Or, as Victor would sometimes have said in the past, por qué no los dos?

Barry came to a temporary stop to take a breather. He would've liked to take a sip of water from the little bottle he had strapped to his belt, but given his rebreather and the likely toxic Kryptonian atmosphere of the ship that he had no chance at breathing in, it was better to dehydrate.

"Who are you?" a voice called out from behind him, and Barry whipped around to see Kara looking at him about five paces away. Unlike earlier, she no longer had that combat armor on, only wearing a skintight black jumpsuit that resembled the material of Superman's outfit. She had an angry but curious look on her face, and before he could respond, she groaned slightly with one hand flying to the side of her head.

Thinking fast, he reentered the Speed Force and took Kara by the shoulders, phasing both her and him through the nearest wall—which he first double-checked to ensure that it wasn't a hull panel separating them from the vacuum of outer space, a scenario that would have been much worse for him than for her —before slamming her against the wall of the room, which itself turned out to be some sort of small storage closet.

"Get off me," she growled, shoving her off of him with surprising strength and causing him to stumble backwards in a yelp of pain. Still, his back was to the only door for the room, which meant that she couldn't run to raise the alarm. "What did you do to me?"

"Phasing," he said, both hands up. She wasn't his Kara, but he still didn't want to hurt her. "I just… phased us through the wall. That's it."

Kara groaned again, this time falling to her knees and grabbing her head with both hands.

"Are you okay?" Barry slowly asked, hesitantly walking forward toward her with a hand reached out.

"Stay away from me!" Kara snapped, causing Flash to flinch backwards. He wasn't sure if she had super-strength or other powers—he was under the impression that the Kryptonian atmosphere took those powers away, though he wasn't sure how that played with the Earth-like gravity onboard the ship—but he generally preferred not finding out if she could snap him in half like a twig.

"Okay," he slowly said, both hands held in front of him in a show of caution. "I think we got off on the wrong foot." He put one hand on his chest. "My name is Barry Allen. What's yours?"

She glared at him as she stood up, though the effect was somewhat mitigated by how she intermittently squeezed her eyes shut every few seconds. "Kara," she bluntly answered.

"Kara," Barry tested the name out as if he hadn't known that earlier. "Alright, Kara. I don't mean you any harm."

"Why are you here? How did you get here?"

"I… may or may not have snuck onboard your dropship."

Kara frowned. "May or may not? Did you, or didn't you?" Before he could respond, she groaned again with her hands held to her temples, falling to the floor in obvious pain.

"Are you okay?" Barry asked, concerned. He didn't remember Kara having headaches or anything along those lines despite being de-powered in a containment cell for however long she had been locked up. "Can I do something to help?"

"My… room," Kara grunted. "I have… medication."

"Right," Barry nodded, and he moved forward to scoop Kara up from the floor. "Don't worry, I've got you."

She looked at him strangely, but the moment passed as he phased back through the wall into the corridor.

"Okay, where's your room?"

"Do… down the hall. To the left. Last one in the corridor…" she trailed off, her eyes squeezed shut as she lay limply in his arms.

Without thinking, Barry sped according to her instructions, phasing right through the door of the last room in the hall once he hung a left, and they appeared in a what appeared to be a utilitarian, non-descript bedroom.

"Where?" he asked, laying her on the bed. She vaguely and wildly gestured, and he saw a small metal container with a row of small black orbs sitting in it. Grabbing one, he brought it over to her.

"Is this it?" he asked. She cracked open an eye and nodded. Grabbing her by the back and sitting her up on the wall that served as her de facto headboard, he slowly pushed the orb through her lips in an educated guess that it was orally ingested. That she swallowed it confirmed his assumption, and she lay back against the metal paneling for a few moments as the medication took effect.

"Whew," Barry sighed, pacing back a few steps as he looked around. As per his initial assessment, it was an undecorated and gray room, all metal and angles, with the only standout burst of color being a folded outfit on a small table to the side. He approached it. On the front of the outfit was the same logo on Superman's outfit, and Barry realized that it was the outfit that Kara had worn in the other world – or at least one that was substantially similar, if the colors and design were any indication.

"You never told me what you were doing on here," Kara's voice came out from behind him. Barry turned to see Kara standing already, just a few feet away from him. "Give me a reason why I shouldn't alert everyone about the fact that we have an intruder onboard."

"I'm… I'm a friend of Superman's," Barry decided to say. "I followed him onboard to make sure he was alright."

Kara's expression softened slightly, but she still seemed to be skeptical. "That's it? You followed Kal onboard because you thought he would be in danger?"

"Is… he not in danger? This is Zod's ship."

She had a quizzical look. "What do you know about Zod? He isn't a danger to Kal."

It was Barry's turn to frown. After all, the Zod he remembered—from two different timelines—was nothing more than a bloodthirsty maniac willing to kill even his fellow Kryptonians like Superman and Kara if it meant achieving his goals. The genocide of the human race was hardly an afterthought for him. Was this Zod different somehow, even though so many other things about them and the Kryptonians had remained the same?

"I don't—I don't believe that," Barry said, with some amount of hesitancy. "Look," he continued, cutting off what appeared to be a retort from Kara, "see it from my perspective, and also everyone else's on Earth. Literal aliens show up from outer space, ask in a very not-nice manner for the world's greatest superhero, and now he's incapacitated onboard."

"And how exactly do you know that Kal reacted poorly onboard?"

Barry pursed his lips, cursing his big mouth. "I, uh, I have a commlink that hears everything he hears. I heard him, um, collapse."

Kara's eyes narrowed. "So, this wasn't just you, then. This is a larger conspiracy against us, and even Kal is in on it."

Barry raised his hands defensively, sensing a little bit of potential danger arising. "Woah, it's not like that at all, Kara. Really. We just… aren't sure if we can trust you, and Superman agreed that he wasn't sure either. He grew up here, Kara. He's practically one of us."

Kara sighed. "He is Kryptonian. We are his people. He belongs with us."

"I'm not sure if he sees it that way. Doesn't his choice matter?"

There was an inscrutable expression on her face, but Barry could sense that something he had said had pierced deeply into her heart and mind. He pushed his advantage.

"I understand that you're his cousin and that you care deeply for him, but right now, Superman needs to return to Earth because that's where… well, that's where his home is. He has a mother and father down there too, just like he did on Krypton."

Kara looked up and into Barry's eyes. "Okay," she whispered. "The medbay is two levels up. It takes up most of the floor. You can't miss it."

"I heard that," Lantern said, his voice crackling to life in Barry's ear. "Get back to the cargo hold and prepare for evac."

"Thank you, Kara," Barry said. He walked toward the door before stopping and looking back at her. "I'm sure Superman would really love to talk to you more about your family later."

Kara looked down at her folded outfit and didn't say anything in response as Barry phased back through the door and into the corridor.

"I've got Superman," Lantern said. "On my way down."

"Any trouble?" Barry asked.

"No. I waited until the doctor-looking dude left." Lantern paused. "You are one hell of a sweet-talker, Mister Flashy-Boy. I have no idea how you talked yourself out of that one."

Barry looked back at the closed door one last time before he sped off, not deigning to reply to that comment. Within moments, he was back down in the cargo hold, and soon enough, Lantern flew in, Superman contained in a green bubble along with him.

"Alright, get in," Lantern said, lowering the bubble down to Flash's level with a ramp descending into a make-shift rectangular opening. Flash acquiesced, taking a seat beside Superman's unconscious form, as Lantern pried the cargo bay doors open to the vacuum of space. The crates inside the cargo hold buckled slightly but didn't otherwise move as the atmosphere of the ship vented into space. No alarms even sounded as Lantern and Co slipped out, the conjured green hands closing the bay doors after they were safely out into space.

"Flash to Batman," Flash spoke up. "We have Superman and are returning to Earth. Any changes in the ship?"

"Negative, Flash," Batman's now-familiar voice came back. "No change. It looks like your path back is clear."

"Sounds good," Lantern said. "We're coming home."

"Affirmative," Batman replied. "We'll debrief once you get back."

Flash took one last look at the three-legged Kryptonian vessel before he turned back to the sight of Earth, quietly sitting as they reentered the atmosphere. The entire situation bothered him; Zod was… different than he had remembered, which frankly frightened Barry because it made the Kryptonian warlord an unknown quantity to him. Kara being there, though, was an unexpected turn of events, and that she seemed reasonable and even somewhat sympathetic to them was a heartening piece of knowledge.

The Justice League was going to have a lot to talk about.

To Be Continued

Notes:

Since I've written about 30k words in the last ten or so days, my future pace of updates will probably slow to about one chapter every two days. Also, final self-plug for The Last Daughter of Krypton, which is now complete and at least mildly relevant to the main story, though not essential reading for The Dawn of Justice. I hope you all have enjoyed this universe so far.

Casting:

Calvin Swanwick: Harry Lennix (Man of Steel)

Faora-Ul: Antje Traue (Man of Steel)

Kara Zor-El: Sasha Calle (The Flash, 2023)

Dru-Zod: Michael Shannon (Man of Steel)