A/N; I am entirely reader-supported. Here are my special thanks to those of you who enjoy my writing enough to support me with your hard earned money on my pa-atreon page. Not just them though, special thanks to everyone who even just reads this story, reviews it, favourites or follows it. You're the reason I keep going. Thank you. Welcome to this new story, feel free to check out my other work if this is your first.
Confusion. That was an emotion I'd been forced to get used to from a very young age. I didn't necessarily understand things as quickly as everyone else did, so I'd learned to accept my confusion and move on regardless. This situation was testing my ability to do just that, though.
Sleeping in bed one day and waking up cradled by giants in the shadow of a crumbling planet. For some reason, with my mind racing, I began to understand what was happening, and that made me even more confused than ever. What kind of dream could change how my mind itself worked? That was the first hint that I wasn't in Kansas anymore.
The second was when I tried to bite my tongue and actually felt the pain. So why did the giants have me? They spoke in a language I could not understand, but some words stuck out: 'Krypton,' 'Zod,' and 'Kal El,' most of all. The last was used in reference to me, and that's when I accepted just how fucked I was. Kal El. Zod? Krypton? Fuck, I got Isekai'd and into the body of a person who would be the center of many things to come.
The man passed me to the woman and walked to the side of the pod, placing his hand on the pod and saying a word clearly. I did my best to shove it into my head and keep it there. A compartment opened up, and he dropped a crystal within. The Fortress of Solitude, my mind helpfully supplied.
Now, understanding my situation, I tried to memorize as much as I could about this situation. The man I suspected to be Jor-El took me from the woman and dropped me right into the pod. It was comfortable. At least, I could say that. And then I was off, flying at immense speeds from the way things seemed to blur around me. Not like I would have been able to tell from within the pod itself. From where I sat, it felt like the pod was stationary.
Of course, things could not be so perfect. I felt it when Krypton exploded. It tossed the pod off-axis, and I got to watch the planet's explosion as well as what began to happen to its sun after that. Krypton was the first planet in the solar system, and its explosion tossed a whole bunch of shit right at the red son. It accepted them and began to swell. The fuck? This definitely wasn't canon.
The sun exploded, sending gases and colors all over the system. For some reason, the pod survived, and I only ended up being tossed ass over teakettle, and when it all settled and the pod began trying to fly to Earth again, a portal opened right in front of us.
The pod was sucked right in, and that was it. I saw colors. I smelled smells, and I heard sounds. When it was all over, I saw myself, still in the pod, in a grassy field of some sort. When armed men and women crowded the pod instead of the expected old farmer couple, I sighed. Guess it's a flashpoint world for me. This was going to suck massive balls.
And then they got closer and closer. I could see the icon on their clothes. That's the shield eagle, isn't it? The pod swung open as they approached, and one of them leaned in to get a look at me. He said something to the rest of them, and one of them came forward, not holding a gun. She grabbed a hold of me and lifted me right out of the pod. I could feel the pod lock itself behind me. It would take a Kryptonian to open it now.
XXXXXX - Nick Fury
"A baby?" I asked Coulson with a scowl on my face. I'd been doing that more and more often these days. After 9/11, all the pressure was put on us. Why didn't we find out about it on time? Why couldn't we find evidence tying the US's desired war target to the attack? Nevermind that SHIELD was never supposed to be an agent of the US government in the first place. And now, this mess.
"Yes. A baby. We took it out of the spaceship, and the spaceship just locked itself. It looks human, has all the parts, and apart from the lack of crying and spontaneous defecation, it behaves exactly like a human baby," Coulson said, and I pulled on my temples. The only person I'd ever feel comfortable about showing this much weakness was Coulson, so I took advantage of the opportunity.
"So what do we do with it?" he asked.
"We have scientists studying it, do we not? Continue with that. Find whatever information we can get from the alien."
"Do we kill it?"
"Now, why would we do that? No. We study it. More could be coming right now. We need to learn all we can from it. As much as possible. I want an initial report by next week. And find out as much as you can about that spaceship. Get the best of the best on it. We need to know what we are doing," I rattled off orders as I considered placing a call to Carol. No. She said emergencies only, and a single alien baby was no emergency. I scheduled a call with Talos, though. He should know more about this alien species.
XXXXXX - December 2003
"They've found something," Coulson said as he tossed a folder on my desk. Two whole years to find anything different about the alien baby that had crashed into our planet.
"What did they find?" I asked, trying to get the cliff notes while I skimmed through the report.
"One of the scientists, a young one, decided to try playing around with the blood itself. Normally, it's just like human blood, no differences at all, but once he exposed it to UV light, it shifted. The structure changed and became something a bit more."
"What does that mean for us?" I asked. Years at the helm of SHIELD had taught me that unless the scientists could bring some actionable advice or tech with their findings, then those findings were almost always useless. Those motherfuckers could make a mountain out of a molehill if they felt they could get away with it.
"Nothing right now. But they suspect the alien himself might begin to display unique abilities over time as he is exposed to solar radiation," Coulson said, and I nodded.
Good thing much of the new facility was underground. I nodded at the news and accepted it.
March 2004
"What do you have for me, Coulson?"
"The alien, his skin is now impenetrable. We can't break it to get samples no matter what we try," I placed my palms on my head and began to massage them. The Security Council would not be pleased by this. The moment the possibility of abilities came into question, they'd become irrational. They lost the ability to see the forest for the trees they were so focused on.
"What other abilities have you noticed?" I asked.
"None. Just his hardy skin. Beyond that, there's nothing worth noticing."
I nodded. We could work with that.
May 2004
"The scientists believe the alien has begun to exhibit signs of enhanced senses."
"Senses?" I echoed.
"Yes. Sight, smell, hearing, taste, all of them. It showed signs of being in pain starting a month ago and complained of
loud sounds no one else could hear. They thought it was some form of psychosis until one of them theorized that he was just hearing everything at an enhanced level," Coulson explained.
Senses and Invulnerability? This species was already seeming to be more trouble than it was worth.
"Alright. Bring me more information if any is found," I said, dismissing him to prepare myself for the council. Last time, they were evenly split on the matter. I could only hope that this piece of news didn't radicalize the reasonable majority I was beginning to rely on.
January 2005
Yesterday, another new ability had emerged, I thought to myself as I got off the elevator and walked deeper into the complex. This time a report from Coulson wasn't enough.
I walked to the facility director's office and took a seat as the video began playing. I watched the boy, a toddler, really, begin to play with the Rubik's Cube left in his 'room.' And then everything changed between one second and the other. Its eyes glowed red as it unleashed a blast of devastation that destroyed much of the room before it managed to get itself under control.
This was going to be a mess if anything ever was. Invulnerability and enhanced senses were one thing. The ability to unleash devastation with only its eyes was just something else.
Logic screamed for me to terminate the subject, but hope stayed my hand. The boy was an alien in biology, but by all social metrics, it was human. If it could be raised to value humanity above all else, then we'd have a hell of a guardian for us when the time came. I could feel it in my bones. We'd need him standing on our side when the worst came for us.
Besides, the threat of an invasion of his species had died down as time went on. Talos was unable to identify the species, and considering the boy had been here for four years now, it was a bit unreasonable to expect anything to happen after all this time.
"Socialize the boy. Introduce him to more human culture and information. Teach him, raise him as you would any other human child," I ordered the manager, and besides a look at me like I was insane, the woman accepted the orders with no complaint. Good, now I just had to hope it didn't come back to bite me in the arse.
XXXX - January 2006
My head felt like someone had taken a hammer to it at this point as I watched the video for the seventh time in a row. Some part of me wanted to scream at her, to blame her for allowing this to happen, but I knew she wasn't to blame. Who could have seen this coming? Who would have known that with heat vision, enhanced senses, and invulnerability, there would be a whole lot more powers?
The alien had waited for its watchers to grow lax over time. It had even waited until New Year's Eve when people were more likely to slack on the job to begin. I hit play on the video and watched as the creature turned to the camera with a smirk before running to the door of its cell at speeds I struggled to catch with my eyes. Only one punch. That's what it took to tear down over a ton of reinforced steel. The guards, credit to them, had shot into motion nearly instantly.
Bullets bounced off its skin as it ran down the hallways. It moved with an understanding of the base itself, and I cursed myself for ordering them to treat the thing as human, and then it went for the second subject of interest in the base itself. The spaceship it had arrived in. Unlike the alien, we never could get any information from the ship itself. Our best attempts to even break the outer shell to get at what was inside didn't so much as scratch the thing. Bullets bounced off it. Explosives didn't scuff it, and putting it at the centre of a missile test had left it unscathed. It just turned into something of a curiosity.
The alien got one look at the ship and bent down, putting both hands on the bottom. And in a move that nearly gave me an episode on the first watch, it began to fly. It flew right out of the base, crashing through tons of stone and steel to make it to the surface, and then the feed stopped.
XXXXX - Kal-El POV
The Fortress of Solitude was just that, a fortress. When I tossed the crystal as I had seen in the Smallville series and as the crystal prompted me to do, the last thing I expected was to suddenly find myself inside the fortress itself. Apparently, the fortress did not truly exist on the same plane of reality as everything else. It was in something like its own pocket dimension, and that pocket dimension was blooming.
After a few months in here, I understood that the crystal was some kind of gateway and it interfaced with Kelex, the Artificial Intelligence created by Jor-El to deal with all the responsibilities in the fortress. The crystalline structure I was used to seeing on TV and in comic screens was just the outer representation of the gateway. It still needed to be protected and hidden, so the first instructions I had given Kelex were related to using the best cloaking and shielding tech to ensure that Shield wasn't watching me.
I was conflicted about the organization known as Shield. On one hand, they had been pretty good to me for the last five years, but on the other, they were Hydra. I guess it's like Nazis being nice to you. Could you really hate them for being Nazis when they were never Nazis to you? Of course, that's why I cracked that place like an egg and made my escape the moment my flight kicked in.
Unlike the original Clark Kent, my powers had kicked in much faster and at earlier stages in my development. I submitted myself to a medical examination from Kelex, and the Artificial Intelligence postulated that I was medically fine. The reason my powers had come in was that I hadn't felt safe and secure in my environment, unlike the original Clark Kent.
Yes, of course, I told the AI everything. I'd made sure he was fully under my control. Apparently, Jor-El had not expected his son to discover the fortress until well into his teens, so he'd given him (me) full administrative control over Kelex. After making sure my control was supreme, my second course of action was to have Kelex delete the collection of code that was in the process of developing into an Artificial Intelligence based on the memories and personality of Jor-El. It had some ten years left in its development, so there weren't any real dangers to deleting the code. I didn't know what version of the fortress and Jor-El I had been left with, but the risk of it being the one from the Smallville series was too high for me to stomach. An overbearing Daddy was the last thing I needed in this new life. I had come to terms with this new life, and the one thing I wanted from it was absolute freedom. Luckily for me, with the hax powers of a Kryptonian, that was well within reach.
Speaking of, "Kelex, how far are we into development?" I asked the empty room, and a holographic display of a floating human head appeared in front of me before speaking in a smooth British accent, "The aging device is almost completely ready, Kal-El."
"And the alterations I proposed?"
"Well adapted into the device as promised, Kal-El," he said with a quirk of his bearded face. Yes, I'd modeled my SI after Idris Elba. Sue me. I just had to make sure Thor never entered this place, and Kelex had assured me that even the all-seeing Asgardian would never be able to penetrate the fortress' shielding so Heimdall would never have to see his twin acting as a legitimate butler/assistant/friend for a complete stranger.
I walked across the fortress, taking the scenic route to smell the roses. Without space considerations to think of, the place was actually massive. There were massive greenhouses that produced enough produce for me to survive here for centuries, and there were actual foundries that even made replacements for the robots that tended to and organized the entire place. I could see how Clark, in some universes, had turned this place into a sanctuary for extinct animal species. There was more than enough space for everything I could dream of adding. Well, except a Death Star, but nowhere was perfect. Not even this Kryptonian heaven.
When I arrived at the med bay, I saw two of the aforementioned robots looking over a machine. They were interesting things, humanoid from the waist up, but with floating gravidisks below the waist for movement instead of legs. Their hands could also shift and twist into a multitude of tools. Another floating head appeared in front of me, and I nodded at Kelex as he droned on about the machine's functions.
It was an accelerated aging device, created by one of the scientists in Jor-El's lab to age and indoctrinate future citizens of Krypton into their specific roles at immense speed. Jor-El shut it down because it was inhumane, but I'd found my use for it. Shield would be searching for a five-year
-old. With this machine, I'd be sixteen in a year. And even better, I'd be sixteen in a year with all the information and knowledge of one of Krypton's top scientists and all the training of one of Krypton's top warriors. Of course, the templates I'd chosen for the information going to be downloaded into my head were from Jor-El and Zod respectively.
The reason the machine had taken so long to build was actually Kelex scrubbing through all the information I received to make sure nothing untoward was included, as well as the little extra I'd had him include in the machine's design. Solar emitters. Yellow sun emitters, unfortunately, but still supercharged to whole new levels of efficiency and power. Once the year was up, I'd come out with all the power of a Kryptonian who'd spent decades absorbing solar radiation. Hopefully, that would be enough to tide me over until my body was strong enough to endure exposure to blue sunlight without exploding from the inside out. Trust me, Kelex's models had been suitably descriptive and gruesome.
"Will it hurt?" I asked, gesturing to the device.
Kelex's face softened, "Of course not. Quicker and easier than falling asleep," he said before going on another spew session.
"I'm ready, Kelex," I said, cutting in before the Artificial Intelligence could go into another round of exposition about the device.
"You know what you must do while I am unconscious?" I asked, more to pass time than anything.
"Yes, Kal-El." I stepped inside the machine that shared some similarities with the device that had turned Steve Rogers into Captain America, except looking decades more advanced. It swung shut once I was in position, and I was out like a light. Quicker and easier than falling asleep indeed.
XXXXXX July, 2007
When I came out of the machine, it was almost like I stepped out in a new body. I was stronger. I could feel it without even trying. I was faster too. I'd had Kelex include whatever training manuals and tools he had on board for figuring out a Kryptonian's enhanced powers under the yellow sun, and they were coming in clutch right now by stopping me from incinerating everything around me with my heat vision.
I floated into the air with ease, like gravity never had any hold on me. The holographic head that represented my only friend in this life appeared in space next to me, "Kal-El. Welcome. You are still naked," he said, like he was shocked. Making a show of closing his eyes, he pointed me over to an outfit laid out for me on a mannequin. I smiled and floated over to it. It was a 1-to-1 recreation of the outfit Superboy had worn while he was at Cadmus in the Young Justice show, including the "S" in the center of the shield.
"I see you've enjoyed exploring my memories."
"Oh yes, Kal-El. They provided an excellent range of new data sets. And I have fulfilled your mission," he said.
"Good, show me."
Pictures of an old couple appeared in the air around me, with multiple news articles and other pictures. I read through them at a speed that astounded me and caught Kelex's idea train almost instantly.
"You want me to pose as this bastard grandson," I said.
"Yes, Kal-El. It will be most expedient. The necessary memory modification and compulsion devices have already been built, and the robots are at the ready to carry out the mission. All that remains is your consent." He said. I nodded at him, and he nodded back.
The couple in front of me, Harry and Barbara Kent, were an old pair of British multimillionaires. Members of the peerage even. The Lord and Lady Kent had been blessed with two children, an older and a younger. The older was well suited to inheriting the family fortune and responsibilities. He seemed, in every respect, the perfect noble. The younger, however, had been a bit of a rogue before his death two years ago in a racing accident. What was of interest about him though, was a news article from about sixteen years ago. It spoke of a scandalous affair with a housekeeper that resulted in a pregnancy. There was no news about the pregnancy or housekeeper after that, but Kelex had been able to discover that both the mother and child had died on the birthing bed.
What he'd also found had killed any hesitation I had about going forward with the plan. The elderly couple in the pictures had paid the doctor quite handsomely to ensure neither mother nor child survived. Why they'd put something so incriminating in an email conversation was beyond me.
Anywho, the plan Kelex was implementing now was a simple one. With multiple stealth robots, he was going to modify the memories of all the doctors involved, and even the elderly couple, to believe the child had survived. For the elderly couple, they were going to believe that they had paid for the child to be sent away and raised in secrecy. After that, the robots were then going to use the compulsion devices to plant the idea in Harry Kent's head that he ought to leave a good legacy to his 'bastard grandson' in his will. Something to the tune of fifty million dollars, a little under 10% of the family's liquid assets. A lot for a bastard, but not so much as to raise any eyebrows. And then, the robots were going to poison the old assholes with something undetectable to ensure they died in the next year.
They were going to give me the identity and funds I needed to live unbothered in the regular world. The fortress was beautiful and all, but to live here forever was a life I could not stomach the thought of.
"A good plan," I commented to Kelex after I looked through everything and the identity he'd set up for me. He'd even done it under the name 'Clark Kent,' so I had to give him his flowers. I didn't particularly care about the name. It was a name like any other, and one I will bear with pride.
"The training room is ready, by the way," Kelex said, and I tore down the door in my haste to move there. Fuck. Sorry, Kelex, I said in my mind. Guess I still wasn't fully in control. I wanted to get somewhere, and everything in my way had been torn down in a second or less. The power of a Kryptonian was something else. It was tough to imagine that this universe, which was most definitely the MCU, would have anything to match up against me. 'How did I know it was the MCU?', you might ask, well Samuel L. Jackson was the Director of Shield, Robert Downey Junior was the CEO of Stark Industries, and Chris Evans was the war hero known as Captain America. Did I need to say more?
A/N; And that's the first chapter of our Clark Kent SI. Love it? Let me know. Don't love it? Let me know! We've got the next five chapters of this story, along with the next five chapters of another fic that I uploaded at the exact same time as this one (an OCSI into a firebender during the 100 year war in the ATLA universe) all available on pa-atreon, and you can read all of that right now just by heading to the link on my profile or searching for my username up there. Feel free to have a look.
