- Prologue -

Lying on the bed in her apartment, Zynthia Ardeen gazed at the holo-images swirling about her and sighed. All of them were of Superboy, a legendary figure from the Age of Heroes that she had fallen in love with as a child. Now a teenager she loved him still, a lost hero from a thousand years ago she had long accepted she could never hope to meet.

"Holos off," she said, running a hand through her short blonde hair as the images faded.

Her love for Superboy was something Zynthia kept from her boyfriend, Thom Kallor, having come to his world and sought him out only because as Star Boy he was the closest thing to Superboy this era had to offer.

Crossing over to her balcony Zynthia gazed out over the city of Xan, here beneath the exceptionally clear skies of this planet. Xanthu was one of the more technologically advanced worlds of the United Planets, its Science Institute even boasting two new time-ships. Their possibilities were not lost on Zynthia, but her fantasy of using one to go back to Superboy's time could never be more than that. Time-travel was strictly monitored with few besides the Legion of Super-Heroes so far trusted with use of such craft.

The door to her apartment suddenly whooshed open and there stood someone Zynthia was very unhappy to see.

"C..cousin Imra?" she said.

"Hello, Zynthia," said Saturn Girl entering the apartment.

"Have you come here to arrest me?"

"I should. You emigrated from Saturn illegally."

"If I'd done so legally I'd have had to bear the mark. It's degrading and we shouldn't be forced to wear it"

"All Titanians have to wear it offworld," said Saturn Girl, glancing down at the symbol for the planet Saturn emblazoned on the tunic of her own costume, "the one that tells everyone the wearer is a telepath. Non-telepaths are suspicious of us. They don't like having mind-readers among them without knowing who they are. But then that was the last thing you wanted anyone to know about you wasn't it, Zynthia? When you got here you managed to contrive a meeting with Star Boy, probing his mind to discover what he did and didn't like in a girl, and using that knowledge to become his girlfriend."

"You make it sound like I coerced Thom, but I didn't," protested Zynthia. "I just used my abilities to find out everything about him that another girl would have had to seek out by other means. My way just saved time."

"It's still an offense to hide your true nature and take advantage of him that way," said Saturn Girl. "You may not approve of the laws of our world, but they're there for a reason. I'd prefer not to have to arrest you, so you need to break up with Thom and return to our world voluntarily."

"So you travelled all this way just to break up our relationship?" said Zynthia, bitterly.

"Actually, no. I recently came into some..ah.. intelligence about a plot by criminals to steal a time-ship several weeks from now that I wanted to pass on to Thom, and I also wanted to see Star Boy in action. We're thinking of inviting him to join the Legion."

"And you want me to have broken up with him before then."

"I do, yes. You have two weeks. If you haven't done so by that time and booked passage back to Titan I'll return and arrest you."

When her cousin had gone, Zynthia fumed for a few minutes before announcing: "You can come out now."

In response a figure who had been invisible the whole time, but masking his thoughts, made himself visible.

"You know what she's done," he said.

"I do," said Zynthia, "and she has to be made to pay."

- 1 -

High above the cornfields of Kansas twin blue and red streaks arced across the clear blue skies. Most people glancing up from the ground on hearing the sonic boom as they reached mach-1 and following their trajectory would have taken them to be airplanes or possibly the test firing of some new rockets, but it was neither. No, they were something much stranger. One was a teenager from another planet who had arrived on Earth as a baby and been raised as one of us, a teenager with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men, a teenager known to the world as...Super-Sister! As for the other...

His costume reversed the colours of hers, but there had been plenty of reasons to assume he was another survivor of her long dead planet, a fellow Kryptonian whose powers mirrored her own, but he wasn't. They landed in a high mountain meadow that held great significance for Claire Kent aka Super-Sister, a meadow that was in many ways her birthplace, and then hugged.

"I'm so sorry to see you go," said Claire. "It was fun having a big-brother, even if it was only for a week."

"And I wish I really was your big-brother," he said, "but when my memory returned I knew then that I'm actually from the planet Daxam and that, as fond as I am of the name you gave me, my real name is Lar Gand."

"I'm glad your memory returned before you were exposed to lead."

"Not as glad as I am. That stuff is lethal to Daxamites. Well, goodbye Claire," he said, kissing me on the forehead, "time for me to go."

"Goodbye, Lar," said Claire, as he launched himself into the sky, watching him soar into the upper atmosphere and knowing she would never see him again. "Goodbye Mon-El."

- 2 -

This was their first time on Earth for both Thom Kallor and Zynthia Ardeen and they were trying not to gawp, but not only were they inside the Legion's famous HQ - a repurposed Tevant 27 rocket shell provided by their fabulously wealthy benefactor R. J. Brande - but Brande himself was presiding over the trial being held here today. Legion leader Cosmic Boy was acting for the defence, Invisible Kid the prosecution, Brainiac 5 was appearing as an expert witness, and the remaining Legionnaires - Triplicate Girl, Phantom Girl, Colossal Boy, and Chameleon Boy - were acting as the jury. Lightning Lad was absent for some reason. Saturn Girl was the accused and had voluntarily agreed to wear a head band that would suppress her telepathic powers for the duration of the trial. She did not look happy, glowering at Zynthia whenever she met her gaze.

"It's time we began," said Brande. "A grave charge of conspiracy has been laid against Imra Ardeen and it is the purpose of these proceedings to determine the truth or otherwise of that charge. Cosmic Boy will open for the defence.

"Thank you, your honour. The defence calls Imra Ardeen."

Saturn Girl took her place at the stand and Cosmic Boy began his cross examination.

"You were the first of us to meet Super-Sister," he said. "Would you please describe for the court the circumstances of that meeting."

"Certainly. It took place just after the second time that you, Lightning Lad, and I visited the 20th century to see Superboy. Our records of that period are sketchy but we knew this was the point at which Super-Sister took over from her brother as Smallville's protector. What we didn't know were the circumstances, so I stayed behind to covertly watch that handover."

"And what did you discover?"

"That Super-Sister is not in fact Superboy's brother but Superboy himself, transformed into a girl by a vengeful woman."

"Do you know the identity of this woman?"

"I do. It was my cousin, Zynthia Ardeen."

"Wait, what?" said Zynthia.

All eyes briefly turned to her for this outburst before focussing back on Imra. What was her cousin playing at, she wondered, and what did she hope to gain by accusing her of something she didn't do?

"You described her as vengeful. Why was she vengeful?"

"Criminals from the planet Xanthu will shortly - or rather would have shortly - stolen a timeship, one of them fleeing to 20th century Earth. Thom Kallor, the superhero Star Boy, would pursue in the planet's other timeship and team up with Superboy to apprehend the villain when he got to that time. He asked Superboy to assist him in apprehending the second criminal, who he believed was hiding in the huge maze of copper drainage pipes under Xanthu's capital city. Star Boy's powers are comparable to Superboy's own but his X-ray vision can't penetrate copper. Lana Lang blackmailed Star Boy into taking her with them, apparently hoping to make Superboy jealous."

Zynthia recognized the name from her own studies of the period. A friend of Clark Kent she was romantically interested in Superboy, unaware they were the same person.

"Overhearing Lana's plot he decided to teach her a lesson by ignoring her on 30th century Xanthu and pretending to fall for Zynthia, who was only too happy to play along having been in love with Superboy since she was a child and first saw such footage of him as survives from the past. Amazingly, miraculously, the boy of her dreams, Superboy, had come from the past and there she was, in his arms. She knew he was only pretending to court her, but when he returned to the past she was crushed."

This rang true to Zynthia. If any of this had actually happened, that's exactly how she would have felt.

"Zynthia's relationship with Star Boy ended soon afterwards. Unfortunately, in the years that followed, Zynthia's life took a downward turn and she convinced herself Superboy had spurned her. Love turned to hate and she blamed him for all that had gone wrong in her life. She became convinced that everything would have turned out better for her if they'd never met.

Having somehow acquired a strange ring with mysterious powers she hatched a plan to alter the past and make sure they never did. By now an adult, she stole a time-ship, travelled back to a point a few weeks prior to Superboy's encounter with Star Boy, and tracked him down during one of his morning flights. Masquerading as someone named Shar-La from a planet ruled by women she used the ring's rays to turn him into a girl, into Super-Sister, so that there would no longer be a Superboy for her to meet, no longer someone who would break her heart."

"You're describing events that haven't happened yet," said Cosmic Boy.

"And now they never will, at least not for us. I captured Zynthia and explained to her that she hadn't changed her past at all, just caused the creation of a divergent timeline - our timeline - in which Superboy remained Super-Sister. I then delivered her to the Science Police of her own timeline but took no action against the teenage Zynthia in this one."

Zynthia would've been stunned by these revelations had she believed they were true, but she didn't. No, none of that had happened. It was all a lie.

"No further questions, your honour," said Cosmic Boy.

"And the prosecution?"

"I have one question for the accused," said Invisible Kid. "Ms Ardeen you say you delivered this other version of your cousin to the Science Police of her own timeline. That being the case, shouldn't we be able to have them verify this?"

"Ordinarily, yes," said Saturn Girl, "but for some reason access to parallel universes is closed to us at the moment. Brainy is at a loss to explain it."

"I see. Very convenient. No more questions for the accused at this point, your honour," said Invisible Kid, "so I'd like to call Thom Kallor to the stand."

Zynthia breathed a sigh of relief at this. Thom would put them all straight.

"Thank you for appearing before us, Thom," said Invisible Kid. "As Star Boy you are Xanthu's primary superhero, correct?"

"That is correct, yes."

"And Zynthia Ardeen is your girlfriend?"

"Was my girlfriend. We're just friends now?"

"Oh?"

"Yes. She confessed to me that she was in love with Superboy and had only got together with me because my powers made me the closest she could find to him in our century. She also confessed that she was from Titan and had used her telepathic powers to learn what I liked in a girl before seducing me."

"You didn't know she was from Titan before that?"

"No."

"Titanians are required to wear the symbol of Saturn when offworld, are they not?"

"Yes, but though she's wearing it now," said Thom, indicating the brooch visible on my clothing, "she wasn't then."

"But you forgave her."

"I did. We're teenagers so it's not as if either of us is the love of the other's life. We had fun together, and I understood her objection to wearing the mark."

"You didn't just forgive her, though, did you? Zynthia, if you would, please?"

This was the moment Zynthia had been waiting for. She stood up and pressed the jewel on her choker, the one that was projecting a hologram of civilian clothing over what she was actually wearing. The hologram faded away revealing a costume that was a version of Star Boy's in the same way that Supergirl's was a version of Superboy's. Instead of trunks the maroon tunic emblazoned with a yellow star continued down to mid-thigh as the skirt of a dress. Zynthia's legs were bare, her boots and cape yellow, and the buckle of her white belt bore the symbol of Saturn.

"I did more than just forgive Zynthia," said Thom, "I gave her my powers. Say hello to Star Lass, everyone."

- 3 -

Smallville being the small, relatively peaceful town that it was her night patrols were usually a quiet time in which Super-Sister could reflect on recent events. Having Mon-El around had allowed her to forget how much she missed Bruce Wayne for a while. Claire gazed upwards taking in the glorious starfield overhead. In a location as rural as Smallville you didn't have to get far out of town to see it in all its majesty, something forever denied those who lived amid the light-pollution of cities. Somewhere out there her dog Krypto was playing among the stars. Claire hadn't seen him since becoming Super-Sister and could only wonder what her pet would make of his master's transformation.

While she was gazing out into space Claire spotted the long tail of a comet travelling between Earth and the moon. Deciding that riding a comet might be just the sort of fun thing she needed to lighten her mood she decided to fly out to it. Before she could reach it she encountered two small asteroids, sailing through the void side-by-side in delicate gravitational balance. As she got closer something else that was odd became apparent. One of them had a tower of rocks standing on it, the sort of structure that could not be natural, particularly as it was topped by an open hand. As she landed on the asteroid so that stone hand slowly closed into a fist. Distracted by the sight Claire did not see the stream of glowing green rocks streaking over from the far side of the second asteroid until they were almost upon her. By then it was too late. As they rained down on her those chunks of kryptonite sapped her strength, rendering her helpless. Then they began to move, to assemble themselves into familiar shapes...

"Those pieces of living k..kryptonite have become grotesque imitations of human beings," Claire gasped to herself. "Th..they're charging at me like a horrible army of ghastly demons!"

The figures started battering Claire, who was too weak to resist them, watching in horror as her skin began to slowly turn green, a sure sign that kryptonite poisoning was setting in.

Then, suddenly, like puppets whose strings had been cut, the figures collapsed into the piles of rocks they had been before. Not that this was of any immediate help to Claire, who still found herself lying in a field of kryptonite.

But not for long.

A time bubble materialised above her piloted by Lightning Lad, who swiftly used his powers to blast most of the rocks away from her.

"Your nemesis Lex Luthor discovered a way of animating rock and used it against you," he said stepping down from the craft. "I paid him a visit before coming here and destroyed that device."

"Thanks for the rescue, Garth," said Claire, her skin slowly resuming its normal hue. "Now if you could just remove the last rock..."

"Not until I've done this," he said, snapping a metal belt about her waist.

"What...what are you doing?"

"That's a red sun radiation generator," he said, "which is projecting a field around you that will neutralise your powers, allowing me to do this."

He then snapped an ordinary pair of handcuffs around her wrists.

"Claire Kent alias Super-Sister," he said, "I'm placing you under arrest."