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The Albino Menace!
In the pod chambers, there is a late release, a hideous creature that crawls its way out of the slime and gasps for air, confused. A horrible monster, its species known for its barbarity, spreading disease, and occasionally, for being cannibalistic.
It's a pestiferous beast, a hideous--and intelligent--monster and after getting a suit and its tangled fur cleaned up by Stacy, it quickly goes on the hunt.
There are smells all over, some of them very strange, and the overall smell of this...thing, the creature is in, but there is one it zeroes in on.
One scent.
Its prey.
It moves, running along the ground on all fours, jumping and clinging to outcroppings on the walls. It finds its prey in a large room full of people, looking at the little square in his hand, but despite the people present, the strangers there, it will not be denied.
It zeroes in...and then LEAPS!
It's a pestiferous beast, a hideous--and intelligent--monster and after getting a suit and its tangled fur cleaned up by Stacy, it quickly goes on the hunt.
There are smells all over, some of them very strange, and the overall smell of this...thing, the creature is in, but there is one it zeroes in on.
One scent.
Its prey.
It moves, running along the ground on all fours, jumping and clinging to outcroppings on the walls. It finds its prey in a large room full of people, looking at the little square in his hand, but despite the people present, the strangers there, it will not be denied.
It zeroes in...and then LEAPS!
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"Kara, come with me. I need to show you something and I think I can in the Sensorium. There's stuff you need to know about Krypton."
He starts heading towards the Sensorium. He has to walk, since he's running low on juice. It'll probably take a while longer for the lack of yellow sunlight to start bothering Kara.
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Hmm.
Her time there with Brainy had been...
Not thinking about that.
She nodded, though, and followed Kon. "Sure," she said. She looked at him from the corner of her eye as they walked side by side. "Have you ever seen Krypton?" she asked. "I showed it to Brainy when he and I were there."
And she's thinking about Brainy.
Again.
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He walks into the center of the Sensorium.
"Stacy, you do this whole thing with telepathy, right? Like if I think it, you'll know what I'm thinking?"
||Yes.||
"I'm thinking, right now, about a certain historical event...thingy. I was shown. Do you have any info on Krypton's history so you can fill in the details I've forgotten and make a simulation based on all that? Based on what happened with Black Zero?"
||Yes. I have resources on Krypton's history. Programming simulation now.... .... Simulation ready.||
Kon turns to Kara.
"You ready? It's not pretty."
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Immediately, there's a cacophony of sound. Laser fire. Screams. They're both dressed in the red and black uniforms of soldisers, with rocket belts--not that they need them, but the Kryptonians did, being all mundane on their home planet.
There are drone crashing from the air and one crashes thunderously close to them. Soldiers are shooting them down. Soldiers are being shot down.
One of them, with the bearing and helmet of a captain addresses them, urging them to keep moving.
"Thank goodness," says the Kryptonian. "That rebel's blast was nonfatal. How fare you, soldiers? Do you recognize me -- Captain Van-L? Do you recall your own names?"
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And the name.
Captain Van-L.
That...no.
This wasn't possible.
She looked at Kon, defiance strong in her eyes. "No. This is from Power Girl's Krypton. It has to be."
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"Don't worry about our names, Captain. There is a war on, isn't there?"
"Indeed, and I need your aid, my friends. For there are no others not engaged in battle! A small band of rebels have broken through our lines with a bomb. We must stop them! Before they destroy the Citadel and all we Kryptonians have fought to preserve!"
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He gently pulls her along, after the Captain, towards the Citadel.
"This is Krypton, Kara. This is what Kal showed me. This is what Jor-El sent with him, so he'd know the good and the bad."
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She'd been in animated stasis for so long.
She hardly remembered Krypton.
How could she even be sure?
She tries wrenching herself out of Kon's grasp, but it's a futile effort. Maybe she's not trying hard enough. Or maybe he's just that strong.
She closed her eyes tightly, trying to block out the war that raged around them.
The war that couldn't possibly have happened.
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They fly into the Citadel with their little rocket belts, where a bunch of men with no shirts are setting up an explosive array. They look haggard, like they live outside of polite Kryptonian society.
"--nearly linked to the main generator."
"The Old Bloods will fear us now! They will know that Black Zero is not a group to be trifled with!"
"I agree!" says Van-L, jumping into the fray. "It's a group to be imprisoned!"
Taking advantage of the distraction, Kon points Kara to look into a chamber in the Citadel. It looks almost like the pod chambers, with bodies inside glowing yellow pods, but they're entirely mechanical in nature, and obviously Kryptonian technology.
More than that, they're not all adults. All the beings suspended within are in various states of life, from fetuses to embryos, to small children, to fully-formed adults.
"This is what you had to see, Kara."
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"You act as if you've never seen the clone banks of Krypton, soldier! Living beings grown for you Old-Bloods to harvest and use as you see fit! Skin grafts, organ transplants, a whole new body if you want... when the thing you need most is a soul!"
With that, he takes out a blaster and blasts Kon before collapsing from his injuries, sending him flying to the metal deck.
"Ooog, I forgot how much that hurt the first time," Kon groans.
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He was her reality.
What was around them...
That was all false.
She wouldn't accept it.
She couldn't accept it.
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"Kill him, Buse-X!"
"A witness to Black Zero's greatest triumph!" crows one of the terrorists. "Once we detonate the energy core, all theses genetic slaves will awaken from their induced slumber and be free!"
"Perhaps then, the other Old Bloods will use you for spare parts, Captain. That's all that will be left of you!"
"You fools!" Van-L cries, struggling to free himself from their grasp. "I want to end this ghoulish practice as much as you! But your terrorist acts provoke military responses! Black Zero will solve nothing -- even if it kills ten thousand Kryptonians!"
"Ten thousand and one!" says the other terrorist, leveling his gun at Van-L's head.
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There were no words for what she was feeling...and yet there were so many words for what she felt.
Unconciously, she felt herself reach out to Brainy for support...and then she realized that he wasn't there with them.
"Stop!" She yelled. She looked up. "Sensorium! Stacy! Whatever! Make it stop! I don't want to see anymore of this! Please!"
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They were right in the middle of it. The safety protocols were on of course, so it didn't hurt them, but the bomb went off and shook the very core of the planet itself, devastated the world, made it clear exactly why the planet was so colorless and barren in places that the only color was in the art hall.
But the light faded and so did the figures and so did their costumes.
"They destabilized the core."
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And Jor-El is there, but Kara is apart from it, like she's invisible.
Kon is in the place of some other man, dressed like they were during the time when Krypton destroyed.
"You should not have come, Kon-El," says Jor-El.
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Kara looked between Jor-El and Kon, mystified. It was so weird seeing her past and her present mixed up like that.
She lowers herself onto the ground with a nearby wall, and she watches quietly, wiping away at her tears.
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"Such concern touches me. Your family has always stood by the first House of El in times of trouble."
"The planet's going to explode soon, isn't it?" Kon asks sadly, briefly glancing at Kara.
"I only just confirmed it recently. The Council will not believe me. Due to a radical plot a group known as Black Zero had a thousand centuries ago, events were set in motion that made the core of Krypton unstable -- even deadly to Kryptonians." Jor-El voice is grave. "The planet will indeed explode... within days." He casts his gaze downward. "Perhaps hours."
Jor-El puts his arm on Kon's shoulder. "Return home, Kon-El. I have matters I must attend to. If you dare to hope, my brother Zor-El is attempting to find a way to preserve lives from the death of our world, but I fear his attempts may be in vain. Now is the time to be with your house. I am proud that you have always carried the name El, cousin, and have wished that my own son would grow up to be like you."
"He'll grow up to be better," Kon promised the holographic specter.
"I will never know. I only hope that he goes to a place far better than this. But then...that's all that any of us can hope for now..." Jor-El says, turning away, looking almost numb. Tired. He looks as if only the faint hope that he can save his son's life is what sustains him in the wake of what it to come. "Fare you well, Kon-El."
Jor-El walks away, down the hall, to where his wife, Kara's aunt, waits. She's weeping as they prepare the pod, and he embraces her, as the death tremors of the planet start again.
Kara and Kon hear his voice, as he speaks his last recorded words, meant to be heard later by his son.
"You will travel far, my little Kal-El, but we will never leave you--even in the face of our deaths. You will make my strength your own. You will see my life through your eyes, as your life will be seen through mine. The son becomes the father. And the father, the son."
He goes on:
"The planet I am sending you to is called Earth, and it's people are not so different from our own. Live as one of them, Kal-El, to discover where you are needed. Always hold in your heart the pride of your special heritage. They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way."
His last words to him are:
"For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you... my only son."
As the world fades, as Jor-El stops recording the archive of his last days to put it on the rocket, Kon, now crouching near Kara, sighs quietly, "Think he was trying to make Kal a dictator now? 'Cause it looks to me your uncle was just trying to save him."
He plops back on his butt to sit near her in the now-empty room.
"And that Kon-El guy was a real guy. Since he was a friend to your uncle, and he was family, Kal thought his name would be a good name for me--for being the same. When I saw all this, it was the day Kal gave me my name."
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"I...I can't accept this as truth, Kon. Even if it is, I can't. I just...we were so advanced. So smart. So strong. We couldn't have been this barbaric. It...it goes against everything about us."
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He looks up. "Stacy, show 31st century Earth. Like it was when I was with the Legion."
There it blinks around them, shining, ecologically-friendly, full of multi-colored people walking along, flying cars all around and tall spires of buildings not that different from Krypton's.
They're now sitting on a park bench.
"This is what Earth's going to be like someday."
A melting pot.
"Look at it. Not that different from Krypton, right?"
All shiny and brand-new, with people provided everything they need. There's crises, but good guys to stop them. In fact, the Legion goes flying overhead, just as diverse as some of the people on Earth, with Brainy--at least a hologram of him--among them. The people cheer.
"With some things Krypton didn't have." He looks over at her. "If Earth can turn out the same way, doesn't it make sense both worlds could've started the same way? Maybe that's what happens everywhere, on every planet. Bad things happen, and then it gets better until everything's all bright and new--just, for some worlds it's faster than others. Earth is slower than Krypton."
He gestures with a hand. "But it'll be lucky enough to last longer. Maybe the reason it's that lucky is because of us--because of Kal, and the League, and the Titans, and everyone fighting to make it that way."
Another pause. "But even with how hard we all fight, you have to figure it gets this good because humanity wants it to."
He shakes his head. "Nobody's better or worse than anybody. I kinda think everyone's capable of the bad--and everyone's also capable of this."
And that's the point he's trying to make, Kara.
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