trans_9 | Coping at Ke'e Beach

So, what do you do when you find out you're going to die? Kon's seen how thrown Kal is from his death--but Kal comes back. Even if he doesn't believe it now, Kon knows this, and he knows that he's not likely to have the same thing happen to him. He's not Kal. The world doesn't need him like it needs Kal, so why would he come back?

Heh. The Good Ship Stacy: two good-as-dead Super-guys enter, one super-guy leaves.

...Okay, that's kinda not funny.

Superboy doesn't know if he can take his mentor's tack of playing it by ear and trying his best to help everyone else. He doesn't know if he can get over the whole feeling lost part of it to get to what he needs to do, and just deal with their situation here.

Even after all his talk to Tim of not avoiding people, Kon deals at first by avoiding the others. But it's just for a bit, just a little while, not like all that time he spent on the farm, hiding, after Luthor made him hurt everyone, and the difference is, he's not hiding from coping, or repressing, this is how he copes. He just doesn't like people to see the initial anger--and it is anger, that he expresses by punching robots in the Sensorium until his knuckles start to bleed.

Heh, and that leads to his other problem. Not enough sunlight. The stuff in the Sensoriums feels like the real deal, but it's obviously not, if he can't process it so that his powers stay at full super-levels, and the light that Will kid's been conjuring up for him is weak. He's going on empty now. He can be hurt.

And it just drives it home even more exactly how...mortal he is.

But if anyone comes looking for him and poke their head in the Sensorium, they'll find him not punching robots or moping and brooding. If they peek in, they'll see him sitting on a rock on a beach bathed in the glow of a Hawaiian sunset. He hasn't availed himself of holographic clothes, but his plantsuit is stripped down to his waist, and he's writing things on one of the media pads from the Media Library, a thoughtful look on his face.

"--Have I ever been sledding? No. Better put that on there..."

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression... is he at acceptance already? Maybe his general attitude of rocketing through his life at warp speed is benefiting him for once.

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"If you wanna harsh on somebody, harsh on me, 'cause, um, I totally blew it with the Bug thing."

He rubs his neck.

"Which, honestly, makes the whole 'you're going to die saving the world' thing just a little surprising, with the actual saving the world part, but perhaps the sucking is what explains the dying."

"I doubt it," Lyta replied. She eyed the boy for a few moments before asking: "Do you mind if I tell you a story?"

"...Sure, I guess." He's listening.

Lyta settles into her seat.

"Where I come from, about twenty years ago, Earth had just come out of a war with a race called the Dilgar. They were barbaric. They invaded the League of Non-Aligned Worlds and massacred and tortured billions in the process. None of the other major powers would do anything. So, Earth intervened. A few years later, Earth had won, the Dilgar were all dead after their home world was destroyed when their sun went nova, and the League looked to Earth as their savior, their protector."

She continued, "Eventually, the government decided it was time to expand our sphere of influence, but before they did, they wanted to make sure that none of the other major powers were going to get in the way. So, they sent an expedition to system just outside the territory of a race called the Minbari. We didn't know a lot about them at the time. They were isolationist, even the races that had met them before had had dealings with them in years. But, we wanted to make sure they wouldn't intervene, so we sent the expedition.

"When it arrived, it encountered a Minbari fleet and, not realizing that the Minbari opened their gun-ports as a sign of respect, our fleet captain open fire inadvertently killing their spiritual leader, Dukhat. We were at war again. Our arrogance had led us back into war. Only, this time, it was different. This was not the Dilgar. Next to the Vorlons, the Minbari were the oldest, most powerful space-faring race in the galaxy. Their technology was at least a thousand years ahead of our own.

"And to make it worse, we were alone. No one was willing to challenge the Minbari on our behalf. To do so would be suicide. So we faced them alone. One by one, the Minbari fleet tore through the outer colonies, wiping out defenses that had taken years to build in a matter of minutes. No ship that confronted them was ever heard from again. In four years of war, of fighting for the very survival, we only ever destroyed one Minbari ship.

"We didn't stand a chance. We'd lost the minute that captain ordered his batteries to open fire. No matter how hard we fought, no matter how much we tried, we couldn't beat them. We tried to surrender and they ignored us. We begged and we pleaded for mercy and, still, nothing. Earth was going to fall. We were going to die. The human race was going to end.

"So, we only had one choice. Keep fighting. And that's what we did. We were defeated. We were already dead. But we made them pay for every inch of space. We made them pay for every planet, every outpost, every colony. Until they reached Earth. We knew we were going to die but we still fought anyway. Every ship capable of fighting was sent to stand between Earth and the entire Minbari fleet. None of them expected to come back. Survival wasn't an option. Their only goal was to delay the inevitable. To give us time so as many civilians as possible to could get off the planet and escape into safety in neutral territory."

She paused then.

"It takes a lot more bravery, a lot more heroism, to go into a fight that you know you're going to lose than it does to go into one you actually stand a chance of winning."

"Just because you might lose more than the others doesn't mean that you're less than they are. In fact, it might make you more."

Kon sits there quiet for a moment, and then chews on the nail of his thumb, mulling it over. The relative indifference he'd been projecting drops, and he looks up, his eyes just a little glassy, and at once it's apparent how much all this has really gotten to him, how much he just... he just wants to be more than he is right now, and how daunting the prospect is that he such little time to be it.

Kon'd come into the world in such a strange way, and because of it, he wonders so many things. He'd wonders how it was he managed to grow his own soul (if it's as small as Raven said, does that mean he didn't have one at the beginning?), wonders if he's a real person and who he really is, wonders at his worth, wonders if he's rotten from the inside out because of where he really comes from--half a good man, half an evil one.

Ma Kent said the world needed a Superboy, and he believes it. He knows he can be what he wants to be, he doesn't have to be Luthor's lackey "son"--he wants to choose Kal's way, and make it his own way.

Still... can someone half-cloned from one of the worst supervillains in the world really save it?

"You really think so?" asks the Boy-Who-Might've-Been-Superman.

"Yes, I do," Lyta said. And she meant it. Despite the distrust and the awful accusations that she'd made against Kal, Kon, Brainy, and the other superhero kids, she meant this. Her mind had been, at least, opened to the idea that she may have jumped to judgment too quickly.

"I have an idea. I may be able to help you, at least, with Brainy's cooperation," she then said. "I don't know a lot about cloning but if you were cloned in your universe like you said and if Brainy's from the future of your universe, I would assume that he does.

"Before we leave here--if we leave here--I might be able to copy your memories and your personality into a clone of you. Maybe we could send him back with Paco, since he's obviously from a point after you've died."

She pauses.

"It's not exactly ethical...but it's there if you want it."

At 'Maybe we can help you,' he perks up.

At the cloning, he looks shocked, enraged, and a little disgusted.

"No way! You can't just play with a clone's life like that! I couldn't steal its life away to force it to be me! How can you even suggest that?"

Despite being a clone, he has a thing...about frivolous cloning. And you can't copy a soul.

Even then, what about the soul the clone would develop on its own? Stealing its life away for his?

No. Never.

"'Not exactly ethical'--that's evil."

Lyta is quiet as she thinks over Kon's reaction. Finally, she nods slowly.

"You're right, it is," she admits. "I don't even know what the hell I was thinking... Now who's the reckless one?"

He still looks a little suspicious of her apology and looks back at his little To-Do-or-Die list.

"I kinda want some alone time now," he says sullenly.

Coping at Ke'e Beach

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