Kara squinted her eye and moved her hand with extreme care, every movement precise and calculated. Slowly, she rotated the machine's arms and released another burst of radiation into the small piece of Kryptonite, it flashed with green light for a second and then started to vibrate, absorbing more and more radiation. With a loud 'bang', it exploded into hundreds of pieces which quickly lost their colors.
Taking her hands off the controls, Kara wiped her forehead and sighed. She wasn't stupid enough to experiment with the radioactive rocks while in the same room, but using remote control handles and cameras in a far away room worked, even if it still caused her some stress.
In truth, she knew she should really be working on a prosthetic eye, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She was still hopeful her eye would start to grow back, despite the fact it was showing no signs of doing so.
Still, putting on a prosthetic could delay or even stop the re-growth. Perhaps her healing was prioritizing her internal organs and would shift back to her eye eventually? She had been feeling better lately.
Glancing aside, she saw her prosthetic leg was still only at 60% charge and sighed before also checking her robots on the computer.
Her mining robots were still working, they weren't very efficient, being just repurposed security and maintenance drones instead of specialized equipment, but they could still find precious metals inside the asteroids and bring them back to the ship fairly easily.
It wasn't a long term solution, but she wasn't looking to start a true mining operation anyway, and could still get a fortune before they broke down.
Catwoman had called her two days after their meeting in order to accept the job, but her asking price had been a little too large for what Kara had in hand. She hadn't thought she'd need 50 million in gold when she had first mined the asteroid belt with Kori.
Still, it wasn't all that hard to do, even with the technology she had at hand.
Finally, she looked at her data recovery program. The Psions had damaged the data crystals in her ship while trying to extract information from them, and it was taking a long time to get it all fixed.
Stretching her back, Kara yawned and went back to her experimentations. She had already managed to turn a tiny piece of kryptonite red by bombarding it with radiation and accelerating its half-cycle, but any more and the damned rock simply degraded too fast to be of use, quickly becoming inert.
As a Kryptonian, very few things threatened Kara, and she wanted to be ready whenever one of them showed up. Magic was already being dealt with by obtaining Nth metal, and it would even have the bonus of helping her finally heal, but there was always a chance of another Kryptonian showing up.
As far as she could find, her cousin hadn't dealt with general Zod yet, and an evil doppelganger was always a possibility in DC, what with alternate realities and mad scientists.
So, she was trying to find a way to deal with them, and she doubted Superman would let her use the more… permanent solutions. As a result, she was killing some time trying to create golden kryptonite, relatively harmless to her people, but able to reduce them to human level for a long period of time. Perfect for safe incarceration.
She wasn't having much luck.
"Damnit!" She cursed as another small piece of Kryptonite lost its color and stopped radiating any harmful waves. It hadn't exploded this time, but Kara finally decided that just radiation wouldn't be enough to create anything other than the red variety, and that one only drove Kryptonians mad with rage.
Changing her approach, Kara tried to increase the rock's half life instead, expending another hour and a half trying various ways of doing so until she finally got a nail sized piece of blue kryptonite on the table.
She memorized the precise method of fabrication before erasing it from the computer. Even if she lost two entire days of data gathering and studying, Kara wasn't willing to allow anyone even the slightest chance of getting their hands on Kryptonite research.
Sending a drone to put away both red and blue pieces of Kryptonite, she watched as they put them in small lead boxes. Kara checked the more long term experiments with pressure and chemical baths, making sure they were running correctly before pushing herself away from the chair and grabbing her prosthetic.
With a turn of the wrist, she locked it in place and wiggled her metal toes. The metal wasn't capable of transmitting sensations, but she always felt better when she had all her parts in place, almost like she was whole again.
Putting on her socks and boots, Kara dropped down on the floor and cracked her neck. How strange, in both her lives she had always wanted to fly and, now that she could, she had the odd desire to walk everywhere.
Looking over everything one last time, Kara made sure the mining process was automated and working as expected before grabbing her respirator and walking towards one of the ship's hatches, then she flew out into space picking up speed towards earth.
She didn't fly as fast as she could, or even constantly accelerate. She wanted to let herself rest since it was a much greater distance than just from the moon.
Still, since her mask allowed her to breathe easily, and there was no air resistance, her body moved with ease, picking up speed slowly but constantly, allowing her to finish the trip in less than two hours.
She had to bleed out some speed before reentry, lest she burn her new clothes but, in another twenty minutes, she was dropping down behind an alley in Fawcett City. The sun was still up in the sky, so she was a little early getting home and, since she hadn't eaten in a day and a half, decided a little ice cream wasn't too much.
Fawcett City in the afternoon was beautiful. It had a peaceful feeling Kara had only ever felt in Kandor when the military was away from the city, a sense that no matter what happened, everything was gonna be alright. People walked the streets and just felt…safe, Captain Marvel was doing a good job.
"Whoa!" Screamed a teenager as he almost hit her with his bicycle while she was waiting in line for an ice cream.
"Watch it, you punk!" Shouted a man from behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder and tried to support her and stop her from falling. It was completely unnecessary, but Kara appreciated the thought. "You alright miss?"
"I'm fine, thanks." She gave him a wide smile before noticing the little girl hiding behind his leg and holding one of his hands. "And who's this?"
"Anna." The little brunette squeaked from behind her father, hiding her face on his pants and causing Kara to laugh out loud.
Kara really couldn't see herself raising a kid like that, no matter how cute she seemed. Perhaps it had been for the best that Kal El had found such caring parents as the Kent's.
The young father lifted the girl up into his arms and kissed her on the cheek before smiling at Kara. "Come on, honey, say hi to the nice lady."
"Hello." The little girl said and then buried her face on her fathers' neck while mumbling something.
"Nice to meet you too, Anna." Kara couldn't help messing with the kid's hair. "Heh, cute kid."
"Thanks," Said the proud father. "I've never seen you here before, are you new here?"
"Yep, just moved into the city a couple of weeks ago."
"Really, hope you like it here then."
They continued to make small talk as the line advanced, Kara asking about what to look out for in the city, and him kind of bragging about his daughter. It wasn't anything important, but she found it nice to be able to have a simple, normal conversation.
"Hey, I think it's your turn." The father pointed and Kara saw he was right.
"Thanks, nice to meet you." She waved the little girl goodbye before approaching the ice cream truck and passing the attendant a bill. "Get me a vanilla cone."
"Right away Miss."
"Hi honey, did you wait too long?" Said a female voice from behind her.
Turning around, Kara saw what was probably the girls' mother joining them to wait in line. Getting her cone, Kara waved back one last time and left.
"Hi mommy, daddy was flirting with the pretty lady!"
Kara almost spit her ice cream as she heard the eager little girl tattling to her mother. Lowering her head, she increased her walking speed while snickering at the flustered man's response.
Kara should have known things were going too well. Her experiments were going well, all her projects were working as expected, she should have known something was gonna go wrong.
Looking up, she saw Captain Marvel flying towards a tall building before being hit by a huge lightning bolt and losing control, falling heavily into the asphalt only four blocks to her right.
Damn, was Livewire or Weather Wizard in the city?
Using her X-ray vision, Kara found the Captain already recovering before a second discharge of electricity passed through the cables in the street, hitting the Hero in the chest, driving him back into the ground and revealing a blond teenager sparkling with electricity, her boot on his chest.
"Well, well, well, looks like you're not so marvelous after all!" The girl, who couldn't be older than fourteen, gloated before the Captain recovered and tried to grab her. With a flash and a few bolts of electricity, she disappeared, only to appear on the sidewalk. "Ha! He did say it wasn't going to be easy."
Seeing the girl lift her hands in the air and they starting to gather another electric discharge, the hero dodged.
"Sha… darn it!" He started to say, but cut himself off, clearly not knowing how resistant the girl was, and unwilling to really hurt her. Kara noticed the hero seemed to be holding back a lot, even avoiding causing damage to his surroundings despite the battle.
Kara kept an eye on the fight and started walking towards them. She wasn't actually worried, Captain Marvel was about even with her cousin in power, but it wouldn't hurt to be close by, just in case of any accidents… Plus, it was her first superhero fight, she didn't want to miss it by getting distracted.
Both fighters started playing a kind of keep away game, with the super powered teenager flashing away every time the Captain got close, and he enduring her electrical discharges while grunting and grimacing.
Fortunately, the girl didn't seem able to actually hurt him, even when her revealing outfit started helping, shining with orange light as it channeled her power.
Noticing it, the Captain started aiming for her suit, managing to damage it without hurting the girl inside and causing her teleports to become erratic.
One of said teleports fell short, leaving the girl just a little too close to the hero, he managed to use his speed to grab her before she could reorient herself, destroying the electronic devices in her suit and causing her to scream in frustration.
She beat her fists at his arms fruitlessly, her hair floating up as her electrical discharges became weaker and less controlled.
The fight seemed to be over when the girl grabbed at the captain's arms and they both flashed with electricity, causing every lamp in three blocks to blow up, and one of the generators in the closest lamppost to explode in a shower of sparks.
A thunderbolt hit them from above, causing the closest windows to explode, when Kara's vision finally cleared, she saw five stunned kids in the place where the two had fought.
The oldest looking girl recovered first, she shook her head and looked at her own hands in wonder before releasing a laugh.
"Ahahahahahaha, I beat Captain Marvel, I actually did it! How cool is that?!" Pointing with her hand, she released another thunderbolt towards an empty car and caused it to explode. "And this power, we had never absorbed so much power before!"
Kara's stomach dropped, she could put two and two together and come to a terrible conclusion. Somehow, this Livewire wannabe had absorbed Captain Marvel's powers.
Discarding her half eaten ice cream, Kara flexed her foot and tried to alpha strike the oldest girl by going as fast as she could. Somehow, the girl caught her movement, her eyes widened and she released another thunderbolt right at Kara.
The strike hit her in the chest with the power of a truck, arresting all her momentum and sending her flying back to hit a car, causing the metal to bend around her. The impact drove the air out of her lungs and sent a jolt of pain all through her body, somehow bypassing her natural resistance. Worse, it carried enough of a charge to fry the electronics on her leg, despite the amount of isolation she had on it.
Crap, Captain Marvel's powers were magic weren't they?
"Ugh." Kara grunted, grabbing the metal around her, Kara pushed, freeing her body from the car and glaring at the girl.
The little shit just laughed and lifted one of her arms, releasing another bolt.
Kara wasn't fast enough to dodge lightning, but she could certainly dodge someone aiming at her. Flying aside, she watched the new attack hit the car and make it explode before having to fly up in order to dodge another bolt.
"Will you just stay put!" The girl screamed, stomping on the ground from anger and aiming another bolt towards Kara.
The Kryptonian dropped down from the air, letting the thunderbolt pass harmlessly over her head while taking the opportunity to charge right at the girl.
Before the brat could gather another bolt, Kara was close enough she could slap some sense into her.
"Ack!" The girl screamed, her eyes going wide from fear and, just before Kara could hit her, disappeared in a flash of thunder, hitting the clouds above them and discharging thunderbolts towards all directions. Even Kara's enhanced senses couldn't see which one was the real one.
With the immediate treat gone, Kara grabbed the unconscious 10 years old boy in the middle of a charred street. She first checked his vitals and released a breath of relief, then turned towards the other three girls.
They all looked like different versions of the same girl, one of them was crying in a sitting position, her heart beating like mad from fright, she had slightly longer hair and no piercings or tattoos. The second had short spiky hair and used the same piercings as the original, but had a wild look in her eyes and seemed very angry. The last one was still trying to recover, wearing the destroyed suit.
Kara guessed she was the original, since there was nothing different on her body.
"Ugh… what happened?" The boy in her arms asked, holding his head in pain. Kara laid his body on the ground and prepared herself to fight. The little brats weren't that powerful, but she was still wounded, and they were damn fast.
"I… I was… wait Captain Marvel is a kid? Wha… how!?" The original girl asked, dumbfounded.
At her side, the wild looking girl started flashing before turning into a stream of electricity and flying into a nearby energy cable, her travel so fast Kara was unsure she would have caught the girl, even if she didn't have to protect the unpowered boy. At least she didn't seem to have been supercharged like the older clone.
"Kara? What are you doing here?"
"Hi, fancy meeting you here Cap." Kara said and smiled in relief, at least the boy didn't seem to be damaged in any way.
"Oh crap!" He scrambled away from her before taking everything in, then he lifted an arm and shouted. "Shazam!"
Nothing happened, he tried jumping up and screaming the name again, but his body refused to change, then he noticed all three of them looking at him and scratched his neck sheepishly. "Can we just pretend that didn't happen?"
"Suure." Said the original girl, then she looked from Kara to the Captain, and her still crying doppelganger before sighing. "Shit, I didn't even want to do this, but the others convinced me and now I'm hurting children. Ugh, I knew it was too good to be true."
The girl let herself fall on her ass and crawled closer to her double before putting an arm around her for comfort and covering her own eyes with a hand.
Kara didn't know how to deal with one crying preteen, much less two. Giving a glance to Cap's civilian identity just to make sure he wouldn't break out in tears on her, Kara approached the twins and said the first thing that came to her mind. "Come on; let's go before someone else gets here. I have cake at home."
Flying while carrying three kids was kind of awkward, but Kara managed it fairly easily and, soon enough, the more childish of the girls was giggling in her grasp with both arms open wide.
"Weeeeee!" She screamed and almost wiggled free of Kara's grasp. It wasn't the stealthiest thing to do but, at this point, Kara was beyond caring.
She entered her apartment and dropped all three of them on the ground before throwing herself face first on the sofa and releasing a loud groan.
"So… what now?" Whispered the boy beside her head and she waved him away like an annoying fly.
Turning in place, Kara started fiddling with her fried leg. Taking off her boot, she tried to manually disengage the locking mechanism with one hand while waving the boy away with the other. "You're the hero, you find out what's going on."
In frustration, Kara managed to get a nail between the jammed locks and rip them free, finally getting the destroyed leg out of her body. The prosthetic itself seemed to be a total loss, but at least the port seemed to be salvageable, so she wouldn't need a new surgery.
15 minutes later, Kara pinched the bridge of her nose and could already see the headache coming. Long story short, the girl was called Amy and she could absorb electricity, but hadn't been able to truly use her ability until someone made her a power suit and told her to fight Captain Marvel.
Damn, and the stupid girl actually did it, thinking the worst that could happen was she lost and, as a minor, would get a slap on the wrist.
To make matters worse, the girl suffered from multiple personality disorder and, when she absorbed the Captain's power, her body had split into four. "So… who are those personalities again?"
"Ah… only Amber has a name, really." Amy told her while trying to appear smaller by keeping her head down.
"Amber is the mad one, right?" Kara asked while massaging her aching stump in annoyance.
"She's… she's not mad! She's just… angry." Amy protested and took another bite of her sandwich before grumbling. "She's the one who always protects me."
"Fine, so we have the 'protective one', the 'childish one.'" Kara pointed towards the other girl who was happily eating cookies in the kitchen while swinging her legs on the stool. "And the one who ran away was what?"
"I - I don't know, she just… always wants me to do dumb things, like… she's kind of impulsive."
"Errr… turns out everyone in the League is busy right now." Billy told her as he finished texting on his phone. Kara released another groan, a louder one this time; she just knew it was gonna be her problem to fix this. "So, I think I know why I can't transform. I think Amber absorbed the power of Zeus, so I can't use the magic lightning to summon my transformation."
Kara looked from Amy to the little boy and lifted an eyebrow. "And it has to be magic lightning, normal lightning won't do?"
"Still can't believe Captain Marvel is a kid." Amy whispered to herself and finished her meal. Licking her fingers, she asked. "Can… Can I have another one?"
Kara nodded and Amy eagerly started opening the fridge. Looking closer, Kara noticed the girl was far too thin, her ribs visible under her suit and her limbs more like sticks.
Damn her bleeding heart, she was gonna have to do something about that too wasn't she.
"I don't know. This never happened to me before." Billy said and dropped down beside her on the sofa. "I mean, we can try right?"
"I'm NOT hitting a ten year old with lightning!" Amy shouted in outrage from the kitchen before lowering her head again, as if afraid she was gonna get hit.
"Didn't seem to bother you when hitting Captain Marvel with lightning." Kara joked and the girl flinched.
"I… I didn't think I could hurt him." The girl confessed, her voice barely above a whisper. "And that was mostly Amber anyway."
"Well, thankfully, both missing personalities don't seem to be doing any damage." Kara said. "Amy, do you think you could face them if they make problems?"
"I… ah, Amber was-was the one who always dealt with problems." The girl said with a shaking voice. "I'm too weak, too ugly, too useless, I-I'm only good for my power."
The girl quickly started to tremble in place, her nails digging into the flesh on her exposed tight until they drew blood. Kara didn't know how to react.
"Amy!" Billy cried out and held her hands tightly with his own, snapping her out of her funk. "Amy, you're not weak or useless, you fought me, you defeated me, and nobody weak could do that! Besides, you're far from ugly."
Looking at Billy's eager expression, Amy couldn't help but take some deep breaths and calm herself, then she gave a little giggle. "I don't think heroes are supposed to cheer up their villains."
"Ugh, alright, enough sweetness already." Kara mocked them. She had lost a very expensive prosthetic, had a killer headache and was probably gonna have to fight someone with the power of Zeus; to say she was in a foul mood would be a huge euphemism. "Do you at least have any idea where your two missing doppelgangers would go?"
"I don…" Amy started to say when an enormous thunder interrupted her, rattling Kara's windows and causing every light in her apartment to go out.
Looking out of the window, Kara saw another ten meters wide thunderbolt hit the top of a building and blow every one of its windows, leaving a short, spiky haired teenager with several piercings on her face laughing maniacally on top of it.
With a maniacal laugh, the girl lifted both hands up and rained thunderbolts down on the streets at random. "Nevermind, I think I found her."