Warning: My notebook died and I'm having to write from my phone, my patrons are helping out to PR my chapter so there shouldn't be any loss of quality, but it does mean updates are going to be slower until I can get a new PC.
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"I'm sorry Miss Danvers, what exactly is going on here?" The large man asked, his huge beer belly touching the table as he used his elbows to lean forward. "I mean, I'm glad things are working again, but why now?"
Kara thought about what to say, she could lie and come up with an excuse but, did she even need to?
"Were you close to the Danvers, Mister Blackwell?" She asked, buying herself a few more seconds to think.
"No Miss Danvers, I never really met your parents. I'm just a grunt trying to keep everything working after that asshole ran away with the company's money." The man told her and scratched at his beard. "From what the boys tell me, they were never that involved with things anyway."
"I see. Well, suffice to say that, for personal reasons, I too did not know them very well either." That the personal reason was the fact that she was an alien from another planet with no actual relation to the Danvers didn't need to be pointed out. "It took me some time to get access to my inheritance once I found out they were dead."
"I see…" he sighed, then shook his head. "Or well, I don't, but I guess that's not any of my business anyway. All I wanted to know is, do I still have a job? And what about everyone else?"
"Yes, you still have a job. Mr. Donovan will be taking over the CEO position for the time being however," Kara pointed to Dubbilex disguised form at her side; a middle aged black man wearing glasses. "And, since we're going to be expanding, you're actually getting a salary bump despite the demotion."
Derrick Blackwell had turned out to be a surprisingly simple man. Far from being the best man for the job, Blackwell had, nonetheless, been the only one capable of doing it until now.
Thankfully, Dubbilex had agreed to act as CEO for a few months until Kara could get someone better.
She was already compiling a document with all she could prove about Lex's crimes to try and entice her first choice away from the unscrupulous business tyrant's side.
"Right, can't say I'll miss all this damn paperwork, and I'm really glad the guys still have a job but…" Blackwell cut himself off, as if afraid of actually asking something.
"Go on Mr. Blackwell, I won't be firing you for asking questions as long as you're polite about it." Kara waved for him to speak.
"Well, it's just… a few of the boys and I stopped by the factory earlier today and… well, it's awfully in order ma'am, and there were some strange people working there, people nobody had ever seen before." The overweight man pushed himself away from the table and his eyes avoided Kara's. "Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you, but a man hears things."
"Now, I don't mean to insult you ma'am, but you just showed up out of nowhere, fixed the old factory in a week, and now you're not only hiring the boys back, but a lot of other people too, all this because of some miracle contract with WayneTech of all things…" Blackwell's leg started tapping against the floor from anxiety and he kept glancing at the door. "I had to think to myself: The city is awfully quiet and away from anything exciting. Ain't nobody gonna be asking too many questions if strange shit starts happening around here. I don't want the boys getting caught with some kinda metahuman or mad scientist deal."
"Don't worry, Mister Blackwell. I'm only going to be doing exactly what I said, which is to produce affordable technology." Kara sighed. In hindsight, getting the G-Trolls to help put the factory in order was kind of a dead giveaway. Even when Dubbilex kept them under his illusions the entire time, they were still too fast and too strong to be normal humans. "Is anyone else going to cause trouble because of the ridiculous notion that I'm some kind of supervillain?"
"No ma'am. Most of the boys are too happy to see the company back on its feet again to even think about it." Blackwell said, and now that Kara was looking for it she could see the clear signs of fear on his face.
At least now she knew why he was being so polite to her. Machiavelli may have been a prick, but if it really was better to be feared and that kept Blackwell in line, Kara wasn't about to go out of her way to correct any misunderstandings Blackwell might have.
They finished talking about the new hiring policies and having Blackwell act as a guide so Dubbilex could get to know the company better, with that out of the way the now former CEO of her company left the room feeling both apprehensive and optimistic.
With Bruce having accepted her proposal, Kara had spent two weeks designing new solar panels that they could produce. Kal had not been happy she was putting off her talk with the League's unofficial counselor, Black Canary, but he hadn't pushed the issue yet.
Still, Kara had managed to get her panels' efficiency up from around 13% to a whopping 26% just with the technology her company had access to, and decreased the cost of producing them by 35%. However, even this improvement was pitiful considering what she could do with her own tech, but it was the absolute limit with the current materials in use.
They weren't exactly the quantum leap forward she'd hoped for but she'd make her panels even better in a year or two.
"Miss Danvers." Dubbilex shook her shoulders, causing Kara's eyes to snap open with a startle and her fingers to dig a hole into the table she had been holding. "When was the last time you slept?"
"Sleep is for the weak." Kara joked. Seeing the unamused look on Dubbilex's human face she pushed herself to her feet and explained. "Kryptonians don't really need to sleep, Dubbilex."
"Miss Danvers, I was in charge of your little cousin and read CADMUS' files on Kryptonians. While you can achieve a state where sleep is unnecessary, it requires years of exposure to yellow sun radiation."
"I slept plenty yesterday." Kara defended herself, but didn't tell the Genomorph it had only been for two hours before waking up in a cold sweat. "I'll sleep a little tonight when I get home."
"...Very well, I'll start working on getting the company fully operational right away."
"Remember to put some G-Gnomes to watch over the employees, at least for now. Like Blackwell said, I don't think anyone is gonna be asking questions at the moment, but we did 'mysteriously' get a WayneTech contract and the factory site is full of Genomorphs. It's better to be safe than sorry."
"Of course. Miss Danvers, before you leave, can I ask you about a personal matter?" Dubbilex said, his illusion appearing to be hesitant.
"Sure, go ahead." Kara mumbled as she scratched at the bags under her eyes.
"Many of us Genomorphs wish to meet the metahumans used as a base to produce our kind, but the CADMUS database only has the location of a few of them. Could you ask the League about it?"
"Of course, I'm sure that even if the League doesn't have that information, Batman should."
"Thank you."
With a yawn, Kara allowed Dubbilex to take her seat and start working on the company systems.
Walking into one of the storage rooms, she typed a password on her cell phone causing both the floor and ceiling to open and revealing the Zeta-Tube she had installed in the building a few days ago.
In truth, she really wanted to fly back home, but the Lobo locked on the Fortress of Solitude was already completely healed. It meant there was far too big a chance that a copy of the bounty hunter had already regenerated from his missing arm and was hunting for her.
Lobo really was incredibly annoying, she didn't even dare go back to her moon base alone since he could travel through space with his motorcycle. As a result, she had to get Kori to go with her and relocate some of the projects there into the Fortress.
Thankfully, Kal had agreed to separate a corner of the Fortress for her use and she trusted him to give her privacy while she was there.
When she got back and saw the state of her apartment, she groaned. There were feathers spread everywhere and even some drops of blood. With a sigh, Kara made for the linen closet when Dexter came running from her bedroom, his little paws barely making a sound on the floor.
He threw his body against her and waved between her legs once or twice before dropping a pigeon head at her feet and glancing up with an incredibly smug look on his face. "Meow."
"Ah! Who's my cute little murder machine!" Kara couldn't resist and crouched down to scratch at his ears until the cat laid on the floor and presented her his belly. Kara knew it was a trap, but being a Kryptonian had some advantages so she scratched at it anyway. "You're a good kitty, eliminating all those flying rats. I just hope you know you're gonna need a bath now."
Dexter had been in the middle of clawing at her hand with all four legs when he heard the dreaded word. With a hiss, he kicked away from Kara's fingers and fled under the sofa.
"You know that's not gonna help you!" She called out as she got the cleaning supplies and started using her speed to clean the apartment once again.
She was in the middle of washing the yowling cat when something on the TV caught her attention, a supervillain with wind powers had attacked Happy Harbor and caused a lot of property damage.
"Right, almost forgot about that." She said and finished getting rid of the blood on Dexter's fur. Pulling her phone out she first called Kal's number.
"Hey Kara, is something wrong?" Kal asked in a worried voice when he picked up the phone..
"Nope, just calling to warn you I'm gonna be improving the defenses on Mount Justice." She said in a calm voice.
"What?"
"Just saw it on the TV. Kori and Kon subdued a villain over at Happy Harbor less than a week after they moved into the mountain." She told him with a tired voice. "I just wanted to warn you I'm turning that mountain into an impregnable fortress. And I'm NOT avoiding deadly force."
"Ah… look, can we talk about it later? I'm working right now."
"Sure. I'm not gonna change my stance, but you can talk."
Hanging up the phone, Kara immediately started dialing a second number even as her mind was filling with the defenses she'd put on the mountain… Was poisonous gas too much?
"I thought we'd only talk next week, Miss Zor-El?" Said the older, male voice over the phone.
"Hello Bobo, have you found out anything about Dr. Morrow yet?" Kara asked in a curious voice. "Cuz I just saw one of his robots attack Happy Harbor not even two hours ago."
"Hmmm… that certainly explains some things." The chimp said from his side of the phone, then seemed to stop to think about something. "Yes, I do believe I can narrow down the scientist's location by the time of our first team meeting."
"Good, while The Light is a far more dangerous long-term enemy, T. O. Morrow is our most immediate priority." Kara said before ending the call, already thinking about how much of a powerhouse Firebrand would be.
Worst case scenario, she was pretty sure she could reverse engineer at least some of Morrow's hardware if she could get her hands on another one of his androids.
While Kara had no confidence in replicating Red Vulcano's AI, she could probably make less intelligent robots with a version of his hardware.
Also, a geokinetic modification to her armor and drones could improve their capabilities by a lot.
'When was Red Vulcano born anyway?' Kara wondered, she was pretty sure she could slightly modify his core programing to make him less of a homicidal robot supremacist, but doing that after he was activated felt too much like mind control… or even mind r**e for her liking.
She wouldn't feel all that bad about destroying him if he didn't give her a choice, but mind control was a step she wasn't willing to take.
With Dexter angrily staring at her from under her bed, Kara sat down on the carpet and started messing with her latest experiment. Two small platforms, just big enough for one of her smaller pillows to fit on and connected by a myriad of cables.
Kara used her X-ray vision to stare at the components inside it, then pulled out the fried circuit board, fixed it, adjusted its configuration and used her heat vision to weld it back in place for another try.
Her front door bell rang causing Dexter to dart out of his hiding place and go check out who had arrived.
Looking through her apartment's walls Kara saw it was just Billy making sure she was alright. The boy had been coming over so often the doorman just let him through now. Grabbing for her phone she buzzed the door open and shouted. "Come in Billy!"
Kara hated that her friends and family felt the need to keep an eye on her every day since Lobo attacked, but she understood their reasoning. She and Kori hadn't exactly been perfectly stealthy when coming or going from the building. And most people didn't know she had enough firepower to face an army hidden in the residence.
"Hello, Miss Kara. Thanks for ha… Argh!" Billy started to say from the entrance when a terrifying hiss and loud yowling interrupted him. Dexter had already started defending his home. He was such a good and loyal kitty. "Get it off, get it off! Shazam!"
A few seconds later Kara saw her cat walk back into the room, his tail held high. In a much better mood, he jumped on top of a chair and started licking his claws clean.
"That cat is a menace." Billy grumbled as he peaked through the door and glared at Dexter.
"Don't be silly, Dex is just protecting his home." Kara dismissed the boy's concerns and smiled at him. She liked Billy, he was a good kid. "Come in, make yourself comfortable. You're gonna be here until my training with Kal, right?"
"Yeah… sorry about the ruckus, Miss Kara." He scratched at his neck and sat down on the bed to watch her work. "So, what're you doing?"
"Trying to make a commercially viable teleporter, but it's not going very well."
"Don't we already have the Zeta-Tubes?"
"Do you know how much those things cost?" Kara snorted and put one of her small pillows on top of a platform. "Zeta-Tubes are incredibly expensive to make and maintain. They are made from very exotic materials and require constant upkeep. Not only do we not have enough materials to build them for civilian use, it would cost more than anyone could pay to use them."
"So, you're just making something new?" Billy asked, now becoming interested.
"Well, I'm trying. Krypton had its own teleporters, but Earth doesn't have the technology or the materials to make them work."
Kara glanced at Dexter with a guilty look, but she pressed the activation button anyway and winced. With a crack of displaced air, space crumbled in a circular hole around the pillow and it was sucked in as if by an irresistible force, then the hole healed and the pillow appeared resting on the second platform. "YES!"
"It worked?"
"Don't know, but there wasn't an explosion and the stuffing is still inside the pillow, so that's progress." Taking the pillow off the platform Kara looked it over and didn't see anything wrong with it. She nodded, time for another test.
The most annoying thing about the teleporter was the constraints Kara had to work under. She could make a teleporter fairly easily, but it would either need to be made completely with Kryptonian tech or with Earth-tech that made each activation cost more than a quarter billion in resources. She wanted something accessible.
Something like, one or two thousand dollars per activation would already be ground breaking. She'd offer to substitute the current Zeta-Tube network too, but the technology was also much harder to block or intercept and had a galaxy wide range.
She thought she had managed to get everything working affordably, but every time she activated one of the platforms to send something, it ended up creating a mess.
The concept was simple: you take two fixed platforms, you gather enough power and pierce through the space between those two points, the person steps through the portal and viola.
The problem is that she couldn't create a bridge through space-time gently, not yet. The connection would traverse the object through space like a bullet and the exit was far more violent than the entrance.
Not only would whatever was sent come out in a violent and noisy bang of displaced air, the space around the exit would also expand causing the teleported object to explode as it stayed in its expanded form even as the space around it snapped back to normal..
Her answer was to change the direction of the space tunnel, instead of sending something, she'd pull it. Which seemed to have worked. At least the pillow had not contracted or imploded.
"Huh, this is new." Billy commented. "Usually, when I see mad science, I'm trying to stop it from happening, not just watching with interest."
"I prefer the term, 'super science'. Thank you very much." She threw the pillow at his face in mock anger before looking around for a new test subject.
One of her drones would probably work, right? They were inexpensive to make anyway.
"I don't know, it seems like mad science to me." Billy mocked as he looked around the messy room. "A super scientist would probably have a tidy room."
Kara snorted, "Aren't we feeling cheeky today?"
Making sure the first teleport hadn't messed up anything inside the bases, Kara pressed the button again. A second later, her drone teleported from one platform to the other without apparent damage. Eagerly, she ordered it to fly only to release a frustrated breath when it didn't move.
Using her vision, she confirmed it's insides were fried. Taking the entire thing off the socket and making sure it couldn't turn on again, Kara put the entire device away and sighed. "Not today I guess."
"What went wrong?"
"Don't know, gonna need better equipment than I have here to find out." She confessed and scratched at her tired eyes, she really had to get some sleep. "So, what's this I hear about dangerous villains at the Sidekicks' place?"
"Ah, it was great!" Billy almost jumped on the bed, his eyes shining with excitement.
"A villain attack was 'great'?"
"Well, no, but it wasn't a human enemy, and it wasn't really trying to hurt anybody, so Red Tornado and I agreed to let the Team take care of it and They. Were. Awesome!" Billy seemed to regain his energy, motioning with his hands like mad. "Miss Koriand'r took charge of the situation instantly, and Robin disappeared so fast when I wasn't paying attention. Do you think he'd teach me how to make my laugh come out from everywhere like he does?"
"Lame! Tell me more about Kori and Kon, did they get hurt?"
"No, Connor worked really well with her. The enemy was this cool robot that could use wind like Red Tornado and..." Billy sat up on the bed and started reenacting the scene while Kara imagined what it must have been like to be there. "But the robot was too strong and made a huge tornado! If Robin hadn't been waiting to sneak attack it I don't think Aqualad would have made it with his electricity. Then the Robot self-destructed."
"So, there was nothing left?" Kara asked, from what Billy said the fight had gone much better than in canon. It was a pity they hadn't managed to save anything then.
"Well, Kid Flash did manage to steal its head as a souvenir before it exploded."
"Oh, really?" Kara's eyes focused on the boy with a much bigger interest. So they had managed to save something. Could she track Morrow using the head? Did some of its wind control abilities remain?
"See! That's totally a Mad Scientist look right there!" Billy jumped up on the bed a second time and pointed right at Kara's face making her lose the definitely NOT evil smile she had.
"Get down from my bed Billy!" She scolded, causing him to float a few centimeters above her bed before setting down on the floor. "And, are you gonna stay transformed the entire time now?"
Billy only gave a quick glance towards Dexter, peacefully sleeping on top of the chair and gulped. "Yep."
Eventually, Billy escorted her towards the Zeta-Tube and Kara teleported to the Fortress. She had actually taken a quick nap and arrived a few minutes late for her daily session with Kal.
Both Kal and Kon waited for her with the same disapproving look on their faces, almost making Kara laugh out loud when she saw it.
"Sorry. Captain Marvel was telling me about your fight today and I lost track of time." She lied almost on instinct, then grimaced when she noticed she was trying to avoid talking about her problems again.
Walking to their side Kara sat down on her knees, her back perfectly straight and her arms resting on top of her legs. At their side, one of the Fortress' screens was reproducing the sound from an out of tune TV.
"Now, today we're gonna start on Torquasm Vo. As I already told you, this art has a lot to do with meditation so that's what we're gonna be starting with." Kal said, looking at the both of them seated at his flanks. "Now, I want you to close your eyes and focus on the sound of the white noise, don't try to ignore everything else but just… let it drift away while you focus."
Trading one last glance with Kon, Kara saw that Kal had already closed his own eyes and was slowing his own breathing. She followed his example, closing her eyes and trying to concentrate on the TV.
She breathed in, drawing the cold Arctic air into her lungs and breathed out, letting out some of her worries every time. Her mind became clearer and clearer.
She was safe, she was with family and under the strong defenses of the Kryptonian Fortress, right now she didn't need to worry about improving her armor or hunting down the Light. She didn't need to ask herself what happened with all the pieces of Lobo hit by her teleport grenade and if they'd all regenerate into a new one, she only needed to relax and focus.
Before even ten minutes had passed Kara's head fell forward, her body tilting to the side until she was touching Kal's shoulders as she fell asleep.
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