A/N:
Well, it's been a while. For those who read my other stories, you can skip this note because it's gonna feel very familiar.
How are you all doing? I'm sorry it took me so long to update. I tried to come back to writing last year, writing a few more chapters for this story and Will of the Force, even promised myself I wouldn't disappear again and, instead, depression hit me harder than ever, much harder.
I... made a lot of mistakes in this time, not writing what I loved was perhaps the least of them, but I finally started writing this again, and I hope to continue.
Honestly? I thought about dropping this story (I mean, can I say I didn't drop it after a year without posts? I guess it's just an unannounced hiatus), but in truth, I still deeply love this and Will of the Force, so it will have at least a few more chapters, even if I'm very rusty.
I really wish to finish both this and Will, and I'll try, but I honestly won't be giving people a timeline, even before I missed a lot of those, now that I don't have the same time, I'm likely to miss even more.
Saying that, I have already restarted Will of the Force, and, when I came back, I started Arcane: Rule of Blood as a way to try and get back to writing, and I'll continue to write those fics from now on.
Since my return, I have been posting things every 3 to 4 days, alternating between Will and Arcane while I read the chapters I had for Supergirl and got familiar with the story again, that rate of update will probably continue, as a result, chapter for Supergirl will probably two or three times a month.
Eventually, I'm hoping to pick up speed, but I'll not be promissing anything.
For those reading, I'm really sorry for the long hiatus, and I hope you guys continue to enjoy the story.
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Kara caressed Dexter as he moved around on her lap. The cat yawned, stretched his front legs, and then dug his claws into her pants for a second before relaxing and starting to purr. With a smile, she ran a hand over his head a couple more times before he bit her, demanding that she stop moving so he could sleep again. Dutifully, she obeyed her feline overlord and went back to programming.
They were sitting only a few meters inside the front doors of the Fortress of Solitude, the environmental control making it just cold enough that the cat sought a warm spot to rest, but otherwise wasn't really bothered.
Outside, only a hundred meters away, Kal-El and Kon-El were flying through an obstacle course, the younger kryptonian struggling to increase his speed as he weaved between sunstone pillars shaped to look like small buildings.
Typing one last line of code, Kara sent the modifications to the Fortress AI. "Start modifying the prototype now, warn me as soon as it's ready," she said, then stretched her arms and turned to her second companion. "I can make you something if you want to join them, you know."
Im-El was very different from his brother, the treatment that fixed his genetics left him with a leaner build, his inability to absorb sunlight making it harder to build muscles, his hair was much neater and he carried himself with more discipline, never fully relaxing even when she visited him on the Kent farm. He also wore winter clothes, the temperature affecting him almost as much as a normal human.
Honestly? Standing there with his arms crossed behind his back, the boy reminded Kara of her father, even his looks were closer to Zor-El's than Kal's despite being a clone of the latter.
With a cacophony of noise, Kon-El smashed through a crystal pillar, then lost control of his flight and went spinning down into the ice, digging a 40-meter-long trench before finally stopping.
Im-El winced. "I appreciate the offer but, unlike my brother, I'm not particularly interested in flying…" Watching as crystalline pieces of the pillar fell, cracks forming all over it, he continued. "Or destroying things."
Kal-El… no, Clark flew down, laughing in good nature as he offered Kon-El a hand, the boy accepted, rising into the air and waiting as the damaged pillar absorbed sunlight to re-grow. They were having fun.
Watching then, Kara decided to make him a flight suit anyway, and maybe something to enhance his strength. The effort would take some time away from her current projects, but it would be a pity to leave him out of family activities and she wasn't exactly in a hurry.
Turning only his head to watch her, Im-El narrowed his eyes, then sighed. "Don't do anything unnecessary. Finding my own solutions is a very interesting project."
Fair enough, she too enjoyed coming up with new things. "How are things on the farm anyway? I heard you're always asking to leave or, well, far more than Kon at least."
"I love the farm," Im-El said, turning back to watch the boys fly through the obstacle field again. "However, I do not like it very much."
Closing her holographic display, Kara focused on him, her lips parting to ask about his answer before closing again. She too loved the Kent farm, it was a great place to relax and the Kents were already like family to her.
But she couldn't imagine herself living there. She really, really wouldn't enjoy farmwork and, while she could appreciate the lack of people, Kara doubted she could live without a laboratory or space for experimentation.
"What if I lent you some of the building equipment I used on the new house? My underground labs are just about done there, so I could let you borrow the tools to build one to your taste if the Kents allow it."
Losing his composure for a second, Im-El's head snapped to her and he almost shook with excitement, his face nearly breaking out in a smile. "That would be greatly appreciated. A personal laboratory would allow me to finish researching Blockbuster in only a few more weeks."
"You're that close to making it safe?"
"Not for humans, that will still take a few years to a decade."
Kara thought about the answer. Unlike Kon-El, Im-El didn't have any human DNA, even with his cell's ability to absorb sunlight disabled by gold Kryptonite, his body was still much stronger than an average man, to the point he could be considered a low-tier super, if only barely, but that shouldn't make too much difference for Blockbuster.
"The Genomorph's DNA," she said. "It's far more malleable than even your kryptonian side. Adapting to Blockbuster use would be much easier."
"Correct, do you remember Karen?"
"The G-Troll who took Blockbuster to defend against the Light?"
"Indeed, she's agreed to help us with research. While her body will never return to its previous shape, her DNA has adapted to the point her exposed muscles have healed and she's no longer in pain."
"Want me to send you Poison Ivy's data?"
"There's no need. Brother Dubbilex is allowing me to work on the research directly."
"YES!" Kon-El interrupted them from outside as he finally managed to finish his obstacle course without causing any damage at his highest speed. With a smile, Kara reactivated her holographic display and ordered the next formation to start growing, the field more than doubling in complexity. He turned to glare at her. "Oh, come on!"
"What, you thought that was it?" She yelled back. "There's still three more for today!"
Without any complex programming or the need for density, sunstone could grow incredibly fast, so the new pillars finished rising from the ground in only five minutes, just enough time for Kon-El to drink some water and take a short rest before starting again.
Taking another breath, Kon-El flew into the simulated city, then flinched when a missile shot back at him from inside one of the pillars, closing his eyes and bracing for impact. The holographic missile passed harmlessly through his body, but momentum caused him to smash into a pillar, then two others before he collapsed into the ground.
"Careful, this one fights back!" Kara yelled in amusement.
Turning back to Im-El, she watched him with a complicated expression. On one hand, she loved that he seemed to appreciate technology just as much as she did but, on the other, she didn't know how to feel about him becoming a genetic scientist.
"What about animal use? The Justice League apprehended a lot of creatures that were experimented on with Blockbuster, are they adapting well?"
"Some," Im-El nodded. "Every species seems to react differently to the substance. There's a wolf who shows almost no negative side-effects, but some foxes had to be put down to spare them the pain."
"How are their mental capacities?"
"Generally, their cognitive ability varies, but they can be compared to children between the ages of 5 to 9 years old. The aforementioned wolf is particularly intelligent," When he finished, Im-El seemed to get a hint of her goal and gave her a suspicious look. "Why?"
"Since the rabbits I had the Titans taking care of show no signs of undesirable side effects, I was planning on using the procedure on Dexter, but Kal-El talked me out of it. Dexter is surprisingly smart for a domestic cat, but he's still too aggressive."
"You wish to use Blockbuster as an alternative? Interesting…"
"I have no intention of leaving him so vulnerable," Kara nodded. "With the substance, the increase in strength would be far easier to control and an increase in intellect would make training much faster.
"My plan was to have M'gann help socialize him with mental simulations, then, after he's learned some more, have him go through the kryptonian procedure, but I don't want him to get much bigger or feel any pain."
Im-El's eyes shone with a light that Kara recognized from the mirror whenever she had an interesting idea, but he managed to get control of himself before speaking.
"Hmmm… since it was developed by the same laboratory that created me, Blockbuster is surprisingly compatible with kryptonian physiology. I believe that is partially because Dr. Desmond was attempting to emulate some of our race's powers. Still, studying a live subject before applying it to myself would be for the best."
"You're not experimenting on my cat," Kara glared at him. "But you can use one of the rabbits."
"I'm afraid you're underestimating the Titan's attachment to the rodents," Im-El sighed and shook his head. "I can try to ask and, even if they deny me, I'll probably perfect the substance for the cat before adapting it for myself. The Brain had experimented on several felines before being captured, so there's already a lot of data about it."
"Thanks."
"Mistress Kara Zor-El, apologies for the interruption but your modifications are finished," The Fortress AI said, taking the form of her uncle as it materialized at her side.
At that, Kara turned towards the inside of the Fortress and narrowed her eyes, focusing on her vision to look through the walls until she could inspect every spot on the newest version of the Phantom Zone Projector inside its laboratory.
While the Fortress had the data to build a projector, it had unfortunately lacked some of the most important materials, resulting in the need for some modifications, most of which hadn't worked out, but she was hopeful about this one.
"Hmm, Kon's probably gonna take quite some time to finish this one, so want to test something with me?"
"Does it explode?"
"Hopefully, no."
"Then yes, please," Im-El said, turning away from Kon-El's second attempt and starting to walk further into the Fortress. "There's only so many times I can watch my brother crash before it stops being funny."
"We'll have to agree to disagree on that," Kara snorted, then gently put Dexter down and got up, the cat complained, then stretched his back and ran inside the Fortress, probably looking for another warm spot to rest on.
Stepping inside the experimental laboratory, Kara turned the wall transparent so Im-El could watch the procedure, then had two sunstone chairs raised from the ground, her holographic display almost covering her face.
Causing the images to float to the side, she sat down. "Have you read about the Phantom Zone yet?"
"No," Im-El said, sitting at her side and looking through the wall with some interest. "Some of the Fortress data is still inaccessible to me and I've been focusing my studies on genetics and biology."
"Well, it's an interdimensional realm outside normal space/time, Krypton used a projector to breach into that realm as a way of imprisoning dangerous criminals."
Well, it was a lot more than that, but Kara was really hoping it wouldn't come up… ever.
"And I suppose that is the projector?"
"That's the prototype for a projector, I've had to modify it to work with available materials."
"And it 'hopefully' won't explode?" He said, tapping a nervous finger against the arm of his chair. "I must ask, what are the chances there will be a kryptonian escape if it does explode?"
"Ah…"
Im-El jumped from his chair, his face going white. "I'm calling Clark."
Kara snorted, shaking her head. "I'm kidding, don't worry, there's no chance of an escape, not without a lot more work than I've done."
With a wave of her arm, Kara threw the holographic display between them, allowing Im-El to get a good look at the information available. Then, finally, she used a modified space lock to isolate the projector from normal space and activate it.
The large box shone with a white light, a barrel extending from the middle until it released a ray of power that stopped midair and started to spread in a circle. The very air seemed to shake and then crack as the barrier of the Phantom Zone was breached for the first time on Earth.
Kara leaned forward, hand gripping the arms of her chair. For a moment, the portal flickered, its edges expanding and contracting at random before finally stabilizing into a three-meter-wide circle of white light. She had succeeded.
"The power necessary…" Im-El whispered.
"That's mostly my fault," Kara said, embarrassed. "It's not supposed to take so much energy, but I couldn't find a way of lowering the requirements with the materials I had on hand."
Leaning back, Kara ordered one of her drones to activate inside the isolated chamber, then move towards the portal to explore it.
"What exactly are you hoping to achieve?" Im-El asked.
"While the Phantom Zone was used to house prisoners, there's a real chance some Kryptonians used it as a last resort to escape our planet's destruction. If that happened, I'll need to find their exact location before I can retrieve them."
Despite having adapted the projector to work with subpar materials, it had still been programmed according to the data available in the Fortress, so Kara wasn't worried about anything escaping through the breach she had created.
Under this configuration, the portal was a one-way opening into the Phantom Zone unless the information exclusive to an individual was provided, at which point only that being could be retrieved.
The problem was acquiring that information without the records contained in an existing projector, and she had no way of obtaining one of those.
Finally, the drone touched the portal, but the material simply turned to dust in less than a millisecond after passing through the opening, not even enough time to send back information.
"Crap, I was hoping that would work," Kara grumbled.
"Is the portal unstable or do the drones not meet the requirements?"
"Let's find out."
Over the next 10 minutes, Kara had dozens of different materials passing through the portal, all of them dissolving into dust at the exact same speed, even small pieces of kryptium and kryptonite didn't show any signs of resistance.
She was tempted to use Nth metal, but her supply of that was too small to waste on this experiment.
Finally, she had one of her Karabots bring out a glass containing a fruit fly, the robot quickly registered the creature's signature in the projector, and then pushed it through the portal, making sure not to touch its edges.
The fly passed through the opening with no problem, flying straight into the Phantom Zone when the glass dissolved around it, body seeming to lose color as it entered the interdimensional space.
"So a live subject can pass through the barrier while inert organic matter will just dissolve on the way in… Hmmm, is life a requirement to protect the physical matter? Is it will? But I doubt a fly would have that in any meaningful amount. Perhaps a soul? Still, the data for the original projectors didn't indicate any such requirements."
Testing it would be easy enough, the Fortress was capable of creating a brain-dead animal clone in only a few hours, but should she continue in this direction or try to fix whatever problem caused the restriction?
"But… how would I acquire information if I can't send in recording equipment?"
Deactivating the projector, Kara selected the fly's data, then turned it on again, a white ray of light shooting out from the device and, instead of creating a portal, materialized the insect mid-flight in the center of the room.
A second later, the karabot captured it, putting the creature away for further investigation. Lesser fruit flies made for surprisingly good animal testing material.
"I could help?" Im-El offered after thinking for some time. "If we clone a sufficiently complex brain I could program it to record information in its memory without the need to make it fully functional. It would be no different from an organic computer."
For a moment, Kara just stared at the boy, then she grimaced, but she had to admit that if the requirement was only life, not will or soul, it could work. There were plenty of ways to read memories in the Fortress if she didn't need to care about a subject's comfort.
It still felt a little too close to what the Psions had done for her liking. Why couldn't he have enjoyed engineering or programming like a sane person!?
"I'll see if I can't fix this requirement, but I'll probably take you up on that if my efforts don't work."
She may not feel comfortable with Im-El's suggestion, but she wasn't going to dismiss it entirely if there was a chance some of her family had survived in the Phantom Zone… Well, not exactly HER family, she wasn't from this dimension, but Kara cared about them all the same.
Four hours later, Kara stepped out of the Zeta-Tube in Metropolis with her cousin. She was wearing a business suit, complete with a pair of fake glasses, and had undone the small side braid she usually had on her hair, instead wearing it in a low bob.
They had left the younger kryptonians at the farm, then changed clothes and used the League's teleportation system to move discretely instead of flying here. Kara could have used her teleportation platform, but she knew it could be sensed by a variety of means and didn't want to take any risks, not this close to LexCorp's headquarters.
Together, they entered a nearby building using the back entrance, then moved as if they belonged while crossing the lobby.
"Want a ride?" Ka-Clark asked, a content smile on his face.
"No need," Kara shook her head, giving Clark a hug and adjusting her briefcase. "I had Dubbilex prepare a car to take me to the meeting, have to make things look official after all."
Leaving the building where the Zeta-Tube was hidden, Kara traded one last smile with Kal-El and then found a driver already waiting for her, he wore a black suit and seemed competent.
"Miss Kara Danvers?" the young man asked, but he was already opening the back seat for her.
Kara traded one last glance with Clark, then entered the car and opened her briefcase, starting to read some documents at a normal pace, a vicious smile appearing on her face.
Who knew leaking the data from LexCorp would be so profitable? Her company, Danvers Enterprises, had limited resources right now, but Dubbilex had already managed to buy one of LexCorp's former laboratories in Metropolis and she was here to meet with Caldecott Industries after that company had bought an entire skyscraper from them.
She almost wished Lex Luther would find out she was the one who leaked the information, then used the chance to buy his properties for cheap just to see his face.
Hmm… The CADMUS scientists she had acquired seemed to be doing a pretty good job, it also looked like Kon-El was working on something interesting, a way to produce solid-state batteries for a competitive price using Earth's current technology. His proposal would still be difficult to escalate to mass production, but she could work on that.
Kara would like an alternative with even fewer environmental effects, but she was happy with small steps for the moment.
Finally, it seemed like Lena Luthor had re-scheduled their meeting for personal reasons, moving the location to Central City a week from now. Knowing her own schedule, Dubbilex had already agreed to the change.
Putting the files back into her briefcase, she leaned back in the car and enjoyed the rest of her ride. Really, Kori had complained that she was working too much again but, since there was nothing time-sensitive or dangerous on the line, Kara found it very relaxing.
She liked establishing her company and messing with Luthor while there was no real danger, she also loved working on complicated projects, there was no need to consider it work when she didn't even need to accelerate her thoughts.
Stepping out of the car, she saw the construction crew working to put the Caldecott logo in place of the Lexcorp one at the side of the building and couldn't help smiling, then she walked into the building and went up to the top floor.
"Miss Danvers, I presume?" An older man said in a British accent. "Welcome, it's a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Donovan has just finished negotiating the lease for the floor."
"Albert Caldecott?" Kara asked, recognizing Donovan as the pseudonym Dubbilex had chosen. "The pleasure is mine. I didn't think your family was still active within the company."
"As a general rule, we aren't, but medical research has always been a passion of mine so I started working in the company at quite a young age." With an elegant gesture, Albert Caldecott held the door open for her.
Inside the room there was a large table with two seats, four bodyguards stood beside the back wall and, in front of the table, a large TV showed Dubbilex's disguised face as he attended the business meeting.
"Ms. Danvers, I'm glad you could make it," the Genomorph said.
"Dabney," Kara nodded as she took a seat, then had Mr. Caldecott hand her a few contracts.
"As I said, Mr. Donovan has just finished our negotiation for leasing the 27th, you may read the contract."
She took a moment to check everything, enhancing her thinking speed so as to not miss any details, but everything seemed in order and, after an appropriate amount of time, she signed the papers.
"Wonderful. Now, I believe we still have the most important things to discuss?"
"Yes, I appreciate the amount of equipment you've been able to provide us, but we've acquired a new laboratory in Metropolis and hope to staff the majority of medical research here, we'll need to start from scratch. I'd also like to discuss the distribution of our new products."
"You've managed to finish the artificial organs?"
"Not entirely, we have a few samples ready, but they're not yet economically viable and we require approval from the FDA for our implementation, but I'm happy to say we've managed to get the regulators on site and we're proceeding through the process at warp speed. Surprisingly, one of the former CADMUS scientists has already started the process for a skin transplant we may be able to fast-track for commercialization in two to three months."
"Now that is very interesting news, tell me more."