Chapter 7: The Trail of the Carnage
The Vex spaceport was an assault on the senses, a frontal attack on decency and order. Disembarking from the relative silent misery of "The Rusty Pilgrim," Kara and Ruthye were engulfed by an ocean of chaos. The air was a thick, warm, chewable cocktail, a mix of the acrid stench of ionic engine ozone, the pungent and greasy aroma of alien meats frying in street food stalls, and the unmistakable smell of desperation from a thousand different species. Neon lights flickered in languages Kara didn't recognize, casting a sickly glow over puddles of iridescent oil and the faces of smugglers, mercenaries, and fugitives. For Ruthye, who had spent her entire life on a rock farm, it was like being thrown into the heart of a noisy, smelly star. For Kara, it was a depressing reminder of the raw reality of the universe beyond the idealistic bubble of Earth.
"Stay close," was all Kara said, her voice barely a whisper above the din.
Ruthye didn't need to be told twice. She stuck to Kara's leg, her hand clutching the hilt of her father's sword as if it were the hand of a ghost.
Grox's "Used Shipyard" was less a dealership and more a graveyard. Ships of all shapes and sizes rested on rusty platforms, many of them cannibalized, with cables and pipes hanging from their entrails like guts. The salesman, a four-armed insectoid being named Grox, greeted them with a clicking of his mandibles, his multiple compound eyes independently swiveling to evaluate them.
"Ah, customers! Fresh customers!" he buzzed, rubbing two of his hands together. "Looking for transport, eh? Grox has the best! Quality guaranteed! Low mileage!"
He pointed to a ship that looked more like a brick with wings than a space vehicle. "The K'lar's Fury! A classic! Only had one owner, an old cleric who only used it on Sundays to go to the Temple of Chaos!"
Kara didn't even bother to look at it. Her senses, now fully recharged by Vex's yellow sun, were on high alert. They were both a blessing and a curse. She could hear the hum of a loose connection in the Fury's engines, the hiss of a micro-fracture in the hull. She could smell the mold growing under the floor plates.
"Not that one," she said simply.
They spent the next hour in an exhausting dance of negotiation. Grox showed them ships with forged flight records and obvious structural problems, and Kara dismissed them one by one, pointing out the flaws with a precision that unnerved the insectoid.
(Kara POV)
'This guy thinks we're idiots,' Kara thought, as she ran her hand over the hull of a light freighter. Her fingers detected an irregular vibration in the metal. 'Inertial stabilizer failure. It would fall to pieces on the first hyperspace jump.'
It felt like a parody of her life on Earth. There, she used her powers to stop catastrophes. Here, she used them to prevent a used ship salesman from ripping her off. The irony was so heavy she could almost feel it physically. She looked at Ruthye, who was watching the negotiation with deadly seriousness, as if witnessing a duel of honor. The girl didn't understand the technical details, but she understood the struggle. She understood that they were alone and that every decision was a matter of survival.
'I'm doing this for her,' she reminded herself. 'And for Krypto.' The image of her dog, asleep and safe in Urahara's strange nursery, was the only thought that kept her going.
(Third Person)
Finally, they found one. A light freighter of the "Barge" class, a model so old it was probably an antique. It was dented, painted with a layer of an undefined color between rust and moss, and the engine, when it started for a test, emitted a guttural sound that reminded Kara of a dying animal. But the hull was solid. The life support systems, though archaic, were reliable. And, most importantly, it was the only thing they could afford.
"The price is firm," Grox buzzed, his antennae twitching. "Three hundred thousand galactic credits."
"We don't have them," Kara said.
"Then we don't have a deal," the salesman retorted, starting to turn away.
"Wait," said Ruthye. Her voice was small, but it cut through the air. She drew her father's sword. The silver blade, forged with a lost art, shone even under the dirty shipyard light. "This. It's worth more than your junk."
Grox's four eyes fixed on the sword. His greed was such a strong emotion that Kara could almost smell it. The insectoid took the sword, feeling its weight, its balance, the hum of history in its steel.
"Deal made," he said, almost too quickly. He threw a data key to Kara. "I call her 'The Lucky Lady.' You'll need her."
On board their new, unreliable ship, the silence was thick. Kara could feel the weight of Ruthye's sacrifice. The girl said nothing, but her shoulders were a little more slumped, her gaze a little harder. She had given up the last thing she had left of her father.
"We'll get it back," Kara said softly.
Ruthye simply nodded. "I know. After we kill Krem."
For the next few hours, Kara immersed herself in Vex's underworld. She left Ruthye on the ship with strict instructions not to open the hatch for anyone. She moved through the crowded markets, a blonde ghost in a crowd of monsters. She tried asking openly, but only received hostile stares and an attempted assault that ended with two unconscious thugs in an alley. She learned quickly. The direct method wouldn't work here.
She sat in a noisy cantina, ordering only water, and concentrated. She closed her eyes and let her super-hearing expand. The noise was overwhelming at first: thousands of conversations in hundreds of languages, the clinking of glasses, drunken arguments, the lies of merchants. But then, as Clark had taught her, she began to filter. To look for the right frequencies. The keywords. "Outlaws." "Krem." "Massacre."
A whisper. At a table across the room. Two arms smugglers, discussing a failed deal. "...the Outlaws took the whole cargo near Mle... they said they were going to celebrate in the Badlands..."
Bingo.
She followed one of them to a warehouse on the lower levels. The bribe was easy. A few credits and the promise not to break his fingers got her a name: a middleman.
The middleman, a gelatinous being named Xix, who communicated through odor bubbles, was more difficult. He didn't want money. He wanted a favor.
"There's a package," Xix gurgled, the bubbles smelling of ammonia and deceit. "Small. Discreet. It needs to get to Kytar station without being scanned. Take it for me, and I'll tell you what I know."
Kara felt a wave of revulsion. She hated this. She hated having to negotiate with the scum of the universe, playing their dirty games. But the image of Krypto, weak and poisoned, appeared in her mind.
"Deal made," she said, her voice a blade of ice.
The package was heavy, cold, and vibrated faintly. She didn't ask what it was. She didn't want to know. In return, Xix gave her the clue.
"The Outlaws aren't scavengers. They're fanatics. They follow a leader who seeks artifacts from an ancient war. Their trail isn't one of theft, it's one of desecration. They've been looting tombs in the Badlands. They're looking for a place called the 'Planet of Bones.' No one knows where it is. But the one who knows everything is an old hermit. A farmer. The only survivor of the Outlaws' last massacre. He lives on an unnamed world on the edge of the Tarak system."
It was a trail. Cold, vague, and dangerous. But it was a trail.
When she returned to "The Lucky Lady," she found Ruthye asleep in the co-pilot's seat, clutching her empty sword scabbard. Kara felt a pang of something she hadn't felt in a long time. Responsibility. Care.
"Wake up, kid," she said softly, activating the engines. "We have a direction. More or less."
Ruthye woke with a start. "Did you find him?"
"I have a lead," Kara said, as the dented ship rose from the Vex docks, leaving the chaos behind and heading back into the cold, lonely darkness. "Don't get excited. It's probably a trap."
"It's not a trap if you know you're walking into one," Ruthye retorted, her logic simple and brutal.
Kara looked at her and, for an instant, saw in the girl a reflection of the toughness that the universe was forging in herself. She didn't smile. She simply nodded.
"Buckle up," she said. The hunt had begun again.
*****
The journey through the Badlands was a lesson in cosmic humility. "The Lucky Lady" protested with every hyperspace jump, each shudder of the hull a reminder that they had traded a king's sword for a beggar's horse. The archaic and failure-prone navigation system threw them off course twice, forcing Kara to make manual corrections based on star maps she remembered from her studies in Argo City, knowledge she thought was lost forever in the ashes of her past. The silence in the cockpit was thick, only broken by the irregular hum of the engines and the occasional questions from Ruthye, whose natural curiosity was beginning to overcome her somber determination.
Finally, they arrived.
The unnamed planet on the edge of the Tarak system did not welcome them with the majesty of a new world, but with the indifference of a tombstone. The sky was a perpetual gray, a dome of opaque steel stretching from one horizon to the next, with no visible sun, no clouds, just a depressing, diffuse light that bathed everything in shades of ash. The wind howled, a constant lament blowing through rock canyons and dust plains, carrying not the scent of life, but the sterile smell of erosion and oblivion.
"I don't like this place," Ruthye whispered, her face pressed against the cockpit window, her wide eyes reflecting the desolation of the landscape.
"No one would," Kara replied, her hands steady on the controls as the ship descended, fighting a side gust of wind that made it creak.
They landed near what, according to Xix's ancient maps, had been the main settlement. Now, it was just a skeleton. Buildings that might once have been elegant were reduced to blackened shells, their structures twisted like broken bones. The fields surrounding them were not barren; they were burned, black scars on the gray earth. There was no movement. There were no birds in the sunless sky. There was no life. Only the silence of death, orchestrated by the howl of the wind.
"Do you think the farmer is still here?" Ruthye asked, her voice barely a thread of sound.
"If Xix's lead was good, he's the only one who could be," Kara said, her face a mask of concentration. "Stay on the ship. Lock the hatch. Don't go out for anything in the world."
Kara stepped outside, the wind whipping at her cape and hair. The air was cold and thin. She closed her eyes and concentrated, expanding her senses. Her super-hearing swept the planet, searching for a heartbeat, a breath, the slightest hint of life amidst the sepulchral silence. The wind was a roar in her ears, making the task difficult. She filtered the noise, searching for the anomaly, the only jarring note in the symphony of desolation.
Nothing. Silence.
She expanded her vision, her eyes penetrating the rock and dust. She saw the foundations of the destroyed houses, the rusted vehicles, the bones of forgotten farm animals. And then... she saw it.
Several miles away, on a small plateau overlooking the ruins, there was a movement. Slow. Rhythmic. Methodical.
Kara rose into the air, a blur of red and blue against the gray sky, and flew toward it. She landed softly at a respectful distance. The only survivor of the Outlaws' massacre was not weeping. He was not shouting at the silent skies. He was digging.
He was a tall, thin being, of a species Kara did not recognize, with skin tanned and cracked like the dry earth beneath his feet. His movements were mechanical, devoid of all emotion. Shovel after shovel, he dug into the rocky soil, his body moving with the efficiency of an automaton programmed for a single, terrible task. Around him, rows of freshly turned mounds of earth stretched across the plateau. He was building a cemetery for a world.
Kara approached slowly, her boots barely making a sound on the ground. The farmer didn't look up until she was only a few feet away. His eyes, sunken in his emaciated face, were empty. There was no fear, no surprise, just an exhaustion so profound it seemed to have consumed his very soul.
"We're looking for information," Kara said, her voice soft, careful not to break the fragile silence that surrounded the man. "About a group called the Outlaws. And a man named Krem."
The farmer stopped. He leaned his weight on the shovel. He looked at Kara, and his empty gaze seemed to focus for the first time, recognizing the emblem on her chest.
"Are you one of them?" he asked, his voice a hoarse whisper, scraped raw by disuse and pain. "A hero? You're late. You're always late."
There was no accusation in his voice. Just the simple statement of a fact.
"We couldn't..." Kara began, but stopped. Excuses were useless here. "What happened?"
The farmer leaned on his shovel and looked toward the ruins of his village. "We were a peaceful people. Farmers. Artisans. We had no weapons. We had no enemies." His gaze was lost in memory. "They arrived at dusk. Their ships were like metal insects, dark and silent. They asked for nothing. They declared no war. They just... began."
His voice didn't tremble. It was a flat monologue, a report of the facts. "They didn't kill for resources. They didn't conquer for territory. They killed for fun. I heard their laughter. The leader, the one they called Krem, made bets with his men on who could make people scream the longest. They shot at our houses not to destroy them, but to set them on fire and watch families run out, only to hunt them in the fields."
He pointed to one of the largest ruins, in the center of the village. "That was the school. They surrounded it. And they waited. They waited for the parents to come out to look for their children."
Kara felt a wave of nausea. She clenched her fists so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
"It lasted all night," the farmer continued, his gaze still lost. "I hid. In the irrigation pits. I am a coward. I heard the screams of my friends, of my neighbors. I heard the crying of the children. And I did nothing. I just prayed they wouldn't find me. And they didn't."
He turned back to the half-dug grave. "When the sun came up, they were gone. The only thing they left behind was... silence."
"And your family?" Kara asked, her voice was barely a whisper.
"My wife... she's there," he said, pointing to one of the mounds. "My eldest son... there. But my daughter... Kael... she... was in our house. It collapsed. I... I haven't found her yet."
He drove the shovel back into the earth. The movement was automatic. One shovel. Another. The only action he had left in an empty world.
Kara stood there, the wind howling around her, feeling the weight of a pain that was both alien and terribly familiar. It was the pain of survival. The pain of being the last one. The pain of having to bury an entire world.
*****
Kara stood there, anchored to the ground by the weight of the farmer's grief, a pain that was both alien and terribly familiar. The wind howled around her, a constant lament that seemed to carry the echoes of the screams from the night of the massacre. It was the pain of survival. The pain of being the last one. The pain of having to bury an entire world, one grave at a time.
(Kara POV)
'It's not fair,' she thought, and the idea was so simple and so childish that it almost made her laugh bitterly. But it was the purest truth she felt in that moment. It wasn't fair that this man, in his forgotten corner of the universe, had to bear a burden she knew so well. She saw in his empty eyes the same abyss that sometimes stared back at her from her own reflection. The void that loss leaves when it has taken everything.
The anger she had felt before, the cold fury that drove her in her search for Krem, transformed. It was no longer a flame of vengeance; it became a warm, protective ember of pure compassion. Her mission, in that instant, changed. Saving Krypto was her objective. Ruthye's revenge was her contract. But this... this was her duty. The duty that came with the emblem on her chest, a duty she had tried to drown in alcohol and forget in the vastness of space, but which refused to die.
(Third Person)
Without a word, Kara moved. Her body, which a moment before had been tense with rage, now moved with a grace and softness that seemed out of place in that desolate landscape. She approached the ruin the farmer had pointed to, the pile of twisted metal beams and fractured concrete blocks that had once been his home.
"Where... where was her room?" she asked, her voice a soft whisper barely audible above the wind.
The farmer raised a trembling arm and pointed toward the back of the collapsed structure. "Upstairs. It faced the flower field... the burned flower field."
Kara nodded. "Wait here."
She closed her eyes for an instant. The world for her dissolved into a spectrum of lines and densities. Her X-ray vision activated, not with the intensity of a weapon, but with the delicacy of an archaeologist's tool. She saw through the layers of debris, through the metal and stone, searching for the anomaly, the small, fragile structure of a child's skeleton.
She found it. Trapped under a main support beam, on what had been the floor of the room.
She opened her eyes. Her expression was somber, but determined. She looked at the farmer. "I've found her. Please, step back a little."
The farmer looked at her, a spark of something that was not hope, but a terrible and painful need, shining in his empty eyes. He obeyed, backing away several yards.
Kara approached the pile of debris. She knelt, her hands touching the cold surface of a huge concrete slab that must have weighed several tons. She didn't lift it with a sudden jerk. She remembered Clark's lessons, the endless hours of training at the Fortress. "Control, Kara. Always control. It's not about how much force you use, but about how much force you don't use."
With absolute concentration, she applied gentle, steady pressure. The concrete didn't crack; it rose. Slowly, silently, as if it weighed less than a feather. She moved it to the side with the delicacy of a mother lifting a blanket from a sleeping child. Then, the metal beam. She carefully bent it, untangling it from the other debris without causing further collapses.
Little by little, with infinite patience, she cleared her daughter's grave. It was not an act of power. It was an act of respect. An act of mourning.
(Ruthye POV)
From the ramp of "The Lucky Lady," Ruthye watched the scene, her heart shrinking. She had seen Kara fight. She had seen her fury, her chaotic power under the influence of Red Kryptonite. But she had never seen her like this.
She watched the "maid of power" use her strength not to destroy, but to unearth. She saw the hero of legends act not as a goddess of war, but as a humble gravedigger. Every movement was careful, deliberate. She saw the restraint she had been told about, and for the first time, she understood its true meaning. It was not a repression of weakness; it was the manifestation of a much greater strength. The strength of compassion.
The image of her own fantasy, of herself plunging her sword into Krem's heart, appeared in her mind. Before, it had brought her comfort. Now, suddenly, it felt... small. Childish. Vain. She realized that killing a bad man was easy. Anyone could do it. But what Kara was doing... kneeling in the dust of a dead world to offer a little peace to a stranger... that was hard. That was being a hero.
(Third Person)
Finally, she reached the small body. She carefully wrapped it in her own red cape, the emblem of the House of El covering the lost child of an unnamed world. She stood up and walked slowly toward the farmer, her steps like a funeral procession.
She handed him the small bundle. The farmer took it, his arms trembling violently. He knelt on the ground, cradling his daughter one last time, and finally, the dam of his grief broke. He sobbed, a heartbreaking and silent sound, his body shaken by spasms of a sorrow he had held back for too long.
Kara said nothing. She simply stood by his side, a silent guardian in his vigil, her presence an anchor in his storm of pain.
Later, when the farmer's sobs had subsided, Kara used her heat vision, not as a destructive beam, but as a precision tool. With a fine, controlled beam, she dug a perfect grave in the rocky soil. Together, they buried Kael.
When the last shovel of earth covered the small mound, the farmer turned to Kara. His eyes were no longer empty. They were filled with a gratitude so immense it was almost painful to see.
"Thank you," he whispered. "You gave me back my daughter. You gave me back the right to mourn."
"I am so sorry for your loss," Kara said, and the words were not a formality. They were the truth.
"They... the Outlaws..." the farmer said, his voice now filled with a new strength, a need to help the woman who had shown him so much kindness. "I heard the one they called Krem. He boasted. He said their leader was looking for a 'green sun.' A weapon from an old empire. He said the final clue was on a paradise planet, the only point of light in this desolate sector. A place called... Iph-T'Kin."
It was a lead. Concrete. Real.
Kara nodded, memorizing the name. "Thank you. This... this will help us."
She prepared to leave, to return to the ship, to the hunt. But the farmer stopped her, placing a hand on her arm.
"Don't seek revenge, hero," he told her, his voice that of a man who had seen the end of that road. "Revenge only burns the house you're trying to protect. Seek justice. It's a slower fire. But it gives more warmth."
Kara looked at him, and in the farmer's eyes, she saw the reflection of the lesson she herself was struggling to learn. She nodded again, a silent understanding passing between the survivor of Krypton and the last son of an unnamed world.
She turned and flew back to the ship, leaving the farmer alone with his graves, but no longer with his loneliness.
*****
The silence inside "The Lucky Lady" was an entity of its own, an invisible passenger that occupied the space between Kara and Ruthye. As the dented ship moved away from the unnamed planet, leaving behind the field of newly dug graves, the weight of what they had witnessed settled on them with a gravity that even Kara's super-strength could not have lifted. Ruthye, sitting in the co-pilot's seat, did not take her eyes off the window, her gaze fixed on the swirl of stars in hyperspace, but her mind was anchored to the gray earth and the bones that slept beneath it.
Kara flew the ship with an automatic efficiency, her hands moving over the controls with a muscle memory that required no conscious thought. Her mind, however, was a whirlwind. The farmer's words echoed in her ears: "Don't seek revenge, hero. Seek justice." It was an echo of the lessons Clark had tried to teach her, lessons she had dismissed with the cynicism of a survivor who had seen justice fail too many times. But to hear it from a man who had lost everything, a man whose soul was a cracked mirror of her own, gave the words a new and terrible weight.
She found herself watching the girl beside her. She saw the way Ruthye's small shoulders had become a little more rigid, how her grip on the empty scabbard of her sword was a little tighter. In the girl's silent determination, Kara saw a dangerous reflection of herself. She saw the birth of a warrior, yes, but she also saw the hardening of a heart, the beginning of a scar that, if not tended to, would become the same armor of pain she herself wore.
(Kara POV)
'I'm breaking her,' she thought, and the idea was a cold pang in her chest. 'I dragged her across the galaxy on a quest for revenge, and every step we take, every horror we see, is turning her into me. A girl who has seen too much. A girl who believes that the only answer to pain is more pain.'
She remembered her own childhood in Argo City after Krypton's destruction. The fear. The loss. The feeling of being the last, of carrying the weight of a million ghosts. That burden had crushed her, had turned her into the cynical young woman who got drunk in a red sun bar. Was she doing the same to Ruthye? Was she forging her own successor in the art of miserable survival?
The word "hero" that the farmer had used resonated in her mind. It was a label she hated, a mantle she had never wanted. But in that moment, she understood a part of it she had always ignored. Being a hero wasn't just about fighting monsters. It was about protecting people from becoming them. And she was failing to protect Ruthye.
(Third Person)
Kara disengaged the autopilot. The ship came to a stop in the absolute silence of deep space, surrounded by the distant glow of a nebula.
"Ruthye," she said, her voice soft, but firm.
The girl turned to look at her, her eyes, which had seen too much for her age, met Kara's.
"This ends here," Kara continued. "This... madness. I'm taking you home."
Ruthye blinked, confused. "Home? But... we haven't found Krem yet. We haven't gotten the poison. Krypto..."
"I'll find Krem myself," Kara interrupted her. "I'll get what I need for Krypto. But you... you're going back to your farm. With your brothers."
"No!" Ruthye exclaimed, her voice filled with a sudden betrayal. "We made a deal! My sword for his head! You agreed!"
"I agreed to find him, and I will," Kara said, her patience beginning to fray. "But I didn't agree to drag a child through a trail of corpses. This isn't your place, Ruthye. You're seeing things no one should see. You're... hardening. And I'm not going to be responsible for that."
"I'm fine!" the girl insisted, her small body trembling with a righteous fury. "My father is dead! My home was destroyed! Do you think I don't know what the world is like? I've seen it up close! And I won't hide from it!"
"It's not about hiding. It's about surviving," Kara retorted, her own frustration bubbling to the surface. "Surviving with a part of you intact! Do you think this is a game? An adventure? This is dirty, it's ugly, and most of the time, there's no happy ending! I want you to have a chance to have one! A chance I never had!"
"My chance for a happy ending died with my father!" Ruthye cried, and the tears she had held back for weeks finally broke, rolling down her dirty cheeks. "The only thing I have left is justice! And you promised it to me! You can't... you can't abandon me now!"
Kara looked at her, and in the girl's tear-stained face, she saw the young Kara of Argo City, alone and scared, begging her father not to send her away. She felt her own resolve crumble. The farmer was right. Revenge burned the house. But hope... hope was an even heavier burden.
(Ruthye POV)
'She won't leave me,' she thought, even as tears blurred her vision. 'She can't. I saw it in her eyes on the planet of the graves. The same pain I feel. She understands. It's not just my revenge. It's hers too. We're the same. Two girls who lost their fathers. Two girls looking for justice in a universe that doesn't offer it.'
She extended a trembling hand and placed it on Kara's arm. "Please," she whispered. "Don't send me home. Not until we finish this. Together."
(Third Person)
Kara was silent for a long moment. Logic told her the girl was right. Logic told her she should protect her, lead her away from this path. But her heart... her own battered Kryptonian heart told her something else. It told her that abandoning this girl now would be a betrayal worse than any other. It would be abandoning herself.
"Alright," she said finally, her voice a defeated whisper. "Together. But under my rules. We'll do this my way."
Ruthye nodded, wiping her tears with her sleeve. "Your way."
Kara reactivated the engines of "The Lucky Lady." The familiar hum filled the cockpit again. The moment of crisis had passed. Their strange, little family of two had survived their first big argument. And their bond, forged in loss and now tempered in confrontation, was stronger than ever. They set a course for Iph-T'Kin, the paradise planet, the only point of light on their dark and bloody path.
*****
The takeoff of "The Lucky Lady" was silent, a respectful departure that did not disturb the quiet of the newly formed cemetery. Kara kept the ship at low altitude as she circled the plateau one last time, her eyes fixed on the solitary figure of the farmer who stood among the mounds, a statue of grief and resilience against the gray sky. They did not say goodbye. There were no words that could encompass the abyss of what they had shared. Sometimes, mourning was a language best spoken in silence.
Once they were in low orbit, the unnamed planet shrank beneath them, becoming a sphere of marbled gray, a scar on the black canvas of space. Kara entered the coordinates for Iph-T'Kin into the ancient navigation system. The hyperspace engine coughed, protested, and finally came to life, stretching the distant stars into lines of white and blue light. They plunged back into the non-place that was travel, leaving behind a world of ghosts.
Ruthye, who had remained in a solemn silence, finally spoke.
"He loved her," she said, her voice a whisper barely audible above the ship's hum.
Kara looked at her. "Who?"
"The farmer," the girl clarified. "His daughter. He loved her very much. That's why he stayed. To bury her."
Kara nodded, her throat feeling tight. "Yes. I know."
"My father loved me too," Ruthye continued, more to herself than to Kara. "That's why he gave the killer everything we had. To protect me and my brothers. But it wasn't enough." She looked at the hilt of the sword that rested beside her. "That's why I have to do this. Because he loved me."
Kara listened, and in Ruthye's childish, iron logic, she heard an echo of her own broken heart. The logic of loss. The equation of revenge. The desperate attempt to make sense of a senseless act, to balance a scale that would never be level again. She said nothing. There was nothing to say. She simply reached out and gently squeezed the girl's small shoulder, a gesture that was both a comfort and a silent warning.
(Urahara POV)
Light-years away, in a garden where the air was always pure and smelled of freshly brewed tea, Urahara Kisuke watched a holographic screen. It didn't show a battle or a cosmic crisis. It showed a looped replay of a simple scene: a figure in red and blue moving at a nearly imperceptible speed, digging dozens of graves in gray soil under a sunless sky.
He poured himself another cup of sencha, the steam rising in lazy wisps. At his feet, Krypto slept peacefully in his stasis basket, a soft, rhythmic crimson glow surrounding him, keeping him safe from the poison and from time.
'Fascinating,' he thought, and the word in his mind was not a tic, but a deep, thoughtful conclusion. 'The experiment continues to yield the most unexpected results.'
His analysis was not that of a simple observer. It was that of a conceptual biologist studying the rarest specimen he had encountered in two millennia. He rewound the recording.
'Initial hypothesis: the main variable (Kara) would use her superior abilities to intimidate the native (the farmer) and extract the necessary information in the most efficient way. Estimated time: thirty seconds. Emotional involvement level: minimal.'
He paused the recording at the moment Kara began to lift the debris from the farmer's house.
'Observed result: the main variable completely disregarded efficiency. Instead, she chose an act of pure compassion. The application of her power was not for intimidation, but for comfort. She did not use her super-speed as a weapon, but as a tool for mourning. She dedicated hours of her time, a valuable resource on a mission of revenge, to a task that offered her no tactical advantage.'
His gaze shifted to another screen, which showed an analysis of Kara's brainwaves and emotional patterns during the event. The graphs were a chaos of peaks and valleys. Grief. Empathy. Repressed fury. And underneath it all, a resonance of deep and overwhelming sadness.
'The connection to her own trauma is obvious,' his internal monologue continued. 'The act of burying the farmer's daughter is a symbolic repetition of her inability to bury her own parents, her own world. It is an attempt to give a stranger the closure she never had. It is... logically irrational. And, therefore, exquisitely human.'
He changed screens, now showing the final conversation between Kara and the farmer.
'And the consequence... the farmer, in an act of emotional reciprocity, voluntarily provides her with the information she needs. Compassion has proven to be a more effective tool for information extraction than intimidation. A lesson many galactic empires never learn.'
His gaze rested on one last screen, which showed Ruthye's face as she watched Kara.
'But the most significant result is the effect on the secondary variable (Ruthye). Direct exposure to an act of compassion in the midst of a quest for revenge has introduced a paradox into her operating system. Her main objective (revenge) is now in conflict with a new ideal (compassionate justice, embodied by Kara). The seed of doubt has been successfully planted. The trajectory of her development has been permanently altered.'
Urahara leaned back, a genuine smile of satisfaction on his face. His research on Cosmic Silence was based on a theory: that apathy, the end of meaning, could only be fought with acts of unpredictability, of irrationality, of compassion. Cold logic, perfect order, as he had seen on Krypton, eventually led to inertia and nothingness. But the chaos of emotions, the inefficiency of love, the irrationality of hope... that was what kept a universe "interesting." That was what kept it alive.
Kara Zor-El was no longer just a Kryptonian anomaly. She had become the living proof of his thesis.
He stroked Krypto behind the ears. The dog sighed in his sleep.
"Soon, little one," Urahara whispered. "Your owner is learning to be a hero. Not through her victories, but through her scars. And good stories... good stories always take their time to bloom."
With a gesture, the holographic screens vanished, leaving the garden in a serene silence. Urahara stayed there, sipping his tea, a lonely gardener watching the rarest and most tragic flower in the universe begin, very slowly, to heal.
Omake:
Scene: Urahara Shop (Metaphysical Manifestation)
Kisuke was in the back room, examining a cube of dark matter that had cost him a favor from a Lord of Chaos. The air smelled of green tea and the faint ozone fragrance emanating from the artifact. Suddenly, the aroma vanished. The sound of the boiling kettle stopped. Time itself seemed to freeze.
The color drained from the world. The walls of his shop, once a warm wood color, turned a lifeless, ashen gray. A deep, cold shadow fell over the room, one that came not from any light source, but from the absence of all hope.
A figure materialized before him. It was tall, cloaked, with a robe of a green so dark it was nearly black and skin as white as bone. Two points of burning light glowed where its eyes should be. This was not a being that walked through reality; reality itself bent around it. It was The Spectre, the Spirit of Vengeance.
The voice that spoke was not a sound, but a certainty imposed directly upon Urahara's soul.
"KISUKE URAHARA. YOU ARE AN ANOMALY. A KNOT IN THE THREAD OF FATE."
Urahara, without moving from his spot, slowly placed the cube on a table and fanned himself gently.
"A bit dramatic for a first introduction, don't you think, Spectre-san?" he said with a calm that defied the being's oppressive presence. "Usually, people start with 'hello'."
"SILENCE IS FOR THE INNOCENT," the voice boomed. "YOU HAVE TRADED WITH THE DAMNED. YOU HAVE THWARTED DIVINE RETRIBUTION. YOU HAVE ALTERED FATES THAT SHOULD HAVE ENDED IN JUDGMENT. YOUR EXISTENCE IS AN ACT OF IMBALANCE."
'Ah, so he hasn't come about a particular problem, but about my general business model. This is more complicated,' Urahara thought.
"I offer solutions," Urahara replied aloud. "The consequences and the morality of my clients are... irrelevant to the transaction."
"MORALITY IS THE LAW. AND THE LAW DEMANDS JUDGMENT," The Spectre declared. "YOUR SOUL WILL BE WEIGHED. YOUR GUILT WILL BE MEASURED. AND YOUR SENTENCE WILL BE... ABSOLUTE."
The Spectre's burning eyes intensified. Urahara felt an inconceivable force penetrate his being, a gaze that could strip a god's soul bare and burn its sins to ash. It tried to read him, to judge him, to find the stain of guilt upon which it could enact its terrible purpose.
And then, for the first time in countless millennia, The Spectre's gaze... failed.
It did not find a single soul to judge. It found two, fused and interconnected in a paradoxical way. It saw the soul of Michael, a mortal full of regrets and a strange nobility, and it saw the soul of Urahara, an entity of incalculable power and age. They were superimposed, one and yet neither. There was no point of reference, no origin that could be judged under the laws of this Creation. Trying to judge him was like trying to capture the concept of an echo.
The Spectre took a conceptual step back, a hesitation that shook the false reality of the shop.
Urahara smiled, a genuine grin full of profound irony.
"You seem to be having a problem, Spectre-san," he said softly. "You're trying to judge me with the laws of this garden, but I am not one of its flowers. I am... the gardener from next door."
"YOUR EXISTENCE IS PERMITTED... BUT NOT SANCTIONED," The Spectre growled, his confusion turning into a cold fury.
"Are you sure about that?" Urahara asked, his tone turning serious. "The gardener does not judge the bee for visiting both poisonous and healing flowers. He is only interested in the garden being pollinated. Perhaps my... 'business model', as you call it, is simply a form of cross-pollination. A necessary service to keep the cosmic ecosystem interesting."
It was a clear message, a direct allusion to his pact with The Presence. He didn't state it explicitly; he didn't need to. He was reminding The Spectre that there was an authority above Vengeance.
The Spectre fell silent. It was a weapon of absolute purpose, but its purpose had been stayed by a higher directive. It could not act. It was a living contradiction: the embodiment of God's wrath, incapacitated by that same God's will.
"YOUR PATH CREATES CHAOS. YOU WEAVE WEBS THAT ENTANGLE THE RIGHTEOUS WITH THE UNHOLY," The Spectre finally said, his voice now a dangerous whisper.
"Chaos is merely an order that has not yet been understood," Urahara replied, beginning to fan himself again. "And my webs... well, my webs are just business. Now, if you'll excuse me, this tea is getting cold."
The Spectre stared at him for what felt like an eternity. The ashen gray of the room receded, the colors returned to normal, and the sound of the boiling kettle resumed.
"Your existence is a dissonance in the hymn of creation, Kisuke Urahara," was its final warning. "I will be watching."
And with that, it vanished, leaving only a lingering chill in the air.
Kisuke Urahara was left alone. He let out a sigh, this time not of boredom, but of genuine tension. He ran a hand over his forehead; it was slightly damp.
'That was a close one,' he thought. 'Confronting the tool is one thing. Confronting the concept is another entirely. I'm going to need a stronger tea.'
A/N
Hello everyone,
Here is another chapter of this novel. It's really difficult to maintain quality in stories, especially when I want to write very long chapters. Generally, my chapters are between 4 and 6 thousand words long, not including the omakes.
Speaking of omakes, I've written a lot—around 100, haha. I'll try to include one in each chapter. This novel already has an ending; I just need to tell the whole story to get there. If I write without an ending in mind, I'll never finish it, so it's better to focus on a good ending first and then figure out how to get to it.
If you have any omake suggestions, for example, Kisuke talking to or interacting with cosmic beings like the Eternals, Darkseid, Trigon, etc., please let me know in the comments. I might add it in the future if I haven't written it already.
Until next time, Mike.