Chapter Six: The Defender of Earth

May 4th, 2008; Redden State Forest, 30km Southeast of Metropolis.

"Lex, what are we doing out here?" Lena asked as she closed the door of the limousine. Lex ignored her, instead turning to the driver.

"Stay here."

"Yes, sir." Lex nodded, then beckoned for Lena to follow him away from the service road and into the forest.

"Lex…" Lena moaned, drawing the word out. Lex remained quiet until he was confident he was out of earshot of the driver. Only then did he speak.

"I've spent the last few months combing through any and all unnatural extra-planetary events," he said, leading her onwards. Lena sighed dramatically.

"Seriously, Lex? This hypothesis again? There's no proof…"

"Which is why I went looking for some," he retorted. He was sure he was right. There was no other reasonable explanation. Kara Zor El was an alien. And he thought he'd finally found out how she got to Earth.

"Regardless," he continued, "I searched through every recorded detection of an object crashing to Earth from space – not an easy task I might add – in the decade of the 1980s. Based on Kara's limited recollection, I am certain that the '80s is the time period during which she arrived on Earth."

"Ok, let's assume you're right. How much space junk fell back to Earth in the 80's alone?" Lena said, tripping over a fallen tree branch. Lex kept walking, though he did slow down slightly so she could catch back up.

"Over 2000 pieces. However, if that number is adjusted to only include objects with projected landing sights within 200 kilometres of Metropolis, that number falls to just three. And in 1987 – exactly five years before we met Kara for the first time – an object, believed to be an old Soviet Satellite, crashed into the Atlantic off the Delaware coast. Visual confirmation of a fireball streaking across the sky proves it."

Lex and Lena continued their journey onwards, trekking through the woods as the trees began to close in around them.

"However, using my own satellites, as well as analysis of footage of the event, I extrapolated that the object, whatever it may be, did not land in the ocean as assumed. Rather, it should have crashed right here…" The pair pushed through one final grove of trees, coming face to face with something that almost had Lex jumping up and down in joy. A crater, in the middle of the forest. Nothing natural could have made this.

"Oh my god…" Lena breathed. Lex hurried down the slope and towards the centre. There appeared to be nothing of note at first glance – other than the indentation the size of a house in the otherwise untouched forest of course. No signs of metal or any other man-made substance. Not that Lex has been expecting any. Decades of rainfall would have washed away anything on the surface. But he was Lex Luthor. He would not be defeated by simple rain.

He pulled out his phone – ingenious things, these iPhones. He'd taken apart the one he'd bought and upgraded it beyond anything a simple mind like Jobs could come up with, but still, impressive. And popular. Lex would never have guessed the fortune that was the newly emerging 'smartphone' industry. Perhaps he should get in on it?

But for now, the modified phone did its work. He ran the phone/scanner along the ground, making rounds of the crater as Lena stood on the lip, shock written across her face.

Finally, near the dead centre, he found what he was looking for. A radiation signature. One that didn't match anything he'd ever seen before—something… out of this world.

"I've found it," he whispered to himself.

He didn't see all the colour leave Lena's face, nor did he notice when she fled back the way they came until several minutes later.


The Present Day…

"When did Mr and Miss Luthor make you aware of their discovery Agent Danvers?" Lucy asked critically.

This Alex could answer honestly.

"They didn't. I only learned about the ship after Lex attacked Metropolis."

"And why is that?"

"Because they didn't trust me, and rightfully so. By not telling me, Lena and Lex didn't put me in the position of having to lie to my superiors," Alex said, shifting her tone to imply that she thought Lucy was an idiot for asking such an obvious question. It worked, and Lucy narrowed her eyes, hands clenching around the clipboard.

"And when was Miss Zor El told?" Alex opened her mouth to answer, then stopped, eyes following the rush of movement in the reporter's gallery above.

"… I think you may just want to ask her yourself, Miss Lane…"

The giant oaken doors at the back of the hall swung open…


May 12th, 2008: Sichuan Province, China.

An ear-shattering 'crack!' echoed across the sky, and Juan jolted back from his scrutiny of the city maps. His men, surveyors and emergency response teams, had just brought him back a series of updated reports on the most damaged sections of this city – which had been torn apart by a 7.2 magnitude Earthquake not a few hours before.

Fearing the worst, he rushed out of the makeshift command centre in the town square and looked up to the sky, mirroring the actions of many others. That noise had sounded too much like a gunshot…

A pinprick above the city immediately came clearer into view, increasing in size at an alarming rate. Juan's heart leapt into his throat, and he took an involuntary step back. Was this the end then? Who had sent this weapon? Why? Hadn't they been through enough? A hundred deaths had already been reported, and hundreds more were sure to follow.

"Get back! Missile!" One of the other men, a party liaison, cried out. Screams erupted, followed by trampling as people fled the square. Not that it would do them any good. Juan had seen the damage such weapons could do. So had the man who stepped up beside him. His best friend, Zhi Lao. They didn't need to speak to know what the other was thinking.

The object came closer and closer, until, in the last brief moments before the end, Juan caught a flash of red.

A woman, dressed in blue and gold armour, with red boots, a red cape, and a red S glyph on her chest, landed in the middle of the square – cracking the cobblestones. She stood up, pulling her shoulders back and flaring her hair behind her, where it floated slightly despite the absence of any breeze.

"My…" Juan couldn't even come up with something to swear by he was so stunned.

"Captains," the woman exclaimed in passing Mandarin, though the accent was American, "I am Supergirl, and I'm here to help. Point me to where the greatest problem is."

Supergirl. The protector. The hero. The maiden warrior.

Juan had heard talk of her. The mysterious Kara Zor El, who had been seen helping people across the globe. Stopping natural disasters, taking down terrorist cells, saving people from burning buildings. Juan had thought it a hoax. A grand lie. A story told to raise one's spirits. Heroes did not exist in such a world. A woman who could fly and lift planes? That couldn't be true. And yet here she stood, asking to help.

Juan, mastering his shock – and his fear – stepped forward.

"Supergirl. There is a school, right on the fault line. There are students trapped inside. It is too dangerous for us to go in… but if you can enter without disturbing the ground…"

"I can. Thank you, Sir. Show me where this place is. Quickly, before more innocent lives are lost."

Juan rushed to get his maps and pointed out the location. Supergirl nodded, then shot back into the sky.

Juan took a long breath. And then he smiled. So much for stories. Perhaps… perhaps believing in heroes wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Kara flew to the location the captain had pointed out, and sure enough, right on the fault line, was a school surrounded by emergency vehicles. She landed in the middle of several men dressed in firefighter fatigues. It wasn't the most elegant of entrances, but she found a grand display often jolted people into action quicker, and those kids needed her to move fast.

"What's the situation?" She asked. Her Mandarin wasn't excellent, but she could string together sentences reasonably well. She'd spent several months in China in '03.

After a few seconds, one of the men explained things to her. According to the heat scans, there were several groups of children and staff still trapped inside, but the responders couldn't risk disturbing the ground by deploying their equipment.

"I'll get as many out as I can," she said, before taking off and flying carefully up to the nearest window. She eased the windowpane out of its frame, before squeezing inside. Spindly cracks ran along the vinyl floor and the concrete walls; Lockers and posters thrown across the room. Using her hearing, she traced the first group to an amphitheatre near the centre of the campus. She opened the door, being sure not to touch the floor, and immediately called down to the fifty or so students clustered in the centre of a stage at the bottom of the room.

"Stay still! I'll fly down and get you. Don't move!"

The students and the two adult staff members with them, all stared up at Kara in awe. Yeah… she was getting used to that. She glided down and selected the person who looked the youngest – a girl of perhaps nine with long black hair. She held out her hands to the girl, palms up, and she hesitantly took them. Then Kara floated up slightly, bringing the girl with her. She screamed, but not in fear. No, the expression on the girl's face was one of pure joy.

Kara pulled the girl tight to her chest and whispered, "Hold tight." Then she travelled back the way she'd come and deposited the girl with the medics. She returned to grab the next person, repeating the same process each time. By the fourth kid – a tall boy of perhaps sixteen – they had begun forming a line with a person at the edge of the stage with hands outstretched waiting for her. It certainly made the process faster.

She repeated this for three more groups of students, removing about three hundred in about thirty minutes. It was slower than she'd like, but she couldn't risk her gravity field disturbing the newly settled ground.

Finally, she lowered the last person – a teacher with greying hair – to the ground and landed, taking a deep breath as she turned back to the school.

"I can't hear anyone else inside, but I counted about fifteen dead in the corridors," she said.

The teacher clapped, and the students all broke out in applause and cheers of a single word. She supposed the closest translation would be… "Super-One."

Blushing at the praise, she made her way over to the Captain she'd met on her first landing. He'd apparently made his way over.

"Where to next?"


May 15th, 2008: LCorp RnD Facility, New Jersey

(Everything is legal in New Jersey ;D )

Lena stood beside Lex, who was practically bouncing on his toes with excitement, as an enormous truck drove into LCorp's underground RnD garage. She refused to call it a lair. That just felt incredibly tacky.

The truck came to a stop beneath several dozen cranes, and Lex rushed towards the operators' panel giving rapid-fire instructions as he went. Lena just stood there in the middle of the floor. Watching as the cranes disassembled the truck roof and walls, revealing something… impossible.

A fuselage twice as long as Lena was tall, built from a metal that didn't even exist on the periodic table. Some transparent metallic substance that had no molecular resemblance to glass covered the cockpit, inside of which was a red chair lined with electrodes, and a console of sorts.

The craft was incredibly damaged. One side of the ship had been seemingly melted away, and the console was completely fried. Black scorch marks covered both the inside and outside of the craft, and what they assumed was where the engine had been, was just a mangled cylindrical thruster shell. Protruding from the main body were two stumps of metal with incredibly intricate wiring hanging loose from the severed ends. They'd theorised these might be some sort of solar-panels that had disintegrated upon entry.

The cranes began carefully lifting the ship from the bed as another truck rolled in. This one contained everything else of interest from the crash site. Any loose pieces of metal, some bizarre plant life that had sprung up around the crater, vast chunks of irradiated soil, and, oddest of all, a green crystalline substance they'd found scattered and buried deep underground.

Lex returned to her side as the ship was craned away to be studied and dissected.

Lena swallowed.

"We should put together a model. Calculate the entry vector, and use that to calculate a… a possible origin point," she whispered, barely able to believe the words were coming out of her mouth. Her sister was an alien.

"It's already running," Lex said, grin still etched across his face. He offered his arm to her.

"Shall we?"

She took his arm and let him steer her away towards the lab.

May 17th, 2008: Paris, France

Kara dropped from the sky, cracking bitumen. A semi-trailer smashed into her, crumpling on impact. The momentum of the crash threw the rear of the truck almost completely vertical in the air, groaning under its own weight. Then it crashed to the ground, and Kara turned her eyes on the driver. A man in a black ski-mask was looking dazed as he sat at the wheel, his companion trying desperately to deal with the airbag that had burst in his face.

A white van drove past the now stationary truck, and Kara spun on it, releasing two quick consecutive blasts of heat vision. She took out both tires on the side closest to her, and the van ground to a halt, skidding around in an arc as the tires on the other side tried to propel the vehicle forward. One of the doors flew open, and a woman took aim at Kara with a semi-automatic. Kara rolled her eyes, then raced towards the woman, disarming her, the few bullets she'd been able to fire crushing on impact with Kara's skin.

She'd learned not to let people take shots at her from a distance if she could avoid it. While she and her bad-ass outfit were invulnerable, that didn't stop shrapnel from deflecting off her body. Nor did it do anything for bad guys with shit aim.

Kara pulled the woman out of the car and threw her onto the road. Then she grabbed the driver of the vehicle before he could run away.

"Now, now. We can't have that. There's a lovely cell waiting for you in prison, and considering the effort that went into preparing it for you, it would just be rude for you not to visit." Two cop cars came flying down the road, skidding to a stop. Three guys ran out, pistols raised. To their credit, they only gawked at her for a second before getting to work. One bent down and cuffed the two goons, while Kara walked with the others to the back of the truck.

"What's inside?" Kara asked them.

"Dispatch says it's a shipment of vaccines bound for the suburbs," one of the cops, a man with sick braids, stated, voice gruff.

"Good thing I was in the neighbourhood then," Kara said. They rounded the back, and the two men targeted the door as two more cars pulled up at the end of the street. Behind the truck, a traffic jam was beginning to form, people getting out of their cars to yell. As soon as they saw the cape and the cops, all whining stopped, replaced with hushed whispers to get phones and cameras out.

Kara looked to the cops for permission to open the door, and they gave it. She gestured for them to step aside, then grabbed the handles and yanked it open. Gunfire instantly filled the street, and Kara spun around, jumping into the air and flaring her cape to either side of her. The bullet-proof fabric caught the bullets, and she stayed in the position until their clips ran out. Then she dove into the truck and grabbed two men by the scruffs of their necks. She dropped to the ground for the two policemen as another group of cops ran towards them.

"We've got this Supergirl. Thanks for the assist," the man with the braids said, winking at her. She flashed him a smile, then nodded to the crowd, before shooting back into the sky.


May 19th, 2008: LCorp RnD, New Jersey

"Lena! The model is complete, come and see!" Lex shouted, and Lena grabbed her tablet and raced over to Lex's console as he cast the render to the enlarged overhead screen.

The screen started with satellite images of a fireball across Metropolis, rewinding, a tiny green blip representing Kara's… Kara's pod, leaving the atmosphere and flying out into space.

"This is assuming the pod maintained some sort of constant speed. The engineers are relatively confident in saying the ship was powered by solar energy; which in turn fuelled the ships now non-existent engine and the cryogenic drive that kept Kara asleep during transit." The blip slowly moved away from the solar system, and a count of years slowly began ticking up in the corner. Five, ten, twenty, fifty…

"Any luck on those crystals?" he asked, and she handed him her tablet.

"Sort of. I've isolated the chemical formula. It's a form of Krypton Hydride but fused with atoms of the same mystery metal alloyed in the structure of Kara's pod. It's highly radioactive, and prolonged exposure would undoubtedly cause cancer, radiation sickness, and other diseases typical of such exposure. But the interesting thing is that the material, which I'm calling Kryptonite because of the crystalline structure, gives off its radiation at a specific wavelength that causes immediate electromagnetic degradation to its surroundings. The higher the wavelength, the faster the degradation. It's why all the plants around the crash site were either dead or mutated. It was literally bleached of UV, and it eats through the physical and infrared spectrums too."

"Interesting," Lex said, pursing his lips as his eyes flickered between the tablet and the screen. One hundred years, five hundred years, one thousand years… The blip had now left the solar-system entirely behind, drifting through empty space, pace retracing.

"Any practical applications?"

"Maybe as an alternate energy source, but we'd run out fast, and the radiation is obviously a considerable factor."

"Hmm. Best lock it away for now then. Have the crystals moved down to a secure lead and concrete vault."

"Agreed," Lena said, making a note on her tablet. Good. She wanted as far away from those glowing space-rocks as she could get.

The screen dinged, and Lex and Lena turned back towards the icon.

'Point of Origin: M-class red-supergiant star in the Cygnus constellation, 1,525 lightyears from Earth. Total time elapsed: thirteen thousand years.'

"My god," Lena muttered.

Lex pulled out his phone. "Hello, NASA Administrator? This is Lex Luthor. I need to borrow the Hubble Space Telescope…"


May 24th, 2008: Chicago, Illinois, The United States

Adam Stephenson stood in the middle of the road, arms crossed. Beside him were his brothers and sisters. They stood silent and still, thousands of people in the middle of the road. They didn't speak. They didn't wave signs. They'd tried that. Nothing changed. Maybe… maybe this would be different. Adam didn't think so. If he was honest… he didn't think there was anything that could be done in his lifetime.

On the other side of the street, police dressed in riot gear formed a line. Behind them, sirens flashed red, white and blue.

Adam had grown up on stories of his father. He was a soldier. A man proud to wear those stripes. He had enlisted out of a sense of duty to those three colours and the people who wore them. He had been a man of faith. A believer in hope. His father before him had marched just like Adam was now. For the same cause.

Adam's father had been a man of faith. He'd served his country in three wars. Then he'd come home, and been shot dead by a man wearing the red, white and blue.

Adam wasn't a man of faith. Faith had failed him. Hope had failed him. But he wasn't a quitter. If God decided that Adam would be fighting for the same cause his grandfather had, and his grandfather had, and his grandfather had… then that was the path he would follow. Regardless of how it ended.

Adam was not a man of faith. But he could trust in himself. He could trust in the men and women standing beside him. And he could trust in the woman whose hand sat in his.

He looked to her out of the corner of his eye, marvelling at her orange hair and pale skin. She stared down the line of men with their guns and their gas and their badges with passion and fury in her gaze.

Demi was not a woman of faith either. She couldn't bring herself to believe in God. To her, Destiny was an excuse used to justify too many acts of horror and death. Adam could respect that. Understand it. But she believed in him, and to Adam, that meant more than anything else in the world.

A woman from CNN stood behind Demi, hiding a video camera in her jacket.

"People!" a voice yelled through a megaphone, "This is a major roadway. Please disperse to allow the free-flow of traffic to resume!" Behind the hastily erected police barricade traffic was backed up for kilometres, the honking of car horns the only sound puncturing the otherwise still air.

Adam took a deep breath, squeezed his girlfriend's hand, and stepped forward. Instantly, tasers and guns were raised. In the row behind, tear gas was prepared.

"Five African-American kids died this week in Chicago," Adam called out, the reporter edging her camera out so she could see him. "Killed by police. Those kids won't ever see any justice from the people who should be protect' ng 'em. This is the closest they get. You tell the mayor that we want to know what he's gonna do for our kids. Until then, this highway stays closed."

"Sir, with all due respect, you have to move out of the way. Protest somewhere that doesn't stop one of the largest roads in the city."

They'd tried that. They'd just been ignored.

"Tell your men to disperse, or we will remove you ourselves," the man with the loudspeaker said. He was a tall man, though still not as tall as Adam. He stood on the roof of a car, towering over police and protester alike.

Adam raised his hands beside his head, palms facing the line.

"We're staying right here," he said softly, though the words carried easily in the street. The man rolled his eyes, then gestured to his men.

"Move them." Two moved forward, faces obscured by helmet and visor. Adam closed his eyes. Hands grabbed him, pulling his hands behind his back…

"And what makes you think you can move me?" a voice asked. It wasn't one Adam knew, and he knew most of the people in this crowd. He'd gone to church with them. Sat in school with them. Mourned with them. The hands grabbing Adam's arms slackened and, hesitantly, he opened his eyes.

The protesters parted around a figure with long blonde hair wearing armour of midnight blue and gold, a red cape falling across her shoulders and to the ground. An emblem sat proudly on her chest — a stylised S.

"Tell the mayor that this man," she gestured to Adam, "has asked him a question. Until that question is answered, no one will be using this road."

She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, blue eyes fixed on the lead policeman. He gulped, then spoke into his radio. Supergirl turned that stare on the two cops holding Adam, and they retreated immediately.

Heart pounding, he rushed back, pulling Demi into a fierce hug. The whole crowd looked to the woman in blue, awed. The reporter had stopped hiding her camera. Instead, she'd fixed it on Supergirl's face.

"Why?" someone asked from the back.

"Supergirl?"

"Why help us?"

Supergirl looked at Adam, and in the eyes of the most powerful woman in the world, he saw pain. And he saw compassion.

"Because it's right."

She stood there alongside them for five hours. And in that time over a hundred reporters arrived, and even some helicopters hovered over the highway. But the part that amazed Adam the most was that, as the minutes wore on, their numbers swelled by tens of thousands. People from all across the city were joining their blockade. They didn't have signs or posters. Instead, they brought bottled water and fresh food.

As the fifth hour was ticking to a close, a limousine arrived. Supergirl turned to Adam and nodded. A whispered hush ran through the protesters as they spotted the mayor, and then something was being passed forward. Demi grabbed it, revealing a metal pole with fabric tied around it.

Red, white and blue.

Supergirl took the flag in hesitant hands, then turned to Adam.

"This is your moment. I can't fight this battle for you. The whole world is listening. Make it count." She unwrapped the flag and planted it into the ground. The stars and the stripes unfurled, rippling softly in the breeze. She held out the metal to Demi, who took hold with one hand. Then she gestured to old Charlie Porter. Aged, frail, the pastor of Adam's church had never been one to surrender when he had something to fight for. He grabbed the flag too. The people around Supergirl reached out, and then the ones behind repeated it until an entire wave of people were reaching out towards that flag.

And for the first time in a long time, Adam felt just a tiny bit of hope.

Maybe, just maybe, he was a man of faith after all.


June 12th, 2008: Metropolis, 51st and Adams,

Kara crashed through the roof of a deli, flattening the structure instantly. Her head slammed into the ticket counter, metal bending around her head.

"Ow."

"Supergirl? Do you copy?"

"Yeah Oracle. Just peachy."

Kara pushed herself upright and spat a filament of metal out of her teeth. Then she pressed a hand to her ribs. A gash had been ripped through her armour, piercing through to the skin beneath. She was… she was bleeding. Kara wasn't afraid of blood – she was a woman after all – but she'd never bled from an actual wound before. Her skin had never been pierced before. What the hell was that axe?

"Babs… Get Henshaw on the line. Right now."

Kara walked through the wreckage of the deli as flames started springing up along the floor, burning what remained of shelving and canned goods.

"Miss Zor El, what the hell is happening out there?! Something just came out of space and careened into the Atlantic! We didn't even see it!"

She stepped out of the deli and cracked her neck. An alien, twice her size, rippled with more muscles than she could count. Grey skin, black hair, one yellow eye, another dead one cut by a long scar. And clutched in its right hand was an enormous battle-axe, dripping with blood. Her blood.

"Henshaw. Clear the city," she whispered.

"Supergirl…" Babs started.

"Do it." The line crackled, then went dead, and Kara took another step out into the road. She looked into its eye and saw only hatred unbounded. Around them, people were screaming as they fled, car tires screeching as they drove away. Kara could hear two helicopters already inbound.

"Who are you?" She asked the creature, floating up into the air, cape billowing behind her.

"The one that got here first," it growled in a guttural rasp, lunging forward.

Kara took a long, deep breath, and moved. She balled her hand into a fist and ducked under the axe blow, then slammed her knuckles into the alien's gut. It shot up into the air under the force of the blow, screeching. Kara followed, sonic-boom cracking glass and pavement alike. She rose up and punched it again, and again. Higher and higher above the city they soared until the creature managed to swing the axe at her. She blocked the blade away with her gauntlet, severely damaging the metal, then kicked upwards. Her dwarf-star enhanced heel cracked into the alien's jaw, and its head snapped back. The axe bit into her thigh as claws tried to rake her side, but the armour did its job well. Screaming as the axe bit deeper and deeper, sparking pain and agony in her that she'd rarely felt before, she flipped them over and grabbed the alien by the throat. Then she forced them down. Faster, faster, until they hit the Earth at a velocity powerful enough that their landing released a shockwave that splintered the concrete of the surrounding buildings. The street was empty. Cars raced away from downtown, all except a parade of black sedans, Alex shouting orders from within.

The alien tried once more to hit her with the axe, but she grabbed the arm, bent it over her knee, and snapped it. The creature released a throaty scream as the axe fell from the limp appendage.

Kara, panting, grabbed the alien by the throat and lifted it up to face her. The one eye was still full of hate as the creature's teeth ground and spat at her, but there was something else there now. Terror.

"Who are you?"

The alien growled trying to struggle free. But Kara stood on the beasts chest, all her gravity bared, and her grip was iron.

"Speak!"

"Rogol Zarr!" It spat.

"Why did you come here?"

"I am the first of many! You're too juicy to resist."

Kara lit her eyes, letting the heat of her gaze burn the creature's skin.

"Why?"

"To destroy the last pitiful, ragged, pathetic breath of the planet Krypton." It tried to spit at her again, but the spittle evaporated under her glare.

Krypton? Unbidden, a memory flitted across her eyes: red skies, thundering noise, a flash of green and the bitter cold.

"If I'm pathetic," she said softly, "what does that make you?"

A veritable army of DEO vans and trucks rolled up around the battlefield, forming a perimeter of people, guns drawn. Kara's eyes flickered to Alex as she ran out of one of the vehicles, Barbara and Henshaw behind her, all armed to the teeth.

She couldn't let them talk to this thing.

Kara's grip slackened just slightly, and Zarr used its remaining arm to grab her and hurl her aside. She somersaulted through the air, regaining her balance, and blasted the alien with her heat vision as it caught the axe and prepared to attack once more. The beams slammed into its chest, setting the skin ablaze. Then she shot forward, grabbing Zarr by his face, and pounded him into the tarmac. Once. Twice. Three times. On the fourth, what she assumed was his heart-beat, failed. She released the body, letting it hit the crater, and watched with satisfaction as grey blood pooled around the creature's head.

Stepping back as Alex and Barbara ran towards her, she clutched at her side, fingers coming away red.

"That stings," she hissed, as Alex grabbed her and threw Kara's arm around her shoulders.

"How the hell… What is that thing made off?" Alex exclaimed as Barbara dropped to her knees beside the axe, and Henshaw stooped over the creature.

"Reynolds!" He barked, "Go to the crash site and retrieve the ship this… whatever it is… used to get here. We can't let anyone get a hold of it but us." He turned towards Kara, and his expression softened. He nodded to her, and she returned the gesture.

"And… I can't believe I'm saying this... get a medic for Supergirl."


To all the folks in America... We might not be able to vote and help you out, but for what it's worth, good luck from the Land Down Under.

Sorry, this took so long. We should be getting back to regular updates very soon!